WHERE IS OUR SOUP FORK!
Princess Luna glared dangerously at the wide-eyed, shivering footman. Her silver-shod hoof slammed down on the tablecloth. THIS TABLE SETTING IS INCOMPLETE! HOW CAN WE BE EXPECTED TO ENJOY THE SOUP COURSE WITHOUT THE TRADITIONAL SOUP FORK!
"Luna..." Celestia gently chided her.
"Oh." Luna drew back thoughtfully. "Our apologies. Perhaps this is one of the things that has changed since we have been away." Her hoof smacked the table again. BUT WE STILL WANT OUR SOUP FORK!
Celestia caught the footman's eye, gave him a reassuring wink, and nodded for him to withdraw. He did so with great relief and speed.
Luna stared into her bowl as if its contents had personally insulted her.
"Luna, dear, sweet, lovable, frustrating Sister Mine," Celestia said, "we all understand that it hasn't been easy readjusting since your return. But you really must find a better outlet for your frustrations than berating the staff. They are only doing their best to help you."
Luna shut her eyes, and nodded sadly. "We agree, Sister. And we apologize. Perhaps thou could suggest such an outlet?"
"I have just the thing in mind. Leave the soup, and come with me."
"We do not understand, Sister... hoof-paints?"
"Come now, Luna! You can't have forgotten how much we enjoyed hoof-painting together when we were young."
"We are no longer a filly, Sister!"
"Luna, you remember Hearth's Warming Eve, when you got me the coloring book I asked you for?"
"We did not understand that either."
"Luna, I got more enjoyment out of that simple coloring book and set of colored pencils than I've had in a long while. It was the best present I'd gotten from anyone in years. All I'm saying is that sometimes the best way to recover from dealing with life's complexities is to do something childishly simple. Like hoof-painting."
Celestia used her magic to select a pre-stretched canvas from the art-room's supply closet, and set it on the easel in front of Luna. Arranged in a semicircle around Luna were several small pots and cans of paint.
"Just pick a color," Celestia suggested, "and have at it."
Setting up a canvas on her own easel, she selected a pot of golden paint and began gently outlining the petals of a flower. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Luna draw a pot of night-blue paint closer to her, tentatively dip her unshod hoof into it, and then bring it up to stroke the canvas, albeit with a doubtful, uncertain expression on her face.
After a few minutes she coughed to get Celestia's attention.
"Wilt thou look, Sister, and give us thy appraisal?"
Celestia nodded, and leaned over to look.
She blinked.
In the exact center of the canvas was a square of paint. An exactingly sharp-edged, monotone square. It was as if someone had simply snipped out a square of the original canvas and replaced it with a swatch dyed a single perfect shade of blue.
Celestia looked at the pot of paint, and Luna's dripping hoof.
"Luna, how do you do that?"
"It is not difficult, Sister. It is like when we paint the sky at night. All it requires is exactitude and concentration." Luna dipped fresh paint on her hoof and slapped it across the canvas.
The perfect square was joined by an absolutely straight, monotone line with not a single smudge or drip of paint.
Celestia's eye twitched slightly. Then she recovered.
"The idea, Luna, is not to be so exact. Put a blob of paint on the canvas and then... smear it around. Let it be rough-edged, free of self-imposed boundaries, an expression of yourself and your feelings. That sort of thing."
She pointed to her own canvas, to the blobby, free-form look of the petals of her flower.
"Ah! We think we understand, Sister." Summoning a fresh canvas with her magic, Luna busied herself with it for a long while, while Celestia added a stem and leaves to her flower.
Luna sat back proudly, her hooves and snout lightly flecked with blue paint. "How is this, Sister?"
Celestia looked. And stared.
The entire canvas, from edge to edge in every direction, was a single monotone shade of blue.
"Uh. Um." Celestia thought quickly. "A very good beginning, Sister. But perhaps you might consider using other shades of paint as well?"
"Ah. We had wondered why there were so many." Drawing a pot of red hoof-paint closer to her, Luna attacked the canvas.
Celestia found her hoof shaking slightly as she used clay-brown paint to add a pot for her flower, and began sketching in the outline of a table below it. As she worked, she noticed Luna moving from pot to pot, and can to can, never using the same color of paint twice.
When Luna gently coughed again, Celestia nerved herself, then looked.
The canvas was a riot of color, blobs of every shade overlapping and twisting about each other. Luna herself was spattered with paint of every shade, and looked like an extension of the canvas.
"That is indeed... expressive," Celestia hazarded.
Luna nodded. "We think so! It is quite soothing to spread the paint about, and to use so many colors without restraint."
Then she peered at Celestia's canvas. And her face fell.
"We are doing it wrong."
"No, no," Celestia hurriedly reassured her. "Abstraction is just as valid a form of expression. Your work should reflect your true inner self."
"But that is just it, Sister!" Luna moaned. "We are not truly able to let ourself go! To express ourself fully! It might lead to... thou knows what..."
"Don't be silly, Luna. You're not going to lose control again, just playing around with paint."
"It is insufficient!" Luna stated flatly, glaring at the canvas. "Nothing we do is truly an expression of ourself any more."
Discouraged, Luna sat back, snatched up a facecloth, and buried her snout in it, rubbing furiously to get the paint off her face.
Then she suddenly froze. She held the cloth up before her, staring at it in wide-eyed astonishment.
EUREKA!
Celestia stumbled back out of the way as Luna darted forward, collecting every single pot and can of paint in her magic. Snatching up a large orange bucket, she emptied all the gooey paint colors into it, swirling the bucket to blend them together well.
Then, grinning like a maniac, she upended the bucket onto herself in one massive, vomitous, multicolored SPLOOSH!
Celestia desperately cast a shield spell to protect her white coat from flying spatters of paint as Luna darted past her to snag a drop-cloth from a nearby settee with her teeth. With a wild toss of her head, she flung it open onto the floor. Then she threw herself bodily down on it with a loud, wet squelching sound, and rolled ecstatically back and forth like a filly in a summer meadow, wings splayed open, all four hooves in the air, her laughter long and loud and increasingly deranged...
HA HA HA! HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! HAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
"Luna!" Celestia cried, frightened out of her wits. "Luna! LUNA!"
The Canterlot Royal Gallery was only too happy to make an exhibit hall available for the Princess Luna to showcase her works. The art elite of Canterlot gathered to murmur approvingly about the truly unfettered expressiveness of the pieces.
Pride of place on the end wall was given to the broad swatch of cloth on which a seeming explosion of color and movement and unbridled passion was sketched out in arcs and sprays of contrasting hue and subtle intersections of abstract shapes.
It looks like somepony fell into a vat of melted crayons, Celestia grumbled to herself, and then made snow angels with it.
Princess Luna herself, her coat, wings, mane and tail still mottled with dark patches where some of the more stubborn colors had refused to entirely wash out, was only too happy to discuss the inner turmoil and deeply repressed feelings that had led to her artistic breakthrough.
"And of course," she cried proudly, "we must acknowledge the work of our kind Sister, which was a true inspiration to us -- it helped us to see what it was we were holding back, what we truly needed to express!"
Luna had insisted in including Celestia's staid, practical painting of a flower in the collection. It was hung to the left of the massive cloth abstract, and by contrast looked woefully insipid. The assembled art critics made suitably appreciative noises. It was a work by her Majesty, after all. But Celestia could see what they really thought of it.
She stared at Luna, so bright and cheerful, so utterly free of care. Luna, with her dark coat, which could suffer being smeared with every color of paint without harm, so totally unlike Celestia's pristine white, on which even the slightest spatter of paint would show like a neon sign.
Luna, who was able to give herself over to her Muse, in a way Celestia could never allow herself to do.
Celestia frowned, eyeing her Sister.
Would another thousand years, she wondered, be anywhere near long enough?
The End
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, its characters and indicia are the property of Hasbro.
No infringement is intended. This story is a work of fan fiction, written by fans for fans of the series.
Cover Source Image(s):
http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/File:Luna,_Spike_and_Twilight_laughing_S2E04.png
