Foals and Mortals

by Carabas

Rating: everyone
Tags: Comedy, Cutie Mark Crusaders, Dinky Hooves, Rumble, Diamond Tiara, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 16333

Wherein the foals of Ponyville stage a Hearth's Warming play, and everything goes irretrievably to hell.

Wherein the foals of Ponyville stage a Hearth's Warming play, and everything goes irretrievably to hell.

Written for Alaborn for the 2018 Jinglemas collab.

Published 2018-12-29 11:40:01 UTC
Last updated 2018-12-29 11:40:01 UTC

Foals and Mortals

If you asked me, “So, Scootaloo, where and when and how did all the trouble kick off? Y’know, that thing where you and every other foal in Ponyville ruined Hearth's Warming, set the School of Friendship on fire, mishandled the severed head of Clover the Clever, all that kinda thing?” then I’d have to say ...

… Well, y’know, first I’d say that’s a lot of questions at once. Space them out, come on. And also, you’d be overlooking some of the good things we did. Okay, yes, a little went wrong, or a lot, even, but we all learned valuable lessons. I did straight-up good friendship-y stuff. And nopony actually died, which is the most important thing.

But to answer you, I’d say it began one day in school. It was near the middle of the day, just as we were all about to head out for lunch break. And, not that I’m passing the bit to her or anything, it really got started when Miss Cheerilee said, “And this year, class, I think it’d be a wonderful idea for you to stage a Hearth's Warming play!”

“A Hearth's Warming play?” I asked, flapping right up out of my seat. Everypony else murmured and chattered, just as interested as I was. “About how Equestria was founded? With Hurricane and Pansy and Puddinghead and everything?”

“Precisely that, Scootaloo, though try not to tip over your desk.” I settled back down and swapped excited glances with Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom, as Cheerilee smiled at all of us and kept talking. “I’m sure you’re all familiar with the topic — in fact, I know you all are from the results in your history test — and with the whole classroom’s effort, you can put on a fabulous show for the holiday season. Princess Twilight’s offered the main auditorium in the School of Friendship as a venue. And there’s not a pony in Ponyville who wouldn’t love to go there to see your performance.”

Everypony sat up at that, at the idea of the play and the audience and performing in the School of Friendship and … well, everything. I flapped right up out of my seat a second time, and only just saved my desk from tipping over. My fellow Crusaders buzzed with excitement, and I guessed their minds would be racing with ideas just like mine. Just behind us, Snips and Snails started whispering keenly, and from what I could make out of her face, even Diamond Tiara looked interested.

The pony who sat up straightest and looked keenest of us all, though, was Rumble. And I could understand why he’d look happiest. He’d stuff on his mind, I knew. His brother, Thunderlane, was stuck training with the Wonderbolts up until Hearth's Warming Eve. So was Rainbow Dash as well.

Sucky for both of us, but he seemed a little lonelier. Anything that could make him feel that little less lonely would be good. And he knew how to put on a show as well, and how to get ponies fired up. I knew that for certain.

“Putting on a play for the whole town?” I heard Sweetie Belle say. Her eyes shone, and so did Apple Bloom’s. We Crusaders know a cool thing when we hear it.

“Putting on a play for the whole town?” Dinky Do didn’t look quite so enthusiastic, and shrank back in her seat a little. Not really the put-herself-front-and-centre type. She mostly prefers to keep her face buried in a book rather than fly it before an audience.

Mostly’s an important word there.

“Before your families and friends,” Cheerilee said reassuringly. “All of whom, I promise you, have acted parts or helped out in the Hearth's Warming play themselves before, and who could help you if you’ve any worries or questions. They and I will be happy to advise and help … but,” and her tone became a little lower, a little more conspiratorial.

“Whenever this is staged, every group of ponies knows the story, but they always brings their own take on it. What were the Founders like? What made Puddinghead and Platinum and Hurricane quarrel so much? What make Smart Cookie and Clover and Pansy come together in the end? How did their journeys go, and what led them to Harmony in the face of the windigos?”

“Not wanting to freeze to death?” Diamond Tiara said, her tone arch. “That seems like kind of a big one.” The instant before Cheerilee gave her a reproachful look, however, she seemed to catch herself, close her eyes, and mutter, “No. No. Niceness. No cynicism or bullying. Be a better pony, Diamond.”

Cheerilee pressed on. “The story of Hearth's Warming is every pony’s story … for everyone who values friendship and harmony, for that matter. It’s everyone’s to tell, and retell, however they like.” She winked at us. “I’ll be around to help and advise and oversee if you need me, but make it your own. And have fun.”

So like you might expect, we didn’t spend lunch break lunching. We mustered outside, every foal of us, breath steaming out into the cool air. A light layer of snow lay, thanks to Rainbow Dash and the weather teams before she’d rushed off to the Wonderbolts — nothing too deep, but enough to make everything all frosted and wintery-looking.

We stood in a circle in the snow, and discussed deathly serious play matters. And make no mistake, this was something worth taking seriously. Staging the founding story of all Equestria? It’s pretty important stuff. Showing how the tribes got harmonious in the first place? Importanter still. Reminding ponies of all that? Importanterest of all.

So we discussed it, and all the lofty topics that we’d have to ensure the play touched on. First and foremost, how we’d go about organising it without calling on help. Making it our own telling, like Cheerilee said.

Well, no. Firster and foremoster, who’d play who and who’d get the cool parts.

Slight problem with the Hearth's Warming play. If you’ve got a whole class staging it, there’s only, like, six roles, and there’s only so much you can do to flesh out a windigo role or a random herald or guardspony. And some roles’ll be wanted more than others. For example, and if we’re being totally honest here, then yeah, Private Pansy might have helped save the pony tribes and found Equestria by breaking the pegasi mould and forging friendships and all that. But on the other hoof, Commander Hurricane’s cool. And if you’ve got lots of ponies wanting to be cast, you can see why there’d be problems.

But Apple Bloom had had an idea to cut through those problems. She’d explained it to me and Sweetie when we were heading out. We’d deemed it pretty neat. And she laid it out to everypony else, even as Sweetie wrote names down on a piece of paper. Before them, there sat an upturned hat.

“So here’s how I reckon we can makes things fair, with nopony having to throw a kick or nothing,” Apple Bloom said. As she spoke, Sweetie Belle ripped out a section from the paper with Smart Cookie written on it, folded it, and slipped it into the hat. “We write down all the names of every role we’ll need — a chorus, the Founders, three windigos, stagehoofs-cum-extras, you name it — and we’ll shuffle ‘em and draw ‘em from the hat. Fair and random. If any of y’all get a tribe that doesn’t fit, we can … well, we can figure something else out. That sound good to start with, though?”

Pipsqueak was the first to nod, sorta hesitant, and that set off nearly everypony else, even as Windgos 1 through 3 joined their papery siblings in the hat. Diamond Tiara looked skeptical, but didn’t comment.

“Ready? Draw when it gets round to you. We all unfold at once, so we’re all surprised.” Apple Bloom gestured, and Sweetie shuffled the papers in the hat and floated it around clockwise. First port of call was Silver Spoon, who gave it a quick, secondary shuffle with her hoof before drawing one out. Round the circle it went, before it finally trailed round to me. I drew out my piece of paper, and as it finished at Apple Bloom and Sweetie, everypony else started unfolding their papers.

I wished under my breath as I unfolded my own paper and peered down.

Wishes work. ‘Commander Hurricane’ was emblazoned across the slip of paper. That sort of role and good luck deserves a word like ‘emblazoned’. I whooped and held it aloft. “Heck yeah! Meet your new Commander, everypony!”

Groans or whoops came in response from some quarters, but most everypony else was busy reacting to their own bits of paper. “I got ...” Featherweight squinted at his own paper. “...er, Princess Platinum?” He flapped his wings uncertainly. “That … might work?”

“Smart Cookie.” Silver Spoon smirked. “Not bad.”

“What about you guys?” I asked, turning on Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. “What did you —”

“Stagehoofs-cum-extras,” Apple Bloom replied, and both she and Sweetie smiled a little wryly, waving their own papers. Sweetie cast an envious glance Featherweight’s way as he scratched his head. “But ya know, I reckon that ain’t so bad. I had some ideas for stuff that could be done behind the scenes with staging and props and all. Ways we could do stuff quickly and all.”

“Private Pansy,” murmured Dinky, looking down at her own paper, sounding even more uncertain than Featherweight.

“Clover the Clever!” I heard Snails cheer. His voice was a little snuffly, and as his head bobbed, his horn seemed to wobble a little. He’d been under the weather with what looked like a case of slow-burning horndroop the last couple of days, and hopefully it wouldn’t get any more serious. “Oh man, I’m going to be the smartest Clover there ever was.”

“I’m Puddinghead!” Snips exclaimed as well. It was amazing how I could hear Diamond Tiara carefully not make a snarky comment. “That’s ... um, might need to cover up my horn somehow. But to heck with it. High-hoof, bro!”

“Yeah.” Sweetie nodded slowly, ignoring the clamour around as the doofuses high-hoofed. She brightened. “Yeah! I can do something to help out as well! We need lights, don’t we? During one Twilight Time, Twilight taught me a few really cool light spells. How to summon it up, and make it different colours, and leaving it hanging, and all that! We could have, um, moods for scenes, or whatever the thing is!”

“Staging stuff and lighting both sound cool! We’ll need those to make it the best Hearth's Warming play Ponyville’s ever seen.” Guilt pricked me a little. “Though it does kinda suck that you two couldn’t be Puddinghead and Platinum. That would have been neat.”

Apple Bloom smiled ruefully. “Luck of the draw, I guess. No use hollerin’ over it. Besides, I reckon I can still help out some even behind the scenes.”

That didn’t stop it being a little sucky, but I couldn’t help but grin down at the little slip of paper in my hoof, and bestowed a grin on the hat as well. When you held Commander Hurricane in your hoof, you couldn’t help but think the system had done good work. Everything had been entirely fair. Random chance hadn’t let us down, even if it had maybe gotten the tribe wrong in a few cases. We’d all gotten our roles, with no pressure or jockeying. And by the best luck in the world, I’d gotten the bestest role.

The process was sound.

So of course ponies started undermining it.

Diamond Tiara, her Windigo paper balanced atop a forehoof, looked from Silver Spoon to the hat, to Snips, then to the hat again, furrowed her brows for a moment, and then said “Snips?”

“Yeah?”

“A cupcake of your choosing every day for the next week at Sugarcube Corner if you give me Puddinghead for a Windigo.”

He blinked, and then beamed. “Deal!” he chirped without another second’s thought, and they swapped slips of paper.

“Wait, what?” Apple Bloom said indignantly as Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon swapped smirks, and as Snips and Snails turned on each other to enthuse about the great deal he’d gotten. “You’re disruptin’ the system!”

“I’m not!” Diamond protested. “I’m improving the system. This way, I get to act alongside Silver Spoon. Snips doesn’t have to hide his horn with a hat or something dumb — and he’d have to, ponies would find it weird watching a unicorn boast about how the earth ponies are best and don’t need anypony else. Also, Snips gets cupcakes. Also also, I did it without bullying or pressuring anypony. I just bribed.”

“Tha-”

“I’m getting better.” That last word was almost plaintive.

“I’m cool with it. I’m very bribable,” Snips said cheerfully. “And hey, I can still do windigo stuff. I can understudy Snails, even!”

“Sounds sweet.” Snails groaned slightly and brushed a hoof across his forehead. “Urgh. You might have to. This horndroop’s killing me.”

Apple Bloom sought about for some way to refute that, to defend the honour of the hat system, but seeing Snips fussing over Snails and seeing Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon immediately enthusing over how they’d be the best Founder duo must have made it difficult for her. She made a few strangled throat noises, and then said nothing at all.

And after she stood silent, the dam just kinda burst.

“Dinky?” Featherweight spoke. Dinky turned to him, just as he offered his own paper. “I’ll swap you Pansy for Platinum. I couldn’t do a Princess justice.”

Dinky accepted the paper, swapping Pansy for Platinum with a vaguely panicked expression. Featherweight turned to grin at me, anticipating partnership, but I had eyes then for Dinky’s distress. “Er,” she said, looking around. Looking around for anypony else. She waggled the paper helplessly in her magic. “Would anypony else like Platinum?” Her gaze alighted on Sweetie, and lit up. “Sweetie Belle, you could do Platinum justice, couldn’t you?”

Sweetie Belle watched Platinum being brandished at her, and I saw her green eyes gleam. I saw the thoughts and keenness raging under her expression. I saw her wrestle with temptation … and then force it into a leglock, kick it in the face, and once it was down and twitching, she reached out to Dinky and gently pushed Platinum back towards her. “Dinky,” she said, slowly, as if she badly wanted to not say the words, “you should play Platinum. You’d be way better at it than me.”

“I’d be way better …?” Dinky trailed off. She studied the Platinum paper like it was a deadly viper, and then regarded Sweetie Belle like a madpony encouraging her to just give it a little tickle behind the venom glands. “But I’d have to be on stage. And there’d … there’d be ponies watching.”

Sweetie pushed Platinum right back into Dinky’s front. “Rarity explained this once. Think of it like … like it’s not you on stage,” she said. “It’s Platinum. You’re acting as Platinum. And I’ve seen you read history books for fun. You’d know how to portray her. You’d be a great Platinum. Ponies watching you would really see her, I bet you anything.”

Dinky looked down at her paper, still bashful and unsure, but then ventured a glance up at Sweetie Belle. “… Do you really think so?”

“Definitely.”

Dinky’s gaze turned back to the paper. She studied it with mixed parts nervousness and thoughtfulness, and I thought there seemed like a little more of the thoughtfulness as time went by. “I know some books,” she ventured. “Some about Platinum herself. Others about more of the old unicorn monarchs. I could give her my best shot.”

She thought for a moment longer, and even as Sweetie beamed, a certain cast came to Dinky’s expression, like an explorer contemplating some lethal and age-old unexplored temple. “I know some very good books,” she said with a kind of grim determination.

With that, I glanced around to get a sense of what everypony was was doing and who was what. Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara for Smart Cookie and Chancellor Puddinghead, Snails and Dinky for Clover the Clever and Princess Platinum, and Featherweight and yours truly for Private Pansy and Commander Hurricane. Upon further checking, Snips, Twist, and Pipsqueak would fill the Windigo roles. Everypony else, including Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, would handle whatever extra roles needed filling and the backstage work. There seemed like a role I was missing, but that seemed to account for it all.

Fair and random chance had been eclipsed at the last moment, kinda, but at least it had all worked out alright-ish.

And just as I turned my attention back to my piece of paper, mentally preparing another gloat as well as turning over what bold, imperious stuff I could say as Hurricane, I remembered a role I wasn’t sure had been filled or not, and a pony I hadn’t checked on.

Check on him I did. “Hey, Rumble,” I said. He stood with a piece of paper in his forehoof, studying it with a faint frown, and as I trotted closer, I got a glance of the words on it. He was the chorus.

“Oh, so,” I said, after trying my best and failing to think of something more breathlessly witty, ”you’re the chorus?”

“Hmm? Yeah, I guess.” He turned it over in his hooves, and seemed deep in thought. “It’s an alright role, I guess. Lots of speaking, lots of scene-setting. You get a feathered hat, even. I could make it work.”

He said the words, but I could tell his heart wasn’t really in it. Don’t act too shocked, but I can get ponies sometimes. I can tell when they’re not saying things, and Rumble was doing his best to not say quite a few things, most of which, I reckon, would have been at the chorus’ expense.

I couldn’t fault him too much. It seemed like … what? Just standing in place and talking, really. It’s the role that blurts exposition and shuffles the main cast on between all the exciting scenes. It’s no good for a pony who’d rather be doing stuff, any stuff.

And I …

Alright, call me a sap. It’d be fair. It was sappy. Sappier than a whole forest confessing its love for another forest, or some sort of simile, I dunno. I blame Sweetie Belle. I usually do anyway, but she’d literally just set an example.

“Rumble?” I said.

“Yeah?” he said, a little still in reluctant thought over his paper.

And, princesses help me, I offered him Hurricane. “Long live the new Commander.”

He was caught short. He stared. He opened his mouth a few times, and his eyes bulged like particularly excited fishbowls. And at last he said, “I … I couldn’t.”

“Sure you could,” I said, trying to sound cheerful and carefree. You don’t get the chance to play Hurricane every day. This must be how Sweetie had felt, I thought. “Just put on the costume, look imposing, and grumble about how the other tribes smell and how pegasi are cool. Anypony could do it. You could do it awesomely.”

“No, I mean ...” He flushed. “I mean, I couldn’t take it from you. I mean, not that I don’t want to …” He trailed off, found his train of thought after a moment in whatever station it had parked itself in, and tried again. His eyes fixed upon the emblazoned ‘Hurricane’. “I mean, do you want to be the chorus?” he said.

“Sure. Why not?” I lied. “Lots of speaking. Lots of scene-setting. I love that junk. Just need somepony kind enough to be a Commander if I’m to take that role over. What do you say?”

He didn’t reply for a bit. You ever notice how colts get flustered and stop talking at the drop of a hat? I’ve noticed.

Eventually, his gaze focused somewhere on the floor, he reached out and took Hurricane, and pressed the chorus into my own hoof.

“I guess I still kinda owe you for what I did at Cutie Mark Day Camp,” he said quietly. He looked up, and wore the most embarrassed smile I’d ever seen on a pony. “Now I owe you twice over. This is … hey, I really do owe you, Scoots.”

“Ah, don’t get sappy,” I grumbled, trying to hide my own flush. There was enough sap going around as is, more than there’d been from the Cutie Mark Crusaders Lumberjacks Incident, the mere mention of which sometimes still makes Applejack say bad words under her breath. ”Just play a good Hurricane on stage, alright? And I’ll chorus you in good as well.”

I turned away to let him confer with Featherweight, and around me, groups of ponies chattered about their own roles, or other stuff about the play, or even about things which weren’t connected to the play, if they were totally weird. The glow of doing a good thing buoyed me up, but only so much.

Look, I’m not joking. Hurricane. Coolest role. No questions.

But even as I slumped a little, two ponies moved in by my sides and buoyed me right up. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle had seen what I’d done, and they didn’t need to say words. They would, but they didn’t have to. I knew what they’d say. I could practically feel the warm glow about them.

Doing the good thing can suck. But good ponies can remind you why it’s not sucky. And do I ever know good ponies.

And so, before this could turn from sap into outright mush, I cleared my throat, stood upright, wore the most Rainbow Dash-y smile I could, and turned to face them both.

“Lights, staging, chorus,” I said, pointing at each of us in turn. “Shall we get to organising?”

And get to organising we did — we being mostly the CMC. We kinda slipped into the role, and everypony else in the play mostly let us get on with it while they focused on their own parts. We’ve got lots of experience of organising things, from before and after we got our cutie marks. Some cruel ponies would argue that our track record’s not all that great. I’d argue back that learning from your mistakes and how not to start any more fires or riots or early dragon migrations or just-about End-Times is how you become great organisers. By that standard, we were on-track to be the greatest organisers ever.

I won’t bore you with all the details. We had plenty of time, and we were busy most of it Spare materials and wood and fabric and whatnot for props and stage decorations were chipped in from lots of ponies. We sorted out our own costumes, of course, but we reckoned it couldn’t hurt to at least get Rarity’s opinion on what we’d come up with for the Founders. She looked over our designs — and although she was quiet for a moment and smiled this strange, faraway smile, she nodded and said she thought they looked fabulous, darlings, and she’d be only too happy to lend us her old backup sewing machine. So long as we promised to not accidentally stitch two of the princesses together. Again. Twilight opened her school auditorium’’s doors to us in the afternoon after classes had finished. She or Cheerilee would usually float by to watch our set-up and rehearsals, and some of her students would peek in from time to time as well.

And let me tell you, we rehearsed our tails off. As Apple Bloom supervised stage set-up and set construction, which involved something complicated with spinning parts, and Sweetie Belle practised strange things with little glowing lights, everypony else got into their roles, worked on their scenes together, and got something like an improv script together. It wasn’t too hard. Everypony knows how the play goes and hows its scenes flow, and most of it came down to figuring out how the characters talked and bounced off each other.

The standout there was Dinky. She’d research during rehearsals, bringing all sorts of books and reading from them on stage, and hum and haw and scribble and tweak lines in her script copy each day. She came out of her shell more as she got increasingly sure about her take. Her Platinum changed a little each day, from the usual snooty take, to something a little more sharp and imperious as time went by.

Snails did his best to keep up and keep his Clover bouncing off her and keeping her Platinum-y impulses in check. His best was kinda crimped by his horndroop acting up, though, and as the day of the play came closer, he got more haggard and spluttery and droopy. Just as well Snips was shadowing him, I reckoned.

I’ll say this as well, I got into the role of the chorus even though I hadn’t been sure about it at first. Call it Stockhorse Syndrome setting in if you like, but standing at the front and pretty much controlling the whole telling of the play turned out to be cool. And I didn’t have to be stodgy about it for anything. I could bedazzle. I could flourish. I could make dramatic gestures and buzz across the stage and get the audience all riled up.

Using my scooter to help buzz across the stage seemed like a great idea, but after I only nearly flew off and crashed into the rows of seats half-a-dozen times, Apple Bloom and Sweetie and Diamond and Cheerilee joined forces to yell at me until I dropped the idea. Spoilsports.

I wrote to Rainbow Dash as well, telling her all about it, and I knew Rumble did the same to Thunderlane. She’d been Hurricane in a play once. She’d know what was up. And, no matter our urging to make the play our own as much as we could, maybe I asked her for advice as well. If you want to know what’d make something cool, you ask Rainbow Dash. She won’t let you down.

And in short, and all considered, it all looked like it was shaping up fine.

Let’s just get a sense of that fineness, in the last day before the play, during our final set of rehearsals and set practise. You might reckon that last day would have been time enough to catch and stop whatever came next. And I say again, it all looked fine.

I zipped into the School of Friendship’s auditorium, only a little late. Rows of seats ran down a gentle slope, facing the stage. Atop that stage, most everypony else looked like they were all preparing and getting in a last hard lot of practise. Down, and around into the backstage area, and up I went to join them.

It bears mentioning that the chorus outfit had been finished up the day before, and I wore the hat proudly wherever I went. It was the mushroom-y sort they wore a few hundred years ago, and had a long red feather sticking out at a jaunty angle. You try not wearing that everywhere.

Only downside, if you can even call it a downside, is it makes you want to put on your few-hundred year-old voice as well. Objections from the others had made me not include that in my chorus lines, but it was a real struggle.

“Yonder, an Apple Bloom! How fareth thee … thou? … no, thee, on this stage of wonders?” I said.

“Thought ya weren’t going to make it all Shakelancy?” Apple Bloom replied. Her, Tag-A-Long, and Truffle were stooped around one of the bits of theatrical scenery she’d been working her heart out over the last few days. A long, two-dimensional, cardboard set of snowy mountains ran on for several metres, set in what looked like a wooden clamp on the ground, with struts on either side. As I approached, Apple Bloom nodded at Tag-A-Long and Truffle, who took up positions by its sides. She pulled a little lever by her hoof, which was hooked up to the clamp, and took a wide step back. The whole line of mountains abruptly wobbled up off the ground a few inches, Tag-A-Long and Truffle turned little wheels set into either side, and the scene spun around to reveal the other painted side — a pale winter sky, complete with windigo shapes half-hidden in the clouds. Other long, painted scenes lay stacked nearby, the topmost one a snowy forest.

“That just means I’ve got to get the Shakelance out of my system.” I admired the scenery. “Looks like you’ve got the spinning scenery working a charm!”

“Yep” She tapped a windigo proudly. “Stage set-up’s going to take no time at all. All me and my glamorous assistants’ve gotta do is hook on the suitable scenery onto the hidden side while a scene’s happening, and your scene transitions can be as smooth as … as somethin’ that’s smooth. What do you think?”

“Hah, I think it’s great!” I admired the frame, clamps and struts and whatever the lever did and all. Apple Bloom’s handy with her hooves. If she wants to make a thing that spins, you better believe she’ll make a thing that spins. “I mean, er. It’s … prithee, a thing of surpassing … ah, heck, it’s great.”

“Gosh,” said Truffle, looking cheerful and stunned all at once. “That’s the first time I’ve been called a glamorous assistant.”

“Keep it up, and you’ll get called it plenty.” Apple Bloom clapped him on the wither, and he blushed while Tag-A-Long grinned. “Still a little trundling of things to do, so for the few crowd scenes when you guys are busy, I borrowed some pommel horses and rockers and whatnot. We can sling them out and use ‘em to pad out numbers. Thanks again for doing the faces on them, Tag-A-Long.”

I eyed up the pommel horses and rockers she’d mentioned. They sat together in one corner, and the former had had heads tied onto them, painted with amiable-looking and slightly vacant smiles.

I’m not a liar, so I can’t deny they looked a little spooky, what with the blank expressions and all. But I didn’t need to volunteer the truth either, so I just smiled and nodded.

“Fires of friendship are all ready to go as well.” Apple Bloom gestured, and I turned to look at what looked like an old round fire-circle, with a cover over it and a button near its base. “Borrowed an old flare for scarin’ off Ursa Minors and whatnot from the barn. We let it off when Silver Spoon and Snails and Featherweight do their bit, Sweetie gets some fuschia light in there, it glows out through the edges, and we’ve got something that could probably scare off a real windigo. Neat, huh?”

Seemed foolproof to me. “Definitely!”

“Glad yah reckon so!” Apple Bloom turned on Truffle and Tag-A-Long. “Come on, let’s practise getting all the scenes on, and we’ll try not to concuss ourselves off of it. Check on Sweetie, Scootaloo. She’s got her lights just about ready, I think.”

Check I did. A short way across the stage, I found Sweetie tinkering with little hovering globes of light. Her horn seethed and burned with an outburst of green magic, and as I approached, I saw her summon a little purple orb. Panting and pleased, she floated it to her left, where it joined a row of other little light orbs, all bobbing in mid-air.

“Got them done?” I asked.

“Yep!” she replied, turning on me and beaming. “That last one’ll be great for the Platinum and Clover scenes. I’m so glad I asked Twilight for all these pointers on light spells during Twilight Times, and that she let me look at all those spellbooks when we were rehearsing. Now I can just have them all ready, and if I keep control over them, I can have them go and shine down wherever to make the atmosphere good.“ She paused. “I, um, might have been taking advice from Rarity on how atmosphere worked and what colours were good for what all this time. But it’s fine. That’s still, y’know, us doing our own thing.”

“I don’t need convincing.” I leaned down to inspect a glowing orb of blue. It glimmered turquoise at me, as if greeting a friend. “These are neat!”

“Thanks! I’ve been practising hovering them around as well, as well as trying to focus their glow into spotlights. We’ll get proper light from above.” As she spoke, the yellow orb began to slowly hover up out of its place in the row, and Sweetie Belle hurriedly turned. Her horn blazed green and pressed it back into place. “Yellow’s a little fiesty. I think it’s being a bad influence on Green and White as well.”

That wasn’t a set of sentences I’d expected to hear applied to colours before, and felt I ought to ask. “Colours can be fiesty?”

“Well, these ones can. Twilight explained it once. It’s all about hiccups in the magical matrices and self-assembling motive due to thaum … stuff. Alright, I didn’t quite get all the explanation. But so long as I can do magic at them, they should behave themselves.”

That sounded confusing, but trustable enough. Sweetie looked away to see to cyan when it started flashing anxiously, and I moved on.

Past her, I saw Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon strutting around in their costumes as well, pleased as punch in the old-styled clothes. Well, Silver Spoon was entirely pleased in her Smart Cookie get-up, at least. Diamond Tiara looked a little more disgruntled with her hat in the shape of a meringue. But if you bargain for a role with a name like ‘Chancellor Puddinghead’, I’m not sure you’ve got any right to be surprised by what you get.

They were concentrating on copies of the script in their hooves, so I didn’t disturb them as I went by. But at my back, I heard Diamond break off from Puddinghead’s scatterbrained monologue and say, “You know, I think this is all pretty good for me. Acting as one of the Founders, bringing about harmony for all ponykind. I mean, I wouldn’t want to internalise all the crazy, but some of the other stuff could make me a better pony. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“...Maybe?” Silver Spoon cautiously allowed. “Doesn’t Puddinghead get in the way of harmony, though?”

“Well.” Diamond shook her forehoof irritably. “Details.”

I moved on from them, and made for what I thought would be Dinky going through her role in her increasingly-passionate way, with Snails trying to keep up with an expression of slight fear.

But as I drew closer, I realised the scene was off a bit. For one thing, there was no Snails. Instead, one of the pommel horses sat by Dinky, with the patchy cloak we’d whipped up for Clover resting on its back, and a buckball with a pony face drawn on it mounted at one end. It stood still, a captive audience for Dinky. She sat by it, spoke in a low, cold tone, and didn’t have a script, I noticed. Instead, she seemed to be making a sword from pieces of cardboard.

“Er,” I said, trotting up. “Prithee?”

Dinky turned, and though her eyes briefly brightened, she immediately composed herself, and put on the face of Platinum. Or her version of Platinum, at least. Her features were cold and stern. She wordlessly adjusted her prop crown when it nearly wobbled off. She spoke, and kept gluing sequins onto her hiltless sword without a hitch. “Our Chorus,” she said, her voice low. “For what reason do you approach Us?”

She’d been taking this whole method approach, like Dray-Cloven or somepony like that. It’s kinda cool, and also kinda unsettling. And she can really make you hear the capital letters in words, which was just straight-up spooky.

I mean, leaning into the role’s great and all. But I think there’s a limit, and she may have already whizzed right past it.

“Just wondering how the rehearsal’s going,” I said. “Where’s Snails?”

“Rehearsal proceeds apace. When We appear before the rabble on the morrow, they shall behold Us as a sunbeam, bright and terrible and undefiable as the dawn.”

What do you say to that? I eventually decided on, “...It’s going well, then?” I hesitated a moment longer. “Er, you might not want to call the audience ‘rabble’.”

“Rabble they are, and rabble We deem them. To Our grandeur, they shall bear witness; such is the sum of their utility.” She continued fixing sequins onto her sword. I gave it a closer look. The cardboard had been painted a dark, grim grey, like a stormcloud, and the sequins were all red. It was the sort of sword you wave about with your magic while cackling and trying to destroy the world.

Dinky’s expression made it look like her Platinum was contemplating exactly that, and I decided to hurry the conversation along. “So where’s Snails?”

She sighed. Regally, and disdainfully. “Our lackey lies abed. Horndroop is his excuse, and his friend tends to him ere he attends Us. Let us hope that said friend has understudied his role well.” Her eyes darkened. “We understand Our own role as well. Clover must be up to the task of stymying Our tendencies, of fashioning harmony. Else, what woe and terror shall befall ponykind? What howling horrors await outwith in the dark? What madness uncoils within?”

I decided to stop talking to Dinky then. “That’s … that’s super. Keep making that prop sword and rehearsing Platinum, and, um, go over things with Snips when he shows up. I’ll just check on, er, other ponies. Yes, other ponies.”

I mosied on, leaving Dinky behind, and tried not to worry about her. Instead, I tried to worry about Snips and Snails. Horndroop doesn’t look fun, and it would keep Snails in bed for a week. And Snips had been goofing off more than actually understudying. And we’d be down a windigo. I hoped it would work out alright, somehow.

That left just Rumble and Featherweight to check on, and I found them at the other end of the stage. They were fixing up each other’s costume barding, and as I came near, I heard them going through their lines at the same time.

“What news from the other tribes, Commander Hurricane? How did the talks go?” Featherweight prompted, as he adjusted one of Rumble’s backplates.

“Nothing good. Bah!” Rumble snorted, and it was a pretty grim, contemptuous sort of snort, I’ll say. He’d been throwing himself into the role, if nowhere near as much as Dinky. Thank goodness for that. If they’d both been as keen, none of us might have survived till play night. “All they do is moan and refuse to help!

“No luck with the talks, then?” Featherweight could do a good Pansy for that matter. He looked all resigned and yet unsurprised, like he’d seen that outcome coming.

“The earth ponies hide away in the mountains and whine that shifting the sun and moon won’t do anything, and the unicorns hide away all their wheat and moan that we ought to be fixing the winter! It’s as if they’ve not been listening to … listening ...” Rumble stopped, and his mouth moved as he went through that last sentence in his head. “Oh, dang it.”

“Take it from the top again?” said Featherweight sympathetically.

“Yeah, may as well.” Rumble groaned and rubbed the crest of his helmet (which didn’t look at all like an old scrubbing brush anymore, not after we’d finished with it). “Man, I hate messing up lines. Maybe I should just play Hurricane as a bit forgetful. And have Pansy correct me a bunch. You think that could work?”

“Could do,” Featherweight allowed. “Want to check the script for things we could set up, or improv it?”

“Improv. I don’t want to just end up forgetting what I’m meant to remember to forget. Or something.”

He looked worried and glum, and I took that as my cue. “You’ll do great,” I said, trotting up. “Ponyville won’t have seen a better Hurricane. And if you forget a line or two, it doesn’t matter too much. So long as you keep on going and look like you know what you’re doing, ponies’ll just let it wash over them.”

He grinned bashfully. “Heh. I suppose.” A pause, then. “Is that how you and the other CMC got so far as you did with the whole Incident That Never Happened at Town Hall…?”

“We don’t talk about the Incident That Never Happened at Town Hall,” I said flatly. We don’t. It Never Happened. Bring it up and I swear I’ll fight you. Some things done in the name of getting a cutie mark ought to stay buried.

“Ah. Sorry.” He looked away for a moment, and then nodded at my hat. “You look all ready to chorus at ponies.”

“Thanks! You look ready to command at them!” The grammar maybe wasn’t perfect, but it was what was needed.

“Heh. If you say so.” He hesitated. “Er. Thank you again, seriously, for giving your role to me. If you decide you want it back —”

“No way. I’m committed to being the Chorus, and you’re going to make an awesome Hurricane. And all we need to do is give our mutual awesomeness a last bit of practise before tomorrow.” I glanced back in the direction of Dinky and the pommel-Clover. “Would be nice if Snips turned up, so we could get properly started ...”

Speak of the windigo, and he blows in through the door. Snips entered stage left then, snow dusting his scarf and hat. His eyes looked a little red and groggy, I noticed. “Sorry everypony!” he called, before he sneezed with the force of a gas explosion. “Snails sends his regards, and also a lot of phlegm. It’s okay, though. I’ll be Clover.”

Unlucky for Snails, and unlucky for the play, but at least we had that understudy. That was lucky.

“Somepony lend me a script.” Snips ambled up to us. “And also remind me who Clover was. She’s a Pillar, right?”

Unluckily, we had an understudy. I briefly met the gazes of Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, and we all agreed, after a lot of mutual nodding, significant blinking, and pointed looks, that we’d just do what we could, and that the show would go on no matter this hiccup. Rumble asking me part way through if I’d gotten something in my eye didn’t help much, but we got the gist of it all across in the end.

“Alright, everypony!” Apple Bloom called. “Somepony pass Snips a script! Snips, go have Dinky chat you through the scenes while we set up! We’ll get one more full rehearsal under our withers ‘fore tomorrow!”

And, with a few hiccups here and there amidst lots of smoothness, we did indeed. And late that eve, when the snow outside glowed with starlight, we all went home, buzzing for tomorrow.

When I got home, I found Ditzy had dropped off Rainbow Dash’s reply to my letter, on official Wonderbolts stationary and everything. I read it in bed.

She was proud as heck. She so badly wanted to fly home and see it, if it wasn’t for dumb training for their own Hearth’s Warming Eve show. She advised projecting so deaf ponies in the back could hear me, to pester Spike for tips if I hadn’t already, and that she bet all the Chorus practise would mean I’d tell even awesomer stories around the next campfire.

And at the end of the day, I was to knock ‘em dead, squirt. Her words.

And what else does anypony need to be told? I swore I would. We all would.

The night had come. My hat and fancy puffy shirt were all donned, and in the latter case, slightly itchy. But there were other things on my mind.

“Oh, wow,” I said, peeking out between the curtains before the stage, to where our audience was filling up the seats. “That’s a lot of ponies.”

“And griffons. And yaks. And changelings. And … and all of Twi’s students.” Apple Bloom poked her own head out above mine.

“Neat! She must want them to learn all about pony friendship!” Sweetie Belle wriggled under me and poked her own head out.

“What’re we all looking at?” From below Sweetie Belle came the voice of Pipsqueak. “Blimey, that’s a lot of ponies.”

“We gathered the first time!” Diamond Tiara yelled at us from behind. “Come on, we’re still finishing set-up. And there’s still no sign of Snips!”

We all withdrew back behind the curtain, to where the backstage was in full manic last-minute preparations mode. Truffle and Tag-A-Long pulled objects hither and thither and got the mountains scene ready. Silver Spoon cast her eyes hurriedly through her copy of the script. Dinky prowled about like a tiger, swishing her sword, her expression like something an ancient pony warlord would put on just before they started conquering. Featherweight adjusted the helmet on his head, and Rumble …

… Rumble looked nervous. Stage-fright. It happens. He was breathing hard and looking like he was doing his best to overcome it. But he was jittering. Real bad timing to find out you get stage-fright, if you ask me.

“Twist’s still out there?” Apple Bloom asked, turning around and seeing no sign of one of our windigos. “Here’s hoping she comes back with Snips, wherever he’d gotten himself to. Let’s just … let just get the stage properly dressed til they turn up.” A raucous rumble came from the world past the curtains, and she groaned. “Hopefully soon.”

“You understand how the plan’s gone wrong, right?” Diamond Tiara said acidly. “We had a step in it that assumed Snips and Snails would act like helpful, useful ponies. Maybe we should have accounted for that at the time. But no — no. No.” Even as we were all turning on her with annoyed looks, she was already knocking a forehoof against her own head. “No. Bad Diamond. Be helpful. Be nice. Better pony. Be one.”

I cleared my throat and spoke up. “If we’re delayed waiting for them,” I said, “I could always go out front and make introductions. Stall them. Tell jokes, maybe? I know one about ...”

The joke I knew never went explained. The backdoor slammed open, blowing in a flurry of snowflakes, and we all turned to briefly scream at a horrible spectral figure, which, after we got a little more of a closer look, turned out to be Twist in her windigo costume. She panted heavily, as if she’d come here at the gallop. “We’ve no Cloverth!” she blurted, as we all choked back our shrieks.

We all paused. I stepped closer to Twist. “What?” I said, hoping that I’d misheard.

“I thtopped by to check on Tnipth! He’thcome down with horndroop after vithiting Thnails! We don’t have any Cloverth!”

And after she repeated that a third time and caught more of her breath back, it sank in.

And a second round of shrieks started.

“Thnips thayth he’th thorry, for what it’th worth,” Twist ventured, after we’d all finished exclaiming and groaning and making high-pitched noises at Snips’ expense. “We can fill the role with thomepony elthe, right?”

“I … well, maybe? There’s not many ...” I trailed my head around looking for somepony. I saw somepony. I leaned towards her. “Sweetie Belle?”

Her green eyes met mine, and she looked worried and dubious. “I’m already looking after the lights.”

“You can set ‘em up ahead of time, right?” Apple Bloom turned on her. ”Just set ‘em up before a scene starts, jump on, play Clover, do her lines as best you can, and then jump off and rearrange them. We can sort out the scenery while you’re doing all that. Scoots can keep the audience entertained while you’re light-arranging. Can’t you, Scoots?”

Anything for an unsure friend. I nodded.

And after a long moment, Sweetie Belle hesitantly nodded.

“Right!” barked Apple Bloom. “Scoots, get out front and get regaling. The rest of you, set up whatever needs set up! Double-check your costume if you’ve got one. Diamond, Dinky, Rumble, ya’ll feature in the first council scene, so get your war-faces on. Get out there once Scoots gives ya the cue and do your darndest. As for —”

As she spoke, I trotted towards the curtains. They waited before me, long and red and velvety, muffling the hubbub on the other side. I closed my eyes, breathed in, and then pushed them aside. And stepped out onto the stage.

There were more ponies now. Parents of everypony involved, and everypony from around Ponyville who wanted to see the story of the Founding. Miss Cheerilee sat in the front row, and flashed me the widest, most encouraging smile a pony had ever received. She was outdone the second later by Pinkie Pie, whose smile came with the flash and whistle of streamers. Applejack and Rarity sat by her on one side, and Fluttershy and Twilight and Spike on the other. They’d all done this before, and sent me their own grins or whoops or claws-up. And past them, all the ponies. Not just ponies either. Matilda and Cranky, of course, as well as the students from Twilight’s school, all of whom held notebooks and pencils in their mouths, and were keenly watching me as if they were about to start taking notes.

I hesitantly stepped up, cleared my throat, and just like that, the whoops and murmuring died down. They all waited for me; I had their attention just like that.

They were a good audience, of course. They came in good and already convinced. But still, it felt great. Like I was a princess over them.

And because they were so good about it, I gave them a dramatic pause — one moment, then two, dragging on until I spoke up. Projecting, like Rainbow Dash had urged me to, and drawing from the script we’d all hashed out and I’d memorised.

“Once upon a time,” I started, drawing out the words, “there was a time before Equestria. A time before all the harmony we know and love today ever existed. A time before the alicorn princesses, and before friendship, and before everything. Look!”

I gestured, and right on cue, right on those words, the curtains swept back, revealing the snowy mountains, lit from above with pale blue and white light. A few appreciative oo’s rang out, and I pressed on. As I did, three sets of hooves scuffed up the back of the stage. Diamond, Dinky, and Rumble. I turned slightly, putting them in my sight and keeping the audience there as well, and gestured at them.

“We were three tribes then, rather than one ponykind. And we were torn apart by disharmony and hatred!” One cue, the three scowled at each other, from where they propped themselves up along the back of the scenery-frame. “Unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies. The pegasi controlled the skies and weather under the rule of Commander Hurricane, like they did now, but they demanded tribute and food. The unicorns, under Princess Platinum, moved the sun and moon and stars in those days before the princesses, but they too demanded stiff payment. And the earth ponies, stewards of the earth, grew their food grudgingly but withheld it when they were pushed too far. All mistrusted the other, but all got by in a cold sort of peace … until the Great Winter came.”

So far, so good. I had them. They were all nodding along. This was the story they knew, in different words but still basically the same.

Look, you know it as well. I’ll lend you my script later, if you like — for all the use it ended up being as things grew out of hoof — and you can trust me that I was a great chorus. So it went on through what you know; the winter came, it sucked for everyone, and everyone’s leaders came together to try and find a solution. That didn’t turn out so hot, but it set things up really nicely for the rest of the story, which is what ponies care about.

They all came around the sides and on-stage, just as Truffle and Tag-A-Long, just out of sight, spun the snowy mountains around to reveal a stony fort interior. That struck up more appreciative noises, and I knew Apple Bloom would be grinning something fierce at her work’s reception. Diamond Tiara had the swagger she’d adopted for Puddinghead, Dinky strode as coldly and boldly as a princess from the ancient times ought to, and Rumble…

...Well, stage-fright seemed to be happening. His trot was wary, and he tried not to look at the audience as he came on. He perched awkwardly on his own stool as they sat around the central table, still looking nervous. There was a difference, I realised, between getting the attention of a load of foals you knew, and between performing for a whole bunch of strangers. And poor Rumble was really coming to grips with that difference.

It didn’t help when, just when I’d finished my narration, Dinky brandished her sword, slammed it onto the table before him, and snapped, “Answer, varlet! Answer for your iniquity!”

I don’t totally blame Rumble. Could you try answering for your iniquity on the spot, just like that? I know I couldn’t. Rumble was caught off by his nerves, and by the fact of Dinky leaning far, far into her take on Platinum, and instead of Hurricane’s cool contempt, he instead produced a strangled, “Glerk?”

“Winged wretch, steel-shoed thug, uncouth tyrant of an uncouth kindred, answer, We say! Do these snowstorms fly under your command, or for your sheer ineptitude?”

“Let’s not rule out whatever you might have done, Princess.” Diamond interjected then, and it seemed merciful, as Rumble was turning a terrified shade of yellow. She kept the right level of sneer in her voice. “What have you unicorns done to the skies? Trying to drive off the pegasi and make the earth ponies slaves all of your own, eh?”

“Earth pony chattel?” Dinky turned, and if Diamond thought she could sneer before, well. It was like being condescended to by the sun. “A meagre reward that would be. As meagre as the weight with which We hold your words. Were it otherwise, We assure you, Our blade would seek your hide for satisfaction, such as you may provide.”

Diamond hesitated, and eventually retorted with, “Well, you smell.”

“Glerk!” Rumble tried. He really did. But Commander Hurricane clearly wasn’t up to it that first scene, not with so many strange eyes suddenly on him.

And so it went, Diamond and Dinky bickering, and Rumble making the odd plaintive noise under his breath, with Dinky being kinda terrifying and Diamond showing enough rare kindness to sometimes try to fill in Hurricane’s side of the conversation. (“What’s that, Commander? You say we’re hogging all the food? Well, maybe stop making us have to!”)

I’m not going to lie, I was kinda glad when it was over, but the audience still seemed to be with us. They seemed to like the set. Nopony had shouted anything unkind about the dialogue or narration. Dinky had gotten a few bemused looks, and they’d mostly been gallant enough to try and ignore Rumble’s stage fright and voicelessness. So far, not so bad.

The three vanished behind the curtain, and I plunged back in to stem the gap. “So what then after the summit?” I said. I drew out the words. There’d be a lot of work going on behind the scenes in a hurry. “Why, they all went back to their tribes — to the earth ponies, unicorns, and pegasi — and met their closest advisors, to make their next move.”

That would be enough time. I gestured dramatically at the curtain, waiting for it to reveal Puddinghead’s longhouse, and the Chancellor and Smart Cookie griping about the situation.

It didn’t open. I waited a bit more.

It didn’t open up. I heard vague noises from the audience, and vaguer noises from behind the curtain.

And when it continued to not open up, I smiled glassily at the audience. “And what did they discuss, you might ask?” I said, as I smoothly slipped back behind the curtain, and hurriedly turned on the others there. “Guys!” I hissed. “What’s happening?”

A kerfuffle was happening, was what. Rumble was breathing into a bag, and was having his back patted by Featherweight. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon hopped anxiously, waiting to head out while Apple Bloom and her two glamorous assistants helped her fix something that had gotten stuck in the spinning scenery. And a very harassed-looking Sweetie Belle was trying to fix some yellow and red lights in the air, giving the impression of a cosy, fire-lit place. Unfortunately, the little lights were being feisty, in her own words.

“Almost,” she said, catching sight of my pleading look, her horn straining with magic. “Just about got them.”

“Alright,” came the voice of Apple Bloom, at much the same time. “That should be her fixed. Let’s give her a spin.”

The lights seemed to finally behave, and Sweetie caught her breath for a moment. Just a moment, before her eyes widened. “The cloak!” she yelped. “Oh, I’ll need Clover’s cloak! Is it still on the pommel-horse?”

She started forwards to check around for the cloak, just as Apple Bloom kicked the scenery’s button, stepped back, and Truffle and Tag-A-Long spun hard. Warnings rang out, an instant too late, and Sweetie Belle, cantering across backstage, turned just in time to see the edge of Puddinghead’s longhouse come whipping up towards her.

There was a resounding clunk. There was a graceful arc described in the air as Sweetie Belle was sent flying several feet. There was another resounding clunk as she hit the floor. There was a stunned silence as we boggled at her, out cold on the ground.

Then, for neither the first nor the last time that night, panicked yelling ensued on all sides as Apple Bloom and I rushed to her. She was still breathing — that was good. Heartbeat, check. Consciousness, less so. I carefully opened one of her eyes, and she looked groggily every which way. She made a noise. It might have been words of reassurance, or command, or just “Gchk” repeated several times.

I suspect the latter.

“What… what did you do?” yelled Diamond Tiara, whirling on Truffle and Tag-A-Long. “We … we don’t have an unlimited supply of unicorns, you blockheads! You can’t just knock them out! Even if they’re Sweetie Belle!”

“Somepony get her some water! And what do ya mean, ‘even if they’re Sweetie Belle?’” Apple Bloom blazed, rising from our stricken Crusader, as I grasped her tail in my teeth and pulled her out of the way a little, to one wall. “I oughta —”

“I … I mean ...” An agony of the soul took place in Diamond Tiara, and she subsided for a moment and murmured, “Be a good pony, be a good pony, be a good pony,” to herself over and over, as Apple Bloom seethed.

“Thlight problem, bethideth the obviouth,” Twist ventured, trying to keep things on track. “We need another Clover. And thhe’s on next thene.”

“Right.” Apple Bloom breathed out like a general watching her army gradually coming in second. “Right. Right. A understudy’s understudy’s understudy. Right. Fine! We’ll fix one of those. Scoots, go out and … and do the earth pony scene. Stall if ya can, and if we need to shuffle the order some and do the pegasi next as well, we’ll slip ya the word. We’ll move all this to one side.”

On with the show, then. I steadied myself. Sweetie Belle, if she wasn’t gurgling and waggling a forehoof vaguely in the air a few metres away, would have surely told me the same. Without turning back, I lunged back out onto the stage.

The audience had definitely gathered that something was up. There was a slight uneasiness in the air, as if they were waiting for explanations for whatever stuff they’d caught. I’m sure I saw Rarity lean towards Applejack and murmur, “Did you catch ‘unlimited supply of unicorns’, darling? I’m sure I caught ‘unlimited supply of unicorns.’” Cheerilee gave me a smile that had at least a hundred questions fighting to get out.

I smiled back. No sense in worrying her. The show was still happening.

And on it went. “And what did they discuss, you might ask?” I said, picking up smoothly where I’d left off. “Well, let’s start in the home of the earth ponies, with Chancellor Puddinghead and her aide, Smart Cookie.”

The curtain pulled back, and before the longhouse set, on a stage that had been hurriedly cleared of all the evidence of a kerfuffle, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon stood and hesitantly began their scene.

They got on with it well enough, but we were all a little distracted, I think. It didn’t help as well that the lights up above seemed to be behaving weirdly, and the red and yellow flickered madly. That nagged at my attention, but what could I do right then?

The scene drew to a close, and a sharp ‘Psst!’ coaxed me back towards the curtain. I leaned back to listen, while trying not to look like I was doing that, and I heard Apple Bloom whisper, “Pegasi next! We’ve maybe sorta worked out a replacement Clover. Just give us another scene till then?”

“How? And also, can you fix the lights at all?”

“Go chorus at ponies!” She nudged me forwards, and after only a slight delay, I chorused at ponies. The old earth pony longhouse flipped to become a soaring skyfort. Rumble flapped in to deliver his report on the summit to a keen and waiting Featherweight, and he …

… he did his best. He produced coherent words this time, though they were kinda mumbled. He still didn’t look much at the audience, and he moved as if he was being dragged. Featherweight did his own best, pulling all the weight he didn’t have much of and more to spare. His Pansy cajoled whatever info Hurricane had to offer out of him, filled in what bits of the conversation he could, and improved Rumble mercifully through the scene and out the other side.

As the curtain drew on them, Rumble briefly looked my way, looked sorry as all heck, and murmured something I didn’t catch.

I would have replied. Sure, I was gritting my teeth over how this’d be something to throw the audience off once again, but I didn’t want to say it. You don’t make a pony feel crummier about themselves for something they’ve not got a total grip on. You just don’t. I’d have told him that it was fine, that stage nerves before loads and loads of strangers were perfectly normal, and that honestly, we’d bigger problems right now.

But we were both on stage, and the curtain drew in, and I had to turn away to tell the audience all about Platinum and her court and faithful Clover the Clever. And then the curtain drew out again, and some of those bigger problems started happening, all at once.

The scenery was nice enough, a nice icy-blue unicorn palace Apple Bloom had spent all night painting. But the lights weren’t co-operating. Red and yellow bobbed around and cast the wrong hues over everything, and had been joined by a curious blue, nosing around one of the palace towers. Off in the audience, several unicorns muttered, and I saw Twilight tilt her head and frown.

Before the scenery, Dinky stood, her sword sheathed and her stance upright. “Clover,” she said, with the absolute voice of authority, “attend Us.”

From off-stage, there came a muttering.

“Trundle it forward some. Little more. Little mo— catch it, catch it, catch it—”

Something trundled on, stage right, and I peered at it as keenly as any of the audience, having been out of the loop. It stopped short, caught by somepony pulling a little rope tied about its middle, and there it rested, where everypony could get a good look at it.

It was the pommel-Clover. The cloak had been carefully set upon it, and a battered cardboard tube had been glued onto the face to make a horn, and from the direction it had come, I heard Tag-A-Long’s strained voice. “‘Elloh, ‘oor ‘Ighnish! ‘Ow’g th’ shummit go?”

“It went as a succession of disappointments, which We cannot pretend surprises us,” Dinky curtly replied, but she was drowned out by the furious whispering from off-stage.

“What in tarnation are you doin’ a ‘gottle-o-geer’ voice for? That ain’t needed!”

“It’s ventriloquism! I’m doing ventriloquism!”

“You ain’t ventriloquising, you’re gurgling like a ninny!” Apple Bloom’s voice had a sharp, kinda frantic edge to it. I could tell she needed a hug or to kick something. Maybe both. “Go see to Sweetie! I’ll do the voice! Go! I’ll just … ahem. Well, shucks, Your Highness! They didn’t see reason like I hoped?”

“They did not. Your optimism blinded you, good Clover, and We shall not have it continue to do so.” Dinky stepped up to Clover. “Cast the scales from your eyes, and advise Us frankly and without fear. We have given thought to going forth to seek a new land for unicornkind, and We would —”

As she spoke, she clapped Clover across the withers. Clover’s horn fell off.

Dinky paused. She blinked down at the horn. And then Clover’s whole head fell off.

We stared at Clover’s head. Clover’s head stared up back at us. It looked a little reproachful. Our audience stared also, and I turned and tried to do my chorus bit. To make it fit. Smooth history over. Keep the play going.

I drew a blank. You try explaining a decapitated Founder. For a long moment, I stood there in my floofy get-up, under the weird glow of Sweetie Belle’s lights, facing a whole hall’s worth of engrossed and slightly worried eyes, and made noises like a sheep trying to swallow another sheep. “Erk,” I managed. “Agh. Erm. Glah?”

“Yak approves!” one of Twilight’s students declared, enthusiastically scribbling notes. “Ponies’ history is surprisingly grisly and cool!”

Then, luckily, using certain meanings of ‘lucky’, Dinky recovered herself from whatever Platinum-less sea she’d briefly been adrift in and swooped in and saved things. For certain meanings of ‘saved’.

“Perfidy!” she wailed, gesturing at Clover’s head. “Rank assassination! We name the other tribes responsible for this calamity in Our court, and calamity they shall reap! Aye, calamity enough to choke them! A thousand for Clover, We shall see it done. The heavens shall be pierced with wailing, and the rivers burst their banks with the sanguinity of those over-sanguine villains who harrow Us!”

As improv, it was rad. I cowered back a little from the sheer conjured wrath of it. The blue and yellow lights hid, and only the bolder red light remained out in the open, adding to the effect. Dinky stuck to her theme. The ways in which Clover would be avenged filled the air. At one point, I remembered that we could always just fix the pommel-horse and tried to frantically hiss Dinky silent and backstage, and guess how successful I was in that.

There did come a point, though, where it did look like she was winding down the monologue, and we’d get to move onto the scenes where they all cross through the wilderness. We’d make progress. I could chorus at the audience and keep the ship of the play steady.

Then somepony in the audience — I didn’t see who — ruined it. Just as I was trying to come up with the right words as the chorus to move the scene along, they nervously piped up from the back. “We’re sure this is the Hearth’s Warming play, right? Not Sombra: The Early Years?”

“Which knave dared speak? Which cur had the gall to cast aspersions on Dread Princess Platinum!?” Even as I made strangled noises and tried to calm her down with a frantic sotto voice, Dinky’s horn glowed. She leaned off the stage, her crown wobbling, and brandished her sword at the audience. Her voice dropped to a snarl. “Bring them to us! Bring us their bones.”

In the front row, I noticed Ditzy Doo, one of her eyes shining as she watched Dinky, lean closer to her neighbour and proudly announce, “I gave birth to that!”

I glanced to one side off-stage, and saw Apple Bloom, Silver Spoon, and Diamond Tiara watching with narrowed, wary eyes. I made a cutting gesture and nodded.

As one, they all trundled out, grabbed Dinky, and dragged her right away from the front of the stage and towards the back, the curtain closing behind them and muffling Dinky’s torrent of curses at their expense. In the brief moment of hush that followed, I closed my eyes, took as many breaths as it took to feel calm again, which was approximately a billion, and looked out at the audience.

If I was lucky, the various strained, bewildered, concerned, and/or amused looks on their faces meant that they thought they were witnessing Art, which you’re not meant to get or understand, I think. You just appreciate and smile and nod when a smart pony explains it to you. Maybe they all thought they’d just gotten a dose of Art, right to the face from a firehose.

Fat chance. I smiled glassily, blurted out “Two minute’s intermission!” and skedaddled.

Behind the curtain, everything was on fire. Not literally. Not yet.

“How hard would it have been, for the love of all pete, to just pick up Clover’s head, quickly stick it back on her, and just let it roll right over the audience?! How hard, Dinky?! How hard would it have been to not demand the audience’s bones?!”

“Were We to suffer such infamy, on whatever front it presented itself? No, We say, No until time’s ending!”

“Oh, stars, I’m the worst Hurricane. I’m the worst Hurricane there ever was. Thunderlane’s going to hear about what a rubbish Hurricane I was and how I couldn’t get a word out on the stage and how I just made noises like a duck that’d been stepped on rather than just say my words and I’m never going on stage again and I’m never going out in public again and —”

“The lightth are thtill meththing around! Red and yellow just flew up into the rafters and they’ve come back down with an orange! There wathn’t an orange before! Thweetie Belle, you’ve got to wake up and help uth!”

“Gchk.”

“Don’t just stand there, you idiots! Get the scenery loaded up. It’s me and Silver Spoon on next, and we need a snowy forest in the background!”

“‘Play your part on the stage with your school’, Mum said. ‘Acting’s in your blood, Pipsqueak,’ she said. ‘String of glorious performances dating back in the family to ruddy antiquity,’ she said. We’re airbrushing this one out of the family chronicle, Mum. You’ve been watching it, you’ll understand.”

One of my eyes began twitching uncontrollably. Rainbow Dash would know what to do, I thought. Or one of her friends would know what to do. We’d just cut our losses and go up to Twilight, and tell her we’d learned an Important Friendship Lesson about not biting off more than you could chew, or something like that, and that’d conclude things. It does usually.

Others didn’t have the same idea. Truffles and Tag-A-Long were already setting up the scenery frame under Diamond Tiara’s glower, and heaved on their wheels to flip it around.

It was at that moment that the door swung open and Cheerilee swept in. “Class,” she began, “do you have everything under contr—?”

Then the spin of the frame completed its trajectory.

Clunk. Arc. Clunk.

I don’t know if you’ve ever taken a plunge right off the edge of a five-hundred-foot gully — if you have, neat, we should compare stories — and discovered a little bit of the way down that the parachutes and glidy stuff you’ve outfitted your scooter with doesn’t actually function. You’ll just see the gully coming up towards you, all large and all-encompassing and inevitably, unavoidably splatty, up until the moment when the coolest pegasus in Equestria snatches you out the sky and flies with you to a ledge to yell at you till dusk.

Seeing Miss Cheerilee get knocked unconscious by the spinning scenery got across something of the same feeling, except that I knew the cool pegasus was a hundred miles away. There was only the oncoming splat.

And somehow, that helped. It didn’t much, but it did a little.

My eye stopped twitching. I turned on Apple Bloom, who was making anguished throat noises while checking on Cheerilee, and Twist, who was making a sound only dogs ought to be able to hear, and Rumble, whose outward terror had totally gone and been replaced by a glazed-over expression of supreme peace with the universe, and to everypony else who didn’t seem thrilled about what had just happened, and I said, “It’s alright, everypony! We can fix this!”

Some of them stopped and looked to me, frantic hope filling their eyes. Some were a little distracted.

Case in point, Diamond Tiara. “Great work! Fantastic, really! You’ve proven yourselves the the most lethal ponies in Ponyville, and that’s saying a lot!” she yowled at the cowering, shell-shocked Truffle and Tag-A-Long. “Do you accept contracts? I’ve got some ponies I dislike a lot right now! Hey, do you accept contracts on you?”

“Diamond!” I snapped, and reluctantly, grudgingly, she turned around. I had everypony’s attention once again. “It’s okay, everypony. Put Miss Cheerilee next to Sweetie; they can sleep it off. We’re ponies, we know we’re tough-headed. All we have to do is keep on with the show.”

A storm of objections rolled right at me, which I brushed off. “Three travelling scenes, and then the final division and rise of Harmony in the ice cave. The end’s in sight. We can do this. We might not be doing as awesomely as we’d have liked, but that’s no reason to not see it through to the end, right?”

Some reluctantly nodded. Others didn’t nod, but kept their silence. I’d put that much of a lid on things for now, at least. There were some objections, though. “What about the lights?” Featherweight asked.

“Never mind the lights for now,” I replied. “We can’t do anything to fix them at the moment, so there’s nothing we’d get from stressing out over them. Just ignore them and let them fly about, and if a scene gets the wrong atmosphere, well, it gets the wrong atmosphere. Or maybe it gets the right one, or a really new and cool one. We just roll with it.”

“What are we going to do about Clover’s head?” demanded Silver Spoon. “We can’t just overlook a Founder’s head.”

“Dinky?” I nodded at her. “Wheeling that pommel-horse around’ll just cause another disaster, I think. Carry the head about with you. I think ponies know what to expect from you now, so there’s no way it could shake them much more.”

“We shall bear Our servant in Our charge,” Dinky said sternly, “and shall conceive of and heed the counsel she gives.”

“Fantastic. Truffle, Tag-A-Long? We don’t need a scene change for a few minutes, so just see Cheerilee and Sweetie Belle are all comfy and have water nearby and such. Pipsqueak, Twist, you’ll be doing your full windigo routine soon, but you can lurk and haunt the others on their trails. Apple Bloom?”

“I’ll help mind Miss Cheerilee and Sweetie,” she said, somewhat calmed, and nodded at the pair. She reached out and patted me on the wither. “You carry us over that last stretch, Scoots, and then we can all go home. I’ve got your back.”

“Thanks, Apple Bloom.” I turned to Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, Dinky, Featherweight, and lastly, Rumble. They all awaited, and Rumble glanced briefly at the curtain and did his best to smile back at me.

“As a very wise and cool pony once said to me,” I told them, “let’s knock ‘em dead.”

The final stretch. The walks through the woods. The last difficulties before the coming of Harmony.

Oh hey, I just realised that that was applicable to us. Hah, that’s neat.

Getting the audience ready and settled again wasn’t quick — the whole room was alive with conversation by the time I wandered back out past the curtain, and some bits looked like they were raring to fight other bits, but once I stood forth and talked enough as if nothing was the matter and a cool bit of history was unfolding that they’d miss if they kept jabbering, they hushed up.

“All the tribes struck out from their home, and searched high and low for shelter!” I declared, as the curtains pulled back and revealed Diamond and Silver Spoon doing exactly that. They’d steadied themselves, double-checked their scripts, and bantered back and forth. The other tribes were dumb, according to Puddinghead. Give them a chance, urged Smart Cookie. Puddinghead indulged in whimsy, and Smart Cookie looked exasperated. They played it mostly classic, and it seemed to reassure ponies. Things were almost normal.

Almost normal, that is, apart from the little orbs of light. Ignoring them was a little harder than me just saying it, and they flitted about and dazzled and generally made the snowy forest look more like the inside of a Pinkie party with all the big, booming speakers than a gruelling march through the bleakness.

Diamond wasn’t handling it well. Being a good pony isn’t easy to her, or all that natural to her. But she’s trying, which counts for a bit. All the flashing and lights poking curiously around her and flitting at her eyes drove her to snarly distraction, however, and whatever she had left of her goodwill was vanishing thick and fast. The scene’s end came just in time.

“Commander Hurricane, Private Pansy, and the pegasi had barely any more luck! Their own route was furious with snowstorms … and they were followed all the while.” And so they’d were, had had, were enduring, and were again. Rumble and Featherweight flapped through the forest trails, and Pipsqueak and Twist stalked them, making the odd evil-sounding windigo noise whenever it seemed needed. Or whenever it just seemed fun. Featherweight did the lion’s share as Pansy, and Rumble … kept doing his best. He was speaking a little more clearly now. He acted as if he suspected the audience only wanted to injure him, rather than outright slay him. His actual stage presence, though, remained limited.

Maybe he’d have been happiest not performing to a crowd at all. Maybe giving him Hurricane hadn’t been the kindest thing, when I thought on it, or maybe leaving him with the chorus still would have been an ordeal. But he got through his scene, and shambled off-stage by the end of it looking happy to have survived.

“Princess Platinum and Clover the Clever struggled on as well, leading the whole unicorn kingdom at their backs!” The audience craned their heads to see, and weren’t disappointed by, if that’s the word I want, Dinky standing with the severed head of Clover held in her magic.

“Many a league behind Us, Clover, and many a league ahead. Are We to lead our subjects on as eternal nomads, without the mercy of rest or the peace of homes?” Dinky said.

…, replied Clover. At least, so I could tell.

“No, indeed! We shall lead them on, We as the unconquered sun, and We shall pursue the unconquered sun to wherever it hangs, insolent and free and bewarming the world. But what follows should the other tribes align themselves with Our trail?”

…, Clover elaborated.

“Why, Clover, We know the solution. Slay and burn, till Our hoofhold is beyond all challenge!”

“Seriously!” yelled the same heckler from before, “if you want to just stage a telling of a little Sombra’s rise to infamy, I’d go buy tickets—”

“Which indescribably insolent cur without the mental wherewithal to both trot and breathe continually slanders their Princess?” Dinky cast the head of Clover aside and drew her sword, and it took one heck of an effort to pull her off the stage, I can tell you that. The rainbow of lights followed her back.

And with that, one truly final stretch to go. A scene we’d decided early on to condense a little. All the Founders meet in the same cave, seeking shelter from the horrible storm pursuing them. The three leaders bicker, and at the height of their bickering, they begin to freeze. In the original plan we had, they’d slow down. A blue light sent by Sweetie would shine on them, to represent them getting frozen, since you can’t actually freeze a pony in ice on-stage. Not any more. The windigos would laugh and run circles all around the cave as their wicked plan seemed to succeed at last. Meanwhile, the followers bond. They talk about things. And in the nick of time, the fires of friendship flare to life, unthaw everypony, and Equestria is both made and saved amidst harmony, as it always is and will be.

Classic format, like I said, just squeezed in a little and without as much focus on the nice land around them. It could work easily enough. Sure, we’d almost certainly make it difficult for ourselves, but it was easily workable in theory.

“...and at last,” I told the audience, with one of those special, intense stage-whispers that carries across a room, “they found a new and wondrous land, with space for homes and farms for all. But its wonder was all but hidden by the terrible snow and ice, a crushing blanket they’d brought with them, fuelled by their hatred and distrust. All of them sought shelter in a little cave, thinking to escape the horrible winter. But little were they to know that winter would follow them in.”

“Ah, escape from that horrible winter!” Diamond Tiara declared, a little redundantly if you ask me, as she and Silver Spoon entered stage right. Before them, at the centre of the stage, there rested Apple Bloom’s prepared campfire, ready to shoot out the fires of friendship when the time came.

“I’ll get a fire started, Chancellor,” Silver Spoon replied.

“Nay,” growled a familiar voice. “We shall get a fire started. The earth ponies shall turn themselves around and depart to wherever their smell shan’t be minded. They shall search hard for such a place, and be long at it. Isn’t that right, Clover? Yes, that is right.”

Dinky stalked in, stage left, Clover’s head in her grasp and still her conversational partner. And on cue as well, Featherweight and Rumble poked their heads up over the lip of the scenery-frame.

“The … the pegasi claim this place,” said Rumble, carefully not looking at any part of the audience. He tried to rally. “If we wanted other tribes here, we’d say. You’ll notice we don’t.”

“Wait,” said Silver Spoon in accordance with her role, “there’s enough space in the cave for all of us, surely?”

“What if we put our heads together for one more summit?” said Featherweight. “Maybe we’ll learn some secret that lets us beat this winter and the monsters we’ve seen driving it on.”

Clover had little to say on the matter, though Dinky did make a show of listening to her and scowling.

“And so the three tribes re-united, but even after all their troubles, were still not unified,” I said, laying stress on the last word. Re-united, not unified. I was proud of that. It’s got a cadence to it. “Could their leader’s hearts be thawed by those who followed them? Could ponykind pull through?”

These were rhetorical questions for the sake of the narrative, if you follow. But Dinky, deep somewhere within Platinum’s head, got a bit confused, and gave them an answer. “Nay!” she snapped, and strode forwards towards the campfire, towards Diamond and Silver Spoon. “Long has Our trail been, and scarcely improved is it by seeing what rabble awaited Us at the end! Are We to seek unity with blackguards such as these? The prospect galls.”

This was alright, I thought. Improvised and horribly out of my control, like anything involving Dinky had become, but it was all fine with the story so far. Show how stubborn the leaders really were, and make their followers desire for friendship all the cooler in comparison. In fact, I could see Featherweight and Silver Spoon exchanging glances, getting ready to meet and talk about how cool harmony would be. This was, in fact, fine.

It was fine up until the moment when, bristling in front of Diamond, Dinky drew her sword and jabbed — just a jab, mind you, not an outright stab — jabbed Diamond Tiara in the chest with it.

Jab or stab or not, though, Diamond Tiara recoiled. Her eyes narrowed and seemed to flash red. Maybe that was just the lights up above, though, lending an unhelpfully aggressive aura to everything.

She’d had enough. Whatever goodness she was trying to cultivate had been spread a bit too thin in the service of a lot of patience for too long now, and it snapped like stretched string. She smacked the sword aside with furious force. “Don’t you,” she rasped, “don’t you be weird, and don’t decapitate Founders, and don’t be really, really weird, and don’t disrupt the whole play, and don’t hit me with a sword!”

She swung out to swat at Dinky’s ear with a forehoof, and Dinky reflexively smacked the sword hard right into the inner part of Diamond’s foreleg. It might have just been cardboard, but it was stiff stuff, and the sequins all over it gave it an extra bite. Diamond yelped, and at that point, things went irreversibly to cack.

Because at that point, Silver Spoon, who had been watching, ploughed in. She wasn’t a fighter. She didn’t swing a hoof if a cutting retort could do. She’d had her differences with Diamond. It’d been her sharp words that helped turn Diamond around, after all. But despite it all, through thick and thin, Diamond Tiara was Silver Spoon’s friend, and you don’t watch a friend getting hit by a sword without wanting to step in to have some stern words with the sword-wielder. Silver Spoon flew at Dinky, and they both hit the stage floor in an angry tangle of legs and jabbing swords.

“But even as the leaders squabbled, their followers would surely see sense.” I said the words with a slightly manic edge, watching Silver Spoon approach our metaphorical final hurdle and throw it to the ground and kick it and get hit by its sword a lot. Her own patience must have been stretched to breaking point as well. “I said, surely the followers would see — Silver Spoon, would you stop trying to kick Dinky’s face, for the love of —” I whirled around. I needed help. I saw help. “Featherweight! Rumble! Get in there! Pull them apart! Windigos, you as well!”

Featherweight flapped down into the fray, and after a moment’s hesitation, he was followed by Rumble. Twist and Pipsqueak in full windigo get-up charged in first, but without a strategy, and alternately yelled at whatever seemed like it needed yelling at and jumped in to pull on whatever seemed like it needed pulling on. This last earned them both a couple of flailing kicks to the face apiece, and soon their pulling had a lot more of a wrathful component to it.

Featherweight came at them shortly after, and made straight for Dinky. He made a grab for her sword, and was abruptly met by the flung head of Clover the Clever. She bounced off his face and he staggered back, looking faintly stunned, before he tottered backwards into Rumble’s hooves. He produced pained noises, as well as words I wouldn’t have even suspected Featherweight knew. It’s amazing what you learn about a pony after they’ve been hit in the head.

But at the time, all that amazement passed me by, and I just boggled at the spectacle, torn between wanting to yell a lot, cry a lot, or just jump in to start kicking as well. We’d been so close. We could have run through the whole play and nailed the landing, if not any part of the flight before. We maybe could still.

But I didn’t see how. I swept my head around to stare wildly at the audience. Everypony there was reacting pretty much the way you’d expect, with ponies either gabbling in bewilderment, parents yelling for some-or-other ruffian to get off their little darling, other parents urging their little darling to put the shoe in where it hurt, Ditzy enthusiastically pointing out Dinky’s talent for jabbing at eyes, and, at the front of it all, Princess Twilight Sparkle. She had her Princess face on, and seemed to decide that she was the closest thing to an authority figure in the room. She rose from her seat…

“No, wait!” I wailed, and turned back to the scuffle…

...where I saw Rumble, in a steady, controlled sort of way, taking off his and Featherweight’s costumes.

I forgot about everything else for a second, and tried to decide which of many possible questions and exclamations I should blurt out first, just as Rumble swiped Featherweight’s helmet off the ground. “Stay there, buddy,” he murmured, a hint of tremble in his voice. “I’ll finish this off. Also, you’re the new Hurricane.”

“Gchk?” responded Featherweight as Rumble dropped Hurricane’s helmet on him

“Darn right.” He steadied himself, took a deep breath, and then plunged into the fray with purpose to do his best. I saw him descend, wings blurring, as he swooped in and snagged Silver Spoon to hoist her up into the air, kicking and cursing.

“Oh no!” declared Rumble. He still wasn’t looking at the audience. But he seemed to be riding some mad sort of determined high, and was powering through his fear of dialogue by shouting it all. “Our silly leaders aren’t being friends! I, Private Pansy, think we should be friends, don’t you, Silve— I mean, Smart Cookie!”

It was a little abrupt compared to the dialogue we’d had in the script for this scene, but at this point, the script was so much paper. And I could dig the brevity.

“I’ll kick you till you can’t kick— I, um,” Silver Spoon paused, took a second to breathe and focus, and blinked at Rumble. “Er, yes. Yes!”

“Very good! What about you, Clover the Clever! Shall we be friends!”

Her head was still on the floor somewhere, amidst the mad scuffle. Maybe Rumble was planning to do the voice for it. I know I was. But before either of us could start up, Tag-A-Long broke in. She must have been watching from the sidelines, and, stars save her, she knows her moment. “‘’Esh I goo!”

She doesn’t know her approach, but she knows her moment, and that’s the important thing. “Excellent! We’ve solved the problems!” yelled Rumble, powering on through his fears, ploughing on through the quickest approach to the story, getting us to what would be the ending. Not the prettiest or most planned of endings, but an ending regardless.

He swept down towards the floor, dropped Silver Spoon into a semi-controlled tumble, and alighted right by the campfire, primed and ready to shine.

“And so ponykind found the strength to stand against the windigos and the hatred in their own hearts!” I blurted out. I knew my cue as well. “And the fires of friendship shone like never before!”

Rumble opened his eyes. The whole world must have been staring back. His hoof wobbled.

But he stood his ground, and with a mad, delirious laugh, brought his hoof down on the button.

What’s that old things ponies say about stories? If your ending is strong, ponies’ll forgive any weak beginning. The journey’s important, but the destination makes it stick.

We could have pulled that off, as well. If, at that moment, the fires of friendship hadn’t misbehaved. Rumble kicked the button, and a prolonged gurgling noise came from the campfire ring. And then, just as whichever of us were left standing and paying attention and not kicking or getting kicked broke into the first line of, “The fire of friendship lives in our hearts—” it spat out and set the curtains on fire.

At that point, Twilight just kinda stood up and shut everything down, and everything after that’s a blur.

“Well,” I said, in the hush of afterwards. “That was, um … that was a play.”

Rumble considered this. “Yep,” he agreed.

There didn’t seem much more to say on the topic at that time, so we just sat together in silence and watched from a balcony in the School of Friendship as a general state of kerfuffle spread below us. We still had our costumes donned.

Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon and their parents were fussing over their bruises and throwing the occasional dark look at Dinky, who seemed to be coming down from the highs of Platinum, but only slowly. Ditzy hovered over her, proud as anything, and cooed over her sword. To their left, Apple Bloom stood with Twilight, all her friends, and Bulk Biceps as they tended to the semi-concussed Cheerilee, Sweetie Belle, and Featherweight. Apple Bloom was explaining things. Sweetie Belle, though still a little dizzy-looking, looked thrilled that the play had gone off, at least. Miss Cheerilee looked as if she could do with having a few less things explained to her, thanks.

By them, other teams of ponies and some of Twilight’s students hurried about with buckets, often crashing into each other, and doing their best to arrest a plume of smoke puffing out of the auditorium’s open door. By that door, the hastily-reassembled Clover the Clever stood, and looked faintly proud. It was a pommel-horse with a history, now. Lights shimmered around it and the door, and green seemed to have made Clover its perch.

I reckoned there was enough acrimony here to keep some of us from not talking to certain others for, oh, a couple of weeks at least. And enough bad decisions to keep us all grounded for the next thousand years. But I could worry about that in a sec. Right now, nopony had noticed me, and nopony was yelling yet.

“So,” I said. “You still low about Thunderlane missing all that?”

Rumble considered the question, very carefully. “No,” he eventually allowed. “No, I think … no. No, he’s better off having fun with the Wonderbolts, I think. In fact, he’s welcome to stay there until everypony forgets about what happened here and who was involved.”

“Yeah. I think we’ve dodged a crossbow bolt there.” I winced a little. “Mind you, Rainbow Dash’s probably already writing to ask how it went. She’s going to laugh till she’s sick when she hears the story. And then she’ll groan for weeks about how she missed all the fun.”

“Same with Thunderlane.” Rumble grinned ruefully. “He’ll want details. Exhaustive details.”

We were quiet for a moment longer. From below, the sound of Miss Cheerilee having conniptions arose. Then Rumble said, “Hey, you know, you were a great chorus. You told it awesomely. And, y’know, kept things as on-track as you could, for what you had to work with.”

Alright, I blushed a little. It’s not every day you’re told you were a great chorus. “Heh. Thanks. You were …” Honesty kicked its spurs in, and I wobbled for a second. “Alright, I won’t lie. You were warming up to Hurricane, even if it was taking a while. But you were a great Pansy. Saved the whole play, right at the end there.”

He grinned again, this time with extra rue. “I’ll put that in the next letter I write to Thunderlane. Scootaloo says I’m a great pansy. Though, um, if I saved the play there … call it even for Cutie Mark Day Camp and everything I did there?”

I felt we’d been even since the start. But he was smiling and expectant, and what the heck. There were worse ways to round things off. “Even,” I confirmed, and sealed the deal with a hoofshake.

And then, when he was least expecting it, I turned that hoofshake into a hug. He protested. He didn’t do affection. But he didn’t protest that much.

The sounds of fervent arguing rose up, as Twilight seemed to be making plans to gather up all the wild light and release them into the next aurora that came migrating by. And I knew I’d have to go down and face the music alongside Apple Bloom and the others. Friends don’t leave friends in the lurch. But let’s leave that for another story, and close off on me hugging a friend who’d helped us finish a play, and bring something vaguely resembling the magic of friendship to the season.

Sappy, I know. But what better season for sap?