Dear Princess Cadance,

I am happy to report that your lessons have paid off, and Operation: Wincest was a success! As I mentioned in my last letter, I was able to plant the idea of showing up early in Roseluck and Daisy's minds. Well, by telling King Thorax that I needed him to show up at their cottage early, and take my place as Lily, I got the second part of my plan together.

Everything went great! The sisters took the vacation just as expected, and I imagine they're having a great time! By the way, thanks for those tickets! And the title suggestion, it should help keep whose idea all this was secret. As for Thorax and Pharynx, there's a new clutch of grubs on the way to prove how well that went.

That was a bit of a surprise, but at least now you can't taste the tension every time they're in the same room. Now the only problem is figuring out how to apologize to the hive for giving them that comparative anatomy textbook you recommended as a gift! Apparently Thorax has been walking funny ever since Pharynx skimmed ahead to the section on dragons, and they're keeping half the high-castes awake at night between the roaring, barking, howling, and purring that goes on. But I suspect you already knew that would happen.

Operation: Starburst will commence upon receipt of the Royal Crystaller's upcoming vacation itinerary, as previously planned. Until then I humbly remain,

Your faithful student,
Ocellus

Ocellus put the magical seal on the scroll as her mentor had taught her, and sent it on its way. Just as she was selecting a new book to read from the small personal library she kept in her dorm room, she heard a knock at the door.

"Just a minute!" She called out, reshelving her copy of Aligning the Stars: A Practical Guide to Mating Souls and going to get the door.

"Counselor Starlight?" She asked when she saw the pink mare on the other side of the door. "I'm really sorry about the mix up with who was meeting who where and when," she said with all the sincerity she could muster.

"Oh, don't worry about it! Everything worked out in the end... Ambassador."

"Oh carapace, " Ocellus thought.

"As a matter of fact, I'm so grateful that I thought I'd help you with your Advanced Studies!" Starlight continued. "Specifically, the differences in interpretation of pain, pleasure, and punishment."

Slowly, a very large flyswatter emerged from behind the counselor, and Ocellus gulped audibly.

"I... Uhm... Don't suppose I could take an incomp!ete on that lesson?" She chuckled nervously.

Starlight leaned in close, a vaguely manic grin on her face.

"No."

Meanwhile, half-way across Equestria, Roseluck was waking up with a lazy, catlike yawn in an extremely crowded Princess-sized bed. She was happily snuggled up between her two sisters, and would have been content to remain that way if not for the impending necessity of certain biological functions.

With the cautious grace of a mare used to crawling out from between two bed mates for over two decades, Rose slipped down between two intimately familiar sets of pink thighs and started wriggling out the foot of the bed. On a whim, she gave each of her sisters a playful kiss on the hock before popping out the bottom and rolling onto her hooves and trotting over to the bathroom.

Once she got there, she sighed to find the door locked and the shower running inside.

"Ugh, hurry up Lily," she muttered, knocking at the door once, twice... and freezing on the third knock as she remembered something very important.

That Lily and Daisy had both been in bed with her.

Indeed, a glance back into the 'bedroom' confirmed her suspicions. Lily had already rolled into her spot in the middle, and was snuggled up between Daisy and Trixie, so who....

For a second time that morning, Roseluck's brain stopped, took a look back at what had just gone through it, and did a double-take.

As the haze of sleep started clearing rapidly, Roseluck remembered the night before. Their arrival at the Manedalay Bay. "Breaking in" the bed, drinks, dinner, more breaking in the bed, wandering down after a lengthy shower, dancing, meeting Trixie, being just buzzed enough to invite her to join them for a few drinks and a show, getting tickets to some magic act that Trixie had come out to compare to her own....

Then the door to the bathroom opened to reveal an older stallion with a blue coat and tousled silver hair.

"Good morning, Rosie!" He said entirely too cheerfully for being in Roseluck's hotel room at Celestia-knows what hour in the morning. "Thanks agouch!"

Jack Pot slammed the bathroom door between himself and the mare who had just punched him in the face. Roseluck, for her part, did the only logical thing left to do.

She fainted.

Author's Note

The end?