Princess Luna scowled down the long, carpeted hallway of Canterlot Castle. “Cadance...what is that thing!?”
“That thing is a human, and his name is Steve!”
Steve scratched his nose. “Hey,” he greeted nonchalantly. “It’s a cool horse country you have here.”
Princess Celestia tried her best to force a smile. “Umm, yes. Hello there...Steve.” She turned her attention to her adopted niece and lowered her voice. “Are we sure it can understand us?”
“Of course he can!” Princess Cadance chirped, turning her candy-colored body to face her guest. “Excuse me, Steve, do you understand Princess Celestia?”
Steve scratched his head. “That’s, like, the white horse, right?”
“Uh-huh!”
“Yeah, I understand her.”
“Such insolence!” Luna snorted, stomping a hoof outside of the bounds of the carpet on the marble floor. “How dare this interloper enter into our presence and refuse to show even a modicum of respect for our regal status!”
“I don’t understand the blue one, though,” Steve added.
“Luna! There is no need to be mean!” Cadance scolded. “In fact, that’s exactly why I brought Steve here! I’m worried about you and Celestia both.”
Celestia frowned. “Why would you be worried about us? We’re doing splendidly!”
“Indeed,” Luna agreed. “We have all the wealth and power imaginable, and are preparing for a wonderful retirement in the near future.”
Cadance pursed her lips worryingly. “Yes, but neither one of you has any love in your life!”
“That’s silly talk, Cadance!” Celestia hummed, punctuating her sentence with a brief chuckle. “I love all my subjects!”
“Maybe so, but everypony needs to be loved, too! Not just spend all their time and effort loving others! After all, ponies can’t survive without love.”
Luna snarled, narrowing her eyes. “What an absolutely ridiculous assertion. I survived more than a millenium on sheer force of hatred alone, and let me tell you, I much prefer it to being pestered by alien monkeys!”
Steve sat down on the carpet. “Woah. This carpet is like, really soft.”
Cadance took a powerful step forward, not backing down in the face of the Princess’ pushback. “Luna, you ordered the execution of a citizen for littering yesterday!”
“Actually, it was loitering. And, the crime took place during the night,” Luna tacked on, raising a hoof. “I am responsible for the night.”
Cadance stuck her bottom lip out in a pout. “Yes, but that is far from the only example of your creeping cruelty over the past few years. And Celestia, you have a serious problem with treating everypony in the castle like they’re your children.”
“Untrue and hurtful,” Princess Celestia gasped, holding a hoof to her chest and furrowing her brows in emotional injury. “I might have a special place in my heart for Twilight, and to a lesser extent her friends, but-”
A guard in full armor turned the corner and clanked quickly toward the Princesses. “Your Highnesses,” he grunted in a greeting, popping to a salute soon after. “Princess Celestia! Can I please have tomorrow off of work?”
Princess Celestia kneeled down to the guard’s eye level. “Oh? Why?”
“B-because I have a date,” he told her, scraping the floor with a hoof bashfully.
“Really!?” she gushed back. “Who is the lucky mare?”
“My wife,” he replied, dancing from hoof to hoof. “She bought us tickets to a buckball game!”
“How wonderful! Well, as long as you promise to have fun you can take tomorrow off. No need to find a replacement!” Lighting up her horn and reaching out with a hoof, Celestia removed his golden helmet and rustled his mane affectionately.
“Yay! Thank you, Princess Celestia!” The guard cheered, dancing away down the hallway.
“Do you see?” Cadance hissed in a loud whisper, taking care to avoid being within earshot of the retreating guard. “That sort of behavior is exactly what I’m talking about!”
“Oh, come now, Cadance, he’s still young! He needs to be cut a break now and then…”
“He has three foals!” Cadance continued to hiss, baring her teeth. “And the oldest one is a college student in the Crystal Empire! Auntie, you can’t fill the hole in your heart by doting on your employees. Please- you need love, and Steve can give it to you!”
Princess Celestia bit her lip, her eyes shaking from object to object in the hallway as she chewed over Cadance’s words. “How would he do that?”
“I chose him especially from the strange realm beyond the mirror in my castle! I walked into a human school, and it was overflowing with love. I think that the ‘humans’ like him that live there are love experts.”
Steve burped. “Excuse me. Do I still have to say that here?”
“Yes,” Luna replied, grimacing in disgust at him. “Cease and desist your bodily gas expulsions or be subject to execution like a common loiterer.”
Celestia’s muzzle scrunched up. “I don’t know, Cadance, are you sure he’s a love expert?”
“Absolutely! All humans seem to be. Not only that, but he’s also extremely intelligent. I snuck into the office of the school headmares- some sad and lonely middle-aged humans with poor fashion taste- and went through their school records. The humans seem to rank the intelligence of their young with numbers. Your old pupil, Sunset Shimmer, is a 4! Many other students are around 3. Steve is ranked a 1.1!”
Celestia blinked. “Really!? It’s been a long time since I visited that world, but to think humans were so intelligent… Anycreature almost three orders of magnitude smarter than my old student certainly could pick up on pony customs quickly…”
Luna stomped and snorted loudly. “I grow tired of this inane conversation! Cadance, is this conversation going somewhere, or can I leave the presence of this driveling gas-bag you have smuggled into our midst?”
“You will both be going through love therapy with Steve,” she replied while wearing a coy smile. “And I will not be taking no for an answer! Allow me to demonstrate. Steve, could you come over here?”
“Alright.” Slowly, Steve stumbled onto his feet and shimmied over to stand next to Cadance.
Cadance turned her attention to the human and smiled. “Give me a hug!”
Steve obliged, and when he pulled away, Cadance nabbed his hand with her hoof. “I really enjoyed meeting you today, Steve! You’re special to me! Am I special to you?”
Luna shrieked briefly, flaring a wing out to cover her eyes. “Such degeneracy! Cadance, does your husband know you are out here committing hoof-adultery with this foul creature!?”
“Yes, and it’s not hoof-adultery, Luna! My husband loves and respects me enough to trust me with my work as the Princess of Love! This is exactly the sort of mindset that this love-therapy will help to fix.”
Celestia sighed. “Well, Cadance, I have to admit that I am skeptical of your approach...But, since I love and trust you, I suppose I can try...Steve’s...therapy, for your sake.”
Cadance grinned broadly, tilting her head to the side cutely. “I’m so glad.” She turned her attention to Luna, releasing Steve’s hand. She raised her eyebrows in a prompting manner.
Luna peered out from between her wing feathers. When she was satisfied that the scene was clear, she rose to her height and folded her wing back. “I shall permit this creature to stay on castle grounds without placing his head on a pike, but he is nowise allowed to touch me or approach me from the side or back.”
Cadance considered Luna for a moment. “I’ll take it,” Cadance accepted with a shrug. “We start tomorrow. I’ll remain here for the duration of your time together, to make sure his head remains un-piked.”
“Curses,” Luna muttered quietly to herself, turning away and frustratedly shaking a hoof in the air. “Foiled again!”
Princess Celestia sat at her sun-drenched breakfast table, directly across from Steve the human. She kept her gaze mostly focused on the variety of pastries and fruit on the small circular table, and away from her ‘love-therapist’.
“So...am I allowed to like, eat, or…?” Steve inquired.
Celestia’s ears perked up quickly. “Oh! How rude of me! Yes, please, eat.”
“Nice.” Steve picked up and zealously tore into a fruit-filled croissant.
The royal across the table merely clopped her hooves anxiously together, too ill-at ease to even bother sipping at her tea. “So, Steve…” she finally spoke.
“Muh-hnuh?” he garbled, spewing crumbs across the otherwise pristine tablecloth. He hurriedly swallowed. “Sorry.”
“Q-quite alright,” she assured him, eyes nonetheless flickering across the besmirched linen. “I’ve been thinking a lot about this ‘love therapy’ Cadance wants us to do, and...well...what is it, exactly?”
“Candycane just told me she’d give me gold to be nice to you and your sister,” he responded honestly. “And I was like, ‘okay, so I get to miss school and get paid for being nice to magic ponies?’ And she said yes, and then I wondered what was in that bottle of Advil my mom gave me, and then I took a bite of this fruit thing.”
Celestia clopped her hooves together twice more. “A-alright...So, I should just leave it to you, then? Or...should we h-h-hold h-hooves like you and her?”
Steve made a strange expression and shrugged. He reached for his croissant again with one hand, and placed the other one palm-up in the center of the table.
“O-oh, r-right now?” Celestia asked. She craned her neck around to make sure her royal guards weren’t present anywhere in the room. “Okay...h-here it goes…” She lifted a hoof over the table and shakedly placed it down on his palm.
Immediately, his fingers curled up and around her golden slipper, their warm pads pressing into her coat. She gasped, a light blush spreading out from the center of her cheeks. She covered her mouth with her other hoof and looked around furtively again to make sure nopony was watching.
A warm, tingling sensation overtook her fetlock and spread slowly up her foreleg. After a short fifteen seconds, it seeped into her barrel and up to her face, where her blush grew. A euphoric calm shot down her back and into her other limbs as she sighed. She forced her eyes to meet Steve’s gaze. “Is...Is this what love feels like in its purest form?”
Steve shoved another pastry, this one whole, into his mouth. “Ihunnow.”
A knock resounded through Luna’s chambers, tearing her from her evening wake-up routine. Groggily, she crossed the room and threw open the door unceremoniously. “Uh,” she mumbled in a half-greeting.
“Hello, Luna!” Celestia chirped, her left hoof held by a distracted-looking Steve. “Isn’t it a wonderful day!?”
Luna frowned intensely, her eyes flicking between Celestia, Steve, and the point of contact between their appendages. “No, sister...He’s roped you into his turpitude, as well, has he?”
Celestia giggled. “Oh, you’re too serious Luna! Steve is a great friend, and his love therapy is working wonders! I’ve never been this happy on the job!”
Luna deepened her scowl. “And why in Equestria is there a eudicot in your mane?”
Celestia released Steve’s hand and reflexively placed it by the flower tucked into her mane behind her ear. “Isn’t it beautiful? Steve and I went on a hoof-holding walk through the gardens after lunch and he picked it for me! He says I’m pretty and deserve breaks and nice things!”
If it were even possible, Luna’s expression of resentment deepened. “That’s one of my night roses,” she growled through the grinding of her teeth.
“Even though Celestia has the same name as my principal, she’s like, way nicer and gave me no detention all day,” Steve said, Smiling and wrapping an arm around her withers.
Luna gagged.
“Anyway, Cadance says it’s your turn to have Steve!” Celestia half-cheered. She turned her neck and nuzzled his cheek. “I’ll miss you, sugar bun!”
Luna pulled back behind her door and dry heaved. After clearing her throat, she returned to view wearing a forced smile. “Well, Steve, I am all ready for you...Why don’t you come in and we’ll get started?”
Cadance popped into view with a pink flash next to Princess Celestia. “I’m so glad to see you’ve changed your mind, Luna! One thing before you start…” With another pink flash, a spear eleven cubits in length, with a bronze point fashioned to the body with a gold ring, appeared in front of her. She deftly nabbed it with her hoof. “I broke into your room while you were sleeping and found this cool polearm...Or is it a pike?”
Luna’s forced smile took on an air of pain as she winced.
“Can I borrow it for tonight?” Cadance asked sweetly, a single eyebrow dropped low in a threat.
“Fine!” Luna spat. “Enter my chambers Steve! But be warned that you are one word away from being shot out of the window!”
“Dope,” Steve answered, following her inside.
The door shut, leaving a very worried-looking Celestia and a peeved Princess of Love.
Luna sat on one couch in her room, hooves crossed across her chest as she glowered down at Steve, seated across from her on another couch. An obsidian coffee table separated them, not helping the room’s brightness in the least.
Steve cleared his throat and scratched his nose. He looked to his left, and then his right, taking in the room’s appearance.
Luna threw up in her mouth a little bit, but forced it back down.
The human then kicked his legs up, crossing them around the knee and resting his feet on her coffee table.
Luna stared at the feet, her gaze laser-focused. “No.”
Steve slowly removed his feet from the table.
Luna’s eyes lingered on the spot where his feet had been for several seconds before snapping back to meet his. “Let me make one thing clear tonight,” she told him in a low rumble, taking care to enunciate each word. “I find you to be a disgusting creature, and I would much prefer it if you weren’t here at all.”
Steve sniffed and pulled down the sleeve of his shirt. “A’ight,” he grunted, standing up and walking towards her chamber doors.
Luna watched him with a furrowed brow. “Wait!” she called when he was only a few feet away from the exit. “Get back here! You are supposed to argue with me!”
“Oh,” he hummed. “Cool.” He meandered back over to the couch and took a seat.
“As I was saying, you are disgusting and I hate you.”
“Uuuuuuhhhhhh,” Steve hummed, his mental gears clearly turning at furious speeds. “No...I’m not?”
Awash with the thrill of victory, Luna leaped to her hooves and pointed one accusingly at him. “I do not you what you have done to my sister and Cadance, but rest assured it will not happen to me! I am made of stronger stuff than them!”
“Okay then.” Steve pulled a strange box out of his pocket and began fiddling with it. Colorful tunes and the tinkling of bells filled the room.
“What...what are you doing?” Luna demanded. “What is that infernal device?”
“Candy Crush,” he commented, sticking his tongue out and turning the device slightly.
“Wh...I...Stop that! We are supposed to be locked in a duel of the wills, pitting our intellects against one another in a battle from which only one shall emerge unscathed!”
“Oh.” Steve put the device back into his pocket. “Okay.”
Luna’s cheeks puffed up with air, and she exhaled forcefully. “I don’t know how you became so insufferable! I can’t believe I let you inside my chambers.”
“It’s cool,” Steve said, standing up and jerking a thumb at the doors. “I can totally leave, it’s all good.”
“NO!” Luna cried, her horn flaring as she quickly locked the door. “I-I mean, y-you are not going anywhere until we come to an agreement about how you are not to touch or interact with me in any way tonight!”
Steve sat down. “Okay. Uh...Why?”
“Why? Why!? Because...Because you are a filthy, intolerable animal that I am not at all emotionally invested in, and I have absolutely no fear of emotional intimacy or the prospect that letting anycreature near me will result in an outpouring of deeply repressed feelings! In fact, I am so sure of this that I shouldn’t be screaming!”
Steve blinked and sniffed. “Your mane is really pretty. It’s got like those...stars in it, and blue is probably my favorite color, after like, black and purple.”
“Foul beast!” she snarled back. “Your tricks won’t work on me, I assure you!”
A few hours later, a blood-curdling scream echoed from the servants’ workshop. A door was kicked open, and two Night Guards exited, dragging a mare behind them.
“N-no! Please! Don’t take me to the Princess!”
“You should have thought of that before you scuffed the royal slippers, cobbler!”
“I’m begging you! She’ll break all of my limbs, demolish my family’s home, and exile me to the dragon lands!”
The other guard spoke up, but in a hushed tone. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do! If we let this go and she finds out we knew all along, we’re all dead! You hear me? Dead!”
The wailing continued through the castle hallways, until the doors to the throne room burst open and the guards dragged their offender into Princess Luna’s Night Court.
“Your Highness!” The guards bowed profusely, not even daring to meet her gaze and instead finding much to be appreciated in the carpet’s intricate patterns. “We bring before you the Royal Cobbler, guilty of maiming her Majesty’s hoofwear!”
A series of hushed noises were heard from the direction of Luna’s throne; but no response. Slowly, the first guard looked up. “Y-Your Highness?”
Princess Luna was seated lengthwise across the throne, resting on the lap of a strange creature. She was jerked from her concentration. “Hm? What?”
“Uh…” The guards shared a confused glance, before the first spoke again. “The Royal Cobbler damaged your slippers. Should we take her to the leg-breaking room?”
The strange creature whispered, and Luna burst into a fit of giggles, smacking him lightly with a hoof. “You are terrible!” she gushed. “Don’t be like that, snuggle buns.” She turned her attention back to the guards. “Ah, no, that won’t be necessary. No action is needed.”
The guards shared an even more confused look.
Slowly, the accused mare rose shakily to her hooves. “R-really? I’m not in trouble? You’re not going to give me a nightmare?”
Luna pulled her head away from the trio and scrunched up her muzzle. “I wasn’t planning on it...Well, maybe a *little* spooky dream, just so you won’t do it again.”
The creature grabbed Luna’s hoof in one of his appendages and smiled.
The three supplicants gasped simultaneously, fear gripping their chests.
“Oh, alright,” Luna sighed, meeting the creature’s gaze before turning her attention back to the ponies in the room. “No bad dreams, I promise. Go buff out the scrape and go to bed.” Having said that, she leaned down and planted a chaste kiss on top of the alien’s head.
One of the guards fell over, unconscious.
Luna was asleep in Steve’s arms when Celestia and Cadance entered the throne room. They quietly approached the throne, and Cadance gently put a hoof on Luna’s shoulder, shaking her. “Luuuuuunaaaaaa,” she called.
Luna startled awake and tightened her grip around Steve’s neck. She fearfully looked at the new entrants before relaxing slowly.
“Did you enjoy the love therapy?”
Luna rubbed her eyes with a hoof. “I...N..No…”
Cadance pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows. “A little bit?”
“M...M-maybealilbit,” she slurred, resting her head against Steve again.
“Well, Steve, you did a good job,” Cadance praised, floating a bag of gold bits over to him. “Here’s your payment, as promised.”
“Gold coins! I can pay my tuition to Harvard with this,” he celebrated, nodding in satisfaction at the weight of the small burlap sack. “Or Bowling Green. Or like...become a pirate, or whatever.”
“Are you ready to go back?”
“Actually, before I go, I-”
Cadance hit him with a bolt of pink magic, causing him to disappear.
Luna hit the seat of her throne with a dull thud. Whining softly to herself, she rose to her hooves, rubbing her backside.
“Well, I hope you both trust my opinions on love, now,” Cadance delivered with a knowing smile. “What did you learn?”
Celestia cleared her throat. “Dear Princess Cadance, today, I learned that all ponies need love! It’s not enough to love others, either; although that’s a wonderful and necessary thing, it’s vital to be loved and know that you’re loved, too!” She looked forlornly downward. “This love can come from places you don’t expect...I already miss my friend Steve, but I’m grateful for these wonderful lessons that he helped you teach me, and I hope that our paths will cross again in the future.”
“That’s a wonderful synopsis, Celestia! I’m so glad that you found the experience enriching.” Cadance turned to Luna. “What about you, Luna?”
Luna stood on four wobbly legs, tears washing her mascara and eyeliner down her face in a very unbecoming pattern. “I...I-I’m literally s-shaking and crying right now,” she stuttered, frowning.
“Aww,” Cadance gasped, putting a hoof on her barrel. “I know how hard it must be to vocalize your feelings, but try your best, okay? We’re all here for you.”
Luna’s tears slowed and her frown became more pronounced. “B-bring him back!”
Cadance’s brow furrowed. “What? I’m sorry, Luna, but I can’t jus-”
A blue pop signalled Luna’s exit from the room. The two remaining Princesses looked around the room.
“Where did she go?” Cadance asked.
Celestia hummed in thought. “I’m not su-”
Another blue pop startled the duo, and Luna reappeared brandishing a knife from the Royal Kitchens in her magical aura. “I SAID BRING HIM BACK, YOU HUSSY!” she screeched, swinging the blade wildly as her family members dove for cover. “WHERE ARE YOU KEEPING HIM!?”
Author's Note
I hope you enjoyed! They're cute, aren't they?
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