Prince Blueblood was a jerk. He was an entitled, arrogant, stubborn, hot headed, son of a witch. Did Moondancer have a bit of a crush on him? Why yes. Yes, she did. Why? If only she knew. Although perhaps it was a good thing that she had some sort of feelings for him. After all, she probably would’ve killed him in several instances if she didn’t, and since the whole reason she’d accepted the role of Prince Blueblood's personal magic tutor was to prove her ambition and skill to Princess Celestia, murdering him was probably not a good idea. However sometimes-like now for example-she was really tempted to just to slap him across the face.
“You told them what?!” Moondancer asked angrily.
“He said I couldn’t do magic! Well, he didn’t actually say that. He was being all courtly and fake polite, but that’s exactly what he meant. What was I supposed to say, Moomoo?” Blueblood replied.
“First of all, for the thousandth time, do not call me that. Second of all, let me get this straight. You told Jet Set, Upper Crust, and at least a dozen other important ponies that ever since Princess Celestia hired me to teach you magic, you’ve become a powerful unicorn, and when they asked you to prove it with a demonstration, you proceeded to tell them that you would give them one tonight, and that you’re soconfident in your abilities that you would try the spell on Jet Set himself?! Need I remind you that even after a full year of tutoring, you've barely even lifted a broom with your magic?!” Moondancer practically screamed at him.
“Did I mention that I said I would do that advanced truth spell you were telling me about?” He asked in a guilty and slightly frightened voice.
“Are you serious?” His silence was all the answer she needed. She started having a panic attack as she paced back and forth.
“No no no no no. I really don’t need this. If you go out there and execute a truth spell incorrectly on Jet Set, not only will you be a laughing stock, but I will never be able to work as a magic tutor again. Who would hire a magic tutor for their fillies who can’t even teach a grown stallion? And if Jet Set gets some horrible side effect from the spell done wrong, who is going to reverse it? Will there even be any magical specialists there?” Her voice had gotten higher and higher as she spoke, and by the end, she was almost screeching.
“It all sounds so bad when you say it like that,” he said. She stopped pacing to glare at him.
“And obviously you’ll have to come with me to fix any mistakes that I make,” he added casually.
"Me? At a court function? Is that even legal? Just look at me!" Moondancer said, gesturing at her unkempt mane, bushy eyebrows, and oversized glasses.
"Oh Moomoo, I don't know why you're always so hard on yourself. Ithink you're pretty," he stated matter-of-factly. She glared at him again, but it was ruined by her blushing cheeks. She let out a long sigh.
"Well, I guess I should get tutoring," she said bitterly after a few seconds.
"Yes, if this spell is as hard as I think it is, I might actually have to pay attention to how I'm supposed to do it this time." He looked comically horrified at the notion. Moondancer rolled her eyes.
“If you get the spell right, it won’t just make Jet Set honest. It will put him in a kind of trance, and compel him to say whatever is on his mind when asked a question. And as you know, spells that have mental or emotional purposes are very tricky!”
"This isn't one of the spells that explodes if I get it wrong, is it?" Blueblood asked.
"No." He looked relieved.
"Usually when it’s done improperly, it causes insanity," she said. Blueblood gulped.
"Please tell me it's temporary?" he asked hopefully. She hesitated.
"Sort of. It can last forever, but it's reversible."
"How?" Blueblood asked nervously.
"Somepony in the room must tell a secret. Something they've never told anyone."
The presentation was held in a very large meeting room in the Canterlot castle. Like most of the rooms in the castle, the walls were covered with beautiful paintings and elaborate mirrors, and the floor was littered with chairs, sofas, and coffee tables. There were also several large, white pillars. Moondancer was unsure whether they were structural or decorative, but whatever their purpose, she was glad that they were there. They gave her things to hide behind as some of Canterlot’s most elite ponies filtered into the room.
She had made the effort to do her hair properly, but she was still far from the standards of Princess Celestia’s court, so she was going to stay out of sight all evening if she could. She couldn’t believe how many ponies were showing up! When Blueblood had agreed to do this stupid presentation, only a few of Princess Celestia’s inner circle had been there, but now it looked as if all of the important ponies in Canterlot were there! She supposed she couldn’t blame them. After all, other than the four princesses, Prince Blueblood was the only royalty in Equestria, and he was infamous for being dreadful at magic, along with most other things, so maybe they thought the chance to see him do a spell as high level as a truth spell would be interesting. The thought of everypony thinking Blueblood so incompetent upset her a bit, but at the same time, perhaps they wouldn’t think that way anymore if he made an effort to show them that they were wrong…
As the clock chimed seven o’clock, her nerves were bearing down on her. This was the time Blueblood was scheduled to perform the spell, and he wasn’t even here yet! One minute passed as palace workers served refreshments to the guests. After what seemed to Moondancer an eternity, but was really just another minute or two, Blueblood entered the room.
Moondancer had thought that he was late simply because he was being irresponsible, but when she saw him, she saw that his smile was fake, and he was sweating. A lot. She knew him well enough to know that definitely meant he was nervous. But why? This would be pretty bad for him if he failed, but it wouldn’t be that hard to fix, and he’d done much more scandalous things just in the year she’d known him, and he hadn’t been this nervous then. So why now?
Then, his eyes found hers in her hiding spot behind the pillar. She was shocked by what she thought she saw in them. Yes, there was basic fear and nervousness, but that wasn’t all. His eyes looked pitying, but more than that, they looked apologetic. Had he truly believed all of that stuff that she’d said when she’d been panicking? About never being able to be a magic tutor again? Did he really care about that? Was he nervous for her sake?
She realized that she’d been staring into his eyes like one of his stupid fanmares, and quickly looked away. She couldn’t believe that even after a full year of seeing ridiculously dumb mares fawn all over him without him giving them even a second glance, she still occasionally fell for his charms. Of course he wasn’t worried for her. He was Prince Blueblood. In his mind, he was above everyone, and everyone loved him. She wouldn’t be as naive as all of them.
All too soon, Jet Set demanded to see the truth spell. Blueblood glanced in Moondancer’s direction. Despite herself, she smiled at him and mouthed ‘You can do it’. A bit of the weight seemed to lift from his shoulders, and he smiled back at her ever so slightly. She was only helping him so that she could impress his aunt. It was not because she liked him as a pony. Even in her own mind, she didn’t believe that, but that was what she told herself at moments like these, when her cheeks started flushing and she felt that strange feeling in her stomach that her research in science and magic couldn’t explain.
The crowd took a collective step back to make a ring at the center of the hall around Blueblood and Jet Set. A look of deep concentration formed on Blueblood’s face, and his horn shot out the spell. However, he’d been so focused on doing the spell correctly that he didn’t aim it properly, and it went right over Jet Set and the rest of the crowd’s heads, hit a mirror that was high up on the wall, and flew right back to hit Blueblood squarely in the face.
It didn’t knock him over or anything of course. Moondancer had taken a course called ‘Comparing Quantum Mechanics and Non-Physical Magic on a Molecular Level’ that had taught her that unless a spell was specifically engineered to make physical contact, it operated like light, in the way that it wasn’t really a physical substance. So, the spell fell on him and sunk into him. He immediately turned to look at Moondancer. At first, he looked shocked and a bit frightened, but then he went still and his eyes glazed over. Her first impulse was to run up to him and ask if he was ok, but she managed to avoid it.
As the entire room silently stared at Blueblood, his unseeing eyes still looked at her, since that was the last place he'd been looking before the spell had kicked in. All she could do was hold his gaze.
“What are you staring at?” Jet Set asked Blueblood suspiciously. Blueblood’s gaze at Moondancer didn’t waver as he responded in a subdued voice.
“I’m staring at the most beautiful girl in the room. She’s my aunt’s hired tutor, she thinks I’m a douche, and she’s the smartest pony I’ve ever met, but she still has no clue that I’m secretly in love with her.”
The whole room turned to look at her, but Moondancer barely even noticed. For a moment, the tingling feeling returned to her stomach at full force, and her face felt like it was on fire, but then she realized what must have been happening. Oh no. No no no no no.
"Do you know why we're here?" a calculating looking stallion asked.
“I know you can't be here to see me. You all hate me,” he said carelessly.
“Except you, Moomoo. I can never tell if you hate me or not,” he added confusedly. The guests were now swinging their heads back and forth, trying to decide which pony they wanted to watch. Moondancer finally got control of herself, and faked confidence as she marched into the center of the crowd.
“Everypony stay calm. This is something that can happen when an error occurs during a powerful truth spell such as the one that was just attempted. It has caused extreme delirium, irrational thought, and...” She tried to think of a better way to put it, but couldn’t come up with anything.
“Insanity,” she finished.
“Is it permanent?” asked Upper Crust. Moondancer looked over at the crowd, ready to assure them that their beloved prince would be just fine, but when she looked at their faces, she saw that they didn’t look even the least bit concerned for him. Most of them looked satisfied, and even happy at the thought of Blueblood being permanently disabled. What in Equestria was wrong with these ponies? Obviously Blueblood was not the most helpful or polite pony, but he was still a pony! She’d always thought that the court loved Blueblood, but maybe she'd been wrong.
“As if you care,” Blueblood said in his diminished voice, seemingly mirroring her thoughts. She shook her head to clear it.
“No. It can be easily cured. But first, I need to check how severe it is.”
The greater the level insanity, the more dark the secret needed to be told to reverse it. She looked at Blueblood, who was looking unnervingly empty. She knew it was because of the insanity, but the sight still rattled her. She walked up to him and asked him some simple questions to see how far the insanity went.
“What is your name?”
“Blueblood,” he responded.
“What is your favorite pizza?” It may seem like an odd question to most ponies, but Blueblood loved his meat lover’s pizzas. Probably because the mare who always delivered them was half in love with him.
“Pineapple and anchovy with no sauce because the sauce is too messy. But I never order it because it’s not very manly.” Everyone laughed. She glared at them until they shut up. She probably shouldn’t have glared at some of the most influential ponies in Equestria if she wanted a future in magic, but oh well.
“What is your exact relation to Princess Celestia?” some jerk from the crowd yelled out at him.
“She found me alone in the Everfree Forest as a baby and felt sorry for me, so she took me in and told me to call her ‘Aunt Celestia,'" he said. Whispers started among the ponies watching.
Well, the good news was that he still knew his own name. Bad news was that he didn’t seem to know anything else at all. His favorite pizza was definitely all-meat. He would never order something that he didn’t like as much, just so ponies would think he was ‘manly’, and he was Celestia’s great great grandmother's great great grandson’s second cousin or something like that. Ponies would know if he were just an orphan. And he definitely, absolutely, positively did not have feelings for her, of all ponies.
She was going to need one heck of a secret to break the spell. She addressed the audience again, this time trying to remember the little she knew about proper manners.
“He will be fine if everyone cooperates. The cure to his current predicament is simple. Somepony in this room must tell one of their deepest secrets. I know it’s a lot to ask, but it’s the only way,” she explained earnestly. Everypony stared at her. Some of them looked amused, some dissatisfied, and some outraged at somepony like her telling them what to do. But it was clear that they didn't plan on doing anything to help, much less telling everypony any of their precious secrets. Had she completely misunderstood how people thought of Blueblood? She’d always thought he was such a spoiled brat, but here were all the ponies she’d thought treated him like a god, and none of them could care less if he was okay. She was shocked and horrified at every single pony in the room.
“Look, I don’t care if you want to help him, and I don’t care if you think I’m beneath you. If you don’t get your snobby bums over here right now and start spilling your guts, I am going to go straight to Princess Celestia, who has total faith in my intelligence due to the time I spent at her school by the way, and tell her that not a single one of you would help the closest thing she has to a son!” she yelled. So much for manners. They looked appropriately scared, although whether it was fear of her threat or fear of her, she wasn’t sure. Regardless, her request had done the trick. Slowly but surely, everypony came closer, but they still said nothing.
“Well?” she prodded. All at once, everypony started talking over each other. Moondancer watched Blueblood, waiting for his eyes to unglaze, but nothing happened. She waited a minute. Still nothing.
“He needs deeper secrets!” she shouted at them. There was a moment of silence before they complied. She couldn’t follow more than one or two voices at once, but she still heard some noteworthy things.
“I’m not really French! I use a fake accent to impress ponies,” said Fluer de Lis in an accent that greatly differed from her French one.
“My cutie mark is fake! I have to paint it on every day. My real cutie mark is a slice of bread,” Upper Crust confessed.
Still, nothing worked. Moondancer had to force herself not to tear up. She did not cry. She’d only cried once in her life since she’d been a filly, and it had been when Twilight had come back to visit from Ponyville for the first time. She would not do it again. There was one thing left that she could try. There was one pony in the room who hadn’t yet shared a single secret. It was Moondancer. She had really been hoping it wouldn’t come to it, especially since Blueblood would maintain his memories from this, but she had to try.
“Blueblood,” she started. Somehow, even though she’d said his name rather quietly, the whole room seemed to hear her, and they silenced themselves to listen. With difficulty, she swallowed her nerves and continued.
“When Princess Celestia first hired me, I only took the job to get something impressive on my resume. I wanted to teach young unicorns about the joys of magic and science, just as Princess Celestia did for me. You were just an obstacle that I needed to get past in order to make it to my dream.” It felt so strange for her to say these things out loud. She hadn’t thought she ever would. It was even more strange to say them with no reaction at all from him.
“But as I got to know you, I realized that working with you wasn’t so bad. It didn't take me long to figure out that the only reason you aren’t good at magic is because you don't try, and that you’re much smarter than you lead ponies to believe.” Come on! Couldn’t he just wake up from the insanity now? Wasn’t what she’d already said enough? She really didn’t want to embarrass herself by finishing her speech.
“You’re not as shallow and heartless as you seem on the outside. You’re sweet, and funny, and I guess what I’m trying to say is that…” She closed her eyes and took a breath.
“You may be a crazy, germaphobic, self-centered, brat, but I like you. A lot. And maybe the reason I've stayed an entire year isn’t for my resume. It’s because as annoying as you are, I don’t want to leave you,” she confessed.
She waited, and waited, and waited some more, but his eyes were still glazed over.
“Why isn’t it working?!” she yelled. The tears she’d tried so hard to keep in were starting to drip down her face.
“How should I know? You’re the smart one,” Blueblood answered in the same flat voice as before.
“Really Blueblood? I just told you my deepest darkest secret and even in your stupid insanity trance, you manage to be sassy about it?”
“Well you did say I was insane. Perhaps that’s why,” he answered emotionlessly. Despite everything, she rolled her eyes and smiled a bit. He was still in there somewhere. She had to figure this out.
“What am I missing?” Moondancer muttered desperately. Suddenly, she heard a light, almost angelic sounding giggle coming from behind her.
She turned to see who would dare laugh at a moment like this, only to find Princess Celestia standing right behind her, in front of the crowd. Moondancer stared at her in shock.
"Oh Moondancer. You've always been quite the clever young mare, but you have a tendency to miss what's right in front of you," she announced simply.
"Wh-what do you mean, Your Highness?" Moondancer asked, fighting to keep herself composed.
"How exactly did you analyze the situation to assess that the spell was performed incorrectly?"
"Well obviously it was!" Moondancer cried, losing her patience. Celestia just continued to smile amusedly.
"And why is that?" Celestia asked. Moondancer took a breath to calm herself. She needed to relay the facts, not the drama.
"He said his favorite pizza was pineapple and anchovy with no sauce." Celestia raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow at that.
"Okay, that was a bad example," Moondancer said, trying to defend her assessment. She thought about it for a second.
"He said that you and he aren’t biologically related.” This time, Celestia looked down at the floor for a moment, regret filling her eyes.
“Yes. I found Prince Blueblood in the Everfree Forest when he was just a baby. I could not just leave him there defenseless, but I worried that some ponies would revolt without proper justification of my raising him. I never should have kept it from Equestria, but what he said is the truth,” Celestia said. Wait, what? But if the spell really hadn’t gone wrong…
“No, it can't be. He said that I… That he… That can’t be the truth,” Moondancer said, unable to believe what Celestia was clearly insinuating.
"Do you know the reversal spell required to reverse the truth magic?" Celestia asked softly.
"Yes, but it won't-"
"There's only one way to find out," Celestia said. Moondancer supposed Celestia was right. If Blueblood really had done the spell correctly, then it was petty of her not to cast the counterspell purely out of her own self doubt.
Focusing on her magic and, unlike Blueblood, the direction that she was aiming it in, she cast the required counterspell. For a moment, she thought it hadn't worked and that Celestia had been wrong, but then Blueblood blinked and the layer of glaze over his eyes lifted. They were back to their usual, annoyingly handsome ocean blue. She ran up and hugged him. After a second of hesitation, he returned the embrace. When she pulled away, she saw that his usually white face was an embarrassed shade of tomato red, and his eyes were wide and horrified.
“Am I dreaming?” he asked skeptically. Moondancer rolled her eyes.
“Overdramatic as usual,” Moondancer commented. Her playful tone seemed to throw him off even more.
“So you really... “ He took a breath and tried again.
“What you said, did you mean it?” he asked. He looked more sincere than she’d ever seen him. Sincerity wasn’t usually his strong suit. She blushed uncontrollably and glanced at the floor.
“Yes,” she admitted quietly. She looked back up at him. He was smiling now.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asked nervously. His smile turned mischievous.
“Yeah, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. Knowing you, I figured you’d think it was disgusting,” he said. She gaped at him.
“What?” she asked.
“I know it’s stupid. I guess I just pegged you for the type that thinks fish and fruit don’t belong on a pizza,” he said jokingly. If looks could kill, he would have been dead. He laughed at her expression.
“Oh, you mean the part about you, Moomoo?” he asked. Before she had a chance to say anything, his joking tone disappeared, and he continued, looking down and turning a bit red again.
“Yes, I did.” They looked into each other’s eyes, and Moondancer couldn’t believe that this was actually happening. She was waiting for it. She knew it was about to happen.
“I’ve never really done this before…” he admitted, obviously embarrassed.
“Can I-”
He never got to finish because Moondancer pulled him in and kissed him. He kissed her back, clearly forgetting his train of thought. There were dozens of important ponies gaping at her and Blueblood, the know-it-all tutor kissing the snooty prince, but she had learned enough to know that neither of them were quite as they appeared, and in that moment, she didn’t care what anypony thought of her, because she was happy.
Author's Note
Hope you enjoyed this story! If you did, make sure to give it a thumbs up please!
