The former princess Luna hesitated in the doorway. The room beyond was black as, clichéd though it was to think it, the night. Which was to say it was dark, but not so much so that she couldn't see the general layout. Why everypony acted like her night was some black, lightless void irked the princess at times. Especially when the moon was full, it was perfectly bright enough outside, as far as she was concerned. It was all some kind of anti-nightness conspiracy, it really was.
With a sigh, her horn lit, and she magicked the lights within on. While it wasn't too dark to see without them, it was too dark to see clearly and in detail. And if she was going to see to the task ahead, she really needed some proper light. Princess of the Night she may have been, but her eyes worked just like everypony else's. Taking a look around, she was struck with the immediate desire to turn the lights back off, close the door, and leave. The room, her room, took on a daunting air as she regarded it in light of her immediate goal. She had been putting this off for so long now after all, surely it wouldn't hurt to wait another few days...months...decades perhaps...
Luna shook her head. No, she needed to stop procrastinating. This was exactly the reason things were as bad as they were, because there had always been some excuse to put it off, and days had turned into months, and months into...well, not into decades, yet, but years for certain. And sure, maybe she had, in the past, had some good reasons to put it off. She'd just been purified by the Elements of Harmony and brought to a strange new place to live. She'd needed to regain her power and cleanse her mind of the trauma of a thousand years of isolation. She'd needed to get used to the new world and time she was living in. She'd needed to catch up to speed with the new structure of the government. She'd needed to return to her role as Guardian of Dreams and Bane of Nightmares.
She had needed to read all the Harry Trotter books. No matter what Tia said, it had been a necessity.
But now she was retired. She had no pressing obligations, no royal duties. She had only the goals she herself set. And much as it pained her to admit to it, she had decided that one of those goals was to finally stop putting it off, and clean her room. It was, and had been, a mess for as long as she could remember. She spared a brief moment to try blaming it all on her sister, but it really wasn't Tia's fault, no matter how tempting it was to pretend otherwise. The room had admittedly been somewhat cluttered when her sister had presented it to her after her return, but that really had only been the case because her sister had not known how she might have wanted all of her stuff arranged. Tia had done her best, having everything sorted into a variety of chests and then stacked neatly against the walls. She had given Luna the opportunity to see to arranging her room as she saw fit, in her own time.
Flash forward several years now, and what had been a neat, orderly, if cluttered arrangement had exploded into chaos worthy to make Discord feel at home. Most of the chests had never been opened. A few had been rummaged through, and left half closed over the now bugling messes within. Some had been used as makeshift furnishing. One was currently hiding the scorch mark on the rug she didn't want anypony, especially the maids that she never permitted inside, to see. And yes, she saw the faulty logic there, but still!
Grumbling to herself about her own stupid goals and wondering just what was supposed to be so bad about procrastination, Luna seized a chest at random and opened it. The interior was full of dresses. They were neatly folded, carefully sorted and organized, and truly quite hideous. The colors, and the frills, and the lace...oh what lace! She made a face, and shoved the contents back inside, rather purposefully wadding them up into a tangled mess. She had never liked those dresses even when they had been the height of fashion. Truth be told, she didn't care much for clothing at all. Naked was the natural state of the pony, and she saw no reason to argue with nature on that point.
She started to shove the chest back onto the pile with the others, but paused. No, that would not do. If she was to clean, to really clean up in here, she couldn't just cram everything she didn't like into the corners. She was going to have to...throw things out. Luna shuddered a little at the notion, and mentally went through her many arguments about how she was not hoarder. Some of this stuff could still be useful! Although...the dresses...she had to admit, it was hard to imagine a situation in which she would ever wear them. Use them as firestarter perhaps, but wear them? She was retired. She had no fancy, formal events for her sister to force her to attend anymore. And even if she did, she certainly would never choose any of these particular dresses to wear.
Really, there was no good reason to keep them.
Hesitantly, the alicorn allowed herself to seriously consider the idea. It would, after all, free up so much space in her room if she could just get rid of stuff. How many of her things had now sat in these chests for years, untouched, unneeded? And if she did have a need for something, well...she might not be a princess anymore, but she was hardly poor. She could always just...buy something new. Yes. Yes, maybe she really could do this!
With new found determination, Luna yanked the chest of dresses back out of the pile and set it near the door. The first of many, she felt certain. Except...except maybe she was being too hasty. She needed to think this through more. She ought to have a pile for things to throw out, yes, but also perhaps a Maybe Pile. And then a pile of things to keep. Oh, and she should divide the pile of things to get rid of into a Throw Away pile and a Donate pile. And perhaps a pile of things her friends might want. That pile would need to go with the Keeping Pile, to make sure it didn't get thrown away by mistake...
Luna stopped, and frowned. "...no," she told herself out loud. "No, this is why you can never get rid of anything," she went on, and let out an annoyed huff. If she was going to do this (and she was!) then she couldn't do it by half measures. It had to be done, for real, for serious, and for keeps.
Her horn flashed, and in a sudden motion, she ripped a hole open in the fabric of reality. The portal glowed a haunting blue around the edges, and the view through it revealed a star filled blackness. How far into the depths of space it went, the alicorn wasn't entirely certain, but definitely far enough to put anything thrown through it well beyond the reach of easy retrieval. She eyed the opening, and then another burst of magic torn open a second portal, this one passing through time. She anchored the portals together, so that the temporal gateway would serve as a metaphysical counter-balance for the spacial portal, and keep the thing from causing local space-time from going wonky. And then, once she was certain she wasn't going to accidentally create a blackhole or a time-loop or get sucked into an alternate reality, she grabbed the chest of dresses, and hurled it through the opening.
Luna watched as the chest tumbled off into the void, and was filled with the strangest sense of satisfaction and release. That had felt...good. The dresses were gone, never to bother her again. They were no longer her problem to deal with. She could, and had, just let them go. It was freeing. Liberating. And she suddenly found herself eyeing the rest of her room and wondering what else she could get rid of.
She grabbed another chest, yanking the lid open and peering inside for some useless junk to throw into space. Junk like the drama novel she had started when she was young and full of angst. She had written all of three chapters about a young filly, sick of being outshone by her perfect older sister, and then grown bored of it when she had run out of synonyms for brooding. She gave an excited exclamation as she sent the emo text flinging off into space, to compete with the endless void of nothing over which was darker in its soul. After that went a couple musical instruments she had always told herself she might learn to play. And the records of her tax returns, the pre-Nightmare copies. And the one awkward love letter from some random pony she had never met that, despite spending a thousand years in storage, still smelled slightly of sharp cheese for some reason. Well now it could go stink up the airless void!
Luna made a curious noise as her rummaging brought up a glass jar, which she turned in her hooves until the label came into view. She froze for an instant as she regarded the lettering on the millennia year old container, suddenly holding it as if finding she had a bomb in her grasp. With a tiny if emphatic "Yikes" she quickly turned and tossed the offending item away, and let out a breath of relief as it vanished. Crisis averted, she went back to the chest to resume searching.
She paused a moment. She had just throw the jar through the space portal, hadn't she? It had all happened so fast, she really hadn't been paying that much attention. She peered through the opening, trying to make out the shapes of all the random junk now floating against the backdrop of stars. It was however, really really dark out there. Right there though, that glint of light tumbling further and further away...surely that was coming from the glass of the jar. Yes, yes it had to be. And besides, even if it had gone into the time portal and been kicked some centuries into the past or future, well, what of it? How much harm could it really do?
Mayor Kick Start eyed the park and all the activity of his staff around it critically, though with a hopeful smile on his features. Things were actually coming together quite nicely in his opinion. The tables had been set out and covered in gingham, which were even now being loaded with platters of food. Tents were being erected, outdoor gaming supplies were being set in the spaces cleared for them, the stage was nearly finished for the band. All in all, it was looking perfect.
And it needed to be perfect. Today's festival was important. Perhaps the single most important festival in all of unicorn history. Things had been pretty bleak since magic had left them, made all the worse by the falling out between them and the pegasi and earth ponies. They were alone, and without magic, and it was threatening to become a real issue. The entire unicorn race was in danger of spiraling into a deep, society wide depressive state from which they might well never climb back out of.
They needed this event to not only lift their spirits, but to prove that even without magic or allies, they were still a perfectly capable people. And as he looked around, Kick Start felt a hopeful swell of pride at how well things were looking. Why, if one ignored the lack of colorful magical auras, it was hard to tell they were missing anything really. It was all neat, tidy, professional, and most importantly of all, cheerfully inviting. It already just looked like fun waiting to happen.
He paused in his survey as a glint of sunlight off something in the grass caught his eye, and he walked on over to find a glass jar laying there on the ground.
"Well now this doesn't belong here," he noted to himself as he picked the carelessly dropped container up, and checked the label on it. He then did a quick scan of the tables, and made his way over to one of the many platters piled high with mini sandwiches. He made a little space next to platter, and set the jar down, being sure to turn it so the label faced the front of the table, displaying in big, friendly letters a single word: Mayonnaise.
