Months and months of planning, of shuffling schedules and delegating duties, and it all came down to the simple, downward motion of a blunt knife. At last the pudding was carved into slices, divided between the parents and their child, and each plate set neatly on the table with a conclusive wisp of magic.
“There,” Shining Armor announced, flopping back into the embrace of his cushioned seat. “Finally. No more guards, no more courtiers, no more crystal ponies petitioning the crown… just you and me and Flurry Heart. Our family, alone, for Hearth’s Warming dinner.”
Princess Cadance smiled and glanced at their daughter, who was already bouncing in her chair for the plate to come closer, but she cast her gaze to the assorted food and snacks on the table and gently frowned. “I’m still not sure we should be doing this.”
“Doing what?” Shining lit up his horn to grab a fork and began scooping out some of the fruit mince from his slice. “Ponies all over the country take a break from their jobs to be with their families. Why should we be any different?”
“Because we’re their leaders.” She retrieved her own fork as well as a butter knife and dug into her share. “I told you that before. And if the ponies out there need something, it’s our responsibility to be ready, willing and able to help.”
Shining blew some air out of his nose. “You know you’re starting to sound more and more like my sister, right?”
“And she’s setting a great example, isn’t she? Princess of Friendship for a little over twelve months and she’s already giving Celestia a run for her money. Could even replace her in a few years’ time.”
“Candy, honey…” His ears angled back as he cocked his head. “I thought we agreed we wouldn’t bring work to the dinner table.”
“I know, I know, I just…” She sighed, laying her fork and the piece impaled upon it on the plate in front of her. “It’s hard to switch off. I was raised to be the Princess of Love for as long as I can remember, so pretending like I’m not what I am while we’re in a palace dedicated to who we are… it doesn’t come easy.”
Her husband blinked like a deer in headlights. “Oh,” he said, clearing his throat. “Well, that’s… fair. But still! This is our space. Nopony can reach us here. Besides, I don’t think anypony can say that we haven’t earned a break. Delivering a baby is no small task.”
“I delivered Flurry. You just sat in the corner and cried half the time.”
“Because I was happy!” Shining held up his forehooves defensively. “What, I'm not allowed to get emotional around you anymore?”
“They didn’t sound like tears of joy to me.”
“And you didn’t sound like you were having a whole lot of fun either.”
Cadance baulked and jabbed a hoof at Flurry. “That creature was tunnelling out of my uterus! Have you ever tried giving birth to something with a stars-damned spear attached to its head?!”
“You squeezed my foreleg so hard you nearly broke it!”
“She nearly broke my pelvis!”
Flurry giggled.
Shining and his wife both turned to her and melted. “But we’re so glad you didn’t, my little bubsy-wubsy,” he said in that tone people use when they’re talking to a puppy. “Because no mare in the world can satisfy me like your mother.”
“Darling!” Cadence recoiled with a hoof to her mouth and wings puffing out and a small blush upon her cheeks. “You really think so?”
He shut his mouth and paused, blankly staring off into the distance, then shrugged and chuckled. “Well, maybe there’s one or two, but who’s counting?”
The blush instantly faded, and her hoof returned to the table’s surface with a resounding thud. “You really do say the sweetest things sometimes.”
With a simple nod and a proud grin, he sat a little straighter in his chair and finished off another piece of pudding. “See?” He swallowed his mouthful and gestured to the three of them. “Isn’t this nice? Our first Hearth’s Warming together as a family and we’re already arguing over the dinner table like ordinary ponies do.”
The princess lowered her gaze to keep herself from blushing too much. “I see what you mean,” she replied, sweeping a lock of her mane away from her cheek like a shy little filly. “Nopony to keep up appearances for, just us being… well, us. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if, for a day… we could pretend we’re normal again.”
“We are normal,” her husband affirmed, extending a wisp of magic to her tiara and floating it off her head, then lay it down on her end of the table. “We never stopped being normal. We’ve just found ourselves in rather abnormal circumstances. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
She sighed. “I guess.” And then she furrowed her brows and straightened her back, looking at him with a determined glint in her eyes. “Wait, no, you’re right. You’re completely right. We’re entitled to quality family time as much as anypony else! Celestia and Luna take vacations for themselves every once in a while, so why can’t we do the same?”
“Exactly.”
“Yeah.” She nodded slowly to herself at first, then more emphatically so Shining could see her conviction. “Yeah! I’m a princess, but I'm still flesh and blood. I have my needs. And right now, my family needs me.”
Shining angled his head and beamed, and lifted a crystal glass of champagne as a toast. “To us.”
“To us.” Cadance levitated her own and smiled in return. “Let nothing stand between our normalcy.”
The massive twin doors to the main dining hall suddenly burst open.
Out from the corridor bounded Twilight.
“Twilight?!” the happy couple exclaimed in unison, as if it could be anybody else.
Flurry reached out her forelegs and babbled excitedly.
“Good news, everypony!” the world’s second-youngest alicorn declared, brimming with so much enthusiasm she could hardly keep all four hooves on the floor at once. It was like watching a centipede tapdance – her legs a total blur. “You won’t believe what I just found in the library! Well, technically Starlight found it when she was helping me reorganised my castle’s inventory according to this new sorting system I read about in an article from Libraries Monthly – which is super good, by the way, you should totally subscribe to it – and it was talking about how there’s a museum in Maretania called the Saddlandrian Library, and how they use this really fascinating and intuitive—”
“Twily,” Shining interrupted, turning in his seat to face her more directly. “Slow down. We weren’t expecting you, or anypony as a matter of fact.” He cocked his head and ears. “How’d you get past the guards, anyhow?”
Twilight closed her mouth and blinked, then curled a forehoof upwards and pointed to the golden tiara she wore. “Uh, I’m a princess. Not to mention your sister. And I’ve helped save the world half a dozen times.”
“You could be Chrysalis in disguise.”
Cadance snickered. “Not that you’d be complaining, hun.”
He snapped back to her, eyes wide and coat somehow a shade paler. “I have… no idea what you’re referring to, beloved wife, who is the only female to have ever borne a child of mine.”
“Indeed.” She softly chuckled some more, before returning to Twilight. “Anyway, I’m sure my little sister-in-law has a good reason for barging in on our private Hearth’s Warming family dinner, which we’ve been planning months in advance, entirely unannounced.”
“Of course I do,” Twilight professed, and with a purple flash of magic beside her she made a scroll appear and unrolled it. “I wouldn’t have flown all the way here from Ponyville if I didn’t, and trust me, this will knock your fetlocks off.” She daintily coughed and brought the parchment closer. “Have you ever heard of Starswirl the Bearded?”
Shining groaned and slammed his forehead against the table, rattling all the plates and cutlery. “You’re seriously interrupting us to talk about an old guy from a thousand years ago?”
“Yes, I am, Shiny, because he wrote about you a thousand years ago!”
He jolted upright, ears at attention, both he and Cadance widening their eyes with shocked expressions, and both with open mouths. “Say what now?”
“I mean, well, maybe not you specifically, but your family – Flurry Heart in particular.” Twilight turned her head to the scroll and skimmed the scribbled lines like a mare possessed. “And I quote, ‘there will come a time when a fifth alicorn is born to us, sired and sheltered by love and chivalry, whose soul is pure as crystal’.” She looked back at her sister-in-law, brother and niece, all with a grin so giddy even Pinkie Pie would be a little unsettled. “Don’t you see?! It’s a prophecy! And he goes on to say this alicorn ‘will enact great change, and herald the dawn of a new age – one of eternal peace and harmony’.”
Shining peered out of the corner of his eye to his wife, who peered back at him, then both looked to little Flurry as she played with her silverware, sucking on the handle of a butter knife.
“Oh,” Cadance said. “That’s nice.”
“Nice?!” Twilight all but shouted, flinging a hoof into the air. “It’s fantastic! It means Flurry is literally the answer to every single problem in the whole entire world! She’ll do things none of us could ever dream of, and solve issues we don’t even see yet!”
Shining blinked, glancing left and right. “I thought you and your five friends already did that.”
“Eh.” She waved the same hoof flippantly. “If Starswirl said she’s more important, I won’t argue.”
“OH YES YOU SHOULD!”
Everybody whipped around for the corridor again.
Galloping into the hall came a frantic Starlight Glimmer, who skidded to a halt on the crystal floor when the carpet ended. “I don’t know what Twilight told you exactly,” she wheezed, gasping for breath as sweat beaded from her brow, “but she’s got it all wrong.”
“Ugh, Starlight,” Twilight groaned, “I already told you, you’re drawing the wrong conclusion.”
“And you aren’t?!” barked Starlight, eyes wide with a fury that could rival Tirek’s. “I studied Old Ponish all the way back in elementary – my hometown was drenched in ancient texts! What makes you the authority on it, huh?!”
“Excuse me,” Cadance gently interrupted, dazedly looking at Shining for any kind of support, only to find him just as bewildered, “but whatever happened to this being a private function?”
“Uh… yeah.” Shining shook his head and shifted in his seat, as if to somehow make himself feel more comfortable in his own home. “How did you get past the guards?”
Starlight met his gaze and put a hoof to her breast. “Me? Oh, that wasn’t much trouble – I just teleported in, same way how I got here from Ponyville. Nearly as fast as flying, as you can see. You should really let me place some protective wards around the palace, by the way.”
“Okay, okay, that’s enough.” Twilight gave her a little shove in the direction of the corridor. “This is a family moment, Starlight, and as much as we appreciate you, you’re not—”
“You weren’t invited either, Twily,” Shining stated, folding his forelegs. “Now, as much as I dislike the intrusion and random ponies getting to trespass in my home, I’m kinda curious of what Starlight has to say.”
Twilight froze in place as if struck by lightning, then her ears went limp as she slowly turned and presented him a forced smile. “Oh, she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about. You wouldn’t want to hear it anyway.”
“They wouldn’t, no,” Starlight grumbled in agreement, pushing past Twilight’s advances with grim determination in her step. “But they need to.”
Cadance pursed her lips and scrunched her muzzle, looking to Shining once more. “Is this something normal ponies have to deal with on Hearth’s Warming too?”
“Unfortunately, no.” Starlight snatched the scroll from Twilight’s magical grasp and brought it before her, then winced at the writing. “Yeah, see, the thing about Old Ponish is that, like our modern language, it has homonyms – words and phrases that have different meanings in different contexts, despite being spelled the same. And although this prophecy could be liberally interpreted to mean what Twilight thinks it does, I’m not so sure that’s the case.”
Shining shrugged. “It didn’t sound so bad to me.”
“To the untrained ear, perhaps.” She flipped the parchment over and walked toward his side of the table. “But you see this bit here, where it says the alicorn’s soul is pure as crystal? Ponies back then thought crystals were just a different type of ice – harder to melt, different colours, but still translucent and cold to the touch. And you have to remember this wasn’t written too long after the tribes united, so anything related to winter was considered sinister.”
“Meaning…?”
“Stars, do I have to spell it out for you?! Your daughter is pure evil!”
Flurry spat out the knife and laughed as it disappeared beneath the tablecloth.
“Or… will be evil, if you aren’t careful!”
Shining frowned, watching Starlight intently as he took the scroll from her. “What about all this talk of eternal peace and harmony?”
“Exactly.” Twilight stepped forward and nudged Starlight out of her brother’s personal space. “If Starswirl thought a fifth alicorn would cause the end of the world as we know it, he would’ve said so, and his prophecy clearly states the opposite.”
“You’re just choosing to read it like that,” retorted Starlight, pulling away and circling back around to the other side of the table, glancing at Flurry while she approached Cadance. “Believe me, Your Highness, there’s no reason I would lie to you. Starswirl never wrote a prophecy that didn’t come true, so if it’s your daughter’s destiny to become the most destructive supervillain that ever lived—”
“Then it’s my duty as a mother to prevent it.” The princess scowled down at her like she’d dragged mud across the polished floor. “Not that I have much faith in a prophecy I’m only just hearing about, especially when it could be years from being fulfilled.”
“Which is why we need to prepare for when it does.”
“Not that it’ll really matter in the end,” came a third arrival’s voice.
Yet again, all eyes found themselves drawn towards the corridor, which suddenly erupted in a brilliant cloud of lavender-coloured smoke, startling everyone. Out trotted a sky blue unicorn with silvery hair, mane and tail bobbing rhythmically as she held her head high and beamed with a smug sense of pride.
Twilight and Starlight dropped their jaws in mutual shock. “Trixie?!”
“The one and only,” she confirmed, flourishing her good looks like the bona fide fashion model she is. “Trixie isn’t here for business, however, so no shows until I can bring my carriage along.”
“But how did you get here so fast?” Twilight asked, examining her up and down, front to back, as if the magician could only be a mirage. “Taking the train from Ponyville to the Crystal Empire takes upwards of a week in winter!”
“Trixie is a mare of many talents,” she explained, eyeing Twilight derisively. “She is an illusionist first and foremost, so it only seems like her train is slower than your fancy wings and teleportation. Speaking of which, thanks for waiting, Starlight.”
“What?” Starlight defensively countered, tactically retreating a couple of steps. “I couldn’t let Twilight get here and spread her false interpretation of what could be a very real problem.”
“Trixie knows this, but it would’ve been nice to have done her the courtesy of asking to take your leave. Trixie has feelings too.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“Trixie heard that!”
“Alright, okay, enough of this,” Shining interjected, flapping his forelegs about to get everybody’s attention, then stabbing a hoof at Trixie once all was quiet – except for Flurry’s excited giggling. “You, the one who talks in third-person, how did you get past the guards? Twilight and Starlight have their excuses, which I’ll have to address next inspection, so I’d better hear something good, or else—”
“There are no guards.”
“…I beg your pardon?”
“There never were.” Trixie’s smile was now so wide you could cut the pompous air surrounding her with a knife. “Trixie is an illusionist, Prince-Consort, and a mare of many talents.”
“Oh, for the love of…” Cadance groused, sinking her face into the waiting embrace of a wing. “Putting aside how ludicrous that sounds for a moment, why are you here?” She lifted her gaze and stared hard at Trixie from behind exhausted brows. “Let me guess, another prophecy?”
“Your Highness, please, it isn’t polite to rush.”
“My patience is wearing thin.”
Trixie paused, then nodded. “Noted.” With a quick clap of her hooves she vanished in another puff of coloured smoke, and somehow rematerialised from behind the princess’s chair, sauntering along the dinner table towards Flurry. “Trixie is never really where you think she is, by the way. But since time is short, she will graciously dispense with the pleasantries and cut straight to the chase: both Twilight and Starlight are fundamentally wrong.”
“We are?” Starlight questioned.
“She’s just trying to get on our nerves,” Twilight assured.
“Am I?” Trixie leaned around Flurry’s booster seat to look at her square in the eyes, and the foal squealed exuberantly in response. “Starlight knows more about Old Ponish than Twilight does, there’s no denying that, so let’s assume she’s right for the time being. Does that contradict the prophecy?”
“Of course!” Twilight stomped her hoof so forcefully it shook the table. “How can it claim that Flurry Heart will be a villain – which it doesn’t – and say that she’ll bring about everlasting peace and prosperity?”
Starlight cleared her throat. “Peace and harmony.”
“Six in one, half a dozen in the other.”
“No, no, Starlight makes a very good point,” Trixie agreed, sidling further along the table and swiping a small chunk of pudding in her magic for herself. “The prophecy never specifies that this fifth alicorn will do right by others, or who this peace and harmony will serve. What does that tell you?”
“That you’re not as smart as you think you are.”
“Says the insufferable know-it-all.”
Shining groaned and sat back in his chair, gawking at the ceiling. “Is this going anywhere?”
“Away,” Cadance murmured, “hopefully.”
“Aw, don’t be so negative, you two,” said Trixie, patting Shining on the shoulder as she popped the pudding into her mouth and chewed. “You’ve given birth to the fifth and final alicorn! The one who’ll outlive us all! After all, what could be more peaceful and harmonious than a world with nopony in it?”
Silence descended on the dining hall.
“Uh…” Shining twisted in his seat to face her, a dreadful sense of confusion bubbling up in his stomach. “C-come again?”
“You heard me.” Trixie disappeared behind his backrest and trotted out from behind Cadance’s instead. “Wherever there’s life, there’s conflict and hardship – different opinions, ideologies, ungrateful audiences who refuse to pay their fair share of bits – so it only stands to reason that life itself could be the problem. And who better to solve that problem, and bring about that new age of peace and harmony, than our very own Flurry… Something-or-Other?”
More silence.
Cadance closed her eyes and took a deep breath in, then out. “Are you implying,” she said slowly and deliberately, “that Flurry Heart, my daughter, will at some point in the future… conduct GENOCIDE?!”
Trixie burst into laughter.
Everyone stared at her, utterly bemused.
“Of course not!” she wailed, slapping the floor and nearly collapsing in a fit. “You think I’d put that much stock in the mad ramblings of whatever senile geezer Twilight idolises on any given day? She’s a nerd! How can anypony take her seriously?! That’s why they’re both wrong!”
Her frenzied cackles echoed off the walls and ceiling, forming an echo chamber that made it sound like an entire choir laughed with her. But nobody else in the room seemed to find it funny – except for Flurry, who found just about everything hilarious – especially when they caught a glimpse of Cadance.
“I want you,” she pointed at Trixie, “and you,” Starlight, “and you,” Twilight, “all of you… out of my home. Now.”
Twilight stepped forward. “But Cada—”
“I said NOW!” With a sudden explosion of magic, the dining hall was bathed in golden light and the three intruders caught in a whirlwind that blew them straight back down the corridor, the entrance slamming shut behind them. “And stay out! Is it so much to ask for just one normal day without anypony treating me or my family like… like…”
“Royalty?” Shining offered.
She turned to him, chest heaving, and stared at him for a moment. “Yes,” she finally answered, nodding faintly. “Thank you. And if you wouldn’t mind, love, I’d… I’d like to have that dinner we planned. I think we have deserved it after all.”
A dopey grin and heavy-lidded eyes gazed back at her. “Wanna vent some of that frustration out on me later?”
Cadance curled her lips into a wry smirk she desperately didn’t want to let him see, but once the cat was out of the bag, it couldn’t be caged. “Maybe. Only after Flurry is down for her nap, and only if you behave.”
He pumped a forehoof.
“And just for that, we’re doing the stuff you don’t like.”
“Ba!” Flurry shouted.
Both Shining and Cadance gawked at each other, then snapped their collective gaze to their daughter, who jumped up and down in her seat and restraints.
“Hababa.”
They began leaning in, scooting around the table in their chairs, excitement and glee swimming in their hearts like ducks in water.
“Habababa.”
“That’s right,” said Shining, leaning even closer – so close he was almost cheek to cheek with her. “That’s right, baby girl. Say papa.”
“Or mama.” Cadance shimmied in and took position near the opposite cheek. “You can say mama, can’t you, my widdle Fwuwwy Harf?”
Flurry’s muzzle twisted and contorted in concentration, prying the depths of her mind for the knowledge and focus to articulate her thoughts. Either that or she was about to make a massive mess in her diaper.
But then it came to her, and she beamed with joy.
“Genocide!”
The dining hall fell deathly still and gravely quiet. Even the cold nip of winter winds appeared to somehow pierce through the palace exterior, chilling the air within. Heartbeats skipped, breathing slowed, and the atmosphere began to fester and rot.
Shining looked at Cadance.
Cadance looked at Shining.
They both stared at each other for what felt like an entire unblinking minute.
And then they rose from their chairs and swept Flurry up in a tender embrace.
“Her first word, Shiny! Her first word!”
“I know, Candy, I know! I can’t wait for the next!”
