The Prince's Predicament 2: The Princess's Predicament

After a few more stops of little importance, during which Cadance kept her thoughts mostly to herself, they returned to the Crystal Palace. More specifically, to the throne room. For the last twenty-four hours, Shining had not been holding court, and there was a bit of a backlog by now.

A rather rough-looking pegasus stallion approached the throne, first. He wasn't scheduled, meaning he'd been bumped to the front of the line for an emergency. "Your highnesses," he bowed.

"You look to be injured," insisted Shining. "Let us dispense with formalities that you may receive treatment."

"Yes, highness," he answered. "The loam sharks are back on my plantation, and they're attacking my employees."

"How many sharks?" asked Shining.

Cadance glanced sideways. There hadn't been a recorded sighting of a loam shark in nearly a thousand years. They had been hunted almost to extinction by King Sombra and his army, and the remaining population had died out.

"The most I've seen personally was two, though my employees say there are at least four. One of them is apparently red, but I've only seen two green ones."

Shining nodded and turned to the guard escorting him. "Send out twenty guards in scale and chain armour with machetes. Tell them to maintain cover as employees."

The guard nodded and escorted the plantation owner away.

"Loam sharks have been extinct for centuries," noted Cadance. "You're not going to order that they be protected? Maybe Fluttershy could help if we called for her?"

Shining shook his head. "These are not actual loam sharks. If they were, I'd have sent fully-armoured guards to protect the area, and yes, called for Twilight's friends. This is a new bandit group that's been harassing the crystal ponies outside of the city. The guards know what to do, and they know that this is top priority."

"Your highnesses." A pair of ponies; a stallion and a mare, approached the throne. "We would have you settle a dispute for us," stated the mare.

"Yes," noted Shining, indicating that this visit was planned and scheduled. "Let me just ask, which one of you suggested bringing this before us today?"

The mare raised her hoof.

"I was against it," volunteered the stallion. "I think this is a waste of the court's time."

"Duly noted," nodded Shining. He pointed to the right sight of the rug from his perspective. "Ma'am, step over there, please." He then indicated the other side of the rug. "Sir, please step over there."

The stallion moved to where he was told, but the mare just looked up at him. "Why? You haven't even heard what the argument's about!"

"I'm going to in a moment," he assured. "Please, step over there."

The mare looked insulted that she was being pushed to one side, rather than being allowed to take center stage in front of the royal couple. She turned to Cadance, the look on her face showing just how bruised her ego was at being asked to take three steps to the left. However, not even Cadance would save her, motioning for her to step aside.

"Now," sighed Shining, once the mare had moved to where she'd been asked to go. "As you're the one bringing this before the court today, we'll start with you. What is your complaint?"

The mare started to step back to the center, but a guard blocked her with his spear.

"You can tell me from where you are," waved Shining. "I can hear you just fine."

"Well, his brother," she said, pointing at the stallion accusatively, "was staying with us last week. Everything was fine until Thursday. We have a rule in our house about washing dishes; if you dirty the dishes, you wash them, and on the last day here, he not only ate my last container of leftover ratatouille, he didn't wash his fork! He just left it in the sink!"

Shining turned to the stallion. "Is all of that true?"

The stallion shrugged. "Most of it, yeah."

"What's untrue about it?"

The stallion scratched the back of his neck. "Well, I wouldn't say it's "untrue," per se. It is true that my brother was in town, and the rule about washing your own dishes is accurate, but I was In Canterlot between Tuesday and Friday. I don't know when she had ratatouille, or if my brother ate it, or what he did with his fork. That's not something I can account for."

"Do you refute any of it?" asked Shining.

"Not at all," he answered. "I can't confirm it without asking him to come back, and if it's true, he needs to wash the fork, and again, I think this is a waste of time."

Cadance agreed. A simple spell to rekindle their love for each other was all they needed to see that washing dishes didn't matter.

"What's your suggestion for moving forward, then?" asked Shining.

"I'll make her more ratatouille and wash the dishes," he shrugged. "It's not a big deal."

"It's the principle of the thing!" shouted the mare. "If he cleans up after his brother, it's going to teach our kids that it's okay to be slobs, because somepony else is just going to clean up your mess for you!"

"Perhaps," nodded Shining. "Have you considered telling your kids that sometimes, things happen outside of your control, and it's the job of every good citizen to help clean up a mess that they didn't necessarily create for the benefit of other ponies?"

The mare dug in her stance. "No, because that sets a precedent. If they start cleaning up after other ponies, other ponies are going to clean up after them, and then they won't clean up after themselves!"

"I'm sure your kids are smart and reasonable enough to tell the difference between right and wrong," assured Shining.

"They're not!"

Cadance gasped. Shining winced. "Do you truly have no faith in your children; at least, so little that you cannot believe that they have a sense of morality?"

The mare was shaking, now. "I didn't mean it like that..."

"Then how did you mean it?"

For a long time, there was silence. Cadance had her spell ready to go, but Shining put his hoof on hers to stop her.

"Morality is something that a parent should instill in their child. While it is true that your children should not have to clean up messes for others, doing so is a nice thing to do. If you are holding your children to the standard of cleaning up after themselves, that is a good thing. However, helping others does not mean they need to stop helping themselves.

"Now, here's what's going to happen. First, you're going to let your husband take care of the dishes. He's going to make you some ratatouille, wash the dishes, and then you're all going to sit down as a family and discuss how you should not only be cleaning up your own messes, but helping each other to clean bigger messes. Dismissed."