For somepony who liked to take sweeping action, Lyra realized she was going to be mired deep in the nitty-gritty of paperwork and meetings for enough time that she was going to get antsy about not improving herself.

Which is why Blaze found Lyra doing wing-ups in her office, burning both magic and muscle while writing a report on the floor in front of her. Pausing, a little taken aback, Blaze did what came naturally. "Sir!"

Teleporting upward a ponylength and then landing on her hooves, Lyra nodded to the chair while returning the salute. "At ease. Did Tailstrike explain it all to you?"

Hearing her nickname had what Blaze realized was the intended effect: she relaxed. "Yeah, I think. You need a pegasus to train newbies, and asked for me."

"You wouldn't give up a half day of training for an offer like that."

Blaze laughed and nodded. "Yeah, you're right, but I want to hear you say what you want and what you're offering. Tailstrike is so rigid sometimes, I wonder how she can turn corners."

Managing to keep her reply laugh to a chuckle, Lyra said, "Okay, the deal. You'll be a sergeant and my first pick to be a staff sergeant when this gets big enough that we need more than one of you. I have a draft of what I want trained into new recruits, and a list of requirements from commanders of what they want when we deliver them. I want you to handle all that so I can get on with handling the bigger stuff—like keeping anyone who might get up your nose from doing that."

Having had her chance to rise fast through the ranks in the Wonderbolts forestalled by teammates she had to admit were better for the job, Blaze had a lot to like about being told she would be first to be promoted. The rest, though, was what had her interest. "So I'll be teaching ponies to fly right—the Wonderbolt way?" That got her a nod. "What else?"

"Do you know the training that unicorns get to expand their mana reserves and regeneration?" Lyra asked.

"You didn't?" Blaze's question got a raised eyebrow from Lyra, so she went on. "You can increase pegasi magic the same way?"

Pulling out her second revision guide book, Lyra floated it across to Blaze. She waited, giving time for Blaze to read it and understand what it entails.

"Using your pegasi magic, keeping it constantly refreshing, is the key? So what we're doing in Wonderbolts training is the opposite of this." Barely resisting the urge to facehoof, Blaze pushed on. "But it won't take much to do solid training on non-magical flight and do this at the same time.

"First thing that needs to change is the flying. If we start by teaching pegasi this method, they can be doing that while they learn to fly properly. Since I'll have them for most of each day, I can filter those who cannot fly right—" As she said it, Blaze saw another rise of Lyra's eyebrow. "You're going to say that I should teach everypony to fly that way, aren't you? You are. Okay, so I can monitor those who are getting in into a fast-track and single out those who aren't into remedial training."

"You'll do it?" Lyra asked.

"Teaching them will be—"

"I mean, do you want the job?"

Blaze paused, shifting away from the intense focus she was in to puzzle through the words. She realized quickly that she'd already been thinking as if she had taken the offer. "I'll do it until you find somepony better."

Smirking, Lyra asked, "You think I'll find somepony better than a Wonderbolt, Sergeant?"

Lifting her chin, Blaze shook her head. "Not in this lifetime, Commander."

"Sir! Yes, Sir!" Lyra stood rigidly at attention while Blaze stared at her. There was still some confusion there, she realized. "Come on, it worked when I was Bubbles. Run me through it."

"Not only are you my commander, but you're also the pony who taught this to me." Nonetheless, Blaze ran through the prepared speech and cleared her throat. "Alright, recruits, your first lesson is how to train your magic. Like running and flying, you're going to be doing it for the rest of your life—so listen close."

The explanation was clear and concise. Lyra had started with a full tank, and after an hour she had edged that magic level down and down until she could no longer feel it. The ongoing glare from Blaze helped reinforce that she needed to be completely empty.

"Finally? How much magic do you have?"

Tilting her head a little, looking at Blaze as if over a pair of half-moon glasses, Lyra slowly lit her horn up.

"Right. Of course. I'll have to be flexible here, then. Some will empty fast, others will take—hopefully not an hour, but still."

"What about the reservists who need a brush-up?" Lyra asked.

Stopping her mental process, Blaze pivoted to the new topic. "You want those trained separately from the recruits, but I think there needs to be two different systems for them— No. One will suffice. All reservists will be required to attend the month-and-a-half training once, then they will be able to do the brush-up course."

"That was my intent, too. Especially since many reservists already signed on for this coming intake. I've sent out a warning about the increased duration, and arranged so that nopony will be penalized if they cannot attend this one." Rolling her shoulders a little and freeing up her wings, Lyra stretched next to work the twitchiness out of them. "So, what next, Teach?"

"After establishing everypony's abilities with their magic, and picking out those who need more than a little work, I'd move on to actual flight. Nothing fancy, no 'Bolt techniques, but push to see how their endurance is in the air and how hard they can pull a turn. It will also give me a chance to see how many bad habits I need to train out of them." Taking a slow breath, filling her lungs, Blaze shouted, "Get in the air, newbies, and let's see how fast you can move!"

Letting out a panicked cry, Lyra had to admit that Blaze had learned how to shout from Spitfire, and she wondered if it had been via osmosis. She tried her best to fly without the Wonderbolts' style, but unlearning all that was, she realized, too much. "Dammit."

Zipping in to fly beside Lyra, Blaze asked, "What's up?"

"I was going to try flying like a recruit would, but I can't." Lyra twitched her wingtips to pitch left and right, then back to level. "I just can't."

"That means I get to push you twice as hard. Come on, put on as much speed as you can for the first five laps, then we'll try something fancy—and don't you dare use any magic." Blaze realized she had a problem the moment she told Lyra to move faster. "Huh, hold up. There's a problem doing it like this. I can't set the pace and watch you fly at the same time."

"Come on. You know exactly how to make me fly faster. Do it!" Slowing her pace, Lyra was daring Blaze to make with the encouragement.

It took two wing beats before Blaze caught on. "Alright, Newbie, get those wings moving! You can fly faster than that!"

Lyra could, too. She flared her feathers to catch the next downswing and shot forward, bringing her wings into a far more aggressive angle to pour on the speed—and right beside her was Blaze, grinning like a fiend.

"That all you got, Newbie?!" Blaze shouted, and took the speed-up a notch. With Lyra beside her, never failing to match wing beat to wing beat, Blaze could see herself enjoying her new role far more than wallowing as a wing-second in the Wonderbolts until the next fast-tracked hothead got promoted above her.

Her blood howling, Lyra flew five fast laps of the city with Blaze. Her wings felt like they'd had their first good workout for months, and that made her wonder about the flying she'd been doing. When they landed in a training field, she rolled her wings a few times, letting the muscles cool down. "Now I know why the Wonderbolts train together so much. I've been letting myself slip."

"Huh. Lucky you happen to have a new training sergeant to fly with." Dropping to the ground and catching herself on her wings, Blaze looked over at Lyra. "Let's do a few hundred wing-ups to keep things in shape."

They had done two hundred and eighty-three when Poppy Bread and Bright Feather arrived. Lyra noticed Blaze stiffen, but she made a point of finishing out the last seventeen wing-ups before jumping up to her hooves. "Captains. Sorry for the wait—good training sergeants are hard to find, and when I have one so eager to do her job she yells at me, I am not going to disappoint her."

"Good thinking there. You wanted to see us about the matter of training requirements and filling a sergeant role?" Poppy, commander of the Royal Dragoons, asked.

Lyra nodded. "Absolutely. Changing leadership means I want to try improving things. In the past, we expanded training for individuals who specifically wanted it. Giving specialized lessons for the Guard regiment they want to be part of. That, from all reports, led to some exceptional new Guardponies."

Seeing the way the wind was blowing, Poppy confirmed Lyra's details. "The Dragoons don't get a lot of recruits, but all the ones we gained in the last few years that had that training— You're absolutely right on all counts. So you're going to make that training mandatory?"

"No. It wouldn't scale at all. Class sizes would negate the special focus our trainers could spend with the few who saw their career as their lifelong goal." In a perfect world, Lyra would have hundreds of staff and could assign one to each recruit to make them the best Guardpony they could ever be. She wasn't in a perfect world, but she was working at it. "What I will be doing is extending the full training of new recruits out to a month and a half and training every recruit to be the perfect mix of traits that they could perform in any regiment they wished to, and even shift between them, with minimal training.

"There'll be no more generic flight training for pegasi—everypony with feathered wings will learn to fly as well as a Wonderbolts recruit. Every pony will get armor and teamwork training as if they were destined for the Monster Hunters. Weapons training as if they were to be Dragoons or Guard"—Lyra nodded to Poppy and Bright—"and the empathy and investigative skills to work in the Police or Research and Acquisitions."

Whistling, Bright worked over his thoughts on the idea. "I like it, but how are you going to manage such an extended training period?"

"Reservists will not need to attend the entire training again to re-certify. They will only need to prove their fitness level and update any skills that have changed. All reservists will need to go through the new training at least once, though, so they are at a level we can verify." Lyra could practically feel Poppy's question coming, so turned to look at her.

"So you want to know what we'll need from our recruits?"

"No," Lyra said. "I want to know what you want from your recruits."

There would be entirely new weapons training, along with armor training, and (something she was prepared for) special situational awareness training. Lyra expected a delivery in two days of an assortment of weapons and a new practice spear from the Royal Guard.

She was still writing down details for the next iteration of manuals when she got a knock on her office door. "Come in." Interruptions were inevitable, but when Lyra saw Sweetie walk into her office, she put her book aside. It surprised her to see her wife without armor on. "Wha—?"

"You have twenty minutes until our reservation at The Tasty Treat's new venue is ready—and we are not allowed to miss this. Saffron might forgive us, but Coriander wouldn't. So get out of your armor, take a shower, and try to look your best." Sweetie was glad, in a way, that she wasn't a unicorn. If she had been born with a horn, Lyra would have been teleported into the shower as-is and it would have been up to one of Lyra's underlings to scrub it free of moisture. "You aren't moving fast enough!"

With the last delivered at full training sergeant volume, Lyra moved fast, stripped her armor and teleported herself to the shower. In all, she was done fast enough, and to Sweetie's standard, in under ten minutes. Thanking magic itself that she had spells to dry and wash with, she brushed out her mane quickly and returned to her office and Sweetie's side. "I'll take care of my armor later."

Sweetie would have growled and chewed out anypony else for such a flippant treatment of their gear, but she had given her wife an order and one thing she stood by was that if her order was a bad one, it was her fault. She sighed and kissed Lyra's cheek. "Come on. You're going to love the food there tonight. I invited some special guests to help Saffron and Coriander get things off to a fantastic start."

"I'll take a stab in the dark and say you invited every member of the wings and horns club?" Lyra asked.

"Being the wife of an alicorn gives me some advantage there, so yes. I got RSVPs from Celestia, Luna, and Cadance. Twilight is busy, but she didn't sound happy about it."

The evening air was cool, but pony coats were such that Lyra had never felt particularly cold in Canterlot since she became one. "She wouldn't be happy about it, and whatever it is must be important. She loved the take-out I brought back with me."

Settling into a walk beside Lyra, Sweetie almost closed her eyes in bliss. The building she'd arranged for the restaurant was lit up with big lights from outside, and there was a line at the front door to get in. Near the end of the line was a little sign that read: Those with reservations, please proceed to the door.

"We have reservations, right?" Lyra asked.

"Of course. I have an invitation from the owner, Lyra. Come on." Marching down beside the line, Sweetie felt not a hint of impropriety at bypassing the queue to get it. A glance at Lyra, though, revealed she was embarrassed enough for the both of them. "Lyra, come on."

Able to feel every stare directed her way, Lyra was glad that Sweetie was between her and the crowd as they trotted briskly for the door. When they reached it, Lyra and Sweetie were confronted by a bouncer checking reservation. When asked for their names, Lyra said them as quickly as she could so they could get inside.

Coriander saw his special guests and rushed over to greet them. "Sweetie, Lyra! It's good to see you both! I can't begin to say how grateful my daughter and I are to you. This is Saffron's dream come true."

About to reply, Sweetie was instead caught up in an uncharacteristic hug from Coriander. She hugged him back, and as he drew back from her, she saw his eyes sparkling with tears. "You both deserved it. Have the others arrived?"

That reminded Coriander of why he was so overwrought. "The princesses! Yes! When you said you had a group coming and to prepare for hearty appetites, I scarcely believed you had invited royalty!" As if the night wasn't already so important to their restaurant, he'd had two princesses, an empress, an empress' consort, and— For a moment Coriander wondered what the special name for an empress' daughter was.

Not exactly needing directions to spot her table, Sweetie said, "Thank you."

Lyra let her wing trail over Sweetie's back as they approached the big table in the corner of the huge restaurant. "I'm pretty sure we're all off duty, so can we skip all the highnesses and imperial majesties?"

"Only if you can convince our waiter to do so," Celestia said, nod doing a good job of holding back her chuckle.

"I doubt that would be possible, sister, and I too do not wish to hear another such. Please, Lyra, Sweetie, sit and share in the bounty of roti we have been provided." Luna proved her point by nibbling along the edge of a piece.

There was no chance for Lyra or Sweetie to continue the conversation, due to being pounced by a pink alicorn. "Ack!" The fluffy feathers were overwhelming, but it was hard to deny Cadance when she wanted to hug, so the pair hugged her.

"It's been way too long since I've seen you both! You didn't come to Flurry's Crystalling, Lyra!" Cadance jerked back and pouted at Lyra.

Pulling up chairs for herself and Sweetie, Lyra sat down and slumped her shoulders. "It was all Twilight's fault. She had me working twenty-three hours a day!"

"That's not how Twily describes your time working for her. I think," Shining said, "it was more like 'Lyra lays in my library all day, dog-ears all my books, and feeds Spike things no dragon should ever have.'"

"I told her, I didn't know that had tungsten in it." Slumping back in her chair, Lyra stared at the ceiling. "And it wasn't me! I figured a diamond dog should be allowed to borrow books just like everyone else."

Sweetie bonked Lyra on the head. "I can't take you anywhere."

"I heard you got a promotion?" Shining asked, doing his absolute best to keep his excitement down to a grin.

Cadance, who hadn't heard anything about it, looked at Shining. "How could she get a promotion? She's already commander of a regiment. Wait! Are you finally going to get a coronation? Do I get to sing the Behold, Behold song again?"

"You never stopped singing it. I heard you yesterday singing it to Flurry," Shining said.

Leaving the couple to their mock argument, Lyra focused on Celestia. "I hope I haven't messed things up so much you regret my new position yet?"

Celestia waved away the concern. "Nothing that would warrant a cake, certainly. You have every regiment guarding their unicorns, though. Poppy looked… happy, though. What did you change, apart from everything?"

"It's not everything, but I am increasing how long we train recruits for. This will mean a more comprehensive and consistent training. Would you like a full report?"

"Tomorrow," Luna said around a mouthful of roti. "I would like to order drinks now."

A server, apparently assigned to listen for such things, rushed over and attended to them. Once they all had their drinks, which took no time at all, Coriander arrived at the table. "Can I take your orders?" He worried a little on how to address different royalty that had different titles without offending any of them, and in that confusion he hadn't used any. He went on to explain their ordering system.

Refreshed and relieved, Celestia, Luna, and Cadance were quick to respond with a fixed menu choice. Lyra and Sweetie took that option too, and Shining surrendered to peer pressure.

"We have a special course for little ones, if you'd like that?" Coriander asked, almost overwhelmed with the enthusiasm. Even the tiniest of ponies present, currently wedged between her parents, deserved as much attention as the adults.

"That would be perfect, thank you." Cadance was nopony's fool. Her daughter, she knew, had a big lunch and that she shouldn't be too hungry—which meant Cadance could steal some extra food from her daughter's plate.

The appetizer ended up being the only thing that could fully quiet the table. Even Celestia struggled to take her time and savor each mouthful when the food tasted so good. Luna had managed to become completely distracted from the stack of roti beside her to devour the dish.

Cadance had to spend a little extra time away from her own food to ensure Flurry was content to gnaw on a samosa. When she did manage to get something down, she practically melted on the spot. "This is sooo good! I might have to send our chefs to get some training in how to cook this… uh…?"

"These are samosas, that creamy dip is raita, and the drink is mango lassi," Sweetie explained. At Cadance's curious look, she laughed. "I've done a little work for Saffron and Coriander. They needed help, and I helped. Mostly just bits."

"'Just bits'?" Celestia asked.

"They were stuck in premises too small for their growing customer base. Being limited with size and staff, they couldn't easily afford to stop their business for the time it took to modify a new building—not if they had to pay rent on it during that time. So I paid for the rent here, and paid for the ponies to fit the building out to Saffron's needs, while they kept working. This is their first night open here."

"I could have sworn I'd had something in the rental-tax code to cover that, to allow small businesses to grow. I believe," Celestia said as she finished her last samosa, "that I will need to talk with Upper Crust."

Elbowing Lyra, Sweetie asked, "Is this how it started for you?"

"Huh? How what started?" Lyra asked back.

"Seeing problems and fixing them. I guess I first noticed you doing it with Scootaloo. Finding problems, fixing the initial one, and then ensuring they can't happen again." Kissing Lyra's cheek, Sweetie caught a wink from Cadance across the table. "And I think it's something I admire about you more than anything else."

Happy to indulge in a little public affection, Lyra kissed Sweetie's cheek back and then did a double-take. "Wait. More than the wings?"

Sitting back a bit, Sweetie tapped her chin in thought. "Okay, it's number two, but it is a close race."

Reaching around behind Sweetie's back with her wing, Lyra pulled her closer for another kiss. "If I could, I'd grow another pair to make it the third thing."

"Shiny. Shiny." Cadance was biting her lower lip and struggling not to scream his name. "Look at them. Ugh, it's so adorable."

Making judicious use of his shield spells, Shining was doing a reasonable job of deflecting any food that Flurry tried to launch back onto the plate on her high chair. When he glanced at Cadance, then across at Lyra and Sweetie, he groaned. "You're an addict."

"What?"

"It's not a bad thing, though. I guess everypony has something they would give up every other pleasure in life for." Kissing Cadance on the cheek, much as Sweetie had just done to Lyra, Shining tilted his head and deflected another piece of samosa from flying toward the floor. "Have I told you, today, how much I love you?"

"Yes, but not enough times." Cadance felt the love surge within each of them, like a hurricane of perfection. Then a piece of mashed potato flew before her eyes, bounced off some kind of blue shield that certainly wasn't hers, and bounced back past her—on Shining. Watching him clean it off and tend to Flurry made her wish she could teleport him all the way back to the Crystal Empire and show him how much she loved seeing his fatherly side.

When he finished with getting Flurry back to trying to eat what had become a small pile of vegetables, Shining looked up at Cadance and felt his love for her intensify a thousandfold. "I love you, Cadey, with all my heart and for all my days."

Luna, who was sitting on Shining's other side, let out a little sigh.

"Something the matter, sister?" Celestia asked, a little concern rising at Luna's tone.

"Will we ever have time for loves of our own?"

"You need to go out and look. I… have a stallion who has caught my eye. It's not easy to convince him that he's the pony I would rather spend time with, but I believe he's starting to catch on." Looking at her sister, Celestia raised her visible eyebrow. "You should get out more. What about those trains of yours? Is there a handsome stallion who works the footplate with you? Footplate is the right word, isn't it?"

Rolling her eyes, Luna nodded. "It is a footplate." She looked down at the table. "But I couldn't lie to somepony, and especially not somepony I admire."

"Why would you be lying?"

Looking across at Lyra and Sweetie, then letting out a soft sound of regret for all that could have been, Luna replied, "Because I couldn't spend my whole life with them."

"You're right. That's why you don't promise that. Be honest. Tell them you'll be with them for as much of your life as you can, and keep telling them that. Luna, this isn't an ideal situation, but it's a burden we don't have to shoulder alone." When Luna didn't reply, Celestia nudged her sister with a wing. "You could always talk to Cadance or Lyra about it."

"I could never do that. They're both so—" Luna bit her reply off and closed her eyes. "You're right. They're both young, yet, but also happily married."

"Exactly. Plus, while Cadance is often moving around or in her own country, I have pinned Lyra to one place in particular. I would recommend speaking to her, even if love is Cadance's domain."

"When is she going to get the source of love magic?" Luna picked up a piece of roti and started nibbling it.

"You think she needs it? She can already detect it, guide it, and even manipulate it. The magic, Luna, is already hers." Celestia didn't say, of course, that she hoped it would manifest as soon as possible. She still had to maintain her mysterious airs, after all.

"Excuse me, mares and gentlecolt, your main courses are ready." Using his magic to gather the now-empty plates from before each pony, Coriander did his best to stick to his treat them like anypony else routine, mostly because it had worked and he had detected a slight air of relief among his customers when he had accidentally missed their titles. "Our rich korma, featuring seasonal vegetables and yogurt, spiced basmati rice, and some delicate aloo tikki on the side." He described the food as he passed it out to each pony, even providing another stack of roti for the middle of the table—but not daring to take the almost empty one that Luna seemed possessive of. "Would you like another drink?"

"Yeah," Lyra said, managing to drag her attention away from Sweetie now there was more food. "Probably get us all another round?" She looked at the assembled diners. "Korma is a lightly spiced curry, so you won't need anything to cool off with, but that drink is soooo good."

Luna, at long last, had discovered the best use for the monster stack of roti she'd been supplied. "This is delicious," she said after using the flatbread to scoop some rice and korma up.

Dodging two other servers leaving the kitchen with plates, Coriander set his own empty dishes down at the pot-washer and left them to it. Walking through the gleaming new kitchen, he found his daughter working hard to finish off five dishes. "They're loving it."

Turning to stare at her father, Saffron almost fainted on the spot. It was already a high-pressure evening, but then she'd found out that all of Sweetie Drops' "extra few guests" were royalty. Her new line chefs were doing wonderfully, the new dining room staff were performing flawlessly, and there she'd been hyperventilating in the bathroom. Now, though, seeing the demolished appetizers she'd made returning, and hearing the good news, she could finally let out a breath and stop her panicked frenzy. "Truly?"

"You. Make. Amazing. Food! Saffron, dear, they practically pounced on the plates as I set them down. Please, focus on your cooking and remember that tonight is your night."

Straightening up, Saffron nodded. "Yes. They're not my only customers tonight. I would like to go out later and thank them, I just— They are really enjoying my food?"

"I'm getting them more drinks now. Please, go back to making the best food Canterlot has ever seen."

Finishing off their desert, the six adults around the table all looked at each other with a great sense of accomplishment and what could border on the beginning of a food coma. Everyone except Luna, that is, who was nibbling on a piece of roti still.

"Where did you put all that food, Luna?" Lyra asked.

Blinking in surprise, Luna looked down at her scraped-clean dessert dish and then to the roti that she had so recently been chewing. "I expend a lot of energy." She managed to keep a straight face for two whole seconds before ruining it and laughing, soon joined by all the others.

"We're going to see Twilight tomorrow," Shining said. "Did you want me to take her a message, Lyra?"

Lyra racked her brain trying to come up with something, but couldn't think of what to say. "I don't— Wait. Can you tell her it was an honor to be in her guard?" At Shining's nod, she sighed. "I keep having these moments where my life turns around. At the time it's hard to tell if it's the right thing or not, but so far I haven't managed such a turn that I didn't recover from."

Celestia snorted and shook her head. "Lyra, you have excelled in everything you've ever done. Already you have every commander in the E.U.P. Guard buzzing with excitement to see what your changes will bring. We still have some things to teach you, I believe."

"Change and light?" Luna asked, and got a nod from her sister and Lyra. "Your first training intake happens in two and a half weeks. That will last for six weeks. So make sure you see my sister in two months' time."

Snapping a salute off, Lyra smiled at Luna. "I also need to talk to you about your own guards."

"But, my guards are fine. They protect me and—"

"… wouldn't last ten seconds in a fight against a squad of Guards if I gave them nine seconds to prepare for it. Have half of them sign on for training with this intake and half sign on with the next." Providing a stare she hoped matched Luna's, Lyra added, "And I still need to talk to you about them."

"Very well. Tomorrow, midday?" Luna asked.

Lyra nodded to that. "Shall we take care of things over lunch?"

"I'll have to ask my sister's newest niece if she can prepare us something special." Luna looked at Celestia, grinning up a storm at the look of confusion on her face.

"I'm pretty sure she's talking about Bread Basket," Cadance said.

Realization dawning, Celestia cleared her throat. "Of course, I knew that. I'm still coming to terms with the little coup that she and Blue pulled to arrange that wedding. I'm so proud of that boy."

Feeling a presence slipping up behind her, Lyra tilted her head so she could see who it was and relaxed when it was Saffron Marsala. "Ah, our esteemed chef."

The attention of five alicorns and two of their partners staggered Saffron for a moment. She dipped her head. "Your—"

"That meal was wonderful, thank you. Saffron Marsala, correct?" Celestia asked, interrupting before the mare before she could stumble over titles.

"We're informal here tonight, so no need for honorifics," Luna said.

Though her father had warned her to not use titles, seeing Celestia and Luna together had stunned Saffron to the point where she'd forgotten the advice. "I hope you enjoyed everything?" The enthusiastic replies made Saffron's pride swell. She dipped her head again. "Any time you would like to come and enjoy a meal, please, just have somepony contact us an hour or two in advance and we can always fit you in."

It was quite an offer, and one Celestia now planned to take advantage of at least on a monthly basis. But an idea urged her to ask, "There is a gala coming up in two months. Would you be interested in providing my chefs with the training required to cook a selection of food for it? You would, of course, receive tickets to attend as my guests, as well, for you and your staff."

Saffron blinked in utter surprise. "T-The Grand Galloping Gala?" she asked, and got a nod. "I must, graciously, accept."

"Excellent. I'll have my head chef contact you as soon as he's able. Thank you again for the meal. I believe we must take our leave, however." Standing up, Celestia realized she should have remained seated until Saffron had left; the poor mare looked rocked by the height difference.

Spotting the same thing Celestia did, Lyra stood up and interspersed herself into Saffron's foreground. "If you need to discuss—" Lyra was surprised at her wife's hoof now lodged in her mouth. She rolled her eyes at Sweetie.

"My darling wife, you have to understand, means exceptionally well, but goes a little odd when she's in Canterlot. Despite being promoted to Commander of the Guard, and having enough work to last her well into next century, she was about to offer to help you with the job of working in the royal kitchens. She is an amazing pony, don't get me wrong, but her sense of workload always falls off the side of Canterlot and she is utterly incapable of finding it again." Glad to see Saffron break into a case of giggles halfway through her explanation, Sweetie continued. "So while she was about to say she could help, the truth is she is very busy and, as a loving wife, I won't let her start down this path again. Last time, it took another princess foalnapping her to stop a destructive spiral."

Managing to get the hoof out of her mouth, Lyra sighed. "It's true. Canterlot is full of ponies that I know I can help, and I can't stop myself from trying."

Saffron got the sense this was well-trod material. She put on a polite smile and inclined her head again as Celestia led the way out of the restaurant. Within moments, she was left with Lyra and Sweetie from the group. "I scarcely believed you'd invited royalty, here."

"There are some perks to having a wife who's an alicorn. I talked to Princess Celestia about this, when it came up, and she was sure that there used to be a method for businesses to gain relief on their rent to manage such growth. She's going to look into it," Sweetie said. "But until that's arranged, if you know anypony else who's struggling, let me know."

Unable to hold back a moment longer, Saffron's composure broke and she rushed Sweetie to hug her. "Thank you so, so much. This was like a dream come true. Since we came to Canterlot, things have been a struggle. Then Pinkie Pie and Rarity came, and everything changed for the better—but we were stranded in that little restaurant."

Hugging back, Sweetie was sure it had been the right thing to do. "I definitely think we'll be having dinner here regularly."

Letting go, feeling more than a little self-conscious about the physical contact, Saffron bowed her head. "I look forward to preparing cuisine for you. I was thinking of opening a chef's table, so if you'd like, you could try that when I feel comfortable enough to have customers in my kitchen with me."

Lyra waited for the pair to finish talking before draping a wing over Sweetie's back again and walking with her out of the restaurant. "I am pondering something."

"That sounds like trouble. What?" Sweetie asked.

"If Crêpe Suzette would be upset if I ate lunch here every day?" Lyra had to duck as Sweetie half-heartedly swung a hoof in her direction. "Maybe I could foalnap Saffron?" Another dodge was needed. "Maybe get Saffron to teach Crêpe?"

"Crêpe is an amazing chef, Lyra. Don't you dare downplay her food."

"Yes, sir!" Lyra saluted with her wing in the Wonderbolt style.

Author's Note

Where is Carmen SanDiego, and why hasn't she stolen a certain Staff yet?

"Is this one for me?" Lyra asked, looking around at a shrugging cast. "Okay, well, I didn't really play those games, but if I know Equestria, and in particular how much fate loves silly jokes, she will be hiding somewhere that will take a bunch of weird clues to find."

"Oh! Oh! Lyra!"

Looking around at Pinkie, Lyra asked, "What's up?"

"I think I saw her in Ponyville last week. She was trying to seel self-propelled carts."

Lyra groaned and slumped in place, utterly defeated by Pinkie's logic.

So I do this "Ask X" thing. X can be any character within the story. You can ask them anything and they will definitely, hopefully reply. Keep the questions appropriate to the age-rating of the stories, and they will answer the best question in the author notes of the next chapter. The more votes a comment has the more likely I will get it to the right character to answer. Try to keep it to one question per post!

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