Paperwork

Twilight sent her forms through interdepartmental mail. She was so miserable that she wanted to take a day off, but, because she had just started working for the government, she had only accrued two hours of leave. She could have requested an advance on her leave, but she didn’t have a copy of the right form. She would have had to go to the town hall, and that risked encountering Mayor, and when Twilight thought of Mayor, tears welled up in her eyes.

The Equestrian City Government Association’s banquet was next week. “I’m not going,” she told her friends.

Fluttershy said, “But are you really sure you should stay away?”

“You can’t avoid her forever,” said Rainbow Dash.

Applejack said, “You’re one of the guests of honor. I kinda think you have to go.”

“You’ve never been to this kind of event,” observed Rarity. “They’ll seat us all together. You won’t have to talk to her. Trust me, darling.”

“I’ll make sure you have a good time, no matter what!” said Pinkie Pie. She sang,

“Our Twilight’s turned from purple into moody blue.
We’ll try to cheer you up, ‘cause that’s what true friends do.
As long as you’re with us, you’ll have no cause to bawl,
You shouldn’t fear to go inside the banquet hall!
I’ll fill it with confetti falling so thick from above,
you’ll never even glimpse the pretty pony that you love!”

“Thanks, Pinkie,” said Twilight. “I guess.”

Contrary to Rarity’s expectations, however, the six ponies and one dragon were not seated together. When the usher saw Twilight’s name on the invitation, he jumped to attention. “Mrs. Sparkle!” he declared. “My apologies for not recognizing you. Your seat is on stage next to Mayor.”

Twilight attempted to protest, but when she moved her mouth, no sound came out. It was like a nightmare where she was continually looking for the right form to fill out but could never find it. All the drawers in her file cabinets were empty. She would open one, but it had only file rails. Another drawer had hanging folders, but they had nothing inside. A third had a single blank sheet of paper sitting at the bottom. She opened drawers in a panic, searching for the right words, for any words at all, but the idea of sitting next to Mayor all night evoked joy and fear so intense that it overwhelmed her faculties.

Rarity said, “There must be a mistake. We were supposed to sit together.”

The usher fetched the banquet organizer, Amethyst Star, who consulted her guest list. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “but on the guest list, you’re marked as couples. All of you.”

Applejack said, “We’re all couples? What the hay does that mean?”

At their table, the place cards stated in flourishing calligraphy, “Mrs. Rarity and Mrs. Pinkie Pie,” “Mrs. Fluttershy and Mrs. Applejack,” and “Mrs. Rainbow Dash and Mr. Spike.”

Rainbow Dash waved her hoof at the place cards and said, “This is more embarrassing for you than for us, but it doesn’t really matter.” She pointed to the stage. “That does. You need to move Twilight here.”

Amethyst Star’s embarrassment was obvious. She was Ponyville’s premier event organizer (except for parties, since those were Pinkie Pie’s domain) and the Equestrian City Government Association had engaged her on Mayor’s recommendation. For the past week, she had been a tornado of action. A whirlwind of forms had secured the use of the town hall. She had crashed into the kitchen of caterer after caterer until she had found one who was available. She had printed the invitations and sent them whizzing through the mail on the same day the Association provided a guest list. She had been unstoppable.

“Let me get my Association contact,” Amethyst Star said.

Her Association contact was a pegasus with the peculiar name of Zoning Law. Amethyst Star had only talked to him once before deciding his name was appropriate. He was pedantic and fussy, overly and obsessively concerned with aspects of the event that didn’t matter, like the precise color of the chairs or the lengths of the stems on the flowers that were to be presented to Mayor. Yet on every major question, his carelessness and ignorance obstructed everything she did. He didn’t provide a guest list until she took the train to Canterlot and barged into the Association offices, and then he had acted as if she were wasting his time with trivialities. She couldn’t print programs until he told her who was giving speeches, but he didn’t seem to care who spoke or in what order. His worst offense happened before she was even hired. When Zoning Law first told her about the event, he claimed the Association was flexible about the date. She accepted the job believing that the banquet could be next month, giving her plenty of time to prepare. But when she attempted to book the town hall, Mayor contacted her and told her that the president of the Association wanted the event held next week. The revelation that she was nearly out of time sent her into a panic. Mayor, unsurprised, said, “I see you must be working with Zoning Law.”

Amethyst Star found Zoning Law as quickly as she could. “There seems to be a problem with the seating—” she began.

“Then you ought to fix it. That’s what we’re paying you for, you know.” He pretended to yawn.

Amethyst Star dragged him to the table where Twilight Sparkle and her friends stood in awkward silence. She explained the situation, concluding with, “The guest list is outside my purview, so I thought it would be best if you spoke to them. I’ll have the staff remove Twilight’s place setting from the stage and put another one at this table.”

“These arrangements were made in strict accordance with Mayor’s wishes. I still have her letter right here. See, it says, ’My partner Twilight Sparkle.’ So I—oh. It says, ‘partners.’ Not ‘partner.’ I thought she meant they were a couple. That you were all couples.” Zoning Law put the letter away. “Oh well. It’s too late. Seating has already been decided and nopony is going to move now.”

Amethyst Star said, “I’m sure the staff can—”

“No!” Zoning Law barked.

“Excuse me?”

“Absolutely not! I will not have them engage in such a complete and utter waste of time. Really, to think we might let ponies just move their chairs around like that. Absurd!”

Pinkie Pie said, “Now hold on, Mr. Meanie Law! She’s our friend and she wants to sit with us—”

As Pinkie berated Zoning Law, Twilight let her eyes drift through the hall. Ponies gathered in little clusters, chatted for a few moments, exchanged a hug or a pat on the shoulder, then shifted to other clusters. Every pair of ponies acted like old friends reconnecting after years apart, and they drifted among each other like dandelion seeds in the wind. Except, Twilight saw, for Mayor. With her silver mane, she resembled a dandelion seed more than any of the other ponies there, but unlike them, she was fixed, rock-like and steady, at the center of the crowd. Ponies said a few words to her, no more than a perfunctory greeting and congratulation, and then floated away.

The shallowness of it offended Twilight. These other ponies, who were supposed to be here to honor Mayor, seemed not to care about her. They were here because it was a high-society event, the kind that gets into the newspaper gossip column because everypony who’s anypony was there. Twilight, who had barely been able to think of anypony other than Mayor for a week, was both the only pony who cared about her and the only one keeping her distance.

Twilight interrupted her friends, who were still arguing with Zoning Law. “Pinkie? Everypony? It’s okay. I’ll sit with Mayor.”

“You don’t have to,” said Applejack.

“I want to.”

Zoning Law sneered, “Well, if we’re all agreed this is pointless, then I really have better things to do.” But as he turned away from the table, something caught his eye. He crouched, stared at the tablecloth, and gasped. “Oh no,” he whispered. “Amethyst Sparkle! Look at this! Look! The tablecloth isn’t even!”

Rarity, who couldn’t resist an opportunity to examine a piece of cloth, crouched to examine the tablecloth herself. “Why, it’s just a little askew. Hardly at all, though.”

Amethyst Sparkle’s horn glowed, and the tablecloth shifted slightly. Zoning Law muttered, “No. It’s still not right. This is unacceptable.” From somewhere he produced a pair of shears. “I’ll have to even it myself.” She didn’t try to stop him. She would make sure there was a line item in the Association’s bill for “tablecloth damage due to unauthorized use of shears.” It might ruin her reputation as an event organizer, but it filled her with schadenfreude.

Mayor greeted pony after pony mechanically, as if she were a wind-up doll who could only shake hooves and say, “Good evening. How are you? Yes, I do feel honored, thank you.” Her recitation had become so automatic that she didn’t notice when she was talking to Twilight. Then she stopped, too ashamed to go on.

“Hi,” said Twilight.

Mayor hadn’t expected Twilight to come. She had rejected Twilight too firmly, too definitively. She had wanted to reject Twilight so utterly that Twilight would not dare to see her again. If she had had to put Twilight on her to-do list, she would have written, “Avoid most beautiful mare I have ever known.” Twilight was temptation ponified, sweet forbidden fruit that Mayor longed to taste, and if Mayor were confronted with that temptation enough times, she knew she would eventually succumb. The only sure way for her to resist the temptation was to not be confronted with it at all, but here it was. Twilight had said a bare syllable to her, a mere pleasantry, but the dulcet tone of Twilight’s voice made Mayor heave a sigh of pleasure. Upon hearing her own sigh, she realized that Twilight might interpret it as frustration or exasperation. She rushed to fill the silence with something more inviting, but, having nothing else prepared to say, what came out of her mouth was, “Good evening. How are you? Yes, I do feel honored, thank you.”

But Twilight seemed to forgive her foolishness. “I hear we’re sitting together at dinner,” she said.

“We are?”

“Yes. And, I like it that way.”

Mayor knew that Twilight’s remark was really a question. She knew that she ought to respond now the same way that she did last week when Twilight was at her door. But she also knew that she had felt miserable since then.

The crowd around them, the most fashionable and beautiful in Ponyville, looked indistinct, like smudged ink on parchment. They made dark blots here and there against the background of the town hall, and the blots trickled into one another, merging, growing, fading, always with undefined borders that made it impossible to tell where one pony ended and the next began. The blots consisted of gossip and backbiting, of petty drama and dishonesty, as embodied in the sycophants, posers, and parasites of the self-aggrandizing glitterati. These ponies, lacking the temperament for heroism, and envious of the success of Twilight and her friends, and of the success that they mistakenly attributed to Mayor, were here only to share in reflected glory. Saying nothing that any pony wanted to hear and hiding their personalities behind their tuxedos and evening gowns, these ponies lost their individuality and dissolved into the blots that swirled around the hall.

Against that background, Twilight and her friends stood out, crisp and refreshing. To Mayor, Twilight stood out most of all. Twilight had come back to her after being rejected. Twilight was in love and had been unafraid to act on it. Twilight was still the most beautiful mare Mayor had ever known.

Mayor said, “I do too.”

Twilight took a confident place beside her, and the pair stayed together in the middle of the hall, in the crowd of drifting ponies but steadfast and secure in each other. They greeted, chatted, and mingled with guests as a harmonious and indivisible unit. When they ate dinner, it was side-by-side on the stage and in full view of the guests.

Between bites of her bell pepper stuffed with hay risotto, Twilight asked, “Is there anything we can do? I looked in the Civil Service Code, but I didn’t see any exceptions.”

Mayor finished her bite of mushroom ragout on a bed of rye grass. “There aren’t any. It’s absolute. There are allowances for other situations, like if you were a family member. There’s a nice set of forms for that and some clever procedures. But for romantic relationships, there’s nothing.”

“So that’s it, then,” Twilight mused. She sipped her wine and said, “We’re not allowed to be happy.”

“Don’t be so hasty. We’re not in violation yet.”

“Yet?” Twilight fluttered her eyelashes. “Does that mean you’re planning a violation?”

Mayor blushed. “You know what I mean.”

“It’s more fun to pretend I don’t.”

“Some day. Not yet. I don’t know a way around the Code, but maybe there is one.”

“Would you mind if I ask Princess Celestia? I think she would help.”

Mayor nodded. “For somepony at the head of an enormous government, she has a stunningly casual attitude towards regulation. It’s almost as if she doesn’t like paperwork.”

“She doesn’t. Raven Inkwell takes care of it. I may have been Celestia’s student, but it was Raven who taught me to appreciate bureaucracy.”

“She sounds like quite something. Should I be worried?”

Twilight stifled a laugh. “Let’s just say she’s married to her work.”

A pair of eyes out in the audience caught Mayor’s attention, hard eyes with a glint of gold in them. The eyes were ruthless, toughened with decades of indifference toward the fates of other ponies. They were Filthy Rich’s eyes.

Mayor realized that she was leaning toward Twilight, leaning over so far that she was nearly resting on Twilight’s shoulder. Under the table, their hooves had touched without either of them realizing it. She returned to a more decorous pose, righting herself and withdrawing her hoof. “I think we have a problem,” she said. “Look at table four.”

When Twilight, too, found Filthy Rich’s stare, she saw in it hostility and conniving.