Celestia was thoroughly enjoying her retirement. The time off from work and responsibilities was nice, certainly. But for her, the best part was seeing the course of Equestria unfold before her, now as a spectator. Even the most mundane newspaper headlines were of endless entertainment to the venerable mare. Celestia had trained Princess Twilight Sparkle well, and taught her everything she knew. She was confident that her former protégé would be the ruler that Equestria needed to succeed her. But while knowledge could be taught, wisdom could only be learned. And there were just some lessons that Princess Twilight had to learn on her own.
"Like the magic of friendship," Celestia mused to herself as she sipped her coffee. She couldn't keep the smile from her face as she read the latest news article. "Sometimes lessons must be learned the hard way."
Princess Twilight Sparkle had faced numerous world-endangering disasters before. And while she may not have always been cool under fire, she had her past successes to look at to give her the confidence in herself she needed to accept the throne when the time came. During the transition of power, Celestia imparted upon her some final bits of advice.
In their years of knowing one another, Twilight had often proposed the idea of the populous being involved in the governmental decisions. While Celestia had entertained Twilight's academic interest in "democracy", she also warned her against it, based on her own experiences. But when the time came for the changing of the leadership, Twilight broached the subject with her former mentor one final time. "The great experiment", as she called it. It was clear to Celestia that this was something the Twilight wanted to attempt, despite all of her warnings otherwise.
"As you wish," Celestia said simply.
Twilight frowned. She knew Celestia long enough to know what that meant. She didn't agree, but she wasn't going to try to stop her either. Like a foal trying to grab a hot pan. Life was the most effective teacher. And this was a problem that the universe would solve, itself. To say nothing of the fact that it was a source of entertainment for Celestia to read about.
Oh sure, it was innocent enough at first, testing the ballot systems for voting on the nominated names for the new Trottingham ferry boat. Celestia snorted reading the name that won the vote in a landslide: "Boaty McBoatface." That should have been all the evidence that Twilight needed to see that this "democracy" was a bad idea. "I ruled as a monarch princess for over a thousand years. If it isn't broken, don't try to fix it."
Twilight was many things. Stubborn among them.
"She got it from you," Luna said.
"I never taught her to be stubborn!" Celestia objected.
"But she did learn it from you," Luna said, sipping her tea.
Twilight would have preferred to say that she was 'persistent'. And she was. And unfortunately, she wasn't the only pony who wanted to reinvent the wheel. Despite the predictive powers of actual unicorn magic, and the Pegasi weather team's ability to literally control the weather, and the Ponyville earth pony way of wrapping up winter. The "wisdom" of the ponies voted on a new system to forecast the seasons:
Weasel Day.
It was just as silly as it sounds. On Weasel Day, near the end of winter, the princess would look into the appointed weasel's den to see if he was smiling. If he wasn't, then it meant six more weeks of winter. But if he was, then it meant the there would be an early spring.
Twilight had been so sure that ponies were generally smart. Sure, a single pony could be smart, logical, and rational. But as Celestia liked to say, "Never underestimate the foolishness of a crowd."
On the morning of Weasel Day, Princess Twilight Sparkle paced back and forth nervously in her castle study.
"It'll be fine," Spike assured her.
"We've been through worse," Fluttershy added.
"Just think about how many times we've saved the world!" Rainbow Dash said.
"That's not helping!" Twilight said. "I know we've done all that, and this is trivial in comparison, but that just makes me feel worse about being this worked up over it."
"Have you eaten anything this morning?" Applejack asked, offering her an apple. Twilight gladly accepted the fruit.
"Not in your new dress!" Rarity said, grabbing the apple with her magic, splitting it into bit-size pieces to spare Twilight's dress and spilled apple juice.
"It's gonna be fun!" Pinkie Pie said.
"I'm sure it would be fun for you, Pinkie," Twilight said. "This is exactly the sort of event you would be great at. Even Fluttershy."
"I like animals," Fluttershy said. "But not crowds. And definitely not all the attention."
"And it doesn't matter," Twilight said, "because the law says that the state governor has to do the honors."
"I thought you were a princess, not a governor," Rainbow Dash said.
"It's a general term for the pony in charge of governing the state, or nation," Twilight explained. "And in this case, that means the princess. So I can't think of a way to get Pinkie Pie to be able to do it."
"Ooh! Ooh! What if you used Grogar's bell to make me an alicorn princess again!?" Pinkie asked.
"No!" Everypony replied at the same time.
"It has to be me," Twilight said with finality.
"Remember to smile," Rarity reminded her, making one last adjustment to Twilight's dress. "After all, the press will be there."
"Smile even if the weasel doesn't," Fluttershy added.
"As if you need a reason to smile!" Pinkie Pie said as she smiled smilingly.
"You're gonna do Awesome™!" Rainbow Dash assured her.
"It's about that time..." Applejack said.
Twilight looked at the clock on the wall. Indeed, the hour was fast approaching. She practiced her "smile and wave" one last time to her friends before walking outside to the castle courtyard.
There was a small crowd of ponies from the press with steno pads and cameras. The usual fanfare of the approaching princess was eschewed to ensure that the star of the day would not be disturbed in his special burrow in the castle grounds.
Princess Twilight Sparkle and the rest of the crowd waited in awkward silence for a few minutes until the clock tower chimed the appointed hour. She took a deep breath and crouched down to look inside the weasel burrow to see whether or not the weasel was smiling, and she would have to order the Cloudsdale Weather Ponies to wrap up winter early. Or if they, and the earth ponies of Ponyville, would have to delay the crop-planting season by six weeks for no discernable reason.
"Give the ponies what they want," Twilight Sparkle thought and she looked inside the burrow.
Celestia knew how hard it would be to get the coffee stains out of fur as white as hers, but she didn't care. It would be worth it. She hadn't laughed this hard in decades. Even Luna, despite her usual, reserved seriousness, had to clutch her sides amid her full belly laugh.
At the end of the day, Celestia decided that what was important was that Twilight learned an important lesson. One that, like wisdom, could not be taught. It could only be learned through experience.
And in Twilight's experience, she decided that her "great experiment" was a resounding failure. It turned out that letting ponies vote for things just seemed to make thing messy. It really was just easier to keep ruling as a monarch princess.
In taking back her power, the first thing that Twilight did was abolish Weasel Day. The arrival of Spring would not be dependent on such a silly forecasting mechanism. Even in a land of magic, how would the smile of a weasel affect the seasons in the first place?
Celestia and Luna both had fallen on the floor laughing. The front page photo on the newspaper laid displayed on the brunch table. One could squint to look at the award-winning photograph and debate endlessly if merely seeing the weasel's teeth counted as a smile or not. For her part, Twilight Sparkle was very much not smiling. After all...
It was hard to smile with a weasel biting your face.
