Tastes Like Heresy

Chapters

Chapter 2: Hunting for Inspiration
Chapter 3: Archive Binge
Chapter 4: Cooking up a Cutie Mark
Chapter 5: Trial by Fire (and Explosions)
Chapter 6: Dinner and a Show-off
Chapter 7: Toroidal Heresy
Chapter 8: Actual Trial, Figurative Fire
Chapter 1: Some Time to Reflect
Interlogue: Spice Must Flow

Chapter 2: Hunting for Inspiration

I didn't end up spending all that much time on hunting down ponies for their culinary opinions, as the first few conversations went about as well as you'd expect. Let me give you an example:

Me: Hey, other pony! Got any ideas for a new recipe burnin' a hole in your brainpan? Some combination of flavors that you've just been dying to try out? Please tell me. Tell me. Tell me tell me tell me Tell ME!

Other Pony: No, you psychotic filly. I'm a(n) (insert profession here), not a chef! Say, isn't that sort of thing your job?

I'd even tried to ask a few pregnant mares what kind of crazy stuff they'd been craving. That should have given me something novel, at least. Trouble is, pregnant mares are hard to find in the palace, and it is not fun for anypony involved when you guess wrong and it turns out your mark was actually just fat. It's especially unfun for me when I get a couple of temporary horseshoe-shaped cutie marks, but what can you do?

Even tried Asking that insufferable pig of a court magician, Pierce the Omnipotent, if he had anything to contribute. All he had to contribute, turns out, were some catcalls.

“Hey, babe! You look like you taste spicy!” he said, ignoring my question entirely.

I know that ponies say that when you find somepony insufferable, the best option is to ignore them. Some ponies, though, are just really hard to ignore. Pierce was one of those ponies.

“Gee, I've never heard that one before,” I scoffed while rolling my eyes.

“How would you like to take a ride with the most powerful stallion in Unicornia?”

“You may have won last year's Grand Magus Tournament to get your job, but I don't think you've got anything on King Lanthanum, Bucko.”

“'Omnipotent' means I'm potent in every way you can imagine,” he smoothly said as he sidled up next to me.

And then he purred. That pig-brained son of a horse purred at me.

After I finished cringing away from him, I continued rebuffing his advances. “Really, 'omnipotent' means one has unlimited or universal power, authority, or force,” I spat as I bumped him away.

Yes, I've read a dictionary. Try not to faint.

Sadly, the conversation didn't end there. The universe isn't nearly that merciful, it seems. Pierce must have been feeling extra horny that day, because he just kept the pick-up lines coming.

At one point, he even made some lewd comments on the first part of my name that I've almost finished blotting out of my memory. Suffice it to say that I introduced myself as “Miss Spice” for the rest of the week. At least I can say he “inspired me to take off in a new direction,” namely up the nearest palace spire.

So, with burning ears, bruised flank, and exhausted patience for other ponies, I began to climb the southwest palace spire and admire the view.

And what a view to admire! Thinking back to it makes me want to sneak up the spire more often... which would be a lot easier if I weren't about to be banished from Unicornia in the morning. Imminent exile aside, there is a lot to be said for the view atop the southwestern spire. Putting a palace atop Terra's Horn tends to give it a commanding view, after all, and I was on a balcony high above the rest of said palace.

To the east, there's the coast. Or so I've heard. Even the top of the world isn't high enough to see that far. A bit closer to us are the mudpony marshes fed by our river, the Swirlybeard. It's generally assumed that the filthy mud ponies have lived there ever since the Year of Exodus 372 years ago, when we all found our new homes. From what I've heard of those brutes' freakish resilience, I'm not too inclined to disagree with the council's graybeards on this. Apparently, it takes a lot more than a spot of mud and pestilence to put down those putrid ponies. One thing those hulking horses do have going for them, though, is their unique cuisine. In all of my experience experimenting with ways to spice up our traditionally drab dishes, I'd never even thought to— but I'm getting ahead of myself.

On the bright side, at least I'm not being banished to those bogs. Dying in all that mud, grime, and filth doesn't appeal to me at all.

Almost directly below me to the north and south were the Borealis Valley and Australis Valley farms, respectively. The valleys themselves were of a curious shape, two halves of a funnel laid on their sides, with the narrow, high end looking out over the desert to the west. They look as if Terra herself had gouged a hole out of a block of stone with her horn, cloven it in two with a strike from her hoof, and used each half to plug up a pass in her mighty mountain range. Thanks to their shape and that of our mountain, these valleys get almost all of the rain that would have watered the deserts of Pegasopia. The streams that flow through the middle of each valley meander a bit before meeting up on the mountain's eastern face, where they combine to form the windy Swirleybeard river. The Swirleybeard then runs down the mountain and through our center of industry, Riverton.

The Australis Valley to the south is the breadbasket of Unicornia. It's the prime land for producing oats and alfalfa, two staples of the Unicornian dinner table. The choicest of these crops are grown on our mountain's side of the valley, where it gets more direct sunlight. Not-so-coincidentally, it's also the hottest place around these parts.

The north side of the Australis Valley also contains a sizable plot of land dedicated to my favorite crop, saffron. It colors foods a glorious golden yellow and makes them smell like hay, honey, and a million other indescribable things. Mom makes a little bit of special mead infused with the stuff, and I don't think I've ever met two flavors that went so well together. That spice has given me so much inspiration to work with in times past.

Saffron isn't easy to come by— Even with the amount of pull I have as Royal Chef, I have to fight the dyers and doctors for every last thread of it. It doesn't help that yellow and silver are the royal colors, either.

If the Australis Valley is Unicornia's breadbasket, then the Borealis Valley is clearly the fruitbasket. Since most of it lies in the shadow of Terra's Horn, most farms there grow berries. All kinds of berries. Blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, raspberries, salmonberries, snozberries, the works. So many desserts waiting to happen, and I've committed to memory every last one that a unicorn has devised. No new inspiration from that angle.

Speaking of desserts waiting to happen, the Borealis Valley is also the source of most of the honey in Unicornia. The berry farms need bees to make berries, so beekeepers are nearly as commonplace as farmers. Some farmers keep their own beehives and sell the honey for extra money, but their stuff just doesn't hold a candle to those beekeepers with a special talent for it. I don't know how they do it, but some of these unicorns can even control which kinds of flowers a hive will visit, even when the berry plots are mixed.

The Borealis Valley has always been important to my family. The berries go into most of my father's baked goods. The Golden Bun Bakery just wouldn't be the same without its blueberry bran muffins. Other ponies use the berries in various wines, and Mom keeps a few varieties in stock at The Amber Mare for the fancier lightweights. The real reason we love the Borealis, though, is the honey. Mom uses a special blend of salmonberry and blackberry honeys when she brews our top seller, mead. There are a few big reasons why The Amber Mare is so well beloved, and our signature mead is one of them. That mead has helped me put together a myriad of dishes before, but even that font of inspiration had dried up.

To the west, I could see the Great Pegasopian Desert. Looking at its crackly brown-gray parched earth transitioning to yellow-brown graininess made me imagine a dessert made of ground-up crystallized honey interspersed with oats... This would have been great, except that I'd made that very dessert four nights ago, and then a fortnight ago, and then another ten days... Let's just say that it wasn't a new idea and thus wasn't helping.

According to the graybeards, the desert exists mainly because the mountains of Terra's Crest are too high for clouds to carry much rain over. I remember some old pony tales about fiendish pegasi attempting to steal our rainclouds and ruin our crops, only for the clouds to keep raining out partway up our mountain, giving our oats and alfalfa some extra water.

Arid as the desert is, it's not totally cloudless. That's how we know those pegasus devils still live: we see the occasional clump of clouds slowly shrinking whilst drifting towards a bigger, stationary clump, which then gets absorbed into the roving clump and heads towards a new clump of clouds. The pegasi are probably behind the clouds' peculiar procession. Sometimes a few clouds would break formation and do their own thing for a while until they finally disappeared. Don't really know what to make of that. Maybe that happens when a pegasus gets lazy and drops their clouds?

That gets me thinking: What would a cloud taste like? I figure it'd be light, fluffy, and melty, and it sure is cold up where clouds hang out... Maybe if I lightly packed together a snowball of shaved ice and drizzled honey all over it... Dangit, that sounds delicious! Why couldn't I have thought of this while I was looking at those clouds? If I had, I wouldn't be getting banished to that blasted desert in the morning!

Well, like I said, I'm getting banished to the Great Pegasopian Desert. Part of the council was feeling merciful (or especially cruel? It's hard to tell), so they'll be teleporting me someplace close to one of those roaming cloud clumps. Maybe some of those bat-winged devils will descend from their flock to feast on me? At least I wouldn't run out of water and die of thirst. I'm a chef and I don't get out much, so I figure I'd be pretty tasty...

Disturbing thoughts about how I'd taste aside (probably extra salty and a bit tender, with a hint of saffron), I'm going to be exiled into the middle of a desert. Hopefully the aggression of its purportedly warlike natives has been exaggerated a hair or two, because I don't know much more than any other pony here does about living there. I'm going to need to find some pegasi and rely on their hospitality if I want to live more than three days. Wonder if they know how to cook anything?

Exile— what are you supposed to pack when you go into exile? Are you supposed to pack warm? I read someplace that deserts get quite cold at night without clouds to keep the Sun's heat trapped (kinda like the mountain top I've been living on for a few years, come to think of it), so I'd better pack a fur cloak.

Then there's the other temperature extreme during the daytime. How am I going to deal with the heat? Come to think of it, when's the last time I've had to deal with being too hot that I couldn't solve by taking off a cloak or coat? Away from the stoves, that is. Probably when I was visiting a farm in the Australis Valley last summer to see if their oats were fit to touch King Lanthanum's Royal Tongue (and to convince them to grow more saffron).

While dealing with perspiration was... irksome, it was manageable once I'd stripped. The real problem, though, was having to deal with the hot sun on my face. Granted, I have to deal with having the sun in my eyes at my home altitude as well, but it just isn't nearly as easy to shrug off down below, where you aren't welcoming the extra warmth it brings.

How did those Australian farmers deal with it again? They weren't wearing much. Just some work booties, tool belts, and... HATS! They wore broad-brimmed hats to keep the sun out of their eyes and faces. I don't have anything quite like those farmers' hats, but I do have a small collection of chapeaus. My chef's toque wouldn't do much aside from keep my sweat-sodden mane out of my face. My pointed wizard's hat, though, seems like it has a wide enough brim to do the trick.

It's a midnight purple and periwinkle dealy with some light yellow stars spangled around it. I don't particularly care if it looks gaudy on me, I didn't buy it so I could show it off in public. I mean dangit, I'm a chef, not an archmage! I've got as many cantrips as the next pony, but my magic is better suited to cooking food than unraveling the secrets of the universe. Don't even want to think about what Pierce the Omnipotent would say if he caught me wearing this thing. Still, is it a crime to buy something so you can look in the mirror and feel great and powerful once in a while? Even if it was, what could they do? Banish me?

Hah! There is no way the fashion police can have any claim on me once I'm in the desert. No longer will I have to value form over function. I guess I'd never thought about there being upsides to banishment before. No rules, no fashion police, no princess to whine about the quality of mead she's served, no parents to nag you about bringing in their mead to replace it... no parents...

Now I've gone and made myself sad.

Chapter 3: Archive Binge

Okay, back. Where was I again? Oh yeah, I'd been looking out over my soon-to-be new home and failing to take inspiration from that. That, and staring with morbid curiosity at a swamp.

Anyhow!

At this point, I'd exhausted two out of three routes of possible culinary inspiration. Talking to my fellow unicorns was a bust. Going up the tower and enjoying the view was nice, but it didn't take me anyplace I'd never been before. That left perusing the archives for inspiration the next morning.

The archives are an intimidating place. They're built into an enormous cave carved out of the mountaintop a small ways below the palace. The ceiling is so high, you could almost fit that tower I was just talking about standing straight up. The archival cavern started out as just a quarry to mine stone for the palace, but Clover the Clever had other ideas. Ideas about learning and preserving knowledge.

Emphasis on the preservation. I mean seriously, do you have any idea how seriously the archivists take preserving records? They will strip-search everypony who passes through the great portals into the archives on the off chance they were dumb enough to smuggle in any food messier than a narrow-mouthed water bottle. If they're feeling suspicious that day, they'll comb through your mane (and, if you're fluffy enough, your coat) to make sure you aren't hiding anything in there, either. Then they repeat the process on the way out to make sure you aren't trying to take anything home with you. Can't have those precious tomes leave the clean, cold, dry darkness of the archives and have them exposed to sunlight, moisture, magic, or, Topaz forbid, food, after all!

Food isn't the only thing banned, though. Here's a brief list of things that'd get you thrown out of the archives if they catch you with them, just to give you an idea:

*Food
*Juice
*Hot tea
*Iced tea
*Booze that looks close enough to water
*Improperly bottled water
*Dirt
*Torches
*Things to light torches with
*Magelight gems
*Gems that could conceivably be enchanted to give off light
*Dirt
*Noisemakers
*Pets
*Books from outside
*Familiars
*Disease
*Did I mention dirt?

You get the idea. They recently started allowing bags of holding, but you're usually better off not bringing one if you can avoid it. They will search every last nook and cranny of it on entry and exit, and they will find whatever contraband has been stashed there. A number of ponies, especially students, like to take advantage of the archivists' fastidiousness if they've lost anything in their bags. Or if they just need a really thorough combing and don't have the money for a salon visit.

They don't allow you to use much of any magic, either. Topaz help you if they catch you doing anything more interesting than levitating a notebook or pencil. If they catch you once, they'll let you off with a warning and several minutes worth of a stern talking-to. Once you're on the list of past offenders, though, your next use of unauthorized magic gets The Cone of Shame stuck on your horn for the duration of your stay. The Cone of Shame is a fluorescent orange magic-suppressing sheath that they slip over your horn. It's nearly impossible to remove without magic.

Did I mention the archives are cold and dark? Since it's filled with flammable material they want to keep in one piece, they don't allow any fire for heat or light. For light, they use just enough low-power magelight gems for you to see your own hoof in front of your face, complemented by dim magelight gem lanterns in the reading rooms so that ponies can actually read the books. Something about too much light damaging the books and such. Also, there being no fires, sunlight, or heat gems means it's even colder inside than out if you ignore windchill. You can tell the first-timers by their lack of parkas. If I saw one such poor soul, I'd offer them some tea. Except, y'know, there's no way to get any into the archives.

So I managed to enter the cold, dark, dry cave without undue incident, and even got a nice combing out of the deal. I waltzed up to a librarian, and he greeted me before I could properly hail him.

“Ah, hello Miss...” began the proactive librarian.

“Spice. I'm the royal chef, Miss Spice.”

"Well, Miss Spice, what can I help you with? Looking for an old cookbook with a favorite recipe from his highness's childhood? We do have a few of those In the archives."

Now, I'd already looked through every cookbook in the kingdom and under it. This isn't so much because I am an avid reader as it is because there just aren't all that many of them to begin with. That said, I still needed some inspiration, and I had an idea where to find it. A vague idea, at least.

"No, thank you. The King gets his favorite childhood dish every other Thursday evening, so I doubt I need a refresher. I'm afraid I'm looking for something a little more exotic. I want to see whatever you can find regarding outlandish cuisine that isn't a cookbook."

At this point, his eyes glazed over and twitched rapidly side-to-side for a couple of seconds, as if he were reviewing a swiftly scrolling list. Then he reported, "I know just what to get you! Please report to reading room 2B. I'll meet you there in several minutes."

And with that, he bolted into the archive chambers with unseemly haste. I never could get used to the librarians.

I reported to reading room 2B as directed, waited a few minutes, and, lo and behold, the same librarian from before pulled up to the door with a small wagon filled with various titles that more-or-less fit my description.

"In this cart, I bear every book you've asked for, from Australian Bounties to Why Watermelons Are Wonderful, and a gem lantern to read them by. Also, there's a Marium-Withers Unabridged Dictionary and a set of the Encyclopedia Unicornia for when you run into unfamiliar terms." I'll give the librarian this much: he sure was thorough.

"Is there anything else you need?" he queried with a hopeful smile.

"No, thank you, that will be all."

I'd scarcely stopped speaking when he dashed back to help the next patron in line. Can't fault his efficiency, either.

Now I had a problem. I had tens of tomes, and only a few hours before I needed to cook the royal lunch. I knew of only one way to deal with such situations—

"Eeny, meeny, miney... moe!"

Shut up. It's not like you would have done much better.

I had no idea at the time, but that little "moe" had sealed my fate. He is the one I'm blaming for getting me banished. Had he let my hoof drift a bit to the side, I'd probably be at The Amber Mare right now, celebrating an end to the culinary doldrums I'd been wallowing in for so long. But what has happened, has happened. Moe betrayed me, and now I'm being exiled on charges of xenophilic heresy. Next time someone wants to ask moe for advice, I'll tell them moe can sit on his own horn and spin.

That seemingly innocuous book that moe pointed me to? It was titled Ancient Earth Pony Customs and Culture. At the time, I thought it meant customs of ponies from our ancient homeland, or that the ponies were just well grounded. I mean, why on Earth would a librarian get me a book on mud ponies? Because I'd asked for it, apparently...

'Well,' I thought to myself, 'best get cracking.'

And so I cracked open the tome to the table of contents, flipped to the section on cooking, foods, and culinary practices, (which was big enough to be its own book, in my opinion), and began to read.

—^*^*^—

Now I'm only as big of an egghead as the next unicorn, but there are some things that I legitimately geek out over. Mainly, I have a thing for precise alchemical equipment and using it in my cooking. I blame my upbringing at the hooves of a brewer and a baker.

You see, brewing and baking require a lot more precision than anypony gives them credit for. Golden Brown (aka Dad) Would tell me that if I wanted my honeyed oat bread to turn out with just enough spring and fluff, I'd need to balance the wet and dry ingredients, add the proper amount of yeast, and a get thousand other details juuust right. And if you want to measure any sort of compactable powder (e.g. flour), precision means weighing your ingredients.

Actually, talking about it all like this is going to take forever. Maybe it'd be easier if I just listed out my unusual implements and what they're for as I pack them. I don't care if you think I'm weird for packing cookware for exile. Sometimes a pony needs some things.

*Triple beam balance

*For measuring powdered ingredients, etc.

*Mortar & pestle

*Nothing quite beats these for crushing and grinding things.

*Brewer's thermometer

*A gift from Mom from when I left the nest. Brewers like her need really accurate thermometers, and they aren't cheap to commission. They're pretty solid for any other kind of cooking, too.

*Graduated beakers

*So much more precise for liquid ingredients than plain old measuring cups.

*Glass stirring rods

*Easy to clean, and great for stirring hot things. Not just for stirring, either. I don't know how everypony else goes about pouring liquids without them...

The real gem that I'll have out in exile, though, I don't have on me just yet. They understandably don't trust prisoners with knives, so they'll be presenting it to me as part of the banishment ceremony. This isn't just any knife, though. This is a multipurpose survival knife. Apparently, these things are standard issue to unicorns getting exiled to the wilderness. That'd explain how it earned the name "Blade of the Banished." And ponies call me overdramatic...

Back on topic, the blade itself is fairly impressive. Allow me to illustrate:

It's just a bit longer than my horn from end to end. Both the inside and outside of the crescent are sharp enough to cut with, from the pointed tip almost to the hammer-like knob on the other end.

The outside edge is used for slicing and chopping, and it's serrated close to the heavy end for sawing through whatever it can't slice. The inside edge is more for reaping grasses and such. Any unicorn, even an exile, has too much dignity to eat off the ground like some dumb horse, after all.

One tip of the blade comes to a sharp point in case I need to pierce something. Or stab something... Okay, I don't want to think about that anymore. The other end of the knife has a heavy knob that has a flat face for crushing and bludgeoning. Most of its mass is concentrated here to make pounding the stuffing out of things easier.

Still keeping my mortar & pestle, though. I stand by what I said.

They gave me the sharpening kit ahead of time. Probably because

a) It's not as dangerous

b)It isn't anywhere nearly as glamorous to publicly present to the soon-to-be exile as the Blade of the Banished itself.

Anyhow, the kit consists of a whetstone to grind the blade on, some animal fat to lubricate it, and a patch of leather to strop the blade to a keen edge.

Admittedly, the knife is one of the better redeeming bits of being banished from Unicornia.

—^*^*^—

Okay, now where was I...

Oh yeah! I was about to relate to you just what was so Earth-shattering about that book. As much as I wish to have the moe that chose this book burn eternally in Tartarus for getting me banished, I must admit that this book led to the greatest adventure I've had in my life. This book introduced me to the magical world of fried food.

What is fried food, you might ask? I'll get to that.

So I was reading Ancient Earth Pony Customs and Culture's chapter on food and cooking. I had my muzzle glued to the page as I scanned every last sentence for my salvation, hoping I'd find something exotic enough to put the Spice back into my Amber. I read through paragraphs on all manner of unfamiliar vegetables and roots, and even checked out a few of their entries in the dictionary. A tuber called a potato intrigued me enough for me to pull up its encyclopedia article.

Still, while new ingredients would solve my problems sure as Pierce is a pig, I couldn't see convincing Princess Topaz to send out regular expeditions to gather them. Hardly a unicorn has set hoof off of our mountain home that wasn't banished from Unicornia since we settled on Terra's horn hundreds of years ago. Needless to say, this book was looking like a dead end. Well, at least until I came to a passage that read something like this:

One of the chief methods earth ponies used to cook potatoes was to slice them into strips and immerse them in oil, usually peanut oil, and fry them. This provided the resulting "fries" with a crunchy exterior and a fluffy center.

That last bit really caught my attention. Not only did it mention a method of cooking foreign to me, it mentioned results I've never really been able to attain with my own methods.

When you boil vegetables or you cook meat in a skillet, stuff cooks fairly evenly. It might be a bit colder in the center, but the doneness gradient is pretty gradual. You can maybe get results like frying by making the flames hotter, but the forge master couldn't listen to my request to borrow his equipment with a straight face.

And then he called me a silly pony who'd likely find a way to burn the castle down with it, which was totally unfair for him to say. Outta Stock had doped those stone trivets with something flammable from the alchemist's labs that All Foals Day, I'm sure of it! I guess I never will get him back for that...

Anyhow, the point was that this book had gifted me with a revelation to pursue, and pursue I did.

I didn't know much about what an oil was, but I remember learning something in school about skin producing the slippery stuff to make hair shinier and cause acne for some reason. Apparently, it was also good for cooking things in. I didn't want to go around to hundreds of teenagers with a cloth and a bucket (though I have done stranger things in the name of culinary excellence), so I figured it would be better if I read up on this mysterious peanut variety of oil.

I cracked open the P section of the encyclopedia and readied the dictionary, and went into a whirlwind of page-turning. The journey went something like this:

Peanut oil is a slippery liquid made from the peanut. Valued for its high flash point (dictionary: Flash point is the temperature at which a substance bursts into flames).

I flipped to a new page.

The Peanut is a plant from the legume family that produces seed pods in the ground nearby. The seeds in these pods are large, meaty, and somewhat greasy. (The seeds pictured there looked familiar, but I couldn't put my hoof on it just yet.)

I flipped through the rest of the book, facehoofed, opened the correct volume of the encyclopedia, and finally flipped to the page I was looking for.

Legumes are a family of plants that produce nutty seeds in pods and replenish levels of certain nutrients in their soil over time. Because of their beneficial effects on soil nutrient content, they are often used as part of a crop rotation by farmers so that less manure is required. Some members of this family include alfalfa, beans, clover, carob, lentils, peas, and peanuts.

Thinking: 'I thought peanuts looked kinda familiar. I have no idea what most of those things are, but peanuts do look a bit like alfalfa seed pods. I guess this explains why those farmers were so resistant to my pleas to change some of the alfalfa fields over to saffron production, despite the fact they'd make a mint.'

I ruminated on that for a bit before suddenly remembering that I was a mare on a mission. Pondering crop allotments could wait for later. That peanut oil stuff looked interesting, so I went back to the P volume for more.

Peanut Oil can be extracted from peanuts in the following manner: Gather up a sizable quantity of peanuts, shell them, and then crush and grind them into bits. Then immerse the crushed peanuts in water in a bowl, preferably a deep one with a narrow mouth, and leave it covered overnight. In the morning, there should be a layer of oil at the top of the bowl that you can skim and bottle for future use.

While I didn't have access to peanuts, I did have access to alfalfa seeds in abundance. From these, I hoped to extract sufficient oil to recreate the ancient art of frying. With this new way to cook foods, all sorts of new avenues of cooking and flavor would open up, digging me out of the rut I was stuck in.

Fillies and gentlecolts, we have here my great revelation. I had an idea in my head, and a way to bring it to pass. I was not subdued in my exultation.

"YES!"

I would like to make a note here on the hypocrisy of the librarians. The resounding "shh!" that followed my joyful shout was at least twice as deafening and three times more disruptive.

Chapter 4: Cooking up a Cutie Mark

You know my special talent is experimenting with and inventing new foods and ways to cook, but I suppose I never did get around to telling the story of how I got this saffron flower on my flank. That's about as important to posterity as the rest of the stuff I'm talking about, so here goes.

It all happened at The Golden Bun, my dad's bakery that adjoins to The Amber Mare. The two places of business are connected via our living quarters on the upper floor. I guess it says something about Golden Brown that he chose his shop's name after Mom chose the one for her shop, but I digress.

I'd always loved to watch my parents work since I was a little filly. Mom didn't let me taste her wares, though, so I spent more time around Dad's bakery. He'd call me his little dough girl. He'd always have a treat ready for when I'd show up after school.

"What's that?" I asked, gesturing at the powder he was pouring into a vat as I nibbled on my salty sweet pastry.

"It's yeast," he replied.

"What's it do?"

My dad saw a prime moment to educate his filly in the ways of baking. "What yeast does, Spicy, is it eats the sugars in something and then spits out bubbles and alcohol. I use those bubbles to make my breads light and fluffy for when I bake them."

"It eats the sugars!? Why can't it just eat the bread like everypony else?"

"Because, my little dough girl, if it didn't eat the sugars it wouldn't blow the bubbles I need to make the dough rise. You do like your bread to be fluffy, don't you? Or are you opposed to eating your fellow fluffballs?"

"I like fluffy brea—"

"Maybeyou're not really my daughter at all. Maybe you're really just a roll that jumped out of the oven too early! Only one way to find out: chase you down and gobble you up!"

"Eeeek!" I squeaked as I took off as fast as my stubby legs would carry me. The chase was on.

After a couple of minutes of running around the kitchen, with his growling and laughing and my giggling and squealing, he finally caught me.

"Om nomnomnom nomnom!" He bellowed as he clacked his teeth above my ears. Then he nipped one of them and said quizically, "Wait a minute, you don't taste like a roll. You're too salty. Maybe you're a pretzel?"

"No, Daddy, I'm a pony!" I snortled.

"Are you sure?"

"Yep!"

"And quite a silly pony you are!

"Well, for this honestmistaking of your identity, you're entitled to another question. Go ahead and ask away!"

"I think I've seen mommy use that yeast stuff. Is she trying to make her drinks light and fluffy, too?”

“Kinda,” he chuckled. “Remember how I said the yeast eats the sugars and spits out bubbles and alcohol?”

I nodded vigorously.

“Well,” he said, “ponies want the drinks she brews because of the second thing. It makes them nice and bubbly too, but that's just a bonus.”

“Why do they want to drink stuff with alcohol in it? It makes it smell funny. I've tried asking Mommy, but she always just tells me I'll find out when I'm older, but I'm older now, so can you tell me?”

“Your mother's probably right to keep it from you. Still, I figure it's better that I fill you in just a little before somepony else gives you the wrong ideas,” he sighed. “You know how after a patron's been at the tavern for a while on a night and they start acting funny?”

I nodded slowly.

“They come here and drink our brew so that they can act funny like that. Some ponies drink to lighten up their uptight selves and have a little unrestricted fun. Others drink to peel away their restraints and get things that have been bothering them off their backs. That's your mom's specialty, by the way: lending an understanding ear to ponies' problems. It's why she became a barkeep, really.

“Then there's the ponies who have a big, big problem and drink themselves silly so they don't have to think about it that night. Not a practice I approve of, since it amounts to running away and pretending the problem doesn't exist. That, and the alcohol combined with their unstable emotions means they're liable to do something really stupid that hurts everypony involved. A lot. Please don't ever be like that.”

Now, I wouldn't call Golden Brown an intimidating pony by a long shot (he's just too fluffy!), but his face fell and his eyes looked so sad as he said that last bit that I never wanted to be that last pony he talked about. It was like rainclouds had suddenly flowed over his golden eyes. And before you point this out, I was clearly a type II drinker near the beginning of this story.

“I promise I won't ever be that third pony,” I muttered grimly, eyes downcast.

He reached a hoof over and mussed my frizzy mane. “Now I've gone and made you sad, haven't I? This won't do at all! You sure are a curious little filly, so how's about you come closer and watch me bake? Nah, you watch me bake all the time.

“Oh, I know! How about you actually help me with the baking this time around?”

At this, my face lit up like I'd just won a lifetime supply of salt. “Really?” I gasped. “Really really?”

“Really really. Now let's get started. Go forth, my fluffy minion: raid the pantry of its oat flour, and bring me the spoils!"

"Yes sir!" I saluted and gleefully dashed off to obey, like a good little minion.

"Here!" I called out after I spat out the flour jar.

And so it went for a few minutes: he'd bellow out an ingredient, and I'd scramble off, pick it up, and rush back with it in my mouth. I was such a good minion. Once I'd collected the last of the ingredients, he floated the recipe book in front of me.

"One of the most important parts of baking, and of cooking in general, is to make sure you have all of the ingredients together before you start. If you don't, you can end up with a blackberry pie with no filling, and nopony likes it when that happens. So, Spicy, would you please read off the ingredients so I can check them?"

"Sure!

"Oat flour!"

"Check!"

"Yeast!"

"Checkers!"

"Warm water!"

His horn glowed for several seconds, and steam began to waft from the bowl of water I'd brought in.

"Checkarooney!"

And so on until I reached the end of the list.

“Looks like we've got everything. Good work, minion!” He patted me on the head. I giggled. “Let's get down to the actual baking. Now you see, yeast is alive,” he lectured. “Most of the time it's asleep, and it doesn't do much when it's asleep. That's why we can keep it so long, by the way. Do you know why I warmed up that bowl of water?”

“Um... was it to wake the yeast up?”

“Yuppers! It's so I can wake them up for their breakfast of sweet honey,” he stated as he stirred the yeast into the bowl. "Speaking of which, that's what I'll be adding next." He measured out some honey into a beaker, and then scraped it into the water with a spatula and stirred.

I continued to stare in rapt attention.

“This is where we add in the dry ingredients. Most ponies settle for using pre-metered measuring scoops, but not here at the Golden Bun. I've found that if you want to make the best baked goods in Unicornia, you'd best work to keep all of your ingredients in balance.”He said that as he set a bowl on the balance for measurement.

I could never forgive him for things like that.

Dear Lanthanum how I'll miss him.

“Aaaaauuuurrrgh! That was awful! Whatever I did, I swear I'll be good!”

“Okay, I'll try my best to hold off on the puns." Liar. "Now, try measuring out three fifths of an ounce of salt. I've already got the balance tared to the weight of the bowl. Since this is such a delicate process, I want you to try using your magic to mete it out.”

“Ok-kay...” *Gulp*. I was not very experienced with magic just yet, and this was obviously a task of grave importance I'd just been entrusted with. I would have blamed the hot oven for my sweat at this point, but it hadn't been lit yet. Let's just blame it on my extra fluffy coat and move on.

After a couple of false starts, I managed to get warmed up and levitate a little scoop of salt over to the bowl and start meticulously drizzling it in.

“Aaaand three fifths!” I squeaked with a sigh, then slumped to the floor. Delicate manipulation is hard for a little filly to do.

“Aww, my little dough girl is growing up so fast,” he choked out as he pulled my limp form into a hug. “Before I know it, you'll be competing in the Grand Magus Tournament and needing to beat away all the colts with a levitating stick!”

“But Daddy, colts have cooties!”

“Except your dad, right?”

“Except you.”

“That's an acceptable answer. Now, since you've done so much hard work, I'll let you sit back and watch while I continue to add ingredients,” he continued as he began measuring out the rest of the ingredients and adding them to the main bowl as well.

“It's important when you're doing anything with flour that you only stir it just as much as you need to to get the ingredients distributed more-or-less evenly. If you stir flour too much, anything you make out of it turns really chewy, and not in a good way.” He leaned his head down to my ear for a conspiratorial whisper. “Those are the baked bads I sell to the annoying customers.”

I let out an amused snort.

“Now all we have to add before mixing in the wet ingredients is...” A concerned-looking ear twitch. “Hold your horses...”

I heard galloping, slamming, measured trotting, and then Mom walked through the door.

“Oh, hi Spicy. Goldie, the neighbors across the street are in a bit of a fix. Could you come over there with me to help them out?” She queried, almost calmly.

I've never been quite sure whether he loves it or hates it, but the only pony who gets away with calling him that is Mom. Ponies tend not to mess with the family who controls their access to the best bread and booze in town.

“I'll be right there, honey!” He frantically shifted his gaze back to me. “Spicy, it looks like I'll be busy for a while. How do you feel about finishing this loaf on your own?”

A quick enough astronomer could have picked out new constellations from the stars in my eyes.

“I'll take that as a 'sure thing.'” He opened a drawer and levitated a handled foal's wooden spoon so I could stir the mixture without magic. “Let me know how it turns out!”

“Okay, Daddy!” I exclaimed as they galloped away.

And so I set to work levitating the bowl of rolled oats, conveniently pre-measured out by Golden Brown before he left, that marked the last of the dry ingredients. It was really more of magically flinging the oats in, which is way easier than sustained, precise control of an object. Still a bit tiring, but my parents encouraged me to practice using my magic at every opportunity so it could get stronger.

After I'd rested for a minute from my latest exertion, I grabbed my foal's mixing spoon in my jaw, bounced up a series of stools and chairs and up onto the counter to stir the mixture just enough to break up the layers and clumps. Did I ever mention that baking is dusty work?

Then came the really important part: the honey-yeast-water. It was in a nice sized glass bowl that was big and curved enough to make getting a grip on it with my foal's mouth very difficult. I was a bit exhausted from performing incredible feats of magic beyond any normal pony's comprehension, but I felt that more magic was my only option. It would involve sending the bowl a fair distance across the counter, though.

I thought maybe I could try flinging the bowl of yeast mixture the distance and then stop it over the mixing bowl and carefully flip it to pour. I charged up my little nub of a horn, and then released the energy to launch the yeast bowl.

Apparently, catching a flying object is harder than it sounds.

*Cloungsplulsh*

“Oh, demonwings!” I shouted, glad my mother couldn't hear me and trot off to fetch the soap with me in tow.

“Okay, Amber, we're not going to cry. Crying's for babies and you're not a baby.” I may have sniffled a little. “What would Mom do at a time like this? Well, first she'd tell me to go clean up the mess. Amber Spice, would you please go clean up that mess? Okay, me, I'll go clean it up.”

So I got a cloth and cleaned it up. Still, that left me with a half-finished pile of dry bread ingredients and no convenient way to warm up some water to wake up more yeast. I was not going to let simple impossibilities get in the way of finishing that bread, though. I'd been entrusted with the fate of this baked good by Master Baker Golden Brown himself, and I was not about to disappoint him.

And so I started to think: ‘Now how could I get some woken up yeast, some water, and enough food for the yeast to use to spit out fluff-giving bubbles? Where else was yeast around here... Mom used yeast to make her funny-smelling drinks that made her patrons act all funny. It spit out bubbles there too...which means it must already have been woken up! And it already had all the food it could want!’

And, energized with that thought, I rushed to fish out my foal's handled measuring scoop and a foal's bucket and made a bee-line for Mom's brewery.

The brewery is in the back of the complex, spanning two floors behind the storefronts and the house proper. Mom kept several copper vats to make various varieties, including some special seasonal brews, and kept the vats at different parts of the brewing cycle so she'd almost always have something fresh to tap. The vats in question were wide, tall cylinders with conical bases. I could never figure out whether they looked more like abruptly tapering horns or like hooves wearing strange stilettos.

Some had their tops open to the air, while the ones we wanted to make bubbly had domed tops and a special kind of stopper that only let out gas when the pressure differential got too big. You know, like the kind you find on pressure cookers. Amber Draft keeps them enchanted to keep the brews inside chilled so that the yeast doesn't get any funny ideas about making the batch taste bad.

When we got the once-in-a-blue-moon heatwave two thirds of the way up Terra's Horn (I take a cab between my parents' shops/dwellings and my apartment in the palace, in case you were wondering), it was nice to slip into the brewery and hug one of the vats. Just as long as you checked the thermometer first to make sure she hadn't supercharged that vat's chilling enchantment for the conditioning cycle, anyway.

Once I entered the brewery and located an open vat of mead (and checked the thermometer), I realized that I was just too short to reach the brew. This wouldn't stop me, of course. I was a foal determined, and I would not be denied.

So I went and did what any self-respecting filly or colt would do: I cludged together a ziggurat of random things from around the surrounding rooms and climbed up that with the bucket, and then with the freshly cleaned measuring scoop.

Since this batch of mead hadn't been fermenting all that long, it still smelled sweet and had only a little of that "funny" smell I'd later grow to love. I thought back to the recipe and scooped the appropriate amount of liquid into the bucket, then began to trot back to the kitchen with my golden prize in tow. On the way there, though, I got sidetracked as I passed Mom's spice box.

I could still clearly smell the mead in my foal's bucket, but there was another smell there too. A familiar one. The smell of honey became stronger and more metallic. A thread of fresh hay wended its way into my consciousness. I smelled saffron, and I just knew it would make this bread perfect.

When you get inspired and a fey mood besets you, you don't think; you do. And do I did. I didn't care how expensive it would make the bread; I just knew it would be worth it.

I brought the bucket over to the spice box. I opened the box, extracted a single thread of saffron, and plinked it into the mead. Then I continued my trot back to the kitchen and set the bucket on the counter next to the dry ingredients I'd planned to add the mead to. I wracked my brain to remember what I'd been taught about heating spells so I could properly release the saffron's flavor, and I found what I was looking for. Normally, it was considered magic that was a couple of grades above what was expected for little fillies. Didn't matter to me; I was a girl on a mission.

Straining and groaning, I managed to spark my horn and surge the mead's temperature, and the smell of metallic honey and fresh hay surged with it. Then I poured the bucket of saffron-infused mead into the dry ingredients and began kneading the mixture with my forehooves. Then, satisfied I'd mixed everything just enough and with flanks tingling and my inspired fervor fading, I decided to take a nap.

It was a good nap, and sorely needed since I'd just exhausted my magical font. Determination only counts for so much, so I must suffer for my art. The nap must have lasted for a few hours, since the dough had turned into bread by the time I woke up and was emitting anaroma that was just heavenly.

"Wait, bread? Aren't you supposed to be dough?" I bolted upright, sloughing off the blanket I'd failed to notice before. "Blankey? How'd you get here?"

I was a terribly perplexed little filly.

I heard some muffled voices and the soft clip-clopping of approaching hooves, until the door burst open and a jubilant Golden Brown pounced on me.

"This is just so exciting! My little dough girl really is growing up so fast! We'll have to throw a party and everything! Now what color streamers—"

"Whoa whoa whoa, whoa. A... a party? What? Can we start at the beginning? Like where this yummy-smelling bread came from or why I woke up covered in blankey?" I hadn't quite woken up enough to put those together, and having my motormouth father talk my ear off wasn't helping.

"Aww, you're just so adorable when you're all confused and flustered like that!"

I put on my best unamused face.

"And now it's even worse!" He turned his head as Mom walked in. "See what I mean, honey?"

"Yes, she's even more heart-rendingly cute than usual," she replied. "Still, I think she'd appreciate it if you answered her questions before she blows a gasket."

Mother to the rescue!

"Okay, okay. When your mother and I came back about an hour and a half ago, we found you lying fast asleep right there on the counter next to a bowl of interesting-smelling bread dough. I wanted to wake you up right then and there, but your mom thought you looked like you could use the rest.”

“You just looked so peaceful,” she chimed in, “so I convinced him to put the dough in the oven and let you rest while I went to get you a blanket. I did find a few interesting messes on the way to do that, by the way. For instance, a makeshift ziggurat constructed beside one of my fermentation vats. You don't smell like you've actually been drinking from it, thankfully. I just hope that you were careful not to contaminate the batch when you harvested part of it.” She gave me a wry glance.

You couldn't see it through my thick coat, but I was blushing sheepishly.

“That, and from the smell of it,” she continued, “somepony got into my saffron while I was out.”

My sheepish grin widened, and I further shrunk into a ball of fluff.

“Normally I'd be docking that pony's allowance for the price of the spice; but...” Her wry glance softened into a warm gaze. “seeing as this turned out okay...” She gestured at the delicious-smelling bread. “I think I can arrange an indefinite stay of execution. Besides, there's a more pressing and far happier occasion to be concerned with right now.”

My relieved smile plunged into a confused frown.

“Huh?”

“Oh. It seems she hasn't noticed yet. Goldie, would you be a dear and fetch two pairs of earmuffs for this next bit?”

“Sure thing, honey!” he said as he urgently galloped off. He returned a few seconds later wearing one pair of earmuffs and sliding the other onto Amber Draft. “You're the mom, honey, so you get to tell her.”

“Thanks, dear.”

“Tell me? Tell me what?” I queried with raised eyebrow and cocked head.

“You're right, Goldie. She really is adorable when she's confused like that. Spicy, mind telling me what that thing over there is?” She pointed a hoof at my right flank.

I looked back there, and was stunned. There on my flank, plain as the sun in the sky and beautiful to me as Princess Topaz's crown, was a bright purplish blue saffron flower with red stamens and yellow anthers. I gasped.

The ensuing squealing could be heard from Lanthanum's Diamond Throne to the base of the Australis Valley.

Chapter 5: Trial by Fire (and Explosions)

And that's the story of how I got my cutie mark. Isn't it a gem?

Maybe you can see why I was so desperate to get out of my rut and back in my groove. Creating just feels so good. I feel like I can do anything at all when I'm in that mode. When that's cut off from me, I feel empty and impotent. And frustrated. Almost like I'd gotten my horn knocked off... I'm really glad that I've still got my horn, by the way. That kind of punishment isn't totally unheard of, but it's for crimes a few orders of magnitude worse than mine.

Topic, topic, what was my topic... right. I'm really a bit excited to get to this next part. For the first time in months, I'd been inspired again. Not to boast, but an inspired me is a sight to behold.

After I left the archive with my notes and another fine combing (I never know how much to tip security for this kind of thing) and served up the royal lunch, I began my culinary quest.

First order of business was to gather the supplies. This was a proof-of-concept, so I only took ten pounds of alfalfa seeds from the pantry. Then I searched the cupboards to find a comically large glass mixing bowl (can't have been cheap to commission that thing) and fetched my largest mortar and pestle from my apparatus stockroom. Some ponies would just call it a closet, but I find it helps to be precise. That, and it gives me an excuse to say apparatus and feel all science-y. Don't judge me.

With all of that and my notes on my test kitchen counter, I set to work pulverizing alfalfa seeds.

*Tink*

*Crch*

*Crnsh*

And then I glanced over to my notes and remembered that the bowl needed water in it.

"Crispidy! Crunch! Would you two fine colts please get over here to the test kitchen and fill this bowl to about three quarters to the top?"

Two rather portly young stallions zoomed into the kitchen, saluted, and got to filling it from the tap (cisterns are wonderful things) as I continued to crush the seeds.

A perk of being the royal chef: underlings! I've got a couple of lesser cooks serving under me, ostensibly to expedite food preparation. Kind and eager as my personal minions are, I don't quite trust them with the delicate stuff. I wouldn't let Crunch within a mile of a souffle, and Crispidy couldn't get the baking time for cookies right to save his life.

They're still useful for plenty of things, like brute labor or keeping a pot stirred, but I do all of the delicate work. As I've always said: If you want something done right, do it yourself.

They finished loading the bowl with water and levitated it together back to me just in time for me to plunk in the first batch of crushed seeds.

"Thanks, boys! Now get back to work. I'll call you again when I need you."

Another salute and they were off. It is good to be the boss.

I kept up the crushing and plunking for a few more minutes until I'd finally broken down all ten pounds of alfalfa seeds and submerged them in the bowl of water. Then I covered the bowl with a towel and left it, satisfied I'd have everything I needed to begin experimenting with frying on the morrow.

I went through the rest of the day after that, barely controlling the urge to burst into song (I did hum profusely, though), and went to bed with a mind simmering with new culinary possibilities.

After the royal breakfast was served the next morning (salted scrambled eggs with mayo on toasted old oat bread, in case you were wondering), I trotted back to my test kitchen to check on my experiment.

I was disappointed with the results.

Upon yanking the towel off of the bowl and getting a good look at its contents, I vented my exasperation.

"Oh, COME ON!"

My door was still open, so my two assistants zipped in front of me, looking nervous.

I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. "Don't you two worry. It doesn't concern you."

They slunk away, visibly relieved.

What had me so put out was what was in the bowl, or really, what wasn't in it. Where I had expected at least a good half-inch deep of oil ready for frying, I found a gossamer-thin layer partially covering the water. At least the rainbow of colors the film made was pretty.

This would not do at all. It was high time to come up with a plan B, so I got to thinking:

'Think think think— If I can't get any actual oil, what can I get that's like an oil?

'What's an oil like? It's slippery, and it has a high boiling point. And it's a liquid.

'Slippery, slippery, I feel like that's important... What else do I know that's slippery?

'Soap! But you can't eat soap. You get the trots from that. I should know, I'm a chef. What else is slippery that you can eat?

'Animal fat! Some ponies eat the stuff straight, and they're not dead yet. Though how they can do that without gagging is beyond me. Animal fat is slippery. Slippery like oil. Animal fat isn't a liquid though—unless you heat it up!

'Now where can I find some at this hour? Animal fat is not quite the King's cup of tea, so I don't have any on hoof... The soapmakers! They use the fat to make soap! Maybe that's why it's slippery? Who cares, I have a fat supply to appropriate!'

And then I was off to appropriate myself a fat supply for testing.

"How much do you want for ten pounds of fat?"

"We ain't a weight loss clinic, missy," he smugly snarked with a smirk.

I rolled my eyes.

"I'll ignore that comment. You see, I'm not looking to sell fat, I'm looking to buy it. So I say again, how many bits would make a strong buck like you willing to part with ten pounds of fat?" When negotiating, flattery always helps. "I wouldn't want to keep the king waiting, after all." A bit of implied threat is generally a plus as well.

Or maybe it was because he'd just called me fat. My memory's not perfect.

"For you? Four bits!" Not sure whether the accompanying widened eyes and sweat drop were from a mildly attractive mare flirting with him, or from realizing he'd just insulted a servant of the King. I didn't particularly care which it was.

With my well gotten gains, I trotted back to the test kitchen to begin my experimentation in earnest. First thing to do was find something to fry... but what did I want to crispify on the outside while leaving its insides only mildly cooked? Maybe some kind of pastry? But there are so many things that could go wrong in making such a relatively complex food. Chicken? Probably not a good first trial either. Too high a chance I'd fail to cook it all the way through and then everypony could get sick. Best to stick with a simple egg for the time being.

Conveniently, I still had the basket of eggs from that morning's breakfast.

I gathered together my materials:

*Basket of eggs
*Medium saucepan
*Crock o' lard
*Bucket of water

That last one may strike you as odd, but I've found it to be a necessary feature in my test kitchen. I've got a bit of an infamous relationship with fire that I almost deserve.

I've never been a pyromaniac. Though I know a useful spell for igniting flammable things (very handy for firing up a stove or a furnace) and I have an affinity for spells that involve warming things up, I have little more desire to torch things than the next pony does. I just have to be a little more careful than most when I'm steamed.

As if you've never willed something frustrating to burst into flame.

Anyhow, while I have a close-to-standard love for fire, fire just really loves me and wishes to profess its undying devotion to me far more than is appropriate for polite company. That's the best explanation I've come up with, at least.

It's the reason why there's a test kitchen in the first place, really. For some reason or another, my cooking experiments lead to more fires and explosions than half of the royal alchemy department's efforts put together. Because of this, my test kitchen is made of sterner stuff. Every surface is made of metal or hard stone, and everything's been enchanted for extra strength and fire resistance. Apparently they used the same enchantments they put on the guards' hazardous environment armor, which I suppose is pretty cool.

In short: Fire loves me, so I need to keep a bucket of water around to give it the old cold shoulder. Incidentally, the bucket seems to work pretty well on Pierce, too. And now that I had all my supplies ready, I could get this show on the road.

I lopped a chunk of the lard into the saucepan so it would be about halfway full and sparked the stove to life to get it melting.

It started to smell good after a minute. Being a chef used to trying everything under Lanthanum's golden sun, you acquire a lot of acquired tastes. With my experience, I bet I could cook a coney that would make an avowed vegan's mouth water. As long as I didn't tell her what animal both it and the fur lining my parka had come from, at least.

Now I had a pot of presumably very hot liquid, and a basket of eggs. I'd figured I'd fry up the egg like I would ordinarily boil a hardboiled egg: plop the egg into the hot liquid, shell and all, and wait a few minutes for the yolk to harden sufficiently. Except the hot liquid in this case would be hotter and cook it faster, and hopefully I'd get an egg that was just a little runny in the center.

Things did not turn out that way.

*SPRACK*

That's my approximation of the sound of an exploding egg. Had my ceiling above my stove been made of wood instead of steel and stone, I'm fairly sure there'd have been eggshell shrapnel embedded up there. It would have found a way to catch fire as well, I'm certain. As it stood, I got hit with a spray of hot grease and second-hoof shrapnel.

Luckily, my ridiculously fluffy coat of hair protected me from the worst of it. Note: if you're not a fluffer like me or my dad, make sure to wear something while frying. The hot grease spattering everywhere when you cook something with water in it (i.e. anything you'd conceivably be cooking) is murder if you don't.

This was off to a smashing start...

Unwilling to be deterred by a minor explosion like that (I deal with worse fairly regularly, after all—that one wasn't even big enough for anypony to nudge a concerned snout through my door), I revised my tactics and moved on.

The egg was thoroughly mangled, mushed, and otherwise ruined by the explosion, so I pulled it and its fragments from the hot grease with a slotted scoop. No mean feat, I should say, since there's nothing already-slimy foods coated in an additional layer of grease like more than to slide through the slots. Things got much easier once I commissioned the royal jeweler to make a fine mesh scoop from silver. But I digress...

This time around, I cracked open the eggs before dropping them into the hot grease. I'd noticed the spattering from last time whites touched liquid grease, so I was prepared and had my head away from above the pan when the plume of steam and rain of grease erupted. Some still got on me, though, and it was hot enough for the heat to get through my coat and make me yelp.

"YIPE!"

Still not bad enough for anypony to burst through the door and spring to my aid. Sometimes I wondered if the palace denizens' jaded natures would result in nopony noticing if I were to be spirited away, kicking and screaming, by a band of bat-winged, slit-eyed pegasi intent on eating and/or ravishing me. And then it turned out they'd be the ones throwing me to the demons, so no worries on that front... Screw Fate and his sense of humor.

I waited until the grease-spattering died off and then checked on the egg. Well, what used to be an egg. What remained of it looked more like one of Crispidy's abortive attempts at baking. There was smoke, too, now that I think of it.

So I took the time to scoop out my second attempt at egg-frying, dashed down to the alchemists' stockroom, and accosted Outta Stock for some eye protection. I was going to keep an eye on my eggs if it meant the end of me, so help me Lanthanum.

"Hey, Spicy! What brings you to my humble workplace?"

"I've been doing some experimentation down in my test kitchen, but things have gotten a bit dangerous and I could use some protection."

"Knowing your reputation, I don't think we have what it takes to outfit you properly. The palace armory is that way," he dryly drawled as he gestured down and to his right.

I rolled my eyes.

"Your wit is so sharp, I'd gladly steal it and use it to chop up alfalfa. Anyhow, it's nothing quite that serious, Stocky, I just need some safety goggles. Nopony wants a repeat of January, after all."

"Got that right," he said as he shuddered a bit and floated over my goggles. "Good luck! Do try not to blow up the palace this time. I kinda work there."

I sighed in exasperation.

"Thanks, Stock. I'll keep that in mind as I mix up my world-ending brew and make sure it spares the palace. Wouldn't want to put you out of the job, after all," I droned as I slipped on my alchemical splash goggles. "Later!"

And then I turned and dashed back to my stove and the pan full of hot grease. I hadn't realized something important about hot grease yet. You see, water can only get so hot before some of it boils away, keeping a pot of water's temperature capped at its boiling point. Problem with grease is, it's boiling point isn't nearly as low as its flash point. I figured this out as I dropped in my third egg of the session. I expected the spattering. I didn't expect what the grease droplets did next.

*FSHHOOM*

“Fire! Unholy horse apple juggling mud ponies, IT'S ON FIRE!”

I think I took it fairly well. You'd surely have said much worse if something caught fire that really shouldn't have. Quick-thinking mare that I am, I flung the bucket of water at the conflagration.

This was not my brightest move.

Another thing I'd neglected to consider is just how much hotter burning grease can get than water's boiling point.

*KOSHHHHHHHHE*

That is the sound of very hot grease hitching a ride on a rapidly expanding steam cloud. While on fire. In a flash, a brilliant plume of golden flame erupted from my sauce pan and bloomed outward. It would have been quite pretty, really, except that I was standing too close to really appreciate it. It didn't help that this was me and my kitchen being engulfed in flames, either.

I'll cut the suspense and say that I lived through that event. Huge surprise, right? The flames mostly hugged the ceiling and I wasn't too close to the stove, so I got out of it with some relatively minor coat and mane singeing. Sure am glad I was wearing those safety goggles. On the bright side, at least the explosion put out the fire in the pan...

Source: Bemmo aka StandardBronyBrowser

It was a shame about my coat, though. I'd been growing my mutant hair out a little to see how I looked with the extra fluff, and I had been liking the results. Was getting to be a small nightmare to comb, though, but that's what palace servants are for! I may have been a little leery at the thought when Princess Topaz first hired them (All denizens of the royal palace must remain fabulous!), but I'll admit that having somepony to help with your grooming was something a girl could get used to.

What I was meaning to get at, was that I'd had to get my hairlike coat cut down by about an inch-and-a-half after the day's ordeal was over. Wasn't over yet, though. I still had myself an egg to successfully fry, and I would not be denied.

Note: A grease fire & water explosion is still below the interestingness threshold at which anypony will bother to check if Amber Spice is okay.

I'd learned something important. Namely, don't EVER leave hot grease unattended. It tends to catch fire when you do that. Also, don't use anything that'll explode (which includes water, apparently) to put out a grease fire. Once I'd recovered sufficiently from being blasted, I put out the stove and trotted back to the alchemists' stockroom.

"Back again so soon? Did you find your goggles unsatisfactor—eeyow! You're looking less like Amber Spice and looking more like Coal Briquette. Dangit Spicy, I thought I told you not to burn down the place! Are you okay?"

"It's nothing a trim won't fix, so I think I'll pull through. Almost needed a haircut anyhow. To be fair, you never told me not to burn down the place. You only told me not to blow up the palace, and as you can see, I've done an admirable job of that."

"Well, glad to see you're more-or-less in one piece. How's the test kitchen looking?"

"Place has a new coat of grease, and the ceiling's a bit blacker than usual, but it'll still serve fine."

"As much as you love our chats, somehow I don't think that's why you're here. what're you looking for this time? Is it my fiendish good looks?"

"Not looking for your fiendish good looks, no. Maybe you should check the lost and found? Normally they empty it about monthly, but it might be stuck to the bottom of the bin."

And cringe. Score 1: Amber Spice!

"What I'm really looking for, though," I continued while smiling smugly at my little victory, "is whatever you alchemists use to put out interesting fires, particularly really hot ones involving flammable fluids. The incident that dyed my coat a new color involved flaming grease so hot it made water explode on contact."

"So you've found a way to make water explode? That's a real alchemical achievement! Maybe you should consider a career in the labs? Bwahahahahaaa—!"

Spicy: 1, Stock: 1. And there went my lead.

Once the uproarious laughter had died down to the occasional sputtered snort, he finally got around to being helpful. Let it never be said that Outta Stock is irredeemably snarky and cruel. Only irrepressibly so.

"Really though," *snrk* "we've actually got something here that should help with that. Making that kind of fire that would be dangerous to throw water on isn't actually all that rare in the labs, so we keep some buckets on hoof that are filled with something a little less volatile: sand!"

He floated a rather large bucket of sand to me from below the counter.

"If you ever run into a flaming liquid, just dump this sand on it to put it out."

"Thanks, Stocky!' I chirped as I grasped the bucket with my levitation. "I'm gonna go back and try again now. I've got a good feeling about this next test run!

"And no more explosions today, I promise." And with a wink, I giddily pranced back to my test kitchen with the sand bucket in tow.

This time I wasn't about to let fire get the best of me. I had a new weapon in my arsenal for when things got out of hoof, but I figured I'd repurpose an old one as well in the name of prevention. It's loads easier to cook food some more rather than to try and unburn it, after all.

My brewer's thermometer. It's amazing how overengineered these things are to handle extreme temperatures, but they'd better be for how much they cost. Keeping an eye on the grease's temperature would not only warn me of when it'd catch fire, but it'd also let me know how hot I was cooking my eggs. The plan was to wait until the grease climbed to over 235 degrees Fahrenhoof (23 degrees above water's boiling point) and then plop the egg in for high temperature frying.

I clipped my thermometer to the inside of the pan so that the grease would come up a bit past the mercury bulb and slopped another block of fat in there, then I fired up the stove again.

When the grease came to temperature, I added the egg with a satisfying *spssh* and watched it solidify for a couple of minutes while keeping an eye on the temperature. Watching both of these with grease continually spattering on my goggles wasn't easy, but an occasional wipe from my fetlock helped a lot. That and my facial fur's protecting me from the hot grease made me thank Lanthanum once again for my ridiculous coat, while the grease itself made me thank Topaz herself for showers. I'd thanked the servants and the barber too, by the time I'd gotten all cleaned up from this ordeal...

Once I was satisfied with the egg's opacity, I put out the stove, fished the egg out of the pot and onto a plate, and placed the pan on a rack to cool. I was not about to have a repeat of the last time. It was still a lot squishier than a hard boiled egg, but that was the point of the exercise, after all.

A couple of minutes passed as I waited for the egg to cool down, and then came the moment of truth: would this technique produce food that was worth all the explosions, burns, and strange looks it had taken to get this far? There was only one way to know, and so I levitated out a knife, cut a bite out of the white and yolk, and floated the yellow-orange-dripping yellow-orange and white wedge to my mouth and bit down on it.

"Needs some salt..."

So I sprinkled some salt and tried it again.

"Mmmmm— You know what this would go great on? Toast!"

So I galloped off to the royal baker and procured a loaf, galloped back and sliced it, and then stopped.

"Huh. It's never been all that easy to cook toast evenly, and now I've got this pan filled with hot grease that can cook it on all sides at once... Let's fry it!"

I fired up the stove, heated the grease hot as an oven, and plinked in a slice of bread. A few minutes later, it came out black and landed in my growing pile of charcoal. I hadn't expected to get it right on my first try, anyhow, so I'd brought extra bread to spare.

I levitated in another slice, this time keeping my telekinetic grip on it. This time I checked on the toast by floating it out of the hot grease about every 30 seconds.

I'd repeat the process, watching the bread gradually get to the color I wanted, until...

"Perfect! Golden brown, just like Daddy!"

I put out the stove and let the toast drip dry and cool down a bit, and then bit it.

"A bit too... greasy." In case you've never had grease in your mouth, it gives you a kind of slimy, scuzzy sensation that sticks to your tongue, your teeth, and the roof of your mouth. Yeah, not quite sure why I'd expected anything different for something cooked immersed in grease. This called for a slightly different approach.

I still didn't want to make toast the conventional way, but bathing it in hot grease didn't seem to yield good results either.

Then I got to thinking:

'What's wrong with the conventional method? Uneven and slow heat transfer from fire to food. That's why I use water or grease to speed up and even out heating. What's wrong with frying it deep in grease? The bread soaks up the grease and then tastes like a crunchy, grease-sodden sponge. Now if I had just enough grease to heat a side of the bread slice evenly, maybe it wouldn't soak up too much... It might even be a little soft in the middle... Well maybe I should do that!'

So I did that. I got out a new, shallower pan and added just enough grease for it to come up about a quarter of the way up a slice of bread. Then I brought it to temperature on the stove (I'd already moved the other pan full of grease onto the cooling rack, by the way) and added the bread slice. To keep the bread evenly browned, I flipped it about every half-minute until I was satisfied.

Then I lifted it from the pan, let it drip dry a bit, and bit down with a delightful crunch.

"Ahh– now that's the good stuff. Just the right amount of grease to make it taste fine."

And fine it tasted. Still, I'd made this toast with a specific purpose.

"Eggs!"

The egg I'd cooked was still sitting there, but it had gotten cold. It still tasted okay, and tasted even better on the warm fried toast, but I figured I needed to taste the combination when both foods were warm to see their full glory.

One of the talents you develop as a cook is multitasking. I can cook several dishes at once and have them all finish at the same time, so two at once wasn't such a big deal for me. It still looks impressive to passersby, though.

I fried up an egg and some toast and plopped the egg on the toast, added a few dashes of salt with a flourish, and took a big bite of egg on toast.

It was glorious.

"Mmmmmmh– This shtuff ish delicioush!" Gulp."But does it just taste good to me, or is this recipe a keeper?"

That really was an important question. I can't count the number of times my... eclectic tastes led me to appreciate one of my creations way more than the average pony would. Exhibit A: Tear Beer. What I required were test subjects. Pony test subjects.

I quickly fried up another pair of egg & toasts, then poked my head out the door and bellowed "Crispidy! Crunch! I need you two to come sample the fruits of my labors, stat! I must know whether my new creation is fit to touch the royal tongues!"

*Zzzip*

And there they were. Crispidy was looking a bit more enthusiastic than Crunch. And by a bit, I mean while before he'd been looking nearly as depressed as I had been when I was stuck in my rut, where then his face was lit up like a torch gem. I'm fairly certain that a chance to sample my new culinary creations was why he took the job in the first place. Hay, the stallion had even proposed to me a couple of times in the past.

I'd shut him down each time, though. Thing is, I didn't really know the guy and a workplace romance would have been terribly awkward for all involved. That, and he creeped me out a little.

"Here you go, boys. Eat up, and tell me what you think!"

Crispidy dug into his with gusto.

When he resurfaced from his state of bliss he exclaimed, "Marry me, oh food goddess!"

"I'll take that as an ‘it's wonderful.’ So, what do you think of it, Crunch?"

Since he noticed Crispidy wasn't dead yet, he looked at the proffered egg & toast with a now somewhat less incredulous eye and took a bite.

*CrunchCrunchCrunch*

"Mmmh. Could maybe use a little less... grease on the eggs? Still, this one's a keeper for sure," he said as he magically lowered a set of ear muffs each onto his and Crispidy's ears.

"EUREKA!"

Did I mention that my test kitchen has excellent soundproofing? They told me it was to help me concentrate and that the explosions that seem to follow me might have had something to do with it as well, but sometimes I wonder...

Once the echoes had died down and Crispidy and Crunch had removed their earmuffs, I dismissed them and set to work on one more egg & toast. This one I set on a plate and brought with me to the alchemists' stockroom.

Crispidy, I'm pretty sure, would gladly proclaim my divinity from the mountaintop even if I gave him a sculpted mound of horse apples and told him it was a new creation of mine. While Crunch isn't exactly prone to exaggeration and doesn't worship the ground I walk on, I can't trust him to value honesty more than he values his continued employment. That's why I had to get an outsider's opinion from someone unafraid to call it as he saw it. That's why I needed Outta Stock.

"Stocky! I need your help figuring out if today's string of explosions has produced something worth the trouble. I tried it out on my lackeys and they seemed to like it, but you know how lackeys are. Oh wait, you don't! And I'm not sure whether I should gloat over or envy you."

"I may not be overlord material like you, Spicy, but I would make a smashing higher-level minion. I'm competent, I'm unlikely to try and backstab my glorious leader to steal the spotlight, I am the local crown prince of snark, and I've got this nice shiny void where most ponies keep the bucks they give. Also, everypony loves me!" he finished while rearing up.

"Yeah. I'll keep your name in mind for when I finally mind-control-poison the royal family and take the throne for myself. Who knows? I could always use a court jester."

I blew him a raspberry.

"Still," I continued, "I need an honest opinion on this new dish I dreamed up. Preferably before it freezes over, as it apparently tastes best hot. Also, magical heating would cost you extra."

"But you aren't charging me anything for this in the first place, you nag."

"I'd charge you ten bits to warm it up, and that's because I'm feeling nice. Now come on and take a bite before it cools!"

"Okay, okay I'll eat it," he said as he levitated the still warm egg & toast over.

*Crunch*

"Mmmmh! Say, Spicy. I do believe you're on to something here!"

The clever stallion cleverly levitated a clever pair of earmuffs onto his clever head of cleverness to keep his clever-maker cleverly safe. Just in time, too, the clever devil.

"WOOHOOOO!"

I'm fairly sure that blast temporarily deafened several relatively nearby patrolling guards and cleaned all of the snow off of the palace roof.

Also, there may have been a victory dance going on. I'll spare you (and myself) a description, but I'm sure Outta Stock would tell you all about it if you gave him half a chance.

"Well, glad to see you're now officially out of your rut," he replied coolly after stowing his tactical earmuffs. "So, what kind of fancy pants name are you going to call it?"

''I'll call it..." I'd actually not given that subject much thought to that point. I was too busy creating to bother with mundane details like what to call something. Still, I'm not bad at thinking up stuff like that on the spot, provided my muse is feeling cooperative.

"Well, whenever I cook it for reasonable folk, I'll just call it 'Fried Egg over Toast.' When royals talk about it, though, they'll call it something in Fancy, like "Pain Grillé a la Oeuf."

"A pretentious name for a simple meal from a pretentious pony. I love it!

"What is this frying thing you mentioned? It sounds intriguing. Is it how you managed to keep the egg yolk all liquidy in the middle?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. Frying is a cooking technique similar to boiling something in water, except you replace the water with hot grease, which doesn't boil so much as get really really hot because science. You know science, right?"

"Yes, Spicy, I know science," he sighed as he shook his head.

Chapter 6: Dinner and a Show-off

That right there was sort of the beginning of the end for me. I wasn't quite ready to present my discovery to the royal family just then. See, I have a thing for drama, so when I come up with a new thing, I go big. I wasn't about to tell the princess that the culmination of over a month's work was a delightful new method of cooking eggs over toast. No, I was going to give her a spread of fried foods so regal she'd throw a feast in its honor. Except she'd be feasting on them. You know what I mean. I am a unicorn, after all, and any proper unicorn knows that anything worth doing is worth doing in style.

Speaking of in style, there are some more things I ought to pack. I've got a bag of holding, so it's not like I have to pack light.

Regardless of whether I'll ever wear it again, I'm not parting with my chef's toque. It was one of my father's gifts to me when I first started work at the palace.

Up to that point I'd just been using a dingy hair net to keep my frizzy locks from flavoring the food. It served fine while I was at school or doing small-time cooking or catering, but Dad figured that my working in the palace meant that I would need swankier duds in order to fit in. Or so he said. I strongly suspect he had just been looking for an excuse to get his little dough girl a fancy hat.

I sure don't blame him. It's been a very good hat, and it's put up with the strain I put it through way better than it has any right to. Kinda like him, come to think of it. Even if I never cook another day in my life (perish the thought), at least I'll have this hat to remember him by. I thank King Lanthanum on his diamond throne that Dad had the foresight to get fireproofing enchantments put on it.

I'm packing a few other items to remember good ponies by, like the brewing thermometer from Mom and a couple of drawings my little brother, Sepia Tone, had made for me.

Source: Bugsydor

The family portrait and his rendition of my coat of marks are some of his early works, but since they were parting gifts from when I left home, they're two of my favorites from him. I'd say he did a bang up job, even if he was still fairly new at the time.

He drew himself into the family portrait after the fact, in case you were wondering. That's why he's standing a bit off to the side. Clever guy left the canvas mostly blank for the actual posing, instead sketching our poses into place and taking down which bits were supposed to be which colors onto a notepad. Then he did the same sort of thing with himself in a mirror. It's kind of a paint-by-numbers thing, but with more numbers than I'm used to.

The real gem of my keepsake collection, whether you'll pardon the pun or not, is the torch ruby Outta Stock gave me the night of my promotion to Royal Chef. Now what a memory that was...

He and I are actually fairly close friends. I guess that's bound to happen when two ponies are doing their best to get under each other's skin, but what can you do?

Now, this event went down the night I heard I was being promoted. I was pretty excited about the whole thing, as you may imagine. I was also somewhat chagrined, for reasons that will become clear. Outta Stock was excited too, although it would have been hard for a bystander to pick that up through his smugly satisfied demeanor. You see, his satisfaction came at the expense of the newly appointed Royal Chef. Literally.

"Your ability to sink to new lows never ceases to astound me, Mr. Stock."

"Aaap-ap-ap-ap-ap! That's Sir Stock. Or your highness. Remember the terms of our agreement."

"Well, your royal heinousness, I still can't believe I took you up on it. There has to be a law on the books somewhere protecting the drunk from obligations to any bets or dares they take."

"Tough luck, lady, there isn't. Believe me, I've checked," he said, smirking.

Knowing him, he probably had done so in some degree of seriousness.

"Really, though," I sighed, "even as buzzed as I was, I should have known something was up when you proposed that bet. You don't make bets–"

"I make prophecies paired with some obfuscating horse apples about what happens if I'm wrong," he finished.

I rolled my eyes and stuck my tongue out at him.

"That's not quite how I remember it going down, though," he mused.

"Oh, really," I deadpanned.

"Indeed. I remember it going something like this: I said, 'Dang, Spicy. You're such an awesome cook, they're gonna have to promote you to Royal Chef by the end of the month!' And you were like 'Hah! The day they promote me over everypony's heads to Royal Chef is the day I cook you a four course candlelight dinner while wearing my tackiest formal dress.' Then I, grinning like the diabolical mastermind that I am, took you up on it on the condition that you call me 'sir.' Then you said, 'And if you lose, you're doing all of that stuff. In my tackiest formal dress.'"

Fillies and gentlecolts, I present to you Outta Stock! I swear, that pony missed his calling when he didn't go into theater...

"So... is the food almost done yet? Because I am starving," he said as he made to smoothly sneak a spoonful of soup.

I thwarted his attempt with a thwack to the horn and gained a manic glint in my eye. Due to the nature of those who usually find themselves within the palace kitchens, I didn't find many opportunities to do what came next.

I put on my best visage of righteous indignation and my shrillest, most obnoxious cook's voice, took a deep breath, and cut loose.

"GET OUT OF THE KITCHEN! IT'LL BE READY WHEN IT'S READY!"

This was enough to send Outta Stock galloping from the staff kitchen with his ears pinned down and his tail tucked between his legs.

I am by no means a quiet pony. I'll have to remember this trick for when I'm in exile. Pegasi have really sensitive ears, right? Or was that bats... Anyhow!

When the food was all good and ready (all at the same time, to boot), I levitated it all onto a cart for serving and rolled it out to the mostly depopulated staff lounge where Outta Stock was waiting at a fancily set table, grimacing.

"While I'll be the first to admit that I was kinda asking for that one," he said exasperatedly, "did you have to be quite that freaking loud?! Not only do I enjoy being able to hear, I need to for my job. What if somepony asks for water and I hear 'aqua regia?'"

"Oh come off it. I sincerely doubt I was loud enough to do any permanent damage–"

He interrupted by nodding his head vigorously with a practiced expression of barely suppressed "pain" across his muzzle, ears, and eyes.

"I swear, your parents must have made some unholy pact to get your lungs swapped with a pair from one of those demonic pegasi. My ears are still ringing! If I end up losing my job over this, I fully expect you to use the extra money from your promotion to keep me in the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed," he continued with all of the mock-seriousness in the world.

“Okay, okay, I'm sorry, your highness. Now do you want me to dish us up, or are you too injured to partake in this glorious feast?" I said, sweeping my hoof grandly over the food cart.

"Praise Princess Topaz, I am miraculously cured of my impending deafness! Let's get started!"

And so I lit the candles and the fuel for the chafing dishes, floated over and filled our mead glasses (with some of the special stuff I brought from home), hovered the wildflower and saffron petal salads into place, and began dinner.

"Spicy, I've got got to say I'm impressed," he remarked as he levitated another clump of petals. "I'm not usually a salad advocate, but may King Lanthanum toss me into the Sun if these flowers don't taste very nearly as good as they look."

"You flatterer," I replied through half a saffron petal. "I bet you're just saying that so I'll do more of your cooking."

Due to the character of upper class cuisine, that's actually a pretty good compliment. Traditionally, our salads have been more of a visual art form than a means of exploring the frontiers of flavor. I'd usually enlist my little brother the artist to help me make new salads whenever he'd visit. We didn't always see eye to eye on our creations, but we usually came up with something we could agree on before we finished a salad session, even if that something was that salads were stupid and so were we.

Effectively, classy ponies would have prepared for them bouquets that were technically edible. Me, though? I didn't really see why something that looked that fancy couldn't taste and smell good as well.

This particular salad, for example, was composed of some mildly fragrant whole flowers that I wouldn't mind snacking on by themselves, saffron petals (which taste nothing like saffron the spice, which comes from the stamens of the flower), and some salmonberry vinaigrette. The result was a striking potpourri of reds, purples, and blues that smelled like a mountain meadow and tasted like nectar waiting to become honey. It was a salad to shut up and savor, and so we did.

Once we'd both finished contemplating our salads, I set our empty plates aside and brought the next course to the table. It was a fairly simple rabbit soup. Just some wildflower greens (from which the flowers used in the aforementioned salad had been severed. Wouldn't want them to go to waste, after all), some chopped up rosemary from my private herb garden, and, naturally, broth that the rabbit had been partially boiled in.

And maybe a hint of saffron to go with the saffron greens.

"Y'know," I said between spoonfuls of soup, "I was awfully tempted to turn down that promotion."

Gotta give Outta Stock credit for being a quick eater, because he was already two thirds done with his soup at this point.

"Really?” *shlip* “You don't say.” *slrp* “What could have possessed you to do that?" he drawled distractedly as he lifted his bowl to slurp the rest of his soup down. He was clearly enjoying his soup a bit too much to participate in a proper conversation.

Oh-ho-ho. This was just too perfect.

“It would have been almost worth being a lower level cook for eternity to see you cook a big meal in this dress.”

*SPLCHSSHHFFF*

Incidentally, that's the sound of a simple rabbit soup being atomized into a fine mist. All over my face. Got a good look at his face while it happened, though, so it was totally worth it.

"Pfa-hahaa-ho-hoh!" I cackled as I attempted to dab my face dry with my napkin. One of the curses of fluffiness is that it's way harder to clean liquids out of your coat.

"Yeah, laugh it up," he groused while fighting to hold down a chuckle of his own. "You made me waste a nice bowl of perfectly good rabbit soup in the name of making me imagine myself in an emerald-studded cerulean dress...

"Though, come to think of it," he snarked with a snicker, "it'd probably look loads better on me than on your egregious orangeness."

"First off, I'm clearly amber, not orange. You don't get a pass for being male, since you just now correctly used 'cerulean' in a sentence.

"Second," I whispered hoarsely as I levitated my mead glass to my snout, glanced behind him, and subtly charged a second spell, "don't look now, but I think that's a guard."

His charcoal gray coat turned a shade closer to ash as he cautiously turned to look at the wholly uninteresting empty corridor behind him.

*CLULSH*

That sound was the result of my suddenly flinging my bowl to give him a new "hat." It's a shame it was half filled with perfectly good rabbit soup at the time.

"Oh, I got you good there! Consider it payback for making a 'long shot' bet based on insider info," I taunted, punctuating my remark with a triumphant raspberry.

"Which was payback for the when you fed me a 'peace offering' of alfalfa cakes filled with green dye and made me think I had Wise Acher's Disease when my pee turned green," he remarked as he floated over some napkins to towel off with.

I giggled. "That was a good one, wasn't it?"

"Yes," he said with a chuckle that was oddly dry for how much soup he was still covered in, "yes it was, but not as good as that one time I set up a bunch of clues to trick you into thinking there was a plot to kidnap you and shear your coat for use in a new line of sweaters."

I will have you know that Outta Stock can be very subtle and convincing when he puts his mind to it. Anypony would have fallen for that. Anypony. Also, I didn't know him nearly as well then as I do now.

We've had a good natured prank war going ever since he gave me a bag of bricks of some kind of really sour crystal disguised as salt as a "Welcome to Your New Job at the Palace" present. As much as I love salt, I couldn't resist sampling the merchandise. It was so incredibly sour that I couldn't even squeeze out a startled yelp because my mouth had puckered so hard.

A few days later, a few bricks' worth of this new special extra sour seasoning found its way into Outta Stock's dinner and he found himself hoisted by his own petard. And thus began the greatest prank war in the palace's history since the fabled prank war of Grand Boffo vs. Harlequine.

Sometimes the war would escalate and nearly go too far. Sometimes it'd die down to a dull roar. What was constant, though, was that we'd always share a good laugh about it, prankster and prankee together, when we got together again afterwards.

"I don't think I'll ever fully repay you for that one. Now if justifiable arson were an actual thing, though... maybe I could abuse my new position and float the idea to the princess?" I mused. "They say the fastest way to a pony's heart is through their stomach; I'd bet it's the quickest way to their ears, too."

"Meh, I'd been meaning to bring my place's fire retardation gems up-to-date for a while now anyhow," he said with a dismissive flick of his horn. ''Anyhow, now that you have demonstrated your soup-based superiority, would you mind serving up the next course?"

"Tee-hee-hee" *snrk* "Silly me!" I chortled as I floated the main course onto the table. It was the rabbit that had so graciously lent its flavor to the well (ab)used soup earlier, but roasted and dressed up on a bed of rosemary spears and glazed with saffron-infused honey.

Some might find it a bit macabre to eat the rabbit after eating his food and then drinking his bath, but that's the way the courses are ordered. What can you do? Not that I was complaining about that dinner: it was far too delicious for any of that nonsense.

I carved up the coney and divided it between the two of us, giving the stallion the more generous portion. I like the taste of rabbit fine, but eating meat is a bit exhausting and tedious if you don't have the teeth for it. Some lucky mares have nice, stallion-like canines that let them tear into meat with stallion-like gusto, but the rest of us girls just have to make do with our knives, incisors, and molars.

So while I got to cut my coney to tiny chewable chunks, Stocky over there got to float his meat up to his mouth directly for tearing. When I'm dining with another mare, I usually look forward to this part of the meal: since we wouldn't have anything in our mouths for a few minutes, it would provide a perfect opportunity to chat. For stallions, though, having a meat course in a meal usually means a time of wordless (if not quite quiet) contentment.

“Is the fierce predator done eviscerating his prey yet?” I snarked, somewhat irked at being forced by my lack of silencing spells to listen to his gory conquest of that poor three quarters of a rabbit.

He lowered the rabbit piece from his muzzle, said a cheeky "Nope!" and continued his barbaric feasting. Stallions...

I released a resigned, defeated sigh and took a sip of my mead between chewing on chunks of coney. Not to blare my own horn, but it wasn't like I could blame him for his behavior. After all, this is my cooking we're talking about.

I wonder if that's how pegasi eat? Seems demonically barbaric enough. What do they eat in the desert, anyhow? Sand? No, that doesn't make any kind of sense. Now where was I?

Oh right, finishing dinner. Watching Stock eat that rabbit was actually kind of adorable, if you could ignore how repulsive it was. In kinda the same way as watching your pet dog chow down on a well-deserved bowl of table scraps after he's been good all day.

So we finished our rabbit bits, he in messy bliss and I torn between disgust, amusement, and a somewhat lesser degree of pleasure than his.

Once I'd finished chewing my last morsel (and he swallowed his last chunk. Judged those portion sizes perfectly!), I refilled our mead glasses and floated out our desserts.

"Behold the pièce de résistance, the Dessert Desert Crumble!" I pronounced with a flourish.

It was comprised of ground-up crystallized honey interspersed with oats, and looked like crackly, scorched earth with rocks, sand, and salt. There was some salt in there, too.

“You ought to be proud, Stocky! You'll be the second pony to ever taste this!” I exclaimed.

“It's like eating a dessert wasteland,” he quipped.

I kept my silence for a long moment, doing my darndest to pretend I hadn't heard that. He will burn someday for his punny impudence. It's a shame that I won't get to be the one to light the match.

"Really, though," he continued, "this recipe is a keeper. It looks fancy," he took a bite, "it tastes fancy, and on top of all that, it's got that exotic je ne sais quoi that earned you your promotion in the first place. This is a very Amber Spice dessert, and that's a very good thing.

"It's this kind of thing that makes me like you, Spicy" he said after taking a sip of his mead, eyes shining with unexpected sincerity. "You look at pieces of a tired, bland world, and you mix them up and make them interesting again. Just look at this. Oats, salt, and honey. How bland of ingredients are those? I probably had the same things for breakfast. And then here you go, turning them on their ears to make them into a desert fit for a princess! You live to make life interesting, to 'spice' things up, as it were, and that's a goal I can really get behind."

It's that kind of thing that makes putting up with Outta Stock worth it. He may prank you from here to the moon and seem generally insufferable to an outside observer, but it's all sincerely in good fun. He'll tease you relentlessly or flatter you shamelessly, but only because he knows that you love it deep down.

It took me a couple of months through our prank war to realize it, but just about everything he does is centered around one purpose: livening up dull palace life for us ponies. If he has to mix some iron salts in with the alchemists' fuel pellets and give them a show to do so, so much the better.

I wasn't kidding when I said he missed his calling by not going into theater. Or at least stand-up comedy. Then again, he'd probably get enough rotten food tossed at him in the latter to feed a mid-sized hamlet for a week.

Regardless, Stocky's special talent doesn't really even have anything to do with his employment as a stockroom clerk. He told me that really had more to do with family connections, family tradition, and the prospect of getting an inflated government salary for a cushy government job. I'd bet saffron to alfalfa cubes the real reason he came here instead of taking a job in entertainment, though, is here he gets to use a more personal touch rather than perform for some nebulous, broad audience. Here, he gets to directly interact on an informal and personal level with dozens of ponies rather than spray a diffuse cloud of joy nowhere in particular.

Enough about how great a guy Outta Stock is on the inside and back to the dinner. At this point he'd drained two thirds of his glass of mead.

"Y'know, I'd almost feel guilty for making that rigged bet if it weren't the only way to get you to treat yourself like this for your promotion. I mean seriously, Spicy, what were you planning to do tonight?"

"I was going to... I don't know... I guess go home and get drunk with my family, maybe?"

Okay, so I'm not always the best at planning my time. And that's why I'm a cook and not an event planner.

"And instead I got you a five-star candlelight dinner for two with a handsome stallion, cooked by the very pony who cooks for the Princess herself."

I opened my mouth to make a quip about wondering where this handsome stallion I was supposed to eat with was, but then I stopped to really appreciate what he'd just said.

While it would have been nice to just have a mildly rambunctious event in a back room of The Amber Mare with my parents (and maybe my little brother), I had to admit that this was the best I'd eaten in quite a while. While I had sampled nearly every dish I'd made to make sure they'd turned out as intended, I had never really cooked for myself when I was on the job, and it was always hard to get motivated to cook something fancy when there's nopony there to enjoy it with you.

"Well look at that, you punk! You actually managed to do me a favor, in the blot-packwards way of yours. I could almost give you a hug. Or maybe a noogie."

"Oh stop it, Spicy. Too much more of this and you'll make me blush!"

If I'd believed him for a second, I'd have kept going relentlessly.

"Really, though," I replied thoughtfully, "I've got to do this more often."

He nodded heartily.

"Sans the dress, of course."

He pouted.

"No, not even for you, Stocky.

"Once a month sounds reasonable to me. They're not all gonna be this fancy, but I'll try to make something new for each one. Sound good to you?"

Too bad I couldn't keep that creative streak up forever. Figure I could have lasted another year or two at least on that second wind I picked up from the discovery of frying... but I digress.

"Yuppers!" he chirped.

"Don't say that. Only my dad gets to say that, and it's barely okay when he does it.

"And Stocky, thanks for the bet. It feels good to actually get to see a pony enjoy my cooking, and it feels pretty good to eat it myself, too."

"Oh, don't thank me yet. You haven't even seen your present yet." he said with a smug smirk. Or maybe it was a sincere smile? Hard to tell, face and track-record like his.

"As you might have guessed, I saw this promotion coming a mile away. Being in touch with a good portion of the palace rumor mill and knowing the right ponies to get my facts checked has given me some time to think about how I'd commemorate it.

"It was obvious enough that I should get you to do what you love, the way you love, and, eventually, for the reason you love doing it. I may have tacked on some details to sweeten the deal for myself, but what would you expect?"

I rolled my head in a shrug.

"It wasn't enough, though. Sure, it was a good prank with great results, but it still amounted to making you do something for me, even if you benefited from it, too.

"So I thought about it. What could I do for you to properly celebrate the night your career was made? I could have organized a party, but you don't like large parties filled with faces you don't know. So then I thought of what else you bring to special parties: presents!

"But then I had to figure out what to actually get you. Let me tell you, filly, you are not easy to shop for. Raid the stockroom for some new unorthodox tools for you to use? I might be able to smooth-talk my way out of trouble for stealing supplies, but it would still feel cheap and unimaginative. Get you a new hat? Also unoriginal, and I strongly suspect that I'd find my pelt coating a new cushion if I so much as suggested replacing your current toque."

"You would be correct," I deadpanned. "Now, not to seem impatient or anything, but what the hay did you end up getting me? You've got me curious!"

"All in due time, Spicy, all in due time," he replied as he got up, blew out the candles, and returned to his seat.

"I could have gotten you a giant brick of salt," he continued as he ignited his horn's spring-green glow to telekinetically rummage through his saddlebags below the table, "but you'd probably only use it to cook for me for reasons that need no discussion."

I blew him a raspberry at that. Yeah, no need to discuss favors that have already been returned.

"The salt brick was a bust, but it got me thinking of what... other... kinds of rocks you might like," he said, apparently struggling to find the object in his pack.

"So I thought to myself, this mare likes practical things first and foremost. Hay, she even lugs a triple beam balance from my stockroom to her kitchen every day because it's 'just better' than relying on measuring scoops for dry ingredients. She likes being flamboyant and flashy, too, and is a bit of a drama queen to boot.

"And then, like a magelight gem had just lit up in my head," he announced as a ruby red glow suddenly flooded the room from his saddlebag, "I knew precisely what to get you."

And then he levitated a glowing torch ruby out of his bag as I stared on in wonder.

Torch rubies are rather spectacular things. It's true that a magelight gem is nothing special. Hay, most homes in Unicornia close enough to a leyline to tap into one are outfitted with them for general lighting purposes. That is to say, nearly all Unicornian homes. Half the reason we settled on Terra's Horn in the first place was its top being a massive leyline locus, even for a mountain.

Magelight gems are terribly mana-inefficient, though, so using one as a portable lantern without a nearby leyline just isn't done. I mean, who'd seriously consider waving one of those mana hogs around when anypony could just light up their horn? I guess maybe somepony like Pierce would do it to show off how big his mana font was... Ugh. Pierce. That's one chump I won't be missing when I'm in exile.

Torch rubies, though, are a horse of a different color. Instead of lacing a gem with a cheap high-capacity, low-efficiency shiner spell matrix to pump a constant stream of mana through, torch rubies are fire rubies enchanted with a couple of different, more energy-friendly if more expensive, interleaved spell matrices.

There's the complicated glowy one that makes the light. If I heard the salesmare right, it's more efficient than normal partly because it only makes red light that can pass through the red fire ruby. And heat. Torch rubies get pretty hot, but they're still loads more mana-efficient than your run-of-the-mill magelight gem because heat rays are apparently a lot easier to make than light. Who'd have thought?

Torch rubies were first conceived of as camping equipment for those hikers who want to see Terra's Horn's wild side, which probably explains why they make heat as well as red light. Also, something about how red light doesn't screw up your night vision so you can still see outside of the gem's glow.

Maybe this present was conceived as an attempt to get me out of the palace more? Topaz knows my flabby flanks would have appreciated the exercise...

Where was I again? Oh, right. Enchantment number two. That's the other cool thing about torch rubies: how they're powered! Most magelight gems need a constant supply of mana from an outside source. While torch rubies still need to get their mana from somewhere, they're not nearly as picky about where it's from.

The salesmare said some fancy words like thermothaumic and photothaumic that my mom told me meant it could be charged up by heat and light. The other cool thing about it is that it's actually quite cool to the touch whenever it's charging up. That, and it kinda sucks in the light in a small area around it whenever it's not busy pumping light out. The resulting lensing is pretty amusing, so telekinetically tossing it to and fro makes a great way to pass the time.

Not long after I got this gift, I tried charging it up by shaking it to see what would happen. It did get charged a little, but I think that was just its absorbing light from my horn and levitation aura. You can charge the gem directly off of your own magic, too, but that kinda defeats the purpose.

Turning the gem's light on and off is controlled by casting a couple of cantrips that everypony with a horn learns in magic kindergarten. Calibrating the heat and light output takes some technical knowhow that I've never been willing to pursue. If I did, I'd probably be spending my days tinkering with gems instead of food.

Wonder if I'd have found a way to get myself exiled in that profession? Maybe I'd have accidentally discovered that the most efficient way to turn mana into light required me to shout "Unicorns suck, mud ponies rule, and Princess Topaz's dad's a pegasus!" from atop Terra's Horn?

So yeah. Torch rubies. Warm red light that lasts several hours if you keep it charged up, which isn't all that hard if you leave it someplace warm and bright. Shouldn't be any problem at all in the Grand Pegasopian Desert.

Even if it wasn't going to be so incredibly useful out there, I'd still be bringing it along anyhow. It's easily the best memento I've got for my best friend. Its being both a pretty and practical thing to pack is a pretty nice bonus, though. Stocky wasn't kidding when he said how I absolutely loved that sort of thing.

Now, Outta Stock isn't my boyfriend. He's already in a deeply committed relationship. I mean seriously, no stallion has ever loved a mare like that stallion loves himself.

Okay, that last bit was a load of horse apples and I know it. Dangit, why in the world didn't I ever go out with him when I had the chance!? Even if it didn't work out, it'd at least have been interesting. Hay, that dinner was practically a date and I didn't notice! Could he have been coming on to me that whole time and I didn't notice? Dear Lanthanum was I thick! And if I hear one chuckle out of you about my girth, I swear on Lanthanum's Diamond Throne I will gore you.

I guess you could say I've been married to my work since I got to the palace, and the pending messy divorce has put me in the mood for some rebound action. Well, less of a divorce and more of a widowing, but you get the idea. Well, you know what they say about hindsight being 20/20. Also gets you a great view of other ponies' plots too, apparently...

That said, he'd already been the best friend I could hope for here. The guy would cover for me when I got sick (or just really needed a break, sometimes at his insistence) by telling my boss something that'd make said boss look at me the next day with an air of concern mingled with abject terror. Sometimes that boss was the Princess. Him putting the bits together to get me that torch ruby, though? That was something special.

"So what do you think, Spicy?" he said coyly. "Is this good, or should I take this back and find you some extra sour 'salt' instea—"

“That. Is so... Awesome! Thankyou Thankyou THANKYOU!” I cheered as I leaped across the table to give him a giant fluffy tackle hug of friendship.

There were no survivors.

Author's Note

I'd like to thank McWeaksauce and LightningFast for prereading this chapter for me, and I'd like to thank myself for drawing the art pictured above.

P.S. Remind me not to ever hinge my posting of a new chapter on completing an ambitious art project. My taking forever to get around to that meant I was sitting on this chapter for about a month before posting it.

Chapter 7: Toroidal Heresy

I'm going to miss doing that to Stocky...

Anyhow, a bit more about me. I'm a mare of two hats, and those hats happen to say something about me. There's my garish pointed wizard's cap that I like to wear in private sometimes, and then there's my white chef's toque that I wear whenever I'm cooking.

Wearing my wizard's hat, I get to feel powerful and mysterious. Like some archmage ready to confound and destroy any fool foolish enough to challenge me. Maybe I'd turn Pierce into a newt. Lanthanum knows turning him into a wild boar wouldn't impress anypony.

When I wear that hat, I can feel like a paragon of unicornkind. Somepony who could lift a giant boulder before it could fall on a class of foals on a field trip. Somepony who could wow her audience with feats of awesome magic they would talk about for days to come. When I wear that hat, I can feel like somepony meant to be adored by all of Unicornia.

In my wizard's hat, I can pretend I'm somepony I'm not.

I'm no archmage with the fabric of reality quivering to heed my will. I'm just an average unicorn with an average grasp of magic. I've got your basic cantrips like levitation, and I have a few cooking spells I'm pretty good with, but it's nothing I'd perform on a stage.

Okay, maybe I'm not entirely average. Kinda hard to be when you're a fluffy, eccentric unicorn who caters to royalty and has a taste for drama and saffron. I'd be hard-pressed to say my life has been boring, at least.

I have to say, my chef's toque fits me a lot better. Apart from the magic, elegance, grace, and beauty that define unicornkind (with some notable exceptions), that white hat is tied to nearly everything I am.

This hat is my adventure hat. It is my hat of science! It's the hat of my family, and not just because my dad had it made for me. I guess it doesn't have much to do with Sepia Tone, but isn't a painter kinda like a chef with a bit more permanence in his work?

My chef's toque is the hat I wear when I set off to explore the frontiers of flavor. It's the hat I use to think the chef-y, foodish thoughts that move my work forward. When I'm in this hat, I'm either going to create something or die trying. Or get banished, I guess, but what can you do?

Exploring... Maybe I could think of this whole banishment thing as a chance to expand my horizons. That mudpony book had a lot of interesting exotic ingredients like potatoes and peanuts. I wonder if anything tasty grows in the desert? Those pegasi have to be eating something, right? Maybe if I can convince them to let me cook for them, they'll eat my food instead of eating me... I'd better pack some salt and herbs.

Maybe I'll get the chance to wear my favorite hat in the desert after all. Into the bag with you, my hat of adventure!

Think I'll wear my wizard's cap to my banishment, though. Far more memorable to banish a dangerous, mysterious heretic in a garish, pointed hat than to banish some mostly harmless loon in the garb of her profession, and I do love to give ponies a show...

Not to mention that the brim should be wide enough to shield my face from the desert sun.

That brings me, of course, to how I actually ended up getting myself banished from Unicornia to said desert to be Demonwing fodder. I'm just about packed, so there's not much sense delaying that bit of my story any longer.

You are about to behold the instrument of my destruction. It was of my own make, and it was delicious.

I present to you the ultimate fruit of my recent labors, and maybe even my crowning achievement as a chef. A pastry fluffy enough to rival my own coat, sweet enough to put a bee into a diabetic coma, and so light that it shall rise with me to take Unicornia by storm when I return from exile. Behold: the honey-glazed donut! All shall love them and despair!

Yes, there's a possibility this won't be my last ever day in Unicornia, but I don't want to get ahead of myself trying to explain that just yet.

Remember how I said frying up a pastry could turn out well? I was right, but it took a bit of doing. I could cook a ball of lightly spiced dough in hot oil, but if it was any bigger around than my horn it wouldn't cook right. I'd either get a charred shell with a reasonable center, or a delightfully crisp exterior that was still raw dough on the inside.

I solved that problem by putting that hole in the middle so it'd have more surface area exposed directly to the hot grease and cook a little more evenly. The decision to put a hole through the pastry went a little like this:

"Refuse to cook right, will you? Form a blackened crust around an ice-cold center, will you?! Dare to mock me by being inches from perfection and yet infinitely far from it at the same time, WILL YOU?!

"Maybe you'll be a bit more agreeable once I run you through with my horn and toss you into the cauldron of burning death! RAAAAAAAHRGH!"

And so it was.

I'll have you know, by the way, that all subsequent donut holes were cut out with perfectly sanitary cookie cutters instead of being gouged out on my very nearly as sanitary horn.

Anyhow, I had this holey revelation just in time to showcase this food (and sundry others I'd dreamt up since discovering frying) in a glorious feast!

The feast may not have been in my food's honor, but this was really the next best thing. The Unicornia Day Pageant is hardly a low-profile event in any case, and the one in the Platinum Theatre in the Royal Palace is easily the biggest and most prestigious. Everypony who was anypony was going to be there, and I was going to be catering to them all.

Yup. No possible way that could have backfired...

The play was pretty good this year. Princess Topaz had wanted to go all out this time, so she had the high magi and the royal jewelers work with the finest fashion designers in all Unicornia to get the costumes just perfect.

Rather than relying on cheap dyes, giant hats, and cumbersome props to look like members of the lesser pony races, they embedded gems with special enchantments in the costumes. The enchantments acted kinda like the ones royal guard uniforms use to keep the royal guards looking more, well, uniform, but they were a bit higher power. Instead of just adjusting coat, mane, and eye color, these enchantments would alter many aspects of the wearer's physique. This meant they had to constantly drain power from the wearer to keep the illusions going, but I think the effect was worth it.

We had mud ponies who were built like houses, if your house was a sturdy, squatting, sprawling apartment complex. If those weren't illusions, I'd pay good money to see Pierce fail to flip one of them in a wrestling ring. All of that bulk and muscle capped off by a pair of greedy, beady little eyes and a wild mass of mane, just like a classic storybook thug. I actually had trouble telling the mud pony mares from the stallions, but the differences were there if I looked hard enough.

As big and impressive as our mud ponies looked, I can't say they looked truly frightening. Big and strong, yes, but stupid and lumbering too. They'd probably go down to a few shot puts, spike barrages, flechette clouds, strategic sword slashes, and maybe a few creatively placed boulders for good measure. The pegasi, though, looked like any one of them could dash up to me and bite off my horn before I could lift a pan in self-defense.

The pegasi in the play have been giving me nightmares. It doesn't help that I could be seeing real pegasi as early as later this morning, either. Their coat colors were dark, but desaturated. Sickly grays, blues, some greens, and the occasional faded bloody red gave me the feeling that they weren't overly fond of Lanthanum's sacred sun. Their slitted bright green, yellow, or red eyes added to that impression, too. Why'd they choose to live in the desert, anyway? Was it the cold desert nights?

Then there were the fangs. Oh sweet mercy, the fangs! These weren't the nice pointy teeth that help your average stallion healthily tear into a chunk of meat. I'm talking about a mouthful of dripping blades and needles clearly meant to tear bleeding chunks from a living victim.

I'm shivering just thinking back on it.

The way the "pegasus" actors would sneakily skulk shadow-to-shadow had to take tons of practice, too. It really added to the impression that these catlike predators of the night were always just a twitch away from stealing your saddlebags, taking your life, or ravishing some unsuspecting mare.

The most impressive part of any of the illusory costumes, though, were the pegasus wings. They were hairless, membranous things a shade darker and more pallid than the rest of the coat.

They weren't static, either; those things would move! The actors couldn't use them to fly, since they were illusions, but what they could do was amazing. The actors could actually emote through their wings, and I could somehow understand them. They'd bring their wings up and forward like they were getting ready for takeoff whenever they bristled, their wings would flare out whenever they were surprised or alarmed, their wings would clamp to their sides when they were trying to look calm and controlled, their wings would pop up in a shrug when they were unsure, and their wings would even fidget when they were nervous.

Apparently this was all possible because the high magi made their wing illusions tap into normally dormant parts of the ponies' brains that would control wings in a pegasus. I'd heard some whispers that they were looking into putting together a spell to give a unicorn flight-capable wings, too, which I guess is pretty nifty.

And of course, there wasn't a horn in sight among the mud ponies or the pegasi. Not even a nub or a flicker. I bet the princess was proud.

I know all that technical stuff because Outta Stock got to serve a lot of the high muckity-mucks working on the pageant, and apparently they just would not. Shut. Up about it. They'd just go on and on about their pet project in the play until Stocky wished his ears would fall off.

Unfortunately for me, Stocky is an avid advocate for "show, don't tell" in storytelling. Sometimes that stallion makes me wish I had a talent for transfiguration so I could learn a zipperlips spell.

Enough for now about the impressive special effects. Onwards to ponies enjoying the play and, more importantly, the feast I'd prepared.

The narrator is a pretty underappreciated role in the pageant. Most ponies seem to think you just need to be loud and clear so any old town crier could snap it up. The problem is, town criers are noticeable. A great narrator, instead of drawing your attention to himself, lives to focus your attention on the story, subtly bridging gaps between events. They set the stage and fade into the background, like the servants bringing in the next course of a meal, you hardly notice the great ones at all. We had a great narrator this year.

"Long, long ago, in the ancient homeland of our fathers, there lived three races of ponies," his voice rumbled into the darkened theater.

"There were the earth ponies," he intoned as a spotlight flared, illuminating a rather filthy mud pony couple. "Great of frame, yet small of heart. They had a gift for farming we can only match today thanks to the ingenuity of our ancestors."

Cue some subdued murmuring from the few farmers in the crowd.

"Then there were the pegasi." Another spotlight lit up a pair of pegasi with vicious fangs and cunning eyes, making them hiss and cringe at the light. "They were a brutal and deadly race of warriors. Proud of their combat prowess and their control over weather," he finished as a lightning strike silhouetted them.

"Greatest of all, of course, were we: The glorious unicorns of the old kingdom!" The central spotlight came to life, showing a pair of nearly regal-looking unicorns in old-fashioned livery. "As the holy stewards of the Sun and the Moon and of magic unmatched, it was our destiny to rule and reign.

"This story," he half-whispered as the spotlights faded to black, "the story of how Unicornia came to be, began on the summit of our ancient mountain home of Heaven's Embrace."

Scene change, and now some of the theater's hungrier or more curious patrons made a dash for the food I had waiting in the wings. I was still paying most of my attention to the pageant after the break, but I couldn't help but notice the warm reception my fried goods were getting.

After the short break, the pageant began to get into swing.

"The Old Kingdom was governed much like ours is today. King Chromium would call upon his subjects at dawn and dusk to assist in swapping the celestial spheres. Even so, raising the sun and moon is an immensely draining task, so he would delegate most of his political duties to his beloved daughter Princess Platinum, and to her Council of Graybeards."

One of the secondary purposes of the Unicornia Day pageant is to help educate foals about history and government. Some would say the pageant tries to teach them big words, too, but I suspect those ponies need to expand their horizons a bit. Kinda wish it would teach more science and magic though.

Even in the high-class crowd I was running in, there were plenty of children in attendance. We pretty palace ponies have families too, you know, and going to the pageant was one of the highpoints of a foal's year. Naturally, Just about everypony working in the palace brought their families there to watch. Rest of my family couldn't make it to this year's pageant at the palace, as they were all watching the one put on by Sepia Tone's school. He'd had a pretty big horn in painting the sets this year, I heard tell. Oh, why couldn't I have gone to that one instead?

Kinda got sidetracked there. Let's get back to the pageant.

"Not all was well in Heaven's Embrace, however," the narrator continued.

"Milady," a breathless unicorn courier said as he slammed the door open, "the pegasi are revolting!"

"What else is new?" the jester countered, "I've always found pegasi revolting."

"Silence, foal!" Platinum rebuked with a swift scepter to the noggin. "Please continue, courier. This sounds to be grave news indeed."

"Grave news it is forsooth, your highness, for an ill wind has begun to blow across the land. An ill wind, and a chill one too. Not only have the pegasi refused to pay us their homage this season, they seem determined that this season shouldn't happen at all!

"It has become unnaturally cold in our borderland towns, complete with snow and ice. These unseasonable blizzards are being contained for now, but they continue to grow in strength by the day. At this rate, I doubt that even the finest meteomancers in the kingdom would be able to hold these storms back for long."

"That is dire news. Praytell, what could have driven those brutes to such a fiendish display?!"

"I know that not, my princess. The pegasi have, however, issued some demands to be fulfilled before they will correct this weather.

"First, they demand a greater share of the food the earth ponies grow."

What would a needle-mouthed pegasus do with mud pony vegetables, anyhow? I can only hope that means the show's special effects were a bit overblown and I won't be staring down any such devouring maws in my near future.

"That does sound doable. I'm sure we could impress the earth ponies with the importance of showing kindness to their pegasus brethren."

"Second, they demand that we establish and celebrate annually a 'National Kiss a Pegasus Day'?"

The ever-intriguing sound of disgusted laughter bubbled up through the audience.

I've got to hoof it to Platinum's actress: she was able to convey a look of horrified yet uncomfortably restrained revulsion all the way up to the balcony seats.

"Well– I, uh, perhaps they could be convinced to settle for something a little more tame. Like a Pegasus Appreciation Day. We could have a day for each of the three tribes, even. Were there any other demands brought to the table?"

"The third demand was an annual tribute of ten thousand crowns' worth of, and I quote, 'whatever gems, shiny baubles, and magical doohickeys you boneheads use in your spooky magics.'"

At that, Princess Platinum went livid. Her coat went from an alluring gray to a deathly bleached-bone white.

Ah, the countenance of a pony who's just gone from uncomfortably indulging the whims of the mad, to seething with barely-contained outrage when the mad one pushes things a few steps too far. With a bit of horrified shock thrown in for good measure. I've grown intimately familiar with that look over the last few days.

Thankfully for the Princess, the Jester chose that moment to step in so she could compose herself. Outta Stock really would have made a great jester in whatever hypothetical empire I could have set up. Always able to speak his mind, never fearing to make a fool of himself in the name of telling ponies what they need to hear. And he could pass it all off as a comedy routine if things went south.

Oh gouge it, I'm getting sidetracked again! Back to the Jester. The one in the play.

"Why bother negotiating at all?" he chimed in. "If I were in charge, I'd just charge in with our armies and give them all what for! Forget giving them what they want until they just want peace, I say!"

"Art thou mad?!" Platinum shrieked, delivering another blow to his thick skull. "If nothing else, the pegasi are a nation of mighty warriors. Any such direct assault would be suicide!"

She took a few deep breaths before she continued, visibly calmer. "Nay, though it paineth me to say it, we must... negotiate with these devils of the air. We cannot allow our subjects to freeze to death, and our pride can only keep us so warm.

"Courier, take a letter!"

"And thus the Summit of Three Tribes was called, for the first and only time," the Narrator droned ominously to close the scene as the stage lights dimmed.

Another brief break for them to change scenes. As good as the stagehorns at this theater are, it takes even them a few minutes to tear down and set up sets this elaborate. This gave the ponies curious about the snacks their neighbors were finding so much more engrossing than the pageant itself a chance to see what all the fuss was about. My donuts in particular were becoming popular.

"The summit was attended by leaders from each of the three tribes," the narrator supplied.

"Chancellor Puddinghead of the earth ponies." A large, muscular, grease-colored mare stomped onto the scene and chuffed. "A pony with a skull as hard as the Earth's crust, and twice as thick.

"Commander Hurricane of the pegasi." A thundercloud-maned stallion with a coat of sable slinked from the shadows to the negotiating table. "Renowned for his cunning and prowess in battle; feared for the fury that earned him his name."

Call me a skeptic, but Commander Hurricane just didn't sound like a skulky enough name for a pegasus. Maybe pegasi liked ironic names? Sounded fierce enough, though, I guess, so I let this one slide.

"And of course, the ever-radiant Princess Platinum!" The crowd erupted in cheers as the light gray mare with the white-gold mane from the previous scene strode onto the stage. "Beautiful as the dawn, unyielding as the mountain she stood on, and incorruptible as the metal of her namesake."

As is the fashion among higher-budget theaters, Princess Platinum was portrayed as a slightly idealized version of Princess Topaz. Take that as you will. Speaking of princesses, somepony had brought Princess Topaz a plate full of my honey-glazed donuts, and she had been munching on them merrily.

"I, Platinum, high princess of the Unicorns and emissary to the three tribes, do formally call this summit to order. It has come to my attention," she announced as she floated some gold wire-rimmed glasses onto her face to read the agenda she was holding, "that there has been a significant amount of unseasonably inclement weather around our border towns, particularly the ones with more regular pegasus contact."

Commander Hurricane looked about ready to rip her throat out at that last statement. Then again, that more-or-less seemed to be his default mood.

"Namely, they are being buried by blizzards harsher than we have seen in the depths of any winter," she continued. "If there is anything the pegasi could do to alleviate this grievous burden, we would be willing to show our appreciation."

"Yeah. We earth ponies are having a hard time too, with all that snow covering our towns. You pegasusseses need to stop making it snow already so we can go back to work!" thundered an irate Puddinghead.

"I guess it would be kinda hard to wallow when your mud holes are all frozen solid," Hurricane chuckled with a needle-filled grin.

What should have been booming laughter at well-storied mud pony foolishness turned out instead to be a trickle of guffaws. Turns out something as mundane as an annual pageant with amazing special effects that they'd paid a hoof and a horn to see just couldn't hold a candle to some simple pastries I'd fried up.

The aisles had filled with lines of ponies queuing up to receive additional donuts and other sundries. The first major influx happened when ponies noticed their princess had ordered a plate of them for herself, and were imitating her for status points. Then they noticed how amazing the donuts tasted, and went back for seconds. And thirds. With that sweet, slightly crunchy shell of semi-crystallized honey wrapped around that warm, moist, fluffy goodness, who could blame them?

By all rights, this night should have catapulted my name into every unicorn's mouth, followed shortly thereafter by a freshly fried donut. Unicorns had been eating the same bland, uninspired dishes, hearing the same bland, uninspired music, and living the same bland, uninspired lives for centuries! The unicorns in the audience that night seemed to be waking up from that centuries-long stagnation just a little.

Maybe this new, previously unimagined food could have inspired others to "take off in a new direction" and form novel ideas. Maybe that night could have been the beginning of a reneighssance!

Now, though? Instead of my name being in everypony's mouths, they just spit it out like bad mead. I'd never noticed until recently how much of a hiss you could tack onto the word "Spice."

I didn't pay much attention to the pageant after that point. Once my attention was pulled from the actors to the audience by their deafening lack of raucous laughter, the actors couldn't be bothered to take it back. I guess it didn't help that I'd seen versions of this same play about twenty times already.

There were hundreds of ponies here, actively enjoying my art. A true artist of any sort knows that to be one of the most enrapturing feelings one can experience, so I think I can excuse my lapse of attention.

As for the rest of that scene, it unfolded fairly predictably. Some issues were raised, some insults were traded, the earth pony was a stupid brute, the pegasus was a lecherous predator out for conquest, and Princess Platinum was the most regal thing imaginable in her circumstance. Then Princess Platinum vowed to stake out a new home far away from the lesser races, followed by the major intermission that marked the end of Act I.

Then, something unexpected, but not at all unwelcome, happened.

"Fillies and Gentlecolts!" announced Princess Topaz, "I would like to publicly

acknowledge the mare that has so obviously stolen the show this evening."

I hadn't quite caught on at this point, so I was wondering whether she was going to commend the actress playing Princess Platinum or the leader of the special effects team. The pony she's talking about in one of these is usually at least within shouting distance, so maybe if I looked closely I could find—

“Would the Royal Chef, Miss Amber Spice, please join me in my box seat straight away!”

I was dumbstruck for a second there. Thankfully, years of living in the Palace had taught my legs to proceed briskly to the Princess whenever she called for me, so I didn't have to waste time composing myself before I got moving. That was a good thing, since the Princess didn't wait for me to arrive before she continued talking.

“The Royal Chef has always been a bit of an odd one.” She paused a little to allow for some polite chuckling among the audience.

“It is how she has been promoted so quickly, really. I had long since tired of eating my daily bread the same way, day-in and day-out. Then Amber Spice came to work in the palace kitchens, and she was strange. She would do things with food that were simply unheard of. She would combine strange flavors, and they would meld beautifully or stand out vibrantly. She is a pony willing to take risks, and I dare say those risks have paid off,” she said as she gestured expansively at the spread of fried foods.

“So tell us,” she said, turning to me as I walked up to her side, “what is the secret behind your latest and greatest batch of wonders?”

Now I'm not normally one for public speaking, but I do have a flair for the dramatic.

“My secret, eh?” I said as I sashayed to the front of the box. “The secret to making these delicacies had to brew in my brain for a number of weeks. The seed of my inspiration was planted while I sojourned in the cold dark depths of the Royal Archives. In there, I found an ancient book of wisdom titled Ancient Earth Pony Customs and Culture. It contained forgotten culinary secrets and... oh dear.”

The whole theater had gone deathly silent. If a pony were were to breathe heavily, I would have heard it. Speaking of which, there was a significant source of heavy breathing right behind me.

I turned around to see the princess who not two minutes ago had been touting me as the best chef since Sliced Bread with color drained, nostrils flaring, and mouth very nearly foaming.

Horse apples, I was such a numbskull.

That flair for the dramatic seems to also include a flair dramatically stepping my hoof right into it. Let's review the name of that book that seemed to upset my dear princess so much.

Ancient Earth Pony Customs and Culture.

Ancient Earth Pony Customs and Culture.

Earth Pony.

Mud Pony.

How under Lanthanum's golden sun did that not register until that very moment? Why did I just have to flap my gums before my brain could catch up with them to tell them it was a bad idea. Sure, everypony usually just calls them mud ponies whenever they're not going for historical vernacular, but this really is something I should have realized a lot sooner. Like before it got my rump ejected from my homeland. I'm still kicking myself right now, in case you couldn't tell.

Anyhow, back to the bleached-bone-livid princess. I guess Platinum's actress got this part of her radiance right as well.

“I can't believe this, you– you traitor! You have brought to my royal lips fodder meant for vulgar horses, and bewitched it to taste like food! The thought of such impropriety. It makes me so ill that I could just—”

Then she did it. The most sickening, unprincesslike thing you could ever do to a chef: She noisily emptied her stomach onto my hooves.

In front of the entire theater.

Seeing their cue, the nobility then magically yanked on their own uvulae for a breathtaking display of synchronized purging. I don't know how long it'll take them to scrub all that vomit out of the theater, but I'm guessing something on the order of months.

I just have one thing to say about all that: Worst. Pageant. Ever.

Chapter 8: Actual Trial, Figurative Fire

Sometimes I feel like fate is mocking me. He certainly wouldn't be the first. I mean, ever since one unfortunate incident at elementary school, everypony in my class always referred to any new particularly extravagant hat they got as "a never-before-seen Amber Spice delicacy." I'm no stranger to being the butt of cruel jokes by any means.

This was a new level, though. I'd been right about to pass from being just another royal chef to being immortalized. Ponies generations from now would read about me as Lady Amber Spice, discoverer of frying and inventor of the donut. Hay, I bet they'd even have been blessing my name at dinnertime alongside the King and Princess. But then the auditorium became a vomitorium and my career got blackballed more thoroughly than a steel ballbearing at a pitch factory.

Why does life have to be so ironic!?

So yeah, my professional life was pretty well over at this point. Nopony who was anypony was going to publicly associate with a known heretic like me, much less hire me on to cook for them. My best prospects to find work would be as a scullery maid in some small town like Podunk on the Swirlybeard's Muttonchop tributary, but even that was a long shot. Not to mention it would be a pale shadow of my former glory with zero chance for advancement, and we all know how I feel about stagnation.

While I have technically amassed enough of a fortune through my rather prestigious position as Royal Chef to live out the remainder of my days in mild discomfort without working another day in my life, that doesn't solve much anything beyond my survival. I'd live and die an unwanted, friendless old nag, and that's no kind of life for anypony. My parents might have still let me visit, provided I came under cover of darkness and stayed in a room constantly "undergoing renovations" so as not to scare off the customers... Hay, I doubt even Outta Stock would stand by me in the end. I know I wouldn't, had our situations been reversed.

"But Spicy," you whine, "I thought you said you were getting banished!"

To which I reply, "Shut your donut hole, I'm getting to that part!"

While my donuts' disastrous debut was enough to eternally brand me as a heretical pariah, it wasn't quite heinous enough to get me ejected from Unicornia. That offense would have to wait for my trial before the Council of Graybeards. Since I was an admittedly high profile character, it would have been simply unconscionable to sentence me without letting the press have a field day with it.

And these ponies have the nerve to call me overdramatic.

So apart from either languishing as an outcast or assuming a new identity and starting up an underground donut ring, my only option was to fight the Princess in court.

That life of crime is sounding pretty good about now, compared to what I've gotten myself into.

So, the trial.

The Platinum Court, where the proceedings were held, is a pretty opulent place. The domed ceiling was adorned with gold, silver, and, naturally, platinum in abundance. Between the precious metals, the copious quantities of finely cut diamond and topaz magelight gems, and the polished marble stepped floor, it was perfectly understandable for ponies to wear sunglasses if they expected to be in there for a while. Also, it is downright impossible to cast a proper shadow in that room. The overwhelming brightness is apparently supposed to symbolize Lanthanum's golden sun scrutinizing your very soul, revealing even your darkest secrets or something like that. That impression isn't hurt by the giant yellow and white magelight gem globe protruding from the ceiling's center, either.

The court's seating is arranged somewhat like this:

The whole thing is a sort of amphitheater. The pony presenting her case to the council sits or stands in the center, directly beneath the sun globe. In criminal cases like mine, the defendant shares the spotlight with the plaintiff and whatever witnesses are called.

On the next ring outwards and upwards sits the Council of Graybeards, looking down at me in contempt and disgust. Or maybe that was just indigestion. Can be hard to tell through all those beards.

Fun fact: Turns out it really is required to wear a beard while on the council. Even the mares. Those unicorns who cannot grow one themselves usually just tie on a fake, though using growth magic to sprout a temporary beard has been coming into vogue lately.

The next couple of rows up contained the rest of the court staff, like the bailiff and the stenographer, as well as the witnesses called to testify for or against me.

Then we had the press seating. You know, I'd always dreamed of some amazing food I'd created putting my name in the papers. Guess I got my wish, and it looks like I'll even be a headliner. Fate, you must be writhing in sadistic glee right about now.

Above the press were a couple rings dedicated to whatever nobles, officials, and political high muckity mucks deigned my case worth their oh-so-valuable time. Strangely enough, Pierce was absent from this section of seating.

Beyond that, up in the nosebleed section, was the seating for the hoi polloi. The various ne'er-do-wells who apparently had nothing better to do than to watch a heretic squirm. Well, I guess I can't fault them for indulging in some free entertainment.

And that about does it for where different denizens of the court could situate themselves. Now on to the actual trial.

"I am the honorable Magnum Cura, presiding. The case Common Decency vs. Amber Spice will proceed—"

A rust-red stallion with a golden mane, a goatee you could use as a wire brush, a pair of gleaming copper-colored sunglasses, and a horn made for puncturing steel plate then piped up saying, "Actually, Common Decency has been so offended by the notion of the defendant's offense, that she has recused herself from the case. I'm her chief assistant, Hatchet Job, and I am standing in her place."

Now there was a name to run from really fast. Hatchet Job had a reputation for being brutally effective whatever he did, especially in the courtroom. Rumor had it he was aiming for Common Decency's job as Solicitor General. Since his campaign of scrounging up all the dirt he could find on his boss was coming up empty (the ever-scrupulous Common Decency was clean as a whistle), he'd turned his brutal efficacy to winning high-profile court cases.

And here I was, poised to be another head mounted on his wall.

"Oh, Demonwings."

"Well then, the case Hatchet Job vs. Amber Spice shall proceed immediately. Amber Spice, you are charged with lesser heresy, attempted regicide, and failure to comply with Her Radiance's code of grooming for palace staff. How do you plead?"

I was half surprised they didn't accuse me of being fat, too. Still, that last charge gave me an idea.

"Grooming codes, your honor?" I answered in a honeyed tone, "Why, praytell, am I facing a civil charge in a criminal hearing?"

"A crime against fashion is a crime nonetheless," a nasally voice chimed in. One of the other councilponies. Flawless Mane, I think.

"Do you mean to tell me, sirs, that looking the way I do is a crime?" I replied, manic gleam in voice and eye.

"In a word, yes," he responded almost warily.

"Perhaps, Your Honor, you would like to charge my Princess-mandated servants with conspiracy to commit crimes against fashion and good taste as well? They have been party to my foul deeds in this realm since the code's inception!"

"It is the Princess's prerogative to press charges in such cases, and we the Council do not deign to speak for her in that regard."

I saw my chance, and I capitalized.

"Oh, I see how it is. Selectively enforcing the laws of the land against ponies you dislike. It's because I'm fluffy, isn't it?! Not every unicorn can be born with an easily managed coat who's hair just falls out when it gets too long, you know. Why, I'll bet I'm only facing charges at all because I don't look like the rest of you!"

"ENOUGH!" roared an incensed Magnum Cura. "I will not have my courtroom made into a mockery! The charge against Amber Spice for failing to comply with Her Radiance's code of grooming for palace staff is to be dismissed and stricken from the record, along with all related commentary. The remaining charges remain standing."

I'm not striking them from my record, you sons of horses.

"Now," he continued, his rage having vented, "as amusing as your shenanigans are, Amber Spice, you seem to have failed to make any pleas. Please rectify this forthwith."

Well, so much for making this room into my personal three-ring media circus and getting off scot-free in the ensuing legal and social drama. At least I managed to dodge that fashion rap.

"Ah, my pleas. I plead not guilty on both counts. I am not a heretic to any degree and am just as sure of our obvious superiority as the next unicorn. Grace, might, and majesty are inherent to the unicorn form with very few exceptions. Besides, I lend our dear King Lanthanum my power to help move the Sun at dawn and dusk, same as any of you!

"And I certainly never tried to kill anypony, let alone the Princess! How would that help me at all? I'm perfectly happy with the political situation here as it currently stands, and it's not as if I bear Her Radiance any ill will."

"We will determine your guilt or innocence once we have access to more credible testimony. Your pleas have been duly noted, and the trial shall proceed accordingly."

Some incomprehensible legalese later, they started calling in witnesses.

“Calling Lady Helios of House Helios to testify on behalf of Hatchet Job,” Magnum Cura boomed, prompting a mare colored like an unripe salmonberry to flow up to the podium across from both me and Hatchet Job.

"Lady Helios, do you swear upon Terra's horn, on which we stand, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"I do so swear."

"Thank you. You may begin."

"Thank you, Your Honor.

"As you are all likely aware, I am Lady Helios, head of House Helios and noblemare in good standing."

Because we weren't told that just now, apparently. Sometimes I wonder if these ponies ever really listen to themselves.

"The royal chef is a fiend. Neigh, a devil! I would not be surprised to find that her horn was a fake and that she's been hiding a pair of leathery wings under that indecently fluffy coat of hers!"

Not five minutes into the trial and already they were going for Ad Equinem attacks. Yep, I could tell where this day was going.

"She concocts these confections of insidious deliciousness to corrupt ponies and turn their minds from the light of Lanthanum's golden Sun towards the abysses inhabited by the minds of baser races."

And now I want a donut. Blast. Speaking of which–

"I would just like to point out that Lady Helios is still among the living and presumably virtuous, and yet she herself consumed no fewer than seventeen of my donuts–"

"And promptly proceeded to empty her stomach's contents upon the theater floor," Interrupted a mildly irritated Magnum Cura. "Miss Spice, I have been charged with hearing this case, and I will have an orderly courtroom. Is that clear?"

I nodded my assent.

"Good. If you would please continue, Lady Helios."

"Gladly," the somewhat ruffled noblemare replied.

"Now, I will admit that I consumed many of those fell confections, but that was before their true, nefarious nature had been brought to light. When I discovered it, though, I was so sickened by–"

"Lady Helios," Hatchet Job cut in, "you say you eventually found the donuts sickening. This implies a few things, among them the possibility a poison with a delayed onset. Might you describe how you felt upon consuming them initially? Might you have described it as, say, euphoric?"

"Yes, there was that," she replied, beginning to look concerned. "Eating them just felt so wonderful at first. So warm, light, flu–"

I think I saw her mouth start to water.

"So they started off by making you feel wonderful, and then you continued to eat them, well past what would ordinarily be considered healthy. How did eating them feel after, say, the thirteenth donut?"

"Well by that point," she continued, her look of concern growing in strength, "by that point I'd started to feel a bit ill."

"And yet you felt, shall we say, compelled to continue?"

"I suppose I did," she said in a near-whisper, her concern mutating into horror before our eyes. "I just couldn't help myself."

"Stallions and gentlemares of the Council," Hatchet Job intoned triumphantly, "by her own admission, Lady Helios felt compelled to continue ingesting these donuts long after doing so was clearly making her feel ill. I propose that this was not due to some gluttonous moral failing on her part, but was instead the result of these deserts having been enchanted. Charmed, if you will."

"Yes, it's true!" Lady Helios said in a panic. "The witch tried to poison us all with enchanted edibles! How could this have happened in blessed Unicornia?!"

"I believe the good Lady Helios has suffered enough for today. Bailiff, if you would."

At that, the bailiff escorted the hysterically sobbing mare from the Platinum Court while Magnum Cura prepared to call in the first witness for my defense.

"Calling Assistant Royal Chef Crunch to testify on behalf of Amber Spice."

My two-straws-short-of-a-bale assistant had a tendency to make up for his general lack of smarts with an overabundance of enthusiasm. Typically I found this trait endearing. His unquestioning faith in my abilities and ideas combined with the impressive zeal and gusto with which he'd carry out whatever simple tasks I'd give him was not only adorable, it also made him grade A minion material. Sometimes it would even net me some positive unexpected results by taking my instructions to a logical extreme, like that time he made three bowls of merengue from just two eggs.

Sadly, this was not one of those times.

"Assistant Royal Chef Crunch, do you swear upon Terra's horn, on which we stand, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"I swear upon Terra's Horn, on which we stand, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!"

"Thank you, Crunch. You may begin your testimony now."

"You're welcome, your honor. I will begin my testimony now."

He sat there for a minute, looking like he had something to say on the tip of his tongue, but not quite knowing how to say it out loud. Thankfully, Councilmare Piercing Beam broke up the silence before it could proceede to true awkwardness.

"Perhaps you could start by telling us how you know Royal Chef Amber Spice."

I think she may have been one of the ponies to select him to testify.

"How I know Amber Spice? Amber Spice is my boss! She's the best chef ever, and she's a pretty good boss too. She always makes sure I know exactly what she wants me to do, and then I do it the best that I can.

"She even let's me try out her new recipes before anypony else gets to," he said with the goofiest grin on his muzzle. "They usually turn out pretty good, which is how she got her job I guess."

"Say, Mr. Crunch. I can call you that, right?" Hatchet Job.

"I don't see why not," Crunch replied.

"Splendid! So, Mr. Crunch, about how often would you say Amber Spice—"

Hatchet Job was sewing the seeds of my downfall, I just knew it. How could I tell he was sewing the seeds of my downfall? His lips were moving.

"Your honor, I object! He's talking to one of my witnesses, and I wasn't allowed to talk to his."

"The objection has been overruled," a peeved Magnum Cura pronounced. "Perhaps if the defendant had spent the time preceding her trial learning about basic courtroom procedure, she would understand why Hatchet Job's questions are allowed while her interruptions are not."

"As I was asking, my good friend Mr. Crunch, about how often would you say Amber Spice offers you a new recipe to taste?"

"I'd say about once a month, usually. More-or-less weekly if I count new twists on old dishes. She hadn't been producing anything new for the past few months and that made her really sad, and I was sad too.

"But a few weeks ago she came up something called 'frying' and it's been nonstop new eats since then! They've mostly been really good, too, especially the donuts. Are there any donuts here? Lady Helios said something about them earlier, and now I'm really hungry for some."

He's just so adorable when he gets excited. His sincerity helps, too. It's such a shame the unsettling way the light suddenly decided to glint off of Hatchet Job's sunglasses just then had to kill the moment for me.

"Why, Mr. Crunch, it seems you are rather fond of Miss Spice. Is she just as fond of you?"

I swear, that grin of his could slice open a sack of flour at fifty yards.

"Well, maybe not as fond of me as I am of her," he answered with a bashful grin, "but she seems to like me well enough in a professional sense. She keeps giving me things to do, and she seems pretty satisfied with the results," he finished with a slight glow of pride.

"You say you are fond of her. You say that she asks much of you, and that you always give willingly. Do you ever think to... question her suggestions?"

I swear, a grin that predatory does not belong on a pony's face. Maybe there's something to those rumors of Hatchet Job's being part dragon...

"Nope! I'll admit I'm not the sharpest of unicorns so I can't always see where she's going with an instruction, but experience has taught me not to question her orders. If I just do what I'm told really well, things usually turn out great! Things just seem to go wrong in ways I don't understand whenever I try to take matters into my own hooves."

"So it's safe to say you'd do anything this made asked, never thinking to question her or her motives."

"Yep! I would do anything for her."

"Thank you, Mr. Crunch, for making that clear," he cordially replied to Crunch before wheeling to face me. "Miss Spice, do you have any words for Mr. Crunch?"

While Hatchet Job's grin had been deepening, the color in my coat had been draining to the point where I was a bone yellow. I had a number of words for my situation, but very few of them were printable and I didn't feel like sorting through the stack right then. Instead, I settled for a feeble "I would like to dismiss Assistant Royal Chef Crunch from the witness's stand."

Magnum Cura sustained the dismissal and Crunch pranced from the courtroom, completely oblivious to the sinister picture Hatchet Job had painted with his words. Hatchet Job is a master of spin and innuendo. It's little wonder how he managed to get so far in his field.

"Your Honor, before we call in the next witness to speak on my behalf," Hatchet Job interjected, "I would like to point out some possible connections to the council between the witnesses so far. If I may?"

"You may," Magnum Cura supplied.

"Lady Helios's testimony suggests that the donuts were both poisoned and enchanted to alter the eater's behavior. This Crunch pony displayed a devotion to Amber Spice that was nothing short of fanatical and utterly unquestioning. Not only that, but he was well accustomed to consuming strange, unknown foods on a regular basis.

"Who is to say that such fervor couldn't have been inspired through enchanted foodstuffs?"

"Hrm. Your speculation will be taken into account, Hatchet Job," Magnum Cura stated.

"Calling Squeaky Clean to testify on behalf of Hatchet Job."

Squeaky Clean, the suds-white and bald-as-an-egg soapmaking stallion I bought some grease from, slunk up to the stand.

"Squeaky Clean, do you swear upon Terra's Horn, on which we stand, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"I do."

"Thank you. You may now begin your testimony."

"Thanks, Your Honor.

"That mare over there, Amber Spice? She threatened to have me thrown into one of my own lye vats!"

"I did no such thing!" I interjected. I may have been thinking it or even lightly implying it, but I sure as the sun shines didn't say it out loud. "The only vat of lies involved is the one you're filling right now."

"Amber Spice, you will remain silent while the witnesses speak!" Magnum Cura stated forcefully.

Well okay then.

"Continue if you will, Squeaky Clean."

"Just Mr. Clean, if you please."

"As you wish, Mr. Clean."

"Could... could you make her stop doing that? She's staring at me like she wants to set me on fire, and her history as a chef makes me think she just might be able to."

Yes, I was indeed glaring needles at him. However, I was then and yet remain woefully unable to actually magically ignite him. If I was right next to him for a few seconds I might be able to scald him, but not likely much else.

Didn't stop them from clamping a bright sky blue cone of shame onto my horn, and this in turn failed to keep me from intensifying my glare from needles up to stiletto spikes.

"Amber Spice, I would have you know that intimidating a witness into a hysterical breakdown is not helping your case. At all," Magnum Cura droned wearily as the witness was carted off by the able bodied bailiff.

And I would have loved to let everyone know that

A) he was already mostly like that when I found him, and

B) it's his own fault for letting himself get intimidating by an extra fluffy, slightly overweight unicorn mare.

But I didn't, as even then I valued my continued existence and thought I might still have some claim to it if I played my cards right.

"Calling Pierce the Omnipotent, Court Magician, to offer expert testimony on behalf of Amber Spice."

Ah yes. The reason he wasn't in the spectator seating was because he was taking part in the main event. Of course.

I wasn't sure what to think of this development. On the one hoof, it was a high-profile witness speaking in my favor. On the other hoof, it was Pierce, and he would be talking about me. In public.

I could only hope he'd keep things toned down for the public's sake.

"Pierce the Omnipotent, Court Magician, do you swear upon Terra's Horn, on which we stand, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"I do, sir."

"Thank you. You may now begin your testimony."

"I was contacted by one of the good stallions of the Council to offer my expert knowledge on Amber Spice's magical prowess. I have regular contact with that fine mare, and I must say that Hatchet Job is grossly overestimating her abilities.

"First off, according to her most recent full physical, her telekinesis is only strong enough to maybe forcibly subdue a housecat, depending on how angry it is."

Ugh. The less I remember about Mr. Scrabbly, the better.

"A fully grown pony would be out of the question.

"While she is an accomplished chef, it is doubtful she would be able to use her powers to actually harm another pony. She has the ability to warm or chill a stationary object of moderate size at close range by an appreciable amount, given enough time. However, it would be nearly impossible for her do so without her prospective victim noticing.

"As for her skill with weapons, she lacks any sort of formal combat training. She is capable of using several tools at once with precision, including knives, but once again only at fairly close range and not with great force.

"In other words, she's mostly harmless. If you would please remove that incredibly tacky cone of shame from that unfortunate mare's horn?"

The bailiff walked up to me and released my horn from the restraint, which I was quite thankful for. Do you have any idea what it's like not having access to your magic? Imagine needing to sneeze, but the sneeze just never comes.

That said, he got that cone off of me by declaring me to officially be a magical lightweight, so I was a bit conflicted.

"Pierce, I know you said that her magical skills have little to no direct combat application, but what of indirect applications? The possibility of enchanted foods has been raised earlier today. Can you confirm this as plausible?" a subtly hopeful Hatchet Job asked smoothly.

"I can confirm that fear as laughable, sir. While Amber here is somewhat skilled at enchanting an object, she needs to know a spell in order to enchant something with its effects. On her mandatory Young Adult Magical Aptitude Test, she showed about zero potential with mind-altering spells and scored well below average on illusions. It is beyond unlikely that she has grown in skill in those fields enough since then for her to make a pony fall in love with her or her foods through unconventional means.

"The only thing she has that could enchant my mind is that body," he said with a disquieting purr.

"I have no further questions for the witness," Hatchet Job stated, somewhat disappointed. "Does Amber Spice wish to speak with him at all?"

"No, I don't."

"Pierce the Omnipotent, you are dismissed."

"Calling Pierce Pinnacle of house Pinnacle to testify on behalf of Hatchet Job."

Only halfway out of the Platinum Court, Pierce turned on his hooves and trotted right back up to the stand.

"Well," spoke a somewhat bemused Magnum Cura, "this is somewhat irregular, but hardly unprecedented. Since you have already been sworn in, I see no reason why you shouldn't be allowed to proceed immediately."

"Thank you, sir."

Now I was definitely not bemused. Confused? Yes, I was a bit confused. That pony had just finished defending me in court. He'd done so by trashing my skills as a mage, but it was the most solid defense I'd received all day and had thoroughly countered Hatchet Job's foremost lead on convincing the Council of Graybeards that I was a dangerous assassin. Then, before he'd even effectively left the room, he was called back to the stand to testify against me. I think I had the right to be confused.

Amused, though, I most certainly was not.

"Since you just finished defending Miss Spice under oath, I cannot help but wonder what you have to say of her in condemnation," Hatchet Job stated, apparently sharing Magnum Cura's bemusement.

"Oh I do have something to say, sir. I believe you've been coming at this from the wrong angle. Your original plan of attack is untenable, for Amber Spice lacks the requisite skills to magically poison her foes. That, and you have yet to address the glaring question of motive. Lucky for you, I know her well enough to deduce that motive:

"Amber Spice is strange. She's not a part of the herd. She is, and always has been, an outcast from the blessing. It doesn't take a magical genius like me to see that she would resent this deeply.

"I would be the first to admit that I find her physically attractive and wouldn't at all mind going for the occasional roll in the hay with her, but no sort of deeper relationship would be possible for us. Her views and attitudes are just too abnormal for her to properly relate to anypony.

"This mare, you see, has no respect for tradition. She's always focused on finding something new and untested, rather than on her skills at reproducing already perfected forms. Hardly a trait you would find in any mentally stable unicorn."

Not mentally stable?! That was a low blow, even for Pierce. I mean, yeah, I've had a couple of breakdowns in my time, but that was when I was having an existential crisis because I couldn't figure out a way to do something that was supposed to be my special talent. Perfectly understandable. It's certainly nothing to start bandying about such phrases as "mentally unstable" over, right?

"Our beloved ruler, Her Radiance Princess Topaz, on the other hoof, is a paragon of stability and order in all times and in all seasons," Pierce recited. "It seems simply miraculous to me that the two of them haven't come into serious conflict much sooner.

"A unicorn so unhinged as to search the unknown for improvement over the perfection inherent in Unicornian tradition might not behave as a normal unicorn in other situations. Where a normal, well-adjusted Unicornian citizen would, upon finding themselves to be out of line with society, adjust themselves to fit in; a maladjusted, heretical mare such as Amber Spice might try to change her world to better suit herself instead.

"Perhaps, when such a mare found herself found herself in disagreement with somepony in authority, she thought to remove that authority rather than acquiesce.

"She may not have magical means of controlling or poisoning ponies, but with her mundane skills in the kitchen, she wouldn't need anything more.

"Then again, perhaps she can put to use some exotic methods using knowledge from other races that no good unicorn should know?

"I hope I have been of service to the Platinum Court. I will now leave the Council to ruminate upon my words."

"Yes, Pierce Pinnacle of House Pinnacle, you are dismissed and may return to your seat," Magnum Cura said, looking somewhat disturbed.

I was pretty disturbed, too. A lot of the more outrageous claims Hatchet Job was trying to smear me with, I could get over by being outraged and hoping that everypony else would eventually realize how ridiculous they were.

Pierce's line of attack, though, was so plausible I might have believed it had I not been, well, me. It does suck dragon eggs being the odd mare out, and I'd be lying big time if I said I didn't resent "normal" unicorns just a bit for how easily they fit in.

Have I ever felt tempted to poison the Princess's food? Maybe slightly when she was being particularly whiny about her food, but then I'd remember that not only would poisoning her make me a horrible pony, it would also cost me my job.

"Calling Outta Stock to testify on behalf of Amber Spice," Magnum Cura said.

Stale saffron, Stocky. I didn't need you to stick your neck out for me and risk your reputation by sticking up for a pariah.

Not that the gesture isn't as appreciated as a convenient shade cloud in the summer heat.

"Outta Stock, do you swear upon Terra's Horn, on which we stand, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"I swear," Outta Stock affirmed.

"Thank you. You may now proceed with your testimony."

"Thank you, Your Honor.

"I've got to admit, though, that I am not a huge fan of the legal process as it stands. Don't get me wrong; I am well aware that it or something similar is necessary in order for us to have a fair and just society where good ponies can live free from the tyranny of ponies who would abuse power.

"How can you judge a pony properly, though, if you don't know her? I have yet to come up with a good answer for that question in the not-so-long twenty-four years of my life, so instead I'll do my best to solve that problem a different way. I'll do my best to get you fine unicorns of the Council to see Amber Spice the way that I know her. I guess you could call me a character witness."

"I object!" Hatchet Job objected. "This individual is clearly in contempt of court. Not only has he personally stated his discontent with the Unicornian Justice System, this notion of a so-called 'character witness' that he espouses is both highly irregular and largely irrelevant."

There was a good deal of intense murmur ring among the mares and stallions of the Council of Graybeards for a couple of minutes. Leave it to Stocky to give ponies something to talk about.

"Your objection, Hatchet Job, is overruled. As much as we value piety and respect for the State, this unicorn, Outta Stock, brings up issues that we cannot in good conscience ignore. We shall test his suggestion this once.

"Mr. Stock, if you would please continue."

"With pleasure, Your Honor."

Something told me that, within his heart of hearts, he was blowing raspberries at Hatchet Job with all of his might.

"You might ask, Your Honor, who I am to say that I know this made any better than any of you. To answer, I am the clerk in charge of the Royal Alchemical Stockroom, and I provide many of the precision instruments with which Amber Spice produces the royal meals."

"So she uses alchemical instruments in the making of these meals? One can only wonder what residues, intentionally or not, make it into–" Hatchet Job suggested, apparently mistaking a pause for an invitation to butt in.

"I take offense to the suggestion that any of the instruments in my stockroom are anything but perfectly clean," Outta Stock said with a pinch of righteous fury. "If you knew the first thing about alchemy, you'd know that in order for each experiment to be deemed valid, each and every surface and piece of equipment must be scrubbed, sanitized, and cleansed of any impurity to a degree that would make your dear granny's 'spotless' kitchen look like a mudpony's swampy den by comparison.

"Now that you're hopefully done putting my professional pride on the line," he continued, visibly and audibly less incensed, "I can proceed with my story."

"So that's how we met. She didn't think the instruments used by the other denizens of the royal kitchens measured up to her expectations, so she traded up from measuring cops to volumetric flasks. I was more than happy to further the great Unicornian ideal of precision, so I got her what she needed and made sure I was always there when she needed more.

"I also noticed that she was a mare who had trouble relating to most other ponies. Being a good citizen and member of the Blessing, I befriended her. We've been close friends for about five years now, and coworkers at the Royal Palace about a month longer than that. I can honestly say I know her well.

"Amber Spice is a mare who loves things to be precise and perfect. Once she has an idea, she won't rest until she has tweaked it to be the best it can possibly be. I should know: I've had to personally pull her out of an endless loop a few times just in time to keep her from collapsing from exhaustion. The results of this drive for perfection are obvious, too. I doubt anypony here can remember a time when the food at this castle has been as high quality or as interesting as it has been during her tenure here."

I heard a heartening murmuring of approval from many ponies of the palace at this.

"A drive for perfection," Outta Stock continued once the murmuring died down, "while admirable, won't get you anyplace fast unless you can actually get there. Not every rube from the berry patch has the brains to take a good concept to fruition, after all. Persistence gets you nothing unless you're clever enough to be persistent in the right direction. This cleverness, this ingenuity, is something that Amber Spice has in spades.

"Amber Spice is a clever pony. Some of the ways she's blindsided me in the little prank war we've had running between us since we met..."

He trailed off there, resting his pastern on his cheek in nostalgia for a couple seconds before continuing to speak.

"Pranks are a little beside the point, though. What I mean to say about her, is that she is ingenious in how she pursues her goals. When she's presented with a problem that she is invested in, she's able to make intuitive leaps and mold the fragmented pieces before her into a working whole. The shape of the much-maligned donut, I'm told, is one such leap. Seeing that the outside of a pastry was cooking too fast while the inside cooked too slowly, she gouged a hole through its center to increase the surface area exposed to the heat. It's a solution I'd expect one of our alchemists to come up with after a month of study, but Spicy here made the connection swift as can be!"

Okay, I may have fibbed a little to Stocky on how that event went down, but I certainly understood why that solution worked after-the-fact. Maybe I subconsciously knew that would work and that's why I impaled the impudent pastry on my horn? Yeah, let's stick with that.

"She's clever and insightful, and she loves precision. I've known plenty of smart ponies with an eye for detail, though, who have done nothing with their lives. It takes something more than just that to make a pony special. What does Amber Spice have that so many lack? The ambition to improve."

Oh you flatterer. Tell me more about why I'm amazing!

"It seems you're quite taken with this Amber mare," Hatchet Job remarked snidely. "Perhaps you'd like to tell us how she smells, or how she performs in—"

"Hatchet Job, I have had enough of your horse apples! You of all ponies should know the value of professionalism and keeping a civil tongue in one's head. Now, you will either sit back quietly and respect my rights as a witness to tell my story, or I will personally find a way to cram a titration pipette up your plot, sideways. Am I being perfectly clear, sir? Good."

The nerve of some ponies. Respectable ponies don't imply that sort of thing about a mare, even if she is on trial. About time that spell-stumper got what was coming to him, I'd say.

That said, how does Outta Stock get away with saying things like that? That is a superpower I might be willing to kill for.

And no, I am not currently nor was I then blushing, and I was most certainly not imagining what such a scene as Hatchet Job was insinuating might look like. Besides, there's no way you could have seen that through a coat this (apparently criminally) fluffy.

"As I was saying, my good friend Amber Spice is not only a clever perfectionist; she also has the ambition and motivation to do something about it and never settles for 'well enough' when she knows she can make it better. If Unicornia didn't have ponies willing to push their limits like that, where would we be? No fine art would be made. There would be no masters of magic to be found. This very courtroom would just be a drab wooden box if every unicorn just settled for the lowest common denominator instead of striving to become something better.

"Many wonderful things in our land exist only because some unicorn had the ambition to master their craft, and foods are no exception. Amber Spice is a master chef who pours her very soul into everything she makes. The ability to craft the best meals she possibly can is her life.

"Without the creative outlet her job as Royal Chef provides her, what is she?"

That's a good question. What am I if I lose the opportunity to be a chef? I guess I'm about to find out.

"One might as well ask 'what is a unicorn without a horn.' As the Royal Chef, though, she is a blessing to everypony who tastes of the fruits of her labors, and the Royal Palace would be a duller place without her."

Thanks, Stocky. I guess the Royal Palace would be a less interesting place without me. Bland food, a decided lack of explosions... Not that the Princess would ever admit she missed me out loud.

"The desire for precision and perfection, the cleverness to get there, and the undying ambition to improve herself until she reaches it. These are all traits I've found in Amber Spice, and anypony in the audience would be proud to exemplify even one of these qualities.

"In short, Amber Spice is a good mare who embodies many of Unicornia's highest values; she just does so in ways most aren't used to seeing."

"Thank you for your contributions, Mr. Stock. We will take your testimony on Amber Spice's character into account when we render our final judgement on her."

I don't know how many hearts that speech of his changed, but I could have kissed Outta Stock right then. Moon over mountains I'm going to miss him.

Now if only the trial could have ended right there.

"Calling Her Radiance, Princess Topaz, to testify on behalf of Hatchet Job!" Magnum Cura proclaimed.

Puzzlingly, there was a complete and utter lack of any other sort of fanfare as the regal gray mare stepped up to the stand, unless you count a redoubling of Hatchet Job's aura of smugness.

"Your Radiance, Princess Topaz," Magnum Cura reverently intoned, "do you swear upon Terra's Horn, on which we stand, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"I swear upon both Terra's Horn and my name as Princess of Unicornia to do so," she solemnly replied.

"Thank you. You may now begin your testimony, Your Radiance."

"Thank you, Your Honor.

"I could not help but notice the efficacy of Outta Stock's testimony on behalf of Amber Spice as a character witness. I would commend him for defending his friend with such vigor.

"However, I too knew this mare, and I must point out some details that his testimony left out," she stated, teasing at a golden curl in her mane. "I hope to provide my own perspective on her character.

"My Father, the King, began employing her a few years ago as Royal Chef because he was bored. Bored out of his blessed skull. Apparently, eating the same gruel day after day becomes quite taxing when you are expected to juggle the celestial spheres.

"Because I love my father dearly, I went along with his hiring this... peculiar pony to cook his meals and help relieve his ennui. I've managed to tolerate her for most of these past few years, and even managed to enjoy a good portion of her meals.

"There was always something bothering me about her, though," she sighed with a wondering flourish. "Something about the way in which she took pride in her work was off.

"Yes, she would prepare interesting variations on old favorites. Many of these could be seen as refinements coming closer to the dish's intended form. However, these weren't the meals she took the most pride in.

"No, the meals she took greatest pride in preparing were those that were original creations."

The sneer she said that with contorted her muzzle in a way that reminded me of scrambled eggs.

"Instead of putting her energy into refining her skill at reproducing traditional forms, she often twists the old forms, or worse, abandons them altogether in favor of whatever breed of whimsy she suffers from at a particular moment. She has no respect for the perfection that is Unicornian tradition."

"Twisted... That truly is the operative word here, isn't it?" she rhetorically queried, cocking her head my way with a knowing smirk. "Portrayed in one light, she seems to embody many of Unicornia's core values. In truth, though, she twists our great culture's values like a horn gnarled by decay.

"I will grant that her attention to detail and her skill at doing something precisely as she intends to are commendable. I daresay if I had even half of her inclination, affairs of state would drive me simply mad."

About two thirds of the audience chuckled politely at her little "joke." I, however, remained resolutely unamused in the face of her charms.

"I am perfectly fine with her possessing that quality, and even wish that it were more common among my staff. However, her cleverness and her ambition to improve, which Mr. Stock lauded so highly, are horrifically misguided in how she applies them.

"As I mentioned before, Miss Spice does not take pride in honing a skill or perfectly reproducing the essence of a traditional dish. No, that just doesn't satisfy you, does it, Amber Spice," she said, turning to address me directly in a voice that was smooth as fine linen and yet felt as if it could cut me down where I stood.

"No. Being perfect isn't enough for you; you have to be different. Unique. Well I have some news for you, Miss Special Snowflake: There is nothing new under the Sun. You may think yourself and your works to be different. That nopony has walked the earth who is just like you and that that means you're special. The truth is, you're just as special as the next snowflake that falls on a drift, only to be trodden under hoof or molded into a snowball.

"Of course," she said, visibly and audibly reining herself in, "that hasn't stopped you from perverting our ways and our values. You continue to believe that invention is a worthwhile pursuit in spite of the evidence to the contrary that surrounds you on a daily basis."

I'll give her one thing: she can spit out a word with such disgust it would give me flashbacks to the results of my "accidentally" slipping her some sour wine to see if she'd complain about its flavor the same way she did about the perfectly fermented ones. Turns out she has multiple levels of responses for that sort of thing, by the way.

"I'd move to have you institutionalized, but it's clear you're just depraved. Those mud ponies you borrowed your latest innovation from? Your philosophy is more like theirs than you realize. They likewise believed that they could improve their lives by looking to the future while ignoring our glorious past and present.

"Unicornia has no room for that sort of backwards thinking, Amber Spice, and you have had plenty of time to mend your ways. Consider my testimony your letter of termination," she concluded, haughtily thrusting her snout into the air before flouncing off to her seat as she was dismissed.

"Calling Assistant Royal Chef Crispidy to testify..."

Finally, we would get to hear the far more competent and professional of my assistants—

"...on behalf of Hatchet Job."

—throw me unceremoniously into a pit. Full of spikes. This was not the best day ever.

"Assistant Royal Chef Crispidy, do you swear upon Terra's Horn, on which we stand, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"I swear to do my duty as a Unicornian citizen."

"Thank you. You may now begin your testimony."

Oh Crispidy, you son of a horse. What did you hope to gain? My job? Fat chance. An attaboy and a pat on the head? Maybe. Most likely you'll get demoted to bus boy for sharing a kitchen with a known heretic. It'll serve you right, too.

"Thank you, Your Honor.

"I am Crispidy, and I have worked directly under Amber Spice as her assistant alongside Crunch for the past couple of years. That I have survived so long in this position is somewhat miraculous," he stated, all business.

"Your Honor, Amber Spice is dangerous. She doesn't care what or who she endangers in her pursuit of new foods. It is only through Crunch's resilience, my caution, and her impossible luck that none of us have sustained serious injury or death."

Impossible luck?! You mean the kind of luck that turned a small grease fire into a hair-charring, room-blackening explosion? Crispidy sure has a whacked-out perspective.

"Crispidy, my good sir, you have intrigued me," Hatchet Job smarmed affably. "Care to elaborate upon what sort of workplace hazards she engenders?”

“Sure. For instance, her cooking experiments usually end in either fire or explosions. Sometimes both, as happened in the recent incident when she was first testing out frying food.

"In General, she has a fondness for fire, and fire seems to follow her wherever she goes. The reason her "test kitchen" was built was to keep her contained and away from anything or anyone valuable while she did her more extreme experiments."

"Are you saying, Crispidy, that you don't trust Amber Spice to do her job safely? That she's a menace to those around her?" Hatchet Job asked, flashing that trademark draconic grin of his.

Stony faced, Crispidy replied, "I'm saying that Amber Spice is the sort of mare whom I wouldn't trust around matches, much less around the Royal Palace or the Royal Family."

"Thank you, Crispidy. That will be all."

"No further witnesses are listed. Hatchet job, does the prosecution have anything that remains to be said?"

"Neigh, your honor, the prosecution rests," said a self-satisfied Hatchet Job who looked like the cat who'd just swallowed the canary.

"And what of you, Amber Spice? What more do you have to say for yourself?"

"Oh I've got something more to say, all right. This trial is a farce!"

The whole courtroom plunged into silence. Even the plebeians in the nosebleed section. That didn't stop me, though. Oh no. I was just getting warmed up.

"For starters, you only gave me one credible witness to testify in my defense. One! Of the other two, one was my less-than-competent, two eggs short of a baker's dozen, strangely loyal underling, and the other was an insufferable pig who's testimony consisted entirely of alternately hitting on me and direly insulting me."

"What can I say? I've got a thing for mares with a bit more meat on them," Pierce called out from the witnesses' row.

"Long history of sexual harassment aside, need I mention that said pig testified for both sides? That has got to pose a serious conflict of interests! That's how these things work, right? I could name five ponies off the top of my head that I'd rather have representing me on the pedestal. Why couldn't I at least be involved in choosing ponies to defend me?

"Meanwhile, the prosecution got star witnesses like Her Radiance Princess Topaz. How am I supposed to stand up to that?"

"And about that: How am I supposed to defend myself in court against a seasoned professional like Hatchet Job on my own? I'm just a chef. I haven't had the opportunity to study Unicornian law for a bajillion years!"

Hatchet Job nodded enthusiastically at this.

"And don't even get me started on the charges. Who in their right mind would think that I'd tried to kill Princess Topaz? She's a wonderful mare and working for her family already pays the bills far better than anypony else could afford to. And don't even think I've forgotten about the charge that I'd failed to comply with a code of cleanliness just because I'm just so sparking much fluffier than any normal unicorn has any right to be. Well it's within my rights, gouge it!

"They taught me back when I was a little filly that if I was ever accused of a crime, I'd be innocent until proven guilty and I'd be given a fair trial. But you... all of you... I was already a convict, an assassin, a heretic in your eyes before I entered this court. I've got the right to a fair trial, so why isn't any of this fair!?"

The waterworks may or may not have been running at this point.

"It's just not fair," I said, more subdued. "I shouldn't be here. It's Thursday. Salad day. I should be home, sipping some mead celebrating whatever new leafy abomination I and my brother came up with during the day...

"I never meant for any of this." I sniffled. "I shouldn't even be here. All I wanted was to make something new. Something to celebrate. Maybe even something to be remembered for. All I ever did wrong was correctly cite my sources..."

"I shouldn't be here. Why am I here? Why am I here?!"

Magnum Cura tried to interject ,"I think we have heard en—"

"I will let you know when you have heard enough! With all due respect, Your Honor, I will not be silenced until I have said my piece.

"Why are you all looking at me like I'm some dangerous animal? Like I'm a rabid dog that has to be hunted down and disposed of? Court Magician Pierce the Omnipotent himself already told you I'm a mediocre mage who could barely overpower a housecat, and I'm not about to win any prizes for physical fitness, either. I'm a CHEF, for pony's sake. What under Lanthanum's golden sun is so sparking threatening about me?!"

It was technically spoken in my defense. I'll take what I can get.

"Hmm... Actually, that is rather baffling. Why am I the star of such a high profile court case?" I mused, tapping a hoof to my chin. "What could possibly make this case so important as to require the attention of the Council of Graybeards?"

"Okay, let's backtrack a little. So, I got into this whole mess by using a method I got from reading a book on Earth pony culture to cook something everypony who tried it loved. Not exactly something I'd expect to cause a popular uprising to dethrone the Princess, but... Hmm.

"I know it was the Earth pony part that got me in trouble, but—ohh. This is one of those implications things, isn't it! My taking inspiration from Earth ponies where all things Unicornian failed to give me so much as a spark implies that I don't believe unicorns to have a monopoly on good ideas and maybe Earth ponies are not inherently inferior to us. And everypony feasting upon the fruits of my labors implies that on some level, they agree with me! Even the Princess!"

"But that's not what we're taught in school. It's not what we're taught every Unicornia day in those pageants. To even think such things is unthinkable! Mud ponies, with something worthwhile to say?" I let out a cackle. Can't have good unicorns thinking like that! That'd be simply–

"Heretical..."

Holy Terra's padded backside, do I ever know how to step in it.

"It... It all makes sense now. The Council convening, the press attending, the Princess speaking out against me, the skewed witness selection... You never meant for this to be a proper trial at all, did you?."

However hot that room was, it needed to be less so. Same with the light. Really wish I'd had some sunglasses about then. Did you know that walls could close in on you in an amphitheater?

"No... You never meant for me to have a chance. This is no court room, this is a pillory! A place to shove me, bound, into a spotlight so you can humiliate me! It's not even about punishing me because I was bad: It was about sending a message! Well, it worked! I have been humiliated. I am now lower than a swamp a mud pony just took a dump in. Your message to Unicornia is ringing out loud and clear!"

My increasingly hysterical voice rang out over the otherwise silent courtroom for a couple seconds as I caught my breath. A voice within me whispered, 'Well, Spicy, you're in quite the fix. The most powerful ponies in Unicornia are out for your blood. They want to see you fall, and fall hard.

'And falling you are. Why not make an impact when you reach the bottom? If you're going to go out, go out with a bang! You're a dead mare anyway, so what more could it hurt?

'After all, since when have you ever been known to do anything halfway?'

Now I don't advise taking advice from a voice in your head as a general rule, but this one had a point. At this point, my future looked like bleak isolation eventually degenerating into begging at street corners at best. Given that the government seemed bent on making an example of me, I'd have been lucky to have gotten that.

They wanted an example? By Platinum's ashes, I'd give them an example for the books.

"In light of recent developments," I chirped with a decidedly less-than-entirely-hinged glint in my eyes, "the vast majority of you can all go burn in the deepest pits of Tartarus! I spend my hours and days attempting to craft delectable new delicacies for your stodgy, status quo, bland-seeking tongues, and I've had it up to my horn with you all!"

Ooh, it felt good to get that off my back. If I'd known before how cathartic this was, I'd have done it a lot earlier! Except I wouldn't have, because I valued my life and livelihood. Amazing how opinions change with the times.

"You want to know precisely how many hairs have ended up in Princess Topaz's meals over the years of my employ? Three! And those were from when Crispidy here thought nopony would notice his covertly sampling Her Radiance's soup while it was on its way out the door last June. I didn't mention it at the time because for one thing, the soup smelled so good I couldn't blame him, and for another, I'd always valued his input when I was devising a new dish. It's such a shame he doesn't seem to value me in return.

"Speaking of him, Hey Crispidy! You're a traitor and a coward. Also, you don't wash enough and your mother dresses you funny!"

Ah, the liberation of inevitable doom. I could say pretty much anything I wanted at that point while I waited for the shock to wear off of the crowd. Provided I didn't do anything too stupid, at least, like implicate my family or Outta Stock.

"Now who else among the crowd demands special attention? Not you, Crunch. You're a great pony, but I just don't think things would work out between us.

"Pierce? Your mother was a mud pony and your father smelt of salmonberries! Nothing against the attractiveness of unicorns in general, but I'd have been more likely to accept the amorous advances of a wild boar than accept the propositions of a pig with a horn."

One of my favorite memories is going to be watching him cringe at that line.

"And while I'm flinging about curses and epithets, I've got a special batch prepped for you, Outta Stock! May you live in interesting times, may you come to the attention of ponies in authority, and may you always find exactly what you're looking for!"

I cast a glance up his way to find a small smile on his muzzle and sad tears barely confined to his half-closed eyes. He got the joke, too, it seemed.

Sorry, Stocky, it looks like I got the last laugh after all.

By Lanthanum's diamond throne, I'm going to miss you.

"Hey, Large Charge!"

Magnum Cura grimaced. This moment alone vindicated my taking that course in Atinlay.

"Yeah I'm talking to you, Blue and Bulky!"

His grimace deepened. Some would say I've got no right calling other ponies fat, being halfway there myself. I say it gives me every right.

"You call yourself a judge, but you've been nothing but a bully since I got here today. Instead of trying to keep a fair and balanced court of law, you've just been telling me to shut up and sit down while other ponies tarnish my good name.

"And then there's Princess Topaz," I drizzled in a tone sweet as honey, yet bitter as venom. "The nag who promoted me! I've been catering to your whims for years without uttering a single complaint. Can't quite say the same for you, I'm afraid. I'm more of a mead mare myself, but you whine about your wine so much, why, I could swear you'd been swapped at birth with the Royal B—"

*zzzhirp*

I had been right about to lay down a real bon mot about Her Radiance's uncanny similarity to the royal family dog, but a positively rabid Magnum Cura had cast a zipperlips spell on me. And ponies say they don't act like their pets...

"I do believe we've heard ENOUGH!"

Magnum Cura let his shout finish ringing through the Platinum Court before speaking again, and nopony else dared to challenge it. Not another sound in the entire amphitheater. Funny how getting lost in one's own musings keeps her from noticing a pony's teeth-grinding, simmering rage until it finally boils over. You'd think I'd have at least noticed his coat going from blue to purple.

"Now," he seethed in a far more subdued tone, "the Council has much to discuss as it determines Amber Spice's fate. The Platinum Court is adjourned for a fifteen minute recess while we do so."

With that, the Council of Graybeards retreated to the private meeting room adjoining the courtroom. Most of the other ponies shambled out of the Platinum Court wearing varying expressions of shocked silence. Of the few who remained, most were common unicorns whispering furtively to each other in the upper rows. Judging by how they generally kept stealing glances at me, they were probably talking about the show I'd just put on or muttering about the nerve I must have had to pull it off.

I guess they weren't very good at being furtive if I could tell what they were doing, but it's not like there was much else for me to focus on while confined to the center ring.

As long as I didn't feel much like self-examination, at least, and I really didn't feel like taking a close look at myself right then. Figured I could do as much self-examination as I pleased once I was dead.

And who should rescue me from almost certain introspection than Magnum Cura and the Council of Graybeards, come to deliver their verdict!

"We, the Council of Graybeards, have decided this mare's fate," He announced to those ponies still within the Platinum Court before peering down his snout at me.

"Miss Spice," he spat, "you are a unique one. You found you'd fallen into a hole and, where most would have had the sense to try to climb out, you elected to get a shovel and continue digging."

"An apt metaphor for a mare so fond of mud," a bearded mare of the Council chimed in.

"Some members of the Council," Magnum Cura continued, "are advocating for clemency. However, the majority view is that this cannot be allowed. To let such a disgraceful insult to the Princess, the King, to Common Decency, and to all of Unicornia be answered by a mere swat to the pastern would be inexcusable!" he thundered.

"Nevertheless, ours is a rational society. Therefore, after one year in exile, you will have the opportunity to return on one condition: that you prove yourself to be in the right by producing a meal by *ahem* exotic methods that is so great and unique as to be without peer in the realm. If you, Amber Spice, can convince a panel of qualified judges that the meal is without peer, then you shall be repatriated as a Unicornian citizen in good standing and have all honors and positions restored to you that you are currently being stripped of."

That right there, fillies and gentlecolts, is the silver lining I'm clutching to for dear life at the moment. This means that if I can manage to do my Lanthanum-scorned job right, to do what I was born to do, then I can return home having exchanged disgrace for honor.

That, and I'll have to survive. Please don't let those needle teeth be for eating ponies...

"However, should you return early or without worthy recipes, you shall be exiled again. This time, into a molten caldera."

Did I mention that it's a bit of a high stakes deal?

—^*^*^—

So, that's how my trial went. Whenever I think too hard about it, I get the distinct feeling that it would have gone significantly better for me had I ever learned to keep my trap shut. Strangely, my family never seemed to value the ability to bottle up your emotions instead of calling things as you saw them. Then again, my father's a baker, my brother's an artist, and my mother's a barkeep, so I guess it's not so strange after all.

It might have gone better, but it didn't. And now, between packing up and reviewing how I got to this point, I've been up all night. It's not like I could have slept anyway, but this can't be helping my chances of surviving what comes next.

*Domp-domp-domp*

That must be the door.

“I'll be right with you!”

*PLAM*

“Or you could just come right in! That works too.”

Ah. Here come the guards to escort me to my—

Oh you have got to be kidding me. Is that a Cone of Shame?!

Author's Note

Fun fact: Weighing in at 11k+ words, this chapter is the longest contiguous piece of writing I've done in the history of ever. It's also about a quarter the length of the entire fic.

Hope you enjoyed it!

Chapter 1: Some Time to Reflect

I've come to the conclusion that the world would be a much safer place for me if I could learn to keep my Tartarus-cursed mouth shut. I wouldn't cause explosions, I wouldn't make waves, and I certainly wouldn't be packing up for my impending exile right now. Then again, I wouldn't have found exactly what I was looking for, I would never have come to the attention of those in authority, and I definitely would not be living through interesting times, either.

Urgh! Why does the safe path always have to be the boring one?! One of my greatest assets got twisted into becoming my greatest liability. Oh, but the universe does seem to have a perverse appreciation for irony, doesn't it?

Well, I can't fault Fate his sense of humor. I mean, who'd ever think that somepony like looney little Amber Spice, Royal Chef for his eminence King Lanthanum, would find a way to get herself banished? What could I do? Bake an alfalfa seed cake for her magnificence Princess Topaz that had a dirty limerick scrawled in blood across the top? And yet, here I am getting ready to look back on my life like I'm some old nag on her deathbed. And I'm sure that Fate is laughing his rump off at his own cleverness.

Looking back, I guess this whole mess technically started by my following some of my mother Amber Draft's advice. I opened my mouth, and she filled me with comfort and direction that happened to turn south after a while. I can't exactly blame her, though. All she was doing was being a good listener and giving her daughter something to smile about. Saying it's her fault I got exiled from Unicornia would be about as harsh and unreasonable as blaming your grandfather's heart attack on a yearling's sneeze startling him.

I can't imagine how she's taking this.

Well, getting banished for heresy is a tough thing to explain, so I might as well start at the beginning. I'd been having a rough week, so I decided I'd stop by Mom's bar, The Amber Mare. It's a great place to go and offload your problems. Using an actual fireplace and torches instead of magelight gems helps give the tavern a warm, friendly atmosphere. Combine that with freely flowing mead, wine, and oat beer, polished orange-brown granite counters, fur-cushioned furniture, and a barkeep with a keen ear, a wise voice, and a heart of gold, and you've got a cozy place to sort out your troubles. Or just forget them for a while. Whenever I enter the place, it feels like I'm coming home. My old room being just up the stairs and to the right doesn't hurt that impression, either.

Now what could drive an upstanding young mare like me to drink? I had a lot of things going for me, after all. I've got a family that loves and supports me, I got my dream job of cooking for the royal family, and I'm not a bad looking pony if I do say so myself. You might ask what was getting me down. That's basically what Mom did when she saw me trot up to the counter.

“Hey hon, why the long face?” she asked.

“Long f-f-face?! Oh no! I haven't morphed into a stallion, have I? This is so awkward! How will I ever explain to my friends? To my f-family? Oh woe is me!” I wailed an octave lower than normal whilst collapsing.

I then blubbered, “I-If I'm g-going to have to l-live my life as a— s-st-STALLION... I must know if I retain any of my former fab-b-bulosity. Tell me, fair barkeep, where I may f-find a mirror in which to behold my new elongated visage and det-t-termine if I am at least handsome in this new form.”

Mom, wearing a bemused smirk, gestured with her horn at the gigantic mirror covering the wall behind the counter.

Gazing into the mirror, I adopted a madmare's rictus and pitched my voice back to normal upon pretending to notice I was indeed still female. “Oh joy of joys, I retain my original gender! This calls for a celebration. I need a glass of honeyjack and a party hat, pronto! Nothing could possibly be wrong with a day where I discover I don't suffer from some horrible genderbending curse, after all.”

“I left myself wide open for that one, Spicy. First glass is on the house,” she said as she magically chilled my drink and slid it to me. “Really though, something's bothering you. Don't even think you can hide it from me. Seriously kid, what's eating you today?”she said with a concerned gleam in her eyes.

The forced, manic grin melted from my muzzle faster than froth you'd just spit in.

“Work. My job is killing me,” I sighed.

“Work's been tougher than usual? Princess been persnickety about what you're feeding her?”

“No more persnickety than I've come to expect.” I took a swig of my drink. “That's the thing, though. I've been the royal chef for a few years now, so I am intimately acquainted with every recipe that has been on the royal menu for the past three centuries. Every. Last. Recipe.” I punctuated that last bit by stomping on the counter first with my left forehoof, then with my right, and finally with my face. “There are only so many variations a pony can do on alfalfa flapjacks when all you have to work with is alfalfa, oats, eggs, honey, berries, salt, a dismal smattering of precious herbs and spices, some seasonal flowers, and the occasional bit of meat brought home from the fur hunts.”

“So what you're saying, hon, is that you're bored?”

“Not just bored. I'm stagnating, and it's driving me up the walls!” I took a slurp. “I'm a mare whose special talent is supposed to be coming up with new and interesting things and ways to cook. I'm stuck making the same old, bland recipes year after year, and it's finally gotten to me. What's a pony supposed to do when she can't even think of how to do what she's supposed to be good at anymo-ho-ore?!” I bawled.

A patron to my left glared at me, then shifted a concerned glance to Mom as if to ask how many I'd had. She gazed back with a face that said 'Not enough.' I'd have let the nosy patron know how unamused I was, but I was a bit busy.

“Easy there, Spicy. You're not the first mare to doubt her cutie mark,” she soothed, running her amber hoof through my poofy, brownish red mane. When she continued, her tone had grown just firm enough to support me while gently telling me to buck up and grow a spine of my own.

“Besides,” she said, “it's not all bad on your end. You've got me and this tavern, for starters. You've got an understanding ear to open up to about your troubles so they don't trouble you so much.

“And then there's your own resources. Your sharp mind may have dug itself into a rut following the royal routine, but you're still the same smart, beautiful, curious pony who thought to put some of my still-fermenting mead in Pa's bread dough and gave us a whole new line of foodstuffs to sell alongside these tankards of mouse urine.” She paused to chuckle at her own remark. I almost smiled as well.

“What you need, young lady,” she dictated whilst holding my chin up to look me in the eyes, “is a fresh perspective. You've got free run of a large part of the palace, so use it! Go up into the spires and look out over the valley fields. Chat with the court magician or some of the other nice stallions roaming about and see if they have any new ideas. Doesn't even have to be about food to inspire you to take off in a new direction, after all. You could even, Topaz forbid, do some research in the Royal Archives! Who knows what sorts of cooking arcana you could unearth in those timeless, dusty halls where mortals fear to tread.”

Once I'd calmed down enough to stop crying and levitate my glass again, I took another long sip from my honeyjack. I didn't remember Mom refilling it, but the mead was a good inch higher in the glass than it was a minute ago. And it tasted salty, too. Mmm... salt. Back when I was helping Mom run the bar for a few extra bits, I'd come up with the idea of putting salt in the beer. Ever the whimsical one, Mother called it tear-beer and threw it up on the board. Did I ever mention how much I love salt? I just can't imagine why that drink never sold too well. You can keep all the gemstones in this dang mountain. Just give me a mountain of salt to roll around in, and I'll be happy.

“Y'know what?” I sniffled. “I think you're right!”

And so it began.

Interlogue: Spice Must Flow

A room of rituals has been prepared

Sigils are etched into the floor

A mare walks in to meet her fate

She will soon leave, but through no door.

An audience this strange mare has:

Mages, nobles, peasants, kings.

So silently they stand and watch

As now she steps into the ring.

Before she leaves, they give her things:

A blade: to live. A cloak: to hide.

She does accept them gracefully

Though she glances to the sides.

Who could it be she hopes to see?

A brother or perhaps a friend?

Or maybe parents, strong and soft

To see her mayhap meet her end?

She sees nopony she would like,

But does not shed a single tear.

She calmly walks into the ring,

Stepping surely to hide her fear.

The mages horns are all aglow.

Sigils start shining, all stand clear,

Except the mare inside the sign.

Her presence fades, she disappears—

To reappear in warmer climes,

'mid desert rock and cruelest sand.

She casts a look of longing sweet,

Then begins, soft, to cross the land.

Already exhausted, the mare

Falls to the ground, and she stays there.

Though still alive, her closéd eyes

See not her savior from the skies.

Author's Note

Amber Spice's adventures truly begin in the sequel, Desert Spice.