Princess Celestia trotted urgently through the morning light which painted the halls of Canterlot Castle. Servants and retainers surreptitiously scattered out of her path, because it was clear to see she was on a mission of great importance.
“Sister!” A gold-shod hoof banged on a massive ebony door. “Luna! Wake up! I have important news!”
Two of Luna's ceremonial Night Guards stood by awkwardly in their positions flanking Luna's bedroom doors, mentally updating their résumés. Celestia sighed impatiently and stamped a hoof. “LOONY! GET YOUR MOON OUT OF BED AND OPEN THIS DOOR!” She cleared her throat demurely and gave an apologetic glance to the Night Guards. They remained bolt upright at their posts, blinking dazedly, their helmets cocked askew on their heads from the force of Celestia's Traditional Royal Canterlot Voice.
A moment later, the door glowed, then jerked open to reveal a visibly angry Princess Luna. Her starry mane blew in a nonexistent breeze, as usual, but rather than being one graceful mass of magical mane, it blew in all different directions, as though a tropical storm was spinning on the back of her scalp. Celestia tsked. “Sorry about the bed head, Loony, but I know you'll want to hear this.” Without another word, she barged past Luna into the bedchamber, kicking the door closed with a hoof on the way past.
Luna glowered at her elder sister as the latter walked past her. Her impatience was not far off the boil, and soon bubbled to the surface. “Tia, what--!” She was cut off by Celestia spinning to face her like a playful foal. “Oh, little sister, I've just received the most wonderful news! I knew you'd not want me to wait to inform you, so I had to come right here to wake you up and I'm sorry for that but it's just so thrilling--”
Luna raised her voice over Celestia's excited babbling. “Sister. What.”
Celestia gathered herself and coughed. “Right, of course.” She drew herself up and her shining eyes met Luna's. “I have just received a letter from my student in Ponyville.”
“Twilight Sparkle, was it not?”
“Yes, she's the one. But what's important was the contents of this letter.” Celestia took a deep breath. “There's a new one.”
Luna's eyes widened. “Do you mean. . .”
Celestia was grinning, practically bouncing with delight. “Yes!”
“And she's the right age, she's studying--”
“Yes!”
Luna's mouth fell open and she stared at Celestia for a long moment. Finally she snapped her jaw shut and nodded, her eyes shining. “What then are we waiting for? Allow me to brush my mane and we shall be off!”
Cheerilee, schoolteacher of Ponyville, ran herd on her. . . herd, she supposed, ushering them back into the classroom after the lunchtime recess. She counted heads as they streamed through the door, and then shut the door behind them and went to the blackboard. She tapped a hoof on the floorboards for attention, then continued the day's lessons once all the saucer-sized eyes in the room were focused on her.
“Alright, my little ponies, I hope you had a nice lunch.” She smiled as the heads in the room nodded in reply. “Now we're going to continue our French lessons, so--” Cheerilee halted mid-sentence, seized by the odd sensation of being watched. More watched than she should be, that is. She scanned the room and all the windows, but didn't see anything. She gave a mental shrug and continued. “. . .so get out your French books and open them to page 42.” Scraping and shuffling filled the room as the students complied, and Cheerilee gave the room another hard look.
She smiled brightly at her students, wiping the expression of foreboding off her face. “We're going to use the table of common conversations on page 42. I'll begin a conversation with each of you, and I want you to reply with the correct response. Alright? Let's begin.” She looked at Diamond Tiara, who occupied the corner desk in the front row, and said, “D'accord, il est coupable ou a-t-il un alibi?”
Diamond Tiara listened attentively, briefly consulted her textbook, delicately cleared her throat, and replied, “Il n'en a pas, il a été pris la main dans le sac.” Cheerilee nodded to the filly and noted that she was still overpronouncing, probably from the mistaken idea that it sounded more refined.
Cheerilee worked her way through the students one by one and was near the back of the room when she reached Twist's desk. “Twist, nous vous envoyons les secours, ne bougez pas, combien y a-t-il de blessés?”
Twist's goofy, open smile came to her face and she didn't bother consulting the book before replying, “Il y a deux adultes dans la premiére et thuste le thauffeur dans la theconde. Ils themblent juste thoqués. Je reste à leurs côtés, mais les voitures bloquent la route.”
Cheerilee's ears pricked up. Had she heard. . . giggling? She kept her eyes on Twist while her ears flicked about, trying to locate the direction of the sound. “Very good, Twist. How about one more, since that one was easy for you? Tu as une mauvaise mémoire?”
Twist smiled even bigger, pleased to be able to demonstrate her skill. “Oui parfois j'ai des trous et je me thuis résigné à thette idée.”
As Twist confidently replied, Cheerilee definitely heard giggling again. She sidled to the nearest window on silent hooves and thrust her head outside without warning. “Ah-ha! Caught you!” Then her brain caught up with what her eyes were seeing, and her ears folded back and she regretted getting out of bed this morning, for huddled in the bushes outside the window, most of their large bodies hanging out of concealment, were the sovereign rulers of Equestria. And she'd just said ah-ha to them. She wondered what the Moon was like this time of year.
Celestia and Luna had winged their way to the school grounds earlier in the day and had observed from a distance as the students played at recess. After receiving Twilight's letter, Celestia had instructed the Royal Intelligence Bureau to put together a report on Twist of Ponyville, including a physical description and known associates. Celestia lowered the report and scanned the playground. There! Curly red mane, oversized glasses, candy-cane-swordfighting cutie mark. She was playing with three fillies who didn't have their cutie marks yet and who Celestia's great wisdom could easily identify as ponies whose talents had already been demonstrated clearly but who were too useful as metaphors for the transition into puberty to allow them to experience character development. She shook her head sadly, regretting, as she always did, the injustices perpetrated on innocent ponies in the name of authorial need.
Celestia elbowed Luna in the barrel and pointed. “There, that's her,” she hissed. Luna swung her military-issue binoculars around to where Celestia had indicated, and her field of vision was filled with a single enormous red curl. She frowned in confusion, then sheepishly lowered the binoculars to see Twist not ten feet away. She delicately coughed into her hoof. “Indeed, I see her. Are your sources reliable, sister? This filly does not appear to be special.”
Celestia smiled knowingly. “I have absolute confidence in my sources, dear Luna. Listen!”
The princesses each cocked an ear towards the red-headed filly and were immediately rewarded. “Thcootaloo, that'th not fair, you have to let thome of uth take a turn. Maybe we don't alwayth want to play 'Vulnerable And Thexually Inexperienthed Foal Accthidentally Theduthes The Object Of Her Hero Worthip.' “
Scootaloo scoffed at her. “Shows what you know, Twist. This is 'Vulnerable And Sexually Inexperienced Foal Is Seduced By The Object Of Her Hero Worship.' It's a totally different game!”
Celestia and Luna were both holding their hooves tight to their mouths to contain squeals of joy. Luna got herself under control enough to lower her hooves and gasp, “Your sources spoke true! She is everything we had hoped for!” Celestia just nodded excitedly, a broad grin behind her hooves.
Now the princesses were staring up into the magenta face of an angry schoolteacher, albeit one whose anger had been rapidly replaced by confusion and then an emotion Celestia had long thought of as 'alas, the Moon.' Celestia made a mental note that her giggling was louder than she had thought, and smiled winningly at the schoolteacher. “Um, hello, good schoolteacher! The Princess Luna and myself are conducting our Royal Review of the Equestrian School System, yeah, that's the ticket, and we have been engaged in the first phase of same, which is known as, um, Observing The Classroom Undetected. Yeah, that's it, yeah. Your keen instructor's eye has ably discovered us during Phase One, so we shall move directly to Phase Two: Observing The Classroom Detected. . . May we come inside?”
Cheerilee's veins were still thundering with alas, the Moon, so she just nodded mutely and pulled her head back inside the room. A moment later, the schoolhouse door was magicked open and the stately figures of the Sister Princesses entered and stood majestically, the effect spoiled only slightly by the twigs blowing gently in their manes. The students stared, then the tableau was broken by the thud of Diamond Tiara remembering her etiquette lessons and flinging herself out of her chair to lie prone on the floor in a bow. This was followed promptly by a second thud as Silver Spoon followed her lead.
The students' heads swiveled around to Tiara's and Spoon's lowered heads and raised backsides. Their heads swiveled back around to the elegantly betwigged Princesses. Each of them found that the backsides made a sound argument, and the room was briefly filled with thuds as they all followed suit. Cheerilee bowed as well, a slightly panicked smile fixed on her face.
Celestia surveyed the sudden sea of rumps and rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, thank you, you may rise. . . rise. . . seriously, get up.”
Luna inhaled. “YOU SHALL PLACE YOUR SEATS IN YOUR SEATS POST HASTE!”
Whatever the opposite of a thud is, the room was filled with them as ponies leapt from the ground into their chairs and folded their hooves on their desks. Luna nodded. “Thank you.”
“Well, if you don't mind, miss. . .”
“Cheerilee,” Cheerilee said in a daze.
“Miss Cheerilee, we'll just stand quietly in the corner and observe your educational procedures.” At a hesitant nod from Cheerilee, Celestia and Luna went to the front corner of the classroom and stood unobtrusively, or at least, as unobtrusively as two divine giants can stand with their manes waving in a magical breeze and their horns inches from scraping the ceiling.
Cheerilee watched them take up their positions, then turned to face her students, hoping no one would notice the facial tic she had suddenly developed. “Well then, my little ponies, in honor of our. . . guests, perhaps we will move on to Equestrian History--”
“No!” The Princesses shouted in unison. “Um, ha ha, that is, we don't want to disrupt your lesson plan, naturally.”
“Naturally,” Luna chimed in.
“So, by all means, just proceed with the Fren--er, whatever lesson you happened to be teaching before we arrived.” The Princesses nodded encouragingly, their eyes eager.
“Right. . . who was the next to speak, then?”
Celestia cleared her throat. “I believe it was Twi--er, that filly with the swordfighting cutie mark. Not that I'd know, of course! She just seems to be next, somehow. Ha ha.”
Luna grinned a toothily innocent grin and nodded in agreement.
Cheerilee's eyes narrowed suspiciously, but she turned back to the class and said, “Then, Twist, Salut, tu as bien dormi?”
Twist beamed and promptly replied, “Oh que non, j'ai vraiment thommeil, je me thuis levé très tôt the matin.”
Cheerilee noticed that most of the class had become thoroughly distracted and were staring at the Royal Corner of the classroom. She glanced over and saw both Princesses grinning hugely and nudging each other. Her teacher's reflexes overrode her better judgement. “Ahem!” She ahemed, in the best schoolteacher style. The Princesses' smiles vanished and they froze as though they'd been caught with their hooves in the cookie jar. They shifted their eyes to look at her. “If you don't mind, would Your Highnesses try to refrain from distracting my students?” She fixed them with a gimlet eye.
The Princesses shrank back and hung their heads guiltily. “Sorry, Miss Cheerilee,” they chorused.
Cheerilee stared at them for a moment longer. “That's better.” She turned back to the class and opened her mouth to prompt the next student, only to find that she had no memory of which student had just spoken.
The glow around Celestia's horn winked out and she called, “Wasn't it Twist's turn, Miss Cheerilee?”
Cheerilee thought for a moment. That didn't seem right, but Twist hadn't spoken yet. . . had she? She shrugged it away. “Twist, if you please, As tu besoin de ton tournevis pour fixer l'étagère?”
Twist was confused by Miss Cheerilee's uncharacteristic lapse of memory, but gamely rose to the occasion. “Merthi mais tout d'abord je dois utiliser la thie thauteuse car la planthe est trop longue.”
All eyes shifted to the corner of the room again, and Cheerilee sighed and looked. Celestia had sunk to her haunches and was biting her lip as her sides heaved silently, while Luna was prone on the floor, pressing her lips together with her hooves as tears rolled from her eyes.
“THAT IS ENOUGH!” Thundered Cheerilee in the Traditional Exasperated Schoolteacher Voice. “You, and you,” she pointed to the flustered Princesses with a quivering hoof, “get out! I am trying to teach these foals and you are standing in the way, and I will not stand for it, even if you send me to. . . the. . . Moon, heh heh, um. . . Your Highnesses?”
Celestia looked at Luna. Luna looked at Celestia. They drew themselves up to their full height, and visions of the Moon danced through Cheerilee's head. The Princesses lowered their heads to Cheerilee. “You are absolutely right, it is irredeemable for anyone to impede the education of youth, even royalty. We shall depart, and we beg your forgiveness.” Without another word, they left the classroom, and the school, in peace.
They flew the short distance to their waiting chariot, and as the charioteers leapt into the sky, the Princess of the Sun addressed the Princess of the Moon. “So we're going back tomorrow, right?”
Luna snorted. “Of course we are. I already have some ideas about how we can remain undetected. See, if we take two tin cans and some string. . .”
Author's Note: I took liberties with the seating arrangement in the classroom. Just roll with it.
I speak no French, so I asked Professor Google to teach me some. Here are the sources of the French dialogues in the story:
Diamond Tiara's dialogue:http://www.tolearnfrench.com/exercises/exercise-french-2/exercise-french-8165.php
Twist's first dialogue:http://www.tolearnfrench.com/exercises/exercise-french-2/exercise-french-6441.php
Twist's second dialogue:http://www.tolearnfrench.com/exercises/exercise-french-2/exercise-french-7417.php
Twist's third dialogue:http://www.tolearnfrench.com/exercises/exercise-french-2/exercise-french-7710.php
Twist's fourth dialogue:http://www.tolearnfrench.com/exercises/exercise-french-2/exercise-french-6890.php
