Chapitre 1

Chapter 1

The bed suddenly moving beneath me pulled me from my slumber followed by an expulsion of air in a loud oomph. Half a second later there were several soft thumps of something soft hitting something else repeatedly.

"Ack! Damn it 'Tia! Move your fat fiery flank!" Luna exclaimed and my pillow suddenly dissipated, my head hitting the mattress.

Forcing my eyes open, I was greeted by the sight of the two Princesses of Equestria pummeling the metaphorical feathers off each other with a pair of pillows.

I watched the for a moment, folding my ears back before stretching my neck to look at the alarm clock. Six in the evening.

Way too fucking early.

Groaning, I pulled the covers over myself and rolled over, trying to ignore the commotion.

Immortal God-Princesses or not, they were still sisters. Which meant that on the rare occasions they got the opportunity to wake each other up, they did in in the time-honored tradition of all siblings.

In other words, in the most annoying way they could possibly think of. While it was nice that they felt they could relax around me, I'd rather that Celestia would just go away.

With a sound of frustration, Luna finally managed to push her sister off her and onto the floor before curling up beneath the covers again.

Chuckling to herself, Celestia climbed back onto her hooves and whacked Luna once more with the pillow. "Wake up. The Maretonian ambassador has an audience with both of us in a hour, remember?"

Luna just groaned.

I agreed with her sentiment. This was one of the few drawbacks of having moved in with my marefriend. Whenever she was woken up for some kind of emergency, so was I. I had turned my sleeping schedule around to match hers. Not like I couldn't just as easily write during the night. It also did make it much easier to watch the sunrise.

Right now, I mostly felt like telling the Princess of the Sun to fuck off. Instead I groaned and stretched, before giving the Princess of the Sun a tired look. "Must you?"

Celestia simply smiled. "I do indeed. You know how difficult my sister is to wake up." She poked the pile beneath the covers that was Luna. "Wake up! You need to get ready."

Really? Because I never had a problem with it.

Luna finally stirred and poked her head out, giving her sister an annoyed look but then started to unwrap herself from the bedcovers. "...Very well."

Celestia grinned, trotted happily out of the room and I raised my head to look after her. "What left her in such a good mood?"

Groaning, Luna stretched and spread her wings wide. "No idea." she grumbled with a yawn before shifting to nuzzle at my ear. "Sorry."

Shaking my head, I shifted to nuzzle back in turn. "It's fine. Occupational hazard, I suppose. And it's not like I'm the one who needs to look royal in less than a hour."

Luna sighed and then stretched again before pulling back and jumping off the bed, folding her wings.

Not that she needed to do anything to get ready. She looked amazing as usual. Some feathers out of place but that was the only evidence of having just gotten out of bed.

Flexing her wings again, she left the room to start getting ready, a pair of maids rushing to assist as soon as she left the bedroom. I looked after her for a moment before I rolled over and pulled the covers over myself again. Just a couple more minutes...

Despite the early morning for me, sleep refused to return. Half an hour later I groaned and rolled onto my back, looking up at the canopy of the bed.

Well, crap. Might as well get up then.

Yawning, I forced my eyes back open before rolling off the bed, landing on my hooves before stretching and heading for the other room.

Fuck early mornings so hard.

The outer chamber of Luna's private rooms... or maybe I should say, our private rooms. Man that was hard to get used to. In any case, it was empty of ponies.

Yawning again, I made my way over to grab a cup of tea from the table before making my way over to the door, peeking outside. "You might as well come in."

"How did you know I was here?" Skitter asked as she walked inside, the changeling fluttering her wings.

I shook my head at my assistant/bodyguard. "You are always there, Skitter. Get a life."

Luna had been against it. Strongly against it, in fact. But, we had a bit of a changeling problem.

As in we had changelings and a lot of ponies who were afraid of anything different. Which meant that we needed to show them that they could be trusted or nothing would be accomplished.

The changelings needed emotion to live. It was as simple as that. No, puppies wouldn't work, not in a practical way anyway. Their emotions were too diluted to live on. Each one would need to drain something like a hundred puppies a day completely just to live.

No, they needed sophontic emotions to eat. Which in this case meant ponies.

The treaty with the changelings allowed them to travel freely across Equestria... in their real forms. Any shape they took had to show that it's really a changeling. Mostly by keeping the wings in their natural form.

For this to work, they needed to be accepted and that was really, really difficult. They didn't need to drain ponies to gather emotions. Hell, just being around in a high-emotion environment turned out to be enough that they could nibble on the 'love in the air'. Might sound silly, but it worked.

Even so, changelings hanging around at weddings and popular dating spots required them to not be outcasts in pony society.

Which in turn meant convincing ponies that they were not dangerous.

And that meant making a powerful statement by a princess. Such as allowing one to be the bodyguard of her coltfriend/consort.

Luna had not been a fan, but I talked her around to it. We needed this to work.

"Just doing my duty, my lord." Skitter answered with a smile.

I gave her a tired look. "Stop that. What's on the agenda today?"

She tilted her head in thought. "Nothing is planned, sir. Do you plan on doing some writing?"

Didn't particularly feel like it tonight. I didn't think there was any kind of dinner or something I would have to attend, but I wanted to double check.

"Not really. Let's see what we can figure out, though."