Luna’s knife sliced through her stack of pineapple and banana-peel pancakes. She pondered the make-believe face her sister had crafted on top; that of a filly, she judged, given the long green pineapple leaf eyelashes. She took a sniff of the warm buttermilk morsel before slipping it into her mouth. The filly had lost an eye. Luna’s chewing slowed, and she sighed.

Celestia smiled at her from behind the bouquet of freshly cut daisies and zinnias spelling out “Welcome Home!” that she had placed at the center of the grand dining table, busy with her own breakfast platter. It was a fine morning. Luna was back from her long diplomatic errand, the Summer Sun Festival was just a couple weeks away, and the pancakes had turned out just right this time. Luna was eating them, at least, and as far as Celestia was concerned, that was all that mattered.

Except that she wasn’t. Celestia put her fork down.

“Luna?”

No reply. Luna was staring at her plate, poking the side of her pancakes with her knife.

Celestia eased out of her seat and glided down the length of the table. “Luna, can you please tell me what has you so preoccupied? Is something not to your liking? You’re not feeling underappreciated again, are you?”

Luna kept cutting, intent on leaving as much of the fruit face intact as she could. “Me? Preoccupied? Heavens, no.” A syrupy section of the stack came free and floated to her lips.

“Luna, I can tell something’s bothering …”

“It’s … it’s nothing,” Luna snapped. “I’m fine. Thank you for the flowers. They’re lovely. Busy day today?”

Celestia took a step closer. “Luna …”

The knife and fork clattered onto the plate. “I lost my temper,” Luna grumbled, rubbing her temple with her hoof. “I did something … decidedly undiplomatic. You know I’m not good at these things. It’s just that those creatures were so incredibly vile. I couldn’t walk ten paces down the street without a herd of them gathering and flashing their little rectangles at me—taking pictures to gossip and ridicule me through their mass communication machine—giggling like foals and begging to climb onto my back. And the smell. I’d swear they are bags of swamp slime with legs, and approximately as intelligent.” She sighed again and pushed her plate away.

“So … what happened?” Celestia asked, soothing Luna’s slumped shoulder with her hoof.

“My counterpart was the very model of their kind. Lazy. Malodorous. Single-minded in all the worst ways. My spirit link, as I mentioned to you yesterday, it took to signify that we were …” Luna paused to swallow, grimacing as if she’d eaten something rotten. “Married.”

“Goodness me!” Celestia gasped. “It must have been so hard for you.”

Luna nodded, bracing her head now in both hooves. “I shall omit the finer details out of common decency, to spare you the fit of nausea that would surely result. Nevertheless, I cannot help but worry that I did something wrong.”

Celestia brushed at her sister’s forelock, straightening out the frazzled strands. “Now Luna. Remember what we said about negative self-talk. I’d like to help. Is there anything at all I can do?”

“Well … I was thinking,” Luna mused, blinking up at Celestia, the glint of new hope in her eyes. “I was thinking maybe you could … ah …” She slid out of her seat. “Perhaps it would be best if I were to show you.”

Celestia beamed. “Oh, do! I’m certain that whatever it is, it isn’t as bad as you’re imagining. And you really need to stop being so hard on yourself. Remember the old saying, ‘To err is mulish; to forgive, equine.’

Luna suppressed a laugh and dipped her muzzle to indicate the balcony. The two walked side-by-side to where the sky glowed bright blue, clear for miles to the mountains. The pegasus guards standing watch there for aerial assaults parted to let them pass.

Celestia gave them a nod as she patted Luna’s wing. “Now, let us see whether we can turn this blooper into a bed of roses!”

Outside you waited, baking in the hazy glow of the Canterlot summer sun, in no condition to shoo away the jays perching on the side of your cart.

Luna pointed at you from above. “In my bout of … indiscretion … I fear I might have …”

Celestia arched an eyebrow, surveying your cart.

“It doesn’t appear to possess any magic,” Luna continued, “and so, cannot revive itself as most normal ponies can. What should we do?”

“Well, I’m sure I could ask Twilight to dig up a spell I know from the archives in Canterlot Library, but I’m not sure what effect reconstituting the creature in its original form might have on the magical foundations of Equestria. And to be honest,” she draped her wing around Luna’s shoulders, “the peonies are looking a bit fatigued.”

The jays tweeted at you, bobbing and cocking their heads in curiosity. Then as one they flew off, a whispering burst of color, frightened by a passerby leading a wagon full of silk scarves.

Luna looked up through the soft aurora of her sister’s mane. “The peonies? Are you suggesting …”

“It’s been too long since we did something together as sisters,” Celestia replied, giving Luna a squeeze. “I think that your counterpart would make first rate mulch, full of life and nutrients for the flower patches. What do you say? A day in the gardens, just you and me against the weeds?”

Luna gazed down on you from the balcony, seeing a fertile meal for her lavender in your red sodden wood chips and greasy brown gobbets. She smiled.

“Yes! A day of weeding and feeding it shall be! And to Tartarus with diplomacy!” She conjured two sets of canvas work chaps and a pair of rakes.

Celestia laughed. Some of the crowd below heard it, and thought it to be a joyous blare of trumpets. “I couldn’t agree more!” she declared, and joined Luna in dressing for the long day ahead.

And so your blood came to mingle with the sacred soil of the Royal Gardens, the inviolate domain of the Two Sisters of Equestria. Deeply did their topiaries and their hedges drink of your fertile life fluid, and fast did the roots of their dwarf trees and vines cling to your sundered remains. Indeed, they fed, and grew so fast and so strong that the Sisters saw, and were amazed, and devised a new policy.

A delegation was formed to the kingdom of Johnsonville. Their gifts were nets, their parley was spears, and their chief ambassador a groundskeeper. For you had demonstrated the true purpose to which your kind should be put.

The retinue came and went, under the cover of night, or on dark, rainy days when nopony was about, always returning with heavy crates and covered, iron-barred pull-carts. A month passed, then two. Summer yielded to autumn. The flowers were trimmed and replaced. The trees and bushes were pruned, and all marveled at how the floral display had flourished in so short a time. It was magic, some said. Others thought it merely a good omen. But all praised the wise Sisters, the Beatifiers of the kingdom.

Twenty wood chippers hummed in the Gardens of Canterlot.