“Ok,” Spitfire pinched the bridge of her nose, “let’s try going through this one more time,” the last three words coming out through clenched teeth. The tea set lay to one side, long emptied, its calming properties long forgotten. Sonata sat opposite her at the table, somehow still aimlessly smiling. Silver Tongue, her unfortunate lawyer who'd been called in only to be totally ignored, sat beside her with his head in his hooves, several hours past making his final attempt to advise Sonata not to answer a question. “Where were you three days ago, around the time of morning market?”

Sonata took a deep breath. Spitfire glanced behind her to see Twilight leaning forwards to listen, while Starlight sat further back with her head propped up on one hoof, not bothering to hide her scowl. By rights, Starlight should have been the one with the most patience, having had a break when she’d left and returned an hour later, her only explanation being the two words ‘background research.’ When Spitfire turned back to Sonata, she was looking up at the ceiling with her head cocked to one side.

“I was at the market talking to that pony with the stall with all the seeds,” she said, looking more directly towards the others as she went on and gaining more confidence in her memory, “asking him about planting a taco tree, as my coltfriend said he’d buy me one if I could find one for sale anywhere.” Spitfire didn’t sigh or close her eyes in exasperation, but only because she was a professional and there was a princess in the room. The coltfriend had been a regular feature of Sonata’s different stories through the afternoon, as had tacos, whatever they were.

“Anyway,” Sonata continued, triggering Spitfire’s now-automatic counting of the number of times that word appeared per story, “I was there when this row of geese paraded past. Five of them I think, or maybe six.”

Sonata stopped to think for a moment. Starlight groaned.

“No, wait, there were seven!” Sonata confirmed. “Yes, definitely seven, I’m sure of it.”

Did she think Spitfire would be checking witness statements on the number of geese present? Should Spitfire be checking the number of geese on the witness statements? Was that something police forces would actually do?

“Anyway,” Sonata returned to topic, and Spitfire’s mental tally increased to two, “I thought, that’s quite strange seeing geese here at the market when ponies don’t eat meat, that’s like them farming pigs or something, but maybe they sell geese for feathers for making quills, since you don’t seem to have pens here?” Sonata looked to the others for answers, but only impatient stares replied. Spitfire wasn’t sure what a pen was, even if responding wouldn’t have distracted even further from the story. “And for eggs and stuff?”

Eggs... How long had it been since Spitfire last ate? It felt like they’d been in the interview room forever. Spitfire dared not look at the clock, but she knew they all must have missed at least one meal. Somehow Sonata still had the energy to keep talking and talking, each tale more ridiculous than the last, with no method Spitfire had tried proving effective for producing anything but more of the same.

“Anyway,” – three – “I thought they must have escaped from one of the farm stalls or something, so I went after them, but they started honking at me. I tried honking back” – because of course she did – “but it didn’t work so well, and when I got close they were all hissy and tried to bite me.” Taking her eyes from Sonata for a second, Spitfire checked the princess and Starlight were doing ok. A quick look showed them in further-progressed forms of their previous stances, with Starlight looking like she’d fall asleep from boredom if she wasn’t so irritated, and Twilight hunched in rapt attention.

“So I tried grabbing one to cuddle it to show everything was ok, but they all ducked back out of reach.” Sonata’s brows drew down, and her eyes flicked down to one side. “I mean ducked like they went under my arms,” she clarified, as if it was needed, “not like they all became ducks or something; they were definitely geese, ducks smell completely different. Anyway, I kept trying, but they just waddled away faster.”

The witnesses hadn’t mentioned any geese, but then they’d hardly been asked about them, either. Spitfire wasn’t exactly the sort of pony who visited markets often, so she couldn’t really say how likely it was that geese would be there. It sounded plausible, though. Slightly too plausible to ignore. Just like the previous stories had.

“Then a really helpful yellow pony came up beside me and offered to help,” Sonata ploughed on, and Spitfire’s ears pricked up for details on Fluttershy, anything that might catch Sonata out by her letting on more than she ought to know, “saying she was good with animals. She tried talking to the geese, but they weren’t listening, and kept heading further and further away from the market.”

Spitfire shifted in her seat, unable to remember the last time she’d remained sitting down for so long.

Sonata continued, “We went after them, trying to get closer without scaring them off, but they were always slightly too quick for us. And when Fluttershy flew ahead so that we could trap them between us, they just went off to one side towards the town hall.” Was it believable that an expert in animal care would have trouble herding seven geese? She really didn’t know enough to judge. When she’d woken up that morning, that wasn’t a question Spitfire had expected to be asking herself before the day was out.

“I’m not sure what was going on outside,” Sonata said, with Spitfire remembering a moment later that ‘outside’ referred to being outside the town hall, “the banners said something about a ming vase festival, but the geese ran straight through the middle of it.” That would be checkable, at least, once Sonata was done with her story. “They honked but nopony got out of the way, and we were trying to catch them before anything could go wrong but they got all flappy and knocked lots of the white pottery things on the tables onto the floor.”

That sounded like something that Spitfire might have heard reports of if true, having been in the police station all day. Again she looked briefly around the room behind her, to see if the others could confirm or deny it. Princess Twilight looked to be in mild shock, probably over the destruction of pottery, and Starlight appeared so humourless that Spitfire wouldn’t have been surprised if Ponyville’s legendary party pony kicked down the door to bring Starlight emergency balloons and cake. Neither showed any recognition of hearing about it before now, though.

Sonata carried on regardless, “I’d thought the ponies around the tables would be angry and shout at me and Fluttershy, but they said that stuff wasn’t important and all they really wanted to do was make sure all the geese were ok.” Spitfire knew nothing of ming vase collectors, but her suspicions were definitely raised. She tried not to let it spread to her eyebrows.

“By that time, though, the geese had snuck into the town hall, and we got there to see them disappearing through to the back room. Luckily the mayor was already in there” – aha, somepony we could actually verify the story with – “and she quickly stopped stuffing all those bits into that black suitcase and helped us drive the geese back outside.” ...Or not. Spitfire bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to maintain the will not to sink her face into her hooves. Twilight, a glance revealed, was frozen in place, staring at Sonata with bulging eyes. Quite an accomplishment, given how many hours they’d been listening to Sonata for already, but then she hadn’t implicated elected officials before. Starlight’s mouth was hanging a little way open, and from the raised eyebrow it looked like she might even be impressed.

Sonata didn’t even slow down. “Once they were through the main door they headed straight for the river, and we both tried to cut them off but they went around us again.” Just how fast could geese waddle, exactly?! “They got to the water and swam away downstream, and we were about to jump in after them when we saw them going to the far bank, where we spotted their nests.” Again, that was verifiable, at least; somepony could check if there were any geese nesting on the river through Ponyville downstream from the town hall.

“And that was when we realised... we’d been chasing wild geese all along.”

...

Hoof covered face.

Spitfire didn’t see how anypony else reacted, being too busy shaking her head while burying it in both hooves. Behind her, she heard Twilight sounding confused and concerned, speaking softly to Starlight.

“Wild geese? Why is that so bad? I didn’t even know we had them nesting in Ponyville.”

Lowering her forelegs just enough to see out over her hooves, Spitfire took in the scene. Sonata at least wasn’t openly giggling, just sitting there with her too-innocent smile. Silver Tongue had his eyes screwed so tightly closed that muscles in his cheeks were twitching, a picture of a pony wishing he could be anywhere else in Equestria at that moment. Spitfire turned to look back at the other two just as Starlight started speaking, in a voice like granite.

“It was a wild goose chase, Twilight, that whole story.”

Relieved she wasn’t the one to have to explain that to a princess, Spitfire gave Starlight a look of silent gratitude. Twilight then looked to Spitfire for confirmation of the story assessment, to which she could only nod. Somewhere between grimly and helplessly.

Author's Notes:

The geese in this chapter are domestic geese, not Canada geese. Just in case anyone thought of Canada geese by default. I wouldn't want anyone to misunderstand and get the wrong impression.