Sgt. Clare, Castle kitchen:

I chuckled as I opened the door and let Luna out the doorway but she quickly rushed back inside. “What’s the matter?” I laughed and she quickly brought a hoof up to my mouth to silence me then nudged her head and motioned for me to look out the door.

I peeked out the door and my smile turned into a dire look as I realized that night guards were searching the halls, looking for something or someone. I looked over to where I had left the knocked out guard and groaned as I closed the door, realizing that his unconscious body was no longer there. They must’ve thought that Luna and I were intruders and were probably looking for us.

“They’re everywhere” I muttered. She shook her head in shame, “We are going to get in sooo much trouble for this” she murmured. “No we’re not. We’re just going to walk back to your room and viola, problem solved” I replied, she rolled her eyes due to the obvious stupidity in the plan. “That’ll never work, only guards will be patrolling the hallways, anyone else seen wandering the halls will be detained” Luna told me and I nodded.

“Then how will your plan work?” she asked, figuring like my plan would never work. “I’m on night duty and you wanted an escort” I replied, I could tell she wanted to face-hoof as she realized the simplicity in it. “All we have to do is sneak out of the kitchen and we’re home free” I said triumphantly as I opened the door to the kitchen and led her out.

We easily snuck out of the kitchen and began to stroll down the hallways of the castle carelessly. “See nothing to it” I told her and she rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I wonder how you come up with these ridiculous plans” she snickered.

“HAULT!” ordered a voice from behind us, ‘Spoke to soon’ I thought to myself as we both turned around to see two royal guards approaching us in the hallway. “What are you doing in the royal castle after hours… Your majesty, I apologize I had no idea it was you” the guard apologized as they bowed down in front of us. “Do not worry yourself guard. Sergeant Clare was simply escorting me from the royal garden back to my room” Luna informed the guard, lying perfectly like she had rehearsed it several times.

“Yes ma’am, it would be wise to have a guard with you. There is an intruder in the building” the guard informed us. “Really who?” she asked, “At the moment ma’am, we are unsure. The librarian reported that there were two intruders who made a disaster of the library and knocked over a book shelf while yelling something about a cycloid. Also one of the guards were assaulted and knocked out by the intruder, we have… Sergeant you have something in your hair, it looks like… like applesauce” he informed me. I thought to myself how foolish we had been not to wash our hair before we left, we had only cleaned off our body and face, not our hair.

“Oh it uh must’ve been from lunch” I replied, trying to make up a convenient lie. He raised an eyebrow. Luna leaned over and licked the applesauce out of my hair, the guards’ eyes went wide in pure shock. ‘God this was not going to end well, I could already tell’ I thought as Luna stepped away from me. “You guards are truly lucky to have such delicious food for your lunches” Luna said and the guard shook off the utter shock and nodded. “Uhm yes ma’am… we do ma’am” he stuttered, still obviously shocked.

“Well, I hate to have to cut our conversation short, sergeant if you would be so kind as to escort me to my chambers” Luna told me and we both turned and walked away. As we walked up a staircase and onto the second floor I looked to her.

“Did you have to do that?” I asked and she looked to me and smiled. “Well you weren’t very good at lying and I needed some way to distract him and throw him off guard” she told me, I had to admit she was good at talking her way out of things. “You know we make a pretty good team together” I told her and she nodded, “But next time I get to make the plan” she laughed. “And have me talk us out of our problems?” I asked rhetorically.

She laughed at the thought of me talking us out of a problem. “Good point, you can just stand behind me for good looks” she laughed, okay now that was just insulting.

We reached her bedroom and I opened the door for her. “I could talk us out of a bad situation” I argued and she laughed. “Well that went real well when you were trying to calm me down. How’d that go again?” she asked, I laughed knowing exactly what she was trying to do. I reached my hand around her neck and brought her in for a kiss. She held a hoof up to my mouth and stopped me.

“No peaking” she said, I rolled my eyes then closed them. As I leaned in for a kiss I felt my nose go icy cold and I immediately opened my eyes and stepped back from the sudden coolness. “I said no peaking, now I’ll have to punish you” she said as she brought out a feather and wisped it across the tip of my nose. I felt a sneeze coming and I didn’t want to accidently sneeze on the princess so I held my sneeze back and it came out in a little tiny ah-chew. She squealed in delight, “You’re so cute when you sneeze” she told me as I rubbed my nose.

“Please tell me you froze my nose then tickled it just to make me sneeze?” I asked but sort of already knew the answer. She nodded playfully and I groaned from the innocently terrible joke. I shook my head in humour as I figured it’d probably be funny if I watched it happen.

She leaned forward and gave me a quick kiss to the cheek which I returned. “Goodnight Luna” I whispered with a wink, she looked into my eyes and it was as if her cyan eyes sparkled. “Goodnight Clare” she whispered back then turned and trotted over to her bed. She looked back to me, “If you wish to have some rest you could always come to bed… I mean, not with me I…I meant with… I have another bed that” she stammered as she accidently let it slip. “I know what you mean, don’t worry about it” I said as I turned around and closed the door behind me and stood guard outside her door.

As I began to stand guard I became extremely tired and constantly yawned and soon I leaned against the wall, then I slid down the wall until I was sitting down and finally I passed out.

Sgt. Clare, Sudan Africa, 13 months ago:

“Okay gentlemen, intelligence reports that this little town here is where the gun runner is going to come through. We need to set up an ambush point and take him out. HQ would like him alive but they know how hard it might be to catch this guy and they don’t need us losing our lives because we tried to catch some guy alive so if you think it’s too dangerous don’t be afraid to pull that trigger. Any questions?” Captain Daniels asked.

I raised my hand. “Yes sergeant?” he asked, almost reluctantly. “Can we order some pink window blinds for the windows, the place is really depressing?” I asked jokingly, several of the other guys snickered. Daniels sighed, “No sergeant, we cannot have pink window blinds but your suggestive decretive theming is always noted” Daniels replied, obviously semi- humored by my suggestion.

I let out a depressed sigh as I walked to the rear of the Humvee and opened the rear passenger poor. I reached in the back and pulled out some decretive blinds, “Okay, I guess we’ll have to use these” I said, the blinds were ridiculous looking, made of beads and string. Captain Daniels groaned, “Sergeant where the hell did you get those?” Daniels asked in disappointment.

“Some crazy old bat was selling them, look she even sold me a dream catcher” I replied as I showed him the dream catcher. “She said it would stop all the bad dreams from entering my head as long as it was hung nearby” I said in a child-like voice. He face palmed and groaned at my humoress stupidity. “Jesus Christ sergeant, sometimes I worry about your mental well-being” he told me as he chuckled, most officers would rip me a new asshole for even suggesting such ludacris things but we had served in the infantry together for the last ten years, ever since we enlisted together when we were both eighteen. “Don’t worry Captain I got you one to” I said as I tossed him another dream catcher, “Sergeant please don’t tell me you didn’t spend more than… ten dollars on all this stuff” he muttered in fear of the answer. “Twenty” I replied, knowing that I had probably let the crazy old lady rip me off but the stuff was still cool looking.