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It’s another stressful day in Equestria. Princess Twilight, haggard as ever, drags her hooves through the halls of Canterlot castle. She’s filling in for Luna and Celestia for a week after many assurances that she could handle it, things will be fine, they should take a chance to relax. And she is handling it, just not as well as she’d hoped. Her horn aches from handling the sun and moon, her head aches from the long lines of complaining citizens, her hooves ache from her formal shoes.
She’s ready to flop down in her bed in the friendship wing of the castle when she hears Pinkie laughing a few rooms away. Twilight decides to make a detour to peek in on her wife, who has appointed herself castle foalsitter.
She slowly clops up to the door to the nursery, trying to be quiet despite her hard horseshoes clinking against the polished stone. It works well enough, since Pinkie is distracted with a gaggle of giggling little ponies. One of the smaller pegasus fillies has made a nest in Pinkie’s fluffy mane. She’s using her tail to play a board game while her front end is working on a zoo’s worth of balloon animals. She must have been at this all day, but she doesn’t look stressed at all. It’s a far cry from her first time with the Cake twins, assuming Pinkie wasn’t exaggerating that story.
Twilight leans against the door frame to get some of the pressure off of her hooves and just quietly watches. Eventually, Pinkie does notice her. She waves excitedly and then gets right back to work on the balloons. Despite how aches and gripes and stress, Twilight feels quite peaceful right now.
Twilight only has half a week left filling in. She thinks she’ll manage.