It was after the appetizer had been served, consisting of a single square salt lick, when the attaché to Princess Ember noticed a change in the composure of his superior. Her sapphire confidence had been blunted with glaucous gray; and she loomed over her salt square, not going near but unable to look away, as though on the edge of a precipice. 
	
        When the envoy asked what could be the matter, she pointed with a ragged finger to the head of the table of the reception hall, where Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer were seated together, speaking discreetly with each other like quiet robins.
	
        “There’s a new event organizer,” she informed him, “who has chosen our ship on which to christen his latest venture.”
	
        The envoy admitted that he didn’t grasp the oracle.
	
        “He doesn’t understand the order of the Royal Procession,” she replied with impatience. “He has seated two ponies who are exactly identical next to one another at the head of the table, trying to sabotage our mission.”
	
        “No need for such suspicions, Princess,” said Slider. “I’ve worked in the Foreign Ministry for years. This is simple stuff—as you will see,” he corrected himself, catching a cutting glare from his mistress.
	
        “The Foreign Ministry was a joke for decades,” she reminded him.
	
        “Sometimes,” answered the wise deputy, “an undertaking develops most profoundly when it is allowed to lay dormant. Listen.” He turned his body to conceal his explanation. “A pony has many features—horns, wings, coats of a dazzling array of colors. But we know that the easiest way to identify one is by their distinctive call. This is the result of many years’ research.”
	
        “Good to know I have an assistant well-acquainted with the binomial nomenclature of ponies,” Ember replied.
	
        “[i]Twilit Crackle[/i] and [i]Glimmer Go-Fish[/i], to be precise, are who we are concerned with here, if I am not mistaken.”
	
        Princess Ember lit up with a flash of hopeful recognition. “Glimmer Go-Fish! That’s the one! What do we do, then, Slider? You’re the expert. Things might get bloody if we can’t get the princess to intervene on behalf of our claims...”
	
        “Yes, yes,” he answered trivially. “Now, [i]Twilit Crackle[/i]—she has a voice pleasing to the ear, like the ramble of water over the smooth pebbles of a riverbed. It sounds like this—[i]cabbagescabbagescabbagescabbages…[/i]”
	
        The Princess, who, besides being the figurehead of her people, figured an adroit student, closed her eyes and imitated closely: “[i]Cabbagescabbagescabbagescabbages…[/i]”
	
        “Yes. And if you listen you will notice a subtle difference between her and [i]Glimmer Go-Fish[/i], whose voice is like a wheel which licks up and flicks the mud of the Lake of the Four Winds in gnarled spits. Like this—[i]Yyyack! Yyyack![/i]” 
	
        Ember repeated these sounds, and, meditating on them, exalted, “Yes! Yes, I think I can hear it.”
	
        “Pardon, Majesty,” came a footman pony with a refined face, “but the Princess is ready to give you an audience.”
	
        Ember glanced at her hosts, who had finished making chat at the head of the table and waited in silence as the din of the reception hall fell under the spell of their nobility. She turned back to Slider in the pall of the stillness which had come over the room; and, rising slowly from her seat, followed behind the footman, to where she would be received by Twilight.
	
        She was introduced, and stepped forward with one, two, then three bows in the direction of the two mares. 
	
        “Majesty,” she said, looking sidelong, “We have come to seek your appeal on a legal dispute which has arisen between the Dragon Lands and Macintosh Hills…”
	
        She hesitated to provoke a request to proceed.
	
        “…Regarding certain land rights belonging to some of the princes of said Dragon Lands—” she paused again, receiving only smiles—”the titles to which have been deemed forgeries by the examining magistrate, Ipso Facto.”
	
        She kneeled down. “We beg your indulgence and arbitration on this matter… Uh… [i]Tailgate Fluttersparkle[/i].”  
	
        “But [i]I’m[/i] Tailgate Fluttersparkle!” cried a multicolored pegasus at the rear, as loudly as the force of her low voice could muster. 
	
        Glimmer Go-Fish’s eyes glimmered with resentment. She propped herself up over her clean-licked plate, and growled before the whole company with a voice like a creaking wheel, “I know [i]you[/i]… You’ll just never learn, will you?”
	
        The reception room murmured in disbelief; but Princess Ember, maintaining her bent knee, grinned at a private victory.
	
        “The purple one,” she thought to herself. “The purple one with the horn and the iconic haircut.”