Thirty Minute Pony Stories

“I do not wish to appear rude to them,” said Princess Luna, peeking out from the double-doors of the throne room. “Especially not considering, the… circumstances, but… Ah.”

“It should be fine,” said Princess Celestia, with the distinct tone of one who is not at all sure that things will be fine. “I think.” She leaned over Luna’s head and took her own look through the crack of the door. She coughed. “We can only hope.”

“But the procedures!” hissed Luna. “The etiquette! How does one address…?”

Celestia coughed and shut the doors. “There’s nothing for it. We’ll simply have to play it by ear. Ready?”

“I do not truly smile in such a manner, do I?” asked Luna.

Celestia resisted the urge to crack open the door again and take another look. It was, perhaps, for the best that she didn’t. That might have confirmed that they were really there, and not, in fact, some sort of shared hallucination. “I don’t… think so,” she said hesitantly. “But we can’t keep them waiting. Are you ready?”

Luna nodded, reassured. “Ready, Sister.”

“On three. One… Two… Three.”

With infinite reserve, the two sisters pushed the doors open, revealing two ponies that looked an awful lot like Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Save for the garishly strained smiles they wore on their faces.

“Greetings to you from the future!” shouted the pony that looked quite like Luna. “We are here on ambassadorial duties of great import!”

“Indeed, yes!” said the pony that resembled Celestia quite a bit. Her smile stretched a bit wider. “We’ve come to the past with the intent of establishing diplomatic relations.”

“That is… very nice,” said the actual Luna, trying her best not to seem too put-off. “We— That is to say, you— Which is to say, us— ”

“We’d be happy to accept your envoy, of course,” Celestia chimed in.

“Yes,” said Luna, thankful for the rescue. “Yes. That.”   

“The happiest days!” whooped their future incarnations. “May there be celebrations!”

The two present princesses added a halfhearted laugh and turned around to huddle.
“We are not going to become this, are we?” Luna whispered.

“Stable time loops,” Celestia sighed. “It’s… entirely possible that we’ll have to. They’re here, which means it happened.”

Luna looked back at her future self, who seemed to have taken to giggling her head off. “By the stars above…”

Norse Pony’s comments: I laughed pretty hard at this. A completely silly idea, executed well. You gotta hate those stable time loops, making every successive version of you act like a jerk for all eternity.