The South Fold records desk logged Form 7-C at 11:40.
The form is one page. The print shop calls it a decline. The title line reads "Request That a Sovereign Visit Be Declined." Box one asks who is declining. The Sun Bench wrote its own name. The Sun Bench holds eleven of the seventeen seats on the Fold council. Those eleven seats use the crown's sun on their letterhead.
Box two is the reason. The bench left a single sentence. "The Sun Bench does not want the princess to come."
Box three asks for a preferred hour if the visit must stand. The bench wrote "none." Box four asks whether the hall will still open. The bench checked "no." Chair Sable Quill signed at 11:36. Dusty Verdict stamped the corner at 11:41.
Verdict put the form in the drawer marked Visits. The drawer sits under the session desk. He entered the number in the day book. He left the note line blank.
"It came in complete," Verdict said. "I file what they sign."
Councilor Maren Pell asked for the day book at 15:02. Pell holds one of the six seats that do not use the sun. She took the floor at 15:10. She did not make a speech. She read box two. She read the signature. She sat down.
"Their chair signed it," Pell said. "The page is the page."
Quill answered at 15:14. He stayed on his hooves. He said the Sun Bench is the princess's bench. He said she is welcome in the Fold in every season but this one. He said Thursday is already taken by a ditch hearing. The ditch hearing is item 6. It has been on the sheet since Monday.
"We are with her," Quill said. "We do not have the hall."
The hall was not full. Nine ponies sat in the public rows. Thirty-one seats in those rows were empty. A card on the clerk's spike reserved them. The card is from the Sun Bench. It is dated yesterday. It says "royal row, hold."
At 09:20 the same bench signed Requisition 12. The order is four hundred chairs, two hundred cups fired with a sun, and a banner. Line eight of the banner reads "She Arrives at Two." The kiln receipt is clipped behind the order. The receipt is 38 bits and a rush fee of 6. The fee names Tuesday. Form 7-C is clipped in front. The clip is plain brass. Verdict left it there.
The crown office in Canterlot sent a harmony notice at 16:02. The notice carries four lines and a seal. Line one names Princess Celestia. Line two names the South Fold hall. Line three names Thursday at 14:00. Line four says she will speak on unity. The seal is the sun. No line cites Form 7-C. No line cites the day book. No line cites the banner.
Harmony Gloss read it in the Canterlot corridor at 16:05. Gloss keeps the crown visit sheet. Gloss held the paper at eye level and took no questions on the slip.
"The hour stands," Gloss said. "A regional bench does not cancel a seal."
The notice reached the Fold by tube at 16:22. Verdict stamped it received. He set it in the Visits drawer. He did not pull Form 7-C.
"I don't pull a signed form for a notice," Verdict said. "They can share a drawer."
Petitioner Lark Fen had waited on item 6 since noon. Fen runs a two-mare crew on the east ditch. The request is three lines. It asks for nine cartloads of gravel before the next rain. The chair never called it. At 16:31 Quill moved the session into recess. The recess produced no vote. The session closed at 16:40.
"I stood through it," Fen said. "They spent the hour telling their own princess to stay home. Then a seal told them she is coming."
No vote struck Thursday. No vote kept it. The decline is in the Fold drawer. The notice is on top of it. The banner is in a tube behind the desk. The cups are in a crate by the west door. The crate says "Thursday."
Verdict closed the day book at 16:41. The last line is his. It reads "7-C pending. Sheet unchanged. Item 6 not called."
Fen left the hall at 16:44. The gravel request was still in her satchel. The crate of cups stayed by the west door. No pony moved it.
