CANTERLOT ROYAL GARDENS — Premier Maren Holt of Frostmere said the Cinder Reach junior side will not skate at the Winter Junior Rink, set this season on Frostmere ice. He said it Wednesday night at the compact supper under the quince trees, while the draw could still lose a name.
The Reach has been off the sheet since its columns crossed the Gray Dike. In September its juniors asked to return under their own mark. The Monday letters did not discuss the dike. They discussed trains.
Pellamere, Ostbridge, Quill Harbor, Bracken Court, Ivy March, and Dun Merrow wrote by the morning pouch. Each letter named a junior bench and a train that bench would not board. Quill Harbor added that it would be sorry to miss the fish. It was the only regret in the pouch.
Table Seven was set longwise to the terrace. Frostmere took the near end. The six took the length, pins aligned, coats already checked. The Reach was printed on the seating card and was not given the cloth. Corra Venn, second secretary, sat in a folding chair from the service tent, between the last quince and the hedge. She got the thin napkin. She got a dessert fork, and no other fork, from soup through cake. She kept her coat on. She left at the soup. She did not stay for the word.
The chair stayed where it was. Nell Harp, nineteen seasons on the hedge tables, turned Venn's card face down and put a small cake on the plate, one candle, the cover the kitchen sends when a seat has been taken off the count.
Lady Nessa Bray of Pellamere wore oxblood velvet and a silver skate-blade pin on the left breast, where a decoration goes. Her program was open before Holt stood. It had been printed Tuesday. At 7:40 the italic read, "A Word, Unprepared, on Who May Skate." Holt spoke at 7:40 with an empty hoof. He used the page's verb. The quartet entered on the cue printed under the line.
Pimm Rowe, captain-elect of the Frostmere juniors and the supper's honoree, wore white ice-silk. Against it lay the cord the program would pin on him "should the rink remain whole." He nodded when the italic ended. Harp had watched that nod at six, beside the service tent, while the spoons were still being counted.
"They added six cakes at noon, and one small," Harp said. "The small was called a courtesy. That means nopony is meant to sit down to it."
Lark Mellen, a junior clerk from Quill Harbor, was behind the fern at the service edge. Quill Harbor's copy had gone out on the light paper the compact uses to acknowledge receipt, and light paper did not get a terrace chair. The fern faced the cloakroom.
"Six coats were off the pegs before he stood," Mellen said. "I could see the pegs from the chair they gave me."
Ambassador Soren Vale of Pellamere had the center of Table Seven and a pin matched to his wife's. "Nopony threatened a walk," Vale said. "We have a schedule. If the Reach is on the ice, we are not on the ice."
Mareline Verdict kept the eligibility book at a side desk under the lantern. She had not been seated at Table Seven. The rule allows a host realm to close a bench if a walk would split the draw past mending. It does not mention a supper. She entered the closure at 7:41 and sanded the line. The sand caught the cuff of a junior usher who had come to ask whether the folding chair ought to be put away before the portrait.
The painter, booked for Rowe and instructed to keep the quince in the frame, sketched the long table, the hedge, and an empty chair with a cake. Venn was not in the sketch. Her train left the Gardens spur at 8:05. The quartet was in the encore printed beneath the italic. Harp took the small cake back to the tent, candle still straight, and the servers ate it standing.
The sheet made after the encore lists the six, the host, and a closed bench. The time on the closure is 7:41.
The painter signed the sketch at 8:18, with the quince and the empty chair still in the frame. Harp entered the small cake on the kitchen chit once the servers had finished it.
The usher's sandy cuff was listed as linen. The folding chair was back in the tent before the skate-blade pins came off.
