//------------------------------//
// Clover Pavilion 
// Story: Sun Redacted 
// by daOtterGuy 
//------------------------------//

Mr. Greenhooves, or Green as his few friends liked to call him, was a simple pony. He wore plain work clothes over his dusty brown fur to do his job, had simple hobbies like checkers in the park, and lived a mostly carefree life. He was not the type to contemplate mysteries on any meaningful level, and, most importantly, he didn’t ask questions.

Green was Celestia’s personal gardener. Well, one of three. Each of her gardeners tended to one of the distinctive special care areas around the castle grounds. These restricted areas were, of course, not to be confused with the public gardens. The latter was enjoyed by both visitors and general maintenance. The prior wasn't.

Now, Green did not get a special title and he wasn’t recognized as one of the special gardeners (general maintenance certainly didn’t give him any special consideration outside of basic insults) in public. He cared for the Clover Pavilion. It was one of the biggest of the three and required careful and deliberate instructions given directly by the Solar Princess herself that must be followed. To. The. Letter.

And his orders were fairly straightforward.

Order One. Do not ask questions. Easy enough. He didn’t like to know answers.

Order Two. Do not listen to anything that is told to you while in the Pavilion, including from the Princess herself. He was hard of hearing, so even if someone wanted to tell him something, he probably couldn’t hear them  anyway.

Order Three. Bury everything, no matter what. A task he and his shovel Cutie Mark happily performed whenever able. Why, he was even burying Something right now.

“RELEASE ME.”

Green shoveled another mound of dirt onto the… Something. He called it ‘Something’ because it was vaguely like a squid, kind of like a fox, and sort of like an egg. None of these things meshed well together at all, and in lieu of comprehension of what in Tartarus this thing was, Something did all the heavy lifting required.

Additionally, he was bound to Order One. Thus, he had no interest in answering the question of the Something meaning that he might as well have not heard anything at all.

“I WILL UNMAKE YOU.”

Another mound of dirt was added to the pile. This time, the Something spluttered as mud went into its… mouth? Green was going to settle on ‘mouth’ if only because there was not a single word that could possibly describe it otherwise.

“I WILL FIND THE FLYING MENACE FIRST, THEN I WILL COME BACK FOR YOU.”

Green presumed the Flying Menace was the guard that had come in earlier to deliver the Something. Weapon Point something or other. Or was it Spearbutt? Didn’t matter. The hulking pony had brought the Something, so Green buried it as per Order 3. That was the very important job he had been assigned to do, and getting to know his coworkers was not part of that.

Though, Green did remember a lot about him (them? He was bad at telling ponies apart) because he was rude. Earlier, he had stomped into his garden, leaving non-garden regulation mud tracks and red gore from whatever it was that was splattered across most of his body. He’d cleaned off with a towel (the GOOD one, which he was loath to let him use, but Green didn’t feel like testing the Something-killing blood-covered guard’s patience), dumped the Something right in front of him, and trotted back with nary a word.

That guard was an odd one, and Green hoped that the current Captain of the Guard (Glitter Armour or Shining Plate?) eventually realized not to trust that smiling face and the large amount of innuendo that spilled forth from his mouth.

The Captain, however, had proven to be rather dense, since he had definitely not realized that his subordinates regularly commit unspeakable acts against incomprehensible beings in the name of the Solar Crown… or perhaps the guard was very good at hiding his true self, but that attributed an amount of competence to a pony that Green didn’t like. Regardless, that particular guard was set to retire soon, and then Green would hopefully get a more polite guard that didn’t use his GOOD towels.

“I AM THE ONE WHO WILL SWALLOW THE SUN.”

Three Somethings prior had claimed that within the last week. One before had wanted the moon. Two others had a penchant for the ocean. One particularly sick monstrosity had wanted to eat all the donuts that had ever existed and, though Green was loath to mix personal vendettas with his duty of burying things he had no interest in understanding, he had taken some amount of pleasure in burying that one bottom up. Or on its side. It was very difficult to understand the positioning of Somethings.

“ANSWER ME YOU INFERNAL GARDENER. TELL ME YOUR NAME SO THAT I MAY UNDO YOU.”

Answering the questions of a Something went against Order Two. Trying to comprehend why it wanted to know his name went against Order One. Thus, as far as Green was concerned, nothing had been said at all.

Another mound of dirt was dropped onto the pile.

“TALK. SPEAK. ANSWER ME! DO AS I SAY YOU DAMNABLE GARDENER. KNOW THAT YOU—”

The last heap of dirt was shoveled onto the pile, cutting off the words that hadn’t been said, by a creature that hadn’t been there to fulfill the Princess’s request to grow another bed of flowers in one of her private pavilions at a time that was certainly reasonable and not three in the morning.

Green whacked the mound a few times with his shovel for good measure,  then threw the tool back onto his wagon. He grabbed a pot of standard clover, then set about planting them in the new flower bed with the special fertilizer.

After the clover was securely rooted in its new home, Green pressed his hooves into the soil and released a pulse of magic. The clover glowed a soft green before a crunching sound began to emanate throughout the pavilion.

Shortly thereafter, an ear-piercing screech that defied comprehension shattered the calm serenity of the night.

Well, except that the horrid sound came from the pavilion. Order 2 meant that he couldn’t hear the scream, and, even if he did, Order 1 dictated that he was not to question why a flower bed would be screaming. Thus, Green could conclude that there was no screech at all within the pavilion and he could hear nothing.

The clover glowed brightly, then very naturally grew several sizes bigger. It joined the rest of its brethren within the field of flowers that was contained within a massive expanse that stretched seemingly endlessly toward the palace walls in every direction.

Of course, despite this, he knew it would take less than a minute to return to the castle proper, which meant the garden was not endlessly expanding and, even if it was, Green would refer back to Order 1.

His job was done as per Order 3 and would be until the next Something came to his territory, at which point he would fulfill his obligations to follow the Orders once more.

As he packed away his tools, his mind (which did not seem to agree with his viewpoint of nothing being present in the pavilion) went over past memories of Somethings that had been seared into his brain. Horrors beyond recognition that would plague his nightmares and thoughts regardless of his stubborn adherence to the Orders set by the Princess.

Regret began to creep in. He had taken this job for its opportunities, but had paid the price in his sanity regardless of how much he tried to deny the abominations that he was subjected to every day. Would he ever find peace? Would he one day have a nightscape devoid of these nonsensical terrors?

Probably not. But talking about it helped, and that was why he had a palace-designated therapist.

Suppressed existential dread did love company.