Sunny Skies All Day Long

Sunny Skies is a, 8548 word single-chapter short story written by PhantomFox and hosted on FIMFiction. It is a slice-of-life story that tries to stay true to the feel of the show, and tells the story of Princess Celestia's attempt to spend a day in Ponyville incognito.

Summary
The story opens with Celestia having just returned to Canterlot after the events of "A Bird in the Hoof," where she complains to Luna about how their subjects always walk on eggshells around her, afraid of incurring her wrath for the slightest mistake. Celestia wishes she could just have one day as a normal pony, without all the royal pomp and ceremony, and Luna tells her flat-out to just go ahead and take a day off to fulfill that wish.

A few days later, Celestia sneaks out of Canterlot and disguises herself as a normal-sized white pegasus named Sunny Skies before heading to Ponyville to test the disguise against Twilight. Upon entering town, "Sunny" meets Rainbow Dash and claims to be from Fillydelphia, although she lets slip knowlege of a trick the Wonderbolts had only just unveiled in Canterlot and has to amend the cover story slightly to compensate. Rainbow spends some tiem teaching "Sunny" some basic stunts, some of which end with Sunny crashing into a tree. After they part ways, Sunny and Twilight literally bump into one another and after an awkward conversation the unicorn runs home to try and figure out why Sunny Skies seems familiar. Pinkie Pie pops up during the conversation, seems to recognize Sunny for who she really is, and runs off.

In an attempt to avoid encountering Pinkie again, Celestia heads toward Sweet Apple Acres and ends up helping Applejack and Big Macintosh pull their apple cart out of a mud hole, which ends with Sunny crash-landing in a mud puddle. On AJ's recommendation, Sunny heads to the spa and encounters Rarity, who adopts the pegasus as a replacement spa buddy for Fluttershy, who is busy tending to an injured squirrel. During the spa session, Rarity designs a dress for Sunny that is uncomfortably close to reflecting Celestia's regal aura and colors and Sunny nearly blows her cover by stating a preference for a designer who is ten years out of date. Pinkie pops out of a bucket of sponges to deliver a party invitation to Sunny.

At the party, Pinkie offers Sunny a chili-chocolate cupcake, which happens to be Celestia's favorite flavor. worried that Pinkie might blow her cover, Sunny tries to avoid her and bumps into Fluttershy. She tells the yellow pegasus that she's a story-teller by trade, and that leads to Fluttershy asking Twilight to recommend soem storybooks. Twilight, still preoccupied with her deja-vu over Sunny, brings her and the Mane 6 to the library to look for a good book. Celestia's cover is finally blown when Twilight has Spike send off a letter asking for a book on advanced teleportation, which loops back aroudn and re-materializes in front of Sunny Skies. The Mane 6 start to freak out until Celestia tells them firmly that the entire point of the disguise was to avoid the royal treatment.

The rest of the day goes smoothly once Twilight and friends get used to the idea of treating "Sunny Skies" like a normal pony and Celestia returns to Canterlot that evening in a great mood.