Where You Are Most Needed (and Least Expected)
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Where You Are Most Needed (and Least Expected)
“In a hole in the ground…”
Twilight Velvet lowered her pen, fell back until the chair’s rocking died away, and stared at the empty inspiration on her desk.
In a hole in the ground
Under the desk’s lonely lamp, the words glistened, ink fresh on the page, their meaning poised like an actor waiting for someone else’s cue. In a hole in the ground… What could there be? Treasure? Fossils? Lost cities? Something had to fill this hole.
In the darkness, she dismissed the idea. Things. Things were everywhere, if you listened to the scientists. Star things and rock things and water things, things too small to see and things too big to comprehend. They picked everything out: the way fluids fell in a waterfall, the weavings of a rainbow, the mechanics even of a beating heart. One by one, the machine of science picked out the atoms of everything, and it deadened her.
She was fed up with things. There would not be “something” in a hole in the ground. There would be “someone”. She wanted someone.
But who?
Tiny ponies, hiding from the smog of a nearby city?
Little foals, playing in the countryside well past their bedtime?
Even goblins forcing ponies to mine for them… well, those goblins each counted as someone, because evil coveted what goodness had, whether or not it understood goodness at all. Everyone knew that. She vaguely wondered if more ponies would respect science had it been evil. A mad scientist using lightning to galvanize a corpse at least was creating life, however much they shouldn’t.
In a hole in the ground
Twilight Velvet wanted to create from nothing. The creation of creatures crowded her mind, ghosts giving themselves up. Unfortunately, they left nothing but machines.
Nothing will come of nothing. She’d have to think again.
So, bracing herself with each breath, she turned her chair to face the life of Twilight Velvet, here and now, in this room lit only by a lamp on a desk in the corner.
No. Not yet.
She turned back to the desk and opened the topmost drawer. Photographs came out under the guiding lights of her simple spell. She examined the first.
Bloom Fountain. A bank manager. Portly, red-faced, and possessed of the feeble grin and squinty eyes of someone constitutionally ill-tailored for the sunshine of this sandy Zebra Country. With his monocle and suit, he looked every bit the bank manager her mother had said he was. An odd profession on such exotic shores, perhaps, but he’d taken it seriously. He always took it seriously. Her mother once said Canterlot could’ve dropped him in the middle of a rainforest, and within minutes he’d take his banking duties so seriously his first words to the undiscovered tribes would be, “My good fellow, what monetary standard do you use?”
Nothing. Not a blip in her memory. Twilight Velvet shuffled the photo to reveal the next item.
A newspaper clipping. She’d taken years to track this edition down. PLAGUE IN ZEBRA COUNTRY. In the photo, crowds of grainy, half-shadowed ponies rushed across the platform to the train carriages. Of course, none of the ponies were likely to be her or her mother, but the picture helped her build a memory of what it must have been like.
There’d been only two of them. Her, and her mother.
She flipped to the third photo.
Twilight Candle. Her mother.
Smiling, in front of a humble mill. Mare Mole Mill, it said over the doorway, as though the tall, tapering building wore a badge of pride. They were definitely not in Zebra Country here, not with the fields sleeping behind them and the distant dot of the city over Twilight Candle’s shoulder. A tiny filly – the miniature of Twilight Velvet – stood by her side, giving the classic blank stare of all infants when confronted with a camera.
There’d been only two of them here as well.
No photographs of Bloom Fountain – her father – existed from this point on. It’d proven enough of a shock to learn she, Twilight Velvet, had been born abroad, yet her father never left his post.
PLAGUE IN ZEBRA COUNTRY.
Twilight Velvet stared at the photo again. Mare Mole Mill, the stone tower standing proudly over her mother and herself. Those fields sleeping behind it, like old friends who trusted her enough not to wake them up with her gambolling and running around and hollering at random birds.
Now she really looked, she could see the dark bags under her mother’s eyes. Twilight Candle had forced herself to smile for the camera.
Here and now, Twilight Velvet forced herself to feel something. A rush of understanding, a trembling lip, long-overdue tears, anything.
Something?
Just a blip in her mind. That was all.
She flipped through the remaining photos, expecting nothing. The rest of them showed gritty lanes and blackberry bushes and coppiced trees and interesting thrushes of the countryside. Oh, how she’d gone crazy when she’d figured out how cameras worked…
Still, none of it filled the void. She thought happy, but her lips had forgotten how to smile.
The drawer opened. In went the photos. Slam went the drawer again.
In a hole in the ground
Twilight Velvet groaned into her hooves, sliding them down her face until the lips slurped where their corners caught. Those photos had never helped before. Why would this be any different?
In a hole in the ground… Twilight Velvet was stuck.
I’m stuck.
I’m well and truly… stuck.
At which point, Twilight Velvet stepped away from her desk – chair rocking suddenly – and stepped out of the room.
In the anteroom, a fire crackled under the mantlepiece. Bookshelves did not line the walls: they were the walls. Books roosted and slept, the wings of their pages tucked away and their spines turned to the orange glow, gently warming themselves. She briefly imagined them all taking off, startled, and flying over their heads all a flutter and a flapping of covers.
Over “their” heads, after all, because Velvet was not alone. Her own daughter sat in the middle of the room, a tiny set of hooves and horn surrounded by… Well, Velvet didn’t peer too closely. It was best not to disturb Twilight Sparkle when she was concentrating.
Twilight Velvet approached the right shelf and levitated one of the books near the top. This was one of a rare set, for whereas most of the books greyed with age or darkened under official boredom, these ones boasted every colour of the rainbow, one for each edition.
Caught in the firelight, the title of this blue one glowed golden: The Big Blue Breezie Book, by Long Handle Screw.
Every corner of the cover flaked and curled where her young spells had pulled and pushed a little too vigorously. She’d read this one back on Mare Mole Mill, almost every night until she’d discovered there were more books. A red book, and a green book, a yellow one, a pink one, grey one, violet one, crimson one – though truth be told, she had a hard time telling it apart from the red one – brown, orange, olive, lilac… Yet she always came back to the blue one. She never forgot her first.
Behind her, someone turned a page of a different book. Her daughter spent half her life reading, so Velvet paid it little mind.
Velvet opened The Big Blue Breezie Book.
Ah. Choices, choices.
That was always the trouble with inspiration. She waited months never having one, and then thirty seven turned up all at once.
Where to go? Where to start? In a hole in the ground… Could “Big Witty-Tongue” and his clever cat convince her to climb out of it? Or would “Hack the Giant Befriender” ask a giant to pull her out? She could find something to fill the hole if she tried “The Terrible Head”, perhaps?
Or maybe little folk were the answer after all? Surely the “Lilly Puddles” were clever enough to build a device and excavate her out of their poor wee home in the ground, that hole in the ground where she’d fallen in?
Yet Velvet’s gaze fell down the contents page and only fell deeper and deeper, into an emptier and emptier hole, and the light got further and further away as she fell under layers of writers and storytellers who’d told seemingly every story that needed to be told.
There was a click behind her.
Velvet tore her eyes’ desperate grip away from the book to watch her daughter.
Twilight Sparkle was building a cone.
It smelled of soot and oil. The framework gleamed. Metal girders the size of straws snapped into place while Sparkle worked. She measured with her steel rule. She fiddled with an abacus. She hummed at a schematic she’d scribbled herself out of crayon. All technical. All precise.
Velvet hated the sight. She was a mare of words and leaves, not at home around metal numbers. Yet she bit her tongue for her daughter’s sake.
Sparkle hummed again.
Kindly and not a little guiltily, Velvet said, “Is everything all right, honey?”
A flicker of annoyance twitched across Sparkle’s face, but soon a polite blankness covered it up. “Just a little en-ginny-ee-ring… add-just-ment. It’s hard working on curves. The pi is never precise.”
Tiny sweat beads threatened to sting Velvet’s face. Her daughter always tried to get technical around other ponies.
“What’s that you’re making?” she said, nervously watching the cone.
“Ah. Well. It’s supposed to be Rockhoof’s volcano, but the eastern slope is too straight-y. I think I can correct it, but the book’s not helping.” Sparkle pointed to an open book, one of many crowding around her like anxious servants.
Velvet relaxed. “Oh, Rockhoof! Yes, I’ve been meaning to update those maps, honey. Professor Fossil did her best, but I told her she’d forgotten to take into account the earth ponies’ trench-digging activities on –”
“Mom?” said Sparkle.
“Oh, yes. Sorry, honey. Carry on.”
While her daughter fussed and cussed over some tricky nuts and bolts, Velvet crept around her, careful not to cast a shadow over her work. And… yes! As she’d thought! That old book!
She craned over Sparkle’s head, trying to squint at the map. Many islands dotted the coast, and even inland she saw the vast ranges they’d tried to convey by hoof. Professor Fossil back in the day had wanted an accurate topographical map. Velvet had wanted something more… vivid.
“How are you doing it?” she asked gently. “Active or dormant?”
“Active,” said Sparkle without looking up. “I want it to be perry-od-accoo-rate.”
“Period-accurate, huh?”
Bless her daughter, but she’d read the dictionary without understanding how some of the words were pronounced. Velvet could almost compliment Sparkle for taking a stab at it anyway.
“This a school project?” Velvet asked.
“No. Just for fun.” But Sparkle didn’t look like she was enjoying it; a little girder slipped, and she uttered, “Shoot!”
Maybe Velvet could help? She warmed up her smile.
“Where are you putting the trolls?” she asked, all sweet innocence.
Then Sparkle looked up. “Huh? Trolls?”
“Oh, you know. The Quartz Trolls of the Callous Caverns, deep in the heart of the volcano. Trolls are full of mischief, stealing food and destroying homes in their quest for gemstones. Rockhoof had to wrestle them out of the caves and into the light of the sun with his trusty shovel, and that was almost impossible when they could dig themselves into the ground and hold on tight –”
“Mom! That’s a legend! It’s not real.”
And just like that, the warmth dimmed.
Velvet began, “But it’d make a very good –”
“This is an accoo-rate volcano,” said Sparkle, very seriously. “It has real things in it, not silly trolls. Anyway, that legend’s just a metal-four for tidying up the sandy soil before agree-culture-all devil-op-ments started. The trolls reper-sent wild chaos before civvy-lized order.”
Sparkle had made some progress bolting two girders together before Velvet added, “Where did all that come from?”
Again without looking up, Sparkle pointed at one of the many open books. Velvet levitated it. Archaeological Accounts of the Mighty Helm, by Professor Fossil.
The old scholar must have published it after Velvet left the university. She sighed and sagged. Fossil had never been one for silly trolls.
“Oh, trolls were real enough in ancient times,” she said, but without much hope. Even she could see what Fossil was getting at. And Rockhoof was famous in the Egga chronicles for telling tall tales, and that document had been written while he was alive!
A thimble of doubt tinkled in Sparkle’s voice when she asked, “Were they?”
Velvet heard her mother over the years, reading her bedtime stories and talking while they weeded the cabbage patch near the mill, and picked mushrooms and berries in the fields and in the hedges… and occasionally ran away giggling from an irate farmer chasing them off his property…
“The world,” she said, “was very different in those days, when there was much more magic, and many marvels and miracles.”
To her delight, she watched Sparkle stop her fiddling and look up, eyes wide open and ears reaching eagerly towards her.
“Are you sure?” Sparkle said, blushing.
“I did study Ancient Ghrian tribesponies when I was younger. I should know.”
“But Professor Fossil says Rockhoof made things up a lot.”
“All Ghrian ponies did that. It was part of their culture. That doesn’t mean they weren’t telling the truth.”
“Huh?”
Velvet sat down, near the fire. She had to shift a few books aside to make room, but it was a good sign that Sparkle didn’t object and even helped her with some of the bigger ones.
Tenderly, Velvet seated herself close and lay on her belly, forelimbs folded under her chin. If her daughter craned her neck now, their eyes would be equals.
“For instance…” Velvet smacked her lips, coaxing the words to come. “Rockhoof once said he ransacked the Hive of the Changelings using nothing but his bare hooves. And a thousand thousand changelings tried to stop him, but he swatted them all like flies.”
“When you say a thousand thousand,” said Sparkle, narrowing her eyes, “is that two thousand, or one million changelings? Because even a pony with the strength and stamina Rockhoof was alleged to have couldn’t possibly achieve that. He’d exhaust himself after two hundred and twenty-five – approx-eemately – at most.”
Velvet opened her mouth to ask –
“I calculated it.” Sparkle pointed at the abacus.
Once more, Velvet wondered what monstrosity had been unleashed by that abacus, that cruncher of numbers, that world-grinder. But her husband had insisted, and even the most cautious and polite attempt to take it off Sparkle had led to squealing and trying to prise her tight hugging legs off of it. Velvet hadn’t tried again.
Instead, she gave her daughter a little generosity. “Yes, it isn’t very likely, is it?”
“No, no, no. Not at all.”
“Two hundred and fifteen, huh? That’s a lot –”
“Two hundred and twenty-five,” corrected Sparkle, tiny body ballooning with smugness.
“My word, that is rather a lot, isn’t it? No, I don’t think he did it either. But what is true is that some changelings built small hives in the nearby Monolith Mountains. Fossil and I found traces of petrified honeycomb in that area when we were younger.”
“Oh, that,” said Sparkle. “But changelings are a known –”
“Rockhoof and his friends might have fought them off from time to time, yes.” Now she was back on track, Velvet heard the promptings from The Big Blue Breezie Book. “But once, the Changelings were Elven Ponies, and they were led by the Queen of Elvendale.”
“What!? Elven Ponies aren’t real.” Sparkle glanced at the other books around her before turning a worried plea to her mother. “Aren’t they?”
“They might have been. Not many stories are clear on what they were like, except that they were astonishingly beautiful and easy to fall in love with. Elven Ponies were secretive and distant creatures, though. Where else would changelings have come from?”
“That’s not right! Changelings aren’t mythical. They’re totally natural emotion-eaters. It’s just basic ecology.”
Velvet wished she’d read the dictionary as thoroughly as Sparkle. Some of these words flew right over her head without dropping so much as a clue.
“Are they?” she whispered, and the fire’s chill died down briefly. “Some say they were cursed to feast on love, as punishment for their evil. Elven Ponies didn’t care about normal folk’s feelings. Although they were easy to love, they didn’t love in return. They thought mortal love was an amusing bit of… silliness.”
Sparkle shivered. “Please stop. They sound horrible.”
“Oh, they were. Don’t believe the tales ponies tell today. No one in history said Elven Ponies were good.”
Velvet grinned. Her front hooves crept closer; Sparkle watched them, inched away uncertainly.
“And they used to snatch –”
“MOOOOM!” Sparkle leapt onto her hooves, out of reach, just in time.
“Snatch away unguarded children! And they’d replace them with their own, just for the fun of it. And the family would never know until it was too late…”
Sparkle batted her mother’s hooves away, and shame knocked Velvet back. Her daughter spent most of her time learning from scholars, after all, because as silly as the old legends and tales were alleged to be, Sparkle knew all too well that “silly” was not the same as “harmless”.
“That’s not funny, Mom!” Sparkle sat down hard, flicking Velvet’s nose with her tail. It barely sent a puff of air in Velvet’s eyes, but she felt the hurt deeper inside.
“Sorry, honey,” she said. “My mother used to do that to me when she told a scary story –”
“I! Was not! Scared!” In the face of the evidence and a doubtful hum from her own mother, Sparkle fidgeted. “You… just… caught me by surprise, that’s all. It was a reflex action.”
“I know, honey,” said Velvet, to be fair to her. “I’ll try not to be too scary. Then one day, a sorcerer caught up with the evil Elven Ponies –”
Oho, did Sparkle’s ears prick up at this! “Star Swirl the Bearded?”
“Honey! There are more sorcerers throughout history than just Star Swirl the Bearded.”
“But he’s the father of the amniomorphic spell, the time tripler spell, the limbo lockstep, the –”
“Well now, give… oh, say… Clover the Clever some credit. She was a powerful sorcerer too…”
“Not as powerful as Star Swirl,” muttered Sparkle sullenly.
“…and she also had a big heart and a generous spirit,” continued Velvet, who’d much preferred her over the old bearded windbag.
Her own mother clearly had done so, too. Handed down from mother to daughter, the journals had made for interesting reading.
Velvet had read some of Star Swirl’s journals cover to cover, but only once. She frankly thought he was a bit full of himself. It’d be impossible to say “good morning” to him without him dissecting the statement just for a petty bit of points-scoring.
Whereas Clover, by all other accounts – Clover herself never wrote about her own life, just about experiments and discoveries – had been quite shy and retiring and preferred to study animals and strange ponies in the many forests of early Equestria. Velvet still had the Bestiary somewhere, alongside Observations and The Chronicles of Platinum. They’d been well-hooved-through.
“Anyway,” said Sparkle quickly, “what did Star Swirl do?”
“The sorcerer,” corrected Velvet. “Whoever they were, they were said to have punished the Elven Ponies for their callousness and trickery. The sorcerer forced them to hunger for love, so that they would appreciate what they were doing to other ponies. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. The changed Elven Ponies just got angrier and more spiteful, copying beauty from others and trying to steal it back, but under all the glamour and illusions, they only became as ugly as their dark hearts. That’s why changelings are so vicious. They remember how beautiful they used to be.”
“Can a spell do that?” said Sparkle suspiciously.
“Do what? Cast illusions?”
“No! Obviously, that’s easy magic! I mean turn someone into an emotion-eater.”
“Why not? Emotion-eaters exist in nature. It is possible to go from a material diet to an abstract one, so long as there’s enough magic to convert between them.”
Sparkle raised an eyebrow. “Where did you read that?”
Velvet looked around their little library, books nested from floor to ceiling. True, Sparkle had read an astonishing number of these books already – it had taken her mere months, where Velvet had taken years – but it was still, in a petty, pleasant way, nice to know she hadn’t reached the good stuff yet.
“Clover the Clever’s Bestiary, of course. See, she performed experiments with an ordinary fruit fly and a vampire watermelon –”
“You’re being silly again. Um, aren’t you?” said Sparkle, but she asked as though apologizing for asking. The model volcano lay completely abandoned at her hooves. Both eyes swelled to take in all the imagination that her mother spoke into existence, as though Velvet were a poet feeding her daughter with visions and daydreams.
“Oh no, not at all.” Glancing about for inspiration, Velvet noticed a certain eight-legged silhouette in the corner. On the ceiling. “Floating” a smidgen away from the wall, but far enough to tell where the invisible web had been laid down. Aha!
“In fact,” added Velvet, memory holding open the very book for her, “it was in the Bestiary where we learned about a strange tribe in the Everfree Forest. Clover said it used to be the home of giant Spider Ponies.”
“Ew! No!” Sparkle curled up small at this. Thank goodness she hadn’t spotted the spider in the corner…
“Oh yes. She even had tea with them. Apparently, flies on crumpets taste delicious, if a bit crunchy.”
“Mooom! Stooop! Spiders are disgusting.”
“I thought it was rather sweet of her, really,” said Velvet, trying not to sound huffy. “It’s very important to understand others and their ways. Sometimes you learn a great deal, even if all you learn is that there’s more than one way to enjoy life.”
“I’m not eating flies on crumpets! Talk about something else! That’s disgusting.”
Lesson completely lost, Velvet sighed under her breath. “You’ll learn one day, honey. All right, how do you feel about…?”
What other creatures were there? Velvet glanced at The Big Blue Breezie Book for inspiration. Of course, some of Rockhoof’s tall tales had ended up in there too. Perhaps, though, it was best to talk about something not scary…
“How about Wargponies?” said Sparkle suddenly.
Velvet blinked at her, caught completely by surprise. So far, she’d never gotten her daughter to volunteer anything “silly” during a discussion.
“You don’t think they’re silly?” said Velvet as a first test.
“Of course not! Star Swirl the Bearded himself worked on several polymorphic spells, like this one time, he made a bird turn into a piece of fruit totally by accident…”
Part of Velvet settled down again. Star Swirl. Obviously. Yet watching her daughter beam and blush and trip over herself rattling off spell after spell, Velvet wondered if she wasn’t being a bit harsh on the old boy. Star Swirl had done mighty deeds, way back in Equestria’s past, some of which were noble and heroic. Perhaps the world needed someone who didn’t focus on friendship, but who knew the right spell for the right place at the right time?
“…and then he turned a pony into a plant pot.” Sparkle nearly rose off the floor gasping for breath. “And I think he could’ve even transformed a dragon into a giant –”
“Yes, that’s lovely, dear. Tell me about these… Wargponies, was it? I don’t think I’ve heard of those.”
Another flicker of annoyance, but this time it was followed by a pitying face. Sparkle said, “I’m sure I told you about them before.”
“No, I told you about Wargs, yes. I know what Wargs are. Not Wargponies.”
Puffed-up with the chance to educate her poor mother, Sparkle began, as though reciting from an encyclopedia – which was probably the case – “Wargponies are normal ponies who have been cursed by the three Wargs of Legend. The Warg who was fated to swallow the earth cursed the earth ponies. The Warg fated to swallow the sun cursed the unicorns. And the Warg fated to swallow the moon cursed the pegasi. Of course, none of them really exist, but! According to the legend! A Wargpony turns into a vicious wolf-like vampire when the magic of one of those three elements meets them.”
Frowning and concentrating, Velvet crossed her forelimbs to stop them falling asleep on the carpet. “So… cursed unicorns turn into wolves during the day?”
“Uh huh.”
“And… don’t tell me… pegasi turn into wolves during the night.”
“That is correct, yes,” said Sparkle officiously.
“So… how do earth ponies turn? They’d be touching the ground all the time.”
“The book didn’t say. I think it’s something to do with what kind of food they choose to eat.”
“Why’s that?”
“Earth ponies are all about food, aren’t they?”
Velvet made a drawn-out sound to indicate she was kinda right but kinda not all right. “Yeeees, but earth ponies are complicated, honey.”
“Anyway, Wargponies,” said Sparkle, who dealt with some problems by not dealing with them, and “not-dealt” with them in a certain tone of voice. “I think that’s unlikely. They’re more likely to be natural creatures, like changelings. Part of the order Vampyromorphidae.”
“What?”
“It’s a classify-cation I came up with on my own. Cart-Us Linear-Us classifies all kinds of creatures in his Best of the Bestiary. He’s very speck-i-fic.”
“Specific,” corrected Velvet, but out of habit. Cart-Us Linear-Us – who was so fancy-schmancy he’d tried to make his name sound ancient – had never been on her reading list, since he A) wasn’t involved in history or stories, and B) hadn’t existed any earlier than a hundred years ago. Anyway, this sounded like “metal numbers” stuff again. Ordering animals into classifications like numbers on a chart.
Velvet stared at the unfinished cone. Her daughter was trying to make a mountain. OK, technically a volcano, but looking at it she couldn’t help thinking “mountain”. Mountains… They were fit for legends. “Volcanoes” sounded slightly too exotic or unfamiliar, but everyone respected “mountains”. Mighty mountains for a Mighty Helm…
“Home of dragons,” she whispered under her breath.
Little eyes followed her gaze and jumped back, twitchy as sparrows.
“I sure hope not,” muttered Sparkle. “This is a volcano!”
“Dragons can live in volcanoes quite easily. In fact, they like volcanoes. Lots of heat, hardly any life around, plenty of caves to hide their treasure.”
“No dragons!” snapped Sparkle. “They’re not nice!”
Velvet wondered what her own mother would’ve said, if she’d lived to hear her granddaughter say such things. Of course, neither Velvet nor her mother had found any dragons near Mare Mole Mill, however many caves they’d explored and hills they’d checked. The countryside just wasn’t the place for mountain-sized reptiles.
Yet her mother had told her once: Here Be Dragons, Once Upon A Time. Here Be Dragons.
And dragons were not monsters. Dragons were just… shy and retiring. They liked their privacy. But they also liked beauty. They ate gemstones because real food wasn’t beautiful enough for them. They liked a good fight, and they respected ponies like Rockhoof who could fight, in their own graceful, beautiful way.
Sure, it was never a good idea to poke a sleeping dragon in the eye. Velvet had been warned never to anger a dragon; they’d squash an annoyance as carelessly as we ponies might squash a bug. Not us, obviously, us two never squash bugs. We have better things to do with bugs than squash them. Still, they are easy to squash, and so are ponies for angry dragons.
But – and here was where Velvet always leaned in close and hungered for the dream – if a dragon became your friend, tough as it was to persuade them, then you had the strongest friendship of all. It would take a lot of love for one dragon to leave its hoard and join a pony, willingly, as friends.
And here was Velvet’s own daughter, acting like the magnificent creatures were spiders again. She sighed. One day, she’d have tell the really old bedtime stories.
“Very well,” said Velvet. “No dragons. No grown-up ones, maybe. How about a baby one?”
“Not even a baby one,” said Sparkle. “Baby dragons grow up.”
“They take centuries to grow up, honey. You’d spend your whole life with a baby, and it would hardly grow up at all. That’s a generous amount of time to teach them how to be good with ponies.”
Sparkle opened her mouth to object… and thankfully, some of her native curiosity closed it again. Velvet knew she’d struck gold. If anything appealed to young Twilight Sparkle, it was teaching.
“Dragons can learn that?” said a little voice.
“Yes.”
“You could tame them? Train them to do tricks?”
She’s only young, thought Velvet firmly. She doesn’t understand what she says.
“I said you could teach them,” Velvet said, not as coldly as she’d feared but definitely chilly around the edges. “Dragons are intelligent beings, not pets.”
“Don’t they steal gold and kill ponies who try to get it back?”
“I didn’t say they were all nice. Dragons are dragons. Sometimes their love of beauty makes them forget about other valuable things. All the same, there are ways. Clover herself once befriended a dragon, and until the mob attacked it and it burned down the village and fled, Clover might have united ponies with dragons forever.”
“Ah, well,” said Sparkle dismissively.
“Listen, honey. Dragons are just another species. They’re not evil monsters all the time. If you learn how to think like them, and how to talk to them, and when to back off and when to get close, and if you read the signs and learn the language… then, Twilight Sparkle, you might find a dragon can see more precious things than gold, and can treat other lives as respectfully as their own. They’re proud creatures, though, so it’ll take time to teach them the most important lessons.”
Just like a certain little madam, she thought. She didn’t dare say that part out loud.
“OK,” she said instead, “what would you like to have on your mountain?”
“Earth ponies!” said Sparkle at once, her eyes indeed sparkling bright. “They were all over the mountains back then, and they’re so warrior-y. They get the job done every time.”
Velvet sighed, smiling. Yes, they certainly did. Back in Mare Mole Mill, it was always the earth ponies who made her mother feel welcome. Never shying from a challenge, the two unicorns who were treated like family had helped in the fields, once or twice a year. Hard work, tough on the back: how the earth ponies did it so easily, she’d never understood.
And the hoedowns! Oh, the dancing and the big dinners, everyone sitting along huge tables so no one felt left out. The noise, the chatter, the guffaws and titters, and the running thunder of excitable foals – it was her kind of chaos. She still remembered Embrace, a stallion who always seemed to have a trick under his hooves. How often had they climbed high the towers of Vanhoover and flicked sugar cubes at passing hats? Ten points if you knocked a top hat off. Fifty points for a bonnet…
It wasn’t that her mother disapproved, exactly. She loved the earth pony families and visited them constantly, spending half her life drinking tea or cider or stronger beverages over at a dozen cottages, barns, mills, and village greens, occasionally at a café in Vanhoover’s city centre. But earth ponies had jobs to do. Velvet had to do her studies, often supervised so she didn’t e.g. climb out the window and run off to play with Embrace, usually in some hay loft somewhere. Eventually, her mother drew the curtains. Studies were important. Science was important. Magic was important. No tempting fields. Out of sight, out of mind. And so many other clichés.
Velvet hated studying. Her prospects had never looked good. How she ever got as far as Canterlot… That was nothing short of a miracle.
“I remember Rockhoof spent a lot of time in mead halls with his clan,” she said dreamily. “So much dancing and singing and drinking and enjoying their time together.”
“Mm hm,” said Sparkle, who was always quiet at family reunions. “But I meant more he was so brave and strong.”
“Oh, earth ponies are, when they’re riled,” said Velvet, and she warmed up to a new taste of memory pouring in like wine. “Never mess with an earth pony’s farm. Take it from me; it’s one of the scariest things you’ll ever see.” The memory shuddered, a brief drop of vinegar amid the succulent tang.
Sparkle frowned up at her. “Farmers? I meant warriors. Heroes. You know?”
“Oho! Don’t think there’s much difference, young Sparkle-me-lass.” A nudge almost knocked Sparkle sideways. “Farmers are warriors who beat their swords into ploughshares. There’s still a little hero inside every earth pony. Small, maybe, but stout of heart and strong in spirit. Never rile an earth pony. The last time Equestria went to war, they put the fear of Celestia in the enemy.”
Not without losses, though, she added privately.
In the grand scheme of things, it hadn’t been a great war. A minor skirmish, really. But Embrace had gone off with many other earth ponies, and then months later had not come back. Earth ponies always answered the call. They got the job done. No matter what it cost.
Velvet had tried to follow him. She’d gotten as far as the eastern coast of Equestria before her mother ambushed her and dragged her kicking and screaming back home. She had prospects! She had a future! How could she throw it away so recklessly? It was the only time her own mother had scared her to tears, but she put the fear of Twilight Candle in Velvet.
So much had changed. It was as if Velvet had followed a script and never realized it until she’d veered off course. She forced herself not to love anyone else after that. No excursions into the countryside. No hoedowns. No nothing. Velvet intended to get the job done. All that meant was three years in classrooms and her own shut-in bedroom at the top of the mill. Studying.
Studying.
And studying.
For three whole years. Living death. Not even living with hope. Only her studies had worked. Studies of science in particular were the hardest and coldest. Studies, science, and death went together so well in her mind…
“I guess…” Sparkle brushed herself down. “Only, everyone in Canterlot doesn’t seem to like farmers much.”
“Yes,” said Velvet, and the cold steel of death sharpened her words. “I know.”
“They talk about them like they’re dirt.”
“Then they don’t know how important dirt is!” She fought against the machine closing around her mind. No! Not those memories! “Most of what we eat and drink started out as dirt! Earth ponies are the wise ones who know the magic needed to transform dirt into something alive, something sweet to share. They make us all of one flesh.”
“Ew.” To Velvet’s sharp surprise, Twilight beamed after this and held up one of her many books. “Wait a minute! That’s ecology! It’s all a cycle of the ecology!”
Velvet straightened up. “What?”
“All that dirt to food stuff. I get it! See? See?”
What Velvet saw on the page – being so enthusiastically offered – was a web. The earth below, labelled with such things as “nitrogen-fixing bacteria” and “ammonia” and “nitrites” and “nitrates”. Plants higher up, then a pony, then bones, then something called a “detritivore” which looked like a blob, then up in the clouds, then back to the ground as “lightning” and “compost” and “leaf litter”. Arrows ran all over, so she could chase them to every picture on the page.
Her education failed her here. “What’s this?”
“Everything’s all of one flesh here too. See, the earth ponies make food from the ground, then carnivals eat the ponies, or they both die and turn back into ground. Some of it goes up in the air first and then gets sucked into the soil by bactria or fixed by lightning. It’s very efficy-ent,” Sparkle added proudly. “It’s a science, called ecology.”
Velvet kept staring. This was a science?
Back home, it was just wisdom. Every earth pony had told her about the deep life, which lived through every plant and animal down the stretching fields of time, from the history beyond the horizon to a future far from home. Everything, sooner or later, became everything else. That didn’t stop the farmers chasing pesky wolves off, but at least they knew sooner or later how it all fit together. How could that be turned into more metal numbers?
But she kept her mouth shut. An… odd way to get there, maybe, but Sparkle had gotten there at least. Why fight it? What could justify destroying a young filly’s smile?
So she beamed back. “Very good, honey. I had no idea you took an interest.”
“Of course. I needed it to make the mountain realistic. Maybe I could put bactria in the ground so it’s even more realistic than anyone else’s model.”
“Haha! Next, you’ll be telling me there’ll be shrunken earth ponies on it.”
Sparkle looked a little too thoughtful at this –
“It was just a joke, honey,” said Velvet with all due haste. Unicorn fillies had odd magical surges, true, but Twilight’s could be measured by how many screams they caused.
“Is this one of those ethical things?”
“Yes,” said Velvet firmly.
“OK, OK, I was only thinking it!” Waving her little hooves frantically to ward off words, Sparkle gritted her teeth and ground them together. “Do you know if Smirches are real, then?”
Once more, Velvet had the feeling that her daughter had pulled the rug out from under her. “What?”
“Smirches. They’re like tiny earth ponies, but really, really strong. See, I got this book too.” The ecology book ducked down and a second book levitated itself under Sparkle’s spell.
Velvet gaped at the cover. An old friend. She hadn’t seen this one in ages! The Marvellous Land of Smirches, by Blacksmith.
“I remember now,” she murmured. “Smirches. Only slightly taller than the average table.”
“But broad in the shoulders!” recited Sparkle ebulliently. “And of great strength! Rockhoof said he saw them when he was exploring –”
“The Smokey Mountains.” Velvet nodded. “Yes, I remember. But isn’t that a ‘silly legend’?”
“It’s still interesting what ponies used to believe,” said Sparkle, a shade reproachful. “I might make some Smokey Mountains, actually. I’ll make them react realistically to mist. All I need is a tiny fan and the right smoker-stoker spell.”
“Are you going to model the whole world?” said Velvet, chuckling.
“Just the bits Rockhoof saw.” Now a third book replaced the second. “I’m saving up for a Shiny City.”
“A what?”
“That’s my next project. One model for the past, and one model for the future. See? The future’s going to be a big old Shiny City. See the tall towers and things? Well, I heard Manehattan was going to become bigger and shinier. At the moment, it’s just brick apartments and things, but the mayor’s keen to make it more richer than Canterlot. Not better,” insisted Sparkle under a sudden rush of royal pride. “Not really. But more futuristic-ly.”
Velvet saw it everywhere. Metal, metal, gleaming bright. Not a field or hill in sight. Horror and confusion paused in mid-tussle deep inside her head. This was her daughter’s idea of a bright future? One where the buildings are literally shiny enough to be bright?
“And there could be teleporting booths so non-unicorns can go anywhere they want in a flash. And laser spells to protect everyone. Laser magic everywhere! And flying carts that don’t need pegasi to pull them. And some of the buildings are gonna be rockets, and we’ll live on the moon and have moon cheese and we could play in the craters on the Mare in the Moon. I wanna see if the shadow’s made of black quartz! There’s a lava thing in one of those astron-monny books called a ‘mare’. I wanna see if it’s real!”
She stared past the book to the twinkling dreams in her daughter’s eyes.
A neat, tidy city, of squares finely organized and everything quick and efficient. But beloved by the same mind that, a moment ago, bubbled and burst and bowled itself over, barrelling towards a burble and a babble, all over just how awesome Rockhoof was. Rockhoof, an earth pony surrounded by mountains and hills and valleys and fields… surrounded by a place Velvet had visited once, during her higher education, with Professor Fossil in tow. A place so bristling with green magic that standing there, and seeing the earth, she could forgive, just for a moment, the three years of studies and death needed to get her this far and yet this close.
What could Twilight Sparkle see, that Twilight Velvet couldn’t?
And Velvet wondered, Am I jealous of my own daughter?
“I don’t know what to say.” That was the safest answer she could give.
By now, Sparkle overflowed with delight. “I thought one day, I could show Princess Celestia. Maybe I could work in the royal palace like Dad does. I bet the princess would love to see a Shiny City. I could design it for her. Look, I’ve got the blueprints ready!”
Sparkles burst out of nowhere. Blue pages flapped before Velvet. On them, white lines shepherded the space into squares, sliced through it cleanly, and piled numbers up before her. How could someone read this and understand it?
Another burst of sparkles, and the blueprints vanished. Twilight Sparkle huffed and puffed under the effort.
“I’ve already saved up for it, too,” she added weakly.
Sparkles burst again: a piggybank jingled in mid-air before popping out of existence again.
“I just… need… to rely… on compound… interest,” gasped Sparkle.
Compound interest. The words buzzed Velvet’s memory. Now it all made sense. Some things did skip a generation, and in a very small way Velvet had carried her father’s baton for him.
“You sound just like your grandfather,” she said quietly.
At once, Sparkle calmed. The levitating books shot back into place. Nervously, she nudged them to a more precise arrangement.
“My grandfather?” said the little voice, and Velvet realized the little filly had only ever met her paternal grandfather.
“I meant my own father,” Velvet corrected, just in case.
“Oh.” Sparkle cocked her head. “Have I met him at all?”
For the first time, Velvet worried and pitied her daughter. A proud student, and a true bookworm in the finest of family traditions, but… she had trouble remembering names. Hardly anyone spoke to her at the family reunions.
“No,” Velvet said, pulling her closer – for once, her daughter didn’t object. “It was a… It was a mystery what happened to him,” she lied. “He had a job to do, in a faraway land, a long time ago.”
Her daughter squirmed a little in her grip, but only to get more comfortable. They both wriggled and sat closer to the fire, Velvet trying to keep the creep of the cold well at bay.
“Was he an explorer?” said Sparkle politely.
“Hm? Oh, bless you, no!” The laugh helped. “My father didn’t like exploring. He was a plain stallion, and a quiet one. He didn’t have any use for adventures. No, my mother – Twilight Candle, you definitely met her, she was the one who gave you that Smarty Pants doll – was the one who went exploring. She went to the Zebra Country to find the lost tribe of healers, and she met him as part of the arrangement. He was there for the bank – they funded her expedition –”
“What does ‘funded’ mean?”
“Means they gave her the money she needed. Exploring costs much more than a piggybank full of bits, you know.”
“And did they fall in love at once?”
“No one falls in love at once. But they were interested in each other. My mother always wrote home to her mother, even if she’d just come out of a temple full of deadly traps, and my father was good to his family and always sent them money and gifts. They were both family ponies, my parents were. They bumped into each other at the Post Office stationed out there, and then they started talking to each other about their homes back in Equestria.”
Uncharacteristically, Sparkle was silent. It was easier not to check what expression she had on her face; Velvet instead stared across the room, to the dark corner of shelves, and beyond that to a mill where her own mother had sat her on her knee and told the tale…
“My father stayed at the town for a while. He had other duties, and he was a very serious pony. My mother went out of town and into the dark jungle beyond, where anything that could happen to her did happen to her. All kinds of monsters and traps and strange tribes… The sights she saw, and the beings she met! It took a long time and a lot of trips before she found the tribe of healers.”
“Were they zebras?” said Sparkle. “Or ponies?”
“Zebras.”
Sparkle smacked her lips together. “Were they… dangerous?”
“No, no. Zebras aren’t dangerous. But they are wild, and carefree, and make their own laws. You have to be very respectful to a zebra, especially one who knows magic. My mother made the mistake of blundering after them when they were feasting, many times. She was half-starved and going crazy, and they vanished at once, just to spite her.”
“Just like that?”
“I think she might have embellished it a little. Maybe the zebras didn’t vanish; they were just really quick. But they weren’t friendly when she finally found the tribe. They said she was trying to attack them. They imprisoned her. They frightened my mother at first with scary stories. I think they didn’t trust strangers much.”
“But that’s awful!” Sparkle squirmed between Velvet’s protective legs.
“Don’t worry. It gets better. When my father found out from pegasus messengers what had happened, well… My mother had learned earlier that he was the only unicorn in a family of earth ponies. It sometimes happens. He had the earth pony spirit.”
“He went after her, didn’t he?”
“No, no, no, no, no! He didn’t just go after her. He ploughed his way to her! He worked out the right angle and the distance needed from his pegasus messengers, and then he pointed himself that way and he charged. They say even the trees fought to get out of his way. When the zebras saw him coming, they sent their finest tricksters to mislead him and confuse him, but he just ignored their cunning traps and guile magic and was soon at the tribal village.”
Already, Velvet’s cheeks swelled with ripe laughter.
“And do you know what my father said to them?” she whispered.
“What?” whispered Sparkle back at her.
“He said… ‘Excuse me, but I’d like to file a complaint! Please take me to your manager at once!’”
A giggle threatened to explode; Sparkle had to clasp her mouth with both hooves.
“He said that?” she managed to whisper in between the giggles.
“Very crisply and firmly, or so my mother swears. She also said he lost his monocle in the jungle and never got it back.”
“Did they make it out OK?”
“They made it out fine. The zebras thought it was jolly funny!”
“It is pretty funny!”
“Oh, now it is, but it wasn’t so much at the time. I laughed when I first heard it too, but my mother said it was terrifying. No one knew what would happen. That’s why it was so good to hear the zebras laugh. They were good sports, really. They liked bravery. Had a fine sense of humour too.”
“And then they went home?”
“No, the zebras invited my father to a feast as a guest of honour. They thought it was funny to watch him eat fruit with a knife and fork. He always kept cutlery and napkins in his pockets, just in case.”
“My grandfather was a hero…” breathed Sparkle.
Velvet paused. She supposed he was, in a way, but she’d always given the word “hero” to her mother. She didn’t have a word for her father. He seemed too… fussy to be a hero.
“After that,” she continued, “my mother and father made a great team. Not that he ever went exploring again. He said the heat didn’t agree with him, and anyway he much preferred the comforts of town. But he did his job, until the end.”
Too late, she cursed herself. To the end? Why had she mentioned that?
Unerringly, Sparkle asked the wrong question: “What do you mean ‘until the end’?”
And Velvet sighed. There was no way she could answer the question, yet she couldn’t deny her daughter now. Not now. Not after that.
“My mother and I had to return home shortly after I was born. We never saw my father again.” She stared up at the ceiling. “I like to think he’s still out there, working for the bank, too busy to come home.”
The unwanted newspaper headline soiled her mind: PLAGUE IN ZEBRA COUNTRY.
“Did he ever send home any gifts?” said Sparkle, and, for once, Velvet cursed her daughter’s keen memory.
“Not yet,” she replied in a thought-terminating tone of voice.
A quiet crackling in the flames.
“He must be really old,” mumbled Sparkle, who seemed to sense the tightrope she was walking. She certainly spoke as though she hung in the balance. “I would like to meet him one day?”
It took a lot of fighting with her own lips, but Velvet finally approved of one sentence: “Who knows what the future holds?”
“Didn’t you ever go back?”
Velvet shook her head; she felt her daughter’s scalp under her chin. “Nothing exciting happened to me. I lived in Mare Mole Mill near Vanhoover and then moved to Canterlot. That’s where I met your father.”
“History repeats itself.”
Frowning, Velvet looked down to two upturned eyes. “I’m sorry?”
“You sound like my grandparents. Dad’s the bank manager type, you’re the explorer type.”
“I’m not much of an explorer,” said Velvet, looking away in case Sparkle saw the blush she knew was coming. Mare Mole Mill was a long time ago. “Not anymore.”
“But you do all those bungee-jumping and barrel-rolling things!”
“That’s just… for fun. A hobby. I’ve never really travelled. Exploring was my mother’s whole life. She said that was how I came about.”
“What did she mean by that?”
Oops. It had just slipped out. Turning yellow in the squirming belly, Velvet quickly lied, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Does reading stories count as exploring?” said Sparkle. When Velvet dropped a puzzled look on her head, Sparkle shook it off and hurried on to say, “Well, I like travelling in stories. You get to see all sorts of crazy places, and it doesn’t make you late for dinner! How cool is that?”
“Travelling in stories?” A weak chuckle, another bout of staring into darkness. “I guess that makes me an explorer.”
“More an explorer than Dad. He thinks bingo’s exciting.”
“Isn’t it?” said Velvet, biting down on her own smirk.
“All the neat little numbers and the grids are fascinating, but they’re not exciting. Not like reorganizing shelves!”
“Then I guess you’re never going off to have crazy adventures when you grow up, then.”
“I might. I’m saving up for more than just Shiny City. I wanna go to Zebra Country!”
“Haha! Since when?”
“Since two minutes ago. I’d like to find out if all my books are right. I heard zebras dig in the ground when they’re looking for water or just frustrated.”
“Hm. I don’t know. My mother never mentioned it.”
Too comfortable, she struggled to get up again, and got a blundering few steps before her daughter crawled back into her circle of books. The little girders of the mountain looked… not prettier, when they were still metal, but more hopeful to Velvet’s eyes. Perhaps her daughter saw further than even she did, and she could see zebra jungles and Monolith Mountains and the green bowl of Rockhoof’s valley.
She picked up The Big Blue Breezie Book where she’d dropped it without noticing, and then glanced at the author’s golden name. Long Handle Screw. Had he been an explorer too? Or had he sat at home and dreamed?
Had her father dreamed, in between the numbers?
To think, he’d only really been a creature of habit. So was Velvet’s husband Night Light. So was Twilight Sparkle. Was there some odd attraction there? Velvet had loved the Twilight Candles of the world, the Embraces, the laughing zebras and hearty earth ponies who went to even a little war because that was the job you did, and not for glory or fame. But she’d married a Night Light, a royal financier. And she always remembered that story about her father, Bloom Fountain.
They seemed like classic Canterlot ponies, all class and neatness and respectability. Only, they didn’t hobnob with bigwigs. On those occasions when they’d spent time with their wives – Bloom Fountain much more rarely than Night Light, because having an explorer for a wife meant waiting patiently for her to come home – they’d tidied the house, done the chores, acted like little hobgoblins or brownies, one or the other – she always got those two mixed up. Either way, Bloom Fountain and Night Light did the jobs in front of them. They’d even found a kind of joy, in their own fussy little ways.
Fussy little ways for fussy little stallions. Some might have thought of them as little ponies.
She looked at Twilight Sparkle, sat amongst fussy little books that, all of a sudden, seemed to contain more worlds than Velvet had dared to dream up. Science, metal, numbers… perhaps there was a magic there too, just like there was magic in the soil that other ponies treated like dirt.
Gently, she kissed Sparkle on the forehead and murmured, “Don’t stay up late, OK?”
“Mm hm,” said Sparkle.
Knowing her daughter, Velvet set aside a spare pile of kindling for the fire. She’d check in the morning, and if there was a sleepy head well past its bedtime, she’d levitate it and its owner to the bedroom full of books. Sparkle had started her own collection; it already surpassed Velvet’s.
Back in her study, Twilight Velvet sat up to her desk and stared at the words she’d abandoned.
In a hole in the ground
She added: there lived
“In a hole in the ground, there lived…”
She stared at it. After all that, inspiration had betrayed her. She’d been working on this thing for five years, and had only a half-sentence to show for it.
Instead, she peered into her drawer and took out the newspaper clippings, then the photographs.
Mare Mole Mill, the stone tower. The dark tower.
Her mother’s eyes looked crushed with weeping. Her smile was dead too. Velvet knew that now; her mother had smiled while telling stories, especially the one about Bloom Fountain the brave bank manager. This was not that smile.
In the distance, she imagined the wolves howling. They didn’t come close to Canterlot – cities were for domesticated dogs, not wild wolves – but they’d always prowled near Mare Mole Mill. Some of the farmers tended to sheep and cattle.
Brave souls, yet fussy little lives.
“In a hole in the ground…” She tried out the phrase under her breath. “…there lived an earth pony?”
No, no. Too plain. Why would an earth pony live underground? That wasn’t sensible. No pony would live in a nasty, dank hole, unless it had been refurbished and made to look like a little cottage with grass all over it. And little windows, perhaps, and fourteen big meals a day, including elevenses and supper and tea. All eaten at the same table, with family and friends…
Shorter than the average table…
Of course. Sparkle had mentioned them earlier, hadn’t she? So Velvet wrote, in the margins, “Smirches.”
Then she crossed it out. She was on the right track, but she wouldn’t copy from someone else. Instead, she flicked through The Big Blue Breezie Book, hoping to land on inspiration. Blue, blue, blue, just like her husband.
A thought struck her.
Under the crossed-out word, she wrote down: “Blue Smirch.”
Ha! Blue Smirch, like Night Light! A fussy little stallion, that was it! She still wasn’t happy with copying the word “Smirch”, so she tried underneath: “Blue Hobgoblin”, then “Blue Brownie”, and finally “Blue Earth Pony” before dropping her pen and giving up.
No, no, not yet. Bedtime beckoned in her bones, but she was so close.
She wrote In a hole in the ground there lived a ???
Frustrated, she threw open another drawer. Piles and piles of scattered pages taunted her with projects still unfinished. If she couldn’t travel across the sea, she could send her mind over a forest of pages. Yet everything started, and nothing came to an end. Why? She was so close!
She liked the “Hob” part of the word, though, so she crossed out “goblin” to leave “Blue Hob”. Then she put a ring around “Blue”. Maybe that could be a name, rather than the species? Blue Hob? Hob Blue? Hob Bloom? Blue Bloom Hob? Blue Blue Hobby? Bobby? Bob Bluey? No, wait, go back… Blue Hobby… Blue Hobby… like a hobby horse? A hobby hole?
Well, what else would they be? Some kind of hole-builder? She was close! So close!
Who was she writing for?
The question popped into her head.
She stopped.
Who am I writing for?
Who are we writing for? Twilight Sparkle gave me the ideas.
She ducked the question and wrote, whilst reading aloud, “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hole-builder.”
That didn’t seem right. She went on, fussily adding, “Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell.”
So maybe something more exotic, like Zebra Country?
“It was a dry, bare, sandy hole…”
No, definitely not! She crossed it out quite vigorously. Or maybe Sparkle would complain she hadn’t covered that angle? Hastily, Velvet crossed out everything and started again:
“In a hole in the ground, there lived a hole-builder. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat…”
OK, but then what kind of hole was it really? She couldn’t go on listing “nots” all day. The imaginary Twilight Sparkle in her head nagged her like a stuffy wizard, fiddling with any magic words that came in, shepherding them into neat rows and columns with a staff for a crook…
…wondering about dragons and spider ponies and wargs and mountains with realistic mist…
Well, put like that, it was obvious what she should write. Velvet felt the uncertainties seep away and a brave spirit plough forth, straight from her brain up her horn to the levitating pen that sorted the world not as it had been, but as it was meant to be.
That said, she went back and crossed out “hole-builder”. “Hobby horse” would do as a placeholder. She really wanted to make the “hobby” bit work. Perhaps Night Light – who’d gone to bed at the right time and would wait patiently for his wife to join him – was a “hobby horse”. She giggled. He did like his hobbies so. Their bedroom had bingo sheets and guidebooks all over. “Hobby horse”. Yes. She liked the sound of that. Very folklore-ish.
She wrote the next sentence, the first of many she wrote that night, on several pages. Her mind didn’t dare sleep even when the sun broke through and she heard snoring from the anteroom where Twilight Sparkle needed picking up and putting to bed.
Before she went to do so, Twilight Velvet stopped to reread that sentence, again and again. She’d have to edit it all at some point, but first she had to go there and back again. “Hobby hole” would have to do, since neither “hole-builder’s hole” nor “hobby horse’s hole” had sounded right. Hobby pony? Hobpony? Hobbony? She thought of it as like an earth pony. Yes, that’d have to do. It could stand in for them ponies gladly.
Still, she’d have to cross that part out and try again. Only that part: the ending itself was perfect.
Velvet smiled.
“It was a hobby hole,” she read under her breath, “and that means comfort.”
