“Give me all your bits.”

Was I really being robbed? I had always been, for a lack of a better word, “sheltered” and had absolutely how to react in this sort of situation. I guess I’d had things stolen before, but only in the sense that I left something somewhere and when I went back for it was gone; I had never been directly robbed and it had always seemed like one of those things that would never happen to me.

I was frozen in shock and the robber had to repeat himself.

“I said give me all your bits.”

“They're in my saddle bag.”

In retrospect maybe I shouldn’t have just told them that, I mean the pony was behind me, if I was a little braver I could have easily kicked them in the face. But of course I was too afraid of the possible consequences to do anything like that.

I felt him rustle through my saddle bags, quickly skipping over the books and going straight for my bits. I soon noticed that my saddle bags felt substantially lighter.

“Thanks bud, have a nice day,” the thief said mockingly as he rushed out of sight; I never even managed to get a good look at him.

I just stood there, completely dumbstruck.

I had just lost all of my money, though my food had been spared, but still, what was I supposed to do now? I couldn’t head back to Ponyville as I had no money for the train, and if I were to walk I’d have to cut through the Everfree Forest to make it back in less than a week, and that was not an option.

In the end I decided to continue on to Las Pegasus; it seemed like the most logical course of action.

I figured once I got there I could figure out what to do.

***

The walk had been long and depressing but I had finally made it to Las Pegasus; maybe it was here that I would find what I was meant to do.

Wow, I had almost forgotten the whole reason I was on this journey, that robbery had been a major distraction but now I was back to focusing on my ill-fighting cutie mark. It wasn’t necessarily realistic but I couldn’t help but blame my cutie mark for this whole mess; If my mark had fit me from the start I would never be here, in an unfamiliar city with no bits to my name.

Now that I was here it was time to come up with a plan. First thing first: find out where this Serenity lived, I believed that if somepony helped me discover what I was meant to do all my problems would go away so finding Serenity was my top priority; a flawed priority to say the least.

I had realized on my walk that I had never asked the Unicorn in Ponyville where this Serenity pony lived specifically. In my youth I was always making simple mistakes like this, jumping into action before I had all the necessary information. And now I had to think of someway to find out about Serenity.

I was trying to think of what to do when suddenly it hit me, the unicorn had said she learned about Serenity from a book, What was it called? After some thought I managed to remember the title, The Future Sciences: Universal Predictability.

I knew what I had to do, and I was not very happy about it. I had to go to a library.

***

The Las Pegasus Public Library was quite different from the one in Canterlot, not only was it smaller but it had an entire floor dedicated to magazines related to celebrities and films. Luckily though they did still have sections for “actual books”.

I acted fast, I felt very uncomfortable being in a library so soon after leaving the one in Canterlot. With my knowledge of the workings of Libraries I managed to find a copy of The Future Sciences: Universal Predictability relatively fast.

I headed straight to the Index. S, Se, Serenity P.202. I flipped to page 202 and found that there was entire chapter written by Serenity on the topic of Cutie Marks and how they affect a pony's decisions and lifestyle.

I didn’t read much then and there, I was quite desperate to get out of there, and headed straight to check out the book; thank Celestia for the implementing of the "Universal Library Card" for all of Equestria, otherwise checking it out would have been for more of a hassle.

Once I was out of the library I headed to a park bench and began to read the chapter by Serenity.

I don’t feel the need to retell the entire chapter, so let me summarize: Serenity theorized that a Cutie Mark was not a definitive sign of a pony’s talent or fate; a new and seemingly outrageous idea. While the theory conflicted with a lot of common beliefs her proofs and evidence examples were well stated and justified. After reading it through I found that her case had been very persuasive; and also found that she would be the perfect pony to help me with my problem.

As luck would have it, they had an address where you could reach her (not her home address of course).

As luck would not have it, the location was on the entire other side of Las Pegaus.

After a bit of lazing about I finally accepted that I was just going to have to deal with a little more walking.

So I walked.

***

Before the day was out I had managed to reach the address the book had given, it appeared to be a small office building.

I climbed up the steps and knocked at the door.

After a moment of waiting the door opened. Before me stood a grey unicorn with a black and white mane and light blue eyes.

“Hello?” The pony said; it came off as a question.

“Um, are you Serenity?” I asked, a little nervous that I may have had the wrong address, something I often worried about.

“Yes… and you are?”

“Oh, sorry, my name’s Tailor.”

“Nice to meet you Tailor”, Serenity greeted me, “do you have some sort of business here?”

“Um, yes, I was hoping you could help me… I have my problems related to my cutie mark.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Um, no, sorry, I wasn’t aware I needed one.”

“I see…” Serenity thought for a moment, “okay, come in, take a seat in the waiting room, I apologize but you may have to wait a while… I don’t usually talk to people without an appointments, you’re lucky you caught me on a slow day.”

“Thank you.”

I stepped inside the waiting room. There were a few other ponies there.

I found myself very nervous, which I guess was not surprising, as I believed I was about to learn something important about my destiny.

Which I suppose was true, but it wasn’t something I was going to be happy to learn.

Author's Note

Chapter 5 might take a few days to work on before I post it, sorry if it takes a while.
Thanks for reading.