"Your Majesty," the guard said as he bowed respectively, "A letter has arrived."
Twilight looked up from the latest book she had been reading and lifted a brow at the pony at her door. "Who is it from?" she asked as she brought the scroll in question to her side and skimned it over.
The stallion cleared his throat awkwardly. "I can't tell, Princess."
As Twilight finished reading, or at least attempting to, she laid it out on her desk. It was scrawled in very absurd hoofwriting, or very intricate cursive, it was hard to tell. The few words she could make out were 'A tea party for Her Majesty at earliest convenience', or at least, something along the lines of that anyway. Equestrian obviously wasn't the writer's mother language, and apparently writing it was fairly worse. She supposed that it was a foreign diplomat and that he or she wished to discuss an important matter in the simplest of ways: Tea.
Deciding this was the case, Twilight began to write a reply letter, which read simply:
'Dear Sir or Madame,
I gladly and most graciously accept your offer for tea, if it still stands. I am at your disposal from the hour of 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm on Sunday of this week. If this time is not to your liking, however, request a time and date and I shall do my best to oblige. I sincerely look forward to meeting and discussing the matters of which bring me to your residence, and the topics for debate on any subjects that should arise.
Her Majesty,
Princess Twilight Sparkle
She then rolled up the scroll and stamped it with the royal Canterlot wax seal. She then gave it to the guard who stood stoically in her doorway. "Send this to the address where it came." she said as she read over the first scroll once more. The guard took the scroll but did nothing. She looked back to him puzzled. "Well?"
"I-I'm afraid that I can't very well do that, Princess." he stammered.
Twilight furrowed her brow. "Whyever not?"
"Well," he began, "Considering that it arrived in the Canterlot Castle mailbox-"
"The mailbox?" she asked, confused, "Yes, well, I suppose that's why it didn't just appear in my quarters in the first place..." She looked back at another desk where neatly stacked piles of letters sat to be sent out or read. It looked the same as before. "Are you telling me that the letter was not sent by mage-fire?"
He nodded. "Yes, Your Majesty."
"Well how am I supposed to find out where it came from!" she cried, agitated and a little worried by the strange letter, re-rereading it once more. "I can't make out an address or even a name!"
The guard gulped nervously. "May I suggest, Princess, a Traveling spell?"
She glared at the guard but sighed nonetheless. "A Travel spell for this stupid letter? For tea? This must be important!" she mumbled as she readied the spell. The pinkish aura surrounded the letter still in front of her and placed the location of its origin on a nearby map. Her eyes widened.
"Canterlot?" she said, obviously dumbfounded, "That can't be right!" She cast the spell again and watched as a purple line traced itself from a street in the city to the palace. She paused before resuming, "I suppose that it's a dignitary on buisness here in Canterlot. He or she might have taken a trip to a hotel, or has a residence here." she concluded.
Sighing, she turned to the guard, still carrying the letter. "Take this to 2145 on Rueberry Street, Soutwest from here." she said as she waved a hoof in dismissal. The guard bowed, relieved that the buisness had been concluded, and went away to deliver the letter. Twilight returned to her book she had been reading, also relieved, and put the invitation in a trash bin nearby.
That Sunday, just as Twilight promised, she arrived at the house from which the letter had come from. House wasn't the best term to describe it, though, as it was more of a mansion times the power of three dipped in gold and then burned down and rebuilt by gods and blessed with holy water made from rare jewels. It was as beautiful, and if not more splendid, than Canterlot Castle itself.
Twilight had arrived on time with a trio of guards by her side, all standing in awe of the mansion. It must've been a wonderfully rich noble to afford it, but it made Twilight a bit uneasy. She hadn't been notified that somepony had moved or purchased a house so close to the castle, but then again, such matters were below her. Although, a house this grand was enough to put doubt in anypony, as they had no clue whether or not they were dreaming or needed a pinch to be sure they weren't.
Nevertheless, Twilight was looking forward to the meeting with this anonymous dignitary. The sophisticatedness of the house erased the trouble with the invitation she had the few days before. Though, she was sure that she would have to deal with an excruciatingly foreign accent, considering the nature of the letter, but rang the doorbell anyway.
A chorus of singing answered her, most likely the chime made to announce a guest's arrival, and made her and the other guards cover their ears due to the exceptionally high volume of the sound. As the doorbell abruptly stopped in its crescendo, and the faint ringing in their heads died down, Twilight heard the large, golden double-doors creak open. Taking a brief second to compose herself, she plastered a very forced smile despite her confusion.
"Announcing the arrival of Her Majesty, Princess Twilight Sparkle." a guard stated as clear as he could.
"Greetings, friend, I have come to your resid-" Twilight began, before she was interrupted by a sing-song childlike voice.
"Princess! You made it! Come on inside!" the voice chimed as a hoof roughly dragged her inside. "I got the table, the cups, the tea, the pastries, the teapot, the forks, the knives, the smaller fork, the spoon, the other smaller fork and the really small spoon, the cupcakes, which I guess is also a pastry, and the salads, which I don't really know why we need those 'cause we're having tea, but I didn't really know what you have at a tea party 'cause this is my first one with another pony, the ribbons, the small sandwiches, the flowers, and the vase all set up!"
Twilight, who yelped and stumbled inside the foyer, listened with as much attentiveness as she could to the run-on sentence as she slid around on the polished floor. As she regained her balance, still slippery though, blinked rapidly before she took a glance at whoever pushed her inside.
Two excited blue eyes stared back at her. Twilight blushed sheepishly and tried to back up a bit, bumping into a marble table behind her and sending an expensive-looking vase crashing to the floor. It broke and sent shards of glass beneath her, but the pony in front of her didn't care at all, or at least didn't notice, as the eyes were still buzzing with an ecstatic aura. The owner of those eyes were a small filly, rather than a pony. It was a snow-white unicorn with curly black hair styled neatly atop her head and a smile that reached from ear to ear.
Twilight gulped. "Oh, um, hello there." she managed, "I, uh, was expecting somepony.. older. S-Sorry about the-"
The filly didn't bat an eye. "Oh this is going to be so.. formal! So great! I really wasn't sure you'd show up!" she squealed.
"Oh, yes, well, would you be a dear and fetch me your father? Or mother? I'm meeting them here for tea."
Suddenly, the filly's smile disappeared and was replaced with a small frown. "That's going to be a problem." she said slowly, "I didn't know that you wanted them to come too." She looked around the large room, as if she had never seen it before, then sighed; a small, tired sound. "Mommy- I mean 'Mother'- is in Manehattan, and Father is out in the city somewhere." She looked back to Twilight with a terrified expression. "B-But I can send them a letter! W-We can, I mean you- No, wait, we can wait and I'll just get them... No, daddy- Drat!- Father doesn't want to ever see her, at least not in the same room, so we have to set up some kind of communication system--"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold on there little pony!" Twilight chuckled as the filly began to race around the room in search of some paper, "Do you mean that you sent the letter to the palace? Not your parents?"
The pony stopped as she pulled out a quill, looking back at Twilight with a beaming smile. "Oh yes! I wrote it all by myself! I set up everything for the tea party, without any help!" she managed before spitting the feather out. "I'll have to make some more room for Mother and Father, but at least you're here! You are staying, right?"
Twilight gulped. Looking back to her three guards, which witnessed the whole scene unfolding, she made an expression that read 'Help me!'. But the most reaction she got out of any of them was a shrug that read 'Why not?'. She groaned inwardly but realized that she couldn't possibly deny the child before her, who had gone to great lengths to get her here, and looked back to the filly that was trying to use her magic to write two more letters that she obviously didn't want to write.
"Of course I'm staying." Twilight finally sighed. The filly hummed in approval, more like a squee than anything else, and tried harder to sign her name at the bottom of the first letter. Twilight smiled to herself and said "And these letters won't be necessary. Show me where you set up the items, dear, and let's get this tea party started."