The Letter
If there was anything to be said of monarchs, it was that with great power came much responsibility. Being a princess meant doing a lot of paperwork; this was an unavoidable fact of being in a monarchy where the rulers actually cared about their subjects. Since the ruling class in Equestria was so small and still so caring, unlike so many of their contemporaries, they did much of their own paperwork, even though they had untold amounts of “servants” willing to do many of the work for them.
However, having to do a lot of paperwork may have been an exercise in pain for some, certain ponies relished it. Twilight was one of those; she loved paperwork. Filing tax reports, looking over building maintenance fees and signing waivers for new business ventures made her day. The smell of parchment, the dipping of her quill into her little bottle of ink, the scritch-scratch of the quill’s tip across the scrolls she sent out; even though it was only a short amount of what she did in the day, paperwork time (or buzz-kill hour, as Spike called it) was always a joy for her.
Still, even one so dedicated and studious as she could be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of paperwork that could file in on holidays and during celebratory events, so at times small piles of the stuff would be relocated to “to do” sections on her agenda. It was at one of these small piles that she found something most curious; a letter, written to her by a citizen from one of Equestria’s larger cities. The front of the letter was a bit difficult to decipher, but she determined it came from somewhere in the western region, along the coastline.
“Dear Princess Sparkle,” she read, noting how the hoof-writing seemed a tad... messy. It was hard to write with hooves when one wasn’t a unicorn, but it could be done easily with enough practice. Either this sender hadn’t had such time to practice, or they had been in a hurry, or both, if that was possible. “I lieke u so much. U...”
Two hours later...
Spike walked in from some of his chores around the outside of the library. These usually consisted of trimming the bushes, weeding some of the flowers, and making sure the bird who lived in the lower branches weren’t dumping their nestling’s excrement right outside the door. Closing the door behind him, he looked around the library, noticing the rather random scattering of books all over the place.
Well, more so than usual; whenever Twilight studied, she could be so messy. It really clashed with her usual neat-freak demeanor, but hey; everypony had to have a quirk of some kind.
“Twilight?” he called out, looking for his long-time friend/relative. “Where are you?”
Off in a corner, he could hear muttering and mumbling, almost like that of a crazy pony. Or, Twilight; either one was a good guess. Walking over and past a stack of books, the diminutive purple dragon found what he was looking for.
“Twilight? What are you doing over here in the corner?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing,” the princess said in a sing-song voice that made the spines on the back of Spike’s head stand up a bit. There was something... off here. “Just looking up legitimate reasons to imprison somepony.”
“Imprison?” Spike asked, his eyes bulging out of his head. “You... you mean... no! No, Twilight, don’t send me to jail! I’m sorry, I’ll never eat the last blueberry muffin again!”
“That was you?!” Twilight asked, spinning around and glaring at her assistant with a wild-eyed snarl. “I thought Derpy had eaten it! You know her extreme fondness for muffins exceeds even my own!”
“Yes, it was me! I confess! I also just farted outside and blamed a passing mule when asked. Now please don’t send me to jail, please, I won’t last one day in prison!” The dragon threw himself at Twilight hooves, holding onto them like a dog about to be dragged away for a much-needed bath. “I’m too young and squishy to be somepony’s puppet!”
“Wha... Spike, I’m now a bit upset with you, but I’m not going to send you to jail,” the princess huffed, blowing a bit of her mane out of her face. "I wasn't even considering it."
“You’re... you’re not?” the little dragon asked, looking up at her with puppy-dog eyes.
“No, you are just going to have to make it up to Derpy and me at a later date, and that mule as well,” she said, using her magic prying the dragon off of her. “No, I was looking up terms for imprisonment because of... this,” she spat in anger, disgust and slight constipation as she gave her assistant a letter. in fact, the way in which she gave it to him, it was almost as though it were a diseased rodent she needed disposing of.
“This?” he asked, picking it up. “It’s just a letter; a pretty long one too, I think. So what?”
“It’s not the letter, Spike; it is the travesty inside the letter that has my brain all in a frenzy,” the alicorn said. “I received this letter from one of Equestria’s citizens several days ago, and have only just gotten around to reading it. I... I don’t know what to do, Spike. Did this pony ever pay attention in school, or have these new-fangled "energy drinks" completely rewired his brain?”
“Do? How bad could it possibly be?” the little dragon asked as he looked it over.
“Bad? Bad? Bad doesn’t even begin to describe this travesty to our language!” Twilight suddenly shouted, one her wings flicking out and knocking over a few books. “I have never seen such a massacre of spelling, punctuation and sentence structure! Some of Fluttershy’s chickens could have no doubt written this better, given time and patience, the last of which I am sorely short on right now!”
“Come on Twilight, not everypony can be as educated as you,” Spike muttered as he continued to read through it. “We all make spelling mistakes at some time in our life; so what is this pony just... made most of them in this letter?”
“That’s not the worst of it!” Twilight said. “This pony seems to think I would enjoy a little story they wrote, starring me! It... it just boggles my mind that I was even able to read this. Some of the same words are spelled two different ways in the same sentence... and they’re both wrong!”
“Actually, Twilight, I think I’ve seen a letter like this before,” the dragon said.
“You have?” the princess asked, her hooves stopping from almost tearing out her mane. “When? Where? Was it from this same pony?”
“It’s called “fanficiton”, though the one I saw involved Rainbow Dash and Applejack,” he said. “They got it in the mail at the last get-together at Applejack’s farm. Some pony from Manehattan had sent it in, along with a fruit basket and a bottle of champagne.”
“And? What is this “fanfiction” of which you speak?” Twilight asked, a sudden swirling mass of books filling the room as she looked through every encyclopedia she could. “I’ve never heard of such a term.”
“It’s sort of like writing a novel, only about others and in your own words,” Spike said as he finished looking at the letter. “Anything can happen in it, seeing as how you are the one writing it. It’s not a technical term you’d find in a book; you’d only learn about it if you actually socialized more often.”
“How do you know about these, other than that one addressed to Applejack and Rainbow Dash?” the alicorn asked. “Besides, I don’t have the time to socialize like you can; I have important Harmony and managerial-related things to work on all the time.”
“I’ve... seen some,” Spike answered in a somewhat mysterious tone. “All I know is the one they got was burned within five seconds of them reading it together, Rainbow muttering something about “stupid stereotypes” and stuff. Applejack refused to tell me what had been in the rest of it, seeing as how I had only read the intro. The point is, this letter to you starts as one, just like theirs did, but quickly devolves into a fanfiction based on you and, apparently, the guy who sent it. Why else would he spend so much time on describing himself in the beginning?”
“What?” Twilight asked, her nostrils flaring. “That poorly-written piece of filth, with me and... that character doing all of those... things... is really about him and I doing that stuff?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” the dragon said.
The princess said nothing for a few seconds. “Was it meant to impress me?” she asked softly, her mane starting to rise in the air, as if it were being wafted upwards by a slight breeze. Her jaw was set, and there was something about her stance that made her assistant feel... uneasy. “Did he send it to... show me his feelings towards me? Is that it?!”
“I... I guess so,” Spike said, not knowing just what was going on. Okay, Twilight was beginning to seriously scare him, even more than when she had found out it was he who had clogged the toilet the other day. Damn, those chimmi-cherry-changas of Pinkie’s design just didn’t want to sit right with him sometimes.
“So... all of those spelling errors... those crimes against sentence structure... that stupid plot and horribly shallow character development... that was all meant to impress me?” the alicorn asked. “That was supposed to make me... like them, or something?”
“Maybe,” the dragon said. “Spike,” the alicorn said as her eyes began to shine. “I’ll be right back.” Grabbing the letter from her friend’s outstretched claws, Twilight shone like a beacon, and then just vanished.
“Teleporting; never gets old,” Spike said, dusting himself off a bit. Looking around, he sighed. “Now I need to clean up her mess; again. I’ll never get to write my fanfictions about Rarity today, if she keeps making messes like this for me to clean up.”
In Spike’s young dragon mind, his were written on a scale exceeding many great works of literary art; in reality, they were... decent.
“Reports are coming in from a western city in Ponyville, where news of a mysterious crime has occurred. One Samuel J. Hooflordington, a young college student, was found tied up in his room with a large and poorly-written piece of literary work stuffed in his mouth. Police still have no idea just who could have done this, but our resident police psychologist was able to determine it was a pony with a serious case of Grammar Nazism Syndrome, a rare but entirely unsociable disease where the “victim” has an unending urge to destroy any and all errors in writing.”
“Thank you, Captain Gerard,” Princess Celestia said. “Are there any ideas as to why this pony received such an... unusual punishment?”
“No, but from interviews with those who know the “victim”, he was a loner with no friends and seemed utterly obsessed with princesses,” the guard said. “Now, or at least all the way to the hospital, all he could say was “the quills... the quills...” or some nonsense. He’s likely gone a bit loopy, if you ask me; we may have to keep an eye on him, should he send anything your way, your highness.”
“Thank you,” the princess said. “Keep me up to date on the situation, should they find more evidence.”
“Yes ma’am” the guard said with a bow. “You will know the instant new information is discovered.”
Celestia dismissed her guard and looked down at her student. “Did you, by chance, have anything to do with this?” she asked politely, although the snicker in her tone was threatening to spill out at a moment’s notice.
Twilight saw no point in lying. “Yes; you should have read that letter, your highness. It was... truly awful; perhaps the worst thing I have ever seen put to ink on any paper.”
“Oh Twilight, surely you jest,” the larger alicorn said. “I myself have had the... misfortune of receiving a letter such as you did. Perhaps worse, it was written intentionally bad, whereas in your case, it was simply due to an unwillingness to learn during their time in school on how to properly write.”
“You did? When?” Twilight was curious now. “How bad was it? Was it as bad as... this author's works?” she asked, waving one of her hooves towards nothing.
“I shall spare you the details, but it was from Discord, and yes, it was terrible,” Celestia said. “I received it the day before my sister and I overthrew his tyrannical reign.”
“Was it that bad?” Twilight knew Discord could be a prankster, especially when it came to just wanting a laugh, but from what she had heard from earlier lessons, he had been far more cruel and unusual in his punishments back when he ruled Equestria.
“Yes; why do you think I convinced my sister to help me turn him to stone?”
Author's Note
Another short piece, just because I felt like it. This was partly based off of an experience of mine with another writer on Fanfiction.net: trust me, their stuff was truly terrible.
