Violet Streak

I thought my first weekend in Ponyville would be nice, relaxing and fun. Maybe I would spend some time with my friends and play some games. Maybe we would go explore the town. Maybe we would even try to get our cutie marks together. Nope. Instead, I ended up desperately clinging to my new best friend as we tried to hide from a monster after narrowly escaping being eaten by another monster. Ponyville! Great! I was definitely reconsidering liking this place. And the day started so normally, too.

*****

I woke up pretty early for a saturday – about seven o’ clock – and went downstairs. Back in Cloudsdale, I would always get up around ten at the earliest, but here, I just felt like I didn’t need as much sleep for some reason. Maybe it was school... class did start an hour earlier in Ponyville, maybe I was just used to being up that early.

I went and got myself a bowl of oats for breakfast. One of the great things about being a pegasus: I could always reach the top shelf, even when I was really small. It took me a couple of minutes to find a bowl and the box of oats in the new kitchen, though. Mom would usually make something on the weekends anyway, but I was too hungry to wait. Besides, Whisper was going to come over at some point and we were going exploring. It was the first chance I’d had to really see the town and I wanted to be ready to go as soon as she got here.

Mom walked into the kitchen and lightly kissed the top of my head. “Good morning, honey.” She went to get a frying pan and started cooking.

“Morning, Mom,” I said with a mouth half full of food.

Dad walked in about ten minutes later, yawning, and sat at the table. “Good morning. How are my girls today?”

“Good,” I said as I took another bite of oats.

Mom set a plate of french toast topped with blueberries on the table in front of him and gave him a kiss. “Doing very well.”

Normal morning. I guess my parents were already pretty used to living in a new house. They never really seemed bothered by it. Mom was already used to the kitchen, but maybe that’s because she used to be a chef. Her cutie mark is a frying pan because her special talent is cooking. She doesn’t work anymore though. She quit so she could be a full-time mom, though she does do catering sometimes.

Dad took a bite of his breakfast and let out an “Mmm!” as he chewed. He likes letting everypony know how good the food is whenever Mom cooks.

There was a knock on the door just as I was finishing my bowl of oats. I swallowed and quickly called out “I’ll get it!” as I flew for the door. Mom was right behind me. I'm not supposed to answer the door by myself. It's a stupid rule though, I'm plenty old enough to do things on my own. Besides, it's not like I wasn't allowed to go pretty much anywhere I wanted if I was with friends, so why shouldn't I be able to answer a freaking door?

Whisper stood in doorway, waving at me. “Hi!”

“Why, hello there,” my mom said. “Whisper, wasn’t it?”

She nodded. “Mm-hmm. Can Violet come out and play? I wanted to show her around Ponyville today.” She looked at both of us excitedly like she just couldn’t wait to show me around.

I quickly started out the door. “Yeah. I already finished breakfast, so we can go—”

“Hold on a minute. I’m alright with you two seeing the town, but don’t you still have homework to do?”

I stopped and frowned. I couldn’t lie to her; she already knew the answer. “Can’t I just finish it later?”

Mom gave me a stern look, the kind of look that says ‘you’re going to do this whether you like it or not.’ “The sooner you finish it, the sooner you won’t need to worry about it.”

I groaned and started walking back inside. It was bad enough being told I had to do homework on the weekend, but being told I had to do homework instead of playing with my friend when my friend was standing right there was even worse. “Sorry, Whisper…” I looked at Whisper and stopped when I saw a big grin on her face.

“Ooh ooh ooh!” Whisper started jumping up and down with excitement. “I still have homework to do, too! We can go get mine and do it together. And I can show you the library, too!”

I looked at my mom and smiled my best please smile.

Mom chuckled. “Alright. Go grab your bags and you can work on it at the library.”

“Yes!” I quickly ran upstairs. I still wasn’t happy about doing homework, but at least I could still hang out with my friend. It only took a second to grab my bag that already had everything in it and run back downstairs. Whisper and I headed right out.

“I’ll be checking your homework when you get back so make sure it’s done,” Mom called to me as we walked away. “And I want you home by four thirty, understand?”

I waved my hoof and rolled my eyes slightly. “Yes, Mom.”

Whisper turned to me and smiled. “Your mom’s nice.”

I never thought my mom was mean or anything, but I didn’t really get why Whisper said that out of nowhere. “Uh, thanks?”

“No, really. I mean, she just changed her mind so we could hang out instead of making you stay home.”

“We still have to do homework.”

“Yeah, but at least we don’t have to do it alone, silly.”

It only took us a few minutes to get to Whisper’s house. I was kind of surprised how close it was. I guess that’s what I get for living in a small town now. The inside of her house looked similar to mine except for the decoration. The front door led into the living room which had a fireplace in the far wall. The kitchen was to the left and a staircase leading to the second floor was to the right.

A yellow earth stallion with a dark red mane walked in from the kitchen. He was really muscular, like he could lift a boulder like it was a pillow. I took a step back without thinking. The stern look on his face worried me a little, but his expression softened when he looked at Whisper and me and smiled. His cutie mark was a crossed hammer and wrench.

“Thought you were going out today,” he said, more to himself than to Whisper. “Who’s your friend?”

Whisper turned and gestured to me. “This is Violet Streak. Violet, this is my dad, Silent Steel.”

Silent walked up to me and shook my hoof. “Good to meet you.”

“Yeah, you too” was all I could think to say.

“I’ll be doing some work around the house if you girls need anything,” he said as he walked to the front door.

“Actually, we’re gonna go do our homework at the library,” Whisper called back.

“Oh, alright. Well, have fun then.”

Silent went out the door and Whisper led me upstairs. She stopped for a moment when we reached the second floor. “Shh,” she said, turning to me. “Don’t make too much noise, my mom is still sleeping. Gear, too.” We walked down the hallway quietly and came to a bedroom at the end.

The first thing I did when I walked into Whisper’s room was stop and stare. Most of the room was normal, a bed with light blue covers in the far right corner, a dresser and a small closet to the left and walls tinted soft-pink. There was a single window on the left side of the wall across from me, but what made me stop was the rest of the wall. Dozens of dolls and stuffed animals were neatly placed among five homemade shelves attached to the wall, each one a different size. Most of them were ponies, but there were also two bunnies, a teddy bear, a griffon and on her bed was a red dragon as big as I was. She even had all four of Equestria’s princesses sitting next to each other in the middle of the top shelf.

“Woah.” I put my bag down and flew over to get a better look. “Gear said you had a lot of dolls, but… Wow.”

“I like collecting them,” Whisper said defensively as she grabbed her saddlebags from the closet. “Besides, I don’t just let them sit there, I play with them, too.”

I hovered and looked at princess Twilight for a while. “Where’d you get them all?”

“A lot of them were gifts. I bought some of them with my allowance, too.” She levitated Twilight off the shelf and I followed it down to her. “You like her? My real dad gave her to me for my birthday last year.”

It took me a second to fully realize what she just said. “Wait, what do you mean ‘real dad?’ Didn’t I just meet your dad?”

“Actually, that was Gear’s dad, my stepdad. My mom married him when we were foals.”

“Wait, so you’re not really related to Gear?”

“He’s still my brother. I barely remember when he wasn’t.”

“So, what happened to your real dad?” I almost immediately regretted asking that.

Whisper looked down at Twilight and petted her mane. It took a few seconds before she responded. “He lives really far away. I hardly ever get to see him.” There was a hint of sadness in her voice as if she were trying hard not to let it bother her.

I looked to the side to avoid eye contact. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. We still write to each other now and then.”

Note to self: Think a little before bringing something like that up!

We both sat there in silence for a moment before Whisper spoke up. “So is Twilight your favorite princess?”

I was happy to change the subject but took a second to think before answering. “Yeah, I guess so. Princess Twilight is awesome. Almost as cool as Rainbow Dash.”

Whisper put Twilight back on the shelf and started walking to the door. “Have you ever met her?”

I grabbed my bag and let Whisper lead the way to the library. “No. But, I mean, she’s the princess of friendship! She travels all over Equestria, helping ponies wherever she goes. That makes her pretty cool if you ask me.”

Whisper smirked at me like she knew something I didn’t. “Hmm, princess Luna helps ponies, too, ya know. She visited me once in a dream.”

My eyes opened wide. “Really? When?” My parents once told me that Luna could enter the dreams of fillies and colts who were having problems, but I never knew anypony who’d actually seen her.

“It was a long time ago. Actually, I don’t remember the dream very well, I just remember talking with Luna for a while and then she let me ride on her back as she flew around.”

“Wow. That must have been great. I wish I could meet a princess. Even just seeing a castle would be awesome.”

Whisper smirked again. I raised an eyebrow to her but said nothing. Apparently, the town was a lot bigger than I first thought because we kept walking in the exact opposite direction of school – which was a long walk from my house – and there seemed to be no end to the houses and buildings. Before long, I could see a huge forest in the distance to my right. There were clouds floating over it even though the rest of the town had nothing but blue sky and the whole thing looked oddly dark compared to what I’d seen of Ponyville so far.

“Race ya!”

“Huh?” I said as I turned and saw Whisper running off to the left. “Hey!” I chased after her and tried to get in front, but she was just as fast as I was on the ground. Using my wings, I pushed my saddlebag out of the way and took to the air. It was hard to fly fast with my school books weighing me down, but I managed to get ahead.

“Hey, no fair!”

I turned, flying backwards to face Whisper, stuck my tongue out and taunted her with a “Blualaulu” noise. I saw her horn glow for a split second before the front of my mane was pulled over my eyes. I had to stop and hover for a second so I could push my mane out of the way. Whisper had changed directions and I could hear her giggling. I flew after her again and into a big open area. By the time I caught up to her, it was too late.

“I win!” Whisper started doing a little victory dance, bobbing her head and shifting from side to side.

I was going to say something about her cheating, but I got distracted by what was behind her. It was something that looked like a purple and blue tree I’d seen from a distance when I was moving to Ponyville. I never thought to ask what it was. Only now I could see that it was actually a huge crystal tower shaped like a tree and looked like it was holding a building in its branches. My jaw hung open as I stared straight up at it. It must have been four or five stories tall and nearly twice as big around as any random house in Ponyville. All I could say was “Woah.”

Whisper giggled again. “Welcome to the Ponyville Royal Library.”

“This is your library? The one in Cloudsdale didn’t even look different from anything else. Wait, did you say Royal Library?”

“Yeah! This used to be princess Twilight’s castle years and years and years ago before she started traveling the world. Before she left, she had the lower levels turned into a public library and they moved the whole thing to this part of town for touristy reasons. It’s all here on this sign.” Whisper stepped to the side and, sure enough, there was a large sign that said almost exactly what she told me.

It took a couple moments for my brain to understand. “You mean princess Twilight actually used to live here? In Ponyville?”

Whisper stopped smiling and furrowed her eyebrows like she was trying to understand my question. “Yeah. This is the town where she became a princess. Didn’t you know that?”

“No…” I hadn’t even known that she ever wasn’t a princess.

“Well, you do now.” Whisper’s smile returned and she hurried to the large, golden double doors at the front of the castle-brary. “Come on, let’s finish our homework so we can actually play.”

We stepped into a large circular room that was maybe half as wide as the outside of the library and made of the same blueish-purple crystal. A wooden desk in the middle had a little sign sitting on it that said tours would be offered in the afternoon. The walls were practically lined with windows and large pictures between them of princess Twilight, a few pictures of the other princesses and some other important-looking ponies I didn’t recognize. Whisper didn’t pay attention to any of it and just started walking towards a door in the back. Strangely, nopony else seemed to be around.

“Wait!” I called. “Don’t we need to, like, sign in with the librarian or something?”

“Nah, it’s fine. I come here all the time for homework. He’s probably just busy or something.”

I hurried after her. “Is it always this quiet?”

“I don’t think ponies usually come here on the weekend unless they’re touring the top floors.” Whisper pushed the door open and trotted inside.

“What’s on the to…” I froze in place when I entered the room. I could feel my chest tighten as I tried not to breathe or make even a tiny sound. There, curled up and sleeping in the middle of the library, was a huge purple dragon! I could hear its snarling breath as it gently snored. It must have been almost twice the size of any stallion I’d ever seen. It’s mouth was probably big enough to bite my head off whole!

Whisper didn’t even stop walking. She went right up to its face and set her bag to the side. My whole body tensed up and I cringed watching her. Then she started poking it right in its nose. Who does that!? Its eyes shot open and it slowly started opening its mouth. I flung my bag to the floor, spread my wings and ran after Whisper. I flew straight up, holding onto my friend for dear life. The ceiling wasn’t very high, but at least we were out of its reach.

“What are you doing?” Whisper asked in a panic.

“What am I doing? What were you doing?”

The dragon rubbed one eye as it stood up straight. It took a second to look around before it spotted us. I knew I couldn’t hold us both in the air forever. The open door was our only chance and I had to take it. I wasn’t very quick with the extra weight, but I bolted through the door and continued flying. I looked back when I got to the main entrance and saw it chasing after us. I screamed and flew outside.

“Violet, wait!”

“Gotta hide, gotta hide!” There was no time for waiting. There was nopony around and the closest place to hide was the dark forest I’d seen in the distance. Losing the dragon there should have been easy, at least, easier than anything else. If I were alone, I’d fly up into the sky, but Whisper can’t walk on clouds.

I went as fast as I could and kept flying once we entered the woods. I had to slow down to weave back and forth through all the branches, but that wasn’t the only reason I was slowing down. My breathing got heavy and I could feel my wing muscles tiring. Whisper started wriggling around which didn’t help. Both of us yelped when I flew into a branch and we tumbled to the ground.

I picked myself up. I was a little sore and had a few scrapes, but nothing was broken or bleeding. “Whisper, are you okay?”

“What did you do that for?” she yelled at me as she jumped to her hooves.

“Wha–What do you mean?” I yelled back. “There was a dragon! It was about to eat you!”

“No, he wasn’t! He… Oh…” Whisper stopped and looked at me like she just realized something important.

Before she had a chance to say anything else, something let out a loud growl. The noise seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. I looked around, but all I could see were trees and darkness.

“What was that?” I asked, my voice starting to shake.

“We shouldn’t be here. This is the Everfree Forest, there’s monsters everywhere!”

“There’s what?”

“Run!”

We ran screaming as fast as we could even though neither of us knew which way Ponyville was anymore. The growling kept up with us and I could hear its gallop. I was already tired from flying and couldn’t keep jumping over loose vines and swerving around trees for long. We quickly came to a small clearing but were trapped by a huge rock face. We stopped and tried to catch our breath. That’s when the monster came into view. It was about the same size as the dragon, walked on all fours and looked like it was made of wood.

It walked towards us slowly and backed us against the rock. It jumped at us and we each dodged in opposite directions making it hit the rock head first. After shaking that off, it turned to me and barked. I ran around it, trying to get to Whisper when I saw her throw a small rock at it. All that did was annoy it and make it pay attention to her instead of me. I strained my wings to fly over and grab her before it could attack, but I could only manage to lift us up into a tree. The monster didn’t give up and started barking at us from the ground. Luckily, it couldn’t climb, but we didn’t have any escape. All we could do was cling to each other and scream for help.

Suddenly, I heard a roar above us. The dragon was on top of the rock face. It quickly crawled straight down the rock and it and the wooden monster stared each other down. The wood one barked and lifted its back to look bigger. The dragon took one deep breath, stood upright and let out a huge plume of green fire towards the sky. That was all it took for the wood monster to run away. The dragon walked over and looked directly up at us.

Whisper suddenly let go of me and jumped down. “Spike!”

I gasped, thinking she’d lost her mind. But to my surprise, the dragon gently caught her and lowered her to the ground.

“You really shouldn’t be out here, you know,” the dragon said to Whisper. “It’s dangerous.”

“Sorry.”

“You can talk?” I asked, nearly yelling.

“Of course I can.”

“Oh. Spike, this is Violet. Violet, this is Spike. He’s the librarian.”

“Your librarian is a dragon?” I asked as I flew down, keeping some distance between me and Spike.

“He’s a nice dragon!”

“I think we can save this for later,” Spike interrupted. “Right now, we need to get out of here. That timber wolf was young, it won’t be long before the whole pack comes by.”

I gulped. If that thing was young, I didn’t want to see what an adult looked like. I looked around but couldn’t see any sign of Ponyville. “Which way is out?”

“There’s a path on top of that cliff that should take us back.”

“I can’t climb that,” Whisper protested.

Spike knelt on all fours close to the ground. “Both of you hop on. I’ll have us out of here faster than you can say gemstone.”

Whisper was pretty quick to hop up on one of his shoulders. I hesitated to climb on his other shoulder. I would have just flown, but my wings were already sore. Walking closer, I saw my and Whisper’s saddlebags on the end of his tail. “Is that my bag?”

“Hm?” Spike said, looking back at his tail. “Oh yeah. You left them behind and I was coming to give them back when I saw you go into the forest.”

Note to self: Spike is a nice dragon.

“Come on, already,” Whisper called, waving me to get on. “Let’s go.”

I grabbed onto Spike’s other shoulder and he started climbing the cliff really quickly. It was a weird kind of amazing to see his claws dig into the rock as easily as I would push through a cloud. I could see Ponyville and the path back from the top. It would only take us a couple of minutes to get back.

“You know, you coulda told me that Spike was a dragon sooner,” I told Whisper.

“Sorry, I forgot.”

“You forgot he was a dragon?”

“He’s always been a dragon. It just didn’t seem weird to me.”

I giggled at her. I should have been angry, but laughing was all I could do at that moment. “You’re crazy.”

Whisper puffed up her cheeks in annoyance and narrowed her eyes at me.

*****

“Ugh, finally done,” I said as I put my books back in my bag. It felt like we’d been doing homework for ten hours even though it was more like one and a half.

“We’ve still got the afternoon to play. What do ya wanna do?”

I thought about it for a moment. There was something I wanted to do, but I wasn’t sure how to do it. “Hey, Spike!”

Spike stopped putting books on the shelves and turned to us. “Yeah?”

“Do you know anything about getting cutie marks?”

“Hmm. Sorry, dragons don’t have cutie marks.”

“Aw.”

“But…” he continued, “I do remember three fillies about your age a long time ago who were trying to get their cutie marks. They made a club and called themselves the Cutie Mark Crusaders. They went all around town trying everything they could think of that might be their special talent.”

I smiled and turned back to my friend. “Whisper, let’s make a list.”