Jonythorn Maximus: Quest For Friendship.

  It was morning. He stretched his legs down to the hooves and surveyed the scene. Nopony else was around, and he checked the satchel he hung up in the tree he slept under. Jony opened the leather bag and saw his maps tucked neatly and orderly inside.

"Good", he said to himself. "Better not lose ten years for nothing," he said as he stood up.

He slung it over his shoulder and continued the almost finished trek back to Canterlot to have his painstakingly written maps evaluated by Celestia. He was so excited to be in Canterlot again! He could see his father, Thornwellius again! He left Jony four years before because of a few in-field injuries, but now that Jony had finished he was to return and see him again!

As he walked to the gates of Canterlot, he paused and said "Almost forgot! Got to enter in appropriate attire," he exclaimed as he reached a hoof in the satchel.

He took out his fathers hat that Thornwellius left behind for him as a parting gift. "This was your great-great-great grandfather's hat. He gave it to the generation after him, and after him, and after him..." Jony was too preoccupied with his new gift to listen to Thornwellius explain.

          Now, looking down at that hat, Jony Put it on his head and strolled down the bridge.

"Halt," a Canterlot Guard said, who was standing in the way.

"That's odd," Jony thought to himself. 'The guards didn't ask for ponies to stop when I was here last'. The guard continued, "I need proof of your invitation to the Grand Galloping Gala, please."

       Jony paused, and replied, "I'm not here for the Gala, sir I'm just going home,"  as the guard looked skeptically at him. "And just how do I know your not going to sabotage it?" the guard asked.

       Jony showed the guard the letter of business Princess Celestia gave to his father so long ago. He smiled and thought, "This ought to convince him". But the guard replied, "This is nearly ten years old. I cant accept this under the circumstances. I am sorry." Jony stood, slightly in disbelief, and thought of something else to show the guard. "If you showed evidence of the journey mentioned, then I could let you in," he added.

       Jony smiled excitedly, and started to take out his maps to prove to the guard his order of business. After a few minutes of examination, the guard said, "This is acceptable. You may enter Canterlot," and moved out of the way. Jony laughed and waved his maps around as if they were banner-like. Then the wind ripped them from his hooves.

       His eyes slowly went from twinkling to wincing, his laughter to sobbing, his happiness to tragedy. He wobbled, his legs buckling, giving in to gravity like a toppling tower of sadness, that gives in when the wear is too rough. His head clattered with the cobblestone bridge, his mane, a tangle of disappointment and anguish, his mind going blank as a newborn colt's flank. Darkness surrounded him.

       When he awoke, he was staring at a black wall. Not a wall, but a ceiling. He sat up from the bed he lay on and looked around. It was his room! He recognized the endless boxes of Power Pony comics, statues of Starswirl the Bearded, his old Hearths Warming Eve wreath was still hung on his door. It was dead from a lack of water. The dead look in the wreath reminded Jonythorn what had happened seemingly moments before. He emerged from the blankets, nearly perfectly, but was tangled in the sheets and fell to the carpeted floor below.

        "Nothing says 'welcome home' like a rug burn on your face", he proclaimed.

        He stared at the note that lay on the floor beside him. He assumed the guard had written it, for it was scribbled down horribly quickly from the look of it, and no one else knew he had arrived. He bit it and stuffed it in his hat with some difficulty, and while he tried to put the hat on properly, he paused. That's when he thought of his father.

         "I bet Dad's down in the living room, waiting for me to wake up like he did when I was little! He would always sit in that swivel chair and ask me 'What do you want to do today, my little colt?'" He listened. No footsteps up the stairs, curious from what had thudded on the floor upstairs. No opening of a door, rushing, hugs, sharing stories together from their time apart. Nothing.

          And so Jonythorn Maximus lay, wrapped in his bed sheets, whimpering and wondering if anypony still cared whether he had returned home, whether he wanted to tell his tales of mapping, whether anypony at all still remembered him. He shed some tears for a minute or two, and finding that perhaps his thoughts were correct after all, he escaped his bed sheet cocoon, and left his childhood home, with all hope and memories with it. He was a broken colt, a denizen of deteriorated dreams.

          He walked alone that afternoon. Alone, into a hometown that not even he could remember how it went nearly a decade ago. Where was his father, he asked himself, where was his friends he had before he left. Perhaps he knew the answer, long before he answered it, while he was weeping in his bedroom. Perhaps they all had moved on. Why hadn't his father left a note for him? He recalled the note, took his hat off (which he had not finished correcting the poor posture of before), shoved his hoof inside, and pulled out the note. In barely legible hoof-writing, he drew the meaning of the words he saw into his mind.

            (From the guard)

          "Sorry kid, we couldn't get your maps in time. Some pegasus flew down there and picked them up in their mouth, but they saw some pony with a cart full of muffins and let go of them, chasing after the cart. Sorry fella, but your maps didn't make it. The wind blew them into the waterfall. When they pulled 'em out, the ink was all smeared, and the paper was torn, and the..."

          Every painstaking detail about the maps put a small dent in his heart with every word he read. He whimpered. His sorrow turned to anger and fury at the guard's last sentence.

         "...and by the way, maybe next time, get your paper laminated. It's cheap, and it keeps paper safe you know!"

         Jony picked up a pebble, crumpled the note around it, and apple-bucked it into somepony's  apartment seven stories up. The tinkling of glass was heard on the cobblestone sidewalk.

          "Well that didn't help at all," he said. He sighed, and looked at the sky. The sun was setting. The horizon was flooded with pinks and oranges, softly flowing away from the sun. It calmed him, and he spoke.

           "Ah, sun. Your the only one that has followed me to the ends of Equestria and back. But that doesn't  help me.," he said as he loitered around the corner of the street he was on, looking for some way to start a life in Canterlot.

           "I'm going to need a job,"Jony said to himself. "Hows about that place to start?" he said to himself, walked up to Doughnut Joe's Gourmet Doughnut Shop, and stood in the doorway, thinking if this was really what he wanted to do with his life. He took a deep breath, telling himself that being here was going to be brief, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.