Because it is right

Shia opened her eyes and discovered two things. First, it was still night. It wasn’t unusual, as the unicorns in Canterlot would often have a lot of difficulties to make the sun rise. Then, she was in a bed, which was a bit weirder, as she clearly recalled sleeping in the street, before remembering everything that had happened the last day, which still wasn’t explaining how she had ended up into that bed.

Even more problematic: what she was calling her dress had disappeared.

She couldn’t wait for the sun to rise, as there was, again, no telling when this would be, so she stepped out of the bed, put the blanket on her back at the place of her dress and decided to use her unicorn magic to create a little light spell.

She was in a room with a single bed and very minimalist furniture. Still, it wasn’t really interesting her at the moment. She went outside in the search of her dress when she heard somepony whistling outside the house in the garden.

Heading there, she found mister Foster who was hanging her dress as well as a few children’s clothes on a string.

“What did you see?” Shia asked immediately, forgetting all manners.

“Hello there!” joyfully greeted her Foster. “I saw you were sleeping on the floor, which wasn’t really tolerable, even for somepony as tolerant as I am.” he replied.

Shia slowly simmered down. Still, she wasn’t feeling at ease with only a blanket on her back.

“Your dress will be ready once the sun will have made it dry. I’m sorry, but this isn’t something I can make go any faster.” Foster explained, understanding her concern.

She wasn’t ready to wait. Calling once again her magic to the rescue, she made the air heat all around the different clothes on the string. She made an effort not to rush it too much, as she didn’t want to burn them, but she was really playing with the limit.

“Impressive.” Foster noticed with a smile. “But maybe you would want to wear a proper dress before keeping on doing your magic thing here.”

Shia stopped her spell. Enraged almost against her will, she turned to Foster who simply pointed to a very simple dress that was waiting, well folded, on a bench near the door.

“I was going to bring it to you, as a little gift, but I wanted to finish with the clothes here first.” Foster explained. “I didn’t expect you to wake up so soon.”

But as he was saying those words, the sun began to rise over the horizon.

“Well, actually, it seems you being awake is quite a chance.” he added with satisfaction. “Could you take a glance at the children? We have a rule saying that everypony must get up as soon as the sun rises.”

And having said those words, he went back to the rest of the clothes, those that still hadn’t been washed.

Shia felt a bit unsure about the whole situation, but having to take care of the children was sufficient to make her forget about everything else. So she quickly took the new dress with her, changed in a hurry and then went upstairs where she found that some children still hadn’t woken up.
Sampion was one of them, but Toothy told her that she should let him sleep, as he hated being woken up in the morning.

Shia hesitated, but doing so came close to his bed. She saw the foal tremble a bit and said, out of instinct, a very soft: “Wake up.”
Sampion opened his eyes, turned to Shia, looked at her for a moment, and got up, joining the other for the morning wash.

“You should tell me how you’re doing that.” said Toothy.

“Doing what?” asked Shia.

“He never behaved that way with anypony else. It’s weird.” the filly observed.

Shia was beginning to think it really was weird too, as the way the foal was looking at her was creeping her a bit.

Once the morning wash was finished, all the fillies and foals went out to play in the orphanage huge garden, following almost always the same pattern. Moonlight would propose an idea, Toothy would decide if they would follow it or not, both Renette and Oaken Seed would then follow the decision to play the game with the others.
As for Sampion, he soon appeared to have disappeared.

“You shouldn’t worry too much about that.” said Foster when Shia told him she had lost one of the children. “He likes to be alone. He will be back for breakfast.”

And then Foster went back to his search for roots, as it was one of the ingredients he needed for the special soup he had promised. Roots and leaves. Mostly leaves.

Sampion indeed came back for breakfast, didn’t say a word when all the other children were talking, trying to explain to Foster the story of how the awesome princess Luna had created the moon, mixing in their own interpretation of the story, and at the end of the breakfast, Sampion disappeared once again while Foster was still listening to the very confused and contradictory explanation from four excited children under the amused look of Shia who made sure never to intervene in the conversation.

The rest of the morning went on pretty quietly. The mare, now more accustomed to the inhabitants of the orphanage, spent most of her time playing with the children, but refused to tell a new story before bedtime, which was a game in itself for the children.

And then Sampion came back with a surprise.

He had brought an apple.

At first, Shia didn’t understand, but she slowly realized that the foal wanted to offer it to her as some sort of gift. It made her blush. Still a bit suspicious, as even if apples did grow on trees, they still couldn’t appear by magic, she asked him if he had stolen it from the orphanage’s reserve.
He confirmed that was the case, but said he had first asked for mister Foster agreement.

Shia thought of going to Foster and ask him if it was true. But she realized how insulting this would feel for Sampion. She asked him again to be sure, but he confirmed that he had taken the apple from the reserve with the agreement from mister Foster. He added that it was a way to call it even after the shared apple of the last day and a way to thank her for staying with them.

Shia had little reasons to refuse the gift. Still, she asked if Sampion would be against sharing the apple amongst everypony there, which he agreed to happily, as if he hadn’t expected anything else from her. So she summoned her magic once more and cut the apple in six parts that she distributed to everypony.

But before any of them could bite his or her part, the voices of ponies shouting at the orphanage’s door interrupted them.

Instantly, Sampion ran away behind a tree and Shia understood how complicated things were suddenly going to be.
She sighed, took the apple’s parts with her and went to open the door.

There, waiting for her, were two guards and a merchant who stopped shouting as she opened.

“Good morning miss.” said one of the guard. “We have come to arrest a food thief.”

“I know it is that little Sampion. I saw him.” said the merchant. “It isn’t the first time we had to deal with him. I warned mister Foster, but I can’t let anypony steal from me like that without reacting.”

There was a form of regret in the merchant’s voice that touched Shia. He wasn’t a bad pony. In other circumstances, he probably would have closed his eyes upon such a little incident. But those were hard times and thievery was considered with the upmost severity, even for a simple apple.

“I’m deeply sorry.” Shia told them. “I think he just wanted to have something to offer to me. I’m not sure to understand it all. But here is your apple.”

She gave back the apple’s parts and immediately understood, at the merchant’s look, that it wasn’t going to work.

“I can’t sell an apple in that condition. And even so, it doesn’t excuse what he has done. We can’t have thieves think they are above the law. It would be the beginning of chaos.”

Of course it wasn’t going to be that easy. There was always the possibility to just let the guards enter and take Sampion away, but Shia just couldn’t accept it. Not only did she feel responsible for what the foal had done, but she knew there had been no bad intention behind his act. He might have been a liar, and probably a bully, and a thief, but he was before anything else a simple foal with simple hopes and a good heart.
That she was certain of.

“Maybe I could pay for the apple!” Shia suddenly thought out loud, remembering the bit Foster had given her the last day.

She proposed the bit, that only piece of money she possessed, hoping to buy the foal’s freedom with it, but it wasn’t nearly enough to pay for an entire apple. The piece of metal in her hoof was completely useless.

“But if you really want to pay for the apple…” suddenly said the merchant.

He stopped there. He was clearly hesitating to propose the trade he was thinking of. Still he decided it was better than let a thief win or put a foal in a cell.

“… I would accept the dress you are wearing as payment.” he finished.

Shia hesitated.

Not because she wasn’t certain the dress was her to sell like that. Not because she wasn’t certain the trade was a fair one.
She just hesitated for a second and blamed herself for that hesitation. She was a mare with very strong principles and one of those was that she should always try to help, no matter what the consequences could be.

She took off her dress and held it to the merchant who never even tried to take it.

He was looking at her body and so were the guards.

“I’m sorry. I am so sorry!” said the merchant. “I didn’t know. Please keep the apple and your dress.”

“But that apple belongs to you.” replied Shia, who put her dress back on.

“I’m offering it to the orphanage, as a gift.” the merchant said.

“No, you have no reason to do that.”

“You don’t want me to give the apple to the orphanage?” asked the merchant, confused.

Shia of course wanted what was good for the orphanage. But at the same time, she didn’t want the gift to be made for the bad reasons. She hesitated between accepting it or refusing it, and, seeing no way out, just asked:

“Why is it the orphanage has so little food to work with to begin with? I know that there isn’t as much as everypony would hope there was, but you obviously can spare an apple or two!”

The merchant looked surprised.

“The orphanage doesn’t have enough food?” he asked. “I wasn’t aware of that. I know mister Foster always asks us to give something, but we know that the mayor already makes sure the children have all they need. This is what our taxes are for anyway!”

He was getting angry as his explanations were unfolding. And at the same time, he had a hard time believing that the orphanage could actually be in a dire situation. He was feeling both betrayed and confused.

As for Shia, she still wasn’t certain how she should react herself, when she heard the little voice of Renette asking her:

“What is going on? Is Sampion in trouble because of the apple?”

Shia understood she didn’t even have a decision to take. It was already clear she had to try everything for those children. Which meant try to have an impact once again.
She felt both alive and afraid at the same time. Alive because she was suddenly feeling like the whole universe could obey her will if she were to wish for something strongly enough. Afraid because she had failed once, and knew she could very well fail once again.

But some things are worth taking the risk of failure. And the little Renette between her legs was more than worth it, as were any of the children of the orphanage, and even the trust of the merchant in front of her.

“Take me to the mayor.” Shia almost ordered.