The Friendship Archives

Libraries play host to the beginnings of many stories. Usually between the pages of the books within but, on occasion, things are a bit more - if you'll forgive the pun - literal. In this particular library more often than most, and not even because it provides so many great openings to make jokes about "leafing" through a volume or "branching out" into a new genre.

The Golden Oaks library in Ponyville may be a hollowed-out yet still living tree, but that isn't what makes it truly special. What really touches off so many stories in this place is its librarian and tenant, the pony Twilight Sparkle. Whether that start is provided by Twilight herself or one of her friends, many stories have found their beginning within its walls of bark and coarse-grained wood. Its broad-leafed green canopy has sheltered the volumes stored within for decades, and the collection has only grown since the arrival of its current caretaker. Some of the stories begun here have even metaphorically found their way home to roost, bound between covers and stored on the lovingly tended shelves to be retold again and again. Twilight herself has added several volumes; both of her own thoughts and experiments, and her adventures. Her friends have made contributions as well over the years, some by their own hooves and others with Twilight's aid. Memoirs, tales of adventure both real and imagined, professional guides and academic musings all share space along the ageing tree's shelves.

Every pony could put names to the best of Twilight Sparkle's friends of course. Spike the dragon and the bearers of the other five Elements of Harmony are almost as well-known as Twilight herself. However, as one might expect from the Princess of Friendship, these are hardly her only friends. Many individuals from Ponyville and beyond have left a story or more within Twilight's library. No small number of them even begin there, in telling or in reality. All kinds of weird and wonderful events have been captured on the shelves within the tree - some merely passing curiosities, of no lasting impact beyond the individuals that lived them; and others grand sagas, which changed the face of the world and more.

For Twilight, none of these stories is more valuable than any other. They are the collected legacy of friendships past and present; the living, breathing history of Equestria as seen by its youngest princess and those she has loved. From Celestia's diaries telling the story of a faithful student's nurturing, growth and eventual ascension, to her own small pad of notes on Pinkie Sense, to Rainbow Dash's Daring Do fanfiction, these books are all a part of Twilight's very soul.

The following tales are not world-changing adventures or grand treatises on the unknown. They are not even the more mundane life stories that eventually ended up on the shelves of Twilight's library - they are simply beginnings. Small events which began relationships, that in turn produced one of the library's many volumes.

The telling of a particular story can begin in many places and at many times, but for our purposes this first tale starts - stereotypically enough - on a dark and stormy night. However the storm is the catalyst for the telling, confining ponies indoors, rather than any ominous portent of the tale's nature. A pegasus stallion, his role in combating the storm complete, finds himself on the ground outside the library. Seeking shelter within, he is offered a seat by the fire and some company while the rain dies down.