Dear Princess Celestia.
Chocolate Swirl shivered with delight at seeing those words on the scroll. It was opened, of course, Princess Celestia always checked over them but when she got nearly four a day from Princess Twilight Sparkle, they added up quickly.
All the letters needed to be stored and filed and that was Chocolate's job. This was one of his favorite ones, the princess talking about her experiments and what results they might yield. She wrote at least twice as fluently when writing these, they were nothing like when she had her assistant write them.
Putting quill to paper, Chocolate began to write a reply.
Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle,
I am writing to confess to you how much I would love to meet with you and talk. Maybe if you weren't
Chocolate screwed the paper up and threw it in the bin. "If you weren't a princess and I weren't just a scribe."
Celestia was in the middle of lunch when the latest message puffed into being with a burst of green fire. She knew who it was, only one pony sent her multiple letters a day just to let her know that a slug was still alive. Despite misgivings about gastropods aside, she had to read it over.
"Oh, Twilight is on her way." Celestia's day brightened at the thought, having her peer visit was always a good way to break up the monotony of ruling Equestria.
To one side a particular stallion sighed. "A special one, this will need to go in the travel section." The soft words got a sharp look from another pony and, despite the look of disdain Chocolate trotted up to the princess. She took a few moments more to read the letter before floating it to the stallion.
"Thank you, Chocolate." Celestia smiled down to the white unicorn with the brown and pink mane, it was a ritual each and every time he took the letters.
"You are welcome, Your Highness." Chocolate bowed to Celestia and scurried out. New letters to read were always the bright points of his day.
It was simply an announcement letter, with no real substance to it other than that, so it was filed away and Chocolate, custodian to the Friendship Letters, left it at that.
The day flowed on, some cleaning was always needed and he was hard at it when there was a knock at the door. "Excuse me?" The female voice got Chocolate's attention away from the broom he was using.
"Welcome, are you sure you are in the right place-" Chocolate froze as he turned, everything seeming to collapse around him.
"This is where Princess Celestia has all my friendship letters stored, right?" Princess Twilight Sparkle smiled at Chocolate, recognizing the description of the pony she had been told ran this little office. She noticed he seemed a little off and trotted over. "Did I come at a bad time, are you unwell?" Chocolate's mouth moved a few times, his eyes wide. He was about to say something when a soft hoof lifted up and pressed to his forehead. "You aren't running a temperature. Could you cough for me?"
Chocolate did cough when a cold device was pressed to his chest. Twilight had pulled a stethoscope from somewhere and was listening to his heart, which he thought was going to beat its way out of his chest. "Your Highness!" His voice finally working again, Chocolate now had all the time he needed to properly panic. "What do you need?" The mature stallion's voice broke halfway through his question.
"I need to look over some of my letters. I made backup notes, of course, but Spike cleaned them up and now the copy in my letter from last month is the only results I have from the-" Twilight was explaining her plight when she was cut off.
"The experiment on the tree frogs? Of course!" Chocolate spun around to a huge cabinet of little tiny draws. Twilight was rebuffed a little, this stallion apparently knew her notes quite well, or so it seemed. "Yes, yes, it is in pigeonhole seventy-six f."
Twilight's heart beat faster, this was quite unexpected. She had figured the scrolls would all be in a pile in a room somewhere. "You have reference cards?" Her ears perked as far forward as they could and her wings ruffled a little, suddenly the plight of frogs was less interesting than how her letters were being sorted.
Caught off-guard, Chocolate froze and turned. "Uh, of course I do, at any moment Princess Celestia might need to know exactly what shade of green Rarity used for a dress you were talking about in a letter. I would search under 'close friends' then find the 'Rarity' card. It will list all the letters where you mention her."
Startlement filled Twilight, this system was brilliant! "So to find the letter about skinks…"
"Research, reptiles. There are only seventeen scrolls from there, and only three in the last six months. The other you wrote last month was about tortoises and their hibernation methods. Since those results were inconclusive I doubted you would want that one." Chocolate's mind was completely in his work, he barely even acknowledged that the princess was the one asking him until the end, when he tacked on, "Your Highness."
"Just call me Twilight." Twilight smiled at the stallion. She had met other librarians before, and some quite liked their job, but no pony had she ever met was this into sorting and classification systems before. Or read her letters. All of her letters. Even the ones she admitted to herself, were boring. She snapped out of her daydream to realize that Chocolate was passing the letter to her. "Oh, thank you. Do you have material to make a copy of them?"
"Right over here." Chocolate stepped around the cabinets of papers to his own little writing desk. "I will leave you to it, if you like?"
Twilight nodded, wanting desperately to have a little quiet time to think about what had just happened. "Thank you."
The moment the door was closed, Chocolate slumped down against the wall. Breathing came faster and faster until a passing guard gave him a thump on the back. "Thank… you…" Chocolate, cured of his hyperventilation, staggered off to get some lunch and think.
Inside the room, Twilight wore a little smile. "He is an odd unicorn…" She got to work on the scroll but realized she lacked paper. Scanning around, she spotted a whole mess of screwed up balls of white in the bin beside the desk. "Surely he won't mind if I borrow some of this." She unfolded the paper and started at seeing her name.
Chocolate was strolling back to the glorified closet where he worked and, when he opened the door, found the room empty. Then he saw something that made his blood run cold. On his desk, neatly unfolded, were all the aborted letters he had tried to write to the princess. "Oh sweet Celestia…"
He bolted in, slamming the door behind him. One was missing, one of the more… well, he had written more on that one than the rest, although the full contents of it he couldn't remember. "I will be kicked out for sure!"
The poor stallion passed out as his desk, that evening, his fear robbing him of the drive to go to bed or finish cleaning.
Knocking at the door woke Chocolate, he had slept in his cubicle again. This was the third night since the princess had found his letters.
"Chocolate, Princess Celestia needs you in the throne room." It was one of the guards, of course. This was it, he was going to get kicked out. Straightening, Chocolate marched for the door and out, the guard was gone.
"At least they trust me enough to attend my own doom." He plodded toward the throne room only to find a smiling Princess Celestia. Her expression didn't change when she saw him.
"Chocolate, oh thank goodness you are feeling better. Twilight said you were feeling under the weather, but these simply must be cataloged." Celestia gestured with a hoof to one side, where nearly twenty scrolls sat, all clearly letters from Princess Twilight.
"Y-y-yes, Your Highness." Chocolate trotted up and, with the wonder that is horn magic, lifted all the scrolls. Just then, a green burst heralded another and he froze as Celestia caught it.
"Hrmm, oh, this one too, thank you Chocolate." Celestia's smile widened as her golden magic set the new scroll on top of the pile.
"You're welcome, Your Highness." His reply was automatic, but Chocolate figured she was likely just biding her time, looking for a replacement. He walked from the throne room to where all the letters were kept. Using his magic he flipped the pile upside down, so he could get at them in chronological order.
The scrolls were mostly mundane, but each needed to be cataloged and filed properly. He had the last open and was scanning it for the usual telltales when he froze and blinked.
Dear Chocolate Swirl, I am sorry I had to steal some paper from you, I hope you can forgive me. I thought you might be interested in this new catalog system I was working on, it has been bugging me for the last two days and I wanted you to know about it. While my schedule is usually quite busy, I promise I will write to you as often as I can but there is just one condition. You must write back to me.
Your Pen-Friend, Twilight Sparkle
Chocolate found nearly four more pages discussing the pros and cons of various cataloging systems and then detailed a modification to his own that was quite brilliant. But he could see where it could be improved more.
Brushing some tears from his eyes, Chocolate quickly got up on his seat and pulled out one of the failed letters.
Dear Twilight Sparkle...
Author's Note
A reader's comment on another story inspired my brain to rush into this one. They will know who they are, even if not recognizing the idea as such.
There is no more to it, just a cute little idea of two nerds geeking out and becoming friends.
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