Pinkie groaned when she heard more crashes from upstairs. The twins were still awake! She sighed and slowly walked up the stairs again.
“Auntie Pinkie!” chorussed Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake when they saw their favourite babysitter enter the room.
Pinkie shook her head. Although she loved the twins dearly, if there was anything that drained her party spirit, it was a long evening babysitting. “You two cheeky foals were supposed to be asleep ages ago!”
“Can’t sleep!” Pound squealed.
“Too light!” Pumpkin explained.
Pinkie walked over to the window where a beam of light streamed through a crack in the curtains and pulled them shut tighter. These summer evenings lasted forever. “Would you like another story?” she asked.
“We’ve read them all,” Pumpkin complained.
“Hmmm…” Pinkie scratched her head with her hoof, trying to remember the fairy tales that Nana Pinkie had told her as a little filly. “Have you ever heard the tale of Almond Seed?”
The twins looked at each other. Sounded like a boring baking tale, and they looked at Pinkie skeptically.
“No,” Pumpkin said.
“We haven’t heard that one,” Pound added.
Pinkie sensed their uncertainty. “It’s got twins in it,” she chimed.
Pound and Pumpkin smiled at her parents’ apprentice. “Tell us.”
Pinkie got comfortable in the arm chair between their twin beds. “Well… it starts like all good fairy tales… once upon a time…”
Once upon a time, in a village called Hollow Shades, in the northern reaches of the Everfree Forest, there lived an earth pony stallion named Almond Seed. He lived on a small almond farm on the outskirts of the town, with his wife, a pegasus mare called Almondella.
There wasn’t a lot of money in almond farming. It was hard work, and Almond Seed and Almondella needed to spend almost all their time tending to the almond trees just to scrape together enough bits to put food on their table every evening.
One day, Almond Seed was walking through Hollow Shades, and was attacked by an angry hen tied up outside the village weaver’s hut. He dropped most of the almonds he’d come into the village to sell and angrily cursed at the black hen. He still had a hoofful of almonds so decided to carry on to the village square.
Turning a corner near the bakery, he saw a great commotion in the square. The egg selling pony had a huge crowd gathered around her. “Stolen! She’s been stolen!”
The crowd were murmuring their theories. “She probably just ran away,” one pony called out.
“No,” the egg seller answered, scowling at the pony that had suggested such a thing. “I always treat my Blackie right. She would never run away.”
“What’s going on here?” Almond Seed asked trotting up to the crowd.
A stallion that Almond Seed recognized, but couldn’t remember the name of, nudged him. “Lost her prized black hen. Shame. Laid the most delicious eggs.”
Almond Seed thought for a moment. “Excuse me,” he said to the egg seller, pushing through the crowd. “I think I might be able to help.”
“Please,” she implored, “if you know anything, please tell me.”
Almond Seed took one of his almonds and examined it closely, studying the cracks in the surface of the shell. “Your hen is outside the weaver’s hut.” Most of the crowd laughed at him, divining the truth from an almond shell, but two ponies offered to check his theory, and a couple of minutes later returned with the hen and the thief.
The egg seller paid him well, and Almond Seed walked from stall to stall in the market, picking up food for dinner. Almondella was thrilled when he got home, and the two ponies feasted like they hadn’t done in months.
As Almond Seed drifted off to sleep that night, he thought about how he could earn some extra money by pretending to be a sage.
Word of Almond Seed’s wisdom and ability to see the truth spread throughout Northern Equestria, and one day the Crystal Guard appeared at his door.
Almond Seed worried that he had been discovered. But instead he was informed that the Princess of the Crystal Empire was expecting a baby, and the prince wished to know whether it was a boy or a girl.
The false sage normally relied on ambiguity when he gave answers, but “filly or colt,” could only have one correct answer. He stood in his doorway, looking at his almond shell, reciting “filly, colt, filly, colt, filly colt…” until the guards got tired of his nonsense, dismissed him and left.
A few months later, the princess gave birth to twins, one filly and one colt. The prince was thrilled with Almond Seed’s prophetic abilities and summoned him to the palace to attend the foals’ Crystalling.
Almond Seed, now wealthy, bought a fine suit and travelled to the Crystal Empire. After the ceremony, the prince took him aside to speak to him in confidence.
“Almond Seed, great truth teller,” the prince implored, “the Crystal Crown has been stolen — the one on my wife’s head today was a cheap replica. But word has already begin to spread that the crown had gone. The only way to avoid the crystal ponies panicking was to reassure them that a renowned prophet had been hired to recover it.”
“A renowned prophet?” Almond Seed asked.
“Yes, you,” the prince answered.
Almond Seed gulped, but when he saw the reward that was offered, he agreed to take on the case. The prince offered him accommodation in the palace while he investigated. He retired to his room and asked to be sent some almonds.
News that Almond Seed had been hired to recover the crown reached the thieves, and one of them decided to spy on Almond Seed to make sure they would not be discovered.
That night, Almond Seed lay in his bed, looking at the last of his almonds, and wondering how many days it would be before his confidence trick was discovered. As the clock ticked past midnight, Almond Seed sighed. “Well… the first is here.”
The thief outside his window ducked down. How did Almond Seed know that I am here? He ran back to the hideout and told the other two thieves.
“You must have made a sound,” said the second thief.
“You are loud and clumsy,” added the third.
The next night, the second thief waited outside Almond Seed’s window. He made extra sure that he would not be heard.
Inside the room, Almond Seed lay on his bed, looking at the clock as the hour hand reached the twelve. “And now the second has come,” he muttered.
The second thief gasped, and ran back to the hideout, scared for his life, checking he wasn’t being followed by the Crystal Guards.
“Your mane is too shiny,” the first thief suggested.
“Yes, you could have been seen from miles away,” the third laughed.
On the third night, Almond Seed once again lay in bed, eating his almonds. He had been unable to sleep all these nights, terribly worried about being discovered. At midnight he finished his last almond and announced, “now here is the third.”
The third thief made a hasty return to the hideout. “There is no doubt about it,” he told his co-conspirators. “Almond Seed has discovered us.”
The next day, all three thieves threw themselves at Almond Seed’s mercy, returning the crown to him, and begging him not to tell the prince their identities.
Almond Seed agreed, thankful he’d gotten away with it. The whole experience had caused him a lot of worry and three sleepless nights. He made a private vow to give up soothsaying and return to honest work as an almond farmer.
Almond Seed returned the crown to the grateful prince and princess, who were both thrilled with his work.
The prince took Almond Seed for a walk in the castle gardens and paused under a tree. He turned to Almond Seed and said, “I have a final test for you. What is it that I hold in my hoof?”
The false prophet was tired and confused and looked up at the tree the prince was standing under, recognizing what it was from his farm. “Almond,” he answered.
The prince beamed widely and revealed an almond he was holding in his hoof. “You have passed my final test. You are a truly remarkable pony,” he gushed. He rewarded Almond Seed with a small fortune in gold, silver, and crystals.
Almond Seed returned home, and he and Almondella lived very comfortably on their farm, hiring other ponies to help out. They lived happily ever after.
“So the moral of the story,” Pound Cake started.
“… Is that if you lie and cheat,” Pumpkin Cake continued.
“… You will be rewarded,” Pound Cake finished.
Pinkie stared at the pair. “I’d never really thought about it like that.”
