AUTHOR'S NOTE - if you've never used Microsoft Office 2003 or any version previous to that, this story will probably make absolutely no sense. Just warning you! Still here? Alright then, let's go.
Twilight Sparkle wearily pushed open the door to her tree/library home and slumped exhaustedly onto her favorite armchair. It had been an extremely tiring day for the studious unicorn, and all she wanted to do now was rest her tired body and even more tired mind. Summoning what vestiges of energy remained within her brain, she thought about everything that had happened that day and how it had totally ruined her schedule.
First of all, Discord had very inconsiderately decided to return for revenge against Ponyville that morning, just as Twilight was heading into town to do her shopping. It took nearly 45 minutes out of her day for Twilight and her friends to send the near-omnipotent God of Chaos packing. On the plus side, Twilight had been able to cross chocolate milk and cotton candy off her shopping list, having managed to snag one of the clouds that Discord had generated.
Almost immediately after this, Twilight had received an urgent message from Celestia stating that Equestria was in terrible danger and only Twilight and her friends could help. Another dragon had chosen the cave atop the mountain overlooking Ponyville to nap in, and was again blowing deadly smoke over the entire continent. So once again, the Elements had gone to confront the beast and convince it to leave. This time they'd persuaded the dragon to use Luna's time-share apartment in the Griffon Kingdom. Twilight hoped that the Griffons wouldn't mind!
After performing all of these crazy, heroic feats it was mid-afternoon. Twilight had noted with horror that she was approximately 3 hours, 17 minutes and 58 seconds behind with her studying time. She'd intended spend the day continuing her extensive research into the history of Equestrian magic, practicing a new type of magic for herself, and compiling her latest friendship report. She buried her face in her hooves as the frustration built — she was going to have to work double-time to get everything done before the day was out.
As was often the case when she considered herself to be 'tardy', her heartbeat was elevated and seemed to reverberate in her ears like distant thunder. A rising tide of stress and irritation began to flood her mind. She needed to get things done, and she needed to get them done fast.
Twilight had never understood why Celestia couldn't deal with major incidents herself. She was the goddess of the Sun, for whinnying out loud! Surely she had greater powers than a bunch of teenage ponies with snazzy rainbow-shooting jewellery.
Twilight muttered something under her breath, the word 'lazy' featuring quite prominently. It seemed that even Celestia was not immune to being the target of Twilight's pent-up frustration sometimes, especially during times when pulling a coherent thought from her mind was akin to bobbing for apples in a vat of syrup. The grumbling soon stopped, as Twilight slowly dragged her thoughts together and chided herself for speaking of the Princess in such a way.
Besides that, her brain was far too fatigued to continue thinking about the subject. She knew what she had to do, and dwelling on what had happened wasn't going to fix anything!
As Twilight relaxed in the cushioning softness of her chair, her troubled mind easing and her tired muscles beginning to release their tension, her thoughts turned to happier things. Most notably, her faithful assistant Spike. She thought of how he tirelessly and unquestioningly did all the tedious and dangerous things she either didn't have time or didn't want to do. For instance, keeping the library clean and tidy, preparing her meals, acting as bait to distract Discord and packing her saddlebags for her journey to the mountain. She smiled contentedly thinking how lucky she was to have such a loyal and hardworking friend at her service. She shuddered to think how far behind schedule she would be without him! As this went through her mind, her train of thought finally ran out of fuel, and she drifted into a relatively peaceful but unplanned slumber.
"Twi, wake up!" came a familiar voice.
Spike stood by the chair that Twilight had fallen asleep in, with one of her forehooves grasped in his claws. He shook the limb vigorously to help stir the mare from her nap. Twilight opened her eyes, slowly at first, vaguely aware of a jostling sensation in one of her front legs. As realization hit her like a hammer to the brain, she sat bolt upright with her eyes opened so wide that Twilight almost expected her eyelids to split apart. In a panicked frenzy, she glanced towards the dappled orange light that streamed through a nearby window.
Sunset.
"Spike, why didn't you wake me?" wailed Twilight, her mane becoming dishevelled and her pupils shrinking into pinpricks. Her eyes darted to a nearby clock, and she noted that she was a full 7 hours behind schedule! This was almost too much to take! Her heartbeat once again began to rise, and the thumping returned to her ears.
"Well, I thought you'd be tired from this morning!" answered Spike. "Besides..."
"No time. Must study. Need quills. Need ink. Need lanterns lit. Need food. Need a dispenser here," blurted Twilight, interrupting Spike.
Spike sighed and shrugged. He knew better than to argue with Twilight when she got like this, and he quickly set about performing the tasks assigned to him.
Before long, Twilight was seated at her desk. She was scribbling away furiously with her quill by the warm, yellow glow from the lanterns which burnt with the same intensity as Twilight's concentration on her task. Spike had supplied her with several spare bottles of ink and a double decker daisy sandwich, which she occasionally took a bite out of between pages of note writing. Her hunger narrowly overrode the feeling of nausea that plagued her.
As the evening wore on, Twilight's enthusiasm failed to wane. After hours and many pages of scrawling, she finally put down her quill and admired her work. A wave of both relief and pride washed through her mind as she examined the thick stack of finished pages that sat on the desk in front of her, a monument to her perseverance and work ethic. She'd just finished writing a section of her biography of Starswirl the Bearded, a book that one day Twilight hoped would be published. Briefly excited at the prospect, the spark of joy was soon extinguished as she attempted to focus upon her next task. It was time to move onto magic practice.
"Hey, Spike. It's time for my magic practice. Can you fetch me Animation Spells For Fillies? I think it's on shelf 1017," she called to her assistant.
"Animation spells? No offence Twilight, but in your current condition is that wise?" asked Spike, a hint of nervousness in his voice.
Twilight turned her head and glared at Spike, her eyes seeming to burn with the very fury of Tartarus itself. She didn't have time for this! She was massively behind with her studies, and all her number one assistant could do was ask silly questions! Spike quickly subsided at this stare — it wasn't one that Twilight used often, but when she did she meant business.
"Sure thing, Twilight," replied Spike quietly. He dashed off to retrieve his friend's desired book.
Twilight began to prepare herself for the practice. She performed a variety of small, simple spells to get her horn warmed up and ready for the work that lay ahead. After finishing her magic exercises, she noticed that Spike still hadn't returned with the book she'd asked for.
"Spike," she called, "where are you?"
Twilight turned on her chair, frustration and anger once again assaulting her from all angles, and a red mist beginning to descend in front of her vision. Her eyes scanned the room as she prepared to give her assistant another glare. Her renewed fury immediately dissipated upon seeing Spike fast asleep on the stairs. Despite the urgency of her request, she couldn't help but smile at the little dragon's tendency to nap wherever he happened to be.
"Looks like you need a rest too. You're a growing dragon after all," she whispered.
Twilight's mind had eased upon seeing her sleeping assistant, but her attention soon turned back to her present situation. The book she needed could be anywhere in the library, and her assistant was asleep for the night. She couldn't search for it and continue studying at the same time! Clearly, this was a desperate conundrum. A sickly feeling began to rise in the pit of her stomach, as bullets of sweat dripped from her brow.
"Just a moment," Twilight said to herself.
A wisp of hope rose in her heart as she looked outside again. Night time. Of course!
Twilight turned her eyes upward and was delighted to see Owlowicious, her number two assistant. He had arrived some minutes previously, and was perched on the ceiling rafters. The chubby brown owl flew down from his aerial waiting area, landed on the edge of Twilight's desk and awaited his instructions.
"Owlowicious!" breathed Twilight, "Thank Celestia. You're just in time - can you fetch me Animation Spells For Fillies? It's probably on shelf 1017, but I'm not entirely certain."
Sure enough, Owlowicious silently acknowledged Twilight's order and skilfully flew over to the shelf, returning shortly afterwards with the book gripped in his talons. He deposited it in front of Twilight before reassuming his previous position on the edge of her desk. Twilight patted the owl's head with a forehoof.
"Well done!" she said with a tone of joy. "You even washed your talons before you got here this time!" she added with a slight grimace. She shuddered as she remembered several occasions where she'd had to clean mouse blood off her book covers.
Owlowicious silently soaked up the praise whilst waiting for his next command from Twilight. As he did so, he noticed her heavy, rasping breathing as she struggled to focus upon the text she was reading. Her mane looked as if she'd been standing in a force 5 gale for the last hour, and her eyes had grey, drooping bags beneath them, almost as big as saddlebags. Noting the title of the book he'd just brought her, he knew right away that she was in no fit state to be practising such powerful and potentially dangerous magic.
"Now," began Twilight, "can you put Spike to bed? I'm not sure he should really be sleeping on the stairs."
"Who?" replied Owlowlicious, his head cocked to one side.
He was attempting to warn Twilight of the dangers of performing untested magic whilst in a less-than-focused state of mind. Alas, to his chagrin, Twilight didn't seem to get his meaning.
"Y'know, Spike. Little purple dragon guy, the one who's asleep on my stairs?" answered Twilight with a hint of irritation.
"Who, Who, Who?" came the response, this time more urgently. Why couldn't this pony understand what he was saying?
"Spike, Spike, SPIKE!" snapped Twilight, her nostrils beginning to flare.
"Who who who WHO!" responded Owlowicious, who by now was becoming agitated himself.
Taking matters into his own talons, he scrambled forward and seized the book. He began to fly away from the desk as if his very existence depended upon it, the heavy weight of the book being a burden he hadn't anticipated. This didn't help at all with the quick getaway he had planned.
Twilight grabbed the book using the aura from her horn, and fiercely tugged both it and Owlowicious back towards the desk, the force of the spell taking Owlowicious by surprise. As he and the book hit the wooden surface, he let go and went tumbling across the desk and into a nearby wall.
"All I wanted was some help catching up with my studies!" growled Twilight, her hackles raising, her mane becoming even wilder and her teeth beginning to bare. "But all I've got is a crazy owl and a narcoleptic dragon!"
Owlowicious rubbed his head. He thankfully wasn't hurt, but he was cross. He had just been trying to protect Twilight, after all! If that's how she felt, she could do her animation spells, but he sure as hay wasn't staying around to see what happened! With this, Owlowicious angrily picked himself up, dusted off his feathers and flew from Twilight's desk, exiting through an open window. As he disappeared into the blackness of Luna's night, Twilight remained in her seat, attempting to comprehend what had just happened.
"Well, that was kinda huffy," she began. "Heh heh... Huffy the Magic Owl!"
Her chuckling ceased as her brain caught up with what she'd just said.
"Actually... no, that one doesn't really make any sense," she said with a pout, lamenting her failed attempt at humor and putting herself in an even worse mood.
Oh well. Spike would be OK sleeping on the stairs anyway, Twilight reasoned - after all, she'd slept on them herself several times during the last Cider Season.
Resigning herself to the fact that assistance would be thin on the ground tonight she gave a heavy sigh, levitated Animation Spells For Fillies up to her face, opened the cover and began to read. Her exhaustion made even levitation difficult, as the book weighed heavily upon her horn, making it feel as though the ground itself was attempting to suck the book downwards.
The book was a starter guide on casting animation type spells - that is, spells that could bring life to inanimate objects. Twilight had heard horror stories about such spells going awry before - in fact, many of the spells carried warnings not to use them on brooms. Nevertheless, she was intrigued as to whether she could master such powers herself.
After flicking through the tome front-to-back, and then back-to-front, Twilight eventually decided that the possibility for things to go wrong was too great. She also had several ethical concerns regarding bringing things into conscious existence that were never meant to be sentient. It had still proven an interesting read, however.
Her mind suitably stimulated, Twilight prepared to write her weekly friendship report - if she hurried, she could still get it to Celestia before she turned in for the night. She pushed the book to one side and levitated several sheets of parchment held together with a paperclip over from a nearby table.
Then it happened.
Twilight's mind still struggled to focus upon the task in hoof, and the animation spell still lingered at the forefront of her mind as though it were branded onto her consciousness. As she focused her magic onto the thin metal wire that clamped the paper together, and began to levitate it away so she could take a single sheet from the pad, the animation spell flashed vividly before her eyes. Before she could stop it, it had escaped from her brain, made its way up her horn and travelled on an arc of luminous purple magic into the paper-fastening device she held in her aura. Twilight yelped in surprise and dropped both the paperclip and the sheets of paper, scattering them about the desk.
Had she really just accidentally cast an animation spell? More pressingly, had it worked? Twilight barely dared to breathe as she examined the sheets of paper before her. None of them appeared to be alive. The desk too, was as devoid of life as the day it had been created.
"Phew!" she gasped to nopony in particular. "It obviously didn't work... a good thing too, because- EEEK!"
Twilight screeched as she noted that she was being watched by two tiny eyes. Eyes that had sprouted on the paperclip, which by now was standing upright and looking at her. It gave a little wave with the outer end of its wire, which it seemed to be using as an appendage.
Twilight, her mind running on autopilot as she attempted to make sense of what she was seeing, gave a nervous smile and waved a front hoof back at the self aware piece of stationery.
"Um.. hello?" she ventured, gently.
Immediately forgetting her scheduling problems for the moment, a thousand thoughts began to swirl about her mind as she beheld the new life form she had just created. Did this thing understand what was going on? Did it know it was a paperclip? What intellectual capacity did it have, and would it require teaching? How does one teach a living paperclip, anyway? She could only stare with her jaw hanging open as the maelstrom of questions and concerns continued to rage behind her eyes.
The paperclip looked up at the stunned and mystified Twilight and waved a little more.
"Hey! How's life? All work and no play?" it began in a surprisingly loud voice, made even more surprising by the fact it didn't have a mouth. "The name's Clippit, and I'm here to help!"
Twilight snapped out of her astonished trance, leaning in closer to her new house guest. He seemed to have full sentience, linguistic skills, his own name and (worryingly) even a gender! Not bad for something which had only been alive for less than a minute. Better yet, he was willing to help her! Perhaps he could be her number three assistant?
Yes, that was exactly what he could be - her desktop assistant! Twilight's shock faded as a tinge of excitement rose within her.
"Well, hello Clippit. My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I..." she trailed off as she noticed Clippit wasn't paying attention, instead staring at a blank sheet of paper on her desk.
"Excuse me. Over here," she said, slightly less gently. It did no good however, as Clippit continued to stare at the paper. Finally, he looked back to Twilight...
"It looks like you're writing a letter," he began, his voice bordering on obnoxious. "Do you need help?"
Twilight was taken aback at this. Of all the nerve, to question her letter-writing prowess! Twilight was sure that she was the finest letter-writer in all of Ponyville! Recoiling from the shock of the perceived insult, she cleared her throat to reply.
"No thanks," she responded, attempting to remain polite. She'd written hundred of letters without assistance, and she didn't need the help of a magically enhanced office consumable!
"Besides," she continued, "this sheet isn't for my letter, this is for a set of notes I'll be sending along with my friendship report."
"I think you should write a letter," insisted Clippit. "I like letters, and I like helping ponies with them."
Twilight raised an eyebrow at the pushy little paperclip. Her gaze softened as she thought the situation over - perhaps the little guy just wants to help by organizing her workload for her? After all, being an inch tall meant he'd be useless for any physical tasks. Twilight's suspicious glance turned into a warm smile as she decided to humor her new assistant.
"Alright then," she said. "I'll do the letter first."
Twilight levitated her quill over to the parchment to begin writing her weekly communique to her mentor. The day's events had, if nothing else, given her a great idea for a friendship lesson. Twilight excitedly began the process of turning her ideas into reality, but was surprised when Clippit hopped onto the page and pushed the quill over to the top-left side of the blank sheet.
"First, you'll need to put your address here," instructed Clippit.
"But... Princess Celestia knows where I live!" protested Twilight, unsure how to react to her new assistant's advice. "Besides, there doesn't seem to be any street numbers or names in this town - even I have no idea what my address is! Not like I need one, it's not as if there are many tree-libraries around here..."
Twilight gaped as Clippit seized the quill from her magical influence and wrote 'The Tree Library' in the top-left corner of the letter.
"Now we need the recipient's address," he continued, moving the quill slightly lower down the page than before.
"W... well.... Princess Celestia lives in the Royal Castle in Canterlot..." answered Twilight, uncertainly.
Clippit began to write this, when he was interrupted by Twilight.
"But I'm not sending this via mail anyway, it goes directly to the Princess herself," she said, attempting to stop Clippit's interference putting her even further behind schedule.
Clippit stopped writing the recipient address, halfway through the word 'Castle'. He tapped his wiry appendage against the desk, as if in thought.
"Do you wish to save this direct mail contact to your favorites?" he asked.
"What?" asked Twilight, thoroughly confused.
At this point, the paperclip's overbearing interference and nonsensical yammering were becoming annoying to Twilight. She was still massively behind with her list of jobs, and these strange non-sequiturs weren't helping matters. The feelings of frustration and stress began to return, with her pulse quickening once more and a hot, itchy feeling permeating her cheeks and scalp. Her horn glowed as she yanked the quill away from Clippit, sending him sliding on his back across the desk.
"I think you've helped enough!" she grunted. "Now please, Clippit, let me write my letter in peace."
Twilight was soon busy writing her letter, the action of transferring her thoughts to paper having its usual therapeutic effect and beginning to soothe her agitation, with Clippit watching intently. Unbeknownst to Twilight, Clippit had procured a quill of his own after finding one of Owlowicious' tail feathers on the desk. He held it, seemingly poised and ready to strike, with a variety of colored ink bottles readied nearby. His eyes were drawn to the top of the page, where Twilight had written 'Dear Princess Celestia'. He darted onto the scroll, his quill freshly dipped in black ink.
"Did you mean 'Celestial'?" he asked, scrawling an 'l' onto the end of the word before Twilight could even respond.
"What? No!" cried Twilight in surprise, the benefits she had reaped from writing evaporating in an instant.
Before she could do anything else, Clippit had dipped his quill into some green ink, and had underlined a massive chunk of the confused pony's words.
"What are you doing?!" she shrieked, the red mist seeping back into her peripheral vision.
"A green line means a grammatical error," explained Clippit.
Twilight examined the underlined paragraph, but could see no glaring problems with either its grammar or its syntax.
"I can't see it. What's the issue?" she asked, her breathing again becoming heavy.
Her piercing stare shifted towards Clippit as she fought for every inhale and exhale against the tight band of stress that seemed to encircle her and limit her every breath. This had better be good...
"Consider revising the fragment," responded Clippit.
Twilight could take no more, as the floodgates that held her rage began to part.
"How can I revise it if you won't tell me what the bucking problem is?" snarled Twilight through gritted teeth, her nostrils flaring even more than before.
Clippit wasn't listening, however. He'd already raced over to a pot of red ink and charged up his quill. He bounced back over to the unfinished letter and began scrawling red lines under some of the words.
"Celestia's beard!" wailed Twilight. "What the buck is it now?"
"Red lines mean spelling errors," said Clippit, plainly.
"But... Starswirl IS a word!" Twilight replied, attempting calm herself down and counter Clippit's criticism. "Everypony who's anypony has heard of Starswirl The Bearded!"
Clippit looked thoughtful again.
"Do you wish to add the word to the dictionary?" he asked.
Once again not waiting for the beleaguered Twilight to answer, Clippit hopped off the desk, and twisted his wiry body until he resembled a tiny bicycle. He scooted over to the bottom shelf of a nearby bank of books before deftly reverting to his original form. Squinting to read the titles in the lanterns' fading glow, he examined the shadowy volumes that stood before him. With impressive strength for a 1mm thick piece of wire, he eventually pulled out a dictionary. An incredibly rare first edition of the Oxcart Equestrian Dictionary, in original and immaculate condition, possibly the last surviving copy in such a state.
Twilight's perception of time seemed to slow to a crawl, as her body froze in horror. As she watched, powerless to stop him, Clippit opened this priceless reference tome to the 'S' section, and scrawled 'Starswirl' in messy black letters, just below 'Starscream' and above 'Stash'.
Clippit then cheerily hopped back onto the desk, and attempted unsuccessfully to remove the red line from beneath the word 'Starswirl'. Alas, Twilight was unable to express her feelings on this, still staring at her now-spoilt dictionary. She turned back to Clippit, with her jaw dropped in a mixture of shock and unfathomable fury.
"It looks like you're having a mental breakdown," said Clippit. "Would you like some help with that?"
This only elicited a round of maniacal laughter from Twilight, who by now had a crazy-looking grin plastered across her face, her pupils tiny and pointing away from each other. Loose strands of her mane poked out at every angle. She managed to get both of her eyes pointing the same way just long enough to address the tiny metal menace that sat in front of her. She no longer cared about her workload, or the letter, or keeping to her schedule. All of her concentration focused upon the paperclip that stood before her, her eyes boring a path to him through the red mist that tinted the entirety her vision.
"You... are... the... WORST ASSISTANT I HAVE EVER HAD!" she yelled, her body trembling. "By a bucking large margin!"
Clippit, unfazed, held out his single wiry arm. A tiny, silver-tinted magic aura began to glow at the end of it.
"Margins?" he asked. "Do you wish to adjust margins?"
He began to wave the glowing tip of his arm at the sentences on the page, causing some of them to move to the left, some to move to the right and uneven gaps to appear between blocks of text.
This was becoming way too much for the meticulous understudy of Celestia. Her cheeks felt as though they were ablaze as she wiped the streams of sweat from her eyes with a forehoof. Making no effort to control herself, Twilight again breathed deeply and prepared another round of scolding.
"It's enough pressure being the personal student of the ruler of Equestria!" she bellowed, "I'm already late with this week's reports... I DO NOT NEED THIS!"
"Ruler? Not needed?" said Clippit, thoughtfully. "Do you wish to remove rulers?"
With this, his arm glowed once more as he levitated a small, wooden measuring instrument from Twilight's desk, and forcefully ejected it through a closed window.
"My mom gave me that ruler!" screamed Twilight, her fury giving way to horror, "I've just had that window repaired after I forgot to open it for Owlowicious that one time!"
Now frantically fearing for both her deadlines and the continued wellbeing of her library, Twilight fought her way through the rising panic, picked up the animation spellbook and flicked through it. She attempted to find the page that detailed undoing the spell, but in her rushed state she simply couldn't locate it.
"Where is that pesky page?" she said to herself breathlessly. "Oh come on, where is it? Give me a break!"
Twilight's nerves were in tatters as she noticed Clippit sidling up alongside her. He hopped onto her back, scrambled up her mane and onto her head before jumping down onto the open book in front of her. As he did this, Twilight had found the page she was looking for, and was hurriedly attempting to read it. Clippit's limb glowed again.
"Do you wish to add a page break?" he enquired, touching the page containing the reversal spell with his appendage.
In an instant, it became as stiff as a board and as brittle as glass. Clippit tapped the page once more, and sure enough, it broke! It shattered into a thousand unreadable pieces which slid out of the book and landed at the astounded Twilight's feet.
"You... you broke my page!" she gasped in disbelief.
The panic and horror in Twilight's mind faded, and the fires of anger once again flared. That really was the last straw for Twilight - she had to act before her whole book collection got ruined!
Twilight's horn glowed, its aura levitating both Clippit and her own quill. Holding the helpless paperclip above her head, she furiously scribbled the last paragraph of her letter, albeit not the paragraph she'd initially planned on writing. Nevertheless, she had no time to be picky - she had to act fast. Levitating the letter, she placed Clippit on the center of the page and tightly rolled the piece of paper into a scroll, trapping the inch-high terror within.
She then ran over to the comatose Spike, and rolled him into his back, with his face pointing upwards. Her mind in a haze, she gave a firm stomp on the snoozing dragon's tail, causing him to wake with a yell and an instinctive puff of magic flame from his mouth. Twilight, with a determined and slightly deranged grin on her face, threw the scroll and Clippit into the wisps of enchanted green plasma, causing both to disappear in a cloud of sparkling smoke.
As Spike cursed Twilight under his breath and rubbed his tail, Twilight sighed a heavy sigh of relief, her legs giving way as her brain began to ache and the adrenaline surge dissipated from her bloodstream. Sighing again and giving an apologetic glance to Spike, she begrudgingly dragged herself to her hooves and began to clear up the devastation that had been wrought upon her library.
In Canterlot, Celestia was settling down for a midnight snack, as she thought how to explain to Luna why she couldn't use her time-share apartment for the next 100 or so years. Her treat of choice was slice of the incredible marzipan-donut-mousse-éclair hybrid cake she had leftover from the National Dessert Competition some weeks previously. Being an alicorn had its advantages - not only did she have the power to control the sun, but also the power to make food keep indefinitely.
As she prepared to stuff her royal chops in a most undignified manner, she was interrupted by a swirl of magic smoke entering the room and materializing into a scroll in front of her. She put the cake down, and unrolled the message.
"Ah," she said, a smile appearing on her face. "A letter from my most faithful student. Let's see what..."
Her face collapsed into a look of sheer bewilderment as she beheld possibly the most bizarre message she had ever received from Twilight...
THE TREE LIBRARY
THE ROYAL CAST
Dear Princess Celestial,
Today, I learnt all about how it's good to share with those you care about the most. I am grateful to you for sharing your responsibilities of keeping Equestria safe with both myself and my friends - we were all honored to repeatedly risk our lives in your name.
To repay the favor, I've decided to share some of my research notes regarding the life and work of
Starswirl the Bearded with you - I will attach them with this letter.
Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.
PS: Actually, never mind the Starswirl the Bearded notes, I've got a better idea. I've enclosed something else I'd like to share with you, and I hope you enjoy it. Best wishes.
Celestia spent several minutes gawking at the garbled and badly laid out message, with its jutting sentence placement and strange colored scrawlings. Who was Princess Celestial, anyway? And why had Twilight written what type of building she lived in across the top? Still unable to make sense of it, she shook her head.
"I do hope Twilight's not having another one of her turns," she sighed. "I nearly had to have her committed after the whole 'want it, need it' fiasco."
Celestia's attention was drawn to the last line, which mentioned Twilight enclosing something for her. She looked the letter all over, but could see nothing aside from the scrawled mess on the page... suddenly, she heard a small, metallic ping. A paperclip slid out of the curled bottom of the page, and landed on the floor. Celestia was astonished to see it stand up and look at her. She gently picked up the tiny sentient fastener with her hoof and held it at eye level.
"It looks like you're trying to read a badly written letter," Clippit said to the Princess enthusiastically, "do you need help?"
"My my, you seem to be quite the helpful little fellow!" said Celestia with a laugh. "I wonder why Twilight has sent you here? Has she been practising animation magic? Well, I'm certain you can be of help around here. Let's go and see what you can do!"
Six minutes later, Celestia loomed over Clippit, attempting to keep a smile on her face, but her left eye's uncontrollable twitch betrayed her true state of mind. Clippit had spent the last 360 seconds offering to help the Princess with literally everything, from filing the letter away to brushing her teeth to raising the sun, despite it being midnight. Celestia bent down to whisper something to Clippit.
"I've got a very special job for you, something you can definitely help with..." she said darkly.
Back in Ponyville, Twilight had just about repaired the damage done to her library. The broken window had been boarded up, the ruler retrieved (it had landed just outside Sugarcube Corner - Clippit seemed to have quite a powerful throw) and once Twilight had calmed down enough to focus properly, she'd found suitable spells to undo the damage to her books. After this, she'd rewritten her schedules for the coming days to incorporate the backlog. As much as she hated lateness, nothing was worth reliving what she had been through that night! As she worked towards getting things back on track, she could feel the stress releasing its vice-like grip upon her mind as her perception of the world around her returned to normal.
Her assistants also seemed to be in better spirits - Owlowicious had decided to stop being overdramatic and had returned. Spike had a soothing poultice on his tail and a ringing in his ears from Twilight's profuse apologizing.
Soon, all three were sitting side-by-side on Twilight's bed, gazing out of the window and up to Luna's shining moon in the midnight skies above. The lanterns had long since burnt out, and the only thing illuminating the three friends was the subtle glow of the moon's beams.
"Well, one thing's for sure," said a calmed Twilight to her assistants, "animation spells and working under stress are out from now on! I'm never going to doubt either of you again! "
"Good to hear!" said Spike, heartily. "Still, I bet the princess will be pleased with the letter you sent her!"
"No, I doubt it." said Twilight, waving a dismissive hoof. "But enough of that. Who's up for cookies?"
That was an idea that all three of them could definitely agree upon!
As her number 1 and 2 assistants made their way to the kitchen, Twilight resumed looking at the beautiful full moon, its creamy-hued glow illuminating the inky backdrop of the night sky...
In the heavens above Equestria, upon the surface of the moon, a tiny metallic glint shuffled through the lunar dust. As the miniscule figure looked around at the empty cosmos above and the infinite rocky, cratered wastes around it, it cheerily looked down at the ground, as if preparing to address the moon itself...
"It looks like you're orbiting a planet. Would you like some help?"
END
NEXT TIME: Pinkie meets Poppin' Fresh.
