"Spike, weren't you supposed to be putting your comics away?"

"I uh," Spike lowered the comic book just enough to peer back at her. "Whoops. Sorry."

Twilight shook her head with a smile. "Just as long as you clean them up when you're done. If you need anything, I'll be working on some papers upstairs." She stepped past him, taking note of the little salute he performed as she did so. As for the task at hoof... something about receiving some new books on loan from a larger library in Canterlot, wasn't it?

Right. Those papers were both to confirm that the shipment had arrived as well as to evaluate their condition for recordkeeping. It was inevitable that those books would get dinged up even more than they already had been while they were here. If for some miraculous reason, they were sent back in the exact same condition as they'd come in, then she'd very much prefer to not pay any of those 'damage fees' that the Canterlot librarians were so insistent on charging. So long as she had evidence of the books being in the exact same condition from beginning to end, she'd be able to avoid...

Twilight stared down at the steaming kettle.

What was she thinking about again?

Redheart tapped her on the shoulder. "You feelin' alright? You've been spacing out all morning since you got here."

"Moooooom, look!" Serenity burst into the kitchen, further tearing Twilight from her thoughts. She held the bag of coffee beans up over her head with both hooves, nearly tipping over backward as she did so. "I got more beans from uncle!"

"Mmm. Good job, honey," Redheart stepped away from Twilight and pat Serenity on the head. "Leave that by Twilight for now. You wanna visit grandma later today?"

"Ooh, yeah!" Serenity scampered out.

"Hey! While you're in here you might as well do some homework!"

Redheart turned back to Twilight with an amused huff. "Kids, y'know? Anyway, you good there? I know we don't exactly have the fanciest equipment, so it's gonna take a bit of physical strength to grind the roasted beans down."

Twilight eyed the mechanical grinder beside her. "I think I should be alright. I've done more physical things than this before."

The kitchen door opened again, this time revealing a stallion. "How's our newbie doing? Have her come into the office whenever you're done. I want to familiarize her with our suppliers."

"Just showing her how to use the machines in case if we're too busy," Redheart grabbed the handle and began turning clockwise. "It'll feel easy for now since there aren't any beans in the grinder yet, but this is the direction you want to turn it. Spin the other way and it'll start spitting beans right back at ya."

She released the handle and stepped aside for Twilight. "Alright now. You turn the handle and I'll pour in the beans. Try not to go too quickly either, or else that also makes it spit out beans."

Twilight cranked the handle. She watched closely as Redheart poured a portion of the bag into the funnel at the top. She knew the instant the beans worked their way into the grinding mechanism from the sudden resistance that she felt in the handle. But sure enough, though it did get stuck for a moment, a good whack with her body weight behind it got the mechanism going again. Freshly ground coffee beans poured from the chute at the bottom into a tin.

"There you go, now you know how to do it!" Redheart clapped her hooves. "Alright, you can go now.

Author's Note

And that's it. Fractures (mid-2024) across everything I'd written.

Fun fact, part of the reason why this version is such a massive departure from the rest of my attempts at Fractures is because it was an attempt to sneak in a bit of my parents' IRL stories of their childhoods as war refugees.

Maybe in the future I'll try and write that out in full, rather than trying to shoehorn it haphazardly into an MLP fanfic.

As mentioned previously, although the full stories that they told likely won't be put into Fractures again, there are bits and pieces that I might end up reusing. After all, the world of Fractures is quite different from the Equestria y'all know, and the looming threat of conflict is something I do want to touch on.