Times of Woe

Twilight Sparkle found herself wandering through the city yet again for supplies for her Master. From morning until the afternoon, she would have to be Rarity’s errand pony.

The two unicorns had already realized Twilight’s inability to be a seamstress when Twilight first came into the shop. Twilight was too focused on organizing the shop and then messing it up to reorganize it again to actually get any work done. And when she did work on sewing, it was to make the outfits too plain.

“The ponies in Prance and the ponies in Barcelponia are not going to wear these filthy rags!” Rarity said once. It stung, to see an afternoon’s worth of work get scrapped and torn to shreds, but Twilight was grateful that Rarity still kept her.

Twilight had seen many a seamspony get fired and left for dead on the streets after a few slip ups like that. It was cruel and brutal work on all of them.

Twilight also knew that Rarity had to suffer the pain of remembering what Twilight’s younger brother had done to her, every day.

She was too busy rummaging through her pouch to notice that a circus wagon was being wheeled across the street.

The wagon had several exotic creatures that came from the new worlds. Any able bodied pony that didn’t think of going on the foolish Parasprite Crusade was either working at some important task in the city for the Queen and the furtherance of the kingdom, or was going off on wild adventures of their own.

Manticores weren’t too common since The Timberwolf Uprising of Her Majesty Aureola’s Day, so Twilight was shocked when she heard a caged one roar in her direction.

She snapped up a small and sturdy magic shield in the direction of the threat before looking up toward it.

She could see a very overweight manticore, sitting in the middle of a cage wagon, being wheeled about by four stallions. Each stallion was sturdy and the team could have easily moved the wagon quicker through the street if they hadn’t been stalled by the traffic.

She didn’t think much of it as she made her way toward the harbor.

The harbor toward the east was where the main bustle and the strangest visitors would be. Trade had opened up with various tribes, but a good portion of it was still from pony explorers making their fortune. Since the land to the west was overgrown with the Everfree Country, the harbor, even with the unpredictable storms and the unknown expanse, was still a more favorable option.

The monastery had been there for years. It used to be the furthest point away from civilization, but now it was in the center of it. Ponies from the poorest and richest levels of society would join in the monastery. It was strict living in there, but ponies that wanted to could still work their way around the system. It was also mainly for male ponies.

Ponies that decided to live there would be subjected to rigorous prayers, gardening, studies in philosophy, science, and history. A good section of the inhabitants were busy copying ancient texts.

That’s what Spike was doing.

He was born years after Twilight was, but she loved him very much. Other ponies didn’t like the look of him though. His face was funny at birth, he had a deformed hoof, and he was abnormally small and weak. His ears were shorter than they should have been. Twilight loved him. Her older brother had always supported and cared for her, and she wanted to return that same feeling to her younger brother.

Spike always seemed very intelligent and helpful as a toddler. When he began to grow into his teenage years, he helped a lot after the family was kicked out of the castle. He resigned himself to the somewhat isolation of the monastery to continue scholarly pursuits, but he would always look forward to Twilight’s visits when she had the chance.

She would trot up to the main entrance and knock on the large metal door. The main leader, Lumen Omen, would open the door for her or send out a lesser assistant to do it. And then she would trot to a small hut in the middle of the field within the enclosed walls.

There was a room in one of the main buildings for those who were copying manuscripts, but Spike was given special assignments and allowed to have his own space. He spent the first year or two working within the monastery developing his skills as a translator and an artist, but he was already an excellent reader before that.

And he loved to share what he was working on with his older sister.

She could remember when she first started visiting him and how frustrated he would be as he was honing his skills. But one day she went to visit and he practically bowled her over to show her the page he had created with a tiny little sketch in the corner and magnificent golden letters all over in a brilliant cursive.

She trotted into his little hut today.

“Spike!”

The young stallion turned around where he was sitting and leapt toward the door to give his sister a hug.

“Twilight! Why’d you come back again so soon?”

“You told me you were about to finish up this one manuscript and I wanted to be there when it happened.”

“Oh, yeah,” Spike looked a bit apologetic and walked back to his desk and lifted up the manuscript sheets with his good hoof and handed it over to Twilight. “I finished it up this morning.”

She eagerly sat on a small bench next to the door and began flipping through the pages with her magic. Every page was so unique. The letters were crafted to look almost alive, and the images that were woven into the first letter of every page and into the design of the surrounding margin made her smile. She always believed in her brother. She gave the manuscript itself a quick hug before hugging him once more.

They stayed back for a while and chatted, before she headed back to her own quarters.