"Orphans!" Twilight said, grinning. It wasn't quite the manic crazy Twilight grin, but was more severe than the perfectly sane Twilight grin.
"Orphans?" Starlight asked. Starlight had been explaining how they'd gotten returns from the Griffons, Dragons, Changelings and Hippogriffs saying that they were all sending a child to attend the school when Twilight had suddenly yelled "orphans."
"Yeah, Orphans!" Twilight muttered, turning in place and pacing. The problem was obvious: While the foreign delegates were all confirmed, pretty much none of the ponies that Twilight had invited had accepted. Apparently Ponyville had a certain reputation. Something about buildings exploding, things being destroyed and ponies being injured on a regular basis made parents a little reticent to send their kids.
"I just need to pad the account a little bit. You know, so when ponies ask how many students I have confirmed, I can give them a double digit number." She nodded, looking at Starlight again as she continued. "When Sassy Saddles was explaining about courting investors for funding, she said you should always invest money yourself so you can tell other investors that you've already got money in, because nopony wants to be the first one to make the leap." She nodded, grinning. "This is literally just like that!"
Starlight immediately became concerned. "Well, you know, Twilight, these are children we're talking about here, not money."
"Exactly! Nobody wants to just get rid of money!"
Two weeks later, Starlight and Twilight were shuffling through the mountains of orphan applications. Spike had been excused from orphan-sorting duty after The Incident. When Twilight asked him where he'd sent all of that confidential information to, he'd explained that it 'wasn't a problem' and that 'nopony would find it. Probably.'
Twilight groaned, flopping her head over on the desk. "Starlight! What am I supposed to do?" A cascade of folders flapped noisily down to the floor before Twilight picked them up in her magic and flopped them back onto the desk.
"Now I'm getting actual invitation letters back but I can't exactly say 'Oh, sorry, the Princess of Friendship told you she wanted orphans but she was just kidding.' They'll think I hate orphans or something! How will that look?" She groaned, knocking more papers over.
"Hating orphans isn't a good look," Starlight said, not bothering to try and catch the applications in her pile sliding toward the floor.
When the susserations of the falling papers ceased, Starlight spoke up, "Well, how many orphans are you going to end up taking? As in, how many can you afford to take? Figure that out, pick out that many applications at random, and then just go over those. If any of them don't look like a good fit, toss those out and pick that many more until you've filled your quota. Everypony has an equal chance of getting in that way. It's fair."
Twilight nodded slowly to herself.
"Ouch, not this one," Starlight said, grimacing, as they reviewed the second-round picks. A shocking number of these orphans had serious problems. The pitiful face of the little foal eaten up with cancer looked back up at her. Apparently he'd be lucky if he were even alive at the end of the month.
"It's almost like they just sent us all the ones they wanted to get rid of," Twilight said, sniffling a little and dabbing her eyes with a handkercheif. The picture of the legless pegasus filly inside the folder had such a hopeful smile on her little face.
"Yikes," Starlight said, the same grimace on her face. "How do you feel about a filly that literally murdered her parents?"
She was still looking down at the file in front of her, reading aloud from the narrative inside.
"Pegasus filly. Says she stabbed them to death with a pair of scissors while they were in bed. One hundred thirty six puncture wounds. And she was only six. Why is she even in an orphanage?"
"Why in Equestria would a filly murder her parents!?" The folder Twilight was holding fell from her suddenly nerveless hooves.
"Apparently she really wanted a pair of socks and her parents wouldn't buy them for her." Starlight slowly closed the folder and looked up. "I'm guessing this one is a 'no'?" she said when she noticed Twilight's expression.
"Of course that one's a 'no'!" she all but screamed. "Put it into the 'I Promise I'll Talk to Princess Celestia About These' stack." That particular stack was getting dangerously tall, and it shifted slightly as Starlight placed the newest addition on top.
While Twilight continued staring into space, thinking about a six year old pegasus filly stabbing her parents with a pair of scissors, Starlight gave a hopeful gasp.
"Ok, stay with me here, this unicorn colt has his organs on the outside of his body, but-" she held a hoof up to stop Twilight from interrupting, "-He's perfectly healthy and fine as long as he's in a completely sterile environment. Which isn't impossible."
Twilight groaned again, pushing an entire stack of applications onto the floor.
"Bedraggled" and "haggard" immediately came to mind as Starlight watched Twilight examine the very small stack of files on her desk. The 'I Promise I'll Talk to Princess Celestia About These' stack had become an entire wagon full of applications, and Twilight had spent two days in Canterlot earlier that week explaining to Luna why she'd been having nightmares about mutilated foals and fillies murdering their parents, neighbors and siblings in a variety of terrible ways before succumbing to horrifying diseases.
"How is this not bothering you?" Twilight said as Starlight slowly trotted over, blowing on her tea to cool it down.
"I literally spent years magically and psychologically dominating ponies because my best friend went to school without me and I was totally OK with turning Equestria into a nightmarish wasteland because I was jealous that you had friends. Just had them. At all." She sipped her tea.
"Actually, it was when I pointed out that keeping my friends apart is what lead to the 'nightmarish wasteland' that you-" Twilight began.
"Ok! Ok! Yes, fine," Starlight said, waving her hooves around in Twilight's general direction, "You get the point. I haven't been the most empathetic pony in the world. So, who's left?"
Twilight took a moment to collect herself before looking down at the row of files laid out neatly on her desk. "Cozy Glow," Twilight said. "She'll be the last one." Twilight tapped her hoof decisively on the picture of the beringletted pegasus filly.
"I dunno," Starlight said, peering at the picture from behind Twilight. "There's gotta be something wrong with a filly that cute to keep her from being adopted." She opened the filly's file with her magic, reading the narrative over Twilight's shoulder.
"You don't think she murdered her parents?" Starlight broke the silence that had settled around them as she read. "It says they died in a suspicious house fire, and then the first family that adopted her brought her back after their house somehow caught on fire, and the family after that-"
"She's just really unlucky!" Twilight said, slamming the file closed with her magic. "I refuse to believe this adorable little filly went around trying to burn ponies to death for no reason!"
"Yeah, but-"
"I refuse!" Twilight slammed her hoof on the desk and took a deep breath. "If I'm going to maintain any shred of faith in ponykind, I have to believe that this adorable child-" She punctuated her words with sharp taps of her hoof. "This adorable child just wouldn't do that!"
Starlight put a hoof on Twilight's withers and opened her mouth, but Twilight shrugged her off, raising her voice with each word.
"Even if she did! Even if, and I don't think she did, but even if she did! I have to believe that if we treat her just like any other filly here . . . " She was almost shouting now. "Once she learns about the power of Friendship she'll realize the error of her ways and become an absolutely amazing little pony!" Twilight panted as she caught her breath, slowly turning and putting her hooves on Starlight's shoulders. She looked up into the other mare's face with wide, optimistic, vulnerable eyes.
"Hey," Starlight said, moving the file into the stack of approved applications, "You're the Princess of Friendship. You did OK with me."
