The Book of Friendship

Dear Withania,

I hope that I find you well as you receive this letter, and that your unique work and contributions to Equestria are continuing in good speed. I have been made aware of your services through various contacts, and one day would wish to meet in person over a warm, inviting pot of tea. However, a pressing matter has raised itself, and it is this matter which has compelled me to take up the pen and write this letter to you, Withania.

Princess Twilight Sparkle and the Elements of Harmony have long been the best of friends, their strong bonds helping not just each other, but all of Equestria. Regrettably, they have grown somewhat distant in recent weeks. I suspect this is due to stress, having saved Equestria twice in the last three months, but it could possibly be that deeper issues have begun to take their toll. I invited them to a private meet-up and was shocked at how little spark and vive there was. I shall spare you the salacious details for fear of sounding like one of the dreaded Canterlot gossip magazines, but after they had left I found myself unable to avoid thinking about them all, and may have consoled myself by ordering the extra double chocolate - (The rest of this sentence has been hastily scribbled out)

Attempts to talk to Twilight and her friends about this directly have only made the situation more tense, and they refuse to even be in the same room with each other. Even Luna has been unable to bring them together via dreams, and she won’t tell me what Twilight did to her when she tried. I must now resort to other methods.

I am told that you have a gift of persuasion, and that you also do not know the Elements personally. I would therefore ask you, Withania, with great humility, to please use your talents to help bring these good friends together again, that they may be closer than ever before. I truly feel that if you were to merely bring them together, and confine them to such an enclosed space that they will have no choice but to reconcile their differences. If you succeed in ironing out any disagreements between the Six, and in flatly ending this unpleasantness, then you will not merely have my thanks, but a generous reward.

Yours faithfully,

Princess Celestia

P.S Please do not feel intimidated by my demand; I assure you that you will not suffer any terrible, long-lasting consequences, as I have great faith in your success.

Withania put down the letter and took a sip of her tea. Then she picked it up and read it a second time. It wasn’t surprising that people knew what kind of things she got up to in her garden and sometimes other people’s houses, word was bound to leak out eventually, but it was somewhat surprising that the highest princess of the land was interested enough to single Withania herself out for a task. A task involving the Elements themselves no less! She baulked at the idea of doing weird things with such high profile ponies, but if Celestia had specifically ordered her into action, presumably it was an acceptable thing to do.

“A gift of persuasion?” mused Withania, sipping her tea again. “I mean, my pollen breath is pretty persuasive, but I don’t think eating the elements of harmony and turning them into plants is really going to solve anything here.”

Sometimes the best way to get people back together was, by either force or happenstance, to get them stuck in the same space until they put their differences aside and co-operate again. Like two siblings having to wear a get-along-shirt. Withania could fuse them all into a single plant, but that would be rather difficult to reverse, and they probably wouldn’t be thinking straight in their new form, thus doing nothing to solve the original problem.

Maybe Celestia was onto something with the last bit she’d written about ironing the issue flat - this must have been a secret message for exactly what Celestia wanted Withania to do. And certainly Withania was very much on board with the idea of flattening ponies, with an iron or otherwise.

“I’d better get to work on this right away - this could take a few days to pull off… and then I’ll need to get the girls to Canterlot as well!”