"You want me to... WHAT?!"
Twilight Sparkle was dumbfounded. She was confounded. She was frazzled, dazzled, bedazzled and she-azzled…
Wait, is that even a word? I really don’t know anymore.
What Princess Celestia (no second name attached) had just asked her to fulfil what was undoubtedly her toughest friendship assignment yet.
Although, ‘friendship’ is a bit of a stretch. Who am I supposed to be ‘befriending’ with this exactly? Teachers? Word Count Pedants? Librarians… oh wait, I’m one of those.
She didn’t have to settle any long-standing disputes between warring nations. She didn’t need to melt the stony heart of a megalomaniacal supervillain. She wasn’t even required to arrange for a fire insurance policy after somedragon got dust in his nostrils whilst cleaning and burnt down half the Education section in-between her carefully-stacked shelves.
Thanks, Spike. Great job. All those dictionaries, thesauruses and academic tomes… all up in smoke. Literally. Along with my chances of passing this most unusual of tasks, due to your inability to stick your claws in your septum in time.
Basically, what The Great And Glorious Cake-Loving One had asked her most dutiful, gifted and neurotic of students to do was quite simple in its methodology…
…Whilst simultaneously being impossibly complicated, convoluted and… something else. What means ‘prone to errors due to being deceptively difficult’?
The upshot of it was: Twilight Sparkle must write something all by herself. Of her own creation. Birthed out of her own feverish egghead. No more, no less.
This posed something of a challenge for the brooding horned-prodigy, as she was much more comfortable with digesting words through the written medium than putting feather-to-paper herself.
Sure, I’m okay at filling in regular Friendship Reports and making important lists about what important lists I have to make for the week ahead, but… this is a challenge on an entirely unprecedented scale! It’s absolutely ludicrous! Ridiculous! I’m a mad mare for even considering it!
But seeing as it was Princess Celestia herself who’d made the request to her face, it was all Twilight could do to say ‘yes, ma’am’, wear her most gleaming yet phoney of smiles before stumbling out of the Throne Room, bowing and curtseying all the way.
I wish I’d never told my friends what happened when I returned from Canterlot. They all couldn’t stop laughing at my sycophancy, until I used the word ‘sycophancy’ and they all stopped and looked very confused. Good.
And if this most Herculean (who's Hercules?) of assignments wasn’t impossible enough, the ruthless royal had added an extra twist to her zingy lemon drizzle of an undertaking…
Twilight’s future ‘masterpiece’ had to be exactly 1000 words. No more, no less. No exceptions, alliterations, take-backs, or short-cuts allowed.
And most definitely no aimless rambling substituted for proper textual content. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Owlicious for a while. I hope he’s okay… and I wonder if I should have hay fries or daisy soup for dinner… oh, all right. I get it.
Another rule: she couldn’t ask any of her other friends to help her. Huh, chance would be a fine thing. I love my five fellow Element holders, honestly I do. But let's just say… they’re not the most linguistically gifted equines in Equestria, and leave it at that.
Lastly, it had to be done by the end of the month. That gives me… twenty days. Some ponies might look at that as plenty of time to finish, but I see it as just more chance to mess up. Help!
So now Twilight sat in her cosy nook of a bedroom alone, with a single candle illuminating an empty sheet of paper in front of her deep into the night…
And for once in her spectacularly successful academic career, she was at a complete loss of what to do next.
I wish there was some kind of advisory structure to this narrative challenge, it would make it so much easier. There’s so much I can write about, I don’t know what to write about! If that makes any sense…
She briefly considered just doing a straight retelling of her many adventures with her friends up to that point, but she decided Celestia had probably heard all that before. Then he played with the idea of recounting her delightful childhood with her parents and Shining Armour, but quickly reached the conclusion that would just be completely boring.
After all, I’m almost falling asleep just thinking about it. Or maybe it’s because it's so gosh darn late, and here I am leaning over my desk like a procrastinating witnit instead of sleeping like a newborn foal. Or is it ‘nitwit’? Aarrgh…
Realising she was probably worrying herself into an early grave, an exasperated Twilight took a second to relax and listen to the gentle sounds around her.
A tree branch lightly tapping at her window.
Spike’s soft rhythmic snoring in the opposite room.
The soothing melody of a hyperventilating unicorn, about to suffocate to death from all the overwhelming pressure she’s under…
Oh no, this isn’t working at all… Twilight quickly sprung into action by reciting the names of all the Ponyville residents in alphabetical order, and thanks to that rigorous mental exercise (as well as breathing repeatedly into a conveniently placed plastic bag nearby) she was finally able to calm down a tad.
Oh, what do I do? What do I do? This ‘simple task’ is proving to be as impractical and unworkable as I feared… wait… I’ve got it! I’ll form a slight composition around the most difficult, arduous, taxing, brain-numbing and downright unfair mission I’ve ever been given. Which is…
****************
“...The essay I set you?” Celestia listened with interest. “You mean, your 1000 word report is… about the stresses and strains of writing a 1000 word report? How amusing. Pray tell… how did you come up with the idea of that?”
“Well…” Twilight answered proudly. “It all started when…”
Oops, sorry folks. We’re out of space.
Maybe next time, when the conditions aren’t so… restrictive.
Ciao!
Author's Note
Well, I did it folks. Don't get confused... in no way is this an ode to what I go through every single time I put fingers-to-keyboard to deliver you folks a fanfiction and it should not be assumed that this is based on real life events that may or may not have actually happened...
*Reaches for the headache pills, bottle of Jack Daniels before places note on door which reads DO NOT DISTURB*
