SEP 6 Sunday.

I write out another rune in my notebook and check the letter I have again.

It took a few weeks, but earlier today I got the results of Twilight's research.

Dear Veil Winter.

First I'd like to thank you for the amazing opportunity to assist in your research, it was an enlightening experience. Attached is the list of runes that you asked for and their context.

Once again thank you for the opportunity, Twilight Sparkle.

The letter isn't long, but it was still very awkward to read. And that's not it either, I still had other mail. I had a meeting with Celestia yesterday and she gave me my mail.

A lot of mail, it seems Celestia has found a new way to prank me. Turns out Celestia only ever brought me the important letters, not this time, now she just sent me all of the mail, including a backlog of unimportant letters that she kept. So color me surprised when I got a fucking pallet of letters dumped into my apartment courtesy of Philomena, at six in the morning.

It's now six again and I've only gotten through half of these damn letters. I don't know the full number, but I'm halfway done and have counted over two hundred, so around four hundred total. Most of them are uninteresting, a majority are letters from other researchers that are asking for information or on occasion some advice.

Not many normal ponies have much of a reason to send me a letter, as it's fairly well known that I don't really respond to letters or accept invites to events, but even then a few letters stand out. A few dozen letters are thank you letters, and from what I can guess these are from regular ponies.

Some have names and some are unnamed but all of them are thanking me for one or more of my inventions. And I have odd feelings about it, on one hoof it will always feel odd to have ponies talking about me and thanking me, but on the other hoof, it gives me a feeling of pride and happiness that what I've made has helped so many.

I've seen many use what I've made and talk about how much they like it, or even sometimes how thankful they are, but to be personally thanked in a hoof-written letter that somepony took the time to write and send me while not expecting a response is something new. As for how I responded to all this mail? Well, I'm not sure I should respond.

The only reason this pile of mail isn't much bigger is the fact that most ponies that know about Veil Winter also know that Veil Winter doesn't respond much to letters, and when I do respond it's mostly to decline invites. So if I started to respond to researchers and others I'd get even more mail and that would cut into my free time significantly, especially when I release new inventions or spells.

So for now I think it's best I don't respond more than I normally do, and that leaves me with only one problem left, what do I do with all these letters? Most of them I won't be answering, so I guess I just destroy them? I'm not really sure to be honest. After some thought I decided to keep some while destroying most of them.

It may feel a little rude to destroy letters ponies sent me but I don't have the room for all this, and keeping them would be pointless. I decide to destroy all the letters but that brings up a new problem, how do I destroy them? I can't burn them all and my trash doesn't have room either.

I guess I'll have to think about that more, I stand up and look around at the piles of envelopes and letters. I decided to just stack it as best I could and use some string to tie them together in bundles. It takes a while but once everything is somewhat organized I decide to move on from all these letters.

I leave that be for now and start on the list of runes I was given. The top of the list is another rune for emotions, and this one is of a much better quality, which means I can now continue on my emotional magic gathering spell, but I've decided to focus on my Everfree project first, mostly for my own health.

The emotional gathering project is definitely more important but my current project won't take long so I'll push it off a little, it may be selfish but I really want to do this and like I said it won't take long, and I can do a little work on the other project in the meantime. Speaking of the Everfree project I've made some progress already, specifically I've finished the shield that will go around the camp.

I also found the right spell to create a gem array, now I just need to pick out the right gems and make the illusion spell, I should also train my flying a little more but I can do that with Blaz. And speaking of the illusion spell, I found a good illusion rune a few days ago that should work well, it's not perfect by any means but it's enough for what I need.

I also see the three other runes Twilight was able to find on emotions. A rune for happiness, a rune for discomfort, and a rune for joy. Somewhat of an odd mix of emotions, and most of these runes are not well made at all, but they do still work so I'll add them to my ever-growing collection.

Once I'm done I fold up the letter Twilight sent me and keep it away from the others, probably for the best if I don't lose it. Once That's done I decide to practice something more interesting, my life magic is something that's been progressing well for a long time now.

When I first started working on it two years ago I mainly focused on the conversion ratio between it and my natural magic, like I'm doing with space magic right now, but over time I focused less on the conversion ratio and more on my fine control of life magic.

This has resulted in my life magic being both more dense and much less wasteful when being used, guess all the tedious work on copying the Companion Vine was worth it. And I am also much less wasteful with my natural magic by improving my natural magic control by relearning all those spells.

What's my point with all this? Well as a result of all these things I now have access to a lot more magic than before, which opens a few doors, and I think it's time to look at a certain plant again. The Iron Oak, in the past I made steel wood by accident and now with more magic and better control I can actually start using the material more.

I find my small stack of stockpiled steel wood cubes, each a one-by-one-inch cube. I have five as I stopped making them a long time ago, I leave them be for now and I find my Iron Oak seeds before planting one in a pot, It's time to see just how much I've progressed, so I start to dump my life magic into the plant while making sure to copy the Iron Oak's natural strengthening process.

It takes a few moments for me to properly remember the Iron Oak's magical flows, and I feel a sense of satisfaction when the Iron Oak becomes Steel wood in a few minutes. It ended up only taking a third of my magic to make a new steel wood cube, a vast improvement from spending half a day waiting to regain my magic to dump it inside the plant.

This vast increase is mostly due to me gaining better control over my life magic, and a smaller part is probably my magic capacity growing.

I find my wood carving knife and the gem that is used with it before processing the wooden lump into a new one-inch cube. Once that's done I make some fresh tea with my kettle and also spend time practicing with the Companion Vine to improve further.

Normally I can only break even on how much magic it takes to hold up this ability, but when I drink Blood Leaf Tea I can gain magic slowly even while practicing, I really should name this ability something. After an hour I stop practicing and simply meditate on the life magic around me while my magic fills completely.

Now that I know my new limits I can start messing around a little, also called experimenting. One thing I never really tested is how tough the wood is to different damage, I know fire is less effective and magic breaks it if too much is used, but how would steel wood handle simple physical damage?

I decided to grow a quarter-inch thick stick that is a foot long, It takes a little less than the full one-inch cube would, I do lose a little width due to carving off the bark, but I planned for that when growing it, I take the stick and dry it out before trying my best to snap it in half.

I first try with my field alone, and I fail, I'm able to somewhat bend the stick but it's just too tough to snap and after a few tries I give up and move on to using my hooves. I again try my best to break it, and after way more struggle than should be needed for something so small I break it in half.

If I use this as a base I could probably break an inch-thick piece of steel wood but that would be the limit of my impressive strength, I seem to have severely underestimated the strength of this wood. I thought its strengths lie in how much magic it could handle and how hard it was to cut, but now I realize its real strength is its sheer durability.

Honestly, the magical capacity and magic resistance are the weak parts, that's insane, by magic the things this wood could be used for. And that leads to an interesting thought, how much more can I strengthen this wood? A good question for later, I still have more things I want to test.

I take half the snapped stick and start decomposing some of it to thin it out and form a rough cutting edge. Next, I take my carving knife and start improving the edge further, I finish up with sandpaper, but it turns out to be completely ineffective against the steel wood, guess I'll need to work on something for that.

For now, this will have to do, I need to make dinner and this should be a decent test. I walk out to see Entropy preening her feathers while on her perch, over time the shadowy mist has spread from the tips of the largest feathers to covering the ends of all her feathers and it's still progressing further.

"Hey, girl?" She stops preening herself to look over at me, "You want dinner?"

In response, she flies over to me and lands on the countertop. "Good, food." She caws out while hopping around a little.

Recently she's started stringing words together a little, it might be only one extra word but that's double what she started with. I smile at her, "That's right, good food. Now can you ask nicely?" I've been trying to teach her a little since she started doing this.

She tilts her head for a second. "Good." She caws while rubbing against me. She still doesn't know a word to describe me, but that can be worked on.

"Not bad. But, you, good, would work better. Can you say, you?" I ask while gathering a few ingredients to start cooking as Entropy stays on the countertop.

She again tilts her head a little, and after a moment of silence she tries. "Uou." It's not quite right but still a good attempt, so I ripened a Juniper berry before giving it to her.

"A good try, but not right." I smile and encourage her more. She's a very smart bird and is by far my most trusted friend, it would be amazing to talk with her fully one day, and from what I've seen it's also likely given enough time.

She happily gobbles down the berry. "Uoy." Another good attempt that gets another small Juniper berry as a reward. We repeat this several times as I test out my improvised knife. It's dull as hell, but it works and what little edge the wooden blade does have doesn't dull at all as I cut up carrots and other vegetables.

I'll have to test it on other things but this could be an honest-to-magic replacement for low-end metals, and it's wood, FUCKING WOOD. Once my vegetable and fish stew is cooking I focus on Entropy again, she's still trying to get it right and I think she's getting a little frustrated about it.

"It's fine girl, we'll try again later," I reassure her and sit down next to the counter she's on top of.

But it turns out Entropy is like me, stubborn in her training. "uuoU, Yoy, CAW!" By the end I can tell she's definitely frustrated and maybe even a little angry.

So I employed a skill I learned years ago when helping my relatives deal with their kids. "HEY! Calm down, it's, OK!" I'm maybe a little too stern with my words so I start petting her. Be firm but kind, it's the best way I know to deal with the young when they get like this.

She seems a little down at my words, I've never needed to be loud with her like this. "I'm not mad, but how about we focus on something else?" She perks up a little and I take her over to the main room by the plants. "How about we take a quick trip to the forest?" I ask happily.

She doesn't say anything but a few moments later we're in the unnamed forest around Ponyville. Neither of us says anything as I quietly pet her while watching the stars overhead. I smile as she calms down and starts demanding scratches from me. I Wonder how Celestia is enjoying her gift? I ask myself with a slight smile, she's probably not enjoying it at all.

I chuckle and continue to watch the stars in the dead of night.

POV Shift Celestia

I silently glare at the box in front of me as the stubborn lock doesn't open for the hundredth time. "What kind of riddle is this!? It doesn't even make sense!!" I exclaim in frustration at my empty bedroom.

I huff and start going through the riddles again, I know he's new to this but this is just a horrible riddle. Maybe I could send him some better ones?

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. :D

Any names for the Companion Vine copying skill? Because I tried and failed to come up with anything good.