JAN 14 Wednesday.

It's the end of my workday and I'm at home waiting for my meeting, I told Stone I wouldn't be training with him last week. I just told him that I had something to do at work.

Right now I'm double-checking my newest invention. It's a small flat piece of wood several inches wide and long, with a small sapphire to provide magic. It's simple to use, you just place bits on it and a small illusion will tell you how many there are.

The spell scans anything above the small wood plate for anything that matches the weight and size of a bit. Most of my time was testing, it can also count bits inside bags or containers. It's not the most useful to smaller sellers but for bigger transactions, it should speed things up.

I also expect many to not really trust this invention for a while, but I think it will see use after some time using it. But none of that really involves me as I won't be doing more than inventing it. I still have some time before I have to leave so I just do some chores.

I take care of my plants and Entropy's needs, and then I just spend some time carving wood. Right now I'm working on a model of Entropy while in mid-flight, it's far from done as I'm still learning how to carve feathers properly. The book Celestia gave me has information on how to carve several things.

Feathers are delicate to carve as they are both thin and detail-intensive. I'm using a piece of Chestnut wood for this so I have to be more careful than when I work with Iron Wood, but I'm slowly improving as I go. I stop for a moment as I see a flash of flame in my main room.

Philomena appears in a small shower of flames that disappear immediately after. I look over to her as she lands next to Entropy on her perch. I look up at her as she holds a letter in her beak, "Hello Philomena nice to see you." I grow and pick a Juniper berry to trade her.

She drops the letter and catches the berry I throw at her, Entropy watches this and then looks at me expectantly, I just smile and do the same for her. I open the letter, and it's just a confirmation of the time of our meeting, I fold the letter and keep it with me, I'll need it to get inside the palace.

Philomena doesn't leave right away and instead just starts resting next to Entropy on her perch, Entropy just stares at Philomena for a moment before doing the same. I continue with my carving, slowly cutting out small pieces of wood, I slowly carve out a single feather before moving on to the next one.

This model is several inches across and is going well so far, I hope I don't break it before I finish it. I spend a while longer working on it before checking the time, it's still a little early to leave so I find a book to read. This is one of those books I bought a while back at the auction.

It's just a story novel and not a very good one at that, but it keeps my interest long enough. When it's time I get up and watch as Philomena leaves in another flash of flame. "Hey girl, you remember the plan?" Entropy opens her eyes and looks at me for a moment before flying over to me and landing on my back.

"Ok then, let's get going, we have some revenge to reap." She doesn't answer me and just melds into my shadow as I put on my saddlebags and jewelry, I leave my cloak as it's not snowing right now. I walk out into the street and start making my way through the city.

The snow has lessened a lot and by the end of the month, it will all be gone. I see some guards pass me as I walk uphill into the upper city, I've seen more of them patrolling recently. I don't think much of it though, it's probably just a robbery, even if those are rare they do still happen.

It doesn't take me long to reach the gates, after showing them the letter I got earlier, I'm led to my meeting. I enter the room and bow as always before sitting down with Celestia. "Hello Celestia," I say to her while getting comfortable.

She smiles. "It's good to see you again Shade. How have you been? Anything of interest happened since our last meeting?"

"Straight to it then?" She gives me a nod. "Well I've been doing well, and I have two things for you." First I pass over a report on the progress I've made with the B.L.P spell, it's not long and basically just tells her how long I think it will take along with a few other small bits of information.

After she's done she moves the papers to the side and looks back at me. I pass her another small stack of papers, these have all the information she'll need to know about what I've nicknamed the Bit Counter. Then I placed the one I made on the table and slid it over to her.

Her smile grows as she reads through the papers. "This is very well done, I can think of several ponies who will find this useful." She looked back at me once she was done reading. "I must once again thank you for the work you've done. And the work you've given me." She says that last part in a teasing tone.

"Stop accepting things I give you, you should know by now it's just a trap to give you more work." I tease back at her. Her smile stays and she moves the papers and bit counter to the side.

"Well if nothing else I'm happy you've been busy. Where is Entropy? You mentioned you were bringing her." She asks.

I just smile and wait for my plan to unfold. Me and Entropy had a plan, and considering how smart Entropy is I hope she remembers. After a moment of me just smiling silently Entropy starts, and from Celestia's own shadow, we both hear a voice. "Move."

Celestia's head snaps down in surprise and she starts looking around her, but she finds nothing. "Out." This time Entropy's voice comes from the stack of papers to her left. She picks them up with a confused face, nothing is under them.

She looks at me thoroughly confused. "Where are you?" She asks this in a curious and happy tone while casting some type of scanning spell. I can't hold it in anymore and start chuckling, Celestia's waits until I'm done before giving me an expecting look.

Once I stop I answer her. "Come on out girl, I think you've earned that treat I promised you." Entropy shifts out from the shadow of my teacup and stands on the table with a proud look.

She watches Entropy closely as she emerges from the shadow. She looks surprised for a moment, "When did this happen?"

"Just after the new year, she basically did the same thing to me. I'm not sure how she learned how though. We've tested several things and it's an interesting ability. It seems what you found was accurate in some way."

"It seems so. Do you mind if I take some notes on a few suggestions and ideas?"

"I'd love that." She pulls a piece of paper from somewhere and starts taking notes. Celestia is a curious pony just like me, then again if you live that long you would need to be curious to not go insane from boredom.

I feed Entropy a small piece of fish while she takes her notes. Philomena is sitting on a perch in the room and sees me giving Entropy something, she flies right over to the table and lands next to Entropy. I think for a moment before turning to Celestia. "Hey, can Philomena eat meat?"

I don't know the diet of a phoenix so I thought it best to ask. She stops for a moment to look back at me, "I've offered a few times but she doesn't always take it, she prefers fruit and nuts" She goes back to her notes. Instead of giving Philomena meat I take a small bag out of my saddlebags.

I only brought two small pieces of fish for Entropy, but I also brought some berries with me when I went outside with Entropy. I give the second piece of fish to Entropy and offer several berries to Philomena, she takes them happily. She eats all of them in only a few seconds and I spend a while scratching her feathers.

She didn't let me pet her for the first few meetings, but I kept giving her treats and now she lets me pet her. Her feathers have an odd feeling to them, it's like holding your hoof over boiling water in the steam. It isn't warm enough to hurt me and feels nice, it gives a nice warm that takes away any cold from the waning winter.

My second hoof is occupied a second later by Entropy also demanding scratches. I pet them both for a while, when Philomena was done she decided to find a better spot to sit, after a flap of her wings she landed on top of my head before sitting down.

I just look up at her as she looks back down at me, I chuckle and let her have her fun. When Celestia finishes she looks back up to see me scratching Entropy while Philomena sits on my head. She holds it in for a second before chuckling at my situation.

"It seems Philomena has really gotten to trust you, I'm glad as she doesn't always trust others even after interacting with them for a while." She silently passes me the notes she made. I take a moment to look through the few pages she wrote. In very neat and elegant writing she's taken about three pages of notes.

They are mostly about theories and suggestions of different things to test, most of those tests are things I've already done. But a few suggestions are things I didn't think of. Can Entropy move through glass in a shadow? What effect does a shadow being distorted by things like water have? Along with a few other suggestions.

"Do you mind if I copy this?" she nods while petting Entropy who moved over to her after I stopped giving her attention. I take out some paper and cast the copy spell on her notes twice, I put away the first copy and take out a quill to start adding a few things to the second copy.

I use the back sides of the papers to answer what questions I can, it takes several minutes to finish before passing the edited notes and her original notes back to her. "Thank you, there are a few things in there that I missed. I added anything that I did test." I wait again as she reads my added notes.

"Also, how has the whole Veil Winter thing going." I've heard the name mentioned a few times at the library over the past few months.

"I have mail for you." I nearly groan as she moves several letters over to me. Every time we meet she gives me any mail Veil Winter gets. I haven't answered most of them as most are just me being invited to different events.

The few I did answer were mostly invites that were too important to ignore, so I just politely declined them, claiming that I'm too busy with work for the crown. I got many letters the first month or so, but after that, it calmed down to only three or five every time me and Celestia meet.

But we haven't met in a while now so I have more than normal. I start going through them and see a few that are nothing new to me, I do find one from a noble family for a party of some kind. I write them a polite letter declining their invitation and move on.

Most of the other letters are uninteresting to me, but one does catch my interest. It's a student, I don't recognize their name, but they are writing me for extra credit. They can get a little extra credit if they write to a known inventor, and she decided to write to me.

I'm not sure what to do with this, so I decided to just send back a list of book recommendations to study and leave it at that. Once I'm done I turn back to Celestia who's put away the notes and is now just drinking some tea. I pass her both letters.

After she takes them I ask her a question. "When was the last time you've played a game?"

She turns to me before thinking for a while. "I'm not sure, it's been a while now though. What type of game?"

I smile and take out a wooden box from my saddlebags. "A friend got me this and I thought you might enjoy something fun to do." I unfold the box to reveal my new stone chess set.

She smiles again. "I'd love that, it's been far too long since I've last played." I see her smile and realize that I just challenged a thousand-year-old pony to a chess match. Needless to say, I didn't win a single one of our games.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading.