That night, I couldn't sleep, I was so excited. Only a few hours later, I would find my true calling, and learn about my future life. Lying in bed, unable to sleep, I tried to imagine what my cutie mark would look like.
Maybe it would be a pen and pad, or a book being written. After all, I had a pretty creative mind, and as I said before the town was more or less devoid of good, exciting stories. We had a library, but most of the books were old, or about school things. That would be nice, being given time to write down my stories, instead of just thinking them.
But as excited as I was, I was also a little worried. What if I got something I really didn't want? That happened sometimes. I had a cousin once who really wanted to carve things, and spent his childhood in the town wood shop. But come the ceremony, he got appointed farmer, much to everyone's surprise. Then again, there was a drought the next year, and the extra framer we had in the form of my cousin saved us from starvation. In fact, we were pretty dang lucky that he got that tractor cutie mark.
Thinking about it, I realized just how many times something like that happened. When a tornado had come through, a pony had just randomly gotten a carpenter cutie mark, and so we could rebuild. When the big fire had engulfed half the town a few years ago, multiple ponies had recently gotten unexpected cutie marks.
As you might expect, this revelation spawned all sorts of theories in my inventive mind. Were the princesses saving us? Could the cutie marks tell the future? Or was it just a lucky coincidence? Knowing how wrong my predictions and explanations often were, I shrugged these thoughts off as wild conspiracy theories, and drifted of to sleep.
if only I had known just how much of a conspiracy there really was.
I woke up the next morning bright eyed and bushy tailed. I jumped out of bed, quickly put on my clothes, and raced downstairs. After a hurried but filling breakfast, I rushed out the door and down the street to the town square, to meet up with my friends and get a good seat for the Ceremony.
Spotting my friends Darkstone and Springstep, I hurried over to them, taking the front-row seat they had saved for me. Sitting down, I started chatting with them about what cutie marks we thought different ponies might get. Talking with them like this, the time went by quickly.
Soon, the Ceremony began. All of the of-age ponies went on the stage, one by one, and when they stood in the middle their mark appeared. Once this happened, an announcer would give them their job assignment. At first, their were no surprises. Darkstone and Springstep both got want they wanted, and so it was with hope in my heart that I walked to center stage.
I had the biggest grin on my face as I waited for my mark, a grin that only got wider when an image of a pen and paper appeared on my flank. Standing there, I waited for the announcer to give me my job, which I assumed would be story writer.
"Starscribe the colt shall be... town hall transcriber!"
The smile slowly drained from my face as I realized what that meant. The job of the transcriber was to copy down what the mayor said, word for word, no creativity involved. It was frustrating to be so close to my dream, and yet so far. But it was my destiny, so I supposed some good was to come out of it.
But soon something even more shocking happened. When Bonegear was called forward, he stood up and center, just like everyone else. But when his cutie mark appeared, it was something nopony saw coming.
For his mark was a picture of townhall, the sign of a future mayor... but above that was a bloody knife.