//------------------------------//
// Famulus [One Shot] [Unfinished] [Scrapped?] 
// Story: Missing Pages & Scrawled Footnotes 
// by Ice Star 
//------------------------------//

Princess Celestia stifled a shriek at the sight in her writing room, and instead allowed herself an immensely undignified squawk of cough. The air caught in her throat caused her to let out one more hack, and the ungraceful sound was strange to even her ears.

Golden inkwells had heir contents spilled upon the carpet. Shredded paper was here and there. Tiny scritch-scratches tore at the thread of her lovely magenta pillows, which were now mottled with oozing black splotches. 

Crowning this disaster was not the little talon-prints in the same ink across various parts of the room, but the spilled tea.
The spilled tea that she had brought back only moments before and was most certainly piping hot.

Small puffs of noxious smoke reached the princess, and she coughed, her eyes wide with worry. The stench of singed fabric stuck to the back of her throat, its odor an unwelcome coating she could not swallow.

But it was the crying that caught attention most, for the pitiful wails of a child grated in her ears, and that was how she knew the spilled tea had caused almost as much problems as her phoenix. 

She did not mourn the smashed cup of Prancian porcelain, but cantered over to the tiny, scared dragon close to her pillows. 

Spike...

In her mind, she still saw his green eyes bright with innocent charm as he had played beside her while she worked and Philomena napped. Now, they were aflame with innocent pain, something that she had only ever seen in infants when they encountered harm in the world of colors, smiles, and coos that they had previously cherished.

The princess heard a gasp escape her. Spike was near her shattered teaware, hiccuping sooty screams and crying. His tender young scales were scaled and pained-looking from the hot drink, and her teabag was caught between two of them, and was only jammed in further by how he tossed about. 

"Oh, Spike..."

She fell to her knees with a roughness even she did not expect from herself. Her horn flared with golden light that was no longer its usual mild hue, but one with more focused yellow undertones. 

Spike whimpered when the magic ran delicately over him, and the sound made Celestia wince.

Good, good. He can still feel this.

"Shh, it's alright, sweetie. I'm here now." And I never should have gone to get a snack if this is what I was going to come back to...

Celestia dismissed her barb of self-criticism, shoving it away for later so she might concentrate her efforts on the baby drake.