//------------------------------// // S2E7: Farmers Black Market // Story: The Starlight & Pals Magical Half Hour // by Cold in Gardez //------------------------------// “You know, Library Amnesty Day was Starlight’s idea,” Twilight Sparkle said to Spike. “Originally, that is. Back before it was a real holiday.” They were at the kitchen table for breakfast. In lieu of pancakes, Twilight had a bowl of shredded oats and blueberries. They didn’t taste like much, but it was summer, and that meant ponies like Rarity and Rainbow Dash and the spa twins were traipsing around, showing off toned bodies that looked like their skin and coat had been painted over cords of supple muscle. And though Twilight knew her body weight was well within acceptable limits for an alicorn mare her age, she couldn’t help but feel a little frumpy and dull and, yes, a bit pudgy if we’re being honest. So she was having cereal for breakfast and enjoying it in the same way the ancient pony stoics enjoyed being miserable, because it also meant they were being virtuous. Spike wasn’t on a diet. He had all kinds of pancakes. Twilight gazed at them as she spoke. “Yeah?” Spike rolled an entire pancake up into a little funnel, plopped in a dollop of whipped cream, and swallowed it whole. “Did she have any overdue library books at the time?” Twilight shook her head. “It wasn’t about her. I think she knew how much trouble the library was in and wanted to help.” Starlight was a mare of many talents – magic, dialectic materialism, leading cults, etc. As a cult leader she’d learned a lot about what made ponies tick, and she knew that ponies hated conflict. Specifically, she knew that returning overdue library books to Twilight Sparkle’s library inevitably led to conflict. Usually just verbal conflict. Because few ponies with overdue library books wanted to fight an alicorn, they tended to keep their books forever and simply never went back to the library, which was simultaneously emptying the library of books and ponies. It was unsustainable. Twilight came close to losing her certification by the Equestrian Library and Pole Dancing Association, Canterlot Chapter. The library had to change, or she had to learn how to pole dance.  Twilight had gotten as far as reading online reviews for various dancing poles when Starlight came to the rescue. The answer, she proposed, was Library Amnesty Day. On Library Amnesty Day, any overdue library book could be returned with no penalty to the library, assuming it was still in readable condition. For scofflaws who had damaged their books or, Celstia forbid, lost them, Library Amnesty Day offered only a partial relief. Their fines were waived, but they were still glared at fiercely by Twilight Sparkle, and of course their dreams were haunted by the spirits of the books they had damaged or misplaced. In Starlight Glimmer’s original formulation, Library Amnesty Day was followed immediately by Library Persecution Day, a public holiday in which librarians would ride out into their towns, corralling book criminals and herding them to the village square for mass trial and punishment. While the idea did appeal to something deep and primal in Twilight’s heart, she suppressed that feeling vigorously and only sometimes, long into the night when she would lie awake in bed, did she imagine herself sallying forth, flames bursting from her hoofsteps, clothed in the shining armor of virtue and righteousness, bringing justice to the lands and the library’s accounts-due ledger. And so there was no Library Persecution Day. But Library Amnesty Day was a big hit. For three years Twilight had celebrated it alongside all the book-loving ponies of Ponyville, and today was the fourth. She finished the last of her cereal and drank the remaining milk from the bowl like her parents yelled at her not to.  “Good morning!” Starlight Glimmer chirped as she trotted into the kitchen. She measured out a cup of pancake batter from the bowl onto the skillet and poured herself a smaller mug of coffee. While the pancakes sizzled she joined them at the table. “Ready for today?” “Just about.” Her hooves beat a rapid tattoo on the table. “I’m so excited!” “And I’m excited for you,” Starlight said. “What about you, Spike? Any plans for the day?” “Chores, comics, dragon stuff. Mostly dragon stuff. You?” “I was going to help out with the amnesty day,” Starlight said. “If you don’t mind, that is, Twilight. Every year you seem to have so much fun with it, and I thought, hey, maybe I could tag along? Just some community service.” “I thought the judge said you were done with that,” Spike said. “She did!” Starlight beamed. “This is all voluntary! No court order or anything this time. If you want the help, Twilight.” Twilight did, and it was good to hear Starlight wasn’t serving another sentence. The apprentice-teacher relationship between the two of them was complicated, with deep feelings of respect and affection, but Twilight had to admit that when Starlight was in jail or on trial for some new offense it caused a bit of strain between them. Twilight’s preferred solution was for Starlight to stop committing crimes; Starlight insisted that the law had to catch up with the new, higher morality she was inventing to lead ponies into the next age.  Sometimes, Twilight wondered what it was like to have an apprentice who wasn’t a reformed villain. Probably pretty nice. After breakfast, Twilight left the private section of the crystal Friendship Castle to start her rounds about Ponyville, reminding ponies that any overdue books they had could be returned without fee. In her mind she plotted out a route through the market square, past Sugarcube Corner, around the old lumber mill, past the paper factory, west across the stream that divided the nice, clean part of the town where all the unicorns lived from the more ‘rustic’ and ‘weatherbeaten’ earth pony neighborhoods. Then she would cut back through the fields between the Carrot and the Apple clans, disarming any traps she might find along the path, and swing up through the pegasus houses floating overhead. Around lunch she would hit the town square again, snapping up any books she’d missed the first go around (and lunch as well), and finish her day with a circuit around the outskirts of the town, catching those ponies who preferred to live away from the herd, like Fluttershy and Zecora and the crazy cat mare who yelled at ponies to stay away from her trees. She made it as far as the market. A young cream pegasus mare, perhaps a few years older than the Crusaders and with just the first blush of approaching adulthood gracing her limbs and hips, flitted over to Twilight. She had a set of unslung saddlebags clutched in her forelegs, and she came to a nervous bobbing stop a few feet away. “Excuse me,” she said. “This is Amnesty Day, right?” Twilight’s heart sang. Her wings trembled at her side, lifting her hooves a few inches off the ground. Already, ponies were coming to her with overdue books! She wasn’t even having to hunt them down! This was going to be the best Library Amnesty Day ever! “It sure is!” She smiled at the mare, doing her best to imitate the warm, infinitely forgiving expression Celestia always seemed to wear. “Do you have something you’d like to turn in?” “Oh, do I!” the mare exclaimed. She opened her saddlebags and pulled out a small necklace, a silver chain studded with glass gems, the kind one could buy for twenty bits from the beauty aisle of Barnyard Bargains. It glittered convincingly in the morning sunlight, and the young mare shoved it at Twilight. “Uh…” Twilight said. She took the necklace with her magic. “What is—” “Thank you so much!” The filly darted in for a quick hug. “I’ve felt so guilty since I took that thing, but now I feel much better! Ha, whew!” “Uh…” “Go Amnesty Day, right?” The pegasus spun in a little circle in mid-air, then burst away with a flap of her wings. Her voice faintly reached back to Twilight from the sky. “Thanks!” Twilight stared at the necklace in her hooves. She stared at it until another voice startled her back into the present. “Excuse me?” She looked up. A stallion was standing a few feet away. He was harnessed to a large cart, which appeared to have some sort of tarp-covered object in the back. Behind him, more ponies were lining up. They all seemed happy to see her. “Okay, whoa, uh, I think there’s a misunderstanding,” Twilight said. She held up a hoof as if to ward off the stack of ponies. “This is Library Amnesty Day. It only applies to library books, not any other—” “Actually, I changed that,” Starlight said. She appeared in a pale flash of light at Twilight’s side. Draped across her back and shoulders was a motley assortment of saddlebags, duffel bags, messenger satchels and even a bejeweled purse sparkling with rainbow sequins. Floating behind her were even more — bulging packing crates and bubble-wrap-enclosed mysteries and what appeared to be a bearskin rug rolled up into a tube. Dozens of smaller objects orbited around her like tiny moons: jewelry and watches and gilded horseshoes and even a book or two. Crossbows and stilettos and spiked clubs twirled like batons. They all bobbed in time with Starlight’s breath. “It’s just Amnesty Day now,” she continued. She panted a bit, and her coat was already streaked with sweat in the early morning heat as though she had been running around town, perhaps collecting items as she went. “Keep accepting stuff, okay? We’ll make a pile in the castle foyer and go through it later.” “Um…” Twilight stared at the mass of contraband floating around Starlight. “What…” But it was too late. Starlight was gone in another flash. Twilight blinked away the blobby afterimage of the mare. “Will you be here all day?” the stallion asked. He unhitched his cart and rolled it around to Twilight’s side. “I’ve got more back at the house I need to grab.” “Uh…” “Stop holding up the line!” somepony further back called. Twilight peered around the stallion and saw the line had grown down the block. A second line of Pegasi had formed in the sky. Across the street, merchants were setting up food booths. A band began tuning their instruments on a stage set up in front of the town hall. As Twilight watched, a pair of pegasi hauled up a bright pink banner emblazoned with “FIRST ANNUAL PONYVILLE ANMESTY DAY!” That’s not how you spell ‘amnesty,’ she thought. It was something solid her mind could latch onto. She imagined herself walking over to the sign, gently correcting its makers, and helping them write a new one. And then everything would be back the way it was supposed to. “You have to be careful with this, okay?” a pale unicorn mare Twilight recognized as Amber Down gently set a wooden crate as tall as a foal on the cobblestones. It was bound in thick iron bands, and the lid was sealed with an industrial-looking hasp with a padlock the size of Twilight’s hoof. Tiny holes were drilled along its length and guarded with wire mesh. The wood above the holes was stained black with soot, and as Twilight stared in numb fascination she noticed a faint orange glow begin to build inside the crate, like a furnace slowly coming to life. The whole affair rumbled, and the wood seemed to expand, straining at the iron bands. Hot air rushed out with a dry whooshing noise and tickled her muzzle. “I’d keep him, but he’s just getting too big, you know?” Amber Down put a little spritzer bottle on top of the crate. “If it gets too hot, spray this inside the holes.”  Twilight didn’t want to spray anything into the holes. She didn’t want to go near the holes, or the box, and she was already wondering if she could dump it in the deep end of the Cattail Lake on the west end of town when the next pony in line interrupted her thoughts. “You’re still accepting overdue library books too, right?” He held a pulpy, dripping mass in his hooves. It seeped down his fetlocks in fibrous runnels. “I accidentally left it in the toilet.” “I’m sorry, princess,” Mayor Mare said. She sat beside Twilight in the square. Behind them the pile of contraband had grown throughout the morning, and now stood taller than the roofs of the merchant stalls selling elephant ears and cotton candy and lemonade to the festive crowd. The mayor had a sheaf of official-looking papers in her hooves, decorated with florid lettering and sealed at the bottom with a wax stamp and red ribbon. “The paperwork is all valid. Today is Amnesty Day.” “I understand that,” Twilight said. Her voice was strained by now, each word clipped, ending with little explosive puffs of breath. Understan-Duh. Tha-Tuh. They’d been discussing this for a while. “And I reiterate that my apprentice appears to have… accidentally, I’m sure… filled those declarations out incorrectly. It was supposed to be a Library Amnesty Day. Just like last year. And the year before. And the year before that.” Mayor Mare studied the wax and ribbon at the bottom of the cover sheet. “This has your seal on it.” “I… may have delegated that to her.” A decision Twilight now counted among her deepest regrets in life. “Excuse me,” Rainbow Dash said. She hovered in front of them, forelegs folded across her chest. “Are you two done? I have more stuff to confess.” They’d moved beyond purely material amnesty by this hour. Instead ponies were coming to her with declarations of guilt. In the past three hours Twilight had learned more about her fellow ponies than in all the years of living in Ponyville combined. She wondered, absently, if her parents would still let her move back to her old room in their house in Canterlot. Mayor Mare shrugged. “Legally, there’s nothing to discuss.” “Great.” Dash flipped through her little notebook. “Oh, man, I’d almost forgotten this one. You’ll get a kick out of it. Remember cider week last fall? The night before the harvest I licked every apple in Sweet Apple Acres.” “Every apple.” Twilight remembered the taste of her first Sweet Apple Acres cider. It was so delicious. And now, never again. “First, why? Second, how? There’s got to be… I don’t know, over a million apples on that farm. There’s no way you could lick every one.” Rainbow Dash nodded vigorously. “So, I tried by myself at first, but it took like 20 minutes just to finish one tree. And I was like, no way that’s gonna work! So I flew up to Cloudsdale and asked if anypony there wanted to help me prank an earth pony town and they were all like ‘Hell yeah!’ so we had like a hundred pegasus ponies all licking apples.” She sighed blissfully, her gaze locked on gauzy memories. She shook herself, glanced back down at her notebook, and continued. “Okay, this next one’s more of an accident. So you remember that freak thunderstorm last month? The one that wasn’t on the weather schedule?” Twilight closed her eyes and prayed to Celestia for a meteor. It was late when Twilight got back to the castle. By law Library Amnesty Day lasted for twelve hours. So, apparently, did regular Amnesty Day. For the last hour or so, after the legal confessions were done and ponies had moved on to purely moral failings, Twilight pondered what to do with the mountain of illegal goodness piled beside her. She could have incinerated the entire affair with a spell and a wish, reducing all her problems to ashes. But some of the items given over to her care were technically alive, and others treasures in their own right, and Twilight could not justify their destruction simply as a matter of convenience. She could, she supposed, have just left them. It had a certain appeal – walk away from her problems, take a nice long bath, and go to bed. In the morning they would forget this ever happened. But that would mean leaving a pile of illegal items, some of them expensive, many of them dangerous and a few outright malevolent, just lying around town, where any foal could happen across them. And that was a weight on her conscience she likewise couldn’t abide. So, in the end, she did what Starlight said she should. She brought them back to the castle and dumped them in the foyer. “Whoa, nice haul!” Spike said. He was perched atop a similar pile across the way, looking a bit bigger than she remembered. Lanky, with limbs that stretched just a few more inches, and wings big enough to enfold her like blankets. “Starlight! Check out what Twilight got!” Starlight trotted around the mound. She wore necklaces and bangles and an electrum circlet set with a bright orange zircon. Bracelets rang like little chimes on her fetlocks. When she saw Twilight’s stack of loot she grinned. Twilight stopped her with a hoof. “Starlight, why?” Starlight gently pushed Twilight’s hoof back to the floor. “What do you mean? Isn’t it obvious?” Twilight huffed. “Yes, I think it is, actually. But I was hoping for something more elevated than ‘I wanted free stuff!’” “Okay, you’re looking at this wrong.” Starlight walked around her and sorted through the collection of illegal, unfortunate and doomed items that littered the foyer. She picked a few up, tossed them aside, and after some hunting plucked one into the air. It was a small jeweled box, about a hoof-width on a side, with glass portholes set every few inches along its gilded faces. She brought it over to Twilight. “Do you know what this is?” she asked. Twilight grimaced. “A fairy box. Compass Call gave it to me. Said he found it in his grandfather’s attic after the funeral.” Starlight tilted the box, sending little sparkles of light bouncing across the room. Something sang a quiet lilting hymn just below the range of Twilight’s hearing, like the ringing in her ears during the deathly quiet emptiness of night. “Believe him?” “I want to.” “Of course.” Starlight peered inside one of the box’s little windows. It was empty – Twilight checked it as soon as Compass Call hoofed it over. “But then, that’s what anypony would say, isn’t it? That it’s not theirs, they just found it, they would never have such a… thing in their house.” That pause. What had Starlight wanted to say? Such a dangerous thing. Such a terrible thing. Such a fantastic, wonderful thing. Twilight gave her head a little shake to dispel the treacherous voice. “And now we have it,” Starlight continued. “There are, what, five or six ponies in Ponyville who know how to use something like this? You want to put it back out there, maybe hide it in somepony’s attic or beneath their bed, until it falls into one of their hooves? And then just hope?” “No. But I’m not sure I trust us with it either.” Starlight froze for a moment. The fairy box teetered in her magical grip and almost fell, but she caught it before it could plunge to the floor. She looked at it, looked at Twilight, then set it back on the pile with an appropriately sober expression.  “Look,” she finally said. “I get why you’re worried. I’m maybe not the best pony to be collecting all these things. But that’s why I needed your help! If ponies saw me gathering up everything illegal in town they’d all be like ‘There goes Starlight, off to be a villain again,’ but when it’s Twilight Sparkle, everypony knows you’re doing it for the right reasons.” “I did it because you tricked me into doing it.” “Well, sometimes you’re not as expedient as you should be.” She wrapped her foreleg around Twilight’s shoulder and leaned against her. “That’s why we make a great team.” “Right.” Twilight sighed. “What do we do with all this?” Starlight shrugged. “Whatever we want? As long as it’s good, I mean. Get rid of the weapons, put the books back in the library, sell the jewelry to raise money for the school. That sort of stuff.” “Okay. And the weed?” “The what?” “The weed. The marijuana. There’s, like, fifty kilograms of seeds in there. I think Tree Hugger turned it in accidentally.” “Oh.” Starlight gazed at the pile curiously. Her muzzle twitched, as if trying to scent it out. “Well, I mean… look, we’re all adults here, right? There’s an obvious answer, and I, uh, I don’t think I need to spell it out.” They gave it back to Tree Hugger, of course. She was the only pony who knew how to plant it for next year’s harvest.