//------------------------------//
// this is a love letter, but let's not be too straightforward about it 
// Story: Love Letter 
// by darf 
//------------------------------//


"I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees." - Pablo Neruda






"You are so beautiful, I feel like a drop of rain in the ocean of love... No, that's terrible. That's even worse than the one about tooth-paste."

Spike crumpled up yet another draft of paper and hurled it towards the trash-can, which had long since overflowed and was now spilling in every direction onto the floor.

Just so we're not in a completely empty white room, Spike is sitting in like, a library, or something. Just imagine it looks like a library, only there's a large desk by the window, and it's a lot of windows. You can sit there and absorb the sun, or study, or just... be in a library. Who wouldn't love that?

"Does it have to use a metaphor? Maybe you should say, 'Dear Rarity, I love you so much I wanna give you a million kisses all at once!'" Pinkie Pie popped up helpfully to Spike's right and leaned on the desk, teetering the well of ink but not setting it off-balance enough to spill.

Spike caught it with his claw regardless.

"That is a metaphor, Pinkie. You can't actually give someone a million kisses all at once... you're just using that as a way to say that you really love them."

Pinkie Pie tilted her head and scratched the top through her poofy pink mane.

"Well, duh! I thought that was what we were doing?"

"This is way too hard. Maybe I should have asked somepony else for help."

"But then you wouldn't have cupcakes to eat while you were writing, would you?" Pinkie Pie held up a tray of colorfully decorated desserts.

Spike raised an eyebrow and eyed the tray suspiciously.

"These aren't special cupcakes, are they, Pinkie?"

Pinkie Pie giggled.

"Oh, Spikey! Every batch of cupcakes I make is special." She rubbed her stomach and patted her head simultaneously. "They're made with extra love and care to show everypony in the world that I love them!"

"How do you get so much positive energy all the time, Pinkie?"

"I don't know! I started eating this weird fungus growing behind the coffee maker, and ever since then, I haven't needed to sleep!"

Spike blinked.

"Huh," he said. "That... maybe I'll mention that to Twilight later."

"Did you know that if you try really hard, you can smell colours?"

"Uh... no?"

"Well, you can't! But I can. Always been able to. Do you wanna know what green smells like?"

"Sure?"

"A cucumber!" Pinkie grinned and propped herself up on the desk with her forelegs bent. "Wanna ask me another one?"

"I'm trying to write a love-letter to Rarity, Pinkie Pie," Spike said. He tapped with his quill at the stack of blank paper in front of him. "And so far you haven't been much help."

"What about a reference to a famous love poem somepony already wrote? You could say, 'Rarity, your horn is like a red, red rose... because it's really pointy, and you might poke yourself on it if you're not careful. Ouch!'" Pinkie Pie beamed.

Spike raised an eyebrow.

"It's impressive you can quote that word for word," he said.

"I read a lot of classic literature! Or, watched the movie versions, at least."

"Writing a letter to say you love someone feels impossible," Spike said glumly. He stared down at the blank piece of paper with an offended look,  begrudged that it refused to fill with ink and write itself. "How can I use words to explain the most powerful feeling in the world?"

"You could draw a picture instead. What about Rarity holding a mink? You could call it, 'Fantastic Wonderland Adventures And Also There's Chocolate'."

"You're setting up a really obscure and not necessarily very funny allusion there, Pinkie Pie."

"And you sound like Twilight Sparkle sometimes when you're not paying attention!"

Spike scratched his head. He looked over out the window, where the sun was beaming in perpetually from the giant fiery orb that orbited the planet they were standing on, presumably mostly made of rock.

"Ooh, what about a trans-media thing? You could write her a letter, but every time you finish a line, leave a QR code that leads to an ARG where she has to guess what the next piece of the puzzle is going to be before a timer runs out, and if she collects enough way-point pieces before the threshold grid overflows, she can—"

"Pinkie," Spike said, staring at the pink pony as though she deserved an unpleasant metaphor written about her, "is your job here just to say every idea that won't work, until I finally find the one that does?"

Pinkie Pie looked up and pondered the question.

"Hmm... I guess that could be one of my jobs. I'd also like to be in charge of hydration." Pinkie Pie narrowed her eyes and stared at Spike. "When was the last time you had a drink of water?"

"About thirty seconds ago," Spike said. He tapped his cup of water as a helpful illustration.

"Have some more anyway. You can never be too hydrated!"

"Unless you're drowning," Spike said with a frown. He took a drink anyway, and the water did taste nice, in the way that water had no taste, but reminded you that your mouth was working and could taste anything it wanted to afterwards. Ice cream, maybe.

Dear Rarity, Spike wrote down. Whatever was going to come afterwards, that at least was a good start.

"Don't forget to draw little hearts around her name," Pinkie Pie whispered, opening a package of bottled water and positioning them helpfully in a grid around the table.

"Right, Pinkie. Thanks."

Here's what he eventually came up with:

Dear Rarity,

I think about you a lot.

I've always thought about you. I mean, the first time I saw you, I know I got a little carried away. You were beautiful, but that wasn't everything about you, and as I got to know you better, I realized how I felt about you that first day was nothing compared to how I would eventually feel about you later. How I feel about you now.

The word 'love' sounds silly to me. It's just a word. We say it to somepony we care about, our friends and family. It's like a little signal at the end of what we're saying, to mark off a point in time or history that we acknowledged there was something special between us, linking us together, keeping us moving forward even though we don't know what's over the horizon.

Sorry. I know I'm not very good at this 'poetry' stuff. I just figured, why not try, if it's for somepony you...

Well. I wanted to say it anyway.

Rarity,

...

Would you like to go for coffee some time?

I'll pay for the scones.

Yours truly,

Spike <3