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// 6 - Group Chat 
// Story: Dark as Ink at Night 
// by David Silver 
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A magical tree, grown from the Tree of Harmony itself, from a seed that represented hope itself. mysteries of that tree were vast and unknowable. It was also where a bunch of teenaged creatures were hosting their meeting place, one of the princesses included.

The creatures living there called themselves the 'Young Six'. Raven assumed it was a harmless title, one of their many little quirks. After all, what they did was not her problem. Unfortunately, having Luna up in the clubhouse made it part of her problems, at least, something to keep an eye on.

As such, when Raven got a visitor at her workplace, it was with a raised eyebrow that she recognized Sandbar.

The colt gave her an awkward smile. "Hi, Raven, right?"

Raven let out the faintest sigh. "Sandbar, I thought we had reached an agreeable end? The public right of way is being respected. You can come and go from your tree without opposition."

“Um, yeah!” Sandbar perked up. “And we’re very happy we got your… assurances on that.” He nodded far too enthusiastically. “But we…” He shuffled from hoof to hoof. “We’d like to invite you up to the treehouse to talk with us and Princess Luna.”

Raven tried not to show her displeasure. She had already dealt with this, hadn’t she? She gave them what they were in fact legally entitled to, as they had the legal rights to this property, and they walked away happy, right? “Of course, let’s,” she said, sure her voice was the picture of politeness.

“Alright then, come on!” Sandbar trotted away toward the clubhouse, with Raven in tow.

The time let her think. There were so many difficult ponies in Canterlot. Getting in the way of important royal projects. Like this one, naturally. Even out here she cannot be free of this.

And Princess Luna… Why was she involved? Was she still interested in disrupting the project? Raven thought they had come to an understanding, but this felt much more like she was about to undermine the project, instead.

And she still had other things to work on! The work was not done and she needed to get it do–

She bumped into a fuzzy figure in front of her, causing her to stumble and half fumble onto the ground. She didn’t hit the ground hard, but she was startled.

Sandbar looked back at her. “Are you okay, miss Inkwell?”  

Yona put a hoof out to Raven, helping her up. Her mouth moved, but it took Raven a second to process it.

"Sorry, Raven, but you look worried! Need help?" She gave Raven a little smile that bordered on a smirk.

Raven shook her head, glancing at Yona as she was pulled to her hooves. "Just a bit annoyed at your friend here, I suppose." She colored faintly, realizing what she had said. "My apologies. I have plans, and they are—"

Smolder snorted from within the treehouse, watching from a balcony. "Yep, she's got some of that Twilight DNA going on."

Raven craned her head up at Smolder before shaking her head quickly. "You called me here for a reason, did you not?"

"Please enter." Luna gave a little toss of her head into the treehouse. "We should all speak, sitting. We all have things we'd rather be doing, but this is important enough to demand all our times."

Raven walked past, to the ramp up. "If we must."

Yona snorted at her side, tail twitching as she followed up after.

"Don't mind Raven, she's just wound a little tight." Sandbar put a supportive hoof against Yona. "Let's just talk this out, like grown po—creatures."

Raven entered the treehouse proper, something she had never done over the time she had with this project. She had been in a similar place, though, which was Twilight’s crystalline castle in Ponyville, and she had expected similar. This was not actually very similar. What she expected was a mystical feeling location with occasional clutter from overwork, but what she found was a very well lived in location, with objects in it that must be from all four littering the area.

But in the center there was indeed a table with a lot of seats, and already many creatures sat down at the table, a griffin, a hippogryph, and a friendly blue colored changeling. She knew the names of all these creatures, Gallus, Silverstream, Ocellus, but she hadn’t met any of them, and knew next to nothing about them beyond that they had a role in the creation of this house. 

And they were serving tea and cakes.

Raven took a seat near the entrance, and observed as the rest of the denizens took their seats. Clearly not all of the denizens were as comfortable as Smolder seemed, Ocellus in particular looked like she was about to faint, breathing heavily. Gallus and Silverstream remained quiet and shared a glance. Smolder flitted down from upstairs, landing and pulling up her chair, a more cavalier attitude.

“Alright, I think most of us have seen Raven around, at least,” Sandbar said, “But this is Ocellus, Silverstream, and Gallus.”

Raven nodded her assent.

“Have some tea,” Silverstream said in a somewhat strained tone, pouring a teacup. Raven floated the teacup over to her, taking a sip. It was alright. Clearly not everycreature there was extremely comfortable with this.

And Luna, taking her time to walk across the table, sat down on a pillow on the ground. “Wonderful, let us begin the negotiations!”

“Negotiations?!” Ocellus blurted out, before clapping her hooves in front of her mouth.

Smolder snickered as Silverstream patted Ocellus on the back. “Way to break the ice, Princess.”

“I believe this is an accurate description of what may commence,” Luna defended herself, placing her hoof to her chest. 

Raven furrowed her eyebrows and turned her head at the creatures here.

Sandbar cleared his throat and addressed Raven. "Uh, this is about the tree. We wanted to talk about the tree." He spread his arms out. "But more than just the tree. This entire place. The tree is a, uh, symbol, but so is that castle."

Silverstream shot up a hand. "I hid there once!"

Gallus snorted with a smile at that. "I think we all did that at least once."

"If we are to negotiate, I would expect that to be what we would be discussing," Luna said with a smile.

"Mhm, mhm, you're right. But, uh, it's about our history, I guess." Silverstream leaned in over the table. "This place is important to us. We want to be a part of what happens to it."

Gallus gestured to Silverstream. "That. Exactly that. You came in here with a plan and kinda bulldozed everything in the way without actually talking to anycreature."

Raven gave a somewhat unamused glare. "I fail to understand how this is in any way different."

Ocellus took a trembling stand. "We're not stopping you, um, ma'am. We want to talk, creature to creature. Adult to adult."

Luna nodded firmly. "Precisely so. This is my suggestion. While I appreciate you all, you are not of the age to be given official diplomatic positions. However, you are the caretakers of this place, and that gives you the status of a place of interest." She pressed her hooves together. "Raven, you mean well, this is not in doubt, but can they be given a seat at the table of your designs?"

Deep inside of Raven, something rankled her about this. “I’m not sure that would be… appropriate. As you said, these… youths are not of an appropriate age to be given any sort of official position.” She took another sip of the tea. “I’m also afraid that this is a very large task, and I’m sure all of you are very busy.”

The yak to her side hopped up, rearing back in an enthusiastic manner, the collision with the ground shaking the ground around her. “Yona not afraid of hard work! Yaks best at hard work.” She nodded, eyes closed.

Raven looked at her with only a minor turn of her head. “All of you are students, you are busy with studies, and the rest of your life. Meanwhile, I am spending nearly all of my waking hours worrying about this project.”

“Why not get some help then!” Gallus said, putting on a big grin. “A bunch of people who can run around and help out if you need it.”

“I am not afraid of the work.” Raven put the teacup down. “This is my job, after all, it would not be your job. Besides,” she raised an eyebrow. “I believe the offer was to have a seat at the table of my designs, not that you all would work as laborers or assistants.”

“We can do both,” Gallus insisted.

“Well, I have it under control.” She looked around, and settled on looking at Luna. “I am not sure what the benefit of these extra minds at the table would be.”

Luna hummed softly. She folded her legs into a seated position and set her forehooves down on the floor. Her wings drifted gently shut. "This castle means a great deal to these ponies. It means much to me, and, recently, it has gained meaning to you as well." She spread her wings slowly. "We all have dreams of what this place could become, and they are all wonderful. Can we not arrive at a shared vision that makes us all happy?"

Raven hopped to her hooves. "I will not see this castle reduced to a play area for eager little foals!" But rather than cowing them, all of them were gaping at her like she had said something ridiculous. Slowly, she sank back to her pillow. "What is your idea?" She tried her best to keep her voice even, as if she hadn't just had an outburst.

"Well..." Smolder started. "That castle is huge, and that's not counting the dungeons. All that space isn't even being used for anything right now." She stretched her limbs out languidly, letting out a soft sound. "Luna mentioned there were tons of artifacts hidden everywhere. We should be showing that off. The castle's great, but not many ponies will come just for the stone. If they know they get to see actual bits of the past, they'll be making a line."

Before she could retort, Sandbar also stood up. “And the forest is also interesting. There’s all kinds of interesting things very nearby, as well as locations that are around where the original tree also was.”

Almost to reply to Sandbar, Gallus spoke up, “But even the castle isn’t 100% safe. The big creatures are gone but there are still things around. The tree of harmony tends to keep them away, but the castle isn’t all in the tree. We’ve had to evade critters, and even know more about what keeps them away.”

Ocellus said very quietly. “Also we’re worried that even with a policy of not leaving, our treehouse won’t really be um… not bothered. If there are other ponies living here and working here, it’d be very nice, I think, to have them living in places that we don’t get in each other ways and so that everycreature knows who should go where and who is moving in,” she squeaked. “If that’s not too much trouble.”

“And that’s not even everything,” Silverstream nodded. “We’ve been talking about it, like, a lot.”

Raven looked around the table at all the creatures, each looking eager, or what passes for nervous eagerness, and her vision set on Princess Luna. She was smiling. It was a princess-smile, even, like her plans were coming to fruition.

Raven swallowed her complaints. They weren’t all meritless, anyway, right? Some of them were things she had considered. She sat back a little, sitting up, composing herself. “Alright, we can proceed forward with some more terms, then.”

An eruption of cheers from the other creatures could be heard in the rest of the castle.