Ponyville goes to the...dragons??

by Freelancer


Chapter 9: What's a friendship report?

Prior Note: First part of this chapter starts at the same time (midday) when the last one finished, second and onward parts occur later in the day. Also, as stated before, Rarity’s predicament is only a side plot, just be aware of that when reading next two chapters.


Chapter 9: What’s a friendship report?


The Ponyville post office sat on the southern edge of the small town. It was a building that matched the surroundings exactly, bearing the same style of thatched roofing, and the same shade of wall plaster as its neighbours, rendering it virtually indistinguishable from those buildings around it. This particular architectural detail came with its own set of pros and cons; the pro was that the structure wasn’t an out of place eyesore in the street, the con, on the other hoof, was that since the surrounding buildings were predominately homes, the post office was particularly hard to find, unless somepony knew exactly which one it was.

The post office was currently, as it usually happened to be at lunchtime on most weekdays, virtually devoid of anypony.

The exception to said rule was the local grey and blonde mail-mare, Ditzy ‘Derpy Hooves’ Doo, who was presently going through the stack of letters and parcels received from Manehatten at her desk while happily devouring a muffin.

As everypony in Ponyville knew, she REALLY liked muffins.

“…that’s for Rose, this one’s for the Cakes, you’re for Pinkie Pie, that’s for…” she thought aloud, her trained hooves swiftly dividing the pile of letters across her desk as she spoke the names to herself.

She spoke the names aloud for a number of reasons. The main one was that by doing so it kept her concentrated as she had an unfortunate habit of getting, as her nickname somewhat suggested, confused at times when she lost her focus.

And when she did, things had a slight habit of somehow going wrong... even if half the time she just didn’t know what it was that went wrong.

At the present moment she wanted to keep her focus and avoid confusion above all else, hence enabling her to get her mail sorting duty done as fast as possible. Earlier that day the bright pink puff of energy, known as Pinkie Pie, had come bounding in to the post office with an invitation grasped firmly in her teeth.

It was an invitation to one of her signature ‘Welcome to Ponyville’ parties, parties which often featured the DJ expertise of Vinyl Scratch, copious amounts of Apple family cider, and loads of her much loved Sugercube Corner made muffins.

And, according to the invitation Pinkie had given her, this particular party was for some very ‘special’ guests to the small town, hence it was a party she refused to miss. She had heard whispers of Ponyville finding itself being visited by dragons, and the opportunity to both have a chance to see them, and enjoy a great party and lots of muffins at the same time was one she simply couldn’t let pass.

“Mm-muffins,” she drooled, imaging a table covered in muffins of all flavours splayed out before her.

Her sudden confectionary daydream, though, was quickly shattered. The sharp ring of the doorbell as somepony entered pulled her back together, followed by another ring as it closed, and the clack of hooves as said somepony approached her desk.

Quickly wiping her mouth with the back of her hoof, to make sure there wasn’t any drool, Ditzy smiled and looked up at her customer.

The mare then found herself slightly surprised to see Rarity standing there, and for some unbeknown reason looking a little tense to say the least, the alabaster mare regarding her curiously as she looked over the piles of letters that covered Ditzy’s desk.

Rarity was a regular visitor to the post office, often coming in to send off material orders, finished clothing items, and alike, but Ditzy had never once recalled seeing her as jittery as she appeared to be before.

“Hi Rarity! Can I help you? You need another order sent off to Trottingham?”

Rarity shook her head. “No, not this time I’m afraid… I hope you’re not too busy Ditzy,” she said quietly, her horn beginning to glow a faint blue as she pulled a sealed envelope from her saddlebag. “But I was looking to send a… a rather important letter to somepony in Canterlot, preferable as soon as possible.”

Ditzy, being the easily humoured and somewhat cheeky mare she was, hastily put a hoof across her muzzle in an effort not to giggle at the unicorn, prompting Rarity to give her an unusual look.

“Soooo… does Rarity have a special somepo…”

“NO!” Rarity yelled without thinking. The amount of volume in her voice not only blew a few letters from Ditzy’s desk, but also caused the grey pegasus to yelp, and nearly fall off of her chair.

Within a second Rarity regained her composure, but it took a few more for Ditzy’s heart-rate to return to normal.

“Ehem, my dearest apologizes for that most unladylike behaviour, Ditzy, but this is simply a letter to a friend of mine,” the unicorn smiled, a faint amount of red glowing in her cheeks.

Ditzy nodded a few times, and despite still being a little shaken from Rarity’s blasting, took the floating letter in her hooves. The cross-eyed mare’s jaw just about hit her wooden desk when she peered down at it, then read the name written on the envelope aloud, and finally looked back up at Rarity again.

“Shining Armor? As in… captain of the royal guard, and husband of princess Cadence, that Shining Armor?”

“Of course… what?” Rarity started almost defensively, not exactly impressed with the odd look and raised eyebrow the pegasus was giving her. “Ditzy, just because I’m a mare, and he’s married to Princess Cadence, doesn’t mean I can’t send him a letter as a friend. He is the brother of one of my best friends after all… besides, like I said before Ditzy, this is important.”

Ditzy’s eyebrow only raised further up her forehead. “Then why don’t you get Spike to send it for you? It would take him a bare minute to send, and I’m sure he’d do it for free, since he and Shining Armor are basically family I mean.”

Rarity suddenly felt her face flush, and once again nervously bit her lip. “I’m afraid Spike is… busy… at the moment, Ditzy,” she sighed, thanking Celestia that Ditzy was no Applejack when it came to calling lies.

Ditzy pondered for a moment before shrugging to herself; she couldn’t really argue with the unicorn’s logic, after all, she often sent letters to her friends in Cloudsdale, and most of the them were married as well. Plus, she and the post office’s main purposes were sending and receiving letters anyway.

“Fair enough,” she smiled at last, blinking a few times to readjust her wayward eyes. “So, you want this delivered ASAP then huh? Hmmm, well… it’ll cost a few extra bits… but I could write this up now, put an express delivery stamp on it, and get it on the one o’clock train, which would mean he’d get it privately delivered around six o’clock, I think.”

“That would be perfect,” the unicorn sighed gladly, using her horn to extract the necessary bits from her saddlebag, while the pegasus pulled a black book and a pen from one of her desks many draws. “Oh, and Ditzy, I know you never would anyway… but please, don’t go telling anypony about this, ok?”

“Sur fing Rarty,” Ditzy replied with a pen in her mouth, taking the gold coins before hastily taking down the date, time, sender, and receiver in the outgoing mail book. “See ya latr.”

“Goodbye Ditzy.”

Once she had left, and found herself outside in the street again, Rarity sighed loudly, wiped her brow and allowed a smile to spread across her face; So far everything had gone as intended.

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“Well, I know I always said dragons were stubborn and hard headed, like you Spike,” Twilight teased as she happily looked back over the results of their work, causing the purple dragon’s cheeks to flare crimson, along with those of his three counterparts. “But I never meant it literally, or thought I was right about it for that matter.”

Spike couldn’t help but cast his eyes back as the small group exited through the white picket fence, the sight that greeted him still being the same massive swell of apple trees, most of which though now lacking their prized glistening fruit. All that fruit, he knew proudly, was now either safely sealed away in barrels, loaded into the cart Big Macintosh would take to Ponyville, or, in the case of a select few, cooked into the steaming pie he was holding in his claws as he sat on Ember’s back.

All in all, It had been surprisingly strenuous work, but the effort they all felt had been worth it; not only did the three newcomer dragons, Ember and Spyro especially, feel as if they had repaid some of their debt to the local ponies by helping out Applejack and her brother, but Cynder was also back on level terms with Big Macintosh.

Apparently anyway, the violet dragoness didn’t really seem to care about it, or the older Apple siblings themselves much either way; all through the day she had predominantly kept herself to herself, and gone about her work silently... or strangely rather, silently up until Applebloom had returned home from her day at school. The cream filly, upon sighting the dragoness ramming apple trees in the middle of the orchard, had hastily gone to help her out in any way she could.

And to everypony’s utter amazement, and especially Spyro’s given he knew how stubborn she could be when it came to asking for help, Cynder had accepted without protest. Just how three fillies had been able to crack the dragoness’s rough exterior, where she and just about everypony else had tried and failed, was beyond even Twilight’s ability to understand.

“Heh, it might be a bit far-fetched, but it’s a darn useful trait in my opinion Twi!” Applejack chucked from beside her lavender friend, her own coat shining the same shade as the late afternoon sky. “If these three are willing to help out like that again, the hay, we’d get the entire harvest done in no time.”

“Eeyup.” Big Macintosh said in agreement, his well-known phrase prompting a few giggles and laughs. “I’ll say myself you three make some good workers.”

“Yeah! You three… should… come up… to the farm… more often!” Applebloom chimed in between pants a little way back along the road, the filly’s short legs making it a difficult for her to keep up. “AJ… can ya… slow down… please?”

Applejack and Big Macintosh grinned at each other, broke into laughter, and rolled their eyes at their younger sister as they walked; the two remembering a few certain times in Applejack’s own life when she’d been in a similar situation, where Mac had been forced to slow down his own none-stop, long stride pace to allow her to catch up.

What happened before both sibling’s eyes though, and those of everypony else, was completely and utterly left field.

“Ugh, come here you,” Cynder sighed aloud with a small smirk, momentarily stopping to reach down and grab Applebloom’s mane in her teeth, and then, as everypony stood there in surprise, lifted the excited filly onto her back. “Just don’t go pulling any of my scales out, ok?”

“Ok!” Applebloom giggled in delight as the pair of them quickly caught up, her red bow bouncing with each step the dragoness took.

As they came closer, the cluster of three adult ponies looked momentarily at the violet dragoness, then at the filly perched on her back, then at each other, and finally burst into a fit of laughter, their behaviour drawing odd looks from the four dragons and one filly; if they were any other group of ponies, they would have thought the situation absolutely random, especially given it was somehow Cynder of all dragons in the middle of it... but being good friends with Pinkie Pie meant that the concept of random became an everyday part of life.

Cynder, in reply, just snorted and shook her head, the dragoness a little annoyed at finding her small act of generosity, and hence herself, the centre of the three ponies humour.

“Ugh, these ponies,” she muttered under her breath. “They’re so weird.”

Once the laughter died down, the small group continued swiftly back towards Ponyville, aware that now Princess Celestia’s sun was once again taking its light and going elsewhere over the horizon, and hence leaving the land of ponies to another night, and the silent watch of Princess Luna’s moon.

The small town was, as always, its usual desolate and silent self after the sun set, but strangely Spike got the feeling something not so normal was up; even by Ponyville standards it was much too quiet, plus, why the three Apple siblings had decided to come with them back to the library, especially after such a long day of hard work, was also an as of yet unsolved mystery.

Along the way, Twilight gave the three dragons a talk about Princess Luna, and how each night she raised the moon and arranged the stars to her liking, so everypony could enjoy the beauty of the night. Cynder seemed to ignore most of it, and instead decided to have her own conversation with Applebloom, although Ember and Spyro both seemed enthralled, with Ember throwing a surprising amount of questions Twilight’s way.

Applejack couldn’t help but smile at the sight of Spike and the extremely curious pink dragoness, If the old saying ‘a colt will always marry somepony like his mother’ had any merit whatsoever, then it must've applied to dragons as well as ponies.

“So, how come if Princess Luna places the stars in the sky at night… why doesn’t Princess Celestia do the same with the clouds in the day?” Ember asked curiously as she looked up at the darkening sky, Spike still perched on her back with their hard earned apple pie.

“Because although they’re part of the day clouds are more specifically part of the weather, and hence they fall under the control of pegasi weather ponies,” Twilight answered, the unicorn smiling at having yet another chance to express her knowledge. “Also, clouds can also be found in the sky at night, so Princess Celestia couldn’t really claim the clouds as being part of the day either, even if she wanted to.”

“Plus it would just be another pain-in-the-flank duty for her, along with reading Twilight’s five page friendship reports,” Spike chuckled, his addition causing Ember to giggle, and Twilight to glare at him, clearly unimpressed at his remark about both her and her mentor. “Heh… sorry.”

That was when, however, Twilight suddenly stopped in her tracks. “Spike! I just had a great idea! We haven’t written a friendship report to the princess this week, and we haven’t told to her about Ember, Cynder, and Spyro yet either… so, what if we wrote a report to her with them included!”

“Ya’ll could put in about how Cynder and Mac got over their differences,” Applejack put in with agreement, using a hoof to shift the position of her hat, the reasons as to why she still wore it when the sun was setting escaping Ember. “To get our apple harvesting done I mean.”

The unicorn nodded enthusiastically as she thought over the proposition; before the conversation could continue though, Spyro loudly cleared his throat, and caused both Applejack and Twilight to look back, the dragon’s actions reminding the two mares he was still there, and informing them he had absolutely no clue what they were going on about.

“So… what exactly is a friendship report?” he asked, his head slightly tilted in a show of confusion, while Cynder just rolled her eyes and gagged at the name.

Twilight smiled sheepishly before answering, a little surprised, and embarrassed, she had overlooked explaining such a major part of her day-to-day life. “Well… usually once every week, either Spike and I, or one of the girls, sends Princess Celestia a letter about our adventures and what we’ve learned about the magic of friendship. Originally she asked me to as part of my studies when I moved to Ponyville, but after a rather… interesting… situation, she decided that we should all send her letters on what we learned.”

“And, after ya’ll get settled in, maybe we can convince one of you three to send the princess a letter,” Applejack chuckled, giving the purple dragon a playful shove. “I reckon she’d love that.”

Ember had to admit she liked the idea, and a lot at that; the thought of actually meeting Princess Celestia was one she had pondered over on a regular basis, though the dragoness hadn’t yet come across a means to establish such a meeting... but now, with the help of Twilight’s friendship reports, she had a chance to make her wish known not only to Twilight, but also to Princess Celestia herself.

It was a win-win situation no matter how she looked at it, or at least that was the case if Princess Celestia approved of a dragon, other than Spike, staying with her student anyway.

“I’d really like that Twilight, maybe we can start writing it when we get back,” the pink dragoness smiled at last, looking up and seeing the library standing tall at the end of the street.

Spike, however, was one step ahead of her, his eyes already locked suspiciously on the twisting tree structure he and Twilight called home, and his suspicion only growing ever more as they got closer and closer, and certain details became clear to his eyes; he specifically remembered not pulling the curtains across, not turning off the kitchen light that morning, and there not being a door in the front doorway, courtesy of the rather strong red stallion walking beside him.

“I wouldn’t hold your breath, Ember,” Spike said dryly as they arrived at the newly fitted door, slowly sliding off of her and readying himself. Twilight momentarily looked at the door, before shrugging to herself, and then pushing it open. “We’re not going to have much free time tonight.”

Ember regarded him curiously as she stepped inside. “Why is that…” the dragoness started, her voice suddenly being cut off as light erupted at her from every direction.

“SURPRISE!!”

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Note:

Uni’s done! Also, next chapter will be up in the next two hours or so (no, I’m not kidding)