Twilight checked off the second to last thing on her checklist and read the last item to herself, “Double check writing assignment checklist to make sure you have everything to write your assignment.”
“Desk? Check. Writing equipment (see writing equipment checklist)? Double checked. Writing assignment paper laid out ready to review before beginning? Check. Ideas necessary to finish the assignment? Check. Alright that should be everything.” Twilight scooted the stool in front of her desk in and sat down. Pulling up the assignment a last time to check before beginning.
“Write a short story.” Twilight blinked as she noticed a line she’d missed before. “In a hundred words or less.” She scrunched her nose up at the parchment and turned back to her desk. “Oh well. I’m sure I’ll have no trouble condensing this story idea down to a hundred little words. I’ll just have to be concise.”
Twilight picked up her quill and began writing.
—-
Six hours later Twilight screamed as her last quill broke. Scattered around the room were abandoned papers covered in words with a large number written in the top right corner.
“Note to self,” Twilight noted to herself, absently brushing her rapidly mussing mane, “All future creative assignment preparation checklists will require EXTRA extra parchment and EXTRA extra quills.”
She looked around at the cluttered papers and at her latest attempt. Then she looked at the clock and flinched. There was no way that she was going to have time to go out and get more quills and parchment and still get back in time to condense her short story. She sighed. Again. If she wanted to turn it in on time she’d just have to use one of the ones she’d already written.
“Oh, there’s gotta be some way… Maybe if I paste together the longer ones to make them shorter. Like a collage!” Twilight walked among the papers scattered all over checking the numbers at the top. “Oh, but then my assignment will look like a cheap ransom note from a foalnapper. Princess Celestia won’t like that.”
She circled the room again, before stopping suddenly as a thought struck her. “Unless…”
—-
“And for a week after that one hundred words was a much larger number. Sadly the spell was obvious because everypony KNEW how much a hundred is supposed to be but whenever they counted to it they always ended up with a much larger number than it was expected to be,” Twilight finished telling her friends at their get together at the Corner
“Wait,” Applejack interrupted, “I remember that. I was trying to handle the farm’s finances that week and that mess with the numbers mucked things up pretty good. You’re sayin’ that was your fault?”
“Um, yeah,” Twilight admitted, “Sorry.”
“It messed up all my measurements as well,” Rarity admitted from where she sat with the others sipping her drink, “I had to take in SO many dresses after it was over, I could have made other dresses out of the spare material. I would have lost some very important customers if they hadn’t had the same thing happen to them. Twilight, how could you be so reckless?”
“I read about it in the papers,” Fluttershy added, “I was lucky we’d done the ferret census a week earlier or we wouldn’t have been able to order the right amount of feed for the poor dears.”
“Wait, was this a few years ago in early Spring?” Rainbow Dash butted in as she seemed to put something together.
The other ponies nodded.
“No wonder my flight speeds were down so much that week. I nearly strained a wing trying to get back up to my usual!”
Twilight looked abashed and muttered a couple apologies before turning to look at Pinkie Pie, the other mirroring her expectant look.
Pinkie looked back at them with confusion, “What?”
“Don’t you have some story about how my spell nearly ruined your week?”
“No,” Pinkie shook her head, “I’m a baker, we’re used to our numbers being off. I mean a bakers dozen counts up to thirteen you guys. THIRTEEN. Do you have any idea how many would be pastry chefs have gone mad trying to learn our math system? I don’t. We lost the ability to count them in the great mathematical bake off of ’42.” Pinkie’s expression became serious. “That was a dark day for baking.”
The other five ponies stared at the somber pink mare for a moment before snapping back to each other.
“Anyway, it took a week to figure out how to counter the spell I cast and that was the fourth spell of mine the Princess had to add to the Tome of Forbidden magic.”
“Jees, how many spells do you have in there?” Rainbow asked.
“At last count… I think 37,” Twilight admitted, “Celestia was talking about adding the want it need it spell though so it might be up to 38 the next time it is safe to open the tome and write things in it.”
“Hey, Twi,” Applejack interrupted, having been trying to count something up in her head herself, “I never did figure it out, how much did you increase a hundred by with that spell anyway?”
“Oh, I could only get my story down to 900 words so I had to increase it by a factor of roughly 1.4771213. Still got full marks too. Ha.”