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// A camping we will go in Entry Eighteen 
// Story: The Diary of Diddy Discord 
// by DreamWings 
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Dear Diary,

We’ve arrived safely on the outskirts of the Everfree forest this morning. It’s now night time so I have to write this by firelight. Tia wants to read it but I keep telling her that although she’s my friend I can’t let her read my Diary; it just isn’t done. Miamore told her to stop so I’m safe for a while—as long as I hide this really good before I fall asleep. Otherwise she might try to read it when I can’t stop her, and when even Miamore couldn’t stop her. 

The Knights lighted the fire for us. We got some of the best ones on King Alicorn’s force. Sir Emblem, Sir Shimmer and Sir Pines joined us on our little expedition. I know all three of them; they’re okay. Sir Pines is one of the best ponies to bring camping. He knows everything about everything when it comes to plants and animals. I know tons of stuff I never knew before thanks to him. Galloway learnt his lesson about plants the hard way; never make a flower chain out of the blue flower near the Everfree. At the moment the Knights are having to make a remedy to stop him smiling. He looks like a Cheshire cat—a really creepy Cheshire cat with hooves instead of claws and a cutie mark instead of stripes.  It’d be funny if he didn’t look so scary.

Blankety’s eaten nearly all of the smores in the camp, even though they were meant to last us the whole week. To be fair Gallophad helped him finish all of them; I never realised but he really can eat like a horse (get it? Ha!). He cheered up a lot when he saw all the chocolate, marshmallows and crackers coming over to us. We witnessed the biggest event in Equestrian history and also one of the rarest- Gallophad smiling. It really is great, for that one brief moment before his face goes back to usual. I told Miamore this once but he just laughed at me. He’d seen his younger brother smile lots of times. To which I’d replied, ‘younger brother?’ and he’d just laughed again. Their family’s really confusing. Next I’m going to find out that Loony is really the Mother of Tia or something weird like that. Actually that seems really funny. Imagine Loony trying to boss anypony around. She can barely talk more than two words. And even they’re just ‘Dandelion’ and ‘Tia’ (she nearly said ‘Blankety’ once but fell asleep mid-word). 

I can see the stars from where I’m sat. They all shine so brightly down here away from the Canterlot streets; you’d really truly believe that there was life up there.  My Daddy’s up there right now, I know it, and he’s looking down at me and feeling proud of his colt; his little Diddy. I’ll never forget him and he’ll never forget me. That’s a deal. As Mommy says, ‘cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye’. Me and Galloway have made some actions to go along with it so that it looks really cool. It’s become our secret handshake, one that we won’t show anypony.  We haven’t even taught Blankety or Tia it because it’s for us brothers only. We have a special relationship.

Gallophad and Miamore showed us the fencing skills they’d been practicing at their school recently (‘fencing’ is sword fighting. I did wonder at first why they were practicing to be carpenters when they had one ready to build anything they asked for anyway). They were really good at it and Miamore won the fight by a long way. Being the oldest and biggest we didn’t think Gallophad would be much of a challenge, but actually he was really good at it to. Almost as good as Miamore. Galloway demanded a lesson afterwards. There was a move they’d done he wanted to learn so they took him to one side to teach him it.

That just left me, Blankety and Tia together. We didn’t have a clue what to do; after all we’d already played too many games of eye-spy in the carriage ride getting here (we had to go by ground instead of air since we only had one pegasus with us and Sir Pines couldn’t pull the carriage all by himself). Thankfully Sir Shimmer came over and asked us if we wanted to go get water from the stream with him. We were reluctant at first, thinking it was going to be really boring, but it wasn’t—oh no, it most certainly wasn’t. 

It was a stream—but almost as big as a river. There were critters of all sorts playing everywhere. Tia fell in love with the little beavers building a pile of sticks over the running water. I liked the snake best. He slithered everywhere he went and dived under the water with a happy grin on his face. Blankety couldn’t really look at the river too much because the running water and the amount of smores he’d eaten made him feel really poorly. He turned green and had to be rushed behind a bush to throw up. It was gross. But after that he seemed to cheer up a bit.

Being sick certainly didn’t stop him eating all of the barbequed sweet corn and carrots we had for tea.  After that not much happened. We sang some songs whilst Sir Emblem played on his guitar; we did this until we felt too tired to go any further. Miamore got really annoyed and really wanted to tell scary stories as well but Sir Shimmer, noticing how tired we all were, said we’d get the chance to do it tomorrow. There was plenty of time to do all of the fun stuff we wanted to do; we were going to be there for the whole week.

Everypony’s agreed, just before we are going to go in inside our tents (I was sharing with Blankety and Galloway), that this place is really fun. This is like our safe place where we can all be happy together. Miamore said we had to remember this place if we ever got upset. This would be the Capital of our own little world.

And we had to remember how happy we were here throughout any trouble that was to come. I don’t know why he told us so many times; we got the message. 

Oh well, I’d better go hide you Diary. Tia’s coming over again to say goodnight and I bet she’ll try to take another sneaky peak. Quick, abort, abort.