The pen laid still for a moment, a slick black instrument that seemed out of place atop the cheery cherry red tabletop. It was a good pen, much better than those favored for the routine and mundane acts of jotting notes or scribbling shapes onto the backs of cocktail napkins.
It rolled smoothly beneath a small yellow hoof. A slow and methodical rhythm that passed the time as one’s forelimb would lazily dip in a fast moving stream, drawing ripples with the absence of effort. Each measured movement as the silent swing of a pendulum. An impatient ticking in the background of calm pensive contemplation.
This particular pen’s days of scribbling and jotting were long past. For some time, the pen had served as a keepsake rather than a writing utensil. Carried as a memento of many brief momentous moments, where the flourish of its tip would write history. A time when words shaped worlds, and a signature spoke for civilizations.
It rolled, and stopped. The hoof holding it against the table paused in anticipation.
The history of the pen would remain secret beneath the unassuming ebony finish. Were it to be properly appraised, one might expect a bidding war from collectors willing to hurl their fortunes with the same zeal that warring nations would hurl thermonuclear bombs, consumed by the glinting hope of a pyrrhic victory.
The red haired filly bit firmly on the pen, holding it between her tongue and cheek as the glistening black tip pressed tentatively against the coarse white paper. It nestled comfortably between the crowns of her molars, as the glossy synthetic hardwood gave with the firm pliancy of ballistic rubber.
The pen was not a toy. It was a gift. A tool brimming with potential and purpose.
Ideas swirled within her head. A roaring furnace of imagination that stoked the forge of creativity. Every idle thought built relentlessly upon a towering edifice of ideas. A tower that pierced the constant constraint of the pale blue sky, soaring higher than any pegasus, and seeing farther than any telescope. A perch of dizzying heights that revealed the full majesty of unseen lands, unparalleled in scope and scale.
Applebloom slashed the first sentence into the sheet of paper.
The pen once shaped the course of worlds.
Now it would build them from the ground up.