//------------------------------//
// In which very little happens until the end. 
// Story: Beginnings 
// by Ironthread 
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	Today, Cold Scent decided, was not a good day. He came to this conclusion after dealing with the second pony who had found themselves in the wrong division and refused to be convinced otherwise.
“Look, Mr., ah,” - he glanced down at his notes - “Turner, let me put it this way: I don’t know what happened to your blue… whatever you called it, and honestly, I don’t care. That’s petty crime and larceny. This,” he explained, gesturing to the disheveled office in which he worked, “is cold cases. Nothing that gets here is likely to be newer than a few months old.” He was getting increasingly frustrated, to the point of hearing the grinding of his teeth resonating up through his jaw. “I deal with cases where you’re out of leads. It is literally. In. My. Name.” to punctuate each word, he rapped his hoof on his worn triangular name plate, which explained in four short words what he had been trying to convince this earth pony of for the last half-hour.

***

In the end, it took Cold Scent another fifteen minutes to get the stallion out of his office. This was not, he considered, wasted time, since he rarely did anything anyways. Not to say Cold Scent was not good at his job - it simply came down to the fact that, in ponyville, there is not much crime. Out this far from places like Canterlot, everypony knows everypony. If , for example, somepony were to experience a mysterious increase their fortunes shortly after a robbery, a significant leap of the imagination is not required to deduce the culprit. This ,of course, meant the only criminals in ponyville were either very stupid or the very clever. Cold Scent was hired to deal with the second group.
That second group, however, was being stubbornly inactive. Cold Scent supposed this was a good thing, but he was not sure. He worried, slightly, that some might find his services redundant, and be inclined to fire him. He always supposed he could move to the cities. He was not sure if he wanted to.  Frowning, he glanced at his case record. The fifty years of Ponyville Police Department casework fit into a rack of filing cabinets that were piteously small. Canterlot had bigger broom closets. To one side lay Cold Scent's own stack of files. The cases that had made it to him. it was very, very short. In over four years in his division, Cold Scent had dealt with three cases, two of which had ended with the culprits fleeing Ponyville Police Department jurisdiction, with the hunt still going. He knew they would likely never be found, but he held out hope. His record was otherwise spotless, considering it was only one case. That one... had been interesting. Cold Scent smiled slightly to think of it, glancing at the photo of himself and a chartreuse mare tacked up on one of his many cork boards. It was partially obscured by colored strings that spiderwebbed out from a "Map of Ponyville and its Environs," according to the careful lettering across the top. Cold Scent remembered having an organizational system for it at one time, but it had been forgotten, along with what he had been mapping out initially. Cold Scent, sighing, pulled a deck of cards from the top left drawer of his desk, and began to lay out a game of solitaire.

***

Cold Scent’s hooves clacked lightly against the desk as he quickly put the last few cards onto their respective piles. He then turned, making another mark in the “won games” column of the blackboard. The current tally revealed he had completed an alarming number of games. The rest of the board was reserved for random thoughts, drawings, and calculations, many going back years, more added by erasing portions of old notes and writing over them. He was interrupted in the middle of setting up a new game by the entrance of yet another lost pony, a mare this time.
“I’m sorry, but I’m right in the middle of something very import-” He stopped, the queen of hearts falling from his hoof when he saw who it was that had just walked in. “Well, you’re definitely in the wrong place.”
“No, I assure you, I know quite well where I am.” Replied Princess Twilight Sparkle.
“Right. Well, what can I do for you? If you’re looking for a case, everything’s archived in the back.”
“No, though I would like to see those someday. Rather, I am looking for you.”
“Because… ?” Cold Scent replied, still unwilling to believe anypony really interesting - or, indeed, anything other than lost - was visiting for a good reason.
“I have found myself with a mystery on my hands, and I wish to address it. Who better than the local constabulary?”
Cold Scent wasn't certain about what a constabulary was, but decided this would be a question for another time. Twilight, meanwhile, continued to speak.
“I come to you because you deal with cases too old to be interesting, or even solvable, to others.”
“And why,” responded Cold Scent, slowly, “did you not contact the police sooner?”
“Because I only just learned about this particular enigma.”
“What?”
Twilight sighed, and proceeded to explain. “This case is one started thousands of years ago, forgotten except by those who read very obscure texts. A case of myths and legends. Heroes from fairytales."
Cold Scent wanted to look incredulous. He really did. But then he remembered that this was Princess Twilight bucking Sparkle, which ought to be good enough. And if it weren't, his memory supplied him with ample reasons to believe her: her fights with Nightmare Moon (a myth), and Discord (another myth), her tutelage under Princess Celestia (a legend) and her becoming a princess (an impossibility). Honestly, he realized, he shouldn't be so surprised.
"Right, so, why me? I'm not even a unicorn, for Celestia's sake."
"One need not wield magic to understand it. When I asked the desk if they had anyone who was good with cold cases, they directed me to you, inspector. And I think you will be quite interested indeed, because this is a very cold case.”