Twilight Sparkle and the Cake Thief

by Noble Thought

Chapter 5: Muffins and Mysteries

“A tray of muffins for the royal audience,” Muffins announced to the guards, almost dancing in place.

“Good morning, Muffins,” the guard on the right said, holding open the door with a faint pink aura. “They smell divine, as usual.”

“Thank you! I made them myself!” She paused to beam up at the taller stallion, quite handsome in his gilded chain and plate. “It’s my first time delivering them!”

“Well, you’d best get in, then. The Princess has a full schedule this morning, and her morning muffins are all that keep her going.”

It should have been one easy task to step past that door. “All that keep her going?” What if they’re not scrumptious enough? Maybe a little more— But the look the guard gave her, a warming smile under the cool gold rim of his helmet, calmed the turmoil. “Are—” She swallowed. “Are muffins really enough?”

The guard’s smile widened and he chuckled. “The Princess has often told me that she lives for her morning muffins. Go on in, Muffins.”

One side of the wide door swung open to let her into a room lit with the scattered light from a dozen stained glass windows. Golden light predominated, and reds spread between them in the colors of sunset and sunrise. Two guards flanked the other side of the door, resplendent in gold and silver barding, heads held high, spears leaning against their shoulders in casual grace.

The carpet underhoof deepened, grew softer and more plush, until it felt as though she were back in Cloudsdale, walking on clouds.

The sight of Princess Celestia pulled her back out of the dreamy state, and she glanced back to make sure the muffins were still in place. She could hear, again, her grandmother’s admonishment to “Keep your wings up. That’s a good filly. Don’t let the tray fall.”

“Your Highness,” Muffins murmured, bowing her head low as she approached the throne.

“Good morning, Muffins,” Princess Celestia said in a bright tone. “Thank you ever so much. But, if I could ask a favor of you…”

Muffins nodded swiftly, suddenly nervous. “O-of course, Your Highness.”

“If you could stay here for but a little bit longer, I’m afraid my table is quite…” The princess waved a hoof at the stack of books on the dais, and the smaller stack on the table beside the throne. “Full. I promise I will let Mistress Cake know you did not dally unneeded.”

Muffins bowed low again, her hooves quivering. Up close, the princess was even more beautiful than she was from afar, and her eyes shone with a warmth that spread through her. “T-thank you!”

“Of course. One moment, please…” With that, Celestia turned her attention back to the pony in black robes and black cap, his bushy mustache bristling. “I understand, Dean Line, that I placed the school under your supervision. Believe me when I say I am loathe to interfere in the day-to-day running of the school.”

It must have been her imagination, but Muffins could have sworn the princess shuddered.

“But this is a special case.” A muffin floated free of the platter on Muffin’s back and began unwrapping itself slowly. “The curriculum change for next semester is minor, but I assure you that it is both necessary and will impact no other classes. However, I do have certain obligations that I must attend to, and among them is the education and care of Twilight Sparkle. As she is the only student, thus far, who has signed up for the class, I trust you will trust me to set my own curriculum.”

“Very well, Your Highness. Will Your Highness close the enrollment for the class, then?” he asked.

“If any others wish to attend, they are free to sign up. I will not prevent any other students from learning what they may.” Celestia smiled, one eyebrow raised slightly. “I highly doubt that any other students will be interested in Ancient Esoterica.”

“Yes, Your Highness. Will there be anything else this morning?”

Muffins caught him glancing at her, a faint scowl turning his lips down. She got the feeling he would very much like to argue. She tried her old standby to treating frowns, and crossed her eyes at him, sticking out her tongue at the same time.

The frown vanished. If anything, he looked confused.

Not laughing, or giggling, or tittering, or letting any of her amusement show was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

Celestia seemed to have no compunctions about showing hers, and laughed softly.

“I… um… Enjoy your breakfast, Your Highness.”

“I most certainly will.” She took a tiny nibble from the crusty edge of the muffin. “Thank you Dean Line. I do appreciate your input, and I hope you will continue to bring your concerns, any concerns, to me.” Celestia raised a hoof and set it down gently.

He bowed, gathering up the scrolls and tomes in a telekinetic spell, and left.

“Mmm…” Celestia made a small noise of pleasure as she took a heartier bite from the muffin. “You spoil me, Muffins. Truly, you do.”

“Your Highness?”

“Oh, please call me Celestia when we are alone. But—” Celestia arched an eyebrow and lifted a wing. “—only when we’re alone. The trappings of state do so wear on the ears.” Another bite, another small noise. “So much better than those bran muffins Quiverquill forces on me.”

Muffins stood quietly, gnawing on the inside of her lip. Curiosity about what Celestia had been talking to the Dean of her school for gifted unicorns inched its way through her thoughts.

“Do you know anything about Twilight Sparkle, Muffins?” Celestia asked as she lifted another muffin, sniffed it, and took a more delicate bite. “Blueberry. Delicious.”

“A-a little. She came to the kitchen last night to study. She does that a lot. But…” It wasn’t really her place to say that Twilight had done little studying. But the but was already said, and she couldn’t take it back. “She heard us talking about the Cake Thief. And Honey Cake told her the story.”

“Oh? I’ve heard… rumors about this ‘thief’ as you call them.” Another nibble. The platter of muffins on Muffins’s back lifted and settled behind the dais, where they would be hidden from view. Celestia winked at her, as if to say ‘You didn’t see that,’ and settled more luxuriantly into her throne’s plush cushioning. “What do the cooks say about the story? Or, better yet, why don’t you tell me all that you know.”

“I’m not as good a storyteller as Honey Cake, but I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all I ever ask,” Celestia said. A muffin lifted from the tray and floated over to Muffins. “For your trouble.”

“Thank you!”

In between bites and nibbles, she told Princess Celestia what she knew about the story and the legend and, at prompting from the princess, Twilight’s reaction to the story.

By the time she had finished, she was working on her second muffin, savoring one that her grandmother had made the night before. “And that’s about it. She left before the overnight cooks were coming in to start baking up some food for the night shift of guards. Honey Cake sent me and… Crunchy and I to bed as she was turning down the main oven.”

“And yet… both you and she were up at unreasonably early hours for your ages.” Princess Celestia sighed. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, my little pony. I do appreciate your dedication, and I’m certain Honey Cake does as well, but you are growing still, and need your rest. Do be certain to go to bed early tonight.”

“And the cake thief?”

“Will get their just desserts.” Celestia smiled, tapping a hoof against the padded seat. “Run along, Muffins. I don’t want Honey Cake lecturing me about keeping young fillies from their duties.”

“Honey Cake lectures the Princess?” The question formed in her mind and left her mouth in the same instant. Shocked, Muffins stood stock still, staring up at Celestia’s sparkling pink eyes.

Celestia laughed her rich laugh. “Oh, thank you for that, Muffins. And…” She smiled, waving a hoof to bring her closer. “Nopony escapes lectures when they deserve them. Not even I.”

It wasn’t until she was halfway back to the kitchens that she paused, looking back the way she’d come. “She’s… just a pony. Like me.”

She shivered as she said it, as though she had just spoken a precious secret that shouldn’t have been said aloud. Resolutely, she steadied herself and locked that bit of information in the back of her mind and threw away the key.

Keeping state secrets… she fervently hoped she wouldn’t be given any more to keep.

---

Later, as she was mixing a massive bowl of batter with the hoof-powered mechanical beater, Muffins watched Crunchy Crust frowning down at a perfectly circular, pale lavender disk. He set it aside after a long moment with a sigh, and picked up a sheet of cutie marks.

A quick glance around for Honey Cake, apparently off inspecting or directing one of the other, smaller kitchens, and she hopped down from the stand holding the big mixing bowl. It could sit for a little while. She’d just added the baking powder, and it would take time for it to rise before she had to stir it back down and pour it.

In the meantime…

“What’s that?” She touched the lavender—Or is it purple?—medallion. To her surprise, it deformed slightly. Crunchy hadn’t heated the icing into firmness yet. That was usually the first step he took after forming the basic shape. “Sorry!”

“Oh… Hey, Muffins.” He sighed, long and heavily. “Nothing much. Just… I heard… Nevermind. I’ve got so many of these to do, and just three more days.”

“Come on, Crunchy. You can tell me. I told you about the batter bomb I made, yeah? So what’s this bit of icing you’re sighing over?” She bent down to study it more closely. What had been plain lavender from afar revealed a few darker speckles arranged at regular intervals around a shallow, pointed depression.

“Oh, this?” He floated the disk up and turned it around. “I overheard Twilight say she didn’t get one. And, um… well, I thought I would make one for her.” His eyes lit as he rotated it slowly, leaning against the table. “She’s so smart, isn’t she? I’ll bet she catches the thief.”

Oh colt. “Yes… er. Of course she is. And will.” Muffins covered her muzzle with a hoof. “And… when will you give her the special piece?”

“Oh, it’s not done yet. I, um, I need an amethyst. And… um. Well, a few amethysts of a lighter shade. And a few tiny flecks of diamond.” He winced. “I have no idea where I’m going to find them this close to the unveiling.”

Muffins studied her friend from underneath her hoof, holding onto the sigh with all her strength. After another moment, she regained her composure and locked eyes with him.

“Look, if you’re gonna do this, I think I know how. But it’s not gonna take gems. It’s gonna take guts. And bravado!” Muffins pranced around the table to swing a hoof over Crunchy’s back. “And a friend!”

“How? I’m just a confectioner.”

“Aww. That’s so sweet! But do you always want to be a confectioner? Or do you want to be a… um… what’s a word for a brave person that starts with con?”

“Conqueror?”

“Conqueror of hearts! And sugar. Crunchy Crust the Bold!”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the muffin dough swelling above the rim of the mixing bowl. Swifter than she could react, a thin bubble of air puffed up as though inspired by her speech. A unicorn working nearby noticed, called out a warning and ducked under the table he was working at just as the bubble popped.

Crunchy Crust followed suit.

“Hey! I did not give you permission to rise yet!” Muffins jabbed a hoof at the bubble and fixed her best cross-eyed glare on it.

As the dough settled down with an enthusiastic, if slow, whistling wheeze, Muffins sighed along with it and set a hoof on his back, patting gently. “Maybe we start with baking muffins.”

“Does she like muffins?”

“Of course she likes me!”

Crunchy Crust didn’t groan like he usually did at her puns. Instead, he was biting his lip and staring down at his hooves.

Muffins rolled her eyes. Colts. “Okay, listen, Crunchy. You just met Twilight, and you’re already looking for gems to give her? You don’t give a mare gems before your first date. Unless you’re insanely rich, which you aren’t, so no gems. Frosting.”

“B-but, it’s… what?”

“You heard me. If you want a serious chance at catching her attention, you have to be bold, not desperate. You have to stand up, raise your head, and proclaim, ‘Twilight! I made you a sugar medallion!’”

A snort of laughter exploded from the other side of the kitchen, followed by a series of titters and hushed shushes.

Crunchy Crust shrank in on himself, cheeks flushed brighter red than a strawberry.

“What? That’s perfection. Now finish that confection.”

“But what if—”

“It’s not Nightmare Moon!” Twilight stamped her hoof for the third time. Usually, that was the end of the debate. When her mother put her hoof down, it certainly ended debates in the Twilight house. Not even her dad would lightly open an argument again if she did that. The same was sort of true when Dad did it.

Being in charge wasn’t as easy as her mother made it look. She took a small breath, held it, and met his eyes, trying to will the reason across the gap between them.

“Spike, if it were Nightmare Moon, don’t you think Hearth’s Warming would be much more dangerous?”

“But—”

“No, Spike. No more buts. Please stand still. And lift your right claw three centimeters.”

Twilight nudged his claw gently up and let go with the spell. He stood, balanced with one foot on the frame of her bed, the other planted on a stool, and both arms were raised at right angles to each other, a string tied to each of his talons. The resultant web of red string, borrowed from the castle seamstress, held a multitude of cards hanging at odd angles, some of them bisecting multiple lines.

At her feet, a bevy of other cards lay scattered about, still waiting to be placed on the connecting web of intrigue. At least, that’s what Sable Sleuth called it. Each one had its place, and the strings held them in a dimension of time, space, and meaning. Of course, after the second missing hat rack had been commented on, pointedly, by Mrs. Heatherswitch, the mistress of the dorms, she’d had to make do with Spike and the two.

Which was working out better, as it let her see the shift of meaning as he lifted and flexed his claws, shifting the cards in time and space through the thousand years of mystery.

Twilight flicked an ear at the flash cards strewn about the floor. Each one should fit into the great web, but each one represented a supposition rather than the facts already hanging on the strings. They fit. She only needed to see how.

Time.

It all had to do with time. Little drawings of cutie marks—Spike’s contribution—littered the web as tiny dots scattered throughout history.

“Spike, I think I might need to have you go to the library again and see if you can find—” She peered at the list crudely drawn cutie marks on her page, then at the more faithful recreations Spike had drawn on each of the cards. “This one.” She pulled a card with a crescent moon surrounding a trio of stars, all perfectly drawn. How he’d gotten the figures to look just right…

“The librarian said she was going home after two.” He jerked his head at the clock on her wall. “It’s three.”

“Oh. Right. I remember, now…” She rubbed a hoof at her forehead, staring at it. She could have sworn she’d just looked at it two minutes ago. Time was slipping away from her, ungluing and sliding every which way. If only she could pin it down like she could cards.

“Besides, I think you’re being a little too obs… obsti…”

“Obstinate.” She smiled. At least he was trying to use those vocabulary cards she’d given him for his birthday. “And I am not. This happens to be the best way to visualize information short of actually drawing it. And I am not going to try that again.”

“Good idea. I still don’t know how you thought that drawing looked anything like a cat. I told you it was a catcus.”

“It was clearly a cat! Four legs. A head. A tail. Claws. A cat.”

Spike rolled his eyes.

“It was a cat. Mom’s cat. You’ve seen Mister Wiggles.”

“I hope you didn’t show Mister Wiggles…”

Twilight growled and stamped her hoof yet again.

He sighed. “Fine. It was a cat.”

“It was.” She stared at him until he looked away. “Thank you. And… thank you for drawing the little cutie marks.”

“You’re welcome. So… what’s all this got to do with your cutie sugar… medal… thing.”

“The proper term is medallion. A disk made out of a solid… usually metal, but in this case sugar, and decorated to show an acclaim or as the recognition of nobility or an appointment of office.” Twilight poked his belly with a hoof. “And somepony singled me out. Me! What if it’s a ploy to get to the Princess through me? That happened in Sable Sleuth and the Ivory Igloo, and it happened to Daring Do with her sister in Daring Do and the Copper Cornice, remember?”

“Are you sure? You keep telling me what I read isn’t necessarily true.”

“That’s because you read comics. Comics aren’t great at giving minute, personal detail like the written word.” She flicked an ear and lifted another card, this one adorned with the profile of the Mare in the Moon. With a set of fangs, she noted. “Comic books also exaggerate everything for the visual appeal.”

He frowned, opened his mouth, and closed it again, not meeting her eyes.

“Why, though… That’s the question.” She pulled the card free of the tangle and examined it more closely. Spike, whomever his parents were, had apparently gifted him with an early talent for art. The book she’d had him pull it from lay with a half dozen others on her bed, all of them with various objets d’art also collected from the library. “Why is everything connected to you…”

“I thought you didn’t believe in Nightmare Moon.”

“I don’t.”

Spike met her gaze for a moment and turned his nose up with a hmph.

“I’m sorry, Spike, but you know how I feel about comic books. I’m not going to change my opinion of them because you like them.”

“But you don’t have to act like I’m wrong for liking them,” he grumbled.

She flinched. “Oh… I didn’t… Spike, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Of course you’re not wrong. It’s an opinion, and we have differing opinions.” She touched a hoof to his foot. “Will you accept my apology?”

“Yeah. Fine. But what about Nightmare Moon? You’re focusing an awful lot on her for not believing in her.”

“I believe that the myth of Nightmare Moon is something that a lot of ponies put a lot of stock in,” she said, shifting the card up and down through the ages, pairing it with this string or that, and bringing it back to her own cutie mark. It didn’t seem to fit in any one place, either in her mind or next to any of the facts. “It may be important in some way. Somepony might believe in it enough to try and make the myth a reality.”

“Like in Power Ponies issue five,” he said, a note of smug satisfaction in his tone. “The Power Ponies were stalked by a villain that wanted to make an old prophecy come true predicting the return of Grand Duchess Larcenia, Destroyer of Property Values!”

Twilight looked up from her cards. “That’s…” She bit her tongue. He was trying.

“Brilliant? It’s one of my favorite issues! In the end, the villain takes up the name! She’s a recurring villain, now.”

“That’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy, Spike. It’s one of the most common types of ‘prophecy’. Which is why I’m worried. What if somepony is trying to make Nightmare Moon real? Or at least as close as they can get to real.”

But Nightmare Moon’s card didn’t fit anywhere in the web. Not next to any one of the other cards, nor by itself. It only seemed to center on Twilight’s card. But the cake thief touched on almost every other card she’d tacked up, and none of them shared more than two or three other intersections in time, and hers certainly didn’t.

Not even when she bunched the strings up and had them flow through Nightmare Moon did any of them make sense. It just made a mess of radiating lines that led nowhere. Just like before. Except… they came from somewhere when she bunched them all up.

She was missing something. A myth, even one as long-standing as Nightmare Moon, had no power, and myths changed over time, losing their original intent.

“You know what I think?”

Twilight let the card drop. “What?”

“I think, maybe, you should ask Shining Armor for help.” He shrugged. “He knows all the guards. He is a guard. Maybe he knows something.”

“Maybe. But… I don’t want to get him involved in this. He’s… he’s doing really well, Spike. What if this is all a ploy to get me drawn in to get him drawn in to get him replaced as a guard, and replace him with somepony else who seems more trustworthy, but isn’t, and later—”

“Whoa! Whoa. Slow down the crazy train. Why would you even think that?”

“I don’t know! I’m making this up as I go along!” With the help of Sable Sleuth, who was written by somepony who knew how intrigue worked. Was that the answer? She rubbed her chin with a hoof, staring at the problem floating in her mind’s eye.

And her mother had a picture in her office, of her standing with the author of Sable Sleuth, Sandy Scruple, both holding first print runs of their first books. Her breathing calmed, and the haze over her thoughts began to recede. Everything came through more clearly.

Twilight might not know how to go forward with the investigation.

But I know who would. She hoped her mother would know what to do. And, as much as she wanted to go to Princess Celestia with the question, it was little more than conjecture, too much supposition, and not enough facts. “Spike, we’re going home early.”

“What? But what about Shining Armor? I thought that was a good idea.”

“And we will talk to him. He’s due back in two days from from winter training in the Northern Plains. If I can’t find out what I need to do next, or where to look, I will bring Shining Armor in, one hundred percent.”

---

“…and volumes one, two, and three of Star Swirl’s Astra Carta.” Twilight sent the three hefty tomes drifting into the trunk by the door. The wheels squeaked, but they’d been doing that since she’d loaded Tulip Moon’s Compendium of Cutie Mark Theories.

“And why do you need those? They’re just… con…” Spike paused, squinting at the scroll in his claws. “Stell… ations. Constellations!”

“Very good. To answer your question, I need them because, as I demonstrated in Marellan’s Myths and Mysteries, many old stories are connected to the constellations. Like Celestia’s first raising of the sun, or the Hearth’s Warming Heart. One of them may correlate to Nightmare Moon. From there, maybe I can cross-reference old stories about that constellation and uncover the hidden secret of the thief. Or thieves. Mom will know what it means.”

She couldn’t rule out the possibility of a cult of ponies trying to bring an old myth to life, however silly it sounded.

“Um. What about.. the moon?” Spike pointed a claw up at the ceiling. “You know, the one with Nightmare Moon carved into it?”

“It’s not a set of stars, Spike. Constellations are groups of stars that ponies have drawn pictures over. Some change, but Celestia makes sure that the most important ones stay the same. Some of them date from before recorded history. Like the Horseshoe. It dates all the way back to the first horseshoe, before ponies migrated to Equestria. It’s… it’s history!”

“Okay, fine. Sheesh. I get it.” Spike made another tick on the scroll. “I think that’s it.”

Twilight snatched the scroll up, peering at the columns of checkboxes on the right side. Every one of them had a check, but she couldn’t remember doing more than double-checking.

“What? Did I miss something?”

“No… just… just double checking.” Each book name drifted by, and she could picture it easily enough in its proper place in the trunk, but she couldn’t remember placing them all. But the top was level, as her mental diagram said it should be.

“You mean triple checking? Geesh, taking the ‘being careful’ part a little too far. Not even Listeria went that far.”

“Why would a bacteria have anything to do with making a check… list.” She groaned, rubbing a hoof at her forehead. “Spike, that was terrible.”

“No, no. Listeria! Mistress of Lists! From Power Ponies #42. She had every step of her crimes on a list, and she was so organized that the power ponies had a terrible time catching her. Until they swapped her ink for, get this, disappearing ink!”

“Spike…” That’s ridiculous. She held it back, let herself smile, and laid the list back in the trunk. “Good job on the list. Are you all packed?”

“Yup!” He hefted his backpack, a lumpy thing with too many pockets. Comics sprouted from every one, rolled, folded, and crammed in where they would fit.

She held back a comment about treating books right, swallowed, and swung the door to her dorm open.

Crunchy Crust stood there, facing Muffins, his hooves clasped over hers, cheeks flushed.

“…can’t give it to her! What was I thinking?” Crunchy drew a hoof to his muzzle. “You have to do it!”

“But… uh. What about, you know, the confectioner a-and… and…” Muffin’s flicked a look aside and brightened, ears perking. “Hi, Twilight!”

Crunchy froze, swallowed, and took a step back, planting all four feet firmly. “As I was saying, Muffins, you should give her the medallion. She does like muffins, after all.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

Twilight traded a look with Spike, who shrugged. “Um… I was just about to leave. Is there something I can help you with?”

“No, Crunchy is just being obtuse. You give her the medallion! You made it!”

“You asked me to finish it!” Crunchy pushed Muffins back, let go of her clasped hooves, and turned to head back down the hallway. He didn’t, Twilight noted, ever look her in the eyes, and his cheek was twitching furiously. “She likes Muffins. She said so herself. Well, I like Muffins, too. Maybe I’ll just give it to you.”

His tail sagged as he slunk away, ears drooping.

“That doesn’t make any sense! You’re the one with the crush on Twilight!”

If her words had any effect, Twilight couldn’t tell. He disappeared around the first corner he came to, his hoofsteps stopping, then resuming as a door opened and closed.

“He has a crush on me?”

“Yeah. I guess. I don’t know.” Sighing, Muffins looked at the object cradled between her hooves. “I think he thinks that I have a crush on you. And that I have a better chance.”

“At… what? Dating me? I’m not interested in a relationship. I have far too much time invested in school and research.”

“Ouch. Blunt. But, yeah. I get that. I think he’s got his head in the clouds, though. He was making this after you left this morning.” Muffins held out the object, a crystalline chunk of sugar, fused to a solid shape almost like a hard candy.

It was partly translucent, and the steady magical lamps in the hallway cast a purple glow over Muffin’s gray hooves. It was perfectly round, or as near to perfect that Twilight would have needed a compass to tell otherwise, and fused all the way through the center was her cutie mark, purple and silver sugar crystallized into a perfect double-star, the twelve points sharp, and the surrounding five stars tiny pinpricks of silvery sugar, not unlike the stars in the night sky.

“He made that?” Twilight looked up from studying the candy, but couldn’t find the young stallion anywhere, nor could she hear his hoofsteps in the hallway. He must have picked up the pace after getting out of sight. “It’s beautiful.”

“It looks like a gem…” Spike murmured, reaching up with a claw to touch the edge. Twilight pulled him back before he could make a grab for it.

“Maybe it does, but it’s not for eating.”

“Hey! I’m not a baby. I don’t stick everything in my mouth.”

Anymore. Twilight smiled at him. “Well… I know. But impulse control is still something you need to work on.”

He folded his arms over his chest and looked away with a grumpy harumph.

“Hey, that wasn’t very nice. You’ve gotta be gentler. Especially with the stallion dragons… male dragons. Uh…” Muffins scratched at her chin. “Stagons!”

“I’m a boy dragon, thank you very much.”

“But that’s so boring!” Muffins’s beamed her widest smile at him, golden eyes almost meeting his.

“Both wrong. Technically,” Twilight said. “The taxonomy is very clear. He’s a dragonling. But—”

“Twilight! You promised you wouldn’t call me that!”

“And that’s why I don’t call you a dragonling anymore.” Twilight ruffled his spines. “He made a very convincing argument about dragonlings also being dragons, regardless of taxonomic conventions. So he’s a dragon. Just a baby one.”

He growled, but kept his mouth shut.

“Both of you need to lighten up.” Muffins tapped a hoof against Twilight’s chest. “And you need to be nicer. Colts… boys… They’re easier to, um, be around when you’re nice.”

“But I’m his teacher. I need to tell him what he’s doing wrong. My teachers don’t waffle around telling me what I did wrong.”

“Well, sure. But he’s not you. Do your teachers treat all of the students the same way?”

“Of—” Twilight froze, mouth open. She couldn’t recall if her teachers did or didn’t treat the other students the same way. They must have. Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns wasn’t for ponies who couldn’t handle direct criticism. “I’m sure they do. They must.”

“Uh-huh. Look, Grandma is really good at handling the other helpers in the kitchen. Lemme see… So, instead of saying ‘You’re impatient, Spike!’ do this.”

Spike glanced at Muffins, one eye ridge raised.

She smiled at him and reached out a hoof to pat his shoulder. “I know you like gems, Spike, but this one is super-duper special. Crunchy Crust made it because he wanted to do something special for Twilight, and I just need to know that you’re not going to eat it, okay?”

“Why would I eat it? It’s not real gemstone. It just… it looks so tasty. Like an amethyst. All purple, and…” He glanced at Twilight, snapping his mouth shut. “But I would never eat anything of Twilight’s.”

“Okay. I’m going to trust you with this, then. Crunchy Crust made this because he really likes Twilight, and it’s special to him, and to her.” Muffins held out the sugary cutie mark, her ears going limp, and just a hint of a tremor creeping into her smile. “Keep it safe, okay?”

He watched her for a moment, his spines beginning to droop as Muffins’s smile grew ever more tremulous.

“I can do that. Dragons are naturals at keeping special treasures safe!”

Before he took it, Spike doffed his backpack and flipped open the biggest compartment. Inside, he made a nest of some of the comic books, glancing up at Twilight intermittently with a defiant set to his brow. Then, with exaggerated care, he placed the cutie mark in the nest and double checked the straps holding the flap closed before strapping the backpack on again.

“Good! That’ll be nice and safe in there. Thank you, Spike.” Muffins ruffled his dorsal spines, smiling.

“No problem! Consider it as safe as a dragon’s egg!”

“See?” Muffins grinned at Twilight. “Now he knows that if something happens to it, he’s the only one who can be blamed for it. He’ll work extra hard to keep it safe. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have muffins to bake!” She bounded down the hall, pausing at the intersection where Crunchy had disappeared. “Maybe you should, um, not try hiding in the mare’s room.”

A flushing Crunchy galloped away. Muffins followed at a slower pace, shaking her head, muttering under her breath and giggling to herself.

“Uh…” Spike met her gaze, his brow furrowed, mouth hanging open. “Just what in the hay was that?”

Twilight shook her head. “Priorities, Spike. Let’s get back on track.”

Comments

[Noble Thought]

6737592
6755644

Sorry for getting back to you so late.

I usually respond much quicker, but vacation, and work messiness...

Anywho... I very much enjoyed reading these theories. Who knows! You may be subtly changing the story as it moves forward, too! I love reading these. It gives me ideas for red herrings, for ways of subtly hinting who may be involved, who's to blame, and even ideas for bits of comedy.

[howard035]

The weird thing is, before this chapter the author had a blog post about how this would be the "Muffins chapter," and how cute and adorable she would be. And indeed Muffins was cute, but I feel like Spike really stole the show instead, with his vocabulary practice and his Power Ponies references, he came off as even cuter!

For the record, I believe the term for male dragons is drakes, and the term for female dragons is dragonnes. But I love the idea that "baby dragon" is something Spike negotiated Twilight down to from something even more embarrassing.

[Noble Thought]

6872157

I think there's a ton of different ways to call dragons dragons, and my editor pointed that out, too... but I decided that drake would be for a teenage male dragon. Dragonette for a female teenage dragon.

I loved the way this chapter came out. Muffins, Celestia, Crunchy Crust, Spike... They were all fun to write.

[FanOfMostEverything]

I'm glad I finally read this. I still don't think much of her canon name, but Best Pony was fantastic this chapter. Definitely looking forward to further developments in the mystery.

[Sunny]

Curious to see if this is still ongoing!

[Noble Thought]

7625452

I am working on it. Slowly, but I'm working on it. Life has been... interesting. I haven't had the opportunity to sit down and work the outline into more chapters in a while.

[Sunny]

7625722 Wishing you well then!

[Snowdrifter]

“What? That’s perfection. Now finish that confection.”

Zecora approves of this, the advice shouldn't be dismissed!

[RK_Striker_JK_5]

Twilight, there's such a thing as overthinking.

[Noble Thought]

8411482
It's what she does best.