Tangled Up In Purple

by Crescent Pulsar

Prologue

One late afternoon, in Windigo City, a middle-aged unicorn stallion stepped out of his townhouse. He had a yellow coat, slicked-back emerald hair, a mustache, and silver eyes and hooves. He wore a pair of thin-rimmed glasses, a grey scarf, and a satchel, which hung from his neck.

It was chilly and breezy, as was often the case for that time of the year, but he was accustomed to it and merely adjusted his scarf before descending his porch steps, beginning his trek to the post office. Said trek was uneventful, save for the couple of greetings that he returned along the way.

Upon entering the post office, the clerk glanced toward him. When he was recognized, the clerk turned his head to face him and offered a slight smile. "Good morning, mister Balm."

"Good morning," Lemon F. Balm warmly returned the greeting as he approached the desk.

Once there, he lit up his horn and pulled a rather thick book out of his satchel, which he settled upon the desk with a heavy thump. The Epic of Twilight Sparkle was written on the midnight blue cover, in golden text. The first three words of the title were separated from the last two by a pair of horizontal stripes: one purple, one magenta.

"I'd like to have this delivered to Princess Twilight Sparkle," he casually stated, since he had made such a request several times before, albeit for drafts. "Instant delivery, please."

The clerk simply nodded his head and began to fill out the order form. "Tracking and preservation spells, I take it?"

"That's correct," Balm confirmed.

After the clerk finished filling out the order form, he pushed it forward to be signed and said, "That will be one hundred and seventeen bits."

"That's three less bits than last time," Balm idly commented while he signed his name.

Once money had exchanged hooves, the clerk took a tag and wrote down the sender's and recipient's information onto it before applying a postage stamp and postmark. Next, he threaded a cord through the hole on one end of the tag, then tied it around the book vertically, making sure the tag was displayed in the front. Finally, he called out to someone in the back and a unicorn came to take the book back to their own workspace.

Happy that he had done what he had set out to do, Balm bid the clerk goodbye and left. Not too long after his leave, however, the clerk heard and felt someone slamming into something.

"When was this wall put here?" The clerk heard a familiar voice say.

Someone sighed before answering, "You're at the wrong post office, Derpy."

While the clerk was shaking his head at that, the unicorn in charge of instant delivery shipments was frantically trying to track down where they had sent Balm's book after being startled by the collision.