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House Calls1,231 words
New Faces2,346 words
Familiar Places1,403 words
Opening Doors2,059 words
Royal Instruction3,719 words
A Kindness3,048 words
Of Secrets, Answers, Lies and Worse2,651 words

New Faces

A client plays host to a great number of potentially priceless memories, to abuse the position you find yourself in would be immoral and a punishable offence

~Excerpt from Memory Wishers by Twilight Sparkle

“So... what do you think it means?” Regret asked after a while, “It’s not exactly much to go on.”

Honoured shrugged, placing the sheet back onto the desk as she focussed on the rest of the folder. “For all we know,” she speculated, withdrawing another sheet from the folder and laying it on the table with the others, “anything at all. What if she’d said yes to the mailmare as she offered to bring a parcel to her, what if she said yes to a risky business decision, it’s hard to tell.”

“Or maybe…” Regret started, already thinking of the other… less-mundane possibilities. “Maybe she turned down the offer to become a superhero at one point in her life, that might be it,” he finished with a grin.

Honoured didn’t even look up, “doubtful… a mare of her standing. It’s probably something a little more down-to-earth than that,” she said in a thoughtful voice, withdrawing more and more sheets from the thinning folder and scanning each one.

Regret muttered something about ‘only joking’ before starting on the sheets himself, reading each one that Honoured passed down until he spotted a single line of type that caused his eye. He slid the sheet back across to his companion, “Seen this? All expenses to be paid by the palace themselves; why pay for it at all? She could have probably added it in as a retirement package seeing as she ran this whole gig for a good half a century or so.”

“Did you ever meet the boss?” Honoured asked as she scanned the proffered sheet again.

Regret furrowed his brow; he could almost picture her… an ageing lavender coat and… was it black spectacles or navy? “I think I did… once or twice,” he replied slowly, gazing off into space as he attempted to remember his employer.

He was brought out of his reverie as a hoof jabbed him in the shoulder, breaking him from his trance and causing him to fix the culprit with a glare.

She just chuckled to herself, already starting to replace the files within the folder, “Well either way, I guess we’re going to meet her sooner or later; probably sooner unless you have anything you want to grab?”

“No, I’m good,” Regret assured her, “Do you want me to go and sign out the equipment, or don’t you think I’m qualified enough for it?”

“Well… now that you bring it up…” Honoured started as she slid the last sheet back into the folder and took out a small card from the lip, “and since you offered so nicely, I see no reason to deny you this,” she continued with a honeyed smile. The card sailed its way over to her colleague while her smile remained.

“Thanks…” Regret said, catching the card and looking at Honoured in confusion, “I’ll meet you at the teleporters shall I?”

Honoured nodded, levitating the folder beside her as she stood up and made her way over to the door, opening it and waiting patiently for Regret to pass through, smiling innocently at him as he slipped through and made his way towards the equipment depot.

Once he was out of sight, she shut the door behind herself and started snickering quietly, making her own way towards the teleporters.

It was fifteen minutes later when her colleague finally rounded the corner – a large steel box balanced between his wings – to find Honoured, sat next to the wall with a cup of coffee held aloft in her magic.

“Enjoying yourself?” she asked her laden colleague.

Regret just gritted his teeth, staying silent as he continued past her.

“I would have used my magic,” she continued regardless, getting up and walking beside him, “but then you kindly offered to save me the effort, thanks for that by the way.”

“You could still do that,” Regret grunted from between his teeth, trying very hard to keep the strain from his voice.

Honoured paused for a moment as she observed her colleague before her, “Pass…” she decided, “it helps build character anyway.”

Regret just groaned his disapproval as Honoured started moving again, “Why so glum?” she continued cheerily, “You said it yourself; we’re going to meet the mare who started it all. Come on; the teleporter’s all set up and rearing to go.”

Honoured overtook her colleague and made her way to a pair of round bases in the floor with a small machine between them, equipped with a slot exactly the same width as the punch card that Honoured withdrew from her coat, hovering it in the air beside her as she waited for Regret to finally catch up; strained breaths and all.

Once he was stood on a base, Honoured, stood on her own base, slid the punch card into the machine next to them and waited for the machinery and magic to do their work. It was amazing in its own right; the boss had made all of this: the memory wishers, the teleporters, the equipment that her colleague was carrying on his back. No matter what she said about professionalism, it was certainly going to be something to brag about.

Even if she didn’t understand how it all worked specifically, she, like everyone else who’d been hired for the job, had been taken through initiation which consisted of three days where she’d stared at a projector while a boring scientist in a suit had gone through each individual detail of the mechanics of their job. The sum of it was that all she needed to know was that the equipment did its job; the job in this case being to teleport the pair of ponies to their next job by aid of a punch card with specific co-ordinates.

A loud buzz cut her off from her thoughts as the plate below her started to glow eerily sea-green moments before it sent her into the whirlpool.

The whirlpool had become infamous in the workplace for its brilliant nausea-inducing qualities as the shades of turquoise and lime spun around and around, spinning them this way and that for seemingly hours before sending them down to earth with a crash.

Honoured landed smoothly, taking a step forwards to steady herself on the cool ground before turning to look at her colleague who hadn’t landed as smoothly and was staggering around dangerously. Moments before he tipped over sideways, the equipment on his back was surrounded in a cool red aura and lifted safely away from him, just before he fell into the hedge.

Regret groaned as he extracted himself from the bush, shooting a glare at Honoured who met his glare with a smirk of her own. After a moment he coughed and looked forwards, “So this is her place right? Looks quaint.”

Honoured snorted, “Please don’t say that again, it doesn’t suit you. As for the house… it looks homely I suppose... in an isolated sort of way.”

“If by homely you mean abandoned-mansion-homely, then sure; I don’t really want to go near your home though.”

Honoured sighed and shook her head, the house was indeed vast and lifeless, the grey-slatted walls towering above both of them with wide and dusty windows that shone darkly into the evening air.

“Certainly not the place I’d want to retire to,” Regret remarked into the air.

Honoured caught herself nodding along with her colleague before realising what they were doing, “Come on, we may as well make sure we’re actually tending to a nearly-deceased,” she said over her shoulder, beginning on the less-travelled path towards the aged house, her hoofsteps echoed a moment later by Regret joining her.

“Would you look at some of this flora…”

Honoured couldn’t help herself; she laughed out loud, turning her head back to Regret with a look of incredulity plastered across her face, “Since when have you been interested in flowers?”

Regret turned an alarming shade of red as the blush spread across him, already reaching the tips of his ears as he mumbled something about ‘interesting wildlife’.

Honoured chuckled to herself again, turning back and stopping a few paces short of the dark and imposing door.

“Ladies first?” was the signal that she was waiting for. She rolled her eyes and knocked on the door three times; pausing in between each knock to produce three clear noises.

“Did you have to make it sound like that?” Regret asked as Honoured stepped back again, “so… creepy and stuff?”

“Knocking? Creepy? I didn’t know you were scared of a little sound, Final,” Honoured quipped, smirking.

“Don’t call me Final…” he replied through gritted teeth, “you know I don’t like that name.”

“Whatever you say.”

Any further conversation they may have had was cut off as the door in front of them swung open with barely a creak, revealing a large pearly alicorn with an ethereal rainbow mane.

There was a moment as the two of them registered the figure in front of them. From there, Regret let out a hushed whisper of “Princess Celestia,” and knelt a moment later. Honoured’s own reaction was to kneel down and offer the same reverent gesture whilst simultaneously dropping her magic around the equipment.

She realised what she’d done a moment too late as she spun on the spot, looking for the inevitably wrecked equipment in the darkened garden, only to find it still floating five hooves above the grass; held within a lime green aura that neither of the scientists possessed.

A slight chuckle came from behind her as princess Celestia smiled at the two ponies in front of her, “Please, stand,” she offered, lowering the equipment into the waiting field of Honoured's magic. “I take it that you two are from the institute?”

Honoured and Regret both stood up, their heads still bowed slightly, when Honoured found her voice, “Yes, Princess, we’re here to see Twilight Sparkle,” she said with barely a stammer.

The princess’ benevolent smile drooped slightly as Honoured spoke, “Ah, straight to business it is then. You presumably want to see her before you begin the process?” she asked, then nodded to herself, standing back from the doorway, “you’d better come in.”

Honoured nodded, stepping forwards confidently and slipping past the princess into the dark mansion. A moment later, Regret echoed her nod and followed her inside the house, only allowing his jaw to drop when he'd cleared the doorway.

The princess sighed to herself as the two scientists gaped at the elegant home. Marble and red velvet carpets were in evidence everywhere along with a large tapestry which hung on the wall facing them. The doorways were replaced by tall arches that gleamed and a glimpse of an incredible library could just be seen beyond the nearest one.

The princess shut the door behind them with an audible click, breaking them from their ogling of the interior. “As much as I’m flattered that you like the design of this house, you have a patient to see to, do you not?”

The scientists mumbled their apologies, still not quite meeting the gaze of the princess.

“Come, follow me. I’ll take you to her.”

Honoured and Regret, both suitably rebuffed, followed after the princess silently as she led the two of them up the stairs and along the left hallway; leading them to the end before stopping and turning back to the two of them, the lone, dark door all that lay between them and the owner of the mansion.

“Alright,” Celestia spoke softly, “I warn you that this is probably not what you expected, my… close friend is old; she’s so very old. I understand that this procedure is taxing on the mind, I just ask that you treat hers well… Luna knows… she deserves it,” Celestia finished quietly, her voice only that of a whisper as she addressed the two ponies, both of whom nodded solemnly.

“Good. Well in that case, may I introduce you two to your client, Miss Twilight Sparkle.”

The door swung open, revealing a lone bed in the middle of an expansive room. A large window overlooked the front of the house in all its neglect while another part of the room was taken up by a single contraption, beeping regularly as it measured the heartbeat of the pony laid in the bed. The room was lines with bookcases, the tomes within, dusty and misaligned.

Honoured barely recognised the pony laid in the bed; her fur was almost a dusky grey while her mane had turned completely white, the only pigment being from inside her mouth as she breathed shallow breaths; a dot of colour against the greyscale mare. Her colleague apparently had the same reaction as she heard a repressed gasp from beside her.

“That’s the boss?” he murmured quietly, “Damn...”

“That is my student, yes,” Celestia spoke into the quiet room, her voice only interrupted by the single intermittent beep of their patients heart. “Twilight has always been a helping hoof for Equestria, Twilight has always been there, ready and willing to make a change for the better,” Celestia paused, then continued, her voice slightly louder, “she altered her will one last time thirteen years ago to include her final wish.”

“What if I’d said yes…” Honoured whispered.

Celestia nodded, “Yes, now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you two to do your work in peace. You might want to hurry as well, she’s held on well for a pony of her age, but I know better than anyone else that a pony has to stop holding on to life eventually. Good luck, you two,” she spoke softly before turning and shutting the door quietly behind her.

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