You've Got Mail!
It was a Mid-Summer day in Canterlot. The sun shone down on the ivory white castle that hung impossibly high on the steep mountain slopes, a gentle breeze cut through the narrow walkways and weaved its way between the blinding spires, and flags of multitudes of colors and mesmerizing designs flapped aimlessly along the currents. Dozens of Celestia’s royal guards patrolled the streets of the castle, ensuring her majesty’s protection and admiration.
Celestia trotted along a narrow hallway overshadowed by the mountainside. She could see outside through the large gaps in one side of the hall towards the municipal city-states of the western coastline. Cloudsdale hung lazily over the thick forest canopy of the distant foothills below. She hummed a tune to herself, passing by a few guards and servants along the way to her destination. Today was clean-up day.
Her sister, Luna, was already hard at work to move her thousand years of collective gifts from her private study to an inconspicuous location of the castle that only she and Celestia knew of its existence. Celestia had an easier task at hoof—cleaning out her personal safe that was stuffed full of Twilight’s personal observations during her time in Ponyville.
That task was easier said than done, however. She had to sift through each and every message and keep the most memorable ones while tossing out the less important messages for scroll renewal—a method in which the scrolls were wiped of its contents so that Celestia had a new canvas to write on. She liked the idea of recycling used scrolls instead of paying the heavy costs of buying more magical parchment from the paper smith. She enjoyed Signet’s company, if it was only for a few meager minutes. He was a busy stallion, already providing parchment for several of Equestria’s city-states and authoritarian figures, including Twilight Sparkle herself.
Celestia approached the safe door, which was halfway down the long, straight hallway. Her horn lit up and the locks inside the door unlatched in a timely sequence of knocks and clambers. At last, the door opened, revealing a small mosaic room stuffed full of all sorts of scrolls and personal letters. A large pile of scrolls caught her by surprise, as it gave way from a breeze of fresh air and cascaded down on top of her, burying her waist-deep in a pile of parchment.
She sighed to herself. “This is going to be a long day…”
Her horn lit up, and one by one each scroll hovered about her from her hooves. She unfurled a few of them at a time to read their contents.
“Hmm… no, no… huh, maybe I’ll keep that one.”
All three scrolls wrapped back up in a perfect roll. Two of them were tossed away to her right, while the one she decided to keep was placed carefully on the floor to her left. The pattern of tossing and placing scrolls became almost second-nature to her, as more and more scrap messages piled up on the wall next to the safe entrance. A few of her servants took the liberty of carrying some of the scrap messages to scroll renewal.
After about a half an hour of sorting, the safe was only about a third of the way empty. She was beginning to bore herself through reading all of Twilight’s personal entries; she wanted to quicken the pace a bit. Instead of reading through the entirety of every message, she would skim through them, picking out important key words to decide which ones to keep and which ones to toss.
For the first few messages in this new method, she found two to keep and seven to toss. She was now reading through more and more messages as they fluttered out of the safe in a single-file. This put on a hefty strain as she read message after message by the second.
A spark flew out from her horn as she skimmed through one particular message. The spark entered the stream of her magic flow and surrounded all of the scrolls in her grasp and within the safe. Her eyes went wide when she realized what she’d done, but before she could do anything about it, all of the scrolls inside burnt up into green flames and a dark plume of smoke assaulted her as it snaked its way out into the daylight. A couple of her servants watched in awe as the black plume faded away, heading straight for Ponyville.
“Oops…” Celestia said quietly to herself.
“Just a little more, Spike,” Twilight said, holding a ladder still while Spike grunted unnervingly trying his best to hang a rather large picture frame on the wall of the lower floor of her home. It was clean-up day for Twilight Sparkle and Spike, who were also helped out every once in a while by her friends.
“I think I’ve got it,” Spike said, pulling down on the frame. It stayed put, satisfying Twilight in its placement. The picture was a portrait of her in all her princess-y glory. The picture replaced an old one which was just her filly self during her time in the School for Gifted Unicorns. It was a nice upgrade, and one less chore for them to deal with.
Spike slid down the ladder and landed on both feet. “That wasn’t too bad, but it probably would’ve been easier if it wasn’t so heavy. Don’t you think, Twilight?”
She giggled. “You may be right, Spike. It is an important picture, though.”
“You’re right about that. With you being a princess and all, I guess it’d make sense to have the portrait look nice.” He took out a scroll from behind his back and unrolled it. “Now, what’s next on our list? Clean the dishes?”
“Done.”
“Clear out the cobwebs in the bookcases? Wait, I already did that. Organize the books in alphabetical order?”
“Check.”
“Hang up Twilight’s personal portrait? We just did that. What about cleaning out the telescope upstairs?”
“Done that already,” Twilight smiled.
“Hmm, what about feeding Owlicious?”
“Did that earlier today.”
Spike pondered. Most of their chores have already been done, so they did not have much left to accomplish. “What about clearing out and organizing old messages from Princess Celestia?”
Twilight tapped a hoof to her chin. “I don’t think I’ve done that in a while.”
“Well, let’s get goi—” Spike breathed in heavily.
Twilight raised her eyebrow in suspicion. “A letter from the princess?”
Spike breathed out, expelling a green flame from his mouth. A scroll materialized before them, which then plopped down gently on the floor. The scroll didn’t have a wax seal on it, but instead it had a red ribbon tying it up in a perfect roll. Twilight brought the scroll over to her and unfurled it. She read through it, eying it even more suspiciously.
“That’s odd, I clearly remember sending this to her not too long ago. Why would she be sending it back to me?”
Spike shrugged and began to speak. Before he could say anything, he breathed in again. He shot another line of flame out from his mouth and yet another scroll fell to the floor. Twilight became vastly concerned. “Spike, what’s going on?”
“I don’t know Twili—” He breathed in yet again and shot another ball of flame across Twilight’s muzzle.
“Spike! Be careful where you point that at!”
“Sorry, Twilight. I just don’t— *BURP*”
Twilight dodged the emerald flame as another scroll fell down on the floor. This just wasn’t Celestia to be doing this to either of them. Spike fell flat on the floor, belching flames left and right, letting more and more scrolls pile up on the perfectly mopped floor.
“Spike, make it stop!”
“I can’t— *BURP* —Twilight. It’s Celestia’s— *BURP* —magic…” Almost as if he had hiccups, Spike bounced around on the floor from each message released from inside him. “Twilight— *BURP* —do something!”
Glancing around the bookshelves quickly, Twilight flew up to a certain set of books of magical remedies. She found one that might have what she was looking for. She raced back down to the podium, dodging each bout of flame and flailing scroll; the floor was now littered with a layer of ribbon-bound letters to Celestia. She opened the book and scanned page after page of hexes and charms and came across one that seemed like it would do the trick.
“Hold still, Spike!”
“Okay— *BURP* —Twilight…” Spike was becoming increasingly fatigued. He didn’t know how long this would last.
Twilight’s horn flashed to life, surrounding Spike’s throat as she focused her magic on conjuring a lock charm on Spike’s messaging ability. For a few seconds, the light around Spike’s throat intensified, as another message tried to make its way through him, but was lost halfway through delivery.
The light faded and Spike laid on his back, panting in fright. Twilight flew over to him, patting his head. “Are you okay, Spike?”
“Ugghh… I think so…”
“What happened?”
“I think maybe the princess…” He stopped. Something deep inside him quelled within. The growing pain quickly intensified as he gasped heavily. Twilight’s eyes grew wide.
“Oh no…” The charm only managed to back up the surge of messages that tried to circulate through him. Twilight had only one option—run. She dove underneath the nearest table and tipped it over in front of her. The room exploded in a fiery inferno of licking green flames, followed by a barrage of scrolls raining down from the ceiling. It didn’t seem like it would end, as Twilight became surrounded by a heaping pile of scrolls.
She heard Spike’s assault die down; the room fell quiet once again. In its place, a sea of scrolls packed the floor, covering Twilight waist-deep. Spike laid himself on a cushion of scrolls, groaning in pain. Twilight brought the table back up and swam her way through the pool of parchment. She was amazed by the sheer number of letters she sent to the princess all this time.
“Spike?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
He only groaned in response. “Twilight…”
“Twilight!” she heard Rainbow Dash’s scream. Rainbow sped her way through an open window and hovered just above the balcony. “Twilight! What’s going… on?” She raised an eyebrow in confusion, trying to process what she was seeing. “What happened to you two?”
“Just a simple mistake from the princess, most likely,” Twilight responded bitterly.
Spike breathed in one last time, and shot a ball of green flame just above him. This time, a sealed scroll materialized in front of her. She growled in disgust and opened the message.
“Dear Twilight Sparkle,"
*BURP*
"Sorry about the mess. I was trying to clean out an old safe of mine when things got out of hoof. Could you please send those messages back to me so that I can take care of them properly this time?
"Sincerely and with deepest apologies,"
*BURP*
"Princess Celestia.”
Twilight rolled up the parchment and looked around her. She sighed “This is gonna be a long day…”