Yet the Sea Is Never Full
Twilight checked the items she’d need against a mental checklist:
Inkwell to the right-hoof? — full.
Pegasus feather in her magic grip? — sharp.
A piece of paper in front of her? — blank.
Everything at the ready, as she was used to having, as it was before and always will be again, an unbeatable habit of hundreds of years, Twilight Sparkle was working, tongue sticking out, decidedly un-Princess-like in her concentration.
Finally, a bit of time stolen (a delicious little transgression) off her duties for her own private project. For a few dozen years now this little itch to try to do something new had been with her. The weightless, intangible idea — formless now, but almost ready to be incarnated in the ink and parchment.
She deliberated for a few moments, glancing probably for a hundredth time over her notes. Few pages worth, not too much — things she’d jot down every few years or so when an idea came to her. No point in hurrying things along, she was content to let it congeal and churn in her mind. Nothing more than a key word here or there, a thought remembered or dreamt of, rough sketches of the composition and structure.
Today, she decided. The half-formed thoughts were already coming together in her mind and it would be the day she’d finally do it.
The quill moved, straight and unwavering, in precise short strokes, ink animating the lines of ancient runes, parchment stretching in front of her like a path into the world yet undiscovered:
“These are the words of a Teacher, student of Celestia, Princess in Ponyville...”
It would be something bold. Something new, something she had not yet ever done. The unknown made her exhilarated, and the lines blurred together, weaving the perfect pattern.
And of course, almost immediately she was distracted by a silvery call of bells and flute piping from the magical contraption on her desk. There was a letter coming in.
Twilight stifled a little sigh, put the quill away and opened the silver box that was making the musical noises. The letter — still warm after the magical reduplication — waited for her.
It was, as she had expected, covered by copious amounts of glitter and more than a few shiny stickers that somehow complemented perfectly the shock-pink ink of the text. The haphazard writing followed not the lines of the paper, but more the whims of her over-eager and excited student, anxious to put to paper another friendship report.
She smiled as she read it:
Dear Princess Twilight!
Today was a really unusual day — and for me, even a bunch of unusual todays. You see, I was sooo worried about letting down my bestest best friends, that I sort-of-kind-of maybe used the Time Spell you showed me, even though you told me not to. But just a teensy-weensy little bit, I promise!
But after twenty-five attempts to disaster-proof everything and engineer a perfect day, I had to give up, and I’ve learned a valuable lesson about friendship — sometimes you just cannot worry about every little detail and worry about tomorrow so much that you forget about today.
Your faithful student,
Who has totally NOT nearly destroyed the time-space continuum.
Caramel Comet
PS. Sorry about that time-noodly thing, fixing it right now.
So that’s why yesterday seemed to drag on so long. And that did explain the weird black cat.
Caramel was certainly a great sorceress-to-be, but her rambunctious nature had definitely brought a few… irregularities to the teaching process. It was good that she had finally learned to make peace with what happened a little bit, instead of trying to fix everything at once.
She nodded to herself and added the friendship report to the archive. Another piece of paper to join the hundreds and hundreds of similar — and different — letters from so many ponies over so many years. Each filed neatly in a special filing cabinet and kept forever by preserving spells. Each signifying a lesson learned, a friendship made stronger.
The letter being dealt with and, assuming the time would get fixed by tomorrow morning, requiring little response, the princess looked outside, enjoying the last bits of the dusk. Beautiful as ever, each sunset — a masterpiece of her once mentor.
Somehow she did not feel like writing any more today. There would be another day, and another time for it, but now she merely enjoyed the sunset and the evening. And then the night came, and the night went, and a thousand little things took her time and her attention, and then she had once again found herself at her desk, looking out of the window.
She took a breath, releasing herself from the busywork of the day, and checked against the mental checklist.
Inkwell to the right-hoof? — full.
Pegasus feather in her magic grip? — sharp.
A piece of paper in front of her? — flat.
Everything at the ready, as she was used to having, as it was before and always will be again, an unbeatable habit of hundreds of years.
“The sun rises and the sun sets…”
Lines flowed easily as if she was simply tracing the words, the idea congealed within her long ago, now just yearning to become one with the paper. Time was meaningless for her now as she was consumed by the effort of her art.
Meaningless for her, but not, unfortunately, the rest of the world. Still, the celestial spheres rotated, moved by the Princesses in Canterlot, ever regular in their perfect harmony, and once again her little box chimed, bells and flutes singing a short melody. It had been designed as soothing and beautiful, but Twilight had long since become inured to its beauty. It was just a beep, a bit of noise to distract her from her writing and to draw her attention where it was needed more.
Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle,
The breezies left today, and I learned something from them. There is a value in tradition and in following the way things were done before—even if you don’t always understand it at first, and even when you see a problem and think ‘hey, here’s something new’, sometimes it had happened already, and somepony knows what to do about it!
The ponies that came before us did things for a reason, and it is important to follow it to the letter when you learn it.
Your loyal subject
Diamond Lance
Diamond Lance. Stalwart, true, exceptionally grounded and pragmatic for a pegasus. Not her student, not a bearer of Elements of Harmony, not someone of whom prophecies were told and songs were sung. Just a pony with a friendship problem — her little pony and her subject.
The scroll pushed aside, careful not to smudge the fresh ink, she wrote an answer. It was easy — she wrote letters like that hundreds and hundreds of times. It was also hard — each letter and each pony were unique, and each demanded and deserved the attention and right words to help them learn not a rule or a maxim, but how to know what they wanted and how to do what they thought was right. To help them be the best they could be.
It was her work, her true, real duty — not fighting monsters, not even making spells, but keeping this incredibly delicate weave of friendship that did not protect Equestria, did not feed its ponies, did not do anything at all, except making it worth living in.
She loved her work and she loved her ponies, every last one of them, and the only little regret she had was that she would not be coming back to her own writing today… but there would be another day tomorrow.
She set to writing the reply, and then the night came, and the night went, and then there was another day, and another evening, again and again, and many times over. And then once again she checked the items on her desk against the mental checklist.
Inkwell to the right-hoof? — full.
Pegasus feather in her magic grip? — sharp.
A piece of paper in front of her? — yellow and frail with time.
Everything at the ready, as she was used to having, as it was before and always will be again, an unbeatable habit of hundreds of years.
She wrote… and she was interrupted.
Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle,
I'm sorry for causing so many problems for the Cloudsdale weather services and the ponies of Ponyville, but I just didn't want the winter to end.
I love the crisp winter sky and the skating on the old frozen lake and making snow alicorns... but I know that the animals need the warm weather to play about and we need the sunshine and the rains for the crops for ponies and critters to eat, and the snow must melt for the water to go back to the streams and rivers.
I love the winter, but there is a season for everything and a different time for every purpose.
Yours Truly
White Snow
Another lesson learned again. She deliberated for a second, reading the foalish unsteady cursive and looking at the last patches of the snow outside. This letter needed an answer - a touch of encouragement for the filly who had made a simple mistake… though perhaps not right now. It would be better if the little filly got her letter from the princess after she had finished whatever chores the weather-team would give her, so there was time to write a little bit more.
The letter from her little pony had given her that last push those last right words she needed for everything to click into place, and then, finally it was finished, her own little addition to Equestria, her own little footnote to make it better. Not the world-saving stuff, but something new, personal and something she thought she could be proud of nonetheless.
She rolled the scroll, so that she may put it in her library. Perhaps in due time, she’d have it published or share it with one of her students.
Finding the right place for the new piece was easy — her system was impeccable, if she even needed it, having memorized the layout of her private library by rote long ago. Fifth bookshelf to the right, seventh shelf up. Scrolls, old and new, lying in the wooden pigeonholes.
The pyramid of scrolls shifted when she released her new creation in its new allotted place. Paper rustled, and one of the older scrolls fell out of the shelf, unfolding as it did. She picked it up, careful not to crumple the ancient paper and squinted at the bleak, almost discolored ink:
“...The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again…”
She looked at the twin scrolls, one new, another - ancient, one an accidental copy of the other. And then she laughed quietly and put both scrolls back on the shelf.
Today was a good day.