Pippi stepped over to her desk, the first rays of weak sunlight flickering through the window. An early start on such projects was, as everypony knew, utterly essential. Going to bed early yesterday had left her feeling refreshed and creative; now all she needed was enough time.
-and the right equipment, of course. She cast a methodical eye over the contents of the little wooden table. Quill and ink? Check. Suitably long scrolls? Check and check. Ink-removal catalyst ('For The Unicorn In A Hurry!')? Check. She giggled happily, rubbing her hooves together in eagerness. Everything a student could ever want! Spike had clearly outdone himself. He'd even included a few snacks for her breakfast, all safely separated from the writing tools.
Pippi blinked, and regarded the food more closely. She'd half-expected apples, and the celery was a nice touch, but candy floss? For breakfast? It wasn't even on the desk, Pippi realised with growing alarm, leaning around the frame. It was stacked on top of-
"Annika?"
"Yes indeedie!" The party pony sprung from her hiding place with a laugh. "What a surprise to see YOU here, Pippi!"
The unicorn groaned inwardly. Refreshed or not, it was far, far too early to have to deal with this. Despite knowing it was a bad idea, Pippi began with the obvious.
"Annika," she asked, with a grin so fixed as to put statues to shame, "What, precisely, are you doing crouched behind my writing desk at six in the morning?"
"Writing, of course! What else does anypony do at a writing desk?" Annika stifled a laugh. "You're silly, Pippi!"
With a sigh, Pippi tried to plot a course through the reefs of insanity that made up Cape Annika Pie.
"Yes," said Pippi, ignoring her friend's last sentence, "This is indeed a writing desk. For, as you so eloquently pointed out, writing. Now, what do you think that I was planning to do, at this hour, at this desk, with all these quills and scrolls?"
Annika bounced several feet into the air. Pippi didn't see her legs bend an inch.
"Ooh! Ooh! Early morning guessing games!" She screwed up her eyes in thought. After a second, she slowly began rocking from side to side; slowly at first, but then faster and faster until she was a veritable blur of pink. As Pippi opened her mouth, Annika suddenly stopped dead still. Her eyes sprang open.
"I've no idea!" she announced, triumphantly.
It took a few moments of gently massaging her temples before Pippi could bring herself to respond.
"Annika. This is my house. And while I realise I said you were always welcome to visit-"
"You did say that! Yeah!"
"-I didn't mean at this hour of the morning and without telling me!"
"Aw," said Annika, with a grin, "But it's always more fun when friends drop in unannounced, isn't it?"
"Annika, you're still supposed to announce your arrival when you do that!" Pippi felt herself growing ever more exhausted with each sentence. "Not half an hour later when the occupier finds you!"
"Oh, I see now! That explains the arrests! So, can I stay?"
Pippi grimaced. She'd been looking for perfect silence to get this written. Annika seemed to pick something of this up; her hair deflated a fraction, and her voice had the faintest note of pleading about it as she spoke.
"C'mon, Twi. I just super-mega-ultra-needed a pony with a writing desk this morning! There's a story just bubbling up, up, up inside Annika right now, and I can't... you know..."
She mimed levitating a scroll and quill, an impressive feat for an earth pony. Pippi softened a little; Annika did have a point. It certainly took an awful lot of effort for non-unicorns to create legible writing.
"Fine," she sighed. "But can you be a little less... Can you try to be quiet? Please?"
As Pippi floated a loaded quill and paper away from the desk, she wasn't looking at Annika for a moment or two. This was probably just as well.
Annika Pie tried. She really, really tried. Around two seconds in, her face felt all funny and hot, then suddenly it felt all chilly. She blew out her cheeks to hold more talky-talk in her mouth, but the pressure just increased until she was nearly bursting. She started to sweat profusely, and sleek pink hair flopped down limp on either side. In desperation, Annika began to wring her mane.
It picked up on the first ring. "Hello, this is Annika's mane! Who's speaking?"
"Oh, sorry, mane! I'm not allowed to talk right now."
"Why, what's wrong?"
"I'm at Pippi's, you see."
"Hey, she's fun!"
"Yeah! But I really need to write that story I was telling you about, and I have to be super duper quiet so I don't bother her."
"Ooh, tricky. Maybe you could ask Pippi really nicely if you can have a noise break every few seconds?"
"Actually, it's strange, but she seems to be heading off somewhere now- BYE Pippi!"
***
As the door to the library closed behind her, Pippi sighed deeply. There was precisely zero chance of her getting work done at home while Annika was in residence, but she honestly didn't have the heart to kick her out. Especially when she drooped like that. It might have just been the wind in the branches, but Pippi half-heard a "sproing", similar to that of a pony's hair re-inflating, as she walked away. She honestly couldn't take offense. Still, that left her kicking her hooves outside on what was clearly going to be an icy, blustery day. Shivering a little, and packing the floating scrolls and quills into a saddlebag, she began walking through the town at a brisk trot, more to keep warm than with any particular destination in mind. Not that there was much chance of finding somewhere to hunker down, with all the shops closed.
Pippi wandered for a while. A long while. It really was frightfully cold. But a mixture of pride and determination kept her moving away from the library, however foolishly. If she could just find somewhere warm and quiet, she could get this dratted thing written! Still, her hopes were falling with her core temperature. Ponyville was always dead this early in the morning, she considered, sluggishly; certainly none of her friends would welcome a visit at this hour. Least of all the pony opening her door wide and waving her inside with a concerned hoof!
Normally, Pippi would have faltered at such a picture, blinked a few times, tried to comprehend it. But right now, the warm glow from inside Tommy's Boutique overrode all such comedic tendencies. She galloped into the warmth.
***
Pippi woke up smothered in pillows, blankets and embarrassment. Fumbling her way out of the heap, she cast around for some indication of where she was. The fainting couch she was sprawled over would have been a giveaway, as would the suspicious amount of satin and velvet on the pillows she'd just batted aside, if not for the rather more immediate presence of Tommy herself, standing over by the fireplace. Her head turned at the eruption of fabrics.
"Oh, darling!" she cried, trotting quickly over to the swaddled Pippi. "Whatever were you doing outside on a frightful day like this?"
"Mhmm. Scrolls... I... fmblg..."
Still slightly dozy, Pippi tried to fumble through an imitation of Annika's earlier performance. It went about as well as could be expected.
"I... see," said Tommy, lying through her teeth. "Well, I've kept all of your scrolls perfectly safe. They're over by the door."
Indeed they were. Pippi turned back to the white unicorn, her wits slowly returning.
"Thanks for taking me in like this, Tommy," she began. A mug of hot cocoa floated by at shoulder height; she clasped it gratefully in both hooves. "I got a little bit carried away this morning, looking for somewhere quiet to write."
"More than a little, Pippi dear, if you took to the streets without a-"
Tommy caught up with her friend's previous sentence. She inclined her head a fraction; a rare show of humility, indeed! Before Pippi could speak, Tommy continued, in a silken tone.
"I should of course have realised that being a gifted student of the Princess you would have had a truly brilliant literary education in Canterlot," she began, with a winning smile. Pippi found herself wondering if any café in town spread it on so thick.
"So darling, if t'were possible for you to spend just a few minutes with me and my latest symphony of prose, I would be ever so grateful!" Tommy finished, adding a few eyelash-bats for good measure.
Pippi sighed. She did rather owe Tommy for her generosity; her own, secret story could wait a few hours. Still, it did beg a few questions.
"Is that why you were up so early today, Tommy? You were writing?"
"Composing prose, darling. But yes. And I'm ever so glad I was, as I can hardly imagine what I'd have done if-"
Pippi waved that away. She didn't want to feel any more embarrassed about that little misjudgement.
"Let's get started."
***
The hours had rolled onward. Tommy was a hard person to edit for; she refused to show Pippi the original text she had written, and instead asked for improvements and adjustments to one word or snippet at a time. She also had a horrible tendency to ball the current page up and toss it into the fire; Pippi had slowly realised that the fireplace had stayed lit all day purely on the products of Tommy's literary misadventures. And as for the story itself, well...
Still, they were done now. Right?
"Are you absolutely positive you can't think of a better phrase than 'rain-slicked flank' for that section with Meredith Peardrop?" Tommy asked, eyeing the latest version critically.
Pippi shuddered. "Quite certain. Quite, quite certain."
"Ah, well," said Tommy, brightening somewhat, "It is on a deadline, after all."
That got Pippi's attention. The girl stared oddly at her friend.
Tommy gave a twinkling little laugh. "It's for the story-writing contest, of course. The one Anna set up in honour of her tree, remember?"
"But... but..." Ignoring the fact that Tommy's newly-polished story would be better placed on the highest bookshelves than in an all-ages competition, Pippi had a sudden sinking feeling about this. Why hadn't she put two and two together sooner?
"But I was meant to be entering that!" Pippi gasped. "And with all this helping, I've only got this afternoon to write a whole new story to rival yours!"
At first, Pippi thought Tommy's shocked expression was surprise; after all, Pippi had rarely allowed herself near a deadline since the Smartypants Incident. But as she took in the other pony's expression, she realised that Tommy was staring past her, at the window. Where the sun had already set for a winter evening. Pippi's voice was a whisper.
"How long do I have?"
Tommy paused for a while before speaking. When she did, her words were soft, and sad. "An hour. Ninety minutes, at most. I'm so sorry, Pippi. I honestly assumed that you would have submitted something before now."
Pippi nodded, miserably. Fluttershy would be submitting something amazing, for sure. Adding Tommy's polished, if somewhat graphic, story to the mix would only make the challenge harder. And now that she thought about it, hadn't Annika Pie being dying to write something too? And even Dash, last week?
So many writers! And she had a sneaking suspicion that they would all be submitting incredible works of fiction, diving into the depths of fantasy or the pinnacles of science fiction. Right now, all she had was a single hour and a mind clean out of ideas. A soft, marshmallowy hoof touched the back of her neck.
"I'm sorry, darling. If I do win, I'll be sure to credit you for your help. But I've got to head over to the town hall and submit my little piece of art post haste." Tommy, covered in scarves and an elegantly padded jacket, opened the boutique door.
"Please. Feel free to stay here as long as you need," she added, as the door closed behind her. Pippi said nothing, and stared at her scroll. The fire went out.
***
Pippi lit a candle from the dying embers. So what if she hadn't thought up a fantasy or an epic? So what if she hadn't invented new characters from the four corners of county? So what? Like any good student, she could write fast; and that just might be enough.
A very kind and very clever pony in the Canterlot City library had once told her: the best stories come from writing what you know. Pippi smiled, and raised a quill.
Pippi stepped over to her desk, the first rays of weak sunlight flickering through the window. An early start on such projects was, as everypony knew, utterly essential...