AN: Just to let everyone know, now that Punky and Inky have settled into their lives more or less, there are going to be jumps between days when not much happens.

Punky Print's Log: Day 60

I've been stealing for over a month now to feed Inky and I. There have been plenty of foals who followed Neko's example and have brought us food. However, like me stealing from a single house, it can only happen so often without causing suspicion. When somepony does bring us food, they always knock a certain way.

Knock-knock-knock-thump

There are around twenty houses with my cutie mark scratched into the fence, but there are over a hundred with a tally mark drawn by them on the map in my bedroom. Today, I stole from a house at a corner where the wall and the cliff merge. I've never seen anypony through the windows, and they're never shut when I walk past. When I first went there to ask for a job, nopony answered when I knocked. I could never see a name painted on the building, but the apples were still picked daily.

When I took an apple from the house's corresponding tree, nothing was out of the ordinary. Nopony came out to catch me, and nopony stopped me. However, once my sister and I had eaten breakfast and we were going about our days, there was a knock at our door. It wasn't the usual knock of our friends and benefactors, so I approached the door with caution.

When I opened it, an old stallion with bright pink eyes was at the door. He had on a long cloak that more than covered his cutie mark and his tail, the dark blue hood pulled up over his head. He smiled and held up an apple.

"I believe this belongs to you." Confused, I began to ask him what he meant when I heard Inky call from the dinning room.

"Hey, Punky, an apple's missing! Are you sure you got enough?" I snatched the apple from the mysterious stallion angrily.

"Yeah, I'm sure," I called over my shoulder. "What do you want?"

"You ate my apple," he said bluntly. "I just want to make sure the side effects don't harm you too grievously." Though I would probably have denied it if he'd asked, I did have a stomach ache.

"What side effec-?" I was cut short as smokey magic pulsed under the cloak's hood and drew gray smoke out of me through my throat.

"Don't worry, little one," he said, "It's only a guard charm, to prevent thieves." He smirked. "Most ponies would be instinctively drawn away from my trees. You must have been truly desperate to take one of my apples anyway." I looked away from the unicorn, pride preventing me from admitting my struggle to a stranger in any way. "If you'd like, I could teach you such spells." I looked up at the cloaked figure and his smiling black muzzle with unbridled eagerness.

"And the counter-spell?" He cocked his head. "My sister ate the apple, too."

"Ah, of course." His smokey magic pulled another black cloud from further inside the house, like a homing beacon for the previously cast magic. There was a surprised noise from inside of the house, and as I pulled on my cloak I called back to my sister.

"I'm going out, Inky!" I closed the door and rushed to catch up to the mysterious stallion.

"I think," he began, "I'd like you to be my assistant. Or perhaps my apprentice. Yes, I like that one better." He turned his head to me. "What do you think?"

"Okay," I said. I didn't care much either way with the title, because both sounded suspiciously like jobs. We stopped at the house in the corner, and the mysterious stallion opened the gate with a spell that lit a previously invisible symbol with gray light. Once we reached the door, he repeated the spell again.

"Before anything else, I'd like you to help me prepare some special order potions I've not gotten to yet." He smiled as he threw back his hood. "Your lupine friends have caused quite a bit of trouble." Strangely enough, the unicorn was not a solid black color. There were white stripes across his black coat, or perhaps it was the other way around. "Have you not seen a zebra before," He asked, sensing my confusion.

"I saw one in a book once," I replied, "but never with a horn."

"Ah, yes. I'm a special case, you see. Both a unicorn and a zebra, I happen to be." He hung his cloak on a hat rack and gestured that I do the same. "Now, on to those orders."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Simply catch the ingredients in this bowl." He passed me a wide wooden bowl, which I took with my magic and held at the ready. He walked over to a work bench and began shining a silver basin. I took a moment to take in my surroundings; the floor was mainly empty and the house looked gutted of each wall that individualized the rooms, creating a wide open space in the middle of the house. Above this open space, what looked like hundreds of bottles hug from the rafters with their corks facing the floor. As I took in the strange sight, a cork came out of a wide, dusty pink bottle to my right.

I flung the wooden bowl beneath the bottle and watched as dried buds fell in.

"Rosebuds," the stallion commented without turning to look. Another, thinner bottle, this time glassy black, popped open as the rosebuds' cork popped back in. I threw the bowl under it with a proud smile.

"Blackberry leaves," he said, once again without looking at me. The bottle closed, and again another one opened with a pop. "Hawthorn," pop "Lemongrass," pop "Orange blossoms," pop "Tilia flowers," by then I could hear a smile in his voice, and I was laughing happily as the bowl swooped and flew through the room. The bottle of tilia flowers closed, and suddenly, two bottles on opposite sides of the room opened simultaneously. Pop-pop!

"Spearmint and Chamomile." My eyes widened as the finely ground leaves plummeted towards the floor. I dropped the bowl to the floor with a thud and focused on the separate streams of dried flora. The falling leaves arced upwards and moved through the air like serpents, undulating unsteadily towards the bowl. "Don't let them touch," he said urgently as the two floating groups of leaves threatened to touch. The two gently poured into their own separate piles in the bowl, and I let out a breathy and relieved laugh.

"What would have happened if they'd touched," I asked as he moved away from the reflective basin and towards the wooden bowl.

"Absolutely nothing, little one," he said with a touch of humor, "I gave the order to see it done." I huffed in mock annoyance. He placed the bowl on the workbench and began grinding the ingredients together. "These are ingredients to a simple tea that is made to help ponies sleep. It's not magic, but it is effective."

"Is there anything else I need to do?"

"Not at the moment. Although your enthusiasm is appreciated." There was a ringing noise, and the stallion looked out the window at the fence outside. "On second thought, perhaps you should find your way into a hiding place." I dove under the workbench and tucked my bright blonde mane and tail behind me.

The door opened to reveal Lemon Grass' father, Wheaty Fields. He had bags under his eyes, and he looked infinitely more worn than he did at his wife's funeral. The zebra stallion poured the ground up tea into a linen drawstring bag and gave it to Fields, who then pulled out a bag of corn from his saddlebag and placed it in front of the zebra. Fields then headed to the door, turning back only briefly to give a gruff 'thank you' and a nod of his head. Once he had gone, I climbed out from under the table.

"Some," the mysterious stallion said, "need sleep more than others." We stared solemnly at the door that Fields had left through until a cobweb from beneath the workbench fell over my nose and I sneezed. The zebra laughed. "Perhaps you could dust away all the cobwebs for today?" I nodded and set to work clearing away the dust and cobwebs from all the cluttered corners.

When the sky turned orange, the zebra gave me two ears of corn from the bag Wheaty had brought and a small bag of the tea. I ran home excitedly, my pay for the day hidden in the pockets of my cloak until I ran to my sister, smiling brightly.

"I have a job!"

AN: Yes, the tea recipe in this chapter is for actual tea. It's sleepytime tea, but I suspect it's copyrighted out the butt because on the box it literally says "made exclusively by celestial seasonings, inc." So sis, if you were wondering why I nabbed a box of tea from the kitchen and ran with it into our room, now you know. The things I do for you guys. :3