[SP] A Gift for Growing, a Gift for Knowing [Attn: Hippo]

[Windwright]

T'was the night of Hearths' Warming and somewhere in the castle,
A pony was waiting, bearing a parcel.
The guests in the main hall were dancing with glee,
But Windwright the alchemist whistled merrily.
She sought for a pony who she'd been assigned,
"Bring her a present, with kindness in mind."
And as it turned out, the mare had interest,
In one of the subjects that Windy knew best.
She'd sent off a letter as soon as she'd learned,
And called in a favor that she had once earned.
She'd wrapped what came back with a festive glow,
Shining green paper, with a red tinsel bow.
And then on this night of Hearths' Warming Eve,
She flagged down a guard assigned to retrieve.
So now she was waiting for Granola to arrive,
To receive her Secret Princess gift and jive.

[Hippo]

Though the evening was calm and the wind had died down,
Granola had found herself running late into town.
For a mare, often a hermit, made sure she would be there,
to the Ponyville hearth's warming that ponies would share.
The earth pony was distracted by the typical frets,
of social anxiety and feeding her pets.
But once she finished the daily jobs she intended,
she put on her coat and trotted towards the ponies she friended.
She walked into the castle, with bag and plants on haunch,
to see all the guests dancing, and talking, and punch.
A few waves to some strangers and good tidings to close steeds,
and then placed her gift plants down and away from any potential stampedes.

 

 

Nola looked around at the ponies who seemed to be overseeing the conditions of the event. "I'll just place these right here, and whoever can just placed them wherever. Poinsettias for the castle." Granola wanted to introduce herself to everypony, but the curiosity of her tongue always took priority. She trotted over to the punch bowl and poured herself a cup.

[Windwright]

It was time. Windwright's Secret Princess spy guardsmare came to inform her that Granola had been spotted in the castle. Windy trotted along behind the guard as she was led to the ballroom and pointed to the punch. The alchemist wove her way through the crowd and all but materialized just behind her target, saying "Miss Granola Gracie? Happy Hearthswarming! My name's Windwright, and I was told this was something you might want."

She offered out her mystery parcel, a bit over a foot long, three-quarters that wide, and a good hoof's-width thick, out to Nola with the bow twinkling in the light.

[Hippo]

 

Granola was only slightly startled and was able to keep her mouthful of punch from spewing out of her muzzle. She widened her eyes with surprise. Clearing her mouth of her beverage, she set down her cup and immediately began inspecting the gift. She took it with both hooves and could immediately tell it was probably some kind of book, as the shape and weight were consistent with what one would expect. "Oh my gosh! It feels kind of nice getting something out of nowhere. I like this Secret Princess thing! Heheh." She knew it was probably coming tonight during the party, but because of the mystery of it all, she thought it would be best to place expectations low.

 

Granola carefully took off the bow and wrapping around the book and revealed it to herself. It was a book with a sophisticated binding and cover. A reprint of Libram Arcana Botanicae. Granola gasped. She looked up at Windwright but without saying anything at first, started sifting through the pages of the book. Many of the pages were written in an old style Ponish, but several footnotes added more modern context. "Windwright! This is amazing. Where did you get this? I don't know that I understand all these terms and syntaxes, but you better believe I'm gonna learn! And the artwork in this thing is brilliant!" Diagrams on every other page gave Granola the confidence that this would help her in her experiences discovering rare flora and find evidence of long lost pony cultivars.

[Windwright]

Windwright grinned broadly and said, "One of my contacts in the AAAA put me in touch with their publisher, who's also working on translating a lot of the old treatises on alchemy, magic, and botany. Apparently the return of the Pillars was a shot in the foreleg for getting some of the more obscure passages and phrases done, and this little beauty is on the cutting edge of ancient lore. I'm actually thinking about picking up a copy myself to see if I can't take another crack at breeding a strain of mages' tears that's a little easier to harvest so my suppliers will consider not charging my left wing every time I start using it in my research. Not that I'll be holding my breath. Oh, and I left my calling card in the last pages, let me know if you need to borrow my old ponish thesaurus. I use Silverscroll's myself, the grammar primers in the appendices are worth their weight in bits."

 

She was glad she'd made a good guess on the nature of the gift, being in an adjacent field of study was often helpful but it was no substitute for actually knowing somecreature. "Anyway, yeah. The chapter on jungle cultivars is apparently causing a big splash in the industry, my contact was practically dancing to tell me about it in her return letter when I wrote to ask about good books. I'm guessing some of it is techniques we didn't know they knew, but from the sounds of it there's some promising new information too."