Dear Princess Celestia,
My list of places to look for Hortense when she manages to slip out from under my magical surveillance has been growing steadily smaller as the months go by. I used to check…
- the graveyard
- the mesopelagic region of Ponyville Lake in that contraption she calls a “diving bell”
- that big Hotel Monolith that showed up out of nowhere last year (I admit that one’s a genuine mystery)
- any of half a dozen derelict granola mines in the hills south of town
- that one creepy cave in Ghastly Gorge (the slime-free one, I won’t go back to the other)
- that old, locked-up police box on the corner of Stirrup Street (she takes naps in front of the door)
- Twilight Sparkle’s lab in the library cellar
…Now my first stop is always Ponyville Municipal Jail. I slip Sergeant Tin Star a couple of vouchers for free ice cream at Sugar Cube Corner to let me look at the register of inmates. If H.P. is on it, I fork over the bail money after three or four days of letting her stew in the slammer.
I know this work you have me doing is important for the safety and well-being of the realm, but isn’t there some kind of a three-strikes policy? The evidence locker is filling up with H.P.’s confiscated “eldritch” gear. You may want to send that other agent you mentioned to clean it out and move the whole lot to a more secure location.
By the way, can you please tell me his name? Not knowing who it is, I could easily mistake him for a counter-agent… and I don’t want to have a spell-duel in the town square over a misunderstanding that ends with ME in the clink.
Your obedient servant,
Autumn MarelethP.S. As Hortense’s “research assistant” I have seen an awful lot of queer goings on. Please include by return post my peril-sensitive sunglasses, which I left in the top drawer of my bureau.
