The barren landscape flashed by behind the windows of the train car. Blue sky and yellow earth were only sometimes speckled with spots of other colors: a cloud, a cactus, a lonely shack or a vulture.


Pinkie sat on a bench holding a dark wooden box in her hooves and staring at it. The polished sides were covered with interlocking brass circles with strange symbols etched in. Every few minutes they ticked all together and changed their configuration.


Pinkie raised the box and gave it a shake yet nothing could be heard, neither the mechanism moving the circles nor any other hint about the content. She sighed and put it down on the seat beside her.


The mare put a hoof in her mane and rummaged briefly before pulling out a clock. She looked at it, moved her lips and put it away again. She tapped the hoof on the bench for about five minutes glaring every now and then to her saddlebags.


Pinkie said, “Time’s up.” She leaned to her bags and pulled out a thick scroll bound with a simple yarn. She fumbled with the node, then pulled at it with her teeth. With a snap the yarn broke and the scroll unfurled.




Dear Pinkie,

I’m sorry I had to extort all those promises from you, but you’ll have to to think about them when you read this and I know how scatter. I gave you a very precious thing and a very important mission and despite all the stuff I sometimes say I trust you to do the right thing.


What you hold in your hooves is my heart. It’s inside the box. Don’t try to open it, it’s useless and I don’t think even the Princesses could crack it. Don’t waste your time.


I probably owe you a story on why you are bringing it in the middle of nowhere and on why it’s important. You’ll get it, I always pay my debts.


You know that I looked for Matilda for so many years before I finally found her. That was one of the best days of my life right along the day she married this old fool or when she accepted my proposal or when. At the end all these good days seem to have happened in the last years. It was a good time. I looked for her for a very long time, I traveled through all of Equestria and even far outside of it. I’ve seen so many things and at the end only she was important.


Anyway I had been traveling for some years when I began to lose hope to ever find her. I was in a inn in Baltimare drowning my sorrow in some stuff brewed in a bathtub when I heard the story for the first time. Sailors always tell stories, half of them are simple bragging and the other half come from salt caking their brain. That day I was down enough to grab at every possible chance, no matter how thin, and so I listened to this story about an Artisan living in some port in the south who was making the most impossible compasses and sextants. They told me that each of her creations was unique, it would work only for the pony commissioning it and help her find the thing she desired the most. Or that was the gist of it. One sailor said that it would take your soul as a payment, the other that eternal ruin would follow and a third one that she only build things for heroes. As far as I remember the discussion ended in a brawl of some sort and I woke up the next day in a cell.


At that time I ignored the story, but the idea was planted in my brain. And after a while, as I heard that story or a similar one again and again and as my hopes were squashed, I began to pay attention.


Details changed. Sometimes it was a griffon or a zebra or a minotaur. Half the time the Artisan was a male, and I heard it stayed in a palace or in a bog or in a shop in the depths of a labyrinth of alleys and houses. But a few important things were always there. The instruments would guide you to your heart's desire and you could find the Artisan in or near a port in the south beyond the Dragon’s lands, on the border of the desert.


I left Equestria to look for her. It took me almost five years.


That time hasn’t been easy. I know you and your friends have seen your share of danger and adventures, but it was a different thing. I drifted alone, never staying longer than necessary, never allowing anyone to really come near me. I grew bitter. It was far worse than when you welcomed me in Ponyville.


As I reached the Middle-Sea I


Matilda opened her eyes for a few minutes. I’m not sure if she saw me, but I think she felt I was there. When I finish this letter I’ll have to leave her side to bring it and the box to you, and then I’ll be back here. I hope I’ll have the strength to do it. I’m sorry again to have to ask this to you, but I can’t go away from here.


Back to the story then. I’ve seen a lot during those five years. The world is far bigger and weirder than ponies give it credit for. Equestria is a beautiful land, but it’s only one among so many others. When you return to Ponyville go to my home. I’ve written my memoirs down, you’ll like them. Matilda convinced me to do it. She said it would be a waste if only the two of us would ever know them.


I followed a thread through half the Middle-Sea. It’s a place full of islands and small reigns and republics and cities. You can’t throw a stone without it passing over at least two nations that for some stupid reason can’t stand each other. But in every port the story became more solid, the leads more concrete.


In a small village I finally found a griffon that had one of the instruments. As I arrived to his home, a small white house on a cliff overlooking the sea, he was wary of me. It took me a lot of screaming, angry hoof shaking, cursing and two bottles of tsikoudia to have him talk to me. And then we talked a lot, all the night until the morning. It was the first time in years I told some stranger my whole story and he told me his. When dawn broke he showed me the sextant that, according to him, had led him exactly to what he wanted. What that was is one of the few details he never revealed to me, but he said that what I wanted was right and that I deserved to find it. He also told me that there would be a price to pay, and that the most difficult part would be to convince the Artisan.


When I left I had a destination and, I like to think, a friend.


Two months later I arrived to Kabreesh. It’s a strange city, one of a kind you could never find in Equestria. They call it the Gate to the Desert and half the world passes through it. It is large, noisy, smelly and a boiling cauldron of every species that walks, flies or crawls on this world. It is also a city that works in equal parts with gold and favors and I had neither of them.


There I


The memories of that place are not pretty. I ended up doing favors to certain powers in the city, and in exchange could visit the Artisan. As I

The city at that time

When I arrived I

Matilda called out to me. She swings between wake and slumber. I think she knows and is trying to be by my side even now. I would give everything to give her more time, but it is beyond my grasp. The only thing I can do is being here for her. The moments when she's with me become shorter. I only want

In Kabreesh I made a few friends. It took me more than ten years to understand it, but better late than never. While my time in the city was complicated and not a tale I should tell to fillies it also brought me to meet some very special individuals. There was the Captain, Peddler, Venom Vice and lastly the King of Rats. You would have liked the king. I tried to strangle him, twice. I had to What we did was important in the end. At the time I didn’t care.


Matilda woke up again, we talked a bit. I still can’t believe she stayed with me at the end. The doctor also said something about how they don’t know how much longer she will stay with us. I didn’t listen to anything else he babbled about. It wasn’t important, I know more than he anyway.


When I knocked at the small shop hidden in some of the low quarters of Kabreesh where the sun rarely shines I was with the King. He had insisted to be with me. I thought it was because annoying me entertained him, but I was wrong. The hardest part would have been to convince the Artisan, he was there to help me. As I said, it took me a long time to understand.


There are many places in this world where things we can’t understand dwell. Some are evil, some are nice and some simply don’t care for those labels. They come from the hidden lands between civilizations, from the jungles and the deserts, from the depth of earth or from the far mountains. Most of the time they don’t bother us, and when they do they play their own games.


The Artisan was one of the few that found us interesting as beings and not simply as toys. I have a very vague memory of what she looked like. I think she was a donkey, but somehow I doubt it. The King talked with her for a long time, and then she talked to me and said that my search was pathetic and that Matilda wasn’t worth the effort.


I told her what I thought of her opinion. It took me a while, it wasn’t pretty, you won't find it written down anywhere and at the end I had to catch my breath. Apparently it was the right thing to do.


And that brings us to the box. The symbols and the rings you see would guide me along the path to my love. I had to learn to read them, the road was rarely straight and at the end I feared that the Artisan had tricked me, but it worked. I have no idea if I would have found Matilda even without the box, but I don’t dwell on the past and on what could have been.


The price I had to pay was my heart. As she told me so I didn’t need to think about it, I accepted. I still think it was pretty cheap. The Artisan ripped it out from me and put it in the box and there it continued to beat. It would do so as long as Matilda’s heart would beat and up to that point it would always lead me to her. The box would even show me when I had a single day left.


I don’t know much about magic, never learned more than what was necessary to avoid it, but even I recognize that this is some pretty impressive piece of spellwork. And this spell will dissolve when my heart stops beating.


An empty heart is something terrible, Pinkie. I have seen it and I have felt it. It may seem something ponies say because they want to be deep or wise, but it is true. And the moment my Matilda will leave this world I know my heart will be emptier than the head of that empty.


The Artisan warned me that how the spell dissolves will be dependent on the content of the box, and this is the reason why you have to bring it so far away from where it could do any damage.


I feel pretty bad about asking you this. You are like I would have loved to have you at my side at the end. We didn’t always see eye to eye and you can be quite a hoofful for an old donkey, but you are a good kid. Matilda liked you, and if we don’t count that she married me then she is a good judge of character. With you she has always been right, and that’s why I gave you the box.


When you’ll come back we won’t be here anymore. I don’t know what waits for us on the other side, but we will be there together.


I leave you with my love and my stories, they represent my whole life and they belong to you.


Cranky Doodle Donkey

---

Pinkie sat down in the long shadow of the great rock. The sun was setting and small critters began to come out from their dwellings. She looked at the distant hill where the heart of a donkey stood inside a magical wooden box. The land around it was barren and devoid of life. She had been extra-careful in making the biggest possible racket to send away any snakes or mousies or scorpions hiding there. She had felt silly doing it but she had promised it.


There was a brief rumble, then a blinding light flashed on the hill. Pinkie covered her eyes and looked away. A wall of dust and sand racing from the hill hit her and almost threw her against the rock.


As the wind calmed down Pinkie rose and shook herself free of the sand. She patted her coat down and cantered to the hill.


When she arrived she looked up at the ancient fig tree that had appeared where the box had been, at the somewhat sparse foliage and at the big, ripe fruits. Tears dropped on the thick roots as she smiled and said with a broken voice, “An empty heart… what a silly old donkey.”