“What happened to the rest of her name?”

“We couldn't fit it all in.”

“You can't hang a banner that says 'Welcome Princess [i]Celest[/i]'. Take it down and try again.”

Twilight Sparkle trotted off without another word.

“She could have said [i]something[/i] nice about it,” said Berry Punch. “It was really pretty the way you drew the dot above the i in the shape of a heart, and we put all that work into mixing the paint. Now she wants us to start over.”

“I think she has some sort of disorder,” said Golden Harvest.

But Twilight Sparkle was Princess Celestia's personal student. So they had to do what she asked.

[hr]

They got to the market just as the party supplies vendor was packing up.

“Sorry girls,” he said. “All out of banners.”

“But we need to redo our banner to welcome Princess Celestia tomorrow,” said Golden Harvest.

“All sold out I'm afraid. Tell you what—I'll get a new roll in tomorrow. I'll drop it off at your farm first thing then you'll still have time to paint it before the princess arrives.”

[hr]

Next day the two ponies stood in Golden Harvest's barn in front of a blank sheet of canvas. Berry Punch held a paint brush in her mouth, dipped it in a tin of pink paint, with just a little glitter, and carefully painted the letters. She had nearly finished when she dropped the paintbrush and stomped a hoof with frustration.

“It happened again,” she wailed. “We ran out of space.”

They looked at the banner reading 'Welcome Princess Celesti'.

“It's difficult,” said Golden Harvest. “It's so unfair. Twilight doesn't understand. We have to fit in all those letters, and when you start writing, you don't know exactly where it will end.”

“We've still got some more canvas. Let's try again.”

“Suppose we start writing on the right hoof side?”

“Then we'd run out of space at the left. And we would have to spell it backwards.

While they were pondering the problem, the barn door burst open and Pinkie Pie burst in spinning her hooves like cartwheels.

“Golden Harvest! Berry Punch! Quick—it's an emergency—do you know where I can find a banjo?”

“We're kind of busy right now Pinkie.”

“Me too. And can you help me get a tambourine, cymbals, triangle, tubular bells and a bass drum?”

“Pinkie—”

Berry Punch took a step back to dodge the spinning pink hooves, and put her hind leg into the tin of paint.

“Oh—buck it!”

Pinkie Pie rushed out of the barn. Golden Harvest wiped the paint off Berry's hoof. A moment later Pinkie dashed back for a final word.

“You know if you write your message [i]before[/i] you cut your canvas to size, you can make sure it fits.”

“Oh... Yeah... That makes more sense.”

[hr]

They cantered out of the farm and towards Ponyville carrying their banner. After finishing the artwork, they had left the paint to dry and trotted into the town, to find it was being invaded by a swarm of colorful insects. But Twilight Sparkle obviously knew what to do, and was taking charge, so they left her to deal with it and went back to collect the banner.

Outside of the town they ran into Twilight and friends.

“Twilight. We did it. See. We managed to fit it all in.”

The two mares proudly stretched out their banner for everypony to see.

“That's—ah—very nice,” said Rarity. “But I'm afraid the princess has just left. There's been a little—ah—incident.”

They looked crestfallen.

“It's very pretty,” said Fluttershy. “I like the way you drew the dot above the i in the shape of a heart. You can keep it for when the princess next comes to visit.”

Twilight took a more skeptical look.

“Except you spelt welcome with two Ls.”