Strings of Fate

Chapter 6: Trouble at the Market

The next morning, Tempest woke up and put her cloak on. She met Twilight at the door to the castle, who was waiting with Spike. Her little dragon had a fairly long scroll in his claws, along with a quill with which he was writing items onto it.

"Good morning, Twilight." Tempest greeted the princess as she trotted up.

"Good morning." Twilight replied with a smile, "You feeling better?"

"A little bit, yeah." Tempest lied. She hardly slept at all last night because of her worries, but she managed to sneak a few hours in before she had to wake up.

"That's good." Twilight didn't seem to notice that she was lying, "We're just going over our list before we headed out to the market. Do you need anything?"

You. Tempest heart jumped when she realized what she thought. "Uh, I don't think so." Tempest tried to keep her voice in line.

"Okay." Twilight looked over Spike shoulder at the list.

"We need tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, and we're running low on asparagus, so we need to grab some of that as well." Spike read off the list he had in front of him. "We can also stop by Sugarcube Corner for some muffins, or cupcakes if we wanted to."

"Good idea, Spike." Twilight nodded, and Spike wrote those items down on the list. "I'm also running out of extra quills and pencils for when students lose theirs. I could also grab some for my friends' classrooms, as well."

Spike also added those items to the list.

"All right. It looks like we're all ready, so let's go!" Twilight opened the doors, flooding the entrance with light from the morning sun.

The walk to the market wasn't a lot, but since Twilight's castle is placed a little bit outside of town, it was probably a good 5 minutes or so before they reached it. There were stands set up for every fruit and vegetable around, as well as balloons, posters, and a stand for stationary items.

Tempest took it all in. It wasn't anything like the markets in Canterlot that she went to as a filly, but it was still nice and quaint for a town of this size. Everyone seemed to know each other pretty well, by the looks of it.

Everytime someone would wave or say good morning to Twilight, they would take one look at Tempest and run past her, or just stop and glare at her.

By the time they had bought the cucumbers, Tempest couldn't shake the feeling that these ponies were definitely not happy with the fact that she was here, walking around, without any guards or chains on her.

"Ooo, the asparagus stand is right over there." Twilight exclaimed. Tempest followed her up to the stand, and once they were up there, she tapped on Twilight's shoulder.

"Uh, Twilight, I've got a bad feeling about this." Tempest motioned her to turn around, as there were a few ponies starting to gather around the stand. None of them looked happy.

Twlight didn't even turn around. "Oh, Tempest." She waved off Tempest's concern, "Stop being such a worry worm."

At this point, the crowd surrounding the stand had doubled in size, and a good thirty ponies now had their eyes set on Tempest. Her worry grew.

Tempest tapped Twilight's shoulder again, and this time Twilight turned around, but somehow didn't notice the crowd of ponies. She looked straight at Tempest in the eyes.

"Honestly, Tempest. What could go wrong?"

Tempest caught the faint sound of fast moving air and quickly backed away. Twilight did the same as a small shout escaped from her mouth. A tomato flew inches away from both of their muzzles.