Never plan a scheme that requires luck to work.

Continuing her rounds and reading her book, Threads hummed to herself happily. She liked the old mystery novels from the dearly departed Red Herring. It was such a shame that he disappeared, mysteriously as he lived and wrote, never to finish his last 'Detective Dog' novel, 'The Falcon's Malteser', leaving the case of Ernest's murder unsolved. There were of course some Red Herring fans (called Red-heads) that claimed that Red Herring was writing under another name, Poison Pen, but Warm doubted that. She had read one of Mr Pen's works, and the adjectives 'predictable', 'cliche' and 'boring' came to mind. They weren't completely terrible, but she had high standards for a good mystery novel.

Like this one. It wasn't a Detective Dog one, but it was still tantalisingly suspenseful. 'I know what you did last Wednesday' featured a class reunion that is interrupted by a series of grizzly murders. Having no protagonist and being written entirely in third pony, the reader is left supremely confuzzled, never sure who the killer might be.

Warm stopped reading as she passed by this particular house though, and waved enthusiastically at its owner.

"Poppa Patchy-Patch! Hello, how are you this fine morning, evening, afternoon, day? Well? And I mean well as in opposite of sick, not well as in insisting an immediate answer. Or a device to draw ground water for that matter and to trap colts called Timmy. I am well, but not the Timmy-type of well. That would be very strange."

Posts : 644 Join date : 2012-04-26 Age : 36

Poppa Patches had been sitting in the rocking chair, placed on the terrace of his cottage. He had been mulling over a new Silvershoe Mystery-book, but the motive for murder - not to mention the murdering tool - was missing. Silvershoe was a detective and Poppa had been thinking of adding the detective a companion, maybe a lawyer, or a gardener, NO WAIT, a writer! Yes, a writer named Frostmane, or maybe a lawyer would be better, an elderly lawyer, maybe, the one defending lost cases.

Reaching for a notebook, his hooves touched nothing. Placing his glasses on his nose he noticed the notebook was missing - even if he was 100 percent sure he had placed in on the table next to a cup of coffee and his ink pen.
"Hrrrmmm." he grumbled, bending down and trying to spot the book, but then a bright voice interrupted his thoughts and exercise.

There it came, firing right towards him, it was one of the younger ponies of the village, somepony... what was she called? Glow Yarn? Hot Seams? Something like that. Poppa got up again, the movement accompanied by pops and snaps of his elderly spine.

Get off my lawn, was his first thought when meeting up with this pony, but then again, he could use a little help searching for the notebook. Surely somepony had stolen it while he had been nap- resting his eyes a little.
"I am not too well." he admitted, because there was no shame in that elderly mind of his. "I am not any kind of well. I losht shomething important of mine, propably shomepony shtole the thing. Shurely."

"Somepony stole the precious thing? And who's Shirley? Did she steal it like, eins, zwei, guten morgen?" Threads tilted her head in curiosity. "Didn't see anypony about when you were napping, so that must mean Shirley must be a master of disguise!" She looked around again. Then, pulling a textbook salute, she said. "Don't worry, sir. Shirley won't get far, unless she already has and then there's not much I can really do about that. Unless you got a time machine. Or drugs. But drugs are bad, so a time machine would be preferred greatly. I just need to get it over 80 miles an hour, and hopefully not make out with my dad. That would be icky."

Glancing about for the third time she asked, "So the precious thing. Was it your heart? Should we be looking in the hospitals for it? Is Shirley an extremely clever doctor and extracted it while you were having an afternoon snooze? How are you working if that's the case? Do you have two hearts? That means you do have a time machine, and all is well! Unless...it was your time machine that was stolen! Yes...this is bad though. That means it could be anywhere and Shirley could be anything. I might need a screwdriver."

Posts : 644 Join date : 2012-04-26 Age : 36

"I washn't napping, I merely reshted my eyesh a little." Poppa said, not quite sure who he was trying to prove about it. "And I losht my notebook. I can't remember shome thingsh without my notebook."
He bent again to check underneath the rocking chair, and as it was not there, he got up again - still cracking and popping.

Majority of Threads' speech went past by his ears, but he also wondered, who was this Shirley the younger pony kept on mentioning. His mind raced around the notebook, but he could not help but to think that Shirley would be a good name for Silvershoe's assistant. And maybe possible love interest? Yes, a lovely young lady, who would often get kidnapped. No wait, maybe preferably a cold-hearted femme fatale.
Now he only needed the book to write these musings down. He reached for the book and- DAGNABIT! It was still missing.

"I should check inside the houshe, sho that I know if shomething elshe ish misshing." he murmured, opening the front door and stepping inside. He stopped right inside, looking over his shoulder. "Er, come on in, if you want. Thish might take a while."

"Whatever you say, napper. Which makes me wonder; why do they call it 'kidnapping' shouldn't it be 'kid-stealing'? 'Kid-abducting'? Words are very awful sometimes, it takes a lot of effort to wrangle them, pin them to the floor, and tame. Like the word gossamer. I hate that word. It's so weirdly strange and not in a good way, making it like a cake that merely looks delicious but is not delicious. Those cakes are a lie. The cake is a spy. The cake is a pie. I like pies. I like pi, too, 3.1416..."

Reciting the numbers up to a point, and then spouting random numbers afterwards, Threads entered the house.

"..34999999 and so on. What does the notebook look like? Any distinguishing features? Colour? Thickness? Hobbies? It all can be important..."

Posts : 644 Join date : 2012-04-26 Age : 36

"The notebook ish about an inch thick, it hash hard, dark gray coversh." Poppa said, while entering the small kitchen, where things seemed to be in order. He ambled towards the livingroom, which as well was in order.

Surely no one had gone to the basement study, he wondered. That room had a locked door and no windows big enough to fit a pony thief. But as there now was a visitor in the cottage, he could not really go and check, because all of his equipment and scripts were out in the open. Poppa seemed very worried of his secret, even if he was not a mad murdering pony, like some of those horror stories he had read last week. He merely did not like to shout out that he enjoyed writing. Not to mention the crazies out there seeking his address to 'discuss' his writing. They blatantly wanted to give him ideas he did not need.

Her gaze waltzed over the desks, shelves and walls, accompanied by Threads' humming. Old books, dusty portraits, abandoned sheets of paper, but no dark grey notebook.

"Motor cars, handlesbars, bicycles for two, doo-doo doo doo jamboree..." she sang softly, before asking, "Does it help, writing down your memories? Can thoughts and feelings really be marked in 26 symbols? I should think that it's like casting shadows on a cavern's wall, and everything becomes deformed duck-rabbits that become one or the other when you open the box and check the cat. I can't even express my thoughts to the present much less the future, and memory itself is a very fickle thing remembering thing that haven't actually happen."

Trying a random door, she revealed a dark descending staircase. "Oh! What's this?"

Posts : 644 Join date : 2012-04-26 Age : 36

Threads' rambling thoughts and the question stirred the elder up from the floor, as he had been searching from underneath the furniture.

"It helpsh," he said with a low tone of voice as the mare asked about writing down memories and feelings. He had some time ago read about these kinds of things, to study for a deeper character profile. "Though shome poniesh, don't know how many, might feel the difficulty of deshcribing their feelingsh to others. Thish ish called alexithymia."

How ironic. He could not remember where his precious notebook was, but he remembered a silly tidbit he had read from a dusty papersheet some weeks ago. Then his train of thought got interrupted again, as the guest and helper found the staircase to the basement, which Poppa - at times - called his 'shecret lair'.

"There ish just the ... bashement", he muttered, not willing to go down there right now, "Nothing important there."
Actually, the only rooms to search trough where the basement and the sleeping room, so it narrowed down the possibilities of finding the notebook.

"Ehh... Don't feel like seeing where you sleep. It'd be weird seeing where you sleep and dream. You can look there. I'll descend into a deeper level. The descent of pony, where rabbits are our cousins and frogs are our fathers. Entrance into the everfree! Not to say that your basement is like a forest, but how would I know? It could be!"

As she chattered, Threads tread down the stairs. "A forest in a basement, that'd be strangely nice, it would need light, though, what if you put in artificial light? That could be like the coolest garden ever! Underground, but with the light with the intensity of the sun. Speaking of light, let there be light. Light, light, light... Voila."

Blinking rapidly to adjust her vision, Threads did her usual habit of looking around curiously. And there was a lot to look at.

"Patchy-patch? Is this your basement? 'Cause...all this looks...important..."

Narrowing her eyes at the writing desk, she trotted over and started reading the sheets ontop.

Posts : 644 Join date : 2012-04-26 Age : 36

Behind his guest's back, Poppa Patches smacked his face with his hoof. He would not have minded the mare invading the kitchen, the bedroom, anyother room, even the bathroom... But Threads had found his 'shecret lair' just a moment ago. He rolled his eyes in defeat, ears flopping a little more than usual. The secret was out and now propably the information would leak and the crazed ponies would come and try to give him suggestions he did not need.

"It ish the bashement." he admitted to Threads, following the mare downstairs. "Alsho a shtudy." As Threads was taking a good look at the papers on his desk, Patches slammed his hooves on the top of the papers. "And thish ish not any of your concern."
He piled the papers - all memorynotes, last pages of his last chapter, studies from another investigation - in one pile and looked for a place to hide them from the curious, bright eyes. Then he noticed the covered typewriter, which itself was too big to be hidden.

"You should really tidy your workplace, y'know?" Threads beamed, "No wonder you lose stuff and leave it all over the place and forget where you put it. And it's no good putting it all in one pile, either." She motioned to the stack that the elderly pony had just constructed. "You have to sort the lump into ordered sections, apples with apples, oranges with oranges, instead of dumping it all with the tomatoes. Toh-may-toh. Toh-mah-toh? Po-tah-toh? Let's call the whole thing off."

She sniffed. "It really is dusty down here. Dark too. The dark side may be good for cookies, but it's not really good for prolonged work. I have a window." She held out her hooves, motioning a square-ish shape. "It is a nice window. And a magnifying glass for the details. It is quiet here, though...so that kind of helps? Wouldn't be nice if you were claustrophobic, though, too enclosed. One can feel trapped by secrets and lies and everything a basement represents. Memories, too. That must be why dungeons are underground. There's no better place for a prison of despair and melancholy. Regret, too. So much regret and...shame? Perhaps so. But it's not exactly a place to make stuff out of love and care. You shouldn't be if you don't like what you are. You should change."

At these words, she nodded, as though she had declared some great conclusion. "Well the book wasn't lost in the forest of papers made from a forest of trees. A strange reincarnation of a group. Do plants even fit into the karmic cycle? Reincarnation doesn't make any sense. You don't have the same body, you don't have the same mind, how can you say that it's still you? If a tree falls in a forest, but no pony's around, did it actually fall? Let's collapse the wave and look in your bedroom Poison-Patch, but if your book isn't there, we may have an invisible time travelling thief on our hooves. That's also invisible. That plays chess, because checkers are stupid. Both kinds."

Posts : 644 Join date : 2012-04-26 Age : 36

Now, who was this pony, giving him advice like that. It was like a chick trying to teach a hen to lay eggs. Poppa Patches clutched the papers against his chest, like they were a proper and well fortified shield against Threads.
"I rather like to think of thish room ash a nesht, thank you." he muttered, holding the papers with one hoof and pointing to the door with the other.
"And now, out. Pleashe."
His voice was even and trying to be calm by all means, though there was a little vibration beneath the steadiness.

Clearly, the mare had figured out his little hobby, but that still was the least of his worries. The notebook was still missing, and even if Threads assumed Poppa lost things - which was an absurd idea, he did not forget things ... not that he could remember ever doing so - Poppa himself thought someone had taken it. Even if it was an invisible thief of time, it did not matter. Patches was ready to hunt the notebook down if it was needed.

Threads tilted her head, then pulled off a textbook salute before bouncing up the stairs.

"That means only your bedroom is left, Pa-pa-pa-patchwork Pops! We'll find the forgotten file or notebook if it's there, so if it isn't then we might be in trouble, if it's not in your messy dungeon dump nest that only a grandfather could love."

Dancing through the rooms, until something resembling a bedroom was found, and it was there that Threads saw a dark grey notebook; three centimetres thick. Levitating it open to her, she called, "Here it is! Your lost notebook of lostness. Of lost memories and thoughts and places and ponies, that may have changed forever by now; sometimes not for better."
Scanning it briefly, she snapped it shut. It would not be nice to look through ones memories. They were for Patches to share only if he wanted to. "Patchwork Pen! Your book wasn't stolen by Shirley the time travelling thief from a desolate family with five mouths to feed!"

Posts : 644 Join date : 2012-04-26 Age : 36

Poppa Patches sighed and placed a messy pile back on his working desk, then exiting the room after Warm Threads. This time, he closed the door, so it would not be too inviting - but maybe it just became more intriguing... It seemed that he was damned if he did and damned if he did not. Shrugging, he decided the incident be, since it was not point to cry over a spilled milk anymore. Threads knew, and Poppa had no idea, how to keep this a secret anymore.

"I would appreciate it, if you ushed my own name, when shpeaking to me. To you, I am Poppa Patchesh, or Patch, or Popsh, and nothing of Poishon or Pen." he said, then gasping in surprise as Threads announced that the notebook had been found.

"Where wash it? How did it--? I'm sure I did not--?" he blubbed out, too confused to finish his questions.

"Your bedside table," Warm Threads replied, waving the book around, "This is why you should be tidy, Poppa Patchesh, or Patch, or Popsh, and nothing of Poishon or Pen." She frowned, as if the back of her mind was trying its damnedest to tell her something that she had missed. "It happens to the best of us, and I am hardly the best, I'm not even close. My thoughts are cluttered and messy enough and I try to be neat in everything else to make up for it. But I digress, as usual, here is your notebook of losty wosty thingies. Hey, Patchouli, are you a mystery novel fan? Have you read Red Herring's work? Classics with no equal, they were. The great Detective Dog would have caught any time traveling thief with nothing but logic and hard work, I reckon. But fortunately, we don't need 1000 pages to solve this mystery, no sir! You just forgot you put it on your bedside table, is all, Patchy-patch. No great murder, no grand scheme, just good old forgetfulness. Esnessess. More boring than a Poison Pen novel really..."

At last, Threads' subconscious screamed in her forebrain's metaphorical face, before punching it and retreating to the darker depths of Thread's mind.

"Is that why you don't want to be called Poison Pen? So that you're not confused with that dull author? Understandable, understandable..."

In the darker depths of her mind, Thread's subconscious facepalmed. Metaphorically.

Posts : 644 Join date : 2012-04-26 Age : 36

Poppa snatched the book off from Threads' hooves and placed it protectively against his chest, like a school-aged filly would do to their diary. He was extremely relieved now that the book was found, but at the same time, he noticed he did not quite like the direction where the conversation was going.
"I don't forget thingsh." he said, his voice shaking with uncertainty about the matter. What if he did forget things? It was nothing to be ashamed of, really, but... Poppa hated to admit that he was not on his prime anymore - shattered mind only brought this fact up.

His train of thought got disturbed as Warm Threads went on with her usual chatter and Poppa managed to pick up some things. Then he tried to concentrate on the things he had thought earlier on about the character for the next mystery novel. But as usual, the idea had been long gone from his mind. So, now he only needed to concentrate on this unexpected visitor.

To him, it seemed that Warm Threads was confused with the whole ordeal of Poison Pen, while Poppa had thought that she was on the trail already. This made the elder confused too, as Threads asked why he did not want to be associated with the name.
"...Becaushe I am not Poishon Pen...?" he said, his tone getting a questioning hue, like he needed Threads to confirm this fact. And did the mare just call Poison Pen dull? "Uh-uh, why you think Poishon Pen ish dull?" he then proceeded to ask.

"Because his stories are," Threads said simply, "His stories are boring because his characters are boring, his mysteries are boring, as if they are just going through the motions. As if there was a checklist and Pen of Poison just decided to check off the common crime cliches. I mean, what next, a sidekick to ask questions? Blech. You need to be unique! Have your own style! Show something old in a new light! Take the road less traveled, or failing that, take the road more travelled in a way nopony else has done it! On a unicycle, for instance. You don't win points by simply checking the common tropes! You win points by winning points! Even something utterly mundane can win points if you present it right. When Pen doesn't. He presents it the way all the other mystery writers, except not as well because it's not his style."

Threads shrugged. "Anyways, the book has been found, and I'm sure you want to kick me out of your house cause I'm me and I'm already getting on your nerves and synapses. Tap-dancing on your myelin sheaths. So please kick me out verbally because that hurts less than being kicked out physically and you know what I'll be leaving."

She started walking towards the door.

Posts : 644 Join date : 2012-04-26 Age : 36

Poppa was pretty much stunned at the unexpected critique - though at least he had learned to take some at his age. But even so, it made him feel a little like getting huffy. A rosy tint crept on his flat cheeks, not a sign of positive feelings, but negative. Anyway, he made a mental note to write some comments down as they had come to him and brainstorm over some - eeeugh - better plotpoints.

Poppa tried to smile, even if it made him look like a sick pumpkin, as he said,
"Thanksh for the help. I shupposhe I wash foolishh to believe my notebook wash shtolen." He adjusted his small glasses on his nosebridge and coughed solemnly.
"You sheem to know where the door ish. Want me to shee you out?"

"If you wish, Patchwork," Threads smiled, "If you wish."

As she walked through the front door, she stopped and said, "And I do mean it about the 'find your own style', Patchy. I'm sure you've got enough firing cells in the old skull to stand on your own. Like the bit about, what was it? Alexithymia? Yeah, I'm not sure if I'm being confusing at the moment. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. But I hope you understand. I better be going."

She bounded off, waving at the old author behind her, "Toodaloo, P-p-p-poker Patch and Pen! I'll see you around!"

Posts : 644 Join date : 2012-04-26 Age : 36

Well, this visitor had certainly baffled the elderly unicorn. Poppa clutched the notebook against his bony chest, scratching the back of his head, trying to wrap his mind around all the things happening. He was pretty much confused about Warm Threads and if she did now know that Poppa wrote under an alias of Poison Pen or not. Watching the female leave, he finally closed the door and wrapped himself to the comfort of the silence of his home.

"I better write thish down." he muttered to himself, then leaving to the basement to take a good smoke and maybe write down some notes about a new character - a character that was a confusing mare with a nosy attitude and fondness to the sound of their own voice.

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