—Georg
(with editing assistance by The Music Man and Bad Horse)

From the Desk of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna:

TO: Cold Chisel de Rosewood, presently residing at the estate of Jet Set

RE: Patronage

BE IT ENACTED by the most Excellent Highnesses, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, Diarchs of Equestria, by and with the advice and consent of the Council of Advisers in this current Council assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

A sculpture shall be created for placement in the Royal Canterlot Gardens commemorating the bearers of the Elements of Harmony and their services to Equestria. A careful and extensive search has been made of all sculptors in Equestria, and the Honorable Cold Chisel has been selected to craft this sculpture in honor of these six heroes. It is our wish...

Cold Chisel scanned down the commission, skipping the flowery language until he finally came to the most important part: The Price. He mused for a while, resting his hooves in front of the fireplace while sipping a decent Merlot, with only the slightest of regrets to the plebeian local parentage of the otherwise excellent vintage. The middle-aged unicorn picked a fleck of lint from his well-brushed coat and leaned back in the recliner with a scowl to think.

His welcome at the estates of Canterlot’s elite was drawing swiftly to a close. The privilege of having the famous sculptor lounge around their expensive mansions and eat their kitchens bare had been a great social coup at first, but the invitations had slowly dwindled as the rich and famous had gotten to know him. With no wealthy patron willing to expend the funds necessary to support him in the manner to which he had become accustomed, he had been forced to reduce his expenditures to the bare necessities; hooficures were now only a weekly occurrence, and he had even begun to using a domestic shampoo on his majestic golden mane. Not to mention having sunk to dwelling at the estate of a detestable social climber who had actually earned his money instead of inheriting it like proper rich ponies.

“I should have never come to this dreary city merely for the lowly task of restoring a broken statue. And it was not even one of my better works!”

He took another sip, seriously considering pitching the accursed flowery scroll into the flames to watch it burn, until he rustled up against the rest of his morning mail. Bills, bills, bills, an overdue notice, and a note from the bank refusing to advance any more funds from his relatively weak stream of income. He tucked the scroll away and stuffed the rest of the mail viciously into the fire with a frustrated snarl. “Materialists!”

At least repairing that accursed statue for Princess Celestia had staved off his creditors for a few weeks. He gave a wry smile at the memory of the idiotic inspectors attempting to find a single flaw on the repaired statue in order to reduce his fee. His masterful repairs upon what the barbarian natives insisted on calling “Celestia the Peacemaker” were as perfect and seamless as his original majestic carving, even though the statue’s torso and several limbs had been shattered into dozens of pieces by a gang of vandals who had somehow forced their way into the Grand Galloping Gala.

His smile turned to a scowl as he considered the full forty or more detestable, locally created statues bearing similar names scattered across Canterlot Castle like rabbit pellets. They were but the work of untalented hicks and boobs with hammers. His would be the work that would span the ages.

The train that Cold Chisel took to Ponyville felt like a nightmare of wheezing and gasping ancient parts, ready to expire at any moment. As it pulled into the station, he felt amazed that it had survived all the way down from the mountains of Canterlot to the depressing little rural town where the bearers of the Elements of Harmony lived. It seemed such a plain place for them all to have gathered, when it would have only taken them a few hours to travel to Canterlot and live like heroes.

He shrugged at the thought and put it out of his mind. It really did not matter to him where they lived, only that he would be able to make a quick sketch of each of them for his commission. Before he stepped out of the train, he checked the placement of his favorite easel in his loaded saddlebags, each embroidered with the handsome chisel over a curved line that adorned his flanks. His prepaid ticket was secure within the bags, and he had no need for a jacket to cover his handsome granite-red coat on this pleasant day. Before nightfall, he would be back on the train and wiping the dust of this place from his hooves.

The morning sun shone warmly on Cold Chisel’s shoulders as he looked about the shabby town and sneered. No art galleries, no decent sculpture of any type, just cheap trinkets resembling candy hearts scattered all around the crude pan de bois architecture that looked like a disgusting melange of Europonian peasant hovels. A curl came to his lip as he glanced across the flammable thatch that was draped over the vast majority of the huts; civilized ponies at least had tile roofs. This barbarian outpost was less a town than a collection of tinder in desperate need of a match.

The conditions of the commission he had accepted twisted in his gut like a badly digested meal mixing with poor wine. As in any normal commission, his first upcoming payment was to fund the creation of a scale model concept statue, which would be presented to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Only after their approval, would funding for the final work begin. The indignity of the contract was the final disposition of the first scale model. No museum or estate of nobility was to house his excellent preliminary work. Instead, it would suffer the degrading fate of being dumped back into this cultureless town, much as casting pearls before swine. They would probably even display it by — he shuddered — putting it on a fountain.

Still, there was a certain rough charm about the town’s inhabitants. Not even in Canterlot was there such a difference between the numbers of mares and stallions. After a moment, he blinked in realization. He was the only stallion out on the street.

Vive la différence! Oh well, business before pleasure.

He sniffed as he examined a rather crude map adorning the walls of the dirty train station. After a few moments of searching, he located the first subject referenced on the commission’s “work order,” a supposedly culturally advanced unicorn named Rarity. With a toss of his head to throw back his golden mane in the morning sunlight, he trotted over to an airy and quaint structure called the Carousel Boutique.

“Ah. Bonjour, Mademoiselle Rarity de Ponyville. Je suis Cold Chisel—”

As he began to speak, an alabaster white unicorn mare gave a shrill, piercing shriek of joy from the middle of what could only be called a sea of cloth scraps. She clutched her hooves to her face before bounding at him so rapidly that a trail of loose threads and colored scraps flew behind her in a wake. For one moment, he was frozen between fleeing and diving for cover. She was indeed a beautiful mare, but the thought crossed his mind that perhaps he had entered some sort of asylum or hospital by mistake. Fortunately she skidded to a halt before impact, but then began babbling about his sculpture project in horribly-accented Fancy at such a rapid pace and with such bad grammar that he could only catch about one word in ten. If this was an example of the cultural height of the town, it was probable the rest of the wretched inhabitants would speak in nothing but grunts and pantomime.

As he set his easel up to make a preliminary charcoal sketch of the young, chattering mare, he finally snapped, “Young lady, please! Your accent is simply too thick for me to make any sense out of what you think you are saying. I am only here for a short while to make a few creative sketches for the piece. If I could just get your cooperation. Just... stand over there.” He looked again, and his bottom lip curled with disdain. “And remove that hat.”

“This hat?” She had not been wearing a hat when he entered the shop, but somehow she had acquired one before taking her place to pose. Rarity touched the hat nervously. “Really, I couldn’t.”

Cold Chisel placed charcoal to his paper and began to draw. “Just throw it somewhere in with the rest of the trash.”

“Trash?” A distasteful look crossed her otherwise beautiful face in the middle of a stroke. He scowled, and moved his charcoal to draw her flank, trying to capture the essence of her twisted tail.

“I don’t think you’re getting the tail right. It has more loops than that and more... swishy.” Cold Chisel looked up to see Rarity looking over his shoulder with a frown of disappointment.

“Ma’am, just go back over there and let me draw! And lose the skirt.”

“Moi? Well, I suppose.”

Chisel sighed and returned to his work, tracing the elegant lines of the dress that... dress? He looked up to see the unicorn wearing a full ball gown complete with yet another accursed hat. “Madam, I do not wish to draw your outfits, I wish to draw you! Now take that off!”

“You mean naked?”

“Madame!” he thundered. “You were not wearing anything when I came in here!”

“Well, yes. But a proper lady does not have herself sketched alone être à poil. Except... there were those few times in college, but that was for art, and I really needed the money. Well, I suppose.” The unicorn mare slipped behind a dressing screen while Cold Chisel wadded up his ruined drawing and threw it away.

“Now! Hold still. Look up to your left a bit. A little more. Now hold it.” Cold Chisel began sketching again, the charcoal fairly flying across the page.

“Do I really look that fat to you?”

He looked up. There was no Rarity. He looked around. There was still no Rarity.

He looked behind himself, and the white unicorn in question was leaning over his shoulder, examining the unfinished sketch as if she were a critic. There was a special place in Tartarus for all critics everywhere, particularly ones who criticized his unfinished works.

“Really, darling. I don’t think you have the flanks right, and the proportion of my legs is all wrong, plus you have my cutie mark drawn in dark icky charcoal where it should be a soft blue, and—”

“SIT!” Cold Chisel fumed and pointed until his reluctant subject returned to the pose. Then he picked up his charcoal and began to draw again, across the flanks, up the lace trail of the hat to her... hat? He looked up.

“LOSE THE HAT!” he bellowed in frustration.

“But I don’t think the light flows correctly across my face without—”

“Arrrgh!” He stood up and threw his easel back into his saddlebags. “Never mind!” With a snort of disgust, the sculptor stormed out of the boutique.

“I wonder if a scarf would be too much?” Rarity shook her head and returned to her work. The handsome artist’s visit had put her far behind schedule. There was so much to get done before this evening, and her friends were counting on her.

Cold Chisel stalked into the Ponyville Library and looked around with pleasant surprise. From the outside, he had expected the old hollow oak tree covered with windows and doors to contain nothing but old farming magazines and dusty books, but the well-lit inside seemed larger than the outside as well as considerably better stocked than he had expected. He ran a hoof across one shelf, admiring the meticulous way the books were all stacked together and sorted by genre, language, and author. But once his attention left the shelves, his opinion plunged.

The table in the middle of the library was covered with some of the worst sort of trash imaginable: commercial picture art books. Trashy chunks of borderline garbage, with dozens of tiny photographs of what passed for art in this blighted land, all glued together and sold to foolish socialites to adorn their coffee tables. The mere sight of them made him want to be messily sick.

“Spike?” sounded a soft and velvety voice from the middle of the room behind the pile of trashy books. “Is there somepony at the door? Spike?”

A cute purple unicorn with a striped mane popped her head out from behind her book fort and looked at Cold Chisel with a sudden embarrassed smile. “Oh, you must be Cold Chisel. You’re early! Or I’m late. Oh, no! The letter from the Princess said you would be coming to Ponyville to do some sketches, but she didn’t say when. I would have met you at the train station if I had known. See, I left a spot for ‘Meet sculptor at train station’, right under ‘Study up on art’ and ‘Wake Spike from nap’ on my checklist!” A faint snore filtered down from upstairs and Cold Chisel wondered briefly what a ‘Spike’ was before turning to the task at hoof.

“My time here is limited, Mademoiselle Twilight Sparkle. All I wish is to take a few preliminary sketches of the Element Bearers and return to Canterlot so I may produce a scale model of the final statue. If it pleases my patron, she will then advance me the funds necessary—”

“You mean they.” Twilight Sparkle blinked and waved a hoof. “I know it can be difficult to remember that we now have two Princesses since Luna was freed from the moon, but—”

“He, she, or it! I do not care!” Cold Chisel pulled his easel out of his saddlebag and slammed it down in the middle of the floor. “I must have a sketch so I may get the proper proportions on the statue. It is the only way—”

“If you need our measurements, I’m certain Rarity would be able to give them to you. She measured all of us for our outfits at the Grand Galloping Gala. I just know she would be happy to make you a copy.”

He fumed. “Madame Rarity is exceedingly busy with—”

“Voulez-vous dire ‘Mademoiselle Rarity’? I mean she’s not married, so the proper form of address is Mademoiselle instead of Madame. Did I say that correctly? I mean I’ve studied a lot in books, but—”

“Just hold still and look like you are doing something heroic, so I may make my sketch and depart!” He levitated out a fresh chunk of charcoal and began to draw across his paper with sure and strong strokes. This mare was an easy one to draw: straight mane, straight back, even curve on the tail, big eyes, levitated book... He abruptly stopped and looked up while wadding up his drawing. “Lose the book.”

“But I wanted to look up the grammar while I was just standing here. Maybe if I—”

“No! The Elements of Harmony are strong warriors! With the power of the Elements, they defeated Discord and Nightmare Moon. A book does not fit! Hold that pose and look up at that window over there.” He bent over his charcoal again, straight back, curved tail, straight mane, straight horn, eyes looking up... and down. He wadded up his drawing again and glared daggers at the young mare who was still trying to read the book she had placed on the floor.

“Miss Sparkle! Do not move this time! Just ignore the book and look out the window so I can get this done!” He picked up his charcoal again: back, legs, mane, tail, forelegs, forelegs, smile, forelegs, balloons, fore—

Cold Chisel looked up with a ferocious scowl at where the purple unicorn was talking energetically with a fluffy, pink earth pony. “Miss SPARKLE! Who, or what is that?!”

“Hi, I’m Pinkie Pie! I heard you were going to come here and do drawings of all of us so you could make a big rock that shows everypony how we are the Elements of Harmony and I thought gee we already have a big rock that Rarity brought back because she thought it was a diamond but it was just a rock and we already have one of those so I thought instead of a rock we could have candy which would be so cool and everypony would love it because everypony loves candy just like everybody loved Discord’s chocolate milk rain clouds but I guess not everypony but I did because they were yummy but he’s gone so all we have is regular chocolate milk now—”

Twilight Sparkle plugged the pink pony’s mouth with one hoof. “Maybe you could draw my friend and I at the same time?”

“NO!” snapped the sculptor with a snarl. “You! Stand over there and shut up! I will draw you next. You! Stand there and look out the window! And try to look like an Element!”

Cold Chisel picked up his charcoal again. Back, legs, mane, tail, fluffy mane, grin, horn—

He looked up again at where Pinkie Pie was posing over the purple unicorn’s flank and grinning. With a growl of frustration, he flung his easel back into his bags and stalked out of the library, ignoring Twilight Sparkle’s worried voice.

“Um. Mister Chisel? Are you coming back? Hello? Oh no.”

The brisk walk in the country air made Cold Chisel feel a little better and allowed him to cool his temper. Certainly there must be something in the water that made all the mares in that small town crazy. Perhaps the Elements of Harmony affected their minds in weird and untold ways. At least out here he could hear the birds chirping, the fish splashing, and the creatures chittering in the trees, all of which made him feel like he was back in his native Northern Prance. He followed the map to a small cottage with more bird feeders and nests than he had ever seen and knocked firmly on the door.

“Mademoiselle Fluttershy? It is I, Cold Chisel, here to take your sketch for the Princesses’ new statue.” He knocked again and frowned. There were some small rustling noises inside, but nopony was answering the door. It would be most embarrassing if he were to knock on the wrong door. The Element of Kindness was supposed to be a yellow pegasus, but this house did not look very pegasus-like, having stone and earth construction and a green turf roof. It almost had to be an earth pony house, but according to his instructions the only earth ponies he had to draw were the annoying pink one who lived in the town, and a rural landowner of an apple estate. He looked around, but the only apple orchard he could see was some distance away.

He knocked again, a little quieter this time. “Hello? Is this the house of Mademoiselle Fluttershy?”

This time there was a tiny little squeak, and the door opened just a crack. The only thing he could see from the doorway was a sliver of yellow and pink, interrupted by a beautiful teal eye that sent his heart racing as if he were a colt again.

“Bonjour. My name is Cold Chisel, and I have been selected to create a work of art suitable for the Royal Gardens honoring the Elements of Harmony. I have little time, so if I could get you to come out in the sun for a few minutes and hold still—” His voice dropped to a rumble. “And not have any pink ponies pop up—” Forcing a normal expression back on his face with a polite smile, he continued, “I can get a sketch done. Would that be acceptable to you, Mademoiselle?”

“T-t-today? D-d-d-draw me?” Her voice gave a little squeak at the end. “C-c-could I have Rarity w-with me p-please? For support? I-I didn’tknowyouwerecomingtodayandI’mnotready.”

The thought of the overdressed unicorn tightened the corners of his mouth as it reminded him of his detestable contract. It was always best to deal with reluctant models firmly, to show them just who was in control of any modeling session.

“No,” he commanded coldly. “She is otherwise occupied. Now hurry out here, my time is limited.”

“I’m r-r-really sorry. I j-just can’t come out.” The door even gave a timid click when closed, and all of his knocking and pleading did nothing to open it.

Cold Chisel fumed as he trotted along the road among the apple trees, trying his best to get a look through the trees for at least one of the Element bearers who could just hold still—

“Hi there!” The accursed perky pink pony bounced along beside him, matching his speed. “What ‘cha doin’?”

Chisel passed by several responses, at least one of which would have gotten him arrested, before settling on a somewhat strained polite, “Mademoiselle Pinkie Pie, I am looking for a pony named Applejack. She is supposedly a landowner of some sort. I would imagine she is out managing her estate somewhere about here. I’ve been looking for some of the p—” He quickly edited out the word ‘peasants’ “—onies around here that work on the farm to give me directions to where she resides, but I have not seen any.”

Pinkie Pie giggled as she continued to bounce along beside him. “That’s silly. The Apple family works all the time. I bet she’s in the south field with her big brother. Come on! You can draw us both!”

True to the pink pony’s word, there were three ponies working the south field: Large, Medium, and small. The large stallion bore a rich coat the hue and shade of expensive Aswan granite, and was of such a size such that it would take a great amount of work to carve his likeness, even as a scale model. The medium mare could easily be carved from less expensive cryptocrystalline quartz, cheaply dyed to match her rather unique shade of orange. The small one he ignored as there was no possibility she could be one of the Elements of Harmony.

Cold Chisel approached the sweaty medium-sized pony, but before he could say a word, Pinkie Pie jumped in with all four hooves.

“Hey Applejack! The sculptor who the Princess sent the letter about is here and he wants to draw pictures of us to make some big rock thingie but not like Tom more like one of those big statues that Rainbow Dash broke at the Gala when—”

“Pinkie! Can ya hush up a sec and let the poor guy talk?” Applejack gave a solid buck at the tree, and the sky rained apples around Cold Chisel. “Twilight said you were coming up this way sometime, but this here’s darned poor timing. We gotta finish bucking this whole field and get ‘em in the barn before the rain tonight. It’s gonna be a soaker. If’n you had told us afore you came up, we could’a worked something out, but I can’t come into town for yer sketch thingie now, we’re way behind here.”

With a subdued growl of resentment and a fake smile, the sculptor began to pull items out of his saddlebag. “I shall not take up much of your time then. Allow me to set my easel up, and I shall draw you here.”

Cold Chisel carefully backed up out of apple falling range, picked up his charcoal, and considered his subject. The mare’s hat bothered him, but after a moment of thought he decided not to make an issue out of it. The sun was already quite a bit farther along than he had anticipated, and the hat seemed more a part of the sweaty blonde mare than a simple accessory. It would make that part of the statue easier to carve anyway. He scowled and moved his easel to an unharvested tree as the mare had completed harvesting and moved while he was thinking. In one smooth motion, he raised his charcoal and touched it to his paper.

“What ’cha doin’?” In defiance of all natural laws, somehow the pink pony had popped up directly under his easel. The resulting startled jump smeared a huge streak black streak across Chisel’s paper, as well as bringing his temper dangerously close to a boil. He carefully pulled off the smudged front sheet of paper and wadded it up in silent contemplation of physical violence.

Then he had to move the easel because Applejack had finished with the nearby tree and moved onto the next. A flurry of rapid drawing allowed him to almost get an entire apple-marked flank drawn before Pinkie Pie descended unnoticed from a branch into his view. With a fierce scowl, he wadded up and threw away the drawing of either an Apple Pie or a Pinkeyjack, depending on which end you started at.

After nearly thirty minutes of failed freakish drawings criss-crossing the orchard in a long trail of wadded-up papers, he flung down his charcoal with a muttered curse.

Applejack paused in her apple-bucking to call back over one shoulder as he stomped away. “Hey! Watch yer language, mister. There’s fillies present!”

Apple Bloom nodded from under her basket of apples. “Yeah. Or at least speak up. I didn’t get half of that one.”

The defeated sculptor stomped in a blind fury down the path back to town, trying to ignore the pink bouncing pony to his side.

“Draw me again! Oh! Oh! Draw me! I can make a face like this! Or this! Or this!”

“Pinkie Pie!” bellowed Cold Chisel. “I have used up all of my paper except one sheet trying to get you to stand still long enough to make a sketch that has four legs and only one head! I’ve only got one sheet left for this Rainbow pony, and I’m not going back to Canterlot without at least ONE GOOD SKETCH!”

There was a flutter of wings from the gathering clouds above, and a sweaty blue pegasus with rainbow mane dropped down to hover in front of them. “Hiya Pinkie. Who ya torturing?”

Pinkie Pie giggled, “Oh, silly Rainbow Dash. I don’t torture anypony. I’m just trying to get this stuffy McCrabby Pants to smile and enjoy this beautiful day. He’s the sculptor the Princess sent to make a statue of all of us but not really turn us into a statue like a cockatrice or basilisk but just carve a big rock up like Tom and make into a statue of all of us and I hope he finds a pretty pink rock for me but if that doesn’t work he could use bubblegum because there’s always a lot of bubblegum and if you leave it out it gets really hard. Do you have any gum?”

Rainbow Dash shook her head and grinned. “Well, mister sculptor. If you think you can capture my awesomeness on one piece of paper, you go right ahead. You should have caught me earlier today before we started gathering clouds for tonight’s downpour. We’ve got a schedule to keep here, and there’s not much time left until we get this storm started.”

Cold Chisel took a deep breath and grabbed for his easel and charcoal with the speed of a cowpony drawing a lasso. “Miss Dash, just hold still for just one minute so I can sketch—”

Rainbow Dash struck a series of heroic poses while talking, “Hey Pinkie, with the extra bits I got from overtime, I should be able to get back in the monthly game tonight. Make sure they wait up for me if I’m late.

“Whoops, gotta run. Ditzy’s stacking the clouds too deep and we don’t want hailstones tonight. See ya!”

There was a rainbow colored blue blur and the pegasus zipped off into the low-lying clouds, yelling something about overstacking and cumulonimbus. Chisel gave one look at his last remaining sheet of paper with a bold explosion of lines on it that bore only vague resemblance to a pony, or perhaps a chicken-spider, and wadded it up before screaming, “A monument to the Elements of Harmony should be a big collection of blurs and empty space.”

The last wadded-up paper flew away, closely followed by his remaining charcoal, the cardboard backing from the paper pad, and an innocent eraser. Grumbling, he stuffed the easel back into his saddlebags and stomped angrily away.

“So. Where ya goin’ now?”

“Back to Prance! This place is insane and needs to be erased from civilized society! It’s even worse than... Trottingham!”

How in the world could anypony get LOST in a tiny little piece of trash town like this?

The question rattled around in his head like an echo from a whistle as he rushed through the city streets in the growing dark. But when he galloped to the train station only to see the tail end of the train vanish in the pre-dark gloom, something finally snapped inside him.

“You! Stupid! Train!” Cold Chisel gave an anguished cry and kicked the empty train station, which prompted another anguished cry and a limp. “Stupide train, stupide ponies, stupide town!” A crash of lightning overhead preceded the beginning of a long slow soaking rain. “Stupide pleuvoir!” He collapsed to his haunches in the rain, listening to the train whistle fade away as the darkness closed in. “Stupide moi.”