Book of Days
is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic by Warren Hutch. This story is a prequel to the show, presenting the author's take on the early days of Equestria, more specifically the birth and upbringing of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. It is presented as Twilight Sparkle's translation of the journals of Clover the Clever, court magician of Queen Platinum and surrogate mother to Dawn Heart, a filly with the wings of a pegasus and the horn of a unicorn who is mysteriously born from the Warming Heart one summer solstice.
Contains examples of:
- Accidental Misnaming: Chancellor Puddinghead apparently had a bad habit of referring to Clover the Clever as "Mrs. the Clever".
- Alliterative Family:
- Amazing Technicolor Population: In the source work, ponies' coats have unexplained technicolor variation, but in "Hoofnote [4]" of Part 16 of this fanfic gives a justification. More than a millennium before, ponies had a restricted coat color variation matching real-life ponies', until Discord altered them:in those days ponies' coats generally came shades of grey, brown, russet, and beige, often with spots and dapples. The truth, they told me, was that the multicolored hues common today were magically imposed on the pony populace by Discord during the era of his misrule.
- Big "NO!": Dawn Heart's reaction to Clover and Pansy getting in a fight, complete with suspending them in the air.
- Bilingual Bonus: Landsknecht, the term used to describe the earth pony's military men, means 'German mercenary' in English. In German (the language where the word comes from), it means 'Soldier of the land.' Think about it for a minute.
- Bowdlerization: In-Universe, Twilight apparently does this with a few of Clover's more colorful comments.
- Discussed by being mentioned by name in the footnotes of Chapter 12.
- Discussed by being mentioned by name in the footnotes of Chapter 12
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: According to correspondence from Smart Cookie, when she and her family were moving to Fort Everfree with Clover and Dawn Heart, Puddinghead decided to "help" them pack by giving them loads of things they didn't need, such as a table large enough to seat twenty, a wagonload of musical instruments, and a life size bronze moose sculpture.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Clover apparently delves into this when describing how she, her husband, and Dawn Heart are forced into exile-in-all-but-name to Fort Everfree after the royal court's fear of Dawn Heart reaches a point when Queen Platinum can't keep them around anymore. However, Twilight has removed them from the translation for the sake of not labeling the book as "mature" (and this is after having to ask Celestia what some of the words meant).
- Color-Coded Speech: While the text telling the story of the past is written in the default colors, notes from ponies in the future are written in colors that reflect the translator:
- Twilight Sparkle's translator's notes are in purple, matching her coat color.
- Princess Celestia's are in light blue, not matching her coat color, but is a visual counterpoint to her sister's color, being a lighter version of the same color.
- Princess Luna's are in dark blue, matching her coat color.
- Pinkie Pie's are in pink, matching her coat color.
- Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: Dawn Heart suffers from this, since she's technically a newborn; for one thing, she calls Clover the Clever "Cwovuh".
- Luna and Celestia's teasing in the footnotes is written in this sometimes, mostly to annoy Twilight (It works).
- Fictional Document: Twilight is translating the journal of Clover The Clever into modern Equestria.
- Freak Out: Twilight's reaction sometimes to the back and forth between Celestia and Luna in the footnotes.
- Footnote Fever: Chapters end with a number of foot-notes from Twilight explaining references to the society of ancient Equestria, often including some back-and-forth banter between Celestia and Luna.
- Pinkie Pie somehow gets in on this at one point, interrupting a back and forth on food between the Princesses to offer a hungry Twilight some cookies. Neither Twilight, the Princesses, or their publisher can explain how that got in there.
- Happily Married: Clover and Crimson.
- Heroic BSoD: Poor Clover gets this when the three tribal leaders task her with replacing the Warming Heart — despite not knowing how she did it the first time — and finding a way to alter its appearance to something more befitting a symbol of unity, and to do all that as quickly as possible.
- If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: Apparently, when Starswirl made a toast at Clover and Crimson's wedding, he threatened to turn Crimson into a rabbit if he ever broke Clover's heart.
- Innocent Inaccurate: After Dawn Heart's Potty Failure incident, she destroys her bed, assuming that "bed" is what was responsible for the whole affair.
- Kneel Before Frodo: When Starswirl the Bearded meets Dawn Heart and gets a sense of her power, he kneels to her and tells the assembled crowd to take note of her and the great things she'll one day do.
- Laughing Mad: The collective reaction of Clover, Cookie, and Pansy when their first attempt at recreating the Warming Heart, but as a diamond (as per orders), ends up with a literal result... creating the Crystal Heart.
- Mama Bear: Clover, Cookie, and Pansy all become this towards Dawn Heart. When Clover hits her in a moment of frustration-based anger, the other two turn on her.
- Mythology Gag: The home that Clover's family and friends founded after being relocated to Fort Everfree is called Paradise Estate, which was the main setting of G1.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Clover's reaction after she, in a Rage Breaking Point regarding her futile attempts to recreate the Warming Heart, gives Dawn Heart a brutal Breaking Speech and hits her.
- Noodle Implements:
- The ancient Equestrian equivalent of the idiom "No fooling, Fetlock" apparently involves a pheasant and a butter churn.
- And the ancient equivalent of the phrase "Yowza!" apparently involves a stile and a caber.
- Noodle Incident:
- Somehow, young Dawn Heart's attempt to play with a bumblebee led to an oak tree getting ripped out of the ground and flung out of the palace grounds to crash into another mountain.
- Princess Luna's "bucket incident." It's typically brought up by Princess Celestia in response to Luna needling her about one of her own embarrassing episodes, and mentioning it usually gets Luna to shut up pretty quickly.
- Oh, Crap!: Clover has a humorous one when she runs into Starswirl at Fort Everfree.
- Papa Wolf: Starswirl becomes this to Dawn Heart, recognizing her as a kindred spirit in magical power, and not wanting her to be ostracized for it the way he was. After Clover hits her in a moment of anger, he coolly warns her to never let it happen again.
- Parental Substitute: Clover and Crimson to Dawn Heart.
- Poke in the Third Eye: Clover tries to cast a simple spell to gauge young Dawn Star's magical potential, and promptly passes out from magical overload.
- She stops a noble from doing the same thing with a scrying device. Celestia herself said to Twilight it would be like looking straight at the sun with a telescope.
- She also tries to warn her old mentor, Starswirl the Bearded, against doing so, but he interrupted her before she could say anything. His reaction is a lot milder than Clover's, in that only his eyes lit up bright pink for a few seconds.
- Potty Failure: Happens to poor Dawn Heart, who is new to concepts like having to go to the bathroom.
- Power Incontinence: Dawn Heart, due to literally being only a few days old and no understanding of why she should be keeping her power in check, let alone being able to do it.
- Rage Breaking Point: Clover, after months of mounting frustration due to being unable to complete her mission to recreate the Warming Heart, finally snaps when Dawn Heart accidentally breaks a prized possession, leading to her giving her a brutal Breaking Lecture and hitting her. She regrets it almost immediately.
- Running Gag: Celestia and Luna's childish arguments in the footnotes, which quickly drive Twilight up the wall.
- Twilight uncovering something in her translations that leads to a Spit Take by an Alicorn. She lampshades it.
- Sand In My Eyes: Luna claims that the wet spots on a particularly touching moment of the manuscript are merely the result of another Spit Take moment. Celestia and Twilight both claim that it's happened to them too.
- Shout-Out: Part 3: Translator's Hoofnotes [2] makes one to Red Sonja, but calling her "Red Ponya" instead:The common popular image of Commander Hurricane as a long maned amazon off the cover of a Red Ponya comic book is quite different from the image of the actual historical mare who appears in glimpses through Lady Clover's journal.
- Spit Take: Apparently Celestia's reaction when Twilight asked for definitions for some of the curse words used by Clover. Luna was amused.
- Also her reaction to the second Noodle Implements example.
- From Part 13, it's Cadance's reaction when she finds out that the Founders were involved in creating the Crystal Heart, as an alternate of the Warming Heart, and, as it's unclear when in the explanation the spit take happened, possibly also that it was basically an attempt at recreating the initial conditions and that it was a crystal just because of royal decree.
- Super-Strength: Dawn Heart is strong enough to drag several dozen stallions behind her in a game of tug-of-war.
- Wonder Child: Dawn Heart, the super-powered Alicorn filly who would eventually grow up to be Princess Celestia.
- It looks like Luna herself will be one, but she hasn't shown up in the story proper.
- Younger Than They Look: Dawn Heart looks to be just shy of her teens, but is only a few days old.
