While actually titled "Widget Whatsis's Workshop of Wondrous Whatnots and Whirling Whatchamacallits", the sign-painter pony wasn't getting paid by the letter and thus abbreviated it.  A small but well maintained building with different clockwork and mechanical inventions, some finished but most not, lining the outside of the shop. The inside of his shop is what some might call 'organized chaos', tools and gears and bits, evidence of his tinkering, laying on every available surface. Many are repair orders that ponies have made, but many are his own inventions in various states of assembly. Blue prints and drawings are rolled up neatly and stored on two bookshelves from floor to ceiling.

<<< FROM: Branches and Books Library

By the time Widget and Quill had gotten back to the workshop, Widget's expression had turned all the more dreamy, as if clouds were circling his head. He magicked his wings off and set them carefully aside onto one of his several desks. "I just can't believe she said yes," he said with a happy sigh. "I've been trying to work up the courage to ask her out for months. And she said yes so easily..."

[From... Branches and Books Library]

While Widget was using his magic to remove the wings, Quill slumped down to sit on the floor as soon as they were through the door, happy to be somewhere that wasn't full of ponies or having to walk across town. As Widget mentions about how he asked her out, Quill smiles sleepily.

"I.. thought you were going there for books," Quill yawns, interrupting his comment while he stretches his arms out, "not going to ask her out. If.. do.. do you want me to come with you? I can make sure.. that.."

Quill yawns again and closes his eyes for a moment and, as his head slumps forward, he quickly opens his eyes again, looking a little startled.

"Oh, is.. this.. this is the shop? It's.. a bit, um, disorganised. I feel sorry for the pony who has to tidy all of this up..."

Widget smirked slightly as Quill slumped down. He was adorable, to be honest. "Well, I hadn't really planned on asking her out. My brain just kind of kicked me in the flank. I guess I did forget my book... I'm not overly concerned, though, I'm sure of my calculations. I just wanted to double check. If I'm careful, it shouldn't be any sort of issue." He chuckled a little at him as he leaned down and nearly fell asleep right there on the floor. "Well, you don't look like you'll be awake long enough to come with me. Come on, let's get your bed all ready. And Quill..." He smirked, peering over his glasses, "I hired you to organize it, remember?"

Chuckling, he made his way up the stairs to his loft, consisting of two bedrooms and a storage room. The storage room nearest the stairs was chock full of parts and metal bits and bolts. The second room was the master bedroom, Widget's bed and bookshelves, rolls of older blueprints and a desk under the table covered in papers. The final room was the spare bedroom that had boxes of papers in it, along with spare sheets and towels on wall shelves, and an wardrobe for his clothes, with a folded bed up against the wall near the window. "Like I said, I'll clean all this out tomorrow," he said as he pointed his horn to the bed and it opened up, a set of sheets lifting from the shelf as he began to make the bed for his assistant to bed down.

"But, you didn't say it was this untidy," Quill complained somewhat feebly as he followed Widget up the stairs and, even though he was about ready to collapse, he found himself counting the stairs as he climbed them underneath his breath.

"Seventeen, eighteen... I can start the tidying tomorrow, I guess."

As Widget used magic to unfold and arrange the bed, he wasn't entirely sure whether or not it was just him seeing things in his half-asleep state, or whether it was something that Widget was doing. Either way, he wasn't going to complain and, with each heavy footstep, he felt himself being inexorably drawn closer and closer to the bed.

"...after your, um, evening out, in the morning, we'll start in the mor-"

From Quill's perspective, the huge bed kept getting closer and closer but, suddenly, the floor came crashing in to view and, as his eyes drift closed again, he figured that "near the bed" was close enough.

Widget watched as Quill fell and didn't get up again, only momentarily alarmed. It was apparently, though, that he was fine, just asleep on the ground. "Hmmhmmhmm. I suppose you are still a baby dragon," he said softly, fixing up the bed the rest of the way. He leaned down and lifted the dragon onto the bed, pulling the blanket up over him. "Sleep well, Quill," he whispered, turning off the lights before making his way downstairs again.

Though Quill was well and asleep, Widget still had work to do before the moon rising. He fished out his second wing prototype, which was not quite as elaborate as the ones he had ruined earlier that day, but they were still functional. Moving to one of his many work desks, he set to work on the tiny clockwork parts, biting his lower lip thoughtfully as as he checked and double checked his magic work, his gear work, and his strap systems. There was still a lot of work for him to do before moonrise...

By the time Widget looked up from his work, the sound of traffic from outside the shop was growing louder as ponies gathered and set up stands and talked in excited groups about the moon rising. "I guess that's about all I can do," he said to himself as he flexed the wings to make sure one last time all the gears were working. With a sigh, he pulled off his glasses and wiped the sweat off of his brow. The light was getting dusky outside -- time to make his way over. Firstly, though, he had to get ready for his very first date.

First date... Even though he felt his stomach twist and tighten up at the idea with butterflies, he was also giddy with anticipation. Going up to his room, being sure to stay quiet so as not to wake the little dragon in his guest room, he looked through his wardrobe to find something perhaps a little more appealing than nothing at all. After a few moments, he at last settled on a blue vest coat that was certainly nothing formal, but more than just nothing at all, and he thought he looked pretty snazzy in it, too. He replaced his black square rim glasses with dark red oval ones that matched his hair and accented his face in a flattering manner. He never wore these, though, because they were more fragile than his black square ones, which were often pelted with bits of metal during the invention process.

At last, down the stairs he went, his wings coming onto his back just beneath the hem of the vest and strapped down securely. A pocketful of bits and a basket in his mouth, he made his way out to the market, Sugarcube Corner to be exact, to pick up what was had been requested of him.

>>> TO: Sugarcube Corner

"Oh, no, I couldn't eat another bite, I'm stuffed," Quill offered a chuckle, pushing the silver plate on the table aside. The precariously stacked tower of pastries on the plate wobbled for a moment before crashing over, scattering them across the table and tumbling on to the floor.

"Please. I insist."

The booming voice shook the stone walls of the room and belonged to a pony, albeit one of huge proportions, such that he had to bow his huge, grey head so as not to concuss himself upon the ceiling. Still, the cracks in the ceiling suggested that he hadn't always been successful in this endeavour.

With a wave of an equally sizeable and impressive hoof, more pastries appeared on the plate. More and more pastries. An almost never-ending tide of pastries. Cascading on to the floor, they continued to appear, until Quill sat almost neck deep in the pastries.

"I insist."

Above them both, the stonework began to crack, showering the pastry sea with dust as the crack widened until, finally, the head of an even larger pony peered down in to the room. Such was the scale of the thing that, through the rapidly spreading cracked stone ceiling, half of an eye could be seen.

"Look at the state of this place."

The crack spread, racing across the ceiling and creeping down the walls, until the whole of the room itself cracked. The sea of pastries began to shift, forming a wave that carried Quill along, through the crack in the wall. Struggling to remain on the surface of a wave of croissants, Quill gulped down lungfuls of air at each opportunity.

"You're almost there," commented a passing croissant before, with a bready grin, it too was absorbed in to the tumbling wave of treats. Quill closed his eyes and let himself be carried forwards. Forwards, and then down, as the wave cascaded off the cliff that solidified underneath him. With a thump, he hit the bottom.

With a thump, Quill fell out the bed, tangled up in a sheet. Without saying a word, he untangled the errant blanket, climbed back up on to the bed and pulled the blanket around himself.

"Welcome back," said the croissant.

Standing on the bed, with his face pressed against the window-pane, Quill strained to see where all the noise was coming from. He'd been awake for a few minutes now and, after remembering where he was and checking his bed for talkative croissants, Quill was mostly certain that he was awake.

Quill turned to look around the room, considering his options. In the darkness, the unfamiliar room was full of potential terror. The cupboard loomed at one end of the room. A towel half slipped from it's place on the shelf looked like the tongue of some impossibly large monster. As for the abyss underneath the bed, well, who knows what lurked there. The door on the far side of the room might as well have been a million miles away.

"There's nothing there," he told himself while rubbing his eyes clear of sleep, "and, even if there was, you're a dragon. A dragon! Big. Fearsome."

With his eyes focused on the door, Quill leapt down from the bed and hit the ground running as fast as his legs could carry him, one claw still tightly gripping the blanket, which trailed along behind him. Without pausing in his stride, he pushed the door open and went straight for the stairs, propelled by the fear of the unknown. The stairs presented little obstacle for him and, finally, he made it through the chaos of the shop proper and out in to the cool evening air.

One good yawn and a stretch later, he rolled the blanket up and put it down by the door. Quill turned and walked away, wondering about the noises coming from the town square, before going back to the blanket and looking over it critically.

"Well, it could get cold, and..." Quill picked the rolled up blanket and tucked it underneath one arm, nodding to himself, "...what if Widget needs a blanket? What if he didn't take one with him?"

With his mind made up, he began his search for the source of all this noise.

[Exit to... Special Event - Moon Raising in Town Square]

--> From: Ponyville Business District - Summer Song Cafe -->

Starcrasher looked around the business district, occasionally asking Quill what the buildings were with the enthusiasm of someone who was looking forward to spend a lot of time in Ponyville yet knew nothing about it. Which was to say, Quill would be doing most of the talking as every time he'd stop, she'd have two more questions for him.

As the door to Widget's Workshop opened, Starcrasher looked around at the mess, and grinned. While others would undoubtedly not be able to see past the mess, she recognized the signs from having a similar quirk herself, and could tell that there was a system to how the items and thingamajigs were strewn about on the floor and furniture. With only a couple of modifications everything would remain within easy reach assuming one would watch where they'd walk.

- "So what does this Widget work on exactly? I have no idea what half of these are for."

[Enter from... Ponyville Business District - Summer Song Cafe]

Being quite new to the town himself, Quill didn't have much of a clue about what the various buildings in the town were for, but he seemed happy enough to provide half-asleep speculation about the nature of each business they went past.

Quill cringed a little as the door to the workshop opened, half expecting the mess to have somehow grown in size and spill out on to the street. I mean, after all, that was exactly the sort of thing  that happens in dreams but, as the workshop was in the state he left it in earlier that evening, he sighed with relief.

"I'm.. um, well," he figured that, being a dream, it was probably fine to confess to Starcrasher, "the.. I don't really know. I kind of only, um, started working for him, um, today. This afternoon. Earlier. When I wake up tomorrow, I promise I'll tell you that, just.. this has been a pretty odd dream."

Starcrasher nodded reassuringly. If Widget was as random as the appearance of his Workshop made him out to be, then one assistant more or less wouldn't matter much as long as the job got done.

- "Oh, i'm sure it'll be fine. Especially if his date goes well, and since he hasn't come home yet i'd say it is."

The references from Quill to this being all a dream she simply blamed on him being half-asleep, he'd likely be more awake in the morning, in more ways than one. So, stepping into the Workshop, she looked around, waiting for Quill to show her to the room they were going to share so she could see that he got some much needed sleep before he'd collapse on the spot.

"If his date-thing doesn't go well," Quill started to waddle towards the staircase that led up to the loft and, as he climbed up each one, he continued to speak, "then, um, there's a window we might be able to escape out of..."

It was slow-going up the stairs but, eventually, he made it to the top and walked along, past two doors towards the third and final one, the one that was left open when he made his daring escape earlier that evening. Eyes widening, he stopped before reaching the doorway; whatever terrifying thing that lurked underneath the bed had probably also made good it's escape, but with the front door of the workshop left unopened, that could only mean...

"...it's on the loose inside the workshop! Um, I mean, the bed is in there, and the other rooms, I think, must be Widget's. You should, um, probably go in first."

Starcrasher nodded and, not knowing anything about the threat of talking croissants, simply walked into the room before turning around to wait for Quill.

- "Come on, i promised Princess Luna i'd tuck you in."

She stood next to the bed, within arms reach of anything that might be hiding under the bed, though aside from a small cord that could potentially get snagged around her hoof there was no actual threat that she perceived.

"I, um, wait, no, be carefu-" Quill stammered as Starcrasher went in to the room, as if everything was just fine and, after it became apparent that whatever it was that was underneath the bed was either not interested in the pony, (or had moved on or, most likely, was simply trying to lull them both in to a false sense of security), he took a few tentative steps in to the room.

"Okay, just.. um, be careful, if you're going downstairs, okay? The, um, thing, that was under the bed? I think it might be downstairs. Or," he started to climb up on to the bed as quickly as he could, imagining that the thing beneath the bed would probably strike while he was vulnerable, "maybe it got into Widget's room, or.. oh, we could make.. make a trap or something! To catch it!"

"And then we can show it to Widget, he'll be sure to let you stay as my assistant if we, um, we catch the thing."

Starcrasher resisted the urge to chuckle, though a grin did manage to slip through.

- "I'll be sure to keep the door closed then. I got it, don't worry."

She stepped away for a moment, allowing Quill unrestricted passage to the only bed in the room. She'd tuck him in, then wait until he would at least be partially asleep before making her way out of the room. Oh, which reminded her.

- "Come to think of it, do you sleep with the light on or off?"

The tired dragon managed to make it up on to the bed and, with a sleepy but triumphant smile, he sat down and looked at Starcrasher. While it would be quite a large dent to his pride to admit that he'd much rather sleep with the light on, it made a certain amount of sense, in Quill's half asleep state, that the thing underneath the bed obviously didn't like the light, which is why it remained lurking there.

"Um, lights on," he shuffled about on the bed, bouncing up and down a little to try and coax the thing under the bed out before adding, "but only because the thing doesn't like the dark! It's for our own safety!"

- "Of course. I'll try to keep that in mind."

After making sure Quill had climbed up on the bed, Starcrasher moved to get her horn caught in the blanket, dragging it over the small dragon as she waited for him to get to sleep. After that, she'd be off to hunt whatever had apparently been on the loose, which more than likely just meant something that vaguely resembled a monster with the lights turned off.

But hey, she had been like that not too long ago, so it wasn't like she could blame him for it.

"And we'll have the.. the thing, tomorrow, and, there's probably nothing to worry about, and the Princess was there too, and the clever pink one, and.. hey, you're kind of pink too, I wonder.. I wonder if that means something.."

After a few minutes spent mumbling about the nature of the thing under the bed and how to catch it ("it's big" and "with a trap" respectively), along with some advice about how to handle Widget when he gets home ("hide in the big wardrobe"), Quill finally got back to sleep, snoring quietly and returning to the strange dream about croissants.

After Quill had fallen asleep again, Starcrasher backed out of the room, gently nudging the door shut before taking a deep breath. How did she get herself into this mess again? She didn't know, and part of her didn't even want to know, but for now there were more important things to do.

Walking up to the first half-collapsed pile, the unicorn wondered what those things stored in the boxes were for, but given that they kind of like looked like those other things stacked in the corner she figured they'd have to go there as well. Concentrating on lifting one of the boxes, her horn started to glow softly, then a little more brightly... before the lighting failed abruptly.

- "Okay, okay, i can take a hint. Jeez."

Grumbling, she picked up the first box to start moving everything by hoof instead. It would only take slightly longer, and most of it would be her trying not to stumble her hoof against anything, but it would work. Concentrating on nothing in particular, her horn started glowing again, providing just enough light in the room to be able to see where she was going with the boxes.

While Starcrasher began the unenviable job of sorting through the boxes downstairs, Quill continued to snore and dream. The croissants were back, this time in greater numbers than before, such that the fold-out bed was bobbing like a raft upon the sea of pastries. Cookies, shaped like exotic fish, occasionally leaped out from the sea and, as each of them hit the pinnacle of their jump, they offered a few words each, such that as the numbers of them grew and grew, whole sentences could be heard...

There is a baker, whose name is Cake,
And, with her friend pink,
she loads the basket for us to take,
and a hot flask full of drink.

"How can I pay for these things?" said Quill,
"For all these treats, hardly plain,
should earn you half a dozen bits in the till,
so I should give them back again."

He gazed at the cookies with hungry eyes,
He sniffed at their sparkling tops;
Like a gem-coated paradise,
found in jewelers shops.

"I guess you're new in town, say,"
The Baker said, and smiled;
"So, for now, no need to pay,
after all, you're a child.

"So enjoy the snacks and drink,
crafted with all my care,
and aided by the assistant pink,
but with no pony share!"

And she smiled through her pink mane,
offering treats that we did love;
She handed over the basket again
while Widget watched from above.

O, with a grin he had his fill,
Quill ate well that day;
It was a dragon who visited Ponyville
and found a place to stay.

The sea of croissants settled, the school of cookie-fish moved on, finally leaping out through the window and leaving a confused Quill sat on his bed. Surrounded by croissants. Again.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:28, Thu 17 May 2012.

Afte going back and forth, and backing into a pile of boxes on more than one occasion, Starcrasher sighed. It looked like this was going to be more work than she thought it'd be. Perhaps it would be a better idea to continue in the morning when there was more light out, at least she'd be able to see more than the dim illumination her horn was capable of. First though, she had to pick up those boxes again, someone might trip over them.

Now which box did the stuff that spilled out over the floor go in again...?

"What do you mean," the gigantic form of the blue pony demanded to know as he waded through the rolling sea of pastries towards the bed, "you hired a new assistant? Are you that lazy? You can't just go round inviting people in to my home! It's your fault that Twilight doesn't like me!"

With each step that the unicorn took, he got larger and larger, until his horn carved a line through the ceiling, cracking the wood and letting the light of day pour in to the room.

"And what about the mess? Why are all these croissants here? Why did you get out of bed? Why did you even come to town?"

Quill stared up at the gigantic unicorn and, in this dream, he couldn't find anything to say or any gesture to make that would somehow make the situation better. The blankets of his bed wrapped around him and held him in place while the unicorn walked back through the door, leaving a wake of talkative croissants in the pastry-sea behind him. With a slam of the door, the cracks in the ceiling knitted together, leaving Quill alone with the croissants once more.

"I.. I think," Quill whispered quietly, "I think I'm in trouble."

After putting everything back in the boxes as best she could -- which can generally be considered to be anything that allows them to remain stacked on top of one another without collapsing -- Starcrasher looked around the room. Though she couldn't see much due to the lack of lighting, she still figured she had done a pretty good job cleaning the place up. Sure, halfway through she had ended up having a bit of trouble making out the different colors of the boxes as her magix started to reach its limits, but she believed she'd still done a good job regardless.

Stifling a yawn, she felt it was time to get some sleep. Thing was, Quill was sleeping in the bed now, which meant she had to find another. In a building this size however, surely there had to be a guest room of sorts. She could sleep there without sharing a bed. After all, Quill stayed here, and she was working here as well, right?

Given that this line of thought sounded perfectly fine in the mind of a tired teenage pony, she made her way upstairs, grumbling at the lack of lighting. The loft seemed to have lights though, but Quill was sleeping in the only bed there, so it seemed she was stuck with the darkness. After several tries -- and one attempt where a mop and a broom had threatened to fall on her -- she found a bedroom. Yawning again, she glanced at the clock. It was pretty late, he was probably sleeping over at his date, so no reason why she couldn't borrow a bed for the night while she was here. Roughly ten seconds later, Starcrasher was hugging one of the pillows, drifting off into the land of sleep shortly after pulling the blankets up to her shoulders.

<<< FROM: Books and Branches Library

"Well of course, no one can blame her. She's just getting back into the swing of things, I imagine she's quite out of practice when it comes to raising the moon and watch over the night and whatnot. She's been doing an excellent job so far, though," said Widget as the two ponies made their way back to his shop. "I'm glad Ponyville was so receptive to her. I didn't expect that they wouldn't be, after Nightmare Night, but some still hold old prejudices and fear. It sounds like everypony--"

As Widget opened the door and tried to turn on the lights in the place, he paused in his speech, narrowing his eyes. The door was unlocked and the lights would not switch on. The familiar gentle whirling of clockwork devices powered by spells had grown silent, and Widget was getting a bad feeling about this... "What in the world...?"

There was a flash as a soft blue illumination came from Widget's horn to shine around the place, and he froze, his pupils drawing near to the size of pinpricks as he saw the horrendous, terrible mess that had become of his workshop. His basket and book clattered to the ground as he took a few tremulous steps inside. "What... But... I... I..." he stammered, stepping inside and looking around with an expression that could only be described as horror. "My workshop! What happened to my workshop?!" he demanded of no one. Everything had been switched around and boxed, the boxes out of order and moved. However, his shock was quickly becoming anger as he moved around, trying to find the prototype wing frames and Pinkie's blueprints he had left on the desk with a more frantic motion. Turning around a desk, he opened a broom closet, and was promptly buried in what had been stuffed behind the door.

"QUILL!!!" he roared angrily up the stairs as he clambered awkwardly out of the debris in a tone similar to how Twilight would shout for Spike if he had done something to a lost book he had been in charge of.