Mooncake had his snout shoved deep into an aging book he’d found in the back corner of used bookstore. The cover had a worn and stained look, like a book that had either been loved too much or too little. But within it’s mangled pages was a world of fantasy and myth.

At the moment he was deep within the story of a boy who drew cats on every surface he could. A strange behavior for sure, but it seemed to be coming in handy as the boy wandered into a temple haunted by a large monstrous rat.

He was just about to find out the moral of the tale when somephony’s hoof tapped against his shoulder. He jerked back from the book looking rather startled, twisting to face the shop owner who greeted him with the words “I’m sorry, but we’re closing.” With a sigh the foal rose to his hooves, placing the book back where he’d found it. “Ah, sorry.” With that he wandered out of the shop on his way back home, mind still lost in the story of the boy who drew cats whose ending would go unknown till tomorrow.

It was these tales of morality, origin stories, history, and the cultures of distant lands that occupied his brain. What had been accomplished and how phonies explained things was absolutely fascinating. How each culture had their different origin stories and tales of great floods. How they all had different yet similar beliefs on how the world was formed. He just wanted to absorb it all and he did the best he could. He’d already exhausted the collection of books in his mother’s shop and from there had been hopping from bookstore to bookstore, museum to museum, trying to collect it all.

It was a pity he couldn’t just acquire all the information, gathering rare texts, old scrolls, and paintings depicting the stories of old. But what was stopping him? He could go search for those things and he certainly wanted to. Better yet, he could share what he learned with others. The stories that used to be told to keep foals from behaving badly, the ideas of how the world used to work, the old tradition of transmitting stories orally of a herd’s past. He’d start with his mother’s shop, working there until he’d made enough money to set up a shop of his own. It would be filled with the tales of old, scrolls, everything he loved and was fascinated by. Little by little he’d collect the oddities he desired and share them with others, educate them on the past. Everyone would know the stories of their culture.

That was something to aspire to, sharing the folklore and the history that belonged to them all.