A most fascinating explanation! I had never heard mention of donkeys within the land of the Three Tribes! Tailwind exclaimed, thoughtfully. For the longest time was my understanding framed, that such 'corruption,' that is to say, how our ancestors' hatred attracted the foul Wendigoes, who themselves brought ice and death, was but a metaphor for the ruination, such vices as pride, vanity, avarice, and aggression bring! Should they be allowed to fester within our hearts! Nay, personal experience shone its gleaming ray of revelation upon my awareness, to the reality of historical hardships! Behold, for it remains a most magnificent of metaphors!

Nevertheless, what atrocity befell your ancestors breaks my heart! As does your continued suffering! Certainly not yours, personally, but I spoke to your family! Merchants, they are, offering honest wares, yet their unhappiness clung to, and radiated from them like a malaise! Paralyzed through debt, they yet cling to the very karma that has already brought to them such ruination! They speak of it with hopeless resignation, having wrong nopony, to the best of my knowledge, that it be their lot to endure burdens unearned!

Such is their, and even your own, disparagement, that you humble yourselves in great excess! Humility is a wondrous virtue, one I would be a fool to presume your lacking in! But a leech, is a parasite, whose mere existence must come at the expense of something else! A leech had no choice in the circumstances of its lot in life, or even its birth, and to disparage the humble leech of such, is quite silly, indeed! However to presume yourselves, equivalent, is to presume that your existence is causing harm to the Cherry Blossom Empire! Their continued tolerance of you is only charity!

I have seen your work, if only in part! Yet what was witnessed was stupendous! Amazing! You are a maid of spectacular talent, clearly of keen intellect, and the Lords and Ladies of this palace are lucky to have you! Lady Sable Spirit must surely recognize this, valuing a tidy palace in excess of your wage! Most certainly among the best maids, I have had the privilege to behold, since my own mother! Make no mistake, my friend: You provide value! To call you a 'leech' is to reject observable reality!