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// Silence in the Library 
// Story: Generosity's Trust 
// by chibiachika 
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        While the duties were typically his to handle anyways, Spike felt like the library was growing bigger every day. Since the rebirth of Twilight Sparkle, he had been left to tend to the entire library. He was always appreciative when his friends came by and helped out, but it was still a good bit of work to return the books to their shelf at the end of each day. Today was one of the busier days as well, Cheerilee had brought her students to find some books to do projects on. The kids usually left books out all over the place, and today was no exception.

        It wasn’t completely a bad day though. Rarity and Applejack had stopped by for a quick visit, and helped him out a little. Spike wouldn’t care if Rarity pulled every single book off of the shelves and left them in disarray. He would do anything to make her happy. Her smile was worth every bit of work he could do for her.

        As the last book was put back in its place, Spike took a step back, and found himself tumbling down the ladder. His daydreams of the ivory unicorn made him forget that he was at the top shelf. He stood up, and the floorboard clicked under him. “I really need to get somepony to repair this old place.” The board had lifted up, and a golden shine was on the side of the board. When he looked closer, he saw that there was a handle embedded into the board. “What’s this? Twilight never showed me it before. Maybe she didn’t know about it? Hard to believe she’d miss something like this, though.” The baby dragon grabbed hold of the handle, and lifted it up. To his surprise, this opened up a hatch big enough for anypony to walk through.

        The stairway under the library was dark. Spike grabbed a candle, and blew a flame onto the wick before descending down the stairs. It was easy to tell that nopony had come down here for years. The thick imprints his feet left in the dust were proof enough of that, not to mention the cobwebs he kept having to brush off his face. The stairway was long, he could barely see the light of the regular library from where he was.

        When he reached the bottom step, he held the candle up to get a better view of the room. His eyes widened at the sight. There were bookshelves as tall as the stairs, lined end-to-end with books. He blew some of the dust off the books on the closest shelf, and looked at the titles. “Love’s Labour Won by William Clopspeare? The Isle of the Diamond Dogs? The Poor Stallion and the Mare?” If his eyes could widen any more, they would explode his head. Was every single book in this room a lost work of literature? If Twilight had known about this, he would probably never see her again because she’d be down here all day and night! Heck, maybe he should write a letter to the princess about this find!

        As Spike turned to go back up the stairs, a soft groaning emanated through the halls, freezing him in his tracks. “Um...hello...? Is somepony down here?” He wasn’t sure why he asked that question. If neither he or Twilight knew, then how would anypony else know?

        The reply came quickly, a loud moaning called out.

        “What would a brave pony like Applejack do at a time like this?” the dragon asked himself. His body was shaking. Maybe it would be best if he just went back upstairs and sealed the room off forever.

        The next noise to resound through the chamber was distinctly a mare’s southern drawl. “Yeehaw!”

        “Applejack? That couldn’t be! That didn’t sound like it came from upstairs, but what would she be doing down here!?” He started to nervously walk down the rows of books. An unexpected draft blew the candle out, but there was another light source nearby. Spike slowly approached the light. Through the shelves, he could see some fast moving shadows.

        “Come on, buck me harder you wild girl!” The passionate sound of Rarity’s voice excited Spike, but it quickly turned to curiosity as he went closer to the light. What exactly was she talking about?

As he rounded the corner of the row of books with the source of the light, what he saw would shock him for a long time to come.

Applejack was reared up, a rope tied around her snout. Rarity was holding the other end of the rope, riding on the orange mare’s back. They both froze upon the sight of the terrified dragon.

“Oh...um...hey...” Applejack smiled nervously, “we were down here explorin’ cause we’d never seen anythin’ like this. And...Rarity fell...and hurt her leg...so I’m carrying her...Ain’t that right?”

“Yes! Ow, my leg!” Rarity whined a little as she said that, and held one of her back legs. She put on a pout as she looked towards Spike.

“I’ll go get the first aid kit!” Spike turned to go back to the upper level.

“Oh, don’t worry about it, my wittle Spikey-Wikey. Applejack’s carrying me to the doctor!”

“How did you even get in here? I only found out about this place on accident! The dust was so thick on the stairs, and I didn’t see any hoofprints in it.” the dragon was still shocked, and stuttered a little as he spoke.

“Dust? Dust!? DUST!? GET ME OUT OF HERE!” Rarity squealed and tried to stand up fully on Applejack’s back.

        Applejack sighed. “We found this place on accident ourselves. We’ll explain later. Ah gotta get something off my back.” She glanced up at the unicorn with an irritated expression, and trotted into the darkness.

        Spike watched the two as they left. He wasn’t exactly sure what just happened. He’d never seen any ponies do something like they were doing when he got there. Sure, he used to ride on Twilight’s back, among others, but they seemed to be acting a lot different than just friends. As he turns back around to leave, his tail knocks the candle that the mares had been using to light the area. It rolled over to the bookshelf, and before he could grab it, the flame jumped up to the old book. It was gone faster than one of his flames would deliver mail to Princess Celestia. It continued to spread to the aged books quickly.





        “Well, Mr...Spike was it?” Flame Douser, the chief of the Ponyville Fire Department, met with the dragon at the ambulance, where he was being checked out. “We managed to get the fire out before it hit the upper level, but everything in that gigantic cellar of yours is gone. We found a back door open down there, so we guess your friends managed to get out just fine, which is lucky!”

        Spike’s expression of utter shock did not change. “Celestia is going to kill me.”