Ch. 5 - Study Party
The Traveling Tutor and the Librarian
Study Party
Thanks to his theatrical training, things looked like they were going pretty well. The librarian had accepted his apology, it sounded like she was going to forgive the damage he had done to the book, and the dragon Spike definitely had a nice, glossy glow to his scales as he trotted out of the kitchen. Still, there was something bothering him. The magic building under his hooves and across his chest was somewhat akin to standing next to an upcoming lightning strike or a young pupil undergoing a magic surge.
“Twilight Sparkle, before I leave for my appointment, I wanted you and your dragon to have this cake as a tangible representation of the sincerity of my apology.” He turned his head to pick the cake pan off his back with his teeth and stepped forward, waiting for Twilight to pick it up with her magic. And waited.
Hm. She didn’t even move. Something interesting must be in that book — Oh! She must be looking at Chapter Twelve. Oops.
“Heheh.” he muttered through a mouthful of cake pan. “About my notes. I’d be more than happy to buy the library a new copy when the third edition is relea—”
The pitter-patter of fast moving dragon had not quite been loud enough to get Green Grass’ attention as Spike dashed back into the kitchen, but the librarian’s sudden surge in magical power seemed to nail his hooves to the library floor while the cake dropped from his mouth, forgotten in his fascination.
She was beautiful. Radiant power filled Twilight Sparkle’s entire being to overflowing, from her stark white eyes to a smoldering mane that flowed in a nonexistent breeze with little sparks of fire at the tips of each hair. A crackle of ozone filled the library with a tang that seemed to catch on the back of the tongue and tingle along his spine, holding every hair on his coat on end. Even though he was just moments from death, Green Grass could not help but stare and marvel at the power of the cosmos, ready to be unleashed. On him.
“Mister!” yelled the little purple dragon, holding a cylinder nearly as large as himself. “When I hose her down, you run. Do you understand?”
“Huh?” Green Grass shook himself out of his self-destructive reverie and looked at Spike, who was holding a huge fire extinguisher. “Oh. What?”
“RUN!” The little dragon yanked the trigger, sending a blast of liquid carbon dioxide over the glowing unicorn. The rapidly receding clatter of running hooves quickly became drowned out by multiple blasts of freezing vapor as Spike tried to cool down his angry roommate with the kitchen fire extinguisher.
“Spike! — Ack! — Spike! Quit it! All right! I’m calm! I SAID I’M CALM!” cough “Okay, now I’m calm. I swear, I’ll ground you! Stop it right now!”
The little dragon paused in his frigid assault for a moment and broke out laughing. “Oh, Twilight! You look like a snowpony!” The CO2 had frosted every hair on her body, making her look like some strange white-haired arctic beast, complete with deadly gaze and bared teeth.
“Spike! You know you’re not supposed to use that on anypony unless they’re on fire.” All the windows in the library popped open at once as a magic-driven rush of air blasted through, clearing the library of dangerous levels of carbon dioxide extinguisher reside at the cost of only a little rain dripping back in. With a second flash from her horn, the frost vanished from her coat, turning her back to purple, although still angry.
“Sorry, Twilight,” he replied, pointedly ignoring the charred hoofprints on the library floor. “You know how you get when you skip meals. Like breakfast this morning. And dinner last night. I bet a piece of cake would cheer you right up.”
“Well, I suppose.” Twilight glared at the cake as a proxy for the escaped green tutor. Burning that much energy was exhausting even normally, after a whole night in the lab and skipping meals... Yeah, Spike was right. A slice of cake would help. Cake was cake, even from an annoying vandal.
The little dragon handled the details, getting the cake slicer and plates and utensils, and cutting it into nice, square chunks. He gave a deep sniff after dishing up two pieces, and sighed. “Ah, Pinkie’s half-and-half specials, banana and marble chip. Wait just a minute. I’ll get us some juice.”
Twilight levitated over one of the slices of cake and morosely poked it with her fork. Even if the vandal had scribbled in the book, that was no excuse for what she did. Princess Celestia was going to be terribly upset at her for losing her temper again. She would give her The Look, with just slightly narrowed eyes and the smallest pout of her bottom lip, maybe even with that infinitesimal shaking of the head she would do when her favorite student had done something spectacularly bad. Maybe even a sigh. That was always the worst. Thousands of years of experience had been spent in developing that sigh into a weapon that could have sent entire armies home in disgrace, horribly worried that they had somehow caused their Princess some form of distress.
With the fork firmly grasped in her magic, Twilight scooped up a large bite of cake with determination. “I can fix this and turn it into a Friendship Report! I’m going to go apologize to him, right after we eat.”
The horrible crunching noise that echoed through the library when she bit down caused Spike to hurry back around the corner, still carrying his pitcher of juice as he looked at Twilight clutching her jaw in restrained agony.
“Twilight? Are you all right?”
“Stpiketh. Could thyou go over to Minnuetteth and thsee if shee can thsqueesth in a denthts visit this afterntoonth? I thphink I broke a thothph.”
* * *
To say Twilight was in a ‘mood’ was a horrid injustice to the poor word. Four letters cannot possibly encompass sleep-deprived, frustrated, hungry, damp, chilly, teeth that still ached from the dentist’s spell and a neck that seemed to be all knots and tension clear down to her tail. Embarrassed and mortified would have to fit in there somewhere, and still leave enough space for Princess Celestia’s sigh. It called for a much larger word. Or many such, bound together with covers and glue.
Fortunately, she lived in the middle of just such a medicinal treatment for her ‘mood.’ Unfortunately, she had read most of them already, or at least the more interesting ones.
First things first. Checklist!
☑ - Create checklist
☐ - Apologize to the jerk.
☐ - Apology dinner with Spike.
☐ - Visit the Spa for a massage.
☐ - (optional) Memory spell to erase today.
☐ - Read self to sleep.
* * *
“Well, that was a bust,” Twilight muttered, standing outside of the jerk’s empty wagon, unable to get even to the second box on her checklist due to a lack of Green Grass. Wherever he was, he had even parked his wagon in a jerky fashion, right on top of the tulip bulbs Mr. Greenhooves had spent so much time last week planting. All he needed was a stage, and he... oh. She took a step back and mentally imagined the wagon with a built-in stage, and the vandal’s hat and cloak in a different color, with stars.
“So that’s why this felt so familiar. He’s like the pesky brother the Great and Annoying Trixie never had. On some level, I associated him with her and took an instant dislike to the vandal. Saved a great deal of time too.”
The wooden sides of the wagon felt cool against her forehead as she leaned against it, trying not to beat her head against the wall in frustration. “Don’t judge a book by its cover doesn’t just apply to books, Twilight. You need to start appreciating ponies for what’s inside, not outside. Why does the Princess have to be right all the time, even when I’m here?”
There was just the faintest of ticking sounds coming from the inside of the wagon, and her ears twitched in response. “I suppose opening the book up to take a peek might help.” She tried the back door, which opened at her magical touch. “Hello? Are you in here Mr. Grass?”
Argh! The Princess was right again. I never would have thought his wagon would look this way inside.
Twilight Sparkle was used to living in a library, but the tutor looked like he lived between the well-used pages of a dentist’s office magazine. Densely packed shelves to each side of the wagon were packed nearly full of books, each shelf held closed by a clever locking bracket of earth pony design so the books would not spill onto the floor while the wagon was moving. That did not seem to have stopped a few dozen books from being scattered across the combination floor/mattress/rug in a fairly thick layer that prevented anypony from even setting one hoof in the room without treading on a book. Or three. Scattered across the top, bottom and between the open books in drifts much like snow were hundreds of pieces of paper, ranging from little scraps that could barely hold a word to full sized sheets packed with writing.
“Well! I suppose part of my apology could be cleaning up this mess. I’ve heard of bachelor living before, but this is ridiculous.” A burst of purple lit her horn as she lifted the entire mess in one lump, sending it whirling around the room as she popped books back into their proper place.
“Griffon Physiology and Psychological Profiling goes here, History of Modern Wingblade Duels goes on this shelf,” she mumbled to herself as the books weaved and dodged, the paper scraps gathered themselves together by size and vanished into desk drawers, and a few dried-out scraps of food and dirt were tossed out the door behind her. She even used a quick spell to polish the fire bucket, which had been refilled with clean water for future use and tucked away behind the door.
“A fluffing spell for the mattress, cleaning spell for the clock and window and done! There, much better.” Twilight looked around the tiny room, expecting at any moment for the green stallion to show up and provide a compliment for her hard work. She glanced at the clock and sighed at how little time had gone by. It was less than an hour until sunset; he should be slinking back by then. All the books had fit snugly back into their shelves except one fairly chunky volume that still hovered at her side.
“Like a tortoise, he carries his house upon his back. I don’t think Tank has a library in his shell. Don Rocinante probably wouldn’t fit anyway.”
An almost irresistible urge came over her to check the back of the book for a library card just in case he had stolen the book from some other unfortunate library. She wrestled with the idea for a moment before surrendering to the inevitable.
Just to prove his innocence of the charge.
“Property of Baron Chrysanthemum?” she muttered. The tutor was inconsiderate, impulsive, a vandal and a jerk, but he did not look like somepony who would steal from a private library. She checked several more books, carefully putting them back on the shelves afterwards, but they all carried the same tidy little gold-foil seal with the baron’s coat of arms inside their covers. “It could be a forgery, I suppose. Hm…”
She located a copy of Twerp’s Peerage in the tiny library’s reference section and flipped through it diligently. “Duke… Prince… Baron Frazzleberry... Baron Chrysanthemum, there we go. Married, five children—” Her hoof paused on its trip down the page in search of a coat of arms, returning back up to where the children were listed. “Green Grass. Special talent: Teaching unicorn magic. Status: Single. Ick!” Slamming the book closed, she shoved it back onto the shelves.
When Twilight Sparkle was younger, there had been more than one young noble unicorn colt who had been supposedly quite interested in being ‘tutored’ by the Princess’ private student, when in actuality they had very different goals in mind. Her youthful experiences had been educational, true, but even restricting study-buddies to only fillies had not been wholly successful in preventing that sort of imposition. Everypony in Canterlot had just seemed to want something from her, either physically or socially, and by the time the Princess had sent her to Ponyville, her social circle had shrunk to the only two beings who really cared about her. One had just hosed her down with a fire extinguisher, and the other had just ‘coincidentally’ sent a young noble colt to town. Well, one of those two was getting a stern note, and the other was going into time out, she just was not quite certain which one was going to be which.
For a moment, she considered going back into the library while leaving a trapspell to notify her when the tutor returned from wherever tutors went when they were not tutoring. Don Rocinante finally convinced her otherwise, seducing her with pristine pages and alluring stories telling of an old pony and his faithful servant as they traveled the countryside to bring justice to the oppressed, triumphing over dragon and giant alike. After only a token resistance, she surrendered herself to the faithful touch of her childhood friend and allowed it to carry her away into a world of delusion and fantasy while settling down on the clean floor of the wagon with a happy smile. Maybe today was not so bad after all.
* * *
As he fled from his certain librarian-induced doom, the part of Green Grass’ mind that controlled his hooves was working just fine, even if the rest of it was overloaded with thoughts like ‘fry me like an egg’ and ‘hate to see what an overdue book fine costs.’ By the time he had all of his few remaining wits gathered up, he had nearly traveled all the way across town, and it took a long, wet slog through the cold rain to get back to Berry’s bar, where he was supposed to meet the rest of his school planning group.
“Hey lovercolt!” called a plum-colored mare from behind the bar with a friendly wave as he hung up his hat and cloak to drip. Berry Punch grinned at his embarrassed blush as she started to pull chairs down from the tables in preparation for the night’s patrons. Berry’s bar had more grown than been built, starting when the young mare had invited friends⁽*⁾ to taste her delicious homebrewed beer, and slowly expanding to take over the entirety of her basement as her paying friends grew in number. “I hear you met our town’s resident dragon.”
(*) ‘Friends’ being defined as ‘Somepony who will drink with you, preferably with their own money.’
—
“Yeah, and Spike too,” grumbled Green Grass. “Do you have anything to take the taste of shame and humiliation out of my mouth?”
“A little early to start, isn’t it? Anything to do with our town’s lovely little librarian? I hear you left her all hot, wet and bothered this morning.”
Technically true on two out of three points. Twice. “Just a beer, please. Whatever you have.”
“Coming up. Two bits, please. Thank you.” An unlabeled brown bottle soon sat innocently on the table in front of him, covered in frozen perspiration and unaware of the fate that was soon to overwhelm it, as well as many of its close friends and relatives.
He looked at the ‘beer’ skeptically, and turned it in his hooves for closer inspection. “There are no nursing mothers or small infants in the house, right? So I don’t have to worry about this being full of formula or... something else?”
The puzzled look from Berry turned into an explanation of his day, which he then had to go back and repeat when the local school teacher, Cheerilee, showed up for their teacher’s meeting, and then go back yet again when Superintendent Masters arrived to make the meeting complete. Repetition seemed to take the edge off of his embarrassment, and hearing some of the stories told by the locals about Twilight Sparkle and her antics made what he went through sound fairly normal, if only by comparison. Once the local subject matter was exhausted, the entertainment part of the conversation turned to college hijinks and school board meetings (which were more interesting than they sounded), interspersed with little stories about the little tots who Green Grass was going to be tutoring in off-hours for the next two⁽¹⁾ months.
(1) Provided he lived that long.
—
It felt good for Green Grass to be back with so many earth ponies. Every time he went to Canterlot between tutoring sessions, he entered the city with mixed emotions that had everything and nothing to do with his parents and their plans for his future. Here in the bar with his hat and cloak hung up by the door, he could be accepted for what he was. Whatever that was. Unlike the bars in Canterlot, there were no games of ‘Snub the other Nobles’; just Berry’s ‘Worst Beer in Equestria’ contest⁽²⁾, the ‘Can you even hit the dartboard after that many beers’ puzzle, or the never-ending ‘There I was...’ storytelling competition. As tempting as it was to switch to higher-concentration, memory destroying drinks after the events of the day, he stayed with beer, and the various permutations of beer that gravitated to Berry’s cooler as if it were downhill from a brewery.
(2) Currently holding the record was ‘Griffon Teaflower Ale’ whose only positive attribute recorded was ‘wet.’
—
The school superintendent was first to leave their little planning meeting, going home to a wife and three children. Cheerilee had school the next morning, so she soon followed. As Green Grass delayed his departure into the night, he even found himself tending bar for a while when Berry had to go upstairs to put her little sisters to bed. When the last customer had gone out the door, he helped put the chairs up and sweep, much as he had done during college (to his parents’ outrage and shame), and soon found himself tracing an unsteady path back through the dark streets, headed for the giant tree library that loomed up as a silhouette against the starry sky.
The beer sloshing around his belly helped hide the pain in his hooves and knee from his trip, as well as to muffle the chilly fall breeze that ruffled his now-dry cloak while he plodded wearily back to his trailer and lumpy bed. It was a good thing he had used the bathroom in the bar before setting out. Most likely the psychopath in the library would turn him into a newt if he were to slip in to use the facilities as Miss Dewey had permitted.
Well, I suppose ‘slept like an anvil’ and ‘half-deaf’ was nearly as good as ‘permitted.’
Tomorrow he would move his trailer to someplace more hospitable in the community, as far away from the squirrelly nut in the oak tree as possible. There were no lights still on in the library to indicate an ambush, so it was easy to slip into his own dark home-away-from-home, curl up on the lumpy mattress and pull his⁽³⁾ warm blanket up for a well-deserved peaceful night’s rest.
(3) suspiciously
—
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Those footnotes.
Hmmm... Twilight seem rather crazy and condescending. Seems legit.
I love that Spike knew exactly what to do with zero hesitation. There's a time for trying to calm Twilight down gently, and a time to just get the fire extinguisher.
He lives in a traveling library, Twilight, he lives in a traveling library.
Bets on Twilight having fallen asleep Green Grass's cart reading the book.
Oooohhh, that kind of 'marble chip cake'
One lulled to sleep by tilting at windmills, the other too drunk to notice his bed being occupied.
They fight crime!Love the bit where Grass is enraptured by the lethal majesty that is enraged Twilight. If I wasn't shipping these two before, I certainly would be now.
Also, is it wrong that I want the Who's Who of Equestrian nobility to be called "Derp's Peerage"?
Ah, the ever addicting site They Fight Crime! , many hours of my life were destroyed there.
Actually I thought of her doing a 'Hulk-fighting-Loki' moment, but the results would be... messy.
*wham!* *wham!* *wham!* *wham!* *wham!*
Dear Princess Celestia,
Can you help me hide a body?
Your Faithful Accomplice,
Twilight Sparkle
My faithful student.
I knew this day would come and I'm just so proud! Your first ponyslaughter or did you skip straight to Murder?
Anyway I have a certain advantage of being able to send any anoying bodies to the moon (I'm looking at you Loona) might I suggest burial, I'm sure your friend Applejack has some empty land, or maybe dear Fluttershy has come carnivorous friends who can help, maybe even Pinky Pie?
I can't wait to receive a further friendship report on this matter, remember friends who kill together stay together?
Your mentor
Princess Celestia
1756754
Not at all.
Got to the part about the sigh and I laughed out loud. Man, that was good. Hits the spot of Twilight's terror of Celestia's disapproval. And the faux pas was just small enough to skip the dungeons and the moon (although I wonder how Twilight might think Celestia is going to punish her now that she's an alicorn?)
1757638
...thank you for sharing that site
Don Rocinante, a very good book.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
She was beautiful. Radiant power seemed to fill Twilight Sparkle’s entire being, from her stark white eyes to a smoldering mane that flowed in a nonexistent breeze with little sparks of fire at the tips of each hair.
-Ah, so he likes very magical mares?
“Huh?” Green Grass shook himself out of his self-destructive reverie and looked at Spike, who was holding a huge fire extinguisher. “Oh. What?”
-Ah, that explains that...
“Spike! You know you’re not supposed to use that on anypony unless they’re on fire.”
-Well, TECHNICALLY her hair WAS on fire...
She would give her The Look, with just slightly narrowed eyes and the smallest pout of her bottom lip, maybe even with that infinitesimal shaking of the head she would do when her favorite student had done something spectacularly bad. Maybe even a sigh. That was always the worst. Thousands of years of experience had been spent in developing that sigh into a weapon that could have sent entire armies home in disgrace, horribly worried that they had somehow caused their Princess some form of distress.
-I concur with this characterization...
“Stpiketh. Could thyou go over to Minnuetteth and thsee if shee can thsqueesth in a denthts visit this afterntoonth? I thphink I broke a thothph.”
-Well, I thought they had avoid this problem... did Spike cut wrong, did Pinkie not follow procedures, or did Twilight dig into the cake on the wrong plate?
5) (optional) Memory spell to erase today.
-Hmmm... interesting option...
“Well! I suppose part of my apology could be cleaning up this mess. I’ve heard of bachelor living before, but this is ridiculous.” A burst of purple lit her horn as she lifted the entire mess in one lump, sending it whirling around the room as she popped books back into their proper place.
-I wonder if this will work out like the time Sweetie Belle tidied up Rarity's inspiration room (regardless of if you wrote this before or after that episode aired).
Well, I suppose ‘slept like an anvil’ and ‘half-deaf’ was nearly as good as ‘permitted.’
-I see...
squirrelly nut in the oak tree
-A nice turn of phrase...
-I intend to keep reading, but, for reasons having nothing to do with the story, I may not be commenting as much.
Don Rocinante? Oh, that's clever. That's brilliant! How on earth did I not notice the association last time I read this?
3557507
You must have read it.
An attraction to power, eh? Can't say I blame him. Also, very interesting backstory to him. I like it. It definitely gives his character some depth
I lost it here. Excuse me while I try and peel myself off the floor.
Dangit Green Grass!
Come to think of it, Twilight won't be facehoofing tomorrow morning.
Unless...it's not her own face she's hoofing.
Green Grass: I'm terrified for my life, but I feel strangely attracted to her.
Spike: That's because unicorns are attracted to shinies and power, and Twilight is both.
Green Grass: Don't you mean "has"? And besides, I'm an earth pony.
Spike: I know what I said.
A suspiciously unicorn-shaped blanket, I suspect...
This is...
I'm not gonna sugar coat it, this story frustrating to read for me and I'm trying my best to figure out why that is. So far, the best explanation I have is that I feel like I'm being TOLD what the story is rather than shown. Like there's a serious disconnect I feel with the characters here. I've NEVER been a fan of having exposition right in between dialogue, EVER. In fact I hate it. And that's why I feel disconnected with these characters. The pacing just feels jagged too, and not smooth. Like it's going all over the place and it becomes a chore to read. Not fun at all. Overall, it feels needlessly complicated. I encourage simpler sentences and structure then this would work better.
SIGH
I don't know. That's just how I feel. I tried, but I can't continue to read this. Sorry.
9210947 Well, it is from my six year ago writing, and thankfully I've gotten better. Go look at The One Who Got Away for something a little more current and a little shorter.
This is a decent enough joke, but I had to read over it several times to understand it, and I'm perfectly fluent in English (as my mother tongue). I think there's just too many <th> to be really legible, and some of the placement is weird. Like, I keep wanting to read "Spike-eth", like some sort of Ye Olde English version of Spike, rather than what I would expect out of, say, a comic strip, where they would probably just replace the <S> with a <Th> for "Thpike".
This paragraph also gives me a lot of vibes of either Pratchett or Adams. They did a lot with language and, like... hinting at language? If I get my point across. I'm sure you're already familiar enough with their work understand what I'm trying to drive at even if I can't seem to express it properly.
And the brick comes back down.
I feel like this goes nowhere. While it does clue us in a little to how/why Twilight feels this early on towards Green Grass, I kept thinking it was hinting at something to come, but I think Trixie is mentioned like three times total across the entire story, so this ends up coming across as a red herring at best and meaningless at worst.
I'll be honest, I kind of love the inclusion of Don Quixote (and using his horse's name, too) in the story. I'm not truly familiar with any of the original material, but Man of La Mancha is one of my favorite musicals, and I like seeing that your references seem mostly to be from the movie instead of the book(s), since I actually recognize them.
While I like the timing at the end of this line, the audience already knows this, so on the whole it feels more like repetition, or at least a complete lack of subtlety.
--------
I think it's at this point, five chapters in, that this story finally starts coming into its own, or at least establish some of the driving points of the entire rest of the story arc. What I mean is, up until this point it feels like a string of themed but not really connected jokes -- not quite on the level of those "random" fics floating about, but not having enough of an overarching story to compare it to anything more than Benny Hill -- but here we start seeing the plot points that develop this into a full-on rom-com story.
She.... She moved his papers! Oh dear...
Infatuation has taken hold quite well! Let it simmer for a while...
...
Uh-oh?
Oh no?
Le crap?!
The words are difficult to choose.
What is going to happen in the morning after Twilight cools off from her first outburst of the day, only to realize she has personally destroyed an entire wagon load of books?
I wonder if Twi is still in there and he just didn't see her
What is the atmospheric pressure in Equestria? Because it must be significantly higher than ours for CO2 to be in liquid form.
Luna headed towards the Throne Room to investigate a strange rumor she had overheard1.
1. Luna was most definitely not gossiping with the staff disguised as a pegasus named Moonlight Shadow.
Upon quietly opening one of the doors behind the throne (and sneaking her head around the edge of the tapestry hiding it), she was surprised at what she saw.
1. The Throne Room had somehow managed to acquire quite a few more corners than it had the previous day.
2. All the corners had somepony in them.
3. There was a fiery creature slowly circling the room, melting holes in the floor while keeping a sharp eye upon the occupants of the corners.
Upon closer inspection, Luna realized that one of those ponies was her sister, along with her sisters' personal secretary, 8 Royal Guards, and an assortment of Canterlot nobles2.
2. Plus one bewildered griffin tourist.
Another look made her realize the fiery creature was none other than Pissed Off Twilight Sparkle™
Luna slowly closed the door, placed several of her strongest silencing spells around the entire wing of the castle, and ordered all the remaining guards to keep everypony away.
Meanwhile in Ponyville:
Spike opened a box in one of the library closets, placed a sternly worded note atop a growing pile of its siblings, shoved the box back into the closet next to the others, then headed over to Sugarcube Corner for a chocolate doughnut with ruby sprinkles.