The basement was dark, because she wanted it to be.
It didn't have to be. There were devices, and a simple command would light up the area as a whole. More specific requests could create smaller patches of illumination, while one crucial order would temporarily dampen the thaums stored within, to minimize the risk of having even that little amount of background magic interfere with the more delicate experiments. For those times when safety demanded measures beyond that, the entire system could be dismantled and evacuated in less than three minutes, leaving the researcher to work by firelight. And of course, any unicorn who'd made it through their childhood years never had to truly worry about the dark, or so she'd thought until the day she'd encountered the first of the Nightmare's shadows.
There were no experiments going on, not that there was much room to even try and she didn't feel like starting anything new, much less focusing her frustration into picking up on something she'd previously had to leave off. All she felt like doing was -- sitting in the dark. And so she did, staring into nearly indistinguishable shades of umbra, trying to think of the last option she had available. There had to be one more. Just because she'd failed with the first four entries on the checklist didn't mean she'd reached the bottom of her scroll. She simply needed to look that much harder, and it had somehow felt as if that would be easier when there was nothing else to truly see.
It wasn't working. Images of the past moved through her inner vision, generally on a loop, with some of them just a few minutes old.
"Twilight?" Slightly muffled and distorted from having to move through the door at the top of the ramp.
She didn't answer.
The designer's voice was slightly cross. "I am aware you didn't teleport out: my feel may not be the most refined, but I am more than familiar with the sensations from the burst of magic you create on departure. The front door is undisturbed. You were not in your kitchen or bathroom. There are places to hide in the library, but I have checked most of them and the best were already occupied by books. That leaves the basement, Twilight, and I cannot feel an active security spell --"
She hadn't locked the top door? Why hadn't she --
"-- and so I am coming down."
There was a brief soft blue glow, well overhead. This was followed by a soft creak, and hoofsteps venturing onto the ramp.
"Oh, why is it so dark in here?" came the automatic complaint. "Well, I believe I can prove somewhat adequate to that task." The glow manifested again: a field being summoned without projection, simply for the lumens it could provide. "And there we --"
Silence took over again, soaked through what was no longer complete darkness and gave the shadows extra weight.
"-- Twilight?"
"Leave me alone."
She heard the slow breath. "I don't believe you mean that. If you truly wished to be left alone, you have a rather ready means of leaving us. Instead, you went to where you could still be found." Hoofsteps moving down the ramp, audibly zig-zagging several times. "Where did all --"
Bitterly, "-- the same place as the others. All the same places."
"I recognize this one."
She wasn't looking, and didn't really need to: she had a pretty good idea of which one Rarity was talking about, just from approximate position on the ramp. "You haggled --"
Primly, "-- negotiated --"
"-- her down to just about free..."
"Yes." The simple statement was followed by a slow sigh. "Another portion which would arguably be my fault. Twilight, how many books are down here?"
"Enough to make an argument for a branch library. I was -- moving them up to the main floor, week by week. Building the piles. Because if the mayor wasn't reading my letters, then her staff still came in, and I thought if I made things just keep getting more and more crowded, one of them would tell her. And then she finally showed up, and..." And -- everything.
Slowly, "How many is 'enough'? Numerically."
"It doesn't matter." Because her plan had failed. And then, adding that bitterness to the more recent portion, "You're supposed to be my friend. You were supposed to help me."
Quieter still, to the point where she could barely hear her own breathing. The intruder had stopped moving, and the weight of the silence saturated the world.
"Being your friend," Rarity finally said, "does not mean doing whatever you desire. It means doing what is best for you, even when that might hurt you. Even when it chances breaking the friendship entirely, because we care enough to see you go on without us if it means the pony who trots away in rage is whole. I can think of times when we have failed you, Twilight, including that which ended with a certain doll -- and the Princess, as angry as I have ever seen her. Angrier than I thought she could become -- more enraged than I would ever wish to behold again. It was a lesson for all of us, to -- pay more attention. We do what you need, Twilight, not what you want." A long pause. "And yes, I am aware of the irony in using those words so close together. But still, I would have believed it was a lesson you had sent off to the palace long ago."
She didn't know what to say, and so let the bitterness speak for her. "You won't help me. None of you will help me."
"We will assist you with the sale, as much as we can," was the soft reply, with the hoofsteps now moving again. "But that is assisting you in holding it, Twilight. None of us will help you to avoid it. If you do not follow Mayor Mare's directives, then she has the power to fire you. I am -- not certain as to whether the Princess would intervene there. The palace would likely attempt to keep you within the settled zone, but the thrones try to avoid direct overrides of the various mayoralties unless there is no other choice. I can see the Princess locating another job for you in Ponyville, so that you could continue to live among us. But you would no longer be a librarian. Is that something you wish to risk?"
The bitterness didn't seem to have an answer for that.
"Or," Rarity continued, speaking more slowly as she made her way past the next hoof-level obstacle, getting closer to level ground and the primary reserves, "is this happening because you wish to move on? Because you no longer wish to be a librarian at all, you feel you cannot quit a post which the palace found for you, and so you arrange things in a way which would leave you being fired --"
"-- I'm not a librarian. I've never been a librarian. Not a real one."
The interrupting, almost neutral words had been entirely her own: her voice, her thought. Her self-loathing.
Eventually, when the first wave of shock had passed, "...what?"
Twilight's horn ignited: just enough to add a little more light to the area, and her head turned. It wasn't so she could look at Rarity: nothing would have made her eyes seek another pony. Instead, pinkish glow silently illuminated her left flank. Her mark.
"Everypony in the Archives knew it," she said, eyes now squeezing shut. "When I was getting ready to graduate from the Gifted School, the Princess asked me what I was going to do next. And I told her I was going to be a researcher. A pure researcher. All I needed was a lab and equipment. It... was pretty much the only time I'd ever asked her for anything. To give me the devices I needed, access to every book, and a space I could work in. Someplace -- isolated. Maybe have somepony make food deliveries every once in a while. Because I was going to be working on the most advanced stuff, so isolation wouldn't hurt, and... I'd never really asked her for anything until the moment I asked her for that research grant."
"Which she then gave you," Rarity stated, with that voice a little closer now. "You continue to collect your funds to this day."
"She didn't," Twilight contradicted. "She didn't give me what I asked for. She wrote the grant, but I -- I trusted her to write it, and that meant I just stood back and let her field take the quill. It took her nearly an hour to draw up the terms and I didn't read anything she was writing because I trusted her, Rarity. I signed it without looking at it, because she was my teacher and -- then she had me. I'd just agreed that I would only receive funding for as long as I had a job. I couldn't just be a pure researcher: I needed to hold employment or I'd be on my own. Lab setups are expensive, I didn't know where to look for another sponsor because I didn't really know anypony, nopony other than her, and I... I think that was the first time I was ever angry with her. I don't know how much of it showed. But she wouldn't let me be pure, and..."
The pony who had gotten off the air carriage had said the first part. The one who'd made friends took the rest.
"...she wouldn't let me just lock myself into a lab for the rest of my life. Where I wouldn't have to see other ponies or deal with ponies or feel confused, stupid, different... anything. Because that's what I was going to do, wasn't I? Just go in the lab, have food delivered, never have to speak to anypony other than the Princess or Spike again, and I was at the point where I was just about treating him as lab equipment. Maybe if I'd had a big enough accident, it would have taken moons before anypony found us, and that might have just been because the food delivery pony saw the last shipment rotting on the doorstep. I was going to -- hide. Work on magic because it was the last thing I still understood. But I trusted her, Rarity, and she used the chance to sabotage me, for what she must have thought was my own good. I had to have a job outside my research, or I wouldn't have the backing I needed to research at all. I was furious when I got back to the dorms, but... she'd showed me the terms I'd signed off on without reading them, and it was too late to get out of it. She asked me what kind of job I wanted to have. And the only thing I could think to tell her, because jobs meant other ponies and other ponies meant feeling confused, stupid, and different... was that I liked books."
"And then you were in the Archives." Closer still.
"I started in Reception." It triggered a hollow laugh. "Me at the front desk, Rarity, right out of school with magic as the last thing I could relate to and wondering if my lab equipment had finished polishing its scales. I made it through two hours before the senior Archivists pulled me out by my tail, and I think it was only two hours because they had to fight their way through the herd of ponies who were yelling outside their offices. But they didn't fire me, and I guess that was because the Princess had been the one who'd asked them to give me a job in the first place. They didn't want to offend her, because -- well, I guess acquisition budgets might be part of that, too. So they just moved me into different departments. Over and over, because the Archivist in charge of my latest posting would get offended when I tried to rearrange her section, and the patrons would get offended when I -- was me, and... then I had the tower. The least visited part of the whole complex. Which was fine, because it was all the more hours where nopony was there and I could just research. I went to the tower, I spent as much time in Rare Documents as I could get away with, and I just... got worse. I read books, and I rearranged books, and I stared at anypony who dared to touch my books, and I... wasn't a librarian. Everypony knew it. I had a mark for magic. I understood magic. Being a real librarian would have meant being somepony who dealt with the public. I couldn't do that, so they put me where I probably would never have to. And I told myself I'd won. I had a job where I didn't really need to do anything, and I barely had to deal with anypony, and I..."
The next words were a whisper.
"...I told myself I was happy."
The only parts of her to move were mouth and thoughts. She wished both would stop.
"I think about that pony sometimes, up in the tower," Twilight just barely managed. "I know who she was and how she thought, and... I don't understand her. I don't understand... me. It almost makes me glad I wasted my chance at the time-travel spell, because if I went back that far and tried talking to myself... we wouldn't connect, we couldn't. She'd never understand me. She'd think I'd wasted my time in Ponyville, because I was ordering books and helping patrons, scheduling story times and going out with friends. Hours she would have been using for research. But I wound up here and the last librarian had supposedly retired, so the post was open... but I still didn't have the mark, Rarity, not a librarian's mark. I was in the Archives because the Princess put me there, I was in the tower because the Archivists knew I wasn't right for anything else and stuck me there, and then I was in the tree because she put me here, and all I knew about being a librarian was how to make sure all the books were in the right order. I'd never taken a class in library science. Three years ago, if you'd told me that running a library was something that had its own science, I couldn't have even been bothered to waste my time with laughing at you. I came here, I had a whole library all to myself, even if it wasn't a real one like the Archives, and I started putting the books in the right order -- right up until I got my first patron. A colt looking for a story to read as part of a vacation assignment. I had no idea how to deal with that. So I just messed it up, over and over. I had him in History first, because that's sort of a story, and then I practically tried to stick him in the card catalog so he could choose his own story and stop making me fail. I wanted him to leave and he couldn't because he didn't want to be in front of Cheerilee with an empty paper when the term started. He was here for two hours before I finally... remembered what it was like to just want a story."
And now she wanted her mouth to move -- but the smile wouldn't come.
"He came back the next day. He wanted to know if the author had done anything else. Or if there was anything like that first book from somepony else, that I thought he might like just as much. Truffle -- forced me to be a librarian, and I got better at it after a while... but I'm not a real one, Rarity. I won't ever be. I'm just... taking up space, because there's somepony out there with a librarian's mark who would be so much better at this than I am and maybe she can't do what she's meant to do because I got put here. I couldn't be a real librarian, but I thought I could have a real library, and maybe then nopony would..."
It was all she had, and Rarity waited for more through nearly a minute before finally sighing.
"You are," she eventually said, "something of a hoarder. You're aware of that, yes?"
"...yeah."
"It takes one to know one, Twilight," Rarity ruefully added. "There have been times when I have wondered if Spike -- well, to be frank about it, if he feels a connection to me because at our first meeting, he somehow perceived my inner dragon. In that way we see the stereotypical adults, living only for the acquisition and defense of their treasure. I have my moments of greed: my -- less than sterling behavior when attempting to talk the red dragon out of his claimed cave was a demonstration. You have your loves, I have mine, and we have both had times when we were weak. You found a justification for yours, and I helped you in your acquisitions. So to that degree, a portion of the fault is mine. But... Twilight, you put too much on marks sometimes. Far too many ponies do. Yes, the librarian who had the tree prior to your arrival -- and let me put any rumors to rest: she did in fact retire a short time before the Summer Sun Celebration and the mayor had been filling in with her own staff while the search continued, she was not fired in order to accommodate your needs and I swear that somepony will give Thistle Burr that kicking one of these moons -- she had the mark. I am a Ponyville native, one of but two in our group, and I grew up with her in the tree. To that extent, I knew her."
"What..." She wondered why she'd never asked anypony before. "What was she like?"
It was almost possible to hear the memories moving forward. "She was often kind, but had her moments of short temper: her particular anger-triggering offense was somepony eating within the library. There was a story that she had once kicked an adult for simply allowing a piece of candy to silently dissolve on his tongue. She faithfully held story time, on schedule -- but unlike you, she never invited those of experience to be guest readers, and Pinkie has told me how much Cranky relishes the chance to do his voices." A pause. "Also how awkward it would be for him should you ever have public knowledge of that, so please keep it to yourself. Twilight, the mark grants its magic, and a higher base level of skill for the pony making their first attempts. But skills can be learned. Do you wish to hear that you will never be the best librarian? Perhaps that is true: one with the mark and study to go with a natural talent would surpass. But that you cannot be a real librarian? Let me ask you a question, Twilight: one somepony of your research skills must have uncovered by now. The mark for bearing an Element. What does that look like?"
Her eyes had to open. There was no other way a blink of pure confusion could come. "...what?"
Without a single trace of irony and only slightly less in the way of sincerity, "Well, it has to be a talent, does it not? It is something a pony does, and thus there must be a mark specifically for that activity. Even my sister would follow that argument, and perhaps agree with it just a little too quickly for everypony's comfort -- but at any rate, would you please describe the icon to me? For we are unqualified, Twilight, all six of us, and so the search must begin immediately for our replacements. Somewhere in Equestria, or perhaps among the pony populations of the other nations, there is somepony whose exact talent, whose deepest magic, is to be nothing more than a Bearer. We must find that pony -- or, better yet, we must hope to find six of them -- so that we, as natural inferiors who never should have attempted a task we were not suited for, may surrender our roles to those who would be so much better at them. I can be packed to leave within the hour. Or, knowing my own habits there, three." Thoughtfully, "Truly, we may consider it to be a blessing that in our predestined incompetence, we did not create a world where we would need to be looking in the dark."
There was a giggle among the corona-lit shadows. Twilight briefly wondered whose it had been before identifying a very local source. "You're being silly."
"I?" Rarity defiantly declared. "Silly? No, I am being practical! We must save Equestria, Twilight, from the greatest menace it will ever encounter: ourselves! Trot up the ramp with me so that we may begin -- oh no, oh dear, neither of us has a mark for trotting..."
More giggling. "And now you're just being ridiculous."
Affronted, "Clearly not. Does my mark look as if it is for being ridiculous?"
"I still don't know what your mark is for," Twilight exaggeratedly teased. "You're a dressmaker with gems on your flank, and since every last piece you make doesn't have a gem on it, plus you've never made a dress completely from gems, or hollowed a huge one out and worn it -- then I guess that's it! Your mark is for being ridiculous! The mystery is finally solved!"
"We should tell Applejack and Rainbow immediately," Rarity solemnly decided. "I believe both will accept your conclusion. Enthusiastically. Twilight -- do you know what a librarian's mark looks like?"
The seeming shift in topic nearly derailed her, and she scrambled for the safety of lecture. "Well, there isn't one icon. Different ponies have their magic latch onto concepts in different ways, so just like a lot of other talents, there's a whole list of librarian marks. The most common is a foreleg stretching towards a shelf, but right behind that for frequency is a partially-open card catalog drawer, and then you get --"
The hoof gently contacted her flank, and she froze.
They touched, all of them did, and she'd become used to that. There were nuzzles between friends, along with the occasional ponypile. Twilight usually learned about Rainbow's patience having completely run out on a lecture at the moment she found a cyan hoof jammed into her mouth. But... for the definition she still had so much trouble trying to believe might ever be a part of her life, what Rarity had just done wouldn't be considered intimate. However, looked at in the other way...
You had to know somepony very well before you would casually touch their mark.
"You are Ponyville's librarian," Rarity softly said, "and so this is a librarian's mark. A librarian who, perhaps, is still having certain difficulties accepting her place and is, shall we say, overcompensating somewhat. Insecurity has a way of doing that. If I ever believe that the tale might not force a blush so hot as to set me on fire, I will tell you about my first trade show, from before I gained the Boutique. The show which convinced me to try the road which ran through my own shop. I know what it's like to doubt your own skill and place, and that is with my mark. But you are the town's librarian, and I would rather keep you in a post you have come to enjoy." She paused, sighed. "And part of being the town's librarian is to hold the annual remaindered sale. It is certainly necessary to continue being one. So, assuming that you agree we will never mention the concept that a mark might exist for being a Bearer in front of the Crusaders, because actively begging for disaster is generally a bad idea -- might we begin discussing that sale now?"
The hoof dropped, a softly glowing horn illuminated the blue-tinged nuzzle which followed, and Rarity waited.
Finally, "I... really have to, don't I?"
"I am not particularly happy about having to capitulate to the mayor either, Twilight: I still have a few disagreements of my own to move beyond, mostly centering around geese." (Twilight winced: she'd been out of town for that one.) "But in this instance, she happens to be right. I cannot dismiss her order simply because she was the one giving it. We will help you, as much as we can. Myself especially, since some portion of this is my fault. But it has to be done."
She forced herself to take several deep breaths, ordered her tail not to flick, made her ears go straight and rotate towards Rarity alone.
"...okay."
Her friend smiled. "Very well. Then if I might ask an initial favor? The lights are keyed to your command. Would you please turn them all on? I'm not accustomed to operating purely by corona light, and while I saw the state of the library when I entered -- a state I should have said something about so much sooner than this -- I can't quite make out everything that's down here. I would like to know exactly what we are up against."
Twilight nodded, and said the command. All the lights came up. Rarity looked.
Then she looked again.
This was followed by sitting down rather suddenly, with the left foreleg coming up to press against her head.
"...oh."
Twilight found the grace to blush.
The elegant form swayed somewhat. "I... Twilight, how...?"
With open (if misplaced) pride, "I've been going to auctions at least once a moon. Plus there's a lot of donations after stable sales, when ponies decide it's easier to donate than hanging onto the same books for a year until you get the chance to try selling them again. Also, sometimes publishers decide to just destroy excess stock and since all I really needed was enough copies to make the mayor see we had to have a new tree, duplicates weren't a problem and they were happy to let me take things they were just going to destroy anyway! Plus there's all the places you and I went, and there's some other tricks --"
"-- is that column actually holding up the tree?"
"No."
"Oh. Good." The swaying not-so-subtly accelerated. "So it can be safely dismantled."
"In stages. Rarity, I know it looks bad, but if we're really all working together --"
"-- Twilight, the library has never had this many books! I don't know if there's this much demand for reading material in all of Ponyville, even with the extended wait, and... Luna's star-tangled tail, there must be fifty copies of just that one novel! How are we supposed to... Spike! Spike can -- no, not even Spike has that much flame, nor do I have the gems to fuel it... oh, Twilight..."
They had known each other for nearly three years, and so Twilight knew exactly when to let her field catch Rarity in mid-faint.
She carefully lowered her friend to the floor, then looked around at the primary reserve and sighed.
We're not burning books. That's... wrong. Selling them is bad enough. That's necessary, at least in that it's what a real librarian would do. But we're not getting to the point where books wind up being burned. We'll get through it.
Her field exerted again, and she gently began to carry Rarity upstairs. It was time for an apology, and that apology would need to be followed by a full group discussion. But...
Twilight frowned.
This was the first-draft ordering of the newest checklist: apology first, then bring them into the basement so they could all see the scope of the problem. But...
What would be the best time to tell them about the storage unit?