//------------------------------//
// Weed Your Darlings 
// Story: The Remainders Of The Day 
// by Estee 
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As Twilight understood it, the concept had originally been born in Manehattan, where any pony tendency towards acquisition generally ran up against that settled zone's most constant problem.  The one thing you could just about never find for sale in the business-oriented metropolis was more living space, and so anypony who liked to accumulate possessions would eventually have to decide exactly who (or in this case, what) was getting the bed, at least for those apartments which weren't so small as to initially restrict their residents to spine-destroying hammocks.  A settled zone which never had enough room for its residents very happily sold them the things which would overflow what little solitude existed and then kept right on doing it because there was no place quite like Manehattan, a declaration which the rest of the continent tended to follow up with "Thank goodness."

The combination of a metropolis dedicated to selling things and resident ponies who had nowhere to put them had eventually triggered a new creation.  Portions of the wild zone to the immediate west had been cleared and a different type of city had arisen:  one populated by nothing except vast, empty buildings and spacious rooms waiting to be filled.  Those buildings rented access to the inviting vacuums, and the result was that while the majority of Manehattan's ponies still had no true way of living with their own possessions, they were now welcome to visit them just about any time they liked.  And it wasn't as if effectively paying double on the settled zone's notoriously Tartarus-freed occupancy prices was going to put a damper on anypony's personal budget, at least not in a way that those who collected the funds cared about.

(Twilight had heard rumors that several Manehattan residents had taken one look at the huge spaces available in those new buildings, compared them to their own closet-sized apartment, then effectively cut out the middlepony and moved in with their possessions.  It was supposedly exactly like living in the city itself, only with slightly less access to plumbing and a somewhat extended commute.  Manehattan's mayor was rumored to be considering building a huge toll gate in front of the main western entrance because if ponies were living in that immediate area with any degree of comfort while still being able to save a few bits, something clearly had to be done to fix that.)

Ponyville's population wasn't as concentrated, and the smaller settled zone easily found room for little things like backyards.  But still, there were ponies who had too many things to fit in their homes and didn't feel like redistributing any of them -- and so while it occupied only a single new building to the immediate south of the train station, the concept had found a home near the continent's center.  Twilight, seeing the opportunity for boosting her master plan, had taken advantage.

The seven of them were standing in the hallway, just outside her storage unit.  A wall of books mostly barred access to the interior, although it did so in a rather polite and decidedly organized way.

Rarity began to sway again.

"I believe," she dazedly said, "I will require some additional degree of explanation.  That entire section is the same novel, Twilight.  You said you had been claiming excess stock from the publisher --"

Which got Spike's attention, because Twilight hadn't let him in on every part of the plan.  "That doesn't sound right."

Rainbow glanced at him, then briefly examined the indicated section.  "Is there a way having four hundred copies of the same book would ever sound right?  Especially when it's one that boring?"

"...you read it?" Fluttershy asked with rather open surprise.

"Everypony else was reading it," Rainbow lightly fumed.  "So I tried it.  I gave up after twelve chapters.  They never did anything except whine and make eyes at each other and then when the author put a contract in, a contract you had to sign just to have a date, I kicked the whole thing out my bedroom window.  I don't know where it landed and I don't care."

Twilight's corona ignited, and glow softly indicated a rather indented edition.

"Oh," Rainbow stated.  This was followed by "Anyway, it's stupid.  And now it's stupid times four hundred."

"Eight hundred," Twilight helplessly corrected her.  "There's some more columns going towards the back."

Most of the group winced.  Spike just looked more confused.  "But when publishers get rid of extra copies, they sent them out to be destroyed, Twilight.  That's what you've always told me.  To keep somepony from getting their field on them and trying to work with a market that's already been flooded."

"They were happy to let me take them," Twilight said.

"Really?"

"I mean, you wouldn't just put all those books in a huge bin behind your warehouse if you didn't want somepony to come along and take them.  It's practically an open invitation."

She was at the front of the group, closest to the wall of words, and so had to try and work out exactly who had facehoofed on sound.  (Rainbow:  there had been an accompanying rustle of feathers, and it wasn't as if she hadn't had enough exposure to that particular variant.)  Spike, however...  well, facepalming involved a portion of air being displaced on impact, plus there was a little skittering noise from claws going over scales.  That was always considerably easier to pick out.

"You went dumpster diving," her little brother passively declared.

"No!  Dumpsters are dirty!  I'd never go in one unless I didn't have any other choice!"

Which, as a protest being presented to a sapient who'd literally known her all his life, was somewhat useless.  "You -- let me guess...  you lifted the entire dumpster in your field, turned it over, sorted out the books..."

Twilight blushed.  Rarity swayed faster.

"...yeah," Twilight eventually admitted.  "Plus I had to lift the entire thing over the fence first.  Because they had No Trespassing signs up and that meant I couldn't go onto the property after hours, but there wasn't any sign which said the dumpster wasn't allowed to leave."  Defensively, "I mean, it's not as if I kept the dumpster.  That would have been theft.  I kept the contents.  Which the publisher said --" with more than a little offense "-- were trash.  And sure, that book isn't...  good..."  Her tongue was immediately coated in the foulness of drastic understatement.  "...but it's still a book.  Nopony wanted it.  Which might be sort of justified because nopony should have wanted it in the first place.  Or written it.  Or paid for it."  She hadn't even made it to Chapter Six, and that was after eight tries spread across three moons, just from trying to see what all the fuss was about.  As far as she'd been able to determine, it was about the author's ability to take the simple act of a character trying to say 'Hello' and rendering it into dialogue which never would have emerged from a living pony's mouth, something which had been darkly impressive for the first chapter, pain-inducing over the next three and if left to itself for the entire page count, might have produced a local fatality.  "But when it's a book, and you're just sending it out to be destroyed..."

Pinkie, who claimed to have finished the entire thing and whose only comment had been that the author had clearly never done any of it, seemed to be thinking everything over.  "But this is good, right?  We don't have to sell enough to clear every last extra book!  We just have to sell enough that what's left can fit in here!"

Twilight's spirits began to lift --

"-- nuh-uh!" Applejack immediately shot back.  "No fallback positions!  Can't go in sayin' we've got a last resort already on tap, or nopony's gonna give it their all -- an' with this space waitin' t' use, the problem's jus' gonna start buildin' again.  Twi's gotta get things down t' where it all fits on the shelves.  That's the order.  Not 'mostly fits on the shelves an' the rest goes in the storage unit.'  We have t' do this right.  Sell what we can, an' whatever doesn't get sold gets gone.  Anythin' else an' we're beggin' for Round Two.  Not gonna happen on mah watch."

-- and immediately sank again.

"Very well," Rarity managed, propping herself against the hallway's back wall.  "We have all pledged our hours, at least what we have of them, towards making this work.  But...  looking at the scope of this...  where do we even begin?  The amount of labor required seems to approach the infinite..."

Twilight turned to face them, managed a small smile.

"That's why you make checklists," she told them.  "Because a great writer once said infinity's a lot easier to deal with when you think of it as a series of small chunks.  We just need a first step to begin with.  That leads into the second, then the third, and eventually, you're at the bottom of the list and you're done.  And the first step is..."





Step 1:  sort the books.  Figure out which ones have to be sold, versus the number which should be kept.

It wasn't a happy step.  

The first subsection of that step should have been the easy part:  they just needed to gather the duplicates, those hundreds (and then some) of excess copies which Twilight had acquired in the name of forcing the issue.  But it wasn't a pleasant process, because it left Twilight working among her failures.  There was a constant series of little emotional kicks going into her ribs, and the repeated impacts never seemed to become any duller.  And depending on just which of her friends was currently trying to assist her, there could be -- other issues.

"So you're sure they're all the same printing?" Pinkie asked.  "Because I was checking the catalog and this says the first printing is worth two-tenths of a bit more.  We could price that one a little higher for the collectors."

They were currently working in front of the tree:  it had been the only way to find enough space.  The contents of the storage unit had been emptied under Moon, levitated as a single bulk transport back to the library, where they had completely clogged up the aisles until Sun had been raised.  With operating hours under way, Spike was temporarily managing the front desk, and Twilight was -- mostly watching the street.  Pinkie, a few body lengths behind her, was checking over the most populous of the duplicates.  Familiar slapping sounds were coming from that area:  paper being placed on top of paper, over and over.

Part of Twilight's focus came from simply not wanting to watch.  They were going to get rid of books, and...  it was necessary, but having it be necessary didn't change the fact that it hurt.  But ultimately, she was also looking at the street because so many passers-by were looking at her.  

Well, she supposed there were legitimate reasons for that.  Ponies who trotted and flew past the tree generally didn't expect to have most of the view obscured by a huge semi-mound of books.  They were naturally going to pause a little, slow down in their travels so they could take an extended survey of current events.  Or a stare.  It was usually a stare.  Sometime the pony's body would go past them and the head would just rotate back while the body was still going forward, as if the pony's neck had been changed into rubber.  

Twilight had tried to tell herself that it was drumming up interest.  There was clearly something happening at the library and now ponies were going to be wondering what it was.  That was a good way to start building on one of the future steps.  But still...  they were staring, and she occasionally stared right back in the hopes that it would make them move a little faster.

Admittedly, some of the stares went past her, because that was where the books were.  Along with the current round of sorting.  And Pinkie.

"They were all in the same dumpster," she replied, not bothering to glance back.  "And given when I got them, if there was any mix of printings in there, it's almost guaranteed to be the last ones, Pinkie -- the copies the publisher ran off just before they realized the market was saturated.  It's probably not worth checking inside the covers.  Not with the number we've got on this one title."

Pinkie sighed, presumably nodded.  "Okay.  I'll just put them over here."  More slapping sounds.  "And a little here.  Some more here.  I think this end needs more reinforcement..." A rather specific series of slaps.  "There we go!  Okay, now let me just frame the window and we'll do the next title.  Twilight?"

Which temporarily prevented some of the earlier words from fully registering.  "What?"

Carefully, "'Saturated' means everypony who was going to buy a copy already did, right?  And that's why the rest were thrown away?"

"Yeah," Twilight reluctantly admitted.

Unfortunately, it led into the natural followup question.  "Then how are we supposed to sell them?"

She sighed.  "I don't know.  Just...  sort them out, Pinkie.  We'll worry about that step when it comes.  So you're almost done with that title?"

"If I don't need to check the printings?  Just about."  

Several hundred down, untold numbers to go.  "Then what's next?"

"Shingles."

That one triggered a groan.  "I wound up with duplicates of carpentry books?  I don't even remember getting anything about roofing."  It was starting to feel a little like going out with Rarity on the morning after the designer had lost track of her drink count at the bar and consumed that regrettable fourth.  She would inevitably need to request assistance in discovering everything which had actually taken place after that, because her memory would have collapsed six hours before her body did.  

"No, shingles," Pinkie corrected.  "I want to slant the roof a little, but I'm not sure if I can stagger in for a step pyramid, because there isn't enough holding it up from the bottom.  And I can't do a flat base and build on that without interlocking pages, which is going to be kind of rough on the books and we want to sell them in the best condition possible!  So I'd need a really big book for the base.  Really big.  About three times my body length.  And I've never even seen one that big!  So I was kind of wondering if there was any magic for making books bigger.  And if there isn't, that friction spell?  I'm going to need it.  Because the shingle copies will be diagonal, and I don't know how to keep them from sliding!"  Hopefully, "Unless you can think of something...?"

Which was when Frame the window? finally made its belated journey across Twilight's wearied mind.

Twilight slowly turned.

"Pinkie?"

"Yes?"

"What is that?"

"Oh, now you're just being silly, Twilight!" Pinkie enthusiastically chirped.  "You grew up around books and you worked with books!  Anypony who's spent that much time with books would know what this is!  So either you just want me to say it or --" with open pride "-- you just can't spot it when it's being done on this kind of scale."

Twilight tried to scale the result down.  This failed to produce any results, which led into her mentally attempting to scale it up and see if that produced anything she could work with.  She finally stopped when the intangible result began to overlap the tree.

"Pinkie..."

"It's a book fort!  A life-sized one!  You can trot inside, and look out the windows, and defend yourself from the siege of the evil hardcovers!  Because if you're building with paperbacks, then hardcovers have to be the evil ones.  Besieging good with good is just silly.  And the paperback are probably the underdog, because hardcovers do more damage.  So I had to make this one really big, because when you're the underdog, you need extra ponies.  But it needs a roof because if we don't have one, Rainbow's going to besiege us from the air.  And it should probably be reinforced, in case she decides to crash through it.  On purpose.  Or on Rainbow.  So what do you think?  Diagonal plus shingles?  Or would another shape absorb more impact?"





The central issue with Rarity was distraction.  

They had agreed not to page through the books any more than necessary.  A quick inspection for damage, especially with those things which hadn't been taken down for a while:  even Twilight's most dedicated reshelving didn't flip through every last page, and so she occasionally didn't see when some rather rude, uncaring, and possibly insane pony had defaced a page by writing in the margins or underlining passages in a book they didn't own.  Inspection, at least at the speed of the fastest possible field-assisted page flips, was necessary.  Reading stood a chance to paralyze the entire process, and so neither of them was going to do any of it.  They'd sworn to that.

None of which prevented Rarity from looking at the covers.

"Hmmm..."

Oh no.  "Next book, Rarity."

"Just a moment.  I am simply removing a quantity of dust.  Should this wind up being placed into the sale, it will need to look its best."

"Oh.  Okay."  

"Also, once the patina has been wiped away, I should have a better judgment for the true hues of the lead character's dress.  How old is this book?  Let me see...  oh, really.  Well, then.  Given that only two or perhaps three living ponies might have a personal memory of the time when this was originally in style, I believe it might be safe to attempt some degree of revival.  Now of course, I will not take credit for the design.  That will be left to the original creator, and I will note that this is but my interpretation of the work on my label.  Which naturally means that I will need to learn that designer's name and as I have sadly observed so many times before, your fashion history section is so lacking as to practically force me to create my own department at home.  I believe you confirmed the quality of my collection rather recently, did you not?  So simply allow me to gallop back to the Boutique for a moment --"

"-- Rarity, this is your fourth trip."

Crossly, "Well, clearly your teleporting me home would leave both of us doing something other than sorting for the duration.  I will certainly not delay my journey until distraction causes me to lose the bulk of this idea.  And I will not permit you to bring the contents of my shelves into the tree, lest any of my own troops wind up being felled by friendly spellfire.  I shall not be gone for long, Twilight, not unless I wind up going rather deep into my own shelves in order to find this creator -- hmm.  Yes, something will have to be done about that peek-a-boo rip over the mark.  Would you believe that there was once a time when such a dress was seen as a deliberate provocation towards the erotic, and so some ponies demanded that such things be banned?  When the majority of ponies trot about with their marks on full display every day?  I swear, to cover something for a single second is to send it into the realm of the forbidden..." 





Spike had grown up at her side, and...  a lot of that time had been spent with her making mistakes regarding his upbringing, something she'd finally admitted and frequently apologized for.  But on the whole, she felt he'd turned out rather well, and acknowledged that a good part of that was in spite of her.  The little dragon's natural gregariousness seemed to have just about fully recovered from their years in the Gifted School, for youth brought with it an improved ability to bounce back.  He had mostly shed the effects like worn-out scales, while Twilight was...  still working on that.  

But there had been positive aspects to having them grow up together, and one of those was that her brother's priorities were frequently in order.  He knew when to help her with problems (and she knew she had yet to accurately pin down every last time when she needed help).  He was willing to assist with so much, and just knowing she could count on him sometimes helped keep her stable during a crisis.  However...  there was still a problem, built into the relationship itself.

Spike was her little brother.

He understood when she, and by extension, the library needed him.  But there was only so much extra labor he could stand.  Even during those times when things were operating normally, he would frequently respond to her third attempted rearrangement of the day by chasing her out of the tree.  After a certain number of hours, Spike would inevitably begin to hear the duties of youth calling him.  He wanted to go see his friends.  He wanted to go outside and play.  He wanted to know when the next raise in his allowance was coming, especially after spending so much time as a distinctly underpaid assistant.  He would become frustrated with his confinement.  And sometimes, when Spike became frustrated...

"I saw this yellow thing through the window."

"Oh?"

"I was trying to remember what it's called.  And if I've ever seen it before.  I can't remember if...  well, anyway, all I know is that it glows and its light is sort of warm.  Do you think it'll be back tomorrow?"

...he turned sarcastic.  





Applejack's honesty could be something less than helpful.  There had been times when the Bearers would collectively need to present some degree of falsehood in order to make a mission work, and their best hopes for such occasions was to either isolate Applejack -- one drastic emergency had led to temporarily locking her in a handy washroom, but the farmer had been rather good at kicking her way out -- or just hope nopony noticed the tight-lipped earth pony shuffling her hooves at the back of the group.  She was notoriously bad at diplomacy (which she saw as 'mostly lying'), occasionally slipped up while deliberately trying for tact, and could sometimes turn into the last pony to whom the words "What are you thinking?" should ever be uttered, because there was a very good chance she would tell you.

As it turned out, that Elemental trait wasn't much of a comfort during sorting either.

"An' that one.  Weekly gossip rag.  Ninety percent's a lie, nine is exaggeration, an' you might not want t' trust the writer an' editors t' put their real names on anythin'.  It'll be another waste of table space, an' we're gonna have to take up jus' about everythin' 'round the tree t' start with.  Just shred it."

"I am not shredding anything."  Twilight put her hoof down, and the echo bounced around the library for a few seconds.  "Not before giving it a fair chance!  Some ponies collect magazines!  Maybe there's a resident with a gap in their issue run!"

"Y'mean like somepony missed a Gabby Gums column an' wants to catch up on all the old lies?  Nothin' ages faster than gossip, Twi, an' anypony dumb enough t' hang onto it probably got enough sources goin' that they don't need this one.  Bad enough t' have the books stacked so high:  ain't gonna have the tables on top of each other too.  As-is, we're probably gonna need some crates.  Just let me rip it an' we'll move on t' the next."

"No."

"Y'ain't makin' sense!"  And with that, Applejack put her hoof down.    

It took far more time for those echoes to die away, and that was before accounting for those produced by the two collapsed columns.

"...sorry," the considerably stronger pony finally said.  "Ah'll pick that up.  An' fix the floor.  But point stands, Twi.  There's stuff which ain't gonna sell, which ain't even worth the effort of tryin'.  Bad apples.  Gotta identify 'em and dump 'em now 'cause it's that much less t' do later.  Confetti and nests, that's all it's good for.  So let it be confetti an' nests."

The softness had to be forced into her voice.  "No."

They stared at each other for a while.

"You're bein' stubborn."

Steadily, "Takes one to know one."

That got a hat-covered nod.  "Yeah, won't argue that.  But mah point don't stand on that one, it gallops.  All you're givin' yourself is more t' do later, after the sale, when you'll be pretty much out of time.  Do it now an' it'll be easier at the end.  Twi, sometimes you've gotta get out of your own way, an' this is one of them.  Back up, let me do it, an' on t' the next.  We've wasted enough time arguin' as is."

"Then we'll waste more," Twilight softly replied, "because I'm not moving.  I'm not destroying anything right now, and I'm not even going to consider it until after the sale.  Everything gets its chance, Applejack.  So you can fight me on this until Sun gets lowered, and we'll do nothing else -- or we can go back to pure sorting, with no shredding involved.  Or you could go home.  Your choice."

In open frustration, "An' where did y'learn t' act like this?"

She went with the honest answer.  "You."

Applejack blinked.

"...fine.  But when it's over, Twi, if there's an Ah-told-y'so due t' you, Ah'll be making payment."  She turned back to the Periodicals archive.  Sorting resumed.

After a while, "Y'ever send a letter t' the Princess 'bout that lesson?"

"No."

A slow exhale.  "Good."  





The word for Fluttershy's efforts was  "...sorry."

Twilight had known that of all her friends, the caretaker would have the least time to give.  The needs of the cottage occupied the majority of Fluttershy's hours during the best of times, and spring was birthing season.  Animals who had done whatever they could to keep warm during the winter brought the results into the world, a number of species just had a cycle which lined up with the budding moons, and then there were those who just did anything they wanted, seemingly whenever they felt like it, and as long as everyone else was going into labor, they might as well too.  

The majority of those deliveries took place unsupervised.  Animals had been giving birth on their own for a very long time and for the most part, they'd become rather good at it.  There was very little need for Fluttershy to be present for hatchings unless the parents wanted her to meet the newborns, and Twilight had been told that most birds wanted to have a little private time with their new family before considering any visitors.  But with mammals, things could become a little more problematic.  Many species tended towards multiple births, and it was possible for the newborns to become somewhat tangled up with each other inside the womb.  (It was actually one of Applejack's greatest fears:  her sheep tenants were the species most prone to that problem, and she was known to spend a good part of those births lurking outside that portion of her land, ready to gallop for help at the first desperate bleat.)  Sometimes labor would start too early, or too late.  A few infants tried to emerge back-first.  Given the sheer number of residents at the cottage, the odds of having at least one issue in delivery on a spring day didn't just approach certainty, they occasionally seemed to exceed it.  

So when Fluttershy was trying to give what little time she could, Twilight had to leave the largest window open.  And at any moment...

A grey tomcat with an exceptionally short tail and a notched left ear meowed, stared down at them with a cool yellow regard.

"...um..."

"I know it's important, Fluttershy.  Go."

And as the pegasus headed for that largest of windows, "...sorry."

(On the whole, Twilight considered it to have been an improvement over the previous day.  This time, they'd gotten through six minutes.)





"I'm bored," Rainbow announced for the twentieth time.

That's nice, Rainbow.  "Just keep going."

"This is boring.  Sorting through checkout cards is boring."  

There was a word for a pony who was relying on Rainbow to do repetitive, low-energy work which demanded complete mental focus while offering a total lack of action, and that word was 'desperate'.  But the calendar had exacted a number of tolls from the group:  when it came to having the Bearers freely gather in any non-emergency situation, spring truly was the single worst season.  However, with Rainbow...  well, the simple fact was that she had more free time available than anypony else.  Unless there was a major change to usher in (or out), or something had blown in from the Everfree and had to be dealt with immediately, Rainbow's personal labor as Ponyville's weather coordinator generally either wrapped up early in the morning or about an hour after the pegasus finally forced herself out of bed.  The rest of the team took over during the bulk of the day and while some of that would occasionally require consulting with their superior (assuming they could pin down the location of her current nap), very little of it would require Rainbow to put in actual work.  With spring established and the phase into summer weeks away, things mostly coasted and Rainbow mostly practiced stunts, picked herself out of the resulting divots, then fled before anypony could come out of their house to verify who had just produced the crash and demand a little repair labor.   

(There was also a word for a pony who managed to make Rainbow clean up after herself, and that word was 'fast'.  (Having exceptional jaw strength was a secondary requirement, as Rainbow seldom stopped straining to get away from a tail clamp.)  Rainbow hated cleaning:  her kitchen sink served as perpetual evidence, and Twilight's infrequent visits to the cloud home always kept her well away from the food preparation area because it seemed as if the occasional low rumble was being produced by something other than ions shifting within the floor when Rainbow planted her hooves with a little too much force.  She was roughly familiar with a cloud's natural pegasus-assisted rumble.  In Twilight's sincere opinion, nothing happening in the direction of an unattended kitchen should ever sound hungry.)

Rainbow could become bored with an activity in less time than it took to launch a Rainboom.  Anything which didn't have much in the way of movement involved would disable her focus, things which required paying attention to fine detail work had better have a backup plan in place along with an emergency response crew on standby, and the most potboiler of adventure novels needed to be sending up steam plumes before the prologue ended.  Tasks which Twilight found mentally numbing were likely to end up with the materials scattered in fragments of frustration, possibly with Rainbow hovering over the largest and boasting about the damage she'd managed to put on that one.

But for sheer quantity of time available...  she'd already asked Spike to do everything he could, and the little dragon was performing the current task for the Romance section while under strict instructions to look at nothing which was not the checkout card.  Beyond that, for assistance during the majority of hours, it was Rainbow or it was nopony.   

"Rainbow, we're just looking to see how often a book has been checked out since the last sale," Twilight reminded her, not quite for the twentieth time.  "We should generally try to keep an entire series together because somepony who just finished Volume Two is going to be really upset if they have to skip over to Volume Five.  But for solo novels, if something hasn't left the library once, there's a chance that..."  More slowly, with her misery increasing by the word, "...nopony's interested any more.  At least not interested enough to come in and check the book out, or maybe even take it off the shelf at all.  Just note the last checkout date and if it's from before my arrival, that book might be -- in trouble.  And then it might need to go out to the tables, because it's taking up space, and space is what we have to create.  Put it on the 'Possible' pile.  If it's just forgotten..."

The responding pause was a fresh one, and the words were new.  But coming from Rainbow, the question felt -- odd.  "Ponies forget about books?"

"And authors," Twilight miserably said.  "The Archives don't:  that's part of why they exist.  To make sure that there's always one last place to go.  But...  even there, I know there's books on the shelves which only get moved when they're being dusted.  Books which have been sitting there for centuries because -- ponies forget.  Somepony said that less than one percent of everything that's ever been written is still being read today.  And part of that is because nopony can read it all -- not even the Princess would have had enough time to go through everything in the Archives, Rainbow.  But a lot of it is because ponies forget.  It's like that one novel out front."

"The book fort one?"

Pinkie had temporarily given up on the roof in favor of starting a second level.  (It had taken her nearly an hour to create a workable ramp.)  "Yeah.  You'll have a book which everypony reads.  Then everypony's read it, the author's told the story, and the ponies might take it down themselves once in a while for some reason, even put themselves through reading it again.  But they don't pass it on to their children.  They don't read it out loud for other ponies, or put it in school courses.  Only a few books get that, when it's stories.  And even for nonfiction, things get updates, and not many ponies want to attribute older sources and explain how things changed.  Sometimes the first author was wrong and when ponies know more, the whole book gets replaced.  And ponies...  forget, Rainbow.  Some books don't deserve that, but...  it's hard to stop, and just about impossible to reverse.  At best, maybe somepony will be so bored that they'll just snatch something off the shelf because they haven't read it before, and then that book's alive for a few hours.  While that's happening, the author isn't gone any --"

She finally spotted the shape of her thoughts, and forced her words to stop before the melancholy completely took over.

It's not like we're sending them out to be buried.  It's not like anypony died.

But in so many cases (and for the Archives, it was a truly vast majority), the writer was already dead.  The book was their legacy.  The book was...  all that remained.  As long as that legacy stayed on the shelf, there was a chance for it to be taken up again.  Dead paper would become living words.  The lost returned until the moment the covers closed and then they waited again, lost in rest and quiet hope.  To remove a book from the shelf, not have it sell, and then just get rid of it...  was taking away that last chance.  Taking the legacy of those preserved words and condemning them to perpetual silence.

Kicking out books felt so much like kicking ponies.  Kicking them into the grave.

Carefully, with an odd softness in that often-edged voice, because when Rainbow decided to care about something, she fully committed herself to that too.  "I can just take over for a while if you need a break."

"I need a drink," Twilight lied, for what she really needed was a few seconds away from the library floor and a drink was her first, best excuse.  "I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Bring me back some wake-up juice?  Because seriously, I could fall asleep right here."

"You sleeping on a giant pile of books," Twilight said with faint, unfelt humor.

"Yeah."

"Well, there's one more off that checklist..."

The fuming might have been partially faked.  "Hey!"

"Now if you'd just take a nap inside the bell, even for five seconds, I could just about wrap up the whole first scroll."

The warning wasn't, especially when it came with flaring wings.  "Twilight..."

"Seriously, given what you were like when I got here, I had you sleeping on a pile of books as the weaker option --"

Rainbow pounced, because a quick round of payback-intended quasi-roughhouse wasn't boring.  And once Spike had unearthed them from the wreckage of the inevitable collapsed column, they went back to work, with the pegasus grumbling all the way while Twilight distractedly noted that Rainbow knew a surprising number of curses in Griffonant.  

But it was all done with distraction now, because no amount of tumbling across the floor had shaken the thought out of her head, and the quiet time beneath the books had simply given her all the longer to dwell on it.  

We're not killing ponies by taking away their legacies.  There are master copies in the Archives.  There's always a chance for somepony to come along and read, one more time.

But the Archives were in Canterlot.  Most ponies would go through their entire lives without traveling to the capital, and it often seemed as if just about the same percentage were incapable of considering the benefits to be gained from filling out the library exchange program's request form.  

This isn't a burial.

The thought would not leave her head, because she didn't want it to.  It was the only shield she could raise.  

Some lies were protective.  It was something she'd never been able to discuss with Applejack, not with anticipation of the disgusted snorts which would serve as the central counter to her arguments.  But it was true.  You told lies to protect ponies.  From pain, from upset, and when it would hurt too much, from the truth.  And there would be times when those shields held.

It was just a little different when she knew she was lying to herself.