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// Chapter 4 
// Story: The Book that had Never Been Read 
// by Unwhole Hole 
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	“Proof?! What more proof do you need? She needs to be EXPELLED!”
Spoiled Rich bristled and leaned forward over Cheerilee’s desk, appearing as though she were about to start foaming at the mouth. She was literally quaking with rage, and eying Dinky aggressively from time to time. 
Cheerilee, meanwhile, looked even more exasperated than usual. Her expression was close to what it looked like after trying to explain algebra to Snails, except worsened by the fact that she now had to stay after hours to hold an emergency meeting with Spoiled Rich and Dinky’s mother. Dinky was in attendance as well, sitting in a smaller chair on the right of her mother. She was not particularly interested in the conversation around her, though. None of it really mattered. Instead, her eyes were focused entirely on the book sitting on Cheerilee’s desk. 
“You can’t!” cried Derpy. “Oh please, Cheerilee, you just can’t!”
“Of course she can! And she will! I’ll have you know that I’m a member of the School Board- -”
“We know,” said Cheerilee, pressing her hoof against her forehead. “You’ve said it at least seven times so far. Have you ever noticed how weird it is that we have a School Board with ten salaried members to oversee one teacher?”
“We oversee all the schools in Ponyville!”
“Yes. All one of them.” 
“Well, if this incident is any indication, you don’t have the ability to run it yourself! Do you know where my daughter is right now? The psychiatric wing of Ponyville Hospital! Because of what this halfbreed reject did to her! I mean, what will other ponies think, knowing I have a daughter that had to get sent to the looney bin? It could ruin us!” 
“But she didn’t mean to!” said Derpy. “My little muffin would never do that, not on purpose, she just wouldn’t…um…” Derpy paused. “What did she do again?”
“She brutally attacked my daughter, you moron!” shrieked Spoiled Rich. “I should have you thrown in jail for this! She’s your responsibility! But what do I expect from a mental deficient…” She sighed, then glared at Dinky. “She’s a troublemaker, just like her father- -”
“Don’t bring him into this,” snapped Derpy. 
“Don’t you dare get angry with me like that! I’m the victim here! It’s not my fault that your too stupid to properly wrap a muffin!” 
“Shut- -UP!” shouted Cheerilee, slamming her hooves on her desk. Derpy and Spoiled Rich both recoiled at the sound of Cheerilee’s fully manifested teacher-voice. “Why is it that the only pony being an adult here is Dinky? And might I remind you that she’s right there!” Cheerilee pointed toward Dinky, who was still quietly staring at the book. “Oh, my head,” she said, sitting back down. “And the doctors wonder why my blood pressure is so high…” 
“I brought muffins, if that would help,” said Derpy, lifting a small basket of freshly prepared muffins. 
“Muffins can’t help you now,” said Spoiled Rich, smiling. “This is the last straw. I was against this from the start. This is what happens when you try to mainstream the special-education students with the rest of the class- -”
“Dinky is my top student,” said Cheerilee. “Not just in this class. Ever. She has the highest grades in my class this year despite a three year age gap.” 
“But is that worth her constant violent outbursts?” 
“She doesn’t have outbursts,” replied Cheerilee. 
“Then how do you explain what happened to poor Diamond Tiara?”
“Wait,” said Derpy. “Something happened to Diamond Tiara? Oh, Spoiled, I hope she’s okay!”
Cheerilee interrupted before Spoiled could retort. She kept her explanation simple and slow, knowing that Derpy sometimes had trouble following complicated stories. “I talked to the other students,” she said. “Silver Spoon was there when it happened. She was holding Dinky back at the time.”
“Holding her back! See! I’m right, she was trying to attack my daughter!”
“But she never reached Diamond Tiara. From what I’ve gathered, Diamond Tiara stole this book from Dinky. She started reading it, and then…well, that’s when I got there. She was screaming, and I couldn’t get her to stop.” 
“So? That just means she used magic! That’s what her kind do! She must have put a curse on my daughter, some kind of mind control spell!”
“Mind control. Sure, why not. Just because master level wizards can barely create that kind of spell doesn’t mean a child with no formal magical training shouldn’t be able to.” 
Derpy gasped. “Dinky! I didn’t know you could do that!”
“I was being sarcastic,” clarified Cheerilee. “I was pointing out that there’s no way a unicorn her age could have performed a spell like that. And when the ambulance came, the paramedics checked for signs of magical injury. They didn’t find any.”
“Then…then what happened?” asked Dinky.
The group went silent. “We don’t know,” said Cheerilee. “It seems to have been some kind of mental breakdown…”
“My own horseshi- -”
Cheerilee stood up suddenly. “If you’re going to use language like that in my classroom, I’m going to make you stand in the corner! I don’t care if you’re on the School Board or not!” 
“But then what about the book?” said Derpy. She pointed at it. “If Diamond Tiara got sick when she read it, maybe the book is broken.”
“It’s not,” said Cheerilee. “I looked through it myself. Every page.” She lifted it up and flipped through the pages, showing them to Derpy and Spoiled Rich. “And it’s blank.”
“What?!” cried Dinky and Spoiled Rich at the same time. 
“Blank,” repeated Cheerilee. “It’s empty, the kind of book you would use to write a diary in. There’s no words at all.” She flipped it closed and placed her hoof on it, sliding it across the desk toward Dinky. Dinky reached for it greedily, but Cheerilee did not lift her hoof. “You can have it back,” she said, “but you can’t use this book for your report, for obvious reasons. Also, I’m giving you a demerit.”
Dinky’s chest suddenly tightened. For the first time since the conversation had begun, she looked up and saw that Cheerilee was serious. “But- -but I’ve never had a demerit before! Why?”
“Because I’m an earth-pony, and I don’t know any better. I do not tolerate bullying in my school. Do it again, and you’re out. For good.”  

Spoiled Rich left quickly, producing a loud sound of harrumphing as she did. Derpy remained behind for a moment, though, to speak with Cheerilee. From what Dinky understood, they were both approximately the same age and had grown up together, even though Derpy had left school by the third grade. They were not terribly close, but like most ponies in Ponyville, they were friends. 
It was dark outside by the time the meeting finished. Dinky did not mind much. The darkness hurt her eyes less than the sun did. On an ordinary day where she found herself akwake so late, she would have paused to look up at Luna’s sky. This time, though, she immediately opened her book and looked inside.  
Cheerilee had been wrong. It was all there. The book was full of text, just as it had been before. Dinky flipped through, just to make sure. She had no idea how Cheerilee could have missed it. There was not a single blank page in the whole text. 
“Dinky?” said a voice behind her. Dinky jumped, startled, and turned around to see Silver Spoon. She had been sitting on the stairs of the schoolhouse out of sight. 
Dinky frowned. “Go away,” she said, bluntly. “I really, really don’t want to talk to you right now.” 
“I’m sorry,” said Silver Spoon, being equally blunt. 
“You’re sorry. No you’re not.”
“I am!” said Silver Spoon, stepping forward. The concerned expression on her face did look sincere, and Dinky decided that she likely was, but probably only because she was alone. “I didn’t mean to- -”
“To rat me out? I got a demerit because of you.”
“And as an earth-pony, that comment was extremely hurtful.”
“Hurtful? One of MY comments was hurtful?”
“She doesn’t really mean it! You don’t know what it’s like for her- -”
“I was just in there with her mother. I can guess. But I’m not angry at her. I’m angry with YOU.” 
“M- -me?”
“I don’t mind if you insult me. I respect you. But you let her go too far. And she got what she deserved.” 
Silver Spoon’s eyes widened. “How can you say that?”
“How could you let her talk about my mom like that? You could have stopped her!”
“You know I couldn’t- -”
“Just like you ‘can’t’ get a grade higher than hers?”
“You don’t know what it’s like! To be in love…”
“Nor will I ever, Silver. Not if I can help it. Not if it takes me away from…” She looked down at the book she was holding. “I have to go,” she said. “I have a book report to write.” 

Once again, Dinky found herself sitting at her desk, her room lit by the harsh white light of her crystal lantern. This time, though, she was not reading the book. Instead, it was sitting on her desk, dominating the surface with its presence even though it remained closed. It almost seemed to be waiting to be opened. 
Yet, for some reason, Dinky found herself hesitating. She wanted to read that book more than anything, to finally know what was in it. But she also knew what it had done to Diamond Tiara. She was under no illusions: whatever had happened to Diamond Tiara had only happened to her because she saw what was in this book. Dinky had no idea what that meant, and could only grasp at the potential implications. 
She did know one thing, though. She desperately needed to know what was in this book. Looking at its outer surface was only a maddening reminder of the fact that it was impossible for her to recall the contents while she was reading it. She had read it seven times now, and each time she had gone to write her report only to find that she could not even distantly recall what had gone on between the book’s covers. 
Dinky had stared at the book for nearly an hour when an idea suddenly occurred to her. The epiphany was so rapid and so simple that she laughed at how foolish she had been. She quickly moved the book to one side and took out a piece of paper, then prepared her quill over it. 
“I don’t care if it takes me all night,” she said. “I’ll transcribe you! If I can’t write about you after I’m done reading you, then I’ll write while I’m reading!”
This idea made Dinky feel very pleased with herself. She was sure that it would work. She happily flipped open the book and lifted her quill in her magic. 
Transcription was not easy. It required a great deal of concentration to both read and write at the same time. Dinky had rarely done it before, and she decided that it would be best if she did a test. She would transcribe just the first page, and then see if her writing was neat enough to read. 
So she began, reading through the first page and quickly scratching the letters and words that she was seeing across the blank page. Since she was reading, she did not look up to see what she was writing; that would have defeated the purpose. It was also what made the endeavor challenging. From what she could tell, though, her letters were straight and even.
When she finished, Dinky let out a long sigh. Her head hurt, but she had succeeded. She slowly pushed the book to the side despite how much she wanted to continue reading it, even though she had already forgotten what was actually written on the first page. Dinky instead turned her attention toward the page that she had written.
Almost immediately she found herself blinking, confused at what she was seeing. Then she felt a growing sense of unease as she realized that it was not a trick of the light, or of her tired eyes. There was indeed text on her page, but it was not written in Equestrian. At first Dinky though that it was just badly written and that the letters had blurred into each other, but looking at it she saw that each letter was formed perfectly and that each was evenly spaced. They were not even connected, despite the fact that Dinky had been sure that she had been writing in cursive. 
The letters themselves, though, were strange. They were incredibly complex and covered in both strange curves and sudden angles, all of which were edged so deeply and aggressively into the paper that had the desk not been covered in a thin sheet of protective glass the page surely would have been carved into the wood. 
Something about the letters made Dinky shiver. Something was wrong with them. Even their mere existence was disturbing. They were not in any language that Dinky knew: they were not in modern or Old Equestrian, or in any classical Pegasus fonts. They did not follow any runic scheme either. They were too complicated and, somehow, too old. That was the impression that Dinky got from them, that the page she was staring at was somehow far deeper than it should have been, as though she was the first pony to have seen writing like this since longer than even Celestia could remember. 
The more she thought about it, the more Dinky’s blood ran cold. She had only been transcribing, and yet her page was covered in these strange markings. She did not know why, or how, or remember making them. Because of this, she suddenly found that she was breathing fast. A few beads of sweat dripped from her forehead and onto her desk.
Dinky turned around in her chair, trying to look away from the transcribed page- -only to suddenly freeze in horror at what surrounded her. The thin strip of midday light that was coming through her curtain illuminated her room, and Dinky saw that every wall had been plastered with pages that had not been there just minutes before. All of them were covered in the same style of text, running not only across the pages but beyond them and over the intervening space of the walls. Symbols of every shape were written on running, still damp ink, all in the same font that Dinky had inadvertently copied from the book. 
“N…no,” said Dinky, shutting her eyes. “It’s not there. It- -I only made one page! It can’t be- -”
She opened her eyes, expecting the vision to have vanished. It had not, though. The walls still remained covered- -and Dinky thought that she saw a few more pages scrawled in red ink. She gasped, and her quill dropped from her magic. 
Dinky stood up suddenly, only to realize that the text had indeed spread. Not to the walls or the ceiling, though. As she looked down at her body, she saw that the fine and strange lettering had been inked over every inch of her young body. 
Ink ran down Dinky’s lavender fur and onto the floor as she stood for several minutes without moving. Then, slowly at first but rising to mad crescendo, she began to laugh.