//------------------------------//
// Chapter 8 
// Story: The Book that had Never Been Read 
// by Unwhole Hole 
//------------------------------//

	It was beginning to make sense. Not in the way Dinky had intended it to, but her own intentions had long been abandoned as she progressed forward, piecing together the ideas that had begun to coalesce in her mind. The symbols were not letters. Not in the sense that they represented sounds, at least, or even ideas. Instead, they were something more similar to shapes. They were geometric forms of unimaginable complexity, with the visible portion just a tiny speck of their true nature. They were rocks that had emerged from the lake; the symbols were the barest tips, connecting to great unseen mountains beneath the cloudy surface.  
They meant something. Dinky was not sure what, because it was impossible to translate them fully unless they were all present. They were pieces, but Dinky had no idea what sort of machine they were pieces to.
In her efforts- -what she came to think of as research- -Dinky had begun to translate much of the book into its final form based off her notes. The only thing she did not attempt to translate was the name in the back, at least not more than once. When she had tried, translating the first two letters had given her sudden and excruciating pain, and translating the third had made her profoundly sick. She did not dare attempt the whole word; the idea of what it might mean was simply to terrible for her to dare to face. 
Dinky no longer slept. She no longer needed to. More than that, though, she did not want to go back. She did not want to see the lake again, or feel its slimy brackish water against her skin- -or to see what had seen her. If she revisited the lake, Dinky was not sure that she would be able to come back again. 
In this time, she read the book more times than she could count. As she did, she became aware that it was starting to change. Each time it would be different, and the tone began to change. It was no longer grand and fun; when Dinky finished, she would be left with a deep fear as though what she had seen had left shadows inside her mind. There were things in the book now, things that frightened her more than she could have thought possible. When she read these things, Dinky wondered if this was what Diamond Tiara had seen when she had looked in the book. Her only consolation against these horrors was that she could only remember the fear when she finished the book, and not the things that it had shown her. 
Dinky had long since forgotten the book report, or school, or anything else beside the book. It was all that mattered now. The only purpose that she existed for was to solve its mystery. 

Derpy was beginning to grow increasingly concerned. Initially, she had decided to be lenient with allowing Dinky to choose not to go to school. From personal experience, she knew how cruel ponies could be to somepony who was different. She herself had been mocked endlessly in school, and she saw the same thing happening to Dinky, albeit for the opposite reason. Whatever had happened between her and Diamond Tiara must have been stressful, and Derpy was fine with giving Dinky a few days off. 
A lot longer than a few days had passed, though. It had now been just over three weeks since that incident, and as far as Derpy knew, Dinky had not yet returned to school. To Derpy, this was terrifying. She had seen the pattern before when she herself had dropped out of school just over two decades ago. In her case, it had because she had simply been unable to keep up with the other students. Dinky, though, was not like her. Neither of her daughters were. They were smart, especially Dinky. Derpy just did not understand what had gone wrong. 
She was aware that Dinky was moving, though. She spent most of her time locked in her room, but not always. Her amblyopia made her partially resistant to perception spells, and combined with the fact that as a mother she was never really able to ignore her own daughter, Derpy found herself often seeing Dinky sneaking out at night or returning with ink and paper. At first, Derpy had hoped that it was for a really, really good report, but she was increasingly realizing that such a belief was wishful thinking. 
Something was wrong, and she needed to do something. She just had no idea what. Every day, she would go to Dinky’s door and say goodbye before she went off to work, and every day she would come back hoping to see Dinky on the couch, happy to see her in a way that she had not been in years. Instead, though, every day was the same: Dinky would be hidden away, doing her work, as she always did and always had done. 
Eventually, though, Derpy got up the courage to do something. She took some time to prepare a large basket of Dinky’s favorite flavors of muffins and then, with some hesitation, climbed the stairs to the upper level of her house. 
The upper level was not large, and was mostly separated into two rooms. One had belonged to Sparkler, and Derpy kept in in order just in case her elder daughter ever decided to return from the distant Crystal Empire. The other, smaller room belonged to Dinky. Originally, Dinky had insisted on having that room because of how pretty she had thought the view was from it. Derpy really hoped she still enjoyed it as much as she had back then. 
“Dinky?” she said, tapping at the door with her hoof. There was no response, but the door had not been closed properly and swung open slowly. 
Derpy paused. She hated to disturb her daughter’s privacy, because she had hated when her own parents had done that to her. Still, she had come- -albeit slowly- -to recognize that this was a dire situation, and stepped inside.
The door almost immediately shut behind her, and Derpy squeaked in surprise, nearly dropping her muffins in the process. She held onto them, though, knowing that they were for her daughter, and fumbled about the dark room for a moment.
The first thing she noticed was that it smelled bad. Not like what it should have smelled like, though. Derpy would have understood if it had smelled like a filly had been living there continuously for three weeks. Instead, though, it smelled old, like the dusty, chalky smell of the unused mailroom beneath the Ponyville post office that was largely used to store old records. Somehow that dry, old smell was worse.
Derpy nearly tripped as her hoof suddenly struck something metal. It in fact took all of her concentration not to slip, fall, and break something, but she managed to stay on her feet. She reached down and picked up whatever it was and quickly realized that it was a broken crystal lantern that had been left on the floor. The crystal inside had not been charged in some time, but Derpy saw that it was still alive with a dim yellowish glow. Carefully, she opened the flap to allow some of what little light it had left out. She then looked around the room.
When she did, Derpy immediately saw a pair of reflective yellow eyes staring back at her through the darkness. This time she screamed and dropped her muffins. They spilled out of the basket but then stopped, each suspended in field of gold light. They hovered for a moment, but then were put back into their basket and the basket lowered gently to the floor. 
“Please don’t make a mess, mother,” said Dinky, her voice sounding strangely empty. “You need to be more careful.” 
“D…Dinky?”
Derpy held up the lantern, and as her eyes adjusted to the inadequate light she saw that the reflective eyes she had seen did in fact belong to her daughter, who had apparently been watching her from her chair with her back to her desk. Derpy gasped when she saw her daughter: Dinky’s hair was unkempt and her already tiny body gaunt to the point of exposing the outlines of her ribs. She almost looked skeletal.
“Dinky, when- -when was the last time you ate something?”
“Ate something?” Dinky looked distant, but a vague expression of confusion crossed her face. “I had…I had a muffin,” she said, pointing to a plate sitting on the corner of her desk. “Pistachio…when I got back from the library. But that was two days ago…” She frowned. “No…I think it was longer than that…” 
“Dinky! No! It’s been a LOT longer, if you don’t eat- -”
Dinky chuckled. It was a high, slow sound, and Derpy shuddered when she heard it. It sounded like Dinky was about to start screaming. “I’ll what? Starve? No. Not until I’m done.”
She lifted her hooves and pointed. Derpy redirected the narrow beam of the lantern at the walls and gasped. They were covered in the paper and ink that Dinky had been steadily acquiring: every surface seemed to be plastered with pages of various size and shape, all coated in strange symbols that Derpy did not recognize. They were not simply posted, though. The pages seemed to lead into each other, and the symbols connected and ran together in strange shapes that Dinky had assembled throughout the room.
“A single pattern,” said Dinky, her chuckling suddenly stopping. “A single pattern…but to what? What is it FOR?” she slowly revolved in her chair. “But why am I asking you? You probably don’t know…”
“Dinky…” Derpy took a step forward, shuddering as she saw several large pages that differed from the rest. They seemed to be covered with crude, childish charcoal drawings of a pony. Her body was invariably drawn with thick, dark lines, sometimes what looked like hundreds of them. Her eyes, though, had been stained with red ink. It looked as though Dinky had just poured ink onto the paper, and then hung it up before it dried, causing the figure drawn on the pages to seem to be weeping where the red ink ran down her smiling charcoal face. “I brought- -”
“Muffins? I know. I can see them.”
“I have all your favorite flavors! Corn, and orange zest, and bran but with dates instead of raisins. I know how much you hate the raisins- -” 
“I don’t have a favorite flavor,” said Dinky, coldly.
“You…you don’t?”
“No. I hate them all equally. I can’t stand muffins. I only ever ate them because it seemed to make you happy. But I’m such a disappointment now, I guess it doesn’t matter if I fail to maintain that illusion.”
“Disappointment? You’re not a disappointment, Dinky!”
Dinky lifted her head but did not turn around to face her mother. “I can’t stop seeing. If I close my eyes, I see it. I see THEM. The pages, the letters. But I saw your face. When you saw me. What must you think of me? I’m a failure in your eyes. And I accept that. It’s not like it matters anymore anyway.”
“No! You’re just- -you’re just sick- -”
Dinky turned around suddenly with a small burst of golden light that caused her mother to take a step back. Her yellow eyes focused squarely on Derpy’s. “I’m not ‘SICK’,” she hissed. “I’m NORMAL. This is NORMAL. Anypony, anypony in my situation would do the same THING! I have to- -I have to read it! I have to FINISH it! That’s what Luna said! She said it to ME!” Dinky suddenly paused, and all the anger left her. “But…but she wasn’t really Luna, was she? Or does that even matter anymore?” 
Derpy was now quite frightened. Not for her own safety, but for that of her daughter. Something was wrong with Dinky, and although Derpy was not smart enough to figure out exactly what it was, she knew that it was up to her to stand up and act like a mother. 
“Dinky,” she said, trying to sound firm despite her wavering voice. “This isn’t healthy. You can’t stay in here like this. You haven’t even been to school in three weeks!”
“Three…three weeks?” said Dinky, seeming legitimately surprised by that number. 
“Yes! And you used to love school! You used to love…a lot of things. Dinky, please, tell me! I just want to help! What happened?”
Dinky’s eyes slowly grew distant. “I never liked school,” she said. “In fact, I think I hated it. It took me this long to realize that, but…yeah. I always hated it. Just sitting there, doing nothing useful…” she began to turn back to her desk. “Wasting my time to learn how to live a wasted life…” 
“No!” said Derpy, taking a step forward. “That isn’t true! You’re so smart! So much smarter than me! It always makes me so happy to imagine what you can do, what you could be. Not like…me…”
“Potential, you mean.” Dinky shook her head. “I don’t have any potential. Not really. I can’t even read a book properly. And it’s now probably too late to submit my report…there’s no point. Dropping out, staying in? It all leads to the same thing. The same life.” She put her head down on the book on her desk. “My only chance to get out of this town was to get into Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. But now there’s not enough left of me. Just them…and just her…” 
Derpy’s heart suddenly beat faster. “You can still apply. I’m sure you can get in.”
“My application has been rejected four times. They didn’t even send me a rejection letter. They just ignored me. Because I’m too stupid. Too useless. I thought this last time, I was sure to have it…but I’ve dropped out of school now. I’ll never get in.” 
“They…didn’t reject you,” said Derpy, feeling her breath catching in her throat. 
“Then why am I here?” Dinky looked at the book on her desk. “Unless this is what I’m for…”
“They didn’t reject you,” asserted Derpy again. “Because I never delivered your applications.” 
The room fell silent for a momenta, and almost seemed to grow colder. The lantern that Derpy was holding flickered and suddenly glowed much more brightly. 
“You WHAT?” said Dinky, turning back to her mother. 
“I- -I had to!” cried Derpy. She sputtered for a moment, and then took a deep breath. “No,” she said. “I didn’t…but I did anyway.”
“You sabotaged me,” said Dinky in disbelief. 
Derpy closed her eyes, unable to look at her daughter. She had felt ashamed most of her life, but never to the extent that she felt at that moment. “I couldn’t- -I couldn’t let you go! To Canterlot! Your sister is already out in the Crystal Empire and- -and I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want you to leave me. You’re all I have left! My little muffin, I’m sorry- -”
“Don’t you DARE call me that,” said Dinky, standing suddenly. “And don’t you dare claim to be ‘sorry’! Do you think you can just apologize for something like that?”
“But I am sorry, I didn’t realize- -”
“That you were destroying my future? Turning me into a little version of YOU?!” 
“But I just- -I just wanted things to be like they were! When you were little, and when you were so happy! Before- -”
“Before I had dreams? Or the desire to make them come true?” Dinky sighed, and then fell silent. “Or had dreams. I don’t…I don’t anymore.” She turned back to her desk and walked up to it, her eyes focused on the closed book on the surface. “I was naïve,” she said. “I guess I really can’t trust anypony at all. Not Silver Spoon, not Twilight, and not even my own mother. All I can trust is you…” 
Dinky reached up and stroked the book. That was when Derpy realized what must have been going on. She knew that Dinky’s anger was fully legitimate, but she also realized that the book was doing something to her. She did not understand why, or how, but knew that she had to do something about it. 
Derpy suddenly leapt forward, bounding over her basket of muffins that would now likely never be eaten. Before Dinky had time to react, she grabbed the book and pulled it away. 
“What are you doing?” said Dinky with strange, empty calmness. She turned slowly to face her mother, and her eyes seemed both so devoid of soul and so furious at the same time.’
“This book!” cried Derpy, suddenly terrified of her own daughter. “It’s doing something to you! It’s making you sick!”
“The book is the only thing I have left in this world.” Dinky paused. “No, that’s not quite right. The book doesn’t matter. Not really. It’s what’s written inside it that is so important.” She held out her hoof. “Give it back, mother. Unless you like seeing me suffer. Which, apparently, you do.”
Derpy shook her head. “No. I can’t! I have to get this book to Twilight, or to Starlight, or to- -”
Suddenly, Derpy found herself moving in the wrong direction. Instead of moving away from Dinky and getting the book to a safe distance, she was moving toward her daughter. This took her a moment to comprehend, and her confusion instantly cleared when she saw the pale gold magic surrounding the book, drawing it and her with it toward Dinky.  
“Dinky, are you- -are you doing this?” asked Derpy, still clinging to the book. 
Dinky did not answer. She just kept staring, her horn alight and her dead-looking eyes focused entirely on the book.
“How did you get this strong?” said Derpy, trying to pull the book away. Even flapping her wings, she was unable to make it even budge against Dinky’s magic. “It’s the book, isn’t it? It’s possessing you!”
“The book isn’t possessing me,” said Dinky, her voice neutral but just barely tipped with strong annoyance. “It’s just a book. Just writing. Just words. I’ve always been this strong, mother. If you had actually paid attention, maybe you would have seen that.” 
“I did notice! Dinky, that’s not what I meant!”
“That you’re holding me back? That you want me to be stuck here, like you are? To turn into a mail pony that everyone secretly hates and laughs at? What is it, mother? Revenge? Because I had a future and you didn’t?” 
“Dinky- -” Derpy felt her hoof click against something on the floor. She looked down, and although she was not holding the lantern anymore she could see Dinky’s light illuminating a complex five-pointed symbol that she had gouged into the floor. Derpy’s hoof had caught on the edge of one of the strange carved letters, and it gave her enough traction to actually stop her forward motion. 
“Give me the book, mother,” hissed Dinky, now sounding furious. “Do something useful for once and JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!” 
“No! It’s hurting you!”
“It’s not like you can even use it!” cried Dinky, her magic suddenly surging as she wrenched the book free of Derpy’s hooves, causing her to cry out as it left. Now free of the forward force, Derpy fell backward, landing hard on her wings. “You can’t even READ!” 
Almost as soon as Dinky said it, her rage collapsed. The book floated back into her possession, but she did not feel better. In fact, she only felt worse as the realization of what she had just said passed over her. She no longer felt afraid as she had before, but now she felt ashamed. She had gone too far, and would have gladly accepted the fear of losing her book back if she had just been able to take back what she had said. 
Derpy sat up. As she did, she winced. One of her wings was at an odd angle, indicating that it had been sprained by the fall. Her eyes met Dinky’s, and Dinky saw that her mother was on the verge of tears, and not from the pain of her injured wing. 
“Mom, I didn’t mean- -”
“I have to go,” said Derpy, quickly. She wiped her eyes with her foreleg and then ran toward the door. As she did, she stopped. “I hope…I hope you enjoy your book, Dinky.” She sounded utterly defeated, and before Dinky could stop her, she left. Dinky’s vision in the dark had become so powerful that the glimmering of her mother’s tears on the floor were almost blinding. 
Dinky said nothing, but watched her mother go. More than anything, she wanted to go back to the euphoria of the book, even if she had to face the horrors that were beginning to propagate within- -but now, instead, she felt lucidity building in her mind. 
She had said some terrible things. She had called her own mother useless and despised, and worse, had made fun of the dyslexia that had made it a daily challenge for her to just live a normal life. Because of this, Dinky began to realize that she was no better than Diamond Tiara. Worse, even. 
Dinky looked down at the book that now sat centered on her desk, ready to be read again. 
“Why?” she asked. “Why did you make me do that?”
The book gave no response. It was a book, after all. It had no capacity to make Dinky do anything at all. It could only be read. Dinky’s choices had been her own since the beginning. 
That was when a realization struck Dinky.
“It…it doesn’t matter, does it?” she said, feeling her heart sinking toward despair. “None of it matters anymore. No matter how many times I read you, I’ll never remember. And the report…it’s too late now. Why am I even doing this?”
She looked around at the text pasted on countless pages on her walls and even carved into her floor. Distantly, she had some conception of what the runes meant, but largely she had no capacity to read them. She doubted that she ever would. They were just as pointless as everything else: an obsession that generated no end, save for more obsession. 
Dinky looked down at the book once again. This time the urge struck her, more powerful than ever before. All she wanted to do was to open that book again, and to relive the beauty of the story inside one more time, even though it was rapidly becoming corrupted with something else, leading toward something horrible that she could not comprehend. She knew that if she read that book, she could escape everything she had just said, and everything that she just did. There was not much time before whatever was coming would arrive, and when it did, she would not have to worry anymore. 
She reached out with her magic and began to open the cover. Then, inexplicably, she stopped, and instead picked up the book.