//------------------------------// // Arrival // Story: Princess Twilight Sparkle And Her Number Two Assistant // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle was in one of her frenzied states of being yet again and Spike suspected that in the hubbub and commotion, Twilight had no doubt forgotten that they had to go to the train station to make a very important pick-up. Somewhat frustrated, Spike sighed, uncertain of what Twilight would do without him to keep track of well, everything. After clearing his throat a few times, Spike resorted to words to get Twilight’s attention. “Hey, Twilight—” “Not now, Spike.” “But Twilight—” “Spike, I am inundated with school stuff. Please, whatever it is, it can wait.” “No, it can’t.” Spike began tapping his foot against the floor and his tail bobbed behind him. “Tenth hour, train station. I told you last night. Your new library apprentice is arriving and she’ll need an escort—” “Spike, I’m positive that she can find her way here. How can she work in a library if she can’t make her way here from the train station?” “Twilight, she’s seven.” For a moment, nothing happened, nothing at all, and with furious vigour, Twilight scribbled away with her quill. Then, after about eight long seconds, the quill ceased its scratching. Still primed with ink, the quill began to bleed out a blot upon the paper where it rested, and Twilight’s head lifted while her distant eyes focused in alarm. “Holy guacamole, Spike! Don’t just stand there, get to the train station! You can’t leave a seven year old all alone at the depot! I’d come along, but as you can see, I’m kinda busy.” Twilight looked down at her paperwork and then made a face of angry disgust. “And now even busier, because the ink ran. Horseapples!” Realising for the first time that he would be going to the train station alone, Spike let heave a smokey sigh while scratching his claws against his squamous palm pads. “Fine, I’ll go to the train station. Alone. So much for making a good first impression upon your new library apprentice, Twilight.” “Spike, I’m sorry, but I’m swamped. Buy her some ice cream or something. Look, just find a way to get this done.” Horn glowing, Twilight now devoted all of her attention to removing the ink blot left upon her paperwork. Shaking his head, Spike departed, his tail bobbing behind him. While Spike power-waddled down the packed-dirt lane, his tail bouncing in time to music that didn’t exist, he thought about his last Carnivores Helping Other Magnificent Predators meeting. Sometimes, the response to something cute, helpless and fuzzy was the irrepressible desire to take a bite of it and this, this was a beastly thing to try and live with. Of course Spike and his fellow members of C.H.O.M.P. would never follow through with this driving desire, but living with said compulsion was distressing, hence the need for a support group. Spike was self-aware and maybe even a teensy-weensy bit self-conscious of his footprints. In Ponyville, a village of ponies, his footprints in the road stood out among the hoofprints. Of these hoofprints there was a great deal of variation; some small, some large, but all of them were hoofprints no matter their size. Spike left behind the unmistakable mark of his passing; everywhere he went, to and fro in the village of ponies could be tracked—followed by those with a watchful, wary eye. Standing out equated to an utter lack of privacy, but Spike had made peace with that long ago. Ahead and to the right, there was quite a commotion. Spike’s eyes sought out the clocktower and he saw that he had no time for gawking, because the big hand was almost on the tenth hour marker. Still, he might have himself a look if he kept moving. Nurse Redheart was on the scene and Twinkleshine was approaching. Sumac it seemed, had crashed again and the wreckage of his reckless flight experiment was scattered about everywhere. Ponyville just wouldn’t be Ponyville if Sumac wasn’t crashing into it. Being a rather large village, it was a wide, easy target to hit. Spike shook his head and hurried away just as Twinkleshine began to unload upon her helpless colt. No doubt, she would say all of the usual things—at incredible volume for the whole town to hear no less—and this was a scene that had played out with such frequency that it was now part of the day-to-day routine of Ponyville. Sumac’s scoldings were routine, and as routine, they were interwoven as part of the comforting fabric of daily life. Newcomers to Ponyville, such as Twilight’s brand new library apprentice, would have a lot to take in. Ponyville wasn’t like other towns in Equestria. Some called it Weirdsville, an apt moniker if ever there was one. Ponyville was some kind of strange-magnet and many claimed it had something to do with the close proximity to the Everfree Forest. Others said that Ponyville was built attop ancient buffalo burial grounds. Whatever the reason, Ponyville had more than its fair share of freaks, weirdos, and oddities. Spike couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. The tenth hour train was a common departure time for Ponyville, which meant that the station was almost empty. There had been a few arrivals from elsewhere, including an officious-looking giraffe wearing a fine tweed suit jacket (with a well-tailored neck no less) and a dapper bowler hat. Fine brass spectacles glinted in the autumn sunlight and Spike allowed himself a moment to admire the impeccably dressed creature. It wasn’t every day that one saw a giraffe in Ponyville, no, just once a month when he came to do business with the local bank. This distraction was forgotten when Spike saw the small dusky blue pegasus filly sitting atop a battered suitcase held together with patch-tape. She looked hopeful, maybe just a little bit scared, and something about her poofy mane reminded Spike of the clouds of cotton candy that Discord was so fond of creating. Moving with the confident assurance that only a princess’ most trusted assistant possessed, he waddled over to introduce himself. “Hey, I’m Spike.” Squirming in a shy way, the filly managed a strained smile. “I’m Talespin.” What Spike heard was ‘Tailspin.’ Flexing his claws, he allowed himself a cautious smile. “That’s quite a name. Do you crash a lot?” Laughing, the filly’s shyness vanished and she shifted atop her suitcase. “I do, yes. My mother, she named me Tailspin because I get dizzy in bright light but after I got my cutie mark, she changed my name to Talespin because of my love for stories and tall tales.” “Oh,” Spike said, realising that her name had a double meaning. “You get dizzy in bright light?” This caused a most curious reaction from the filly, who cast her eyes about in a squinty, shifty manner, looking around her at the mostly-empty train platform. After checking to see if the coast was clear, she said to Spike in a low whisper, “My mother and I, we’re not like normal pegasus ponies.” “I’ve met Night Glider,” Spike interjected. Again, the filly’s eyes darted about, to and fro, checking to see if somepony was listening. “We come from nocturnal pegasus stock. We don’t have the cool wings but we have the aversion to daylight and a powerful urge to go sleepy-sleep while the sun is up. Ponies are askeered of us because of this so Mom tries to keep it a secret.” “Kid… this is Ponyville, the capital of weird.” Spike jerked his thumb-claw back over his shoulder to the village behind him. “If that’s as weird as you get, that won’t even get you noticed here.” He saw her bite her lip and make the sort of face that ponies make when challenged. “But I’m strange and unusual,” Talespin said, blinking and squinting. “My life is all about the secret I have to hide and my struggle to be normal. It defines my existence. What we do in the night must never come into the light, my mother says—” “Sheesh, no wonder your mother sent you here on a library apprenticeship.” Spike—utterly unaware of his own grin—leaned in closer to the bewildered filly, determined to make her feel welcomed. He understood being an outsider—he understood keeping aspects of one’s self hidden or out of sight from others. “Kid, welcome to Ponyville. The only way to be normal here is to embrace whatever weirdness you have. How would you like some ice cream?” “Mom told me not to take sweets from strangers.” “Well, I am Spike the Dragon, Hero of the Crystal Empire. There. Now we’re not strangers. So how about that ice cream?” “Yeah, okay, I guess, sure.” Talespin yawned an awful lot, which, given her nature, seemed perfectly normal to Spike. She was a nervous, anxious sort, with all of the energy that came with that. Though seven, she was a young seven and not an older seven. What stood out about her though was her cutie mark, a pile of books with a rubber stamp beside it. Spike had seen many library-related cutie marks—living in a library castle exposed one to librarians—but he had never seen a mark like this one. It was the rubber stamp that stood out and Spike was curious about its meaning. Even more intriguing to Spike was the fact that she was a pegasus. It wasn’t that pegasus ponies couldn’t be librarians—they most certainly could—it was just that such a mark was rare. In Spike’s own experience, most ponies with library-related marks were unicorns, because magic made it far, far easier to work with books. Talespin would have a rough go at it and she would have to work so much harder since the job would be physical for her, rather than a mental effort. “So tell me about your mark,” Spike said between bites of maple-lavender ice cream. “It showed up in the spring. My mom told me to clean my room and so I did and I put all of my books on the shelf and then I got annoyed that they weren’t organised so I arranged them just so and then I got my mark.” A dribble of ice cream ran down Talespin’s chin. “And that was the day that my life was ruined.” “Ruined?” Spike’s spoon clattered into his bowl and both of his arms came to rest upon the cool edge of the table. “After that, all my mother could talk about was that it was time for me to leave home and make my mark upon the world. She said it was the way of things. I didn’t want to leave home. It’s not like I had many friends or anything, but home is home, ya know?” She shook her head from side to side, let out a huff, and slumped down in her chair. “My mom, she hunted for a library program, but she didn’t feel that they were good enough for me. We’re poor, but she has really high standards, and she doesn’t want me being poor, so she wrote letters to Starlight Glimmer and Starlight talked with Princess Twilight I guess and somehow, I got accepted into the library program and I’m happy to be here I guess, but I didn’t want to leave home.” Picking up his spoon once more, Spike tried to understand, to have some empathy for Talespin. This was the way of things. The younger one was when securing an apprenticeship, the better. More time spent in training and learning one’s future trade. Pinkie Pie had left home as a filly and was now considered a master baker, even at her relatively young age. If she started now, Talespin would be an accomplished librarian by the time she was a mare. A future could be secured, but at the cost of foalhood. Such was the way of things. It left Spike a little sad. Even worse, Spike understood. Night Glider was being a good mother. As hard as it was for Talespin to leave home, it was probably harder still on her mother. Whatever future awaited, it had a dreadful cost; Night Glider had given up her daughter and sent her away to learn a trade. This was a good thing, with a good outcome, so why did it feel so bad? “Mom says I’ll fit in here,” Talespin said around a mouthful of maple-lavender ice cream. “I almost didn’t graduate junior flight camp and my mom, she was so worried about stuff that she wouldn’t tell them about why I can’t fly so well in the daylight. Now my flight record shows I’m clumsy and uncoordinated and that’s just not true. But I’m stuck with it.” When she left out a huff, her nostrils flared. “Mom says its for the best. Just grit your teeth, she says, and try to make your way through the day.” “I think that you’ll fit in here,” Spike said, trying to offer some much-needed reassurance. “The foals of Our Town, they never stay long.” The filly sat back in her chair and rubbed her neck with her hoof. “But I didn’t think my mother would do this to me. She was always talking about how it was just us… just the two of us… and how nopony else would understand us because of what we are. She was always saying stuff about how we had to stick together… but she sent me away, just like all the others. There’s no point in making friends if you know that they’ll just be sent away.” Spike wished that Twilight was here, because he had no idea of what to do or say. Twilight understood Our Town’s legacy and the problems it faced. If she was here, she might be able to say something that would make Talespin feel better—but Twilight was buried beneath an avalanche of paperwork. It was autumn, the time of school registries, and was the most difficult time of the year for Twilight, the time when she was most overworked and overstressed. It was a bad situation for certain and Spike knew that Twilight couldn’t just drop everything to sort this out. Which meant that it fell upon him to make this right somehow. But how? Talespin showed signs of being a mess and Spike began to suspect that the real reason why the filly was sent here for the library program wasn’t to learn a trade, but to get sorted out. To be made better. This was more therapeutic than trade. Of course, Night Glider didn’t have the financial means to send Talespin to a good school, so an apprentice program was the best chance that Talespin had of getting out of Our Town… And potentially having a normal life. Squaring his shoulders, Spike prepared himself for a fight. He was a dragon, supernaturally tough, durable, and arguably, Twilight’s most capable assistant. At least, he thought so, and right now, facing such a challenge as he was, he wasn’t about to second-guess himself. No, he had a filly to save—to befriend. Sensing a challenge, Spike rose to the occasion. He was Spike, Hero of the Crystal Empire. Surely he could get one filly settled in, sorted out, and situated. How hard could it be? What could possibly go wrong? Wringing his clawed hands together, he realised, a lot. A lot could go wrong. Spike’s heroic upswing downswung into powerful neurosis and he felt a terrified prickle in his brain. Left eyelid twitching, Spike steeled himself for what was sure to be his most important, most monumental task. Spike was going to save a pony.