Eventually, Twilight would learn that in the aftermath for any Ponyville outbreak of mass stupidity, the first priority was to find out how deeply Rainbow had been involved.
Strictly speaking, there were times when the pegasus had played no part in whatever had just transpired -- at least, not when it came to setting it off. She would often try to help with the solution, could occasionally be wrangled into participating in the cleanup if you could catch her before she fled and if Rainbow had been involved in any part of the solution, there was probably going to be a lot of cleanup. But when it came to the town's distribution of sheer dumb, she was a force. Not always the initiating event, but there were too many times when she seemed to be a primary vector. Any tracking done on the infection spread for a plague surge of raw "WHY?" was going to wind up going past a prismatic tail eventually.
It would ultimately take years to work all of the math: time, hundreds of theory-bearing pages filled with extremely small corona writing, and multiple bale-tons of debris. (Some of that last was produced by the Crusaders, and finally discovering Rainbow had been ultimately responsible for launching that long-galloping fiasco would surprise a grand total of absolutely nopony.) But Twilight had only been in Ponyville for a fairly short time, and the little unicorn wasn't entirely certain of how that stay might truly last.
She didn't know how to be a good friend. The questions regarding how she was supposed to make that work had her producing scrolls every week. And there was also the matter of how she could become a good librarian, a true one who dealt with more than the Ancient History department's normal maximum of two patrons per day. The two aspects seemed to be somewhat linked.
Be a good friend, be a good librarian. Learn every lesson those who had initially chosen to cluster around her could provide, especially since they'd also somehow made the decision to stay. Make the miracle last.
Of course, one of Rainbow's earliest offered lessons was that a friend could also be somepony whom, strictly speaking, you probably wanted to kick a few times.
Occasionally.
Now and again.
But only when she had it coming.
Which was often.
But you had to figure for intent...
It was a fairly warm morning for mid-autumn, and the weather schedule which Twilight had hung up in her bathroom said it was supposed to be a much cooler one. The extra heat should have been removed from the tree's vicinity hours ago, but -- when it came to the local weather coordinator's assignments for Ponyville, Rainbow had assigned the library to herself. It was a decent excuse for dropping by a little more often, along with being an even better one for sleeping in. After all, a friend probably wasn't going to file an official complaint just because the climate was a little late.
There were quite a few patrons in the library: some of the most anticipated book releases of the season had recently come out, and a number of ponies (with no wings involved) were browsing through the selection -- but she didn't have any active readers on the well-padded benches. The unicorn understood that: it was too nice a day to read inside, at least around the tree.
And there would soon be more books heading out for a properly-stamped sojourn. Twilight's main desk had a heavily-laden, multi-tier Reservations rolling shelf behind it, waiting for a rather large number of ponies to pick up the titles which had been requested in advance. And one of those books had been requested by a friend: something which just about guaranteed a meeting later that day.
The tree was peaceful. Almost completely silent. She felt as if she was doing a good job.
Then she heard the hoof rapping against glass.
It didn't take long to track down the source of the only sound within what had been a pleasant silence: behind her, and quite a bit above. It put her on the irritable track towards her living area, because the tree had been quiet and that felt like a vital part of what a good librarian should be trying to achieve. Why did anypony even need to knock on her balcony door, anyway?
But then she approached the top of the ramp, and saw who was on the other side of the glass.
Her corona mildly exerted itself, and a touch of glow opened the door.
"Hey," Rainbow casually said, and bobbed slightly within the hover. Twilight absently noticed a small piece of oddly-aligned feather down at the tip of the right wing, and the tail seemed to be twitching a lot.
Why is she on the balcony?
...hovering just over the balcony.
Did she need to see me in private, away from the patrons? Is this important?
The vocal end of that emerged as a somewhat worried, upwards-directed "Hi."
Rainbow continued to flap. "That book I asked for. Did it show up?"
Which removed a little concern from the proceedings. "Yesterday."
"Good," the pegasus declared in a tone which openly announced that having to pick up a book was anything but. "Can you bring it up to me? I can't come in."
It was a statement which seemed to beg a number of questions. Twilight immediately decided that a friend should probably ask a few.
"Why?"
"I can't land," the pegasus firmly stated. "Not right now."
The unicorn blinked.
She looked at her friend's dangling legs. None of them seemed injured or rather, when it came to a pegasus who had a rather flexible definition of a good touchdown, none of them seemed any more injured than usual. At the very least, there were no split hooves or keratin cracks on display --
-- a small piece of shed feather down casually drifted past one hoof, landed on the balcony and stuck there.
Still, it was best to check. "You're not hurt, right? I have a first-aid kit in the bathroom --"
"-- the ground," Rainbow announced, "is lava."
Twilight rotated her ears a few times. Recently-heard syllables were put through the centrifuge and failed to spin themselves into anything which made sense.
"...what?"
"It's a pegasus thing," the weather coordinator firmly said. "This is the time of year when a lot of us shed some feathers. Little ones, stuff which isn't vital for flight. But it's sort of itchy, and it's best to get it over with as fast as you can. This year is really itchy." The prismatic tail twitched again. "And the more you fly, the faster they go, because the extra flapping helps shake them loose. So I fly as much as possible. I don't land unless I have to. And we call it lava time, because thinking about the ground that way sort of helps some pegasi stay up."
"...oh," Twilight eventually said. Her central acquaintance with the slightly-alien nature of pegasus biology was in presuming they had some and, since they weren't dead, it was functioning properly. (Later in the day, this would start to feel like something of a pity.)
The cyan snout released a fully-undignified snort, because neither snout nor owner really cared about that sort of thing. "As far as I'm concerned, lava's more honest than ground. At least lava tells you how much it hates you. Ground pretends it's innocent." Another snort. "Most of the ways ground has for killing you just sort of lurk."
"So you can't land," Twilight attempted to summarize.
"Not any more than I absolutely have to."
The unicorn tried to figure out whether this represented an actual change in observed behavior.
"Why did you knock up here?"
"Your front door," the pegasus irritably announced, "isn't rigged to be opened by somepony who's hovering." The twitching tail moved into more of a lash. "That's really kind of inconsiderate."
Twilight's experience with Rainbow was still fairly limited. She'd still been through enough of it to recognize that the pegasus had a rather notorious method for interacting with closed doors, and was briefly grateful that it hadn't been used. Crash sites had a way of disrupting the library's peace.
"So can I just get the book?" Rainbow asked, and followed that by directing her gaze over Twilight's back: given a hovering pegasus and a very small librarian, it didn't take much. "Spike! You in there, buddy? Can you just pull that book for me and bring it up?"
"He'll be in Canterlot for a couple of days," Twilight quietly said. "There are things which still have to be wrapped up, after we moved. He offered to take care of a few." The absence of a very small dragon made a fairly large tree feel that much emptier, and she wasn't sure why. Maybe that needed to be a scroll.
The pegasus reluctantly nodded. "Too bad. I like talking to the little guy. So could you just bring it up?" Another snort. "Can you believe they're actually making me read this thing?"
Twilight hadn't done more with the reservation than writing down the requested title onto the exchange program form and sending it to the Canterlot Archives. "Who's 'they'?"
"The Weather Bureau," Rainbow irritably announced. "Since it's their book. It's just a bunch of stupid regulations. Four hundred pages of them. Sixty of those are just the rules for getting things done on time."
The librarian frowned. "Shouldn't you already have one of those?"
"There was one in my office when I took over," the pegasus admitted. "But it's on loan."
"Loan," Twilight repeated.
"Yeah. During my first week in charge of the weather team. I looked at a few pages. Then I loaned it to the ground. I don't know where it landed." Another small feather fell away, adhered to the balcony. "But the Bureau said there's gonna be a quiz. So can I just get the book?"
"I --" be a good librarian "-- don't nose over books away from the desk, Rainbow..."
"Why not?"
"It's regulations. It's almost like doing it outside the library."
One last snort. "The whole tree is the library," Rainbow reasoned. "Your balcony is still the library. I just need to get this book, Twilight. And then I can look at a page. Or two. Maybe twenty. I just have to guess right for which ones they'll quiz on." A brief, thoughtful frown. "I can probably work that out if I check the complaints file. Wherever that landed." Which was followed by a still-surprising "Please?"
...it -- really wasn't all that much to ask, was it? Just bringing a book up to the balcony...
Twilight wanted to be a good librarian. But even more than that, she wanted to be a good friend. Somepony who wouldn't get sent back to Canterlot.
"I'll be right back."
Rainbow had flown off to study. (They had only known each other for a few moons, which meant Twilight had yet to recognize that this mostly indicated 'look at a selection of words, mostly confuse them with each other, and then ignore what the majority actually meant.') The library's warm silence had resumed, and Twilight basked in it.
Then a hoof rapped at the balcony door's glass again.
The unicorn's natural presumption was that Rainbow had forgotten something, and it broke at the moment she climbed high enough to see that it wasn't Rainbow at all.
"I'd like to pick up my book," the hovering light green pegasus mare said, and four shed feathers drifted to the balcony. None of them went anywhere after that. "The reserved one. If you don't remember, the title was --"
"-- books are picked up inside," Twilight immediately tried.
"The weather coordinator got hers here," the new mare announced, and not without a little irritation: the teal tail twitched. "I was passing by. I saw it. Why can't I get mine?" Her eyes narrowed. "Unless that's just something you do for friends..."
The little unicorn was trying to be a good librarian. Ponies who were properly fit to hold a library job probably shouldn't be accused of favoritism, especially when they didn't have a librarian's mark. And there was more than one pegasus who really didn't want to land right now.
"I'll just go get it," she decided. "What was the title?"
She'd been expecting to see one friend. The second was more of a surprise pop-in -- with this mare, that description of the arrival occasionally felt literal, and Twilight really didn't know how it worked -- but she was grateful to see her. If nothing else, a friend was definitely somepony she could complain to.
"...and they've just kept coming since!" Most of the volume was implied: it was still a library, although it was now a somewhat-emptier one. "Rainbow picked up her book, another pegasus saw her get it and decided that meant she could use the balcony, so two more saw her and now they're just about all going that way!" The streaked tail very nearly lashed: it took a second before Twilight noticed the movement beginning, and another before she managed to fully stop it. Good librarians probably didn't lash their tails very often. "I know they all want to fly as much as possible right now, and I sort of get why. I can see the feathers dropping." The unicorn's snout wrinkled a little. "And then they sort of just stay where they are. On the balcony. I'll have to get a broom up there later."
Her friend nodded, and outlying parts of the curly mane bobbed with the movement. But her ears were still rotated forward. The mare was an excellent listener.
"But I have to keep going to the balcony, over and over," Twilight groused. "And I'm not going to move the Reservations shelf unit, because regulations say that's supposed to remain next to the desk. Which means I have to go up, see who it is, find out which book they reserved, go down, get the book, go back up again..."
"I can help with that!" the mare half-chirped in a rather happy manner. "I really-really can, Twilight! I know just what to do!"
Twilight stared at the beaming bright face.
"You do?" emerged with a little too much surprise.
Her friend was gracious enough to ignore it. "Yeah!" This time, the nod was fast enough to make the curls toss. "Just leave everything to me! I just need you to --" Blue eyes filled with thought. "-- go outside for a few minutes. Or into the basement. Just out of the way, really. Because I'll need to set everything up, and that's easier without you -- not that I mind you being around, silly!" (Twilight frantically pulled her expression back together.) "It's just that you don't know how to do this yet! And it'll take a lot longer if I have to teach you today."
You have to trust your friends. She wanted to believe she understood that one well enough to avoid writing it down. She knows I'm not good enough with talking to ponies to have me help her. And she knows so many of them personally. I can just watch another time...
If anypony could get things back to normal, it was the town's social center. She had to believe that.
"Okay, Pinkie," the little mare decided. "I'll just clean up the basement for a few minutes. Let me know when you're done."
"You'll hear when I'm finished," the baker promised. "You'll hear everything!"
The unicorn looked at the gleaming material cylinder. Then she looked into the open end, searched through the hoofwidth it took before she found the metal back wall. Stepped away slightly, and slowly tracked the first of the two wires which led towards the ceiling.
...eventually led. The library had a number of things which were already hanging from the ceiling. Clockwork fans. Lighting devices. Banners announcing upcoming events. It meant the wire had to take a number of twists and turns along the way. Also bends. There were a lot of bends.
...how did she even get up there...?
"See? I told you!" Pinkie beamed. "...oh. Oh, right. Not a lot of ponies use them. Because they're mostly a toy, and I don't know if you played with this kind of toy." The baker's eyes momentarily dipped from the weight of sorrow. "Or any toys. Twilight, do you understand how they work?"
The little mare managed a nod. It was a basic science trick. You took two empty cans and connected them with wire or a really tight string. If somepony spoke into one can, the vibrations went down the wire and emerged at the second can as sound. A foal's plaything, and it still suggested that wider implications were available -- but with magic around, nopony was really looking into any of them. "Pinkie --"
"-- good! So anywhere, there's two." The earth pony nodded at the second hanging can. "Because a few pegasi dropped by while you were in the basement -- don't worry, Twilight: I got their books, and because I'd seen you do it before, I checked them out properly -- and I noticed that they were hovering at different heights."
"Pinkie."
"It's a natural thing. Some like to go higher than others. So two cans. That way, the high ones don't have to dip to where they aren't comfortable. And they'll speak into their can, you'll hear it by your desk, and you'll know which book to bring up --"
"Pinkie!"
The earth pony stopped talking. Looked at Twilight, and the blue eyes were wide with what felt like both confusion and fast-approaching hurt.
The baker was very good at listening. Comprehension of the speaker's actual issues was somewhat less reliable. But... she'd just been trying to help. And Twilight wasn't very good at any of this yet. There was a chance that Pinkie knew best. Maybe this was right...
"Thank you," Twilight finished. "I... just wanted to say thank you,"
Pinkie brightened.
"You're always welcome," she smiled. "Anyway, if you've used them before, then you know how it works. You have to pull the wire really taut when you hear the bell ring, or the sound won't travel." She briefly paused. "I also put a bell out on the balcony. So you'd know when to pull on the wire."
Twilight managed a nod. The earth pony glanced up.
"I usually don't have to bend things that much," Pinkie admitted. "It's usually just a straight line. But two straight lines would have sort of sliced through the library. And anypony who went into them. This is safer. And I'm sure the sound will be okay."
"Did you test --" Twilight began to ask, and it was as far as she got before the world blurred pink.
"-- and that's it for my break time!" the rushing blur announced as it broke for the door. "I've got to get back to the Cakes! Bye!"
Twilight stared at the hanging, gleaming cans for about a minute. It would have been longer, but that was how long it took before the bell went off.
Her corona ignited, pulled down on a can until the wire was tight. One ear rotated into a near-seal against the open end, listened. Then she tried the other can.
"Hello?"
"Argle bargle fargle?" said the can.
"...hello?"
"Fargle."
There was a line forming.
Actually, there were two. Because there was a pair of cans and as Pinkie had observed, pegasi liked to hover above a surface at different altitudes. So some went for the low can, others went for the high, and it had effectively doubled the speed at which ponies could place their requests. All of which were still being sent to one mare.
One stallion complained about the delay involved in retrieving his book. She pointed out the issue, and he rather thoughtfully suggested that she hire some extra help. And, in the interest of true speed processing, it was probably best for the library to get another balcony, because there were pegasi hovering in short stacks and some of the upper wingtips went rather far on the downbeat. Plus if the alignment wasn't quite perfect, then somepony was getting a tail in the snout.
There was a trail of shed feathers on the balcony. Then it became more of a muddle, and eventually transmuted into something of a morass. Twilight tried to clean it up during a quiet moment and found her hooves sinking into the soft mire.
The broom went into the accumulation easily enough. It just didn't want to come out again.
She had a little time to think that over, in what was becoming a much-emptier library. (She didn't quite understand what was going on there, and had too much happening on the upper level to ponder it for long.) Especially because it was getting worse.
Picking up reservations was one thing. But the line occupants had collectively moved on from there.
"I'd like to get a book," the hovering stallion said.
"What did you reserve?" Twilight patiently asked. She'd heard the bell clearly enough, even in the bathroom -- but hadn't quite been able to translate from the Fargle.
"Nothing. I'd just like to get a book. What does New Releases have in the way of mysteries?"
She stared at him.
"Just read me off some titles and authors," he added. "I can choose from there."
The stare didn't seem to be getting through. Neither did the mutters which were emerging from the line of pegasi stretching out behind him. Or lines, where most of the occupants were darkly contemplating how they'd picked out their orders ages ago and he was just holding everything up.
"I like murders," the stallion helpfully offered as he fully ignored the chance of inspiring his own. "A full main course of murders. You can put some maimings on the side. Don't go light on them. I'm okay with the large bucket of blood. Oh, and I should also pick up something for my kid. What's the seasonal release for the Happy Toys line?"
She was now trying to think of ways to dissuade ponies from using the twin air paths. Anything which would keep them from seeking that service, making her go up and down the ramp over and over and over...
Twilight considered her options. Reviewed every single thing which kept ponies out of libraries. This felt vaguely heretical, but she was really just trying to get them off the balcony.
Then she nodded to herself, and her corona projected towards a quill.
The newest hovering pegasus mare took a long, rather careful look at Twilight's tiny, half-crooked smile. Then she read the hanging sign again.
Pay Late Fees Here
The unicorn held the smile, and waited for the mare to flee.
"I only have smidgens," the mare announced. "But payment in hundredth-bits still counts, right? Can you open my saddlebags for me? Just keep them coming out until you've got enough."
Twilight normally wrote up a large-print list of the week's New Releases and put it on an easel display near the main display table, just to give patrons a chance at a quick review of the offerings while approaching from a distance. It had felt like something a good librarian would do. And ponies who didn't have reserved titles kept asking about what kind of books were available. Authors. Categories. Genres. Whether something was in stock. And every extra trip up the ramp was that much more time being used. Time during which more pegasi seemed to appear.
She couldn't list every book in the library, and she wasn't going to put the card catalog on the balcony: not only did it take up too much room, but the feather swamp meant she might never get it back down again. But she could at least move the New Releases list. And she'd noticed that some ponies tended to check out given combinations of books. A little historical non-fiction from War typically had a chaser of Geography. Foreign Romance perusals tended to lead directly into Vacations And Travel.
The little mare wrote that down. Then she posted it.
The results were immediate.
"Hi! Can I get a Number Five?"
"Hardcover or paperback?"
"Surprise me."
"Anything on the side?"
"How about a cookbook? Something focusing on pastry. Miniature hot apple pies for preference. Deep-fried."
"Did you want to supersize any of that?"
"Nah. Three hundred pages is the limit."
The bell rang. Twilight located the proper can on the second try. It was always the second try.
"Targle nargle quargle," the can said.
"Fargle bargle anderargle kerpargle," Twilight agreed, and headed directly towards Science Fiction.
She'd... been going up and down the ramp over and over, for what felt like the entire day. She didn't know what the cumulative distance was. Just that it was enough for her legs to hurt --
-- her legs hurt. Library work wasn't supposed to be the sort of labor where your legs hurt. And it was getting late in the day and it felt like she was doing nothing except going up and down the ramp, she hadn't dealt with a patron inside the library for --
-- she looked at the nearest clock.
Then she looked at the front door. Nopony had come through it for --
-- the bell rang. Then it rang again, more insistently, The third ringing was the product of a pony who didn't understand that legs required time in which to cross any distance, and would never comprehend that the same was true of sound.
Twilight located the proper can on the second try. It was the low end.
"FARGLE!" it shouted in rather singular tones. It was a shout which came with its very own embedded whine, and the vintage was always fresh.
That can't be her.
She doesn't have...
Twilight stared at the can. Then she pushed towards the ramp again.
There was a tawny-streaked unicorn on the balcony, along with a measurable amount of frustration. It was something which came off the new mare in rising waves. The ignorance, however, had more of a radius effect, and allowed her to completely dismiss all of the pegasi fuming behind her.
The pegasi. The other unicorns. The earth ponies...
Twilight took a moment to survey the situation.
"Hey!" the tawny unicorn demanded. "Pay attention to me! I'm the one who called you up here!"
The librarian continued to examine the fresh evidence. It was vital to understand exactly what was happening, especially if she wound up having to recite any of the details in a court's witness stall.
Somepony had found a pair of semi-portable ramps. Long ones, in order to allow for a gentle climb. One went up, the other went down, and they were pressed against opposite sides of her balcony. And because the ramps had to be rather long and her balcony had a certain proximity to the entrance, the Up ramp was blocking the front door. The standard entrance no longer was. It was the balcony or nothing --
"-- I said," the mare angrily repeated, "pay attention to me!"
Twilight reluctantly looked at Brindle.
The fourth-wealthiest pony in town (all inherited, because Work was something to be avoided) had fur which displayed the false health granted by Cosmetics: something which was normally overlooked within ten seconds of meeting her, because it tended to get lost within the perpetual aura of Entitlement. She moved with the natural confidence which came from knowing that she was personally both young and naturally svelte, but Twilight was just skinny.
Brindle felt that nearly everypony was beneath having her put any effort towards making eye contact. She had a rather odd talent for speaking directly to somepony's hooves while maintaining a fully-upturned snout. Her victims had very little reason to compare notes, and so each thought the tendency for a fully-imaginary word to flash into their minds was theirs alone. None of them knew what the nonsense term actually meant, and all had decided that the brain's perfectly understandable query of Why Is Murder Considered To Be Bad? had somehow been rendered in shorthoof as 'Karen'.
It wasn't unusual to see her at the library, as she liked to be seen carrying the Right Books. It was just that 'carrying' was as far as it went. Brindle regarded actual reading as a disease which she couldn't afford to catch. When it came to willful ignorance combined with the ability to simply tell herself she already knew everything, Brindle had been kept out of the Flower Trio on overqualification.
Twilight risked looking at the ramps again. There were earth ponies and unicorns on the Up ramp. A few of the hovering pegasi had spaced out somewhat to honor those line positions.
"Where did those come from?" the little mare risked. She was sure it hadn't been her own action. Not only did she lack any spell for spontaneously creating ramps, she would have remembered putting them against the balcony. Personal acts of transcendent stupidity tended to sear themselves into her mind via the never-cooling branding iron of humiliation.
"I had them placed, of course," Brindle artlessly sniffed. "A rental from Rampart at the Ramp Supply Stable. Because of you. To counter your clear discrimination." The next sniff almost dislodged a lost feather, which was just about the first thing to do that all day. (Twilight absently noted that the mire's depth hadn't increased since her last examination, and there were still plenty of flapping pegasi about. The best theory was that Brindle's aura was repelling anything new.) "When are you going to clean this? My hooves are getting filthy!"
Twilight mentally turned the phonograph needle back to the previous whine track.
"Discrimination," she tried.
"That's what it is," Brindle announced. "Obviously. Because the menu is only up here, and only the pegasi can access it."
Twilight made a mistake. She talked.
"You could come into the library."
"Nopony can get into the library," Brindle smugly pointed out.
The mistake was then compounded.
"Because the Up ramp is blocking it!" Twilight declared. "The ramp which you had placed --"
"-- to fight discrimination!" Brindle countered. "Against me."
Twilight hadn't been in Ponyville for all that long. But it didn't take very much time with Brindle before everypony learned that the mare usually felt she was discriminated against, and quite a bit of the population had to resist the urge to prove her right.
"Discrimination," Twilight errored. (Isolating the exact form of stupidity had momentarily seemed important.)
"I should sue," the other unicorn announced.
Portions of the three lines briefly perked up. When it came to Brindle, long-time residents classified threatened lawsuits as Entertainment.
Twilight, however, had only been in town for a few moons.
"Sue," she repeated. "Why?"
"I told you," Brindle sniffed. "Any time somepony gets to do something which I can't, that's discrimination. Before I was so thoughtful as to bring in the ramps, I couldn't use the menu. The one-stop balcony book ordering location, which allows me to pick up my accessories without actually having to enter a library."
"Your not having wings," Twilight continued to mistake all over the place, "means I'm discriminating against you." A thought made the rather poor choice to occur. "Birth discriminated against you!"
"I know!" a rather unexpectedly relieved Brindle announced. "Finally, somepony gets it! That is exactly what I tried to tell the court when I sued the Princess!"
Twilight blinked a few times. It didn't help.
"You --"
"-- she's been discriminating against me for my entire lifetime," Brindle stated. "Because she can raise Sun, and I can't. It's obvious class exclusion. I have class, and she excluded me. Also, I wasn't born an alicorn. So I sued. But the judge just didn't see it that way." She was now looking at Twilight with new eyes. "But you..."
The little mare suddenly became aware that she was on the verge of potentially making a friend. Also that she didn't want one.
"It doesn't work that way," she quickly said. "Not with biology."
The sniffs came back. "If somepony can do something I can't," Brindle told the world, "it's discrimination. If I have to do something which others don't, same thing. I had to climb the ramp. When I could have flown up."
"You're a unicorn!" still seemed worth pointing out.
Which was when Brindle smiled.
"There's a wing spell."
As a go-to move, blinking was proving to be completely ineffective.
"...yes," Twilight reluctantly admitted. It wasn't one of her better memories.
"And you can cast it," the tawny-streaked mare triumphantly continued. "I've heard ponies talking about that."
More likely pony, singular. "I can," Twilight unwillingly confessed. "But it's not a very good spell. It's exhausting, for starters. And that's not as bad as what happens once it starts. Because the wings have to be made in a way which responds to thought. Which means there's the potential for a feedback loop. I've been thinking about what happened, and I'm pretty sure there's some kind of mental effect --"
"-- if you can cast the wing spell," Brindle concluded, "then forcing me to climb a ramp is clearly discrimination. Fortunately..." and the smile was bright, perfect, and horrible "...we both know a way to fix that."
The audience was starting to mutter again. And Twilight, for whom empathy and recognition of social situations was a work in progress, often had trouble recognizing cues -- but in this case, the message was arriving in bulk. The mutter meant she'd been talking to Brindle for too long. She wasn't going up and down the ramp. No books were being nosed over, and the line wasn't moving. The mutter wanted her to give Brindle what she wanted so she would go away, and doing so vertically was just fine.
Is that what this was about? All of this just to make me...
It didn't make sense. But with Brindle, sense was an optional, ignored extra. And it was possible that the unicorn had a party to attend, and wanted to make an impression. Another party. Pinkie had said Brindle went to a lot of them. For annual events, that was up to once each and then never again.
"Just cast it," the svelte mare snidely suggested. "And then this is over."
Twilight was tired. Her legs hurt. She wanted the mare off her balcony. She wanted everypony...
Her horn ignited, and Brindle was suffused with glow.
It was only the second time Twilight had tried the spell, and yet the sudden weakness in all four knees was completely familiar. So was the migraine's rather polite orange-scented announcement of Incoming. The wings themselves, however, turned out to be variable by recipient. Rarity had wound up with a shape reminiscent of a butterfly. Brindle's set was more appropriate to a mosquito.
"There," Twilight wearily announced, and turned away from all of the ponies who were just staring. "I'll go get your book --"
"-- who cares about the book?" Brindle laughed, and the artificial wings buzzed her aloft. All the better to look down on the world entire. "This is marvelous! You look so small already, just from going up a little!" Another buzz picked up extra altitude. "Of course, you were pretty small to begin with. But the rest of you..."
Her eyes were bright. They were also slightly glazed.
"I wonder what you would look like from higher up," the unicorn vaguely considered, and the spell buzzed all the faster. "Yes. Higher."
It was getting harder to hear her. Distance did that.
"Higher and higher..."
The difference, Twilight considered, was that on the prior occasion, Rarity had been falling away from her. Increasing distance made it harder to get a good line of corona projection, plus there had been a number of Wonderbolts in the way. In this case, Brindle had been plummeting towards her, into sight. When it came to catching somepony with magic, that was a distinct improvement.
Of course, she'd been tired. So the catch definitely could have been smoother. And as with Rainbow's save of Rarity, Twilight had needed to find some way of bleeding off Brindle's momentum. So the corona bubble had needed to switch vertical movement into a high-pitched screaming horizontal tour of Ponyville's streets. Ending it at the central fountain seemed to have been an act of Twilight's subconscious, but water landings helped.
She'd bled off the momentum. A water-sputtering Brindle had threatened to sue for that too, and it had just made her think about other ways to bleed ponies off --
-- she was just tired.
And the ramps were still there. (She was too tired to move them. That was what casting the wing spell did to her.)
And now there were three lines, two cans, and one mare trying to help every patron during a surprisingly intense New Releases season.
And the ponies kept coming.
She found a new pony on the balcony, all fire-reds and subtle oranges, crouched low and scraping with their hooves. That one, when queried, admitted she was trying to get the feathers: the stated intent was making Art.
Twilight wished her luck, while suspecting that the smidgens found among the down might actually grant more of a profit margin. A lot of ponies had been dropping their change.
At one point, somepony came back, and openly cut in line to do so. All three of them, at the same time. She seemed to feel that having a complaint gave her the right.
"I don't like this book," the mare announced once Twilight's weary stumble had finally reached her. "I tried reading some of it before I got home. The first two paragraphs weren't any good. You're the one who recommended it off the menu. I want a refund."
"The library is free to residents," should have felt like more of a reasonable argument than it did. "There's nothing to refund."
"It's paid for out of taxes," the mare noted. "You could refund those."
Twilight's only response was to lightly sway from side to side. The mare looked at that, and took pity.
"We can just do an exchange," she offered. "Bring out something else in the same category."
"...okay."
"But I want a sample."
"...sorry?" drifted up on a slow-rising tide of exhaustion.
"A sample," the mare said. "Try before I buy. Read me some of it, so I don't have to turn around again."
Eventually, Twilight stumbled back. Reading commenced.
"You're not doing the voices," the mare observed. "It's better with voices."
The fire-red mare had removed most of the feathers and nearly all of the lost smidgens, but for the few of each which rested where hooves had been regularly passing and were thus presumably stuck there forever. There didn't seem to be any new feathers accumulating and as Sun began to go down, Twilight finally registered the lack of fresh debris.
"You're not molting," she wearily told one out-of-shape pegasus stallion. He wasn't very good at hovering, and each of the three words had been directed at a different eye level.
"Oh, lava season is just a few hours," he told her. "I'm done."
The next blinks were just about her last of the night.
"Then why not just land?"
"Do you know what goes into launching a flight?" the sweating, somewhat-overweight male asked.
"I'm a unicorn --"
"-- there's a little jump," he said. "Joint extension. Unfurling everything. All sorts of muscle movements to get going. It's complicated. That's why we have flight camps. It's not easy to start the flow. And once I do have it, why would I want to stop and start over and over again? Think about how hard that is on the system. All of the systems." His hover lurched to the right. "It's much easier to keep the inner steam boiler running as much as possible."
She tried to see it, and immediately got stuck on the boiler comparison. The small mare distantly wondered how many calories he was burning.
So did he.
"It's more convenient this way," he said. "Since the fly-thru air paths exist. Don't you think it's easier, not having to go into the library at all? If I had to go inside..." The mid-air shudder nearly put him into the bell. "I don't think most of these ponies would bother at all. It's about convenience."
For who?
She was tired. She was allowed to make a mistake.
For whom?
The corrected version didn't feel any better.
She stared at him. He didn't really notice. The lines were starting to mutter again.
"Anyway, this was hungry work, waiting," the stallion said. "Don't you think you should put out snacks? I hear zebras put out snacks. In bowls. But this is a line for pegasi." He gave it some thought. "Do you know a winged bowl spell?"
One extremely vital eye muscle on the left side of Twilight's face twitched.
"If you had to come inside," the exhausted mare summarized, "you wouldn't. Because that's not convenient."
He nodded. "So can I get my books? That's a Number 9. Low-calorie on the cookbook. And celery, if you have it. I'd really like some celery."
The little unicorn turned around and went inside, closing the balcony door behind her.
The three lines waited. Several of their occupants looked at the closed door, and considered that Sun was being brought down. The librarian was probably just trying to keep too much of the tree's heat from getting out. Two of them mentally drew up designs for installing a helpful sliding window.
Then there was a flare of light within the library, and that was what got most of the crowd's attention. The light was tinged with pink, a little too close to white, and came with a singular lack of sound. It was the non-noise produced by an exhausted mare summoning the last tenth-bits of strength she had to give.
A window on the ground level opened. The too-bright corona projected through the gap. Four extremely surprised ponies were very carefully removed from the ramp and as soon as the glow left their bodies, the ramp itself was removed from the vicinity of the front door.
...well, technically, it was a removal. The ramp went up. It traveled a short distance towards the street, and then the glow brought it down again. And because they'd been removed first, the ponies who'd recently been standing on it were perfectly fine. The fact that the ramp had hit the ground hard enough to produce a shockwave which knocked two of them off their hooves was purely incidental.
The next burst of light made the front door fly open, and partially off.
"FINE!" Twilight announced as she stood within the newest gap, horn shimmering and shining and placing so many of her features within near-blinding white. "It's just too INCONVENIENT to come inside? Then let's make this official! Who cares about regulations? Nopony here! So inside no longer exists! The library is coming OUT!"
She stepped out of sight. Several of the dumber ponies stared at the resulting hollow. The smarter specimens had evacuated at the moment when the first burst of light hit.
The hollow wasn't empty for long.
"SHELVES!"
Three floating bookcases slammed their way onto the grass. The Reservations stack didn't stop rolling for twelve seconds.
"DESK!"
As per regulations, it went next to the held books. The landing made bottles break. Ink soaked into the grass.
"BENCHES!"
Some of the padding came loose.
"Oh, wait," sarcasm merrily called out from the interior of the tree. "You're all going to need someplace to stand! FLOORBOARDS!"
There was a rather horrible sound. It contained an underlying layer of squeal, produced by hundreds of nails coming up in a single huge wrenching. It mostly got lost in the shattering clamor produced by mill-structured wood dying or, in this case, dying again.
The huge pile of giant splinters eventually spread out across the lawn. Twilight, horn still blazing, marched out behind it, and those few ponies who hadn't found enough brain cells to flee yet also turned out to lack the ones which would have let them stop staring.
"I am your librarian!" the little mare announced. "I set the rules! The fly-thru option is closed! FOREVER! Libraries are for going into, not going past! Because this is stupid, this is just getting stupider, you can SEE how stupid it all looks because I just SHOWED YOU and it is OVER! A library belongs INSIDE! Everything about it! FOREVER!"
Which was when an exhausted, soul-weary Twilight, physically and magically spent, noticed the few remaining stares.
She thought about that for a second.
She was, in fact, being completely unreasonable.
"HOWEVER, I MAY ADD A OUTER DROPBOX SO PATRONS CAN RETURN BOOKS AFTER HOURS! AND TO KEEP THE ELDERLY FROM TRAVELING IN THE HEAT, SUMMER MIGHT SEE A BOOK CART! I WOULD APPRECIATE SOMEPONY DROPPNG BY TOMORROW WITH A LIST OF RENTAL PRICES ON CARTS! NOW EITHER COME IN OR GET OUT!"
And then they were all gone. Some galloped. Others flew. A few galloped who could have flown, but they'd temporarily forgotten how their wings worked because flying took a lot of effort and some of that was mental. And a scant number of final feathers were shed, none of which had been ready to molt yet.
Twilight exhaled and, with that final effort released, the slim form dropped into the grass.
She didn't know if that was what a good librarian would have done, and she was fully expecting to have the mayor turn up in the very near future with a well-prepared lecture. She wasn't quite certain as to whether a good librarian would have even gotten into that situation.
(She really wasn't sure about just how much of it had been Rainbow's fault.)
But the tree had Twilight Sparkle. And now Twilight Sparkle could rest. Breathe. Calm down. Put away her temper. And work on a speech for the inevitable apology tour in the morning.
Or rather, she could do that after she got all of it back inside. The bookcases. The desk. The...
...floorboards...
I tore up the floorboards.
Everypony had left. Sun was being lowered. Moon was just starting to come up. It gave the resulting facehoof an audience of one.
The fly-thru air path had been unused for hours, and would never be occupied again. The library, however, was going to be closed for at least two more days.
It hadn't taken Twilight all that much residency time to learn that she was responsible for the tree's budget: an additional split-second had been required before she'd forced herself to admit that there was really that little of it. So in the interests of still having some bits to pay for the remaining portion of her autumn new book orders, she was trying to do some of the initial repairs herself. How hard could it really be to nail torn-up floorboards back down, anyway? At least, for the ones which could still be pieced together.
That was what she'd told the mayor, after finally getting a chance to speak at the end of the most recent Never Do That Again lecture. (#2 on the Dressaging Down Twilight Sparkle menu, and you couldn't refuse the mandatory blush. However, that was the variant which also said she wasn't being sent back to Canterlot, because the mayor wanted to yell at her here.) That she was going to put in the work, in every possible way. There were fix-it books which told you how to go through all of the necessary hoofsteps, and it would be a while before she realized that all of them had purposefully neglected the important part: the amount it cost for an expert to fix all of the amateur's mistakes.
She'd scrounged up a few sets of slip-on hoof-hammering shoes, added padding to the interior for the smallest until she'd been able to make them almost fit. And there wasn't a single patron anywhere, because the library was closed.
"This is boring," her lone non-patron declared from the top of a supportive bookcase. "Boring."
Twilight glared at the pegasus.
"Seriously," Rainbow decided. "How is anypony supposed to take a nap with all of this noise?"
"Libraries," the little mare offered through gritted teeth, "aren't for napping."
"Says you," the pegasus countered. "It's just about the only thing they're good for. Why would anypony build furniture with these nice wide, smooth tops unless they wanted ponies to lie down on them? And then they put them in a place where it's always supposed to be quiet. The perfect snoozing environment." The sleek mare's face somehow found a way to preen with intellectual pride. "So a library is for napping. That's logic -- Twilight?"
"What?"
Helpfully, "I know you can't see your own face right now." Thoughtfully, "Pinkie would probably tell you to scatter a few mirrors around. In case of can't-see-your-face-emergency."
"Rainbow..."
"But I can see your face," the pegasus continued. "I think that's a face which needs to send a really long scroll to the Princess."
"Really."
"Yeah," Rainbow decided. "Something about controlling your temper. Maybe by putting the energy into doing something physical. Like dusting the top of bookcases, because my feathers are getting dirty."
Twilight's imagination immediately conjured a number of ways to deal with Rainbow, all of which she immediately tried to physically channel into harder stomps against the nails. For a mare who weighed less than the majority of adolescents, it didn't seem to mean much.
"Too noisy!" Rainbow unsubtly offered. "And boring! And it's taking too long!"
"You could help," Twilight forced out.
"Why? It's not my fault."
The little unicorn internally composed a number of scrolls. This was followed by editing them all for profanity. The three remaining syllables didn't seem to be Princess-suitable.
"But you kinda need help," the pegasus considered. "That's really obvious. And me doing some of it would make things go faster. And make them cooler. And less boring. And then maybe after I nap, we can do something fun together. Since the library's closed and if you were alone, you'd probably just be boring yourself." She nodded to herself: the forward end of the prismatic mane bounced accordingly. "Okay. Show me how this is supposed to work? The hammering stuff. Because I really wasn't paying attention."
"You need me to show you how hoof-hammer shoes and nails work."
Placidly, "I mold clouds."
Twilight demonstrated.
"It's boring," Rainbow decided.
"It's carpentry."
"Same thing," the non-patron casually dismissed. "And your nails aren't lying flat enough. Somepony could catch their hooves on the edges. Chip them." It triggered a snort. "Another reason to hover. And just stomping on nails over and over is gonna be so boring..."
The pegasus stared down from the bookcase. A magenta gaze gradually narrowed in on a broad nailhead. (The impact receiving points had to be wide: hooves didn't deal well with small targets.)
"Twilight?"
Most of the irritation was kept out of her voice. (Most.) "You're not hammering, Rainbow."
"You didn't give me any shoes yet," the pegasus flawlessly logicked. "I was just thinking. This is about force, right? Applied energy. Getting as much kinetic transfer to go directly into the nailhead as possible. With a fully-vertical impact, because you have to keep the sharp part in line."
Twilight, who was slightly impressed in spite of herself, favored her guest with a nod.
"And stomping usually wouldn't give you a good transfer," Rainbow reasoned. "Because the bottom of the shoe is flat, but it's hard to bring your forelegs straight down. Most ponies plant their hooves on angles. An edge touches down before the rest of it. They'll hammer the same way. And it'll mess up the nail."
The unicorn had to push the words past the light stun. "You figured all that out in --"
Shoulders and half-unfurled wings found a way to shrug together. "I see how ponies move. That's just athletics. Anyway, most ponies are gonna mess it up. Because they'll hammer the same way they trot."
"Okay..."
With rapidly-growing excitement, as new feathers began to vibrate in anticipation, "So if you're lucky enough to be a pegasus, why stomp at all? The shoes protect my hooves, right? So all I've gotta do is land. Come down right on top of the nail! But it's probably best if I build up some speed first. Give gravity a little assist. I know what happens when I come down a little faster than gravity was figuring on. I do that all the time. I just have to do it with a target. Planned cra -- landings. Anyway, building up speed. I can do a few circuits in here, but you should open the bigger windows. Let me get outside and really get going. Oh, and the balcony doors. Leave those open. I don't think it'll cause any problems if ponies see me come in that way."
Rainbow nodded to herself in open satisfaction and in doing so, ignored nearly everything going on around her.
"Yeah," the pegasus decided. "Go into the floor at high speed. Over and over. That is a plan. So float a couple of those shoes up to me, go open everything up, clear some space because the impact vibrations are gonna move, and I'll get started -- Twilight? I was watching you. The shoes go on my forehooves. You don't have to send them around towards the back -- unless you think I should try a one-point landing? I know it's more force, but that's a really small target." She abruptly grinned. "And that just makes it a challenge! Okay, send up two pairs --"
The librarian's expression was impassive.
"-- and your aim sucks," Rainbow announced. "That is my butt. You are pushing shoes into my butt -- they're kicking me! You're kicking me!" Wings desperately flared, and two bubbles of glow-coated steel accelerated in their wake.
You had to figure for intent, when it was Rainbow. The unicorn probably needed to write a scroll on the subject.
"This isn't funny! Get them off me! Get them -- I was only trying to help...!"
You also had to become very good at tracking a fast-fleeing object, but Twilight was working on that.