How hard could it be?
Very.
When Diamond thought about it... she knew that ponies talked about the mailmare. It almost felt as if some of them tended to stay on the topic almost constantly. It was possible that a few kept discussing her because they weren't intelligent enough to think of any other subjects, but... realistically, there was also the matter of what seemed to be a never-ending supply of new material.
She was aware that ponies talked about the mailmare. She wasn't completely sure what they'd been saying, because Diamond hadn't always paid a lot of attention to what ponies said unless she'd been looking for something she could use against them. But there had been enough words drifting through the air as to make her feel that she should have retained at least a few of them, and...
She'd overheard a few of the talks, as had her consultants. The adults' discussions certainly included descriptive terms, none of which included any flattery whatsoever. And there were things they called the mare, but -- there were too many of them. No single term seemed to be used with sufficient regularity to designate it as the baseline. And if the herd was somehow collectively quoting individual subsections of the birth document, then the mare had the only form in the Herdbook Registry to claim a personal filing cabinet. Nopony among her consultants could state, with anything remotely approaching confidence, that they knew the mare's name.
Her daddy had stated that it had taken a surprising amount of effort to learn it, and Diamond was starting to perceive the why.
Of course, she had the option to simply ask him -- but that would have meant admitting that she hadn't known. Additionally, there were times when Diamond simply preferred to manage her own affairs, especially when having any adults learn what those were would inevitably wind up leading to interference. At a minimum.
Nothing got settled during recess. But there was more time available than that. She already had her consultant group at work on the problem -- although once school let out, she wouldn't have the whole of it for long: everypony within the assembly had their own lives, and it usually took some advance arrangements to make their long-term priorities completely coincide with Diamond's.
(Additionally, when it came to the totality of her intended afterschool schedule, she didn't want to have the boys along for the whole of it. Some things needed to be private, especially when the ultimate goal was to make her displays public enough for the designated viewer to notice.)
She needed to learn about the competition.
And Snips had an idea...
Five adolescents were making their way down some of the back trails, because that was the fastest way to reach their first destination -- or would have been if winter hadn't become involved. The back trails didn't exactly see a lot in the way of snow clearing, and that meant they were mostly trying to follow in the hoofsteps of whoever had been through before.
Diamond and Silver, as the earth ponies in the group, should have been first in the procession: superior strength, greater snow-breaking capacity. Snails, out of what Diamond quickly decided was concern over the future stage of her leggings, got in front of everypony and let a unicorn's greatest weakness lead the way.
She watched him for a while, as the group trailed far too slowly in his inefficient wake. Considered how the other benefit to personally being out front would have been giving him an extended look at her backside, managed not to mutter to herself, cut her pace a little more so as not to trot directly into his dock --
-- something seemed to prickle along the base of her mane. Her hocks felt as if all of the muscles had just gone tight. Her ears tried to twist, rotating until they were just about fully backwards and since pony anatomy wasn't designed to go so far, that segment of the whole rapidly became uncomfortable.
It all added up to one thing. A concept which needed a moment to arrive as words, because the basic sensation had been created at a time before words existed.
Somepony is watching me.
The prey sense. Intangible, almost ineffable -- but when it arose, always recognized. Something was observing her, possibly even following -- and not the pony she'd wanted trailing, because he was currently going to war against a knee-high ridge of accumulated flakes and losing. There was another entity involved...
It was a sensation which arrived on the level of absolute knowledge. It was also effectively useless, because she didn't know what was watching her. She also wasn't getting a sense of immediate danger from any of it. Just... observation. And that made it annoying.
'Prey sense.' She'd been given formal lessons on it during kindergarten, and was still waiting for the followup class which would explain how any of it applied to her. Yes, ponies were technically a prey species. It was possible to apply the label to any herbivore, and that seemed completely unfair because if you weren't careful about what you tried to use as a meal in a wild zone, some of the plants would absolutely try to eat you first.
Also, predators pursued whatever they wanted and didn't stop until it was in their clutches. Therefore, on the mental level, Diamond was clearly a predator. It wasn't her fault if her body had decided to disagree. And when they were in the settled zone, when she couldn't hear or scent anything trying to line up an attack... then the most likely explanation for the internal alarm going off was one of Miss Fluttershy's birds having spotted a pony procession and deciding to follow for a while. Not so much in case of future interrogations as in the hopes of seeing something tasty slip out of a saddlebag.
Additionally, anything which did come after them would be attacking a group. Taking on a single pony was one thing, at least if that pony wasn't Diamond. A single pony could potentially be some level of prey. The herd was the reason Equestria existed. There was power in numbers, and some of it might eventually elect to stop kicking.
She recognized that. And she didn't feel as if there was any real danger, especially when none of the others seemed to be reacting at all. So she stayed on rough alert, made sure she wasn't showing any external signs, and pushed on ahead. Far too slowly.
Followed. Observed...
She knew all of that, and found it stupid. Not as bad as being in pain, when the alarm was ringing so loudly as to potentially prevent the most basic of thoughts (like how to shut it off) -- but persistent. Annoying. Something was watching her, possibly trailing, she knew that, but she didn't hear wings and couldn't pick out extra crunches in the snow past the sounds of five efforts (with the lead substandard), she had total awareness and that meant her body could stop now...
But the sensation wouldn't leave.
It didn't quite fade when the group reentered Ponyville's streets. Instead, it became decidedly more unfocused, because it was late enough for a few adults to be out and about. There were ponies who tended to watch Diamond as she went by, just in case she decided to give them a little personal attention. Say a few words...
She tried to recognize faces. Remember if there was anything she'd said before, followed by trying out the only thing she could say now. But there had been so much, and... she didn't remember all of it. Barely a fraction, and that was with those comments which had felt devastatingly memorable at the time.
Secretary Of Insults. Full-time position, with travel benefits and possible sleeping quarters at the new house. It was possible that the employer might remember something just before going to bed --
-- Diamond blinked.
What was --
-- she was sure there had just been a partial flash of bright light from the alleyway on the left. Which had been followed by a sound very much like something bouncing off a wall and then falling into a mound of snow. Diamond knew exactly what that last sound was like. She'd had a few winters in the world, and some ponies were easy to push.
Maybe somepony had been shoving their plow load into the alley. Reflection of light from the blade. And they'd tripped, because you had to put displaced snow somewhere and for the last six ponies to go by, the alley had probably been it --
"-- that's it up ahead," Snips reported. "The red brick building. I'm in there all the time." Openly disgruntled, "Because after Mom finishes repairing the books, somepony has to mail them back. I've gotta head over to the shop right after this part, Diamond. You know how she gets..."
Diamond nodded. Mrs. Bradel truly believed in the family business model, and had a special fondness for the section which said that legally, her son didn't even need to be paid minimum wage.
"So let's go in," Diamond told them. "If it's going to be anywhere..."
The prey sense waited for the doors to click shut, and then finally turned itself off.
Diamond exhaled. Looked around, and then tried to figure out what part of the post office she was supposed to be looking at.
There weren't that many ponies in line at this hour: the rush to mail things out in time for Hearth's Warming was well behind them, with Hearts & Hooves Day still some distance ahead. (She had to get some open notice from Snails before then, if only for the sake of getting him trained early on proper dating gift shopping.) Only three were waiting to speak with the clerk, while a fourth wanted to know every possible means of sending a box to Manehattan while, ideally, paying for none of them. Two mares were looking at mailing supplies, because it seemed that a few adults turned up at the building with the contents of a future package and no idea for what was supposed to happen next.
One wall hosted a myriad of brass-edged miniature glass doors, each of which had a cubbyhole behind it, its own number and, courtesy of the post office, something resembling a street address. It was ideal for getting things mailed in while you were still looking for a place to live, and also would have been perfect for Diamond if it hadn't been for the minor problem of still being a minor. Kids needed to have an adult sign the application form.
There were also two maps, colorful and bright and not so much painted onto the far wall as embossed there. The one on the right showed Equestria, and numerical codes designated the region identifier for every settled zone. Diamond actually had most of those memorized, because there were fifteen stores (going on sixteen) and if there wasn't a store in an area, there was probably a supplier. It meant that her father both sent and received letters all the time --
-- which had been just that many more opportunities for contact with the mailmare --
-- and it had given her plenty of exposure to the system.
The right-side map displayed her own nation. The one on the left was for the world.
She wasn't quite as familiar with those codes. Barnyard Bargains did have a small International section, tucked away near Cookery. It meant her daddy regularly ordered from outside the borders -- but most of what he brought in was spices. He was reluctant to fully expand the business into any territory he didn't truly understand, and had once told her that he longed to meet the one yak who could theoretically instruct him about the destruction of customs forms.
It still meant she could read the majority of the map, because the postal system was an international, cooperative effort. Ponies passed off outgoing mail to Protocera, which agreed to honor the stamp -- and in return, ponies carried griffon mail to Equestrian destinations. Mazein packages tended to be heavier, anything going to Eeyorus would plod up to its intended destination -- if there was a region code embossed into the map, then someone was going to deliver the mail. Eventually.
There were a lot of region codes. There was also rather more in the way of map. Several sections were just -- outlines. Rough coastlines, and very little else. It struck Diamond as being a rather odd number of blank spaces, and she felt that somepony should have filled them in already. Then again, if that had happened, International Studies would have been that much longer --
"I don't see her," Snails whispered. "Maybe she's still out on her route?"
"Maybe," Sweetie considered. "Those can take hours to finish."
Diamond didn't want to see the mare. 'Recognized on sight' was the best case. The worst was everything which could happen after that.
There had been no sightings yet. When you weren't looking for her, the mare was everywhere and all too often, so was the stink of ozone --
"So what do we do?" Silver softly checked. "Just ask one of the employees?"
"Nah," Snips grinned. "I've got a faster way. You see that big open window in that wall, near the mailboxes? Where nopony's standing right now?"
"The one about snout-level, yeah," Snails noted. "So?"
"That's where they nudge over packages which are too big to fit in the boxes. I've seen them do it." Not without pride, "And sometimes Mom gets mail that way, because she gets stuff to fix from all over the world and the other countries don't always get the address completely right. The post office holds some of the big stuff here until we can come over to verify it."
"And?" Diamond checked.
"And I've picked up stuff," Snips told them, short legs beginning to cross the distance towards that gap. "And if you rear up just right, you can see the sorting area behind the wndow. Which has a town map." This grin wasn't quite so dull. "They stick labels on it. Current route assignments."
He reached the window.
"Names..."
Snips reared up.
The abrupt resumption of the prey sense upon exiting the building was mostly overlooked. Diamond had other things on her mind, starting with a rather basic question: It took my daddy a 'surprising amount of effort' to visit the post office?
The other inquiry was a little more open.
"What kind of name is 'Derpy'?"
Everypony thought about it. Adults flowed around the tight knot of confused youths, which had effectively frozen itself into place within the cold street.
"Dunno," Snips finally admitted. "Does 'Derpy' mean 'mailmare'?"
And then they were all staring at him.
"What?" Snails finally asked, because the colt who knew Snips best was the obvious candidate to effectively announce when his friend wasn't making any sense.
"In another language," Snips very nearly clarified. "I mean, a lot of ponies get names which go with their jobs, right? Or maybe they change their name once the job starts, to fit it better. But sometimes parents like to pick the exotic stuff. Like what Miss Fleur's folks must have done, because I'm pretty sure the only thing her name means in Equestrian is her." He shrugged. "Naming's sort of weird. Anyway, maybe 'Derpy' means 'she who smashes mailbox doors' in Yakasian or something."
"Maybe..." Diamond considered. If foreign languages were getting involved...
Somewhere off to the north, the Town Hall bell began to toll.
"And that's my cue," Snips announced. "See you tomorrow! Let me know if you learn anything else!"
"I will," Diamond promised -- followed by "Thanks, Snips." He'd had an idea, and it had turned out to be a good one. Offering thanks was effectively mandatory, especially when doing so effectively encouraged him to come up with that quality of idea again. As opposed to all the ones regarding the grossout potential of field-flung yellow snow.
"No problem," the shorter of the colts grinned. "Just get me something tasty from the store! At the employee discount!"
Most of the trot to Barnyard Bargains was spent in reflecting on how she had absolutely not taught either colt to do that.
There were occasional exchanges of presents within the group. Hearth's Warning, birthdays -- the traditional times. (Snips tended towards hoofmade items, while Snails generally found something suitable for Cameo's terrarium.) But they'd both been surprised to learn that Diamond had to buy anything she gave. Which she did while working with what she considered to be a fairly adequate allowance -- but if her intended purchase was coming from the store, then it had to be paid for. She simply did so at the employee discount.
This was proper. Inventory had to be kept. Freebies messed up the profit margin. And when it came to getting the discount -- well, she was the toy aisle's primary advisor. Recognition was only fair.
So the boys didn't ask her to get them stuff for free. They just made the occasional request for a purchase to be made on their behalf. And if it wasn't a gift, then Diamond was (eventually) fully paid back -- at that discounted rate.
Something is following me...
The other schools had let out. They were seeing ponies of their own age on the streets. It was possible that somepony was finally paying attention to her tail.
"I've gotta duck out after the store," Snails reminded her from his position on the left (and in no way behind her). "The farm, you know?"
She knew.
Somepony other than the one I want to notice...
She eventually risked a glance back, trying to see if she could pick out the observer. It mostly got her a flash of light from the window in front of the fix-it shop's broken camera display.
This time, the sensation didn't fade as they entered the building.
She'd explained the destination on the way over. It wasn't to see her father: this was the hour which hosted a scheduled meeting, and he would be leading the herd in the conference room. But her daddy had asked the mare out. Diamond didn't know exactly what he'd said, and could only presume the mare's -- Derpy's? -- response had included something which could pass for 'yes'. She wasn't currently in a good position to ask him about the exact circumstances of the mistake, and going to her was clearly out. But whatever had happened -- it had taken place during the store's day shift. And her daddy was infamous for never quite closing the office door, to the point where ponies just knocked on the frame. It meant employees could hear a lot, and there seemed to be a good chance that they were still gossiping.
Except that they weren't.
He also said that he was going to arrange some privacy.
Maybe he'd spoken to her near the loading dock. Or among the backroom Advance Orders shelves, or maybe the door had even... closed.
Nopony was talking about the upcoming error. There weren't many employees talking at all. And when they spotted Diamond...
She felt as if she was collecting a number of rather odd looks. Her first guess was that they had heard about what was going to take place, and rather naturally felt sorry for her. Which she appreciated -- but it would have been nice to get a few verifying words on the subject, as opposed to the total silence which instantly closed in whenever she stepped into view.
Maybe they were worried that she was going to tell on them. She didn't have any reason for doing so. Yes, the store was sort of on the messy side today, but -- the franchise was busy, to the point where she couldn't always spot ponies through all the ponies who were already in the way. Customers knocked things over all the time, or dropped pieces and didn't put them back. There was a fair chance that she'd been the first pony to spot most of it.
...it was almost a pattern. She would lead the group down an aisle, there would be a thump somewhere behind them, she'd turn around...
Maybe there was somepony new doing shelf stocking. If items were placed too close to the forward edge, then the vibrations produced by passing hooves could eventually send them down. Wind backblast from active wings was worse, and formed one of the many reasons why her daddy asked that shopping pegasi remained grounded while within the store...
...definitely on the messy side today.
Sweetie and Snails put a few fallen things back on the way out, working via glow. It was good practice for them. Diamond approved.
In winter, Moon looked over the majority of the cycle. It meant that when the trio of adolescent fillies finally got to approach the library, Sun was already being lowered -- and Diamond, who'd spent just about the whole of the day trying to get some help from the herd, had officially missed her opportunity to recruit from the other side of the cosmic. This annoyed her. But there was presumably going to be a chance to try again tomorrow and if there somehow wasn't, everypony was presumably dealing with the sort of issues which didn't necessarily make trying to save her father from himself into something minor, but could at least justify asking it to wait for a while.
They weren't going to spend a lot of time inside the tree. Diamond typically didn't commit all that many hours to the library, and that obviously wasn't jealously over its survival. She hadn't been particularly fond of the place before Miss Twilight had made the instinctive decision to deflect the blast of power away from it, and her daddy had been the first to admit that the mare really hadn't had time to think about anything in the way of aim.
Diamond typically wound up at the library when a school assignment required a certain amount of research. The fact that she now had to do all such research herself was more than a little grating, but... she'd been caught copying the work of others, and the only way to show that she'd stopped was through very visibly not doing it any more. In public.
How long was she supposed to keep it up before ponies would just believe that she wasn't going to start again?
What would it take before she was just trusted --
-- anyway, she didn't enjoy the majority of fiction, at least when it was written down. Stories were meant to be read out loud by somepony who was sitting next to your bed. While doing voices, because it was always better with voices.
Diamond had recently taken up a minor interest in the new invention of audiobooks, but she got sick of swapping albums and besides, none of the voices were exactly right -- but to be fair about it, her daddy didn't exactly have the time to start a sideline career in vocal recording.
Most stories weren't interesting because the act of writing was clearly a rather basic one. Anypony could make up stories about ponies who didn't even exist. (She often presumed that just about anything somepony else did was simple, or else they wouldn't be the ones doing it. By contrast, her own issues were obviously immensely complicated because complexity had to be assigned to those who could manage it.) Diamond had created multiple, fully-plausible falsehoods regarding the real and wound up having just about all of them believed. This was a process so inherently complicated as to inevitably collapse in on itself, and Diamond presumed that the collapse was inevitable because otherwise, it wouldn't have happened to her. But she did feel that she'd kept it going for longer than just about anypony else could have.
Novels usually didn't hold her attention, especially when nopony was reading them to her. But she had some genuine interest in history. Fiction was just stuff which somepony had made up, but history -- those were stories about real people. And by contrast, there weren't all that many of those stories, especially when you compared the count to the total number of people who'd ever lived. Diamond wasn't always sure as to exactly what made somepony's life important enough to get into the official record, but presumed any truly reasonable standards meant she was prequalified.
She could find genuine pleasure in reading through a historical account, especially because any twist ending wasn't the result of a desperate author looking for any way of reaching the final page which didn't require actually resolving several dozen dangling plot threads. But that wasn't the sort of thing you could just casually admit, and that was another reason for Diamond to mostly avoid the tree.
Also, it was winter, she was wearing more than a few layers, the library hosted a resident dragon, and Miss Twilight kept the place (over)heated accordingly.
She made sure to check on the alicorn's position as they entered. They were about to do something which, if spotted, would definitely lead into adults asking questions: that made it essential to know exactly where the one with the most local authority actually was. But the small mare was behind her desk, and a glow-enveloped quill was steadily moving from one small lined paper rectangle to the next. Creating new cards for the library catalog would keep Miss Twilight busy for a while. All they had to do was avoid drawing her attention.
They carefully passed the desk. The librarian didn't ask if they needed anything, because her focus was on the cards. She certainly didn't get up or try to follow them.
Something following...
Maybe the sensation had just gotten frozen into the On position. It would probably defrost when Diamond began to overheat.
The trio took the long way around to what Diamond was sure was going to be the relevant section, peeked ahead to make sure there were no inconvenient adults in the area, avoided a few patrons, kept six ears on rotation in a hunt for either exceptionally light hoofsteps or an abrupt shift of wings, closed in --
-- Diamond had believed the tree would possess something regarding her desired topic, because Miss Twilight didn't like fully excluding any category. The librarian had Views on censorship, and one of them said that when it came to authorship, ponies generally had to be allowed freedom of creation. Furthermore, once that book was created, then there had to be at least one library which hosted a volume from its print run. Otherwise, how could the text truly be said to officially exist? And there were always the Canterlot Archives, which made sure to get a copy of everything -- but the vast majority of Equestrians would never venture into any of the more than two dozen buildings which made up the Stacks, and that means local branches needed to do their part.
So Ponyville's library had books which discussed exotic dressing techniques, because Miss Twilight had Views on forbidding things from being written.
She also had certain opinions about allowing the results to be read.
Diamond had reasonably been expecting the books to be sealed behind either a swing-down locking glass shelf cover or some degree of glow. The first was preferable, because the typical shelf lock wasn't very good and a little fiddling around with a horntip could potentially defeat it. Another type of horn use was required to get past glow, but there was some chance for the librarian to have been using a purchased spell and Sweetie might have been capable of defeating anything store-bought.
A lock or glow. Finding both struck her as overkill. Having the glow's hue radiate as a very familiar pinkish shade was just unfair.
There was a card pasted to the lower right corner of the blockade. It was possible to make out the hosted words, if you squinted.
"'Not To Be Removed Without Direct Supervision'," Sweetie softly read aloud. (They had to keep their voices down: the librarian wasn't that far away.) A little mournfully, "We should have known. But I didn't, because I've never been in this part of the library."
"You never tried to get a mark for this?" Silver curiously asked.
"It's something which adults do," the unicorn replied. "Once they're adults. Nopony wanted to wait that long."
Silver thought about that. (Glasses shifted.) "That makes sense."
"And we would have needed a lot of clothing," Sweetie added. "More than any of us had. Which probably would have meant asking Rarity if we could borrow some, when she doesn't exactly make a lot of things for kids." With a small sigh, "And then she probably would have asked why we needed so many slip-ties. She doesn't like slip-ties... Diamond, why are you pressing your snout against the glass?"
"I'm trying to read the titles."
"...oh."
"I can't make them out through the glow." She reluctantly pulled back, blinked until the spots faded from her vision. "This is so stupid. Why would she lock this away? All I want to know about is how to wear clothes properly!" In the way which made colts think about what had been temporarily hidden underneath...
Two adolescents took what almost felt like a shared breath. And then both looked at her: one through lenses, one without.
"Maybe it's the wrong approach," Silver carefully tried. "There's got to be other things you could do."
"Like what?" emerged on a current of frustration for which only the volume had been muted.
"You could try flirting," her oldest friend proposed. "Like -- Cotton. She flirts all the time --"
That was good for a largely-repressed snort. "So wait until she finishes. And then try whatever's left. If there's anything at all." Cotton Cloudy believed herself to be attractive: according to Silver, this was actually true. She also felt herself to be flirtatious, which mostly begged the questions of where she'd first encountered the word and why she'd never bothered to read the actual definition. Because Cotton flirted through process of elimination: attempt every possible means of vocal and social interaction which could possibly exist and if her target responded in a positive manner, then flirting had clearly been achieved.
Cotton had been attempting to flirt for most of the school year. The casualty list of the mentally stunned had begun to record the names of those who attended Ponyville's other schoolhouses, and showed no signs of turning back. And Diamond wasn't entirely sure how flirting worked just yet, mostly because she'd been concentrating on dressing up as her primary tactic -- but she knew enough to recognize that if Cotton was doing something, then that automatically wasn't it.
Sweetie's forelegs shifted a little. Hooves lightly, awkwardly scraped against the floor.
"Or," the unicorn softly proposed, "you could just ask him out --"
Instantly, "He has to ask me."
"Why?" Silver softly followed up.
"Because if he can't pick up on the clues, then why is he worth it?" She just barely managed to keep her left forehoof from stomping, and the majority of her followup decibels had to be implied. "Demonstrate some intellect! And interest! Besides, he likes white streaks! We know that!"
"He likes streaks," Sweetie quietly tried. "But that doesn't mean he's going to like everypony who --"
"-- and I have --"
She stopped. Looked directly at Sweetie --
-- no. The little unicorn wasn't competition. Her mane and tail really didn't have any white in them, and the colors didn't appear as streaks. It was a two-tone look. Completely different.
Diamond stopped. Held back the sigh.
"Maybe there's somewhere else we can learn about it," she considered. The town's bookstore felt like a possibility, but Miss Bluestocking was probably going to keep a close watch over those titles. Plus you couldn't really read in the bookstore, because that mare didn't like it when customers tried for sneak previews. And even if they just copied out the titles in hopes of future mail order, there was still the problem of securing a drop address --
-- something thumped.
All three adolescents froze. Fast-rotating ears focused on and isolated the sound.
"A book fell," Sweetie quietly decided. "A couple of aisles over, I think."
Diamond nodded. Remained on alert, because that was the sort of thing which could potentially draw librarian attention --
"There's stories which have exotic dressers as characters," Silver recalled. "And they probably talk about their work. Maybe if we just found one of those?"
"Which means reading a whole book," Diamond immediately groused, "just to see if there's two or three paragraphs which I actually need. And maybe a whole lot of books, because those paragraphs might not be in the first one. Or the second, or a lot of numbers past that. It's too much time. And it's not like there's any book which just tells you what's in a book."
"But if we can't get at the real thing --" Sweetie softly began.
Which was when Diamond had a Thought.
"-- what if there was?"
"Was what?" Silver asked: this time, the head tilt shifted glasses and necklace. "The real thing to watch? I don't think anypony's going to let us into a show --"
"What if there was a book," Diamond slowly said, because she'd just become aware that this was an Idea and that meant her words needed to be clearly enunciated for the eventual record, "which told you what was in books?"
She'd added a few decibels into the statement. They had seemed necessary. You just didn't get the same kind of vocal impact into the average whisper.
"A book," Sweetie repeated, "which told you --"
"-- you get somepony to read the first book!" Diamond interrupted, because brilliance had the stage and the audience could just wait to applaud until the end. "Then they just write down whatever's in it! Only they keep it to the important stuff. Like character names and places and short summaries for what everypony does. So nopony who would have had to read the original book has to deal with stupid things like describing places and weather conditions --"
She could feel herself sweating: a natural consequence of being so fully dressed within the well-lit, overheated half-wounded library during the dead of winter, and the primary reason why they'd needed to make this visit short in the first place. She simply no longer cared. The Idea was that good.
There was also a faint touch of cooler air beginning to flow across her forehead, coming in from a high point. Maybe the librarian had actually thought to turn on a fan.
"-- and you wouldn't get stuck having to pay attention to the first book, because all of the important stuff is in the second! Can't you see it? What if nopony ever had to hunt for subtext again!" Real text, as with clearly-written contracts, needed to be fully in the open. Diamond rather accurately believed that anypony who wanted to work with subtext had something to hide. "Or spot some subtle clue, because it was found for you! " Happily, "You could just skip over all the character development, because that's almost always stupid. That character should have been developed in the first place. And when it comes to key scenes, to those two or three paragraphs which were the only reason you were about to force yourself through a whole stupid book when they might not even be there, you would just know --"
The light breeze amplified, ruffled her fur and brought cool relief to the heat generated by utter genius.
Then the first sounds of too-close wingbeats finally reached her.
And then three adolescents finally, belatedly looked up.
The half-hovering alicorn was staring down at them. Her expression, twisted well beyond the usual levels of distaste, was actually rather hard to read. Her eyes, gradually fading to pure white from the edges in, were not.
None of them moved. The first one to move was obviously going to be the first target and while Sweetie knew some old Crusader twitch code which signaled a simultaneous three-way break and rush from safety, she hadn't taught it to Diamond or Silver. They didn't know if the eyelid edge shiver was supposed to be it.
"It's almost funny," the librarian too-softly told them. "How I never really thought I would hear that again, especially coming from anypony else. But bad ideas are sort of alive, aren't they? And sometimes they try to survive through changing hosts. So I'll tell you exactly what I told Cliff Notes. That you're not banned, not for an idea. And you can all come back tomorrow. But you're going to go home and think really hard about what you just said. NOW GET OUT."