Let’s get down to business part 2
“Morning, Twilight.”
There were days when she would be up bright and early, but now the dawn would find her either still working, or sleeping, most of the time at her desk.
This was one of those mornings. Twilight stood at her desk, her hooves under her head papers to her right, papers to her left and papers under her hooves. Spike pulled those out in case she would drool while she slept, it happened from time to time, he then took a blanket and placed it on her. At the feeling of the foreign object her wings twitched, or it could have been from the caffeine, he didn't know. With Twilight taken care of he went downstairs got a quick breakfast, milk and rubies, and took another look at the grocery list he made the last day.
Hay for the whole week, a couple of apples for afternoon snacks, maybe some oats and other vegetables, depending on what he could find at the market. Grabbed a hoof woven basket and a took some bits from Twilight saddlebag.
Most vendors have already opened up shop. He looked around for what he needed. There was very little competition. Only one pony would sell one good. There was one apple vendor, one cherry, one celery, one of each.
While some ponies would also grow some other food on their farm, those were for their own consumption only, so most of them could set the prices how high they wanted, but except for a few. Nopony overcharged their produce.
He walked around buying what was on the list and a little more, like a jar of honey or some nuts. He placed a order for some hay and payed for it to be delivered to their home. He wanted to talk to Applejack about what her sister was doing, but today big mac stood at their cart.
They exchanged a few words, Spike bought the apples, a little more than he planned but Big Mac offered him a discount so he didn’t pay much more than he thought he would. He asked if A.J. would be here tomorrow and after hearing “Nope” he went home.
While waiting for the hay delivery ponies to arrive he dug out the books from the pile of papers and shelved them. It was quick and dirty. If a book could be placed near where it was supposed to be it would be great, if not, there was room for it elsewhere.
Now with the books put back in sort of their spots, he started sorting the rest of the papers. He only looked at the dates. Four piles started forming, Today, Overdue, Tomorrow and Other.
Other were either missing their dates, or had no specific time mentioned, or were letters, scrolls with some of Twilight thoughts and ideas, or anything else that did not fit in any of the first three categories.
The most important was the Today pile. When it started getting bigger he would take it to Twilight and just tell her that those were due today, before leaving. Around midday he made her something to eat and took it to her room.
After he ate he cleaned his plate along with the rest of the dishes from yesterday.
He continued to sort the papers until the hay arrived. After paying them something extra so that they would carry it in the kitchen, he returned to his work. Several times he was interrupted by ponies having business in the library. It went by fast.
By the time dinner had to be made he finished separating the papers, cleaning after the deliverers, checked the mail and closed the library. He took the last of Today’s work to Twilight along with her food. After eating and taking his and Twilight’s dishes to the kitchen he separated the Tomorrow pile into the New Today and the New Tomorrow piles.
He took the New Today as well as the Overdue to Twilight making sure not to wake her up and went to bed.
“Good night Twilight.”
The next couple of days were the same. Shopping in the morning, cleaning and library work for most of the day, cooking whenever it was needed and of course trying to make sense of the Other pile.
One morning he met Applejack and the two talk for a little. She was interested in how Twilight was doing, he was interested in Apple Bloom’s relation with Zecora. A.J. didn’t know much about it. She knew her sister spent some of her nights with her, but she was not worried, despite the fact that Zecora lived in the Everfree. Applejack knew that she would never let anything happen to Apple Bloom, when Spike asked how she knew, she just said “Caused she told me so.” If it was good enough for A.J. it was good enough for him.
He hadn't learned much, except that from time to time she would take a couple of old jars from the house, her grades were slightly better, as well as she spend more time alone since she started going to Zecora’s. It was not much, a few hours here and there, nothing to worry about.
“Maybe she had a little colt friend.” Applejack said joking.
So what if she spent a day or two at Zecora’s, so what if she wanted to have some private time. Her grades were up, she was working on the farm as much as she always did, she still went crusading with her friends Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo and for the most part stuck out of trouble, but most importantly she was happy. Applejack couldn’t have been happier, Big Mac agreed, but Granny was on the fence. They just chucked up it on her age or because she never actually stood and talked to Zecora.
Spike got some answers and it had to do.
The rest of the week was uneventful.
Then came the day he waited for, his day off.