As Ponyville’s head librarian, Twilight Sparkle had a number of very important duties. In addition to monitoring the lending and return of books, she was responsible for referencing, reshelving, restocking, acquisitions, evaluating each and every new acquisition, hiring, firing, employee evaluations, book repair, budgeting, specialist research on request, operating as head of the Ponyville Historical Society, maintaining an efficient schedule, scheduling maintaining an efficient schedule and – a relatively recent revision resulting from some complaints from disgruntled citizens – ensuring somewhat consistent opening hours that did not involve leaving whenever she wanted to go see her friends.
What that really meant was that, as Ponyville’s head librarian, Twilight Sparkle got to spend a large part of every day surrounded by, buying, caring for, reading books, or completely absorbed in books. And also that sometimes she had to stop and give Spike – her assistant and the only one she trusted to help her in carting for the library as opposed to, say, using it as a crash landing pad or inviting squirrels to live ir - a pat on the head and a ‘good job’ for all his hard work helping her out.
It was, for all intents and purposes, the perfect job. It honestly baffled her that nopony had snapped up the position before her. But unfortunately, her duties to the library were no longer the only duties she had.
As Ponyville’s premiere Princess, Twilight Sparkle had a number of very important duties. All of which she was presently ignoring.
She shouldn’t have been at the library. She should have been having dinner with the Griffon Ambassador, who had ostensibly travelled to Ponyville to apologise for the actions of his wayward daughter Gilda. Even though Gilda hadn’t really done anything to the town. Over a year after she left. Shortly after Ponyville conveniently became host to a newly coronated Princess relatively unversed in ruling. Oh, and – while he was here – he wondered if she wouldn’t mind signing this form granting him a payrise?
She should also have been meeting with Mayor Mare to inform her for the sixteenth time that no, she did not need a statue of herself erected in the town square. She did not need a plaque, or a palace, or a monthly tribute. No, she was not interested in taking over the Mayoral duties or overriding her except when she was wrong. Yes, the Mayor was wrong fairly often. No, she did not have any tips for wooing Applejack and even if she did she was not going to help ponies seduce her friends.
There were a dozen other places that she should have been on ‘vital Princess business’, but Twilight Sparkle was coming to learn that more often than not – at least for her – ‘vital business’ involved ponies sucking up to her and trying to buy her authority with presents and nicities. And although, logically, she understood that there would always be ponies – or griffons – doing exactly that and that she would have to get used to them, she also understood that, right now, she really didn’t care.
So instead she was sitting behind the desk of Golden Oak’s library, pretending to pore over the latest Daring Do book – Daring Do and the Perilous Perils of the Perilous Pink Paradox – while instead staring intently at the door, waiting for the bell to ring. And ring it would – Rainbow Dash never, ever failed to visit the library as soon as she found out that a new Daring Do had been released, and Twilight Sparkle never failed to send her a polite note informing her it was there so that she could be the first to read it. Some might have called letting Rainbow check out the books before they were properly shelved an abuse of power, and maybe they were right – but if it meant she could make one of her best friend’s happy without hurting anypony else, maybe that was okay.
As if on cue, the bell rang and the door swung open. And as Dash sauntered into the library with an excited grin, Twilight Sparkle felt the weight on her shoulders become just a little lighter.