The rain persisted for the rest of the day. I didn’t see Rainbow, and Pinkie commented that maybe she was helping with the weather. Storms didn’t usually last so long with weatherponies to manage them.
Sunday evening, I made a dash through the downpour back to the library. Pinkie had paid me for my foalsitting the Cake twins in pastries, although I did manage to get some less sweet fare when I reminded her that diabetes is much more common in people than it is in ponies.
The blood sugar crash I was riding by the end of the day tried to lull me to sleep while a rising need for nicotine kept pulling at me to stay awake. The rain and the dragon sleeping downstairs, however, dissuaded me from going out to find something to smoke.
I still hadn’t spoken to Spike. When I’d left that morning he’d been sleeping, and when I came back in the evening he was sleeping but in a different position, so I figured that he had probably moved at some point. Since the library opened for business the next morning, I figured I could get to know him then. Applejack had apparently beaten her hangover was not still lying around. The breakfast items Pinkie had left for her were partially eaten.
I settled down onto the small bed, curling my legs to fit better. It took a while, but I managed to drift off to sleep.
Rainbow was sleeping on the other bed when I woke up in the morning. She was draped over the sheets even more carelessly than usual. Her feathers were bedraggled and judging by the damp bedspread she might have gotten soaked in the rain.
Speaking of the weather, the morning sky was grey but slowly clearing. The rain had stopped, leaving mud puddles everywhere. I guess if you can control the weather then there isn’t much need for modern storm drains. I wondered why the previous day's rain had been so hard. Maybe that was why Rainbow was out all night.
I let her sleep and grabbed a muffin from the basket. Even day-old they were still amazing. I walked down the stairs while chewing and collected my things for a shower. After stepping into the bathroom I began to undress. There was a splash from behind the shower curtain, which was closed.
Freezing for a moment in uncertainty, I threw a towel around my body and jerked back the curtain. Spike was up to his eyeballs in bubbles. We both started in surprise, staring at each other.
“Sorry, I was in the middle of a bubble bath and I didn’t know you were going to come in,” Spike blustered, opening the drain plug and quickly getting out of the bath. He was still covered in foam and excused himself from the room without pausing to wipe it off.
Well, that was awkward but I still needed a shower. After letting the bathtub drain out I stepped in and turned the water on. After freshening up and redressing, I left the bathroom to see if things were going to be as weird between Spike and I as I thought.
Surprisingly, they weren't. He mentioned that he’d have to curtail his three-hour bubble baths, but didn’t bring up the subject further. Rainbow had told me that Spike was the equivalent of a preteen, and that combined with the obvious species difference made things a little less awkward than if I’d wandered into a guy’s bathroom while not fully clothed.
Spike had cleaned himself up and offered to make breakfast. I was in the mood for something more substantial than muffins and helped him crack eggs and mix ingredients into omelets. He sprinkled a small handful of gems into his, a load worth quite a bit of money back on Earth.
While the precious stone market had been down ever since Equestrian sources flooded the market, I thought they were still too valuable to just, well, eat. Furthermore, I wondered what Spike’s teeth had to be made of in order to support that kind of diet, not to mention his digestive system.
We were just finishing up breakfast when I heard a faint ringing noise. I realized it was my phone, which I had left near the bed. I jogged upstairs to get it.
Rainbow was stirring and muttering under her breath by the time I answered the phone. Since she appeared to be awake now, I didn’t bother keeping my voice quiet. “Hello?”
“Hi Denise,” said Twilight. “Are you at the library?”
“Yes I am.”
“That’s great. Do you think you could find a book for me? Spike can help you.”
“Just a minute.” I went downstairs and told Spike who was calling.
“Oh, cool,” he replied. “Can I talk to her?”
I handed the phone over. Spike took it in his claws. I didn’t know exactly where his ears were, but he seemed to have no trouble using the device. “Hey Twilight! Huh? Oh yeah, I think I know where that book is.”
He gestured for me to follow. We took a path deep into the library’s stacks of shelves. I saw that we were getting into the magic section, which gave me a little jolt of excitement. Not that I could do anything with those texts, but it might be interesting to check out.
Spike found a large volume that looked quite old. It was clumsy for him to handle along with the phone, so he handed it back to me.
I talked to Twilight while Spike looked through the book for a particular page. “So what’s going on with you?”
“Well, it’s been an interesting trip so far,” she replied. “I have to thank you again for your help, Denise. If everything goes right, I should be back by the end of the week and I can tell you all about it.”
Spike held up the book, one claw tapping at a particular paragraph. The language was not English, and while I might be able to sound out the words, there was no way I was going to understand them. It looked like it might be Latin, or whatever the pony equivalent was.
“Has Spike found it yet?” asked Twilight. “Could you read it, please? I’ll put my phone on speaker.”
I didn’t know why Twilight wanted me to do that, but Spike held the book up expectantly so I started to read out loud.
It was difficult to get my tongue around some of the words, but I did my best. About halfway through I thought I heard some background noise or some kind of feedback from Twilight’s end. By the time I was finished, there was definitely something going on. I wasn’t really sure what it might be. It sounded like gusts of wind, static, and all sorts of other cacophony.
Twilight raised her voice to be heard over it. “Okay, that should do it.”
I heard something that might have passed for a sound effect from Jurassic Park. “What was that?”
“Perfectly normal,” Twilight assured me. “Listen, I’ll be traveling a lot tomorrow but I’ll try to call you late in the day.”
“Okay,” I said, still unsure what she was up to or whether I really wanted to know. Twilight seemed unconcerned, though, so I decided that I would just focus on trying to enjoy my vacation.
“So what was in that book?” I asked Spike after ending the call.
He shrugged. “I just barely got the locations of all the books memorized. Remembering the contents will take a while longer.”
Rainbow came downstairs a few minutes later. She had a muffin and seemed to be fairly awake but still tired.
“What were you up to yesterday?” I asked.
“Well, I went to see the weather team and they were happy to see me. I think some of them may have slacked off a little to come to the party because we had a cumulonimbus buildup like I’ve never seen before. Since I was there, I stayed all night to help get it under control. Otherwise we might have had storm damage instead of just drenching rain.” Rainbow yawned.
“Yeah, the rain gave me an excuse to stay in bed most of yesterday,” Spike chuckled.
Rainbow glanced out the window. “The last of the clouds should be going away soon. It might take a while to dry up all the mud, though. Oh, I forgot to mention; I have to go to Cloudsdale tomorrow morning for an awards ceremony. Yours truly wrestled a tornado last night and kept it out of town.”
She smirked at my surprised gasp. I knew Rainbow was good at weather control but I had never experienced her ability firsthand. Her expression clouded suddenly. “I guess I’ll have to leave you alone again. It’s not like I can bring you to Cloudsdale.”
I waved a hand. “It’s okay. I don’t like heights.”
“So what are we going to do this morning?” Spike asked. “Since it’s muddy outside.”
Rainbow investigated a nearby cupboard. “Twilight has some games stashed in here. Aha! My favorite; Weather!”
She pulled the box out and opened it. The pieces were different, but it looked similar to Battleship. Rainbow began to set the game up, grinning at Spike and I. “I’ll let you two play together, since I’m so good at this.”
One of the professors I had for Statistics class had used the game of Battleship as an example in a problem, so I knew that there was a sciency way to go about playing it. Based on the “challenge accepted” look that Spike wore, he seemed to be willing to play hard. The two of us sat down across the table from Rainbow and began the game.
It was a stiff competition. We burned an hour trading moves and staying roughly even on score. Eventually, however, Spike and I won through combined effort.
He held up his claws and I gave him a high five. That almost felt strange in itself, as I had gotten used to hoof bumps while living with Rainbow. Said pegasus grumbled a little, but soon bounced back with the offer of a rematch.
We played again and Rainbow won the second time. By the time the game was finished, it was getting towards lunch. Since I was saving plenty of money through Twilight’s gracious offer of letting me use the library, I had extra cash to take Spike and Rainbow out to eat.
Spike flipped the library’s sign to closed and we went out. The mud outside had begun to dry. Rainbow and Spike decided on a restaurant. I had resigned myself to salad, but found that the eatery offered a range of vegetarian dishes made for the human palate, like bean burgers and veggie pizza.
There were a group of girls clustered at a table when we came in. I assumed that they too were on spring break. We had just finished ordering when they got up and headed towards the exit.
I smiled and nodded to them in sort of a “hello, fellow humans,” gesture. All their attention seemed to be focused on Spike, however.
“Oh, look!”
“He’s so cute!”
“What’s your name, little guy?”
Spike grinned and held up a claw. ““Ladies, please; one at a time. I’m only one dragon.”
There were a few more ooh’s and ah’s over him before the group departed. Spike sighed and slumped in his chair. “Tourists. I used to like the attention, but this might be getting out of control.”
I guess I had never realized how lucky I was to deflect attention by being a relatively normal human. Or at least I looked like one from the outside. As we waited on our food, I became aware of the nicotine jitters again.
My mind was distracted from that again when the food was served. It tasted great and Rainbow and Spike seemed to agree. After finishing up, we left the restaurant. Rainbow glanced skywards, looking at the clearing clouds, and suddenly froze. “Ohmygosh, it’s Spitfire! What’s she doing in Ponyville? Maybe she’s here because she heard about what happened last night. Should I go talk to her? Do I look okay for meeting here? Is my mane straight?”
It was an outpouring of words more likely to come from Pinkie. I was slightly confused, looking at the sun-colored pegasus who was passing overhead. Maybe she was some kind of celebrity?
Rainbow sprang into the air but appeared to reconsider. “I...maybe I shouldn’t go talk to Spitfire directly. How can I introduce myself without sounding like a crazy fan? That’s exactly the last thing I need. I, um, I’ll catch up with you later.”
Spike and I shrugged simultaneously almost as if we had practiced it. We continued walking back to the library as Rainbow flew away.
“So what were you planning to do for the rest of the day?” Spike asked as he flipped the sign to open.
“I’ll figure it out.” I wandered the library a bit, perusing the books. It wasn’t long before I found myself in the magic section. I looked around, seeing so much that wasn’t available back home. A smile crept onto my face. Yeah, I could spend a while here.