//------------------------------// // Old Habits [General] // Story: Half-Hour Horses // by HoofAndQuill //------------------------------// (The prompt: Staying up past your bedtime.) Spike smiled and walked alongside Twilight Sparkle as she trotted up the stairs. This was his favorite time of day. A lot of ponies seemed to think that being a librarian, or a librarian's assistant, was easy. Maybe if he was a unicorn with magic to pull and return books, or maybe if he was, odd as it sounds, a Princess, he could manage to go to bed less than completely exhausted. But the fact was that he was a dragon, and a child at that. Climbing up and down ladders and stacks of books all day, running errands for Twilight, and cooking meals so that she didn't end up burning down the library was tiring work. "Okay, Spike. That's everything on the list!" Twilight smiled, looking positively chipper as she climbed up into her bed and settled down under the covers. Spike headed to his own bed, the soft pile of blankets in the little basket looking more inviting than ever. He crawled up over the side of the basket, not even bothering to stand up straight like he was normally supposed to, and dove under the blanket, pulling it tightly around him and snuggling down in the warm cotton. It wasn't very manly, or very dragonly, but he'd long since given up on being overly much of either. He was dimly aware of Twilight talking. She was talking to him, sort of, though really she was just thinking out loud. "So, Spike, tomorrow is the seventeenth, which means... let's see..." Spike had just about managed to tune the voice out, when a sudden shriek made him jump completely out of his bed. "Aaah! Spike, tomorrow's the seventeenth! I have a report on Hearth's Warming to deliver to Celestia! One I haven't even started yet!" He glanced back toward his bed, from his position facedown on the floor. Nope, no chance now. Still, he'd try. He struggled to his feet, eyelids drooping. "Come on, Twilight, that report was scheduled before you became a Princess. You don't have to do that kind of thing anymore." "Don't have to do that kind of thing anymore? Of course I still have to do it! Princess Celestia ORDERED me to do it! Being a princess now doesn't mean I can just disobey her, Spike! Come on, we've got so much to do!" Spike pinched the bridge of his nose. He knew that tone. He'd been living with Twilight since he was hatched, and that tone was as clear an indication as anything ever could be that he'd be getting nowhere by arguing. Twilight galloped downstairs in a panic, and Spike plodded along behind her, rubbing at his eyes. The library was already in chaos, and Spike took a deep breath, and then ran down the staircase to catch Twilight before she actually ended up breaking something. -- Twilight frowned, tossing book after book off of a shelf onto the floor. "Spike! I need that book, uh... the one about Clover the Clever and Smart Cookie..." "Assistants, Adjutants, and Associated Administrative Attachments! I know where that is!" Spike sped up a ladder, kicking against a shelf to slide the mount sideways, so that he could reach the given tome. He held onto the book as Twilight impatiently took it in her magic, dragging it and the attached dragon across the room. -- Spike shuffled through the desk, knocking the supplies all out of order despite knowing he'd have to fix them later. "Uh... no quills, Twilight. You know, if you weren't writing so fast, this wouldn't-" "I don't have time for a lecture, Spike! Quills, quills... the store will be closed, it's the middle of the night! Spike, grab a feather from my wing!" He winced, looking at the feathers held out for him. "This is a really bad idea, Twilight." She shook her feathers quickly. "Come on, time is wasting! How am I supposed to write a report with no quil-OW! Spike!" -- "Spike, could you make some tea? It's... late, and I haven't..." "Uh, Twilight? It's right in front of you. You really need to go to..." Spike yawned heavily, and then shook his head. "You really need to go to bed, Princess Celestia won't mind if the report's a little late." "Mind? She won't mind? Of course she'll mind! Agh, Spike, it spilled all over the parchment! Get some towels, quick!" -- The morning sun crested over the hills, and the warm yellow light shined bright into the Golden Oak Library. Princess Twilight Sparkle smiled as she checked over her writing, nodding and cross-checking only occasionally. No spelling errors, no grammatical issues, and all the facts checked out. It was solid work, of course it was. She pulled a small binding ribbon out of the complete mess of a desk, and wrapped it around the parchment, sealing it with a firm pressing of her new royal signet. Twilight took a deep breath, and then let it out in a relieved, satisfied sigh. Done. "Spike! Can you send this to Princess Celestia? We've got a big day ahead of us!" No response. She turned around, looking around the room for a bit of purple tail or green spines sticking out of a pile of books. Twilight couldn't help but smile a little when she finally found him, laying on one of the shelves, six feet off of the floor. He looked like he'd fallen asleep while... oh, right, she'd asked him to pull something for her, and she'd found it on her desk. She must have forgotten to tell him. Twilight paused in her thinking, and looked around the library. It was, simply put, a complete disaster. Books were strewn all over the floor, in no particular order. Three of her longer feathers lay broken on a pile of marked up parchment, the split tips still leaking ink. Everything was in disarray and chaos. Spike was going to have his work cut out for him, putting all this back in place. Had she even thanked him, all night? She'd been barking orders and demanding help, but she couldn't remember if she had even bothered to actually tell him thank you. Yet, here he was, having worked until he literally passed out. Twilight lifted Spike gently in a field of magic, and walked slowly and quietly up the stairs, doing her best not to wake him. She levitated him over to his bed, and wrapped the blankets loosely around him. She glanced at the windows to make sure no pegasi were hanging just outside, and then leaned in and kissed Spike's cheek. "Thank you, Number One Assistant. You're my best friend, and I hope you know that, Spike." She said it in a whisper, not that there was much danger of waking a sleeping baby dragon this exhausted. Twilight lay the bound report down by his bed for later sending, and trotted back downstairs. She kept her work quiet as she straightened up all the mess she'd caused. Spike, for his part, just snuggled up under the blankets in his basket, and smiled.