//------------------------------// // Chapter Five // Story: In Which Rainbow Dash Learns to Really Read // by Normal //------------------------------// “Hey Twi, what’s a dwarfish?” Rainbow Dash said the word slowly, before pausing in the middle as if it were two words. Dwar Fish. What the hay. It's that truly elusive species, ya know. Twilight Sparkle looked up, an expression of true confuzzlement donned upon her stunted muzzle. And that children, is why you must always be careful when you keep your nose, equine or otherwise, in a book day in and day out. You'll end up with a nose, or something that resembles that particle body part, being three point four inches shorter than normal. “A what?” If her nose could have shrunken up anymore with that sentence inquiry, she would have soon found herself in possession of an innie instead of an outie. And really, who needs two? Reptiles, that’s who. Luckily for our dear, dear friend Twilight Sparkle, the magical unicorn prodigy, if her name seems lacking in thoughts of redundancy to you, this was physically impossible for even the most pastel of ponies. Rainbow Dash, satisfied with her entrance to this story of Twilight’s tree, lowered herself to the floor with a few soft down strokes of her wings. “A dwar fish.” The distinction between words was even more unmistakable now. In fact, the way our chromatic flyer pronounced it resembled nothing of the word she meant. A bright mane does not indicate a bright mare. “Rainbow Dash, I have to say, quite frankly, that I don’t know what you are talking about. At all,” She paused, “And being a younger sibling I am afraid I have an extremely low tolerance to puppy dog eyes…Ok, I have several books on fish.” “Twilight…When you say several, you mean like one or two, right?" “I suppose you can say that,” A stream of books started to dance off the shelves, “One or two hundred at least.” Facehoof, facedesk and facebook all happened seemingly simultaneously as Rainbow Dash expressed her frustration in the most blatant fashion known to ponydom. Just a short while later and already, “Argh,” Rainbow Dash screamed in the dramatic way that is more suited for Rarity, “I’m just not finding any answers in these books.” “That’s because you have only just opened your first book. The information you’re looking for is not likely to appear on the title page-" “It was under E!” Came the explosion that rocked Twilight's eardrums as she was interrupted. “Pinkie!” Rainbow Dash’s cry was elated. “Pinkie Pie…” Twilight’s, well, not so much, "Normally, when ponies come and go, they use the door." "Well, that's just silly! C'mon Twilight, think outside the cupcake." Twilight resisted the urge to grab the book Pinkie had appeared out of, "The phrase is outside the box." "Hmm," Pinkie scratched behind her ear, knocking out five different cupcakes, a lemon icee, and one red marble that had been temporarily borrowed from one small colt half way across Equestria, "When were we in a box?" "Pinkie..." "Yessssss Twilight?" She drawled it out, batting her eyes in both an attempt at seduction and to get out some rather irritating particles of sugar. One might say that her gaze was as sweet as sugar, if they wanted to be whacked over the head with a rolled up Foal Free Press for such a foully made pun. "Oh, never mind. What do you need?" "Oh, nothing. I just came to pick up Enjoyable Stocking Stuffers. Its hard to find E.S.S. these days, so veeeeery hard. Most places' E.S.S. is so worn out for from so many people using it, like my own. I like a nice fresh E.S.S. Mmmmmm." Pinkie couldn't hold back a moan as she fondled something in front of her that only she could see. "Oh, yeah. Lyra, I know you're jealous of this E.S.S. Damn jealous." Rainbow Dash couldn't hold the dam that tried to hold all her laughter. "Damn, Pinks, you should try my E.S.S. sometime." If Pinkie looked any more serious at that remark, it would have been quite possibly destroyed forty-two of the known universes. "Dashie...You don't have an E.S.S." "ENOUGH!" Twilight's mind was a much more delicate creature than most and found itself breaking under pressure that would make even a newborn foal laugh. As such, such nonsense was sheer pain for her. There was no other option but to shut them the tartarus up. And, let me just say, shutting Pinkie Pie, the pinkth wonder of Equestria, was a feat in itself. "Twilight, why so serious?" Breathe in,one. Breathe out, one. Breathe in, two... "Because...You...you... We'll never find the answer..." Tears started to well up in her eyes and she consider regressing in age to escape all of this. And breathe out, number two. What number was she aiming for again? "Three," Pinkie Pie suggested helpfully, peaking over the author's shoulder, "You don't actually feel like writing this, do you?" She whispered. That's...right, Twilight thought as she gasped in desperately for the third time, giving Rainbow Dash the time and opportunity to answer for her, the crassly true remark about her E.S.S. forgotten "Twi's helping figure out a word." "Oh, oh! What word? Is it that one," Pinkie's bouncing intensified as she started pulling books off the shelves into a leaning tower of knowledge, "Or that one? Oh! This one, this one! I bet it is this one!" She held up the latest Daring Do book, one that featured a herd of rather shaggy ponies surrounding the heroine that everyone loves. It was almost laughable how they only reached the knee caps of the adventurer, despite their flaming look of ferocity upon their muzzles, muzzles that properly fit their petite sizes. "Dawwwww, those Dwarfish ponies are so cute."