Ponyville at night was mostly peaceful and quiet, with the occasional mishap or events that would take place. Such cases would be a rampaging Ursa, a pony committing petty theft, even a mare's alicorn ascension or a 'batty' transformation. Ponies laid in their beds asleep as all the houses' lights were off, leaving only street lamps across the town dimly lighting the town's empty roads. But tonight, the roads weren't as empty as usual.
Nyx was trotting her way throughout the town, making the necessary turns down certain streets to her destination. The filly had a hard time getting herself to sleep that night, and for multiple reasons. One was having a room all to herself now. She did love the fact that she had her own room now, but laying in her new bad, she started feeling lonely without Twilight or Spike, even if they were just a matter of feet away now. It was something that would take some time to adjust to.
Factor number two was a nightmare she had just in her first hour of sleep. In it, she was still Tirek's captive, and had convinced Twilight to not surrender, but there were no two heroes arriving to save her. The villain stole her magic and life essence from her, her entire life as Nyx and Nightmare Moon flashing before her eyes. When the deed was done, her body felt lifeless as she was released from her prison, falling to the ground below. The last thing Nyx could comprehend was her mother wailing her name just a split second before slamming into her grave, and her life gone.
But neither reason drove the filly to start running across night lit Ponyville. When she woke back up, she thought about what if Tails and Cosmo never showed up, and how her decision would reflect on everypony. Twilight, their family, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, they would have been devastated. All the good memories she had with them would end. Those memories made her remember about certain items she kept treasured, most of which held in a hollowed out book at home.
Or, better titled, her former home; the Golden Oak Library.
Nyx made her way through town until she reached the library, or what was left of how it once was. She was only told that Tirek destroyed it, but was not told of what was remnant of it; barely a base of the tree with a tall wall of bark, the property surrounded with grass blackened by soot and burnt spots by embers now burnt out. It was a sad sight to see, the only place Nyx could call home now obliterated into nearly nothing. She kept one thought in mind; was there any chance her treasures somehow survived destruction, or did they burn away like the tree itself?
Too determined to turn away, the filly walked closer to the tree's base. She then saw that she wasn't alone there, as a certain little dragon stood just a couple yards from the wreckage, and looked to be just staring at it. Nyx didn't know any other Ponyvillian of that height, color, or for that matter, species.
"Spike?" Nyx said, stepping up to the dragon. "What are you doing here?"
Spike turned around, confirming his identity to Nyx. He then said "Couldn't sleep. How about you?"
Nyx didn't face him directly as she replied "I had a bad dream and couldn't sleep either. I needed to come here to see what happened, and to find some things." She had a small sniffle, trying not to cry after a good look at the wreckage.
"What did you think you could find?" asked the young dragon. "Judging by what's left of it, I don't think there's anything left." He too was trying to not get upset, but felt the dam holding his emotions slowly breaking. "I thought I'd come here to do the same thing, to find my old bed, and my blanket, and my special stash of jewels. But when I got here...
"I think they're gone, just like home."
The two then started to gently cry, with Nyx starting as her eyes were shut and tears began to stream out of her eyes. Her whimpering at the reality broke through Spike as he started to cry as well. He put his arms around her neck and hugged his head against hers, and they cried together. The pain of their first Ponyville home gone, and with the visual proof in front of them, it hit them hard, all too painful to take in, especially like this.
"Spike!" "Nyx!"
The two overheard Twilight's voice calling out for them as she finally caught up to the two. Judging by her tone, she spoke witg a combination of worry and small anger, a mother's natural reaction when her children do such a thing as go out in the dead of night. As she walked up behind them, she asked "Why did you two go through town in the middle of the night?"
When she reached the two, she could hear the two crying before they turned around, revealing their tearing eyes before her. What anger she had immediately turned to concern at the sight. The moment she stopped trotting, both Spike and Nyx hugged at a side of Twilight and cried against her instead of each other. Unable to see them like that, she opened her wings and wrapped them around the two, lowering her head so she could nuzzle one at each side.
"We're... We're sorry," Nyx said as she cried. "We couldn't sleep, and we just..."
"It's okay, Nyx" Twilight said softly, "it's okay."
The purple mare held herself strong for the two, even though she felt the same pain Spike and Nyx were letting out. She witnessed the library's destruction first hoof, and accepted the reality of it much sooner than the others. It still, however, hurts her heart to know it that true.
The trio sat together, Twilight letting the two cry out all they could. It took a little while for them to calm down enough until their sobbing ended, and wiping the last of their tears from their eyes. She leaned back up and set her wings back on her sides.
"Feeling better?" she asked. The two nodded. "Good. Now why exactly did you two come all the way here?"
"Well, I wanted to come here and see if any of my stuff managed to not get blow up," Spike answered first. "I got here first, but froze on my feet when I saw... well, you know."
"You too, Nyx?"
Nyx nodded and explained about her nightmare, and hoping to find her treasure book amongst the wreckage. Twilight could understand the nightmare part, but she felt part of her heart break when it came to her treasures. She didn't know how to best put to words the most likely result of those treasures, as well as the belongings of Spike's and her own, so she just said it as kind, plain and blunt as truthfully possible.
"Oh Nyx, Spike, I'm not sure about that. Tirek's blast destroyed so much and barely left... well, only what's there now. I doubt that anything that was there would've survived. I'm so sorry."
The two frowned at what she had said, but Nyx tried to protest. "Can we at least try to find something? Please?"
"Nyx, I really don't think..."
"Please, Mom? Just one look to see. Please?"
The little filly begged with the most wide-eyed pleading face she could make. She didn't want to resort to that tactic, but it has worked on more than one occasion, and this was too important to her to let go so easily. Her mother, however, had stood against the pleading gesture and won a good majority of times. But with her mind quite fatigued from the day's events, she didn't have the strength to resist her daughter's plead.
It didn't help that Spike was looking up with sad eyes as well, even though they failed in comparison to Nyx's.
Twilight sighed, smiled and said "Alright, you win. We'll take a look, but we stop after one hour. Do we have a deal?" The two smiled and nodded.
"Thanks, Twilight," Spike said.
"Thank you, Mom," Nyx added.
The purple mare got back on all her hooves and began to motion herself to the library's remnants. Her daughter and loyal assistant walked alongside her into the wreckage, with a small pause at where the front door once stood when the trio mentally prepared themselves.
It took a minute, but they walked into the wreckage and began to look around. Each one took a section, with Twilight helping Spike or Nyx if they needed help moving things they couldn't move themselves. So many things broken, burnt and withered to almost nothing, mostly the remaining covers or pages of destroyed books and tomes. It was mostly those remnants that the three were digging through, covering up only more piles of destruction underneath.
Time felt as if it was going by strangely to the trio. The hour was going by slowly as they used Luna's moon to depict when the hour was passing, courtesy of a little filly's tutoring of astronomy from her mother. Nyx periodically checked where the moon was and made sure to let it known when an hour would have passed. Her checking act it as a counter, roughly every fifteen minutes, a couple times sooner towards the end.
"Five minutes."
Twilight raised her head up from bowing in search, wiping away a tear out of her eye. Spike was close to him, so she cleared her throat a little and said "OK, Spike, let's wrap things up here."
The little dragon was shoveling debris with his claws, trying to find whatever more he could. "Not yet," he said as he dug. "Nyx said five minutes, and I'll spend the next four digging."
Twilight rolled her eyes and said "Alright. I'll wait for you with Nyx." She then walked over towards Nyx, who had stopped searching altogether and was sitting on the ash-coated, blackened floor. Her last notice also was very weak in tone, and judging by that, meaning she had no success in her search. "Nyx, were you able to find anything?"
"No," Nyx replied, looking down at the floor and lightly kicking a few small pieces of debris around her. "You were right. There's nothing left here that survived that blast. I shouldn't have come here and waste the time trying."
"Oh Nyx," Twilight said, "trying was not a waste of time at all. I wanted to try too, but you and Spike were the first ones to go and try. Chances were slim that we would find anything anyway, but we can't say we didn't try."
"But it's not fair," Nyx said, sadness turning into complaining. "It's just not fair."
Her complaining was turning to anger. She began to have one of her temper tantrums that she began having since her return from Nightmare Moon to her filly self. They were frequent at first, particular adjusting to what was then her more limited abilities, but now they were only so often when something really, really annoyed her.
"Tirek was a selfish, greedy, oversized version of Diamond Tiara, and he stole from everypony for no good reason. I may have done things similar to him, most things even worse, but at least I was sorry. But him, he did all the things he did and only regrets being stopped by you and the others. Why do we have to handle things that was all his fault, like losing our home?!"
"Nyx." Twilight spoke to her with a more firm and authorative tone. "Calm down. I know it's not fair but it's just how life is sometimes." She then attempted to be more caring when Nyx's eyes looked up at her, angry and shedding tears. "We just need to stay strong and move forward. You know that as well as anypony else."
"I know that," the filly complained, "but it's still not fair! My friends get put in danger, my family nearly gets enslaved... I'm tired of it! I just want all the bad things to stop and go away! It's just not fair!!!"
She kicked a small piece of rubble in front of her hard to let out some frustration. She then stomped her kicking hoof on the ground and bowed her head, her tantrum seeming to have wind down a little. Before Twilight could say anything more, they heard a clanging sound.
The sound came from the direction where the rubble Nyx kicked landed. The object was sent out the back of the once standing library, beyond the tree base's border. Following that clang was another sound; an owl's hoot. Flying up to the trio's view was Owlowicious, who perched himself on a resting remnant of some of the tree's bark that still stood up.
Spike looked up at the owl and asked "Hey, what are you doing here?"
"Hoo."
"You know who's who, you hooter."
"Hoo."
"You. Not me, or Twilight, or Nyx. You." The little dragon pointed to each of them as he said it.
"Hoo."
Spike deadpanned the hooting bird for a moment before throwing his arms up, growling, and then folded his arms and said "Oh forget it. I'm not going on with this."
The event forced a smile out of both ponies present. Nyx regained her self control, including having her temper cool off, and asked "What are you doing here, Owlowicious? There's nothing here anymore."
The owl replied with another hoot, and flew off where he was perched. The ponies and dragon followed his lead, going outside the library's indoor perimeter and around the back. What they found was their nocturnal pet hovering above something large and covered in black. It was most likely where the rubble Nyx kicked landed on and made the clanging sound, and Owlowicious was pointing that out to them.
It was hard to tell what the object was, even with the light from the moon, and being covered in a layer of black ash didn't help. They quickly approached and inspected, the object having one flat side and the opposite side rounded.
"No... It couldn't be..." Twilight murmured to herself. Wanting to find out, she used her magic to lift it onto its flat side, and then quickly got to the new exposed side. The domed side flipped upward and hung over on one of the sides. What she imagined it was revealed to be true, making her happy beyond belief.
"It is! It's our chest!" She yelled. "I can't believe it!"
"Hoo," hooted Owlowicious in confirmation.
Both Nyx and Spike looked inside the chest with Twilight to see that it was true. It was the chest of trinkets Nyx had for the things she 'acquired' and kept as Nightmare Moon, and Twilight brought it from the castle when Nyx was given her life as a filly back. They walked around it to look inside but their feet caught onto things on the ground, causing them to trip into each other. Landing on the ground, they saw other items that were there that looked to have been pushed into the ground by the chest. What they found put them both in a joyous state as well.
"Hey! It's my blanket!" Spike yelled, and pulled it up off the ground. It was covered in dirt and soot, but he didn't care, especially with what he found wrapped inside. "And look, my gem stash is here too!"
"It's ok! It's ok!" Nyx began to shout in joy. "My treasure book is ok!" Her little hooves quickly dug the book out from the ground and embraced it in her legs. Like her mother and brother, she felt so relieved to have her most important keepsakes still in her possession.
All three took a couple minutes to see how many of their belongings were there. Spike's blanket kept some of his prized gems intact, including a fire ruby he was aging for a special occasion, all while having his dirty blanket wrapped around him. Twilight looked in her chest to find all of her items inside intact as well, including the reference guide to the Elements of Harmony. That item, however, was something she didn't believe she had put in the chest herself, and left her in wonder. After finding that, she found another book-like item inside, something that made her grin ear to ear.
Nyx opened her treasure book, damaged and filthy as it had become, to find all her prized possessions as well. Her glasses and headband, her favorite kazoo, her Cutie Mark Crusaders cape, all of her items that she'd put in there were there. Some were better than others, but they were there and that's all she cared about.
But then her eyes managed to see something still in the sooty dirt. She reached down to grab it to find out what it was, only to become both surprised to discover what it was, and saddened at what have become of it.
"Oh no..."
Nyx used her magic to levitate the item up, and walked the couple steps it took to reach her mother, who was looking in a book. To gain the mare's attention, the filly spoke up in a sad tone.
"Mom..."
Twilight turned away from her book to see Nyx's sad expression, and a magically-floating Smarty Pants. The doll, even with its age of being the alicorn's fillyhood treasure, had definitely seen better days. Covered in soot, missing half of its limbs and a once loose button eye, and showing its loss of stuffing, Smarty Pants was in terrible shape. Nyx's look was her heartbreak from before, but worse.
The doll was a gift after Twilight told Nyx about its use with the Want It, Need It spell, and the filly 'adopted' it as her own by playing with it until she fell asleep one night. Seeing it how it now was broke Twilight's heart, after all the things she did with that toy in her youth. But her broken heart was barely shown as she looked down at her daughter and smiled gently. She reached a wing around the filly's back and held her in a close embrace.
"It's okay, Nyx," she said softly. "We'll get Smarty Pants fixed up."
"Really?" Nyx asked in hopefulness, but then expressed her doubts over the thought. "Why bother? It's just like the library- broken and sad to see. Why fix what someone else who'd come around just to break it again?"
The purple alicorn used her magic to hold the doll herself and kept it held before the two. She then told her daughter "Just because someone will go off and break things doesn't mean everything can't be repaired. If somepony breaks a wing, they can rest to let it recover, or somepony else can put a hole in a roof and build a new one in its place.
"Smarty Pants is no exception, because there's been times when I'd play with her and a button would fall off or her mane too tangled. When I was really little, my mother or your Aunt Cadance would fix her, or I would when I got old enough to do it myself. I know how much fun you've had with her, just like how I did, and no big jerk like Tirek will take that away from you. We'll fix her back to her former self, but you can only still enjoy having Smarty Pants if you want to."
Nyx thought to herself about what her mother had said. Ever since she snuck the doll from that chest, she enjoyed having it to snuggle with at night, and playing pretend games with it during the day. She even brought it along when with her friends, without a care in the world, because she was happy to have it. She didn't want so much of the first place she called home to fade away, including that raggedy old doll.
"Can... Can we fix her tomorrow?" Nyx asked.
Twilight nuzzled the filly's cheek, and then replied "We'll get what we need from Rarity first thing after breakfast. And whenever you and Spike are ready, we'll come back here during the day and check for any other salvageable things. Who knows, maybe your stuff from that old castle can be found and used in your new room, like that big bed."
Nyx showed no hesitance as she replied "OK," and nuzzled Twilight's neck. "Thank you, Mom. I love you."
"I love you too, Nyx," Twilight said in return, resisting the urge to shed tears, with failure.
Spike then stepped up to the two and said "Hey, what about me? Ain't I included in this family stuff too?"
The two ponies had a small laugh, and Twilight extended her other wing out for the baby dragon. "Come here," Twilight told him, and he joined in for another warm family hug. They heard a hoot from Owlowicious as he took off into the night air for a flight, leaving the three with one thing to do.
"Come on, you two. It's very late for all of us as it is. Let's go back to the castle and get some sleep," the purple mare said. She then used her magic to levitate the items she found in the chest back inside, sealing it to take back with her.
"Hey Mom," Nyx said, "what was that book you were looking in anyway?"
Twilight put the chest back down for a moment to open it and pull out the book. She floated in front of the young pony and dragon for them to read the cover-
"Photo Album"
This was an important treasure to Twilight, an importance she grew to learn from her mother. It contained numerous pictures from her life, small slivers of items of great importance to her, and more memories than most could remember.
After promising the two that they could all look through it tomorrow, all three gathered what was theirs and began to walk their way back to their castle from the remains of the Golden Oak Library; from their old home to their new home, where new adventures and memories awaited to be made with each other and their friends and family of Equestria, Mobius, and beyond.
But more importantly, Princess Twilight, Nyx, and Spike found closure in one adventure's end as they walked their way to where life will take them next.