//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2: Nocturn 
// Story: Time on Their Hooves 
// by Pineta 
//------------------------------//

The Abbess walked through the doorway and along the main hall, past the long wooden tables aligned parallel to the length of the room, where the novices were all sat on low benches chattering away waiting for the meal to begin, and up to the high table, set across the hall on a raised platform beneath the portrait of Canonical Hours. Here the rest of the Fellows were waiting for her arrival, seated on plush cushions. The room was lit by candles, positioned in circular chandeliers hanging by chains from the high ceiling, and in forked candelabra set on the tables, among the many plates, trays and dishes of good food.

In the middle of the high table was a large ornate hourglass, used to ensure that dinner ran to proper time and that the ponies of the Order did not dawdle to excess over their food. On taking her place, the Abbess levitated this in the air, turning it over, before replacing it. Then she picked up a wooden gavel and signalled the start of dinner by hammering it firmly against a sounding block, creating a loud sharp noise which instantly silenced the chattering ponies. Except one pegasus filly with a pink bow in her mane, who let out a terrified squeak and leapt high in the air, knocking a chandelier to one side.

The Dean exchanged a look with the Abbess, shaking her red mane and tutting despairingly. “That Peony Poset. Frightened by a loud noise… Really… She’s lucky she’s under our care—she wouldn't last long in the outside world.”

The Steward, who was levitating dishes of hot steaming vegetables onto the table, paused a moment to defend the young filly. “We’re lucky to have her,” he said. “She has a lovely singing voice, and we have a shortage of good sopranos in the choir.” He was an ivory unicorn with an immaculately groomed mahogany mane. Whereas the rest of the Fellows were content to dress in their simple hooded gowns, he chose to wear an elegant frock coat, cravat and gleaming white shirts with extra lace.

They all piled food onto their plates: roast vegetable pastries, steamed butternut squash, fresh beans, potatoes, pickles. The ponies of the Order enjoyed their food, and the abbey took pride in providing the best for its members. Most were content to eat straight off their plates, although some of the unicorns chose to show off their skill at manipulating the latest instrument technology—knives, forks and spoons. The Abbess surveyed the hall checking that every table was well provided, nodding at the Cellarer, sitting at the end of the table, to acknowledge that everything was in order. She watched the disturbed chandelier swing back and forth across the central table, casting moving shadows onto the surface, then turned her attention to the high table conversation.

“This weather is getting very tiresome,” complained the Practical Scholar, a yellow earth pony with a curly blue mane. “The workshops are freezing. Well… It's okay for the glass blowers next to their furnaces, but the rest of us are trying to piece together precision timepieces with hooves numb from the cold.” He rubbed his forelegs together to make the point. His pale yellow coat was covered with specks of oil acquired from an afternoon of tinkering with gearwheels. “Can't we bring spring forwards a bit?”

He did not mean this seriously. Everypony knew that the calendar was set to a fixed scheduled drawn up by Starswirl the Bearded before the foundation of the Order [1]. This pattern had been followed for over seven centuries, and nopony considered changing it now.


[1] His original vision called for a year of three hundred and sixty days, divided into twelve months of thirty days. This was certified by the unicorns, as in line with the cosmic order; by the pegasi, as optimum for managing weather patterns; and by the Earth ponies, as ensuring a good length of growing season to produce the food they needed. There had been a few modifications, following a process of public consultation, which added an extra five days of public holidays. A late request by the Show Jumpers League for an extra day to hold their annual gala was permitted one year in four (so-called leap years).

“The winter always seems to last. While summer comes and goes so fast,” mused the Librarian, Azalay, an old zebra mare who had joined the abbey after many years travelling the world [2]. 


[2] Her full name was Azalay Asfar as Time-Buck-To, identifying the distant foreign priory where she had joined the Order many years ago.

“That is just how it seems to ponies,” said the Abbess. “Time always seems to pass quicker during warm summer days, and slower during the cold winter nights. That's why we have a mechanical timepiece to regulate the seasons.”

“But,” said the Practical Scholar, “the Minute is running slightly slower than it used to.”

“It can't,” said the Abbess, helping herself to a portion of daisy and buttercup salad.

“It is,” insisted the scholar, “I timed it with an hourglass that was filled with sand some time ago to mark a one hour period. During that period, the Minute counted only fifty-eight minutes – it's going slow.”

“It can't,” repeated the Abbess, levitating a fork above her plate to select potatoes and parsnips.

“But—”

“You misunderstand me. The Minute cannot run slow by definition. It always runs at one minute per minute because it is what defines the minute. It is the absolute time standard, so it can't run slow. Instead your hourglass was running fast. Pass the sprouts.”

The Practical Scholar could not dispute her logic. He passed the sprouts.

“That is not to say,” continued the Abbess while spooning the vegetables onto her plate, “that it is necessarily a perfect timepiece. Let us suppose—as a thought experiment—that there exists a perfect clock, which could measure the length of a time period to perfect precision. It is quite conceivable that our imperfect Minute would run fast or slow relative to such a clock. However the Minute is the best timepiece we have—the hourglasses are fine for measuring short periods, but we must have a clock which does not require a pony to turn it every hour. Maybe one day we will build a better chronometer. Until that point we must trust the Minute.”

“I read of a world, very far away,” said the Librarian. 
“With no alicorns to make night or day. 
Around the sun, the world is fixed in orbit. 
So regular you can set the clock by it.”

“That would make things easy,” said the Abbess, in between mouthfuls of food. “But I can’t see it working. The sun and moon are so easily disturbed by stray magic, we need the princesses to control them.”

“Sounds like an old mares' tale to me,” said the Dean. “Like those stories about magic clocks controlled by fairy ponies, and pumpkins which turn into rocks at midnight.”

“There's a way to build a better clock using atomic theory,” said the Practical Scholar. The Dean groaned. Atomic theory, a radical new intellectual idea that all the matter in the world was made of tiny indivisible particles, was the Practical Scholar's pet subject. She did not share his enthusiasm.

“No really,” he said. “If we can just produce a coherent cloud of cold atoms, all spinning in unison, then we could build a super accurate clock!”

“And how will you build it?” asked the Dean.

“I'm working on it.”

After they had finished the main course, the Steward brought in sticky sweet pastries made with soft cheese, honey and raisins, and a vessel of cream which they each poured over their portions.

“Is everything prepared for the feast tomorrow?” the Abbess asked the Cellarer. “Do we have enough cider in stock?”

“Eeyup,” she said. “More than enough. The Practical Scholar sent the last order to the cider press, written using metric units. But they assumed it was in hogsheads. So we now have nine hundred and twenty barrels to drink up.”

The Dean sighed. “Why do you have to count everything in different measures to everypony else?” she asked the Practical Scholar.

“Why does everypony else still use such silly archaic units? The metric system is much more logical. It’s all based on multiples of ten. I’ve also been working out a system for metric time which will have ten minutes to the hour, and ten hours to the day, and…”

“Anypony would think you had ten legs.”

“Can I remind you all,” said the Abbess, “that it is very important that everything goes smoothly tomorrow. It will be the five hundredth anniversary of the defeat of chaos and the restoration of order. Everything needs to be precise and on time or it will give a bad impression to the novices and the princesses. Dinner will start at seven o’clock precisely. We have plenty of time to get through all five courses before eleven o’clock. That was the precise hour that Discord was vanquished, so I will propose a toast to the princesses at that point. Don’t drink too much cider or fall asleep.”

The Fellows nodded their heads, but were not paying much attention. The Practical Scholar stared vacantly into the air, musing on further innovative time keeping instruments.

“If we could excite a mechanical resonance in a rock crystal,” he mused, “it would oscillate at a precise frequency and make an accurate clock. But how do we start a mechanical vibration?”

“Try bashing your head against it,” suggested the Dean.

“This cream's a bit thick,” said the Steward, lifting the jug in the air and watching the viscous liquid slowly drain onto his pudding.

“It's the cold weather,” explained the Cellarer, “let me warm it up.” She took the jug and left the table.

The Abbess stopped listening to the Fellows’ random conversations and stared over their heads at the novices, engaged in their own conversations, then up at the ceiling, where the chandelier was still swinging back and forth following the earlier disturbance. She noted the level of sand in the upper half of the table hourglass was almost finished—less than a minute to go. She placed one fore hoof against the other, feeling her pulse, and counted the passage of time steadily, as was her habit. One, two, three... The chandelier swung to the left... Four, five, six... Back to the right... Seven, eight, nine... Left again. She watched the final grain of sand fall, then stood up, pausing briefly to let the chandelier swing fully to the right, so that when she banged the gavel sharply down to signal the end of dinner, it was clear of Peony Poset’s vertical trajectory.

The sound abruptly cut off the Fellows' and novices' conversations and all ponies stood in silence. Now that the formal meal was completed, the ponies were free to do as they wished until it was time for bed. Some would return to the workshops or the library to work on their projects. The novices would mostly stay chatting and playing games in the hall. The Abbess and the Dean left the table and walked out of the hall with stern faces as the entire order watched them.

The two friends kept up this demeanour as they walked up the tower staircase, but once they reached the Abbess's chamber, they both started giggling. They closed the door and sat down on a pile of cushions. The Abbess withdrew a bottle of port from her habit—



“What’s port?” said Apple Bloom.

“It's a place where you park boats,” said Scootaloo.

“It's the left-hoof side of a boat, opposite to starboard,” said Sweetie Belle.

“Port is a type of sweet wine,” said Twilight. “It comes from Portugallop. Now please let the Doctor continue the story.”



The Abbess levitated two glasses off a shelf, filling them with the sweet wine.

“You’re getting better at making them jump out their skin with that gavel,” said the Dean.

“They get more jumpy every year,” said the Abbess.

“We need to toughen them up. Maybe we should get them to run up to the summit every morning.”

“How are they doing with their studies?”

“Progressing at their usual pace,” replied the Dean. “How are things with the princesses?”

The Abbess outlined her earlier observations and the brief conversation between Celestia and Luna. The Dean listened with interest.

“So Luna blames Celestia for the cold weather? Is there any truth in that?”

“I don't see how,” said the Abbess, “but I don't have any better explanation.”

“Maybe if we can find an explanation—assuming it isn't the sun—and explain it to Luna, she might soften up.”

The Abbess nodded.

“It would be good to get them together again.”

The two Fellows continued chatting late into the evening. They were old friends, and it was their custom to spend this time of the day talking privately about the affairs of the abbey. Eventually the Dean stood up.

“Well, I better go and check the novices are all in bed and not reading under the covers. Goodnight.” The two mares exchanged a short hug, then the Dean left closing the door behind her.

The Abbess walked over to the window and stared out at the stars. The moon had now risen high into the sky, and its light shone onto the plaza illuminating the flagstones, the water channel and the clock face. She watched the Minute mechanism move up and down for several cycles, listening to the soft clang of the metal arm, then she walked back to the centre of the room, blew out the candles, threw off her gown, and climbed into bed. Before she closed her eyes, she turned over an hourglass on her bedside table—actually an eight-hour-glass—which would time her sleeping period. Then she fell asleep with the ease which comes to ponies who live their lives to a strict regular schedule.



The Abbess's room was on the top floor, separated from the roof by a layer of wooden floor boards, and a very small attic space, too low to allow an adult pony to stand without hitting his or her head on the roof-trusses. There was, however, just enough space for a small foal, and while the Abbess was enjoying her evening chat with the Dean, this space was occupied by a little pegasus filly named Rappel (or Rap to her friends—and to us, as we shall assume that role), lying on the floor with her ear to a crack between the boards, listening to the private conversation.

As soon as Rap heard the Dean leave the room, she got to her hooves, and quickly, but quietly, ran along the narrow attic passage. Halfway across the building there was a sky-light, which she pushed open, then she jumped out onto the roof, skidding down the tiles into a valley between two gables. She then set off racing across the slates in the moonlight in order to reach the other side of the building.

Rap was a light blue pony with a perpetually messy purple mane. Her coat was covered in small scratches and grazes. Her small wings had not yet allowed her to achieve sustained flight, a fact which irritated her greatly—although she would never admit as much—but this handicap had failed to prevent her from exploring every rooftop and high location within the abbey. Possessing a natural gift, cultivated by much practice, to fit her hooves around the tiniest ledge in any rock or brickwork, and flapping her small wings to maintain balance with a highly individual application of pegasus magic, she could scale any cliff face or building wall. She also knew some neat tricks with a length of rope. Nonetheless, scarcely a week went by without suffering at least one minor fall.



“A pegasus filly who couldn't fly—like you Scootaloo,” said Apple Bloom.

“Yeah,” said Scootaloo. “Hey—do you think I can climb that wall—let me try!”

Without waiting for a reply, she galloped up to the clock tower and set off up the stone wall. Buzzing her wings, and sustained by her momentum, she propelled herself up hoof-by-hoof past the lowest windows, then onwards and upwards, and had nearly reached the next window when she slipped off a support. Falling back she flapped her wings wildly and made a grab for a windowsill with another hoof. But to no avail. Just before hitting the ground, she was caught in a pink magical aura. Twilight rotated the floating filly the right way up, put her down on her hooves and gave her a stern look.

“Let the Doctor continue the story.”



She reached the far end of the roof and grabbed the end of a rope, left tied around a chimney stack, in her teeth, then swung herself off the gable. She hit the wall of the tower with all four hooves, and abseiled quickly down three floors. On reaching her destination floor, she pushed against a window, then on finding it shut, hammered loudly.

A light-green unicorn filly opened the window and Rap dropped into the room. It was a small bedroom, containing two bunks and other basic furniture, lit by a single candle.

“Why did you shut the window?” she asked, turning back outside, and pulling the rope into the room, letting it coil up on the floor.

“It's cold,” replied the other filly. She had a pretty, curly grey mane and a light green coat. She wore thick rimmed glasses. Next to her stood an earth pony filly of the same age with a brown coat and orange mane. 

Rap kicked the rope behind a cupboard, closed the window, then scrambled up onto a bunk and pulled a blanket over her head.

“Quick—get into bed,” she said to her roommates.

Unfortunately before they could do this, the door to the room opened, and in walked the Dean.

“Patina, Ginger Root,” said the Dean, sternly addressing the two fillies. “What are you doing out of bed? The bell for lights-out was twenty minutes ago.

Patina and Ginger Root stood in the middle of the room looking slightly lost.

“We… err…” began Patina.

“We thought we heard a noise,” improvised Ginger Root.

The Dean gave them a long hard stare until they both looked away. Eventually she just said, “Well, don't let me find you out of bed out of hours again.”

Patina and Ginger Root were both novices who had entered the abbey the previous summer. Patina came from a unicorn family in Canterlot and had earned her cutie mark—a splendid hourglass—after revising her school’s exam timetable to show that it was possible to take courses in unicorn history, levitation, chamber music, and Equestrian literature without any clashes. Her teacher had suggested that the Order of the Time Turners might be a better place to continue her studies. Ginger Root came from the small coastal village of Manehattan, which was rapidly growing due to the profitable trade in spices from the South Seas. After gaining her cutie mark—a set of scales—she had worked in her merchant family’s shop for a year, before leaving home, seeking adventure, and had ended up at the abbey. The two fillies shared a room with Rap and had become best friends. 

Once the Dean had left the room. Patina immediately walked over to the bunk and prodded the blanket covering Rap. “You've been eavesdropping on her and the Abbess again!” she accused.

“Yes,” admitted Rap proudly. “Best way to find out what's going on around here. Quizzing the Steward after he's drunk too much claret sometimes works, but the Abbess doesn't tell him everything.”

“It's not right to listen in on other ponies conversations,” said Patina.

“Don't you want to know what I heard?”

Patina was not sure whether she wanted to know or not.

“It's about the princesses!” said Rap with a tempting smile.

“Tell us,” said Ginger Root.

Rap grinned. “Celestia wants to make peace with her sister. But Luna blames her for the freezing weather. The Abbess thinks if she can show that Celestia is not at fault, then they will be friends again and everything will be clockwork.”

Rap had lived in the abbey for her entire life. After her parents—both members of the Order—had died when she was very young, she had been adopted by the Steward and Cellarer and taken into the community. Having grown up within (or as often as not, climbing up) the abbey walls, she knew far more about the buildings and ponies of the Order than any of the novices: the secret passages, the rooms which nopony ever visited, the best route to scale the cliff, how to get into the wine and food cellars, and up on the roofs. She also knew which adult ponies were most prone to gossip, and had a better understanding of the internal politics of the institution than many of the senior members.

Despite this, she was officially not yet a novice. The regulations stated that membership of the Order was only open to ponies with a special talent for keeping time[3]. None of the Order doubted that Rap would one day be initiated as a novice. But it was a formality that it could not happen until she had demonstrated her special talent and got her cutie mark. At this point in the story, Rap was still a blank flank. This was a point of considerable frustration to her, and she was forever scheming how best to demonstrate her skill in keeping time, get a cutie mark, and enter the Order as a novice.


[3] This was interpreted fairly liberally. Keeping time was the collective duty of the order and required many ponies with diverse talents. So a pony with a special talent for making sugar pastries, would be admitted, provided she could make them in good time.




“She was a Cutie Mark Crusader! That’s so cool! Why didn’t you say so before?” said Scootaloo.

“But she can’t have been a crusader,” said Apple Bloom. “They didn’t have crusaders in the old days. We’ve only just invented crusading.”

“But she would have been a crusader if they’d had crusaders then.”

Twilight glared at them.

“Will you please stop interrupting and let the Doctor finish the story.”



“So,” said Rap, “I just need to find out the reason why it's so cold, then I can save us all from the tyranny of two sulking princesses, get my cutie mark, and prove to the Abbess that I should be a member of the Order.” She paused while drawing up a mental checklist of the tasks ahead. “But first, let's get some snacks.”

She jumped out of bed and made for the door. Patina and Ginger Root stood where they were.

“We’ll get in deeper trouble it the Dean finds us out of bed,” Patina said.

“Relax,” replied Rap. “She will be in bed herself now. And if we do meet her, what can she do?”

“She’ll give us one of her cold hard stares.”

Ginger Root shivered. The Dean’s stares could make a pony feel very uncomfortable. Rap, however, never stayed still long enough to encounter one.

“Come on Pat,” she pleaded.

“But we shouldn’t be roaming around the abbey at night. It’s against the rules.”

“They’re not strict rules.”

“That’s not the point. You’re supposed to respect the rules, as if you don’t, you’re not respecting proper order, and if you don’t respect that then you shouldn’t be here. You’ll never be admitted into the Order if you keep breaking all the rules.”

Rap turned to face her reluctant friends with another smile. “They had those delicious cannulicchi pastries at dinner, with ricotta and honey and berries. And I bet there's still some marzipan fruits and that liqueur soaked sponge cake with the candied peel.”

“Let’s go,” said Ginger Root, giving the deciding vote.

In addition to knowing about the confidential politics of the Order, Rap also had a considerable knowledge of the contents of the Fellow's pantry. As befitted their senior status within the abbey hierarchy, the food served to the Fellows was of significantly higher quality than that dished up to the novices. The Cellarer always prepared more desserts and sweets than were consumed at dinner, and left the remainder in the pantry for any Fellow to partake of as and when they felt hungry. Rap and her friends helped the senior members finish the leftovers during midnight visits to the pantry, having long ago noted the shelf where the Steward hid the key.

The three fillies crept out of their room, along the corridor, and down the spiral stone staircase into the hall. After rummaging among a pile of napkins and cutlery in an ancient carved wooden cupboard, they found the key. Rap pushed this into the lock of the pantry door while standing on Ginger's back as Patina levitated a candle above the keyhole. Turning the key with her mouth, she opened the door and they entered the food store. Rap immediately walked along the shelves surveying the contents.

“Pastries will be in that tin. What's new? Oh good, they've brought in some more dried dates and figs... And what's this? Hey—it's got almonds in it—try some. Another carafe of port—they do like that stuff—and what's this green one? I've got to try this.”

She pulled the stopper out of a tall glass bottle full of a bright green liquid. It contained a highly praised liqueur produced by a satellite abbey in the Unicorn Range to a secret recipe containing over a hundred herbs and plants. The bottle was a rare gift from the abbot of that Order. Rap took a swig, then promptly sprayed the liqueur into Ginger's face—using the natural pony magic to turn a small mouthful into a voluminous spray to full comic effect.

“Urgh! That tastes awful.”

There were however plenty of the promised ricotta, honey and fruit filled pastries. The three friends sat down on the cold stone floor to enjoy the clandestine meal.

“What do you think is causing the cold weather?” ask Ginger.

“Well,” said Rap, “if it was something to do with sun, Celestia would know. If it concerned the moon, Luna would know. If it was about the clouds and stuff, the pegasi weather patrol would know. In any case they would tell the Abbess...”

“In which case you would know,” said Patina.

“Exactly,” said Rap. “So it must be something completely different. I was thinking there must be some sort of mysterious ice monster sucking all the heat out of the sun. So if we can figure out what it is, we could set a trap for it, and catch it, and save Equestria from eternal winter, and I can get my cutie mark.”

“It's not eternal winter,” said Patina. “It's just rather cold.”

“And I'm not sure there are any ice monsters,” said Ginger.

“That's because they're so mysterious,” said Rap. “Maybe it's an ice dragon which sleeps in a cave and only sticks its head out when nopony is looking to suck in some warmth. But it's been growing bigger and bigger for the last hundred years so it's eating more and more heat.”

“I'm not sure ice dragons exist,” said Patina.

“They must do. Just as there are fire-dragons which breathe fire, making the world hotter, there must be ice-dragons which breathe ice and make it colder. That's logic.”

“But how can we catch it?” said Ginger.

Rap thought about this while finishing off another pastry.

“We need to know more about them. Where they live and so on.” She paused, licking the soft cheese and honey off her hooves. “There must be a book about them in the library—lets go and find it.”

The three friends left the pantry (being careful to tidy up and lock the door behind them—they didn't want any fuss) and walked across the dining hall in the darkness, with the glow of moonlight entering through the high windows casting bars of light onto the walls. The library was located on the second floor of an octagonal tower at the other end of the building. 

At this time of night they did not expect to meet any other ponies. They tip-hooved carefully past the Steward’s room—a quick glance through his door showed he was busy ironing his dress shirts next to the fire. They walked through a small passageway joining the two buildings and up a spiral stone staircase. They kept silent and moved slowly until they were into the library tower.

On pushing through the heavy curtain which marked the entrance to the library, Rap ran forwards. Then suddenly froze, her hooves rooted to the floor, staring straight ahead. Patina and Ginger Root ran into her and they were all thrown to the floor.

“Ow, why d'you stop like that!” said Patina. In reply, Rap just pointed a hoof forwards. It was nearly pitch black. Their large pony eyes were good at picking up even the faintest illumination, but they could not resolve anything in any detail. On the other side of the room, at a large wooden table, a single candle was lit, shining onto piles of books and casting shadows. Behind this they could make out a hooded figure. The flickering candle just revealed two sinister glowing yellow eyes beneath a black hood.

“A-a ghost?” whispered Patina. She clutched a hoof around Rap, who was also visibly shaking.

Ginger Root, however, ignored them both and trotted forwards confidently.

“It's just the Librarian,” she said.

As she approached the desk, the figure pushed back her hood to reveal the black and white head of the zebra scholar.

“Hi Azalay,”

The zebra's old eyes were not as sharp as the young fillies, but on hearing her name, she peered down to make out who had addressed her.

“Why is that young Ginger Root there?
I can see your orange hair,
I hope I did not give you a fright,
What brings you to the library this night?”

“We kinda got an idea we want to check out. Are you working late too?”

She looked at the scrolls covering the table, covered with writing in an alphabet unknown to her, interspersed by exotic symbols.

“It's true I work late into the night,
Studying these scrolls by candle light,
For I am old, but you instead,
Should by now be asleep in bed.”

Ginger Root ignored this comment and pointed a hoof at the paper scrolls.

“Is that zebra writing?”

The Librarian smiled, always happy to discuss her work.

“No my friend, this script is not a tongue of mine,
Zebra is but a dialect of Equine,
These are Griffon words, and the coloured inks,
Are the hieroglyphs of ancient Sphinx.”

Rap and Patina, overcoming their initial fear moved close up to the table and stared at the scrolls. The Librarian was in the process of copying text from several scrolls, with the different languages in different colours. None of it made any sense to the little fillies. Some lines looks like a train of wiggling worms, other seemed more pictures than letters, some shaped like birds and animals.

“What's Sphinx?” asked Patina.

“The hieracosphinx was an ancient beast,
Of which we scholars understand the least,
A lions body, a falcon's head,
They left inscriptions, which cannot be read,
While on my travels in lands to the south,
On an island in a great river mouth,
I saw many statues, with strange inscriptions,
And on my scrolls I copied these depictions.
Tonight I am still quite perplexed,
But one day I shall read these texts,
And thus their story I will trace,
And learn the riddles of this race.”



“She did! She did! She was the first pony—or zebra—to read Sphinx. I did a course on ancient Sphinx at Canterlot. She deciphered the hieroglyphs by comparing them to similar old Griffon texts. It was an amazing piece of scholarship and laid the ground for a generation of future research. Of course there’s still a lot we still don’t understand to this day—”

Apple Bloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle all glared at Twilight, who stopped talking. She turned to the Doctor with a guilty face.

“Please Doctor, continue the story.”



“But enough from me, it's now your turn,
Tell me what you wish to learn.”

“We want to know how to catch an ice dragon,” said Rap.

“That is not an animal I know,
Dragons are creatures of fire, not snow.”

“The dragons we know of, yes,” said Rap. “But there must be other ice-breathing dragons for the sake of balance. But we think they're getting a bit out of hoof and that's why it's so cold. So we need to stop them. So we need a book to tell us where they live.”

The Librarian thought through this statement before replying kindly,

“If you ask for my advice,
I'd say that dragons can't breathe ice,
But there could be something that I miss,
My knowledge is not complete in this,
There may be a book on such a beast,
Or a general guide, at the least.”

Azalay lit an oil lamp and holding this in her mouth, she led the three fillies through the maze of shelves that made up the library. Stopping at the shelves where the books on dragons were stored.

“Here you will find the books you seek,
On magical creatures, the most mystique,
Now, I bid you goodnight, for I must return,
I hope you find the knowledge you yearn.”

The zebra placed the lamp on the floor and walked away. The three fillies lost no time in pulling books off the shelves and scanning pages for something of interest.

“Earth dragons, green dragons, oriental dragons, sea dragons, snapdragons,” said Patina. “'Ice dragons' aren't in the index.”

“There must be something somewhere,” said Rap, flipping through the pages of a large richly illustrated tome, with her hooves, pausing now and then to inspect a picture.

“I dunno…” said Ginger.

After an initial scan through a pile of books didn't reveal anything, they settled down to a more systematic literature search. Rap climbed up to the top shelf and pulled off any titles which looked vaguely interesting. Patina levitated these into neat piles and built a small book fort to demarcate a patch of floor space which they claimed for their investigation. Ginger Root found a few cushions and dragged these over. They then settled down to serious study.

Twenty minutes later, when the Librarian returned to check their progress, the three friends were all fast asleep. She extinguished the lamp and gently draped a blanket across the fillies before leaving them to return to her quarters smiling softly. It was good to see young foals passionate about scholarship.



A little more than six hours later, the Abbess awoke. By this time, the moon had moved around to the other side of the hall, but as dawn approached, there was a faint twilight brightness. Nonetheless she had to light up her horn to read her hourglass, and saw, to her surprise, that it was half an hour earlier than usual. The Abbess was a very regular sleeper and this early awakening puzzled her, but with no explanation in sight, she shook her head, climbed out of bed and set about her morning routine of brushing her mane and washing her face in an earthenware basin. Then, with time to spare, she stood at her desk and stared up at the old volumes of the journals of the abbey compiled by her predecessors, which where neatly ordered on the shelf above her, together Starswirl the Bearded’s Inquiry into the Nature of Time, Space and Facial Hair, the thirteen volumes of Commander Hurricane’s Comentarii de Bello Equestri, and other history books.

The records in the abbey went back many centuries, to the time before Celestia and Luna's reign, and before the foundation of Equestria. Some of the earliest texts were unreliable legends, and nopony was entirely sure how old they were. Or for that matter, how old was the world?

Ancient books described how the world was created by the gods in seven days. While the Abbess knew better than to treat these as accurate accounts, she saw no reason to question this particular detail. A day was defined as the time taken for the sun to move around the earth. And as the movement of the sun was controlled by super-magical beings, there was no reason why the creators should not have kept the sun above the horizon while they finished their work. No doubt the first seven days were much longer than contemporary reckoning, allowing all the time necessary for the deities to carve the mountains, fill the oceans, grow the first lifeforms, which would then die and turn into fossilised hydrocarbons, to be spun into polymers and turned into plastic pony dolls by the giants and brought to life by magic[4].


[4] Or so one story said. An old earth pony legend told another, in which when the world was created, all animals lived in harmony in a beautiful garden. But ponies were expelled from this paradise for stealing apples. The Practical Scholar preferred an alternative explanation that all hooved creatures were descended from lobe-finned fish. The Dean had pointed out numerous flaws with his theory.

The Abbess wondered if it would ever be possible to learn the age of the earth by modern reckoning. During one of his monologues about atomic theory, the Practical Scholar had talked about how some species of atoms could decay into others, with lifetimes ranging from a tiny fraction of a minute, to many years. Maybe you could count the number of different types of atom in a rock and from the relative amounts, determine when the rock was first formed. She dismissed the idea as ridiculous—how could any pony count the number of atoms in anything?

In a sudden revelation, which sent a shiver down her spine, chilling her bone-marrow, the Abbess realised why she had woken up early. She had not heard the sound of the Minute for—she did not have the mental terminology to accurately complete that thought. Forcing herself to keep calm, she walked to the window and looked down into the plaza. The clock-face was showing 6:47. Sunrise was scheduled for 7:24. It had evidently been 6:47 at least since she woke up, as the water in the chute leading to the minute was frozen solid, and the clock mechanism lay quite stationary.