//------------------------------//
// Chapter XLIX 
// Story: Lessons in quirks 
// by Mike84 
//------------------------------//

	"Urgh... what are we waiting for, Pinkie? Haven't we been patient enough by now?"
Rainbow Dash was walking in circles in front of the small two-story house in which Inkhorn and Featherscribe were living. She had flown up and even tried to peek through the closed shutters of some upper floor windows against some protests from Pinkie Pie. Pinkie on the other hoof appeared almost unnervingly relaxed to Rainbow Dash. She seemed perfectly happy counting clouds, declaring what kind of figures she saw in them or doing the same with stones on the ground and trying to engross Rainbow Dash in a talk about why she thought Frankie was carrying a stone in his money bag. 
"Why are you in such a hurry, Dashie?" Pinkie Pie asked with an air of actual interest in this question that Rainbow Dash would have liked to see from her about the questions she herself was aching to ask Inkhorn. 
"Why? We've been just hanging around here for like...", Rainbow Dash was making a sweeping movement with one of her wings. 
"You don't want to hang around with me?" Pinkie Pie asked, sulking.
"Wha...? No, no, no, Pinkie! Nothing against hanging around with you, but you are missing the point! We should be doing something to help Twilight and Frank!" Rainbow Dash said exasperatedly.
"But we are, silly", Pinkie Pie said. "We are doing exactly what Twilight told us to do to help."
Rainbow Dash forced herself not to facehoof with frustration. She knew perfectly well that when she got into a discussion with Pinkie about the sense of what they were doing or not doing, she would never hear the end of it. 
But suddenly Rainbow Dash's face brightened. "Yes, we are doing exactly what Twilight told us. And Twilight told us to wake up Inkhorn if necessary. I think it is very necessary!"
"You do?" asked Pinkie Pie, again with this unnerving kind of actual interest in this question.
"Oh come on, Pinkie! It is almost sundown already! How much more patient are we to be?" Rainbow Dash had meant for the 'almost sundown' to be a deliberate exaggeration to bring her point across, but as she looked up at the sky, she found the statement to be closer to the truth than she had expected it to be. The sun was already lowering towards the horizon and the sky began to show the yellow, orange and reddish lights of dawn. She raised an eyebrow involuntarily. Her body clock told her that it was unusually early for that. Had they indeed been waiting longer than she thought they had?
"Just wait sixteen more seconds", Pinkie Pie said.
"What? Why?" Rainbow Dash asked confused. 
"Because by then Featherscribe will be here to open the door for us", Pinkie Pie explained matter of factly. 
Rainbow Dash cast a look over her shoulder and indeed saw Featherscribe coming down the alley at a fast pace, his wings spread in an almost aggressive manner. 
"Is our home under siege now?" he asked with a frown as he approached. 
"Yeah, nice to see you too, Feathers", Rainbow Dash answered cooly. "Twilight told you she wanted to ask Inky some more questions."
Featherscribe snorted as he went to the door and unlocked it. He clearly didn't like Rainbow Dash calling Inkhorn 'Inky'. 
"Why are you here anyway?" Pinkie Pie asked cheerfully. "Aren't you guarding Frankie?"
"Mayor Mare is there now and gave me leave so I can have a quick meal before I got to get back and spend a sleepless night guarding him, same as Inkhorn did last night."
"Look now, Feathers", Rainbow Dash said, mustering all patience she had left after the long waiting time. "All we want is to ask Inkhorn a few questions and we'll be gone again. Not so much more than what you all did the morning after the party. What's your problem?" 
"Alright already", Featherscribe said as he entered the house. 
Rainbow Dash quickly followed, earning herself a stern frown from Featherscribe which she ignored. Pinkie Pie followed in Rainbow Dash's wake. The living room of Featherscribe's and Inkhorn's home looked somewhat similar to the offices in the town hall, though with some more comfortable furniture, a chimney that had obviously not been used in a while, and some pictures on the walls. There was a shelf full of folders, carefully marked by months and years and apparently including Featherscribe's archive of newspapers. An escritoire stood in one corner of the room on which papers were stacking high, suggesting that Inkhorn and Featherscribe didn't work in the town hall's offices only. 
"Wait here!" Featherscribe said gruffly as he carelessly put his saddle-bag on top of a paper stack on the escritoire. "I'll get Inkhorn."
"Thank you!" Pinkie said cheerfully as Featherscribe made for the stairs leading up to the second floor. 
"Gee, Pinkie", Rainbow Dash whispered when Featherscribe was out of sight and out of earshot. "Why are you so happy? Doesn't he bother you at all?"
"Who?" Pinkie asked.
"Featherscribe of course!" Rainbow Dash almost snapped. "He's been acting like a jerk all day!"
"I don't believe Pen and Paper did anything wrong", Pinkie said, smiling. 
Rainbow Dash gasped, ready to give a disgruntled response when suddenly she spotted a little motion from the corner of her keen eyes. 
The saddle-bag, which Featherscribe had stowed onto the escritoire, was shifting slightly and was clearly about to fall. Within the blink of an eye Rainbow Dash was there and caught the bag before it could hit the ground. She also caught several sheets of paper that had been lying under the bag and been dragged along by it and some which had slipped out of the bag itself and now mixed with the others. She cast a bewildered look at the uppermost sheet that was covered with a rather untidy scrawl. In this moment however she heard hoofsteps from the upper floor, quickly put the papers and Featherscribe's saddle-bag back onto the escritoire and returned to Pinkie Pie. 
Inkhorn didn't look good and Rainbow Dash had to admit she could somewhat understand Featherscribe's protectiveness if Inkhorn had appeared as worn out before as she appeared now. 
"Hello Inky", Pinkie Pie chirped. 
"Pinkie", Inkhorn said with a slight nod as she descended the stairs. "Featherscribe told me you had some questions?"
"Hello, Inkhorn", Rainbow Dash said. "Yes, we do..."
Inkhorn stopped at the end of the stairs and looked expectantly. Rainbow Dash felt stupid suddenly. Twilight hadn't been very precise about the questions she would ask Inkhorn. She decided to overplay her insecurity with a straightforward assault: "You told Twilight that Mr. Rich's servant Swallowtail was not in the register of citizens, but when Twilight checked again, he was right there!"
"She checked it again herself?" Inkhorn asked with a tone of mild disapproval, but before either Rainbow Dash or Pinkie Pie could respond, she continued: "Indeed I had checked out only the pages of the more recent arrivals in Ponyville, the last few decades that is, while Mr. Swallowtail was there, but only on the pages of the more long time residents. I wanted to tell the Princess when I spotted him, but she had left already."
"That's all there is to that?" Rainbow Dash asked, sounding almost despaired at the banality of this explanation.
"Yes", Inkhorn said. "Just what else exactly did you think there was to it?"
Rainbow Dash didn't know how to respond to that and was therefore somewhat relieved when Pinkie Pie took over with the next question: 
"Did Frankie really attack you this morning?"
Inkhorn nodded, looking tired and rubbing her eyes with one hoof. 
"He tried to, at least. When I went up with the tray of his breakfast, he suddenly charged towards me. Looked like he wanted to push me down the stairs and then rush past me. But I know some basic repelling spells, so he didn't finish his attack run, but was suspended just a few steps away from me."
"But that doesn't make any sense!" Rainbow Dash said. "Even if he had gotten past you, he wouldn't have gotten far in broad daylight right in the midst of the town where everypony knew about his arrest."
Inkhorn shrugged and nodded. "Quite right. It appeared crazy. Maybe he is somewhat mad."
"He says he didn't attack you!" Rainbow Dash said. 
"Well, he did. It was unmistakable. What does he claim it was?"
"He says that nothing like that happened at all. Nothing that could even be mistaken for an attack."
"Somewhat mad indeed", Inkhorn said. 
"I don't think he is mad!" Pinkie Pie insisted. 
"Then what do you call it?" Inkhorn asked wearily.
Neither Rainbow Dash nor Pinkie Pie could think of any response. 
"Was that everything?" Inkhorn asked. "I'm still really tired and would like to get a little more sleep."
Rainbow Dash was thinking frantically about anything else to ask, but she didn't really know what to ask about in spite of the woefully unsatisfactory amount of new insights this talk had produced so far. She finally nodded reluctantly.
"Well, see you then", Inkhorn said, turned round and shuffled back up the stairs. 
Rainbow Dash was looking at Pinkie Pie who returned her look no less helpless.
"Oh, we just can't get back to Twilight with so little to tell her", Rainbow Dash moaned.
Pinkie Pie cocked her head. "What else would you like to tell her?" she asked. 
Rainbow Dash gave a frustrated shrug. She walked over to the escritoire again and cast a look at the papers lying there. As she did so, there were again steps from above and moments later Featherscribe appeared on the stairs while Rainbow Dash turned away from the escritoire. 
"Are you happy now?" Featherscribe said. 
"I'm always happy", Pinkie Pie chirped. "But really, you should smile some more!"
Featherscribe rolled his eyes. "I got a night shift ahead guarding that friend of yours. Not much to smile about for me at the moment."
He grabbed his saddle-bag, walked to the door, opened it and gave Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie the look of an unspoken, but unmistakable request to leave now. As he stepped outside after them, Pinkie Pie asked: "Didn't you want to eat something?"
"I had a little snack while you were talking to Inkhorn", Featherscribe said as he closed the door and locked it. 
"Are you locking her up now?" Rainbow Dash asked. She had been wondering before when Featherscribe had unlocked the door after he had arrived here. Locking ones door was a rather uncommon practice in sheltered Ponyville. 
Featherscribe snorted. "I'm not locking her up! You can just open the door from the inside. Didn't Princess Twilight recommend us all to be careful?"
"Not so convinced that Frank is the attacker after all then?" Rainbow Dash probed. 
"I am. But better safe than sorry. Not that it was any of your business anyway!" 
With that, Featherscribe walked away in the direction of the town hall.
Rainbow Dash cut a disgruntled face.