Owlowiscious had been acting strangely for days. The day after the crystal castle sprouted the owl refused to go inside, shivering and puffing up whenever his claws touched the floor. Whenever they finally convinced him to at least come in on a new wooden perch he never stayed long. He wouldn't leave Twilight's new bedroom unless tempted with food or a book to be put away, and a few times Spike would wake up and the only thing left of the owl would be scattered feathers by the window. It wasn't like he didn't go off every night before that to do his night-owl thing when his work was done -- Spike didn't know, maybe he was hunting or reading or something -- but when he started leaving for longer and longer... plus he always just sat on Twilight's desk staring at books or a wall with those really big sad eyes...
Spike had to do something. And seeing as how Owlowiscious kept on disappearing, he'd have to be tricky about it.
Spike fidgeted underneath Twilight's bed and groaned as his scales scraped against the bottom of it. Owlowiscious had finally come back in a few minutes ago, but had yet to turn around from his stare out the window. Spike ground his teeth while he glanced from the little bird to the books he'd scattered in a loose pile a few inches from the bed. Usually with Owlowiscious it was a sixth sense; as soon as he flew in he would turn the corner, scout the floors, pick up all the books in a fell swoop and have them organized before Spike could even get his butt down the stairs. Now he didn't even try, and with Twilight gone for the last few days dealing with legal affairs he didn't even really have someone to make him do it either -- the one time Spike asked him to put a comic book away for him all Owlowiscious wanted to do was play twenty questions!
"Come on, Owlowiscious," Spike hissed, before he smacked his claws over his mouth.
It did the trick, at least. Letting out a tiny chirp, Owlowiscious twisted his head all the way around (okay, that was still pretty freaky) and looked about until he saw the books on the floor. The owl fluffed his wings and lifted them, and as soon as he started flapping Spike tensed. It was showtime.
Owlowiscious hovered forward to the pile of books slowly, and then landed on the floor beside them with a gentle click of his feet. Eyes and head twisting and roaming on the pile to search for any notes Twilight might have left behind, he studied their covers and nosed at the one book Spike had left open and upside down. While he did this Spike crept forward on his belly, doing his best to be quiet. As soon as he had wriggled his way out of under the bed and made sure Owlowiscious was looking the other way, he took a deep breath. And then he jumped.
Owlowiscious screeched and kicked as soon as Spike got a hold of him, thrashing around and pecking at Spike's claws. He lifted his wings, batted at Spike's face and filled his mouth and nose with feathers before he could say anything. Then he was flapping for all his worth. Spike struggled to keep a hold of his body, to keep his wings down, but then he had shifted and was holding on to his talons--
"Uh-- w-wait, Owlowiscious, I!--" he coughed as the owl slapped him with a wing. "I'm just trying to--grah--"
Spike yelped as Owlowiscious lifted him into the air. The bird careened left and right while he tried to balance and sent Spike scrambling to hold on. As soon as he got decent ways up he pulled upwards, struggling to reach the height of the window, but Spike yanked at his feet and sent him back down again.
"Jeez, will you stop?! I'm just tryin' to help!" Spike yelled, trying to find purchase on Owlowiscious's feathers without hurting him with his claws. The bird just kept going, leaning down to peck at Spike's slipping fingers. And then he was trashing forward, to where Twilight's desk stood. Spike screamed as he was tossed into a pile of paperwork (Twilight was going to kill him!) and his tail dragged across the desk to make a thick scratch down its top. He bit his tongue and hissed when Owlowiscious lost his balance and the two of them crashed into the hard crystal wall. Spike felt his breath go out of him and saw stars dance in his eyes, and somewhere Owlowiscious let out a strangled cheep.
Spike felt his claws slip, his claws go limp, but just before Owlowiscious could recover and pull himself away Spike shook his head and tossed himself over the bird. He held his wings down, tucked Owlowiscious tight to his chest, and twisted to land on his back as the both of them thudded to the ground in a crash of bodies, paper, and splattering ink wells.
"Owlowiscious... urgh, stupid... bird," Spike muttered, holding him close while he tried to struggle away. "I just want to talk to you because I'm worried. You've been acting weird -- well, weirder -- for like a whole week now! Will you just let me do this?"
Owlowiscious wriggled for a while longer, eyes narrowed as he chirped angrily and snapped his beak. He slowly sagging into Spike's claws. His bristled feathers laid flat, and after a while his angry snaps became a warbling, sad "hooo".
Spike put him down and watched him to make sure he wouldn't try to fly away, and then he sat down in front of him.
They stared at each other in silence, and after it stretched on for a few seconds too long Owlowiscious started to shift his talons against the crystal.
Spike watched as he turned his eyes to the shattered shards of one of the ink wells they toppled, and the stain forming on the crystal. He hopped over to it, used a wing to scoop the glass into a shining pile, and lifted the quill beside the mess in his beak. He flapped his wings, flew to the desk and set it on the corner. Grabbed piece by piece of loose parchment paper and reorganized them into a neat stack in the left upper corner. Straightened out the couple books that were shifted on the tabletop.
He turned to the books Spike had laid out as a trap last. After putting the majority of them away to the right upper corner of Twilight's desk, he turned to the last one on the floor. He kept it there, settling instead to stroke at it with a single talon. He stared holes into the front of it, his eyes big and sad, and he hummed out a mournful, quiet croon.
Spike stood up to stand by him, and realized that the book Owlowiscious was staring at -- Daring Do and the Search for the Magical MacGuffin -- was one of the only ones he and Twilight had managed to salvage from the Golden Oaks Library.
"It must be hard for you with the library gone, huh?"
"Hoo."
"You. And me and Twilight... and everypony else, now that I think about it."
“Hoo."
"You, like I just said, you-- ugh, never mind. But... is that why you've been doing this? Just sitting around and doing nothing?"
Owlowiscious nodded, another low hoot, and then he pivoted his head around to stare away from Spike. Spike thought he saw his lift one of his talons and swipe at his face -- he didn't know if owl's even could cry, but man, if they could...
Spike padded up to Owlowiscious, laying a claw gently to his side and plopping down on his bottom. He stroked at the owl's ruffled primaries, and the tuft of the smaller fluffy feathers that had started to raise near his chest, then put his claw back in his lap. He looked down to the floor, and thought.
"I get it, you know. I mean, of course it's sad. We had a lot of good times there, and most of our belongings were burned up, and your little nest thing got all crushed. Not to mention my favorite Power Ponies comic, and my old comfy bed, and..."
Spike sighed down in his claws; he remembered first moving to the library with Twilight, where Pinkie threw that awesome party with the spicy cupcakes. He remembered reading there with Twilight, and up in his little hiding loft, where the summer heat would seep in through the loose board and he could nap on his days off. He thought of all the ponies that came through, checking books out and talking with him while he straightened out the shelves. He thought of everything, and for a second he felt his eyes burn.
But then he thought about his talk with Twilight and the others, how Twilight hugged him and they all shared memories.
Owlowiscous chirped beside him, his body tinier than Spike had ever seen, and the drake realized... Owlowiscious never got that. He was gone at the time, and Twilight had been gone more and more frequently, out of the castle or in the throne room. With him flying off too, Twilight probably never really saw him at all.
Oh. And Spike had just sort of... made it all worse, hadn't he? Oops.
"Oh, uh, I mean-- oh, we don't need that stuff, Owlowiscious! After all, we have each other, right? And we have all of this new stuff!" Spike shifted on the crystal floor, and shivered as his fleshy tail met it. "Even if it is kind of... cold."
Spike smiled at Owlowiscious, grimaced as he realized that Owlowiscious only shrank down further and was now shaking.
Spike sighed and frowned, and he thought about everything about the Golden Oaks Library again. He felt his eyes sting and clamped them tight, then opened them and pulled Owlowiscious close to his side. They turned their heads toward each other at the same time, staring at each other with sagging, tired eyes.
"But it doesn't make it hurt less, does it?"
Olwowiscious shook his head and used his wings to drag the Daring Do book he had been staring at to sit flush at his front. A little claw and his beak cracked it open and flipped the pages. He gently turned over each one, scrolling over the words and pictures. A few of the corners were singed or covered in ash, and he brushed at those pages with a wing before moving on and whistling at every turn. After he got to the back cover, both he and Spike saw a smudge of dirt and ash smeared on the checkout card. After clearing it away, the reading on top make them both sigh: "Personal Property of Twilight Sparkle. Please Take Special Care and Remember to Return on Time!"
"Ah, I remember when she put that there," Spike laughed, nudging at the book with his foot. "As if some kid was actually gonna read it. I'm surprised she even got that back when she did."
Spike stared off, remembering the one time she almost didn't. Five days went by past the due date, and Ruby Pinch still hadn't returned it or even sent word to why it was so late. Twilight was practically fuming at first, then she crumbled when she thought of all the reasons a young filly wouldn't have brought something like that back: torn pages, spilled juice, the thing being lost altogether.
"Hoo," Owlowiscious sounded, and by the little chatter afterwards, and the way he lifted a wing to his beak, he was probably thinking of how Twilight had actually fallen asleep with the novel in her hooves when Ruby Pinch gave it to her weeks later -- and how she had twitched when she saw pencil marks on page twenty-two and dog-ear folded page corners everywhere.
Spike looked up from the book to the stacks of them on Twilight's desk, and nudged Owlowiscious with a shoulder.
"I guess I was right about something: we don't all of that stuff to be happy, Owlowiscious." The owl in question looked up at him and cocked his head, chirped at him. "I mean, it stinks that our stuff is gone now, but we can get more of most of it. And yeah, I know, you just miss that stuff like the books and the nest because you have good memories with all of it, but... you still have the memories like that one, don't you? Sure they'll fade a little bit, but you'll remember the important happy stuff forever. Plus we’ve got this old thing."
Spike stood up, picking the book up from in front of Owlowiscious to set it on Twilight's desk on the right-hand stack. Then he turned around to throw out his arms to gesture to the room around him, to the entirety of the castle spread out around him.
"And have you seen this place? I know you haven't really flown around it much, but this place is huge and pretty... and a little bit delicious..." Spike shook his head, and turned back to the little owl now resting by his clawed feet and chirping up at him. "Seriously, there's more books here than you've ever seen before, and I'm sure there's at least one or two copies of most of the books we had back in the old library. Plus there's this giant ballroom where everypony can come to have awesome parties, and there are hidey-holes everywhere! You could build yourself nests all over the place and fill them with all kinds of weird owl stuff."
Spike looked down, to where Owlowiscious stared up at him with round, squinted eyes now starting to widen and clear. His beak started to stretch just a tiny bit upward. He picked Owlowiscious up with one hand and placed the bird on his shoulder, where he pressed and rubbed his feathered body to Spike's neck.
"We all just freaked out when the library was gone because our the stuff we liked went with it and we missed it. Do we have to, though? We have this big new place and everybody's okay, so why don't we just, you know, make new memories and make this castle just as special as the library was? It won't be all the same or anything... but it's not supposed to be. If you're ever feeling sad about the old things we lost... we have our memories, and now we have a cool place to make new ones too. Did that, uh, make any sense at all? Did it... help?"
At his ear Spike could hear a tiny hoot, something tiny but there, and even though Owlowiscious still shivered he hopped up and down a little bit. Spike could feel as he nodded and rumbled a few noises against him. As he shifted could feel his beak stretch upwards in the closest thing to a smile a bird could come to. Spike lifted one scaly arm, placing his hand to Owlowiscious's side. As the bird shook and snuggled warmly into his neck, he gave a gentle squeeze and pulled them even closer to one another in a quick hug. Then he pushed the owl away from himself, so he could sit in his hands and Spike could look him in the eyes -- wide eyes, shimmering and clear and cut into crescent moons with his smile. Spike gave a small smile back, then laughed nervously, looked to the floor then back to Owlowiscious.
"Oh and... sorry for not, uh, talking to you about this before. I know both of us have done some stuff we regret to each other before... --oh, alright, it was mostly me... and yeah, I know I should have listened to you about that gem cake... and all those other things... and I wasn't that nice to you at first and tried to get Twilight to throw you out-- but we're friends now, right? And it must have been rough going all those days without hearing this sort of stuff, so..." He smiled. "Well, with PeeWee out of the house, you're officially my best bird buddy, so from now on you can come hoot and chirp at me if you're feeling down, alright?"
Owlowiscious let out a chipper “hoo”, before snuggling further into Spike’s scales and turning his head to Twilight’s bedroom door.
The two of them had a lot of Castle to explore, and a lot of new memories to make.