“Aryanne, no, put it down, bad girl,” Dr. Heartstrings ordered her latest appointment.
The white-and-blond, and rather grimly dressed, mare that was the object of her current ire shook her head and clutched the deplorable book tighter to her breast. “Nein, it’s mine.”
“Your parents sent you here for a reason, young missy, and that book is the root of the whole problem,” Lyra said, waving her curtain rod in a vain attempt to dislodge the earth pony’s death grip on the ceiling fan. “Now hand it over before I turn that fan up to overdrive.”
“Nein!”
“As impressive as your human linguistic skills are, you are not going to leave this office with that book.”
Aryanne stuck out her tongue and blew a raspberry at her. “Tvilight Sparkle let me check zees book out.”
“Eight weeks ago,” Lyra pointed out sharply, poking the belligerent mare in the ribs, eliciting a squeal of laughter. She had already attempted to tickle her down, but the silly mare had a will of iron. “It’s so overdue you’d think it was Celestia’s work ethic.”
It got quiet all of a sudden and both mares just started at each other, the mint one turning quite red in the face.
“Wow,” Aryanne said flatly, eyebrows tabling. “That was just uncalled for.”
Although grateful that that the mare had dropped the phony, if not well-done, accent, Lyra was at her wits end. She tossed the curtain rod aside and trotted across the room to the control switch for her fan. Sure enough, there was an overdrive setting.
“The record for holding on is forty-six seconds,” she exclaimed as she recalled various other times she had had to use it. “I’ll give you about seven.”
With a high-pitched shriek, Aryanne managed to exceed Lyra’s prediction by about a good five seconds. She landed in a heap upon the couch, head spinning and stomach churning dangerously. But she managed to hug the book as firmly as ever. She watched groggily as the good doctor approached her and spoke in a low tone.
“Young mare, hand over the book.”
“N-no… nein,” she answered, throwing a hoof over her mouth to halt her stomach’s escape attempt.
Lyra reached out with a hoof and placed it upon the mare’s shoulder. “Please, it’s destroying you, Aryanne.”
“Nvr,” she managed to say around her hoof. But she knew it was inevitable, she released the book and threw her other hoof over her mouth, rushing towards the wastebasket to make a deposit.
Lyra sighed as she gripped the book in magic and held it up. “Aryanne, do you even know what this book is about?”
“Abrot augh gimble mauck,” was the response poor mare. With a cough and a couple deep breaths, she managed to speak legibly again. “About a great man.”
Lyra shook the “German-English Guide to Mein Kompf” in the sick mare’s face, groaning in agitation. “Hitler was one of the worst human beings to ever live.”
“N-nein, he made Germany great.”
“While at the same time tried to destroy the rest of the world.”
“All they had to do was listen to him.”
“He tried to kill the ‘racially impure’.”
“Propagandized assassination,” Aryanne snapped trying to stand up in defense of the man. But, nature hadn’t fully taken its course, and she found herself leaning back over the wastebasket again.
“Did you even read the book?” Lyra demanded.
“I… have…. memorized it,” Aryanne managed to say before heaving again.
Lyra paused a moment. “Okay… that’s actually pretty impressive… in a dark, horrible sort of way. Back to the point, how can you defend this monster?”
“He wasn’t… ooaaugh… a monster,” Aryanne protested weakly. “It’s the people who took his metaphors and… hhyyioocgh… arguments too seriously that are the… bleaugh… monsters.”
Lyra’s mouth snapped shut with a click. “Metaphors?”
She stared in disbelief at the retching mare. “You think it was all full of metaphors?”
“Of course. No one in their right mind would actually do such things. You have… uuugh… have to take it from a logical perspective.”
“Hitler was insane you stupid filly,” Lyra shouted as she non-too-gently whacked the mare’s blond mane with the large book. “He had necromancers and soothsayers in his cabinet(1) and believed an ancient spearhead made him immortal(2). And, just FYI, he did do most of those things.”
Aryanne still didn’t believe her. “You have no right to put all the blame on him.”
Lyra’s eye twitched as she began to fume. “He killed sixteen million people in concentration camps for crying out loud. After starving them while using them for slave labor.”
Aryanne looked to be on the verge of cracking now, as her eyes widened and her pupils turned into tiny pinpricks. “No… that cannot be.”
Lyra slammed the book onto the ground and grabbed the filly in her magic, yanking her close until they were nose-to-nose. “Listen you little trilobite. You’re a pampered, spoiled little filly whose used to getting her way, and living on the campus of an esteemed college that your parents paid for isn’t helping you either. Now, listen to me and listen well.”
Aryanne gulped as beads of sweat began crawling down her face.
“You… don’t… know… everything,” Lyra shrieked in her face, not caring who outside the room might hear. She took a couple deep breaths, seething. With a long sigh, she pulled the terrified mare into a hug. “I’m trying to help you, Aryanne, believe me. This is a very bad path you stumbled upon, and you need to understand that.”
She broke the embrace and snatched up a piece of paper. “To help you understand, Aryanne, I recommend these sources.” Her quill moved swiftly over the parchment. “Victory at Sea, Mause, Auschwitz, and the Diary of Anne Frank.”
She gave it to Aryanne, who took it and swiftly left the office. Later that same week, Aryanne would burn all her Nazi gear and drop out of college, much to her parents chagrin. But it would be alright for her. Now void of certain biases influenced by the book, she opened a Texas-style barbeque restaurant in Manehatten, catering to herbivores, omnivores and carnivores alike(3). It would remained in her family for many generations, serving everyone, from the average Joe, to foreign leaders. Under her enlightened eyes, the Don’t Trot on Me was the biggest name on the east coast, so that, upon her death, she left large fortunes to her twelve children and thirty-eight grandchildren.
Lyra, however, became rather upset upon finding that she had to pay Aryanne’s late-fees at the library.
(1) True fact.
(2) Also true. The Spear of Destiny, or the Holy Lance.
(3) Another fun fact. Her ex-hero, Hitler, was a devout vegetarian.