Diamond really didn't pay that much attention to Mrs. Bradel or, in the days before Cheerilee had essentially ruined her life, to the entire family. She was vaguely aware that they were bookbinders, mostly because Snips had mentioned it a few days prior and the fact had stuck in her head due to her need to show she was paying some attention to the finer details of her employees' boring lives. She also knew that Mrs. Bradel specialized in book restoration, because her father had once gone to the mare and requested the removal of decades from an old family diary. Snips' mother knew workings which just about nopony else on the continent could claim to have mastered, mostly because she'd invented nearly all of them -- and also because unless you were a pony with a pressing need for book restoration, just about every last one of those workings was completely useless. Spells which smoothed out creases, added moisture to binding glue, made pages flexible again... and rendered her incapable of doing just about anything else.
Every unicorn (with the possible exception of the town's rather annoying librarian) had a limited learning capacity for their castings: they all had their fields and beyond that, could only learn to work a few spells over the course of their lifetime. (Diamond, briefly curious as to how that compared to the ultimate number of tools she might considering personally mastering, if only in the name of potential superiority, had asked her daddy what that number was, and been told that six to eight learned workings was typical, along with minor variants on whatever those spells turned out to be, and then a personal trick on top of that, which never had to be taught to those unicorns at all.) So for a pony to clutter up their memory with spells which affected nothing except books... that pony would need to be a bookbinder, have the world's worst priority sorting system, or just wind up as a librarian who had a ridiculous obsession with books to the point where even Diamond had heard the stories about how Mrs. Bradel refused to allow that adult into her shop for more time than it took to drop things off and pick them up again, lest she lose so much of her business to having those personal spells copied.
But on the whole, Mrs. Bradel was just... there: not worth paying attention to, not even really worth insulting (especially now, when she needed Snips more than ever), and forever smelling somewhat of old parchment and fresh binding glue. So when Diamond went to pick up the youngest in the family, she didn't really notice the adult, any more than she truly paid any real attention to Snips, whom she had told to gallop ahead of her and head for the mansion: Diamond would catch up later. Because when it came to paying, there were things Diamond had to do immediately.
Snails was gone. And he'd had all the items Cameo needed to survive: the terrarium, plants, heat lamps, the books which Diamond had promised to read in order to learn how to take care of her. She couldn't get any of them back. And so she'd ignored Snips staring at her, hadn't bothered truly registering the expression on his face, and galloped off on her own to take care of her newest employee.
Cameo's job was to be there, to stay when... nopony else would. Which meant Diamond, as her supervisor, needed to make sure a proper working environment was available.
It took nearly two hours, two hours she couldn't afford to spend with so few days left and but one colt remaining. But it was two hours which Cameo needed, and... they were two hours which ultimately didn't completely work out. There was no reason to visit her daddy's store, for pet supplies were mostly left to the settled zone's specialty shop. Visiting that shop had found just about nothing in the way of terrariums, at least not of the size and majesty which someone like Cameo was surely going to require. The owner didn't stock much, and a few frustrated future customer inquiries quickly uncovered the reason why: very few ponies kept reptiles, only one was known to take comfort in the presence of fish, a single pegasus had the town's lone tortoise, and Snails special-ordered everything else. All the shop had was a few emergency backups. Diamond had temporarily settled for one of those, mostly due to the complete lack of other choices, and had it sent ahead to the mansion. But she'd special-ordered something a little more spectacular for later and given the owner her promissory signature, swearing to come back on the following day with the actual bits. (It was a promise she always kept, for she kept a cautious eye on her allowance, always putting aside a few bits for emergencies -- and her father had been very careful to teach her the exact meaning of "credit rating" and why she should never take a chance on ruining it.)
But the books... those would have to be special-ordered as well, and the pet shop owner didn't have that catalog. Neither did the town's bookseller, and that put her in the library, with its annoying and somewhat surprised custodian trying to be helpful. But apparently entomology was this completely fascinating science which the librarian hadn't really studied and only one colt in town ever asked for books on, so that section was basic and when it came to jeweled scarabs, didn't contain anything more than a few paragraphs which officially registered their existence, mostly in Griffonant. However, in this case, the books Diamond needed could be acquired through the library exchange program, lent out from the Canterlot Archives. A process which would take up to five days.
She got it down to three, mostly through short, panicked breaths which she hadn't even known she'd had in her armory, plus a rather self-surprising "Please" personally delivered to the dragon, who then completely eliminated any outbound mailing time. But it was three days of taking care of Cameo where she wouldn't entirely know what she was doing, and when it came to food.... Diamond could keep the plants growing once she had them, but there was nothing which would let her create them without the base seeds -- which, in Ponyville, only existed at Snails' farm.
She'd galloped home as fast as she dared, which still meant frequent stops to make sure Cameo was still with her. She needed those plants, didn't know if anything else could substitute even for a little while, she had no access to farm or Snails and Snips couldn't even go to his friend's house. She didn't know how long Cameo could go without eating. She didn't know anything.
She... didn't know what to do. Only Snails did.
Without Snails, Cameo could...
Diamond, her stomach back to churning in a way which told her she was about to find out how long she could personally go without food again, mind spinning and unable to latch onto facts or lies in a way which would help anything, looking at every clock as she passed it and wondering if she had enough bits to hire an emergency air carriage into Canterlot and shopping money for after, along with whether the more elaborate pet stores would even be open by the time she got there and what their food supplies were like, plus it left her roaming the capital without her daddy, her daddy who wasn't anywhere to be found in the mansion and when she finally asked a servant, she was told he'd gone on a business trip and might not be back for days, rushing away before the mare could tell her anything else... eventually wound quickly up going past the study, where she got a brief glimpse of Snips.
He was stretched out across the floor, to the limit of stretch his small body would allow. Eyes half-closed, head and horn low. Talking to Snails.
It took Diamond a few seconds to brake, and then several more to turn around. The actual trot back to the doorway wound up feeling oddly slow.
The colts, who had already begun to look up at the sound of passing hoofsteps, stared at her. Neither said a word.
Diamond, with most of her mind already trying to figure out what she could say to the taller colt in order to get that food supply back, didn't put sufficient effort into her greeting. "What are you doing here?"
"My folks expect me to be here," Snails slowly said. His head had come up. His eyes were starting to go back down again. "Plus... you had Cameo --"
"-- you can't --" and somehow, she managed to stop herself. She couldn't open negotiations with the opposition knowing they were in a position of strength.
"-- and I still had the stuff for her. So I brought that with me. The servants put it in your bedroom."
Diamond stared at him for a few seconds, and he failed to meet her eyes during every last one of them. Winning a negotiation before it started was... a little unusual.
"...you're not taking her back?" That wasn't unusual. That was beyond unusual.
"I told her she was going to be with you now," Snails replied, and the words felt oddly heavy within her perfect ears. "And I saw a couple of servants bringing in a terrarium. You cared enough about her to visit Mr. Shoqërues' place before you came home, because you... didn't know if I was gonna be here. I think that makes you the right pony for her, even if --"
And he stopped. His head went just about all the way down, his eyes closed, and he stopped.
"Even if what?" It was very close to a demand.
"Nothing." Still not looking at her.
"Ponies don't say something over nothing," Diamond shot back.
And out of nowhere, from Snips, "You do."
He was looking at her. And once again, those eyes were angry.
Diamond didn't have a response. She'd been down to one colt. She seemed to be back at two. She couldn't chance going down to zero. And... she didn't know what he'd meant.
"Snips..." Snails dully cautioned.
"I said we'd give her a chance," Snips retorted. "When Miss Cheerilee was switching her desk. I told you it was okay if we gave her a chance, because stuff can look different when you're sitting at the back. That maybe she'd be different. And she got us together outside of school, but she doesn't listen, Snails, she didn't listen to you, she just ran off and..." The smaller head went down, the eyelids began to descend. "...I dunno, maybe we're okay, maybe, but..."
"We don't know," Snails quietly responded. "Until we get home, maybe not even until after -- we don't know. And if we act like something's wrong when we get in..."
"Yeah, I know, Snails, I know. But..."
And Snips' head came up again.
The eye contact was brief. And the sheer force of it nearly pushed Diamond out of her own doorway.
"Why are you doing this?" Snips asked.
Diamond, worn out from a day of introductions and desperation and near-discovery, found herself at a temporary (and complete) loss for lies, and decided to buy time while she scavenged the last of her resources. "Doing what?"
"Being nice to us," Snips shot back. "Getting us together. Watching during breaks, coming up with that tapping thing Snails told me about. You aren't nice to us. Just Silver. But Snails wanted to give you a chance, I said yes, and then you were nice, when --"
"You don't do nice things. For anypony."
Had he said it? Had she just remembered it? Or had words come in concert with memory?
"Why?" Snips repeated, and waited for his answer.
She was still tired. She didn't seem to have anything new to offer in the way of believability, and so she searched through her lessons...
"There is no such thing as perfect business transparency, and there shouldn't be. If you've caught on to the hot trend of the next season before anypony else, why would you want to go around telling the competition what it was going to be? Perfect transparency allows ponies to see right through you and read the projections you wrote out on the other side. Your books have to be honest, your numbers true -- but your plans should only be told to those who absolutely need to know them, the ponies who can help you carry them out and be trusted not to bring the words back to those who can use them against you. Don't offer that trust casually. But --"
No. She didn't need to think about any more than that.
"Things look different from the back," she tried, because if the words were somehow good enough for Snips to speak, they would have to be acceptable for hearing.
The small eyes briefly narrowed -- and then his head went down again. Both boys nearly had their chins on the floor.
"We studied some," Snails quietly said. "While we were waiting, after we talked. And it's probably about time for dinner, and you kind of look like you've been galloping around a lot. You've got sweat in your coat, and... maybe you should go clean up, Diamond, and then I'll get Cameo's stuff set up in your room. We can eat after that, and then..." The shrug was almost fully horizontal. "More studying, I guess. I don't know if we're up to the blocks tonight. Or..."
He sighed. And Diamond knew she'd heard him sigh before, it felt like there had been something involved each time, maybe the same thing, but she couldn't remember what it was and she'd just been told that boys didn't want to play...
It seemed to be a time for expressing some concern about employee welfare.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Snails lied. He wasn't very good at it.
"Something's wrong," Diamond insisted.
"It doesn't matter," Snips wearily said. "It's a fifty-fifty chance anyway."
Snails managed to glance at his friend. "Fifty-fifty?"
"It'll happen or it won't," Snips replied.
The slow nod which came back seemed to have a touch of resignation about it. "Yeah. Diamond -- it doesn't matter, okay? It'll happen or it won't. So we're not gonna talk about it any more, either of us, no matter what you say, not until after tomorrow morning, because then we'll know, it might not happen, and... you've been tired in class. You've nearly fallen asleep a few times, you already passed out on us the once, and... three of us maybe not sleeping isn't any better than two. So you go wash up if you want to, and then we'll do what we've gotta do. Okay?"
It wasn't okay. It was frustrating. She'd asked a question and she wasn't getting anything approaching a real answer. Diamond got to do that when ponies asked her about things she was best off not admitting to, and it was fine for her -- but somehow, when it came back the other way, it was really annoying. Plus she already knew that not having an answer was something that could easily steal sleep.
But Snails' eyes were -- hard. And it was a hardness that seemed to have been born from pressure and heat and something deeper than exhaustion, something which had forged his pupils into a substance stronger than --
-- diamond.
"Tomorrow," she checked, thoroughly irritated.
"Tomorrow," Snails confirmed. And it was all she got out of either colt for the rest of the night, including the times when she tried to spring it on them out of nowhere during the study sessions, during the breaks when neither really felt like playing and she wanted to see that bridge finished already... but not during the minutes when Snails had been setting up Cameo's new home, with Diamond already having decided not to cancel her order because any companion of hers was entitled to something with multiple stories, plus she would have to see what could be done about installing some miniature fountains.
She did wind up saying something to Snails at the end of those particular minutes. It seemed as if it was something which... had to be said.
"Thank you."
He hadn't met her eyes. "I know you'll take care of her."
She hadn't understood, and somehow, without being at all sure why, she'd wound up saying so.
"That's how you thank me," Snails had said. "By making sure she's okay. She's cared for. She's loved. Do that and... no matter what happens, one good thing..." He'd taken a slow breath. "One good thing came out of it. Take care of her, Diamond. No matter what."
She'd nodded. They'd eaten, they'd studied, they hadn't played. And in time, the boys had gone home.
As it turned out, there was something that could be done while not sleeping and knowing her daddy wouldn't be coming in to kiss her: reading books. And the things had been boring, with many of the words incomprehensible: Diamond had wound up making two trips back to the study in search of worthy dictionaries before the first of the books had fallen out of her tired mouth in such a way as to both require a future extra trip to the Bradel residence and allow her to discover the existence of the glossary. But she'd pressed on, because...
...Cameo watched her from the terrarium, and Diamond could tell she was watching. It took a little while before the scarab would approach a carefully-lowered hoof, but Diamond decided that was because she was just used to the envelopment of Snails' field. She ate. She relaxed under the heat lamps. She flew around Diamond's bedroom, exploring, with her new supervisor watching carefully, making sure of where she was at all times. And she would go back to perching on Diamond's tiara, with the two reading together. Or rather, Diamond reading out loud and Cameo listening to the words which described her original habitat, because reading out loud made things less boring.
Eventually, Diamond found herself going over the same sentence three times, and she carefully returned Cameo to the terrarium which had been installed on a relocated table to the right of her bed, just before curling up at its base and falling asleep where Cameo could see her.
It seemed important, having Cameo see she was there. And Diamond, who had taken her new sleeping position on instinct, too tired to truly think, didn't know why.
It had taken her some extra time to get out of the mansion in the morning, mostly because she'd needed to round up all of the servants, at least for the day shift. They'd been marched into her bedroom, introduced to Cameo, shown the books, and told to make sure they knew where the little scarab was while cleaning or changing mostly-undisturbed sheets or anything else. And then after they'd been sent out again (with the books and instructions to pass everything on to the night shift), she'd needed a few minutes to tell Cameo where she was going, why, and what time she'd be back, something the scarab was probably roughly familiar with from Snails' schedule, but this was Diamond and besides, once school wrapped up for the summer break, there would be considerably more shopping trips involved, some of which Cameo would have to come along for, if only to see how she coordinated with new outfits, plus there was the toy store to browse and the dollhouse section just might have those fountains in stock. But for now, she wasn't going to bring Cameo to school, because it was bad enough that Diamond had to go and there was no way she was going to make somepony else suffer through it.
She'd explained all that, and it had gotten her looked at a lot, along with a considerable amount of six-legged limb weaving and a few wing displays. Diamond had decided she'd learn what that end of the conversation meant soon enough, would do it faster than anypony (except Snails) and in the meantime, making up Cameo's responses in her head worked out perfectly, especially since that meant someone was agreeing with her.
And then she'd trotted off to school, consumed with plans, along with attempts at same. There were four days left -- but due to the way the calendar had worked out this year added to two very surprising snow days created by an unexpected storm which had broken the schedule and several plows when it had blown in from the wild zone, two of those were the weekend -- and that started tomorrow. If she was careful, she could have the colts at the mansion for two whole days, and that was all the more time to make them learn --
-- but she still didn't have a way to make them actually write the correct answers down.
The deadline was approaching, and the anxiety was certainly there -- but that pressure wasn't driving her to a solution, and she didn't want to be in a position where she would have to rely on a near-instant one which only arrived at the moment they all trotted into the schoolhouse for what had to be her last day. Diamond needed an answer, she needed it fast, and Cameo, while possessing a fresh perspective on the matter, wasn't in a position to deliver any ideas. (Which wasn't Cameo's job anyway and Diamond wasn't expecting her to work outside her comfort zone.)
But between poor sleep and the true need for servant education added to desperate (and so far, futile) planning along with the nearly-daily war with her breakfast, Diamond had left the mansion later than she normally would have, enough that any gallop required to get her through the schoolhouse door before the bell rang was... something she didn't have the energy for anyway. So she trotted. She would only be a little late, and excuses for that sort of thing remained automatic.
Diamond heard the bell while she was still on the approach, and crested the rise which put her in sight of the school about three minutes after it went off. It gave her a perfect vantage point from which to see all the colts and fillies milling around outside.
Well... nearly all.
They were talking to each other, mostly at low volume. The words didn't reach Diamond, but there was enough tone to let her know there was a lot of confusion out in the grass. But it trotted alongside with what seemed to be anticipation, and as Diamond froze at the crest, having spotted the two absences within the herd, her muscles suddenly tensing and a new voice sounding in her head, something screaming at her to run... a certain yellow filly looked up. And then that one signaled orange and white, who passed it along, there was something new rising from the ranks and it sounded like a group snicker...
...Silver was trotting up the path. Coming towards her.
Slowly. Eyes down. Glasses left behind in the grass because whatever expressions had been experienced in the minutes before Diamond's arrival had produced so many slips as to make her only friend momentarily surrender.
"...Silver?"
"You're supposed to go inside," was the soft response. "As soon as you got here. Just... go inside. While we wait out here." And her friend wouldn't look at her.
Diamond could hear the desperation in her own voice. Anypony could. And she couldn't stop it. "Silver, what's going on? Where are --"
"-- inside. With her. It's..." Silver's eyes closed. "...I don't know what it is. Just that she wants to see all three of you, while we wait outside, she just told us when we got here, you were late and I couldn't gallop off to find you because everypony had seen me already, and... and now they've seen you, and..."
The first tear fell from those pinkish-purple eyes.
"I don't know what's going on," Silver whispered. "I haven't known anything for days now. Just that... she wants to see all of you. And I can't do anything..."
A single head shake, hard enough to disrupt the end of the braid.
"No," Silver softly said. "It won't mean anything. It won't help anything. But I can walk you to the door."
And Diamond, with nowhere to run, slowly trotted at her friend's side, while the others watched and giggled and laughed and singsonged and did all the things Diamond would have done if it had been any of them.
It hurt.
This time, when the door closed behind her, Diamond knew she would come out again. She just didn't know if she wanted to.
The colts were sitting in front of the largest desk, heads down, hindquarters against the floor, eyes half-closed. Cheerilee stood behind something which suddenly felt very much like a throne.
"Come up here," the teacher said, "and sit down."
Diamond managed to make her legs work, for just long enough.
Cheerilee waited until her position had just about matched that of the boys, waiting between them. Nodded to herself, and then trotted out from behind the desk, moving behind the trio, then back around to the desk again, circling them as she talked...
"Last night," Cheerilee began, "I had a visitor. Rather later than I like to receive them, but parents tend to think teachers are paid for too few hours because those spent at the actual school are all they truly believe exist in my workday, and so more than a few like to extend things a little. Parents typically drop by at all hours. To discuss grades. Why a higher one wasn't fairly given for what they see as fair or, rarely, to ask whether something was truly earned. To talk about my methods, and it's amazing how ponies without a teaching mark seem to believe they understand my profession better than I ever could. But last night's visitor opened with a question I really hadn't heard before."
She stopped. Looked at Diamond.
"She wanted to know why her son's tutor had an insect on her tiara. An insect which she was convinced didn't exist in Ponyville. A bug which could have only come from one other pony. And from what she said, she then went out to that tutor's home deep under Moon, waited for her son to leave -- and saw the other colt go out with him."
Diamond couldn't look at the teacher. Couldn't breathe.
"Okay... let me just get Cameo and --"
"Diamond, you've gotta listen, I was gonna do this before we --"
-- got to Snips' house.
Because she had to pick up Snips by herself, and nothing about her could show a single sign that she was spending any time outside school with Snails. Nothing at all.
Cameo had been on her tiara.
Snails had tried to save her. Again. And Diamond... had run away.
"For some reason which she never quite explained to me," Cheerilee went on, moving again, "this upset her. It got her so angry that she stormed off -- to the Gastrope residence, where she seems to have exchanged a few words with those particular parents, mostly about whether they had tried to arrange the whole thing. There was a fight. A rather noisy one, which ultimately wound up getting the police involved, if only because there were coronas surging all over the place and the lightshow accompanied by the volume was starting to disturb the neighbors. And with that broken up without arrests becoming involved, she decided it was time to yell at me. A decision the Gastrope adults echoed about ten minutes later, while she was still in her first diatribe, and long before I would have been allowed any chance to talk. Which ultimately brought in the police again, who had become surprisingly sick of the whole affair before reaching my residence. And after all parties were separated and most of my furniture was upright again, an agreement of sorts was negotiated."
Stopped again. Behind them this time.
"Snips and Snails knew some of this coming in, I suspect," she said. "Especially Snails, given that the original fight was at his house. I know you're getting the whole thing at once, Diamond. But I'm pretty sure all three of you will be hearing this part for the first time."
Trotted around to the front. Stopped, looked at them. And once again, no part of her, including the stupid daisies on her flanks, seemed to be smiling.
"You are all staying after school," Cheerilee told them. "Your parents will be coming in. All of your parents. And once we have everypony in the same room under some shaky form of temporary truce -- we are going to find out exactly what's been going on."