Sparking Interest

Twilight Sparkle was a curious pony. Curious and eager.

Once her attention belonged to a subject she had insufficient information about, she would not rest and go great lengths to fill these gaps in her knowledge. She was a scientist at heart, seeking knowledge wherever she could.

While she knew by now that her fillyhood dream to know everything about everything in the whole world would not come true, her thirst for knowledge remained as strong as it ever was. There was always another mystery to study, another empty entry in an encyclopedia, another machine she did not understand yet. Nothing filled her with more happiness than figuring out another mystery.

So it was no wonder that the unicorn was more than intrigued when she found a small, unremarkable package on her doormat one afternoon. Usually, Twilight would have given it a second look right here but she had just come back from the market, her saddle bags full of food and other things for her daily needs. Instead, she simply picked it up with a flare of her horn and carried it inside the large hollow tree she called her home.

Deciding to give it a closer inspection after she had stowed away her purchased goods, Twilight placed the package on her table in the central room of the library. Soon, the items were stored and sorted and she returned to the table, curious what the package contained and who sent it.

Sadly, there was no address on it, meaning that it hadn’t been delivered by the mail service. Someone must have dropped it before her door by himself. Someone that desired to stay anonymous…

Usually that would have made Twilight suspicious but it had been a while since she had a break from her everyday life, so her scientific curiosity got the better of her. Deeming it irrelevant, Twilight carelessly ripped off the wrapping paper and tossed it aside, revealing a simple wooden box and a slip of paper with some notes on it.

Focusing her attention on the paper, Twilight picked it up. Maybe it would give her more information about the mysterious sender and what exactly was in the box.

Dear recipient,
You have been anonymously and randomly chosen as a scientifically adept individual by one of our couriers to test our newest invention. In the box you have received is a living cell culture of a special kind of algae in a nutrient solution.
Its task is to purify water and give plants a growth spurt, increase the productivity of fruit-bearing trees, and heal various soil borne diseases of different kinds of plants by a symbiosis to bolster their immune system as well as repelling most kinds of pests. Though, due to the symbiosis, the plant itself might change its appearance a bit. The fruits however, will remain edible and enjoyable.
Now we need you and the other testers we have sent this innovation to field test it. We have sent enough of it that you will be able to test its safety for yourself. The effects will show in roughly 18 hours, when the culture has settled in and starts spreading its agents.
If you are satisfied with the results we request you to add it to your groundwater. The town well would be a possibility. We will send another courier in two weeks to take a look at the results. We would like to ask you to take notes concerning the development. It will make our future work much easier.
Thank you for helping us!

To describe Twilight’s expression as puzzled would have been a stark understatement. Her eyes hushed from the box she had opened while reading; revealing its cushioned inside and the rather large, corked vial inside, and the short note.

Usually she would have wasted no time to throw the suspicious box and its contents right into the garbage bin, but the effects described in the letter seemed too good to just disregard it. To imagine that every farmer in town would be able to produce more apples, carrots and whatever else while not having to worry about having the plants die from varmints sounded like a huge improvement to their lives. Huge enough to give it a try.

Twilight didn’t dither for long. Soon, she had gathered some potted plants and a tomato plant she was willing to risk losing. One of them even seemed dead to her, for she had forgotten to water it for about a month. Even though the unicorn felt a little guilty about it, she was glad to have a test object for an extreme case now.

Humming a gleeful tune, Twilight started to place the pots on a shelf in her laboratory in the basement and watered all of them before pouring a minimal amount of the liquid in each one. It was a slightly green, a little bit slimy substance. It looked repulsive but Twilight had seen worse in her filly days in Canterlot, when she had pestered the lab technicians with an unending stream of question.

Not before long, every plant was set up for the experiment and the unicorn let her gaze wander over them once more before turning to leave the basement. Now she had to wait until tomorrow to tell if the letter had contained the truth. Stifling a yawn, she decided to hit the bed early, her all-nighter from yesterday took its toll and she was dangerously close to falling asleep on a book due to her exhaustion.

The idea itself didn’t so bad to Twilight but the past examples had shown that sometimes she started to drool on the pages, damaging it in the process. And the morning after, her neck would hurt from the uncomfortable position. No, a bed sounded like a much better option to Twilight.

Wasting no more time, the unicorn entered her bedroom and fell on her bed. She was asleep before her head even hit the pillow.

Two days later, Rainbow Dash pushed the front door of the Twilight’s home open and was greeted by a seemingly abandoned library. Her loud ‘Hello?’ went unheard. The cerulean pegasus had only intended to stop by to return a borrowed Daring Do book, but the unusual silence and darkness were extremely irritating.

A few more moments of concentrated but fruitless listening for anything that would betray another living being in her vicinity later, Dash decided to look for her unicorn friend, rather than leaving the book on the counter as she would usually do it. She had to find out if there was something wrong with Twilight.

Now thinking about it, Rainbow couldn’t remember to have seen her friend for a couple of days. By itself, that wasn’t a big thing but most of the time this happened, Twilight would be found reading somewhere close with Spike managing the checking in and out. Today, neither of them was to be found.

A quick check of the bedroom upstairs revealed that the two weren’t sleeping either. With every empty room Rainbow checked, her mental pictures of what happened to Twilight became worse and worse.

Just when she was about to go into panic, a faint shattering noise reached Rainbow’s ears and she remembered another place she had yet to look after. Twilight’s sanctuary, her laboratory.

Cautiously descending the stairs to the basement, the pegasus listened for more noises and saw a dim light shimmering through the crack below the door. A yelp sounded through the wooden boards.

Already on edge because of her worries before, Rainbow didn’t spend another second waiting and bolted to the entrance, almost breaking through it. However, the door swung open rather easily and a squall of humid heat wafted over her nostrils as she stumbled into the lab. Even though irritated by the sudden change of climate, Rainbow quickly recovered herself and inspected the scene before her completely baffled.

If the pegasus wouldn’t have known better, she could have sworn she was standing somewhere in the deepest jungle. Not only was the air warm and moist, the whole room seemed to be filled with all kinds of ridiculously large plants and fungi, some covering the walls, some growing high up to the ceiling and sprouting large leaves there. Brightly colored blossoms and fruits shone out of the surrounding green walls here and there.

The vegetation in that room had completely taken it over, the scientific machineries and tools that dominated the room before were crammed together in a large glass box in a far corner. Now, it had become a greenhouse for every type of plant one could imagine.

In the middle of all of this stood Twilight, filling the shards of a broken glass into a garbage bin before returning to her desk where she took some notes. Finally overcoming her bafflement, Rainbow shook her head and approached Twilight from the side, who was so wrapped up in her experiments that she hadn’t noticed the pegasus tumbling into the room.

“Twilight?” Rainbow Dash asked cautiously and nudged her friend’s shoulder. “What the hay are you doing here? Why does your basement look like a jungle?”

Startled by the sudden touch, Twilight spun around to face the pegasus. Surprise showed on her face but turned into a smile immediately.

“Oh! Hey, Dash! What can I do for you? Sorry, I didn’t hear you at first, I just got too wrapped up in these experiments!” Twilight started chattering with a happy grin plastered on her face, despite her bloodshot eyes betraying a heavy sleep deprivation. There were few things that excited her more than science and experiments, reading books being one of them.

“Well, first off, I wanted to return that book here but now that I think of it, I haven’t seen you in days. How long have you been down here? How much did you sleep in that time?” Rainbow explained with an inquisitive stare. It wouldn’t have been the first time Twilight had worked herself to total exhaustion and passed out on the floor for a whole day or more.

“No… I think I haven’t been here very long.” The unicorn turned to her notes again and started muttering to herself, “Let’s see… this elixir needs about 18 hours to fully develop the plant… I first infused that one at… right after this one was ready and then… Oh…” Twilight turned her gaze guiltily at Rainbow again. “It seems I’ve been working here for about 37 hours.”

Rainbow Dash simply shot her a scolding glare. Usually the roles were reversed, but sometimes Twilight needed someone to look after her and press her to watch out for herself and the pegasus didn’t hesitate to be that one if she had to.

“Did you at least eat something?” Rainbow inquired, keeping up her stern expression.

Twilight’s face lit up at the question. “Actually, yes! You see these fruits there? I’ve grown them myself down here just a little bit before you came here and they are really tasty! Want a bite?”

The unicorn didn’t wait for an answer and broke off a banana from its shrub and levitated it towards Rainbow, who looked at the yellow fruit with confusion. Bananas were rare imports and almost nobody could get them out of the season, but somehow Twilight had a whole shrub of them in the middle of spring.

“Wait a minute… What are you doing here, now? You still haven’t told me!”

“Oh! Well, you see…” Twilight quickly told the irritated Rainbow about the package, the latter and how wonderful the serum worked. Then she told her about the request to fill some of it into the town well.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean we don’t need everything to go overboard like this thing,” Rainbow threw in, pointing at a daisy that stood up a proud one-and-a-half meter.

That drew a laugh from Twilight. “No, no, no… That won’t happen! I just gave it an overdose and isolated it in a glass box to see how it would react if there is too much for a single plant. If it spreads through the groundwater, it should get distributed over a large area. It’s pretty safe and we can just cut the plants if they get too big.” The unicorn stifled a yawn and became thoughtful. “I should go to Mayor Mare and ask her if it’s okay to do that now…”

“Can’t you go after you get some sleep?” Dash raised an eyebrow and leaned against the wall, crossing her legs before her chest.

“Please, Rainbow? It takes so long to show an effect, if I do it now and go to sleep afterwards, I’ll see the results when I wake up!” Twilight pleaded with a pout. She knew her friend wouldn’t just leave her, so the obvious solution was a bargain.

“And you’ll go to bed afterwards? No more sciencing?” the pegasus asked skeptically.

“I promise!” Twilight allowed a smile to creep up the corners of her mouth.

Exhaling theatrically, Rainbow Dash let herself fall forward on the floor again. “Then let’s get this over with! Can I give Spike the book so he checks it in again while we’re out?”

“Isn’t he up in the main room? I told him to watch the library while I’m here and as long as I don’t need him to help me with an experiment…” Twilight’s expression turned from irritated to sheepish, “Okay, I asked him to come here a little while ago and he should be still here…”

With that, Twilight let her gaze wander around the room until rested on a large mushroom. On top sat her assistant, enthralled by a comic book.

“Spike!” Twilight shouted in an annoyed tone, causing Spike to fall off the large cap in surprise, ”I told you to watch out for the library, not to read comics down here with me!”

Ever since the little dragon had discovered comics, he spent a great part of his time reading them. Unfortunately, this meant he had been disregarding a lot of his usual work for it, much to Twilight’s chagrin. Another side effect was that he barely noticed anything that happened around him while he was reading.

"The only time I want you down here is when I need you as security, so you can alarm someone else if my safety spells fail during a potentially dangerous experiment. I told you to go back up when the last one ended at least an hour ago!"

"Okay, okay! I'm going already, geeze!" Spike grumbled and jumped back on his feet. Quickly picking up his precious comic from the floor, he disappeared through the door.

"Sorry, Rainbow, I'll just clean this up and calculate how much of the serum I need for Ponyville’s well. It'll take about 15 minutes. Can you wait here so long?"

"Sure thing, Twi. I'll just give your weeds there a second look," Rainbow nodded and approached a table with a couple of smaller flowerpots while the unicorn focused on her note pad.

These plants seemed to have received a lot less of the wonder fertilizer. Besides being a bit larger than your ordinary ones, there was nothing obviously unusual with them. On a closer inspection however, the symbiotic influence of the algae showed itself. Small bluish-green veins had formed on the stems and the leaves, giving them an alien look. The blooms though, counted easily to the most beautiful ones Rainbow had ever seen. I wonder if...

"Twilight? Would you mind me taking one of these home? They're pretty cool," the pegasus asked her friend.

"Yeah, sure. Why not..." came the absent-minded reply.

Grinning inwardly at her friend’s nonexistent attention, Rainbow took a sky-blue flower with bright yellow accents in a small pot from the table. As she tried to stuff it into her saddlebag though, she saw the book she wanted to return again. Annoyed by the fact that she had forgotten to give it to Spike before he left, the pegasus left the basement and Twilight with her calculations.

In the main room, Dash found the little dragon yet again reading behind the counter. With something between a snort and a chuckle, she placed the book before Spike and informed him about it being returned by pulling his precious comic down for a second and pointing at his newest task. Despite a lot of grumbling, it didn’t take long until the book was finally back at its intended place on a shelf and Spike continued reading.

Free of the book, Rainbow was just about to place the flowerpot in her saddlebags, when she had second thoughts about it. She had never been very good with plants and the last time she had one was almost three years ago. Should Rainbow really take the flower with her? Nah… Twilight will take better care for it. Hope she likes her new bedroom plant.

Having made up her mind, the pegasus quickly flew upstairs to her friend’s bedroom and placed the pot on the nightstand before returning to the main room of the library. Twilight was already waiting there with a box containing a vial of the substance in her magic grip.

“There you are! I already have the right amount of the serum in the box. We just need the Mayor’s agreement,” she told her friend happily.

“Nice! Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go!”

Not wasting any more time, they left the tree, heading for Mayor Mare’s office.

Two hours of arguing with the brown mare later, Twilight and Rainbow finally left the town hall with visible trails of exhaustion on their faces and proceeded towards the well Twilight had chosen to spread the serum. Neither of them spoke much; the discussion with the town’s bureaucrat had taken its toll on their vocal cords, even more so on Twilight since she had done most of the talking. At first, the plan had met resistance, of course, if Rainbow hadn’t seen the results with her own eyes, she would have been reluctant as well. Eventually though, having saved the town and Equestria as a whole before most certainly helped to get them the permission.

Without much fuss, Twilight simply emptied the vial into the dark depths of the well as soon as they arrived at their destination. In an unspoken agreement, both turned towards the Golden Oaks Library and trotted towards it, Twilight subconsciously leaning against Rainbow Dash due to her tiredness, looking for support. Normally the pegasus would have been uncomfortable with someone being so close to her… normally. She wasn’t sure if it was because she was also tired or there was something else, but somehow she liked the feeling of the unicorn’s soft fur brushing against her own.

They slowly made their way through the town in the pink and orange light of the sunset and soon the library came into sight. From the distance the two of them observed how the door opened and a cloaked figure left the house and quickly walked away as it spotted the pair. Under the cloak, two bulges showed themselves on the pony’s side. If it weren’t for the horn sticking out under the hood, they could have speculated if it was an earth pony carrying two small pouches or a pegasus. Since there weren’t too many alicorns though, the latter seemed highly unlikely. Either way, before the mares were close enough to greet the stallion, he was already gone and they merely got a short glance at his face.

Twilight briefly wondered who this pony was. Sure, she didn’t know everyone in town by name but she was sure she would have remembered a unicorn in Ponyville due to the fact that most of its population consisted of earth ponies. Oddly enough, despite her being sure that he wasn’t from Ponyville, the unicorn seemed strangely familiar to her, as if she had seen him somewhere before. Maybe he’s just a traveller I saw once… Twilight pondered, deciding to ask Spike about him.

If it weren’t for Rainbow, the librarian would have run into her own door, caught up in her thoughts and too tired to even watch out for anything before her. Chuckling at the prevented accident, Dash guided the thankful and embarrassed unicorn through the entrance. Inside, they were incidentally greeted by Spike, who was still in the same position he had assumed when Rainbow Dash had seen him last. The only difference was a stack of new comics beside him.

“Spike, what did the stallion that just left want here? Did he say anything?” asked Twilight.

“Nah… he just wanted to take a look around, see if he finds something interesting. Obviously, he didn’t. Wasn’t here for more than about 30 minutes and left without borrowing anything. A weird guy…” Spike replied, almost not bothering to look up from his current comic book.

This seemed a bit strange to Twilight as well but she was in no state to think about it more thoroughly. Instead, she yawned wholeheartedly.

“I’ll close the library for today and go to bed. Good night, Spike,” Twilight announced after a short glance to Rainbow who returned it sternly, wordlessly reminding her of their compromise.

Satisfied with this, Rainbow grinned again and wrapped a wing around her friend as she escorted her to the stairs. “I’ll take ya up there. You look like you could fall asleep standing straight.”

Only a small grumbling sound came from the unicorn’s mouth as she tried to nudge the pegasus’ neck, missed and accidently rested her head on it. The next thing Dash felt was Twilight leaning against her even more and soft breathing on the back of her head. More than a bit surprised, she realized that her joke had been truer than she had anticipated and Twilight was indeed fast asleep.

“Looks like you were more tired than I thought…” Rainbow chuckled. “C’mere, I’ll carry ya.”

She knew Twilight couldn’t hear her but that didn’t stop talking anyway. If nothing else, it had proved to be amusing in the past as well as it was now. With utmost care not to wake her, the pegasus loaded Twilight onto her back, ascended the stairs and entered the bedroom. Small, silent steps carried the two mares through the darkened room and to the bed.

Thankful that Twilight was still sleeping, Rainbow let her friend gently slide from her back and onto the soft mattress. A small little snort caught the pegasus attention, making her worry if she had been too rough. Luckily, that wasn’t the case and Twilight now rested on her bed, snoring quietly.

Happy that she still didn’t break her friends slumber, Rainbow finally pulled a blanket over the purple unicorn that promptly started to wrap herself in it. For a moment, the pegasus couldn’t look away from Twilight as she shifted around in her dreams, trying to find the most comfortable position and scrunching her nose until she finally did. Then it was that she visibly relaxed and a peaceful expression found its way to her face.

Altogether, it was the cutest thing Rainbow had seen in a long time and she couldn’t help herself but smile as a pleasant warmth filled her chest. Unable to lower the corners of her mouth, she tenderly nuzzled Twilight’s cheek and stroked her hoof over the unicorn’s sleeping form.

“Sweet dreams, Twi.”

With this, Rainbow Dash finally turned around and left the room. If she h89ad paid more attention, maybe she would have seen the content smile that had formed on Twilight’s face when she whispered her goodnight.

Author's Note:

Hey, guys... I know this is but a sorry excuse for a story but real-life has caught up to me. To be exact two weeks after I decided to join the contest. I'll finish it somewhere on the way, probably may. Since I'm in my graduation class and have about 3 months until my final exams, I feel rather exhausted and unmotivated lately. Once I've finished them, I'll probably be more productive but right now I'm happy if I manage to write 500 words in one go.

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