Chapter 3
The familiar warmth of the morning sun woke the librarian of Golden Oaks Library from her strange dream. Something about the Goddess of Magic… and tea.
Scarlet Letters opened her bleary eyes and smiled as the limbs and branches of her living home danced about in the steady breeze. The light shimmered off the dewy leaves as they rustled in the soft wind, and flickered as it streamed in through the window above her steamer trunk-turned-wardrobe.
She loved plants. Vibrant, living, green plants. She always had. It was a curious thing, for a pegasus to be so drawn to the earthly pleasures like gardening, but she couldn’t help it. It ran in the family. When she first set eyes on the library… Well she just knew it was where she was meant to be.
Scarlet stretched lazily and rolled her wings this way and that, delighting in the soft pops that came as a result. She smacked her lips and slid her tongue along her teeth, tasting the last traces of apple and pastry dough.
Her eyes shot open with a start.
It wasn’t a dream… was it?
Memories from late last night came floating back into the forefront of her mind. She remembered accidentally confronting the Princess in the Library. She remembered offering her tea. She winced as she remembered the whole ‘would you like to come up to my bedroom and see my diploma’ thing, and right after the Princess… Twilight told her to keep things informal. She chuckled at her own foolishness. Too informal, Scarlet. Too informal.
She recalled a second cup of tea for both herself and the Goddess of Magic. She recalled a most pleasant conversation that followed about the magic of friendship and her stories about the quaint little hamlet surrounding them. It was… nice. It was the first time in a long time she just sat and chatted.
She frowned to herself. It was a pity Twilight had to leave, so soon after their third cup of tea, but the whole affair skirted on the boundary of what could be considered appropriate in polite society. She moved to hop off of her cloud mattress and noticed a purple something out of the corner of her eye.
Turning her head to look at the foreign object, she couldn’t help but smile. It was a feather. A long purple feather. Resting on her makeshift dresser. Scarlet Letters slipped out of bed, feeling the cloud mattress brush past her rump as it rose into the air behind her.
The feather in question was laying on her steamer trunk, the one piece of furniture she owned. Moving with purpose, she walked over to the feather and balked. It sat on a folded piece of parchment, sealed with red wax in what she recognized as one of the two Royal Seals of Equestria. She’d seen this particular seal once before when she got his… letter…
“No,” Scarlet said to herself, squeezing her eyes shut and taking a deep breath. “It’s not one of those letters. Today is a new day.” She repeated the mantra like the organizer of her survivor support group back in Trottingham had urged them all to do, until she actually believed it.
She popped open the letter and braved the text within.
Dear Scarlet,
Good morning! I hope this letter finds you in good spirits. Thank you so much for the tea last night and the pleasant conversation. I’ve gone without those simple pleasures for so long that I had forgotten how wonderful they truly are. Thank you for helping an old mare remember.
On the topic of remembering, our conversation brought to mind so many memories. Memories of my time in Ponyville. As I write this, it strikes me that you seemed, well to be perfectly frank, resentful of the idea that you should make friends in Ponyville.
I understand your trepidations and concerns, as I had similar misgivings when I first became a librarian there around a hundred years ago. But please, believe me when I say that the crazy ponies of Ponyville are well worth the effort it takes to befriend them.
So, to encourage you to get out there and make some new friends, I’m giving you an assignment.
Scarlet looked up from the letter and blinked. “Is she serious?”
If you are wondering, yes I am quite serious. I’d like you to send me regular updates, reporting on the town and its population. I want you to get out there and meet the folks around you, to make friends… and maybe more.
There’s something about that library that turns mares into old spinsters, so don’t be afraid to buck the trend, hmm? Oh and that reminds me, there’s a ‘one cat per librarian’ ordinance for the library. I don’t think it was covered in the housing paperwork, but Glenn Dale can tell you all about that if you have any questions.
But I digress. Don’t bother with the mail to send your reports, just use the magical quill I left with this letter whenever you write me, and then burn the letters. Yes, you read that right, burn them after you write them. Trust me, I’ll get them.
As for responses… Well I’m working on a spell for that. Hopefully they’ll pop up where you’d expect them too. But I confess I’ve not done this without Spike before, so it’ll be an adventure for both of us.
I wish you the best of luck in your new life here in Ponyville.
- Twilight
Scarlet screwed up her face in befuddlement at the letter, and shook her head. Glenn Dale? Spike? Burn the letters after writing them? Homework?
It’s been a long time since she’s had a homework assignment. With a red wing she opened the top drawer of her steamer trunk and slid the letter in with her unmentionables. Pinning the quill behind her left ear she made her way out into the hall and across to the bathroom to get ready for what she was hoping would be another uneventful day.
Bright eyed and bushy tailed, Scarlet left the living quarters and hopped merrily down the stairs into the library’s main room. With each hop she opened her wings just enough to feel the otherwise still air rush across her feathers. She grinned as she did it, remembering how her mother would chastise her for such unladylike behavior whenever she did it in public. It was simply not the sort of thing a proper lady does.
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she noticed a curious fact. Somepony, somewhere in the library, was humming. She moved to the reading table in the center of the main room, and looked about. The humming continued it’s happy obliviousness, but she couldn’t find the source.
Changelings don’t hum, do they? “H-hello?” she called out to the disembodied voice.
Suddenly, there was a muffled cry, and a soot covered stallion fell out of the nearby chimney. If Scarlet made a list of the one hundred most likely things to happen this morning, a soot covered stallion falling out of her fireplace would be no where on it.
The stallion coughed and sputtered as he rose up to his hooves. He was tall and lean, that much she could see right away. Still coughing, he stood on a dirty tarp at the foot of the fireplace. Trying her best to showcase the calm that all Trottingham natives are known the world over for, she took a deep breath and asked the stranger who he was and what his business was.
Unfortunately it came out as “WHOAREYOUANDWHATAREYOUDOINGINMYHOUSE!” as shouted by a clearly insane pony with little to no control over the volume of her voice.
The stallion winced and two sooty wings, previously unnoticed by the shrieking mare, shot out of his sides. Whether it was an subconscious attempt to look bigger to scare away a predator, or an overly optimistic mating display, was completely lost on both ponies.
A few tense moments of silence passed before the stallion dared to make another sound. Which was just a whole lot more of the coughing he forgot to do while not breathing. Scarlet just stared at him as he coughed, until she couldn’t take it any more.
“WELL?!”
“Huh?” he coughed out.
She nodded, and took a moment to compose herself. “Who are you?” she asked in the least threatening tone she could manage.
“Oh! I’m Chim Chimalee,” he coughed, “but you can call me Lee, everypony else does.” He offered her a hoofshake, but she just looked at the sooty appendage.
“Okay, Lee," she said with raised eyebrow. "Why are you in my house?”
His coughing fit ended, he looked around the room and shook his head. “Uh… Actually I think this is the library.”
Scarlet felt her left eye twitch. “Yes Lee. I’m Scarlet Letters. The librarian. I live here. Now. Why are you in my house?”
At that he grinned broadly. “Oh! I’m Ponyville’s chimney sweep! I’m here to clean your chimney.”
“Are you? Well I… I-I’m sorry, before we continue, can you do something about your ah… wings?”
Lee looked behind him and noticed his two best friends were still standing at full attention. Turning back with a bit of a blush to his cheeks, he willed them back down after a moment of deep concentration. Scarlet sighed to herself, with the understanding that Lee wasn’t the sharpest knife in the apple cart.
She continued. “As I was going to say… You know what? Forget it. Could you kindly see yourself out before I call the guard?”
He sat his hind end down down and shook the soot from him like a dog shaking off water. What she assumed was a uniform sootiness to his coat and mane revealed a mauve coat with a tousled blonde mane. “No can do, Mrs. Letters—”
“That’s Ms.Letters.”
Lee took a moment to process this information and smiled. “Cool. Yeah, anyway, it’s the first Thursday of the month. I’ve got a contract with Glenn Dale to hit up all the public buildings in town to clean out their firepla—.”
Scarlet cut him off with a series of polite noises, shaking her head, “Okay new rule, Lee, are we ready?”
He nodded.
“When you come to clean out the fireplaces of the library before business hours, you have to knock first, okay? You can’t just let yourself in.”
He started to nod again, but stopped suddenly. “But what if the Library’s open for business?”
“Well then… you can just come in like anypony, deal?”
He nodded a third time without pause.
She clapped her forehooves together and smiled. “Excellent! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find some breakfast. You do… whatever it is you need to do in here and then… leave. Okay? Great. Do try and keep the soot out of the books, hmm?”
He nodded a fourth time, grinning like a fool, before he made his way back up into the flue. Scarlet watched curiously as the large stallion fit his upper half into such a tight place. Then she decided not to think too hard about it, and headed off into the kitchen.
If all the stallions were as thick-headed as Lee here, then Twilight’s prophetic calculations on librarians to spinsters would be right on the money. Although… She chanced a peak over her shoulder at the tall stallion’s muscular flank and—
Yeah, no. She shook her head, disappointed in her own wandering eyes, and hussled into the kitchen for a right proper breakfast.
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Wait...
BY CELESTIA'S BEARD! How did I miss this in the prereading.
I see now, what you did here. And I approve.
4028631
It's because I didn't like the original description after rereading it and changed it! Glad you approve, though.
I see what you did there...
Since Spike is the only baseline Twilight has to work with when it comes to receiving magic faxes, I certainly hope Scarlet does not end up having to belch Twilight's correspondence out of her throat.
4031732
I have to admit, I am significantly more excited about writing what happens when they appear than I have any right to be.
To get the unpleasant out of the way first:
I believe that you meant subconscious, not knocked out.
That said, great job so far! Let me know if you are in need of another pre- reader or an editor, I would be glad to help!
4035158
Sweet cuppin' cakes, you're right! Thanks for spotting that.
So far so good. A hundred years, huh, Twilight. She really shouldn't arrive so unannounced... Does she do that to every new librarian? You're just torturing that poor pegasus by naming her 'Scarlet Letters'...
4155270
I am a bad man, for certain. I need to add a new chapter here this week or next. Probably next.
4155878
It's next.
#justsaying
4215389
And I am still a bad man.
Sorry for the delay in stories this week, working on a script for the comic of Princess Twilight Sparkle's 500th birthday. My blog has a few more details.
But I promise you satisfaction before a fortnight passes!
This is cute story, you deserve a thumb and a fave.
4251674
Thanks! New chapter coming tonight or tomorrow.
Hmn, so reading between the lines, it sounds like around a hundred years into Twilight's time as a princess they had a war with the changelings that involved Chrysalis' death.
Hahaha. Hey, it's worked for 100% of the Ponyville librarians we know about.
Neat.
It looks like the first friend has arrived!
Heh.
Shipping senses tingling...
Wait, never mind, false alarm.
..........how...
has nobody said this?
"“Oh! I’m Chim Chimalee,”
CHIM CHIMMINY, CHIM CHIMMINLY, CHIM CHIM CHAROOO!