Taking Care of Animals

by Nicknack

Chapter 5

Earth Pony and I left Twilight’s room alone so we could split up to cover the library’s upper floor. Compared to her attitude after the first day’s investigation, it’d been a mighty fine change to see her prancin’ ’round like she owned the place. Completely unfazed by a messed-up leg, no less. Whatever she and Rarity had gotten up to that morning—which was their business—it had filled her spirit right up to the brim.

I guess some of that rubbed off on me, at first. But five hours of searchin’ later, I started trustin’ my gut more and more that the entire investigation weren’t nothin’ but an exercise in futility.

Don’t you get me wrong: I’m a fighter. When my clothes store was goin’ under, I worked that sewing machine ’til the bank had the police escort me off the premises. I don’t just give up. I’d stick it out to the end—I liked Earth Pony, and not just her cute parts—but I had a hunch we weren’t gonna find any answers in that library.

The killer was more than good. He—or she; I still hadn’t gotten around to givin’ Earth Pony my workin’ theory on Rarity—was a monster. They were the sort of creepin’ shadow foals fear at night, hidin’ tightly under their covers and hopin’ against hope that a cotton sheet can stop claws sharp as sickles.

I reckon that’s how Earth Pony was, too—if you’ll excuse me comparin’ her to a foal. The monster was real, and it took her friend. She’d wrapped herself in a cocoon of cotton sheet convictions, and she wouldn’t let the claws of doubt cut through ’em. Why was there gonna be a clue in Twilight’s library? Because there had to be.

I felt bad for that filly. During our time upstairs, every half hour or so, she’d come to check on me. Every half hour or so, I saw the truth more and more in her saggin’ demeanor: we were wastin’ our time.

Still, I had a job to do—partly to avenge a deceased friend, and partly to help a breathin’, new one. I decided to take a break from the top floor of the library. Downstairs, in the library proper, Twilight had added in some shelves since I’d left town four years back.

I wandered through the newer shelves, the ones that were on the floor, not in the wall. As I walked, I looked for books out of place. Two shelves later, I smiled at a glimpse of the Twilight I knew: Dusty or no, not a one of them books were out of place.

Course, after six shelves, I also noticed that every books was covered in dust, so I doubted they’d actually been moved to get disorganized.

After my ninth shelf, I got pulled outta my bookwatchin’ trance by a draggin’, thunkin’ sound. My heart caught in my chest ’til it melted back down at the sight of Earth Pony hobblin’ down the stairs. I remembered her chipper, bright blue attitude that mornin’. Now, everythin’ about her drooped—her raincoat and tail dragged on the floor, and her eyes and ears carried the downtrodden look of somepony who’d failed even after tryin’ her hardest.

She spoke to me without a lick of inflection. “Find anything?”

I felt bad to tell the truth, but I gently kicked the bookshelf anyway. “No confession notes written in glitter and confetti, but I can tell you this: Twilight kept every book on every shelf in perfect alphabet-order, right to the very end.”

By then, the sun hung low enough in the sky that it painted our dusty room with golden rays and long, skewed shadows. Earth Pony hobbled through the growing dimness, over to the readin’ nook. “Right. So we know the guy doesn’t hate the alphabet.”

“Or girl,” I added.

That earned me a glare that was more’n a little hot, so I backed off. Now wasn’t the time for me to bring up my Rarity theory. Since Pony’d dropped the suicide angle on me last night at dinner, I figured I’d return wait until we got somethin’ to eat first.

For now, Pony walked forward, starin’ a thousand yards into the distance, until the front half of her collapsed face-first onto one of the public readin’ cushions. She sent up a plume of dust, and her shallow breathin’ was a spring windstorm in that library’s morbid silence.

It didn’t feel right to stand behind her with her rear in the air, so I jogged over to the other side of the cushion. I couldn’t see any of her face since her blue mane fell around her head like a mop.

Muffled, she asked a question:

“What is this guy, Applejack?”

I gathered my thoughts a moment and hack-strapped together the best answer to lift her spirits. “He’s a monster, Earth Pony. Ain’t nothin’ more than a spook who’s darn good at not bein’ seen and gets off on takin’ folks away.”

Earth Pony’s ears perked up at me, followed by her now-dusty face. “But he didn’t take Twilight! He just took credit for it. Why would he do that?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes things don’t make sense. The best folks like us can do is try’n think somethin’ out there makes sense, in the grand scheme of things.”

She didn’t say nothing. Hay, she didn’t move. Just sat there, quiet-like. I felt bad for her, but you know how it is. Sometimes a pony just needs things to be quiet to let her thoughts come together. I sat on the cushion next to her to give her some time.

After ten minutes, I felt it’d been enough. “C’mon, why don’t we go get some grub. Then, we can find you a pillow that ain’t a cloud of dust.”

Earth Pony finally stood up properly, stretched out her back like a cat, and grinned at me. “Excuse me, but I like clouds.”

I threw a smile right back at her. It was genuine, all things considered, and I figured the poor girl needed to see one. “You ever think you ought to’ve been born a pegasus, Earth Pony?”

She gave me a sarcastic smirk. “It crossed my mind once or twice. I guess…” By the confused look on her face, I thought she’d found a theory. Then she let out a bark of a sneeze that would’ve shook the leaves off the library had it been fall.

“Careful there.” I chuckled.

She returned it. “Dumb dust.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I mean, least it’s Twilight’s dust. Not a speck of it out of place, all evenly coatin’ everything.”

“Unless someone checked out a book or something…”

“In this town?” I raised an eyebrow. “I bet no one even goes to the movies anymore, let alone readin’ a book.”

We shared a chuckle, but as it tapered off, Earth Pony and I both got the same idea at the same time. Or at least, I thought so at first. She rushed over to the folder with all Twilight’s pictures, and I rushed back to the stacks. This time, I wasn’t checkin’ the books, but the dust in front of ’em. There were some uneven trenches in it, dusted over, where books had been moved at some point. I wasn’t lookin’ for dust, though; I was lookin’ for the shiny gleam of hardwood.

“It doesn’t say, Applejack!”

Earth Pony’s question shook me out of my search a moment. “Doesn’t say what?”

“The mare who came to check out a book and ended up finding Twilight. The officer didn’t bother asking.”

I blinked as I moved on to another shelf. That was actually a good angle, which once again reminded me why I wasn’t a detective.

Regardless of what I was or wasn’t, in the psychology section, I found fresh book tracks. There weren’t any dust in them, so they couldn’t have sat for long. The dust-covered book they were in front of had to have been recently moved, either by Twilight or another unicorn who’d been in the library.

“Pony, get over here!”

I heard stumblin’, a crash, and her cursin’ a table that fornicated with its mom. Earth Pony appeared a few moments later, bright-eyed and hopeful. “What is it?”

I pointed at the thick, green spine of the recently moved book: Coping With Loss. Earth Pony leaped on it like a cat on tuna, looked it over right careful, and delicately slid it off the shelf. She opened the back cover, nodded, and slowly sat down.

Then, she opened it upside down, pages facin’ the floor, and shook it. At first I was amused at her method of readin’ a book. Then I figured she was lookin’ for loose objects or papers that’d been between the pages. After she went on for longer, even that didn’t seem right.

Finally, I let my curiosity wander: “What was that all about?”

“Old trick I learned,” she muttered. She stopped shakin’ the book and opened it to about three-quarters through. “Sometimes, books that are opened to a certain page or section enough times get deeper creases in the binding. The sticker in the back cover says nopony’s checked this book out in two years, so it had to be Twilight who read this. And knowing her, she probably read it a lot.”

“Makes sense,” I nodded, impressed. “She’d lost Spike, and he was her little brother. Heck, she told me once she got her cutie mark from hatchin’ him.”

“Yeah, but…” Earth Pony flipped to the table of contents. “Death of a loved one is pretty early on in this book. The most-read section is in the middle of ‘degenerative nervous conditions’.”

“What, like anxiety?”

“No, like old ponies going senile. Long-term amnesia after an injury. That sort of stuff.”

I blinked, not sure what to make of that. “So… who’d Twilight know who lost their memories? Her parents aren’t that old…”

Earth Pony shook her head. “And her grandparents are pretty sharp, too. I met them at a Guard thingy about a year ago.” She snapped the book closed. “So that’s definitely a lead.”

Hope kindled in my chest. “Plus that one mare who wanted a book.” I wanted to keep listin’ leads, to make myself more useful. “And… uh, any other friends of Twilight who knew her. At least, they might know what’s up with that book. Or maybe they’ve forgotten, which... would answer that question, anyway.”

Pony stood up, swayed for a moment on two legs, and quickly hoofed me the book on loss. For as big as it was, the thing felt pretty light. Once she’d regained her balance, she tilted her head sadly at me. “Applejack… haven’t you been listening to Rarity, or me? Twilight… at the end… didn’t really have anypony. You were in her room. There weren’t any pictures of her with friends or anything.”

I blinked. “Beg pardon, Pony, but there were. She just kept ’em in her middle desk drawer.”

Earth Pony blinked back at me, several times, hard and furious. “You… you think you could have mentioned that four hours ago?”

“I did!” I returned her glare, minus the blinkin’. “I said, ‘weren’t nothin’ interestin’, unless you wanted Spike takin’ pictures of himself.’ They were pictures of her before the murder—”

“That’s important, Applejack.” She shook her head a little. “Sorry. No need to get snappy. But stuff like that paints a better picture of what she was up to before the murder, and can give us a clue about her personal life, which…”

“Neither of us know much about,” I filled in the silence with a wide, uncomfortable truth.

Earth Pony nodded. “And I mean, it might be a long shot, but what’s the thing you say? You miss twenty percent of the shots you never take?”

I grinned as she turned and headed up to Twi’s bedroom; it didn’t seem right to correct her take on the saying. I left the book on the table, next to Earth Pony’s folder, and then joined her.

That time, in Twilight’s room, the window had a view of the sunset sky. Bein’ alone in a strange, soon-to-be-dark house that’d recently been visited by a monster set my mane on end, but I swallowed and mared up.

Over at Twilight’s desk, Earth Pony sat hunched over the pile of pictures with a maginfyin’ glass. She’d hung her raincoat on one of the dresser knobs, which gave me a good view of her back—and the scars, plural, behind both her shoulders. They were symmetrical, and since they were both curved inwards, they formed a ghastly pair of wings, almost like a fourth butterfly to match the three on her flank.

My stomach broke the silence by growlin’. I muttered down at it. “Hush, you.”

Earth Pony chuckled, and I laughed too. However, the back of my mind dreaded how long it’d taken her yesterday to look through that fol—

“I’ve… I’ve got something.”

Somethin’ in her voice sounded mighty peculiar, and my hungry gut wrenched to wonder what it might be. Earth Pony was starin’ wide-eyed at a photo. I walked over to the desk to find out which one.

The picture was one of the blurry ones of Spike, and by his smile, it was obvious he’d taken it on purpose. Course, with how young the guy had been, he didn’t seem to know much about picture-takin’. He’d managed to get a reasonably clear picture of the wall, at least.

Earth Pony’s hoof shook as she gave me the magnifying glass. I swallowed, not sure why I was nervous. I scanned the picture from top to bottom, but I wasn’t exactly sure what I was lookin’ for.

The only thing in it other than Spike was a picture on the wall. At first glance, it looked like a family shot. Six ponies, all posing for a picture…

My mouth went dry.

I was in that photo.

I dropped the magnifying glass, shatterin’ it, and walked backwards. It had to’ve been an old picture of me, since I was still wearing my old Stetson from back on the farm. I’d left that in Appleloosa, with my little sister. I’d never had it in Ponyville, let alone worn it for a picture. But sure enough, it was in that picture, just like Twilight was there, and across from me had stood Rarity—a mare I had never seen afore yesterday. I’d remember a personality like hers.

Earth Pony looked at me as I backed away. There was somethin’ burnin’ in those eyes, and I remembered how she’d reacted to Rarity’s news last night. I didn’t want to fight in a library, let alone against an EGI agent. “Earth Pony,” I said in a shakin’ voice, “I swear to Celestia, this is the honest truth: I have never met Rarity afore now.”

The fear in her eyes didn’t abate one bit. “Applejack…”

“I do not remember ever posin’ for that picture, an’ if Rarity and I met afore today, I swear neither of us remembers it.”

“Applejack.”

“And buck it, I don’t even know those other three ponies!” I was on the verge of tears now. “I don’t know what this is, it’s some sort of trick, or—”

“APPLEJACK!”

I shut up. Earth Pony, she was breathing mighty heavy by now, but she weren’t mad. I was a good five feet away, and I swore I could hear her heart beatin’. Her mouth moved, but no words came out. She swallowed, inhaled, and finally managed to hiss out a reply:

“Applejack. I’m in this picture too.”

Comments

[AnnLies]

This part of the story is too intense for anyone to post a comment.

This is a sign of an engaging story.

Ann lies.

Signed,
The Other One

[Holy]

Oh man... This is getting good.