Beyond the Books

by TTV_KingPhoenixEmbers

Chapter One

Beyond the Books
Chapter One

Every morning started out this way, didn't it? Hear the alarm go off when you're supposed to get up, reach out and smack the snooze button. Repeat about ten times before you realize you're late. Then you spend the next five minutes panicking, as you rush to leave for your job which starts at “Obnoxiously Early” o'clock. Just like every other work day, you proceed to forget how to open doors in your panic and run into them before actually working the doorknobs. By the time you're out of the house and flying towards your job, some ponies might wonder how you escaped unscathed. Sometimes you wonder that yourself.

“Slept in again?” your friend at the Ponyville Weather Team office chuckled, right as you raced in. “Have you considered removing the snooze button?”

“If I did that, I'd just smash the alarm clock until it shut up,” you retort, just as you do every day, before yawning. This whole thing was routine, although the words said were different. Sometimes. “What's on my schedule today?”

Your friend chuckles, “You'll love it – you have the day off.”

You stop what you're doing and slowly turn to him. The look you give – the one with your eyes half-lidded and looking unimpressed – makes him crack up. You scowl at how he's just standing there laughing.

“You could've told me yesterday!”

He snorts, “Aw, but where's the fun in that?”

“That was a dick move, dude,” You sigh, shaking your head. You don't know why you're surprised, he plays these kind of pranks on you all the time... which is fair, 'cuz you play pranks on him in revenge.

You hear your boss call out your name, and turn to see her land. Even though her actual name is Skydancer, but 'Boss' works just fine for you, and she hasn't yelled at you for it yet.

“Heya, boss,” you say casually.

“What're you doing here?” She asked, giving you an odd look. Then she spots your friend. “...He didn't tell you yesterday, did he?”

“It may have slipped my mind,” He snickers. Both the boss and you shake your head.

“Get your flank back home, you look like a mess.”

You chuckle, “Sounds about normal!”

“Yeah, 'cuz you keep hitting the snooze button, sleepyhead.”

Laughing as you head on back into the skies, aiming to fly at a much less panicked pace than ten minutes ago, you wave as you plot to find a spare cloud and sleep until it was no longer “Obnxiously Early” o'clock. Finding just the spot, you immediantly land and just as quickly resume your sleep from earlier.

By the time you wake up, the sun is in the middle of the sky. Realizing you just spent half of the day sleeping and only had half a day to hang out on your day off, which was a rare occurance in itself, you zoom back down to the ground, hoping to find something to do. Your friend is still working at the weather office, doing the usual thing of paperwork probably. Walking about, you are just looking around at Ponyville, appearing bored at the fact that everypony seems busy.

Your other friends are at their jobs as well, so they were off-limits to hang with for the time being. So you decide to just let your hooves steer you where they want to go. After a few minutes, your eyebrows rise. For some reason, your hooves seem to think you want to go into the Ponyville Library.

I've got nothing else to do, you think to yourself with a shrug.

Walking up to the door, you give it three short knocks, wondering just what you'd check out from the place. That gets you thinking, what books does the library offer? You've not been inside it before, so you don't really know. All that you know is that it's taken care of by a mare that apparently moved here from Canterlot quite sometime ago; you vaguely remember one of Pinkie's welcome parties, but considering the frightening frequency of her parties, those memories are very vague. The door's suddenly enveloped in a violet aura of magic, and you step back a bit as you watch it swing in.

“Oh, hello,” A lavender mare greets you with a smile. You recognize her from her welcome party as Twilight Sparkle. “Do you need something?”

“Well, I've got the day off and I was wondering if you had any books you might recommend,” you say.

You watch as the unicorn's face brightens in an instant. Clearly she was as much of a bookworm as everypony said she was. This was only confirmed as she dragged you inside to see what you'd be interested in.

"What kind of things do you like?" She asks with a smile. You shrug.

"I don't know, I haven't been here before," you admit. She gets a determined frown at this.

"I'm sure we can find something for you!"

Your eyebrow raises as you watch her remove books from an entire shelf. You notice that most of them were adventurous titles, and decide that you aren't really in the mood for some super-adventurous story right now. Perhaps something else will do. Looking about as Twilight puts the books back, every now and then hovering one by you just to get rejected politely, you finally find a section you think you have a craving for right now.

“Those?” She asked, pointing a hoof at the shelf. You nod. “You actually like those kind of books?”

“I don't know," you say about one. "It just looks interesting, that's all. Worth a shot, right?"

Twilight blinks, before shrugging and the two of you go about checking out the book. Once that's taken care of, you thank her – your words muffled by the book you hold in your mouth – and take off for your napping cloud. Once there, you settle down with the book, open it, and start at the beginning.

Once upon a time...

Comments

[Whirring Gears]

Noticed a couple past tense verbs here and there instead of present. Other than that, looks interesting and I'd like to see more!

[the-pieman]

I'm new here and I'm interested but busy, how do you set a fic to "read later"?

[the-pieman]

I'm new here and I'm interested but busy, how do you set a fic to "read later"? Wait, I'll just check the FAQ section!

[Shadowers1]

521742 clicke the book next to the title, and if you wwant to keep track of it while its in progression, click the star next to the thumbs up/down bar

[Fox-Sama]

Not bad, a little short but most first chapters are.

Keep it up

[Vulpibard]

this. is. interesting, i'll be sure to follow your story.