Hitch-22

by SheetGhost

Chapter 7: The Old Librarian

1.

The crowd dispersed at the conclusion of Celestia's speech with only a little prodding from the royal guard. Celestia stayed, speaking with Wintergreen for a few moments before descending back down the town hall steps. The field around town hall wasn't barren, many ponies still lingered, curious about the Princess but knowing better than to approach. The Princess herself walked undisturbed, looking over the town with curious eyes. She didn't find her target before her guards did, one came up to her and whispered something in her ear, then pointed to the old oak. Celestia nodded and moved towards the tree, still pretending to look as though she were just a tourist enjoying the sight of the country town.

Mayor Mayor for her part didn't even notice the Princess. She chewed at the snack she'd picked up and contemplated how best to carry out her vengeance. None of the hexes or curses she'd bought from Madam Pie had worked yet, and she couldn't figure out how to get the mare fired when she couldn't see the mayor. The Princess came up and sat beside her, wings folded against her sides. Mayor Mayor didn't pay the pony who sat beside her any heed. She just assumed it was some other Ponyville pony wanting to get out of the heat of the day, the idea that the Princess would want to talk to her was beyond her.

"Pardon me, but may I have some of that? I'm a little peckish," Princess Celestia asked.

Mayor Mayor started and stared at the mare besides her. The Princess smiled down at her with radiant warmth. Gaping, she offered the bag she'd been snacking out of without a word.

A few pieces levitated from the bag, and Celestia ate them one at a time, with small, elegant bites. After she finished, she looked up, ignoring Mayor Mayor's astonishment. She smiled at the large branches of the old oak. "This is a good tree. I like it. There's nothing like this in Canterlot."

"I see," Mayor Mayor muttered. She was at a loss for words. Why was the Princess here? Why was she sitting next to her? Would it be imprudent to ask? How did one talk to a princess? She'd read books with princesses in them, but sitting next to one was another matter entirely. "I uh, guess I should thank you, your highness?"

"What for? Is this your tree?"

"No, no, of course not," There was a lot of uncertainty and nerves in Mayor Mayor's voice, the more she failed to clamp down on it, the more apparent it became. "I uh, I mean for endorsing Mayor Strawpony."

"Oh? Why do you have to thank me for that? It was a favor for a subject of mine, nothing more." Celestia's eyes were on her now, and Mayor Mayor tried to shrink into herself to escape from the heavy gaze of the nation's leader. It didn't work.

"Well, I really, really, really don't want to be mayor, you see. I was added to the ballot by accident, but since you endorsed Strawpony, there's no chance I'll become mayor... right?"

Celestia's face was grave. "My little pony, with an attitude like that, I'm afraid you're destined to become a mayor."

"What?"

"You hate the idea of becoming mayor, right?"

"Of course!"

"You want nothing to do government or administration whatsoever?"

"Yes! Exactly!"

"You brood over the possibility over becoming a mayor. You wonder why any sane person would want to be a mayor."

Mayor Mayor was overjoyed. The Princess understood her completely, and would soon correct her erroneous statement about her destiny. It was clear that anyone who hated the idea of being a mayor that much could never become one.

Celestia didn't correct herself, she just nodded and kept her grave, knowing expression. "Then I'm afraid you're doomed. You'll be a mayor."

"What? Why?"

"Everyone becomes what they hate, eventually."

There was only one hitch, and there it was plain as day. The hitch was simple, really: what one obsessed and brooded over with hateful intent inevitably dominated one's life. It was why Madam Pie had a secret shrine to Celestia hidden in the back of her hut, it was why Granny Smith, who'd made it her mission in life to keep Ponyville free from tyranny ruled the community with an iron hoof, it was why Davenport of Davenport Quills and Sofas secretly kept a pen in his desk and only kept loveseats in his own home, and it was why Mayor Mayor was doomed to become a mayor.

It all was quite simple really, Celestia explained, take herself as an example: she wanted nothing more than to be just a regular pony. She hated the pomp and ceremony that surrounded and restricted her. Yet the more she obsessed about it, the more she seemed to struggle against it, the more it consumed her life. Making rules against ceremony just created new ceremonies against the typical ceremonies, and Celestia despaired for ever having a moment being normal.

"Of course, do you know what the real horrible truth is?"

Mayor Mayor shook her head.

"There's got to be a part of me that enjoys it, even if it's just enjoying being annoyed by it. Although I suspect it's more than that. I think there's a part of me who likes being pampered, who enjoys the silly little ceremonies and the funny way ponies gape and grovel. It's awful to think about, because that means there's a part of me which thinks I deserve it all, but doesn't want to admit it. I suppose I'm terrible at being honest with myself. You'd think something like that would come with age."

"I can't see it. You either dislike something or you like something, don't you?" Mayor Mayor asked.

"Well, what do you hate, Mayor Mayor?"

"Other than the idea of being mayor? Well, let's see." She really couldn't think of much, she even only mostly really, really, really disliked Wintergreen. There was something though, a taste in her mouth she could never quite get rid of. "Almonds. I hate almonds. Can't stand them. Never want to look at another one as long as I live."

Princess Celestia laughed. "Dear, what do you think you've been snacking on all this time?"

Mayor Mayor screamed and hurled the bag in her hooves away from her in fear and disgust. They spilled into the grass in front of her, disgorging the horrible truth of its contents: Almonds. Hot, salted almonds. She'd picked them up from the market on her way to the old oak, still in a haze over her deliverance from her doom. She'd enjoyed them as she plotted her revenge, barely even aware of what they were. Some part of her must have been aware, some unconscious part that was hidden within her, secretly working away within the depths of her heart, pulling her towards the intoxicating, disgusting taste of almonds.

Celestia just smiled, for the most part it was an attempt at comfort, but a hint of mischievousness pulled at the edges of the smile.

"But my cutie mark! I'm a librarian! It's my calling!" Mayor Mayor said. She had to prove Celestia wrong. Celestia had to be wrong. There had to be a way out of this. She had just narrowly escaped becoming a mayor, and here was her very deliverance from that wicked fate telling her that it was only a temporary reprieve.

"A bound scroll. It's an interesting cutie mark, to be sure," Celestia said, looking at the emblem that marked Mayor Mayor's thigh, "How'd you get it?"

"The library. Ponyville's library," Mayor Mayor said, remembering back, proud of what she'd accomplished and what it meant about her future, "I got it when the old librarian let me run it for a day. I ran it much better then she ever did. I reorganized all the scrolls, and scheduled everything for the next several weeks. I even wrote some letters to get books replaced and some transfers done."

"Administration."

"What?"

"Your special talent is administration, then, isn't it?"

Mayor Mayor gaped. No, no. That was impossible. She couldn't be wrong about her own cutie mark, her own purpose. She was a librarian. She was going to be- well, she'd been planning to be, the head librarian of-

"Let me guess, you wanted to be the head librarian somewhere?" Celestia asked, as if predicting Mayor Mayor's very thoughts.

"Canterlot." Mayor Mayor wilted. She gave up, as she often did, and waited for the Princess to finish her horrible onslaught, finish systematically picking apart her life and showing her the unfortunate truths behind it. She could ignore it, refute it in herself, if only the Princess would shut up and go away.

Celestia's smile was definitely michevous now. "What do you think a head librarian does?"

"I don't-"

"Organizes. Leads meetings. Balances budgets. Approves new rules. Disciplines junior staff."

"So what?" Mayor Mayor glared up at the Princess, who didn't seemed at all phased by her defiance.

"What do you think a mayor does?" Celestia questioned in an almost singsong voice, the trap was closing, and there was no escape for Mayor Mayor anymore. She looked up, her eyes once again on the branches.

"Cuts ribbons! Makes speeches!"

"What do you think leading a meeting is? A head librarian makes speeches, and cutting ribbons is a very small part of the job. The reality is that everything I just said about being a head librarian applies to being a mayor. In fact, the Canterlot royal library is almost a city in itself, with the amount of staff it employs."

"What are you saying?"

"What I'm saying, Mayor Mayor, is that if you really didn't want to be mayor, you wouldn't have even shown up at that debate. If you really hadn't cared, nothing in the world could've made you a mayor, even if they had elected you in a landslide. What I'm saying, Mayor Mayor, is even what you wanted to be was a just a mayor, albeit with a different title."

Mayor Mayor sat in stunned silence. Celestia watched the way the leaves swayed in the breeze of the tree. Then, when it became clear there was nothing left to say, the Princess stood. "I hope you find your way in life, Mayor Mayor."

The Princess walked away in her usual graceful stride. The Pegasus guards who accompanied her appeared from nowhere to flank her as she made her way back to the chariot. Mayor Mayor watched, her mind caught up in itself like a broken motor. No one dared to approach the Princess as she left, except for Wintergreen, who walked close enough to the Princess to wink at her. Celestia winked back.

Mayor Mayor saw this and realized that she'd never told Celestia her name. The Princess just knew it, and spoke it as though it were familiar to her. Mayor Mayor started screaming, trapped in the horror of the idea that the Princess of Equestria herself was out to get her. She didn't stop screaming until everyone else started screaming several minutes later when town hall finally collapsed.

2.

Mayor Mayor had never met her mother, but she imagined the departed mare was something like the old librarian. The old librarian had always been pleased to see Mayor Mayor when she came to the library. At first the filly had paid the old mare little heed. The library was just a place to escape to where none of her classmates ever dared to chase her with their jeers. It was some time before she discovered the warmth of the old mare, who always smiled at her when she arrived, and always asked her how she was doing, and actually listened and cared about her answer.

It wasn't always a perfect relationship; Mayor Mayor often grew frustrated when the old librarian couldn't hear her when she requested some book or other. It was the same frustration she imagined the strange pony with the indistinct cutie mark felt when questing for his or her unknown glocklim, whatever that was. Once she'd spent ten minutes trying to explain that she needed a book for her correspondence course, and her father couldn't afford to pay for it. Could she please, please put in for a transfer from another library? That was towards the end though, when the old librarian was starting to forget things, and wouldn't let Mayor Mayor do any of the tasks around the library that she used to.

Most of the memories were good ones though. One afternoon, after class, Mayor Mayor found her outside the library, huddled down underneath the old oak, a book between her hooves. When she noticed Mayor Mayor, she invited the filly to sit besides her. The two ponies sat for a time, and the old librarian began to read from the book, a story about a pony far away from home, searching for a place to bury her mother's ashes. She found a place, besides a tree within the Everfree.

The story morphed at some point as the old mare stopped reading from the book and began to tell another story. This one was about a tyrannical mayor, who became mayor of the town through virtue of bullying everyone into voting for her. Once she was mayor, she would gang-press ponies into working on her projects for her free of charge, by threat of raising taxes beyond what the poor ponies could afford. Under her orders they cut into the Forest of the Everfree. Taming it. Tearing it down. They took the valley that was now the center of Ponyville and made it into something different, something new. They stopped up the river and cut away the trees.

It wasn't what the mayor was doing that was bad, not really, it was the just way of things. It was how she did it that was bad. The threats, the bullying, the continual postponement of elections. She built a town, but she built it on the misery of others. No one stood up to her until the town reached the tree where the mother's ashes were buried. The mare who'd buried them there stood before the tree and refused to let anyone touch the tree, and bucked off anyone who tried. Soon, some friends came to join her, other mares who were tired of the way the mayor did things, and the mayor was turned away. The tree survived. The town continued to grow, but it moved around the tree, rather then destroying it. The power of the mayor waned, and she was forced to hold an election that she lost.

Mayor Mayor, still a little filly at the time, had drifted into half-aware sleep as the story continued. Her head had slumped against the side of the old mare, and her drifting mind made the imaginings of the story into a dream with movement and weight. She would never be a mayor like that, she told herself, as her eyes fluttered shut.

The old librarian smiled down at the girl. If she'd lived, perhaps she could've convinced Granny Smith that the girl wouldn't make such a bad mayor after all. Instead she'd passed away, unceremoniously, and without much comment. No one in the town remembered her but Granny Smith, Madam Pie, and Mayor Mayor. Carrot Cake could've told you there was an old librarian, but he couldn't have told you her name or what she looked like.

Her name was Book Binding, and her ashes were buried besides the old oak, without a tombstone, at her own request

3.

Town hall opened with a horrible groan, splitting right down the middle. Celestia was gone, and there was no one to protect Ponyville from the weight of its own incompetence. The pillars that held the building up tumbled, and everyone in the field around the hall scrambled to get out of the way.

"I warned you!" Solid Wall cried. "I warned you, I warned you I-"

He was silenced when the building began to disgorge its horrible hidden contents out of its growing orifice. A stream of cloth poured from the whole and just kept coming, creating a tidal wave that swept Solid Wall away. Waves and waves of socks swept of out the building. More socks than anyone could ever possibly need. More socks than anyone could ever wear in a Celestia span-lifetime.

Atop the wave of cloth rode Mayor Strawpony, who took the whole affair with solid indifference. In fact, he barely seemed to move at all. Everyone else moved, everyone screamed and ran and tumbled. The only sound besides screaming that could be heard was the sound of Wintergreen's hysterical laughter, a strange, desperate, choking laughter that was more terror and desperation than it was amusement.

The surge of socks didn't end for some time, but it did turn out to be a good cushion against the falling debris that rained from town hall. The field around town hall was covered in socks, and the ponies buried in it took some time to extricate themselves. When they did, they came out to discovered Mayor Mayor and Mayor Strawpony staring at each other. Mayor Mayor's expression was of shock and dismay. Mayor Strawpony's expression was a dopey smile that had been painted on and was beginning to fade.

Mayor Strawpony's name was descriptive: he was a scarecrow.

He wasn't an animated scarecrow, or a magical scarecrow, or anything like that. He was just a scarecrow. His purpose was to scare crows. He hadn't been doing a terribly good job of scaring crows, since he'd spent decades stuffed away in town hall.

"Strawpony is a straw pony," Mayor Mayor said, her mind working through this fact. Now she was certain she was going mad. There was no other alternative.

"Of course he's a straw pony," Granny Smith explained, trotting up from behind her, "He's a scarecrow, he's supposed to scare away good'fer'nothin' politicians like you. Politicians ain't good for this town, or any town, I reckon."

Madam Pie, McFeely, and the dozen other elderly ponies who'd also been in on this terrible secret, kept their silence. Mostly because half of them were still buried beneath all the socks.

Carrot Cake extracted his lower half from the sea of socks. Cup Cake had managed to bolt, but he had frozen in fear and let himself get swept away in the torrent. After spitting out the socks that'd lodged themselves in his mouth, Carrot Cake looked at the scarecrow, then at Granny Smith, then back at the scarecrow. "But, uh, we can't have a scarecrow as a mayor, can we?"

"And why the hay not?" Granny Smith challenged.

"Town hall. Socks." Mayor Mayor replied, looking up at the building. It was in tatters. The roof was gone, and a massive cracks ran down both sides. It was doubtful it would ever be salvaged.

"Er, right," Granny Smith was chagrined. "That reminds me! Minty!"

Minty Wintergreen, who'd been trying to sneak away while everyone was distracted, froze. She turned around and gave the most sickeningly sweet and innocent smile any pony could ever give. "Who, me?"

"You're fired."

"Aww," Wintergreen groaned, "Can I at least keep the socks?"

"No."

"Aww."

Mayor Mayor grinned as she realized that Wintergreen had been destroyed, and she hadn't had to raise a single hoof to manage it. Well, maybe those hexes from Madam Pie had worked after all. She reminded herself to consult Madam Pie on all her future vengeance missions.

"So, uh, I'm confused. You've been the mayor all along?" Carrot Cake asked Granny Smith.

"'Course not! And don't call me such a thing ever again. I'll pretend you didn't say that this once. Strawpony was the mayor, and his assistants did the job of mayorin' without being politicians. Means they had to do their job well, instead of bein' slimy and underhanded."

"But, now we don't have a mayor, or a mayor's assistant. Who's going to organize this clean up?" Carrot Cake asked, and pointed to the pond of socks and cedar surrounding town hall.

Quill Filing popped up from underneath the socks, a few of them still draped upon his head like the silly decorations of a court jester. His companion was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't matter at all. His moment had now arrived. His grand plan was about to bear fruit. "Ah! But you do have a mayor!"

Carrot Cake was confused. "Huh? Who?"

"Well, we can't have a scarecrow as a mayor obviously, which means he's disqualified from the election." Quill Filing explained, not bothering to pull himself from the pile of socks that held him. "Which means there's only one pony on the ballot for this year's election."

There was a pause as Quill Filing's idea spread. Realization crept up the faces of all the ponies surrounding him, except for Mayor Mayor, who ignored her father at any cost. Her eyes had returned to her political rival, the straw pony, as she tried to determine how much of this was real and how much was insanity. She touched it, it felt real, it looked real. How many diseases of the mind did she now have?

Meanwhile, the cost of ignoring her father piled up, as he worked his machinations, and brought to fruition his plan for his daughter. Mayor Mayor would never want for anything, and she wouldn't even have to eat almonds if she didn't want to. She would be mayor, and even if she was a terrible one that would be alright. There was no way she couldn't be an improvement over a scarecrow.

"Makes sense to me," Carrot Cake agreed, "I mean, if it doesn't work out, we can always elect someone else next year."

"I don't like it." Granny Smit objected.

"Do you have an alternative?"

"Yep. No mayors."

Carrot Cake shook his head. "I don't think that'll work. I'm not voting for a scarecrow, no matter what Celestia says."

"So. We're electing her then?" Granny Smith pointed at Mayor Mayor, who'd managed to knock off Strawpony's straw hat, and was now trying and failing to put it back on. "I don't trust her. She's a politician."

"She's fine. I'd vote for her, in fact, I was planning on it before things got all strange," Carrot Cake shrugged. "She seems harmless enough."

"Harmless as a fly, and far too stupid to do any lasting damage," Quill Filing promised. "But why bother with an election at all? Does anyone else want the job?"

Nobody wanted the job. Not the Apples, not the Riches, not the Cakes, nor anyone else who was about. In fact, nobody in Ponyville wanted the job, not even Mayor Mayor, who was given it without her will or consent. Somebody had to have the job, after all, and she was just standing right there and really didn't have anything else to do. What was the point of having a librarian when there was no library? A mayor was almost the same thing anyways, or close enough, at least so everyone agreed.

"Then, I suppose it's decided then. You're the new mayor," Carrot Cake said, and patted Mayor Mayor on the back, "Congratulations."

"Wait. What? You mean me?" Mayor Mayor asked, she turned to look at the group of people who were now staring at her expectantly. "Wait. You're making me the mayor?"

"I suppose we'll just have to accept it." Madam Pie lamented, leaning against Granny Smith who glared at her. "C'mon, Granny, let's get something to eat."

Granny Smith stopped glaring at Madam Pie for a moment to turn her ire on Mayor Mayor. "Bah! Take your ponyfeather mayoralty if'n you want it so bad. We'll get along just fine."

"I'm- the mayor?" Mayor Mayor said, her mind still whirling through everything that had happened. What fresh insanity was this? Why was she the mayor? What in Equestria was going on?

"Good luck with this mess," Carrot Cake said, indicating the ruins of town hall and its socks, before taking his leave.

"Congratulations!" Quill Filing beamed, trying and failing to extricate himself from the socks. "You'll be the best mayor Ponyville has ever had, of that I'm sure!"

"Wait. Stop. You can't do this to me!" Mayor Mayor cried, whirling around at all the departing ponies. They ignored her, they had homes and shops and fields to check to make sure they hadn't been destroyed by an onslaught of socks. They hadn't time for unimportant things like politics "Stop! Everyone, wait! I don't want to be the mayor! Stop!"

It was too late. Everybody left.

Mayor Mayor Mayor was alone.

Comments

[xoid]

Dear god, how does this not have more up‐votes?

The humour in this story is that delightful mix of perfect timing, horrible realisation, surreality and cringe‐inducing sympathy for the besieged protagonist that leaves you in stitches whilst grinning like a madman.