Recycled Origami and Upcycled Scales
Twilight Sparkle had to admit. Her home was stunningly beautiful. Each dewy leaf shone like silver, catching the moonlight its tender grasp and holding it for the barest of moments before letting it go. At night, the added architecture faded away to only the barest hints of substance, a suggestion to those with curious minds to ponder at what secrets those shadowy shapes could mean.
It was like something out of a foal's picture book. She thought this was rather fitting, in something of an ironic sense, that such a book-like place would house so many books within itself.
Though she had only lived there for a short time (compared to the Sparkle Manor or her tower on CSGU campus) it had already become her immediate thought tagged to the word 'home' and she doubted she could design a more perfect place if she tried.
The only problem... was that she was currently locked outside of it.
"Come on now, there's no reason to be difficult," she reasoned. The Treebrary did not respond to her plea. "I'm not asking for much. Just... unlock yourself. Or reveal a secret passage. Please? I'll redo the varnish on the stairwells like I've been promising."
The latch clicked and the door swung open before her. Just as she was about to congratulate herself on a job well done the door finished opening to reveal Spike's grinning ghost standing on the other side.
"Hey! I nearly had it!" she pouted.
"Twilight. You were bargaining. With a tree. I don't think being outside your own head for so long is good for you."
Stifling her embarrassment, she followed him inside where the dragon had already lit a few candles.
"How did you get inside?"
"Flew up to the balcony while you were checking every inch of the door for a crack big enough to slide through. I left Owlicious's bird door unlatched so he could come and go while we were out."
Flying. Of course. Despite having had the option for some time now, Twilight still often found her thinking stuck frustratingly two-dimensionally. Out of the dozens of methods she'd approached to try and enter her house, 'up' had simply never occurred to her as an option. "Good thinking Spike. Who knows how long we could have been stuck out there."
"Only until it stopped being funny," he said with a cheeky smile. Twilight mustered enough solidity to give him a playful shove.
"Being like this has been..." He searched for the right word, twisting his arm in a way that would have pulverized any mortal joint. "Not exactly fun. Interesting, I guess. But I think I'd like to be solid again."
"Me too," she agreed. "Guess I'd better get started. You want to help make your golem?"
"In a bit. I wanna check on something upstairs first."
She nodded. "Suit yourself. I'll be in the basement with the Styxian mud when you're ready."
Much to Twilight's relief, the large gap at the bottom of the basement door that always let the cold air up was finally good for something! She slid easily through the gap, popping out in the lower stairwell without an ounce of pageantry or presentation. She was on a mission, after all, and besides, who was there to see it?
Gathering up her spirit, she collected enough ghostly presence to flip the wall switch. Lights flickered one one-by-one, illuminating the basement as she knew it; one-quarter scientific equipment and lab, three-quarters miscellaneous storage.
While the lab area was clean and clear, as any good lab should be, the storage left something to be desired. Boxes and trunks and cloth-covered furniture competed for space in a silent struggle between Twilight's possessions from Canterlot and those belonging to the previous owners stretching back through who knows how many librarians.
Twilight frowned at the mess. "Great. Now how am I supposed to find the Styxian mud in all this mess?"
Twilight took a step closer, straining her neck to try and see above the clutter. As she did, she slowly rose up until she hovered above it all.
"Oh," she remarked, "Right. Flying. That makes things easy."
Having conquered the third dimension of movement, Twilight set to search the room from above. She crossed off the farthest reaches immediately. Some of that rubbish was so old, she half-considered if the tree had been grown around it. Thankfully, most anything that belonged to her was stacked near the innermost edges which limited her search area considerably.
All seemed to be going swimmingly until she rounded a rather tall piece of covered furniture that formed a small alcove against the wall. It was there that she found monsters.
They were small, hideous things with squat fat bodies, long spindly arms, and gaping maws. Twilight shrieked and shot up into the roots above. She clung for dear life before she risked a glance back down at the gremlins.
They hadn't moved.
"Twilight?" Spike called from the top of the stairs. "I heard a scream. You okay?"
"I'm fine!" she called back as she returned to the floor. "Just got a little spooked."
"Remember, you're a ghost. You're basically invincible."
"Well, technically no ..." Twilight mused, but let it slide. She pulled back the blanket, revealing the creatures to the world.
"They're stone," she remarked, then went to poke one. It deformed a little even under her minimal pressure. "Mud?"
A worrisome thought flitted through her mind. That would be bad, yes, but also incredibly improbable.
Twilight then noticed a slightly smudged piece of paper tucked beneath one creature. With a little careful prying she pulled it free. Her eyes scanned the loopy script and when she was done, she let out a low groan.
"Spike!" she yelled, "I have good news and bad news."
"What's the good news?"
"I found the Styxian mud."
"That's great! And the bad?"
"The Crusaders used it all making pottery in a cutie marks attempt."
There was a brief pause before he replied. "Is it good pottery?"
Twilight suppressed a small smile. Spike always knew how to lighten to mood, no matter how grim. "Not good enough to wear around town for a week. I'll have to order more from Canterlot."
"How long will that take?"
"Too long. I doubt it'll arrive before the new bodies finish growing."
"What are we supposed to do until then?"
"We'll have to find a substitute.” It wasn't ideal, but better a poor temporary solution than putting off the whole project. “You start looking around up there for viable materials and I'll start down here."
"I'm way ahead of you!"
That was... concerning, but Twilight had bigger things to worry about. Such as finding a suitably thaumic-neutral material in a room filled with science and antiques.
Her gaze drifted through the room appraisingly. What had a low magical energy coefficient? What would provide good mobility? What could she stand to part with if it got damaged or destroyed as she wore it?
And then her eyes alighted on the pile.
It came to pass at some point or another in the life of every librarian where they encountered a book that could not be saved. A misbegotten novel that some pony dropped in the bathtub, or a reference tome cracked and crumbling from years of mistreatment. Books could always be repaired to an extent; pages dried, covers rebound, spines restitched, but there was always a breaking point. Eventually, the kindest thing to do was to buy a new copy (or in the case of some specialized mages, create a magical duplicate from scratch) and retire the old one from service.
As the sole librarian for a small yet remarkably accident-prone town, Twilight had quite a pile of such books in her basement. Though they had long since been marked 'Void' and replaced, she still could not bring herself to throw them out. A few she had tried to preserve by recycling them into bookmarks, but had found her crafting skills somewhat lacking. And so the pile sat, growing by a new volume every couple of weeks (faster if school was out), with no hope for the future save the junkyard or incinerator.
But now Twilight saw them in a new light. Not just as what they had been, but what they yet could be. Trees and wood were generally poor material to hold a spell due to their strong magic signatures and relative high akashic values, but books were different. The procedures and processes of manufacturing wood into paper left their inherent magic so jumbled that it essentially became white noise. Books were fantastic at holding enchantments, and what was she at the moment if not one very complex spell?
"It's crazy." She shook her head. "Plausible, but completely ridiculous. Even if I managed it I wouldn't be able to move. Well, unless I... hm... that could actually... no." Her ghostly essence began to pace out of instinct as concepts and diagrams drafted and scrapped themselves in her mind. "But wait, if I...oh. Oh, that could work. That could really do it."
She eyed the pile of books again. They seemed practically inviting now. "Use us!" she almost thought she could hear them plead. "Give us a purpose! Let us be useful again, if only one last time."
There were... risks, involved, of course. After all, who knew what odd traces of magic the books may have picked up over the course of their lives, let alone how that could impact her spell. But then again, no spell was ever truly free from risk. Even simple levitation could backfire if the caster lost focus.
Twilight took a deep breath. Or tried to. Even without lungs the gesture was still calming. Closing her eyes to trick her mind into forgetting that stacks of books were usually impassable, she stepped forward.
Despite her lost vision, she still knew the instant her forehoof passed into the books. She could feel every page, every layer, more clearly than she had ever felt with hooves or flesh. The crisp feeling of dry paper and vellum was transmuted to a cloud-like sensation. She was feeling a book from the inside! Three more steps and she was fully inside. She could count every layer, thousands and thousands of them as they passed through her spirit, bisecting without pain. There was a strange warmth as well, not so much a feeling of touch, but more like if light itself could be touched and could invite one to touch it. She leaned into the sensation, a sense of rightness guiding her decisions, as her mind seemed to spiral inward deeper and deeper until suddenly-
*VWORP!*
Twilight blinked. Or tried to. Her eyes felt oddly grainy.
Wait, eyes? Felt? She could feel?
The unicorn expanded her awareness and took in the familiar sensation of sensation. Touch, texture, how she had missed it so! Even if everything felt a little dry and rough.
She wondered if her proprioception was back yet and tried to focus on where her 'body' was in relation to itself to get a sense of her new shape.
She was... a pile of books.
Not exactly a pony, but it was a step in the right direction.
But a stationary pile of books wasn't going to be of much help to her friends. For that, some editing was in order. She felt around for where she reasoned her back hoof should be and found chapter three of Daring Do and the Jade Amulet. With barely a thought, the pages shifted and rifled. She prodded further as the scientist within her chomped at the bit to explore and document and push the boundaries of this new state of being. A flex here and a page folded. A shrug there and some stitching came undone. This was going to take time, but she was a quick learner.
Time passed, but she did not perceive it, lost in her world of words and pages and folds. The longer she worked, the more skilled she became as pages began to whirl and flap and bend around her. After what could have been either hours or minutes, the cacophony of rustling paper settled down. Two columns of books moved aside like a parting stage curtain and a very Twilight-like creature emerged into the basement proper.
Testing her weight on white and yellow hooves, she made a tentative foray into the world. However the moment she was clear, the unused books in the pile collapsed around the void she had left. Startled, Twilight yelped and leapt into the air. She descended slowly, her lightweight body drifting in a slow spiral as she fell.
"Well that's interesting." She angled her hooves to glide herself towards a tall standing mirror she'd never found room to put in the library. "Let's see how I turned out." She alighted easily on the ground, barely noticing the perfect landing as she was already absorbed in studying her temporary form. It was one thing to understand and feel it as she'd been crafting, but another entirely to see it from the outside.
Her body was made of paper. Countless pages of white and yellowed texts overlapping in a complex pattern of interlocking folds, creases, and pockets. A crop of purple and pink bookmarks recreated her mane and tail of a degree that was far from perfect, but was at least recognizable. Her cutie mark was, thankfully, spot on having been pulled from the covers of some old monogrammed notebooks.
She nodded, complex folds sliding across each other with the sound of turning pages. "Not bad. Not bad at all." She tried a few experimental stretches, finding her body surprisingly limber. "Better than I expected, even. I think I could get used to this. For a few days, at least."
Twilight's papery ears perked up at the sound of familiar footsteps clicking their way around upstairs.
"Sounds like Spike found himself something to use."
She made her way up the stairs, slowly getting used to walking with such a lighter frame. And then she encountered the door. Or, more specifically, the doorknob. "Hrm. Right. Can't use magic. That's going to get old fast."
With a little tricky folding, she managed to hook a hoof around the doorknob and twist it just enough to let the door swing free. She stepped into the library proper and was surprised to find sunlight streaming through the windows. How long had she been working?
"Finally done?" a voice asked to her right. "Geez, I thought you were going to spend all day down there."
Twilight turned and found, much to her surprise... Spike. A completely normal-looking dragon, munching on a bowl of gems.
"Spike?" she asked, just to be sure.
"That's me," he replied, thumbing to himself.
"What in Celestia’s name did you use to make a body that realistic?" Seriously, how had he done this? Was this some sort of dragon ability her books hadn't covered or was her assistant secretly some kind of genius sculptor?
He scratched his frills, which seemed stiffer than usual. "You remember that growth spurt I had a few weeks back?"
Twilight nodded. "I do, but I don't see what that has-" And then it hit her like a dictionary to the head. She flinched and recoiled away from him in disgust, her pages crumpling and crinkling. "Oh Spike that is disgusting!"
"No it's not!" he protested, "It's literally just me!"
It was obvious when she looked closer. His scales were dull and chipped in places and he almost seemed translucent where the light struck him just right. His frills lacked their usual flexibility and suck out stiffly.
And he never blinked.
"Still it's... ugh. Why did you even keep it?"
"I never had a molt that clean before. I thought maybe I could, y'know, stuff it or something. Maybe use it to pull some pranks."
"You wanted to stuff, no, taxidermize your own shed skin," Twilight said stiffly.
"Well yeah it's going to sound bad when you put it like that."
The papercraft-icorn sighed and shook her head. It was still gross, but admittedly a very creative solution she would have never considered. "I'll give you points for cleverness. It's actually a rather ideal material since you don't risk any thaumic cross-contamination because it's already perfectly attuned to your magical signature.”
"Yeah, and check this out!"
He clenched his fists and hunched up his shoulders, a pose Twilight easily recognized as him revving up his fire breath. She took a few alarmed steps back and ducked behind the door.
"Spike! Careful! Paper body!"
But much to her surprise, no flames left his mouth. Rather, a small gout of green flame burst from the end of his tail where its tip was missing. He slowly rotated his body until he was practically sitting on his tail, then with a sudden surge of fire, he shot into the air! After a quick lap of the room he leveled off, hovering at about three times his normal height like some strange draconic genie.
"I can fly!"
"So you can," she marveled. "I guess this proves true Earnest Drake's theory about spirits and a dragon's Inner Fire."
He bobbed up and down like a buoy and something in his body jingled. "I can even store gems inside to use as ballast. Took me a while to find the right amount, but I had plenty of time."
Spike made another lap around the room, making Twilight flinch back as the flames got uncomfortably close. "Argh! Spike! Again, paper body."
He came in for a landing and turned around with an embarrassed expression. "Sorry, I wasn't thinking." He snapped his claws, which made a disturbingly hollow sound. "Hey, why don't you cast a fireproofing spell on yourself?"
"I can't." She tapped her paper horn. "No magic."
"Oh." Returning to his bowl of gems, he rummaged for a moment before producing a large, if slightly misshapen, amethyst. "How about this? It'd probably work for magic medium."
Twilight pushed it away. "It would, but it's probably for the best that the temptation is gone. It'd be really bad if I used too much magic in this form."
Spike nodded in understanding and tossed the gem into his mouth. It clattered as it landed on the others. Now that her initial disgust had passed, Twilight's scientific curiosity took the wheel. "How did you do the eyes? Shouldn't they be open holes?"
"They are." Spike opened his eyes and Twilight immediately wished he hadn't. She'd never thought about what a dragon looked like from the inside and regretted now having that knowledge. To her relief, Sike noticed her distress and shut them again. "I just floured my eyelids. I can see fine either open or shut, which is weird but, eh, what isn't today?"
"And the teeth?" She almost didn't want to know.
"Also mine." He opened his jaw like she was his dentist. If she were, she likely would have retired on the spot. Teeth should not come in so many varying sizes. "I've been saving them up in case I ever need an emergency army."
"Come again?"
"You know." He made a leading gesture. Twilight still didn't get it so he continued. "If you plant dragon's teeth in fertile soil they'll spring up into fully geared warriors. It's pretty common knowledge, Twilight."
Twilight was no expert on dragon biology, but having lived with one for the majority of her life, she felt she had a pretty good handle on what to expect. This did not make the cut. "And where did you hear this?"
Spike shrugged. "Shining Armor."
Now it clicked. Twilight vaguely remembered a foal's story her BBBFF used to read to her (and, at the time, infant Spike) where the hero had pulled such a trick. "Spike, that's just an old fairy tale."
"So was Nightmare Moon, and look how that turned out."
He had her there. Chuckling, Twilight decided that it was time to move on. She stretched her body and smoothed out a few crinkles. "You know, despite the lack of proper materials, I think we've done well for ourselves. I think these bodies should do us well."
He nodded, grimaced, then swapped the placement of two of his teeth. "Yeah, though I wonder why the Crusaders used our mud in the first place."
A faint patch of red ink relocated to Twilight's cheeks. "I may have told them that, in lieu of Twilight Time, they were free to use anything in the basement that wasn't scientific equipment or personal belongings. I can see how they thought a tub of grey mud was fine."
Outside, the town clock tower bell began to chime. Once, twice... the echoing bongs continued until eleven solid notes shook the air.
"Eleven already?" Twilight asked, "Is that right?"
"Yeah," Spike said, "You were down there working all morning. I checked in a few times, but I don't think you even noticed. What are you doing?"
As he answered, Twilight had begun to move about the room, collecting various books and placing them by the door. "Double-checking my biomancy references. I don't want to give any of the girls a botched body." She stared at a shelf for a long moment. "Where's Pinpoint Primary's Tenth Edition Illustrated Guide to Pegasi Wing Structure and Musculature? It should be on this shelf."
"Primary's? I don't remember that one. You sure it's in your collection?"
"Yes. We brought it from Canterlot. I remember studying it for Princess Celestia's test on the magical mechanics of pegasi flight. Though I still wonder why she was so insistent I learn about that particular topic."
Spike snapped his claws. "Oh! Right, I remember it now." His expression dissolved into irritated bemusement. "Twi, that was a library book. You returned it when we moved."
She pulled out her head from between two volumes. "We did?"
"I did," he corrected. "You forgot, you were so stressed about the move."
"Alright. That's... a problem," she said with a heavy breath, "but not a terrible one. I'll just have to go to Canterot and get it."
"Do you really need that book? "
"Imagine what will happen if Rainbow Dash's wings end up even slightly subpar."
"Oh. Yeah, you need that book."
She glanced at the clock again and took a sharp breath. "This is going to be tight. I'll have to miss the lunch meet-up with the girls, so you make sure to go and make sure they all found something to work with. In the meantime, I'll prime the gestation tanks so they can start generating proto-bodies while I'm gone. Then I can take the one o'clock train to Canterlot. I'll get there by this evening, swing by the library before it closes, get the book, then catch the red-eye train back here." She blew out a puff of stress. "It's a good thing this body doesn't need to eat or sleep."
Twilight looked up as she felt a small claw on her shoulder. "Hey," Spike said with a smile smile. "There's nothing to worry about. We all know you'll have us back in our bodies in no time." He offered her a closed fist. "You got this."
She smiled, ever thankful for his unconditional support, and returned the hoofbump. "Thanks, Spike."
True, this was a crazy situation but that didn't mean it was out of control. Just a few days of making do, then everything would be back to normal like it never happened. The worst of it was past. So long as her friends used basic common sense, there'd be no way anything could go wrong.
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Something is going to go horribly wrong, isn't it?
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I hope not or else it might be so cliche I might die from how tacky it will be.
Well, Pinkie learning how to multiply herself and getting some (more) class levels in Eldritch Horror counts as horribly wrong already.
I can already imagine the chaos Twilight will inadvertently cause at Canterlot. It should be fun to read when you get the chapter up for her trip there.
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Or perhaps... Wonderfully Wrong?
Twilight. Laminate yourself. Quick. Otherwise you will be splashed by some cart driving through a puddle in lower Canterlot, your papery shell will crumble, and your spirit will take refuge in the nearest bunch of literature. Do you choose the anti-science yellow journalism in that magazine stand, or are you drawn to the fascinating articles in that adult bookstore? Choices.
At least until Haycarte's Spell came across her purview.
And in the canon timeline, she found out that those lessons weren't anywhere near as useful as Celestia thought they'd be. (We're all assuming she crashed offscreen as soon as the heartsong was over, right?)
Your common sense or their common sense? From their perspective everything they've done has been eminently logical.
Wait. All that was set-up? The meat of the story is yet to come? Ahh yeaaah
Can't believe I let this story sit around like the contents of Twilight's basement. Eagerly looking forward to more, both in how the golems will go wrong and how Canterlot will react to Paper Twilio.
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She was flying directly away from Canterlot. That's a lot of altitude to at least figure out gliding.
I'm not saying she did, but there was plenty of opportunity.
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Or she could learn more about earth pony resilience. When I put it like that, she might even crash on purpose...
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Well, Rarity's probably going to use magic, Applejack's probably gonna break herself doing chores, Rainbow has an Alien-Scootaloo in her belly, Pinkie became kind of a tentacle monster...
Wow, that was 30k words? Mentioned before that I read this offline (with no knowledge of the wordcount) and this was an exceptionally smooth read. It also made my day! My fav chapter was probably the one with Fluttershy (probably one of the sweetest things I've ever read), though all of them were fantastic in general -- the characterization was phenomenal, and I had a lot of laughs. Looking forward to any future chapters that might happen :)
I hope this is continued. I'm looking forward to Spike's reactions to the various ways they've messed up.