Dinky and the Sisterhooves

by Impossible Numbers

Bookworm vs. Bookworm! Behold the Great Battle of Wits!

The next morning, Dinky skipped and sang through Ponyville on her way to the gnarled… or was it gnarly, she’d have to check the dictionary again… to the gnarled oak tree with a door on the trunk and windows on the branches.

What the other Sisterhooves Sisters didn’t know – and what she hadn’t cared to tell them last night – was this: Golden Oak Library was her second home.

Not literally, of course. The previous librarian – good old Cheerilee, now there was a mare who understood the foalish mind – had lived there, in a bedroom over the main hall, and apparently the new one was moving in to take her place. As much as Dinky spent hours at that library, she’d rather go home to sleep on her own bed, thank you all the same.

She simply strolled through the front door. Last night had been the closest she’d ever gotten to a mare whom, so far, she’d only ever seen as a sort of distant blob. And briefly at the Summer Sun Celebration, of course.

If anything, she couldn’t wait to see a hero in her natural environment.

Dinky slid in, balancing the key guiltily behind her own head.

There she was! Sitting up to the table with the weird wooden horsehead thingy on it, reading a book! Now that was her kind of librarian!

Dinky stopped and watched until the hero Twilight Sparkle looked up.

“Can I help you?” the hero said.

Dinky’s gaze flickered to the unicorn horn and to the sparkly stars of the cutie mark. It was all for show: Dinky tended to know about ponies ahead of time before going in for the direct assault.

“You’re Twilight Sparkle, right?” she said innocently.

“Yes…” said the hero – more like a stranger, indicating that the answer could very well turn into a “no” if this wasn’t to her liking.

Dinky hesitated, but not for long. Thanks to Derpy, a little pegasus determination pushed against the approaching gales of trouble.

“You remember me? I was with Ammy – I mean, with Amethyst a couple of times in Canterlot?”

Twilight’s face creased with the effort. “I don’t remember an Amethyst…”

“Or Lyra? Maybe you’d know Lyra? Lyra Heartstrings? She was up in Canterlot to see her friends. Ammy’s the grumpy-looking one she brought with her?”

Contriving to look sad without really pushing her face much, Twilight said, “Vaguely. I’m sorry. Canterlot feels like a lifetime ago, to be honest.”

“That’s OK!” Dinky wandered among the shelves, inspecting the covers for any odd words or strange phrases. “Do you have any books on how the world was made? I’m on a quest, you see.”

Silence. When she turned around to check, she saw Twilight reading her book. Of course, back in Canterlot she’d had her nose behind hundreds of pages and a well-bound cover pretty much all the time, but there were such things as manners.

“I said do you have any books on how –?”

“Yes, yes, I heard. Sorry.” Although Twilight’s frown didn’t look particularly sorry. “Isn’t that a bit weighty for someone your age? We’ve got children’s books over there –” Twilight pointed without looking “– if you want something more age-appropriate.”

Thus divested of her librarian duties, she buried herself in her book.

Dinky glared at her. The old librarian would never have acted so brusquely, to say nothing of a hero. What was this mare’s problem?

Normally, Dinky wouldn’t swank. Blushes and apologies were more natural to her, especially around Derpy, because Derpy – who didn’t have much of it herself – treasured intelligence in others. And she treasured you being yourself. Dinky would be anyone for Derpy, so in some respects she was lucky.

But Twilight was seriously ruining the script, and Dinky was nothing if not a mare who… well, didn’t direct, but who felt deep down that she really knew more than most of the cast and crew did, including the director.

“I’ve read them all,” she blurted out proudly.

Ah, now this made Twilight look up. “I beg your pardon?”

“I’ve read them all.”

“We have three hundred and sixty-six children’s books.”

“Yes. And I’ve read them all.”

“You mean you’ve borrowed them. No one your age could read as fast as –” To Dinky’s surprise, Twilight suddenly looked as though she’d been hit with a shovel. After that, her face was much softer. “You’ve really read them all?”

“Well, I don’t have a lot of books at home. Just the geology ones.”

Twilight closed her book. “Geology?”

“Yeah.” During her speech, Dinky craned to see the cover under Twilight’s hoof. “Ammy’s big on geology. Ask me anything.”

“About geology?”

“Yep.”

“Uh…” Twilight tapped her lips. “OK, something easy… What’s the distinction between magma and lava?”

Pfft. Too easy. “Magma is molten rock below the earth’s surface,” Dinky recited. “You can sometimes find it in chambers under volcanoes. When it spills out and comes to the surface, then it becomes lava.”

Twilight nodded encouragingly. “Not bad. Let’s try something else: What is the dominant element contained in the earth’s crust?”

“Oxygen,” said Dinky without hesitation. “Then it’s silicon. That’s why there are so many silicates, like quartz.” A momentary loyalty to her sister Amethyst prompted her to add, “Quartz is my favourite.”

Despite herself, she smirked at the raised eyebrow on Twilight’s face. True, that raised eyebrow was clearly of the “well done you’re not as dumb as I thought” variety, but she’d take what she could get. Especially from someone who didn’t remember her sister’s name.

“Interesting,” said Twilight, turning around on her seat to face her fully. “So if I were to ask you where you’d look to find a stalactite, you’d say –”

“On the floor in a cave.”

She knew from the sudden stillness she’d got it wrong.

“I mean on the ceiling,” she said quickly. “Stalagmites are on the floor.”

“Well done.” Twilight nodded. “Wow, you’ve really done your homework.”

“I read them over and over until Ammy said, ‘Why don’t you try some more books at the library?’ Anyway, you can only read about rocks so many times before it gets…” Out of respect for her sister, she amended the upcoming phrase to: “A little bit dull.”

All the same, she hadn’t quite forgotten the brusque reception she’d received, and so sauntered off to inspect the classics section. Now that the smugness was dying away, she wondered if waking the sleeping dragon of Twilight’s interest had been a little on the dangerous side. Ah well. Quests were supposed to be dangerous, and all that.

“What are you looking for?” Twilight’s hoofsteps came up behind her, making her spine tingle. “The classics? Aren’t they a little advanced?”

Smugness demanded a response to this outrage. “The first one I read was High Hopes by Inkling.”

“But that’s over five hundred pages.”

“Yep.”

Suspicion twanging on each syllable, Twilight said, “Are you sure you’ve actually read it?”

But Dinky had been expecting this. She took a deep breath and countered with: “The story starts when Little Seedling goes to visit her parents’ gravestones and gets ambushed by ‘Willing-and-Able’ Mama Winch. She makes the filly get her some food so she can find the traitor Compost Heap and get her revenge on that vile mare.”

“Yes, but anyone who started the story could easily say –”

“Years later, Little Seedling gets money secretly from an unknown benefactor who turns out to be Mama Winch. Little Seedling’s ‘true’ love is Star-Crossed, an angry stallion who hates all mares as wicked and scheming, but then marries one later anyway just to spite poor Little Seedling.”

“OK, so not everyone knows that, but –”

“Compost Heap turns out to be the mare who betrayed Star-Crossed and Mama Winch for money years ago. Oh, and Star-Crossed becomes a widower at the end and is very sorry, but in my edition he marries Little Seedling, and in the older edition, they just part ways because they’re too angry and sad to make up.”

Finally, she gasped for air.

Twilight said, “Wow. Thorough.”

“I did read it. Some of it was very sad, but it was all so interesting. What were you reading, by the way? I didn’t see.”

“Hm?” Twilight blinked and glanced over her shoulder. “Oh. That.”

Surprisingly, she blushed, a tactical mistake when in the presence of a curious filly.

“Er… just an old classic. I only read it for nostalgic purposes.”

Dinky frowned. Good as the dictionary was, she hadn’t read up to the letter “N” yet. “What do you mean? Is it something I might like?”

Twilight squirmed where she stood. “I was reading… The Hidden Plot.”

The instant her ears met those words, Dinky beamed and almost rose off the ground. “Ooh, I love that one! It was the first book I ever took home. All the mystery about the hidden plot of land, and who was growing those wonderful flowers. I never knew gardening could be so fascinating!”

“But it’s… you know… a children’s book.”

Twilight was saying this to a filly who’d already tackled more classics books – or so Dinky suspected – than most of the ponies of Ponyville had even touched. “So? It makes ponies happy. I liked it. Cheerilee says there’s nothing wrong with being a child, even for a grown-up. She told me she reads children’s classics too.”

“Ah. I think I’ve met her. Cheerilee is the schoolteacher who used to live here in the library, isn’t she?”

“Yep! She’s the best! And she’s really smart. You’d love her too if you spoke to her.”

For the first time, Twilight actually smiled. Dinky thought she had a lovely smile, like a giggle in squiggly form. If only she did it more often.

“I think I will have a talk with her,” said Twilight, more to herself than to Dinky. “I mean, friends are all very well, but it’d be nice to get to know someone interested in knowledge and learning.”

“Cheerilee’s your mare there, Miss Twilight Sparkle.”

The smile widened, now becoming the threshold of laughter. “I suppose you have a point… um… sorry, I didn’t get your name?”

Dinky raised a hoof to shake. “Dinky, Miss Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight blushed, but she accepted it and shook once. “Just call me Twilight. What would you like to read today, Dinky? Or…” She giggled, and it was a tinkling, tickling sound that made Dinky giggle back. “She Who Knows The Classics So Well?”

Already, Dinky’s mind fizzled and burst with fireworks. Until she’d cracked open her first book, alone in her room, she’d had no idea it was possible to see whole worlds without getting out of her chair. She’d seen the vast savannahs of the Zebra Lands, climbed the Yakyak Mountain Range, been hustled and bustled in the big city of Manehattan, and even dived under the sea to be dazzled by the fabled lost palace of Ethis Ethica. All while drinking a cup of cocoa and getting backache from stooping too much on her beanie bag, or on her mattress, or sitting too long on the floor.

She said, through the colours and the bangs of her own imagination, “I’d like to read you, Miss – Twilight.”

Twilight gave her an odd look for a moment.

“I’ll translate that,” she said carefully, “as drink and biscuits. Care to join me? I was just about to take a break.”

Dinky held up an embarrassed grin. Sometimes, trying to be cute was an easy art to fumble.

“Of, of course,” she mumbled. “Wh-Why wouldn’t I?”

---

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

It's always a joy to meet a kindred spirit... though it can be hard to believe you've found one.

[PresentPerfect]

Never seen Cheerilee as the previous librarian before, that's neat. :)