Chapter 24: Two ponies work in a library and talk sometimes
Twilight woke up feeling well rested. She got out of her bed quietly as Spike was still asleep and stretched a bit. She took a look at the alarm clock next to her bed and found that its hands weren't moving. That was strange. She pulled back the curtains of the bedroom window, expecting it to just before sunrise. She was rudely surprised by the sun being up in the sky and the streets down below being crowded as they would be on Monday morning.
It took her a second to realise that she had woken up late.
She rushed to the bathroom to wash her face and make herself look presentable, waking up Spike in the process.
"What's the bug deal?" Spike asked crankily as he turned in his bed, ready to go back to sleep.
"I'm late!" Twilight answered, not seeing that Spike had already fallen asleep.
Twilight entered her bathroom and quickly washed her face and dried it. She didn't bother with brushing her mane and just used magic to make it look presentable. She'd have to be back in ten minutes to properly brush her mane. She made her way to the door to the stairs and opened it, the quiet in her home being replaced by the quiet murmur of a class.
Today was the day when the teacher, miss Cheerilee, got her class to pick out books for a project and Twilight had totally forgotten. This was foolish on her part, she noted with distress as she made her way down the stairs. The teacher and her class were around the central sitting area, listening to the teacher about what sort of books they should pick for the project and other details and whatever.
Twilight was more interested in coming up with a reason as to why she was late despite her quite literally living where she worked. The reason, that started feeling more like an excuse after Twilight realised there was nothing to blame but her lack of responsibility, had to be good for her weird colleague and grumpy boss, Anya, and with how their last interaction had gone on Saturday, Anya was more likely going to be the grumpy boss and not the weird colleague.
Speaking of Anya, she was sitting at the front desk like she did most of the time. She also looked quite tired and was a lot more slouched than she would be 'normally' (A pony developing a slouch was already a very rare thing and Anya's slouch was a lot worse than anything Twilight had seen). Ignoring how her boss looked, Twilight approached the front desk.
Anya didn't react like Twilight expected. In fact, she didn't react at all besides a simple raised hoof in what was probably a wave.
"I'm sorry that I'm late," Twilight started, her voice full of guilt, "It was my own fault."
"Cool," Anya whispered in response instead of the angry reprimanding Twilight expected. Take wa a bit taken aback by the casual response but then she noticed that Anya was struggling to breathe and was shaking a little bit.
"Are you fine?" Twilight asked, concerned now that she was sure that Anya won't be calling her stuff.
Anya opened her mouth to respond but coughed really hard instead, and looked as though she was going to hack her lungs out. After she stopped coughing and steadied herself, Anya said, her voice slightly above a whisper but dripping with sarcasm, "I'm doing fucking great, can't wait to cough my useless piece of shit lungs out onto the floor."
Twilight probably would have said something about how she had cussed, especially when there were foals nearby, but didn't since she didn't want to worsen Anya's already bad day.
"You know, I think that you should leave and go rest since you aren't doing too great," Twilight suggested, looking eager to help. "I can handle things here."
"You look like shit as well, as if you got out of bed a minute ago," Anya responded, meeting Twilight's kindness with grumpiness, much to Twilight's shock. Twilight would have said something mean back but Anya was right. Twilight knew that she looked terrible and that she had gotten out of bed less than five minutes ago. Anya then added, "Go make yourself look decent and then come back."
Twilight grumbled and turned to go back upstairs and make herself presentable.
"And be careful with the book," Twilight said to the two unicorn colts who she had helped with finding the book they'll be using for their project.
The colts joined the rest of the foals in reading their books. They'd be leaving in sometime with their books, making Twilight secretly wish that Cheerilee hadn't given them such a project. Twilight loved books and she knew that more than a few of the books that had been taken would be returned damaged, and that fact hurt her.
She cleared her head from the images of book harm she had imagined and made her way to the front desk to see how Anya was doing, and maybe strike a friendly conversation with her.
Anya was at her desk, looking tired and still coughing every now and then.
"Hey, Anya," Twilight began as she say down next to Anya, "How are you feeling right now?"
"I think I want to cave my skull in," Anya answered with a sigh, as if self-harm were a trivial matter. "Or maybe I want some sleep. Either way is fine since I don't have to be awake."
"Anya, you can't just say things like that!" Twilight responded, shocked at how casually Anya said that she wanted to hurt herself.
"Okay, cool, you can go now," Anya responded with a cough. Twilight suddenly understood that Anya was trying to stop her from making conversation.
"Go where?" Twilight asked as she controlled her frustration. "I know you're trying to avoid talking to me but I just want a friendly conversation."
Anya looked annoyed at how Twilight wouldn't leave her alone. She leaned back in her chair and asked with a sigh, "What do you want to talk about?"
"I-" Twilight began only to realise she didn't know what to talk about. She quickly thought of something and said, "How did you get your cough? You looked fine on Saturday."
Anya turned to face Twilight. Twilight watched as Anya formed an answer in her head and how still Anya was as she did that. Ponies would normally have some body movement but Anya just didn't. No flick of the tail, no ear movement, and her face seemed to have no emotion on it. How had Twilight not noticed the strangeness as much?
"So, yesterday morning, I found a badly injured kid in the forest and brought them to the hospital, I'm sure you heard about that," Anya started. Twilight did know since she had heard from various ponies about how Anya had saved a filly from bleeding out. Anya continued, "And getting her to the hospital had a lot of running involved and to put it simply, I'm not built for that kind of physical exertion and now I suffer the consequences of that."
"You did save a life though."
"Never said I regretted that. Just hate how weak my lungs are."
Twilight was going to continue, happy to see how easy it was to get Anya to talk. Unfortuantely, she was interrupted by the class suddenly appearing at the desk.
"I'll talk later. Got work to do," Anya said as she turned to check out the books that the class had.
Twilight was disappointed that their talk was cut short but happy to have had it nonetheless. Perhaps she could learn something about friendship from the talk and write back to princess Celestia about it.
Dear princess Celestia,
It has been an eventful week here in Pontville and I'm happy to say that I've learnt something about friendship. Sometimes, somepony might not warm up to you due to your or their actions but so it takes is some communication to fix things up. I learnt this after a somewhat short but rather pleasant talk with somepony I had a strained relation with.
Your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle
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It gets funnier when you realize that Anya is talking like this to what can be described as a hero/world saver and later what can technically be called a god killer ... well more like God Petrifier.
aka I headcanon Discord as a neutral God of chaos because chaos is not good nor evil. The whole being evil thing is him just being bored and needing something to do"Big"
11885719
I need discord to just be the ultimate shit slinger, he knows exactly what's going on with Anyaand cracks jokes about it and messes with him about memories and help him/hinders him outta fun and to stick tobl sunbutt to piss her off.
11885782
she'll probably be named something else but that's a potential nickname
11885783
intentional since spike kiterally just woke up and went back to sleep
11885904
Understandle, wonder if him being amnesia will have him do awkward stuff around Anya since she "pretty".
Funny as hell if she gets hit on and she like "im pretty sure I use to be a dude so that'd be kinda gay"
11886223
the character is not like what you assume btw, but i guess 'anonymous' is a name that has too much history behind it, so thats on me
11885970
brain rot
you have it and so do i
11886264
Fair enough no flfault of you, just like you said the name anon has some pretty heavy history.