Forgotten Bookcases

by Cynical

What We Choose

Forgotten Bookcases
By M3lancholy

Now you and I
On plastic chimes
Above roses
Red and White

What We Choose

I was alone now.
Rarity was the first of us to leave Ponyville.
Her fashion business took her away from us to the big cities. Manehatten I think? Now she lived the high life, enjoying the finer points of Manehatten society and earning millions of bits every year. I might have been jealous of her, once upon a time, but she was one of my friends, and I was happy for her.

The next was Applejack.
None of us realised just how many ponies came to the farm until Applejack announced to us that day, long ago, that she was opening an outlet in Manehatten, her profits allowing for such a thing now. Bless her though, Applebloom, now the local handy-pony of the entire town, was left to take on the farm as well. I'll give her credit; she had a stubborn streak as wide as her older sister. She didn't accept help until the farm was in direct danger of being lost… again.

Nopony ever foresaw the last one to leave.
Fluttershy, kind, gentle, shy Fluttershy. She left on request after all her animals lived to ripe old ages, hell, after ten more years I think even Angel bunny is still alive and kicking. She was asked by the doctors in Canterlot Specialised to come and work for them. To this day, I'm not sure whether she agreed because she was too shy not to, whether she wanted to help other ponies get better, or because she was too lonely in her big cottage.

Then there was only Me, Rainbow, Pinkie, Spike, Applebloom and Scootaloo.
Then Spike left. He'd grown bigger and bulkier over the ten years we'd been in Ponyville, and it was now almost impossible for him to fit into his own bed in the library. He left for Manehatten a year ago in search of Rarity. He knew she'd be able to at least offer him some accommodation while he was finding his feet. I think that was the hardest separation for me to bear, probably due to the fact that I pretty much raised the little guy, and watching him leave triggered something in me. The result being that I stayed in my room for a week straight against the onslaught of both Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie.

And then I woke up one morning, and the world kept turning. I lent out a book to Cheerilee, had lunch, and decided that my world hadn't ended yet. Not that it really mattered anymore. Believe it or not I became reckless, eager to live life on the edge for once as I never had before. Over the course of a year I slowly narrowed the knife edge I walked across down, from staying awake for days at a time, to my most recent endeavour of pranking other ponies with devious plans and humorous results.

Each activity gave me a certain thrill that I had been missing from my life. That little bit of zing that made living worthwhile. I don't think I ever realised I'd been missing it until I had my first dose of it, even if it was simply a mix of chemicals within my brain and body which mixed together to give me an experience I wasn't likely to forget. Except soon enough, disobedience and pranking just became natural, they lost their flavour. Which leads me to right here, right now. That is, me being on the summit of Dragon Peak, the highest mountain within fifty miles of Ponyville, wearing a pair of goggles and a rucksack.

I stood on the peak and allowed myself a breather; it had been hard work climbing up here after the last time I did so to face the dragon. At least this time, I'd be going down a lot faster than I had before. I looked out over the western edge of the summit to the almost cliff-faced drop below and smiled, my heart already starting its familiar rhythm of BaDum BaDum BaDum. I looked around for a moment more, then jumped off the edge of the cliff.

BASE jumping, defined by Rainbow Dash as the coolest sport there is. Mixing high speed with low altitudes and no room for error. I angled myself, my heart strangely calm while I was in free-fall, and aimed for the clearing a mere 3000 hooves below me. I had planned thoroughly for this beforehand, I may have turned into a reckless pony but I was still a librarian and a scientist. I knew that as I weighed roughly 104 pounds and taking the normal value of gravity mixed with the height of the drop, I would have roughly six seconds before I'd have to pull the parachute with barely nine hundred hooves to spare.

If a pony happened to be flying nearby, they would have most likely heard the laughter coming from my mouth. The laugher of a mad-pony maybe, but laughter nonetheless. The six seconds of free-fall provided me with a boost of which I'd been looking for these long days. The smile on my face was plainly evident as my hair was pulled skywards and I flew towards the ground. It might not have been Rainboom speeds as such achieved by Rainbow, but it was enough for this unicorn as I reached the maximum speed and pulled the cord around my front, releasing the parachute.

As it turned out somepony was out and about, Rainbow Dash in fact. As I accepted the sudden deceleration, I saw a rainbow coloured blur speeding past me, turning around, then coming back up to join me with a less-than-happy expression on her face.
"What the hay Twilight?" She screamed across what was only a few metres. I didn't bother answering though; I needed my focus for the last part of the jump.

As my parachute slowed me down to the effect of roughly three forces of gravity, I had less than four seconds, three, two, one, and I never got to finish my countdown as Rainbow grew annoyed with my silence and apparent captivation with my activity and simply picked me up in midair, and plonked me back on the ground at more suitable speeds. She then continued to attempt to question what I was doing, not that I heard her. I was still enjoying the aftereffects of the adrenaline rush from the jump, and my response to what I can only assume was a question was "That was amazing!"

For such an unflappable mare, I think I succeeded in doing just that. Of course, I might have just presented a response which was so unexpected that it might even give Pinkie a run for her money. As it was, Rainbow eventually gained control of her tongue and attempted to form a coherent thought from the current events, in this case, "What?"
I attempted to fill her in but I had a feeling that I was sounding more and more like Pinkie did when she'd had a lot of sugar. "Well Rainbow, I've been trying to liven my life up again and induce an adrenaline rush so that I'd feel alive again. That BASE jump you just saw was my latest way to do so, and It. Was. Amazing!"

At this point Rainbow's jaw was very close to detaching and dropping to the floor and probably further if her expression was anything to go by. Give her her due though, she lifted her jaw back up and moved it around a bit before giving a much more thought out sentence, "Come again?"
And again I tried to explain the thrills that I had taken it upon myself to achieve, going into more depth this time and detailing how I'd started. It was a long story, starting with when Spike left me a year ago, and detailing all of my escapades from the laughably small to the most recent extreme, each accompanied with the explanation of the adrenaline rush that I received so much that each activity in turn became tame and boring. Eventually I ended with what I said before, which seemed to snap Dash out of whatever reverie she'd been occupying since I said I had taken up extreme sports.

"You mean you just jumped… off that cliff there… for fun?"
"Pretty much, yes."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because, wait, what?" The anger in her voice was enough to throw me off the trail for a moment or two, I didn't expect that response, or that tone for that matter.
"Why didn't you tell me you were going to do something this awesome, I would have totally come and joined in, plus I would have caught you if anything had gone wrong."
"But you have wings; I'd have thought the thrill of it would have been lost on you."
"Naw, flying never loses its thrill. In any case, unless you forget, Speed is my middle name."
"I thought it was Danger."
I saw Rainbow pause for a moment to try and think up a believable reply to that. "That's also my middle name."
"Riiiight."

I left it at that. All wonders about how much of a thrill Dash would have gotten from the activity aside, I could see that it was a smart idea and I hadn't done it. A backup wouldn't have gone amiss during an activity of this calibre, in fact, if I think about my planning for the activity, I can't remember actually planning a back-up. It was times like these that I wondered if my mental capacity was being affected by the changes that my life had wrought upon me lately. It was not a train of thought that I wished to follow right now, the glow of the jump already fading from me and leaving me tired. I had needed to walk up the mountain in the first place, and adrenaline only gave me so much of my energy back. I turned towards the path leading to Ponyville and started walking, pausing after a moment to look back over my shoulder and ask "You coming?" To which there was a scurry of hooves, and seconds later, I had my Rainbow maned friend next to me as we walked through the forest.

While we walked, we talked about stunts and sports and tricks and kicks. In short, we traded stories of our various deeds and death-defying stunts. For every story where Rainbow did a triple barrelled aileron roll, I matched with a skydive from pegasi drawn carriage. Every crash, met with an accident and every myth, a legend. I might not have noticed it at the time, but Dash and I grew more talkative to each other, we slipped out of the usual restraints that a very undernourished friendship had kept us on, and started talking normally, as friends anew once more. I might have said that it was because we'd found yet another common interest between the two of us. I still remembered when she'd taken up Daring Do, and now I had taken up one of her passions, I suppose things do come back around after all.

As we neared Ponyville, Rainbow announced that she had to check on something at Sugarcube corner and that she hoped I'd meet her there later, say 6 O'clock? I agreed and said I'd meet her there. We parted ways there, her to go and check on whatever it was at Sugarcube corner, and I to my tree so I could stow away my equipment and plan for my next activity, I might even be able to share it with Dash too this time, keep her happy and to keep me safe if something failed.

I paused outside the door of my tree at this, since when did I care about Rainbow's happiness above my own safety? Sure I cared a lot about all my friends, but separation and isolation had done enough to decay those bonds enough so that I didn't feel the same way I did now about them. Rainbow? Rainbow was different, somehow I just knew that. In the end I reasoned that it was because we'd renewed the bond between the two of us on the long walk home. With this thought firmly in mind, I opened the door and went inside.

'But why did you suddenly slip back into the bonds of friendship then?' my mind asked me.
To be honest, I'm not sure what it was that allowed me to slip back into my old role as 'friend of Rainbow Dash' again. Earlier, I had attributed it to sharing another common interest, but now I realised that it might have been something else, or rather, I realised that a common interest wouldn't have been enough for me to resume the old roles, after all, if it was that I would have been like that from the start, the memory of teaching Rainbow the delights of reading still firmly in my mind.

Looking back at it now, a number of other questions sprung to mind, for example, what had she been doing that far out of Ponyville in the first place and why had she gone after me? OK, maybe friendship lasts a little while, but being the cynical pony I was, I just couldn't see Rainbow lifting a hoof if I had just… just… just what? What would it have looked like for an observer? That was the question. As I put my mind to it I ran down the events and their order, about how I had stood on the cliff top, how I had taken a moment to look around to make sure I was truly alone, and how I had… how I'd jumped. Dear Celestia, did she think that I'd tried to commit suicide?

Now that I thought of it, more and more pieces lined up in my head. I'd lost so much since I'd started out in Ponyville, and I hadn't shown myself to either Pinkie or Rainbow that much over the past year, preferring my own company above all others and knowing that somepony would have objected to my frankly reckless activities. I suppose they thought I had become a recluse, gone mad with grief maybe? Either way, it fit nicely into the holes currently available for me, not that I liked the hypothesis it led to any more.

But the hypothesis also led me to another discovery, why I'd been able to switch back into our old roles as friends so easily. She'd dived for me to save me, to save my life. Even if I wasn't committing suicide, it was the thought that counts wasn't it? Rainbow had dived after me to prevent me from dying, I keep trying to get over that part, but it keeps sticking in my head, especially knowing what could have happened if she'd misjudged things and ended up ploughing to the ground herself. It was a… a comforting feeling, knowing that I had somepony else to look out for me.

It certainly put things into perspective, that was for sure. I glanced up at the clock and noticed that it was almost five in the evening, that would give me just enough time to make plans for my next activity and then go to whatever was happening at Sugarcube corner. So I sat at my desk and planned for a trial of a special suit that I'd been working on in my spare time, I called it a wingsuit, a week hence in Ghastly gorge. I'd talk to Rainbow about it tonight, it was certainly something she'd be interested in, that was for sure, added to the fact that I wanted to know what it was like to fly, this was looking like an ideal opportunity to do just that. I left the plans underneath a paperweight that I'd got as a present two years previous from somepony or other, and left for Sugarcube corner.

---

When I saw Sugarcube corner again after the numerous years that I'd neglected to visit it, I could have almost been fooled into believing that it was still ten years ago and nothing had changed. The bakery looked as inviting as ever, door open and the warm smell of baking enticing any and all inside. The bakery itself looked like it had been renovated recently, the cracks which had been there previously were gone, and the paint looked generally touched up all around. On entry, I was met with Pinkie Pie standing behind the counter. Oh, and that's something else, Mr and Mrs Cake left a while ago too, was it five years ago, or four? I can't really remember anymore. All that matters at the moment is that they left Pinkie in charge of the bakery in Ponyville, while they and the foals left to Manehatten to work as bakers in a more profitable area.

When Pinkie saw me, it was like we'd never been apart for countless years, that is to say, she bounced up to me, over the counter she was working at, and started talking to me at an increased rate to what I remember. Thankfully the Pinkie filter in my head seemed to be working still, and allowed me to answer whatever questions she put to me, and nod and shake my head at the appropriate times. After a few moments though, she stopped. I'd like to think that she realised that nothing was going into my head and that she'd decided to give me a break from her voice, but the true reason became apparent when she spoke, well shouted, "Dashie!"

After I'd managed to get my eardrums to stop ringing, I glanced towards the door to see that the newcomer was indeed Rainbow Dash. The pony in question managed a quick "Hey Pinkie." before striding into the room and being tackled by the party pony in a flying hug. Seeing my chance, I quickly went to the counter and talked to one of the staff that Pinkie had been forced to employ. Not because of any problems with workload, but because the neighbours had started to complain that Pinkie was being too hyper and that she needed somepony to keep an eye on her, even if it was just the amount of sugar she had every day. Thankfully, it allowed me to place a quick order for a blueberry muffin and sneak off into the corner of the shop to let Pinkie expend her energy.

I didn't not like Pinkie per se, more that I couldn't deal with how hyper she was right now. I might have been able to deal with her when she turned herself down from eleven to a more reasonable one. In any case, it looked like Dash was getting pretty uncomfortable now too as she was trying to push the pink pony off with one hoof whilst trying to stay upright with another. I sighed and lit my horn, lifting Pinkie off the poor pony with barely a thought. Rainbow stood up slowly, cracking her neck from where she'd been on the floor and sending a nod of thanks towards me. I focussed my attention on Pinkie Pie who had somehow managed to turn herself upside down while she was still in the magic field, I couldn't help myself laugh at the sight in front of me which set Pinkie off and caused Rainbow some confusion when she came back from ordering her confection to find me splitting my sides and Pinkie doing an accurate impression of a hamster in my magic field.

She shrugged and sat across from me. I tried to contain my laughter, reducing it to a few snorts and giggles as I lowered Pinkie towards the floor gently where she immediately proceeded to grab a cupcake that had been left on the counter for such unlikely events, and came to join us at our table in the corner of the bakery. We talked for a while about inconsequential things. I asked Dash what she'd wanted to do at the bakery earlier where she told me that they'd called off an intervention they had planned to hold for me. I was touched, they explained that they'd grown worried after I'd seemingly shut myself away for the best part of a year and they had finally decided to take action to remedy that. Of course, this plan didn't really apply when Dash had found that I wasn't a bitter recluse and that I was actually being quite daring in my deeds. She'd called off the intervention to which there were many complaints of ponies being robbed of a perfectly good Pinkie party.

This rolled smoothly into another discussion about stunts and sports between myself and Dash, effectively shutting Pinkie out of the conversation, not that I noticed at the time, I was too busy trying to convince Rainbow that potholing was a lot more dangerous than she could imagine, especially when you took it upon yourself to do it without light.
"Isn't that really, really dangerous Twilight?" Pinkie jumped into the conversation, trying to join into the discussion between us two daredevils but failing poorly.
I assured her that I knew what I was doing and I wasn't likely to hurt myself while I was doing so, then continued with the debate. If I'd turned my head to the side, I might have seen a look of disappointment and sadness in Pinkie's eyes, but I didn't, so I couldn't.

"Anyway, I'm planning on testing a wingsuit in a weeks’ time at Ghastly gorge, you up for it Dash?"
"Hell yeah!"
"Me too!"
"The more the merrier I guess."
"Erm, sure."

Pinkie's intervention in the middle sounded enthusiastic, but me and Dash both shared a look which doubted whether Pinkie would really want to do that. Not that she'd be dissuaded, she looked determined to prove a point and follow through with her word. After sorting out a meet-up time and place, I headed home to sleep. Rainbow stayed for a few moments longer before she left herself, the whoosh of her wings denoting her departure from the bakery. Of course now that I had some time to myself to think about things, I could see that perhaps Pinkie just wanted to be included in the discussion, we did effectively shut her out. I made a note to bring it up with her later. For now I was really tired and I just wanted to rest.

I reached my library, opened the door and gazed across the frigid room, shutting the door after I'd walked inside. Seeing that it still remained deserted no matter how many times I would still wish for my number one assistant to return, or even my number two assistant, Owlicious, to appear. Sadly the former was still all the way in the big city and the latter had died three years ago. I tried to move on sometimes, but whenever I tried to stop thinking about the friends that I'd lost, their memories kept coming back to haunt me. Hopefully the stunt at Ghastly gorge would push back my thoughts about them for more than a few hours. It seemed to be the only thing keeping me sane at the moment. Maybe if I did something which took me to the edge of death, I’d move on entirely?

I climbed the stairs, briefly looking over the balcony to the library floor below before going into my room and lying down in bed.
"Goodnight everypony."

I didn't sleep that night.

Comments

[Cynical]

General note:
1 foot = 3 hooves

[Uncr3at1ve]

The moving away stories all seem very familiar... just over-used or did you pseudo-steal them from someplace or another?