The Canterlot Public Library had last been rebuilt nearly two hundred years ago, when civic priorities placed more emphasis on spectacle and less on functionality. The great interior open space of the original plan had been gradually partitioned into wooden reading stalls and rows of ugly but sturdy prefabricated steel bookshelves to keep up with the growing number of patrons and books.
As head librarian of the Canterlot Public Library, Twilight Sparkle dealt mainly with the administrative matters that had given her more than a few of the gray hairs in her mane. But on that day she'd been at the registration desk taking care of customers. She had sensed the library grow even quieter than usual, and looked up from stamping a date-due card.
"So if I can check out three books for four weeks, it stands to reason I should be allowed twelve books for one week!" the older unicorn mare across the desk in front of her continued. "Furthermore ... ah ... excuse me! I am speaking to you!"
But Twilight merely stared, slack-jawed, over the shoulder of the agitated mare, who finally huffed and turned around to see what was there.
A few steps away, Princess Celestia, eldest of the ruling diarchs of Equestria, stood next to a small sapphire-blue unicorn filly. The two of them stood just in front of two tall white unicorns barded in gold and standing at attention, and just behind a brass stanchion with a small white sign on top that said "PLEASE FORM SINGLE LINE HERE".
"Y-Your Majesty!" the library patron gasped.
"Please," Celestia said with a gracious smile. "Do continue."
The panicked mare dropped her entire stack of books on the floor while trying to bow and back up at the same time. She gave a startled whinny when they landed with a bang, then galloped away and was swallowed up in the dim maze of tall old bookshelves in History and Biography.
Twilight pushed forward against the edge of her desk. "Princess Celestia!"
"Shh," Celestia cautioned, then motioned with her eyes towards a sign that said "QUIET PLEASE".
Twilight frantically searched her memory for the proper protocol for greeting royalty from behind a desk. Grinning like a moron was probably incorrect, but it was all she could come up with on short notice.
"Introduce yourself, Starflower," the princess said, nudging the small blue unicorn, who seemed more intimidated by Twilight than by Celestia but stepped bravely up. Her chin barely reached the edge of the desk.
"Excuse me, miss, my name is Starflower, and I'd like a library card, if you please."
"I see. Do you have some identification, Starflower?"
Starflower bit her lips and shook her head.
"Well, do you have anypony here who can vouch for your identity?" Twilight craned her neck far to each side in turn, as if searching the far reaches of the library for such a person.
Celestia stepped forward. "Perhaps my word will do?"
"Oh!" Twilight said, feigning surprise. She rubbed her muzzle. "Do you have some identification, miss?"
Celestia's eyes drifted in thought. "Well ... yes! I have my library card." She magicked a small grey card out of nowhere to land on the desk in front of Twilight with a surprisingly solid click.
Twilight's ears twitched in surprise. "This ... is stone." She squinted at the card. "And it expired ... if I'm reading this inscription right ... fifteen hundred years ago."
"Did it? Oh dear. I may have some overdue fines."
Twilight had never figured out how to tell when Celestia was joking and when she was being serious, and sometimes suspected no such distinction existed for the princess. She turned to the filly. "Okay, Starflower. I think I can trust this nice lady. Fill out this form, draw a picture of your cutie mark in this box, and I'll make up a card for you." She gave Starflower a blank form and a pencil, and turned back to Celestia. "It's so nice of you to visit, Princess! What can I help you find?"
"Nothing today, Twilight. I have my own library, you know. But one's first library card is an important symbolic threshold. I remember how much you loved yours."
Twilight blushed. "You do?" Then she remembered. "Princess! I was thinking about Haydigger's theory of the mitdasein, and that maybe it could form a bridge between Marehayana Buddhism and Neighzsche's will to power—"
Celestia nodded. "I wrote something about that myself, after a lecture by Canter."
"But—but that was a hundred years before Neighzsche or Haydigger."
"Great minds think alike. Which is sometimes a little boring."
Twilight inhaled sharply. Boring. The simplicity of the word chilled her.
She quickly brightened again. "If it's excitement you want, we just unpacked the new edition of the Encyclopedia Equestria! The one with the new magical index that can find all instances of any words or phrase you ask it for!"
Celestia smiled. "As enticing as that sounds, I'm afraid we can't stay. I still have to meet with the Ministers of Agriculture and Horticulture before sunset, and I know they'll spend half an hour just arguing about bee allocations. They always want to overwork the poor dears."
Starflower pushed the completed form back across to Twilight, who saw the filly had listed the castle as her address.
"Where are you staying in the castle?"
"In the north tower. I have my own room! Way up so high that when I look out my window I can see—"
"Ponyville," Twilight whispered along with Starflower. She blinked and shook her head. "I'll print up your card right away, Starflower. Of course, you can pick it up tomorrow. Or I can mail it to, um, the castle. If you really can't stay." She looked hopefully toward the princess.
"Thank you, that would be perfect," Celestia said. "It is always a pleasure to see you, Twilight." She turned to leave, then stopped, and added, "And, Twilight? I am always interested in your opinion. But you do understand, you don’t need to impress me anymore.”
Impress her?
"Goodbye then, and thanks again," Twilight said as the princess and her entourage departed. "If you need anything, I'll be—" The doors clicked shut behind the last guard on his way out.
"—right here."
She wondered how Bluebell, Celestia's last star pupil, was doing. She probably ought to write her a letter or something. Welcome her to the ex-students club. Help her adjust.
Maybe later.
For my readers who've suffered through my many sadfics, here's something less melancholy. Now technically alternate universe!
Thanks to Antsan for encouraging me to finish it, to bookplayer, GhostofHeraclitus, and Blue_Paladin42 for pre-reading, and to Ebon Mane for letting me use the drawing CosmicUnicorn did for The Three Notes (story #84 on this site, and one you might like if you liked Big Mac Reads Something Purple). Thanks to Sunchaser for telling me to move the ending of chapter 2 forward to where it is now, and for his detailed review.
A few things I see in pre-reading:
1. You use a lot of adverbs in your dialogue attributions. You might try doing a search on “ly” and finding all the adverbs that way, then ask yourself if each one is necessary. Can you indicate the same state or emotion with some form of action? It would punch up the chapter and make it a little more than a couple of ponies standing around talking.
2. Does Twilight not immediately recognize Princess Celestia? If she does, then there’s no need to say that she saw a stately wide alicorn. She saw Celestia. Let us know that. The unicorn filly, on the other hoof, needs more description.
3. Speaking of which, I’d like more description overall. We know it’s a library, but picture the library that you’re thinking of in your head. What’s the desk made out of? Are there a lot of windows? How high do the stacks go? You want to weave those facts into the action.
4. The conversation that Twilight and Celestia have while Starflower is filling out the form is cute, but is it necessary? The form-filling is the important action, and I think our attention should be focused there. Maybe rewrite this from Starflower’s perspective. She’s writing everything down while the two older mares talk about things way over her head.
New story! So I think it's about time to read some of your stuff instead of just following.
A short chapter, so there's not a whole lot to say here. I like the conceit, and of course the writing is solid. The stand-out bit of this for me is definitely the banter surrounding Starflower's request for a library card. It's very breezy and natural, and quite fun to read.
On the critical side, I feel like that first paragraph is a bit of a beast to get through. It's chock full of words with three or more syllables. It does serve well to alert the reader that this is going to be written from Twilight's perspective, and I know you have a big enough following that you're not going to lose a whole lot of readers with that block of text, but if I didn't know who you were, I would find it particularly intimidating.
The use of 'shouted' for Twilight's exclamation when she sees Princess Celestia niggles at me a bit, too. This may well be a matter of personal preference, but 'shouted' to me carries either no emotional connotation or some subtle negative connotation, depending on circumstance. I'd expect Twilight to be pleasantly surprised to see Princess Celestia, at least from what information we're given in this chapter, and so I find that particular choice of verb a little jarring.
Other than that, I found it quite enjoyable (if a little depressing – this is all Twilight comes to, after 20 years?) I need to run, but I look forward to coming back and reading some more later.
2229783 Both good points, and both now fixed. "Shouted" is one of those cases where I used the wrong verb in order to avoid using "said" and the right adverb, because adverbs are evil. But changing it to a movement with no speech tag is, I think, even better.
excellent writing. I love what you're doing with the writer's workshop scholarship—a very noble endeavor with a good cause, considering all the talented writers on this site
this line struck me as harsh, vaguely out of character for someone like Celestia, especially as a parting line
but I don't really like making these types of comments before the story ends because maybe it will clear up later
Needs more description. And fire your pre-reader who says otherwise because that's just dumb as hell.
I can properly say that I literally didn't know where this took place. Needs SO much more discription (and not detail) that will not only place Twilight and everyone. But explain her situation.
The Discription of the story doesn't count toward the story itself. Remember that. So EXPLAIN EVERYTHING! And I'm sorta interested. But not all that much. you have 1,000 word chapters that not only show uninterested writing, but point out a significant lack of effort.
Hell even my oldest fics were always 2000+ word chapters
You should have seen when I started out too. Every chapter was 30,000 words and it wasn't that good.
YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE TO GET A BARE MINUMUM OF 1000
It's just lazy and needs to be fixed
I am not sure what to think of this. Of course, I have only read the first chapter, but still...
You write well, and your grammar is good, but Celestia just seemed, I don't know, out of character. Why would she be so dismissive towards Twilight?
Like I said, this is just the first chapter. So, this could turn out differently than what I think it is going to.
2233665 Seriously?! She has at least made some effort in making this chapter, and not lazy! So what if this is a 1000 word chapters? Yes, she needs a little bit more description, but lazy?! NO!!!! This story's not even dumb!
Do I have the authority to slsp you??
I've been on a Salvador Dali kick lately.
“It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself.”
Twilight's concerns in chapter two did really stick out to me. So daunting to make your own impact in the world when all the best things seem to have been done and said, especially with the world being more saturated than ever today. Especially when you've already wasted so much time
As I read this, it felt like something more needed to be added in transition between paragraphs, perhaps more about her thoughts, but I am not sure what it would add other than hammering in the point. Wasn't sure either if you intended "watchpony watched"
Liked the story, I do get the ending and it is very fitting, but the writing was a bit too much of a cliffhanger for me. It was so sudden, I had to go back and check that the story was marked completed.
I guess even just emphasizing the last sentence as its own paragraph would give it more finality.
Also will mention I am forever grateful for your pointing me toward LessWrong which has taken my reading to bright new horizons.
Eye of Argon too, which I will use for more nefarious purposes
20 or 200 years o_o I'm confused
Interpreting Twilight's desperation as evidence for how much time Celestia spends with her, that's obvious lie. But a lie that successfully communicates that she's failing at impressing miserably. Poor Twiggles
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I'm so unhappy with that line, and with how I handled Celestia here. I don't think she'd say that or act quite like that. In fact I'm bothered now by the whole setup--why would Twilight keep working as a librarian instead of becoming a court magician? Perhaps there are no court magicians under the sisters--we've never seen any.
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Yes, thanks for pointing that out; I agree. I doubt I'll ever fix it, though.