After avoiding the last two annual events, Twilight is finally going to hold her first library sale. Or else. And when compared to selling off books, 'or else' may be starting to look pretty good.
Libraries have a way of accumulating excess reading material. Periodicals pile up. Ponies who fail to sell off their own books at stable sales decide donations are easier than just waiting for the next go-round. And of course, a truly dedicated librarian will be adding tomes at every opportunity, until the shelves are full -- and then some. There's a cure for this situation, and Twilight's been avoiding it for a few years.
Time's up.
(A stand-alone, no prior-reading-necessary part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group: new members and trope edits are welcome. )
There were times when she wondered if they were called patrons because it took so much effort to keep from patronizing them.
In many ways, the daily operation of Ponyville's public library had very little in common with Twilight's previous custody of the Ancient History department in the Canterlot Archives, and most of those differences centered around the use of the facility. When she'd reigned over the tower -- well, realistically, after she'd been kicked up the ramp into the single most isolated position available just so everypony else wouldn't have to deal with her trying to reorganize their departments every other week -- the maximum number of visitors she'd ever had to deal with in a single day was two. The books themselves never left her section: she'd stood watch over some of Equestria's most precious texts, and so it was understood that any research done would be conducted on the premises. Also that the standing of watch was going to be rather on the literal side, for Twilight would find a place where she could keep an eye on things and then do exactly that, because the books were precious indeed and nothing was going to happen to her charges if she could prevent it. A maximum of two visitors per day, and as her reputation had spread throughout the academic community, the duration of those visits became progressively shorter, for it seemed as if many ponies had trouble taking notes while a small, exceptionally slender unicorn mare unblinkingly stared at them from a mere three body lengths away.
It had taken more than a little time for Twilight to recognize the errors she'd made, and all of those realizations had come after she'd moved to Ponyville. To allow ordinary books free departure after their borrowers had made the loan official... it had taken some getting used to, although the first accusation of stalking had done a lot to encourage a quicker learning process. The idea that she had to acquire the newest texts instead of having the Archives automatically order everything under Sun and Moon -- that was something she was still struggling with, especially when it came to the limitations inherent to her budget and the fact that any books which were only going to be read by her would be paid for the same way. It kept her purchasing down -- somewhat, or at least had led into a slow, steady redistribution from salary to order catalog, for some things could not be passed up by any researcher who wished to retain the title, no matter what the damage to her savings. Just learning how to (occasionally) wait for second printings had been hard enough.
Getting books back when that borrowing had gone over the time limit? It was something she was still struggling with. There were too many times when she spent more on stamps for late fee notifications than she could ever hope to recover through the fees themselves. Letting Ponyville know that she was willing to substitute participation in what she insisted were harmless experiments for those payments did a lot to encourage a speedier return process (along with keeping a few ponies out of the library entirely), but still... there were a number of repeat offenders whose ink tally had gone so far into the red as to require a new color on the left of the spectrum. Twilight tried not to take it too personally and, after one particularly offensive account had led to what the police had viewed as a rather more debris-strewn category of accusations, also tried not to make any recovery attempts in person, because she also couldn't get back in late fees what she'd personally paid out in damages and really, it was almost as if Mr. Waddle had held onto the thing on purpose just to see if he could get her into his residence in the first place: following that up by basically telling her she had to find the thing and all he could remember was that it was under one of the heaviest objects in the house. And the expression on his face as he'd watched her beginning to lift had been -- odd, and after she'd confronted him on that strangeness, things had gotten... confusing. Loud. And eventually, legal.
Regardless of Chief Miranda Rights' rather strident opinion and the court-mandated position of that one never-expired restraining order, Twilight felt she would be better at that kind of recovery now. Certainly more controlled. It had taken time to learn how to manage a library, and much of that time had been spent in dealing with other ponies. A busy day could see dozens of patrons trotting through the tree and in her first moons of residency, there would be just about that same number of straightenings performed in their wake. But it had forced her to interact with ponies on a casual basis, every day the library was open. To have contact with those who weren't friends or families or book warehouse custodians who'd sworn they were going to ship two moons ago, and that particular restraining order had another four moons to go. It had forced her to -- socialize, if only on that most basic level, and since it was a level she had to reluctantly admit to never having understood before...
Becoming a true librarian -- admittedly, one who was still working on creating a true library, but that plan was in progress -- had ultimately been good for Twilight's emotional health. She was willing to admit that now, even if it had taken nearly thirty moons before she'd told the Princess about that particular lesson. The job was frustrating, especially in some of the ways she had to deal with the library's patrons. It could be stressful, and seldom more so than when the late fee notices came around again. But once she got past all of that -- once she'd dealt with it -- it had helped. She assisted her patrons and, after some rather rushed advice from Rarity, had mostly learned when to stop helping them. There were little joys to be found in matching pony to book, and few things were better than seeing the shine in a pony's eyes when they realized that reading was something more than assigned chore, recognizing a lifetime of love about to bloom -- and spotting that look on Rainbow's face remained one of the best moments of Twilight's life.
It was a hard job, yes, especially since there were so many things to manage and she'd also learned to stop passing most of the gruntwork onto Spike. It was harder than she'd ever expected it could be, and she'd finally taken a trip to the Archives and apologized to the department heads whose realms she had once so casually tried to overturn. But it was her job, and it had eventually become a job she mostly enjoyed --
-- right up until a few of the more hapless patrons became involved.
Honestly, she didn't want to talk down to them. It was just that some of them seemed to be completely incapable of doing anything on their own. She'd made so much progress, could look back at the pony who had existed prior to stepping off the air carriage and wonder just how that unicorn had ever made those decisions -- but those who seemed as if they were being willfully stupid still offended her. Those who displayed the intellect of infants made it feel as if they were justifying treating them as newborn foals. And so there were times when she would -- slip. Just a little.
Idiocy offended her. Interruptions didn't help.
"Excuse me?"
The automatic pause in her field's movement of the quill allowed a blot of ink to run down it, fully obscuring the last two words while occupying all the space she would have required for the next six.
Twilight didn't manage to repress the entire sigh. Yes, she'd only lost her sixth draft of the proposal. It was just that she'd been on her sixth draft, and that was for the eventual ninth follow-up letter being sent to Town Hall. She was starting to wonder if any of her previous missives had actually been read.
It's working. I just have to hold onto that. It's working and I know it. Eventually, she's going to understand the need, and once she sees that...
But the latest stage of her careful plan had to be momentarily reined in again, and so Twilight reluctantly looked up from the ruined text. "Yes?"
"I need Volume Twelve of the Encyclopedia Equestria," the pearl earth pony teenager said, with every word seeming to emerge on a rising tide of incomprehensible caution. "Please."
Twilight looked at the young mare, whom she knew had been in the library more than a few times before. Turned her head towards the very obvious, precisely-lettered Reference sign which hung over the appropriate section, which admittedly meant crossing over a few recent barriers along the way. Nodded once.
"I know where it's supposed to be," the teen said.
"Did somepony move it?" She was pretty much always willing to assist in a book hunt, especially since patrons could do long-term damage during their searches. And for a reference text, one which was truly never supposed to leave the tree...
The young mare's face worked in odd ways. Nostrils widened, then narrowed again. "I'm... not sure that's... no. They didn't move it. The book is -- right there."
And there it was. The book was right there, in the proper location, and the patron still wanted Twilight's assistance in acquiring it. Honestly, when it came to the most basic acts of intellect --
-- wait. "Did you need a specific version of Volume Twelve?" Because thanks to some rather stupid policies enforced by the previous librarian, the tree's collection was something less than complete. Well, Twilight was well on her way to fixing that -- but while it was all going according to plan, the mistakes of the past hadn't exactly been corrected yet.
This time, the expression quickly settled on confusion. "The -- latest one?"
A moment was used to despair over the research standards accepted by the teachers outside the Gifted School. (Honestly, it wasn't as if she hadn't tried talking to Cheerilee about guest-hosting a class on source attribution.)
"So you know where it's supposed to be," Twilight carefully said, starting to feel as if she was speaking to a kindergartner (which had to ignore the fact that the teen was taller than her). "And which edition. Of the proper volume. Which is in its proper place."
It got her an oddly fretful "Yes."
The next Summer Sun Celebration would mark Twilight's three-year anniversary in Ponyville. Place her next to the mare who'd been greeted with the loudest GASP! of anypony's life and the only true similarity would be in appearance. But still... sometimes, the words just slipped out.
"I'm really not sure how I'm supposed to help with that," Twilight said, and instantly wanted to kick herself.
The teen pranced in place a little.
"It's... on the bottom..."
And then Twilight understood.
"Oh!" The smile was almost instant, and the beaming expression included more than a little pride in her patron. "Thank you for asking me! Just give me a moment..." Her field exerted, stoppered the inkwell and put the quill away. "You did the right thing, coming to me. So let's just get you that volume!"
She got off her bench, trotted towards the Reference section and after a moment, the teen followed. The distance between them, however, was something less than constant. Twilight was small for a unicorn mare, the teen was on the large side for an earth pony, and -- well, it created certain difficulties in direct pursuit. Plans had their temporary price, and Twilight had to adjust a few things along the way.
"You'd be amazed how many ponies have just been taking things," Twilight said, now taking a little pride in her own hard-acquired skill at small talk. "And honestly, it's like they think they're doing a party trick! Just move quickly enough and -- well, thank you." Her smile was widening a little more with every hoofstep.
"I just -- couldn't..." The teen's words faltered and as she tried to follow in Twilight's wake, so did something else.
"Oh!" Twilight's corona ignited, and the developing problem was quickly nullified. "Careful..."
The teen managed a nod, which was just barely visible within the myriad of ominous looming shadows.
"It's a little narrow there," Twilight admitted. "You know, I recently read this really interesting article in one of the psychological journals. It said that ultimately, most ponies define 'normal' solely by themselves. And they usually don't even know they're doing it."
Another one of those barely-nods, just spotted during a quick glance backwards.
"So when I redid the aisles to accommodate -- well, to accommodate -- I guess I subconsciously -- based the requirements on myself."
Again.
"I should fix that," Twilight decided. "After closing: it's too many moving objects for operating hours. So here we are... yes, this year's are the green covers -- and there's Volume Twelve -- and --"
Her field exerted. All it took was a casual effort.
Admittedly, even with her field strength, it seemed to be somewhat less casual than usual. But she'd recognized that as a unavoidable side effect of the plan.
"-- here you go!" She floated the volume over to the teen. "Now just bring it up to the desk when you're done, and I'll put it back for you."
"...okay."
"Don't try it yourself. The last pony who tried to -- well, they're okay." Supposedly still jumping a little at loud noises, but really, when you got down to it, that kind of reaction to sudden sounds was just common sense. "But it's best to let me do it." The biggest smile of all. "You understand."
"...okay," the teen repeated, which really didn't feel like a good response. Maybe there was another problem to deal with.
"Is there anything else? If this is for a school assignment, I can suggest some additional reading once I know what the topic is. And if you need any help attributing your sources --"
"...I'm -- okay," the teen replied in the best inadvertent Fluttershy imitation Twilight had heard all moon.
Twilight tried to find the right response for that.
"Well, let me know if you need anything else!" she beamed. "I'm here to help!"
The teenager, moving in the semi-concussed gait so common to those unfortunate enough to deal with Twilight when she was in the middle of a brilliant plan, took up the volume between her teeth and staggered away, veering just a little too much to the left.
Twilight's corona ignited in time, and a certain amount of resorting took place. The teen made it to a study table with nothing more than a touch of potential phobia and Twilight returned to her desk, ready for the seventh draft.
'And in order to truly and finally provide the settled zone with a proper library...' Maybe she should underline 'proper'. Three lines might do the trick. Eventually, she was going to get through. It wasn't as if the older mare could just ignore her forever, especially since reports of Twilight's improvements had to have reached Town Hall by now. The building's staff used the library, along with their families and children -- really, the tree, for all its flaws, put Twilight at the center of so much activity, even if that level of activity had diminished somewhat as her plan began to take hold.
It was quiet in the library now, with the teen as the lone patron to be reading, carefully taking notes, and occasionally pausing to fearfully glance up and shudder. With Spike outside, playing with some of the other children, it made things peaceful. Admittedly, she really needed to tweak the lighting a little because all the new shadows falling across the desk weren't doing the paper any favors, but other than that, it was a perfectly lovely atmosphere for a beautiful late afternoon in the middle of spring.
Few things were simpler than becoming wrapped up in her writing, especially while resting in a shaft of mostly-blocked sunlight and actively considering the words which would make the letter's recipient finally stop being able to perform the miracle of ignoring bursts of missive-carrying dragon flame going off in front of her snout. And so the library itself slowly faded back into background awareness, its custodian lost within vocabulary and the comforting scent of old paper and plan, right up until the moment the target of everything she'd so carefully done trotted right up to her desk.
"Miss Sparkle."
The voice, at least when it spoke directly to her, had a way of being oddly formal. That same voice, announcing the start of holiday festivities, parades, concerts, and just about anything else where the settled zone's residents might wind up with an effective day off, tended to be jovial. Relaxed, although that was something which seemed to have lessened over the years. And cordial? Just about always -- when dealing with the majority of her constituents. But when those tones were turned towards Twilight, they became formal. And, more often than not, somewhat... edged.
Twilight understood. Running the settled zone which hosted the Bearers came with certain stresses, none of which had exactly dropped in intensity since the extended night when the Elements had been rediscovered. And during any number of interactions, she would try to respect the pressure which the older mare lived under, do whatever she could to avoid adding to it -- excepting those occasions when Twilight was right. This happened to be one of them and so while Twilight blinked, it was only once, for the voice's owner had come to her. She was on her own ground, or at least flooring. And if the mare was here...
"Mayor," she smiled as she looked up. "It's good to see you! I was actually just in the middle of writing you!" And it wasn't as if the elected official could just ignore her when they were face to face, so... "I wanted to talk about the library! I know you're about to write up the summer budget, and --"
"-- what a pleasant coincidence," the mayor smiled back.
Twilight looked at that smile. There didn't seem to be any actual happiness in it. Truth was somewhat lacking. Intensity, however, was currently registering at eleven out of a possible ten.
"Mayor?"
"I wanted to talk about the same thing," the mayor continued to smile and Twilight, looking through the lenses into those grey eyes, found herself momentarily resisting the urge to shiver. "Trot with me?"
It's okay. Everything's going as planned. This is just Step Seven on the checklist: finally speak to the mayor about the library. She's just -- not happy because... she knows I won. She read the letters and she's realized she has to agree with me. And she's not happy about that for some reason, but once she understands how much better things are going to be...
Still, there were Rules to consider.
"I can't leave right now," Twilight told the older mare. "Not with a patron in the building and Spike outside --"
"-- oh, we're not going anywhere, really," the mayor falsely reassured her. "We are going to talk about the library. And so we're going to trot around the library. Keeping the setting appropriate. If you would?"
Twilight, starting to feel as if her increasing dizziness was coming from something other than the rush of victory, got up and came around the desk. "All right..."
The mayor, moving carefully, led the way, heading towards that recently-used Reference section. Twilight, searching for the right opening overture, followed.
"I haven't visited in some time," the mayor said. "I really should have. Usually, it's so much easier to send my staff when we need to consult a volume, and for my own reading... well, I don't do as much of that as I'd like, not when it comes to reading for pleasure, but my husband picks up and returns what I do get to peruse. You've met him, of course." (Twilight, who hadn't retained much of an impression regarding the stallion other than his thankful ability to bring books back on time, nodded.) "But it means I don't get to see the little changes you've been making over time, not gradually. I get them -- all at once. Like the International section I went through on the way in. You've expanded that somewhat, yes? I don't recall seeing so many foreign languages before."
Oh, so they were going to start with the little things. "There's some demand," Twilight admitted, "and I've been trying to accommodate it. Also, sometimes it's easier to just order in the original language than to wait moons to years for the translation, especially for some of the most distant nations, and ever since Cranky moved here -- do you know how many languages he speaks? He can just look at a page for just about anything and rattle it off in Equestrian! It's really made story time special, Mayor, having him read all those new tales to the kids, and if he just spoke Ancient Crystalia --"
"-- Mr. Doodle," the mayor casually interrupted, "has his talents, yes. And with the number of ponies and others who've moved here over the last few years, I can see how we would have some increase in requests for those texts. Quite understandable. And those rotating racks in Periodicals. Also new?"
"I didn't want to go vertical at first," Twilight admitted. "But it provides a central hub for the most recent issues of just about everything. I just wish I could keep the metal from notching the page edges --"
"-- vertical," the mayor cut her off. "Yes. Which I believe would rather happily bring us to those." She gestured her left foreleg towards the nearest one of those. No contact was made, and so swaying (or worse) did not occur. (The teen, watching from the study table, still twitched.) "Also new, I believe. And old. Oddly so."
The conversation seemed to be at the place Twilight needed it to occupy, and so she didn't understand why having arrived at the destination was starting to feel like the worst possible thing. "Mayor?"
The older mare stood still for a little while as Twilight's mind frantically searched for the right words, dyed mane further greyed by recently-arrived shadows.
"Miss Sparkle," the mayor said, "it is spring. Just about the heart of it. The Weather Bureau grants us warmth throughout the day and just a bit of chill at night, while Miss Dash occasionally manages to fulfill their schedule on time. In spring, certain things take place in Ponyville and other settled zones throughout the realm. Ponies like to clean in spring, getting rid of clutter which might have seemed insulating during the winter. Windows are flung open. Gardens are freshened, houses and barns acquire fresh coats of paint. There tends to be a lot of stable sales in the spring, and I know you're aware of that because I see you frequenting a number of them."
"You wouldn't believe some of the books ponies just let go for a tenth-bit!" The exclamation was just about equal parts excitement and offense. "I've never had a real find, not something which would have to go into Rare Documents or anything for my private shelves, but when it comes to just stretching out my acquisition budget..." She had learned to let Rarity do the bulk-rate negotiating, and the sellers had accordingly learned how to hide under their own tables.
"And in spring," the mayor went on, starting to trot again, "the library, under the previous custodian, would have an annual event. I came to speak with you about that. Because under the old calendar, that event would be five days from now. And in the time since you were assigned to replace our retired prior librarian, you have not held that event. At all. I believe the town has been missing it. I know there have been consequences. In five days, I expect you to revive the custom, in all its glory. Or -- hmm." Thoughtfully, "How should I put this? Or -- else. Yes, that feels appropriate. Or else, Miss Sparkle."
The smile had never faded, nor had any degree of true mirth ever appeared.
Twilight tried to find comfort in the plan, and discovered swallowing hard didn't seem to have been any part of the checklist. "Mayor, you didn't say what you wanted." Five days... she'd looked at the library's original event calendar the day after formally taking custody: for an annual event, five days from now would have been --
-- oh no.
The mayor had stopped next to the encyclopedias.
"Ah," she said. "The secondary student's best friend. And here I see a generational descendant of my fond acquaintance: Volume Seven. Containing information on the political processes observed across the world. In my youth, I was studying a copy of that volume, Miss Sparkle, and I felt the words resonating within me. My mark manifested right here in the library, did you know? I read those entries, I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and my magic followed suit. It's made me somewhat fond of the Encyclopedia as a whole, and no volume holds a dearer place in my heart than number Seven." Her left foreleg came up, and the hoof gently rubbed against the book's spine -- or rather, tried to, as the older mare couldn't quite reach. "That's not my specific volume, of course: too many years have passed. But in a way, there it is. Volume Seven. May it equally inspire my eventual successor."
None of which seemed to be giving Twilight a chance to talk her way out of it. "Mayor?"
"And there it is again," the mayor mused.
"...sorry?"
"Volume Seven. Right there. And right there. Also, right there. And I could go on for a while. I count six copies, Miss Sparkle. Two from each of the last three editions. Six rather thick, extremely heavy copies, carefully stacked on top of each other as part of a vertical column of encyclopedias which reaches up to, oh, call it seven times your height. Why?"
And there they were: at the best possible staring position for the race to what Twilight had seen as victory. She searched her mind for the right words.
"I ran out of shelf space."
Twilight's mind, as allies went, was somewhat unreliable.
"Yes," the mayor carefully said. "I can see that. Having six copies of each volume would tend to overwhelm the assigned area. But why do you have that many to begin with?"
Which brought them to the necessary organization of a proper library, and Twilight's thoughts went back to pretending they'd been with her all along. "Well," she began, preparing to quote the letters which she was now convinced the mayor had never read, "for starters, there's school assignments. I know the teachers try to spread things out a little when it comes to topics, but there are still times when just about every filly and colt in Ponyville winds up researching the same thing during one moon. Having just a single copy of the current edition leads to lines." And in her first year, fights, but that had mostly ended once the settled zone learned just how quickly Twilight could break them up. "And too long a line leads to missed deadlines, failing grades... Truthfully, Mayor, we need multiple copies just to keep everypony's average up."
"So at least two of each current volume," the mayor seemed to agree. "To keep things flowing. Understandable."
Twilight nodded. "But honestly, after seeing the traffic we get around midterms, I was thinking we should be going to --"
"-- and the other four? From the previous two years?"
"Well, some articles are updated between editions," Twilight explained. "A really well-written paper would check every printing and then talk about how public knowledge had changed. So as I was saying, at least six copies per current edition would put the study traffic in order. And I know it's not enough for real standards, especially when there's so much which I'd still have to find or order, but when you project it all forward --" the excitement was beginning to build in her words, it was taking so much not to just prance where she stood -- "-- we'd have at least the seed of a true Reference section, and that brings us to what I've been writing you about --"
"Miss. Sparkle."
The punctuation had come from the stomping of hooves, two furious slams into the floor, each with all of the earth pony's strength behind them. Columns vibrated. The teenager twitched. And Twilight stopped talking.
"Good," the mayor breathed. "Nothing fell over. Even with so many choices of potential disaster. Miss Sparkle, I see a column of encyclopedias on my left. Another is behind me. Several more can be found to the front. You have books on top of books, around books, over books, possibly within books. I am aware that a common nickname for the Canterlot Archives is 'the stacks.' I didn't realize that was literal. Trying to maneuver around the library is like trying to swim around the sea stacks off the coast of San Dineighgo, only with somewhat more risk of bringing the whole thing down. I understand that you have had to prevent several falls in mid-cascade. A few ponies required unearthing. At least one is still considering therapy. This building, when figured for allowing ponies to move through in what they would normally and reasonably expect as safety, has a maximum book capacity. You have overwhelmed it."
And Twilight felt the warmth of her internal smile, because the plan was still on track.
"Ponyville needs," she stated, "a proper library. A proper library has books, Mayor -- more than we had when I first arrived. And yes, books need space. So as I was saying in my letters, since the summer budget is coming up, all you have to do is authorize the planting, hire an earth pony team to accelerate the growth a little, and we can start working on the first branch facility. Once it's reached the right size, I'll move some of the books over to that, and by then, maybe we'll be ready for --"
"There are books on the ramp."
"Yes."
"Why aren't they sliding?"
"Friction spell. Just on the ramp. I tried it on the books to make the columns more stable, but ponies were having a hard time getting the covers apart. So I had to keep the ramp section down to a single layer."
"And under the study tables?"
"That's the new Medical section."
"Ah. I see. And there is the sign saying so."
"Yes."
"You have rather exacting fieldwriting."
"...thank you?"
"In five days," the mayor said, "under the previous custodian, the library would have an annual event. You will revive that tradition, on time, and bring the book population of the tree down to a reasonable number. One which fits entirely on the shelves. And the rotating racks, of course: I expect you to keep those. Five days, Miss Sparkle, and every last column of the eighty-two I counted before reaching your desk will be gone. Or -- yes, this still seems to fit -- or else."
The tree did not catch fire. No part of the air surged into a whirlwind. Lightning didn't strike, the earth neglected to heave, and every part of the environment failed to appropriately respond to the sheer level of blasphemy. A proper reaction was thus left entirely to Twilight, whose corona ignited, with the field's borders immediately beginning to spike.
"You want me," Twilight checked, tones low, "to get rid of books."
The mayor didn't move. Not a single tail strand twitched. "Also magazines, if anypony will take them. Possibly journals. Basically, if it is paper and no longer useful, I expect it to be gone."
And now the notes had shifted into the music of rising danger. "A proper library would never --"
"-- no. The Archives would never," the mayor fearlessly corrected. "The Archives which, as I understand it, currently occupy twenty-seven separate buildings within Canterlot, with four more under construction. Ponyville is a small settled zone, Miss Sparkle, or was: our population has increased somewhat over the last few years, and I expect we'll be at moderate status in another two. Perhaps we'll eventually need a larger library, in a generation or three. But for now, we are a small settled zone, with facilities appropriate to that status. You had to leave the Archives, yes. I'm sure some part of you still considers that a loss, not having immediate access to their resources. But if you need them, they are but a gallop and day away, Miss Sparkle. You will not recreate them here. You live in a small town, one which has a small town library. And as the librarian, you will run this facility appropriately. Five days, Miss Sparkle. Or else."
It was beyond blasphemy, and she could feel her corona surging from the sheer level of cosmic insult. "Or else," she repeated in a half-hiss. "Oh, no. You can't get me this time, Mayor, and there's no way you're going over my mane. You can't threaten to write my mother or the Princess again." Was Twilight bluffing on that? She wasn't sure, and no part of her cared. Her tail was lashing, the edges of her eyes were starting to fade into white... "Because this is my library. My domain. They have no right to tell me how to operate it."
(She'd just said the Princess didn't have any right to tell her how to do something. A tiny part of her enraged brain examined the statement, then hid in a corner and prayed nothing would notice it.)
"It is," the mayor steadily replied, "the town library. You are simply its custodian. And if I need to order you into doing something necessary, I will."
"I'm the librarian," Twilight valiantly ignored her, corona now starting to approach a heavily-spiking double, a sight which had sent the teenager into an attempt to hide under the study table and now on top of everything else, the hematology texts were going to need resorting. "Who are you to tell me what to do?"
The older pony visibly thought it over.
"I believe," Mayor Marigold Mare said, "I'm the pony who sets your purchase budget."
Twilight's field winked out at the exact same moment her hind legs collapsed, sending her tail splaying across the floor.
"And that," the mayor told her, "would be the 'else'." She turned, began to trot away -- then paused, glanced back over her shoulder. "Five days, Miss Sparkle. The library will resume the tradition of an annual remaindered sale in five days. Or -- well, you have the idea, I'm sure. See you among the tables..."
She left. It took twelve seconds for the echoes of her self-satisfied departure to fade, plus two minutes before Twilight could move again.
A remaindered sale. Selling. Off. Books.
Not on my watch.
Twilight forced herself to her hooves, angrily spun so she could trot to her desk, start working on a counter-plan and in doing so, lost track of where the nearest column was right up until the moment her right hip slammed into it.
As it turned out, there were some surprising benefits to being buried under an avalanche of encyclopedias. For starters, it provided quiet time in which to think, and Twilight used those oddly-effective moments for mentally drawing up the first draft of a research paper which would prove the mayor to be the single most evil elected official in recorded history. Then she realized the initial twenty chapters of biography could be struck and replaced with a complete account of what had just happened, establishing all the proof necessary. Some time was used for considering a fictionalized version, and she finally settled on having the entire thing play out as a series of interspatial incidents during the trial.
It was a plan, and it also happened to be one which temporarily distracted her from the myriad of unpleasant sensations which came from having several dozen extremely thick hardcovers fall on her.
Eventually, she managed to work her way out of the new pile, with her lone patron's help: she'd had the option to just ignite her field and try to fling everything away, but she would have literally been working blind and since she'd heard the hooves moving towards her, sending a high-velocity hardcover towards her rescuing party seemed to be a less than polite move. Instead, she wriggled, she let the teenager's mouth pluck volumes away here and there, and freedom occurred. A freedom which was followed by two minutes of thanking her patron, and then five minutes of frenzied restacking, as the impact of the encyclopedias had produced enough vibration to bring down a few nearby columns and there was just so much which needed to be put back in order.
Twilight's priorities weren't among the things which needed reordering. After all, this time, she'd thought to thank her rescuer first.
In time -- a much shorter duration than Twilight would have been expecting -- the teenager left the library. Twilight had her place all to herself. Her domain. A domain which she'd been working so hard to improve, bring up to standards, a labor not just of love, but pride and determination and --
-- it was labor. It was work she had to do, and properly. What part of standing guard over books meant getting rid of any?
She slowly trotted around her domain, examining the columns while trying not to moan too much at the movement, for hardcover-shaped bruises provided their own form of knowledge, mostly related to where every last muscle could be found in her impacted body. (The encyclopedia rise had been split in two, and reshelving Volume Twelve gave her a little comfort as the stacks became even again.) Every last one of them deserved to be there, because every column contained books. Yes, some of them were books she never wanted to read and if you got right down to it, more than a few had texts which never should have been written. But regardless of their quality, the fact remained that every last one of them was a book. Some needed to be there for knowledge, others for pleasure, and more than a few as a object lesson on How Not To Write, with the last category sadly tending to be the most heavily borrowed.
Ponies got rid of books, yes: that was part of what stable sales were for (and Twilight dreamed of the unknowing party who truly didn't know what they had -- or rather, what Twilight was about to acquire). Libraries did not. She wanted Ponyville's library to be a true one, and so she had formed what had felt like a rather simple plan: to make that library into a true one. Libraries needed books. And Twilight, through her time as a librarian, had learned so much about the process of acquiring them on the cheap. Stable and estate sales -- she could get Spike to help her with the former: he would have nothing to do with the latter -- allowed her to give the abandoned a new loving home. Some library catalogs were best off avoided because the publisher would try to overcharge the only parties who had to buy: there were situations where private ordering was best, and her friends allowed her to send packages to their homes in order to avoid the automatic price increase that came with the tree's address. Ponies made donations, with Twilight grateful for every last one. Bookstores had clearance sales to frequent, while public auctions sometimes offered 'All the books in this box' as a listing when the curator couldn't be bothered to sort out what any of them were, and a mere opening bid could easily suffice. And on those occasions when her friend was available, Twilight would ask Rarity to come along and demonstrate the fearful efficiency of her "A lady does not use this word" haggling skills.
And so books had come. They had come in packages and boxes, saddlebags and carefully-clenched teeth. Twilight had happily overloaded the tree's shelf capacity and then kept right on going, because that was part of the plan. She had to show the mayor that the tree alone was inadequate for a true library. Twilight needed a second structure, just for starters, and that meant having enough books to justify creating one. As plans went, it had felt perfect, and any reasonable party would respond to seeing her collection in only one way: by giving Twilight what she wanted.
Of course, a reasonable party could generally be defined as one which didn't respond to a problem with blasphemy.
Twilight sighed. She expected too much from other ponies sometimes, and she knew it. Rational behavior was almost a contradiction, and common sense wasn't. But she kept trying...
However, for now, there was a problem to be solved. The mayor wanted her to sell off books. Twilight didn't want to do it. Therefore, she wasn't going to do it. All she needed was a good reason not to, and that reason existed. She just had to think of it...
Twilight went back to the encyclopedias and sorted out the volumes which had suffered the most damage from the crash, then carefully packaged them for transit to the book restoration shop and Mrs. Bradel's tender care. And then she gathered several other volumes, levitated them to her desk, and began to research.
There was a way out of this. It was time to discover what it was.
Reason #1: I don't have to do anything she says because (complete legal entry here).
Research quickly proved that one to be something less than effective.
The library was her domain: Twilight knew that on a level which approached (but could never reach) the deepest currents which flowed from her mark. Everypony in the settled zone knew it. Some of them even referred to the tree that way: as Twilight's library. Emotionally, they all knew it was hers.
Legally, however... legally was something else entirely. Legally, the tree was the property of the settled zone. Government property, and so it fell under the jurisdiction of Town Hall. Twilight didn't own her own workplace and didn't even have true possession of her residence: occupancy of the residential area was a side effect of her research grant. Wherever she went in her studies, she would be gifted with a place to live -- but another portion of the grant's terms dictated that she also needed to have a job. She could live in the tree just as long as she was the librarian. And while the Princess had been the one to assign her that post, that hiring had ultimately been approved and signed off on by the mayor.
The mayor who was, in the town's hierarchy, Twilight's superior.
1a: She's not really my superior. I get to tell her what to do.
This was true. Twilight had the occasional right to command the town's resources. The mayor could offer advice, suggest strategies, and try to direct them away from anything flammable, but a palace-assigned Bearer mission could effectively push the settled zone's leadership over to the seven of them until the crisis had passed.
The operation of the library was not a Bearer-level crisis. (Even if it should have been.) And Twilight suspected any attempt to pass it off as such would lead into a fleet of letters being sent from Town Hall to the palace, followed by the arrival of an angry Princess on her balcony and a dressing-down which would make the Smarty Pants Incident look like a school play's warm-up act. When there was no disaster in progress, the mayor legally had near-ultimate dominion over the library and -- the acquisitions budget. There was no local way around that.
Twilight spent some time in corona-spiking fuming, then moved on to 1b.
1b: There's a level of authority above her. I can appeal directly to it.
1b was almost immediately shut down, pushed back into the deepest recesses of her subconscious in the hopes that it would never emerge again. Under normal circumstances, Twilight did everything she could to avoid invoking the palace. The relationship was student and teacher: turning it into wielder and weapon might be the best way to break that relationship once and for all.
(She'd been that desperate exactly once, just a few weeks ago. The exact issue of Equestrian law she'd needed dealt with had placed things into Luna's custody and... it hadn't worked out.)
She would not try to override the mayor through bringing in the palace. Yes, that would theoretically be invoked in an attempt to save books, but -- that didn't feel like enough. And in her heart of hearts, she felt that if she did go for that final resort, the only response would be a rather terse letter telling her to find another way, possibly through making some friends.
1c. I don't want to.
It was a solid rationale. There was no denying the truth of her reasoning. It just wasn't going to hold up very well under open scrutiny.
She would have moved deeper into the subcategories from there, but that was when Spike came in.
"Selling off books?" He was shocked enough to have his nictitating membranes visibly shift. "Seriously? She wants us to get rid of -- books? But the Archives..."
"We aren't the Archives," Twilight sighed. "And she's not going to let us become them, either. I really thought I could have us up to four buildings within three years, but she's... not being reasonable." At least Spike was on her side. He'd grown up with her, and so his priorities were fully in order. "She doesn't understand about needing books. I want to make this place a real library, because if it's a real library, then that means --" and stopped.
"...Twilight?"
"It means I'm doing a good job," she finished, and hoped the words would be enough. "But I can't go over her mane on this. The sale is supposed to be in five days, Spike. Five days to figure out how not to have it."
"Well..." One handling claw came up, and he thoughtfully rubbed at his chin's scales. "Twilight, what did she say when she gave you the order? Exactly."
Her words were pained: the voice of a mother with thousands of children who wanted to love them all equally (even when they didn't all deserve it) and knew she didn't have enough food for the entire family. "We have to -- sell off -- enough so that everything which stays can fit on the shelves and racks. No more columns."
And her little brother, who was known to have the occasional moment of brilliance, smiled.
"There you go."
The hope began to surge. "Spike?"
His features twitched into a reptilian grin. "Let's -- I don't believe I'm saying this... reorganize!"
Reason #2: I don't have to clear space because we have enough already. We just need to make more efficient use of it.
She couldn't believe she hadn't thought of that herself. It must have been the stress.
Stress which, as they tried to enact Spike's solution, wasn't exactly going away.
"How's History going?" he called out across three overcrowded sections.
"It isn't," Twilight sighed. "I can't push these volumes any closer together. They're starting to sort of -- compress into each other. Actually, I really don't like the looks of that spine. I think it's being damaged by all the pressure on both sides. Let me just pull that out --"
Gravity had already happened. General physics was happy to follow suit.
Her first words, once Spike had unearthed her enough to expose her mouth, were "So when there's a lot of pressure on a central point, and you remove that blocking point, all the surrounding potential energy can go kinetic and escape through the gap. That's interesting."
"Twilight?"
"Or in laypony's terms," Twilight went on in that same mildly (and recently) concussed tone, "pull the plug and here comes all the water! Whee!"
"Twilight, I think you'd better lie down for a while."
"I can't. Economic Wars: The Great Griffon-Triggered Depression fell open right on top of my face. There was just enough light to spot the error. So I have to write the author. And you have to send it."
"In the morning," Spike carefully insisted.
"Ponies are reading the wrong facts! And that edition is --" her field, which was now wavering a little around the edges, exerted enough to turn the pages. "-- ponies have been reading an error for that long? Fifteen years of miseducation, Spike!"
"So it'll be fifteen years and one day," he said, clearing off her forelegs. "Come on, time for bed..."
"But --"
"-- you'll compose a better letter after you get some sleep and have a good breakfast. And you worked through dinner. You really shouldn't try to correct academics on an empty stomach."
She sighed. "I guess you're right."
He silently nodded, then started to work on freeing her hips.
"You know, there's a surprising number of benefits to being buried under a book pile. You should try it sometime."
No response.
"Those other ponies really didn't have any right to complain. They should have just appreciated the experience."
The silence carefully maintained.
"Also, the mayor is evil. I don't know if I said that earlier. Evil. It took the encyclopedias to make me really appreciate that. Maybe if I dropped them on her, she'd realize how evil she is. And then she'd admit it, and as soon as she says she's evil, we can blast her with the Elements and fix everything." Thoughtfully, or at least as close as she was currently capable of being, "I'm not sure how that would work. Maybe they would turn her into an extra library. An evil library."
"Twilight --"
"-- no, I'm being silly," she admitted. "Libraries can't be evil."
"Twilight?"
"So they'd just turn her into a pressure point which was only evil by coincidence. And hated me. And buried me in books. Which was really helpful, so maybe that's not evil. Intentionally. Is it tomorrow yet?"
Eventually, he wound up dragging her along the ramp by her tail.
Reason #2, Take #2.
"So it has to all fit on the shelves," Twilight considered. "But she didn't say they had to fit on the existing shelves. Just -- shelves. So if we add more shelves..." Her eyes brightened -- and then her tail drooped. "Which costs money."
"We could just make some," Spike proposed. "How hard could that be?"
Twilight's tail lifted, then silently twitched towards the lingering crack in the library's front door. "That," she said with a forced steadiness, "is a reminder of what happens when I try to do carpentry. And can't. Looking at the diagrams in a book which tell you how to nail shelves together isn't the same as being able to: that lesson kind of stuck." Much like a certain less-than-fondly-remembered batch of defective spackle. "And even if we try it, we'd need money for the raw materials. I've only got so much savings, Spike, and we'd be looking at a lot of shelves. Plus we'd need somewhere to put them. Even when they're clear, the aisles aren't that wide: I don't think we can squeeze things close enough to allow more than three extra units per rough row and still have ponies get through. I'm not sure that's going to be enough."
Spike thought it over. "We could get the materials for one extra unit. That won't cost too much, and we'll find out if we can put it together."
"Maybe..." Twilight considered -- then perked up again. "And I could just sort of move it all over the place! Pick it up, put it down, see where it would squeeze in -- and then I can just draw up the new floor plan around it! See how many books the sample will take, average out the page counts, work the math for the multiplier, and that'll tell us if we have enough room and money for the remainder! Go to the hardware store, Spike. Get wood. Nails. Hoof-hammer shoes. And if anything says it's an FF product, leave it."
Time passed. Carpentry took place, or at least a rough approximation of same which more or less held together under some of the lighter paperbacks, at least while Twilight's field was still tightly wrapped around the whole thing. The library reached its official opening hour, which meant patrons started coming in and, after they got a glimpse of the intense activity, very quickly went out again.
A new floor plan was drawn up and compared to the number of books which required shelving. The first requirement turned out to be eighty percent more floor.
Twilight groaned, sunk down to the inadequate floorboards, placed her forelegs over her head, and moaned.
"What if... we took out your desk? Ran everything from..." Spike hesitated. "...your bed?"
"Not enough," Twilight sighed.
"Vertical? Instead of having shelves next to shelves, we could just make the units taller, like the Archives --"
"-- yeah," she sighed. "Like the Archives. Do you also remember how the Archives have ponies reach the highest shelves? Moving platforms that levitate along predetermined paths on command. I don't know that enchantment, Spike, that's making a device, and that's not my specialty. I don't know if I can learn it in time, plus I'd need all the materials and after you figure in for running the trials and cleaning up the debris... not with our deadline. I can't. And I can't order them from a convenience store because I don't have the budget and the mayor isn't going to approve anything for this, not when she wants me to sell off! Maybe the archivists don't -- feel the same way about me any more after I finally apologized, but they still can't let me have a bunch for free, and I can't borrow their platforms when the Archives need them. If we go too high, two-thirds of ponies can't reach things. Go way too high and I'd always be galloping around getting books for patrons, plus it gets hard to focus my field on something when it's too far away to clearly see..." And the other option was hiring a pegasus assistant, but budget.
Comforting handling claws moved through her fur, carefully angled to prevent scratching. "Folding ramp?"
She mentally worked the math. "It would have to be a zig-zag and even with the friction spell involved, if the slope angle was going to be safe, it would take up half the library."
Spike, out of ideas, quietly sat on the floor beside her.
"There's only so many places we can move things inside the tree," Twilight miserably said. "Remember when that one patron told me about bathroom reading and I tried to put some of those books in our bathroom? That really didn't work out." It had, however, taught her a lot about the physics of water spray. Also the chemistry of scents soaking into paper, and all the ways it couldn't be undone by anypony other than Mrs. Bradel, who had happily accepted the consequences (from a great distance) and her portion of the heavy kick to the library's budget. "I can't carve out any more of the interior wood and keep the tree healthy. The basement is..." She thought about everything which was currently in the basement. "...occupied. You and I still need a place to sleep. We have books on top of books, around books, not inside books because that's just stupid, and we have all this vertical space but we can't use it. I can't just ignite my horn and create more room..."
She blinked.
Spike, who had a lot of experience with that blink, subtly shifted away, moving to what he was hoping would be a safe distance.
It wasn't.
Reason #3: I am supposed to be Magic, therefore, reality can just get out of my way.
Compression spells -- worked. At least, they would work in theory, as Twilight didn't currently know any and while she was sure she could master the workings, every version she could find was inadequate to the library's needs. That such magic was only meant to be used on the inanimate clearly wasn't an issue. (There might be very few solids which truly qualified for the name, but cutting down on the space between things for the living... wasn't a good idea, and Twilight quickly looked away from that section of the text.) Making books smaller could be done. The results would be denser, and some volumes would require sturdier shelving -- but in theory, she could eventually just shrink every book in the library down to about forty percent of its original size, then give out a loaner magnifying glass after every movement of the checkout stamp. The problem was that the spells were strictly short-term. The compressed state required infusions of fresh thaums to truly maintain: otherwise, any affected object left to itself would eventually snap back.
Twilight spent some time figuring out the math and found herself looking at a library full of miniaturized volumes which, if she recast the working regularly and went to the full triple corona each time, draining herself into exhaustion -- would explode back into full size about twenty minutes before she could reasonably hope to wake up again. And given the packing of the volumes onto the shelves, portions of that explosion would be decidedly literal. (Plus no book would ever be able to leave the library again, but really, when compared to no longer needing to deal with late fees, that was almost a benefit.)
Phase spells were something else she hadn't mastered and were even more short-term than the compression variety: keeping books inside books wasn't a particularly good idea, and having two objects intersecting when that magic wore off was a much worse one. It would also make books impossible to recover for anypony who couldn't work the magic, difficult for just about everypony else, and offered the option of trying to read superimposed pages. So on the whole, no.
There was teleportation to consider, if only briefly, for her trips took her into the between -- a space which, as far as anypony could tell, just might be something close to infinite. Once you took out the short-term travelers, it was certainly infinitely empty. The problem there was nopony had truly explored it, because remaining within for longer than it took to complete a teleport was -- inadvisable. Just staying that long often meant wrapping oneself in memory to get past the total sensory deprivation, which made it a less than advisable place to store shelves. And besides, there were constant rumors that any true attempts to remain and explore had resulted in ponies becoming lost. Permanently. If ponies could go missing forever, then so could books. So construction of a permanently-open portal to the between, which had already felt like a truly bad idea on any number of levels, effectively became an impossible one.
(At that point, Twilight did recognize that she had reached the place where she was just kicking concepts against the wall to see what stuck. Still, there were times when bad ideas led to good ones, and some of those might still look sensible after the doctors finally released the aspiring spell researcher from the hospital.)
Creating sapient, self-levitating books which would hang in the air until somepony called for them: a completely wonderful idea. And when she eventually remembered the fantasy novel she'd originally seen it in, she still considered it to be a completely wonderful idea, and also a completely unworkable fantasy.
Making one book somehow hold the knowledge of every book: probably not. Besides, if it ever worked and the mayor learned she could cut down the space requirements that much, it would probably leave Twilight with one book and eventually, somepony would borrow it and never bring it back.
"Magic," Twilight wearily announced, "sucks."
Spike blinked.
"There's thousands of workings," Twilight slowly continued, pushing herself away from the basement's primary workbench, or at least pushing herself as far back as she could go. "Sure, some of those are just minor variations on central spells, and there's a lot of things that'll never work for me just because they're mark-tied spells and a mark for magic still isn't one for luck, let alone..." She stopped, sighed. "Anyway, there's thousands of workings. And I always wind up thinking that's going to be enough to cover everything a pony could possibly need. Except that it isn't. I keep getting reminded of that and I still forget it's not enough, right up until the next time I need something which doesn't exist. And I can't try to invent new spells without more testing time than we've got."
The smile was a purely weary one. "So -- you're not going to just try making one up on the spot this time and casting it on theory?"
She couldn't quite echo the expression, for some lessons would never fade. "I'd rather not have the books trying to eat each other."
They both rested in silence for a while.
"We burned most of the day on this," Twilight said, feeling the hours pressing against her fur. "And we didn't come up with anything."
"You're completely out of ideas?" Spike checked.
"I had this really stupid one where putting enough books together would sort of warp space and distort things so much that any number of volumes could share the twisted region. I even wrote down a few dumb conjectures on it."
"Really?"
"I think I threw them away without thinking about it, though. I can't find any of them."
"Oh."
"By the way, do you know where this orange fur came from?"
"No..."
"It doesn't smell or look pony," Twilight decided. "Maybe we've got pests. On top of everything else..." She sighed. "Well, that's easy enough to fix. I can just go to the cottage and ask Fluttershy to drop by. She'll ask them to leave. Through moving in. With her. Again."
"It's what she does," Spike shrugged. "It's not like the cottage doesn't have the space, and then there's the grounds..."
"Yeah," Twilight agreed. "At least one of us isn't at -- maximum... capacity..."
Reason #4: Friends!
"Let us say," Rarity carefully proposed from her place on the loft's guest bed (as there hadn't been enough space on the main floor for the hastily-gathered seven of them to sit in comfort), "that following your explanation, we all understand what the problem is. And of course, that we are willing to do whatever we can to assist you with the solution. Isn't that right, everypony?" Four mares nodded. "I only wish that the timing had been somewhat better. Fluttershy has births to attend, I know Applejack needs to keep an eye on her first sprouts... the middle of spring requires any number of hours from us, Twilight. But we will do what we can."
"I've got a lot of birthdays!" Pinkie chimed in. "But I can get back here between them! And on the sale day, I've actually got some free time! You can count on me, Twilight: every minute I can give!"
Rainbow's expression was somewhat more acquisitive than inquisitive. "Selling books... any particular --"
"-- no!" Twilight smiled, and held back the laugh of relief for just the right moment. "That's not it! But I knew you would all help me, once I finally thought to ask, and... I'm sorry it took so long. The solution was to have all of us working together on this, the whole time. I should have thought of that at the start, and --" openly abashed "-- I'll try to get there faster next time, I promise. But you don't have to help me with the sale! With everypony working together, I don't have to sell anything!"
She wondered if they were using the extended moment of silence for trying to figure out her plan, and then wondered why they needed to do so at all. Surely they must have seen the solution. It was so obvious...
"Huh?" Rainbow eloquently said.
...or not.
"I need to have all the books on shelves!" Twilight declared. "But nopony said they had to be my shelves!"
Fluttershy's one visible eye blinked. "...um... Twilight, I think I know where you're going with this, and..."
"-- right! With all the things you have to buy just to keep up on veterinary procedures and species discoveries, you're practically the animal annex already! So we'll just shift all the Zoology books over to the cottage because when you think about it, that's really where they should have been all along! And Rarity, I don't have much about fashion, but you can take everything I do have! Although that's going to duplicate a lot of magazines, but it's just extra copies for ponies to read and you've already got the waiting area in the Boutique, so when you think about it, the reading space is already set up! Applejack can put the farming material in the barn plus anything I've got on tenant relations, then we move all the books about games into Pinkie's attic, I buy some extra checkout stamps and give everypony their section of the card catalog to take home..." She smiled -- then gave it some more thought. "Oh. Late fee forms. You'll need those. And I'll pay for anything you need to mail. Now, the order forms should still go through me, but if you've got any recommendations in your areas of expertise..."
She was wriggling on her bed now, the excitement wrinkling sheets and shifting bangs. It meant she needed some time before she truly noticed them staring at her.
They were all staring at her.
"And I would get the Adventure section?" Rainbow checked with what seemed to be truly excessive caution. "Because there's kind of a problem --"
"-- no," Twilight smiled, managing to maintain the smile in the face of the scrutiny. "You get Sports."
"Why?"
Wasn't it obvious? "Because most ponies can't reach your house and nopony really cares about sports anyway."
Rarity took a slow breath.
"Twilight, dear," she carefully said, "do you happen to recall what my father does for a living?"
"He's a hoofball coach," Twilight immediately replied. "He started coaching after retiring as a player -- oh! Rarity, I didn't mean -- well, I know ponies read about sports in the newpaper, but that's just to get the results, and writing about matches and seasons long after they're already over, that's just --"
"-- he was considering," Rarity expertly (and tensely) interrupted, "composing an autobiography."
Twilight thought about that.
"...does he need an editor?"
Rainbow and Pinkie simultaneously facehoofed. Rarity simply sighed, then glanced around at the others -- with her steady gaze never quite reaching Twilight.
"I can come in tomorrow morning and assist with the initial sorting," Rarity stated. "Really, I should be the one to devote the most hours, seeing as how at least a portion of this is my fault in the first place. I helped her to purchase the most books at the lowest price, and so some of the blame must go to me for enabling."
"There's no sorting involved!" Twilight hastily smiled. "We're just packing up the relevant sections! And I'll do all the carrying. Applejack, you're pretty good with carpentry stuff: how much money and time would you need to make the new shelves?"
"Ah can drop by a couple of times," Applejack said in response to something other than Twilight's words. "Not too much, though. Maybe Ah can help figure out what's just gotta be kicked out. Can't expect t' sell everythin'. Some stuff's just gotta go at the start if we're gonna have any chance of reachin' the goal, an' as for what's left after... Spike, y'feel up t' a bonfire?"
The skin under Twilight's fur was slowly beginning to pale in horror.
"I could always use confetti for parties!" Pinkie declared. "Shredding magazines is good for that!"
"But," Twilight managed. "...but... but..."
"Sounds good," Applejack quickly decided. "Won't be sellin' too many of those anyway, so might as well put 'em t' use. Fluttershy, any of yours need the building material for nests?"
"...yes," the pegasus said. "All the time. But nothing with too much ink: sometimes the feathers get stained --"
"You're all ignoring me! You're ignoring my plan!"
"And that means," Pinkie gently stated, "we care enough not to listen. Now somepony should really find the latest rare book catalogs and check everything against it. We don't want to put out anything too good! Spike, I saw you checking one at that last stable sale: is it new enough?"
"I... think so," her traitorous little brother said. "Let me go look..."
Twilight's legs went straight, pushed her off the mattress and into a rather awkward landing on the floor.
"You..." she began, staring at them all, and couldn't seem to find another word. "You..."
Nothing else came, and so she had to settle for a furious stomp down the ramp, letting the echo of the strongest hoof pounding she could manage speak for her. But they seemed to ignore even that, and their words kept coming.
"You really think this is the best thing?" Spike timidly asked. "To sell?"
Rarity sighed. "I know you have learned to be generous, Spike, especially as a means of -- resistance. But still... acquisition is an instinct, and it manifests in ponies too. There are times when the best thing to do is letting go. In this case -- yes, that means holding the sale."
A long pause. "I know when I have to let go," he finally said. "For safety, and to be a little more... whole. But Twilight -- she's not me, Rarity..."
"This is partially my fault," the designer replied. "And so the explanation should fall to me as well. I will go speak with her."
And Twilight would have heard regret in the tones if she had still cared to truly listen.
The basement was dark, because she wanted it to be.
It didn't have to be. There were devices, and a simple command would light up the area as a whole. More specific requests could create smaller patches of illumination, while one crucial order would temporarily dampen the thaums stored within, to minimize the risk of having even that little amount of background magic interfere with the more delicate experiments. For those times when safety demanded measures beyond that, the entire system could be dismantled and evacuated in less than three minutes, leaving the researcher to work by firelight. And of course, any unicorn who'd made it through their childhood years never had to truly worry about the dark, or so she'd thought until the day she'd encountered the first of the Nightmare's shadows.
There were no experiments going on, not that there was much room to even try and she didn't feel like starting anything new, much less focusing her frustration into picking up on something she'd previously had to leave off. All she felt like doing was -- sitting in the dark. And so she did, staring into nearly indistinguishable shades of umbra, trying to think of the last option she had available. There had to be one more. Just because she'd failed with the first four entries on the checklist didn't mean she'd reached the bottom of her scroll. She simply needed to look that much harder, and it had somehow felt as if that would be easier when there was nothing else to truly see.
It wasn't working. Images of the past moved through her inner vision, generally on a loop, with some of them just a few minutes old.
"Twilight?" Slightly muffled and distorted from having to move through the door at the top of the ramp.
She didn't answer.
The designer's voice was slightly cross. "I am aware you didn't teleport out: my feel may not be the most refined, but I am more than familiar with the sensations from the burst of magic you create on departure. The front door is undisturbed. You were not in your kitchen or bathroom. There are places to hide in the library, but I have checked most of them and the best were already occupied by books. That leaves the basement, Twilight, and I cannot feel an active security spell --"
She hadn't locked the top door? Why hadn't she --
"-- and so I am coming down."
There was a brief soft blue glow, well overhead. This was followed by a soft creak, and hoofsteps venturing onto the ramp.
"Oh, why is it so dark in here?" came the automatic complaint. "Well, I believe I can prove somewhat adequate to that task." The glow manifested again: a field being summoned without projection, simply for the lumens it could provide. "And there we --"
Silence took over again, soaked through what was no longer complete darkness and gave the shadows extra weight.
"-- Twilight?"
"Leave me alone."
She heard the slow breath. "I don't believe you mean that. If you truly wished to be left alone, you have a rather ready means of leaving us. Instead, you went to where you could still be found." Hoofsteps moving down the ramp, audibly zig-zagging several times. "Where did all --"
Bitterly, "-- the same place as the others. All the same places."
"I recognize this one."
She wasn't looking, and didn't really need to: she had a pretty good idea of which one Rarity was talking about, just from approximate position on the ramp. "You haggled --"
Primly, "-- negotiated --"
"-- her down to just about free..."
"Yes." The simple statement was followed by a slow sigh. "Another portion which would arguably be my fault. Twilight, how many books are down here?"
"Enough to make an argument for a branch library. I was -- moving them up to the main floor, week by week. Building the piles. Because if the mayor wasn't reading my letters, then her staff still came in, and I thought if I made things just keep getting more and more crowded, one of them would tell her. And then she finally showed up, and..." And -- everything.
Slowly, "How many is 'enough'? Numerically."
"It doesn't matter." Because her plan had failed. And then, adding that bitterness to the more recent portion, "You're supposed to be my friend. You were supposed to help me."
Quieter still, to the point where she could barely hear her own breathing. The intruder had stopped moving, and the weight of the silence saturated the world.
"Being your friend," Rarity finally said, "does not mean doing whatever you desire. It means doing what is best for you, even when that might hurt you. Even when it chances breaking the friendship entirely, because we care enough to see you go on without us if it means the pony who trots away in rage is whole. I can think of times when we have failed you, Twilight, including that which ended with a certain doll -- and the Princess, as angry as I have ever seen her. Angrier than I thought she could become -- more enraged than I would ever wish to behold again. It was a lesson for all of us, to -- pay more attention. We do what you need, Twilight, not what you want." A long pause. "And yes, I am aware of the irony in using those words so close together. But still, I would have believed it was a lesson you had sent off to the palace long ago."
She didn't know what to say, and so let the bitterness speak for her. "You won't help me. None of you will help me."
"We will assist you with the sale, as much as we can," was the soft reply, with the hoofsteps now moving again. "But that is assisting you in holding it, Twilight. None of us will help you to avoid it. If you do not follow Mayor Mare's directives, then she has the power to fire you. I am -- not certain as to whether the Princess would intervene there. The palace would likely attempt to keep you within the settled zone, but the thrones try to avoid direct overrides of the various mayoralties unless there is no other choice. I can see the Princess locating another job for you in Ponyville, so that you could continue to live among us. But you would no longer be a librarian. Is that something you wish to risk?"
The bitterness didn't seem to have an answer for that.
"Or," Rarity continued, speaking more slowly as she made her way past the next hoof-level obstacle, getting closer to level ground and the primary reserves, "is this happening because you wish to move on? Because you no longer wish to be a librarian at all, you feel you cannot quit a post which the palace found for you, and so you arrange things in a way which would leave you being fired --"
"-- I'm not a librarian. I've never been a librarian. Not a real one."
The interrupting, almost neutral words had been entirely her own: her voice, her thought. Her self-loathing.
Eventually, when the first wave of shock had passed, "...what?"
Twilight's horn ignited: just enough to add a little more light to the area, and her head turned. It wasn't so she could look at Rarity: nothing would have made her eyes seek another pony. Instead, pinkish glow silently illuminated her left flank. Her mark.
"Everypony in the Archives knew it," she said, eyes now squeezing shut. "When I was getting ready to graduate from the Gifted School, the Princess asked me what I was going to do next. And I told her I was going to be a researcher. A pure researcher. All I needed was a lab and equipment. It... was pretty much the only time I'd ever asked her for anything. To give me the devices I needed, access to every book, and a space I could work in. Someplace -- isolated. Maybe have somepony make food deliveries every once in a while. Because I was going to be working on the most advanced stuff, so isolation wouldn't hurt, and... I'd never really asked her for anything until the moment I asked her for that research grant."
"Which she then gave you," Rarity stated, with that voice a little closer now. "You continue to collect your funds to this day."
"She didn't," Twilight contradicted. "She didn't give me what I asked for. She wrote the grant, but I -- I trusted her to write it, and that meant I just stood back and let her field take the quill. It took her nearly an hour to draw up the terms and I didn't read anything she was writing because I trusted her, Rarity. I signed it without looking at it, because she was my teacher and -- then she had me. I'd just agreed that I would only receive funding for as long as I had a job. I couldn't just be a pure researcher: I needed to hold employment or I'd be on my own. Lab setups are expensive, I didn't know where to look for another sponsor because I didn't really know anypony, nopony other than her, and I... I think that was the first time I was ever angry with her. I don't know how much of it showed. But she wouldn't let me be pure, and..."
The pony who had gotten off the air carriage had said the first part. The one who'd made friends took the rest.
"...she wouldn't let me just lock myself into a lab for the rest of my life. Where I wouldn't have to see other ponies or deal with ponies or feel confused, stupid, different... anything. Because that's what I was going to do, wasn't I? Just go in the lab, have food delivered, never have to speak to anypony other than the Princess or Spike again, and I was at the point where I was just about treating him as lab equipment. Maybe if I'd had a big enough accident, it would have taken moons before anypony found us, and that might have just been because the food delivery pony saw the last shipment rotting on the doorstep. I was going to -- hide. Work on magic because it was the last thing I still understood. But I trusted her, Rarity, and she used the chance to sabotage me, for what she must have thought was my own good. I had to have a job outside my research, or I wouldn't have the backing I needed to research at all. I was furious when I got back to the dorms, but... she'd showed me the terms I'd signed off on without reading them, and it was too late to get out of it. She asked me what kind of job I wanted to have. And the only thing I could think to tell her, because jobs meant other ponies and other ponies meant feeling confused, stupid, and different... was that I liked books."
"And then you were in the Archives." Closer still.
"I started in Reception." It triggered a hollow laugh. "Me at the front desk, Rarity, right out of school with magic as the last thing I could relate to and wondering if my lab equipment had finished polishing its scales. I made it through two hours before the senior Archivists pulled me out by my tail, and I think it was only two hours because they had to fight their way through the herd of ponies who were yelling outside their offices. But they didn't fire me, and I guess that was because the Princess had been the one who'd asked them to give me a job in the first place. They didn't want to offend her, because -- well, I guess acquisition budgets might be part of that, too. So they just moved me into different departments. Over and over, because the Archivist in charge of my latest posting would get offended when I tried to rearrange her section, and the patrons would get offended when I -- was me, and... then I had the tower. The least visited part of the whole complex. Which was fine, because it was all the more hours where nopony was there and I could just research. I went to the tower, I spent as much time in Rare Documents as I could get away with, and I just... got worse. I read books, and I rearranged books, and I stared at anypony who dared to touch my books, and I... wasn't a librarian. Everypony knew it. I had a mark for magic. I understood magic. Being a real librarian would have meant being somepony who dealt with the public. I couldn't do that, so they put me where I probably would never have to. And I told myself I'd won. I had a job where I didn't really need to do anything, and I barely had to deal with anypony, and I..."
The next words were a whisper.
"...I told myself I was happy."
The only parts of her to move were mouth and thoughts. She wished both would stop.
"I think about that pony sometimes, up in the tower," Twilight just barely managed. "I know who she was and how she thought, and... I don't understand her. I don't understand... me. It almost makes me glad I wasted my chance at the time-travel spell, because if I went back that far and tried talking to myself... we wouldn't connect, we couldn't. She'd never understand me. She'd think I'd wasted my time in Ponyville, because I was ordering books and helping patrons, scheduling story times and going out with friends. Hours she would have been using for research. But I wound up here and the last librarian had supposedly retired, so the post was open... but I still didn't have the mark, Rarity, not a librarian's mark. I was in the Archives because the Princess put me there, I was in the tower because the Archivists knew I wasn't right for anything else and stuck me there, and then I was in the tree because she put me here, and all I knew about being a librarian was how to make sure all the books were in the right order. I'd never taken a class in library science. Three years ago, if you'd told me that running a library was something that had its own science, I couldn't have even been bothered to waste my time with laughing at you. I came here, I had a whole library all to myself, even if it wasn't a real one like the Archives, and I started putting the books in the right order -- right up until I got my first patron. A colt looking for a story to read as part of a vacation assignment. I had no idea how to deal with that. So I just messed it up, over and over. I had him in History first, because that's sort of a story, and then I practically tried to stick him in the card catalog so he could choose his own story and stop making me fail. I wanted him to leave and he couldn't because he didn't want to be in front of Cheerilee with an empty paper when the term started. He was here for two hours before I finally... remembered what it was like to just want a story."
And now she wanted her mouth to move -- but the smile wouldn't come.
"He came back the next day. He wanted to know if the author had done anything else. Or if there was anything like that first book from somepony else, that I thought he might like just as much. Truffle -- forced me to be a librarian, and I got better at it after a while... but I'm not a real one, Rarity. I won't ever be. I'm just... taking up space, because there's somepony out there with a librarian's mark who would be so much better at this than I am and maybe she can't do what she's meant to do because I got put here. I couldn't be a real librarian, but I thought I could have a real library, and maybe then nopony would..."
It was all she had, and Rarity waited for more through nearly a minute before finally sighing.
"You are," she eventually said, "something of a hoarder. You're aware of that, yes?"
"...yeah."
"It takes one to know one, Twilight," Rarity ruefully added. "There have been times when I have wondered if Spike -- well, to be frank about it, if he feels a connection to me because at our first meeting, he somehow perceived my inner dragon. In that way we see the stereotypical adults, living only for the acquisition and defense of their treasure. I have my moments of greed: my -- less than sterling behavior when attempting to talk the red dragon out of his claimed cave was a demonstration. You have your loves, I have mine, and we have both had times when we were weak. You found a justification for yours, and I helped you in your acquisitions. So to that degree, a portion of the fault is mine. But... Twilight, you put too much on marks sometimes. Far too many ponies do. Yes, the librarian who had the tree prior to your arrival -- and let me put any rumors to rest: she did in fact retire a short time before the Summer Sun Celebration and the mayor had been filling in with her own staff while the search continued, she was not fired in order to accommodate your needs and I swear that somepony will give Thistle Burr that kicking one of these moons -- she had the mark. I am a Ponyville native, one of but two in our group, and I grew up with her in the tree. To that extent, I knew her."
"What..." She wondered why she'd never asked anypony before. "What was she like?"
It was almost possible to hear the memories moving forward. "She was often kind, but had her moments of short temper: her particular anger-triggering offense was somepony eating within the library. There was a story that she had once kicked an adult for simply allowing a piece of candy to silently dissolve on his tongue. She faithfully held story time, on schedule -- but unlike you, she never invited those of experience to be guest readers, and Pinkie has told me how much Cranky relishes the chance to do his voices." A pause. "Also how awkward it would be for him should you ever have public knowledge of that, so please keep it to yourself. Twilight, the mark grants its magic, and a higher base level of skill for the pony making their first attempts. But skills can be learned. Do you wish to hear that you will never be the best librarian? Perhaps that is true: one with the mark and study to go with a natural talent would surpass. But that you cannot be a real librarian? Let me ask you a question, Twilight: one somepony of your research skills must have uncovered by now. The mark for bearing an Element. What does that look like?"
Her eyes had to open. There was no other way a blink of pure confusion could come. "...what?"
Without a single trace of irony and only slightly less in the way of sincerity, "Well, it has to be a talent, does it not? It is something a pony does, and thus there must be a mark specifically for that activity. Even my sister would follow that argument, and perhaps agree with it just a little too quickly for everypony's comfort -- but at any rate, would you please describe the icon to me? For we are unqualified, Twilight, all six of us, and so the search must begin immediately for our replacements. Somewhere in Equestria, or perhaps among the pony populations of the other nations, there is somepony whose exact talent, whose deepest magic, is to be nothing more than a Bearer. We must find that pony -- or, better yet, we must hope to find six of them -- so that we, as natural inferiors who never should have attempted a task we were not suited for, may surrender our roles to those who would be so much better at them. I can be packed to leave within the hour. Or, knowing my own habits there, three." Thoughtfully, "Truly, we may consider it to be a blessing that in our predestined incompetence, we did not create a world where we would need to be looking in the dark."
There was a giggle among the corona-lit shadows. Twilight briefly wondered whose it had been before identifying a very local source. "You're being silly."
"I?" Rarity defiantly declared. "Silly? No, I am being practical! We must save Equestria, Twilight, from the greatest menace it will ever encounter: ourselves! Trot up the ramp with me so that we may begin -- oh no, oh dear, neither of us has a mark for trotting..."
More giggling. "And now you're just being ridiculous."
Affronted, "Clearly not. Does my mark look as if it is for being ridiculous?"
"I still don't know what your mark is for," Twilight exaggeratedly teased. "You're a dressmaker with gems on your flank, and since every last piece you make doesn't have a gem on it, plus you've never made a dress completely from gems, or hollowed a huge one out and worn it -- then I guess that's it! Your mark is for being ridiculous! The mystery is finally solved!"
"We should tell Applejack and Rainbow immediately," Rarity solemnly decided. "I believe both will accept your conclusion. Enthusiastically. Twilight -- do you know what a librarian's mark looks like?"
The seeming shift in topic nearly derailed her, and she scrambled for the safety of lecture. "Well, there isn't one icon. Different ponies have their magic latch onto concepts in different ways, so just like a lot of other talents, there's a whole list of librarian marks. The most common is a foreleg stretching towards a shelf, but right behind that for frequency is a partially-open card catalog drawer, and then you get --"
The hoof gently contacted her flank, and she froze.
They touched, all of them did, and she'd become used to that. There were nuzzles between friends, along with the occasional ponypile. Twilight usually learned about Rainbow's patience having completely run out on a lecture at the moment she found a cyan hoof jammed into her mouth. But... for the definition she still had so much trouble trying to believe might ever be a part of her life, what Rarity had just done wouldn't be considered intimate. However, looked at in the other way...
You had to know somepony very well before you would casually touch their mark.
"You are Ponyville's librarian," Rarity softly said, "and so this is a librarian's mark. A librarian who, perhaps, is still having certain difficulties accepting her place and is, shall we say, overcompensating somewhat. Insecurity has a way of doing that. If I ever believe that the tale might not force a blush so hot as to set me on fire, I will tell you about my first trade show, from before I gained the Boutique. The show which convinced me to try the road which ran through my own shop. I know what it's like to doubt your own skill and place, and that is with my mark. But you are the town's librarian, and I would rather keep you in a post you have come to enjoy." She paused, sighed. "And part of being the town's librarian is to hold the annual remaindered sale. It is certainly necessary to continue being one. So, assuming that you agree we will never mention the concept that a mark might exist for being a Bearer in front of the Crusaders, because actively begging for disaster is generally a bad idea -- might we begin discussing that sale now?"
The hoof dropped, a softly glowing horn illuminated the blue-tinged nuzzle which followed, and Rarity waited.
Finally, "I... really have to, don't I?"
"I am not particularly happy about having to capitulate to the mayor either, Twilight: I still have a few disagreements of my own to move beyond, mostly centering around geese." (Twilight winced: she'd been out of town for that one.) "But in this instance, she happens to be right. I cannot dismiss her order simply because she was the one giving it. We will help you, as much as we can. Myself especially, since some portion of this is my fault. But it has to be done."
She forced herself to take several deep breaths, ordered her tail not to flick, made her ears go straight and rotate towards Rarity alone.
"...okay."
Her friend smiled. "Very well. Then if I might ask an initial favor? The lights are keyed to your command. Would you please turn them all on? I'm not accustomed to operating purely by corona light, and while I saw the state of the library when I entered -- a state I should have said something about so much sooner than this -- I can't quite make out everything that's down here. I would like to know exactly what we are up against."
Twilight nodded, and said the command. All the lights came up. Rarity looked.
Then she looked again.
This was followed by sitting down rather suddenly, with the left foreleg coming up to press against her head.
"...oh."
Twilight found the grace to blush.
The elegant form swayed somewhat. "I... Twilight, how...?"
With open (if misplaced) pride, "I've been going to auctions at least once a moon. Plus there's a lot of donations after stable sales, when ponies decide it's easier to donate than hanging onto the same books for a year until you get the chance to try selling them again. Also, sometimes publishers decide to just destroy excess stock and since all I really needed was enough copies to make the mayor see we had to have a new tree, duplicates weren't a problem and they were happy to let me take things they were just going to destroy anyway! Plus there's all the places you and I went, and there's some other tricks --"
"-- is that column actually holding up the tree?"
"No."
"Oh. Good." The swaying not-so-subtly accelerated. "So it can be safely dismantled."
"In stages. Rarity, I know it looks bad, but if we're really all working together --"
"-- Twilight, the library has never had this many books! I don't know if there's this much demand for reading material in all of Ponyville, even with the extended wait, and... Luna's star-tangled tail, there must be fifty copies of just that one novel! How are we supposed to... Spike! Spike can -- no, not even Spike has that much flame, nor do I have the gems to fuel it... oh, Twilight..."
They had known each other for nearly three years, and so Twilight knew exactly when to let her field catch Rarity in mid-faint.
She carefully lowered her friend to the floor, then looked around at the primary reserve and sighed.
We're not burning books. That's... wrong. Selling them is bad enough. That's necessary, at least in that it's what a real librarian would do. But we're not getting to the point where books wind up being burned. We'll get through it.
Her field exerted again, and she gently began to carry Rarity upstairs. It was time for an apology, and that apology would need to be followed by a full group discussion. But...
Twilight frowned.
This was the first-draft ordering of the newest checklist: apology first, then bring them into the basement so they could all see the scope of the problem. But...
What would be the best time to tell them about the storage unit?
As Twilight understood it, the concept had originally been born in Manehattan, where any pony tendency towards acquisition generally ran up against that settled zone's most constant problem. The one thing you could just about never find for sale in the business-oriented metropolis was more living space, and so anypony who liked to accumulate possessions would eventually have to decide exactly who (or in this case, what) was getting the bed, at least for those apartments which weren't so small as to initially restrict their residents to spine-destroying hammocks. A settled zone which never had enough room for its residents very happily sold them the things which would overflow what little solitude existed and then kept right on doing it because there was no place quite like Manehattan, a declaration which the rest of the continent tended to follow up with "Thank goodness."
The combination of a metropolis dedicated to selling things and resident ponies who had nowhere to put them had eventually triggered a new creation. Portions of the wild zone to the immediate west had been cleared and a different type of city had arisen: one populated by nothing except vast, empty buildings and spacious rooms waiting to be filled. Those buildings rented access to the inviting vacuums, and the result was that while the majority of Manehattan's ponies still had no true way of living with their own possessions, they were now welcome to visit them just about any time they liked. And it wasn't as if effectively paying double on the settled zone's notoriously Tartarus-freed occupancy prices was going to put a damper on anypony's personal budget, at least not in a way that those who collected the funds cared about.
(Twilight had heard rumors that several Manehattan residents had taken one look at the huge spaces available in those new buildings, compared them to their own closet-sized apartment, then effectively cut out the middlepony and moved in with their possessions. It was supposedly exactly like living in the city itself, only with slightly less access to plumbing and a somewhat extended commute. Manehattan's mayor was rumored to be considering building a huge toll gate in front of the main western entrance because if ponies were living in that immediate area with any degree of comfort while still being able to save a few bits, something clearly had to be done to fix that.)
Ponyville's population wasn't as concentrated, and the smaller settled zone easily found room for little things like backyards. But still, there were ponies who had too many things to fit in their homes and didn't feel like redistributing any of them -- and so while it occupied only a single new building to the immediate south of the train station, the concept had found a home near the continent's center. Twilight, seeing the opportunity for boosting her master plan, had taken advantage.
The seven of them were standing in the hallway, just outside her storage unit. A wall of books mostly barred access to the interior, although it did so in a rather polite and decidedly organized way.
Rarity began to sway again.
"I believe," she dazedly said, "I will require some additional degree of explanation. That entire section is the same novel, Twilight. You said you had been claiming excess stock from the publisher --"
Which got Spike's attention, because Twilight hadn't let him in on every part of the plan. "That doesn't sound right."
Rainbow glanced at him, then briefly examined the indicated section. "Is there a way having four hundred copies of the same book would ever sound right? Especially when it's one that boring?"
"...you read it?" Fluttershy asked with rather open surprise.
"Everypony else was reading it," Rainbow lightly fumed. "So I tried it. I gave up after twelve chapters. They never did anything except whine and make eyes at each other and then when the author put a contract in, a contract you had to sign just to have a date, I kicked the whole thing out my bedroom window. I don't know where it landed and I don't care."
Twilight's corona ignited, and glow softly indicated a rather indented edition.
"Oh," Rainbow stated. This was followed by "Anyway, it's stupid. And now it's stupid times four hundred."
"Eight hundred," Twilight helplessly corrected her. "There's some more columns going towards the back."
Most of the group winced. Spike just looked more confused. "But when publishers get rid of extra copies, they sent them out to be destroyed, Twilight. That's what you've always told me. To keep somepony from getting their field on them and trying to work with a market that's already been flooded."
"They were happy to let me take them," Twilight said.
"Really?"
"I mean, you wouldn't just put all those books in a huge bin behind your warehouse if you didn't want somepony to come along and take them. It's practically an open invitation."
She was at the front of the group, closest to the wall of words, and so had to try and work out exactly who had facehoofed on sound. (Rainbow: there had been an accompanying rustle of feathers, and it wasn't as if she hadn't had enough exposure to that particular variant.) Spike, however... well, facepalming involved a portion of air being displaced on impact, plus there was a little skittering noise from claws going over scales. That was always considerably easier to pick out.
"You went dumpster diving," her little brother passively declared.
"No! Dumpsters are dirty! I'd never go in one unless I didn't have any other choice!"
Which, as a protest being presented to a sapient who'd literally known her all his life, was somewhat useless. "You -- let me guess... you lifted the entire dumpster in your field, turned it over, sorted out the books..."
Twilight blushed. Rarity swayed faster.
"...yeah," Twilight eventually admitted. "Plus I had to lift the entire thing over the fence first. Because they had No Trespassing signs up and that meant I couldn't go onto the property after hours, but there wasn't any sign which said the dumpster wasn't allowed to leave." Defensively, "I mean, it's not as if I kept the dumpster. That would have been theft. I kept the contents. Which the publisher said --" with more than a little offense "-- were trash. And sure, that book isn't... good..." Her tongue was immediately coated in the foulness of drastic understatement. "...but it's still a book. Nopony wanted it. Which might be sort of justified because nopony should have wanted it in the first place. Or written it. Or paid for it." She hadn't even made it to Chapter Six, and that was after eight tries spread across three moons, just from trying to see what all the fuss was about. As far as she'd been able to determine, it was about the author's ability to take the simple act of a character trying to say 'Hello' and rendering it into dialogue which never would have emerged from a living pony's mouth, something which had been darkly impressive for the first chapter, pain-inducing over the next three and if left to itself for the entire page count, might have produced a local fatality. "But when it's a book, and you're just sending it out to be destroyed..."
Pinkie, who claimed to have finished the entire thing and whose only comment had been that the author had clearly never done any of it, seemed to be thinking everything over. "But this is good, right? We don't have to sell enough to clear every last extra book! We just have to sell enough that what's left can fit in here!"
Twilight's spirits began to lift --
"-- nuh-uh!" Applejack immediately shot back. "No fallback positions! Can't go in sayin' we've got a last resort already on tap, or nopony's gonna give it their all -- an' with this space waitin' t' use, the problem's jus' gonna start buildin' again. Twi's gotta get things down t' where it all fits on the shelves. That's the order. Not 'mostly fits on the shelves an' the rest goes in the storage unit.' We have t' do this right. Sell what we can, an' whatever doesn't get sold gets gone. Anythin' else an' we're beggin' for Round Two. Not gonna happen on mah watch."
-- and immediately sank again.
"Very well," Rarity managed, propping herself against the hallway's back wall. "We have all pledged our hours, at least what we have of them, towards making this work. But... looking at the scope of this... where do we even begin? The amount of labor required seems to approach the infinite..."
Twilight turned to face them, managed a small smile.
"That's why you make checklists," she told them. "Because a great writer once said infinity's a lot easier to deal with when you think of it as a series of small chunks. We just need a first step to begin with. That leads into the second, then the third, and eventually, you're at the bottom of the list and you're done. And the first step is..."
Step 1: sort the books. Figure out which ones have to be sold, versus the number which should be kept.
It wasn't a happy step.
The first subsection of that step should have been the easy part: they just needed to gather the duplicates, those hundreds (and then some) of excess copies which Twilight had acquired in the name of forcing the issue. But it wasn't a pleasant process, because it left Twilight working among her failures. There was a constant series of little emotional kicks going into her ribs, and the repeated impacts never seemed to become any duller. And depending on just which of her friends was currently trying to assist her, there could be -- other issues.
"So you're sure they're all the same printing?" Pinkie asked. "Because I was checking the catalog and this says the first printing is worth two-tenths of a bit more. We could price that one a little higher for the collectors."
They were currently working in front of the tree: it had been the only way to find enough space. The contents of the storage unit had been emptied under Moon, levitated as a single bulk transport back to the library, where they had completely clogged up the aisles until Sun had been raised. With operating hours under way, Spike was temporarily managing the front desk, and Twilight was -- mostly watching the street. Pinkie, a few body lengths behind her, was checking over the most populous of the duplicates. Familiar slapping sounds were coming from that area: paper being placed on top of paper, over and over.
Part of Twilight's focus came from simply not wanting to watch. They were going to get rid of books, and... it was necessary, but having it be necessary didn't change the fact that it hurt. But ultimately, she was also looking at the street because so many passers-by were looking at her.
Well, she supposed there were legitimate reasons for that. Ponies who trotted and flew past the tree generally didn't expect to have most of the view obscured by a huge semi-mound of books. They were naturally going to pause a little, slow down in their travels so they could take an extended survey of current events. Or a stare. It was usually a stare. Sometime the pony's body would go past them and the head would just rotate back while the body was still going forward, as if the pony's neck had been changed into rubber.
Twilight had tried to tell herself that it was drumming up interest. There was clearly something happening at the library and now ponies were going to be wondering what it was. That was a good way to start building on one of the future steps. But still... they were staring, and she occasionally stared right back in the hopes that it would make them move a little faster.
Admittedly, some of the stares went past her, because that was where the books were. Along with the current round of sorting. And Pinkie.
"They were all in the same dumpster," she replied, not bothering to glance back. "And given when I got them, if there was any mix of printings in there, it's almost guaranteed to be the last ones, Pinkie -- the copies the publisher ran off just before they realized the market was saturated. It's probably not worth checking inside the covers. Not with the number we've got on this one title."
Pinkie sighed, presumably nodded. "Okay. I'll just put them over here." More slapping sounds. "And a little here. Some more here. I think this end needs more reinforcement..." A rather specific series of slaps. "There we go! Okay, now let me just frame the window and we'll do the next title. Twilight?"
Which temporarily prevented some of the earlier words from fully registering. "What?"
Carefully, "'Saturated' means everypony who was going to buy a copy already did, right? And that's why the rest were thrown away?"
"Yeah," Twilight reluctantly admitted.
Unfortunately, it led into the natural followup question. "Then how are we supposed to sell them?"
She sighed. "I don't know. Just... sort them out, Pinkie. We'll worry about that step when it comes. So you're almost done with that title?"
"If I don't need to check the printings? Just about."
Several hundred down, untold numbers to go. "Then what's next?"
"Shingles."
That one triggered a groan. "I wound up with duplicates of carpentry books? I don't even remember getting anything about roofing." It was starting to feel a little like going out with Rarity on the morning after the designer had lost track of her drink count at the bar and consumed that regrettable fourth. She would inevitably need to request assistance in discovering everything which had actually taken place after that, because her memory would have collapsed six hours before her body did.
"No, shingles," Pinkie corrected. "I want to slant the roof a little, but I'm not sure if I can stagger in for a step pyramid, because there isn't enough holding it up from the bottom. And I can't do a flat base and build on that without interlocking pages, which is going to be kind of rough on the books and we want to sell them in the best condition possible! So I'd need a really big book for the base. Really big. About three times my body length. And I've never even seen one that big! So I was kind of wondering if there was any magic for making books bigger. And if there isn't, that friction spell? I'm going to need it. Because the shingle copies will be diagonal, and I don't know how to keep them from sliding!" Hopefully, "Unless you can think of something...?"
Which was when Frame the window? finally made its belated journey across Twilight's wearied mind.
Twilight slowly turned.
"Pinkie?"
"Yes?"
"What is that?"
"Oh, now you're just being silly, Twilight!" Pinkie enthusiastically chirped. "You grew up around books and you worked with books! Anypony who's spent that much time with books would know what this is! So either you just want me to say it or --" with open pride "-- you just can't spot it when it's being done on this kind of scale."
Twilight tried to scale the result down. This failed to produce any results, which led into her mentally attempting to scale it up and see if that produced anything she could work with. She finally stopped when the intangible result began to overlap the tree.
"Pinkie..."
"It's a book fort! A life-sized one! You can trot inside, and look out the windows, and defend yourself from the siege of the evil hardcovers! Because if you're building with paperbacks, then hardcovers have to be the evil ones. Besieging good with good is just silly. And the paperback are probably the underdog, because hardcovers do more damage. So I had to make this one really big, because when you're the underdog, you need extra ponies. But it needs a roof because if we don't have one, Rainbow's going to besiege us from the air. And it should probably be reinforced, in case she decides to crash through it. On purpose. Or on Rainbow. So what do you think? Diagonal plus shingles? Or would another shape absorb more impact?"
The central issue with Rarity was distraction.
They had agreed not to page through the books any more than necessary. A quick inspection for damage, especially with those things which hadn't been taken down for a while: even Twilight's most dedicated reshelving didn't flip through every last page, and so she occasionally didn't see when some rather rude, uncaring, and possibly insane pony had defaced a page by writing in the margins or underlining passages in a book they didn't own. Inspection, at least at the speed of the fastest possible field-assisted page flips, was necessary. Reading stood a chance to paralyze the entire process, and so neither of them was going to do any of it. They'd sworn to that.
None of which prevented Rarity from looking at the covers.
"Hmmm..."
Oh no. "Next book, Rarity."
"Just a moment. I am simply removing a quantity of dust. Should this wind up being placed into the sale, it will need to look its best."
"Oh. Okay."
"Also, once the patina has been wiped away, I should have a better judgment for the true hues of the lead character's dress. How old is this book? Let me see... oh, really. Well, then. Given that only two or perhaps three living ponies might have a personal memory of the time when this was originally in style, I believe it might be safe to attempt some degree of revival. Now of course, I will not take credit for the design. That will be left to the original creator, and I will note that this is but my interpretation of the work on my label. Which naturally means that I will need to learn that designer's name and as I have sadly observed so many times before, your fashion history section is so lacking as to practically force me to create my own department at home. I believe you confirmed the quality of my collection rather recently, did you not? So simply allow me to gallop back to the Boutique for a moment --"
"-- Rarity, this is your fourth trip."
Crossly, "Well, clearly your teleporting me home would leave both of us doing something other than sorting for the duration. I will certainly not delay my journey until distraction causes me to lose the bulk of this idea. And I will not permit you to bring the contents of my shelves into the tree, lest any of my own troops wind up being felled by friendly spellfire. I shall not be gone for long, Twilight, not unless I wind up going rather deep into my own shelves in order to find this creator -- hmm. Yes, something will have to be done about that peek-a-boo rip over the mark. Would you believe that there was once a time when such a dress was seen as a deliberate provocation towards the erotic, and so some ponies demanded that such things be banned? When the majority of ponies trot about with their marks on full display every day? I swear, to cover something for a single second is to send it into the realm of the forbidden..."
Spike had grown up at her side, and... a lot of that time had been spent with her making mistakes regarding his upbringing, something she'd finally admitted and frequently apologized for. But on the whole, she felt he'd turned out rather well, and acknowledged that a good part of that was in spite of her. The little dragon's natural gregariousness seemed to have just about fully recovered from their years in the Gifted School, for youth brought with it an improved ability to bounce back. He had mostly shed the effects like worn-out scales, while Twilight was... still working on that.
But there had been positive aspects to having them grow up together, and one of those was that her brother's priorities were frequently in order. He knew when to help her with problems (and she knew she had yet to accurately pin down every last time when she needed help). He was willing to assist with so much, and just knowing she could count on him sometimes helped keep her stable during a crisis. However... there was still a problem, built into the relationship itself.
Spike was her little brother.
He understood when she, and by extension, the library needed him. But there was only so much extra labor he could stand. Even during those times when things were operating normally, he would frequently respond to her third attempted rearrangement of the day by chasing her out of the tree. After a certain number of hours, Spike would inevitably begin to hear the duties of youth calling him. He wanted to go see his friends. He wanted to go outside and play. He wanted to know when the next raise in his allowance was coming, especially after spending so much time as a distinctly underpaid assistant. He would become frustrated with his confinement. And sometimes, when Spike became frustrated...
"I saw this yellow thing through the window."
"Oh?"
"I was trying to remember what it's called. And if I've ever seen it before. I can't remember if... well, anyway, all I know is that it glows and its light is sort of warm. Do you think it'll be back tomorrow?"
...he turned sarcastic.
Applejack's honesty could be something less than helpful. There had been times when the Bearers would collectively need to present some degree of falsehood in order to make a mission work, and their best hopes for such occasions was to either isolate Applejack -- one drastic emergency had led to temporarily locking her in a handy washroom, but the farmer had been rather good at kicking her way out -- or just hope nopony noticed the tight-lipped earth pony shuffling her hooves at the back of the group. She was notoriously bad at diplomacy (which she saw as 'mostly lying'), occasionally slipped up while deliberately trying for tact, and could sometimes turn into the last pony to whom the words "What are you thinking?" should ever be uttered, because there was a very good chance she would tell you.
As it turned out, that Elemental trait wasn't much of a comfort during sorting either.
"An' that one. Weekly gossip rag. Ninety percent's a lie, nine is exaggeration, an' you might not want t' trust the writer an' editors t' put their real names on anythin'. It'll be another waste of table space, an' we're gonna have to take up jus' about everythin' 'round the tree t' start with. Just shred it."
"I am not shredding anything." Twilight put her hoof down, and the echo bounced around the library for a few seconds. "Not before giving it a fair chance! Some ponies collect magazines! Maybe there's a resident with a gap in their issue run!"
"Y'mean like somepony missed a Gabby Gums column an' wants to catch up on all the old lies? Nothin' ages faster than gossip, Twi, an' anypony dumb enough t' hang onto it probably got enough sources goin' that they don't need this one. Bad enough t' have the books stacked so high: ain't gonna have the tables on top of each other too. As-is, we're probably gonna need some crates. Just let me rip it an' we'll move on t' the next."
"No."
"Y'ain't makin' sense!" And with that, Applejack put her hoof down.
It took far more time for those echoes to die away, and that was before accounting for those produced by the two collapsed columns.
"...sorry," the considerably stronger pony finally said. "Ah'll pick that up. An' fix the floor. But point stands, Twi. There's stuff which ain't gonna sell, which ain't even worth the effort of tryin'. Bad apples. Gotta identify 'em and dump 'em now 'cause it's that much less t' do later. Confetti and nests, that's all it's good for. So let it be confetti an' nests."
The softness had to be forced into her voice. "No."
They stared at each other for a while.
"You're bein' stubborn."
Steadily, "Takes one to know one."
That got a hat-covered nod. "Yeah, won't argue that. But mah point don't stand on that one, it gallops. All you're givin' yourself is more t' do later, after the sale, when you'll be pretty much out of time. Do it now an' it'll be easier at the end. Twi, sometimes you've gotta get out of your own way, an' this is one of them. Back up, let me do it, an' on t' the next. We've wasted enough time arguin' as is."
"Then we'll waste more," Twilight softly replied, "because I'm not moving. I'm not destroying anything right now, and I'm not even going to consider it until after the sale. Everything gets its chance, Applejack. So you can fight me on this until Sun gets lowered, and we'll do nothing else -- or we can go back to pure sorting, with no shredding involved. Or you could go home. Your choice."
In open frustration, "An' where did y'learn t' act like this?"
She went with the honest answer. "You."
Applejack blinked.
"...fine. But when it's over, Twi, if there's an Ah-told-y'so due t' you, Ah'll be making payment." She turned back to the Periodicals archive. Sorting resumed.
After a while, "Y'ever send a letter t' the Princess 'bout that lesson?"
"No."
A slow exhale. "Good."
The word for Fluttershy's efforts was "...sorry."
Twilight had known that of all her friends, the caretaker would have the least time to give. The needs of the cottage occupied the majority of Fluttershy's hours during the best of times, and spring was birthing season. Animals who had done whatever they could to keep warm during the winter brought the results into the world, a number of species just had a cycle which lined up with the budding moons, and then there were those who just did anything they wanted, seemingly whenever they felt like it, and as long as everyone else was going into labor, they might as well too.
The majority of those deliveries took place unsupervised. Animals had been giving birth on their own for a very long time and for the most part, they'd become rather good at it. There was very little need for Fluttershy to be present for hatchings unless the parents wanted her to meet the newborns, and Twilight had been told that most birds wanted to have a little private time with their new family before considering any visitors. But with mammals, things could become a little more problematic. Many species tended towards multiple births, and it was possible for the newborns to become somewhat tangled up with each other inside the womb. (It was actually one of Applejack's greatest fears: her sheep tenants were the species most prone to that problem, and she was known to spend a good part of those births lurking outside that portion of her land, ready to gallop for help at the first desperate bleat.) Sometimes labor would start too early, or too late. A few infants tried to emerge back-first. Given the sheer number of residents at the cottage, the odds of having at least one issue in delivery on a spring day didn't just approach certainty, they occasionally seemed to exceed it.
So when Fluttershy was trying to give what little time she could, Twilight had to leave the largest window open. And at any moment...
A grey tomcat with an exceptionally short tail and a notched left ear meowed, stared down at them with a cool yellow regard.
"...um..."
"I know it's important, Fluttershy. Go."
And as the pegasus headed for that largest of windows, "...sorry."
(On the whole, Twilight considered it to have been an improvement over the previous day. This time, they'd gotten through six minutes.)
"I'm bored," Rainbow announced for the twentieth time.
That's nice, Rainbow. "Just keep going."
"This is boring. Sorting through checkout cards is boring."
There was a word for a pony who was relying on Rainbow to do repetitive, low-energy work which demanded complete mental focus while offering a total lack of action, and that word was 'desperate'. But the calendar had exacted a number of tolls from the group: when it came to having the Bearers freely gather in any non-emergency situation, spring truly was the single worst season. However, with Rainbow... well, the simple fact was that she had more free time available than anypony else. Unless there was a major change to usher in (or out), or something had blown in from the Everfree and had to be dealt with immediately, Rainbow's personal labor as Ponyville's weather coordinator generally either wrapped up early in the morning or about an hour after the pegasus finally forced herself out of bed. The rest of the team took over during the bulk of the day and while some of that would occasionally require consulting with their superior (assuming they could pin down the location of her current nap), very little of it would require Rainbow to put in actual work. With spring established and the phase into summer weeks away, things mostly coasted and Rainbow mostly practiced stunts, picked herself out of the resulting divots, then fled before anypony could come out of their house to verify who had just produced the crash and demand a little repair labor.
(There was also a word for a pony who managed to make Rainbow clean up after herself, and that word was 'fast'. (Having exceptional jaw strength was a secondary requirement, as Rainbow seldom stopped straining to get away from a tail clamp.) Rainbow hated cleaning: her kitchen sink served as perpetual evidence, and Twilight's infrequent visits to the cloud home always kept her well away from the food preparation area because it seemed as if the occasional low rumble was being produced by something other than ions shifting within the floor when Rainbow planted her hooves with a little too much force. She was roughly familiar with a cloud's natural pegasus-assisted rumble. In Twilight's sincere opinion, nothing happening in the direction of an unattended kitchen should ever sound hungry.)
Rainbow could become bored with an activity in less time than it took to launch a Rainboom. Anything which didn't have much in the way of movement involved would disable her focus, things which required paying attention to fine detail work had better have a backup plan in place along with an emergency response crew on standby, and the most potboiler of adventure novels needed to be sending up steam plumes before the prologue ended. Tasks which Twilight found mentally numbing were likely to end up with the materials scattered in fragments of frustration, possibly with Rainbow hovering over the largest and boasting about the damage she'd managed to put on that one.
But for sheer quantity of time available... she'd already asked Spike to do everything he could, and the little dragon was performing the current task for the Romance section while under strict instructions to look at nothing which was not the checkout card. Beyond that, for assistance during the majority of hours, it was Rainbow or it was nopony.
"Rainbow, we're just looking to see how often a book has been checked out since the last sale," Twilight reminded her, not quite for the twentieth time. "We should generally try to keep an entire series together because somepony who just finished Volume Two is going to be really upset if they have to skip over to Volume Five. But for solo novels, if something hasn't left the library once, there's a chance that..." More slowly, with her misery increasing by the word, "...nopony's interested any more. At least not interested enough to come in and check the book out, or maybe even take it off the shelf at all. Just note the last checkout date and if it's from before my arrival, that book might be -- in trouble. And then it might need to go out to the tables, because it's taking up space, and space is what we have to create. Put it on the 'Possible' pile. If it's just forgotten..."
The responding pause was a fresh one, and the words were new. But coming from Rainbow, the question felt -- odd. "Ponies forget about books?"
"And authors," Twilight miserably said. "The Archives don't: that's part of why they exist. To make sure that there's always one last place to go. But... even there, I know there's books on the shelves which only get moved when they're being dusted. Books which have been sitting there for centuries because -- ponies forget. Somepony said that less than one percent of everything that's ever been written is still being read today. And part of that is because nopony can read it all -- not even the Princess would have had enough time to go through everything in the Archives, Rainbow. But a lot of it is because ponies forget. It's like that one novel out front."
"The book fort one?"
Pinkie had temporarily given up on the roof in favor of starting a second level. (It had taken her nearly an hour to create a workable ramp.) "Yeah. You'll have a book which everypony reads. Then everypony's read it, the author's told the story, and the ponies might take it down themselves once in a while for some reason, even put themselves through reading it again. But they don't pass it on to their children. They don't read it out loud for other ponies, or put it in school courses. Only a few books get that, when it's stories. And even for nonfiction, things get updates, and not many ponies want to attribute older sources and explain how things changed. Sometimes the first author was wrong and when ponies know more, the whole book gets replaced. And ponies... forget, Rainbow. Some books don't deserve that, but... it's hard to stop, and just about impossible to reverse. At best, maybe somepony will be so bored that they'll just snatch something off the shelf because they haven't read it before, and then that book's alive for a few hours. While that's happening, the author isn't gone any --"
She finally spotted the shape of her thoughts, and forced her words to stop before the melancholy completely took over.
It's not like we're sending them out to be buried. It's not like anypony died.
But in so many cases (and for the Archives, it was a truly vast majority), the writer was already dead. The book was their legacy. The book was... all that remained. As long as that legacy stayed on the shelf, there was a chance for it to be taken up again. Dead paper would become living words. The lost returned until the moment the covers closed and then they waited again, lost in rest and quiet hope. To remove a book from the shelf, not have it sell, and then just get rid of it... was taking away that last chance. Taking the legacy of those preserved words and condemning them to perpetual silence.
Kicking out books felt so much like kicking ponies. Kicking them into the grave.
Carefully, with an odd softness in that often-edged voice, because when Rainbow decided to care about something, she fully committed herself to that too. "I can just take over for a while if you need a break."
"I need a drink," Twilight lied, for what she really needed was a few seconds away from the library floor and a drink was her first, best excuse. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Bring me back some wake-up juice? Because seriously, I could fall asleep right here."
"You sleeping on a giant pile of books," Twilight said with faint, unfelt humor.
"Yeah."
"Well, there's one more off that checklist..."
The fuming might have been partially faked. "Hey!"
"Now if you'd just take a nap inside the bell, even for five seconds, I could just about wrap up the whole first scroll."
The warning wasn't, especially when it came with flaring wings. "Twilight..."
"Seriously, given what you were like when I got here, I had you sleeping on a pile of books as the weaker option --"
Rainbow pounced, because a quick round of payback-intended quasi-roughhouse wasn't boring. And once Spike had unearthed them from the wreckage of the inevitable collapsed column, they went back to work, with the pegasus grumbling all the way while Twilight distractedly noted that Rainbow knew a surprising number of curses in Griffonant.
But it was all done with distraction now, because no amount of tumbling across the floor had shaken the thought out of her head, and the quiet time beneath the books had simply given her all the longer to dwell on it.
We're not killing ponies by taking away their legacies. There are master copies in the Archives. There's always a chance for somepony to come along and read, one more time.
But the Archives were in Canterlot. Most ponies would go through their entire lives without traveling to the capital, and it often seemed as if just about the same percentage were incapable of considering the benefits to be gained from filling out the library exchange program's request form.
This isn't a burial.
The thought would not leave her head, because she didn't want it to. It was the only shield she could raise.
Some lies were protective. It was something she'd never been able to discuss with Applejack, not with anticipation of the disgusted snorts which would serve as the central counter to her arguments. But it was true. You told lies to protect ponies. From pain, from upset, and when it would hurt too much, from the truth. And there would be times when those shields held.
It was just a little different when she knew she was lying to herself.
Twilight knew something about Ponyville's gossip circuit, but it mostly came from what Rarity tried to pass on during some of the longer sessions at the Boutique, and it didn't mean she remembered all of it. Still, it had been enough to teach her something about the power passed-along words could wield, along with just how distorted those sentences could become through repeated retellings, each of which seemed to lose at least one of the original terms. The forgetful ponies would substitute, deciding that one changed word couldn't possibly hurt anything -- and twenty more exchanges would have nothing of the original gossip left.
Ponies had seen the book sorting being done in front of the tree. Some of them had certainly watched a portion of it, and a little of that had gone on for a disconcertingly long time. It meant that word was being passed around of something happening at the library -- but Twilight couldn't trust those words to be accurate, and it meant the next step had to be carefully supervised.
Step 2: advertise.
That one turned out to be a multi-pony effort. Applejack created the initial sales pitch. Rarity softened it somewhat, then rendered the words in her elegant calligraphy. (Both carefully kept Twilight out of those portions: they were all too familiar with what could happen when she tried to promote or sell any kind of service, especially since she tended to expect far too much from everypony else's vocabularies.) Twilight took the results into the basement, cleared space around her personal printing press, belatedly sorted out those books, and then ran off copies. Pinkie then tacked the largest-print version of the results to every notice board in the settled zone, and a grumbling Rainbow dropped a personal copy off in every mailbox she could reach before becoming bored and demanding to know why the Post Office couldn't just do it, not to mention a certain little dragon. Twilight wound up sending her out three times with reminders that postal services came with purchased stamps: one more expense which came out of her budget. (She had a certain number of rather expensive long-distance stamps, but they couldn't be broken up into smaller units: such things had to be saved for the library exchange program.) And as for having Spike send out everything... well, there were also only so many gems he could work with, and so much fire for each to power. Asking him to deliver every last one-sheet would guarantee an empty storage cabinet, exhausted little dragon, and a tremendous number of startled ponies who simply weren't used to having their mail arrive in bursts of green flame.
The stamps were an expense. The paper for the one-sheets was an expense. There were so many expenses involved in running a library, and the Mayor would set the budget that was meant to cover them all. If Twilight didn't succeed at the sale, that portion of the budget might become so very much smaller...
So they had to advertise, especially as Twilight had already missed two sales. The long-term residents of the settled zone needed to be told that the once-annual event was back on again, while those who'd moved in after her arrival didn't know any such thing had ever taken place at all. And given the sheer number of books they had to sell... well, it hadn't taken very long for Fluttershy to convince them that they needed to think outside the settled zone, and so a little ad space had been purchased in a number of Canterlot newspapers. That had been something other than cheap, and nopony knew if it would lure in enough extra traffic to justify that expense. Theoretically, they just needed one dedicated collector who was willing to risk a day trip. But Twilight had been careful in her weeding: things with a true value on the secondary market weren't going to be priced at a quarter-bit each, and the majority of those books had been retained on the shelves: even if they hadn't been used recently, the potential cost of replacing them seemed to justify the space. Such collectors would, for the most part, be disappointed, and ponies suffering letdown tended to keep their bits in their saddlebags. They wouldn't spend.
Twilight was the only one who seemed to be spending.
Spending money to make money: a concept which both Rarity and Applejack had been trying to explain over repeated visits. Twilight felt she understood it, to the point where she'd finally asked both of them, in stress-filled tones which hadn't been recognized until an hour after they'd left (or apologized for until she'd finished galloping after them), to stop talking about it. Yes, they'd forced one crucial point to sink below fur level: any bits gained from the sale didn't go to Town Hall. Instead, any funds she managed to raise would become part of the library's budget. She could use them for maintenance, improvements and, if she somehow wound up with any empty shelf space, she could purchase new books. As long as the money was spent on something to do with the library, its use would be completely up to her. And surely somepony had to buy something. With the exception of her darkest blanket-kicking hours within the nightscape, Twilight refused to indulge a fantasy which ended with her having the same number of books she'd started with.
(The worst of the nightmares had seen a long line of ponies stretching out to the fringe and beyond, every last one of whom had found things late and lost and forgotten, each carrying enough tomes to bury her, all having decided that this was the perfect time for a severely belated return. And then the newest pile of books had encased her to the point where all light and air had been locked away, leaving her to suffocate in the darkness of decaying paper -- until she'd woken up to find she'd somehow managed to kick her pillows into her own snout.)
She was stressed, and nearly three years of lessons had brought her to the point where she was both capable of recognizing it and trying not to vent her emotions onto ponies who didn't deserve it. Spike was taking the majority of patron interactions, she was swallowing back so many of the words which might have offended the friends who were trying so hard to help her, still couldn't stop them all, had her apologies accepted for every last slip and didn't know how much longer that would last...
"I hate this," she'd told Spike on the night before the sale itself. "I hate knowing it's my fault. If I'd done this every year, on schedule, we'd have less to sell tomorrow. If I hadn't tried to force a new planting. If I hadn't made all those trips to the auction house. The publishers. If I hadn't done... everything..."
Her right forehoof had listlessly poked at her okra. She hadn't found the appetite required for eating any of it, or much of anything else over the last day.
"It's over after tomorrow," he'd tried to reassure her. "We'll sell what we can, and I'll take care of the rest." Which had gotten him a stare, and he'd responded with a rather awkward expression. "Well -- it's like Applejack said. I'm up to a bonfire --"
"-- we are not burning books."
"Twilight..." A deep breath. "...do you really think we're going to sell enough to fit the mayor's orders?"
"I hope --"
"-- do you think we can? Not hope, Twilight: think."
After far too long a pause, she'd shaken her head.
"Then we have to do something with what's left over," he'd stated. "We can't risk the summer budget. Twilight, you have to -- let it happen."
More rearrangement of greens. Some of the results were starting to look like failed shelving systems.
"Let me do it," she'd finally said. "This was me. My problem, my buildup, my everything. So when it's time to get rid of them -- just let me do it, Spike. By myself. Please?"
He'd nodded. They'd both gone to bed, or at least one to bed and one to basket. The basket had done its job: the bed hadn't. And now Twilight was staring out the window, watching Moon during hours when she should have been sleeping, unable to descend into the nightscape for whatever fresh round of self-imposed horrors were awaiting her. Awake under Moon, watching and thinking and, in both cases, wishing she could stop.
It has to be me. It was my fault, so it has to be my solution.
We sell. As much as we can. And then I...
...open the grave.
I kick ponies in, one after the other. I tell them they're worthless. Nopony remembers them any more. Nopony loves them. Nopony ever will again. I bury them, and I trot away to find their replacements, right up until the day I wind up burying them too --
-- it's just books. A book is not the author.
It's never just books. A book isn't the author, but it's what the author was thinking about, what they wanted to say.
Some of it was stupid. Some of it never should have been said at all.
But there should still be a record. That once there was a pony, and even if their words were wrong, that pony still had something to say.
Did real librarians feel like this? Did their marks shield them from such thoughts? Let them ignore the pain? Was it only her, so unsuited for the job, who inflicted agony upon herself, hurt without reason, emotions which never should have been felt at all?
I am a real librarian. Rarity believes that. This is a real library and I'm responsible for it, so I'm...
...a real librarian never would have let things get this far.
I love matching ponies to books. I love seeing the light come on in their eyes. I love... being there at the moment when love begins.
I'm going to get rid of books. Books which will never find their ponies. I'm standing in front of the cemetery and ordering the herd to gallop into the earth.
I...
...the sky is starting to lighten. Sun will be here soon.
I have to get up.
She forced herself out of the bed which didn't work, made legs which didn't want to work carry her towards Spike's basket.
"Spike?" The first response came out as something like 'Gnniffl,' and she gently hoof-poked his right shoulder. "I know it's too early, but we have to get started. We need to set up the tables before the first train leaves the station, just in case any of the commuters pass us. Come on -- it's going to be a long day, but the sooner we start it --"
the longer it's going to be
"-- the sooner we... get it over with."
"Grisht," her little brother muttered. "Gah." Green irises slowly revealed themselves. "What time is --"
"Too early," Twilight sighed. "And too late. Come on. Let's try to grab some breakfast, and then... let's just get it over with."
Step 3: sell.
The version of the entry on the original internal checklist had featured more capitals and three encouraging exclamation points. Twilight couldn't seem to summon any of them up right now.
She surveyed the setup as it waited for its first customer under waning moonlight. Getting the tables ready had been easy, for Twilight believed in time and motion efficiency studies. She had found fascination in the works of Bunker Galebreath, especially as concerned how just about anything could be rendered into a more practical and energy-saving form -- with the possible exception of dating. (It had taken her second year in Ponyville before she'd understood how raising a family of twelve could channel somepony's interests in that direction.) As such, she'd taken the lost stallion's advice and saved a step. Sorted books went directly onto a waiting table. The table, when loaded, went into the basement. Once the first-stage sorting had wrapped up, any secondary process (pulling back essentials, rares, things which couldn't be replaced) took place on the tables themselves, and whatever remained after that could be levitated directly outside (while being carried rather high and with some serious worries about keeping things balanced at all times) and placed into its predesignated selling position, lined up with the chart she'd drawn on the third day. In his way, Bunker Galebreath had been a genius, the pioneer and first-mark Founder of his entire science --
-- dead for ninety-three years. Forgotten by just about everypony who didn't work in the industry he'd founded, with more than a few of those ponies unaware of the stallion who'd started the whole thing.
Three of his books were on the tables. Placed with efficiency and care.
Twilight forced herself to take a breath, began to trot around the tables -- and tree, for the only way to get everything arranged without having books piled up in the street had been to surround the trunk. Three hundred and sixty degrees of book overload. Every other arrangement would have involved tables on top of tables, hardcover hazards to traffic both hoofbound and airborne, and they'd still needed to angle things in a way which would leave space for the book fort. Twilight hadn't thought of something she could do with the book fort other than asking Rainbow to keep it dry: the tree had received a multi-day Weather Bureau exemption which had left it untouched through the last two seasonal sprinkles.
The fort, in its way, was rather efficient: Pinkie had casually figured out a base structure which allowed for considerable book density while allowing it to take the weight of multiple giggling occupants. Twilight had already caught several colts and fillies playing within the paper walls, and despite the damage which was surely being done to the book surfaces they were tumbling across, she'd -- let them. It wasn't as if she was going to sell all of those copies and in a way, it gave the books something to do in the last days before... today.
The structure had served other purposes: it was yet another means of letting ponies know that something was happening at the library, and it defined the rightmost border of the sale. If Twilight could see the fort, she was in her part of the event: once it was out of sight, she was in Spike's initial territory. With no way for any single pony to see everything (and even an overhead survey would have been blocked by a number of branches), they'd had to split up the assignments. Her friends would be coming in whenever they could throughout the day, serving as both relief and extra eyes: there was no way Twilight and Spike could get through the entire Sun-raising through (beyond) Sun-lowering shift without breaks, and neither had any hope of being able to watch the entire area all by themselves. Twilight was all too aware that during the times when it was just the two of them, it would be all too easy for anypony to snatch an unpurchased item from an edge table and gallop off before anything could be done -- then darkly considered that every piece stolen was one less thing they had to sell.
She'd put up signs, indicating sections and categories for the browsers. The printing press had been put back into action, and maps for getting through the maze of tables were posted at the outer edges. Despite Zecora's advice, snacks and drinks for shoppers had not been provided: the budget was already stretched thin enough. The Crusaders had shown early signs of using the fort as a lemonade sales station, and Twilight had displayed the double corona which had gotten them out of the area before anything could explode.
Rainbow had arranged for a rain-free day, negating book-moving wind gusts and keeping the humidity at pleasant levels while making the pre-dawn air around the tree a little warmer than it would be for the rest of Ponyville: weather which made it easy to browse for a while. Applejack had taken what remained of Twilight's stamp budget and converted it into an assortment of coins which she called a bank: multiple denominations which would make it easy to offer change.
They'd done everything they could have for her, after she'd done everything she shouldn't.
"Are you ready?" Spike softly asked as he gazed up at her, worry writ large across his scales.
"No," Twilight quietly replied. "But we're out of time."
She would retain the memories from the day for the rest of her life, but as something other than a steady flow. In the rare times when her blushing future self cared (or was forced) to look back upon it, things would play out as a series of little scenes, focus moments from the sale which she would never forget, sometimes in spite of her best efforts.
The first purchase: that stayed with her. Applejack had told her that getting the initial exchange into her saddlebags was crucial because up until the moment you had that one sale, there was a possibility to finish the day with none. (Applejack, in describing her personal segment of the disaster which had ultimately taken out their first Gala, had disgustedly borrowed a rounders term. "It's a perfect game. No customers, no sales, no money, an' no point.") A pony who'd been on her way to the train, ready for the sleepy commute into Canterlot, had trotted by the tables and paused just long enough to pick out a book by the light of corona shine, one which would wind up substituting for a window-propped pillow. That had been three-tenths of a bit, and Twilight had exhaled as the prospect of a total failure wearily staggered away from the sale, trying to make its way to the tracks.
Sun had been raised. More ponies had come by: some responding to the one-sheets and checking the tables on their way to work, others who never bothered to glance at mail or notice boards and thus got to experience the dubious joy of a settled zone where every scheduled event came as a complete shock. Twilight had moved among the tables and watched others easily doing the same: she hadn't repeated her mistake of basing the aisle spacing around herself. And then they'd had their first pony coming off the train.
"Can I get a better rate for bulk?" the mare asked, her words weighed down by a heavy Canterlot accent.
Twilight looked her over, noted the presence of the cart. "Are you reselling?"
The pause seemed to go on for a little too long. "Does it matter?"
"Other than the part where I'd appreciate your being honest with me? No," Twilight replied. "I'm selling books today. If you can sell them to somepony else at a personal profit, that's your business, and I hope it works out for you. I'll kick down the prices on some things if you're taking a lot of them, but I'm not going to do 'everything which fits in the cart for a hundred bits' on a pile six times my height, and if you try to sneak any of the collectibles into a bulk rate, I'll see it, and I won't be happy. But if you play fair with me and don't try to spear me on the final total, I'll work with you."
Because that had been on the checklist as 3a.
I'm not Rarity. I can't go into negotiations trying to win. The objective is to clear space, so if I have to deal a little or a lot in order to do it, I also have to accept some degree of built-in losing in those deals. Let them have their victories, and I'll have less books to deal with in the end.
The mare thought it over.
"I run a fourthhoof book stall," she eventually admitted. "I'm trying to see if I can stock up." An appraising pink gaze moved over the tables. "Your stuff is cleaner than most of what I get. That's just about Archives-clean."
"Thank you." She'd said the words without feeling them. "Go on in. Let me know when you're ready to total."
The unicorn mare nodded, then trotted past her, leaving the cart behind as she made her first move into the maze. An older earth pony stepped up to occupy the briefly-vacant space.
"Miss Sparkle," the mayor neutrally greeted her. "Beginning early, I see."
"Earlier than you might think," Twilight replied, forcing her words to stay calm. "We were setting up before Sun was raised."
The mayor slowly looked over the tables, or at least the half which were visible from her current position. "This is rather more -- stocked than I had expected. There is enough here to account for every one of the columns, added to most of the shelves --"
"-- it's what we had to sell," Twilight interrupted, and immediately prepared to not talk about any of the reasons why. "All of it. Nothing essential, Mayor: nothing I can't replace if I really need to, and nothing which should never be sold at all. This is what's been remaindered. I sorted, I weeded, and my friends helped me to get it all done on schedule. The sale is under way, on time. That's what you wanted."
Softly, "Miss Sparkle, I can count, and I can see where the tables begin to circle the tree. I can also see that most of these tables have been borrowed. I told you to bring the collection down to something which would fit on the shelves. If I were to trot into the library right now --"
"-- you can't. Unless it's an emergency or enough ponies are helping to let me go inside, we're closed for the day. I'm needed out here."
The mayor took a breath, held it for a few seconds. "Please answer me directly, Miss Sparkle. The books which currently remain inside the library. Do they all fit on the shelves?"
"Yes. With space left for the ones which are checked out right now, and then some."
"And how many of those on the tables would need to sell in order to maintain that internal status?"
Twilight held back her first answer, just long enough to surgically extract the more impolite qualifiers and terms of direct address.
"Most."
There hadn't been much left over.
"Most," the mayor repeated.
"Yes," Twilight told her. "Most. Mayor, this is my sale. It's three years of sales crammed into one day, because that's what you told me to do. I complied. But it's my sale. I'm conducting it the best way I know how and when it's over, I'll make sure the collection fits on the shelves, because that's what you told me to do and... it's what a librarian would do when the mayor ordered it. When the mayor -- shouldn't have had to order it. You told me to make space, and..." It was so hard, not swallowing in front of the older mare, keeping her own gaze up and level. "...you were right to tell me that. I was neglecting one of the duties of my job."
The earth pony tilted her head to the right, returned it to center. The cravat shifted accordingly.
"I am somewhat surprised," she finally said, "to hear you admit that."
"It's my job," Twilight repeated. "It's your job. I don't want to step on your territory, not even when a mission forces me to. It's... not a nice place to be. But at the same time, Mayor -- it's my job. So -- are you here to shop?"
Grey eyes blinked, exactly once.
"I came by to see if the sale was proceeding on sched --"
"-- then you're not buying," Twilight cut her off. "And I currently have somepony who's interested in a bulk purchase. Today, Mayor, my job is to sell books. So I think my time is better spent guiding her than speaking with you. So if you'll excuse me, or even if you won't, until the day you finally fire me, I have to go and do my job..."
She turned easily within the aisle: she'd left enough space for that too. She did so quickly, before the mayor could see the other impact. For Twilight had watched as the words had kicked into the older mare, every one bringing its own hard-hoofed blow, but she didn't want the official to spot what was now happening on her own end.
It had been nearly three years, and she had changed so much. But it had been days of stress and confronting her own failures while getting ready to bury ponies, and sometimes, even now, after nearly three years...
...sometimes, the words just slipped out.
She could feel that now. She even knew that the words had been wrong. But she hadn't stopped them, she couldn't take them back, she couldn't fix --
"-- I don't hate you," the mayor whispered, and every last syllable somehow found a place within purple skull-flattened ears.
Twilight stopped. Facing away from the mayor, unwilling to turn back. Perhaps unable.
"It must feel like that sometimes, doesn't it?" the older mare quietly continued. "We come into conflict far more than any mayor and librarian ever should, or perhaps ever have. Some of that is because I so frequently -- too frequently -- find myself turning control over to you, or dealing with the fallout from the chaos which the mere presence of Harmony so often seems to summon. And so it's rather easy to fall into the temptation of exerting what little power I do have, in the name of getting some of that control back. But I try to avoid that, Miss Sparkle. I simply try to do my job, including the portions which require forcing you into finally doing yours. I doubt we'll ever be friends. But I don't hate you. And, even if it's too much, too late to hope... I'd rather... that you didn't hate me."
Hoofsteps moving away, accompanied by the subtle sound of a tail being dragged across grass and cobblestones. And by the time Twilight could force herself to turn, the mayor was gone.
There would be slow periods, and there would be many of them. Ponies would reach their workplaces, and most of those wouldn't emerge until it was time for the midday meal. Fillies and colts would gallop past the tree on their way to something far more important than a book sale, although a number of those had stopped -- to use the fort. Twilight had recognized that she would be spending long hours staring out over tables which had nopony sorting through their contents, and... well, under different circumstances, it could be argued that she didn't lack for the means of spending one way in passing the time. But she didn't open any of the books, not unless it was to show somepony which printing they were about to consider. To read one might be to consider keeping it, and to keep one would potentially open the emotional floodgates which ultimately washed everything back into the library. Twilight had learned many things over her time in Ponyville, and that included how to recognize a precious few of the times when she couldn't trust herself.
The slow times came, but they came for so much of the settled zone. She had been in the Boutique for enough hours to know when Rarity's traffic would dwindle to nothing, leaving a grumbling designer alone with her sketchbooks. Sugarcube Corner would end the morning shift and begin baking the goods required for the afternoon. The slow times came and in this case, her friends started to arrive with them.
"Ah can spare 'bout forty minutes," was Applejack's first remark as she trotted up. "But that's it, Twi. Still, for forty minutes, Ah'll do what Ah can." Sharp eyes surveyed the area. "Ah see some space opened up on those eight. Lots of space."
"I had a reseller," Twilight admitted. "We worked out a bulk rate. She got some things from the back section, too. It covered the Canterlot ads, Applejack, and then some."
It got her a practical "Good," followed by still more examination. "Magazines don't look like they're shiftin'."
She managed to suppress the sigh. "I know. Roseluck was by earlier, and... I didn't have the one she wanted, the same way I've never had it. And then she accused me of working with them in order to hide the truth from the public."
"That conspiracy rag?" Twilight nodded. "Ah asked her 'bout it once. Wouldn't show it t' me."
Twilight blinked. "She didn't want to educate you?"
"Said if Ah wanted t' see it, that proved Ah was workin' with them." Muttering somewhat, "Still tryin' t' work out jus' who 'them' is."
"So she wants me to carry that magazine to educate the public," Twilight carefully tried out, "but anypony who wants to be educated -- shouldn't be?"
"Yeah," Applejack concluded. "Makes as much sense as anythin' else she says or does. Which is t' say, none. Twi -- have y'sold one magazine all day?"
"...no. But there's a lot of Sun left, Applejack, and I'm not closing when it's lowered. I was planning on staying open until after the late train got back from Canterlot. I've got enough devices to light up the tables for a while, and as long as there's ponies out on the street --"
"-- Twi?"
She knew she'd waited too long before answering. "Yes?"
And the strong voice was gentle. "You're kinda on my turf here, sellin' an' all. So -- please listen t' me for this. An' Rarity, 'cause Ah think she'll tell you the same if she gets t' drop by. One of the hardest things t' do when you're sellin' is figurin' out when t' stop. When y'have t' -- give up. 'cause if y'push too long, y'get mad inside, an' then when you're mad enough, it starts t' come out, an' -- well, an' then y'get the Gala. Don't push too far. Y'ain't used t' this, you've had a hard week already, an'... it's gonna reach the point where y'have t' stop. Watch yourself, figure out when that time is -- then quit twenty minutes before it, in case you're wrong. Okay?"
"I have to wait for the last train," Twilight insisted. "Ponies might want to read themselves to sleep, and some of the commuters wouldn't have wanted to carry a book around all day, so they wouldn't have bought on their way out --"
"-- not arguin' that, Twi. Further than Ah'd tell you t' push on your first try, but it's a big job and y'already made that decision. Ah jus' don't want y'waitin' for the customers from the restaurants after they close, and then the cooks t' head home after cleanin' the kitchens, an' then the police on the night shift t' wander over... Last train, then some time after that. Enough maybe for those customers t' go by. An' then you're done. 'cause if y'say 'five more minutes' enough times, it's four more hours. Y'understand? No graveyard shift. None at'tall."
Except for the part where stopping meant opening the gates to the graveyard. "Yes," Twilight quietly said, and found herself looking away.
"All right," the farmer gently said. "So let me do mah -- hey! Yeah, you'd better stop movin'! Ah see you tryin' to sneak that -- back in a minute, Twi' -- off without payin'! Oh, when I get mah lasso on you...!"
She didn't see all of her friends, not while Sun was still being moved across the sky. Rarity had her own hours to worry about, and the seasonal needs of Fluttershy's friends hadn't exactly abated. But as promised, Pinkie had some free time: her half-day added to a relative lack of birthdays on the calendar, and it intermittently left a pink blur pronking along the aisles trying to help everypony she could, at least during those moments when she wasn't trying to regulate the combat in the book fort.
(They hadn't sold a single book from the fort, nor had any of the post-saturation copies moved from the tables. Twilight suspected part of it was because nopony wanted to dismantle any portion of the structure, with the rest centering around That Book.)
Rainbow, however... well, Rainbow really wasn't suited for selling. If she wasn't interested in something, she generally didn't understand why anypony would ever be, and anything she liked had better be appreciated by everypony else or there would be Words. (Or, more typically, Actions, Demonstrations, and Fleeing Before Anypony Could Force Her To Clean Up.) Rainbow kicked her opinions into the world and didn't understand why the target didn't reshape itself to conform with her beliefs, much less why the world occasionally felt the need to kick back. Translate it all into a sales approach and it would have had her forcing pony snouts into the few pages she was willing to put up with while rerouting them away from absolutely everything else, which was why Twilight had preemptively put her on aerial security. Because there were a number of situations where Rainbow's participation actively made things worse -- all while refusing to recognize the true results of her efforts until somepony jammed them all up her nostrils. So in many ways -- just about every way, because security duty would quickly turn boring and lead to the pegasus uncovering one of the pillows she'd (poorly) hidden in the tree in case of Nap Emergency -- Twilight had expected Rainbow, at least for the sale itself, to be no help whatsoever.
She'd been wrong.
"What are you doing?"
"Hang on..." The weather coordinator nosed another cover. "Huh. Sixty years?"
"...sorry?"
"Sixty years. This book is sixty years old. I thought I saw that when we were going through the checkout cards." Paper was slapped on top of more paper. The sound had been repeating rather frequently, which was what had gotten Twilight's attention in the first place. "Now let's see this one -- ninety? Seriously, ninety? Well, you can't kick a book that old out into the cold! Or into the warm. The too-warm. I mean, the fire. In case Spike winds up -- anyway, you can't, so..." Another slap. "And this one's... huh. Well, it's still got some growing up to do. With the old folks. They know stuff sometimes." Slap.
"Rainbow, you've got about a third of the Adventure table --"
"-- so? An adventure's an adventure! No matter how long ago it was! And the older it was, the more impressive it gets, because if something just came out yesterday, then how do you even know the pony survived it? Actually, given how old some of this stuff is, maybe the ponies involved already -- no, don't tell me! No spoilers! It was bad enough when you almost blurted out the whole thing about Daring's mother secretly being -- anyway, what are you charging for bulk? And is there any special friend discount?"
"...Rainbow?"
Huffily, "Look, you're the one who practically forced me to get bookshelves. Which I had to pay for, with enough room for a whole Sports section, or you wouldn't have asked me to do something dumb like move all of Sports up there in the first place. So if I've got to have shelves, they need to have something on them, or what good are they? Oh, that reminds me -- Sports. You didn't clear out anything about flying records, did you? Because it would take a really mean pony to do that and somepony had better pick up after her. Oh -- yeah. While I've got you here. Thaumic Fiction. What is that and why are all the covers so awesome?"
Direct encounters with Mrs. Bradel always stuck in Twilight's mind, mostly due to embarrassment having the emotional consistency of hot tar.
"Oh. Twilight," Snips' mother awkwardly said as a rather wide body began to uncertainly back away. "Of course you're out here. Because it's... your sale." Another body length was put between them, also in reverse.
"Mrs. Bradel," Twilight uncomfortably replied. "Is there anything I can help you with?"
"NO! -- I mean, no..." The overweight mare was starting to sweat. "I can talk to Spike. If I need anything. Yes. Spike."
"He's inside," Twilight told her. "It's been hours already. I told him to take a break."
"So it's... you," Mrs. Bradel weakly said. "Just you." And, much more quickly, "Well, that means you're overworked. I'll come back later..."
Twilight kept the sigh internal, and still wondered how much of it Equestria's foremost book restorer had heard.
It was... a common misconception regarding Twilight's talent, really. A distressingly large number of ponies believed she was capable of inventing spells on the spot (generally untrue and, on the few occasions when she'd tried it, always disastrous), while just as many seemed to feel she could copy a pony's personal spells just by standing in their general vicinity for a few minutes. This was an utter falsehood. She'd performed a speed duplication all of once (and still wasn't sure that hadn't just been a group of long-time theories suddenly coming together): with every other spell, she typically had to be in the original caster's vicinity while they worked their magic over and over again, sometimes for hours. Even then, certain spells simply wouldn't yield to her, and she occasionally suspected that even for the workings which she did add to her personal repertoire, she hadn't matched their creators on every last detail.
Mrs. Bradel had created several workings which nopony else in Equestria could cast, spells she outright refused to teach in order to keep so much book repair traffic moving across the continent and into her shop. She had workings which could add moisture to dried-out binding glue, restore luster to pages and covers alike, make paper heal itself as if it were a living thing. She was the best there was at what she did, to the point where Twilight had heard of her long before coming to Ponyville: both the Gifted School and Archives -- the Archives! -- trusted her to restore their most precious texts. Twilight had been thrilled to find out that she would be sharing a settled zone with the one pony who was best-suited to keep her own collection in order, and sent all of her repair traffic to the shop accordingly.
It was just that... Mrs. Bradel didn't trust her. She felt Twilight wanted her spells. Would duplicate them, put the restoration shop out of business entirely, and would be capable of doing so after spending just a few consecutive minutes in her presence. Which was, frankly, ridiculous, not to mention more than a little paranoid. Because all Twilight would actually do was keep the library and her own personal collection in order. She had too much going on in her life to take over all the other restoration traffic. Plus she couldn't copy Mrs. Bradel's personal spells that way in the first place. Which meant the older unicorn was just being silly. So there.
"Pinkie's in that section now."
"Oh. Pinkie. Then Pinkie can help me." Another three body lengths. "I have some things ready for you, by the way. Please pick them up when you can. Or send Spike. It's best to send Spike. Not that you have to any more, since the restraining order couldn't be renewed -- actually, my son really likes Spike. And that's why I'd rather see him. As would my son. So send him. Please."
And Twilight watched the creator of the spells she would probably never get to learn gallop away from her, backwards, until the tree was put between them and she could finally let the sigh come out into the open. Purely, utterly, and pointlessly silly: that was what Mrs. Bradel's actions were. A wonderful book restorer, the best on the continent. But as a pony? Silly. Imagine, being afraid like that...
Admittedly, having been caught lying low within the flowerbed outside the open shop window during business hours probably hadn't helped Twilight's case. Especially when it came to that recently-expired restraining order.
(She'd been wondering if there would be any practical benefit to having Rainbow sneak her in while Moon was still up and drop her off on the roof.)
Some ponies purchased books, and some of those purchased -- well, more than she'd been expecting them to, really. It had been some time since the last sale, and it seemed as if there was a category of resident who did all of their book buying during such occasions. She recognized more than a few faces among that group, and just barely managed to keep herself from asking most of them for their late fees -- although she did darkly consider that at least now, she had some potential idea of why they'd been so reluctant to pay.
Others wandered between the tables, picked things up and put them down, left without buying anything. Most of those tended to put things down several tables away from where they'd picked them up, and Twilight found a brief burst of energy in the fury that had her trading reshelving for retabling. Apparently there was also a certain category of resident who couldn't be trusted in the vicinity of a book for more than three seconds no matter where that tome was -- but she held her tongue. She'd had her outburst, and... she couldn't afford to chase anypony away, not now, not with Sun shifting across the sky. Some of those ponies might come back later. Several had promised to and Rarity, who'd just barely managed to drop by long enough to overhear one of those, had softly snorted and turned away.
There were ponies who would camp out in an aisle, seemingly having arranged their bodies to block the maximum possible amount of groundborne traffic. Those ponies would choose something, and then they would read it. They wouldn't buy whatever they were reading. They would simply stay in one place until they'd finished their chosen text, which really shouldn't have taken as long as it did when the vast majority of those ponies had arranged themselves around the magazines.
(It didn't get much better with the pegasi: they tended to hover over the exact center of the Periodicals table, which meant their shadow fell over whatever everypony else was reading. It created an angry number of fliers who wanted the reader to abandon that best spot so they could start, along with more than a few earth ponies and unicorns who would carry the magazine to another table, one where the light was better -- and then leave the issue there.)
Children moved in and out of the book fort. It provided a steady supply of laughter throughout the day, along with a total lack of sales.
Three ponies had decided, based on what seemed to be a total lack of evidence, that she was stupid. The Canterlot advertisements had lured in more than the one reseller, and some of those ponies made purchases of their own. However, this particular trio -- they arrived one at a time, about two hours apart -- asked her about books which the Archives only allowed to be removed from the stacks under heavy guard, and they generally also asked whether they could get them for five bits each. Such ponies easily gravitated to the few minor collectibles, which had been priced accordingly. And everypony of the set had an amazing ability to, with a mere glance at a number, place a decimal point to its immediate left. This rather insulting piece of numerical punctuation would be invisible to everypony except themselves, would make no sense to anypony who knew what the book was truly worth, and yet still had to be honored at all ridiculously low costs -- or at least so they kept on claiming up until the moment they found themselves trying to explain their viewpoint to her flaring corona, whereupon two had considered the debate forfeit. The one who kept going beyond that... well, she couldn't afford to lose a single customer. And by definition, those who were never going to pay her prices on the things which deserved to sell for those bits weren't it, especially for that last one, whom Rainbow caught trying to smuggle the first printing into his saddlebag when he falsely believed nopony was looking.
An hour after that, a mare, one whom Twilight had never seen before, had come along. She had silently surveyed the entire section of quasi-rares, nodded Twilight over, passed over the total number of bits required, levitated the books into her saddlebags, and left without a word.
There were slow times, and busier ones. Sometimes she had five ponies trying to give her bits at once, and it would eventually be followed by thirty minutes where Pinkie did whatever she could to make Twilight laugh, trying to take her mind off the feeling that thirty minutes seemed destined to become forty.
Sun moved across the sky, and books sold. Sun was lowered, and the tables became that much emptier. The rest of her friends concluded their labors for the day, and then it was all of them under newly-raised Moon, setting out the devices whose glow granted them that much more time. It allowed them to intercept some of the ponies heading home from the train station, or those whose Ponyville businesses had just closed and finally given them time to shop. Many of those purchased, and she even saw two return from those who had promised to do so -- two out of the forty-seven who'd said the words.
But then all that traffic went home, and stars shimmered down upon increasing desperation. Twilight began to lower her prices for those few who came in, hoping nopony from earlier would find out about her discounting and complain. Offers to get a free book with any three which had been paid for began that stage. Then it became two in order to reach the self-assigned gift, and Rarity just barely stopped her before she turned the entire thing into a saddlebag-stuffing contest: ten bits for everything the pony could fit and still have some retaining amount of fabric left between the hardcover-created rents.
They sold books until long after the last of the trains had pulled away, deep under Moon, until the smells from the restaurant district stopped drifting across them, with Spike long-since having fallen asleep under a table. It meant he missed a minor sales spurt: two novels and, with one chef having shut down with exceptional speed, four cookbooks.
Applejack packaged them, nosed the bundle over, thanked the cook, and then quietly trotted over to Twilight.
"It's time," her friend said. "Y'know it."
"The police should be coming by to check on us again after we had to restrain those shoplifters. The night shift police, Applejack. Maybe if we --"
"-- Twi..." A soft sigh. "Look around."
She didn't want to. She also didn't have to, because some lonely part of her soul had kept count throughout day and night. She already knew.
They had sold books, so many books. Twilight had bits secured in the library in what felt like ridiculous quantities, all of which could be used for the library, for anything that would help the tree at all. They'd sold books --
-- but they hadn't sold enough.
At the start, she'd levitated sixty-eight fully-loaded tables into position around the tree. None of them were completely empty: other than the collectibles, there was no such thing as a completely sold-out section, and that hadn't occupied an entire table to begin with. Some had given up more of their contents than others, and she'd been keeping track of every space. This book occupied that much room: the doorstopper was three of those, one slim volume only truly counted for the value of its words...
"Ah took a trot 'round the tree, just before that last fellow came in. An' Ah make it out t' be..." Applejack sighed again. "Well, put it all t'gether, take out every last gap, an' Ah think you'd have 'bout thirty-seven tables left, Twi, plus the fort. Y'did nearly half. An' that's better than Ah thought you'd do. That one bulk sale near the start really helped. Gotta thank Fluttershy for that: wouldn't have seen none of the Canterlot traffic without her."
Twilight barely managed a nod, followed by a soft "Thank you, Fluttershy."
From three tables away, "...it's okay. I just wish it had done more..."
"It's over, Twi," Applejack gently told her. "Y'know what comes next."
She did, and called out to her friends. They all came to her, and every face was laced with concern.
"Everypony," she sadly told them, "thank you. For everything you did, and tried to do. We did -- as much as we could. You did, to save me from myself, and... this time, I created something nopony could get me out of. Not completely. But you all tried, as hard as you could, and... thank you for that. All I can do is thank you, and promise this won't happen again." Ruefully, hating herself with what little energy she still had to give. "My next giant mistake should at least be a different one."
Rarity's voice cut through the air, urgency driving the syllables. "Twilight --"
"-- I hear myself," she broke in. "I'm just... tired, Rarity. It's been days, and -- I'm tired. You all must be tired too, and that means the last thing I can ask you to do is -- go home. The final part is mine. It was my mistake, and -- it's my cleanup. All mine. So if somepony would take Spike inside, let him sleep somewhere a little more comfortable, and then just... go home."
"Ah don't think we should be leavin' you all by yourself," Applejack steadily offered. "It's been a long few days for you -- too long. An' --" she stopped, and her face scrunched up: the sign that she'd been about to say a truth which she'd then decided shouldn't be voiced and blocked herself just in time. It didn't take very much for Twilight to guess what it would have been.
"And you think if I'm alone, I won't do it," Twilight quietly finished.
Applejack winced -- then nodded.
"Come back tomorrow morning," Twilight told them. "A couple of hours after the library opens, because I'll need some time to... sort things out. When you do, it'll all be gone." Which was followed by a slow sigh. "No, I'm lying. It'll probably almost be gone. Everything will be gone with the possible exception of the book fort. I'm... not sure what to do with the book fort."
It brought out a smile. "Nopony bought a copy of that one all day," Twilight told her. "It wouldn't have mattered if those books were on the table or not. And the kids had fun. A lot of fun. Go home, everypony."
"And if we say no?" Rainbow demanded, a little more softly than usual.
"Then I'd tell you that you do what's best for me. And sometimes that also happens to be what I want, and..." She had to force the last words. "...I think what's best for me, and what I want to do, is finish it myself. So I'll -- remember. Please?"
The five of them exchanged glances, silent looks laden with heavy words. Then they nodded, trotted up, nuzzled and wished her luck and, in Rainbow's case, bumped her more softly than usual. Spike was carried inside, brought to pillows and blankets and everything else he needed to recover from the too-long day. And then everypony went home.
Twilight stood alone, under Moon, among her failures, and let the weight of the night drive her spirits into the soil.
I messed up.
She'd already known that.
I did this. I was wrong, and I couldn't fix it.
That too.
And now I have to...
Step 4: disposal.
About thirty-seven tables worth of books, plus a fort. A full day under Sun, part of the night beneath Moon, and all that time had led to a total of three magazines leaving the tables.
She knew so many spells, and few of them were suited to destruction. She'd never had any need to study combat magic before taking up her Element and even now, most of her direct offense centered around using her field to create quickly-projected bursts, bolts of applied pressure which could shove hard. But if all else failed... given enough time, she could just pick everything up, then carry it to the trash, over and over again, until the forgotten became the buried.
She stood among the dying, and prepared to open the grave.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I... I couldn't, and I'm..."
She knew they couldn't hear her. The books were merely captured thoughts. The beliefs and conjectures and dreams of those long-passed into the shadowlands, about to lose one more anchor holding them to the living world.
There would always be a last anchor. There was always the Archives. The buildings so few visited, and the ones who did go just about always entered with specific reasons to search. Intentions which would bring them nowhere near the final copies of these books.
"...I'm sorry..."
Her library didn't need them any more.
Her settled zone hadn't cared.
Her world...
The white hoof gently touched her shoulder, and Twilight's eyes finally opened again.
"You never sleep at your desk," Rarity quietly said. "How long did it take?"
"Hours," a not-quite-focused Twilight just barely managed. "I... just finished the last ones -- what time is it?"
"Later than it should be," Rarity replied. "Spike is still sleeping, but... he is youngest and yesterday, at least for the labor, was hardest on him. Let him rest, Twilight."
"I did," she said. "I never woke him up, not even once."
"The book fort is still outside."
Twilight sighed. "I know. I still don't know what to do with it. And the mayor will be by later..."
"She told you such?"
"No. It's just really easy to guess."
"And she may complain," Rarity decided. "But it will be the only thing she has to complain about. Because before I came here, I went to your storage unit. And when I first entered the library, I checked on Spike, then ventured into the basement. And I suppose it is possible that you have used a new hiding place, but... I choose to believe in you, Twilight. With the exception of those which make up the fort, as far as I can see --"
"-- they're gone," Twilight wearily smiled. "They're all gone."
The books fit on the shelves. All of them did, with space left over for those waiting to come home, and then a little more.
"How do you feel?" Rarity carefully asked.
"Good." And it was the truth.
Rarity blinked.
"From... disposal of a burden, I would expect." More quickly, as if hastening to recover, "Along with knowing that you are now capable of such actions, even when that burden is arguably somewhat more personal than before --"
"-- no." And with a rush of joy, "I feel good because I figured it out, Rarity. It took me hours, and then I had to go back and collect them from the trash, but -- I figured it out! They're gone and I didn't have to destroy anything! Nothing got thrown away! They're back in circulation! Every last one!" A brief pause. "Except for the fort. I may ask the mayor if I can keep the fort. As a fort."
"...Twilight?"
"It'll take a few spells," she mused. "Something to protect it from the weather, just for starters. I don't have to worry about anything which would normally fuse the pages as a side effect because they're not really books any more: they're part of a fort. But I've got the space outside the tree, and sometimes a kid just wants a place where they can go outside and rest with their book on a warm day. Or even a fort. I could even add some more playground equipment after the next sale, once I have some bits again." With a rueful shrug, "I'm a little broke right now, or at least the library is. Well -- back to normal, really. But once the summer budget opens up --"
"-- Twilight."
"...what?"
"I believe I am going to need an explanation. And in order to prevent it from being repeated six times..."
"Say that again," Rainbow challenged, just a little more weakly than usual.
"I thought getting everypony together was supposed to keep me from having to repeat --"
"Naw," Applejack interrupted. "One more time. Slowly. With a lot more detail. Y'did what now?"
Twilight beamed.
"It's the library exchange program! Well -- the postage which gets used for it, plus I spent pretty much everything we got yesterday on stamps. And boxes. I needed a lot of boxes. But that's the idea, Applejack! The tree doesn't need the books any more, because we have a proper library -- well, a proper small town one. But do you know who barely has any library at all? Appleloosa. They're still trying to get everything established and a real library is just about at the bottom of their list for some reason -- so I sent them enough to get them started! It's not enough for a true library, but it'll at least give them something to build on, and something to read while they're building. And then I scattered some of the rest around to the other desert settlements. But I still had a lot left over, so I thought about all the foreign books I've been bringing in, and then I realized some of the libraries in the other nations probably don't have enough Equestrian volumes --"
Pinkie, who appreciated it when somepony allowed one of her own verbal barrages to reach the last piece of ammunition, seldom interrupted anypony. 'Seldom' did not indicate 'never'. "-- you donated them?"
"All over the world!" Twilight grinned. "New homes for every last one of them! Including the magazines. I'm sorry, Fluttershy, but sometimes the desert settlements fall behind on the news, and I thought they might appreciate some magazines --"
Pinkie facehoofed.
It was something else which happened on occasion. It had happened at the storage unit. And yet it was still a fairly rare sight, rare enough to stop everypony in their own hoofprints.
"Oh, Twilight..." Pinkie groaned.
"...Pinkie?"
The baker sighed.
"It was a good idea," she admitted. "And a really really nice thing to do. The new settlements could use the books, and I'm sure some of the other libraries will appreciate what they get. But Twilight... you mailed them..."
She wasn't seeing the problem. "I was careful! I bundled up the boxes, I reinforced everything so it wouldn't come apart during shipping, I used the exchange program directory to get all the addresses right, I wrote everything clearly and had the post office weigh it all --"
"You wrote everything clearly?" This from Spike, whose eyes were starting to widen.
"Of course! The postponies need to read where it's going!"
"And," Pinkie said, "where it came from."
This time, Rarity's collapse came all at once, with her forelegs pressed around her horn as her barrel hit the library floor.
"Oh, no..." the designer groaned. "Pinkie, you don't think -- no, of course you do, that is exactly what will happen..."
Fluttershy softly sighed. Spike moaned with something very close to agony. Applejack joined the facehoof parade with a hat-muffled downbeat. Rainbow just looked confused, and Twilight gave her company.
"What's wrong? I found the answer, everypony! Sure, I had to put a return address on the package because that's how mailing things works, but why does it matter if they know who donated? It's a donation! They'll understand that!"
"They're libraries, Twilight," Pinkie wearily said. "They're libraries which have their own space problems. And the desert settlements will take whatever they can get, mostly. But they still have some librarians in charge there, and the other nations sure do. They'll see donations -- but they're also going to see something else. They're going to see another librarian on the other end of the postal trail -- one who was just trying to find a new home for books, somepony who made her problem into theirs. And when they have their own remaindered sales and can't get rid of everything, including some of the stuff you made into their problem -- they're still going to have your return address, along with some money they can spend on postage..."
Twilight sat down. Hard.
Silence reigned over the library for a time, at least until they all heard the dignified trot of the inspection rapidly approaching.
"We don't tell her," Twilight said.
They nodded.
"We can't tell her."
Again.
Twilight sighed.
"I think the storage unit owner offers a discount when somepony rents by the year," she said as she forced herself to stand up. "Rarity, would you please go with me after I finish pretending everything's okay? I need you to haggle --"
"-- negotiate --"
"-- that down on the biggest room they have..."
It had been weeks, enough to put them into summer. Weeks before Twilight had what she needed to make the journey across town, speak to the staff members who served, in their way, as some level of Guards, and finally knock on the door.
"Yes?"
She pushed it open and slowly trotted into the Sun-lit office, the package floating in the field bubble at her side.
"Miss Sparkle," the mayor politely nodded. "I wasn't expecting you. Or -- that." She looked at the bubble again, then inspected the well-wrapped bulky rectangle within. "Is this Bearer business? Something we need to be concerned about? I can have the police alerted within minutes and after that, the settled zone can be --"
"-- no," Twilight hastily said. "Nothing like that. Nothing's going on, not on that level."
"Oh." The older mare exhaled. "Our streak continues, then. With the constant exception of the Crusaders, the relative peace goes on. So why did you need to see me?"
"I just wanted to give you this." She sent the package onto the desk, winked the bubble out.
Grey eyes regarded the rectangle for a few seconds.
"What is it?"
"It's for you."
"I do not," the mayor stiffly stated, "take bribes."
"It isn't," Twilight weakly protested. "It's just -- a present."
"A... present," the older mare tried, seemingly tasting the words as they moved across her tongue.
"Because we are trouble," Twilight said as she stood within a dusty sunbeam. "All of us. There's been trouble since I got here. Things we respond to, and things we --" she swallowed "-- start. Sometimes without meaning to. You put up with a lot, Mayor, and... maybe it's too much sometimes. I can't do anything about the missions which come looking for us, or when things are just -- random. With him out of the garden, there might be more of that. But for the rest, we're trying. We all are. And I... wanted to give you a present."
That grey gaze moved across her, snout to tail and back again. And then the mayor's head went forward, teeth closed on the end of the string, pulled...
The wrapping opened, because that was what it had been designed to do. The older mare looked down.
"Oh."
Twilight couldn't hear anything within the syllable. There had been no recognizable emotion at all. There had just been a sound.
"I'm sorry it took so long," she tried. "I -- well, I had to find out your birthday, but that was just asking Pinkie. But after that, I had to track down your teachers and ask just when you'd gotten the assignment. That took a while, just finding and writing everypony, back and forth. And then... well, there aren't a lot of ponies who hang onto the old editions and most of them don't ever think somepony might be looking, so I just kept getting classified ads and searching through every sale I could find, just in case..."
It brought out a tiny nod. Nothing more.
"It's not your exact copy," Twilight apologized. "At least, I don't think it is. There's always a chance, I guess. But I know I have the year right, and the publisher, and --"
"-- is there anything else, Miss Sparkle?"
She took a breath, and the warmth of the air failed to reach her.
"The Princess asked me to investigate an incomplete spell. One of Star Swirl's. I'm going to start on that today. I already told Chief Rights and I wanted to make sure I told you. I don't think anything's going to happen, because it's just an incomplete working, but -- I thought you should know."
"Yes, I should," the mayor nodded. "I appreciate the warning, of course. Let us hope it was ultimately unnecessary. Good day, Miss Sparkle."
Twilight turned, began to make her way out, ears and tail carried far too low.
And then she heard it.
The soft intake of breath. The hoof rubbing against the old book's spine with the gentleness which only came from love.
"Volume Seven," the mayor whispered. "My Volume Seven."
Twilight looked back, and saw the shine in Marigold's eyes.
