And a Happy Nerd Year
Progress in Equestria had always been a curious, almost paradoxical thing, fueled by searching the past more than anticipation for the future. Magic was the reason, of course – the cure for a plague or demon could rest in the dilapidated library of a mountaintop hermit-mage, or the diary of a rural herbalist from before the time of Celestia. Princess (now monarch) Twilight Sparkle herself had lead many desperate quests for such spells, so perhaps she knew better than anyone when one of her first grand edicts was for the collection, translation, and indexing of the whole breadth of mystic knowledge in all the land.
It would be a task of decades to apply this organization to Canterlot’s labyrinthine archives alone – to say nothing of all Equestria’s knowledge, or that of its friends and enemies. Archaeologists centuries from now would present findings utterly unknown, and even if every secret could be plumbed the labor would never truly end. There would be new threats and discoveries, ever-adding their own index cards to catalogs which even now filled three shelves in the Canterlot Library.
The project was soon learned be most limited by horsepower, as no more than a few dozen qualified applicants took up the charge. It required active, interested ponies who sought not to merely dust decaying tomes, but to painstakingly pull out one book or scroll at a time, search it for magical knowledge or implication, index it appropriately, and shelve it in the right section so it could be found again if needed. Of course, this often demanded a complete re-shelving to accommodate the growing catalog, itself a task of many hours. All done in the oft-shadowy light of the Archives, rarely speaking even to other researchers. Forever.
In short, it was Moondancer’s dream job.
The glacial pace and princess-mandated thoroughness meant that no sense of urgency existed whatsoever among her coworkers. None of them worked tonight, Hearth’s Warming Eve. None would work tomorrow, or the day after. None had come in yesterday.
This, of course, made her dream job even better. The coffee machine and bathroom were hers and hers alone, as was the box of holiday treats sent down ‘for the department.’ Moondancer even took to humming carols as she worked, relishing the empty echo, happily trotting to her table with two more tomes aloft in her horn’s pale glow. A tiny grin scrunched up her snoot as she chewed a pastry, washed it down with coffee, and opened the first book with the same wonder she did all the others. Each was a mystery to be explored and solved by her own hooves and brain, with not one single other pony around. Truly, Hearth’s Warming was the happiest time of the year.
“Um… excuse me?”
The voice hit her like the sharp edge of a hoof scraping slowly across limestone. Moondancer’s expression turned flat as she looked over to the newcomer.
An orange stallion with a cream-colored line down his nose, complete with the messiest hair and beard she had seen since… well, two days ago. He’d fit in perfectly with her coworkers.
Moondancer’s ear flicked away the topwards ponytail she wore, reminding her that perhaps she wasn’t well positioned to judge mane-styles.
Regardless, she turned back to her work.
“This section is closed to the public,” Moondancer said, adding a little extra under her breath. “Are the guards off for Hearth’s Warming, too?”
“I’m not the public, I’m–”
“Even for...” Moondancer glanced over his gaudy cloak, arching one of her bushy red eyebrows. “Wizards.”
“Not a wizard,” the stallion said, stumbling over his words with awkward speed Moondancer was all-too familiar with. “I’m actually… well, I wear a lot of hats these days, but ‘chamberlain’ is probably the best take. Here’s my passport and my permission.”
He threw open an over-stuffed saddlebag and retrieved a few official-looking cards, including a temporary pass to the Archives. ‘Sunburst’ was his name, according to them. Also apparently a resident of the…
Moondancer peered over her glasses, though that reduced him to an orange blur. “You don’t look like a crystal pony.”
“I emigrated as soon as I could.” Sunburst’s voice quickened with clear enthusiasm. “Think of it – a whole empire’s knowledge, returned at once to the modern world. Much was suppressed by Sombra, yes, but it lived! Culture, language, knowledge, all hiding in forgotten libraries, begging to be unearthed and shared once more.”
That… sounded incredible, yes. Moondancer caught herself nodding and firmly stopped.
“At any rate, I was hoping you could help me, Miss...”
She blinked slowly.
Then grudgingly remembering she was contractually obligated to help visitors, she breathed a sigh. “Moondancer.”
“Nice to meet you, I’m Sunburst.”
She rolled her eyes as he fished a crystal-bound tome from his bag. “I need to find some books on translation. It’s clearly Crystalatin, but… you’ll see.”
Crystalatin was, interestingly, a language Moondancer knew. The ancient Crystal Kingdom far outshone Equestria before Sombra came, and nostalgia for its tongue had never quite faded away. Years in the Archives had given her ample time to dust off her old high school lessons.
She accepted the book and studied a random page, feeling curiosity rising against her will. The letters were right, as were the sounds, punctuation, and combinations. But the words were gibberish.
Still, her eyebrow went up again. “You traveled from the Crystal Empire for help translating a type of Crystalatin? Wouldn’t your own experts be better?”
Sunburst tittered uncomfortably. “You would think. The librarians are as clueless as I am. As for experts… well, you’re looking at him. This isn’t old Crystalatin, or Sombra’s, not even the new kind which got popular when Cadence became princess.”
“Which wouldn’t be in an old tome, anyway,” Moondancer mused. “But what are you doing here on Hearth’s Warming?”
“I can’t let this go!” Sunburst said excitedly. “I have a piece of their history in my hooves. This might be the keystone to a whole new understanding, an epoch or sub-culture which could yet be totally unknown. It...”
He blushed and fell silent, cutting himself off abruptly. A pony fascinated with his passion, yet told one too many times that no one else wanted to hear.
“Anyway,” Sunburst stammered. “I hope you don’t mind if I set my things down here. I can figure my own way around.”
Left alone in the massive Archives, it would be nightfall before a stranger ‘figured their way’ to a bathroom, let alone the exact knowledge they sought.
“Nope,” Moondancer said. She pushed up her glasses, surprising herself with a lopsided smile. “We’ll do it together. Part of my job description, you know.”
“I see you’re busy,” Sunburst protested mildly.
“Yes we are.” Moondancer stood up, making a perfunctory effort to smooth her ratty old sweater. “Let’s start with the catalog, maybe there’s something already on file that can steer us right.”
In Moondancer’s line of work, there was no such thing as disappointment. At least, there shouldn’t be. Some knowledge was simply lost, some books damaged beyond translation, some references made or pointed to works that were gone forever. When this happened, one simply filed a notation and moved on.
It was a little different this time. Hours of checking, searching, and reading to no result, slowly slumping both their heads. Tracts on Crystal linguistics were exchanged for the kingdom’s history, searching vainly for clues both in its mighty founding and tragic decline.
Moondancer was curious, but she always was. Poor Sunburst, though… how many weeks had he chased this tail? She remembered his name now, he was chief adviser to the Crystal royal family themselves. He should have every archivist in the city at his beck and call, not just her. A futile quest, coming slowly to its end. For his own curiosity, yes, but also with sincere love for his adopted people.
Moondancer grew a bit chattier than her norm, seeking to cushion his looming defeat. They gossiped excitedly during breaks or while climbing ladders to high shelves, two kindred spirits in love with learning. They galvanized each other with praise of Twilight’s grand gathering of knowledge, speculating on its future and noting the rallying effect it was already having on intellectuals in the changeling and griffon lands. On chatter less political, they agreed Daring Do was a poor archaeologist, and Dragon Pit was a… problematic relic which should really not be reprinted. There were better games, anyway. Even if the last edition of Marehammer made ranged combat overpowered…
The hour had grown late. The excited look Sunburst gave her was a tired echo of his flagging hope, but a relief all the same.
“You play Marehammer?”
Moondancer shrugged. “I don’t have anyone to play it with. I paint the models, I read the books even though half of them are alicorn-wank.”
That lead to another lively discussion about how most ponies didn’t get that you weren’t supposed to view anyone in that setting as ‘the good guys,’ distracting them for another few minutes before reclaiming the original line.
“Which army?”
“Descendants of Discord.” Moondancer waggled her eyebrows, enjoying the faint blush they earned from Sunburst. “You?”
“Mare-Marines,” he mumbled. “I could never get the hang of painting eyes. I like that they’re all in helmets.”
“Which chapter?”
“Luna Lamenters.”
“Hey, that’s pretty obscure.” Moondancer’s smile took a mischievous twist. “I had you pegged for a Sun Guard kind of guy.”
Sunburst arched his nose with joking arrogance. “Well, I supposed I’m more counter-culture than you think. I’ve never even played the most common games: Settlers of Coltan, Monopoly, Scrabble...”
“I don’t even know that one.”
“Scrabble?” Sunburst asked incredulously.
Moondancer nodded, and he shrugged. “Maybe it fell off while I wasn’t looking. You have this jumble of letters and crisscross them to make words, but if you misspell them your opponent can–”
A light oof sounded as a hoof struck his shoulder and remained. More startling than painful, as was the sudden, serious expression Moondancer wore.
“Say that again,” Moondancer said tightly.
“Say what?” Sunburst asked, the day’s frustration lending a very small edge to his words. “Scrabble? Jumble of letters, misspell...”
His eyes latched onto hers.
Sunburst bolted around the table. Moondancer clambered over it, and both arrived at the crystal tome. Throwing it open to a middle page, they chose the biggest word there and copied it on a notebook.
Gibberish. A jumble of letters. Yet not quite so, for it followed all the normal rules of the language.
From there, it was the work of mere minutes overflowing with the most wonderful tension Moondancer had ever known. Trial, error. Mixed, reversed?
Sunburst was the first to notice something: why were all the words so large?
A discarded syllable. A shuffle of a single letter from back to front.
A word, translating to “mountain.”
Coincidence? They applied the formula to another, another, another. All ended up as perfect Crystalatin words, from the era of Sombra’s rise.
It was well-past dinnertime. They scarfed pastries, blasted old coffee with magic heat, and began filling their notebooks. Words became sentences, paragraphs, pages.
...Histories. Dates, places, legends, kings. Ponies.
No, not ponies.
“The boarfolk.”
Sunburst said it as a whisper. His head drooped with exhaustion, though his eyes were alight with awe and wonder.
“They were conquered by Sombra early on. His records say they were too stupid to learn, suitable only for the slave-mines. But it was a bluff! These are their foundational stories, the words of their great thinkers, descriptions of their monuments… their culture! Sombra always tried to stamp out all trace of his conquests’ individuality. They, they hid it right beneath his nose!”
Doubt struck him at once, and the light died in suspicion. “In a crystal book?”
“Naturally.”
Moondancer shot him a grin. “All your books are bound in crystal, it would be weird if one wasn’t. Put it in the deepest part of a library and no one will find it for… well, a thousand years.”
Sunburst nodded. “All in a coded version of Crystalatin, so it wouldn’t be discovered.”
“Pig Crystalatin, if you will.”
The joke was lost on Sunburst. With slow reverence, he closed the tome. The rest of the translation could wait. He ran his hoof down its spine, tears gathering in his eyes.
“They’re still out there. We have contact with a few boarfolk settlements to the east of us. We can return this. Give them back what they always should have had.”
He sniffed wetly and rallied, giving a trembling smile. “I’m sorry, I’m a little overwhelmed.”
“And hungry.” Moondancer slipped her head beneath his chin and rubbed outwards – an affectionate gesture of care or worry. “Let’s get something. My treat.”
Sunburst gave a gentle laugh. “What could possibly be open Hearth’s Warming Eve?”
“Not all cultures celebrate it. Do you eat kirin?”
Moondancer stood, cracking her back with a satisfied groan. She turned to find him staring at her, working his lips.
“Do I… eat kirin?”
“Yeah.”
More silence. Moondancer’s eyebrow went up.
“No,” Sunburst said carefully. “I do not eat kirin.”
The bulb lit. Moondancer laughed out loud, giving him a playful slap. “I meant their food, you dummy! There’s a kirin place on the way home, come on.”
Unfortunately, the dining room of the restaurant was closed. They paid and collected their food, with Moondancer gently leading the way to an apartment block. A few mumbled questions and answers showed that Sunburst had no arrangements for staying elsewhere, and was welcome to crash on her couch.
The air was crisp, and the snow crunched underhoof. Lights from various parties glowed large enough to brighten the streets, though the hour was so late that they had the road all to themselves.
Out of the blue, Sunburst looked at her curiously. “So, what’s your story?”
“Pardon?”
“You asked me, now I’ll ask you. What was an archivist doing at work on Hearth’s Warming Eve?”
Moondancer shrugged. “No real family. My friends all have their own things going. I’m not really into plays or parties, or any of the other Hearth’s Warming kind of things. No reason not to work.”
His expression softened, but she waved him off quickly. “None of the pity eyes, I’m fine. I love my job. I love my friends too, even though they’re not… you know. Our people.”
“Big nerds?”
“Yep.”
“No Marehammer fans?”
“They call my displayed models ‘little soldiers.’”
“Ogres and Oubliettes?”
“I run one-pony games for Twinkleshine. She likes it, but with only one player it’s basically just collaborative storytelling.”
The conversation trailed off from there. They arrived at her house and crap she should have cleaned, but no help for it now. They ate the spicy noodles on her dining room table, sharing space with books, board games, and a half-framed poster for the old Star Swirl movie.
The last one caught Sunburst’s attention, and after a few seconds studying it he broke out in a grin.
“His hat! They got the right number of bells!”
“I know, right?” Moondancer gestured wildly. “You cannot believe how hard it was to find a picture like how they’re supposed to be.”
A little more nerd talk followed, but it was Hearth’s Warming Day already, and both were exhausted. One to her bed, one to the couch, they collapsed and let the rest of the night pass without them.
Dawn rose on that festive day. Parties, sweets, presents. Love shared and friendships renewed.
It was much the same for the unlikely duo – at least for the jolly spirit and air of joy. The rest was completely different. They resumed the translation with glee, pausing often to speculate, gossip, and snack. Both were happy as could be, with not a pinch of holly in sight.
Sunburst was to leave first thing the next morning. But as they munched their dinner of griffonscones, he presented Moondancer with two small crystal balls.
At first, she laughed awkwardly. “No-no, sorry. No presents. Come on, don’t make this weird.”
“Weird?” Sunburst asked with innocent confusion. “These are just… oh, of course. These are from the Crystal Empire, they’re all over the place back there. They’re really nothing special, but for us… well.”
He got down on one knee, and looked up to Moondancer with solemn gravity.
“Moondancer.”
“Um.” She said, with a period. A blush burned at her ears, though it cooked queasily in her stomach.
“Will you...”
He looked to her with sparkling eyes, and a grin he could no longer suppress. “Join my Ogres and Oubliettes campaign?”
She socked him with a pillow.
Three weeks later, Moondancer lounged on her beanbag chair, slurping noodles from a mug as she studied the floating orb in front of her. Her horn glowed and the image in it turned, taking in the cluster of tiny pieces on a square-tiled grid.
Her magic passed through the orb, circling a small area on the map. “I throw my fireball here.”
Twinkleshine grumbled through her own connection. “Moonie, I have nine hit points left.”
“I have the ‘True Friend’ feat, I can exclude you from the blast.”
“Oh! Right.”
Moondancer saw her friend smile sheepishly in a small corner of her orb, as well as the faces of the other players. And Sunburst himself, managing the map and monsters.
“Alright guys,” he said, trying to sound menacing. “All that noise definitely woke up the Wyrm Queen. You can all feel the rumbling as she approaches, but make some perception checks to see if you...”