Chapter 1
No one paid much mind to the single cloud lazily floating above Ponyville. After all, Rainbow Dash had been known to leave a few stragglers behind, especially when her nap schedule overlapped with weather duty.
No one noticed how very low this cloud floated, nor how it stopped directly over the chimney of Inkwell's Used & New Bookstore.
Inkwell never even looked up from his cheap paperback when a cyan pony tumbled out of the unlit fireplace.
“Morning, Miss Dash,” he said.
She brushed the soot from her mane and looked about nervously. “Hey, Inkwell. Still closed?”
“Opening in five minutes,” he replied, idly turning a page.
She nodded, then trotted over to the “New Release” section. Every so often she'd shoot a wary glance at the closed shop curtains, as if they might spring open at any moment and expose her to the ponies wandering outside.
“Is the new—”
“No, Miss Dash, the new Daring Do is still not out.”
“Right. Sorry.” She nervously ran a hoof through her mane. “Anything like it?”
Inkwell deigned to look up from his book. A single eyebrow rose.
“You know,” she said, “Adventure stuff.”
“Try Lord of the Shoes. Young Adult section.”
Rainbow knew the section well. She affectionately eyed a row of Daring Do novels as she worked her way through the aisle, head cocked sideways to read the titles.
“'H', 'I', 'J', 'K'...here we go.”
It took only the a moment to locate the book in question. It was easily the thickest book in the section, a single golden horseshoe emblazoned on it's spine.
“This thing is huge, Inkwell! I just want something quick before the next Daring!”
“You asked for advice,” he said, slightly raising his voice to be heard from the register, “And you got it. Now hurry up, I want to open shop.”
She hesitated for a moment, weighing the tome in her hooves. With a shrug, she tossed it into a satchel slung over her side.
I can always exchange it for store credit, she thought, trotting to the cash register.
“That'll be thirty bits,” droned Inkwell.
“Thirty for one book?! That's highway robbery!”
“And that,” he said, jabbing a foot at her satchel, “Is a single volume trilogy. Thirty bits.”
Explains why the thing is so big, she inwardly groused. She hadn't planned on dropping so many bits that morning, and snapped the coins onto the countertop with more force than necessary.
She moved to the fireplace, crawled in, and shot a parting remark over her shoulder before zipping out of sight.
“Ten bits a book is still a ripoff!”
The book was dense. The language was dense. The author, J.R.R. Coltkien, had a dry style. Rainbow Dash skimmed the first few chapters, a tendril of regret curling through her; the story was nothing like the Daring Do series.
Then she got to the Black Riders.
By now it was nighttime. She was reading by the flickering light of a single candle, and Coltkien had suddenly switched gears. Gone were the mind-numbingly long descriptions of food and landscapes. In their place were nine evil beings astride charcoal ponies. Then came the Forbidden Forest, with it's Barrow-Downs.
When the dismembered hand started crawling towards Frodo in the dank halls of a forgotten burial site, Rainbow Dash shivered and tucked her hind legs under the covers. Her heart was pounding; Coltkien's language hooked into her psyche more deeply than Daring Do ever had.
It took her one month to finish Lord of the Shoes. After that, there was no turning back. She burned through Inkwell's fantasy selection like a forest fire.
Her obsession might have ended there, or at least not accelerated, but for the Oceanography Club.
Rainbow had just finished kicking the last cloud out of existence over Ponyville when she spotted the hubbub. A modest crowd was seated around an outdoor stage, watching a harpoon wielding pony scream his head off. Naturally, she flew down to take a look.
She had just enough time to give a nearby sign the once over (welcome, blah blah, Herman Melville, blah blah blah, Moby Dick?) before the pony on stage raised his voice to ear shattering levels.
“I grin at thee, grinning whale! Come taste of my steel!”
On cue, a massive, gelatinous white whale — a masterfully realistic piece of puppetry — entered stage right. The actor, looking crazed as Ahab himself, chucked his spear directly into the beast's snout.
Dozens of gallons of highly pressurized fake blood spurted over the insanely laughing actor, the stage, and a suddenly screaming audience.
Thus was Rainbow Dash introduced to the classics. It was, needless to say, love at first sight.
“What are you trying to say, Inkwell?”
“I'm trying to say there's nothing new since yesterday.”
Rainbow's eyelid twitched. “I swear, if you're holding out on me…”
Inkwell nervously felt around underneath the countertop, never taking his eyes off the mare in front of him. “I…might have an early release of the newest Daring Do. Here.”
He slid a somewhat thin book across the counter. Rainbow snatched it up and started flipping through the pages, only to toss it aside.
“Weak,” she muttered to herself.
“What?”
She slammed a hoof onto the countertop. “This thing's weak as hay!”
“I'm…sorry?”
Rainbow ran a twitchy hoof through her mane. “It's cool. We're cool.” She trotted to the chimney and spread her wings. “Call me when you get some stronger stuff.”
Stay calm, Rainbow, she thought. So Inkwell let you down. Big deal. Ponyville's full of books. Everybody has books. Every—
Her eyes locked onto Sugar Cube Corner, specifically, Pinkie Pie's open upstairs window.
Ten desperate seconds later she was flying home with a thick pink volume clutched in her hooves. Pinkie Pie never even noticed Pastry Chemistry for Dummies was missing.
Rainbow Dash flipped through Applejack's copy of A Practical Farmer's Guide to Small Engine Repair for the second time. It didn't do much, but it was still a hit.
Thoughts of the Ponyville library were driving her to distraction. But however much she wanted to kick in the doors to Twilight' s house and gorge on every book in sight, the thought of anyone discovering her hobby — just a hobby, she assured herself — was too much to bear.
Besides, she thought, I can quit books anytime I want.
In every room of the house, stacked floor-to-ceiling, ink and paper mutely agreed.