Reading is a tricky business
Twilight growled, repositioned the ruler, and moved the book a fraction of an inch to the left. She stepped back and surveyed the shelf, then rubbed her head and sighed in frustration. It’s not right! There’s something wrong, something… missing…
It was just another day at the library.
Twilight had been organizing the new arrivals of books. It was all part of her recent master plan: to lure her friends into becoming more literate by putting together a section of recently released, popular, and contemporary novels. She stiffened slightly at the word, but sighed again and pushed it away. They were not at all academic books, not at all classical works of literary magnitude. I had to start somewhere, Twilight reminded herself as she turned to head downstairs.
It wasn’t that her friends didn’t read. Twilight was familiar with Rarity’s gossip-rich, romance-infused “novels,” (she gagged at the thought of Rarity trying to foist another one of those on her) Fluttershy’s botanical and veterinary magazines, and Rainbow Dash’s near obsession with the Daring Do series, but they tended to stick with what they knew. Applejack was busy and too practical, and Twilight couldn’t imagine Pinkie holding still long enough to read something longer than an invitation. So she had set up her new shelf, or her "literary engagement display" as she had first thought of it, and soon Twilight would move it downstairs where she could easily corral her friends into finding something they would then read.
Descending the staircase, she endured grand delusions of success.
I can’t believe they’ve never read any of the classics. What Fluttershy reads is fine for her profession, and the Daring Do series is good, but hardly full of universal themes and meanings. Rarity… I won’t start on what she reads. All the things they’ve been missing out on! Pyonor Dostoyevsky! Shakespony! Jane Mare! Grape Expectations! Do Changelings Dream of Eclectic Sheep?! The Apples of Wrath! And there’s so many more; how do they live without such great books in their lives? They’ll be so happy at discovering such amazing works of art…
Deluded by her own happiness, Twilight attempted a Pinkie-esque bounce and promptly fell down the stairs, rolling until she hit the bottom. Groaning as she pulled herself up, her cheeks burned in embarrassment and she narrowed her eyes, making a mental note not to get carried away again. It’ll take some time. I just have to get them hooked, and then I can start introducing them to serious literature.
Pacing momentarily and coming perilously close to being lost in thought again, Twilight glanced at the clock. She had asked her friends to come by that morning, and all that was left to do was move the shelf back downstairs to the common area of the library. It would be an easy enough task to move with magic, but as Twilight entered the lobby she heard a familiar voice from another room.
“It’s supposedly very popular, darling, so I thought I’d take a look at it…”
The faint echoes amplified as Twilight approached the door, only a crack open, but the next words gave her pause.
“But really, dear, I couldn’t believe it! Twilight’s plot is terrible!”
Twilight blushed, confused. No, no, I can’t have heard that right…
“Yeah, well,” a scratchier voice replied, “I don’t really care for that stuff. You would know.”
“Why, I’m offended!” Rarity replied, haughty woundedness creeping into her voice. “You should take a look at it yourself! You might learn something about taste in the process…”
For perhaps the first time that day, Twilight had stopped thinking, frozen completely still in shock. Then there were quick hoofbeats, and the door swung open to reveal a mildly surprised Rarity.
“Uh, hi!” Twilight stammered, looking everywhere before settling on Rarity. “How did you, ah, you were… how did you get into the library this early?” She finished, cringing, excruciatingly awkward.
Rarity kept her usual cultured demeanor, a calm contrast easily apparent to the self-conscious Twilight. “Oh, darling, I thought you knew. Spike lets me in whenever I drop by.”
“And, ah, why is Rainbow Dash here?” Twilight asked, fighting the burning in her cheeks and the urge to glance backwards. I’m sure I heard it wrong. She could have been talking about anything else. My plot… I never really thought about appearing attractive, maybe it’s… and was she asking Rainbow Dash to look at it!?
“I ran into her on the way here. I think she’s a tad worked up since Applejack got her back for that prank with all the clouds in her bathroom. She’s skulking about the whole incident; she won’t tell me what Applejack did to get her for that, but I think she’s just plotting something big to get back.” Rarity leaned in as the talked, glancing conspiratorially.
Twilight twitched, forcing herself to stand still. Did she just emphasize that? Why that choice of words? Was that a hint? Is she trying to tell me gently, without embarrassing me? Am I getting fat?
Rarity cocked her head, curls shifting. “Dear, are you alright?”
“Fine! Fine. Just fine.” Twilight glanced around desperately, shifted quickly, and finally glanced at the door to get a spark of an idea. “Since you’re here early, how about I go ahead and round up everypony else?”
“That sounds like a fine idea, darling, but I think I’ll catch up with you in a minute,” Rarity demurred. “I have some quick errands to run and then I’ll join you.”
“Sounds great!” Twilight replied, an overly-wide, nervous smile crossing her face. “I’ll see you then!”
Then she ran out the door, only pausing to grab a saddlebag.
Rarity blinked once, a slight frown crossing her face, and then shrugged it off and retreated to another room.
~~~~~~~~
It’s nothing, it’s nothing, even if that was what she said, it’s just her opinion. I need to calm down so I don’t go crazy again.
Twilight trotted quicker than usual through the town, wild thoughts projecting her wilder imagination onto the streets around. It was a busy enough morning; the streets full of ponies provided her ample opportunity to covertly compare posteriors.
Twilight was lost in a sea of plots. Round plots, fit plots, thin plots and thick ones, mare and stallion plots, plots arrayed in every hue she could imagine, plots in every position possible, and she compared them all to hers. Agonizing, with every pony she passed she noticed a new feature, a new subtlety in the way the other half of their bodies moved, the way the tails swished and moved over that delicate subject as they trotted along. Insatiable, she stopped and stared.
I can’t believe I never thought about this. I never even noticed! Does my plot really look bad? How can I even tell; I can’t see back there!
Standing still in the middle of a busy road, her frozen posture gained a few odd glances, but for the most part they left her alone. Yet Twilight saw all of them, and every glance seemed to pass over one particular part of her. Twilight twitched as she felt the eyes moving over her.
What am I going to do, what am I going to do? I need to observe. I need data. I can’t be drawing these insane conclusions without any evidence, and Rarity is just one opinion, even if she would know. I need criteria, I need to form proper ideas of what makes a plot, err, attractive.
All at once Twilight realized she was standing in the middle of the road among the busy morning traffic of the town’s center, and blushing she moved off the street to hide her perilously exposed plot. Tension rose again as she found a spot to rest her plot, a bench where she could observe and hide her posterior. I can’t let them see it! Not now, not when I don’t know if it’s presentable or not.
From the cover of the bench, she glanced through the ambling streams of shoppers and ponies at work.
Then Twilight spotted Fluttershy crawling through an alley.
“Hi! Fluttershy! My friend! I can talk to you about something embarrassing and personal and surely not material for public discussion, right?” Twilight skidded over, tail plastered to her plot as Fluttershy dropped the large black sack she had been carrying and yelped in surprise.
“Oh, Twilight—I—um, sure,” Fluttershy glanced back at the sack, “just, um, please don’t mention I was here, and can we get away from here quickly, please?”
“Of course, of course,” Twilight muttered, shifty eyes glancing back toward the alleyway’s entrance. For Celestia’s sake, Twilight! You should have known you could never talk about such a lewd subject in public!
“Let’s go back to your cottage a different route so nobody behind us can watch our behinds,” Twilight suggested. Dazed yet wary, Fluttershy nodded her nervous assent and the two slunk away.
~~~~~~~
Minutes later, Fluttershy closed the door to her cottage, inadvertently hitting Twilight’s rear and sending a shock of panicked thoughts through her head.
Has my plot gotten so big that I can barely fit through a doorway!?
“Um, Twilight…” Fluttershy began, staring at the ground, even quieter than normal. “I think we need to talk; I got angry and did something, really, really, really bad, and—”
“Talk! Yes! We need to talk!” Twilight sputtered. Steeling herself for the moment of truth, Twilight took a deep breath, both sets of cheeks burning with tension. Suddenly, Twilight pivoted around, shoved her tail aside, and thrust her plot into the air just before Fluttershy’s face.
Fluttershy turned red, eyes wide, and spoke very, very quietly: “Um… Twilight…”
“TELL ME WHY!” Twilight shouted, holding back the tears, holding back the rush of sudden emotion.
Trembling and blushing intensely, Fluttershy let out an incomprehensible high-pitched noise in response.
“T-twi, I don’t understand what…”
“Nobody will tell me the truth!” Twilight raged, spinning around to drive Fluttershy back with her knife-edge gaze.
“Twilight, no, please; I don’t want to get scared again, I don’t want to get angry again; I’m sorry I did it!” Fluttershy begged, covering her face with her hooves and shaking.
“I see none of my friends will be honest with me,” Twilight hissed. “None of them will bother to speak the truth; they’re all bound by society’s invisible rules!”
Breathing hard, Twilight stared at the floor, hearing the secret conversation, Rarity’s mocking words, Fluttershy’s denial.
“I’ll show them. They’re all crazy. Well, I guess I have to go to an actual crazy pony to say what the fake crazy ones won’t.”
Twilight walked to the door, Fluttershy quaking in the corner. As Twilight exited, she caught a single eye peeking out from protective hooves, straight at her exposed plot.
“Don’t look at it!”
Then she slammed the door behind her.
~~~~~~~
Pinkie Pie’s eye rolled around, just the left one, her right hoof stamped twice, and her mane shot straight out for a moment before returning to its usual disarray.
“Ooh, that’s a new one!” Pinkie exclaimed as Mr. Cake backed out of the room warily.
Twilight burst in, a large striped umbrella concealing her rear.
“Hi, Twi!” Pinkie bounced over, oblivious of her friend’s frazzled expression and instead examining the peculiarly placed umbrella.
“Don’t look!” Twilight said in a stage whisper, eyes twitching erratically under her messy mane.
“Oh! I know! Is it raining sideways? I always wondered why it never rained sideways…” Pinkie tapped her hoof to her chin, crooked eyes glancing around the shop suspiciously.
After rushing to each door to check for spies, Twilight turned to the perplexed Pinkie, who was for once the more rational of the two.
“You have to help me, Pinkie!” Twilight shuddered before grabbing the unconcerned Pinkie by her shoulders, holding her at foreleg’s length and whispering loudly with bloodshot eyes. “They’re all crazy, all of them!”
“Maybe I can finally fit in!” Pinkie commented, at ease as Twilight whirled her head to check for intruders.
“No, Pinkie. There’s only you and me. We’re the only sane ones left.” Twilight let go and backed up.
“Now…” Twilight rubbed her hooves together, shaking, and then thrust her plot into the air, umbrella still attached.
“Tell me… tell me everything.”
“Hmm…” Pinkie rubbed her chin again, and then prodded the umbrella a few times. “I like it, but I don’t think the other ponies will appreciate your unconventional fashion sense. You might want to talk to Rarity about that kind of thing.”
Twilight turned around slowly, eyes wide, desperate betrayal creeping across her face.
“You’re crazy too,” Twilight whispered.
Pinkie didn’t break her perpetual smile, completely oblivious to the gears cracking, exploding, and burning in Twilight’s head as the seconds passed.
“I can’t trust anyone here!” Twilight announced, standing straight up, a stray strand of her chaotic mane obscuring her eye. “There’s only one way out!”
Grabbing a cake with her magic, Twilight shattered a window and promptly dived through it.
“Hey!” Pinkie exclaimed angrily. “I was going to sell that!”
Expression cross, Pinkie wandered back to the counter as hoofsteps sounded closer to the door.
“Wait… why would I sell it when I could eat it?”
The door opened, and Rarity entered with a distressed Fluttershy in tow, head down and cringing.
“Um, Rarity, I really think we need to talk, I’m scared and I don’t know if I can control myself…”
“Right after we find Twilight, dear.” Rarity scanned through some of the more proper pastries before alighting on the suspicious voids of two cake displays. “Pinkie, darling, have you seen Twilight around recently?”
“Oh! Right, she was just here. Where did she go?” Pinkie picked up the cake she had been devouring, and seemed surprised at the lack of librarians underneath.
“Did she seem alright? Fluttershy thought she might be worried about something, dear.”
“Rarity, please, I really—”
“Nah, she seemed pretty normal.” Pinkie paused. “Come to think of it, she actually made more sense this time!”
~~~~~~~
The city of Canterlot had known peace for over a thousand years.
There’s only one pony left, only one so far removed from our bizarre social contracts to speak plainly…
It had only been interrupted for one brief skirmish, a wedding. The trial it had faced had been orchestrated by a malevolent conductor, one in command of thousands of sinuous shape-shifting instruments, each with their sinister tunes to play. Yet nothing it had faced in its long tenure compared to the innocuous menace approaching. Twilight was coming, and they would rain judgment upon her plot, or she would rain hellfire upon them.
Wandering by, several ponies on the darkened train wondered if they should attempt a conversation with the quiet mare with disarrayed hair staring out the window. It was probably better for their sanity that they didn’t.
Soon, the train came to a rest with a torrent of drizzling rain at the Canterlot station. Twilight stepped out, unremarkable except for the cold look in her eyes and the tail held close to shield her posterior.
Twilight slipped into the shadows like a wraith in the wind.
~~~~~~~~
“Darling, please pay attention to me; I haven’t seen Twilight in hours and it’s starting to worry me!”
Pinkie continued to hurl various pastries at a sheet of glass propped against the counter, all splattering harmlessly to her apparent disgust.
“And…” Rarity added, perplexed, “why are you doing that, dear?”
“I don’t get it!” Pinkie exclaimed, running up close enough to bop her nose into the pasty-strewn glass and staring confused into the messy reflection. “How did she make that work? I have got to figure that out!”
“Now you know now the rest of us feel,” Rainbow Dash muttered from behind, rolling her eyes.
“Ooh! Oh! We should go get Applejack and see if she knows anything about how a cake can break glass!” Pinkie bounced over to Rarity, who shied away from the bits of pastry covering Pinkie’s energetic face like the prospect of a date with Blueblood.
“You do that, dear; I’ll catch up.” Rarity sighed in relief as the messy mare left her personal space. Dash and Pinkie shuffled out, leaving Rarity alone with her thoughts for a moment as Fluttershy trembled in the corner. The worried seamstress stared at the broken window for a moment, shrugged as if to declare “I give up!” and headed towards the door.
“Are you coming, Fluttershy?” Rarity glanced back, halfway outside.
“N-no, I don’t think so.” Fluttershy’s eyes darted about in the dark corner, the haunted orbs widening at unseen specters.
“Well, catch up with us, or I’ll come and find you. I have a feeling we’ll need all the help we can get.”
Fluttershy added a few muttered words as the door shut: “I don’t need to go outside, not with all the reminders of what I did; they’re all looking at me; I can feel their eyes…”
~~~~~~~~~
For the guards it was a familiar sight: although Twilight had not crossed their paths in the past few days, the occurrence was as usual. With a casual nod they lent her entrance through the menagerie of halls and up through the spires, and the armored sentinels dismissed the untidy mane and the occasional twitch of her eye as normal for one who had cared for little else but studying.
Hoofsteps echoed as Twilight ascended into the spire, the high winds gusting outside as the sun sought a resting place. Her thoughts ran amuck as twitching eyes darted around, searching for those she knew to be spying on her surely displeasing posterior.
“Almost there. Then she’ll tell us, and we’ll know…” Twilight glanced back at her plot that she had oh-so-carefully kept in the shadow of the stairwell and shuddered.
On up the stairs she went, until at long last Twilight knocked on the great black double doors. For a few tantalizing seconds Twilight waited, feeling every inch of her ambiguous plot touched by the night air, exposed. A lock on the door clicked open—Twilight felt she would explode at the tension—
Luna poked her head out of the door, seeking her visitor, but she was given no time to react before Twilight threw herself at her hooves.
“Please! Princess Luna, you're the only one that can help! The only one who can answer the burning question..."
Then Twilight spun around, for the third and final time revealing the indignity of her plot. Luna stood, puzzled, her head cocked at a curious angle to regard the plot now invading her personal space. A few moments passed, and then Luna spoke hesitantly.
“Twilight, we are not sure what…” Luna levitated a book over titled Modern Sexual Etiquette and perused a few pages. Twilight cringed, her eyes shut all the while as she waited for judgment to be passed. Then Luna’s eyes lit up, and she tossed the book away without a care.
"Aha! What a joyous occasion! They have finally decided to submit to my beauty! Come, we shall bond at once.”
Luna grabbed Twilight with her magic, and the plot-perturbed librarian yelped before Luna dragged her into the room.
“But Princess Luna, what about my plot?”
“Opposite your anterior end? Oh…” Luna dropped Twilight and rapidly retrieved her book again, skimming through a few more pages until she found the section she had been looking for. Moving closer to Twilight as she pulled herself off the ground, Luna fluttered her eyelashes and spoke huskily:
“Dost thou have a mirror attached to thy posterior? We can see ourselves in close proximity to it."
“What do mirrors have to do with any of this? Princess Luna, please, just tell me the truth about my plot!”
“We are sure your plot is most desirable, but…” Luna’s eyes glinted as she paused, Twilight already on the brink of nervous tension. “Perhaps we should take a closer look.”
The room ran circles around Twilight as she felt her heart tremble, the climax approaching. “I’ll do anything, Princess Luna! I can’t hold these feelings inside any longer; do whatever is necessary!”
A grin graced Luna’s complexion, the slightest of curvings at the thought of what was to come. “In that case, we shall move at once to satisfy your desires.”
This is it, I’m finally going to know the truth, it’ll be all over after this…
Luna sauntered over to a couch, grinning back at Twilight all the while and swaying her flanks ever-so-slightly as she walked.
Twilight noticed none of it, caught up in plots of a different kind altogether.
“Now…” Luna was veritably purring as she spoke, laid out on her back, wings spread. “Come up and stand over us, revealing your gluteus, so that we may inspect it most thoroughly…”
Ah! How could I be so stupid, of course Luna can’t see when it’s facing away from her. Twilight snapped out of her veil of plot-induced thoughts, shaking her head free before hastily scrambling onto the couch. Holding her breath, Twilight could barely disguise her trembling and excitement as she climbed backwards over Luna, her star-spangled flanks inching closer to the ever-patient arbitrator.
“Tell me,” Twilight begged, her voice a quaking whisper.
Luna licked her lips in anticipation, eyes running hungrily over her new playground. “Mmmyes, you have been gifted with a most attractive posterior…”
Twilight breathed sharply, cold relief tingling through her spine at the words, releasing tension with an audible gasp. It’s not ugly… I don’t have a monstrously unattractive rear! Oh, I can’t believe I was so…
Luna’s hoof hovered an inch over the purple plot, a mere inch from physical contact. Then the double-doors burst open.
Pinkie ran into the room, a leash attached to her neck dragging Fluttershy behind her, and Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack were quick to follow. All but Pinkie gaped at the situation, Twilight staring back at them as Pinkie leaped around and made barking noises with her tongue lolling out.
Then Luna poked her head out from behind Twilight’s plot, curious as to the interruption.
“We were not aware it was commonplace to intrude…”
“Ah’m out.” Applejack turned and left.
Of the remaining witnesses, Rarity stared, flabbergasted; Rainbow Dash gawked; Pinkie followed her nose until she bumped into Twilight’s posterior, who was quite frozen and numb at the situation; and Fluttershy scrambled into a dark corner, hiding from all attention.
Pinkie poked Twilight’s tail, who started and then glanced back at Luna before blushing deeply, eyes wide open.
Oh Celestia, what was I about to…
“I told you all I was part bloodhound!” Pinkie exclaimed, skidding back over to her still-staring friends, hopping beside their astonished faces as she grinned wildly. “Her flanks were all over that umbrella!”
No, what was SHE about to-!?
“We are most displeased by your friends’ conduct, Twilight,” Luna said flatly. “In other centuries, such deplorable actions would be punishable by—”
“I DID IT! I WAS THE ONE!” Fluttershy cried out. “Angel Bunny broke my favorite vase right in front of me, so I took all of his toys and I hid them in an alley, and…”
Rainbow Dash floated over and helped Fluttershy out of the room, doing her best to provide moral support as the bereaved mare teared up. Twilight took the opportunity to swiftly exit the couch, her whole body burning and flushing.
Rarity glanced between Twilight and Luna, still lying on the bed, perplexed and mildly irritated.
“Um, Twilight… we can come back later if we were interrupting someth—”
“No! No, nothing at all going on here! Why don’t we talk about anything else other than this outside?”
And then Twilight ran out the door.
“We shall most eagerly await your return, Twilight Sparkle!”
~~~~~~~~
Rarity glanced at the bookworm sitting across from her on the train, who was still profusely redder than usual. They had been silent since they had left the castle.
“Why did you lie about it?”
“Lie to you about what, dear?”
“Don’t make me say it!” Twilight’s cheeks reddened again somehow, and she looked away. “You and Rainbow Dash, in the library this morning, talking about how terrible my… my…”
Twilight hid her face as Rarity’s confusion faded, until at last she held a hoof out in compassion, touching her shoulder lightly.
“Darling, this morning, we actually weren’t talking about you, we—”
“How could you not have been!?” Twilight reared up, glaring, profuse embarrassment still present.
“Twilight, we were talking about a book!”
A few longs seconds passed, and the incredulous stare focused on Rarity did not fade.
“Twi, dear, do you remember the shelf of new releases that you put out on the main floor of the library which we all knew was a thinly disguised attempt to get us to read thick philosophical tomes?”
It was that obvious?
“Yes,” Twilight replied guiltily, fresh stinging embarrassment mixing with the old. Rarity put her hoof back on her shoulder, doing her best to comfort her friend.
“Well, dear, there was a book on there that shared your name. I had heard so many things about this new romance that I simply had to try it, but I found it so unpalatable…”
Rarity shook her head in disgust, Twilight finally feeling a growing understanding of the mad, mad world around and inside her.
“It was just the most angst-filled, dreary and awkward thing I had read! I had figured you would at least know of it, Twilight, if for no other reason than it shares your name. It doesn’t match any of your interests, I suppose, although I did just walk in on—”
“That was an accident!” Twilight interjected, blush threatening to return. Rarity nodded, questions unanswered but gladly put aside for a friend.
“Well, dear, as I said to Rainbow Dash, it was simply so atrocious that I couldn’t stand to read more than a few dozen pages.”
The sound of the train running over the tracks pervaded all for a few moments.
“That was it?” Twilight asked, the cool relief in her mind clashing with the agitated stress of her body.
“That was all, dear. Nothing about you. From what I’ve heard, you may have overreacted just a small bit, but that’s all behind you now.” Rarity opened her mouth again as she realized her choice of words, but opted not to acknowledge it as Twilight looked away again.
“If it helps, you look well enough around back, darling.”
Twilight acknowledged the statement with a tired nod, and the train rolled on.
Several more minutes passed in silence and contemplation, Twilight doing her best to actively forget the past few hours and Rarity simply resting from the exhausting parade of events.
“I guess you could say, Twilight, that after all the trouble and all the toil that you put yourself and your friends through, after all your attempts to get us to read and find out the truth, that it was simply a matter of…”
Rarity hid a curious expression on her face, barely able to constrain a wide grin, Twilight looking on curiously.
“A matter of what?”
“Falling victim to your own bad plot.”
