“Oh, library,” Twilight whispered. “Why did you burn?”
Only silence answered. She huffed, staring into the darkness, and rolled over onto her other side. The blanket rolled with her, exposing her tail to the terrible chill of the castle, but she didn’t bother to cover herself again. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered now.
Tirek was gone. She knew that he had been locked away in the depths of Tartarus once more, never to wreak havoc on ponykind again. The day had been saved by the power of friendship, par the course for her misadventures. She and her friends were prepared to oversee their new kingdom ... or at least, she would pretend to let them make important decisions. She loved them dearly, but it wasn’t as if they’d earned becoming alicorn princesses. They had new thrones, which was a good start, but they still had a long way to go.
Still, despair gnawed at her mind. The library, her beloved tree of knowledge of good and evil, had been destroyed by Tirek’s fury. Only a charred wreck of its former self remained, not too far from this cold, distant castle that the box had vomited up. Part of her wanted to leap out of bed and mourn for that twisted stump, but the day’s events tied her down with chains of exhaustion. So she lay there, allowing a parade of single tears to splatter against her pillow like the rain that should have been falling.
Memories surfaced: the first time she had ever set hoof in that place, her nerves frazzled further by an unexpected party … the chaos of her corrupted friends, playing keepaway with the jewelry they had been searching for all along … the blazing, searing pain of oblivion as she was accidentally vaporized by harmony, and the panic of mares upon realizing what they had done ...
“You were there all along,” she said. “Good times and bad times, you were always there for me. And now you’re just gone … where will I go crazy now?”
A muffled voice roused her from her angst. “This is the part where I come in.”
The door swung inwards, allowing a pony to step in and quietly close it behind her. She crossed the room and drew the curtains, allowing the light of the moon to illuminate Twilight’s pity party. The alicorn squinted at the newcomer; though the lighting made it difficult to see, the greenish mane made it clear that this was not one of her friends.
“Hi,” the strange mare said, beaming. “The name’s Golden Oak. I’m your library.”
… made it clear that this was the best friend she never knew she had.
Twilight stared in disbelief. The pony who claimed to be a library didn’t gradually dissolve into the ether, and a quick punch to her own face yielded the same lack of results. “That can’t actually be you,” she said breathlessly, nursing her bruised cheek. A few hairs in her mane sprang haphazardly out of place. “You’re dead. And a tree. You’re a dead, smoking tree full of dead, smoking books. On a scale of one to ten, the possibility of you existing is somewhere in the area of Celestia’s usefulness.” She thought for a moment, then whimpered. “My poor books …”
“Silly Twilight.” The pony who claimed to be a library nuzzled her. “You didn’t think the Rainbow Power wouldn’t fix everything, did you? Even as a tree, I had a soul. You and your friends just gave my soul a new place to be. Don’t you know that’s how magic works?”
“Prove it.” Despite her words, Twilight couldn’t help but lean in to Golden’s touch. There was something familiar about it, as if it had once touched sunlight and bathed in morning dew. And perhaps provided a place for the owl to store his hundreds of rotting kills, but that was neither here nor there. “Prove you’re the library.”
“Of course.” As if sensing that they were being watched, she whispered a few words into Twilight’s ear. The words set the alicorn into a fit of furious blushing, although they went conveniently unrecorded by the narrative. Details like that aren't a big deal; they only serve to ease events along. They’re much like fiber in that sense.
“I …” Twilight’s eyes tried to well up with tears, but they (the tears) began to gush like waterfalls. Pinkie would have been proud. “It’s really you … you’re alive, and you’re here and everything. I’m just …”
“Shh,” the library whispered, leaning in close. “No tears, Twilight. I'm all right. I came back just for you. Now be sexy for me, okay?”
Twilight made as if to speak, though she wasn't exactly sure what she meant to say. Her wordless protest was quickly silenced as Golden dived in and kissed her with enough force to suck the saliva out of her mouth.
It was as if a pony-shaped vacuum had decided to eat her face. Twilight didn’t care. She kissed back as if her life depended on it, throwing herself deeper and deeper into the soft firmness of those fresh new lips. Broad lavender wings wrapped around the library, pulling her into an embrace tight enough for their rapidly-beating hearts to caress each other in the dark. Somepony lost her balance, and the two slammed onto the mattress, but the fun had only just begun.
The more they touched each other, the more they craved to be touched. Fire burned at every area where their bodies connected — it would have been an unpleasant sensation in other circumstances, but as of this moment it was all they needed. Their tongues didn’t so much battle for dominance as wage an epic war for the newly joined territories. One of them would thrust itself into its foe, and it would be met with screaming resistance as the other threw its entire weight against it with all the force it could muster. Truly the bloodlust of the twitching pink muscles was the stuff of a saga worthy for the ages.
The door cracked open. “Twilight?” A scaly head peaked in, and its owner slowly blinked the sleep out of his eyes. “I couldn’t sleep, so I was wondering if …”
His eyes focused. A hunched beast cast a gyrating shadow in the moonlight streaming through the window. It was actually much less poetic than it sounds.
“I’m going back to bed,” Spike said, and he abandoned the scene with all the lurching grace of a headless zombie. Let somepony else deal with it, he decided. The mental scarring could wait until morning.
