Twilight Sparkle was a pony who prided herself on many things, though three things stuck out when she was asked to describe herself. Her wonderful connection with her friends, of course, was one of them. The other was her talent for magic, something she liked to think she was pretty darn good at, not to toot her horn too much! But lastly, and oh this may possibly be her favorite, she had an ever increasingly wide knowledge of literature in all types and forms!
Since she was a young foal she read every word she could get her hooves on and ate them up hungrily. She had read them all, from fairy tales of fearsome beasts to how the great kingdom of Canterlot was built, and she usually loved every word of it (with an itty bitty little criticism and twelve page non-mandatory essay here and there on her issues). However, there was one subject she hadn’t delved into much. Just one she hadn’t considered delving into, even when the thought occurred to her. It was so dirty to even think of the subject. So animalistic, so naughty, so...
“Interesting,” Twilight Sparkle mumbled under her breath.
But still in her library she sat hunched over a table with nothing but the flickering dim light of a candle to illuminate the words on the pages before her. In the dead of night she committed her crime to gaze over the words before her. On this night, as every night before for the past week she sat invested in the words that entranced her every being. She could say it, not out loud of course, never outloud, but Trainyard Escapade had taken over her nightlife.
“I can’t…” Bristle whimpered, his eyes filling to the brim with tears that he could no longer hold back. In the darkened alley in the thunderous rain Heart Thorn could still feel the tears of the stallion slip past his eyes and fall onto his black chest. It was as if the embrace he held the stallion in squeezed out every last emotion that he had and reduced him to nothing but a sobbing wreck. Even in Heart Thorn’s muscled, burly grasp he still shook and trembled uncontrollably. “I’m sorry I’m so selfish… I didn’t… I didn’t think that you would… I’m sorry,” He choked out the sobbing apologies one after another and buried his muzzle deep into Heart Thorn’s chest. “Please let me go… I don’t… I don’t deserve your kindne-”
“Shut up,” Heart Thorn stated. Even under the rain his words were more solid than the thunder above. “If anybody was a selfish idiot tonight it was me, Bristle. You don’t have to hide yourself in a darkened alley like this.” His hoof slipped to Bristle’s chin and pushed it up until their eyes met. His lips looked so firm and soft. “Bristle, I think you know how I feel.”
Bristle felt his eyes widen. In what little light he had he studied the face of the black pony before him and sat there in silence. Heart Thorn jutted slightly and Bristle felt something hard poke against his abdomen.
“I… I don’t,” Bristle whimpered. "I don't know."
"What?" Twilight Sparkle let out a shreak. This was it, her first slip up. She had been so careful to suppress every single emotion that flowed through her veins. She kept her mouth shut for a lot of events in the story thus far, for fear of awakening the dragon that slept upstairs beside her bed. Spike was unaware of her little midnight adventures through the romanticly touching homosexual escapades of Bristle and Heart Thorn, and she made sure to keep it that way. The details between the scenes that initially caught her attention did nothing but add to the storyline and development of the characters, this she would stand by until she died. But even then just the simple thought of how Spike would look at her if she even dared mention that she suppressed a squeal at their first tender loving embrace after much less… easily explainable details. How one would even fit something so wide up their… that was beside the point.
Even when they first kissed on the midnight train at Heart Thorn’s departure to his abusive wife did she not openly weep, though she desperately wanted to. She had taken a vow of silence from the moment she opened this book and was cast under its demonic spell. Forget the fact that it was so glaringly obvious what Heart Thorn was trying to tell Bristle! Forget the fact that she knew VERY WELL what was poking his abdomen between Heart Thorn’s legs. She could stay silent no longer at Bristle being so blind to Heart Thorn’s true feelings.
“You aren’t just an object to him, Bristle!” Twilight cried out and beat her hooves down against the table. Tears stung her eyes when she cried out, hoping to reach Bristle somehow. “Why can’t you see that?”
Perhaps she was a little too enthusiastic in her temporary loss of sanity. Just a bit. It took three hard hitting smashes of her hooves against the table before she was able to even begin thinking about controlling herself. And even then she sat mad eyed with a mane suddenly frizzed out as if it had never been brushed. She sat in silence for the next several moments, her breath more ragged than Rainbow Dash after flying a marathon. But it wasn’t her own outburst that caused her heart to sink, it was the fact that she heard a distinctly familiar yawn of a young purple dragon.
“Spike!” Twilight hissed when she gazed to the top of the stairs that led up to both her and Spike’s bedroom and saw possibly the most frightening looking shadow of a baby dragon in her life. The only thing that could have fit the mood of the situation better was if a flash of lightning from a sudden freak storm illuminated the room. Twilight felt her eyes widen, and without thinking her horn began to glow.
Twilight flung the book with all her might. A mighty battle cry erupted from her throat which may or may not have sounded exactly like a scream of pure, unrelenting panic. An explosion took place beside her in the direction where she threw the book. It happened to land precisely on a shelf that was just wobbly enough to not think about, but everybody knew what would happen if a pony leaned on it wrong. Or threw a book at it, but who in Equestria is paying attention to the little details? She watched book after book on the shelf fall on top of each other and bury her hidden treasure deep underneath. She took in a quick gasp of breath and covered her mouth with both hooves.
“Twilight?” Spike’s voice came from the top of the stairs. Twilight turned to him slowly, her eyes still wide. Spike stood there still rubbing his eye trying to wipe away the sleepiness that clung to his body. He was still confused, perfect time to hurry.
“O-Oh, Spike!” Twilight jumped up from her seat and pointed to the bookshelf. “It was awful! I-I was getting a glass of water and all these books just fell! T-This tree is so unstable I can’t believe we live in it! We’ll have to clean it up tomorrow!”
“Unstable?” Spike questioned.
“Well we’ll deal with that later let’s get up to bed shoo shoo go go!” Twilight spoke the mouthful of words faster than the sleep deprived dragon could even process the fact that Twilight had grasped the end of his tail with magic and was dragging him back up the stairs. She raced up after him and shoved him back into bed and wrapped the blanket so tightly around him that he might as well be mummified.
“Gee I sure am beat goodnight let’s go to sleep now! I-I was here all night!” Twilight laughed loudly and jumped onto bed. She stared up at the ceiling with a smile stretched so wide it was beginning to hurt her face.
“Twilight?” Spike asked. He sat up slowly and looked at the unicorn. “You aren’t sleepwalking again, are you? You do weird stuff when you do, you know.”
“Can’t talk I’m falling asleep! Like you should right now!” Twilight looked to Spike and held her eyes wide open and seemingly refused to blink. Spike’s expression grew uneasy, but he did finally lower himself into bed. Only when a good five minutes pass did Twilight allow her expression to fade into a more relaxed one. Even though her body was calm, all she could think about was her story, the story she had dedicated far too many sleepless nights to reading, was buried under so many books out in the open. It was fine, all she had to do was wait until Spike fell asleep and she could retrieve it and hide it again between her mattress made invisible by a simple cloaking spell, no biggie!
“Twi?”
“Sleep!” Twilight called out.
Spike seemed to finally get a hint of the memo, though his breathing still remained above a level of calmness for quite some time. Twilight lay in bed with her limbs stiff and breath rapid, thoughts still dangling in her mind of Heart Thorn’s confession and Bristle’s naive response. Oh how could he not get the picture that Heart Thorn loved him far more than he would ever love that horrible abusive woman he called a wife? Why wouldn’t Bristle just let himself be loved? Isn’t that what he wanted? Even in the beginning of the story he only gave his body away so willingly out of desperation and desire for another pony’s affection!
“Ugh,” Twilight groaned quietly into her pillow when she rolled onto her belly. Explaining that book’s entrancing characterization would be impossible when over a third of it involved the two stallions grabbing each others… W-Well the author had many ways to describe the area, she learned.
All she had to do was wait for Spike to sleep. If she waited thirty minutes tops she could go retrieve the book and hide it, and maybe get a look at the confession. All she needed was a bit of patience… she could do this.
“Eight hours?” Fluttershy gasped and covered her mouth with her hoof. She shifted uncomfortably in place and looked down to her saddlebags while biting her lip. “Since four this morning?”
“Yep, Twilight’s out like a light,” Spike sighed and placed the first of many books onto the shelf. “She made this huge mess and then wants me to clean it up for her? It’s like, Geez we have ponies who are gonna want some books!” Spike shook his head and placed a second book onto the empty shelf. Before him lay a pile of scattered books, some face open on the ground in an incredibly disorganized fashion. He let out a groan and shook his head. “Anyway what do you want?”
“O-Oh!” Fluttershy took a step back and looked down to her hooves. “W-Well if Twilight isn’t up I don’t want to inconvenience you.”
“Hey come on, I’ve checked out books a hundred times before!” Spike waved his hand in front of his face and laughed. “I can find them real fast too! I clean this place so much I think I got half the placements memorized.”
“Oh… W-Well, if it isn’t a bother,” Fluttershy spoke softly before pointing to her saddlebag. “You see Angel is sick, and the poor dear just won’t take any medicine I try to give him. He’s a bit fussy but I know it’s just because his belly aches. He’ll only take his medicine if I read him a bedtime story.”
“In… the middle of the afternoon?” Spike looked at Fluttershy in question.
“He has… specific needs,” She sighed loudly and shook her head. “I just don’t know what to do if he won’t take his medicine. He won’t eat he barely sleeps, and I can’t look over any of the other critters if he won’t settle down!”
“Calm down, Fluttershy,” Spike turned away from the shelf he was six books in the middle of rebuilding. He walked up to her and gave her a reassuring smile. “What does Angel Bunny like to hear? I’ll find it faster than you can say Wonderbolts!”
“W-Well,” Fluttershy put her hoof to her chin. “His favorite story is Blue Streak Cloudshine.”
“On it!” Spike called out before turning away from Fluttershy. He had already climbed up to the third shelf of the bookcase opposite the hall from the pegasus and was running his claw slowly over the bindings of each of the books. “Let’s see, Blue Baking, Blue Heart, Blue… Hey sorry, Fluttershy, I think Blue Streak is checked out!”
“Are you positive?” Fluttershy took several steps forward, a look of concern spreading quickly over her face. “O-Oh dear… Angel Bunny loves that story.”
“Hey we can find another one that he’ll like!” Spike jumped down from the bookshelf and landed with ease before walking up and over to Fluttershy. “How about Rainbow Sail? Twilight used to read that to me all the time.”
“Angel Bunny finds that story a bit pretentious,” Fluttershy shook her head with a frown. She sighed loudly and placed her hoof down to her temple. “Oh dear, what am I going to do?”
“Hey it’s okay,” Spike reassured the pegasus before wandering back to the pile of books that were still in a mess. He had begun to gather them up slowly, though still continued to give Fluttershy a reassuring smile. “Just let me finish cleaning this up and I’ll help you find ano… Hey wait a minute!” Spike cried out and a smile suddenly split across his face.
“What is it?” Fluttershy questioned, taking several steps closer to Spike.
“Trainyard Escape!” Spike held the book up high above his head. A simple, brown leather book with no pictures or anything on the front but the title. “Oh man this was my favorite book when I was just a hatchling! Angel’ll love this!”
“Are you sure?” Fluttershy’s voice held reservations, that much was clear. Even so she reached out her hoof and grasped the book. “This is called Trainyard Escapade, Spike.”
“Really?” Spike looked confused, his brow raising in question. “Coulda sworn it was called escape.”
“I don’t know Spike, Angel is really picky about his reading material!” Fluttershy widened her eyes and seemed to plead to Spike. “He hates expanding his library no matter how much I insist upon it. One time I read him Goodnight Luna and he ripped out half the pages he was so upset!”
“Naw, trust me, he’ll love this!” Spike pushed the book closer to Fluttershy. “No pony alive could hate this book, it’s just so good!”
“If you insist,” Fluttershy mumbled. Though she held her reservations, Spike obviously didn’t take note of them. She hesitantly placed the book in her bag with a frown still lingering on her lips. “I’ll bring it back soon, alright? And hopefully then I can talk to Twilight. Angel always settles down for a good nap after he gets his medicine. I really need to get going though, before he throws up again!”
“Right,” Spike smiled at Fluttershy and began once again to gather up the books near his feet. “Maybe by the time you’re back I’ll have this done and can finally get the rest of my chores done,” He chuckled, though it sounded a bit dry. “I’m sure Twilight will be happy to know you stopped by!”
“T-That’s great!” Twilight said in a far too ecstatic tone. The same grin she had the night before was back, the one that ached to keep yet she couldn’t bring herself to wipe off her face. “Y-You put all those books back by yourself?”
“Yeah… T-Twi, are you okay?” Spike asked. “You’ve been staring at that shelf for a while.”
And here it was. The moment of her downfall. She was going to be sentenced to death for reading about Bristle’s joystick (as the author put it) tasting better than the candy Heart Thorn’s mother made when he was a child. She could picture herself now being drug to the gallows, crying that it was all for the sake of the characters. Yet none would hear her pleas.
“I’m super!” Twilight said and turned her attention to Spike. “Just… making sure they’re all here! Wouldn’t want one to get lost now would we? Crazy, right?
“Yeah… real crazy,” Spike took a step away from Twilight with an expression only describable as pure concern spreading over his face. He turned away from her, though for the next several moments he was constantly looking over his shoulder. “I’m going upstairs for a bit to dust our room, alright?”
Twilight didn’t reply.
This was front page material, it had to be. Princess Celestia’s star pupil tried guilty to reading adult homosexual erotic literature. Maybe they would cut off her horn? No, no… that would be going easy on her.
“It has to be here,” She growled. She took a step forward and stared hard at all the books. Spike wouldn’t have misplaced it, he had been scolded too often on the matter of just willy-nilly placing books at random on the shelves to know better. How oh how could she have overslept? How oh how could she have fallen asleep with pages of PORN that had touched her eyes just laying on the floor?
“Oh dear oh dear oh dear,” She whispered. She had looked at all the titles at least a hundred times, but the one she so desperately searched for just wouldn’t appear.
Silence. She needed silence to think. Just a moment to gather her thoughts and think about a solution was all she needed not to panic. At the moment the most rational thing to do seemed to be simply move to Los Pegasus and go by Twilight Flopple until she died… Okay maybe she needed to think a bit more rationally than that.
Just then the sound of a door creaking open hit Twilight’s ears. She shot her head up and snapped her eyes to the direction of the library door just in time to see a little yellow pegasus poke her head inside and look around cautiously. She seemed to be trying her best to be stealthy and undetected, though at the first sight of Twilight Sparkle she seemed to freeze faster than any spell Twilight could possibly conjure to do so.
“Fluttershy!” Twilight’s yell was somewhere between excitement and maddened panic. All her mind could do was scream ‘act natural’ at least a hundred times before another word passed her lips. “W-What are you doing here so early?”
“Uh… I… w-wrong house!” Fluttershy seemed to do her best to back out as quickly as possible, but before she could do any such thing Twilight ran forward and grabbed the door with her magic and pulled it back open to find Fluttershy nearly cowering in its frame.
“Hold on a second, Fluttershy!” Twilight insisted. Just for a moment her worries left her and were replaced with concern for her friend. “You're jumpier than usual.”
“O-Oh, yes, you see…” Fluttershy seemed to be slowly crouching down. “I just… I came to… Spike lent me a book earlier for Angel since he needed to take medicine.”
“Oh, really?” Twilight questioned. “Wait, isn’t his favorite book out?” Something about Fluttershy’s expression seemed off. She wouldn’t meet Twilight’s eye even for a second, which was stranger than usual. They kept flickering around the room looking for anything else to focus on. Twilight glanced at her cheeks and realized they were flushed.
“Yes it was,” Fluttershy replied with a nod of her head. “It very… very much was! But with this book I’m sorry to say he apparently loved it! He downed his medicine quicker than he did with his favorite book, sorry to say.” She bit down on her lip and shifted awkwardly in place.
“Oh?” Twilight lifted her brow in question. “What book did you end up reading to him?”
“It was… just… T-Trainyard Es… escap… y-yeah” Fluttershy shook her head with what Twilight would almost call anger.
“Trainyard Escape?” Twilight questioned.
“Y-Yeah, that one,” Fluttershy nodded her head. I apologize, I’m very flustered, Twilight! Did you know Spike read this?”
“Trainyard Escape? That’s Spike’s favorite book!” Twilight felt her eyes light up with excitement. However she was greeted with a look of horror as if she had just told Fluttershy she had cut open Spike on her own table. “He used to beg for me to read that to him every night!”
“T-Twilight I…” Fluttershy bit on her lip and shook her head again. “Oh! I know I have no place telling you this but that is wildly inappropriate for a dragon his age! And you READ it to him?”
“W-Well,” Twilight felt confusion take over her. “It has a bit of blood, but that’s not really something I thought would phase him much.”
“A bit of blood!” Fluttershy wasn’t speaking to Twilight but simply exclaiming at this point. “W-Well of course it was realistic in that sense, but the blood isn’t the problem with it! I have nothing against ponies like that but reading it to baby dragons seems horribly inappropriate, Twilight! Even if we’re applauding realism in such a setting it’s just… how could you?”
“You weren’t moved by the story?” Twilight asked. She couldn’t help but sound a bit hurt. Though the story was Spike’s favorite, she had to admit it held a special place in her heart as well. She certainly had nothing agaisnt a bit of criticism, but this was downright an attack. “Even when the son begged again and again until his father finally came?”
“That was his father? Oh dear Celestia. I thought the age difference was a bit large but oh my,” Fluttershy placed her hoof to her forehead and began to shake her head slowly. Her breath was shaking so badly that Twilight thought for a moment she was actually in danger of passing out. “Twilight… the setting alone for acts like that were so scandalous!”
“But the trainyard was their special place!” Twilight insisted. She took a step towards Fluttershy and the pegasus seemed to shrink. “You didn’t even reach the part where the son remembers his father taking him there when he was little and it’s why they come there all the time as adult to do the same things they did back then!”
“When he was little.” Fluttershy didn’t question at this point, merely stated what Twilight had told her. Her face was flushed pink at this point. “T-Twilight, I don’t think I want to hear anymore of this. The story did it’s job and I… I don’t think I want to deal with it anymore.”
“B-But wait, Fluttershy please this story is important to me and Spike! I’m fine with you not liking it but it sounds like you don’t even understand it!” Twilight shook her head. “The brother feels left out even when he tries to join in, did you get that far at least?”
“Twilight…” Fluttershy’s voice was quiet and nothing but a mumble.
“You didn’t care when the father got called on by the royal guards by the brother eventually?”
“With the things you’re telling me I’m glad I didn’t get that far!” Fluttershy shook her head and took another step back. Twilight could feel her mouth hang open at a loss for words. Fluttershy was not tearing open her saddlebag “Angel bunny shouldn’t have heard such words and neither should have Spike! I’m sorry Twilight but this is me putting my hoof down… I’m sorry…”
“If you really feel that way,” Twilight shook her head with a frown plastered to her lips. “Then I’m sorry Spike recommended it. He really loves it, too.”
“I-I don’t want to hear, I’m sorry!” Fluttershy grasped the book and held it out to Twilight with her head hung low. “P-Please just take it away!”
Twilight Sparkle stood frozen in place when she caught sight of the book. She didn’t want to believe it was true, but here it was, a nightmare becoming reality. The mere sight of the words of the title on her eyes caused her breath to catch in her throat.
“Trainyard Escapade,” Twilight read the title aloud. Just a few letters added could make a world of difference, if you thought about it. Twilight stood frozen and could only move her eyes briefly to look into Fluttershy’s own. Fluttershy couldn’t hold her gaze for more than a second before turning away and biting her lip. She seemed too horrified of what her friend had told her to even consider looking her in the eye.
Twilight hung her mouth open. She thought of a million ways to explain her actions, to explain to her shy, timid friend why she had just spent the past several minutes defending this book. In the frame of her library door time seemed to freeze, but it was hardly enough to think of an explanation. Nothing came close to satisfactory when she ran it through her head… so she decided to be honest.
Twilight Sparkle opened her mouth, and spoke six words.
“I read it for the plot.”
