The Riddle

Twilight stood still, staring blankly out the window above her desk.

It was now eleven days after the start of her project, and their weekly picnic was due tomorrow. It was also the twenty-fourth of May, not that that was particularly important, and her research so far hadn’t been a success. She was about halfway through the books she had wanted to read, and though she was still motivated enough to finish them all, she was not optimistic enough anymore to believe that it would advance her cause in the way she had hoped.

Peewee had grown to become a familiar sight, but his presence in her home was less informative than one would think. If she were to consider him an animal, then she’d conclude that he was extraordinarily intelligent. He would leave her in peace when she was busy, and come to her during breaks if he wanted something, usually food. He would communicate his taste by taking or rejecting different dishes she offered, and his tastes even seemed to change based on his mood. He liked to take flights around the library, but rarely ever disappeared out of sight, and he had never made any attempts to leave.

He did, however, not appear to understand her, at least not yet. A few times, Twilight had carefully tried to ask him something, and it had not felt like she was talking to an equal, not even provided that equal didn’t understand her language. It had felt like talking to an animal.

The most fascinating thing to observe had been what Twilight assumed was his metabolism. Rather than ejecting parts of the food he ate in physical form – like less graceful creatures tended to do – he would hover in the air, and erupt a shower of orange sparks to slowly fall onto the ground. Twilight could only guess that, with time, they would somehow be decomposed into earth or something. It was notable that he always did this outside, at least that was how it had been the two times she had observed.

So... it appeared that he somehow had an intuitive grasp on the the pony concept of tidiness (even though what he did hardly even seemed to be unhygienic), but was not intelligent enough to understand what she was trying to say when she had asked him if he wanted to accompany her to their picnic a week ago... or, when she had asked him if he wanted to be brought back to his parents...

Other ponies in town had of course noticed his existence, an unavoidable circumstance if his home was a public library, and Twilight was pretty sure, even, that more ponies than usual had come to the library in recent days, probably just to get a glimpse at him. Even in a town that lay next to a forest full of mystical creatures, a phoenix still seemed to be an attraction. Not that Twilight could blame them. If it was her, she was pretty sure she would have visited the library only to... well, no, that wasn’t true, she would never be able to visit a library and only care about something other than the books. But she would probably want to see him. Even now, that he was around all the time, his mere sight had never stopped being special. There was something inimitably pure and beautiful about a phoenix, something that no other creature could really compare with...

But that was hardly a scientific fact to write down.

She could try to interact with him a bit more... maybe perform some kind of experiment... but she didn’t want to treat him as an object, or even as a pet; she wanted to treat him as a guest. And you didn’t just perform scientific experiments on a guest without his consent.

Maybe she should ask? But how would she know if he really agreed?

Or maybe she should-