The Riddle

The information in the remaining books had been even more sparse.

The History of Canterlot portrayed phoenixes as a creature of wonder, and “owning” one as as the penultimate symbol of status. (Twilight had taken the book out of the library’s catalog after her read; surely there were other books that did a better job in re-telling the history of the world’s capital, and she had already written a letter to the Royal Library, asking them to send one.) The Magic in Nature: A force through the ages reallyought to have at least a section about them, but Twilight had been disappointed. The book had merely noted that little was known, and that many of their powers “remained unexplained”. Both of those things were definitively true, but it was also unhelpful, and odd considering the fairly detailed information that the book provided about many other species. Perhaps that circumstance was by itself important.

It did, however, have one piece of information that did seem to carry relevance, which was an observation of how phoenixes seemed to “rarely be affected” by tragedies that had befallen other species, ponies included.

And lastly, Greed and Deception: The role of Money in the Griffon culture had been an excellent and highly interesting read that sadly didn’t mention phoenixes at all, but was still something she’d recommend to anyone who wanted to learn about Griffons.

Twilight sighed as she looked over the page whereon she had just written every noticeable find. It was a depressingly short list.

And if the incident with Philomena had not taken place, then her conclusions now would look radically different, which was not a good sign for their reliability.

Perhaps...

Was this the wrong approach?

No, that was silly. Obviously, reading about them first was the correct approach.

But was it time to change it up with something else?

She was beginning to think of phoenixes more and more as a riddle, and you didn’t solve a riddle by reading. You solved a riddle by thinking.

For which you needed to be smart...

... or, perhaps...

Sometimes, riddles were not solved by the smartest ponies, and sometimes, the same pony would be stuck on a riddle on one day, but be able to solve it on the next. A big factor was variance, or, to put it more bluntly, luck.

Perhaps, if she just asked somepony else, that pony would know the solution immediately.