Unnoticed

by Estee

Rating: teen
Tags: Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Mayor Mare, Sad, Main 6, Spike
Length: 18605

On one of the last nice autumn days for his first fall in Ponyville, all Spike has to do is collect late fees and a lost book from a unresponsive library patron. A pony who isn't answering letters. A pony who might as well have never existed.

It's only been a few moons since Spike moved to Ponyville, and the settled zone hasn't quite gotten used to having a dragon around, any more than his sister has become accustomed to managing all the duties of a small town library. So while she sorts out late fee notices, he's expected to work the front desk and speak to patrons. Ponies who don't know how to talk to him. Ponies who seem to be having a hard time even looking at him. So when Twilight finally sends him to collect a book from a truly unresponsive patron, it's almost a relief.

Except that the pony isn't there. Will never be there again.

And just about nopony seems to care if she was ever there at all.

(A stand-alone, no prior-reading-necessary part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group: new members and trope edits are welcome. )

Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.

Published 2016-10-28 01:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-10-28 01:20:01 UTC

Merely Players

They made themselves look at him, and then they would not.

Spike supposed he should have been used to all kinds of stares by now. There had been several categories available at the Gifted School, starting with that which had always felt like the most common example: the stare of envy. That one had generally been directed at Twilight, but he'd always been within the blast radius of the looks which loathed his sister (at first, then coming closer and closer to owner with every passing school year, and now slowly working back towards sibling, something he still wasn't quite ready to completely trust in again) for her possession. Something they wished they could have, with a few of the richest never fully comprehending why they couldn't just buy one for themselves. There had been at least two offers to acquire the broken-in model, and one had been conducted while he was with her in the hallway, with the approaching filly fully uncaring about what he overheard, because it wasn't as if he could possibly be capable of understanding anything which wasn't an order.

There was the gaze of hatred, because the Gifted School was for ponies, and there were some who felt that nothing which was not a pony should be in those halls. Mostly students, and not very many of them. One teacher, who had been fired in their third year. And a single colt who was somepony Spike didn't care to remember unless he absolutely had to and would have been happy never to think of again, since there was no longer a weekly need to work through his own pain by dreaming about all the many ways that one could have been expelled: something which had never come to pass.

Confusion, that was common, especially from first-years, and it was one of the stares which had followed him into Ponyville. What is that? Is it even allowed? Does it talk? No, surely it can't be talking: somepony's just using magic to project their own words, a hidden field rendering the spell invisible. Can't talk and can't think. Just a familiar. A living channel for magic, something virtually nopony had ever learned how to work with over the history of Equestria, something absolutely nopony in the current generation of casters could do. Not even Twilight could copy the semi-secret for moving thaums through a living being, especially not with Spike, for intelligence was the final barrier. Even if the title occasionally got attached to assistants, nothing which truly thought could be a true familiar, and he was grateful for that. He'd been in the room when she'd originally researched the process, and so had seen the uncaring notes concerning the frequent need for replacement, for that which lived had the potential to channel its own inherent magic -- and that which channeled the magic of another didn't last long.

But so often in those school years, when he was still learning control, before the Princess had taken him into private lessons and then after some degree of mastery had come -- it had been the stare which seemed to rule their new settled zone, the one it felt like everypony in town had to use at least once. And for some, again and again and again.

"What do I do with that? Should I just ignore it? Or is it going to try something? I've heard the stories, the myths, and since that's all I know, then that's what's real. So it'll try to steal from me, or burn me, or steal from me and then burn me, maybe it'll try to eat me -- does she have any real control over it? Does anypony? What am I going to do if it comes after me? What could anypony do? And once it grows up, if we don't find some way to get rid of it before it grows up..."

They'd only been in Ponyville for a few moons, just long enough to reach the tipping point of autumn truly heading into winter. Spike had a habit of checking the weather schedule, for Twilight often forgot to do so when her obsessions began to take over, along with neglecting a host of other little things, like eating. The steadily-shortening days had taken on a deliberately planned variable quality: too chill in the morning, too slow to warm -- but in late afternoon, there would be golden hours: a scant offering of time when the air would be pleasant, the smells would be crisp, and it would be just warm enough for him to be at some level of comfort. Just a little while, and then it would turn again: in this case, the bottom was supposed to drop out of the temperature as the pegasi brought in a chill drizzle which was supposedly meant to soften up the leaves which remained on the ground after the Running. Just a few weeks left before it would be too cold for him to even consider going outside without multiple layers over virtually every scale. A ticking clock counting down the time until the tree effectively became his prison.

The golden hours were upon them now, and he wanted to go outside. But he couldn't, because Twilight still wasn't completely used to the duties of fully running a library. Her management of the Ancient History department in the Canterlot Archives had mostly been a matter of shelving, cataloging, and assisting the rare patron who had need of those books -- then constantly lurking behind non-concealing furniture, staring out at the unnerved reader as she made sure nothing happened to the precious texts. She'd never had to manage ordering new books, let alone doing so within the restrictions of a budget: the Archives automatically acquired everything at no cost to the department heads. She hadn't had to deal with more than two patrons in a day for her entire time in the tower. And as the books never left her part of the Archives, there had never been such a thing as late fees.

The act of fully running an actual library involved work -- labor Twilight had never done before, skills she didn't have a mark for. She was effectively trying to learn on the job. And the first thing she'd learned was how to pass off every duty she didn't personally care to deal with onto a distinctly underpaid assistant.

She was a short distance behind him, the partial corona around her horn showing the mobile jagged edges of slow-building anger as she sorted through checkout cards and the library's copies of old late fee notices: form-letter-based, increasingly desperate requests to at least get the book back and maybe the rest could be worked out from there. She didn't want to deal with it: every little surge of light with a sawtooth edge told him that. But she saw it as necessary, and so had committed herself to the task. However, it meant somepony had to take the front desk, even if that 'somepony' was a strictly honorary term which was only truly (and sometimes, barely) used by one mare. Spike had been told to deal with the patrons, and told in a way which made him feel as if she would take over at the moment she felt he had something he couldn't manage, which was probably just about everything.

He'd tried. At first.

But... they trotted in. They looked towards the front desk, sometimes even when they needed no help at all, because the town was still getting used to its Bearers and more than a few just couldn't quite reconcile having a personal student of the Princess in charge of their library. They spotted him.

They made themselves look at him. And then they would not.

Eyes would dart away. Heads would turn. And should he attempt a typical library conversation, try to find out what they needed, their gazes seldom met his. Words would be mumbled into manefall, mostly concerning how they could deal with everything themselves, no need, no need, no need -- and some of that would be rushed forth on their way out of the library, for what they saw as his owner was distracted and who knew what he might do when unsupervised?

But before that, they would stare, some of them. Today, with the last lingering hours of being able to enjoy time outside rushing by, it had felt like all of them. They would stare at him, and it would be the stare of fear.

There had always been stares. There always would be. He was the first dragon in two generations to live among ponies (and according to Twilight's research, the most in any generation had been five), the only one raised from the hatching of his egg and to that degree, some amount of staring could arguably be expected. But the Gifted School had a small population, and jaunts into Canterlot had been rare. Vacation times had mostly been spent on the House estate: the typical exception was their yearly trip to the volcano, so that Spike could breathe in the trace elements which were essential to his health. And once Twilight had graduated, he'd barely seen the outside of the tower: she would sometimes send him for supplies, and he would collect them from places which finally knew to expect him before he went hurrying back, because Twilight would have thought of at least seven more things for him to do during his absence. He'd never had to deal with a full town of stares. But they'd been in Ponyville for a few moons, Twilight was no longer quite so isolated and expected him by her side at least part of the time, it felt as if the gazes had become constant and...

He hadn't spoken to the last nine ponies. At all. Why should he bother? They wouldn't speak to him, not properly, not as if they were dealing with somepony -- someone, it was someone and they wouldn't even give him that -- someone who was... real.

He didn't want to talk to ponies. He didn't want to deal with ponies. He just wanted to go outside.

"Oh, for...!" A little flare of pinkish light accompanied that one, followed by the rare frustrated stomp of a forehoof against the floor. (Not too hard: she didn't have much in the way of physical strength and wouldn't risk using what little she did possess if there was a chance of damaging town property.) "Enough already!"

There was nopony else in the library to hear the outburst, or stare at him when he turned just enough to speak with her. "Found a bad one?"

"Horrific," she grumbled, her features contorting into a wince. (He read pony expressions automatically, for it was just about all he'd ever known. There were times when he wondered about a first meeting with another dragon, if he would be able to tell if they were curious or frustrated or angry, and whether he'd be able to figure any of it out in time. In their fifth year, he had looked into a mirror and pretended up emotion after emotion -- and then he'd remembered just how many varieties a dragon face could come in, every last one of which he'd only seen in books.) "This one... Sun and Moon, Spike, it predates our arrival! The old librarian was sending notice after notice to this one pony, she never got any response -- but that's all she did! No answer to a notice? Send another notice! The library may have spent half of what we could ever recover in late fees on the postage which wasn't recovering them! This is just... embarrassing. If I can't get anything else done today, then I want to at least do something about this account. Mail isn't working: she's clearly been ignoring every last letter. I'm not wasting a single tenth-bit of the budget on another stamp. As far as I'm concerned..." She trailed off, thought it over again, then nodded hard. "Yes. Clearly this calls for direct confrontation!"

It surprised him. Twilight was rarely aggressive. Passive-aggressive wasn't all that common either. (By the time of graduation, dismissive had become a near-constant.) But the best way to get the former was through offense done to books, and so... "Okay." And he tried to reconcile himself to more time trapped inside, to ponies who just stared, while she went --

-- she was looking at him.

It wasn't a stare of any kind. Just -- looking. Waiting. And there was a growing blush beginning to underlight the fur of her cheeks.

"What?"

"Well... um..." The right forehoof awkwardly scraped at the floor. "I'd... really rather not have it be my direct confrontation..."

He supposed he should have expected that. Since their arrival in Ponyville, Twilight had started changing (and some of his earliest, dimmest memories insisted she was changing back) -- but when it came to personally facing others down outside of her sanctuary, she hadn't changed that much.

Carefully, picking out her words with the clumsiness of a foal stumbling through unfamiliar land in the dark, "You just have to... go to her home. Knock on the door. If she's not home, you can leave the letter, and we'll at least save the cost of the stamp. But if she's there... just try to talk to her about the book. Politely. Just ask if -- we can have it back. And maybe we can work something out with the fines. An installment plan, I guess. Something like that. But the important thing is just to get the book back, Spike. As long as we have it, and we can see it's okay --" she winced "-- or send it to the Bradels' shop if it isn't... then everything's at least a little better, because at least it'll be back on the shelf, and..."

A deep, slow breath, as the border of her horn's corona slowly began to shift from jagged edges to quivering glow.

She was looking directly at him.

"...please?"

She had said 'please' to him. A request instead of an order. Some of those dimmest memories contained suggestions that there had been a time when Twilight had regularly said 'please,' compared to very few of the ones between that distant past and now.

"Okay," Spike said, and hopped down from the bench.

If nothing else, it would put him outside.

And he was too late.

Twilight hadn't let him go immediately. Neither of them was fully familiar with Ponyville yet, and both still occasionally got lost while trying to navigate some of the more narrow back alleys. As such, she'd insisted on having him stay in the library until her field had levitated down a map -- and then another map -- followed by cross-referencing, because there was always a chance of the cartographer having sneezed at exactly the wrong moment -- and then she'd drawn him up a copy of the route, which had taken three tries. Twilight had a little drawing skill, at least enough to create rough outline sketches of whatever she was looking at and place the more complicated diagrams in her notes -- but if she found any line which wasn't perfect, she tended to start over. The exceptions were the times when she retired to a private spot so she could practice her fieldwriting deep under Moon, with Spike generally having to pull the blanket over student and about two hundred crumbled balls of unworthy efforts. And if he'd been told to do it and his clawwriting wasn't just right...

...actually, she'd been -- rather quiet about that lately. Not only had the fourth horseshoe not dropped for a couple of moons, but the first through third seemed to be firmly attached --

-- it didn't matter. Because she'd held him up, trying to make sure her little map was just right. And so by the time he'd finally gotten outside, the golden hours had dwindled into something much closer to golden seconds, and he'd just barely cleared the tree's canopy before the light was abruptly cut in half. A glance up found a member of Ponyville's weather team, happily herding in a dismally-grey cloud with absolutely no degree of caring about the ruination he was about to inflict.

Shortly after that, the rain began.

It was a promise rain, and not a promise he wanted to see kept. It was cold and bitter and driven by just enough wind to let it act as a liquid guided missile unerringly striking the smallest vulnerable points between his scales. "I will be snow soon", it seemed to whisper, "and if not me, then lots of my friends, and all of us hate you..."

He tried to make himself smaller as he pushed on through Ponyville, let the inner fire have less distance to travel. But the chill came quickly, and he couldn't blow comforting fire across claws which were holding a fragile (if increasingly damp) map. The letter, to be delivered only if nopony was home, was safe within what Rarity had called a backpack: a modified, largely waterproof saddlebag design with straps added to loop around his shoulders, colors perfectly selected to complement the luster of his scales. Rarity had never stared at him. There were ways in which she didn't look at him, at least not in the ways Spike wished she would -- but she always saw him. She verbally stumbled sometimes, between somepony and someone, but he felt that she was trying, knew she cared about trying and making him comfortable and...

...she was beautiful. It was so easy for him to see that. He knew what beauty was in a pony, at least for him. But if he was to ever meet a female dragon his own age -- what would he see? What was it even possible to see, after a lifetime growing up among the four-legged?

He'd searched for pictures, of dragon children, teens and tweens. There had been a very few, mostly drawings and paintings: photography had only been invented within the two generations without a dragon citizen of Equestria. He'd looked at those images for hours, and no amount of time had turned them into anything more than pictures.

He shivered.

(Twilight felt that the cold would be easier to deal with as he aged, as the inner fire grew hotter. He didn't know if she was right. She didn't know. She couldn't.)

He passed a rain-spattered notice board and a pony who was carefully pulling down old papers with his teeth, most of which were coming apart in his mouth. Spike was able to read one of them just before it came apart: an expired notice concerning Ponyville's outdoor theater season, the schedule coming down with the last of the plays already performed. He'd missed them all, and wished he hadn't. Theater was fun. Plays had been one of the few good things about school, even if he'd never been any true part of them. There was something about watching everything come together --

-- but the clean-up crew member was just about the only stallion he saw. There didn't seem to be that many ponies on the street: most had taken shelter from the rain, and so there were barely any stares. But still... not being stared at left him in a state of waiting for it, and that somehow felt worse while forcing himself forward through this chill promise rain. Sent out for a book because Twilight couldn't do it herself. He had to do so many things which Twilight couldn't, like cooking and sometimes cleaning and, before they'd come to Ponyville, nearly all of the caring.

Why was the book important? Why did it justify being out in this?

He remembered that he'd wanted to go outside, and nothing in him could have laughed.

Spike forced his head up, checked a street sign and compared it to the map. He seemed to be on course, although he couldn't be sure of it: a paper addition had been tacked to the wooden post, and the lightly-flapping cheap brown sheet intermittently covered most of what came before 'Avenue'. But then the wind died down for a moment, and he was able to confirm his path -- along with getting just enough time to read what had been written on the new arrival.

He didn't know what it meant.

He knew about stable sales, although he'd seldom been to any. In his dimmest memories, the precious time before Twilight had begun to curl up inside herself, he kept faint images of toddling at her side as her field excitedly rummaged through the contents of boxes and tables. Stable sales were what happened when ponies felt they'd acquired too many things and so had to pass on some of the more useless to others, who would then add them to a growing pile of possessions until the point when it triggered another stable sale. Twilight, in those first years, had openly dreamt of coming across a find: a rare volume which its owner didn't know was rare, kicked out to the table or put in a box where it was just a quarter-bit for any single part of its contents, two bits for the lot. She'd heard stories about that kind of discovery and longed for one to be told about her, along with getting to cradle the main subject -- but then the Gifted School had begun to take its toll, and her travels had been cut down to classes, dorms, palace, vacation, and volcano.

This was a sale, but the word "stable" had been replaced by something more suited to wealth. Maybe it was the term ponies used to describe such sales when they had both too many things and a lot of money to spend on the inevitable replacements. And it pretty much had to be indoors, unless somepony had been so forgetful as to not bother checking the weather schedule before planning anything for this day, especially given the hours posted on the sign.

It seemed to be in his general direction, at least according to that bottom-line pointing arrow. He supposed he could stop on the way back, look for that one-in-a-million title from Twilight's most longed-for checklist, but... he had no bits on him, not even under the special extra-large, hollow-domed scales on his hips. At best, he could spot something, ask the sale's host to hold it for a while, and make his way back to the tree as fast as he could, or at least as fast as he could in this cold. Something which was too slow, and it still required having the book's current owner being willing to hold something for him, even when he promised a pony would be coming back...

Maybe he'd stop. If only to warm up a little before the final push back to the tree.

He kept going, and the sale notices accompanied him. One part of that was briefly literal: a notice was whipped off the post by the wind and blew along at his side for half a step. But there were more papers covering up more street names, and more arrows. He was definitely heading towards it. But he had to do Twilight's assigned

ordered

task first, and so he kept moving towards that, on a path which was now starting to head through ponies again. Mostly middle-aged adults, with the majority as mares, and none of them looked at him. But it wasn't from avoidance. Their eyes were focused straight ahead, and the moisture in the rain seemed to have given the irises an odd gleam.

And then he was there, and there.

He blinked away liquid, double-checked the map. This was the address. He was in one of the places where Ponyville began to dip and sway a little, the ground seeming to buckle in random waves before making the final climb and surge towards the dam. In this case, it was a dip, and it started at the front of the tiny house: two stories up, but one very visibly down. The ground crept away from the basement, exposing more and more brick as it continued its slant towards the back. The walls, especially that of the thin upper story, had a slant of their own, sharply diving inward to form a triangle roof, something which looked sharp enough to cut.

Ponies, eyes gleaming and faces intent, were going into that house. Others came out, some with full saddlebags or laden fields, others bearing nothing more than disappointed looks. And standing in front of the house under a mud-stuck giant umbrella which was only slightly swaying in the rain, placed with the accuracy of a pony who had read the schedule and knew how to best plant it for blocking the gusts, was an old stallion. There was a crate in front of him, and a little box with a flip-top lid on top of the crate. Some of the ponies who were leaving without anything glared at him as they exited, and most also took a moment to stare at the little box.

This was the sale. But it was also where he was supposed to be getting the book.

Under the one hoof -- on the one hand, it meant the owner was very probably home. But in the other...

He blinked, hurried forward, heading directly for the front door.

Later, he would decide the old stallion had initially reacted to his movement, and not the actual sapient who'd been trying to move past the crate.

"It's four bits."

Spike stopped. "Huh?"

"Four bits to enter," the stallion said. "If you don't buy anything, there's no refunds --" and that was when he finally looked. "-- you're a dragon."

It was a statement of fact Spike had been hearing on a near-daily basis, and one which always seemed to presume he had no personal knowledge of the actual event. As such, he'd come up with a rather large number of responses, of which Twilight approved of exactly none. But she wasn't there, and so he wearily said, "Yes. There's no cure. Sir, I'm not here to shop. I'm just here to speak with the owner of the house. Is she in?"

The stallion stared down at him for a few seconds, and it was an odd sort of stare. It had begun as one of the usual, more confusion than anything else -- but then it seemed to soften, becoming a little blurry around the edges.

"You're serious," the stallion quietly said.

Why wouldn't he have been serious? "Yes."

Softly, "You really don't know."

"I know she's having some kind of formal stable sale today and maybe she's busy -- are you her spouse? I'm sorry, sir, but really, this is only going to take a minute at most --"

It would be a long time before he realized that the stallion had been attempting to be gentle with him, at least in tone. Nothing ever could have been done for the words.

"-- she's dead."

Spike heard a pony trotting out of the house, moving behind him, and a full saddlebag shoved into his nearly-empty backpack. He didn't move.

"Youngling," the stallion carefully said, "-- you are young, aren't you? I'm sorry, but... she's been dead for a week. The burial was three days ago, because... well, nopony knew she was --" and then, even more carefully, "I'm sorry. Did you know her?" That with true curiosity within, something Spike didn't understand.

"...no," he eventually got out. "I'm from the library, sir. She has -- she had a book, a very overdue one, and my sis -- the librarian asked me to come by and ask if we could have it back. I have..." He shrugged the backpack off, rummaged for and presented the letter. "...this."

The stallion watched as Spike spread the paper out for him, eyes now fixed on the movement of hands. It took some time before he shifted to the actual writing. "Yes, that's the official stamp. I got one a few years ago, when I kept my license study books a little too long." He looked Spike over again, and he seemed to be thinking, rather harder than would have reasonably been expected.

A mare came up behind Spike during the interval, and he knew it was a mare because of the way she poked her head over his shoulder. "Look," she said, "if it's not going in --"

That made the stallion notice her. He looked directly at her, then at Spike, and appeared to come to a conclusion.

"Yes," he said.

"Good," the mare said. "Get out of my way so I can give this old codger his bribe." The snout pulled back, then went into his left shoulder, started to shove --

"-- he's going in," the stallion said, and the pushing stopped, just before Spike could truly start to react to anything more than the wavering weak blue eyes staring down at him. "Youngling, you may head inside and search. I can't promise that it hasn't already been sold: somepony else tagged the lot, and while I'd hope they checked inside the covers for checkout stamps, the tagger has been known to miss such details, which is part of what brings ponies to the sale. So it's possible that somepony else already trotted out with it and if so, please accept my apologies and bring them to the library with you. But if you find it, please take it. Anything else... well, anything else is anything else. But I'll go inside in a few minutes and personally let the bit collector know to let you out with it -- and only it. But if you find another item and take a fancy to it, I'll expect you back at this crate."

He didn't seem to know what to say, and the too-long search of his vocabulary only came up with "Thank you."

"You're quite welcome," the stallion quietly told him. "Go in now. You must be cold."

Spike slowly stepped away from the crate, headed for the door. Behind him, the frustrated mare was getting ready to take it out on somepony. "For free?" she half-screeched. "Ponies have to mouth over four bits, but it gets to go in for free?"

"He has business," the stallion softly replied. "Official business."

"But -- but -- free...!"

And doing his best not to listen any more, failing with every step, Spike walked into the estate sale.

The first thing he heard was a Prance accent: something rare for Equestria, as most of that other nation's denizens seemed to feel traveling within their neighbor's lands was lowering themselves to walk among the peasants while suffering completely unfair persecution when the fully natural urge to spit on their lessers finally took over. It was a stallion talking in another room: out of sight, but sadly not blocked from hearing. He was complaining about a price. Something was not a quarter-bit. It was eight bits, when other things were a quarter-bit, and that meant everything had to be a quarter-bit, for did the stupidity inherent to Equestria not claim belief in equality? Then that meant all prices should be equal to the amount he designated. A besieged, increasingly frustrated mare was trying to explain that the piece was molt glass, not normal at all, prized, and all the stallion cared about was that somepony would not sell it to him for a quarter-bit. He cared so much that he seemed to be refusing to relinquish it to the field of another who seemed willing to pay at least six, for justice had to be done, and justice would be allowing him to purchase.

There was a box near the doorway. There seemed to be a lot of cloth in it, and most of that featured tiny, intricately-interlocked loops.

He looked around. The walls were wooden, but vertical wood: planks laid from top to bottom, an odd placement for a pony home, a darker brown than most would have ever dealt with. He had entered near the narrow ramp to the second floor, and it was a ramp he didn't like the looks of, for it seemed as if somepony had been going through some rather poor design standards when they'd built the little house. A very few ponies favored stairs, and Twilight had said there were times when even buildings went through fashion trends, with more than a few structures resulting from revivals and fads -- but for the most part, ponies who lived in multi-level buildings favored ramps. But this structure had very little back-to-front (and not much side-to-side either), which made this ramp climb at what seemed to be a treacherous slant. He had his walking claws and when he planted his feet properly (something Twilight hated seeing him do indoors), he could gouge miniature safety notches into the wood. Ponies had hooves, and anypony using hooves on that ramp without completely focusing on their steps...

He had to look for the book. Find a book in a house where nopony lived any more, where the owner had been dead for a week, but the burial had only been three days ago because nopony had known she was --

-- it didn't seem to be very warm in the house, and the Prance accent was making it colder by the word. He wanted to get away from it, and so he carefully made his way up the ramp, one hand on the wall for extra support.

About halfway up, the angle seemed to change somewhat: another thing any resident would have had to watch out for. He stopped, adjusted, and it gave him a chance to glance down at the living room. The furniture seemed old, and it wasn't the age of dignity or history. It was the antiquity that came when dust was allowed to collect, when cleaning became too much work, when... you just didn't care any more. It was a patina which had almost appeared in Twilight's dorm room before she'd started to decide that cleanliness meant something, and then she'd become overfocused on that for a while, insisted that he take it just as seriously. It had faded after a while, at least partially -- but never gone away.

There were cabinets, all open-fronted, and things on the shelves. Gaps between things, with the wood a different color in the empty spaces. Everything which was still present had a brightly-hued circle of paper on it, and that paper bore a number. Something about it bothered him, and he wondered if it was the color. It seemed far too bright.

Slowly, he went the rest of the way up.

A tiny hallway off a sharp bend to the right. Three doors. Where would a book be? The living room was possible, but -- not yet. Maybe the Prance stallion would have left by the time he got back down. A bathroom, to read while doing other things, or a bedroom, to read before sleep

final sleep

He froze.

"...excuse me?" He looked up, saw an older mare. "I... need the ramp."

He moved out of the way, found himself glancing back at her as she started to make her way down. "...be careful?" he asked, and heard the fear in his own words. "Please?"

It made her look at him. It seemed to make her see him.

"I will," she eventually assured him. "I know... how tricky this is. It's a wonder she kept living here, at her age..."

He didn't know where the question came from. "Did you know her?"

She blinked.

Several seconds later, "No." And down she went, slowly, carefully.

He made his way down the hall. It was far too narrow, worse than the ramp had been, and when he looked into the first of the rooms, he saw the reason why. That triangle of a roof had an apex sharp enough to cut, and the walls were capable of doing the same. This one had cut into the interior, turning what had been intended as a bedroom into something so much smaller. Just enough space for a bed, a couple of cabinets, a nightstand, and then -- there was the wall. Slanting inward. Almost seeming to fall inward. It felt as if there was a frozen collapse in the room, and it was made all the worse by the pictures.

The resident had used that slanting wall. She had put hooks into it, and then she had hung little paintings off each one. Flowers, mostly, and the corner of every one bore a bright circle of paper. But those paintings dangled from the hooks, for they could not rest against the wall. Dangled into the air, waiting to fall.

He had to make himself look away, towards the bed and its musty sheets. Slowly, he examined the nightstand, for there were books there. But none of them was the tome he was after: they were all cheap paperbacks, spines deeply creased. The covers all featured muscular stallions and shapely mares, the latter of which was always wearing a dress which had a rip over the mark. They were also dusty and, according to the attached circle, a tenth-bit each.

The bathroom was found next. It featured a towel rack of brass, one which had been priced at twenty bits, perhaps because of the sailing ship. He looked the billowing curves of metal which were worked above the highest of fabric hangings, and kept looking.

Twilight's birth home wasn't too far from the west coast, and so the potential to go and see ships had always been there -- but she hadn't, so he hadn't, and when she'd gone to sleep after a too-long school day, when she'd cast too much and drained herself into exhaustion, after he'd had to get the nurse again, sometimes after dragging her fallen form to a place where he could find help... he would sit by her bedside, wait for her to wake up, and... most of what Twilight read wasn't fun, not for him. She wanted facts and formulas. He wanted stories, especially after having spotted the first of the plays. The Gifted School's library accommodated, and it was there that he'd found out about sailing. Very few ponies went out on the water: they weren't talented swimmers, and the fear of going overboard kept most on (or over) land. But those who did were often considered daring, bold enough to tell stories about, and so he'd often tried to wait through those long nights of waiting for Twilight to wake up by sending an imaginary self out to follow Captain Bound Sterling, secretly fixing the masts and adjusting mainsails while the character went about his centuries-past adventure, so that the old sailor would have that much less to worry about when saving the world.

She liked sailing.

Ponyville wasn't anywhere near a coast. And she'd liked sailing.

The right book wasn't in here either. Just towels and toiletries and -- bottles. Many of them had labels which said that they shouldn't still be there, and they were. And the wall, the wall was so close and --

-- one room left, and he temporarily gave up on the book at the moment he got a look. It didn't keep him from entering.

There were rolls of thread, huge ones, half the size of his body. Wool, from the look of it: many sheep made a side living by allowing themselves to be sheared every so often and collecting bits for the results. What seemed to be a hundred colors were arranged around the room, stacked on top of each other, around each other, and all in a position where they could be brought to the loom. More spools were bound to that complex structure -- but there was no work in progress. No lines stretched across the empty weave. There was just waiting ends, waiting spools, bits of cut thread trampled into a worn-down, heavily-stained carpet -- well, it was stained in the places where the wool wasn't, just behind the oddly-configured bench which might have been designed to let a pony try and work from an odd position for long periods, buying precious hours of operating the treadle before the cramps started to come in. There was no dust on that bench, at least. But there was a stain on the carpet behind it, a rather large one, and right next to that, under the dusty window...

He smiled. He felt himself smile, and welcomed it.

A toy dog, woven from yarn: circular body, black head, small floppy ears. It seemed to be sitting up, begging playfully.

His approach was almost shy. He was thinking about fillies and colts, the ones who didn't look at him the way the adults did, because it seemed as if it took extra years before somepony truly learned how to stare. About the ones who talked to him sometimes, tried to figure out how the presence of someone with hands might change the rules of the game they were so desperate to win. He was thinking about gifts, and knowing he could ask the stallion out front to wait for his return, he shyly stepped forward to ask the toy dog if it wanted to come back to the tree with him, just for a little while, until he could truly find it a new owner.

He reached down to pick it up, and a claw snagged into one of the intricate loops near the neck. Spike pulled his hand back, trying to free it.

And then he was sitting on the carpet, within the stained area, staring at the reflection of dusty light off liquor bottle glass.

His eyes involuntarily moved to the yarn head, still hanging from one claw. Back to the bottle which had been concealed inside the toy.

He felt his mouth open. Felt something very close to a scream starting to rise --

-- his hand whipped to the side, and the dog's head flew into the loom. He scooted backwards, moving without ever getting up, kicked the door shut, and sat in the empty, too-narrow hallway, breathing far too fast. And he didn't know why.

It hadn't been the alcohol, or at least he didn't think that had been it. Spike drank alcohol whenever he felt like it, strictly for the flavor. Something about his body... Twilight believed that the inner fire literally burnt off that which made ponies drunk long before it could ever reach his brain, and so he could enjoy anything just for its taste, unable to become drunk off anything which wasn't the kind of gem which she refused to let him consume until he was older. But she still hated to let him drink, especially in public: there had been one time when a rather aggressive stallion had refused to believe Spike could outdrink him, declared contest, and... well, the stallion had woken up. Eventually.

It was... something about the bottle having been within the dog. A toy containing that which was not.

Something about the carpet...

...there was no book up here, and so Spike went down the ramp. He had to wait until a stallion finished coming up.

The Prance accent was still there, and it had gotten louder. It had also started to demand something in the way of tenth-bits. It didn't exactly encourage an audience, but while there was a basement to search, Spike didn't see any ramp going down. It meant he had to search the living room -- but that search was a short one: there were only two things to read, both catalogs, and each had been printed long before he'd been hatched. It left him with his attention drawn to the eggs.

They were most of what was left in the open cabinets. They were made of thick glass, too painted to see through, each of which had metal trim running around the edges, leading into projecting rods of silver. A cradle, used for when a pony had to rear back and lift something which had been balanced across their forelegs. It was a delicate operation, as fragile as the item being cradled.

The ends facing him were -- open.

Ponies without horns and coronas and fields had a hard time of it. Spike just walked forward, picked the egg up and, on pure instinct, held the open end up to his right eye.

The moment is frozen, and so are the waves. The ship rears up, trying to crest the approaching force before the foam can crash into it, wash across the deck and sweep cargo and equipment and ponies into the sea. The ocean is fighting back, trying to have its way with the intruders, but the angle of the hull indicates an expert hoof upon the till, and it's clear that the vessel's captain has already won. There will be a splash, and a drenching, and coats itchy from the salt. But there will also be laughter long into the night, defiance at what will be claimed to be a pitiful effort on the ocean's part, and that laughter will be ringing forth to drive away the fear of the day when the sea truly tries again...

He set it down.

She loved sailing.

And couldn't pick another one up.

He risked a glance into the kitchen, got his first look at the Prance stallion's coat: mottled grey. There was no true dining room: just a tiny low table, which the argument was being conducted across. Behind that seemed to be a pantry, almost empty, with dust across so much of the shelves. No book.

Slowly, he started to make his way outside, just as the older stallion began to come in.

The pony looked at him. "No luck, youngling?"

"I..." For some unknown reason, it took a few seconds to find more words. "...didn't find anything upstairs or down here, and I couldn't find a way into the basement, so..."

"It's a strange little configuration," the stallion told him. "If you want to go into the basement, you have to go outside and step around to the back. Just go down and when the stone is completely exposed, turn the corner and you'll find a door." He hesitated. "There's... a lot down there. I doubt there's any books, but if you want to check -- just be careful. There's two ponies there, and... be careful, youngling. Just be aware that they've claimed all the soft goods, and I doubt they'll react well if they see you poking that."

He didn't know what 'soft goods' meant, and said so.

"All the cloth," the stallion partially clarified. "You'll see. Just keep your distance. I doubt you'll like them any more than I did."

It was getting colder outside, with the wind moving the rain all the faster: the schedule being kept despite Rainbow's best efforts. He'd never really felt as if he was getting any warmer while he was inside the house, and the walk down to the basement door left him feeling a chill which the air hadn't carried. The door was soon spotted, and it took a little shove to get it open.

Two angry mares, just a few years older than Twilight, glared at the sound of intrusion. Then they realized what he was, and glared all the harder.

"It's ours," said the smaller. "All of it is ours. We already told the codger outside. So you can just get --"

"-- book."

They were staring harder now, for he'd barely whispered the word.

"What?" demanded the larger. "What did you say?"

"I'm from the library," Spike forced, "and I'm looking for an overdue book. He said you just took the cloth."

The smaller one sneered. "Well, maybe we should just take the rest of it while we're --"

The larger raised a forehoof, silencing the other. "Just a book," she said, watching the water running off his scales. Spike nodded. "Fine. Just stay away from our stuff."

He forced another nod, started to move into the half-light, and wound up going past the mares as the smaller hissed "Why did you have to do that? We're not done searching! If it claims anything more than one lousy --!"

"You saw it," the larger said And then, probably believing he couldn't hear them, so many ponies seemed to believe he could barely hear at all, "Do you want to get it mad? I don't even want to get it near dust. It gets angry, or it starts sneezing, and all our goods..."

They were standing among dozens of musty boxes. Some of them were open, and every last one held intricate loops of yarn. Scarves, sweaters, legwarmers...

"Fine," the smaller muttered. "Let's just hope it gets out of here quickly. Before it breathes or something."

He tried to ignore them. He could not, even as he searched the nearly-empty shelves. There were no books in sight, a few boxes left, perhaps abandoned because they were too small to hold such quantities of weave. Still large enough to hold a book, though, and he started opening them. Spare parts for the loom greeted him from the first. The second held a broken egg, and he quickly looked away. The third...

...photography was new, and so the process was still evolving with some speed. Spike had never really studied it, or rather, Twilight hadn't and so he hadn't had to record any of the notes. So he didn't know how old the picture would have had to be in order to have all its hues rendered in tan, beige, and sepia. Everything in the picture was composed of those shades. The house. The -- other, tiny house in front of it. The street. The mare. The stallion.

It didn't seem to be a Ponyville house. It didn't even look Equestrian: the angles were all wrong, the outer decorations somehow seeming foreign. The ponies in front of it could have been young, could have been old: the picture wasn't all that sharp. They were fully dressed in a kind of clothing which he'd never seen before, their hooves were muddy because it had been raining recently, the front door of the larger house was open, and the mare... the mare had been caught laughing.

Behind him, the buyers were still talking.

"So what's the plan?"

"We haul it out to a market. Not here. Canterlot first. We can come back if we've got any remainders we can't get rid of. But for now... we'll just arrange the stuff across the space. We don't even need to take it out of the boxes: some ponies like to dig. Gives them the thrill of the hunt. You'll see that, when you've been on the job a little longer."

"How were you thinking of pricing it?"

Thoughtfully, "In this kind of bulk? Until we get a look at the quality in better light... probably a couple of bits each. No more than five unless it's deluxe, so it'll sell faster. Make the capital ponies think they're ripping us off, especially when they don't know how much we paid for bulk. If they think they're taking us, they'll buy all day."

The next words were surprised. "Seriously?"

"Yeah." The larger mare snickered. "They love to think they're hurting you. Trust me. They just lick that horse apple smear up." A deep breath, and then, with more emphasis, "They lick it right up."

And then he was outside, doubled over, hands on his knees, vomiting into mud and dead grass.

The mud steamed where it had been hit. There was a sudden stench of acid, and brown blades curled up into black. Spike dropped further, hands and knees now in the dirt, threw up again. Again, until there was nothing left in his stomach to bring up, and then one more time because his body didn't seem to believe that.

The rain ran down his crests, dripped in small rivers between his scales, washed across his eyes and brought chill everywhere it touched, pinned him to the ground and refused to let him move.

strike the set

Those words echoed inside him. He didn't know where they had come from. He didn't understand why they wouldn't leave.

He didn't know how much time passed before he got up again. The mud was wiped away before he forced himself up the rise, and finally went back into the house.

The Prance stallion was still arguing, and now the pony who'd let him in was watching, seeming increasingly frustrated. But he still made time to look at Spike when he heard the arrival.

Spike saw the question in his eyes. A slow head shake got rid of some water.

"I'm sorry," the stallion said. "Please pass that on to the librarian."

He managed a nod.

The Prance stallion used the moment to shout. "Just let me pay my price! Who else is interested? Nopony, for I will not let anypony be! I am protecting the idiots, keeping them from spending on things which should only be a quarter-bit, tenth-bit each, and less for bulk! All used, all picked up and put down and... Equestrians, not knowing how to take care of things, ruining them, a tenth-bit you should be paying me for --"

The stallion never heard the claws moving across the floor, and so wasn't ready in any way when the claw poked him, right in the mark which showed the last remnants of a shredded price tag. He spun, ready to scream about something new -- and saw the source of his startlement.

He froze, which further meant he'd stopped talking.

"When it happens to you," Spike softly said, "it'll be a tenth-bit for your whole life, every last piece of it put together. And there won't be anypony who wants to pay."

The silence didn't last long, and it didn't last long enough for Spike to fully exit. He was nearly at the door when he heard "DRAGON? Idiot Equestrians are using dragons to try and get their stupid --"

Spike turned his head, just for a second. Quiet abruptly returned.

He left the house. Left the street. (It would take moons before he could make himself walk down the latter, and nothing ever made him enter the former.) He walked through the rain, past ponies with eyes gleaming from the moisture and something more, back through wind and a cold which had nearly reached the last of his inner fire until he finally reached the tree, a few minutes after the library had closed for the day. It took several knocks before Twilight let him in.

"There you are! I was getting -- oh, did you find the book? Your backpack doesn't look that heavy -- what's that sticking out of the corner? Did you find something? But I really don't see the weight of a book, so I guess she wasn't -- wait, that's the letter, I can see the letter past the other corner and you didn't even deliver the..." Confused now, "Spike, was she home, and that's why you still have the letter? But she told you she..." A hard swallow. "...lost the book, and that's why you don't..."

The words flowed over him like the last of the rain, and he gave them no more regard than for the chill they brought him. He simply forced himself forward, walking past her towards the steadier ramp which led to his basket, never truly seeing her expression. And as she watched in silent shock, Spike curled up under every blanket he could find, belatedly removing the backpack only after he'd piled them all onto his body -- only then seeing what was sticking out of the corner.

He'd taken the picture. Somehow, in all that, he'd taken the photo with him, and never noticed.

It's not like it had a piece of paper on it. There wasn't any price. Nopony cared about it. Nopony cared about...

It's mine.

He might have heard words then, or at least something which wanted to be words. But he was exhausted in so many ways, had already surrendered, and so as his eyes closed, the only thing he truly heard was his own inner realization, a concept which had waited until the moment before he slipped into the nightscape to arise, so that he would carry it into his dreams.

The stain on the carpet near the loom had been in the shape of a pony body.

He tried to eat on the next morning, with rain ended and an oddly-grey Sun returned. Nothing really wanted to go down, and even the scents from making Twilight's breakfast made him want to vomit again.

She was looking at him from across their little table, and her face showed an expression he'd rarely seen in those bad years. Something he still had a hard time believing.

"Are you okay?" she carefully asked, as if unsure of how much she could put into the words. "You didn't sleep well. Your blankets were -- well, I guess you didn't really mean to leave them all over the floor like that, and --" more quickly "-- it's okay, you don't have to pick them up right now. Or until you're ready, really. But you don't go to bed that early, and even though you got up before me, I think you slept a really long time... Spike, are you sick?"

He shook his head.

"You're sure?" That expression was stronger now. "I mean, we still don't... um... know about the things you could get. Just because you don't feel sick in a familiar way doesn't mean you aren't."

"I'm not sick," he said, because he wasn't. Not in that way. "Okay?"

The last word had felt oddly -- defiant.

"Oh." A long pause. "And --" very awkwardly now "-- I just want to get this out of the way, so I don't have to think about it for the rest of the day, you never said anything about the book or..."

"It's gone," he quietly said. "You're not getting it back."

It triggered a tiny waft of a sigh. "So she lost it."

"No."

That set off a blink. "Stolen? I'll forgive the late fees if it was stolen."

The words weren't good enough. He wondered if anything was. "She's dead, Twilight." He kept going through the sudden inhale, the little gasp. "She died a week ago, and they buried her a few days ago, and they sold all her stuff yesterday. I guess somepony just put a price on the book, and somepony else paid it before I got there. The pony managing the sale let me go inside to look, and... it wasn't there. Just... order a replacement copy, okay? It's not coming back. It's never coming..."

His arms moved forward, and he pushed himself away from the table.

"Spike?" The expression would have been as strong as he'd ever seen it now, if he'd just allowed himself to see at all. "Are you sure you're -- are you really o --"

"-- do you need me for anything this morning?"

Hesitation. A very visible, extremely desperate search to come up with a workable lie, which was ultimately futile. "No -- not unless you want to talk about --"

"-- I'm going out."

"...where?"

"Rarity's." It was the truth, or at least the first part of it.

"...oh." There was a little relief there, just enough to provide contrast against all the rest -- and then it vanished. "Okay. As long as I know where you'll be. When do you think you'll be --"

But he'd already been moving, and the door closed on her words.

Rarity peered closely at the picture, squinting a little. "It's a shame about the lack of sharpness in the image. With this scant level of detail, it looks rather like a costume from a play..." she mused. A little more huffily, "And the colors have been completely ruined, of course. Wherever did you get this, Spike?"

Eyelashes batted at him. He missed it.

strike the set

"Spike?" That same emotion, which he was more willing to see on her. "You didn't answer me -- and honestly, dear, you look somewhat unwell. Are you feeling quite all right? Today is little improvement over yesterday, and forgive me for my impudence, but during that little unexpected weather event which blew in from the wild zone a few weeks ago, I noticed that you don't seem to do all that well with cold. Should you need a place to start a fire, or a -- oh, what is that term? -- oh, right, of course, silly me -- jacket -- actually..." She winced a little. "No, this is not the time to hold back in the name of surprise. I had been designing a jacket for you, as a gift for Hearth's Warming. It's not quite ready yet, but if you can stay for a few hours and allow me to try out some fittings -- of course, that would be a few hours only if business remains this regrettably slow..."

"I'm not sick," he insisted, followed by a more careful and polite "I just want to know where it's from. How old it is. What the colors were. The dress and the pony -- ponies. I thought maybe... once you saw the dress, you'd know the fashion, where it came from, what kind of ponies were wearing it..."

"Oh!" Her horn ignited, and the fashionable glasses settled themselves onto her snout. "Hmmm... yes... let me think... I will need some time with my catalogs, along with a few of my own history texts. And I admit, the true colors will be a challenge, but I should be able to work backwards from the finer gradations -- which will still take some effort. Whatever did you need this for?"

He couldn't explain it to her. He hadn't even found a way of explaining it to himself.

"Stuff."

That blue gaze focused on him over the top of the lenses. "'Stuff'," she quoted.

"Stuff," he repeated.

The quiet regard went on for a while.

"Find a place to get comfortable, Spike. This will take some time --" spotted the movement "-- no, do not sit in the back. Stay out front with me."

"But if somepony comes in --"

Firmly, "-- then they will be sharing the Boutique with a gentledragon, unless they are of such rough quality that they feel unworthy of the occasion. Now: let me begin. I already have a rough idea of where to start my search, based in the age of this photograph. They were only like this at the beginning, Spike, the absolute beginning, before either of us was born -- and so unless this was taken at a rather crude tourist trap which sends ponies back in fashion time while demanding a modern cost for inferior results, the first question I may be able to answer is that of when..."

It took four hours, and too little of that was profitably interrupted. But in the end, she showed him the sketch, along with the notes she'd elaborately calligraphied beneath it. For Rarity could draw -- well, she could draw ponies and then place clothing upon them: he had no idea if she was capable of anything else. However, when it came to that limited subject...

"And there we are," she told him. "I matched the age of the picture to that of the dress rather precisely. It is difficult to make out their precise ages, Spike, but with the time which has passed since then, it would place them as seniors at the very least. And I confess that tracking the dress itself was more of a project than I had anticipated, for one does not often consider the fashion choices of those ponies who live outside Equestria. But our three species have spread to more places than our homeland, and some consider the other nations to be their place of greatest love. You are looking at Mazein, Spike, where the very first cameras were made and minotaurs have long-hosted a pony minority among their citizenry. Thus what seems to us as oddly solid construction, along with what we would think of as a rather fine dollhouse in front of the residence." A brief frown. "Something to do with the dominant minotaur faith, I think. Odd to see it with a pony residence, but perhaps they were simply standing -- well, at any rate, there you go. Source, year, season, a rough idea of the overall location. And their colors, of course." More softly, "Her colors -- yes, her colors, hers and no other are what you truly cared to learn. You can stop staring now."

He managed it, for just long enough. "How --"

A sigh. "Oh, Spike... your verbal battle initially focused on dress and singular, then tried to retreat to the plural. The shift in position was rather noticeable, and so you lost the war. Who is she?"

He closed his eyes. "I don't know."

The slow breath was rather audible. "I might have expected that, I suppose. Did you simply find the picture somewhere, become fascinated with the mare within, and --"

"-- do you know her?"

This breath was just as audibly confused, and it got his eyes open in time to see the facial match. "I have never been to Mazein, Spike, so unless --"

"-- she lived in Ponyville. You saw her face, her colors... you know she would have been a senior..." More urgently, "Do you know her, Rarity? Was she ever in the Boutique? Did you see her around town?" And now even to his own hearing, it was starting to become desperation. "In a shop, at a restaurant, in the street -- anywhere -- anything..."

Pony expressions were natural to him and when they came from her, naturally believed. She wanted to help him.

Softly, "No."

She could not.

"Can I take this?" He pointed to the sketch.

Openly worried, "Of course, Spike. But please, if there is anything else I can do -- if you just wish to talk about this..."

He was already folding the sketch. Carefully. After all, she'd drawn it.

"I've gotta go," he said, and left.

He knew what she'd looked like, a long time ago. And he'd already known where she lived. That was a matter of record. And if you wanted records...

These glasses didn't seem to be as fashionable, and the older earth pony who stared at him through them wasn't somepony he was quite as comfortable speaking with. In fact, he'd never spoken to her at all, not when he was by himself.

"I'll respect the effort it took to get into my office," the mayor told him. "Especially since you asked your way in through two layers of rather surprised assistants. But I'm guessing this isn't Bearer business, because you never invoked your sibling's name while you were trying to not quite explain your way past the door. So I'll ask you directly: tell me what you need, and why."

He wondered if the first part would be enough. "There was a pony who lived at 157 Sturgia Way. I need to know her name."

"You used the past tense," the mayor noted as she began to trot out from behind her desk. "When did she leave?"

"She... died." He'd thought the mayor would have known that. "Last week."

She was looking at him. Looking down, although that was usually just a natural consequence of the difference between his height and everypony who wasn't a filly or colt. But in this case, it seemed to be giving extra weight to her scrutiny.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Spike."

He nodded what degree of thanks he could give, and wondered why she hadn't known about the death of a Ponyville resident. Were there truly so many residents in the settled zone for a mare's death to go --

Four days before anypony found her.

"Not a friend," the mayor steadily said, "or you would have known her name. Nopony any of the Bearers know."

Maybe: he hadn't asked all of them. After he finished here, he could --

"-- so. Why?"

'They lick it right up.'

He just barely managed to banish the words from inner hearing, and knew they would try to come back at the first moment of distraction. But they were the only words he seemed to have, and they were good for nothing at all.

"I -- just need to know. Please?"

The older mare sighed.

"Public records," she said, "are just that. And I should make you fill out a wealth of forms explaining why you need to access this one, but... you are not a Bearer, and not everything you do will be related to them, the Elements, or anything else. However... I can see your face, Spike. I'll admit, I can't quite work out what you're feeling right now, not from your expression. That'll take some time. But your voice -- sometimes it feels strange, how your voice can be so pony..."

She trailed off, looked at him in the greyish light.

"You should fill out a wealth of forms," the mayor said. "But you aren't going to."

His shoulders sagged, and he began to turn away.

"I, however," the mayor added, "can just trot to the proper room. Wait here, please."

The first thing he saw on her face was the apology.

Her snout dipped in towards her desk, laid the single piece of paper down.

"I don't have a name," the mayor softly regretted.

Spike glanced at the paper, failed to register any of the words. Back to the mare. "...how?" It started out as soft. "She lived in Ponyville! She must have filled out forms, right? Taxes, aren't there always taxes and stuff?" And got a little louder. "Whatever her business was, she must have paid taxes, she had to send things to Town Hall or Canterlot --" and louder still "-- maybe if I went to Canterlot --!"

She raised an interrupting forehoof, even as her eyes briefly closed.

"One only pays taxes," the mayor quietly offered, "if one works. Or if a pony's income is above a certain level. Normally, everypony is supposed to file: even when they don't make enough to pay tax, they must complete a form saying so. But some neglect to do so. Especially the elderly -- yes, Spike, I asked around the building: one of my employees was at the estate sale. But I found none who were at the funeral. No sign that there even was a funeral. None who knew her name."

"But her home!" he protested. "Property tax...!" A term he only knew because Fluttershy had been having a waking nightmare concerning her upcoming bill during her last library visit.

"She rented," was the steady reply. "And that is what I have for you, Spike. The name of the property's true owner. The estate sale was to clear out her possessions before the house could be rented to another. We don't see them often -- only when somepony has nopony to will their things to or, on even rarer occasion, when the children..." A long pause and then, sadly, "...can't be bothered. She never paid the town anything. She missed at least one census form, because it's so easy to neglect those as well. She never registered to vote. But she had a landlord, and it's rather difficult to rent a home without the other pony knowing your name. Go to him, Spike. Ask him who she was. Because I don't know. There was an elderly mare who died a few days ago in my settled zone, and... I don't know what her name was. She lived under my care, and I never saw her, or knocked on her door before an election to discuss issues, welcomed her to a festival, or..."

She wasn't looking at him now. She wasn't looking at much of anything.

"When you find out," the mayor said, "come back. Tell me her name. I need to give one to the conjured voice I'll be cursing myself by."

"LATE!" the stallion screamed from a hoofwidth away. "ALWAYS LATE!"

"But..."

"LATE WITH THE RENT! SHE SAID SHE HAD TO WAIT FOR HER VOUCHERS, OVER AND OVER! SHE SAID THEY HAD TO BE MAILED FROM -- WHY WOULD ANYPONY GET MAIL FROM THERE? SHE BEGGED ME TO CHANGE THE PAYMENT DATE, BUT EVERYPONY ELSE PAYS ON THE SAME DAY AND SHE WAS ALWAYS LATE! WORST TENANT! YOU WANT TO KNOW HER NAME, DRAGON?"

The glob of spit slowly slid down his scales.

"LET THAT BE HER NAME!"

The door slammed in his face.

Spike stared at it, listened to the angry hooves pounding their way deep into the elaborate home. Looked at the wood, and felt his nostrils beginning to flare in a certain way.

One breath. One breath and the stallion would want to remember who she'd been. He'd probably want to do anything Spike said if it just prevented the next breath...

So he took that breath. And then he took another, and another, until his heartbeat slowed and the inner fire settled back into its proper place as the heat stopped rising from his scales.

Spike had learned control, first from the Princess and then over and over again in the Gifted School, as so many things kept trying to test it. But it wasn't all he'd learned. In the early days, the dimmest of memories, he'd been Twilight's little brother. But after that, her unpaid assistant. Something which could seem all too close to slave labor -- but there were some things you couldn't beat it for when it came to acquiring a select group of skills. He had a much stronger understanding of unicorn magic than the vast majority of unicorns, and might have been able to outperform a few Gifted School students on exams right up until the moment they all hit the practical: you couldn't record and help to review years of Twilight's notes and not register something. His grasp of workings, their operations, distortions, and potential construct... all excellent. And he had learned something else.

Vouchers.

He knew how to research. And now he knew where to go next.

They'd told him to wait at the back of the red brick building, until she returned. And based on the time which had passed since, they had then blatantly lied to him about just when she was coming back, followed by not caring about it.

He'd been hungry for hours. It was getting worse by the minute now. And he was still afraid to eat.

At one point, when the nature of the lie had started to settle in, he'd risked leaving for a little while, for Sugarcube Corner was close, the idea was fresh, and he'd been feeling rather stupid for not having thought of it earlier. (It was probably the hunger's fault.) Because the bakery was open, and Pinkie would be behind the counter. A pony who occasionally seemed to be aware of everypony in the settled zone, at least for two details: their birthdate -- and their name.

He'd gone inside, spotted her quickly, waited until she'd finished with her customer, given her just a little information plus the address and a glimpse of the sketch to refresh that all-encompassing memory, then waited through the single second it should have taken to learn.

What he'd gotten was a sad "I never talked to her."

Even with only having known her for a few moons, he realized that was wrong. "How could you never talk to her? You talk to everypony, at least once a year!"

"Because some ponies..." The curls had dipped. "...don't celebrate, Spike. At all. Some ponies just want to be left alone on their birthdays. I know when somepony's birthday is being ignored by everypony else, I almost always know -- but I also know when somepony just wants it to be another day. When the worst thing you can do is remind somepony that it's their birthday. It -- took a long time to learn that, and I -- I kind of hurt a few ponies before I really figured it out. So if she didn't want to celebrate, Spike, really and truly and really-really didn't want that, and she was living here before I came in, and she didn't shop at the bakery... then I never met her. I don't know everypony. Just the ones who... want to be known. Even a little. I'm sorry, Spike, and -- I'm sorry."

And he'd gone back to sit on the brick stoop again, now wondering if he'd missed his window.

The Sun was starting to dip now: there wasn't a very long wait for that in the shorter autumn days. He was wasting his time. He should have been on his way to the -- funeral home? Hospital? There seemed to be a choice of destinations. Which was closer? He hadn't brought a map --

-- the sound of wings overhead. He automatically looked up, fully prepared for it to be the wrong pony again. It was, and he watched the surprised-looking stallion (who probably hadn't been expecting a dragon on the stoop) trot past him and into the building.

All right. Hospital or funeral home. The funeral home should come first, because hospitals never closed. Now... where was a funeral home? How many were there? Was there any kind of funeral custom which a pony from Mazein would have needed to have --

-- more wings. Another glance.

The grey pegasus touched down next to him, gave him a brief glance of surprise, and began to trot by.

"Wait!"

She stopped, glanced back over her right shoulder, shook her head to clear the golden mane from both eyes. The left one was regarding him with open curiosity. The right one was... doing something else entirely.

He found it strangely hard to look at, and his gaze darted to the mark. It took a few seconds to ransack his memory while trying to recall what that one meant, another for realizing he had no idea, and one last moment for realizing she'd figured out he couldn't look at her.

"I'm sorry," he said, and wondered if there was any way the words could carry the sheer amount of pain.

"Are you," she neutrally replied. "Are you really." And began to trot again.

All he could do was speak to the golden tail. "I -- know what it's like when ponies look at you. And then when they won't."

She stopped moving. Completely stopped, with not even a single rustle of feathers left. Her ribs shifted: in, out, in.

"I suppose you do," she said to the building's back door. Her voice was... odd. There was something which might have once been playfulness about it, had the tones not been bearing so much weight. For some reason, even though they didn't sound anything alike, it made him think of Twilight --

-- she turned. She looked at him. And when he saw her eyes again, he understood. In some ways, Spike didn't know a lot about ponies, even after growing up among them: the time in the Gifted School had cost both siblings. But he'd been with Twilight since the first moment of his life.

He knew the sound of a pony who'd told herself to grow up too fast and in doing so, missed far too much.

"I accept your apology," she told him. "Maybe just yours." And once again, she began to turn, started to head for the interior of the post office.

"Wait?" She stopped again, and her tail moved in a single annoyed lash. "I was waiting for you. They said you had that route, and if you delivered her mail, then you would have... please..."

She took a deep breath.

"Her."

Right: it wasn't as if he'd narrowed it down. "She lived at --"

"-- 157 Sturgia Way."

He stared at her.

"I've been waiting for days," the mare quietly told him. "For anypony to ask. Anything."

She trotted over, sat down next to him on the brick.

"Why do you want to know?" she asked. "I know where you live. You're nowhere near being her neighbor, not that any of them talked to her. Not that she talked to any of them, either, but... why?"

"I wound up at the estate sale," Spike made himself reply. "By accident."

"How," the mare immediately questioned, "is it possible to wind up at an estate sale by accident?"

Spike looked up at her. One eye (a rather pretty one) looked down at him.

He knew nothing about her. She knew virtually nothing about him. And somehow, it made her safe.

He told her everything.

Sun was just about completely lowered now.

"αόρατος," the mare said, and almost smiled at his reaction. "Sorry -- it's Minotaurus. For Equestrian, 'Aoratoss' would be closer, but with a hard emphasis on the first O. That was her name, Spike."

He took a slow breath. It didn't warm him.

"What was she like?"

"She was alone," the mare said, staring up at the darkening sky. "She wanted to be alone. Until she didn't. And then..." Her inhale was a match for his: for a moment, he wondered if she could feel her own inner fire. "How old are you?"

He blinked: it had come from nowhere. But then he told her.

"Seriously?" Half-groan, half-sigh. "Sun and Moon, I've got a kid who's..." Stopped herself, glanced down at him. "I haven't told her anything about what happened. I don't want to. And you -- you want to know everything: I can hear that. It's going to haunt you until you find out, isn't it? You already told me I wasn't your first stop and if I put you off, I won't be your last. But you're young, you're just a kid, and there are things I don't want to send you into the nightscape with --"

"-- I already had dreams. Last night."

Quietly, "How bad?"

"I'm here." They were the only words he had.

Her eyes closed, opened.

"I was a kid when she got here," the mare said. "Around your age. I didn't know her, because nopony did. And I live in her part of town, two streets away. When I got the route, when I met her... I tried to remember if I'd ever seen her before. Even going back and forth with her shopping. But I couldn't remember. Because she didn't talk to anypony. She stayed in her house, a house nopony could be happy with, and she got her things delivered. If you'd gone to Barnyard Bargains, Mr. Rich would have told you he used to send over a package once a week based on an old written order: basic staples. She always ordered the same things -- plus a whole lot of wool yarn, but I carried most of that. She didn't come out unless she absolutely had to. I left packages at the front door after she didn't answer, because there's a standing order with the post office to just drop things off, when I hate doing that just in case somepony sees a package outside and decides it's theirs. But that was the order. And every moon, she'd get a letter from Mazein. Just not at the same time every moon: it's a long way off, and it takes a while for anything to come that far. That was a voucher. It was the only income she had. She'd sign it, have it sent to the bank, and they'd split it between her account and her landlord."

"Who sent it?"

"She never said." She sighed. "She cursed them a few times. About being so late. That's why she came out, why she finally talked to me. Because one moon, her voucher was seriously late, and her landlord didn't like her. She sort of came with the property, you see. Do you know what a lease is? Figures... it's a piece of paper which says you have the right to rent that house. And in her case, it meant she had the right to keep renting it, no matter who owned it. He picked up the house from the last owner, and he couldn't get her out of it. So whenever she was late, and she was pretty much always late because of the way the postal system works, he'd hassle her. One moon, it got so bad that she came out to confront me about where her voucher was. She screamed at me for about five minutes in her accent before I got a word in. She told me I'd stolen it at one point, and I knew she was just saying it because she was upset and -- scared. She was always scared. Because she wanted to be alone, and she didn't know anything else. Talking to me was almost as terrifying as missing her voucher. And when she finally let me move, breathe... I passed it over to her. She just took it from my teeth and slammed the door."

He didn't know how to respond to that, and so remained silent. He'd built up an image of a happy mare outside a house, learned her hues, age, and place of origin -- and couldn't make any of what she'd just said fit.

"Three days later," the mare continued, "it dawned on her that she might want to consider an apology. Six days after that -- it's what she told me -- she got up the nerve to open the door as I was passing by. She said 'Sorry.' That's all. 'Sorry.' Then she closed the door."

"She... doesn't sound very nice."

The pegasus slowly shook her head. "One week later, she left an outgoing package in front of her door. No postage. It was addressed to 'that mare with the crazy eyes'. She'd... baked me things. Done some cooking. Standard ingredients, but a weird style, and the taste... I'm never going to taste any of it again, not without flying gallops upon gallops, and I can't leave my kid behind. I can't afford to go that far with her next to me. I've been thinking about that. That I'll never taste it again. That I don't have a cookbook, or know where to start looking for one that weird: dishes made by Mazein's ponies with Equestrian ingredients. That she'll... never talk to me again. It's not that she wasn't nice, Spike. I think she was a nice pony, once. Maybe a really good one. But something happened, and she was alone, she wanted to be alone, and if any time came when she thought she didn't, like when she started leaving things out for me... she didn't remember how to not be alone any more. She knew once, when she was young. I'm sure of it. But... ponies forget. It would take her days, literal days to dredge up any kind of response. Once she started inviting me in -- just to make sure the mail came all the way, that was her excuse -- she'd slip a lot. She got mad easily, and most of that was at herself. She'd make a little slip, then turn her fury into having made one into a bigger slip, along with a lot of screaming. I had to wait it out, until she kicked me out -- and then, a few days later, she'd try to apologize. If I knocked before that, she'd just hide. It was... all she knew. She didn't understand how to be with ponies any more."

"But she was talking to you," Spike insisted. "She could talk to you!"

"Because she had to," the mare replied. "Because I was always going to be there. She needed her mail and I was the pony who delivered it. To that degree, we were stuck with each other. It was about as much of a relationship as she could conceive of. So she talked to me, because she was old, Spike, old and scared and alone and... I was there. She couldn't make herself go outside, find ponies she could talk to. But I came to her, just about every day. I think in the end, she decided that made us friends."

The last word had borne an odd note.

"...were you?"

"I don't have many friends," the pegasus said. "I have a daughter who loves me. I have at least one coworker who laughs behind my back a lot and then saddles me with the worst of the loads, because she knows I can't afford to quit. I have a lot of ponies who look at me -- and then don't. I don't know if she was my friend. I know she was as close as I usually get."

The words hadn't been sad. They hadn't been regretful. They had just been... words, and that made them even worse.

"Eventually, she started making me scarves," she said. "I'd bring over pictures my daughter drew -- those probably got cleared out before the sale: it's not as if the manager could get much for them. She'd say weird things sometimes, like how her next house would be so much better, when she moved back to Mazein. I asked her when she was planning to go, and she said she didn't know when she'd be called for. Nopony could know. And then she had this quiet look on her face, and she said 'But not long, I think. This house almost worn out.'"

Too many things were nagging at Spike, and one of them finally stepped forward. "How could she even check a book out, if she never really left her house?"

"Oh, I did that," the mare told him. "I got a card in her name, at her address. Her accent was pretty heavy, but she could speak Equestrian, and she could read it. She told me what kind of books she liked. Real escapist stuff. I'd bring it back, and pick her up used ones at stable sales. That's part of..."

She paused, looked at the freshly-risen Moon.

"...how I knew she was dead."

Spike waited.

"I really don't want to tell you this part," the mare said.

And all he had was "Please?"

She sighed.

"She didn't always answer the door. I left stuff outside a lot: I told you that. But she always came out around voucher time, because she had to. So I wasn't surprised to see mail and used books building up in front of her door, because -- that was just her. She didn't even open most of the mail she got. But leaving her voucher outside, especially when it had arrived on what was supposed to be on time for the first moon since I'd gotten her route -- she always started checking on that day. Every time, every moon. I saw the envelope was still out there -- salmon-pink, you couldn't miss it -- and I started pounding on the door. I nearly kicked it in. I was screaming her name, and then I flew up, started looking in the windows... and she was next to the loom."

He gave her the silence and wished he could take it into himself, displace the frantic calls from his inner hearing.

"The doctors wouldn't talk to me about what happened," the mare said. "I wasn't family. Nopony knew if she had family, and my bringing it up to her was a good way to get kicked out. I couldn't afford to bury her, and she hadn't left a will, any kind of instructions -- I had no right to her body, any more than I could get her medical information. And I still tried to find out what Mazein ponies did, but I had no way to get custody, and by the next day... no family anypony knew of, no instructions. Maybe it was a grave somewhere I haven't found. Maybe her body went to a medical school so students could study. I don't know. All I could do was... write a letter. Because I'd delivered her vouchers, and I knew what the return address was. I sent mail to Mazein, telling them she was dead. Asking if there was anything they wanted me to do. But it'll take weeks before I get anything back, if I ever do. And I waited for somepony other than the doctors and police to ask me what had happened. Nopony did. Not until you. Because she drank too much, and cursed too much, and was alone too Tartarus-freed much, and I was the only pony she talked to. A pony who can't tell you about her life in Mazein, or who that stallion in the picture is. A pony who doesn't know why she came here. A pony who..."

The moonlight reflected off those gold eyes, and the liquid coating them.

"...didn't do enough."

He put out his right hand, gently ran his claws through the fur over her mark. She accepted the contact, and they sat together under Moon for a while.

"Thank you," he finally said. "For everything you said. For everything you did, even if you don't think it was enough."

She didn't look at him.

"But," he went on, "maybe it's not over. Maybe if I go to the police, the hospital, and tell them it's something to do with the Bearers, maybe if they think --"

And then she did.

"What are you doing?" the mare asked, and the tone was more intense than he'd been ready for.

"We can find out where her body went! Maybe get a place to bury her? How much does that sort of thing cost? I've got an allowance, and -- if you hear back from Mazein, if anypony --"

"-- why does this mean so much to you?"

The words had been soft. The impact hit him harder than nearly anything in his life.

strike the set

"I..."

No, he had the words, as far as that could be applied to two more of them. He just didn't know if they made any sense.

"...like plays," Spike finished, and felt like the stupidest sapient in the world.

The soft gaze rested on him. "Go on."

He blinked.

"Really?"

From another pony, it might have been a tease. "That's really not a sentence you can end on."

He looked inside, so close to the inner fire. Then he looked deeper, and let the words come.

"When we were in the Gifted School," he began, "the students had plays. Usually once a semester. I loved them. It was... the school wasn't that small, but it was just about all there was, and the stage could be -- anything. I wanted to be in a play so much, but the only role anypony would consider me for was a dragon, and dragons in those plays -- they... aren't good parts. I still want to be in one, sometime, somehow. But Twilight wasn't interested, nopony else cared, and..."

The auditorium was generally used for lectures. It had not been designed as a theater, not for expressions of imagination which changed the world in somewhat more subtle ways. So the sound carried, because students needed to hear the guest speakers, and the lighting was proper for illuminating a rough central area. But when it came to everything required for a play -- some improvisation was required. The Gifted School's theater group tried to bring magic to bear in their efforts: the lack of a trapdoor to drop vanishing actors through could be compensated for with illusions and teleporters -- if only somepony in the group knew how to reliably perform those workings, a hope which tended to come through just before that student graduated. It made the improvisations a little more frantic, and cleanups of magical mishaps during rehearsals were frequent.

So some things were done through more conventional methods. Even if you wanted to create a fully static set through illusion, keeping the effort up through three shifting acts was difficult. So background pieces were painted by field and, on rare occasion, mouth. Pasteboard furniture was glued together. Dropping pebbles onto metal was easier than trying to create the sound of rain through magic, as long as you got the drop rate right. Magic was used here and there: a paper tree would have its branches seem to sway at just the right moment, a burst of phantom lightning would streak out over the audience at the moment pounding hooves created thunder. But for the most part, it was the mundane. The younger students weren't always in a place where they could fully trust their magic, but they could always rely on their stagecraft. And so the plays would eventually come together, piece by oils-covered piece, as the students laughed through most of their mistakes and desperately tried to hide the rest.

They never saw him watching, for when the center stage was lit, the seats were not.

Spike loved plays. Not just the performance, but everything which went into setting it up. He had his own magic, something which only the Princess seemed to even partially understand -- but it would never replicate what Twilight could do. It didn't let him be any part of the Gifted School other than the one walking at her side, even as he was increasingly dismissed by his oldest companion, diminished towards something approaching lab equipment. But on the stage -- on stage, anyone could do magic. You could create worlds. All you needed was imagination, wood, paint, time, rehearsal, and dream...

So he watched, whenever he could, for Twilight was sometimes in classes (or extra classes, or self-assigned projects on top of the extra classes), and he had free time in which she would never call for him. He supervised every step. Auditions. Set design. Orchestrations. Blocking: he could find hours of fascination in blocking, which most ponies wouldn't have considered as particularly easy to do. And on the night of the performance... well, by the time he was old enough to be truly interested, Twilight wasn't. Not in anything except her studies. So he'd generally have to find an excuse to get away from her for the night, and since she wasn't expecting him to try making one, he always got away with it. Of course, by then, he could usually say every line along with the performers and, from his hidden place in the auditorium, he'd occasionally try just that. But he'd seen the process of the world slowly coming together. He had to see it on the night it was finally complete.

And on the next day, he would reverently see it out.

The students would move across the stage, taking things down. Some of that would be in silence, but that quiet would be interrupted by laughter as they remembered how this section had finally come together, along with the time it had nearly come down on the orchestra benches. Nothing would ever be destroyed. Nothing.. Backgrounds would be gently wrapped in cloth. Effects machines got packed into crates. Costumes were placed in long bags, then hung on wheeled racks and pushed deep into the school's basements. There was always a chance somepony in a future class would want to run the same play again, and while the current students realized it wouldn't come out the exact same way, there was nothing wrong with giving them a head start.

They created worlds on that stage. And then they put those worlds away until they were needed once again, doing so in reverence and joy.

Striking the set. It was almost a ritual. It was something very close to sacred.

It was everything which hadn't happened at the estate sale.

"...and it felt like... they were just throwing her away. She'd made her world, even if it was a tiny one with just two performers and a bunch of ponies passing stuff in from offstage. They were in her world, and... they didn't care. They just took what they wanted from it and left her behind. They called her work -- horse apple smear, that ponies would just lick up. They wanted her life for a tenth-bit, in bulk. Nopony cared about her. Nopony at all..."

She subtly shuffled closer, lowered her body. He saw the shoulder, and instinct pressed his face against soft grey fur until the coat could absorb no more tears.

"Spike," the pegasus eventually said, "if I asked you -- would you do two things for her?"

He nodded against her body.

"Let her go."

He pulled back, just enough to stare at her from damp eyes.

"Say you stepped onto her set," the mare told him. "That's a fair way of putting it, I guess. But you came in at the end, during the last act, on the closing night. Nopony's going to start the performance again. The actor, writer, director -- they were sort of all the same pony, and nopony kept a script. You could spend the rest of your life trying to recreate it -- and if you did, what if you rewrote yourself into somepony like her in the process? She wouldn't want that for you. For anypony. In the end, she didn't even want it for herself. And before she could risk a second opening curtain -- the set was struck. Go out and write your own play. That's what she would have wanted for you."

"But -- if nopony cares, then..."

"...she's dead. She'll still be dead whether somepony cares or not. But she isn't forgotten." Staring at Moon again. "There are those who say -- nopony's truly dead as long as their name's still spoken. So -- 'Aoratoss.' Once a year, once in a while, when you think of her. Let her know somepony remembers. Somepony cared. I think she'd be happy with that."

Spike looked up, from brick to mare to Moon.

"Aoratoss," he said.

It was a cool fall night, and quickly dropping into cold. But for the first time in nearly two days, he felt warm.

The pegasus sighed, stood up. "I'll take you home," she said. "You can get on my back. Have you ever ridden a pegasus before -- oh, good. Then you know where to put your feet. Which is a good thing, because I've never had a rider. Come on: my kid's gonna be wondering what happened to me in another half-hour, so if we don't get in the air --"

The door behind them opened, and a snide mare face stuck itself through the gap. "Are you still out here? What happened? Did you forget how doors work? What direction the building is in, when it's right in front of you?" A snicker. "Do you need a quick refresher course on what knees do?"

The pegasus turned, and as she did so, her jaw went partially slack, the difference in eye position seemed to increase, her entire form seemed to radiate confusion as her tail drooped and her posture sagged...

"I'm sorry!" she cried out in a voice a half-octave lower than the one she'd spoken in a moment before. "I just don't know what went wrong!"

The mare snorted, which didn't quite hide the second snicker.

"Typical," she said. "Go home. There's no overtime for talking. Assuming he understood you. Like anypony could..." And closed the door again.

The pegasus' spine snapped into alignment. Her legs straightened, and the tail lofted. "Okay. So just climb on, and we'll --"

"-- what just happened?"

She very visibly thought about what to say next.

"They think I'm a joke," she eventually told him. "So I play along sometimes. It lets me get away with things, especially if the mistakes are real. And -- well, some of them will never believe anything else. At least this way, I can say the joke's on them."

And before he could stop the words, "Is it?"

There was a moment when it seemed as if both eyes were about to focus on him. And then it was gone.

"Get on my back, Spike," she finally said as she lowered her body, and he knew she would never say anything more about it. "I know where the tree is. I'll get you home."

He carefully got on, cautious not to scratch her with his walking claws. Her wings beat, and they were in the air.

"So what's the second thing?" he called out over the new wind. "You said there were two!"

"She was afraid of the world," the pegasus said. "Don't be."

Spike thought about that, as the tree got closer, as he saw every light on, long after closing.

"What's your name?"

"Dulci," the pegasus said. "Short for Dulcinea. But just about everypony calls me Derpy."

The natural question arose. "Why?"

"Because they think it's funny," Dulci patiently replied. "Right up until the joke turns out to be on them. Going down..."

She took off a split-second after his walking claws were on the ground again, heading home to be with her daughter. And as soon as the sound of wings faded, the frantic words which kicked their way outside took over.

"...I tried! I tracked him to Rarity's, but --"

"-- dear, please calm down, we must try to keep our heads or we will be no good to anypony at all --"

"-- she didn't know where he went from there. It got so late, he'd been gone for hours and hours and... somepony said they saw him heading into Town Hall, but they'd gone home and he could... it could be anything, he could be anywhere..."

"Sugarcube, y'gotta take a breath. Rainbow can go out an' scout from the air, Fluttershy takes another direction, Pinkie an' me, we do some ground work -- Ah mean, we know when he was in the bakery, so it ain't been that long since he went off the map. Maybe he just got caught up in some kids' games."

"He was acting so strange this morning!" And now there was the sound of hooves, pacing in an accelerating circle. "I thought he was getting sick, and when he gets sick, when I don't know what's wrong or what to --"

-- he opened the doors.

Six mares turned. They stared at him.

"Young dragon!" Rarity started to shout in a sudden fit of instant hypocrisy. "You do not vanish like that! Not for so long at your age, not without telling somepony truthfully where you are --"

But that was when Twilight reached him, draped her chin over his shoulder, rubbed her head against his scales, and attempting to bring back the memory of the last time that had happened froze him long enough for the others to close in.

Eventually, the ponypile broke up. Then there was some yelling, followed by a desperate attempt to explain, which led into a second ponypile and more yelling. And after that, five went to their homes, one had a few more yells and nuzzles in her, and a very tired little dragon, who'd practically been pushed to the dinner table at hornpoint, finally went to bed.

Things still felt a little awkward at breakfast the next morning. But at least the food was staying down.

Twilight still looked -- worried. She looked worried. He was acknowledging that now.

"Do you... feel any better?" she awkwardly asked. "Your blankets were still a little rumpled."

"Kind of," he partially lied. It was... still trying to settle in, and there were times when words from the sale still tried to dominate his inner hearing. But they seemed to be a little more distant now. "I'm sorry about last night, Twilight." The twelfth time he'd offered that. "I know I was out too long. I know you were --"

"-- it's okay," she stopped him. "We're okay."

He managed a smile. Both of them ate for a while, and then Twilight cleaned the dishes.

"Are you going to be okay if I go out for a little while?" she tentatively asked as the last mug was levitated back into place. "I mean... can you take the library for a few hours? There's something I think I should do."

He looked up at her. "What?"

"Well..." Feeling her way through the words, "Everypony... when I got scared last night, they all just -- came with me. They didn't really ask why. They didn't think about everything else they had to do. They just saw I was scared, and they came with me, and then they asked why. I caught them in the middle of work and dinner and feedings, and... I just thought I should go around to everypony, and -- thank them. For being there. I'm not sure that got through last night, how grateful I was, so... it couldn't hurt to go say it, right?" With steadily increasing speed, "Even though it's the next morning, and I'm probably a little late, and... I already messed it up, didn't I? I got it wrong, I --"

And just before she could begin to shake, his arms wrapped around his sister's forelegs.

She froze, as he hugged her. She often did. But slowly, she brought her chin down, and gently nuzzled him.

"They know you're trying," Spike whispered. "Don't be afraid. Never stop trying."

"It's... okay if I go?"

"It's best if you go. I'll take the desk. I'll even reshelve a little."

Crossly, "Oh, great. So when I get back, I'll have to --"

She couldn't see his smile. "Go."

According to the weather schedule, it was a much warmer morning than the previous two. It would have been a fine time to be outside. But Twilight needed the time directly under Sun more than he did, and the empty library was pleasantly warm, with autumn sunlight streaming through the glass to fall upon him and the front desk. It also gave him time to think, and sort through order catalogs. Cookbooks were boring. Mazein cookbooks written by pony residents were boring and had an immense shipping cost. But if he asked Twilight to bundle a few other things with it, brought the cost down for a full bale-weight...

The doors opened, and a stallion strode through: a black pegasus with a silver and white mane rendered into an oddly upright style, a pony Spike had never seen before.

The pony looked at him. And then he would not.

Spike took a deep breath, felt his nostrils flare a little.

And then he hopped down from the bench, confidently strode around the desk, right up to the stallion, and stuck out his right arm, with claws curled into his palm, knuckles forward.

"Hi!" he happily declared as he looked straight into the stallion's eyes, smiling all the while. "I'm Spike! What's your name?"