You Just Have to Listen if You Want to Know
Some days were harder than others.
Tick.
Some days, the endless, piercing silence felt absolutely unbearable.
The books seemed to dampen all noise into a fuzzy, unsettling chatter that leered in the back of her mind. It was a sickness; it spread through her thoughts, contaminated information, blotted her senses until she couldn't even recognize the words on the page.
This place had become a prison of her own making. The one and only place she could find solace, where she could submerge her conscious thoughts in endless texts and waves of information. It made dealing with the ridicule easier that way, stuffing so many things into her memory that the insults got lost in a sea of information.
And yet, like pieces of driftwood cracked off of an old boat, they always rose to the surface.
Tock.
The clock sounded like an explosion upon a backdrop of serenity.
The chittering birds outside and the woodpeckers that tapped upon the branches of her tree stood upon a fine line when it came to the distinction between 'chatter' and 'infuriating'.
Spike softly padding across the library floor to shelve books should have been the latter, given that the nature of the sounds of his feet upon the wooden floor excluded it from chatter, but something about the dependable, rhythmic stamping of her number one assistant's steps made it...bearable. Reassuring, if anything.
Maybe it was just him, though.
Tick.
Her friends' conversations, although not involving her, were much the same. She refrained from paying attention to the exact words; it was impolite to eavesdrop, as her mother had taught her early on.
Her gaze slipped back to the pages of her book. Old and dusty. It was an autobiography of one of Canterlot's more renowned noble houses. It hardly matter which; to Twilight, the family line was simply another subject of research, although the book had certainly become decrepit over the years.
The cover, she recalled, was scuffed; the same went for the binding and the back. Every page had some sort of issue with it; one was crinkled, and the first page had nearly been torn out by some careless reader.
Tock.
As for the current page, a couple tears sullied its edges. A couple tears stained the page.
She flipped forward a couple chapters, blamed the chatter, and moved on. Out of sight, out of mind.
Tick.
She glared up at the clock sternly. She'd broken one in her foalhood; a lot of good that did when a new one was bought within the hour. She may have learned her lesson, but that particular urge never stop. Its constancy - its continued persistence in counting seconds - was, beyond all reason, absolutely incensing.
Every time it made that noise, she felt herself flinch. It broke the chatter with impunity, relentlessly - the persistence was debilitating.
"Hey, Twilight?"
Oh, thank Celestia.
"Yes, Applejack?" she asked, blinking softly.
"You're sure you're alright over there, sugarcube?" the farmpony asked, "You're lookin' a mite glum, if you don't mind me sayin'."
Oh, sure. I'm just having a hard time getting up in the morning.
"It's alright, Applejack. This book is just...sad."
A few moments of locking stares with her friend ended with something of a silent truce, as Applejack nodded minutely and returned to the conversation.
A few more seconds passed as she returned to the book, trying to find the spot where she'd been reading and ignore the nagging voice in her head.
Somewhat annoying was the fact that, for all she tried, she couldn't find it. She had been reading on this page, right? Giving it a quick skim, she noted that the passage was about the Archduke's son.
Hmm.
Well, she supposed she could search for whatever she'd been reading previously la-
"Hey, Twilight!"
The librarian reared back, standing on her back two hooves before falling back to her flank, before giving the vibrating mass of unfettered pink on the table a firm look.
"Pinkie Pie, I was reading that-"
"I know! I just wanted to know why you skipped a bunch of pages in the middle!"
...oh. Right.
Well, you see, Pinkie, I don't like crying in public, bec
"Just ignoring irrelevant information, Pinkie." The party pony jumped off of the table, joining Twilight as she sat back down in front of the book.
"Oh, I see! I always see a bunch of stuff I don't like reading, so I just kind of skip through a lot of it until I get to the really fun parts where the characters are talking, but then I don't know what they're talking about, so I just have to go all the way back and read it all when it would have been easier to just read it all from the beginning! Isn't that just the worst?"
"Well, I wouldn't know, Pinkie. I prefer to read books the whole way through instead of skipping important details about the plot. Otherwise, I would end up confused and in th-"
"So why'd you skip all that stuff in the middle, silly?" Twilight's train of thought found itself derailed and hurling into a vast sea of forgetfulness as her brain scrambled for a legitimate response.
Unfortunately, all of the improvising parts were stuck on wondering how Pinkie's smile could be so intensely gleeful, yet so pleading.
"Uh - well, I just - it wasn't important."
I'm not worth it.
"But isn't everything important? I remember one time the characters ate some pizza on a Saturday and the pizza parlor pony was the culprit from the prologue!"
"Well, yes, but this wasn't important becau-"
"And if it's not important, then you're probably not paying attention to it, 'cause unimportant means you don't care, and if you don't care about books, what do you care about?"
Please, stop asking.
"No, it's not that, it's just that the Archduke's midlife-"
Pinkie continued her onslaught, even as their friends formed a semi-circle around her.
"And really, if you don't care about books, that means something's super-duper wrong, right? I thought you loved reading, Twilight!"
"No - I mean, yes, I do, but-"
I only need time, I'll be okay-
"I guess we all have down days, but if your up is our down, then something's up and we need to get down to the bottom of it!"
"Pinkie, please, I'm fine-"
"And as your friends, we'd feel just awful if something was bothering you and you didn't feel like you could talk about it!" Pinkie cupped her hooves around Twilight's cheeks, forcing their eyes to lock. "You'd tell us, right?"
The shocking blue of the pink pony's irises drilled into her, filled with silent begging and concern and fifty other things that Twilight just couldn't process in her frazzled state of mind. She tried to blink, to break the seemingly impenetrable gaze of Pinkie Pie, but the best she could do was a half-hearted twitch of her eyelid.
Pinkie, please. I'm fine. I just need some time to myself.
"I need help."
Wh- no, that was not what she meant to say-!
She felt Pinkie's hooves pull away from her cheeks, but for all intents and purposes, they were still there. Her body was frozen in space, and right now, she certainly felt like she wanted it to be frozen in time, too.
"Twilight..."
And just like that, it was un-frozen, snapping back and away from her friends.
"I mean, it - I'm just fine, I don't really - you don't have to be concerned about anything, girls!" I'm not okay. She could feel her smile being weighed down even as she tried to put up a false front, "I'm...I'll be alright." Please don't walk away.
Fluttershy stepped up to her with unbidden determination, extended a wing, and folded it over Twilight's withers.
"But, I, I'm f- I'm fine..." Please.
Pastel yellow hooves embraced her, and were soon crossed with sky blue, ivory white, light orange, and brilliant pink.
"I don't - I don't deserve-" Some pressure behind her eyes was pushing forward, and it was getting harder every second to hold it back.
"Hush, Twilight. You deserve just 'bout every star in the sky; heavens know the Princesses'd give 'em to you."
The other girls murmured their assent as the shuffled in closer to Twilight. Even as the tears flowed, she dared not move a muscle; just in case it would all fall apart, in case it could all move away from her if she pushed to harshly.
Tick.
An eternity passed.
Tock.
The slow breathing of her friends, for whatever reason, was neither chatter nor infuriating. It was simply something all on its own.
A quiet wave of shifting went through the pile of mares as Spike quietly climbed on top of it, doing his best to join in on holding Twilight closely.
...for all the things she heard, she should've listened to herself the most.
Author's Note
I listened to Thought I'd Let You Know and decided I'd use the time to vent some of my own frustrations into a story.