Don't You Know the Derby Decimal System?
“Are you sure this is the last one?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Yep!” Twilight nodded vigorously. “An unabridged copy of the Canterlot Academy Magical Reference Dictionary. Be really careful with it. It’s an incredibly rare book. You don’t know how surprised I was when I realized that Ponyville had a copy!”
“I’m pretty sure I do,” Rainbow Dash answered. “I was here. You found it this afternoon and spent like an hour telling me about it.”
“Oh, right.”
“So where does it go?”
“Right there!” Twilight pointed at an open space on a top shelf. “It’ll fit perfectly and be right in line with all the other reference materials!”
Rainbow Dash looked at the book, then at the open space, then back at the book. The book would fit in the space without issue, but getting it there…
“Are you sure that’s the best place for it?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Of course. I spent all day yesterday setting up the organizational system for maximum efficiency! There’s no wasted space in the library, all of the different sections are placed intuitively, and everything will be perfectly easy to locate. Since there’s no single author, it goes in by title with the other similar reference books.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Rainbow Dash said. “What I mean is that this… book weighs more than I do, and you want it on the top shelf. Anypony who tries to check this out is going to end up crushing themselves.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem.”
“Yeah, why’s that?”
“Because judging by the amount of dust on it when I found it, it seems that the chances of anypony actually checking it out are slim to none. And on the off chance someone does, it’s a reference book for unicorn magic. Any unicorn who wants it would be able to get it with their magic.”
“In that case, couldn’t you use your magic to put it up there?”
“Normally, I could, but I’ve been moving stuff around all day. Right now my horn feels like it’s about to fall off.” She smiled nervously. “So if you could get it up there for me, that would be wonderful.”
“Fine,” Rainbow Dash said with a groan. Even though the book lay flat on the floor, it still almost reached up to her knees. She could comfortably stand on top of it. “Can you at least help me get a grip on it?”
“Sure.” Twilight’s nose wrinkled in concentration as she focused her magic on the book. It began to glow and wiggled slightly before slowly floating up off the floor.
“Here goes nothing.” Rainbow Dash wrapped her forelegs around the book and began to drag it upwards. It started to slip, but she caught it with her rear legs and continued to flap violently as the book tried to tow her downwards.
“You’ve got it, Rainbow Dash!” Twilight called from below. “You’re almost there!”
“Yeah. Thanks!” Rainbow Dash gasped. She appeared to be fighting the book, and was only just barely holding her own.
“Are you okay? If it’s too heavy just bring it back down and I’ll put it up tomorrow.”
“I got this!” She dipped in the air slightly to get under the book, and began to push it upward. “Just a bit further…”
“Dash, you’re going to hurt yourself! Bring the book down!”
“I’m not letting some book beat me!” She heaved the book upward and managed to land the corner on the edge of the shelf. “Okay, if I just…” she shoved the book into the gap. “There we go!” She sighed and dropped down to the floor, letting her wings hang limp. “Golden Oaks Library is now officially reorganized! That was the last one, right?”
“Yes, yes it was.” Twilight trotted over to her. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I think. Mostly.” Rainbow Dash stretched her wings and twinged. “I may have strained my wings a little. Nothing serious. It should be back to normal by tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I just need to rest my wings up a bit and I’ll be all good.”
“So no more flying today?”
Rainbow Dash shook her head. “Nope. Probably couldn’t even if I wanted to. I mean, maybe a little, but not very far. Wouldn’t want to pull something.”
“If you can’t fly, how are you going to get back home?”
Rainbow Dash shrugged. “I’ll just relax for a few hours; do some stuff around town. When it’s time to go to bed, I should be recovered enough to get home.”
“Er, there might be a problem with that.”
“Really? What’s that?”
Twilight stifled a giggle. “Have you looked outside lately?”
Rainbow trotted over to the window. She could barely see out of it. Everything was dark except for a thin sliver of rapidly dimming light in the distance as the sun slid beneath the horizon. “Seriously? It’s that late already?”
“Time flies when you’re having fun!”
“I don’t know if I’d call flying loads of books around fun…”
“Oh, come on. You can’t tell me that you weren’t enjoying yourself a little. I mean, I know you aren’t really into library organization, but it’s cool to learn some new things, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess now I know where to find the ‘Magical Dictionary Reference’ whatever on the off chance I’ll ever need it. Not that I’ll be able to get it down.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Twilight frowned. “Like when most ponies think of a library, they think of books, right?”
“Well, yeah. That’s what a library is.”
“Not necessarily. Or at least, not entirely. It’s mostly books, but what the library is really about is knowledge. It’s place you can go to learn things. The whole reason I wanted to reorganize the library is so that it would be easier for anypony who comes in to find whatever information they’re looking for. If somepony goes to the trouble to come here because they want to know something, I want it to be as easy as it can be for them to find it.
“Books might be the most common way of storing that knowledge, but not the only one. This library has mostly books, but there are newspapers, music, art, even a few movies. Remember when we found that old copy of Night of the Headless Horse?”
“Oh, yeah! That’s a great movie! It’s a bit hokey, and the special effects are pretty awful, but it’s fun. I didn’t think that was part of the library stuff though. I thought it just belonged to whoever lived here before you.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Rainbow Dash, it’s a library. Nopony lived here before I moved in.”
“Oh, right.”
“Point is, there are all sorts of interesting things in here that we never would’ve found if we hadn’t done some cleanup.”
“Okay, I think I see what you’re getting at. You mean like that newspaper about the storm that happened way back when?”
“The one that happened before you moved to Ponyville?”
“That storm was why I moved to Ponyville!” Rainbow Dash puffed up her chest. “The Ponyville weather team was understaffed and couldn’t get it cleared out in time. They sent me in as backup and I ended up staying. And that was seriously a crazy storm. I’m pretty sure they still use it when they teach the new recruits about high wind conditions. It was really weird to see a newspaper article about it.”
“Exactly! Isn’t it cool to find things like that? Or that old book about the history of the Wonderbolts? Or that old music?”
“I guess there was some pretty cool stuff we found. Even if we did have to wade through dozens of dictionaries and books about rocks or knitting or whatever. That part was pretty fun.”
“See, I told you!” Twilight grinned smugly. “Anyway, you really can’t fly home with your wings like that. It wouldn’t be safe, especially in the dark. Why don’t you just spend the night here? Spike’s off in Canterlot, and I’m pretty sure we have a spare mattress you can use.”
“Sure, why not. I don’t know if I’m ready to go to bed yet, though.”
“Yeah, I’m still wound up from all the organizing!” Twilight clapped her hooves happily. “I was thinking that maybe I could dig the old projector out of the basement, make some popcorn, and see if Night of the Headless Horse is as scary as it was when I was a filly. And then maybe test out the new organization system and pick a few books to read.”
“Sounds like fun.” Rainbow Dash said. “Well, except for the ‘testing out the organization system’ part.”
“I guess you don’t have to help me out with that part. You can be in charge of the popcorn.”
“We should probably go to bed soon,” Twilight said for the fourth time that night.
They had intended to hit the hay once the movie had ended, but the poor quality of the special effects had completely prevented that effort. Despite Twilight’s insistence that the movie was a landmark of filmmaking, the general fact that the “headless horse” clearly had a head that was just covered with a blanket made it difficult to find it appropriately scary. As a result, they had burst into laughter every time it appeared onscreen, and were even less tired at the end of the movie than at the start.
“Soon. I’m almost done with this chapter,” Rainbow Dash mumbled as she leaned back on her pillow.
Rainbow Dash had a stack of Daring Do novels, though she was only on her second one. Twilight had a sampler platter of pretty much every variety of book in the library. She had gone through half a dozen already.
“That’s what you said last time,” Twilight mumbled back. She yawned. “Your wings aren’t going to get better if you don’t get some rest.”
“I’m not using my wings.” Rainbow Dash gave her own yawn.
“No, but you are laying on them. That can’t be good for them.”
“Nah.” Rainbow Dash lethargically rolled over. “That’s better.”
“How are you going to finish your book if you’re…” she paused as Rainbow Dash began to snore. “...sleeping in my bed. I guess I have to take the spare mattress.”
She gently slid Rainbow Dash’s book out from between her hooves and put a bookmark between the pages. Then she slowly pulled the blanket over the sleeping pegasus and turned out the light.
As she closed the bedroom door behind her, she smiled. “I knew she’d end up enjoying herself.”
Author's Note
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
-- Cicero
