An everlasting font of Knowledge
The head librarian’s office was a veritable sea of information. Books, parchment, scrolls in a bewildering array of shapes canvased every wall from floor to ceiling, in fact the coverage was so complete there was no wall to see in any direction Mayor Mare looked.
A beautiful summer day punctured this inner sanctum of the ancient library through the crystal window directly behind Head Librarian Exuberantly Literal. Who appeared to be scrutinizing Ponyville’s proposal for a replacement library as if they were the key to his personal immortality. His mane was literally vibrating. With the candles not in use due to what Sir Literal’s claims to be ‘economizing’, the sunbeam framed the scene in a dramatic light with Mayor Mare on a plush swivel chair, his massive desk in between and Sir Literal’s resplendent white coat contrasting a dark red-brown, almost black at the tips, mane. The, surprisingly young, Canterlot unicorn who was already making a name for himself in the civil service lounged on a very large plush swivel chair, in the colour of the library bookshelves.
Mayor Mare experienced facing off with many tough negotiators in her long tenure in office, yet all the accumulated mental tricks failed to ease her nervous anxiety as Exuberantly Literal’s horn began to vibrate in sync with his mane. She could feel control of the project slipping by the second to the Canterlot bureaucracy. At least Twilight didn’t accompany her, Mayor Mare thought, otherwise the duo would probably have been bouncing off each other, and the walls of books, by now.
She decided to put on her most learned airs to try and pre-empt any civil service adventurism in Ponyville.
“Ahem. Well now that you have had some time to review the proposal and seeing that you must be very busy with librarian duties far beyond the paygrade of a simple village mayor such as myself how about we get to the crux of the matter?”
...
Now Sir Literal’s intense viridian eyes were focused on her, a good sign Mayor Mare liked to believe, although now as if the key to his immortality was etched on her face.
“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEYAH!” Exuberantly Literal suddenly yelled while jumping over the, very disorganized, desk and landing in one motion a bear hug on a very confused pony.
“You’ve saved me sweet sweet Mayor!” he said right into her ear. “Mayor Mare I like your proposal so much I could kiss you right now!”.
With a light blush she tried to form a sensible response though it ended up as a “Huh?”
“Oh you Ponyville folk are just the most gosh darned sweetest villagers in all of Equestria, No all of Equus!”
“You wouldn’t even believe me if I tried to explain the pressures in this absurd job!” he punctuated with jabs at random points on his desk.
“Just yesterday I had a meeting with Celestia, ahem Princess Celestia I mean, where I was threatened with demotion!” gasping dramatically “Threatened!”.
Mayor Mare sensed he was gaining steam and feared the consequences of interrupting this runaway train.
“I, Sir Exuberantly Literal, the greatest librarian cum civil servant cum administrator Equestria has seen in a generation, imperiled with banishment to a barbaric fate at a village posting, errrr no offense Miss Mayor, all due to a simple misunderstanding!” declaiming while prancing on his desk throwing off papers and baubles towards her with every shuffle of his hooves.
“What manner of cruelties have I inflicted upon on our precious books in Princess Celestia’s eyes you may wonder to justify such a fate,” eyes glittering like jewels with the reflection of a sunbeam.
“Tis the humblest and noblest desire a gentle pony can have my dear Mayor Mare, the rational organization and accessibility of all recorded knowledge!” he gasped out with hooves stretched dramatically towards the hidden stars beyond the window.
She gaped unblinking while sinking into the plush chair with several rolls of parchment hanging off her back.
“You will agree, I am sure, in your heart of hearts that limitless knowledge is the greatest treasure to ponykind, nay all sentient life forms, that could ever be conceived of!”
She nodded.
“Then you will join me in lamenting that even our Royal Majesty, the most exalted font of knowledge that there ever was, could decline such a humble petition as to centralize all libraries, and all other repositories of knowledge in our land, under a common authority of ineffable wisdom.”
Mayor Mare had seen many performances in her life and was never particularly easy to shock, yet for sheer absurdity this was up there, perhaps not quite matching Pinkie Pie’s wildest moments, but darn close.
Having regained the power of speech she decided to lean forwards and venture a response, “Sir Literal, I truly and sincerely appreciate your presentation as to the, err exigencies, of your current position. Did Princess Celestia specify reasons as to why your petition was denied?”
He turned dramatically towards the last remaining items on his desk, a thick stack of papers in his inbox.
“Why it was a simple 2000 page report on the necessities of consolidation, standardization, and colocation of many critical information services under the central authority of the throne, with a select chief librarian to delegate the day to day decision making independent of any existing minister of course. Plus all the addendums, appendices, charts, figures, formulas, references, etc. that reports need nowadays to be taken seriously with the ministers. Though as a fellow servant of the throne I doubt you are unfamiliar with those aspects Mayor Mare,” ending the last word by plopping back into his chair.
Mayor Mare skeptically gazed across the table, “Although I have also experienced the joys of Canterlot bureaucracy I do find the length of such a preliminary report to be excessive Sir Literal, perhaps that is why her majesty was displeased?”
“Nonsense!” he immediately yelled. “There’s no such thing as report too detailed, as long it’s factually correct of course. Without all the supporting documentation there is simply no way for any pony to decide on a matter as complex as this!”
“With every great endeavour there must be risk taking and I shudder to think of what would happen if I didn’t include every possible scrap of information I had if, Luna forbid, the proposal doesn’t succeed.”
She couldn’t help but notice even his swiveling to face the windows was dramatic and impeccably timed.
“Besides the bulk of it was for the pencil pushers anyways, I didn’t seriously expect her to read through allll of it. It’s a sad state of the world that us noble and upstanding citizens in the 2nd millennium of a peaceful Equestria have to fight fresh battles once again with a far more insidious enemy,”
“And what is this enemy you speak of Sir Literal?” she said with the slightest hint of irritation. She felt the clock ticking, metaphorically of course, the office was bereft of one and she doubted there ever was one during his tenure.
“Why the conniving pencil pushers!” he interjected, “no offense to Pencil Pusher of course he is one of my closest friends.”
“Once they get their hoofs on any proposal, no matter how banal, they start insisting on absurdities such as ‘regulatory oversight’ and ‘fiduciary responsibility’, and I could go on dear Mayor Mare. With such an environment do you blame me for behaving duty bound to preempt every possible objection to my beloved libraries?”
Her eyebrows were arched well into her forehead by now. With a headache forming behind. She began to realize the immensity of the challenge laid out in front of her. If she doesn’t figure out a way to get ... whatever this was... under control her decision to keep Twilight on the sidelines to simplify the process of rebuilding Ponyville’s library, instead of letting her take the lead, might blow up spectacularly. Perhaps the Princess of Friendship has an innate desire to become the Princess of Paperwork too?
“SPIKE!” Twilight Sparkle hollered across the throne room of her castle while holding a very long roll of parchment, “Where did you put my after-meeting checklist?”
“Uhhh” Spike eloquently responded as he stored away the pre-meeting checklist, “Aren’t you holding it?”
Twilight quickly realized Spike must have mixed it up with the after-meeting checklist (exhaustive). Even she wasn’t that obsessive! After all, personally filling out hundreds of points after every Friendship Meeting would be an unduly burdensome waste of time given her tremendous responsibilities now. The exhaustive list was only for very important meetings.
“Uuughhh Don’t mess around with them. I allocated specific cubbyholes for every single one of my checklists. Every. Single. One. Get the master location checklist of checklists please so that we can figure out where the checklists are supposed to be.”
The massive crystal doors closed just as the last word sounded behind an animated group of ponies who have, by now, gotten used to the former librarian’s antics and were instead focused on planning the group trip to Canterlot that Rarity suggested.
“Sheesh. Give me a break will you Twilight. All these darn cubbyholes are unlabeled so I have to entirely rely on memory to tell which one’s which!” eyes twitching in annoyance as he turned around, “In fact you are usually so on top of anything or-gan-iza-tion-ally why haven’t you worked out a way to do that in this huuuge palace?”
The suddenness of the response shocked Twilight and after a moment of silence she realized Spike was clearly upset at her inexcusable delay in instituting proper storage methods. A flitter of pride swelled within her Alicorn-librarian-Princess heart. He was clearly expressing a deep need for order and rational cataloguing that were the hallmarks of the old Ponyville library. Oh how she missed the perfectly sorted books in perfect harmony!
After a huff she left her throne and with the flash of a teleport spell was across the room, pulling him in a warm hug.
“Your right Spike, we will have to ask Mayor Mare for permission to speed up that new library so we can finally have a place to put everything. This palace just isn’t built like a library, I know the disorganization grates on your psyche Spike, I will try my best to keep my annoyance in check.”
She was nuzzling his cute ears by now and try as he could, Spike couldn’t stop a blush from appearing and smothering his resignation at Twilight’s peculiarities.
They were locked in that warm embrace for a few minutes in quiet comfort until she practically flew away with a twirl in the air at the dawning realization that the demand for a new library combined with a, mostly empty, crystal castle might mean that she could have an extension built right into her castle! For rare and precious books of course that needed to be guarded lest they fall pray to another Tirek or, as Applejack would call it, Saturday troublemakers.
She gleamed at him, “Come on Spike, we have so much work to do! Pack your bags because we’re heading to Canterlot!” then vanished in the flash of another teleport spell.
Spike looked outside the crystal windows gazing at the peaceful and quiet village of Ponyville under the gentle rays of Celestia’s late afternoon sunlight, and sighed.
“What have I gotten myself into?” he wailed, “How could you want to work in Canterlot? Weren’t we supposed to have fun there? Oh my sweet Rarity, I promise I will spend time with you soon!” throwing up his hands, “Me and my big mouth, I just had to suggest a new library could be built bigger with more books.”
Author's Note
My first ever fanfic story!
Also a huge fan of books, which may colour my perception of the characters, though probably not of Twilight.
Sir Exuberantly Literal is an OC pony who is refreshingly honest while being, hopefully, entertaining. He has a very large ham and is not afraid to show it.
Let me know what you think in the comments!
