The Library of Ponyville

Dear Princess Celestia, or... to whomponyever finds this:

Today I learned...

Today, I discovered...  no,  today, I realized...

Today I began this letter. No dragon to send it, so I just have to trust it falls into safe hooves. No dragon to write it, so I'm doing my best by the light of my horn. You know this letter is nowhere near my first. It may turn out to be the first of my last. Enclosed here in this book are the conclusions I have wrought, one letter at a time. It may be that they will be enough for you.

This building, this tree, this universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of arboreal galleries, with open air between, surrounded by very low railings. From any of these branches ponies can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable. Twenty shelves, five long shelves per side, cover all the sides except two; their height, which is the distance from floor to ceiling, scarcely exceeds that of a normal bookcase. One of the free sides leads to a branching that which opens onto another gallery, identical to the first and to all the rest. To the left and right of the branching there are two very small stalls. There, one may sleep standing up. Also through here passes a spiral stairway, which sinks abysmally and soars upwards to remote leafy distances. On the branching there is a mirror which faithfully duplicates all appearances. Ponies usually infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite (if it were, why this illusory duplication?); I prefer to dream that its polished surface represents and promises the infinite! ... light is provided by some spherical fruit which bear the name of lamps. There are two, placed in opposition, in each room. The light they emit is insufficient, but incessant.

    Like all ponies in the Library, I traveled in my youth; I have wandered in search of a book; perhaps the catalogue of catalogues; now that my eyes can hardly decipher what I write, I am preparing to die just a few leagues from the gallery of bookshelves in which I was born. When I die, there will be no shortage of pious hooves or horns to help me over the railing, wherein my body will enter that vacuous space, dissolving or decaying amidst the everlasting black through the fog of the fall, which is infinite. I say that the Library is unending.  The idealists argue that the symmetric branching is a necessary form of absolute space, or, at least... our intuition of space. They reason that a triptych or pentateuch is inconceivable. Let it suffice now for me to repeat the classic dictum: The Library is an infinite tree whose exact center is any one of its rooms and whose bark is inaccessible.

In all good faith,

TWILIGHT SPARKLE