The Golden Oak library was empty but for one mare, who sat at the desk of the front area, reading a book she’d already read at least three times. It was an old story. She’d hoped it would be comforting, the way old stories sometimes were.

Instead, she found herself unable to concentrate on the words or engage herself with the story. She wasn’t sure why, usually a good book and a nice cup of chamomile tea were all she needed, to relax the day away. It wasn’t either that she enjoyed the boisterousness of her roommate or the annoying questions of the ponies who hadn’t bothered to memorize the entire Dewlap Decimal system.

But…it would have been nice if one of Miss Cherilee’s students came by. She didn’t mind introducing foals to the favorite books of her youth (well, she’d never had a youth, but she had favorite books). She even enjoyed reading to the weanlings, on the rare occasion anyone had time to take them here.

Evening Star shook her head at her own foolishness. The mayor had chosen her for this position because she liked the quiet and because…well, nopony besides Trixie really felt comfortable around her. They all still remembered when Zecora had carried her out of the Everfree Forest, mumbling about strange and…let's face it, unsettling things.

The citizens of Ponyville weren’t as prejudiced as they had once been. The Princess of Friendship and the other Bearers of Harmony had made sure of that. But still, they’d never known what to think of an amnesiac, with no known family or friends, who for the first few weeks of her life in town, had pushed away the hoof of friendship, whenever it had been extended in her direction.

It was Evening Star’s fault, as always. She needed everything to be in the exactly the same place she left it and when ponies put a book back in the wrong place, it ruined her entire routine. She had tried to express, as nicely as she could, that it was important to keep each book where it belonged, so she could easily find it for other ponies. And they would just stare at her, like she was crazy. Which she was.

The reason why she lived with Trixie, was because just like she put up with Trixie’s excessive use of the third person, Trixie put up with her obsessive tendencies. It meant that Trixie didn’t ever have to clean up after all.

She closed the book. If she kept thinking about how nobody liked her and how they had every right not to, she was bound to get depressed. And if she got depressed, Trixie would try to cheer her up and that was bound to be worse than the depression itself.

Her horn glowed as the book lifted off her desk and flew to the gap in the shelf from which she’d procured it. Then she used her telekinesis to remove the feather duster from under her desk and begin making her hourly rounds, dusting the sparkling clean books and making sure everything was where it was supposed to be.

Evening Star didn’t remember being in school, just like she didn’t remember having parents or indeed, any kind of a life before Ponyville. But even though she didn’t know how she knew; from her earliest memories she could read. And reading was one of the few things that took her mind off the gnawing unease of existence.

It wasn’t fair. Most ponies got to spend their whole lives doing what they loved, surrounded by ponies who supported them. Evening Star liked being surrounded by books, she liked the comfort of being able to always put everything back where it belonged. But did she love it? Did she want to do it until the pink in her mane had faded and the fuzz on her muzzle turned gray?

Her cutie mark didn’t even have anything to do with being a librarian after all. It was some strange symbol that in all her research, she’d never found a picture of. And when she looked at it too closely, that gnawing sensation she got whenever a book was misplaced or someone rowdy came into the library, only got worse.
A cutie mark was supposed to be an expression of your deepest self. What did it mean when she didn’t even know what hers meant? Like everything else in her life, it was…unfinished, covered in a cloud she would do anything to clear. If only there was a way.

But whatever magic had taken away her memories, she’d not yet found a way to dispel it and with each passing day, she worried more and more, that she never would.

Aaaaaaand now she was depressed.

She sighed. It was impossible to stop herself worrying, it was even more impossible to stop herself worrying about worrying. The only thing she could do was dust the sparkling clean, completely untouched shelves and let the mindless repetition relax her twisted up nerves.

That’s when she found it. A gap in the foal’s literature section was missing. Evening Star didn't like gaps. There was something about…holes…that made her feel like the world was closing in on her. She kept extra books under her desk so she could fill a gap, if one ever appeared. If she didn't have a book which fit into the offending absence, she would immediately go out and purchase a new addition thick enough to fill the gap. Evening Star would sometimes spend hours just re-arranging the books on a shelf, just to make sure there weren't any gaps.

To make matters worse, this book hadn’t been borrowed. Despite her spotty long-term memory, she knew the titles of every book in her library. And she was excellent at remembering what books had been lent to whom. This missing volume (Foal's and Horsehold Tales by the Brothers Grimace) had not once been borrowed in Evening's entire career in the civil service. It was the kind of old storybook that no parent in their right mind would read to their offspring nowadays, because of how likely it was to give them nightmares. In fact, the stories in the tome had been so gruesome and cruel, that Evening Star had never been able to force herself to finish it.

That meant somepony had taken this book, without borrowing it, since her last hourly cleaning.

There was a note though, sticking out of that unexpected absence, a little sticky yellow piece of paper with half-illegible words written on it. Tentatively she reached up and snatched it with her hoof, turning away from the gap to read it, unable to concentrate with the glaring opening in her peripherals.

“HEY EV, TOOK YOUR BOOK FOR SHOW. DON’T FREAK OUT! - YOUR BUFF”

BUFF. Best Unicorn Friend Forever. Only Trixie called her that. She’d come up with it when they’d first become roommates, back when she was still trying to rope Evening into using her magic to be her stage assistant (it was hard enough, most days, going outside, without having to perform magic on command).

And now Trixie, "The Great and Powerful", had taken one of the books without borrowing it. All she'd had to do was ask. It would have at least given Evening Star a chance to mark it down and be sure the book didn’t get lost. They weren’t her books after all. They belonged to the town, to the Equestrian government as a matter of fact. That’s why you had to borrow them. If you didn’t borrow them, they were considered stolen. And if they got destroyed while stolen, she’d have to ask the town to pay for a copy.

This was an old book. It was probably worth a lot of bits. Certainly, worth more than a day of her meager stipend. She’d have to explain to the mayor, who had taken her in when she had nothing, that she’d lost a book. The mayor would be disappointed in her. More than that, she’d be furious and rightfully so. Evening Star had failed at her job. The mayor might not trust her to protect the books anymore. She might decide to fire Evening Star and hire someone who was more trustworthy, someone who didn’t let old books get destroyed as a prop in a gaudy magic show.

But Evening Star’s job was all she had. Without the Golden Oak she’d be homeless. And she’d never be able to get a job as a librarian someplace else, not if any-pony caught wind that she’d let a book get destroyed!

Most ponies would have been annoyed. Some might have gotten angry. But Evening Star was too scared for anger. She needed to get that book back and quick, before something went terribly wrong (as it always was about to).

She grabbed her only cloak and flung it over her, before rushing out into the cool spring afternoon, her eyes searching the sky for any sign of the fireworks that heralded her roommate’s shows. When they failed to register anything but storm clouds, she ran up to the nearest ponies, interrupting a conversation between two good friends to beg “Do either of you know where Trixie is?”

One of the ponies, the one with the cream-colored coat smiled, warmly. “Oh, you mean Trixie the Great? Yeah, I heard she was set up in front of the carousel tonight…hey, you're the mare who lives with her, aren't you? Do you think you could get me and my friend tickets for her next show?”

Evening Star didn’t answer. She was already galloping away in the direction of the Carousel Boutique. She was winded by the time she turned the corner and saw the mare she was looking for. There was Trixie, standing on a pop-up stage in front of her caravan (which was parked entirely too close to the entrance to the boutique for it to be safe), wearing that stupid cloak and that stupid hat (real wizard ponies didn’t wear cloaks and hats like that), and holding Foal's and Horsehold Tales with nothing more than her telekinesis, above a crowd of foals, half of which were holding lit sparklers or sugary confectionaries.

She was currently reading the story about the filly who came across the house with three bowls, three chairs and three beds, while she used her magic to project images of growling bears in the air above her.

“And just as Goldi-Mane drifted off to the land of nod, the Ursa Major and her family returned to home…” Trixie said, with a devilish smile. The foals drew closer to the stage, sensing that this was the part of the story where Goldi-Mane would get her comeuppance for breaking into someone’s house, sitting on all their furniture and eating their food.

“Trixie!” Evening yelled, shoving through the circle of parents to get within sight of her roommate.

Trixie looked up from the pages of the book, confused and then frowned. “Evening, I’m doing a show right now, okay? The Great and Powerful Trixie can chase a ladybug away for you later.”

Evening blushed as everypony around her laughed or clapped at the revelation. Trixie had promised she wouldn’t tell anypony about that!

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the book.

“Trixie, you can’t just take books from the library whenever you feel like it!” Evening replied, pushing past the last of the yearlings to get to the edge of the stage.

“Uh, that’s why libraries are for Evening.” Trixie said. That got another round of laughs from the crowd.

Evening gritted her teeth. “I mean you didn’t borrow it...you just took it!”

“Tomato-potato. Now go away. You are making the Great and Powerful Trixie lose her place in the story.” Trixie said. Without looking she used her telekinesis to pick up Evening and toss her over the crowd of laughing foals like yesterday’s garbage.

Evening landed with a thud in a dirty puddle, staining her only cloak. She trembled for a moment in humiliation and rage. Then she raised herself back to her hooves. She turned back to Trixie, her own horn flaring with pink energy.

“And when the Ursa Major found that someone had snuck into her house and eaten the porridge she’d made for her husband and son, she was overcome with primordial rage!” Trixie read as her spell created the image of a roaring bear above her.

“NO!” Evening Star yelled, using her own telekinesis to shove the members of the crowd out of the way as she stomped back toward the stage, still dripping. “You took that book without borrowing it, Trixie. You took it without telling me, because you knew I would be mad. And you! Didn’t! Even. Care!”

With each punctuated word she shook mud from her mane and clapped her hooves down on the cobblestones until they ached. Trixie looked taken aback and the colorful sparkling images behind her slowly dissipated with the spell that maintained them forgotten.

“All you had to do was ask, ‘hey, Evening Star, can I borrow one of these books for one of my stupid shows, where all I do is talk about how great I am?’ But you couldn’t even do THAT!” Evening snarled, as climbed up onto the stage. “You know how much my job matters to me; you know how important it is that I keep this job. And still, you act like it doesn’t matter!”

Trixie stared at Evening Star in surprise for a moment, then her eyes narrowed. “Oh, please, Evening Star…no librarian in all of Equestria is more persnickety than you! I didn’t tell you about the book, because I knew you’d make a big deal out of it. And do you know why the Great and Powerful Trixie knew you’d make a big deal out of it? Because you don’t have any friends! All you do, all day long is sitting around worrying about your stupid books!”

Evening gritted her teeth together, then closed her eyes and yelled. “THEY AREN’T MY BOOKS!”

With that, she tried to grab hold of the book with her telekinesis, but Trixie, who was no slouch in the magical department, refused to let go. The world slowed, as Evening Star watched the century's old tome rip in half, sending a spray of pages swirling up into the air.

“No! No! No! No! NO!” Evening Star let go of the remains of the book and scrambled to grab all the pages with her telekinesis before they could land on a sparkler or in a puddle.

That was when she heard the first great *THOOM!* of something slamming into the ground. Whatever it was, it sent the crowd in front of the stage scattering in the direction of their homes. Evening Star didn’t care, she was too busy reading the page numbers of what she'd salvaged to be sure she hadn’t missed one.

*THOOM!* The sound came again, louder this time and she felt the stage creak beneath her.

“Okay, okay…I can still fix this…” Evening Star said, grabbing the remains of the book with her hooves and stuffing the re-ordered pages inside of it. “A little glue, it will be good as new…”

“Evening…” It was Trixie, she was standing a few feet away and her voice suddenly sounded very weak.

Evening Star scowled up at her. “None of this would have happened if you had just borrowed the book like you were supposed to Trixie!”

Trixie didn’t answer. She was staring up at something and as she lifted a hoof to point, Evening Star followed her gaze.

Towering over the entire town of Ponyville was a fifteen-story tall translucent purple bear, with the designs of various constellations glowing bright red along the surface of its fur.

“URSA MAJOR!” Trixie screamed as the creature opened its massive, saber-toothed jaws and let out a roar that shook the cobblestones of the town.

Author's Note

Make sure to check out the story which inspired this one: Mimetos by Flipwix! Not only is the concept great, but the prose is fantastic.