Taking her usual seat in her usual library (or what counted for ‘usual’ for her these days, it was rare she made it back to the castle), Twilight fumed. She had come here looking for a book, something to take her mind off everything, but what could she possibly read at this point?

Even ignoring the fact that she’d conquered every text on these shelves (save for the Canterlot census results), she didn’t think there was a book in all of Equestria that’d be engaging enough to distract her from all of this.

But maybe something else might? She thought of the juggling book she had picked out on a whim. She had left it behind, but she wasn’t going to go back and risk another confrontation with her mother.

Her mother. Something stirred, and Luna's and her… Pinkie Pie’s comments from the day before drifted through the fog of her brain. She remembered them mentioning something about theories. Essays. Published manuscripts written by… him.

Her father.

The most sincere clown there ever was, huh?

“Excuse me?” Twilight addressed the empty air in front of her. She hadn’t lived in the castle for a few years, but she hadn’t forgotten the peculiarities and privileges that came with it.

Thus she hadn’t forgotten that royal aides were everywhere. She suspected the castle may be partially made out of them. Sure enough, the air parted, giving way to a middle-aged unicorn.

“Yes, Princess? How may I help you?” The aide asked cooly.

“I’m trying to find anything written by Peritwinkle, if you don’t mind.”

“Peritwinkle?” The unicorn thought for a moment. “There’s not going to be any of his works here, but the southwest library wing should have the entire collection. If you’d follow me.”

The mare beckoned Twilight out of the comfort of her favorite library and into the cold halls of the rest of the castle. It was almost chilling to Twilight how quickly her opinion had soured on every non-book area of this place. Too many alcoves held too many memories of too many lessons taught to her by a Princess who had lied to her too many times. To think she had once accidentally called Celestia ‘mom’. Is that why she made Cadance call her auntie?

“She cried for days after she gave you up, you know.”

“Huh?” Twilight Sparkle turned towards the unicorn aide. There were a lot of them in the castle, and Twilight’s interactions with them as a student had been limited, seeing as most of their time was taken up serving the princess directly. Still, she seemed familiar. Raven Inkwell was her name, wasn’t it?

“Sorry, who cried?”

“Princess Celestia. The day she brought you back she had asked for my assistance. She didn’t know a thing about foal care, hadn’t even changed a diaper in a thousand years, she said. I spent a week helping before she… before your family took you home.”

“Mmm,” Twilight grunted. Great. Just another pony that lied to her.

“My mother passed away last year. Cancer.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We…. We fought, sometimes,” Inkwell sniffed. “I was happy that we were able to make up in time before she was gone, even if I didn’t end up getting to spend as much time as I would have liked with her.”

Ah. That’s where this was going.

“Did Celestia put you up to this?” Accused Twilight. “Another stupid thing in my life she manufactured from the start?”

“I’m not lying, Your Highness. I would never. She loves you, she loves you so much she’d forgo the only chance she’d ever get to see you grow up if it meant you’d have a better life.”

“So you think she did the right thing?”

Raven Inkwell finally stopped at the door, and looked downcast. “I think… I think that when a pony loves someone, they’ll try to do what they think is best for that pony. Sometimes, they don’t realize that it may hurt that pony in ways they didn’t intend.”

“It still hurts,” Twilight replied flatly.

“But she still loves you,” Raven Inkwell countered. “You’ve no idea how happy she was when she learned you had been accepted to the School for Gifted Unicorns.”

Twilight paused, her anger suddenly cooled. “When I’d been accepted? She didn’t know I had applied?”

“She didn’t even know you were still in Canterlot until you nearly destroyed the testing classrooms. She didn’t want you to feel like you hadn’t earned it.”

Twilight opened her mouth, then closed it. The unicorn aide nodded, opening the door to the library, several other scholars already inside.

“You’ll find copies of Peritwinkle’s works on aisle P, stack twelve. Will that be all, Princess?”

“You’re dismissed, Miss Inkwell.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” she turned to enter whatever hidden dimension aides presumably lived in, but then hesitated. “I hope it works out for you.”

Twilight just rolled her eyes, trotting down the aisles to find her quarry.

Her eyes spotted a collection of small leatherbound volumes, bright purple in color. Levitating them down, the purple text declared them to be the Lex Comedium I, the Lex Comedium II, and the Unfinished Juggler’s Arcanium (with a new foreword by Ponyacci).

Bingo. Hard to be anything else with names like that, though the Unfinished part of the last one’s title was a little worrying. But that worry was buried under the excitement of reading a new book series in a field of study she hadn’t even given a thought to.

Well, no thought save for certain very enticing fantasies of her curled up in front of a warm fire with a certain party pony as she lectured Twilight in extreme detail the fundamental laws of comedy science before they—

No, no thoughts about anything like that. She was angry right now, angry! And she had her father’s legacy to educate herself on. Generations of entertainers had been inspired by these slim little booklets. Time to see what all the fuss was about.

And maybe, just maybe, learn a little bit about the one family member that couldn’t disappoint her. Unless he didn’t properly cite any of his scientific sources.

Opening the first page of the first volume, Twilight did what she did best when she was upset: lose herself in a good book.

Dry wit. That’s how she would describe it. Twilight wasn’t the best judge of humor, having tried to dissect it to its essential bits before being informed by Pinkie that humor didn’t work that way (which is to say, she was using the wrong scientific methods), but Peritwinkle’s stream of consciousness came off as… wry? If that was the appropriate word for it.

Still, she wasn’t sure she understood what the big deal was. It was worth a sensible smile here and there, but maybe the Royal Fool’s humor was just too out of date for her to understand.

And look there, one of his proofs was outright wrong. He forgot to integrate the last exponent which made it come out to–

Oh, wait. That integral would correspond with the matrix on page 10 and…

Oh!

Twilight couldn’t help but giggle a bit. Clever! A few of the other ponies turned to glare at her, and she blushed a bit.

“Sorry. Calculus joke.”

As if a veil had been lifted from Twilight’s eyes, she started looking closer at the various equations and treatises. Even if they were on things like pies and the right trajectory for a squirting flower there was an uninhibited wit to the Fool’s formulas. Even when the answers were wrong they were so comically over the top wrong that it was clearly him poking fun at it all.

They were good. Brilliant. More and more she found herself giggling like a schoolfilly, earning her dirty looks from those who took the sanctity of library silence a bit more seriously, and she excused herself to a remote and comfortable corner where she could turn the pages and cackle to herself in peace.

It hurt to laugh. And not in a good way.

Dammit, they were hilarious. Her father was hilarious. He wrote like she did. He thought like she did. And it wasn’t helping her mood. The least Celestia could have done is suggested this as part of her curriculum.

Maybe then reading these books wouldn’t hurt so much.

Maybe then she wouldn’t have felt the despair of knowing a pony in the exact instance she realized she’d never even talk to him.

Maybe she wouldn’t feel ashamed at having sent Pinkie away in tears. After all, Pinkie had gotten these exact same jokes.

But… this was what Twilight was left with, wasn’t it? A title she didn’t earn, family members that couldn’t tell the truth, a… somepony she had chased away (and who knew what they even were right now) and scrolls written by a dead pony she’d never, ever meet.

Emotional exhaustion reached its boiling point and metastasized into fully physical exhaustion. She found her eyelids getting heavy, and stifled a yawn as best she could.

“I wish… I wish I could have known you. At least talked to you, just once. Maybe you’d get it. Maybe you’d understand.”

Sagging down into the comforting weight of old book-nook pillows, Twilight drifted off to sleep.

Author's Note

Thanks to Trolleytrainer for the proofread.