Muted Nonsense

by Twilight

Rating: everyone
Tags: Comedy, Adventure
Length: 2367

Twilight is given an assignment by the Princess to decode a book. It doesn't quite turn out right.

Twilight Sparkle, student of Princess Celestia, is given an assignment like usual. Except she has to decode an old magic book, written in a language even older than Celestia herself.
What happens when she tries to rush learning the language?
Maybe even with the use of magic?

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2012-11-03 05:40:01 UTC

Obtain

It was a beautiful day outside, the sun was shining over the bright green grass, birds were singing, and everypony was off doing their own thing. Everything was seemingly peaceful and calm.

Except the Ponyville library. That was not near calm at all. Really.

Twilight began running frantically around her room.

"No, no, NO!" She yelled in frustration.

"This isn't it!"

Several plenty more paces around the room and she probably would've carved a hole in the ground.

"There aren't any books on this ANYWHERE!" She screamed, throwing a pillow at a wall with her magic, making a quiet THUMP before falling onto the floor in a crumpled mess.

She slowly walked over to the wall, stared at it glumly and tiredly, closed her eyes, then lightly smacked her head into it repeatedly.

"Why"

"Can't"

"I"

"Find"

"This"

"ANYWHERE!?!" Twilight screamed yet again. Not being able to find a book on something was both a new experience and infuriating.

She stared at the ancient symbols again, hoping that there was something relevant at all.

There wasn't.

Spike opened the door, and walked in the room holding a tray with a small plate of hot pancakes on it.

"Twilight, I brought you some-"

"GAHHHH!!" she screamed towards his location in the doorway throwing another pillow directly at him.

"Ack!"

He quickly ducked, the feather pillow soaring over his head and hitting the wall with this time a much louder thump.

"OKAY I'M LEAVING!" He screamed, setting down the tray running out of the room.

He left the door open.

"SPIKE SHUT THE DOOR!!"

"SORRY!!" he yelled in terror, quickly slamming the door shut.

Afterwards, he just stood there, phased.

"What just happened?" he asked himself. He then shook his head to clear his mind, and made his way to the front door.

"Huh. I wonder what Rarity is up to." he said, before leaving the library.

After scanning through the book for the 12th time at least, Twilight still wouldn't give up, of course. She was going to figure out just what these ancient runes were, and what special spells were written about in this monstrosity of a book.

She got it from the Royal Canterlot Archives, with Celestia's permission. It had caught her eye, mostly because of its size and cover.

It was around the size of a small table, and covered with tons of dust. So much that somepony could've actually confused the dust with snow. There was THAT much. Now on the cover, there was a really odd design. There were illustrations of the three types of ponies, each holding what appeared to be a glowing gem. These ponies were surrounded with circles that intersected each other, much like a Venn diagram of sorts.

One day Prior

Twilight was walking through the marble-floored hallways  of the Canterlot Castle with the Sun Princess herself. They were heading over to the private Royal Archives, followed by two guards.

"So, Twilight. I found this mysterious book in the Archives the other day, and I never recalled ever seeing it before."

"What is it about?" Twilight asked.

"It is most likely a book about magic, and the manuscript is far too old for me to understand. I thought that there would be nopony better for the job of decoding than my Faithful Student, Twilight Sparkle." she said.

Twilight's eyes gleamed, happy that her mentor trusted her with something like this.

"So then, Twilight. Are you up for the challenge?" she asked, smiling.

"Yes, Princess! You can count on me!" she replied confidently.

Celestia quietly laughed to herself.

"Thank you, Twilight. I would like you to write me a summary for me if you will by tomorrow."

They arrived at the entrance of the Archives, where 2 more guards stood watching over for any suspicious activity.

Entering, the smell of old, unread books entered Twilight's senses. Oh, how she loved that wonderful feeling.

Celestia was a few feet in front of her, leading the way towards the recently-described 'spell book'. Looking around, Twilight absorbed in as much as possible. Many old works of ponies that have long-passed lined the shelves, and scrolls were neatly filed away in their respective places. Going even further into the back, there were even more mysterious sights. A few small statues of certain ponies were on top of shelves, in sections where their works belonged. Going past a large one, she recognized a mini-statue of Star-Swirl The Bearded.

It was in the wrong section though. Frowning, Twilight picked up her pace a little bit to get back into her place behind Celestia. She couldn't wait to get her hooves on this book! Especially for the princess. Celestia kept silent, with her thoughts to herself for she knew that Twilight was soaking up every little thing that she could see with her own eyes. This was the second time she has been in here, for the first time she hadn't gotten this far.

Back to the Stress-Filled Library

Twilight remembered shortly after receiving the book that very well nopony had ever read this book besides the author and whoever it was intended for.

That obviously meant that it had to be filled with some pretty cool stuff, right?

Twilight sat down, and thought for a moment. Was there anything at ALL that she could use?

She started pacing around the room, thoughts entering and leaving her head. She scanned through a few books, setting them on the floor in several piles on the wood floor.

"Let's see here. 'A Unicorn's Guide to Translating' , no, 'The Languages of Equestria', no, 'Equestrian Dialects', not that either."

She dug around even more, unable to find anything at all. Then, there it was. Smiling, Twilight grabbed the book off of her shelf and hugged it. She studied the title, 'Useful Spells for Learning Languages'. That was a pretty obvious book title, but she didn't care about that at all. She just wanted to get her hooves on that dusty old magic book.

She opened up the book, the wonderful smell of the book's printed pages and the satisfying sound of turning the paper to get where she needed. She looked through, skipping past verbal spells like 'How to understand different languages temporarily' and 'Speaking of a different tongue' , those were of no use to her. After a few more minutes, and 'table of contents' searches later, she finally found what she was looking for.

'HOW TO UNDERSTAND A WRITTEN LANGUAGE PERMANENTLY' was illustrated at the top of the page in bold, with several examples of 'Equestria' written in different languages scattered across the page for personal practice.

Twilight being Twilight, so eager to dive into the big book she hadn't read yet, skipped past all of the additional information on the spell.

"I don't need to read this stuff," she said, with no doubt at all evident in her voice.

"I don't need it at all!"

She flipped one page, going past the beginner's tips and more examples.

"Blah, blah, blah... Hmmm Hmm Hm..." she mumbled, skimming the steps for the spell.

She got up from her sitting position in front of the book, and made her way over to the large runic spell book. This was going to be great! Barely anypony, almost nopony had laid eyes on this work of art for a couple thousand years!

Rubbing her hooves together in anticipation, she stared at the large runic symbols, and re-read the translation spell just to be sure. She started getting focused, which was quite a feat considering how tired she was and how she hadn't made her daily checkli-

"MY CHECKLIST!! OH NONONONONONONONONO!!" she yelled.

"Oh, what am I going to do?" she asked herself, walking in circles from nervousness. If she didn't make one now, or plan on making one, she would have her whole day messed up! And tomorrow! If she didn't make a checklist for tomorrow she would have nothing to do!

"Um, I'll just quickly preform this spell. It looks like a beginner's one, it shouldn't be too hard!" She reassured herself.

Focusing herself, emptying her mind, she focused on the two books. A mellow bird's song was playing through the day's air, and making its way through the window. A woodpecker was getting an afternoon snack in a nearby tree. She continued to focus herself, a bit in a hurry actually. She needed that checklist done.

The two books started to glow within her aura, and lifted up into the air. They spiraled around eachother, and hovered in the air facing towards Twilight. Straight lines of purple light formed, connecting the books together, and a bright lavender energy ball formed in front of the books. Her horn's aura grew bigger, and she was becoming more visibly stressed. This ball was tethered by the light, then launched directly at her horn.

She blinked.

"Is it done?" she asked herself.

She looked around, everything was intact, and the two books were set lightly on the ground closed. She eagerly looked at the big old runic spell book, just itching to open it. Twilight sighed.

"No, Twilight. You already got your spell out of the way. Now you need to get your daily checklist done! Save the book for last." she told herself.

She started to walk over to her drawer full of quills and paper, then she took a glance at her bed. Her soft, warm, fluffy bed. It was seeming to invite her, with a warm greeting of comfortableness.

"I did stay up all night long for this book, I guess a little sleep can't hurt, can it?" she asked.

She galloped over to her bed, and leaped under the covers. Getting in a comfortable position with all the pillows surrounding her, she did not have one single regret of her decision. At all.

She closed her eyes, starting to write her imaginary checklist to sleep. Before she knew it, she was snoozing with no sign of waking up for a couple hours.

Spike was walking back from his day with Rarity at the Carousel Boutique, sucking on a small emerald that she gave him for being such a good helper.

"Man, I hope Twilight has calmed down by now," he said to himself.

"She really needs to take her studies less seriously some times."

After walking for a while, he made his way into the giant tree library and up the creaky wooden stairs. Walking into their room, he saw her passed out on her bed, a happy smile on her face.

'I wonder what she's dreaming about,' Spike thought.

'Probably me.'

With no more paid to mind, he made his way through the tornado of papers and books. Moving aside a couple graphs and a big red book with the title of 'The Big Red Book of Building Devices', he climbed into his basket and pulled his blue blanket over his body. Hopefully everything would sort itself out later.

Spike slowly opened his eyes, groaning. Everything was a blur, and still practically being asleep didn't help him any more on trying to focus on what exactly was happening.

"Wha... what happened Twi...?" Spike slowly asked, almost falling over from drowsiness. The morning had really taken a huge toll on him.

"I overslept, Spike! That's what happened!" Twilight screamed frantically, running around the room.

She skillfully leaped over all of the open-laid books and checklists from previous days of the week so well, Rainbow Dash would've been proud.

"I wanted to take a short nap, but I slept for 2 hours! Now it's almost nighttime, and I have yet to make tomorrows checklist!" she exclaimed.

Spike sighed, clumsily making his way over all over the open-faced books and papers.

"Look, Twi. Missing today's checkli-"

"I'm not worried about today anymore! It's already been said and done!" she wailed.

"Uh, okay. But don't you think that you're a bit too overworked about organizing tomorrow's stuff?" he asked.

"A bit overworked?" she asked, dropping her quill onto the wood floor from her magical grip.

'Uh oh.' Spike thought.

"A BIT overworked?" she asked, turning around and taking a step forward. Her mane was in a complete mess, adding to the insane attitude.

"Listen, Twili-"

"A BIT OVERWORKED?" She yelled.

Spike made a run for it, and grabbed a pillow to use a shield in case Twilight was going to throw anything with in a 4-foot radius at him. Ignoring this, she kept walking towards him.

"I already missed everything I was supposed to do today, besides decoding that book which I have still yet to read, and I'm supposed to write a summary to present to Princess Celestia TOMORROW! Not only that, but I have to go to Canterlot return it because it's too large for the mail, come back to Ponyville to attend one of Pinkie's Parties, AND YOU THINK I'M OVERWORKED?" She howled.

"Uh, a little?" he said nervously, with a sheepish smile. He immediately regretted that decision.

Twilight's eye twitched, before giving him the death glare of ultimate destruction.

"GET OUT!!!!" she yelled.

Spike looked nervously left and right, before quickly taking the opportunity to his advantage and ran out the door and quickly escaped from the library.

Applejack was heading home when she heard the slam of the library door, and a stressed and out-of-breath Spike on the outside of it.

"Y'all okay Spike?" she asked, trotting up to him.

Spike looked up at her, leaning against the library door frame before catching his breath again.

"Yeah, I guess so. Twilight's gotten all stressed out and everything over some silly checklist or something." he said.

"IM NOT STRESSED OUT!" She screamed, her voice projecting out from an open window.

"Ah hear ya Spike. Just take care, okay? Trah not to get int'a much trouble..." she trailed off, then took a quick glance at the window.

"An' good luck."

"Alright, thanks AJ!" he said.

"Cya Spike!" she said, trotting away.

Spike thought to himself on how weird of a day this was.

Little did he know tomorrow was just going to be worse.

No really.

Thanks for reading! :)