“Do you really mean it?”
“Of course I do Twilight, I’ve never met as amazing a unicorn as you, ever in my life.”
She leaned in towards the stallion, both of them puckering their lips for a first kiss, when his mouth opened wide.
“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” He screamed.
“Huh?” Twilight replied.
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
The rooster’s caw pealed across the morning sky like a trout slipping through a stream- quick and agile, penetrating the ears of a listener in quick, short bursts. Twilight Sparkle groaned as she rolled over in her bed, pondering the dream ...nightmare? from which she had just awoke.
She lay paralyzed under the weight of her blankets, the weight of her depression. My whole life has been trying my hardest at one thing after another after another... When will a reward pay off? I mean, I appreciate all the things I have, of course I do! Caring friends, a thriving community, my own library to run, for Celestia’s sake! So why do I feel so down?
“Because it’s another monotonous day of work,” she said to herself aloud, “grinding, with no sense of purpose, no reward at the end of the tunnel, no goal to achieve,” and added within her mind, as a postscript, and nopony to understand me.
Thrown into the air, the blankets sailed lazily down onto the now vacant bed, a parachute with no burden. The purple unicorn stood in front of the mirror, blinking the sleep out of her eyes as she grabbed a comb with her magic to smooth the knots of sleep from her mane.
She noticed the round dimples that accentuated her cheeks, her wide eyes that framed her small nose, the way her mane cascaded sensually across her back. She sighed at her image. Even though she was satisfied with it, she hadn’t met anypony else who was.
It was just one of those days apparently. One of those days that, for no reason, carried with it a downtrodden undertone. As far as anything was concerned, it ought to have been a lovely morning full of hope and joy at the bright sun, the clear skies, the crisp grassy scent in the air. Yet the pony could not help but feel anything but a deep sorrow within her. It was as if something had taken the part of her that reveled in the experience of every new day and twisted it sharply, causing a fresh sunrise to drain her hope rather than uplift it.
Trotting downstairs, she called to Spike to get up for the day, to be ready for any early book-readers. She pondered her assistant: he had an eye for only Rarity and despite her obvious attraction to the Canterlot Elite and the notion of Nobility, Spike never grew depressed or even distracted by her inaccessibility. Maybe it was just a dragon thing; once a jewel is spotted, it’s never forgotten.
Opening the library was the same as ever. Twilight set a kettle of water on the stove for morning tea before taking a duster and sweeping off her shelves. Then she grabbed books from the overnight return slot and began to reshelve them, hardly paying attention to the subjects they were on. Ordinarily, she kept statistics filled on how often a book was checked out, by who, for how long, on what subject, in order to determine what sort of information was flowing through Ponyville and what might be needed at a later date; today she just didn’t care. Perhaps that’s why she didn’t consciously notice the book she had just put up, Attracting Your Special Somepony.
Twilight pondered last night, as she lay in bed before sleep: it was nearly mating season and she had felt her estrus tugging at her consciousness. Under the blankets, she had done what she had needed to satisfy her physical urges but there was an emotional anvil that came attached to that, one that self-pleasure seemed to do nothing to relieve.
Her ears perked up as the tinkle of the doorbell drifted into them; the door to her library had opened for the first time today.
She stopped her reshelving to greet the customer, yet she felt a presence at her back already.
“Attracting Your Special Somepony, huh?”
Twilight was at a loss. She checked the book she had last put in place and, noticing the title, began to blush profusely: not only was it directly related to what was on her mind, but the stranger behind her was able to stab at her innermost thoughts because of it.
The voice was familiar, yet she could not immediately recognize the deep tones, and she was struck by what the words made her feel; it was not an emotion, but a physical sensation of pleasure, which she could not name or understand.
Turning, she saw the well-built earth pony, Big Macintosh, with a playful smirk on his face, clearly teasing, nothing more. Flabbergasted, she merely looked at him, unable to form the proper words to respond.
Darn it Twilight, why do you have to be so awkward all the time! Her neurons struggled to fire their impulses in the correct order, her brain mixing up thoughts and speech patterns as her eyes met the farmpony’s.
She didn’t know what it was about eyes that were so engaging: like the night sky, they seemed endless. Boundless but also closed off and unreachable, something within them so far away as to be inaccessible. A paradox requiring eternal examination.
Finally, the words struggled out, “Were you looking for anything?”
He eyed her quizzically, but did not inquire further into her mind, other than for his task. “Eeyup. I was hopin’ you might have somethin’ on the topic of how to lure gneevil’s away from apple-tree branches. Been having a mighty infestation and Applebloom, just learnin' this stuff for the first year, refused to use the conventional ‘buck ‘em down, scare ‘em off’ technique, so's AJ sent me over to find an alternative solution. Said somethin' about wildlife abuse...”
“Oh alright! Let me just check the botany section over here.... We’ve got 25 Permanent Pest Solutions but I bet those would be just as bad in Applebloom’s mind so... How about this one? It’s called Maintaining Balance: From Trees to Bees to Bugs and Seeds”
Purple glow surrounded the small and tattered book, pulling it from the rows and dropping it directly into the saddlebags of the earth pony. I’ll have to rebind that one soon, the condition of the poor thing is unacceptable
Big Mac nodded appreciatively and said, “I’ll return this soon, hopefully it’ll have somethin’ useful in there. If not, well,” he shrugged, turned tail, and walked out the door.
A loud wailing caught her attention and Twilight dashed to the kitchen to save her teapot from boiling over. She prepared a thimble of breakfast tea and dropped it in a mug, pouring hot water over it. The steam drifted up from the container, wafting the scent of steeping herbs into the pony’s appreciative nostrils.
Sipping the tea, she felt, perhaps, more fortified for the rest of the day. But the sense of longing that tugged at her innards remained unabated.
A thin bead of sweat trickled across her forehead, down the side of her face, hanging for a short moment on the tips of her chin-fur before cascading down to shatter across the wooden floorboards.
Noontime had long passed, Celestia’s sun was setting, and Twilight was just getting the last book in her pile shelved. It was a monster of a thing- enormous brass clasps in the binding with thick, yellowed parchment between two hardwood covers- a book to set an example for all books.
Heaving it into place with a burst of magical energy, the unicorn no longer had any distractions from her inner turmoil. She reflected on the activities of the day.
After the hunky Big Mac had left, the Library had slowed to, essentially, a halt.
A few ponies had come in and out but Spike had helped them with what they had needed and they had gone on their way without hardly consulting the unicorn at all.
Twilight pondered those minds who fled her own: it was strange how there were some ponies who grew jealous at the achievements of others. For a pony like Twilight, often hailed as smarter or having a mind that shone brighter than others, there was always a feeling of isolation, of being cut off from others. For some reason, most ponies could not communicate with her on a level that they felt comfortable with. Yet, those that avoided her thought of themselves as absolutely spectacular, for the most part. But the the librarian knew within her that truly great minds did not grow jealous at those who achieved relative feats, they sang with joy upon seeing one with whom they could actually communicate.
Alienated, she was unable to discuss those but the most basic matters, unaware of how to translate her existential crisis into meaningful words. So she remained one lonely unicorn, stuck within a bubble formed by the minds of others- isolated for the mere crime of existing at a more profound level of consciousness.
And so it was that another day of running the information center of Ponyville ended, and Twilight was left alone with her thoughts.
She shivered and cast her gaze to the floor, wishing the empty and cold space at her side into oblivion.