Chapters How not to behave in a library.
Twilight Sparkle was a happy pony. But this day she was even happier than usual. With a big smile she trotted trough the old, cupper plated doors of the "Bibliotheca Celestianum", also known as the Canterlot Library. It was a part of the vast Canterlot Archives, containing thousands of works of pony literature. And as a student Twilight had been granted entrance to this precious books for her research about piracy and seafaring during the early ponyistic age. This was going to be so fun!
The lavender unicorn stopped by the small cafeteria next to the lobby and bought a take away cocoa and a cinnamon bun. She knew that she would stay at the library for a couple of hours and she really didn't want to have to leave her studies just to go and buy some food later. It was always good to be prepared, she thought.
Soon she had passed the security check (where she had to leave her bags, this library contained the most valuable books and bags were not allowed because of an earlier incident where a grey pegasus had "borrowed" the Golden Book of Equestria and somehow lost it on her way home. It was later found in the bushes together with an empty box of muffins) and approached the help desk.
When the librarian had left, Twilight slowly opened the book and started to read and take notes on her papers. After a while she remembered that her cocoa would get cold and she decided to have a sip. She placed the cup right beside the open book. A pinkish unicorn with purple mane approached out of nowhere. She wore an elaborate dress.
The handwritten pages were very thin and every time there was a little draft they wanted to get turned over by the wind. It annoyed Twilight and she decided to put something in the book to hold them down. Twilight put her cinnamon bun on a napkin and placed it on the page as a makeshift paperweight. She continued to read.
Suddenly she heard hoof steps coming from behind! Could it be Miss Crumplepony? Quickly she decided to hide the bun under the book, but she hadn't thought of the cup placed in the middle of the page! When Twilight lifted the old incunabulum the cup fell over and hot cocoa flushed over the parchment like a brown deluge!
But as soon as North Star had left, Twilight opened the book and watched in horror the mess that she had made. The Illustrated Incunabulum was donated to the library by princess Celestia herself! It was probably over a thousand years old! What to do? What to do?!
The lavender unicorn came up with a brilliant plan. She quickly ripped out the damaged pages and replaced them with blank pages from another book that she had taken from the shelf. If she could carefully copy all the text from the damaged pages, nopony would notice!
Then she came up with an even more brilliant plan. What if she could just switch the book's cover? Twilight looked around to make sure that nopony watched. Then she tried to tear the cover from the old Incunabulum. It was hard work, but after a while she had managed to rip the cover from the book. She then took another book, a new one that was in perfect condition, and discretely tore of its cover. Now she had three damaged books!
When half an hour had passed, Twilight decided it was time to hide the evidence, return the book and discretely sneak away. Hopefully the librarian wouldn't notice that it was now a completely different book between the covers.
Very slowly she rose from the chair and sneaked away from the table, constantly moving in an angle that would hopefully hide the book from view. Then she heard a pony approaching!
As soon as Miss Crumplepony had left, Twilight jammed the book into the space between a heavy glass door and the doorframe. With her hooves pressed against the door she managed to tear the book loose from her tail. But in the process she cracked the glass and a couple of long, dark blue tail hairs were left, still glued to the cover! Oh no!
On her way out she saw North Star preparing to return a book that she had borrowed. Twilight got an idea. A very, very villainous idea... Slowly she sneaked up behind North Star and switched their books when the pinkish unicorn was looking away. She had made it! Nopony would discover her secret!
When North Star returned her book to the librarian, the pony looked very angry when she discovered its condition.
Author's Note
This was inspired by a Mr Bean episode. I thought "What would happen, if Twilight did it?"
How not to behave in a library.
Princess Celestia, the alicorn ruler of Equestria, was enjoying a cup of tea in her royal garden where the birds sang almost as beautiful as if Fluttershy had directed them. The princess took a sip, skilfully levitating the small porcelain cup with her magic.
"Princess Celestia?"
Slowly the princess put her cup down. The unicorn followed it with her gaze until it stood firmly on the table.
* * *
Spike knocked on Twilight's door a second time but there was still no answer. Slowly he turned the handle and opened the door. He peered into the room.
After a while Spike's patience had reached its limit and he just tossed the letter to her under the bed.
"T. Sparkle.
I have summoned you to Canterlot Castle for a meeting tomorrow morning. Report your presence to the guard at arrival.
Her Royal Highness Princess Celestia, Alicorn Ruler of Equestria and Protector of the Crystal Empire, Goddess of the Sun, Divine Ruler of Ponykind, Domina et Dea, Guardian of Life Eternal."
That was all. No mention of the book or anything that would give her the slightest clue about the princess's mood except for the shortness of the text that somehow conveyed the impression of a very displeased princess. Twilight's heart jumped in her chest and her hooves felt shaky.
* * *
The same evening Twilight stepped aboard the Friendship Express. Her bags were packed with books, parchment and quills. A cold autumn wind played with her dark blue mane.
During the entire journey Twilight carried a vain hope that the train would somehow get delayed or misdirected to a far away corner of the realm. What would Celestia do? She could easily banish Twilight or put her back in magic kindergarten! Or maybe throw her in jail! She knew that she had caused damage to a valuable historical book in a way that was unacceptable for any pony, and the fact that she was a trained librarian only made it worse.
When the Friendship Express arrived at the Canterlot Station, glittering in the golden rays of dawn, there was no sign of Twilight at all. She wasn't on the train anymore.
When the station pony had left Twilight realized that she could not possibly afford the ticket to Vanhoover with the few bits left in her bags. And what if the princess would put up wanted posters all over Equestria? In her imagination she could clearly see her being dragged away in hoofcuffs by Celestia's royal guards. Twilight leapt from the bench and started to pace around in circles. Small pearls of sweat emerged on her forehead.
Then she got an idea! What if she'd come up with some clever disguise and a fake name? Then nopony would ever recognize her and she could continue to live In Equestria as if nothing had happened. That was truly a brilliant idea!
When she left the restroom the station pony, who now was sweeping the floor with a broom, looked at her in bewilderment.
How not to behave in a library.
It was morning in Equestria. Twilight Sparkle, still dressed in her fake beard and mail sack, was hiding behind the oil shed at the small train station were she had spent most of the night. The railway police hadn't shown up yet and she began to realize that the station pony had just wanted to scare her off. What annoyed her the most was that her ingenious disguise so clearly had failed its purpose. Why didn't anypony believe the idea that she was Twidalf the Grey? She realized, reluctantly, that she needed another disguise.
Twilight saw a building with the text "STORAGE DEPOT" written on its door. Slowly she stepped closer to the entrance and used her magic to pick the lock in a way that few other ponies could do. Without a sound the lavender unicorn opened the door and continued into the storage building, sneaking on the tips of her hooves.
The room was very dark and a smell of mothballs filled the damp air. In a big, wooden crate she found a heap of old uniforms of the type used by railway ponies. Twilight immediately donned a blue jacket, a shirt and a tie. She also put on a peaked cap. Now she had a real disguise, she thought. The unicorn looked at her reflection in the mirror and she was very content with what she saw. She sure looked very much like a railway worker.
"Get aboard the train at once! We are already late and all the other brakeponies are at their stations. Hurry up!"
* * *
The freight train traveled through the Equestrian landscape in a trail of black smoke and a smell of burnt coal. It was not a pink, gingerbread-house like train as the Friendship Express but a instead very train-like train, Twilight thought. She enjoyed the wind in her mane and the beautiful view from the freight car. Oh, how she liked being a brakepony!
After about an hour another railway pony emerged on top of a freight car and joined her on the platform.
Inky was a very friendly pony, and Twilight appreciated her company. She knew so much about the railway and after Twilight had told her that she was new, Inky had promised to show her how to switch rails.
* * *
Several hours later the train arrived at a big, industrial railway station in the middle of nowhere. In the north and south Twilight could admire the high, blue shapes of the mountain range far away and in the east she saw the dark green mass of the enormous forest near Galloping Gorge. But right here, where the train had stopped, was only flatland. She jumped off the platform and started to pick some blackberries from the brushwood nearby the tracks. Twilight realized that she hadn't eaten anything since yesterday and now she was really hungry.
The unicorn was so preoccupied with her blackberries that she didn't notice what was going on in the background... If she had looked up from the brushwood she would have seen that the locomotive was now released from its freight cars and quickly moving along the tracks to the other side of the station while another locomotive was preparing to take its place. The engine driver, a little black pegasus with a pile of glowing embers as her cutie mark, was busy operating the heavy piece of machinery. She carefully monitored the instruments on the back head of the boiler while at the same time trying to look out the window. It was not entirely according to regulations, but she thought that the high competence of her co-workers would guarantee that the tracks were clear and the freight cars carefully secured. Little did she know...
Meanwhile Twilight realised that she had gotten a purple stain from the blackberries on her shirt. She tried to rub it off, but the stain remained.
She looked up just in time to see the locomotive bump into the freight cars with a force of several tons. And since she hadn't secured the brakes on any of them, all the cars got pushed into motion! The whole train was now loose.
Inky Pie and the other railway ponies slowly emerged from the debris. Nopony was hurt, although their manes were ruffled and their clothes covered with dust. The service depot was not a pretty sight, its walls looked like a giant had tried to do origami while drunk, Inky thought. Some of the freight cars were derailed and the draisine was destroyed beyond repair. Its windows were shattered and diesel from its broken engine had formed a big puddle in the dust.
And at that time nopony noticed a small, lavender coloured horn bobbing up and down in the blackberry brushwood. It was a rather ashamed Twilight Sparkle, quietly sneaking away from the scene. She constantly pricked herself on the thorns but she kept quiet as didn't want to alert the railway ponies of her escape. It was definitely time for another disguise, she thought. Preferably something less dangerous...
How not to behave in a library.
An astray Twilight Sparkle walked trough the flatland south of the northern woods. The landscape consisted mostly of meadows and streams with clear, cold water from the high, snowy peaks of the Unicorn range. Twilight had invented a new, clever disguise; she had turned her jacket inside out and somehow thought that this would make her look like a totally different pony at a distance. Although she was a very intelligent unicorn, she wasn't exactly a master of disguise like Pinkie Pie. But in theory it was a great plan. If she only hadn't left her spell books at the storage building...
But at least she didn't starve. She could eat the grass, even if it wasn't a favourite dish for a pony used to cupcakes and sandwiches with daisies on them. Twilight had enjoyed a privileged and comfortable life, and now she was walking Equestria's road less lands like a wild pony. She couldn't go to Canterlot, and she couldn't return to Ponyville either. And now she could not even use the bucking Friendship Express! How she missed her balloon...
But suddenly she got an idea. She had red in a book somewhere that before Celestia, and even before Discord, ponies had lived in the wild during the paleo pony period. They didn't have houses or trains or princesses... They just lived of what nature provided. Twilight concluded that if they could make it, so could she... After all, she was a very talented unicorn. And how hard could it be? Not hard at all, she thought!
And thus Twilight decided to become a wild pony, living free and happy in the nature. She found a perfect place for her settlement in the creek of a little stream. Twilight gathered branches and twigs from the trees nearby and started to build something that she called a hut. It looked like a failed bird's nest, but to her it resembled the Canterlot castle. She put the twigs and branches on the ground and tied them together with grass and reeds. Then she made a little bed out of grass and happily placed herself upon it. Here she would sleep and enjoy the beauty of nature, laughing at the city ponies and their ridiculous taste for unnecessary luxury! Ha! Those foals!
After a moment, while enjoying the wonderful beauty of nature, Twilight got bitten by an ant!
But the bitten unicorn didn't give up. She decided to take a stand. Twilight started to rub two sticks together to make fire to drive the ants away! After half an hour of intense rubbing she gave up and used her magic to create a burst of flame, much like the ones that from time to time shot out of her mane and tail when she was really enraged.
And then she realized that her hut was located in the tall grass, too. Soon it erupted in flames and the fire grew to an uncontrollable inferno!
In a couple of minutes everything was on fire. Twilight galloped as fast as she could, fleeing from the raging flames. The heat and the smoke filled her eyes with tears and she coughed while she ran across the burning meadow. The wind had created a storm of fire, engulfing everything in its path! Now she was really scared. Her heart pounded fast like a drum.
"You can thank me later," the cyan coated pony suggested with a proud look in her golden eyes.
Twilight decided to not try to be a wild pony ever again. Her books hadn't mentioned anything about ants and fires and she concluded that nature was very overrated.
How not to behave in a library.
Twilight woke up in and old, lumpy bed. At first she didn't recollect how she had gotten here since yesterday, but then she remembered how she had found a nice, elderly pony who had let her sleep over in her guestroom. They were at a small trading village somewhere near the city of Tall Tale, south of Vanhoover.
When Twilight looked at the front page she spat out the coffee over the table in sheer chock. The text red:
"RAILWAY DISASTER caused by unknown UNICORN. Yesterday a lavender coated unicorn caused extensive damage to the Equestrian Railway Company's property by failing to correctly apply the brakes on a freight train. The unicorn fled from the scene and is now wanted by the police as a suspect. She is believed to be named Sparklight Twinkle and is not considered dangerous if approached, although caution is advised. Her cutie mark is a star with smaller, white stars around it and her mane is dark blue with a streak of dark pink in the same color as her cutie mark."
On the next page she could also read:
"Huge wildfire north of the Unicorn Range. Nopony was hurt, but it took the weather control pegasi several hours to extinguish the flames. Lightning Dust, a heroic pegasus, spotted the fire and could quickly alert the fire fighting unit to the scene. The fire is believed to have been caused by arson or neglect. The police are encouraging the public to provide clues that might lead to the conclusion of the case. Also a lavender coated unicorn in a railway uniform was spotted in the vicinity of the fire."
"Is there anything wrong?" Mrs. Purplepony asked while mopping up the spilled coffee from the table with a napkin.
"But please, if you're allergic to coffee you don't have to drink it, dear. I can make you a cup of tea instead. Or a glass of milk? Maybe some apple cider?"
"Achoo!" said Twilight while trying to rip the paper in into the shape of a banana.
With a little glow from her horn, Twilight magically pulled a small roll of tape to her and attached the banana shaped piece of paper over her cutie mark. It concealed the star a bit and she hoped that Mrs. Purplepony's bad eyesight would do the rest.
In a comic book about The Amazing Superpony Twilight had red that the aforementioned hero had in the last time managed to preserve his secret identity by blowing his breath on the glasses of a pony just about to discover him without his mask on. The condensation would make it impossible to see trough the glasses, she thought. Surely this ingenious idea would save her too! Mrs Purplepony must not discover that she wore her poem as a fake banana!
Twilight leapt from the table and ran! She galloped for the door but Mrs. Purplepony threw herself in her way, grabbing the unicorn's hind leg. Both ponies rolled around on the carpet, wrestling and cursing.
Although Mrs. Purplepony was old, she was surprisingly quick for her age. But she couldn't do magic.
How not to behave in a library.
Twilight Sparkle ran for her life. The raging mob of ponies chasing her had deduced that she was the one responsible for the terrifying wave of arson, terrorism and destruction of poetry that had befallen their fair lands lately. They were not entirely wrong...
The lavender unicorn jumped over a fence and dove into a small garden pond. She tried to hide herself like a crocodile among the aquatic flora, hoping that the pursuing ponies somehow wouldn't find her. The water was cold and the bottom of the pond felt muddy and foul. Twilight took a deep breath and submerged.Call upon the sea ponies when you're in distress... Helpful as can be ponies - simply signal SOS... The very idea of sea ponies seemed preposterous to her at first.. But she knew that they were clearly possible. She had never seen one, but she had heard a rumour that they might exist. Old fossils of long dead generations of ponykind had been discovered, often strange and different from the present forms of pony. Maybe sea ponies belonged among these?
She tried to get back under the surface again, but she just couldn't do it. Twilight decided to keep half of her head just above the waterline. She looked around and saw no traces of the angry mob, but she could still hear their voices at a distance. She blew little bubbles from her snout.
But now she had to get to safety before the angry ponies returned. Quietly Twilight sneaked away into the bushes nearby, climbed over another fence and jumped down on the other side where she found an empty barrel. She reluctantly crawled into it.
After a while Twilight got an idea. A brilliant idea! She turned the barrel upside down and wore it as a disguise. Slowly she crawled away, step by step with only her hooves visible beneath the barrel when she moved. Twilight had removed the tap from the barrel, creating a hole so she could see.
But something wasn't right... She had an eerie feeling that she somehow had forgotten an important part of her plan. This escape was just too easy... Twilight stopped and slowly turned the barrel around, rotating her view. When she had turned half a circle her view from inside the barrel was blocked by a big, blue pony head! Oh no! The curious ponies had followed her from behind all the time!
When Twilight crawled out of her barrel she saw that a pony with a bowtie and glasses had appeared. And the whole mob was staring at that pony. She was about the same age as Rainbow Dash, but she was an earth pony with a light greenish coat and an dark orange mane with streaks of red. On her back she carried a bag filled with books.
Twilight could only watch the idiocy with her jaw dropped. This was highly unusual, she thought. But at least they seemed to have forgotten all about her. Maybe she should stay and help the poor pony? Maybe she should do something... But Twilight choose a different option. Quietly she sneaked away. This was not her proudest moment.
Author's Note
* If she had taken the time to finish her book, she would have known that the aforementioned character didn't die at all, and neither would Twilight.
How not to behave in a library.
Two weeks had passed since Twilight's disappearance and the lavender unicorn had managed to hide from princess Celestia virtually undetected, she thought. Now the princess would have cooled off and maybe even forgotten all about the very important book that Twilight had damaged. And maybe, just maybe, she had missed Twilight so much that she would give her a warm welcome when she arrived... That was so heart warming, Twilight thought. Celestia might say "Oh, dear Twilight! How I missed you, my faithful student. I've been so worried! I'm so glad that you're safe! O, Twilight, when you were gone I realized how important you are to me and how foolish it was to ever be angry at you! Please can you forgive me?". And then Twilight would run to her and she would say "Dear Princess Celestia, off course I forgive you!" and the princess would give Twilight a big hug and tell her how much she loved her and Twilight would be so happy that her heart would almost burst with joy! And all about the dusty old book would be forgotten, she thought. Twilight smiled a happy smile when she stepped down from the train car that just had brought her back to Canterlot. How wonderful it would be!
The lavender unicorn trotted trough the streets of Equestria's capital and looked for posters with her picture on them, maybe even with a message from Celestia telling everypony how much she missed Twilight and how important she was to her. But there were no posters, except for one about "The Great and Powerful Trixie's Magic Show next Thursday!".
When she trotted trough the old castle's gate the guards barely looked at her. Maybe they were new recruits and they didn't know who she was? That would most likely be the case, Twilight thought.
Twilight continued trough the corridors and soon she had reached the big, ornamented doors to the princess's throne room. She begun to feel a little nervous now. Twilight's heart started to pound a little and her legs became shaky. The unicorn had to sit down on the carpet and take a deep breath. Then, slowly, she opened the doors and snuck into the magnificent throne room of Celestia.
At the end of the great hall she could see the princess herself, but her back was turned towards her. Celestia, tall and majestic, seemed to stare into an elaborate glass window. Twilight felt a hard lump in her throat and suddenly all of her previous euphoria had left her. This was not the welcome she had hoped for.
Twilight crawled backwards on the carpet, almost stumbling over her own tail. She was so ashamed... How she wished she could just run away. Just turn around and flee... She would not stop until she reached the farthest shore of the Equestrian coast and then she would jump into the water and swim across the ocean, just to get away forever. What to do? What to do?! And what would Celestia do to her? Think Twilight, think!
"HA HA HA! Poor innocent Twilight will take all the blame, while I, a changeling who is not in any way related to Twilight, will get away with my evil plan! Ha ha!" she said with a voice that sounded like a really bad impersonation of a pirate.
Twilight ran for the door, but Celestia slammed it shut with a spark of magic from her horn. The exit was blocked!
"Oh buck."
THE END
