Author's Notes:

Man, I don't know, I was just finishing up something that had languished in my Google doc for ages. God knows how it's worked out but someone might get a kick out of it.

Pfffbt.

Curled up with a book, Twilight was aware of Barry entering the room but only in a dim way. Certainly not enough to actually stop what she was doing even as he flumped down onto the sofa just along from her.

Twilight, engrossed in her reading, didn’t really think too much about why she was suddenly bounced half a foot in the air, mostly just frowning as she came close to losing her place. Eventually though she got the vague impression of being watched and lowered the book, flinching on seeing him sat there with his chin propped on his hand, just smiling at her.

He did not say anything, and just kept on smiling. Twilight raised an eyebrow. Slowly.

“I feel like you’re going to tell me something,” she said, going crosseyed and sneezing a second later as she got booped on the nose. Barry chuckled and sat back.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” he said.

This could go one of several ways. Twilight decided to be cautiously optimistic.

“Oh?” She asked.

“Just finished bringing over the last of my stuff. That’s me now, I’m done. Moved in,” he said, dusting off his hands to show just how done he was.

Moved in as in, ‘moved in with her’, which had been the plan for a while now.

The process of Barry moving his things was (or had been) a process that he had somehow managed to stretch out over several weeks, now approaching a month. This wasn’t completely his fault. The vagaries of getting from here to there (and back from there to here) were such that moving it all at once was simply unfeasible.

The way through wasn’t big enough to take a lorry for one thing.

“Oh,” said Twilight, who hadn’t expected this at all. “Oh that’s great!”

Pausing only to mark her place in the book she then bounded across the sofa and into his arms, there to hug him and be hugged in turn. Barry was caught quite off-guard but wasn’t complaining.

“Is that the surprise?” She asked, leaning up enough to be able to look him in the face but otherwise remaining happily bundled against him.

“No, the surprise is what I saved for last in the bringing over and what’s sitting just out there waiting for you,” Barry said, pointing to the door with one arm while keeping the other wrapped about her. Twilight’s cautious optimism slid a closer towards the cautious and a little further from the optimistic.

“...what is it?”

“My books.”

Twilight’s ears pricked up.

“Books?” She repeated. Barry, seeing a familiar glint in her eye, held up his free hand to maybe head off some of that enthusiasm that was bubbling up inside her.

“Now don’t be expecting too much, I’m not bringing in the Library of Alexandria or anything, I’m just one man. Just thought you’d be interested.”

Twilight was practically vibrating with interest. Books were one thing - books were fantastic, just on principle - but human books? Books that you wouldn’t be able to find anywhere here unless you went to there? Books covering subjects utterly alien and unknown? By authors writing from an experience and history of a whole other universe?

The thought was making her quite overwhelmed. She had to take a few breaths to calm down.

“Okay,” she said very deliberately, very slowly, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. “Okay, this is good.”

“That’s it, breathe,” Barry said, rubbing her back a little.

She breathed. Or brothe, as Barry preferred to think of it. Not that he’d tell her. She’d look at him funny and probably not think it was as funny as he did. Which would only make him laugh more, were he to mention it.

“Okay,” Twilight said again. “How many books?”

“Just a few boxes.”

This could mean anything.

“Boxes?”

“Well I wasn’t going to take them here one by one, I’m not that masochistic. Come on, I’ll show you.”

And with that he gave her a kiss on the head and got up off the sofa, carrying her with him tucked under his arm. Twilight did not appreciate this.

“Put me down,” she said, unamused. He did so, amused, and they went out through the door he’d entered through

Just outside - right outside, in fact - boxes and boxes of books were indeed evident, sitting in stacks. Squealing with delight Twilight was practically falling over herself in her haste to get at them, her annoyance at being carried like a yoga mat immediately forgotten.

“You never told me you had this many!” She said, hopping from hoof-to-hoof just by the stacks. Barry found her excitement invigorating, if a little extreme.

“It’s only, like, eight boxes,” he said, shrugging.

Not even big ones.

Not that Twilight cared.

“How did you get them all here?” She asked, now circling around them, peering at them.

“One at a time, quietly,” Barry said, tapping his nose despite this being the truth and in no-way an attempt to mislead her. He just enjoyed messing with her, really, and she knew this. Twilight rolled her eyes.

“Why didn’t you ask me for help?” She asked. Barry looked affronted.

“Wouldn’t have been much of a surprise that way!”

Couldn’t argue with that. Could point out why it was silly, but couldn’t really argue with it. So Twilight decided to just press on, lifting the lid on the first box available. Inside, there were books. Surprisingly.

Twilight did her best to keep her heart rate down. She had to put the lid back and turn around. Could still smell them though. The unmistakable scent of the printed word. Or possibly that was just her overactive imagination. Who’s to say?

“Are these boxes in any order?” She asked.

“Racking up the questions there, Twilight. I like your style. And order indeed! Who do you take me for? No, it’s just random. I like to think that’s part of the surprise - that the surprises keep going with every box opened.”

Twilight had stopped listening to him at this point, not that she missed much as a result.

“I don’t know where to start,” she said. Barry scratched his chin.

“How about...this one?” He said, grabbing the top-most stacked box and lifting it down and setting it in front of her.

Seemed as good a place to start as any.

Twilight got stuck in at once, ooh-ing and aah-ing at every book she pulled out no matter how mundane and no matter how little clue she might have had as to what they were about. Some were fiction, some were not, all were interesting to her.

For his part, Barry was also looking through a box, though with more nostalgic feeling than naked delight at the new and unusual.

“Man, you know, I forgot I had most of these when I was packing them. Don’t even remember packing this one…” he said as he sifted through his box, eyebrows raising in surprise as he pulled out something he thought he’d lost years ago but apparently hadn’t. He made a note to give it a read at his earliest convenience, see if it held up.

“What’s this one?” Twilight asked.

Barry looked, and found Twilight hovering around his copy of American Psycho. Images of rats and plastic tubing danced through Barry’s head, alongside in-depth opinions on Whitney Houston albums. And that one chapter that was just about putting a gun in a locker at the gym. He delicately removed the book from her magical grip.

“Ah. That. Maybe work up to that one. You kind of have to get the joke...” He said, putting it into the pile he’d been sorting to get it out of the way.

He then dug around in his box with a level of urgency and provided a far smaller, hopefully tamer book in short order, squinting at the cover.

“How about this one? The history and development of Ecclesiastical clothing!” He said, proffering it towards her.

“The what of what what? That sounds really niche.”

This she said while snatching it out of his hands with a ravenous eagerness.

“There’s pictures!” She exclaimed.

“Well, there had to be, really,” Barry said. Would have been kind of a confusing read otherwise, given the subject matter.

He left her to it. Not long after she was back again:

“What are these?”

This time she was holding forth a far more benign selection of reading material, and a selection that Barry did not immediately recognise. It took him a second or so of squinting for it to click, but then he got it.

“Huh, didn’t know I still had those. Must have missed packing them up, too! Those would be some choose-your-own-adventure books. They’re, uh, they’re from when I was younger so they’re not exactly the apex of the artform, but hell,” he said.

Twilight hovered them in closer to herself and gave them a more thorough look. The books didn’t do anything especially exciting, even when she poked them.

“Are they magical?” She asked.

“Magica-wha?” Barry asked in return, entirely caught off-guard by the question.

“How do you choose your own adventure?” Twilight said, for clarification.

He couldn’t work out if she was pulling his leg or not.

“You guys don’t have these here? Kind of surprised, actually,” he said.

They did, Twilight had just never encountered them. This in itself was also fairly astounding.

“How do they work then?” She asked.

“Pretty self-explanatory, but I’ll break it down for you.”

He did so. Twilight admitted afterwards that it was pretty self-explanatory.

“That’s pretty self-explanatory,” she admitted afterwards.

“Told you,” Barry said.

Twilight’s attention returned to the book. Curious, she opened it up and went straight to the beginning. Commonly the best place to go with an unfamiliar book.

“So I start here...hmm...pick this one...go to this page…”

She trailed off the further she went, flipping a few more pages in before looking suddenly appalled.

“I died!” She declared, turning the book around in shock to show him that it told her that she’d died. Barry could have figured that part out himself.

“Yeah, that happens a lot in those,” he said, recalling many such disappointing dead-ends.

Twilight had turned the book around by then and was glaring at the page as though demanding it explain itself. As was often the way with books, it did not.

“How was I meant to know?” She asked, sounding personally offended.

“There’s a lot of trial and error.”

“That’s not fair…” She grumbled, descending into further, less audible grumbling as she started over again from the beginning, this time taking slightly longer on each choice, in case some vital clue or detail might elude her. She was giving the book far too much credit, and not very long later:

“I died again!”

Barry had to admit her mounting frustration was kind of cute to see, if only because it was frustration over something so silly. Her face was a picture.

“Suppose some might see that as value for money,” he said.

Twilight’s response was more of a growl than anything else, followed by a very determined flick to the start of the book again. Barry left her to it, feeling it best to do so.

It took her a few minutes to get through the book properly, though her occasional, additional grunt and growl and flick to the start indicated that it was not a smooth road. At length she got it. Not that she looked happy about it.

“There’s one - one! - correct path through that book and it is entirely nonsensical and counter-intuitive!”

As Barry had said, not the apex of the artform. He tried not to grin.

“Not a fan then?” He asked.

“The idea is good! The basic design is simplistic but solid. The execution here is - is! - is woefully lacking!”

Strong words from an angry pony.

“I’d suggest writing to complain but I’m pretty sure that publisher doesn’t exist anymore,” Barry said.

“I’m going to try these other ones…” Twilight said, grabbing the others and pulling them over towards her. A glutton for punishment, apparently, especially as she appeared to be reading through all of them (there were at least three she had yet to go through) all at once.

Barry had to smile. She really was quite lovely.

Yawning, he rose from the rather uncomfortable cross-legged position he’d been in and stretched, reaching down to ruffle her hair and ask:

“I’m going to make some tea - would you like some tea?”

She was once again engrossed, and so not paying full attention.

“Hmm? Oh, yes please, thank you,” she said, smiling up at him.

“Alright.”

And off he went.

Her tea went cold, incidentally, untouched and forgotten about. By the time he’d come back from boiling the kettle and steeping the bags Twilight had already produced some rolls of parchment and at least one notebook and had already started jotting things down, muttering to herself as she went.

This continued until it got dark.

“You, uh, you coming to bed?” Barry asked after a long, long time of being quiet, checking his watch.

It had been quite nice just sitting about in companionable silence, looking over every so often to see her getting more and more involved in what she was doing with every passing hour, but the night was drawing in now.

Twilight squinted, brow furrowed.

“In a minute. Just…”

She didn’t finish, instead trailing off in a way that made it clear that the sentence hadn't had her full attention from the get-go. Barry knew better than to press the issue so, smiling to himself, gave her another peck on the head and toddled off to bed on his own, confident she’d be along in her own time.

When he woke up, Twilight was not next to him.

Clucking his tongue and shaking his head he pulled on his dressing gown and shuffled his way downstairs, following the sound of Twilight talking to herself. She was exactly where he’d left her, albeit surrounded by more paper than she had been the last time he’d seen her.

“Morning, you,” he said and her head snapped up.

Twilight had plainly not slept a wink. Not that he’d expected her to, given she hadn’t come to bed. Her mane was wild, her eyes wide and just starting to edge into the bloodshot.

She also looked thrilled to see him.

“I’ve done it!” She said. He gave her a thumbs up. He had no doubts that she had done it as Twilight could, in his experience, do anything she wanted - his only doubts were on what it was she had done.

“Great! What?” He asked.

“I improved your books!”

“Cool! Which ones?”

“The adventure ones! The unfair ones. I fixed them, and then I made them better. Look!”

A volley of hefty tomes were whipped up and whizzed across to Barry, smacking into him and falling into his arms one after another. The first nearly knocked him over, but he was ready for the others.

“Blow me down,” said Barry once the last one had landed.

“Sorry, heh,” Twilight said, getting up onto unsteady legs and trying to rub some feeling back into them. Barry, meanwhile, was juggling what she’d thrown at him. In the event he had to sit down just to be able to have a proper look, laying them about himself.

He quickly discovered that the books did not operate on their own, but rather formed an intricate and interlocking web that required a significant level of cross-referencing, sometimes cross-cross-referencing, something he hadn’t even known could happen or would ever be required to.

“This is very in-depth,” Barry said.

Twilight had wandered over to him by this point and clambered up onto his back the better to peer over his shoulder, hooves dangling either side of his neck.

“It has to be, really. For the simulation to make any kind of sense to have any real, you know, fairness you have to incorporate a lot more variables. It was basically just random before! No! Worse! Arbitrary! Now anyone playing or reading or playing and reading can make intelligent, informed decisions! Now it makes sense!”

This would likely be a very Twilight-y version of making sense, a kind quite foreign to Barry who was still leafing through the half-dozen or so books in wide-eyed amazement.

She’d even knocked up a table to take wind speed and direction into account, a table which in itself required consultation with at least two others elsewhere. Barry really didn’t know where to start. At no point was any of this even approaching his area of expertise (his area of expertise being taking naps).

“There might be a bit of learning curve on this one, Twilight,” he said with as much tact as he could muster.

In the event, it was an insufficient level of tact. Twilight pouted but did her best to hide this, ears falling limp as she continued to hang over his shoulder.

“Well it’s only the first version, not like I was expecting it to be perfect or anything like that…” She mumbled, the way someone might mumble if they had expected something to be perfect.

“Hey,” Barry said, setting down the book he’d had open across his lap and then twisting in place to haul her off his back. “Hey, hey come here.”

More juggling followed, this time involving a pouting pony who ended up sat on Barry’s folded legs. The manic enthusiasm that had filled her and driven her through the night had ebbed away now, the way manic energy often does, and she seemed a little despondent. With a finger under her chin he gently tipped her head up so she was looking at him.

“Nothing’s perfect - except me, obviously - but that you managed to turn this sort of thing out overnight without breaking a sweat is staggering. You never cease to amaze me,” he said.

Twilight blushed furiously.

“It’s just some minor improvements…” She said, head thunking into his chest, mostly to hide her face. He laughed and gave her a scratch behind the ear.

“That you’d say so says a lot about you, I think, and a lot about why I love you so much. Ah, you’re a wonder, you. Never change. Just be you forever,” he said.

That got a smile from Twilight. She couldn’t help it. And it was so big the whole room seemed to get that bit brighter and warmer, though that might have just been the morning sun - difficult to tell sometimes.

She then yawned so widely she would have fallen out of Barry’s lap had he not been holding her.

“I’ll give it a go later, your improved system. You can walk me through it. You’ll probably have to. First though I think you should probably maybe have a sleep,” he said, giving her a pat on the back.

“I’m really not tired,” Twilight said through the tail-end of her yawn.

This was less than convincing.

“Hmm, she said, girl who pulled an all-nighter. Alright, tell you what, you curl up and close your eyes for fifteen minutes and if you’re still awake then I’ll believe you,” he said, shifting one of those books of hers behind him to act as a crude pillow and then lying back. Now sprawled on top of him, Twilight frowned.

“Or we could just have breakfast?” She asked.

“Sure. But you’ve been poring over tomes all night! You should at least rest your eyes, eh?”

This was also less than convincing but he delivered it in such a way and with such a smirk that Twilight found she couldn’t bring herself to just deny him.

“...fine. But it’s not going to work!” She said, closing her eyes and settling herself more comfortably.

“I’m sure.”

A very quiet fifteen minutes followed. Twilight’s tail flicked a few times but not long into it that had stopped. Outside the sun continued rising. Birds did bird things. Barry lay and stared at the ceiling, checking his watch every so often, or else just happily watching the totally-not-asleep pony resting on top of him.

“Still not tired?” He asked once he’d seen that the full fifteen minutes had elapsed.

Twilight’s reply was a snore and a snoozy snort, the small patch of drool that had been soaking through Barry’s pyjama shirt getting that bit bigger. He swept some of her mane out of her face and tucked it behind her ear with a thumb, sighing to himself.

“Amazing girl…”

She really was.