"I don't understand why we can't just use the system we always used before," the crystal pony librarian said for what had to be the hundredth time.

For what had to be the hundredth time, Twilight Sparkle smiled through clenched teeth and explained. "Mrs. First Edition,(1) even if your system was better than the Dewhoof Decimal System, and I'm sure it had many positive features to recommend it, the fact remains that you want to integrate your library with the Equestrian national library network, and that means the books have to be filed in the Dewhoof system anyway, which means if you insist on using your own system in your own library, we'd have to file the books TWICE, once in your system and once in the Dewhoof system. We might as well save time and just convert to the one library archive system that is already used by all the libraries in Equestria anyway."

First Edition was barely any older than Twilight herself, but she had the ability, passed down from librarian to librarian since time immemorial, to look at a pony in a manner that clearly implied that she outranked them in matriarchal hierarchy by at least a thousand years.(2) She was using that glower at full strength right now on Twilight. Twilight merely gave her a wide-toothed smile that sparkled more than the crystal pony's peach colored flanks and ignored it. "Just do it," she said, smile never faltering.

First Edition strode off, pushing a cart full of books to be catalogued in front of her. Twilight could hear her muttering under her breath about ponies " coming in and changing things just to be changing them...." with the rather odd euphemism "Prancies" thrown in. Twilight sighed. Another day of ponies being difficult. What was she doing wrong?

And why did everypony keep glancing at her horn?

She wearily went on about her rounds. This was getting frustrating. Some of the staff were respectful and pleasant to her, and did as she said without hoof-dragging. Some. But she was spending all her time riding herd on the few who didn't. And even the ones who were nice seemed... she didn't know.

They acted a lot like the ponies did back in school , She realized. When she was, against her wishes, pushed by Celestia into going to one of their parties or other little get togethers, and they found themselves hobnobbing with the Princess' protege.  Intimidated. Unhappy. Like they wish she wasn't there... And it was making her feel just about like she did back then: like the most unwanted filly in the world--

Why was there perjoratives coming out of the media room?

Twilight had been trotting right past the door when she heard the imprecations coming from within. Curious and a little alarmed, she peeked in.

Roller Reel was in the room, working away. He'd arrived at the library earlier that week, looking for work. He did have a bit of a sulky disposition, but a lifetime of working with Spike had made her more than used to that. He'd inquired about the new movie and media department and she'd put him right to work. Despite his morose attitude he'd been fairly respectful toward her and had done the work the way she'd told him to do it, so she was more than satisfied.

He was a scrawny teenage pony, with a silver coat and a black disheveled mane and a predilection for baggy black tee-shirts with grim logos on them. His cutie mark of a film reel marked him as a lover of movies and cinema, and one of fairly recent vintage, as she learned in his job interview.

His job consisted of cataloging the stock of records and film reels that had arrived from Canterlot's library as a sort of seed starter for the new media department. He was also expected to examine each of the reels and vinyl records by hoof for damage.... which by necessity included playing them. He had taken to the job like a duck to water, and it looked pretty certain he had a permanent position there. At the moment he was running a film through the reel-to-reel film box. Judging by what he was sputtering at the screen, he didn't approve of what he was seeing. "What's wrong, Roller?" she asked.

He turned and looked at her, then waved a hoof at the rear projection screen in front of him. "Miss Twilight--- What is this load of happy horseapples?"

Twilight looked at the screen. She saw several ponies in Hearthwarming Day costumes; the tinny notes of a Hearthwarming wassail played over the speaker. "It looks like a Hearthwarming Day pageant," she said with a smile.

"It's the biggest load of prancy elitist propaganda I've ever seen!" Roller said angrily.

Twilight reared back, shocked. "Roller, that's the story of how Equestria was founded !" she said, upset.

Roller snorted. "Yeah, if you ignore all the outright lies from beginning to end," he sneered.

Twilight's jaw nearly hit the floor. "You'd better explain yourself, mister!" she said. "That story has been carefully passed down in Equestria for thousands of years. Celestia herself taught it to me when I was a filly."

Roller gave her a half-lidded look. "Yeah, and I'm sure Princess Celestia has never, ever left out any little details in the things she taught you," he said.

Twilight started to make an angry retort, then cut herself off. A few unhappy little exclusions of detail in the past started crossing her mind. The Crystal Empire's existence, just for starters. Or Discord. Or Nightmare Moon. She shut her mouth and settled for glaring at him.

Roller's expression actually softened a little. "Geez, you really didn't know at all, did you?" he said. He pulled up a chair each of them and sat down. Twilight followed suit. "Okay, look, I'm sorry," Roller said. " You're cool, and maybe you didn't know. Let's start from the beginning. Didn't any little details of that nice little story--" he waved at the projector  "--strike you as kind of funny?" At her head shake no, he tossed his head. "Come on, you're super smart. How logical does that story really sound? Aren't there any holes in it?"

"Well it's obvious it's mostly a parable," Twilight said. "I mean I'm sure that there were more than two ponies from each tribe.."

Roller just shook his head. "Nah, c'mon, think bigger than that," he said. "Think about the three tribes. Do you really, really think that the pegasi and the unicorns treated the earth ponies like equals?"

Twilight paused. "Why.... why wouldn't they?"

Roller looked at her for the longest time. "You know, now I really want to visit Equestria," he said with a wistfulness that surprised her. "More than anything. I wanna see what kind of place makes a unicorn ---a unicorn--- think like that." He shook his head. "Miss Twilight, the pegasi and the unicorns hated each other. But they treated each other with respect because they both had power. But the earth pony tribes were slaves." At Twilight's disbelieving jaw drop he said "Oh come on, Miss Twilight. do you really think it could have been any other way? We got 'Chancellor Puddinghead's' journals and letters floating around in this library someplace. We know better."

"You have Chancellor Puddinghead's--"

"His real name was Level Head," Roller snapped. "He was the first Earth Pony leader. The Prancies and th--- the unicorns and the pegasi named him 'Chancellor Puddinghead as an insult." Roller looked away. "Anyway, use that big brain of yours. The pegasi could fly, and walk on clouds, and control the weather; storms, blizzards, lightning, tornadoes. The unicorns could throw fireballs and turn ponies into frogs and move the sun and the moon. What do earth ponies got? Nuthin.' Yeah, we can make plants grow better. So can a bag of fertilizer. And being strong just means you can work harder for whoever's cracking the whip.

"You tell me, Miss Sparkle; who do you think was in charge--- and who do you think was somepony else's slave?"

Twilight was speechless.

Roller went on. "The earth ponies were the first to leave the old country after the Windigoes came," he said. "And yeah, they knew what was causing the ice age right from the start. The earth ponies escaped while the unicorns and the pegasi were trying to fight the windigoes. Level Head led them to New Land, started a new settlement.

"Then the unicorns and the pegasi came after them, and tried to put themselves in charge of everything. Again. And while the unicorns and pegasi were fighting over who got the biggest share of new land and earth pony slaves, the windigoes found them all again."

"Following their hate," Twilight said.

Roller snorted. "They followed the unicorns and the pegasi." He shrugged. "In the end it was the Earth Ponies that saved everyone. " He looked at her, like he was waiting for her to catch the hint. "A forcefield saturated with love? Big pink heart shaped glowy thingy, anything starting to sound familiar?"

"The Crystal Heart?" Twilight yelped.

Roller nodded. "Not like that Prancy Propaganda has it. Clover the Clever didn't invent the way that drove the Windigoes off... an earth pony did. A magic force field generator, made out of an enormous crystal grown with earth pony magic by an earth pony rock farmer.   That didn't need a unicorn to cast or a pegasus to keep running. Powered by the energy of love, fueled by magic from earth ponies,  that could drive off the windigoes and keep the New Land safe.  It was earth ponies that saved Equestria. Not the Magic of Friendship and not Clover the flippin' Clever."

He hung his head. "They say for a while there, For half a minute it looked like the earth ponies would finally be on equal footing with the Pegasi and the Unicorns. Pegasi with the weather, Unicorns with the sun and moon, and earth ponies with the Crystal Heart. It was just about perfect. Well you can see how that panned out." He snorted.

"As soon as the threat was gone it was back to the same old routine. They didn't even wait till Equestria was completely defrosted before Clover the Clever stole the heart--" Twilight gasped "--- and found a way to copy the Hearthwarming Spell without the Crystal. From there it was all downhill. We had nothing again.

"So a band of ponies led by Level Head stole back the heart. Wasn't hard, it wasn't like they were really guarding it too much.... They had Clover the Klepto to keep their little tushies warm now, didn't they? And they took the Heart, and led about a third of the earth pony population out of the New Land and up into the frozen north, where the Equestrians wouldn't follow them and wouldn't bother them, and founded the Crystal City. After a while the magic of the Crystal Heart changed us..." he waved his hoof at himself, indicating his sparkle.

"And that's how the Crystal Empire was made."

Twilight's mind was reeling. Was this possibly true? "Wait," she said. "Your rulers were unicorns! And you've had Pegasi in the Crystal Empire too... I've seen pictures and..."

"Babies," Roller said, rolling his eyes.

Twilight looked at him. "What?"

Roller actually blushed a little. "You know. Babies. Foals. The next generation? Even way back when, there was a lot of, you know, crossbreeding between the tribes. Isn't a Crystal Pony family that doesn't have a little pegasus or unicorn in their family tree." He held up his hooves. "I ain't like my grandad; I don't think there's nothing wrong with that." He half grinned and got a faraway look in his eyes. "Can't say I blame 'em, even back in the day... I mean, heh, now I've seen some pegasisters and unicuties---" his eyes took on the far off gleam of an adolescent who'd just recently discovered girls. "I mean, I saw this one rainbow maned pegasus filly, she was tight. And you unicorn girls are seriously smoking. I mean look at you--" he realized the verbal cliff he'd just leapt off a hair too late. "Urk."

Twilight couldn't help but be amused. "Tell me more," she said, leaning forward coyly and fluttering her eyelashes like she'd seen Rarity do. The look of panic on his face was worth the price of admission.

He clapped his hooves over his face. "I just told my boss she has a nice flank," he muttered out loud.

Twilight barely restrained her laughter. "Well no you didn't." She paused. "Not till just now--"

"Argh!"

Twilight Sparkle busted out laughing at him. "I'd clear out my desk, if I had one..." Roller groaned. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

"I'll let it slide this once," Twilight said.

"Anyway. Babies," Roller said, his face flaming. "Within a couple generations Crystal Pony couples started cropping up that had Crystal Unicorn and Crystal Pegasus foals. And once those foals grew up...." he sighed. "We were being ruled by unicorns again. The Crystal unicorns made themselves the royal family, and proclaimed that any unicorns born henceforth were of 'royal blood,' regardless of what family tree they fell out of. They made any pegasi born their enforcers, the Royal Knighthood. And there we were, right back at square one."

"Was it really that bad?" Twilight said, sarcastically.

"Was it really that bad?" Roller mimicked right back. "Whaddya mean? When they put any non unicorns and non pegasi out of the government? When they started banning all crystal magic research, and confiscating or burning any books about it? When they started raising taxes clear to the Dome and wasting it on royal frippery and spending the Empire into debt? When one of our Queens was so frivolous she altered the spells on the Crystal Heart just to pretty up ponies' manes?" He pointed to his own shaggy mop, then showed her a tiny crystal on one of the piercings in his ear. "It takes deliberate effort to not be made up like a royal girly-boy in this city.

"Or how about when they turned the Guard into a useless bunch of royal bully-boys, because hey, who needs a real army? We've got the Big Magic Crystal and the Prancy Pretty Unicorns to save us!

"Or how about when King Sombra ascended to the throne by slaughtering all the other unicorns? That bad enough for you?"

Twilight's pupils turned to pinpricks. "Sl-- slaughtered...."

Roller nodded. "All of them," he said. "Even the foals." Twilight made a horrified sound.  "Standing orders during his reign; anything born with a horn was to be killed. On the spot. He didn't want any pretenders to the throne during his reign. Anything with wings was drafted into his army at birth, where he used magic and good old-fashioned beatings and abuse to turn them into his personal band of sadistic psychos. Not that there were many left; he wiped out most of them climbing into the throne.

"Then he spent a couple of decades turning the Crystal Empire into a new suburb of Tartarus. I can't breathe right because I didn't run fast enough from his press gangs and spent the last six months of his reign choking on crystal dust in the mines. There isn't a pony alive in the Crystal Kingdom who didn't have to bury somepony they loved while your Princess Celestia and Princess Luna decided whether or not to get off their plots and overthrow him. We lost our homeland, our magical heritage, our freedom, and our loved ones--- over and over again---  because we got ruled over by a bunch of crooks, boobs, idiots and tyrants whose only claim to the right to rule was a bone sticking out of their heads. I dunno, you tell me: Was it really that bad?"

Twilight was shaken. "Is that why... why ponies here--"

"Treat you like horseapples?" Roller's head hung low. "Pretty much."

"Try and look at it from our side," Roller said. "We got ruled over by a bunch of idiots who were unicorns. We got conquered by a unicorn. We got "liberated" by Celestia and Luna---"

"Celestia and Luna are alicorns," Twilight said automatically. "They represent the equal balance between the three tribes, being part unicorn, pegasus and earth---"

Roller shrugged and rolled his eyes back. "Yeah, yeah, makes a nice speech. But all they are to anyone with eyes is just another pair of unicorns with wings. And then we get thrown over ten centuries into the future by a unicorn. And then we nearly get conquered again by the same unicorn... and we get saved by what? Another unicorn with wings.

"Who then takes over and starts ruling our country, along with her unicorn husband. And nopony says a darned thing."

"But we're not like those unicorns..." she protested. "We're not. There's no reason to fear or hate us." Her eyes were wet.

Roller looked away. "You only need to get bit once to learn to be afraid of a dog," he said.

"It's not like that!" Twilight said, getting to her hooves. "In Equestria, all three tribes are equal!"

"In Equestria you have two all-powerful winged unicorn princesses to make everypony play nice," Roller said. "How long would that last if they took a powder?

"...And you really think you're all equal? Tell me this, Twilight Sparkle, Faithful Student of Princess Celestia; how many earth ponies are there in Equestria with noble titles?"

Twilight looked down. "I don't know any," she admitted.

Roller almost looked sympathetic. "For what it's worth, I don't think most of us fear or hate you. You're pretty cool, yourself. And I met your brother; he's cool. And Princess Cadence, she's pretty, and nice, and all that...she's certainly a heckuva improvement on Sombra. Some ponies probably resent you, but I don't think many of them hate you. Or any unicorns.

"I think it's just that we've all given up hope of ever being anything but somepony else's property."

There was a flipping noise from the projector; the filmstrip had come to its end. Roller turned back to it and started taking the finished reel off the machine. "I better get back to work," he mumbled.

Twilight left the media room, shaken. Every inch of her wanted to dismiss what Roller Reel had told her as the grousing of a typically whiny teenage colt, the reciting of a half-remembered grievance speech. She was too honest with herself for that, though. Everything Roller had said, had the ring of truth to it--- the painfully learned and lived truth.

But it was so much to swallow! Was that really the true history of the Crystal Empire, of Hearthwarming Day, of the start of both their kingdoms?

Was she really part of a system that was so perfect looking on the outside-- yet so badly skewed on the inside?

She looked around her, at the endless rows of half-sorted and half-misfiled tomes. In the past books and research had been her solace and rescue in times of doubt. Could she find the answer here? But wouldn't these books all be biased as well? And even as ancient as they were, still written centuries after the fact....

There was one resource that would be closest to the truth. Even closer than Celestia or Luna; they had been born centuries after the founding of Equestria, to begin with. No, she needed an eye witness account.

Course set she marched through the aisles till she found the head librarian. The elderly pony looked up from her work in wary curiosity. "yes?"

"I want to see the journals of Level Head," she said firmly. "Now."