HOME | DD

Description
Twilight Sparkle let out a sigh as she placed yet another book back where it belonged.  A recent bit of showy recklessness on Rainbow Dash's part had knocked two-thirds of the library's books clear off their shelves, leaving Twilight and her assistant Spike to put them all back.

"Can't we take a break, Twi?" Spike moaned as he climbed up on Twilight's back to place a book on the top shelf.  "We've been working all morning and I'm getting hungry!"

"You just got back from an early lunch break five minutes ago, Spike," Twilight replied as she picked up a book of her own with her telekinesis.  "Besides, it's important that a library be kept in order at all times so that anybody looking for a book can find it with as little difficulty as possible, and we must all work hard to make that happen."

"...How many times a day do you rehearse that corny line?"

"Oh, shut up."

As she went to pick up the next book, Twilight caught a glimpse of the inside of a book that had landed open on the ground.

Hm?

Curious, she flipped the page and read a bit more.  Spike paid no attention.

Well, well, well.  This might make the cleaning job ten times easier.

"Spike?"

The tiny dragon turned his head.  "Yeah, Twi?"

Twilight approached an hourglass on a desk nearby and flipped it over.  (It had been knocked down with the books, but she had put it back earlier that day.)

"I've changed my mind.  I'm giving you thirty minutes off.  There's something private I need to do."

"Yes, sir!"

Spike ran out the door almost instantly.  After watching him leave, Twilight turned her attention to the paragraph inside the book she'd discovered.

Book Gremlins.  Minor demons born from the souls of librarians who grow too curious about books of dark magic, which happens quite often.  They tend to maintain their organizational tendencies from mortal life, and a single Book Gremlin can organize an entire library in a fraction of the time anypony mortal could.  I'll just summon one of these and the rest of the cleanup job will be as good as done!

The next ten minutes Twilight devoted to reading up on the appropriate summoning rituals and preparing everything in a hidden back room of the library.  (She had to be discreet, as she knew Princess Celestia would never approve of her entertaining this sort of magic.)

Finally it was time.  The unicorn examined the summoning circle drawn on the floor, with candles lit all around and every rune drawn as if by a pro calligrapher.

Here goes nothing...

Bowing her head, Twilight shot a bolt of magic from her horn, striking the center of the circle with faultless accuracy.

Almost immediately, the circle began to glow.  Lines appeared in the air between the flames of the candles, and the runes lit up in sequence.  All noise in the vicinity seemed to be absorbed by the spectacle.  Finally the room went pitch dark for a fraction of a second, after which a tiny creature was resting in the center of the circle, visibly dazed.

So... this must be a Book Gremlin.  He's a little less fearsome than I expected.

The creature was about the same size as Spike, but a lot thinner.  It bore solid yellow eyes and tiny fangs on a roughly spherical head, and had long arms and legs with skinny and clawed fingers and toes.  It had a long and skinny tail, its length about two or three times the gremlin's height, that curled into a cute spiral behind it.  Its whole body was black, and it hunched low, like a gorilla.

"You all right, little guy?"

The gremlin looked up at Twilight and made a chirping noise.

"Glad to hear it!  Come on, I've got a job for you..."

Twilight led the gremlin into the library, where about a quarter of the books still remained in disorder.  It cowered in displeasure at the sight.

"Do what you do best, little fellow."

The creature perked up instantly.  "Chirp ch-chirp!"

Almost instantly, the Book Gremlin was at work.  Twilight could only watch as it grabbed books and put them back at the rate of about twenty or thirty books a minute.  It expertly picked up, straightened, and shelved every book, and when it needed to put one on the top shelf, it just scaled the shelves while holding the book with its tail.

He's both cute AND efficient.  Who needs Spike when you've got a Book Gremlin?

Figuring she no longer needed to do any of the work, Twilight moved to her favorite reading spot and grabbed a book.

Let's see now.  "TICK.  TICK.  TICK.  The second hand of the analog clock on the kitchen wall made its way around the face, a step at a time.  The three hands attached to the center of the clock resembled a slim wife, a slightly chubby husband, and their--"

"CHIIIIIRP!  CHIRP CHIRP!"

Twilight glanced up.  "Done already, little guy?"

The gremlin didn't look happy.  It slapped the book out of range of the unicorn's telekinesis, letting out an angry string of chirps that she couldn't make heads or tails of... but that bore a vague resemblance to her little manifesto to Spike earlier about keeping the library orderly.

"...You're mad that I was slacking off while you did all the work, aren't you?  Well, I..."

"CHIRP CHIIIIIIIIIIIIRP!"

In a black blur, the gremlin made a circle around Twilight, and the next thing she knew her vision was tinted yellow.  A bit of detection with her horn revealed that she was now enclosed in a magically generated rectangular prism, created by the gremlin.

"Hey now, we can talk about this..."

"CHIIIRP!  Chirp chirp ch-chirp!"

...or we COULD if I had half a clue what you were saying.

With a clap of its bony hands, the gremlin caused the ceiling of the enclosure to drop several inches, forcing Twilight to fall on her belly as her legs gave way to the sudden lack of space.

"Hey, c'mon, I didn't..."

It clapped again.  This time the walls to Twilight's left and right slid in, forcing her legs in front of and behind her.  They stopped a few inches closer together than the ceiling and floor did, squashing the unicorn to a curious width.

"...I'm not going to talk you out of this, am I?"

The third clap was the big one.  The front and back walls slammed towards one another, compressing Twilight until she was a mere inch and a half from nose to tail.

Dismissing the enclosure, the gremlin approached the now-box-shaped Twilight and picked her up, a mischievous grin decorating its face.  She tried to protest, but her compacted state paralyzed every part of her body, including her mouth.  Even her magic was shorting out.

What's he... YEEEEOW!

The gremlin raked its clawed fingertips across the top of Twilight's crushed form.  Although it only had four or five fingers, the action magically created hundreds of cuts across her, and they felt like they ran clear through her.  When done with her top, it continued on her left side and bottom, leaving her other side untouched.  When it finished, she was cut clean through yet bound at one side, like a... like a...

...A book!  He's turning me into a book!

It made too much sense.  Twilight could even feel a weird tickling inside her as lines upon lines of text appeared on her many new pages.

Letting out a final, scornful chirp, the gremlin slapped something onto the book-shaped unicorn's unharmed right side, then ran off, abandoning her on top of the pile of books that still hadn't been put away.

Well, buck you too, little guy!  I'm sorry I ever summoned you!  ...Now what do I do?

By a stroke of luck, Twilight could see the hourglass she'd set up for Spike from her current position.  Only a few minutes' worth of sand remained in the upper half.

Spike had better come back soon.  How am I going to explain this to him?  For that matter, how am I going to explain anything to anyone in this state?

Twilight had no idea how much time passed before Spike finally showed up, just a little after the hourglass ran out of sand.

"Ugh!  Rarity can be such a grump when she wants to be.  I'm going to talk to Twilight and get her to... Twi?  Are you there?  Where'd she go?"

YES, I'M HERE!  BUT HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TELL YOU THAT WHEN I'M A BOOK?

Spike looked around, but couldn't find a trace of the purple unicorn, not at all suspecting that she was lying on the floor.

"Huh, she's gone.  But she certainly got a lot of work done while I was out.  Maybe I can 'extend my break' a little, as long as she's not here to boss me around..."

NO!

"...No!  She'd find out for sure, and then I'd be in a heap of trouble.  Besides, it's important that a library be kept in order at all times so that anybody looking for a book can find it with as little difficulty as possible, and we must all work hard to make that happen.  ...Wow, Twi's drilled that into me so many times I've got it memorized."

Phew.  Thank Celestia.

Rushing back to the pile of books, Spike began putting them away properly, looking at each one to see where it went.  Twilight mentally pleaded, book after book, that she'd be the next one.

About seven or eight books in, her pleas came true.  Spike picked Twilight up and examined her.

"...Weird.  I've never seen this book before."

Twilight's head and front hooves decorated the front cover of the book Spike was holding, her face frozen in an expression of worry.  He flipped her over, revealing her tail, cutie mark, and rear hooves on the back cover.  Then he opened her up.

"This book looks just like Twilight.  I never judged her as being this egotistical.  Oh well, it's probably none of my business.  On the shelf you go."

Shutting the book, Spike turned and placed it in an appropriate spot.  Twilight mentally winced as she felt herself get shoved between two other books.  From the side she looked relatively inconspicuous, a pastel purple spine with a Dewey Decimal sticker on it.

Well, this is just fantastic.  He looked me right in the face and didn't put two and two together.  Now what am I supposed to do?

As Spike ran out of the room for a moment to fetch a stepladder, Twilight could do little but resign herself to her fate.

It'll probably be days before anypony finds me.  I'm going to snap for sure if I'm stuck here for that long.  Who knew the life of a book could be so BORING?

...That reminds me, I wonder what's written inside me.

Description
Twilight Sparkle let out a sigh as she placed yet another book back where it belonged.  A recent bit of showy recklessness on Rainbow Dash's part had knocked two-thirds of the library's books clear off their shelves, leaving Twilight and her assistant Spike to put them all back.

"Can't we take a break, Twi?" Spike moaned as he climbed up on Twilight's back to place a book on the top shelf.  "We've been working all morning and I'm getting hungry!"

"You just got back from an early lunch break five minutes ago, Spike," Twilight replied as she picked up a book of her own with her telekinesis.  "Besides, it's important that a library be kept in order at all times so that anybody looking for a book can find it with as little difficulty as possible, and we must all work hard to make that happen."

"...How many times a day do you rehearse that corny line?"

"Oh, shut up."

As she went to pick up the next book, Twilight caught a glimpse of the inside of a book that had landed open on the ground.

Hm?

Curious, she flipped the page and read a bit more.  Spike paid no attention.

Well, well, well.  This might make the cleaning job ten times easier.

"Spike?"

The tiny dragon turned his head.  "Yeah, Twi?"

Twilight approached an hourglass on a desk nearby and flipped it over.  (It had been knocked down with the books, but she had put it back earlier that day.)

"I've changed my mind.  I'm giving you thirty minutes off.  There's something private I need to do."

"Yes, sir!"

Spike ran out the door almost instantly.  After watching him leave, Twilight turned her attention to the paragraph inside the book she'd discovered.

Book Gremlins.  Minor demons born from the souls of librarians who grow too curious about books of dark magic, which happens quite often.  They tend to maintain their organizational tendencies from mortal life, and a single Book Gremlin can organize an entire library in a fraction of the time anypony mortal could.  I'll just summon one of these and the rest of the cleanup job will be as good as done!

The next ten minutes Twilight devoted to reading up on the appropriate summoning rituals and preparing everything in a hidden back room of the library.  (She had to be discreet, as she knew Princess Celestia would never approve of her entertaining this sort of magic.)

Finally it was time.  The unicorn examined the summoning circle drawn on the floor, with candles lit all around and every rune drawn as if by a pro calligrapher.

Here goes nothing...

Bowing her head, Twilight shot a bolt of magic from her horn, striking the center of the circle with faultless accuracy.

Almost immediately, the circle began to glow.  Lines appeared in the air between the flames of the candles, and the runes lit up in sequence.  All noise in the vicinity seemed to be absorbed by the spectacle.  Finally the room went pitch dark for a fraction of a second, after which a tiny creature was resting in the center of the circle, visibly dazed.

So... this must be a Book Gremlin.  He's a little less fearsome than I expected.

The creature was about the same size as Spike, but a lot thinner.  It bore solid yellow eyes and tiny fangs on a roughly spherical head, and had long arms and legs with skinny and clawed fingers and toes.  It had a long and skinny tail, its length about two or three times the gremlin's height, that curled into a cute spiral behind it.  Its whole body was black, and it hunched low, like a gorilla.

"You all right, little guy?"

The gremlin looked up at Twilight and made a chirping noise.

"Glad to hear it!  Come on, I've got a job for you..."

Twilight led the gremlin into the library, where about a quarter of the books still remained in disorder.  It cowered in displeasure at the sight.

"Do what you do best, little fellow."

The creature perked up instantly.  "Chirp ch-chirp!"

Almost instantly, the Book Gremlin was at work.  Twilight could only watch as it grabbed books and put them back at the rate of about twenty or thirty books a minute.  It expertly picked up, straightened, and shelved every book, and when it needed to put one on the top shelf, it just scaled the shelves while holding the book with its tail.

He's both cute AND efficient.  Who needs Spike when you've got a Book Gremlin?

Figuring she no longer needed to do any of the work, Twilight moved to her favorite reading spot and grabbed a book.

Let's see now.  "TICK.  TICK.  TICK.  The second hand of the analog clock on the kitchen wall made its way around the face, a step at a time.  The three hands attached to the center of the clock resembled a slim wife, a slightly chubby husband, and their--"

"CHIIIIIRP!  CHIRP CHIRP!"

Twilight glanced up.  "Done already, little guy?"

The gremlin didn't look happy.  It slapped the book out of range of the unicorn's telekinesis, letting out an angry string of chirps that she couldn't make heads or tails of... but that bore a vague resemblance to her little manifesto to Spike earlier about keeping the library orderly.

"...You're mad that I was slacking off while you did all the work, aren't you?  Well, I..."

"CHIRP CHIIIIIIIIIIIIRP!"

In a black blur, the gremlin made a circle around Twilight, and the next thing she knew her vision was tinted yellow.  A bit of detection with her horn revealed that she was now enclosed in a magically generated rectangular prism, created by the gremlin.

"Hey now, we can talk about this..."

"CHIIIRP!  Chirp chirp ch-chirp!"

...or we COULD if I had half a clue what you were saying.

With a clap of its bony hands, the gremlin caused the ceiling of the enclosure to drop several inches, forcing Twilight to fall on her belly as her legs gave way to the sudden lack of space.

"Hey, c'mon, I didn't..."

It clapped again.  This time the walls to Twilight's left and right slid in, forcing her legs in front of and behind her.  They stopped a few inches closer together than the ceiling and floor did, squashing the unicorn to a curious width.

"...I'm not going to talk you out of this, am I?"

The third clap was the big one.  The front and back walls slammed towards one another, compressing Twilight until she was a mere inch and a half from nose to tail.

Dismissing the enclosure, the gremlin approached the now-box-shaped Twilight and picked her up, a mischievous grin decorating its face.  She tried to protest, but her compacted state paralyzed every part of her body, including her mouth.  Even her magic was shorting out.

What's he... YEEEEOW!

The gremlin raked its clawed fingertips across the top of Twilight's crushed form.  Although it only had four or five fingers, the action magically created hundreds of cuts across her, and they felt like they ran clear through her.  When done with her top, it continued on her left side and bottom, leaving her other side untouched.  When it finished, she was cut clean through yet bound at one side, like a... like a...

...A book!  He's turning me into a book!

It made too much sense.  Twilight could even feel a weird tickling inside her as lines upon lines of text appeared on her many new pages.

Letting out a final, scornful chirp, the gremlin slapped something onto the book-shaped unicorn's unharmed right side, then ran off, abandoning her on top of the pile of books that still hadn't been put away.

Well, buck you too, little guy!  I'm sorry I ever summoned you!  ...Now what do I do?

By a stroke of luck, Twilight could see the hourglass she'd set up for Spike from her current position.  Only a few minutes' worth of sand remained in the upper half.

Spike had better come back soon.  How am I going to explain this to him?  For that matter, how am I going to explain anything to anyone in this state?

Twilight had no idea how much time passed before Spike finally showed up, just a little after the hourglass ran out of sand.

"Ugh!  Rarity can be such a grump when she wants to be.  I'm going to talk to Twilight and get her to... Twi?  Are you there?  Where'd she go?"

YES, I'M HERE!  BUT HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TELL YOU THAT WHEN I'M A BOOK?

Spike looked around, but couldn't find a trace of the purple unicorn, not at all suspecting that she was lying on the floor.

"Huh, she's gone.  But she certainly got a lot of work done while I was out.  Maybe I can 'extend my break' a little, as long as she's not here to boss me around..."

NO!

"...No!  She'd find out for sure, and then I'd be in a heap of trouble.  Besides, it's important that a library be kept in order at all times so that anybody looking for a book can find it with as little difficulty as possible, and we must all work hard to make that happen.  ...Wow, Twi's drilled that into me so many times I've got it memorized."

Phew.  Thank Celestia.

Rushing back to the pile of books, Spike began putting them away properly, looking at each one to see where it went.  Twilight mentally pleaded, book after book, that she'd be the next one.

About seven or eight books in, her pleas came true.  Spike picked Twilight up and examined her.

"...Weird.  I've never seen this book before."

Twilight's head and front hooves decorated the front cover of the book Spike was holding, her face frozen in an expression of worry.  He flipped her over, revealing her tail, cutie mark, and rear hooves on the back cover.  Then he opened her up.

"This book looks just like Twilight.  I never judged her as being this egotistical.  Oh well, it's probably none of my business.  On the shelf you go."

Shutting the book, Spike turned and placed it in an appropriate spot.  Twilight mentally winced as she felt herself get shoved between two other books.  From the side she looked relatively inconspicuous, a pastel purple spine with a Dewey Decimal sticker on it.

Well, this is just fantastic.  He looked me right in the face and didn't put two and two together.  Now what am I supposed to do?

As Spike ran out of the room for a moment to fetch a stepladder, Twilight could do little but resign herself to her fate.

It'll probably be days before anypony finds me.  I'm going to snap for sure if I'm stuck here for that long.  Who knew the life of a book could be so BORING?

...That reminds me, I wonder what's written inside me.