Second-Best Pony

by Bad Horse

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, Sad
Length: 3303

Sometimes your best just isn't good enough.

This is a story about a little pony at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns who loves magic, and studies it all day, every day. A pony whose secret ambition is to become the private student of Princess Celestia. His name is Quick.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2012-11-02 05:24:10 UTC

Anything you set your mind to

Standing in the dark before his small bedroom desk, Quick Silver took a few deep breaths, closed his eyes, then relaxed and focused on his horn.

He thought about the spot where his hooves met the ground and imagined lines of force coming up out of the ground, up his legs, through his body, meeting just where his spine joined with his skull, and flowing out through his horn as light. The magic began to flow, and it made his horn vibrate with a steady hum that he could feel more than hear. He fed the glow, trying to keep the flow steady and even.

Some more-advanced unicorns modulated their glow at a high frequency, just as singers use vibrato to keep their voice steady. Quick hadn't quite figured that out, so his was a constant white light. He struggled to keep it from wavering. Channelling all his magic into his horn while keeping the flow strong and steady was like trying to sing a single note as loud as he could and balance a ball on his nose at the same time. He didn't need to open his eyes to know he wasn't entirely succeeding. He could feel an abrasive buzzing in his skull when the pressure wavered.

He let go of the flow of energy and felt his horn go still. Then he lit it again, just enough to read by, and turned to look at the light meter.

He'd built the meter from an old cuckoo clock. A pipe projecting from the clock's side admitted only light from the direction it was pointed in. It led through a hole he'd drilled and into a dark chamber. Inside, a charmed plate, fixed to the second hand's shaft, was pulled towards the light, against a restraining spring. An escapement locked it in place at the highest point that it reached.

94.5 candles. Oh, hay. He hadn't even broken a hundred.

Quick grabbed a quill and scratched the number into his journal. He glanced over the other data points for today—hours slept, calories eaten, minutes of exercise—but there wasn't anything to account for his poor performance.

"Quick?"

Looking towards the closed door, Quick realized he'd forgotten to lay a towel across the bottom of it and the light from his horn would have seeped out under it. "Just practicing my glow, Mom."

"Don't you think you've practiced enough for today, honey? You've got a big day tomorrow."

"Okay, Mom." Quick stepped over to the bed and whacked it. "You're right. This mattress feels so soft. I really was sleepy."

"Quick? I'm not kidding. Don't make me open this door."

He sighed. "Okay, okay." He'd just have to get up extra early tomorrow to check his math again. He wondered as he climbed into bed what kind of spell his mom used to tell whether he was really in bed or not, and whether there was a counterspell.

As he lay back on his mattress—it really was quite soft—and closed his eyes, he pictured Princess Celestia as he'd seen her, standing on the palace balcony, her hair flowing in her own never-ending wind of escaping magic. He had snuck out before dawn, defying his parents' rule against going outside after dark, and watched from a distance as she stood on the palace balcony and raised the sun. He'd gotten away with that. But his parents were much more watchful at bedtime than in the morning, and to watch her set it again at the end of the day, he'd had to stay out hours past when he was supposed to be home, missing supper and sending his parents into a frenzy of worry. They'd grounded him for two weeks afterwards. It had been worth it. The Princess had smiled as she gently lowered the sun into its great hidden bed and hummed it to sleep, its bright rays fading to orange, then dark violet.

Ponies who didn't practice magic, and many who did, thought it was all about getting stuff done. They might admire a show-mare's fancy tricks and pyrotechnics, but when it came right down to it, they thought it was all lifting boxes and opening doors. Some ponies could just lift bigger boxes than others.

Quick had seen a string quartet perform in the park outside the castle one afternoon.  The violinists were flashy, bending back and forth as their hooves flew up and down the bridges of their instruments. But his eyes had been drawn to the cellist. She had played with her eyes shut, pressing her instrument up against her, and Quick knew she must have been feeling its powerful vibrations with her entire body, carrying her far away from the park and the audience. Quick had felt then that that earth pony mare understood magic better than most of his teachers.

Princess Celestia was magic, and he wanted to be near her.

When he'd told his little sister what he'd seen, she'd felt sorry for the guards, having to stand at attention all day. He couldn't make her understand how he envied them. She said he was a stupid colt.

Maybe.

Quick would never be big enough to be a royal guardspony. But the Princess had magicians, too. Sometimes, in the past, she'd even taken some achingly lucky pony on as a personal student. When the Jehoovah's Witnesses had come to their door in their itchy-looking suits and ties, talking about heaven, Quick hadn't even been interested. Real ponies in history books had been the Princess' student. This "heaven" was nothing compared to that.

Quick had never told anypony of his secret ambition, not even Lucky Strike, his best friend at school. Even Quick would have laughed at it if he'd spoken it out loud. Lucky wouldn't have understood anyway. He would have thought that Quick just wanted to be the best unicorn mage in Equestria. He did, of course. But that wasn't the point. Or Lucky would have taunted Quick for having a crush on Celestia. But that wasn't it, either.

He just wanted to see that smile again, as often as he could.  Even if she didn't notice him.

You can do anything you set your mind to, he reminded himself.

When he arrived at the school the next morning and walked up the broad granite steps—the very same steps that Starswirl the Bearded had walked up as a colt—Quick paused under the arch at the top, set down his poster board, and took in a few breaths of the crisp morning air.  Then, as he did every day, he reached out one hoof and pressed it flat against the outer wall, trying to feel the history lying within the stone. He imagined he could glean traces of the magic left by the generations of powerful mages who had passed through this portal. He couldn't, of course. Some speculated that earth ponies could, but certainly not unicorns. But it always gave him a little courage before going inside and tramping down the wide, tall stone corridors, where hoofsteps echoed like thunder.

The Princess had not had a private student for several years now, since Blue Velvet had left for the University of Hoofington. Supposedly, the instructors forwarded a list of all the projects that got three hooves up to the Princess herself. He inhaled sharply at the thought.

"Hay! Watch where you're going!"

He apologized to Fine Line, the student he'd bumped into in his reverie. The corridors were badly lit, and he ought to pay more attention. Besides, it wasn't right for him to think such thoughts. The Princess had all of Equestria to choose a new student from, if she took one on at all. All that thinking about it did was make his pulse shoot up and his breathing ragged so that he wouldn't be able to speak calmly. But a small part of him rebelled, and whispered, You can do anything you set your mind to.

The presentations were in the main lecture hall. Everyone else in the school would be looking down at him from the seats that rose up above the checkerboard-tiled floor where he would stand in front of the blackboard. Paper Pusher, Ink Blot, and Cookie Cutter sat high up in the back, Pusher grinning at the students, Blot glancing towards the exits as though he were already thinking about lunch, and Cutter looking straight ahead impassively as if that could magically hurry the colts and fillies into sitting just as quietly in their seats. For all Quick knew, it could.

Lucky had saved him a seat. "For somepony Quick..." he said, smirking.

"Yeah, yeah," Quick said as he sat down, before Lucky could add, you sure are slow. Quick wasn't as nervous about presenting to the professors and the students as he was about speaking from the very spot where Celestia had stood when she addressed them. He was slated to be the last of the advanced students to present, so he watched and waited, mentally rehearsing his own talk between speakers. He'd practiced it several times already at home, and in his head on the way to school.

Mocha's project, as usual, was about the natural magic of chocolate. He seemed to be claiming to have discovered some kind of earth pony magic liberated by mixing chocolate with coffee. If he had, it was powerful stuff, judging from the manic way he ran back and forth in front of the audience, barking short sentences at the instructors. Quick hadn't seen him so worked up since he accidentally dropped a square of baker's chocolate onto an open peanut butter sandwich. "See, mate, there is such a thing as too much experimentation," Lucky whispered.

Lazy Susan got two hooves down for her illusion to make a messy room look like it had been cleaned up—one from Professor Cutter, on ethical grounds, and another from Professor Pusher, because it had flickered.

After her, Lucky got up and gave his talk. It was a surprisingly technical demonstration of how the penetration depth of a magical field varied in anisotrophic minerals, and how this effect could be used to locate gem inclusions or fault lines in rock. Lucky managed to almost completely hide how smart he was by cracking jokes, winking at the older fillies, and grinning like an idiot. But he still got three hooves up, and Quick slapped hooves with him when he sat back down.

It was nearly lunch when it was finally Quick's turn. The whispers and rustlings of the students had grown louder, and Professor Blot was now spending more time looking longingly towards the exit than at the students presenting. Quick set up his poster board full of graphs next to the lectern and dove right in.

His project was about "incidental effects." Every unicorn's horn gave off some light and some sound while they were doing magic. Some argued that a bright light and a loud sound meant a powerful spell. Others claimed that was just draining power away from the intended effect. Quick had to know which was right, for his training. So he'd built the light meter to measure glow intensity, and a small recording needle to record audio intensity. Then he'd asked adults and other students to let him measure their light and sound output while they made the brightest glow they could, the loudest hum they could, and levitated the heaviest weight they could. The weight was to calibrate total power. Then he'd computed the total power needed for each effect, added them up, and graphed each unicorn's total power output under each condition.

"So, in this last graph," he said, pointing with one hoof, "when the same unicorn does all three tasks, adding the power of the intended and incidental effects always gives about the same number. So it looks like the incidental effects are a waste." He only now realized the crucial graph wasn't nearly big enough for anyone else in the room to read, let alone the professors in the back row. He let out a breath and turned to the three instructors.

Paper Pusher thrust his foreleg into the air, his hoof pointing straight up. "Great! I loved it!" Quick waited to hear more, but Professor Pusher lowered his hoof and looked over to his left at Ink Blot.

Ink Blot slowly raised a foreleg with one limp hoof pointing mostly up. He leaned forward and cleared his throat needlessly, as if he were about to perform. "I really wish you'd asked my advice before undertaking this," he said, with one of those I'm-your-buddy smiles that grown-ups never got quite right. "All this talk of forces and equations is very pretty, but it means little to a practicing mage. What matters is focus, control, and a third quality that is indescribable but that every true practitioner of the arts understands intuitively, Quick. What I like to call style. I doubt your equations will ever capture that." He lowered his hoof and leaned back again. "Nonetheless, you showed remarkable initiative and inventiveness. Good job. But remember, Quick: If you want to run with the big horses, style is everything."

Quick nodded. "Thank you, sir." He had of course heard Blot and others go on about style many times. He could recognize it when he saw it, but that was all. At first he'd thought it was something like derivatives that he could figure out if he studied hard enough. Then he'd hoped that with time his style would materialize on its own, like a cutie mark.

Maybe it still would. Maybe he just hadn't worked hard enough.

He turned to Cookie Cutter, the head instructor. She raised her foreleg, hoof down. Quick's ears drooped and his mouth fell open a little.

The head instructor raised her bifocals to look at him. "I'm sorry, Quick. I know you worked very hard on this. But you didn't do any magic. All you did was measure the magic that other unicorns did."

Quick looked at the chart full of graphs and equations, and back at Cookie Cutter.

"Forget all that for now. I want you to see your glow, Quick. Now."

Quick stared back at her, eyes wide.

"Yes. Now."

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He tried to forget the rows of eyes upon him and to remember to breath from his diaphragm, and focused on warming his horn to an even, bright blue.

"That's a nice start. Now give it more intensity."

He felt the magic in him, willed it up and outward. His muscles began to lock up with tension. Keep the stomach relaxed.  Don't tense the neck. Breathe. Focus on the horn.

He could see the glow through his eyelids, could feel that it was still even. He summoned all his strength and thought and feeling and directed it into his horn. Sweat broke out on his forehead, but his horn was glowing stronger than ever. If he could measure it, he was sure this would be a personal best.

"Good. Now put some power into it. See how bright you can make it without losing that steadiness."

Put some power into it? Quick didn't think he could even maintain it as it was for more than a few seconds longer. He scrunched up his face and clenched his muscles and squeezed—

—and the magic farted out in a series of bright pulses, then collapsed. He heard the high-pitched laughter of young ponies, but the instructors had silenced them by the time he opened his eyes. He avoided the eyes of the other students and looked back at Professor Cutter.

She sighed and shook her head. "Quick, you have as keen a theoretical understanding of magic as any pony I've ever taught. You know what every authority has written on spell structure, the thirty-six spell archetypes, and how to weave them together using a distinctive and unifying theme. But all this book learning—" She whacked a book lying on her chair's armrest. "—means nothing if you can't make magic with it."

"But—"

"No 'buts'! Theory is not your problem, Quick. It's become a crutch for you. I know you want to do spell research, but the frontiers of research are in spells that require power and finesse. That's what you lack. Power and finesse. Do you think you're going to hire somepony else to cast your spells for you?"

Quick looked down at the floor. "No, ma'am."

"I want you to practice the glow exercise for five minutes every day, Quick, and I want to see an improvement next semester."

Quick nodded meekly. Professor Cutter looked at him without speaking, so he took that as his cue to return to his seat. A few colts nearby giggled, but he didn't care. He had defiled the spot where She had stood, blotting out any lingering grace that had remained.

He didn't dare tell Professor Cutter he had been practicing half an hour every day for years. He didn't know how he could improve enough by next year to satisfy her. But he would find a way. You can do anything you set your mind to, he recalled.

"And now," she announced, "we have several entrance examinations for next year's incoming class. There will be no class this afternoon; the rest of you are free to go."

Hinges squeaked and hooves scraped as Lucky and almost everypony else got up and shoved or shuffled their way out of the room, except for a few very young colts and fillies and some adult ponies who might be their parents, who had been sitting in an inconspicuous back corner of the room all along. Another adult whom Quick didn't recognize with a short-cut mane and a serious-looking collar and tie pushed her way in against the river of students and joined the other professors in the back row. Quick stayed in his seat.

Professor Cutter shifted her bifocals to look down at the list of students. "Twilight Sparkle," she called.

Two unicorns who Quick supposed were the parents, one blue and one silver, trotted down to the front and stood off to one side. They smiled and nodded at a little lavender unicorn filly as she stepped forward one foot at a time, keeping her eyes on the floor.

"Bring in the wagon," Cutter said without looking up.

The little purple unicorn looked up and met Quick's eyes with an uneasy look. He hoped his own failure hadn't made her nervous. He gave her an encouraging smile, and waited to see what she could do.

ghostofheraclitus:

Maternal Magic. Ill-understood and dangerous. Best keep away. Don't want to end up like Mr. Brazen Hoof down the road, now do you? [obscure mythology joke, forgive me, writer, I know not what I do]

Philip Goetz:

What is the reference?

ghostofheraclitus:

Poseidon had legendary brazen hoofed horses also known as, ahem, Sea Horses (hippocamps). With the seahorse species it is the male who gets "pregnant". The implication is that Mr. Brazen Hoof played with this arcane field of magic and, well, one thing led to another. As it were.

I have an odd sense of humor.

Philip Goetz:

According to http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_ponies/Unicorn_ponies, the names are: Apple Polish (female, fan name), Bastion Yorsets / George Washingtony (fan name), Jazz (male, fan name), Lonsdaleite (older female, fan name).

Philip Goetz:

Been trying to establish from the episode what time her exam was. Each of the Mane 6 has a story, and they all take place at the same time. Applejack's clearly takes place moments after sunrise on a clear day, while Pinkie's takes place at noon on a completely overcast day (and she is looking out the window from Manehatten AT PONYVILLE, which appears to be a few miles away and also has no clouds overhead).