Ch1 - Fear

Celestia’s Tiny Student

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Chapter 1

Fears

“Rise and shiiine, my little Sparkle,” said an unfamiliar voice. Before turning on the pillow, Twilight gave a drowsy, “Shmerrrr.”

“Rise and shiiiiiiiiine, my little Sparkle,” the unfamiliar voice spoke once again.

Twilight felt something shake under her body. Unable to ignore it any longer, she asked in a pleading voice, “Can I please sleep a little longer, mommy? Pretty pleeease?”

“Wake up or you’ll be late for your first day of schooool.”

Twilight bolted upright, her eyes wide in horror. “Oh no! I’m going to be late! I have... to...” Twilight trailed off, noticing the white face to her side, its large, pale magenta eyes looking intently at her.

“AAAAAAAAAA...” Twilight screamed, running off the side of the pillow that served as her bed and crawling underneath it.

Celestia watched her student with a small frown while she waited for her to calm down. It’s been two weeks already and she still cannot get used to her new life. Not that I can blame her; it *is** a big change, after all.* Celestia waited patiently for the filly to calm down.

A half-minute later, the tiny unicorn crawled out from under the giant pillow and climbed back onto the pillow, walking towards the princess. Her head was down, avoiding eye contact, as she sat down on the frilly edge of her pillow, saying, “I am really sorry, Princess. I did not mean to scream like that... I... I just forgot...”

Celestia sighed softly. “It’s fine, my little pony. I am sure that my appearance must be quite intimidating from your point of view,” Celestia reassured the tiny filly, giving a warm smile. It still saddened her that she was partially responsible for Twilight’s current state, although she hoped that she would be able to adapt.

“Are you hungry, my little pony?” Celestia asked, moving to sit next to Twilight while levitating a tray of food left by the servants between them.

Twilight flinched at the sudden movement, before quickly quashing the fear she felt. The princess wouldn’t hurt me, so why am I so afraid?

Tiny Twilight looked back to her giant mentor, who was currently using her telekinesis to cut off tiny bits of her sandwich left for the princess by her servants. Celestia rearranged the neatly cut pieces, putting it together into a miniature sandwich as she levitated it closer to her student. Twilight hesitantly took the sandwich in her tiny hooves.

“Bon appetit,” Celestia said cheerfully, hoping to brighten up the mood of her student.

“T-t-thank you,” Twilight replied hesitantly as she leaned in to take a bite of her tiny sandwich.

Celestia’s smile faltered. To think that this filly who had studied magic so intently before attempting to join the school is now too afraid to use it.

“Twilight.” Celestia’s voice was quiet, but firm.

Twilight turned towards the princess, swallowing the bits of sandwich in her mouth before replying, “Y-yes, princess?”

“I understand that it must be very hard to adapt to your new environment. Everything must seem so big and scary without your parents. My very presence terrifies you,” Celestia spoke as calmly as she could.

“N-no, princess, I... I’m not afraid of you, and I am fine with being here,” Twilight replied desperately. I am not afraid of you. I can’t be afraid. You are my idol! It was my dream to meet you! How can I be afraid now? Twilight thought, regretting the fear she’d shown before.

It was clear that Celestia didn’t believe her. “I... I’m not afraid. Really! And I can prove it,” Twilight said with fake bravery in her voice, but immediately jumped when Celestia raised a hoof towards her, dropping her facade of confidence.

Twilight frowned, realizing exactly what she had just done. Why can't I stop fearing her? I hate it. I do not want to be afraid! Why can't I be braver? Twilight scolded herself before approaching her mentor’s hoof, still raised in front of her. She raised a hoof to touch the one in front of her, but just as she was about to make contact, she hesitated, withdrawing it slightly. Twilight attempted a few more times, but after a few ineffectual attempts, she collapsed to the ground, burying herself in her hooves.

“I don’t wanna be afraid! I wasn’t afraid before! Why am I so afraid now? It’s so unfair!” the filly bawled, still trying to hide her tears behind closed hooves.

Celestia lowered her hoof, her expression filled with disappointment. It is not your fault, my little pony. You were confident back at the school when you were too excited to feel fear, but now... Celestia thought, waiting for the filly to calm down. “It is not your fault. Your fears will leave you sooner or later,” spoke Celestia calmly, restraining herself from raising a hoof to comfort the crying filly.

Twilight slowly wiped away her tears and looked back up at her mentor. “R-really... you r-really t-t-think so...?”

“I’m sure. Being brave is not the same as not being afraid. Being brave is when you continue on, despite your fears,” Celestia lectured calmly before raising her hoof again.

Twilight looked back at the hoof in front of her before attempting to touch it again. Her hoof came closer, but once again failed to make contact. Celestia gave a sigh and lowered her hoof again.

“As much as I admire your efforts, I feel that they are misplaced. There is another fear you should be fighting,” Celestia spoke now in more of a teacher tone.

“Another fear...?” Twilight asked hesitantly as she climbed back onto her pillow. “You don’t mean...”

“Yes, Twilight. It has been two weeks, and you have not used your magic at all. As much as I want to give you more time to adapt, you should at least try to face your fear. After all, the faster you can overcome your fear of magic, the sooner I can begin to teach you how to control it,” Celestia continued.

Twilight felt another surge of apprehension in her gut. Being Princess Celestia’s student is like a dream come true, but I can’t be her student if I can’t even use magic. Twilight knew that if she could not learn about magic from her mentor, she would not be her student any longer, and this fact alone terrified her more than using magic or her mentor’s intimidating size.

I’m sorry Twilight, but this is for your own good. I know that you love magic, but you cannot let your fears get in the way of what you love, Celestia thought as she levitated a sugar cube and put it next to Twilight.

Twilight, still trembling, jumped back as she looked at the ordinary sugar cube, which seemed to be the size of a stone block from her diminutive perspective. Fear slowly turned into confusion as she turned her gaze to her mentor again. “I don’t understand, Princess.”

“I want you to levitate it,” Celestia spoke calmly, hoping that her student would begin to fight her fear of using magic.

Twilight just stared at the sugar cube for several minutes, as if seeing it for the first time in her life. Celestia continued to watch her student patiently, trying not to move. This was one fight her tiny student would have to conduct entirely within her own mind.

You think you are so sweet, so square. You think that I cannot lift you with my magic... I will show you... and when I am done, you will become part of my mentors tea! Twilight thought to herself. Her mind was a mess and her logical young mind was breaking under the pressure.

Twilight glared at the sugar cube as if she wanted to destroy it with her gaze. After a long, awkward silence, she finally took some effort to focus, trying to channel some of her magic through her horn.

Celestia watched patiently as she saw her student finally taking action, slowly a small, purple aura was visible on her tiny horn, but Celestia’s hopes didn’t last long when the aura dissipated.

Hours passed as Twilight stared at the sugar cube, even though her mentor had left unnoticed some time ago to attend to her royal duties. Every time her focus began to form, images of her surge flashed through her mind and the magic she was forming would fade away. The pain of the surge. The pain she felt trying to stop it. The pain she inflicted on the Princess. The two potted plants that stood where her parents once did.

“You useless. Stupid. Delicious cube of sugar!” Twilight yelled in frustration, kicking the cube with her tiny hoof. It bounced to the edge of the bed, and with one more furious buck, fueled by hours of failure, the sugar cube crashed to the floor, shattering into tiny crystals across the once pristine bedroom floor.

Twilight moved to the side of the bed, looking horridly down at the white powder. While it would not be a big deal to clean up for any normal sizes pony, for the tiny unicorn filly, it was a giant mess, and it was all her fault. “What have I done?” she wailed as her frustration turned into panic.

Twilight started to dance in circles around her pillow. “What have I done? What have I done? The Princess expected me to levitate it, but not only did I fail to complete my assignment, but I also made a huge, enormous mess in her bedroom. The sugar will attract ants, and the ants will get into her bed, and they’ll bite her in the middle of the night, and she’ll know that it wasmy fault!” Twilight yelled in panic as images of giant, disappointed princesses flashed in her mind.

“I need to clean up this mess before the princess comes back,” Twilight said to herself, calming down a little before she noticed a big flaw in her plan. “But... how?”

For several minutes, tiny Twilight sat on the edge of the bed staring down at the floor. The floor that was a very, very long way down.

Twilight tried to force herself to levitate the sugar from the floor with her magic, but couldn’t get over the terrifying images in her mind. Finally in desperation, Twilight slowly and carefully climbed down to the floor, using the little loops of lace in the bedspread as a ladder.

As soon as Twilight was on the floor, she looked around to search for anything she could use to clean sugar, but did not find anything useful. Undaunted, she decided to gather all the sugar with her own tiny hooves, no matter how long it would take.

It took Twilight an hour to gather all sugar from the floor into a pile. “I DID IT!” she screamed in joy as she jumped, only to fall on her face, completely exhausted. She sat up and massaged her aching face. I really need to stop doing that.

Twilight’s happiness from a job well-done faded as she looked at the pile of sugar gathered in front of her. I gathered all this sugar, but now what? I can’t just hide it under the bed, and I don’t have any cleaning equipment... Twilight once again conjured images of her mentor’s disappointed face.

In her desperation, Twilight decided that there was only one thing she could do: eat the evidence. She gathered a bit of the sugar in her hooves and stared at it only for a moment before stuffing it into her mouth, nearly gagging from the deluge of sweetness.

Twilight spent the next hour in a delusional sugar high before collapsing, sick to her stomach, on the small patch of fine white powder still remaining on the floor.

After a long day of her usual routine, Celestia walked impatiently back to her room, feeling that her student would get into trouble without her supervision.

Calm down. Twilight may be tiny and very young, but she is still a smart pony. What’s the worst that could happen?

As always, she passed her saluting guards as they opened the door to her bedchamber for her. Celestia slowly walked into her room, expecting to see Twilight reading a book that had been left for her on bed, or perhaps sleeping on her pillow, but what she saw caught her completely off guard.

What...is that? Celesia thought curiously as she saw her student laying on the floor on some sort of white powder. Celestia walked closer and lowered herself to have a better look.

Are my eyes are deceiving me, or is my little student sleeping in a pile of sugar?

“Oh, Twilight,” Celestia smirked, guessing what had transpired in the room. “What am I going to do with you?”

Twilight slept deeply until she felt a warm feeling inside her, spreading further throughout her body every second.

Celestia and Twilight were in the princess’s personal bathroom, which was as big as her bedchamber and even more stylish. There was a spacious bathtub opposite the sink raised to Celestia’s height. An artificial hot spring sat in the middle of the room, and behind another door there was a sauna. Gold trim and gems decorated the entire room and the furnishings, and a large mosaic of Celestia’s cutie mark dominated the space. All in all, it was more of a spa than a bathroom.

At the moment, Celestia was sitting in front of the sink sending healing magic into her student, who was lying in front of her on the countertop. The spell was supposed to neutralize poisons and toxins, Celestia thought. I never thought I’d have to use it to neutralize a lethal dose of *sugar***.

Pleased with the progress of the spell, she levitated Twilight closer to the tap and twisted the hot water on. Celestia, after removing her golden horseshoe, let the water run over her exposed hoof. Content with the temperature and pressure of the running stream, she levitated her student under the flowing water.

Twilight sputtered awake, shaking out her waterlogged mane and hastily clearing her vision with a hoof. After noticing the white porcelain sink under her and the golden tap above, it didn’t take long for her to discover where she was.

A bath?! Twilight struggled against the golden aura trapping her under the water.

“Let me go... let... me... GO!” yelled Twilight with all her strength, which amounted to a cute squeak. Baths were evil. The scourge of all that was fun and enjoyable. It didn’t help that she was completely powerless to fight her mentor, a mere toy in her grasp.

“You know I can’t do that, my student. You have sugar in your tail, mane and fur, and it is not going to clean itself,” Celestia replied sternly.

Twilight continued her pointless struggle until she got too tired to resist, grudgingly allowing her mentor to dry her wet body with a sponge before brushing her mane and tail with a tiny brush, which Twilight was positive came from a little filly’s toy set.

“That’s better. It doesn’t look like you have any more sugar in your mane or fur,” Celestia stated, satisfied as she examined her student. Twilight simply hung from her mentor’s grasp in defeat.

“C-could y-you l-let me g-g-go... p-p-please?” Twilight pled before giving a tiny sneeze, shivering in the cool air.

“Not yet, there is still one thing left to do,” Celestia replied as she levitated a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste closer to her tiny student. Twilight opened her eyes in shock and once again struggled but soon gave up as the princess began.

Celestia really began to focus now. As an alicorn, a millennia old and brimming with power, she had to develop her mind to control the flow of her magic, lest it rage out of control. With a subject as fragile as Twilight, it was much more difficult than one would expect to successfully brush teeth no larger than grains of rice with a normal sized toothbrush without harming her.

Twilight closed her eyes and decided to wait it out, suppressing the terrible urge to flee from the giant alicorn holding her against her will.

Her difficult task complete, Celestia levitated Twilight to the floor and freed her from her golden aura, knowing full well that her student hated this routine. It was no surprise when Twilight immediately bolted to a nearby towel and crawled under it.

“Twilight, you know you need to take a shower from time to time to stay healthy and clean. I apologise that I cleaned you so forcefully, but it is much safer considering the size of this bathroom,” Celestia said. She’d already considered finding a way to let Twilight clean herself, but didn’t give it too much thought in the last two weeks.

“Go away!” Twilight’s muffled screams emanated from under the towel.

“Did you say something, my student?” Celestia asked, feigning deafness. She moved to the towel and lowered her head towards it.

“I said... Go away!” Twilight yelled again, though more from embarrassment than anger.

Celestia sat silently for a moment before replying nonchalantly, “As you wish. I will leave you for now and come back in fifteen minutes. Please don’t do anything reckless until I return.” It wasn’t the first time her student hid under something in her bathroom after she was cleaned, and it would likely be several minutes until she reemerged.

Celestia, content to wait until the little filly calmed down, left to prepare dinner and more reading material for Twilight.

Half a minute after her mentor had left, Twilight crawled out from under her towel. She wasn’t angry at her mentor in the slightest; she was just embarrassed of being cleaned up like a doll. And after the episode with the sugar cube, facing her mentor was the last thing she wanted to do.

“I can’t be brave for my mentor. I can’t use my magic. I can’t even take a bath by myself. Is there anything I can do?” Twilight all but shouted as she gazed upon the giant, ornate bathtub next to her.

It took only a moment before inspiration struck the little filly. “That’s it. I’m gonna prove to my mentor that I can take a bath all by myself,” said Twilight, set in her decision.

Twilight walked around the bath, searching a way up, before noticing a towel hanging from the edge. She immediately scampered up with her tiny hooves, and after an adventure of epic proportions, Twilight stood on the edge of the tub, breathing lightly.

Now what? Twilight took a quick look around, noticing a shower head hanging from the wall. Without a second thought, Twilight walked towards it, her balance threatened by the fear making her body tremble.

I am tired of being afraid. I am tired of being unable to do anything,, Twilight thought as she fought against the uneasiness in her gut. She soon approached the shower head and braced herself against it.

As Twilight knew that using her magic would end in a failure, she pulled on the shower with all her strength.

The shower head, already holding on precariously, jolted loose from its hold on the wall, causing Twilight to lose her balance and tumble into the tub. The shower head, by sheer coincidence, hit the hot water knob before clattering to the bottom of the tub, pinning the tiny filly beneath. Water gushed from the nozzle and began to fill the bath, soaking Twilight’s fur immediately.

Twilight quickly recovered and urgently attempted to move the nozzle as the water started to burn her. She lit her horn and desperately wrapped her magic around the shower head to lift it off her before the water reached her head, her sudden, immediate fear of drowning quickly banishing all the fears of a power surge. The heavy shower nozzle barely budged as the water level reached her head and continued to rise.

Twilight drew up more and more magic from her core before losing control, her wall of self-control shattering under the flood of her energy. The shower head was thrown violently aside and Twilight shot up above the hot water, her surge shooting off tiny sparks that fizzled against the hot water below.

Princess Celestia bolted into the bathroom, severely worried by the loud clattering thud she’d heard only a moment before. Her worries were confirmed as she took in the scene: Twilight was levitating in a tiny power surge, just inches above the hot, steaming water filling the tub.

Celestia levitated her limp, unconscious student away from the hot water and waited until the power surge fizzled out. Wasting no time, she sent a healing wave into her student’s body before shakily patching up her student as well as she could with the help of her first aid kit and liberal application of cure spells.

Celestia quickly placed Twilight back on her pillow before teleporting straight into the Royal Hospital, abducting an idle doctor to assist her student.

“I’ve bandaged her injuries already, but she may need more professional assistance,” Celestia said to the doctor hurriedly. Unable to do much more, she began pacing, having been lost completely to the emotions boiling inside of her.

“Are you feeling alright, my little pony?” asked the unfamiliar voice.

Twilight gave a drowsy, “Shmerrrr,” before turning on her pillow. “Can I please sleep a little longer...?”

“I see you are feeling better. That’s quite a relief,” said the unfamiliar voice. Twilight took a moment to be confused before she suddenly remembered everything that had happened. She shot upright, taking a deep, gasping breath.

She held her panicked breath as she looked around the room, slowly realizing that she was safe from the scalding water that had threatened to drown her and remembering the surge that had saved her life. She breathed out slowly, taking in her bandaged body and the pillow below that served as her bed.

She looked to the side, gazing into the large, worried magenta eyes watching her every move.

Celestia flinched. Her student was looking into her eyes again, a simple act that would soon lead to the screaming and the—

Celestia’s eyes widened as the small purple filly jumped from her pillow, hugging her nose in a vice grip. Tiny tears flowed down Twilight’s face as she clung on.

“That was... t-terrifying,” Twilight said. “I f-felt my skin b-burning. I c-couldn’t breathe. It was horrible.”

Celestia watched the filly cry onto her nose for a moment before moving her bare hoof to hold her as lightly as possible.

“It’s all right, you’re safe now,” Celestia said, before tears began to roll down her cheeks as well, “You’re s-safe. I w-won't let you get hurt e-ever again.”

The embrace lasted for what seemed like hours. Celestia marveled at how the little filly was able to so completely break her composure twice in such a short amount of time, when even war and the broken, bloody bodies of slain allies couldn’t. They shared a moment and though what passed between them was for them alone, it was to define their relationship, full of trust.

Free of fear.