Magic Tutor

by RainbowDoubleDash

Rating: everyone
Tags: Snails, Twilight Sparkle, Slice of Life, Alternate Universe, Sweetie Belle, Trixie, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Comedy, Dinky Hooves
Length: 43526

Trixie shall train the foals of Ponyville in the art of magic!

Snails has a problem - he's been getting headaches, a lot of them, that keep him from sleeping. Trixie is quickly able to identify the problem: He isn't using enough magic, and it's building up. All Snails has to do is use more magic, and the headaches will go away. Of course, the Great and Powerful Trixie is more than willing to train a foal in the use of magic - after all, she's already training Dinky. What's one more?

...wait, why are there seven foals? Help!

A Lunaverse story.

Published 2013-09-03 06:00:02 UTC
Last updated 2014-04-01 20:39:22 UTC

2. Schoolyard Tales

The Official Residency of the Representative of the Night Court of Luna to Ponyville needed a shorter name, but after eight months of living in Ponyville, Trixie had yet to make any serious progress on the matter – not for a lack of trying. In conversation most just shortened it to “the Residency,” or just “Trixie’s house,” and that was fine. The problem was with the sign that hung next to the front gate, identifying it. Trixie had three versions of it: the current version, hanging up, which was too long and stretched out too far into the street; the second version, sitting in her basement, that was too tall, reaching from the top of its pole to nearly the ground; and the third version, also in her basement, which was perfectly sized, but the text on it was too small to read.

“What if it was written diagonally?” Trixie asked Pokey Pierce, her secretary and general helper. Her horn glowed blue and she waved her hooves a few times, changing the illusory mock-up of a fourth version of the sign so that the words were tilted. She frowned when they only ended up taking up more space.

Pokey glanced up from the paperwork he was doing. “I still think this is a hopeless cause,” he said. “Duke Blueblood was this town’s representative for how many years and he never managed to fix it?”

“Yes, but he spent a goodly portion of his time here drunk,” Trixie noted of her predecessor. There was a protracted and striking silence from Pokey at that, and Trixie could feel his eyes boring into the back of her head. “Shut up,” Trixie appended.

“Shutting up,” Pokey said with a chuckle, turning back to his paperwork. Normally, most of the work that the Representative and her secretary had to do pertained to farming bills in some way, requests or reports that needed to go to Canterlot, or come from Canterlot and be distributed to the ponies of Ponyville. Today, however, they had needed to focus on some last-minute paperwork concerning Twilight Sparkle’s pseudo-house-arrest and how it was going to work. Apparently some “concerned” pony back in Canterlot had raised an objection to Twilight’s sentencing, specifically the part about how she would be encouraged to work around town to make up for what she had done, and in essence was making the argument that Twilight had become an indentured servant to Ponyville’s town council – a practice that had been outlawed about a hundred and twenty years ago. Trixie and Pokey had needed to provide, in exacting detail, what Twilight was required and not required to do and not to do, so as to prove that Twilight had not been accidentally indentured at some point during her sentencing.

Trixie didn’t know if the pony causing the trouble was genuinely concerned or just trying to stir up some recognition. She had decided to ignore it in either case, unless it became a genuine problem. The two had managed to finish up a few minutes ago, and Pokey was double-checking everything now as Trixie worked on her sign problem.

“Varying font sizes?” Trixie asked, making the words residency, representative, Night Court, and Luna larger than the rest. Given that those were the longest words in the title already (except Luna, but that had to be large), it didn’t help matters as much as she had hoped. She let out a long-suffering groan and banished the sign, turning to face Pokey. “There’s no fixing it!” she exclaimed. “That’s it. I’ll just have to change the name entirely.”

Pokey snorted a little. “Right. You making a title shorter.”

Trixie stuck her tongue out at Pokey as she trotted up to his desk, looking down at the paperwork. “Done?” she asked.

Pokey signed his signature below Trixie’s on one sheet of paper, pressed a stamp to it, and placed it with a stack of others inside of an envelope. “Done,” he said, though in fact he still had to seal the envelope with wax and the Official Sigil of the Residency of the Representative of the Night Court of Luna to Ponyville. This, mercifully, simply had the sigil of Ponyville on its bottom half, and the moon-and-star-holding-back-the-sun symbol of Luna in its top.

Trixie nodded in approval. “Okay, we’ll call it a day here,” Trixie said, waving her hooves at Pokey as he rolled his eyes and stood. “Now shoo. Dinky and Snails will be here any minute.”

Pokey groaned a little, though he did do as Trixie asked. “I hate Wednesdays,” he complained.

Trixie frowned. “You get to go home early!”

“Yeah, but that just means we have extra work on Thursdays to make up for it.”

Trixie sighed. “Dinky – and Snails now, too – need help learning magic. I think the little extra work is worth it to ensure that the next generation of unicorns know how to use their magic properly!”

“That’s not what you say on Thursday mornings.”

“I’m not a morning pony. Also shut up.” Trixie used her hooves to hurry the stallion along towards the door. “Helping Dinky and Snails learn magic is exactly the sort of thing my special talent is for. And, it could be seen as a vital form of community service. It’s my civic duty as Representative!” She opened the door for Pokey –

“Hi Miss Trixie!”

Trixie yelped at the sudden and unexpected burst of noise. She looked out her door, and found herself looking at seven pairs of eyes, belonging to seven foals, each of which had still-growing horns on their foreheads. There was Dinky, of course, and Snails, he was expected as well. Less expected was Snips, Snails’ best friend, who was about half as tall of him, possessed of a green coat and orange mane and with a cutie mark of a pair of scissors. To their left was Tootsie Flute, a filly with a lavender mane and very pale coat, whom Trixie knew primarily because she was friends with Twist, Bon Bon’s little sister. The remaining foals, Trixie didn’t know the names of off-hoof – there was a white filly with a purple-and-pink mane; an orange one with a pale red mane; and a pale yellow filly with a purple mane and what looked like wings on her back.

Standing behind them, shifting from one hoof to another uncomfortably, was Raindrops, while sitting beside her, huffing and puffing and sweating buckets onto her scooter with a cart attached to it, was Scootaloo. Raindrops glanced at Trixie. “Um,” she said. “This – this wasn’t my idea.”

Trixie looked back down at the foals, all of whom were smiling eagerly, except for Dinky, who was looking nervously between the remaining foals and looked confused and worried. She felt a hoof pat her back, as Pokey trotted out and past Raindrops. “Have fun with your civic duties!” he exclaimed.

Trixie watched him go, then looked to Raindrops, then to the foals, then back to Raindrops. She pointed a hoof. “Explain!”

Snails had stayed up late the previous night simply making his horn glow as bright as possible for as long as possible. Trixie’s advice on the matter ended up working – he managed to get several hours of sleep before his headache had returned, and he finally felt genuinely tired as well. He wasn’t positive, but he was pretty sure that missing sleep, even if he wasn’t tired, was a bad thing.

When he trotted into school that morning, he had been walking on starlight, and not simply because of finally being able to get some sleep. He could hardly pay attention in class, and once recess rolled around, he wasted no time in telling his best friend Snips the good news.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie is gonna teach me magic!” He exclaimed loudly.

Snips’ jaw dropped. “Aw, no way! Really?”

Snails nodded happily. The two had trotted over to their usual hangout by the tree and flagpole in the front of the school. When they reached the tree’s trunk, Snails beamed as he tapped his noggin. “You know those headaches I’ve been getting? Well, yesterday, Miss Trixie came over and said she knew what was wrong. I’m just not using my magic often enough! She says that I have tons!”

“Tons?” Snips asked.

“Tons!” Snails responded, turning and facing the tree, reaching out for it with his telekinesis and trying to wrap it all around it so that he could lift it up and show off. He got a few sparks and an aura around one low branch, but that was it before he had to give up, panting. “Well, Miss Trixie said so, anyway,” Snails said when he had caught his breath. “And if Miss Trixie says that I’ve got tons of magic, I’ve gotta have tons!”

“Did she actually say tons?” A new voice asked. Snips and Snails both looked, and saw Sweetie Belle, a white unicorn filly with a pink-and-lavender mane, looking at them with one brow raised.

Snails nodded fervently. “Yah-huh,” he said, raising a hoof as he recited what Trixie had said from memory. “‘You have a lot more magic than you think, Snails, you just don’t know how to use it yet.’ That’s what she said.”

“That’s not saying tons, though,” Sweetie noted.

“What are you, a dictionary?” Snips asked. “You just don’t want Snails to be awesome!”

Sweetie pouted. “I don’t mind!” she objected. “It’s just that Snails hardly ever uses any magic at all, and he’s the same age as me, and I don’t ever use that much magic either ‘cause I’m still learning. I think that’s all Miss Trixie was saying.”

“Nuh-uh,” Snails objected. “I’m a month older than you. And Miss Trixie did too mean that I have tons of magic. I’m a pedigree.”

“Prodigy,” Sweetie said without thinking.

“Dictionary!” Snips said with a laugh.

“I am not!” Sweetie countered. She crossed her hooves. “If Snails can get good with magic at Miss Trixie’s, then I should be able to as well!”

Snips came forward at that. “No way! Miss Trixie said she’d help me and Snails! There isn’t any room.”

Sweetie met his advance, getting right into his face, close enough that their horns and muzzles were practically touching. “She didn’t say that!” Sweetie said. “She didn’t even invite you!”

Snails leaped to his best friend’s defense. “I bet she’d be okay with it, though!” he said. “’Cause he’s my friend, and ‘cause he’s Trixie’s biggest fan just like me, and ‘cause my sister says that miss Trixie’s special talent is even doing magic for ponies!”

Sweetie Belle backed away a little at that, her eyes watering up. “F…fine!” she said. “I just…I just wanted to learn some magic too ‘cause my sister already could when she was my age, and ‘cause my mom and dad are disappointed, I just know it…” she turned around, running away in tears.

Snips stuck his tongue out at her retreating form, but Snails blinked a few times. He hadn’t wanted to make Sweetie Belle cry. “Aw…now I feel bad,” he said, looking down and scuffing a hoof on the ground.

Snips looked to his friend. “Why?” he asked. His eyes widened when he saw the look on Snails’ face. “Aw, no way, Snails! You know she’s just pretending to cry, right?”

“But it’s wrong to make another pony cry.” Snails said. “My dad taught me that.”

“But she’s faking it,” Snips said with certainty.

Snails took in a deep breath. “I gotta make her stop crying, though,” he said, trotting after Sweetie. Snips rolled his eyes as he followed Snails across the playground.

They found Sweetie Belle bawling her eyes out behind the swing set with her best friend Scootaloo, who was patting her withers; and another foal, Tootsie Flute, a pale blue filly with a lavender mane, who had one hoof on Sweetie’s head and was saying something, probably consoling. When Scootaloo saw Snips and Snails, she stood up, scuffing a hoof on the ground and spreading her wings wide, while Sweetie kept her back turned to the two of them, sniffling.

“Go away!” Scootaloo demanded. “You made Sweetie cry!”

Snails stopped a moment. Scootaloo had a well-deserved reputation as the toughest foal in school. Everypony still vividly remembered a fight she had once gotten into with Dinky Doo about a year ago, which had involved hooves, teeth, wings, macaroni, and snow. Dinky had started the fight, too, calling Scootaloo’s idol, Rainbow Dash, lazy. The fight had been broken up, and Dinky had apologized and the two were even friends now – but there had been no doubt that it had been Scootaloo who had been winning the fight.

Snails swallowed and stepped forward. “Sweetie Belle, I’m sorry,” he said. “You can come with us to Trixie’s if you like. And you’re not a dictionary.”

Scootaloo’s wings buzzed as she hopped forward. “Oh no, it’s not that easy – ”

“R-really?” Sweetie interrupted, turning around and wiping tears from her eyes. At Snails’ nod, she brightened, standing up straight and beaming. “Oh, and Tootsie should come too!” she said, waving a hoof at the other unicorn.

Tootsie’s eyes went wide. “Really?” she asked.

“Yup!” Sweetie said. “Miss Trixie’s special talent is doing magic. I’m sure she’d love to show us all how to do magic just like her!”

Tootsie’s head titled to the side. “But I’m the best in class with magic,” she said, as her horn glowed the same color as her mane and eyes. She easily picked up several stones in her aura and started juggling them. “My momma says it’s ‘cause I come from a good pedigree.”

“’Cause you’re a prodigy,” Sweetie corrected.

Tootsie set down the stones. “I don’t think so,” she said. “She says it’s ‘cause she and papa are both unicorns, and their parents were unicorns, and their parents were unicorns, and their parents were unicorns, and…”

“Well, so’s my family,” Sweetie noted, putting a hoof to her mouth. “I don’t think it matters much.”

Tootsie whickered. “Yeah it does!”

“Does not!”

“Does too!”

“Does not!”

“Does too! Just look at Snails!”

Snails bristled. “What about me?”

Tootsie looked to Snails, then scuffed a hoof on the ground. “Um. Well, your parents are both pegasi. But you’re a unicorn. That’s ‘cause there was mixed-breeding in your family some time. It means you can’t ever be really good at unicorn magic ‘cause there’s pegasus in you messing it up or something. That’s what my momma and papa say, anyway.”

“But that’s not true at all!” Scootaloo objected, stomping forward. “My mom was a night guard! And I’m gonna be a Night Guard too! It doesn’t matter that my dad’s an earth pony!”

“The Night Guard has all three tribes, though,” Snips pointed out.

Scootaloo rolled her eyes. “I’m gonna be part of the aerial division, duh. They only accept the best, but I’m gonna be the best, just like my mom was!”

Tootsie scuffed her hoof again, looking embarrassed. “S’ not the same,” she said. “That’s what my momma said. Earth ponies and pegasi mixing isn’t like unicorns mixing.” She sighed. “Doesn’t seem fair to me, earth ponies and pegasi get to marry and have foals and their foals will be just as good as any other earth pony or pegasus, but unicorns marrying one of the other tribes might dilute the blood.”

Scootaloo titled her head to the side. “Don’t you like Truffle Shuffle? He’s an earth pony.”

Tootsie blushed even more and seemed to recede in herself. “Y…yeah…” she said in a small, quiet voice, eyes darting around in case Truffle was nearby. It probably wouldn’t have mattered, anyway; Tootsie’s crush on Truffle was perhaps the worst-kept secret in school.

“And if your mom and dad feel like that, why’d they even move to Ponyville?” Snips asked.

“I dunno,” Tootsie admitted. “It’s just what my momma and papa told me.”

Snails considered. “I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “Maybe Tootsie’s right and I’ll never be good at magic ‘cause I’m mixed-breed.”

“That doesn’t matter!” Sweetie said.

“Does too!” Tootsie said, coming out of her embarrassed withdrawal. “It’s dumb and stupid and I wish it wasn't like that but my momma and papa said it’s true so it is!”

“Girls, girls!” Scootaloo said, interposing herself between the two unicorn fillies. “Look, your mom and dad said one thing,” she pointed at Sweetie, “and your mom and dad said something else,” she pointed at Tootsie, “and we don’t know who’s right. We need to go get advice.”

The four unicorns and one pegasus all paused a moment, then nodded as one and turned around, heading towards the sandbox, where Alula was. Alula was a sandy-coated, purple-maned pegasus-unicorn, an extremely rare true hybrid between the two tribes. She had both wings and a horn, and could fly – though not very well – and do unicorn magic too – though this was also somewhat lacking. Both were because she was still young and still learning, but unlike a pure unicorn or pure pegasus, she had to split her time learning both forms of magic.

Because of her wings and horn, Alula looked like an alicorn, however. She was not an alicorn, but that didn’t stop the foals of Ponyville from thinking that just maybe she was lying in order to hide her true alicorn nature and that one day when she grew up, she’d get to rule over a country somewhere like Luna and Cadenza. It also meant that the foals of Ponyville had collectively decided – much to Alula’s own consternation – that Alula was the wisest pony in all of town, or at least the wisest foal, and could answer any of their questions.

They found her having used water from the school’s hose to wet the sand in the sandbox, and she was using her hooves, a bucket, and a small shovel to build a sand-castle – the largest and most impressive that the five of them had ever seen, at least in the school sandbox. It was nearly as tall as she was, and she was carefully using her hooves to pick out small windows, and had even surrounded it with a moat.

“Wow…” Snails said as they approached.

Alula glanced at them, and blushed immediately. “Th-thanks,” she said, her voice as soft as it usually was. “It’s, um…it’s supposed to look like the, um… Kaiserpfalz?” She paused, thinking, then nodded. “Yeah. The Kaiserpfalz. It’s the biggest castle in the world. Bigger than Canterlot, even! It’s in Pferdreich. It’s where the Boonde…Bundere…where their council meets.”

“Is it gonna be yours someday?” Snips asked.

Alula turned, blushing. “U-um, no…” she said, sitting down in front of the castle and tapping her two hooves together. Even no longer paying attention to it, however, she reached out a wing unconsciously to smooth over a wall with her feathers.

“Oh,” Snails said, shifting a little. “Alula, we have a question.”

Alula looked up at the four of them, eyes wide. “Oh,” she said. “Um…what is it?”

Snails, Snips, and Scootaloo looked to Sweetie and Tootsie expectantly. The two glanced at each other for a moment, then nodded, agreeing that whatever Alula said, it would settle the matter. Sweetie stepped forward. “Does it matter if a unicorn is a mixed-breed or not?” she asked.

Alula started. Her wing’s twitch carved a little more sand out of one of the castle’s walls then she intended, but it didn’t fall – a testament to her skill, one she probably would have been more proud of if not for the surprise of the question. “W-what?” she asked.

Tootsie looked Alula over, then let out a long sigh and smacked her forehead. “Alula’s a pegasus-unicorn, guys…” she noted. “She won’t know…”

“But she’s really wise!” Snails objected, getting down on his knees and hocks in front of Alula. “C’mon, Alula, you gotta know! Am I no good at magic ‘cause my mom and dad are pegasi?”

Alula rubbed her hooves together. “U-um…” she said. “W…well, I guess, sort of, since they couldn’t – ”

“Ha!” Tootsie exclaimed, leaping between her front and hind hooves. “See? I told you! It’s ‘cause of mixed-breeding like I said!”

“W-wait!” Alula exclaimed, reaching out her hooves. Tootsie stopped her jumps, looking at Alula, and the foal tucked her wings tightly against her side and looked away. “I…I mean, I don’t think it’s just because Snails’ parents couldn’t teach him unicorn magic. Like my papa can’t teach me it either ‘cause he’s a pegasus. But my momma’s a unicorn and she can.”

Snails blinked a few times, then stood with a hoof in the air. “That’s what the Great and Powerful Trixie said!” He exclaimed. “She said that weak magic is a common problem with unicorn foals raised by members of other tribes, like how a pegasus raised by an earth pony might have problems learning how to fly!”

Scootaloo’s wings sagged. “Yeah, I can say that’s definitely true,” she said, though she brightened. “But I’m this close to convincing Rainbow Dash to help me! I just know it!”

Tootsie bristled. “But my momma and papa said it’s not the same with pegasus ponies and earth ponies!” she whinneyed. “I don’t think it’s fair, but that’s just how it is!”

Alula blinked a few times, tapping her hooves together. “I…w-well, my momma’s always telling me that, even though I’m not learning my magic at the same rate as some other unicorns, that I’ll still come into my own. That I have the same potential, it’s just taking me longer.”

“But my momma and papa – ” Tootsie began.

“Maybe they just made a mistake,” Snips suggested. “Adults make mistakes all the time. Like, my mom and dad were certain I was gonna be a filly and they didn’t have any names picked out for when I turned out to be a colt. So they nearly called me Sugar!”

Snails rubbed a hoof behind his head as he considered that. “What’s wrong with being called Sugar?”

“It’s a filly’s name,” Snips insisted.

Tootsie, meanwhile, considered Snips’ line of reasoning. “I guess…” she said. Then her eyes widened. “That’s why I can go to the Great and Powerful Trixie’s home! I don’t need to learn all that much magic but maybe she can explain the whole mixed blood thing to me!”

Alula glanced between the ponies. “Trixie’s teaching you all magic?” she asked.

Sweetie nodded her head enthusiastically. “It’s her special talent!” she explained. “You should come with us!”

Alula stood up, wings flaring in excitement. “I want to learn magic!” she said. “I bet it would make my pottery so much easier!”

Scootaloo snickered slightly. “Potty,” she said, jabbing an elbow into Tootsie.

Alula blushed. “Pott-er-y,” she said, though she knew full well that Scootaloo knew what she was talking about. “Making stuff with clay! I just know it’s gonna be my special talent but for some reason I haven’t gotten my cutie mark with it yet. Maybe I need to learn spells for helping with molding or baking or getting clay or painting it…oh! And can Firelock come? She was gonna help me bake some pottery today. Maybe instead she can learn some magic too!”

The remaining foals froze somewhat at the mention of Firelock. “Um,” Sweetie said. “Didn’t she once nearly burn down Whitetail – ”

“It was an accident.”

“And there was the time when Sweet Apple – ”

“She wasn’t even there!”

“And the town hall once – ”

“There was a flood in the basement, she was trying to help.”

The foals looked between each other. Scootaloo held up her hooves. “I’m not learning magic,” she said, backing away.

At length, the remaining ponies looked to Alula. “Okay,” Sweetie said. “Firelock can come. But she has to promise to not burn anything down!”

“No problem!” Alula said happily. “I’ll go let her know!” she dashed off.

Snails considered. Just a few minutes ago, it had just been him and Dinky going to Trixie’s place. Now there were five other foals added to the list. Something seemed wrong about that, like he had forgotten something important…

“Oh, right!” he said quickly, looking between the foals. “Trixie made sure to get permission from my mom and dad. You all should get it, too, from your parents. But you’ll have to be fast, and get there when me and Dinky do!”

“Fast?” Scootaloo asked, leaping forward again and smiling brightly. She winked at the unicorn foals. “I have my scooter and cart with me today…”

Snails considered. “Can you really get all around town in time?” he asked.

Trixie did not receive an explanation from Raindrops, who had none to give, while Scootaloo was too tuckered out. As she watched, however, one by one Tootsie Flute, Firelock, Alula, Snips, and Sweetie Belle all brought pieces of paper over to her. Each one had more or less the same thing written on it:

Dear Representative Trixie,

Thank-you for volunteering to teach my foal magic! As the bearer of the Element of Magic, I’m certain that you’ll have a lot to show them, especially seeing as your special talent is teaching magic to foals! As you requested, I am hereby giving my foal permission.

Trixie opened her mouth and raised a hoof. She closed it and lowered the hoof. She bowed her head and thought deep thoughts. She felt a headache coming on. A big one. She knew she had to explain to the foals that her invitation was only to Snails, that she was just helping him out because of his headaches, that Dinky was the only true student she had time for…

Then she made the mistake of looking at the foals. Each of them were wide-eyed and waiting eagerly. All of them wanted to learn magic, not from just anypony, but from Trixie. And if she told them to go away, she would disappoint them. There would be tears. There would be complaints. There would probably be angry parents demanding that she apologize and teach their foal anyway.

Trixie took in a deep breath and let it out as a mighty sigh. This was going to end poorly. She knew it was going to end poorly. And she knew, just as surely, that she wasn’t going to send these foals away.

“Come on in…” she groaned, stepping aside and waving a hoof.

Interlude. An Overdue Reunion

Some months ago...

As holding cells went, it wasn’t all that unpleasant to Twilight. It wasn’t very large, of course, but there was enough room to stretch out, if she wanted. The provided cot was only a little uncomfortable, and given that it was summer, the thinness of the blanket was actually welcome. The black-and-white bee-striped prison shirt she wore was surprisingly cozy. She even had a window, though it was barred, and only looked out into the constabulary’s courtyard, anyway. The food was terrible, but Twilight had eaten worse. And after the first day, when it had become clear to all police officers present that Twilight was being as cooperative as she could possibly be, were actually rather polite. One of them had even given her a few magazines to read.

Of course, it was still a cell. The horn-ring that suppressed her magic wasn’t coming off for any reason, which meant Twilight had needed to remember how to use her hooves and mouth rather than her telekinesis to pick up and move things, something she hadn’t really done since she was a foal. That made meals rather interesting, as well as turning pages on a book, but she had re-learned quickly enough. Too quickly, actually. She had hoped that it would take longer, in order to distract her from what the police sergeant had told her this morning.

Poniszawa had telegraphed to Canterlot that a pony claiming to be Twilight Sparkle had been arrested. The central police bureau in Canterlot had sent a courier with Twilight’s files and a picture of her, all of which confirmed that she was, in fact, who she claimed to be. Having done that, they were sending officers to escort her back to Canterlot for trial – and they had also let Twilight’s mother, father, and brother know where she was. They were on their way now to see her. They would see…

The warden, an earth pony, approached her cell with keys, and another police officer had manacles. Twilight stood wordlessly, holding out her hooves compliantly as the warden opened her cell, and the officer put the manacles on her front hooves. “Your family is here,” he said.

Twilight nodded, having guessed as much. She followed him, head downcast. All she could imagine was the disappointment she’d see. She was a member of the House Starlight, supposed to be the most upstanding noble family in all of Equestria, the viceroys of Latigo, its largest province. She had been a perfect daughter, always minding her manners. Sure, she’d annoyed Shiny sometimes, but that’s what little sisters did.

She could remember how proud her father and mother had been when she’d made it into Luna’s Magic Academy. When she’d aced her first year – when she’d taken on additional subjects in her second, third-year subjects – when she’d simply been skipped to the final year. When she’d graduated with a perfect grade-point average, when Luna herself had been there to present her with her diploma, to name her as the brightest mind of her generation.

Twilight gasped a little, quietly. They would be so disappointed, so angry…and they had every right. Every right. As she was walked through the constabulary and to the area where she’d get to meet with her family, she could already hear their scorn. And she deserved it. For making them worry, for disappointing them, for ruining her life and their reputations…the viceroy and vicereine of Latigo had a daughter who was a criminal. The Captain of the Royal Canterlot Guard had a little sister who’d nearly destroyed a town. They’d still love her, but they’d never forgive her…

Twilight was lead to a pair of double doors, which opened inwards into a broad room full of tables, and with a catwalk overhead for guards, though only one was on duty – Poniszawa was hardly known for its criminal element. There were also a pair of double-doors on the other end of the room, leading out to the ‘public’ part of the police station.

The police pony escorting Twilight stopped just inside the door as well. Twilight fidgeted a moment, before taking a few steps forward. She supposed she should simply find a table and wait for the inevitable. She hadn’t gotten very far at all, however, when the opposite double-doors opened, and three unicorns came in.

Twilight locked eyes with them. Night Light, her father. Twilight Velvet, her mother. And Shining Armor, her brother. For an eternity, they just stared at each other…and then suddenly the three unicorns were moving, galloping across the room at full speed. Shining and her father were fast, but her mother outpaced them both, was on Twilight in an instant, almost knocking the younger unicorn over as her forelegs wrapped tightly around Twilight in the fiercest hug she’d ever received.

“Oh, my filly…” her mother gasped, squeezing even tighter somehow. “Twilight, you’re alright…thank Luna, you’re okay…”

Twilight blinked. “M…mom – ” she tried. Her mother released her, only for Shining to pounce on her next, hugging her, giving her a brotherly nuzzle. He wasn’t in his guard uniform, but he was still built like one, much stronger than was typical for unicorns, and Twilight was pretty certain that a few of her bones would crack before too long if he kept the hug up.

And then, her father. He had been shifting from one hoof to the next anxiously, and finally the wait was too much and he pushed Shining aside. Shining didn’t begrudged him it as her father grasped Twilight, holding her close, putting a hoof on her head and running it through her mane. He was crying – they all were, and they weren’t doing anything to hide it. “I thought I’d lost you, Twilight…” her father gasped. “I thought I’d never see you again…” he pulled back from her after a long while, looking her in the eye, hooves on her shoulders. Her mother was as well, running a hoof over her neck and withers, and Shining was holding one of her front hooves in both of her own, heedless of the manacles. It was as though they were worried that if they broke contact with her for a second, she’d disappear.

She looked to her family. “Y…you’re not mad…?” she asked.

Her mother let out a slight laugh through her tears. “Twilight, I’m furious at what you did, what you put me and your father and brother through,” she said. She reached up a hoof and brushed an errant strand of Twilight’s mane from her eyes. “But…but that doesn’t matter right now.”

“You’re safe,” her father said. “You’re safe now, that’s all that’s important.”

Twilight looked between the three of them again…and after a moment, she felt something inside of her break. But it was something that needed to break. She lasted only a moment more, before she felt the tears in her eyes swell up, and nothing was going to stop them. She leaned forward, into her mother and father as they embraced her again. She struggled with her manacles for a few moments, they prevented her from hugging them. She settled on nuzzles instead, her tears disappearing into their manes and coats but being replaced in no time.

“I…I’m sorry! I’m so, so sorry!” she cried. “I…I don’t know what I was thinking, I shouldn’t have run, shouldn’t have…I’m sorry!”

Twilight didn’t know how long she stood there, crying into her mother’s and father’s coats. She didn’t care. Shining Armor was there beside her, one hoof over her withers, rubbing her back as she let all the pain and misery and regret of the past few months just come pouring out.

“We’ll…we’ll work to try and make things as good as possible,” her father said at length, when Twilight’s tears finally began to subside. He forced a smile. “We’ll hire the best team of lawyers in Equestria. We can get public support. Princess Luna herself said – ”

Twilight, however, shook her head. “N-no,” Twilight said, waving a hoof – both hooves, actually, thanks to the manacles. “Dad, I’m…I’m going to plead guilty to my charges. To everything. I don’t need lawyers.”

Her mother’s hoof, on her neck, tensed. “Twilight…” she said, “you were…you have some serious charges against you.”

Twilight shook her head. “And I’m guilty. I’m completely guilty. We shouldn’t waste money.”

“Even if you plead guilty, there’s deals to be worked out,” her father said. “Plea bargains, to reduce charges, or…and, Twilight, you really shouldn’t plead guilty. It should be nolo contendere. Lawyers are better at this sort of thing – ”

“No,” Twilight said firmly, looking her father in the eyes. “No. I’m not running anymore. I’m not hiding anymore…not from anything. I’m admitting to what I did. I broke into restricted sections of libraries. I taught myself forbidden magic. I used it to bring a dangerous creature into a town. And then I ran. I’m guilty. I’m going to accept the consequences. I’m going to pay my debt to society, however long that takes.”

Her father looked her over, staring at her, mouth hanging open a little. After a moment, he looked down, closing his eyes. “I…I see,” he said. “I…I don’t know if that makes me proud of you, or if that seems foolish. Both, I think.”

Twilight chuckled humorlessly, nuzzling her father again, then her mother, then her brother. Her mother had fresh tears in her eyes, and hugged Twilight closely. “Let’s…” she said, as she guided Twilight over to a table, sitting down at it. Her father and brother followed. “Let’s use this time while we can, then. To catch up.”

Twilight nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Um…s-so…anything interesting the past few months? Family events?”

The three of them were silent for a moment, before her father suddenly let out a laugh – a real one, that startled Twilight. Her father grinned slightly, glancing at Shining. “Well,” he said, “your brother may have a marefriend in Cavallia, if that letter he was trying to write meant anything…”

Shining Armor did something he didn’t do often – he blushed. “Dad…!” He groaned, glancing around nervously.

Twilight couldn’t stop herself from giggling. She couldn’t forget what lay ahead, or what she had done, but she could push it aside for the moment, and just focus on her family. “Really?” she asked. “Anypony I’ve heard of?”

Author's Note

Chapter 3 will be coming soon, though probably not today. Here's an interlude instead.

3. Repeated Mistakes

The foals piled into the Residency, and Trixie directed them to go into her living room and make themselves comfortable. Once they were all out of sight, she stepped out of her home and up to Raindrops. “What is going on?” she demanded in a low voice as she closed the door behind her.

“I don’t know!” Raindrops responded, throwing her hooves wide. “One moment it was me and Snails trotting down here with Dinky, and Dinky didn’t know Snails was coming so I was explaining what was going on…then just when we reached the gate, Scootaloo appeared out of nowhere with all those foals in her scooter’s wagon!”

Trixie turned to glare at Scootaloo. The orange filly looked back confusedly for a moment, before realizing that Trixie didn’t precisely look happy, and her filly survival instincts kicked in. “Oh…um…” she said, glancing around a few moments before her ears and wings perked. “I’m, uh, supposed to be...grounded right now! Right! So I can’t be here! I’ll get in trouble! Bye!”

“Wait!” Trixie cried out, but it was too late. Wings buzzing, the orange filly shot off at full speed, leaving a dust cloud behind her. She had moved too quickly for Trixie to even consider using telekinesis or some other magic trick to stop her.

Raindrops raised an eyebrow. “Look, I guess there was some confusion or something,” she said. “Snails probably told a bunch of foals at school, and they wanted to come over and learn magic with him and Dinky. But what’s the big deal? I thought you liked foals.”

Trixie turned to Raindrops, one eye twitching slightly. “There is a huge difference between liking foals, and wanting to be stuck with a herd of them for a few hours!” Trixie shook her head. “This isn’t like some magic show, they’ll be expecting me to show them spells, teach them stuff…I don’t even know who half of them are!” She looked back to Raindrops, eyes wide. “You have to stay.”

“Huh?” Raindrops asked, whickering and wings flaring. “Trixie, I can’t.”

“Sure you can!”

“I have an evening shift today,” Raindrops said, waving a hoof up at the sky. “I can’t stay, Trixie, I’m sorry.”

“B-but…” Trixie tried, as Raindrops turned around. “But…what am I gonna do?”

Raindrops stopped her trot away, looking over her shoulder. “Well, if you really think you can’t handle it,” she said, “you should let the foals know that there’s been a misunderstanding, and send all but Snails and Dinky on their way. We don’t want this to turn into another Oaton, do we?”

Trixie blanched, once again making cutting motions with her hooves. “Totally different!” She insisted.

“Hopefully,” Raindrops responded, before turning again and heading off towards the weather station.

Trixie watched her go for a few moments, then glanced down, at her own hooves. Raindrops wasn’t the most verbose of ponies, but she sure had a way of packing a lot of meaning into single-word statements. After a few moments, Trixie looked back up, and grit her teeth. “She’s right,” she said to nopony in particular, turning back towards her door and trotting towards it determinedly. “She’s right. Je déteste. But I gotta tell the truth. I have to, I have to, I…”

Trixie opened her door, and found herself staring at a small, gray unicorn filly with a blonde mane – Dinky. Dinky was looking at her confusedly. Trixie stared back for a few moments. “H-hi, kiddo,” Trixie said, before stepping into her home. “Is…is everything okay?”

Dinky considered, sitting back on her haunches and tapping her front hooves together. “I…I thought I was your magician’s assistant, Miss Trixie,” she said simply, glancing up at Trixie, voice full of worry.

Was there anypony in the world as good at the puppy-dog stare as Dinky Doo? Trixie sighed, mussing Dinky’s mane with one hoof and briefly pondering what would happen to the world if Dinky ever learned to consciously invoke that look. “You are, I promise,” she said, leaning down to look Dinky in the eye. “And my friend. But Snails is my friend too. He doesn’t use enough magic so it’s been giving him problems. So I was hoping that you and me could help him learn to use his magic better.”

Dinky nodded. “What about everypony else?” she asked. “Sweetie Belle and Firelock and Tootsie…”

Trixie shook her head. “I don’t know. I think there’s been some misunderstanding.” Trixie stood up and smiled. “But! We’re going to go in there and clear things up. Okay?”

Dinky brightened up right there, nodding again and smiling. Trixie kept an eye on her as the two trotted towards the living room, where they could hear the six other foals talking to each other. Huh, she’s a little jealous, Trixie thought of Dinky, and couldn’t help but smile. Never thought Dinky had any flaws…wait, did she pick that up from me? Ditzy said that Dinky’s becoming a little more sarcastic ever since I started helping her…

Trixie entered the living room with the worry that she was corrupting the youth of Ponyville occupying most of her thoughts. She found the six ponies on or around her couches. Snails and Snips were sitting on the couch itself, talking to each other; Tootsie and the white-coated unicorn were on the floor, meanwhile, singing a song and clapping each other’s hooves. The winged unicorn was on the couch as well, though at the other end from Snips and Snails, and she was keeping an eye on the orange filly with the pale red mane. Said filly was next to Trixie’s wall, of all places, looking up at one of the gas lights.

No, not the light itself, Trixie realized…just the flame inside of it. She was staring at the fire. There was a faint smile on her lips, and her front hooves were gently tapping against each other. She was either lost in thought, or lost without thought, completely transfixed by the flame…

“Um,” Trixie said.

Surprisingly, that got everypony’s attention. Tootsie and her friend ended their game, Snips and Snails ended their conversations, and all six foals turned to look at Trixie as Dinky trotted out and amongst them. They were all staring at her, waiting, expecting her to show them how to perform amazing feats of magic, how to craft faultless figments, how to create things out of thin air, how to…

Trixie shook her head. No, that was a trap. She wasn’t going to fall into it. “O-okay,” she said, making a cutting motion with her hoof. “Okay, um…this is a little unexpected. I only thought Snails and Dinky were going to be here.”

The white-coated filly smiled broadly at that. “But you’re gonna be teaching us magic now, right?” she asked. “’Cause your special talent is teaching foals magic! Snails said so.”

Trixie stiffened a little, looking at Snails. “That is not my special talent,” she objected.

Snails thought. “Oh yeah…” he said after a moment. “It’s, um…doing magic for others. Right.”

“Same thing, really!” Tootsie Flute said. “Because to teach us magic you’ll have to do magic to show it to us.”

Trixie rubbed a hoof against the back of her neck. Tootsie technically had a point; indeed, that was the very reasoning she had given Pokey Pierce just a few minutes ago. “O-okay,” she said. “That is true…but I was really only expecting Dinky and Snails. Like, I only invited Dinky and Snails.”

The foals, save, Dinky, blinked a few times. At length, the white one turned to Snips. “Told you!” she exclaimed.

“That’s not very fair, though!” The orange filly insisted. “How come you’re gonna show them and not us? That’s like…that’s like if Miss Cheerilee was only gonna teach one of us math, but then give us all the same math test!”

“I’m not giving anypony a test, though,” Trixie pointed out. She took in a deep breath, and held up a hoof. “I’m sorry. Dinky’s my magician’s assistant, she helps me out with magic shows, and so of course I’m going to show her magic. And I’m helping Snails because he’s not doing enough magic, and it’s giving him headaches and insomnia.”

“Huh?” Snails asked.

“You can’t get to sleep.”

“Oh.”

Trixie closed her eyes, nodding. Good, the situation seemed to be under control. “It’s just that this is very short notice,” she said. “I was only expecting two foals. I’m really very glad and very honored that you all thought that I could show you all magic, but I don’t think – ”

Trixie opened her eyes, and saw five foals all on the verge of tears – lips quavering, breaths hitching, eyes wide and watery. “B-but…” the white filly said, “but my sister Rarity…sh-she was so much better with magic a-at my age…”

“A-and my momma doesn’t have enough time to t-teach me everything…” the winged one said, looking down at her hooves, wings clinging tightly to her sides, “a-and papa can’t help…”

“And I just wanna…just wanna hang out with my friend…” Snips insisted.

“A-and…a-and…”

Trixie’s mouth opened and closed a few times. She glanced at Snails, who had a comforting hoof on Snips’ withers. Dinky, meanwhile, was looking between all the foals, visibly torn between worry that she was going to be replaced, and worry that her friends would be disappointed. She looked to Trixie helplessly. Trixie shrugged her shoulders, covered her eyes with a hoof, and let out a sigh. “But I don’t think it could be permanent,” she said.

The foals all quieted a little, and Trixie looked back to them. “I could help you all a little,” she said. “Just for today. Okay?”

“Yay!”

The switch in demeanors was neck-breaking in its rapidity, as six sets of hooves were thrown to the sky in joy, tears disappearing instantly. Trixie blinked a few times. Had she just been played? Had these foals just played her? There was no way that was possible, they were too young to know how to do that…right?

Trixie shook her head. “Okay,” she said. “Well…let’s start with the basics – ”

“Levitation?” The white one asked.

“Conjuring?” Snips put in.

“Ignition?” The orange one said with a beaming smile.

“Names,” Trixie clarified, as she trotted into her living room and sat down amongst the foals. “I know some of you already, but some of you I don’t. So let’s…let’s go around in a circle, and you can introduce yourselves to me, tell me a little about yourselves.” Trixie nodded, smiling. Just like what she had done with Cheerilee and everypony else back during the Longest Night. The foals obediently formed a semi-circle in front of Trixie. She pointed to the one at the furthest end, the one with wings. “So…let’s start with you.” She smiled. “You look like a princess.”

The reaction to that was somewhat unexpected. The foal started, wings flaring slightly. She sniffed as her eyes began to water. “I-I’m…I’m n-not a princess,” she said softly, looking away from Trixie.

Trixie blinked a few times, rubbing the back of her neck. This was not a good start. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Just, um…okay. What’s your name, then?”

The foal sniffed again, rubbing her eyes a moment before answering. “Alula.”

Trixie nodded, leaning a little to look at her side. “No cutie mark yet…what do you think your special talent will be?”

“Pottery,” Alula answered without hesitation, and brightening a little. “I don’t know why I haven’t gotten my cutie mark yet. I know my special talent already…”

Trixie smiled a little, touching a hoof to her chest. “Well, it might be something else,” Trixie said. “Or there might be some special quality about pottery you haven’t discovered yet. Like my special talent. I knew from the day I was born that it was gonna be magic, just like my Grandpapa. But it wasn’t until I realized that it wasn’t just doing magic, but doing magic in a way that made an impact on the lives of ponies in some way, that I earned my cutie mark.”

“Can we hear your cutie mark story?” Snips asked. “I bet it’s awesome!”

Trixie certainly thought it was, in its own way, but she was also pretty sure that it wasn’t the sort of thing she should be telling little foals. “Maybe some other time,” she said, looking to the white filly next to Alula. “Okay, you said you were Rarity’s little sister?”

The filly nodded. “Sweetie Belle!” she identified herself. “I don’t know what my special talent is gonna be. Me and Scootaloo try to earn ours all the time, but nothing ever seems to stick.”

“Well, it will eventually, don’t worry,” Trixie said with a nod, then looked to the next filly expectantly.

“Tootsie Flute,” the filly said. “I dunno what my special talent is gonna be, either.”

“Truffle Shuffle,” Snips said with a laugh. Tootsie started, then blushed as she looked away, but also smiled a little.

Trixie also smiled at that. She knew Truffle Shuffle, or at least knew of him. “Does somepony here have a crush?” she asked, leaning in a little.

“M-maybe…” Tootsie said, rubbing one hoof against the opposite leg.

“Not denying it?” Trixie asked with surprise. “That’s actually pretty mature for a filly your age. Does Truffle Shuffle know?”

Tootsie shook her head. “I’m, um…I was planning on waiting…for Hearts & Hooves day.”

Trixie tsked. Sure, she had issues when it came to…intimacy…but sweet, innocent little schoolyard crushes? Hardly. She had been raised in Neigh Orleans, after all. “Might not want to wait. Il n’est rien de réel que le rêve et l’amour.”

The foals all looked at her strangely. Trixie rolled her eyes. “Zut alors…” she sighed, looking to the next pony in line. “And you are?”

The filly smiled. “Firelock,” she said. “And my special talent is fire.”

Trixie blinked, glancing at the pony’s side. Her flank was bare. “You sure?” she asked. “It might be something else…”

Firelock shook her head. “Well, I mean, like you said, it might be something specific,” she said. “Like it could be pyrotechnics, or firefighting, or fire science, or…”

“Um,” Trixie said.

“…volcano inspector, or fire magic, or smoke jumping, or…”

“Uh,” Trixie added.

“…phoenix breeder, or fire eating, or fire wrangling, or…”

“Okay,” Trixie interrupted. “Firelock, is it? Yes. Very good.” She looked to the remaining ponies, though she kept an eye on Firelock. “Okay…Snips? Your special talent is mane-grooming, right?”

Snips nodded. He was one of the only two ponies in the room, besides his friend Snails, that had actually earned his cutie mark already. “Miss Rarity even said that I was good enough to do her own mane! Though she wouldn’t let me actually do it when I offered. But my dad lets me help out in his barber shop! I can do tails and beards, too.”

Given how his own mane looked, Trixie wasn’t very surprised that Rarity didn’t allow Snips to touch her mane; Trixie could only assume that just because one had a special talent for cutting and styling manes, it didn’t necessarily mean that one’s own personal style choices were going to be typical. She turned her attention to Snails. “And Snails, of course. Your special talent is…creepy crawlies…”

Snails laughed a little, glancing at his own cutie mark of a snail. “I like animals,” he said. “But especially invertebrates. They don’t get nearly enough attention in Equestria!”

“’Cause they’re gross,” Sweetie noted, sticking her tongue out a little.

“So? So are dogs,” Snails noted.

“They are not!”

“Are too! They drool, don’t they?”

Sweetie Belle didn’t respond to that. Trixie supposed that Snails had a point, and of course, a special talent of dealing with bugs and snails and worms and other such animals was actually invaluable in a farming community like Ponyville. Whatever Trixie’s own aversion to “creepy crawlies,” Snails would find no shortage of friends as he learned more about his special talent.

Trixie looked to the last foal. “And Dinky Doo,” she said. “You know everypony here already, right?”

Dinky nodded. “And I don’t know what my special talent is gonna be,” she said, glancing at her flank, “but that’s okay. ‘Cause as long as I don’t have my cutie mark, it could be anything! I’m full of potential.”

Trixie nodded. “Okay, then,” she said, looking at Dinky. “Now, Dinky, you’ve been here the longest. For today, instead of my magician’s assistant, you’ll be my teacher’s assistant.”

Dinky brightened a little at the responsibility. “What do I do?” she asked.

Trixie thought a moment. “Go to the basement and grab some of the golf balls I use for tricks. As many as you can carry.” Dinky nodded, dashing off. Trixie, meanwhile, stood and held a hoof out to her side. “And as long as I’m teaching magic, I’ll need my magic hat!” Her horn glowed, and with a blue flash and pop, her hat appeared in her hoof. She put it on as stylishly as she could.

The foals applauded lightly, and Trixie smiled. “To begin,” she said, casting her magic sight spell, “we’ll need to see where all of you are with your magic. Can all of you make your horns glow?”

There were nods, followed by each of the six foals lighting up their horns. Some of them accomplished this easily enough – the pale lavender glow of Tootsie seemed the strongest, though Firelock’s own red effervescence wasn’t far behind. Snails’ green-gold and Sweetie’s lime green magic were the weakest, meanwhile. The remaining two foals – Alula with purple magic, and Snips with orange – seemed to be roughly in between the two. More importantly, through her magic sight, Trixie saw that Snails, and to a lesser extent Sweetie, were both under-channeling, while the remaining four seemed to be channeling just the right amount of magic.

Trixie tapped a hoof to her mouth as she regarded Tootsie Flute in particular. Magic flowed from her inner reserves and through her horn with very little effort; even Dinky, after months of practice with Trixie, wasn’t quite at the same level, though she was pretty certain that Dinky had a larger inner reserve to draw from. “Tootsie, your magic seems to be pretty good already,” she noted as she cancelled her magic sight.

Tootsie nodded, though she shifted nervously. “My momma and papa have been teaching me. They’re both unicorns. They say it’s cause I come from a good – ”

“I’m back!” Dinky’s voice interrupted. Trixie glanced and saw the filly coming with the small bag that Trixie kept multicolored golf balls in. She was balancing it on her back, using her lavender telekinesis – a few shades darker than Tootsie’s – to balance it there. It didn’t look it, but it was actually more complicated a task than simply carrying the bag telekinetically. Was Dinky showing off?

I really hope I’m not corrupting the youth of Ponyville, Trixie mused. Trixie took the bag from Dinky, and hoofed out three balls to each foal, resuming her magic sight. “Okay,” Trixie said. “Everypony levitate just one ball.”

Each foal was capable of it, but Sweetie and Snails both visibly struggled. Trixie considered. “Okay, Sweetie, Snails, take a break. Everypony else, try picking up two at the same time, in two different grips.”

Sweetie and Snails both looked dejected at being told to sit out picking up two balls, but Trixie made sure to give them a reassuring smile. The remaining ponies managed two, but Alula dropped hers after a few moments, and Firelock not long after. Trixie looked between Dinky and Tootsie. “Okay, now each of you try for three,” she said.

Tootsie and Dinky both managed to pick up their three balls without a problem. “I could lift a whole lot more,” Tootsie noted.

“So could I!” Dinky insisted.

Tootsie grinned, standing, though only to drop into a challenging stoop. “You’re on!” she proclaimed, horn flaring slightly. Dinky met the grin eagerly, not standing but instead closing her eyes and spreading her front hooves wide. Snips’ and Snails’ golf balls were lifted in her aura, while Tootsie grabbed Alula’s and Firelock’s. Dinky took one from Sweetie’s pile, Tootsie another…and that’s when the problems began.

A pale lavender aura started to close on the remaining ball, but a darker lavender aura tried for it as well. Dinky opened an eye, looking at Tootsie, who looked back. Caught between two auras trying to pull it in opposite directions, the ball began to shudder. Sweetie backed away from it nervously.

Trixie glanced between them, raising a hoof. “Um,” she said, stepping forward. “That’s enough, girls. You two are the furthest along with telekinesis.”

“Yeah, but I could hold way more,” Tootsie proclaimed.

“I could too!” Dinky said. “If Tootsie would just let me…”

“If you’d just let me…”

Neither of them released their hold on the remaining golf ball. Trixie glanced between the two. Both were actually beginning to sweat a little, and their breathing was coming faster. “Actually, I’m pretty sure both of you are pretty close to your limits,” she said. “It’s okay, you’re only foals – ”

“Nuh-uh, I’m not at my limit!”

“I’m not either!” Dinky said.

The other foals had backed away a few paces. “Um,” Trixie said. “Look, why don’t you just put down the golf balls so we can move on…and let go of that one…”

Tootsie and Dinky glanced at Trixie, then back to each other. Every ball they had was lowered to the ground – but they continued their struggle over the remaining one. “I want to hold onto it!” Tootsie said.

“Miss Trixie said to let go!”

“I will if you do!”

“I’m her assistant, I’ll have to clean up the golf balls for her after we’re done anyway – ”

Compressed as it was between two young unicorn fillies, there was only two things that could have happened to the golf ball eventually. The first was that it would be crushed between their two telekinetic auras, reduced to powder. However, neither filly was quite strong enough to manage that under normal circumstances.

The second thing that could have happened was, held as it was in the imperfect auras of little foals, the two were not applying pressure equally across the entire surface of the ball. For a brief moment they both applied pressure equally on one side, while their grip on the other was just a little too loose…and the ball suddenly shot out of their auras.

Time seemed to slow for Trixie as the ball flew, and she tracked it. It first hit a wall and bounced off, leaving a dent. Next, it collided with the edge of a bookcase. This sent it rocketing towards the ground, where it bounced, and proceeded to head straight for Trixie’s head. In her slowed perception of time, what Trixie wanted to do was catch the ball telekinetically, put it away, and then lay down a little bit of law on Dinky and Tootsie over doing what she told them to do, when she told them to do it.

What actually happened was the ball smacked her right between the eyes. Her world was stars and pain and golf balls as she stumbled a little, then tumbled over.

Fore…

The world was a bright blue, slightly cloudy sky and a field of green as Vicereine Trixie Lulamoon, dressed in her finest Sunday getup, trotted through the golf course with her faithful caddy, Solrath the Dragon.

“The nine-iron, I think,” Trixie said as she set down her golf ball on the tee. Solrath obediently got her nine-iron and proceeded to hit the ball for her, sending it bouncing off a nearby tree and into Trixie’s head.

“Very good, Mr. Scary Dragon,” Trixie said from the ground as the tree loomed over her and the Moon looked down while the day turned to night and the stars into sunflowers. “Hole in one.”

“Very good, your excellency,” Solrath said, though as it turned out, he didn’t really exist. Where he had been standing, there was now a picture of a nine-iron. “Looks like it might rain, your excellency,” the picture said.

“Quite,” Trixie observed as the flood waters rose. She clung to her golf bag for life, but a shark grabbed her from beneath and started shaking her back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and –

The world slowly faded back into reality as Trixie realized she was being shaken awake.

“Miss Trixie! Wake up!” Dinky was exclaiming. She and Tootsie were on either side of her, shaking the larger pony trying to wake her up, while the other foals watched. Maybe. Trixie couldn’t seem to get a good look at them; her eyes were spinning a bit.

“I – I’m awake! I’m awake!” Trixie proclaimed. “I’m awake! I’m awake. Yes. Ow.”

Dinky and Tootsie stopped shaking Trixie, looking at her with deep concern. “Are you okay?” Dinky asked.

“We didn’t mean to!” Tootsie added. “Honest!”

“We’re sorry for fighting!”

“We’re sorry for not doing what we were told!”

“We’re sorry for nearly killing you!”

Trixie heard about half of that as she closed her eyes and put her hooves to her head, trying to get the world to stop spinning. You can walk straight after Oncle Sky Shaper’s moonshine, you can recover from this, she insisted over the pounding in her head. “Okay, okay!” Trixie said, raising a hoof and waving it at the two. “It – ow, la batterie, arrêtez de jouer de la batterie – it’s okay. It was an accident.” She rubbed her head, then looked at her hoof. She didn’t see any red. That was probably good.

“Okay,” Trixie said, standing. She wobbled a few times, but was otherwise okay, as she looked to the foals. “Okay, um…so that happened. Dinky, Tootsie, don’t fight. Let’s just move on – wait. Wait.” She counted the foals, then counted again to be sure. “There were seven of you, right? Where did – um…the one with the wings…”

“Alula,” Snails provided.

“Yeah, her. Where did Alula and Firelot – ”

“Firelock,” Sweetie corrected, as she pointed to the living room’s door. “They went looking for a first-aid kit. Dinky said there was one in the basement.”

Trixie nodded. She was normally better with names, too. She decided to blame the blunt force trauma, and an icepack sounded good right about now. “Okay. Once they get back, we can – ”

“Oh, hey, cool! Fireworks!” A voice called. It came from outside the living room, down the hall, and from the basement, which was accessible from Trixie’s kitchen. It sounded like Firelock’s voice.

Trixie took her hoof from her head. She remembered what Firelock wanted her special talent to be. She remembered seeing Firelock staring, lost without thought, at a simple gaslight flame. And, she remembered that she had just purchased a new crate of fireworks, for the show she hoped to put on for the Ingathering in a few months.

The crate that was stored in her basement.

Interlude. House Arrest

One month ago...

“Guilty on all counts?” the lead prosecutor, Closed Case, exclaimed as he, Twilight, and judge Honorable Oath trotted into a side-room of the courthouse, along with the clients of the prosecutor – technically all of Ponyville, but here represented by the town’s mayor and the eight members of its town council. A truncheon-armed guard was also accompanying Twilight, out of legal if not practical necessity.

Closed Case turned to Twilight, made a slight face, then looked back to the judge, who was settling down behind a desk in the room. “Guilty on all counts,” he repeated. “Your lordship, Miss Twilight Sparkle is an expert in magic, not law. I don’t think she knows what she’s doing. It’s not too late for her to hire a proper attorney, and given her inexperience I don’t think it would be untoward to not accept what she just said out there.”

The judge – a staid earth pony, gray in coat and mane both – considered for a moment, then looked to Twilight. “Mister Closed Case has a point, Miss Sparkle,” Honorable Oath said. “I would like to double-check the books to be sure, but I’m certain that I could strike your plea from the record and let you try again once you find a lawyer.”

Twilight shook her head before she could give the judge’s offer any thought, as she wasn’t certain she wouldn’t take him up on it if she did try to think things through more than she already had over the past month. “I know what I said, your lordship,” she said, looking him in the eye. “And I meant it. I plead guilty to all charges.”

“Are you attempting a plea bargain?” Filthy Rich, one of the members of Ponyville’s town council, asked. “The time for that was a few weeks ago, Miss Sparkle.”

“Not sure if’n we’d be willing to accept one, anyway,” Applejack, another member of the council, mused. “You gotta owe up t’ what ya did wrong, Miss Sparkle.”

Twilight nodded at Applejack’s words, not out of panic of over-thinking them this time, but rather out of complete agreement. “I know. That’s what I’m doing.” She looked back to Honorable Oath. “I’m guilty. I’ll take whatever I’m sentenced with.”

There was a knock on the door before Honorable Oath could speak. A moment later, the door opened, and a secretary peeked in. “Your lordship?” she asked. “There’s, um – somepony here to see you…”

“Tell him or her that I am quite busy at the moment,” Honorable Oath responded. He didn’t take his eyes off of Twilight, however, instead staring at her as though he were trying to solve some great puzzle.

The secretary looked mortified at what the judge told her, glancing out the door, then back in. “It’s the Princess!” she squeaked after a moment.

That got Honorable Oath’s attention, and everypony else’s as well, as the judge stood quickly, mouth opening and closing a few times. “Let her in, you silly filly!” he exclaimed as he came around from behind his desk. The secretary opened the door fully, and indeed, standing outside with a somewhat bemused smile on her face was the Alicorn of the Night, a trio of Night Guards accompanying her. One proceeded into the room ahead of her, while the other two remained outside as Luna trotted in.

Everypony inside bowed, of course. Luna acknowledge the bow with a nod, then indicated they should rise. “I’m sorry to drop in unannounced, Honorable,” the princess said, then glanced over Twilight and Ponyville’s town council. “However, after my failure to act quickly when Ponyville was last attacked, I have taken a personal interest in this case,” she looked to Twilight, “especially as, among other charges, Twilight Sparkle has been charged with the learning and use of dark magic.”

Twilight almost tried to defend herself, to point out that the dark magic spell she had used was, as these things were measured, fairly minor –an Ursa Minor was, after all, only an animal, not a pony, and she hadn’t caused any harm to it, either. She stopped herself after giving it a fraction of thought, however. It didn’t matter that the Ursa had only been an animal, she had still overridden its will and replaced it with her own, and had done so recklessly and without true thought towards consequences.

Honorable Oath, meanwhile, nodded. “Y-yes, your majesty. Twilight Sparkle has just plead guilty to all charges. I was about to dismiss her and the prosecution, to consider her sentencing, but if you would like to…?”

Luna looked to Honorable Oath, the slight smile returning to her face. “The Crown may be the law, Honorable, but this is your case, and I do not wish to impose myself on it unnecessarily. Do you have any preliminary thoughts?”

Honorable Oath clapped his mouth shut and glanced down, thinking hard. Twilight couldn’t help but think that the judge must have felt like a colt being given a pop quiz. “Nothing I have read about this case suggests malicious intent,” he said at length. “Twilight Sparkle turned herself in of her own free will, and before, I understand that it was she who banished the Ursa Minor back into the Everfree Forest.” Honorable Oath looked to Twilight. “Were this simply a matter of destruction of property, I would charge you to pay for damages. However…there is the matter of the reckless endangerment and resisting lawful arrest, as well as the use of dark magic. A more severe punishment then a simple fine is required.” Honorable Oath looked to Luna. “I would like more time to consider, Princess, but if I had to sentence Miss Sparkle here and now, then I would sentence her to ten years of house arrest, at the Starlight’s family home here in Canterlot. And I would require her to submit to random checks of the spells she has been casting, to ensure that whatever dark magic spells she has learned, she has not been using them.”

Twilight blinked a few times. “Not prison?” she asked. Luna and Honorable Oath both looked to her, and she shrank back a little, but steeled herself. “Um…sorry, your majesty, your lordship…it’s just…I was expecting prison.”

“And you would go to one, if you violated the terms of your house arrest,” Honorable Oath warned. “Barring that, however – prisons are for ponies who are a danger to others, or to themselves. Nothing about this case, however, has suggested malicious intent to me. I see a mare who made a stupid mistake in the heat of the moment. The law says you must pay for that mistake, Miss Sparkle, but nowhere does it require that you suffer for it.”

Luna nodded at that, glancing a moment at Twilight and the Ponyville town council before turning once again to the judge. “Well said, Honorable. You are also right to want more time to consider the sentencing and legal technicalities. I shall leave you to your deliberations. I should like to address the court after you sentence her, however.”

The judge agreed, of course. Luna left the room at that, and Twilight and the Ponyvillians were escorted from the room afterwards, and back to the courtroom outside. As they were, Twilight heard Closed Case muttering to himself. Twilight couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit of sympathy – this case was probably supposed to have been a big thing, a huge media circus, and a chance for Closed Case to get a little bit of fame. She was, after all, the daughter of viceroy Night Light, arguably the most powerful pony in Equestria after Luna. For Twilight to be charged and brought to court was a huge embarrassment, and certainly most ponies had probably expected the trial to be drawn-out affair.

Twilight resumed her place at the table reserved for the defendant, while the Ponyvillians went to their own table, which had a new pony sitting at it that wasn’t there before – Trixie Lulamoon, Twilight realized. The blue unicorn grinned and waved at Twilight, but quickly found herself surrounded by Ponyville’s town council, asking her what was going on.

Luna, meanwhile, stood near the door to the judge’s side-room, talking to one of her Night Guards, though in too low a voice to be heard. Directly behind her in the gallery, abuzz with talk of the arrival of Luna, sat her father, mother, and brother, all looking at her worriedly. Her father leaned forward. “The princess just arrived,” he noted.

Twilight knew she wasn’t supposed to talk to her father at the moment. She glanced at the guard that still shadowed her, who looked back, considered a moment, and then looked away, whistling a low tune. Smiling a little, she risked leaning back slightly, though she kept her head forward. “I noticed,” she whispered.

“What did she want?”

“I don’t know. She wanted to address the court after I’ve been sentenced.”

“What did you get?”

“I don’t know yet,” Twilight lied. But only a white lie – even more so than talking to the gallery, she knew she couldn’t share details of whatever went on in the side room with them, and besides, there was every chance that the judge might change his mind in some way.

It was some time – more than an hour – before Honorable Oath emerged again. The court’s bailiff looked confused for a few moments, glancing nervously at Luna as he no doubt wondered if he was allowed to order the princess to rise in what was technically her own courtroom, but after a reassuring nod from the alicorn he spoke up. “All rise for his lordship, Honorable Oath.”

Everypony did, then seated themselves when Honorable Oath gave them leave to. Twilight felt a reassuring hoof on her shoulder; she glanced behind her and saw it was her brother’s, though her mother seemed to be steadying him. Honorable Oath took a few moments to gather himself, then looked to the courtroom. “The court accepts the defendant’s guilty plea,” he said. “Therefore, for the crimes you have been charged with, I hereby sentence you, Twilight Sparkle, to be placed under house arrest here in Canterlot, for a period of not more than ten years; and to submit yourself to random inspections of the spells you have cast, whenever required by a duly appointed representative of the Crown.”

The courtroom’s gallery burst into conversation at that. Twilight took the opportunity to glance back at her family. There were tears in all their eyes, but they were also all smiling, knowing that this was probably the best sentence they could have expected. The sound of Honorable Oath’s hoof striking his podium a few times brought the courtroom back into focus. He glanced down at Luna. “Before this case is closed, her majesty, Princess Luna, has asked to say a few words.”

Luna nodded to him, then stepped forward from where she had been standing, making sure to stand in plain view. “My little ponies,” Luna said, “I can find no problems with judge Honorable Oath’s sentencing. It is fair and just and right in every way, and I do not wish to challenge it…however.”

Luna paused them, no doubt anticipating the breakout of murmurs that would ensue with her words. She was right, of course, and Twilight took a moment to once again glance back at her family. They all looked more than a little confused, and worried as well. Twilight had to admit to no small amount of worry herself.

Twilight glanced back to Luna when the murmurs died down. Luna glanced to Honorable Oath, and then to the Ponyville town council and Trixie. “However,” Luna repeated, “I should like to suggest an alternative sentence. Twilight’s house arrest in Canterlot would more than pay her debt to society as a whole; however, she did not harm society as a whole, only Ponyville.” Luna turned to look at the Ponyvillians. “What follows is not an order – merely a suggestion. Rather than remaining in Canterlot for ten years, I would like to suggest that she be placed under house arrest in Ponyville for five, that she be given a job there, and that a portion of her earnings from that job go to pay for the damages that she caused.”

Luna turned to Twilight. “You would be given a chance to see and to personally apologize to the ponies you have wronged, to grow to know them and connect to them. And in turn, they would have a chance to grow to know you and connect to you, and grow to understand that you did what you did not out of maliciousness, but rather that all your crimes stem from a single, foolish mistake.”

Luna turned, and looked to Honorable Oath. “Once again, Honorable, this is not an order, nor a royal pardon. It is only a suggestion, that you may amend in any way you see fit, made to you, to Ponyville, and to Twilight.”

Honorable Oath pursed his lips as the courtroom came alive with low conversation. It was not often that the Princess merely made a “suggestion,” but he nevertheless was obviously trying to treat it as one, and measure it carefully. Twilight, for her part, was frozen in shock. Spend her time not in Canterlot, but in Ponyville? Surrounded by the ponies she’d insulted and nearly hurt? Whose Eventime festival she had ruined? They would hate her, despise her, and they had every right to. How crazy would she have to be to give up the comfort of Canterlot for…

“Oh,” Twilight said quietly. Canterlot would be comfortable. Her family’s estate wasn’t the largest in the city, but it very nearly was, and it was well-appointed with staff and other amenities. She would be surrounded by her family, have as much chance to do whatever she wanted, not expected to do anything…it wouldn’t be the punishment she knew she deserved. It would be a ten-year vacation. And there was more, too, something about the way Luna had explained the alternative sentencing, the chance to connect…she looked back up to Luna, who was looking at her. “If you want to speak with your family, you may,” Luna said, easily heard over the buzz of the courtroom.

Twilight didn’t waste in any time in turning to her family. Her mother, father, and brother were all glancing between Twilight and Luna, confused. “What is the Princess doing?” her brother asked.

Twilight only shook her head, glancing over at the Ponyvillians, who were talking amongst themselves, looking just as confused as Twilight’s family – all except Lulamoon. Twilight suddenly realized she knew why the blue pony was here now: as the Representative of the Night Court to Ponyville, Trixie was empowered to break any tie votes the town council may find itself in. And with what Luna had just proposed, a tiebreaker might very well be necessary. Twilight then turned back to her own family. “I’m going to take what the Princess suggested,” she said.

Her mother started, and reached out to her, placing a hoof on her cheek. “Don’t,” she insisted. “Twilight – you could stay in Canterlot – ”

“But it’s not a real punishment, mom,” Twilight said, leaning forward to nuzzle her mother. “I mean…it’s not. Not really.”

“Nonsense,” her father said, making a cutting motion with one hoof. “It’s exactly what anypony would get for the same, Twilight, Just accept what the judge sentenced you with – ”

“Dad,” Twilight said, looking to her father without moving away from her mother. She felt wetness in her eyes. “I’m…I’m sorry…but Princess Luna is right. I shouldn’t just…just sit around in Canterlot. That’s not paying my debt. A-and, and besides, you heard what Luna said. It’s only five years. And Ponyville isn’t that far from Canterlot! You could still visit whenever you liked!”

Her father’s mouth opened and closed a few times, before he looked down. “But…” he said, “Twilight…we only just got you back…”

“I know. But…but I think I need this.” She looked to Luna, then to Lulamoon, who was sitting amongst the Ponyvillians while they debated. Lulamoon looked up to her, and smiled a little, before being pulled aside to answer a question. Twilight looked back to her father. “Trixie…she tried to explain something to me once. Something about…connections…I can’t remember. But what Luna said, she made me remember it.” Twilight nodded to herself, breaking away from her mother, finally, but only so that she could nuzzle her father. “I need to go to Ponyville. But I won’t be going anywhere else for awhile. I’ll just be a little further away, that’s all.”

Her father reached up, putting a hoof on Twilight’s withers as he returned the nuzzle. “Alright,” he said. “Alright…”

Twilight smiled, then turned to look at Shining Armor. Her brother looked her up and down. “You’ve grown a lot, Twilie,” he said. “I’m supposed to be the responsible one. You’re supposed to be goofing off across the country reading books.”

Twilight giggled a little, as she and her brother nuzzled. “Look where that got me,” she noted. Shining Armor let out an ironic chuckle of his own, before Twilight turned away, and looked to Luna. She was the first to reach her decision, it seemed. The town council of Ponyville followed.

Honorable Oath banged his hoof on the podium for silence again. When he got it, he looked between Twilight, the Ponyvillians, and Luna. “Twilight Sparkle,” he said, “I am open to the Princess’ suggestion, with a few clarifications. You would be placed in Ponyville and a job suitable to your skills would be found. You would have to pay your debt to Ponyville solely from this job – I don’t want your family stepping in here. The five year sentence would be mandatory, and not open to shortening. You would be allowed to change jobs if you so chose, provided that you remained within Ponyville. And at any time, you would be allowed to contact this court and request a change of sentence back to the one originally proposed, and time spent in Ponyville would count towards that ten-year sentence.” The judge looked to Ponyville’s town council. “Twilight would be employed in Ponyville at your pleasure, beginning no more than one month from this date. You could at any time and for any reason submit a request for her original sentence to be resumed, though a final decision on that matter would rest with this court and Twilight would be interviewed first. She will otherwise be treated as any other citizen placed under house arrest would be treated.” Honorable Oath looked between the two parties. “Is this acceptable to both of you?”

“It is,” Twilight answered first.

The Ponyvillians needed a few moments more of discussing things with each other, but at length, Ivory Scroll said something to Case Closed, and the lawyer looked to the judge. “The citizens of Ponyville agree,” he said.

“Very good,” Honorable oath said. With a glance at the princess, who nodded, he banged his hoof on the podium a final time. “Case closed.”

Earlier today...

Twilight’s first day had mostly been her inspecting the library in detail, settling herself in her home upstairs, and then setting about trying to find out what kind of condition the library’s organization was in.

It wasn’t good. In point of fact, as near as Twilight could tell, there wasn’t any kind of organization at all. Books seemed to have been shoved into shelves with no regard for the decimal system of organization that had been standardized throughout Equestria two centuries ago. History was mixed with literature. Sciences were haphazardly scattered everywhere. Foal’s books were mixed in with advanced mathematics. The closest thing to organization was that the astronomy books were at least grouped helpfully near the spiral staircase that led up to the small observatory, but even then, that wasn’t out of a sense of order, it was out of sheer laziness on the part of the Ponyvillians. And the periodical section was completely out of date.

The library, according to a file that Twilight had managed to find in the front desk, had a total of twelve thousand, eight hundred and seventy-four books. And not a single one of them was where it was supposed to be.

It had kept her a little busy throughout the night. Two hours alone had been spent trying to decide whether it was better to just pull everything off of every shelf and start fresh, or try and just gradually re-organize everything. Finding a cookbook in the chemistry section (well, flanked by four chemistry books, anyway) had prompted the former choice, if for no other reason than the process of trying to decide whether or not there was some logic to the idea of putting cooking and chemistry together caused her to maybe have a very small breakdown and pull everything from the shelves and onto the floor with a burst of frustrated magic.

Once that decision had been made, she had ended up staying up all night. It was a chance to put her newly-restored magic back to work, at least: when the Sun had set and the day given way to the night, she had eschewed the normal lights the library was equipped with and instead created and released dozens of glowing purple orbs throughout the library to give her light enough to read by. Then came the organizing. Admittedly, that had calmed her down more than a little, not only because she was bringing some much-needed structure to the library, but because with every book she laid hooves on, checked the library card number, found the appropriate space on a book shelf for, and put away, she felt an ever-growing sense of the library becoming more ‘hers.’ It wasn’t long before she was moving automatically, not even keeping track of the time that was passing, or even fully cognizant of what she was doing. Yes, it quickly became rote, but Twilight enjoyed rote. She’d had so little of it ever since the Ursa Minor…it was actually nice.

The progress she was making was nothing short of amazing. Or, at least, she thought it was, until she heard the front door to the library chime from where she sat on the second floor, putting away the modern histories. Glancing up at the sound, she saw from a nearby window that it was light outside, and another quick search of the walls let her spot a clock that, more than simply having worked through the night, she had worked through the morning as well – it was past three o’clock PM. A glance around the floor, meanwhile, revealed books everywhere – not scattered everywhere, organized in neat piles, but they still formed a veritable maze. She knew the ground floor didn’t look any better, either.

Stifling a yawn at the sudden realization of how long she’d stayed up, Twilight cantered over to the stairs and down, trying her best to put on a smile and hoping she didn’t look too bad from staying up all night trying to reorganize the library. “Good morning!” she said as brightly as she could. “I’m Twilight Sparkle, the new…um.”

Twilight stopped halfway down the stairs, blinking a few times, when she locked eyes with the pony who had come trotting in – an orange earth pony with a blond mane and a cutie mark of three apples, wearing a Stetson hat and glancing around the library, or more precisely the piles of books everywhere, with one eyebrow raised. When she looked up at Twilight, her own eyes grew at least as large as Twilight’s.

Applejack. Head of Sweet Apple Acres, but more importantly to Twilight, a member of Ponyville’s town council. Twilight remembered her from her trial. She remembered each member of Ponyville’s town council, in fact, but Applejack in particular had stood out – after all, Twilight had met her counterpart from another world. She tried not to draw any conclusions from what she knew of that Applejack, however – this was a different pony, who had grown up in a wholly different world with, for all Twilight knew, wildly different circumstances.

Twilight forced herself forward, unconsciously lowering her head submissively. “S-sorry about the state of the place, Miss Applejack…” she said. “I’m just doing a little, ah, re-shelving.”

Applejack got over her surprise, and instead waved off Twilight. “Place has needed a good overhaul for years now,” she observed, trotting up to meet the unicorn and giving a hearty smile. “Ain’t hardly gonna call ya out on doin’ the job the rest of us were too bone-idle to do ourselves!”

Twilight smiled a little at that, as well as the country accent that Applejack sported that, despite its questionable grammar, went a long way towards putting her at ease around the orange pony. Applejack extended a hoof. “Don’t think we’ve been formally introduced,” she said. “Name’s Applejack. Ah run Sweet Apple Acres, with the rest of mah family. An’ Ah’m a member of the town council.”

Twilight nodded, taking the hoof. “Um, Twilight Sparkle,” she said, glancing around the library. “Librarian, I guess. But you knew that.”

Applejack, to Twilight’s surprise, shook her head, even as she gave Twilight’s hoof a vigorous shake. “It’s fall now, keeps me busy at the orchard. I missed the meetin’ where we set you up. Suits ya, though.” She looked around. “Anyway. Ah can’t seem ta find my almanac for the year, so Ah was lookin’ ta see if’n the library still had a copy. Probably won’t have much luck right now, though…”

Twilight brightened as a cover, decimal number, and location flashed through her head. “Actually…” she said, turning around and beginning to navigate through the book maze she had created. After a few minutes of searching around, and one or two false leads, she managed to find one of the few bookcases that was full up already. Using her hooves, she pulled out a large book, and hoofed it over to Applejack. “Here you go.”

Applejack offered a bright grin as she took the almanac, then glanced around at the book maze. “Y’know, believe it or not,” she said, “It’d probably have taken me three times that long ta’ find it before, what with how disorganized the place was. Color me impressed. Place’ll probably look new-built by the time yer done with it.”

Twilight brightened much more at that, looking over Applejack as the two began making their way towards the library’s front counter, Applejack balancing the almanac on her back, flicking it with her tail every now and then to keep it from falling off. Her smile faded a little as she remembered that Applejack had been at her trial – and had been one of the members of Ponyville’s town council that had voted as to whether or not she should be allowed in town.

“Um…Miss Applejack?” Twilight asked.

The earth pony looked over at Twilight, smiling. “Jes’ Applejack,” she insisted.

Twilight nodded. “Applejack…I was wondering…and you can feel free not to answer this! But I was just wondering…a month ago, at my trial. When you and the rest of the council were voting for whether or not I should be allowed to come here. Which…which way did you vote?”

Applejack’s smile didn’t falter, though it did become a little wry. “It’s a secret ballot, Twi, Ah can’t tell ya,” she said.

“Oh,” Twilight said, looking away. “Sorry – ”

“Nah, don’t be. Yer new, ya didn’t know.” The two had reached the front counter, and Applejack put down the almanac on the counter, and looked pointedly at Twilight. “Ah can tell ya that it ain’t secret forever, it’ll be open ta the public in one year. Ah can tell ya that it was a six-to-two vote, too. Yer friend Trixie didn’t need to break a tie. And,” Applejack offered a wink at Twilight, “Ah can tell ya that Ah’m the sort a’ pony who feels a mite tickled when a pony that’s done wrong or who needs help, has the guts to stand up and admit it, and take responsibility. Took me awhile ta’ learn that lesson mahself, too.”

Twilight looked Applejack over, even as she began filling out the library card for the almanac. Applejack had all but told her that she’d voted to let Twilight stay in Ponyville. Why? The Apple family’s night had been ruined at the Eventime just like everypony else’s. The Ursa Minor she’d lead into town had destroyed an Apple family cart. She’d put Apple lives at risk, hadn’t she?

“So,” Applejack said, “yer stuck in here for the next five years, huh?” At a nod from Twilight, Applejack tks’d. “Cider season’s commin’ up. Apple family cider ain’t somethin’ ya want to miss. Tell ya what – Ah’ll make sure ta save ya a bottle or two. Consider it a ‘welcome ta Ponyville’ gift.” She suddenly glanced sidelong at Twilight. “Ya do like apple cider, right?”

Twilight blinked as she carefully slipped the library card into the almanac. “Y-yes,” she confirmed.

Applejack brightened again. “Good ta…” she began, when she paused, ears flickering a few times and frowning as she glanced towards a nearby window. “D’ya hear fireworks?”

Twilight did, actually – softly, at first, but the sound rapidly gained in volume. Applejack trotted over to the library’s front door and opened it, looking around. Twilight poked her head out as well, fairly certain that as long as her four hooves stayed inside the threshold, she wasn’t violating her house arrest. The two of them spotted the source of the sound – fireworks were launching from the Official Residency of the Representative of the Night Court of Luna to Ponyville, which wasn’t very far from the library. The unicorn looked to Applejack. “What’s the occasion?” she asked.

Applejack shrugged. “It’s always one fool thing or another with that pony,” Applejack said, then glanced back to Twilight. “You’ll get used to it. Am Ah good ta go?”

Twilight blinked a moment, then nodded, using her horn to telekinetically grab the almanac and float it out to Applejack, who took it and placed it on her back again. “Thank’ye kindly,” she said, tipping her Stetson. “Ah’ll be seein’ ya soon, Twi. Always good ta make a new friend. An’ welcome ta Ponyville.”

Twilight nodded as Applejack turned and left, then went back inside, closing the door to her library and looking around at all the work she still had to do. At a guess, she was maybe a sixth of the way done with her re-shelving. She had a lot to do still.

On the other hoof, Applejack seemed to think she was doing a good job. Smiling to herself, and feeling a small surge of confidence, Twilight trotted through the maze of books and back upstairs, getting back to work.

Author's Note

For the past week or so I've actually been debating turning this into two separate stories, one for Twilight and one for Trixie. Thing is that both of the planned stories have the same planned conclusion and second halves. So instead this is basically just an A plot and an E plot right now. Why A and E? Because they will eventually come together to a single plot. An Æ plot, if you will.

That letter's called ash, by the way.

Anyway. I have no idea how, properly speaking, Equestria's legal system should work. For that matter I don't really know how America's does beyond the occasional Law & Order episode, where the defendant doesn't usually plead guilty 'cause that's not as dramatically fun to watch. I plan to not ever be in a situation where I need to find out.

I do know that I'd like judges to be addressed as "your lordship," echoing convention in parts of Canada (including its Supreme Court until the 2000s), mostly because that feels all monarchical n' such. Plea bargaining is apparently allowed, which is common in American law, occurs fairly often in Canadian law, but is almost unheard of elsewhere. Honorable Oath's musings on how he should sentence Twilight also suggest that Equestria operates under common law rather than civil law - that is, individual judges use their own interpretations and understandings of the law code, in conjunction with past rulings and precedents set by previous judges, in order to pass sentences.

I think that house arrest is actually a very common sentence in Equestria, as well, for the reasons that Honorable Oath outlined: prisons are for those believed to be a danger to either others or to themselves. Otherwise, it isn't seen as worthwhile to waste the time, effort, and money of the Crown (and it helps that these are ponies - not noted for their hardened criminal population). Although, additionally, I think that Equestrian law forbids "cruel" punishments but not necessarily "unusual" ones, which Twilight's sentencing may qualify as (though obviously there's a significant amount of room to argue that any kind of unusual punishment could be interpreted as cruel; the point is that, though they are not encouraged to do so, a judge is perfectly capable of creating a sentence on the spot that he feels would be best for the guilty party in question).

Court decisions can be appealed, of course, going to higher and higher courts until finally you reach Luna herself. This rarely happens, though, and Luna may refuse any case that reaches her if she feels it is not worth her time or that the lower courts have already handled things sufficiently at the appeal is simply delaying the inevitable (much as the US Supreme Court is allowed to do the same and in fact does so with better than 90% of appeal attempts)

4. Fire!

Within a second, Trixie, galloping as fast as her hooves could take her, was out of her living room and in her main hallway. Half a second after that, she was in her kitchen. It took several more seconds for her to negotiate the unfortunately steep stairs that lead down into her basement. She was nevertheless standing before Alula and Firelock, eyes wide, horn glowing bright, and trying to remember if the lone shield spell she knew was fireproof.

She found Alula with a first-aid kit held in her mouth, staring at her with wide eyes at the speed with which she had barreled down the stairs. Firelock, meanwhile, was sitting in front the crate of fireworks, the instructions and warning manual that had come with it in her hooves, reading everything contained therein by horn-light that would occasionally loose a tiny spark that Trixie desperately hoped was just spare magic, and not an actual ember. She was not comforted by the fact that Firelock seemed to be trembling slightly.

“Hhhhhiiii girls,” Trixie breathed, trotting forward carefully and making sure to keep one eye on Firelock as she did. “Um…Alula, thanks for getting the first-aid kit, why don’t you take it upstairs? Firelock – ”

“Blitz Bang’s Boomers?” Firelock exclaimed suddenly, jumping into the air. She looked to Trixie. “You’re gonna have Blitz Bang’s Bombastic Boomers at your next show?”

“Yeah – ”

“And the Crazy-Curling Colorful Cocktails of Konekticut, too?”

Trixie thought to what she’d ordered, looking at the crate. It was closed securely, though the wood was a little too thin for her liking. “Yes,” she said. “Firelock, why don’t we – ”

“Tell me that you have Full Flame’s Phlogiston Fuses!”

“How do you even know the word ‘phlogiston?’”

“Because I love fireworks!” Firelock exclaimed, throwing herself at the crate and embracing it tightly. Her horn let loose another few multicolored sparks as she did. In another moment, she was on top of the crate, hopping back and forth from one corner to the next. “They’re all peeeewwww! Whiz! Zoom! And then bang! – whoa!” Her last leap missed a step, and she slipped from the box. Trixie caught her telekinetically before she could be injured. Firelock barely missed a beat, however, letting out a squeal as she squirmed excitedly in Trixie’s telekinetic grasp. “I can’t wait for the Ingathering!” she proclaimed as Trixie set her back down. “Can we set off a few fireworks?”

“N-” Trixie began, though then she saw that Firelock was looking at her with wide eyes, flopped ears, hooves pressed together…the puppy-dog stare, almost as good as Dinky’s. Trixie shut her eyes quickly against her greatest weakness, but the memory of the eyes remained.

No! Trixie railed against herself. I have to be strong. This is exactly what Raindrops was warning against. Étoiles dans le ciel, I can stand up to this foal!

Trixie opened her eyes, looked to Firelock, and realized that there was no way she was going to be able to stand up to this foal.

Merde. Well, maybe I can mitigate the damage. “How about,” Trixie ventured, “I teach you a spell to create illusory fireworks?”

The change was profound. Firelock’s eyes grew even wider, her ears went perk, her mouth split into a massive, toothy grin, and her whole body quivered with excitement. “Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!” She exclaimed, beginning to leap from front to hind hooves and buck like a bronco. Trixie, meanwhile, let out a slight sigh of relief as she telekinetically picked up Firelock and brought the excited filly upstairs, Alula following.

“Okay.”

Trixie sat with the semicircle of foals in front of her again, each staring expectantly, save Dinky, who was sitting beside Trixie as her teacher’s assistant. Trixie raised a hoof. “I’ve decided that the first spell I’m going to teach you,” she said, “is how to create illusory fireworks.”

“Yes!” Firelock exclaimed again, hopping in place and horn letting loose a few sparks.

The other foals talked amongst each other at that as well, already discussing how they were planning to use the fireworks. Trixie made a note to warn Rarity about Sweetie’s plan in particular, then raised a hoof. “I should warn you,” Trixie said, “that it’s…well, not a hard spell, but not exactly easy. There’s a good chance that you might not be able to do it by the end of the day. But, what I show you should be enough to allow you to keep practicing.” She smiled. “Best of all, it’s basically just a glorified version of making your horn glow, so I’m pretty sure it’s something any unicorn can do, regardless of special talent.”

“Pretty sure?” Tootsie Flute echoed, head tilting to the side. “You don’t know?”

Trixie paused a moment. “Er, no.” she admitted.

“But what if we can’t do it at all? How will you know if it’s just because we need to practice more, or if it’s because we can’t ever make fireworks?”

“I wanted to learn a pottery spell,” Alula ventured softly.

Trixie winced a little. “Um, Alula…” she said, “I…don’t know any pottery spells.” At Alula’s dejected look, Trixie quickly added, “b-but I could probably help you refine your telekinesis! That would help with pottery, right?”

Alula brightened, nodding and looking satisfied with that. Now, however, Firelock stepped forward. “Wait!” she cried. “Does this mean that I won’t get to learn how to make fireworks?”

Trixie blinked. “No, we’ll still do that,” she insisted. “Just, maybe Alula can sit this out, and then after I’ve shown you all my fireworks spell I can help Alula – ”

“But what about me?” Snails asked. He shifted awkwardly from one hoof to the next. “The whole reason for doing this was supposed to be to help me with my under-channeling.”

“Well, yeah,” Dinky interjected in Trixie’s defense, “but to do that you just need to use your magic more often. Learning how to make fireworks should be fine for that!”

“But Miss Trixie’s teaching Alula something special!”

“She’s not really,” Alula ventured, tapping her hoofs together. “It’s just helping me with my telekinesis…”

“Then Alula’s learned something special and so has Firelock!” Tootsie objected. “And what if we can’t make fireworks?”

“I’ll be able to make fireworks,” Firelock declared proudly.

“Maybe, but what about the rest of us?” Sweetie asked, looking down at her blank flank. “I don’t think my special talent is going to involve setting stuff on fire.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that,” Trixie said quickly. “The spell was going to be a glamor – an illusion. Remember? No real fire or heat, just light and noise.”

There was a moment of silence, when Firelock stepped forward again. “Then what is the point?” she demanded.

Trixie blinked. “You…can use it safely indoors?”

Firelock looked down at that, then sighed, trotting back over to the semicircle. “That’s cool, I guess…”

Trixie began to object, but then remembered that she was dealing with a foal, and one who was possibly pyromaniacal at that. She pushed aside her bruised pride in illusioncraft. “Okay okay okay,” Trixie said. “How about this: I’ll try and teach each of you some spell you might want to learn, if I can. In the meantime,” she looked down at Dinky, “Dinky, I’ve shown you how to do a lot of basic cantrips over the past few months. You, as my teacher’s assistant, can try and show everypony I’m not currently working with how to do them. Okay?”

Dinky nodded, and Trixie did as well. There – crisis averted. “Now, Firelock,” Trixie said, and the foal eagerly perked up. Trixie held up her hooves. “Snails raised a good point about the big reason anypony is here today at all, and I did promise I’d help him with his problem. So I’ll spend some time with him first. Then you, since I said we’d do fireworks, and then I’ll randomly select everypony else’s order. Does that sound fair?”

Firelock looked to Snails in jealousy, but sighed again. “Okay…” she moaned. “That’s fair, I guess…”

“Okay,” Trixie said, as Snails trotted over to her. “Everypony, listen to Dinky. Dinky, you’re in charge. Don’t go mad with power the way I would. Okay?”

Dinky nodded, grinning at Trixie’s jab at herself that was, at the same time, a gentle reminder of Dinky’s minor spat with Tootsie from a few minutes ago. Dinky was a smart foal and, whatever bad habits Trixie had that may have been rubbing off on her, she was fundamentally a good pony. After the accident with the golf ball, Trixie was certain that Dinky would be on her best behavior, and wouldn’t get herself into another fight.

Trixie looked to Snails. “Okay, come on, we’ll go into the backyard for some space,” she said. Snails followed her. “Any thoughts on what you want to learn?”

Snails thought as the two trotted. “I think it’d be neat if I knew how to make my animal friends bigger!”

Trixie saw a newspaper headline in her mind’s eye: FOAL MAKES 100-FOOT-TALL SPIDER, NAMES HER “SUPER FUFFY. And in a related article: Ponyville representative missing; presumed eaten and/or exiled.

“I don’t know how to make animals bigger,” Trixie said, which fortunately enough was the truth. “How about something else?”

Dinky watched Trixie go, then looked back to the other foals, and in particular Tootsie. She tapped her hooves together for a few moments, then let out a long sigh and held forward a hoof. “Tootsie, I’m sorry that I fought with you over the golf ball,” she said.

Tootsie Flute, much to Dinky’s relief, didn’t waste any time in tapping her own hoof to Dinky’s. “It’s okay,” she said. “I was being at least as bad. I’m sorry too. Friends?”

Dinky nodded, then stood up straight and put on her best smile as she held up a hoof. “Now then,” she said. “What kind of spell would you like to learn? I can make really bright flashes with my horn, or throw my voice, or muffle sounds, or make dancing lights…”

“Can you do fireworks?” Firelock asked.

Dinky considered. “Not really,” she admitted, looking up at her horn and running some of her magic through it. She was able to make a few sparks of light leap from it, but nothing more than what any foal, even Snails and Sweetie, was capable of. “Besides, Miss Trixie will be showing you that, Firelock.”

Firelock nodded, looking up at her own horn. Channeling magic through it, she was able to set off notably more sparks than Dinky. “I think I’ll just practice this,” she said. “Miss Trixie can show me more. You guys can do your own thing. I’ll be listening, though.”

“Okay…” Dinky intoned, gaze lingering on Firelock. Miss Trixie was already going to show her all about fireworks, so why wasn’t she taking the opportunity to learn more? After a few moments, though, Dinky looked to the remaining foals. “So, what else?” She asked, considering the minor cantrips she knew how to cast, the majority of them just being variations on making her horn glow. “I can make dancing lights! Want me to show you those?”

“I can do those too,” Tootsie said, closing her eyes and setting her horn alight. Two small motes of light sprung into existence around her horn and began an orbit around her body. After a few moments, she opened her eyes again, smiling brightly.

“Well, I can’t,” Sweetie noted. Snips and Alula echoed their own lack of ability.

“Okay,” Dinky decided, looking at Tootsie. “How about you and me help Sweetie, Snips, and Alula?”

Tootsie nodded, and looked to the other three unicorns. “Okay, first,” she said, “you have to gather the magic at your thauma, just like when you’re lighting up your horn. The trick is pushing the magic out of your thauma. You need to – ”

“Wait, what?” Dinky asked.

Tootsie paused, looking at Dinky. “Huh?”

“What’s a thauma?”

Sweetie grinned, holding up a hoof. “The part of a unicorn’s horn that controls magic!” she exclaimed.

“You are a dictionary,” Snips declared.

Sweetie started to defend herself, but Dinky spoke first. “I’ve never heard of it.”

Tootsie blinked at that. “Really?” she asked.

“I haven’t either,” Snips ventured.

“I have,” Alula said, looking up at her horn and poking it a few times. “I used to go to the doctor’s every few months to make sure that my thauma was developing okay. I didn’t really do any unicorn magic when I was a baby, so the doctors thought that maybe I only had a vegetable horn.”

“Vestigial,” Sweetie corrected.

Dinky looked up at her own horn. She could only see the tip really, of course, but she’d always thought that it was just…well, a horn. She’d never really considered that there was more to it than just the bone and thin layer of fuzz that covered it. “And it controls my magic?” she asked, poking the base of her horn.

“Well…part of it,” Tootsie said. “There’s the thauma, the alveo – ”

“Gland that runs through the horn’s center,” Sweetie provided.

“ – cornumusculum – ”

“Muscles in the base of the horn!” Sweetie exclaimed.

“I didn’t know about those,” Alula put in, eyes wide and glancing at her own horn.

Dinky’s eyes widened, hooves at the base of her horn and feeling around her head now. Snips was doing likewise “I have muscles in my horn?” she asked, mind suddenly filled with the image of being able to wiggle her horn around as easily as she could swivel her ears. She closed her eyes and tried really, really hard to make the muscles that she never knew she had move, but nothing happened.

Tootsie giggled. “They basically squeeze the thauma and control how much magic you’re letting out,” she said. “They don’t do anything unless you’re doing magic. Didn’t Miss Trixie tell you this stuff?”

Dinky shook her head as she opened her eyes. “Miss Trixie just…shows me magic,” she said, setting her horn aglow again and conjuring a dancing light, making it float between her two outstretched hooves. “She says to just picture what you want and imagine it coming from your horn. It always feels different for each spell. Like, with dancing lights, it feels to me like I’m…I’m blowing a bubble, I guess.”

Tootsie stared at Dinky. “Huh?” she asked. “But then how do you know how to shape whatever magic you want to do?”

Dinky shrugged. “Maybe that’s why I’m always grabbing things so hard,” she admitted, but then looked to Sweetie, Snips, and Alula. “But…yeah. Miss Trixie didn’t tell me about that stuff. She just kinda...shows me what to do.” She held forward her dancing light. “Like this! Just run magic through your horn and imagine yourself making a dancing light.”

The three began to try, but Tootsie shook her head. “But you need to know what you’re doing,” she insisted. “You’re pushing the magic from the thauma and through your alveo. The glow around your horn isn’t just light, it’s your actual magic from your alveo. You need to take that magic and shape it. That’s where the cornumusculums – ”

“Cornumuscula,” Sweetie corrected even as she concentrated on her own horn.

“Dictionary,” Snips added automatically, equally focused.

“ – get involved,” Tootsie finished.

Dinky frowned, making another dancing light in front of her, then a third. She didn’t really feel anything happening in her horn, beyond just the normal tingle. It certainly didn’t feel like there were muscles flexing or thaumas being squeezed, or whatever Tootsie was saying. “I think you’re making things too complicated,” she said.

“No I’m not!” Tootsie objected. “It’s really important!”

“Then how come I’m just as good at magic as you?”

“Hey,” Firelock interjected, as she stared at her horn and kept trying with her sparks. “So I just imagine that there’s a bag or whatever at the base of my horn and I’m squeezing fireworks out?”

“No, your muscles are squeezing your thauma,” Tootsie insisted.

“No, you’re just imagining yourself making fireworks,” Dinky said at the same time.

Tootsie whickered in annoyance, stamping a hoof. “But that’s just your imagination!” She objected. “Plus I haven’t even gotten into how you have to make sure that you’re using the right kind of magic.”

“It’s only dancing lights! That doesn’t even matter!” Dinky insisted, whickering herself, then stepping up close to Tootsie. The other unicorn didn’t back away as their horns and muzzles were practically touching. “I don’t need to know what all the parts of my legs are called to walk! You’re making things too complicated!”

“No I’m not!” Tootsie insisted. “This is all really important to know – ”

“Hey!” Snips exclaimed. “I’m doing it!”

“Me too!” Sweetie added.

Dinky and Tootsie turned to look, and saw that, indeed, the two other unicorn foals had both managed to create simple, faint glowing orbs – orange in Snips’ case, and lime green in Sweetie’s – that hovered in front of their faces. Sweetie managed to get hers to move through the air first, but Snips wasn’t far behind. As Tootsie and Dinky watched, Alula managed to create a purple orb as well, her wings flaring in excitement as she quickly caught up to her companions in maintaining it and making it move.

Tootsie and Dinky glanced to one another, before the latter finally asked the question both were wondering. “So who’d you listen to?”

Sweetie, Snips, and Alula looked between each other for a moment, then back to Tootsie and Dinky. “Um…Firelock, actually,” Snips said, as he brought his dancing light around and in front of him, and tried grabbing it with his hooves. It was just a ball of light, though, completely intangible.

Sweetie and Alula nodded in agreement with Snips. “What she said about squeezing a bag at the base of your horn,” Sweetie said. “I just did that. And look!” she held her hoof forward, dancing light orbiting around the end of it. “It worked!”

“My first real spell,” Alula nodded happily, wings still flared. She closed her eyes, concentrating harder, and made a second dancing light after a little effort, the two proceeding to orbit the tip of her horn like a halo. When she opened her eyes and saw them both, she laughed with delight. “Momma’s gonna be so happy!”

Dinky and Tootsie blinked, then turned and look to Firelock, still focusing on her own horn, then each other. “I guess…” Tootsie ventured. “There’s more than one way to do it?”

“I guess,” Dinky said, looking down. She’d almost gotten into another fight with Tootsie, and only a few minutes after apologizing for the first one. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Tootsie said, as the other three unicorns cancelled their dancing lights, all looking tired from the exertion, but happy at having all learned a new spell. Tootsie stood up straight. “No more fighting with each other! Okay?”

“Okay!” Dinky agreed, stomping a hoof and feeling determined to make sure it didn’t happen again. She looked to the other three foals. “Okay, so that’s dancing lights! Keep practicing it and it’ll get easier and easier. So now, who wants to learn – ”

“Got it!” Firelock exclaimed suddenly, making the other five foals jump and look at her. Firelock was standing as though she were ready to pounce, still looking at her horn. It was shooting out a multicolored sparks – mostly red or green, but there were plenty of other colors mixed in. As the foals watched, she managed to create the sparks in thin air a few inches above her horn, then another one a few inches above that. Small crackling sounds and pops came and went with each little burst.

“Wow!” Snips exclaimed, trotting forward. “You learned how to do that all by yourself!”

“And it’s got sight and sound,” Dinky observed. “That’s really cool! Even Miss Trixie normally has to cast two different spells to make illusions for sight and sound both – ”

Dinky’s train of thought was interrupted when she saw a few of the sparks touch down on Miss Trixie’s nearby couch. Most of the sparks were flared out wisps of magic, but a few made it all the way down still glowing with magic – and, evidently, heat, as one spark left behind a smudge of black. Cautiously, Dinky came forward, next to Firelock, and extended a hoof towards the sparks going off in the air over her horn.

“Ow!” she exclaimed as she recoiled when one of the sparks landed on her fetlock. It hadn’t really hurt all that much, but it had hurt a lot more than it was supposed to if it was only an illusion. She backed away from Firelock in fright. “Firelock, those aren’t illusions, those are – ”

“Real fireworks!” Firelock finished for Dinky, grin somehow growing yet wider and eyes growing even wider. “I can make real fireworks! I’ve always wanted to! Ever since I went to Hoofington and saw Blitz Bang’s Bombastic Boomers! Now maybe I can open my own fireworks store in Ponyville! Firelocks’ Fantastic and Fabulous Flaming Fireworks Funhouse!”

Dinky started to try and bring Firelock back into focus, but Snips let out a huge gasp first, pointing at Firelock’s side as a glow appeared there. “Your flank!” he exclaimed.

Firelock froze, then slowly turned her head to look at her flank, just as the glow that had been there subsided, revealing a trio of bursting fireworks, two green and one red. Firelocks’ eyes grew wider still. “My cutie mark!” she exclaimed, hopping from hoof to hoof again, horn glowing brightly and setting off more fireworks, starting with the loudest, brightest one yet. “I got my cutie mark I got my cutie mark I got my cutie mark – ”

“Make legs longer?” Snails asked, as he and Trixie stood outside, in her backyard.

“Your legs are petty long already,” Trixie noted.

“I meant a bug’s legs.”

Trixie sighed. “I don’t know how to do that,” she said. She’d been saying as much more often than she was comfortable with over the past few minutes. “Um, Snails, look,” she held up a hoof. “I’ll be honest with you. My special talent is magic, basically, but…I don’t really know all that many spells. Most of what I do know are illusions. They can’t make any real changes. I practice them all the time so I’m really good at making illusions do whatever I want.” She demonstrated this by turning around, horn glowing, and creating an illusion of colorful fish swimming through the air. But she reached out and ran a hoof through them, demonstrating that they were mere figments. “I can do the same stuff with sound. But outside of that?” Trixie shrugged. “I’m…sorry, I don’t really know much.”

Snails sighed, looking down at the ground. “Oh,” he said dejectedly.

Trixie winced. She’d promised to show Snails all kinds of amazing magical feats, but right now it seemed like she was incapable of showing him anything that he actually wanted to learn. It wasn’t a good feeling. “Maybe think of things other than bugs,” Trixie ventured, looking down at her hooves as she considered the non-glamor spells she did know. “I know how to make a few simple shields, how to make small bolts of lightning. I could help you with your telekinesis the way I’m going to show Alula. There’s my memorizing spell, or I could show you a few glamors, or – ”

“Hey, wait,” Snails said, perking up. “Memorizing spell?”

Trixie blinked, then smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “You can use it to perfectly remember anything you’re looking at for about a day. It’s like taking a picture and keeping it in your head, though you can only have one at a time.”

Snails considered that for several long moments, then smiled. “That’d be fun!” he said. “I could take a picture of all my animal friends at home and carry it around with me all day long!”

“Or you could use it to help with homework, or for a test,” Trixie pointed out slyly, nudging Snails with an elbow.

Snails frowned as he considered that for a moment or two. “That sounds like cheating, though,” he observed. “I don’t want to cheat, even if it would help my grades.”

Trixie sighed. “Well, Cheerilee would approve of that, at least.”

“Is there a way I could share the picture?” Snails asked. “Like, take what’s in my head, and move it to somepony else?”

Trixie considered a spell she knew that did exactly that, which functioned by forming a physical conduit from the caster’s brain to the recipient’s via the most direct magical route – the mouths and tongues of the caster and receiver. Or in other words, it required the caster to kiss his or her target. With tongue.

“No,” Trixie lied, for once confident that a lie she had told was both completely justified and had no way of coming back to bite her in the flank. “Sorry.”

“Oh, okay,” Snails said with a sigh. Trixie let out a sigh of her own that Snails wasn’t focusing on learning a spell that would, at the very least, get her in trouble with (in order of whom Trixie feared the reprisals of) Raindrops, Luna, Snails’ parents, and the law. “Well, the picture spell sounds really cool anyway! Teach me that.”

Trixie nodded, taking off her hat and setting it on the ground in front of him. “Okay, now focus on the hat,” she said. “At the same time, I want you to imagine…imagine your magic.”

“What’s my magic look like?” Snails asked.

“Well, to me, your magic looks like a kind of green-gold tapestry,” Trixie answered. “But that might not be what you imagine it like. Dinky, for example, imagines magic as kind of…sensations, I guess. Like, when I taught her dancing lights, she said it was easiest if she imagined she was blowing bubbles, but from her horn. If she was learning this spell, she’d probably imagine it as being like…like water flowing from her horn to her eyes, or something.”

Snails paused. “Wouldn’t that sting?” he asked.

“Probably. I just imagine magic as colors. This spell I imagine is a kind of bright light, like a camera bulb’s flash.”

Snails considered a few moments more. “And that’s not what Dinky imagines her magic like,” he noted. “It’s what she imagines her magic doing. What’s she think her magic is like?”

Trixie blinked. “I…don’t know,” she said, and realized that Snails had a point – Dinky had never really defined what she imagined her own, personal magic to be like, the way Trixie imagined her own magic as being like a big ball of many colors inside of her, just waiting to pour out of her horn. She shook her head. “We can ask her later. What do you imagine your magic to be like?”

Snails considered for several long minutes. Trixie gave him the time – this was a very personal question, after all. At length, he looked back to Trixie. “Flavors,” he answered.

“Flavors?” Trixie asked.

“That’s what I’m thinking of, whenever I do manage to make my horn glow,” Snails said as he looked at his horn. “Every time, I remember mom’s cooking. ‘Cause the first time I made my horn glow, it was at dinner, and we were having…I forget exactly what, but it involved hot peppers. And it was so hot that my horn glowed!” He smiled. “That’s what Raindrops said, anyway.”

Trixie nodded. Flavors seemed a little odd, but she could work with it. She pointed at her hat. “Okay, so what do you imagine a memory spell to be flavored like? What’s a really memorable flavor?”

“Sour apples,” Snails responded, puckering his lips at his own memory as though he had just bitten into one.

“Fair enough. So just focus on that flavor. Try and wrap it around my hat, make my hat taste like – ”

Trixie was interrupted by a loud snap from within her home, followed by a series of crackles. She whinnied in surprise, Snails as well, and the two retreated to the other end of the back yard in fright before stopping, looking back at the house.

“What was that?” Snails asked. “That didn’t seem anything like sour apples!”

“It wasn’t you, it came from inside,” Trixie noted. She looked to Snails. “Stay here, I’ll go figure out what’s going on.”

Snails nodded, and Trixie cantered back to her home, stopping only long enough to grab her hat and set it back on her head, then trotted into her home, making a beeline for her living room. She saw several flashes from inside, and heard Firelock’s voice.

“I got my cutie mark I got my cutie mark I got my – ”

Trixie turned around the corner, looking into her living room. Most of the foals were in one corner, away from Firelock, who was prancing in place in the center of the room, her flank now indeed carrying a cutie mark consisting of a trio of exploding fireworks. Magically-created fireworks were being set off from her horn every few moments. The sparks didn’t seem to bother Firelock herself, but the burning smell in the air evidenced that the fireworks were no mere glamors.

“Firelock!” Trixie exclaimed. The foal jumped, turning to face Trixie and accidentally lobbing a firework in Trixie’s direction. The adult mare let out a yelp of surprise, throwing up her cape. The enchantments in it rendered it all but fireproof, and the firework ricocheted off of it and towards her kitchen. Glancing, she saw the firework bounce off of a metal pan hanging from its rack in the ceiling – and then down, and into her basement.

Trixie stared for about a quarter of a second, before dashing towards her kitchen and looking down the door that lead to the basement. A red glow emanated from down there, and there was a sound of sizzling.

“Oh no,” Trixie said. She turned, looking down the hallway, at the foals, except for Firelock, who had their heads poking out the door to the living room. She’d never grab them and pull them from the building in time, and even if she did, that many fireworks going off under the building…

Trixie let out a cry of frustration. “I swore I’d never do this again!” She cried in futility as she leaped down into her basement, taking the steps three at a time. At the bottom, she found the crate of fireworks had had a hole burned through it by Firelock’s magic. It had probably hit only a single fireworks’ fuse, but that would have lit more, and more…

Trixie had seconds. Crying out in frustration, she leaped forward, grabbed the crate, and closed her eyes, horn glowing bright as she thought of her back yard – and then remembered that Snails was still out there. Shouting in frustration again, she thought instead of her front yard, and willed herself to go there, and to take the crate of fireworks with her.

There was an azure pop, and the briefest instant of nothing. With another blue pop, Trixie opened her eyes – and found herself not in her front yard, but on her roof.

“Send me to the Sun!” Trixie cursed as she dashed away from the crate of fireworks, but made it only a few steps before the sound of sizzling abruptly stopped.

Trixie was too familiar with the way her life progressed to be fooled. She threw herself to the thatched roof beneath her, and covered herself with her cape.

BANG.

It wasn’t the loudest sound that Trixie had ever heard, but it wasn’t far off, either. Aside from the fire protection, Trixie’s cape offered a degree of protection against damage as well – not much, but it probably saved her from getting more than bumps and bruises as the crate of fireworks went off, scattering wood chips and pieces everywhere as the fireworks arched into the sky. For whatever reason, not every firework went off at the same time, instead creating an impromptu show as they one after the other sailed into the sky and exploded in broad daylight. Some of the fireworks, meanwhile, instead launched horizontally, streaking over Ponyville to go off just a few dozen feet from the ground, though fortunately the sparks they released were too weak to start any fires, even on the thatched roofs that Ponyville favored. And lastly, one firework was pointed down, and skidded along her roof before sailing down and into the ground in her front yard, and exploded.

It felt like forever until silence returned, though Trixie knew that it had been, at most, only a few seconds. Cautiously peeking out from under her cape, Trixie saw that her roof was intact, if scorched in places. Ponyville wasn’t on fire. That was good. Trixie elected to not even bother checking her office window.

No, the unicorn faced a couple more immediate problems – how to get down from her roof, and what to do to Firelock once she was back inside.

Getting into her home turned out to be easy, at least – Trixie had left a window open on the second floor, and climbed in easily enough. She stomped across her upstairs, then down the stairs to the main floor, horn glowing a crystalline, angry blue. Once downstairs, she found all the foals had gathered in the kitchen, looking down into the basement. Firelock didn’t seem to be there, but Snails was.

Trixie set aside her anger, or tried to at least, for a few moments as she looked down at the foals. “Is everypony okay?” She asked.

Everypony nodded slowly, but stared at Trixie like she was Corona returned. The acrid smell of smoke coming from her coat and probably singed tail didn’t help, she imagined, but Trixie also didn’t care. “Where’s Firelock?”

“N-no!” Alula exclaimed. Trixie’s gaze fell on her, and the foal backed away in fright, but swallowed. “No, w-we won’t tell you, y-you can’t be mad at her, it was an – ”

“Where’s. Firelock.”

The five remaining foals, as one, pointed down the hall, back to the living room, as Alula shivered in fright. Trixie turned around, stomping back down the hall and whickering in anger as she went. That was it. She was going to lay down some law. She was going to teach Firelock how to behave and hopefully break the foal’s rather unhealthy love of fire. She was going to send everypony who wasn’t supposed to be here home. She was going to…

Trixie looked into her living room, and saw Firelock exactly where she had been when she’d launched the firework at Trixie, staring at the door. Her eyes were wide, and her breath coming in short gasps as she trembled. At the sight of Trixie – tail flicking in anger, eyes narrow, lips pulled back into a snarl – the foal let out a sharp whinny of fright, turning and retreating to a corner of the room before realizing she was trapped and turning back around, legs shaking.

“I – I – I’m sorry!” She exclaimed as she huddled in the corner. “I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry! I was just so excited ‘cause I earned my cutie mark and please don’t be mad!”

Trixie opened her mouth to exclaim that she was so far past mad that she couldn’t even see it anymore, but stopped when she remembered what she was looking at: a little filly, who had just earned her cutie mark, who had been excited, who hadn’t meant to hurt anypony, even if she almost had.

Trixie took a step into the living room. Firelock flinched, hunkering down more, tears streaming from her eyes as she put her hooves over her head, crying without any shame in a way that only foals could. She looked absolutely terrified – and the object of her terror was Trixie.

The unicorn looked away for a moment, looking at anything other than Firelock. Her gaze settled on her couch, which had a few small burns from some of the earlier fireworks that Firelock had been setting off. Nothing major – nothing a minor cantrip wouldn’t repair. Her roof, too. It was only thatch, easily, cheaply fixed. And her window – well, it had been awhile. It was due for a repair, anyway.

Trixie took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly, looking back to Firelock. “Hey,” she said as softly as she could manage, trotting forward slowly and carefully. “Calm down, kiddo. I’m…not going to do anything. Okay?”

Firelock didn’t seem to believe her. Trixie had reached her now, and after a moment of thought she took off her cape, holding it up before Firelock. “Fireproof,” she declared. “I’m fine. All I’ll need is a bath to wash out the smell of smoke.”

The foal didn’t seem to really hear Trixie. The older unicorn let out another sigh, putting on her cape as she sat down beside the foal, pressing her barrel to Firelock’s own. She looked her over, noticing the cutie mark again. “So…fireworks,” Trixie said. “That’s a good special talent.”

Firelock looked at Trixie, then burst out in a fresh round of tears. She buried her face in Trixie’s shoulder and neck, though, and Trixie took that as basically a good sign as she used a hoof to pat Firelock on the head. “Just…be more careful, okay?” she asked.

“I try!” Firelock exclaimed. “But I always do this! This is just like when the town hall basement flooded, a-and I tried to start a fire to fix it – ”

“Um,” Trixie interrupted. “What?”

Firelock sniffled, looking at Trixie. “’C-‘cause you use water to put out fires…” she explained. “S-so I thought…I thought that you could use fire to get rid of water…if you had enough…”

Trixie nodded for a moment, before what Firelock had said hit her. She chuckled a little. Firelock giggled too. The memory of what had just happened was a little too close for Trixie or Firelock to move much beyond that, but it seemed to help the small foal, at least. After a few moments, Trixie gave Firelock a friendly nuzzle, which the foal returned. “Do you know Red Splasher?” Trixie asked, naming Ponyville’s resident fire chief.

Firelock flinched, looking back down. “He doesn’t like me very much,” she said.

It didn’t take a genius to realize why, but Trixie didn’t say that. “You know a lot about fire,” Trixie said instead. “But I think you need to learn a little about fire safety. Especially with a cutie mark like that.”

Firelock looked like she wanted to object, but thought better of it and nodded. “Red Splasher doesn’t like me very much,” she repeated.

“I think he’ll like you just fine. Red Splasher likes putting out fires, after all. You’ll give him plenty of opportunities.”

Firelock was still for a few moments, but then nodded. Trixie stood, helping Firelock to her own hooves and leading her from her living room, back to the kitchen. The other foals had their breaths held as the two trotted in, Trixie nodding to them as she got a cloth and helped Firelock with drying her eyes. She took a few moments to look at each of the foals, as well. She hadn’t even taught any of them a single spell yet…

“If anypony wants to go home,” Trixie said, closing her eyes and letting out a long sigh, “you should now. I…I don’t think I’m doing a very good job at this. I think…I think I’m in over my head, trying to keep an eye on all seven of you. You haven’t even learned anything.”

“That’s not true!” Sweetie Belle objected, stepping forward and letting her horn glow. After a moment, a small ball of lime green light appeared in front of her horn, and began to orbit around her body as she swung her head. Snips and Alula both created dancing lights of their own. “See? Dinky showed us!”

Trixie blinked a few times. “Dinky?”

“Uh-huh!”

“But I still haven’t learned anything!” Snails objected, looking between the various dancing lights that the other three unicorns had made. He glanced to Firelock. “Firelock got her cutie mark and can make fireworks, you three can make lights, Tootsie and Dinky are almost as good as you, Trixie…”

That wasn’t true, though for foals the two were still very good. Still, Trixie grimaced as she looked down at her hooves. Great. Dinky was a better teacher than her. She looked to Snails. “Okay,” she said. “I need to focus on Snails. But as for the rest of you…I think I need some help. Somepony who can keep an eye on you all and…well. I can’t do both, so I need the help.” She tapped a hoof to her mouth in thought. Lyra, her first choice, was out of town, doing a concert. Trixie didn’t know Rarity, Sweetie’s older sister, very well, but she did know enough to know that she probably wouldn’t appreciate being dropped in on unannounced with a half dozen foals – certainly Trixie didn’t appreciate it.

Trixie wasn’t sure if any of the other foals had free parents or older siblings who were free, at least, no unicorn ones – and if she was going to pretend at all that she was still trying to teach these foals magic, she needed another unicorn, who had the free time, who preferably knew a fair amount about magic, and who had a big home with lots of space…

Trixie realized she knew a unicorn like that.

Trixie let out a long sigh. “Okay, follow me,” she said standing. “We’re going on a field trip.”

“Where to?” Tootsie asked.

“You’ll see,” Trixie said, as she lead her small herd out her front door and lawn. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied the scorched grass from where the firework had gone off in her yard, and winced, stopping. “But, um…first, Dinky. You’ve been over my place often enough…how much do you think the window’s gonna run me this time?”

“Um…nothing?” Dinky asked.

Trixie started, turning and looking at her office window. The firework had gone off maybe ten feet from her window. The sound of the explosion alone should have at least cracked it. Yet, the window, against all odds, in defiance of a curse that was at least eight months old so far, was intact.

“Ha!” Trixie exclaimed happily, prancing in place a few times and glancing at Firelock. “You’re okay, kiddo!” Feeling much, much happier, she began trotting off, the foals following. Most of them affixed Trixie with looks of confusion, Firelock included, but Dinky only giggled.

It was probably for the best that she was out of sight of the Residency when a rogue baseball from a too-eager foal came crashing through the window, leaving a fairly neat, baseball-shaped hole in its surface.

Twilight Sparkle had only been back at work for a few minutes since Applejack left when the library door opened again. Letting out a slight sigh, she trotted down the steps from the upper floor again, looking at her front door. She wasn’t very surprised to see Trixie, though she was somewhat surprised at the somewhat haggard appearance and faint smell of smoke that Trixie was sporting.

What really surprised Twilight, however, was the small herd of foals surrounding Trixie, each of them glancing around the library and its piles of books in confusion.

“Hi, Sparkle,” Trixie said. “I…need some help.”

Author's Note

As a reminder, Trixie does in fact know how to teleport as of Crisis, but she royally sucks at it and has pretty much sworn it off.

6. Sweet Dreams

“I’m…not sure this is a good idea…” Twilight said as she trotted beside Trixie through Ponyville’s streets.

Trixie winked at Twilight again. “It’s a perfect idea. Trust me, it was one of mine, so I’d know.”

Twilight forgot her concern for a moment at that, as she smirked. “Your ideas are just perfect by default?” she asked.

“Naturally,” Trixie said, holding her head high and trotting with her nose in the air in true Canterlot fashion. “I’m practically perfect in every way.”

“See, ‘cause my father once told me about this ice palace…”

Trixie stumbled, though it may have also been because, with her nose in the air, she wasn’t watching where she was trotting. She managed to catch herself, though, as Twilight chuckled at the sight. Once she had her four hooves under her again, Trixie joined it.

The two mares had spent most of the hours following their discussion with Tootsie finally doing what they had set out to do – teach the foals magic. Trixie had managed to work in time with each of them, and helped them each learn a new spell, or else refine one that they already knew. Firelock had good control over her fireworks now, while Snips had learned how to change the color of his or another’s mane or coat for a short while. Trixie had shown Alula a trick to allow much more precise control over telekinesis than even Twilight was capable of, while Tootsie Flute had picked up a nascent version of Trixie’s shield spell, though Trixie had been sure to teach her a variant that was not airtight so as to prevent accidents. Sweetie Belle had learned how to magically throw her voice, as well as alter it a little – not much, but she could make herself sound like a different filly. Lastly, Trixie had shown Dinky how to ‘catch’ magic and make it her own, taking over several dancing lights that Trixie had created.

Twilight hadn’t been idle in the meantime, of course. She’s walked each of the foals through the spell stick, until the seven of them knew it well enough that they probably could have taught other foals the spell themselves. They had needed to go over several steps multiple times when a pony would return from Trixie’s private tutoring, but the repetition had actually helped everypony understand what they were doing better. At the end of the lesson, each had been able to cast stick successfully on their first try. More importantly, each of them had a more complete understanding of magic as a result. Twilight had noticed Tootsie as the first one to start examining the spells she already knew through a more technical lens, but each of the other foals had soon joined in. It was in rough terms the equivalent of foals who had just learned multiplication reverse-engineering the steps involved to teach themselves division – on their own initiative. They made some mistakes, but Twilight had been there to help.

The foals also still insisted on feeling their way through magic as well. Snails kept referring to different effects as spicy or sweet or the like, and each of the foals had similar habits, referring to magic as having a taste or color or feel. Twilight found herself more than a little lost each time they did – but, she supposed, no more lost than the look Trixie got on her face whenever Twilight spoke in more complete magical terms.

The foals weren’t quite treating magic like an art, but nor were they approaching it like a science. They’d found some middle ground, some closer to one end and some to the other, but definitely all of them were balancing the two philosophies. It seemed to be working for them, and without having to discuss the matter Twilight and Trixie decided that the fact that the foals were enjoying themselves, while still learning, was enough.

Of course, enjoying learning magic or not, each of the foals were getting hungry, and tired. Trixie had rounded them all up and escorted them home at around seven o’clock. Twilight had resolved to get back to re-shelving library books, but she wasn’t at it for much more than an hour or two when Trixie had returned, no foals in tow this time but insisting that Twilight come with her to the Punch Bowl, the local bar owned by one Berry Punch.

Like most of Ponyville, Twilight noted, the Punch Bowl had fresh paint, new windows, a new sign, and in all ways a new look to the place, as a result of the incident of several months ago. She slowed her trot when they neared, and stopped it entirely just outside the door. She could hear ponies inside, laughing, talking, playing music, and just generally having fun, it seemed. Twilight looked to Trixie nervously. “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” she repeated.

“I think it’s a good one,” Trixie countered. “None of the foals cared about the Ursa Minor.”

“But these are adults – maybe even some of their parents,” Twilight objected. “Foals…foals don’t know what danger is!”

Trixie held up a hoof at that. “Most of them were kidnapped by Corona when she swung by the first time,” she pointed out. “They’re doing okay.”

“Because they’re foals,” Twilight emphasized once again. She looked at the bar’s door. “B-but…”

Trixie whickered. “One drink. Just one. It’s a tradition, Twilight, for new friends. A Neigh Orleans tradition. We have to have a drink together at the local.” She waved a hoof at the bar. “It’s a Wednesday night, even. Who goes to the bar on Wednesday? There’ll be maybe six or seven ponies in there, including staff.”

Twilight still had a front hoof raised and her weight on her hind hooves, ready to start galloping back to the library, though the more rational part of her brain knew that teleporting was a much faster option, and as an added bonus wouldn’t require her to break the terms of her house arrest. Yes – just teleport back to the library, it would be easy, she was more than familiar enough with the location now…She stared at the door to the bar and had her ears swiveled to face it like it was a dangerous creature she had just noticed, she felt every fiber in her being screaming to go run and hide…

But, after several long moments, Twilight set her hoof down, and swallowed. She closed her eyes, and forced herself to take in a deep breath, and let it out as slowly as possible, then repeated the process a second time, then a third. When she opened her eyes, she saw Trixie staring at her with her heat slightly tilted to the side, one eyebrow raised.

“Breathing exercises,” Twilight explained. “Found them in a book while I was re-shelving. That not important, though…” she steeled herself, looking at the door to the Punch Bowl – and found her resolve wavering again almost instantly.

Trixie noticed, of course, and stepped closer. “Look, um…” she said, reaching out a hoof and placing it on Twilight’s withers. “Maybe we can reschedule that drink…which maybe isn’t a Neigh Orleans tradition and I just wanted you to get inside and get to know some of the town better. Best intentions, I swear.”

Twilight nodded, though she only half-heard Trixie. “No more running, no more hiding,” she said, latching onto her new mantra in life where the breathing exercise had failed at the moment. “No more running, no more hiding…no more running, no more hiding…no more running…” she stepped forward and put a hoof on the tavern’s door, “…no more hiding.”

In spite of the mantra, Twilight had trotted into Berry’s bar with her eyes closed, which she was pretty sure was a sort of hiding, but a small one. It meant, however, that she was totally unprepared for what happened next.

“Welcome to Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle!” A multitude of voices exclaimed.

Twilight nearly leaped from her coat at the exclamation, eyes shooting open as she looked around in confusion. The tables that normally occupied the center of the bar had been cleared away in order to make room for the ponies crowded inside, which represented a sizable portion of Ponyville’s population, or at least the population of its town center and inner farms. The walls, meanwhile, were decorated with streamers and balloons, while hanging from the ceiling was a long, purple banner with pink lettering proudly proclaiming ‘Welcome Twilight Spakle.’

Twilight might have bolted away in fear – and indeed, the mare’s center of gravity and hooves had once again shifted as though she had intended to do just that – but then her eyes closed on the banner and the misspelling. “Uh – ” she began

She didn’t get any further. A pink pony had bounced over to her almost as soon as she entered, but on seeing Twilight’s look, her eyes widened. She leaped up to the banner, grabbing a ceiling rafter with one hoof as she produced a marker from Twilight had no idea where and edited in the missing R in Twilight’s name. “Sorry!” she called down. “This was kind of a rush job!” she let herself fall back to the ground as she once again trotted up to Twilight, and proceeded to hop around the unicorn with abandon. “Not that I didn’t have any warning, actually I’ve been planning this party for a whole month but I thought we’d have it in the library but then I was talking to Bluie and Bluie said that libraries are supposed to be quiet and some parties can be quiet but surprise parties aren’t, so this was a last-minute venue change and I didn’t quite calibrate the cannon right for the Punch Bowl…oh! I haven’t introduced myself!”

The pony stopped bouncing, landing in front of Twilight, who’s head had been bouncing up and down as she had followed her movements, or tried to. “My name is Pinkie Pie, and this,” she swept a hoof at all the gathered ponies, “is your official Welcome to Ponyville Party!”

“Wh…buh…” Twilight stuttered, looking at the gathered Ponyvillians. “But I…” She found herself stepping forward, mind all but blank and mouth working on its own as best it could. “B-but I brought an Ursa Minor into town! I…I endangered all of you…you should be mad at me…why aren’t you all furious?”

The ponies of Ponyville looked between each other. One of them raised a hoof. “I’m Red Splasher,” he said. “Town fire pony. I once flooded the town hall’s basement trying to put out a fire.” He tapped his hooves together. “It…might have been a bit of an overreaction.”

“Alcohol was involved,” a stallion standing close to him confirmed with a nod, as he affectionately bumped his flank against Red Splasher’s.

Twilight opened her mouth to object, but then another pony came forward, or rather flew on over to Twilight. “Rainbow Dash, weather manager, future Wonderbolt,” she said by way of introduction as she landed in front of Twilight. “I let a wild storm go over Ponyville. Ruined everypony’s day.”

“Not everypony’s,” another pegasus said as she trotted over. Twilight recognized her as one of Trixie’s friends, but she introduced herself anyway. “Raindrops. I got into a fight with a griffin that destroyed half the town square.”

“Ahh, she deserved it,” another pony – Applejack, Twilight recognized from meeting with her earlier in the day, and few weeks before at her trial – said. Rainbow Dash seemed to consider speaking up at that, but then apparently decided against it with a shrug, fluttering her wings as though brushing whatever concern she’d had aside for the moment in favor of just enjoying the party.

Applejack, meanwhile, winked at Twilight, before looking to Raindrops. “Probably coulda’ used a whuppin’ mahself ‘bout a month or two later.” She looked over to one of the ponies behind the Punch Bowl’s bar – Berry Punch herself, Twilight supposed, since she seemed to be in charge back there.

Berry Punch only shrugged at whatever Applejack had referenced. “We all know what I can be like when I get a few in me,” she said, then grinned wickedly at another pony of similar coloration who was behind the bar with her – Cheerilee, Twilight realized. “And when the Punch sisters get a few in them…”

“Things have broken,” Cheerilee confirmed. “Chairs. Table legs. Priceless antiques. The occasional leg or rib.”

All at once, the various ponies in the room all started commenting on things they had done in the past, simultaneously taking the time to introduce themselves to Twilight. Not everypony had a story of their own, and most weren't quite on Twilight's scale, but there were still quite a few tales of property damage, reckless endangerment, and a few monster invasions. Pinkie in particular managed to tell a story about parasprites that she somehow delivered almost entirely in alliteration.

Twilight’s eyes were blinking rapidly. She was aware of a presence at her side, and saw Trixie there, having acquired two cups, currently empty, and a selection of beverages, some of them alcoholic, some of them not. “Bois, Twilight, this is a party,” she commanded, displaying the bottles for Twilight to choose from.

Twilight ignored the choices. “Everypony in this town is crazy!”

Trixie considered for a few moments, before smiling. “Yeah,” she confirmed.

Twilight digested the new, but in hindsight obvious, information before looking at the drinks that Trixie had brought over, selecting one at random with both her front hooves, uncorking it, and sculling back a few gulps. Trixie hid a smile behind a hoof when Twilight finished, and looked at Trixie with determination. “Okay,” the purple unicorn declared. “Okay. Thanks. Now that I know that, I think I can handle all this.” She looked at the bottle. “Might need more of whatever this is, though.” She looked back to the Ponyvillians, who for the most part were having their own conversations now, though a few were most definitely interested in whatever she was going to say.

Twilight held the bottle in the air with telekinesis “I’m Twilight Sparkle, I brought an Ursa Minor into town, and now I’m here to make up for that and to make some friends!”

“Hooray!” The ponies exclaimed as she once again began sculling back whatever drink she had in her hooves. Twilight finished it off, acquired another bottle of the same drink from Berry Punch, and proceeded to try to do something she’d never done before: mingle.

Trixie was no longer hiding her smile behind her hoof as she watched Twilight proceed to mingle with all the grace of a rhinoceros, closing in on Rarity first. She noticed that the bartender – Bubbly Orange, wasn’t it? – watching Twilight as well, though with more a look of confusion in his face. When he noticed Trixie looking at him, he asked “isn’t that just hard lemonade? Wouldn’t she have to drink, like, four or five bottles just to get a buzz?”

“Does she know that?” Trixie asked with a chuckle.

Firelock stood somewhat apart from the other foals, making sure there was plenty of room between herself and them. She was also standing in the sandbox, away from the nearby trees of the school, and as an extra safety precaution that Firelock herself had thought up, the foals had a bucket of water standing by.

“Okay…” she said quietly, closing her eyes and running her magic through her horn. “Here…we…go!”

The spell was basically the incarnation of her special talent, so the magic came easily to her horn, and shaping it was an instinctive thing, no more complicated for her than holding one’s breath. With a flash, a stream of light shot into the air several feet and then ignited, burst apart in a shower of multihued sparks.

“Wow…” the other foals – unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies all – let out. They were all gathered outside, along with Miss Cheerilee, the day after Firelock and her friends had met Miss Sparkle and learned magic from her and Miss Trixie. Whenever a foal earned their cutie mark, their teacher would extend recess a bit in order for the foal to take some time to show off their new talent. Firelock was certainly eager to, and Miss Cheerilee had said that a foal who just earned their cutie mark would probably have a difficult time paying attention in class unless they got the time to let their excitement play itself out.

Firelock didn’t stop at her single firework, of course, setting loose another, then a third, each time the colors in different shades. Firelock opened one eye, grinning brightly. “And I can do this, too!” she exclaimed, closing her eyes again and concentrating really, really hard. This was a little more complicated, and truth be told she hadn’t really practiced it at all, but…

She let out another firework, this one soaring a few extra feet into the air before bursting apart. Firelock’s eyes shot open as she watched the sparks take the shape of a five-pointed star – albeit, a very lopsided, uneven five-pointed star.

Diamond Tiara’s head tilted to the side a little. “It’s not very symmetrical,” she noted with a slight whicker.

“Now Diamond Tiara,” Cheerilee objected. “Firelock’s only just learned how to make fireworks at all. She just needs to practice.” The teacher grinned slightly. “After all, I’m sure we remember what it was like when you first got your special talent.”

Diamond Tiara blushed slightly as the other foals giggled, Firelock included. Diamond Tiara’s special talent was accessorizing; on the day she’d earned it, she had come into school wearing a fortune in jewelry, looking absolutely fabulous and pleased with herself – at least until her father and mother had shown up, the latter quite annoyed that she had gotten into her jewelry box and stolen half her collection.

“Don’t worry,” Cheerilee added, patting Diamond Tiara on her withers. “Most foals go a little overboard when they earn their cutie mark for the first time. It’s a very big day, after all!” She turned her attention back to Firelock. “Fireworks, you say? I suppose you’ll be looking to help Trixie out during the Ingathering, then.”

Firelock paused. She actually hadn’t even considered that. “I guess I should make things up to her after what I did to her own fireworks…” she mused. “That’s a great idea, Miss Cheerilee!”

“I’m glad you think so,” Cheerilee said with a smile, turning and trotting back towards the schoolhouse. “Now, you foals enjoy the rest of your recess!”

Firelock smiled, looking up at her horn and setting off another firework, then another, trying to get the star-shaped one right. After a moment, though, she saw Alula sitting at the edge of the sandbox, next to the bucket of water and tapping her front hooves together pensively. “Um…” she said softly – Alula said everything softly. “I-if you don’t mind, that is…I mean, I know you’re trying to be safe and all, and that’s good…”

Firelock shook her head. “No, that’s okay,” she said, making room for Alula in the sandbox. “I should probably do what Miss Trixie said and spend some time learning fire safety from Red Splasher before I do anything else.”

Alula smiled, picking up the bucket of water with her teeth and pouring it out onto the sand, getting it nice and wet to start with so that she could begin her sand castle. She already knew what she was going to try this time – il Palazzo d’Inverno, the Winter Palace of Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, located in southern Cavallia. She’d tried making it before with sand, but it required a lot of very fine detail that her hooves weren’t capable of, and nor had her telekinesis been – but maybe with the new trick she’d learned from Miss Trixie, in addition to the way she’d learned to use her wing’s feathers to smooth rough edges, she’d be able to pull it off. Firelock sat down nearby, eager to help.

Elsewhere in the schoolyard, Snips was giggling slightly to himself. He was standing behind Applebloom and Twist, who were playing that hoof-clapping game that fillies always played with each other. The colt’s horn was aglow, and he released his magic in a quick burst the way he’d learned to do yesterday. Twist let out a squeal of surprise at the result as she pointed to Applebloom’s mane, which had suddenly become teal with bright pink polka-dots in it. Applebloom gasped in surprise as well. She whirled around looking for the source, and saw Snips running off, laughing like a madpony. With a growl, she gave chase. Snips only laughed harder – he had to do something to amuse himself since Snails wasn’t around.

Meanwhile, Tootsie Flute was about a dozen feet away from Truffle Shuffle, shifting her weight around between all four hooves in nervousness as Truffle talked to one of his friends about the Wonderbolts. Tootsie took a step forward, then backwards, then three steps forward, then five steps back, behind Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. Truffle didn’t notice her antics.

Sweetie let out a long groan. “Come on…” she said, getting behind Tootsie and giving her a small poke with her horn. “Get over there!”

“I think I’m fine here,” Tootsie said, avoiding a follow-up poke.

“Talk to him! You have to talk to him.”

“Trust her on this one,” Scootaloo said, nodding sagely. “Otherwise you’ll just keep it all inside until Hearts and Hooves day, you’ll make him a card, and he’ll love the card, but then he’ll think it’s from your older sister and she’ll ruin everything but it’s not really your fault because you didn’t really think things through when you should have!”

Tootsie stared at Sweetie. She didn’t know the story that Scootaloo was referring to. In fact, it had managed to remain completely private until now. Sweetie turned on the pegasus filly. “Scootaloo!” she objected, turning bright pink. “Why did you say that?”

“Everything worked out in the end, didn’t it?” Scootaloo said. She thought a moment, then smiled. “Hey, that new spell you know…” she leaned over and whispered something into Sweetie’s ear. The unicorn filly perked up at it, then grinned wickedly, rubbing her hooves together as she turned towards Truffle Shuffle, horn glowing and a lime-green effervescence wrapping around her throat. “Truffle Shuffle!” she called – her voice matching Tootsie Flute’s. “There’s something I want to tell you!”

Tootsie’s eyes widened as Truffle turned. “Yeah?” he asked, trotting up to Tootsie. The filly did the only thing she could – panic. Her own horn glowed bright as she used the first and only defensive spell she knew, the shield sphere that Trixie had taught her. She was still new at it, though, and the sphere, lavender in color like her magic, didn’t appear until after Truffle reached her. Thus, he was in the sphere too.

Truffle started slightly when it appeared, while Tootsie was just frozen in place. After a second, Truffle looked to Tootsie. “Uh…” he said. “What…did you want?”

Tootsie stared. “I…I…” she tried. “I…I learned a new spell! From Miss Trixie! It’s this shield! Isn’t it cool?”

Truffle blinked a few times. “Yeah,” he agreed, looking around at it, tapping one hoof against its side. He sat still, waiting a few moments, but Tootsie didn’t do or say anything. “Um…” he said. “Can…can you dispel it?”

“…I can’t remember how…” Tootsie responded. Truffle’s eyes widened, and Tootsie held up her hooves. “B-but that’s okay! It’s a dweomer but I don’t have a lot of magic so I couldn’t put a lot of magic into it so it’ll fade away on its own in a few minutes!”

“Oh,” Truffle said, sitting down. “That’s good. But until then, we’re stuck?”

“Yes.” Tootsie said. “Just…stuck. Together. In a sphere. Marry me.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing!”

Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo both giggled, hoof-bumping each other; Tootsie had, apparently, forgotten that anypony outside her conjured shield was more than capable of hearing inside of it. The two fillies started trotting away when Snips ran by laughing, horn flashing, followed by an Applebloom who’s mane was now polka-dotted and who’s coat had somehow turned blue-and-red zebra striped. “Y’all have ta help me stop him!”

Scootaloo burst out laughing at the sight of Applebloom as Twist, her own coat turned green and tail now sporting rainbow stripes, joined her friend. “Why should – ” she began, when there was yet another flash, and Scootaloo suddenly found herself with a bright cream white mane, while Sweetie Belle’s coat had turned purple.

“That’th why,” Twist provided.

“Grr…” Sweetie growled. Snips had run around the other side of the school house. “Get him!”

The four shot off, rushing the jungle gym that Pipsqueak and Dinky had clambered to the top of and were currently trying to become King and/or Queen of the Mountain, as appropriate and depending on who fell off first. Dinky was older than Pipsqueak by a year, and taller too, but on the precarious (but safe) bars of the jungle-gym, size didn’t count for much and at times was a detriment. Also Pipsqueak was just better at navigating it than Dinky was, and was stronger than his size suggested thanks to being an earth pony.

At the moment, the two were butting heads, basically literally, their foreheads pressed together as they tried to push each other off. “King,” Pipsqueak insisted when he managed to push Dinky back a few inches, making her lose a few bars as he came to the top.

Dinky pushed back. “Queen,” she insisted, getting some leverage under her and pushing up. Pipsqueak had to give ground, and the two were once again even – until Dinky grinned evilly, horn glowing and grasping Pipsqueak by the hair of his tail – since it was just hair, it wouldn’t matter if Dinky grabbed it too hard, she would never have risked grabbing an actual body part given her persistent telekinesis problem of doing so. Dinky lifted Pipsqueak up with telekinesis, over her head. “Ha!” she exclaimed, stepping up to the top of the jungle gym. “Queen of the Moun – waaagh!”

Pipsqueak had flicked a hoof against Dinky’s horn, disrupting her magic. He fell smoothly, fetlock catching a bar and swinging under the jungle gym’s top, tripping up Dinky while he was down there. She lost her footing and fell onto her stomach, and Pipsqueak climbed back on top, then sat down on her back, smiling. “King of the Mountain!” He declared with a laugh.

Dinky was about to try and reclaim her Mountain, but the school bell rang. Dinky blew a raspberry at that as the two climbed back down in order to head back inside. “How come you’re so good at that?” she demanded. Pipsqueak had moved to Ponyville from Trottingham over the summer, but since school began Dinky had not once been able to become Queen of the Mountain. She hadn’t ever even tried before Pipsqueak had shown up, but for some reason ever since he had declared himself to be such on the first day of school she had wanted to try. Some part of her suspected it had less to do with beating Pipsqueak so much as it was a chance to spend time with him, though she wasn’t sure why.

“I have a jungle gym at home,” Pipsqueak informed Dinky. “It’s not as big, but it’s good practice.” He considered. “Oh, also, I lived a year on a ship when me da’ was a trader before he admitted how seasick he got. Climbed the rigging a lot.”

Dinky realized right then and there that she probably wasn’t going to ever beat Pipsqueak at the game, but equally she knew she wasn’t going to stop trying any time soon. She looked past Pipsqueak, and saw Firelock and Alula leaving the sandbox, a half-completed, very complicated sand castle sitting there; after school the two would probably finish it. Tootsie Flute was trotting to class alongside Truffle Shuffle; Dinky was surprised to see that, and even more so by the blush that both were wearing and the huge smile that Tootsie had plastered on her face. Nearby, Sweetie Belle, Applebloom, Scootaloo, and Twist, none of them looking very happy and their manes and coats turned a cacophony of unfamiliar colors, were marching behind Snips, who seemed to have been caught by them but was giggling and had a big grin on his face.

“Why’d you turn uth different colorth?” Twist demanded.

“Snails didn’t come to school today! Had to keep myself amused somehow,” Snips said, as his horn glowed. The four filled flinched, but all that happened was the color changes to them dissipated into nothingness. They each breathed a sigh of relief.

Dinky smiled at the sight of all her friends having fun. She felt an errant itch on her flank, and stopped to scratched it, but it didn’t go away for a few second longer than it should have. She checked to see what had caused it. Nothing was there, however. She shrugged, galloping back into class and catching up to her friends. Whatever had caused the itch, it could wait a little while longer.

And meanwhile, back in Ponyville proper, Snails lay in his room. He’d gotten plenty of sleep the previous night, and had woken up on time for school, but had still been incredibly groggy. Dewdrops and Shutterbug had decided that, now that he was getting some long-overdue rest, he deserved the day off of school, and had had Raindrops inform Cheerilee of the situation before she went to work. Snails wasn’t looking forward to the extra work he’d have to do – school work was hard for him under normal circumstances, never mind when he had to make some up – but had taken the excuse to go back to bed and finally get some shuteye.

Before he had, though, he’d stood outside of his room for a few minutes, channeling magic through his horn and taking a mental photograph of his room, and all his animal friends inside of it. He’d carried that picture in his head with him to bed as he’d lain down and closed his eyes. Just as he’d thought, he was able to carry it into his dreams, too.

Author's Note

Yay! My first completed story for Season 2. Logic dictates that it should have been Tambelon. Logic has no place here.

Hope you all enjoyed it! Tambelon and this story are sort of a "patch" for the Lunaverse, with the goal of fixing some of the problems from Season 1, namely Corona's characterization and resolving Twilight's story arc in a way that hopefully everyone can be happy with. This story is sort of disjointed, there's a lot of different and perhaps better ways I could have gone about writing it. Still, I enjoyed it. It was lighthearted and happy for the most part, which makes for a good contrast to Tambelon as far as my mental and emotional health are concerned.

For those keeping track, my next story is Treasure Hunt, involving the foals of Ponyville basically re-enacting the plot of Cutthroat Island, but hopefully good. Following that is The Great Dragon Coronation, Penultimatium, and then the season finale, The Final Fall of the Tyrant Sun. There may be some side-stories written by me in the meantime as well.

But first, I have to finish Tambelon. That will be fun - oh yesss...

1. An Overdue Twilight

1. An Overdue Twilight

Twilight Sparkle hadn’t known what to expect, rushing winds, peels of lighting, a sphere of nothingness displacing reality to herald her return before depositing her at the bottom of a smoldering crater. What actually happened though was decidedly anticlimactic. One moment she had been in that impossible gulf between worlds and the next she found herself sitting in the central town square of Poniszawa next to a fountain, almost as if she had never left in the first place. Certainly none of the ponies in the surrounding area seemed to pay her arrival any mind, going about their ordinary daily routines undisturbed, heedless of the lavender unicorn that but mere moments before hadn't been there.

Had she awoken in her bed the she might have dismissed it all as just a dream. It could still possibly have been some kind of delusion, but she was fairly certain she was still sane and in control of all her faculties. Plus, there had been the promises she had made to herself – No more running, no more hiding – not just from the law but from herself either. It was time for Twilight Sparkle to own up to all her mistakes no matter the consequences.

…and yet…

Could she really do it? Could she really bring herself to just surrender to the authorities?

It would be so easy to just disappear, and even though she had promised both to herself and to the princess, she couldn't deny that the temptation was there. Then she remembered just how lonely and isolated these past few months had been. She couldn't go back to living like that, with no family, no future, no hope. Still, it was hard, and Twilight felt her stomach turning in knots while her hooves seemed as though they were rooted in place, and she was afraid. Not of the punishment and humiliation that awaited her, but of her own cowardice. She feared that if she so much as tried to move from where she sat she would in spite of herself runaway all over again.

“No!”

She hadn't realized her cry was made aloud until another mare walked up to her, “pardon me miss, but is everything alright?”

“Yes…no…I mean…” Twilight stammered as her jaw quavered in dread of the words she was trying to form. “I…I need a…” she gulped audibly, “a police officer.”

The other mare’s expression of concern deepened, “Are you in some kind of trouble, miss? Are you hurt? I can help carry you to the hospital.”

“I…just please…please go and find a police officer, and do it as quickly as you can.”

The other mare looked confused and hesitant, but nodded. As Twilight watched the pony trot off, she breathed a sigh of relief; it was all finally going to be over; there was no longer any turning back now.

…and yet…

There was no telling how long it would take for an officer to arrive. Even if she didn’t have time to run she could still teleport. It would be so simple, so effortlessly easy that she absently felt the familiar spell weave its way through her horn.

With a smack of her own hoof, Twilight forcefully denied any such traitorous desires. She would hold firm in her resolve and bring the nightmare of these past few months to its final and inevitable close. She repeated her promise again and again like a mantra, whether aloud or only in her own head she didn't know.

No more running, no more hiding.

Still, her breaths increasingly came in ever more frantic pants with each passing moment as she sat, eye clenched tightly shut and every muscle inn her body held tense. She shut out all distractions and focusing on the singular task of not abandoning her promise.

No more running, no more hiding.

No more running, no more –

“Excuse me, but I was told you needed some kind of assistance.”

Twilight nearly jumped from her own skin when she was tapped on the shoulder. Now, as she slowly brought her eyes back into focus, and with them her mind back to her present circumstances, she couldn't help but tremble at the imposing figure of the uniformed stallion in front of her. Though his face bore a genuinely helpful, if concerned smile, to Twilight it felt almost like a cruel mockery of her impending doom.

Clearly the officer didn’t recognize her on sight, maybe because he’d not been part of the raid to capture her, or perhaps he was only a new recruit hired in the interim after she'd made her escape. It didn't matter, though it certainly would have made things so much easier if he had identified her on sight. Part of her would have preferred being violently tackled to ground over this. Again she felt the temptation to flee, or just make up some lie – it would be so easy.

She muttered once over, “no more running, no more hiding,” and then held a deep breath.

“I'm sorry I didn't quite here that.”

Exhaling sharply Twilight finally spoke the words that would forever seal her fate, “I need you to arrest me.”

The officer cocked his head briefly than knocked a hoof against his ear, “Sorry, but I think I must have misheard that last part. It sounded like you said you wanted me to arrest you.”

That traitorous part of her screamed once more in vain, demanding that she flee, that she do anything she could to escape. She could still do it, it would be so – “No!”

The outburst hadn’t been a denial of guilt but only to silence her own thoughts before they bested her resolve, and so she quickly amended, “I mean yes. My name is Twilight Sparkle and I’m a wanted fugitive…and don’t look at me like that. I am not insane, I’m just tired. So very, very tired… and all I want to do is see my family one last time before I have to serve out my debt to society.”

She held out her fore-hooves so they could be easily cuffed. She also lowered her head, in a mix of defeated resignation, mournful shame, and of course to make it easier for the officer to slip a magic suppression ring onto her horn. She breathed deeply, however, as she sat fully committed, her fears all seemed to finally evaporate. It was all over; at long last it was all finally over…

“Miss Sparkle?”

Twilight started as she was woken from her dream – or rather, her memory. Blinking a few times and holding up a hoof against the glare of daylight coming in through the train car’s window, she found herself looking at an earth pony stallion, dressed in a plain brown uniform and holding a clipboard in one hoof. “We’re here, Miss Sparkle,” he said. Behind him, Twilight could see a second pony, this one a pegasus, in an identical uniform.

Twilight nodded, standing and stretching. She was surprised she’d been able to get any sleep at all on the train ride, which had after all only been a two-hour one from Canterlot’s municipal prison to Ponyville. Slipping on saddlebags – using her mouth and hooves, as she still wore a magic-suppressing horn ring that prevented her from using even simple telekinesis – that contained the few personal belongings she was taking with her, she followed her escorts from the morning train and onto the platform of Ponyville’s train station.

There was a small bustle of ponies already, some getting off the train, but more piling into it. The station seemed almost new, or at least like it had been rebuilt recently. The wooden floor was finely polished, the walls and benches clean of any sign of dust or decay, the window that separated the ticket master from the main station free of any scratches. The only thing out-of-place was construction occurring along the sides of the rail line itself, ponies lifting tall poles into place and stringing up a series of wires – telegraph wires, Twilight realized. With all of Equestria’s major cities, other than the pegasus cloud-cities, having been connected to the telegraph network, the system was now finally expanding into the smaller municipalities and boroughs.

Twilight followed her escorts as they left the train station, and entered Ponyville proper. The whole town, she noticed, looked shiny and new, despite the fact that it was mid-autumn – new windows, new walls, new gardens…and where it didn’t look new, it looked suitably old and rustic, houses that had been built decades or longer before and had been given plenty of time to settle into their places, become a natural part of the town. Though even these, Twilight noticed, seemed to have a fresh coat of paint or new-looking fence in several areas.

Twilight felt her mood darkening at the sight of the new construction and paint-jobs. She knew the reason: at the start of the last summer, Ponyville had been attacked by a minion of Corona. She didn’t have all the details, but she did know that afterwards, Ponyville had asked for financial help from the Royal Emergency Management Ministry, the REMM, which her father, Viceroy Night Light, headed – and their request for help had been initially denied, ostensibly because the REMM wanted to take time to assess the situation, but in reality, because her father was using his position to get back at Trixie Lulamoon, the town’s Representative of the Night Court, and also the one peripherally responsible for her spending so many months on the run as a fugitive.

Twilight still wasn’t sure how she felt about that – what her father had done was wrong, but then, with him unable to get in contact with Twilight in any way, he had only been acting out of fear and despair. In a way, a very direct way, it was her fault.

The point of it all was, though, that Twilight Sparkle, daughter of the pony who had tried to strangle Ponyville, the unicorn who had brought an Ursa Minor into town simply to prove her own magical prowess and then had stupidly let it get out of control and wreak more than a little havoc, was coming to live in town. Twilight let out a sigh, hanging her head as she trotted. The ponies here would probably hate her, and they had every right to. But she had a debt to pay to them, and she intended to pay it.

After several minutes of trotting, Twilight and her escorts reached a tree, the largest that Twilight had ever seen. The tree wasn’t just for decoration, however – its insides had been worked out, as evidenced by the windows and doors across its surface. The tree was nevertheless alive in spite of this, though its leaves were browning given the season. A sign that hung from the tree’s front door identified the tree/building as “Golden Oaks Library.”

Twilight wasn’t surprised when she saw there was a few ponies waiting for her at the library’s front door. The first was a beige earth pony with a grey mane and wearing a cravat, and a cutie mark of a scroll tied with a blue ribbon. This would be Ivory Scroll, the mayor of Ponyville. Standing next to her was a pony much more familiar to Twilight – a blue unicorn with silver hair, wearing a purple, star-studded wizard’s hat and cape.

Trixie grinned when she saw Twilight, waving. Twilight offered a slight smile of her own, though it was put-on as the pegasus of her escorts trotted over to the mayor and began talking to her. Trixie, meanwhile, trotted over to Twilight. “How are you?” she asked.

Twilight blinked a few times, looking around at the town. Nopony seemed to be paying her much attention – but they seemed, to her eyes, to be doing such in a very deliberate way. They had to all know her and remember her, didn’t they? “Scared,” she admitted, though her weak smile didn’t drop.

Trixie’s more honest smile didn’t either. “It’ll be okay, I promise,” she said. “The ponies here put up with me, remember?”

Twilight chuckled slightly at that – not much, but it was real. She looked back to the library. “Looks just like the one from the other world,” she noted. It was difficult to think that this time only a few months ago, she had been in some kind of parallel Equestria, where Celestia had remained good and it had instead been Princess Luna that had gone mad.

Trixie nodded. “Layout inside is a little different, though,” she said. “You’re only going to have the top floor to yourself. There’s a kitchenette, bathroom, bedroom, small living room, few closets. The observatory on the top is something you can reach from your place, but it’s also accessible from the ground floor from a spiral staircase – it’s open to the public. What’s yours is, um…small.”

Twilight’s smile grew a little larger, and significantly more genuine. “Except for the entire library I’ll have under my hooves after closing time,” she noted, waving a hoof at the tree as a whole.

“Well, yeah, except that,” Trixie acknowledged, tilting her hat down a little. She began to say something else, when the mayor and her escort came up to Twilight. Trixie and Twilight both stood a little straighter, expecting something official to begin around now.

“Alright then, Miss Sparkle,” her escort said. “If you could just tilt your head forward so I can get that ring off…” Twilight did, and the pegasus used his hooves to slip the magic-suppressing ring from her horn. A tingle traveled up and down its length, and before Twilight could stop herself, she sent some magic through it – not much, just enough to make it glow. After about two months of not being able to use her horn, it felt good to have it up-and-running again, as it were, and none of the ponies present begrudged her the minor cantrip.

“Okay,” her escort said. “Twilight Sparkle, your formal sentencing to Ponyville begins now. You will be working in this library for the town of Ponyville. Fifty percent of your pay will be deducted from your earnings each month and go to the town of Ponyville to pay for damages caused this past Spring. In return, however, the town has elected to allow you to live in the library rent-free, though note that this will not cover any utility expenses. Do you understand?”

Twilight nodded – the exchange seemed more than fair, all things considered. The escort continued. “Your house arrest to Ponyville will last until you have completely paid your debt to Ponyville out of your library earnings and you have served at least five years here. While under house arrest, barring a life-threatening emergency you may not leave the library without a designated escort, and even with such an escort you may not leave Ponyville without special permission from the Royal Police Bureau.” The pegasus turned to Trixie, gesturing with one hoof. “Representative Trixie is your designated escort, and she may herself designate a second in case she should be unavailable.”

Trixie’s head tilted to the side. “Do I have to pick one now?” she asked.

The pegasus shook his head. “And you can change it as necessary, though there’s a form you have to fill out each time you do. I’d advise against doing it too often, however. More than once we’ve run into situations where the main escort would simply deputize somepony nearby, or do up a bunch of the forms with the name of the second left blank and give them to the pony under house arrest, giving the sentenced pony the freedom to come and go as they please. That defeats the entire purpose of a house arrest, and can lead to penalties for both of you.”

“Although,” Ivory Scroll put in, raising a hoof, “the town council of Ponyville is hoping that you will use your chances to leave the library in order to see to personal reconciliation with some of the ponies who were impacted by the Ursa Minor’s fit, or else to help the town out during, for example, the Running of the Leaves, or the start of winter.”

Twilight blinked, even as the escort nodded. “Being proactive in this way may – note that I’m saying may – lead to, with permission from Ponyville’s town council, a loosening of some of your sentencing terms, though not its length.”

“Justice should be about symmetry, not punishment,” Ivory Scroll continued. “Show us that you’re here for more than to fulfill a debt. Help us out, Miss Sparkle, and we’ll help you.”

Twilight paused as she considered that. “Would anypony really want me helping out?” she asked. “After what I did – ”

She stopped when she heard light laughter from Trixie and Ivory Scroll both. She glanced between the two of them in confusion, and Ivory Scroll just waved a hoof. “This…this is Ponyville, Twilight,” she said. “Only a week or two before you first came here, the town was attacked by parasprites. And a few weeks after you left, there was a wild phoenix. Then after that…well, let’s just say, Miss Sparkle, that I do believe that your Ursa Minor is just par for the course here.”

Trixie nodded. “Some towns have landmarks, some have famous ponies, some have rustic charm. Ponyville? Ponyville has the occasional monster attack.”

Twilight blinked a few times at that, while Ivory Scroll thanked the two escorts and sent them on their way. “Don’t worry, you’ll like it here,” Trixie said, putting a hoof on Twilight’s withers and guiding her towards the library’s front door. “Welcome to Ponyville.”

My little pony, My little pony
Ahh ahh ahh ahhh...
My little pony –
Friendship never meant that much to me
My little pony –
But you're all here and now I can see
Stormy weather; Lots to share
A musical bond; With love and care
Teaching laughter; It’s an easy feat,
And magic makes it all complete!
You have my little ponies –
How’d I ever make so many true friends?

After the curse that Corona’s minion Zecora had placed on Ponyville forced the citizens of the town to drink alcohol without end, without allowing them to pass out (though fortunately also not allowing them to poison themselves), the town had been rendered a complete wreck. Nowhere had this been more true than Berry Punch’s bar, which had essentially been the epicenter of the disaster. Tables had been broken, windows smashed, floors stained, an entire wall had collapsed, and of course, its entire stock had been completely depleted and equally as completely not paid for, at least for the most part.

But that was months in the past now. Emergency money had come from Canterlot – eventually – and distributed as necessary to the various townsponies who had needed to rebuild their lives. Now, with a new door, new windows, new wall, fresh coat of paint, and fresh stock of fine beverages, Berry’s bar had opened its door again. Berry had been worried, Trixie knew, that everypony would be wary of going anywhere near alcohol after what had happened, that even with her doors open once again last Friday, she’d still be facing a number of very, very poor months ahead.

She had been quite wrong, of course. It turned out that after months of not being able to kick up their hooves at the local taphouse after a long, hard week of working their fields and orchards, the farmers of Ponyville – even Applejack – had been eagerly counting down the days until the bar had opened again, nevermind everypony else who lived in the town proper, especially Trixie. That Friday had been the best that Berry’s bar had ever had.

Today – Tuesday evening – was looking slower, but still plenty busy as Trixie trotted in, giving Berry and the orange-coated stallion that helped her tend bar a wave as she did. She made to go to her usual seat, but saw, of all ponies, Raindrops already sitting at the bar, a drink in front of her and head hanging, with mane obscuring her eyes.

“Yikes,” Trixie said as she trotted over to her pegasus friend, sitting down next to her. “Rough day?”

Raindrops snorted slightly.

“Sorry to hear,” Trixie said, signaling the barkeep for her usual. “I guess that Rainbow Dash’s productive streak couldn’t last forever, though. I’m guessing it was something to do with her, right?”

Raindrops snorted again.

Trixie sighed sadly, though she eyed Raindrops a moment before pressing on. Her wings were limp, though, and she seemed fairly relaxed – she wasn’t giving any of the outwards signs Trixie had learned to recognize as her tells for when her anger was in danger of boiling over. “Well, thanks for the nice day, anyway,” she said as her drink appeared in front of her courtesy of Berry – bourbon, of course. Raindrops didn’t seem too incensed and wasn’t telling Trixie to leave her alone, so she resolved to stay. “Sparkle’s arrived in town; spent the day with her and the mayor getting her situated in the library. I’m here for a celebratory glass for that. You should have seen her – she was so nervous!”

Raindrops let out a slightly more subtle snort at that. Trixie took a swig of her bourbon as she considered. “I guess you’re right,” she conceded. “I suppose she does have a good reason to be nervous. But, hey, those parasprites never came back to fix anything. Neither did that phoenix, or Corona. So that puts her a leg up over them, right?”

Raindrops’ only response was another snort. Trixie’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, come on,” she insisted. “Sparkle’s been through a lot.”

Snort.

“She has!”

Snooooort.

“You know, that’s not really very mature.”

Snnnnooorrrrt.

Trixie opened her mouth to retort to that, when Raindrops’s head leaned forward, then more forward…and then ended up in her drink, knocking it over and splashing her, the bar, and the floor. At that, her wings flared out as she said something – it sounded a bit like buzzah wah, but Trixie wasn’t sure – and her head shot back up as she glanced around with glassy eyes. “Wha…?” she asked. “Wait, when did I get here…?”

Trixie was aware of Berry and her bartender then, Berry looking at Raindrops closely before turning to the bartender. “Okay, switch her to soda, Fizzy,” she instructed.

“That is a soda,” the bartender said, as he went over to the bar with a rag, cleaning up the mess as Raindrops ran her hooves over her eyes. “Ginger ale.”

Berry raised a brow. “Switch her to diet, then,” she said.

Raindrops blinked a few more times, letting out a low groan. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, waving a hoof. “Haven’t slept much the past few…um. Did I pay already?” at a nod from Berry, Raindrops sighed. “Okay. Sorry, I’ll go…” She turned, trotting from the bar with her head hanging.

“Wait, hang on,” Trixie said, though Raindrops didn’t seem to hear her as she trotted outside. She sculled back her bourbon, ignoring the burn to her throat with practiced ease, and passed a few bits to pay for it, before setting off after Raindrops. Her friend hadn’t gone far – Raindrops was trudging down the street towards her home, wings still sagged a little and head hanging low. Trixie caught up to her easily. “Raindrops?” she asked. “Is everything okay?”

Raindrops glanced up at Trixie, ruffling her wings. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said.

“Honest?” Trixie asked, then smirked. “No pun intended, I swear.”

Raindrops nodded, smiling a little anyway at Trixie’s accidental reference to the pegasus’ Element of Harmony. “Yeah, honest,” she promised, stopping and sitting back on her haunches, again running her hooves over her face. “I’m just…exhausted. Wanted a soda as a pick-me-up, but I guess that didn’t work. Just need to sleep, I guess…”

Trixie’s head tilted to the side. “Rainbow Dash?” she asked. If there was a reason Raindrops was unusually tired, it was usually somehow related to her erstwhile weather captain slacking off.

Raindrops’ head shook again, however. “No, she’s been fine lately. Job was fine. I just haven’t been getting a lot of sleep this week.” She started trotting again, and Trixie kept pace. “Snails has been getting these headaches for the past two or three days, worse when he tries to sleep, so he ends up staying up all night. Which means I stay up all night to make sure he isn’t trying to let a…a…I dunno, a really big, hairy spider or something, into the house.”

Trixie shuddered at the thought, though Raindrops didn’t, being more used to her little brother’s love of creepy-crawlies that was his special talent. “What about your parents?” Trixie asked.

Raindrops rolled her eyes. “You know my dad. He’s half-asleep all the time anyway. And my mom could give Pinkie Pie a run for her money with how energetic she is.”

Trixie stared. “So your whole family’s being kept up just because Snails has been having headaches?” Trixie asked. She smirked a little. “Lucky foal. Whenever me or one of my cousins tried to stay up all night, tante Moonsinger would threaten to make us sleep out in the bayou with the aligators. Oncle Sky Shaper actually once took us out there, too.” Raindrops raised an eyebrow at that, and Trixie laughed, waving a hoof. “Oncle just ended up turning it into a camping trip. Caught some fireflies, brought some marsh mallows home…nourri les moustiques…” Trixie was less fond of that particular part of the memory, or rather the itchy day after it, “…and anyway, we never even saw a gator.”

Raindrops nodded a moment, but then shook her head as she pressed forward. “They’re bad headaches,” she said, tapping her head. “Snails says they’re right here, at the base of his horn. Whenever he goes to sleep he only ends up getting a few minutes before waking up. Then nothing will keep him down. Weird thing is that he doesn’t seem to be getting tired, though, or at least Cheerilee didn’t notice anything.” She sighed. “If the same thing happens tonight, we’re going to take him to the hospital, see what’s going on.”

Trixie considered, frowning. “Base of his horn?” she asked. Raindrops nodded. “And he can’t sleep…mind if I see him? Promise I won’t be long, but I think I might know what the problem is and I might know how to help.”

Raindrops’ wings and head perked a little at that. “Yeah, if you can,” she said. By now, the two had reached Raindrops’ home – a small, two-story house, smaller than its neighbors but notable for having a somewhat flatter roof with a railing and a door leading to it. Raindrops lived there with her father Dewdrops, mother Shutterbug, and little brother Snails. Trixie sometimes wondered how the family, three of whom were pegasi, could stand living in such cramped conditions, and could only assume that they tended to use the roof as an impromptu third floor when the weather was good (or not, as the case may have been with Raindrops).

Raindrops let the two of them in, calling out a hello to anypony who was home as she did. Trixie followed her through the narrow hall that led to her living room, where the two found Dewdrops, who had a blue coat and sandy-blond mane, with the day’s newspaper in front of him and a pipe in his mouth – a scene that was bizarrely picturesque to Trixie. He looked up from the paper, and smiled when he saw Raindrops and Trixie. “Good evening, Trixie,” he said slowly – Dewdrops was one of the most sedate ponies that Trixie had ever met. “What brings you here?” He glanced at Raindrops. “Anything to do with why Raindrops looks like she detoured through Tartaros on the way here?”

Raindrops rolled her eyes at that, waving a hoof. “Thanks, dad…” she intoned as she glanced upstairs. “Snails in his room?”

Dewdrops nodded his head. “With your mother and their newest friend.”

Raindrops’ wings sagged. “Legs?” she asked.

“Eight,” Dewdrops responded, turning back to his newspaper, chuckling.

Raindrops’ wings sagged further. “Come on…” she said to Trixie, climbing the stairs up. Trixie followed, trying to figure out what Raindrops’ question and Dewdrops’ answer had been all about. She hadn’t put it together by the time they reached the second floor and Raindrops opened the door to her brother’s room. Trixie looked in.

Snails looked out. So did Shutterbug, whose coat was much like Raindrops’, and whose mane was similar as well, albeit with a white stripe.

And so did something eight-legged, disturbingly large, and more than a little hairy. With a few too many eyes for Trixie’s liking.

“Snails,” Trixie said after a long moment. “There’s a tarantula on your head.”

Snails usually got quite excited when he saw Trixie, but that excitement was absent today. It perhaps had something to do with the tarantula sitting on his head, just behind his horn, with a few of its legs resting on the horn and the rest on his head. He did wave at Trixie and Raindrops. “Hi, sis,” he said, quite calmly. “Hi, Trixie.”

Trixie looked to Shutterbug, who was fiddling with a camera. “Shutterbug,” Trixie said. “There’s a tarantula on your son’s head.”

“Oh yes, I know, I brought her home with me after the shoot for this month’s magazine,” Shutterbug said. In an extremely stark contrast to her husband, she spoke at a mile a minute, and her wings often twitched as though she was ready to take flight in a moment. “She’s a redknee tarantula from Alpaclan – ”

“I’m calling her Fuffy,” Snails provided.

“ – and she was in the studio in Canterlot because she was moulting and we wanted to get photographs of that but the shoot ended earlier than expected – always happens to me, don’t know why – and we had her until tomorrow anyway so I thought I should introduce her to Snails. Isn’t she magnificent?”

Trixie blinked a few times, then looked to Raindrops. “Raindrops,” she said, “there is a tarantula on your little brother’s head.”

“Does the studio know you brought Fuffy home?” Raindrops asked.

Shutterbug tittered a little, tapping the side of her nose. “Her tank has little logs and rocks and stuff, if anypony even checks they’ll just assume she’s hiding. I figured just a few photographs for Snails, I can take her back tomorrow morning, and nopony’s the wiser!”

“Why is nopony concerned about the tarantula on Snails’ head?” Trixie asked. “I’m concerned. Deeply concerned.”

Snails laughed a little, looking up. He slowly raised a hoof to the tarantula – Fuffy – placing its tip just in front of her and tilting his head just slightly towards the hoof. Fuffy without hesitation crawled onto his hoof, which he then lowered to look eye-to-too-many-eyes with the tarantula before gently nuzzling it. It may have been a trick of the light, but Trixie was pretty sure the tarantula nuzzled back. Then Snails gingerly carried Fuffy over to a small tank full of sandy pebbles and stones, and she obediently crawled off his hoof and into the tank, which he closed.

Trixie stared. She opened her mouth and raised a hoof. She closed her mouth and lowered the hoof. She bowed her head and thought deep thoughts. Raindrops chuckled as her friend tried to puzzle through how to deal with what she just saw, and instead trotted into the room now that the deadly spider was safely and comfortably stored. She sat down next to Snails so that she could wrap him in a wing hug. “How’s the head?” she asked.

Snails’ ears and head drooped a little. “Okay…” he said, rubbing the base of his horn. “It’s mostly just this ache now…still haven’t slept, though. I want to, but I can’t, or I can, but then I wake up and it hurts…”

Shutterbug let out a long sigh as she finished packing up her camera, trotting over to Snails and drawing him into a big hug. “Well don’t worry, Snails, we’ll get to the bottom of this, you and me and Fuffy can help too. Maybe the doctor’s tomorrow – ”

“No!” Snails exclaimed, eyes wide. “I hate the hospital. It smells funny. And they don’t let anypony bring their pets in!”

Shutterbug smiled. “But honey, the doctors there would only want to help you.”

“I don’t wanna.”

Shutterbug put her front hooves on her hips, looking like she was about to lay down a little law. Raindrops coughed into one hoof before she could, glancing at Trixie. “Actually,” she said, “Trixie says that she might be able to help.”

Shutterbug blinked a few times at that, before turning to the blue unicorn, pressing her hooves together. “Really?” she asked. “I didn’t know you had any kind of medical training, Trixie!”

Trixie shook her head at that, dispelling her reverie. She decided to forget about Fuffy, and move on. She put on her best smile. “Well, no, I don’t,” Trixie admitted, trotting forward. “But I do have a guess at what might be the problem.” She looked to Snails. “Snails, do you know how to do telekinesis yet?”

Snails blinked a little. “Um…sorta’…” he admitted, looking down and scuffing a hoof on the floor.

“Well, let’s see…” Trixie said, looking around the room for a test object. She noticed more than a few tanks full of more than a few bugs, and decided she didn’t like looking around Snails’ room that much. Instead, she took off her hat, and set it down in front of Snails. “Try lifting this,” she said, her own horn glowing and the whites of her eyes turning slightly blue. In her mind’s eye, Snails’ body took on a mostly-pink glow – the color of unicorn magic, at least how she had been taught to perceive it – which faded to a more greenish-gold color around Snails’ horn, the color of his personal magic.

Snails looked nervously at Trixie’s hat for a few moments, before bracing himself – standing with four legs set wide apart and head stooped – and set his horn glowing, closing his eyes. His horn glowed green-gold, and a matching aura slowly wrapped around Trixie’s hat, though it gave out after a moment. Grunting, Snails tried a second time, and got his magic to remain wrapped around Trixie’s hat, and managed to lift it a few feet into the air. The foal, however, was quite visibly straining, teeth grit, eyes screwed shut – while meanwhile, his magical aura showed a significant buildup of green-gold magic at the base of his horn, but only a small trickle actually traveling up the horn’s length and projecting outwards.

“Okay, that’s good, Snails,” Trixie said, raising a hoof and cancelling her magic sight spell. Snails let Trixie’s hat drop to the floor with relief. He was panting more than a little, and Raindrops and Shutterbug both had their hooves on his back to steady him as he sat down. “Okay, I’m pretty sure I know the problem,” Trixie said, looking between Raindrops, Shutterbug, and Snails. “Snails, I’m guessing that you don’t use your magic very often.”

Snails thought, tongue in teeth as his eyes looked upwards. After a long moment, he shook his head. “I guess not,” he admitted. “I don’t think I have a lot.”

“No, that’s not it,” Trixie said, smiling as she looked to the two pegasi. If she was right, this was a fairly simple problem to fix. “Unicorn magic isn’t like pegasus magic. Your magic is focused in your wings and hooves,” she held up and waved her front hooves for emphasis, “and a little bit leaks out whenever you move a cloud or flap your wings or whatever. It’s constantly moving and shifting and being used and replenished, right?”

Raindrops and Shutterbug both nodded, and Trixie continued. “Unicorn magic, though, is focused out of our horns, of course,” she tapped her own horn, “but it doesn’t leave us unless we want it to – when we use telekinesis, make it glow, or cast a more complex spell. So we have much more precise control over our magic than pegasi, or earth ponies. The trade-off, though, is that we’re restricted to just a few spells based around our special talents, usually, and that we can potentially use up too much of our magic at once and hurt ourselves, by overchanneling.

“But, what is happening here is the opposite of that – under-channeling, I guess you could call it.” She looked to Snails, lowering herself to her knees and hocks to look him in the eye – though she didn’t have to stoop as low as she might have needed with other foals, given that Snails was fairly tall for his age. “Basically,” she told him, “you’re not using your magic enough, and it’s building up inside of you. It’s starting to give you headaches because of that. Your magic wants out.”

Snails blinked a few times, before looking down. “Sorry,” he apologized.

“Hey, relax,” Trixie said, waving a hoof. “It’s okay.”

“Oh, this makes it sort of our fault, doesn’t it?” Shutterbug asked, tapping her front hooves together, while Raindrops’ head was downcast in thought. “Since we’re not unicorns? We don’t know how to help Snails learn magic. He’s behind all his unicorn friends at school, isn’t he? This can be fixed, can’t it?”

Trixie waved a hoof again, standing. “I don’t really know, but I’ll bet that this is a common problem amongst unicorns raised by parents from other tribes,” Trixie said, shrugged. “Same as how a pegasus raised by unicorns will probably take longer to learn how to fly and use weather magic. It’s just one of those things. Anyway, all Snails needs to do is use his magic more often, and preferably learn how to use more of it at once, by doing more complex spells than just telekinesis or making his horn glow.” She looked down to Snails again, smiling. “You have a lot more magic than you think, Snails, you just don’t know how to use it yet. You just have to practice.” She raised a hoof, conjuring a trio of small balls of light, which she juggled with her hoof, even as they flashed through a rainbow of colors. “That’s why I use my magic as often as I can. Practice makes perfect!”

Snails started to smile at that, but darkened after a moment. “Aw…but I don’t know how to practice…” he said morosely, glancing up at his horn and straining a little. After a few false starts, he got it to glow. “Magic is hard…”

Trixie tapped a hoof to her mouth. “Well…” she said. “Tomorrow’s Wednesday, right? I’ve been showing Dinky how to use magic for the past half a year on Wednesdays, helping her out. Dinky’s like you, Snails, her mom’s a pegasus and can’t show her how to use her unicorn magic.” Trixie looked up at Shutterbug. “If it’s okay with you and Dewdrops, I could start teaching Snails, too. I’m sure Dinky wouldn’t mind.”

“Really?” Shutterbug asked.

“Really?” Snails asked, standing up, ears perked and eyes wide. “I could learn magic from the Great and Powerful Trixie?”

Trixie beamed more than a little. A simple yes could have done here, but Snails wanted more than that, and she was willing to provide. She picked her hat back up, flourishing it before planting it back on her head, hoof on the brim and holding it low over her eyes. “You could learn…the most magnificent of magics!” she proclaimed. “The most spectacular of spells! The most awesome arcane secrets and sensational sorceries ever witnessed by pony eyes!”

Trixie finished this by rearing back on her hooves, one hoof stretching up high, as illusory fireworks went off behind her – though she made sure to keep the noise relatively down. That was all Snails needed to turn to his mother. “Can I, mom?” he asked. “Can I? Can I? Please please please?”

Shutterbug smiled brightly. “Of course you can!” she said. “Raindrops can bring you there after school tomorrow – you don’t mind, do you, honey? Raindrops? Dear?”

The three other ponies looked to Raindrops, who was sitting back on her haunches, head downcast and mane obscuring her eyes. After a moment, a slight snort escaped from her, but she didn’t otherwise move.

Trixie chuckled at her sleeping friend, and looked back to Shutterbug. “Tomorrow, after school,” she said. “I promise to be the best magic tutor in Equestria!”

Author's Note

The opening to this is, of course, taken with permission from A Final Crisis of Conscience, by Emeral Bookwise.

5. Learning Curve

Twilight considered as she took in what Trixie said, explaining how her day had gone so far – her talking to Raindrops the other day and learning about Snails’ condition, volunteering to help Snails, the other foals showing up at her home unexpectedly, the small rivalry between Tootsie Flute and Dinky Doo that had nearly given her brain damage, and Firelock’s earning of her cutie mark that had, as a side-effect, nearly caused Trixie’s house to explode. While she spoke, the foals sat in one corner of the library, looking over some of the more accessible books to them.

One point that Trixie had raised stood out in particular, though. “I’ve been indentured?” she asked.

Trixie – who had her cape off and was running magic over it, trying to rid it of the smell of smoke – paused in what she was doing and saying, and looked to Twilight. “No!” she exclaimed. “Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Well, now that I think about it, it actually does sound a lot like indentured servitude…”

“It’s not!” Trixie insisted as she shook out her cape. “You’re here of your own free will, you can get any job you like in Ponyville, the town council just set you up with this one, and you don’t even have to stay here, you could go back to Canterlot whenever you liked – ”

Twilight held up her hooves, though, and there was a small grin on her face. “I know, I know,” she consoled. “It’s kind of funny, though.”

Trixie rolled her eyes as she put her cape back on. “I guess,” she admitted after a few moments, letting out a long breath.

Twilight did likewise, before looking over her shoulder at the seven foals. “So…” Twilight said, “magic tutor?”

“Yeah.”

“And it’s not going well.”

Trixie shook her head, though she then looked around the library. “I didn’t know you were re-shelving everything, though,” she noted, putting a hoof to one nearby pile that was nearly half again as tall as she was. “And you just got here, probably the last thing you want to do is deal with foals…”

It wasn’t the last thing, but it was fairly far down the list. Twilight hadn’t gotten any sleep last night in her re-shelving efforts, and while it was true she’d done seventy-two hour study sessions in the past, she’d never had to deal with a rambunctious foal while doing such, let alone seven. Twilight wasn’t very good with foals, either – and most importantly of all, she was, well, Twilight Sparkle, the pony who had brought an Ursa Minor into the town and ruined these foals’ Eventime festival. Indeed, all of them probably remembered the bear stomping into town. She had personally put these foals’ lives at risk.

But on the other hoof, Trixie needed help, and wasn’t likely to find it anywhere else at this time of day – not without disappointing the foals. Twilight steeled herself. “Okay,” she decided, holding up a hoof in determination. “I’ll help.”

Trixie looked surprised. “You will?”

Twilight nodded. “Mayor Ivory Scroll suggested that I should use my time here to help out ponies, right? Well, this is a good start – and I don’t even have to leave the library!” She thought a moment, to another book she had seen in the library. “In fact…”

Twilight trotted off, looking over the various stacks of books strewn about the library. After a few false leads, she finally found what she was looking for. The book looked new, but in fact it was just underused in the earth pony-majority town of Ponyville – it was in fact several decades old, so old that it predated the current trend of alliteration in Equestria’s books and was instead simply entitled Cantrips, by Dry Inkwell.

“Here we go!” Twilight said as she carefully removed the book from the pile it was in and dusted it off with telekinesis. “This is the most basic kind of spellbook there is, and nearly all of them can be used by any unicorn pony if they try hard enough. I can teach them from this!”

Trixie looked the book over. The cover was as plain as could be, simply the title, the author’s name, and a stylized image of a unicorn foal’s head. The blue unicorn couldn’t help but stick her tongue out. “Ugh…magic books…I have a bad history with them.”

Twilight nodded, remembering what Trixie had told her in the Everfree Forest – well, an Everfree Forest – a few months ago. “Well, most unicorns don’t have your probl…” Twilight bit her tongue before she could finish what she was about to say, looking to Trixie worriedly. “N-not that it’s a problem!” she said quickly. “Not problem, um…difficulty…uh – ”

Trixie smirked, waving her off. “It’s okay, Sparkle. I can take a good ribbing. Usually.”

The two started trotting back to the foals. Twilight looked down at the floor as she did. “S-sorry…” she said, then grinned sheepishly. “After everything that’s happened, I still don’t think before I speak or act…”

“No, but you did catch yourself,” Trixie pointed out. She was still wearing her smirk. “C’mon, let’s go introduce you to everypony.”

Twilight couldn’t help but keep her head slightly bowed as the two reached the seven foals, each of them having found a book to keep them occupied. Trixie cleared her throat after a moment, getting their attention, and Twilight suddenly found seven sets of eyes focused on her. She managed to keep herself from flinching.

“Okay, guys,” Trixie said, pointing to Twilight with one hoof. “This is Twilight Sparkle, the town’s new librarian. She’s really good with magic, too – ”

“As good as you?” Snips asked.

Trixie looked to Twilight, putting a hoof to her mouth as she considered. “Maybe a little better,” she allowed.

“A little?” Twilight asked, standing up straighter at the challenge.

“A smidge.”

Twilight stared at Trixie, who winked after a moment. Twilight’s eyes narrowed in response, but she also smiled as she turned back to the foals. “I graduated summa cum laude in my class at the Princess Luna Academy of Advanced Magic and Higher Learning. I had a perfect grade-point average, and Princess Luna herself hoofed me my diploma. My thesis, An Empirical Study of Translocation: Analyzing Conjurational Variables to Enable Teleportation Arrivals Within .5 thou, was published in the Arcane Academic Archives.”

The foals stared at Twilight. Twilight stared back for a few moments, before letting out a grunt of annoyance – this was why she wasn’t any good with foals. She didn’t know how to talk to them. “I’m really, really good at magic. Princess Luna said so,” she abridged, trying to ignore Trixie’s chuckle.

“Didn’t you bring the Ursa Major to town once?” Sweetie Belle asked.

Twilight started, considering running back to her books behind her and forgetting this whole idea, before she realized what she was thinking and let out a sigh, hanging her head. No more running, no more hiding. That was her new mantra in life, wasn't it? It had to apply here, too. “Yeah. Except it was an Ursa Minor, but yeah. That was me.”

She deserved this. Any second now the foals were going to cry out and say that they didn’t feel safe around her, and that was entirely fair. But at least she would have made the attempt for Trixie –

“That was awesome!” Snails exclaimed.

Twilight blinked, looking up. “Huh?”

Snips and Snails bumped hooves. “Yeah!” Snails said. “That was the biggest bear I ever saw!”

Snails got up on his hind hooves and lumbered forward like a bear towards the fillies. “Rawr! Ursa attack!” He lunged for Alula, who leaped out the way, wings fluttering a little for extra speed, though she giggled as she did. The game quickly became some kind of variation on tag, where the foals had to keep in a comparatively tight circle around the ‘ursa’ foal, who could only move on his or her hind hooves. Whoever he or she tagged had to take his or her place.

Twilight stared. This…this had not been what she was expecting. She had put ponies lives at risk. “It…it wasn’t a game – ” she began, but she was nudged by Trixie. Looking, she saw the other mare wink, then look back to the foals. “Miss Sparkle’s the one who brought an Ursa Minor into town,” she said, leaning down to look the foals in the eyes as she smiled, “but she’s also the one who got rid of it!”

The foals stopped at that, as Tootsie scratched the back of her head. “I thought you did, Miss Trixie,” she said. “I was watching. You made, like, fifty copies of yourself, and you threw lighting at it…”

Trixie chuckled again. “Not exactly,” she said. “Mostly I just distracted it for a few minutes, and Snails’ sister did all the hoof-work with the lightning. We were just buying time, though, so that Miss Sparkle,” she pointed back to Twilight, “could teleport it back home!”

The foals all once again looked to Twilight, eyes wide. “But…but it was huge!” Dinky exclaimed. “How’d you teleport it all?”

Twilight realized she was staring in confusion, and forced herself past it after a few moments. “U-um,” she said. “Actually, it’s not really that different from teleporting anything else, you just need to have the power – ”

“How much power do you have?” Firelock asked.

“W-well, it’s not like magic can just be easily quantified…there’s a lot of variables, hence why I needed all the time to build up the magic in the first place since it’s an exponential growth based on the mass – ”

“But she did have enough to teleport a bear the size of the town hall,” Trixie interrupted as she stood up straight again, nodding sagely.

“Wow…” the foals all let out as their eyes somehow grew even wider.

Trixie winked at Twilight again, then motioned to Snails. “Okay,” she said. “I want you six to stick with Twilight for the moment, and behave yourselves for her. She’s got a book of cantrips to teach you. Snails, we’ll get that memory spell down like I promised. Then I’ll try and work in more time with each of the rest of you, starting with helping Firelock refine her new spell. Sound good?”

The foals all nodded, though they were all more fixated on Twilight as Trixie and Snails trotted over to the library’s second floor. Twilight tried her best smile. “Um…okay,” she said, getting Cantrips and opening it to the first page. “So…where would you like to begin?”

“I want to teleport!” Snips exclaimed.

Twilight grimaced a little at that, as she looked down at the book. “Um…teleporting magic is really, really difficult. Most unicorns can never learn any variation of it.” She read down the book’s list of cantrips. None of them were related to teleporting in any way, not even small objects. “Sorry.”

The foals, almost as one, let out a collective sigh at that. Firelock, Snips, Sweetie, and Alula each looked over to Tootsie and Dinky, almost as though for guidance.

“Well…” Tootsie said after a moment, trotting over to the book and looking down at its table of contents, “what’s stick?”

“It’s an adhesive spell,” she responded. When she got a blank look, she reminded herself yet again that she was dealing with foals. “Um…it makes something sticky for a short time, so that you can attach it to something else.”

Tootsie looked to the rest of the foals, who considered for a few moments. “That sounds fun,” Dinky said after a moment. “Miss Trixie hasn’t taught me that one yet, so it’d be new for me, too!”

“Well…okay, then!” Twilight said, smiling as she turned through the book’s pages until she reached the cantrip. She was surprised to find that it seemed to take up more than two dozen pages in the book – all the cantrips, in fact, were explained in exacting detail. Twilight herself knew several different ways to accomplish the spell, but as she glanced it over she found that this level of attention to the ins and outs of the cantrip would make it perfect for teaching. Dry Inkwell certainly wanted whoever read this book to learn everything about the spells contained therein.

“Okay!” she declared, standing up straight as her horn glowed and she conjured some paper and simple pencils for the foals, each of whom gasped in surprise at their appearance. “Everypony, get ready to learn!”

The second floor of the library was no better organized than the first, except that it was smaller and so the stacks of books seemed to make space even more of a premium than on the first floor. Trixie used telekinesis to move some of the books aside, then picked one out at random. “What’s an entomological encyclopedia?” she wondered aloud.

“Ooh!” Snails exclaimed, grabbing at the book. On instinct, Trixie kept it away from Snails’ hoof, holding it over her head – though admittedly that didn’t put it very far out of the tall foal’s reach. Snails realized his mistake after a moment. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry for trying to just take it…I just get really excited with entomology. It’s the study of insects!”

“Oh,” Trixie said. She almost lowered the book, but then smiled. “Quick warm-up, then,” she placed the book on top of a large stack, then nodded towards it. “Grab it with telekinesis, and then we can use a page from it for the memory spell. If you can’t, then you’ll have to memorize a page from…” she glanced around, picking out the least pleasant book she could find in a moment and holding it up. “The Complete History of the Decline and Fall of the Fourth Griffin Empire!”

“Ah!” Snails exclaimed, looking up to the entomological encyclopedia desperately, horn glowing.

“In four parts!” Trixie added, as she found a second volume in a different stack. She now had parts two and four. “If I can find all four parts then you’ll have to use this instead of the bug book!”

“No!” Snails cried again, eyes closed tight and teeth grit. His green-gold telekinesis wrapped around the encyclopedia and tugged at it. It moved a few inches.

Trixie chuckled slightly as she trotted around, looking over the stacks. “Uh-oh, I found part three…”

“Ngh…!” Snails let out, as he moved the encyclopedia a few more inches. It teetered on the edge of the stack. Trixie continued trotting around the room, half-heartedly looking for part one. She was pretty sure she saw it buried in one of the stacks closer to the back wall, but decided to ignore it for at least a few more seconds. In those few seconds, Snails managed to get the encyclopedia into the air, and then over to his hooves.

Trixie smiled, setting volumes two through four of Decline down near the first volume, something she was sure Twilight would appreciate later. She tapped her front hooves on the ground in applause. “Good work,” she complimented. Snails was panting a little, but smiled himself at Trixie’s praise. “You should try to use your telekinesis as much as possible at home. My aunt and grand-père actually forbade me from using my hooves or mouth to grab things to eat at dinner for a whole week in order to teach me. If I couldn’t grab it with telekinesis, then I wasn’t allowed to eat it.”

Snails blanched. “That’s mean!” he exclaimed.

Trixie shrugged. “It was only for dinner. Made me learn telekinesis real fast. Also my uncle told them that it was a ‘take your daughter to work’ week, so I got to have big lunches with him and my cousin Sharp Minded.” She frowned. “La petite rapporteuse told on us in exchange for ice cream. That was alright, though, she was a unicorn like me, so when her turn came and I caught her at the dinner table…”

Snails stared at Trixie, and Trixie stared back. “Anyway,” Trixie said. “Memory spell. Find a page you like.”

The colt did, flipping through the pages and looking over the various pictures and information about different insects. He finally stopped on a page and picture about diving beetles. “This one!” he said, setting it on the ground and setting his horn aglow again. Trixie noted that this first step – channeling magic through his horn, the step before actually shaping the magic – was already becoming much easier for him, even if the more vital second step of actually shaping that magic seemed to be just as hard. Casting her magic sight spell, she saw that his magic was flowing through his horn at a much speedier pace, and the ‘block’ of under-channeled magic was slightly smaller. Even if he hadn’t learned a new spell yet, Trixie’s efforts were definitely helping Snails.

Grinning at that thought, she trotted over next to Snails, and pointed to the page of text that accompanied the picture. “So we’ll focus on this rather than the picture. It’ll be just like before, with my hat. Think of a really, really memorable flavor – ”

“Sour apples!” Snails proclaimed, his lips once again puckering at the memory.

“Sour apples,” Trixie confirmed. “Okay, so take that flavor and kind of project it onto the page. You need to…” Trixie thought a moment, wondering how to work this with flavors instead of colors and light, like she used for her own magic. “You need to basically strongly associate this page with that taste. They need to be the same thing for you. Every time you think about sour apples, you remember this.”

Snails licked his lips as he kept channeling magic through his horn, small, harmless sparks flying out as the colt channeled more magic that was necessary and the excess escaped his horn. After a few moments, his eyes started to gain a green-gold color, both in Trixie’s normal vision and in her magic sight.

Trixie rubbed Snail’s back. “Okay, you’ve nearly got it!” she said encouragingly. Snails grunted, redoubling his magical efforts. To Trixie, it looked like he had hit a wall; the magic required for the spell being just too much for him to channel right now thanks to his under-channeling problem. But he was so close…Trixie decided to lend a tiny bit of her own magic to the effort. Her horn glowed, and she melded some of her own magic with that of Snails. The foal didn’t seem to notice, but after a few more seconds there was a bright flash, and all at once Snails’ horn gave out.

The colt stumbled a little, but caught himself with Trixie’s help. He shook his head. “Ow…” he moaned. “That hurt…”

Trixie patted him on the head as she cancelled her magic sight spell. “It’s because you’re under-channeling, you have to put a lot more effort into this than normal. I also had to use a little of my own magic to help you – but only a little, and again, only ‘cause you’re under-channeling. Keep doing magic and it’ll get easier.” Smiling, she looked to the encyclopedia, pulling it forward and holding it in front of her, so that Snails couldn’t see the page. “Okay, so, let’s see if this worked. Fourth line of the paragraph that starts with ‘adult beetles have streamlined’ was…?”

Snails thought, licking his lips. “Covers, then elytra in…um, these,” he made half-circle motions with his hooves.

“Parentheses,” Trixie provided. “And then…?”

“They have elongate hairlike ‘filiform’ – ” Snails made the half-circle motion again, “ – antennae. Larvae are not frequently seen and have a long thorax.”

Trixie nodded. “Okay. Fourth word in, first line, from the paragraph below that.”

“Are,” Snails provided.

“Yup! Okay, what’s it say after the first semicolon under its pest status?”

“What’s a semicolon?”

“A comma with a dot over it.”

“Oh! Um…I don’t know what that first word is. P-R-E-D-A-C-E-O-U-S on other insects.”

Trixie’s smile widened; the fact that he was using punctuation marks and words he didn’t know the meaning of meant that the spell had most likely worked. Snails could have probably told her or written down whatever he wanted about diving beetles already, but he would have been limited by his own grasp of Equestrian while doing so. There was just one other test. “How many times,” she said, counting, “does the word ‘and’ appear?”

Snails frowned, eyes still closed as he thought. “Nine,” he said after a moment.

Trixie offered her largest grin yet. “Snails, I’ve got news for you,” she said, her tone making it clear what kind of news it was. Snails opened his eyes, giving a full tooth grin that Trixie matched. “You did it!”

“Yay!” Snails exclaimed, hopping back and forth between his front and hind legs. “My first spell!”

Trixie nodded. She felt an errant itch on her flank, around her cutie mark, but ignored it as she came forward and offered a hoof. “Good job,” she provided.

Snails ignored the offered hoof, and instead hugged Trixie. “Thanks, Miss Trixie!” he exclaimed. Trixie accepted the hug as Snails continued. “I kind of wanted my first spell to be something to do with my animal friends. Like making them bigger! But this is really cool too!” He closed his eyes. “It’s like I can carry around all the pictures of them I want all the time!”

Trixie patted Snails on the head. “Well, you’ll probably only be able to carry two or three images in your head,” she said. “That’s all I’ve ever managed, and this spell isn’t related to your special talent so you’ll probably be about the same.”

“It’s still really cool! I can use it to help me draw them, too!”

Trixie nodded, breaking away from Snails’ hug, and hoofed him the entomological encyclopedia. “Okay. Let’s take a little bit to see if I can’t help you cast this easier. Then we’ll go and get Firelock.”

“Alright,” Twilight said, using a hoof to point to the blackboard she had created and on which she had drawn the specific magical symbol and formula for stick. “Stick is a transmutation spell. Or more precisely, an alteration/transmutation. An alteration/transmutation changes the properties of some creature, thing, or condition. A spell that heats something up, changes something’s color or shape, or turns one thing into something else, is an alteration/transmutation.” She pointed to the next part of the blackboard. “Now, stick is the colloquial name of – ”

“What does that mean?” Sweetie Belle asked.

Twilight paused a moment. “Colloquial?” she asked. Sweetie Belle nodded. “It means informal or common. Like…for example, we normally just call our country Equestria. That’s its colloquial name. But its proper name is the Kingdom of Equestria. Although outside of Equestria, we’re colloquially known as the Principality of Equestria. There’s a really neat reason for this – ”

“Um,” Firelock interrupted, looking down at her sheet of paper. “Can we learn the spell?”

Twilight blinked. “Of course!” she declared, turning back to the chalk board. “As I was saying, stick is the colloquial name of this spell. Properly, as Dry Inkwell points out, its real name should be adhesive dweomer. A dweomer is an ongoing, lingering magical effect that exists independent of any influx of magic, as opposed to an ars, which is a magical effect that begins and ends instantly or nearly instantly, though its results can linger.” The foals collectively repressed giggles at the word ars, though Twilight didn’t know why.

“The adhesive dweomer consists of several steps,” Twilight explained, pointing to another part of the chalkboard. “First, you gather your magic in your thauma and project it up through your horn. Next, you shape the magic, adding qualities to it. Now, as I’m sure you know, every spell has three qualities – ”

“I didn’t know that,” Sweetie Belle said.

“Neither did I,” Tootsie said, looking surprised herself as the other foals voiced their agreement.

Twilight looked between them. “Huh,” she said. “Well, that’s okay, we can go over those now.”

“Um…” Dinky said, raising a hoof. “Miss Twilight…what does this have to do with making stuff sticky?”

Twilight smiled. “Well, for one thing, you’re not making anything sticky with stick, despite its name,” she said. “It makes one object stick to another object, but not through any kind of conjured glue. That would be a different spell. This just makes one object attach to another.”

“Okay…” Dinky said, looking at the chalkboard, then down to her own pencil and paper. Twilight had been having them take notes. “But, it’s just…Miss Trixie never does any of this when teaching me a spell. She just…shows me how to do the spell, and then walks me through casting it myself.”

Twilight tapped a hoof to her chin, wondering how to explain this to foals in terms they could understand. At their age, she’d already grasped most of the advanced concepts of magic, and was already moving on to high magical studies. She imagined that most of these foals were somewhat less adept, though. “If I asked you what two plus two is,” she said at length, “you’d all have an easy time answering, right?”

“Four,” the foals answered as one.

“Right. That’s simple math, so simple you don’t really need to go through the steps to add it up any more. But what if I asked you…what’s a hundred eighty-four plus two-hundred seventy-three? Try to do it in just your heads.”

The foals all thought, using their hooves to tap out mnemonic rhythms to help with their equations. “Four hundred fifty seven!” Tootsie Flute eventually exclaimed.

“That’s right,” Twilight responded, pointing at Tootsie. “Now how did you get that?”

“Well, first you add the four and the three together and get seven,” Tootsie responded. “Then the eight and the seven. That gives you fifteen…”

Twilight nodded in confirmation as Tootsie explained the simple arithmetic. “You used simple math to do more complex math,” she said, “breaking the problem down into pieces that made it easier to solve. Magic builds off of itself in the same way,” She held out a hoof and conjured a piece of chalk. “Knowing and mastering all the steps in simple cantrips will make it that much easier to do major magic.” She turned around, tossed the piece of chalk up into the air, and shot a beam of magic at it. By the time the chalk had hit the floor, it had transformed into a marble statue, taller than Twilight, depicting a model of the planet and the orbit of the Sun, Moon, and Stars around it.

“Ooh…” the foals let out as one.

Twilight smiled. She sent the statue back into nothingness, then turned around, looking back to Dinky. “Understand?” she asked.

Dinky nodded. “I do. Thanks, Miss Sparkle!”

“Alright, now where were we?” Twilight asked, looking back to Cantrips and glancing up and down the page. “Oh, right. Every spell has three qualities…”

Twilight continued on for some time. She found herself surprised at how little these foals knew about the terminology and nuances of spellcraft; even if they came from non-unicorn families, surely there parents could have seen to it that they got at least a basic walkthrough, right? She decided to just chalk it up to the fact that Ponyville was an earth-pony-majority rural town; unicorns were a comparative minority, and most of them would only focus on learning spells related directly to their special talents, which would come more-or-less naturally. Few would ever try and branch out and test the limits of their cutie marks as Twilight had.

“…right, so everypony got that?” Twilight asked as she finished.

“I didn’t,” Trixie’s voice said. Twilight looked, and saw her coming down the steps from the library’s second floor, Snails in tow, the latter holding an entomological encyclopedia in his mouth as he trotted along, looking quite pleased with himself.

“Done,” Trixie proclaimed, holding up a hoof in triumph. “I have now officially accomplished something today. How’re things on your end?”

“We’ve almost started!” Alula supplied helpfully, as Snails trotted over to Snips and showed off the encyclopedia, while Sweetie Belle, who could see the pictures of the bugs in the book, looked a little grossed out.

Trixie’s eyebrow raised at Alula’s statement. “Almost started?” she asked.

Twilight nodded. “We had to cover a few basics first,” Twilight said with a small smile. “The qualities of a spell, the difference between a dweomer and an ars…”

Once again, the foals giggled slightly at that word, though Twilight still didn’t know why. Trixie, meanwhile, looked even more confused as she looked back to Twilight. “A what and a what?”

Twilight blinked a few times. “A dweomer and an ars,” she repeated. Trixie continued to stare blankly. “A continuously-empowered spell verses a singular spell event?” Trixie didn’t look any more enlightened, and Twilight grunted. She conjured a brief flash of light. “Ars,” she provided, then created a ball of light that she kept empowering with her horn. “Dweomer.”

Trixie stared at the light, tapping one hoof to her mouth. “I think I…maybe…seem to recall that…” Twilight leaned forward hopefully, “…I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Trixie nodded her head with certainty at that, while Twilight let out a groan before she could stop herself. “But you learned magic from Princess Luna!” she cried.

“Yeah…but not really the technical side,” Trixie admitted as she trotted over to Twilight’s conjured blackboard, looking it over. “Whenever Luna wanted to teach me a spell, she just sort of…walked me through the steps. Or she’d let me watch her cast the spell, and then I’d do whatever she was doing.” Trixie smiled as she raised a hoof, looking back to Twilight. “I know how to raise the Moon!”

The foals all went wide eyed at that. “Really?” Tootsie asked.

Trixie rubbed a hoof behind her neck, and Twilight took that in. “Well, I’ll never have the power needed,” she said. “Me and Twilight and every other unicorn in all of Ponyville together wouldn’t have even a tenth the power. But I do know how to, yeah.”

“How?” Twilight asked, her voice completely deadpanned.

“It’s not easy,” Trixie responded. “See, first you have to use magic kind of like a mix between a lever and a key, and plug it into the Moon…”

“Not that,” Twilight interrupted. “How could you know how to do that, but not know some of the most basic magical terms?”

Trixie put her front hooves together as she thought, looking again at the blackboard and the magical formula there. “Okay,” she said. “I have no idea what all that stuff means. But I could easily still just write it all down without understanding it, right? And with magic, that makes you end up with a spell.” She held up a hoof. “Or like with painting! I don’t have to know how to actually make paint in order to be a good painter.”

Twilight shook her head. “Actually, some of the best painters make their own paint.”

“You get what I mean, though – ”

“No, I don’t! So you mean to tell me that when you turn yourself invisible or create copies of yourself with illusions, you have no idea what’s happening?”

Trixie bristled, trotting forward. “I know what’s happening!” she objected. “I’m bending light!”

“But you don’t know how?”

“With magic! Isn’t that enough?”

“Not if you want to do anything really complicated – ”

“Hey! I can do complicated easy.” Trixie turned and her horn flashed blue. She created a facsimile of herself, grinning haughtily at Twilight. “See? Perfect mirror image! You know how hard that was to learn?”

Twilight grunted, her horn flashing lavender. The mirror image of Trixie disappeared in a puff of magic. “But how are you going to learn to do something really complicated?” she asked, rifling through a few of the spells she knew. “Like…this?”

Twilight closed her eyes, channeling magic from her horn down to her back. She was wrapped in a lavender glow for several long moments. When the glow cleared, she had sprouted a large pair of shimmering, butterfly-like wings. She fluttered them a few times, lifting off of the ground and smiling down at Trixie as she drifted up towards the ceiling. The foals, too, were staring in awe.

One of Trixie’s eyes narrowed. “I could figure that out,” she objected.

“You sure? This is a really difficult spell,” Twilight said as she flitted around through the air, nimbly avoiding the stacks of books that reached towards the ceiling. “There’s eight different steps, each of them requiring precise timing and balance of magic. It took up twenty pages in the book I found it in – ”

“Ugh!” Trixie groaned, horn and eyes both taking on a blue glow as she watch Twilight. “Spellbooks. That’s like writing down the steps to a dance. You lose the entire dance in the process!”

Twilight froze in mid-air, glaring down at Trixie. “I’ve learned nearly every spell I know from a spellbook! They work just fine for every other unicorn!”

“Well, here’s something that I made up just now!” Trixie called, the azure glow to her eyes disappearing and shooting a beam of blue magic at Twilight. It struck Twilight harmlessly, but she felt it washing over her newly-created wings. With a purple flash, the wings disintegrated. Twilight let out a yelp as she fell towards the ground, though Trixie’s telekinesis caught her and set her back on her hooves harmlessly.

Twilight glared at Trixie nevertheless. “You dispelled my wings!”

“And I didn’t even need a spellbook,” Trixie proclaimed, raising one hoof in the air as though in victory, eyes closed. “It’s way more fun that way!”

“Fun, huh?” Twilight asked, horn glowing.

Trixie opened her eyes just as a lavender beam of energy struck her in the face. It didn’t hurt, but she suddenly felt…something. Reaching up to her face, she felt significantly more hair than was supposed to be on her muzzle. Twilight conjured a mirror in front of her, and Trixie saw that she was now the owner of a brand-new moustache and goatee ensemble.

Twilight laughed, as did the foals. Trixie, fumed, channeling magic into her face and dispelling the unnecessary facial hair as she turned to Twilight. The lavender unicorn was sniggering herself. “I learned that from a book, too,” she declared. “See? It can be fun. Funny, anyway. For me.”

Trixie’s horn glowed bright blue.

“They’re like you two, but adults,” Firelock said to Dinky and Tootsie as the two adult unicorns argued back and forth about magic, as well as slung the occasional, harmless spell between each other to make some point.

“Yeah…” Dinky admitted, looking to the notes that Twilight had made them take. “I think Miss Twilight has a point about knowing how magic works, though,” she said. “But Miss Trixie’s got a good point, too! Magic should be special, not just…math homework.”

Tootsie Flute nodded in agreement. The foals had gathered in a circle around the notes that they had taken, in front of the chalkboard that Miss Twilight had created. It did feel like a math problem, and even if there was a new spell for the foals at the end of the problem, none of them were particularly looking forward to working through it, what with them having gotten out of school so recently. “Think we can put this together ourselves?” she asked.

“Maybe, but I think we’d need Miss Twilight’s help,” Sweetie Bell decided, and after a moment the foals agreed: they didn’t yet know what any of the formulae on the chalkboard or in their notes meant, as Twilight and Trixie had started after each other before they could begin. She looked to Snails. “But you learned your first spell?” she asked.

Snails brightened, nodding. “It’s a memory spell!” he explained, holding forward the encyclopedia he held, opened to the page on diving beetles. “Go on, ask me anything about that page!”

“Wouldn’t you know everything anyway?” Snips asked, as Alula and Sweetie both went a little green at the picture next to the page in the book, a diving beetle depicted at several times its normal size.

Snails shook his head. “I mean, sort of,” he admitted. “I’d be able to tell you all about diving beetles, yeah. But I wouldn’t be able to tell you something like…” he thought for a few moments, eyes closed. “There are twenty-one periods!”

The other foals all crowded around the book, counting the periods. “He’s right!” Tootsie declared after a moment. “Hey, how many the’s are there?”

Snails counted in his head. “Eleven!”

“Hey, cool!” Firelock exclaimed, a few sparks shooting from her horn in excitement. The other foals all flinched, but they were just harmless, intangible magic sparks, not real ones. Firelock blushed a little. “Sorry,” she said. “But that’s a cool spell! You could use it to help you take tests!”

Snails shook his head. “Miss Trixie suggested the same thing. But that seems like cheating. I don’t want to do that.”

Firelock shrugged, grinning. “If Miss Trixie shows me that spell, that’s what I’ll use it for.”

“Scootaloo would probably love it, too, if she were a unicorn,” Sweetie thought aloud. She brightened. “So, hey! Firelock, you learned how to make fireworks, and Snails, you learned that memory spell, and me and Snips and Alula all learned how to make dancing lights. So we all learned something new today!”

“Except me and Tootsie,” Dinky pointed out, looking to Tootsie Flute. “Why did you come today anyway, Tootsie? You and me are already the best in class with magic. I’m Miss Trixie’s magician’s assistant, so that’s why I came, but why did you?”

“I had a question for Miss Trixie,” Tootsie said. “My momma and papa say that pure unicorns are better at magic than unicorns from mixed families. But these guys didn’t believe me.”

Dinky frowned at Tootsie’s statement. “But I’m as good as you, and my momma’s a pegasus, and so is the rest of her family.”

“What about your dad?” Snips asked. “Your sister’s a unicorn. Is your dad?”

Dinky thought. It occurred to her that she’d never actually asked what tribe her father Castor Cut was, and she couldn’t remember if her momma or Sparkler had ever mentioned it. She’d never met him herself, either. “I dunno,” she admitted with a shrug. “But…look at Firelock! Firelock, isn’t your dad an earth pony?” Firelock nodded, and Dinky continued. “But she figured out her own spell all by herself!”

Tootsie considered. “But it’s related to your special talent,” she pointed out, poking a hoof against Firelock’s flank and the new cutie mark there. “Those spells always come in eventually.”

“Oh, right,” Dinky admitted. “Did you ask Alula?”

Alula started, looking down at her hooves. “I don’t know why everypony always comes to me, I don’t know…” she said softly.

“I did,” Tootsie said with a nod. “Alula agrees with everypony else. But my momma and papa wouldn’t have told me that for no good reason!”

“That’s true,” Dinky admitted. “My momma always has a reason for everything!” She paused a moment, though, as she thought about some of her mother’s decisions. She loved her mother dearly, but…“though…sometimes, it doesn’t seem like a very good reason.”

“Well, that’s why I came.” Tootsie said. She turned around. “In fact, I think I’ll just go and ask them now.”

Tootsie trotted off towards the two adults. Intentionally or otherwise, the two had cleared a broad space in the library for the two of them to argue/duel in, moving stacks of books aside as they debated and spell-slung. Trixie was once again sporting a goatee, though she seemed to be taking it in stride this time. Twilight, meanwhile, had somehow turned bright pink, with yellow polka-dots all over her coat.

“Magic is not a science, Sparkle!” Trixie proclaimed with a stomp of her hoof.

“Well it isn’t an art either, Lulamoon!” Twilight countered.

“Um…excuse me?” Tootsie asked.

The two adults paused, before their horns glowed bright and they dispelled the respective enchantments they had lain over each other. “What’s up?” Trixie asked, any of her previous annoyance with Twilight apparently forgotten save for a slight glare at the other mare, which Twilight returned.

“I have a question,” Tootsie provided.

“About adhesive dweomer?” Twilight asked, trotting forward. Her eyes widened. “Oh, I completely forgot about all of you! I’m so sorry, I’ll – ”

“No, it’s not about that,” Tootsie said, shaking her head. She was aware of the other foals coming forward, watching and listening in order to learn the answer to Tootsie’s question themselves. “It’s actually about the reason I went over to Miss Trixie’s today in the first place. You two can go back to fighting after – ”

“We weren’t fighting, we were debating,” Twilight interrupted.

“Fervently,” Trixie added.

Tootsie blinked. “I, um…don’t know what that word means.”

Trixie trotted over to Tootsie, settling down in front of her. “Passionately,” she explained. “It’s a good word, you should use it. But anyway – what question did you want to ask? Is it about magic?”

“Sort of,” Tootsie said, rubbing one front hoof against her opposite leg as she considered. “Okay, I’m the best in class at magic, or at least I’m as good as Dinky,” she nodded towards the gray unicorn foal, who nodded with pride. She then looked back to Trixie. “My momma and papa always said that was ‘cause I come from a good pedigree.”

Trixie frowned. “A good pedigree?” She asked. “What are you, a dog? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Tootsie held up a hoof. “Well, see, my momma and papa are both unicorns, and their parents were unicorns, and their parents were unicorns…”

“Um,” Twilight said, glancing at Trixie, who glanced back. Both looked nervous for some reason.

“My momma and papa don’t think there’s anything wrong with earth ponies or pegasi, though!” Tootsie insisted. That was the case as far as she knew, anyway. Her family had moved to Ponyville a couple generations ago from Canterlot, after all – her great grandmother had even been the town representative, appointed by Luna herself! – and Ponyville had more earth ponies than anything. Tootsie continued. “But my momma and papa say that unicorns marrying and having foals with other tribes dilutes the blood. That’s why Snails is having trouble with his magic, ‘cause his family are all pegasi.”

“It…doesn’t work like that,” Trixie said, glancing at Twilight. “Right, Sparkle?”

Twilight was tapping her hooves together nervously, glancing at Trixie, then back to Tootsie. “Not…exactly?” she said in a small voice.

Trixie paused at that, before her eyes narrowed a little. “Twilight,” she said, her voice dropping an octave.

Twilight held up her hooves. “Just…let me explain, okay?” she asked, then looked back to Tootsie, licking her lips a moment before pressing on. Tootsie wasn’t sure why she was so nervous; all she’d done was ask a question. “Okay, Tootsie. It is true that unicorns raised amongst unicorns tend to learn magic faster, and know more spells. But that’s just because they have their family to teach them, or even just have more opportunities to see their family doing magic and just picking things up from them.”

She looked to Trixie, who crossed her hooves. “But…?” she asked. “My whole family is a mix of all the tribes, Sparkle.”

Twilight nodded, glancing around the library. “But,” she said, lifting a few books, before smiling as she pulled out the one she was looking for. She flipped it open, then held it out in front of Tootsie. It was a foal’s history book. “But Star Swirl the Bearded?” she asked. “The most powerful pony practitioner who ever lived? His family were mostly earth ponies!”

Tootsie blinked. “I didn’t know that!” she admitted.

“There’s more,” Twilight said, holding up a hoof. “Okay, let me think of some other famous unicorns…Red Magician was all unicorns in his family. But Astral Star came from a mixed family. So did Dry Inkwell. Sky Cast was a pegasus-unicorn, of course, though admittedly she had a mostly unicorn family…”

Trixie looked significantly more relieved at Twilight’s words as she looked to Tootsie. “The point is that unicorns can be great spellcasters no matter who their parents were,” she explained, tapping her hooves together. “Your parents…probably just made a mistake. They probably read somewhere or noticed that unicorns raised amongst unicorns tend to learn faster, and assumed that it was because they were ‘pure’ unicorns. But that’s not the case.”

Tootsie nodded. That made sense. Adults made mistakes just like foals did, she knew; they were just better at covering them up sometimes. She smiled a little at this new knowledge. “So there’s nothing wrong with a unicorn marrying an earth pony?” she asked.

Trixie smiled, tussling Tootsie’s mane. “Not a thing. Though maybe you should let Truffle Shuffle know you’re going to be marrying him at some point.”

Tootsie blushed, as her grin grew wider, though she tried to hide it with her hooves. The other foals, who had been watching, all giggled a little at the sight. Trixie and Twilight glanced between each other, then back to them. “Okay,” Twilight said at length, standing up. “We should get back to learning that cantrip!” She paused, glancing at Trixie. “Um…maybe you could hold off on teaching Firelock anything? Just until she’s learned this.”

Trixie nodded as she joined Twilight in trotting over to the foals. “Hey, you got a quill and paper?” she asked. “I want to take the time to write something down, before I forget.”

“Sure,” Twilight said, pointing off to the library’s front desk. Trixie was off in a moment, and Twilight looked to the seven foals, six of whom had gathered their magical notes and settled down in front of Twilight’s chalkboard again, while Snails had acquired a pencil and paper of his own and was doing his best to write down his own notes. Twilight let him catch up, then clapped her front hooves together. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s learn some magic!”