Sunny Haze concentrates with great content on her open spell book. She licks her lips with anticipation, blowing strands of her sunset orange and violet mane out of her sapphire blue eyes. She repositions herself on the hard wooden floor of the small tree house and begins another attempt at levitating her book off the ground with her unicorn magic.
Her little filly horn is just starting to glow a faint cobalt blue when a heavy thump sounds by the trapdoor and rocks the tree house. Sunny loses concentration and gives a glare at the disturbance.
“Sorry.” Dew Drop laughs awkwardly while rubbing the back of his neck. Sunny continues to glare as the periwinkle earth pony (a pony with no wings or horn) trots next to Sunny in the tree house. “Whatcha workin’ on?”
“What do you think?” Sunny asks without her usual sarcastic tone.
“Magic?”
“Yup.” She closes her spellbook with a front hoof and sighs loudly. “I’m never going to learn how to use magic.”
“Don’t say that, Sunny,” Dew comforts. His emerald eyes sparkle through his silver and cyan mane in the always foggy air of the large forest consisting almost entirely out of spruce trees. The only village in the entire country of Equestria sitting in the middle of that forest is Shady Hollows, where the two foals live. “Besides, most unicorns only use their magic to levitate things, and that’s not the most helpful spell in the world. You don’t need unicorn magic.”
“You don’t understand, Dew. You’re an earth pony, not a unicorn,” Sunny retorts. She angrily pushes her spell book aside, meaning for it to stop in one of the corners of the tree house, but instead falling out the trapdoor of their hide-out.
She glares at Dew Drop. He looks taken aback. “How is that my fault? I was trying to be comforting!”
Sunny Haze grumbles while she stomps past the colt to the trap door. She climbs down the ladder onto solid ground where, on lucky occasions, the fog is so thick that you cannot see anything more than four tail-lengths away.
Dew Drop joins her beneath their secret tree house that they built by themselves only a few moons ago. “Where’d it go? You don’t think it fell into the river, do you?”
Sunny gasps. She turns to the river beside the tree house. Sure enough, her spell book is sitting on a small, jagged rock in the middle of the rapid water. Since the book landed exactly in between rapid rocks, it’s too dangerous to grab it off. This would be a great time for levitation magic, Sunny moans in her head.
When Dew Drop appears next to her, she grabs his shoulders with her pale gold hooves and shakes him. “My book is in the river!”
“Technically, it’s on a rock.” Dew pushes Sunny away from him and stares at her book. Then he bends down and grabs a wet gray stone in his teeth. He turns his head away from the river, then with a quick twist of his neck, the rock soars over the river and hits the book just enough for it to land in the water.
“Well now what?” Sunny asks. Dew Drop grins mischievously.
“Now, we chase it.” Before his unicorn friend can reply, the periwinkle pony is galloping quicker than ever before alongside the river. Five minutes later, she stops breathlessly at a brink where the two foals stop. The book is enough behind where it won’t pass them for at least a minute.
“Now what?”
“Now, I rescue it.” Dew Drop quickly leaps into the ice-cold water of the river. He splashes water onto his filly friend as he swims to the center so he can grab the book, but she doesn’t care.
“Dew Drop, are you crazy? I don’t need my book that bad!”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it,” he replies. The tattered brown book is just drifting into his hooves when orange sparkles envelope it and it suddenly zooms out of the water, past him, and toward Sunny. Sunny stares wide eyed as her book flies inches by her face, then stops next to a familiar spring green unicorn with long violet locks of mane and orange eyes that sparkle.
“Looking for this?” the green unicorn asks, levitating the dripping spell book in her orange magic.
“Give that back, Emerald Star!” Sunny Haze shouts as the bully unicorn who sticks out her tongue, then runs away. Full of fury, Sunny gallops after Emerald through the thick fog, leaving Dew Drop above the river.
Sunny’s chest begins to hurt. She slows to a stop and collapses onto the soft green grass, staring upward where the fog covers the night sky. Why does Emerald Star always have to be so…infuriating? Sunny asks herself while catching her breath. What is she doing out here after sunset, anyway?
“Watch out!”
Sunny Haze has only seconds to turn her gaze to the left where she sees Dew Drop fail at skidding to a halt and instead flying straight into her as if she was a bowling pin. For a few moments, she doesn’t move, for her friend has knocked the wind out of her. “What...what are you doing?” she asks in a choking voice. “You could have killed me!”
Dew slowly rises onto his four hooves. “I was trying to follow you.”
“By nearly killing me?” Sunny asks between breaths.
“I didn’t realize you were laying on the grass soon enough.” He holds out a hoof to help his friend up. “Sorry about that.”
Sunny Haze takes the offer of the hoof once she can finally breath right again. Once she’s on all four hooves, she glances around nervously. “Do you know where Emerald went? Or at least where the village is?”
Dew Drop bites his lower lip as he shakes his head.
Sunny Haze feels like she might faint. “We’ve not only lost my favorite spell book, but now we’re lost ourselves. When we get back to Shady Hollows, Emerald’s parents are so hearing about this!” she spats.
Dew Drop turns in every direction, but no matter which way he turns, all he can see are faint bushes and vivid fog.
“I just can’t be sure with all this fog everywhere,” Dew Drop complains. “I can’t see my own hooves in front of my face.”
A hush falls over the two foals. Sunny Haze glances at Dew Drop’s cutie mark of a raining cloud, symbolizing his special talent of creating rainstorms. Sunny turns to her blank flank with no image of a cutie mark. She hasn’t found out her special talent yet, and she is determined to.
Dew Drop ponders on his own complain for a moment. Then his emerald eyes brighten. He points a periwinkle hoof to his friend’s unicorn horn. “Try using your magic.”
“My...my magic?” Sunny Haze stares upward so she can see the very tip of her pale gold unicorn horn. I guess it’s worth a try, she thinks. She closes her eyes and concentrates on her magic like the many attempts she has done before. All she has ever tried to do before is levitate, so the idea of clearing fog is new to her.
For the first time, she can feel magic start to swirl through her horn. A broad smile approaches her face. She opens her eyes and stares at the cobalt light glowing from her horn without losing focus. Then, she gives a determined grin to the fog.
It actually happens. Her horn glows blue as a bright ray of sunshine streaks from her horn as if it were a flashlight. In only a second later, the fog around them fades from sight. “Yes! Woo-hoo!” Sunny exclaims happily. “I did it! I performed my very first spell!”
“Not only that, Sunny Haze,” Dew Drop announces. Sunny stops cheering at turns to her friend, who instead stares at her flank. “You’ve got your cutie mark.”
“WHAT?” Sunny Haze twists her head so she can gaze upon her pale gold flank. Sitting right in the center is the image of the sun shining down rays of sunlight onto a cloud. “My special talent is clearing fog?” Sunny says less enthusiastically than she always thought she would react when she first found out her talent. “Isn’t weather dealt by pegasi?”
“But the fog is too thick for pegasi to clear,” Dew replies. “Sunny, you received your very own cutie mark!”
Sunny Haze smiles. Sure, she probably just lost her favorite book. And maybe her special talent isn’t some insane magic like age-reversal spells like she’s always dreamed of performing. But hey, any talent is worth having, and if she could pick her second favorite, clearing fog is...somewhere in that range.
Maybe if she keeps telling herself that, she’ll believe it.
With sunshine clearing their path, Sunny Haze and Dew Drop find their way back to Shady Hollows in no time.
She’s suddenly glad that she lost her spell book.
