Little Victories

The wind was an angry creature, determined to ground the clumsy grey filly before she could reach her new school. Another gust sent her tumbling through the air, flapping her wings as fast as they would go to try to regain her balance. The clouds grumbled, threatening to release their rains a little before schedule.

Today of all days! Derpy thought as she attempted to fly over the combative, stormy winds that were trying to tear her apart, but to no avail. She pushed her hooves forward to try and fight back, her last and only option. The weather ponies had to schedule a storm on my first day! Not only that, but her eyes were jolting this way and that and she could not get a hold of them. Her vision blurred, then refocused, only to blur  as her eyes drifted apart once more.

What’s more, she could feel the clouds beginning to drool out their water unto her back. All she could do was keep trying to fly forward now, blinking back the tears that threatened to cloud her vision even further. Hold it together, Derpy, she said to herself, calming her inner storm of anxiety so she could focus all her energy on getting to school.

But she was having trouble doing so. Voices broke into her thoughts, haunting her with memories of her last school. What is that… that thing? a little filly spoke of her, her voice dripping with disgust. Look at her eyes! a unicorn commented, her nose scrunched in repulsion. Oh, and she’s a blank flank, a colt pointed out, and the whole crowd stepped back. Now, now, now, the teacher broke up the group. Let’s not make fun of the less fortunate.

The less fortunate, she had said. But they were orphans, weren't they all less fortunate? It seemed at first that the teacher had a slip of the tongue, but, when Derpy yanked her eyes upwards, she noticed that the mare was trying to hide a nasty grin of her own. Ever since then, the grey filly had a thick scar on her heart. And the other fillies were constantly picking at the scab.

The only way the filly had been able to escape the unhealthy environment was to confide in the orphanage’s counselor, the only pony she could remember who had cared for her well being. The yellow mare, Ms. Golden Rays (or, as she told Derpy to call her, Miss Goldie), had been very displeased to hear that the orphanage’s educational program had been so corrupted. She had tried her best to fix it by having several conversations with the teacher and even one with the class, but all Derpy had gotten out of it was more glares and insults from her classmates and bad grades from her teacher. Finally, after two and a half years of trying to fix this terrible bullying, the counselor finally gave up on the idea that the class was going to change and made plans for the filly to start at a new school after Spring Break.

But Derpy had a hard time believing this place would be any better. Even so, she tried to retain her optimism in hopes that her gut feeling was wrong and going to class would be a walk in the park compared to how it was in the orphanage's school. She knew it was the fuel driving her on, through the lightning and thickening sheets of rain.

Thunder shook the world beneath as the filly began to descend. she could see the plain white and blue schoolhouse through the veil of rain and fog beneath her. She squinted, forcing her eyes to do as she willed them to, trying to make her way down to her goal. As she did so, she noted self-reproachfully that no other fillies were making their way into the building. The bell perched at the top of the school groaned as somepony chimed it three times. Despite its age, it still let out a relatively smooth bong each time. Something about the bell comforted Derpy, even though she knew it meant that she would be late.

On her way to the ground, the inelegant pegasus swerved to avoid a lightning strike that wouldn't have affected her in the first place and stumbled over a tree branch, plummeting to the ground in a downwards spiral. She closed her disobedient eyes tightly and prepared for impact. She soon found the winds’ force had died down, though, and she could no longer feel the rain against her coat; as she opened her eyes, she realized she hadn't hit the ground at all. Instead, warm, pink unicorn magic held her within its grasp.

Confused, Derpy pulled her gaze up to the best of her ability. In front of her stood a lean white unicorn mare with her violet mane pulled into a loose braid. She stared at her, her expression unreadable as a stone. Lowering her brown glasses with a steady hoof, she examined the filly in front of her. Wordlessly, the mare slowly flipped Derpy onto her hooves and released her from her magic. “The new student,” the unicorn announced to the empty playground after a moment of silence, looking off into the distance.

The gauche filly looked around, bewildered. Then, tentatively, she glanced up at her elder and nodded. The pony, presumably the teacher, nodded back at her, then turned around and walked into the building. She left the door open, the only sign that Derpy should follow. For a moment, the young pegasus considered running away. The teacher didn't seem to like her, and fear pricked at her heart over what her classmates might think of her.

But, before she could, she reminded herself that she had to go to school somewhere, and, since this was the only school anywhere near the orphanage, it would be either here or the orphanage’s class. So, with a sigh, she pulled herself forward, stepping into the schoolhouse and closing the door gingerly behind her. The minute she turned around, she somewhat regretted having come in.

Everypony was looking at her. The teacher, the foals, everypony. Furthermore, there were about thrice the amount of fillies and colts that the orphanage’s school had, and there was an air of malice in the room that made her want to tremble. She tried to remain calm as she stepped through the rows of desks to the only open seat: the one right in the middle of the front row. Her eyes began working against her then, and her vision blurred to beyond something she could comprehend. She reached forward to find her seat, groping blindly for the smooth surface.

“She’s blind!” some colt called out, and a few giggles could be heard across the classroom.

“Quiet,” the teacher said sharply.

Finally, Derpy felt the spot she was looking for, but, as she was sitting down, she slipped and missed her seat entirely. This broke the thin ice that had separated the class from being calm and collected and bursting into laughter. Everypony started to laugh at her, and she felt her cheeks burning.

“Hush!” the mare commanded. It was unusual how quickly the class followed her orders, but Derpy liked it. She walked over and helped the yellow-maned filly into her seat.

As soon as Derpy was where she belonged, the phlegmatic teacher trotted back up to the front of the room, where a plain chalkboard was nailed into the white wall. “Since we have two new students today, I’m going to do a quick introduction. The rest of you will need to work on finishing up your Language Art Projects,” the mare informed the class, walking to the center of the room and standing in between Derpy and another filly. The rest of the room exploded into movement, excited jabber, and the rustling of papers.

“My name is Miss Discovery. For this class, you will need to bring a notebook, pencils, and your mathematics textbook,” the teacher began, placing a textbook on each of their desks with her magic. She continued blabbering, but Derpy found herself distracted by the filly beside her.

It was rare that the filly found an advantage to her aberrant eyes, but this was one of those uncommon occasions. Carefully, she kept one eye trained on the teacher while allowing the other to look at the other filly (indirectly, of course). She noted that the filly was a shade of light grey as well, although she was an earth pony. Her mane was a dark grey and looked clean. She seemed much more sophisticated than the average pony, but there was one major thing they had in common. When Derpy noticed it, she nearly jumped out of her seat in disbelief. The filly didn’t have her cutie mark, either.

The pegasus snapped to attention when Miss Discovery slapped a name tag on her desk. “Write your names on these, then tape them to your desks” she ordered, setting a tape dispenser on the corner of Derpy’s desk. “This is where you’ll be sitting for the rest of the year. When you’re done with that, just wait until the class’s work time is over. Maybe browse through the past chapter of the arithmetic book.” With that, the instructor made her way back to her desk.

Quietly, Derpy reached back and lowered her heavy saddlebag to the floor. Then, she dug through it and pulled out a black marker. Gripping the marker between her teeth, the filly wrote her name in messy letters on the uniform brown nametag and sloppily taped it to her desk.

“Um, are you done with the tape?” a voice asked to her right. The grey pegasus turned to face her fellow blank flank.

“Yep!” she said cheerfully, picking up the tape dispenser and placing it on the other filly’s desk. Quickly, while one of her eyes was following her command, she read the girl’s name. “Octavia” it read, though she could just barely make out the letters because the filly had written them in cursive. “Nice to meet you, Octavia!’

The earth pony looked at her, smiling. “You too… umm…” she craned her neck to try to read Derpy’s name tag, but it was clear she couldn't understand her hoofwriting.

“Derpy!” the filly finished the sentence for her new acquaintance, closing her eyes so that she might look normal, if even for just a second.

“Oh,” she replied, a note of pity in her voice.

The pegasus decided to ignore the sympathy. This day had been going much better than those at the other school, and she was just glad to have the company of somepony nice, even if they did think she was a little weird.

Here’s to a way better rest of the year! she thought happily as she smoothed out the tape on her name tag.