Frame of Reference

by Minds Eye

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Celestia, Slice of Life, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 3085

Twilight Sparkle tries a different tactic for her art homework.

Twilight Sparkle is a gifted student when it comes to math and science, but even the smartest unicorns can struggle to control their magical abilities. And when precision fails her in her latest assignment for art class, Princess Celestia is more than happy to offer her help in overcoming the challenge.

To some extent, at least.

Cover art: Celestia Napping by Skecchiart.

Thanks to Noble Thought for pre-reading.

Published 2015-12-23 23:00:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-12-23 23:00:02 UTC

Catnapping

Twilight Sparkle tugged on her magic, and the black marker floating in her grasp jumped to the left, striking a line through the picture she had struggled with over the last half hour. She groaned, dropping the marker and her face to the desktop. “I can’t do it!” She slapped a hoof to her mouth, cheeks flushing, and she sheepishly peeked up at Princess Celestia over her shoulder.

“You can do anything you set your mind to, little Twilight,” the Princess said with a smile, running a hoof up and down her back. “Drawing may not be your best talent yet, but you can’t let doubt cloud your mind.”

She dropped her face back to the table. Her snort blew several loose sheets of paper away, each one carrying another botched version of her homework.

“Oh, come now. You don’t give yourself enough credit.” Celestia brushed a hoof across Twilight’s face, and she lifted her head up to show Celestia her latest attempt. “Now what’s wrong with this? You drew a perfectly acceptable cactus.”

Twilight frowned. “It’s a cat.”

She couldn’t bear the sight of her mentor fumbling for words, and Twilight turned away. The gold-trimmed furniture of Celestia’s chamber waited for her sight, and each piece seemed to be delighting in her failure, each one a face made of buttons for eyes and vicious smirks in place of their cushions. She’d never be able to craft anything that could measure up to them.

A familiar, lingering thought crept back into mind. She had struggled with it all afternoon, but Twilight hadn’t been able to banish it completely: she hated art class.

Twilight cringed at the mere hint of that fact. She couldn’t hate art class. She couldn’t hate any class. It just wasn’t an option available to her. “I don’t understand. All I’m doing is levitating the marker! I know how to do that, but why can’t I make it work?”

Celestia straightened her head from the twisted angle she had take to view Twilight’s work. “There’s more to art than simple levitation, Twilight Sparkle. You need precise control over every movement of your instrument—marker, brush, chisel, whatever you use to create. Practice makes perfect!”

“But it’s due tomorrow!”

“Then it’s time to rethink your strategy, hm?” Celestia settled on the simple crimson rug at the center of the room. “Come sit with me for a moment. Frustration is the enemy of productivity, my dear student. Take some time and think from a different angle.”

Twilight kicked away the crumpled remains of an earlier attempt. “What angle? I know what a cat looks like already. It’s just not coming out right.”

Celestia smiled warmly and lifted her wing. “Then let’s put our heads together. Maybe we can figure out the problem.”

She trudged over to the Princess—trying to ignore the flowing line of white thread woven into the perimeter of the rug. Her skill couldn’t even compete against the most basic decoration in the room. Twilight curled up under Celestia’s wing, and its warmth draped over her back. “Can’t I just learn art history? What do I need to draw for?”

“Practice, my dear student. Practice! It’s the only way to develop control over your magic.” Celestia summoned her marker and a stack of paper to rest before them. “Control is how I didn’t drop all these things on your head, and how scholars and scribes get to write with their mouths free. And it’s also why I like every student that goes through my school to take an art class as soon as possible.”

“But... but it’s just pictures!”

“Indeed it is, just like all the graphs and charts you love so much. Suppose I asked you to draw a pie chart showing that one value is twice as much as another. Would it be correct to divide the circle into one-fourth and three-fourths?”

“No...”

Celestia tightened her wing around Twilight’s back. “Precisely, just as precise as your pen strokes must be! Now let’s take another look, shall we?” She picked up Twilight’s newest attempt in front of them both. “What do you see?”

Twilight studied it all over again. The skinny body. Two legs so far, both held up to the side of a little circle for the head. A few short lines for claws. More sticking out of the head for teeth and whiskers. And one obscene gash cutting it all in half. If it wasn’t for that, if all she had to go on was the simple shape and the tiny little pricks sticking out from all over it…

She buried her nose under Celestia’s feathers. “A cactus!”

“Look again, my dear.” Celestia took hold of Twilight’s chin and tugged her face back up. She traced a hoof around the jumbled mess of ink. “Do you see all this empty space on the page? You had all this room to work with, and a fairly clumsy tool to draw your picture. You tried to make it too small.”

Celestia took her marker, and Twilight watched her start doodling on a fresh page. The marker made sweeping arcs across the page, flowing quicker and smoother in Celestia’s grip than she could ever have hoped for in her own. A moment later, Twilight was looking at a tree nearly twice the size of her cat—a simple tree with no bark and only a few squiggly lines covering the branches for leaves, but an identifiable tree all the same.

Twilight took the page from her and looked it over in more detail. “I don’t think I can do this...”

“Why not?”

“It’s too much. Look, you made the trunk slender near the top and thicker near the base. I don’t know what kind of details Professor Easel will be looking for on a cat if it’s this big. I can’t match this.”

Celestia summoned a book from one of her shelves. “Have you ever heard of Arbor Eye, the founder of the Art Institute of Baltimare? He’s one of the better artists I’ve seen over the last century. His specialty was wildlife, but...” She set the book down and opened it up.

Twilight stared into the ice blue eyes of an orange tabby looking back up at her. “He painted cats?”

“No, this is only a sketch he colored in.” Celestia tapped the text on the opposite page. “He always said the hardest part of painting animals was bringing life to a lifeless canvas, and there was never any shortage of cats around his neighborhood for him to practice with. Perhaps you could take what he used to hone his skills and use it to help yourself.”

She took note of the tabby’s characteristics—the shape of the head, it’s size in proportion to the rest of the body, the total length of the body in general. Even with the use of pens instead of paint, Arbor Eye had captured each detail marvelously, and Twilight could almost feel the animal curled up with her under Celestia’s wing.

Her eyes flicked over to the text, and she read his thoughts about the sketch. A handsome alley cat, Arbor had written, that spent an hour sunning himself atop the wall under my apartment’s window every day without fail. It took me five drafts before I was satisfied I did him justice.

Celestia rested her head atop Twilight’s. “And there you have your model. Do you think you can match some of those details on your own?”

Twilight looked back at the discarded pages at the foot of her desk. If it took a great artist five tries to get it right, she wouldn’t be able to anytime soon. Perhaps there was a better option further in. She felt Celestia’s body shake in silent laughter as she turned the page, but Twilight soldiered on.

Time passed them by, Twilight taking to reading Arbor’s thoughts aloud, and Celestia listening and asking a question or two. Each picture Twilight found gave her a new specimen to study, but much to her chagrin, each specimen displayed different features for her to consider. Nothing between all the examples she found—fur color, body proportions, size, nothing—was universal across the board.

Eventually, Celestia’s questions stopped coming, and Twilight did nothing but read all of Arbor’s misgivings about his work. His sketch of the black cat took seven tries for him to be satisfied. The note on a picture of kittens lamented how he had thought he could translate such a lively pair to a flat medium. There was always some shortcoming about each picture for him to point out.

For a moment, she wondered if he knew that she knew his pain. Twilight sighed and looked to Celestia. “Do you think I could—”

She snapped her mouth shut. Celestia’s head was resting over crossed forelegs, her eyes closed and a small smile on her lips. Twilight waited for her to speak, but only Celestia’s soft breathing reached her ears. She waved a hoof over her eyes, and got no reaction. “P-Princess?”

Celestia let out a contented sigh and curled her body around Twilight, giving no reaction to her student’s surprised squeak.

Twilight wrestled her way out from under the wing wrapped around her, and Celestia still didn’t wake up. She sucked in her lips, stopping up the stream of words that threatened to come out and disturb her sleeping mentor. What was she to do? Celestia wanted to help her finish the assignment, but she was the Princess. Surely she needed her rest. Her mother always hated being woken early from naps, and running a country surely demanded more than running a household.

But Twilight needed her guidance. There were more possibilities when drawing a cat than she ever thought possible, and she had no way to narrow them down. If one of the best artists of the last hundred years couldn’t draw a good picture of a cat on his own in only a few tries, what chance did she have?

A whine escaped her lips, and Twilight leaned against Celestia’s body, the Princess’ breathing rocking her back and forth. Inhale... exhale... the cushion of her barrel expanded and contracted with a comforting regularity. Twilight closed her eyes.

There had to be something. Some trick she could use to her advantage. Her mind kept returning to the picture of the two kittens, and Arbor’s gripe about it: a flat surface. Exactly the limitation she faced, but he had been able to overcome it with his skill. That kind of result was beyond her reach, but there had to be something—

Her eyes snapped open.

She sank back into Celestia’s body, and the next breath pushed her out all over again.

The third dimension.

A triumphant smile spread across her face. If she couldn’t succeed on a flat surface, she wouldn’t use a flat surface. But what would she draw on? Twilight stood up and began to pace. Trying to draw an entire cat and adapt its shape to fit a three-dimensional object would be even tougher than drawing on paper, but if she could somehow translate just one feature to something...

Twilight studied one of her forelegs. Maybe she could color it to match one of the subjects in the book. The orange tabby, maybe. If she were clever enough, she could even draw lines on her hoof to mimic the paw.

She dismissed the thought after another heartbeat. There wasn’t enough time to dye her coat, nor would scribbling on it with a marker look like the kind of effort the assignment called for.

Her head smacked on the carpet, and she lifted it up for another bonk. Why couldn’t art be easy like her science class? Why couldn’t it be as simple as using the atomic weight of Carbon to calculate the mass of one-point-five moles of the substance? She froze.

When in doubt, simplify. She repeated the mantra Professor Beaker drilled into her class before every experiment. A controlled procedure yielded more accurate results than one depending on multiple factors to go right.

No coloring or dying hair. There were already too many variables to consider. More importantly, whatever she drew needed to be immediately recognizable. Trying to be clever and make claws out of a hoof would never work. Hooves and paws were just too dissimilar, but cats and ponies shared some things in common.

A face. A simple face with whiskers all done with her simple little black marker. If she were to trace those characteristics over a pony’s face, it would look far more lifelike than if she sketched it out on paper. It would also show a degree of control if she could adapt to the contours of a living body. All she needed now was a mirror.

Twilight scrunched her face in thought. That wouldn’t work. It would tax her focus enough just concentrating on each stroke of her marker without worrying about matching her thoughts to a reflected version of her actions.

Her head swiveled around to Princess Celestia’s sleeping body.

Celestia’s subconscious thoughts chose that moment to stretch out her legs, showing off the pristine snow-white coat covering every inch of her body—including the face that settled back on top of her hooves, perfectly straight and level for Twilight.

The black marker would show up far more easily on white hair than purple hair...

Twilight thrashed her head about like her mane had caught fire trying to shake the thought away. That was the Princess of all Equestria her mind was thinking about. If she wanted a cat face drawn on her, she would clap her hooves and have a dozen of the best artists from all over the country ready to draw it for her. The last thing she needed was a mere student tarnishing her regality.

It wouldn’t be right. Celestia had taken Twilight under her wing and shown her every kindness she could have expected.

But she needed to finish her assignment.

Twilight jerked her head again and made her way back to the desk. Drawing on a pony’s face was a silly idea in the first place. No one would want to look like that. She would have to make do with paper.

Plain, boring paper.

With which she had done nothing but fail time and time again.

She frowned at the empty sheets strewn about the desktop. How many more would she need before she got it right?

Frustration is the enemy of productivity.

Princess Celestia was always there to help her however she needed it. She knew Twilight wasn’t getting anywhere doing it on her own. She had offered to help find a solution to Twilight’s problem, and now Twilight had a possible solution ready to go.

Twilight looked back yet again. Celestia seemed to be smiling at her with her eyes closed.

One line wouldn’t hurt anything.

She crept back to Celestia’s side with a blank sheet. Arbor Eye’s book was still there, open to the page of two kittens wrestling with each other, and she scribbled a few marks to resemble an attempted trace. Twilight lifted the marker higher, holding it up to Celestia’s muzzle.

It was trembling in midair.

No, Twilight reminded herself, she was making it tremble. It was in her magic. Her control. She took a breath to calm her nerves, and her grip solidified. The marker stabilized.

Twilight pulled it to the side, and a few inches of black line scored the face of the Ruler of All Equestria.

Celestia groaned, and Twilight barely restrained her yelp, clenching her eyes shut, cheeks burning hot from shame and embarrassment. I lost control, she thought, ready to burst. It was a mistake, I swear! It won’t happen again!

No other sound came from Celestia.

She opened one eye, and saw her teacher lying unchanged, save for the ink across her muzzle. Twilight held her breath and drew two more in rapid succession.

Celestia’s head rolled to rub her cheek on the carpet. She resettled with her nose pointed at Twilight.

Twilight suppressed a giggle. She had failed to make all three of them completely straight, but they still looked for all the world like a set of whiskers dangling from her face. They just needed something to be hanging from.

She tilted her marker and pressed the side of its tip against Celestia’s nose. One quick roll up and over her snout left a little black spot dead center. A few more whiskers on the other side for balance, and the cat’s mouth would be complete.

Perhaps she should give Celestia some eyes, too. A face wasn’t a face without eyes.

Professor Easel:

Please see to it that Twilight Sparkle receives a passing mark for her assignment due this morning. While I regret she is unable to present it herself, I assure you that I have seen her work personally, and attest to the diligence and care she put forth in her efforts.

Also, please excuse her from attendance this morning and send her back up with one of your enchanted ink erasers.

My apologies for interfering in your class on such short notice. Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.

Princess Celestia

Professor Easel let the note flutter down to his desk. He closed his eyes and pushed up his bifocals, rubbing the bridge of his nose. An ink eraser, to be sent to Celestia immediately. Several scenarios ran through his mind, none of them remotely related to what he had planned for yesterday’s homework assignment.

Twilight Sparkle sat next to him—lower lip sucked into her mouth, and her tail wrapped around her legs as far as it would go. Her eyes looked right back into his, furrowed in worry, but she made no effort to explain the note.

Shaking his head, he checked her name off his roll sheet, and made another check for her homework credit. It wasn’t even going to be graded. All he had wanted to see was an effort, something the students could look back on at the end of term and see how far they’d come, and now he was giving credit in the dark. The word of the school’s founder had to count for something, at least.

He shot Twilight a pointed look. “Did you learn your lesson, young lady?”

She gulped, and slowly nodded. “She... she’s sending me to the corner for a thousand seconds. I’ll stay on the paper from now on.”