Farther Beneath the Planet of the Apes

The Heartstrings house where Lyra grew up was located on the edge of Ponyville behind which was a rolling meadow where she used to play and where the Ponyville Glassworks is now located.  Her early years were conditionally fortunate.  Many among her antecedents having been accomplished musicians, her parents were pleased to find her both able of mind as well as gifted in musical ability.  She found an innate ability to express her feelings in the strings that hummed to her touch early on and her friends would occasionally ask her to perform.

Silly pony.  When she performed  she would usually sit upright and stroke the strings with her front hooves like a biped.  This was a refined style, but it didn't stop there..  Friends and relatives began to notice a habit of assuming an attitude that could only be described as 'bipedal' more and more in her regular behaviour.  Some wondered if she was carrying her performance posture home with her.  Others speculated about whether she might be picking up tendencies from something others were unaware of that was said to lay out in the fields.

It was also in this world that she came to know her place relative to her most gifted peers:  second.  Although possessed of a creatively brilliant intellect she could never seem to rate as high in her studies as Twilight Sparkle or as accomplished in her performances as Octavia and from these she gained a sense of a perception of her as the perpetual runner up.

Never the singular gift sufficient to justify a cutie mark.  And when her cutie mark did appear, it was of her chosen instrument rather than general musical ability.

Never did her parents confidence and support in her waiver.

Never did she let her rivalries in ability affect her feelings toward her rivals as individuals.

She realized that she was fortunate to live in a time in a world of severe competition between such extraordinary individuals whose very existence could help to define and improve her as an individual although this might hinder her from receiving the recognition she might otherwise receive both as a prodigy, and a mare.

And she learned one more thing about not being the best.  The best way to overcome the limitations was Never charging at a limitation head on.       The best way, was through transcending the context in which her merits measured her the lesser and thereby overcoming the inherent limitations imposed upon her by it.

Lyra found this true very early on because the little world that Lyra grew up in was an extraordinary one indeed..