Splitting aMid the Night

"Good morning class. I know, holidays are soon, and you won't concentrate as hard as I may like you to. So today, we will repeat some easy things. We will start alteration, so we may continue going deeper into the field after the break."

Half of Midnight was present to listen. Half of her was pondering the secrets of the world in general and the effect of strapping rocket boosters to a squirrel in particular. She had a tendency to come to class early, then pass the time with whatever crossed her mind. An interesting thought could then let her phase out until she was oblivious to the world around her. The teacher noticed, but he did not hold it against her. He knew she had reasons and no malicious intent. He had been there for her, from her entry exam onwards. He knew what had happened to her. Whatever else troubled her, she could bring to him for advice. He was amazed that she had even kept her mind throughout it all. He expected that she felt the same, though she would never admit it. Any sentiments would only distract from work.

"To break the ice, everypony should receive a bear. Give me a holler if I missed you out. Do something with that teddy. A simple change, like color. I'll assign you more tasks when you're done."

When the object dropped onto her desk, she dropped out of concentration at last. It was just another ordinary teddy bear, the type that stacked in dozens in the school's storage rooms. "It's been a long time," whispered Midnight. "So the past does repeat." A touch of magic brought forth a trickle of blood from the bear's paw. As she watched, resonance lured a tiny tear out of her.

By the time that he arrived back at her desk at the front, the blood already ran off the desk's edge where it faded into insubstantiality. "Do you want me to get you a different object? There should be some around, some with less history." Without saying a word, Midnight closed her eyes, wiped herself clean, and transformed the bear into the shape of a baby dragon. The illusion spell on it had long since dissipated. "You know, some unicorns double your age couldn't do that."

"Odd. This spell took me only five hours of training. That was unusually short. I expected it would be just as easy for anypony else." Midnight brushed a bit of mane out of her face with the same spell that threw the stuffed animal back to the front. "I'm not special."

"You are. Certainly a lot more than others." He spoke in low voice even though the rest of the class was distracted getting their own magic to work.

"I work hard. Perhaps they don't." Midnight made no effort to mask her speech. Who would overhear, and why should she care?

His magic picked up the baby dragon from the floor and set it straight on his desk. "I can believe that you do, but to what end? Why would a medic like you need to master transmutation? One who, like you, has already mastered her craft where it matters?" Her eyes faded away to other areas as he talked. Eventually, her face fell into an implied frown. "Did I hit any sensitive areas?"

"It's starting to rain." As she paused, the room was filled with only an occasional tap of rain against the window. "I hate getting wet."

Despite the upcoming holidays, not every teacher was content with easing up the program as her favorite teacher had; In combat training, anypony showing a moment of distraction would be brought back into discipline with a merciless jolt fired into the flank. Their ancient runes and history teacher, not to be outdone, had found no better time to schedule an exam than that day.

Bonus question time. 'In the time before everypony was unified, not every race even had written language. Which of the three sorts do you think first had writing, and why? Race 1pt, Explanation 5pts' That's easy.

As such, pegasi only slowly moved away from the savage body language their omnivore ancestors had used. It was not until trade with the unicorns flourished that they picked up writing.

This leaves us with unicorns and earth ponies. While many unicorns like to consider themselves extra sophisticated and all that, they tend to forget that the early unicorn race simply had no reason to communicate by any means other than direct conversation or magic. Surely, magic can be used to draw runes or writing in the air. But it wasn't then. For our unicorn ancestors, there were three ways to send a message with magic.

First, telepathy. This is a fairly hard piece of work simply to receive, but even harder to send with. The only practical use was if both sender and receiver would form a passage between their minds, which required precise timing. Also, it was rather short ranged.

Second, recordings of voice, sent imbued into a bubble of magic, which would float to the receiver and give out its message when popped. This was also not effective on any distances longer than two or three miles.

Lastly, there was the point-and-show approach, creating ethereal copies of existing or imagined objects. This was great for sending designs to a blacksmith, for example, and not unlike sending letters today.

Surely, none of these methods were perfect. One must keep in mind though, that unicorns, even more than today, kept themselves locked away in castles among their own. This eliminated the need for long ranged methods of detailed communication. When keeps needed to send a message from one to another, they would light signal fires, which would be answered by sending messengers.

Thus, both by elimination and logical derivation, we can conclude that it have most likely been earth ponies who invented writing. While the weather was mostly dependent on pegasi, they needed some sort of calendar to time their farming duties.

Midnight looked through the pages again, looking for any blank spaces or mistakes. She found none.

Everypony was back in their seats. She was a bit early, though. So she just floated her exam over to the teacher's desk and prepared for another twenty minutes of meditation. Sandhicc looked up from his work at the sound of pages rustling to see Midnight look back at him with a sly grin. She wasn't always the best student one could wish for, but she always came darn prepared for exams.

"Of course. Hadn't expected otherwise from you," he whispered at her. Then, he lifted his voice for everypony else to hear, "Twenty more minutes. Watch the time, sign your paper. Seeing as this is your last lesson, I'm giving you the second half off. Would only be twenty-five minutes anyway, too short."

He gave a confirming nod in Midnight's direction. She got the hint and packed up her things in order to leave.

Now that that's done, what? He won't expect me back for maybe an hour. Are the school gardens still open? Not like I cared about rain, either way. I know a spot that would take me right now. The sun's warmth is all I need. Yeah, the sun on a day of rain. Lovely idea, self. Still it's probably the best idea. We'll see what results. Oh hey, rainbow. Really big rainbow. That shines bright without light and sparkles brighter yet. Maybe it'll go away if I just ignore it and blame everything on magic.

It was dark, but she had no trouble seeing the red. It was all over her tiny hooves. All over her. "Midnight... forgive me." No breath followed after that last exhale of words.

A gentle nudge in her side. Incomprehensible sounds. Another not so gentle nudge in her side. "Midnight? Excuse me, were you sleeping?"

She opened her eyes to see who it was. Little Zeddie, one of her friends, in a way her saviour. After blinking a few times, she could refocus her senses and make out the grass that had served as her cushion, the tree that had somewhat shielded her from the rain. Looking over his shoulder, Canterlot's many houses and spires still stood unfazed by the weather. "I'm alright. Figured I'd sneak in a nap that he doesn't need to know about."

"In the rain when no one knows where you are, for half an hour now?" He pointed to the closest clock tower. She had been out longer than she had expected, though not long enough to cause worries at home.

The wind had picked up and blew raindrops into her face faster and stronger. She found herself slightly chilled. In more than one way, she was grateful that Zeddie had found and awoken her. As she rose, he tried to help her pat dirt and mud out of her coat. However, he found himself blocked off as soon as she had a leg to spare. "We talked about it; I don't enjoy physical contact for reasons you should know. Just gotta grab my stuff and I'm off." She reached to grab her saddlebags from under the closest bench where she had left them. Her magic gripped only air though; They simply were not there.

"Got 'em already!" said Zeddie, lowering the saddlebags onto her and fastening them before releasing his magic's grip on them.

"Thanks, Zed." As they walked out of the garden, she had time to inspect him once more. He did not look too bad, actually. "You're decent enough."

Already I'm getting such thoughts? No, this isn't true. It can't be. Midnight does not date. He does look like someone who could make a lucky mare quite happy, though. They say he's more photogenic than any other colt. Maybe I'm just slow to catch on.

"Somepony's in love, eh?" He had taken a few steps of a lead on her. She had no chance to read his expression, if there was one.

Midnight collected herself to the best of her ability before speaking to let out no hints. "What do you mean?"

He pointed a hoof towards the sky. "The pegasus that created this rainbow. They don't sparkle like that unless there's some really heavy joy in her heart. I mean, we all heard what noise when it was made."

Noise? Act like you know what he means. Well, that thing is still there. I wonder if pegasi can do other things than clutter up the sky for everypony else.