To be a crystaller was a complex thing. Far from simply smacking a baby on the head with a crystal, it entailed being a mentor, a teacher, a role model to the infant in question. It was to be the first pony they’d look up to, outside of their parents. It meant teaching them the ways of the world. It meant being as close to family as you could get without actually being family. It was, in all, a dignified position.
“C’mon, now, open wide! Heeeeeere comes the airship!”
Anypony who’d actually had a baby would say that Sunburst was being as dignified as he could possibly be at the moment.
Flurry Heart opened wide, and with a “Nnnneeeeerrrooo”, Sunburst popped the strained peas into her mouth. He quickly put up a small shield in front of his face before Flurry spat them right out again-again.
Sunburst nudged a trash can beneath the shield and let the latter drop, leaving the peas to fall into the can. “We need to do something about that,” he said to Flurry, stirring his spoon in the jar of peas yet to be spat out.
Technically, with Flurry still too young to be taught magic, all Sunburst had to do at the moment was help the Princess and Prince take care of her. It sounded inconsequential, but having an extra set of hooves around was great if they suddenly had a lot on their plate. Such as a messenger from the yaks arriving and cheerfully announcing that Rutherford was moving his visit up from next week to tomorrow.
Cadance was scrambling about, trying to accelerate a dozen different arrangements at once while also getting the decorations up, and you could almost see her veins throbbing. And even she was handling it better than Shining, who was mostly running around with this or that object to clear this or that room and constantly screaming. You could hear a Trottler effect whenever he passed the dining room. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…”
“Goo?” inquired Flurry.
“Daddy’s a bit stressed,” said Sunburst. “That’s why I’m feeding you. Open wide!” This time, the peas came out well before Sunburst had his shield up.
As Sunburst was wiping his face off, Shining came around again, levitating a table behind him. “AAAAAAAAAA-” He slid to a stop and frowned at Sunburst. “When was the last time you had a manecut?”
“Uh… September. Why?”
“The yaks are coming. Your mane needs to be perfect for the yaks. If things not perfect, yaks…” Shining cringed.
“They won’t see me! What’s wrong with my mane?”
“It’s messy. You need a manecut. Just a trim would be fine.”
“Flurry likes it,” Sunburst said defensively. “It’s perfect for her to spit peas into.”
Shining raised an eyebrow.
“Look, she’ll decide this,” said Sunburst. He levitated the spoon out of the baby food. “If she spits into my mane, it’s good. If she doesn’t, I’ll get a manecut.” Before Shining could agree or disagree, Sunburst popped the food into Flurry’s mouth.
And, for once, Flurry did the unthinkable: she swallowed her food. Sunburst’s heart stopped and he turned to Flurry in slack-jawed disbelief.
Shining nodded. “You’re getting a manecut. Now, if you’ll excuse me…” He legged it down the hallway. “AAAAAAAAAA…”
Sunburst leaned in close and scowled at Flurry. “Traitor,” he hissed.
Flurry didn’t know what that word meant, but she liked it. She giggled and batted at Sunburst’s muzzle.
Life over the past few weeks had been kind of a seesaw for Zephyr. Okay, sure, he’d graduated from mane therapy training, but it was surprisingly difficult to actually get a job that employed it. Mane therapy had its place, true; it was a shame its place had been hidden so well that Zephyr hadn’t found it after almost a week of looking. It’d taken a lot of pleading to convince his parents that, yes, he actually was looking for a job but was having trouble finding one. It was probably his declaration that he’d sleep on the couch rather than rearrange one of their rooms that convinced them. With school payments looming, he spent all of his free time (of which he had a lot) desperately searching for a mane therapy job.
Then, lo and behold, he found a job opening in a new hair salon. They needed a stylist. Styling was a bit different than therapy, but close enough that he could pick it up more or less immediately. The only downside was that the salon was way up north. As in, Crystal-Empire-Way-Up-North, well out of easy travel time of Fluttershy or his parents. If he took that job up, he was well and truly on his own. But, hey, a job was a job, right? He took it.
But compared to mane therapy, mere manestyling was rather drab. All these skills to make manes healthier, and so many of them went unused because that wasn’t what the clientele were paying for. The only thing he had to do was get his customers’ manes styled the right way. He tried to hide in little touch-ups they wouldn’t notice but would improve their manes’ health all the same. Nopony noticed. Sometimes, he’d get a customer who ask about mane care, and he could give them some tips, but those were few and far between.
In the end, though, it was a job, and a pretty good one. He wasn’t complaining; just slightly bored.
Being bored meant you examined certain things intently to try to stave off the boredom. And that meant when one of the first customers of the day pushed open the door, Zephyr immediately noticed this customer was a unicorn. A bit odd in the Crystal Empire, but not much else. And not only that, his mane was a mess. It looked like it hadn’t been cut or even cared for in months. Still, the varying shades of orange in it looked nice, and it went well with his yellowy-bronzy coat.
Zephyr put on his winningest smile (he’d been practicing and it was very winning) and waved. “Hello, there! I welcome you to our fine establishment! How may I help you?”
The unicorn coughed and adjusted his glasses. “Um, just, just a trim, thanks. Uh, mane and tail both.”
Once they’d gotten set up and the unicorn had confirmed he wanted nothing more than a trim, Zephyr went at it. Inside, he cringed a little — this was not a mane in good shape, no — but he could do something for it. As he started combing the loose ends together, he said, “Mind if I know your name?” It was weird how personal ponies could get when he was cutting their manes, but it passed the time.
“Sunburst.”
“Pleased to know you, Sunburst. Name’s Zephyr. So what brings you ‘round here?”
“Just needed a trim. Is it bad?”
“Your split ends have split ends have split ends, so… that might indeed be a possibility.”
“Heh. Great,” Sunburst said in an absolutely perfect that-is-not-great-at-all voice. “Anyway, is, is this place new? I haven’t seen it around before.”
Even though he was behind Sunburst, Zephyr grinned. “Opened barely a week ago, actually. Doing pretty good business so far. And let me tell you, I am glad of that. Just got out of school, and… Well. You know how it is. Bills and such.”
Sunburst coughed. “I, um, wouldn’t, actually. Canterlot School for Gifted Unicorns. Full ride, like all students.”
“O-ho, you lucky dog!” Zephyr said with a laugh. He scooped up the scissors and, with the help of a comb, began clipping away at Sunburst’s mane. “A graduate of CSGU, right here in my salon! Never would’ve dreamed it. So what kind of greatness are you up to, hmm?” In spite of the comb in his mouth, he was perfectly intelligible. Speaking clearly with stuff in your mouth was one of the first things you learned at mane therapy training.
Sunburst coughed again. “N-not much, actually. Wrong kind of gifted, as it turns out.”
“Mind if I ask how? You don’t want to say, that’s fine, bee-tea-double-ewe.” Zephyr had learned just last week to give customers an out when asking them questions like this. It led to less tantrums and accusations of poking into their personal lives. (Weirdly, some customers were more likely to tell him whatever if he gave them an out.)
“Well, it’s…” Sunburst tried to reach up and adjust his glasses, but was blocked by the hair-catching cape he was wearing. He settled for scrunching his muzzle a lot. Zephyr wondered why he didn’t just adjust them with magic. “I, I know a lot about how to use magic, it’s just, I can’t, I can’t actually do much of it beyond the basics.”
Zephyr sucked in a breath. “Ooo. Tough break.”
Sunburst nodded, and Zephyr didn’t need to see his face to know he was looking glum. “Yeah. I mean, it’s weird, graduating from CSGU and not being able to do the things that you supposedly got in for. It’s, um, it’s actually why I moved to the Crystal Empire: there aren’t many unicorns here, so I don’t have much competition. Just kinda did magic odds and ends to get by.”
“Well, at least you were able to do something,” said Zephyr brightly as he cut off the last few bits of hair. “I- You wanna go longer or shorter?” He mentally smacked himself for not asking that sooner. Stupid.
“Um, shorter, please.”
“Righty-o. Anyhoo, you would not believe how long it took for me to know what I wanted to do with myself.” Zephyr snipped away at Sunburst’s mane, getting it short. When someone like this guy said “short”, it was pretty easy to guess how short. “I was trying something new every week and bowing out the moment I had to actually do something. Still lived with my parents, even.” He didn’t feel self-conscious about sharing this. Sharing his own life made his customers feel better about sharing theirs. “But one nervous breakdown and one pep talk from my sister later, I decided to keep at it, found my calling — mane therapy, eff-why-eye — and badda-bing: look at me now.”
“Well, that’s, um, that’s good.” In spite of the nervousness in Sunburst’s voice, Zephyr could tell that the sentiment was genuine. The guy just seemed have trouble actually saying stuff.
“Yupparoo.” Zephyr stopped snipping and held up a mirror for Sunburst to take a better look at his mane. “You said ‘short’, so I’m guessing just a leeeettle bit shorter than this, right?”
“Uh…” Sunburst tilted his head back and forth, looked at it from left and right, examined it from all angles he could. “Yeah, that, that’d be good.”
Perfect. Zephyr laid the mirror aside and went to fine trimming. “So you weren’t so hot in school. But how’s life treating you now? Still just barely scraping by? Or did you roll the dice again and get something better than snake eyes?”
“Well…” Sunburst straightened up a little and Zephyr had to quickly adjust his trimming to avoid poking him in the head. “I’m Flurry Heart’s crystaller.”
“Say what?”
“…You, you don’t know? A crystaller is, uh, kinda like a surrogate parent. And, uh, part-time educator, I guess, when, when the time comes.”
“I see.” And then Zephyr got it. He stopped trimming and spun Sunburst’s chair around. Slamming his hooves down on the armrests, he stared Sunburst right in the eyes and whispered, “You work directly for Cadance and Shining Armor?”
“Um, yes,” said Sunburst, trying to cringe back. “Well, kind of. It’s, it’s complicated. Please give me back my space.”
Zephyr blinked and took a step back. “Right. Sorry.” He spun Sunburst’s chair back, more delicately this time, and went back to trimming. “It’s just a bit surprising, you know, when you say you were almost a washout from CSGU, and now you’re wor-”
Sunburst bristled, and Zephyr had to stop trimming for a second to avoid stabbing him in the neck. “I was not almost a washout! I was hardly dean’s list, yeah, but I did alright! I was bad in applied magic, but I was amazing in magical theory! Straight A’s at worst in my theory courses!”
“Simmer down,” Zephyr said quickly, “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant it’s weird how you say you weren’t good at magic even though you went to CSGU, and now you’re working for the Royal Couple. You know?”
“Sorry,” Sunburst murmured. He sighed and slouched down. His constant movement in the chair was really beginning to irritate Zephyr. “When, when you put it that way, it’s, yeah, I get it. But, it’s, a lot of ponies act like if you’re a unicorn and have trouble doing magic, you’re worthless. But, but a lot of ponies, even some unicorns, they forget that magic isn’t automatic.” He swallowed. “I know pretty much everything about how magic works, so I, I can tell ponies what to do, I just can’t, just can’t do it myself. So they think I can’t do anything, and it’s, um, yeah.” He flicked his ears. “Yeah.”
“That doth be-eth a bummer,” said Zephyr. Trim trim trim. “But you’re kind of a big deal now, so all’s well that ends well, right? …You are kind of a big deal, right?”
“Not a big big one, but still kinda, yeah.” Sunburst sat up a little straighter. “I-”
“Speaking of non-sequitur segues, could you puh-lease stop moving around so much? That’s like the fifth time I’ve almost stabbed your spinal cord. These-” Zephyr made snipping sounds with his scissors. “-are sharp, you know.”
Sunburst went so still it was like he was petrified. “Sorry. But, um, I’m kinda-sorta a member of the royal household now, and, and when Flurry Heart grows up, I’ll be her magic mentor.” He laughed one-quarter nervously. “I guess barely being able to do magic doesn’t, doesn’t matter much when your student can outclass most unicorns by sneezing.”
“Probably the best way to look at that,” said Zephyr. He snipped off one last unruly hair and held up a mirror. “Speaking of looking, take a look at your mane. Too long? Too short? Just right?”
“Erm…” After a moment of self-examination, Sunburst said, “That, I think that looks good, thanks.”
“Same thing for your tail?”
“Uh, pretty much, yeah.”
“Schnazzy. Give me juuust a second.” Zephyr dropped to the ground and began clipping away. He went a lot faster, as tails were easier than manes; you didn’t have to worry about skewering somepony and there was a lot more room for error, since ponies usually focused on manestyles more than tailstyles.
“So, um,” said Sunburst, “I’m kinda just helping take care of Flurry at the moment, and when, when she grows up, I’ll teach her magic. I’m not getting paid, not yet, but, um, just being her crystaller has made me kinda famous around here, so…” He shrugged. “More ponies come for me because of that. I’m not, not swimming in money, but I don’t need to worry about it, either.”
“Good, good,” said Zephyr. Snip snip. “Work with you got, am I right? ‘Cause you are definitely doing that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Although it seems a tad odd that you didn’t try to get into theoretical magic earlier.”
“I told you, I can barely do magic! It’s not li-”
Zephyr took a brief break to poke his head up around the chair and look Sunburst in eye. “Ah bah bah!” he said, wiggling a hoof at Sunburst’s nose. “I said theoretical magic I said, and not experimental. You’re a theoretical scientist or arcanist, you tell the experimentalists what to do. It’s like having PhD’s as interns. You get to sit on a nice comfy chair and take credit for conceptualizing the hypothesis or whatever the jargon is.”
Sunburst blinked and adjusted his glasses with more muzzle-scrunching. “W-well, I, um-”
“‘Cause if you’re half as good at the theory as you claim,” Zephyr said as he zipped back to Sunburst’s tail, “you could do great things in that area.”
“Well, I, I, I, I guess I never really, um, thought about that,” said Sunburst. “I mean, I kept trying to get entry-level applicational jobs, and then, then I couldn’t because I couldn’t do magic, and, it’s, I never even considered that my talents might lie elsewhere.”
“Happens to best of us,” said Zephyr. “Such as myself. I told you all about how I kept giving up on ev-ery-thing the moment I hit effort, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I was just thinking, the moment I found the thing I was exemplary at, it’d all just come naturally. Then nothing came naturally, and I kept thinking that I was bad at that.” Zephyr snorted. “Which, okay, I was — you do not want to see my attempts at clothing design — but it just never came to me that the world wasn’t going to be served up on a platinum platter.”
Sunburst’s tail twitched, although it didn’t interfere with Zephyr’s trimming at all. “That’s, um, if you don’t mind, that’s, that’s kinda… entitled.”
“Oh, it was. I’ve learned better. Just, you — and, well, me too — have to remember to push your limits. Just because you’re on a path doesn’t mean you can take another one, y’know?”
“Hem. Right. Yeah. So, so I’ve been Flurry’s crystaller for a few months now, and it’s, it’s coming along fine,” Sunburst replied. “I’ve even been, um, educating Cadance and Shining in magic a bit, just so they know I’m a, a good tutor.”
“Teaching royalty magic.” Zephyr whistled. “Not everypony can say that.”
Sunburst preened, and when he spoke, a hint of smugness was creeping into his voice. “Nope! Not. At. All. And you seem to be doing fine, too.”
“Not bad,” Zephyr said. He almost shrugged, realized Sunburst wouldn’t see him, shrugged anyway. “Could be better, but I’m way closer to ‘best’ than to ‘worst’. Looking for more specialized jobs, so that degree in mane therapy won’t turn into a degree in useless with me doing nothing but styling. But if I had to stay here, this place is perfectly a-okay. Not bad, just not utilizing my full grand potential.”
“Maybe you can convince your boss to add it to this place’s, um, repertoire or whatever?”
“Ooo, never thought about that. I wouldn’t even have to move.”
“Heh. Well, whatever you try, I hope it goes okay. Me using my, um, my full grand potential is still some years off, but at least it’s, y’know, assured.”
Zephyr nodded as he kept clipping, even though Sunburst couldn’t see him. “Assurance feels goooood. I almost lost my head my first few days here, when I didn’t know the, quote unquote, ‘right’ way to do things.”
“Oh, do I know that feeling.” Sunburst cringed. “I kept on getting lost in magical application and, uh, freaking out. I mean, like, a lot. Sometimes, I wanted to just drop out, but I, I persevered, and…” He shrugged. “Look at me now.”
“Sometimes, that’s really all you can do, ain’t it?” Zephyr said. “Keep on keeping on and hope for the next shot. That’s where I’m at right now, if only so I can do something. I’d hate to go six feet under knowing I’d never made much of myself. Aaaand…” Clip. “Done.” Zephyr pushed himself up with a finely-calculated flap of his wings that took most of the effort from his legs without getting snipped hair everywhere. “You wanna take a look at your tail, or-”
“No, it’s, I’m sure it’ll be good. And even it’s not, well, I mean, you saw me when I first came in.” Sunburst looked over his shoulder at Zephyr and smiled self-consciously. “Personal appearance is… not exactly high on my priority list.”
Payment went quickly and cleanly. “And thank you for stopping by!” Zephyr said brightly.
“Yeah, this, this looks good.” Sunburst ran a hoof through his shortened mane and swished his shortened tail. “And thanks for listening to me ramble, it was probably really borin-”
Zephyr affected a Trottingham accent for a moment. “Oh, pish posh. You were not the most boring customer I’ve had so far this week.”
Sunburst cocked his head. “Today’s Monday. The week’s barely started.”
“Yep.”
“…Okay, wow. I am so sorry.”
“It’s a living,” Zephyr said with a shrug.
Sunburst blinked and coughed. “Still, anyway, thanks. It was nice to just, to just share some of that, get it off my chest a little.”
“Sure thing. Maybe we can do it again if you ever stop by here again.”
“Yeah,” Sunburst called out as he left. “Maybe.”
