Ink’s next class was Physics. It wasn’t her favorite course and the teacher, Mr. Time Turner, while a nice guy, just couldn’t give a proper lesson, or at least one that she felt actually taught her something without having her mind implode.

Though it was a class she nonetheless looked forward to, since there were people there she knew and with whom she was friends. She liked them and they seemed to like her and that was all that mattered.

But they were a weird bunch, Ink knew that.

“Oh, look! It’s that new girl who that one author decided to make up as a personal challenge!” an orange-haired girl with pigtails greeted from one of the tables. She wiped a hand over her navy-blue jacket, as if removing dust. Unsatisfied with just that action, she proceeded to run her hands over her light-red skirt.

Ink walked over, rolling her eyes. “Hi, Gaige. Nice to see you’re just as crazy as ever.”

There was another girl at their table, one whom Ink had known only for a little while, and one whom she considered just as crazy as Gaige, if not more. She nonetheless rocketed out of her seat and ensnared Ink in a bone-crushing hug, her green sweater sleeves snug against Ink’s back.. “Inky! You made it!”

“Hazel… please… can’t… breathe!”

“Hazel, let go!” Gaige cried. Despite her short stature, she managed to grab Hazel around the torso and attempted to pry her off of Ink. “You can’t kill the new character just yet!”

She finally did let go. Her glasses were crooked and her brown hair was a bit frazzled, but her toothy grin demonstrated her carefree attitude… about most things, at least.

Ink took a moment to find her breath. “Nice to see you, too, Hazel,” she managed to say.

She put her stuff down and sat in the remaining seat. A bunch of other students pooled in from the door, and they took their respective seats, chatty and loud. Mr. Turner was collecting and organizing his lecture notes for today; someone, Ink managed to hear over the chatter, was playing one of those silly pocket games on their phone, and they were making a big deal over it.

“So,” Hazel said, still grinning ear-to-ear, “what’s up, Ink? Haven’t heard much from you over the weekend.”

“Still talking to that Artifex dude?” Gaige asked.

Hazel squealed at the mention. “Ohmigosh, you two should totally—”

“No!” Ink shouted. “We are just friends, nothing more, nothing less!”

“Aw, but it’d be so cool! You’re both writers, and writers are like the most romantic people!”

Gaige blinked. “They are?”

Ink gritted her teeth. Oh, how she’d forgotten how much these two could rile up in all the right and wrong ways. “The point is,” she said, “Artifex and I are just friends. Sorry, Hazel.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “Besides. Artifex’s got a crush of his own.”

“He what?!” the other two girls shouted. A few heads turned their way, but other than that, no one seemed inclined to interrupt, much less listen in. “That baka?” Gaige stared, dumbfounded. “How?”

“Who is it?” Hazel asked. “You gotta tell me! Please!”

“Ah-ah,” Ink said, waving a finger. “I think I’ve said enough. You want to know, you ask him yourself.”

“But he doesn’t even like me that much!” she wailed.

“Maybe that’s because you and he haven’t talked one-on-one. I think you’ve just kinda been in the background for him.” Ink pointed at Gaige. “Heck, he and Gaige don’t like each other, and yet they’ve still had more than one conversation!”

“I like his cat,” Gaige muttered. “Francis is a very nice and smart cat.”

The topic of conversation remained on the relationship between Ink and Artifex for far longer than she would have preferred, and she was momentarily grateful when Mr. Turner asked the class to turn their attention to the board so they could begin the day’s lesson. They all took out their binders and papers and pencils as he opened up the presentation. Ink’s gratefulness evaporated, though, the moment it began and confronted by an onslaught of rapid-fire equations and concepts, she felt her mind begin to turn off the light.

To keep herself awake, she scribbled some words down next to her papers. They were mostly ramblings, distant thoughts for a distant time; she was trying to piece together something coherent with things so awfully separate. It kept her busy and occupied, and while she missed some of the notes, she thought she could get them from her friends later on in the day if she needed.

The lesson dragged. Try as she might to distract herself, she began to feel the familiar drooping of her eyelids. The room blinked from colorful to black, and the black grew and grew. Mr. Turner didn’t notice, or he didn’t care—Ink didn’t know what and wasn’t sure she could bother. Her hand’s movements slowed considerably.

Mercifully, though, the lesson ended, and now they could move on to the actual activity. Hazel tried tapping Ink on the shoulder; she didn’t respond; her head had fallen over. In the blackness of boredom, she did not see Gaige’s arms reach around into her backpack.

Bam!

“Fwa!”

Ink jerked up, throwing up all of her papers and her pencil. The other students heard her and gave her perplexed looks. She blinked rapidly, before managing an uneasy grin. “Uh, I’m okay. Just, uh… muscle spasm.”

“Muscle spasms?” Mr. Turner came over. “Is that right?”

“Uh… yeah!” she said. “Yeah. It’s, like, super, totally, completely random. Sporadic. Spontaneous. Out-of-nowhere. Y’know?”

He gave her a look filled with scrutiny. But he did seem to buy it. “All right. Well, in that case, you ought to see the nurse later.”

Her eyes widened, and she tried to save face. “O-oh, no! There’s no need for that! I’m fine, really!”

But it was too late. Mr. Turner had gone back to his desk and was dialing the nurse’s number. It was a lost cause.

Ink sighed. She turned back to her friends. Hazel was doing her best not to chuckle, while Gaige had on a self-satisfied smirk. “Thanks a lot,” she muttered.

Gaige rolled her eyes. “Stupid. I woke you up, didn’t I? It’s not my fault you came up with a dumb excuse like that.”

“But I don’t like nurse! She’s so strict and uptight!”

“You should have thought of that when you came up with those muscle spasms.” Gaige shook her head, then grabbed one of the activity sheets. “Now, come on, let’s at least get this stuff done.”

“Easy for you to say,” Ink grumbled. “You’re actually semi-good at this stuff.”

“Ink!” Mr. Turner called. “The nurse will see you after this class, all right?”

“All right. Thank you!” Then she grumbled something incomprehensible.

As they were working, Hazel took notice of the papers that had fallen to the floor. Before Ink could even think to stop her, she bent down and picked them up, and began sorting through them. Ink saw the familiar, wide-eyed look that always predated a squeal. Her eyes went to the papers; they were the ones with her scribbles.

Ink’s heart near-stopped. “Hazel, wait—”

“OH MY GOSH INK WHAT IS THIS?!”

“Shh, shh! Hazel, please—”

“ ‘Her heart was beating so fast it threatened to burst from her chest, and if it did, she’d have gladly given it to that straw-hat boy!’ ‘It felt like they were the only ones on the floor that mattered!’ ‘He had an enticing personality, that drew people in and convinced them that they were, in some way, important to him!’ … and a whole bunch of random words!”

“Hazel, I swear to God—”

“You’re writing a romance story!”

Ink cringed. She felt all eyes settle on her. She wanted to knock Hazel out or melt into the floor, and she knew she couldn’t do either.

“EEEEEEEE—”

“Miss Hazel?” Mr. Turner interrupted. “If you could please not disrupt the class with your enthusiastic squealing?”

She wasn’t listening. Luckily, Gaige was just as annoyed as Ink was mortified, and she clapped a hand around Hazel and dragged her back down to the desk. Her voice became muffled; her enthusiasm, however, remained.

“You know,” the orange-haired girl said, “I don’t recall Hazel being this quickly annoying in my story.”

Eventually, despite giving Ink confused looks over their shoulders, the students went back to the activity at hand.

Ink let out a sigh of relief. Gaige, after a moment, released Hazel. She bore eye-daggers into the girl’s head, silently warning her not to have another freak out. “Good?” she asked.

“Mmhmm.”

“Awesome.” Gaige turned to Ink; she paused, taking a deep breath. “Now… you’re writing a romance story?”

Ink knew Gaige wasn’t being that loud, but under the strain of embarrassment and anxiety, she still sounded enormous and frightening. “Y-yeah.”

“Huh. Coolio.” She went back to her work, filling out the sheet, as Ink slowly blinked. The nervousness and frantic excitement slowly evaporated from her mind, replaced with the scritch-scratch of pencils.

“... you know, I guess I should have expected that,” she muttered.

Gaige heard her. She shot Ink a surprisingly harsh look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“W-well, it’s just… I thought you’re not into that stuff?”

“B-baka! I’m dating Brad! … Oh, God, just saying that made me feel sick…”

“That’s why I thought that! You don’t like him!”

“Then why am I dating him?”

“To fulfill my ship!”

“SHUT UP, HAZEL!”

“Besides, you two are so cute together—”

“HAZEL! I WILL CUT YOU!”

“But you don’t like him, right?”

“Ink! Just because Brad’s annoying and clingy and weird and stupid doesn’t mean I don’t like him!”

“So you do like him! EEEEEE—”

“HAZEL!”

“GAIGE!”

“INK!”

“JARVY I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU DON’T STOP THIS MADNESS—”

“Would you three please stop disrupting the class?!” Mr. Turner shouted over them. “Or I will send you all down to the principals’ office!”

They hushed up, faces bright-red, voices exhausted, tempers extinguished. “Sorry, Mr. Turner,” Ink said, sheepish.

“Normally you three aren’t this loud,” he continued. “Is there something you want to share with the class?”

Hazel opened her mouth; Ink reached around and cupped her face. “N-nope! Of course not. Why would we? Ehehehe…”

Mr. Turner did not look convinced. After a seemingly-hour-long staring contest, he relented and shook his head. “All right. Can we all please focus on this activity?”

“Yes, Mr. Turner,” the class responded.

Ink returned to her paper, her friends carefully avoiding her gaze. She made sure to do the same.

***

For twenty minutes—which left about 40 minutes left in class—it was silent at their table. It was the kind of silence that was both heavy and light, like it weighed a ton but could also be popped by merely glaring into it. Or in this case, whispering.

As Gaige and Ink diligently worked (with the latter trying to keep up with all the numbers and concepts), Hazel began sidling over. She was so quiet and careful that Ink didn’t even notice she was there, not until she thought she felt someone breathing in her ear.

“So what’s it about?” Hazel whispered.

Ink managed not to jump, but she was sure her hair just shot out like she’d been electrified. “Hazel, what the hell?!”

“I mean your romance story!”

“Look, can’t you just drop it?”

Hazel gasped. “Of course not! Romance is my expertise!”

“I thought being annoying was your expertise,” Gaige muttered from the other side.

“Gaige,” Ink chided; but he did not go further. She turned back to Hazel; her gaze would not hold; she looked side-to-side to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “And it’s about none of your business, that’s what.”

“Come on, Ink! You can’t just leave us hanging here!”

“I’m not leaving you hanging; I’m not even giving you a piece of rope.”

“Those words on that paper were bait enough!” Hazel leaned forward on her elbows, eyes sparkling dangerously. Ink got the feeling that if she did anything but agree, she was dead. “So spill already! I want to know all of the juicy details!”

“Well, see, that’s the problem, Hazel… there are none.”

She saw Hazel blink, slowly. Her smile fell; her eyes lost that innocent shine. She thought she saw her eyelid twitch. One of her strands of hair shot out straight like a needle. “W… what do you mean?” she asked.

Ink carefully leaned back. “Um… would you be mad if I told you I… haven’t exactly started writing yet?”

Now she knew for certain that Hazel’s eyelid twitched; in fact, it was twitching as she realized this. “W-what?” Hazel spluttered.

Gaige looked up, eyeing the two of them with unease. Ink slowly raised both of her hands in surrender.

“Uh… I have some… writer’s… block… sorry?”

“W-w-writer’s block? But-but—”

Hazel grabbed the papers with Ink’s scrawled handwriting on them. She held them up with trembling hands. “But you wrote these words! These sentences!”

“Yeah, but they aren’t really anything else,” Ink said. “They’re just… caricatures. There’s no substance, no story. I wouldn’t even call them characters at this point.”

“But you have characters!” Hazel insisted. “Please, you have to tell me everything! What’s their favorite color? Their favorite food? Favorite person? Oh, please let it be each other! How long have they been dating? Are they married? Are they gonna get married? Please let them get married! I can see the babies now! What are their names? Can I ship them? Of course I can! Now I just need a good ship name. Oh, can I like get a deal since I’m your best friend so I can buy it for half price? Thank you!”

“Hazel!” Ink hissed. “Be. Quiet! I don’t want Mr. Turner yelling at us again!”

“I can’t help it!” Hazel fiercely whispered back. “You’re writing a romance story, Ink! A romance story! You! The girl without a boyfriend!”

Ink blushed. “You don’t have one, either!”

“Yeah, but I’m not the one writing romance without a hint of experience!”

“How does shipping people at all count as ‘experience?!’ ”

“It’s still more than what you have!”

Ink groaned. “God, now I almost wish we were still talking about Artifex and me.”

“We can if you want—”

“Forget it.” She took a deep breath, collecting her thoughts. Hazel was still grinning madly, and Gaige peered at them with a slightly bored look. “Maybe you’re right,” she conceded finally.

“She’s right?” Gaige asked.

“In a way, yeah. I mean, I don’t have any experience in romance. Maybe… maybe I need that to… you know… write romance.”

“And that’s what I’m here for!” Hazel said. She scooched over, wrapped an arm around Ink’s shoulder, and pulled her close. “Don’t you worry about a thing, Ink! Hazel’s got this!”

“I don’t think Hazel has the right to speak in third-person just yet,” the girl retorted, wriggling out of Hazel’s grip. “Besides… I’m gonna need help in more than just shipping.”

“Obviously! That’s why Gaige is going to help, too!”

“Wait, what—”

“Duh! Gaige, you’re the only girl in our little group of three that has a boyfriend. So that totally makes you a resident expert!”

Gaige gave her a flat look. “Hazel. Don’t be dumb.”

“Well, it makes some sense,” Ink said, causing Gaige to turn her fierce gaze upon her. “Maybe there’s something you know that we don’t about romance.”

She then blinked. “Actually… this fits into what I wanted to do today, now that I think about it.”

“Which is?” asked Hazel.

“W-well, in order to get a better idea of what goes into a relationship, I was gonna ask some of the school’s couples what they thought. It was Big Mac’s idea—”

“Hang on,” Hazel interrupted. “Big Mac? You mean Applejack’s brother? He’s helping you?”

“Well, yeah. Artifex is, too, since he’s, you know, friends with most of the couples. Is there something wrong with that?”

“Since when did Big Mac have any interest in romance?”

“I’m pretty sure he’s just being a nice guy, Hazel. He just wanted to help me out.”

At this, the girl’s expression became clouded, like she was deep in thought. Ink blinked. “Um, Hazel?” She snapped her fingers in front of her; there was no visible response. “Hello? Earth to Hazel? … Did she just shut down?”

Then, all of a sudden, she returned, beaming, with no trace of cloudiness left behind. “Oh, that’s good. Anyway, we should really get back to helping you out. You said you wanted to ask some of the school’s couples? Well, there’s Gaige, right there. Why don’t you start with her?”

“Huh?” So fast and so sharply had Hazel’s demeanor shifted from obsessive to genuinely helpful that Ink had to take a moment to process it all. Even Gaige was caught off-guard.

“Um, okay, then,” Ink said. She turned to Gaige, and hesitated. “Wait… like, right now?”

“Sure!” Hazel said. “I mean, we’ve got time!”

“We’re in the middle of physics,” Gaige reminded her.

“That’s not as important as this!”

“But—”

“Go on, Ink! I’ll cover for you!”

“What do you mean, ‘cover’—”

Hazel suddenly grabbed both her and Ink’s papers, placed them in front of her, and furiously began to fill them out. It was almost inspiring, the way she scribbled down and finished calculation after calculation—though Ink could not tell if any of them were right. She looked at Gaige; her mouth was locked open, and she had stopped writing long ago.

Though Hazel had now opened a door for Ink, the problem was, she had no idea what to say or how to conduct this interview. Her mind drew a blank on whatever questions she could have asked. Gaige herself did not seem eager to help, and who could blame her? And Ink didn’t want to impose, especially during class, so maybe it was better she just stay quiet and—

“Get going!” Hazel hissed. “Before class ends!”

She looked at the clock; they had a little less than a half-hour left. That was still plenty of time for—

Seeing Hazel’s absolutely livid gaze made Ink push that thought away. She turned back to Gaige. Her tongue flopped around, no sounds coming out. Where to begin?

Gaige looked at her expectantly, but seeing as how Ink appeared silent, she shrugged, and went back to her work.

“H-how did you and Flash get together?” Ink blurted.

Gaige looked up, frowning. “Seriously? That’s your first question?” Ink noticed that she was blushing.

She swallowed her nervousness. “Y-yes. It’s an important one.”

The orange-haired girl rolled her eyes. “Fine. Baka, you’re lucky you’re my friend; otherwise I wouldn’t be telling you any of this.”

Gaige laced her fingers together, then pushed them out, cracking them, like she was about to set to work on a very difficult project. “And I am!” she yelled to the sky. Ink gazed at her, confused. Gaige sighed. “Forget it. Anyway…”

***

“... and that’s how Equestria was made,” Gaige finished finally. She crossed her arms, appearing smug, ignorant of the amount of bewilderment on Ink’s face. “Any questions?”

Ink tried to mentally shake the cobwebs loose. Gaige had gone on several tangents tangent, talking about her “story” (whatever that was), her brother Treble’s “story,” and then some random tale about that land beyond the magic portal that lay in the front of Canterlot High. She tried to look at least a bit interested, abolishing the deer-in-the-headlights look in favor of a neutral, pensive one. She didn’t want to show that she’d zoned out in the middle.

Hazel sat next to them, still scribbling away on both her and Ink’s papers. She’d piped up now and then during Gaige’s recounting, mostly to squeal or make a comment (to which Gaige was always annoyed and threatened to bop her in the head for another remark about “how cute you were together!”). The rest of the class remained diligently pressed to their activity, and Mr. Turner, thankfully, did not seem keen on bringing attention to the girls.

“Ink? Hello?” Gaige asked again. Her eyes narrowed. “Were you even listening?”

“Eep! I mean, yes! I was!” Ink sat up a little straighter. “A-and I have questions, yes! Um… can I—”

“Fine, go ahead.” Gaige sighed. “But make them quick.”

“R-right.” She peered over the few notes she’d taken, thinking back on what was said. “So that’s it? You and Flash met, you didn’t like him at first, he liked you, you became friends, then you found yourself falling in love, and you denied your feelings, and then you went on a date, then some more, and all the while it was a ‘will-they-won’t-they’ scenario?”

“Well—”

“And then you finally both admitted to liking the other and decided to give being a couple a shot? And then you became really hesitant, and Flash became… what was the word… a ‘baka of a baka?’ Which I take is a bad thing?”

“I mean, it is a bad thing—”

“So you two broke up, or rather, you told Flash you weren’t ready, and he got mad, and then you broke up? And then that British kid, what was his name—”

“Nylon.”

“Right, Nylon; he tried to get with you, and you entertained that idea, but then you realized that you wanted to be with Flash, so you told Neon, and he politely agreed, so you had a mutual break-up with him, and then you went and found Flash, and the two of you made up, got back together, bringing you to here?”

“And that’s how Equestria was made,” Gaige added, a bit dryly. She flicked her head, pigtails flying. “Thanks for regurgitating everything I just said, Ink; it’s like I was really there.”

Ink blushed. “But I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, I guess so. That’s pretty much how it happened. Why? Surprised?”

“Well, obviously. I’ve met and talked to Flash a few times. He’s a little weird—”

“Baka!”

“—but I guess he’s okay.”

“Good save.”

“Thank you. Still, I’m wondering…”

“What? Hurry up, geez; I don’t have all day.”

Ink ignored Gaige’s slightly whiny tone. “Is is always that… long-winded?”

“Huh?”

Ink sensed she’d touched upon a nerve, and was quick to elaborate: “I mean, you could have easily just admitted that you liked Flash, without having to put yourself through so much personal angst. Right? And it took how long before the two of you hooked up?”

“Nearly thirty chapters.”

“... right, however long that is. But it was a long time, right?”

Gaige shrugged. “Sure, I guess. I stopped noticing. Ragga’s got a sick sense of pacing, y’know?”

“No, I don’t know.” Ink sighed. “Look, I’m just wondering if all relationships are that… ‘draggy.’ Does it really take that long to confess feelings, or to realize you have feelings at all? Is it always like this?”

“Mine was,” Gaige muttered.

“And there’s nothing wrong with that!” Ink quickly said. “I just mean if there’s a certain… pacing that makes a relationship a good one. Is there a counter, a correct number of days, a week, two weeks, a month, a year, anything like that? Or…”

Ink paused, considering her next words. “Or do you just follow the path your heart creates, and hope you finish that journey in time?”

The table fell silent. The rest of the class continued working and writing. Ink fidgeted and squirmed, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, as Gaige’s and Hazel’s eyes were on her. She wasn’t sure how to break the silence—or if she even should.

Then Hazel leaned forward, placed an arm on Ink, and, smiling, said, “Write. That. Down.”

It took a little bit, but, despite feeling a bit overwhelmed, Ink took those words and inscribed them onto a piece of notebook paper. Somehow that made them feel more notable, more important. She couldn’t explain why.

When she looked up, she saw Gaige smiling. “Well, whaddyaknow?” she said. “Maybe there is hope for your romance story.”

Ink asked Gaige a few more questions, though most were for clarification purposes. She wrote a few more things down, too, though they were quick and brief notes that said little more than what she’d already figured out.

But the penmanship on paper felt reassuring; she had something tangible, however small, to hold in her hands. It was barely a start, but it was something; and in her experience, something was better than nothing.

“Thanks for the help,” she told Gaige when the bell finally did ring. “Both of you,” she added, causing Hazel to look up.

Hazel beamed. “No problem! Anything for a friend!” Then she got up to hand in their papers.

“So… what now?” Gaige asked. “Do I get the job or something?”

Ink giggled. “Now I have to go to my next class. After that, lunch. Possibly some more interviews. Oh, wait… the nurse’s, before all that.” She groaned. “Like that’s gonna be a lot of fun.”

“You’ll be fine,” Gaige said. “You’re tough. Sometimes, at least.”

“At least you have faith. Thanks again, Gaige.”

“Just give me credit, ya hear?!”

Ink was already gone, though; but Gaige’s words would be written in her heart and signed by her, so that she knew who to thank again when the time came.

Author's Note

Gaige belongs to Ragga_Muffin

Hazel belongs to sunbuttsparkle