The Most Important Lesson
It was the start of the first day of a new school year at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, and the whole classroom was abuzz with the excitement of the new first year students. Unicorn fillies and colts all filled the room, sitting at their desks, discussing amongst themselves all of the amazing things that they would soon learn about magic, their buzzing excitement leaving them unable to remain still.
The audible excitement only started to quiet down out of respect once the teacher entered the classroom. With just a simple wave of their hoof as a way to get the students attention, the teacher addressed the room.
“Good morning, students. I am your new teacher. Firstly, I would like to welcome all of you to this fine institution. Here you will learn all about magic and all that you can accomplish by learning to properly harness it. With that in mind, I would like to begin our first lesson by teaching you all the most important lesson about magic.”
When the teacher was finished speaking, they then turned their head to the side and their horn lit up in its magical aura. A corresponding aura then appeared around the top drawer of their desk and they levitated out an ornate, white porcelain teacup, with an intricate purple design adorning the side, and placed it down on a small table between the teacher and the students, which also had an identical table on the other side of the room, ten feet across from it.
“For this lesson, all you have to do is move the teacup from one table to the other. Simply think about what the most important lesson about magic could be to figure out how to do this.”
Once the objective of the lesson was explained, the teacher then called upon three students and beckoned them to step forward. The three chosen students were a purple coated unicorn who looked nervous yet eager, a fiery maned unicorn who looked confident and relaxed, and a bland-looking unicorn who wasn’t even worth describing.
The purple unicorn was up first, stepping out ahead of the other two students. Putting a hoof to their mouth in thought, they first took a moment to think about how they would approach this, and what the most important lesson of magic could be that held the answer.
After a moment, they had one.
“Oh, I get it.” The purple unicorn piped up. “The key to this test is a simple levitation spell. Since levitation is the most basic unicorn spell, it would thus form the foundation for all of the spells that we will learn in the future, so mastering it is essential.” The purple unicorn announced, confident with their leaps of logic.
With a plan in mind, the purple unicorn concentrated hard and lit up their horn in a purple aura the same colour as their coat, utilising a simple levitation spell. Taking telekinetic hold of the teacup, the purple unicorn then began levitating it in a straight line, over to the table on the other side of the room. Unfortunately, the purple unicorn exhausted all of their magic halfway through, cutting off the spell, causing the teacup to drop to the floor and shatter into pieces.
“Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry.” The purple unicorn apologised, bowing their head in shame.
“It’s quite alright,” the teacher responded in a calm and understanding tone. The teacher then simply levitated another ornate teacup out of their desk and placed it on the table before them.
Looking downtrodden at their failure, the purple unicorn stepped back in silence and the fiery unicorn stepped forward.
“I’ve got this,” the fiery unicorn announced, with a proud smile on their face, confident that they knew the answer. “Obviously the most important lesson about magic is to learn to think outside the box and come up with creative new ways to use and apply spells.”
With a plan of their own in mind, the fiery unicorn then conjured up a small fireball at the tip of their horn and shot it at the teacup, angling it so that the fireball would detonate just next to the teacup, leaving it unharmed from the initial blast, and the force of the impact would blow it across the room to land safely on the other table. Unfortunately, while the blast did indeed shoot the teacup in the intended direction, and even left the delicate porcelain teacup unmaimed, the teacup still ended up overshooting its mark and smashed against the far wall.
“Darn it.” The fiery unicorn stamped the ground in irritation.
“It’s quite alright,” the teacher said again. The teacher then simply replaced the broken teacup with another one once again. The teacher then signalled to the bland unicorn that it was their turn now.
The fiery unicorn stepped back with an annoyed huff and the bland unicorn stepped forward.
And forward. And forward again until they were standing right in front of the table. Reaching down, the bland unicorn then picked up the teacup in their mouth and began walking over to the table on the other side of the room and placed the teacup down once again.
Wordlessly, the bland unicorn then turned back to the teacher, who, after a moment of silence, smiled back at them. “Congratulations. You have figured it out.” The teacher replied.
Upon hearing the teacher telling the bland unicorn that their simple method was in fact correct, the other students in the class were all confused to say the least.
“What!” The fiery unicorn shouted out in a rage, not believing that such a simple non-plan was what the teacher had been asking for.
“B-but they didn’t even use magic,” the purple unicorn tried to reason with logic.
“Exactly,” the teacher responded simply. The teacher then turned back to face the entire class. “In doing so, this student has learned the most important lesson about magic: you cannot solve all of your problems with magic.”
