Proof Of Concept

by Estee

Rating: everyone
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Celestia, Slice of Life
Length: 9545

As facts go, Celestia can always remember 'Why don't we let first-year Gifted School students have a project fair?' is a horrible idea. Everypony else usually needs about eighty years to forget that.

As rationales go, you shouldn't allow first-year Gifted School students to have a project fair for the same reason you don't test dynamite by kicking it into the nearest wall. But since everypony else has moved on, the current school staff decided to show Celestia just how they were going to repeat the same old mistake. Because while this day may host ideas waiting for their time to come, that time is not now.

No matter how much anypony wants it to be.

(Part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group: new members and trope edits welcome.)

Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.

Published 2019-12-13 04:30:02 UTC
Last updated 2019-12-13 04:30:02 UTC

Too Soon

In Celestia's opinion, the only thing which had been proven as truly immortal was a bad idea.

Good ideas... those could be fragile. The first hours of a new concept's birth could easily see it attacked on all sides, and the majority of those assaults would come from within. The progenitor of a good idea tended to have questions, starting with 'If this is really so brilliant, then why hasn't anypony thought of it before?' They would pick apart their own innovation in privacy and, at the moment they risked taking it public, discovered they had any number of enthusiastic listeners willing to do it for them. Because good ideas were questioned, analyzed, and generally just dissected until there was nothing left --

-- but bad ideas? Those were often impervious to debate. They had been known to respond against assaults of logic through pretending the speaker didn't exist and if the current host ever risked a moment of true listening, would engage in the ultimate act of self-defense: jumping to another one. A good idea frequently existed in solitude: a bad idea seemed to start with strength of numbers on its first day and then found itself making friends easily.

There were so many perils in being part of a herd species, and centuries of living without aging had made Celestia far too familiar with all of them. A good idea? That was typically the product of a single pony, and the herd would wonder why any thought worth having hadn't come up centuries ago, in bulk. The herd didn't want to think: it wanted somepony to think for them. A good idea found itself fighting for converts: the worst concepts inevitably found themselves welcomed by those who were just looking for something they could chant, and Celestia privately dreaded the day somepony of genius-level stupidity managed to get disharmony and chaos down to something with a three-syllable meter.

You had to think about a good idea. Bad ones not only abolished thought, but made careful consideration into its own crime. Horrible ideas had a life of their own, used ponies as nothing more than conduits for reproduction and raced across the continent twice before the facts could find where the horseshoes had been stored. They were almost impossible to stop. Eradication? Celestia considered herself lucky if she could force some of the intangible monsters into the shadows, followed by baring her teeth at anything which threatened to approach sunlight again.

(And there was something worse than that. There were ideas which truly felt as if they were good ones, something which would surely work if you just found the right time, the proper place, the pony needed to make it all come together. Concepts in search of their temporal home, stretching a hopeful foreleg towards a calendar which had so few pages left, and... they never worked. They couldn't work, because it wasn't the right time, it was always the wrong place, and... some part of her would deliberately forget what had happened after the prior attempts, because she had to keep trying. Because it was the only way she could keep going forward at all.)

(But it was always a bad idea.)

(Always.)

And whenever she made the mistake of thinking that she'd actually taken one out...

"So I thought," Ms. Newmaths gushed as she took the lead again (because it was the Gifted School and the mare most qualified to escort a visitor through the hallways was whoever had seen the blueprints for the latest reconstruction), "we could have a Project Fair! Just for the first-years, of course!" Just a little more quickly, "Nearly all of them. Because we want to start with the students whose minds are freshest, and then carry the new tradition forward through their graduation! While passing it on to all the classes who come after them, of course."

"A project fair," Celestia carefully echoed. She considered that to be the first time she'd risked repeating the words aloud, and also didn't believe the recent verbal explosion which had taken place in her office to count. There had been no witnesses for that one and in any case, it wasn't as if any theoretical listener could have made out the original phrase in the midst of all the cursing.

"Yes! Because that is part of how Learning occurs!" The middle-aged faded-green unicorn almost capered in place, then more sensibly used her momentum to get past a section of flooring which didn't quite match everything around it and therefore could be identified as a location where Learning had already Occurred. "By asking young minds for the freshest of Ideas! I was amazed that nopony had been doing it!"

Celestia took a very deep, extremely slow breath. It was something which, for most ponies, tended to serve as something of a slightly-delayed warning sign: the majority of observers would need about two seconds before they realized that the inhalation was still ongoing. After that, a smaller number might begin to consider the sheer lung capacity that duration implied. This was inevitably followed by a belated recognition of the alicorn's raw size, and the brightest ones might experience a moment of near-precognition as they thought about the decibel level which would result when all of that air came out again.

But Ms. Newmaths was a teacher: worse, a principal, and one who had just taken up the position. And there were those who wound up with educator's marks because they truly wished to spend their lives in enhancing the future generations to come -- but there were always a few who just wanted to make sure they wound up in a profession where they were just about guaranteed to be the smartest pony in the room. (In the case of Ms. Newmaths, that choice and career path had led her to the Gifted School, and so could be considered in all ways as a failure.) They hardly ever dealt with anypony who wasn't a child and on the rare occasions when they were in the company of an adult, they would look down: with Celestia, this counted as a major accomplishment. And so the kind of deep breath which served as a warning to just about everypony else on the continent was completely disregarded.

In terms of getting the mare to pay actual attention, Celestia didn't feel words were going to do any better. She was mostly speaking to make sure somepony had put everything on a completely personal record.

"It has been done," she carefully stated. (There was a char mark at the apex of the freshly-painted plaster arc they'd just passed through, and she approved because it was plaster. Wood was quicker to catch fire and while it took a talent like Celestia's to make stone truly burn, there had been a certain historical problem with flying chunks.) "The last time was eighty years ago." Which was apparently the exact duration required for everypony who'd been involved with that one to depart the school or, in the presumed majority of cases, life.

"Yes," Ms. Newmaths happily ignored her. "I did see that."

"In fact," Celestia added, "I seem to recall that following the most recent project fair, there was a certain degree of studious revision to the curriculum. Which began with the banning of future project fairs, for what the principal of the time declared to be in perpetuity."

Not that there's much --

The happiness was beginning to fade.

"I saw the notes," Ms. Newmaths stated.

"Just the notes," Celestia carefully inquired.

The canter had slowed somewhat. "A degree of review was all that was necessary. As long as I was careful regarding the attendance -- "

"-- because it brings up the question of how you managed to miss the plaque," Celestia continued.

Silence. The visiting pony used the opportunity to notice where five different one-shot emergency shield generating devices had recently gone off, along with the fact that only three had been replaced.

"I'm sure you've seen it," Celestia added. "You would pretty much have to spot it every time you entered your office. And then you would have to walk across it, which can take some time." Thoughtfully, "I've been told by previous principals that the triple underlining on You Shall Not Host A Project Fair For First-Year Students can serve as a tripping hazard, but I've never let anypony modify it because the original wording was just so difficult to render in brass."

The principal took her own breath, which shifted the usual number of ribs and three times the standard amount of dismissal.

"That was under the old educational system," the mare stated. "We are somewhat more Modern in our current approach. And any mistakes which might have accidentally appeared in the past are cured simply through existing in the present."

It's a resurrective immortality, really. The idea lingers in its shallow grave, waits for everypony who knew its true nature to pass into retirement, the shadowlands, or a very distant rest home because some of the oldest teachers become convinced that the only way to get out of range is through changing nationality. And once they're all gone...

Except for Celestia, of course. But since she didn't work there, she didn't actually count. Admittedly, when it came to the Gifted School, she did try to play her part --

"And this will give you a chance to meet the first-years," the principal added. "Most of them. As you weren't in attendance at the entrance exams four moons ago."

Which made the mare briefly frown.

"Nopony could recall your ever missing those before," she stated. "Apparently there have been times when you were late --" and that emerged with the mild rebuke which might be presented to an otherwise-obedient underling "-- but to simply have missed the whole thing..."

-- she tried to play her part, whenever she could.
When the time came, and it came every year whether she wanted it to or not.
When the auditions paraded across the stage, with every last one fully unaware of the part they had just failed to fill. With nopony having any concept of scenery or set dressing or the lines she'd heard over and over again or the final curtain --

"There was a minor diplomatic requirement," Celestia carefully phrased it, because a mare who saw herself being Educated took pride in knowing History and in this case, that meant Ms. Newmaths would learn about the border incident in its proper time: to wit, given the typical update time required for the textbooks, about eight years. "And I did make sure I reviewed the test results."

Every year.
Another year.

She had looked at every score. Read every last note, feeling the names skim past her as each result was discarded. Together, they had proven what they always did: that some had been turned away, and the ones who remained were perfectly qualified to be in the Gifted School. Another class of students, and nothing more.

One more year with nothing at all.

"So you decided to try it again, Ms. Newmaths --"

"Ms. Newmaths," the principal corrected, which took long enough for the mares to pass four classrooms, two branching hallways, and several twitchy repair crews who already had a certain degree of psychological damage in place from having been contracted to the Gifted School. The ongoing verbal equivalent of a steam pipe venting in boldface didn't seem to be helping their nerves, and the alicorn carefully nudged one cowering specimen out from under his own half-collapsed folding ramp.

Celestia didn't bother trying to use the formal address again. (She was perfectly capable of pronouncing 'Ms': it was just that when you did it in the way the principal favored, there was a certain difficulty in stopping.) It meant she had to become somewhat more personal, and she was almost sure she could get away with that because the most favored children were allowed their indulgences. Given that the principal was already allowing her to play dress-up with a crown, this risk seemed fairly low key. "Progressia --"

The mare beamed.

"-- you're not the first mare to think a project fair would be a good idea." Although this time, there was an ever-increasing chance that she would be the last. "But the Gifted School already has a rather unique relationship with Canterlot." She tried the deep breath again. "A unique, somewhat distant relationship, because nopony will build anything within a certain radius of the school. Admittedly, there have been any number of discoveries made here: it's just that the bare majority of them relate to magic. There's an argument to be made that on any given day, the School is two explosions away from becoming Equestria's greatest contributor to the science of architecture, because generations of those students have spent just about as much time in this building as their own. Or rather, in what was left from the previous incarnations of the building, while trying to figure out how to make the next one stand for more than five moons. In fact, the plaque in your office doubles as the majority of the floor because that was the only way to have it last." Carefully, "You have asked first-years, who are still learning not only their own limits, but the basics of magic and theory and common sense, to come up with something they felt might be suitable for a project fair, which typically means a new idea --"

"-- and here's our designated Hall Of Invention!" the principal declared, because quite a bit of distance had been crossed during the overgrown student's fully-ignored speech and their arrival served as the best means of cutting it off. "They're waiting for you inside! I told them not to start until you arrived. That way, you'll be the first to see their efforts. I don't even know what they've been working on! For you, one simple hoofstep will serve to Launch The Future!"

Celestia carefully examined the doors leading into the cafeteria, then exactingly counted all the places where the shield devices weren't.

Math had never been her strongest suit, and pure love of numbers had -- been the dominion of another. Celestia still hated budget meetings, loathed finance, and felt calculus was somehow conspiring against her. But the natural course of her life had allowed her a multitude of opportunities to experience physics, and so she quickly recognized a number of potential trajectories along which the Future might be Launched.

"As a purely hypothetical question -- as the principal, what would you say," the oldest mare in the world carefully inquired, "if I told you that I felt we needed to clear the room, send the students back to their dorms, and never, ever have a project fair again?"

Progressia Newmaths looked up at her, and managed to do so while simultaneously looking down.

"I would ask you what you had against Education," the principal said, "then see you off to whatever you somehow felt was more important than this, and proceed regardless. Is this philosophy? Because we really weren't planning on adding that back as an elective --"

Which meant the only way to perform damage control was to be there when it all went off, and so Celestia's right forehoof carefully pushed against the door.

"Careful with that," the principal cautioned her, and did so one crucial instant after Celestia felt the moisture adhere. "It's just been painted."

In the aftermath, there was the chance to once again be thankful for a few things, and the foremost was that the principal hadn't tried to host a device fair. Practically no first-year students were capable of attempting enchantments: unless a unicorn had a rather exacting mark, it took years of study to reach the point of trying to make the inanimate capable of casting on its own. (It was a fact every student learned and, in the encouraging environment of a project fair, it was also something just about all of them would have ignored.) So there was no platinum steadily pulling in thaums until the moment it sent all of that power back out again, and for that, Celestia was grateful.

No platinum. But there was imagination in that cafeteria, which went nicely with determination, a substantial amount of nerves, and the increasing background odor of flop sweat.

Bright eyes were looking at her. She presumed this was happening across the majority of the room, because there were quite a few problems built into Celestia's life and high on the list was a total inability to make a subtle entrance. She could easily become the center of focus wherever she went, even among those who could be too young to possess full reverence -- but in this case, she didn't have much in the way of sight lines going back. The long cafeteria tables had been divided by repeating walls of cardboard: something which was meant to grant a degree of privacy for each project, and another aspect which Celestia was grateful for because when it all went wrong at the end, there was only so much fast-flying cardboard could be expected to do.

The rainbow of students she could see under the new lighting devices (because of course they were new, and had the too-brightness of a full charge) displayed a variety of expressions. Some were anxious. A few looked somewhat confident, and one even had that emotion maintain after he realized she was looking at him. But at some point prior to her arrival, every last one had tried to be inventive.

They're all so small.
(It wasn't the first time for that thought. She typically had it when attending the entrance exams, and there were times when she swore they were getting smaller.)
So young.
Nowhere near adulthood. Just barely touching adolescence. Children who've always been children, who can barely conceive of being adults or having foals of their own.
The ones who may not have time --

She took another breath. It let her feel them all watching her, and Celestia mustered a smile.

"Hello, my little ponies," she warmly said, "I'm pleased to be at the debut first-year Project Fair!" Which was the absolute truth, because the alternative was currently not being there and that would only make everything worse. "It's truly a pleasure to see you all." This was said while her head was turning, with a steady purple gaze taking in everything it could because it was now extremely vital to memorize the exact layout. "I understand you've been creating things."

Multiple children nodded.

"Workings which I'll see first."

The action was mostly repeated, at least once she allowed for the two who nearly fainted.

"It's an honor," Celestia declared. Because if somepony had to be in this position, then it should probably be me. "Now I'm sure I'm about to have a lot of questions! Does anypony have one for me?" A light yellow filly, whose shivering hind legs were just barely staying on the nearest table's long bench, flashed her corona once. "Yes?"

"Where are your Guards?" the little student timidly asked. "I thought you always had Guards."

"Oh, they don't have to be in a school!" Celestia laughed. "It's not as if there's any kind of unexpected threat to protect me from in here!" And maintained the smile.

Because generations of principals have been less than comfortable with having armored ponies marching through the hallways. Because it's less ponies to evacuate in an emergency. And because quite frankly, waiting for something horrible to happen in here is an entirely expected threat.

"Anypony else?" There were a few corona signals for attention, the majority of which winked out after the one colt got to the typical mane-and-tail question first. "So whose project should I look at first? Principal, do you have any suggestions there? I don't want it to look like I'm playing favorites!"

She glanced down at the mare, and completely failed to meet her eyes. The principal wasn't looking at Celestia. Her attention was rapidly skimming across the five long tables. It was enough space to typically host the entire school population, it had been clumsily divided by cardboard, and it was being scrutinized for --

-- I know that expression.
I've probably had that expression. I know enough sapients showed it when they were thinking about me, distorted by the structures of so many different faces. Usually at mass gatherings, in the last second before they spotted me.
That's the expression of a pony who's looking for something.
Hoping it isn't there.

"Principal?" she tried again.

"...safe," the educator softly muttered. "It looks like we're safe..."

Which struck Celestia as a very strange word to use within the confines of the Gifted School, especially when she was expecting them to become somewhat less confined. "If you have a suggestion for me?"

The mare blinked, quickly refocused. The left foreleg gestured in what appeared to be a completely random direction.

"Very well!" Celestia beamed. "The colt at the far end of the second table!" The extremely far end. He was about a body length away from the wall, and roughly four from being in another class entirely. The cardboard divisions had granted all the students a fair amount of personal space to begin with: in the case of this colt, the rest of the student body had made the group decision to slide more or less uphill.

He had exceptionally dark fur, black eyes, and Celestia was waiting on proof for the eyelids because he had yet to use them.

"Yes," the little colt quietly said, and the word carried perfectly through a now too-silent hall. "I think you'll like mine."

"That's Photopoll," Ms. Newmaths subtly informed her as the pair began to make their way towards that edge: the narrow aisles between tables were giving Celestia the usual trouble, and most of the alicorn's efforts were being directed towards keeping her knees from ramming into each other.

Celestia's memory rummaged, eventually pulling up a summary of fully unremarkable test scores: enough to get into the School, but... that was it. Still, that didn't prevent a colt from being creative...

A Project Fair means trying to come up with new workings.
Just like the last time.
And all the times before that.
Plus just about every time it happened outside the school.

She thought about centuries of creative unicorns, maintained her smile, and got ready to counter. Because the problem with unicorns, something which was magnified in the young and desperate, who were trying to be creative...

She noticed some of the cardboard walls were roughly decorated. Crude sketches of horns, with the angle of projection and degree of inked flare having been measured by protractor. A few students had concept art for how the targets would look upon being hit by the new workings, and Celestia tried to pick up her pace as she passed the one which had tried to reference an anatomical chart. But Photopoll was bordered by blank brown, along with quite a bit of space.

There was a cardboard barrier at the edge of his table. It gave him a certain degree of framing.

She came up to him, as best she could: the aisles were still trying to interfere. Smiled.

"My working," the colt peacefully began (and did so without blinking), "is for a problem I've been having at school."

She nodded.

"We live in dormitories at the school," Photopoll told her, apparently while under the impression that nopony had known that before. "The first-years get the one in the east wing. Which faces east. My bed is right next to a window. And the curtains aren't very good. So every morning, when Sun comes up, it shines right on me. And that wakes me up."

She could hear students pulling back.

"At home," he stated, "my window faces west. Because I live on the west coast. So I'm not used to Sun waking me up. It doesn't feel right."

"So you made a working to fix that," Celestia carefully asked. The illusion of a sleep mask on his face, to block the light? It wouldn't be easy to hold through the night. Or maybe just a spell which changes the lumen level around his bed: I'm pretty sure that's still in the illusion category...

He nodded.

"My working," he proudly declared, "puts out Sun."

Several tables jumped by a hoofwidth, because some kinds of motion were cumulative and that many ponies trying to relocate themselves while staying more-or-less still were going to take the furniture with them. Ms. Newmaths, against all expectations and common sense, beamed. And Photopoll simply sat there, face displaying the contentment of a pony who had Solved Everything.

Centuries of practice hadn't really done much to improve Celestia's math skills: some of that was a reluctance to replace, and the rest was largely due to a fear that becoming truly adept would only lead to ponies making her do more of it. But she had rather more experience with magic, and so she silently pulled up every memory she possessed of the strongest unicorn fields to ever exist, measured them against the maximum known projection range, then compared both to the sheer scale of the entity in the sky which her soul touched twice per day.

Even with all that, she needed a moment to remind herself that dealing with heat was a pegasus domain before moving on.

"Little one," she carefully began, because the colt hadn't reached adolescence yet and besides, a reminder of 'little' seemed to be necessary, "have you considered something which would -- just to make a suggestion here -- thicken curtains?"

He rather visibly thought about that.

"No," the colt said. "Because there's lots of curtains and there's only one Sun. Plus Teacher says it's always best to charge a problem at the source."

Celestia took a breath, because there was every chance that at some point in his life, this colt was going to smell something bad and after that, air just wasn't going to be available.

"So you want to extinguish Sun," she observed, and wished that she was doing so from a much greater distance.

"I don't like light shining in my eyes."

"As opposed," she offered, "to darkening the windows. Or asking for a different bed. Sleeping in another position. There's also this thing called a sleep mask --"

"-- I think a lot of ponies must have windows which face east," Photopoll countered. "Everything you said works only for me. But putting out Sun works for everypony."

"Everyone on the planet," Celestia stated in a final assault on reason, "needs Sun to live."

"But," the colt replied with the logic of the young, "not to wake up."

Celestia looked down at Ms. Newmaths, and was not surprised to see that the principal was still beaming.

"He's so creative!" the educator gushed. "Isn't that just something which could only come from the perspective of a child?"

"Move his bed away from the window."

The principal blinked.

"This is my school," stated the mare who always wanted to be the smartest in the room, and whom Celestia now suspected had trouble fulfilling that requirement when alone. "I decide when students --"

The heat in the room spiked. Then it decided that wasn't enough, and moved for a direct cut.

"Move. The. Bed."

Ms. Newmaths blinked. (Her student had not.)

"...okay."

"Thank you," Photopoll sincerely offered. "That helps."

Celestia quietly nodded. Began to turn away --

-- don't.
Just don't.
I know I'm going to regret this.

But a bad idea had its own power, and so she turned back.

"How were you planning to demonstrate your working? Did you do any testing?"

"No," the colt admitted. "Because fire and Sun don't feel like the same thing. Plus Sun is really far away. So I couldn't really try it on anything. I just made it in my head. And then I waited for you."

"For me," she repeated, and immediately regretted that too.

"I thought you could take me there," the first-year said. "And then I could try it. And I thought you'd like it, because once Sun was put out, you could have a day off. You never get one, because you have to raise Sun every day. And lower it. Everypony should get days off."

She was afraid to nod.

"And," he added, "you might need to turn Sun back on. Later in the day. After everypony had slept some more." Thoughtfully, "Do you just raise and lower Sun? Or can you move it around, too? Maybe if you just made it go around the school --"

"-- thank you," Celestia said, because she had to say something and 'I want psychological screenings added to all future entrance exams, in perpetuity, for however long that turns out to be. Oh, and send me updates about this student's activities. Weekly. For the rest of his life.' was best said in private. "This was... memorable, little one. In fact, I think it's safe to say that I am never going to forget it. I look forward to hearing what you're working on next. And I guarantee that I'll know what that is. So who's next?"

The exchange currently echoing in her memory had taken place centuries before. It had been long enough for a body to fall into something smaller than dust, with even the coffin returned to the soil. But even so, she had cause to reflect on it now and again.

"Do you know what the difference is between childish ignorance and complete sociopathy?"
"No."
"Ten years and an optional degree."

When it came to magic, the problem was generally associated with unicorns. New pegasus techniques were hardly ever seen -- but anything which did come along could be taught to whatever portion of the population had the field strength and control to master the innovation: being interested enough to bother was also helpful. Similarly, it took an exceptional earth pony to create a fully original song for their tool and in both cases, there was often a strong degree of desperation associated with the attempts. Ponies who had been placed in a situation where nothing they knew worked, and there was nothing to lose from experimentation which wouldn't already be forfeit after it failed.

But techniques and tools... they were usually well-worn roads in the path of magic. And when a pegasus truly came into their own, when an earth pony found their own voice, the initial manifestations of that power would generally be familiar.

Unicorns, however... every unicorn had a trick. Their personal spell, something they'd never been taught. It would be an effect they simply knew how to create, and it would typically be one of the first true castings to appear after their horn fully ignited. Sometimes it was the first, a portion of their personality expressed through their field as thaums and desire. Magic which spontaneously arose from the soul.

And that was the problem.

For unicorns, magic would always spontaneously arise -- once. That effect would be controllable, reliable, often fully understood from the moment of first casting. And unlike techniques and tools, some tricks would effectively be unique: only the caster comprehended how they were performing the working, and many had trouble passing on that knowledge. Fresh magic, new magic, simply appearing in the world -- and for so many unicorns (Gifted School students, the merely curious, more than a few desperate specimens with nothing left to lose plus a large number who'd simply had too many drinks that night), the next thing to arise would be a question: why couldn't they do it again? Simply create a unique spell because they wished to?

It was possible to invent new workings: that was one of the reasons the Gifted School existed. Because there were unicorns who could go through small-scale trials, advancing their knowledge in tiny hoofsteps. Never risking too much at any one moment, until the instant everything came together. The future of magic meant finding dreamers and teaching them how to reach towards reality.

Avoiding extra repair bill invoices meant not having things like Project Fairs.

There was the filly who loved Hearth's Warming and hated suspense. She had found her magic shortly before applying to the Gifted School, and so there had been no holiday spent with her family while her field was active. She would be going home for the winter break, wanted to have her new spell ready, and was happy to show off her experiment before the Princess.

"So you can't just pick things up in your field and shake them around!" the filly gushed. "Because you might have something in there which breaks, and it's hard to tell what a gift is just by the way it rattles anyway. And Daddy was talking about a pet, so that's really mean to do. And we're supposed to have a lesson in why you can't put your field inside things. We haven't had it yet. But I think that means you can't just feel around inside. Not without poking a hole in the box. And horns are good for poking, but Mommy is really good at seeing holes. And that's why I tried to make this new spell!"

The bright blue features twitched.

"It's... not quite ready yet," the filly reluctantly admitted. "But maybe it'll work this time?"

Celestia risked an encouraging smile, and then wondered what she was encouraging.

It's best this way. It's best that it happens when I'm here.

The filly's horn ignited. Gentle green reached under the table, then placed a gift-wrapped box on top of it.

"My spell," she declared in tones of desperate confidence, "sort of takes a picture of the wrapping. And puts it in my head. Then it unwraps everything. Carefully. It even loosens the tape, if Mommy used tape. So it comes off without tearing the paper. And once you see what's inside, it puts everything back exactly the way it was, so nopony knows it was ever opened at all."

More than a dozen students were carefully leaning in the filly's very specific direction.

All right. Narrow application, although somepony would probably try to come up with some way to use it on diplomatic pouches. Not that she said anything about defeating spell protection, but... it's basic. It's a series of movements which reverse themselves on command. The only chancy part is the tape, because that might mean a chemical alteration of the glue.

Just let her try.

"Go ahead," Celestia smiled. "Whenever you're ready. And take your time. I don't mind waiting a little if you need a minute."

The filly took a few deep breaths. Her mane shivered with concentration. And as it turned out, the working did involve a temporary chemical alteration of the glue.

Fortunately, Celestia was preternaturally good with fire. (Comforting dejected fillies was more of a learned skill.)

"I'm not quite sure what the point is," Celestia admitted.

The colt glared at her. The subject of the upcoming point merely looked around at the world in a rather unfocused way, which was generally the only means by which it could look around at all.

"The point," the colt said, "is to turn a frog into an orange."

"Yes," Celestia patiently said. "Let me rephrase. What's the purpose? Because species transmutation is -- ill-advised. If you feel you might be stuck in a swamp and hungry, then you're actually going to be rather lucky because most of a swamp is edible. There's a plant called a cattail --"

The students were young, and so many had somewhat less trouble with interrupting royalty than the majority of adults. And then there were the ones who felt that being a first-year student in the Gifted School meant that they already knew everything, so rudely cutting in on an adult's sentences was just something to do while waiting for graduation.

"I know about cattails," the colt declared. "They're tails. On cats. This is turning a frog into an orange."

The frog made a croaking sound and in doing so, came as close as its species ever would to expressing the concept of 'sneak preview'.

"And why does a frog need to become an orange?"

"I don't care about what the frog needs," the colt said. "I want it to be an orange. Only one which still moves and jumps like a frog. Because that would be funny. But so far, the outer layer is skin mostly swelling up and changing color. Except when it doesn't, which is even cooler! Let me show you --"

The frog responded to the sudden protective wrapping of warm sunlight around its body in the only way it knew how, and fell asleep.

The colt glared at her.

"That's my frog."

"Not any more," Celestia said. "I'm impressing it onto the palace staff. This is now a Royal Frog."

I've been alive for more than twelve hundred years.
I'm almost completely sure that's the stupidest thing I've ever said.

"And you're forbidden from working on species transmutation," she added. Because the world needed any number of things, and she knew none of those requirements were for exploded frogs.

"I'll show you," the angry child declared. "I'll hide my notes. I'll leave clues to where they are, clues so vague that only the most brilliant student ever will spot the first one. They'll follow the trail just to solve the mystery, find everything, and try to finish my spell. Someday, somepony will turn a frog into an orange. A hopping orange."

Celestia silently added his name to the ever-increasing list of Ponies To Keep An Eye On.

"I know a transmutation," she politely said. "It also includes a transport spell."

Which produced a furious "So?"

"I can change a Gifted School student into an expelled one," Celestia sweetly explained. "And then they just spontaneously appear in front of their parents so they can explain why."

The colt blinked, and spontaneously transmuted into a much smaller, considerably more vibratory pony.

"This is my student --" Ms. Newmaths began.

"-- earlier," Celestia cut her off, "you remembered that I usually attend the entrance exams. There are reasons for that. Several. And part of that is because I get to send certain prospective students back. I am not going to override you on this admission, Progressia. At least, not right now."

I am also going to make an effort to be on time whenever possible.
Until it doesn't matter any more.

"But your unsupervised standards," she added, "were not quite in accordance with mine. I understand that new students have new ideas. But as the pony who sets your budget, I feel there should be a philosophy class, along with a mandatory one for ethics, so that they can find new morals to go with them." Brightly, "So who's next?"

There was a filly who thought she had a refinement on the spell which produced artificial wings. Celestia managed to catch most of the cardboard before it could reach the doors, but the main drinking trough had a head start and, once it cleared the city limits, was never seen again.

One colt believed with all his heart that he had something which could tell him what somepony was feeling within their own: an effect which, if the pony you had a crush on actually liked you, would match the glow around your body with one around theirs. He stammered most of the way through his presentation, he could never completely take his eyes off the filly one table over, and Celestia hoped she was a forgiving sort because by the time the alicorn managed to counter the effect, all of his true love's fur had already been twisted into spirals.

Then you had the twins. Celestia had been somewhat surprised to see fraternal twins enter the school: it was possible for identical twins to possess equal field strength, and some might even manifest matching marks -- but for fraternals to significantly echo each other was much more rare. In both cases, it gave each student a study partner, somepony to bounce ideas off, which led to the concept of bouncing in general and with this project, she finally managed to get the ball stopped just before it embedded itself in a wall.

Because it was possible for the gifted to create new spells, and there were even times when the laypony would match that feat. But it generally had to be slow advancement, careful trials, with supervision at every stage. It was possible that Ms. Newmaths felt the first-year curriculum sufficed there, and there was a much smaller chance that Celestia's upcoming review would find her agreeing with the educator.

But they were passing through a forest of ideas, and so many of them had sprung from pastures of youthful imagination. This tended to sound like a positive thing, and would continue doing so until the listener reviewed their own childhood and recognized that most such sprouts arose from soil fertilized by horse apples. Childhood was about seeing the truth of the world in a rather unique way, and that perception included focusing through any number of personally-invented lies.

There were ideas within the cafeteria. But so many of them were bad ones, because good ideas were rarer, harder to come up with, and didn't respect deadlines. Some students had simply gone with anything they could think of while praying it would pass for new, or at least as something which hadn't been tried in a while. Others had clearly been hoping nopony with more than a thousand years' worth of memory and access to all of the original journal articles would come along: it was a very specific sort of hope, and had a rather unique expression connected to its dashing.

Coronas fizzled. Sparks flew. Nothing performed exactly as advertised, because they were first-year students and you could only ask so much.

And then she found the worst-case scenario.

"I couldn't think of anything," the downcast seafoam-white filly said. (Her name was Cascade. Celestia would remember that name, generally around three in the morning.) "I'm sorry. I tried all week to think of something. But everything was already in a book, or an article. Everything I thought of was something another pony had done before, and I didn't know that because it's my first year." She couldn't look at Celestia. "I'm sorry. I was even trying to have an idea while you were putting out the last fire, and I just couldn't..."

Ms. Newmaths began to say something, and 'began' was all Celestia was willing to allow.

"It's all right," she gently assured the student. "Really, it is. One week of lead time... that's not really enough for anypony."

"But if I get a bad grade..." the miserable filly told the table's well-singed surface, because the table was at least two weeks old and so it was well-singed. "I don't feel like I got in by much during my exams. I just don't want to go home..."

"You're not going to be expelled," Celestia quietly said, already moving in to provide the reassuring nuzzle. "Not for this. I promise."

The filly's head came up a little.

"I don't want to let everypony down."

"You haven't," the old mare calmly told her.

"Maybe if I just tried..."

The little horn ignited.

Worse: it did so before Celestia realized that was what the filly was going to do. Before she had a chance to say something. To counter the surge of energy which moved directly for the overhead, fully-charged lighting devices.

Unicorn magic could be regarded in many ways, and at times like the one which was a single second away from manifesting, the first and only interpretation was 'trap.' Because a working would spontaneously arise once, born from the core of the caster's soul. And in times of truest desperation, when a pony was acting from the heart of who they truly were, with nothing left to lose -- there was the smallest chance for something to happen again. It was a combination of factors which kept unicorns trying, and doing so when circumstances were far less than ideal.

Magic had spontaneously risen once. So why couldn't it happen again?

The usual answer -- something which had been ignored by generations in the thrall of their own bad idea -- was 'Because you only have one soul.'

The species capacity for field-created explosions, however, appeared to border on the infinite.

It took a while to get everypony settled down. A few of the more adventurous spirits had found being pinned beneath miniature protective sunlight-yellow shield domes to be exciting, but the majority had simply panicked. Celestia spent some time personally calming the students, dedicated the most minutes to a not-expelled-I-promise Cascade, spoke with the repair crews who had eventually moved towards the sound about what needed to be done, assigned a new (currently intact) section of the school to be the cafeteria for a while, then helpfully cleared away what was left of the tables while the students were escorted back to their dormitory. They had been given the rest of the day off and combined with the cleared space, she had both the room to speak with Ms. Newmaths and a complete lack of audience.

"Well," the principal made the mistake of saying, "we can consider that a dry run for Next Year. And really, if you knew who could have been here, it might have been so much worse --"

Celestia took a very deep breath, and then let all the air go back out.

Words were included.

Eventually.

It had occurred to Celestia that while she had checked the floor for damage, it was possible for the injuries to echo into where she couldn't see them: namely, the ceiling of the level below. It gave her something to do, because she wasn't due back at the palace for a while and returning to the too-careful attentions of Guards was something which could be postponed.

A Project Fair.
Again.

The cafeteria had been on the ground floor. She was patrolling through the silent basement level, using her own corona for illumination. Cascade's attempt had only taken out half of the lighting devices in the cafeteria, but Celestia had noticed flickering continued for a fair distance out. It was best to be cautious, and so she was deactivating most of what she found until a true inspection could come around.

At least that should be the last fair.
The real last one.
Sure, normally I could count on a century passing, give or take, and then somepony would have the same bad idea all over again. But this time...

She stopped. Trotting, moving, and to a temporary degree, breathing.

I come to the entrance exams every year.
Sometimes I think it's worked.
That the Gifted School found the right pony.
...and every time...

Her head dipped. The weight of the dimmed horn seemed to drag her forward.

There's so few pages left. Just a few more years and --

She had to keep moving. It was the only way to get anything done: to keep moving forward. She was almost under the cafeteria, but there was no truly direct route. Like flames, the most extensive damage from student accidents tended to propagate up, and that made the basement into the oldest surviving part of the Gifted School. A status it possessed on an exponential level.

There were hallways, in the underlayer. Natural corridors. There were also stored set pieces for school plays. Classroom equipment which had fallen out of fashion, favor, or repair. Items hidden by those who were convinced that nopony ever truly looked in the basement, which were then abandoned because nopony really knew how to get around all of it either. There were times when Celestia had to subtly nudge her way through a narrow passage, and far more when she simply became fed up and relocated entire blockades. It was probably ruining the upcoming theater season --

-- lights on up ahead. On the other side of that barrier. Small, thin rays were shining through cracks in the debris. The natural dust hanging in the basement air gave the beams distinct borders, along with lending them the sort of haze which generally appeared when Sun's light broke through clouds at dusk. I should deactivate those. She sent a flicker of corona ahead.

Nothing happened.

...damage?

And then she heard the hoofsteps.

They were fairly light. They also possessed that quality naturally, because their bearer wasn't trying to be quiet at all. Somepony who had heard Celestia coming, because the oldest of mares had been making no effort towards silence, and -- who was still moving normally.

The lights were staying on because somepony was working underneath them. Nothing more.

Celestia carefully moved forward. (Shadows clustered on her fur, added dappling coolness to every step, and the hues changed as a corona flickered on the other side.) Cautiously, she worked her way around the last barrier, avoided the splinters from the remnants of fragmented desks, angled her neck --

-- there was a filly. And a memory which already contained more than twelve centuries of time set aside a space for that first sighting, because it was something the observer would carry with her. A single instant to reflect upon, over and over.

The limbs could not be described as stretched, and 'gawky' was forbidden simply from seeing her move. Her legs were long and thin, the surest sign of an early puberty -- but most of those who went through such acted as if their bodies were something being operated with great reluctance, and from some distance away. This filly owned her foreign form, had already mastered it, and each hoofstep came with a confidence that declared any further changes had both been anticipated and planned for. She moved with a solidity greater than her mass: a pony who knew not only exactly where she was going, but what had been required simply to get this far.

(The mane and tail were also somewhat ahead of the true years. Both had been styled, although Celestia suspected the little spirals were mostly there as a way of compressing excess length.)

She felt the shadow of Celestia's presence fall over her, and did not react. The filly simply continued about her work, pacing back and forth with her horn fully lit, portions of the corona flowing here and there across the mirror --

-- there was a mirror.

It was a very large mirror. It was at least three times the filly's height, which made it perfectly suitable for Celestia. If there had been nothing more than an ornate brass and silver frame of curves and curls, then it would have been large enough for the old mare to step through, and it took Celestia a moment to truly identify it as being a mirror at all. There was a central qualification for 'mirror', Celestia was looking right at the thing, and that requirement wasn't being fulfilled.

It reflected the debris piles which served as the walls of the makeshift room. The ink-marked books scattered around the floor, and the filly appeared to have distinctly poor fieldwriting. Some of the drifting dust, although not perfectly: that could have been nothing more than minor imperfections in the glass, especially as those images seemed to be in the wrong place.

But it didn't show Celestia.

And then the reflection displayed the filly. A filly who was on the other side of the workspace, nowhere near the silvered backing, and that image moved across the glass while the pony was going the other way, echo completely separated from the real --

"-- give it time," the filly said, and did so without bothering to look at the new arrival. (Her corona intensified, became more angular towards the horntip.)

The oldest mare in the world stared at the echo, watched it vanish. Moved her gaze higher, and found nothing looking back.

"Time," she repeated, and wondered why her own voice sounded so hollow.

"You haven't been here long enough yet," the filly failed to explain. (A rounded field at the horn's base, just a hint of white blooming near the fur of the skull.) "Just keep looking."

Celestia silently regarded the mirror, and continued to do so until a very weary, Fair-worn mare poked her head around the corner.

The reflection stared out at her. It was possible to see the shock when it found nothing gazing back.

"It's at about forty-five seconds now, I think," the filly told her. (She still hadn't looked around.) "Were you counting? I count sometimes. But I can't get a clock to work right when I'm casting this, so counting is all I can do."

"It reflects the past," Celestia whispered. "How -- how did you --"

"Forty-five seconds," the filly declared with open disgust. "It doesn't reflect enough. What good is seeing something which happened less than a minute ago? It would be more practical with hours. Or moons. But it's at forty-five seconds. I think." The well-styled mane (something so well done as to look like every curl was completely natural) shook with frustration. "But it was at thirty last moon, so at least it's progress. It's just not enough."

The mare took her longest, slowest breath of the day. The filly didn't look.

"You're a first-year."

The filly shrugged.

"There weren't any test scores which showed this level of talent," Celestia softly stated. "I would have spotted that instantly. I would have already --"

"-- test scores," the filly interrupted, "mostly show how good you are at taking tests." Another shrug. "Most tests are boring. Like classes. Those are mostly boring too. And they don't like to talk about things which aren't magic, like films. They barely want to have projectors in here, because they're only machines. But films have little bits of silver which capture the past. Mirrors have silver. So I thought..." This shake came from anger. "Forty-five seconds."

They were both silent for a while. The filly trotted, the mare watched. Reflections drifted across the seconds, keeping belated pace.

"Does the mirror have to be present the whole time?" the old mare asked. "Can you bring it into a space where it never was, and reflect what happened before it got there?"

"I don't know."

"What were you going to do with this spell once it was perfected?"

"I'm not sure if it's important to do anything with it," the filly decided. "I think it's more interesting to see if it can be done."

She paused, and did so while a thousand ancient echoes played within the white mare's ears.

"I was also thinking about one to make it stop flipping things," the filly added. "It's easier to work on my mane when everything isn't reversed. But that can wait."

The mare stepped forward a little more. Came just that much further into the light.

"Do you know who I am?" Because the filly still hadn't looked.

"You're the Princess. Because I saw the light from your horn, and I heard your feathers rustle. And you haven't yelled at me. Mzzzzzzzzzzzzzz --" it was open mockery, and expertly cruel "-- Newmaths yells at me sometimes. She doesn't like it when I tell her classes are boring, or if I try to make them interesting. Or if I think the Project Fair is dumb. So I come down here most of the time."

The white mare made a decision.

(And there was something worse than that. There were ideas which truly felt as if they were good ones, something which would surely work if you just found the right time, the proper place, the pony needed to make it all come together. Concepts in search of their temporal home, stretching a hopeful foreleg towards a calendar which had so few pages left, and... they never worked. They couldn't work, because it wasn't the right time, it was always the wrong place, and... some part of her would deliberately forget what had happened after the prior attempts, because she had to keep trying. Because it was the only way she could keep going forward at all.)

"You think classes are boring?"

With the smallest of petulant forehoof stomps, "They are."

"Would they still be boring if I was teaching you?"

The filly stopped moving. Nearly stopped breathing.

(But it was always a bad idea.)

"...no."

"Special sessions," the old mare clarified. "A few times per moon, at the palace. Maybe more often if things start to work out. Can you accept that?"

"...yes."

And with hope rising, hope which would take forty-five seconds to appear in the mirror and years to fully vanish, "What's your name?"

The filly turned, with streaked mane and tail smoothly shifting. Cool, calm blue eyes stared up into purple, and the cyan light of her corona failed to reflect. It was too soon for that.

(Always.)

"Sunset."