Sunset Shimmer looked into the mirror, complaining angrily to her reflection. "How can Celestia treat me like this?"
Beside Sunset, a maid cleared her throat. Sunset rolled her eyes, but stepped away from the mirror.
"Thank you, Mare'm." The maid's feather duster lovingly brushed the mirror and its frame. When every nook and cranny was perfectly clean, the maid stepped away. "Sorry, Mare'm, about the interruption. Please continue."
Sunset glared at the maid. "You've ruined the moment. I was just working up to a good angry venting rant, and now I'm...I've lost my place! Are you happy?"
"On my own account? I suppose so. I love to dust and clean. Some ponies say I love it a little TOO much. But I'm NOT happy that you're not happy."
"You're just pretending to care! That's all anypony does!"
The maid's eyes narrowed. "Is that what you think? If nopony cares, why would anypony even bother to PRETEND to care? What difference would it make?"
In Sunset's mind, metaphorical gears started to turn. "Is this some kind of logic puzzle? Or are you just somepony else trying to play me like a cheap game?"
The maid pursed her lips. "It's a real life question. If nopony cared at all, everypony could get away with not even bothering to pretend to care. But they do. Why?"
"Okay," Sunset admitted, "Somepony must care about PRETENDING to care. But if they're only pretending, what difference does it make to ME?"
The maid looked Sunset in the eye. "I think you know somepony cares."
"Who?" Sunset shouted. "Celestia just TOYS with me, and tells me what to do. My parents were happy to turn me over to the Crown and never have to see me at all, except if there's a holiday and they haven't come up with some kind of excuse in time.
"You know what they said last Hearth's Warming? My mother said, they thought it was easier to have me around for one day, than to fill out the paperwork explaining why they wouldn't!"
"That sounds bad." The maid tilted her head slightly. "Are you sure she wasn't joking?"
"Know what I got for Hearth's Warming? Socks!"
"I know when you're a filly, socks can be disappointing." The maid chuckled. "One way I knew I wasn't a foal anymore, was the first time somepony gave me socks and I was happy to have them. To be fair, my mother is a VERY good knitter. Maybe your mother isn't."
"The socks were half my size! It's like my parents haven't even bothered to LOOK AT me for the last six or seven years! Anypony could tell they were too small! Even the salespony at the department store where my mom bought them could have told my mom to buy a larger size for any pony my age, if my mother had bothered to ask, or to say anything about me at all!"
The maid nodded. "It's like they don't notice you're growing up."
"No, it's like they don't notice ANYTHING about me. Because they just want to ignore me." Sunset grimaced. "I think my parents would be happier if I'd never been born. Thank...Celestia, that Celestia was willing to take me in. Otherwise I might not have had anypony even a LITTLE like a mother. Not even temporarily."
The maid's eyes widened. "But who took care of you before Celestia? There must have been somepony. Somepony who loved you?"
"My brother was a lot older than me, and he wanted to study medicine. He used to treat me like a patient, said he was 'practicing' on me. For a few months there, I had the names and outlines of all different kinds of anatomical features painted all over me, almost all the time. I still know all the different foreleg bones like the back of my foreleg."
The maid laughed. Sunset tried to resist, but couldn't keep herself from laughing too.
Even after the laughing died down, Sunset still smiled. "You have no idea how long it's been since I told anypony that story."
"Your brother sounds like a very funny pony."
"He is. And he's very sweet, in his own weird way. He's really very nice."
The maid grinned. "Is he single?"
Sunset laughed. "He had to leave Canterlot, to go to a medical school that had a space for him. And ever since then, he's been busier than a beaver in a treeless plain full of timberwolves. Sometimes I get a letter from him. I can tell he's doing well in school, and in his residency, because every time his hornwriting gets a little worse, a little more like a prescription. His last letter, just as an experiment, I took it to a pharmacy. They gave me ten thousand milligrams of poppy seed bagel."
The maid laughed. "So...too busy to NOT be single?"
"Married to his career, I guess. Maybe in a couple years."
"Give me his address today, so I can write him a letter and ask him when I should ask him again. But seriously, I'm glad at least you DO know what it's like, to have family who care for you."
"Sure. It's good SOMEPONY wanted to change my diapers and bandage my scraped knees. He says he thought facing a full diaper would be good practice for other things that seem really disgusting, like surgery on a severely infected, reeking wound, or handling broken bones when multiple fractures have gotten all splintery and everything seems like a total disaster."
Sunset smiled. "But I think really that was partly an excuse. I think he just likes to help somepony who needs it, especially when nopony else can or will."
"But who changed your BROTHER'S diapers, when he was a tiny foal?"
"My mother's sister. My brother's original parents died before I was born. So he was sent to live with my mom, and her second husband."
"It must have been very hard for your brother."
"Yes," Sunset agreed. "Sometimes, I'm sure it was. But it was nice having somepony around who loved me. For as long as it lasted."
"By as long as it lasted...do you mean, before you came here to the palace, to attend the magic school and be tutored by Celestia?" The maid looked pensive. "I'm confused. If you hadn't said that, I would have thought it was lucky your parents thought to have you considered for admission."
Sunset snorted. "It WOULD have been very thoughtful of them. But what really happened was, my brother told my parents it would be like free daycare if I got in. He helped me study, and he filled out the forms, and he brought me to the palace on Entrance Exam Day.
"In a letter he wrote me years later, he told me he had been worried about what might happen to me, if he went away to med school. Who would take care of me? But the 'free daycare' angle worked just great on our parents. When I was given permission to live in the palace as Celestia's special student? They were even happier."
The maid took a deep breath. "Do you feel...abandoned, sometimes?"
Sunset frowned. "I guess I do."
"So you talk to yourself in the mirror."
"I do. Something about this mirror...my reflection in it feels...a little more REAL, somehow, than in other mirrors. I come down here and talk to myself nearly every day."
The maid pursed her lips. "I suppose that explains the little toothpaste spatters I find here sometimes."
Sunset blushed. "I...didn't mean to. It's just, I'm so busy trying to learn everything about magic that I possibly can. Sometimes the time I spend brushing my teeth is all the time I can find to spend with myself."
The maid chuckled. "Don't worry. I won't tell on you. And I did say I LOVE to clean."
Sunset got an odd look. "I didn't...should I have asked about what you meant...about that? LOVING to clean? Maybe I don't want to know. Maybe when I'm older."
The maid nodded. "Yes, you can ask when you're ready. I'm around the palace nearly every day. There's no hurry."
The maid sat down. "When I interrupted, you were saying something about how Celestia treats you?"
"Yes. I was."
"So how DOES Celestia treat you?"
Sunset looked sour. "In the beginning, it was so great. She told me I could learn anything I wanted, become anything I wanted. The only other pony who has ever believed in me like that...was my brother."
"So...Celestia is like a second brother to you."
Sunset laughed. "Sure. For those first few years, it was wonderful."
"Everypony should get to have a wonderful foalhood."
"So true." Sunset still looked sour. "But it didn't stay that way. What Celestia wanted of me...started to change."
"What? Did she stop telling you, you could become anything you want to be?"
"Not exactly." Sunset rolled her eyes. "She started dropping little hints about FRIENDSHIP. And then BIG hints. And then DEMANDS, and ORDERS..."
"Everypony should have friends," the maid said.
"I'm sure you're right. But it's easier for some ponies than for others."
The maid said nothing, waiting expectantly.
"Maybe the problem started, when I was more interested in learning everything I could, to try to get closer to that day when I really can become anything I want to be. More interested in becoming the best mage I can be, than in doing things with friends."
Sunset shrugged. "My drive to be the best...some of my classmates resented me, a little bit. But it wasn't too bad."
Sunset's look went from thoughtful to angry. "But I wasn't really a friendless pony...or I THOUGHT I wasn't. THAT'S probably where it first went seriously wrong. One day, I tried telling a few classmates a story that I thought was funny, about my brother."
The maid smiled. "I imagine you have a lot of funny stories about your brother."
"True. But this turned into the wrong kind of funny. I talked about how my brother used to treat me like a practice patient, because he wanted to be a doctor someday...and somepony misunderstood. The more I tried to explain the truth, the more things went wrong. It seems that some ponies say 'playing doctor' to mean something very different from what my brother used to do."
The maid looked a bit angry herself. "I see."
"Rumors spread, and the more they spread, the worse they became. Soon there were ponies whose parents said they weren't allowed to play with me. They said I might be a 'bad influence.' And that's one of the nicer things they said."
"But was everypony foolish enough to believe those things?"
"Not everypony. But even when somepony was polite, it was hard to know what they really thought. And what they were saying about me behind my back. Whenever somepony tried to get me to talk about my life, especially my foalhood, I didn't know if they were trying to be my friend, or trying to get something they could turn into a jucier, nastier rumor."
The maid looked furious. "Sometimes foals can be cruel, about something they don't understand. I feel for you."
"Thanks," Sunset said with a grimace. "After that, friendship just didn't seem to work so well for me, in the school here. But I wasn't going to let nasty, lying ponies with filthy minds, and the ignorant ponies who believed them without even checking all the facts and thinking for themselves, drive me out of the school where I had earned my right to be. If somepony should quit, they were the ponies who deserved to have to leave, not me."
"That's very sad."
"One day, somepony said something that went just a little too much farther than before. Or maybe it was just that hearing the same thing for the thousandth time finally became too much. Or maybe it was just that partway through what he said, he found a whole new way to insult my brother. I snapped."
"Was anypony hurt?"
"No. But somepony feared for their life that day. I had studied a lot of magic: the school's whole curriculum, and anything else interesting I could find. And when I feel like it, I can be a very creative mage. Somepony learned that day, what fear truly means." Sunset snorted. "But I let him live. I let him beg for his life, for a while. But in the end, I let him live."
The maid looked worried. "That sounds bad. For everypony involved." Her brow wrinkled slightly, for a moment. "So what happened, after that?"
"I told him that if he told anypony too much about what I'd done to him, and what I COULD do to him, he would find out more than he wanted to know." Sunset shrugged. "I don't think he ever told anypony more than I'd wanted him to. But new rumors started. They were vague, and they were terrifying. Or so I infer. Because nopony ever dared insult my brother again."
The maid sighed. "Is that a solution?"
"It was...a KIND of solution. It was better than if somepony had finally driven me to do something even worse to them."
"So...about friendship."
Sunset laughed bitterly. "Many ponies were too afraid to try to even speak to me, after that. The ponies who did, mostly wanted something. Not really true friends."
"Did you tell Celestia?"
"I told her...some of it. I didn't tell her the worst. I left out most of the details. What should I tell her, that her school is full of ponies who can be so nasty and evil?"
"Celestia has ruled a country for thousands of years. Anything bad and nasty that somepony has to deal with in government? She probably knows a lot more about really bad things than you've ever thought. I think she could handle hearing the whole truth."
"Yeah, you'd like to think that, wouldn't you? But everypony knows she controls the sun and the moon and...everything. The things that happened to me? She never would have had to deal with what I had to deal with. She can intimidate most ponies just by walking into the room. She never would have NEEDED to make a nasty little pony beg for his life."
The maid sighed. "Maybe. Maybe not. But I hope you won't have to wait too long, before you discover a true friend. Or true friends. Ponies you can really talk to, who will try to be fair to you."
Sunset fumed. "After what I've experienced? I think most ponies aren't WORTHY of being my friend."
"So you come down here, and talk to yourself in the mirror."
"Sure." Sunset snorted. "I could do worse." She waved a forehoof at the mirror.
Nervously, the maid said, "Be careful with that mirror. It's more dangerous than you might think."
"What, this old thing? I've brushed my teeth in front of it a hundred times. It's a very good mirror. But it's just a mirror."
"It's not always the same!" the maid warned.
Sunset waved her forehoof again. "It's fine." As her hoof passed close to the mirror, the surface rippled. Something seemed to draw her in. "WHAT THE--" Sunset shouted, as she lost her balance and fell into the rippling surface.
"Oh, buck me," the maid said.
Author's Note
Yes, this story is a prequel to Equestria Girls.
I'd say this chapter is more sad than comedic.
...and Memories
"Go to your room!" a middle-aged unicorn mare shouted. "And stay there!"
"But--" little Sunset Shimmer started to speak.
"Not one word more, or I'll double your punishment!"
Wordlessly, Sunset walked through smoke and haze to her room, and shut herself inside.
The mare shook her head. "Honestly! I don't know where we went wrong. A NORMAL foal would be completely over her magic surges by now." She narrowed her eyes and glared at her nephew (and foster son) Gentle Touch. "It's probably YOUR fault. You're a bad influence."
Gentle Touch had learned the ways of this household. Arguing wouldn't do him any good. He stood silently at attention like a junior cadet, which seemed to work best at times like these.
The mare sighed. "There's probably nothing to be done for it. Maybe there's some kind of remedial academy we could send her to. A special school where every moment will be about disciplining little fillies who won't behave properly. I'll have to speak with Sunrise about it, when he gets home."
Gentle Touch felt a lurch of fear for his foster sister, but said nothing.
"And you? Get out of my face."
Gentle Touch obeyed.
***
A few minutes later, Sunset heard a gentle tapping on her window. She started to giggle, but put a hoof over her mouth to muffle it. She trotted to the window and unfastened the latch.
In a glowing aura of Gentle's magic, the window sash slid upward. Gentle didn't want to risk the noise of climbing in, but at least he could comfort his sister through the window.
"Hay, there." he whispered. "How's your punishment going so far?"
Sunset giggled softly. "Not too bad. Do you want to play a game again?"
"How about the quiz game?" When Gentle helped Sunset study for the School for Gifted Unicorns entrance exam, he called it the 'quiz game.'"
Sunset pouted. "I think I already know everything. Or if I don't, I think my brain's full for today. Let's learn magic!"
Gentle Touch said, "Do you have your tennis ball?"
"Sure do!" she squealed happily, levitating it into the air.
"Sssh!" he said. "Not so loud."
Her eyes went big and sorrowful.
He whispered, "How about the writing game?"
"Pfui! You just want to make me study more." But as she complained, Sunset levitated the tennis ball out the window and into a birdbath outside. She rolled the ball around in the bath to soak it.
"I want you to gain fine control over your magic, so you can do exactly the thing you choose to do, and no more."
With her forehooves upon the windowsill, Sunset floated the tennis ball down to the paving stones beneath her window, and rolled the ball around to write her own name in water. When the water dried, there would be no evidence that she'd been playing outside while staying in her room.
She drew a stick figure of her mother, and a dragon bending down towards the mare, with its toothy jaws wide open. "Why couldn't a monster eat MY parents, instead of yours?"
"That's a terrible thing to say about your own parents."
"But I don't see you arguing." Sunset grinned. "It's because you know I'm right."
"Your mother was very gracious to take me in."
"You mean, my mother was very gracious to have a free babysitter. I don't think my mom knows what the word gracious even means."
"You should erase that picture before somepony sees it."
Sunset made a tiny grunt, and the water on the paving stones vaporized into steam. "There, all gone! Now do you feel better?"
Gentle said, "Yes."
"I was careful. I didn't even crack any paving stones this time."
Gentle snorted. "True. You were very good."
"If only my mother thought so."
"Your mother doesn't quite understand about foals. You can't expect a foal to be perfect. I know you're still learning to control your magic properly."
"Sometimes I just wish I could let loose. See how big an explosion I could make."
"I know. But it's a lot more work to repair something than to blow it up. Blowing it up can take just a moment. But sometimes...some things can't ever be fixed. That's why we learn how to do no MORE than we mean to, when we try to do no less."
Sunset sighed. "I know. But it makes me feel like a little mouse in a cage. Not allowed to go outside the wire."
"It's for the best."
***
Sunset gave the examiners a fierce look. "I'd like to take this part of the exam outside," she said. "It'll be fun, I promise you." She formed her cyan-colored magical glow into the shape of a pointing stick, and moved the pointer towards the window. "How about that big courtyard out there?"
Gentle felt apprehensive, but forced himself to appear calm.
Sunset's mother, Gloaming, started to speak. "Sunset, I hardly think--"
"Silence!" an examiner said. "No speaking or hinting to the candidate. Candidate's request is granted, although I have no idea what she plans to do with it."
When everypony had assembled outside, Sunset's magical aura reached across the courtyard to drag a rain barrel towards the group. "I've been reading ahead a bit in the books," she said.
"Oh no," Gentle said to himself.
With a flash of light, the barrel remained a barrel.
Sunset grinned mischievously. "Transmutation is a fun spell. And oil has some uses that water doesn't."
Gentle raised a hoof to his face, reflexively preparing to shield his eyes.
Beside him, Gloaming looked apprehensive and confused.
Sunset levitated a blob of liquid out of the barrel. It shimmered and quivered in the air. "First question!" she barked.
"What is two plus thirteen?"
"Ha!" Sunset said. She stroked the blob across the courtyard's pavement, leaving a greasy trail that traced out the Ponish numerals for fifteen. With a tiny grunt of effort, she set the numerals ablaze. "Give me a hard one!"
The glob hung in the air, ready for the next problem.
***
Sunset floated all the remaining oil out of the barrel and to the center of the courtyard. "Three!" she shouted.
"Oh no," somepony said.
"Two!"
The examiners murmured and shuffled nervously. Their horns softly glowed.
"One!"
Gloaming turned and ran. Who would have thought a middle-aged mare could run so fast?
The cyan glow brightened around the floating blob of oil. Light and sound filled the air. A glowing cloud of smoke and sparks shot upwards. It rose thousands of feet above the courtyard.
Half a dozen different transparent shields hung in the air between ponies and the explosion's epicenter. The examiners had cast hastily to protect both themselves and the visiting family.
The head examiner strolled across the courtyard. He tapped one hoof on the pavement beside a long streak of scorch. "Sunset Shimmer," he said, "Your explosion was poorly shaped. If somepony had been standing here, you could have hurt them. And nopony ASKED you to blow everything up in the first place."
Sunset Shimmer insisted, "But nopony WAS standing there! I did just fine!"
Another examiner, a pale blue mare, peered into the barrel. "The barrel is dry. No oil remains. She did fulfill the final task we assigned, to dispose of the oil she had created."
The head examiner looked around, thinking.
"I did what I was supposed to!" Sunset argued. "I didn't hurt anypony! You're just trying to cheat me!"
A shadow moved across the courtyard, blocking the sun. Ponies looked up. The cloud of smoke had widened.
Also, a white, winged creature appeared to be falling out of the sky.
"She killed a bird!"
"No, it's a pegasus. I think she broke its wings."
As the snowy-winged creature descended through the smoke, ponies' worries grew. The flyer flared her wings, slowed her descent, and smoothly landed. Everypony sighed in relief at the flyer's evident good health.
"Well, well," Celestia said. "Who do I have to thank for that very spectacular show? And who failed to apply for airspace clearance?"
Almost everypony spoke up in a confused babble. Sunset spoke loudly, proud and defiant. Gloaming said little, but fear and anger showed in her eyes.
After listening to the explanations, Celestia used the poker face she had practiced for many centuries. "What an interesting combination of knowledge, raw magical power, oddly applied skill, and near catastrophe we have here."
"I'm sorry, your majesty," Gloaming burbled. "She won't do it again. I'll send her to her room for a year."
"What a shame that would be," Celestia replied. "But I can see this little filly could make an awful lot of trouble. I don't think her room is the right place for her."
"No!" Gloaming cried. "Not the dungeons! All I ask is, you only punish the ponies who are at fault. My nasty little delinquent...and her sneaky cousin. I know her cousin put her up to this. Throw HIM in a dungeon, and leave my family out of it. She didn't know what she was doing!"
Celestia finally let herself smile. "Examiners, would you say this filly passed?"
The examiners conferred among themselves. The head examiner said, "With several irregularities, but yes. She passed."
Celestia shrugged. "I suppose it's out of my hooves. Sunset Shimmer, welcome to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns!"
"Yes!" Sunset cheered.
"And in addition, I would like you to come live in the castle as my personal student."
Sunset said, "What? Live where?"
"With me, in the castle."
Sunset blinked, her eyes tearing up. She ran to her brother. "Don't let them take me away, Gentle!"
Gentle said, "But Sunset! This is what you wanted."
"I wanted to go to school. But I didn't want them to take me away from you!"
Gloaming seethed as her daughter ignored her. "Sunset, the princess said you will live in the castle. And that is where you will go, young filly. Don't disobey me."
"Yes, mother." Sunset hugged her brother more tighly.
Celestia announced, "Sunset Shimmer, you may of course visit with your family from time to time. It's not like you'll never see them again." The alicorn leafed through a file folder she had borrowed from an examiner. "Doesn't your family live in Canterlot? It shouldn't be very difficult at all."
Gloaming shook her head. "Something ought to be done about those two." She spoke more loudly. "He's not even her real brother, you know."
Gentle nuzzled his sister. "Sunset, there's something I need to tell you, too."
"What?"
"I've been accepted to a school too. The Trottingham Institute of Medicine. It's a college where ponies learn how to be doctors."
"Good," Gloaming said.
"But..." Sunset wondered, "where IS Trottingham?"
"It's very, very far away," Gloaming said. "You both have been accepted by very prestigious schools. And you didn't even tell me, Gentle!" She made a sniffling sound. "I just thought the both of you were scheming and plotting some kind of mischief behind my back." She sniffled again. "I'm so proud of the both of you!
"I'll cry so much, now that you're leaving me. I'll miss you so!" Gloaming wiped her eyes with a hoof, hiding the lack of actual tears.
Gloaming bent down to kiss her daughter on the cheek. She whispered in Sunset's ear, "Don't you DARE think of trying to flunk out or get expelled. If you come back home, Gentle is NOT going to be there. If I have to, I'll think of someplace far worse than a castle to send you."
Sunset held Gentle at forelegs' length. "You're leaving me, Gentle."
Gentle said, "For everypony, there comes a time when they have to leave home. I know it's coming a lot earlier for you than it does for most ponies. But don't you think it was necessary?"
Sunset glanced coolly at her mother. "Yes. I suppose it was."
She released her brother, and went to Celestia. She didn't look back.
She didn't really know what the School for Gifted Unicorns would be like, or life in the castle. But she felt sure it had to be better than life with her mother and father.
Even if her brother had abandoned her, it would be ok. She would MAKE it ok.
Somehow.
