Author's Note

Sorry for the sudden change. It was rated everyone until this chapter, which includes a bit of violence. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. I appreciate you reading this note, and the story, too. Thanks!

Overwhelming

Today, Ms. Bloom’s friend talked to all the unicorns about spells. Ms. Bloom was an earth pony, and she had to teach her own race their special talent. While the earth ponies learned about farming and plants, the pegasi learned to fly and control weather, and the unicorns learned about spells and controlling their magic. It was, apparently, a Sire’s Hollow tradition to go with other fillies and foals from all over Sire’s Hollow. Three teachers, three races, teaching about your specialties. Every school year, near the end of the year, it was a week-long learning process.

“My name is Sugar Swirl,” the teacher introduced herself. “I’d like to know all of your names, and we’ll see if I can remember them by the end of this week. I know I’ve seen some of you before, but I suspect a few of you are new.” Sugar Swirl seems nice, Starlight thought.

Sugar arranged the class in two groups. One group had all of the unicorns from past years, and the other group had the new unicorns. Starlight went with the second group, only to discover that she was the oldest one there. Most of the new ones had lived in Sire’s Hollow their whole life, but this was their first school year. But there were barely any students, being such a small town.

Starlight watched as Sugar Swirl tried to remember the names of the experienced unicorns. She heard that Sugar had only made one mistake. Then, her ears dropped when Sugar came closer to their group. Her ears perked back up, though, when she learned just how fun her teacher was. Sugar tried to guess everyone’s names, based on their coats, manes, or cutie marks. She got most of them correct, and she only had trouble with one pony’s name. Starlight’s.

“Let’s see… Lilac Sky?” she guessed. Starlight shook her head. Sugar tried to look at her cutie mark for a hint, before she saw that Starlight didn’t have a cutie mark. The oldest one, and still no cutie mark? she thought. “I give up,” she said, throwing up her hooves. “What’s your name?”

“Starlight Glimmer,” she answered, looking at the ground instead of her teacher. Sunburst’s name would’ve been hard to guess, too. Unless anyone saw his cutie mark. His bursting sun, giving way to his name. She knew her cutie mark couldn’t be rushed, but she was one of the only ponies without one. The oldest pony without one. Besides Sunburst. Though, he got his cutie mark, already. A bit late, but he had it. It had destroyed their friendship.

“Ah,” Sugar nodded, a smile on her face. “It really fits, doesn’t it?” She walked to the center of the room and got everyone's attention. “Well, let’s move onto spells, shall we?”

Starlight normally would have been interested in this, but the first rules were simple. The stronger your emotions were, the stronger your magic was. Don’t use magic when your emotions are too strong. Don’t use your magic for evil. As if she’d forget rules like those. But she didn’t care right now. All she remembered was that her friend was gone. Her friend who would have loved learning information like this. Not that she didn’t, but Sunburst would’ve cared more. Besides, Sunburst would’ve made her love it even more than she already did.

Starlight went through the day of basic spells, she honestly didn’t care about anything that happened. She stood outside the building and focused on teleporting herself into her room, or at least somewhere close to her house. And she succeeded. She landed on the roof of her house, now worried and scared.

She pounded on the roof, yelling for help. Soon enough, Firelight came outside, lifting his daughter down to the ground. Come to think of it, Sunburst’s magic aura was yellow, while her dad’s was orange. They were pretty similar, and Starlight couldn’t help but think about her (ex)-best friend. Once Starlight’s hooves touched the ground, she ran to her Dad and hugged his hoof. If Sunburst were here, she thought, he would have saved me. Starlight walked into her room, her hooves and legs shaking.

Starlight finished the week with three new spells learned. She decided to rush home so that she could continue practicing spells. She lit up her horn, ready to teleport herself, when she felt a hoof tap her on the shoulder. It was a foal, with three other friends behind him. She felt like she recognized them, but she couldn’t put her hoof on it, not until she heard their voices. Their tough, taunting voices.

“Now, you don’t want to teleport yourself onto the roof again, do you?” the boy said.

Everypony snickered at this, everypony except Starlight. And the girl. She walked up to Starlight, a deep frown on her face. “May bad luck be cast upon you,” she said, untying Starlight’s hair ties, and then ruffling her hair, maybe a bit too hard. So hard that Starlight fell on the ground, a deep cut running against her hoof. It started to bleed, but that wasn’t her main problem right now.

Another foal was a pegasus, and she struck her with a storm cloud. Soon enough, her hair was standing on edge and the area near the back of her neck was burned.

The foals came in all different races, Starlight noted to herself. There was a strong-looking earth pony, a tough pegasus, and a small unicorn, who was probably the nicest. And then there was the girl. Starlight couldn’t tell what she was, other than that she was the clear leader of the group. It looked like she was a unicorn, but her horn was kind of, well, sliced. Starlight backed away as the girl lit her horn, as it fritzed. Starlight didn’t have time to think, so she did the first thing she could think of. She lit her horn, gnashing her teeth, collecting enough energy for a teleportation spell.

The bullies all watched as their leader struck Starlight with her magic. Starlight cried out in pain, and everyone, other than the leader, looked shocked. Cuts surrounded Starlight everywhere, and she even had a slight black eye. The unicorn leader motioned for their group to leave the scene, to leave Starlight alone in the field, where she was in too much pain to move, in too much pain to even do magic. “Help,” she croaked, closing her eyes, falling asleep.

The world looked so blurry, Starlight could barely understand what was happening. All she could tell was that there were a few ponies in front of her, but the most distinguishable one was probably her dad, whose face was right in front of hers.

“Dad?” she squeaked. “Wha-what happened?”

Hearing this, Firelight picked his daughter up and swung her around, hugging her tightly afterwards. “I’m so glad you’re okay!” he shouted, jumping up and down like a foal opening a great gift on Hearth’s Warming. He set Starlight back down on her hospital bed where she could rest.

Trembling, Starlight lifted her left hoof up to where she could see it. It had a terrible scar, a bit of a burn and was kind of ashy. She lifted her other hoof to touch it, but she couldn’t. Mostly because it was numb, but also because it was wrapped in a bandage. “What happened?” Starlight asked again, more shocked and curious than before.

“You got, how should I put this, struck. By magic, force and weather,” a pony with a white coat on explained.

Starlight looked to her right and, surprisingly, saw Ms. Bloom, who was drying her eyes. “I’ve really missed you, Starlight. I’m glad you’re okay,” she added.

“Is there anything I’ve missed? That I might need my hooves for?” Starlight demanded.

“Well, there’s the school play. Lucky that you’re only the stagehoof.”

Starlight sighed and laid her head back on the pillow. She didn’t want to think about anything. But she couldn’t help it. She thought about what might have happened if Sunburst were still in Sire’s Hollow. Then she shook her head. I have to stop thinking about Sunburst. And cutie marks, too. He’s caused me enough pain, I don’t need him in my brain anymore.

Starlight closed her eyes and fell asleep, avoiding anything related to cutie-marks or Sunburst. She was done with that.