The Withering Rose

Introductions

I remember being excited about the idea of school, I was old enough to be allowed outside and to meet others. On the first day it was clear that I had expected something better than what I would find myself in.
Introductions are pretty simple for most young ponies, I was one of the exceptions I guess.

Apparently my family was well known by the local community, as a result of my parents'... issues, the others in my class were warned by their parents to stay away from the filly with a 'bad home'.
They weren't wrong about that but when I was so young, all I wanted to know was why nopony seemed to want to speak to me like they did so many others.

I remember trying a couple of times to get to know my classmates, my attempts never went well and after the first day I naturally became the quiet one, always sitting by myself, spending my time daydreaming.
My teacher was kind enough, she didn't treat me differently than anypony else but it didn't make up for my lack of friends.

Being so young, the classes weren't exactly the most challenging, most of the time I sat around drawing. I'm not going to claim to be some kind of brilliant artist but it was something to do and I remember enjoying it.

After the first day of school I came home feeling rather unenthusiastic and it was clear to my mother that school hadn't gone the way I had expected it to, that night she spent more time with me than usual, she told me stories, made sure I was comfortable and helped me get to sleep peacefully.

I loved my mother.

Time went by and not much of interest happened, we learned a little maths, spelling, history... stuff like that. I remember enjoying geography the most at that age, something about these interesting and unique places I'd never visited or even heard of before fascinated me, I still remember learning about various maps of Equestria and beyond, I had recently been told stories of the Crystal Empire by my mother, when I asked my teacher where it would be on the map she seemed surprised I have even heard of it.
My simple question had sparked interest and discussion in the class, others wanted to know what the Crystal Empire was and why it was no longer on the map, some even asked me questions.

It was brief and wouldn't last long but it was the first time I had felt like I was part of a group, like I belonged in the class.

It didn't take long for everything to go back to normal, well... mostly normal.
There was one filly that continued talking to me after that day, her name was Vivianis, a unicorn who had a light green coat and a darker green mane, her eyes were blue and she even had a cutie mark.
She was one of the first in our class to get their cutie mark and hers was some kind of dark green gem or crystal.

Apparently she was especially interested in what I had asked the day before because some of her family actually lived in the Crystal Empire when it was still around, a great-grandparent or something like that.
It had taken a while but I had finally made my first friend, somepony I was truly happy to be around.

We spent the afternoon drawing various things we liked together, mostly flowers and gemstones.
Having a friend made school so much more bearable, maybe even... fun.
From that day onward we would always work together on group activities, we ate lunch together, talked all the time.
I guess this was what I wanted from school since the beginning.

My mother noticed that I was in a much better mood that night and I told her all about my new friend, looking back on it, she was definitely relieved to hear I had somepony my own age to spend time with.

The next day at school there was a group assignment to present something to the rest of the class; we would need to work in pairs to decide on something we were both passionate about to give a small speech on the subject.
Vivi and I worked together on this assignment of course, our subject was on the Crystal Empire and we began our work enthusiastically.

Over the next week we read all kinds of books but there wasn't a whole lot of information about the topic, we found some useful stuff in the library but we had to ask our parents about all the information we couldn't find ourselves.

The Crystal Empire was and honestly still is pretty interesting to me, the flugelhorn seemed to be a pretty weird instrument and their culture had plenty of unique elements that would make for an fun presentation.
As a filly I found the story of King Sombra to be one of the most interesting aspects of the Crystal Empire, back then I couldn't understand the idea of a ruler who seemingly didn't care for their subjects, choosing power over friendship.
Nowadays it seems I have more in common with Sombra than a 'kind' ruler like Celestia... I wonder what young me would think about that.

When it finally came time to deliver our presentations everypony was pretty excited to talk about the subjects that we were fascinated by.
I remember a pair that gave a speech on the history of Hearth's Warming, another on some old story about the 'Mare in the Moon' and even a presentation on rock farming... I never really understood that one.

When it was finally time to give our own presentation, we stood in front of the entire class, I was a little nervous but I could tell Vivi was much more reluctant to speak than I was.
Vivianis had gone out of her way to speak to the filly nopony wanted to be friends with, after all she had done for me, I was inspired to help her out this time.
I began the presentation, giving a little background information about the Crystal Empire, I continued on my own for a minute or so until Vivi was able to gather her confidence and joined in.

The presentation went well, everypony seemed to enjoy it and the teacher was impressed by how much information we were able to gather on such a niche topic.
It felt great... I felt great...

If it wasn't clear enough already, this moment definitely made it obvious to me.
Vivianis and I were best friends and I never wanted that to change.