Unexpected Changes

After all of the students arrived and took their assigned seats, in accordance with the instructions on the blackboard, the teacher walked in. "Good morning, students."

"Good morning, Ms. Mayberry," they answered back in unison.

"Oh, come on, we can do better than that. Good morning, students!"

"Good morning, Ms. Mayberry!" they shouted.

"That's more like it." She trotted up to the board and scrawled her name on the left side over her desk. "Now, we have two new students, as I'm sure you've noticed. Everypony, please give a warm welcome to Top Story and Gusty Gale!"

The whole class turned to one of the two seats and clapped for them. It was odd, but it was normalised in their minds at this point.

As the applause died down, Ms. Mayberry started writing on the board. "Before we begin on our first-day assignments, let's quickly go over the curriculum, starting with mathematics."

This year, they would be studying the next two branches of arithmetic. They'd covered addition, subtraction and multiplication, and this year, they'd be working on two different concepts instead of one: division and integers. It had taken a whole year for them to memorise their multiplication tables, and Lily still couldn't belt out the answers in less than three seconds. She was usually right, but she was slower to answer than most, and had only barely passed because of that. She really wished that she was graded on accuracy, rather than speed, but she didn't make the rules.

For language arts, they would be learning how to turn sentences into paragraphs. They had their final exam outlined already, writing a whole three-page essay on language arts and why it was important. It was going to take so much effort to write out three whole pages' worth of words...

Spelling was spelling. They'd learn how to spell some of the most advanced words they'd ever heard, like "anti-inflammatory," and "grandparent," and "intercontinental." There was no telling when those words would show up on their spelling lists, but they would, and even seeing them written out on the board was intimidating. Anti-inflammatory was particularly scary because it had a hyphen. Words could be spelled with hyphens, now, instead of just letters. This was going to be a difficult year.

Their science class, however, brought up an interesting point of discussion. They would start off with biology and anatomy and learning about animals and plants and stuff, then that would go into plant reproductive cycles, then animal reproductive cycles, and then pony reproductive cycles, which they would need signed permission slips from their parents to take part in.

Daisy's hoof shot up.

"Yes, Daisy?"

"Did you say that heat was a part of the reproductive cycle?"

"Yes, but it's not the kind of heat you're thinking of, where things are physically warm, like a fire or a stove."

Daisy shook her head. "It's that thing where your insides feel like they're on fire, right?"

Ms. Mayberry was shocked. "Uh... Yeah, I suppose that's pretty close to what the sensation would feel like. Yeah, we'll be talking about that in the fourth quarter."

"Can we move it to the first quarter? I have a lot of questions about it."

Ms. Mayberry shook her head. "We'll come around to it in the fourth quarter. Don't worry about it too terribly much; none of you are going to be going through your heat cycles until then, anyway. Some "early bloomers" might have their first cycle while we're talking about it, but it's not something you need to worry about right now. Rest assured that, by the time we start to discuss it, you won't be going through it yet."

"Oh, it's not for me, it's for--" she spotted Lily a few desks over, shaking her head vehemently with her eyes very wide. She already was made fun of for not having her cutie mark yet; she didn't want everypony to know that she was going through her heat cycle early. "It's for somepony close to me. They're going through heat, and I'd like to know more about it."

"I see..." Ms. Mayberry sighed. "Unfortunately, there's not much to be done about it. It's possible to mitigate the effects, but that's far more advanced than what you'll be learning. So just wait a bit, and you'll be fine."

It wasn't much longer, going through the rest of the curriculum, and then they set into their first-day projects. It was the same thing every year. They had to use coloured pencils to make a "poster" that they would then use to introduce themselves to the class. Most of them already knew each other, and the new students had seen fit to introduce themselves before class even started, so this project was mostly just a formality, with a little bit of updating their teacher and classmates on what was going on in their lives. These would also be hung from the front of their desks to show who sat where without needing the seating chart.

After that, it was time for lunch, and they'd present their projects after that. Some of them had used gel pens and glitter glue, and some had even used paint. Waiting until after lunch allowed everything to dry, at least a little bit. Plus, they were to wash their hooves and faces before eating and after crafting, so having both tasks running back-to-back just meant that they'd have every reason to wash up right then and there.

There wasn't much to lunch. There never really was. They would go to the tables, pull out their lunch containers, be that a pail, a paper bag, or a box with a famous character on the front, and then they all had something to eat. It was exactly as it would seem.

Except, there was something strange at the table. A smell that ripped through the air as an audible pop reverberated off the walls of the room louder than the crinkling of paper bags. It wasn't a terrible smell, but it definitely turned several noses away and upset some of the weaker appetites. And yet, Lily was licking her lips at the prospect of what she'd just opened.

Snapdragon approached cautiously, her nose covered by her hoof. "What is that?" she asked, her voice muffled.

Lily stuck a fork into the glass jar and pulled out a soft, yellow-orange ovoid. "It's a pickled egg."