"See?" Amber gestured to her students proudly. "Bit by bit, they're making real progress. In no time at all, they'll be casting spells easily and learning about magic properly!" She was feeling confident in the success of her endeavor, eager to show off what her pupils had already managed to achieve in such a short time after having received lessons from herself and the other magic users of Maretime Bay including Misty.

Comforting gently clapped her mismatched hands. "Very nice. I'd keep an eye on that one though."

"Coriander?" Amber focused on the filly in question and nodded. "She does push things a little too far sometimes." She went over to the filly at the end of the line and plucked up a book in her magic. "Focus on this and let it float around. Nothing fancy. Just watch it move and see if you can grab it."

A voice from outside called out, "Where is she?! I know she's here!"

Amber glanced up towards the door with a confused frown on her face as she watched a mare storm into the room with fire in her eyes and an agitated twitch to her tail. She had an expression of pure anger on her face as she stood there suddenly upset before pointing a hoof at Coriander with a harsh accusation in her voice as she shouted out accusingly, "You!"

Amber didn't know what to make of this situation but she'd have to handle it quickly before it got out of hoof as she trotted over to the mare to meet her halfway and greet her politely in a confused tone, "Can I help you?"

"Yes, you can!" She pointed at Coriander. "I forbade her from returning here! Why is she here? She already hurt herself once before! If you don't stop teaching ponies magic—"

"Ma'am." Amber slipped between the two. "Calm down and explain yourself."

Coriander trembled behind Amber in fear as her mother berated her for her past magical mishap. "It was an accident."

"An accident that had you home, crying, the whole evening!" She stomped the floor with building anger. "And now you're back?! To hurt yourself again?! With new spells?!"

Amber could tell this was about to escalate far more than she was prepared for and quickly glanced towards Comforting for guidance on how to calm the situation down but Comforting's silence didn't give her any sort of direction or help whatsoever. It was up to her. "She made that choice herself. Ponies have accidents, doing a lot of things. It hurts, we cry, but we also have to get back up, and decide what to do. Your daughter—"

"Is a little foal! And you should have known better than to let her come back here!" She grabbed Amber's hoof. "We forbade it!"

Amber struggled to free herself from the grip. "You didn't talk to me."

Worse yet, she could see other ponies joining to see what the noise was about, some of them making noises of support for the mother. The temperature in the room started to drop rapidly.

The mother stepped back, waving a hoof dramatically at the room. "How did you even manage to make a whole library for magic? It was only recently you were locked up in your own basement!"

Amber blinked at that. "What? This is a normal library. We just offer—"

"Offer lies! And tricks! And trouble!" The mare spun around dramatically to glare at everypony else there. "Unicorns should know better than to try playing with magic again after what happened last time!"

That got Comforting's attention. "Last time?" She darted through the air to hover over the mare. "Please, do tell us about 'last time'."

The mare gulped at that imposingly large creature floating overhead. "Um." She shuffled nervously from hoof to hoof for a moment before blurting out an explanation, "Just ask anyone!"

"Ah." Comforting grinned as she leaned in closer. "But I'm asking you." She gently tapped the mare on the nose. "Really, I'd love to know. Please share with the class."

The mare shivered as she answered that intimidating prompt swiftly as she could. "We messed up magic last time! The world burned because of it! So ponies stopped using it!" She then pointed towards Coriander angrily and cried out, "My daughter has suffered enough because of magic!"

Comforting curled around the mother. "The world burned? How dramatic! Not literally, I should imagine, or there would be no ponies around anymore. That'd be awful boring."

Amber cringed at that statement and felt her blood run cold as she suddenly realized that Comforting was saying that exactly as if it had been literal and true instead of merely being said as if it was something clearly ridiculous as an exaggeration for emphasis on just how angry she was about the situation. "Comfs, you're not helping!"

Comforting giggled as she continued, "So! This whole new 'no magic' thing? I have to wonder. Who made that rule? I mean, honestly, you just told me it was a mess last time because ponies got cocky with magic."

The mother went to stomp, but Comforting was in the way. The strange creature had her wrapped up, really. "Look, am I the only one that reads history books?! When Twilight was struggling against Opaline, crazy magic-user she was, she was pushed to the edge, and she took all our magic away to protect us. Our old way of life was destroyed."

Comforting tapped a finger to her chin as she made a long thinking sound. "Hmmm. Interesting! But, I hear this Opaline character has been dealt with. Took a while, sure, but she's no longer an issue. Like your daughter when she made an oopsie, do we just be scared forever, or do we get back up again?"

Amber shivered at that statement from Comforting as it sounded strangely prophetic despite being quite applicable to what was going on in the moment as she continued to listen with baited breath.

Comforting prodded the mare in the shoulder with a fingertip repeatedly as she kept on, "You're making your little one sad. You do see that, don't you?"

"She can't be here!" The mare shoved forward into Comforting, grunting with the effort. "Not after what happened last time! We never use magic again!"

"I got better." Coriander stood up defiantly. "I got better. I'm learning!"

"It could happen again!" The mare lost all sense of self-control as she kept right on ranting and raving about magic in general as if it was a big mistake that never should have happened in the first place and how she wasn't going to allow it again in her daughter's life.

The crowd looked mixed, with some with the mother, and others siding with Amber. And poor Coriander looked ready to cry as she realized her mother didn't believe in her.

Amber could see this turning into a riot quickly and raised her hoof for silence.

No one paid her any heed whatsoever as they continued arguing amongst themselves loudly about whether or not magic should be taught at all to anypony at all. Amber ran her hoof through her mane and shouted at the top of her lungs to get their attention in the most assertive tone of voice she could muster up, "Listen! To! Me!"

The room went quiet, all eyes turning towards her. One pegasus that had been learning to fly hovered in air to gape at her.

Amber gripped the edge of a lectern tightly in her hooves. She let out a low sigh and then began to speak in a clear voice to everypony there before her to address them all as one would address their friends and family members together during a special occasion. "Let me speak. I don't know who started that story about how magic brought ruin upon Equestria."

She waved a hoof over towards Comforting who she could see was looking pleased as punch. "She lived through the ups and downs, but for every down, there was an up. This is the up. Our children need to learn, not be scared to be what they are." She pointed up at her own horn. "We are unicorns! We are magic. Being scared of magic means being scared of the pony we see in the mirror each and every day."

She looked right into the eyes of Coriander's mother. "And all I hear is 'you can't be who you are'. Do you really want that? It's one thing to not be interested in magic yourself. It's another to deny it to somepony else."

The mare let out a low grunt of disapproval but didn't argue the point anymore as she sank to her haunches. "When will this creature let me go?" She glared at Comforting, still coiled about her.

Comforting undid herself, floating back into the air. "Aw. I thought you were enjoying yourself."

The mare snarled as she yanked herself free of Comforting and was instantly surrounded by other ponies on both sides of the argument.

Amber sighed at that, before sweeping her hoof over the class once more. "Now. I'll have your attention for this. This is how magic works!" She gestured towards the board with all the symbols on it. "These are the shapes we make up here." She pointed up at her horn. "These symbols are more than magic. Each one is a little bit of what makes a unicorn what they are."

"But..." The mare shot up with a protest. "I didn't raise my foal to be a unicorn!"

Amber gawked at the mare a stunned moment. "She is a unicorn! She was from the start. She'll always be one. You too! You can like magic, or not like it, but you're both unicorns!"

"But... she..." The mare turned around in place slowly as if confused by this statement of Amber's. "She's a pony. I didn't see any hoofprints from magic when she was born!"

Amber rubbed her face slowly with her hoof and muttered under her breath quietly, "Okay, some basics here." She dropped that hoof and waved at the horn with it. "All unicorns have magic. Even untrained unicorns can glow and pick things up. That's magic! What did you think that was?"

The mother sputtered out, "I... thought that was just unicorn nature?" She wilted a bit at that comment as if realizing just how silly it had been for her to think that unicorns could simply pick things up and glow whenever they felt like it without there being anything unusual. "It's magic?"

"Magic is just a talent. You know who else has magic?" She pointed to that hovering pegasus. "Look at him! Hovering there! That's amazing magic. I'm jealous of pegasi sometimes. They have nice magic."

The pegasus floated lower with a bashful smile on his lips at being singled out so suddenly for something that came naturally to him.

Amber waited for him to touch down again before she finished up her speech with, "Don't get me wrong. What I'm saying is that all ponies are magic. And that magic can do great things, or hurt somepony. It's up to us to learn how to use it properly. That is what we're doing here."

"What if somepony gets hurt?"

Amber gave her a solemn nod as she answered in a firm voice, "Then we try again, but we do it safer next time." She pointed at the board. "These are the basics. Your daughter taught us that we have to go over safety steps before even then. She taught us a valuable lesson. Thank you, Coriander. I hope you keep learning with us." Amber held out a hoof, and soon had a filly tucked into her arm to hug gently. "I'm very happy to have you here."

The filly nuzzled against her neck happily at those words from Amber and the apparent acceptance from her teacher after what had happened with her mother showing up to interrupt lessons like that.

The mother let out a tense sigh. "I'll be keeping an eye on you."

Amber smiled at that. "You could attend too." She pulled back from the hug and placed Coriander down gently onto the ground once more as she gazed over at her mother hopefully.

The mother shrank back as she glanced over towards the other students and then shook her head no, "I think I'd be better off sitting in the back. But I'll be watching!"

The crowd dispersed, the drama seeming to have run into its end. But the class gained one new member, a chaperone.

Author's Note

Ponies are magic! But I thought friendship is magic? Ponies are friendship? The math checks out.

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