Starlight slowly sipped from her fresh hot cocoa, eyes wandering over her eager students. "I see we have a new face" She tapped her hooves together, leaning forward with her eyes on the unicorn. "You understand, this is a course on how to perform magic without a horn, right? I don't want to discourage anycreature from expanding their arcane knowledge, mind. I just want to know if you know."

Lucky Charm gave a firm, resolute nod. "I know!" She waved her hoof over everyone else. "I'm here to help, and I can help better if I see what they just learned. Besides, if we have somecreature who actually knows how unicorn magic is supposed to work, it might help them understand where they're messing up, or make it easier to adapt our spells and such to their ways."

Ariel blinked at that. "That's actually a good idea." She turned to Ocellus. "We should have asked you."

Ocellus colored. "I'm learning magic too. I never really did that much with it." She pointed at Lucky. "I like the idea of somepony that already knows magic fairly well doing that."

Starlight nodded firmly. "Well, then let's begin." She tapped the book in front of her with her hoof. "You have shown you can not only toddle, but even walk, magically speaking. You are walking confidently down the sidewalk of magic knowledge, and I can't be prouder! You've learned several spells, one away from your teacher, mastered them, and used them. Of course, I didn't expect less. The creatures here aren't ones to let a little thing like being from a race that doesn't do magic stop them from doing magic." She laughed tensely at that, fully aware of how amazing the situation was.

"As spellcasters, you could walk out that door, never talk to me again, and expand your knowledge at your own pace. If my job was to get you up on your feet, It's done, you're walking. But, I feel, there is a critical next step that could reshape Equestria as a whole, and help many other creatures who aren't in this room." Starlight nodded firmly, her horn glowing dimly.

Gallus tilted his head to the side curiously. "Wait, hold up. You're not trying to teach every creature magic, are you?"

"Not every creature, but the ones who want to know, deserve to have that chance, do they not?" Her horn got brighter as she brought over several floating books. "These are journals, for you. I want you to write down the spells you've learned, in a way that is natural for you, not unicorn notation. They will be what future curious souls look towards when they're just toddling along. You should include what you felt, thought, and did as you learned to magically crawl. Help the next creature." She placed a book before each of them, minus Lucky.

"I don't have one for you, I hope you understand. Unicorns already have entire libraries of magical books." Starlight flashed an apologetic smile. "I'm sure you've read some of our books."

Lucky laughed and shrugged that off easily. "Well, yeah, I've read plenty."

Silverstream waved at Lucky. "I hope you read ours when we finish." She drew out a quill. "When we finish. Hm, what should I start with? Oh! Duh, the start." She got to scribbling busily.

Gallus opened his book and flipped past the pages to the middle. "I want to do a few before I decide where this one goes. Let's do the toot spell." And he started penning the toot spell, as he saw and felt it. It was, so far as any of them knew, the first griffon spell put to paper.

Starlight applauded gently as her students got to work, some faster than others, but they were soon all writing. "Of course, if you have questions, you can ask. I am still your magic tutor." She stroked a hoof along her snout. "And, while we're at it, I want to try something. Some of you already had magic, and I'd like you to learn to use it."

Ariel inclined her head. "If we already have the magic, don't we already use it?"

Starlight gestured to Ariel with a hoof. "Yes, but you're not trained to use that magic in any other way than your innate ability. Take you, for example. You can transform into a sea pony, and back, easily."

Ariel flickered, becoming a sea pony flopped on the dry ground. "Yep!" She turned back into the more land-adapted form, smiling.

"But." Starlight rolled her hooves. "Twilight told me Queen Novo used that same crystal to transform her and her friends into sea ponies. Learn to use that magic like that, turn it into a spell, that you can cast. That will be the first hippogriff spell, by a hippogriff, for other hippogriffs."

"Oh." Ariel colored. "That sounds a bit harder than what we've been doing."

Starlight nodded. "If you just want to walk, I couldn't rightly blame you, most unicorns stop at walking, if they even get that far. Some look at crawling as far too much effort." She looked to Lucky. "Have you ever penned an entirely new spell?"

Lucky's wide widened. "No! Wait. I did modify that spell, does that count?"

Starlight leaned over her desk. "That wasn't a nice modification, but I am glad you all have worked that out. That does count, a little. In terms of spell-creating, that would be the crawling step. Walking would be using a spell as a way to make a similar spell. Running would be an entirely new spell."

She flopped back in her seat. "Which does mean I'm asking you to run, Ariel. I'm not asking for this quickly. I'm not even insisting you finish, just that you try your best, and I will be, continue to be rather, so proud of you."

Ariel's cheeks colored at the praise. "I want to try it." She lifted her hand and crystal. "Let me feel it." She closed her eyes, fingers curled around her crystal as she turned into a sea pony. "There's a pull, a push." She returned to her normal form. "Like the spells you taught us, but different."

Gallus chuckled at that explanation. "That covers about nothing, but keep trying." He elbowed Ariel gently. "We're with ya."

Ariel nodded once, smiling at them. "Thanks, everycreature." She looked over to Ocellus, considered something, then wrote something else down in a tepid scrawl. "Okay, actually, I think I'm doing this out of order." That got the others looking at her. "What? We should, you know, define what magic is for us, maybe make our own magic alphabet and explain what each letter means, to us, before we make a new spell that would need to be written somehow that makes any sense at all!" She threw her hand up, quill waving in the air.

Starlight hadn't believed she could smile more, but her grin spread to new volumes. "Spoken like a true wizard. Ariel, I look forward to every bit you come up with." She slid down to her own hooves. "Lucky, if you'd come with me as they work?"

Lucky Charm started at the sudden invitation, but nodded quickly. "O-of course." She followed alongside Starlight.

They left the studious line of scribbling creatures and walked down the hallway. "I know this has to be at least a little boring. We're not covering new magic today, but you came with good intentions, and I want to make it worth your time. So! I was thinking, maybe I could show you a new spell, and you can share it with them, when they're ready for it and not in the middle of writing a lot."

Lucky gasped. "I can? But I'm not one of the students!"

Starlight waved her off with her hoof, smiling warmly. "Yes you are. You attend this school, and you're at this class, so you are one of my magic students."

Lucky grinned at that. "Thank you!" She blushed at her own eagerness. "I mean, thanks, teach." She giggled with growing excitement. "What kind of spell? Oh! How about teleportation? I always wanted to do that one."

Starlight chuckled softly. "That is a very advanced spell, Lucky. I don't want you to hurt yourself, and there's plenty of room to hurt things with that spell. I want to help everycreature learn how to run. That means not letting them trip while running, right?"

Lucky huffed softly, but stayed at Starlight's side. "Alright, but then, what are you offering?"

Starlight glanced to a nearby door, a spare room, and pushed it open. "I thought we could make some use of the chalkboard." She grabbed some chalk with her magic on the way in. "You've learned the entire alphabet and how to read magic, I presume?"

"Of course! I'm not bad at magic, Miss Glimmer, honest!" Lucky went in front of the board and started to write out a spell from memory, one that had taken her a moon of work, her very first.

Starlight smiled at the simple spell, reading over the runes. "That looks like it'd find something?"

Lucky bobbed her head. "I used it whenever I lost my lucky hat, and it'd find it."

Starlight gently plucked the chalk from Lucky and wrote another spell. This one was more complex. She turned back to Lucky with a smile. "Then you'll like this one. This is the advanced version of the same idea. Cast it with a clear image in your head of an object, and your horn will become a beacon, leading you towards it. You can even feel how close you are with this!"

Lucky's eyes went wide as she stared at the new spell. "Wow," she got out breathlessly. "That's amazing!" She pulled out her own spell book and got to copying the runes on the board. "I'm going to start practicing this right away."

Launching herself at Starlight, she hugged the teacher tight. "Thank you!"

Starlight smiled softly and hugged Lucky back. "Of course. Keep being friends with them, I'm sure you all can learn something from each other along the way." She rubbed away the letters, clearing the board and setting things back where they belonged. "Let's go back and see how they're doing."

They returned to find all of her students hard at work, many of them muttering or flipping through pages as they worked on their spell books. Gallus was flapping in the air, upside down as he scrawled. "The wind is like..." he muttered as he tried to put what he felt into words somegriffon else might understand.

Silverstream was on the floor, her wings out as she rocked side to side, quill in hand. "You know, we're lucky.

Ariel perked at that. "How so?"

Silverstream lifted her crystal. "Ours is focused, like unicorn horns. We can be just as, you know, focused in writing about it."

Ocellus chuckled. "That would be nice. My magic is all over." She rubbed at her own horn slowly. "But it is how I knew what to do, and how others will." She swept down her body. "I can have a horn, but the magic isn't just from it. Changelings can do magic in any shape."

Yona was the only one who wasn't writing, just watching the others.

Starlight noticed this and trotted over to her. "Hm, it just struck me, but you're not normally part of this class, Yona. What brings you by today?"

"Want to see friends be good at stuff." Yona smiled warmly. "Magic more special for them because harder to get." She pantomimed hugging the air as if hugging any of the hard workers. "Yona proud of hard work. Not see why need magic, but proud for them."

Ariel beamed at that, but didn't stop working. "Thanks, Yona."

Gallus laughed at the yak's antics. "We get the Yona stamp of approval." He scribbled a moment. "I'll take it."

Silverstream nodded firmly, but paused as she stared at the pages. "I don't know what comes after the first bit."

Ariel slid in closer, the two working together on the hippogriff notation.

Starlight threw an arm around Yona. "That's really nice of you. You are all such good friends, and a good friend is a big help when learning something new, magical or not. Sometimes you feel like you just want to hurl your book out a window and scream into a pillow, and a friend can help you get past that."

Ocellus looked up at that. "I, um. My family was there for me." She smiled at the memory. "When I wanted to give up, they made me feel better, and I got past it." She nodded slowly. "The next day, I had figured it out."

Smolder chuckled at her. "I don't trust random dragons to do much but laugh at me if I freak out in front of them. Fortunately for me, I have some quality friends around here." She snatched Gallus from the air to deliver a one-armed hug. "Right?"

Gallus squirmed his way free. "Hey, no distracting me!" He snatched his book back and scribbled.

Smolder smirked, looking quite pleased with the reaction she provoked. "Now, about dragon magic. Dragon's aren't huge on books. For one, they tend to be flammable." She waved the still-empty journal she had. "For two, half of them don't bother to learn to read. So how do I put this down in a way a random dragon could get something out of it?"

Starlight nodded slightly at that. "A good question." She considered this a long moment. "Well, to start, surely there's some way dragon's record things they want to keep around? What do they do when something important needs to be remembers?"

Smolder made a show of thinking about it. "Well, they, uh, carve stuff into rocks?"

Starlight applauded at that. "There we go. If you can write it like the rock carvings, and later we can copy it into actual rocks? We might end up being able to help more than just a few dragons. Imagine it, a whole rock wall with your magical notes carved into them."

Smolder got a grin of her own at that. "That'd be pretty cool, actually." She started writing with a gained zeal. "Go down in history as the dragon that wouldn't stop carving in that dang wall." She laughed at the image. "But if even one dragon actually got something out of it, that'd be pretty great."

Silverstream was still writing, but she paused to look up towards Smolder and then the others. "You're all such great friends!" She giggled, resuming her scribbles. "Does this look right?" She pressed her words in front of Ariel, prompting some back and forth on what hippogriff magic should look like, there on a paper.

While the writing continued, Starlight put her eyes on Yona. "You know." Yona looked to her. "Being such a proud and powerful creature, I imagine yak magic is probably pretty amazing."

Yona huffed at that. "No magic. Yona is not proud of that." Yona drooped slightly at the comment.

Starlight leaned in over her desk, a sly smile on her face. "Learning magic is pretty hard. Maybe too hard for a yak?" The calculating look on her face was hard to miss, but Yona wasn't looking at that.

Instead, Yona's eyes were wide, and she stomped her hooves down hard on the ground. "Yaks are best! We can do anything we want!" She glared up at Starlight. "Anything."

Starlight grinned brightly at that. "Oh, that's just great! I look forward to seeing how you, a mighty yak, manage your very first steps into the magical realm." She offered a hoof. "I'd be honored to help with that."

Yona blinked. "Wait." She considered the situation, looking from Starlight and then at the other students, all busy writing their notes. "You trick Yona. Yona not sure how." She sank to her haunches with a thump. "Magic is hard. Magic not hard like push. Yona good push. Hard different way. Push not help."

Starlight sighed at that, sitting beside Yona and putting a hoof around her shoulders. "Yeah, magic is hard. It's hard in a way that's hard you can't just shove it. It's hard up here." She tapped at her own head. "But you're not dumb, Yona. I'm not fooled for one second. Just because you're still new at Ponish doesn't make you dumb. You have big ideas."

Yona grunted and glanced away. "Yona not smart like pony or griffon."

Gallus clicked his tongue and fired a finger gun at Yona before getting right back to his writing.

Yona huffed softly. "Magic all think."

Starlight nodded once. "It's about thinking, yes. But that doesn't mean someone can't help you out with it." She considered, eyes going skywards. "Besides, it's not just thinking."

"It not?" She looked over. "What else?"

Starlight rolled her hooves over one another, an ear going to the side. "It's about your body. There are forces moving around in there, and you have to be tough and decisive, in there, to get it in the right places." She gave a winning smile at that.

Yona blinked slowly. "Not just think?"

"Yak magic won't just be thinking. I feel sure of that." Starlight patted Yona's considerable side. "You have to find it, but I'm 100% certain yak magic will be physical."

Yona sat up at that, raising her hoof. "Yona can do physical!"

Starlight smirked at that. "Then don't let me hold you up. Your friends will be happy to help you start."

Being mentioned, they all looked up at that, and were quick to swarm around Yona.

Ariel rubbed at Yona's shoulders. "You know what? If I could learn, so can you."

Smolder laughed with a wicked smile. "I don't know yaks for giving up. You can do this, Yona. I can give some tips."

Gallus shrugged nonchalantly as he looked over their progress. "Yeah, I'm game. Muscle magic? That'd be pretty yak."

Silverstream gave an enthusiastic nod and wing wave. "That'd be something great! I bet your tribe would be so proud if you came back knowing magic!"

Yona grabbed those closest, Ariel and Silverstream, giving both hippogriffs a terrifically tight squeeze. "Yona lucky have good friends. Yes! Yona find yak magic, bring home."

Ocellus smiled warmly at that. "That'd be really amazing." She offered Yona a book. "I read this when I was first learning. Um, actually, my mom read it to me. Maybe it'll still help you out?"

Yona took the book in hoof. "Thank you." She looked over the words. "First, Yona need to know how Yona's body works."

Ariel backed up, catching her breath from that great hug. "Yona already knows how her body works." She shook herself out. "It works pretty well! The trick is getting some of that strength from in there." She pointed at Yona. "Out here." She pointed away.

Ocellus sat beside Yona, opening the book. "There are lots of ways magic works, some of it is inside of you, some of it is outside. Changeling magic might be closer to what you're looking for, since we had to not assume we always had a horn ready."

Yona nodded at that and sat in front of Ocellus. "Okay. How first part work?"

The two began sharing and experimenting. Changeling magic wasn't going to be yak magic, but the ideas and techniques seemed to be helpful to Yona. Things settled as the two worked diligently, and the others tried to continue their writing.

Startlight clopped her hooves together. "You're all doing great! I'd love to keep you all here and in the flow, but I do need to see other students. Come on back later. I am so proud of you all I don't even have the proper words for it. But keep practicing, all of you, and keep up the writing. You're making great progress!"

Silverstream lifted a wing. "But, I'm not even halfway done."

Starlight shook her head. "I didn't expect halfway done. You are free to continue, but I am the school counselor and I have to get back to that. Other students need my help you know." She gently shooed her magic students away.

Ariel was one of the last to move. "I'll get it done. This is important, I can see why it matters." She rushed up to hug Starlight about the neck. "Thank you so much!" Then she fled after the others with a bright smile.

Silverstream laughed happily. "I am so excited for you, Yona!"

Yona gave a confident smile at that. "Yona figure out yak magic. Wait and see." She flexed an arm hard.

Gallus pointed at the air. "I want to get that book into a form that can be copied before I start on spells again. It'd be amazing if it caught on. Imagine, griffons with magic, like that was just a normal thing?"

Ariel grinned at that. "Well, when you put it that way..." she thought about her own crystal. "Hippogriffs are walking around with this magic bauble, it'd be nice if they could all use it." She gripped the gemstone tightly, focusing on the push and pull of the magic in her. "I'm going to make a new spell."

Silverstream nudged her from the side. "We're barely learning how to cast spells we're given. You're going to skip to making your own? Can you even do that?"

Ariel looked into the heart of the crystal. "I'm going to try."

Smolder huffed a bit of flame. "Big words, but what are you actually trying to do?"

"I want to turn somecreature else into a hippogriff, or seapony." Ariel gave a firm nod at that. "This already knows how to do that." She jiggled her crystal. "The trick will be telling it to do that, and aiming it. It'll be a hippogriff spell, for hippogriffs."

Gallus nodded firmly. "I like it. You keep talking like that, I'll have to come up with a good first spell too." His eyes narrowed. "But only after I finish getting down the basics. I will not be distracted, even by my special somegriff."

Yona raised her hoof. "And Yona find yak spell after learning what book says!"

Ocellus inclined her head at Yona, but failed to find words to properly approach that. A deflection? "After you find yak magic?"

"Yes." Yona nodded as if that was all obvious. "Learn yak magic, then yak spell." Her smile faded. "Yona not sure if yak spell good for other creatures." She shook her head. "Yona learn good spell!" Apparently sure of herself, she charged ahead.

As a unit, they filtered into their room. Each was determined in a slightly different way, but all unified in the larger goal.

Smolder was the first to speak. "So, I'm going to see if I can write all my notes in rock and then make a copy."

Ariel sat up. "Oh, good idea. Just to see if it can be copied without mistakes, right?"

Smolder gave a quick nod. "Yep." She tapped her book. "But I think it's going to be different, writing the same idea in different ways."

"I bet." Silverstream leaned over the side of her bunk. "You magic is all rawr and fwoosh!" She pantomimed the best she could belching out flames. "Very different from hippogriff magic, but still amazing!"

"Yona wonder how yak magic work." Yona held a hoof up and considered it. "Not just think, body too."

Smolder rubbed her snout. "Well, yaks seem to really let loose when they smash something. It's, you know, their thing. Maybe you could find magic in that?"

Yona nodded once. "Yak smash good." She put both hooves down, eyes closing with focus. "Maybe smash special?" She huffed, trying to think of what think she could need to smash, and in what way, to unleash the power of yak magic.

Author's Note

Our brave wizards in training set off in bold new directions, but what about those who could follow after them?

Join the special community of folks who like my stories and/or get your own here at atreon!

Don't want to do an ongoing thing? You could

Join my discord to chat!