Weaklings

“First things first, Sweetie Belle, you have to know something.” The lilac unicorn coughed a few times, her voice turning more official. “Hi. I am Starlight Glimmer, and I can’t cast common unicorn spells, just like you.” She put her hoof from her chest back on the ground and smiled. “Should I Pinkie Swear about that, or are we good?”

Sweetie Belle slowly nodded, her mouth slightly open. She made an effort to close it and look professional, as far as the lean, long-legged, teenage pony could do that.

Despite that, her first word was simply, “What.” Her second try, seconds later, was more successful. “My sincere apologies… I trust you, Starlight. I do still want to become your student, but forgive me for being flabbergasted.”

“And you should be,” Starlight narrowed her eyes and lowered her tone ever so little. “This is a guild secret between you and me. You say nothing about it unless everypony present is already in the know. That means no parents, no sister, nopony at all.”

She saw Sweetie’s big eyes slowly filling with tears. With a deep sigh, she conceded, “Well, you can share with the Crusaders, I guess? Under the same condition, and you are responsible if they spill the beans.”

Sweetie nodded and smiled, much more relaxed now. “But will you tell me more?”

“A moment.” As far as Sweetie could notice, no spells were cast. Yet, the interior of Starlight’s room parted: the bed, the big kite, and the cabinet moved to the left, the desk and the frost-glazed window at the opposing wall shifted to the right.

In the space that was not there a second ago, Sweetie saw the impossible blue of the widest sky, the green hilly ground full of lush grass, and the daisy wheels scattered in abundance out to the horizon. The warm summer breathed at Sweetie Belle through the uncovered veil, and she sneezed both from the bright light and the rich smells entering her nostrils.

Not a second later, both unicorns disappeared beyond the closed veil, and the small house in the midst of the winter went quiet and lightless once again. The guardian spirit of Starlight’s house shifted in their sleep but did not awake.

Sweetie groaned and dropped her head on a spread of the book. The angular runes were not coming together, however she pushed for understanding. She learned that this rhombus meant a limited space, and that this straight line which meandered back was decay, slowed, but however she tried, the pair was not coming together to form a common food preservation spell.

She was the last in her class to learn telekinesis. Even that simplest spell was still troubling her now, in her twelfth year of life. She had no power to lift a full teapot: her hornfield flickered, and she felt awfully exhausted after just a minute of holding the teapot suspended.

Sure, she was precise and sensitive. It was easy to find a couple of lost needles that Rarity accidentally dropped, or to find a book on a full library shelf because she felt the font on its cover. But how did it matter if the knowledge in the book was out of her reach?

“You will never be a powerful unicorn,” the dark-mantled headmaster of Manehattan’s magic school told Starlight Glimmer after a brief examination of her abilities. Collating spells from elementary sigils: zero out of ten. Magic power: one out of ten, enough to keep a few pebbles up. Capacity: one out of ten, as these pebbles rolled around, knocking on the wooden floor, in less than a minute of Starlight’s telekinetic hold. Precision: surprisingly, nine out of ten, as the little filly was capable of writing three different sentences on three chalkboards at once. The total result: obviously, a disaster.

There was no chance for admission to the school. Starlight understood that. There was nothing to lose either — no other school would accept her, with or without Manehattan’s blacklist.

She lashed out at the examiner, “No, I won’t go! I won’t! I have to reach Sunburst! You fool, you won’t even try with me, will you? Because you’re lazy, cowardly—” She burst into bitter tears, and the further, probably unfair, insults were lost in sobbing.

Only after a minute did she notice that she wasn’t being dragged out of the classroom and that the examiner was smiling ever so slightly.

Two unicorns stood side by side in the never-ending summer. A small village, like Ponyville itself, lay just at the bottom of a gently rolling hill. Chimneys were smoking, and the central square had a spired town hall.

Sweetie breathed in. She felt peaceful, safe, and content. Sure, this land had a toy city vibe, just like a game set she got for her fifth birthday, but for the first time since Sweetie understood that she was weak at magic, she wasn’t worried about it.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Where time runs fast.” Starlight smiled. “Your friends will see you tomorrow. We, in the meantime, will have a couple of years to make you– not a powerful unicorn,” Starlight winced, “but an insightful one instead.”

“What do you mean?” Sweetie asked, but this time less surprised, much more hopeful.

“Ponies as a species have existed for a long time. Even before the tribe unification, ponies were there for many thousands of years, hundreds of generations. Unicorns understood early how important it is to transfer knowledge.”

Sweetie nodded, still at a loss of where Starlight was going.

“When you “learn” a spell, you actually get a prepared spell. One collated many generations ago but adapted for your body, your mind, yourself. Unless you are a weakling, in which case you are out of luck. The adaptation breaks at you. You cannot learn spells like all other unicorns do.”

“Why?” Sweetie breathed. “Why haven’t they counted for me then?”

Starlight held the answer for a moment. She smiled. “Somepony has to write new spells.”