Mahiri realizes her mouth is hanging open and screws it shut. Despite not having said anything for the past few minutes, Freya’s more and more frantic retelling has somehow made her feel sympathetically short of breath.

“You just ran away? Without saying a word to your family or anyone?”

It’s hypocritical of her to say that with such shock, a voice inside of her whispers. It’s not like she did all that much more when leaving home. Sure, a cursory goodbye to her mother, but did she listen when she begged her to reconsider? Asking if she was sure she wanted to go so far away, surely there were places for science that weren’t quite so very far, wouldn’t she get cold all the way to the north, would she ever visit…

and Mahiri had said she’d packed a coat, and she’d left.

(and despite it, it is still very cold in Vanhoover.)

“Scared,” Freya says. “Shouldn’t have done it. Don’t know how it happened, but yaks don’t do magic. So if Freya does magic, Freya is…”

She stares at the table again. “Freya is no yak.”

Despite herself, Mahiri lashes her tail and scoffs loudly. “Please. Magic or lack of has no bearing on species ties. For Sparkle’s sake, do you see me doing alchemy in a little wooden hut on the other side of the country? I’m a zebra of science, and I’m no less zebra for it.”

(So she tells herself.)

Freya looks a bit shocked at Mahiri’s outburst. “But…no other yaks can do anything like what Freya did. It’s not…normal. Freya wants to be a normal yak.”

“Normal is overrated,” shrugs Mahiri. “You are so much more than that, Freya. You’re interesting--no, you’re groundbreaking! If we went to Canterlot, showed Princess Twilight the things you could do--”

“No!”

It’s the first time she’s shouted, and it might be Mahiri’s imagination, but it feels as if the room gets significantly colder when she does.

“Don’t want to be…some kind of project. Or experiment. Just want to…go home and have everything be like it was before.”

Freya rests her head on the table. “Didn’t want this.”

Something lances through Mahiri, white-hot, and she realizes after a split-second that it’s the greenest envy she’s ever felt. After all this, after saving her village, and she still wants to be just like every other yak? Mahiri doesn’t even know all the things she’d do to have something like that, something that would make ponies stand up and finally take notice of her. Undeniable, irrefutable evidence that she was talented, and not just because she could mix a potion or two.

All she has ever wanted is to be special, and now she’s learning the creatures that are don’t want to be.

That’s not what Freya wants to hear, though. So she doesn’t say that. Any of it.

“Well. Who knows? Even I haven’t read every book in here. Maybe we’ll learn that you’re not the only yak with magic. Perhaps it’s some sort of recessive trait, wherein yaks used to all be magical but as they used it less and less and relied on their strength more often, it was bred out with the occasional exception--earth ponies have unicorn foals, after all…I have plenty of theses!”

Freya doesn’t look any more cheery. Right. It probably won’t particularly cheer her up to learn that one other yak 200 years ago had magic and then died.

Maybe she should be digging into the other issue, then.

Yuck. That one involves so many more feelings.

“So if you really want to just go home, why don’t you?”

“They all know what happened! They know about the magic, they know Freya isn’t…they know I am no yak. Not the right kind, anyway.”

“Listen. Don’t you all have a whole thing where some creatures can become ‘honorary yaks?’”

“Yes, but…don’t understand connection.”

“Even if we follow your hypothesis here and declare that you are, in fact, not a yak because you can do magic, you’ve been raised by yaks, follow yak customs, and have lived your life as part of a yak family. If you wouldn’t at least be considered an honorary yak, who would?”

Freya looks to consider this, cocking her head to one side as her hair waterfalls down. “What if they still don’t care? What if they want to exile me?”

Mahiri sighs. “Then I will lecture them. I’ll lecture them all, and then they’ll agree to anything just to get me to stop.”

“Zebra is good at talking,” concedes Freya. “It might work.”

Mahiri nods. She is good at talking. She appreciates that someone has noticed.

A thunderous stomping interrupts their conversation. Mahiri nearly dives under the table, thinking it’s an earthquake, but no alarm sounds, so she goes to the window to test her second hypothesis.

It turns out to be correct.

Two large yaks, bigger than Freya but not nearly as furry, are engaged in a loud discussion with a nervous-looking pony who eventually points a hoof in the direction of the library.

As soon as Freya reaches the window, she gasps and ducks under it. “My parents,” she whispers.

Somehow Mahiri had a hunch about this relationship.

“Do you want to talk to them?” she asks, attempting gentleness but possibly hurtling over into therapist-tone.

Freya shakes. “Yes. No. Yes…but what if they’re here to sentence me to exile?”

Mahiri gives her most deadpan stare. She’s spent years perfecting it. “Why would they come all the way from Yakyakistan to tell you you need to stay out of the place you already left?”

“But then why are they here?”

“I’m just throwing this out there, but maybe, just maybe, they’d like to talk about you running out without saying anything, because they love you, and they don’t care if you can do magic or not. That’s just my theory, though. As a rather gifted scientist.”

Freya shuffles her hooves. “Can we go see them…together?”

She looks hopeful. Freya feels safe around her, for some reason. That’s…unusual.

But maybe she doesn’t hate it.

“Sure,” says Mahiri.

She wonders if Freya might still let her write a research paper about her if she leaves out her name and only refers to her as “the subject,” but maybe that’s a question for another time.

They leave the study area, and head towards where Freya’s parents are now arriving.

Author's Note

mahiri is a very fascinating character to be in the head of and i'd like to do more with her another time. she still has a lot to learn, after all!