Hobby Horse

The grand, towering crystal doors of the Castle of Friendship’s library were closed. The gateway to boundless magical knowledge, nearly every tome and grimoire Starlight could have desired, was locked and sealed and spelled shut. They nearly gleamed with the force of magic that had been poured into securing them.

Starlight estimated five minutes at most for her to break in.

Not that she would, of course. Breaking into restricted areas in her first week of turning over a new leaf would definitely be a bad look. Even if the restriction was ridiculous nonsense.

It wasn't fair at all, really. After years upon years of denying herself, she had finally embraced her cutie mark, finally accepted her deep and unshakeable love of the magical arts. She had a new mentor to guide her, and the library, oh the library. Her jaw had hit the floor the first time Twilight had shown her the library. Rows and rows of bookshelves like towers, like the vaunted skyscrapers of Manehattan. Twilight hadn't even been able to tell her where half the books came from, most had just appeared alongside the castle. The mystery only made Starlight more eager.

But she had been shut out! After days straight in the library, not even starting to make a dent in that endless collection, and Twilight had come along and kicked her out! All for a ‘friendship lesson’ which– Starlight quickly edited the dripping sarcasm out of the words in her mind. She was serious about the friendship lessons, thus foregoing breaking and entering, but getting kicked out of the library still chafed.

She had only just come around on her very own special talent, and now Twilight Sparkle was forcing her to do something else, in her words anything else, anything other than magic that would keep her from stewing inside the castle and inside her own head.

A hobby! Isn't that what her cutie mark was supposed to be? Her big hobby, her main thing, her talent, her identity.

She snorted and kicked a leg to the side, sending a stack of books sprawling. Their titles flashed in her vision as they spun across the smooth crystal floor.

Beyond Your Mark: Enjoying Life Outside Your Talent

Pigeonholed: Breaking Out of Your Box

Hobby Horse: A Pony’s Guide to Trying Something New

They were the only books Twilight had left her outside the library. She couldn't help but roll her eyes. The titles were nearly identical to the sorts of books her dad would give her growing up. The thought made her cheeks burn. Her life would look very different if she had heeded any of the advice in those books before.

Probably, her life would look very different now if she heeded any of the advice in the stack she'd just sent spinning. Her progress on her latest friendship lesson had been halted by one simple fact: she had no idea what she liked to do. Find a hobby was a simple commandment on its face, so Starlight was almost impressed with how thoroughly she had tangled it up in her mind.

She tried to think back to the last time she had gone out of her way for anything that might be considered a hobby. She grabbed for the most recent thing she could find.

Guitar.

She could picture it in her head, the monstrosity of a guitar her dad had bought her for her birthday that year. Six pegs, but a fretboard only wide enough to support three, the ramskull shape with massive horns making it near impossible to hold and even harder to play. A professional would have called it more gimmick than instrument, but that was just how her dad was. Heart in the right place, but always coming up just short with her.

She could still remember how it felt to hold it in her hooves. In her hooves, insistent on that fact, because earth ponies and pegasi played without magic. The best of the best, the legends of rock, played without it. Sure, there were well known unicorn players, a credit to their technical skill, but glowing strings couldn't hold a candle to the showmanship and bravado of a proper strum.

If she was going to be the best, the best of the best, if she was going to defy destiny and fate and achieve a life of her own choosing, she would play with her hooves.

Her amp buzzed warm static, the background bleed of the guitar’s pickups. She could barely reach around the ram’s horn to get at the frets, but her mind’s eye could only see how impressive the instrument would look up on stage, in the shining lights.

She breathed in, anticipating, savoring. She had read every book she could get her hooves on already, she knew everything she possibly could to be prepared for this moment. She hadn't expected her dad to actually pick up on her hints, but somehow, miraculously, he had.

And now, here it was, in her hooves, big and bulky and beautiful. The tool with which she would defy the fate the world had given her, forging a new life. If she succeeded.

If she failed, if she wasn't talented, then that was it.

She breathed out. She pressed her hoof to the frets. She strummed.

It sounded awful.

Her heart lurched.

For one, it was out of tune. Her stupid dad hadn't remembered to buy a tuning pipe with the guitar. She had done her best with a combination of music she knew well enough and a bit of gut feeling, but it was only her best. It was off, and she could immediately tell, and it sat like a rock in her stomach.

She strummed again.

Second, she could hardly fret the strings. The amp rattled the horrible sound of metal scraping metal as she could just barely push the string to the neck. The tone was uneven and even just getting the right strings with her hoof seemed an impossible feat. Magic would have made it simple, but that was the whole problem, it was all too simple to fix it with her special talent.

She strummed once more.

The third, the worst, the amp was loud. She hadn't realized how loud it was, but it shook her bones. Her dad would be able to hear it, she thought. He would hear her trying and failing and he would know that she's not good enough, she would never be good enough, because this wasn't her talent. She felt sick.

There was a screech as the guitar clattered to the floor. Starlight followed it down, curling up next to the amp and letting that warm buzzing hum drown out the sound of her crying.

The guitar Starlight held in her hooves now was much more simplistic. It was sleek and professional and totally unlike Pinkie Pie, who had luckily saved her the trouble of sourcing a guitar and amp just to try it out. Twilight had been right, the party pony owned enough instruments to supply an orchestra.

An anxious current of energy ran through her. Just holding the guitar brought that last memory flooding back in, crystal clear, and all the horrible feelings of inadequacy with it. She forced herself to breathe. Things weren't like that anymore. She wasn't fueled by desperation, by the need to escape from herself and her own talent. She held no stock in success, and thus should not be afraid of failure.

She was afraid anyways. For all that she could summon up that foalhood knowledge, she felt beyond intimidated. It had seemed such a simple thing back then. Just get the guitar, start strumming, change your fate. She had been crushed under the weight of those simple expectations.

Now, it wasn't simplicity that crushed her, but the opposite. With adult perspective, she knew just how much more there was to music, and she hadn't even kept up with it back in Our Town. It was daunting, almost impossible. Where did you even begin? There was certainly far more than just strumming.

Pinkie had told her to play from the heart, but right now her heart felt tight and tuneless.

She couldn't even decide whether or not to use her magic. Highly technical unicorn-style play had seen a surge in recent years, but making the effort with her hooves felt right. It felt humble, it felt like a connection to her old lost self.

She strummed.

It was awful. The strings held their tune but that was the best thing she could say about it. Her hooves could barely keep their places, and she was certain her strumming technique was all wrong. The amp picked up all sorts of ugly bumping scraping noises from the strings.

Starlight didn't care, she wanted to laugh. All the anxiety, all the anticipation, all the sour feelings pumping through her heart, and it had all melted in an instant as she plucked the string and did so terribly. Years and years ago, her dreams had rested on that moment, and so far back in hindsight it was all so ridiculous to her.

She hadn't needed to agonize over escaping fate because her fate had been the one she wanted, if she just hadn't been too impossibly stubborn to realize.

Starlight spent an hour or two that way, plucking, strumming, fretting and laughing at how ridiculous it was that she thought she'd become a rockstar the moment she ran her hoof through the strings.

A part of her wondered why she had ever worried. She had been convinced for so long that her cutie mark was constraining her, that failing at something meant her cutie mark was getting in the way. Her mind wandered, wondering when that began, wondering when she started to give up so easily on everything new to her.

Then she remembered the skateboard.

“Look look, there's that unicorn again!”

“Hey Starlight, trying for another new cutie mark? You'd be better off with a marker and a sticky note, toothpaste butt!”

Starlight did her best to ignore them. That's what Dad said. That's what her teachers said. Just ignore them.

“What's her cutie mark even mean, anyways? It's just a buncha squiggles.”

“Obviously it's magic. Every time a unicorn gets a weird cutie mark it means magic. What else would a unicorn be good for?”

She clutched the skateboard to her chest and eyed down the long hill. She could feel the pressure on her head, the helmet, and four kneepads strapped tight to each leg.

“At least we get to watch her eat hay. Think she'll spill out before the bottom?”

“Won't even make it halfway unless she chickens out with her magic.”

The height of the hill seemed to double before her eyes, vision tunneling, the straight line down seeming to waggle and wave. She wanted nothing more than the other neighborhood foals to go away. Nothing, except a different cutie mark. Her special talent was not magic, and she was not a chicken.

She laid the skateboard down in front of her and nervously set one half of her hooves on top of it. She had read about what to do, so she was prepared as she could be short of doing it. So she just had to do it. And not chicken out. Or fall off. Or use her magic.

She couldn't let herself think any longer. She pushed off. The board began to roll forward, catching over the lip of the incline and slowly tipping past. Just like that, she was off, four wobbly legs planted on one wobbling skateboard that was picking up speed, fast, too fast. She had read about this. She knew what to do, how to slow down, but she couldn't. Her legs felt frozen, rock-solid stiff and welded to the board.

The world around her started to blur as the board picked up more speed still, racing down the hill. She could slow herself with her horn, it would be simple, almost reflexive, and every time she reached for it, she found those harsh words instead.

She was good for more than magic, she could show them.

She grit her teeth and carefully, gently trailed one hoof on the ground. It scraped, nearly sparked, but it did slow her to a manageable speed. She spared a glance around.

Halfway! She was past halfway! She had shown them! She couldn't wait to rub it in their faces at the bottom.

That was when her wheel clipped a pothole.

The board jerked, turned, flipped, sent her flying. She didn't even have time to process how she had gone from a stable ride to mid-air. Instinct kicked in as she braced her hooves to her face and her horn lit. A minty green bubble bloomed around her, bouncing and softening the blow where it struck the road. Another bounce, and another, and her bubble collapsed, spilling her in a pile at the bottom of the hill. Her board thudded to a stop with a shot of pain through her flank.

Distantly, dazed, she could hear laughter.

“What’d I tell ya? Magic is all they're good for.”

The laughter faded away, and she was left there alone, staring into the sky.

This was crazy, Starlight decided. A ridiculous, nonsensical, spur of the moment decision she was now in a position to thoroughly regret. She was far too late in life to be picking up an interest like skateboarding. She knew she was too old, because just that morning she had groaned while getting up from her seat.

It hadn't been on her mind when she had idly asked Rainbow Dash if she owned a skateboard. The only thing on her mind then was mild surprise that Rainbow Dash actually did, since it seemed like the mare had no interest in anything but flying.

The pegasus had been in Sugar Cube Corner when Starlight had returned Pinkie’s guitar. Her attempt at music had been a welcome relief, but music was itself a science almost as arcane as magic, and she had decided that made it a poor choice. She only had so much room in her brain.

The skateboard was, again, spur of the moment. Rainbow Dash had gotten a kick out of Twilight’s latest demand for her student, so Starlight had asked out of pure curiosity. The memory had been fresh in her mind, after all. It had been a matter of about thirty seconds for Rainbow Dash to reappear with a board and helmet for her.

So here she was, in a long open corridor of Twilight’s castle, holding a skateboard. The osmotic accumulation of knowledge that separates mares from foals had informed her of her foalhood self’s simple mistake– going fast down a hill was for longboards, not a skateboard. The slippery crystal floors of the castle were probably less than perfect, but they were flat and open and most importantly empty. Anything was better than an audience.

Two hooves planted on the board, two hooves to the side. She pushed and began to roll, listing off to the side until her other hooves joined their twins atop the board. She was moving. Slowly. Underwhelmingly. It was nothing like the lightning fast exhiliarion she remembered, but then she wasn't going breakneck fast down a hill.

She pushed again, and again, and suddenly she was cruising down the hall, easily faster than trotting speed. Shifting her weight, she managed to bank through one of the castle’s broad corners, hooves pushing her up to speed along this new hallway.

Her surprise at how simple it had been up to this point shifted into ambition. After all, going forward was one thing, but the whole point of a skateboard was tricks. She furrowed her brow, thinking back to how she'd seen ponies jump their skateboards in the past. It really looked like they just…

She balled her magic into a fist and thudded it down on the back of the skateboard. It popped onto its back wheels for a moment, then quickly dropped back to the floor. Not quite.

She shoved with her horn again, this time lifting her hooves as she did, and miraculously, the board followed. She was in the air! She had jumped!

Her thrill was interrupted when she found the skateboard was no longer under her hooves. She didn't have the time to focus her magic to retrieve it. She hit the floor on her hooves, stumbled, flopped to her side, and slid a few extra body lengths down the hall.

Ow.

The board followed shortly after, once again culminating in a bump to her ribs.

Ow. Again.

She hauled herself up from the floor, bruised and thankful for helmets. It had been exhilarating for a moment, but likely not the hobby for her, she decided. It didn't suit her, getting banged up and bruised just to practice a hobby.

Still, it had been nice to use her magic, not for magic’s sake, but in pursuit of something new. Her magic hadn't bailed her out, it had enabled her to reach beyond her means. A complement, not a curse.

A curse. How long had she felt cursed by her special talent?

She knew though. She remembered the kite.

It was simple. Red. Bashed together with sticks and taut fabric, a tail of fishing line studded with hair ribbons. It was a kite, her dad told her, and it would fly.

She didn't see how that could make her feel better. Sunburst had left her, and nopony could tell her when he would be back. A stupid kite didn't matter without him. Nothing did.

Still, she didn't have much choice. Her dad had suggested it, in the way he was always suggesting things she couldn't say no to. He didn't care that her whole world had fallen apart in just a few days. He didn't care that she was terrified to do anything at all, because what if she got her cutie mark and it took her away from him, too. She was convinced he didn't care about her at all.

It was a windy day, chilly and cloudy and grey. The kites needed that, her dad assured her, but she didn't believe him. Birds don't need wind to fly, so the stupid kite should get its act together.

When he handed her the string and told her to run with it, run as fast as she could, she was certain he was just messing with her. She could only run straight on the ground, how would that get the kite in the sky? He was probably going to trick her, use his magic to make it fly.

But she had to appease him, so she took one end of the string, and he took the kite, and she turned away and ran, and he followed. She ran, and ran, and when she was panting and exhausted and right at her limit, she felt a strange tug at the string, just a bit of resistance to her run, a bit of force.

She turned, and her dad was there, but he didn't have the kite anymore. She looked closer, but his horn was dark, quiet. He motioned a hoof up. She looked.

There it was. The kite. Their kite, built by their own hooves without a speck of magic. It was flying, and for a moment, she saw herself up there with it, waving in the wind, far above all the trouble and worry.

She smiled for the first time in days, and ran to hug her father without a second thought. By the time she reached him, his horn was glowing orange. Her first instinct was betrayal, he was doing something after all, he had tricked her!

And then the kite string floated into view, wreathed in orange. In her excitement, she had let go. She gave him the hug she had come for, then sheepishly took hold of the string once more.

The kite was still there overhead, soaring, tugging at its bonds. She could have watched it for hours. She only got about five minutes.

It started with a vague anxiety in her gut. The back of her mind noticed well before she had the conscious thought. The next clue was the look of concern on her father’s face. He was sticking his hoof out, waving it, testing the air. Then, there was slack in the line, and that's when she knew the wind was dying.

It was cruel! It was unfair! She was happy, she was having fun, and stupid destiny had come to ruin it all over again! It was like the world didn't want her to have anything after all.

Well she wasn't going to just let it happen this time! She thought about the wind. She focused on the wind. She shut her eyes and screwed them tight and channeled her willpower into the wind. Her unconscious mind began to shovel magic, pure and raw into her horn as it lit with minty light and sparked and spat.

A bitter, wordless cry ripped from her throat and she poured all that magic into the open air, into the wind that she so desperately needed to beat back the encroaching darkness. The world flashed around her, leaving great rainbow-black spots in her vision.

She felt it before she could see again. The tug of the string, the gentle caress of air through her mane. It was an extraordinary feat of magic, a weighty task even for a practiced unicorn to conjure that much wind, and she had managed it without a thought.

She looked to her kite, high in the sky, and smiled again. She looked to her father. He was looking at her, but not quite at her.

Like there was something on her flank.

She whipped her head around and didn't even notice the kite tug free and disappear into the sky because her dad was clapping and cheering and her life was over. She had gotten her cutie mark. She was cursed.

The kite that lay spread on the table before her was not a perfect replica. Rather than sticks, there were short spars of craft-supply wood in thin tan cylinders. Rather than fishing line and ribbon, the tail consisted of party streamers she had found in a storage closet. Rather than assemble it purely by hoof, she was grown enough to accept using her magic to make things go a little smoother. Still, it was red, and undeniably, it was a kite.

She compared it to the image in the book next to her. She had begged Twilight to grab the specific book from the library for her, and the princess had obliged. Her workflow had been exacting, and her rendition of the barebones basic kite from the book had been created with great care. She just had to hope it would actually fly.

It was a fortunate day that it was appropriately windy by the time she found her way out of the castle’s labyrinth. The sun was low in the sky, threatening to set, and she couldn't help but feel that it was a day well spent. Even if her kite never left the ground, it really had been nice to putter around and try something new, no strings attached.

One string attached, actually, she clutched it in her mouth, lifting the body of the kite in a halo of magic. It was just her, and she had to get it going somehow.

She took off galloping, letting the kite hang in the air, the string pulling tighter and tighter. At the end of its slack, she released the kite from her magic’s hold and ran harder. There was that familiar tug, that resistance that felt so clear in memory.

The kite caught the wind, and it rose, the string pulling back and up with it. Starlight skidded to a halt and turned, half expecting to see the kite lying dragged through the dirt, but it wasn't. It was in the sky, soaring.

She laughed, and in opening her mouth to laugh, the string slid free and the kite attempted to escape into the endless sky. She was still laughing when she caught the end of the string in her magic and tugged it back over to her. It really was that easy. No tricks, no special technique, no deep science to even know where to begin. She just made a kite and flew it.

Her magic held the string, and somehow that was satisfying too. The tugging tension and resistance of the kite in her field felt like stretching a muscle she hadn't known existed. It was somehow better than the tactile sensation of the string in hoof or chomped between her teeth.

There was that feeling again. Giddy pleasure, her magic finding a use for more than just magic for its own sake. It was uncomplicated magic, devoid of creativity or talent, just basic telekinetics linking her to the string.

Starlight wasn't sure how long she sat there, watching the kite wave in the wind, feeling the string pull against the force of her magic. All her life, she had ping-ponged between extremes, all magic or no magic at all. Her friendship lesson in the end, she decided, was one of moderation.

Her whole life, she had resented her cutie mark. It had constrained her, held her back from pursuing anything else, undermined her accomplishments in any other area. She had taken it for a curse, a prescription of how her life must be.

She could see how wrong she had been now. Watching her kite, built with care and precision by her magic, tethered to her by her magic. It wasn't a curse to be dispelled, nor an all-consuming demand on the shape of her life. It was just her, all up to her and how she used it.

She sat there watching the kite until the sun sank below the horizon. She watched until it was nothing but a black silhouette against Princess Luna’s moon. She watched until the wind faded, and the kite sank to the earth.

When she saw Twilight later, she thanked her for the book, and mentioned that she might hold onto it for a while. Twilight smiled at that.