A giant mass of roiling shadows was chasing me down a narrow corridor. I reached a dead end. I turned around, cowering as the shadows loomed above me. The last thing I saw before closing my eyes was a pair of poisonous green eyes, laughing as the shadows lunged forward-
Then the bass dropped and I woke up.
“Aaaaaaarrrrgh”
Thankfully my scream couldn’t be heard over the blaring music coming from next door.
“Nooooooooooooooooo...” I put my pillow over my head, trying to block it out, but it was useless.
“And here I was thinking that having a free period first meant that I could sleep in.”
I checked my timetable for the day, it was funny; I’d only been here for a week and it already felt as if I’d been here for years. I groaned when I realized that I had Practical Magic after my free: the reason I was so tired in the first place was that I’d been up most of the night practicing that bloody come-to-life spell. While it had been fun making my possessions declare war on each other, by the time I actually went to bed it was after 3AM, and even then I couldn’t resist making my alarm clock breakdance for a bit.
I levitated my glasses over to my face, accidentally poking myself in the eyes in the process.
“Son of a biscuit” I muttered to myself, rubbing my watering eyes. My Prac Magic teacher, whose name I’d found out was Star Burst, had told me that the best way to get better at magic was to use it as often as possible, this completely contradicted what my father had told me my entire life.
I was about five when I first tried experimenting with magic. I’d just realized how much fun it was to make random things float around the room and my mother was watching on and laughing. She stopped laughing when she heard my father coming home though, and quickly tried to get me to go to my room. I didn’t want to go though, because I was really excited about my magic and wanted to show my father what I could do. He walked into the room and I ran up to him, eager to see how impressed he’d be.
“What’s all this?” he asked, with an annoyed expression on his face,
“Look what I can do dad!” I said excitedly, and then levitated his hat off his head and over to the table.
There was an icy silence.
“...Is that it?” my father asked coldly.
“Gale,” my mother said pleadingly, he silenced her with a glare.
“Comet, go to your room.” Said my father, pushing me towards my bedroom door. I thought about refusing, but the look on his face told me it wouldn’t be a good idea. My father slammed the door behind me, but that didn’t stop me from hearing the argument.
Star Burst surprised us all when he teleported into class that day. That surprise quickly changed to excitement when the class realized what that meant. Star Burst smiled.
“As you may have guessed, the next topic we’ll be working on is teleportation.”
The class cheered loudly,
“BUT,” the class froze “before that we’ll have to do some THEORY WORK!”
The class groaned.
“The notes-“ there was a flash of light and writing appeared on the board “-are on the board; copy them into your books and then do questions 1-10 on page 114 of your textbooks. Get to it!”
“So Comet, how did you go with the come-to-life spell?” Star Burst asked me.
I happily told him of all the things I had managed to make my things do.
“I’m going to stop you right there,” he told me, when I was halfway through a blow-by-blow account of the epic duel I had orchestrated between my red and blue pens.
“It sounds like you’ve really gotten the hang of that spell. I have to admit, I’m impressed.”
It was funny how quickly Drama had become my favourite class. I know it sounds cheesy, but it was the one place at school where I didn’t feel inferior to all the other ponies. Everyone was at the same level in Drama, and it was the only class where I felt like I could talk to other ponies. This didn’t always end well though, as my lack of conversation skills quickly became apparent. Eventually the topics would dry up and I would resort to asking stupidly formal questions, which led nowhere:
“...So what subjects are you doing?”
“Uh, blah, blah and also blah.”
“Cool...so are you enjoying them?”
“Yep.”
Rinse and repeat.
One instance in particular I got so desperate for a topic that I ended up asking one filly which room she was in.
“246” she replied, I nodded absentmindedly.
Then it hit me.
“YOU!” I exclaimed, rounding on her, she looked worried.
“You’re the one who woke me up this morning when I was trying. To. Sleep. IN.”
She looked so absolutely terrified of me that my anger melted away, replaced with an irrepressible urge to laugh at the expression on her face. I let out a tiny laugh, and suddenly she was laughing with me. A few moments later we were both rolling around on the floor with tears of laughter streaming down our faces. And whenever we started to recover, she would pull the same face again and we would dissolve into gales of laughter once again.
Finally we managed to compose ourselves, and I helped the filly up.
“My name’s Vinyl Scratch,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes, “but you can just call me Vinyl, all my friends do”
“Comet Crash” I replied, she offered her hoof and I shook it, wondering if she meant what she said.
If so, I’d just made my first ever friend.
“Do I have to go?” I asked. Cloudsdale wasn’t exactly the most welcoming place, but it was still better than being shipped off to unicorn boarding school.
“Yes you have to go.” said my mother, fluttering around my room, packing all my things into a massive suitcase. “It’s time you started learning how a unicorn is meant to behave. Besides, I thought you always hated it here?”
“Well yeah,” I replied reluctantly, “But that doesn’t mean I wanna spend the next four years stuck with a bunch of stuck-up unicorns.”
“Comet,” said my mother sternly, flitting over to look me in the eyes, “Your father and I are paying a substantial amount to send you to one of the best unicorn schools in Equestria, you could at least try to be enthusiastic.”
I rolled my eyes. My mother huffed at me then pointed at the suitcase,
“Could you get that please?” I frowned and concentrated: magic had never come easily to me. Other than the cloud-walking spell -which I had known since I was old enough to actually walk- all I could manage was basic telekinesis, and it got trickier the heavier the object. Finally, I got the suitcase in the air and took one last look around my depressingly bare room before walking out the door towards the balloon that waited to carry me towards Canterlot and my new life.
Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns read the sign above the gates.
‘Seriously?’ I thought to myself, ‘even the name of this place is pretentious.’
“I’m not sure about the ‘gifted’ part, to be honest.” I said to my parents, who were standing behind me. My mother looked uncomfortable, but my father just laughed.
“Nonsense son,” he said jokingly, “any unicorn I can put up with for so long has got to be gifted.”
“Besides,” my mother said nervously, “When they heard how long you’ve been able to do that cloud-walking spell they said they’d be happy to have you.”
I still wasn’t convinced, just how advanced were my classmates going to be?
“Well, let’s get you settled in so we can get back to Cloudsdale as soon as possible.”
“Now, you’re sure you’re going to be alright?” my mother asked.
“Of course he is!” boomed my father, “Let’s go!”
They said their goodbyes and left, my mother fare welling me tearfully.
“We’ll write every week!” she promised, and then departed.
I looked around my oppressively small room, which was barely big enough to fit a bed, a desk and some drawers.
“Well, I guess I should get used to this, since I’m gonna be here for a while.” I said to myself, and started unpacking my suitcase.
I was woken up by my blaring alarm at 7am the next morning. I turned it off groggily. For a second, I wasn’t sure where I was, and then it all came rushing back. I groaned, remembering that today was when I started my classes. I rubbed my eyes and started getting ready for my first class, which was History of Magic.
I entered the classroom with trepidation; History wasn’t a subject I’d had much experience with. I knew the basic history of Equestria of course, but I had skimmed the textbook last night, and it had been all about the history of unicorns and magic. I sat down next to a mint green filly who had her nose deep in a book called ‘Is Man a Myth?’
“Um, hi.” I said; she didn’t even twitch.
“Alright class, settle down,” said a stern-looking mare with a scroll cutie mark as she walked into the room. “Lyra, put that away. Vinyl, take those...things out of your ears. Now, let’s begin.”
“Today we will be looking at some of the early works of Starswirl the Bearded.”
The whole class groaned.
I got more and more lost as the class went on; I had never even heard of this pony. Clearly I was going to have do some reading on my own. I made sure to take notes on everything the teacher said though.
I was similarly lost in Magical Theory, as the teacher talked of concepts far beyond what I understood. I was glad when the bell rang for lunch, but nor for long. I got my food in the cafeteria, and then l looked around for somewhere to sit. I couldn’t find one anywhere; it seemed as if every pony was in their own clique, and none to eager to let another pony in. Eventually I just went to an empty table and ate by myself. After an excruciatingly long time eating on my own the bell rang for the start of the class I had been dreading the most: Practical Magic.
The class was chattering excitedly as we entered the Practical Magic classroom. Apparently the other unicorns saw this class as a break from the boredom of normal lessons and a chance to do something fun. A cheerful-looking stallion with three yellow stars on his flank greeted us.
“Don’t get too comfortable class.” He said, smiling “Today will be a practical class.”
I could almost hear the class cheering in their heads.
“I’m sure you’ve all heard of come-to-life spells, yes?” everyone in the class nodded, I sank slightly lower into my chair. “Good, because today we’ll be looking at the practical applications of that spell.
I stared forlornly at the tiny wooden pony I was supposed to be animating, trying to block out the laughter of the other ponies as they messed around with theirs.
“How are you going there?” asked the teacher, trotting over to see my completely inanimate figurine.
“Not great,” I replied, embarrassed, “I’ve never even heard of a come-to-life spell.”
“Where are you from?” asked the teacher, looking surprised.
“Cloudsdale.” I replied apologetically, as if it was my own fault.
“Oh, ok. So how much magic do you know?” he asked me.
“None” I mumbled quietly, totally embarrassed at my ineptness.
“Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that, what did you say?”
“None!” I replied angrily, “I don’t know any spells other than the cloud-walking spell I’ve had to know since I was a foal!” I looked away as I tried to stop tears from coming into my eyes. Everything that day had been so overwhelming, and I hated this new reminder of how little I fit in with my own kind.
The teacher looked at me sympathetically.
“I’m not gonna lie to you,” he told me quietly, “it’s gonna be hard work catching up to the class, but it can be done.” I stared at him, not believing that what he said was possible.
“The fact that you’ve been doing a relatively difficult spell like the cloud-walking one shows that you have great potential.”
“Don’t worry about it ok? I’ll tutor you privately, and we’ll have you up to speed in no time.”
“But for now, let’s see if we can’t bring this figurine to life.”
