Beyond My Years

Three weeks had passed since I gained my two assistants, for they had become more like assistants to me than mere test subjects. I was surprised to see just how close they had become to each other, and even more surprised when I found myself enjoying their company more than just the promise of a magical experiment. They were my friends.

I never had friends in Cloudsdale. As I said before, being a unicorn in a world full of pegasi was difficult. Even when I was able to walk around on solid, non-cloud floors, the other pegasi foals avoided me. It was like I was diseased or something. No one wanted to lose their wings by catching the “horn curse” I obviously had. They all knew it wasn’t the truth, every pony had seen another unicorn at least once in their lives, but I figured the parents were the ones telling the foals not to talk to me or play with me. I was the social outcast.

Even after coming to Canterlot, after hearing the princess talk about special talents and magic, my main focus was not friends. I never really thought about it much, but Twilight Sparkle was my role model. I just hadn’t planned on living my life exactly like hers. I wanted friends when I was younger, I really did. But there comes a point in a young filly’s life when she realizes that she hasn’t made a single friend and she might never have one.

It was when I hit that point that I decided to make magic my only friend. I was happier studying and practicing spells and magic than trying to make ponies who didn’t like me want to be my friend. I couldn’t make somepony like me if they just weren’t going to. So I gave up.

But now… now I had two assistants who had become my friends: Foamy and Dewy. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure of anything anymore. I had taken up magic because I was a unicorn without friends. Now that I had them, should I continue my studies? Is it really what I’m meant to do? Or was it just a void to fill the emptiness my new friends had suddenly filled?

These questions raged in my mind and in my heart during every small experiment we went through. The emptiness on my flank still shouted at me, urging me to continue practicing and studying magic. But when Foamy and Dewy invited me to go to the beach with them, somewhere I’d never been, I pushed the thoughts of my cutie mark, my destiny, my magic, my experiments, and everything else that had been the focus of my life to the back of my mind, and went with my newly found friends. It was time I enjoyed my life.

The beach was a curious place. Ponies littered the sands all the way from the shoreline back up to the dirt paths that led back to the town. We were half a day’s journey away from Canterlot, since beaches don’t typically work well on a mountainside. I wasn’t sure what city we were closest to, but I thought I heard Dewy say the outskirts of Manehatten.

Foamy Shores loved the beach more than any pony else there. Of course, given his name, and his special talent, talking to sea creatures, it was expected. There was a time, long ago when the myth known as sea ponies supposedly existed. I surmised that if it was true, and they had been around millennia ago, Foamy Shores was a distant descendent of those sea ponies.

Dewdrop Prism was no stranger to the waters lapping up on the shore either. Foamy was able to buck a wall of water up at an angle and it would spray droplets across the surface. Dewdrop figured out that if Foamy could get the wall high enough, she could show off her special talent, flying through the drops, and creating a rainbow of color.

“How do you do that, Dewy? Flying through the drops should just make you wet, but you come out completely dry and with rainbows behind you! Shouldn’t that only happen if you make a sonic rainboom?” I asked.

“It’s easy, but I guess you wouldn’t understand how wings work, since you’re a unicorn. Don’t give me that look!” She scolded. I had raised an eyebrow incredulously. She knew of my origins from Cloudsdale.

“It’s one thing to study them and it’s another to own them, Sunny. But anyway, to satisfy your filly-like curiosity, I bend the shape of the droplets to best refract the light into different colors. It’s like how natural rainbows were formed before the pegasi designed the weather factory.”

“And the difference between this and a sonic rainboom is…?” I prompted.

“A sonic rainboom is different than this… that has to do with speed. This is light. Even you should know the difference between the two; you’ve been studying all those spells! Didn’t one of Starswirl’s works have something to do with the speed of light versus the speed of sound?”

“Well yeah… I guess I could check up on that when we get back to the castle.”

“WHEN we get back! Don’t rush it, Sunny! Right now, let’s just have some fun in these awesome waves!” said Foamy galloping in a circle and splashing everypony nearby. Being near the water seemed to bring him out of his shyness.

“Oh, hey, I can do it all one color too!” said Dewy. “All purple or all red - if it’s a color of the rainbow, I can bend the drops to it! Wanna see?”

She gestured to Foamy and he bucked another wall of water up. Again, Dewy shot through it, twisting the drops until she was followed by a streak of purple, the color she’d chosen. Some other ponies gathered around to watch Dewy and Foamy perform their tricks.

Dewy’s talent reminded me of the spell I used to change the color of my coat and mane and the empty feeling suddenly returned. Ponies all across the beach were showing off their special talents and more than a few of the ones closest to us I caught staring at my blank flank. I trotted up to where our stuff was lying further away from the shoreline, and threw a towel over my back so it covered the spot where I was lacking a cutie mark on both sides.

Still, the stares of the other ponies burned in my mind. Was I really that odd? Of course I was, the first unicorn born to a pegasi family and far enough past fillyhood that I should have my cutie mark, but didn’t. I was an oddity on all sides, especially the two sides lacking a cutie mark. At that moment I wanted nothing more than to rush back to my research and study harder than ever.

But when I looked back to the shoreline and saw Foamy and Dewy splashing each other and laughing, their manes slick with water and the sun glinting off the droplets hanging from their coats, I wanted to be with them, laughing and belonging.

I had a decision to make. I watched the two a moment longer before throwing off the towel and rushing back to join them. As I said, it was time I enjoyed my life. And who better to do that with than my new friends?