Dreamstrider

by OkemosBrony

Chapter 24

“Happy last day of classes!” Glacial beams as she gives me a huge slap on the back, almost sending my face flying into the water fountain I’m drinking from.

“You too,” I reply after wiping some water off my muzzle and forehead, which got wet when my face went flying down.

“So what are you going to be doing over the summer?”

“Going back home and Dreamstriding for my hometown.” I leave the fountain and start walking next to her towards our classroom. “What about you?”

“Going to be accompanying my dad on a trip to Mount Everhoof,” she smiles.

“Mount Everhoof?” I repeat just to make sure I’m hearing her right. “The Mount Everhoof, the tallest mountain in the world?”

“I won’t be climbing up to the top,” she says, answering the question I had before even managing to ask it. “Just to one of the camps, where the real snow starts. He’ll be showing me how to collect samples and make sure they don’t get corrupted, then take them back to the Institute and work with them. Will you be coming back next year?”

“No,” I shake my head. “These two years were just to give me a base education in magic, and from here on out I’ll spend all my time learning and practicing my Dreamstriding. What about you? Are you coming back, or are you doing the two-year thing as well?”

“Not coming back,” she shakes her head. “Doing the two-year program like you. I’ll be enrolling at the Ice Academy, where I’ll start learning specifically about ice magic for about ten years before becoming a full member and starting to perform research on my own, and maybe even teach there eventually.”

“Ten years?” I echo back. “That’s a really long time.”

“If I went through 5th grade, all of middle school, and high school, that would be nine years,” she points out. “And then at least four years of college, not even counting any graduate program. I’d be in school way longer than I will be at the Institute, and most of it wouldn’t be spent learning what I want to learn.”

“How are we getting out of school?” I ask, suddenly realizing that my sisters had to go to school and I don’t have to after this year. “As far as I know, everypony in my family’s gone through high school. And that includes all my extended family, too. I can’t think of a single one of them that did anything like what you and I are doing.”

“You mean you don’t remember applying?” she asks, confusion all over her face.

“I didn’t have to do an entrance application to get in here.”

“Not an entrance application,” she says like I should know what she’s talking about. “The application to get out of going to a regular school.”

“There’s an application to get out of school? I’ve never heard of that.”

“Maybe you didn’t have to do it because Princess Luna could’ve just gotten you past that,” she shrugs. “But for ponies that show a lot of promise in their special talent, if there’s a special school that exists for that talent, they can apply to get out of the regular school requirements and instead go to that school.”

“Even if I’m technically not going to school with Princess Luna, just learning from her?”

“Even that,” she confirms. “It’s what Princess Twilight did, remember? She was Princess Celestia’s student before she became the Princess of Friendship. She didn’t even do two years like we did, just attended magic kindergarten here and then became Princess Celestia’s student.”

We walk into our classroom, and about half our class is in there already. They’re all in small groups, mostly identical to the groups we had last year. Arcane Force is talking to a colt I don’t really recognize but Glacial must, because he waves at her and she waves back before going over to talk to them. I know two of the three ponies in that group, so I decide to go up to them and sit down at one of the desks near them.

“Hey,” Arcane Force smiles at me. Come to think of it, I don’t really think we’ve talked much at all this year. “You’re not doing more school here, right?”

“Right,” I confirm. “What about you?”

“Coming right back here next year and starting my first class in healing magic,” he says with a huge smile. “You’ll still be in Canterlot, though, so we’ll have to get together sometime. Unless you’re really busy with Dreamstriding, but you should have at least a little time, right? Especially since most of your work will probably be done at night.”

“Well, there’s still a lot that needs to be done, even during the day. But sure, I’d love to.”

“Aurora?” I can hear Mister Cosmic behind tap my shoulder. “Would you mind coming to my desk for a moment?”

Uh oh. What did I do? Glacial, Arcane Force, and the other colt all went back to talking to each other, so I can’t make an excuse that I’m talking with them and can’t go with him.

The entire time walking to his desk at the front of the class, I’m trying to think of everything that could cause him to want to talk to me in private. I didn’t do anything wrong, didn’t get any bad grades, and didn’t misbehave at all this year. So what could it be?

“Sit down, please,” he says. His tone is pretty friendly, so it doesn’t sound like he’s about to discipline me. At least, I hope not.

“What did I do?” I mumble.

“Nothing, don’t worry,” he smiles back. “I just want to talk with all of my students from this year and touch base with them one last time. Talk with them about how they liked this year, how they think I did, what activities they did or didn’t like, and their plans for the future.” Using his magic, he pulls out a piece of paper and a pencil. “Is there anything you’d like to start with?”

I shrug. “This year was good, I guess.”

“You guess?” he repeats.

“Well, none of it is really related to my special talent. But in fairness, very few ponies have ever even heard of Dreamstriding, let alone know much about the magic that we have to use.”

“What kinds of magic do you have to use that you think we could touch on in here?” He’s not even looking at the paper, but the pencil is writing quickly.

Now I have to think. Most of the magic I have to deal with is either something only Dreamstriders can do, or would mean almost nothing to somepony studying it without being able to experience it like I can. “Do you know anything about emotional magic?”

He thinks about it for a moment. “A little. Do you mean like the effect emotions can have on our magic, or the effect it can have on ambient magic?”

“Both, really. They’re both really big and important things Dreamstriders have to think about when we’re working. We have to be able to detect little changes in ambient magic to help us stop nightmares, and we work on enhancing our abilities a lot through emotional magic. The way we communicate with the creatures in the dream world is based on our thoughts and feelings, so being able to tap into them and their magic is really important to us.”

“I know that would be easy to incorporate into our magical physiology lessons early in the year,” he thinks out loud. “And no matter what type of magic somepony is trying to cast, being in control of yourself is important, and that includes emotions. And some types of magic do work better if you’re feeling a certain way, so understanding how that affects your ability to cast would be something worth teaching. As for how it affects ambient magic, that would be covered mostly in a divination course, but I suppose if we have time we could put it in here.” He looks at the notes he’s taken, then back to me. “Anything else you would change about the class?”

“Not really, no.”

“Now onto future plans. First, I saw that you’re not enrolled here for next year. Have you ever considered changing that and coming back?”

“Nopony here teaches Dreamstriding. I wouldn't be able to learn anything related to my special talent.”

“Still,” he suggests, “it wouldn’t hurt to come back for a little bit and do some more learning. I can tell you’re definitely a very bright student, so you would be able to pick up a lot. And they hired me to teach some of the introductory-level courses for the next few grades, so I would love having you in class again.”

“Thank you, but this is what I have to do.”

“Fair enough,” he nods. “So you mentioned that nopony here teaches Dreamstriding, so what is it you’ll be doing to work on your special talent? I know you’ve said that Princess Luna is the one who teaches you, but what sort of topics do you go over? What about it do you like, what about it do you dislike?”

“Still kind of covering everything. She said that if there was a specific subject I was interested in I could start to focus on it, but I haven’t decided yet.”

“What kinds of things do you cover? I’ve been able to find very little on Dreamstriders, and what I found didn’t seem to be very credible.”

“Some divination, spells, teablending, and studying demons are the most common stuff.”

“So demons are real and exist in our dreams,” he laughs. “Didn’t expect that one.”

“But not all of them are bad. And there’s this whole world that they live in, and our dreams are all connected to it. Dreamstriders go into the dream world, and then go around to the dreams and enter them through there.”

“Well I probably have a ton of questions for you, but I won’t keep you.” He takes the paper in his magic and looks it over, then starts writing a little bit of extra stuff on it. “Do you have any questions for me?”

“No,” I shake my head.

“Have a nice summer, then,” he smiles. “And if you ever get the time, please do come back and visit me. If you’d like, I could even have you guest teach about Dreamstriding some day. So many ponies don’t even think Dreamstriders exist, and so I think they would enjoy learning about something that they weren’t aware of before.”

“Maybe I could get Princess Luna to come?” I suggest. “I bet she’d enjoy coming and talking about Dreamstriders to the class. She always says it’s disappointing more ponies don’t know about us, so I think she’d love the opportunity to come and teach a class about who we are and what we do.”

“And I’m sure we’d all love to meet a Princess,” he says with a big smile. “Well, I’ll be here at the school for at least next year, and hopefully many years to come. If you or Princess Luna ever want to come do a lesson on Dreamstriders, I’d always be willing to have you in my class. And even if I’m not teaching a class where the material would be appropriate for what I teach, I could point you in the direction of somepony whose class would be a much better fit for it.”

“I’ll definitely think about it.” I stand up and give him a little nod, which he returns. “Thanks for being my teacher this year, by the way. You were great.”

His smile grows even larger. “I’m very glad to hear that, and I wish you luck in your future. “

“You too.” I start walking back to where I was sitting, but pass by Dusty on the way. I can’t even remember the last time I talked to him, so I decide to stop at his desk and sit down next to him.

“Hey,” he says, looking up from the piece of paper that he’s writing on. There’s some diagrams and math equations on his paper, so I can only guess it’s something he wants to build.

“Just thought I’d drop in and say hi.” I point at everything he’s written down. “What are you working on?”

“Drainer,” he says. “Sucks up magic from the surrounding area and disposes of it. Sometimes magic can interfere with making things, because the magical properties of something might be changed. They use these a ton in the weather factory in Cloudsdale, because otherwise the rainbows and snowflakes and everything they make might not work correctly.”

“Why does it do that?”

“I’m not a weather scientist,” he laughs. “I wouldn’t know why they need these, I’d just build them.”

“So is that the kind of stuff you’re going to learn how to build?”

“This and a lot of other things. This kind of thing is pretty basic though, so we’ll probably just cover it in the intro magical engineering classes and then move onto other things.”

“Are you going to be staying here? Or is there a place you could go to learn all about magical engineering?”

“Staying here,” he says. “Princess Celestia’s doesn’t have very many magical engineers, but the ones they do have are pretty good. Maybe when I get older, I’ll be working for the Equestrian Engineering Corps. That’s my dream, at least. How about you? What’re you going to be doing with Princess Luna?”

“Don’t really know, actually,” I admit. “It is kinda fun not knowing, though. She told me I could do pretty much anything I wanted, so I’m just taking my time figuring that out.”

“Good luck with that,” he says before looking back at his paper and scribbling furiously on what little free space he has. He seems really focused and I don’t even understand half of the math he’s doing, so I just get up and start walking back to Glacial. She’s talking to more ponies than I left with her with, so I just squeeze my way into the small circle they’ve made and start listening in to everypony else sharing their plans for the future.