You Learn
'You Learn'
The thin red liquid bubbles and pops with the tiny flame roaring beneath it, the fumes rising to be collected in the swirling maze of the distiller's tubes. It reminds me every time of a crazy straw, but I would never mention that to Twilight. She might think it's childish.
The liquid has to first heat into gas, then condense back into liquid and drip into the other test tube at the end, the other half of the potion that, if everything has been measured and timed correctly, will result in a tonic that lets the drinker see in the dark. Fairly simple, as far as potions go (or so Twilight says), but it's much more complex than the basic mixtures that do things like turn your tongue green for a few minutes or whistle loudly when you take the stopper out of the tube.
While the red liquid beads up in the distiller, I check over the method from the beginning. I want to be doubly sure I hadn't made any mistakes. The sounds of paper scraping against paper seem incredibly loud in the quiet library. On the farm, there's always noise somewhere -- a plow churning earth, hammering in nails to fix the weak part of a barn roof, bucking apples, birds and insects singing. The sounds of outside. Even indoors, Granny's usually cooking something slowly on the stove for hours, and it's not like there's isn't plenty of hammering and such to be done inside too. But in Twilight's library, it's always quiet. The sounds aren't birds and plows but quills on paper or hooves on solid floorboards. It used to make me nervous, when I first started, but now it's kind of comforting. There's no distractions. The environment is clean, no contamination, no interference.
I read through the method twice and realize I've read it enough times that the actual meaning of the words is starting to slip. I won't be able to fix the potion if I've done something wrong along the way now anyway. So I watch the first drops come out of the end of the tube, waiting for the potion to turn from a pale sea-green to a deep midnight blue. I can feel Twilight watching, too. She stops her slow pacing of the room and leans in over my shoulder -- she's excited to see the result, maybe even moreso than I am. I sometimes think she might be fiddling around with chemicals and reagents even if I wasn't coming for lessons, just because it's fun -- and her enthusiasm is pretty infectious.
The liquid in the tube suddenly darkens, taking on the deep rich color of the night sky. I pull it away from the mouth of the distiller. In a moment, Twilight will cast a spell to turn the library dark in the middle of the day, and I'll test the potion to see if I can find my way around, but I already know it works from the huge grin on her face.
-/-
I knead the berries into a fine paste with the pestle, the heavy stone producing more and more wet squelching sounds with every blow. Once the skin is broken, the berries smell like rot -- not unhealthy rot but a strong sweet overripe smell that's overpowering if your muzzle gets too close to it. It's not the worst smell -- that would be the bark of the trees that look like willows but don't really have a name that grow only in the Everfree Forest, that smell of old milk and of earthworms dying in rain when brewed in boiling water -- but it's not very pleasant, either. But it is powerful, like everything in Zecora's hut. The strength of every ingredient radiates out, to be picked up by more than once sense. Heavy smooth stones hum as you hold them in your hooves. You taste the bitter tang of leafs as you pick them. And bright shiny berries smell.
The paste needs to be scooped up and strained through a cloth. The little bundle, the dark viscous fluid seeping through the pale material, looks like something alive is caught up in there. Something alive, but dying. I said this to Zecora once -- I think I said it looks like we'd wrapped up a heart or something -- and she just gave me a cryptic smile with no further explanation. I think that's the point, that the berries stand in for the heart's blood that gives the potion its properties of restoration and vitality. I want to ask if, way back in wilder times in darker place, the potion was ever made with real blood, but I don't know if I want to hear the answer.
The juice from the berries drips down into a wide wooden bowl, free from pulp or seeds. The surface is smooth, and I can see my face reflected in dark red. The streaks of white paint on either side of my muzzle stand out more than I thought they would. They make me look different, feel different. I'm no longer Apple Bloom, but I could be some wise shaman in the hidden reaches of Zebrica, the wise witch that brews elixirs and communes with spirits.
"The potion now shall not take long," Zecora says in her deep musical voice, "but do not forget the ancestor song."
I pick up the wooden bowl and slowly rock it back and forth, making the juice swirl. I hum a song without words, a combination of prayer and request that is unique to every individual who uses it. It draws the energy from the trees and the rocks and the earth, from the ponies in my family that have been and the ones yet to be, and borrows a little to flow into the potion. There it will stay, waiting to be released until I drink it, and then it will spread through me and back out into the world. Calling on that energy is a little like breathing, Zecora explained, letting the air move from one place to another, over and around and back to where it came from. The idea of everything being connected so is both overwhelming and comforting -- outside, back in Ponyville, it's a little hard to remember all the time, but in the smoky hut in the Everfree Forest, it comes easily. Here I feel like a rock in a stream, making the water flow around me -- just a rock, nothing significant, no different from another of the other rocks all the way along the stream as it becomes a river and finally an ocean, but still my being changes the flow of the water.
-/-
Scootaloo coughs and drops a wadded-up piece of paper on the floor. I don't know why she bothers disguising it, since Snips and Snails are having an unsubtle conversation in whispers everypony in the classroom can hear and Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara are exchanging glances and giggling around something. I pick my moment and lunge for the paper, flattening it upon my desk. There's a single line, a question, written in Scootaloo's big coltish script.
It reads: CUTIE MARK CRUSADER CHIROPRACTORS?
I turn to Scootaloo, who questions again with her eyes. I nod, and she pumps a hoof in the air and turns to Sweetie Belle to pass the message on. I could probably stomp on somepony's shoulders to loosen them up. It doesn't seem so hard. What's the worst that could come of it?
As I glance back to the front of the classroom I think I catch Miss Cheerilee sigh. I don't know if it was at me or not; it could have been at nearly any of us, except Twist, whose attention is unwaveringly towards the lesson every time. I sit with my back straight and my eyes forward, trying to pay a little more attention to the formula on the blackboard.
After two minutes I remember something I need to ask Sweetie Belle, and I turn the note over to write it down on the other side. I can pay attention and write a note. I'm hearing everything Miss Cheerilee is saying, anyway. I'll remember it all. And if I don't, Scootaloo or Sweetie Belle will. Probably.