Chapter 4
School Days
Another week had passed, and, like in most households, Monday morning was a mess in the Granger residence. The Grangers were traditionally late risers, Sunset fondly remembered the days when she was one herself, but being the personal student to the Steward of the Sun had changed that rather quickly.
As such the Grangers had to suffer the terrible fate of being late risers in the presence of a morning person. Sunset had, as usual, risen at first light and gone on to infuriate everyone else with her perky attitude. The Grangers had unanimously decided that having breakfast prepared for them by the time they arrived in the kitchen every morning was a fair tradeoff.
Sunset hid it well, but Emma could tell that the girl was nervous. Understandable, given the occasion. Today she would be attending a human school for the first time. It had been established that the curriculum would not be a problem. Sunset spoke perfect English, a fact that had confused them all until Sunset had made the guess that it was probably an effect of the portal.
It had actually taken a few days for her and Philomena to notice that everyone, themselves included, wasn't speaking Equestrian. Once she had realized that, Sunset had given the Grangers a short demonstration of her native tongue, a melodic sounding language that consisted mostly of long words spoken at immense speed. They had all found it to sound rather beautiful. And immensely complicated.
Mathematics was, likewise, not an issue. Arithmancy made the kind of mathematical problems they would have to deal with at school look like foals' play by comparison. If anything truly did get complicated, she could always let magic do the maths for her.
Art wouldn't be an issue, given Sunset's drawing skills, PE was of secondary importance. The only subject that the Grangers thought might give Sunset some problems, was French. That too was easily dealt with however. Sunset had simply borrowed Hermione's textbook and used a spell to put together a translation matrix.
When Hermione had asked if she could use something similar to learn Equestrian, Sunset had simply copied her knowledge of the language and placed it in Hermione's mind. Suffice it to say that hearing their daughter and her friend avidly conversing in Equestrian when they came home that evening had been quite the shock for Emma and Dan.
Sunset had assured her hosts that she would make sure no one at the school would question her presence. Seeing how mysterious she was being about the matter, they immediately, and correctly, assumed that magic had a role in her plan.
It wasn't long before Sunset followed Hermione out of the house and the two made their way to the local junior high school. Fortunately the school was only a few streets away and they were able to reach it in a mere few minutes.
The school was a wide, flat building and rather drab in appearance. Hermione guided Sunset to the classroom where they sat down at the front of the class. The classroom filled up and soon enough the teacher came in.
"Good morning class."
"Good morning Miss Pritchard," the assembled students chorused in response. And so class began.
True to her word, no one questioned Sunset's presence, students and teachers alike simply treated her as if she had always been there. The first few classes of the day presented as much trouble for Sunset as expected.
Namely, none.
Hermione repeatedly noticed Sunset rolling her eyes at various math exercises. Text comprehension was similarly easy, it seemed. Art, of course, wasn't much of a challenge, only notable as it gave Sunset an opportunity to actually use her hands for drawing.
All in all the day passed easily.
Tuesday had come and gone, ending up being similarly unremarkable. Wednesday morning, however, brought Hermione's least favorite subject. PE.
"Alright," the teacher began, "good morning class."
"Good morning, Mister Johnson."
"Now I know my colleagues have probably done this to death, but I hope you had fun in spring break." The groan from the class gave him all the answer he needed. "Yeah, thought so. Anyway, to get back into the swing of things, I think we'll try something a little different this time around. You see, I went to France myself over the break and I picked something that seems to be up and coming over there. But first, it's paramount that you're all properly warmed up."
With that he sent them on a few laps around the area while he started setting up the material. Once they settled back where they started in various states of exhaustion, he spoke up again. "Alright, today we'll be trying something called Parkour. Now I know normally exercises on obstacles are meant to be a challenge of endurance and strength. Not so here. The entire point of Parkour is that it is a set of techniques that should, in theory, allow us to clear the obstacles with as little effort as possible. That being said, to do this, we'll need some obstacles."
He proceeded to split the class into groups, giving each group a sheet of paper with the instructions for constructing one of the obstacles. Soon obstacles were being set up around the area and mattresses were being set up to catch the students, should they fall.
"So. Now that we have those, I can give you the basics. The primary point of Parkour is to clear the obstacles with as little effort as possible, while loosing as little momentum as possible. If you're doing it right, you'll run up to the obstacle, clear it and be running again before two seconds pass."
Sunset found that she was actually enjoying herself immensely. This sport seemed to be something for her tastes, a matter of skill before anything else. She would be the first to admit that her studies of magic and rulership hadn't left her with much time for physical exercise. Now that the topic had come up she vowed to rectify the situation. This was a good start, finding a sport that would actually be fun could only help.
An hour later, Sunset and Hermione made use of the first break of the day. They were both completely spent and looking forward to a relaxing math class. Still, Sunset found that she could get behind this sport. She would have to do more research on it. Even Hermione, while in even worse physical shape than Sunset, had made a valiant effort.
After the excitement of the morning, the rest of the day was unremarkable. Math and English passed quickly. Before they left, Hermione showed Sunset to the list of extra curricular activities the school offered. Going with her plan of trying to get in shape, Sunset decided to attend a martial arts course.
Thursday brought an interesting challenge for Sunset in the form of home EC class. She had already proven she could cook reasonably well. Other things she was not used to doing. Being used to living in a palace in a world of magic she was mostly acquainted with such tasks either being done for her, or being easily solved with magic. Fortunately that only gave her a new conviction. A determination to conquer every challenge this world could throw at her.
Friday afternoon saw Hermione returning home on her own. She busied herself with getting her homework done and preparing lunch. Just as the food was ready, Sunset appeared. Having gotten used to Sunset's habit of teleporting, Hermione didn't even flinch when Sunset suddenly stood behind her. A place she decidedly hadn't been a few seconds earlier.
"So, how was it?"
"Quite fun actually, I recognized some of the techniques from watching the guards train back in Equestria."
They sat and ate in silence for a while, Hermione watching carefully as her friend reminisced with a look of slight melancholy.
"Do you miss it?"
"Huh?"
"Equestria. Do you miss it?"
Sunset looked out of the window for a moment. "Sometimes. Y'know, with you and your parents, that's family. That's something I haven't had in years. It's been three years since I last saw my brother. I'm not sure I'd even still recognize my parents. Or they me. I haven't seen them in seven years."
"That's kinda sad."
"It is. But you know what they say. Out of sight, out of mind. Well, we haven't met in the better part of a decade and I'm literally a world away."
Hermione watched her friend carefully. 'I get it. She's a genius. She's a prodigy. But she's lonely. The only one she's had for most of her life was a being literally millenia older than she is. No friends. No family.' As she looked on, Hermione's pity turned into determination. 'Until now.'
Lost in thought, Sunset was rather startled to find herself wrapped into a calming hug.
The weeks flew by and Hermione started treating Sunset as less of a friend and more of a sister. The change was slow and subtle, so it took nearly two weeks for Sunset to notice. When she did, she decided not to mention it. She simply returned the favor in kind. She hadn't missed that Hermione had been lonely as well. She had family, sure, but friendship was another matter entirely. The other students at the school seemed either intimidated, or annoyed, or both. To be fair, they were treating Sunset the same way, but she didn't care much.
The weekend after their first school week, Sunset and Hermione once more sat in the living room. Hermione was practicing her magic again, while Sunset had finished one of the new wards she had been placing around the house. While she gave her magic time to recover, she was once more focused on her meditation.
Hermione had, by now, managed to get an explanation from Sunset. She had told her that she could feel her natural form, along with the form she currently had. That she knew she could be in her natural form just as easily. All she had to do in her meditations was to make a way to go from one form to the other.
When she suddenly heard the words, "gotcha!" she turned around to see that Sunset had started to glow. She carefully watched as Sunset began floating off the couch, hovering in mid-air. Her entire form began to glow a bright teal and a soft humming noise set in around her. After a few more seconds, Hermione had to avert her eyes to stop the light from blinding her.
Suddenly, the humming seized and a pulse of magic ran through the room. Having grown more and more attuned to it over the bast few weeks, Hermione was startled by the intensity of the pulse. Only when four clopping sounds could be heard on the hardwood floor, did she realize that the light had stopped as well.
Turning to see, she found an adorable little creature standing on the floor in front of the couch. A part of her mind was highly intrigued to see an equine the size of a house cat. Still she found herself worrying. 《You okay, Sunset?》she asked in Equestrian.
《Yeah, I'm fine, it's just been a few weeks since I've been in this form.》 Turning, around, the little unicorn came over and jumped up onto the armrest of the armchair Hermione had claimed for herself. 《Ah well,》 she continued. 《I'll have some time to get used to it again. That almost burned out my magic right then and until it's recovered I'd rather not try turning back.》
Suffice it to say that Emma and Dan were rather startled to find an amber-coated unicorn in their kitchen, preparing dinner when they came home that evening. Still, everyone in the house quickly adjusted and Sunset ended up not returning to human form until Monday morning. Emma had almost broken down in giggles when she had found Hermione still in bed that morning, holding a curled up Sunset like a stuffed animal.
Another week later, Hermione and Sunset sat in the living room, reading. When she looked up from her own reading material, Hermione noticed something was off. Sunset was turning the pages of her book rather fast, never spending more than five seconds on a single page. She had seen Sunset do that a lot over the past weeks. At first she had thought Sunset was searching for something and not bothering to read, but by now it seemed that the girl always read that way. After remaining quiet for so long, Hermione decided to speak up, no longer able to keep her curiosity in check.
"How are you reading that fast?"
Sunset looked up, confused.
"I mean, I'm a fast reader, but what you're doing is impossible."
"Not exactly." Sunset smirked. It was that special kind of smirk Hermione had grown to love. It was the sly expression that meant that Sunset knew something, and that she was about to teach. "I'm not actually reading this fast. I'm just memorizing the pages, I'll read them in my mind later."
"Pardon?"
"About three years ago I used a rather obscure spell to give myself a photographic memory. I can remember everything I see. The longer I see it, the more details I can recall, a few seconds per page are enough so I can easily read them later. It's amazing for learning."
"Wha-" Hermione was stunned. "But that's cheating!"
Sunset's smirk changed, this victorious grin meant that she was about to make an irrefutable argument. "Is it? There are people born with this, you know? They have a natural advantage others don't have. I'm simply leveling the playing field."
"I guess ... So you've had a photographic memory all this time?"
"Yup. Want one too?"
"Wait, you could give me one?"
"Yeah, just ... maybe make sure you have your homework finished first. The spell literally rearranges parts of your brain structure, so you'll have a pretty nasty headache for a few hours. And there are some downsides, of course. There are a few things I wish I could forget." She looked down in thought for a few moments. "One of the downsides of being Student of the Sun, I guess. You get to see Equestria at its best ... and its worst."
Hermione thought the matter over for a few moments, while Sunset simply watched from across the table. "So this is just a one time thing? You do that and it's done? Magical brain surgery, basically?"
A smile returned to Sunset's face and she giggled. "Not quite. It's a complicated thing called conceptual magic. It basically allows me to see the brain as a concept and edit it as such. I don't know exactly what the magic does, but I do know how to get it to do that."
Once more, Hermione thought about the idea. "Alright. Go ahead."
With a calm nod, Sunset shifted into her equine form. Absently cleaning her hooves with a spell, she hopped onto the table. "Lean back and try to relax. It's not pleasant, but I promise you, it's worth it."
Hermione gulped, but nodded. She was having second thoughts, certainly, but her conviction remained. Not to mention that she trusted Sunset. She watched as Sunset's horn glowed brightly, her eyes alight with magic. She stared at her for a few moments. Hermione could practically see the spell forming behind those glowing eyes.
She could sense the power in the air, not unlike when Sunset had first transformed, only this was sustained, charging the air with energy, not just a quick release of power. Finally, Sunset carefully aimed her horn at Hermione's forehead and closed her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. When she re-opened them, there was no emotion in those eyes, only pure, uninterrupted focus.
A needle-thin beam of teal light sprang from the tip of the horn and impacted perfectly in the center of Hermione's forehead. A searing pain erupted between her temples. She winced in pain, gritting her teeth to keep from crying out.
Sunset quashed her empathy with determination. Now was not the time for emotions, she couldn't risk loosing her focus before the spell was complete. With cold eyes and the precision of a machine she unerringly kept her horn pointed at her friend, following each of her movements.
After ten excruciatingly long seconds, the beam cut off and the light on Sunset's horn faded. The pain Hermione felt quickly waned until it had dimmed to a more normal stinging pain. It wasn't pleasant by any means, but it was a relief compared to what she had felt a moment earlier. Torn between sighing in relief and crying from pain, she did both.
Sunset's empathy returned with a vengeance. She knew from when she cast that spell on herself that there was nothing she could do to ease Hermione's pain. Normally there were spells that could numb pain by blocking the nerve signals, but doing such a thing was far too risky when the pain was coming from inside the brain.
Well remembering how sensitive she had been to sound when she had been in the same situation, Sunset cast a quick spell on her hooves to prevent noise on the hardwood floor, before jumping down from the table and carrying Hermione to her bedroom. To make sure not to apply undue pressure, Sunset didn't simply levitate her, she instead used a spell to temporarily free Hermione from the clutches of gravity and used short, gentle bursts of her kinesis to maneuver the girl through the hallway and up the stairs.
She made sure to remove Hermione's shoes before navigating her down onto the bed and slowly, carefully releasing the gravity spell. Once her friend was comfortably settled on the bed, Sunset jumped up onto it as well, careful not to disturb her. She curled up next to the girl, casting a monitoring spell to keep track of the progress the spell had made. The process was going well, but it would still take a few hours to finish.
Unable to form a coherent thought, both from the pain, and from the restructuring of her brain, Hermione grabbed the fuzzy red and yellow thing in front of her, and hugged it tightly to her chest. She didn't register the teal glow as she closed her eyes, falling asleep as she whimpered in pain.