//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 // Story: A Foreign Education // by GaPJaxie //------------------------------// When Flurry Heart was not quite two years old, there was a great war between the Crystal Empire and the Northern Changeling Hive. The Crystal Empire lost, and to secure peace, Cadence was forced to agree to a humiliating list of demands. One of those demands was that she would raise a changeling grub as her daughter, and that when that changeling came of age, they would be a full member of her household. They would be considered a part of the Equestrian royal family. They would have a claim to the throne. So it was that Flurry Heart gained a sister. Her sister’s name was Cheval. Queen Amaryllis hoped that Cheval would provide legitimacy to her future attempts to annex the Crystal Empire. Perhaps, ponies speculated, Cadence and Flurry Heart might suffer fatal accidents and thereby allow Amaryllis to claim the Empire outright. But even if such a thing did not come to pass, it seemed obvious to many that Cheval would be a valuable asset for the hive. When Cheval was twelve and Flurry fourteen, that plan fell apart. “I will die before I acknowledge you as my queen or my mother, you murderous whore,” Cheval said. She was remarkably well spoken for her age. Cadence, caught totally unprepared, spat her water up her nose. A reporter captured the whole thing with his camera, producing crisp photos of little Cheval making a rude gesture to Queen Amaryllis, and of Cadence hacking and wheezing after. In the moment, Cadence demanded Cheval apologize, and snapped that she raised her better than that. In private, once the children were asleep, Cadence and Shining cried because they were happy. They loved both their daughters. When Cheval was sixteen and Flurry eighteen, the Sparkle family decided to have Thanksgiving in the Crystal Empire. It was a contentious decision. Twilight Velvet said that the Crystal Empire always felt too formal. There were servants to do the dishes, everything was neat and pretty, and it didn’t have that cozy feeling of the old family dining room. But the family had grown, and with everypony there, they simply didn’t fit in the old house anymore. And so Cheval stood in the corner of the royal suite, soaking in the ambient love while everypony else waited for the solid food to be ready. Her grandparents were fussing over Shining. Twilight Velvet and Night Light were both past seventy, and their age was starting to show. Their manes had more grey hairs than not, and Shining had to raise his voice to be clearly heard. Twilight Sparkle—simply Twilight to most, as her mother went by Velvet—was zipping from place to place. She’d lost a gift, and was panicking about it like an anxious teenager. She was a teenager, in many ways. Her ascension had halted the aging process at sixteen, and she would never mature a day henceforth. She never appeared with a stallion or with children, and no matter how many times she learned the same friendship lessons, they caught her by surprise yet again. Light Step and Double Time were there as well, celebrating their sixteenth year as friends with benefits who refused to even acknowledge they were in a relationship much less consider getting married. Light was sketching Shining on a notepad while she waited for dinner to start. Double Time was trying to rescue him, interrupting the fussing with a story about the time Cadence put her in a jar. Cadence was attempting to have a talk with Flurry Heart, which is to say, she was talking at Flurry Heart while Flurry sulked in the corner. Eyes downcast, wings against her sides, she acknowledged her mother only with monosyllabic utterances. Yes. No. Fine. Sure. Born an alicorn, Flurry had the unique power to age, maturing like a normal pony even as Twilight and Cadence sat frozen in time. Perhaps, ponies thought, she would one day find her level. The whole family was together, babbling and whining and talking over each other. A servant came in and whispered in Cadence’s ear, and she raised her voice to say that dinner was ready. Everypony piled in. Cheval too. She couldn’t eat, but the servants gave her a glass of water and put rose petals in it. The petals made it special. “Hey,” she asked Flurry when they sat down together, “are you, you know?” “It’s fine,” Flurry said, staring at her plate. “Right.” Cheval buzzed her wings. “Sorry.” “Why do you keep saying sorry for something that wasn't your fault?” Flurry snapped. She didn’t lift her eyes from the table. “Because I am sorry,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.” Cadence cleared her throat and gave the opening speech. Everypony had to talk about what they were thankful for. Twilight was thankful she found the gift she lost—it was a bundle of books for the children. Everypony hugged and smiled and ate bread that had a lot of garlic in it. There was a main course of artisanally woven buttered catgrass, which Night Light complained was much too fancy. After dinner, Velvet insisted on doing the dishes. It was a family tradition, she said, and an inherent part of the Thanksgiving experience. Cadence wasn’t about to let a seventy-two year old mare do the heavy lifting, but Velvet physically would not let the servants get near the dirty plates. “Grandma,” Flurry was saying, her voice strained, “come on. Sit down. You can tell us about your new book. Servants are… you know. It’s a palace. Your kids and princes and princesses. So there’s servants, right? It’s normal.” “It’s not what the holiday is about.” Velvet stood her ground. “Thanksgiving isn’t about food, it’s about being together as a family. Through thick and thin. And doing a giant pile of dishes is perfectly enjoyable when the ponies you love are there to do it with you.” “Mom and I can do it,” Cheval said. Her horn glowed a soft blue, and from behind Velvet’s back, she snatched up the entire table’s worth of dirty dishes. “See? Sit down. Talk about your new book. We’ll be right back.” “The hot water will ruin your shell,” Velvet grumbled. “It’ll hide those pretty colors.” “Ah, but that’s how you’ll know Mom and I actually did them.” Cheval’s tone was upbeat and friendly, showing none of the strain that Flurry did. “No cheating. I promise.” After a bit more grumbling, Velvet gave in. Cheval and Cadence collected all the dishes, sent the servants away, and undertook the long walk through the palace to the kitchens. When they arrived, they found dirty dishes everywhere. Though Thanksgiving was an Equestrian holiday, crystal ponies considered it very trendy to do whatever Princess Cadence did. The whole palace was celebrating, and there were ten kitchen servants on cleaning-duty alone. “Let’s give it fifteen minutes,” Cadence said, with no intention whatever of doing the dishes herself. “That’ll give your grandma some time to get into her story.” “Yeah,” Cheval said. “You want to go for a walk outside? It’s nice.” “No,” Cheval said. Her wings buzzed, and her gaze went down to the floor. Then she added, “I mean, yes. I mean, thank you. Sure. But, no.” “Something wrong, dear?” Cadence tilted her head. “You know you can always talk to me about whatever’s bothering you.” “I, um… yeah.” Cheval lifted her head, and looked at her mother head on. Her eyes were solid orange, lacking any pupils or irises. “I wanted to talk to you about something. I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. I wasn’t going to bring it up. But with what happened with Flurry…” “Of course.” Cadence stepped forward, putting a hoof on Cheval’s shoulder. “What is it?” “I think this would be a good time for you to send me into exile.” “Ploughing time doesn’t stop at night!” Or so the propaganda poster said. Stuck up over a fresh concrete wall, it depicted a cheerful looking griffon driving a tractor through a field, his path lit by electrical lights. Cheval didn’t see any rich fields on the rocky mountainside. But, in fairness, she didn’t see any tractors or electrical lights either. A sign in a cafe window informed passersby that the milk ration had been halved, and so tea was available only with lemon. “Next!” shouted the customs griffon at the head of the line. A pony stepped up and handed over their papers. The Griffon Nation was a country in transition, trying to catch up with its far more prosperous neighbors. Whatever the new government was doing seemed to be at best a partial success. All the buildings were very modern, made of fresh concrete and fitted with sockets for electrical lamps—but the lamps had evidently never arrived. All the guards had snappy new uniforms, but they seemed to be short of hats. Everygriffon had fresh sunglasses to keep out the mountain glare, but their winter clothing was threadbare and worn. “Next!” the customs griffon snarled, evidently in a poor mood. The line advanced a step. Cheval was next. In the few moments she had before she was called, she inspected her passport. The form she’d chosen for her time away was a unicorn. If she wanted to fly, she could always impersonate a griffon, but finding an excuse to practice magic would have been harder. The picture made her look a bit plain—not ugly, but academic. She had a blue coat, a sandy mane, and an unfeminine tail whose hairs stuck every which way. Her cutie mark was a collection of abstract symbols. She hadn’t put a lot of thought into it. When noone was looking, she made one small tweak to her form to make it look more like the passport picture. Then the customs griffon called. “Next!” She stepped up. “Papers, please.” He extended a talon, and she handed over her passport and transit permit. “Reason for visit?” “I’m a student at the Griffonstone Institute of Science.” She flashed him an awkward smile and cleared her throat. “I’m studying math.” After asking several more questions, the customs griffon stamped her passport twice and her transit pass once. Both documents were returned to her, and she was pointed to the exit. It took several hours wandering the streets of Griffonstone before Cheval was able to find the campus. A gate guard checked her papers again, and pointed her to her dorm. It was one of the new buildings -- a twenty-story tall monolith made entirely of concrete. Its windows were narrow horizontal slits. The hallways were painted, but they were also painted grey. It could hold over two-thousand students. Eventually, she found her dorm room, numbered 1432-A. She had only one small set of saddlebags for luggage, and fumbled around inside them for the key she’d been given. Before she could find it, the door opened on its own. A small, grey griffon stood on the other side, wrapped in a purple scarf. Her frame was so slight, and her scarf so long and puffy, that it seemed she might vanish entirely into the fabric. Her coat was of a far less attractive shade, and covered in patches of dust. “Hello?” the griffon said, her tone curt. “Can I help you?” “I’m, uh… Cross Product,” Cheval said. “I’m your new roommate. You must be Gia.” “Yup.” Gia stepped out the doorway and pointed back into the room. “It’s a bunk bed. You’re on the bottom.” Their dorm room was smaller than Cheval’s closet had been back home. The bunk bed was shoved into one corner, and working space was provided in the form of two “desks” against the wall. They were not true furniture, but wooden boards mounted on hinges and affixed with chains, which could be folded up or pulled down as required. The space was so narrow that, when pulled down, the desks blocked the corridor to the bed. “Well, it’s not a palace but… we have a window!” Cheval said, keeping her tone bright. Five feet off the floor was a narrow slit in the concrete wall, through which a small sliding pane allowed fresh air to carry. “So what are you studying?” When Gia didn’t answer, Cheval looked back. The room and the hallway outside it were empty. Gia had wandered off. She bit her lip and tossed her bag down onto the bed—lower bunk. There was a pile of paper on the pillow. Most of it was forms from the school, but she spotted a sealed envelope under the clutter. It was addressed to her, with an Equestrian stamp. The picked it up and tore the top off, her eyes scanning over the letter inside. It was from Flurry Heart.