Galloping out of downtown, Keep didn’t miss a beat. He swiftly dodged creatures on the sidewalk and crossed the street with lucky green lights all the way, narrowly avoiding a fast-coming carriage too. The insults the puller threw his way went in one ear, went out the other.
Entering the suburbs of Canterlot, Keep had his muscles on fire and his mind ablaze. This was no time to slack off, certainly not on the first day to boot. First impressions mattered, and he so wanted to get his passion out to his classes today.
Barreling past houses and trees and other fine Amareican suburbia, he saw the school rising in the distance. Keep was running out of breath, but rest would have to wait. Only one more push, forcing his hooves to run despite his not-so-fit self moaning back at him, and he could rest. Just one block across the street now and he’d be home free.
Many still roamed around on school grounds as the rest of the place came to view. That was good. Assembly hadn’t happened yet. Keep took the opportunity to slow his pace and join the scene like nothing happened.
Right after, the bell rang.
Keep almost yelped again but kept his cool as he trotted to the front of the school. A big crowd was forming, made up of students and teachers and other staff on the grass. Good thing he trotted with some technically-not-late students. They wouldn’t notice how unearly he was over the din of a hundred creatures.
A few moments to catch his breath in the confusion. Adjusting to everyone going by around him, Keep took in the little things happening in the anarchy.
High school students meandered wherever, many conversing with each other while fewer dozens looked around in shy awkwardness. They were all mostly ponies, but there was a smattering of every kind present on the grounds: A unicorn traded spells with another and tried them out. An Earth pony towed along a wagon of bonsai trees and having others admire the tiny evergreens. Pegasi and other flying creatures swooped onto school property and happily high-five’d—or high-winged—each other. A yak made her grand entrance with a stack of saddle blankets on her back, trotting alongside her buffalo best friend still coming down from the bus.
The students here weren’t that much younger than him. Meeting Greely just minutes ago felt like a pleasant coincidence, his one last preparation before meeting today’s next generation.
Too bad he didn’t know where the teachers would be during the assembly. He’d forgotten it, so might as well go with the flow.
While waiting and observing, his eyes landed on something magnanimous: the horse statue, Canterlot High’s very own. No matter how many times he’d seen it from nearby or afar, it always commanded his attention. Standing where the portal used to be, the very thing that started this whole crazy reality-altering magic thing in the first place—it never ceased to turn him thoughtful.
A couple antlers showed up from behind the statue.
They belonged to none other than Thistle himself, a strong and stable stag pulling out a couple weeds from the grass. Keep didn’t expect him here, but it wasn’t surprising. Over the years, Thistle had become fascinated with all things nature and, became set for a life in gardening, furnished with greenhouses he made by himself. However, outside of ordinary freelance horticulture, Thistle had also become an activist through plants, protesting an ill corporate action or two every month or so by making flowers grow in their lawn in the shape of the simple phrase, You’re evil and spelling out their crimes for all to see.
Perhaps visiting him before Alloy’s date would be nice, but he was too busy right now, concentrating with his glowing antlers in the middle of a crowd.
The glass doors swung open. With the sun’s brilliance shining down on them, there stepped out the alicorn principals of Canterlot High: Principal Celestia and Vice-Principal Luna, tall and regal as ever in their modest uniforms.
All went silent at their appearance. Keep couldn’t shake off the awe their attendance, the presence of the sun’s and the moon’s very movers.
Celestia levitated a microphone into view. She tapped a hoof on it to test the speakers out, the loud knocks echoing throughout the premises. Then, she brought it up to her mouth.
“Good morning, our dear students!” she began, her voice as smooth as silk. The principal took a pause as she surveyed the mighty crowd before her. “It is an honor to welcome you to a new school year at Canterlot High!”
The place was shaken by applause, mostly from ponies stomping the ground in cheer. In the celebration also was a way to tell the freshmen and the transfers apart—they were the ones who stomped a second late, not knowing the principal’s cues beforehoof. Keep couldn’t fault them. The average pony would just lock up upon meeting the sun mover herself. Her humility and modesty might be obvious to all, but imposing power still imposed.
When the applause died down, Celestia continued, “I know that many of you are itching to start this first day, so I shall keep this short…”
The principal carried on in her speech, addressing the hundreds of students and their diverse ways of life, challenging them to be responsible and to have a sincere love of education for education’s sake. She wrapped everything up with a piece on friendship: how it built up the school over a century ago, how it impacted the lives of those who walked in its halls, and how it continued to do so today. Too standard and bland? On paper, yes, but Keep felt the principal’s sincerity throughout the entire speech, though that didn’t stop a few at the back from almost sleeping in boredom.
Luna tapped Celestia on the shoulder, whispering something to her sister.
Celestia gasped, then quickly turned back to the microphone. “Oh, well!… to cap things off, a school year—and a life—filled with friendship is one overflowing with much good, and I promise that you’ll grow as a better creature through it! And thus, let us have a wonderful start to the year!”
And thus, everybody cheered whether because the speech was good or because the speech was over. That was not all: more than a few saw Luna and Celestia lightly bickering a little as they trotted back inside, likely going on about overtime.
Many started their way inside the school, and Keep found himself swept up with the crowd, fired up by the positive energy everybody had this morning and by just being here. It was only half an hour until his first real teaching class.
He stepped through the row of glass doors into the lobby, and his anticipation built up from there. True, it was the typical scene of students milling about, passing time before classes would officially begin. However, a familiar old feeling washed over the pony, evoking in him that first day of school from ages ago. Just like before, friends here reunited and chatted about what’d gone on over the summer, new transfers ogled their new academy and wondered who exactly to meet, and staff ensured that everything was running smoothly—and that included the guards. Unlike before, the guards weren’t being mobbed by curious students grilling them about their armor.
As for his fellow teachers, none of them were out here. At least he couldn’t see them in the stifling herd about him. If he were to find one, the lounge would be his answer.
Keep pushed his way through the throng of students. Being so young as a teacher made him the mistaken face of a classmate more than once. He could feel himself blushing as he tried to leave behind a freshman insisting the teacher was his lifelong best friend from nursery.
One minute of frantic walking later, Keep reached the teachers’ lounge and opened the door with his magic.
It was rather calm inside compared to the ruckus in the halls. Instructors like him did their unwinding here, secure inside yellow walls as they lazed about on chairs or chatted about random stuff like Monday Night Buckball happening later tonight. Few were the frantic ones doing last-minute preparations for their classes, and they too participated in the lively discussions drifting around.
Math teacher Wing Lime was whipping up a couple bowls of fruit salad in the kitchen for his co-workers, befitting his lean figure and his healthy diet. Sitting on the only couch in the room was the teachers’ rotund clown, Quantum Quark from Physics, with the third time he’d made the same lame pun about muons and moons. Last but not least, there was Strotton Break, teaching art for the past ten years, coolly waiting for his dripping beverage from the coffee maker.
“Morning to you, Keepsake,” Strotton said, turning around to properly greet him with a hoofshake. Strotton looked much like a typical teacher, somewhere in his forties and wearing a tie but no blazer or some other matching suit. “Had a good night’s sleep?”
Keep nervously scratched his head, waiting in line as coffee dripped into Strotton’s cup in delectable drops.
“Erm, not really,” said Keep.
“Figures.”
Strotton leaned in to check his cup.
“I don’t blame you,” he went on. “I still get nervous about days like this. First day jitters get everypony, even the ‘experts’ like me.”
The older stallion then took the cup from the machine and put it warmly on his hoof.
Only now, when Keep’s mind was rested from the chaos outside, did he register that eye-popping scent of coffee again. This one smelled more refined and more roasted than what he’d had in the convenience store. Though, nothing was like what his own coffee back home. Nothing like coffee beans he ground himself with tender love and care.
“Take it from me,” Strotton said to Keep before taking a loud sip. “Relax. Don’t worry about it. No one’s had a perfect first day on the job.”
He laughed a little, shaking his head at what he’d just said.
Just do what the youngsters used to say, Keep: ‘you do you.’”
The younger teacher merely nodded his head at the sage advice. “I’ll remember that, sir. Thank you—“
“—‘cause the hippogriff went to the other side, that’s why!” Quark announced.
His post-joke laugh shot through the whole lounge. Everyone else laughed, though it could be out of simple politeness.
Peace thus returned to the lounge, Keep sat on a free chair. It was a chair without a table attached to it. He stayed there and gazed, specifically, at nowhere.
Blood rushed in his veins, mixed with a helping of adrenaline and a dash of nervousness. Less than thirty minutes until homeroom sessions would end and his teaching stint would take off. Despite his crowd- and coffee-jumbled mind, he remembered the instructions he’d repeated to himself so many times: ninth grade, room B-1, last room to the right before the entrance lobby.
As he sipped his own coffee, he found it amusing that this was his third cup of coffee in this newborn morning. He was a coffee-holic, after all. The last few weeks of his college years didn’t help with his addiction.
“Come on, four cups of black coffee and you’re still not done? This is worse than I thought!”
Keep didn’t exactly feel great in the college cafeteria, especially since “summer heat” was a joke up here. It was bitingly cold, and the heaters hadn’t prevented the shivers. Perhaps he could’ve gone for something much hotter like spiced coffee, but any sensible tongue would lash out against torture.
It didn’t help that he had four more cups of coffee, all empty, next to his carbo-loaded plate of pasta, bread, rice, cereal, and potatoes, which were all the go foods the cafeteria offered.
“Look, Keep,” said Lacuna, a pegasus classmate who wrapped a wing on his shoulder. “We’re your friends, and we don’t want you to stay miserable like this. Tell us, what’s going on?”
Keep lifted his gaze from the plate. There, he saw the only four classmates he had in his history course. They were the four closest friends he had here on campus.
All Duck was a unicorn just like him; she was very studious but was hampered with an addiction to fishing, out of all things. Beside her was Earth pony Four Kicks, the closest thing this college had to a class clown as a self-proclaimed comedian with her funny memes on social media. Farthest from Keep was the breezie Sirocco, a constant traveler in the weekends, never staying put in one place and always returning with a story and a souvenir from wherever. And, last but not the least, there was Lacuna, the one sitting right beside Keep; she was a young Wonderbolt reject, taking up her back-up path in life as a historian-in-training.
They sat at his table and they were all ready to help Keep. If he could only just cooperate.
“Ah, I just don’t know!...” He smacked a hoof on his head’s side, dismay writing itself on his face. “I don’t know… I don’t know if this is what I really want.”
“What, you mean history?” Duck said, inching her head closer to listen clearer.
“But you can’t just shift out now!” yelped Kicks, flailing her forehooves around in the air like a headless cockroach.
Everyone else shushed her, but it didn’t faze Kicks one bit. “Excuse me, but this is his last week here. Not counting the prep to the graduation ceremony, but—“
“Cut it, Kicks,” interrupted Lacuna with a death glare that silenced the Earth mare. “Not the best time for that.”
So Kicks backed out a little, still hanging on in the conversation.
Lacuna sighed, turning to face Keep with a solemn expression. “But, really, are you sure you’re… not sure about this? It could just be a passing funk, you know. Maybe give it a day or two?”
Keep moaned, hooves grabbing his head and mane. The caffeine crash was already falling upon him.
“I don’t know,” Keep managed, slumping a foreleg on the table. “I just want to be sure about it for life. I mean… what if this history thing isn’t right for me?”
He gestured to his plate as if his life-long dream laid there. “Like, I was so hyped about it back in the old days. I loved it a lot then, but maybe… maybe it’s just a foalhood or teenager thing… a thing I’m growing out of...”
“That you’ve stuck by it for almost four years,” added Sirocco as his tiny form landed on Keep’s shoulder, “not to mention the years prior—it means it’s not a phase.”
“Yeah, but still… it’s a clutch revelation.” Keep scratched his jagged mane, undone by pent-up stress, and unintentionally shooed his breezie friend away back to the rest of his friends. “Last night, I thought about my cutie mark... it’s just a chair. It’s just a stupid chair! It could mean anything… agh, why do they have to be so mysterious?!”
He downed half of his coffee and slammed the cup back down. Scared his friends but not enough to scare them away.
“What if...” Keep stopped, held up a hoof, tried to catch his breath. “Wh-what if my destiny is literally making chairs, and I’ve been missing out on it my whole life?”
Lacuna’s hoof grabbed his foreleg. He felt her smothering grip and everything froze.
“Keep, you know cutie marks don’t work like that,” she said, focused on his quivering eyes.
“Answer me,” Lacuna went on: “do you love chairs?”
That was an eye-opener. Keep surely didn’t expect that childish question.
“Um...” He looked at the chair he was sitting on right now. An old, ordinary chair. Might as well be any other old, ordinary chair. “No…?”
“Then it’s not really about chairs,” concluded Lacuna with a comforting smile. The smile spread to the rest of her friends who looked expectantly at him. “It’s the uncovering of the past that drives your life, isn’t it?”
She placed a ginger hoof on his shoulder.
“Not helping.”
And Keep pushed the useless hoof away just to rub his aching head, disturbed by the million doubts lurking in his nerves.
“You’ve heard the stories in the news,” he added, the misery rising. “Ponies rediscovering the meaning of their cutie marks long after they got it, always misunderstanding it until years later, decades even!”
“Worrying about it isn’t going to solve anything,” Duck said, half-anxious. “You can’t just worry yourself away like this!”
“I have the right to worry,” Keep declared with a raised voice, “because I might’ve just wasted four years of my life and undone my future!”
Everyone stopped.
Beyond, other students looked his way, seeing the mad pony standing up from his chair. The clatter of cutlery and the chatter of creatures fell silent.
Breathed heavy, breathed scared. Fear tingled in his hooves.
Keep sighed and returned to his coffee-swamped lunch, ignoring his friends who were sticking with him. If they weren’t going to go away after a stunt like that, he was just going to not talk at all and let them endure his silence.
They stayed until the end of lunch. They silently stayed with him and endured their friend until he left.
~ ~ ~
First Corners College dwelled far from Canterlot, farther up the western coast. It resided in the county of Stirrup City where bridges, roses, and pine trees were aplenty—no beaches here unlike in Canterlot. It was a lot cooler here too, which made poor Keep shiver half the time he ventured outside.
The college’s humongous size still amazed him from time to time. Traveling from his dorm to his classroom might as well be a trek to the other side of the world. At least the place was adorned with resplendent greenery, garnished with its trees, its shrubs, and its never-ending supply of flowers, especially with their lush roses, with so many delicious blossoms ripe for the picking. Since a pony might be temped to get some for a snack, the college had posted signs reminding everyone that the flowers were for display only—no picking and no eating allowed.
Passing by the timeworn red-brick buildings which littered the campus, Keep let his mindless hooves drag him closer to the library. He would apply the final touches to his thesis there and get this final assignment finished. He didn’t know how long he’d stay there for today or tonight. Just long enough to finish everything, long enough to hopefully drown the worries away.
Yet, the worries remained. His mind traced back through his time here in First Corners. Aside from his journey through the history classes here, he also found himself intrigued by the local woodsheds and woodshops which proliferated the college and the rest of town. He’d snapped a couple photos of his creations during his stays there; all of them were chairs of various types. Onlookers said they weren’t that bad—but if they weren’t that bad, they were good, and if he was good at chairs with his chair cutie mark… what was he doing with history?
Still more meaning could be found in chairs. They were usually reliable things. No one approached a normal chair wondering if it could hold their weight or not. They always assumed it would and that it would never let them down.
Keep could be that, then, a reliable pony. It was so general, however, just about any pony of good character and occupation would fit the bill. However, his own chairs betrayed his chair skills, and so...
Bad futures haunted the mind. He hadn’t lied when he talked about the cutie mark horror stories. Somepony going crazy because he wasn’t allowed to perform his cutie mark’s passion, robbed of his dreams before they were realized. Somepony descending into depression over always improving his cutie mark’s craft but never actually getting to the top, never satisfied with where he was because there was always room for more. Somepony looking back in his final years, regretting how he misread his cutie mark and tearing up at all the wasted years and at all the multiplying what-if’s plaguing his dying imagination.
Somepony like Keep going through all three.
He’d wished this whole change thing hadn’t happened. He’d wished that the Change itself had never happened, if only to stop this madness. Surely some of those problems would go away if he’d never become a talking unicorn.
But he knew he couldn’t do that. No one could. He couldn’t ask for things to just return to normal in a flash. Real life did not work that way.
Something rang and quaked in his bag.
He unzipped it open with his magic, keeping his trot going, and levitated his brand-new phone onto his ear. Didn’t even bother to check the name. Just went straight to saying, “’Yello?”
“Um… Keep?”
Burnt Alloy. A bad call already. She was probably catching a break in her own college nearby, wherever it was. Couldn’t remember in this state of mind. Judging by her tone, she would ask him what’s wrong, and she wouldn’t stop until she got a good-enough answer. Stubborn, the mare was.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Keep answered, floating the phone beside his ear as he trotted on. “Why’re you calling?”
“Well,” Alloy started, “Lacuna told me you have a big problem.”
Lacuna should’ve just shut up, was what he was tempted to say.
After hiding a grumble out of earshot, Keep replied, “Yeah, he-he! She’s exaggerating because I’m doing fine. Not perfect, because I do have a problem, but I’m fine; nothing too serious. I can handle it pretty fine, you know, since I—”
“You’re bluffing, Keep.”
That shut him up.
A sigh carried from the other end. “Look, you can’t just bluff your way out of this. These sorts of things can spiral out of control… but I can help. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
Keep rubbed his eyes, breathing hard. Alloy was a good friend, that much was true. Too much for her own good though. Too good for him now, that much was also true. Always asking questions, then roping her friend in just to complicate matters.
His hooves stomped on the brick pathway, dust picking up behind him. “I can handle it on my own, alright? I just need some time to myself, that’s all. No need to get worked up about it.”
“Are you…?”
A suppressed choke, he heard. Was she about to cry? She only just heard about it, after all.
“… are you sure about that?”
“I’m sure, Alloy.”
Silence was her reply. The wind blew and his hooves stomped more on the hard brick road. Birds tweeted among the branches above, their peaceful melodies bothering him. He was in the college forest now; the library was just around the corner.
“Okay,” her voice cracked through the speakers. “If… if that’s what you want, okay. I… I hope you get better soon.”
Keep let out his own sigh. Glad it was over, but she’d sounded so downtrodden.
“Alright, Alloy. Thanks for understanding. Sorry about—”
The phone clicked. The call was over. It promised nothing good. It wouldn’t be hard to envision Alloy halfway to tears in her dorm.
No need to think about her now. He raised his head to check where he was.
He almost jumped back at what rose before him: the library, towering over his figure with its imperial height, yet the mounds of bricks that comprised the structure bestowed on it the intimate atmosphere of home, unlike the brutal concrete and steel found in dozens of buildings in the rest of Stirrup.
Coming and going through the doors were dozens of students with a couple teachers sprinkled in. His fellow collegians were stressing out about their upcoming theses and final projects. Such was the typical college student around finals week. Hassle right before the deadline.
Keep put on a brave smile and cantered in.
~ ~ ~
Just him, his trusty laptop, and his bag of borrowed library books.
Keep mashed on his keyboard which consisted of two big controller-like buttons and one spacebar. His final paper was being polished up with a multitude of last-minute corrections and additions his late research could squeeze out. The first sentence or so of his scholarly argument went like this: “The Change brought about a marked division between pony psyches and non-pony psyches due to the emergence of cutie marks among the pony populace. This division is evidenced in three ways...” Expounding on it had been difficult because it was thesis work; it was supposed to be difficult. Now, however, despite having almost everything in place, Keep encountered another difficulty.
Doubt.
The same doubt from lunch, shared with his friends but never really understood by them or him. The same doubt from a week ago when he shared his latest chair on MyStable and dozens claiming he could be a good carpenter if he put in the time and effort. The same difficulty from a month ago, of what his cutie mark actually meant, and his history obsession fading off like the phase it might’ve been. That passion, gone, and so was its first love.
Not blood but coffee ran in his veins, carrying him through hours of doing the same menial work physical and mental, staving off the doubt as his hooves tapped to refine, refine, refine—doing it better, an incremental increase in grades, making everyone including himself a bit prouder.
But, it didn’t do anything to fully solve or silence the issue of why, why, why. Why history? Why still chase after it when his cutie mark could say otherwise? He had one shot at this, only one college course to go and pay for. A second one was possible but would most certainly tax his parents severely. If he was wrong—
“Um, hello?”
“Yagh!”
He stumbled over, knocking his pile of books to the cold floor and spilling them on his laptop. It was a big bang in the library, and others already glared at him for disturbing their peace. An embarrassing display on top of doubt and possibly missing the deadline.
“Oops! Sorry about that, Keepsake!” the stranger quietly exclaimed. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Need a hoof?”
Keep winced as he mindlessly took the hoof, his rump aching from the fall. However, the embarrassment lifted when he saw her face.
Big round glasses, freckles on her cheeks, and mane cut like she’d been part of the legendary Beetles band from the sixties. It was none other than Miss Fonds, his history professor this year, smiling at him.
After Keep got up and dusted himself off, he turned to his professor eyeing the literary mess he’d made. She bent over to pick up the books and put them back together.
“I-it’s alright, ma’am!” he cried out before gagging himself. This was a library; he wondered where his quiet manners had gone. “I shouldn’t have gotten in your way or stayed between the shelves here.”
Fonds hummed at that, glancing at the tiled ceiling. Those glasses really made her look the nerdy type.
“It’s good you got in my way.” Fonds said, “or maybe it was me getting in your way. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have seen you—” she gestured a hoof at him “—like this.”
A lump snaked down his throat. Fonds was getting closer to it too, getting closer to this problem that shouldn’t be talked about. It could wait until after the thesis, couldn’t it? Tried to form an excuse in his head, but he remained silent to see what her next move would be.
“You didn’t look too happy with your work,” she said, inspecting the laptop from afar as it lay on the floor. “Let’s be honest, that’s happening to everyone here today. Still—“ her gaze leveled with his, dead serious with those eyes behind the spectacles “—this isn’t normal for you.”
His eyes shifted here and there, avoiding hers.
“Keepsake, is there something going on with your thesis?” Fonds inquired, fixing her glasses with a hoof. “Second-thinking your argument on the last day perhaps?”
Keep bit his tongue. He looked to his sides but found nothing but heartless bookshelves that couldn’t comfort him. The student could try arguing his way out, justifying his behavior somehow, but Fonds was air-tight with her arguments like she was the best lawyer in the world. He would only be digging his hole deeper and deeper; all the harder to get back up from. Perhaps he could buy some time, save it for later though all was due the next morning.
“I’m fine,” he blurted out. “Just taking a bit of a break, that’s all.”
Fonds’ eyes widened like saucers. “You mean staring at your laptop screen, dazed and drooling and doing nothing else for the past minute or more, is how you take a break?”
Another gulp dug the hole even deeper.
“And let’s add muttering to yourself about how you might not be really for history after all, rambling about your cutie mark...”
She slowly nodded, closing her eyes for dramatic effect. The cheery smile that started this had long left her features.
“Yes, I overheard all of it, Keep.”
Falling apart. Discovered, outed by himself. He didn’t know what would follow. At the very least, it’d have something to do with Miss Fonds and serious talk. There’d be a meeting full of serious talk with her. That would be punishment enough; precious minutes would be taken away, minutes that could’ve been spent on that thesis which, in hindsight, should’ve been done by now. Add poor time management too to his list of sins.
“For one, you do need a break, that’s for sure,” Fonds said, already turning her head toward the doors. “But instead of dinner, we’ll—“
Keep’s ears rose in curiosity. “Dinner? What time is it?“
“Seven in the evening, and as is, you’re clearly not suited to keep working like this. Hold on, I’ll take this...”
While Fonds checked her phone, fishing for a text, Keep took a glance out the library’s wall-tall windows. To his surprise, the sun had already disappeared; only a shade of its rays lingered in the darkening twilight, offset by the myriad of city lights peppering the sky. Glimmers floated in the air, probably pegasi flying in the night. After four years, he still wasn’t accustomed to such early sundowns this up north.
“Pack your stuff and come with me,” Fonds said as she returned her phone to her saddle bag. “I’ll show you something in my office.”
Keep had no choice. There was no room for refusal.
The laptop was shut tight, and the books were stashed away on a nearby table for some librarian to put them back.
So, with Miss Fonds, he began his trot to the history department.
~ ~ ~
The trip didn’t take long; the history department was near the library. For what it was worth, though, the trot provided him solace by presenting a peaceful nighttime campus. The cool breeze scraped his hair, the owls hooted in the trees, the several lights illuminated vast grounds, the few who still walked here.
Fonds was an eccentric history teacher. Instead of a living antique with a lifespan’s worth of history in the reins, she was young, no older than thirty. In addition to that, he might hear her chattering away with Duck and Kicks after classes, geeking about the latest show or comic she’d picked up. She was a sucker for cartoons and comic books, not to mention that she also collected figurines of said cartoons and comics. It approached hoarder levels if her personal stories of bursting shelves at home were to be believed.
In class, however, she operated as normal. She walked her students through the day’s lesson and finished the session with a relevant moral too.
Once back inside a building and after scaling a couple flights of stairs, they reached the history department. It was packed with professors, among other faculty, working round the clock to get everything ready for the thesis onslaught starting tomorrow. Paper stacks were printed and re-printed, read and re-read. Despite the frenetic pace, it was mostly quiet, with only the scratching of pens and the tapping of keyboards sticking out. The life-sized portraits of the college’s own history graduates only heightened the department’s calm.
Fonds led Keep past a sea of cubicles. Others in their little square office spaces glanced at him oddly but paid him no further mind. It then struck him that he hadn’t known where her cubicle was in his whole time at First Corners.
After navigating through the jungle of office squares, they reached their destination.
Various cartoon figurines and statuettes adorned Fonds’ cubicle, joined by a display of several rare limited edition comic issues and posters from series such as Justice Herd and the Power Ponies. Speaking of the Power Ponies, rare figurines of each of the main cast was there, made and sold from across the portal as their labels on the back testified. On the side hung, too, a couple more posters, depicting her favorite characters in tons of detail and in an assortment of styles. Of course, there was the usual class schedule and stack of papers plus the usual history books on her desk, but they were afterthoughts in this geeked-out spot.
Distinguishing herself from her peers even further, she had an old wooden chair, likely old enough to qualify as an objet d’art. The surrounding air was regal and ancient while its flowery grooves had carving of the utmost quality and care. Compared to the mass-produced plastic chairs everyone else had in the department, this was a masterpiece. Naturally, Keep’s eyes were drawn to the enduring piece of furniture, thoughts of his cutie mark coming back to occupy his mind.
“You see this?” Fonds said, gesturing to the chair and then sitting down on it. She looked at Keep with anticipation in her cheeks, pride in her chair unmatched. “What do you think?”
At first, Keep found himself with no words. Only after a while of fruitless brainwork did he manage, “Um… it’s a nice chair. Unique, certainly.”
“Mm-hmm! And what else can you say about it?”
Keep looked at it then back at his cutie mark. “It… kind of looks like mine.”
“Well, that’s nice,” she answered kindly, “but, honestly, that’s just a coincidence.”
She stood up. The chair was left empty, giving Keep a second good look at it.
“So, no questions about where it came from?” Fonds prodded, sounding a little baffled as her ears flattened against her head. “Nothing about who made it or why? No good questions a promising historian would ask?”
The professor chuckled in delight, letting the student pay full attention to her as she patted the chair’s backrest.
“This was created way back in the eighteenth century, over in the Saddle Arabian peninsula,” Fonds began. “It was specifically ordered as a gift by an aspiring and ambitious shahzadeh to his princess wife. It was one of ten chairs crafted for her as lovely thrones, created to decorate their home.
“Now, if things were simple, I would’ve stopped at that.”
Keep silently nodded. The royal couple wouldn’t get their happy ending so easily, what with Fonds being so coy.
He noticed the back-up chair behind him. It was a regular plastic chair that all the other cubicles here had. Fonds silently nodded, and so he took a seat, his ears lent to the professor.
Fonds cleared her throat before moving on: “The shahzadeh was part of the revolutionary party against the corrupt sultan who wasted no time cracking down on his opposition. Eventually, he ordered the imprisonment of all the party’s members. The shahzadeh and his family had to leave before the sultan’s forces could arrest them. In their haste, they left behind almost everything and brought, out of ten, only this one chair. After that, they lived in exile in another kingdom where they were allowed to live safely and raise their children in peace.
“However, financial troubles and famines long after the original royal couple died drove their great-grandchildren to pawn the chair to a Grittish businessman. He was also a collector of rare and expensive artifacts. Years passed, sitting in his family home where he lived—partially as a talking piece whenever visitors came by to his house—before the Royal Museum of Trottingham took interest. The museum purchased it from the businessman for its historical significance to Saddle Arabia. So, it stayed there through the turn of the twentieth century.
“Decades or so later, another businessman, this time an Amareican tycoon, would purchase the chair from the museum in exchange for a few paintings. At first, he thought he was just going to live with it and have a happy ending, but it turns out that the chair would tear him apart. His wife fought with him because he sold all his expensive paintings for ‘an old chair.’ Long story short, it evolved into a saga that was covered in the national news when she filed for divorce and got more than three-fourths of his estate in the process for her kids… and as one final stroke of revenge, she took the chair with her.
“She remained quite the respectable woman thanks to the wealth she had, rubbing shoulders with famous names and celebrities, letting them have big parties in her villa, and so on. However, because of huge family business woes thanks to her short-sighted son, she had to pay off her debt. Since she didn’t really appreciate the chair’s true value, it was the first thing sold away, and it flew off to some small-town furniture store… right here in Stirrup. It’s called, ‘Chairs and Tables For You!’ It’s right by Sideburn Road, near Willamare River in case you want to visit.
“Back to the chair, it was priced so expensively, it didn’t get sold for forty years. On the bright side, it was witness to this city’s booming history. It saw the death of a mob-connected restaurant across the street and its replacement by a hippie apartment before that got turned into a center for lots of counter-political activity—especially with environmentalist rallies about cutting down too many of our trees—and after that, that same apartment got renovated into a Lineighx tech office with the rise of the Internet. As far as I know, though, it’s since devolved into a mishmash of retail stores and a laundromat. Tragic for such a radically-changing site.
“Anyway, ten years into the new millennium, someone was studying right here for a bachelor’s degree in history. While reading up on the Royal Museum of Trottingham, he read about an odd chair in their records. That’s when it hit him: it was the same fancy chair over at the store! He was so excited to own literal history, he suffered another student loan just to snatch it. It stayed with him in his dorm as a conversation starter and a sign of ego too. Later on, after he graduated and became a professional historian, he would use it as his office chair. Wouldn’t use anything else, even if they had cushions and wheels.
“Years later—after the Change happened and he started a family—he overheard his teenage daughter in her room saying she wanted to be a historian just like her father. The next day, which was her birthday, he gifted the chair to her. He told her the crazy history of this chair and then passed it on to that lucky mare.”
She indulged herself in an elegant laugh. “It’s a no-brainer who his daughter was.”
Keep pawed a little on the floor, still nervous about his no-brainer guess. “She’s you, right?”
Fonds plastered a fun smile on her face, tilting her head towards her father’s gift.
“If only it could talk about the millions of things it’s seen over the centuries,” she said, then a sigh escaped her lips. ”It’d be a far greater treasure than it is now.”
Under the white ceiling lights, surrounded by a deluge of nerdy memorabilia, the chair glittered. It was easy to imagine a crazy old alicorn sitting on it, delighting her listeners with the complete history of the chair. The talks it’d overheard in its private rooms, the sights it’d seen in all its travels, the acts of kindness and cruelty it’d witnessed. At least that was one perk those thousand-year Equestrian creatures had going for them.
Something still nagged at the back of his mind.
“But why tell me all about it?” Keep asked, filled with curious concern. “I mean, the chair is very cool and all, but what does it have to do with me—” he sneaked a glance at his flank “—other than my cutie mark?”
Fonds’ hoof caressed the chair’s post, eyes cherishing the heirloom. “A lot. For one, we’re quite the special generation, aren’t we?”
“Huh?”
The professor covered her mouth in more polite and elegant laughter.
Calming down, she continued: “Keep, I don’t think something like the Change is going to happen again anytime soon. All of us who’s lived through it, who’ve been alive through the Change, are unique treasures. Everyone after us will live as a new set of creatures; they’ve never changed to begin with, already born as magic species.”
Keep shifted his eyes toward the figurines. It’s as if they were looking at him. They were Fonds’ silent testimony as the professor lifted her gaze upon the student.
“You…” she muttered, “you’ve lived through the Change. Studying to be a historian here is no coincidence. Certainly no passing fad on your part either. You know what I think? I think it’s borne out of a genuine desire.”
“A desire for what?” Keep asked right back, doubt clouding all. If it sounded too good to be true, it must be false. Can’t be anything else, but... “It could still be a fad, right?”
A shrug was what he got, but Fonds’ smile stuck around. “Think a little more, Keepsake. That desire can’t be just because of now. Earth’s magic era has lasted, what, twelve years? As jam-packed as that is, it can’t be all there is, can it?”
That was his cue to say no, but Keep uttered nothing. Traced in his mind, backtracked for an answer, trying to find out for the thousandth time that all-important why. The figurines and posters he whirled around at only gave him assuring smiles, no definite answers.
Rest. Yes, thinking about the Power Ponies fighting against some hair-obsessed maniac would give him a second’s rest from this tiring talk of serious real-world personal stuff. What about conjuring up whatever was the backstory behind that weird grayscale Shadow Spade poster? Or wondering what the price of that shiny human-and-pony Daring Do crossover poster was?
Human-and-pony?
Human.
Thousands of years of human history. Thousands of years of history about a species extinct.
That taste of before. He used to be human. Wasn’t human for very long, really. Lived longer as a pony by now, and if he had an average lifespan, then he’d have that a couple times over. Yet, perhaps that only heightened the hunger, spurred the curiosity in him for who he—and who everyone else—used to be.
He’d yearned for more humanity when he no longer had it. For more humanity when he could never get it.
“Humans…”
The word pulled on his tongue, rolling off of it for as long as it could, to let him dwell on that word and the history underneath it.
“It was humans th-that brought me here, wasn’t it?”
The dimples on Fonds’ smile shone under the lights. Her breathing slowed as she took in a student who was catching on.
“That was my bet,” she said as she paced around the chair, drawn to its age-old mystique. “You and figuring out who used to be here before all the magic happened. I could tell from the answers and questions you’ve made throughout the year, and I could tell from the rest of your classmates too. This drive of digging up humanity’s past, seeing its highs and lows, then enjoying the ups while learning from the downs, to understanding how we got here, and what to do to journey on a better path… as well as the fun stuff you’d find in history like with this chair.”
Fonds couldn’t help but bring out a youthful giggle. “And speaking of chairs… you’re just like a chair, Keep.”
He didn’t know whether that was a compliment or an insult. Probably the former. Probably more like Fonds’ special chair.
“What does a chair mean?” she asked as if she was talking to the chair. “Well, we know a lot about chairs. They’re familiar. They bring us comfort in good times, in bad times, even in no times. They’re just there for us when we’re tired of standing up. They’re something to turn to, something reliable, just like what you muttered to yourself back in the library.”
That still brought an embarrassing blush on his cheeks. A sign of madness, talking to himself without even noticing. It’d been convenient that everyone else there had been too focused on their own theses to listen to his mad mumblings.
“But, an old chair like this,” Fonds went on, commanding her student’s attention, “one that’s seen so much? It’s so reliable, they’re an anchor to the past. It’s endured a lot, gotten through tons of circumstances and struggles, but here they are! Still here, living history. If it was personified, I’d think it’d be one of the sages of legends, character built up over the centuries, bursting with stories to tell and what lessons it can impart to us now.
“Of course,” she said with a wink, “a chair cannot speak.”
Why wink at him like that? Maybe it was a joke he didn’t get, or some kind of—
Keep gasped. Recognition opened his eyes.
“But I can!” he yelled, jumping for joy and letting out a merry whinny.
“What’s a historian without a people to tell a history to?” Fonds remarked, her smile ever growing at the sight of a pupil just “getting it”.
“More importantly,” she added, “what’s a people without a history?”
Fonds raised a hoof to her face. She turned it around near her eyes, inspecting it closely.
“You may have been just a child when it all happened, Keep, but it’s clear you saw what we had and how far we’ve come as people. It’s something to be proud of as former humans, banding together through thick and thin to achieve wonderful things. Maybe… maybe I’m afraid that, after creatures like you, we’d start forgetting our human past, our human spirit. Giving it no honor.”
She flicked a smile back on her face, casting it toward Keep. "At least historians like you still come along."
Processing it all. That’s what he did as he stared at the tiled floor as his thoughts churned.
Keep was a pony, a chair, a former human. An anchor to the past, having had lived through it all before. There was weight to it, and it lay on his shoulders.
Yet, one more doubt insisted it was too good to be true.
“What if it’s just a feeling?” Keep asked one more time. Assurance wasn’t earned easily, that much he could feel, although joy was bubbling under the surface. He just knew she would say a wise answer to comfort him for good.
He got Fonds’ posh laugh instead. It had that fancy trans-Cantleantic laugh some actress from the fifties would use to sound high-class. It confused him. She seemed so sincere and serious just moments ago.
Once the laughter died down and her associates stopped rubbernecking her way, Fonds wiped her nigh-teary eyes.
“Really, Keep?” she asked. Her voice, however, betrayed nothing but good faith.
“If you truly love something,” Fonds kept on, “then you’ll push through with it, no matter what your feelings say. I’d say you don’t have a passing fad in your heart; otherwise, it would’ve been gone years ago! The thing is, you pushed through with it, whether you feel like it or not, because you believed this is your destiny.”
The doubts crumbled, crashing down and crumbling into debris. This was the tipping point. Washing over him was peace instead, soothing his once-troubled mind.
Keep sat down on the chair for relief, for repose as his eyes closed. Didn’t have to overthink it through. It was a reliable chair, just like all the other chairs he’d sat on through life. They’d never failed him.
He opened his eyes. For a second, all he could see was light. Glorious light. Basked in truth.
“Better?” Fonds asked, head popping into view.
He beamed back, blinking away the spots in his vision. “Um… yeah!”
“Good! Glad to help out a pony in need. Now—” she pat him on the back, a sign to hop out of her regal chair, “—off you go to your thesis again! It’s due tomorrow morning class hours, remember?”
Thus, the good feelings were shattered just as quickly as they formed. He still had a mountain of work to climb for tonight. A caffeinated evening and a drowsy morning weren’t fun things to look forward to.
But as he thanked his professor and left the history department, assuring peace remained with him into the night.
Keep trotted back to his dorm. Though he did not know when he finally slept, his sleep was the best he had in a long time.