My name is Comet Wishes, and I am the most powerful unicorn in Professor Hornwaggle’s second-year thaumaturgy class at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. I should be at the top of my class, but Inky Quill got a perfect score on the last test, and I’m pretty sure she cheated, even if I can’t prove it. There’s no way anypony can read a whole book in just a week!
I should have been studying for tomorrow’s class, but I was distracted. My best friend and roommate, Presto Chango, had barely gotten in the door to our dorm room before she dragged me away from my homework to tell me about another story of hers.
“I’m telling you, Comet, this is real!” She said, excited. She was bouncing so much that her mane had come undone again, the multicolored braids flailing around her face as she spoke. I wasn’t sure what her natural mane color was - her special talent was changing colors, and she mostly used that talent on herself.
“That’s what you said about the haunted library room,” I groaned. “We spent all night in there and nothing happened!”
“But this is way cooler!” Presto grinned and finally sat down, close enough to wrap a hoof around my shoulders. “I saw it myself this time. There’s an evil sorceress who sneaks into Clover Hall at midnight!”
“The High Energy Magic building?” I asked, not quite pushing Presto away. The hug was keeping her from bouncing around.
“Yeah! She’s probably trying to steal the school’s ancient magical secrets. Evil sorceresses do that.”
She had a point. Evil sorceresses did steal ancient secrets.
“Then obviously we need to tell the teachers,” I said.
“If we do that, we won’t be able to stop her ourselves,” Presto said. “And if we stop her, we’ll probably get extra credit!”
I gasped. “Then I’d be the top student again, and you’d be…” I frowned.
“Tenth or eleventh. I’m not quite dead last, thanks to your notes.” She grinned. She'd spent a whole week learning a spell that could copy notes from me. Presto had almost gotten into a ton of trouble until she'd adjusted the spell to change the hornwriting to look like hers, too.
“Well, what do we know about the sorceress?” I asked.
“She wears a big black cloak to disguise herself, so she has to be, like, a half-dragon and trying to hide her hideous, twisted form!”
“That’s stupid,” I snorted. “Dragons don’t work like that.”
“Yeah they do!” Presto insisted. “I read it in a book!”
I rubbed my chin at that. She had a strong point. Everything in books was true, otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed to print it.
“Even so, I’m sure we’d hear if there was a half-dragon student,” I said.
“I don’t think she’s a student,” Presto said.
“Well then why is she here?” I huffed. “And don’t tell me she’s here to eat foals. Nopony does that.”
“There’s only one way to find out.” She grinned. “You still know that invisibility spell?”
“This is so stupid,” I grumbled, as we waited in the bushes outside the new school building. I’d never been inside -- only the oldest students had any classes in the High-Energy Magic Department, so it was always the subject of rumors, some of which were definitely true. Someday I'd prove the cafeteria food was part of a secret experiment.
“It’s not stupid,” Presto whispered. “I’m sure she’ll be here!”
“It’s already dark out. We’ll get in trouble if we’re not in the dorms!”
“We’ll be fine,” Presto assured me. “Pixie is covering for us.”
I rolled my eyes, not that Presto could see it. We were both invisible, after all. “Pixie Stick is an idiot. She’s going to get hopped up on sugar and end up stacking all the furniture in the dorm rooms in a big pile. Again.”
“Exactly,” Presto said. “I gave her a whole bag full of candy. The dorm marm is gonna be so busy trying to calm her down that they’ll never even think to come looking for us!”
It was a brilliant plan. I wasn’t going to admit that to Presto, though, so I just huffed and waited, looking out for the witch.
We didn’t have to wait long. I heard the hooves long before I saw the dark shape emerge from the gloom. Her eyes were glowing like lanterns from within the blackness of her hooded cloak, and she walked with an odd, lopsided gait, favoring one of her legs. We watched from our hiding spot as the witch pushed the door to the building open with a scarred hoof.
She slipped inside, and before the door could close completely, I grabbed it with my magic, not letting it lock.
“Good work!” Presto said, patting me awkwardly on the butt.
“That’s my flank, Presto,” I groaned.
“I know,” she said. “Now let’s get inside and see if she’s turning the bad students into frogs!”
I groaned and we walked into the building, staying close enough to each other to touch so we wouldn’t get lost. We kept a healthy distance from the witch, watching as she went deep into the building.
"Presto," I whispered. "If she turns the bad students into frogs, what's she gonna do to us?"
“We won't get caught. Where’s she going?” Presto whispered.
“It has to be some kind of secret lair!” I said. “I can feel the magic in my horn.” It was like a strange tingle in the air. I’d felt it sometimes when teachers would demonstrate spells, but here it was thick, like a dense, invisible fog of magical energy.
“Is that what this feeling is?” Presto asked.
“I’ve never felt anything like it. Maybe we should just go back…” I stopped walking.
“We can’t go back now! We’re so close to finding out what she’s doing!”
She had a point, but she’d need a better argument than that.
“And with this much magic, it has to be really cool! I bet if we watch, we can learn a new spell and totally make everyone else in the dorm jealous!”
Presto was really good at convincing me of things.
“Fine,” I said. “But we’re only going to stay long enough to see what’s happening. I can’t keep this spell going forever.”
We walked down the hallway, through the miasma of magic. I tried to imagine what somepony could do with that much magical energy. Maybe they were going to blow up the sun!
A door was cracked open, and I could see light coming from within, the steady, clean light of a magical lantern. We had the same kind of lights in our dorms. Apparently they didn’t trust us with fire, and it was a standing tradition that electrical appliances were banned except when absolutely needed.
We crept closer, until we could hear voices from within.
“...I read through the books you left me. Or, um, I tried. I didn’t understand much of it.” Presto and I shared a look. It sounded like a filly, maybe even a little younger than we were.
“Don’t worry,” said another voice. This one sounded like a grown-up. “I didn’t think you’d read all the way through them. They kinda get into some complicated theory for a foal your age. I'm impressed you got this far.”
"But I didn't understand all of it," the filly said. She sounded sad. "Is that why I can't take regular classes?"
"No, no, that's not it. I'm just trying to figure out how much you know and what we need to shore up," the grown-up said. "At this rate, you'll be caught up to ponies your age before the end of the school year. You're a really dedicated student."
“I didn’t have much else to do,” the filly sighed. Presto and I looked in through the crack in the door. There was a room inside, a classroom with most of the desks removed and replaced with the contents of a dorm.
“Sorry,” the mare said. The two were standing near the front of the room. The evil sorceress had pulled back her hood, revealing a mane full of red and yellow stripes. She definitely looked evil. She even had scars! Daring Do books had taught me that anypony with scars was probably evil.
Presto shot me a look. I had to carefully control my expression to avoid letting her know that she had been right all along.
“It’s okay,” the filly said. Unlike the sorceress, she looked harmless. “I’m just glad that you’re teaching me.”
“I shouldn’t be leaving you alone for so long. You’ll end up as antisocial as I am. Or worse, like Twilight.” The witch shook her head. “First it’s spending all day with books, then it’s a slippery slope all the way to checklists and doing unnatural things with the romance section.”
The filly giggled. “I promise not to ruin any of the book bindings.”
“What are they talking about?” Presto whispered.
“I don’t know but it sounds gross,” I muttered. Presto nodded.
“How about we start today by practicing your Life Sense spell?” The fire-colored sorceress smirked, as if holding back laughter at a private joke.
“Um, okay,” the filly nodded. “I was practicing while you were gone, Miss Shimmer, and I think I really have it down!”
“Show me,” the mare said. The filly concentrated, a red aura glowing around her horn. A wave of misty magic pulsed out away from her, fading quickly with distance. I felt it pass over me and Presto, with a strange tugging sensation at something inside me.
The filly gasped.
“There are two ponies right outside!” She backed up, obviously afraid.
“They’ve been following me for a few minutes now,” the mare said. She looked back at us, and I saw her eyes glowing. “It would be polite if they came in and introduced themselves instead of just eavesdropping.”
“She spotted us!” Presto screamed. She turned to run, not even making it a single step down the hall before she was grabbed by the tail. "She's gonna turn me into a toad!"
“Your invisibility spell is pretty good for your age, but it's a rookie mistake to forget to disguise your shadows,” the mare explained, as she dragged us into the room by her magic, the veil around us shredding apart without even any visible effort on her part.
“P-please don’t eat us!” I begged. It wasn’t proper for a gifted unicorn to beg like this, but I’d rather beg than be eaten.
“I don’t eat ponies,” the mare huffed.
“T-then don’t blow up the sun!” Presto pleaded.
“Blow up the--” the mare rolled her eyes. “That’s impossible for so many reasons I don’t even know where to start. Why would I want to blow up the sun or eat foals?”
“You’re an evil sorceress! Evil sorceresses all want to blow up the sun and eat ponies!”
“First, I’m not an evil sorceress. I couldn’t even manage to hit morally ambiguous,” the mare rolled her eyes. “I know, totally inappropriate for a witch. I’m dangerously close to being a responsible member of society.”
“B-but the black cloak!” I protested. “And the sneaking around! And the…” I looked at the confused looking filly who had been waiting ever since casting her spell. “And the foal that… you’re teaching?”
“Teaching a filly in a school?” The mare gasped. “How villainous. No wonder you needed to stalk me.”
“S-sorry,” I mumbled.
“I suppose the right thing to do would be to get the dean and have both of you yelled at for a while,” the mare considered.
“Please don’t!” Presto gasped. “My momma would never forgive me if I dropped out!”
“Miss Shimmer, m-maybe…” the filly watching us swallowed nervously. “Maybe we can just let them go?”
“Just let them go?” The mare, apparently Miss Shimmer, seemed to roll that thought around for a while. I was watching my whole future get decided in front of me, and I had a sick feeling that she had already decided everything, and even making a decision was just part of an act.
“I-I mean if you want to, your highness…” the foal whispered, ears folding back.
“I’m not a princess, Ruby,” Miss Shimmer rolled her eyes.
“You’re kind of like a princess,” the filly, Ruby, retorted.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Miss Shimmer said. “You stop calling me ‘your highness’ and I won’t take these two to the dean.” The filly nodded quickly. “Fine. But they still need to be punished…” She grinned. “And I know just what to do.”
“How could she give us more homework?!” I groaned, face down in a book as thick as my hoof. “This is so stupid!”
“It’s better than being in trouble with the dean,” Presto said. “And some of this is kinda interesting. I don’t even think we’re supposed to be reading these books yet! This one’s all about high-level transmutation magic.” She turned the book she was reading around with her magic so I could see the diagrams on the page. “This one’s about how to turn a pony into a newt! Or… maybe it turns lead into gold. Or lead into newts. Pretty sure it doesn’t turn a pony into gold, though.”
“What do you think that filly meant when she said Miss Shimmer was like a princess?” I asked, thinking. “She doesn’t have wings, or a crown.”
“Prince Blueblood doesn’t have wings either,” Presto pointed out. “And if she did have wings, she could hide them under that cloak.”
“Blueblood is just a prince. That’s totally different than a princess,” I snorted.
“I don’t think it’s all that different…” Presto considered. “I mean, a prince is like a colt version of a princess, right?”
“Shows how much you know,” I retorted. “While technically you’re right, a prince doesn’t have any real power on his own, traditionally. They just get married off for political reasons, and princesses hold all the real power. Besides, all the Princesses are alicorns.”
“So what we need to do is…” Presto rubbed her chin. “We steal her cloak and find out if she has wings!”
“Presto,” I sighed.
“Yeah?” She looked up.
“Just get back to work. We need to read this by tonight.”
“Well, I can’t give you very high marks for the theory,” Miss Shimmer said, as she looked over our papers. “But I guess since you’re just students it’s not terrible. Don’t they teach you fillies anything about combat magic these days?”
“Um…” I looked at Presto. She shrugged at me.
“Really?!” Miss Shimmer huffed. “Back when I was in school, Mom taught me third-circle combat magic before I was your age!”
“Your mother is a teacher here?” I asked.
“Something like that,” Miss Shimmer muttered. “She doesn’t take on a lot of students, though.” She took a deep breath. “I guess there’s only one thing to do. Ruby, these two are going to have to join us for lessons from now on.”
Ruby blinked. She was sitting away from us, obviously a little scared.
“B-but is that safe?” She asked.
“It’s safe,” Miss Shimmer said, without hesitation. “At least as safe as learning combat magic ever gets.”
“But what about my…” Ruby stopped, biting her lip.
“You know how to control it,” Miss Shimmer said, sounding almost reassuring.
“But what if something happens?!” Ruby was starting to panic. I’d seen the signs before in fillies, though usually it was on exam day. “They could get really badly hurt! They’re not like you, where you can just keep yourself safe!”
“Exactly,” Miss Shimmer agreed. “They can’t. But you know what, Ruby Drop? There are two ways to learn. You can learn by reading and theory and getting all the facts in order, and hope that your theory works when you need it to. Or, you can just try and learn by doing. The second way is a little messier, but then, when push comes to shove, you’ll know for a fact that you’re ready.”
“Professor Birch Staff says you shouldn’t cast a spell unless you know exactly what it does,” I said. “She says if you just cast blindly you end up with skeletons.”
“Skeletons?” Miss Shimmer asked, an eyebrow raising with obvious skepticism.
“I didn’t believe her either,” Presto said. “Not until Dirge tried casting a spell from that book with a big silver skull on it and skeletons popped out. It took days to get rid of them.”
“I’m still finding skeletons in my closet sometimes,” I sighed.
“And I thought the school would be less exciting without me or Twilight around,” Miss Shimmer muttered. “Okay. I’m putting necromancy on the lesson plan, so you can learn to safely deal with skeletons.”
“But necromancy is illegal!” Presto yelled.
“It’s fine, I have a permit,” Miss Shimmer waved a dismissive hoof. “Anyway, I believe in practical work. You can learn theory on your own. You only need a teacher for the parts where something might blow up.”
“S-so what should we do today?” Ruby asked. “I mean, um, you were teaching me about… about…” She looked at me and Presto, as if afraid of spilling some secret.
“About blood magic, yes,” Miss Shimmer said.
“Isn’t that… also illegal?” Presto asked.
“Special education permit,” Miss Shimmer noted. “It’s Ruby Drop’s special talent. It’s extremely useful for basic healing effects. She wants to be a doctor, something I think she’d excel at.” She shrugged. “So, tell me about your talents.”
“Well, um,” I coughed. “I got my cutie mark for replicating other spells.”
“Spell replication? Show me.” Miss Shimmer waited.
“Um,” I said, looking around. “Someone has to cast a spell for me to copy first.”
“Fair enough,” Miss Shimmer said. She raised a hoof, and a ball of light formed, floating above it, a swirling mass of red and yellow. I frowned at it. It didn’t look quite like a regular light spell.
“What is that?” I asked.
“If you can copy if, you should be able to find out for yourself,” she said, smirking.
I frowned and took a deep breath. All I had to do was copy that. How hard could it be?
“...think she’s starting to wake up…”
Everything was swimming around me. I could hear voices in the dark.
“Go ahead, Ruby. Just like I showed you.”
My horn hurt like a sprained ankle, throbbing and sharp and deep all at once. I tried to move, but everything was heavy.
Then I felt something warm, flowing into me like someone was pouring a bath into me instead of for me, and the aches started fading away. I tried to stand, and felt a hoof touch my shoulder.
“Careful. Just let Ruby finish.”
I settled and let the sensation peter out, relaxing. It felt good. Really good.
“There we go, that should be enough. How do you feel, Comet Wishes?”
“Amazing,” I said. “It feels like I just slept for ten hours.” I yawned and opened my eyes, looking around. I was still in the classroom. “What happened?”
“You passed out,” Presto said.
“But you did manage to copy the spell, for about half a second,” Miss Shimmer said. “I didn’t think it would take that much out of you.”
“What was that?” I asked, rubbing my head.
“Ruby healing you.” Miss Shimmer looked at the filly, smiling. “And doing an excellent job. She was able to give you some of her mana, which is why you’re not still suffering from extreme magical fatigue.”
“No, I mean, the spell you cast,” I said.
“Oh, that.” Miss Shimmer smirked. “I wanted to see if you were just copying the appearance of a spell or also the true effects. It looked like a light spell, but it was actually a type of crop growth spell that works by projecting high-energy mana across a wide area.”
“That’s a dirty trick,” I mumbled.
“Maybe,” Miss Shimmer agreed. “But I’m impressed. You did copy it, even though you had no idea what you were doing. From the power utilization curve, it looks like you’re using a type of universal spell matrix I haven’t seen before. It was really something…” She trailed off, thinking.
“Was it okay?” I asked, nervous.
“It’s more than okay!” Miss Shimmer smirked. “If Twilight was here she’d want to strap you to a thaumometer and do scans for weeks. No wonder you got into the school.”
“What about me?” Presto asked.
Miss Shimmer snorted. “I’m halfway sure you’re using Chaos Magic with some of those transmutations. You’re a danger to yourself and everypony around you. Luckily for you, that makes two of us.”
“It’s not chaos magic!” Presto huffed.
“It’s still trouble,” Miss Shimmer said. “But I’m pretty impressed.”
“Does that mean we’re done?” I asked.
“Do you want to be done?” Miss Shimmer asked.
I thought about the books she’d given us. They were easily ten times more interesting than the textbooks our teachers made us read. Mostly because they were sort of against the rules.
“Well…” I looked at Presto. She looked at me.
“Comet Wishes, are you paying attention?” Professor Birch Staff snapped, pulling me out of my sleepy daydreaming.
“O-of course, Ma’am,” I lied. “I was just thinking about--” I glanced at the chalkboard behind her. “About more efficient ways to use magically generated heat. Like... “ I had to be quick on my hooves. “If it would be more efficient to heat a kettle from all around, or even within the water, instead of from the bottom like a traditional stove.”
“Is that so?” She asked, frowning at me. “Then perhaps you’d like to demonstrate for the class the spell I just explained?”
I couldn’t back down now. I definitely couldn’t tell her that I had been thinking about the book Miss Shimmer had given me on Rebellion-era combat magic and how much I’d rather be trying out some of the ice magic I’d seen. The spells just seemed really… cool.
I giggled at my own pun, and Professor Staff glared at me, clearing her throat. I stood up and walked up to the front of the room, where she had a cauldron set up.
“Heat the mixture in the cauldron to a boil,” she said.
I swallowed nervously. I hadn’t actually been paying attention to her lecture. I had no idea how to boil the water. Whatever spell she had been teaching wasn’t actually on the chalkboard and even if it was, I didn’t have time to study it.
I was going to have to wing it, and I wasn’t even a pegasus.
In the combat magic book I’d been reading, there had been plenty of fire spells. They weren’t as cool as the ice spells, but they had to be able to boil water. The diagrams hadn’t been all that complicated, either, but that made sense. Combat spells had to be easy to remember even when you were under stress. This probably wouldn’t be graceful, and the simple spell matrix would waste a lot of energy, but it’d definitely work. I felt a surge of confidence.
I formed the spell right under the cauldron, only feeding it a bare minimum of mana. I just had to be extra-careful and nothing would go wrong.
My hooves were aching as I wrote a sentence on the chalkboard again, joining the dozens of others exactly like it.
‘I will not attempt to heat water with Nazca’s Explosion Array.’
I grumbled under my breath and started writing it again.
“How was I supposed to know it would turn the cauldron into a cannonball and put it through the ceiling?” I muttered.
“It was really cool, though,” Presto said. “The look on the Professor’s face was priceless!”
“Now everypony is just going to remember me as the pony who blew up the evocation lab!” I groaned.
“You wouldn’t be the first,” said a calming voice from the doorway. Presto and I turned to see the last pony I wanted to see at that moment.
“Princess Celestia!” I gasped, kneeling. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to do this! Please don’t expel me!” I closed my eyes, throwing myself both literally on the ground and figuratively on her mercy.
“If I expelled every student who blew up part of the school, very few unicorns would ever graduate, especially not the talented ones,” Celestia said.
“At least you didn’t turn anypony into a potted plant,” put in a too-familiar voice, though not one that I was used to hearing during the day, or anywhere near this part of the school.
I opened an eye and saw a dark shape next to Celestia. Miss Shimmer was looking up at the damage to the roof, where daylight streamed in past the broken timbers and roof tiles.
“Maybe I should give you a book on mending spells,” Miss Shimmer muttered.
“That might be for the best,” Celestia agreed. “I think learning how to fix your mistakes is an excellent lesson for a pony to learn early in life.” She gestured to the blackboard. “Punishments help discourage you from making a mistake again, but fixing problems gives you perspective on why it was a mistake. Both are important, in moderation.”
“Does that mean I don’t have to write it a hundred more times?” I asked, hopeful. A pardon from the Princess was the only way I’d get out of detention this time.
“Oh, I’m sorry, my little pony. I wouldn’t dream of interfering with the Professor’s job, and disciplining her students is part of it.” Celestia smiled serenely, and Miss Shimmer snorted in laughter at her side.
At least I was only being made fun of by the most important pony in the world. That definitely wouldn’t scar me for life.
“I came to check on you to make sure you weren’t in too much trouble to see Ruby later,” Miss Shimmer said. “She gets lonely by herself, and she isn’t confident enough to go out on her own yet.”
“She didn’t seem that shy,” Presto said.
“She’s afraid she’ll hurt somepony,” Miss Shimmer explained. “Ruby… did some things that she still regrets. Worse than just putting a hole in a roof.”
“Friends and self-confidence will help her more than anything else,” Princess Celestia said. “My daughter says you two have been getting along with Ruby Drop quite well, and I hope that continues.”
“Your… daughter?” I asked, confused. Then I saw the expression on Miss Shimmer’s face, a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance that I knew well, having had it plastered all across my snout whenever my parents were talking about me.
“She’s your daughter?!” Presto gasped. “But… she’s so…” She gestured. “Scary!”
“At least somepony respects my killing power,” Miss Shimmer huffed, before Celestia pulled her close with a wing and completely ruined any chance she had of trying to look cool.
“My little Sunset isn’t scary,” Celestia said, leaning down to nuzzle her.
“Mom!” Miss Shimmer groaned. “Come on! Even Luna thinks I’m scary sometimes!”
“But I never have,” Celestia teased.
Miss Shimmer grumbled, blushing and having apparently given up on defending herself.
“Is she really Princess Celestia’s daughter?” I asked. Ruby looked up from her homework, quill scratching against the scroll she was writing on.
“They’re not that different,” Ruby said. “Miss Shimmer seems kind of scary sometimes but she’s actually really nice. She saved me from some bad ponies and brought me here so I could learn to use my magic safely.”
“I bet she’s teaching you all sorts of secret magic,” Presto sighed. The quill in her grasp shifted as she focused on it, changing from an eagle feather to a peacock’s and then to a turkey’s before shrinking to a bluebird’s tailfeather.
“She’s m-mostly just focusing on helping me keep control,” Ruby said, her voice starting to waver. “B-before she- I hurt my parents and…” She sniffled. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
I sat up and put a hoof around her shoulders. Presto took the hint and piled in on the other side, flanking Ruby’s flank like a triple-unicorn sandwich.
“Chocolate?” Presto asked. I nodded. Chocolate could fix just about any problem.
“It’s locked,” Presto said.
I frowned at the kitchen door. Curse them, locking the chocolate away just when we needed it most! This was just another conspiracy designed to test us and drive us to near-madness.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll have to go to the library and get a spell that will allow us to bypass the lock. We’ll probably have to bribe the librarian not to tell the teachers that we borrowed a book of illegal spells, so we’ll need to sneak into--”
There was a click as the door opened a hoof-width.
“It was just stuck,” Ruby explained, as she looked inside.
“Presto, you said it was locked!” I huffed.
“Locked, stuck, same thing,” she shrugged.
“There’s somepony--” Ruby started saying, before Presto opened the door wide.
Miss Sunset froze, staring at us. There was a mixing bowl in her hooves, and she had a frilly apron on instead of her usual black cloak. She was a lot less scary without it.
“...You’re supposed to be studying,” she said.
“Are you… baking?” I asked, confused. “But your cutie mark is for magic, isn’t it?”
“Magical disaster,” Miss Shimmer corrected. She sighed. “Come in and close the door. I suppose you three deserve a break anyway, since you’re doing more work than anypony else in this school, staff included.”
“If your cutie mark is in magic, why are you baking?” Presto frowned. “Unless… it’s magical baking! Like alchemy, but cupcakes instead of gross potions!”
“It’s perfectly normal baking,” Miss Shimmer said, adding more ingredients to her batter. “I’m not a very good cook, but I count among my friends one of the finest bakers in all of Equestria. She sent me some tips on how to improve.”
“But… without a baking cutie mark you won’t be as good,” I pointed out.
“She doesn’t have a baking cutie mark either,” Miss Shimmer said. She poured the batter into a cake tin, carefully smoothing it with her magic. “She had to learn the hard way, with a lot of work and studying. Pinkie might actually be one of the smartest ponies I know, even if she never really acts like it.”
“Why are you baking a cake, though?” Ruby asked.
Miss Shimmer nodded. “That’s a much better question. Do you know what’s coming up?”
“Well,” Presto considered. “There’s Ginger Beer Day, then Eclipse Day, and then--” she gasped. “Princess Celestia’s birthday!”
“And she loves cake,” I put in. It was a well-known national secret.
“So it must be a birthday cake!” Ruby gasped.
“This one is only a practice cake,” Miss Shimmer said. “I’m working my way up to birthday cake.” She slid the cake tin into an oven before turning back to us. “I decided to do my baking out here to try and keep it a surprise. The palace staff loves to gossip, and trying to keep a rumor from spreading is like trying to keep a tight grip on sand.”
“What flavor is it?” I asked. “Do you know the Princess’ favorite?”
“That’s a secret,” Miss Shimmer said. “Now, do you want to tell me just why you three were sneaking into the school kitchen?”
“It’s my fault,” Ruby said. “I wasn’t feeling good and they wanted to get me a snack to cheer me up.”
“Well, I do need some taste-testers for this practice cake,” Miss Shimmer said. "Think you fillies are willing to risk being turned into newts by an evil witch in return for a slice or two?"
"Yes, ma'am!" I shouted eagerly.
She was definitely less scary with the apron on.