"Why do we even have to take this class?", Starlight wondered aloud. She was sitting in a large auditorium, surrounded by at least a thousand other ponies, facing a stage. The stage looked huge, even from Starlight’s position in the balcony seating. A podium lay in the center.
Suddenly, the auditorium went dark, prompting confused mutters from the crowd and causing several ponies still in the aisles to trip. A spotlight drew all eyes to the podium, as unfamiliar show tune music echoed from…
Starlight looked around the dim auditorium, and though it was hard to see, she was certain there were no speakers, no audio system. A yellowish pony walked into the spotlight and began singing about musical theater. A ripple spread from the podium, as students began singing along. Starlight sighed as the ripple reached her, and begrudgingly sang along.
Starlight trudged through the rest of her first day of classes, saying hi to Midnight in the one lecture they shared the first day of the week, a combined astronomy/astrology lecture. Other than that, however, she didn’t recognize anyone in any of her classes. At the end of her last lecture, she started for her dorm.
I guess it was too much to expect to see Sunburst. Knowing him, he probably graduated early!
Her face fell, in step with her heart, as her pace slowed.
It was stupid to come here with some vain notion that "I'd be able to find him" and "we'll be friends again!" What was I gonna say, "Hey, remember me? We were friends as foals and then you got your cutie mark and left without even saying goodbye and it hurt so much that I never made a single other friend?!"
Starlight was quietly sobbing. She lifted her eyes to look around, and saw that several ponies were staring at her, and many others seemed to be looking every which way except in her direction. A pink unicorn mare with purple hair and a cupcake mark on her flank approached her and offered a kerchief from her saddlebag.
"Are you ok? I was walking behind you after you left the magic lecture, and I couldn't help overhearing you muttering."
Starlight winced at the mention of muttering. "Oh, I'm fine, just… read a really sad story, is all!"
The mare started dabbing at Starlight's eyes, "I understand. Are you headed to the first-year dorms? I could use some company if you want to walk with me."
Starlight replied with a small nod. The mare tucked away the kerchief before introducing herself.
"I'm Sugar Belle, in the agricultural school. You're Starlight, right? You answered so many of the professor's questions in lecture I think everyone knew your name by the end. It was really cool!"
Starlight's face, puffy from tears, perked up slightly at the compliment. She sheepishly smiled. "Thanks."
"Where are you from?"
"Sires Hollow."
"Where's that?"
"Over the mountain range, to the west. There's a bunch of old frontier towns on the way."
"Ha, I know what those are like. I grew up in Fair Valley Village. It's a few days journey by train."
"Well, I can't say I've ever heard of it."
Sugar Belle giggled. "Nopony around here has. Only a few dozen ponies live there, and it's mostly old ponies, farmers, and old farmers. I entered a baking competition to get a scholarship here just so I could see more of Equestria than fields of corn."
"I guess you got your cutie mark in baking, then?"
"Yeah! I've been selling pies in the county farmer's market ever since I was a filly. I can make a mean apple cinnamon pie."
Starlight's stomach growled; she had been so lost trying to find the lecture halls that she'd skipped lunch. Sugar Belle's ears perked up.
"Wanna stop by Saltlick Cafe?”
“That’d be nice.”
True to her name, Sugar Belle ordered a couple of decadent-looking cupcakes, while Starlight ordered a wilted but cheap prepackaged alfalfa salad. After they took their seats and started eating, Sugar Belle asked her question.
“So, is Sunburst ‘the one that got away?’”
Starlight nearly choked on her salad, and spent the next several moments coughing. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”
Sugar Belle playfully took a bite of her cupcake. “Maaaaaybe.”
“I guess you’re not entirely wrong. We only knew each other when we were foals. I haven’t seen him in a long time, and I had this hope that he’d be here because he went to Celestia’s magic school and I thought I might run into him, and… this is really dumb, isn’t it?”
Sugar Belle’s expression softened. “Sounds like your friendship meant a lot to you.”
“It did. It does, really.”
“You know you can always go to the registrar’s office and check if he’s enrolled here, right? I don’t think they can tell you anything else, but… at least you’d know.”
Starlight’s eyes lit up. “That’s a great idea!”
Sugar Belle cocked her eyebrow and broadened her smile. “And even if he’s not here, you’ve got at least one friend here! I’m gonna need to steal notes for Dr. Drop’s class from somepony after all.”
“Yeah, sure. It’ll be nice to have someone to study with.”
“So, you want to go to the registrar right now? I’d be happy to go with you.”
“I… uh…”
“Or not! We can just head back to the dorms.”
“Let’s do that.”
Starlight and Sugar Belle finished eating, then walked back to the residential halls towards the edge of campus, comparing notes on their first days as they went. As they reached a courtyard outside one of the larger dorms, Sugar Belle stopped and turned to Starlight.
“This is my stop. What building are you in?”
“Far Gallop, room 105.”
“I’m here in Solar Hall, room 463. Feel free to drop by if you want to hang out sometime. If you’re lucky, I’ll have a pie going!”
“Will do.”
Sugar Belle walked inside, waving as she traversed the large double-doored entrance. Starlight waved back, then continued on her way.
“Yeah, no, I’m coming with you.”
“What? No, I don’t need anypony coming with me.”
Midnight furrowed her brow. “Starlight, you said you started crying in the middle of campus just thinking about this Starburst guy–”
“Sunburst.”
“Him. Look, what are you gonna do if it turns out he is here?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“And if he isn’t?”
“I…” Starlight started breathing more rapidly, her pupils narrowing. Her voice jumped an octave. “I don’t know.”
“Hey, look at me. Breathe.” Midnight placed a hoof on Starlight’s shoulder and locked her eyes with Starlight’s. “What color are my eyes?”
Starlight’s darting gaze locked onto Midnight’s. “Uh… green.”
“My hair?”
“Black?”
Midnight’s face scrunched up, but she bit her tongue. “What kind of black?”
“Like a really dark blue or something what are these questions”
“Hush. Is it a pretty color?”
“Sure?”
“Thanks! What about my muzzle?”
Starlight sighed. “White. Ok, I see what you’re doing now.”
Midnight gave a toothy grin. “Is it working?”
“Yeah. It is. Thanks.”
“So, have you changed your mind about me coming with you?”
Starlight’s smile was uncertain, but she ultimately relented. “Okay. We should probably get going if we’re going to get there; Sugar Belle said they close the office at 7, and it’s–”
“6:30. We should run!” Midnight bolted out the door, bumping the frame in her haste.
Once Starlight caught up to Midnight, who had seemingly forgotten her ability to teleport, the two teleported to the center of campus. Though Sugar Belle mentioned the registrar’s office closing time, she had neglected to mention the office’s location. After several minutes of frantically interrogating passers-by, the two disappeared with a pop, appearing in front of one of the older buildings on campus. A nearby sundial showed the time as 6:40; Starlight and Midnight’s gaits relaxed as they walked toward the building.
Midnight glanced at the sign above the door, which read Union Hall.
“So that’s what Union Hall is.”
It took another few minutes to find the registrar’s office. Though signs led Midnight and Starlight to a corridor on Union Hall’s top floor, what lay there was an array of identical unlabeled wooden doors. They ran up and down the corridor. Midnight knocked on doors, asking for directions to the office, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Starlight teleported into each room, finding herself enveloped in darkness more than once as she jumped into empty offices and storage room.
Eventually, Starlight teleported into a room where several ponies sat behind a service counter.
“Is this the registrar’s office?”
A pony wearing glasses and a turtleneck sweater responded. “Yes. What do you need?”
“I want to check if somepony is enrolled.”
“Name?”
“Sunburst. Male, unicorn, he’d be eighteen years old.”
“One moment.”
Starlight bit her lip and started cantering in place. She heard a voice shout from the other room, “What in the– who knocked over all the registration cards?!”
Starlight grimaced, whispering “sorry” to the absent pony’s chair. After what felt like an eternity, the pony returned.
“There is no pony called ‘Sunburst’ enrolled at this school.”
“What? He must have been here at some point!”
“If he was, I couldn’t tell you. The school’s policy on student privacy is very clear: I can only tell you if he is currently enrolled or not,” the pony recited, her eyes moving towards the clock hanging on the wall. “If that’s all, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave. The office is closing now.”
Starlight walked listlessly out the office door, where Midnight was waiting. When she saw Starlight, Midnight frowned, then pulled Starlight into a hug.
"I'm sorry, Starlight."
"I just thought… I don't know anymore."
"Come on, let's go home."
This time there were no tears. Starlight's head hung low, her body leaning against Midnight's as they walked through the now quiet campus. After some shuffling, Midnight found a gait that allowed her to walk while comfortably supporting Starlight.
"Thanks for coming with me."
"It's what friends do."
Starlight giggled, slightly drunk on fatigue. "Why would you want to be friends with a total stress case?"
"You're stressed out because you miss your friend, right? I might not know you that well, but you can't be that bad."
Starlight was quiet for a while, her eyes closed, as she allowed Midnight to guide her back to the dorms.
She mumbled, "Want to go fly a kite?"
Midnight looked hurt. "What? I thought you were happy I–"
"No, no, I mean like an actual kite. I brought a couple of my favorites with me from home. There's at least an hour of sunlight left, too."
"You have more than one kite?"
"It's relaxing! Please don't say it's weird." Starlight nervously grinned.
"It's not weird, but given the whole 'too cool emo' vibe you had going on before orientation last week, it is a little surprising. I'm not saying no, though," Midnight explained.
Starlight's expression brightened. With that settled, she raised an eyebrow as she asked, "How did you know how to calm me down earlier?"
A small frown preceded Midnight's response. "My little brother, Dusty Wing, used to have really, really bad nightmares. Sometimes he'd wake up thinking he was still in them, and asking him questions about what was right in front of him calmed him down."
"Oh, that's…"
"It's ok. The doctors figured out an enchantment that basically cut him off from the dream realm, and he stopped having them. It's kind of messed up, but you can't really have nightmares if you never have any dreams."
Midnight looked towards the sky, where the August sun was slowly falling, allowing a full moon to shine. "Almost a thousand years ago, they say Princess Luna walked the dreams of ponies at night, rescuing them from their nightmares. Then, suddenly, she was gone! Poof! Like she was a dream, too."
"I remember hearing something like that when I was a foal. You think it's real?"
Midnight smiled at Starlight. "Wouldn't it be nice if it was? Anyways, that story is sort of how I ended up in the astronomy program here. It turns out there's some old academic papers establishing a link between the magic linking stars in the constellations and the magic of the dream realm. It'd be nice if I could figure out a way for Dusty to dream again."
"Wow, I–"
"Also, stars are neat! Did you know that there's–why are you laughing?"
Starlight cleared her throat, forcing her laughter to stop. "Nothing, I just–I didn't know it meant so much to you. It's kind of cool."
"Well, I've got a bunch of stars on my butt for a reason."
"Fair enough."
The two kept talking on the way to their room, where Starlight dug through her bags, plucked out a box kite kit, and put on her best "cool pony" voice.
"Let's go fly a kite."
By the time Starlight and Midnight reached a suitably open field in the residential hall section of campus, the sun had set almost entirely. The sky was clear but for a small group of clouds capping the mountain ridges near Canterlot. Starlight fidgeted excitedly as she put together her box kite kit, while Midnight looked on in confusion.
“I don’t get it. What’s so important about the clouds?”
“Ok, you see those smooth clouds over the ridge? Those are lenticular clouds; the longer section at the end shows which way the wind is blowing.”
The kite was fully assembled, and Starlight lifted the kite and reel into the air, allowing the wind to carry the kite high into the air.
“Why does the wind direction matter?”
“Because the longer end is on the opposite side of the mountain from us, which means…”
A strong gust of wind filled Midnight’s ears, rendering Starlight unintelligible. Starlight allowed the kite’s reel to spin in the gust, lifting its body high above the campus buildings. She glanced at Midnight, repeating herself. “Which means updrafts.”
“Did you learn about weather separately, or is this all for the kites?”
“I really like kites.”
“So… how’d you get into kites?” An hour had passed, and the sun was well below the horizon. A new moon lit the field and the kite. Midnight lay on the grass, resting on her back as she watched Starlight’s kite dancing in the wind.
Starlight paused, her focus slowly drifting from the kite as she answered, “I guess it was right after I got my cutie mark. One day a package showed up on our doorstep. Apparently, my dad had ordered kites that looked like each of our cutie marks. Then, I don’t know. It was fun, and I started making my own kites.”
“I guess your mark does kinda look like a kite, now that I look at it.” Midnight wriggled to look at Starlight’s mark. From her position on the ground, Starlight’s cutie mark appeared upside-down; from this angle, the mark looked like a diamond kite with aquamarine streamers. “Come to think of it, I don’t think you’ve told me how you got your mark. You’re studying magic, right?”
“Yeah. I guess you know about Sunburst already.” Starlight paused as a sudden gust threatened to tear the kite reel from her grasp. Once it was under control, she continued.
“After he left, I was desperate to get my cutie mark so I could catch up with him. No matter what I tried, it wasn’t coming, so I went to the town library and found all the books on the magic of cutie marks.
“I studied for moons, trying all sorts of complex spells to get something that would stick. Then one day, I tried a combination of some spells from a reference copy of Starswirl the Bearded’s Notes on Elementary Magic, Amethyst Glow’s Strings of Fate enchantment, and some Old Ponish hexes that I was pretty sure involved changing the properties of cutie marks.”
Midnight’s eyes shot open wide. “You hexed yourself?!”
“I was a foal! And I don’t think it changed much, regardless. The spells all combined together, I saw a bright flash, and the next thing I knew, I woke up in the Sires Hollow hospital. Apparently I was out for two days. My mom even came home to check on me!”
“Is she not around often?”
“She’s always off on some dumb adventure. Dad says he knew when they got married that mom would always be going off on adventures because ‘that was her destiny’”, Starlight mocked. “That’s why she wasn’t there when you and I met.”
“Oh.”
“Anyways… I was so sure that I’d gotten the spell right that I kept studying it. I had to teach myself a bunch of mathematics for mixing complex magic, which took like two more years because, as it turns out, complex math is really hard when the hardest thing you’ve done is long division.
“Then I was ready, and I cast the same combination of spells, with a bunch of tweaks. This time I could feel it, I could practically see the geometries of the spells meshing together and linking with me. I felt myself rise into the air, saw a flash of light, and–”
“You found a spell that gave you your cutie mark?!”
“–woke up in the hospital three days later. When I woke up, I saw that I had my cutie mark. I finally understood the basic magic behind cutie marks.”
“You gave yourself your own mark?!”
“Not exactly. I tried casting the spell on one of my classmates, and it turns out that the spell just messes with the magic in your body connected to your destiny until you black out. Got into a lot of trouble for that one,” said Starlight, rolling her eyes. “I had a good enough understanding of cutie mark magic to understand that’s all the spell was doing. I’m pretty sure that’s what triggered it.”
“Wait, Starlight, how old were you when this happened?”
“The second attempt happened when I was ten.”
Starlight didn’t notice the shocked expression on Midnight’s face. “How did you even cast something that complex when you were ten? I don’t think I could use that much magic in a day now!”
Starlight rubbed her neck, laughing sheepishly as she replied, “Yeah, I was… very upset with Sunburst and mom and dad at the time. My magic gets more powerful the stronger I’m feeling.”
“So don’t make you angry. Got it.” Midnight stood, walking over to stand beside Starlight. “My story involves less potential brain damage, but it’s pretty similar.. My mark appeared the moment I found Middy. Speaking of which, we should be able to see it now.”
Despite the moonlight, bright stars filled the skies above. Midnight gestured towards a swath of sky.
“That one.”
“It’s pretty. I think. To be honest, they all just look like stars to me.”
“It helps when you understand the magic connecting the stars.”
“You’d be the first pony I’ve met who understood any kind of magic like that, then. Sires Hollow didn’t have a lot of other unicorns specializing in magic. Once Sunburst left, I was the only one I knew.”
Midnight hesitantly asked, “So, Sunburst. He just left without saying goodbye? No letters, no… nothing?”
“No, I… I was so… I was angry, and proud, but I also wanted to surprise Sunburst by just showing up in his class. By the time I got my cutie mark, I was too embarrassed to send him anything. He never sent me anything either, and… here we are. I’m having breakdowns in the middle of campus, and he’s probably off doing big important wizard things.”
Starlight’s focus shifted as another gust pulled hard at the line. Midnight raised her hoof to her chin for a moment. “Mind if I try flying the kite?”
“Sure.”
Starlight offered the reel to Midnight, who played with the reel as she figured out how to command the kite. A few minutes later, a strong gust of wind swept through the field, and she strained to keep the reel in her magical grasp. As she fumbled with the kite, she stumbled hard into Starlight, losing her hold on the reel and sending Starlight to the ground.
“Starlight, you alright?!”
"Buhhh," came Starlight's response. Midnight helped her to her hooves as Starlight processed the last few moments. "I'm okay. You?"
"Yeah. Your kite, though…"
The box kite was still in their lines of sight, but rested neatly atop the spire capping the rotunda of the performing arts hall. Starlight's jaw dropped, her eyes narrowed, and when she attempted to speak, only small squeaks came out.
"Starlight, I am so sorry."
"My kite!"
"I know!"
Starlight waved a hoof in the air, shouting at the sky, "Does the universe just hate me today or something?!"
Midnight patted Starlight's shoulder. "Want to head back?”
“I want to get my kite!”
Midnight cocked an eyebrow. “Starlight, I’m pretty sure that’s the tallest building on campus, and from what I can tell, you can’t teleport that far.”
“But–”
“And even if you could do that, the wind is enough to knock me off my feet down here!”
“But… ugh, fine.” Starlight’s eyes looked toward the grass, her expression falling slack. As the wind continued to blast into her, she started shivering. “Fine, let’s go back to the dorm.”
Midnight patted Starlight’s shoulder with her hoof. “You can talk to someone in the staff about getting your kite down tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Starlight relented. “Tomorrow.”