“I disagree.”
“What do you mean?” Starswirl asked, finishing a graph on the blackboard that detailed the mechanical process of spellcasting and the relation between unicorns and magic.
“I am sorry but I think that idea is wrong, master,” Clover said, shakily raising from her cold desk as her hind leg drummed against the tiled castle floor. “I– I am acting out of place, b– but I feel that I ought to speak.”
“Then do so, student of mine,” Starswirl said with squinted eyes as he turned away from his blackboard, chalk hovering in his magical aura. “You take a stand as a potential future archmage of Equestria—this cold, forsaken land. Better make your words count, oh you too clever of a clover.”
“I– I don’t think you’re telling the truth. I mean, I don’t accuse you of telling a lie but have you ever considered that magic isn’t just… a unicorn’s field?”
“What do you mean, pupil?”
“In all your years of studies, have you ever considered the possibility that our forebears were, if not wrong, lost on a specific pursuit, a singular concept of magic that dooms us rather than helps us understand the world?”
Starswirl pursed his lips and looked up at the shadow-cast ceiling where frost gnawed at the plaster and images of long-past events forgotten by all but a few unicorn scholars.
“Clover…” He sighed and walked away from the board to get a better look of his single student. In his stead, each of his garment bells fell silent, locked in his silencing magic. “Our masters, ancestors, all those long lines of proud unicorns who’ve fought against the blaze of earth ponies’ crude industry and the roaring thunder of pegasi tomfoolery… they’ve worked on describing the world, to understand it philosophically, to approach the Truth.”
“I know, master.” Clover bit her lip and looked askance as she rubbed her forelegs together. She took a deep breath and bore her eyes into her master’s, sunken by fatigue and the lack of sun in Equestria’s everwinter. “But what if they were wrong in doing so? Have they ever considered that merely describing magic as a transcendental field, that aether we just bath in and from which we, unicorns, may tap into thanks to the gifts granted to us—horns and cutie marks—would be biased? What if “magic” as we conceived it is merely a concept we’ve misconstrued over time? What if ‘magic’ as we describe it is just a terrible mistake, a concealment of the actual truth?”
Starswirl shook his head, disconcerted. “What concealment? Are you telling me you want to throw to the fire a thousand years of unicorn tradition?”
“No… y– yes? Maybe. What I mean, master, is that by enshrining magic as an object only we unicorns can use, own, and master, may be wrong.”
Clover swallowed and wiped her brow where beads of sweat trickled despite the frigid cold of the castle room. She threw a quick look at the slit of a window carved in the stone masonry where the whine of winter winds crawled through and made their presence known at the back of Clover’s mind.
“I think that your teaching, that magic is essential to unicorns, and to a lesser—ah, ‘lesser,’ what a terrible term to apply to our brethrens—extent earth ponies and pegasi as they only have a cutie mark… That is wrong! Doesn’t that appear to you to be a terrible path of thinking. We built the exclusion of our very kin, and other races on it. Where is the emancipation in what we teach and learn, master? War… War seems to be the pride and result and process to which what you call unicorn reason leads.”
“And you’ve just come up with that now,” he said with a tired smirk.
“No!” she screamed. Her eyes went wide and she sheepishly retreated away from her master until her rump hit her cold granite desk. She’d walked around it to shove herself straight in front of Starswirl’s face without really registering. Her heart raced and she could hardly breath. “No… S– sorry for screaming. I have been thinking about this for a long time. At least what I think has been a long time. I’m not chastising our tradition, merely saying we should consider other ways. All those ideas are born from some bygone epoch. Our plight is different. So must be our methods.”
She walked away to cast a glance out the window slit to the gloomy realm of winter. Dark shadows ran through the wind and the howl of the wind seemed more alive and hungry and filled with hatred.
“I’ve never seen the sun over Equestria, master,” she said between two hiccups. “And I think our worldview are a reason why. We should strive for emancipation. Our shame is thinking we advance the world from our granite towers, away from any strives, when we don’t create some more. That’s our shame, the shame of all ponies to have locked ourselves in a way of thinking that doesn’t allow self-reflection and self-fulfillment. And we have the audacity to call it reason. That’s my shame too, but I at least have the courage to admit that is a fault in my judgement.”
Starswirl’s chalk snapped in his magic but the white shards stayed stuck in the aura. “Fine, you think you can stomp over the work of our teachers, walk away? Out there, in the cold? I am so… disappointed in you.”
Clover grabbed her quills, notebooks, and shoved them into her bags. She sucked a deep breath then sighed, one tear trickling in the candlelight. She looked at her master one last time.
“You don’t have the monopoly on reason. I just hope you can see the issue in our judgement, master,” Clover muttered. She straightened herself to banish the quivers that numbed her legs. “We can’t stay stuck in this castle any longer. We’re hiding from the world. The tribes are warring outside and we could be doing something: Change things!”
“I am protecting you, pupil of mine.” Starswirl’s jaw clenched and air sifted between his yellowed, old teeth. “You will die outside in the wintertime.”
“I will emancipate us all from the darkness.” Clover threw a look at the door of the study room, and flung it open with her magic. “We sure can’t cling to the idea that magic is born from unicorns only. Tied to something outside of us, tied to something akin to fate, predestination, cutie marks. Those ideas will be the ruin of us.”
She took a first step through the doorframe and dared not look back.
“We should be free from strife. Magic is not our property or even our essence. Instead, it should be something that should be possible from all ponies, everypony, every creatures that walk this earth. Our ancestors’ framework is flawed and it will be the ruin of us all.”
“I wished you could have not settled such a broad judgement on a mere definition, pupil,” Starswirl said if not spat. “I just want you to be safe.”
“We’re building a dead world on old ideas we’re not ready to question. Yet, we must question them. I don’t want to sequester generations in ruins, in the cold outside, just because we’re too afraid from reconsidering our own preconceptions. This world is larger than you think. Magic is not a game of fate and a unicorn’s realm. Magic is possible anywhere, everywhere, from anypony, and I will prove it.”
“Ah, and how will you do this? Outside in the cold of winter, ravished and devoured by the evils of the North. They will eat you, Clover. The war will destroy you. The tribes will grind you to a dust and spread you to the blizzard!”
“At least, I’ll try. I’m leaving your tutelage, Starswirl. Thank you for the education, but now, I need to learn on my own. I depart with fear and anguish in my breast.”
Before she took down the marble stairs to the lower levels where snow piled up in the deserted corridors of the ancient castle, she turned back to her former master.
“I outgrew those walls,” Clover said, “and yet I know they still contain something great: those two little unicorns, Celestia and Luna. Please, Starswirl, before teaching them your philosophy, reconsider what it means. If they are as powerful as you think they are, please, consider my words. I am begging you. I know I am failing you, but if those two are what you believe they are, what if one of them fails you too. Fails far more than your old, recluse bones…? If you believe they’re predestined, will you bear the blame for their actions?”