“With all due respect, I think this is a bad idea.”
Luna and Starlight walked together, Poppin treading just ahead of them and writing down ideas for Luna’s “party.”
“I know,” Luna admitted to Starlight, “but I think this will succeed. Bringing the city together, dragons included, will be the first step. Dragons just need a chance to show that they can coexist with ponies.”
“I thought that’s what the School of Friendship was for,” Starlight dragged her hooves. “I’m all for equality, just ask Twilight, but one party isn’t going to change their minds. Ponies need time to get used to dragons.”
“Then how are you handling it at your school?”
Starlight thought about it for a moment. “I guess, I haven’t. There haven’t been any incidents. A few small fires, sure, but nothing that would scare the other students.”
“But you would bring them together, right?” Luna’s question turned into more of a statement. “You would make sure all students understood the position of their peers?”
“Of course!” Starlight’s tongue twisted, trying to find the words for her concerns. “But a party? How will a party make them understand each other?”
“It won’t. It will help them make new friends. And that will help them understand each other.”
Despite her reservations, Starlight was in complete agreement as far as Cadence and Ember were concerned. A plan was better than none, and Starlight didn’t want to undermine Luna just because her plan wasn’t the perfect one.
Dragons were already staying away from ponies, keeping close to the Dragonland Consulate. It had been only a week since they arrived, and the situation was worsening. The winter weather outside the bounds of the Crystal Heart was growing colder and fiercer.
So dragons who wanted to leave would have to make the trip by rail, the very same rails they continued to camp out on as a protest against the CNP’s demands.
The only break away from it all was that Poppin had gotten replies from a few of her contacts in other cities. It seemed some pony in Vanhoover was happy to organize a concert for them, in three to four weeks at the earliest.
“Oh, maybe here,” she stopped Starlight and Luna by a city park, a large open area situated in the middle of a neighbourhood near the edge of the city.
“Are these trees, you know,” Starlight pointed to the clearly non-crystal bark of the oaks and willows around them, “normal?”
Poppin nodded. “Of course, not everything’s made out of crystal here. Crystal ponies like regular flowers and trees just like the rest of us.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if this is the best place for a concert with dragons,” Starlight said.
“Noted,” Poppin said, “and maybe that’s a precaution I should add for the tour. Any creature could be watching us.”
Again, they circled back toward the palace, taking the long route in order to find a suitable, non-flammable place to host a party.
Teleporting back and forth from the Crystal Empire to Ponyville was easy if it was once or twice, but doing it every day while trying to balance the school and the Crystal Empire was draining her focus.
There was still work to do, but she couldn’t even bring herself to make the walk. Starlight popped into the air and dropped herself on her desk.
“You know, I could help lighten your load,” Sunburst said.
“What the--!” Starlight shot her head up, stunned. “What are you doing in my office?”
Sunburst checked the clock on her wall. “Uh, you scheduled a meeting with at six?”
Starlight followed his eyes. It was half-past six o’clock at night. Winter had turned the days incredibly short, and the sky outside had already turned black.
“Oh,” Starlight pulled her mane, “sorry for making you wait.”
“It’s alright, Trixie just went out to grab our coffee and pizza delivery.”
Starlight paused, processing what meeting she was actually late for. With final exams have done and winter break just around the corner, that meant the only meeting she needed to have was the end-of-semester report.
Her horn thumped against her desk, leaving get another dent in the wood. “Oh no! I left my notes in my room! Aargh!”
“Starlight, are you okay?”
“I got this,” she gasped, teleporting out and then back, a thick file of notes on in her mouth. She tumbled out of her teleportation field, crashing into her bookcases.
Sunburst jumped from his seat. “Starlight, what the heck is going on?”
“Alright, pizza time!” Trixie’s voice cut through the door as she entered, spotting Starlight collapsed on the floor and Sunburst standing over her. “Um, okay then.”
Starlight got up and pushed Sunburst back. “I am fine. Okay? I just need some pizza and a cup of--”
As she stood up, Starlight’s legs began to wobble. Again she stumbled forward, and it was due to Trixie’s fast and accurate reflexes that she was able to levitate the pizza and catch her best friend at the same time.
“Starlight?” she gently slapped her in the face. “Starlight, what’s going on?”
A soft padding, like the warm and conditioned fur of a fluffy rabbit, wrapped Starlight up in a gentle hug. Her vision cleared and focused to see a blanket wrapped around her and pillows under her head. Sunburst and Trixie quietly passed papers back and forth, drinking coffee as they worked.
“What happened?”
“You’re awake!” Trixie leapt from her seat and pounced on Starlight with a hug. “You really scared me there for a moment. We didn’t want to wake you up, so we called a doctor from the Ponyville hospital to take a look at you.”
“We told him what you’ve been up to the past few days,” Sunburst adjusted his glasses. “And he said it’s probably just fatigue. The mental and physical stress just got too much.”
“I know you said you’re fine,” Trixie looked her best friend in the eye, “but even the Great and Powerful Trixie needs her rest in order to stay great and powerful.”
Starlight rubbed her shoulder at the place where she fell. She felt good enough to stand, but took it easy and leaned against her desk as she sat in her chair. Above her, the clock ticked away, creeping toward midnight.
“Six hours?” she gawked. “I was out for six hours?” Starlight scanned around for her papers, grabbing at her quill and inkwell to get ready to take notes.
“Hold on,” Sunburst placed a small folder in front of Starlight. “It’s all done. A hundred pages of the semester report condensed into ten. Most of it was raw numbers and data, so I went through and put them all into graphs on the last two pages.”
“The budget?”
“Reviewed and revised,” Trixie said. “I recommended increasing the gym funding by ten per cent, a lot of students have been asking for more sports-related friendship lessons.”
“What about the teachers’ performances?”
Sunburst opened up to the third page. “I sorted those into their own files and put them in the library. The reference numbers for those are all here, along with short summaries for each instructor.”
“And the student reflections? That was thirty pages, at least!”
Sunburst shrugged. “Trixie’s system for organizing the students was a little messy, but she already planned out the categories after all the questions the students have been asking her.”
Trixie tapped her magician’s hat. “Students ask a lot of the same questions, so I was able to split them up all in here.”
Starlight made a funny face. “In your hat?”
“Huh? No!” she fussed. “In my head. I am a brilliant and categorical performer, after all.”
The whole semester was compressed down to just those ten pages. Starlight could not believe her eyes. But she could believe that she had the best friends in the world. With relief, the desk met her head again, leaving yet another mark, but this time for a good reason.
“So, um,” Trixie twiddled her hooves, “what’s this thing you’re doing with the Nightmare Knights?”
“It’s nothing, I’ve just been so busy being the lead guitarist, and now this whole thing with the Crystal Empire is driving me,” Starlight shot her head up. “Oh no. Wait, how did you know? I didn’t tell you!”
Starlight glared at Sunburst. He shrugged. “What did you want me to do? You passed out from stress, she had the right to know.”
“Don’t worry about it, I already heard from Scootaloo.”
“You did?” Starlight coughed. “But, that was over a week ago.”
Sunburst tapped his chin. “Wait, then why’d you let me keep explaining the band for twenty minutes?”
“Half the school already knows, Starlight,” Trixie said, and then turned to Sunburst. “Meh, I just wanted to see if you knew something I hadn’t heard about. Didn’t know you were going to the Crystal Empire, that was a surprise.”
“And you’re not mad I kept it a secret?” Starlight asked.
“Oh, I am, but we can talk about it later. Right now, you need to rest.”
“No,” Starlight shook her head, “this isn’t right, I should’ve told you from the start. Or at least apologized sooner. I didn’t keep it a secret because I wanted to exclude you. Honestly, I was just embarrassed of the music. I was really into metal when I was a kid, so playing it is kind of like looking back at my awkward phase.”
“Really?” Trixie gave a wolfish grin. “Trixie has become the Intrigued and Curious.”
“Oh-ho, no,” Starlight stood up from her chair. “I really like listening and playing metal, but you are not seeing that side of me.”
Sunburst flicked his eyes to Trixie and snickered. “She asked me to cover for her next week. I bet it’s a concert.”
“Who’s side are you on?” Starlight shouted.
Her office’s door burst open. Smolder, Silverstream, Gallus, Sandbar, Ocellus, and Yona all crammed into the room.
“You’re having another concert?” Silverstream squealed.
Smolder smacked her lips. “In the Crystal Empire?”
“It’s going to be after exams, right?” Ocellus asked, pulling her head up from under Yona, who had tripped over her as they all piled into my office.
“Wha--” Starlight gawked at all of them. “No-no-no. Enough questions! Go back to your rooms. I am your Headmare and we are not talking about this on school grounds!”