//------------------------------//
// ...and Memories 
// Story: Sunset Reflects (Not All Secrets Are True) 
// by Mockingbirb 
//------------------------------//

"Go to your room!" a middle-aged unicorn mare shouted. "And stay there!"

"But--" little Sunset Shimmer started to speak.

"Not one word more, or I'll double your punishment!"

Wordlessly, Sunset walked through smoke and haze to her room, and shut herself inside.

The mare shook her head. "Honestly! I don't know where we went wrong. A NORMAL foal would be completely over her magic surges by now." She narrowed her eyes and glared at her nephew (and foster son) Gentle Touch. "It's probably YOUR fault. You're a bad influence."

Gentle Touch had learned the ways of this household. Arguing wouldn't do him any good. He stood silently at attention like a junior cadet, which seemed to work best at times like these.

The mare sighed. "There's probably nothing to be done for it. Maybe there's some kind of remedial academy we could send her to. A special school where every moment will be about disciplining little fillies who won't behave properly. I'll have to speak with Sunrise about it, when he gets home."

Gentle Touch felt a lurch of fear for his foster sister, but said nothing.

"And you? Get out of my face."

Gentle Touch obeyed.

***

A few minutes later, Sunset heard a gentle tapping on her window. She started to giggle, but put a hoof over her mouth to muffle it. She trotted to the window and unfastened the latch.

In a glowing aura of Gentle's magic, the window sash slid upward. Gentle didn't want to risk the noise of climbing in, but at least he could comfort his sister through the window. 

"Hay, there." he whispered. "How's your punishment going so far?"

Sunset giggled softly. "Not too bad. Do you want to play a game again?"

"How about the quiz game?" When Gentle helped Sunset study for the School for Gifted Unicorns entrance exam, he called it the 'quiz game.'" 

Sunset pouted. "I think I already know everything. Or if I don't, I think my brain's full for today. Let's learn magic!"

Gentle Touch said, "Do you have your tennis ball?"

"Sure do!" she squealed happily, levitating it into the air.

"Sssh!" he said. "Not so loud."

Her eyes went big and sorrowful.

He whispered, "How about the writing game?"

"Pfui! You just want to make me study more." But as she complained, Sunset levitated the tennis ball out the window and into a birdbath outside. She rolled the ball around in the bath to soak it. 

"I want you to gain fine control over your magic, so you can do exactly the thing you choose to do, and no more."

With her forehooves upon the windowsill, Sunset floated the tennis ball down to the paving stones beneath her window, and rolled the ball around to write her own name in water. When the water dried, there would be no evidence that she'd been playing outside while staying in her room. 

She drew a stick figure of her mother, and a dragon bending down towards the mare, with its toothy jaws wide open. "Why couldn't a monster eat MY parents, instead of yours?"

"That's a terrible thing to say about your own parents."

"But I don't see you arguing." Sunset grinned. "It's because you know I'm right."

"Your mother was very gracious to take me in."

"You mean, my mother was very gracious to have a free babysitter. I don't think my mom knows what the word gracious even means."

"You should erase that picture before somepony sees it."

Sunset made a tiny grunt, and the water on the paving stones vaporized into steam. "There, all gone! Now do you feel better?"

Gentle said, "Yes."

"I was careful. I didn't even crack any paving stones this time."

Gentle snorted. "True. You were very good."

"If only my mother thought so."

"Your mother doesn't quite understand about foals. You can't expect a foal to be perfect. I know you're still learning to control your magic properly."

"Sometimes I just wish I could let loose. See how big an explosion I could make."

"I know. But it's a lot more work to repair something than to blow it up. Blowing it up can take just a moment. But sometimes...some things can't ever be fixed. That's why we learn how to do no MORE than we mean to, when we try to do no less."

Sunset sighed. "I know. But it makes me feel like a little mouse in a cage. Not allowed to go outside the wire."

"It's for the best."

***

Sunset gave the examiners a fierce look. "I'd like to take this part of the exam outside," she said. "It'll be fun, I promise you." She formed her cyan-colored magical glow into the shape of a pointing stick, and moved the pointer towards the window. "How about that big courtyard out there?"

Gentle felt apprehensive, but forced himself to appear calm.

Sunset's mother, Gloaming, started to speak. "Sunset, I hardly think--"

"Silence!" an examiner said. "No speaking or hinting to the candidate. Candidate's request is granted, although I have no idea what she plans to do with it."

When everypony had assembled outside, Sunset's magical aura reached across the courtyard to drag a rain barrel towards the group. "I've been reading ahead a bit in the books," she said. 

"Oh no," Gentle said to himself.

With a flash of light, the barrel remained a barrel. 

Sunset grinned mischievously. "Transmutation is a fun spell. And oil has some uses that water doesn't."

Gentle raised a hoof to his face, reflexively preparing to shield his eyes.

Beside him, Gloaming looked apprehensive and confused.

Sunset levitated a blob of liquid out of the barrel. It shimmered and quivered in the air. "First question!" she barked.

"What is two plus thirteen?"

"Ha!" Sunset said. She stroked the blob across the courtyard's pavement, leaving a greasy trail that traced out the Ponish numerals for fifteen. With a tiny grunt of effort, she set the numerals ablaze. "Give me a hard one!"

The glob hung in the air, ready for the next problem.

***

Sunset floated all the remaining oil out of the barrel and to the center of the courtyard. "Three!" she shouted.

"Oh no," somepony said. 

"Two!"

The examiners murmured and shuffled nervously. Their horns softly glowed.

"One!"

Gloaming turned and ran. Who would have thought a middle-aged mare could run so fast?

The cyan glow brightened around the floating blob of oil. Light and sound filled the air. A glowing cloud of smoke and sparks shot upwards. It rose thousands of feet above the courtyard. 

Half a dozen different transparent shields hung in the air between ponies and the explosion's epicenter. The examiners had cast hastily to protect both themselves and the visiting family. 

The head examiner strolled across the courtyard. He tapped one hoof on the pavement beside a long streak of scorch. "Sunset Shimmer," he said, "Your explosion was poorly shaped. If somepony had been standing here, you could have hurt them. And nopony ASKED you to blow everything up in the first place."

Sunset Shimmer insisted, "But nopony WAS standing there! I did just fine!"

Another examiner, a pale blue mare, peered into the barrel. "The barrel is dry. No oil remains. She did fulfill the final task we assigned, to dispose of the oil she had created."

The head examiner looked around, thinking.

"I did what I was supposed to!" Sunset argued. "I didn't hurt anypony! You're just trying to cheat me!"

A shadow moved across the courtyard, blocking the sun. Ponies looked up. The cloud of smoke had widened.

Also, a white, winged creature appeared to be falling out of the sky.

"She killed a bird!"

"No, it's a pegasus. I think she broke its wings."

As the snowy-winged creature descended through the smoke, ponies' worries grew. The flyer flared her wings, slowed her descent, and smoothly landed. Everypony sighed in relief at the flyer's evident good health.

"Well, well," Celestia said. "Who do I have to thank for that very spectacular show? And who failed to apply for airspace clearance?"

Almost everypony spoke up in a confused babble. Sunset spoke loudly, proud and defiant. Gloaming said little, but fear and anger showed in her eyes.

After listening to the explanations, Celestia used the poker face she had practiced for many centuries. "What an interesting combination of knowledge, raw magical power, oddly applied skill, and near catastrophe we have here."

"I'm sorry, your majesty," Gloaming burbled. "She won't do it again. I'll send her to her room for a year."

"What a shame that would be," Celestia replied. "But I can see this little filly could make an awful lot of trouble. I don't think her room is the right place for her."

"No!" Gloaming cried. "Not the dungeons! All I ask is, you only punish the ponies who are at fault. My nasty little delinquent...and her sneaky cousin. I know her cousin put her up to this. Throw HIM in a dungeon, and leave my family out of it. She didn't know what she was doing!"

Celestia finally let herself smile. "Examiners, would you say this filly passed?"

The examiners conferred among themselves. The head examiner said, "With several irregularities, but yes. She passed."

Celestia shrugged. "I suppose it's out of my hooves. Sunset Shimmer, welcome to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns!"

"Yes!" Sunset cheered.

"And in addition, I would like you to come live in the castle as my personal student."

Sunset said, "What? Live where?"

"With me, in the castle."

Sunset blinked, her eyes tearing up. She ran to her brother. "Don't let them take me away, Gentle!"

Gentle said, "But Sunset! This is what you wanted."

"I wanted to go to school. But I didn't want them to take me away from you!"

Gloaming seethed as her daughter ignored her. "Sunset, the princess said you will live in the castle. And that is where you will go, young filly. Don't disobey me."

"Yes, mother." Sunset hugged her brother more tighly.

Celestia announced, "Sunset Shimmer, you may of course visit with your family from time to time. It's not like you'll never see them again." The alicorn leafed through a file folder she had borrowed from an examiner. "Doesn't your family live in Canterlot? It shouldn't be very difficult at all."

Gloaming shook her head. "Something ought to be done about those two." She spoke more loudly. "He's not even her real brother, you know."

Gentle nuzzled his sister. "Sunset, there's something I need to tell you, too."

"What?"

"I've been accepted to a school too. The Trottingham Institute of Medicine. It's a college where ponies learn how to be doctors."

"Good," Gloaming said. 

"But..." Sunset wondered, "where IS Trottingham?"

"It's very, very far away," Gloaming said. "You both have been accepted by very prestigious schools. And you didn't even tell me, Gentle!" She made a sniffling sound. "I just thought the both of you were scheming and plotting some kind of mischief behind my back." She sniffled again. "I'm so proud of the both of you!

"I'll cry so much, now that you're leaving me. I'll miss you so!" Gloaming wiped her eyes with a hoof, hiding the lack of actual tears. 

Gloaming bent down to kiss her daughter on the cheek. She whispered in Sunset's ear, "Don't you DARE think of trying to flunk out or get expelled. If you come back home, Gentle is NOT going to be there. If I have to, I'll think of someplace far worse than a castle to send you."

Sunset held Gentle at forelegs' length. "You're leaving me, Gentle."

Gentle said, "For everypony, there comes a time when they have to leave home. I know it's coming a lot earlier for you than it does for most ponies. But don't you think it was necessary?"

Sunset glanced coolly at her mother. "Yes. I suppose it was."

She released her brother, and went to Celestia. She didn't look back.

She didn't really know what the School for Gifted Unicorns would be like, or life in the castle. But she felt sure it had to be better than life with her mother and father.

Even if her brother had abandoned her, it would be ok. She would MAKE it ok.

Somehow.