Starlight and Trixie went out on the town
Trixie found a beautiful crown
"Don't put it on", Starlight warn'd;
"T'will make us all bow down!"
Maud Pie made a red mark adjacent to the stanza of poorly scribbled writing, with a comment: "Consistent meter? No. Consistent syllables? No. A pattern extending into other stanzas or apparent when viewing the work as a whole?"
She scanned the remainder of the piece, searching for evidence that perhaps it had been intended to be free verse, perhaps something with an identifiable structure or at least a pattern of sounds. At last, she returned to her up-front notations, concluding them with a definitive: "No." She continued her line-by-line review of the amateurish work.
"Don't be a clown,"
Trixie said, wi't a frown:
"T'was the alicorn amulet that did that, silly;
Another accessory doing the same;
sounds like the dream of a filly."
Maud Pie drew red through the second line of the last stanza and wrote a questioning mark: "Fine if you use this structure elsewhere, but it's dangling. Keep to your rules, although it may be acceptable to break them in the right work. Free verse poetry is popular, but you are unable to maintain the pattern you attempt."
"Remember: meter, discipline, rhyme; or at least consistency; or consistency in inconsistency."
"Look! Look!
Don't be shook!
It's easy to doff and don,
like a hat for any old pon--"
T'was not all right
A horrible fright.
The crown took over Trixie
and Starlight felt sick, see.
Her beloved friend was a fool
Never listen'd to any simple rule.
Thought a crown was cool
And was turn't evil and cruel.
Students' homework lack'd
Trixie attacked.
Failed this one and that.
Arbitrary judgments--crap.
Starlight pled, my friend--
Their grades, you must mend
or headmare will bend
your grades at the end.
And Trixie's crown
made her frown
and toss Starlight down
knocking her all 'aroun'
Trixie terrorized and zapped
students fell an' Trixie snapped
blipp and blapped
and zippedy--
Maud lay down the student's essay, which had been "completed" for a creative expression friendship class.
"Your work has rhymes," she looked up with her large sleepy aquamarine eyes, "but no rhyming scheme and the meter is inconsistent. There is room for improvement. It also," she paused, "treats one's headmare and teacher slash counselor in a rather unfriendly negative fashion. Is negativity something you intended?"
Flurry Heart, friendship high school student from the Crystal Empire (and extraordinarily spoiled daughter of the ruler of same), bowed her head in something that may have been shame, but that was more likely just transitory obeisance to an authority figure. "I thought it'd be funny, y'know. Create an epic. Something cool; crewb."
Maud blinked and ignored the 'crewb' neologism, which probably was a synonym for cool but mostly was a diversion from her point. "But where is the humor? And where is the epic? It ends mid-sentence. It lacks a final rhyme."
"Yeah, I ran out of words--hit the limit." Flurry Heart stomped the ground to punctuate her point.
Maud steadied her table, then looked down to review the syllabus of the teacher she was filling in for. According to Trixie's syllabus, Flurry Heart had reached the minimum word limit. Maud, wordlessly, showed this to Flurry Heart, who sighed.
"Why should I keep writing, olds, when I've given my prof the plop she wants? You're just a substitute--you don't know what Trixie wants, don't know her heart. You can't feel her, y'know."
Maud blinked, her expression blank. It was difficult to win respect and authority as a substitute teacher.
"--and where is Trixie, by the way? She'd definitely appreciate this crewb work. She's great and powerful in it and--"
Maud blinked again. "--still recovering from her possession by the Diadem of Destiny."
Flurry Heart shrugged. "Yeah, what's with that? Possession by a THIRD evil artifact? Somepony's targeting her. I mean the Alicorn Amulet situation happened way before my time, but two possessions in the last two years--that's two too strange to be a coincidence, toots. I bet it's totes a conspiracy against her. Lizardponies controlling Equestria, making us dance like fleshsackpuppets, y'know."
Maud blinked very deliberately. "Lizard ponies?"
"Yeah, who do you think makes these artifacts--pony ponies?" Flurry Heart scoffed and walked off.
Maud noted a grade on the paper, a low one, for multiple reasons.
Then, she wrote a brief letter to Flurry Heart's mother, the Princess-Ruler of the Crystal Empire, to determine where these strange "lizard pony" tales may have originated, and a note to Flurry Heart's file recommending an educational unit on how individuals within the more numerous pony groups also had created evil artifacts, to present a balanced perspective.
Finally, before leaving the school, she scribed a "get-well" note to Trixie, ending it with an ironic poem to encourage Trixie's ego and hopefully her recovery--the magician mare enjoyed creative poetry almost as much as she enjoyed illusions.
"Hey. You.
Better. Soon.
Student like loon.
Needs Lulamoon.
Just you promise.
Float like pumice."
While Maud would love to do more to set Flurry Heart's attitude about pony perfection straight, she was merely a substitute teacher.
Flurry Heart's mother wrote, concerned, to Maud about the grade.
After reading the majesty's missive, Maud slowly blinked and affixed Flurry Heart's "great work", including its terrible-to-read scribbling (scribbling that was all the more absurd since the work had been written via unicorn magic horn-transcription rather than the by far-more-difficult-to-steady mouthwriting) to the note with a comment that the word count Flurry had reached was the minimum and another requirement was for it to be a "complete" poem.
Although a miscreant student may willfully define the requirement of "completion" as a poem that "completed" the minimum word count... even if that poem cut off mid-sentence--that definition could not properly apply since "complete" must mean something more than just "finishing" a document for purposes of submission since otherwise it would not have been a requirement. "Complete" must mean a document that "completed" a finished idea or concept and the idea in Flurry Heart's poem was far from complete.
First-class pegasus courier soon returned, round trip, with the "great work" and a more understanding reply from the Princess. "Sorry. I see. I appreciate your efforts. Do as you must."
Flurry Heart, scowl across her brow after multiple reprimands, eventually added another two stanzas:
"But Starlight held fast,
tied Trixie twixt a mast.
Kiss'd her mouth, till she passed out.
Thus Trix was freed from the bout.
Crown removed at last
The danger; t'was past.
Ponies celebrated, wit' a shout:
"Our Great and Powerful Trixie's no lout!"
At least, in not portraying one's professor as evil, progress had been made... of a sort, although the final line didn't quite follow the general theme since the poem wasn't addressing Trixie being a lout--instead, the poem considered how she'd been a danger throughout.
A substitute teacher could only do so much. Maud sighed.
Deep beneath Equestria, in caverns where even Maud Pie, substitute professor at the School of Friendship, had not trod, lizard ponies played with puppets and told frightening tales about the wicked mythical ponies of the surface. And they crafted evil artifacts, and they fabricated bad poetry. Above them, but still beneath the ponies, villainous deep deer did the same, and so it was, all the way down, and all the way up.