“Hey, Gallus.”
The young mare’s voice—were kirin genders called mares and stallions?—cut through the library like a pegasus through a storm cloud. The soft but high-pitched voice took his attention off his deck of flashcards. With Silverstream catching up with Yona, Smolder, and Ocellus, he had been mindlessly memorizing for the past few hours.
She was one of the new students who were supposed to transfer in after spring break. But, in the interest of reducing the kirin’s culture shock, the students had been given the choice to settle in early and get used to the school.
She looked a little older than the normal first-years, but maybe that was a kirin thing. Her fluffed mane and coat were covered in earth tones, shades of light brown and yellow, save for the red horn that all kirin had. What stood out were her eyes, sparkling blue like a clear stream of water, they were much brighter than most kirins’, who usually had amber or darker blue irises.
“Yeah?” he finally asked her. “You know me?”
“Of course!” Her voice pitched up almost as high as a newly hatched griffon’s chirping. “You’re one of the students who saved the school when the teachers were stuck in Tartarus, right?”
“One of six,” he answered. “Really did your homework, huh? Most of the other students barely mention it.” He paused. Come to think of it, how often did he talk to other students? Outside of class, he really only had five friends. Was that normal, for a second-year student of friendship? He felt as if it should’ve been more.
“Just a little. We heard the story during our welcome tour with counsellor Lulamoon.”
Gallus leaked a short laugh. “You can just call her Trixie. She’s not exactly… the formal type.”
“But she’s our counsellor, isn’t she?” the kirin tilted her head.
“Sure, but trust me, the rest of the students just call her Trixie. We’ve kinda seen her at her worst, so it’s hard to act formal. We still respect her, of course. Heck, me more than most, she’s stood up for me in a way that only my friends have. She definitely cares about students. She’s just… well, you’ll find out soon enough, I guess.”
“Hehe, I guess so,” the kirin giggled, but she didn’t say anything else. For a moment, Gallus worried he might have scared her away from talking to Trixie if she ever needed to. But she didn’t seem too concerned.
He then tried to return to his studying, but the kirin stayed beside his table, awkwardly making a little tip-toeing motion as if she wasn’t sure if she should leave or stay. Gallus wondered what was up with her for a moment before he realised he hadn’t actually found out why she approached him.
“Oh, sorry!” He put down his cards again. “Did you need something?”
The kirin’s face perked up immediately and a wide, white smile spread across her face. Gallus swore his table glowed brighter from the sunlight bouncing off her nearly perfect teeth. She seemed excited but still spoke softly. They were in a library, after all.
“Yes! My name’s Petal Blitz, and a couple of friends and I were wondering if you’d be able to give us a tour of Ponyville. We heard it’s an amazing town, but our tour never left the school grounds.”
Gallus suddenly remembered that feeling of his first day. The excitement to finally be somewhere that wasn’t Griffonstone still lingered inside him from time to time. It was just harder to remember between working and being bombarded with homework and tests.
“I wouldn’t mind helping you and your friends out,” he said, but then waved his flashcards in the air. “Except, it’s a really busy time right now for students. Midterms are three days away.”
“Oh! That’s right!” Petal knocked her hoof against her horn as if she was clearing her head out. “That explains why we can’t find your friends. We asked all over the school, but others weren't around.”
That made sense. Sandbar lived in Ponyville, so he could easily go home and eat a home-cooked meal while he studied. Lucky. The girls were out too, but just for the day. A little calm tea time before the storm of midterms.
Should he also take a break? Their teachers were always saying they had to keep a healthy work-life balance.
“Well, I guess I can spare an hour,” he quickly blurted out before Petal turned away from him. “Normally I’d be at work right now, but I got fired a few days ago.”
“That’s too bad, what happened?”
“Nothing. I worked part-time at the bakery, but the owner, Mrs Cake, teaches at the school sometimes. She knew I had tests coming up and refused to let me work until I was done with them.”
“That’s nice of her.”
“Yeah, I didn’t realize how behind I was on reviewing.”
“So, are you sure it’s okay to give us a tour?”
Gallus nodded. “I was starting to lose focus anyway. So, like I said, you got me for an hour. Let’s go.”
They sat around a round mushroom-shaped table at Cafe Hay. The spring sun was bright but the pegasi had still blown in cold air in the morning. The breeze made you forget about the heat while the sun made you forget about the cold.
Cups all around were filled with tea mixed with milk and sweetened with sugar, except for Ocellus who took hers with honey. Silverstream didn’t take tea, but she was fine with a stiff cup of black coffee.
“It’s been so long since it was just us,” Smolder said smiling, sipping her cup. “Though, it’s not like we have much to talk about. Just school, and then more school. I feel like my brain is melting.”
“Yona just need sleep. Should at least be awake for midterms.”
Silverstream nodded. “I can’t believe I only just finished mixing my songs together for my project. I swear, it is not as easy as it looks.”
“I guess that’s why everyone took the essay option,” Ocellus replied, “still, being able to listen to music for a project sounds like a nice change of pace. That said, won’t the grading scale be harder?”
“I dunno. Why would it?”
“Well, if only a few students do the music option, there’s less to compare. With a few hundred essays, the bad ones aren’t going to look as bad when there’s a dozen like them. But with only a few music projects…”
Silverstream pulled her mane over her face. “Actually, I don’t think I want to talk about that right now. How about spring vacation? The Nightmare Knights are playing at Rainbow Falls. Have any of you ever been there?”
“Sandbar has been there,” Yona said. “Sandbar says Rainbow Falls has best trade fair in Equestria. Fancy jewellery, old antiques, that kind of stuff.”
Smolder raised a brow. “To be fair, are there any other trade fairs in Equestria? I don’t think there’s a lot of competition for that title. Does sound cool though. Think they have any tea sets?”
Shopping talk!
The girls fell into a rhythm of discussing what they’d buy, or rather trade for, at the Rainbow Falls trade fair. Terrestrial jewellery was becoming popular at Mount Aris, according to Silverstream. No more pearls or bits of polished coral. And yaks loved adding Equestrian colours to their style of fashion.
“Yak weaving best, of course,” Yona reminded her friends, “but even Yona have to admit ponies have more colours.”
A passerby would never have looked twice at a group of girls tittering away about their wants and desires. It seemed stereotypical, but the truth was, these four kids were simply fulfilling their most natural desires as living beings. A desire for things!
All beings have it. Boys, girls, every creature in between. Even animals acted on a simple desire for the material goods that give them pleasure. In a school of friendship, luxuries had taken a backseat in their curriculum. But the scent of freedom from the day-to-day lessons was in the air. Spring break was approaching.
“I guess I’ll need to actually have stuff to trade,” Silverstream said. “I don’t suppose the trade fair can charge my bank card, right?”
The mention of the bank card, a tool created from enchanted pearls found in Mount Aris waters, brought back memories to Ocellus. Months ago Silverstream had to blow what most would have considered a small fortune just to pay for hotel rooms for the night.
“Are your parents going to be okay with it?” Ocellus said. “I thought you said you carried that around for emergencies.”
“Oh, it was,” Silverstream nodded, “but after I went to Cloudsdale with General Seaspray, I’m technically a trainee diplomat in Queen Novo’s court. I get a monthly stipend from the royal treasury, so now I don’t have to use my parents’ account.”
“I don’t know whether I should be impressed or terrified by your kingdom’s, let’s say liberal use, of its government spending.”
Silverstream shrugged. “Eh, it’s not like I can spend as much as I want. Besides, as long as no one looks too closely at what their taxes pay for I’m sure it’s fine.”
The four of them then sat there quietly under the blinding spring sun, stunned in a slow-looming fog of existential horror. What great powers pulled at the world’s string behind the curtains? Were their lives truly free, or were they mere products of some pony else’s machinations? How could their future ever be certai—
“Hey,” Yona’s attention burst out from the sudden wave of fiscal dread, “is that Gallus?” She pointed to the far end of the street at a group of young kirins, whose sharp, bell-like laughter jingled faintly in the wind as they trailed behind a blue-feathered griffon.
Silverstream held her talons over her eyes to block the sunlight. “I mean, maybe? I can’t tell from here. It could be any griff.”
“Any griff whose name is Gallus,” Smolder said. “How many blue griffons are there in Ponyville?”
“Looks like they just came from school,” Ocellus suggested. “They’re probably those new transfer students the professors said were coming. I thought they were coming after spring vacation though.”
“New students?” Silverstream gasped. “Let’s go! We have to welcome them!”
Petal Blitz and her friends were a breath of fresh air. Even the littlest things, like Sugar Cube Corner to the Ponyville town centre, seemed to fascinate them. Maybe it was growing up with no words or emotions that made them so excitable. Or perhaps it was just that Ponyville charm, its idyllic rustic architecture that made city-dwellers forget the brutalist sublimity of endless neon nights and towering forests of steel, or reminded distant rural farmers of the social closeness they had been missing.
Gallus and the kirin students followed the main road until they reached the Carousel Boutique. One of a few places that stood out, the choice of whites and purples emanated the aesthetic of a dollhouse more than anything else.
“One of our teachers actually owns this place,” Gallus told the students. “If you ever need a new outfit, this is the place for it. Careful though, Rarity might drag you into one of her new projects.”
“Oh, Petal, this place is so cool!” One of the other kirin, Sprinkle Bright, ran up to the glass where mannequins were on display, still wearing the knitted caps and scarfs from the winter season. “I saw in an old magazine once a singer who performed with a studded leather jacket, do you think this place has any of those?”
“That’s not really her style,” Gallus said, “but if she can’t make it, she probably knows some pony who can.”
It was the pride of any experienced student to know something about their teachers and to share it with the new ones. After all, such information could never be found in a book, but hard-fought after long hours of lectures and quizzes. Gallus didn’t want to say that it felt good to finally know more than others, but he could certainly think it.
“You know, if you like fashion, I’m pretty sure Rarity also runs an independent study program. Socializing in Fashion Retail, you’ll get school credit by working here for a few weeks.”
“Really?” Sprinkle’s eyes sparkled, unable to control her excitement. She grabbed Petal by the scruff of her mane and pulled her friend to the next window of outfits while making her friend swear to take that class together.
Suddenly, a voice from behind called out. “You sure know how to get around.”
Gallus turned around and saw Smolder smirking at him. “Didn’t you say you were behind on review?” she pointed out. “Or was leading around the new kids too hard to ignore?”
“Smolder? I thought you were with—”
“Surprise!” An unbelievable force struck him from above, and in an instant, Gallus was being crushed by his hippogriff girlfriend. “Sorry,” she giggled, “I wanted to make an impression on the new students.”
“Yeah, well,” Gallus groaned, stretching his back to work the pain out from the muscles, “I don’t think you’ll have to try hard for that. I think they heard about that one time we saved Equestria.”
The friends took their attention off Gallus and turned to greet the four young kirin, but instead, they were met with excited greetings themselves. They surrounded Smolder, fawning over her orange-tinted scales and leathery wings. They complimented Yona’s braids and ogled the vascular patterns on Ocellus’s wings. Even the mere volume and length of Silverstream’s hair captured their attention as the kirin compared it to their own curled manes.
What transpired could be described in many ways. While Gallus followed the new combined group as two or three conversations ran in parallel, he recalled something from their lessons on the development of identity and friendships: the Erikson Theory of Psychosocial Development, that was it, developed by Griff Erikson, a developmental psychologist from Griffonstone.
In their adolescence ponies, or creatures who developed like ponies, experience the conflict between their identity and role confusion. As one’s interests developed and became more clear, they either coalesced into an identity that was secure or fluctuated into something unstable or amorphous. Alleviating the conflict was, according to Griff, responsible for the adolescent desire to form cliques and tight friend groups, for sharing interests with one’s friends and close peers helped solidify one’s identity.
Or perhaps this was more according to the thinking of Vigor Sky, a pegasus psychologist who modelled learning through the zone of proximal development. Young pegasi mastered flying by watching their parents or older peers and often sought such role models to master skills they could not learn alone. Such was the zone of proximal development, and in some sense, the kirin were very much in the same boat.
A new school, new land, surrounded by new creatures, they probably desired mentors to guide them through those. Griff or Vigor, or perhaps it was a little bit of both, whatever the case was, Gallus quickly realized he could never have the same perspective of a girl.
“Hey,” Silverstream whispered, nudging him out of his thoughts, “you’ve been quiet. What’s on your mind?”
Gallus blinked and suddenly they were standing in the school courtyard again, between the dorms and the classrooms.
“Holy crap how long did I zone out for?”
“Twenty minutes or so.”
It was just the two of them now. Silverstream told him that while he was in his head, Ocellus and the others helped the kirins find their way around the school to the dining hall for lunch.
“So, back to studying?”
“Might as well,” he said, rubbing his head. “I was just thinking about some of the stuff we learned in class. I can’t even keep the information out of my head while I’m relaxing.”
“We’re days away from exams. That’s probably a good thing. Come on, I’ll join you. I have to look through my flashcards anyway.”
For all her quirks and extroversion, Silverstream was exceptionally adorable when she was focused and quiet. At least Gallus thought so.
She chewed the end of her pencil when she was frustrated, the tip of her beak making deep punctures along the length of the wood. When she got stuck or was trying to recite some vocabulary words to herself, she’d fall into a rhythm of twirling strands of hair around a talon until it was wound up tightly, before slowly letting her mane loosen and return to normal.
Noon turned to afternoon, though the lengthening days meant that Princess Twilight had to leave the sun in the sky for nearly an hour longer. As the orange rays of a lazily setting sun cast themselves through the windows, Gallus heard a trill of tapping along the edge of the table. Silverstream’s talons quickly ran along his shoulder and danced up to his neck like a line of ants.
“Hey!” he said, unable to hide his smile. “What was that for?”
“I just wanted to do that.” Silverstream laid her head on top of a stack of textbooks. “I think I’m burnt out without Ocellus reminding me of how much I don’t know.”
“Oh please, you’ll do fine.”
“Yeah? I guess I’m just worried, I want to have a great spring vacation without having to worry about how I did on the tests. Speaking of which, the girls and I talked about doing something together during our break.”
“Like what?”
“Mostly girl stuff, like shopping.”
“Shopping? You mean like buying clothes that fit one body proportion so that overly tall or short mares will have pants with waists that are too big or too tight?”
“And pants with no pockets,” Silverstream nodded. “So we’re forced to buy purses.”
“Are we sure griffons don’t run the fashion industry?” Gallus asked. “We should be careful, Rarity might hear us.”
They shared a soft laugh, trying to be considerate of the other students tirelessly working in the library.
“But seriously, we’re thinking about going to the trade fair at Rainbow Falls. The Nightmare Knights are playing, so we can support Headmare Starlight too while we’re there. You wanna join?”
“You really have to ask? Of course I do.”
Silverstream smiled and the feathers along the crest of her head stood up slightly, just as they did for birds when they were excited. She locked talons with Gallus, gently scratching at his wrist.
“You know, it’s funny. This might sound selfish so I kept it to myself, but when I saw you walking with those kirins, I felt funny. You were just helping them out, but still, I wanted to swoop in and keep you to myself.”
“Yeah, my back’s still feeling that tackle.”
“The trade fair only lasts the first new days of spring break, do you know what you’re going to do after?”
Gallus shook his head. It wasn’t something he thought about that much. Going back to Griffonstone didn’t feel like going home. Equestria and the school, Ponyville itself, that’s where he felt like he belonged.
“Gruff will probably make me clean up his nest or something. Or maybe I’ll run into Gabby and she’ll dump all her delivery stories on me.”
“Or,” Silverstream let her voice linger on the air for a second as she looked up at Gallus with sleepy eyes, “you could meet my parents. Queen Novo’s holding a big society bash back home. It’s totally going to be boring, but I have to show up. It’d be nice if you could be there too.”
“Y-your parents?” Gallus blinked, stunned.
Was it too soon? Too late? He didn’t even have his own family, he had no idea what to expect from his girlfriend’s family. But he took one look at Silverstream and he knew it didn’t matter. Maybe he didn’t know what to expect, but he knew that her happiness meant everything.
“I’ll be there,” Gallus agreed without hesitation.