It was kinda weird waking up from a lucid dream. Don't get me wrong, there was a big difference between real life and dreams, but I'd honestly never had one quite that real. So to go from sitting comfortably on a leather sofa, to being face down on the bed, a pillow atop my head, with three of my four limbs curled beneath me like a cat, was... disorienting, just a little bit. The fourth limb was my back left, and it was stuck straight out to the side. It was also the only thing that wasn't under the covers. Although, my tail was wrapped around it, so I guess that's not quite true?
I threw my head back with a yawn, removing the pillow from my vision as I stretched my forelegs as far forwards as I could. After a minute or two of shaking out the kinks in my body, I hopped off the bed. I wobbled unsteadily, as my hard won balance seemed to have fled. My failing sense of balance did war with one of the natural laws of the universe, it was a loosing conflict. I flopped onto the floor. 'Dammit! After all that practice at the hospital, and the dream… ugh.'
With a sigh, I got back to my feet. Hooves. Whatever. Seeing as the other beds in the room were empty, I figured that Twilight and Spike weren't up here. The smell of pancakes coming from the stairs lent further evidence to that theory.
Once again resorting to water skimmer style locomotion, I scooted over to the stairs. 'And now, the problem. I knew this was coming, and now I have to deal with it. Question is, how to get down stairs without breaking something of mine?'
The answer ended up being me laying on my side, parallel to the steps. My front left and back left hooves would carefully reach out as far as I could on the step, and then I would shimmy my butt down to the next step. Rinse, swear at nearly toppling, repeat.
I was only shaking like a freezing kitten for four minutes when I got to the bottom of the stairs, as opposed to lying in a broken heap, so I counted that as a win!
After catching my breath, I walked into the kitchen, trying to act like nothing was wrong. There I found a purple unicorn sitting at the table, while a purple dragon stood on a stool in front of the stove."M-morning Twilight, Spike."
"Good morning Argent!" Twilight greeted back with the cheer of the caffeinated. She didn't turn to look at me, busying herself by staring hungrily at one of the plates of finished pancakes. One looked normal, and the other seemed to have rock candy in it. "Did you sleep well?"
"Yeah, had a really lucid dream, built a house, it was a good way to spend a few hours." I replied, placing my hooves on the seat of a wooden chair next to her and mounting it with a hop.
"Sounds neat! Anything cool in your dream house?" Spike asked, leaning on a lit burner to access one of the farther pans, adding that finished cake to the rock candy stack. He then blew gently on his claws as if nothing was wrong.
I stared dumbly at the display of heat resistance, before I remembered. 'Dragon, duh.' I shook my head before making an affirmative noise. "Yeah, well, aside from some very comfortable furniture and books, not really. Not yet anyway. I'm planning on building some form of power generator, and that'll let me get into the really interesting stuff, but I haven't decided what method would work best." I tapped a hoof against my chin, winced slightly, and tried again, gentler as I mumbled on, more to my self than my hosts "Solar? Wind? Maybe I should just make a big hole and do geothermal... or something else entirely. I wonder if magic generators are a thing?"
Spike turned around at that point, two plates of pancakes balanced in his claws, he paused for a moment when he looked at me, snickering quietly, but he did manage to get the plates to the table. "Wow, that's the worst case of bed head I've ever seen!"
Twilight followed his eyes to me, and giggled behind a hoof as well.
I looked up, and just barely visible beyond my fluffy, tangled mane – which was covering one of my eyes. 'No wonder my balance sucks, I have no depth perception right now! Why didn't I notice this earlier?' – I could see the pillow I woke up under, resting over the back of my head and flopping to about midway down my forehead. The two things were nearly identical in colour, but it still felt like I should have noticed the addition to my weight. '...which I did, but everything is still so alien that I didn't know the pillow was to blame for its aid in ruining my coordination… I hate how stupid I can be at times.'
With a weary sigh, the kind people give when they know the day is going to suck right from the get go, I reached up to bat the clingy cranium cushion off my head. There was an odd tugging sensation, and the thing fought me the whole way. 'Did my freaking hair get tangled in the pillow somehow?! That doesn't even make sense!'
With a final grunt of effort, which had Spike rolling on the floor and Twilight trying to supress her mirth behind a pair of hooves and a cup of coffee, the pillow finally shot off my forehead with a tearing noise. I shuddered as I felt the thread's popping conduct down something into my skull.
Twilight's eyes bugged out and she started pounding a hoof to her chest as coffee took a detour down the wrong pipe, and Spike abruptly stopped laughing as the cushion sailed away, trailing feathers from the new hole in its corner. My ears fell in shame as my face burned. "S-sorry about the pillow." I stammered, but they didn't seem to hear me. They just kept staring at me, the dragon frozen in place and the mare taking deep, vaugh wracked breaths. I squirmed in my seat.
"I-I can fix it, if you want, or…" still no reaction. My embarrassment got shoved out of the driver's seat by curiosity, while confusion sat shotgun and shouted at the driver. I stopped shrinking in on myself long enough to wave a leg back and forth in front of them. This also garnered no reaction. "Hello?" Nothing.
Annoyance started swearing from the back seat. "It's rude to stare, what's up with you two?" I asked, crossing my forelegs and tilting my head at them. They continued to just look at me, but their gazes had shifted, ever so slightly in the direction I had tilted my head. I turned it the other way, and their gazes followed. Looking up to see what was so interesting myself, I began to gape at the picton blue crystal jutting out of my forehead along with them.
"Wha…?"
^
< ◇ >
v
"To the lab!" Twilight finally cried, knocking everyone out of their stupor. The unicorn then shot out of her seat, breakfast forgotten as she ran at full gallop out of the room.
A magenta tint settled over my vision as every inch of my body tingled with energy. Before I could make a peep, I was suddenly dragged through the air like a rubber band had finally decided it had enough.
As I was sucked down a dark hole in the side of the tree – I did not scream, I did not scream! – which just turned out to be the basement stairs, Twilight came back into view, horn glowing as she stuck various metal parts into a larger housing. The machine she was assembling resembled a large mixer, but instead of a bowl, it had a big glass box attached.
I was deposited on a cushion within the thing. I blinked in confusion, watching as Twilight got out a large roll of paper. It thunked heavily into its mounting. Twilight pressed a few buttons, little arms inside the box zipping up and down and a few inches of paper being spat out a slot as whatever she did... 'I dunno, calibrating? Probably calibrating the… whatever this thing is.'
I crossed my eyes staring at the angular protrusion affixed to my forehead. A small patch of cloth still sat suspended within it. I tugged on one particularly long string, and shuddered and the revolting feeling it sent straight to the base of my skull. I still got rid of it though. "Eugh…"
"Hold that thought." Twilight interrupted my disgust by shoving her hoof in my mouth. It did a pretty good job of shutting me up, but did nothing to actually help get rid of the feeling.
'Ew, dirt and paper taste…'
"So, this machine is just a simple arcano-empathic analyser, designed for scanning magic levels in items and reading their effects, if any. It's on loan from Celestia's School for Gifted unicorns, and I may have made a few upgrades to make it more accurate. So, I need you to sit in there, while this gets us an accurate breakdown on your… anomalous crystalline structure."
I blinked at the unicorn, trying to disect all the information that had been sent my way. I failed, and just latched onto "Analyser," "magic," and "upgrades." "Sounds great. Once you have that, you'll be able to fix it, right?" I asked, tapping the thing twice and giving myself ine of the weirdest, very unplesant sensations. "Gyeigh, I regret that."
The unicorn scowled at me and my stupid decisions, but it looked more like concern than anger. "I would recommend against 'fixing' it or touching it before we know what 'it' is." She ducked back behind the control panel again and began randomly pressing buttons. At least, it looked random to me.
After hitting the big obvious turquoise button, the whole machine vibrated for a second, then little beams of light shot out of the arms inside the box. They swept around for a moment before settling on the crystal. The lights flashed a cycling blue as it began trying to figure things out.
Something bleeped, paper was spat out with the cry of a fax machine on speed, and the lights turned a deep purple. "Magical saturation at seventy two times what would be expected from natural gemstones!? That's over twelve times the saturation of magically grown specimens!" Twilight shouted.
"It's not gonna blow up, is it?" I suddenly felt quite anxious about the apparently energy rich, potentially volatile rock fused with my skull.
"No no, its structure is entirely stable. Strangely conductive. Very flexible, magically speaking." The unicorn rambled on as the thing continued to screech out paper with data for her to pour over. "Magical gems normally don't have such complex-- hold on, are these pathways?"
It was several minutes after the scanner stopped spitting out technical data for the librarian to look through that Spike chose to make his way down the stairs. He motioned me over, and a glance to Twilight got him to give me a thumbs up. "Don't worry," he said quietly, once I was close enough. "She'll be going at that for a while. Here, I brought you something to eat!"
I looked from him to the plate of syrup drenched deliciousness on the floor, before smiling at him in appreciation. "Thank you. So, she does this often then?" I nodded back at the mare.
"--doesn't seem to be an enchantment, the non-crystalized mana is too raw." She muttered.
"Oh yeah. Twilight is one smart cookie, but when something new and interesting presents itself, she tends to get lost in the research. Just you wait, pretty soon, Twilight will have everything figured out." Spike assured me with a pat on the head.
"What does this mean!?" The unicorn seethed quietly.
I swiped at the provided fork, acidentally knocking it from the drake's calw and into stabbing the pancakes when I failed to grab it. With a nervous laugh I attempted to distact him from my lack of coordination. "Does anything she's saying make sense to you?" I asked, as I poked at the fork in an attempt to get it to stick. 'Frick, how was I doing it before again? I think I forgot over the course of the dream.'
Spike peered curiously at the unicorn, rubbing a claw to his chin. "Hmm… it sounds like… "
"How does this have such a flexible dispersal matrix? Even the most advanced casting focus-- hold on." Twilight crawled into the machine, while a mirror flew downstairs to sit at an angle nearby. Her horn glowed as she used the reflection to operate the controls.
"...it's complicated, but she's got this." Spike nodded. "Welp, I gotta go run the library while Twilight is occupied, if she's not having you do something fifteen minutes from now, you should just come up stairs. Enjoy the pancakes!" The door shut swiftly behind him, but not so quickly that he slammed it.
As the fax screech started up once more, I sighed, and turned back to my breakfast. "At Least these are still warm."
^
< ◇ >
v
I finished my pancakes at about the time three different scrolls started orbiting Twilight's head and the "hmmmmmm"ing had reached a resonant level I could practically feel in my teeth. I placed the fork on the plate, then nudged it into the exact center.
The humming cut off, scrolls fell to the ground as. Twilight tilted her head back and she absently snapped a book closed between her hooves, I hadn't even seen that thing come down here. "Huh." She uttered.
I waited for a moment to see if she would continue that thought. When it became obvious she wouldn't, I decided to jumpstart a conversation. "Is that a 'you've got three days to live' Huh, an 'I suppose that makes sense,' Huh, or an 'I can't believe this, this breaks science!' Huh?"
Twilight flinched violently at my listed options. She blinked a few times before scampering closer to me, laying on her belly to be on eye level. "W-what?! No! This is just… not what I was expecting. Of all the possible answers, I hadn't even thought this was on the list, not even remotely. "
"Well that's not reassuring." I muttered, curling my tail around my limbs as my ears pinned back nervously.
She took a deep breath, and layed a hoof on my shoulder, locking gazes with me, totally serious. "Argent, listen to me, what I'm about to tell you will be… shocking to say the least. It will change the way the world works for you." She stared at me for several seconds, letting the weight of her words sink in. "Argent, you are now a unicorn."
I looked from her to the crystal jutting out of my head. I looked back at her, and took note of her utterly serious expression. She didn't really seem the type to joke like this, so I guessed she was telling the truth? "Okay." I shrugged. 'What's one kind of pony over another, really?'
Twilight twitched, froze, and just stared at me. This time less out of seriousness, and more out of just… shutting down. A blink, and she was back online. "H-W-What do you mean, okay!? I've just told you that your whole life will be radically different from what you're used to!"
I gaver her a shrug in response. 'Im already doing that anyway.' "Eh, doesn't sound too bad honestly. Actually... hey, you're a unicorn, does that mean I'll get to do magic like you? Because that sounds awesome!" I poked the-- my horn, apparently, more gently this time. A frown crossed my features. "The cloth won't be a problem will it? Or… can you get rid of it?"
"I… But, you…" the unicorn frothed, my nonchalance apparently more surprising to her than my race change. "I mean, yes, I can remove it." She rubbed the bridge of her muzzle. "You're seriously telling me you don't mind? This is, while unprecedented, almost like being crippled. Your innate earth pony magic has been stripped away, leaving you with something entirely new."
'Mmm, from your perspective sure, from mine, its more like being told Im right handed now. Not all that major when compaired to the soul snatching and hor- pony being. Living? Having become a pony in the first place.' Again I gave her a shrug. "Yeah? I mean, it's not like I knew what I was doing as an earth pony anyway. Seriously I didn't even know they had any kind of magic, and I certainly never used it myself."
Twilight stood up and her eyes kinda just, widened for a second, or maybe unfocused? She walked with a sigh to sit beneath the stairs. "Well that would explain the underdeveloped tribal traits, but still…" A quill and roll of parchment floated over of their own accord. Or maybe the magenta glow convinced them. I looked at the simple display as she scribbled something down.
I watched as a chalkboard was dragged over, but lost interest when all she did was squiggle lines on it and mutter. 'She seems to be busy, so I'm outta here.' I turned and slowly hopped up the steeper stairs. A book sailed over me as I made it into the library proper.
Spike sat at one of the many tables, flipping through a comic book. The dragon glanced up at me and waved, closing his comic and setting it on the table. "Hey, so how did it go?" He asked.
I hopped onto the stool across from him, shaking slightly when one of my legs slipped off. Elbows resting on the table, I rested my head on my "bridged" hooves. "Good, I guess. Apparently, I turned into a unicorn... somehow." I suspect that the drake may have performed a spit take, had he been drinking anything. 'I wonder if fire would be involved in a draconic spit take. Hmm.'
Spike hacked for a moment, pounding a fust into his chest. "W-wait, really? How in the world did that happen?"
I shrugged, staring up at my slightly transparent horn. "I dunno, I just woke up like this. I think Twilight is trying to figure it out at the moment, actually."
"Well, she is pretty smart, so she will probably figure it out. Still though, I've never even heard of a pony's tribe just changing on them like that." He drummed a claw in the opposite arm. "Does it happen where you're from?"
I was too surprised to keep myself from giving a snort of laughter, which progressed into actual laughter. "N-noo~ I can't say I've ever heard of that either." I snickered some more before composing myself. "Twilight did say it was unprecedented, so I can't say I'm too surprised you haven't heard of it either."
Spike nodded. "So, what's it like?"
I felt my ears flop into the questioning position I'd seen on countless dogs on the internet. "Hmm? Whatcha mean?"
"You know, being a different kind of pony! You're the only one I know of that's ever had the opportunity to experience this. So, what's it like?" He leaned across the table towards me.
I leaned back. "Uhh… I dunno...? I haven't done anything unicorn-y yet, so I can't really tell the difference." Spike slumped back in his seat in disappointment. I glanced up at the crystal decoration again. "The only thing I can really think of is, this thing is like, really sensitive." I shuddered. "Getting rid of a single string was beyond uncomfortable, I have no idea how I'm going to get the rest of this stuff out." Just thinking about trying to grab the corner of the cloth almost made me gag.
I shook my head to dispel the phantom sensations. "Putting aside spontaneous transformations and horn issues for now, what is there to do for fun around here?"
^
< ◇ >
v
We spent a few hours playing various board and card games. Apparently, Pinkie brought one over every now and then and just didn't take them back with her, so we had quite the selection.
Twilight galloped up the stairs halfway through a game of war, a rolled up scroll tied with a red ribbon in hoof. "Spike!" She cried upon creating the steps. "Where are you? I need you to send this to Princess Celestia!"
Spike shot up out of his seat and was at her side in a moment. "Okay!" He cheered, one claw outstretched to receive the missive.
I watched with confusion as Twilight handed him the roll of paper, and he didn't make any move toward the door. 'How does he plan on sending that if the postal service isn't involve-- wait, didn't he mention something about this?'
Sure enough, the purple drake took a deep breath, and blew it out as a gout of green flames! The scroll burned up in an instant, reduced to a strangely cohesive ball of smoke and glittering embers. The immolated message sped out the nearest open window before disappearing out of sight.
I tried and failed to whistle in astonishment. Thankfully, I failed just hard enough that the distance kept them from noticing. "Well that was cool."
Twilight turned to look at me, blinked confusedly, and looked back down the stairs into the basement. "Argent? When did you get up here?"
Spike snickered at her obliviousness, while I waved her question off with some casual sarcasm. And an actual wave. "What do you mean? I teleported, it's easy."
The way her eyes widened and she pointed a hoof at me, she believed me. For about three seconds. Because that's when the purple drake decided to clarify things. "She came up hours ago, Twilight, what have you been doing down there?"
A ten minute rant that could be summarized as "research, studies, and magical variations thereof," went straight over my head, with various magical mumbo jumbo attached to words that rendered the whole thing Greek to me.
I nodded and made the appropriate affirmative noises at the right time, although judging by how Spike left halfway through to put his comics and the games away, I needn't have bothered.
I turned from looking at the retreating dragon's tail back to Twilight, who had somehow moved the chalkboard upstairs to aid in her rant. Or maybe she had one on each floor? "--so in conclusion, your horn lends itself more toward raw output than control, but since you have such underdeveloped mana channels, you won't be able to take advantage of this facet of your magic very well when you start casting--"
My ears twitched, and I dialed back into the word spew all the way. "Hold up, when I start casting, you mean I really can use magic?"
The purple mare turned from the board to look at me in confusion. "Of course you can? Why wouldn't you be able to utilize magic? You are a unicorn now."
"Well, I mean." I gestured from the faceted, vaguely curved, blue eye poker on my forehead to the rounded, spiraled, coat matching apparent arcane focus on hers.
"Oh! Well that's not something to worry about. While the makeup of your horn is… entirely unique, it's perfectly functional. With practice, I'm certain you will be an exceptional spell caster!" She cheered.
"Well, that's… awesome! Where do we start?" I asked, finally getting up off the floor. 'Because who wouldn't be ecstatic about learning magic?'
Twilight froze, a piece of chalked fell to the ground as her magic winked out. Her jaw metaphorically hit the floor and it looked like someone had just told her the secrets of the universe. "Y-you want me to teach you?"
"Uhhhhhhhhhh, I mean yeah? At least, that's what I thought you were implying." I awkwardly shifted to the side, kicking/punching the floor.
She stared at me in shock for what felt like an eternity, before The Squee began. Yes, it did deserve the capitalization. In a flash of magenta, I was hoisted off the ground and into a… not really bone crushing, but definitely uncomfortable hug by the taller mare. "EEEEEEEeeeeee! I-I hadn't even thought about taking on an apprentice! I was going to sign you up for Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, but, EEEeeee!"
"Twilight, can't breathe here." I exaggerated, since the purple pony didn't have enough strength in her forelegs to actually do anything that severe. Nevertheless, it got the desired result, and I was plunked back on the floor. I winced, stood up, and removed my pinched tail from beneath me. "Thank y-ow-ou~ now, I'm just as excited for this as you are, so… where do we start?" I tried again.
The mare literally vibrated in place for a few seconds before vanishing, and then reappearing with some mild singeing around the edges of her mane and tail, with a feather floating next to her. "Follow me!"
She didn't go very far, she just ran very fast, into the center of the room. A couple cushions, sized appropriately for the soon to be occupants, leapt into position just in time for Twilight to practically tackle hers.
She stared up at the giant sun symbol thingy on the ceiling with this huge grin on her face, while I made my way over in a much more controlled manner. I settled into my spot after battling the urge to circle it like a dog, and watched her expectantly.
She sucked in a breath before letting her eyes fall back down to me. "Okay! So, we're going into this a little blind, since up to this point you've never even accidentally cast magic, so you don't have any instinctual control over your magic, which means you will probably use too much and run out very quickly, but that's something you're going to learn, so don't worry."
She brought the feather over between us, setting it on the ground so that the points went out either side of us. "We're going to start with a simple levitation exercise, all you have to do is get this quill to move, even if it's just a little. This will give me a baseline on where you're at right now, and how to progress."
"Sounds… doable?" My head tilted and an ear flopped as doubt flooded my system, but I shook it off. 'It's time to learn magic, which I've already seen done, I've got no time to consider the fact that I have no idea where to begin!'
'...Aw nuts.'
I glared at the plumage, willing it to move as desired, but the quill ignored me. 'M'kay, I kinda expected that. If magic was all will power, then it would be too easy… and I would have also just sabotaged that attempt by not thinking it would work. I'm going to just assume I was right with the first half of that, and try something else.' I set my chin atop my forehooves, looking between the task and my teacher. More specifically, her horn. 'Every unicorn I've seen cast magic – granted I've only seen two, which isn't many but still – has had their horn light up during said casting, which logically says that horn light is a requirement… how do I do that?'
I looked up at my-- "hold on." Twilight looked extremely disappointed at me stopping the lesson, but I ignored that for the moment and pointed at my horn. "This isn't going to.. cause any problems is it?"
The purple coated unicorn's eyes were drawn to my hoof, then to the horn, and then the cloth inside of it that still hadn't been removed. "Oh, right." She said after a beat, sheepishly.
"It's okay, I forgot too."
^
< ◇ >
v
I had joked about it before, but good lord! Teleporting was not fun. Like, not even a little bit. Even with the little safety rune necklace thing she had me wear and twenty minutes of careful preparation, it was far from a gentle experience. I only moved two feet, but it felt like I had been stretched across time and space the long way to get there. So as a blue tinted scrap of cloth fluttered to the floor, I spent a considerable amount of time dry heaving and shivering.
It was within the next few minutes that we discovered that my horn growing spontaneously wasn't a one time thing, as the section that had been occupied by cloth filled back in within seconds. The sound was… similar to a reversed glass break.
"Well, now that that… wildly uncomfortable experience is over, feather?" I asked as we left the basement.
Twilight nodded. "Yes, let's continue. Remember, it doesn't have to be much, this is just to tell us where to start." She briefly patted me on the shoulder before settling into the cushion across from me. "Just take your time, we're not in any rush here."
I steepled my hooves and narrowed my eyes at the writing implement once more. 'Okay… how do I go about this? Horn light is still necessary, but it's not like it's a clapper. So what do…' I tapped one hoof absently as I tried a few things. Imagining ghostly hands yielded no results, and neither did mental hooves or mouths. 'I had to check, what with horse land.'
I let out a snort of exasperation. The quill still refused to obey my simple commands. 'Let's try something different then, obviously I'm going to need to figure out how to get the light, and therefore magic, working before I can try any spells, so... What's that look… no, what does that feel like?'
My eyes drifted closed as I pushed my focus squarely onto my horn. I gave it a gentle tap even, just to make sure I was looking in the right place. 'Just look for anything… magical, I guess.'
I ground a hoof into my barrel as an itch started up, but tried to give it as little attention as possible. I started with the cushion directly beneath me; its texture, colour, smell, everything I could sense about it, and then expanded from there. The floor slowly bloomed into existence in my mind's eye. Then a nearby table. Next was the bottom shelves to my right, followed by Twilight's larger cushion and finally, the quill. Why the quill was so slow to appear I had no idea, but there it was.
While half of my mind was focused on refining the detail of my mental map, the rest was trying to reach out and poke the feather again, now that I had a clearer mental picture of it. I thought I almost felt something, like a loose string connected to something else in the center of my chest, but I couldn't find any way to push it around. 'If that even is magic, anyway.'
'I need an example.' I grumbled to myself, focusing on the currently empty space above the bigger floor pillow in my mind's eye. Slowly, something vaguely pony shaped emerged, and then little details wove themselves together over the base. Hooves led to legs, led to the main body, and so on. Eventually I had what I really hoped was a perfect copy of Twilight, doing what she was doing without me being able to see her. 'That would have to be some kind of magic right? A wierd, spatial awareness power kinda deal. This has to mean I'm on the right track.'
If it was accurate, then Twilight's expression was slowly shifting from eager patience to confusion. "Argent? You're not falling asleep, are you?"
I shook my head at her. "No, just trying to figure this out." I 'looked' deeper into Twilight, or maybe shifted which lense I was using. Regardless, the result was a web of magenta lines pulsing throughout her, with a few thicker ones connected to the beacon of light residing within her horn. 'So if that is what it's supposed to look like, where am I?'
The picture flipped around, and I felt a part of my mind that was distinctly human and not okay with this – the part I'd been trying to ignore for my own sanity – had a conniption at being able to look at myself without the aid of a mirror. A very faint, Light blue glow suffused my mental self, similar to Twilight, but with a few major differences.
Twilight's magic seemed to flow through her body in bright channels, affecting a similar appearance to a nervous system, or maybe vascular, but not quite close enough to either.
My 'system' didn't really exist in the traditional sense. I had no channels, just a dull blob of colour, like mildly dyed water in a pony shaped novelty cup. The glow got a little brighter at my chest, horn, and would occasionally flicker a few extra lumens higher down my limbs. The longer I stared at it, the more disappointed I got. It also started to feel like staring at one of those magic eyeball posters, but if the dots were always moving. Like if I kept looking, eventually I would grasp some deeper image, something obvious to some but I hadn't figured it out yet.
'I suppose this is what she meant by underdeveloped, there is no development. At all, period.' Biting back a sigh, I traced the movement of a wave of light, barely brighter than the rest, as it slowly radiated out from my chest and upward. I could almost feel it, but not, like, feel it. 'Wow that's hard to describe. I think I've stumbled upon an entirely alien sensation. Neat.' I shuddered as the little wave of probably magic cycled through my horn. 'Aaand, now I'm definitely aware of that.'
Screwing up my concentration, I tried to reach out and nudge the quill with the energy flowing through my horn. There was a mild pressure, and a noise so faint I probably imagined it, while in my mind's eye, the tiniest little band of blue formed around the – 'stem? Is that what that part of a feather is called, I really need to read my anatomy books some time… when I find some anyway.' – I put off grinning like an idiot until after I knew this was actually happening, and tried to move the quill with my tentative grip.
The band of light shattered in a wholly disappointing fashion, leaving me back at square one. I groaned loudly, my head thumping to the floor between my forelegs. I cracked open one eye to glare at the ink stained writing apparatus. Indeed, it had not moved. I snorted, burying my face in my legs. Then trying to do so again in a way that didn't bother my horn.
"We can take a break if you want. Like I said earlier, we're in no rush. How about I pull some beginners' training books to help you out?' Twilight offered, coming up beside me and holding out a hoof to help me up. I'm guessing that's what that meant anyway, as it didn't seem like the proper time for a han-hoofshake.
I released my grip on my muzzle and turned to look at her, and she gave me a funny look. It was at this point that I realized my eyes were still closed. My ears had followed her, but I realized that this was only what I saw her doing in my mental map thing.
"Maybe… one more try." I turned back to the feather, but also myself. Kind of an over the shoulder point of view so I could keep both sides of the equation in 'sight'.
'Just a tiny bit, a little bit, a smidgen of magic and--' suddenly the tingly pseudo-sensation flared, the glow spread throughout my body being dragged all in one place, my chest, and then shooting toward my horn in a little bright ball of energy. Countless little bands of magic wrapped all around the quill, before merging into a proper aura like I had seen Twilight use when she set up the exercise.
I opened my eyes and beheld--! Periwinkle. A nice deep periwinkle light shimmering around the feather. "Huh." I wondered aloud. "This is… not quite what I was expecting." I looked between the matching glow around my horn and the ensnared archaic pen. "Still cool though." I tilted my head, and sent out the command for the feather to do the same, but just as I got it nearly standing on end, the magic sputtered, shrunk, dulled, and popped like a balloon.
My horn ached, and my breathing had gotten hard. I wiped away a bead of sweat from my brow, careful of the aching crystal, and grumbled in frustration. "Aw come on! I almost had it!"
Twilight clearly held a different opinion on my failure, as she pulled me sideways into her barrel, one hoof wrapped tightly beneath my forelegs as she tried to squeeze the life out of me. Being as apparently out of breath as I was, it was a lot easier than last time. "No, no! You did amazing! Congratulations!"
I wedged a hoof under hers and bought myself an inch to breathe. "Twilight, that didn't even go on for a second, and I feel like I ran a marathon."
"But the whole point of the exercise was for you to access your magic, and you did that! Honestly you surpassed my expectations, I'm surprised you were able to do more than get a few sparks from your horn, since this was your very first time casting magic." A roll of parchment appeared and she scribbled something on it with the quill I failed to move before it vanished back where it came from. "You should be proud! Especially since, according to you, you had never even used your innate magic as an earth pony."
As I looked at things again, keeping in mind her words, it was pretty amazing that I was able to do this. 'Considering humans have no magic at all, it might even be more impressive than she knows.' "So, how did I measure up to a natural born unicorn then? What was it like the first time you tried to use magic?"
"Oh well, I'm… not the best example." Twilight smiled sheepishly, returning me to my seat and backing up a step before turning to the side. "I was born a unicorn, so I've been unconsciously casting magic since I was a foal, and the first time I consciously cast magic… Well, I had a far easier time of it than most. My special talent is magic, so…" she gestured to the… starburst mark on her flank.
'The hell? Do all these ponies have those and I just haven't noticed?' "Ah, okay then."
"What about you?" She prompted.
I cocked my head at her, one eyebrow climbing in confusion. "Didn't you just sit in on my first attempt?"
"No, I meant your cutie mark." She pointed at my flank this time. "How did you get it, what's your special talent?"
This did not clear anything up for me in the least. "I think you lost me. What's a cutie mark?"
This was apparently a question she never expected to hear. At least, not from someone that looked like a young pony. "The… the mark on your flank, Y-you dont know? How…"
I once again looked upon the six gray circles set upon my thigh, and gave a shrug. "I'm going to be honest with you, I really thought that was just more of my wierd coat patterning." My tail curled around my legs as I poked at the design that apparently meant something emblazoned on my upper leg. "Anyway, can we get back to the absolutely fascinating subject that is magic?"
My attempt at a conversational reboot was successful, and Twilight went into lecture mode. A Lot of the terminology went over my head, and I hoped it was just above my reading level, and not that this stuff was supposed to be common knowledge. Either way it might have been rendered moot, given the amount of assigned readings I found myself saddled with.
After Twilight left to do errands, I cracked open the first book. After several minutes of reading up on alien concepts, I realized that the information just wasn't sticking, and so I started the page over and tried again, much slower this time. Still, no luck was to be had. I decided that maybe I just wasn't up to reading that particular book at the moment, and tried another, but got the same results. It probably had something to do with the completely foreign script, rather than any desire to not read though.
"Hmm… this could be a problem." I slammed my face into the book in annoyance.
'Someone must be laughing their ass off right now. Throwing me into an alien world, an alien body, then a slightly different alien body, and now I find that while we speak the same friggin language, which doesn't make sense anyway, we don't share a written system? Why?! What's the point!?'
"STAMPEDE!" someone shouted outside, loud enough to be heard through closed doors.
"Oh what now!?"