"Behold!" Gallus gestured at a strange contraption hidden in the gloomy cave they were in. "This will make me rich, and you'll get some bits too."
It certainly was... something. Comforting followed the lines around, trying to discern how it all came together. "It's really impressive, but also what is it?" She was being confided in! That he had tucked it into a secret place seemed clear.
"The fruit of my labor." He thrust a thumb at his own chest as he reached with his other hand for a large purple-knobbed lever attached to the machine. "Watch." With several loud clunks, he pulled it towards himself.
The machine came to live, glowing with what seemed to be magic. It was dim enough that Comforting felt certain that only she could see that magic. To anyone else, it wouldn't be glowing. Still, it meant it had magic involved in its running. A plastic disc was snatched and pulled along, stamped into a shape of a flat pony with wings spread? It began being painted by the machine, each step adding more colors.
"This is so neat." Comforting danced at the sight of the magical gadget performing manufacture. "How did you even build this?"
"It wasn't easy." Gallus was buffing his chest, looking way more like he was showing off rather than anything else. "And..." He waved over the still moving piece as what it was started to become clear. "See, Twilight!" A picture of Twilight, smiling, wings spread, and looking quite chipper. He put his hand in the right place to catch the finished keyring as it fell off the conveyer belt. "Ready to go."
The machine was already on the way to making a second keyring, painting it while a third moved into position to stamp. It was quite the spectacle of mechanical precision, with some magical assistance. A pity the glow flickered. The machine lurched and jumped, the belt shuddering as the paint was applied incorrectly with a slap of purple across Twilight's artificial eyes. "What the...?" Gallus flipped the switch back to off with a loud but single click. "It must still have a few things to work out..."
"Keep that one." Comforting pointed at the imperfect keyring. "Someone will pay for it, since it's one of a kind."
"Huh..." He picked up the defective keyring. "Maybe..." He added it to the other, proper, keyring. "Why'd it do that? I swear the thing was working right before." He threw a hand, knocking open a box with ten other keyrings. He added the perfect one to that collection. "See?"
"Mistakes happen. If we assume it always does that." She counted quickly. "That's an over 95% success rate, not bad. Can you make a good profit with that?"
Gallus blinked at the little pony. "Huh, I never thought of it like that." One could almost see him running the numbers. "Yeah, you're right. That won't eat into the bottom line much at all. Worrying about nothing. If it keeps at this rate, we're looking good." He swatted Comforting on the back. "You are pretty clever for a little chick of a pony."
Still, the way it had flickered was odd. Not like it was some kind of mistake, but like something had interrupted the power, but it wasn't connected to anything external. "What powers it?" Only way she figured to learn was to ask.
"What, this?" He waved at the grand, and turned off, machine. "Um, a funny crystal, I think?" He popped open a hatch and stuffed the forward half of his body inside, wriggling about. "Right... here." He yanked it free and presented it in its brilliant pearl green color. It glowed with red-brown shades of magic. "Not broken or cracked, but good idea to check." Gallus held it closer to Comforting. "You see anything wrong with it? You're a magic pony, right?"
Comforting took the crystal with her magic, spinning it slowly as she examined it in a quiet moment of intense staring. She saw no hints of cracks. It was a perfectly cut gem. What state its magic was in, she couldn't tell. She wasn't trained in making magic items! But the glow it put out seemed nice and ev--Wait. It flickered, like it had before. "Huh... I should ask Miss Sparkle."
"You see something." He snatched the crystal from the air in front of Comforting. "What do you see? It's my crystal. I deserve to know!"
How to explain that? "I can see magic. It's like a glow... The glow fickered. There are no cracks or anything, but it did flicker. That could mean something, or not. I'll ask the teacher about it."
Gallus stuffed the gem away in his side. "Or maybe they ripped me off. No wonder it was at a discount! I'll be yelling at a creature later, don't you worry."
Comforting squeaked, imagining Gallus angrily storming about the defective product. "Let me ask Twilight first. Maybe it's nothing, or maybe it's a big something. You'll have more info when you complain about it."
"Yeah!" He pivoted on that thought smoothly. "The more I have, the better I can squeeze them. Huh, you're not so bad." He turned away from his machine and started for the exit of the cave. "But no more keyrings while we're getting that fixed. Just eleven maybes."
"So sell those." Comforting rushed to catch up with him. "Market them as sneak previews, that ups the value."
"I swear! I thought you were a magic pony. Where did you hear of half of this?"
That she had come from a world of cruel capitalism was not easily explained. "I heard things." Nailed it. "But it's, uh, supply and demand. Limited supply. You can charge more, but be careful."
"Careful?"
"You're not the only source of keyrings," noted Comforting with a sagacious nod. "Ask for too much and they'll get their rings somewhere else. You'd have to really market the, uh, nevermind. Just don't ask for too much or you'll turn off your customers."
"Are you sure you're not a money pony?" Gallus hiked a brow as they approached the town proper. "Like that little round pony, or the rich ponies you hang out with. Speaking of that! They want a key ring? One of a kind! Limited edition."
Comforting burst into merry laughter. "You're getting it. What is the going rate for a keyring?" That was not something she'd purchased before. She had but one key, to Fluttershy's cottage and even that was rarely used. The door was left open and unlocked most of the time. Ponies were trusting souls. She smiled just thinking about it and her mother behind that door.
"It's, uh... You ask good questions..." He waggled a finger at Comforting. "You know, you're alright. At first I thought you just liked poking your little snout--" He tickled her snout, making her squeak and bat at his hand to little effect. "--where it wasn't wanted. You got some good ideas in there." He stopped tickling her as they reached the bridge to the school proper. "Oh, one thing, that was a secret if you didn't get that idea. No telling nocreature about it."
Comforting adopted a sly look. "Oh? I shouldn't talk to Diamond and Silver about how much they really want a Twilight Sparkle keyring?"
Gallus burst into fresh laughter. "Alright, that you can talk about. Let me get the going rate of keyrings first." He offered a hand.
She met it with a hoof with a loud clap. "See you in class." She raced past him with a big smile and a light heart. She was making progress!
"Flickered?" Twilight raised a brow at her small student. "Do you normally see this kind of flickering?"
Comforting quickly shook her head. "I've seen magical things before. They're either off, or on, depending on the item and if they're working or not or... whatever how magical items work, but never a flicker like that." She wobbled her hooves close together in an attempt to capture the essence of the flicker. "That isn't normal then?"
"Hm... Unless what it was doing needed to flicker... But in most cases, no... Do you have it with you by any chance?" Twilight looked over Comforting as if she could spot it by looking hard enough.
"Gallus has it. He bought it. It didn't do anything dangerous, just hiccuped and didn't do its job just right... I saw the machine it was in flicker the same way, probably because the gem flickered, but I couldn't see it while it was inside the machine, working."
"I see..." Twilight considered a moment. "Odd, but, as you said, it may be a cheap power crystal with a defect. I would want a refund for that too if it did that to me. Though you've saved him quite a lot of effort."
"Hm?"
"I wouldn't have known what was wrong, and I doubt he would have either. Being able to see that flicker saved a lot of steps in figuring out what was wrong and what was at fault." Twilight tapped herself on the side of her head, next to her eyes. "A very useful trick. Which leads me to what I wanted to go over today!"
Comforting perked with a smile. "A new magic lesson?"
"Sort of. I said no new magic for now, and I still mean that." Twilight waved a reproaching hoof. "But that doesn't mean you can't learn more about being a unicorn. You are a special case when it comes to this, and I think we'll both enjoy what I have in mind."
"Stop teasing me!" The taunting of what could be was too much. "What's your idea?"
"Magic recognition." She flipped a blackboard over to a display of the arcane alphabet. "Now, for the usual unicorn, we show each alphabet being used and they get used to the 'feel' of it, but you don't feel magic, because you don't have to." Twilight tapped at her horn. "You can see it. But just because you can see it doesn't mean you have any idea what you're seeing. I propose we fix that." Her horn began to glow. "What rune is this?"
Comforting huffed. She knew the runes by how they looked on paper, and how they felt like when doing them, but not by what they looked like on the outside. "I... do not know," she confessed.
"Because you weren't looking for it." Twilight ran a hoof over the alphabet. "But you will now. Your assignment is to get a mirror and go over the alphabet while looking in the mirror, so you can get an idea of what letter goes with which 'glow'."
To Twilight's surprise, Comforting pulled out a mirror and looked in it, her horn glowing with different letters. "Why didn't I think of that?!"
"It took me this long to think of it." Twilight patted her shoulder gently. "Ideas often seem obvious in retrospect."
"I will..." she trailed off. Her horn had flickered. "What?"
"What?" echoed Twilight. "Is something wrong?"
"It flickered." She stared at her glowing horn, daring it to flicker again, but it only wanted to do it once. "I saw it..."
"Hm..." Twilight stood up with a frown. "Well, you have your lesson. I should get going."
"Y-yes, thank you, Twilight." She had no idea she was one piece among so many that helped Twilight get into action.
"Oh." Twilight patted Comforting gently. "I may need to borrow your mother. Will you be alright without her a few days?"
"I'll be fine!" Comforting slapped herself on the chest. "Adult in here." She pointed at her head. "I can survive a few days without panicking, promise."
"I was hoping that was the case... Still, she is your mother, so checking felt far safer. Have a safe trip home, Comforting."
"You too!" Comforting waved eagerly and dashed from the room, unaware of the events going on around her. The world would move, whether she was prepared or not.