//------------------------------//
// Oh, George 
// Story: Friendship Is Optimal: Changing Tides 
// by Boopy Doopy 
//------------------------------//

Magic, it turned out, was complicated stuff.
Finding a book on the subject was little trouble; there was a shelf along the living room wall that contained nothing but text on how to do magic. However, it seemed like there was a reason there were so many books, because just getting a few pages into the first one, Candle Light found herself already confused.
Watching Warm Spell light up her horn and cast a spell when she was only six made it seem easy, in spite of what the earth pony told her. As she read through though, she got the feeling that it was only so because Olivia was pressing buttons on her PonyPad. This book detailed things like special characters that had to be written and how to draw energy from within yourself and project it into physical space and how to convert ambient energy into magical and a whole lot of other highly scientific sounding things. It was a lot more complicated than she expected, and almost deterred her from reading through the book right now.
But she shook her head clear of discouragement, then used a hoof to brush her mane out of her face. She had who knew how long to figure it out, confusing as it was. If Olivia could do it through a screen, she could do it in real life. 
She put on some Clay Walker CDs she bought with Misty Rose a few days ago, found a comfortable spot on the couch to lay down on, and started reading from the beginning. 
The hardest part at first was figuring out what everything meant. She wasn’t exactly sure what ‘thaumatology’ meant, and even though she was a horse now, she certainly didn’t know horse body parts like the book demanded she know. What exactly was a ‘croup’, and why was such a thing storing her magical energy? A dictionary she found came in handy, and helped her piece some things together.
Applying what she read was much easier. Apparently, telekinesis was the first skill any unicorn learned, and she could see why. There was a technical explanation about how energy was displaced when a unicorn moved an object and how it meant that more energy was required to move larger objects, but the instructions were simple. Think about what you wanted to move and where it was, put energy into your horn, and wrap it around the object. Candle Light didn’t exactly know what it meant to put energy into her horn, but she tried her best to follow the instructions, and to her surprise, it worked! She grinned widely as she carefully held the book she was reading above her and moved it around a few feet without issue.
She couldn’t hold it up for longer than a minute or so before she got tired, but the book explained that, too. Just like a runner, endurance had to be built up before she could hold her energy around an object for longer amounts of time. It explained that practice would make this easier, and so she stopped reading where she was to practice picking up and holding things for the rest of the day. She wore an excited smile the whole time.
Actual spellcasting, however, was much more difficult, something she discovered the next day, after her now ritual walk to and swim at the beach. Spellcasting required learning and memorizing a series of special characters, writing them out in your head while drawing energy into your horn, and then forcing the energy out once the spell was ready. It explained that most unicorns wrote out spells they planned to cast later in the day to save time– she had no idea how something like that could be possible– and that the more often you trained your magic spellcasting, the more complex and energetic spells you could cast. If it was as easy as doing the telekinesis she learned the day before, it would be no sweat.
Candle Light tried hard, but she didn’t cast one spell that day, or the next day. Not the next day after that, or the next week after that. She imagined at first it was because she wasn’t drawing enough energy, since she didn’t really have any way to indicate energy was being drawn. However, by the second week of studying, she could hold the book above her head to read without trouble for almost an hour. She did as the text described and wrote out the characters in her mind while she imagined the energy flowing to her horn, but still nothing was happening. Maybe she wasn’t writing them exactly right? But even if she looked at the book while doing it, she still couldn’t–
“Candle?” Misty Rose suddenly called from outside as she knocked on her door one morning. “Are you in there?” It was unexpected enough that the unicorn almost jumped at the sound.
“Yeah. The door’s unlocked,” she replied. “You can come in.”
Misty Rose entered, looked down at Candle Light, and then looked around the house to take it in. “Oh, that’s what you’ve been up to,” the earth pony smiled. “Rearranging your house, I see? It looks nice!”
“I did that a couple of weeks ago,” Candle Light laughed. “I’ve just been reading this book about magic and trying to figure it out.” Then she let out a small sigh, finished, “It’s more difficult than I thought though.”
"I can't even imagine how difficult that must be," Misty Rose replied. "I don't think I could manage it at all. Maybe that's why I'm an earth pony." A little pause came as the unicorn glanced back up at her book for a second, then her friend said, "Say though, if you don't mind taking a break, do you think you could help me do some shopping? I wanna get some new clothes, but I need a mare's opinion on what to get."
"I don't think I'd call myself the best judge of fashion," Candle Light said sheepishly as she glanced away again for a moment. "But sure. I could try and help with that."
It wasn't too much later when Candle Light was down in the main part of Summer's Edge for the first time in weeks. It was a sunnier day today, and a bit warmer than most of the mornings she went to the beach to swim. Seeing all the ponies out and about as they smiled and walked in the sun helped to remind her of what else Celestia said. Making friends with these ponies was also important.
The two walked through a couple of jewelry shops, the two mares stopping to admire some of the stones without making any purchases, before they entered a clothing store aimed towards mares. There still wasn't anything like underwear or pants that she saw that wasn’t lingerie, but the skirts and dresses and socks they sold looked nice enough.
The unicorn didn't feel particularly helpful to Misty Rose, but she complimented her politely and pointed out some dresses she thought looked especially nice. There were a few that looked like things her wife would wear, and she pointed out one that was bright blue with occasional yellow stripes and red flowers that she saw. Misty Rose laughed at the suggestion.
"I'm already as blue as a pony can come," the mare said lightly. "I don't think more blue would make me stand out much.” Then she squinted at Candle Light. “Hmmm… it might look pretty good on you though,” she said. 
“I’m not sure,” was the unicorn’s immediate, red faced reply. “Maybe though.”
“I can buy it for you, if you wanna,” Misty offered her. “I don’t mind. I have the bits.”
Candle Light could feel more blood rushing to her face as she put on an embarrassed smile. She rubbed a back hoof against the back of a forehoof as she looked away. “Thanks, but no. I don’t wanna be a burden, especially since you’ve already paid for all of my shopping when I first got here.”
“I have the bits, Candle,” Misty laughed. “It’s not gonna– oh, hey! There’s that pony I was telling you about before! Soft Step!”
“Who?”
Before she got an answer, her companion was waving and beckoning a purple unicorn with a brown mane over. She looked about as old as Candle Light did, probably around twenty two or so, and was a unicorn just like her. She had a large, friendly smile on her face, and seemed a bit lighter on her hooves than either Candle Light or Misty Rose were.
“I was just telling Candle Light here about how you were from the Outer Realm, too,” Misty Rose said, as though it wasn’t a passing remark she made weeks ago. “She just moved to Summer’s Edge, and said she wanted to meet other ponies from the Outer Realm like she’s from.”
“Huh. I didn’t think there were other actual people playing in Summer’s Edge,” she started. “It’s kind of cool though that Composition’s shard is popular like that.”
“Shard?” Candle Light asked with a tilt of her head. “What the heck is a shard? You mean, like, this town?”
“Basically,” the mare nodded, wearing a little smirk. “I guess that must mean you’re super new then. I’m Soft Step,” she introduced. She held out her hoof to shake.
“Candle Light,” the unicorn replied, accepting the hoof. “If you’re a human, you must know how the heck to cast spells, since you’re a unicorn, right?” she asked. “I’ve been trying to get it for the last couple of weeks, but all I can do is levitate stuff. Not actually cast spells.”
“Haha, that’s easy,” Soft Step smiled. “There’s a button on the side of the screen you have to open up first. Then you just click on whatever spell you want to do. But you have to actually learn how to do it by pressing the characters in the right order. At least, I did.”
Oh, so then this mare wasn’t actually in Equestria. “I don’t, uh, have a screen,” she told her. “I actually live here. In real life.” She felt somewhat awkward saying it, but she wasn’t sure why. Maybe something about it felt like it would make her the subject of ridicule, as silly a feeling as it was to have.
"Wait, so you, like, went to Japan to upload then?" Soft Step asked, a little amazement in her voice. Candle Light nodded, and shifted on her hooves uncomfortably. "That sounds absolutely insane to me."
“I didn't really have much of a choice on my part. But, uh, I guess that means you can’t help me, can you?” Candle Light asked awkwardly.
“I can try,” she offered. “I’m not sure what you would do though, since I’ve never met anyone who actually lives in Equestria, you know? But let me see. Give me a minute.”
She watched the purple unicorn stare up at the ceiling for more than a minute. In fact, it was closer to five that she remained completely motionless outside of blinking and breathing. Candle Light took a step back from her, debating whether or not she should try and touch her or leave.
"Do ponies from the Outer Realm do that all the time?" she asked Misty, who had returned to looking around for clothes, unbothered by the scene. Even as she asked it though, the answer to what was going on was already forming in her head.
"Sure," the mare answered. "Lots of ponies do lots of weird things. This is pretty normal, I'd say. Some of the ponies I talk to sleep for days and days at a time."
"I think I got an idea," Soft Step suddenly interrupted, making the mare jump. "You can try watching me cast a spell to see how to do it right. A few people on YouTube talked about helping people who just uploaded into unicorns, and that's what they did. I only learned how to do teleportation though because that's all I use."
"That's fine," Candle Light said. "Let me see."
The mare watched as Soft Step closed her eyes and took a breath before lighting up her horn. Time seemed to move in slow motion. She wasn't sure how, but she could almost see the characters being drawn out faintly in the air in front of her, and watched as her breathing subtly made her barrel move from back to front somehow. It was incredibly strange to see, but sure enough, a second later, the mare disappeared and popped back into existence a moment later, now standing a few feet to her right.
"And that's pretty much it," Soft Step told she with a smile. "I guess since you don't have a PonyPad, you'd probably just think about where you wanna be, but yeah. I don't know if that does it for you, but…"
"I think I understand it a little more than the book told me," Candle Light said. "Let me see."
Candle Light closed her eyes, just as Soft Step did, and breathed deeply, focusing on trying to put energy into her horn. She still had no idea if it was doing anything, but this time, she did feel pressure subtly moving from near her flank to her chest as she breathed the way she saw Soft Step do. She imagined drawing out the characters she needed as she pushed the pressure from her chest to her head, and…
She heard a loud 'pop' and felt a rush of energy suddenly leave her as she opened her eyes. She was now standing on the beach she went to every morning, and turned to see Warm Spell's little clubhouse sitting off in the distance. The waves lapped at her hooves and she heard seagulls flying overhead as a rush of excitement came over her.
“Yes! Ahh, yes! I did it!” she yelled as she jumped and danced happily on the beach, leaving hoofprints in the sand. She was so excited that she didn’t even notice as her cutie mark appeared on her flank.