//------------------------------//
// Chapter 12 
// Story: An Earthling Earth Pony at Celestia's School of Magic: Year One 
// by Halira 
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The last class on the day had been Writing with Professor Sweetie Belle. The class wasn’t going to be a standard writing class. Yes, there would be writing lessons about properly writing letters and reports, but much of it focused on how to read spellbooks and write down spells. Writing spells was a bit of a complicated endeavor. Yes, you had to know the runes, but you also had to see the layout of the runes for a spell. Runes were not put in a spell in dimensions like you would read words on a page. Runes could overlap, be combined, and were often placed on a three-dimensional plane; sometimes, you had to account for where a rune would be when. This required more intricate ways of writing spells down without overcomplicating things. This required learning an entirely new way of writing. It was like going back to kindergarten all over again. It made my head swim, but I did my best to try to follow along. 

With no more classes on the day, we were free to do what we wanted. Bright went off to do some strength training with Rocky and Onyx. Red said he had a correspondence that he had to have mailed out. That left me with Hannah and Autumn. We all decided to do some sightseeing around town. Twilight joined us at the last minute—Lunar had taken off to the library immediately after class, although none of us saw him leave. 

“So…what should we go see first?” I asked..”It’s all new and strange to me, so I’m not picky.”

“I’m the same. I’m happy to see anything. It’s just nice to get away from school for a little while,” Summer said. 

“I want to see the main shopping district,” Hannah said. “It would give me an idea of what the going rates for various materials are. I know they are much cheaper here, but I'm not sure how much.”

“I’d like to see Twilight Sparkle’s old family home,” Twilight said. “We can only see the outside since her parents are still alive and live there, but it would be nice to see. Did you know that her mom was an alumnus of our school, just like her?”

“Not surprising,” I replied. “What did she study?”

“Combat magic,” Twilight answered. “Both her parents were in the Lunar Guard when they were younger—it operated even before the return of Princess Luna. Her dad was typically in an office, filling out paperwork, but her mom was the type who was always on the front lines fighting monsters. Her mom eventually got court-martialed, and her dad resigned his commission soon after that; that was not too long before they got married.”

“Twilight’s mother got court-martialed, really?” Hannah asked in surprise. “What did she do? Did she kill someone?”

Twilight shook his head. “Repeated failures to follow orders. Her mom was always the type to jump straight into the action, resulting in her often disobeying commands to stay put, hold her ground, or guard something. She knew a monster was nearby, and she’d go charging off to fight it. You can’t be a soldier if you can’t follow orders. She later became a comic book author, using her experiences in the guard for inspiration.”

“She made comic books?” I asked, even more surprised. The princess having a comic book creator as a parent seemed somehow more far-fetched than some rogue guard. 

“She writes them; she doesn't do the art or anything like that,” Twilight clarified. “Her writing is in reasonably high demand among comic publishers.”

My ears perked. “Maybe they have some of her comics on sale in the city.”

“You have money?” Hannah asked. 

I frowned and shook my head; Summer did as well. 

Hannah sighed. “I don’t have much, and I’m supposed to save it for emergencies.”

“I have money. I’m not as rich as the Canterlot Prims, but my family is fairly well off—new money is what the Prims call people like us. I would be happy to get you each something, as long as it isn’t too expensive,” Twilight said. “My parents would get mad if I went on too much of a spending spree.”

“New money?” I asked.

“Entrepreneurs, they have self-made fortunes instead of inherited ones,” Hannah said. “What do your parents do?”

Twilight rubbed his head with a hoof. “My parents have a fleet of small cargo ships in Manehatten, six ships in all, with plans to get more. They ship to and from the Griffin, Zebra, and Dragon kingdoms. We don’t own the cargoes; we just transport stuff, but it makes a fair amount of money, enough for us to live comfortably, even after paying for upkeep and crews.”

I considered this. Getting stuff bought for me seemed like a good deal. Twilight might be making this gesture to try to buy into our good graces. He didn’t seem to have made many friends outside of his roommate, and it was questionable how strong that friendship was since Lunar seemed to take off without him repeatedly. Twilight Glow idolized Twilight Sparkle, which meant friendship was highly important to him. More friends benefitted me much more than a comic book, but what option would gain me more points with him, accepting or turning down his offer to buy things for us?

”You don’t have to do that for us, but thanks for offering,” Summer told Twilight. 

Well, it seemed the choice was made by someone else. Summer likely hadn’t even considered weighing the options; she just did what her first positive impulse was. It was endearing. Seeing her behave that way made me feel ashamed of myself for weighing what was useful. 

“You can hang with us all the same,” I assured him. It seemed the right thing to do. “Perhaps we should skip the shopping district for today, especially since most of us don’t have money.”

“I really could-” Twilight began.

“No!” Summer insisted, stomping her hoof. “You aren’t spending your money on us. That’s your money. We can go look at the house you want to see. I’m sure there must be other interesting things along the way.”

She was only being firm, not angry. There was no sign of smoke, but Twilight still jumped at the stomp. Considering how quickly he melted at Prim’s bullying, someone seriously had to help this guy with his confidence. 

“I’m fine with seeing this house,” I said supportively as I looked at Hannah. 

Hannah sighed. “Fine, we can go look at the Twilight house. I’d probably only upset myself by seeing how much I still can’t buy. One day, I’ll strike it big!”

I chuckled. “Be sure to buy me a comic when you do.”

She grinned. “I’ll do better than that; I’ll buy you some hundred-year-old first edition.”

“Um…do you have any idea how much that costs?” I asked skeptically. 

She raised her head high. “Nope! But I’ll be so rich it won’t even matter!”

We all laughed at that. It wasn’t that funny, but the enthusiasm for which Hannah declared it somehow made it funny. We then headed out towards the Twilight house with our Twilight leading the way. 

The buildings in town were all alabaster white. The streets alternated between grey, white, and blue. There were occasional trees with tiny fences around them. Plenty of ponies were walking around, but as many as I would have expected in the capital city of Equestria. Most of the ponies were unicorns, but there were still pegasi and earth ponies about, just in lesser numbers. We even spotted a pair of humans in business suits dining at an outdoor cafe. They looked comically oversized for the table and stools they were provided, like adults sitting at a tiny foal’s tea party. 

A kirin stallion walked by and stopped to wave at Summer, who paused to wave back before the stallion continued on his way. 

“You know him?” I asked. 

She seemed startled at the question. “What? Oh, I’ve seen him before in my village, but I don’t really know him. Still, it’s nice seeing another kirin around here.”

“Wonder what he’s doing here,” Twilight said as we continued on our way. 

“He runs a shop back in the village, so he might be gathering stock or meeting with a supplier,” Summer replied. She then paused and pointed. “Look! A park!”

“That’s Canterlot Central Park,” Twilight identified. “The quickest way to the house is by cutting through it.”

“Guess we know which way we’re going,” Hannah said. “Summer is excited about it, so let’s go see.”

Summer frowned. “Are you not interested in the park?”

Hannah shrugged. “Not exactly what I would be coming to Canterlot to see, but it might turn out to be a nice place to hang out and relax outside of class. I’m sure Turnip will be happy to see it.”

I cocked an ear. “Why would you be sure of that?”

She looked me over. “Well…you’re an earth pony, and there’s trees and grass and dirt—”

“That’s tribalist!” I protested. 

She frowned. “Are you not interested in seeing more of all that?”

“Well…I am, but—”

She grinned. “You can take the earth pony away from Earth, but they’re still an earth pony. Don’t worry, I still think you’re cool. Feel free to make any comments about unicorns being a bunch of physical weaklings you want.”

“But you’re pretty strong,” I replied. 

“And you don’t want to farm or mine or do any other stereotypical earth pony jobs,” she replied back. 

I chuckled and raised a hoof to her. “Okay, fair.”

Hannah clopped her hoof against mine. “Fair.”

It was unclear how big the park was, looking at it from the outside. I could see where it ended to my left and right, which was about the size of a city block. How far it went in front of us was the mystery. Some earth ponies had senses that could tell them, in a general sense, how far vegetation stretched.I wasn’t one of those earth ponies. The path going in winded, and trees obscured where exactly it went or ended. It wasn’t what I was expecting at all. 

“I hope this isn’t like New York City Central Park, where we can get mugged,” Hannah said. 

“I’m sure that park isn’t that bad, and neither is this one,” I said. 

It would be embarrassing to admit I was nervous. Yes, I liked vegetation, as Hannah said, but I was from Kansas, and vegetation in Kansas meant something very different than what this was. There were no woods in Kansas, none that I’d ever seen, and I’d never been anywhere that had woods. The most enormous vegetation I had come across was corn fields. Corn stalks could get reasonably tall, but not like this. There was something scary about woods in general. I knew this wasn’t a forest, but it was still far more trees in one place than I was used to. The fact it was in the middle of a city made it all the more unnerving. 

“You okay?” Summer asked. 

I pulled my eyes away from the trees. “Yeah, why do you ask?”

“You seemed nervous. Kirins have to pay attention to how other kirins are feeling; it’s a safety thing. I can generally tell how ponies are feeling,” Summer explained. 

“You’re an empath?” Twilight asked, astonished. 

Summer shook her head. “We’re not empaths or anything like that, but we learn to read body language well. Turnip’s body was very stiff, his ears were slightly flattened, his tail was a little too low, and his eyes were staring at the park without blinking enough.”

“Hmm, you’d make a killing as a used car dealer,” Hannah said. “So, what’s up, Turnip?”

“Are your earth pony senses picking up something about the park?” Twilight asked. 

I debated lying briefly but decided I might as well tell the truth. “I’m not used to being around a bunch of trees. The idea of woods makes me jumpy.”

Hannah started laughing, and I gave her a dirty look. 

“I’m sorry; I shouldn’t laugh. It’s just so un-earth pony,” Hannah said. She got control of herself. “But you’re here at magic school, so why should anyone be surprised? Are you going to be okay with this? We can go around. If you need to prove something by going in, I’ll have your back for that. I’ll give you all the support you need.”

I smiled. “It’s okay. I’ll go in. Summer was looking forward to this. I don’t want to disappoint her. I can have a little courage.”

There was a boom, like thunder, despite it being a clear day. We all looked up at the sky; there were lights. A wave in so many colors…

Twilight yelled something, but I don’t know what; I was so sleepy…