//------------------------------//
// CHAPTER XXXVII: A Kind of Magic 
// Story: Special Illumination 
// by ponichaeism 
//------------------------------//

	"Concentrate, Clover," Starswirl said.
The little filly screwed her eyes up and stared at the ear of corn laying in the dirt so furiously her head started to shake and the veins on her neck bulged. When she realized nothing was happening, she began subtly jamming her horn towards the ear as if she was going to spear it and throw it into the midday sky. A glimmer of light seemed to surround the horn, but Starswirl found it impossible to tell if it was from the spark within her or the sunlight glinting off her pale green alicorn. Then the filly sighed and went limp.
"It's no use," she mumbled.
"Why do you think that is?" Starswirl asked as he strolled around her in a circle. He casually used his magic to pluck ears of corn from the stalks and drop them into the basket on the ground next to them.
"Be-because I just ain't good enough," she said, sniffling. "My horn never worked, and it never will."
"Never think that just because you can't use magic you aren't good enough. Clover, you are always good enough."
She raised her forelegs and squeezed her horn between them almost like she was trying to tear it off and throw it away. 
"My horn ain't!" she hollered.
"Your horn is not you, only a small part of you. If I were to take a drop of water from the well, would you then say that water is the well? No, of course not. It is only a part of something much greater. We are luminous, Clover, not this crude matter." He tapped her horn. "The only truth to you is found within yourself. Relax and let the Harmony flow through you. If your horn levitates the ear of corn, then so be it, but if it does not, then why get so angry? Can you not just pick the corn? Or do you want magic because you're lazy, hmm?"
She avoided his eyes and skittered over to a cornstalk, then threw a suspicious glance over her shoulder. When she saw he was still looking at her, she snubbed her nose at him and bent the corn stalk forward. As she brought it close to the ground, she started plucking ears off of it. Starswirl joined her, forgoing his horn to pick the corn with his hooves.
"Cheer up, Clover," he said. "In case you didn't know, exercise makes you healthier."
She scoffed. "That's exactly what papa says. 'Don't use magic, working with your hooves makes you strong!'" Her voice turned rueful and resentful. "He never wanted me to use magic and now I guess he got his wish."
"Really? Do you think so?"
"Yeah." She turned away from Starswirl. "He's always been that way. Always telling me not to use magic."
Starswirl laid a gentle hoof on her back. "And are you angry with him because of that? Do you feel like maybe it's his fault for wanting you not to have magic?"
She huffed and bent her head, shrugging him off. She did nothing but breathe heavily, until finally she turned back to the cornstalk and picked another ear off. 
She mumbled, "I suppose. But I just love him so much I can't stay mad at him."
"I've spoken to him, and I can assure you he feels the same way you do."
Clover stomped on the ground with her forehooves. "How could he?" she asked. "How could he know?"
Starswirl recalled his own youth and his own father's insistence that he not get involved with the Academy and scientific pursuits. Now, after the fall of Roan, it was all too easy to see why his father had thought that way, but then, in his youth, he had seemed so cocksure and convinced of his own righteousness. He ignored his father's concerns until it was too late for him to realize his father had been worried for him. He never did get the chance to tell his father he understood, and for a while he held a secret fear that that was what had led to his father's final fatal heart attack.
"Children always think their parents are completely incapable of understanding them," he said. "But all that they do, they do for love. They're not always right, but their intentions usually are. Try and understand that."
Sighing, she pointedly said, "I know."
"Do you?"
"I said 'yes', didn't I?" she snapped.
Starswirl lamented that he didn't have a connection to the Harmony any longer, for now more than ever he wanted to know what festering emotions lurked in the little filly's heart and tainted her mind.
"Clover, sit down," he said. 
Her suspicious eyes darted to him, but he only smiled in return, so she made a show of swishing her tail out of the way and lowering her haunches to the ground. She then proceeded to stare at him, waiting for him to get on with it.
"Close your eyes," Starswirl said as he used his magic to lift the full bushel off the ground. "Focus on your breathing and empty your mind of thoughts. If any should enter, let them flow through you. Do not attempt to hang onto them."
"Then what?" she asked, sounding vaguely horrified.
"Then nothing. Just sit, breathe, and relax your mind. I'm going to empty this bushel, then I'll be back."


Despite Clover's best attempts to relax her mind and clear the space in her head of thoughts, they kept intruding and telling her she was stupid for playing along with this, and demanded that she tell Starswirl that. She shifted uncomfortably as her back started to ache. 
How long has he been gone? Clover thought. Feels like ages! Hmph. Starswirl. He thinks he knows so much--
Just then she heard the rustle of cornstalks being brushed against, and even though she knew it was unlikely, the memory of the timberwolves was still fresh and raw in her mind. Her eyes snapped open and went to the rows of corn waving gently in the breeze.
"H-hello?" she called. "Starswirl?"
She heard another burst of rustling, sounding like it came from behind herself. She jumped to her feet and twisted in mid-air, searching for the source and readying her hooves to move.
Don't be such a scaredy-filly, a voice in the back of her mind scolded.
"Who's there?" she called, a little bit more boldly.
A voice whispered, "Please don't holler."
She shied away from the voice, but otherwise stood her ground. She saw a vaguely ponyish shape beyond the nearest row of grass, but made no move to cross the distance.
"I ain't supposed to be out here," the colt's voice replied. "My father don't like it when I'm outside." 
An orange hoof parted the cornstalks. Clover recognized Junior Plenty, who wasn't much older than she was. She'd seen him around town before his accident but had never spoken to him. He sweated and grunted, as if he'd just run over, and yet he obviously couldn't have.
She began warily, "I thought you were...."
He patted a set of wheels on either side of himself Clover hadn't noticed. She approached him and saw that he was sitting in the bed of a cart. 
"Sometimes I sneak out while father's busy in the fields," he said with some pride in his cleverness. 
"What if he catches you?"
The colt shrugged. "He catches me all the time, but that ain't going to stop me. I just don't want him to worry is all."
Clover chuckled. "Yeah, I know how you feel." 
She became keenly aware of her hair dangling in front of her eyes and pushed it back behind her ears. The smile fell off his face, and as Clover rolled her eyes up she saw why: her hair had been concealing her horn.
"You're that unicorn," he said.
"Yeah, I am," she said coldly. "What's it to you?"
He gazed up and beheld the crystal clear skies, like he was searching for something, then slumped his shoulders and let his head roll until he was staring at the ground ahead of him. 
"Nothing, I guess," he said, his voice frustrated.
She took a step forward and said, "I, uh...."
He glanced up at her.
"....I ain't a real unicorn," she said. "I can't do any magic at all."
He laughed bitterly. "It's funny how when you're stuck wheeling yourself around in a cart, even walking here and there seems like magic enough."
His words struck Clover like she'd been kicked in the face. She'd never even thought, or even considered....
"Well, see you around," he said as he jerked on the wheels to angle himself down the narrow path between the rows of cornstalks. "I'm off to see if'n I can make as far as the fence today."
"Uh, bye," Clover mumbled.
Once he'd rolled himself away, Clover sat back down and closed her eyes again. 
Magic, she thought. What was that Starswirl said about just being alive was magic enough, but some ponies are keen to forget all about that? Maybe....maybe I don't have it so bad, after all. 
"Meditating hard?" Starswirl asked.
She opened her eyes and saw him standing over her, black against the mid-day sun. He peered down at her with a jolly gleam in his own eye and cocked his head, impressed.
"I half-thought you'd be up and on your hooves, running off somewhere."
"Well, I wasn't, as you can plainly see."
He cocked his head the other way and said, "Yes, I can. Now come on, let's get back to work."
As she got to her hooves and joined the wizard in picking ears of corn from the stalks, she heard a frustrated protest and glanced over her shoulder, where she saw a furious Lockhorn Plenty heading back for the farmhouse with Junior Plenty on his back. The colt's eyes were fixed on the distance with a hunger longing. Then she turned back to the corn and started picking it with her hooves, humming a song to herself.
"You seem awfully serene, Clover," Starswirl said. "Did something happen while I was away?"
"I was just thinking about magic," she said, truthfully enough.