Stasis considered the issue of cutie-marks carefully. They might seem like mere hindquarterly symbols that indicated one’s greatest power, but now that he faced the prospect of inventing one for himself, he found that he was unsure that he could fake one convincingly. These weren’t mere changelings that he was trying to fool here, these were the ponies themselves; if he wanted to live amongst them unhindered, his masque had to be flawless.
What he needed right now was more information. He needed to talk to a true expert, to somepony who actually had a cutie-mark and who could peel away the layers of ignorance and misinformation surrounding these mysterious harbingers of destiny.
“Major!” he called.
“That’s me!” Major affirmed.
“I want to ask you about your cutie-mark.”
Major paused at the street corner and looked at Stasis curiously.
“What about it?”
“Well…first…is your cutie-mark really a suit?” he asked, pointing at what appeared to be a black suit-and-tie that was inscribed across the orange colt’s hindquarters. He had always sort of assumed that it only looked like a suit, but was actually something fun and exciting. He’d never bothered to ask about it, though, mostly from a lack of caring.
Major observed his cutie-mark critically. “I think so, Stasis. That’s sure what it looks like to me.”
“How’d you get it?” Stasis asked. It was his understanding that one always had to do something to get one’s cutie-mark; you couldn’t just let them grow in like you could missing teeth or limbs, as convenient as that would have been.
Major sat down on his haunches and took on the well-versed tone of a storyteller. “Well, years and years and years ago, my mom and my dad and me all went on a special trip to visit my grandparents in Everfree City. They’re actually my mom’s parents, not my dad’s parents, and it was the first I’d ever seen them in my whole life. I think maybe that’s because they’re so very far away and because they don’t really like my dad very much; they don’t really like ponies who don’t make much money, you know, and they were really upset for a long time when Mom ran away and married Dad. I guess I kinda take offense to them a little, because I really like my dad and –“
“Cutie-mark.”
“Huh? Oh. Um…yeah, so, we went to this really fancy restaurant to eat really fancy food. It’s kind of weird, how the only ponies who eat snails are really poor ponies and really rich ponies. But it was okay, because my grandparents were paying for it, since we couldn’t afford to, and…um…I’m not actually supposed to talk about that kind of thing. I think it kind of makes Dad feel bad, and Mom too, especially when –“
“Cutie-mark.”
“Uh…right. So, we were eating all this fancy food that was really expensive and nasty, but there were these waiters there who dressed up in these fancy black suits and they were just really good at waitering. I mean, they weren’t anything like the waiters you see around here, who don’t wear any clothes at all and spit in your food if you don’t tip them enough. I don’t think these waiters ever spit in their entire lives. It’s not very hygienic, you know, to be spitting –“
“Major!” Stasis snapped. “Summer’s burning! Just skip to the part where you get your cutie-mark.”
Major rubbed the back of his neck with one hoof. “Yeah, well, I told my grandparents that one day I wanted to be like those waiters, and they didn’t seem very happy about that, but after dinner Mom talked to them for a while as Dad took me to see the castle where the princesses live, even though it was too late for visitors. When we went back, my grandparents took me to the fanciest store that I’ve ever seen, and they had another pony in a suit measure me, and then the next day when it was time for dinner they gave me a gift just like you’d get on your birthday, except it wasn’t my birthday, and inside was a fancy suit just like the ones that that waiters had worn at the restaurant the other night, except it was more me-sized.”
“Is that when you got your cutie-mark?”
“Well, no, I haven’t got to that part yet.”
Stasis put his face in his hooves. The immortal little changeling was going to die of old age before Major finished his story.
“You see, my grandpa isn’t really a lord, but he’s sort of like a lord, because he has a bunch of money and a few servants, and normally those servants fix the food and serve the food, but that night I was going to get to serve the food, all by myself! Mom gave me a bath and helped me into my suit and put this weird gel-stuff into my mane and then brought me downstairs for dinner. I did a really good job, too, and Grandma and Grandpa kept saying nice things about how professional how I looked and how good I was doing, and Mom kept making this gasping noise every time I almost dropped one of the big, heavy, fancy plates and Dad kept on patting her on the back and making her drink water. But I didn’t drop anything, and Grandma and Grandpa were very proud, and I guess it was sometime around then that I got my cutie-mark because everypony got very excited and all the servants were called in and everypony was talking at once, and then we had to call a doctor because Mom had fainted and fallen on the floor.”
Stasis frowned. “So…your destiny is…to wear a suit?”
Major smiled. “You know, that’s what I thought, and I was very excited, but Dad says that I’m probably supposed to serve ponies since I really like being helpful and making ponies happy.”
“Your destiny is to be a servant?” Stasis asked, aghast. Worst. Destiny. Ever.
“Yeah!” Major exclaimed. “I could be a waiter, or a page, or even a butler! Wouldn’t that be cool, Stasis? I could be a butler at a lord’s house in Everfree City and be in charge of all the maids and pages and make sure that the silverware was clean and the food was good and the servants were happy and everything just like a…just like a…um…just like a butler!” he finished, exultant.
“Is it really permanent?” Stasis asked, reaching over and rubbing Major’s mark.
“You’re not supposed to touch other ponies there, Stasis,” Major explained patiently.
Stasis withdrew his hoof. Major’s cutie-mark seemed stuck on there pretty good, anyhow.
“Isn’t there anypony you can talk to about this? Celestia, maybe? Can you order a replacement cutie-mark?”
Major was staring at his hindquarters admiringly. “Well, I don’t think so, Stasis. Anyway, I like my cutie-mark. Sometimes, though, I do wish I could change my name…you know, to something starting with a ‘t.’ Doesn’t my cutie-mark sort of look like a capital ‘t?’ Wouldn’t it be cool if my name started with a capital ‘t,’ too? Something like ‘Timberwolf,’ or ‘Tapioca,’ or…or…’Tajor.’ Wouldn’t it be cool if my name were Tajor, Stasis?”
Stasis figured that, if he didn’t want to end up as somepony’s butler, he’d probably better learn more about cutie-marks elsewhere.
* * *
Stasis stared at his belly. It was strange, how full it was of potaters, yet how empty his head was of ideas for cutie-marks. He supposed it was better than a head full of potaters and a belly full of nothing, but that was about the best spin he could put on his present situation.
The problem wasn’t just Pierce and his apparent anti-changeling paranoia, as if that wasn’t enough. The whole ‘blank-flank’ thing had started to get to him. Of course, hardly any ponies dared to call him that outside the sanctity of their own heads anymore…the ones who did, he dealt with in the same fashion he had dealt with the younger, weaker would-be bullies of his own family: with immeasurable, disproportionate retaliation. Dead things were put in desks, dire warnings were inscribed in bathroom stalls, scandalous rumors were spread. Unfortunately, Pierce had cowed most of the bullies before Stasis had even arrived in Trottingham, leaving him with few somewhat-socially-acceptable targets. Stupid Pierce.
No, it just bothered him to see how everypony else had a cutie-mark, and he did not. Back with his family, his hindquarters were considered the epitome of changelinghood, much as every other part of him. Now, they just seemed…blank. His masque made him look just like any other dark-grey yellow-eyed little unicorn pony, and he wasn’t used to being ‘ordinary,’ nor did he like it. He didn’t like it at all.
Of course, giving himself a cutie-mark was the easiest thing in the world, once he understood the lore surrounding them sufficiently well. He just had picture it, think the right spell, channel his magic, and ‘poof!’ Destiny solved.
But what should his mark actually look like? His siblings had it easy: when they infiltrated, they just copied the cutie-mark of the pony they replaced. In the rare event that they, like Stasis, had to invent their own persona, they usually made it as generic as possible, complete with a run-of-the-mill cutie-mark of apples or hammers or couches or something of that nature, something that was on the backsides of many thousands of ponies and wouldn’t draw any attention whatsoever.
Stasis, though, was special. Even as a faux-pony, many Equestrians had told him that he was special, and he felt that his faux-mark should reflect that specialness. Even leaving his hindquarters bare before the world was better than marring it with stupid fruit or furniture or suits or whatever.
So what mark would adequately represent who he was and what he was good at? He pondered. He pondered and pondered and pondered, his brain throwing up one inadequate image after another for his contemplation. He found himself growing angry with his imagination’s uselessness; he might as well have filled his head with potaters and thought with his stomach, for all the good it was doing him. Just as he was about to throw up his hooves in disgust, an image began to form in his mind’s eye….
…An image of him sitting proud atop a throne of lawn trimmings, the bodies of his enemies lying strewn about him like some freakish display of giant black-and-blue lawn gnomes. In his right hoof he held shears; in his left, a mower. Atop his head was a blood-red Frisbee, formed into the shape of a crown, and upon his breast was a chain of potaters, one for each of his many, many plantations. At his hooves Goldie and Abra lay prostrate, holding before them platters laden high with cookies and doughnuts in supplication. Beneath his outstretched right wing was his chancellor, Major, dutifully recording the offering of Stasis’ subjects and weighing it against their many sins against him. Beneath his left was Star Swirl, whose normal attire was sufficient for him to play the roles of both royal magician and jester beautifully, his feats of teleportation and magic-bubble-making drawing travelers to Stasis’ court from all-the-world-over.
“Bwahahaha!”
Star Swirl, ensconced behind a wall of books and arcana, looked at Stasis from across the room.
“You alright, lad?”
“Bwahahahahahahaha!”
Star Swirl shook his head and turned back to his books.
Of course, there might be such a thing as having too special a cutie-mark. Stasis wasn’t even sure if the ponies could handle a mark as special as the one he had just imagined.
Maybe he should pick a mark that was a little more…general. He tried to think of all the things he was good at and liked to do.
…Well, he liked to trick ponies, and take their stuff, and make fun of them both before and behind their backs. He also liked to beat them up, whether individually or in groups, although he didn’t do that as much these days for fear of vengeful wizards. And one of his favorite targets was various ponies’ self-esteem; he really enjoyed reminding them that they were all really just stupid ponies anyway, since they were so apt to forget.
Now, what did all these things have in common? Stasis tried to connect the dots.
…Hmm. I wonder if there is a cutie-mark for wickedness? He tried to imagine what that would look like. Maybe it would just be a picture of his face. Would that be weird, to have a picture of his face on his butt?
…
…
…Yes.
“Lad?” called a voice gruffly from across the room.
“Huh?” Stasis asked irritably. It was just like Star Swirl to interrupt him when he was so close to cognitive victory.
Star Swirl stood up slowly, his joints audibly popping. “Time to do the dishes, lad. Come on.”
“What? Why?” He had been hoping that Star Swirl wouldn’t remember the dishes until right after he had sent Stasis to bed. It seemed only just. Stasis wasn’t overly fond of justice, but in this case he felt that it would actually work in his favor.
“’Why?’” Star Swirl repeated. “Remember how you once told me that Miss Brighten said that there’s no such thing as a stupid question?”
“Yeah?”
“She’s wrong. Now stop your scheming and come help me.”
Stasis grumbled under his breath as he followed the slow old pony into the kitchen. By now he had helped wash dishes so many times that he barely even had to think about it. He began rinsing dishes as Star Swirl passed them to him, his body going through the motions while he considered his problem.
“Lad?”
Stasis paused his drying of a plate, startled. They were already partway through the dishes; a small mound of them was to his right, already finished. He’d barely noticed.
“What are you thinking about, lad? You’re going at it pretty hard, even for you.”
Stasis thought for a few moments more. If anypony knew anything about something, it was probably Star Swirl. Stasis supposed there was no harm in telling the old wizard the truth.
…Well, something in the general vicinity of the truth, anyway.
“I was just thinking about cutie-marks,” he admitted. “I’m probably seven years old by now, and I still don’t have mine. I was just wondering what it would be.”
“Hmm….” Star Swirl said. “Well, that’s actually a pretty normal thing for a pony your age to think about.” He sounded surprised.
“Yeah, well, maybe for a pony a year or two younger than me to think about,” Stasis grumbled bitterly. “I need to get mine soon, and if it’s going to accurately reflect my personality, it needs to be better than everypony else’s, too.” He shook his head sadly. “I’m under a lot of pressure.”
“I can’t even imagine,” Star Swirl replied. Stasis was glad that he understood.
They continued their work for a few more moments. Things seemed to be slipping back into an amiable silence, but Stasis wasn’t quite ready for that yet. Now that the old wizard had broached the subject, now was as good a time as any to learn more.
“Hey, Star Swirl?” he began. “You have a cutie-mark, right?”
The big old pony gave the little changeling a skeptical look. “What, are you thinking of taking it for yourself? Thinking you’ll steal into old Star Swirl’s bed in the middle of the night and make off with his cutie-mark when he isn’t looking?”
“Of course not!” Stasis exclaimed, indignant. “I already tried something like that with Major’s cutie-mark, anyway. I don’t think that I could get it off without you waking up.”
Star Swirl paused his washing and rubbed his forehead a little. He seemed to do that a lot when he was talking to Stasis for some reason.
After a few moments, Star Swirl looked down at Stasis while he resumed his chore.
“I never did show you my cutie-mark, did I, lad?” he said with uncharacteristic non-gruffness.
“No. I’ve never seen you without your hat and cape before. I figured that maybe you had sworn some kind of secret wizardly oath never to walk around in the nude or something,” Stasis admitted.
Sometimes, when he was in bed and supposed to be sleeping, he thought about these things.
“…An interesting idea, but no,” Star Swirl replied. “Here, I’ll show you.”
Stasis swiftly took a step back as the old wizard levitated his cape away from his body. Whatever fantasies he had had of freakish mutations, extra limbs, or vulgar tattoos were soon dashed; under the cape, Star Swirl looked just like any other wrinkly old pony, his skin seeming somehow slightly too loose for his body and his bones showing clearly underneath. Of course, Stasis’ attention was soon drawn to Star Swirl’s cutie-mark – a boring set of grey stars set about a boring grey swirl. It went quite well with his boring grey fur and boring grey personality.
“Is that it?” Stasis asked. “I thought it would be something more exciting.”
Star Swirl cocked an eyebrow. “Well, goodness, lad. Don’t hold back for my sake. Let me know how you really feel.”
“Huh?”
Star Swirl shook his head. “Not everypony’s got the flashiest cutie-mark, lad, but it’s what the mark means that’s important.” He sighed. “I remember when I got mine…I was so excited! I was never a vain one, but for the next week Ma kept heckling me for staring at it in the bathroom mirror when I was supposed to be doing my homework. I took the little one out of her purse – you know, the ones the ladies use to put on their makeup? – and I started using it instead, and she had Pa give me a paddling for that one. It was worth it, though. You only ever get your cutie-mark once; no way I was going to do homework when I could be staring at my destiny instead.”
The old pony sighed. “Of course, Principle had gotten his mark seven years before, and when he saw that mine was in magic, he was not happy. I didn’t know it at the time, of course – being only just turned six – but he was jealous as –“
“Wait, who?”
Star Swirl blinked. “Principal? My brother?”
“Your what?”
“My brother, lad. Maybe you’ve met him? He runs your school, was teaching your magic class for a while there. Sends me nasty little notes in the mail every time you give it a bad reputation, which is nigh-on every day, seems like.”
“Principal Principal is your brother?” Stasis asked, aghast.
Star Swirl sighed. “Aye, lad, he is. We’ve had some problems, him and I, and it mostly started back when I got my cutie-mark. Most ponies back home figured that I’d really make something of myself with a magic cutie-mark, but since it’d be somewhere far away, they just shrugged it off – not much for a professional wizard to do way up north, anyway. But Principal, though…he just didn’t seem to like the idea of me outshining him. That’s as far as I can figure it, anyways.”
He shook his head. “Anyway…what was I saying? Oh, right. Well, Principal was already pretty well respected in Tall Tale – that’s my hometown, by the way – and I was seen as a bit of a rebel at the time.”
“…Are you sure?” Stasis asked the pony who was always wanting to paddle him for every little thing.
“Aye, lad, I’m sure. Up north, ponies were always a bit more into tradition than they are down here. Maybe it’s because they’re so much farther from the capitol, but they sort of see themselves as separate from the rest of the country, I suppose, and they hold onto their traditions tight.”
“And you don’t?” Stasis asked.
“Well, I didn’t see anything wrong with them traditions…I would just rather study my books than worry about wearing the right clothes to the right occasions, or celebrating the million-and-one holidays and festivals we had up in Tall Tale. I did wish that we had cute-ceanaras in Tall Tale, though. It was still seen as a southern invention – probably still is, for all I know – and not celebrating it was a sort of spit-in-the-eye to all those uppity southerners.”
“Northern ponies don’t like southern ponies?” Stasis asked. He had always just pictured Equestria as one huge mash of pastels, mixed about until it reached a smooth, creamy, brown consistency. Sort of like peanut butter. The idea that it might be chunky peanut butter had never even occurred to him.
“Well, if by ‘southern’ you mean everything south of Tall Tale, and by ‘northern’ you mean everything north of Tall Tale but south of the Crystal Kingdom…then aye, we’re not big friends. Doubt these southerners know that, though; most of them hardly would have even heard of Tall Tale if it weren’t for me being from there.”
“They don’t like the princesses either?” Stasis asked. That was hard to imagine; even the ponies out west usually loved the princesses, since the princesses were ponies and not changelings or gryphons or minotaurs or any of the other things that were often trying to kill and possibly eat them, not necessarily in that order.
Star Swirl shook his head. “No, we love the princesses. Back during the Reign, we were about the only region south of the northern wastes that still put up any resistance at all…not that it did any good, of course. But when the princesses came, we were the first to join up against Discord. Not that that did any good, either, not against him, but we’re still proud of it. And we’re still upset that the princesses chose to build their capitol down in the Everfree instead of up there with us. The fact that we were about as far from the center of the country as you could get didn’t change our minds about that. Still, you can ask any good northerner, and he’ll tell you that over a thousand years later, the north still supplies more royal guardsponies per capita than any other part of Equestria. We protect our princesses, even if we feel a bit ignored most of the time.”
“You’re not ignored,” Stasis pointed out.
Star Swirl sighed. “No, I’m not, though sometimes I wish I was. Many of my kin don’t consider me a ‘real’ northerner anymore, anyhow, now that I’ve spent most of my life down here. Or if they do, they only do it to show up ‘them southerners.’ But that’s neither here nor there….”
They were both silent for a few moments as they did the dishes, Stasis considering these revelations, Star Swirl thinking about whatever it was he thought about.
Finally, Star Swirl continued, “Anyway, lad, I was trying to tell you about my cutie-mark. You see, even at six years old, I was already starting to get a bit of a reputation in our small town for not always doing what I was supposed to do. Principal, though, he was about as respected as a thirteen-year-old gets. Always did what was expected, never complained, never tried to get out of anything. Not as popular amongst kids his own age, of course, but that just made the adults like him all the more. I used to think that Principal was the first child since the founding of Tall Tale that didn’t have the citizenry up-at-arms about the corruption of our youth.”
Star Swirl shook his head. “Problem was, Principal was always a bright, bright lad, much like myself, and once he learned that my talent was in magic, somehow he just knew what that meant. Not many ponies get such a general and useful talent, and I guess with all the booksmarts I already had, he just figured that I’d end up superseding him somehow.”
He turned and looked the little changeling in the eye. “Not that having a special talent in administration is bad, mind you – probably better than most, at least as far as popularity goes – but he already knew he was never going to be famous. So when I got my mark and ponies started muttering about me maybe trying for the Royal Academy for Gifted Unicorns, he turned colder and nastier than a pair of snot-cicles.”
“A pair of what?” Stasis asked, confused.
“…If you lived up north, you’d understand. The point is, well, he’d never paid much attention to me before, but now he was downright hostile. I learned pretty quick to avoid him as much as I could, else he’d somehow twist the simplest response around into something hurtful.”
“Did your mother or father do anything about it?” Stasis queried. Any of his siblings who didn’t get along quickly learned to avoid each other; fighting for fun or training was one thing, but Mother did not tolerate anything that would cause disharmony in her family.
Star Swirl shrugged. “Principal was never the kind of fellow to hit you with hooves when words would do just as well, and as long as it never came to blows, Ma and Pa wouldn’t usually pay it any mind. Pa was a farmer and Ma was a farmer’s wife; worse yet, Ma had stopped having kids after the second one, and it was already clear that neither of us were going to be very good farmers ourselves. That meant that they didn’t have time or energy to waste dealing with every little problem we had; it was the best they could do to make sure we had bread on the table and clothes for when the winter blizzards came.”
Stasis frowned. Of course, Star Swirl’s parents didn’t have hundreds of children to help them…but they didn’t have hundreds of children to raise, either. They only had two. Ever. They were probably just being lazy.
“Anyway, I think everypony was surprised when Principal just upped and left. He was only fifteen at the time – we aren’t as sentimental about childhood as ponies down here are, he was already considered an adult – and everypony had figured that he’d end up spending his whole life in Tall Tale, like most do, and be an ‘upstanding pillar in the community’ and all that. Heck, I’m pretty sure the only one happy to see him go besides myself was old Butterbur, our teacher and principal, who probably soiled himself the day Principal got his cutie-mark.”
“You were glad that your brother left?” Stasis asked, shocked. That was one-hundred percent of Star Swirl’s siblings, gone!
Star Swirl shrugged. “Aye…I guess I was, at least for a little while. I thought things would be better after he left. Now I could go about the house without him scowling at me, or criticizing my work ethic, or saying that I wasn’t doing enough to help Ma and Pa, or whatever else he could think of.”
Star Swirl quickly scoured a pot and levitated it over to Stasis. “But if I thought that having him gone would solve my problems, I was wrong. I still didn’t really feel like I fit in with the rest of the town, and now the old house just felt kind of…empty. Ma and Pa were still there, but now they just looked more tired and wore-down than ever. Every Sunday, ponies at church would ask them when were they finally going to send me to the Royal Academy, and so they’d been asking me to do less and less chores around the farm, pushing me to work on my homework instead. Now that Principal was gone, though, if I left, that would leave them there all alone.”
Star Swirl passed the last dish over to be rinsed, and sighed. “It’s funny…Principal left when he was fifteen, but I didn’t finally go until I was seventeen. If I’d waited any later, I might not have been able to get into the Academy at all…as it was, I’d long since read every single book even remotely magic-related that our little library had to offer, and pretty much every moment I had that wasn’t spent reading was spent working odd-jobs around town so that I could get more money to have books shipped in from the capitol. Some of the nicer folks in town even gave me ‘book-money,’ as they called it, so that I could buy some of the more advanced texts, which cost quite a bundle.
“But on my seventeenth birthday, after Ma and Pa and I had had a little cake – I didn’t really have any friends, I’m afraid, I was just too different, too busy – my Pa took me out to a quiet place on the farm, next to a little apple-tree he’d planted the day I got my cutie-mark, and he told me it was time for me to leave. Didn’t matter where I went, he said…so long as I left.”
“What did you do?” Stasis asked, quickly wiping down the last dish with a dry cloth so that he could listen to the story.
Star Swirl shrugged. “I packed my things and left. If I didn’t have so many gosh-darned books, I would have left that evening. As it was, Pa let me have his rickety old carriage…I put my books inside and saddled up. Before I could get very far, though, Ma, bless her heart, came galloping up with some food and water for me to take. I knew I’d forgotten something.
“Took me a month to get to Everfree City. Shouldn’t have taken so long, not for a farmer’s son…but like I said, I hardly helped out around the farm at all by then – most of my odd jobs were with bookkeeping and clerking and whatnot – and I was out of shape, and probably not in as much of a hurry as I should have been. I was also far too careful, always taking my carriage out of sight of the road long before dark, and not sleeping very well, I was so afraid that bandits would come and hurt me and steal my little library. Seems I’d read a few too many histories; thieves might have thrived for a little while after the Reign was over and things were still getting back to normal, but the princesses don’t take too kindly to criminals, if you haven’t heard.
“Anyway….” Star Swirl looked Stasis in the eye again. “You know, it’s funny, but can you believe that I didn’t actually know just how good I was at magic until I got to Everfree City? Of course, back home everypony knew that I was the best magic-user in town. It was just kind of a given, with my special talent being magic and all. But excellent magicians are nothing special at the Royal Academy for Gifted Unicorns, and when I went in to take the entrance exams – which have a ninety-percent failure rate for first-time applicants, by the way – you could just see it in the examiners’ eyes: ‘Oh, great, another country bumpkin from some podunk-town who thinks he knows magic.’ Keep in mind, too, that I was already seventeen – the entrance exams for me were as tough as they could get. Almost nopony gets in that late.
“Well, I passed the written exams without any trouble, but I was kind of expecting that. Lots of ponies pass the written exams. It’s the part where you’ve got to do the actual magic that kills you. And when they pulled me into the room with those examiners, I was so scared, you wouldn’t believe. You see, I didn’t have any backup plans – I didn’t have an ‘exit strategy’ or whatever you want to call it. If I failed these exams, I was toast. I couldn’t go back home, I’d already spent what little money I had so there was no way I could afford to stay anyplace, I had no really useful skills except magic – and not the regular, down-to-earth blacksmithing-and-dressmaking-and-house-building magic that most unicorns know, but the ‘pure,’ theoretical magic that isn’t worth squat unless you can finish your education and get a position in a university or guild.
“And I swear to this day, the chief examiner had in it for me from the get-go. The other two just looked bored, but he had this look on his face and a lilt to his voice like I was challenging him something-personal just by being there. Plus, the examiners get just about as much leeway as they could want in the magic part of the exam – they can ask you to do as many strange and unusual things as they want, as long as it’s magic-related, and if you can’t, you fail. Being on the examiner’s good side – say, having your daddy’s name on the new dormitory – means that your test will probably only be hard. Having the chief examiner ticked off with you, though…well, that’s not the kind of place that you want to be. ”
The wizard shifted position, stretching his back slightly. “Anyway, lad, the point is: I was scared stiff. They started off pretty easy – they asked me to teleport. A very tricky, even dangerous spell, and most unicorns never bother to learn it – but I’d done my first teleport when I was nine, and I’d expected them to ask me to do it at some point. I ‘ported across the room a few times quickly enough, but I could tell they were just warming up.
“So –“
“Can you teach me to teleport?” Stasis interrupted. It was a question he’d asked many, many times before, but Star Swirl had always told him that he wasn’t allowed to learn any spells that would help him to evade capture.
This time, though, the old wizard shifted uncomfortably and was quiet for a few moments. Finally, he sighed and said, “That’s not the kind of spell you can learn in one evening, lad. And you’re only seven years old – you don’t need to be in such a gosh-darned hurry all the time.”
“I can learn complicated spells!” Stasis protested, thinking of the phase-spell. That one had been extremely hard, but he was very proud of it, even if he’d been forced to swear not to tell anyling from whom he’d learned it. (Mother also didn’t like it when Stasis learned spells that helped him evade capture.)
Star Swirl grunted. “I’ll think about it…but only if you don’t interrupt anymore. You’re messing up my narrative.
“Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. So I did the first spell without any trouble. Next, they asked me to lift the biggest number of the heaviest things that I could.
“Now, there was actually a bunch of iron balls of all-different sizes lined up on a desk behind me…but you know how when you’re really, really nervous, your brain just sort of shuts down? I hadn’t even noticed those balls – I’d barely been able take my eyes off those examiners since I walked in the room, actually. I guess it’s no surprise, then, that I quickly decided on the heaviest things I could think of – there’s a time element to these tests, you know – and I lifted all three examiners, and their chairs, and their desk, and all the things on their desk right up, about five lengths into the air.”
“Did you get in trouble?” Stasis asked, eyes wide.
“Well, it didn’t make them like me any better, I can tell you that. They yelled at me so loud, I darn-nearly dropped ‘em. That’s something of a disqualification, you know, breaking the legs on all your examiners. But I did manage to get them back on the ground, gently as I could, and they didn’t say anything else about it. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that most ponies – even most magicians – can’t lift three of their fellows plus a huge solid oak desk plus a bunch of chairs and things into the air at the same time, and those examiners weren’t about to tell me. None of them were yawning anymore, though, I can tell you that.
“Now they started hitting me hard and fast with spells, all three of them, so fast that I lost count. I was frantic, casting spells so quickly my horn was starting to throw sparks. I made a cloud, I walked on a cloud, I sprouted wings, I flew with wings. I blasted a hole through a quarter-inch of plate steel with pure thaumaturgical energy, and then I patched it up again, good as new.
“The more spells I cast, the crazier the examiners seemed to get, sometimes all three asking me to cast different spells at the same time. It felt like hours, but it was probably only ten or twenty minutes before I was so exhausted, I was seriously afraid that I might die right there in the examination room. That’s happened before, you know, although the examiners are usually pretty good at halting you before things get that bad. In this case, though, the more exhausted I got, the more it just seemed to egg them on.
“Finally, the other two literally seemed to have just run out of things to ask, and looked about ready to pass me. The chief, though, he just wasn’t having it. He thought for a minute or two, and then he got this sly look on his face, and he took off this little lead pendant he had about his neck and asked me to turn it to gold.
“Now, I had spent almost all of my life learning nearly every spell I could get my hooves on, but nowhere had I even heard of a spell for transmuting lead into gold. I was frantic; I had no idea what to do. I was sure they were going to fail me.
“Well, the other two examiners looked about as surprised as I did, but the chief just smiled and told me to take my time, like he was sure I couldn’t do it no matter how long they gave me. So, I took a few moments to calm down and get to thinking. I’m not sure how long I was there thinking – time gets all messed up when you’re working on a new spell, or at least it does for me – and I put all the different transmutation spells I knew together in my head, picked ‘em apart, and tried to imagine what I would need to do in order to make this new spell. I also cast a few little ‘feeler’ spells on the pendant, trying to get the ‘feel’ for the lead.
Star Swirl gave Stasis a serious expression. “Now, making a new spell is a totally different business from casting one you already know. Casting a spell mostly requires talent; any unicorn can do that, given enough time and raw power. Crafting a new spell, though…that requires skill. Lots and lots of skill. And generally lots and lots of time, as well; usually at least a few days, even for a simple spell. The most complex spells can take years, or longer. A lot of ponies seem to think that professional wizards just go around setting off magic fireworks and turning water into apple cider and whatnot, but those are just parlor tricks. Only stage magicians do that for a living. Real wizards make their bread and butter either by researching specific aspects of magic, or by using that research to invent new spells – sometimes useful spells, sometimes simply interesting spells, but always new spells.
Star Swirl snorted. “Of course, I’d been making new spells off and on ever since I got my cutie-mark…I just didn’t expect to have to do it for the test, and especially something tricky like a full-on metal-to-metal transmutation. But I guess I was just too tired to be nervous anymore; after a few minutes I asked one of the examiners to let me borrow her gold earrings, and I used some spells to get the ‘feel’ for that too. Again, I’ve got no idea how long I was just sitting there, thinking, while those examiners were quieter than the dead, but after a while I just thought, ‘to heck with it,’ and I cast what I thought was the right spell. It wasn’t. I dispelled it, made a correction, recast it. Dispelled it, corrected it, recast it. Probably had to do that two or three more times real quick before I got it right. Gave the chief examiner back his pendant, now the prettiest yellow that you ever saw.”
Star Swirl chuckled. “Of course, like most transmutations, it would only stay that way for a little while. Turning one thing into another permanently is darn-near impossible. If it wasn’t, we unicorns could just fire all the earthpony and pegasi craftsmen and artisans and let them tell us how wonderful we are and fix us breakfast-in-bed while we did all the real work. Still, for a few minutes, nopony but another wizard could tell that that pendant was anything but truest gold.”
“Did you pass?” Stasis asked.
Star Swirl nodded. “Aye, lad, I passed. Even the chief examiner was real quiet when he told me where I could go to put my things. That’s one good thing about the Royal Academy – if you can get in, it’s free.” He paused. “Well, free for the student, anyway. Not so free for the taxpayer. But that’s not the point.
“As it was, I spent the next however-long just wandering about the campus, going from building to building, never heading inside.”
“Were you lost?” Stasis asked. He still found the big pony-town with all its ‘roads’ and ‘streets’ difficult to navigate from time to time.
Star Swirl laughed. “No, lad, I wasn’t lost. Well, not in the way you’re thinking, anyway. No, I just didn’t really hear anything the examiners said after ‘you passed.’ I didn’t even hear the directions. You have to remember, I had just gone through the most physically and mentally grueling experience of my life – I was so tired, I kind of just forgot where I was, or what I was supposed to be doing. After a while, I even started to hallucinate – I imagined that I could see Princess Celestia, near bright as the sun and twice as pretty, standing there in front of me, talking to me, Star Swirl, country kid who’d never been within a hundred miles of the capitol before in my life.”
“What did you do?” Stasis asked.
Star Swirl leaned down closer to Stasis and said quietly, “I passed out, lad. I passed out hard. And when I woke up the next day, I hurt so bad, I just wanted to pass out again.” He barked a laugh.
“Those three examiners got chewed out, alright – by Princess Celestia. And the pony who’d been sitting there all day and all night to make sure that I was alright? Princess Celestia.”
“Wasn’t Princess Luna there, too?” Stasis asked. He didn’t hear nearly as much about that princess as he did the other one, it seemed like.
Star Swirl shrugged. “It’s called the Royal Academy, but it’s really Celestia’s pet project. I imagine Princess Luna was taking care of affairs of state while her sister was away, meaning that both sisters were probably pretty annoyed with those examiners. And I know there’s a lot of lies and rumors flying around about the royal sisters – always has been, I imagine - but I’ve got to say, lad, from personal experience, ticking-off either of the princesses is not a place you want to be. I’m sure you can imagine.”
Stasis nodded. He didn’t need to imagine what happened when you made a goddess angry.
Star Swirl stroked his beard. “Anyway. Of course, I thought I was still delirious, but Princess Celestia promised me that I wasn’t. And remember, lad, you don’t ever call a royal sister a liar to her face – not even a hallucinated one. So I was real quiet when she explained about how, practically the moment I left the examination room, the princess got three different messages from three different examiners telling her that they had there a pony that they thought she would be very, very interested in. She also explained that there actually wasn’t any spell for turning lead into gold, at least as far as she knew…and odds are, if Celestia doesn’t know about something, it doesn’t exist.”
“So why did they ask you to perform that spell if it didn’t exist?” Stasis asked.
Star Swirl looked him in the eye and smiled. “Same reason that they asked me every spell beyond the fourth or fifth one – they just wanted to see how far they could push me. And if I didn’t have Celestia sitting there by my bedside, smiling like an angel, I probably would have been pretty upset about it, too. As it was, she started asking me questions – nothing difficult this time, just about myself, my interests, my family, my hometown, what I wanted for my life. A few hours later, I think she knew me just about as well as I knew myself – probably better. That’s when she asked me if I wanted to be her student.”
Star Swirl paused, obviously waiting for a response from Stasis, and the little changeling thought for a few moments.
“Does she have a lot of students?” he asked.
“A good question – and no, she doesn’t. Being asked to be her student is something very special indeed. She’s only ever had one at a time, and they are more than just students – in fact, she generally just leaves the academics to the Academy, or some other school. No, she’s more of a mentor than she is a teacher – she gives you advice and guides you through the various trials of your life, using a gentler and gentler hoof until finally one or both of you decide that you’re ready to stand on your own four hooves.”
He stroked his beard again. “In fact…in a way, she’s closer to be being a mother to you than anything else. That’s probably why she almost always chooses extremely intelligent, very gifted young unicorn fillies – I suspect that’s who she can relate to the best. Obviously, though, she does make exceptions – as she did for me.”
“A mother?” Stasis queried.
Star Swirl nodded. “Aye, lad. Neither princess has ever taken a husband for obvious reasons – or reasons that should be obvious, if you think about it – and so, for even more obvious reasons, neither of ‘em has ever had any kids of their own. I don’t know how Luna deals with it, or if she even needs to, but I suspect that taking on ‘students’ is how Celestia copes.”
He wagged a hoof in Stasis’ face. “Don’t you be telling her that I said so, though. She gets psychoanalyzed enough by armchair psychologists without me doing it myself.”
The idea of having insufficient offspring was a foreign one to the little changeling. If Celestia wanted some, he was sure that there were queens out there who would be more than happy to offload a few, if they didn’t think that she’d burn them to a crisp.
“Are you still Celestia’s student?” Stasis asked.
Star Swirl hesitated for a moment. “…I am, and I’m not. There came a time, less than a decade after she took me on as her student, when she showed up one day at the Royal Academy and told me that she thought it was time that we…well, ‘part ways’ isn’t quite right, but it was time for our relationship to change. She figured that I’d learned enough about life that I didn’t really need her help anymore. I could write to her, and even visit her, and I was welcome to come to her with any questions that I had – but she told me that I needed to stop thinking of myself as her student. The relationship just got a bit more…horizontal, I suppose. Not that you can ever get too familiar with your goddess ruler, but you know what I mean.”
“You were still at the Royal Academy after ten years?” Discord’s tooth, did these ponies ever stop learning? How were you ever supposed to do things, if you spent your whole short life in school?
Star Swirl snorted. “I was a professor, lad. I would probably have been a bloody dean, but the Academy just thought it would be too scandalous, promoting Celestia’s protégé so quickly – even if I was the best magician on campus by that point, anyway. Maybe in the world. There’s nothing like being single and having a body and mind in their twenties to let you get hard things done, fast.”
The old pony sighed, closed his eyes, and was quiet for a few moments. Stasis was about to reach over and wake him up when he continued.
“Anyway. Just like with my Pa, I had known that little talk was coming, and I’d kind of dreaded it...but after she let me go, I guess I just sort of felt…a bit relieved, maybe. I was already a renowned magician in my own right; only fools thought that I’d gotten my position by anything but my own hard work. I actually gave up my position at the Academy, too; I guess I’d kept it mostly so that I could stay close to the princess, and because I wanted to…hmm…impress her, I suppose. Or earn her respect, or something like that. As it was, even though the university only made me teach a few hours a week, if you combine that with the time spent dealing with bureaucracy, I guess I just decided that it was too much. I resigned and used what money I had to set up my own little workshop, where I worked pretty much twenty-four seven.
“Now, any magic dealing with living things is almost always incredibly difficult and dangerous – that’s why you have to let your body heal itself the old-fashioned way instead of just having your doctor wave his horn and ‘poof!’, you’re better.”
“But what about spells that turn ponies into chairs and trees and things?” Stasis asked. He’d never seen such a spell, but he’d heard of them.
Star Swirl waved a hoof dismissively. “Parlor tricks. Those are basically nothing but complicated illusions – they might make you look like a tree, the best ones can even make you feel like a tree, but if you try to do any photosynthesis, you’re going to be gettin’ pretty hungry. Heck, if you’ve been cut, it’s the simplest thing in the world for me to cast a spell that makes you look pretty as a daisy – and you’ll keep looking that way until you bleed out.
“Anyway, my point, lad, is that since life magic, as it’s called, is so gosh-darned hard, of course that’s what my attention was drawn to first. When I got my own workshop, I decided to make a spell that would cure birth defects – or at least, most birth defects. Don’t ask me why I picked that one – ponies almost always ask me that like they think that I’ve had some kind of traumatic life experience with a blind fillyfriend or a crippled sibling or something.” He shrugged. “I picked that problem to solve because it was hard, that’s all.”
Star Swirl chuckled. “And how hard! Just healing a cut means that you’ve got to weave together flesh – and flesh is so amazingly, amazingly complicated that nopony can do it without…well…making a mess of things. Let’s leave it at that.
“And so when curious ponies started going through my trash and found a lot of malformed mouse fetuses, well…if I wasn’t Celestia’s student, I don’t think they would have let me get away with it. As it was, I learned to burn anything I didn’t want ponies to see. And the fact that I suddenly quit my set-for-life academic position and for four years hardly ever left my workshop, and nopony knew anything except that I was mutilating baby mice and running my furnace day in and day out…well, lad, let’s just say that there were rumors flying about. A lot of rumors.”
“You were experimenting on mice?” Stasis asked. He didn’t think that ponies had the stomach for that kind of thing. He’d been really hungry one time, and so he made a joke about draining a mouse’s blood and drinking it, and everypony at school had made a big fuss about it: the other students, Miss Brighten, Principal Principal. Even now, Major tried to distract him whenever small rodents might be nearby. Stasis was still bitter about the whole thing.
Star Swirl nodded solemnly. “Aye, lad, I was. That’s why that kind of magic is usually forbidden – you might think that you can help ponies, heal their wounds and fix their infirmities and whatnot, but unless you know exactly what you’re doing, things get very messy, very quickly. I’ve got a pretty strong constitution myself, but even I just about gave up on my project when things got to the experimental stage.”
Star Swirl sighed, sounding tired just thinking about it. “But I didn’t give up. And just a few weeks before my thirtieth birthday, after not-quite four years of doing nothing but eating, sleeping, and working, I sent a letter to each of Equestria’s most prestigious academies and universities, outlining in great detail the exact way to perform the amniomorphic spell. It took a few months for anypony to get up the gumption to actually try the spell, of course, even on dumb animals – but try it they did, and with success. And even today, if a doctor casts a spell and finds a prenatal defect, they can refer you to a specialist and, odds are, they can fix it.”
“Were you famous?” Stasis asked. He wished he were famous.
Star Swirl nodded. “Aye, lad. I was famous before that, but after mothers all Equestria-over started showing off their perfect little babies, I was legendary. It’s been fifty years, and the amniomorphic spell is still probably the most famous, most revered spell made in modern times.”
He sighed again. “That’s partly my fault, I suppose. Fifty years, lad…fifty years of labor, hundreds of new spells, and I still haven’t come close to topping the spell I did in less than four years in my twenties.”
“You’re still the best wizard ever, though,” Stasis pointed out.
Star Swirl nodded. “I know, lad, I know. And I’ve never stopped tackling the hardest problems I can find. I’ve invented illusion spells, transmutation spells, time spells…heck, I’ve even got this gosh-darned destiny spell that I can never seem to finish. It doesn’t matter; as difficult and fascinating as some of them might be, none have come close to affecting the world the way that my amnio has. Some of them Princess Celestia has even stashed away in the Royal Archives as ‘too dangerous’ for the average pony. How is a spell supposed to help ponies if it’s kept a secret?”
“Dangerous?” Stasis queried innocently.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Stasis pouted.
Star Swirl poured himself a glass of water and drank it quickly before continuing.
“Anyway, lad…I don’t suppose that there’s much to talk about after that. I wasn’t quite so bad after I finished the amnio, but I was still a workaholic. Didn’t do much except work on my spells until…I guess it was almost twenty years ago now that I got a letter in Ma’s chicken scratch telling me that Pa had died. Apparently he’d been plowing the fields, something no pony his age should be doing, no matter how strong…and his heart gave out. Ma found him slumped over in the harness, dead as a doornail. Went back inside and wrote Principal and I one letter each, asking each of us to come to the funeral.”
Star Swirl quickly quaffed another glass of water. “First time we’d seen each other in over forty years…first time we’d seen Ma or Pa, either. Oh, I’d written them from time to time, and from time to time they’d write back – always Ma’s chicken scratch, Pa didn’t know how to write. And it was always the same. ‘We’re fine, the farm’s doing well, send some money if you can.’”
Star Swirl set the glass down a bit harder than Stasis thought was strictly necessary. “And I did send money – more than enough for Pa to hire somepony to work the fields if he wasn’t so gosh-darned stubborn all the time. I never did go to visit, though…I would have if they’d asked, but they didn’t, and I didn’t. I was too busy. And before you know it, Pa’s dead…I figured I’d have a chance to speak to my mother and my brother after the funeral, but soon as Pa was in the ground, Principal went up to speak with her. First words he said to me in over forty years: ‘She’s dead.’”
Star Swirl snorted angrily. “That’s Principal for you – for such a prudish, stuck-up stallion, he still manages to surprise you.” He shook his head. “We had a double-funeral that day – not like the folks up there, to let a body lie around too long. Embalming’s not really necessary, not when everypony you’ve ever known is a few hour’s trot away. And my brother…well, I just about had to corner him to get him to speak to me. I lied and told him that I’d been looking for a new place to set up shop, someplace quiet and out-of-the-way, and I asked him if he knew of anything near where he lived, in Trottingham.
“He could have lied – maybe he should have lied. But that’s not the way he is – he’ll snub you out of jealousy or envy or for no reason at all for sixty years, but you’ll be darned before you catch him in a lie. So here I am. I’ve lived here for almost twenty years, lad, and in all that time, do you know how many times I’ve spoken to him? Do you?”
“Not…not very many?” Stasis answered. He’d never seen Star Swirl like this before. He took a step back.
Star Swirl shook his head slowly, looking Stasis in the eye. “No, lad. Not very many times at all. Not that he’s been completely silent, of course…I still get those letters about you. From his tone, you’d think I took you in just to spite him! The conceit of that stallion!”
They were both silent for a little while after that. Stasis wondered if maybe it would be best if he just went to bed. Finally, though, the old stallion sighed for the umpteenth time that night.
“I’m sorry, lad…I’m sorry, Stasis. Obviously I’m still upset at my brother about a few things. I guess when you’ve lived as long as I have, it’s hard not to have a laundry-list of things you wish you’d done different.”
Stasis thought about Mother. She must have a ton of things she wished she’d done different. He felt kind of bad for her, which was an unfamiliar feeling. He remembered what Nit had said, and wished that there was some way he could let Mother know that he was okay without actually letting her know that he was still alive. He hoped that she wouldn’t be too angry with him, when he went back.
Star Swirl slowly walked into the living room, Stasis following. There, the dinged-up old pony looked over at the dinged-up old grandfather clock – an old grandfather clock that Stasis had only begun to pay attention to now that he knew how to tell the time, and now that he had a reason to care – and squinted.
“Another funny thing about getting old – you try to tell a lad about how you got your cutie-mark, and you end up telling him your entire life story except for how you got your cutie-mark.” He looked down at the little changeling, his brow furrowed.
“I didn’t tell you about how I got my cutie-mark, right?”
Stasis shook his head. “No, you skipped that part.”
Star Swirl nodded. “Right. Well, like you, I was more than a bit sharp when I was just a little lad. Principal had already learned how to read, of course, and when I was three Ma insisted that he teach me too. I took to it like a fish to water, and before you know it I was asking Principal just about every day to stop by the town’s new little library and pick up some more books for me to read.
“Now, you have to understand that my parents were of an older generation – neither of them had hardly any education at all. A lot of folks in that situation might not have thought much of ‘book-learning,’ as they called it, and they might have made my brother and I put aside our studies so we could help more with the chores.
“Pa, though…his cutie-mark was of a green field with little yellow flowers in it. I always assumed that it meant he was supposed to work out in the fields as a farmer, which is what he was doing, but now I wonder if maybe his special talent was actually in gardening or landscaping or something. I don’t know; he never talked much, and certainly not about that kind of thing. He was always too busy, or too tired. But while he never complained, I think that maybe he was kind of hoping that Principal and I would get off the farm and make something of ourselves; he probably wouldn’t have been upset if either of us had become a farmer like him, but as it was, he was willing to shoulder all the burdens of running a small family farm like that by himself – well, with Ma’s help too, of course – so that my brother and I could learn a bunch of things he didn’t understand and probably couldn’t care less about.”
Star Swirl stroked his beard. “Hmm…what was my point? Oh, right. I was just saying all that to explain why, even though I grew up on a farm way out in the hinterlands, by the time I was six years old I think I knew almost as much about math and science and whatnot as anypony else in Tall Tale except for maybe old Butterbur himself – and about theoretical magic, I doubt anypony knew more than me. Not that that was seen as a very useful thing to know in Tall Tale, theoretical magic…but like I said, as long as my parents thought I was working as hard as I could on my studies, they mostly didn’t care what it was I was studying. I’d try to explain things to them over dinner, but if you’ve ever tried to explain algebra and astronomy to ponies whose heads are already full of ploughs and plants and potaters all day, you’ll understand why I gave up on that after a while.
“As for my mark…well, on my sixth birthday, Ma and Pa gave me ten bits that they had scraped together somewhere – probably from the bottom of our salt and sugar barrels, if I had to guess, seeing as how both were empty for at least a month afterwards. Nowadays ten bits may not seem like much, especially to you with the little tutoring racket you’ve got going with Major’s mother, but back in Tall Tale when I was a lad, it was huge. I had Ma take me to the library, where they used to keep these free catalogs on display that had all kinds of things that you could order – shiny new horseshoes, laundry lines, wooden teeth. I swear, those things were darn-near as thick as the Physiologus…if you could think of something, you could probably order it from one of those catalogs…or at least that’s how it seemed to me at the time, anyway.
“Now, for quite a while I’d had my eye on one particular item in one particular stack of catalogs. The catalog was at the bottom of the stack, in much better condition that the rest – probably because nopony in Tall Tale had ever bothered to open it before. It was called The New Astronomer, and it had just about everything a new astronomer could ask for – star charts, astrolabes, fancy observation logs. They even had old-fashioned sundials you could order, if you were into that sort of thing.
“But I had my eye on something truly special – the ‘Lunar Special’ it was called, although I’m pretty sure that the princess had never even heard of it. Still, I figured it was the prettiest thing that I’d ever seen – all brass and glass, it shone like gold in that little two-inch-by-two-inch photograph. I could almost hear it calling out to me: ‘Star Swirl!’ it cried. ‘Star Swirl! You can’t consider yourself a real astronomer until you buy me, Star Swirl!’”
Star Swirl shifted slightly on his haunches. “Of course, that was pretty much what the description said, too – and I figured that between the catalog and myself, one of us had to be right. I dug out all my savings, plus the ten bits from Ma and Pa, sealed it away in an envelope, addressed it, stamped it, and dropped it off at the post office to be sent with all-haste to some address in Everfree City – which might as well have been the moon, for as far away as it seemed at the time.
“Of course, the mail didn’t run quite as fast back then as it does now. It was six long, long weeks later that I finally got my first telescope – and my cutie-mark, to boot.”
“They sent your cutie-mark in the mail?” asked Stasis, who still wasn’t quite sure how the mail worked, exactly.
“Not quite, lad. You see, I was so excited to get my new Lunar Special that I darn nearly wrote Luna a letter asking if maybe she could bring nighttime just a few hours early that night – it being such a special occasion and all. When night finally did come, of course I did what any self-respecting young lad would do: I went to my room, pushed my bed aside, set up my telescope, and spent hours and hours just staring at the sky.”
“Why’d you care about the sky?” asked Stasis. “I thought you were interested in magic.”
Star Swirl nodded. “I was, and I am. But magic and the sky – especially the night sky – have always been closely associated. Don’t ask me why – nopony knows for sure, really. For a long time, astronomers thought that maybe the stars were actually suns in their own right, just so far away that they look like tiny little dots.”
“Oh. I just always thought that they were the spirits of the dead,” Stasis admitted. The idea of there being thousands of thousands of suns who-knows-how-far away seemed a bit far-fetched to him.
“Um…probably not, lad. Some of the oldest myths speak of old gods, hugely powerful, who used to travel from star to star like you and I would go to the grocer’s.”
“Or the pastry shop,” Stasis added, just deciding to throw that out there.
“…Right. Supposedly the original Physiologus explained these myths in some detail, but precious few copies survived the Reign, and I already told you what happened to them. Heck, nopony in Equestria could even remember how to read after Discord was done with them, and the rest of the world’s not been known for its book-smarts. The princesses pretty much had to build civilization from scratch.”
“So what are the stars?” Stasis questioned.
Star Swirl shrugged. “Nopony knows, lad. If they were suns, though, why isn’t Luna much stronger than Celestia, who only commands one sun? And seeing as how Luna can move the stars and constellations about at will, well…those suns would have to be so far away, the thought of how fast they’d have to be moving will make you crazy just thinking about it.”
“Luna can move stars around?” asked Stasis. He’d never heard that before.
“Aye, lad, and back when her sister and she first came to Equestria, she used to do it all the time. But…hmm…well, moving the sun and the moon is one thing, but I guess most creatures kind of like to have their stars stay in one place. It certainly makes it easier on us astronomers, when the stars aren’t running away from our telescopes like chickens with their heads cut off…that’s a gryphon metaphor, by the way. Don’t you go using it yourself.”
Stasis filed it safely away.
“As it is, the astronomers still have to send her a letter every time one ‘em wanders off course. ‘Planets,’ we call them – means ‘wandering star’ in a dead language that makes us sound really smart when we use it. Doesn’t seem like something any self-respecting sun would do, going rogue on us like that. And what about falling stars?”
Star Swirl shook his head. “No, lad, as far as we can tell, the stars are some kind of thaumaturgical constructs, much smaller than the moon, and probably a bit farther away. They, or else the night sky in general, is probably linked to magic as well; why else would magic cutie-marks almost always feature stars, and sometimes the moon to boot? Otherwise, you’d think they’d show a horn or a spellbook or something.”
“You still haven’t told me how you got your cutie-mark,” Stasis pointed out.
Star Swirl frowned. “That’s because you keep rabbit-trailing me, lad!” He snapped. “At this rate, I’ll be teaching you differential calculus before I finally get around to finishing my story.”
Stasis glanced over at the clock, which already showed a time well-past that of bed. Bwahahahahahaha!
“Anyway, lad, I got my telescope, I was up all night, and pretty soon it was getting about time for the sun to come up – and after that, for me to go to school. Obviously, I was going to be quite the tired lad when it came time to take that math test at the end of the school day.”
Reaching up, the old wizard adjusted his hat before continuing. “Now, a lesser mind might have thought to himself, ‘Hey, maybe I should get a few hours of sleep before school starts and see what happens.’ Not old…err, young Star Swirl, though. I knew that a more clever solution was in order.
“I busted out all the books I had on magic and wizardry, but while they had more spells in ‘em than I could cast in a week, none were quite what I needed. So I improvised – I took a spell on…hmm.”
Star Swirl stroked his beard. “Well, I can’t quite remember what it was right now, but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with making you look happy when you’re actually downright miserable. Or was it to make you look surprised for the not-so-surprising party? I can’t recall. Whichever it was, though, it was just a simple, easy illusion spell that even a thaumaturgically-advanced six-year-old could master.
“Now, I didn’t think of it as spellcrafting at the time, of course. I hadn’t even been casting spells for that long – and all my books said that most unicorns wouldn’t be ready to make their own spells before they get to college, if they ever do. So I didn’t think too much about it as I took that spell and made a few tweaks to it. By the time I got to school and sat down for old Butterbur’s bore-the-imagination-right-out-of-you lectures, all done in that dry, nasally monotone of his, I had a spell ready that would make me look like I was awake even as I snoozed through the whole thing.”
Stasis frowned. “Wait…is that the same spell you taught me?”
Star Swirl nodded proudly. “Aye, lad, it is – though if I’d known you were going to be such a little devil with it, I’d have thought twice before teaching you it. Or thrice.”
“It’s not my fault if Miss Brighten’s an earth pony and can’t tell when somepony’s wearing an illusion,” Stasis said sensibly.
Star Swirl snorted. “Aye, my brother explained the situation to me in some detail in one of his wonderful letters. The point is, lad, the spell actually worked – or, it would have.”
“What happened?” Stasis asked.
“Well, first thing I knew was, old Butterbur was standing over me with this horrible scowl on his jowly face, like I’d just told him that you’re not supposed to eat butter straight unless you want to look and smell like a tub of the stuff yourself. I swear, he was just jiggling with rage.”
Stasis giggled.
“Turns out that Butterbur’s idiot son Potluck noticed something new about my hindquarters, and when he asked me about it – something only he could get away with during class, of course – I might have…well, I guess I snored a little back then.”
“You snore a lot now.”
“Shut up, lad. Point is, Potluck whined to his daddy like the sleazy little tattle-taling coward that he was and probably still is, and I got in trouble. Turns out, I never got a chance to take that test, after all – Butterbur was too out of shape to beat me himself, so he sent me home for my Pa to do it.”
“Did he?” asked Stasis, who thought that Star Swirl’s cutie-mark should probably be in paddling instead.
Star Swirl shook his head. “Of course not. In any other circumstances, I would have got the paddlin’ of my life for sleeping in class and disrespecting my teacher like that – I might have said a few things before I left that I would have regretted, if I’d gotten paddled for it – but remember: I just got my cutie-mark. Even without cute-ceanaras, that’s still a big deal. My Pa just patted me on the back and told me he was proud of me. One of the happiest moments of my life.”
“If you were so good at magic before, you must have been unstoppable with your mark!” exclaimed Stasis, who wished that he were unstoppable.
“…Not quite, lad. You’re getting cause and effect mixed up. Cutie-marks don’t make ponies good at something: they just show what a pony’s already good at. I was already good at magic…but I was also good at science, and mathematics, and history, and even philosophy, though I was always a bit suspicious about that last one. Just a step above psychology for attracting crazies, in my opinion.
“What I mean though is, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that I was going to be doing things using my head. Now that I had my cutie-mark, though, it was like…I don’t know. You know how it is when you’re looking in the cupboards for some honey, and you’re pushing aside the peanut butter and the jam and the maple syrup and the molasses, and you’re thinking, ‘How can I find the solutions to the world’s problems if I can’t find my gosh-darned honey?’, and you’re looking in the cabinets to either side, and when you finally take a step back and look again, you see that the honey was actually right in front of you the whole time?”
“…No?”
Star Swirl waved his hoof dismissively. “Well, it’s sort of like that. Like a lot of young ponies, I spent plenty of time wondering what my cutie-mark was going to be and what it was I was destined to do with my life. Was I going to be a scientist, using hypotheses and experiments and measurements as my tools to uncover the universe’s dirty little secrets? Or maybe I was going to be an astronomer instead? Just that night, I’d been hunting for the tiniest starlets. ‘There you are, you silly little bugger,’ I’d said. ‘Thinking you could hide from Star Swirl. Ha!’
He chuckled. “I even figured that maybe I’d become an archeologist. Thought I’d go around beating back cannibals and solving ancient puzzles and whatnot. Been reading a few too many books, I reckon, if such a thing is even possible. What I didn’t want to become, though, was a professor; I didn’t want to have to teach when I could be learning new things myself. And I thought that if I had to become a regular teacher like Butterbur, spending my days instructing a bunch of smart-arse kids like myself, well, I figured I’d best just go find some hemlock and do myself in quick before the kids had a chance to do me slow. ‘If hemlock was good enough for them ancient philosophers, then darnnit, it’s good enough for me,’ that was my thinking.”
“But your cutie-mark was in magic,” Stasis pointed out.
Star Swirl nodded. “Aye. When my Pa saw it, he figured that I must be destined to be an astronomer, seeing as how my cutie-mark had stars in it and I’d just gotten my telescope the night before. But I knew that wasn’t it – as soon as I first saw it, there in class with ol’ Butterbur standing over me and droning on and on about what a delinquent I was going to be, I knew that I’d gotten my mark because of that spell I’d made. In one night, I’d made something that could defeat Butterburs all-the-world-over! ‘Why,’ I figured, ‘I can do pretty much anything with magic, can’t I? And I’m darn good at it, too!’”
Star Swirl shook his head. “I was never so excited as that day, lad – not even when I got into the Academy and became Princess Celestia’s student. That day, I knew what I was going to do with my life, I knew I was going to be good at it, and I knew that I was going to enjoy the heck out of it. I could feel the magic inside of me, my empty head was just achin’ to be filled with new spells, and I was going to go out and read more books, learn more spells, and solve every problem that I set my mind to – solve every problem that there was. And, you know, oldness may be getting the upper hoof for now, but I’m not beaten just yet – if it doesn’t hurry up and kill me, I’ll even have an anti-aging spell done before you know it,” the old pony finished, his posture strong, his expression unyielding.
“You will?” asked Stasis, who wasn’t sure that he liked the idea of a spell that would make everypony immortal. He could feel a bit of his specialness slipping away.
“No. Now be quiet while I finish my power-rush.”
After a few more moments of silence, Star Swirl sighed, and seemed to deflate a little bit.
“Anyway. That’s how I got my cutie-mark, lad – one of the most exciting moments in any pony’s life. Of course, after that things started to go south with my brother Principal…but I already told you that story.”
The old pony went silent once more. It took a few moments for Stasis to realize that the impromptu story was, in fact, done.
Star Swirl cleared his throat. “Well, lad, I guess that it’s time for you to –“
“Wait!” Stasis shouted. “I have questions! Lots and lots of questions!”
Star eyed the little changeling critically. “You can ask one question, lad. One. Then it’s off to bed with you. I can’t be having you up all night with me, anyway. I’d go crazy.”
Stasis thought for a minute. As he thought, he found his gaze drawn, as it so often was, to Star Swirl’s magnificent, luscious beard.
“Where’d you get your beard?” he asked. “Were you born with it, or did you make it with a spell?” This question would serve the double-purpose of satisfying his curiosity and settling a long-standing dispute between Major and himself. If Star Swirl was born with his beard, then Major owed him a cookie.
“Eh….” Star Swirl stroked the aforementioned mandibular growth without seeming to realize it. “Well…neither, I reckon. When I first moved to the Academy, my chin was just as barren as any other pony’s. Not too long after that, though, the fur on my chin just seemed to take on a life of its own, and it started growing like crazy. By the end of my first semester, it was already down to my chest, and it just wouldn’t stop growing.”
“Where’d it come from?” Stasis asked.
Star Swirl rubbed his forehead with one hoof for a few moments.
“Well, lad…there was something else that was happening to me while I was getting in my beard. Something a mite bit more unpleasant.”
“Were you growing old?” Stasis asked, concerned.
“…No. That part didn’t come until later, and it wasn’t quite such a surprise. No, lad, I was…well, here, I’ll just show you.”
Star Swirl gently levitated his hat off his head, the bells jingling slightly, and he bent down. As overgrown and wild as his chin was, so, too, was the crown of his head naked and exposed.
“You have no hair there,” Stasis pointed out.
Star Swirl heaved a great sigh as he replaced his mighty magician’s hat. “No, lad, I don’t. Same time as I started getting in my beard, I starting losing hair off the top, too. Way I figure it is, my life got so turned upside down when I moved to the capitol and became Celestia’s student and all, even my hair forgot which way was up. It must have just started growing down through my head and out my chin instead.”
Stasis’ eyes got very, very wide.
Star Swirl rubbed the back of his neck. “Heh heh…you know, that was just a joke, lad; my hair didn’t really…ehh…anyway, what I was trying to say was, going bald wasn’t that big a deal, not at first. But, you know, when you’re Princess Celestia’s personal student, and a brilliant, already-famous wizard, and you’ve got an exotic accent…well….”
Stasis was having some difficulty paying attention at this point. He was just staring at Star Swirl’s giant head; he could practically see the wizard’s hair growing around and through his brain and then out his chin, the filaments seeming not so much like hair as long, thin tentacles, wiggling all about, searching for more brains to control, seeking out the smartest, cleverest, wickedest ones that they could find….
Stasis wondered if it was really Star Swirl that he was talking to, or if it was actually Star Swirl’s hair. He slowly took a step back.
Star Swirl – or Star Swirl’s hair – cleared his throat. “Well, I might not have paid too much attention to my personal appearance before…but now I had all these girls watching me, day-in and day-out. I swear, I couldn’t sit down at a table for lunch without a dozen of ‘em flocking so close, I could barely get enough oxygen to breathe. Leastways, that’s what I would tell myself when I kept getting stupid around them. I swear, having mares around used to shave eighty points off my IQ; I was barely brighter than average when I had them swarming about, telling me how smart I was, how fascinating I was, so on and so forth.”
“That must have been really annoying,” Stasis empathized, thinking of all the really annoying girls he knew. The fact that Star Swirl’s hair suffered the same problems that he did was somehow surprising.
Star Swirl hesitated again. “Eh…yes and no. When you’re a bit older you’ll understand. As it was, I would sometimes complain to some of the other stallions about my little problem, and they would make fun of me, of course. ‘Send some our way,’ they’d say. But then I started to grow this crazy beard and lose the hair atop my head, all at the same time. Suddenly I found that I enjoyed those fillies’ company quite a bit better than I thought I did – and I was afraid that now I’d lose it.
“What did you do?” Stasis asked.
“The only thing I could do, lad – nothing. There was nothing I could do. When I wasn’t pondering the mysteries of the universe, I was pondering whether I should get a toupee or just let it go and hope that the girls would love me for who I was.
“Now, obviously the second option wasn’t going to work, and if you’ve ever seen a toupee, lad, then you’ll understand why I didn’t go that route. No, I just sat around, inventing spells and solving calculus problems and just in general feeling sorry for myself until the end of my second semester, when I graduated.”
“You graduated in just two semesters?” Stasis asked. If he could graduate in just two semesters, and then go out and get a job as a mercenary or mayor or poacher or something, he’d make way more than what he’d been getting from Major’s mother. He’d be rich!
Star Swirl nodded. “I was already seventeen when I entered the Academy, remember? I didn’t quite meet all the normal requirements for graduation…I can still remember those bureaucrats, practically slavering at the mouth over the chance to make me take courses in things I already knew or wouldn’t need and couldn’t care less about. But autocrats trump bureaucrats, and the princess was able to sort everything out so that I could graduate on time.
“It was at my graduation when I finally found the solution to my problem. You see, the Royal Academy for Gifted Unicorns – which is a grade school, high school, and full-on university all combined, in case you haven’t figured that out, lad – is just like pretty much every other pretentious old institution you’re ever likely to meet, and it likes to make a big deal about its history. In this case, the Academy tries to trace its roots all the way back to the founding of Equestria, when the Unicorn King started the first school of wizardry. Doesn’t matter that he started the school because he needed more professional wizards for his army, or that the original school was destroyed ages ago, or that there is no physical or historical connection between Princess Celestia’s Academy and that ancient college at all. It’s the spiritual connection that counts, and the connection between ponies’ wallets and the Academy’s need for more nice new swimming pools and squash courts.
“Anyway, point is, when you graduate from the Academy, it’s a pretty big deal – even if you don’t continue your college-level education, you’re just about guaranteed a great job as a manager in some thaumaturgical workshop somewhere, or you can even shoot to be an officer in the royal guard. And what they decided to do to show just how big a deal it is, is make everypony dress up in these big, ridiculous robes and hats, complete with frills and these little bells that tinkle all sweet-like every time you take a step.”
Star Swirl shook slightly in demonstration, sending all his bells a-tinkling. “Apparently this is the best reconstruction we can make of what the professional wizardry used to wear back in the old-old-old days. Now, at the time, I wasn’t any more fond of this old thing than any of the other ponies there. ‘This is great,’ I thought. ‘I mean, what could attract the ladies more than wearing the same costume that bewitched their great-great-great-grannies? All I need now is to stuff my pockets with mothballs and get a shiny new set of dentures, and I’ll be beating them off with a stick!’
“Also, it didn’t help that these bells were sort of like the cow-bells you used to see on the dimwitted cattle back before the species-discrimination laws tightened up. Really useful, those bells – nothing worse than getting accidently run over by some nitwit cow who thought she saw a snake. Not exactly the kind of thing you want hanging all over your body, though. Not the kind of message I wanted to be sending.
“About as soon as I got into these robes, I was ready to take ‘em off – but I forgot about them as soon as the ceremony started. My brother wasn’t there, of course, and neither were my parents – I wasn’t about to ask them to leave the farm and travel halfway across the country only a year after I left – but Celestia was there, like I’d been hoping, and lo-and-behold, Princess Luna was there too. I could only imagine that Celestia must have asked her to attend; Princess Luna’s nocturnal, you know, and she’d not said two words to me in any of the times we’d met before. I’d just bow real deep and say, ‘Your Highness,’ and she’d just nod her head a little bit and go back to her business.
“This time, though, when the ceremony was over and I went behind the stage to change, there Princess Luna was, just waiting for me. I guess she must have teleported or something, I don’t know how else she got there that fast…but of course, I don’t how she could teleport somewhere when she couldn’t see just where she was going, either. Either way, there she was, and of course I just bowed and waited for her to tell me what it was she wanted. Formality with Celestia is usually just a formality, but you don’t have to be a genius to know that being proper with the Moon Shepherd is serious, serious business.
“She started out pretty much like Celestia had, the first time I met her, just asking question after question after question about myself. Of course, when Celestia did it, she didn’t speak like the Unicorn King was still on the throne and the pegasi were still struggling not to become a vassal race of the gryphons. I swear, during that whole conversation, I had a part of my brain just going a mile-a-minute trying to remember all my thou’s and ye’s, thee’s and you’s. Is it thy or thine? I couldn’t remember; I was just winging it. I felt sure that I was offending her terribly, too; her expression was just so blank, so cold. I figured that any second now I’d lose my head, just because I’d never taken ancient Equestrian seriously as a field of study. I decided that if I survived, I’d write a letter of apology to every author of every book on pre-Chaos Equestrian semantics that I had never bothered to read.
“I guess I must have done better than I thought at the time, though, because after all her questions were finished – and I got the impression that she was only half-listening to the answers, anyway; she’s probably met a thousand geniuses in her time – she asked me about my beard. All about it – when I got it, how long had it been growing in, did any other members of my family have one like it. As she was doing that, I just got to thinking about how small she was compared to her sister, how young-looking. Not that Celestia doesn’t look pretty young herself, mind you – but you could almost mistake Princess Luna for a young mare, if it weren’t, you know, for the dark-blue fur and the pure-magic mane and the sort of feeling you get about her that she could probably break you in half if she had a mind to.
“So, clever as she was, coming and asking me all the questions about myself, I knew the truth – old as she was, powerful as she was, regal as she was, she was really just another filly like all the ones down at the grocer’s who always tug at their mother’s saddlebags and ask about the pony with the huge, bushy beard. And I called her out on it, too. I asked her straight-out if the real reason she’d come back there was to ask me about my beard.”
“Did she strike you down?” questioned Stasis, who figured that if anypony deserved to be struck down, it was probably Star Swirl.
Star Swirl laughed. “No, lad, she didn’t strike me down. I was completely respectful, using thee’s and thou’s and your highness’s and all that; I just asked an innocent question, is all. Did she or did she not come back there just to ask me about my beard?
“Sure enough, that regal mask starts to drop, and now she’s gettin’ all shifty-like, as if I’d caught her with her hoof in the royal cookie jar. So of course, being the young idiot that I am, I can’t quite help myself. ‘Wouldst thou likest to touch it?’ I ask her. ‘Wouldst thou likest to touch my beard?’”
“And she still didn’t strike you down?” questioned Stasis, who really, really wished that he could strike ponies down.
“No, lad, and I’m afraid that she was old enough to resist the temptation that my beard offers – even if I could tell that she really, really wanted to touch it. Instead, her mouth just started twitching like crazy for a few seconds, and I could tell that she was trying her darndest not to smile. After a minute, though, she got it under control, and just like that, she was back to being the super-serious young princess that she’d been before. It was like she’d grown a thousand years older in just a second. Then she produced the fearsomest blade I’ve ever seen out of somewhere and commanded me to kneel.
“Of course, I thought, ‘Now you’ve gone and done it, Swirl. You’ve gone and lost your head over a mare, just like you always feared you would.’”
“Did you ever get married?” Stasis asked. Back when he lived in the forest with his family, he had had a sort of vague concept that ponies might decide not to take husbands or wives, but he’d never thought too much about it until now.
Star Swirl blinked. “Eh…no, lad, I didn’t. Things just seemed like they were moving too fast when I was in school, and afterwards…well, that’s the funny thing about locked and shuttered workshops, lad – try as you might, you’re not likely to find any mares just wandering about between the benches or hiding in the cabinets. And I wasn’t about to go prowling around any saloons, or wherever it is that mares spend their time these days. But you’re taking me off track again, lad.
“What I was trying to say was, for a moment there I was afraid that maybe some of the stories about the night princess were true. You know, the ones where she hunts dumb animals and mounts their heads on her wall like the gryphons do…I could just see it in my mind’s eye…’Equinus Beardicus,’ it’d say. It’d be the centerpiece of her collection, hanging right over the mantel, I had no doubt about that, but it didn’t make me feel much better about the situation.”
“Your mind’s…what?” asked Stasis. Star Swirl was so creepy sometimes.
Star Swirl grunted. “Metaphors, lad. Metaphors. Look it up.
“Anyway, knowing her a bit better now, I’m ashamed to admit that I ever had such thoughts about Princess Luna. She wouldn’t harm a fly – well, not as long as it was a properly proper little fly and left her ponies well enough alone, anyhow. Instead of taking my head, she just tapped me on the shoulder, on the head, and on the other shoulder with that big ol’ sword of hers – and not too lightly, I have to say; she wasn’t being gentle about it – and she magnified her voice magically like she was speaking to some huge crowd as she said, ‘Arise, Sir Star Swirl the Bearded.’”
The old wizard smiled. “And just like that, I was a Knight.”
“You were…a night?” Stasis asked, bemused. So creepy….
Star Swirl nodded. “Yes, I was a…wait. No, lad, not the kind of night that you’re thinking. A k-n-i-g-h-t knight…a sort of…hmm…a special warrior, I guess you could say. The Unicorn King was the first to use them, his special, elite guard, supposedly bound to him by strong oaths and powerful magic before they finally turned around and killed him, not long before Discord came around. After the princesses restored order, they renewed the practice, at least for a little while. For about a hundred years or so, Celestia had her guard, and Luna had her Lunar Knights – a much smaller group, but supposedly they could eat the guardsponies for breakfast, if the stories about ‘em are true. But eventually Luna just sort of let them…die off, I reckon. Discord was gone, and brutish though the gryphons might be, you can’t really say that they’re stupid. Blast enough of them to ashes with the power of the sun and moon, and they get the picture. Pretty soon there weren’t any real enemies around to fight, and she just gave over her personal defense to her sister’s stallions.”
“But she made you a Knight,” Stasis pointed out.
Star Swirl nodded, pride in his voice as he said, “Aye. As far as I can tell, I’m the first such Knight in centuries. I’m no soldier, but I’m no slouch in a fight either, and I guess that I must have made a pretty good impression on the night princess. Who knows? Maybe it was because I kept slipping in things about how much I loved the night sky, and kept mentioning specific constellations by name. Of course, they also say that she likes to spy on your dreams during the night, and has a nasty habit of cutting off heads and mounting them over her fireplace during the day. Maybe it was just the beard.”
“She…spies on your dreams?” asked Stasis, thinking of the strange dreams that he’d been having. The thought that divine voyeurs might be invading his mind while he slept made him deeply uncomfortable.
Star Swirl shook his head. “Don’t go believing everything you hear, lad. I’ve been having dreams for over eighty years now, and there’s been no goddesses in ‘em that I know of.”
Stasis found that scant comfort, given the types of things that likely populated Star Swirl’s unconscious. He wondered if it would be some kind of cosmic event if Princess Luna fell asleep inside somepony’s dream.
“Anyway, lad, that’s why I’m called Star Swirl the Bearded – every Knight of the Unicorn King had to have a title, supposedly based on his most defining characteristic. Lots of ‘the True’s,’ ‘the Good’s,’ and ‘the Noble’s’ walking around in those days, even after they started to get a reputation for brutality and corruption. Especially after they got that reputation.
“The princess, though, has always been a bit more…hmm…’peculiar’ in her titles, I guess you could say. A bit more honest, at least. And that’s why I started wearing this robe and hat – maybe they might look a bit silly to most folks, and one of those folks might even be me, but not only do they cover up my bald spot, they also remind me of who and what I am – Sir Star Swirl the Bearded, personal protégé to Princess Celestia and Lunar Knight.”
Stasis thought for a moment. “Well, I guess that that’s a cool title,” he admitted.
“Aye, lad, I’ve collected quite a few ‘cool’ titles in my day. Star Swirl the Bearded…greatest conjurer of our times…sender-to-bedder of legend.”
Stasis blinked. Quickly glancing over at the clock, he asked, “What –“
“Nope.”
“How –“
“No.”
“When –“
“Uh-uh.” Star Swirl pointed up the stairs.
“To bed with you, lad. If you’ve got any more questions, they can wait for tomorrow, when we’ve both had some rest.”
Stasis slowly turned and made for the stairs, abstaining from his standard grumbling and subvocalized cursing just this one time. It didn’t seem appropriate, after such an incredibly long and strange story – he wasn’t sure that he liked ponies any more than he did when he first came to Equestria all those months ago, but they were certainly more interesting than he had thought. It seemed like the more he knew about the world, the more he knew that he didn’t know. It bore some thought.
Pausing at the top of the steps, he looked down at Star Swirl – or Star Swirl’s hair, as the case may be – for a few moments.
“Good night, Star Swirl.”
“Good night, lad.”