The young filly ran through the kitchen past her parents. They only saw her for a brief moment but they could tell one thing about her, she was crying. The tears were streaming from her eyes, down her cheeks and onto the floor leaving a small trail of teardrops on the ground as she went.
"Ditzy, what's wr..." her mother began however she had already left the room before she could finish the sentence. They then both listened to the small thuds as she ran up the stairs and closed the door to her room behind her. They stood there in silence for around thirty seconds listening to the sobs of their daughter penetrating the walls and floorboards.
" What happened to her? " her father asked as he look towards his wife.
" I think you know well what happened, " She snapped at him " The other fillies were teasing her again.... " her voice began to calm down and she sighed " they can be so cruel to her.... "
Her father, finally realizing what was happening said with genuine concern in his voice " Should we go and talk to her? "
Her mother paused to contemplate this for a moment then finally said " No.... no .... she needs to be on her own for a while, we need to let her calm down, then we can talk to her. "
Her father was rather taken back by this answer " But, there's clearly something wrong wi..."
Her mother cut in abruptly, raising her voice she said " It's not whats wrong with HER it's what's wrong with THEM, They call her Derpy Hooves because she can't fly properly and keeps falling over. I thought we would be free of that when we left Cloudsdale but instead it's gotten worse, now, on top of that they're her blank flank just because she doesn't have her cutie mark yet, Hay, I they probably even mix the two together in order to make her feel even worse!." Her mother took a deep breath and look over at her husband's face. He was clearly quite surprised by the sudden outburst " Look, I... I'm sorry it's just, I can't stand to see her this way. " she said in a soft voice.
" I know " Her father replied " We should probably let her calm down, for her sake and ours. "
Upstairs the young filly now had her head buried in a pillow, still constantly sobbing, today had been one of the worst day's she had ever had. They had been doing gymnastics in school that day, she had tried her best to get out of doing them, she even lied about being sick however after being sent to the nurse it had been concluded that she was " probably just nervous " She was far more than that, she was terrified, she knew that she had absolutely no balance or coordination, she never had had any, back in cloudsdale she had been the worst flyer in her class.. even worse than the filly who's name she was unable to recall that was too afraid to get off the ground most of the time.. at least she could fly straight! She managed to participate as little as possible for the first portion of the class, however soon this was not an option, they were all told to line up and take turns walking across a balancing beam. She intentionally made her way to the back of the line however only then had she realized how stupid a choice this had been. By going last it meant that everyone would have already been finished and so would be watching her even more and comparing her to everyone else. This had made her panic even more. The wait in line which had only actually taken around two minutes felt to her like two hours, she was dreading the thought of having to get up in front of everyone and perform a task which she knew she would not be able to do.
The moment however did eventually come where she was at the front of the line, she look over nervously at her teacher who smiled and gave a nod towards the beam. She then realized that if she chickened out of this the teasing would be even worse than it normally was, she had to try. She concentrated as hard as she could in order to get both of her eyes to face straight ahead allowing her at least some form of balance. With her hoof shaking she took the first step onto the beam, nothing happened, slightly less worried she took her second step, third step, fourth step, around halfway across the beam she let her eyes relax slightly and allowed them to return to their original positions, this was a mistake, the moment she did this a young colt ( clearly trying to impress his friends ) yelled the word " DERP! " from the crowd. This had taken her by surprise and causing her to lose her balance leading to her falling onto the mat below. This was followed by hysterical laughter from the crowd of young fillies and colts, they began jeering and chanting the words " DERPY HOOVES, DERPY HOOVES." Then the same colt who had thrown her off balanced called out " Hey, she's not just derpy, she's Derpy Mc Blank Flank. " This caused an uproar of laughter from the children. This really upset Ditzy, she was, as were most other ponies, very sensitive about not having her cutie mark. This in combination with the name calling made her burst into tears in front of everybody. Their teacher quickly stepped in to stop this " Now now stop teasing derp... err I mean Ditzy " this of course did little to help and the teachers blunder only reignited the laughter " I SAID BE QUIET " the teacher screamed, this of course worked and all of the children fell silent instantly " Now... unless any of you want to write a ten page essay on why teasing is wrong I suggest you all stay quiet while I bring Ditzy to the nurse to make sure she isn't hurt." Ditzy had spent the rest of the day in the nurse's office while she got her wing's, hooves, teeth and pretty much everything else checked to make sure she hadn't hurt anything. Besides a few bruises she was fine however the moment she was let out to go home she began crying and hadn't stopped all of the way.
" I'm too clumsy to be useful for anything..... " she thought to herself as she wept " I'll never get my cutie mark because I'm just not good at anything..... " She kept sobbing for the next hour or so constantly thinking about how useless she was until eventually she simply ran out of energy and fell asleep. That night however she had the most unusual dream, she was alone in a dark room that seemed to stretch on and on endlessly, she was very frightened by this however it was bearable, however soon all around her shadowy figures began to appear, they took the shapes of ponies and began to swirl around her chanting over and over again " DERPY HOOVES, DERPY HOOVES, DERPY HOOVES " this reminded Ditzy of the day's events, she curled up into a ball and began to weep, the shadows continued to harass her for what felt like hours until suddenly a light pierced the darkness in the distance, upon seeing this light the shadows let out a horrible screech as they melted away. Ditzy wiped her tears away and watched as the light moved closer and closer until eventually she could make out the shape of a pony, after a few more moments she recognized the figure and hastily got down to bow " P-Princess Celestia "
The large white alicorn stood before her with a bright smile on her face and a bright light emenating from the tip of her horn. " No need to bow young Ditzy, " she said " I am no ruler here, In fact if anything I should be bowing to you, you do after all rule this realm "
" What do you mean I rule this realm? " Ditzy asked as she looked up at the princess
" Why, I was under the impression that you control your own mind don't you, we are currently inside a dream "
Ditzy was confused by this but she continued to ask questions " W-Why are you here princess? " she asked.
The princess smiled and said " In my sister's absence I am forced to take up the mantle as both princess of day, and of night meaning that it is my duty to patrol the dreams of my subjects to ensure that they come to no harm "
" What do you mean in your sister's absence?.... I didn't no you had a sister princess, is she like... on a trip or something. " Ditzy asked in a much more casual tone realizing the princess did not want any formalities.
Celestia's smile faded, she sighed and responded with a sad tone " Yes, I guess you could say that . Celestia seemed to stare off into the distance for a moment before she shook her head and began speaking again " However that is not why I'm here Ditzy, I noticed that your dreams are very troubled... what is it that's wrong? "
Ditzy paused and a frown appeared upon her face as she remembered why she had been so sad " Everyone keeps making fun of me because I'm clumsy and different "
" Different? " Celestia exclaimed in a curious tone " How so? "
The filly raised her hoof and sadly pointed towards her eye that was facing sharply downwards " It makes it hard to balance, so I'm always falling over.... they keep calling Derpy Hooves "
" Oh, I see " the princess said " Well, do you have any friends that you can stay with to avoid these ponies? " Ditzy look towards the ground and in a forlorn tone she replied " No, I don't, I don't have any friends... "
The princess looked rather surprised " And are you sure this is because nobody wants to be your friend... or because you havn't tried to be theirs? " This made Ditzy think for a moment, she normally just dismissed everyone she came by as not liking her simply because she was afraid to talk to them because they might bring up her eye or her lack of a cutie mark. " I tell you what Ditzy, tomorrow I want you to try and apporach a few ponies, try to be friendly with them, not everpony in your class is bad.. try and see what you can do. "
Ditzy found this interesting, she doubted that it would work but the princess herself had asked her to do it so she would at least try it. " Alright, I'll try it princess. "
" Very good, now I must not stay much longer, there are thousands of ponies in Equestria and only one princess to guard their dreams.. I shall be watching your progress Ditzy " After this princess said this the dream ended and Ditzy awoke to find herself lying on a tear stained pillow with the sun shining through her window. School was going to be beginning soon, she would have to get ready quickly in order to keep her promise to the princess.
She hastily packed her saddle pack and flung it onto her back. She ran out of her room and down the stairs past her mother and father. " Ditzy are you alright toda... "
Her mother was cut off by a quick " I'm going to be late for school, love you, bye " coming from the young filly as she rushed out the front door and started galloping towards school.
Her mother turned towards her father with a puzzled look upon her face " Don't look at me... I don't know why she seems happy now either " her father exclaimed.
" Well... I suppose this is much better than before.... " her mother replied.
It took Ditzy only a few minutes to reach school, it wouldn't start for another ten minutes or, this was great, it gave Ditzy plenty of time to put the princess' plan into action. Calmly she approached a group of fillies from her class and with a smile said " Hi there! "
The result she got was far less than what she expected, the fillies paused until one of them stepped forward and loudly exclaimed "EWW get Derpy Hooves away from me " All of the fillie's then began to laugh and Ditzy, now with her enthusiasm shattered slipped away to go and be on her own. There was a corner of the playground where she would go whenever she wanted to be alone, however today there was a filly whom she'd never seen before sitting there, she was a unicorn and she was a mint green colour, on her flank there was a cutie mark that depicted some sort of harp like instrument. She was sitting on her own and playing with these strange looking toys, they had peachy skin and were standing on two legs and on the top two legs they had these weird growths coming out of their hooves. Ditzy though that maybe this filly was new in her class so maybe she wouldn't tease her, she certainly owed the princess at least one more try so she began to trot over towards her.
" Hi there, my name is Ditzy, what's your's? " she asked her.
The filly looked up suddenly and seemed very surprised that someone was actually talking to her. " H-Hi..... my name's..... my name's Lyra "
" Are you new here? " Ditzy asked "
Yes... my family moved here from Canterlot.. " Lyra replied
" Why? " Ditzy asked, she knew this was a bit nosey however it had been so long since she had properly spoken to anyone she wanted to keep the conversation going for as long as possible.
" Oh, well, umm, the ponies there kept teasing me because I like...... humans"
She said this expecting Ditzy to immediately start laughing and teasing her however instead she sounded curious.... " Humans?.. are those the doll things you're playing with there?.... they look kind of cool if you ask me, people tease me here too.... "
" Why? " Lyra asked.
Ditzy then motioned her hoof towards her lazy eye that was pointing towards the ground " It make it hard to balance so I keep falling over "
Lyra looked rather surprised at this " That's all....? I hardly even noticed, you know, considering that nobody here will be our friends, we could be friends with each other?"
Ditzy looked surprised, this was the first time anyone had ever wanted to be her friend however Lyra seemed to take the delay to mean something else " I mean, you don't have to be if you don't want to, it was only a sugges..."
"Yes, " Ditzy cut in " I'de love to be your friend "
" Really!, " Lyra said " That's great, now, perhaps you can help me with something"
" What?" Ditzy asked.
" While I was still living in Canterlot my mother brought me to this performance, there were a bunch of ponies on stage performing the most amazing tricks with bubbles,"
"Bubbles?" Ditzy cut in.
" Yes, Bubbles," Lyra continued " They would take normal bubble wands and make the most amazingly shaped bubbles you could imagine, ships, buildings, ponies you name it, after the show my mother bought me one of their bottles of bubble soap and a bubble wand however I can't even make a normal bubble never mind an absolutely amazing one, could you maybe, help me? "
Ditzy thoughts for a second, she had always like playing with bubbles and now she could both do that and help her new friend at the same time. " Sure " she said.
" That's great, just let me get it from my saddle pack, " after she said that the unicorn's horn lit up a pale green colour and soon a small bottle of bubble soap appeared from her saddle pack hovering above the ground and enshrouded with the same pale green. Lyra then handed it over to Ditzy. " So how do you make the bubbles come out anyway? " Lyra asked
Ditzy unscrewed the top of the bottle and took out the bubble wand. She then softly blew at it until a rather large bubble came out of the other end. Lyra giggled upon seeing this. " That's so cool, do another one. " This time Ditzy puckered her lips into the shape of a square and blew threw that, to her surprise what she had intended to do actually worked, the bubble that came out the other end was in fact, not a sphere, but a cube. " Woah.... how did you do that?" Lyra asked
" I don't really know...." Ditzy replied.
" Well don't just sit there, do another " Lyra exclaimed with excitement.
Ditzy continued doing this with all manner of shapes, cubes, pyramid, cylinders, even a polyhedron at one point (even though she didn't know what a polyhedron was she thought it looked cool) This display gradually began to draw a crowd of the other children who noticed this rather spectacular event
" Do a cow! " one pony would call out,
" Do a cake! " another would ask, all of these requests Ditzy was able to fulfill if she concentrated solely on getting her lips into the right shape. Soon she was doing even the most complex shapes with ease and suddenly chanting of the words " DERPY HOOVES, DERPY HOOVES, DERPY HOOVES " began in the crowd, however, this was not the chanting from her dream, no, this was encouragement, these ponies loved what she was doing and they wanted her to continue. Suddenly a large flash occurred on Ditzie's flank and once it faded, it left in it's place the imprint of a collection of bubbles floating through the air.
Lyra pointed towards it and said " Look everypony, Ditzy just got her cutie mark!" For the first time in her life instead of a crowd jeering her, it cheered her instead, She had finally found something that she was good at, she would be able to your Equestria performing in front of crowds of cheering ponies just like the ones Lyra had described to her.
Soon the school bell rang and the children began to make their way inside. "Hurry along now girl's," their teacher said as they went inside "We've got a student teacher in today performing the last part of her course to be qualified."
" Oh, what's her name? " Ditzy asked.
" Oh, I think it's Cherry-something, Cherri... Cherilee, yes Ms. Cherilee that's it."