2. The Critique
It’s funny, isn’t it? Ever since we were little fillies I’ve been dreaming about coming here. I mean, it wasn’t always Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns; a younger me would have settled for the Manehattan School of Musical Studies. But the idea is the same: a school in which I could finally meet my potential. I’ve met some of the most talented ponies in Equestria here, ponies of renown. Every day I’m surrounded by the echoes of ponies long since passed whose legacies will outlive mine. This school is everything I could have dreamed it would be. I could be something great here.
And I guess it’s foalish of me to think it’s just about me. Everypony I guess dreams of going to a place like this, a place where anything can happen and dreams come true. It’s hard to get in, sometimes even impossible, but, once you arrive, you have everything you could desire. How could anyone be unhappy once they’re here? All anypony talks about, those who have been here, I mean, is about the opportunities, the elegance, the prestige… and as foals listening in, we think of nothing else. We want for nothing else.
No one thinks of the homesickness.
Octavia set the pencil down on her writing desk, making sure not to let it roll off the edge, slowly opening and closing her jaw to alleviate the ache from holding it between her teeth. She then made to pick up the pencil, halting before actually touching it.
The image of a pegasus writing by hoof, with a quill no less, flittered before her for an instant. Octavia collected the pencil with her hoof, holding it over the parchment on her desk. The grip was unsteady, and the motions awkward, something she had already come to expect.
“Now’s not the time to practice,” she thought to herself, placing the pencil firmly in her mouth.
And I know what you’re going to say.
“Jeez Octi, not even full month and you’re already complaining.”
I’m not trying to complain, but this is not at all like what I expected it was going to be. For example, I’m taking a lot of classes that aren’t music-based. I can understand why they’re having me take the classes – literature and history are things everypony needs to learn, especially when interacting with nobles, as I expect I will be when I graduate and start trying to network and get jobs; however, I feel I’m at such a disadvantage when compared to my peers. There’s a lot of work to do and I’m barely keeping up with it. Even taking notes takes me longer than them, and the professors all teach at what I like to call “unicorn speed.” And that’s not even counting how behind I feel in knowledge in general. If I were to guess, a lot of the ponies here were admitted as foals and spent their whole lives learning this stuff, since everything seems like a recap to them. I knew coming in that they were going to have a leg up on me in terms of education, but I read enough at home, right? You were always making fun of how much I read. I didn’t think it’d be this bad.
Hardest of all, though, are my music classes.
Octavia took a deep breath, thinking of how to best word that following section. She entertained the idea of simply crossing the last line off, but refrained.
Before I continue, I need you to know that I trust you. The reason why it’s taken me so long to write you this letter is because I want to be honest with you, and honesty requires time. I love my mom, but she worries enough as it is, and I don’t want her to be upset, meaning I’m not always the most upfront pony with her. And me trusting you is contingent (that means that it depends on) you keeping my secrets.
In my letters to mom, I told her that I was on the same level as all my unicorn classmates.
That is a lie.
In fact, if anything has hurt me the most out of my experience so far, it has been finding out how far behind I am when compared to unicorn musicians. Their control over their instruments is so fine, so precise; it feels like they’re operating with surgical scalpels and I’m using a hammer. I always assumed that the whole idea of “unicorn musicians being naturally better” was some dumb elitist stigma, like how pegasi are supposed to be better athletes, but now I’m starting to doubt myself.
I could never hope to be as precise as they are, and if I can’t be as good, should I even be here? Taking somepony else’s spot? Somepony who might have grown to be great? A unicorn?
Sorry, I know how depressing that got for a minute. Don’t worry; I’m not thinking of giving up. And I always come to my senses and realize that they don’t really have anything over me. I will be a respected musician; I’ve earned my spot here. Being an earth pony just means that it’ll be that much more satisfying when I prove I’m just as good, if not better. I just have to work hard.
The reason I bring it up is that… Well, I honestly believe that all of this would be easier if you were here with me.
For starters, it’s hard to feel inferior to unicorns when you’re hanging around. But it’s not just that. I just feel so lonely here. Having nopony to talk to is far more upsetting when you see a thousand ponies every day and you can’t make a single friend. Just someone to talk to at the end of the day would be nice. I miss you terribly.
And yes, I do think I’m funny.
A small smile appeared on Octavia’s lips as she folded the scroll, placing it into an envelope in lieu of the ribbon customarily used by the students. Rolling up the scroll would have been hard enough.
“A bit of a downer,” she thought to herself as she placed the letter in her saddlebag. “Oh Vinyl, I could really use your advice.”
Octavia stared into her mirror, trying to imagine what Vinyl would say.
“Um… I don’t know. You can’t be the only non-unicorn in the school, right? Why not make friends with one of them?”
She took a deep breath. Imagination-Vinyl wasn’t wrong, after all; she had come to find that, while sparse, non-unicorns did exist in the school, visible during lunches or walking through the halls. However, Octavia stood almost no chance of meeting them, given that her field of study was completely dominated by unicorns. Not even her common curriculum classes had helped that problem. In fact, she only had one class in which there was a non-unicorn present.
Octavia turned to look at her clock, letting out an irritated growl.
“Speaking of… er- thinking of,” she mused, grabbing her saddlebag before heading out the door. “Wouldn’t want to be late.”
“Why am I still trying to talk to him?”
Octavia huffed as she took some notes written on the blackboard, tuning in every so often to make sure that the professor had not already moved on to a different topic.
“And so we can establish the birth of poetry not as a stylistic choice for artists to employ, but rather as a pneumonic device for orators. The syllabic rhythm, internal and external rhyme, and even the structures of couplets and stanzas were a necessity to help orators remember long epics, which they would then perform in market squares or for lords and nobles.”
“And the princess as well, correct?”
Octavia’s ears perked up at the new voice, looking around to find the source. All around the room she saw unicorn colts and fillies looking at the professor, taking the time to listen and understand the information while their quills wrote down their notes without any real effort. A fleck of envy accompanied the clenching of her jaw around her pencil, which was subdued by the professor’s response.
“Not yet, Miss Clearwater,” the professor said, addressing an aquamarine filly in the second row. “You must remember that poetry existed long before Princess Celestia’s rule. The epics I’m referring to were written about the wars with the Griffons, the Diamond Dog fables, and other such ancient tales. That being said, yes, once the Discord wars ended, writers of prose and poetry did dedicate many an oration to the princesses.”
The professor continued talking but Octavia tuned him out. Her gaze wandered back over her left shoulder to Clearwater, but settled on the pegasus next to her. A slight crunch emanated from her pencil.
“No, you need to focus,” she thought to herself, unwillingly thinking back to the scene that occurred right before class.
A running gallop slowed to a nervous walk. Hurried breaths became swallowed gasps. Directionless glances hardened into confrontational glares. It would have been easy enough to walk past him and into the classroom, to cross that threshold without acknowledging his existence.
“Hey.”
He turned to face her.
“Oh, it’s you again.”
“Yeah,” she mumbled. “Look, I know we started off on the wrong hoof, but-“
“No,” he interrupted. “There was no ‘right hoof’ to start off on, and this whole trying to talk to me, staring at me when I walk by, trying as hard as you can for me to notice you thing. Just stop.”
“I’m not,” she began before being silenced by a glare.
“Yes you are,” he said. “I’ve heard about it. How you stare at me when we’re in the common area at the same time. How your gaze follows me when I walk by. Ponies keep bringing you up, so apparently everypony has seen it. I haven’t because I have better things to do than to keep an eye on some attention-starved stalker.”
Octavia meant to be annoyed. She meant to be angry. She made to yell.
Her voice cracked.
The pegasus’ eyes narrowed for a minute before closing. He took a deep breath.
“Look, I’m not sure what you may have heard about me,” he said. “I’m not that guy. I don’t ‘hang out’ with anyone. I don’t pay attention to anyone. I haven’t for a while and I’m not going to start paying attention now because you feel lonely. Got it?”
Octavia made to answer, but found herself alone. Reluctantly, she made her way into the classroom.
“So why are there poems that seem like they go out of their way to be difficult?” a colt asked, snapping Octavia from her thoughts. “Limericks and sonnets I get, but pretty much everything by Winter Frost seems to have rhythms and rhyme patterns that make them impossible to recite.”
“Well, that would come later,” the professor explained. “As I’ve stated, the original patterns to poetry were crafted as a means to remember because the stories were created and repeated orally. That means that no one actively seemed to notice the patterns as anything structured. Just like when you hear a song, you repeat the rhymes and melodies without actively mapping them out and comparing to other songs, so too did the ancient poets compose. It was not until Internal Rhyme wrote down the first tome of poetry, as per a request from Princess Celestia to document the many works the noble Rhyme family had composed to her, that somepony noticed there was in fact a frequently found pattern.”
As if controlled by a spell, most of the classroom cast a sidelong glance at the pegasus, who kept his head down, writing into his notebook.
“Once he noticed the pattern, Internal Rhyme seemed to become obsessed with defying it,” the professor continued. “He began to create his own constructs, writing within his own stipulations and schemes, expanding the world of poetry from the days of oral performance to that of written craft. Some writers, like Winter, simply took that concept of incredibly restrictive formats to its furthest point, one where only he knew what he was talking about, and that’s me being generous.”
A few students laughed, with the rest simply shaking their heads.
“Very well, time for an assignment,” the professor announced to a chorus of grumbling ponies. “Oh come now, it’s not that difficult. I just want you to write a poem showcasing some of the rhyme schemes and meters we have been discussing. If you find this overly challenging, a simple ABAB poem will suffice.”
What followed was the sound of quills scratching parchment and the rustling of papers as every student, Octavia included, began their work. After writing a modest composition, she looked around the room.
“Great, time to hear once again about how great he is,” she thought bitterly.
“Ok, that seems like enough time,” the professor called out. “Now, since we were talking about your ancestors, why don’t you start us off, Slant?”
“Because you wouldn’t have called on him otherwise, right?” Octavia thought.
The pegasus stopped writing, turning back to a previous page in his notebook and fixing his scarf before reading his work.
A moment, torrent of torment
Joyful seconds ferment
Far more than poets invent
For what is time but a borrowed concept.
Timeless aged words undeterred.
Polite clapping trailed after his reading, as did a few words of praise.
“Very good. Now let’s hear some opinions about it, critiques and thoughts and whatnot,” the professor exclaimed while Slant went back to writing into his notebook. “Inkwell, how about you? What did you think?”
“Well I thought it was genius, obviously,” the charcoal unicorn proclaimed. “The way it describes as something elusive and indescribable was fascinating, and it was told with such command for rhyme and pacing. Very striking work, not that we’d expect anything less.”
“Nice analysis, Inkwell. Now, who’s next – Octavia, you want to read your work next?” the professor said, noticing her raised hoof.
“No,” she responded. “I wanted to give my opinion on Slant’s poem.”
“Oh,” he responded. Every student turned to look at her, save for Slant, who continued to write. “Well, proceed then.”
“I didn’t think it was good at all,” she said. The room went quiet, with the exception of Slant’s quill. “Yes, the rhyme and construct were solid, but it was completely lacking in substance. Not only that, but it tried to dress up the fact that it said nothing with pretentious allusions to a meaning that wasn’t there rather than just saying something. We learnt nothing about what he thinks about time, since he made no point while writing it.”
“You just don’t get it,” Inkblot interrupted. “He was saying that time is something indescribable.”
“No,” she responded. “By the poems own words, time is a never-ceasing procession of moments, good and bad.”
“Then it said that.”
“Again, no. He’s a poet and he invented that definition. What the poem really said was ‘I don’t know what time is and I don’t really care,’ hardly something to write a poem about. If that was the point then I would have let it go, but that’s not the case. His poem depends on you creating some deep meaning because he couldn’t be bothered to come up with one before scribbling whatever lines came to his mind.”
Then there was silence.
“Okay then,” the professor said nervously. “Everyone’s entitled to their own interpretations. Now, if we could, I’d like to hear someone else read.”
Octavia took a deep breath as everyone turned their attention to the next reader. She looked down at her notebook, ready to finish copying the notes from the blackboard, when she noticed that she could no longer hear the scratching of a quill.
Looking up she saw Slant, turned in his seat, looking directly at her. There was something to his gaze, something intimidating and forceful, that made Octavia uneasy, but she made her best attempt to match his stare.
“Well, if I wanted his attention,” she thought to herself. “I’ve got it now.”