//------------------------------// // Minerva's Musings // Story: The Alicorn Academy // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// Minerva was alone. She wasn’t sure that she liked being alone. It happened to her frequently, and it was distressing. Hoodwink was in the bath. Ivy was outside, up a tree, thinking Ivy thoughts, doing whatever it was that Ivy did when she was up a tree. And Brimstone was in his room with the door shut. Probably sulking. Colts. She stared down at the blank paper in front of her. She wanted to write a letter home, but didn’t know what to write. She wasn’t sure if anybody would read it. She thought about the pile of unread mail on the table near the door in the front hall of Silvermane manor. Her family could be a little distracted at times. Even the maids and servants were a bit flakey, as evidenced by the cobwebs and unread mail. The Silvermanes collected oddities. Knick knacks, cursed items, odd creatures, magical oddities, and even strange ponies were drawn to the Silvermanes. The odd ponies only helped the family to grow, after all. Minerva reflected upon Ivy. Her family would love Ivy she thought. And, true to being a Silvermane, Minerva had drawn a collection of oddities to her. Ivy and Brimstone weren’t your usual ponies. She snorted, thinking about Brimstone’s stench. Her family, as wealthy and cultured as they were, would probably love Brimstone, stench and potentially fatal magic being seen as a delightful curiousity. Minerva struggled to raise her quill. It was held in her magic, quivering. What was she going to write? Her older brother was courting the maid. It was scandalous. The maid in question had a unique talent to create cobwebs, which is why she had been hired. Everypony in the family knew that at some point, she was going to become family, and her brother had rose to the challenge of wooing her. She was playing hard to get, causing Minerva’s brother no end of torment. But Minerva knew a secret… Which caused her no end of personal satisfaction knowing something that her older brother didn’t. The paper was still blank. She missed her father. Sure, he was irritable, and grumpy, and didn’t like to be disturbed while he worked, but if Minerva turned on the tears, her father would forgive any intrusion. Her father was working on creating a way to store images in crystals. Moving images. So they could be watched again and again, like movies. Minerva wasn’t sure what movies were, they didn’t have theatres in the Crystal Empire, but she had heard about them. Her father was brilliant. He had conceived of this idea over a thousand years ago, back before the Crystal Empire had vanished and gone away and it was only a thousand years or so later that the rest of the world had figured out that moving pictures were pretty neat. Her mother could make focusing crystals, something exceedingly valuable and rare, as her mother was the only pony that could make them. Any spell cast through them was greatly increased in power, and then the crystal shattered. Minerva shuddered, remembering a terrible memory. She had stolen one of her mother’s crystals and cast her door spell through it, hoping to get into her father’s laboratory, which had been locked against intrusion. She had gone to a very strange place and had turned into a horrible monster. Something Twilight later told her was called a ‘human.’ Yuck. She had stood on two legs… And it was a horrifying nightmare, something she wished she could forget. She had appeared in the closet door of a very kind and generous girl named Rarity, who had been very surprised to see her, and believed her when she had said that she was a pony. Rarity had fed her, looked after her, done her best to console her, and had kept her safe. Twilight and Cadance arrived eventually, and Twilight had gone to her friends in the strange world asking for help. Twilight and Cadance were also horrible gross monsters in this strange world of nightmarish monsters that walked on two legs. The only thing her father was angry about after her whole trip was that Minerva had not taken any notes, and her mother sharing father’s disappointment. Nopony had even realised that she had been gone. And she had been gone for days. Her nanny had tried to say something, but nopony wanted to be disturbed. The nanny finally sought outside help. The blank sheet of paper seemed to torment her. Minerva slammed her hoof down upon the table and blew a raspberry, something Ivy had said was very therapeutic. She felt better. And now she was here. Far away from home once again. With a monster, she reflected. The monster was her friend, and Minerva didn’t like calling her a monster, but Ivy seemed pretty insistent that she was comfortable with the title “monster.” Ivy had told her that there was no shame in being what you are, whatever that may be, and trying to deny what you were would only hurt you. Ivy had embraced being a monster and wasn’t ashamed. Minerva was a Silvermane. She sighed. She wasn’t sure she was comfortable with that at times. Silvermanes were considered monsters. One of her great uncles was a necromancer. He was a fat and lazy pony, and wanted nothing more than to be comfortable, to sit on a cushion and watch life go by. So, he had made deals with horrible things in Tartarus, after creating a way to contact them through a crystal mirror, and learned how to raise the dead. Her great uncle suddenly had servants. And his fellow ponies had become quite irate. He had tried to assure them that his servants were harmless, and were only there to look after his needs, and that he wasn’t raising an army, and he didn’t want to take over the world. The mob didn’t believe him and her great uncle had been burned alive. It was a story that her mother and her aunt sometimes told her, warning her to not be lazy, not be idle, that a happy Silvermane was a Silvermane with a hobby, not a Silvermane that sat all day on cushions. And then there was Sombra Silvermane, but nopony wanted to talk about him. Minerva knew him only by name, and that he had done something VERY AWFUL. But every time she had tried to find out what Sombra had done, the adult she questioned simply told her that Sombra had done something VERY AWFUL and that was the end of the discussion. Usually the Silvermanes were very open about all of their odd family members, taking pride in their behaviour. Even her great uncle, the necromancer. So Sombra really must have done something VERY AWFUL if it was so bad that even her fellow Silvermanes refused to talk about it. Minerva hoped that she would never do something VERY AWFUL. She wanted her family to talk about her, to at least acknowledge that she was there and she existed. She just had to prove herself. She knew that. Her brother had gone largely ignored by the family until it was discovered that his talent was to cause crystals to become violently explosive. Suddenly there was a vested interest in her brother and he was gone, snatched away, joining in behind closed doors, now a member of the family, and courting the maid. Minerva sniffed. She couldn’t make crystals explode violently, but she could open doors into other worlds. And that didn’t seem to be enough. She sighed. Opening doors wasn’t nearly as interesting as making bombs she supposed. Minerva reflected that right now, she was a Silvermane sitting idly on a cushion. She felt a brief twinge of terror, wondering what horrible undead abominations she might conjure. She shuddered violently, causing her sore backside to rub against the cushion in the most unpleasant way. Stupid books, she thought, remembering the horrible library. Her family would enjoy the library, she thought. Especially her aunt, who apparently liked to be spanked. At least that is what her mother had said when Minerva was eavesdropping. Minerva’s face contorted into a pout. She certainly didn’t like being spanked. Minerva rose to her hooves, stretching her legs and arching her back. There was a satisfying crackle. She cast a final glance at the paper. It would simply have to remain empty for now. She turned toward the door and left to go find Ivy, to see what Ivy was up to.