“I’m sorry to call you both in on such short notice,” Prose Myth, Twilight’s magic kindergarten teacher, said, “but I wanted to talk about Twilight’s social behavior.”
Night Light tried not to show his sudden drop in interest towards the situation. As far as he could tell, Velvet was similarly trying to pretend she was still hanging on Prose Myth’s every word.
Prose Myth was a fine teacher, but she completely misunderstood why Twilight was even at magic kindergarten. They treated the public school system more or less as a daycare for Twilight who would be busy teaching herself while the other students learned to read or to use basic telekinesis.
Honestly, Night Light felt they could probably leave Twilight home alone, but the idea did not sit well with him. He was especially concerned about lunch: Twilight always had to be reminded to stop reading and eat on weekends.
“You see, she doesn’t seem to be making friends, or really paying attention at all. I even caught her sleeping in class a few days ago.”
Night Light did his best not to sigh. “Yes, we are aware of her” – Night Light glanced at Velvet to make sure she was not giving her the look every time he brought this up – “problems.”
“Please do not take this the wrong way, but I am worried that she may autistic.”
This time Night Light did sigh. This conversation had played out many times before, and he was not really interested in having it anymore. Besides, Velvet was much better at making a point.
“We can assure you she is not,” Velvet said as if she were describing a patient and not her daughter. Prose Myth was clearly stunned as Velvet continued. “She does seemingly share many symptoms of the condition, but they stem from a different source. I suspect the school still has records of her brother, Shining Armor, who was a similar case. You may wish to review them as you develop an approach to manage Twilight.
“Now, was that all you wished to address?”
Prose Myth slowly came to her senses and nodded. Departing with appropriate goodbyes, Twilight’s parents left the office.
Night Light enjoyed a small chuckle at Prose Myth’s expense as he reflected on her reaction.
“Good work in there, Psychologist Velvet.”
Velvet rolled her eyes. “Psychologists are just philosophers with fancier chairs and cigars instead of pipes. And I think you meant psychiatrist.”
“Hmm… Maybe. You’re not going to start smoking are you?”
Laughing, Velvet rolled her eyes again. “No, of course not.”
“My apologies to call you in again” – Night Light told her not to worry and apologized for Velvet’s absence – “but your daughter isn’t even pretending to pay attention anymore. She just ignores everypony and doodles all day.
“I’m still really concerned about her and I did check on her brother, but he was nowhere near as extreme as Twilight. It’s also attracting the wrong kind of attention from her classmates.”
“Do you happen to have the drawings?” Night Light asked. “I’m sure she’ll want them back. I kind of want to see them too.”
Prose Myth opened up her desk drawer and started pulling out various toys and knickknacks that had been confiscated from other foals. After her desk had become a foal’s dream, she pulled out a sizable stack of papers and pushed everything else to the side.
Night Light took the stack and shuffled through a few of them taking a close look.
“Miss Myth, may I ask how good you are at evocation spells?”
She turned away blushing, and quietly said, “Not as good as I would like… Why do you ask?”
Setting the papers down, Night Light pointed to a particular image with his hoof.
“This is a spell fragment from the standard fireball spell.”
“What!” Prose Myth shouted, taking the paper out from under Night Light’s hoof.
“If you look carefully, you’ll see the other ones around it are modifications. That’s the only one I can recognize out of the stack, but the rest are probably for other spells. It seems I’ll have to have the ‘research safety’ talk with her sooner than I thought.”
Prose Myth looked up from Twilight’s supposed doodles, desperately trying to put words together. “But– I don’t– How– I– She’s six.”
“Yeah…” Night Light rubbed the back of his head, trying to think of someway to not sound rude. “We didn’t mention this before, because neither of us can find a way to put it that’s not…incredibly insulting…but honestly we’re using this school as a daycare to supervise her and to make sure she eats.”
“…I see…”
“So if you could ease up on her, that would be great. We’re planning on enrolling her in Princess Celestia’s school once she’s old enough. Until then, well, she doesn’t have any academic peers her age so it doesn’t really matter where she is so long as she has the freedom needed to teach herself.”
“But what about making friends and learning social skills? Those are important parts of education for young fillies.”
“My wife and my son both agree that if she’s not interested we can not and should not force her.”
Not willing to lose that opening, Prose Myth asked, “And what about your opinion?”
“Definitely worried, but she’s normal enough around the family and her foalsitter. And she’s happy. That’s the most important part.”
Prose Myth sighed, giving up. “Very well. I’ll give Twilight room to continue her own education and hopefully I’ll be able to manage the other foals’s attitude towards her.”
“Oh, Celestia help me,” Prose Myth said. She was sitting on her office couch with Twilight Velvet next to her giving emotional support.
“Whatever happened, it’ll be okay. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
“I messed up. This is all my fault.”
Sigh. Everyday I feel more like a psychologist. Why does everypony come to me with their problems?
“Your husband told you about our last meeting, right?”
Nodding, Velvet asked, “Did you take the reverse approach too far?”
“Yes.”
Prose Myth seemed close to losing it and Velvet did not want to deal with that, but she couldn’t think of anything to say to avoid it.
“It sort of worked at first. Twilight was free to do whatever, and the other foals mostly ignored her. I tried to fix that as best I could, b–but it never worked out.
“Then they started actually bullying her. I never managed to catch them, but it was minor stuff until today. Now Hearts’s parents are calling for…” Prose Myth nearly bit her lip to shreds before continuing. “They’re calling for blood. The principal isn’t listening to anypony. She’s just trying to keep this quiet.”
Getting impatient, Velvet demanded, “Please just tell me what happened.”
Gasping and taking a few breaths, Prose Myth calmed down from Velvet’s small outburst.
“Twilight injured a student in self-defense.”
“Really? How injured?”
“Enough that it doesn’t look like self-defense. Quick Hearts had a few legs broken in the fall and was burned severely before then. Of course, we started healing them right away, but it will still take a few days.
“The real problem, aside from the psychological trauma, is the minor brain damage. Nothing too serious, but not healable with magic.”
That was bad. It was hard to believe that happened in self-defense. With some more prodding, the story continued.
“A week ago, Twilight told me she was going to start casting defensive spells on herself that would trigger if anything got too out-of-hoof. I almost told her not to, but I had to admit that she might need them so I said nothing. Of course, now it’s obvious that she did.
“A group of foals ambushed her while I was away and started a scuffle. From what she said, she made short and gentle work of most of them, but some of the older students joined in.
“Age counts for a lot in terms of magic when ponies are that young, so they could at least compete with her. A few got solid hits in and eventually her defenses started triggering and– Well, you can see the results. Quick Hearts was hit the worst.”
Good work, Twilight, Velvet thought, but said, “So she’s going to be expelled then?”
“Almost certainly. I’m so sorry. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“It’s alright. She’ll probably enjoy being at home instead anyway. We can manage homeschooling until she’s eight.”