[POV: Nicholas]
"I still don't understand why you want to get an art lesson." Sea Crest said, walking at Nick's side, showing where the artist that Celestia mentioned yesterday lived. His name was Blake Art, which Nick thought was one of the strangest names he's come across so far. Seriously, the guys last name was Art and he's not just an artist! This little thought sparked a small argument between him and Celestia, mostly just going back and forth which one's kind had the weirder names. In the end it boiled down to the fact that, to one, the others' species had the stranger names.
But either way, Celestia, with her ability to schedule things quickly, (Being a monarch may play a role) got Nick a meeting with this Blake Art guy.
Nick, who brought along his trusty, handy, dandy notebook, stopped drawing and looked at the absolute misery of a sketch of the blue hard ass beside him. Frowning, Nick responded, "Because I like to draw what surrounds me and I can't draw any of you ponies for a pile of cow pie. It aggravates me...to no end."
"Really?" Sea asked, slightly interested in what Nick's said, "And is that why you've had your nose buried in that notebook of yours?"
Glancing at Sea Crest Nick flipped to the barely recognizable sketch of Sea, letting him soak it in, in all its horrific beauty. After walking for a few seconds with Sea looking at the picture, he burst out laughing, "That's supposed to be a pony?" he chortled, "It looks like a dog with an overly fluffy tail covered in mud!"
Nick's face flushed a bit as a few passing bystanders looked at the two of them with more than just a look of awe, more just confusion, "It's supposed to be you," he mumbled. If Sea heard Nick, he either didn't mention it or didn't care.
"I see now why you want help," he said, mirth still noticeable in his tone, "That's just not a good drawing."
"Gee, thanks Mister Supportive, real confidence booster, you are." Nick mumbled, his-usually suppressed-British accent somewhat noticeable.
While Sea continued to chuckle a little, Nick took it upon himself to mark the corner of the page with Bloo on it with an very visible X to remind him that he needed to fix it. Closing his notebook, he decided to distract himself in the artistic beauty that is the very essence of Canterlot.
Humming one of the few tunes he could remember, Nick continued to let his gaze wander, but after a few moments he noticed a few ponies with an odd look on their faces. It looked suspiciously like...Disgust? Leaning over Nick whispered to Sea, "Uh, Bloo? What's up with the bystanders?"
Looking to his left and right Sea seemed to notice the few too, "Some ponies didn't like humans long ago, " he explained in a hushed tone, "As unreasonable as it is, a few ponies carry that unjust hatred. If any of them say anything, you tell me or another guard. Ponies like that have been known to be rather...Physical."
"Ah...Racism." Nick sighed, running a hand through his already spiky hair, "The worst mindset for any being."
Sea nodded and was visibly looking at passerbys more carefully. Though the thought of being assaulted for senseless racism was concerning, Nick did his best to try and put that tid-bit behind him.
After that last comment the duo's conversation had lapsed into silence as they continued into what was supposed to be the residential district, which wasn't as elegant in architecture or material as the business district that the two of them went through two days ago, but it was still nice to look at. But one question popped into Nick's head and it left his mouth before he knew it, breaking the silence, "Why is it that this guy is going to give me lessons at his house?"
Sea Crest glanced at Nick with his-practically signature- look of 'stop asking these questions because I don't want to answer them'. "I don't know and I don't care. But we're here," he said, stopping and looking at the house to his left. Nick stopped to see one of a higher-end looking two story houses made out of marble and what looked like black granite. In front of the house sat a small courtyard surrounded by a whitewashed stone wall and a small iron gate, which was wide open, with an insignia of a pencil and paintbrush crossing one another one each side of the gate.
Nick let out an impressed whistle, "Wow...This dude's gotta have skill and money to burn if he's got a place like this." he said in a little, awed, tone.
"Ah! You must be Sir Nicholas!" Came a rich accented voice, and the accent Nick couldn't put a finger on but sounded English. By the doorway stood an alabaster unicorn stallion with a short black and red striped tail and a spiked mane styled up and set to one side of his horn, and a cutie mark identical to the emblem on the gate, "I knew what I have been hearing of another human in Canterlot had to be true. Come, come!"
Sea Crest just glared at the stallion and turned to Nick, "Well, seems that we know your new tutor knows you." he said, "And it just had be him. I knew I recognized that name." he added almost inaudibly.
"Meh, come on Bloo, we're wastin' daylight!" Nick exclaimed.
"But it's not even nine o-Hey!" before Sea could finish, Nick wrapped one of his arms around Sea's barrel and hefted him in his heavy-as-bricks armor into the mansion.
"Nicholas! Put me down, this instant!" Sea shouted flailing around in Nick's grip.
"What's the fun in that?" Nick grunted, entering the household, "But one thing, take it easy with the squirming...you're heavy..."
[POV: Lyra]
Lyra was having the most wonderful day ever, she'd just played her best solo of her entire life for all of Equeastria and even the princesses themselves. The concert hall that she'd been playing in was large enough for everypony to sit and listen to her play. The applause was nearly defining, as Lyra took a bow, and set her lyre aside.
Beep Beep Beep
And as soon as the dream was just getting to the part where the princess bow to her, Lyra's ever-lovely, away from home, alarm clock signaled the end to dream land adventures. Groaning Lyra swatted at the beeping menace trying to hit that pesky off switch. But alas, Lyra knew she was too far into the world of reality to go back.
Finally finding the right switch, Lyra quieted the little hell box, and lazily sat up in her bed, yawning and stretching her forelegs over her head, her spine letting out several satisfying cracks. Rubbing one of her eyes Lyra looked around Octavia's guestroom again. It was a fairly normal room with ash grey walls, a princess sized bed with an ebony frame, an oak end table with a more fancy looking lamp with a metal base and a simple dresser of the same wood.
Looking back at her alarm clock, Lyra noted that it was fairly early in the day, just past nine. Letting out another yawn, Lyra slipped out of bed and made her way out of the room to be greeted with the smell of flat, circular stacks of breakfast goodness. Letting the smell lead her, Lyra, with half lidded eyes, slowly made her way downstairs to the kitchen where her cello playing friend was making Lyra's morning saviors.
One of Octavia's ears twitched when Lyra finally made her way to the first floor of her friends home, and a bright and shining grey face turned to give Lyra a smile, "Good morning sleepy head," she chirped. The mint green mare just yawned as a response, only held awake by the refreshing smell of the syrup covered, heavenly stack of delicious pancakes wafting from the dinning room.
"Coffee's on the table for you," Octavia called out as soon as Lyra's eyes finally fell upon her prize. Coffee and pancakes. The two saviors for Lyra's day. With a mumbled thank you, the unicorn sat down on the plush, velvet cushion acting as a seat. Immediately Lyra began digging into her pancakes, occasionally gulping down a sip or two of coffee before returning to the losing war between mouth and pancake.
At some point Octavia had walked in and took her place across from her green friend, who was barley using her fork, and started slowly eating her own, albeit, somewhat smaller stack of pancakes.
After several minutes, only an empty plate, a fork and an empty coffee cup lie in front of the unicorn, who slumped forward to lay her head down on the table. The silence was nearly palpable, only broken by the miniscule amount of noise Octavia was making eating her own meal.
"So, Lyra, did you sleep well?" Octavia asked, to which Lyra responded with a groan.
[POV: Nicholas]
It had been roughly three hours since entering the artist's home, and in that time Blake's personal work room was a mess of balled up papers with two calm stallions and one rather annoyed human in the center of it all.
"For fucks sake!" Nick shouted, hoping to release some of the anger that's been welling up for the duration of his 'lesson'. "How do you expect me to learn when all you do is say, 'draw me'? You're not even telling me how to make a base or how to work out the proportions!"
"It's called finding your own style," Blake responded in his heavily accented voice, "You find your way, you'll rarely lose it."
"It's not a matter of not having my own style, I have one already!" Nick grumbled, "It's that I don't know how!"
With a small glare from his instructor, Nick was silenced, "Listen." Blake said in a more authoritative voice, taking a piece of paper and a pencil and taking a seat right in front of Nick, "How about we try this; instead of you just drawing me, you draw a pony, male or female-and it doesn't even have to be a full pony either-while I draw a human? After twenty minutes, we compare each others' drawings, and make a replica next to it to demonstrate how the other should draw it even better. How does that sound?"
Humming for a moment Nick took a few deep breaths, collecting his thoughts and calming himself down. I'm not bad. he thought, Just inexperienced. I can do this! after pumping himself up Nick grinned, nodded, and started to work.
When twenty minutes had come and gone the two artists, put on their finishing touches, and looked at one another while holding their work.
"And so the time runs dry," Blake said, putting his paper face down on the ground before him, Nick parroting his movements. The unicorn using his magic to switch the papers around and handing Nick his work. The masterpiece, as Nick thought of it, was of a beautiful human woman with slightly curled, hip long hair that blew in an unseen breeze, wrapped in a sleeveless, knee long dress and jacket, shielding her smooth skin from the wind. Nick just made a sound of astonishment as he absorbed the amount of detail in the picture.
Blake let out a small chuckle, quickly saying "I might have gone a bit overboard on it, now let's see what you've made." Before Nick could snap out of his trance to stop him, Blake had already pick up Nick's paper and was inspecting the image on it's surface. What was drawn was a profile of Nick's companion, showing a slightly annoyed look on his face, and quite a bit of the detail on his helm. One of Blake's eyebrows rose as he looked at the humans work, while Nick was trying to make himself as small as possible and failing horribly.
"Much better!" Blake suddenly exclaimed, letting out a loud laugh, "Very much better than before. Seems to me that you are much more fit for drawing a ponies face than all of them, eh?"
After hearing those words Nick let out a small sigh of relief.
"So, when do you think you'll be offering to draw some of the pretty mares around Canterlot?"
Nick immediately sputtered in confusion while the two stallions shared a small laugh at Nick's expense.