//------------------------------//
// Not a Comic Artist 
// Story: A Frayed Notebook with Pages Missing 
// by Ezn 
//------------------------------//

A small green stem broke through the surface of the dirt, stretching up towards the ceiling as it stretched and grew. It glowed with a flickering cloud of cyan magic as it stretched... up... up... up...

The stem grew to the height of a few centimetres before coming to a stop. A tiny bump formed in the middle of the stem, expanding and preparing to burst out as a young leaf. As it bulged, a tiny seam appeared across it.

White Noise gasped and his magic faltered. The plant in front of him turned brown and went limp, before evaporating altogether. With a sigh, he fell to the carpet in a sweaty heap.

"I guess growing magic isn't your special talent, then," said Inkblot, White Noise's friend.

"Doesn't look like it... no," White replied flatly, slowly picking himself up off the ground. "What's next on the list?"

Inkblot levitated a clipboard in front of his eyes with a cloud of grey magic and glanced over it, his green eyes darting from side to side as they made their way all the way down the list. "Uh-oh."

"What? What is it?" White asked.

"We... seem to run out of things to try." Inkblot rubbed the back of his light grey mane with a brown hoof.

White was silent for a moment, but eventually gathered his thoughts and asked, "So we've been through everything, and I'm still" – he glanced backwards morosely – "a blank flank?"

"Well, that's not... I mean, there are other... umm..." For once, Inkblot was at a loss for what to say. "Yes, I suppose that is the case."

"That's what I thought. Thanks for your help, Inkblot, but..." White trailed off, and ended his sentence by turning tail and trotting out of the library, his head hung in shame.


***


In the whole of Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, he was the only pony in his age who didn't have a cutie mark yet. Well, he sometimes admitted to himself that that wasn't true, and that there were actually one or two more, but they were in the minority and thinking of himself as the only one was more dramatically satisfying.

White shivered as the word "dramatic" brought back unpleasant memories of his short-lived experimentation with acting magic. Magically manipulating his own moods was not something he wanted to ever try again.

It was easy for Inkblot, White thought. All he had to do was comfort that one homesick kid and BAM! Cutie mark in psychology... or lying on couches – it's not clear.

White's mood was lifted slightly by his little joke, and he looked up from the black-and-white tiled floor to see a wooden door in front of him. There were wooden doors all over the school, and a good number in his immediate vicinity, but this particular wooden door had a sign that piqued his interest.


Communications


White's grey eyes widened as he realised that he'd never tried to perform any kind of magic to do with communication before. He'd just found something that Inkblot had left off the list.