“And just where do you think you are going?” Cloudy Quartz raised her eyebrow in the sort of way that only an intimidating matron could. Her mouth shrank into a tiny puckered line and her ears pitched forwards.
“To work, there are things that need to be done—”
“Oh no you don’t. You have a new job now. You hit the books or you’ll be sitting funny for a week!” Cloudy pointed at the kitchen table. “You get in there and study. You’ve fallen behind in your education and that’s disgraceful! You just settle in and study whatever it is that you need to study for that project you’re working on.”
“But I—”
“Don’t sass me!” Cloudy’s eyebrow raised.
“But there—”
“I said not to sass me!” Cloudy raised her voice and her eyes narrowed.
Head down, tail tucked between his legs, Tarnish went back to his room for his books, not even daring to look back over his shoulder at Cloudy Quartz. He could hear her impatient snorting. Something about it frightened him a great deal.
The midmorning sun was shining through the window when Tarnished Teapot raised his head and stretched his neck. The kitchen was empty. The others were out working or doing whatever, with the exception of Cloudy, who had gone to Rock Haven to ship baked goods.
It had been so long since Tarnish had studied anything that he had almost forgotten how to study. At first, there was reading, which gave him a basic grasp of the subject matter, but now, he was taking notes and writing down ideas for experiments to try later.
What he needed was his own garden of poison joke, which would not be hard to grow. One only needed a ley line and a steady flow of irregular magic, which the Pie family farm had. There was still the concern of having poison joke around the Pie family though. He and Maud were immune to the effects; Tarnish was certain that the others would succumb.
Tarnish still did not understand how his magic interacted with the world. Ley line instabilities caused an irregular flow of magic, which warped and mutated the world in the immediate vicinity around the phenomenon. His own magic, which Tarnish now suspected was irregular, when it interacted with the irregular magic of an unstable area, produced regularity or stability.
It did not make sense, no matter how much Tarnish thought about it. Two irregularities should interact and produce even more chaos, more irregularity, multiplying the effect, but that did not seem to be the case.
Which called in to question the very nature of poison joke. What purpose did it serve and why did it cause trouble? At one point, poison joke had been plentiful, covering much of Equestria, growing where there were instabilities both minor and major. Much of the poison joke had been purged. Ponies had gone after it with a vengeance, burning it away with fire, attacking it with magic, poisoning it with herbicide. Now, poison joke grew in isolated places, out of reach places, and places where ponies had trouble going because of hostile magic.
And then, quite without warning, the young colt Tarnished Teapot suffered The Thought. If his magic mimicked poison joke and his magic stabilised magical irregularities, what if poison joke was beneficial? What were ponies doing to the earth and the environment by burning, chopping, and cutting away poison joke? Only the petals were bad… one researcher had called them ‘concentrated bad magic’ and had stated that the petals had to be avoided at all costs.
But in Tarnish’s further studies, it was only the petals that were bad. Every other part of the plant had some beneficial property. The pistil structure was useful. The ovary, the style, and the stigma were all useful. The stamens had a myriad of uses, all of them good. Various parts of the plant were used to cure all manner of magical maladies, ailments, illnesses, and sicknesses. Clover the Clever had discovered that the cure for exposure to bad magic, which could be lethal for a unicorn, was found right there at the source of the problem, the poison joke flower. A powerful restorative elixir could be brewed that would purge the stricken unicorn of bad magic. Even just eating the pedicels of the poison joke flower could ease exposure to bad magic, but one had to endure the effects of exposure to the petals.
He thought of the Haunted Wood and the twisted trees. Magic had ravaged the land, destroying everything, mutating the plants and the wildlife, but in the grove with the poison joke, the trees, while still twisted, were much healthier. He thought of the Everfree forest, which was dark, spooky, twisted, full of hostile magic, and much of the poison joke was being eradicated from the outer edges of the forest. The forest which would not stop growing and could not be contained.
And then came the final thought, an idea, a fixation, an obsession that almost bordered upon mania. All of it needed to be studied. Tarnish realised that he could spend the rest of his life trying to get answers to these questions, these thoughts, these ideas.
Alone in the kitchen, Tarnish was unaware that his body had undergone a profound change. His cutie mark, a poison joke flower, had grown. Now, the single bloom had company, two smaller blue buds that had grown. Little tendrils had sprouted.
After long remaining dormant, Tarnished Teapot finally experienced the healthy growth that a pony went through when their cutie mark appeared. The change was profound. Alone, sitting in the Pie family kitchen, Tarnished Teapot believed that he had purpose.
Tended, nurtured, cultivated, the weed had blossomed, and now had to make up for lost time.