//------------------------------// // Chapter one: About Horns and Hurdles // Story: Star Swirl the Bearded’s Guide to the Arcane Arts // by Midnight Quill //------------------------------// Chapter one: About Horns and Hurdles --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My youngest of days were marked by finding out what my horn was capable of doing. And as a young colt simply is, I got myself as well as others in trouble and it took a long time until I got my magic under control. The second most defining event for me, that happened in my early days (which was as incisive for me as it was for my parents), was surely when I was playing at the lakeside and a beautiful, young unicorn named White Leaf was present. I can afterwards hardly hide my attraction to the fair sex, particularly because it was, in combination with my juvenile improvidence, what brought me in that situation. It may have been her shining, silver coat or her mane, colored yellow with stripes of a light green, because I can not imagine her personality being the trigger for what I am going to tell you now: We were playing at the edge of the everblue sea, which surround our village where ever no acres were. Except for White Leaf and I, three other ponys were present: two unicorn-colts named Sun´s Heat and Gray Cloak (a name, ten moons later no fashion-conscious pony would burden his child to wear) as well as a young pegasus-pony named Clouddancer. While we were playing then, the marriage of Queen Admira and King Stronghold came up. It had happened a few days prior and proudly White Leaf announced, that she would only marry an unicorn as powerful as King Stronghold was. In our exuberance completely shameless, every one of us colts tried to court the beautiful Leaf for her attention. And while Heat and Cloak were satisfied with picking up rocks with their magic and tossing them as far as possible, I had to overact. So I stood there and told her; she shall pay attention, as I began to pull at the old oak which was standing at the lakeside. The tree was wider than the confectioner of our village, but I was so focused on impressing that filly that his size, if any, only incited me even more. I held it tight with all my magic, like my life would depend on it. Of, if only I had saved that strength for a moment thereafter. Said tree was seemingly older than most of the Ponys in the village did know. Older and more rotten. It must have been the combination of strong wind, strong will and weak wood what indeed let me tear that tree out of it´s soil. Out of it and nearly upon myself. That this tree did as well underlay the force of gravitation was apparently unknown to me at this time and if it had not been for Clouddancer, which possessed all the sense and reaction I was missing, I would not be sitting here in the candlelight and writing down this book. She flew to me faster than I ever before had seen somepony flying, wrapped me and flung us both three bodylenghts of a full grown stallion aside, just in time before the old tree could teach me my foolishness. And after the almighty deity of justness, a scare should not be enough for me not to forget that happening. From Clouddancer catapulted aside, I landed hard on my left forehoof and broke it. At that time surely fortunate for me, because that way I could not gallop after the lovable Leaf, which was just leaving me lying there, snout high in the air, apparently completely convinced about my magical incapability. I can not tell if that day my broken heart or leg did hurt more. I can only tell that Clouddancer supported me while walking home, until the soft magic of my mother twined around me, lifted me and laid me down on my bed. And if Clouddancer would not have stayed that evening and forced my father down to calmness and reason with her bare presence, he might have banished me on the next celestial body the same evening. So, however, she got a huge apple pie from my mother as thank-you and I was grounded for four weeks, of course only from the date my leg was healed and I could have walked around outside. “What was it,” I questioned myself that whole time, “what enabled me to tear out this whole tree?” I should find the answer not these weeks, but many, many years later, and the way towards it held ready for me events of great frights as well as great surprises... ----------------------------------------------- Leaving out all the minor events of experimenting with my magic, I shall jump directly to one of the bigger ones, more specific to the first day I was co-responsible for raising the sun. At this time, I already mentioned, alicorns were only part of lore and legends, and it was the duty of every unicorn which had reached the age of 16 to help raising and lowering the two celestial bodies which gave us stability and order (besides the minor ability to operate agriculture). For all non-unicorns who are reading this work, I shall explicate these mechanics in short: Our planet, Equis, is being orbited by two celestial bodies of nearly the same size: the sun and the moon, in which the moon is closer to us than the sun. And may these two bodies circle us very steadily, they did it only in the southern hemisphere. Far beyond our boarders, where the zebras live and the climate is to dry even for dragons, these two bodies circle our planet. And everything north of it would be a frozen wasteland if our people would not have left their roots and immigrated here and would the unicorns ever since then not stretch the orbits of these two that far that they touch our firmament for a couple of hours per day. Well, that perhaps was phrased a bit to complex by me. Let me try it again: Sun and moon are tied to our planet and their orbits around it by a significant, magical force. And if somepony wants sunlight in the north, they have to stretch and deform these orbits, like a band of rubber, on which at one point a sphere hangs. The band can not be stretched without limit, that´s why the ice in the north, at the tribes of the Umbrum, will never meld. Nor can anyone set the sphere loose of her band and position her anywhere in the firmament wherever one pleases. One can only stretch the band so far, and while the body walks off his band, the spell fades by time, like the sun lets the morning mist fade and so the body descends back to the south. (Amusingly, this means in the south, at the zebras, the sun rises when it has set from our point of view and vice versa. And during the summer, when our days get longer because we extend the spell a bit so it lasts longer, the zebras experience this effect contrariwise. I wonder if ever someone told them why it is that way?) Well then, orbital mechanics aside, it was my first day with the sun-ponies. While in the morning the only job of the moon-ponies was to ensure that the dimishing spell would release the moon back to it´s natural orbit, - (We had stories... For example; spells that did not fade, because one of the unicorns had had a good day. Or suddenly fading spells, because some natural magic had to have an outbreak and once even a returning spells which let the moon rise again while the sun was already high in the skies for hours..) - well meanwhile it was the task of the sun-ponies to deform the orbit of the sun and ensure, she would make a soft course from the eastern to the western horizon. (We of course all were unicorns, but sun-unicorn however is one syllable too much to enunciate it fluently) For that; one places themselves of course at a location where one has a good view towards east. In our case, that happened to be a cliff plateau right above a very deep valley full of very big, very sharp rocks. (They were called the dragonclaws by my mother, obviously because of their shape and their unfriendly, pointy ends) The view was stupendous, but not as stunning as the fact that said plateau decided to break off right in the middle of our spell. Luckily, as the youngest of us eight, I was standing at the far back of the plateau. (The insuperable order of ranks was truly unduly exact back then) And because of my position at the far back, I was still having ground under three of my hooves when the tip of the plateau broke loose and seven of my friends (Well, friends is a bit too much. Let´s say: village-mates) were taking a sudden excurse into the phenomenon of gravitation. (By the fact that I already permit myself a little joke, the attentive reader can guess that this incident did not end with seven unicorns impaled by the rock formation with the nasty name) But there I stood: a young colt, not that young anymore but not the slightest bit with the power and knowledge I dare to claim having now, at the far edge of a cliff and watching as my village-mates were falling. With reflexes worthy to match those of Clouddancer, I wrapped them with my magic and stopped their fall. What would have been MUCH easier, if my magic would not still have been connected to the orbit of the sun. The natural magic of Equis, on which I will come back later, was pulling the accursed star back to it´s old orbit, while my measly little horn was holding against it. It was at this moment, as lives were depending on my mere magic, as I realized.... Shoot, who am I telling something? Back then, I had no idea why I was capable of doing so. I was laying on the ground, probably whining (yeah, most likely) and tried to hold seven ponies and a star in position. It were again pegasi who prevented anything worse from happening. A whether patrol, searching for early morning storm clouds, came around and lifted the seven others back to the plateau. Lifting them up myself would have finally overused my magic. Celestia knows if we would not still be hanging there if this patrol would not have shown up. The other seven unicorns then took the orbit of the sun back under their control and aligned it for the coming day. Directly after that came the acknowledgements of those seven, and in further course, as appropriately, those of their families. But be ensured, I had to endure more questions than a whole bunch of my apprentices in my later days could ever ask me. Most of them, if not all, were: “How did you do that?” And that was the day, when I decided to find it out. It was the incentive of my just done deed that motivated me to find out if there was not more in me than the son of a teacher and a house-mare. And it was the awareness that there are more forms of magic than direct and indirect and more manifestations of it than unicorns, pegasi, earthponys and the shadow beings of the north. And so my voyage began, which led me from south to north and back again, on which I met friends as well as foes and which end helped me as much as others and hopefully will carry on that way to find out what lies within us all.