//------------------------------//
// XXVI: Entrance 
// Story: Memoirs of a Magic Earth Pony 
// by The Lunar Samurai 
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	“Holy shit!” I howled as a powerful tremor rolled down my spine. The books that I had been carrying were now piled on the floor and adrenaline was beginning to course through my veins. I spun to face my assailant, my mind quickly calculating all possible scenarios through my turn. Was it a robber? A murderer? Was I going to die? All of those thoughts filled my mind as my eyes settled on my attacker.
“Shhh!” they said as she brought her hoof to her lips. “This is a library you know.”
“Amethyst?” I asked as my adrenaline began to dwindle. I let out a sigh of relief, it didn’t look like I was going to die today after all. I hadn’t seen her for several months, in fact, the last time I had talked to her was on the day of my rejection from that unattainable magic degree. She hadn’t changed much, but I was still shocked to see the subtleties of growth. Her mane was held in a bun behind her head rather than down as she wore it before. Beyond that, her voice had altered itself slightly, and her posture was different. Something serious had definitely changed.
“Mhm,” she quietly hummed. “How are you?”
Her words were cold, but I wanted to dismiss her tone to early morning grumpiness.
“I’m doing a lot better,” I said, furrowing my brow. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk after the-”
“Save the apology, Starswirl,” Amethyst started with a sigh. “It’s not like I nearly lost the only friend I had to suicide.”
It stung, being reminded of that night so long ago, but wounds always protest when they are being nursed back to health. “Look, Amethyst,” I started as I turned my attention to the books on the floor. “I’d like to tell you about what really happened. I left you in the dark and you need to be brought up to speed.”
“You think that’s going to fix what happened to me?”
“What?” I asked, suddenly aware that she had her spell of problems after mine had transpired.
She cocked her head and smiled a smile of pity. “It looks like we both have some catching up to do.”
There was a selection of chairs in the library. They were comfortable and were meant for reading for long periods of time. I was personally never fond of them for their intended use, as I preferred the stability of standard wooden chairs. Talking to Amethyst, however, was a good use of their presence. We took our seats and appreciated the silence for a moment.
Before she spoke once more, I noted a few more details about her. She seemed tired, as though the life she was living was becoming unbearable to her physical body. She was striving for something, but I had no idea what that something might have been. The bags under her eyes told of the many sleepless nights that she had spent toiling away at what I assumed were her studies. The way she cleared her mind by closing her eyes and letting out a deep sigh was almost as though she were tired of life in general. It seemed as though she were experiencing the same feelings I had during those weeks of tribulation after my rejection. My suspicions were laid to rest when she finally broke the silence with a soft whisper.
“I’m not sure how to describe this, but I’m going to do my best regardless,” she started as she fixed her gaze on the table between us. “Before I start, I want to let you know that I’m not blaming you for anything that happened. I am, however, going to be completely honest with what I say. I’m not going to sugar coat any of this, and I trust you will do the same.” She let her gaze drift to me once more before continuing further.
“Starswirl,” she started, “After you disappeared, my life became problematic to say the least.”
Immediately I was concerned. It felt as though this speech was rehearsed, like she had expected to say this to me someday. I wanted to keep my emotions in check, but I felt I would not be able to keep them under control for long.
“I’m going to start with the day you spent the night with me. Remember when you asked if things would be alright and I said no? Well, I was taking a risk. I knew the consequences of being caught with a stallion in my dorm that night and, well, I was. A few days after you went to the council and subsequently left my life, I was notified that my position in the honors dorm was being considered for changes. I had reported to the Residence Director after you-” She paused for a moment, looked me in the eyes, and resolved her statement.
“...after we left the hall. There is a strict policy about stallions in dorms, but even more important is the unmentioned policy about no earth ponies in unicorn dorms. As you can imagine, after the council rejected you and then discovered that you had been in my dorm the night before, I was quickly rejected from the honors school here on campus.” During her statement, her eyes had drifted back to the table once more. It was obvious that it was a panful discussion to have, but she felt as though she needed a way to get this off of her chest.
“I don’t know what to say,” I whispered in that pause. I wanted to help console her, but that wasn’t an option at this point.
“Starswirl,” she said coldly, “I’m not finished.”
I promptly silenced myself.
“You see, as time went on, I was subjected to a number of tests. They were individual forms, things that asked about the nature of society and the like. It was strange enough that they were scheduled during the most stressful parts of my semester, but it became apparent something was amiss when there was a question regarding the societal split between earth ponies and unicorns. They asked me to write a paper, just one page, on the differences between earth ponies and unicorns. I… I knew what they were asking, I knew what they wanted me to say, and I said it.
“The entire purpose of that paper was to gauge how ‘elite’ I was. I ended up falling into the trap they laid by saying that the differences were outweighed by our similarities. A few days later, I received a letter in my mail informing me that I was to move dorms the following semester and that my honors courses were no longer part of my curriculum…”
I was shocked. There was definitely something wrong with the school if this had truly taken place. I was in a strange state of emotion as I watched Amethyst squeeze her eyes shut and steel herself once more. The pain she felt was so foreign to me, so distant from what I had felt over those months, and yet it was shockingly familiar. She had been on the wrong end of the Council’s agenda, and she had paid dearly.
“As you can imagine,” she started once more, “my grades went up. Being dropped from the rigorous honors courses meant that I had less work to do and more time to do it. However, it also meant that I was no longer able to attend Evenstar’s advanced theoretical magic class. My degree had been switched from Advanced Theoretical Magic to Theoretical Magic, all but destroying my hopes for research work in my career.”
She looked to me, with tears beginning to form in her eyes. “However, the one thing that stung the most was the fact that I had nopony there. No one was there to comfort me during this time… I guess what I’m trying to say is that, out of all that happened to me, the fact that you weren’t there, that was the hardest to bear.”
I was speechless. I had no way of knowing she had felt this way, and yet I felt as though I should have known all along. During my depression, I hadn’t realized that her life was being affected by me as well. I had caused indescribable damage to the only pony that truly considered me a friend and I had no idea I was causing it. “I…”
“Starswirl,” she started as wiped the tears from her eyes. “I’m still not finished.” The way she said those words was peculiar. It was almost as though a small hint of triumph lingered on her punctuation. “Remember how I told you Evenstar was on the council?”
“Yes…” I said quietly.
“Well, he gave me an offer. He told me that if I could prove to be a hard worker, he would let me work with him over the winter break in his office.”
My eyes lit up. “You mean you’re doing research with him?”
She nodded with a faint smile on her lips. It was obvious she had seen serious tribulation, but the light at the end of the tunnel was still there for her. “He’s told me that if I can prove to be a valuable assistant that he will take me on as an apprentice of sorts after school is over. I just have to keep my grades up and my calculations accurate.”
“That’s great news!” I said. Immediately realizing what I had just implied, I quickly added more words, “Well, it’s great news to hear you’re working with Evenstar now, not that you were removed from the Honors school.”
Amethyst looked at me and smiled. “Thanks. It’s been a trying time for me, but I think I’m doing a lot better now.” Her brow furrowed. “That’s what happened to me… How about what happened to you?”
My mood immediately became somber once more as my mind flashed several images of the past months to my mind. “To be honest, it was the most trying time of my life.” I let out a sigh as I tried to shake them from my mind. It was my turn to be blunt, straightforward, and honest with her and myself.
Her eyes begged me to continue with a desire that words never could. I adjusted myself in my chair and let my mind drift back to the painful day I was rejected.
“Well, as you know, I was rejected from entering the school magic. The council told me that I was an earth pony, and that my attempts to join the realm of the Unicorns was a dream that I would not be permitted to pursue. I was told to continue working in my classes, which at that point were already going downhill, and I was ordered to never enter the Union again.
“So I did the only reasonable thing I could when I left that place and returned to my dorm: I destroyed it. I ended up throwing my desk across the room, tossing my bed out of the window, and destroying every piece of my previous life I could.” I paused for a moment and looked directly at amethyst. “I’m telling you this because you were truthful with me. I promise I have changed since then.”
Amethyst’s head bobbed in understanding.
“After that, I began trying to focus on my classes as best I could, but there was no way I could possibly enter into that realm once more. I had become so disgusted with the life that agriculture had that I developed a supreme hatred for anything my race had done for years. Then, after my dreams of entering the life that you lead, well I was in a position I wasn’t prepared to cope with. After a long time of force feeding myself agricultural study, I let my mind drift into a train of thought that lasted for months.
“Depression is an emotion that I had never truly experienced. To feel it in it’s full force during those few weeks leading up to my…” I hestitated for a moment. I needed to be honest with her, but bringing back those memories wwas something that burned to the very core of my heart. “For those few weeks, I let myself believe that my life was running toward a dead end. I started trying to bargain with every fabric in my being to create some semblance of hope, but that only dragged me further into despair. I found, soon after, that my life wasn’t going to be what I dreamed for it to be.”
I had delayed the truth for as long as I could. It still stung to think about my attempt, but I needed to remember it so I would never again reach that conclusion. “If I wasn’t going to be able to purse my dreams, I told myself that there was no reason for life at all. That is why… well… uhh…” I I sqeezed my eyes shut as the tears tired to flow. I wanted to remain coherent, I wanted to keep my mind focused so I could deliver the final statement of my life, but there was something inside of me that tore itself to pieces as I tried to remember that night.
“I made… I…” I was going backwards. I needed to focus, to keep my emotions out of this statement, but there was no chance. I quickly withdrew from the battle and let myself drift inward. I could stave off the tears no longer, and as they began to flow I turned away from Amethyst. I didn’t want her to see me like this, I only wanted her to understand the truth that I had seen. Things looked up after that moment in my life, it got better, but the words refused to come.
As I sat there, silently weeping at the darkness that had shrouded my life, a familiar masculine voice rose in the silence.
“On that night, Starswirl made an attempt on his life, Amethyst.” The words cut me to my soul, but as my emotion dwindled, I realized who had spoken. It was Evenstar.
“Oh…” I heard Amethyst whisper, half in shock, half in sadness. “I’m sorry… I didn’t know.”
“No one did, aside from Professor Spark and me.” The torrent of tears slowed as I opened my eyes once more. There, standing behind Amethyst, was Evenstar, his signature hat covering his horn. “Starswirl knows his side of the story, that much is obvious, but allow me to add a few details to his situation.
“On that same day, Professor Spark came to me after talking to Starswirl during class. He realized something was amiss and when he questioned Starswirl about his studies with me, he received a rather strange answer. He promptly came to me with that information and I quickly became worried. If there is something I know about Starswirl, it is his mindset. He cannot be swayed to partake an anything that doesn’t allow him the opportunity to fulfil his dreams.”
By this point, I had wiped away my tears and turned my attention to my professor. His eyes were affixed on me in a way that said that Evenstar truly cared for me.
“That is when we both went to the administration and retrieved his room number. When we entered, we found Starswirl motionless hanging from a noose affixed to the rafters. I cut him down and stayed with him the rest of the night. Thankfully, he received no lasting injuries from his attempt.” Evenstar looked at me once more. “But more importantly, Starswirl came to an incredibly profound conclusion.”
“Amethyst,” I started, taking the conversation from Evenstar, “I realized that my dreams and my desperation to get a degree were not tied together. I don’t need a degree to practice theoretical magic, to study the world that I had wanted to join so desperately. I realized, as the rope choked me into darkness, that everything could be solved by leaving the University. So I did.”
Amethyst looked to me, and then to Evenstar. Her eyes were wide as she slowly pieced everything together in her mind. “So what happened then?”
“I left school, returned to my home, and began doing the very thing I’m doing now. Every day since, I’ve come to the library, gathered up several books, and studied everything I could find on theoretical magic.”
Amethyst took the conversation, “However, books can only get a pony so far. There is a reason schools exist, and now Starswirl is behind the rest of his peers in terms of magical study.” It was worded as a statement, but I could feel the question in her tone. She was asking something of Evenstar.
“You are exactly right, Amethyst. You see, Starswirl may have the ability to study at the library, but the only way to truly understand magic is to perform it or see it performed. Books only give you information, they don’t tell you what to do with it.”
I absolutely agreed with them, and the conclusion they were drawing was one that I was quickly becoming aware of in my own reality. “I have my mental world for experiments,” I offered, belying the truth that I was facing on a daily basis. “It’s working.”
Evenstar saw right through my shrouded uneasiness. “Are you sure, Starswirl?”
I let my eyes drift to the table once more. The books that rested on its surface were evident of his question. I had checked out several of them numerous times, and read through them even more. I wasn’t absorbing information as I had hoped, and there was no reason to lie before these two. “You’re right,” I started as I looked to Evenstar. “I’m not learning what I need. Many of these books I’ve read through half a dozen times, but no matter how hard I try I just can’t understand them.”
“There’s a reason for that, Starswirl. Those books you picked up, they’re not meant for you. Those books are meant for unicorns, ponies that already know what magic is on a personal level. Everything they’re trying to say is foreign to you simply because you can’t perform magic at all.”
My posture faded as I realized the truth in Evenstar’s words. I wasn’t able to build knowledge on a foundation that didn’t exist, and that awareness was one that I had avoided since the day I first set hoof in the library. “I can try harder,” I started, trying to talk myself out of the trap I was seeing, but Evenstar quickly refuted me.
“The harder you try, the harder it will be to understand magic at all. You’ll start second guessing yourself, rebuilding perfect worlds you had constructed because you thought their foundation might not be perfectly accurate. The life that you want can’t be forced, it must be revealed.”
My head nodded in agreement. Evenstar was right. “But right now,” I started, “this is the only thing I can do. Until something else comes up, I can’t idle. I don’t care how detrimental it may be to my future, I have to try something.”
“Indeed,” Evenstar said as his eyebrow cocked ever so slightly. “There isn’t much a pony can do to understand magic unless he is exposed to the true inner workings of magic itself. One would need to see an abstraction of the foundation, the true core of the magical system, to learn about magic himself.”
Evenstar looked to the bookshelves and sighed. “You see, this place talks about the how,” he said as he gestured toward the rows and rows of shelves before him. “However, nothing here talks about the why. No unicorn ever stops to ask ‘why can I lift things from the ground using only magic? Why is it that I can create a physical solid out of a simple power in my own mind?’ No, everything here discusses how you do it, it only looks up toward conclusions.” He turned to me with a wry smile.
“Starswirl?” he asked with a spark in his eye. “You’ve seen the how, the conclusions from the work that has been performed, but would you like to see the why?”
My expression must have been the most dumbfounded look ever recorded. I had no idea what he was asking of me, but yet he had piqued my interest on some fundamental level. “What do you mean?”
“Would you like to see why all of this magic works the way it does?”
That’s when my mind clicked and I realized what he was asking. I matched his confident stare and responded, “Why not?”