Penny wove the spell just how she had been trained, the pattern playing easily over her horn. It felt a little odd for her, not to have her magic leak, but spellcasting seemed to be the one time when her horn did what it was supposed to.
"Good, very good." Gingersnap clopped her hooves together, seeing the apple turn into an orange.
"I will be the bane of zebra everywhere." Penny couldn't stop a giggle, lifting the orange up and inspecting it. "Not a bit of apple left outside…" Her magic peeled back the fruit, exposing the juicy segments inside. "Yes!"
"Yup, with the shakiness gone from that third symbol, you have it down perfect. Now, repetition, repetition, repetition!" Gingersnap had a box of apples beside her. "Oh, you will want to eat that, going to need your energy."
The fruit split in half and one part offered itself to the teacher while Penny started breaking off segments for herself. A new target sat on the pedestal and Penny was winding through the patterns when she noticed Gingersnap's eyes go wide. Halting her spell immediately, gulping down her mouthful, Penny turned. "What's wrong?"
"N-nothing… uh, keep going…"
Penny shrugged and did, casting the spell again as she ate, her horn cycling through the patterns. She was leaking magic of course, but it was from her levitation, not the spellcasting.
"Okay, now you did it, I am going to tell you what surprised me." Gingersnap peeled the new orange for her. "Casting while distracted is hard, there is so much you have to do to focus magic and perform it just right, that doing other things leaves a lot of mages unable to act."
Penny kept eating, not really sure where the mare was going with this.
"You, were eating, levitating an object and still got the spell just as right as when performing it alone." Gingersnap looked impressed. "This is a good thing, but it is still no replacement for the three Rs of magic."
Penny sighed, taking some of the second orange from the orange unicorn. "Repetition, repetition, repetition!" The lunar unicorn started on the new apple, even as she finished off the oranges she already had.
"Really like history, don't you?" Giddilee read over Penny's report, liking what she read. "And you write excellently." The mare worked her way through the report, making a few notes on the pages and then giving a happy nod. "Right, I can now confirm that you know everything there is to know about near-history in and around Canterlot." There was an A at the top of the page. "Ready for your next catch-up class?"
"Oh, what next? Geography?" Penny almost bounced in place, she had always loved learning and school was learning in its purest form.
"Mathematics. I hope you have your thinking cap on." Giddilee levitated a page over with a whole mess of problems on it. "Let's see what you can do, just skip anything you are unsure of."
Penny had to reign-in her excitement. Numbers were something she really liked. Taking the page, she trotted to the table she had been working at, in a classroom devoid of others.
2 + 2 =
Snorting, the mare began.
2 x 4 =
It was simple stuff, but she could see the sense in it, for all they knew she was a barbarian monkey before she came.
21 / 7 =
25 ^ 2 =
2x + 5, x = 2
Penny grinned, at last things were getting interesting. Algebra.
3x^2 + 2x - 5, solve for x
She had this, she so had this. She started getting her head really into it and before she knew it she was getting up with her answers page.
"You are done?" Giddilee lifted her head, looking surprised as the mare was passing her the question sheet and a few sheets of answers. "Have much trouble?"
"The notation is a little different to what I am used to, also complex numbers still aren't my thing." Penny screwed her nose up a little at the thought of complex numbers. "But most of it I remembered."
"Full working out, very good." Giddilee marked down the page, surprised at just how neatly the mare had worked through the problems. "You were a trained mathematician?"
Penny shook her head. "If I were, I would have told you. I just really like numbers." She pointed with a hoof toward the last one. "And I loved having to work in base four, so different to the normal things we did."
"You mean you have done work in other base-values?" Giddilee looked surprised in a very good way. "Okay, we need to get you to see Professor Cups." Giggilee looked quite excited as she stood up. "You aren't in trouble, far from it. It would be great if half our students ended up with your aptitude for numbers."
Penny was quiet as she was led from the class down a few halls. "Are different base-numbers really that odd?"
"Going to be honest with you, I put that on there because I was instructed to make that as hard a test as I could. It is something the professor has been working on and just released his first notes to faculty about. By all rights, you shouldn't even know about it, but you solved the problem with minimal working out." Penny blushed so hard that the teacher noticed and stopped. "Out with it."
"I did it in my head, I only went back and did the working out because I knew you would want to see it…"
Giddilee tossed the papers in the air with her magic. "Impudent foal!" She leaned over and hugged Penny to show she didn't really mean it.
"Sorry, I guess?" Penny hugged back.
"You will be once he is done grilling you." Giddilee collected the pages she had tossed and knocked at a nearby office. "Butter, you in?"
A earth pony stallion poked his head out. Pink fur covering him, he had a bright white mane that made him look vaguely like some kind of candy Penny could almost remember. "Ah, Giddy, who do you have there?"
His voice was bright and welcoming, completely going against the normal stereotypes for a 'math nerd'.
"This is Penny Farthing, she is a newish student sent to us by the princesses." The bright yellow unicorn reached out with the test paper, showing the questions to the professor first. "I was asked to administer a test to find her level of knowledge on mathematics."
"You were told to be mean and make it impossible?" Butter Cups looked down the page, chuckling at a few of the problems. The first page of answers was offered. "Oh, very good, she certainly has had a good grounding somewhere." Penny looked between the two, keeping silent as the second of her three pages of answers was added. "Oh my, we have quite a clever mare."
"Professor, the last two questions are answered here." Giddilee sent the last page and Butter dropped the first ones. "Thought that would have you."
"You are playing a trick on your teacher, aren't you Giddy?" The stallion settled back in his chair, batting at the page with a hoof. "You are telling me you had a mare that not only understood the problem, but answered it this easily?"
"It is no trick, but she didn't answer it like that. Penny, twenty two times three. Base four." Giddilee had a big grin.
Penny blinked, working through the calculation. "Uh, one hundred and thirty two?"
"We need to talk, where did you learn about this?" Butter sounded more intrigued than upset and Penny got a sense of suppressed excitement from them.
Stick and Pretty Cart were writing down names. This was the first step, the changeling had been told. "What about Penny?" Pretty looked over to see the list size of her future daughter-in-law.
"Penny is from… well, I know everypony she knows here." Stick tapped her jaw, pondering more names.
"Your list is mostly princesses…" Pretty frowned at it.
"Right, they wouldn't want to miss our wedding, besides, you said invite our friends." Stick almost jumped and quickly wrote down 'Discord'.
"You can't invite him, he will… well, it just isn't done." Pretty was sure this was going to need a firm hoof to be brought down. "Who next, will you invite all the Elements of Harmony?"
"Oh, good idea, and Muffins too." Stick started to scrawl down more names. "Do you think they would all be able to make it… what's wrong?" The changeling blinked a few times. She knew the other mare had meant it as a joke, but it was still a good idea.
Pretty was about to say something she knew she would regret and took a deep breath. "Okay, let's look at it logically. You know them, not just of them?" Stick nodded. "Okay, new rule, you can only invite a pony if you have known them for more than a month."
"But that leaves out Genevieve." Stick didn't like this rule, it was clear. "I thought we were going to have the same amount of guests from each bride's family?" She pointed a hoof that still had some holes in it at Pretty's huge list.
"Dear, this is just the first pass, I don't actually want all these ponies there." Pretty grinned.
Then it hit Stick. This was The Game. She could play this. "Oh, that reminds me, we should offer Dreams and Shadow." Stick added more names from their adventure in the Crystal Empire.
"Who are they? They are odd pony names…" Pretty was glad Stick was adding more names now, it meant she could have more to balance.
"They are the two umbrum ponies that captured us in the Crystal Empire." Stick seemed happy about it all now, after all, everything had worked out alright in the end.
"They captured you? Physically?"
"Well, we gave ourselves up, I didn't want anypony hurting Penny or her foal." Stick sounded, even to Pretty, as quite adamant in this. It was admirable coming from the future mate of her daughter.
"All settled now, I take it?" Pretty started working on crossing off a few names, ponies only vaguely attached to her family.
"Oh yes. Penny made sure they were all well fed until they could look after themselves."
The change in tone, the pitch Stick used when she talked about Penny softened something inside Pretty. This was a mare, a changeling mare, who loved with all her heart. "You two have had quite the adventures together, makes a mother wonder how you two got involved with my little filly."
Stick brightened further and Pretty was glad to see the same lift to her when she was focused on Hay. "She insulted us. We were present during a meal at school and she was mean and unthinking." Pretty blushed. She knew her daughter had taken a habit or two from her, but to hear that the most regrettable personal viewpoint she ever had was imitated by her foal, it stung. "We made up quickly, she mostly said the things without thinking. She is quick to use her heart to solve a problem, I think that is partly what snared me."
Pretty beamed, hearing her daughter had faced the same demon she herself had, and won.
"One of the teachers had her help Penny and me in classes and we grew into close friends. I guess the first time I really felt something more for her was when I watched as she and Penny were playing a game, testing each others history knowledge. It was so cute and I realized, looking from one to the other, it was a blurry line that my heart had trouble finding." Stick was smiling, her eyes looking wistful. "Penny is a little funny. She was just as in-love with Hay as I was, but her head wasn't even acknowledging that your daughter was 'there'."
"You pushed?" Pretty was enamored with the story, it was hard not to enjoy hearing how your daughter had found love.
"Of course. Penny was a little resistant at first, but I think the first night, when Hay curled up on the bed and we just all snuggled, chastely, she broke. One thing I will say for her, when Penny finally works out she loves somepony, she goes head over hooves."
Pretty beamed at this, they really had found each other in a perfect way. "You need to add more, dear." She pointed to the page and both of them found the task of making a guest list a whole lot easier after the story.