//------------------------------//
// XL: Heart 
// Story: Memoirs of a Magic Earth Pony 
// by The Lunar Samurai 
//------------------------------//

Sleeping through the day always made me wake up at the strangest times, and this day was no exception. I slept through most of the afternoon, and as the sun settled for the night in the west, I stirred from my sleep. The first thing I noticed was the pain. Falling asleep in a chair was never a comfortable affair, rather it was driven by necessity. So, as I lifted my head upright, a dull ache crept through my neck.

Stretching helped a bit, but I still winced as I swung my head from side to side. As my mind stirred from its slumber, I noticed that the room was dark and surprisingly quiet. With all the attention I could muster through my veil of drowsiness, I realized that both Amethyst and Evenstar were nowhere to be found.

“They must have gone home,” I whispered. Even the soft words seemed to echo in the cavernous laboratory that I had come to call home. As I let my voice fade from the room, I was met with an eerie silence. It wasn’t terribly frightening, mind you, but it felt out of place as the time went on. The lab didn’t seem alive. Obviously it wasn’t typically in a state that one would consider alive, but it had a sprit and personality all its own. The powerful spells and mathematics that were conjured up in the room belied its humble nature.

There was nothing, aside from a few scattered equations, that would make this room great on its own. It was a cellar, and the more I let my scrutinizing eye gaze over its derelict appearance, the more disgusted I became. Not with the room, mind you, but rather with my own opinion of it. I had placed it in such high regard that I convinced myself that it was the source of the magic that we conjured up. However, as I could so clearly see in the waning light of the evening, the room was little more than that… just a room. Sure it was filled with incredible books, research, and hard work, but there was nothing more to it than that.

The walls were covered in uniform chalkboards, aside from the one that had been cracked in a fit of rage. Aside from its base organization, the room was anything but orderly. The tables had been moved, their surfaces littered with devices and contraptions that we had used during our studies. The bookshelves were orderly, but the scrolls and various items that rested on top of them disregarded that order.

For some reason that I cannot remember or conceive, I rose from my chair and ventured over to the cracked chalkboard that stood so prominently before me. There was something of a draw it had on me, and as I ventured closer, I began to focus on the cracks that emanated from the point of rage. My mind flashed back to the letter from Constance, and that eerie feeling that had washed over me when I had, as now, stood alone in the laboratory. There was this fear that I was being watched that permeated through my mind. It had captured me and urged my soul to leave at once, lest this Constance character approach me or something of a frighteningly similar occur.

However, as I stood in that room with the light slowly fading to the gentle flickering of the candles above my head, I no longer had that feeling. Something had changed about Constance and his terrifying name. Instead of feeling afraid, I felt… determined. I had no real reason to feel this way, but there was something inside of me that refused to let constance’s threat bother me as it had. It may have been in accordance with my own development of the limit, or it may have stemmed from the realization that I was rising above the world in an attempt to prove it wrong, but whatever the reason, the fear was no more.

Evenstar’s desperation to find the Analog equations had been amplified with the notion of another pony researching his work, and that desperation was something that was both marvelous and terrifying at once. In his desperation he had begun to turn toward infinity. As I looked across the board, that harrowing symbol of the unknowingly immense littered equation after equation. He had begun searching a field that he had once believed to be unusable, and as he worked, he seemed to find something of a power in the immensity. It solved many problems that we had once faced, but with it came hurdles and challenges that seemed insurmountable.

I could go on for hours about infinity and not even scrape its surface. However, I believe that Evenstar was beginning to understand its nature, to finally pull the reality of infinity into a usable system. That usability came from the hastily drawn equation that sat front and center of the chalkboard before me. It was the equation amethyst wrote as I had uttered the epiphany that had dawned on me so suddenly. Evenstar refused to let that become covered with his own work, and the equations that surrounded it were bent and contorted to avoid encroaching on its seemingly sacred space.

As I stood in awe of the work before me, a new feeling struck, one that had dwelled in my mind so long ago and had driven me to darkness. It wasn’t powerful, yet its plea was strangely persuasive as I scanned across the board. “They don’t need me,” I whispered as my eyes searched the board for any other sign of my influence. When none presented itself, I let the voice speak a bit louder. It reminded me of the times when Amethyst moved something faster than I, or when she could lift seemingly thousands of objects into the air with little effort. I was always stunned by her ability to control magic, and I have yet to find another pony that comes close to her mastery of the art.

However, despite my intentions, I couldn’t help but feel rather jealous when she would perform such feats. It seemed as though her life had been completely focused on magic and her knowledge of its intricacies was enough to put mine to shame ten times over. She had a personal connection to it, a tangible, beautiful relationship with that tantalizing power, and I had my imagination. It was off putting at first, and while I did show my own skill at times during our work in the lab, I always felt a twinge of pain whenever she could simply control something that I was incapable of reaching.

I never brought it up, as I rightly assumed it would bring a rift between the two of us, and that was something I didn’t want to do at all. You see, take away the laboratory and all the niceties of working together, and there was still something inside of me that wanted to impress her. I wanted her to appreciate me, to care that I was doing something that she was doing as well. I’m not sure where this feeling originated from, or where it would take me, but I knew it deep in my heart. There was something about her, about her nature that I wanted to experience for ages.

Despite that desire, I never allowed myself to think such thoughts in the laboratory. We were coworkers, our paths crossing in a happy accident that put us together once more. I enjoyed working with her, and I believe she had a similar notion, but anything beyond that was something that I refused to entertain.

However, as my mind wandered further still, I tempted myself with that notion. The lab was empty, that much was obvious, but I was still there in its confines. Walls had been built up in my mind to keep myself from thinking of such possibilities, but slowly, as the first stars of night began to peek through the violet sky on the horizon, the barriers began to crumble.

My mind drifted to the time when we first met in that classroom where she detailed her magical skill. It impressed me, and I thought, as my mind dwelled on that time, if that was when I felt as though I should impress her. After several minutes of deliberation, I let out a chuckle and shook my head. No, that wasn’t it, there was something else that had happened, something impactful that had ushered in this feeling in my heart. I then thought to the time when I, as a naïve student, followed her into her room to study for an upcoming exam. Our interaction was slight, and I winced as I remembered the dictionary connecting with my skull. The emotional wounds from that time were beginning to mend, and as I replayed that moment in my head, I began to laugh at its audacity.

It was quite the overreaction for a misplaced gaze, but one that would leave a mark on my mind for quite some time. However, as I peered beyond the concussion and into the time following, I noticed something more. The way she apologized, not with words, but with actions. I clung to that idea, and as my mind replayed the smaller details in vibrant color, I realized that was when my attraction began.

The way she looked at me, both there, and only a few days prior in the lab, was one that always put me on edge. It was as though she had a hold over me just through her eyes, but it wasn’t malicious. She didn’t want anything out of me, it was as though I was something she wanted as well.

Then, in a sudden surge of emotion, I realized something that I had been denying ever since we had first met. I was attracted to her.

Immediately I berated myself for such a notion, as I had always berated myself in the past, but it was something that latched onto my mind and refused to dismiss itself despite my best efforts. The more I pushed it away, the more evident it became. With flushed cheeks and the hairs on the back of my neck erect in fright, I did the only thing I could think of to dispel such feelings. I turned to the shelves and withdrew the first book I could understand. It was a discourse on theoretical magic and the dead ends it still faced.

I plunged my mind in the research, seeking out anything that could rid me of the gripping power of this attraction. It worked, to an extent, and as the night darkened further, I flooded my mind with everything I could find. I needed an escape, and the more I tried to run from it, the more I realized its strength. I was caught in a situation that I could no longer control, one where my mind fought against itself for hours. I feared what would become of me, of Amethyst, and of the research that we so desperately wanted to complete.

Then, as my mind recalled every image I had of her in rapid succession, I saw my opportunity. I remembered her as she organized the mail, as she had controlled a situation that would have taken me hours in mere seconds, and I grasped it.

“You’re nothing,” I growled through grated teeth. “She’s not interested in something like you. Now quit this fanciful daydreaming and give it up. There are more important things to do than focus on frivolous desires that will never come to pass. Give up, Starswirl.”

As my personal lecture came to a close, I realized the time. Everything seemed to have happened so quickly, however, as I looked through the massive wall of windows, I saw a few stray bands of light streaming through the dust in the air. It was morning. I was in no state to work, as my mind was completely enraptured in both my attraction and my attempts to destroy it.

However, fate had other plans. Before I had a chance to escape from the laboratory which had become my prison, the single worst thing that could happen suddenly echoed through the room. Every defense mechanism that I had erected in my life began to crumble from one gentle sound. Panic took hold of my body as I rigidly refused to turn toward the door as its hinges groaned.

“Starswirl?” Amethyst asked.