//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 - Extracurricular Activities // Story: Lessons From Ponyville Elementary // by Blade Star //------------------------------// The small bell above the classroom door let out a sudden shrill ringing, as the clock struck three in the afternoon. The sound cut off my own lesson quite quickly; I knew I was getting close to the end of the day, but I could have sworn I had another fifteen minutes. In any case, the ringing of the school bell seems to have something of a Pavlovian effect on my students. Without fail, each one of them began to pack their stuff away and made for the door. Ah well, I was almost finished, and I was glad to see the back of Wednesday anyway. I called out to the near stampeding foals. “Alright, we’ll finish up with that tomorrow. Don’t forget you have a maths test on Friday. And please, please take your left over lunches with you! My husband is tired of me coming home smelling like PB&J’s. I’ll see you all at nine tomorrow.” Most of the kids acknowledged me in some way, usually quickly reply of ‘Yes, Mrs. Owen’. To be fair to them, they did all sit through the lesson without trouble, and the pre-classical era of Equestrian history could at times be quite dull. Thinking about that though reminded me of an important fact. Potentially, next week we’d be introducing a new lesson every Thursday; magic. A lot of the unicorn foals were now starting to slowly access their magic. From what I understand, when they’re born, it’s pretty much uncontrollable and can cause havoc for parents to keep it in check. A few weeks after though, and with the right spells from doctors, it goes dormant. It stays that way until they’re around eight or nine. This time, when it returns, it’s controllable, and the foals can actually be taught how to use their magic. A fortnight ago, Sweetie Belle had managed, after a lot of trying, to activate her own magic, as had Dinky and a few other unicorns. So, it was decided by the Board of Governors to bring in magic lessons. There was just one problem; I’m a human, and Cheerilee is an earth pony. While she may have innate earth pony magic, she doesn’t know that much about unicorn magic, certainly not enough to teach foals. So, we needed somepony else. There was one logical choice; Twilight Sparkle. Well, Princess Twilight Sparkle officially, but she rarely uses her title. The Element of Magic and Princess of Friendship knows pretty much all there is to know about magic. She’s taught the Cutie Mark Crusaders in the past, helping them with their studies, and she helped my own son, Blade Star, learn to properly use his own magic. As such, Cheerilee and I were rather hopeful that she would be able to lend a hoof each Thursday at the school. “Oh, and just to remind everypony, next week will be the start of magic lessons for unicorns, so make sure you come prepared for that.” There were a couple of cheers from Sweetie Belle and Dinky, while Diamond Tiara snorted in disgust. “I hope you’ve got somepony good, Mrs. Owen,” the spoiled filly said snarkily. “If they’re going to be teaching Sweetie Belle, they’re gonna need to be.” I scowled. “Diamond Tiara!” I barked, but the troublesome filly, along with her friend Silver Spoon had already scampered off. As the last few foals scampered out of the classroom, I sat down behind my desk and took a breath. It had been something of a long day; Wednesdays always are if you ask me. I was about to start stacking the chairs, when I heard somepony at the door clear their throat. Looking up, I spotted Cheerilee, the maroon coloured mare who originally served as the town’s only schoolteacher. With a second fully qualified teacher on hoof, the two of us share lessons, one teaching, while the other catches up on paperwork; marking homework and writing reports, and so on. She leaned against the doorway. “So are you going to see Twilight this evening?” she asked me curiously. We had a good week before the lessons were due to start, but knowing Twilight, she’d need a bit of time to plan, and possibly freak out a little. “Yeah, I’ll head out now,” I replied nodding. “I might as well. Her castle is nearer here than it is to home and it shouldn’t take long.” “Just hope she isn’t going off on one of those adventures with her friends,” Cheerilee joked. “I’ll lock up here. You can go on ahead.” Thanking her, I quickly gathered up my own supplies; a few files, my handbag, and the literacy homework I’d taken in today. Heading for the door myself, I took my set of keys off the hook. “Right, I’ll leave you to it then,” I said to Cheerilee as she finished stacking the chairs. “See you tomorrow morning. I’m still on for looking after that maths test on Friday, right?” Cheerilee nodded. With a final wave, I left and headed for Twilight’s castle. I caught myself, due to force of habit, heading the wrong way to start with. For a good long while since I’d lived here, the route to Twilight’s had been heading into the market square, up to town hall, turn left, right onto Stirrup Street and the second left to the end. That was where her home had been, where the Golden Oaks library had once stood. It was nothing but a husk now; little more than the stump remained, badly burnt and blackened. That was the result of a magic stealing psychopath called Tirek. He tried to kill Twilight when she was sent to stop him, and due to his poor aim, he missed the alicorn princess, and destroyed her home instead. That of course, only made her madder, and ultimately resulted in his downfall. But just as quickly as her old home was lost, a new one was created. For several month’s she’d been studying this box, given by a magical tree, which originally created the Elements of Harmony she and her friends used. Opening it not only allowed them to defeat Tirek, but also created a large, tree like, crystalline castle for her to live in. It was a massive building that rose well above all others in town. She’d moved what little had survived the fire in a few days ago. The poor mare still missed her old place though. Checking my direction, I headed to the far edge of town, the castle quickly coming into view. Heading up the steps, I knocked on the door and pulled the cord for the bell. A few moments later, a decidedly out of breath Spike opened the door and let me in. “Oh,” he wheezed. “Hi, Margaret. Sorry I took so long. I’m still finding my way around this place.” He gestured with a claw to the maze of halls beyond the map room. “Sorry to bother you, Spike,” I replied. “Is Twilight around?” The baby dragon nodded. “Yeah, she’s been organising the new library most of the day. And helping out Applejack too, I think. Why?” I quickly explained. “Sweetie Belle and a few of the other unicorns are getting access to their magic. Cheerilee and I aren’t qualified to teach that, so I thought Twilight, if she has the time, could pitch in every now and then with lessons for them.” I was about to go on, when all of a sudden, a lavender coloured blur all but ploughed into me. A second later, I found myself eyeball to eyeball with a very over eager Twilight Sparkle. “Of course I can help you with some magic lessons!” she exclaimed, a wide, but somewhat unhinged smile on her face. “Rarity was telling me that Sweetie Belle had managed to use levitation for the first time. Come on, let’s go to the school. I can draw up a yearlong lesson plan for you.” She then began to trot past me, and out into the street. I turned to follow her. “Er, Twilight?” I called after her. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to do everything here in your castle? I think Cheerilee has probably already locked the school up anyway.” Twilight was unphased though. “Oh, no, no, no, no,” she insisted. “I need to see what facilities the school has for practice areas, and which textbooks you’ll need, there’s so much to do!” She seemed eager to help, but there was something definitely wrong with her. From time to time, particularly when stressed, the alicorn is known to have these odd manic episodes, along with the occasional psychotic break. I turned back to Spike, who was still standing at the open door. He’d obviously been dealing with this all day. The small dragon looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. Whatever it was, even he didn’t know what was causing her behaviour. Waving goodbye to him half-heartedly, I hurried to catch up with Twilight, who had continued her planning without my involvement. She was no use to me crazy, and as I considered the mare a friend, I tried to broach the difficult subject. I cut across her stream of consciousness and stood in her path. “Twilight, are you okay?” I asked, with a note of concern in my voice. “Is something bothering you?” As I said before, she’s had these episodes in the past. According to her friends, the last time was just before they went to the Crystal Empire to face King Sombra. Celestia had told her there would be a test, and she went damn near crazy trying to prepare. The time before that, it had been her being late with a friendship report, and it resulted in her inadvertently causing chaos across Ponyville, thanks to a ‘Want It, Need It’ spell. I didn’t want an action reply of either of these. Twilight however, shook her head. “No, no, everything’s fine,” she insisted. “Come on, we’re almost there!” In the end, we did end up spending around an hour or so in the school, setting up everything Twilight would need to give basic magic lessons in one of the classrooms. She’d only be teaching the foals basics; levitation, light spells, transfiguration for the more advanced learners, and so on. And they wouldn’t be that strong, certainly not enough to affect me or Cheerilee. She also made a lengthy list of what she called ‘required’ texts on the study of magic. The unicorn foals were certainly in for a tough time when Twilight’s lessons started next week. When I asked her when she’d be available to help teach for an hour or so, Twilight initially insisted on daily magic lessons. It took a lot of persuading to get her to reduce it to just twice a week, and that was more than Cheerilee and I had planned. After all, while the unicorns were having their own special lessons, we needed to have something for the other foals to do. And at the same time, we had to give the unicorns a chance to catch up on their regular studies. This whole magic thing was going to play hell with our class schedules. Eventually, after far more of her help than was necessary, I managed to get Twilight to leave, and locked up the schoolhouse again. At times, that mare can be certifiable, and at others, she could be a brilliant person. This was decidedly the former. But since she wasn’t telling me anything, there was little I could do to help her. Shaking my head, I turned the key in the lock and headed to town. I was planning on heading straight home, but since I’d been stuck out here longer than I intended anyway, I decided that I might as well do some grocery shopping. Ponyville doesn’t exactly have a Co-op or Sainsbury’s, but it does have a good little town market which sells local produce. I needed to grab a few things for meals later in the week. It was just after four when I made it to the square, and business was beginning to die down. Still, most stalls were open and had a fair bit of produce left. Experience has taught me that around this time, you can usually find some good deals to. Equestrians barter like Arabs when it comes to sales; thank God I’ve been to Egypt. I needed a few apples for the apple crumble I wanted to make on Saturday. So I made for the stall belonging to Sweet Apple Acres. And who do I see there, but my own son; Blade Star, as he now calls himself. What was wrong with the name his own mother gave him I don’t know. And I don’t buy that whole ‘blending in’ argument of his. Lizzie kept her human name and she’s a pegasus. Still, it’s what he answers to. Well, that and ‘Bones’; the nickname Roger gave him after he developed his hillbilly accent. Sorry, I sound a bit critical of my own flesh and blood, don’t I? He’s my son, and I love him. But good God he can be trying at times. Still, he usually gives me a discount on apples. “Hello, Blade Star.” I greeted as I walked up to him. He was using his magic to move a few boxes around behind him. I guess he was starting to pack up for the evening. When he heard me, he turned around and smiled, pushing that cowpony hat of his back on his head. “Hey, Mom,” he returned kindly, his soft spoken accent plain to hear. “What can Ah get ya?” Reaching into my handbag, I fished out my shopping list. After this, I needed to get a few carrots from Golden Harvest, and some cherry tomatoes too. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any more of the golden delicious left?” I asked hopefully. He turned around and quickly checked his stock. Activating his magic again, which made both his horn and a few apples light up with a dark blue aura, he picked a few out and set them on the counter. “All Ah got left is these four.” he replied. I quietly cringed at his butchery of his own mother tongue. Still, the apples he presented looked to be in good nick and I only needed three. “I’ll take them. How much?” I asked. “Three bits for the four of ‘em?” he offered. It was a fair price. If the Equestrians had discovered decimalised currency, I might try to get it lower. But two bits was lowballing, and there was no ‘half-bit’ coin. “Sounds good to me.” I pulled out a carrier bag that I’d got with me; a habit of mine ever since the British government starting charging five pence extra for plastic bags. Bagging the four up, I struck up some idle conversation with my son. He’s grown up now, and I don’t see him as much as I used to. “So how’s everything?” I asked. “Applejack doing okay?” The pony nodded. "Yeah, we’re doing fine, Mom. AJ an’ me are fixin’ to go to the rodeo this year. Been trainin’ all week on those jumps. How ‘bout you? Ah know AB’s doin’ alright in her studies. Dad okay?” “Oh, can’t complain,” I answered. “Your father’s been keeping himself busy up in Canterlot. He’s certainly putting his PhD to work I can tell you.” I was about to go on, when I heard a pony clearing their throat behind me. Turning around, I was confronted with a somewhat irritated looking Bon Bon, who was patiently waiting her turn. I blushed a little in embarrassment. “Oh, sorry, Bon Bon.” I said, smiling a little. The earth pony didn’t smile back. I turned back to my son. “I’d best be off. I’ll see you around.” Grabbing the bag of apples, I quickly made my exit. My son has come a long way this past year or so. Before we ended up here, he was a student, fresh out of university, looking for work. And not finding any, I might add. The experience made him somewhat of a depressive, always seeing the glass as being half empty. When we ended up in Equestria, it turned him around, a bit too much if you ask me though. Excited at being in this world, at times, he was a little arrogant. But time here has slowly tempered that, and he’s settled down quite well. He’s got himself a good, steady job, a place to live, and what I could almost call a second family. As weird as he can be at times, I’m proud of him. Leaving the apple stand, I quickly worked my way around the market, grabbing what I would need, and leaving with a few bits to spare. With everything bought, and my shopping bag almost filled to the brim, I began to head for home. As I headed for home, I looked up at the sky. It had been fairly sunny all day; in fact it had been pretty nice all week. The foals had delighted in the warm weather, even if the school playground isn’t in the best of nick right now. Any child, regardless of species, hates spending their break time indoors. However, as I made for home, the sky began to darken a little as clouds began to fill up the sky. Now normally, I’d just accept this; weather is weather, after all. However, in Equestria, thanks to the pegasus ponies, weather is not something beyond control. In fact, it’s tightly regulated down to the last raindrop. The pegasi, you see, can actually manipulate the weather; they can walk on clouds, push them around, and even kick them out of existence. Most clouds are produced at their own floating city of Cloudsdale, at the famous weather factory. So, you understand why I was a little confused at the sudden cloud cover. We weren’t supposed to have anything but clear skies until late on Sunday according to the schedule. Squinting my eyes a little, I could make out the pegasi taking the small tufts of cloud and sticking them together to form large, black rainclouds. Amongst the half dozen or so ponies I saw, including Rainbow Dash; who acted as the captain for Ponyville’s patrol, I also picked out my daughter, Lizzie. She’s a dark blue pegasus, with a long, flowing dark brown mane. It’s not too dissimilar to how her hair looked before she changed. The whole thing was the result of my husband’s ‘best friend’, Discord, playing something of an April Fools joke on her. She lives with Fluttershy you see; helping her look after the animals she cares for in her spare time. When she was human though, there were often times she couldn’t do much to help out, since she couldn’t fly. Though to be fair, Fluttershy, despite being a pegasus doesn’t fly much. Anyway, a passing comment about this to Discord, and he worked his magic. The next morning she was a pegasus. It was only meant to last a week. But after living as a pony for that time, and getting an offer of a paying job from Rainbow Dash, who helped her learn to fly, she asked Discord to leave her as a pony, rather than undo the spell. And so, that was why she was up there now. She’s been with the Weather Patrol for a few months, and she recently finished her probation. She helps Rainbow and the other pegasi on the team to control the weather, particularly the rogue storms that sometimes blow in from the Everfree Forest. For whatever reason, those storms can’t be controlled, and all ponies look on the place as unnatural. She seemed to be doing a pretty good job building up a raincloud with another pegasus; a dark grey pegasus with a silver mane; Thunderlane I think his name is. He’s Rumble’s older brother. Rumble being one of the better behaved students in my class. Cupping a hand to my mouth, I called up to her. Presumably, she could tell me what was going on. It was unusual that the weather team would stray from the schedule like this. “Lizzie!” I called up. She didn’t hear me “Hey, Lizzie! What’s going on?” She stopped in her work and turned to look down at the ground. She quickly picked me out. Apparently pegasi have better eye sight than the other two tribes. She said something to Thunderlane, and then broke off. Pitching onto her side, she began a steep, swooping glide, before landing just a little in front of me. Folding her wings to her sides, she tilted her head, and looked at me curiously. “Something wrong, Mam?” she asked. While my son may sound like a hick cowpoke, my daughter hasn’t lost her accent, an odd mix of midlands and south Wales; a consequence of us moving when she was young. “I was wondering what you were up to,” I replied, gesturing skyward. “Isn’t it supposed to be dry this weekend?” Lizzie nodded. “Yeah, it was supposed to be. But the reservoir is starting to get low because of the heatwave. So we need a quick downpour to top it up again. Otherwise we might start to see brownouts according to the ponies up at the dam. Don’t worry; most of the rain is gonna fall tonight, it should stop early tomorrow. Then we can get back on schedule. I don’t think we have anything big until late next week.” It amazes me just how much control ponies have over their environment, and how fine-tuned everything has to be. Sometimes it makes me wonder how on earth humanity survived without such measures. “Any idea what time it’s going to start?” I asked. I had some washing out on the line which I’d rather not see get soaked again. Lizzie looked up at the growing storm. “Call it twenty minutes before we start it up?” she offered. I could get home in that time. “Oh, good,” I replied. “At least I don’t have to worry about getting the washing in in a hurry. Anyway, I’d best let you get back to work. Drop by on Saturday if you can, okay?” Lizzie opened her wings and began to flap, lifting herself a few feet into the air. “Yeah, sure, Mam. I’ll see you around.” She then began to flap her wings harder and slowly began to climb back up to her work. I meanwhile headed for home to put away the shopping and fetch that washing in. I got back to the house just before the rain hit. We have quite a large place, considering it’s just the two of us. It’s similar to most houses in town, a sort of mock Tudor style, with hints of Bavaria to it. We have a decent front garden, surrounded by a short, white picket fence and gate. A little stone path leads to the front door. The building is long, but not very deep. The front room and the kitchen both look out front. Up the stairs are a couple bedrooms and the bathroom, along with an en suite. It was empty at the moment of course. Roger wouldn’t be back for a couple of hours. It has been strange not having the kids around. They were both on the cusp of moving out when we ended up here. And events just hurried things along. Blade Star lives with the Apples, and Lizzie stays with Fluttershy at her cottage. As a result, I often come home to a quiet house. Maybe we should look into getting a pet or something? I spent the next hour or so, doing the washing. Luckily, everything had dried before the rain hit, so I could get straight on to ironing. I stuck a record, actually a CD of mine altered by Twilight to work on Equestria’s more antiquated technology, on the phonograph and set to work on the laundry. Just as I was finishing up, I heard the front door open. “I’m back!” a voice called from out in the hall. It was Roger, back from Canterlot. “In the kitchen!” I answered. “How was your day?” My husband, dressed in an expensive looking suit appeared in the door a moment later. “Oh, same old, same old,” he replied. “Although I think that ‘Trixie’ pony might be looking to appeal her sentence. Want me to make a start on dinner?” I nodded, setting the iron down to heat up again. “Sure. What do you fancy tonight?” I asked curiously. “Spag bol?” I smiled and nodded. Next Tuesday was the day Twilight’s lessons were due to start. We’d already had a brief meeting with parents on Monday, and Cheerilee had run everything by the board of governors. Since everypony was happy with everything, Twilight was free to make a start, with one of us supervising. The unicorns in my charge were all pretty excited at the prospect of learning magic, even more so at the idea of being taught by a genuine, bonafide princess. The lessons would take up one half hour lesson slot on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while either Cheerilee or myself would take the other foals to another classroom to do either homework catch up, or revision work. It wouldn’t be too taxing for them, and it wouldn’t leave the unicorn students in the dust, but they wouldn’t be getting the lesson off. It was just before nine when Twilight arrived. The foals were still all out on the playground until the bell rang, so we had plenty of time to set up. Cheerilee was watching the kids, so I went over to Twilight. “Hello there, Twilight,” I greeted as the lavender mare walked up. “Ready for your first day?” Twilight hadn’t actually brought that much. She was wearing her saddlebags, which held a few books and notes, but I saw no cartload of textbooks. She looked a little calmer today, and more relaxed. “I think so, Margaret,” she replied. “And listen, I’m sorry if I freaked you out the other day.” Ah, was I getting an explanation? Twilight continued. “I just wanted to be out of the castle for a while. I know it’s been a while now, but I still miss my old home at the library. I guess I was just avoiding my new home. I’ve been doing pretty much anything to get away from going there.” Her ears splayed back and she wouldn’t make eye contact. “Oh, it’s alright, Twilight. I can see where you’re coming from. It took me a while to get used to our new house here too. You just have to make it feel like home.” Twilight nodded. “It sure does now. When school finishes today, you should come and see what my friends have done to spruce up the place. Anyway, I just wanted to apologise if I worried you.” I shook my head and held up a hand. “No apology needed, Twilight,” I assured her. “As long as you can teach these youngsters, that’s fine with me. And I will drop by later. Maybe bring you a house, or should I say, castle warming gift.” Twilight was as good as her word. While Cheerilee looked after the pegasi and earth pony foals, I sat in on Twilight’s lesson. Since Twilight isn’t actually a licensed teacher, someone needed to be there to supervise. It was a fairly small class; Sweetie Belle, Dinky, Snails, and two or three others. After all, the whole class is no more than twenty-five. With Twilight’s help, they all made steady progress, even the not-so-bright Snails managed to make decent headway. When the bell rang, both teacher and students were quite pleased with themselves, with the youngsters scampering off outside to show off their newly learnt abilities. Okay, all they could do so far was lift small rocks, but when you’re a kid, that’s pretty impressive. Heck, if I hadn’t been surrounded by unicorns for the last year and a half, I would be pretty impressed too. When school let out an hour or so later, I headed back to Twilight’s castle. The place had indeed undergone some serious renovation. Chief among these was the new chandelier. It seemed that Applejack had come up with the idea. The five of them had dug out the remains of the old library and brought it over to the castle. While the bough and the branches were all virtually gone, the roots had survived mostly intact. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy had then flown it up and secured the whole thing to the ceiling above the main hall. With that done, Rarity had fastened on enchanted gems, each one showcasing a memory of Twilight’s time in her old home. It really was beautiful. It gave some…continuity, I suppose you could call it. The castle was no longer just a new place to stay, but a successor to the old library. It was a mix of the old and the new. It certainly pleased Twilight. She’s slowly taken to her new place, organising it as she wants. Other ponies have even helped out there, with Applejack and Pinkie Pie sprucing up the kitchen and Rarity doing up Twilight’s own room. Even the building itself has tried to resemble Twilight’s old library, being a great tree rather than anything else. By the time Thursday rolled around she was more than back to her usual self. A quick amendment to her previous teaching plan, and we had a good little curriculum to use for the year. The kids quickly adapted too, with the unicorns all looking forward to their specialised lessons. Though there was the odd side effect; Sweetie Belle learning to levitate things toward Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, neither of whom liked the idea that they couldn’t be part of the magic lessons. But aside from that, things quickly settled down into a routine, as they always did in the end. Now I just have to try and devise some sort of magical exam for them all. Who knows, maybe one day, like Twilight, they’ll be off to Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns.