//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 // Story: Shimmer; or The Equestrian Prometheus // by Mr Fislewait //------------------------------// My departure from Canterlot was not a particularly high profile affair. I was only Celestia's personal protegee, and with the relatively recent arrival of a new royal to the city most interest in me had waned. Who was I but another in a long line of success stories to emerge from her school for unicorns? Oh, once the nobles and courtiers had doted upon me as though I was somepony special, but just as I had realized the limitations of my ambition, so too had they realized my comparative insignificance in Equestria with the arrival of Cadance. So it was that there was no pomp or ceremony on my departure, Celestia even suggesting I take the train as opposed to a chariot. We exchanged a few brief words about the nature of my new placement, she wished me luck, expressed her admiration for my choice and hinted that she expected 'great things' from me. Considering how low key my departure from Canterlot was going to be, it came as a great surprise to find myself accosted by the very pony who had set the whole chain of events into motion, before I could step one hoof outside of the castle. "Sunset! You weren't planning on leaving without saying goodbye were you?" I paused and turned to face the speaker in surprise, I had not expected Cadance to take any particular interest in me leaving. The two of us barely spoke to one another, barely even saw each other about the castle. Despite an occasional nudging from my mentor I had never really considered the two of us to be 'friends', and yet there she stood, disappointment clearly plastered across her face. "I won't be gone too long," I replied curtly, "it's going to be a temporary placement, I won't be far from Canterlot, it isn't some big deal." "Not a big deal? Sunset, I know you're new to the whole friendship thing but you're meant to tell your friends when you are leaving for an extended period," it was a curious statement, one that gave me pause for for thought. "Friends? You consider the two of us friends?" Another day I might have filled my voice with malice or petty sarcasm, but it seemed foolish to leave Canterlot on poor terms with the mare who would likely be occupying most of my mentor's time during my absence, plus I was more than a little surprised, even a mare as saccharine as Cadance surely realized that our relationship was frosty at best. "Well, maybe not the best of friends..." she chuckled, "but aunt Celestia certainly wants the two of us to get along and-" I raised a hoof to stop her before she could continue, thinking that I knew where the conversation was heading. "I might not be some friendship expert, Cadance, but I doubt Celestia wants the two of us hanging about out of some sense of obligation to her," she gave a barely audible sigh as though disappointed and I considered my options. Remaining within her good books could be beneficial to my future and Celestia had asked that I make some friends during my absence, perhaps there was some merit to Cadance's words after all. In a way accepting her offer of friendship would be upholding my end of the bargain with Celestia, and Cadance being in Canterlot would limit my need to spend time on being her friend. It seemed so pragmatic, so sensible, the friendship Celestia wanted me to find without it cutting into the valuable time that could be spent on studying. "That being said...I'm not adverse to the idea of us being friends." "Really?" it was unsurprising that my sudden change of heart caught her off guard, she was quite right to be suspicious of my sincerity. "Really." She stopped and looked me over from horn to hoof, from anpony else I might have assumed the scrutiny to be a sign of suspicion, looking to catch me out in my half truth, from her it felt more like lighthearted curiosity. "Great! I know you've got the address for the castle memorized but I'll include it in my first letter," she embraced me in a brief winged hug, clutching me tightly to her body before quickly separating, "best of luck to you in Ponyville, and I can't wait to hear from you!" She was gone with the same suddenness as she had arrived, leaving me standing dumbfounded at what had just happened. Apparently I was now pen pals with The Princess. It should be repeated at this point that I was a Canterlot mare, through and through. I had rarely left the confines of the capital except on the occasional field trip with an academic class or Celestia herself. I take no shame in admitting my experiences were somewhat 'lacking' and so it should come as no surprise to find that I was sorely underwhelmed upon arriving at my new home. The train ride had been a little rough, bumpy at times with hard wooden seats and my noisy fellow passengers keeping me from being able to focus upon my reading. Not the Black Book mind you, I had long since read that particular tome from cover to cover ten times over. I could gain no more insight from that manuscript without a cadaver to experiment upon and more experience at surgery. No, my current readings were all Celestia approved and important to my education as a potential doctor. Bray's Anatomy, Hors'ts the Heart, Cartz's Principles of Surgery, Horseson's Principles of Internal Medicine... I intended to excel in my new study with the same dedication and enthusiasm as I had in my past lessons. Though secretly I hoped to someday surpass the works of those I was studying, there was no harm to be had in learning from their experiences and their mistakes. Where was I though? Ah yes, the quaint little town of Ponyville. In many ways 'town' felt a little grand for the settlement. While it was granted that Ponyville was home to many facilities that one wouldn't expect from a village (the hospital for one), its general appearance was entirely in keeping with what I expected of some unheard of backwater hamlet. Thatched rooftops, dirt roads, a truly sorry excuse for a train station... I hadn't been expecting Manehattan but I had certainly been optimistic that the 'town' would be a little grander than what I was met with as I stepped onto the platform. "Hey there! Sunset I presume?" I turned to see a snow white mare with a pink mane pointing a hoof at me. I blinked a few times trying to work out why she would know who I was until I remembered that Celestia had mentioned arranging for somepony to meet me at the station and help me get settled. "Redheart?" that was the name Celestia had given me before I left, and a quick glance at her cutie mark supported my thesis that it was her. "That's me. I don't want to sound rude, but you're a lot younger than I was expecting," her eyes flicked across my frame, no doubt noting the various signs of my somewhat pampered lifestyle, though I liked to think myself better than many of the vacuous nobles I still tried to maintain the same level of appearance that was kept by many of the elite, it was important to have standards. "I get that a lot," it was an irritating truth that most ponies expected the prized student of Celestia to be some withered old creature, long past their prime. All of my predecessors had expired in the centuries long past, yet their legacies lived on, when a pony heard 'personal apprentice to Celestia', it was those ancient scholars and wizards they thought of, not some youthful mare still undergoing her training. "So, where shall I be staying?" My 'home' turned out to be a large tree that had been converted into a public library. It was a significant departure from the luxurious private quarters that I was used to and I have no shame in admitting that I initially found something repulsive about the notion that anypony could simply wander into my new home and browse the shelves that made up the bulk of it. I didn't resent Celestia for her decision though, it was more likely she picked the building to appeal to my love of books and study than as a means of spiting me by forcing strangers upon me. In my time there I did come to grow attached to the building, but it was never home. No, my true home away from home came to be somewhere else, but I shall get to that in due course. Having dropped my bags off in the library the two of us had a quick tour of the town, Redheart pointing out the few buildings of any real note, her own address, and generally filling in gaps in the natural conversation with anecdotes about the townsponies. The fact that the most interesting piece of local gossip was in regards to an ongoing rivalry between the town's two resident bakers spoke volumes for how mundane life here must be. Why should I care if Mr What'shiscarrot and Miss What'shercup what constantly at each others throats? If I had found the petty intrigues of court to be a tiresome affair then the gossip of Ponyville barely seemed worth listening to. For all of the banal goings on within the town though the conversation did eventually lead into a topic that I found infinitely more interesting. We had been talking about the weather schedule of all things (truly a sign that we were scraping the bottom of the barrel for topics) when Redheart mentioned a specific peculiarity about Ponyville. "...so in general we get the occasional spell of rain when the fields need watering but otherwise the weather is pretty good, well, unless something drifts in from the Everfree." "The Everfree? I'd heard that was home to monsters," at the time I had no idea just how close the infamous forest was to the town. The border between the Everfree and Ponyville is poorly represented in most maps, having lived in the town I can confirm that their proximity is much closer than most would imagine it to be, the calmer more sedate edges of the forest practically spilling into the town. "Well it is, but it's also home to wild weather, untamed storm clouds, hail storms in the winter..." Redheart trailed off and looked over towards the infamous forest, pointing it out with one hoof. It was only then that I realized the closeness of it. Sure enough I could make out heavy black clouds in the distance above those untamed trees, I imagine a pegasus could tell them apart from normal weather at a glance, but to my untrained eyes there was little difference between them and a scheduled downpour. "Are they...common in the Everfree? Storm clouds that is," I tried to keep my interest in check, not wishing to sound unduly fascinated by the phenomenon. The truth of course was that they intrigued me, and not simply because of some passing academic curiosity. In his notes 'S' had remarked upon the curious fashion in which electricity could be used to crudely bring spasms of life back to a dead body or severed limb. In my own replications of his work I had been sorely limited in my ability to replicate this specific experiment as I had no Pegasus ally that I felt I could trust with my work, so easily could my studies be misunderstood as something nefarious. But with a readily available source of 'natural' lightning... I will admit I was practically salivating at the potential applications. It was at that moment that the first nagging thought pricked at the back of my mind; if a small jolt of energy could briefly reinvigorate a body, then what of the untapped reserves of lightning in the Everfree? This brief flight of fancy may have ended there and gone no further if it were not for what Redheart went on to say. "Oh, very common. That's not all though, the place is crawling with Manticores, Cockatrices and perhaps worst of all, Timberwolves," she shuddered at the name. I was familiar with the others but the word 'Timberwolf' had never featured in any of my prior reading. "Timberwolf?" "Horribe creatures, nopony knows exactly what made them, but they're magically animated dead wood that take on the forms of wolves and hunt anything that ventures into the forest. I'd steer clear of them if I were you," oh Redheart meant well, but her every word attempting to dissuade me from venturing into the Everfree only heightened my interest in it. Dead wood given life anew, and not just life, but sentience! Even in his wildest experimentation 'S' had failed to achieve such a thing, but what if they were to be studied, Daring? What if that same magic that gave the Timberwolf life could be replicated and turned towards a constructive purpose? "So there is nothing in the forest but bad weather and deadly monsters?" I asked the trainee nurse, hoping to pry further information from her about the unexpected gold mine that I had found upon my doorstep. "Well, there's the Castle of the Sisters, but nopony ever ventures that far into the forest. The place is probably completely ruined through neglect by now," that was truly the icing on the cake. A large abandoned building from which I could conduct my own experiments, safe from the prying eyes of the ignorant masses? It felt like destiny, as though providence itself had laid out all the necessary components to assist me in continuing the studies that had been so easily thwarted in Canterlot. Perhaps I wasn't destined for the greatness of being a Princess, perhaps I could never hope to be an equal to Cadance or Celestia, but I could make my own mark upon the world, I could reveal to ponykind wonders of medicine the likes of which had never before been dreamt of. The name 'Sunset Shimmer' would go down in history as one of the great benefactors of Equestria, not fall into anonymity and be forgotten by time as the mysterious 'S' had been before me. My birth might have been inconsequential, but I would achieve greatness by my own hoof, and the Everfree would be the key that opened that path up to me. Or so I thought.