• Published 14th Jul 2013
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The Education of Clover the Clever - Daedalus Aegle



Some people think lectures and classes are for educating. Star Swirl the Bearded has no patience for those people.

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Chapter 12: Practical Applications - Public Relations

As the sun rose over Circle Square, Clover Cordelia was there with her head held high and her hood pulled back, her green curls out for all to see.

The square was full of ponies, and she realized that not all of them had forgotten or forgiven the events of the past weekend. That was alright: with time they would all come around. She ignored the whispers, the sideways glances, and the petty scowls.

They would not stop the Mission.

She trotted up to the big notice board in the center of the square, and levitated out the contents of her saddlebag. With great concentration she placed the poster on the board, positioned the nail, and hammered it in. She continued putting in more nails until it was secure on every side, and every corner, then she stepped back and admired her hoofwork.

The poster read:

WIZARD FOR HIRE
Problems Solved – Curses Lifted – Evil Spirits Banished – Sage Advice Dispensed!
Beneficial Enchantments, Charms, Potions For Sale At Reasonable Prices
To Cure Your Ailments Physical, Mental, or Magical!
Consultations By Appointment
No Problem Too Great Or Too Small
All Are Welcome!
Ponies Of All Tribes And Others
None Will Be Turned Away!
IMPROVE YOUR LIFE TODAY
With The Help Of STAR SWIRL the BEARDED
Inquire At Canterlot House 1 In Pony Or By Post

Underneath it was a simple drawing of the wizard himself, in profile, gazing off into the distance from under his hat.

There was a cough from behind her. “Excuse me, are you Clover?”

“Yes, that's me,” Clover turned to see a young stallion smiling at her. “Can I help yoooouuuu...?”

Oh he has really big eyes.

The young stallion – about her own age, Clover would guess – was a light blue unicorn wearing a scarf in the colors of the Academy of Magic. His mark showed a short, thick-bristled brush. His mane was a soft purple with darker spots, rough and tumbled, with little curls falling around the edges that made him look like he'd just stepped out of the shower. His big eyes were green, and soft, and open, and he was smiling a little awkwardly.

Clover did not know if she had ever seen a more gorgeous colt.

“What's this?” he asked, pointing at the poster.

“Oh! I'm here to let everypony know that Star Swirl the Bearded is open for business from the public,” she said, reciting her memorized pitch. “Most ponies think Star Swirl is some kind of embittered recluse, but the fact is he welcomes everyone to come to him with their problems. Did anything catch your eye?”

“Well… about that one,” he pointed. “Sage advice dispensed? What kind of thing can he give advice about?”

“Oh, just about anything,” Clover gushed. “Is there something special you're thinking of?”

“Yeah, I have a problem I could get some advice for,” he said, and laughed awkwardly. “I kind of need to apologize to a filly and I don't know how.”

Clover's mind filled with the possibilities of Star Swirl giving advice for young colts on how to talk to fillies. Many of the possibilities involved fire. Some involved meteor impacts.

There could be deaths. Or, if not deaths, at least a historic slapping of faces.

“Oh,” Clover said.

The colt cleared his throat. “You are Clover, right? Clover Cordelia?”

“That's me,” she said, chuckling theatrically. “The blackhearted apprentice to the mad wizard herself, in the flesh.”

“My name's Dusty,” the colt said. “Nice to meet you. I intern at the museum in my spare time. I wanted to talk to you about the thing that happened last weekend.”

Clover groaned at the reminder. “Look, if the museum is expecting an apology or something it's not going to happen.”

“No, no!” He shook his head urgently. “Quite the opposite, if anything. Look, I…” He sighed, and sank his head. “I wanted to say I'm sorry you got kicked out and blacklisted. I can't do anything about it, I'm just a lowly henchpony there, but I know that none of what happened was your fault and that you were only trying to help. So, sorry about that.”

Clover felt her cheeks warming at the words. “Oh… well, thank you. I appreciate that.”

“It was a pretty crazy day at the museum even before Star Swirl showed up, if you can believe it,” Dusty said. “Well, you know how it is at the museum. The staff schedule is a historical document that can't be altered, ancient spirits are breaking out of old stuff down in storage, organized protests by religious ponies who don't believe in the past...”

Clover raised a hoof to her muzzle as she laughed, and the colt beamed.

“Alright, that's a bit exaggerated. Still, it's a crazy stressful job. The head curator's idea of on the job training is to just tell you what to do but not why or how, and then she yells at us when we get it wrong.” He shook his head. “Miss Polish... she's great at what she does, but she's not so great at dealing with other ponies. She's an old warpony, you know.”

That sure sounds familiar. Clover nodded. “I know the feeling.”

“Yeah. But I'm sorry she took it out on you.”

Clover felt the blush burning its way up from her chest towards her cheeks. Dusty didn't seem to notice. He was looking at the poster. “So old Star Swirl is going to open up his business then?”

“Strictly speaking he always had,” Clover said. “He just didn't bother to tell anypony. But that's going to change. I'm going to hang these up all over town, and ponies are going to learn to appreciate everything he has to offer.”

“That's cool,” Dusty smiled. “I heard about you at the dorms—”

Clover felt a pit open up in her stomach. “There are rumours about me?” she blurted out. “None of it's true!” But Dusty was shaking his head and laughing.

“Sorry,” he said between chuckles. “I just meant that I heard you're really excited about your work, and that if anypony can give the old pony a run for his bits it's you. And I think that's really cool. Nothing worse than that.”

Again Clover felt her green cheeks turning pink as her heartbeat sped up. “Thanks...” she mumbled awkwardly, her tongue suddenly bloated and clumsy in her mouth.

Before she could manage another word they heard a bell ringing in the distance. Dusty looked up at the clock tower above the city hall down the street. “Horsefeathers,” he muttered. “I have to get going. It was really nice to meet you.”

“Oh,” Clover suddenly felt regretful for no reason she could understand. “Yeah… you too.”

There was a heavy silence as both ponies remained in place, each wanting to get another look at the other before they had to leave.

Dusty opened his mouth to speak, reconsidered, glanced around, opened his mouth to speak again, hesitated, and licked his lips. “Listen...” Clover's ears shot forward to hear. “I have class in a bit, and then I have to stop by my flat, but would you like to go out for coffee later?”

“I'd like that,” Clover said with a slight squeal.

“Great!” He grinned, and his grin was adorable in its awkward enthusiasm. “I'll pick you up at five and we can go to Black Bean's?”

“Sure,” she said, and looked after him wistfully as he cantered down the street with a spring in his step.

Just before he turned the corner and left her sight he burst into a pronk, and Clover snorted with laughter.

– – –

Clover was still grinning to herself when she arrived at Canterlot House 1. It was empty, and quiet except for the soft humming of distant machinery.

With a grin, she set up the gramophone on her workspace, put on one of her favorite records, and began to dance with her eyes closed.

She wasn't even surprised or bothered when she opened her eyes to see that Star Swirl had silently trotted up beside her and was watching her as though she were some strange new insect.

“I have a date,” she triumphantly declared before he could ask. “I met a nice young stallion, and he asked me out for coffee. I said yes.”

“Congratulations,” Star Swirl said, entirely without enthusiasm.

Clover giggled. “You can't fool me, Professor. I know you actually meant that a little. But there's more. It's begun.” She pointed a hoof at him. “I have been spreading word of your work all over town. Everypony in Cambridle now knows that Star Swirl the Bearded knows potions, charms, enchantments, and assorted other arcane solutions to fix myriad little problems that afflict everypony every day, and will sell them to anypony for a reasonable price. You're not getting out of it. I'll make them myself if I have to, and sell them under your name.”

“You're quite serious about this, aren't you,” Star Swirl said blankly. “You know I took you on as my apprentice to study magic, Clover. Not public relations.”

“I've made time for both,” Clover said. “Like it or not, Star Swirl, I am going to show everypony all the good you do.”

Star Swirl tilted back his head and looked up at the ceiling as he stroked his chin. “I could just increase your workload,” he said. “But I won't. I think this is something you have to fail on your own terms.”

“There will be no failing,” Clover said, “because you have made a grave tactical error, Star Swirl. If you truly did not want anypony to think well of you, you should not secretly have been a hero. I have been reading through your case histories, professor, and I have incontrovertible proof that you have saved lives, warded off terrible curses, and given wise counsel to all and sundry!”

“Confound it!” Star Swirl recoiled in mock horror. “You have me dead to rights!”

Clover raised a leg triumphantly. “Yes! Also there was something about saving the world from sirens, but that book had been left in the damp and a lot of it was illegible. You need to tell me that story sometime.”

“Eurgh,” Star Swirl grumbled and shook his head. “I will not. I wondered where that volume had gone. I hate that story.”

Clover gave him her mother's disapproving stare. He rolled his eyes in response. “We will see,” he begrudgingly conceded. “But tell me, Clover, now that you've hung up that poster of yours, what exactly do you think is going to happen?”

“Oh, well, I expect we will shortly start getting inquiries from the locals about procuring your services,” Clover began. “I've planned ahead, and have already prepared a scheduling system for keeping track of consultations.”

“Consultations,” Star Swirl said, his voice flat and lifeless.

Clover nodded. “That's right. Consultations. Appointments with clients, here in your workplace. You are going to listen to their problems and offer advice and solutions. And since we are going to respond to all inquiries with good cheer and efficiency, word will spread and more orders will come in. I have calibrated my expectations to be modest, but I fully expect that with time we will become the toast of the town.”

Star Swirl raised an eyebrow. “Answer me honestly, Clover: you actually trust me to treat ponies who come to me off the streets with courtesy and respect?”

Clover halted and turned to face her teacher. “I'm not blinking,” she said, and looked straight into his eyes. “Professor. You've told me again and again that I should trust you. And while you have quite frankly made it unnecessarily difficult at times to do so, you have never actually let me down. What's more, you told me yourself that anypony who asks for your expertise will get an honest answer. So yes, professor, I do trust you, and I have faith that you will treat our new clients with courtesy and respect.”

“That's interesting,” Star Swirl said, nodding slowly as he thought. “That's very interesting indeed.”

Clover nodded, and smiled wickedly. “Also, if you are tempted to turn mean, I will be sitting right beside you to keep the discussion on track.”

Star Swirl chuckled at that, to Clover's great satisfaction as she skipped away to prepare.

It was a few hours later that the doorbell rang, and Clover yelled “I'll get it!” before skipping to the front door. Her face lit up as she saw Dusty outside.

“Hi Clover,” he said, and brought up a small bouquet of flowers. “I got you these.”

It was not an expertly arranged bouquet, and the flowers were wild. Probably he had picked them himself, and as he held them up the sight of his wide eyes and eager, nervous smile made Clover melt inside. She squealed exactly like a seventeen-year old school filly as she took them. “Thank you! I'll just put these in some water. I'll be right out, just wait inside the door okay?”

He nodded and stepped inside the entrance hallway. He looked around idly, not noticing the shadow that was growing up through the floor behind him.

“Who,” Star Swirl the Bearded slowly intoned, “are you?”

The colt tensed up, then slowly turned around with a stiff smile on his face. “You must be Professor Star Swirl,” he said. “I'm Dusty. Me and Clover are just going out for coffee.”

Star Swirl looked straight through him. “Are you,” he said, and his voice was as the sound of iron striking iron far beneath the waves of the sea, sending deep echoes that carried through the stone and up into his bones.

It took a great deal of effort for Dusty to nod his head while trying to keep his smile from cracking. The colt met Star Swirl's eyes, and saw swords and needles and manacles and all manner of sharp and unpleasant things.

There was a long silence as the wizard studied him unhappily.

“You will have your coffee, and you will treat her with respect,” Star Swirl eventually said. “Otherwise unspeakable things will happen to you.”

“I'm back!” Clover came bouncing along to the entrance, rubbed up against Dusty's side and wrapped her ankle around his. “Oh, you've met Star Swirl already?” she looked at her teacher, and grinned at the sight of the discomfort evident in his eyes. “Don't let him scare you. He's just a big softie, really.”

“Am I,” he said.

“Yes you are,” Clover said with a smirk, and dragged Dusty out the door.

She closed the door behind her with her magic, leaving Star Swirl staring at the plain wooden barrier, deep in thought.

Before long he came to a resolution. He lit up his horn, and vanished from sight.

The door opened and closed, seemingly of its own volition, and the house was empty.

– – –

Meanwhile, someplace else entirely, something else was happening.

In downtown Cambridle a shopkeeper pony was packing his bags and preparing to leave town to stay with a friend for the foreseeable future. He was just about to flip the sign and lock the front door when it swung open, ringing the bell, and a customer stepped in.

A customer with talons.

The shopkeeper had seen griffons, of course, but never up close. He certainly had never had one in his shop before. He stared while trying not to look like he was staring, and the griffon did not seem to notice, or if he did notice, did not seem to care.

He was wearing a red leather coat, a piece of griffon fashion that stood out like a sore hoof in the lands of ponies. A broad belt clasped around his barrel (do griffons have barrels?, the pony wondered) with an iron buckle of the kind a pony hoof could not hope to operate.

There was a soft clatter as he moved, only audible in the sudden piercing silence of the shop. Underneath his belt there hung a variety of tools for jobs the shopkeeper could not picture: sharp and metallic. There were pouches from which wafted scents the shopkeeper knew well, ingredients to alchemical and magical purposes.

“Yesss...” The griffon looked around, eyeing the displayed wares critically, nodding slowly. “This will do nicely.”

The shopkeeper gulped. “Can I help you… sir?”

The griffon turned and sized him up with a glance, and grinned. The shopkeeper had not known it was even possible to grin with a beak.

“I believe you can,” the griffon said, his voice smooth and confident and predatory. His collar was open, and from the inside the shopkeeper could see the hilts of what might well have been very large knives. “Your shop looks like it has everything I need… For starters,” here the shopkeeper heard the clinking of heavy coins in a pouch shifting rhythmically between and around the griffon's claws. “I'd like some directions.”

– – –

When Clover returned to Canterlot House some hours later it was with a smile on her face and a spring in her step. She called out in a sing-song voice as she skipped into the research hall: “Professor, I'm back!”

The coffee date had been lovely. They had chatted about their studies and their work, and before long Clover found herself deep in a discussion about the historicity of Baaowulf.

Clover was thrilled. She hadn't had a discussion about things that interested her with another pony her own age since she first became Star Swirl's student. They talked, they laughed, they navigated sudden gaps in which neither of them could think of anything to say and took recourse to giggling like foals, and at the end of it he had walked her back home and said goodbye with a wish that they could do it again soon.

Clover couldn't stop grinning. She cantered over to her workspace and let herself fall onto the beaten old couch, and stared up at the ceiling with a smile on her face.

The balcony was beautiful in the moonlight, the slight chill a welcome variation from the powerful warmth of a thousand candles, and two score of dancing ponies inside the ballroom. The gala had been beautiful, and Clover had been radiant and gay in her beautiful gown and the necklace her mother had given her for the occasion.

Everypony present, from the Neighpon ambassador in his elaborate ceremonial kimono to the colonel from the pegasus army, had been captivated by her beauty, and had cast envious glances to the young unicorn stallion at her side, the stallion who now cleared his throat and gently laid his hoof upon her shoulder.

“Clover, I...” Sir Dusty stammered. “I've never felt this way about anypony before. When I think about you, my face burns and my pulse quickens.”

Clover fluttered at his words, her knees going wobbly as she pressed tighter up against him. “Go on,” she urged.

“When I see your smile my heart skips like a cheap clock,” he continued, with an embarrassed chuckle. “When I'm with you, I feel like I could do anything, and when I hold you in my arms all the world besides melts away and I want only to stay like this forever.”

Clover purred as she nuzzled him, and raised her head to face him. Their eyes met, their muzzles barely apart. Their lips parted. “Clover,” Sir Dusty said, hesitantly, his body tense and nervous, as she gripped around his chest and prepared to pull him into her kiss, “I think I—”

“Clover!” Star Swirl the Bearded yelled. “Watch out for the sharklion! Its bite can crush Ponium Steel!”

Clover froze up, and pushed the stallion away before their lips met. “I'm sorry, what?”

Sir Dusty stammered, and bashfully ran a hoof through his mane. “I've never done this before. Clover, ever since I met you I've felt that my bachelor pony days seem so empty, and pointless. You've shown me that life can be so much more than just drunken parties and—”

Clover screamed as a massive creature with a shark's head and fin, a black stringy mane, and powerful orange-furred legs with massive claws at the ends of its broad paws, leapt out through the jungle underbrush and roared at her.

“Back, you beast!” Star Swirl the Bearded cried, waving a blazing torch and a fishing net at the creature. “You will not stop us from reaching the Caldera of Sorrows!”

“Clover?” Sir Dusty asked. His hoof stroked gently down her mane and sent shivers down her spine, and she all but melted into his embrace. “You seem so distracted all of a sudden. Is something wrong?” He gasped. “Is it... is there somepony else?”

“No!” Clover protested. “I swear, there is nopony in my heart but you, it's just that... well, I have a lot of chores to do, and...”

“Come, Clover, and stab the iopometer through the black obsidian heart of the caldera.” Clover yelped as she grabbed the instrument her teacher had just thrown at her head. “Beware, for the pierced heart will unleash noxious fumes of volcanic magma, but this is the only way to recover the readings we need to determine the age of the caldera, and kill the debate once and for all.”

Clover ground her teeth together. “Darnit, Star Swirl, I am trying to have a romantic moment here!”

Clover let her head fall to the table and groaned. “He's not even here and he's still ruining my fantasies,” she muttered.

Any further attempts to find imaginary happiness were interrupted when the front door slammed open, followed by a stranger's voice cursing loudly.

Clover looked up to see the cause of the disturbance. Star Swirl was backing into the room, dragging an earth pony stallion along by a rope held between his teeth. His magic, she could see, was otherwise occupied restraining the pony's legs, and the pony did not seem happy.

“This is ponynapping!” the earth pony yelled, straining against the magic holding him in place. “Let! Me! GO!”

“...Professor?” Clover stood watching the bizarre sight from the corner of the room. Both the ponies turned to her.

“You!” the earth pony yelled. “Help me! This lunatic abducted me off the street— MMPH!”

Star Swirl forced his muzzle shut with an expertly-tied noose. “Clover,” he said simply, nodding in greeting. “Do not let anypony in until I come out. I am going to require some privacy with mister Sprout here.”

Clover watched in horror as her mentor dragged the pony, struggling to escape and desperately trying to cry out for help, through the doorway to his private laboratory. The door closed behind them, and Clover heard the sharp, loud click of the lock.

Author's Note:

The penultimate storyline begins.