How To Hatch Your Dragon
"Who is the Faithful Student, Mommy?" the little grey unicorn filly with the blond mane asked her mother.
The cross-eyed Pegasus smiled and pulled the little filly into a warm embrace.
"The Faithful Student story begins with a filly. A filly like you, Dinky. This filly, however loved learning above all. She was the brightest little filly of all and her parents were very proud of her. Sadly, there was one thing that weight heavily on her mind."
"What was it?" Dinky asked, captivated.
"No matter how much that poor little filly read, no matter what she learned she just couldn't find out what her Cutie Mark was." Derpy paused, bathing in her little rascal's excitement, looking deeply into his eyes.
"That is.." she continued "until one fateful day. The day the little filly was to enroll in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.
It was that special day, that should change the little unicorns life forever...
She could barely hold her excitement she was about to enroll in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. The thought alone made her giddy and so she found herself happily bouncing around her parents library, a grin on her face, so wide it was nearly creepy...or at least that was what her brother said anyway. She couldn't care less.
Not that she didn't love her brother, no, no, it's quite the opposite, actually, she loved her BBBFF (Big Brother Best Friend Forever) dearly.
Yes, that's one hell of a cheesy name but she shouldn't realise this until much later. For now, she was just a little filly, excited about the day to come.
And so she was prancing and bouncing through her parents library and was hardly able to contain her excitement, when her father, Nightlight, came in.
"Hey sweetie." he greeted her laughing, which was answered immediately by his little bundle of joy jumping into his embrace and giggling happily.
"Hey, hey!" he chided playfully "slow it down a little. I have something to tell you, my little star."
Nightlight was an astronomer in the Royal Canterlot Astronomers Guild and a good one at that. So it probably were the countless nights he went stargazing with his daughter that made her pick up on his love for the stars, hence his pet name for her.
"What is it, daddy? Do you have a new book about magic for me?"
"Sadly not, my dear. No, I just wanted to tell you, that we got word, from Celestia's School, that they have assessed your exposé and have decided that you will be the first one to take up a new entrance exam they thought up. They told me it'll be a test in magic."
"Wait!" Dinky exclaimed. "So you tell me, that this filly was the first one who had to take up that test? That seems pretty unfair."
"Oh, I see what you mean." her mother replied.
It was common knowledge, that most unicorn fillies and colts had problems even with elemental levitation magic and usually overcame them only a little later than pegasi learned to fly. So, of course, having that little filly take a magic-test as entrance exam seemed hardly fair. Anyways, Derpy just beamed at her daughter and went on.
"Don't worry, the faithful student should come to thank that exam later."
"In Magic?" the faithful little student asked.
"What do they want me to do?"
"That I don't know, sweetie. I only know it shall be a test of your magical ability."
"Oh. Okay."
Seeing her ears drop he swooped her up in a hug.
"Don't worry, my star, you will ace that exam. I know it!"
"Yeah. I will." she answered with a weak smile.
***
"No, no, no I will fail, I will never pass this exam!." the little filly frantically shouted to herself, while she was practically running in circles in the library. Books all over the floor and bags under her sleep deprived eyes. "How am I supposed to pass if I don't even know what I will be tested in?! Levitation? Transmutation? Illusion spells? Raw magic ability? How am I even supposed to learn for that?! Aaaargh"
Thunk! The sound echoed through the library. The faithful student had thrown a book in her frustration. A sacrilege to every true bibliophile as she herself claimed to be.
It had been getting worse and worse over the past few days and the day of the exam was nearing. First the little filly was in good spirits, she just had to double her efforts, learn all night and try her best to acquire as much magical knowledge as she could. But she was soon to realise, that even she couldn't possibly learn this much, in such short time.
Teeth-grittingly she limited herself to studies about magic in general as her mother convinced her, that more advanced things would hardly be part of an entrance exam.
But her parents assurances were in vain, her nervousness grew with the hour.
Looking up from the book she'd just thrown she felt a tap on her shoulder.
"It's time, sweetie." her mother said.
It took her a few seconds to process but her time for preparation was indeed up. Feeling anxiety rising in her gut, she gulped.
"You can do it, sweetie, have faith in yourself." she heard her mother say.
But she hadn't. Each step towards the exam felt heavier and heavier. Her parents seemed to grow bigger and bigger. What if she disappointed them? What if she failed miserably? Would they still love her? With each step Celestia's school which she had longed to visit all her life seemed more and more threatening. It's towers became higher and higher. She felt sick.
It was only when her mother suddenly hugged her that she realised that she'd been shivering.
"It's all right, sweetie" she heard her cooing. "You won't disappoint us. We're always proud of you."
'No. No, she wouldn't disapoint them.' remembering what her favourite foal-sitter had taught her, she took a deep breath, brought her hoof close to her chest and then slowly released the air while moving her hoof away with the air.
Feeling her confidence replenish she looked up to her mother; determination on her face.
"I can do it!" she exclaimed.
And with that she entered the building. But what was about to happen nobody could have foreseen...
"What happened next? Has she failed her exam? Did she accidentally destroy the school? Did she?"
"Atta, girl! Just wait and see. You remember when you where so afraid of your test, last week?"
A shy nod.
"And do you remember how you felt before that test, how confident you were?"
Another reluctant nod.
"Then I guess you already now what happened." the mare said mischievously.
Hearing that, a big grin now adorned Dinky's face.
"Well, then let your mommy tell you the rest of the story now, will you?" Derpy said, a playful smile on her face.
A forceful nod.
The moment the little filly entered her exam room, she immediately noticed the three examiners which were sitting at a desk on the other side of the room. Stern looks on their faces and a peculiar pillar in the middle of the room, covered by a veil.
She gulped, feeling her nervousness grow.
'Don't worry you can do it. You can definitely do it. No matter what they ask you know everything a filly could possibly know about magic. No matter what they want you to do, you will be able to do it' she tried to convince herself.
But to no avail. She felt her eye twitching and her hooves begun to itch. Screaming at her to run away but she stood in place as if rooted to the ground.
It was then, that the chief-examiner finally freed her from her misery.
"Your task will be easy." he intoned ceremonially, his voice warm but stern. "It will consist of you casting a spell and us measuring your magical ability."
Words couldn't describe the relief the little filly felt. Now she knew she would pass this test easily. After all, even though she hadn't had her Cutie Mark yet, she was pretty talented in magic
..however, in her relief she didn't heard what the examiner said next.
"However I have to warn you. This test will have a special quirk to it. Try not to overexert yourself.
Well then. Let's begin."
And with that he lifted the veil.
"This is a dragon egg. Your task is to hatch it." the examiner stated matter of factly.
'Oh sweet Celestia, no!' the filly thought as she felt her confidence dwindling. Her legs felt as if they were made of stone. Each second ticking by excruciatingly slow as she stared at the egg, eyes wide.
Ahem "If you please." The examiner calmly said.
"Oh yeah, yeah." she fidgeted nervously as she readied herself. Ready to pump as much magic in that egg as necessary.
"And what happened then? What happened then?" Dinky could barely hold her excitement.
"And then, when that poor filly stood before that egg and was so nervous, that all her muscles cramped and it took every ounce of her strength to will her magic to flow at all then.."
'Nothing happened.' even in her thoughts it was but a mere observation. 'This can't be true! No, no, no, no!' the filly thought, getting more frantic by the second.
She's been giving it her all for the past five minutes but nothing happened. The egg didn't even seem to notice. It was driving her crazy! Ignoring everything she learned, ignoring the warning not to overexert herself she felt herself falling into despair.
Fear she newer knew rising in her.
She was long past her limit and could already see the apologetic looks on her examiners faces, when suddenly a thunderous bang shook the building and with it the little student out of her reverie.
Something must have snapped that moment she would later tell, for though she'd been at the brink of her powers, she suddenly felt a surge rushing through her system. Flooding her mind in an instant she felt herself being swept aside unceremoniously and she could but watch in awe as chaos broke it's way.
Magic stronger than anything she had ever seen, stronger than anything she could possibly imagine was pulsing through her body. The world started to feel unreal. It was frightening. Without any means of control things just..happened.
First the examiners turned into furniture.
Shock!
A frightened glance to her parents and they turned into plants.
The filly was on the verge of tears.
If it hadn't been for that accursed egg!
And then it happened. The shell cracked and released a tiny purple dragon, a dragon, that was still being enveloped in her magic aura and started absorbing the former at a rapid pace, growing bigger and bigger in the process.
It didn't take him long to reach the ceiling and only moments more before he broke through. In a matter of seconds, the dragon was towering over the school breaking havoc in it's wake.
At this point the filly had nearly lost consciousness and was watching the events wearily, when a glistening light bereaved her sight and she suddenly felt new energy pulsing through her body.
Slowly she felt the control over body return and relief took all tension out of her muscles.
Slumped to the ground she she dared to look up.
Amidst the now slowly fading light stood a tall figure of divine beauty. Touching the filly's horn with her own was the princess of the sun herself staring, not at her but at her flank, for it was now adorned by an arcane star.
Seeing this the princess reverted everything back to normal and declared that filly her personal protégé and faithful student.
"And on that day, Twilight Sparkle found her Cutie Mark and became Celestia's personal student."
"Wooooow." Dinky was spellbound. "That was amazing!"
"Yeah, it certainly was." Derpy laughed.
"How come you even know that story?"
"That's. A. Secret." the mare winked.
"But.." she continued "you could always go and ask Twilight herself for more if you like. What do you say?"
"That would be awesome!" the filly enthusiastically exclaimed.
"Well, than you know, what to do tomorrow, don't you?" she playfully chimed. "But first let's have some muffins!"
I wrote this One-Shot as a little something for a friend, to show her Twily's character depth. Seems I missed that goal a little since it's filly Twilight I wrote about but oh well :D
Maybe I'll continue this and add a few chapters. (Don't worry I'd keep it episodic)
For now, I hope you enjoyed it. 
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You should not be using commas after you end with quotation marks. You should also end the statement in quotation marks. Enroll is missing an 'l'.
Could perhaps be Thunk!
With this, you should not be adding in things making the plot feel like a script. It makes the characters fell almost robotic using "---".
You have some simple writing mistakes but in general I enjoyed the story, however, I believe that you focused far too much on the lesser points of the story. There was a lot of wasted plot used for what could have been good detail but instead you used with pointless conversation. I believe you could have made this story greater, but you really are detailed and try your best in your words.
5442507
Wow. That's a long comment!
Thanks for the detailed review and pointing out flaws. I'll try to fix it.
As for the '--' -indented parts. Do you think it would have been better to write those parts italic instead?
I wanted to emphasise two things at this point. First of, I wanted Dinky to be speechless because Derpy caught her off guard by connecting the story to her own life and secondly, I wanted to emphasise how much Dinky has been spellbound by the story.
On account of the parts I 'wasted' on conversation; would you mind if I inquire where exactly I did so in your eyes?
Not, that I'd say you're wrong but for me the dialog to description ration seemed pretty well balanced. Maybe I'm biased, though.
Anyway, thank you very much for your constructive criticism and also for the Fav.
I'd really like to know what people think makes a story great, I, of course, have my own opinion on that, too.
Info: If anyone finds another 'enrol' in my story instead of 'enroll' just tell me.
Apparently 'enrol' is deemed incorrect here though my autocorrect (set to british english) stated the opposite.
I guess 'enroll' is the american english version.
Go for whichever enrol/enroll is correct to your location. The rules only say your story has to be in English, it doesn't say which English.
5442651
In that case I can freely choose, since I'm german :D
..Though, I prefer british english. The spelling of some words makes more sense in my eyes, even if it's slightly counter-intuitive at times.
Look at favorite/favourite for example. The 'o' is very smooth here as opposed for example in 'stop' and the additional 'u' emphasises/emphasizes this, as does the second 's' in 'emphasise', which makes sense in speaking at the -'ses' part as compared to the -'zes' part in american english.
Anyway, language is in constant change and therefore flexible. It's just my personal preference and aside from that, english isn't even my native language so I guess I'm just being weird.
I prefer British English most of the time too, although there are some words I go for American English or neither of them. I'm Australian, and we use a mix and match of the two most of the time.
A few cases where Australians don't use American or British English are 'capsicum' (bell pepper/pepper), 'fairy floss' (cotton candy/candy floss), 'footpath' (sidewalk/pavement), and bushfire (wildfire). There are more, but this isn't an exhaustive list.
For people like you who learned English as a second (or third/fourth/etc.) language, I have found a general pattern that Europeans and people from Commonwealth countries lean toward British English and everyone else goes for American English.
5442842
Interesting. I didn't think this would be common.
This story needs a lot of help. Half the time you refer to Dinky as a boy! And in the first section, when Derpy is starting to tell the story, you refer to the filly the story is about as an it!! Grammar is all over the place too. Misplaced punctuation, etc., etc. It's a somewhat interesting idea, Ozymandias, but the iffy English is really hurting the story. I understand it isn't your first language, but you really need a proof reader with more experience with written English, if nothing else.
5442932
Seriously? Did I really oversee a mistake this stupid?!
I remember that I wasn't sure if she's a boy or a girl but decided to refer to her as girl but I was sure I did so consequently.
Should this be true, then for this I apologise.
(btw. if you're referring to the part where I referred to Dinky as Derpy's little rascal, than yeah, I'm pretty much aware that this is usually used for males but I thought it may apply to more tomboyish girls as well. If someone feels obliged to do so, please correct me on this one.)
As for the rest. I doubt everyone is such a grammar-nazi to notice every little misplaced comma.
Not to say such things were not important, but you can overdo it sometimes and I don't think a perfect sentence structure is more important than a well build narrative. (which is subject to subjectivity as well.^^).
As for my grammatical potpourri you so dramatically described as 'all over the place', I'd like to see at least one example for my, oh so grave mistakes, since -you might not believe it- I do indeed have a proof reader, who hapens to be a native speaker and author.
Thank you very much and have a nice day.
tl;dr: I don't give a bleep about critics as long as they're too lazy to be constructive. If they are NOT, however, I'm very grateful for every advice and am hereby asking for it. (yes I am, give me your all you trolls!
)
5443033
Well, if you want the specifics, I'll give them to you. But don't blame me for the long list!
It should be "her mother" since Dinky is a girl and you already established that she is a filly.
A filly is a girl. You wouldn't refer to a child as an it when the gender is given, so you should write, "She was the brightest little filly of all and her parents were very proud of her."
Oh, and look at the format of that whole bit of dialogue for a moment:
There's absolutely no reason for the third sentence ("'This filly, however, loved learning above all.'") to be down a line from the first two. The extra line there is just awkward and jarring.
Missing comma. It should read: "Dinky asked, captivated."
Several gender mistakes here. Each time Derpy refers to the little filly, you should say "she" instead of "it." So "...no matter what she learned she just couldn't find out what her Cutie Mark was." Then you need to have a double space before you start the next sentence. By the way, it's perfectly fine to refer to a girl as a rascal. The problem is that after that you say, "...looking deeply into his eyes." instead of "...looking deeply into her eyes."
OK, I'm not particularly practiced at the grammar for dialogue, so I had to look it up, but if you're going to use an ellipses (that's the formal name of the "..." you see) you need to EITHER use that, OR use a comma. And you NEVER put a comma before a word! ",she" will ALWAYS be wrong. So either change that chunk to "That is..." she continued, "until one fateful day." OR preferably to "That is," she continued, "until one fateful day." Actually, the next sentence, "The day the little filly was to enroll in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns." is not a sentence, just a fragment. The whole thing should probably be changed to:
"That is," she continued, "until one fateful day--the day the little filly was to enroll in Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. It was that special day that would change the little unicorn's life forever..."
Make sure you include the ending quotation mark, a possessive apostrophe in "unicorn's," a comma framing the "she continued," part of the phrase, and don't add an extra line if it's not necessary. "Would" sounds much better than "should" in the last sentence. You don't need a comma in that sentence either.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This whole section left me with a really bad impression. I'm sorry, but that's how I felt. If you really, really want me to go through the rest of the piece, I will, but I'm only going to do that much work for someone who has actually asked for it and that I know is going to use it. I've barely met you and I don't know whether very many authors actually go back and edit their stories once they're published. I'm not trying to be offensive or abusive, just help you improve the story.
5446496
Okay. Thank you very much. It seems I had the wrong impression of you and I promise to correct everything you pointed out.
Frankly, I'm pretty impressed that you actually took it upon you to go through all of that instead of just picking one as example.
Again, thank you very much, your help is appreciated.
P. S.: Now I have to defend my 'proof-reader' who obviously overlooked what you just pointed out. I guess he only skimmed through and payed more attention to the content then what was written exactly. In that sense I guess the term 'proof-reader' has been used a bit too lightly here.
5446613
I'm really glad I could help! Good luck with your editing!
5446637
Okay. I'm done. I've re-read everything and corrected everything you pointed me to, as well as several other syntactical and grammatical hiccups.
Seeing how much it was, I really have to apologise. Again. I should have checked it earlier and more thorough.
(And maybe I shouldn't have written it at 10pm while doing five other things simultaneously :D)
Anyway, if it isn't too much, I'd like to ask if, by any chance, you were interested in proof-reading potential future stories, you seem to have a keen eye for it.
EDIT.: How could I possibly forget? HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
(time of writing: 11:47PM GMT+1 12.31.2014)