Falling For Our Stars

by bobdat

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

The date of the trip came closer and closer, and all the while I wished I would hear back from Princess School. Even though I knew there was nothing I could do but wait, I was hoping that I’d get a definite answer so I could stop worrying. I was jealous of an ever-increasing number of ponies like Fly who knew where they’d be going next year, and who knew exactly what they had to do in their exams. It began to feel as if I was the only pony in the whole school who was still waiting when Miri finally got a whole pile of confirmations.
“I’m sure it won’t be long,” Miri said, trying to reassure me. “The deadline is only six weeks away.”
By some miracle of planning, our trip was going to include Hearts & Hooves day, ostensibly to ‘prevent the silliness going to our heads’. I was sure that the day was going to be much more silly if we were all away on a trip, but I obviously didn’t say anything.

There was just a week to go. I woke up, feeling tired as usual and dreading the idea of lessons that day, since I felt like nothing more than crawling back into bed and sleeping for the entire morning.
“Come on, Cat. You don’t want to be late,” Fly advised me, already brushing her mane. “It’s only ten minutes until breakfast.”
“Leave me to die.” I didn’t know how Fly was always so awake in the mornings.
Fly giggled. “I’ll tickle you if you don’t get up.”
I rolled out of bed. “Alright, I’m moving. I can’t wait until the weekend when I can lie in.”

After breakfast we had a special assembly to give us details on the upcoming trip. It was mostly a packing list, which gave us time to get anything we didn’t have from the shops.
“As well as this, you’re going to spend the day today off lessons, doing a special project on Prance’s culture,” the Head mare announced, to my relief. “This will be done in pairs, and the winning pair will receive free tickets to an attraction in Mareis.”
A ripple of murmurs broke out in the audience, mostly doing the same as I was and trying to secure a partner. I’d made the mistake of sitting between Miri and Rarity, with Fly on the other side of Miri.

“Sorry Cat, I told Miri I’d be her partner,” Fly said apologetically afterwards.. “I think she just wants to go with me so she can win.”
“But if I went with you, I could win! Miri is stupid,” I complained, slumping in the chair.
Rarity tapped me on the shoulder with a hoof. “Look for the silver lining, darling. You’ll get to partner up with me. I’m sure our project will be far more attractive than theirs, since Miri has no imagination.”
I giggled. “I suppose that’s true. We should take the other two down, though, for being so scheming.” Our facial expressions must have been quite evil, because Fly seemed to look a little scared.

The sessions seemed to consist of a variety of practical sessions, where the final product would be marked out of ten in each.
“Let’s see… cuisine, geography, music, history and language. I think we can probably do well at a few of those,” Rarity told me. “You’ve got music covered and I can probably do a bit of language and cuisine.”
“Fly and Miri will have history and geography wrapped up,” I added, resting my face on my hooves. “It’ll be tough to beat them.”
“Be positive, Cat. We can win if we put our minds to it.” The purple-maned unicorn smiled at me, and I smiled back.
Not everypony did each activity at the same time, so we were in small classes. Unfortunately, Miri and Fly were in the same class as us, so we would have to do everything head-to-head.
“Music is first,” Rarity said, consulting a timetable. “I’m sure you’ll be absolutely sparkling. This one is ours for sure.”

Our lesson was in a familiar music classroom, and we sat as far from Fly and Miri as we possibly could.
“Okay everypony. Despite the competitive aspect, the point of this session is to become familiar with the music of Prance,” the teacher began, surveying us. “Composers from Prance are world-famous for their work, most of which has a very distinctive style.”
I stopped listening. I was normally interested in music but classical stuff was just so boring. Rarity lost interest too and we had a brisk hoof-war under the table, stifling our giggles.

“Your challenge is to compose a short piece of music in this classical style. I’ll award each one marks out of ten for originality and for following the style.”
Seemed easy enough. I got to work, my horn working overtime as I played the piano and wrote on a blank sheet at the same time. Rarity just admired her reflection in a hoof mirror and gossiped with the group next to us, handily sabotaging their efforts since they got next to nothing done. I only had to listen to three of the original pieces from Prance before I’d identified the style, and then I just sat and tried keys until I had an original tune to adapt. Didn’t take long, and I even spent the last five minutes polishing it until it was perfect.
“Okay, time’s up,” the teacher told us. I was pleased to notice looks of frustration on the faces of Fly and Miri, while both Rarity and I just smirked over at them with confidence.

“Cat, your piece?”
I played it through without any mistakes and then gave the teacher the sheet music. I noticed Rarity’s admiring eyes staying fixed on me and I blushed a little, casting my eyes downwards in modesty.
“This is perfect, I must say. Ten out of ten for definite,” the teacher announced, giving me an encouraging look before moving onto the group that Rarity had distracted. Rarity and I bumped hooves and looked smug. Fly and Miri had scored a measly five, and the teacher had told them to stop halfway through because it sounded so bad.
“We’ve got twice as many points as them,” Rarity pointed out. “You were amazing.” I couldn’t help but blush a little more, a warm feeling in my tummy.

The warm feeling didn’t go away when we headed to the history classrooms, and every time I looked at Rarity it seemed to intensify. I think that getting a compliment from such a glamorous young mare was affecting me.
“The history of Prance is a long one, full of interest,” the history teacher had began. It took me back to a whole number of boring history lessons from the previous year and I found myself drifting off, although this time Rarity stayed interested for the whole introduction. Taking advantage of her focus, I found myself staring at her, taking in the vivid blue of her eyes and the way that her lashes curled perfectly without any evident effort from her. Her mane bounced slightly when she shifted position, and I watched her curls sway, insanely jealous of her perfection and yet at the same time, in complete awe of her.

I wasn’t quick enough to look away when the teacher finished talking, and she turned, her big eyes staring into mine for a fraction before I looked away, heat rising in my face.
“Did you hear the challenge?” Rarity asked after a pause, leaning towards me.
“No… listening to stuff about history just brings back bad memories of last year,” I admitted, smiling.
“We have to research an aspect of Prance’s history, and then write a short report on it. The teacher is going to mark the report out of ten.”
I groaned. “Fly’s going to have this in the bag. She can read faster than lightning, and Miri will just be able to write down everything she says.”
“We need to give it a try. Even if we don’t beat them, so long as we get six points or more, we’ll still be ahead.”

This spurred me on a little, and I picked up the nearest book.
“How about you write and I read?” Rarity said kindly. “I think that would be easier.”
Relieved, I handed her the book and pulled some paper over, ready to get writing. My eyes drifted back to her appearance as she read, and I had to fight to stop myself from getting behind as she gave me points to include.
“Do you think it’s long enough yet, or should I get some more books?” Rarity asked, looking at the page of work I’d managed to write down.
“More books. Anything we can do to beat the others,” I said, and Rarity got up to look for another book. I watched her tail swaying as she went away, and got caught looking. She just smiled a little at my blush.

Two books later, we ran out of time. My horn ached from writing, and I hoped that Rarity had done enough for us to get a reasonable number of points.
“Fly and Miriam? Let’s see…” the teacher said, levitating their report in front of him. I noticed, with annoyance, that they had even included a few sketches, which were sure to wrap up the perfect ten.
“Should we try including a couple of sketches?” I asked Rarity in a whisper while the teacher read.
“Not enough time,” she whispered back urgently as the teacher put the report down.
“Excellent! The diagrams are impressive, but the sources you’ve included… magnificent! Ten out of ten!”

Rarity and I grumbled to each other as Fly and Miri gave us annoying grins. We just didn’t look at them, but their gaze seemed to bore into my head until I couldn’t help but turn around and see Miri poking her tongue out at us.
“So, Rarity and Toccata. Let’s take a look,” the teacher said to us, picking up our report which now looked very smudgy in comparison to Fly’s pristine sheet. We waited nervously for his verdict, and I chewed my lip, trying not to look over at Miri and hoping our result would wipe off her annoying smile.
“Hmm. I like it, very informative, but maybe a bit basic. I’d say… seven.”
“We’re still two points ahead,” Rarity whispered once the teacher had moved on. “We only need to do as well as them in all the rest and we’ll win.”
“Yeah…” I replied half-heartedly, seriously doubting that we could keep it up.My warm feeling had disappeared.

There was a break next, and we ended up bumping into our rivals in the common room. They were at our usual table, so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Those tickets will be ours,” Miri announced as soon as we were close enough to hear her. “Don’t you worry about that.”
Rarity glared at her. “I think the score speaks for itself.”
“Only two events in, there’s plenty of time for us to get ahead of you.”
I didn’t really have the heart to say anything mean to Fly, so I focused my attention on Miri. “Fly is carrying you, on your own you would crash and burn.”
“Oh really? I’d like to see you on your own,” Miri replied, her eyes narrowing.

“Don’t listen to her, she just really wants those tickets. We’ll all be friends again this evening,” Rarity told me after we’d walked away. “She’ll probably apologise.”
“I suppose…” I replied, looking down at my hooves. I actually wanted to win just to show up the others rather than for the actual tickets. I’d been saving my bits for a while and I could probably afford to go to all of the attractions anyway, and I’d rather go with my friends who liked me. “Maybe we should just stop this whole rivalry thing and be friends.”
“Are you insane?” Rarity said, turning to face me. “We have to beat them! If we let them win, you’ll spend the whole trip looking at Miri’s smug muzzle!”
I took a step back, a little overwhelmed by Rarity’s vigour.
“Let’s beat them and show that we’re the best team!”

Cuisine was next, and I was feeling a little fired up from Rarity’s team talk.
“Prance is famous for its cuisine,” the teacher said, a short mare in an apron that I hadn’t seen since my first year at Buckingham. I’d been a terrible cook and she’d quickly given up on my culinary progress.
“Being close neighbours, Prance’s cuisine has manifested itself in ours, creating many dishes…”
The excitement of the day was making it impossible to actually focus on the teachers’ monologues, so I just looked hungrily at the ingredients in the store cupboard and wondered how long it was until lunchtime.

“So, we simply have to make one of these recipes and the best one gets full marks,” Rarity told me, pointing to a list in a cookbook. “What do you think?”
All of the words were written in French, so instead of bothering to translate it all, I just picked the first one with ‘chocolate’ in the title. Rarity found the page and looked at it.
“Looks good to me. Okay, go and get eggs and flour from the storeroom, plus some chocolate.”
“Aye aye captain,” I replied, and she gave me a playful poke as I made my way over to the storeroom. I looked over my shoulder and noticed her looking at me, and I inexplicably blushed again.

There were loads of flour and eggs, so I levitated them up, but there was only one bar of cooking chocolate left. I grabbed it and turned to leave.
“Oi, that chocolate is ours,” an acidic voice said, which turned out to belong to Miri. “Give it back.”
“I had it first, it’s ours,” I replied, frowning. “You can ask the teacher for more.”
“No, it’s ours.” She reached out a hoof to grab at it, but I levitated it out of her reach.
“Miri, it’s mine. Let me past,” I said, trying to escape but finding my path blocked. Miri grabbed again, missing it, and I pushed her. She refused to budge and gave me a mean stare.
“Girls! I might expect this from some first years, but you should know better!” the teacher said, staring at both of us angrily. “Get back to your seats, and you can expect some points knocked off your final totals.”

Fuming, I went back over to Rarity and explained what had happened. She shot Miri a look filled with daggers, but Miri and Fly were giving us equally poisonous glances.
“I expect Miri told Fly that you were the one responsible,” Rarity said soothingly. “Let’s just concentrate on our recipe.”
“If they wanted to do the same one as us, it must be a good one,” I said, trying to follow the recipe closely. “Do you really have any experience with this?”
“It’s some kind of chocolate cake, so it shouldn’t be too hard to make a good one. Just remember to get it out of the oven at the right time,” Rarity told me, her eyes fixed on the book. “Start by mixing the flour and eggs.”

Thankfully we did remember to get it out of the oven at the right time, but when we tried to put icing onto it, the icing went really runny and covered the cake in a thin, sticky mess.
“Try scraping it off,” I said urgently, levitating over a spatula.
“No, it’ll scrape the cake away. Um, we could try covering it up?” Rarity replied. “Can you make some thicker icing?”
I tried, but my efforts just led to a big lump in the middle of the bowl, rock-solid. I put it on top of the cake. “Looks a bit weird.”
Rarity chipped away at the lump and made it a bit more circular. “This decoration is most uncouth.”

Time ran out before we could remedy the problem, and the lump of hard icing looked better than leaving the sticky icing with nothing on top, so we just left it alone. Neither of us could bring ourselves to look over at Miri and Fly.
“Ah, this cake looks… interesting,” the teacher said, making a few notes on her clipboard before slicing it and eating some. “Good taste, but the decoration is… poor. That’s probably… a six, but you’re getting two points off for that little incident earlier.” She walked away, leaving Rarity and I feeling miserable.
“I’m sorry I messed it up,” I whispered to her, poking at the awful icing lump.
“It’s okay, it was my fault as much as yours. A crime against cake, this is,” she told me, but she still ate a slice in consolation.

“Now, this is more like it,” the teacher said when she reached Fly and Miri. Rarity and I stared out of the window so we didn’t have to see their cake.
“Nice texture, good flavour, excellent decoration, if a little unimaginative. I’d give this eight points, minus two for earlier.”
“We’re tied,” Rarity told me. “Two contests to go and we just have to edge ahead.”
“But one of them is geography and Fly will probably get all ten,” I said sadly. “I think we should maybe just accept that we won’t win.”
“Don’t say that! Even if we can’t beat them, we need to lose with dignity! A lady does not give up.”

We went straight to the geography classroom, not bothering to look at the gloating faces that we knew Miri and Fly would have. Fly was starting to annoy me; she could quite easily sabotage their efforts if she thought that the competition was too mean, but she kept trying her best to beat us.
“Try to concentrate this time,” Rarity said to me when we took a seat. “It might be important, and anything we can use to beat Fly and Miri is good.”
I did my best, but the droning voice of the teacher quickly made me get distracted by staring out of the window. There were some small birds flitting about and I was much happier watching them than trying to listen.

“The geography challenge is easy. You need to make a colourful poster about a region of Prance. I’ll give you each a region in a moment. You’ll get points for content and how attractive the poster is.”
We got the area including Mareis, so Rarity got to work sketching a giant Hoofful Tower. I skimmed through some books and wrote down every interesting fact I could find, surrounding them with colourful bubbles without disturbing Rarity’s impressive sketch, which was filling the paper rapidly.
“Wow, that’s amazing,” I said, taking in the detailed drawing Rarity had made. It even included some of the other notable buildings in Mareis.
“Thanks Cat. It’s no different to drawing a fashion design, just more to draw,” she told me, sounding a bit modest.

I sneaked a few peeks at Fly’s poster, which looked like it had a lot more information but a lot less decoration than ours.
“Rarity, you need to add lots of decorations,” I told her, frantically going back over all of the books to find some extra stuff to include. “I think we might be a bit short on facts.”
“Need me to help?” she asked, flicking through a book.
“No, just decorate everything. We don’t have time to add too much.”
She nodded and did as I’d said, adding embellishments that were impossibly pretty and made my colourful bubbles look amateur.

“Time’s up!” the teacher said, looking at the clock. It was almost lunchtime and despite the slice of poorly-decorated cake I’d eaten, I was feeling hungry. Hopefully we could eat lunch away from Miri and Fly, who were really annoying me now.
“Okay, let’s see those posters. Bring them to the front,” the teacher told us, pointing to the desk in front of her. I took it, doing my best to ignore Miri when she walked past me. Their poster didn’t look as good as ours now that Rarity had made ours amazing.
“They all look really good. It’s going to be tough deciding how many points to award,” the teacher gushed, giving us all an encouraging look.
“Probably eight or nine for everypony in the class,” I told Rarity when I sat back down.

Unfortunately, the teacher didn’t follow through on her enthusiasm.
“Miri and Fly? There’s good information but not much in the way of attractiveness. Four points.”
I stifled a laugh. Four was a terrible score. Rarity gave me a surreptitious hoof bump, but our smiles were soon gone.
“What a wonderful drawing of the Hoofful Tower! But little information. Five.”
Nopony in the whole class got more than six, so we probably shouldn’t have been too disappointed, but I still felt a little aggrieved that our amazing drawing had got next to no credit.
“Your drawing deserved better than that,” I told Rarity as we left, aiming to get our food before the others, so we could secure the usual table before them.

We didn’t actually see the others at all over lunch, which was good, because I didn’t think I could stand to see them. They were probably off fuming about their slightly lower score than ours. That one point could be crucial.
“We just need to tie with them, and the final round is language, which the two of us can pretty much manage, don’t you think?” Rarity said as she nibbled on a sandwich. “I think we can at least tie.”
“I hope so,” I said absently, privately wishing that Fly would be a bit more friendly. Not being able to talk to her was making me feel a little bit sick.

“The only reason we’re still in the race is because of you, Cat,” Rarity said, unexpectedly.
I was taken aback and felt my face going red. “Huh?”
“Well, without those ten points in the musical round, we’d probably be three or four points behind. That music was way better than anything I could have done.” She smiled and looked at me, which made my tummy churn a little bit.
“Yeah, but it’s a team effort. You’ve carried me in the other three. You’re so talented.”
Her turn to blush. “Oh Cat, stop it.”
“I’m looking forward to the trip, though, even if we don’t win the free tickets,” I said, finishing my lunch and throwing the wrappers into the bin. “It’s going to be fun to spend time with you three.”
“I agree. Especially since we don’t have much free time left together,” Rarity said in a tone tinged with sadness.

With lunch complete, we headed for the final classroom, which was my usual French classroom. I wasn’t sure exactly what we would need to do, but it was probably going to be something difficult.
“So, the final test. I’m not going to introduce the language since many of you are still studying it. Each of you will get a recording which is appropriate for your skill level, and all you have to do is translate it all. Best translation gets most points.”
Now this was hard. I didn’t even like doing this for exams, let alone when it decided who won the contest.
“You can do it, Cat,” Rarity said. “Just take it slowly.”

I put on the headphones and got started, my horn working hard to get everything written down. There were quite a few sections that I had no idea about, but I skimmed through or repeated them until I could understand, and by the time the lesson ended, I thought I’d done pretty well. I was expecting Fly to have easily outdone me, but maybe Miri would drag her down. It wasn’t until I took off the headphones that I realised how tired I was. The entire day had been draining and I didn’t really feel like having an argument with Miri later on.
“Thanks Cat,” the teacher said, taking my translation. I hoped he was going to be kind.

In the end, we got seven points for our team. Our total wasn’t too bad, but I didn’t find out what Miri and Fly had got. Rarity and I just made our way back to the room, and somepony told us that the results would be announced the next morning. I felt like crawling back into bed and catching up on the sleep I’d been denied that morning, but when we arrived, Miri and Fly were waiting. Miri disappeared into the bathroom the moment we came in, but Fly seemed to have softened.
“We got eight points in the last part, what about you?” she asked anxiously. “Miri is taking it really seriously.”
“Seven,” I replied. “So if we’ve tied overall, there’s no way we can win those tickets.”
“Maybe they’ll give us each two?” Rarity suggested.

In the end, we didn’t need to worry. Rarity and I had scored thirty-three points from a possible fifty, but the winning team ran away with it, scoring forty-eight. I stamped my hooves along with everyone else, wondering why we’d bothered getting competitive in the first place.
Miri apologised after that.
“I’m sorry. I went a bit over the top,” she said at lunchtime, having bought us all a biscuit (including Fly). “I just really didn’t want to get beaten.”
“It’s okay. We were just as bad,” Rarity said. I didn’t entirely agree, but it wasn’t the time to say that, so I just nodded, smiled and ate some of my biscuit.

After that, it was just a matter of counting the days until we left. We were going to get the train into Maneminster, then another train to Mareis. Long trips with my friends were always fun, and I was looking forward to this one especially because it meant time off school. School trips always led to a lot of messing around, particularly at night, so I stocked up on biscuits to take with me. I also went and bought up a pile of fashion magazines for reading material on the train, since it was my turn to buy them. I got a few jealous looks from younger ponies when I came back from the shop carrying the stack, especially since they knew where we were going before long.
“Cat? Can you come with me, please?” Mrs Lemon asked as I passed her, my saddlebags still full of glossy paper. “Just for a moment.”

Suddenly I had an attack of the nerves. It was sure to be something from Princess School, and I didn’t know if I could handle a rejection just before a fun trip. I followed without a word, stepping into her office where she shut the door.
“Take a seat.”
Once I was seated in the horrifically uncomfortable chair that made me itch, she shifted some paper around on her desk. “Cat, before you ask, I haven’t had anything back from Princess School for you. It’s not really a bad sign, though, they’ve still got seven weeks to get back to you. However, I have got something else for you.” She patted a piece of paper. “The music department is thinking of having an end-of-the-year concert, and they need someone to take over running the junior band while the teachers are busy. Want to do it?”

This was certainly not what I had been expecting when I’d gone into her office. “Um… when is it?”
“It’s every Tuesday and Thursday after lessons, for two hours. You’d obviously have time off during your exams, but it is a big commitment. Plus, I think you’ll probably want to work on something for the concert yourself. You are our premier musician in the school,” she informed me, smiling. “I hope you can do it, because we really want to establish this concert as a tradition here at Buckingham.”
“Um… yeah I suppose so. It should be okay,” I replied a little uncertainly. I’d never really thought about the fact that I might be the best musician.
“Excellent! The first rehearsals will be after you get back from the trip, so make sure you have something prepared.”

I went back to the room, feeling a little bit weird about it. I’d been in the junior band when I’d been a first and second year; it had been a lot of simple tunes for ponies who weren’t really good at music but were trying to learn. Shouldn’t really be too difficult to look after, especially since I could just sit behind the piano and keep them on track. The idea of supervising a room full of younger ponies was a little daunting, though, so I pushed the thought to the back of my mind. I really wanted to just enjoy the weekend without having to think about that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, the day before we were scheduled to leave, I was interrupted from my packing my bags by Mr Bluejay.

“Cat, we need to work on a piece for you to play at the concert,” he explained once we were down in the music room. “Now, I know you want to get back to your friends, but I wanted to get in an early session.”
“Okay,” I replied, sitting down at the piano and looking over the keys. “Do you have any suggestions?”
He placed a sheet of music in front of me, which looked horribly complicated. “Have a go at this.”
It was far more difficult than anything I had ever played before, and involved playing three parts instead of the traditional two. I started slowly, working my way through the first part while Mr Bluejay listened to my jarring mistakes.

“This is… really hard,” I said when I got halfway through and lost the thread of it. “Why can’t I do something easier, like the bit I did for my interview?”
“This is world-class music, Cat. If you can master this, then you won’t have to learn anything quite so hard for many years. It’ll be terribly impressive at the concert.”
“But…”
“Is there no-one you’d like to impress with your talents?”
I paused. There was one pony who I’d like to impress… “I’ll try it.”
“Excellent! I must confess, there’s another reason I chose this particular pieces for you,” the stallion said with a wry smile.
“Hmm?”
He closed the sheet music to show the title. It was called Toccata from Symphony No. 5.

Author's Note:

I'm going to include an author's note for the first time, because the ending of this chapter is actually worth a little explanation. I originally named Toccata for Widor's Toccata from Symphony No. 5, the famous music used as a recessional at weddings. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKejfYzB3ak). It's worth a listen if you want some idea of how difficult the piece is to play, even with unicorn magic.