The Child of Sun and Moon

by Darkest Night

A Lesson and a Revelation

He had to admit, the Tasty Treat really was a fantastic restaurant.

It was one of the oldest restaurants in Canterlot, enduring over twenty years in its location at the end of a small alley off Restaurant Row, nearly hidden…if not for the steady line of ponies coming in and out. Its interior was rustic, dim, with bright colors and comfortable benches, and the smells in the place were nearly heavenly, even when he didn’t have his thestral sense of smell. The place was run by an exotic unicorn matron named Saffron and her daughter Curry, and Saffron’s retired father Coriander was almost always in residence in the restaurant, sitting at a small table near the door.

The smells were amazing, but the food even more so. He had never tasted anything like the food there, which was both spicy and textured, with bold sauces and broths, smooth pastas and noodles, hearty breads and rolls, and brown long-grained rice.

He still wasn't sure exactly why he agreed to this. At first it was purely for the food, for a nice meal, but now he had a different motive. He'd agreed to tutor this mare, and despite his usual intention to be alone, he wanted to know a little bit more about her, to see if he could manage to spend extended periods of time with her. Besides, he had this strange feeling that there was a secret lurking behind her charming smile, and he'd learned over his lifetime to trust those feelings. They rarely steered him wrong.

“So, what do you think?” she asked him, looking over at him across the small round table.

“We don’t have anything like this in Baltimare,” he replied, savoring a mouthful of what Curry called flat noodle soup. The perky young unicorn with exotic eyes had all but flirted with him when she took his order. “Most ponies there think that the only spices that exist are salt and pepper. And pepper is almost too daring and bold.”

She laughed. “Sounds like a pretty boring place. I think I’m glad I’ve never been there.”

“It’s a great place if you love bricks,” he said dryly. “That’s what Baltimare is famous for, and the earth ponies there are proud of it. Most bricks in Equestria are made in Baltimare. Right now, the brick season is about to wind down, so the yards are all rushing to get as many made as they can before winter. They can’t make bricks in the winter, so most ponies in town use the winter months to get most everything else done before they can go back to the brickyards in spring.”

“Is that what your shop does? Sell to the brickyards?”

He shook his head. “We own a general store, selling general merchandise and food to the ponies,” he answered. “It’s busy all year round.”

“Are there a lot of unicorns there? I thought Baltimare was an earth pony town.”

“It is,” he replied. “My family are the only unicorns in the entire river district. I think there’s only ten unicorn families in the entire town.”

“Wow. That’s way different from here. Canterlot is a unicorn town.”

“It feels a bit weird walking down the street and not being the only unicorn,” Starjumper mused.

“No wonder they made you come here, given how much you know about magic. If there’s so few unicorns there, then they don’t have any magic schools.”

He nodded. “I learned everything I know about magic from my father,” he told her. “Our family has been collecting books on magic since they moved to Baltimare five generations ago. It was that private library and my father that taught me everything I know.”

“It must be pretty big, given how much magic you know.”

“It fits in a single bookshelf,” he told her. “Books and scrolls about magic and holding spells are very expensive, especially outside Canterlot. Each generation can only afford to buy three or four books to add to the library, and it’s something of a tradition for each member of the family to contribute at least one new spell to the library for our descendants to learn. My brother was the one that contributed the shield spell. I've already contributed mine,” he said, a bit proudly. “I wanted to get it before I left home, because I knew I wouldn’t be staying in Baltimare. That way, my contribution to the family library is already taken care of.”

“What spell did you add?”

“Teleportation,” he answered.

Her eyes widened. “You can teleport?’

“I didn’t learn it,” he lied carefully…well, it wasn’t a complete lie. He hadn’t learned the teleport spell from that book, that was true enough. For that matter, he didn't buy the book, he wrote it, leaving behind a comprehensive guide for his sister to learn the spell without him being there to tutor her. His father had already taken advantage of both the book and Starjumper's expertise on the subject, and he'd learned how to cast the spell just before Starjumper left for Canterlot. After everything his father taught him, Starjumper felt it was only right that he was able to teach his father at least one spell. His father could cast it, but he had a lot more to learn. With more practice, his father would gain mastery of the spell. “I got the book because my father and sister can cast it. They’re both really, really strong magicians, much stronger than I am. So it’s there for my sister once she learns more about magic. My father already learned the spell, but I mainly got it for my sister.”

“Wow, that was a really nice thing to do. So, your father can teleport?"

"He can now," he nodded. "But the book is mainly for my sister. She's going to be an even stronger magician than my father is."

"You must really love your sister to get her a book like that.”

“Dancer is a total sweetheart,” he told her. “And I admit, I did read the book. But it didn’t help me.” Again, not completely a lie. It didn't help him because he wrote it. He already knew everything in it.

“Well, you could always try again later.”

“I have a copy of it,” he said mildly. “Maybe some day.”

She chuckled softly. “Thinking ahead is never a bad idea.”

“So, what about you? What’s it like being the daughter of a supermodel?”

She gave him a surprised look. “Who told you Fleur de Lis is my mom?”

“I’m the son of a shopkeeper, Summer Dawn,” he said evenly. “I’ve seen your mother’s face plastered all over half the merchandise in my dad’s shop. You look so much like her you could pass for her if you dyed your mane a darker shade of pink.”

She laughed. “I’ll take that as the complement it is,” she said lightly, being compared to the beauty of a supermodel. “And it’s not nearly as glamorous as you might think. Mom never acts like a model at home. She always says that after a long day of acting like a lady, the last thing she wants to do is act like one behind a closed door. It was my mom that always played in mud puddles with me, or caught frogs with me on the streambank.”

Starjumper had to chuckle. “I guess that makes a kind of sense, though I can’t imagine a supermodel jumping in a mud puddle.”

“Mom is a tomcolt at heart,” she said with a smile. “My dad’s the prissy one,” she winked. “Cultured, urbane, won’t come within ten strides of mud, and afraid of sleeping in a tent outside because it might look undignified,” she said with a grin.

He laughed. “He sounds stuffy.”

“He’s just a bit eccentric, that’s all,” she replied. “He’s got a great sense of humor, and loves to play pranks on us and the staff. Nopony ever feels safe in our house,” she grinned.

He laughed again. “Really?”

“Yeah. Last week, he put exploding caps in the flour jar. And let me tell you, Withers was not happy,” she said. “He buried them in the flour, so when they went off, whoosh,” she exclaimed, throwing her hooves up. “There was flour all over the kitchen. Withers was so mad, he made dad clean it all up.”

Starjumper laughed brightly, trying to imagine some social paragon like Fancy Pants skulking around that huge mansion, setting traps for his family and servants. It did put him in an entirely different light, that was for sure. “My mom might do something like that, but never my dad,” Starjumper mused.

“Is your mom the bat pony, or your dad?”

“My mom,” he replied.

“Is she much different from other ponies?”

“A little,” he admitted. “But you wouldn’t have any trouble talking to her. She’s lived in Equestria for coming on twenty years. But she’s definitely a little different, because she grew up in the Nightlands.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s the homeland of the thestrals, across the eastern sea,” he answered, then noticed her quizzical look. “Thestrals are what bat ponies call themselves. Only Equestrian ponies call them bat ponies.”

“How did your parents meet?”

“Dad went to the Nightlands to try to buy some of their tapestries to sell in the shop, you know, to bring something new and exotic to Baltimare,” he answered. “That was back when my grandfather was running it, Dad was his roving agent that bought things. He met Mom there, and she came back with him. Dad always jokes that the only thing of value he brought back was Mom. The tapestries didn’t sell at all, at least there. Dad sold them to a Canterlot merchant, and I guess he sold them here.”

She laughed. “Yeah, they’d probably sell here if they looked nice. So ponies could point to them on the wall and just happen to mention in passing that they were rare and valuable bat pony tapestries,” she agreed. “Something like that would be a status statement.”

“Baltimare ponies don’t care about that, which is why I guess they didn’t sell,” he shrugged. “Anyway, we’d better finish up if we’re going to get any work done today.”

They finished their excellent meal and returned to the apartment. They set up down in the common room, which was large and very open and well lit with its large windows, and he started quizzing her about magic…and was a bit disappointed. It was clear that she wasn’t a very good student of magic, because she had serious trouble answering his questions. But, when he asked her to demonstrate the spells she knew, he was completely thrown for a loop.

Summer Dawn was a powerful magician.

He could sense it as she cast several spells. She had immense raw ability, and it was only by that raw power that she was casting the spells, since she wasn’t using the advanced magical techniques to cast the spells she was using. She’d been taught those techniques, but she didn’t use them. She was using her immense strength to just bull through it, making it happen, throwing so much magic at the spell that she made it go off, something that a lesser spellcaster would have no hope to duplicate.

Good Celestia, how did her teachers not see this? Why weren’t they teaching her how to use this immense power? And how in Luna’s moon was she failing in school, with this much raw ability? She was far stronger than he was, and yet she was barely scraping through school and was afraid she’d fail her final exam?

How?

He didn’t let his surprise show, holding it back using the stoic calm he’d cultured over his many years of hiding his secrets, just walking her through the spells to see what she knew. She knew the basics of spellcasting, but didn’t really know how to use the advanced spellshaping techniques—or more to the point, she didn’t use them because she could cast the spells without them, something Starjumper could not do himself. She had a firm grasp on channeling, but didn’t know how to charge very well…and again, that was because of her power. She had trouble restricting the amount of magic she charged into a lingering spell, overcharging it and making it go haywire. And to his delight, she had a highly imaginative mind and a very good memory, which were almost mandatory for advanced spellcasting. There was a great deal of imagination involved in advanced magic, for being able to imagine something was a basis for quite a few advanced spells, including shield spells. She had to be able to imagine, envision the shield’s dimensions in order to cast it efficiently, defining them in her mind as she built the matrix that brought the spell about.

He couldn’t believe what he'd walked into here, and her raw power honestly intimidated him. He was no professional teacher. He had experience teaching a magic spell when he taught his father how to teleport, but his father already knew more about magic than Starjumper did, so it was fairly easy to do. Summer Dawn was like his sister, with incredible raw ability that was unformed, unrealized. For Dancer, it was because she was so young, had only just begun her magical education. But for Summer Dawn, it had some other reason. Maybe she was a bad student and just hated to learn…which he doubted, given her honest curiosity and interest in magic. So there had to be something else going on here.

After she demonstrated the last spell for him, the most advanced spell she knew, she gave him a strange look as he stood there, staring at her. “What?”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. “What’s the one spell you’ve always wanted to learn?” he asked her impulsively. “The spell you’ve always dreamed of being able to do?”

“Duh, teleportation,” she replied immediately. “Every unicorn in school dreams of being able to do what Professor Frostmane and Headmistress Roseglass can do. Both of them can cast the spell.”

“And if you could cast that spell, you’d pass?”

“I’d pass even if I didn’t so much as put my name on the written final,” she replied.

Starjumper turned a bit to the side, his horn limning over in a soft golden glow. A book pulled from the shelf and floated over to them, and he brought it to a stop in front of her. “This is a copy of the book I bought that explains teleportation and holds the spell. I want you to read this book,” he told her.

“Why?”

“Because I think you can cast it,” he answered immediately and forcefully. “No. I know you can cast it.”

“Wait, what? You’re serious?”

“Deadly,” he replied with sober eyes and a stoic expression. “If you want to learn how to teleport, I can teach you. I am positive that you can cast the spell. But there’s a condition.”

“What is that?”

“You don’t tell anypony that I’m teaching you how to teleport,” he replied with an intense gaze. “If your teachers and parents find out what you’re learning from me, they’ll make you stop. They’ll tell you it’s too dangerous and it’s magic that’s far beyond you. Well, they’re wrong,” he declared in a powerful voice. “Tell them I’m teaching you shield spells, and I will be teaching them to you as part of the process of learning how to teleport. Learning to cast shield spells will help you when the time comes, because of the spellcasting techniques you have to learn to do shield spells apply to teleportation spells.”

“Alright, I can do that.” She then gave him a sly look. “This wouldn’t be about extending your tutoring to get more gems, would it?” she asked playfully.

“You don’t have to pay me a gem until after you learn the spell,” he answered immediately. “That should tell you how serious I am.”

“If you can teach me to teleport, I’ll pay you a five hundred gem bonus on top of thirty gems a week,” she retorted immediately.

“Done,” he replied. “By the first day of spring, Summer Dawn, you will be able to teleport. I guarantee it.”

The aura of magic around the book changed from gold to pink, as she took command of it, and she set it on the desk next to her saddlebag. “It’s, it’s not complicated, is it?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Have a bunch of long, complicated words? I don’t read very well,” she admitted, blushing a tiny bit.

“It’s an advanced book, Summer Dawn,” he told her.

“Oh. Oh well, I guess I’ll do my best,” she said. “As long as you can explain the parts of it I don’t understand.”

“I can do that. But, to warn you, the deal doesn’t change outside of that. I’ll teach you to teleport, but we’ll be doing it when I have time to teach you, and you have to respect my privacy when I’m not teaching you.”

“That’s fair. And I’ll still pay for your two meals a week at the Tasty Treat, whether I’m with you or not,” she offered. “I’ll talk to Saffron and have her set up a tab for you. Just don’t get too crazy,” she smiled.

“That’s kind of you,” he told her.

“I’m getting my gems’ worth, that’s for sure,” she replied. “And since you’re not throwing me out, you must have time, so I guess I’ll get started on this book so you’re here to explain anything I don’t get.”

“Fair enough. I’m going to work on something else. Just ask if you have any questions.”

By the end of the hour, Starjumper fully understood just why Summer Dawn was in the position she was in, and why she was having so much trouble in school.

Summer Dawn couldn’t read.

It floored him when she asked him a question, and he asked her to read the passage out of the book. She couldn’t read. She had trouble recognizing words, even letters, and struggled to read the first paragraph in the book. How in Equestria did she get this far in school without the ability to read her textbooks?

Her power, that was how.

After more investigation into the problem without coming out and telling her he could see that she was illiterate, he instead found that she had a very specific problem, a problem that he had seen before, because his brother suffered the same problem. Silver Moon confused words and letters with others, there was some fundamental issue with the way he interpreted what he was seeing that made him unable to discern one letter from another in the Ponish alphabet. It had crippled him in school, to the point where Starjumper had all but gotten him through, reading everything aloud to him. That problem did not make Silver Moon dumb, that was for sure. He was incredibly smart, and so long as Starjumper was there to help him with the reading assignments, he got very good grades in school. He just had this strange problem being able to decipher words on a page.

Summer Dawn had the exact same problem, and he could tell that it had haunted her for most of her life. Silver Moon had originally felt worthless, stupid, inadequate compared to other ponies, because his inability to read made him feel like there was something wrong with him. It made him introverted, had made him struggle not just with school, but with making friends with his schoolmates, terrified they’d find out he couldn’t read.

It explained everything. It explained why she was doing so badly in school despite being so talented. It explained why her teachers couldn’t see the truth of her, if Frostmane was any indication of what the teachers in the school were like. Summer Dawn would constantly ask basic questions based on the bookwook, which would exasperate her teachers to the point where they would think she was lazy, that she wasn’t doing her work and trying to get the teachers to explain everything to her. He’d bet that instead of trying to find out why she was asking those questions, they would harangue her for her pestering, teaching her from an early age that she would get no help from her instructors, teach her not to ask questions.

Standing there by the desk as she struggled to read that paragraph, Starjumper felt…felt something change. He, he couldn’t leave things like this. He felt a personal involvement here because of his brother. He’d seen how his problem had affected his brother’s life, and…and he couldn’t just leave this alone. He wasn’t going to let the same thing happen to Summer Dawn. Silver Moon had always had his little brother there to help him, to get him through school, to make him feel like he wasn’t worthless or stupid. He’d always had his little brother there who understood, who understood his problem and helped him learn how to cope with it.

And now, sitting at the desk beside him, was another pony with the same problem. And he could not turn his back on her.

And he had no idea why he felt so strongly about this when he barely knew this mare. Starjumper stayed away from other ponies, he actively avoided making friends because of the secrets he had to keep…but he couldn’t let this be. While Summer Dawn seemed to have a healthy social life with lots of friends, much unlike his brother, it was still there, and he would bet that it would make her ego very fragile. She would always feel lesser than other ponies because she couldn’t read, made her feel inadequate, inferior, which she hid behind a bubbly smile and an extroverted, friendly personality.

And knowing this about her, now he knew exactly how to go about teaching her.

“Stop. Stop,” he ordered, using his magic to close the book. “Forget about the book.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a doer, not a reader,” he said carefully. “You’re like my brother. He learns best by doing, by experimenting, by getting his hooves into things and learning as he goes. If you try to get him to learn something from a book, he fails horribly. But if you give him the chance to learn something by doing it, he picks it up quickly. And you’re the same way,” he told her, carefully working around the real reason for it. He had the feeling that if he admitted to her that he knew she couldn’t read, she might lash out, or quit the lessons because she would feel humiliated. “So, that’s how we’re going to do things.”

She gave him a surprised look, with a bit of hope shimmering in her eyes.

“I’m almost out of time, so here’s what I want you to do,” he said, putting the book back in the shelf. “Tonight, I want you to practice the light spell.”

“The light spell? That’s basic magic!” she protested.

“Yes, but I want you to cast it on the far side of a closed door, where you can’t see where you’re putting the spell,” he told her calmly. “You have to learn how to focus the terminus of a spell somewhere you can’t see, and the light spell is the perfect spell to practice that skill. So, go home and go to your closet door, and use your knowledge of your closet, what’s in it and its layout, and try to cast the light spell into it, on the other side of the door. Try to place the light spell in specific places inside the closet, like over a particular shelf, or up against the ceiling in the middle, or over a box sitting on a shelf,” he told her, closing her saddlebag and lifting it off the desk with his magic, offering it to her. “Be as specific as you can where you place the spell, going on your memory of what’s in your closet and where everything is.”

“I’ve…I’ve never done that before. I mean, I’ve learned how to levitate things not in my field of vision because I know they’re there, but they’ve never taught us that.”

“Then apply that levitation trick to the light spell, and you’ll have learned a trick that your school doesn’t teach you,” he said lightly. “I’ll let you figure it out. That’s part of your lesson. Tomorrow, we’ll see how well you did.”

“Alright,” she said, putting her saddlebags over her back. She flinched a bit when the clock Starjumper had on the shelf rang loudly, giving three very loud chimes before falling silent. “What’s that?”

“The clock telling us that time is up,” he replied calmly. “When that clock goes off, Summer Dawn, we are done for the day. Go home and practice with the light spell, and tomorrow when you come to the library for afternoon study, we’ll see how much you’ve learned.”

“Okay,” she replied.

He ushered her out the front door and watched her go down the steps, wondering just what he got himself into. He had no loyalty to this Summer Dawn. She was a society pony, a pony that he’d usually dismiss as utterly ridiculous, maybe even scorn a little bit. And while she hadn’t asked him for help, he just couldn’t leave this alone. Princess Twilight had brought him here and given him tremendous latitude to allow him to study magic and fulfill his full potential as a unicorn, to the point where she intervened with the school on his behalf. And down there, just reaching the ground and walking away, was a pony with far more potential than him that wasn’t ever going to see it realized if he did not help.

That was clear enough. Her parents clearly didn’t understand her problem, probably because he suspected that she kept it a secret from them…after all, having a filly that couldn’t read wasn’t going to make her parents look all that good in their high society circles. Her school didn’t care about her problem, because she’d gone all the way to her final year and they’d done nothing to help her. But he did, and when he looked at her, he could only see the hurt in his brother’s eyes when the ponies in his school laughed at him because he couldn’t read a passage from a book.

He wasn’t going to let that happen to another pony.

He’d just have to be careful. As long as he got her out of the apartment when the warning bell rang every day and prevented her from getting chatty, he would be able to keep his secrets. She was here on business, and that business was learning magic. And he would keep it strictly business.

Starjumper was almost maddening.

The stallion was a riot of conflicting signals, and he confused the ever-loving life out of Summer Dawn. But there was one undeniable fact, and that was in the last two weeks of tutoring under him, her grades had improved vastly…and that wasn’t even counting the fact that he was teaching her how to cast the teleport spell.

He tutored her every school day after her classes, and those two weeks had established a pattern. The first hour of the tutoring, he went over her schoolwork with her, which was why her grades had improved significantly in just two weeks. Simply put, Starjumper was the best teacher she’d ever had, because he explained things to her. He didn’t tell her to go read a book. He didn’t berate her because she was supposed to already know that. When she asked a question, he didn’t just answer it, he explained it, he made her not just understand his answer, but understand the question in ways she hadn’t considered. And what was best, he never, ever told her to just go read a book about it.

It was almost amazing how much she’d learned in just two weeks.

The second half of the tutoring—which was usually way longer than an hour—was on learning how to teleport…sort of. He’d told her that she had to work up to being able to cast the spell by increasing her skill with magic in other ways, which meant that he gave her all these strange challenges and tasks that expanded her understanding of magic on a fundamental level and taught her to think about magic in ways she’d never even considered. Every lesson was a revelation, an eye-widening I get it! moment that expanded her horizons.

In just the last two weeks, she’d learned how to cast spells without using her eyes, she’d learned how to triple cast, maintaining two spells while casting a third, she’d learned how to use mathematics to increase the power, range, and efficiency of her spells, and had learned how to use spells she already knew in ways she’d never even considered before.

It was…it was almost intoxicating, both in what she was learning and how it made her feel. She’d never, ever, looked forward to going to school until she met Starjumper. Even though she was still doing very poorly on the quizzes and tests, when lab time came, she was astounding Professor Frostmane with her ability to use magic. She was terrible at writing down an exhaustive description of some magical process, but she sure as Celestia’s mane could get up there and cast the spell and do it.

Just like Starjumper said, Summer Dawn learned best by doing, and she was doing a whole lot under his tutelage.

That was the good part of Starjumper. The bad part was that he was secretive, he was sometimes aloof, and he wasn’t always all that friendly. He seemed to go through moods, she’d learned, and how he greeted her when she arrived in the library to fetch him would set the tone for how the day would go. He was never mean, he was never overbearing or snide or insulting when he corrected her mistakes, but he could be…well, he could be abrupt. He also wasn’t one that engaged in smalltalk or conversation, and that was almost an anathema to her. He seemed perfectly content to sit there in complete silence, a silence that Summer Dawn had always felt was awkward when two ponies were in the same room, and sometimes showed annoyance when she broke that silence. She’d been trained since a filly in the art of social smalltalk, of engaging other ponies in friendly conversation to make them feel comfortable, but that had the exact opposite effect on him. Any time she tried to get him to talk, he would ice up, even stare her down to put her back on her lessons.

And that was so confusing. He had never once been mean to her, and she knew that he liked her. But he kept his distance from her. He was doing a job for her, and even if she didn’t think of him as an employee or a servant, he would not cross some line he’d set in his mind concerning the deal he made with her.

And then there was that clock. No matter what they were doing, no matter how involved or engaged they were in a lesson, when that clock chimed, it was over. Lesson done, Summer Dawn hustled out of his apartment within three minutes of it going off. It had taken Summer Dawn nearly a week to figure out that it didn’t go off at the same time every day, and it wasn’t based on her being there for two hours. Over the last few days, she’d been there for almost four hours every afternoon. Just yesterday morning, she’d realized that the clock did have a pattern, that it went off exactly half an hour before sunset. Since the days were getting shorter and shorter as they counted down to the first day of winter, Princess Twilight lowering the sun by a set schedule that made the days counting up to Hearth’s Warming Eve shorter, the clock changed the time of day it went off so that it always chimed at exactly thirty minutes before sunset. Yesterday, she had accurately predicted exactly when it would go off by reading the almanac section in the daily newspaper, that gave the times of sunrise and sunset..

Starjumper himself was almost always the topic of conversation in school. During the week of his suspension, students saw him sitting at the same table in the library, usually with dozens of books scattered across its surface, studying. When he returned to class, Professor Frostmane completely ignored him, never asked him questions, allowed him to continue self-studying from the many books he kept scattered on the desk and went about her lessons with the others. And outside of school, he was never seen outside of predictable patterns. In the mornings on school days, exactly ten minutes before the library opened, he arrived at Donut Joe’s diner, bought an apple scone and a cup of coffee, and brought them with him when he headed back to campus. For lunch, he would eat in the school cafeteria, and always had the same thing. One hay sandwich with rose petals and pepper, one side salad with grated cheese topping, one glass of apple juice. He would be in the cafeteria only as long as it took him to eat, and then return to the library. On Saturday mornings at exactly nine o’clock, he would go to the general store and buy food and supplies, buying enough to last the entire week, then he would go to the quill and parchment shop across the street from the campus and restock his studying supplies. At exactly two o’clock on Saturdays, he would come out to go to the Tasty Treat, where he would eat in the restaurant and then return home. Every Sunday afternoon at exactly noon, he would take a walk down to the overlook park, the park built on the lip of the city that was built out away from the mountainside, which gave some breathtaking views of the valley below. There, he would lay down on a blanket he brought with him and read, and he would remain for exactly three hours. At three o’clock, he returned to his apartment. And on Tuesdays, he would indulge in the other free meal that Summer Dawn had set up for him at the Tasty Treat, but he didn’t stay and eat in the restaurant like he did on Saturdays. After their lesson that day was done, he would arrive at the restaurant exactly twenty minutes before sunset, pick up the order that was waiting for him, and then return to his apartment. If the food wasn’t ready in time, he didn’t wait for it. He would go back home without it, and ask them to deliver it to the apartment and place it on the porch outside the door for him to come and get when he had the time.

After asking around a little, she’d learned that Starjumper had not once ever been seen in Canterlot outside of those times.

And that was bizarre. It was almost like he lived his entire life by a rigorous schedule, and there was no budget in it for anything, anything fun. He never went to parties. He never deviated from that routine, and he never, ever talked to any pony unless they talked to him first. And even then he was both polite and brief, saying the bare minimum and then excusing himself the moment doing so would not be seen as rude.

He was a mystery, and that was causing some problems for Summer Dawn, because she adored solving mysteries. For the last few days, she’d been trying to figure those patterns out, understand why he did what he did, what meaning it had or what purpose it served. And so far, most of him had her stumped.

But there was one thing she'd figured out. Starjumper was deceiving her about teleportation. He could teleport. He had never outright denied it, never actually lied to her, she realized after she figured it out, he said things very carefully in a way that deflected the issue without being untruthful. He'd made just one little mistake about the subject that allowed her to figure it out, and that was the book. She still had the book, and after two weeks of being around him, she realized that he wrote that book. The hornwriting in the book matched the hornwriting she'd seen on the scrolls and books on which she'd seen him writing. She may not be able to read it, but she could see the shape and flow of the writing on the pages, and it perfectly matched Starjumper's flowing yet exacting writing style.

Starjumper wrote that book. And that meant that Starjumper had to know so much about teleportation that he could write a book about it, write down the spell.

It just matched his personality, she'd learned over the last two weeks. He was exceptionally secretive, and for some reason, he kept exactly what he could do, how much he knew about magic, secret. Not even the teachers in school knew just how much he knew, and it gave her some kind of dark thrill to be in on that secret, a secret so secret that she might be the only pony in Canterlot that knew the truth.

Despite that frustration, so far she could admit that she’d never been happier about school. She was almost bouncing along as she walked down the Promenade with Crystal Bell and Berry Cream, about halfway to the campus. They were talking about the party they’d attended the night before at the Three Rings, a members-only club for society ponies that was nearly as old as Canterlot.

“Sooooo, how are those private sessions with Starjumper in his apartment going, Summer?” Crystal Bell asked coquettishly.

“Just fine, thank you very much,” she replied frostily, which made Berry Cream giggle. “Yesterday I learned how to triple cast! And wanna see what else I learned?”

“What?”

Crystal Bell almost screamed when she was suddenly hoisted up into the air, surrounded in an aura of pink magic. “Want me to turn you over and shake you until you beg for mercy?” she threatened.

Both Crystal Bell and Berry Cream laughed brightly. “You do that, and I’ll throw up on you,” she threatened. “Now put me down. Gently,” she amended quickly.

Summer Dawn flashed a quick grin up at her, then did so. “Wow, I didn’t know you could do that, Summer,” Berry Cream said.

“Starjumper taught me,” she replied. “So yes, I am learning something. I learn something new almost every day that he teaches me. Seriously, girls, he’s the best teacher I’ve ever had, even better than our professors. And the tutoring sessions aren’t boring. He doesn’t make me sit and read dusty old books. From the moment I get there to the moment I leave, I’m using magic, not reading about magic.”

“Well now, maybe I should talk to him. I’m really having problems with that freezing spell,” Berry Cream speculated.

“He already taught me how to do that one,” Summer Dawn proclaimed. “I swear, two weeks now Professor Frostmane has been talking about that spell and I didn’t understand a word she said. But Starjumper teaches me how to cast it in three days. He even taught me some variations of it.”

“Like what?”

“Like this,” she said, her horn flaring with pink magic. The air around them suddenly turned icy, almost painfully cold, and frost crystals started forming around them. “It works on air too,” she announced. “It just takes tweaking the spell a little bit.”

“Wow! Now stop it,” Berry Cream ordered, her teeth chattering.

“Weakling,” Summer Dawn teased, ending the spell. The air didn’t just instantly go back to normal, but as they moved, they walked out of the effect.

“You are so gonna get tons of bonus points on the practical when we test on this spell!” Berry Cream declared.

“Yeah, it should just about make up for me bombing the written part,” Summer Dawn laughed wryly.

“Uh oh,” Crystal Bell said, glancing to the side. Summer Dawn and Berry Cream followed her gaze, and they saw Nova coming up Gem Street, towards the Promenade. “That’s right, his suspension is over now. I wonder how he’s going to act in class with Starjumper there.”

“He’d better be careful,” Berry Cream mused. “If he gets in trouble one more time, he’ll get expelled.”

“I heard that North Star grounded him for a month,” Summer Dawn said in a hushed tone.

“He must have, I haven’t seen him once since he got suspended,” Crystal Bell agreed. “Not even down at the Laughing Manticore, and that’s his favorite place to hang out.”

“At least he only has this one day before the holiday and weekend,” Summer Dawn mused. They were only having class for two days this week. Tomorrow was the Harvest Festival, an annual holiday in Canterlot for which school closed. And it was tradition for the school to remain closed the rest of the week to give the students their first break since school started, a five day weekend.

“Speaking of the holiday, you wanna go do something after the holiday, Summer?” Crystal Bell asked. “I was thinking that maybe we could go down to Ponyville and see the elements of harmony museum on Thursday or Friday. Maybe tour Princess Twilight’s castle there, they’re doing public tours while she’s here in Canterlot standing in for Princess Celestia. I think that might be pretty cool.”

“There’s gonna be a Wonderbolts performance there on Friday, the last performance of the season close to Canterlot before they go out east for the final leg of their autumn tour,” Berry Cream added. “We could make an overnight trip of it, see if Skyblaze crashes and burns,” she added with a giggle.

Summer Dawn laughed. “I still cannot believe that Skyblaze got into the Wonderbolts!” she said. “I remember all those times he used to crash into things around town!”

“Youngest Wonderbolt since Rainbow Dash,” Crystal Bell said with a little trill in her voice. She’d always had something of a crush on the pegasus, who had quite a reputation in Canterlot from back when he was a young stallion for being a wild flyer, and maybe more than a little bit crazy. But it must have worked for him, since he’d managed to get into the Wonderbolts. Even now, nearly five years since those days, many Canterlot ponies still talked about his more spectacular crashes, as well as that day he made it snow in the middle of summer…and boy did he ever get in trouble for that.

“That does sound kinda fun,” Summer Dawn said. “What do you say, girls? Wanna make an overnight of it? We can go down on Thursday morning, stay overnight, then catch the Friday afternoon train and have the weekend here.”

“If I can get my parents to let me stay overnight, sure,” Berry Cream nodded.

The morning session of class wasn’t too insufferable, even though she felt lost while Frostmane was going over the freezing spell, mainly because there was no sense of dread or panic in her. She knew the spell, she could cast both of its variants thanks to Starjumper, and she knew that while she’d do very bad on the written test about the spell, she’d earn back enough points to pass when they did the practicals, which would be held today rather than Friday due to the short school week.

But, the morning session was a bit strained for another reason…Nova. He was back in class, sitting in the very front of the class, and he kept glancing at both her and Starjumper the entire morning.

After lunch came their first test on the freezing spell, which Starjumper didn't have to take, so he went to the library while the rest of the class stayed in the classroom. She struggled through the written test, barely got halfway through it before Frostmane collected up their papers, and then one by one they had to go up in front of the class and cast the spell to prove they could apply the theories they’d learned. Today was their first practical exam with the freezing spell, where they would be graded on using it for the first time. Five students went before she did, and all of them managed to cast the spell, with varying degrees of success and various results. Two students barely managed to freeze the surface of the water. One student shattered the glass bowl holding the water instead of freezing it, and two students managed to freeze portions of the water, forming ice cubes within it. And given they’d only studied the spell for two weeks, all of those results weren’t all that bad, but none of them achieved the objective of the practical, to freeze the entire bowl of water solid without shattering the glass bowl holding the water.

When it was her turn, she nearly cantered up to the front of the class, focused her gaze on the large glass bowl of water on the table, and passed the day’s exam in about three seconds. She froze the entire bowl of water effortlessly, and even did it in a way that didn’t break the bowl, which was also part of the test. Not doing the spell right would expand the ice inside the glass bowl and shatter it, but Starjumper had taught her how to freeze the water without damaging its container.

“Very good, Miss Summer Dawn,” Frostmane said with an approving nod. “That is a full fifty points for successfully freezing the entire volume of water without breaking the bowl. Do you wish to try for bonus points?”

“Yes I do,” she replied, her horn flaring with pink energy once again. Frostmane’s eyes widened in quite a satisfactory manner when she lowered the temperature in the entire room, making it so cold that everypony’s breath was misting in the frigid air. “I learned how to apply the spell to air as well as water,” she declared, her horn’s aura winking out, but the cold remained behind. “And I also learned this.”

Her horn flared once more, this time much brighter, with a much larger aura, which betrayed the sudden surge of magic she unleashed from within her core. A small sphere of pale blue energy formed at the tip of her horn, and then she lowered her head and unleashed it just the way Starjumper had taught her. A beam of blue magic lashed across the room and struck the bowl, and frost and ice almost instantly formed where the beam had struck, the ice crunching and crackling as it formed, encasing the bowl and the top of the table around it in a layer of frost and ice. “You can build up the spell’s matrix and let it go all at once, and it forms a beam of utter cold.”

Frostmane looked impressed, and that made Summer Dawn feel nearly as good as when Starjumper taught her those two variants of the spell. “Outstanding, Miss Summer Dawn. And did you learn the reversal spell to melt the ice?”

“Yes ma’am, both for air and water,” she answered, almost smugly. Her horn flared once again, and the temperature in the room returned to normal. Then, almost as a flourish, she melted the ice both in the glass bowl and around it.

Frostmane gave a respectful nod and picked up a quill with her silver magic, then made several marks on her clipboard. “That is forty bonus points, Miss Summer Dawn, for learning both variants of the spell on your own, and both reversal spells. Ten points per spell you learned on your own. Added to your fifty points for a successful use of the test spell, that gives you a final score on your practical of ninety. I would say, Miss Summer Dawn, that you have passed your exam. Your score on your written test is irrelevant,” she said with a very slight smile. “And since you displayed complete mastery of the spell, you have completed this block of instruction. Until we start working on the transfiguration spell, Miss Summer Dawn, you will be doing self study in the library. Check in with me on Monday morning before you go to the library.”

She very nearly squealed in delight, and tried not to look too giddy as she returned to her desk. It took her two weeks to learn those spells, but it had paid off!

And if Starjumper hadn’t been tutoring her, she was certain that she wouldn’t have even learned the freezing spell. Those gems she promised to pay him were more and more looking like the wisest investment she’d ever made!

“Miss Crystal Bell,” Frostmane called.

It was such a relief! For the first time in over a year, she didn’t have to spend an entire evening worrying and panicking over whether or not she passed an exam! She’d scored enough points on her practical to pass, and given she didn’t even get halfway through the written test, that was a very, very good thing!

And maybe she was a being a bit smugly arrogant, but no other unicorn in class had learned either of the variants of the spell, but about half of them had learned the reversal spell.

So, when class let out for the day, Summer Dawn was almost prancing down the hall, to the point where Crystal Bell and Berry Cream had to chase her down. “Well, somepony’s in a good mood,” Crystal Bell noted lightly.

Summer Dawn laughed. “You realize that’s the first time since the end of our sophomore year I’ve left a class knowing I passed an exam before Friday morning?” she replied. “You’re darn right I’m in a good mood!”

“Well, it’s a good thing there’s a party tonight,” Berry Cream said. “And it should be a good one. Silver Ring always throws great parties.”

“I’m gonna be a little late,” Summer Dawn said. “I won’t finish tutoring until just before sunset.”

“I’d say that hiring Starjumper was just what you needed, Summer,” Crystal Bell told her. “Those other tutors your parents hired didn’t do a very good job.”

“It’s uncanny, girls. Professor Frostmane can talk about something for a week and I just don’t understand a word she says, but Starjumper explains it to me in an hour, and it’s like it’s the simplest thing in the world,” she told them. "I've already learned six new spells in just two weeks. He taught me a spell that fixes a broken object, a spell that makes flammable material catch fire, and the four variants of the freezing spell I used for bonus points."

“And when is he going to teach you that shield spell?”

“He said we have to work our way up to it,” she replied. “And that teaching me those spells I could never get right are steps down the path.”

Since he'd tested out of the freezing spell and didn't have to take the test, Summer Dawn met Starjumper in the library. He was up on the second floor in the main chamber, and he always sat at the same table, another indication of his tendency to be a creature of habit, almost like sitting at another table would disrupt the rigid schedule by which he lived. There were about twenty books spread across the table, and three of them were open and propped up in front of him as he wrote on a scroll in front of them. “Hey, Star,” she called quietly. “What are you studying?”

“Stoneshaping magic,” he answered without looking at her. “And I have two reports and three essays to write by Monday.”

“Ouch,” she winced. “Part of that remedial schoolwork you talked about?" Starjumper had a ton of extra schoolwork to do, which was why he was always busy. He said it was remedial, that he had to prove to them he knew all the stuff they taught in prior years, since the final he had to take would cover that material. They didn't want him to walk into that test unprepared, so the poor stallion was more or less doing an entire five years of schoolwork in one.

"Sort of."

"Sounds like today will be short.”

“A little,” he nodded. “How did it go?”

“I passed just on the points on the practical, and since I did what we have to do to pass the final test on the spell, it means I’ve tested out. I don’t have to work on the spell anymore, so while the rest of the class keeps working on it, I get self-study time in the library just like you,” she proclaimed proudly. “So, I’ll be in here with you on Monday." Frostmane had made him stay in the classroom the last week, but with the first test on the spell completed, she was going to allow him to stay in the library all day while the remaining students worked on the freezing spell. That was more or less standard procedure in school, the students that tested out got to self study in the library until the next block of instruction started. "Thank you, Star. I won’t be freaking out the entire holiday and weekend wondering if I passed. I already know I passed.”

“Good job,” he said without looking at her. “And did you freeze Frostmane’s head?”

She laughed, then covered her muzzle with her hoof when several students there glared in her direction. “I thought about it, but I chickened out. I used the ice beam spell on the bowl instead.”

“Coward,” he teased, which made her giggle.

She waited while he finished what he was doing, about twenty minutes, then he collected up all the books on the table and they left, bringing them all with him by having them float beside and behind them. The library was just down the campus walkway from his apartment, so it only took a brief moment for them to reach his small tower from the library doors. He explained the next step they were taking as they walked, explaining a new spellcasting technique he called staging, which he said she needed to learn in order to use shield spells. “In essence, when you stage a spell, Summer, you’re casting it without casting it,” he told her as they came down the steps of the library. “You form the spell matrix without investing any energy into it, like building the frame of a house, and then you go back in and fill it in once you’re sure the frame is sound and stable. Staging it lets you see what you’re doing before you put any energy into the spell, that way the spell doesn’t misfire and burn your mane off or something. When you’re first learning them, shield spells have to be staged, you have to form its matrix to make sure you have the dimensions and matrix right, then you fill in the frame, which is the actual casting of the spell. It’s a two step process. Once you gain mastery of the spell, you don’t have to stage it anymore. And that holds true for most spells.”

“So, staging is something of a teaching tool,” Summer Dawn mused. “Something you learn so you can learn, that you don’t really use much once you learn what you want to learn.”

He nodded. “But it’s still an invaluable skill to learn, because it does allow you to learn highly advanced magic safely,” he said.

“Magic training wheels,” she giggled.

“Pretty much,” he agreed evenly. “How much longer are you supposed to work on the freezing spell?”

“Another month,” she replied. “So that’s a whole month of self study time for me, which will let me get a head start on the transfiguration spell. I hope you don’t get sick of seeing me,” she grinned.

“We’ll both have our noses buried too deeply in a book to look up,” he replied.

They reached his apartment, and the door opened by his magic before they reached it. They walked into the large common room, which was spartan and immaculately clean, and he took off his saddlebags and hung them on a peg, then set the large stack of books he was carrying on the floor beside his study desk. “So, did you finish learning that gemfinding spell?” she asked.

“A week ago,” he replied in his usual terse manner. “I’m working on the stoneshaping spell now.”

“Cool. I don’t think we have much time, so let’s get started.”

He gave her an approving nod, and beckoned her over to sit on the large pillow set out in the middle of the floor. That was her “desk” for when he was teaching her, as he explained things, or used magic to create illusions that visibly demonstrated something. And those illusions never failed to impress the hay out of her. They were so incredibly detailed, it was almost looking like a photograph, and he could even make them move. So it was like watching a movie instead of looking at a magically conjured picture. Professor Starshine last year said that illusions depend on the imagination and memory of the caster, so it told her that Starjumper had to have an incredibly vivid imagination.

After explaining the process behind staging a spell, he demonstrated using magic, creating magical lines in the air in front of them that mimicked the matrix of a spell in the middle of the casting process. “You build the frame of the matrix but you don’t put any power into it,” he explained. “Usually that would make a spell just fizzle out, but since you’re not releasing it, it holds in its matrix. That lets you look at what you’ve cast, make sure that you have everything right, before you charge the matrix and cast the spell normally. Mind, you won’t actually be doing this. You’ll be building a matrix shell of magic and sensing it, not looking at it. That’s why I had you do those exercises when you sense how other unicorns are using magic when they cast spells. It was refining your ability to sense the currents of magic while they flow.”

She looked up at the swirl of magical lines. “So, this is the visible representation of a spell being cast,” she mused. “It looks complicated.”

“It is, more complicated than actually casting the spell,” he agreed. “But my father taught me that this is the most efficient way to learn to use advanced magic, at least for him and me. There are other theories, other approaches, and they work, but I don’t know them. I’d have to learn them first, then teach them to you, and that would really slow things down. We’ll start with this, and if you can’t get the hang of it, we’ll try one of the other techniques, until we find what works best for you.”

“Alright,” she nodded professionally. “And I think I understand what this technique is getting at. It’s like practice-casting a spell, just without actually casting it.”

“More or less, but there is a trick to it that you have to practice, else you constantly try to cast the spell you’re staging,” he nodded.

Despite both of them saying they wouldn’t be there long, they were there for nearly three hours, as Starjumper methodically walked her through the process and then taught her how to do it. And to her credit, and a little bit if glee, she’d managed to pick it up fairly quickly…and boy, was it not easy. There was a definite trick to it, using magic but not letting it go anywhere and do anything, kind of like imagining she was casting it while she went through the motions of casting it.

And right on time, that clock gave its three loud gongs, and that caused Starjumper to immediately stop what he was doing. “That’s it,” he declared, picking up her saddlebags with his magic and floating them over to her. He put them on her back and buckled them for her when she stood up. “Practice that over the weekend, and Monday we’ll start working on that transfiguration spell, just so you have more time to practice what I’m teaching you so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“Okay,” she nodded. She was about to say something, but there was a bit of a loud clatter out on the balcony, and the balcony door opened before either of them could go see what was going on.

And in that door strode a thestral. It was a thestral mare, taller than average, and she was quite pretty! She had a nearly black coat with spots and splotches of pitch black dappled on her sides and shoulders and chest, spots similar to the ones on Starjumper’s shoulders, and her mane was a lustrous midnight blue with a large black streak around her right ear. Like Starjumper, her eyes were yellow with vertically slitted pupils. Her wings were huge, and when she opened them up over her back after coming through the door, they rose up over double as high as a pegasus’ wings would when they had them open. “Ducky!” she called, then she gave a fanged smile when she saw them. “Oh, is this your student?”

“Mother,” he replied evenly. “Yes it is. Summer Dawn, this is Nightsong, my mother. Mother, Summer Dawn.”

“Hello, Misses Nightsong,” Summer Dawn greeted as she walked up to them, and Summer Dawn had to look up to look her in the eyes. She was nearly as tall as Starjumper!

“It’s good to meet you, Summer Dawn,” she said with an infectious smile. “You’re a total cutie.”

“Aww, thanks,” she said, blushing modestly. “Is Star going home for the weekend?”

“I doubt it, I was just bringing him some mail and a few things from home,” she replied, turning enough to show a small satchel hanging off her left shoulder, just in front of her large leathery wing. It also let her see her cutie mark, which was a series of stars arranged in the shape of a musical note. “Canterlot isn’t far enough from Baltimare for me to not drop in on him and cause him trouble,” she winked.

“Mother,” Starjumper warned, almost plaintively. That made Summer Dawn giggle despite herself.

“So, how are your lessons going, ducky?” she asked, looking right at her.

“Uh, pretty good,” she answered. “He’s a really good teacher, and my grades are already going up.”

“It looks like things are done for today.”

“Yes they are,” she nodded. “I was just getting ready to leave, but I’m glad I had the chance to meet you.”

She gave a smile. “Usually I’d tell you to stay a while and chat, but I’m afraid I’m on a bit of a schedule today, ducky. But I’ll come back another day and we’ll have a nice long chat.”

“I think I’d like that,” she nodded. “And I’d better go, I have to get ready for a party I’m attending tonight. I’ll see you on Monday, Star.”

He nodded without answering.

She let herself out, and as she was getting ready to go down the stairs, he heard Nightsong’s voice through the door. “I see the clock rang,” she heard her say, and that made Summer Dawn pause at the top of the steps. Eavesdropping wasn’t very polite, but she was just too curious to be gracious.

“I have about a half hour. Want to wait until after dark and go out for a fly?”

“I wasn’t kidding about being on a schedule, son,” she heard her say. “I wish I could stay, but I can’t. I need to get back to Baltimare. I came to warn you."

"What about?"

"The Night King lost the throne," she said. Who was the Night King?

"That's not good," she heard him say soberly. "Who took it from him?"

"His daughter. Your uncle Shadowstep's letter says that quite a few thestrals think he lost on purpose so she could succeed him."

Uncle...was the Night King a thestral? The ruler of that place where the thestrals lived? What did he call it...the Nightlands? Yes, the Nightlands.

"That's really not good."

"I know. You know what this means."

"She won't honor the treaty," she heard Starjumper say, his voice sounding angry. "She was against it from the start."

"We'll see, but I'm not sure she has the fangs to challenge Celestia."

"But Celestia's not here. She might challenge Princess Twilight. She's an unknown quantity."

"I think the pasting Princess Twilight's put on a long line of villains that have threatened Equestria may make Whisperwing think twice," Nightsong said lightly. "Shadowstep said that she's sending her daughter here to Canterlot to renegotiate the treaty. In other words, threaten to nullify it if the ponies don't give her what she wants."

"Me," she heard Starjumper breathe, barely audible.

"That's a possibility. What it means for you, son, is you'd better be very careful when Moonblade is here. She may ignore the treaty and diplomatic convention and take a shot at you if she sees you, and she'll have a whole squad of the Night Blades backing her up. She definitely took the long fangs."

Summer Dawn had no idea what that meant....some thestral saying?

"I'm usually careful anyway, but I'll make sure to stay inside while she's here," he answered. "When is she supposed to arrive?"

"Shadowstep doesn't know. Between how long it takes to get here and how long ago the letter was sent, it could be tomorrow, it could be a moon from now. I suggest you write to Princess Twilight and see if she's heard anything about it. And you should warn her."

She jerked a bit when she heard a noise, then lifted herself off the porch and floated out and away from his tower rather than walk down, so her hoofsteps didn’t alert Starjumper and his mother that she had been just on the other side of the door. Starjumper really was keeping some kind of big secret. From what she just overheard, Starjumper was tangled up with the thestrals over where his mother came from, that they hated him for some reason, and there was some treaty or something that kept them from coming after him. He said that if this new ruler ignored the treaty, they'd attack him, and that a term of renogiating it would be them giving Starjumper over to them.

Why? Starjumper was born in Equestria, he'd never even been where his mother came from, he told her that once in one of those rare instances when he was talkative. Why would they care about him? It wasn't like he was dangerous or anything.

Well, she certainly wasn’t going to cause Starjumper any problems. What she’d learned was something she was never going to mention to anypony, not even him. Especially not him, it would mean that she had violated his privacy, and that would make him super mad.

She thought about it as she floated along a good thirty feet off the ground, floating above the Promenade, using the magic trick that Starjumper had taught her to avoid the hustle and bustle on the street below and give her a chance to think without the distractions of the street pulling her attention every which way. It was really fun to float along like that, and she’d practiced enough to where she could get some impressive speed. Nowhere near as fast as a pegasus could fly, but she was moving at what would be a brisk canter if she were walking. Her mind wasn’t on Starjumper’s secret, though, it was on the upcoming holiday weekend. Two days in Ponyville, it sounded really nice. They would go to the Harmony museum on Thursday, tour Princess Twilight's palace, maybe do some shopping, and stay overnight. On Friday, they’d watch the Wonderbolt performance, then come home and relax the rest of the weekend.

That sounded like lots of fun, and since she’d tested out and had a month of self study when she came back on Monday, she wasn’t going to stress over school at all, all weekend.

And that was just pure heaven.

Comments

[Flod]

All i want for christmas is a new chapter!
:3