• Published 3rd Aug 2018
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PONYTALE - Flutter-Spark



A little lavender filly, led by her curiosity, finds herself in the Underground... and finds an adventure she never imagined.

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Chapter 7: Home, Part 1 - First Lesson

As she drifted up from slumber's embrace, Twilight moaned and sighed quietly, slowly rolling over onto her stomach and kicking off the blankets tucked around her body. She spread her legs out as far as they would go and slowly straightened up her hindlegs so her little rump ended up in the air, pressing her forelegs into the soft mattress beneath her as she yawned and curled her back into an arch. Then she leaned forward with her hindlegs staying stretched out straight behind her, one leg twitching and shaking as she arched her back down the other way, forelegs keeping her chest supported in the air, and tilted her head back. Finally she heaved a soft sigh and straightened out her posture completely shaking herself before opening her amethyst eyes and looking around with a smile.

The room in which she awoke was a simple bedroom, comfortable and clean with a bed, a dresser, a shelf full of little stuffed animals just above the bed, a chest of other toys, a set of shelves with a collection children's books, a little table and a nightstand with a lamp sitting on it. Everything was a different light shade of sandy brown, with a throw rug placed beside the bed. And sitting in the middle of the floor was a plate with a slice of pie on it.

Immediately Twilight's stomach grumbled, and the little filly licked her lips as she hopped off the bed over to the pie and sniffed it. She gasped happily as she discovered the scent of cinnamon still lingering around the cooled confection, and she immediately took a bite. There was something else, a sweet flavor close to the sweetness of chocolate but distinctly different and delicious in its own way. Butterscotch, she assumed, based on her mother's phone call from the day before. Either way, it made her smile to think of her Mama having baked it, and she eagerly ate what remained before sighing in happiness, though not quite content as her stomach wasn't quite satisfied; cooled pie would never compare to fresh, still hot pie.

This in mind, Twilight carefully opened the door of her bedroom and stepped out into the hallway, glancing one way then the other before walking into the foyer, and from there stepping into the living room. She smiled a little wider and more warmly as she found Celestia sitting back in a rocking chair by the fireplace, a book resting in the grasp of her forehooves and a pair of half moon spectacles resting atop her muzzle. The Alicorn smiled as she peeked up from her book at Twilight before levitating the spectacles off over onto the mantle, marking her place in her book before doing the same with it and getting out of the chair to walk over and embrace her daughter.

"Good morning, my child," she said, nuzzling Twilight's cheek lovingly. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, Mama," Twilight answered, giggling lightheartedly at the nuzzle. "Thank you for the pie."

"You are very welcome, my child. Would you like another slice for breakfast?"

Twilight's rapid, eager nod made Celestia giggle, and Twilight readily fell into step beside her Mama as they walked into the kitchen and the Alicorn paused by the counter. Twilight licked her lips as she spied a still steaming pie sitting on the counter beside the stove, and clapped her hooves together happily as Celestia cut and deposited two slices onto a pair of plates, levitating them back into the living room onto a table by the corner. Both mother and child settled themselves into chairs at the table and began to eat quietly, neither saying anything but readily sharing smiles, the younger humming in delight at the flavor of her breakfast and the elder chuckling through her closed lips.

Once they were both finished, Twilight sighed and lightly hopped down from her chair, watching as her Mama settled once more into her rocking chair by the fireplace. She stared for a moment as Celestia once again donned her spectacles, then gasped in hushed awe as the Alicorn's horn lit up and golden light filled the air. In seconds, the plates from breakfast had lifted into the air and hovered into the kitchen, where the sounds of running and splashing water and porcelain clinking together signaled the dishes being washed, dried and returned to their proper places. At the same time, several books began to pull themselves off the shelves across and opposite from the table before swirling around Celestia's head, her eyes flicking quickly over every cover as if giving a cursory examination. Once in a while, she would set one of the books on her lap, and after every book not given this treatment had been checked it was returned to its home on the shelves exactly where it had come from.

Finally, Celestia smiled as if satisfied and caused the tip of her horn to flash brightly again, and all the books still floating around her instantly returned to the shelves whence they came, perfectly organized by genre, subject, theme and title. All the while, Twilight simply sat, her jaw hanging, and Celestia stifled a giggle behind her hoof as she turned to meet the child's awestruck gaze at last. The Alicorn easily levitated the books she'd sat in her lap over to the table and let them settle there before setting her spectacles once more on the mantle above the hearth.

After a while, Twilight managed to shut her slack jaw and shook her head in bewilderment, asking loudly, "Mama, how did you do that?"

Celestia smiled and slid easily out of her chair, and gently caressed her child's cheek with a gleam of fondness in her eyes as she answered, "It is a simple matter of memorization, my child. I have spent so many afternoons organizing and reorganizing my books that I now have the perfect system to know where everything goes exactly."

Twilight let a light yet nervous giggled flow before she coughed and said, "Yes, but, I actually meant–"

"I know what it was you meant, Twilight," Celestia said, smiling still as she booped the filly's nose with her hoof. "It is perhaps the most fundamental spell of any pony or creature who has the ability to use consciously focused magic, the levitation spell. At its root, it is simply a means by which one may bring objects with them without exerting their own efforts of physical strength, although the greater the weight in mass they are attempting to move the more focused mental effort and overall bodily strain the spell will take."

"Bodily strain?" Twilight asked, blinking.

"Yes. You see, some asume, incorrectly, that levitation requires a purely mental exertion. The truth is that it is more akin to creating an invisible, detached limb that obeys your mental command and lifts the mass of the object you desire to move using the spell. As a result, the weight of the mass itself is still felt as pressure upon the body of the caster, and attempting to lift too much all at once will tax both body and mind."

Twilight sat down and cocked her head to the side as she considered this, then slowly nodded. "So, it's just like you lifting the weight yourself, only it's your magic that's the muscle instead of your body's muscles?"

Celestia grinned and nodded, nuzzling her daughter's cheek affectionately. "Yes, that is it exactly, my child. In a sense, every spell domain and class in existence is like that; it is a muscle which you must exercise regularly the same as you exercise your body and mind. Only by doing this will you grow stronger in the use of that domain or class. In time, you will become able to shape and reshape your power however you see fit to suit the class or domain of magic you wish to use, and create the most amazing effects, the very foundation of principle upon which magic is based."

Twilight smiled and rapidly drummed her forehooves on the grounds, asking, "Does this mean I'm going to start learning magic?"

Celestia chuckled lightly and nodded. "Yes, my child. And we are going to start with tapping into your reserves."


After following her mother outside into the house's yard, Twilight shivered, a rush of excitement running through her along with nervousness as she stood at the foot of the dark dead tree, watching as Celestia paced before her. "Now then, Twilight," Celestia said, keeping her gaze locked on her daughter. "You said the books you were studying said tapping into magic is akin to opening a bottle. However, it is truly more similar to a stream of running water leaving a pond through a dam.

"How I mean this," she went on, "is not to say the dam blocks the water. Rather, the dam is merely restricting how much of the water is flowing at a given time. At the start, your magic is naturally blocked by a dam, composed of the lack of will to control the magic and a lack of need to utilize it. Such is the way of all spell-casters. As such, the first step to any series of lessons regarding magic is to learn how to channel it in its raw state."

Twilight nodded in understanding. "So, I'm going to have to open the dam, right?"

"Yes," Celestia replied, nodding. "However, as I have said, you have a lot of raw power inside of you. Your reserves, somehow, are much more expansive than most unicorns your age. That is why you inadvertently caused so much damage to the room where we met when you were trying to protect yourself. You were tapping into too much magic too quickly. This time, you are going to try to hold back the magic as you gradually open the dam, letting more and more of the stream flow free from within. As you release more magic, be aware that you will find the strain of holding it back becomes greater with every passing second. You must not block or control it, but rather...

"...you must guide it."

Twilight nodded, swallowing a small lump she hadn't realized was forming in her throat, and shut her eyes. She could feel her nervousness growing, and tried to calm her mind and relax. Then, once she felt she was ready, she searched within. She searched for the feeling from when she had been attacked by Flowey, picturing it as a valve on a great dam blocking the waters of a massive reservoir from escaping. She pictured herself there, turning it, struggling to open the channel and let the waters flow.

Instantly, Twilight felt her horn fill with warmth, one she recognized from her confrontation, and she immediately clenched her teeth together as he eyes squeezed more tightly shut, focusing on holding the energy there. She could sense it, feel it bubbling up from within, and it truly was like a stream flowing through her body, coming from somewhere deep in her chest and rising to her horn as if it were the most natural thing.

Yet she gasped and whimpered as suddenly the feeling became unnatural. It was as if the stream had found another blockage and was reversing course, the flow now spreading down through her spine and from there along unseen channels into her legs, pooling at her hooves and rising rapidly to fill her entire body. Her whimpers quickly became a loud groan as she felt the power of her magic overwhelming her attempts to control it, saturating her entire body as her teeth clenches and eyes squeezed more tightly shut with the strain. Then, just as she was sure she was making progress getting ahold of it, the valve seemed to twitch just slightly more open.

And the maelstrom came.

Her eyes flew open as Twilight screamed, her entire body burning with energy as she found a veil of light, the same bright lavender as before, surrounding and enveloping her, seeming to emanate from her every bodily fiber. She had but a moment to take in Celestia's fearful yet almost awe-struck face before it was lost in a sea of white, the pure power turning her eyes into pools of matching light. She screamed again, longer and louder than before, as this time the pain of this force, this "magic surge" overwhelmed her, suffusing her every bodily fiber as she was lifted by the magic and held aloft before the tree. She could head, vaguely, the rustling of a great many leaves caught up in the whooshing of a torrential wind, but it was muffled, dulled out by the sheer amount of pain driving her screams.

What do I do?! This though echoed in her mind, a scream as desperate as her vocalized one was pained. What can I do?! It hurts! It hurts so much! Mommy, please, help me!

Mommy... Mommy...? Wait... That's it!

All at once, the pain was gone, and Twilight felt her entire body relax as it returned to solid ground, her hooves resting with a soft crunch upon the bed of leaves once more. She opened her eyes, unsurprised to see many more leaves fluttering to the floor around her, and looked up into the face of her mother. Celestia simply stood there, utterly and completely shocked, as Twilight looked up at a massive ball of lavender light resting at the very tip of her horn. Inside, pure energy swirled and coiled and flexed in and out of and all around itself, yet gradually began to stretch out and reshape itself into something. It pushed outward, the ball of light stretching to accommodate the mass of energy within, and slowly a slender equine's figure had been formed, equally as tall if not slightly more so than Celestia, with a mane and tail of ethereal light flowing behind it, a horn and wings befitting its form shown off for both mare and filly to behold.

With a small smile, Twilight bowed her head, and in return the ethereal mare's own head bowed before the filly, with a soft sigh, reached within to the stream of her magic and ceased the flow. Then the mare's body dissolved, vanishing as if it had never been, and all once more was quiet and serene.

Neither Twilight nor Celestia disturbed the silence for a time, both simply standing and staring at the point where the little filly's creation had disappeared. Yet, it wasn't long before Twilight turned to stare into her mother's white face, and her ears folded back as she realized the Alicorn looked almost pale, her wide eyes distant and her jaw slack. So it was with great hesitance that Twilight reached out with a shaking hoof and brushed it along her mother's foreleg, flinching back as Celestia turned her head sharply to meet the gaze of her child.

"D-did I do good, M-Mama?"

The question, asked quietly and in a tone more befitting a much younger filly, seemed to stir Celestia from whatever stupor had overtaken her. She shook her head a moment, glancing from the filly before her to the space before the tree where the "energy mare" had been and back again, before she finally sat down with a loud thump. Yet the stunned awe in her eyes grew overwhelmed with a glow of motherly pride and love as she reached out with both forelegs and wings to pull Twilight close, eliciting a cute little "Eep!" of surprise in the process. A loving, tender nuzzle and even a gentle kiss to her forehead, however, made every worry wash away as she buried herself against Celestia's chest.

"Yes, my child," Celestia finally answered, her voice quivering. "You did very, very good. And I am very, very proud of you."

Twilight hummed happily, and as she let the words and the emotion behind them sink into her heart, she found her heart seeming to swell with DETERMINATION to continue making her mother proud.

Author's Note:

Okay... I'm a touch conflicted with this chapter. It's shorter than I'd thought it would be, and it was a pain for me to write in a way I liked, but I suppose I'm satisfied with it for now. I wish now I'd done a bit more with it, but... Meh, I'll take what I've gotten. If nothing else, it sets a foundation for more.
And, also, damn if I didn't make Twiley pretty dang powerful! But there's a lot of reasons for this, folks, which we will get into later.
For now, please be sure to Upvote, Comment and Follow if you liked this chapter and please let me know what you are liking about this story.