On the Horizon

by mushroompone

Chapter One: Really Bad Advice

What is the perfect score on an exit exam to prove your parents wrong?

And I don’t mean that in the conventional sense. Not proving my parents that I have potential, or moxie, or spunk, or some other nonsensical measure of academic worth, and thereby personal worth. No, they knew I had that.

A D would be really scraping by, probably. Cutting it much too close for comfort. D is graduation by the skin of your hoof. It’s luck, really. Grounds to repeat.

Too risky.

I let my gaze wander to the window. A picture perfect day in Canterlot, of course. Clear skies and fresh, clean air-- so then why did I feel like I was choking on it?

I turned my head back to my exam.

How about a B-? That’s pretty nice. It says that I actually put in a little effort. Still not an A, though, in spite of that effort.

But... I knew plenty of talentless blankflanks who were going to finishing schools on straight-B report cards.

No, then.

Split it down the middle at a C, maybe?

I tapped my pencil without thought or rhythm on the edge of the desk. My own blank flank tensed and relaxed as fast as it could, bouncing my right hind leg at nigh impossible speed.

An A would be easy. These questions were easy. This whole thing was easy, so mind-numbingly easy.

What was I doing here, anyway? This was the dumping ground for unicorns who didn’t get into Celestia’s school, for blankflanks of advancing age, for ponies with talents that were broadly useless or incapable of earning income. That wasn’t me. I had talent. I had buckets of talent!

But nopony knew that, of course. Because I had failed an examination at barely eight years old. How could any decent pony put all that pressure on such a tiny filly?

Focus, Twilight.

Just a few questions left. Choose your destiny.

You wanna do high school again? You wanna be stuck with another round of societal failures?

Or do you wanna go to finishing school like a good pony?

Or…

I should answer another one properly. Everypony knows the quadratic formula, right? It would be kinda stupid not to fill that one out.

To be fair, even I don’t know what I want. It’s definitely not finishing school, that's for sure. But, beyond that...

That’s why I was choking on the fresh air, I guess. Because the “right” grade on this test is only half the battle. Not even that-- it’s like one grain of said on this gigantic beach I had to cross to get to something that would make me happy. What happened when this grain of sand got lost in the shuffle? What happened when I moved onto another cause it was prettier, or bigger, or the other grains of sand just seemed to like it better? What about--

“Five minutes remaining.”

Oh, jeez.

Focus. Focus, Twilight.

The Noble Gases. You know the Noble Gases. Just write them down. Don’t you wanna be honest?

I wrote down the first few elements of the periodic table in order. According to my quick arithmetic, that landed me at a B-. How many more would I have to get wrong to get a C?

“Wrap it up, Twilight.”

“That was five minutes already?!” I exclaimed. My pencil started to tap again.

The teacher sighed. I didn’t know her well, couldn’t even recall her name if I was honest. “You’re the only one left, Twilight. And, yes, you’re technically within your accommodated time, but… Well, I’ve seen the way you’ve been staring out the window. Distracted?”

“I’m just… thinking.”

“Mm.” She crossed her hooves one over the other on the desk and returned to her novel.

I could do that. I could proctor exams. I could teach, I bet. I’m pretty smart. Was it all that hard to just… make other ponies be smart, too?

Nah, scratch that. Definitely not.

What a line to walk. Too much of a srew-up under-acheiver for finishing school, but not such a mess that I needed to do this unbearable year over again.

I wanted--no, no, I needed--a grade that said “Stop worrying! I can handle myself. I’m just an average pony living her average life. I’ll cutie my cutie mark one day and, y’know, maybe you’ll like it and maybe you won’t, but either way I’ll have it and you won’t have to think about me anymore. Can you just stop thinking about me already?”

Could one letter say all that?

Well. C would, as much as any one letter ever could.

So I wrote the wrong planets. I mixed up my homonyms and jumbled up my grammar. I conveniently forgot how to write a few simple words in Griffish.

I put my pencil down and turned my paper over.

The teacher turned her page as well, not yet looking up.

I sat back in my chair and laid my hooves over my stomach. Still nothing.

Tried clearing my throat, just a little. The teacher sniffled.

“Um… ma’am?” I murmured.

The teacher peered up at me over her half-moon spectacles. “Finished?”

I nodded.

She stood up and stretched. The sun glimmered on her jewelry and blinded me for an instant.

I gave my packet a little push in her direction as she walked towards me. Her hoofsteps made these awful, empty sounds on the linoleum. Somehow, though, she retained a sense of authority. Even lounging as she had been, with her mane pulled back in a bun so messy it barely qualified-- she was comfortable with herself.

And, by comparison, it made me hate myself a little more.

She picked it up. “Well?”

I blinked. “W-well, what?”

“How do you think you did?” She asked, holding the exam between the two of us like a screen.

“Oh, you know…” I chuckled nervously, swallowed the extra saliva rolling around in my mouth. “Average. Ish. Give or take.”

The teacher snorted in response. “Average-ish, hm?”

She perused the packet carefully, closely. I had never seen a test scrutinized so intensely, not even by a teacher who was actually grading one. She read every word, turned pages with a practiced deliberation, all while standing right over my desk.

As she neared the end, I opened my mouth to say something, but immediately snapped it shit again when the teacher dropped the paper screen and stared down at me. There was a strange look in her eyes. Familiar, sort of. Like she was in on some secret about me that I couldn’t quite remember.

“Erm,” was all I could say.

“Let’s take a walk,” she said. She folded the thick packet of questions in half and tucked it into her blazer.

I hopped out of my chair, which produced a loud and echoing squeal in the otherwise empty room, and fell in step behind the teacher.

She led me out of the testing room in silence. She was… weirdly tall. Like, taller than I’d thought. Tall enough that I had to sort of trot to keep up with her walk.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Oh, I think there’s somepony here you’d better speak with before you go,” she said. “It’s not a test. Promise.”

A little bit of the tightness in my chest released. Sometimes my anxious tendencies amazed even me.

The teacher took a sudden right, nearly cutting me off, and jostled doorknob of some kind of office. I glanced upwards and noticed the neat golden lettering across the opaque glass: ‘Compass Rose, Guidance.’

I sighed and hung my head. “You’re a guidance counselor?” I asked.

Compass Rose feigned surprise with a theatrical gasp. “Is that what that says? Imagine that. Well, since we’re here…” She pushed on the door. “In need of some Guidance, Twilight?”

Beyond the door was exactly what you think when you hear the words ‘Guidance Counselor’s Office.’ Pictures of foals on a corkboard, motivational posters anywhere there wasn’t a corkboard. Piles of yarn half-knitted into scarves. A bookshelf filled with pamphlets and flyers and booklets--not any real books, you know?--on uncomfortable subjects. A desk littered with friendly trinkets, featuring yet more pictures of her foals.

And, of course, beanbag chairs.

I flopped down into the blue one (it had fewer stains) and sank into its beany depths. “Couldn’t really get out of it if I tried, could I?”

Compass Rose laughed, honestly truly laughed. “So I was right! You are smart.”

I rolled my eyes, but didn’t respond.

“You did a great job getting a perfect C on this exam,” Compass Rose said, pulling the packet out from her blazer. “Seriously. It’s harder to do what you did here than it is to just answer the questions how you’re meant to.”

I crossed my arms, still staying silent, but wondering somewhere how exactly she had caught me.

It smelled like fresh air and sunshine in here. A little bit like orange juice, or maybe that was orange popsicles. Some kind of perfume, too. Like lillies.

A bird whistled outside the window. Wish I was a bird.

“I’ll bet you’re wondering how I caught you, hm?” Compass Rose flipped to the back of the exam. “Well, the exam was sixty questions. You answered the last fifteen of those incorrectly, earning a seventy-five percent. Perfect, middle-of-the-road C. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a student only get the last questions wrong on an exam.”

I squirmed in the beanbag chair. “Oh.”

Compass Rose nodded. “Not only that, but you actually managed to give thoughtful answers, anyway. Instead of the chemical formula for water you… well, you wrote the equation for photosynthesis. That’s much more difficult to remember. Even I don’t know that off the top of my head.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s still wrong.” I ran a hoof across my face to clear away the stringy fringes of my forelock. “They can’t mark a wrong answer right just because it’s better or something.”

“So you admit to answering wrong on purpose?” She asked.

I groaned and rolled my head back to rest on the beanbag chair.

“Now, I can’t be sure of the details, here, but I’m guessing you’re trying to get out of something?” She leaned forward, over the exam. “Maybe… finishing school?”

I turned my head away from her the tiniest bit.

“Right. I’m guessing that’s because you have something you’d rather be doing?”

I didn’t answer.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” She sat back again, and began shuffling things around on her desk. “Normally, I’d give you a career aptitude test. But you seem to be pretty good at getting the result you want from an exam.”

A little smirk teased at my lips.

“So, I’ll just ask: What is it that you want, Twilight?”

I froze. I sat up, the beanbag chair eeking out some weird sound that nearly made me bust out laughing from sheer embarrassment and awkwardness.

Nopony had ever bothered to ask that before, especially not so… bluntly. I had been asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had been asked what I wanted to study in finishing school. I had been asked what I thought my cutie mark would be, and what my parents thought I would do, and if I wanted to join the royal guard with my big brother, and if--

The wind shifted, and the scent of disturbed dirt and fresh-cut grass wafted towards me. I breathed deeply, but couldn’t seem to let the breath out.

Was that pot I was smelling in there? Somepony was getting stoned, feeling all chilled out because they just finished high school, and I was in here?

“Twilight?”

“Um--” I choked on my words, had to clear my throat to continue. “I… I don’t know.”

Compass Rose blinked once, very slowly. “I think you may have misunderstood. What do you want right now? This second. Where do you want to be? What do you want to do? WHo do you want to do it with?”

“Well, my parents arranged this party thing--”

“I didn’t ask about your parents,” Compass Rose said. “I asked about you. If you could do anything right now, what would it be?”

I held Compass Rose’s gaze a moment longer, then slid my eyes past her and back to the window.

It’s amazing how much looking out a window can affect a pony. Especially on such a beautiful day, you know? It was something primal. Sometimes, on those days with particularly fluffy clouds and blue skies and warm sunlight, I could almost feel the itching of phantom wings fluttering against my shoulder blades. I mean, who even knows where I got that from. My family tree is unicorns all the way back. But, I swear, those wings are there.

Maybe I’m more sensitive to nice days than most.

“I wanna play music,” I blurted. I hadn’t even meant for it to come out, really hadn’t even thought it.

“Oh,” Compass Rose said. She seemed almost as shocked as I was at my sudden outburst. “You play an instrument?”

I nodded. “Piano.”

“How long have you played piano?”

I shrugged. “It’s not… I mean, it really isn’t playing playing. It’s more like I listened to music and just figured out which buttons to hit, y’know?”

Compass Rose furrowed her brows almost imperceptibly. “That sounds like playing to me.”

“Well, you should hear Lyra and Vinyl, then. They’re the real musicians,” I said. “I’m just a… music fan.”

“Are Lyra and Vinyl friends of yours?” Compass Rose asked.

“I play with them sometimes.”

“So you’re a band?”

I scoffed. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far--”

“So, I’m hearing that you’d really like to just go play with your band.” Compass Rose was sifting through her rolodex now. She did it with such purpose that I didn’t know whether to be afraid or excited. My heart was pounding either way.

“I… guess.”

“Ah, here we are,” Compass Rose said, settling her rolodex on one entry. She then looked back up at me. “Would you be interested in playing a show?”

“Uh…” I scratched the back of my head with one hoof. My cheeks were already flushed, I could tell. “You mean… like for an audience?”

“Sure. At a cafe. In Manehatten?”

“M-Manehatten?” I repeated. “Manehatten. Like… Manehatten Manehatten?”

Compass Rose giggled, an angelic sound. “Do you know more than one?”

I swallowed. Then sighed. Then swallowed again. Was this hyperventilation? No, right?

“One of my old friends from home owns a cafe in Manehatten. It’s a little place, not much traffic, but it’s a start. Interested?” She looked at me expectantly.

Part of me thought that she was trying to catch me in a bluff. Convince me that what I really wanted was nice, stable finishing school. Trick me into saying that I knew music wouldn’t earn me my cutie mark. But she was just so sincere! Her face was soft and welcoming and generous.

“You don’t think I should just give in and go to finishing school?” I asked timidly.

Compass Rose shrugged. “Maybe you should, maybe you shouldn’t. Playing a show--one show--with your band and attending finishing school are not mutually exclusive, you know.” She paused, sighed, and smiled sadly. “Sometimes you have to be impulsive. You’d be surprised what kinds of things you miss out on because somepony didn’t follow their impulses.”

“That… sounds like really bad advice,” I said. “Like, really bad.”

“What I mean is… think of all the wonderful things we wouldn’t have if everypony was preoccupied with doing what their parents wanted.”

I thought that over, then nodded, if hesitatingly. “Hm.”

“Should I call?”

“Yes.”

Comments

[E-man]

interesting...

[Satto Kez]

Alright. This has my attention.
Hope this continues.

[Lieral]

This really can get somewhere interesting. We know very well the world of the show, but since I guess Starlight won the battle here, this is totally new.

[Greenstaroftheplane]

I wrote down the first few elements of the periodic table in order. According to my quick arithmetic, that landed me at a B-. How many more would I have to get wrong to get a C?

She's basically saying 'I wanna stay in school'

[Greenstaroftheplane]

I could do that. I could proctor exams. I could teach, I bet. I’m pretty smart. Was it all that hard to just… make other ponies be smart, too?

If only Twi if only

[Greenstaroftheplane]

As she neared the end, I opened my mouth to say something, but immediately snapped it again when the teacher dropped the paper screen and stared down at me. There was a strange look in her eyes. Familiar, sort of. Like she was in on some secret about me that I couldn’t quite remember.

Oh my gosh 'shit' (super funny by the by ) no offense by the way author

[Greenstaroftheplane]

So far I'm liking what I'm reading keep it up you have talent I can tell a few bumps here and there but still talented non the less