Starting A Flame

by Star_Shade

Chapter [17] An interesting challenge

Two weeks, two weeks they said. Every day, Piper was told to lift these weights. Hold this stretch for a period of time. Run that distance. Never complain, and never give up. Piper gritted his teeth through all of these. At the end of each session, he was always dripping with sweat and thoroughly exhausted. Doctor Therevex was a brutal taskmaster, but also incredibly kind whenever Piper failed at anything. His soothing words always gave the colt the necessary inspiration to continue.

“Get up and try again,” the doctor said softly, his ever-infinite patience evident in his features. Piper groaned, but dutifully complied. He was now no longer wearing any bandages, though he could always feel the scar on his back. Today, he was asked to bring two thirty-pound weights, nearly half his mass, across the exercise floor.

Piper slowly made his way across. His front two hooves shaking every time he took a step, he was still satisfied at the progress. Half a week ago, he couldn’t even do twenty pounds, now, he was doing sixty. “Good… good!” called Therevex as he watched the struggling colt walk. “Almost there.”

“I did it!” exclaimed Piper in jubilee. “I made it across without falling!”

“Great job, my boy,” said Therevex as he walked over to congratulate him.

“So this was it, right? I can go home now?” questioned Piper, looking up at the doctor.

“Not quite. I believe Commander Shining has something he wants to do with you,” responded Therevex, smiling at his innocence.

---

“So…” Piper drummed with his white hooves on the table before him and looked around. They were sitting outside in a clearing, on a picnic bench next to a tree. Shining was just staring at Piper from across the table, without an expression. Piper was not sure what to expect. He was told that he was going through special training, something different than what he saw older ponies doing. However, the silence around him was starting to eat away at his patience. “When are we going to start?” he said impatiently.

“We have already started,” said Shining, still in his emotionless state of staring at Piper. The colt did not know how to respond and started lazily looking around. Noticing something on the other side of the tree, he made to get up. “Stay.” There was no emotion in the words, just a simple command. Piper halted his movement. Returning to his original position, he returned Shining’s stare, searching for any cracks in the mask that the commander had. Finding nothing, Piper grew bored again.

Minutes turned into hours, as the day cycle continued, Piper laid his head down, sighing out loud to show his discomfort. After what seemed like forever, he heard a voice from behind him. “Get up.” Somehow, Shining had sneaked behind him, sitting and looking at the tree. Piper did as he was told and moved next to Shining, who was staring at the tree and the water canteen in front of it. “I want you to watch the canteen for twenty minutes,” said Shining.

“What?” Piper exclaimed, unsure of why he was doing such a stupid thing.

“I want you to watch that water canteen and not lose sight of it.”

“But why? Is it going to sprout legs and walk away? Is it something dangerous that I need to protect?” It seemed like an endless spout of questions.

“Just watch the canteen,” stated Shining plainly, walking back to the table and closing his eyes. His horn lit up and he sat in silence. Piper turned to the canteen and looked at it, daring it to be interesting. Sadly, the canteen had another idea and sat in its unimportance. Grumbling about doing nothing, Piper got into a comfortable position and watched.

He didn’t last long, after some time, he noticed a butterfly passing through his peripheral vision. Debating in his mind why he was listening to Shining in the first place, and thinking that it must have been twenty minutes, he turned his attention to the butterfly. “Stay focused on the canteen. Your twenty minutes were not up. Try again. Watch the canteen,” called Shining.

Rolling his eyes, Piper returned his gaze to the canteen, deciding to just count in his head. He reached four hundred before he grew bored of doing that too. Chiding himself for his boredom, he again lost his gaze. His eyes wandered up to the tree, noticing how it was ten times more interesting than the canteen. “Focus!” exclaimed Shining. “Try again, twenty minutes.” Piper just groaned in frustration.

He failed two more times, the first with a group of ponies in formation training near him. He turned to them to see what was going on, and with another remark and groan, he watched again. The second time was when Shining’s horn started to sputter, and sparks flew. Piper, confused and distracted, wanted to see what was happening. With Shining alleviating Piper’s confusion with a simple nod and another chide remark to stay focused, the colt once again watched.

After what felt like hours, Piper was finally able to count himself to twenty minutes. With a word from Shining, who still had his eyes closed, confirming that his twenty minutes were up, Piper jumped in jubilee, happy that he would be done with just sitting and watching an insufferable inanimate object for a silly amount of time. Opening his eyes, Shining turned to Piper. Piper, expecting some praise for--in his mind--his massive achievement, was mildly disappointed.

“Good job. Now, I want you to do it again for another twenty minutes,” said Shining casually.

“What!?” cried Piper. “Why do I have to sit here, doing nothing but watching this stupid canteen? Why when I could be doing so much more stuff! At least physical therapy was more interesting than this.”

“Well, when you are done complaining, maybe you can tell me why you are sitting and watching a canteen in the first place. I want you to stay and watch until I come back,” said Shining, starting to walk away.

“Wait, are you just going to leave me to sit here and watch? You are crazy!” shouted Piper, his face scrunching up in irritation as he observed Shining calmly walk off to do something much more interesting than his current activity. Sitting again and watching the canteen, he started compiling reasons why it was useless to be sitting and watching. A. Stupid. Water. Canteen.

Eventually, he lost his focus, and started looking around, hoping to find something, anything to keep his mind at work. He could still follow Shining’s command of staying, but he was done looking at a water canteen. After another period of time, Piper had no way of keeping track now, he heard a fizzle and pop as Shining teleported next to him.

“I see you lost your watch again,” he said simply.

“Well, of course! This is completely idiotic! You would have to be crazy to find staring at the water canteen interesting at all!” said Piper angrily.

“Well, I see you spent no time thinking about why you were doing the activity, but instead wasted thinking time on reasons why said activity was useless.”

“But why? What purpose does it serve for me to just watch something that is not interesting?”

“Because,” huffed Shining, irritation finally showing on his face. “If you are to learn. You need to stay focused. A great soldier and leader needs to learn focus before they can become great in the first place.”

Author's Note:

Well this was a fun chapter to write. It was from a prompt on something that I literally heard once. But I always found it a bit hard to believe that character's automatically learn patience. I know it is probably not something super fun to read, but it so rarely is shown in stories. Anyway, hope you enjoy!
Ps. Sadly have to push updates back a week or two, but next chapter is going to be a big one!

Comments

[THERDSTORYWHISPERER]

Nice chapter!