• Published 12th Apr 2020
  • 5,861 Views, 204 Comments

The Student from Warpla - SparkStone



A new student from a Human tribe goes to the School of Friendship on a mission. As he makes friends, he learns more about himself as well as the world around him.

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Part 11 - Notebook

Valiant was scribbling something down in his notebook. He was heavily focused on it as he pressed down on the paper with his quil. The bottle of ink dipped quickly and often as its contents were beginning to dry. Five bottles of ink and he seems to not even be done with whatever was being written inside. So deep into his work, he doesn’t even notice Yona approach him.

“Hey Valiant!” She greets him, the human boy jumps in surprise when he realizes who was nearby. “What is Valiant doing?”

“It’s classified,” He told her.

Yona tilts her head, confused by what he meant. “Classified? A secret? Don’t worry! Yaks are great at keeping secrets!”

“You don’t need to worry yourself about it,” he assures her as he blows the contents of his work so it would dry. “It’s a… side project.”

“Can Yona see?”

Valiant closed the notebook as a nervous look got plastered on his face. He closes the notebook and puts it in a back filled with more bottles of ink and quills. “It’s… Classified.”


“Yona tried her best to see, but Valiant wouldn’t show Yona!” she tells the others at the lunch room. The others were listening closely to her tale in the hall, causing curiosity to ponder their thoughts.

“You know, now that you mention it...” Silverstream began, holding her chin. “He was writing something in his notebook while he was waiting for me at the Hay burger Diner.”

“So he has a private journal,” Gallus assumed. “I didn’t expect him to be the kind of person to have one, but that’s nothing to fret over, is it?”

“The thing though, is that he has so many extra bottles of ink and quills with him too,” Sandbar mentioned. “When he lent me a bottle, I saw his bag carrying like, ten of them!”

“What do you think he’s writing that’s so important?” Ocellus wondered. “It must be pretty important if he’s been keeping it a secret from us.”

“He’ll come around to it when he does,” Smolder assured the others. “I’m sure he’ll come around to show us whatever’s in there.”


Ten days later, Valiant continues to be scribbling vigorously in the notebook during class. Smolder was next to him at the time as his quill continued to wave back and forth, smoke was almost emanating from the tip. Smolder would have taken a peek if Valiant didn’t set up a book fence around his desk, making it impossible to see without arousing suspicion. Time for a different approach.

“Hey, Valiant?” smolder whispered, grasping his attention. “Can I see what you’re writing?”

“I can pass my notes to you after class,” Valiant replied.

“Oh, it’ll only take a second. I want to see what you’re doing. It looks interesting.”

Valiant gave a fake smile as he slid the notebook farther from Smolder. “Oh, it’s not that interesting. It’s just a small side project. Nothing you need to worry about.”

Smolder smiled and nodded in response. “Okay, gotcha. Nothing to see then, huh? That’s cool. I understand completely. Got it. One hundred percent.” She even gave him a thumbs up, letting him return to his scribbling. She looked back to the teacher, Fluttershy, and tried to focus on class. With her foot repeatedly stomping impatiently, she suddenly lunges at the notebook, tearing down the book fence despite her previous response of being okay. Valiant quickly moved the notebook out of her reach and closed it, not letting her see a thing inside.

“Small Side project my tail!” Smolder yelled angrily, trying to snatch the notebook. “What are you hiding!?”

“S-Smolder! Valiant! What’s going on!?” Fluttershy stammered loudly.

“What’re you writing that’s got you not telling anyone!?”

“I don’t want to say!” Valiant yelled back as he continued to keep the notebook out of reach.


“Wow, you were sure cool about it,” Gallus chuckled at the annoyed Smolder.

“Oh, shut up,” she hissed coldly. The six of them were in the Treehouse of Friendship when Valiant went off to continue with his small project. They continued to wonder what had their friend so preoccupied in that little notebook.

“Well, it’s gonna be harder now that he’s even more wary with us,” Sandbar sighed.

“Yona thinks that Valiant would still hide it anyways,” she commented.

“Let’s think about what he does with that notebook!” Ocellus suggested. “He may be writing in it all the time, but if we know him, he’s probably doing something for someone else!”

“That’s true!” Silverstream nodded in agreement. “He hasn’t done this before, so that must mean someone encouraged him to do this!”

“But who in the world would that be?” Smolder questioned.

“You know, now that I think about it… I think he handed the notebook to Professor Rarity for a day when he stopped writing in it,” Gallus mentioned, earning him a stern look by everyone. “What?”

“You couldn’t have mentioned that earlier?” Smolder huffed.

“Maybe Ocellus can turn into Rarity and take a look when Valiant gives it to her right there?” Sandbar suggested.

“I don’t think that would work,” Ocellus warned him. “Valiant can see magic, so he can spot me pretty easily even when I transform.”

“I think there’s another way you can try,” Gallus told the Changeling.


Two days later since the meet up at the Treehouse of Friendship has passed. Class was done for the day, and Rarity was putting away some of her belonging in her bag. After she cleaned off the chalk from the board, Valiant entered from the door.

“Oh! Darling, you’re early!” Rarity stated. She rummages through her bag and takes out a notebook with Valian’ts name written on it. “You seem to be improving very well! I’m happy to see you taking such an interest despite the fact that we’ve moved on from the subject.”

“... thank you, Miss Rarity,” Valiant told her, followed by an awkward bow.

“Oh, darling! Your courtesy is always welcome!” She told him before searching for the keys to lock up. “Now, run along! We can discuss the matter later. I must get back to the boutique and work on some new designs for the season!”

Valiant nodded and left as told. As Valiant closed the door behind him, he continues walking down the hall until he sees another human. Another Valiant, to be precise. The other Valiant looked at his clone before saying, “Ocellus? What are you-”

The human looks down at Ocellus’s hand, holding onto a notebook. Their eyes shrink, caught red handed with the object. Ocellus turned and fled as she held on tightly to the book. Valiant gave pursuit but she was running into a crowd of students. Valiant passed carefully and apologized as he searched for the fleeing Changeling. Not getting a good view from where he was, he jumps up to a bookshelf and then to a pillar. Having a bird’s eye view, he spots Ocellus immediately, trying to blend in as another pony student. His eyes were able to detect all of the magic around her keeping that form and attempts to catch the Changeling. Ocellus turns and sees the human coming at her, so she turns back into her Changeling form to fly away. Missing his mark, Valiant continues to give chase as Ocellus attempts to get away. She tired her wings out however and continued on foot, but Valiant was still getting close. She was beginning to panic and didn’t see where she was going, tripping over Spike who was holding a stack of papers, and falling on the floor. She and the notebook slides on the sleek and clean ground. When they stopped sliding, the notebook happened to open up. Without intention, Ocellus happens to look inside the notebook and see it was inside. Valiant caught up to her and saw that he was too late.

“Is this... ” Ocellus muttered. “Supposed to be… Silverstream?”

Valiant covered his face in embarrassment as she looked at the poorly drawn picture of Silverstream. She turns the page and sees a picture of Sandbar with sticks for legs. Silverstream with her mane way too large. Gallus has big talons. Smolder had giant horns. Not only did she find a picture of herself, but she found pictures of each of the professors in there. All of them were equally bad.

“Oh… This is… nice...” She spoke slowly, trying to keep his feelings in check. She passes the notebook back to him and sees his look of defeat.

“I appreciate that you’re trying to cheer me up,” Valiant sighed.

“Is this what’s gotten you so worked up?” Ocellus wondered. “I mean… It’s not… That bad.”

“I’ve been trying to improve over the last two weeks, but it doesn’t seem to look nicer, no matter how many times I retry.”

“Wait, we did something like this in Miss Rarity’s class, right?” Ovellus recalled. “But that was weeks ago. We’re not doing it anymore.”

Valiant scratched the back of his head and decided to tell her, not having much to hide anymore. “When I first did the assignment, we were all told to try and draw someone we know. Silverstream was my partner at the time. We turned in our drawings to the professor without showing our partners. When Miss Rarity took a look at mine, her response was… very similar to yours.”

“Aahh, so you wanted to improve at it?” Ocellus realized. “But… why?”

“I’ve never failed at delivering results before, but when this one assignment was something I wasn’t able to do sufficiently,” Valiant admitted. “It felt… Strange, not meeting up to the expectations of others.”

“Well, no one here is asking you to be perfect,” Ocellus reminded him. “You had a lot of flaws back then, and there’s no shame in that. Besides, you shouldn’t let something like drawing hold you back.”

“I suppose I was just too wrapped up in this,” he admitted. “It’s difficult to try drawing them without a proper reference.”

“Reference?”

“You know, kind of like a model. I’ve been working on them when I’mable to see them.”

“That’s kind of creepy,” Ocellus blatantly told him. “If you need some help with it, I suppose I could help.”

“Help?” Valiant looked at her, bewildered by what she meant. “I would have a reference for you, but I wouldn’t be able to draw the others.”

“Uh, Valiant?” She then transformed herself into Silverstream. “You know I can do this, right?”

Valiant presents a dumbfounded expression before his cheeks went rosy. “I… seem to have forgotten in the brief moment.”


The two take the art project over to Valiant’s house. Ocellus transforms and poses as Smolder for the first drawing. Valiant looks at the Smolder model before adjusting her arm and the angle of her head.

“She likes to hang her head a bit. She shifts the weight to the side because she likes to remain in a relaxed position.”

“Wow, that’s a pretty convincing description,” Ocellus stated in smolder’s voice.

Valiant begins the sketch while responding to Ocellus. “I tried to take notice of everyone’s habits in an effort to avoid troubling or insulting anyone.”

Ocellus continued to model for Valiant. This goes on until they’ve done Smolder, Silverstream, and Gallus. He was currently drawing Ocellus as her normal form until she noticed the sun setting.

“We should probably wrap this up,” She suggested. “It’s getting pretty late.”

Valiant nodded in agreement. He places the sketches on the table for Ocellus to look at. Upon first glance, they were certainly better than the stick legs and strange proportions. However, they were still odd looking to her. Gallus’s talons were bigger than his neck. Silverstream’s mane was still big, only more acceptable than the previous drawing she was in. Smolder’s horns were still big and now her tail was big too. Each one had wrong sizes, including Ocellus. She had bigger eyes on hers and for some reason, her wings were opened when she hadn’t taken them out when modeling.

“Is this… supposed to be a caricature?” Ocellus wondered. “There are portions that are way bigger than they should be compared to their other parts.”

Valiant scratched the back of his head, admitting that they looked off. Not mentioning that the lines were crooked or that the shoulders and wings were a bit out of place, Valian’ts focus at the time were the strange sizes given to each of the drawings. “I tried to follow Professor Rarity’s advice when sketching these.”

“What was the advice?”

“Well, she told me to focus on the best aspects of the model, based on their outward appearances.”

“Oh!” Ocellus realized, understanding the quirky drawing a bit more. “So, are you saying Gallus’s talons are the best part of him?”

“Well, I assume it is,” Valiant thought. “He works hard and takes the time to walk to places rather than just fly on many occasions. He seems to not mind staying on the ground and he has a lot of diligence when trying to complete assignments. No matter how many times he wants to just stop and do something else.”

“Oh, and what about Silverstream?”

“Well, she brushes her mane with a lot of care. She looks quite nice and in a way, I suppose I admire the effort for all of the little things she remembers.”

“And Smolder?”

“Smolder really likes her horns. She doesn’t tell anyone, but I notice that they remain quite shiny day by day. I believe she polishes them every morning seeing how the glean looks fresh. She also moves her tail a lot which is like a third arm in a way.”

“Okay, well then...” Ocellus looked at her sketch and pointed at the wings and eyes. “What’s the thing about my eyes and wings? I didn’t even open my wings out when we were modeling.”

“Ah, that,” he said, holding his chin. “I suppose I was imagining your wings.”

“Imagining? Why?”

“Well I rarely see you fly. But you have such nice wings.” Valiant explained. “I was remembering how unique they were out of anyone I’ve ever met. I’ve never seen a Changeling before, but you seem to be quite wonderful. Your eyes are also quite special too. While everyone’s eyes do look very nice, yours is very pretty. I don’t know anyone else here or in my homeland who has them that are like yours.”

Ocellus looked at the human’s good and honest look on his face. She couldn’t help but turn red once she heard the full description of what he thought of how she looked. Like Valiant did before, she covered her face when he turned to almost see her red cheeks.

“Aaaaah, you really think so?” Ocellus spoke in her quivering voice.

He raised an eyebrow at her behavior, but answered her question instead of inquiring about what she was doing. “I do think so. You have qualities that are quite unique. While your ability to transform is also different from other creatures as well, I prefer seeing you in this form than in others.”

Ocellus covered her face even more. Her chest was thumping and she couldn’t look him in the eyes as she was. She makes her way to the door, but bumps into a coat rack.

“Ocellus?” He called out concerned about what she was doing. Ocellus waved to him, assuring she was fine.

“It’s fine! I’m fine!” She told him, reaching the door while still concealing her face. “I’ll, um, see you tomorrow! Yeah!”

She opens the door but pauses for a moment. She looks over to Valiant and peeks, revealing her eyes but still concealing her blush. “Um, actually Valiant… If you don’t mind, can I… have my sketch?”

Valiant gave her a bewildered look but complied with her request. He hands her the sheet and the Changeling accepts it gratefully. “Thank you… I’ll take good care of it!”

“Oh, um... ” he muttered, not expecting that response. “... Thank you…?”

Ocellus and Valiant said their goodnight and separated for the night. When going back to her dorm, she hangs the picture next to her bed. As she readies for the night, she looks at the mirror and smiles, knowing that someone liked how she looked for who she was.