Ghost of the Everfree

by David Silver

30 - Morning Reading

"Whatcha doing?" Scootaloo was in the room's entryway, watching Dry curiously. "You've been staring at that book a while."

"Um." He considered the professions of his friends. Scootaloo was some kind of warrior/wizard. Apple Bloom was clearly an alchemist. Sweetie was a bard? None of them derived their power from a divine source. None of them had to pray in the morning, or evening, or any other time. They probably didn't even...

"Hey, do you have a god you like?" One way to find out, actually asking. He hoped the question wouldn't offend, but trembled faintly in the worry that it would.

Scootaloo inclined her head, but it came to her and she perked. "Oh! That Everglow thing, right? I never got into it. Silver Spoon is way..." Suddenly, a big smile erupted on her face, turning smoothly into a scheming one. "You're copying Silver Spoon, aren't you?"

His face went hot instantly. "Yes, and no! I like this god, and would even if Silver wasn't involved, but her being involved is a nice, um, turn of events..." He gently pawed at the book in front of himself. "I am trying to pray to her, so that they might let me into her library."

"Well, cool. So what do you have to do?" Scootaloo casually hopped up on Dry's bed, watching him from her new perch. "Is it like a spell?"

Oh, right; she understood spells. "In a way, but it's more... in here." He tapped at his chest. "Less outside. Way less... loud." One could pray out loud, as he considered it. "And flashy."

"Well, go ahead." She shooed him on with waves of her hooves. "Show me your magic."

And so he had an audience. There was no more chance to delay. Disappointing Scootaloo, who had been so good to him, felt like a terrible option. He dipped his head and thought of Luminace in her vast knowing, and her vaster curiosity. She was the bravery that would open a box to see what was inside, even when you were scared what might be hiding in there.

She was the will to look and see, even when what you were seeing was frightening. She was the kind voice, calling others to share in the joy of discovery, to share and learn together, and be safer together. She was knowledge in all its forms and stages, to have it, to seek it, and to share it; all aspects of her.

Words. Concepts. They danced in front of his closed eyes. He couldn't quite put a hoof on a single one of them, but, as a whole, they made sense, and they were good.

He blinked open his eyes to see Scootaloo snoring softly. How long had he been praying?! "Are you alright?"

Scootaloo perked up. "Mm?" She opened her eyes and sat up, rubbing at her face with a fetlock. "You zoned out super hardcore. I didn't want to abandon you, in case it wasn't going the way it was supposed to. Um, so what happened?"

A fine question... "I... think..." He hopped to the ground. "I think I will try a spell."

"Wait, that wasn't already a spell?" Scootaloo peered at him suspiciously. "Not that I'm mad at seeing you do something, but what was that?"

"Um... You have to get ready to do your spells, don't you?" He hoped!

"Yep!" She hopped to the ground and dashed away, returning with a book. "Behold, my spell book!" She slapped it down next to Dry's. "I have to study this all the time. Do you have any idea how complicated these are?" She nosed the book open and slapped a hoof down. "Here's a simple one!" It covered a page in dense graphs and small script. "And you have to know it right or you don't get your spell, so...Study study study. I swear, Everglow just like seeing ponies doing their homework." She stuck out her tongue. "Which is not fair, Equestrian ponies usually not getting much homework."

Dry considered the local school and its lack of homework. "But this lets you do very flashy things... far flashier than the other school does."

"True." Scootaloo waved a hoof at him. "You have a point. At least we get something for it." She hugged her book close, as if to say she had no hard feelings existed between them. "So your praying was like me brushing up for the day? Cool. Well, you did it. Show the magic!"

So he did. He spoke words he didn't know in a language he couldn't say. He moved his hooves on the ground in precise patterns that meant something and the power of it sparkled through him in little electric arcs, then it was all gone, all except for a strange weight he could feel, like he was mentally holding something up, like a thought he couldn't shake free and kept looping back to. "Um."

"I don't see anything. I heard the magic words." Scootaloo peered at Dry's mouth, source of the spell words. "But nothing happened."

He had done something, he was sure of it, so sure. There was something inside him, waiting to do... something. "Maybe I have to... be more magic." He pointed at a book across the way, his journal. "Shalawooda!" Nonsense, but magic sounding, he hoped. He could feel that thought jump, but so did the book. It lifted slowly into the air before his widening eyes. "I did it!"

"Neat!" Scootaloo hurried over and snatched the book right out of his magic grip. "Hm, not a very strong hold." She put the book down gently. "Can you do it again?"

"Um... Shala?" He imagined the book rising, and it did! He tried imagining it dropping, with no funny words, and it did. He could raise and lower it as he pleased, be he couldn't pull it over, just make it hover. "I'm casting a spell!" The limits didn't bother him. He had cast a spell, and the power was his!

Scootaloo rolled her hooves over one another slowly. "But you're not. You did, sure. I heard that! But you're not right now."

"It's the same spell." He danced in place. "What else can it do?" Lifting books up was all well and good... "Um..."

"Can you... change something?" Scootaloo patted her own book. "I can set things on fire or electrocute stuff."

"I wouldn't want to do that." Such acts of evocation were more than a little scary. "But what about looking like it?" He waved a hoof at Scootaloo's book as the magic surged within him, wafting out in waves of orange and red that stained the book in flame-like patterns. "Awesome!"

"Woah." She held up her book and turned it around before she looked inside it. "Phew, you didn't color the inside. Scared me a second there!" She folded the book under an arm. "That is pretty neat. Does this spell have a name? Most spells are called what they do, so that'll help."

"Pres... Press... Presto! Prestee? Presti... digits..." That was a thing neither of them had. "Uh..." He squinted at the words in his head, so vauge and hard... "Pres... ti... digits... ation?"

"Magic tricks?" Scootaloo inclined her head at his startled expression. "What? Trixie was going on and on about it."

"Trixie?" He was so distracted, he felt the spell slip free of his thoughts. He still knew the spell. He could cast it again. Was it a cantrip? It must have been. "Who is that?"

"She's a big show off." Scootaloo marched off, returning without her book. "But she knows magic tricks. She does not know any Everglow magic, and she hasn't visited there... yet?"

"Yet?" Dry squinted at Scootaloo. "Is there a portal?"

"Not like a nice stationary one we can hop through." She patted him on the shoulder. "Sorry, but we've fallen through into Everglow a few times in a few ways. Me and the girls were playing with Twilight's spell. She was the first one, and she did it... kinda on accident too, really... A happy accident in the end. Hm, the only pony that went there on purpose is Diamond and Silver, and it wasn't their purpose. Applejack sent them there."

Dry's eyes shined. "Applejack has that power?"

"No," drawled out Scootaloo. "She had a fancy magic item that did it, and now she does not. For the best, trust me. You don't want to mess with that thing, and neither does she."

Dry sagged, but it was a short-lived thing. "That's alright... I have things to do right here."

Scootaloo ribbed him with an elbow. "You don't want to go away now that you have a girlfriend, I get it." She laughed at his blushing. "Not like you've been hiding it, so don't look so embarassed. I'm not making fun of you, promise! Hey, if you're a magician now, how about pulling a rabbit out of a hat?" She produced a proper tophat to try on. "Go on!"

Could he? He did the dance and sang the words. That weight returned, waiting to obey him and do the magic. "Ready." He took the hat and slowly waved over it. "A rabbit..." He reached into the hat, unsure if it'd work, and he came out with... something rabbit shaped. It was like a paper mache rabbit with googly eyes, as done by an eager foal. "Huh..."

"Huh," echoed Scootaloo, peering at the fake rabbit. "Technically, that counts. Congratulations, you're a stage magician." She began clapping slowly. "Hm, what else can stage magicians do..."

"Maybe I should ask that pony." He gave the hat back, but kept the fake... Oh no. The rabbit fell apart, the paper that made it tearing easily, and the rest of it dissolving back into the magic it came from. "Aw..."

"Easy come, easy go." Scootaloo shrugged without great loss. "Maybe when you get better at it, you can make them stick around?"

"Maybe..." An idea came to him and he reached for Scootaloo. "You have something stuck behind your ear." He meant to pull out a shiny golden bit. Instead, a very obviously fake cardboard coin came. Still, it was a coin.

It was enough to make Scootaloo burst into giggles as she snatched the coin from his grip between her hooves. "Neat! Wow, cool." She realized a moment later that her rough snatch made the coin fall to dust. "Oops..."

"Easy come, easy go," echoed Dry back at her with a smile. "Besides, why worry? You don't clean, um, enough. I see more." He drew out a small pile of other coins for her delight. "See? You really should watch back there."

"Stop that!" She swatted at him with gay laughter. "I wash just fine, thanks. Neat spell though. Not very good in the middle of a real fight... but really cool. Hey, that was your first?"

"My very first." He sat up, looking so proud of himself. "Luminace be praised."

"That's your god, right? You must be getting along, since she gave you that. Neat! I might have tried that out, but I'm already doing my own kind of magic, sorry."

He shook his head quickly. "You have nothing to apologize for. I don't... think you'd be a good fit, no offense, I swear, but you do not search for answers to things, at least anymore."

"Anymore? I used to but stopped?" Scootaloo tilted her head curiously. "What do you mean?"

He pointed to her rump. "You used to seek that answer, a lot, I am told. You would seek that answer and ask so many more questions. Luminace would have smiled on that quest, but you reached the end, and were happy not taking up a new questions."

Scootaloo looked back at her cutie mark. "Huh... Never thought of it like that. I answer questions! I help ponies answer their questions. It's what the Crusaders do." She nodded with certainty, sure of her place in the world. "So we're already doing your Luminace's work without her, so there."

Author's Note:

What you get, trying to tell Scootaloo she isn't already awesome. Still, first spell! Woo!

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Comments

[Booster Spice]

The spell thats harder to say than cast, and is useful in that it can make you physical money in donations?