Definitions

by Techno Flare

Chapter III

“Can you believe those guys, Dawn?”

The scenery shifted around me. Greens and browns and bright blue skies flooded my eyes with a spectrum of vibrant blurs, and that was without the ponies around me. My tired eyes struggled to send the messages to my brain, causing a slight headache in the back of my skull. That also wasn’t helped by the tugging of my maneband, nor the pounding of my hooves against the ground as I continued this run. The muscles and joints all over me were singing their frustrations. My head was overloaded.

That didn’t stop Sharp Hex from having conversations with me.

“Did they really think that the Princess was hiding something?” she pressed on, in between some deeper breaths. “Did they tell you?”

“They wouldn’t stop talking about it.” That got a chuckle and bought me some time to sort my thoughts. Friday’s events overlapped into the past couple nights but I could still remember some details. “They honestly believe that Princess Twilight is trying to increase the number of magical incidents intentionally. They say that she is paying ponies to use crazy spells and cause damages, or that she is fabricating the stories entirely to cause ‘fearmongering’ just to put money into the pockets of the governors. Like, what?”

Hex ran along my right side. Slim limbs carried her athletic, deep purple figure from trot to trot along the sparsely grassed path. Every practice, this was our formation, and she made sure of that every day for three years. I think she enjoyed how much I pushed her, seeing as she would be breathless when we first ran together. At this point, she could chat and trot just fine, and it made the runs pass by much faster.

“I never expected White to get into something like that. Who knew he could be so radical?” She talked about White Noise like he was an old friend. “I guess he could be a bit gullible at times, but you even told him your own account of what happened that day.”

“Right, right.” The world around me swirled as I felt some spit catch in my throat, poking my innards like a chip. I cleared it as best I could and said, “I guess White trusts them all that much.”

“Well,” Hex said with a huff, “that’s not how friends should treat each other. That’s what Princess Twilight taught us, right?”

The regurgitation came up once again today. “Ah, of course!” I echoed.

Sharp Hex, and the rest of the running crew, took friendship lessons to heart. Each pony was incredibly kind, and the combined suffering of being on a running team simply forced their bonding together over a common enemy. They took care of each other, and they took care of others when doing team volunteering. There were times, however, when they took the lessons a bit too far.

She covered a lot of ground quickly, and it was mildly difficult to keep my legs moving with her. “White shouldn’t throw away the considerations of an old friend like that. Literally, I could pull out five different points in my notes where our teachers have said something along those lines. It’s not like you were being dishonest, and he should know that the top student at the school would know if another pony were casting a spell that had caused the whole sun thing.”

She took in another breath, hitching a bit from the run’s exertion. “Also, he’s in our magic classes too. Magic isn’t perfect, and I feel like that’s common knowledge for unicorns at a magic school. If he can’t accept that weird things happen then maybe he should pay more attention or something. Doesn’t the data suggest that these occurrences are random? You know more about those studies than I do, I’m sure, but even I can tell when somepony is just disregarding it all. I dunno, Dawn, that peeves me.”

Hex could get upset, but even now she seemed more flustered than normal. I asked, “What’re you trying to say, Hex?”

“If he can’t even give you the decency to take what he was taught about friendship and apply it, why should you give it back?” A turquoise aura spun her short, indigo mane into a ponytail. Her matching eyes gave a sideways glance to me, but it was a look I had only seen my mother give to me — concern.

Something didn’t jive with me. White was somepony I’d known for years, I couldn’t just sever ties with him. Sure, the protesters didn’t make the most sound arguments, but it’s not like they were dead wrong either. Keeping connections helped me in the long term, especially with somepony from my hometown, and I didn’t need Princess Twilight to give me that advice. And at the end of the day, if White needed my help with something, I’d say yes.

“Duuuuuude, where you going?” I heard called out. Two Step was in front of the three others who had already turned around and started jogging back.

“Sorry!” I shouted, running back. “Inside my own head a bit.”

Hex slowed down to link up with me, giving me a slight bump as well. “My bad, I didn’t mean to bring up something that personal.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it, Hex.” Before she could rebute and babble on, I changed the topic away from the controversy. “That spell ended up going alright, the fallo imagine one. It still had some funky stuff going on, but it’ll get the job done.”

I could see her perk right up in the new light as we exited from the forest cover. “See? You’ll be a master in no time at all, star student. Even illusion spells are no match for you.”

I chuckled at that, and the presence of that warm evening sun melted away the tension. Even through discussions like these, I could appreciate the team and the running. Practice was never dull, there was always a lively discussion or two going on during our normal runs. The running itself was soothing, allowing me to stamp out all the stresses of the day and focus on the empowerment of the sport. So many others considered it punishment, but I enjoyed it.

The run settled in then, because even Hex had some points where she went quiet. Sure, the struggle and slugging of practice became more noticeable, but calming the mind and easing the breathing was important for getting solid practice. There was also the impeccable scenery, which could distract anypony with its shining leaves and hypnotic colors. Because of these, time didn’t slow down; it kept its pace from the conversations earlier. After only minutes, we could see the wide white walls of Canterlot jutting out from the mountainside.

Although my head was still a bit jostled from the lack of sleep, my muscles felt better. Seeing the walls, I grew an urge to do something which I hadn’t in a while. Something which we hadn’t done a proper workout for in a couple moons.

We dipped as the rolling hills hid our destination. I nudged Hex slightly with my rump. “Hey,” I said with a nod. “Run-out after the hill? It’s about a four-hundred.”

She guffawed. “You’re on.”

When I ran, the ‘pains’ weren’t like the cut of a slipped knife or a leg slammed against a wall. They were internal. The ‘fire’ of pain was more like sunlight heating the innards of your leg muscles, but the muscles weren’t used to feeling that way. The ‘pins and needles’ in my chest felt more like the round ends of pins poking in several spots as my chest realized that pins did not belong there. The pain is an uneasiness, an uncomfortability, and an urgency to remove those stimuli.

The runners who could become one with their body would recognize that pain, get motivated by it, and dismiss it. That allowed them to keep moving. Speeding up was all about getting used to the pain it caused and running with it. Slowing down meant that the runner wasn’t drawing upon the energy they didn’t realize they had. I tried to explain this all to Hex before, but she spent too much time in her head and not enough time in her body.

As the hill leveled and Canterlot became a mirror for the sun, we took off. I kept pace with her, shoving all thoughts I had to the corners of my mind. I checked my breathing, quickening it but not overwhelming myself. I found my legs rotating smoothly, but I had to focus to get my hooves off the ground quickly.

I refocused on my vision. Halfway done, and I hadn’t slowed yet. Hex’s hoofsteps faded back in my ears before returning to my side, but I never turned my head. The double-thump rhythm returned my focus to my legs. They were screaming at me with discomfort, but I tried to repress it just a bit longer. I sped up.

I hit the final stretch, and I could see the coach’s jacket under the archway. Hex, breathing heavily, was a little ways behind me now. I blanked everything out and honed in on the hole in the walls. Each string of muscle in my body was taut as my diaphragm started letting sounds out of my open mouth while exhaling. My head pounded with increasing vibrations after all the exertion in my veins.

I slowed down.

Hex gained on me, but not before I crossed over the jacket on the cobble path. I felt my limbs flailing and falling to jello as I came down heavy on every step. Hex came over to me after she slowed down as well, but before she could even put up some banter, I had a hoof to my head.

“You okay, Dawn?” Coach Gallop asked. He came slowly towards me, and the rest of the team trudged in behind him. “You, uhh, well, you look like you’re in pain.”

I waved them off. “I’m fine, really.” I looked up, able to focus again. They gave me the same look Hex gave me on the run. “I think I’m just dehydrated, and that’s on me.”

I walked over to my saddlebags, and a small jar with lukewarm water wiggled out from underneath the books. I sat off to the side in the grass, taking small sips as I waited for the rest of the team to gather around.

Patience, however, was not my strong suit. I was already getting behind for the night’s work. For me to not take out a scroll as well to get a head start on readings took all the willpower remaining within me after that hard finish. It was the Coach’s orders, and he benched me once already for doing it.

Finally, we started stretching. Hex animated the exemplary motions in the center, leading as always. At this point in the season, we all knew exactly what the routine was and as long as Hex counted in her head, the team could chat as they pleased. I listened, chiming in if something particular came my way. Sure, I’d talk about that new pop artist which I’d totally heard of before Two Step just mentioned them. It was short, efficient, and effective, and always marked the end of a good practice if ponies were talking.

As I geared the bags onto my back, Hex came over to me by the edge of the walls. “I’m thinking of grabbing a coffee or something to ease me into the week. You wanna join?” She looked towards my saddlebags. “If you can, of course.”

I bit my cheek when I looked back towards my overflowing notebooks. The night, as I had planned it, consisted of homework in three classes, time for researching the anomalies, and brainstorming for another research writeup. “Princess Twilight doesn’t go easy on me, Hex. I was thinking of just showering and getting to work. I’ve got these writeups which never stop coming, so I need a fresh idea every other week.” I dared to look towards her again.

She plastered a soft smile onto her weary face. “Get some rest tonight if you can. It helps keep the fluids in. I remember the one time I edged you out at practice, and I refuse to see you beating yourself up for it again. For all of our sakes, take care of yourself, friend.”

I had already stepped onto the cobble when I said, “Have a good night, Hex.”

She turned right around and started shouting at the newbie, something along the lines of ‘listen well to the Princess’, but I was too far away to make out more than stray words.

I became one of the many ponies in the cobbled streets. Brisk paces and wandering heads tuned one another out, but my mind wasn’t basking in the white, spiraling towers and golden domes of Canterlot. I spent my walk focused on my schedule for the night, preparing the plans of my workload and regretting how short I needed to cut my shower. Although I could hear the Coach and Hex deep within my ears, I planned on bringing a pillow to the library. The city was restless, and over the years I inherited that tireless nature.

Already, I felt the day slipping away. The library held the physical resources I needed, but short sessions never yielded the results I wanted. I was bound to make progress on the anomaly research, if I could pack time into my day like I could pack a suitcase.

I stopped at the white door tucked neatly behind a staircase, listening to the whisked laughter down the street where Joe would take in customers for the rest of the night. The breeze chewed through my coat once more, so I cleared my head and let my work take me over.

---

I told Princess Flurry Heart that we would understand this thing, but after a whole night of searching for anything, this endeavor had felt wasted.

Breaking out of my working mentality, my mind could freely take stock of the horrible posture I had been enduring for the past however long as well as my completely numb rump. I got up from the cushioned booth seating, stretching out and trying to recirculate the activity of fluids and airflow. I decided to take a walk amongst the bookshelves, browsing the names and titles and hopefully processing everything I took in from the shelf’s worth of pages I had already sifted through tonight.

My head cried out at the thought of it, and remembering the practice from today, my instincts brought the plastic bottle I had brought to my lips for its final few sips. The walk would be a good way to empty and refill the bottle as well.

The darkness of the blue shelves washed over me as I absently scanned the tomes, thinking back to the words Hex had said during the run. Common sense is a hard thing to come by, sure, but I had spent the past few hours looking over these magical incidents and related studies. The library here thankfully also kept newspapers and some interesting historical record books, which I didn’t think I would need when I first stepped in here as the sun began to set. The surfing of pages was a journey even I couldn’t predict.

I started with thinking about the most recent incident, the explosion at the school. A spell went wrong. The newspapers had worked hard to inform the nation of it the day after, and they even got Mr. Sprout in a brief interview. He mentioned that nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing indicated that the spell went wrong on his end. This got me thinking about what Princess Flurry Heart said, that there was something wrong with the magic, not the spells. So to cover my bases, I decided to read some literature on spell failure rates, as well as information on the ethereal magic which permeates Equestria.

Spells failing is attributed to user error. In the studies I read, over thousands of trials by a hundred unicorns, if the spell malfunctioned, then user error was deduced to be the result every single time. Now, this study was nearly ten years old, so things could change over that time, but Hex’s claim that magic has unpredictability has been meta-analyzed to support the opposing claim.

The reports of magical levels, referred to as the momenta, had some very up-to-date data. For around the past two decades, there had been miniscule increases each year in nearly every region recording the data. There was nothing significant popping out of the data, but the trend was fascinating. Because of this, nothing but speculation was put forth on the matter in research journals. Some pointed to the return of Nightmare Moon as the inciting point of the increase.

For thoroughness, I checked out the historical record books which detailed the past fifty years of existence in Equestria. There was practically radio silence, in terms of magical events, until Rainbow Dash’s first sonic rainboom. Then again, nothing of note until that fateful Summer Sun Celebration. I made a time graph with some points over time, and the years after just opened the floodgates of magical tsunamis. It wasn’t until Princess Twilight Sparkle took the throne that notable events slowed down. Three years prior was when they started speeding up again. The magic readings, however, didn’t bend at those important milestones.

The water refilling station greeted me with a metallic clang as I placed my bottle under its spout. The bottle shuttered under the water’s weight, crinkling and splashing out what it could manage before it was overpowered by the stream. This bottle had survived multiple refills, and I wondered at what point getting a new bottle would be a good idea.

Spinning away from the water fountain, I decided to stroll into the fiction section. Like my new route returning to the booth, I had taken a different approach when considering what White Noise and those protesters had told me. A library held many books, but detailed information on the budget of the Equestrian government and its distribution is not exactly printed on the covers. Disproving their claims of greed took a little while. After several boring economic journals left me with nothing, I found a distribution of the Equestrian budget this past year.

Research made up less than five percent of the total budget. As a future researcher, this one stung a little bit, and I was ready to ask Princess Twilight about it. Everything seemed in place, however, so I had no motivation to continue debunking embezzlement, even if the claim in the first place was faulty. Dead end.

I went back to the historical records to see if there was any research or discussion about magical incidents in the past three years, but no researcher had looked through the archives in the past two. Dead end.

Nopony even seemed to care that the incredible precision of magic was suddenly being upended. The only commentaries on the matters came within days of the incidents, and even then they only fueled the protest groups or subdued the curiosity of those loyal to the crown. I spent an entire night’s research on a wild goose chase. Dead end.

Four stacks of disheveled books rose to the height of the table I had used for the night. Anypony would find it impressive if anypony else were here. The guards had already left and locked up the place, and I made them aware that I was making the library my space for the night. I had packed with me a meal of donuts which I downed in an hour and cursed myself for doing so later when the sugar crash ended. Many

Some of my research had not been closed up and stacked away. I shifted and sorted all the ones I had read to the floor beside it, but soon my own hornwriting had appeared Seeing it resurface was unexpected since I had already done my homework for the evening. I dove into the readings quickly, so I hadn’t sealed up the scrolls for Ms. Scribble and stowed them. A few flashes of my horn handled it as my brain went full autopilot, not unlike how I had been reading most of the evening. When my mind was filled with complaints, it was the only way to keep going. Once everything was finished, my homework was replaced by my pillow.

I hadn’t come up with ideas for my next writeup like I had hoped, but Wednesday night had yet to fail me for coming up with last minute brainstorming.

Another night within the library’s unreasonably comfortable booth awaited me. Content with the work I had done, I slid into the wide cushions head on. Sure, it was a goose chase, but it was necessary. Like schoolwork. It mattered to Flurry Heart and it mattered to me, so I waded in murky waters in search of that gold. I expected nothing less from myself; my work-ethic defined me because otherwise my goals were pointless.

The ponies I had been taught about weren’t remembered for being mundane or mediocre. Scientists pushed their talents with math and logic to their limits, and wizards became one with their innate abilities. These great members of our past would live on in the minds of the present because they worked hard and contributed to Equestria. For as long as I could remember, I was the filly with potential to become one of those great ponies. Ever since, it was an unwritten, unspoken, and unwavering goal for which everypony knew I strived.

Perhaps one day, like the Mare in the Moon beckoning me from beyond this window, I too could have been the name on a page in a classroom of fillies, calling to them from somewhere unreachable. That day was not achieved by taking time to enjoy a coffee nor sleeping in late. Instead, it was achieved by spending nights reading in the library or working on spells. And maybe, just maybe, figuring out what caused that anomaly of my past would be important enough to contribute to not only the enjoyment of today but the inspiration of tomorrow. In my eyes, there was no other option.

So, I worked until my eyes closed next to a wall of books stacked as high as the table next to it within an empty library. I was okay with that.

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