Chapter 22: Schoolyard
The next few days contained very little of note for Charlie. Some days she spent more time out in the city, talking and visiting with her new friends. Sometimes she went with Dust Storm, usually just a short distance outside the city proper. Far enough that she wouldn't crash into anyone or provoke worry for her safety when she flailed madly in her attempts to fly.
She didn't actually succeed, though she got closer. After a week or so, she could even pass Sunbeam when they jumped at the same time. If she got a running start, she could go up for almost five whole feet before she started to drop again. She was learning, she just needed a little more time to perfect the technique. She was getting there.
She spent a few long nights staring out her window, taking hours before she finally got to sleep. Over a week missing back in the real world. The government would probably be calling off the search soon, if they hadn't already. She'd be one of the other few hundred thousand people who went missing every year. Maybe they'd even whisper that he wanted to go missing, that he'd run off with Derek to Argentina or something.
The pain of it never got to her for long. Dust Storm was never too far away, and seemed to have a sixth sense for when she needed cheering up. His experience was bewilderingly patchy in so many areas—like not knowing how to cook for her. But at least he was willing to help.
Ultimately those next few days were in a holding pattern, waiting for the meeting that mattered. Charlie might've been more successful back home in a dozen different ways, but she didn't know magic. Derek was her only chance of that. Charlie kept her eyes open, but never actually saw her friend out on her own. She'd been adopted by a pony far too important for that.
In the end though, she'd be going to the same school. Whispering Willow Academy started with the end of summer. Its students weren't the kind to be concerned with bringing in the harvest—this was instruction for the elite. Or the elite of a strange small town with questionable loyalty to their national government, anyway.
When the day finally came, Charlie didn't put up a fight. It wasn't a rational argument—ultimately it just came down to the deep personal indignity of being forced to go back to school as a tiny girl horse wearing a dress.
She put on the damn dress, and she let Dust Storm lead her down the streets of Willowbrook to Whispering Willow.
She knew they were going the right way after only a few minutes, when the type of buildings and the ponies walking around them visibly transformed. It wasn’t just in the amount of clothing they wore, though that was certainly a factor. So few ponies had bothered wearing anything at all, until suddenly every child had something. Mostly vests or jackets for the colts. The girls all had dresses or skirts. Little of it actually seemed to care about modesty, so it could ultimately provide similarly little comfort. There would be no crossing her eyes and pretending she was back on Earth.
The school itself wasn't large, all things considered. Maybe similar to a rural elementary school, with six or so different classrooms. But it was hard to be rational about the building when her view of the place came from about a foot above the ground. Everything and everyone still towered over her.
Charlie might've been sucked through a hole in reality into another universe, she might be stuck in the body of a magical horse with wings, but even here there was still bureaucracy to worry about. Dust Storm still had to sit with her for an hour in the school's admin office, going through all her paperwork.
Finally, after she had begun to despair ever getting to class, she saw Derek at last.
Her friend was already waiting in an empty room, with a little sheet of papers and a single teacher tapping her hoof impatiently for Charlie's arrival. The word “stern” had been created for creatures like this, with faces like they might try to scowl Charlie right out of existence.
"By cosmic coincidence, there are two students in need of evaluation before me today, neither of which possess even basic reading competency. Much as you deserve to have failure ratings in all other areas, I've been forbidden from assigning them. As such, I will evaluate the two of you verbally. Take your seat, Miss Firefly. We will begin when you dain to grace us."
She scampered to her seat. She barely managed to glance sidelong at Derek before the exam began.
It was a surreal experience—at one moment, the questions were trivial, covering logic, mathematics, or practical skills. But then they'd be asked about history, or magical theory, and neither of them could provide an answer. The test did not actually go far enough to test their limits when it came to anything humans would've taught.
The process took two grueling hours, with Miss Sugarcane almost literally breathing down their backs with every second. Eventually she seemed satisfied, and she gathered up their answer sheets. Well, she'd been the one writing on them anyway, so maybe they were her answer sheets?
"Remain in your seats," she snapped, as a single one of Charlie's hooves scratched the classroom floor. "You'll not be attending classes today, as Whispering Willow Academy does not know where to place you. Sit here and wait like good little fillies. I'll be back promptly." She gathered the stack into her levitation, then stalked off. Charlie wouldn't be surprised if she'd locked the door behind her as she left.
She turned, and found Derek looking back in her direction. For a few seconds they just stared, meeting each other’s eyes. Then without another word exchanged between them, they both started giggling.
"Well that was hell," Derek squeaked. Charlie reminded herself that was who she was hearing, anyway. The voice was a little deeper than hers, but still had nothing in common with her best friend's. Even her accent seemed different. "That's worse than that year I took six AP classes at once. That was worse than the MCAT."
Her friend had changed very little since the last time she'd seen her, at least physically. Her adoptive parents had stuck her in a dress too, though she had been allowed deep blues and purples. Hers was also tailored for her body, hugging to her hips and settling comfortably around her legs when she moved. Her adoptive mother clearly knew how to handle that long mane, because there were half a dozen little clips and hair ties holding it up and all of them were color-coordinated.
Charlie wasn't jealous, not a little bit. It just wasn't fair that she had someone who actually knew how to put clothes on her. "I hope not. Sounds like we failed at most of that stuff. But she just kept asking. What's Princess Celestia's favorite food? How long did the Dragon Invasion have troops in Yakyakistan? Who defeated the Schmooze?" She rolled her eyes. "Whatever the hell any of that means."
Derek shrugged. "At least it's over. Maybe they'll let us test up in a while, once we've had enough time to learn the written language." She looked back at the entrance to the classroom, staring through the little glass window.
From the inside, the building was as vintage as the outside. Gas lamps on the ceiling, and real chalkboard at the front. The classroom had almost none of the accoutrements Charlie might've expected from a school for very young children. There weren't smiling illustrations, it was all charts and graphs and maps. Stuff so boring her eyes glazed over before they could even settle on it.
"But we're not gonna be here for that long, right?" Charlie asked. "You're getting us home, aren't you? When do I need to be ready to meet you? Running away at night is gonna be tricky, I swear my dad is always awake."
Derek shifted in her seat, suddenly avoiding Charlie's eyes. "You say that like it's so easy, Ch—" she choked, resting one hoof on her forehead in entirely familiar pain.
"Firefly," Charlie said. "That's what they're calling me now. It's okay I guess. Better than being just 'Orange.' Did they give you a real name yet?"
Derek's ears flattened, and her tail flicked loudly back and forth several times before she spoke again. "It's, uh... it's... Lilac... Empathy."
Charlie waited for the punchline. There was probably something Derek was expecting her to say. Or maybe she was just self-conscious about getting a new name? "Okay that's too long. Lilac, how's the escape coming? My family has to be completely terrified by now. I think the police usually declare someone missing after two weeks or so, we're really pushing the line here. When do we go home?"
"I don't know." Derek smacked into the table, her words coming muffled and afraid. Of course there were plenty of other signs of just how defeated she was. Her ears remained flat, her tail didn't move. There was even a smell to that much shame, though Charlie might've just been imagining that. "I ended up in the right place. Iris is really smart, and magical. Her family knows a lot about things that most ponies don't, and she's willing to teach me."
"But..." Charlie prompted. All her excitement had faded to the background now. There would be no sudden freedom in the next few days. No flight in the night to prepare for, no conspiracy to hatch. There would be no seeing her family or friends again. No reuniting with her girlfriend. No seeing her dog.
"But it's... not so simple as just opening a magic portal and walking back. There's probably a way—it seems like magic here can do way more than it could back on Earth, like there's just so much more of it... but it's not the kinda thing I can learn in a weekend."
She lowered her voice to a whisper, finally meeting Charlie's eyes again. There were actual tears in her face now, and her voice cracked with every few words. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ruin your life. I didn't... nopony could've known this would happen. I'm trying to find a way out. But it won't happen tomorrow. It probably... probably won't even happen next year."
The words were their own devastating blows against Charlie. Each one carried the unmistakable weight of conviction. And it wasn't like Derek would lie like this—the lie would be to give her hope, not admit she was clueless.
"What are we supposed to do?" she asked. Charlie sniffed, then wiped her face with the back of her leg. She must've got something in her eye just now, because the whole world was blurry. "Just be... stuck? Live with people we barely know? Pretend we're... ponies?"
"Don't have to pretend," Derek said. She hardly sounded any more confident than Charlie felt. "You're a little horse, Firefly. So am I. If you wanna help look for magical ways to another world, that would be pretty great."
She fell abruptly silent as the door finally opened, and Miss Sugarcane stomped back inside, holding their tests. "Well if those weren't the strangest evaluations I've ever had the displeasure of grading," she said. "Though I conducted them myself, it appears bizarrely as though your scores are identical. That is concerning. If you expect academic dishonesty to get you anywhere here at Whispering Willow Academy you'll soon find disappointment."
She glowered at the two of them, as though daring either to speak up in their defense. Fortunately for her, she found two fillies already on the verge of tears. If she'd come to put the fear of God into them, it was already there. "We'll evaluate you both again at the end of this academic term, separately," she said, a hint of satisfaction coloring her tone. "And make sure you're both assigned where you deserve."
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Holy crap, barely over a week and he's already saying 'nopony'?
Gonna be interesting with neither of them knowing how to read at an academy like this. I'm expecting tutors at this rate— Iris could probably make it happen.
Well of course they're identical, they weren't anywhere near hard enough to test their limits in the areas they knew, and neither had any information in the areas they didn't.
I completely forgot she was ever a male, to be honest. I just picture a tomboy with the name Charlie now.
The full weight of the situation will come crashing down eventually. There will be no easy or quick fix for this. Better to get this over with now and start working towards getting home.
Dust Storm definitely a changeling if he's that much of an empath. Still, the reasons he's doing this are unknown and worrying. If he's there to feed, Charlie's in trouble.
If we're looking at a future alicorn diarchy, this one little moment is probably where the sisters really began.
Yup. Bird horse is actually bug horse.
Pretty sure Charlie's gonna be resentful to Derek for a little while. Still, it would be worse if Derek didn't lay down the situation now. Charlie now has realistic expectations.
Though it should be expected that adults have the same performance on a test meant for little children (hopefully), I wonder if there's something else going on and they have a greater connection to each other than anyone realizes.
There might have been hints to that connection's existence early on. Maybe.
Ch. 5:
"The sound stopped abruptly, and she cracked open a pair of vibrantly green eyes. Were those the same shade as hers? She'd have to check when they were both in the mirror."
Could also be a sign of their otherworldly origins or could be completely coincidental. We'll have to see how they perform together later on.
If she expected cheating, she would also share some of the failure for not catching it. Still, whatever satisfaction she's getting isn't from anything she's done.
But I don't FEEL sick. Lol, I'll shut up now.
Wasn't the test verbal because they're illiterate? How the hell could they have cheated?
This is looking a whole lot like the kind of school that probably won't teach them anything.
Guess I'll keep an eye open for them here then, just in case
They're soooo gonna separate them just based on their socioeconomic status
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Even in magical pony land, the educational bureaucracy has to get in the way of educating in order to justify its own perpetuation and increase, it would seem.
Can’t wait for more
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Granted a rich asshole school in a town controlled by a doomsday cult is kind of a one two punch on that front
MOAR
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I would assume their answers were also verbal. Would've been real easy for the second to answer to just repeat what the first said. Honestly, testing them verbally, in the same room at the same time, was pretty dumb. If you're testing two children, and the second to answer didn't know the answer (which would make them a lot more likely to answer second), then of course they're just gonna repeat the first's answer...
Almost like he could sense her emotions. But how could that be?
These two definitely represent an outside context problem for the education system. The bureaucracy didn’t account for students that hail from such a wildly different curriculum. (That said, it seems that the school board is too dark and terrible for the cult to recruit.
)
And it’ll be a long, rough road back to Earth, if they ever do make it back. We’ll see what the next step entails.
Ah, my least favourite kind of teacher. The kind that... doesn't.
Blood of non unicorns!!
I’m just waiting for a moment to put the song, “It’s tough to be a god” in.
Ugh. Reminds us of the stupid immigration tests. How many amendments are there? Who was the president ten years ago? What is rule of law? When are you supposed to file taxes? So much BS that most actual citizens never even think about. 🙄