New Endings, Old Starts

by David Silver

34 - Rock to Cloth

Comforting went down the road with a loud whistle of joy. She knew something new and she couldn't wait to try it, a lot, and get it just right!

"You look happy." Comforting looked up to see Diamond perched on a fence. "Something happen? I didn't see you go past the other day, and you're usually super punctual."

"I took a day off." Comforting considered her wealthy friend... "Now... I have a question. Do you have something not-alive you don't care about and something not-alive you really want?" She held up her hooves. "No bigger than yourself."

"That's a question!" Diamond hopped down easily. "And a hard one. Hm..." She reached into her pocket and drew out a scepter. "This was a gift, and I never liked it. Maybe if I was an actual princess or something like that." She let the scepter clatter to the ground. "Which I am not."

Comforting considered the fallen royal regalia. "It looks nice." She cradled the orb at the top. "They matched your eyes, even better. Um! But what did you actually want? Your size or smaller. Ideally, this size or smaller." She willed the scepter to float up into the air, wagging it at Diamond.

Diamond grabbed it in her teeth in a sudden swish of her head. "Something I want, huh... What about a statue of me?"

"Huh, alright... But you'll want to put that down." Comforting took a step back, her eyes locked on the scepter. "It'll be scepter-sized, as I warned."

"Wait, you can actually do it?" Diamond released the scepter to thump into the dirt. "This I gotta see."

Comforting focused on the scepter, glancing at Diamond Tiara as she did it. She wanted a Diamond statue! The scepter began to glow brightly with her amber magic field. She was casting it! The world suddenly went topsy turvey as she floped over with another thing on top of her, roughly bearing her to the ground. She heard a yelp, and her spell was gone, leaving her startled form.

"Ha ha, gotcha." Silver Spoon climbed off of her with such a grin. "Just like you asked."

Comforting sat up quickly, scrambling. She wasn't even looking at Silver, instead... "Oh no..." There was Diamond Tiara, or a perfect Diamond Tiara statue. The scepter was at her hooves. "Oh no! No no no." She hurried forward to her petrified friend. "No...." She had killed her friend! "No...." Tears began to well up as her emotions just ran away from her. "No..." She flopped against the Diamond statue. "I didn't mean to!"

Silver took a slow step forward. "Um... You did say to, like, surprise you, right?"

"Not like that!" Comforting burst into a new wail, hugging Diamond tightly. "We have to get help!" Twilight felt like the most obvious, even if that meant her crime would become obvious. Even if she was banned from doing magic forever, she couldn't let Diamond die because of her! "Silver!"

"I'm right here." She was standing just to the side of Comforting, glancing between her and Diamond. "You can undo that spell now."

"That spell is only supposed to turn not-living things to other not-living things..." Comforting sagged with a miserable sigh. "I don't want to risk trying to use it to fix this.... We have to find a real wizard."

"Well, like... There are two of those." She raised both of her hooves. "Twilight Sparkle, and, like, her counselor. Hmmm, Rarity knows some, like, magic, right? Not as good as those two though." Silver shrugged softly. "Oh, and Lyra. Didn't she come from a big fancy school?"

"I dunno." Her blood was pumping and thinking was hard. She wanted to run! But running would not fix it. Comforting forced herself to sit, her little body trembling. "How heavy is she? Can you test, carefully? That's Diamond!"

"I can see..." It was Diamond, entirely, just... not as alive. A status of Diamond Tiara, captured in that instant of surprise. "Not your best side." She wriggles under her friend and hefted her up on her back. "Hey, go earth pony strength. Where am I taking her?"

"This way!" Comforting fled towards the school, almost tripping over herself in her hurry to get help. "This way!"

"I'm comin'." Silver Spoon was a tough earth pony, but she was still Silver Spoon, and Silver was not an athletic pony.

Regardless of that, they made their way to the school. "This way!" Comforting was waving wildly, with not a bit of patience in her. She had tried helping Diamond move faster, but neither her magic nor her small body was up to the task of moving that considerable filly statue move any faster than Silver was hauling it.

Gallus was there, idling the day as they approached. "What?" He could see one of the two fillies had a statue on her back. "Did I miss something?"

Comforting rushed up to him. "Help her carry that, please. That's a friend I made a mistake with."

"Wow..." Despite his word without commitment, he stepped up to help Silver move the statue faster. "Where are we going? This statue's alive? Like Discord?"

Calling Discord was an option. He was an expert of busting out of statues... But Comforting didn't know how to call him, if he could be called on. Expecting chaos to show up on demand felt silly. "Let's try Starlight." Starlight was a good wizard, and less likely to immediately shout at her for being a bad student.

Starlight sat up sharply when something heavy thumped against her door. She could hear muted whispering behind it. "Who is that? The door's open."

Gallus opened the door with a huff, the statue being shared between him and Silver Spoon. "Hey. We need your help with a little something." With a heavy thud, the petrified Diamond Tiara was set in the center of her office.

Starlight gaped at the gift given to her. "Is... that Diamond Tiara?" She spotted Comforting looking awkward. "This is not how we get revenge for mean things one might say. Now, I've heard she can be a little... much at times."

Silver stuck out her tongue. "They're friends! It was a mistake, sheesh. She was casting something and I distracted her, like she asked, and then... this." She waved a hoof at the statue of her friend. "Like... fix it, now please. It was funny at first, but I'm, like, way over it. I want my Diamond back!"

Starlight's horn glowed as she pulled Comforting inside fully, then closed the door with a clap. "Comforting, I need to know exactly what spell you were trying to cast before things went... wrong."

Comforting began reciting a spell. It meant nothing to the others there, but Starlight was nodding along as the runes were read in their Ponish format. "Wow, gotta give credit that you have so much of it memorized. Anyway, yeah, I know that spell. Usually harmless, unless you go zapping ponies with it." She turned in place towards the statue. "Which you didn't meant to do... but did anyway... And now we have a statue..."

Comforting sagged in place. "Can you fix it, please?!"

"Ha... wow... And here I thought I messed up really big." Starlight snickered as she circled the statue. "Caught her right in a bad spot too." She leaned in, examining the startled features. "Look... This is a normal thing."

"Normal?!" Comforting threw her arms wide. "I just killed a friend! That is not normal!"

"You didn't kill her, I am glad to say." She tapped a hoof gently on the stone. "She's still in one piece, so we can fix that. She will be a bit dizzy and maybe a little mad, but other than that... relax. Look, as I was saying, this is normal. Wizards like us?" She waved between herself and Comforting. "We play big, and when you play with big toys... sometimes things go sideways, and then it's up to us to fix our messes." She nodded to Gallus. "You don't need to hang around if you don't want."

"I'm kinda curious now." He leaned up against a wall. "She takes a break, then turns somepony into a statue? That's hard to miss."

"Right." Starlight swiveled to Comforting. "Now, here's the thing. That spell? It's supposed to turn not-alive stuff to not-alive stuff, but that's just a warning on the label. As you can see..." she moved a hoof in a slow circling arc over Diamond's head. "It works on living things just fine. It's not at all graceful enough to want to use it as a living-thing spell, but that doesn't stop you from doing it, which you did."

"I didn't mean to!" But the meaning did arrive. "I can just turn her back?"

"You can, but before you go rushing to do it." Starlight set a hoof on Comforting's small horn. "Remember that living things are way more complicated than a hunk of rock. I won't even blame you if you just ask me to do this. We don't want anypony getting hurt, right?"

Comforting considered that. On one hoof, she caused the trouble. She should thus fix it. On the other, it wasn't very fair to Diamond to hope Comforting got it right. "Y-yeah... Please, if you can... I'll be more careful, and learn, so I can fix this kind of thing in the future."

"You pass." She tapped Comforting on the top of the head. "Now go stand with your friends." She casually slid Comforting with her magic, pushing her over to stand next to Gallus and Silver Spoon. "Because it's time for some magic!"

With a brilliant flash and a mildly extended tongue, Starlight gave Diamond quite the zap. The filly shattered in half, the rocky parts falling to either side as the filly collapsed forward with a wheeze. "Watch what you're doing!" She blinked and sat up, confused. "What?" She turned around to see the others, watching her. "Oh, there you are... I thought I was facing you. What the hey?"

Silver Spoon crashed into Diamond with the last sentence, hugging her friend tightly. "Welcome back, Diamond!"

"I didn't go anywhere." She shoved Silver back a few inches. "You were the one hopping on Comforting. She was making me a statue! Where is it, anyway?"

"I... made you a statue." Comforting laughed nervously, worrying her hooves together as her eyes wandered the room. "I didn't mean to! Starlight got you all fixed."

"You..." Diamond looked down to see the broken chunk of her former statue self. "Wait..." She reached and picked up half of her own head, turning around to see it properly. With a squeak, she dropped it to shatter on the floor. "That is too creepy! That was me?! Comforting!" The filly only shrank further. "You owe me one. Really, turning me into a statue... I'd say you should turn yourself into a statue, but then how would you turn back?"

Starlight tapped at Diamond's head. "I turned you back."

"Oh, right." That brought ideas. "So if she turned into a statue, you could turn her back. Alright, Comforting. Spend the rest of the day standing at attention and I'll call it even. How's that?"

Comforting swallowed heavily. "Um... I don't want to... But I did... I did that to you... Suppose that it's fair... That'll teach me not to do it to anyone else. Um... Is it... Is it safe for me to turn myself into a statue?"

"I'll do it!" With an almost worryingly casual zap, Comforting was a statue. "I'll turn her back, now all of you run off." She shooed them away. Only after her office was empty, minus a statue, did she reach over and rap the statue hard enough to break it, allowing Comforting to fall free. "We can keep that a secret."

Comforting dusted herself off of rocky bits. "Tricky! But thank you... I really messed that up."

"I told you, it's a unicorn thing, especially wizards, which we are. I doubt that'll even be the last time you mess up... Now, I do have to tell Twilight about this." She could see Comforting shrinking. "Hey, relax. I'll tell her you were responsible about it." She willed a broom over to start cleaning the stone bits. "We all make mistakes, but you owned up to it, and got it fixed. Good on you."

Author's Note:

Mistakes Were Made!

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Comments

[Twinkie Sprinkle]

Wow, that escalated quickly.

This was very surreal and unexpected, but made a lot of sense by the end.

I can't say I've actually been in that kind of situation, but it's easy for me to imagine. It was very easy to relate with Comforting's paniced feeling of "I accidentally killed my friend!" That, and her sense of wanting to "pay things back" is a very familiar feeling to me, too.

That being said, it does feel like Starlight was the perfect one to help Comforting and Diamond out of this. The story has already alluded to similarities between Comforting and Starlight in the past, and this made a few more comparisons for the pile.

It's a very good thing to have a potentially overpowered wizard unicorn who's made a lot of boos boos helping another potentially overpowered wizard unicorn who is still growing.

With the very real emotions Comforting was going through in this chapter, it's almost hard to believe this was all a cartoon show for her, not too long ago.

Very harrowing chapter but also fascinating. Here's hoping things start to look up again for our little filly wizard.

[Amethyst Dragonfly]

Poor Comforting! She really got scared at the thought of having done something permanent to Diamond, and with good reason.

This was a very important lesson about being startled when casting a spell that you have just learned.

But at least a Wizard Undid it.

[Chrome Masquerade]

Starlight sat up sharply when something heavy thumped against her door. She could hear muted whispering behind it. "Who is that? The door's open."

Correction: the door is unlocked. Clearly it is not open, as such.

[Chrome Masquerade]

"Oh, right." That brought ideas. "So if she turned into a statue, you could turn her back. Alright, Comforting. Spend the rest of the day standing at attention and I'll call it even. How's that?"

Comforting swallowed heavily. "Um... I don't want to... But I did... I did that to you... Suppose that it's fair... That'll teach me not to do it to anyone else. Um... Is it... Is it safe for me to turn myself into a statue?"

Beats doing the glonkmar.
Like if you get the reference,

[Chrome Masquerade]

Well, at least Diamond has concrete evidence that Comforting is a good friend.

[Prettypony]

Maybe genies are just well intentioned but are constantly distracted when they grant wishes.

[David Silver]

11239888
This explains a lot.

[David Silver]

11239718
I tried to be logical though. They were told to watch for her casting spells, and Comforting was still new at that spell, so didn't cast it as quickly. Mistakes were made! Even if someone never cast a spell at someone, accidentally hurting, or worse, someone would be quite bad!

[Twinkie Sprinkle]

11239894

That makes a lot of sense.

The magic in the story is as well thought out as the emotional content.

[DrCygnus]

well... this chapter was...
err- extremely disturbing
for me, alteast given my
Scientific Literacy

just sayin that there's a reason the phrase

Dead as a Doornail

is a saying that makes sense