A Busy Day
The sound of the front door closing was enough to start waking me up. I didn't smell anything, so dad probably left to go take care of something. He never did any cooking. The ashes that were a bowl of cereal, and a cold sandwich he somehow burnt to a crisp were reason enough for him to not cook. All he can be trusted to do is pour drinks or move things from one container to another. The only pony that can happily eat what he cooks is Skyla.
I trudged my way to the living room, a yawn escaping me as I got there. “Good morning.”
“Good morning, Inova,” mom said from the small table in the corner where she reviewed stuff. An open scroll was floating in front of her. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yeah. I had a weird dream again.”
“What was it this time?”
“Something about a nearly unhurtable filly in black and red armor. She fought with poison, but was very nice. I think she had tentacles too.”
“That’s. . . Interesting.” She put the scroll down and tied it up with a red ribbon. Whatever it was, it didn't get her approval. “Let’s work on your telekinesis before you go to school today.”
I followed mom out back to a nice little rock garden Auntie Twilight made for us with rocks from Pinkie’s family’s rock farm. How that worked without volcanoes, lava, or mines was beyond me. Still, it was a nice place in the back, and the smaller rocks were good to practice with.
Without any prompting, I sat on a flat circular rock, went through the motions of picking out a rock around it, and began working on levitating it. I let the magic flow around my horn, then reached out with it and let it envelope the small stone. With all the willpower I had, I tried to move it to my eye level. The rock stopped about three inches off the ground before my magic wavered, causing it to wobble before it fell back to the ground. “How does everypony else make this look easy?” I tried to levitate the stone again.
“It takes lots of practice,” mom said. “Celestia and I have some stories of when she was teaching me how to use magic.”
“Like what?” I got the rock about three inches off the ground before it wobbled and fell again.
“She taught me how to be gentle with my telekinesis by using banana cream pies. I pied myself in the face so often, she started teasing me about liking bananas. Then, one day, after I had pie on my face again, she asked that question. 'Do you like, mmmm, bananas?' I picked up a pie with my magic and hit her in the face with it.” I gasped in surprise. “She licked her muzzle clean and congratulated me. In my confusion, I slammed another pie in her face, and she thanked me for helping her bypass her dietician’s orders.”
I forgot the levitation practice as I laughed at mom’s story, then yelped in surprise when I noticed Skyla sitting next to me. “When did you get there?”
“Pie?” Skyla asked.
“It was just a story with them, Skyla,” mom explained, making my sister frown. “Since you’re both up, I may as well make breakfast now. Do you want cheesy grits or apple cinnamon oatmeal?”
“Yes!”
The decision fell to me. “Oatmeal, please.”
“Skyla, help Inova with her telekinesis. I'll come get you two when it's done.” Mom left us to go make the apple cinnamon oatmeal.
Until breakfast was ready, I kept trying to lift the rock further than before. Skyla did her best to encourage me the whole time.
As usual, mom walked with us to school. I knew the path well enough that I felt confident enough to walk it without her, but having her with us felt nice.
Also as usual, nothing interesting happened on the way there. I kept my eyes forward, Skyla asked mom math questions for her test, and mom gave math answers. I didn't need to ask her for help, since I already knew all the stuff for my test.
"Bye, girls! Have a good day!" Mom said as she waved to us once we got to school. Skyla waved back with a wing while I nodded in response on our way in.
We walked down the familiar hallways until we reached Skyla's math classroom. "Inova, can you stay with me to help on my test?"
"I can't," I said. "I've got to go take my math test too."
"But you're so far ahead of me! Can't you skip just one test?"
"Nope. I'll see you in flight class." I gave Skyla a hug before leaving to go to the fifth grade math classroom.
Flight class went the same as it usually did with me. Everypony was flying and gliding from cloud to cloud in a relay race between three teams of five, with Skyla on the yellow team. The clouds weren't too high off the ground, and Ms. Radar was quick to help anypony that crashed back to their hooves and into the air.
Everypony was racing except for me. I was standing still on a cloud even lower than the rest, trying to work up the courage to make a short glide to the ground, but I couldn't even get my wings to open for that. The fact that I still flopped forward when I tried to use my wings didn't help.
Getting to where I could bring myself to stand on a cloud was my most recent achievement, though it still scared me, and it was something Nightshade teased me about. I tried not to let it bother me, but it kind of did. I just liked having my hooves on the ground, I felt like the cloud could dissipate at any moment, and trying to control my wings and legs at the same time was awkward for me.
"Oh look, it's Princess Forgetful of Flopland," Nightshade taunted as I walked past her and her little herd. "Aw, did I just take the wind out from under your wings?"
I took a breath and just kept walking towards my history class. Or I would have, if one of my rear hooves wasn't held down by Nightshade's telekinesis. "Let go!"
"Make me."
I looked at the dark gray glow around my hoof and tried to cast a levitation spell of my own to cancel it, but I couldn't get it to work. After giving up on that method, I put all my strength into trying to pull out from the grip.
My attempted breakout wasn't working, then Nightshade let go, causing me to stumble forward and trip up as I tried to balance myself out, making me fall on my side. She and her herd laughed at my fall, something I was used to hearing.
"Inova!" Skyla was at my side shortly after I started getting to my hooves. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine." I held back a wince of pain as I got up. Falling on a saddlebag was not a good feeling, though the books inside did cushion the blow a bit. Thankfully, nothing spilled out this time.
"Let's go." Nightshade led her herd away with her nose turned up.
Skyla frowned at the departing group. "Why don't you do anything back, Inova?"
"Because I can't." My klutziness, weak casting, and flight difficulties made retaliation almost impossible. "Besides, you're here, and that's good enough."
"But what if I'm not here?"
"Then I'll just wait until she leaves." It worked often enough.
Skyla gave me a hug. "I'll see you in magic class."
"Have fun in art." We broke the hug and went to our separate classes.
"The general history of the minotaurs is unique in how it often repeats or echoes itself," Mr. Note explained. "This comes from an odd cultural thing: they are diligent when keeping and preserving records, but don't look back on them very often."
I raised a hoof and got called on. "How do they keep their records?"
"That is a secret kept by their librarians. Princess Celestia has confirmed that some of the books and scrolls are over seven hundred years old."
"No, not like that. Like, um. . ." I waved my hoof around as I tried to figure out how to describe my question. "Telling it."
"Oh! Well, having never read any of their history books myself, I have no idea. They probably don't use music like you do." The chuckles from my classmates made me blush and hide my face a bit.
I cast a baleful glare at the rock on my desk. Everypony else was levitating multiple objects at once, but I was still struggling with holding the one rock. Every time I got it a few inches above the desk, just like the rocks at home, my hold on it would waver and wobble before it landed back on the desk.
Nightshade was across the room from me, with four objects orbiting in her magic around her and a smug look on her face. She didn't have to say anything to taunt me.
I did everything I could to ignore her and went back to focusing on my one rock. After some more tries, it stabilized at the point it usually wobbled at, but my blue glow being replaced with a dark gray glow did not look good. I cut off my magic just before the rock smacked me in the face below my horn.
As had happened before, I pushed the rock back into place with a forehoof and kept practicing.
Lunch was a flower casserole with daffodil, rose, and tulip petals throughout it, a side of tater tots, and a carton of milk. Mom and dad always gave Skyla and me ten bits each for lunch at school. I only spent five of the bits I got while Skyla used all of hers to get twice as much as I did. The five I didn't spend went into a tin in my toy box at home. I'd been doing that for a while, and it was stacking up.
I usually ate alone, but Skyla decided to join me. "So, what are you learning in Equish class?" She tossed a tater tot in the air with her magic and caught it in her mouth before starting on her casserole.
"We've been starting on a play from Wobbly Javelin called The Winter Tale. It's. . . Odd. If Discord wasn't sealed at the time, I'd suspect him of writing part of it."
"Really?"
"One of the less good characters gets chased off by a bear that appears out of nowhere. Just. . . Why? Did a bear appear onstage during the first showing and he just went with it?" I started on my casserole.
"Maybe." She stopped eating to cast a sharp look to the side at Nightshade and her glowing horn. After Nightshade cut the magic and left, Skyla went back to her food. "Oh, we're going to be playing hoofball in general fitness today. That's always fun."
"I want to be on Comet's team for once so she's not kicking the ball at me."
Social Studies focused on cutie marks and their meanings. It was all rather abstract and confusing, as similar marks could mean totally different things. One mark could even have multiple meanings about the pony it was on.
I was the only one in the class who wasn't really enthusiastic about the topic.
I was not on Comet Kicker's team in general fitness, and just as Skyla predicted, we were playing hoofball. As usual, I ended up tripping over my hooves multiple times with no help from Nightshade, since she was elsewhere, and I accidentally caught a ball kicked by Comet. It hurt a lot and I got knocked down, but I got back up and kept trying. I wasn't going to be kept down so easily.
Equish class was a chance for me to relax and recover fron general fitness and the rest of the day. No Nightshade, no running, no flying hoofballs to the chest. Just a confusing play from Wobbly Javelin.
Skyla and I were in the same Language Arts class at the start of the school year, but I took the final test three months early. With a score of 100%, I was allowed to sit in with the fourth grade Equish class and participate in what they were doing for the rest of the school year.
Dad was waiting for us with a saddlebag on him when we left school. "Hi girls! How were your classes?"
"My math test was so hard!" Skyla complained. "All those numbers. . ."
"What did you score?"
"Well, there were twenty questions, I got sixteen right, so that's, uh. . ."
"80%," I answered.
"Yes, what Inova said. How are you so fast at that?"
"Numbers work the same all the time. I know their patterns. That, and your test had twenty questions, all I had to do was multiply by five, so that was pretty easy."
"That's a pretty good score, Skyla," dad said. "Didn't you have a math test too, Inova?"
"Fifty questions, got them all right, nothing I can't handle."
Skyla pulled me against her with one of her wings. "Please come back to my math class and help me!"
"You don't even know PEMDAS yet."
"Teach me!"
Dad chuckled. "It's been a long time since I actually used everything in PEMDAS. Your mom's got some important guests at home right now, so we're going to go to the park, do some homework, and have some fun."
Skyla frowned. "Why do I have to do homework at the park?"
"So you don't have any at home. Inova, I'm guessing you already did your homework."
"Yep," I answered.
"Then you're going to work on your hoof coordination while we're there. Side hops and bar jumps."
"Aww. . ." I didn't want to do those exercises. I'd already tripped enough at school, and I didn't want to do that again.
"I want both of you to put in serious effort as well. When you're both done, Skyla, you can play, and Inova, I have some engineering books for you to enjoy."
I suddenly felt very motivated to carefully do the hoof coordination exercises. I loved my engineering and mechanics books, even though mom and dad thought they were too much for me.
I stared intensely at the spread out Golem Bricks from a set that Aunt Luna had gotten me. She sent new ones to me all the time, and I had some piling up that were still in their boxes.
I liked to keep my pieces contained in one area on my desk. Having four legs made stepping on the pieces a terrible experience. At least that's how it looked after Skyla accidentally spilled some of my pieces on the floor and stepped on them, followed by mom running in and stepping on them. I stayed in my chair the whole time until mom picked all the pieces up with her magic and put them back on my desk.
Building with them was a little tedious. While I could do the grabbing thing with my hooves that I didn't really get, it had a tendency to pick up extra pieces along the way, and I didn't feel confident enough to try using my levitation on them. Whoever designed the blocks did not have hooves in mind.
While I was working on my royal carriage set, Skyla was sitting on the floor with her dolls, playing out conversations with them. It made for some good background noise.
I leaned against the side of the tub and put all my effort into opening my wings. After I felt my forelegs slip a bit, I succeeded, making a splash. "There."
"Hold still." Skyla, in the sudsy water with me, said as she started cleaning my wings. She was very good when it came to cleaning them, and they always felt refreshed when she was done. On the other hoof, I didn't like the fact that I practically needed her help for that. I couldn't levitate anything long enough, and I couldn't keep my wings open while controlling my forelegs, which was practically a requirement to clean them myself. "Inova, why do you flop when you use your wings?"
"I don't know." It was the same answer I gave every time, and it was something I couldn't figure out. Skyla and all the other pegasi were able to use their wings and legs at the same time, and I was used to not being able to fly with them. That didn't stop me from getting frustrated at myself. "I wish I knew."
"You'll get it someday."
"Are you excited for summer break, Inova?" Skyla asked from her bed as I turned off the light in our room. "We won't have any homework!"
"You won't have any homework." I got into my bed and got my blanket over me just as I liked it. "I'll probably still have all that magic, wing, and hoof coordination practice. I wish I didn't."
"Maybe we'll go on vacation somewhere! Do you think we can spend a week at Pony Joe's?"
"I'd rather go to a beach. It looks interesting." A yawn escaped me, and I decided it was time to call it a day. "G'night, sis."
"Good night."
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And then she tripped over them and fell on Skyla who then tripped and fell on them. This caused dad to run in, step on them, trip over mom and then Skyla, and then more pieces. Hearing the commotion, some body guards came in, tripped on them, fell on dad, then mom, then Skyla, then dad again, then more pieces. Every time somepony tried to get up, they stepped on the blocks and repeated the process. This went on for several hours. Lol! … Crystal Empire now requires a warning label on the toys.
That bully at school doesn’t seem to realize she assaulted royalty. Somepony should explain to her about consequences and prison time.
Poor Inova. I’m sure there’s legions of ponies who’d line up for the chance to tutor her… Twilight hasn’t come up with any theories or solutions yet?
11690365 No warning label on the bricks. Just a new sign for sale showing them as a security system for the house.
Nightshade knows well what she's doing. She knows that Inova will not call the Crystal Guard on her, and won't let Skyla do it either. She also knows about where the line is before the faculty will intervene. That, and Cadence and Shining's decree that their fillies be treated as normal fillies instead of royalty in the Empire.
As for theories and solutions, there is one who will come up with a theory, and it happens after an event that's written, but can't be published yet.
Is it something about white coated unicorns?
- MLP: FiM
- Random
"Why can't I cook anything without burning it? I can't even pour orange juice without it coming out burnt!"Sad to say that this is a filly after my own heart. Perhaps appetite suppressant would work better on her than they did for me?
Looks like it's beginning to bug her more than she is letting on.
Much less BEDMAS, I suppose.