Crystal White

by Lovinlife

Book 1: Chapter 3: Tarnished Silver Knight

With the lesson of the day over, and the last bell about to ring to let the students go for the day, Crystal sat at her desk in the middle of the loud and obnoxious chatting fillies and colts who had little else to do but talk about nonsense to pass the time. The noise was so deafening to the blind filly's sensitive ears, she had to attempt to block most of the echoing sound with her hooves as to not be struck by a massive, throbbing headache. She really, really hated this time of the school day, and "really, really" hatred was hate doubled, so it was quite a powerful phrase to be used by such a youngster. Crystal felt such a feeling boil in her insides like a wienie roast when her classmates started to sound like the noises she had heard at the zoo when they had gone on a school field trip there once before. She could just imagine that the other students were doing exactly what had been explained to her by the tour guide that day.

In her mind, the current world around her was just a bunch of colorless shapes that looked like ponies... or rather, what she interpreted the descriptions given to her to be like ponies. It had no background, and these ponies were running around on unhealthy looking, skinny, long legs, jumping from square to square, and making a mess out of everything. Chaos ruled everything and nowhere was safe. But in real life, everypony was just sitting at a desk across from their friends and were talking as if they were outside.

The piercing ring of the telephone surprisingly brought everypony to a polite whisper with impressive speed. Noticing the change, Crystal removed her hooves to uncover her ears before her attention too was caught by another ring of the device. Wheatmire picked the telephone up after its third annoying ring, and the attention for the teacher's conversation dropped completely, and Crystal didn't even listen either. She wasn't in the best of moods anymore from the beginnings of that headache that she had been trying to avoid before.

"Crystal." Wheatmire barked out to the little filly who flinched from both the unexpected call and a bit of pain that flared up in her brain. Crystal managed to avoid giving herself whiplash from how fast she turned her head in the direction she had heard the voice come from as Wheatmire continued with her attention. "It's your mother, she wants to talk to you about something important."

Crystal could feel her cheeks heat red from embarrassment, and the childish "oo's" coming from some of her classmates didn't help with the matter. Unfortunately for Crystal, it was no secret from the entire school that she was babied by her Mom so much, and when the subject arose, she always became the brunt of their jokes.

The joking suddenly ceased before it could really get going when a soprano male voice shouted: "Hey, knock it off!" Crystal recognized the voice instantly as Pitchpatch, probably...no, undeniably one of the most popular colts in the school because he had been the first in the class to get his cutie mark, which according to him was singing. "It's not her fault that her mom loves her!"

Once again, Crystal felt another kind hoof on her back leading her somewhere. She knew it had to be Pitch because he was the only pony in the school who would help her like this. This time however, she didn't feel the humiliation or anger that she usually felt when somepony else would do this. She instantly knew and felt that Pitch wasn't doing this out of pity, but was trying to be helpful. His clear voice, perfect for singing, spoke to her with happiness and eagerness: "Here, let me help you get there."

She was about to throw out what she really wanted for Pitch to do when she snapped out of the goo-goo state her mind had fallen into and pulled herself away from the colt who she wanted as a "friend". Self sacrifice for self gain was needed to accomplish what she wanted, she had to show that she could do things on her own. "No Pitch, I don't need any help." Oh Celestia, she couldn't even convince herself with how she said that. She spoke with a lack of confidence and sadness that made what she said obvious that it wasn't true.

Pitch was silent before giving his answer to Crystal's statement. "Okay, you can do it Crystal!" He agreed, even after her lame performance and him actually helping her before. He did that for her...oh sweet Celestia, he was such a caring colt. But she, once again, pulled herself out of those thoughts: she still had a phone to answer.

"Yes Martha, she's coming right now...Yes, she's refusing any..." Crystal tuned out that conversation and kept her focus on feeling where the desks were. No pony was shouting out directions to her, and she hoped they wouldn't, either: it would give her all the more freedom to get there on her own.

An atmosphere of apprehension created an uneasy feeling throughout the classroom, and everypony there could feel it. They all stood as they watched Crystal begin to move towards where Wheatmire's voice had given her the general direction of the phone, and they all backed her up with silent encouragement that the filly didn't feel.

Crystal kept her concentration on the goal. She took her time moving step-by-step forward, feeling along with her front hoof to make sure that nothing was in her way that she could bump into, and she changed her direction when she did feel something. She could feel the stares were from ponies, and she imagined they were just waiting for her to fail, and the thought of proving herself to everypony goaded her on.

After a few these moments, Crystal felt a hoof press into her shoulder that told her to stop walking. She did when the classroom of foals suddenly erupted up in a spectator-like cheering that told her that she had made it and that her mind was wrong and that her classmates had been behind her the entire time. She had done it. She had walked to Wheatmire's desk by herself without any help from anypony. The teacher had to silence all of her students with threats of more homework as she floated the telephone down to Crystal, who took it with her own magic when she felt it touch her ear.

Crystal wondered what her mother wanted this time, since this wasn't the first time that her mother had called her at school, as she began to speak to her through the phone. "Hi Mom." She called into the voice part of the device with such a soft voice lacking in any confidence that she could've melted any mean pony's stone heart right on the spot, but the magisterial Martha was used to such a voice.

"Come on Crystal dear, speak up. I can barely hear you, much less understand you." Crystal could hear Martha begin to reprimand her and she knew that she should never interrupt her when she began doing that..which she did all the time anyway. "You know? I need to get you to a speech class. Yes! I'll do that. I could see it now, you talking to famous ponies whose names escape me for some reason. Anyway I digress, I called you to tell you that I will be about half-an-hour late picking you up from school, so just hang out there until I get there."

"Okay Mom." Crystal couldn't really say anything else.

"Okay darling, hugs and kisses, I'll see you later." The sound cut off quickly on the other end of the line with a low humming sound, telling her that her mother had hung up.

As if it was planned the moment that Wheatmire placed the phone back onto the holder where it was supposed to go, the final release bell finally wailed out its call of sweet, sweet freedom. The ponies that had been watching the scene all rushed to get to their stuff before stampeding out the door into the cool afternoon.

In the scrambling, one pony knocked Crystal to the floor. She felt more surprise than pain when she collided with the floor. When the explosive sound of ponies running to the door thinned to the outer hallway, Crystal could make out the sounds of a scuffle before Wheatmire's shrill voice put an end to it before Crystal could get up and investigate.

"Pitch! Riot! What in Celestia's name are you two doing!?" Wheatmire's hoofsteps rushed over to where the sounds of violence were located. "Pitch, get off him!" The sounds of struggle stopped completely after this when Crystal stood up from the floor. "What was going on? Explain yourselves." A small pause ensued before. "Yes Pitch?" Pitch must've raised his hoof to answer.

"We were fighting, Miss Wheatmire. You must've known that since you are older than we are." Crystal had to sigh at the same time as she heard Wheatmire do the same because she knew that Pitch would say some smart remark. He was such a clever colt.

Wheatmire's voice was raw with controlled irritation as she spoke back to the most likely proud Pitch. "You know what I meant you little bug, and I won't ask again."

"If I'm a bug, than I must be a big stink bug, huh Miss Wheatmire?"

Before the teacher could retaliate with words to that, Riot spoke up but Crystal could hear his stuttering coming out even worse than usual and couldn't help but feel sorry for the little guy. "I-I-I ac-ac-cid-dently p-p-push-sh-shed C-C-Crystal o-o-over." He didn't like to speak unless it was absolutely necessary so he could avoid the embarrassment of his stuttering, and when he did, it was only but a few words to get his point across.

"And your brother just decided to beat you up because of this?" Wheatmire's voice was filled with uncertainty and incredulity at the brothers.

Crystal decided to move over to where the voices were. Right close by, if not almost half way across the classroom. She lowered her ears at the argument and she just had to intervene. "It's okay, I wasn't hurt." She didn't know how saying this would help anything after she heard it come out of her her mouth, but she had to say something...anything to get her point across to get them to stop without actually telling them to stop.

"Crystal, not now." Pitch shot back to the blind filly, which surprised her quite a bit. Her image of him in her mind dropped a bit from the glowing knight in shining armor (whatever that looked like, but it sounded romantic to her from how it had been explained to her) to one with dull armor that shone like the waters of a murky swamp. But he was still a knight...right?

"Pitch, that is enough. You don't need to yell at young Crystal here." Crystal's thoughts were broken by Wheatmire. "She's tired of this argument and so am I. I'm going lightly on you because you are both brothers and I obviously can't tell you enough times Pitch to not be so rough, so just go."

"Fine by me." Pitch spoke through clutched teeth before he suddenly grabbed a hold of Crystal by wrapping his hoof around her back and directing her to where their bags were. Crystal's bag was there first, Crystal knew this for sure, but Pitch placed his right next to hers. "Come on Crystal, I wanna see the new candy shop that had just opened yesterday downtown. My mom gave me three whole bits to spend there. You can come with me. Here, I'll get your bag for you."

Feeling the sudden shock and surprise from the grab, Crystal jerked and weaved herself out of his hold. It had no tenderness like she felt before from his voice, only a feeling of greed. Telling him the truth, Crystal figured, was the best thing for her to say. "I'm sorry Pitch, but 'Mamma Mia' wants to pick me up late and I don't want her to get mad at me because I was gone. You have no idea how bad..."

Pitch suddenly and rudely interrupted her with his own plea for her company. "Come on, this'll be fun. It's just down the street and around the corner, we could be back before she gets here."

"Pitch, no!" Crystal really, really, really hated shouting. "I can't get 'Mamma Mia' mad at me now. Not when the fall equa-thingy feast is only in two weeks, she'd ground me for sure and I wouldn't be able to go."

Pitch's next question came out of the blue for Crystal, and really confused her. "Do you have a date yet?"

"What? Um...no...I don't."

Okay...I guess I'll go alone...see ya later."

Crystal could hear the slow clopping noise of Pitch's hooves on the wooden floorboards move away to their bags. She could hear Pitch whisper something to his brother, Riot, before she heard the two leave out the door of the schoolhouse. Her head fell as a somber feeling overwhelmed her, twisting her insides into a knot of complete self-regret.

Author's Note:

Edited by BlackRoseRaven on fanfiction.net

Comments

[SilentBelle]

Let's see, things I didn't like:
Some of the sentences were a little longer than they should have been. It kind of sapped away my attention at parts. Some of the imagery and metaphors didn't seem very apt.

I don't really know why she said 'Momma Mia'. That's Italian for 'My Mother'. But why say that instead of mom, or mother? It just seemed weird is all.

It almost doesn't feel like the previous chapter and this one are connected in any way. The only thing connecting them is the prologue.

Crystal isn't left with much of a reason or goal at the end of this chapter

Things I liked:
I like the self-confident walking scene, and I think the teacher's speaking and actions were actually pretty good.

I did like how Crystal interprets Pitch's voice and how the rest of the students are described in her mind.

Suggestions for future chapters: Try to think about why you are choosing to show certain actions instead of others. When you read each sentence you write ask if it is necessary and why. What does it add to the story, and why do you want to add that to the story? If you want, I'll help you edit your future chapters. Send me a PM if you are interested.

[Lovinlife]

2707757 They will connect maybe in the next chapter or the one after it.