Musings on Magic
Sweetie Belle - 14th of Solar Dusk, 08 EoH
Southernmost Orchard, Sweet Apple Acres - Ponyville, Equestria
The warm autumn breeze blew across Sweet Apple Acres creating a symphony from the millions of rustling leaves. Autumn had only just begun to dot trees with yellow and red, making the treetops resemble a patchwork quilt.
The apples which hung from the tree’s branches added another color to the quilt. Most all of them shone vibrantly, their ripe colors seeming to shine in the light of the setting sun. The warm orange light filtering down through the leaves and apples completed the picturesque scene, creating the warm feeling of home and hearth in anyone fortunate enough to pass by and see nature’s splendor.
Splendor which would not last.
Soon the pegasi would need to bring in the snow and ice to let the land rest for a fresh growing season in the distant spring. Soon the wonderful warmth and natural beauty would be replaced by the grays, blues, and whites of winter.
The perfect night for backyard camping was tonight.
Apple Bloom had invited her friends Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo out to Sweet Apple Acres for that reason first and foremost. Or at least, that’s what she had told Apple Jack.
A few years ago when the three had still attended Ponyville Elementary their camping trip would doubtless have been some attempt to earn their cutiemarks in woodcraft.
Now there were other reasons the three would meet up. The sort of reasons adults pretend are adult but is often far more childish than what would motivate a child. Nostalgia.
The three young mares always looked back fondly on their time in elementary school. While little had changed between the present and the past, the high school juniors still felt like it had.
Therefore a small fire pit had been carefully made away from the orchard’s trees, a tent had been set up nearby, and several large bags of marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate bars had been procured for the express purpose of eating enough smores to regret it in the morning.
In other words, the three mares intended to perform the (legal) teenage equivalent of going on a bender.
Apple Bloom sat back in her camp chair and smiled as she looked up at the treetops. “This is great. We should have been doing this every week all summer!” She said with a contented sigh.
Scootaloo frowned. “Wouldn’t AJ get mad? You’re awfully busy in the summer with farm stuff.”
Apple BLoom’s ears drooped sadly. Naturally, she had been given more chores to do as she had grown up. “Y'all don’t think I’m working too much to hang out with anymore, do you?”
Scootaloo shook her head, wincing. “No! That’s not what I meant!” She exclaimed, holding up her hooves. “I mean normally you’re working till sunset. If we wanted to go ‘camping’ like this you’d have to stop early.”
Apple Bloom pursed her lips. “Well, she does get pretty angry if the schedule gets thrown off. But that’s because she still picks up all the slack at the end of the week. I keep telling her she should hire some fieldhooves but nope! Have to keep things in the family, for some reason. It ain’t like no other earth ponies are good at growing apples.”
Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes. “I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t mind if we helped you so you could finish early.”
“Probably not,” Apple Bloom agreed.
She continued talking, but Sweetie Belle’s mind latched on to something else her friend had just said.
“It ain’t like no other earth ponies are good at growing apples.” How do earth ponies make plants grow better anyways?
Sweetie Belle quickly became lost in her thoughts. She knew she had to have learned the answer in school at some point, but whatever it was the answer had long since run away to join her locker combination and where she had left her hairbrush that morning in the Void of The Once Known.
“Sweetie Belle? Equis to Sweetie Belle?” Apple Bloom said to Sweetie as the unicorn busily worked her way through what little she remembered of fourth-grade thaumaturgy in the hopes of discovering even a partial answer.
Scootaloo smirked as Bloom’s hoof waving failed to gain their distant friend’s attention. The orange mare cleared her throat. “I got this, AB.”
Scootaloo leaned in towards Sweetie Belle, placed a hoof over her mouth to help mimic the sound of a pony speaking over a radio and called, “Hello Major Belle, are you receiving?
Turn the thrusters on, we're standing by…”
Apple Bloom’s jaw dropped as this immediately snapped Sweetie out of her thoughts. Sweetie sat bolt upright, a confused look in her eyes for a moment. “Wah? Oh! I— Um, sorry. What’s up?”
Shaking the confusion out of herself, Apple Bloom pointed at Sweetie Belle. “You’re what’s up. What were you thinking about that hard? Is it a good idea for a prank?” AB asked, her tail flicking eagerly.
Sweetie shook her head. “No.I was thinking about something you said. You mentioned other earth ponies being good at growing apples too and I remembered that I have no idea how you guys actually, well, you know... Do that.”
Scootaloo nodded. “Yeah, that’s actually a good question. I mean, it doesn't look like you do anything. You just kinda walk around plants and poof! Apples that taste good just emerge… Wait, is it a scam?!” She asked with a teasing wink.
Apple Bloom blinked. “Y'all forget? We learned it in fifth grade. Miss Cheerly went over everything about everypony’s magic. Like how unicorns cast spells by… Um… magic?”
Apple Bloom’s face scrunched up as she realized she’d also forgotten how other ponies magic works.
Scootaloo snickered. “Maybe you should check to see if you remember before saying you do next time.”
“Yeah, well… Um… I guess so,” Applebloom said sheepishly as she stared down at the ground.
Sweetie bit her lip worriedly. I don’t want this camp out to not be fun… There’s got to be something I can do to—
Sweetie’s eyes lit up as an idea came to her. “This is an easy problem to solve. We’ve got one of every major pony tribe right here! Let’s fill each other in. Who wants to go first?” She asked, looking at her two friends with her best cheerful smile.
Scootaloo and Apple Bloom looked at each other for a moment then nodded.
“You go first,” The two said in unison.
Scootaloo flashed Sweetie a quick smile. “I mean, you’re the one who can almost literally bend the world to her whims. You’ve got the most complicated one. You go first.”
“Okay, but it’s not all that complicated,” Sweetie said with a light blush. “It can be if you’re doing something big, but spells are very simple.”
“I don’t believe that,” Bloom said shaking her head. “I’ve seen Twilight pick every apple in a whole orchard at the same time. That’s gotta be hard.”
“It is. But that’s just because you’re doing a whole bunch of simple things at once. Like trying to screw in a screw, saw a board, sew a seam, and sorta pantry at the same time, you know?” Sweetie said as she scooted back in her chair.
“Unicorn magic is mostly based in willpower. You have a certain amount of magical energy in you. It’s just like stamina, or wakefulness. A resource you have that you can draw on. To use you magic you just sort of ‘reach for it’ like you want to move a leg or our tail. It’s like another body part.
“When you move it, you also focus your will on whatever you’re doing like, um—” Sweetie looked around for something to use an example, her eyes settling on a bag of marshmallows. “Like lifting this bag of marshmallows.”
Sweetie reached out with her arcane power and took hold of the bag, levitating it off the ground within her green aura’s grasp.
“Right now I’m using up that energy. But really slowly because this isn't very heavy or very far away. I’m also concentrating on lifting the marshmallows, but it’s not any harder than focusing on holding them with a hoof. Spells only get hard when you want to do something complicated, like if I wanted to turn these marshmallows into marshmallows shaped like ponies.
“Then I would have to know a spell. Probably a shaping spell, or a molding spell. All that means is you need to know how to move your magic. It’s a bit like martial arts. Magic is a limb, and if you move it in a certain way you can break a cinder block or split boards, or throw a huge stallion across a room.”
Scootaloo nodded eagerly. “I get it! The more complicated the thing is the longer it takes to learn, the more energy it takes, and the more tired it makes you.”
Sweetie smiled. “Yep! There’s more to it, but you guys don’t need to really know how spells work, right?”
Applebloom shook her head. “No, but could you give us the basic idea?”
“Sure. A spell is basically a gym routine for your brain. It’s a thing that’s made to make you think in a certain way so that when you focus your will your thoughts warp the magic into the shape needed to do what you want. A spell can be expressed as anything, well, in theory.
“Think of a spell-like guided meditation. It’s written down as instructions on how to think about the task you’re doing, and also seemingly random things which actually help you get into the right frame of mind. Sometimes those can be just a paragraph of instructions, other times they can fill a whole book.
“Most ponies use phrases and meditation to make shortcuts for a spell once they learn it. You do that by meditating on the full spell and coming up with a shorter thing to get you personally into that mindset and remember all the instructions. You can do that over and over again till you can get even the most complicated spell down to one word you think over and over again while casting the spell. But that’s hard, and most ponies use a sentence at the least.
“For example, to light the campfire, the mantra I used was: ‘Snap crackle pop, burn and do not stop.”
Bloom’s ears drooped. “Uh, that sounds like it could start a forest fire.”
“It could,” Sweetie Belle agreed. “The words don't mean anything to anypony other than me. To me they mean ‘light the thing on fire’, the thing being whatever I am focusing on as the target of my magic. I uh, I had to use stop because there wasn’t a better rhyme and for me, it helps if mantras rhyme.”
Sweetie Belle set the marshmallows down next to the fire as she finished speaking, only now realizing she had been floating them for her entire speech.
Scootaloo nodded. “Makes sense. I always used things like that to remember the order of planets and things. So um, who goes next?” The orange mare asked as she stood up to put a marshmallow on.
“Why don’t you?” Apple Bloom suggested as she nodded at Scootaloo from her chair. “Earth Pony magic ain’t all that exciting.”
Sweetie Belle frowned. “I’m sure it’s cool in some way or another.”
“Yeah!” Scootaloo agreed. “You’re feeding all of Equestria with your magic. It’s got to be cool!”
“Well it is cool, but it’s not all that exciting,” Applebloom sad looking down at the campfire.
“Well, how does it work then?” Sweetie Belle asked. “This is the question which started this discussion. I want to know!”
“Well, alright,” AB said as she straightened back up. “It’s kinda like unicorn magic in that it’s like a body part. But earth pony magic isn’t like a hoof. Uh, well, our strength is like a hoof, but that magic is just kind of there. We’re just stronger than we should be given our muscles. That’s passive magic, y'all know how that works. But the stuff we can do… Uh, it’s like… Um, it’s kinda like an eye, but also a nose.”
Apple Bloom turned to look at the tree closest to her. “See that tree? Y'all look at it and see well the tree. Its bark, its leaves, its branches, and apples. But when I look at it I see more than that. I can see how much light it’s absorbing. I can watch it breathe and turn what we exhale into what we inhale. I can smell what nutrients are in the soil around it and what it's absorbing.
“Not like, literally. I mean metaphorically. I just know that this tree is doing alright by being within the range of my magic’s sense. I don't have to look at it. I know that every single tree in about fifty steps of me is doing just fine, except for one of the younger trees to the south. It hasn't gotten enough fertilizer this year and isn't making much fruit.”
“Oh!” Scootaloo interrupted with a smile. “So you can tell what to do to help a plant grow just by being near it?”
Apple Bloom nodded. “Yeah! I do plants, but other Earth Pony families do other things. Some know what minerals are under the ground and how they are forming. Some know about the water, what's in it, and so on.
“But that’s the stuff we know without magic. We can do things too but it’s not flashy or exciting because it needs to happen on nature’s clock, not a pony’s clock. It can take years or decades to see Earth Pony’s magic’s results. What we can do is talk with what we can sense. But silently, like telepathy kinda. Whatever we’re bonded too we can ask it to do things.
“Like, I can tell these trees to absorb less light except for the red parts, soak up a bit more nitrogen, and grow so their branches point up more. They’d do it. That would ruin them for apple growing though. But it would make them a lot easier to cut for timber and they would grow faster.
“See, our magic isn’t like… We need to learn how whatever we're bonded too works naturally. Then we can help it do better by guiding it. The tree doesn't know what a drought is, but we do, and can tell the tree what to do to work better when there won't be water for it for the next few months.”
Sweetie Belle smiled as AB finished speaking. “That’s actually really cool! I thought you could just make apple trees grow better. I didn't know you could make the tree grow however you like.”
“Well, I could if I learned how. I really only know how to make apple trees grow better apples than they would if I left them alone. But I could learn how to make any plant grow any way I wanted too. I’ve been thinking about getting into wood sculpting when I graduate. That’s when you get trees to grow in certain shapes to make like, a tree where you cut it down and then just strip the bark and have a nice “carved” support beam that’s a fluted pillar.” AB said with a smile.
Scootaloo’s eyes widened. “You could make a tree just GROW a finished pillar? How is that not exciting, that’s awesome!”
Apple Bloom giggled. “It’s not exciting because it could take a whole fifteen years to do. Trees grow slowly.”
“Well, at least you can get a job with your magic,” Scootaloo said her ears drooping as she started speaking, her undersized wings twitching awkwardly.
Eep! I forgot she still can’t fly! We’re making a cripple talk about magic she cant’ use this isn’t okay! Sweetie Belle thought to herself as her eyes widened in horror.
Applebloom winced. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to make you remember—”
“Nah, it’s fine,” Scootaloo said holding up a hoof. “We’re talking about magic and stuff… I just remembered that my magic isn’t useful on the ground is all. I’ll be okay.”
Sweetie Belle cleared her throat. “Uh, you don't have to talk about it. If you don’t want too.”
Scootaloo shook her head. “You guys went, now it’s my turn. Okay, so, pegasus magic. We’ll start with flight.”
The orange mare took a deep breath and spread her misshapen wings out for her friends to see. “Pretend they are the normal size, okay?” Scoots began. “Flight magic is all about how you position our wings. Like unicorns, we have a reserve of magical energy inside us which we can channel not by will but by how our wings are posed. That’s because there’s a field of magical energy around us at all times.
“If I bend my feathers, that changes how the magical field is shaped. If I bend them this way, the field should pull me up.”
Scootaloo bent her wings into a shape which her friends recognized immediately as exactly how every pegasi’s wings looked when they took off.
“My problem is my wings are too short. I can’t shape the field right. See, the shapes matter a lot. Even moving one feather a few degrees in any direction can completely change how your field is shaped and you know, could send you spiraling to the left in a crazy head over plot death roll.
“Some of the poses require you move your wings. That’s why we flap. In theory, you could do everything just with feather movements because newborn foals can fly for a few weeks, but nopony has found poses that will let adult ponies do that yet. So we flap to move feathers from one location to the next while also moving those feathers to do well, whatever it is we want to do. Ascend, descend, slow down, speed up, hover… All that stuff.”
Scootaloo stopped talking and looked up into the sky for a few moments while her friend quietly waited for her to finish. There was no need to interrupt her while she longed to join her other friends in the sky.
“Anyways, weather control,” Scootaloo said after a few minutes had passed, making Apple Bloom jump a bit. “That’s kind of like how Sweetie described spells. We can take the same energy that powers our flight and channel it into our hooves. It won't do anything on its own, but if you concentrate and move your hooves just right and also hit a cloud or even just a bunch of steam or other water vapor you can manipulate the cloud.
“If you just push a bunch of your energy into it the magic makes the cloud stick together. That’s how we get clouds you can make into buildings that are permanent, and also how we can walk on clouds. Uh, eventually you don't even have to think about pushing your magic to your hooves. You just do it. And we make a cloud solid if we want to lay down or something.
“As for weather effects, that’s… Um, well I’m not trained. So I guess it’s like earth pony magic too. I know that Rainbow had to get a masters degree in meteorology to become Ponyville’s Weather Team Leader, and that makes perfect sense because if you kick a cloud to try and make it release water, you know, rain, you can very easily get the angle wrong—” Scootaloo chuckled nervously as she remembered the one and only time she personally tried weather manipulation. “— and make lightning strike Derpy seven times… Thank goodness she’s a pegasus. I could have killed somepony.”
Sweetie Belle frown. “I forgot about that… How come pegasus are immune to electricity?”
“Does it just kinda recharge your magic?” Apple Bloom asked curiously.
Scootaloo nodded. “Mhm! Which um… That’s why you guys found me running around that thunderstorm with a golf club that one time.”
Sweetie Belle giggled, then immediately put a hoof to her lips. “I’m sorry! It’s just that looked so funny!”
Scootaloo waved a hoof dismissively. “It’s cool. I mean, it worked a bit!”
Applebloom smiled. “That’s right! You were able to slow your fall for a few days.”
“Yep!” Scoots said with the biggest grin her friends had ever seen. “I figure if I can get my hooves on about one point twenty-one gigawatts, well, that might get me off the ground. If I got moving fast enough. That would be the hardest part… How do I get myself up to a hundred and forty-one kilometers per hour without asking Dash to push me?”
Sweetie Bell rubbed her chin in thought. “Climb on top of the express train to Canterlot?”
“That might work…” Scootaloo said thoughtfully. “Hmmm… Hey, girls? How would we have gotten our Cutiemarks in Hydroelectric Dam repair back in the day?”
“No,” Apple Bloom said flatly. “We’re not breaking into a dam to let you shock yourself. We’re not thirteen anymore. We’ll get in real trouble.”
Scootaloo sighed. “Yeah, we would… Ah well! I just have to wait for the next thunderstorm then. Should be plenty this fall!”
Sweetie nodded. “Yeah, they always scheduled at least three.”
“Five this year. They want to get a lot of the water out of the mountains to help manage the snow this year. We’ve got to dig some drainage channels for the farm next week… Which probably means tomorrow knowing AJ.” Apple Bloom sighed.
Sweetie Belle reached out with her magic, picked up three marshmallows, and stuck them onto a roasting stick. “In that case, let’s have all the fun we can tonight. Because we’ll all be working hard tomorrow.”
Apple Bloom frowned. “Y'all don’t have to—”
“Yeah, we don’t. But we will. ‘Cuz were friends,” Scootlaoo said, sticking her own marshmallows onto a stick.
Applebloom smiled. “Thanks, girls. Y'all are the best.”
The three friends spent the rest of their evening laughing, eating snacks, and talking about past adventures. The perfect end to the perfect campout.