Chapter 1
The wide and long corridors of Princess Twilight's friendship school were empty. Not a single sound was heard, neither the chatting of students nor the steps of hooves or claws on the tiled stone floor. Class was in session and so all students and their teachers were sitting inside the classrooms and busy with studying and teaching. It was a status quo that should not last much longer.
Right when the bell of the huge school rang out, the doors of various classrooms opened and an armada of pony students started to pour out into the hallways. At the top of one of these pony student groups was a very unique group of students and friends, the only foreign students at the school and Princess Twilight's great hope for her vision:
Gallus the griffon, Yona the yak, Smolder the dragon, Ocellus the changeling and Silverstream the hippogriff.
They were a group of six friends however, not five, and only complete with Sandbar, another pony and the living proof that a pony could be friends with creatures who weren't ponies.
Amidst the chatter that filled the hallways now, one voice suddenly began to drown out all the others: Silverstream started to talk with her friends.
“Guys!” the adorable, hyper-exciteable hippogriff shouted for their attention. “It's amazing, you need to see this!” One of her wings gripped a book and she was holding it in front of her face.
“And what's so amazing?” Gallus asked. His voice sounded annoyed and his face indicated the same sentiment.
Silverstream looked up and into the face of the griffon, beak opened wide and eyes sparkling with fascination and delight. Excitedly, she patted the page of the book she had just been reading in with one of her claws.
“It says here that ponies sometimes dig holes in their gardens and fill them with water so they can go swimming all the time! This is absolutely the best thing EVER!” Her voice had become a high-pitched shriek by now. Silverstream threw her claws into the air and took off from the floor, hovering a meter above her friends now. The book fell on the floor and kept lying there, spine pointing upwards.
“Uh, not really,” Gallus commented on the excitement. He and the rest of his friends stopped and looked at Silverstream. “It's called a 'pool'. Many ponies have one, it's not a special thing.”
“Oh, but it is!” Silverstream countered while landing on the floor next to him, excitement only slightly stiffled by the annoyed response. She picked up the book.
“Gallus is right, Silverstream,” Sandbar joined in on the conversation. “A lot of ponies have a pool. Me and my family have one, too. But I guess pools aren't exactly a thing when your entire house is full of water, eh?”
“No way!” Silverstream shouted in agreement. “In Seaquestria, we are swimming all the time, even during sleep. But I never expected that surface dwellers love swimming so much to build a swimming hole!”
“Hehe, yeah,” Sandbar chucked dryly. “Pony culture has a lot of surprises for creatures who have never been in Equestria before.” He looked over to Gallus. “Hey, Gallus, do griffons have pools, too?”
“Not really,” the griffon answered. “Griffons don't care about such things. They are too busy with fighting to build much. I was just pointing out how pools are nothing special for ponies.”
“Not special for ponies, but special for yaks!” Yona picked up the topic. “Yaks not have pools. Pools would freeze in Yakyakistan! But yaks have hot springs, heated up by underground volcanoes!” she explained, pride in her voice. Yona smiled at Silverstream.
“Underground volcanoes, huh?” Smolder walked closer. “The volcanoes in the Dragon Lands are all on the surface, but we have pools there.”
“Really?!” Silverstream's eyes began to glow again. “Are they filled with hot water?!”
“They are filled with lava,” Smolder corrected the assertion.
“No way!” Silverstream yelled in disbelief. “You're just making this up! Are you?”
“Nope! Dragons have very thick scales, we can deal with much higher temperatures than other creatures can. A bath in lava for us is just the same as a bath in water for ponies.”
“This is so amazing!” Silverstream's voice turned into a shriek again and she sent the book flying a second time.
“It is,” Ocellus spoke with her timid voice, coming closer. “I guess we changelings could do the same if we turned into dragons but, normally, we only bath in small rainwater ponds.”
Silverstream's brain absorbed all the new information like a sponge. “This. Is. INCREDIBLE!” she squealed. “I need to go back to my room and write all of this down!”
Gallus rolled his eyes. “Yeah. We all better go back to our rooms if we want to get all of this homework from Professor Sparkle done until tomorrow. You guys still come to hang out later?”
Silverstream did not seem to hear the question, her beak was already buried deep in the book again, but Smolder was eager to answer. “Sure thing!” she said. “The lounge at seven?”
“Yep.” Gallus lifted a leg and exchanged a clawbump with Smolder.
“I'll be there, too,” Sandbar announced.
“Yona will come!”
“And I will come, too. The homework looks easy, I will be done with it quickly.” Ocellus gripped the books she was holding tighter.
“You don't say,” Gallus remarked sarcastically, making Ocellus blush and his other friends laugh. Silverstream's head was still stuck in the book, only the occasional gasps and squeals indicating that she was still here.
“I'll be waiting for you in the lounge,” Ocellus said after she had managed to overcome her embarrassment.
The friends said goodbye to each other, Silverstream only holding up a claw to contribute to the farewell, then they parted ways and headed back to their respective dorm rooms.
Five hours later, the lounge became filled up and four of the six creatures entered it eagerly. Gallus looked very relaxed and a little smug. “So, did you guys get all your homework done?” There was something sassy in his voice.
“Barely,” Smolder said. “Mathematical tasks aren't a dragon's strong point. We have it more in the muscles, than in the brain. What about you?”
“Eh, haven't touched it yet.” Gallus waved a claw through the air.
“Professor Sparkle won't like this,” Sandbar determined.
“Eh, I'll just give it a glance before going to bed. Worked the last time.” He shrugged.
Yona's eyes were heavy-lidded. “Yona finished, but Yona's brain hurts now.” She stuck out her tongue and let it dangle.
“I got it done, but the amount for just one day was not cool,” Sandbar lamented. “Professor Sparkle should go more easy on us.”
“Uh-huh.” His three friends nodded.
The lounge was full of pony students, which was normal at this time in the evening, but at the far end of it, Ocellus sat at a round table and waved over to them with a smile on her face.
“Hey, look, Ocellus saved us a spot!” Sandbar alerted his friends, feeling his mood getting lifted.
“Geez, Ocellus wasn't kidding when she said she would get her homework done quickly.” Gallus' voice was ripe with disbelief.
“Where's Silverstream?” Yona asked. “Yona not see hyperactive hippogriff.”
“Probably still stuck in that book,” Gallus suggested. “She's almost as much a bookworm as Ocellus.”
The four friends approached the table, grouped themselves around it and sat down.
“Hey, where's Silverstream?” Sandbar asked Ocellus after he made sure that the hippogriff filly wasn't here.
“I don't know,” Ocellus answered. “I haven't seen her since the end of class.”
“Huh, weird..... Silverstream never misses it when we get together like this.”
“I told you,” Gallus smirked “she is still stuck in that book.”
“Maybe one of us can go and look for her?” Ocellus suggested.
“I'll go,” Sandbar said and got up. “I'll be back with Silverstream in a bit.”
The way to the dorms didn't take him long. Two minutes later, Sandbar stood in front of Silverstream's room. He knocked. As Silverstream didn't answer, he opened the door.
“Hey, Stream, are you here?” He peeked through the gap.
As he still didn't hear his friend, he opened it completely and trotted inside. His eyes fell on Silverstream, who sat in her bed with her back turned at him.
“Hey, there you are! The others are waiting already. Did you forget about our meeting?” He expected Silverstream to turn around and start talking in her usual, excited way or to beckon him closer to show him something, but none of these things happened. Instead, the hippogriff began to shook slightly and sobbed.
Sandbar came a step closer. “You're okay there, Stream? Anything happened?”
For a moment, Silverstream remained like this and did not answer. Sandbar was already about to come even closer, as her head suddenly turned around lightning-fast. “I'm homesick!” she sobbed. Thick tears were trickling down her cheeks.
“Homesick?” Sandbar asked, surprised.
“YES!” Silverstream pulled out a tissue, held it at her nostrils and blew into it loudly. “I just thought on it how all of you told me about what kind of pools you have at home and then I suddenly missed being in Seaquestria!” She turned away from Sandbar and sniffed again, then another sob left her throat.
“Oh, wow.....” Sandbar scratched the back of his head, not knowing what to say. “Wait here, I'll go and get the others.”
Silverstream nodded weakly as he turned around and hurried outside of her room. She grabbed the tissue again and dried her eyes with it. The shaking of her body and her sobbing continued.
After a few minutes of silence, Silverstream suddenly heard strong hooves entering her room through the open door. Someone climbed onto her bed, then she felt embraced by two thick, furred forehooves. “Yak friend here to make hippogriff friend happy again!” a loud voice sounded into her ears.
Silverstream couldn't move in the tight embrace, but she managed to turn her head and looked into Yona's eyes. “Yona.....” she spoke weakly. The yak lowered her grip a little as she turned around. Through the doorframe, she saw Gallus, Smolder and Ocellus entering her room. Sandbar followed closely behind. “You're all here.....” Silverstream muttered, a fresh batch of tears collecting in her eyes, this time from affection. Her lip quivered.
“Of course we are!” Smolder spoke to her. “Wouldn't let a friend hang in a moment of weakness!”
Even more tears appeared in Silverstream's eyes. “What should I do?” she cried out. “I miss my home! I like it up here at the surface with all the new things, but now I want to swim through Seaquestria, feel the water around me, listen to the singing of the whales and touch the corals and seashells..... I thought this would never happen to me!” She covered her face with her claws and sobbed into them.”
“Well, uh.....” Smolder scrunched her face. “I'm not sure. I never left the Dragon Lands before and dragons don't get homesick.”
Silverstream removed the claws from her eyes and looked over to the changeling at her side. “O-Ocellus?” she whimpered while the tears kept flowing.
“I-I don't know..... I've never been homesick before. Back during Chrysalis' reign, there wasn't much of a home to return to anyway and it's only a few weeks since I left my family.” She was visibly uncomfortable with her inability to help.
Silverstream's eyes wandered over to Gallus.
“Nope!” he answered the plea fast. “I don't miss my home.”
Lastly, she looked at Yona. “You know something, right, Yona?”
Sadly, the yak shook her head. “Yona sorry, but answer is no. Yona not knowing how to cure homesickness, only here to hug the pain away.” To underline her words, she gripped Silverstream tighter again and rested her chin on her head.
“I know something for it,” Sandbar finally spoke as his friends had finished.
Silverstream looked at him from her tear-filled eyes, desiring help from the colt.
“It happened when I was eight years old,” he began telling his story. “It was during summer vacation and my parents had sent me to my uncle in Rainbow Falls for two weeks. But I wasn't there for long before I began to miss my parents and our house.”
“And what d-did you do?” Silverstream used the pause to ask.
“I told my uncle about it and he had a great idea! He said I just need something that reminds me on home to feel better. So he went and redesigned the guest room of his house I was staying in until it almost looked like my bedroom at home. And that made my homesickness go away.” He smiled at his distraught friend.
“Well, that's a nice idea and all but, we can't exactly do the same for Silverstream,” Smolder commented on the proposed solution.
“Why not?” Sandbar asked.
“Because she lives underwater,” Gallus answered for Smolder. “Do you want to flood her whole room?”
“Hmm.....” Sandbar held his left forehoof at his chin and lowered this eyes, thinking.
“Maybe we can ask Professor Sparkle for help?” Ocellus offered. “She knows a lot about magic, I'm sure she can do something!”
Sandbar removed his hoof from his chin. Together with the rest of his friends, he looked at Ocellus.
“You know, I am impressed you all came to me with this concern,” Twilight said while she looked at the pond in front of the entrance of her school. Behind her, Gallus, Yona and Smolder were carrying sparkling panels and several pieces of furniture and interior decoration in different colors. They placed all the items right in front of the pond.
“Silverstream's parents couldn't pay for all of this, but when I pulled some strings and explained everything to Queen Novo–” Twilight smirked “– she was more than happy to help out her niece.”
To her left, Sandbar, Ocellus and Silverstream, who appeared completely choked up with emotion, looked down at the water. Their three friends joined Twilight's other side.
“Now watch,” Twilight said, glancing at Silverstream. She ignited her horn, wrapped four of the panels into her magic and hovered them inside the pond. Looking through the clear surface, she arranged the panels and molded them together to form walls and a floor. Through the open front, she hovered the furniture inside and arranged them according to the description Silverstream's parents had given her a few days prior. A last magical effort and the remaining two panels formed a ceiling and the last wall, with a door built into it. During the entire process, Silverstream's eyes grew bigger and bigger and tears of joy appeared in them.
“And that's it!” Twilight said as all the components were at their place. She pulled a plan out of her saddlebags and checked everything one last time. Then she tucked it away again and nodded. “Everything is correct. A perfect replica of the bedroom in your home, Silverstream. Now you have a place you can retreat to whenever you need to feel like you're in Seaquestria.” She wiped some sweat off her forehead.
“Oh. My. Gosh.” Silverstream looked below the surface of the pond at her new, makeshift home, eyes sparkling. She hugged Twilight and squealed, then jumped straight into the water. A glow appeared, then she dived down as a seapony, opened the door of the construction and disappeared inside.
Her friends and Twilight watched in satisfaction at the newfound vigor of the young hippogriff.
Twilight did a step towards the pond and turned around. “This was only possible because of you. You did the right thing for your friend and where there for her when she needed you. I'm very proud to call you my students.” She let her eyes wander over the five creatures and presented each of them with a warm smile. They smiled and grinned back at her, wearing slight blushes in their faces because of the overwhelming praise.
Behind Twilight, Silverstream suddenly shot out of the pond and into the air. She hit the surface again and created a wave, splashing water over her teacher and her friends.
Silverstream looked at them in delight, salty rivers of joy running over her face. “Guys, this really looks exactly like my room at home! You are the best friends ever!” She jumped out of the water again, causing another wave to splash over them. All six of them, students and teacher alike, laughed loudly while the exciteable hippogriff filly disappeared under the surface and behind the door of the construction again.
Inside, Silverstream swam onto the replica of her bed. She lied down and rested her fins on her chest. A smile gracing her lips, she stared up at the familiar ceiling.
“Just like home!” she spoke. Then she closed her eyes for a nap.
.