PROLOGUE:
“I can raise the
sun!” Celestia lifted a yellow marble with her magic.
“I can raise the
moon!” Luna lifted a navy blue marble with her magic.
“Uh! Uh!”
Shimmer tried to pick up her marble and failed.
“The sun will
beat the moon!” Celestia cried, bringing her marble closer to Luna’s.
“Nuh-uh! The
moon will beat the sun!” Luna said defensively, clinking her marble against
Tia’s.
Shimmer looked
down at her plain marble sadly.
“Come on moon!”
Trickles of sweat went down Luna’s forehead.
“Go sun!” Celestia
was sweating, too.
Shimmer got an
idea. She scooped her marble up with her hooves, and cried, “You’re both wrong.
My marble and I will beat both of you!”
Celestia dropped
her marble. “Shim-mer!” she complained. “I was beating Luna! Why did you have to
interrupt us?”
“Nuh-uh! The
moon was beating the sun!” Luna said.
Shimmer watched
sadly as her sisters continued to play without her. Like always.
“Tia! Lu Lu!
Shimmer! Lunch!” the sisters' mother called. Tia and Lu Lu bustled past
Shimmer, leaving her on her back, outside, alone.
Shimmer got up
and slowly walked inside. Celestia and Luna ran into her.
“Shim-mer!” Luna
said. “Get out of our way! Why are you always so mean to us?”
“Yeah,” Celestia
exclaimed. “You’re always in our way.”
Shimmer watched,
heartbroken, as her sisters ran out to play without her.
“Blank flank!
Blank flank! Shimmer has a blank flank!”
Shimmer covered
her ears and closed her eyes.
“Blank flank!
Blank flank! Shimmer has a blank flank!” The taunting continued.
Every year
Shimmer dreaded school. And every year it came. She was already in 5th grade-
why was she still a blank flank?
“Blank flank!”
The worst part
was even Tia and Lu Lu were laughing along. Not a big surprise, but still…
“Shimmer has a
blank flank!”
“Enough!” Mrs.
Flower Power cried, although even she looked amused. “We were all a blank flank
once.”
Everypony
stopped laughing. They knew better than to mess with Mrs. Power.
“Everypony take
out your journals and flip to the next blank page. Try to find as many good
things about yourself as you can and write them down.”
Everypony
listened. At the end of class when Mrs. Power went around to see what everypony
wrote, Shimmer had nothing.
“Shimmer! Why
don’t you have anything?” Mrs. Power asked.
“There’s nothing
good about me,” Shimmer replied.
“Yes there is,”
Mrs. Power told her.
“Like what?”
Shimmer asked.
“Umm, well…”
“See? Nothing!
I'm not a good pony at all!”
So when the
class did a poster saying good things about themselves, there was nothing about
Shimmer.
Shimmer cried
all the way home.
“Welcome home
girls!” the sisters’ mother said excitedly. “You have a sister!”
Shimmer froze. A
new sister?
“A sister! How
exciting!” Celestia and Luna exclaimed together. They gave each other a hug and
ran to see the baby. Slowly and carefully, Shimmer followed.
The baby laughed
as Shimmer drew closer. All of a sudden, Shimmer sneezed. And sneezed again.
And again. And again.
“Oh dear,” Candy
Cane, the girls’ mother said softly. She called a doctor.
“Hmm…” the
doctor said, looking Shimmer over carefully. “It seems she is severely allergic
to the baby’s horseshoes.”
Candy gasped.
Everypony knew that baby fillies had to wear the horseshoes to keep their
hooves straight.
Shimmer fled
outside, crying. Celestia and Luna ran after her, but Shimmer was out of sight.
For hundreds of years to come, the family would be apart.
