Spellbound Fireflies (7 page)

Twilight smiled and gave her student a respectful nod.  “You definitely have the basics down.  Let’s go over one of these harder ones.”

Working on one of the unanswered questions drew out more confusion for Twilight.  Scootaloo had a strong grasp of the mechanics and understood the steps for long division, isolating each section of the numbers into easier divisible segments, but as soon as the number was long enough she became confused, switching answer placements around and missing simple parts of the process.  Twilight’s bewilderment grew when she tried talking them out with the filly; as soon as she said the numbers aloud, Scootaloo corrected her mistakes.

Twilight rubbed her chin with a hoof, scrutinizing the paper.  She quirked an eyebrow at the filly, tempering the suspicion in her voice.  “…You said you have trouble reading quickly, too?”

Scootaloo nodded briskly.  Her nervousness had ebbed away over the course of working with Twilight, her tutor proving patient and kind.  “It takes me a long time to read anything.  Sometimes after I get through something, I have no idea what I just read…”  She frowned, ears drooping again.  “I just can’t get it to string together all the way in my head.”

“How’s your spelling?”

“Awful,” she giggled ruefully.

Twilight rubbed at her chin, glaring daggers into the worksheet.  After a moment, she nodded and cantered towards the stairway down to the main library.  “C’mon; we’re going to Sugarcube Corner to get you a milkshake.”

“Really?!”  Scootaloo bounced out of her chair before her treacherous mouth added, “Why?”  She clapped her hooves over muzzle.

Smirking, Twilight headed down the stairs.  “It’s an apology in advance shake.”

“…An apology?  For what?”

“For making you take a test.”

Scootaloo groaned loudly.

“I know; I’m the worst.”

Twilight scrutinized the hoof-written test, her eyes narrowed and muzzle crinkled in concentration.  She referred back and forth between Scootaloo’s answers and her reference book, checking, double-checking, and triple-checking the patterns and styles of answers.  The third time through, she was almost certain her theory was correct.  The fourth time through, she was positive.

She sighed inwardly, a weight settling over her shoulders.  She glared at the book for confirming her suspicions, and then glared at herself for having them to begin with.  She glanced tentatively over her shoulder at the small filly, idly doodling at her desk.  Setting her jaw and shaking her head, she thought,
‘Well, at least it isn’t the gay talk,’
and cantered over to the desk.

“So what was that test for?”  Scootaloo pushed the sketchy drawing of herself and her friends hang-gliding to the edge of the workspace, glancing up at her tutor expectantly.

Twilight cleared her throat.  “Well, it answered a question of mine.  It also explains why you’ve been struggling with math and reading, even why you have messy hoofwriting and trouble spelling.”  She sat gently on her chair, looking Scootaloo over.  The pegasus’ eyes lit up at the thought of an answer and her fidgeting stilled.  Twilight took a deep breath.  “Scootaloo, have you heard of dyslexia?”

Scootaloo pursed her lips, tapping her chin.  “Isn’t that when a pony doesn’t eat enough food so they can stay thin?”

Stifling a giggle, Twilight shook her head.  “No, that’s anorexia.”  She chewed on her lip, willing her thoughts to weave together into something comprehensible.  “…Dyslexia is a type of learning disability.  It’s something that some ponies have that makes it hard to read and write and can make math hard, too.  It has to do with how a pony’s brain processes things that they see.”  She flipped the doodle over, pointing at one of the math problems they had worked on together.  “It’s like this one.  You know how to do all the different steps to get the right answer, but the numbers got crossed up in your head.  When the problem listed five, then two, you saw it as two, then five.”

Twilight placed the test on the desk and pointed at one of the reading comprehension problems.  “And this paragraph is written to have a lot of words that have the same letters in different orders.  That’s why it was so hard to understand; you kept switching the order of the letters around and making different words to the point it didn’t make sense.”  Twilight turned to the young filly, searching her face for understanding.

Scootaloo stared numbly at the papers in front of her.  A wave of shame crashed over her mind, driving her down into her seat and drawing heat to her face.  Waveringly, she choked out, “S-so I’m stupid…”

“What?”  Twilight’s spine straightened, alarm rushing to her tone.  “No, no you’re not stupid at all!”  She grasped her student by the shoulders, gently leading Scootaloo’s eyes to meet her own.  “If I asked most foals your age the answer to three hundred and thirty-six divided by twelve without giving them any paper to work it out, they’d take three times as long to answer as you did and most of them would get it wrong.”

Scootaloo’s eyes wavered under her furrowed brow.  She bit her lip, glancing around the room and avoiding Twilight’s gaze.

The unicorn frowned strongly, worry etching deep lines through her face.  “You’re a lot of things, Scootaloo.  You’re brave, you’re kind, you’re athletic, you love your friends, you’re funny, and you’re the hardest working filly I’ve ever seen.  Of all the things you are, not one of them is ‘stupid.’”

Feeling overwhelmed, Scootaloo returned her eyes to Twilight’s.  Her mind, swimming with doubts and fears, warred with her feelings of confusion, pride, and happiness.  Bewildered, she held her breath and waited for Twilight to continue.

“Listen…”  Twilight frowned, collecting herself, mulling over her words.  “Having dyslexia doesn’t mean you’re not smart.  It doesn’t even mean there’s anything wrong with you.  You just…think differently than other ponies.  That’s all it means.  And different doesn’t mean bad, it just means that some things that others can do easily, you have to work on differently.  That’s the key word there, not that you need to work harder to learn, just
differently
.”

She turned to the worksheet and floated a new sheaf of parchment onto the desk, grasping a pencil and scribbling quickly.  “Here, look at this.  This division problem here.”

Scootaloo leaned over, feeling like she had a large wad of cotton shoved into her head.  She blinked at it.  “Somethin’ that easy?”  Twilight nodded encouragingly, hoofing over the pencil.  Scootaloo quickly scribbled in her answer.

“Good.  Now…”  Twilight jotted down another problem that was just as easy, followed by three more.  Confused and frowning, Scootaloo continued to answer them at a brisk pace.  “Alright, so then…”  Smiling coyly, Twilight took the five completed division problems and rewrote them together, lining up the answers in a staggered pattern.  With a flourish, she moved the completed worksheet from earlier and set it next to the scrap questions.  “See it?”

Scootaloo looked from one sheet to the next.  Her eyes lit up with realization.  “It’s the same question!”  Twilight nodded excitedly.  “And it was so easy!  I can do that…”  Scootaloo grabbed the pencil in her mouth and wrote out one of the problems that was scratched out and corrected to an almost unreadable mess.  Breaking it up into pieces the same way Twilight had done before, she raced through it.

Twilight’s breath caught in her throat.  She watched understanding blossom to excitement on the young filly’s face, hurriedly scrawling out the answers.  Scootaloo went from eagerly inquisitive to awestruck, the pencil dropping from her mouth.  “It works!”  She pushed the worksheet away and grabbed another one from the folder, poring over question after question, smiling broadly around the pencil.  Twilight watched her silently.

Seeing the excitement, the raw joy on Scootaloo’s face, the tremors racing down her sides, the wild look of success in her eyes, struck Twilight deeply.  The impact on the filly, the imparted understanding and joy of learning, gripped her heart tightly and squeezed.  She took controlled breaths, wiping at her eyes.

At last Scootaloo dropped the pencil from her mouth.  “I can do it!  Oh, Twilight, thank you!”  She threw herself around Twilight’s neck and hugged her tightly.

Twilight swallowed the lump in her throat and awkwardly returned the hug, willing her voice smooth and even.  “That’s what I’m here to help with, Scootaloo.”  The pegasus sat back, the grin on her face painfully big.  It was infectious.  “That’s what we need to work on now.  You’re plenty smart and you can
do
the work,” she said, prodding the sheet of clean and complete equations, “You just need to learn how to approach the work differently.”  She glanced over the worksheet.  All of the answers were correct.  “We found the answer for long-division.  We can find similar things for other types of math.  And we can work on your reading and spelling too.”

Scootaloo practically vibrated in her seat.  “This is awesome!”

“Now, Scootaloo…”  Her smile faded a little as she set her hoof on her student’s shoulder.  “I think we can find ways for you to work around a lot of the math.  You’re
good
at it and all you needed was a way to break things up into easier to read chunks.  But it’s not going to be the same for reading and writing.”  She looked the filly over carefully, her smile hiding a hint of sadness.  “Some of this will be a struggle and it’ll probably always be difficult.  But we’ll figure out ways for it to be less difficult than it is right now.”

Scootaloo nodded vaguely, the victory over division still fresh and strong in her mind.  A notion struck her and she slowly frowned and sighed, glancing at the finished worksheets.  “…How come I’m just finding out now?  I wish I knew that trick months ago.”

Twilight shrugged, turning her head to hide the scowl that dug its way across her face.  “…Sometimes ponies miss stuff like this.  What’s important is that we know now.”  She turned back and grinned, ruffling Scootaloo’s mane again.  “We know now and we can work on it together.  Deal?”

Returning the grin, Scootaloo nodded.  “Deal.”

Twilight wriggled under the sheets in the dark room, attempting and failing to get comfortable.  Whichever side she rolled towards proved to be the wrong one and she frequently found herself on her back, staring at the ceiling and muttering.  She mulled over the day, second-guessing the words she’d used with Scootaloo on an endless loop.  Just before giving up and retrieving a book, a swoosh of disturbed air rushed from higher in the tree.

The soft rustling of beating wings filled the room as Rainbow Dash descended from the window, settling gently on the bed.  She smiled at her wide-awake marefriend.  “Hey, babe.”

Twilight returned the smile, sitting up.  “Hey.  Wasn’t sure I’d see you today.”

“Figured I’d stop by.”  She sat on her haunches, shaking out the flight from her wings.  “Hopin’ there’s room for one more.”

“Always.”  She yawned and stretched out her back, her hooves arching over her head.

Rainbow darted under the covers and snaked her forelegs around the unicorn’s middle mid-stretch.  “Gotcha.”

Dropping a leg around the mare’s shoulders and resting her head against Rainbow, Twilight murmured, “Eep.”  She nuzzled Rainbow’s cheek.  “Rainbow’s caught me.  What’m I gonna do now?”

“Be trapped,” Rainbow deadpanned, “Maybe scream a little.”  She brushed a wing along Twilight’s sides, drawing a short fit of laughter from her captive.  Giggling and kicking her hindlegs, Twilight turned and blew a raspberry into Rainbow’s neck.  They rolled back onto the bed, laughing together and tangled up in each other’s hooves.  Twilight rested her head on Rainbow’s chest and snuggled into the pegasus, sighing in contentment.  Chuckles subsiding, Rainbow stroked her marefriend’s mane and asked, “So how was your day?”

“Mmm, alright.  Usual library stuff mostly.  I, uh…I did find out why Scootaloo’s been struggling in school, though.”

“Yeah?”

Twilight frowned, nuzzling deeper into the warm, soft hairs of Rainbow Dash’s coat.  “She had undiagnosed dyslexia.”

“Huh.”  Rainbow chewed her lip, mulling the information over.  “Don’t they usually check for that or whatever?”

“Not really.  I mean, if a student’s struggling a lot they might, but Scootaloo’s smart enough it was mostly hidden, I think.  It’s only now starting to be a problem because she couldn’t get her math work to come out correctly…”  Twilight sighed heavily, her voice trailing off.

“…There’s somethin’ else, huh?”

She shrugged against the pegasus.  “It’s like you said.  Nopony was really looking at her close enough to notice.”  Her frown deepened.  “I don’t like this, Rainbow.  I’m worried about her.  I can only do so much to help her, you know?  Yeah, I can get the test notarized and delivered to Ms. Cheerilee so she can get some extra classroom help, but it doesn’t feel like enough.”

“Relax, Twi’.”  She ruffled Twilight’s bed-headed mane into further disarray.  “A kid that hard-workin’s gonna come out a winner.”  A tone of playfulness crept into her voice.  “I know what you need.”  Sitting up quickly, Rainbow Dash rolled Twilight onto her back and leapt to the foot of the bed, flinging off the blankets and lifting her marefriend’s left leg.  No time wasted, she pressed her forelimbs into the dainty hoof, rubbing and kneading.

“...Oh, dear Celestia.” Twilight groaned, scrunching her eyes tight and then opening them wide.

Grinning, Rainbow worked from the outside to the inside of Twilight’s hoof, digging firmly into the soft sole.  “Like it, Twi’?”

The unicorn rumbled deeply, her head rolling back into the pillow.  “Rainbow Dash…it is of the utmost importance…that you never stop doing that.”

Rainbow snickered, prying all of the tension from her marefriend’s limb.  After several minutes of diligent kneading, she planted a kiss on the bottom of Twilight’s hoof and grabbed her right leg.  “So what’s it all mean for Scoots?  You gonna need to tutor her for a while, or is it somethin’ fast?”

“Guh.”  She shook her head, clearing the dancing joy clouding her vision.  “It’ll probably…umm…Dash, I can’t think straight when you’re…uh…”  Twilight was losing words.  What were words?  “Oh, ponyfeathers, don’t stop.”