//------------------------------//
// CHAPTER XVI: Tikkun Olam 
// Story: Special Illumination 
// by ponichaeism 
//------------------------------//

	"Now," Carmine said, "just what are we going to do with you?"
Starswirl turned away from the window, beyond which the day slid from morning to early afternoon, and observed the stallion and his foal on the other side of the living room.
Carmine asked, "How could you sneak out of the house in the dead of night and wander round the forest?"
Clover lowered her eyes to the floor. "I...."
"Look at me," he said sternly.
She picked her eyes up off the ground, but when she raised them up to her father's scowling face, she shied away from his intense, heavy stare.
He stated coldly, "The fence, then."
Clover's ears fell. "Aw, but papa, it's Saturday--!"
"Should've thought of that before you did a fool thing like go into the forest alone."
"But-but Starswirl did it, too--"
Carmine raised his voice. "Mister Starswirl is not my eleven year old foal. He's a grown unicorn, and if'n he wants to go into the forest at night, that's his business. Can't say I approve, but that's his business. Your business, on the other hoof, is doing exactly what it is I tell you."
Her head drooped until it almost touched the floor. She mumbled, "Yes'm, papa."
"Now, I been fixing to, well, fix that fence out back, but I just ain't had the time. Now you're going to start on it, you hear?"
"Yes'm, papa."
"And while I do my housework, I'm going to think up some more punishments, because you ain't getting off that easy."
"Actually," Starswirl said, stepping forward, "there is an experiment I've been meaning to perform, and I would very much like having another hoof to assist me. I assure you, we will not stray from the village."
Carmine turned to Starswirl, then back to his daughter, a smirk on his lips. As soon as his eyes were off Starswirl, though, the wizard winked at Clover.
"Not more sums, please, papa!" she cried.
The smirk bloomed into a full-grown grin. "Oh, you will help Mister Starswirl with his sums, and then you'll get to work on that fence. Now trot to it."
With her nose still nearly touching the floorboards, she walked like a condemned pony over to Starswirl's side. Carmine watched her progress with a stern eye.
"I'm going to get to work," he said. "Someponies may have the day off, but I've got plenty of housework that needs doing."
Starswirl nodded, and then watched as Carmine walked up the steps to his bedroom. The wizard went to his saddlebag, checked that his scientific instruments were still intact, and shrugged the worn leather straps around his back. As he headed for the door, he beckoned for Clover to follow him. The filly breathed a sigh of relief.
"Just so you understand, Clover, this is merely a reprieve. You'll still have to work on fixing the fence for your father."
"As long as I don't have to do it now, I'm happy."
"Many ponies say that, and then never get it done. To put something off for one day makes it easier to convince yourself to put it off for another, and another, and another, until you have no time left to do it in."
"When it comes to that fence, I don't see how that's a bad thing."
Starswirl chuckled to himself.


"The greatest evil in this world is neither money nor power," Starswirl lectured as he sat on the grassy knoll overlooking the market square. "It is to cling to those things, or any other. That weighs us down and prevents us from ascending up to the Harmony, by making us turn our tails on the five attributes." 
As he gazed down into Clover's eyes, the conical point sticking up atop his wide-brimmed straw hat threw a triangular shadow over her face as she frowned in puzzlement. She looked towards the marketplace, letting her eyes dart to the ponies clustering down there like she expected to see each one hauling heavy crates or barrels around. 
After a bout of intense staring, she finally admitted, "I don't get it."
Starswirl's eyes swept out over the market again, then fell onto one cart in particular. He nodded to it and said, "See how that pony constantly cleans her peaches? Why do you think that is, Clover?"
She stared at the pony behind the cart who couldn't stop furiously scrubbing her peaches off with a rag; it seemed like every time the peach merchant relaxed, she noticed some new blemish that had to be cleaned as soon as possible.
"They're dirty....?" she ventured.
"Don't look at the peaches, look at the pony. What can you tell me about her?"
"That's Prunella Keene."
"Yes, and....?"
"She's got a little grove just outside town--"
"No, not facts, about her demeanor, about the way she is acting. What can you tell me about her, simply by observing her right here and now?"
Clover narrowed her eyes and stared at the farmer for several seconds before finally turning back to Starswirl. 
Uncertainly, she said, "She's nervous....?"
"Exactly right."
Heavily blinking, Clover asked, "It is?"
"Look how nervous she is about her peaches being dirty. When a pony clings to a notion, that attachment manifests itself in their actions, even when the pony in question is not aware of it. Especially when the pony is not aware of it. If a farmer can see nothing in her crop but flaws, that suggests to me that what she is truly worried about is her skill as a farmer."
"So she just thinks her peaches are dirty because she's worried she can't grow them right? Like you thought everypony wouldn't lend their things to you because you were feeling guilt about not being generous?"
"Precisely."
"And she's 'clinging' to being worried about her peaches, and that's making her evil? She's never been real friendly to me or papa, but I wouldn't say she's evil, least not any more than anypony else in this town."
"In her case, I doubt 'evil' would describe her, but that is a distinct possibility if these festering emotions go unchecked. When ponies cling to beliefs, it is because they desire something from them, a selfish sense of worth or fulfillment that satisfies them on a primal level but spoils their connection to other ponies. Say a pony is convinced of her own superiority and annoys others by acting recklessly. When they confront her, rather than admit she is not superior, she instead convinces herself the others are jealous. That allows her to continue to act the way she does and also deny the validity of their claims. Or say there is a pony who has invested so much of herself in learning that when a new idea comes along challenging the knowledge she accumulated, she belittles it and the ponies espousing it without regard for its worth simply because it would make her own knowledge inferior. Both of these ponies are clinging to beliefs that make them feel superior and deny them being inferior."
"But Prunella Keene's never acted superior. She's always just been....there. So how come she's 'clinging' to her farming not being good enough?"
"At the opposite end of the scale, there are ponies who cling to themselves being inferior. Perhaps deep down she clings to failure so other ponies will hate her for it, yet she cleans her wares in an attempt to deny that hidden self-loathing, meaning she is scared of success more than she is scared of failure and deliberately sabotages herself to avoid it. Without knowing her better, it's hard to say. But I will say that at the heart of clinging, you will usually find fear. We cling because we are scared of what happens when we let go, and especially that what we have clung to will disappear. And the more a pony clings to these lurking, hidden feelings, the worse that fear gets, until it consumes a pony entirely. At that point, they really do turn evil."
Then, Starswirl abruptly picked himself up off the grass and started towards the market square.
As Clover scrambled up after him, she asked, "Where are we going?"
"We are going, Clover, to test whether my suspicions are correct."
Starswirl trotted through the market and past Prunella Keene's peach cart, oblivious to the merchant. Keene, however, definitely noticed him, as Starswirl felt a burst of fear and anger radiate into the Harmony at large. He kept his face disinterested and briefly glanced in Keene's direction. Then he halted in his tracks and swung his head over to look at the peaches again, widening his eyes in an attempt to appear awed. He ambled over and surveyed the hills of peaches stacked up in the cart. Picking one up to inspect it, he made an impressed murmur.
He felt Prunella Keen's inner conflict, that of two emotions wrestling for control.
"How do you grow these so plump?" he asked. 
He cast an innocent eye at the merchant; it was a fine line Starswirl had to walk to appear interested, yet not so interested the earth pony sensed she was being put on. 
Startled, the pony said, "Oh. Well....that's, that's good old fashioned Keene family harvest, right there. We put love and care into tending to every tree."
Starswirl acted impressed by the sales pitch and said, "I can certainly see that. I'll take a dozen, please."
He nosed around in his saddle bag, took out two coins and a burlap sack, and gave them to the merchant. Keene put the sack on the ground and started filling it. When it was half-full, Starswirl waited for her to look away from the sack and up at the cart, then sent a tiny burst of magic towards a peach dangling on the cart's edge. She didn't notice it drop into the sack.
"Thank you very much," Starswirl said as he put the sack back into his saddlebag. "Come along, Clover."
They trotted away from the peach seller and out of the marketplace without looking back. Starswirl led the filly around the back of the towering, three-story town hall, then turned and faced her.
"Normally," he said, "you shouldn't rely on outright fabrication of acts of kindness to repair the world, but seeing as this is an example, and the situation is so very dire, I decided to bend the rules to help the Harmony flow correctly again. But always, always tread lightly when walking a fine line like that."
He trotted back out from behind the town hall and all the way back through the market again, and approached Prunella Keene's cart once more. To his pleasure, he noticed her emotions were slightly more welcoming, but still very apprehensive, like she expected to hear a caveat.
"Excuse me, there seems to be a problem," Starswirl said.
"Oh, really?" Keene asked warily. "What's that?"
"I paid for twelve peaches," he said, reaching into his saddlebag and taking out the extra one, "but it seems I have an extra."
The stallion just stared at the peach as Starswirl put it back on the cart.
"Here you go," he said.
"You had thirteen?" Keene asked.
"Yes. Would you like to count them?" He pulled the sack out and showed her each of the twelve peaches. "As you're not a baker, I assumed it was a mistake, but you shouldn't kick yourself over it. We all make them, after all."
He clearly saw and felt Keene struggling with comprehending this act of kindness, until finally the tangle of energy inside her spark worked itself out and he felt a bit of warmth from her. Although it was hard to put into words, it felt like she was shrugging in acceptance, almost saying Maybe unicorns aren't so bad after all.
"Thank you for your honesty," she said. 
With that, Starswirl turned and left, beckoning Clover to follow at his side. Right before they left the market, Starswirl peeked back and saw Keene smiling at the market goers instead of polishing his peaches. Already, she had attracted a new customer.
"You see, Clover? By complimenting her peaches, I freed her from the burden she placed on herself and assuaged her doubts about her farming ability."
"I don't get this," Clover said, staring at the dirt as they walked out of the marketplace. "You say you're supposed to be honest, but I still don't understand how you can lie to her and then say you're being honest about it. That's a, um, a--"
"Contradiction?"
"No...."
"Hypocrisy?"
"Yeah, that's it."
"Remember, Clover, the Harmony is situated between the attributes, meaning it is also balanced between them. Breaking one to strengthen another can balance the Harmony out, so long as a selfless intention is firmly in your heart. I did not perform that act of kindness out of a desire to be thanked or to elevate the status of unicorns in this town, although I do hope that will arise as a result."
"Why did you do that, then?"
"Love," Starswirl said as he magicked one of the peaches out of his bag and made it hover near his mouth. "I wanted to ease the burden she placed on herself, to free her from her own fears and doubts about both herself and about unicorns, and if that requires tricking her then so be it. I only hope that in some small way, I have given her confidence in her own ability as a farmer." 
He took a big bite out of the peach and chewed it happily for a moment. Then his eyes went wide and he spat the fruit out onto the ground. 
"Ugh, these peaches are absolutely awful."