The Castle of Friendship's library
"So, still nothing on my Element?" Sun said to Twilight with a disappointed sigh. It was more of a prediction-based statement than a question, because she already knew what the answer would probably be.
"Well, she's trying, Sun." Spike chimed in.
"Yeah, I kn-- Wait, who are you again?"
He scoffed, "What? You don't know me? I'm Twilight's main assistant, Spike." His explanation was met with a deafening silence. "Remember? Princess Blue Moon Quartz was going to rip my wings off?"
"Ohhhhhh... Yeah, I remember that. Anyways, how's the research going, Twilight?" Sun basically shoved Spike out of her focus (figuratively speaking) to focus on why she was here.
"I'm still looking." Twilight admitted, scanning her vast collection of books for anything that could possibly have anything on the subject. She telekinetically picked one of the books from one of the highest shelves, and levitated it down, wasting no time to flip through its contents. "Let's see... Where's the index... Ah! 'Sub-Elements'-- Oh, no. That's not 'Sub-Elements', that's 'Submerged Elements'. My mistake." She continued to magically flip through the pages, looking for anything related to a "Seventh Element" or "Additional/Other Elements".
Then, she found exactly what she was looking for. "Here it is! 'Minor Elements'! Hmm..." She began to read a passage from the section. "'It has been theorized by many that Elements exist beyond the six discovered ones, and can be somehow grown by the Tree of Harmony. This belief stemmed from the idea that the Elements of Harmony, much like literal friendships (as opposed to its magic), can be complex, and almost impossible to fully understand. As of the modern day, this theory has yet to be debunked, but no evidence points towards it being true.' Wow..."
"That makes sense." Sun commented while Twilight briefly paused. The alicorn was ecstatic, and was grinning ear-to-ear.
"DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?!" she yelled loudly, completely uncaring of her volume in her pure elation. Sun and Spike grinned along with her because of how palpable the alicorn's utter excitement was. She zipped towards Sun, and basically yelled in her face, "THERE'S MORE ELEMENTS!" Without even pausing to breathe, she zipped towards Spike while dragging the unicorn with her, and yelled "AND WE CAN BE THE ONES WHO DISCOVER THEM!!" She grabbed Spike too, and hugged them both extremely tightly.
"That's g-great... but can you please l-let go of me?!" Sun groaned with discomfort. She'd probably be a lot more excited if she was allowed to, instead of having the life squeezed out of her by Twilight. Spike arguably had it worse because of his tinier body.
"O-oh... Sorry!" Twilight chuckled nervously, releasing the two from their behooved death sentence.
Sun hacked up a lung before asking, "Uh, did it say what my Element is, though?"
"Well, since there aren't any, the book actually gives some of its own ideas. So, take your pick, Sun." Twilight pointed her hoof to a part of the page that listed off some words that could be used to name new Elements if they were to be discovered. None of them caught Sun's eye, or even really sounded related to the idea of friendship. The original six Elements were, of course, Honesty, Generosity, Loyalty, Laughter, and finally, Magic. But most of the hypothetical Elements listed in the book were only vaguely related to the idea of a social virtue, unlike the actual Elements. This wasn't a huge problem, but made it a little harder for Sun to pin down which one she thought she represented.
"Gravitas, Humility, Temperance, Tolerance, Wisdom, Passion, Freedom, Courage, Unity, Ambition, Honor, Inspiration..." Sun listed off the Elements, and stopped upon noticing one called "Forgiveness".
"Found my Element." Sun smirked. She turned her head to look at Twilight, but the alicorn was buried deep in a book, with a fixed look of concern and focus. Sun glanced over to see what had her so worried, but she could barely make out the contents of the page before Twilight shut it closed to stop her from seeing it. A shiver ran down the princess' spine as she looked at Sun with a look of utter horror. Her pupils were near-microscopic with fear, and her lips quivered. She knew something Sun didn't.
"T-Twilight, are you okay?" Sun asked, beginning to become quite concerned herself.
"Sun... I... You need to leave. I need to think." Twilight replied calmly, barely masking the emotions that she was trying desperately to hide.
"What? Okay, but why?"
"Sun, you need to leave."
"Alright, I'll go. But-"
"Sun! Just go! NOW!" Twilight commanded, and Sun complied, fleeing the castle as soon as she could. The very second Sun left the castle's entrance, Avalonia voiced her confusion to her.
"What was her problem?"
"Yeah! It's like I'm always in a state of having things being hidden from me, or getting an answer that doesn't even make sense."
"Well, maybe it was something serious that she had a right to hide from you. We don't know."
"Yeah, but now I'm in a bad mood. You mind just summoning that one bird demon that can give me wings? I'm thinking of trying to fly home." Just like she asked for, a pair of familar black wings appeared on her sides, and Sun took to the skies, feeling lucky she was able to have Avalonia as a friend. However, Sun quickly found out that she wasn't very good at flying. In fact, she was horrible, and it was quickly becoming dangerous how incompetent she was at it. She was practically battling gravity itself every single second.
Nearby, a pegasus was lying down under a shady tree, holding a notepad and a pencil. She rose her head to the clear, blue sky as she focused, her various thoughts and new ideas accumulating. She looked back down to her notepad, and wrote,
"The light of the summer sun has passed us by, and the moon of winter has risen with its cold moonlight
We beg the sun to return and warm our frostbitten land
And when the sun finally shines down on us once again, we can finally forgive nature's brutal ways
I really hate winter if you couldn't tell by now"
"No, that's not good." she groaned, flopping backwards to rest on the tree, putting her two front hooves behind her head. She closed her eyes briefly, sighed, and opened them back up to gaze off into the blue abyss that is the sky. Amidst the unmoving clouds, she noticed a mare who was struggling to fly - frequently rising and falling in altitude as her wings flapped desperately. The observing pegasus uncaringly watched the pony struggle. However, when the pony began to dive towards the earth below, the pegasus sprung to action, and launched towards her.
The pony flailed and shrieked as she braced for impact. But then, an electric, blue, yellow, and white-colored streak zipped towards her. A pegasus appeared from the blur, and, fortunately for the mare, saved her. The pegasus carried her, and dropped her delicately onto the ground as she hyperventilated.
"You okay?" the pegasus said, wiping sweat from her forehead, before uttering in confused realization, "Oh... You're a unicorn..." The mare took a deep breath, and nodded. "How'd you get wings?" the pegasus said in an accusatory tone, accentuating her speech by showing off her own wings as she spoke.
The unicorn cupped her head in her hooves, and spoke, "I u-used magic..."
The pegasus chuckled softly, "You unicorns can do, like, anythin', can't ya?" With a friendly smirk, she extended her hoof to the unicorn. "Name's Tempera Ash." The unicorn sat in place, confused. After a second, she extended her hoof as well, and the two shook hooves.
"I'm... uh... Innocent Sun." she said meekly.
The two ended their hoofshake, and Tempera blushed, explaining, "Sorry. I just like bein' formal."
"That's okay."
Then, their back and forth was interrupted with a light breeze, accompanied with the sound of pages flapping. It was the notebook. Tempera's face went pale with horror. Without a second to pause, she turned around and dived towards it, shielding it from Sun's sight. She awkwardly chuckled, "Heheh... Sorry... It's personal stuff..." The unicorn didn't even know what she was talking about. Tempera discreetly closed the notebook as she stood back up and turned to the unicorn.
"Hey," she asked, "are you, like, new to flyin'? I mean no offense, but it looked like you were when I saw you plummeting towards the ground. I can teach you if you want!" Sun took a second to consider it.
"Thanks," she replied, "but I'm probably gonna be taught by Rainbow Dash. I dunno if you know h–"
Tempera zipped towards her, delightedly interrupting her, "Rainbow Dash?! As in, like, the?!"
The unicorn was taken aback, and corrected herself, "W-well... Yeah... I don't know if she's actually gonna teach me. She's more, like, helping me, I s'pose..." She was planning on being taught by her, but she chose to downplay it, thinking of it to be more of a friend-to-friend relationship than a teacher-to-student relationship. Tempera inched even closer to the unicorn's face.
"Well, I wanna be helped! My skills are good... kinda... But... I wanna be taught by her! Please?" she begged.
Sun smirked lightly in sheer awkwardness, looking towards the direction of Rainbow's house as she replied, "...I'll, uh, see what I can do."