Carrot top always tried her best.
Well, she wanted to say that. But the truth was that she was stumbling through life. Even when she was just a filly she never quite cared enough about hoof painting or story time to get a gold star. The pony who was quiet and of an average intelligence. No one really looked at her and saw she was under achieving because she kept her head low, and she behaved well. But this all changed when she discovered herself. Who she was supposed to be.
Gardening was what really mattered. Gardening was who she was. And Carrot top certainly did try her best at gardening. She put her heart and soul into her work. The simple action of breathing life into a seed was paradise. She'd skip through her grandfather's garden, elated by the sea of green and brown surrounding her. The soft soil beneath her hooves and the vegetables it nursed was heavenly. As she got older, the carrots got sweeter and bigger. The garden became fuller and fuller, teeming with nature's gifts, bursting with her work.
But the center of Trottingham was no real place for a Gardner. The plot of land she had available was small and there was no way she could sell any produce, what with the competition. Her parents didn't want her to become a mere farmer. They aspired for her to have a prestigious career, to be a doctor or an artist. She though they were incredibly ignorant. You didn't choose what you liked, it chose you. And giving life to produce, feeding ponies, had chosen her.
Her distain for her teachers slowly became even bigger than that of what she felt for her parents. Being fed the same style papers every day, memorising facts only to forget them a few days after the tests – it drove Carrot Top mad. She had seen life, and this wasn't it. Life was supposed to be a journey, each new discovery was supposed to roll around in your head and fascinate you. Knowledge wasn't supposed to be scrawled onto some paper or locked away in a folder. It wasn't supposed to be tested constantly, nor was it supposed to be a chore.
She longed for fellow growers who understood her, she longed for a life in which her gardening abilities would be much less constrained. A life in which every day she woke up to see miles of fields. Her longing was killing her.
So she ran away.