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// Discovery 
// Story: I'm Not Proud Of My Special Talent 
// by ABagOVicodin 
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	Cutie marks: the first long term goal that a filly would create for themselves. How fun it must be, to trudge through the thousands of activities that ponies were able to test out in order to acquire their special talent. The elation that filled up a pony's mind when they were finally able to find that one attribute which made them different from others is one of a kind. At least, that is what I was told. I was never able to experience elation of that degree. My discovery of my special talent was noteworthy, only because it was the clarification of a part of me that I didn't want, and was embarrassed to possess.
I was born as Stress Relief, a unicorn daughter at the nearby Ponyville hospital. My father told me that I acquired my name because of the mood that both of my parents reverted to when I was finally in the doctor's arms and crying due to the cold room. When my mother first found out that she was pregnant, she was terrified of my health. This was their first child, and my parents did not want anything to jeopardize my health. My mother ate the healthiest (and the most expensive) food that she could buy at the grocery store, despite the financial hole that it dug for my parents. She asked everyone in Ponyville for advice on how to handle children, and was directed to Mr. and Mrs. Cake. They told my mother what she had learned from the twins, and Twilight Sparkle provided all of the books that she obtained on the subject over the years. Not a single page was left unread.
Despite all of this stress and worrying over negative events that would end up creating a handicapped filly, no such events occurred. My descent out of my mother's body had an effect on her that was unheard of in unicorn children. The financial hole that was created due to my mother's panicked eating, and the extra equipment that had to be bought to make sure that I was living in a comfortable environment was in the back of my parent's minds. I'm sure that they worried over it every day, and I'm also sure that my mother was never at home, since she was trying to take care of this debt by finding extra work. Although the debt collector was a nice colt, he assured my parents that they could take as much time as they needed to raise the money. Over this time, my mother and father were seeing each other less and less. Both parents were trying to take care of the debt.
Neither of my parents had managed to pay off the debt by the time I was born, but as the doctor handed me over to my mother, she told me that a warming sensation had moved over her body. All of the worry that moved through her body because of the debt and the fear that I would not be healthy conveniently disappeared, because of me. All my mother could think about was how happy she was that I was born, and that she couldn't wait to bring me home when she was fully healed. My father felt uncomfortable at my mother's sudden lack of worry and he held me as well, and felt the same warm feeling rushing over his body. The money, the fact that his job was very competitive and always had a chance of firing him because of this nature, it all disappeared when I was held in his hooves. I stopped crying when I was in my mother's arms, so my father was able to look up into my light purple eyes, and smile. All of the previous stress and lost money, was definitely worth it, since it evaporated the moment I was in the room.
My parents told me that they never worried about the debt again, and they held their composure whenever they had to pay a portion of it off. They always moved to their jobs and any temporary work with a smile on their face, and left in a completely different mood. Migraines and muscle aches were rampant throughout my parent's bodies, but when they came home and held me to feed me, the tension turned to calmness and the migraine exuded out of their head. My parents were unable to form a correlation with their happy moods and the possibility that a dormant type of magic would be causing it. They thought their happiness over the fact that I existed and was their child was keeping them in a good shape. While that wasn't completely false, I do not believe now that happiness is capable of removing physical injuries to muscles. I also do not believe that happiness is capable of (completely) removing stress. I should know.

As I aged into a filly, my school days always took way too long to reach me. Every pony wanted to look for their special talent, when they weren't learning from one of the teachers at the school. Ms. Cheerilee was my favorite teacher, and I took to staying after class so that I could talk to her more. She didn't mind having me in the class, her lessons brought relaxation into the room, although that was probably me. Ms. Cheerilee and I would talk about possible talents that my future held. She suggested that I should go into writing speeches or books, since my tendency to ameliorate the troubled feelings within a pony whenever I spoke was noteworthy. Another suggestion was to draw a picture or paint something to convey a feeling of bliss, the same feeling that I (apparently) projected in class, even though my mouth didn't talk that much and my horn didn't voluntarily use magic to do so. It just... happened.
After the second week of classes, I managed to write down an extensive list, telling myself that the list should be played out and connected to calm feelings in order to find my cutie mark. Although when I started to play with other ponies on the playground, the list was abandoned for a few years. I distinctly remember placing it in my dresser drawer, and not caring about my cutie mark until I aged a little more. When a few years had passed, my friends started to acquire their cutie marks. What was their names again? Damn, it was so long ago, I can't remember but I know that they were nice. I talked with them about how they found their cutie marks, and they explained their discoveries. My friends focused on finding out what they were good at and worked from there, until those marks formed on their flanks.
I grew impatient. I remember heading home that day, taking out the list that I previously made a few years ago, and straightening it on my dresser. Speeches, paintings, and drawings, this is what I came up with. I looked down at my hooves, and levitated a quill onto another piece of paper, dipping it in a bottle of ink before it started to write. My speeches looked like predictable piles of literature, that the Mayor would no doubt use if it meant other ponies would be more calm towards her (despite her mistakes). However whenever my parents read them, they told me that I should write more. I could turn a paper about hay seeds and how wonderful they were into something that made my parents believe that I was going to be famous and one of the classiest ponies in Equestria. They were half right.
Another year passed and I stopped writing entirely, since it became more of a habit that made my parents feel better, than an attempt to acquire my cutie mark. I didn't notice at the time, but as I grew from a filly to a mare, my ability to cause calm and unstressed feelings in others was slowly disappearing. Ms. Cheerilee was the first to notice, since for the first time during that year, someone had interrupted the class due to their boredom of the lecture. They were immediately lectured back into respecting the teacher, but if I was in the classroom, Ms. Cheerilee assumed that it wouldn't happen. Now, that was not the case. One such night, I remember it as if it was yesterday. It was the beginning of this spiral into something that I never wanted to be. But if it was my special talent, then I couldn't resist.

The cotton sheets on my bed, freshly placed there after my mother had done the laundry. The smell of freshly washed sheets was something that I loved, especially when everything on my bed was freshly washed. Lavender was an intoxicating smell, which relaxed my muscles once my body hit that bed. My whole body relaxed on my bed, my hooves moving up behind me to pull the pillow underneath my neck. As I let my body relax there, unmoving, my legs shifted open and closed a few times, as they felt a cold draft moving through the room from my opened window. That was interfering with my attempts to go to sleep, and I closed the windows shut, my horn's magical glow dying after the deed was done. My purple eyes looked back down at my body. I was slowly growing, especially in the parts that my mother had explained to me.
I was curious, I wanted to know, were there other ways of relieving stress then writing and drawing works that made the viewer at ease? I knew of massages, but I didn't know how to apply them. I had no experience in the physical means of stress relief, and I remember reading a book on a particular kind. My right hoof slowly slid down my premature body, my face turning red as I remembered the words in the book. Sentences flashing through my mind, explaining the healthy things that was brought to ponies that touched their own bodies. Ten minutes later, as I felt my back hooves digging into the bed while I whimpered, my red face cooled from the temperature of the room compared to my blushing. All of the worries of acquiring my cutie mark had melted away, along with the peak that I reached only minutes ago. My chest rose up and down, gasping for air as I stared up at the ceiling. A glow started to illuminate the room, although it was mostly pointed at both of my walls. The glow disappeared as quickly as it came, and a symbol appeared. A content and relaxed face had appeared on my flank. My cutie mark had appeared... due to my embarrassing act.