"Doctor, it's been two months. I'm sure you've had plenty of time for somepony to perform scanning spells. Is she ever going to wake up?" Twilight Sparkle kept her voice down as she spoke. It was after hospital visiting hours by far, and most patients were asleep, but being a princess came with its own visiting privileges - namely, she could go where she wanted, when she wanted, as far as ponies in general were concerned.
"I... I don't know, Princess." The pale pegasus shuffled nervously. "We have a report from Doctor Caduceus's clinic in Ponyville, from before she was transferred here. It's like she's in a coma, except that her mind is exceptionally active, almost as though she were fully awake. Doctor Mori's scans reproduced the report perfectly."
"Okay, that's great, but what does it mean?" Twilight didn't like to push ponies for information, but she hadn't had a lot of time for medical research since assuming the full extent of her royal duties a few weeks before... the incident. She could have helped out herself, she was sure, if she weren't so busy helping her former mentor govern Equestria.
"Well, according to my study, there are two possibilities. One is that she suffers from Locked-In Syndrome. To simplify, the patient's body is essentially comatose, but her mind is fully aware and her senses are receptive, meaning she could be listening to us even now. In that case, it's been too long for her prognosis to be good." The doctor shuffled again. "Alternatively, she could be somehow trapped in a lucid dream, judging by her level of brain activity. That would probably be a magically-induced state, not something psychological or medical science can understand right now, so you'd know more about the possibility of recovery than me."
"Which is her primary diagnosis?"
"Locked-In Syndrome, but..." The doctor's voice trailed off. Twilight frowned into the darkness.
"But, what? Is there some kind of problem?"
"She's not showing any sign of the kinds of brain damage normally associated with the syndrome. If it were my decision, she would be diagnosed with an unspecified enforced lucid dream state and transferred to magical specialists. But you know how the medical system can be with anypony who's not a unicorn..." Twilight rubbed her forehead with a hoof.
"Yes, I understand. I thought my legislation would help with - " The princess cut herself off. "If you can, please see if you can find any further evidence for your diagnosis. As you know, this case has my personal oversight. If you need my ear, just send a note to Spike at the library, and I'll be here as soon as I can. Okay?"
"Yes, Your Highness." Twilight restrained herself from so much as rolling her eyes. Ponies weren't going to stop addressing her as royalty, and she'd learned that worrying about it only made her more stressed.
"I know my way out," the alicorn said, heading for the door. "I'll see what I can do for her on my end."
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"The same thing we do every day," Babs said.
"Try to get our cutie marks!" Applebloom had been taking speech lessons from my big sister, and her accent was nearly gone.
"Well, good luck with that, girls," I told the pair. I was drawn away by an unfamiliar sense of urgency. I could go Crusading any time, ever since... "I have to see the doctor again."
"Since when do you see a doctor, Sweetie Belle?" Applebloom asked. Her question fell in sync with my own nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right. Something had changed without asking me.
"I'm not sure, but I'm going to find out. See you two later, okay?" Not feeling like walking through snow as deep as I was tall, I waved a hoof, and the scene swirled. I had been standing by the door of the Cutie Mark Crusaders Clubhouse, but it became the door of Doctor Caduceus's clinic. I walked past the pink nurse at the front desk, heading straight back to one of the patient rooms. I knew my way around, and I was a big filly. I didn't need a nurse to escort me anywhere.
I stepped inside a small, sterile white room, and sat down to wait. That was how it worked, right? It must have been, because there was a knock on the door almost immediately. The doctor, a middle-aged grey pegasus with an open-scroll cutie mark, stepped in and shut the door behind her, giving me a cheerful greeting.
It was... wrong.
"You're not Doctor Caduceus." She shook her head.
"I am Doctor Dusty Scrolls. Caduceus is on leave today." She set down the file folder she'd been carrying on her back. "You are Sweetie Belle, correct? Rarity's sister?"
"We do not use that name here," I hissed. The air in the room dropped far below freezing, and frost began to form across... everything. How dared she bring back the one word I had forbidden?!
"My apologies. I shall not speak that name here again." The room warmed and began to thaw, though she seemed entirely unaffected by the changes. She must have been a very, very calm pony... or had she not even noticed? I paused the world for a moment to think. First a pony I didn't recognize showed up, then she broke the law by mentioning that name, and she followed up by failing to react at all to my anger.
And she didn't freeze along with the rest of the world. I realized she had been flipping through her charts, watching me intently the whole time.
"You're not - "
"No. I am not under your power, not even here." She paused, then her form glowed a soft white and flowed into another shape, one much more familiar. "Perhaps I should not have attempted to blend in this time."
"Princess Luna?" I blinked twice, and changed the scenery several times to make sure this wasn't a fluke. It wasn't. The midnight-blue alicorn gave me a small, indulgent smile, before returning to her initial solemn expression.
"Hello, Sweetie Belle. I've been watching you for some time now, but I had not been informed your condition was quite so... dire." I blinked once again. My condition? What condition? I didn't have -
Darkness.
"You really shouldn't have done that, darling." A voice full of warmth, kindness, love, generosity. A voice that lingered, haunting my nightmares when I tried to rest.
"No! Stop it, stop it, stop it!" I screamed, returning us to Ponyville. Every building shook with the power of my voice, but my visitor remained unflappable. The torment was gone. I wasn't trapped anymore. I got on just fine, so long as I stayed away from the Carousel Boutique. There was something wrong about that place. I stammered a little as I told the princess, "D-don't ever do th-that again."
"I am sorry, Sweetie. You appear to be protecting yourself from certain memories here. It must end." Her expression saddened, and buildings raced past. I recognized the one that stopped in front of us, and immediately banished it.
It didn't go away. I immediately knew: she was stopping me.
"Let go!" I ordered. Princess Luna did not react, though her eyes seemed fixed on me. "I can't have this place. Let go."
"Will you trust me?" What?!
"Why should I trust you?! Ever since you came here, you've caused nothing but trouble! You've spoken her name, you've broken my laws, and you've tried to scare me! You - "
"I am here to help you, Sweetie Belle, and Princess Twilight Sparkle asked this of me as a personal favor." Luna had cut me off, and I fumed indignantly. Who did she think she was? This place was mine, and my word was law. "You know why Diamond Tiara - and she who shall not be named - are not in your Ponyville. You pick and choose memories and make a goddess of yourself, child, and an angry one when anything challenges your power.
"I know this feeling intimately, Sweetie Belle. I was made a monster by it." She seemed unable to look at me directly as she made the admission. "I try to speak of it little, but though much of Equestria still seems to believe so, I did not appear from nowhere. I was Nightmare Moon."
"Wait, really? I thought that was just a Nightmare Night prank," I said. The alicorn shook her head, and everything I knew about Nightmare Moon flashed through my mind at once. Daddy reading me the old mare's tale; Mommy saying Nightmare Moon would get me if I didn't brush my teeth before bed every night; Nightmare Moon herself appearing at the Summer Sun Celebration more than a year ago.
"Power and anger made a madmare of me. I struck down those who challenged or merely disagreed with me. I tried to control everything." Her expression fell deeper and deeper into shame the more she spoke, until at last she had to turn her head away entirely, staring into the grass by the path. "I hated and resented my sister, and I tried to destroy the world because of her." Abruptly, she fixed a stern look on me, straight in the eyes. "I cannot permit others to share my madness. You must come with me, Sweetie Belle, before you succumb as I did."
The Boutique began to stir, with a long, deep groan, and I froze. A chill ran through me, and I whimpered involuntarily.
"No. No, no, no. You have to leave now. You're waking it up." Luna turned, and gave the growing building a critical once-over before shaking her head.
"No, child. I am waking you. This, no matter how dark and angry it may appear, is yours - and your doing. Come, and I will guide you." The princess extended a wing, drawing me close as the monstrous Boutique began to creep towards us. The place roared, but she cried out over the din with ease. "Swallow us, thou foul thing! Do what thou must, and fulfill thy purpose!"
"What?! No! I don't want to be eaten!" I screamed, waving a hoof wildly for a change to some other scene, any other. Nothing happened - she had trapped me in one place, and the strength of her wing alone was such that I could not pull away. The Boutique, stretched to gargantuan and grotesque proportions, loomed over us. Luna seemed unperturbed, but as the whole thing began to crash down upon us, I screamed again - this time without words. My eyes screwing shut and my face in my hooves, I curled up in a defensive ball to die.
Nothing happened. When nothing continued to happen, I finally risked a look up at the silenced beast.
There was no beast, just a ceiling. Its arches and diamond patterns were too familiar, but it wasn't trying to eat me anymore. Slowly, I pulled myself to my hooves. The place almost appeared normal, if it weren't for the kitchen being the only room.
"Drink your milk, Sweetie." Her voice, once sweet, roared in my ears with each word. I could feel it again: the nameless one jamming a funnel all the way into my throat. Once again I had to swallow or be drowned, and I started to cry.
"Mo, aahp! Aah uuuhpf! Oowa, ehhp!" I had meant to call for the princess to help me, but she was gone. My body started to slow down, and my legs froze in place. Milk sloshed around me, surging towards a door that wasn't there before; its tide carried me away, flowing out of the kitchen and upstairs to her craft room.
She was there, standing next to a crystalline statue that used to be the school bully, Diamond Tiara. I whimpered.
"Please, not again. Don't do this to me again." The milk had gone, but its replacement was far worse. I couldn't bear to look at her as I cried.
Then, I couldn't cry. My vision filled with gemstone patterns, and became dark. I was thrust back into an endless void of sensationlessness. I could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, smell nothing. It wasn't that nothing was there - it was that I had no senses at all.
Except this time, a pinprick of white beckoned to me. It was so small, or so far away, or... something, but it was there, hanging in the emptiness like the first star of evening. I found myself drifting towards it - or it drifted towards me, I wasn't sure - and it grew. It had been no larger than the head of a pin, but it grew to a pea, then a marble. Larger and larger it grew, and faster and faster I was sucked towards it, falling through the nothing until I could see nothing but the bright white. For a second time, I was swallowed whole.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
I woke up. It wasn't a clean transition, as it had been for as long as I dared to remember. Instead, my head was all fuzzy, and there was a bright light in my eyes. I groaned and waved a hoof in its direction; it dimmed, letting me wake up more comfortably. I poked my dry lips with my equally-parched tongue, and groaned again. I needed water, and sat up -
I fell back into bed, my breath knocked out of me by a flash of gray and a pain in my chest. Somepony had hopped up on my bed and was straddling me.
"Well, look who's finally awake," hissed a too-familiar voice. I grimaced, forcing out words as I tried to catch my breath.
"Get... off me... Silver Spoon."
I like it so far I'm going to read the prequel now!
I'm somewhat confused, but I like this.
Interesting. I'd love to see where this goes.
so rarity was found out? shouldnt that have come before her being in the hospital and waking up
I'm a bit confused, but I suspect that was your intent all along, considering the dream state. You're leaving me wondering how much is real, too, which is a good thing. At first I thought we were progressing to a resolution too quickly when Luna appeared (by the way, between this and Sapphire Cave, thank you for recognizing how useful her dreamwalker abilities are - I think people overlook that too often), but then there was Silver Spoon and now I don't know what's happening.
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There will be some clarity in the next chapter.
Thank you for your feedback, as always!
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This is Sweetie Belle's story, so finding out what happened with Rarity will have to come later, if at all. Thank you for the feedback, though!
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Thank you.
So, how did Sweetie Bell escape her crystallization?
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Fair question! Chapter 2, probably.
Dang... now that I have read the prequel and this, this really reminds me a lot of Mad Father.
Fantastic work. I look forward to the next chapter.
Silver Spoon is going to beat three kinds of Tartarus out of Sweetie, I just know it.
What!? Silver Spoon!? What's she doing there!? Now I'm really confused.
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Next chapter.
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Thank you!
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Huh. I had to look that up to be reminded what you were talking about, but I've actually watched a playthrough of that game, and perhaps that's where the dream I had that wrote Drink Your Milk for me came from.
Let's see where this goes..
Doctor Caduceus <-- Do I detect a Kevin and Kell reference?
Fascinating story, for sure!
I like this, but the previous story and this one should be two chapters of the same story. Then the second chapter (this one) could be given the current name of this story.
Okay, maybe it's too late for that, but just don't make a third story for the next chapter, okay?
Anyway, amazing job. This is a very disturbing story, but excellently written.
I haven't been this fascinated by a fanfic since "Rarity's Lament". Good work
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Erm... I don't know what that is, sorry.
Thank you for the compliment, though!
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Wow, thank you!
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Kevin & Kell is a furry webcomic about the married adventures of a wolf and a rabbit. Think of it as "The Family Circus" except half the cast considers the other half edible. I used to read it, and I think my wife still does.
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Two different stories referencing the same mythology. "Caduceus" is the name of the Staff of Hermes (two snakes wrapped around a winged staff), a symbol of commerce that is often mistakenly used to represent medicine. The actual medical symbol is the Rod of Asclepius, which has a single snake wrapped around a simple staff.
I've used the names myself for a pair of batponies in a story in my "do later" folder.
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Oh, my. That actually sounds kind of neat. Thank you for the explanation.
I'm going to either assume shipping or secret friend with Silver Spoon...or of course everything before was a dream, however scene changes suggest otherwise. Who would Twilight be checking up on if Sweetie wasn't in trouble? Why wasn't Sweetie Belle aware of the conversation between the doctor and Twilight if it was in her dream? Why does the story end when it doesn't address the first scene? Actually thinking again....
Every scene seems to have nothing to do with each other. If you were to take each of them out of context and read them individually, they'd tell a separate story.
First scene: Sweetie Belle's in a magic coma while Twilight tries to do everything in her power to fix it.
Second scene: Sweetie Belle is unconscious or in a very deep sleep due to some physical or magical abuse, causing Sweetie Belle to be traumatized by it and reject all reality. Which keeps her from waking up.
Third scene: Very short, first assumption is Sweetie Belle was in an accident and then we assume the scene is a ship fic. Due to Silver Spoon's care for Sweetie Belle. Then upon reexamining what we observed, we would assume that Silver Spoon did something horrible to Sweetie Belle that landed her in the hospital. Either Sweetie Belle suffered memory loss to not remember what Silver Spoon did, or it was an honest accident and she's already accepted that Silver Spoon felt legitimately sorry for it.
Either way, each scene has no real or blatant continuity to it's former or latter scenes. Each seems to have it's own story. But you can easily say Twilight talked to the doctor, then got Luna to help, then Sweetie woke up. But the connection between each scene is lost there because the only characters who are continually mentioned is actually a lone Sweetie Belle; whom never interacts with a character from a previous scene. In fact, once a character is mentioned they don't pop up again. Twilight doesn't arrive in the emergency room to make sure she's ok. Even when Luna mentions she's there to help because Twilight sent her, there isn't anything to prove this is part of the same story other than that lone and forgettable statement. After that, Luna just disappears while Sweetie Belle is tormented by her nightmares (In which Luna was the direct cause to shift the dream into a nightmare) and Luna ends up not banishing these nightmares from the subconscious mind or making them easier to deal with. And last but not least, Silver Spoon, who was never brought up until the very end of the story where it didn't matter anymore. I assume she had significance in the prequel, but the meaning is lost in the sequel. Its the equivalent of having a character hang out just for kicks while they have nothing to contribute.
Now most...actually ALL of this could have been avoided if the very last scene was extended to have Silver Spoon explain what happened to Rarity, as well as talk about the condition Sweetie was in. Along with a few subtle hints as to why Silver Spoon was beside Sweetie's bed specifically would clear up the questions as to why she's in the story to begin with.
Other than that, I'm happy to see you with a writing style like this. It reminds me of my own...although now I whore for detail.
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I suggest reading the previous story (linked in the story description). This is a sequel, and "wtf happened before?" is pretty much answered there (although some details will also continue to be unveiled as this story goes on).
What Silver Spoon is doing here is answered in Chapter 2, which is approximately 3/4 complete. Sorry it's not out yet, by the way (@everyone). I've been having some issues with distractions and writer's block.
Thank you for the feedback, though. I always at least give it a think.
I'm so excited for the next chapter! I honestly hate Rairity so can you maybe oh I don't know........ Have sweetie/Silverspoon take her on. I don't mean kill just slap some since (literally) into her skull.
Okay, to recap:
Sweetie Belle and Diamond Tiara essentially got petrified by enchanted milk.
Luna saves Sweetie Belle from a nightmare
And the story ends from what appears to be Diamond Tiara's POV.
Now my questions are: Did Sweetie Belle wind up in Diamond Tiaras body/mind, does this mean that Diamond Tiara is in Sweetie Belle's bod and thus still petrified, and if so, how the hell did this Freaky Friday moment happen?