Hyperventilation
Diamond looked around at her friends, her smile drooping as she realised that she had no idea what games they could play, something which, now that she thought about it, they had already figured out. No sooner had she remembered this when Auburn cleared her throat a little awkwardly and pointed it out verbally, bringing an embarrassed flush into the pink filly’s cheeks.
“I didn’t think there were any games we could play; I mean: we’ve got no board games, your father’s working so we can’t really play hide and seek and we can’t play anything like Spin the Bottle, for obvious reasons.”
“What’s the problem with Spin the Bottle?” asked Diamond, faux-innocently, smirking inwardly.
“We don’t have a bottle, for starters, there’re only three of us and two of us are sisters. And if you’ve got no problem with me and Copper kissing, then you surely won’t mind if we ask your dad to join in, will you?” Auburn matched Diamond’s pseudo-innocent expression perfectly and then surpassed it, blinking her eyes angelically despite her true feelings being far better expressed via a devilish grin and gleeful rubbing together of her hooves.
“You know what,” Diamond replied, her blush returning full force, “I think I’ll pass on that offer, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” answered Auburn, putting on an overly sincere-sounding Canterlotian voice which made Copperwing give the same fillyish giggle she’d let out when Dinky had cuddle-rushed her mother, the elder pegasus blushing a little at the involuntary reaction as she noticed Diamond’s questioning gaze.
After a moment of awkward silence, all three fillies burst into laughter, sharing the simple fun of the moment in a harmony of laughs, although Copperwing withdrew from it early, closing her eyes and breathing slowly in and out whilst the other two giggled on to the natural end of the sound. Still smiling, the corners of her eyes crinkled in amusement, she breached the newly-formed silence with a return to the still-unanswered question.
“So, we’ve still got to figure out what we’re going to do. Hey, how about Truth or Dare? Three of us should be enough for that.”
“Yeah, that could work!” Diamond grinned, glad they’d finally found something to do; Auburn likewise smiled, nodding enthusiastically to show her agreement with the idea. The trio rearranged themselves on the floor so as to form a circle – or, rather, an equilateral triangle, three being too few to form a true circle – and made themselves comfortable in anticipation of a long night of fun.
“Who’s going to go first?” Asked Auburn, noting that their numbers meant simply flipping a coin to decide was out of the question.
“I think I have a die from ‘Kingdoms around here somewhere,” said Diamond, reaching over to her bedside table to retrieve said die, “Here it is, we can take two numbers each and see what it lands on. I’ll take five and one - Auburn?”
“I’ll take two and six, which leaves three and four for Copper. Alright, let’s roll it.”
Diamond rolled the dice, sending it flailing across the bedroom floor and into the leg of her bed, off of which it pinged on a new trajectory, travelling in its new direction for a few moments before finally losing its momentum and falling flat on one of its many faces. The trio of fillies peered down at it, examining the side which pointed skyward.
“Huh, it’s a six: guess the first turn’s yours then, sis,” remarked Copperwing, leaning back into her previous position, slumped against the side of Diamonds bed and using the duvet as an impromptu pillow. Auburn collected herself and prepared to ask the game’s titular question, but stopped short when she realised she didn’t know which to ask, and that she really didn’t want to make that decision herself.
“How do I know which one of you to ask?” she said, hoping that they’d decide amongst themselves. The answer she got was not quite as fast a decision-maker as that would have been, but it did prevent this being an issue every single turn.
“We’ve still got the dice,” Diamond pointed out, “Shall we say: odd numbers for the one on the asker’s left, even numbers for the one on their right?”
“Sounds good,” said Auburn, tossing the dice so that its roll would not take it as far as the last time and leaning over it when it landed, calling out promptly: “Odd – Diamond, truth or dare?”
“…Truth,” the earth filly answered hesitantly. Auburn frowned in concentration, trying to figure out a good question to ask her, before a malicious grin split her face.
“Alright… You seemed pretty happy that Rumble gave you another chance – a little too happy, in my opinion – you got feelings for him?”
Diamond went bright red, though not because Auburn was right: she liked Rumble, sure, but nothing beyond friendship – if you could call it that – and, to be honest, she hadn’t thought about romance since… well, since Silver Spoon.
“Auburn, he hated me until yesterday, and for the last three years I’ve been horrible to him, no matter how good my reasons – don’t you think that would make for a bit of a messed up relationship? Rumble’s a nice colt, don’t get me wrong, but there’s nothing between us.”
“Nothing between you, huh?” mused Auburn, “Then are you more of a fillies’ filly, if you catch my drift?”
“You don’t have to answer that,” interjected Copperwing, “Although… if you want to, I wouldn’t mind hearing it.”
“Celestia, you two - I don’t know, okay? With all that’s happened these last three years, I’ve had bigger things to deal with than romance: I’m pretty sure I like colts, and I think I might like fillies as well… I just haven’t thought about it much, to be honest.”
“I think you might like fillies, too, “ quipped Copperwing, thinking back to the way Diamond’s gaze had lingered a little longer on her flank than she’d been expecting when she’d been showing her friend her cutie mark, and the slight blush which had marked her cheeks afterwards.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Diamond, bewildered, to which Copper merely smirked and shook her head.
“You sure you can’t figure it out on your own?” Almost imperceptibly, she gestured with an infinitesimal flick of her wing to her cutie mark, and Diamond’s blush deepened. Auburn looked between the two confusedly, trying to discern the meaning behind her sister’s words without success.
“Am I missing something here?” she asked, causing Diamond to turn even redder and Copper’s smug grin to widen, her sister mockingly drawing a hoof across her own lips, closing an imaginary zip before locking it and miming throwing the key away.
Auburn sighed, picked up the die, passed it to her still-blushing friend and sat back to watch the proceeding events unfold. Diamond spun it on its corner with a twist of her hoof and the trio watched as the die’s revolutions slowed and it fell drunkenly onto one side: a three faced up.
“Copperwing,” she called, “truth or dare?”
“Truth,” answered the pegasus, without hesitation.
“Since you were so curious about me, what are you into, Copper? Fillies? Colts? Something else entirely?”
Rolling her eyes, both at Diamond for asking and at herself for not expecting to be asked, Copperwing let out a long sigh and answered with as much mock-casualness as she could muster.
“Honestly, I’m not that fussy… at this point, anyone willing to give me a go would probably have a good chance.”
“Even Auburn?” asked Diamond, knowing full well that she was running a very real risk of crossing the line with that particular joke, but feeling that the opportunity was too good to pass up. On cue, both sisters turned bright red and sputtered mangled sentences of outrage and disbelief, making a good backing track to the crescendo of Diamond’s mirthful laughter. Regaining her composure, Copperwing raised her eyebrows and wagged her wingtip back and forth like a mother telling off a misbehaving child.
“Don’t make me get your father in here, little Miss Incestuality… seriously, filly, you’ve got issues.”
Still laughing, Diamond hoofed the die over and tried to calm down, knowing that if she didn’t stop soon, the results would not be in her favour next time she ended up on the receiving end of the asker’s whim. Copper rolled the die and, clueing Diamond into her friend’s imminent revenge, let out a little cackle as she saw what number the die had brought up.
“Well, well, well… looks like the tables have turned now,” drawled Copperwing, grinning madly, “Truth or Dare, Diamond, what’ll it be?”
Diamond gulped, anticipating a bad outcome no matter what she chose, and went for possibly the stupider of the options.
“Uh… Dare,” she said, cringing a little as Auburn rubbed her hooves together gleefully in anticipation of the vicarious pleasure she would receive from her sister’s vengeance.
“Okay, Diamond, okay… I dare you to eat an entire packet of those fruit gums all together in the same mouthful. No chewing or swallowing until they’re all in there, and no spitting them out.”
Her evil grin spread further up the sides of her face at Diamond’s look of dread, and she clapped her hooves together happily.
“Consider this revenge for the comments about me and Auburn, Dee-Tee – don’t worry, after this we’ll be even.”
Grudgingly, Diamond complied with Copper’s request, pulling open the packet and, tilting back her head, pouring the sweets in. She managed to fit most of the packet in, cheeks bulging outwards like a hamster’s, but with about a fifth of the packet left, she found she could not easily fit any more in by simply pouring them into her mouth. Frowning determinedly, she began taking individual hooffulls of the gums and shoving them sideways so that her cheeks ballooned still further: this continued for a while, until even this method would not aid her in fitting the final few sweets into her gaping maw and she resorted to holding the last of the sugary items between her teeth
To her left, Copperwing let out an appreciative hum as she managed to fit them all in, giggling as Auburn began clapping encouragingly and egging Diamond on to complete the second part of her dare: eating all of them without dropping a single one from her mouth; no easy feat.
Mentally cursing herself for making the fateful joke about Copper and Auburn with the full vocabulary of a veteran sailor, Diamond clamped a hoof over her mouth to keep its sickly sweet contents from spilling and began to chew her way through the mass of cloying confectionery, trying not to gag on the mass of accursed sweets as she commenced the task of swallowing them all.
Her friends watched with bated breath as she alternated between mashing the gums to little more than fruit-flavoured paste and swallowing the resulting mess, looking more and more repulsed as the moments went by but slowly, surely, getting through the Tartarus of sweets she had been put into. Eventually, she gulped one last time, looking as if the battle between her mind and her gag reflex had very nearly been lost, and wiped her mouth, struggling for breath.
“Never… again…” she panted, “I’m done with sweets, forever...”
Weakly, she picked the die up off of the floor and tossed it a short way across the bedroom floor and took so long to start getting up that Auburn, sighing with amusement-tempered exasperation, went and did it for her, shoulders slumping when the dice proved to have landed even-number up.
“It’s me, Diamond… I pick dare,” said Auburn, bracing herself for whatever her friend might come up with as the earth filly’s face creased up in concentration, the slow smile spreading across it signalling her impending doom.
‘Well,’ she drawled mentally, bathing the thought in a pool of sarcasm, ‘this is going to be fun.”
*
Several hours after he had descended to the kitchen for a snack, Filthy Rich lay down his pen, shook out his writer’s-cramp-stricken foreleg and stretched out his limbs, letting out a long yawn whilst his joints popped and his back clicked and fighting to keep his lead-lidded eyes from closing completely.
His bed was calling to him, singing a sweet cadence to lure him into its comforting embrace, the image of its warm, velvety sheets and plumped pillows providing a tantalising glimpse of what he couldn’t yet enjoy: he still had one job to do tonight, and he could not afford to neglect it, no matter how much his bed tried to bribe him with.
Trotting over to the door of his office, he pulled it carefully open so as to be no louder than was unavoidable and exited its confines into the opulent expanse of the upper floor landing, reaching behind him with a hoof to flick the light off as he made his way towards the staircase. He descended with more than the usual care, knowing full well that he was too tired to sprint around the way his daughter did without risking a serious staircase-related injury, and trudged his way through the soft carpet to his daughter’s room, the light on inside it lending the door a golden outline.
Pressing his ear against the wooden surface of the door, he listened hard for any hint of conversation but found none, proceeding to open it as timidly as the reclusive pegasus Fluttershy and peer sheepishly into the room. After a moment searching the crack between the partly open door and the doorframe, he bit the bullet and stuck his head through the gap he’d cautiously widened, glancing about for signs of the fillies.
It didn’t take Rich long to find them: the two pegasus sisters were snugly tucked into their sleeping bags – the elder more snugly than the younger, by joint virtue of her larger size and the fact that her wings were pressing against the fabric in a vain attempt to extend fully – and his daughter was likewise cocooned in her duvet, her foreleg trailing down the side of the bed to the floor, where it almost touched the outstretched hoof of Auburn Wake, a smile on her face.
Chuckling softly to himself, Filthy Rich trotted backwards out of the room, closing the door gently shut as he did so and making his way back upstairs to his bed: it was well past time to sleep, as far as the stallion was concerned, and nothing would stop him. As if the universe were trying to prove him wrong, he tripped on the last step and landed hard on his belly, knocking the air out from his lungs. Driven by an super-equine burst of energy designed to take him to his mattress mistress, he heaved himself to his feet and staggered into his bedroom, bucking the door behind him before burrowing deep into the protective cocoon of his duvet and finally closing his eyes.
Smiling to himself, Rich fell into a deep, comforting sleep, dreaming blissfully of an intelligent, helpful mare with a mulberry coat and deep green eyes: his face relaxing into a contented expression, he unconsciously pulled a loose pillow tight against his barrel and nuzzled it gently, Rich’s mind unconcernedly adrift in a dreamed sea of simple happiness.
*
Diamond awoke sluggishly the following morning, her mouth filled with the sour aftertaste unique to sweets consumed before sleep and her mane plastered across her face, sticking to it with the drool her mouth had leaked whilst she’d been asleep. Sitting up in bed, she rubbed her eyes and wiped her mouth before looking sleepily around for her friends: they weren’t in their sleeping bags, which meant they were probably downstairs already, but she still glanced around the rest of the room to save her the possible embarrassment of walking out of the very same room they were in on a mission to find them.
Satisfied that she was the only occupant of the room, Diamond brushed her hair mechanically, bringing the unruly strands of purple and white into something resembling a mane style and letting her mind finish rebooting whilst there was nothing much to think about. Eventually, she decided that her mane and her mind were both in acceptable states and dropped from her bed onto the soft carpet, shuffling her way groggily downstairs and following the voices of her friends to the living room.
She found them at her workstation, Copperwing showing Auburn the product of their efforts, with the latter pegasus speaking words Diamond was too tired to focus on, but which nonetheless sounded positive. Trudging her way past them to the kitchen, she mumbled them a hello and proceeded on her intercept course for the chef, who spotted her as she approached and beamed.
“Good morning, little Diamond,” he greeted, “Looking for a spot of breakfast, are we?”
She gave him an affirmative grunt and slumped into her usual seat at the dining table to await her food, the chef heading off whilst happily humming under his breath, unfazed by her behaviour after three years of seeing this sort of reaction to mornings from the filly. Before too long, he returned with a tall glass of orange juice and a steaming plateful of freshly cooked food, which Diamond promptly devoured, finishing mere minutes after receiving the meal.
Her hunger sated, and the orange juice beginning to spark her awake, she pushed back her chair and headed back the way she’d come in search of the bathroom and the toothbrush which resided within it. Filthy Rich, coming down the staircase the other way, smiled at her and waved hello, his good mood undiminished by the lack of response: he knew better than anypony that Diamond would not be able to function until her morning ritual of breakfast, washing and self-styling was complete.
Eventually, Diamond felt mostly equine again and trotted her way more quickly down the stairs than she had the first time, her energy returning now that the tendrils of sleepiness had finally released her from their grasp, and made a beeline for her friends, who turned in their seats to greet her. She quickened her pace and reached them after a moment or two, exchanging much more energetic greetings now that she wasn’t in a near-catatonic state of existence.
As Auburn started enthusing about Diamond’s work painting her changelings, the earth filly moved over to her and opened her mouth to accept her praise with a humble thank-you , only to stop dead as the sound of hard, metallic knocks coming from the front door. Her father, who had been heading their way, changed course and hurried to the hallway; the metallic clinks of chains being unhooked and squeak of the handle being turned providing the fillies with their only clue as to the events at the door.
Curiosity piqued, the trio tiptoed their way over to the entryway, jumping with fright when Filthy Rich called surprisingly loudly from the doorway: “Auburn, Copperwing, there’s a stallion from the Royal Guard here who needs to talk to you.”
Diamond’s stomach dropped at the words, heart wrenching painfully as her friends’ faces fell into expressions of dread, and stopped dead in her tracks to give them some privacy. Whilst she knew that this had every possibility of being nothing more than their mother’s job in the Everfree taking longer than usual, the forest’s notorious reputation and the solemnness in her father’s voice led her to fear the worst. If Copper and Auburn lost their mother… well, that just didn’t bear thinking about.
She watched, heart-in-mouth, as the pair trudged fearfully to the door and tried to calm her rising emotions down, attempting to find something else to focus on but only finding the voices of her friends and the stallion from the Guard. Unable to help her terrible curiosity, she listened in closer, and began immediately wishing that she hadn’t.
“You are Copperwing and Auburn Wake, the daughters of Commander-In-Reserve Burnished Gilding, is that correct?” the stallion was saying, letting out a low hum as the pegasi replied that they were, voices quivering a little as they answered him.
“I’m very sorry I have to tell you this, but your mother was badly injured whilst conducting her mission… She’s in a stable condition, but it’s going to be a long time before she’s back to how she was. If you want to see her, she’s in Ward B of Ponyville Hospital – I’d take you there myself, but I need to get back to my squad… You have my deepest regrets for your mother’s condition, and for leaving you so soon after telling you this, but I’m afraid this is goodbye.”
Silence fell, punctuated only by the fading hoofsteps of the Guard stallion as he left the house, but after a minute the sound of quiet sobbing broke the air and Diamond found that she couldn’t just stand by and let her friends suffer alone: purposefully, she strode round the corner and wordlessly brought the sorrow-stricken pegasi into a tight, comforting hug. Auburn quivered in her grip, tears dripping onto Diamond’s back, whilst Copperwing’s breathing, despite clear, deliberate attempts to control it, spiralled inexorably into short, panicked gasps: whispering words of comfort, Diamond stroked their manes and tried to calm them down, and after a long five minutes, Auburn’s quaking sobs became sniffles and Copper’s breathing was more or less normal again.
Reluctant to retract the comfort she was providing, but needing to talk to her friends face to face, Diamond withdrew her hooves from around their shoulders and looked sympathetically into their mournful faces: Auburn looked absolutely miserable, with a twitch of stir-craziness flickering on her face as she considered the prospect of visiting her mother; whereas Copperwing looked shell-shocked and haunted, clearly still in shock.
“Auburn… Copper… I’m so, so sorry,” said Diamond, hushed and sincere, “If there’s anything I can do, just say the word – I’m here for you, whenever you need me.”
This earned a small smile from Auburn, and a numb nod from Copper, the former biting her lip and shuffling uncomfortably on her hooves, trying to formulate a response and eventually going with: “I-I… I need to see her… we both do. I hope you don’t mind if we go now, I just don’t think I can stand waiting any longer than I have to - you understand, right?”
Diamond nodded, smiling sympathetically and laying a comforting hoof on her friend’s shoulder. “Of course I do, Auburn – she’s your mum, it only makes sense you’d want to know what’s happened to her as soon as possible… Do… do you want me to come with you?”
Auburn frowned, considering the offer, but whilst she was still biting her lip in indecision, Copperwing spoke for the first time since the stallion had arrived and made the decision for her.
“I-I’d like that... uh, yeah… Th-thank you, Diamond… You’re a real friend,” she said, her world-weary voice carrying well in the absolute silence which had fallen in the hallway.
Not wanting to get ahead of herself, Diamond glanced at Auburn for her verdict, who nodded in agreement with her sister; and then at her father, who smiled at her and slowly inclined his head in affirmative: Diamond drew herself up to her full height and stood amongst her friends; the matter was settled: she was going with them.
Wordlessly, Auburn moved out from under Diamond’s hoof and trotted off out of the door, and the earth filly waited for Copperwing before making her own way out of the house, picking up the small black bag Copper had brought with her in case it contained something her friend would need. Trotting in solemn lockstep, the trio of fillies walked down the long dirt road to the hospital, Rich closing the door behind them and returning regretfully to his paperwork.
*
“What- What if her wing’s busted? How can she cope without her wing?!”
Auburn was panicking. It had been a fairly rapid transformation, and for the last few minutes the wide-eyed pegasus had been listing off every pessimistic outcome she could think of in an increasingly desperate tone.
“Shut up, Auburn!”
The constant stream of morbid ideas had affected Copperwing, too, and the elder pegasus was looking increasingly distressed by the second, having long ago given up on consoling her sister and resorted to simply yelling at her to stop when it had become clear that the filly was too scared to listen to reason. Her breathing had devolved yet again into agitated, nervous gasps, and her voice now cracked whenever she spoke, the stress getting to her.
“Please, you two; calm down – we’re almost there!”
Diamond was trying to keep the peace between the increasingly agitated siblings, with mixed success, praying to the princesses that they would reach the hospital before one or both of her friends had a breakdown. Up ahead, as she had pointed out, the hospital had risen into view and was getting closer with every step, giving her hope that they might just make it before the situation worsened much further.
This optimistic thought held right up until they reached the hospital proper, and Copperwing stopped dead, looking fearfully up at the building, her breathing even more erratic. Auburn kept going for quite a while before it became clear that Copper wasn’t following, whereas Diamond had stopped with her friend, concerned by this sudden change of heart.
“Copper, come on! Don’t you want to see mum?” called Auburn, impatience flashing angrily on her face and adding fire to her voice. Diamond looked between the two in worry, before trying a kinder approach at convincing her other filly to continue moving.
“Hey, Copperwing, what’s wrong? We’re almost there now, we won’t have to go much further.”
“Can’t,” muttered Copper mournfully, confusing Diamond still further and infuriating Auburn, who had begun pacing back and forth in front of the hospital doors in an expression of her desperation to get to her mother’s side.
“What do you mean?” asked Diamond, genuinely concerned for the filly’s wellbeing now.
“I-I just can’t do it!” cried Copper, bursting into tears, “M-mum’s hurt and I-I know I sh-should go, but I just can’t! I hate it, hate it, hate it! Why did she have to go to hospital?!”
From the hospital doorway, Auburn snapped: “Oh, for Luna’s sake, Copper – get a grip! You’re seriously going to stay out here when mum’s hurt bad just because hospitals are oh-so-scary and you don’t like the smell?! Oh, poor little Copperwing, pissing herself over a bucking hospital… Grow up, would you?”
Taking a deep breath so unlike Copperwing’s near-hyperventilation, Diamond called back at her friend, trying to stop this moment turning into something which would drive a wedge between the sisters.
“You go on ahead, Auburn, I’ll try and get Copper to calm down and find you later, okay?”
Auburn huffed angrily, but nevertheless heeded Diamond’s instructions and pushed the door to the hospital open harder than was really necessary, nearly galloping into the reception area in her haste. With Auburn’s unhelpful antagonising halted, Diamond turned her attention back to Copperwing, who looked to be on the verge of a panic attack: wide-eyed, hyperventilating and shuddering, the pegasus was a mere shadow of her former confident self, a sight which made Diamond’s heart break.
“Copperwing, it’s okay, just calm down and tell me what’s wrong, alright? Just breathe slowly: in, out, in out…” Copper followed her instructions, and for a moment the filly’s state improved somewhat, regaining the ability to speak, although this proved to be more curse than blessing.
“I…I hate hospitals: the smell and the needles and the scalpels and x-ray machines and the whitewhitecorridorsandthedisinfectantand-and-and…” Copperwing trailed off, unable to breathe in enough air to continue her anxious, desperate tirade of terror: her breathing became more ragged and she let out a whimper, her voice hoarse between her sharp gasps. “Oh, oh, Celestia no… Oh, no…”
Her breathing took yet another dive into the sea of panic, and this time did not resurface, no matter what Diamond said to try and console her.
“Copperwing, please calm down!”
Beginning to cry herself, Diamond gave up on her attempts to help her friend on her own and turned to the hospital building: terrified to leave Copper’s side in case she got even worse, she yelled as loud as she could manage over to the reception. “Help! Please, somepony help!”
As, despite her prayers, no help seemed to be coming, Diamond turned instead to her last, desperate hope: this looked like some sort of asthma attack, so maybe, just maybe, Copper’s little black bag contained an inhaler. It was all she had: with shaking hooves, she yanked the bag up off the grass where it had fallen and clawed at the zip, urgently trying to open it – the zip jammed, and Diamond screamed in frustration and terror, pulling with all her might and tearing the bag open at the seam.
A small, blue inhaler tumbled out of the wreckage of the bag, and Diamond snatched it up and sprinted back to her friend, whose gasps for air had become helpless wheezes; fumbling for a moment with the lid, she inserted the inhaler into Copper’s mouth and pressed down on the cylinder, spraying her friend’s throat with the contents. The effect was small, but it was there: Copper’s breathing had returned to panicked gasps, and had slowed somewhat.
Looking for any signs of disapproval in Copper’s eyes in case there was a risk of her overdosing, Diamond depressed the cylinder again and again at regular intervals, slowly but surely helping the pegasus’s breathing return to more manageable levels. Eventually, Copper pushed the inhaler weakly away and lay there panting, cheeks wet with her deluge of tears, whilst Diamond held her soothingly and whispered whatever words of comfort came to mind into her ear.
The two fillies lay there together for what felt like eternity, until the gentle-yet-firm hooves of the newly arrived nurses pried them apart and lifted Copperwing onto a stretcher. Utterly drained, Diamond followed alongside them on three legs, still holding her friend’s hoof despite the pace they were travelling at.
The group vanished into the hospital, and a minute or so later, a thin, bronze-maned pegasus filly stuck her head out of the door, her grin fading as she noticed the absence of her friend and her sister. Ears drooping, she headed back inside and trudged her way back to Ward B, trying to figure out the way to break the news that Copperwing wasn’t coming after all to her injured mother.
*****
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Well my prediction was sort of right. I predicted their mother was going to die on her mission. Close enough I suppose. Anyway love the new chapter. Can't wait for more.
5346813
Initially, the Everfree mission was just going to be something to explain the sleepover, but then I started thinking of ways I could use it better. Funny thing is, I had just decided that their mother was going to come back injured when your comment popped up, guessing something very similar to what I'd just sketched out a plan for.
As good as it would've been for character development (excluding A+C's mother, of course), I couldn't just kill her off like that... Sorry.
That said, Copperwing nearly died this chapter, so perhaps that's sated your thirst for blood? Really glad to hear you liked the chapter - I don't think I've been more nervous uploading a chapter than this one, so it's nice to hear my fears were unfounded.
This was an emotionally charged one, I could almost feel Diamond's apprehension of not having what Copper and Auburn had in addition to confusion as which of her friends to stand by. I would have never called that about Copper, considering how she was described and acted in previous chapters.
5349358
I'm guessing you mean the asthma? Or potentially the anxiety attack, too, now that I think of it.
I did try and foreshadow the fact earlier this chapter, such as here, when they're all laughing about Auburn's counter to Diamond's incest joke:
And whilst she did step in and push Argent Gleam back at the park, there was more than one reason she stopped fighting the moment Argent was out of the way of her and her friends.
On the whole anxiety side, whilst she is more prone to anxiety anyway (she acts casually in public, but she's the sort of person who worries a whole lot more than they let on), attacks like the one she had are rare. It was a combination of her fear of hospitals (to be explained in detail next chapter) and stress about her mother's injuries; along with the resurfacing self-doubt which Auburn's name-calling and her guilt from being unable to go in and see her; which all came together to cause her massive panic attack this chapter.
I'm going to work on this in future chapters, and the asthma/anxiety is going to be a plot point from now on, or at the very least something I take into consideration whenever I write Copperwing in scenes. If there's one thing that bugs me, it's when something's brought in for the convenience of the moment and immediately forgotten about because the writer doesn't care enough to keep it as the recurring trait that it should be. Glad the emotion got across, I was a little worried that it would come off melodramatic but I wanted to keep it as visceral as I could.