It's been a long day, but at last, all the checkups are done! Seriously, sometimes the young ones are just pushy with their wants and while sometimes its endearing today was just plain annoying.
First, they woke me up early and didn't let me eat breakfast, for some obscure reason I'm sure. Then hours upon hours of tedious medical stuff! They took samples, made me say 'ah' so they could check my mouth and throat, and one tried to get a bit too close to my rear with some strange looking thing. I didn't let her get close.
Then made me do some exercise, like running on a treadmill and pushing some machines. I broke the pushing one. It was pretty and made funny noises. I like funny noises, like the ones made by the medical staff after breaking the machine. I kinda felt pretty bad, but at least they can repair it… Probably, at least.
Luckily they let me eat halfway through the tests, but I was so hungry I ate the plates! And part of the table. Apparently, they liked that and urged me to eat most of the table so they could study 'how I could even function'. Their words, not mine.
Wood isn't very tasty but mixed with the other things it was... Well, it was food so I'm okay with that. That was followed by what I could only call as a free buffet of tiny samples of everything they managed to get their hooves on. I think they expected something a bit more impressive than a belch when they brought some radioactive samples to the remains of the table… or maybe they thought I wouldn’t be able to eat them at all since its pretty bad for any kind of life, but honestly… I think they don’t know how planets are born and just how radioactive a young planet can truly be… I’m not into books and I’m feeling inclined to ask my son for some as a gift to these little ponies…. I think I’m rambling…
I had to say that I felt quite full and had to ask them to stop bringing things for me to eat, but that didn’t stop the examinations and being swarmed with multiple medical sensors. At least this time were a bit more careful when asking for some more samples. I think they want to see if I get sick for eating everything. Been there, done that...
After the gruelling times within that boring lab, they finally let me go and sure as the stars that I went flying straight to the gardens, where I decided to roll on the grass and just relax. I almost rolled over some critters but luckily they developed quick reflexes during their evolution. Good for them! I like to see animals well adapted to their environment and just generally being resilient little things… not that I got anything against frail and dainty creatures mind you… Sometimes random mutations can create breathtaking beings!
“I knew I saw a green blur outside the windows. Is everything alright?” the concerned voice of Twilight asked me, quickly taking my mind off the clouds.
“Too loud… Just relax and… feel,” I said while my mind did just that, feeling everything alive around me. My body was relaxed for this familiar state of communion with my surroundings but my mind was curious since this world truly felt very strange. I could feel the young princess approaching me and sitting next to me as I just breathe slowly with a small smile on my face.
“I’m… not sure what are you talking about. Feeling what?”
I reached her with my wing and pulled her in a hug, making her head rest against my barrel and near my heart.
“Everything… Just relax and feel it...” I explained her, feeling her uneasiness but relenting to my wishes as her curiosity finally won the struggle. She relaxed in my gentle grip, so I released her and felt her now slow breathing. I could almost feel her questions, so I decided to work ahead of them.
“Empty your mind… without focus or thought...”
“I’ll try… but I think I’ll fall asleep,” she said while giggling. I replied with my own giggles and set myself to just enjoy the feeling of life carrying on, as it always does.
I don’t know how much time we spent just there, but probably not that much. I couldn’t keep myself in-tune with the life force of this world for long because a feeling of uneasiness crept little by little when I was more than a few minutes feeling it. It was as if something was missing… but what? I couldn’t ponder on this for long as I felt Twilight’s heartbeat suddenly skyrocket.
“Is everything alright, little one?”
“...Whoa… What is this?” she asked, and I could feel she managed to tap into the life force of this world. This little girl is a genius! Maybe the little powers I gifted her for her mini-world helped her but… Not even my son was able to feel the life force! Oh this world gets more interesting by the day!
“That is the pure life force of this world, young princess. All creatures are born with a piece of it and it develops as they grow old and experienced, just to return to the world in the end. At least that’s how it works back home,” I explained as I stretched my muscles a bit. “Usually it makes the world teeming with life after millions of years. Just try to not look at it for long periods of time, dear. They say things about the abyss, but you can also get in problems for staring at the light for too long… and I’m not talking about blindness either.”
That made her snap out of her probably life-changing moment and look at me with a big smile on her face… and I think I even see stars in her eyes?
“It was so… so… I can’t describe it with words! Majestic comes close, but that doesn’t make it justice! And that’s the kind of energy that fuels your spells? It just… boggles my mind!”
“And I can assure you that my home has quite more magnitudes of energy than yours. Trust me, I’m quite an old lady,” I replied while giggling, making her look at me with clear excitement all over her face.
“But... Life force sounds a bit clinical for my tastes, and that’s saying something. Do have any other names for this kind of energy?” she asked me. I just chuckled.
“Just the magic of life, my dear,” I simply said, and I swear that I saw a spark inside those smart eyes of hers.
The celestial sisters stood silently inside the medical facilities of Canterlot Castle, their regal masks cracking under the stress. They were called by the doctor in charge of Gaia a couple of hours after her release, which was well within the normal timeframe to get useful results via analysis spells. What was making them nervous was that the doctor said that they should come as soon as they were able to, and that undertone of urgency was quite alarming. After all… What could possibly affect an alicorn as Gaia?
“You majesties,” said the doctor as he walked into the room, followed by one of his peers.
“We came as soon as we received your message. What can you tell us about Gaia?” asked Celestia, looking at them with one of her most inquisitive looks. The bespectacled mare beside the first doctor pulled out some papers and cleared her throat.
“Sorry for any inconvenience your majesties, but the results of many of the tests were troubling to say the least.”
“How so? It's because of her unusual diet?” asked the night princess, “I had the suspicion that eating metal wasn’t very good for the stomach,” she finished.
“Surprisingly, she didn’t have any adverse effects after eating so many… things. All the results were almost the same between before and after lunch. No, what we found alarming was with her tissue and blood samples, and well… her weight”
“… You have to me more specific, doctors,” said the sun princess with a neutral tone. This time it was the stallion who took the lead.
“We found traces of heavy metals and strange molecules that we can’t identify in all of the tissues and in her bloodstream. We also found scar tissue in several parts of her and her overall metabolism looked slower than it should, given the other alicorn data we have,” he said as he read through several papers. “I must add that this hasn’t been a recent event since we have found traces of the same substances inside her bone marrow.”
“Doctor... Are you suggesting that…?”
“Yes. We suspect that Gaia has been suffering from a very severe poisoning for a very long time… at least, until recently. It seems that she’s been recovering from the past decades. She has been also gaining weight in the same time span, as we found that newer muscular tissue and her coat are healthier than other parts of her body,” the doctor continued, ears wilted down for interrupting Luna’s question. “Her actual weight is similar to her solar highness, even when Gaia is quite bigger than our princess. We found this pretty anomalous giving her apparent complexion. We estimated thanks to the analysis of her skeletal structure that Gaia at one time almost tripled her actual weight. We couldn’t pinpoint the cause of the loss of weight so we assumed that it was tied to her poisoning, but since she can eat every little thing that she can put in her mouth we can’t imagine what could be the actual cause.”
The air in the clinic’s room was thick with dread and surprise, the faces of the diarchs of Equestria showing their shock.
“How could someone try to poison her?” murmured Celestia, loud enough to be heard by everyone around her. Luna, on the other hand, was fuming, her face contorted in silent anger.
“Such a vile act, to poison a sweet mare, as annoying as she can be,” Luna said, snorting and pawing at the ceramic tiles of the room.
“We are more concerned about what kind of poison could make her ill since clearly eating metal can’t harm her and we are pretty sure that anything dispersed via aerosol can’t harm her either,” said the mare, arranging some papers at the desk. “It's a given then, even for an alicorn, she should be bedridden or almost on the verge of death… but we saw her just enjoying the garden as if she was a puppy just a few minutes ago. We are stumped on how somepony managed to poison such a sturdy mare, and how can she even move,” the doctor said while she kept filing papers.
Both princesses were silent for a couple of minutes, looking between themselves and thinking about this revelation.
“We are grateful for your hard work… Oh, excuse me, but I think I don’t know your names,” Celestia said with an apologetic tone. Both doctors just shook her heads.
“Don’t worry, princess. This kind of news can be very stressful for everypony involved. I am Doctor Spectacle and she’s Doctor Pulse. We will keep working on the results and make a complete report when everything is done. There are more specific samples that need to be worked on,” said the now identified Dr Spectacle.
“Your Majesties, when I said we didn’t know how she can even move I meant it. Heavy metal poisoning isn’t a common thing in Equestria and cases can only be found in settlements of miners that aren't careful enough where they dump their waste, but we know that the symptoms are usually pretty severe like muscular pain, migraines and anaemia. I would have someone looking after her if she were my patient. Who knows when a sudden pain can strike her?” said Dr Pulse, making both princesses pale about the news. “Thankfully we found miraculous that her body was somehow processing the metals in her system and effectively cleaning her from the poison. Usually, someone with a severe case of heavy metal poisoning would be suffering from it for life, but she is going to be as fit as a fiddle in… well, many times over my own lifespan that’s for sure. Not a very long time for her if our data about her is accurate.”
“My sister and I have... much to think about. Carry on, my little ponies, and thank you again for your diligence,” said Princess Celestia before nodding to her sister and departing the clinic. Both doctors kept looking at each other for a while before exhaling loudly.
“Boy… it never gets easy when we have to give bad news to somepony,” Dr Pulse said, getting a nod from his partner.
“Indeed… but we should keep working on more positive things, like this hormone testing. If we take the baseline of a normal a healthy pony...”
“Spectacle, I said it earlier and I say it now. Those tests were negative. We even made several scans at her abdomen and we found nothing. Just because you are a father with a newborn child doesn't mean that you can see foals where there are none! Now get to it! You still have a couple of hours before going home,” Dr Pulse said with finality, getting a grumble from the stallion.
Dr Pulse just snorted, working on some of the other tests. They didn’t know if it was normal for Gaia to have such a high count of estrogen in her blood. After the fifth scan, they were sure that it was just another anomaly to the pile of strangeness that was the green alicorn… and that was enough for the doctor.
Some corridors away though, a couple of princesses were very concerned about their guest.