//------------------------------// // Seizure // Story: Rip Van Glimmer // by Rose Quill //------------------------------// Grief is an odd thing. In the month since I had awoken, I had been flung back and forth across the spectrums of anger and anguish so many times. For every moment of relief I had five that stung in ways I never thought I’d experience. I was starting to come to terms with the fact that my friends were gone. If you consider only crying when presented with reminders coming to terms. I had been happy that I had Sunset and Twilight still, familiar faces to help my transition into this strange time, but they weren’t the ponies I knew. They were more distant, more strict, less joyful. Sunset had gone from a girl that enjoyed being with her friends to one of the rulers of the land, tasked with raising the sun. Twilight no longer struck me as the mare I had debated magical theory with, her face more serious than I was used to since she now warded the dreams of Equestria and her moon sailed the sky. Even though those two friends were still here, they were also lost to me. After I cried myself out, I tucked the bundle of letters into my pack along with the other baubles I had stashed there. I looked at each as I packed them, memories rising with each. The rock candy necklace Maud had given me the first year after her move to Ponyville on my birthday. It had been a family tradition of hers, and for her to have given me a string made me feel welcomed by the laconic mare. Days spent flying kites floated through my mind as I tucked it into my bag. The hat came next, remembering the day I had met Trixie and the insane stunt with a manticore that had caused these rips and tears to be bestowed on the hat. I never knew why she had given me the hat, but now it was enough to make me smile sadly. I paused with my journal in my magic, opening it to read a random entry, only to find the ink smeared and nearly illegible. I frowned. The transdimensional pocket I had opened to store things I didn’t want anypony else finding should have been essentially timeless, but the ink in my journal looked like it was the two hundred years old that it would have been had it been exposed to the elements. I flipped through the pages and sighed. Some pages were perfectly readable as the day I wrote them, seeing the entries for my plans for revenge on Twilight to the day she took me as a student, the day I made friends with Trixie, Maud, Thorax, and others. But I still wondered why some pages had faded. After a moment, I shrugged. Maybe my seal just wasn’t totally perfect, and Flurry had known about it, so maybe just enough time had seeped in. I packed the last few things and rose from my bed and left the room. I found Echo just outside, her head ducked as she saw the look on my face. “Is everything all right?” the near copy of my first friend made post-reformation asked. “I suppose,” I replied. “It’s just for all that’s the same, there is so much different. I wonder if I even want to find out what happened to my friends, or try to find Spike. Just seeing those seats downstairs drove some of that pain home.” The other mare nodded. “I suppose I can understand that,” Echo murmured. “I am, after all, just here to guide you if you need help. But to me, your memories are just stories told to me as a foal, so I’m not sure I will be able to appreciate everything the way you may see it.” I sighed. “I get that,” I told her. “But nopony ever learned anything by avoiding difficulty or uncomfortable situations. Remind me to tell you about my issues with magic solutions sometimes.” She smiled. “I seem to recall Grandma telling some of those,” Echo smiled. “But it would be nice to hear from you, for the perspective.” I turned and started to walk down the hallway when my legs gave out suddenly and I crashed to the floor, my tongue suddenly thick in my mouth and my vision going white. I heard Echo’s voice calling is surprise as though through cotton and several other voices yelling amidst a blaring sound of some sort. ”She’s seizing!” “Push two amps!” “She’s going tachy!” I felt a jolt though my body and the world dimmed for a moment, then slowly came back, the voices fading and I found myself looking at Flurry and Echo from the floor. “Are you ok?” Flurry Heart asked, horn lighting as I felt a scan spell rove over me. I just laid there, my heart hammering in my chest and it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I thought at first that it was due to my strange seizure, until I realized that Flurry was leaning against my chest. “Air,” I croaked, and the Alicorn hopped off me, looking a little sheepish as she did. I rolled onto my hooves, my legs still a little shaky. Echo stood next to me, a welcome source of stability in an increasingly unstable world. “I’ll see about some dinner,” Flurry said. “I’m sure that with everything that you’ve been through, you could use a meal.” As she hurried off, Echo looked at me. “What happened?” I shook my head, ignoring the minor wave of dizziness it caused. “I don’t know,” I whispered. I looked at my escort. “Did you hear those voices?” The Unicorn frowned. “What voices?” “I heard voices during the attack,” I whispered, almost to myself. “They sounded familiar, somehow.” “I didn’t hear anything, Glimmy,” she told me. I frowned, my mind trying to place the voices I had heard. “We should go find a bathroom,” Echo said. “Get you cleaned up and let the cleaning staff in to work on the floor.” “What do you mean?” She looked at me, an uncomfortable look on her face. “You had a seizure,” Echo stammered. “And during, you ah…well, you lost bladder control for a moment.” It dawned on me that my hind legs were damp. The smell and sensation were now assaulting my senses and I nearly dragged my escort down the hallway.