//------------------------------// // Ch 3 - Feelin' So Good, Feelin' So Fine // Story: Making Wishes on the Furthest Stars // by Henbane Skies //------------------------------// Chapter Three Feelin’ So Good, Feelin’ So Fine The first things the mare noticed that were out of place before she had even opened her eyes were that her mouth was incredibly dry, and that the whole right side of her face was wet. Her tongue felt like some foreign piece of furniture that had invaded her mouth—she would have thought of it as an extension of the pillow if the pillow wasn’t soaked in saliva. She opened her eyes and instantly wished she hadn’t. Her head exploded with a jagged, sawing pain that reached down to scrape at her eyes and rattle her teeth like a pocket full of loose change. Loose filthy change. Her eyes fluttered as she tried to limit the flood of pale fluorescent light. She knew she was in a bed and she wanted to move, but her body dissuaded her. Better to lie still and try to look at the walls painted the sort of green that resembled cat-sick, and the condolence card pink butterflies. Everything seemed to hurt. She was at a loss to explain to herself why her entire leg had been bandaged and done up in a sling, until she did remember and everything seemed to ache even worse. A moan slipped out between her lips before she could trap it. “Oh!” The sound of a curtain being drawn back, a soothing shadow spread over her bed. A blurry yellow shape darted over to the side of her bed, yellow and pink, and from that direction she could hear Fluttershy’s panicky voice. “I’m so glad you’re awake! First I was worried that you weren’t going to wake up, and then I was worried when it looked like you weren’t breathing, so I did some chest compressions and that seemed to work for a while, but last night your heart gave off some odd palpitations, and I was really worried you wouldn’t wake up again…” The words formed in the mare’s esophagus, dry vocal cords vibrating and tickling her throat. She coughed, and when she started she couldn’t stop. Tears filled her thirsty eyes and that helped a little bit, but it felt like there were nails and powdered glass in her throat. She felt something pry her hoof away from her mouth and a glass tipped up to her lips. She sputtered as the water splashed her face, some of it spilling over and drenching her chest. She drank it in heaving gulping gasps, refusing to believe how anypony could hold fear for the seas or lakes. When Fluttershy tried to pull the glass away she snatched it from her with her teeth and gulped what was left. “You really shouldn’t drink so much so fast, Tempest…” The mare might have said something, she might have made some vocalizations that sounded like comprehensible words in her ears, but what she knew for certain was that she needed that water. When the glass was empty Fluttershy gently took it away, the mare still gasping for air. “Thank you,” she managed to say, her voice sounding like it was filled with drywall dust. Fluttershy didn’t say anything. She smiled, and the mare was grateful enough to accept that much. She used the blanket to wipe at her face and the soft green gown that she had been fitted with, wondering how long she’d been here, too scared to know the answer. Instead she looked around her room, noticing that she was the only resident; the curtains around the three other beds were all retracted, bed sheets prim and folded. Outside, the clouds were off-white and seemed angry. She did a double-take when she saw her nightstand, wondering if she was having a particularly odd hallucination, or a symptom of a dream that never happened. A short pile of gifts covered the cheap grey veneer, small bouquets of flowers and little boxes with colored paper and ribbons stacked just higher than the lamp. Covering the bright pink box at the top was a paper plate with a slice of cake, frosting falling over the side like pink and green magma. The string of a balloon was stuck into the mess of melted wax and frosting, leading up to a gibbous pink face, a black marker smile big enough to pocket the sun. Fluttershy saw her staring. “Pinkie Pie had those set up for you. She wanted to throw you a party in here, but Rarity told her that it wouldn’t have been practical, not while you were still asleep and, well, recuperating.”’ “Rarity was here?” The mare looked down at the pile of gifts, seeing one box near the top that was decorated with an ornate ribbon with gilded filigree, the paper the same cranberry-plum color of Fizzlepop’s coat. She didn’t think a pony like Rarity would care very much whether or not a pony like her was in the hospital. She looked at the gifts and the cake and the oversized balloon with the stupid giant smile and discovered that she was smiling, too. “I didn’t tell Pinkie why you were here, though. The nurses had already changed the bandages on your leg when she came by, and I was too nervous to tell her.” The happiness washed away, just like that. The mare looked at her leg, remembering the fruit knife, remembering those melded nightmares flickering in its edge. To a point, some of it was hazy and filled with a noxious red-orange light. She couldn’t recall half of what happened in her shack, but the knife she could remember as clear as glass. “How long was I…I mean how long have I been here?” Fluttershy gave her a sad look. It was an expression that seemed to come so naturally to Fluttershy, and one that the mare disliked seeing in the pegasus’s eyes. “We brought you in here last Saturday. That was four days ago.” Four days. The mare mused on that, shutting her eyes from that stabbing fluorescent light. A chill ran through her body as she rubbed at her forehead, hoping that massaging it would somehow ease the pain. There was a barbed wire fog in her head. Fluttershy was saying something to her but she wasn’t paying attention. I just lost four days of my life. “Thank you, Fluttershy.” Fluttershy was walking to the door, but she stopped and turned. “Hmm?” “I said thanks. For saving me.” The pegasus blinked and looked like she didn’t know what to say. Then she said “I’ll go get you some more water,” even though the dark mare knew that that probably wasn’t what she wanted to say, and walked out the door. She coughed again. By now her throat was feeling somewhat better and her tongue didn’t feel so much like a shoe in her mouth. The headache was still jarring, though. She looked up at the grid lines between the ceiling tiles, seeing little grey squares that she knew weren’t really there. Her mind was over interpreting what it was looking at, deceiving the same sensations. But Luna, and the field and the cave, those weren’t hallucinations. She closed her eyes, seeing stars in a flowing blue mane. Alright, you, she thought, you know what you have to do now. You’ve got your mission. You got yourself into such a knot that you’re not sure which direction you need to move. Not a problem, nothing you can’t handle. You just have to figure out who you are. Uh-huh, not a problem. Stars, blue night, the gleam of a tiny knife, tomato-skin light, Princess Celestia with smoking cinders for eyes, black clouds. She opened her eyes, frowning. She looked at the balloon. Stupid big balloon with its stupid big grin silently telling her how stupid it was to be so unhappy. She wanted to cradle it and pop it at the same time. Fizzlepop Berrytwist had been attacked because she was weak. She had been ostracized because something had been taken from her, the thing that made her what she was supposed to be—a unicorn. She was broken, weak and broken and scarred. She knew what was right and wrong, but no matter how much right she tried to accomplish, there was always somepony to look at her like she was wrong. Not merely wrong, but Wrong. As though some intrinsic part of her was, by nature, incorrect. Tempest Shadow could take control. She knew how to disassociate in volatile situations. She could see the stepping stones of the plan and follow through with meticulous care. When there was extra baggage, she knew how to cut it away so it wouldn’t threaten the end objective. Sometimes she would imagine that she wasn’t even a pony, but some force that had taken equimorphic shape; something that held no stock in the concepts of Good or Evil, existing only to dispense justice in whatever manner that was required at the time. Somewhere, those two ponies had ended up spending five days living with their nightmares, dragging a fruit knife across their leg. Whose leg? she thought. Whose blood was needed to stop the aching inside? Who are you? Who’s forgiveness are you seeking? What are you trying to bury and what are you trying to embrace? I don’t know. The mare looked at the big stupid grinning balloon. She punched it with her good hoof, the big face rocking back and turning away from her. She smirked and shook her head. “You really are a mess, aren’t you?” The hospital was becoming quiet, probably easing on into the evening. It was hard to tell from the big angry sky outside, clouds colored like hunks of shale or goose feathers and all but pushing down the cluster of spindly birch trees beyond her window. A hungry sky coiling before it pounces. A regular tempest. Fluttershy came back after a while, catching her just as she was dozing back into an uneasy rest. She was carrying a pitcher of water in her teeth, a glass cradled in the crook of one wing. She set them both on the shelf on the other side of the room. Silently, she poured water into the glass and brought it to her. The mare took the glass and drank even though she wasn’t thirsty. “I’m glad you’re awake.” “You already said that.” “Oh,” Fluttershy looked down at the floor, then back at the chair in the corner. The mare now saw that a little rabbit was sitting there, looking bored and irate. “Right.” The mare set her glass down on the nightstand, on a spot atop the pile of gifts where it hopefully wouldn’t tip over. “Fluttershy? I wanted to say that I’m grateful to you, and to Twilight. The things I did, I wish I hadn’t done them. I wanted to be more than what I am, I wanted to be whole, and I thought that…” The mare paused as she tried to find the right words. She shook her head and looked out the window, hoping to find the words there. “I know ponies hate me. I know Canterlot hates me and it wouldn’t surprise me if all of Equestria hated me, but I’m trying, Fluttershy. I’m trying to be better. I just wanted to say thanks.” The pegasus stared at her, her blue-green eyes narrowing into angry slits. “That’s it? Is that all you have to say?” Vocabulary faltered and failed. When she heard the furious depth in Fluttershy’s voice her thoughts were replaced with question marks. “What?” “You’re not going to talk about that?” Fluttershy pointed a hoof at the mare’s bandaged leg. “You’re just going to ignore everything that happened at your house!? You don’t think that that’s important at all? How can you possibly be so…” “Fluttershy, I can barely remember what happened then.” “You were killing yourself!” Fluttershy threw her hooves up on the bed and stared down at the mare. She shrank down into her pillow, stupefied with shock. “Twilight and I both saw you! You were talking to your own nightmares, and you were cutting yourself with a knife! How can you possibly sit there and pretend that everything is fine now? Things just don’t change like that overnight!” She placed her hoof over the mare’s bandaged arm, not so gentle anymore. “Those aren’t going to heal overnight. You did so much harm to yourself that even magic isn’t going to restore all of it. There was muscle and nerve damage. You were lucky enough that some of the infected cuts didn’t progress beyond treatable conditions, or you’d be in a different room right now. Some of those wounds are going to be with you for the rest of your life!” The mare’s eyes were locked on Fluttershy’s, her mind trying to find a way to function after hearing the word infected. Her mouth hung open, unformed words expiring on the air. “No life is so horrible that you should take it away. No pain is so terrible that you can hope to cut it away with the rest of yourself. And there is no wound so deep that you can’t at least try to make it better!” The mare licked at the roof of her mouth. “I thought…” she began, not really knowing where the rest of that sentence was supposed to be. “I thought the best way to be merciful was to—.” She didn’t see the hoof as it pulled back and darted forward; she did see a brief flash as her eyes fluttered up to the cast-iron clouds, the right side of her face bursting in pain. The sounds of hooves galloping through the hall outside. A nurse came in and shouted something, another nurse behind him. They darted into the room and tried to pull Fluttershy away from the bed. “What do you know about mercy!? What do you know about mercy!?” As the nurses dragged Fluttershy out of the room, the little rabbit gave a squeal and scampered to the door. He actually tried to bite at one of the ponies until Fluttershy snatched him away with her wings. The door slammed shut, and the mare in the hospital bed heard Fluttershy screaming “How could you possibly know!? How could you!? How could you!?” Later, a nurse, one of the three that had managed to detain Fluttershy, came in to check in on her. She wiped at her graying mane and asked the mare small questions with a dry-erase smile. She told her that a doctor would be in to ask a few questions and would she be up to seeing him? The mare said yes, she would, even though she didn’t really feel like talking to anypony right now. She rubbed at her jaw, feeling her teeth tingling. When the doctor came she answered his questions to the best of her ability, avoided the ones she didn’t like answering moderately enough. He took a look at her jaw and jotted something down on his clipboard. As he did so, her eyes turned up to his horn, the caramel-colored helical horn as long as a railroad spike. That would be a job, she mused, trying not to look as anxious as she felt. Healing sick and hurt ponies. Administering help when needed. Giving back life whenever it was in danger of being lost. Must be nice having a horn. “Would you mind if I also took a look at your leg, then, miss?” “Um, no, I don’t think so.” If the doctor had caught the uncertainty in her voice, he didn’t ponder over it. With his magic, he found the loose end of the bandage and began unrolling it. The mare had the strange sensation of watching the emergence of a pupa to a butterfly, the gentle shifting of the thing inside its cocoon as it found its way out, though she doubted that what would emerge would have any metaphoric connection to a butterfly. She could smell the wounds before she saw them. Suppurating flesh has that distinct autumnal scent of vigor and decay, similar to tilled earth and rotting tree stumps. It didn’t seem to bother her as much as it did the doctor, who had to cover his nose with the lapel of his white coat. She squirmed in mingled wonder and horror at it, what her leg had become, the caricature of a cyclone encircling flesh, rivers of red and pale yellow diverting from and into each other like a typography map drawn by a madmare, all the fur down to her hoof matted down with dried encrustations that shined in the light like beetles. Some of the fur had been shaved off so that the medical staff could treat the wounds. It looked both alien and familiar to her. The mare muttered something, suddenly feeling thirsty. The doctor glanced up as he inspected her leg, making notes on his clipboard. “What’s that?” She cleared her throat. “Somepony told me there was nerve damage?” He looked down at her, suddenly perplexed. “Who told you that? We weren’t supposed to inform you until we were certain you’d be emotionally prepared.” She was about to copy those last two words, mouthing them instead when he cut her off. “Well, it’s true, anyway. There will be some nerve compression near your elbow, and your hoof will also have some serious motor damage. This can be corrected, but it will take some time. Now, tell me if you can feel anything…” The moment the doctor began to straighten her elbow, white hot fire exploded from the meat of that leg, shooting up into her head and returning back down in a molten loop. She could feel every mark on her leg, and every mark was howling. She screamed, and somewhere through the pain she heard him mutter “Okay, okay, I think you can feel that!” She closed her eyes tight, tears leaking through anyway—it felt like that impossible fire was spreading up her shoulder to the rest of her body. She was about to beg the doctor to cut her arm off, tear it off at the socket, whatever it took to keep that horrible pain from leaching through to the rest of her, when she felt the fire begin to fade away. When it came down to manageable levels she opened her eyes, seeing threads of light weaving down to her leg from the doctor’s horn. The light rhythmically traveled up and down her leg until the pain faded away completely. More than that, she began to feel…happy? Or perhaps just content. She glanced at the stupid balloon face—how can you be frowning in front of a balloon with a smile like that? She grinned, tried to break the grin, kept it anyway. The doctor grabbed a new roll of gauze and wound it around her leg. He wrote something on the paper attached to his clipboard, looking quite pensive. In her tranquil state, she could see all the beads of sweat that dotted his brow. They all seemed so clear she could almost count them. “Now,” the doctor began, and the mare knew immediately she wasn’t going to like the rest of this visit either. “Given the, uh, nature of your admission here, you have to understand that once your leg shows sufficient signs of repair, we’ll still have to keep you here for a week or two.” “Two weeks.” she parroted. “Under surveillance, yes. It’s for your own good, really. You understand, yes?” She would have told him that he could have told her the world was a ball of yarn and everypony was really a cat trying to solve it, and she would have understood him just fine, thank you very much, but she was afraid of getting tongue-tied, so she just said yes. He smiled at her and made some remarks about Princess Twilight’s Friendship summit that she just barely heard, and he was trotting out the door. She sat there, the sky now so dark that she was certain it was getting around nighttime, and she looked down at the pile of gifts. The gifts made her think of Fluttershy, so she turned away from them. Somewhere between thinking and not thinking about things, she fell back to sleep. “Thanks again for the jacket, Rarity.” The mare saw Rarity smile from the doorway as she curled her eyelashes with the patient tenacity of a surgeon. “Oh, you’re welcome, dear. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to effectively encapsulate the you that you are, but I asked my friend Zecora for assistance, and together, I think we’d managed to pull it off.” Rarity’s eyes darkened and turned to her, flashing suspicion. “We did, didn’t we?” “Of course you did.” “Oh, thank goodness!” The mare watched the unicorn, watched her and nibbled at her bottom lip as a war was being fought in her head. There was only one thought on her mind and a dozen reasons why she should just keep her mouth shut and let Rarity get on with her day, and let herself get on with the slow grey grind of her own. Worried that she wouldn’t get the chance for a long while, she cleared her throat and opened her dry mouth. “Can I ask you something?” The white unicorn looked tired. She looked like she didn’t have any intention of answering questions, let alone hearing them. She ran a hoof through her elegant purple mane, using her magic to brush out several snags. It may have been morning, but it was rather late for the proprietor of an active business chain to be visiting a pony in the hospital. She was in the rest room, looking in the mirror with the door hanging open. After hearing her voice, the unicorn pocketed her brush in a small purse and trotted back into the room. “Yes, of course, dear. I was just making a few corrections. Is there something on your mind?” There’s plenty of somethings on my mind, the mare thought. She would never have been so flippant as to say that out loud to the unicorn. She liked Rarity, liked the corkscrew turn of her mane and tail and the brightness that almost never seemed to leave her sapphire eyes. Her voice was an intricacy of sophistication, and she could make the ugliest object sound beautiful just by mentioning it. The mare was grateful that Rarity didn’t treat her with the same vehemence as others did. She didn’t understand it, and she often suspected that it was Twilight’s doing, but she was obliged to the unicorn, whatever the case may be. This isn’t right, said a little voice in the back of her head. She’s an important and well-admired businessmare. You’re a well-known traitor on suicide watch. How much is she risking just by being here? Would she be in the same position tomorrow if she were seen talking to you? She looked at Rarity, looking back at her with tired sapphire eyes, and promptly told that little voice to go drown in a lake. “You and your friends have been together for a while, haven’t you?” The white unicorn beamed. Somehow, through the gloom of the morning and her exhaustion, she still managed to beam. “Oh, we certainly have. We’ve always been there to assist each other in any endeavor, even when some of us weren’t quite expecting it, or even needing it. Yes, we’ve had some…” She paused here to think and make a grimace that the mare didn’t quite understand, “adventures, and there are moments when one has to wonder if your friends really have the best intentions in mind, sometimes, but I’d have to say my life would not be where it is today if I didn’t have my girls to see me through it all.” “Is it really like that?” “Of course, Tempest.” Don’t think about it, just follow through. Bury it and keep walking. “Then, can you tell if there’s something wrong with somepony? If there’s something about them that’s not quite right?” There’s that look again. That anxious-perplexed I’m starting to wish I hadn’t bothered with you expression. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” Rarity said quietly, and that stung a bit. “I mean...I mean, can you tell if there’s something deep inside of a pony that would make them bad? Is there some sign that’ll let you know if a pony isn’t worth any friendship?” Rarity looked at the mare for a while. It looked like every time she was going to say something, a thought would force the words back. She made a show of worrying over the hyacinths and tulips in a vase by the window and then glanced up at the sky. “I’m afraid I’m not qualified to answer that. I really think Twilight should—.” “Twilight doesn’t want to see me. I think she hates me.” “What? Where did you get a notion like that?” “I haven’t seen her in weeks. No letters.” “She’s a princess, dear. She has a multitude of obligations on her plate, and besides, there are others you can talk to.” Then she added, “Surely,” as though she were unsure. The mare rolled her pale eyes up to the ceiling. She punctuated each point with her hoof. “Rainbow Dash openly hates my guts; Applejack is on speaking terms with me, so long as I don’t know where she lives or what her plans are; Pinkie Pie is too difficult for me to talk to; and Fluttershy isn’t too fond of me, either. You’re the only one out of your little group that bothers talking to me.” Rarity chuckled, a high twittering that sounded too nervous. It made the mare fidget in her bed. “Oh, really, Tempest! We’re not the only ponies in this town, you know. There’s an entire world of possibilities out there, dear.” “A world I helped try to conquer. A world I turned my back on.” The white unicorn scowled, good humor suddenly shattered and now the mare felt heat beginning to fill her face. “You’re beginning to behave like a child,” Rarity said. “No, I’m not,” the mare muttered, crossing her legs over her chest. “My little sister measures up to your knees if she stood on the tips of her hooves, and she still acts older than you are now.” Rarity walked up to the side of the mare’s bed, blocking out the dawn sunlight. She didn’t like being so close to the unicorn, didn’t like being reminded of the comparison in appearance. She turned her eyes away to the vase, malachite black and green like the depths of some ancient forgotten sea, where it was more forgiving than the seas in Rarity’s eyes. “Being your own victim doesn’t give you an excuse to continue feeling like one. You are alive, Tempest. Life shouldn’t feel like a curse. We’re trying to help you, all of us.” “And you’re all wasting your time.” Rarity frowned down at her, strong enough that she could feel those eyes pressing down on her. “There’s no need to counter kindness with rudeness. Frankly, I think you enjoy feeling miserable.” The mare was quiet, not responding. Rarity floated out a pocket watch, silver casing with a lovely amethyst cabochon in the center. The drowsiness instantly left her eyes and she grumbled. “Ah, wonderful. I’m late. The employer, late to her own business.” Rarity looked back over her shoulder and hissed “I hope you're happy” before walking over to the desk by the far wall. She grabbed a heavy raincoat, inconspicuous wide-brimmed hat and black sunglasses that screamed INCOGNITO. “Perhaps you’ll be in a better mood by the weekend,” she said, and stalked off in a huff. The mare sighed loudly, forceful inhale/exhale of the sterile hospital air. She banged the back of her head against her pillow, not quite making a bang but more of a loud whumph sound as the ends of the pillow closed around her ears. The truth was that she was happy, and she didn’t know how to feel about that. She’d tried to milk the conversation with Rarity for as long as she could, but she hadn’t expected the unicorn to suggest that she make friends elsewhere, someplace outside of that special group of friends. Inexplicably, she panicked, and then she started haranguing herself and making her friend angry in the process. You’re exactly right, Rarity, she thought, staring up at the white ceiling tiles and the grey squares that weren’t really there. I love being miserable because I love hearing somepony tell me I don’t have to be. Sounds so stupid when you think about it. The mare groaned and tried to sink deeper into her pillow. A nurse came in later and they chatted for a short while as he went through the usual movements. The mare tried to keep the conversation going but her efforts were thwarted when the doctor came in for another round of tests. She glared at his cinnamon mane and his railway nail horn as she flexed her elbow out, and inch, two inches, managing six inches before her arm began to tingle and the pain started to flare up again. “You’ve lost some muscle tone,” the doctor said, and then persuaded her to take a round of grey pills that left a bitter chalky taste in her mouth. He told her that the atrophying wasn’t yet such that she’d have to worry about exercise programs or severe dietary changes, but she caught the worry in his voice. After making her give another blood test he left her feeling tired, worried, and cranky. When the nurse from before came back, she readily snapped at him, spreading her ill humor. He didn’t stay long enough for her to voice her concerns. Not for a lack of trying, she thought. Her headache was coming back, so she closed her eyes and waited for it to pass. Her dreams brought her back to the cave again. “How much longer do I have, doctor?” He had been staring at the clock as he timed her pulse. He had been humming some tuneless rhythm and now he stared down at her as if she were an imaginary figment come to life. “Sorry, what was that?” “How much longer do I have to be here?” He pulled off the cuff around her leg and wrote something down. His lips were pursed tight as a lock, and for a second she thought he resembled a colt that was trying to practice kissing. “Let me just ask you a few questions first. Leg feeling alright? No aches or muscle twinges?” The mare flexed her leg, in and out. She rotated her hoof and swung her leg clockwise. A joint popped like a firework and her arm was a little warm, a little tingly around each scar. She had the grey pills to thank for that. “Nope, no problems,” she said. “And there are no issues otherwise that you’d like to talk about? Nothing you think Miss Goodwill ought to add to her report?” The mare forced a smile as she told the doctor no, she wouldn’t like to add anything. She’d never had a session with a psychotherapist before, but after the past week she’d had enough headshrinking to last her decades. Miss Goodwill had been a callous and condescending mare with the face of a potato left out in the sun too long, who tried to pry at her head as if it were an onion. First with kind words and smiles, then with jabs of increasing size to goad her into talking about herself. She wanted too much too fast. She wanted to know about her parents, how they treated her and how she treated them. She enjoyed asking her if she liked mares, or if she had had a terrible childhood before coming to Ponyville, relishing each time she asked them, gleaning pride from being in the presence of her discomfort. The mare felt proud of herself as she fabricated an existence for Miss Goodwill. She knew the doctor didn’t believe a word of it, but she didn’t care, and she hoped that Miss Goodwill cared even less. It certainly seemed that way from the sessions. No, she had nothing more to say to Miss Goodwill. “Well, I’d recommend keeping you here for another couple of days or so, but I can see that you seem to have everything under control.” The mare wanted to laugh at that, but she kept her lip buttoned up, fearing it would mean another pleasant looping conversation with Miss Goodwill. The doctor extended his hoof and she shook it. “I’m going to give you a prescription—actually two prescriptions. One is an antibiotic for infection, and an anti-inflammatory for your arm. I’d also recommend you keep seeing a therapist, once a week at the very least. You’ve been through…” The mare nodded and made assuages that she would do what the doctor told her, half of it going right over her head. She was getting out of here! She was going to be rid of this awful sterile-sick hospital air, the colorless ceiling and the catsick wall paint with the crude pink butterflies. Away from the tests and this awful stiff bed and the compounding of night and day into a single grey continuum of fluorescent dawn. “So, if there isn’t anything more I can help you with, I think we’re done here.” The mare told him no, there wasn’t anything further, but as the doctor shook her hoof again and told her to have a nice day, as he walked away, already out in the hall, the idea hit her hard enough to make adrenaline race behind her eyes. She shouted for the doctor and he came galloping back in. “I was wondering if you could tell me something about a spell, an anesthetic spell?” His eyebrows darted up before settling back down. “Yes?” “Well, it just seems like a really useful spell for somepony to know. I mean, in case there was more pain.” The doctor actually seemed a bit miffed, straightening up and adjusting his coat over his shoulders. Was there an anxious look in his eye? The mare wasn’t sure, and she wasn’t interested. “You’re not really suggesting I try to teach it to you, are you?” he said. “I will not, miss, for two reasons. The first: I don’t know how the magic would react, or if it would even be possible, given your particular circumstance, but from what we know, it would probably be too dangerous to even try. Second: that spell is only taught to medical students who have studied for four years and complete a two-year residency. It’s considered a Blue-Priority spell.” “Oh.” The mare didn’t understand what blue-priority was, but she felt the weight behind the tone in the doctor’s voice. She resigned herself to mere nodding. “Besides, the medication should help control whatever pain that might pop up. It’ll just take time.” And that’s how you kill joy, the mare thought. There were papers to sign, papers that mentioned payment, and she was told to talk to the receptionist in the lobby about that. That seemed a little fishy, but she didn’t worry about talking to the receptionist quite as much as wondering how she might pay. She’d taken on various odd jobs since coming to Ponyville; road maintenance during the winter and construction during the spring and summer. The pay was, though inconsistent, sufficient enough to live on for a time. Life had trained her to survive on bare need alone. To adapt and improve. She looked at the patchwork scar tissue on her leg, the misshapen places where the fur had been shaved and where it hadn’t. Haven’t been adapting and improving lately. She could manage walking without cramping up. She went down to the lobby on the ground floor and mentioned to the receptionist about the bill. “Oh, yeah,” the young pegasus muttered as she browsed through a sheaf of paper. “It looks like the princess took care of that.” The mare froze. She felt her stomach and throat tighten. “What? She paid my hospital bill?” At this, the receptionist smirked and scratched at her ear with her pen. “Oh, no, she didn’t pay. It says here that she ‘would consult with the patient on the matter, with assurance that the hospital WILL get the money.’ And that’s ‘WILL’ underlined and capitalized. She was insistent on that feature. It must be nice having the princess for a friend.” The mare scowled down at the pegasus, hoping to elicit a fearful twitch of her cocky eyes, tear down that confidence and snide attitude, but the receptionist, her business concluded, turned her attention back to her papers. Suddenly, the mare felt very small. She walked out the front door on shaky and uncertain legs as she told herself to calm down. What’s to calm down about? You don’t even know what’s going on! Twilight hadn’t bothered to see her in the hospital, didn’t set up any communication with her. Why would she want to confer with her about the hospital bill? It was possible she had been getting information about her condition from Fluttershy, Rarity, or Pinkie Pie. In fact, the more she thought about the more acceptable it seemed. The princess would have used her friends to check up on her because she was so busy with her daily responsibilities. Yes, that made sense. Though it made less sense than actually coming to see her in person so they could have a conversation. The mare wanted to talk, why didn’t Twilight? Did Twilight really dislike her now? But what about the bill? Maybe I am being childish. The mare walked into Ponyville, feeling like she was stepping into the belly of some great animal and at a loss to explain why. Her eyes darted around, not sure what she was looking for or what she thought she should be seeing. Nothing had changed, nothing was magically transfigured or transpired in the past few weeks. The day was pleasantly warm with a satin breeze coming down from the north, cloudless and empty. She didn’t want to go home. The thought of walking up the porch and into that moaning house with the wind howling around the window panes and the timbers trying to settle over the hill made her want to vomit. It didn’t even seem like it could belong to her anymore. She envisioned herself stepping into the kitchen and seeing somepony in a corner, somepony she might call a friend, twisted and deformed in some incomprehensible manner. There would be rats in the bathroom, great black ones with ruby eyes and slick pink claws, scratching and snapping at each other in a constantly shifting mat of black. If she allowed herself to sleep in her bed she knew, and she knew in her heart it was true, that she would wake up to see Celestia staring down at her, eyes burning with fire that didn’t come from anyplace nice and sweet, chains ratcheting when her wings shook. Would you get a hold of yourself? They’re not real. They never existed. It was just a dream. Like the grey squares in the ceiling tiles; they’re just little tricks, sensory dishonesty, pure hokum, and nothing more than that. The scars on your leg, the scars that everypony is staring at right this very moment, those are real. You made the knot, now untie it. It was a nice day, and it felt like it was pressing down on her. She felt confused, angry, abashed, all of it mixing together in her head until she ordered it to stop. She pushed it all down into the soil of her subconscious and kept walking. Purpose found, she tilted her chin up and expanded her chest, marching like the soldier of a nonexistent army. She headed past the town square, avoiding the looks everypony was giving her as the smooth-as-spider-silk breeze ran through her coat. “Tempest.” The mare ignored the sound of her name, one facsimile of her. She didn’t recognize the voice anyway, and at this time of day she doubted if it was for anything other than to goad a reaction from her. She watched a group of three colts tinkering with their skateboards, and she wondered. Bad time for foals with short legs to be playing pranks, she thought. The castle rose up before her like the claw of some titanic crystalline dragon, holding up the sky. She did not pause or bat an eye when she marched up the front steps, blue sparks flickering off her horn like stringed shards of turquoise, them and her face reflected back at her from the floor and the walls as she threw open the tall doors. “Twilight Sparkle!” Judgment had once been purpose for the mare. Now, with purpose superseding judgment, it had become difficult for her to anticipate that hidden danger around the corner. She stopped, all of her muscles coiling as they froze, while the blades of six long lances kissed her throat.