It was quiet in Equestria, a calm night for most residents, but for those with children, well, no night was truly calm.
It was a specific family that drew our attention today though, a silver maned Unicorn and a yellow maned Pegasus.
"WHAAA-!"
Dawn Bolt cracked open a bloodshot eye, before groaning and pinching it shut, reaching over to shake his wife's shoulder. "Honey... baby it's your turn..."
His wife echoed his groan, halfheartedly kicking the blankets off before rolling over her wings to land on the ground, dragging them along the floor as she trudged on to little Silver Spark's room.
Soon enough Dawn was drifting back into sweet Luna's embrace, his son's cries getting quieter, before they stopped completely, and he sighed blissfully.
Then he heard his wife scream at the top of her lungs, and he was suddenly wide awake.
It took him less than a second to be out of their bedroom and halfway down the hall, his horn lit up like his namesake as he threw himself through the door.
One look at his panicking wife and twitching son covered in blood was all it took for him to have a teleportation spell ready and locked onto the hospital, all of them vanishing from the room a moment later.
They appeared right outside the hospital, and Celestia bless his wife, she was already through the door before he could even take the first few steps.
The nurse manning the counter, a young Unicorn with a bored look on her face, took one look at the insensate, twitching foal in his wife's hooves and was instantly on hers, horn lit up as she called out for assistance, taking Silver Spark and galloping farther into the hospital.
It was a long and fear filled fifteen minutes as he and his wife were forced to wait outside of the room the doctors had taken their son into, before an old unicorn walked out, sighing and turning to them. "The parents I presume? Would you mind if we talked in my office?"
Dawn shook his head, his wife parroting the motion as they followed the old stallion into a neat looking room with a desk at one side of the room and a couch at the other, which he gestured to. "Please, take a seat while we talk. Oh, and don't you worry, your son in going to be fine."
They did so, and the old doctor ran a hoof through his grey mane. "Have you noticed anything... off about how your son was acting these last few days?"
He and his wife shared a look, before shaking their heads. "No sir, he's been just like normal, this was so sudden, what happened? He's never had any health problems before."
"What happened miss, is that your son just had a severe full body seizure." He barely heard his wife's gasp over his panic. "Hey hey, calm down, he came out all right all things considered, the nosebleed that covered him in that blood was caused by his heart going into overload because of an excess of adrenaline, pumping as much blood as it could, raising his blood pressure. Hence the nosebleed."
"Is... is his heart alright?" His wife spoke up.
The doctor shook his head. "The colt's heart is fine, in perfect shape in fact, the problems, I'm afraid, start and end, with his brain."
Dawn's ears flattened against his head, and beside him he felt his wife's trembling increase a little, they both knew enough to realize that anything medical related involving the brain was never good.
The doctor continued. "The young colt's brain isn't damaged in any way, but, well... I've never run into this type of thing before, his brain has, for lack of a better term, seized."
That... didn't sound good at first, but the more he though about it the more confused he got, seizing is when muscles lock up, so how...
"Hey, I'm sure your confused, so let me explain. Your son's brain, well, in a very, very short amount of time, made a lot of connections, connections that would normally be used for memory storage, the thing is, there wouldn't be any memories for them to be associated with, so they'll just sit there and do nothing."
"This isn't so bad, in a few years the connections would fade and everything would go back to normal, except this has ruined his neural flexibility." That... didn't sound too bad, and Dawn told the doctor as much. "Let me put it this way..."
"Take an adult pony, and show them a tennis racket, they will see a tennis racket, and that's it, because that is what it is. But take a younger pony and, say, show them a broomstick? They'll see it as a sword, a spear, and a broom. To put it simply, he's lost both quite a bit of neural creativity, and he's going to be learning things at an abysmal rate compared to his peers. Don't worry though, he should be just fine."
It was both relief and a kick in the gut, his son would be fine, but he wouldn't have it nearly as easy as others.
"Do you have any idea why this happened doctor? Could it happen again?" He asked.
The old stallion shook his head. "The chances of it happening again are slim to none, as for why... well quite frankly I have no idea. I'd like to keep an eye on him for a month or two if that's okay with you, see if I can't figure out why this happened."
"That's fine doctor. Is... is he okay to come back home with us?" Cobalt Breeze asked.
The doctor nodded. "While he should be fine, we'd like to keep him here overnight to see if there's any long lasting damage from the seizure, but if everything turns out okay then he should be fine to take home tomorrow."
He and his wife nodded, getting up and trotting out of the hospital, both of them heading back home, unsure of what would happen next, and they both sat on their bed quietly once they were home.
"... Dawn?"
"Yes honey?"
"Being a parent is scary."
"Yes it is." They sat there for a while, before Dawn used his magic to pull the covers over them, and he felt his beautiful wife wrap her wings and hooves around him.
"Goodnight, love you." "G'night, love you too."
Click
They didn't sleep well.