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// Ow ow ow 
// Story: Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me 
// by DataPacRat 
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If I'd managed to evoke some sort of mysterious seventh Element of Harmony - or, for all I knew, a mysterious first Element of Individuality, or of Rationality, or who-knew-what - then that wasn't a piece of information I wanted broadcast far and wide across Equestria. So I said to Amethyst, "I thought I'd try something new. I should probably put it in my luggage. I reached with a hoof behind my neck to find a hook or something, but couldn't quite catch it. "Maybe I'll take it off by the camp." My bandage-wrapped leg ached more than usual as I got back to all fours.

At the camp outside the castle, I wasn't even able to open my tent. The mysterious force that let me use my hooves as hands the way other ponies did just wasn't there anymore, reducing me to pure dexterity to do anything - and I wasn't especially dextrous. Amethyst seemed rather amused when I asked her to help me with the simplest tasks, even just opening a drawer. I'd previously gained that hoof-power when a couple of other cows had touched their horns to mine; my mind had gotten zapped to oblivion for a while, but after an extremely embarrassing time dealing with the camp's sanitary arrangements, I was convinced getting my hoof-mojo back was worth a few hours of something like samadhi.

I hadn't really gotten to take a look at the back half of the castle, but I did have the directions pointed at by the Elements pedestal, not to mention my new accessory (which I tried to imply to Amethyst wasn't new at all, and tried not to imply even existed to anypony else)... and the nearest herd of cattle was in Ponyville... so I made some excuses about my leg bothering me, and that I thought I should get it checked out soonish, and started down the trail back to civilization.





Unhappily, it turned out my excuses were much more accurate than I'd believed them to be.

By the time I and my escort had gone half an hour from the castle, the bite from the bulette (which had just chomped on a rust monster), which had spent some time soaking in unfiltered stream water, was now turning an angry red, with ugly-looking swelling. It was becoming too painful to put any weight on, and trying to walk on three legs was incredibly slow - while I gave it a try, it was barely another half hour before a cart arrived from back at the castle expedition, onto which I was duly loaded up.

I took some pain-killers from the first-aid kit (don't leave home without it), which made the gallop to the Ponyville hospital tolerable, if not exactly pleasant.

My case seemed to baffle the local medical establishment - I'd been healing up just fine until now, with any potential infection handily under control.

By this time, the pain was a constant, throbbing companion. I tried to make a joke about just chopping it off and fitting me with a peg-leg, and privately wondered how long it would be before I was serious.

There was one rather obvious happening between when my leg had been fine and when it hadn't... and even the best unicorn spells were, at best, temporarily masking some of the torture... so I broke my personal notions of security enough to have a private discussion with a doctor, asking if perhaps my symptoms could have been exacerbated by magic... exhaustion, or depletion, or whatever the term might be. He hemmed and hawed, and I finally got him to admit that he didn't know, but it certainly wouldn't have helped any of the healing spells that had been put on me.

I was stuck in a hospital bed. (Well, if I'd really wanted to try, I could have gotten out, but I didn't exactly want to.) So I asked Red Pepper to ask Daisy Jo to ask some of the members of the local herd to come visit me.

When they arrived, I ended up not having to say a word. I tried picking up my hospital-bed blanket with a hoof, and failed miserably. They looked at each other, then formed a small circle, heads-in, and leaned forwards...





Blessed relief.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that there's more to happiness than the simple absence of pain - don't you believe 'em, unless they've got a whole philosophical system behind 'em to back 'em up.

The doctors were pleased that their efforts had near-miraculously brought my infection back under control. But they still wanted to keep hold of me for observation, in case of another flare-up. With the addition of one piece of furniture to my hospital room - my trunk of reference books and reading material - I was willing to oblige them.

Cheerilee had visited while I was zoned-out. She'd left behind a bouquet of red clover flowers - simple, but one of my favorites. They were quite tasty.





I compared the Elements pedestal to my maps, and was easily able to match up four of the six branches with the old placements of the four large ley-lines. I checked the fifth, extending the line it was pointing towards... and, at least within my rather large margin of error, the first significant place it was pointing to was easy to find: Ponyville itself. I almost expected the sixth to be aimed towards Canterlot, but it was entirely the wrong quadrant - close to due south. There didn't seem to be anything noteworthy anywhere near that line, on any of the maps of Equestria I could find. One more mystery to add to the pile.

And speaking of mysteries - I now took the opportunity to take a much better look at my necklace, and its inset stone. Having just buried myself in maps of all scales, right away I noticed something about that round, blue-and-green-and-white orb... the central part of it was a near-perfect map for the maps of Equestria and the nearby lands. Given that ponies had explored a rather unhappily small area outside of their homeland, it was entirely possible that the remainder of the stone was a match for the rest of this world's landmasses and seas.

I remembered from the first My Little Pony episodes that the Elements worn by the Mane Six matched their cutie marks. As a cow rather than a pony, I didn't have a cutie mark - so perhaps this was a sort of default setting for this Element. Or maybe it showed what my cutie mark would be if I had one.

An hour or so later, I noticed something new - the white streaks weren't laid out quite in the same arrangement as before. I hazarded a guess that they represented clouds - though whether they bore any relation to the planet's actual weather would take at least a few days of observation of the stone and collecting reports from all across Equestria.





The photo-copied Equinomicon was an astonishingly boring read... especially since most of the subject matter seemed to be concerned with explaining how there were beings who lived outside of Equestria, of various levels of malevolence, and how to try to summon and control them. I had a healthy skepticism that the rituals for 'controlling' extra-Equestrian beings would actually work, but since the idea of "Cutie Mark Crusader Cthulhu Cultists" alone was enough to send shivers down my spine all the way to my tail, I put most of the pages back into secure storage, retaining only those that I hadn't yet been able to puzzle out.

And so, that evening, as I flipped through papers describing unspeakable-to-pony horrors (which were really rather mild, compared to some of what humanity had come up with) under the moonlight, occasionally poking at what might be an ancient artifact of powerful magic, with a horde of doctors and nurses outside my closed door to keep me in and everyone else out...

... the CMCs helped a giggling Cheerilee in through my window. And, wonder of wonders, the trio closed the blinds, and went away, though Scootaloo nearly had to be dragged by the other two. (I tried not to imagine what sort of cutie mark she might acquire if she did stay.)

I didn't accomplish any further paperwork that night. Though I suppose you could say some research was done.






(Author's note: Have toothache. Seen dentist, getting root-canal Monday. Might have influenced chapter.)