I spot a faint glow, reflecting off one of the metal tables. It’s gold-colored, from around her forehead; that isn’t visible from my position. The nurse gasps as it brightens, drawing the doctor’s attention. He canters back up to the bed, just in time for the glow to amplify itself enormously.
The entire bed is shrouded in blinding golden light for a few seconds. The doctor and nurse are both caught in the edges, and thrown rather violently away from the bed, just like all of their supplies that were caught close.
Just like some fragments of an oxygen mask, an IV stand with a severed hose, several shredded bandages, and a whole lot of feathers in varying states of disrepair, probably from the pillow.
Oh- there’s also the mattress fluff, and bits of the sheets.
Then the light goes down, and disappears.
Nopony moves as she drops slightly onto the bed spring, which seems to have survived intact. Might help it’s made of metal, flexible, and all in the same general direction from the blast.
She’s completely free of any bandages, deformities, or visible injuries.
Then she moves. It starts as a twitch, then she rolls over, and attempts to rise to her hooves. One of them falls through the mesh of the spring, though, so she stops, pulls it out, looks at the edge… and simply rolls off the bed.
Once off the bed, she lands on her back, rolls upright, stands up, and looks around.
She looks first at the nurse, then at the doctor. As she turns, she seems to notice us- and turns to look at us as well. Her expression is of confused unrecognition, as I might have expected, as her gaze passes over the medic.
Then she locks eyes with me.
Unlike the other three, she doesn’t move on. Nothing happens for about half a second- then she charges forwards.
I might have dodged. I probably would have dodged, had her expression not glued me in place.
She recognized me.
She’s happy to see me.
She slams into me with a crushing hug, opening her mouth to say something.
She’s interrupted by my pained exclamation. I think she reinjured my rib.
Which isn’t too hard. It was a standard bone repair spell; I should have been on bed rest for two days, then light duty for four. In reality, it’s been about eight hours, and I most certainly have not been resting.
She gasps, releasing her impossible hold. She might even have injured another rib- which my earth pony magic should have made impossible. “You okay?”
“No, it’s- it’s fine. Just a reinjury.”
“‘Just’ a broken rib.” It’s the doctor. “I can patch that up in about a minute.”
She looks back at me. “What’s he saying?”
“Do you not understand what we’re saying?” I ask her.
“Kinda. I understand you just fine, but not him.”
“We’re speaking the same language.”
“That’s… strange.”
“Wait.” It’s the medic. “You can understand her?”
I look up at him. “Yes?”
“But she’s… it’s gibberish.”
I tilt my head, turn back to her. Use Griffish, rather than Equestrian. “Do you understand this?”
“Yes. What’s the difference?”
Prench. “It’s a different language.”
“All sounds the same to me.”
I look up; back to Equestrian. “And nopony else understands her?”
Everypony shakes their head.
“Must be a two-way translation spell of some sort, then. No clue when- or why- it was activated, though.”
“What’s a spell?”
“It’s a method by which a unicorn can use magic.”
“Unicorns can use magic?”
“Yes. Haven’t you used magic?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“You… don’t know.”
“I… I remember being excited about something. Running for Experience. I remember the path I was taking.
“I remember being attacked. I remember thinking I would lose you.” She resumes her hug, much gentler. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
“You weren’t worried about yourself?”
“No. I remember… I remember knowing I’m immortal.”
“Wh… what?”
“I remember knowing I’m immortal. That if ever I’m killed, I’ll just… regenerate. I remember knowing it’s happened before. I…
“I remember knowing what I have to do to… remember.
“I don’t remember what that is. Only that it’s related to Experience.” She says it like it’s a tangible object.
“Related to… Experience.”
“Yes. I remember where Experience is. I remember I was getting it for you.
“I remember knowing I would lose my memories. I remember knowing I would forget how to talk, how to understand the spoken word.
“I remember knowing you would understand me anyways. That I would understand you anyways.
“But that’s… that’s all I remember.”
I look up at the medic. “We need to go back to the island.”
He sighs. “You know how hard that’s going to be.”
My ears go flat. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
“We can’t go?” she asks.
“We can’t go,” I confirm.
“Maybe I can learn what I can here, go later.”
“Even though that’ll make a lot of redundant memories?”
“I’m immortal. Even if it takes a hundred years to get there, and I go through it a hundred times, it’s but a moment in my life.
“But it would be ten thousand years of good memories to look back on.”
“That… That is true.”
I look up, in equal parts at the medic and the doctor. “Can… Can we get insertion into a local foster home, then?”
“Might be difficult,” the doctor states. “You’d have to live in the orphanage for probably at least a few days, before somepony might consider adoption- and with your resources, convincing your chosen parents to adopt shouldn’t be a problem at all. Even if you two go as a package deal- which I would recommend.”
“What’s he saying?”
“That it’ll be a long and annoying process, but we can.”
“What’s a foster home?”
“Uh… a new home, since neither of us have a parent’s home to return to.”
“Ahh.”
“She asking what a foster home is?” It’s the doctor.
“Yes.”
“Ahh. I’m looking forward to seeing how she does in Magic Kindergarten.”
I look at the remains of the bed. “Yeah… me too. Me too.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to get her back to the island?” the nurse asks, finally separating herself from the neighboring bed. Not Redheart, she’s still standing unmoving behind us.
“Yes. It seems there’s something she can do there that will restore her memories.”
“Uh… and with that stamp…?”
“That stamp is for emergency use only. Anything else has to be either pre-approved… or out of my own resources. They’ll never approve a trip right back the way we came, and I don’t begin to have the resources to go back to the coast on my own- let alone with company.”
“What about your company?”
“He’s a medic. They’ll approve his travel anywhere in a heartbeat, but not with nonmedical company. Like me. Or her.” I return her hug, gentling my right foreleg; I can feel the repaired bone trying to give way.
Going to the orphanage is exactly as confusing as I expected it to be.
It’s not that the staff are unreceptive, despite being late at night. After the medic reinstigated that healing spell- unfortunately, I couldn’t justify using my stamp to cover my own medical expenses, so asking Doctor Horse to do it was out of the question, no matter how disappointed he was when I explained it- we had gone to the orphanage. This time, the medic played the part of a bystander that rescued us from a monster attack, in which our parents were killed.
He presented us as relatives; stepsisters, to be exact. He explained of some strange translation magic her mom had cast as he was arriving, allowing the two fillies to understand each other- but that the same thing didn’t seem to work for anypony else… and that, since he doesn’t know what language she’s speaking, he can’t cast a useful translation spell.
Heh. Handy that, with translation spells, the caster has to know both the languages involved.
And, since all Agents are trained in every known language… Well, there’s only one reason he wouldn’t understand her: She’s speaking an unknown language… or legitimate gibberish that I’m somehow understanding as…
Come to think if it, it’s hard to put a hoof on exactly what language it sounds like she’s speaking. It sounds like all of them… yet none of them, at the same time. And I simply never notice when she speaks, because it sounds normal. Unless I’m thinking about it, she sounds exactly like she did at the island- where she spoke, without a doubt, plain Equestrian.
In any case, the issue actually came that it’s bedtime for all the fillies and colts in the orphanage right now. The already overworked staff is caught between battling to get the excited children to bed and handling the paperwork to get us settled in.
That alone would have made it long and tiring. All those other colts and fillies really want to meet us tonight, and won’t stop running right back out to try to do so.
I’m shooing the same pair of excited fillies back to bed for the eighteenth time- and they’re only one of many sets- when I realize they’re winning. I haven’t been keeping them away from her, so there’s quite the crowd vying for her attention. I sigh, and fill my lungs to order them to bed- before I pause.
The most recent winner for her attention has given her a cello… and to be honest, I’m curious. She’s assumed the appropriate playing stance.
She places the bow against the strings.
The crowd ooohs. One of the staff members opens her mouth to speak.
Then she starts moving it. She changes notes, and keeps going.
She’s playing a song.
She… she makes a great musician.
She stops after a couple bars, glancing at the surrounding fillies. She’s met by a chorus of “Aaaw!” and lowered ears.
She smiles, then glances up at me, and winks.
I raise one eyebrow.
“That was nice,” one of the staff members begins. He doesn’t get to finish.
She put the bow to the instrument again, joining it with her voice. Not words, just…
Music.
It’s… it’s…
I awaken quickly, with a sharp breath. Then…
She lowers her hoof from my shoulder, smiling. “It worked,” she states simply. She looks back the other way. “They’re all asleep.” Then she glances behind me. “So are the… uh, grownups.”
I nod. “Ahh… you have an amazing voice.”
She smiles. “Thanks. I… I thought I could help.”
“You’re welcome- and thank you. Now we just need to wake the staff back up.”
She chuckles. “I wish I knew how to limit the effect to the target audience.”
“Wish you knew how? Pretty sure it’s impossible.”
“That which is impossible today is merely a stepping stone on our path to the future.”
“You sure about that?”
“Can you imagine how boring it would be to not invent a directional instrument in umpteen bazillion years?”
“... Right. Probably don’t want to tell them about that.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I won’t. They don’t have a clue what I’m saying, remember?”
“Most of them, at least. Neither of us did anything special for me to understand you- and neither of us understand how it works, right now at least. It’s at least theoretically possible we’ll run into somepony else that can also understand.”
“True.”
It’s then a fairly simple matter of awakening the staff, and letting them carry the sleeping colts and fillies up into their rooms.
That finished, we were able to work on our paperwork and get everything processed.
Of course, there’s only one problem.
She, well…
“I don’t remember my name.”
“You… don’t remember.”
“I know I have one, but I don’t remember it.”
She doesn’t remember her name.
We communicated the problem to the staff, told them of her amnesia. Told her it’s known to be temporary.
So she’s in the system simply as my sister, no name. She won’t understand a word they say, nor vice versa, so it’ll work. For now, at least.
So, with that finally over with, we settle in. No luggage or anything for either of us, just a shared room. I asked her- in Germane, so they wouldn’t understand- if that was okay; she said she didn’t see why it wouldn’t be.
So, we go to bed.
… It’s not nearly as comfortable as that bed under the island.
But she offered, and I couldn’t resist, so we’re both in the same bed.
It… It makes up for it. Don’t ask how, because I don’t know, but she makes up for it, somehow.
… makes me wonder what it would be like if the bed was like the ones under the island.
Probably… It’d probably feel like I was sleeping with a goddess.
Which isn’t that far off even now, come to think of it; if she’s right, and she actually is immortal, she’s one of select few to be able to claim that. There are only two other ponies in Equestria to be immortal- well, three, if you count the one that isn’t in Equestria.
Princesses Celestia and Cadence, plus to my understanding, Nightmare Moon is the corrupted form of Celestia’s sister princess.
I’m not looking forward to that; we have yet to find the Elements of Harmony- despite searching the Everfree and their last rumored location, the Castle of the Two Sisters, many times.
That’s perhaps the biggest reason we’re investigating that island, trying to find out what happened- especially if it’s repeatable. Without the Elements, we may have to resort to a weapon of that scale to subdue the Nightmare long enough for Celestia to cast her carefully crafted cleansing spell.
And hope it works.
She snuggles closer, already asleep, digging her head into my neck and chest. Her horn is, blessedly, not between us; she’s instinctively turned her head just far enough that it’s lying against the side of my neck instead.
I smile, hug her back, and fall asleep.