Magic and Yarn
Princess Fuzzy liked to believe she was a reliable and dependable plushie, ready to face any nightmare or monster that threatened her ward. Now, she found herself shaking with worry, or perhaps fear, of the surge that had thrown her off the bench and to the floor. A floor that was feeling more uncomfortable with every passing second.
Inhale. Exhale.
“Princess! Princess Celestia! Are you okay? Is any pony injured?” A cadre of ponies thundered into the auditorium, their hooves beating out crashing echos and making Princess Fuzzy’s ears flicked back from the raw sound. ‘What…’
“Captain Brass, good," Celestia replied, "Fetch a stretcher for Miss Sparkle here and have her taken to the medical wing right away. No! No magic, we don’t know what it might do to her in that condition. I shall follow with her parents; have some pony bring the professors.”
"Yes, Princess!" the Captain's deep voice rang out. "Sparks, Pinpoint. With me." Steel shoes clattered on timber as ponies rushed to obey.
Fuzzy stared at her foreleg with faint horror as it slowly slid along the floor to touch it’s partner. New sensations and feelings kept hammering into her without pause.
“Princ...Cele-” the weak voice, a familiar voice, Twilight, muttered before the sounds of armored hooves on wooden flooring drowned it out.
‘Twilight!’ A stuttering breath as a wet tongue lashing the back of teeth- her teeth. Jaw muscles tensing and releasing. Speech tumbled forward, sloppy and weird but hers. “Twaa..”
“You're safe, Twilight. Just relax and rest." The Princess tried to comfort the moaning filly as she was carried away.
Shining's familiar voice could be heard from the doorway. “Twilight! Let me go, Cadance, I need to make sure she’s okay!”
“Auntie has it under control, you lump. Let the Guard do their thing and we’ll follow them to the medical wing.”
‘Shiny! I-I feel.. I feel! Please, help me.’ Fuzzy wanted to call out but a shock of fear, of the stomping hooves and unknown ponies stole her voice.
The minutes passed as hooves thundered from the room, the sounds of grunts and muffled words as guard ponies gathered the professors and Twilight’s parents away on stretchers, leaving it oddly silent aside from the soft gasps of a once-plushie.
Princess Fuzzy lifted her hoof, staring as she curled and flexed it, taking a deep breath, using Twilight’s calming technique to try and push down the worry bubbling inside. The sensation of a faint breeze coming from the holes in the room causing a shiver to run down her body, in turn causing the knot of worry inside her to twist. Smells she had never noticed before filled her nose and Fuzzy shook her head to try and focus.
“Deep... breaths… Hah.” No foal to give her voice. “Twilight.” Thoughts and feelings bubbled up inside her, things she had no name for, all revolving around the unicorn.
With her closest friend in mind, the platinum doll cautiously pushed herself up, leaning against a bench to steady herself after the first attempt had her face planting into the floor.
‘...I can feel- this isn’t right...No. Focus. Get u-’ A spike of raw, sharp pain in her hind leg left her gasping for breath, her body stumbling, almost tipping over like a foal before she could find her balance.
‘Something is very wrong!’ The insistent thought was pushed back again.
Princess Fuzzy, the platinum coated plushie looked around for a moment, taking in the feeling of standing on her own with a feeling of... pride? fear?
No strings or spells. No foal or parent holding her.
"F-find Twilight. Nothing else m-matters." she told herself, gritting her new teeth to try and silence the whimpers, then tenderly put one hoof in front of the other, new instincts sliding into place, each step smoother than the last but no less awkward as she limped along, the whispers of panic rising in the back of her mind.
With a last glance at the now empty room, she turned to the open door and began her trek.
- - - - -
The medical wing for Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorn's was fortunate enough that a foresightful builder had allowed for a trio of private rooms, each with a bed and a pair of visitor's chairs. Shining Armor hadn't even noticed the Princess as he sat by his sister's side, Cadance stealing the other chair with a look to Celestia as the pair waited for news.
“How is she, Doctor Humbug?” Princess Celestia gazed down at the sleeping pony on the bed for a long moment before glancing at the grey stallion who was muttering to himself and scribbling notes into a file. A nurse was carefully applying a gel to the filly’s horn, the sharp smell of the medicine mixing with the scent of burnt mane.
“She is fortunate." Doctor Humbug replied, "Judging by the ‘in depth’ examination I have taken in the last five minutes since you, and her brother, all but demanded I give you answers, she is sleeping off the effects of magical exhaustion.” His unconcealed bite earned a look from the Princess. “Still, a stage four magic depletion-”
“Stage four?” Shining Armor cut him off, “But the guard training only ever mentioned up to stage three. Why is there a stage four?” His worry was clear, only Cadance’ hoof on his back keeping him seated next to the bed.
Doctor Humbug sniffed. “Because, junior guard training doesn’t cover it unless you plan on taking medical training. Something I’ve brought up with the Captain before. In this case, she pushed too much magic through her body, which tried to shut down to protect her but something kept the flow open- likely the surge itself, though it was exacerbated by the flare that ended the surge. Thus the burns and stress fractures.”
“A-and my parents?” Shining asked, leaning into his friend’s calming touch as the pink alicorn spoke.
“They did catch the full brunt of the same magic that hammered my shield spell." Cadance rubbed at her horn, already coated with a healing goop.
“Oh, they’ll be fine. Probably won’t even remember it. Pony minds tend to block out abrupt transfiguration and they weren’t changed for long enough to cause other symptoms to crop up. I’ll have nurse Silver Mark wake them shortly.” Doctor Humbug then turned and pointed a hoof at Princess Celestia. “What you did, however, was plain stupid.”
“Excuse me?” It had been some time since a pony had spoken to her in such a tone as the towering alicorn stared down at the unicorn doctor.
Humbug’s blue eyes held all the warmth and care of an icicle as he met his princess’ gaze. “Ending a magic surge of this type by forcibly overpowering the immature spell matrix can result in magical feedback. Bleed-through runs the risk of stressing already overtaxed pathways past the point of recovery. You could very well have got it wrong and torn apart her ability to ever use magic.
“I knew what I was doing, I have been practising magic for quite some time, Doctor.” The mild rebuke was obvious.
“Yes, general magic. Not healing, not like this. Forty years of learning and I still..." Humbug trailed off, eyes distant for a moment, "There are some things, Princess, that you can never have enough practice for. This time, you were lucky. Any bleed-through was minimal.” He shook his head and scowled.
The alicorn bowed her head. "You are correct. I will remember for the future.” Celestia’s eyes moved to the other patient who was curled up in a large basket, snoring softly.
‘A dragon hatchling...from an imitation egg...is she? I’ve been- no, don’t get your hopes up, Celly. Let her grow.’
Cadance, looked between the pair and tried to ease the tension in the room, cutting in with a question of her own. “I didn’t expect the School to have a medical wing of its own, at least not one this large.”
Doctor Humbug huffed in reply, “You can thank nobles with more bits than brains for that after some little class challenge got out of control, ended up burning the original north wing to the ground. The pop up stand of a medical room they had lacked enough of everything so a few ‘noble’ children were left with crippling burns and one lost her horn. Medicine was not so advanced eight hundred years ago."
"They were difficult times." Princess Celestia looked up with a sorrowful look at a memory. “I would have done something had I not been sorting out a border issue with the griffons.”
The doctor chuckled unpleasantly. “How very polite of you, Princess, to refer to the Three Day War like that. Regardless,” He turned back to the pink alicorn, “funding to the School increased and the medical wing was added when they rebuilt. It might not be Canterlot Royal Hospital but we do our best.”
"It's very impressive. I did see quite a few non-unicorn students though." Cadance replied honestly.
"My School has grown so much since Star Swirl's time." The Princess' voice was soft. "Grown past what we envisioned, to teach more than just one tribe about more than just magic. Oh, but I could not let go of the name."
Shining Armor moved to the bedside and held one of his sister’s hooves. “She’s really going to be okay?” His eyes took in the goop covering her horn, the shortened mane with charred ends and the barely noticeable burns in her fur. The real eye catcher was the bright mark on her flank.
The grey stallion's horn lit up briefly, green symbols floating over the sleeping filly. “If the exhaustion is the only problem, then a few days of good rest at her age will see her back on her hooves, but I would say no magic for two weeks, and a course of treatments, to give her horn time to heal. A check up then will give me more to work with than I had now.”
Turning to the Princess, Doctor Humbug gave a short bow. "If there is nothing else, I have other ponies to check on." At her nod, he made for the door. "I'll have the nurse wake the parents."
Cadance watched the stallion leave before leaning against her friend. “Twilight will love it here. Her and..oh, oh dear." The pink alicorn looked around the room.
"Cadance?" The Princess' voice was curious. Celestia had heard a few stories about Evening Star's creations but had never seen one that caused such a reaction.
"Fuzzy, Twilight's doll, isn't here. She's something of an heirloom and a little weird but she's really important to Twilight. In all the rush I left her in the classroom."
"I see." Celestia murmured in amusement.
Shining missed the twitch of an ear but not the slight tug. "Twilly?"
The filly in question chose that moment to sneeze and stir, curling her hoof around her brother’s. "Fuz..."
"I'll be right back! She needs to be here." Cadance tried not to feel slightly silly as Princess Celestia watched her leave to retrieve a doll.
Twilight's eyes slowly crept open, looking up at the two white blurs above her, “Wh-what happened? Did I pass?”
- - - - -
Princess Fuzzy dearly wished she were home or at Twilight’s side as she braved the unknown, like the explorers from the bed time stories as the ache in her leg grew worse. Escaping the exam room had been trial enough but the hallway had revealed a new obstacle in the form of polished tiles that sent her sprawling painfully at the slightest misstep.
After discovering just how sensitive to impact her nose was for the third time, she resorted to walking along the side of the corridor for balance, making rest stops easy, stops that were needed more often as she limped along. The effort was draining in a way she didn't understand, a hollowness inside that sapped her as she pushed herself onward.
‘My leg is sore... plushies don’t feel pain..what am- no! No, focus!’
The end of the corridor opened into a small atrium, but the space before her, with so many other hallways and doors to choose from, made deciding where to go next a daunting prospect.
‘Something is wrong... it hurts. I don't understand..I'm-’
"Twil...Twilight.."
The ache in her hind leg had grown and the others kept shaking when she wasn’t paying attention. Slumping against a potted plant, the platinum pony looked for something- anything- to give an inkling on where her Twilight had been taken. An investigation revealed labels in some places but the letter and number combinations didn’t mean anything to Fuzzy and she could feel the unpleasant knot inside her middle twist as she took deep breaths.
“No sunlight...no moss...no glyph or map..I..” She trailed off. What was ‘A1-4 East Wing’ meant to mean?
Nothing she’d listened to or read with Twilight seemed to help- there was no map or ancient table to refer to and the wrongness wasn’t going away, nor was the hollow feeling inside her chest.
‘Twilight, what do I do? I'm...I'm scared.’ Glass eyes blurred and Princess Fuzzy couldn't hold in the sniffling. Trying to push back up to her hooves was too awkward, slipping and hurting too much.
"Don't think- just...just move!" The once plushie dragged herself forward on her forelegs as far as she could bear to, until numb and shaking, she curled up where she was.
I'm sorry Twilight, I'm not- I can't.." The wall holding everything in crumbled and Princess Fuzzy couldn't stop the sobs bubbling up.
She felt so very small and alone.
- - - - -