What did you do after your life had been shattered?
Fleur knew the answer: after all, she'd managed it twice now. You stood among the debris of what had once been your existence and tried to make a plan. Anything which would allow you to go forward. And as long as you were among the debris, you might... try to look for something you could take with you. Reminders of what had once been -- even if the majority of what you were going to be carrying were the lessons.
Your life had been shattered, but you remained. You assessed the situation and while you were doing that, you tried to remember that there was still a 'you' which could perform an assessment: under that criteria, you hadn't completely lost. That had been one of the earliest lessons: perhaps even the most crucial.
You tried to find a means of going on. That was the obligation for those who still trotted under Sun and Moon.
As long as you survived, there was still something left of the teacher.
She'd done it twice. She knew how it was supposed to happen. In Blueblood's case, she suspected his first and only move would be to forget.
It was something which might take more effort than usual, with quite a bit added to the typical overall range: not just temporal, but physical distance. It potentially wouldn't be enough to just dismiss the events of the day, or the existence of the audience which had watched a terrified stallion trade off bladder control for what hadn't had the chance to become a little extra speed. Fleur felt it was possible that Blueblood would need to forget Ponyville. A stallion who didn't use trains (because renting out a private car was possible, but then you had to deal with the fact that all of the others were still attached) wouldn't find any need to wonder where that one track was heading. But his residence was somewhat more elevated on the mountain than the majority (because of course it was), and there were windows. All of the ones facing west were potentially facing death by stoning, or at least from being paved over.
Give it a few days, and there would have been no humiliation at all: that was what Fleur felt he would tell himself. Fluttershy? Who was that? At the most, he'd taken a day trip to see what everypony else was so curious about, and a single glimpse of the actual subject had led him to reject her. Or there had been no travel, because there were certainly no pictures. (She was almost certain there were no pictures -- but she hadn't really been checking for cameras.) No gossip column entry, no evidence, no witnesses who should ever be believed, no proof at all, and if it turned out there was some of that, then it had been faked. He'd never gone and so another stallion had been through it all. He was important, after all. Trying to embarrass him would surely benefit somepony. And hadn't one of the servants told him about something called 'changelings'?
Let him reach home and he would begin the process of internally changing events, adding and dismissing facts at need. (The latter category would include the inconvenient datum of changeling illusions not showing up on film.) Eventually, he would decide that nothing had happened. Nothing which the superior stallion needed to recall.
And that was why he never changed. You could only truly escape the debris field if you took the lessons along, and that would have meant acknowledging that there was something he needed to learn.
She could almost envy the selective nature of his memory, and that unmatched ability to edit his own life. But to dismiss the lessons...
If you're still alive, then you won.
You can't control everything, but it's fun to watch you try.
Always be ready to react.
Whatever the world gives you, find a way to use it.
Take your pain and --
She looked at the supposed noble, who had just stepped into the shadow cast by his own teetering possessions. It was something he might not have really noticed, at least visually: he'd been moving with his head down for most of the way back to the overburdened cart. But Sun was blocked from his fur now, and it was a chill day. Pretty, but... cold.
Fleur had followed him back, as had Fluttershy and Caramel, who were flanking her again, keeping the pace -- and, at the unicorn's best estimate, nearly all of the trailing crowd. A few members of the audience had things to do at this hour: ponies had peeled away from the herd as their own lives dictated. Snowflake was still at the cottage, because somepony had to manage affairs until its mistress returned. All of Fluttershy's animal charges had remained on the grounds. But the vast majority of ponies had come along, because it was all just a show. Those who watched could never be hurt, there seemed to be some chance for a bonus scene stuck into the credits and besides, with this stallion, it was best to make sure he was actually gone.
Blueblood stopped, with his body fully within the darkness created by the teetering spire of his life: about three body lengths away from the actual cart. Fleur's guess was that his lowered gaze had just caught sight of a wheel. Or something about the shifting nature of that shadow had told him to freeze, evaluate and then pick a direction in which to run. There were servants gathered nearby -- but there weren't as many of them as there had been at arrival, and some of those who remained still looked tired. Wings flared, coronas pushed, all trying to keep the mass stable, and it would be hours going back...
Fleur automatically checked the spire, figured out where she and Fluttershy were relative to any potential collapse, then saw a bulge of poorly-stacked furniture being birthed from one side and tried to see where that one shoddy servant was standing. He had the strongest field in the group: a touch of attention from him would postpone the inevitable for a few more minutes.
...where is he? That's not exactly a stallion who's hard to miss. Darkly, Unless you're holding a grooming brush, and then he can obviously dodge forever.
It didn't matter. Three weary unicorns were already pushing against that spot with their fields, and that was three out of a smaller number than before. The book-carrying stallion's absence had a ready explanation, something shared with the other fresh gaps in the retinue. When it came to Blueblood, servants quit all the time.
But the noble was just... standing there. Frozen in the cold, and she didn't think the wet portions of the cloak had fully solidified.
To Fleur, the establishment of dominance felt as if it needed one last push.
"You said we met you with a comedy routine," Fleur pleasantly stated. "I think that's a good way to look at the day. I've been told that Ponyville's just inspiringly comedic." She briefly paused, and an elegantly-hooficured left foreleg momentarily pushed at browning grass. "I'm still not sure about 'quaint'. But when it comes to comedy..."
He didn't move, he didn't talk, and the servants were staring at those twinned conditions now: you only had to be near him for a few minutes to know that silence wasn't his natural state.
Somewhere behind Fleur, the whir of wings broke the silence: large ones. A pegasus heading for home.
I humiliated him.
Not that it matters. Not that he'll remember.
Why care about something which, as far as he's concerned, never happened at all?
"...Ponyville provides," she continued. "And so did you. But before you crossed our border, Fluttershy and I were going to do something today. Which might need to be stretched into tomorrow, if we wind up having to go into the capital. But we can start here. It's just bed shopping. Because in time, there will be a suitor of quality."
I decide.
"And so there has to be a new bed," Fleur calmly finished. "One which can be meant for sharing with a tall pony, or a stout one. Somepony small. A pony from any of the three Equestrian species, and maybe a crystal will make the trip. That bed has to be soft, yet firm. Supportive. Cool when it has to be, warmed by those sheltering under the blankets. There's a lot of requirements for a good bed, Vlad. The most important is never having you in it. Farewell, Prince Blueblood. Don't come back."
The elegant head lifted. Legs began to shift within the shadow. Slowly, the perfect body turned, until darkened eyes stared at them all.
"I came to see what everypony in the capital had told themselves was so interesting," the unicorn stallion slowly began.
The audience listened. They owed the male lead that much, as repayment for their mirth.
"It says something about their collective taste, I think."
Which was when Fleur realized what was about to happen. Because he couldn't forge his pain, not truly. He had yet to dismiss the day, was bleeding pride from multiple open wounds, and the only thing he could create was a sort of liquid lash. Using words as a whip against the world, pretending he could take away some of his own agony through inflicting it on others.
She thought she knew what he would say. The damage he was trying to do, and for both topic and target, she was right.
"Or the total lack of it," he spat as forehooves twisted, ground against the soil. "That somehow, everypony has chosen to desire a mare who has to constantly keep half of her face covered, in order to keep the whole of it from scaring Sun across the horizon! A pegasus whose wings are practically on the verge of falling from her body, with all the aerodynamics of a landslide --"
-- she's cowering, I can feel it, she's trying to make herself smaller, her mane will be slipping forward to cover more of her face, the herd is getting angry, I can hear the mutters, I can just about smell the rage starting to rise and he doesn't care, she's listening to him because anypony who says something negative about her looks is the one who's right --
"-- and that tail!" The snort burst into the grass, reflected from the ground and nearly destabilized the spire on its own. "What is it they say, about mares who somehow manage to trot about while dragging such a parody? Oh, yes -- that the blood supply required to keep it flowing is fully diverted from the brain. Something which makes them stupid, all of them stupid, stupid enough not to understand that possessing any respect for public decency and standards would have seen it docked! A mare of no quality, of no beauty, a mare with nothing, who comes from nothing, who is nothing --"
It was, all things considered, an oddly calm thought.
I'm going to kill him.
The witnesses don't matter. I can hear the mutters, and the hole where that Tartarus-freed vet's voice should be. The town protects the Bearers, it protects all of them, they see her as the youngest and most vulnerable, I can hear the mood of the herd, I can scent it and she's shrinking into herself, she's shrinking and
"-- living within shit, arising from droppings -- "
at this point, it's really just a matter of who gets to him first.
Someone did.
There was a whir of wings. Smaller ones, heading directly for the stallion, because there was somepony who hadn't been met yet and you just never knew where a treat might come from --
"-- and I'm sick of all these stupid animals!"
The stallion within the shadow jumped, just enough.
There was a sound. It could be described as the sort of noise which stopped all other sounds, except that the mutters of rising rage hadn't truly been cancelled. The majority of the herd had simply shifted into the sort of scream which was too loud to be heard, and the greatest burst of that silence came from Fleur's right. But there was a voice, after the initial shock faded. It came from a single mare, it contained no words, and the scream felt as if it might never end.
There was a sound, and it was created by an unbreakable horn being slammed by a twisting head into fragile avian bones. Of redirected momentum sending a broken body back to Sun, where it fell into the browning grass. Browning and, upon first contact with the wounds, wet and red.
Then there was another sound. Much larger wings (and slightly oversized for their owner) flaring out, one tip harshly scraped against Fleur's side, a tremendous downblast of wind scattered loose soil and the pegasus sped forward, moving at a speed the unicorn had never seen from her charge, her charge was charging and there was just enough time to see that the coral mane had been flipped back, both eyes were exposed and focused and staring at a stallion who should have moved, who was looking directly into those eyes and couldn't move --
-- the yellow body flipped. Twisted in midair, flew upside-down for a fraction of a second before reorienting, the hind hooves coming in first --
-- the pegasus was many things. For starters, she was considerably stronger than she looked.
She came in low, she blasted up into his sternum and he was knocked off his hooves, removed from the soil which would never welcome him, his body rising as it moved backwards. It cleared the height of the cart's base and from there, he just didn't have any more open space to cross.
His back hit the misassembled jigsaw of the spire. Kinetic energy redirected, sent vibrations rushing outwards from the impact point, and he rebounded.
The pegasus had already veered off from the impact point, getting back into Sun and curving around because she didn't care about him. She never had. There was something more important, and she needed to reach it. But he tumbled back down, rolled, cloak torn with fur stained by dirt and darkness, there was a moment when he was trying to get up and then there was a rumble.
Everypony looked up. Everypony, even the escort's charge, although hers was the barest glance. It was the sort of rumble which demanded attention: the sound of physics which had been denied for too long, of gravity finally deciding to pay attention, and it was also the noise created when you put a Marble Whispers sculpture into a place where the genius geometries didn't have enough support to prop up the weight of the actual stone.
Three servant coronas briefly stabbed at the vibrating, leaning mass, because pay vouchers had to be signed by somepony. But they weren't enough. They never could have been. Every unicorn field in the herd might not have been enough to do it, and the shoddy stallion... wasn't there.
Blueblood, on belly and barrel in the cold dirt, automatically tried to look up towards the rumble. He couldn't quite see the source, because it was behind him. A momentary glimpse of his expression suggested that he had no idea how the noise had been produced, but he'd already decided it wasn't his fault in any way.
He couldn't quite see the source.
The collapsing spire rather considerately came to him.
The base had the least distance to go. The topmost portion took its relative time about reaching the ground, giving the herd time to split out of the way. Splinters, bits of painted canvas, and at least a thousand bale-weights of fragments in future search of glue spread into the gap.
And then it would have been over, except it wasn't. Because you could just barely hear a stallion's moans, somewhere under all of it -- but nopony was really paying attention to that. There was pain writhing in the grass, green and gold feathers losing hue to saturating red, and the scent of blood was spreading, the bloodscent could break a herd and Bluestocking was screaming and screaming, the sort of scream Fleur knew because it was the scream which came when words ran out. When all you had left was prayer, and so it was the scream which taught you that there would never be an answer.
Except that this time, there was an answer.
Fluttershy had curved around, was just starting to land, closing the last portion of distance to the broken little body because that was what pain and mark demanded, the herd hadn't chosen a direction but the most natural instinct would be to break, there were at most five seconds before the massmind picked its path and --
Whatever the world gives you, use it.
She hadn't wanted this.
She never would have chosen it.
She'd humiliated him and he'd struck out, the fireworks had gone off-course, it wasn't her fault --
-- but she used it.
Nopony ever saw her horn ignite, because she could hide her field, work with an invisible corona for a few precious seconds. Perhaps some of the stronger talents in the herd would have felt it happen, but -- they were distracted. Screaming did that, along with the sound
the clacking
from the grass. And she could manage her own weight, which meant that for those few vital heartbeats, the seconds they might not have to spare, potentially the last moments if there was nothing to be done, she managed that of her charge.
She couldn't keep it up for long: not with a hidden field which kept trying to twist back towards Fleur, her own magic fighting her as Fluttershy strained against the energies which were holding the pegasus back. The unicorn could feel the physical strength of her charge and between that sudden, incomprehensible power and the effort needed to keep her own efforts invisible, make the results look plausible, she only had seconds, possibly the last seconds and if they had been the vital ones, it
it's not my
still had to be done.
It was the only chance.
Fleur called out at the same moment she turned to face the herd, and it broke through the scream. It was the first voice, it spoke with authority and control, and it gave them direction. The massmind recognized its new leader, took the cue, held its ground. But her call had been more than that.
It was a single word expressed as prayer, while knowing there would be no true answer.
"SWEETBARK!"
The herd, which had already parted to save itself from the spire, located the internal resource and split a little more. It left Fleur looking at yellow-brown fur (and not the best shade of it) over ribs which were heaving in and out. A wrapped tail, twitching. Brown eyes which were no longer bright.
"Thank Sun!" Fleur gasped (and the gasp was real enough, she couldn't hold Fluttershy back much longer, she could feel the effort and her field was about to push into her own fur, her horn felt as if it was being pressed backwards into her skull). "The perfect vet with the perfect mark, the one who's never lost a patient! We need you now! Kori needs you!"
The mare's pupils dilated, to where it was barely possible to find the brown at all. There was sweat forming in the visible portions of her coat, fast enough to saturate the strands, and then a whitish foam rose from fur. A little of that slid away into thirsty soil, and it was the only fresh aspect of the mare which had moved.
The herd knew Sweetbark. It didn't understand...
"Help her!"
Perhaps the words had been Fleur's: she'd meant to say them, but couldn't be sure they'd actually emerged through the rising pain. They could have been Bluestocking's, or they might have emerged from the entire herd at once. All that could be truly said was that the words existed, and they blasted through Sweetbark's flattened ears.
"I..."
It was barely a whisper, and it was the only thing anypony could hear.
Sweetbark's head tossed, went back as the mare reared up on her hind legs. The wrapped tail tried to tuck itself out of sight, and found itself with nowhere to go as those limbs twisted against the earth.
The herd had parted. It had given her a clear path. She used it.
She galloped. Moved forward, cleared the group, went past Fleur by the width of a few tail strands and vaulted the broken bird, rushed by Fluttershy before a single mighty leap cleared the spread-out debris of the spire, earth pony strength pushing towards the horizon as the herd could do no more than stare, the massmind twisting in confusion because they thought they'd known their vet and --
-- sounds and sights go into ears and eyes.
They're thinking about what it all means.
And whenever they see you, they'll remember.
That's how learning works --
-- the pain peaked. Her field, still hidden, winked out. Her foreknees began to bend as her tail sagged --
-- I don't have time --
-- and with the field gone, her charge was moving again.
There wasn't time for Fluttershy to ask Fleur what she'd done, or why. That would be later and with Fluttershy, questions which were supposed to come later often didn't come at all.
Fleur would deal with the words if they manifested. For now, Fluttershy was closing in on the twisting, keening mass of pain, and Fleur forced her forelegs straight, turned, raced towards her charge as the stunned herd could do no more than watch.
"How bad?" the unicorn asked on the run. She had to be careful about her pace: fast enough to mean something, but still leaving her able to work around the scattered pieces of spire. She also needed to be capable of fully stopping before she reached --
"The right wing is broken," came the immediate reply: Fluttershy was already dropping down into the grass, getting close to the fallen companion. "It's the humerus, and if it's a compound fracture going into the joint -- Fleur, we have to move her now. We can't do this here, not with the lacerations. Dirt in the wounds, infection on top of everything else, plus we don't have the equipment. And it's going to take time to move her, too much time."
If the fracture goes into the joint, she could lose the wing. "She skidded when she hit," Fleur noted as she slowed, got ready to drop while her eyes moved down. "That could have done something, especially if her neck got jammed. We'll need to check her head --"
Barely any muscles around the eyes.
Fully open. Staring. Dark pools without any true thought behind them.
She doesn't understand what happened.
She can't understand anything.
Ultimate innocence.
And her beak is opening. Closing. It could be a pain reaction, or the instinct to ward off an intruder. Opening and closing over and over, the edges are hard and they make a clacking sound every time it happens, the sound keeps repeating and the worst thing in the world is hearing that sound going on and on and on and
no
the worst thing isn't hearing it
the worst thing is hearing it stop
the clacking, the mindless
"FLEUR!"
and she was in the dirt looking across the fallen body at her charge, the pegasus staring at her with two frantic eyes, and she didn't know how much time had passed and they didn't have time --
"Can you keep her level and still in your field?" Fluttershy demanded (and it was a demand, things were so bad that it had to be a demand). "Completely still? Because she's going to try and move against the pain, and that'll just make things worse. Can you keep her from doing that?"
"Can you hold her, Fleur? Are you that strong? Can you keep her completely still?"
"I..."
"Can you?"
"I don't have any other choice." Her horn ignited, and did so when she was far too close to her previous effort: the pain slammed into place behind her temples and settled in for a long stay. She ignored it.
The herd, wanting to help and not knowing how, could do no more than watch. Somewhere behind them, the bookseller sobbed.
"Okay," Fluttershy said, because it wasn't and the herd still needed the word. "We'll get her to the cottage --"
"-- we don't have time for the cottage! We're too far out! It took us more than an hour just to get back here --"
"-- there's nowhere else! We need the equipment --"
There was a rather close, yet somewhat distant sound. It made Fleur think of servants digging through debris, and it was followed by the sliding chorus of a bruised, slow-breathing body being pulled out of it via tooth grip. Presumably there were some pay vouchers which hadn't been signed yet, and fieldwriting that horrible was actually rather difficult to forge. There was something unique about the careless scribble which encouraged a signature to manifest in the reader's imagination.
Fleur's lips grimly twisted.
"I know a place."
And they were on the gallop and wing, everypony together, with escort and charge in front of the herd. The massmind moved through Ponyville's streets, with most encountered adults scrambling to get out of the way and some dropping into pace behind the group because if there was a herd forming, there had to be a reason for it and the locals had better be there to find out what it was.
Fleur was running, and she wasn't really meant for it: not for this kind of duration. Any pony who was in decent shape could put together a short-range sprint, and Fleur had to exercise in order to keep her figure intact -- but she was a unicorn. Her training had been for endurance in the bedroom, not on the gallop. Her mane was in disarray, her tail was probably coming apart, but she had to keep the pace and her only comfort was that the bulk of the herd was mostly looking at somepony else. The lead instructions always had to come from somewhere and right now, there was very clearly a mare who was in charge.
"-- Caramel, head for the library. See if you can find Twilight. If she's there, tell her what happened: if it's just Spike, have him contact her, fast. If they're both out, we can start searching. But she's the only one I know with a reliable arrival point for the cottage. If I have to send somepony for supplies, she'll be the fastest. Ask her to wait outside."
The earth pony nodded, broke left and accelerated.
"There's more than teleports," a sharp-voiced pegasus mare barked from the air. "The cottage has to be alerted either way. If you don't have the Not-Princess on call, then we're going to need your quasi-brother ready to pull stuff down and send it by air. Somepony's got to let him know!"
"Flitter --"
"-- I'm on it!" A light purple body with hints of grayish-blue dropped into a turn, banked past Fleur, coming within three body lengths of the escort's snout and giving her just enough time to question the horrible choice of hair bow. "Not like you weren't about to tell somepony to do it anyway!"
There was no exasperated head shake: there wasn't time for that. But Fleur could hear where the shift of coral hadn't been. "Okay, you and you, follow her, but don't rush quite as much: we're going to need pegasi waiting there in case something needs to come back, and you'll have to be a little more fresh -- thank you." Fluttershy, setting the airborne pace on Fleur's right, began to turn. "It's this way. Fleur, are you sure --"
"-- sufficiency clause!" Fleur managed to gasp as she forced her body to follow, straining to keep the field bubble level, close-fit, and stable. She didn't know how to create a shield: that was the requirement for truly solidifying a projection, and it meant she had to keep adjusting, feel how the bird was trying to shift and prevent every movement in turn. And there was a liquid flowing, getting tangled in the borders...
She was trying to use her field to apply pressure directly to the lacerations. Stopping the bleeding. But she couldn't solidify the projection, and she couldn't trust any cloth to be clean enough.
I still can't...
"It's not a crime if the cause is sufficient! Applies to a lot of potential charges! I could go into somepony's house if I saw them having a heart attack through the window, to get them to the hospital! Same thing!"
Fluttershy quickly nodded. "Three buildings down --"
But Fleur had already spotted the device repair shop. And close to that, the happy sign hanging above a different door, with shining glass and too-bright colors on the other side. A rainbow of paint, something which denied the existence of subtle hues.
Once you got outside the artificial restrictions of the stupid Factory, you had the chance for natural rainbows and given how rare they were, a chance was all there ever was. There were two basic requirements. Moisture, such as might be found in tears. And then you needed Sun or rather, light. The rainbow itself was light in a slightly different form, but even with Sun participating...
The interior of the building was a rainbow. Brightness without warmth.
They reached the door.
"Did she leave it open?" the pegasus asked, landing just behind Fleur. "I know she wouldn't have hours right now, but if she just left it open..."
The unicorn noticed the momentary blockade of the shielding body. Used it.
"Yes."
She casually broke in.
A true rainbow was a trick of light. (The local living version was a self-delusion of fast-flying ego.) They changed position depending on where you stood, making them impossible to truly catch. A rainbow had no substance and at the moment Fleur got them into the surgery's cabinets, the same became true of Sweetbark.
There were instruments, because instruments were expected. But the ones which were in the glass-faced cabinets shone. They had never been burnished by a desperate pony's hot breath, much less found the chance to encounter every stain which a living body's released flows could provide. And once you started opening boxes, you quickly realized that just about all of them were being opened for, at most, the second time. Temperatures were checked in this room, mouths held open, and the nail clippers undoubtedly saw some use. The majority of the remainder was just for show. Tools were displayed because tools were expected. And for those things which would never come out when the pet's companion was in the room, there was no need at all.
Without need, there wasn't presence.
"She doesn't have half of it!" Fluttershy declared, her hovering snout halfway into what, behind the front facade, had turned out to be a mostly-empty shelf. "We need more bandaging tape! And there aren't enough splints of the right size, and where's the baking soda? How does she expect to control blood flow without baking soda? Plus we need the right kind of soap --"
"-- start making a list," Fleur called out, and immediately regretted. She still had a headache, and it was getting worse. Every sound was another stab of pain,and there was sound every time the beak closed. She couldn't seem to keep her field tight around the beak. "We can send somepony to Barnyard Bargains for the baking soda." There were enough ponies clustered outside the building: they had to be good for something. "Or to their homes, if that's closer."
"Or cornstarch, we could use that," Fluttershy decided. "I don't see any styptic powder --"
"-- what?"
"It's pretty new. I was reading a journal article about it. Silver nitrate, Fleur: it stops bleeding. But you can't use it on birds most of the time, because you can't get it on their skin. Even when it's on the talons, they might groom themselves and swallow some. It's toxic when ingested. But when things are this bad -- okay, this wrap is sterile. I'll clean the wounds, and then you can use that to apply pressure."
"I'll need to release my field." Her energies were still opening and closing cabinets, which included all of the ones with inadequate locks. "I'm just about at my limit. It'll be easier to let her go for a second than trying to pass the wrap through."
Fluttershy nodded. "I'll get in position..."
They got Kori onto the examination table, with the pegasus' newly-cleaned left wing extended and ready to prevent movement. Fleur's field bubble winked out, and every drop of liquid which had been tangled along the borders fell.
When you thought about it on an absolute scale, there wasn't all that much blood: just enough to splash the table, with some of it flying into pony fur and feathers. But if you looked at it as what a cockatiel had to give, there had already been far too much.
"Sorry. I didn't think --"
"-- it had to fall somewhere." The cleaning was quick, and expertly thorough. "Start the pressure with the wrap here -- stretch it this way..." Careful head and feather movements directed the glow. "All right. Hold her again. I've got the first list: I'll go tell somepony what we need. This is going to take the cottage. I just hope Twilight's out there."
Alone with the clacking.
"I can tell somepony as well as you can --"
"-- which leaves you projecting backwards while your horn is heading outside. I need you in here, Fleur."
What state was her tail in? How wide were her eyes? Was it doing anything to the makeup in that area? Were there even any cosmetics left?
"I --"
The yellow head came up. A pair of blue-green eyes focused onto gray-tinged violet.
"I need you. We have to do this together. We have to do something --"
Something is the worst thing I can do.
There was a sound in the newly blood-christened surgery. It was something like finely-sculpted hooves scrabbling at a too-clean floor.
"-- or she's going to lose the wing, and if she loses her wing, she's going to die, Fleur. She may lose the wing no matter what we do. But Sweetbark's got a bone-glow screen, she's at least got that when I don't, so we can see what the fracture looks like. We'll do what we can. But right now, I need you. I need you to hold her still while I send for the supplies. I need you. Please..."
the mindless
the innocent
the dead
She nearly broke.
She wanted to run from the surgery. To run through the crowd before anypony could stop her, galloping until her legs collapsed, lungs gave out and the cursed circlet of metal around her right foreleg told Celestia where to pick up the corpse.
She needed to break. She had been pushing off the break for years. The other side of the final, true shattering was where the pain wasn't.
She looked into a pair of blue-green eyes. And on a level below both thought and instinct, she was asked to stay where she was.
Fluttershy left, came back. They worked out how to use the screen. The cornstarch and baking soda were dropped off by a fully unremarkable middle-aged brown earth pony, who then joined the crowd outside.
A frantic knock on the front door indicated the arrival of tools and instruments. There were also freshly-gathered herbs and carefully-selected plants, because of course the office didn't have enough of those either. Three select specimens, which had been completely absent (and gathered by three different ponies, just in case), were carefully put aside.
They worked. Soaked wraps were removed so they could see more. The painkiller was mixed and applied. It did something, but... not enough. Never enough. They worked through blood and muscle and bone and a clock which was forever running out.
And all the while, the beak clacked.