//------------------------------// // 💧︎🕆︎☼︎☝︎✋︎👍︎✌︎☹︎ 💧︎⚐︎☼︎☼︎⚐︎🕈︎ // Story: Why Do You Speak My Language?! // by Soaring //------------------------------// It was jarring when the resident human, of all… people, had turned up in the infirmary.  We had been expecting this, but not something of this magnitude. The patient had been presented to us in poor shape. His skin had grown pale, he was knocked out cold, and his body was cold to the touch. “Is he dead?” My voice echoed in my ears. I don’t think I was supposed to say that out loud! “No, he is not, Redheart,” Doctor Stables said as he pulled a glove over his hoof. The exaggerated smack from making sure it was tight on his hoof provided recoil for my eardrums. He was very thorough as always. “T-That’s good,” I said lamely, shakily sighing to get out those nerves of mine. Seems we’re going to be in for a long one this time around. I approached the table. Besides Doctor Stables, the only other pony with us was Princess Twilight Sparkle, who, for some reason, looked extremely calm for a pony in this situation. She was across from us, and she had not shown any discomfort. She only stood there, her eyes glued to the patient’s face. I sighed and counted the utensils. We can’t use any magic, not that it would matter. Doctor Stables and I rarely use it during our surgeries. “Are you ready, Princess?” asked Doctor Stables. My jaw nearly disconnected from my muzzle. How could he have even asked her that question? She wasn’t participating in the surgery directly, why would he suddenly spring that upon h—   “Yes, Doctor. You may proceed with the magic removal surgery.” I turned my attention to the doctor, who looked at me with a slight nod. “Let’s save him.” I returned the favor in earnest. “Yes… let’s do this.” The surgery began... An hour had passed. Progress was made. We located the area of effect, which was… pretty much everywhere. The only thing that was left untouched was his stomach. Everything else had been magically altered. Mostly in appearance. Even if the doctor and I had never operated on a patient like this, we could tell the discoloring of the organs. They’re always grey with splotches of the magic that had affected him. In our training, magic discoloration still looked like a rainbow, if the patient had been around several ponies, and our patient is nothing short of one. However, most of his splotches were purple, a sight that I think Princess Twilight would be worried about. We had her sit over by one of the chairs in the operating room. Normally, we don’t have too many of those as we were always on our hooves during the operation, but some of the longer ones can definitely wear us out, so they save a few just for the staff to use. However, we cannot deny a princess who wanted to oversee our progress, can we? I sighed and carried on. The doctor was making a couple more cuts so we can make sure we’re being as thorough as we need to be. Most of the splotches were gone, but it is never guaranteed to be completely wiped. He may have some permanent scarring… “Is… Is Rick going to be okay?” Neither I nor Stables said anything. We just kept going.  We’ll tell her when we’re ready. “Princess Twilight.” It had been an hour and a half later when one of the guards entered the room. “Yes, Rhinestone?” The guard cleared his throat. “Princess Celestia wishes to see you.” While Doctor Stables grabbed onto the instrument in my hoof, I watched as Princess Twilight hesitated as she got up and paused, sparing one last glance at the patient, before leaving the room. She was ushered out by the guard, and before I knew it, the door had clicked shut. I hope she’s okay. I know how it is when your friend is being operated on. Trust me, it’s not pretty. Princess Twilight stood still as Celestia wrapped her wings around the purple mare. “C-Celestia?” “Twilight, I’m so glad you’re okay.” Celestia released her grip, her wings slowly retracted to her sides. “I had received your letter and had to come here as soon as I could. Is he…?” The purple alicorn gave a sidelong glance to the operating room, before sighing. “He’s… still being operated on. We were conducting experiments to try and figure out how magic affects him so that we could help him, but everything went wrong. I-I thought we had made sure that he would be safe during it all, b-but…” Princess Twilight's voice trailed off, which made Celestia take a step forward. “Did you take all the precautions you needed to?” “Yes,” Princess Twilight breathed out. “At least the ones we knew we needed to. I had Nurse Redheart and Doctor Stables on standby in case it got this bad, but I didn’t want to believe it could get this bad. Now this is all happening, I just hope he pulls through…” “I wish I could offer you comfort there, but I am unsure too,” Celestia said softly, She hung her head. “Times like these make me worry about what else we are unaware of. The best we can do is protect from what we know, and hopefully that will be enough to protect us from the unknown.” Princess Twilight looked at Celestia with a frown, her wings sagging. “I… guess you’re right. I could’ve done more though. Checked the calculations thrice, or consulted with more of Starswirl’s books. I don’t know…” Celestia sucked in a bit of breath before she held her head high and turned around from the operating room. “Let’s go for a walk, Twilight. Get our minds off the whole situation. Corporal Rhinestone, would you accompany us?” “Yes, ma’am.” The group walked slowly down the hall. They passed by several rooms, most of which were tightly shut. There was also some equipment still left out, but most of the hall was clear. Celestia gave Princess Twilight a slight smile. “How did your meeting go with the Yaks up North?” “It was okay. There was much less smashing than usual though. Prince Rutherford said that most of the yaks were resting or something.” “Less smashing?” Princess Twilight nodded… slowly. “As he put it: it was a long winter for us Yaks.” Celestia’s cheeks turned a bright red hue. “Oh,” she muttered, before chuckling. “Well hopefully they’ll be rested before the next summit. I assume you and Pinkie will be attending?” “I hope so,” Princess Twilight began, her lips turning upward. “Going by myself this time around got a lot of confused looks.” Celestia hummed thoughtfully to herself. “Might be because they’re so used to you and Pinkie showing up. Hopefully she’s not busy baking cakes that she’ll be able to go.” “She’s got her schedule ‘lifted’. Said it was because of…” Princess Twilight’s voice trailed off, which left her smile to fall to the ground again. Celestia frowned too. They talked about several other things, but each subject circled back to the injured human. Every time that happened, Princess Twilight would go quiet for a while. The cycle ended when they reached the door to the operating room.  Princess Twilight spoke first with a downtrodden voice, “Look, Celestia, I appreciate everything but I am worried, and I can’t help it. Rick doesn’t deserve this.” Celestia nodded. “You’re right, he doesn’t. I just want to make sure since… well, Derrick had suffered a similar fate.” The mentioning of this name made the purple mare tear up. She wiped them with her forehoof, but that didn’t stop them from coming out as they raced down her cheeks. “I-I know. This all just feels different though. With Derrick, we didn’t know he was sick with this at the time. We diagnosed him with different conditions that seemed like they fit at the time. And now with what we know, I just hoped things would be different. I couldn’t tell Rick that he would be like this, I didn’t want him to worry.” She paused to take a deep yet shaky breath. “All this feels… it just—” “It’s a lot to take in,” Celestia finished. She walked up and surrounded Princess Twilight with her wings once again. “You don’t have to wear a mask all the time. You can let it go once in a while.” “Even if everypony judges me differently?” “There’s a time and a place, Princess Twilight. And this is certainly one of those times.” With that, the tears ran freely as she sobbed into the white alicorn’s chest. It took a bit for Princess Twilight to stop crying, as her grief echoed in the dimly lit hallways of the castle. “How long has it been?” Celestia whispered. “Way too long…” Princess Twilight replied as a few straggling tears fell down her face. “Way too long.” With that, they stood there, holding each other in place. However that soon ended when Princess Twilight pulled away, thanked Celestia for coming all this way to comfort her, and excused herself to go to the restroom.  Then it was just us two. Celestia looked at me with a slight smile. “She’ll be fine, won’t she, Corporal?” I stood there for a moment. Should I answer? It wasn’t something that I needed to do, after all. Yet, a part of me wanted to make sure she knew I was there, so I did, but I stayed quiet, only giving her a nod. She smiled. “Thank you, Rhinestone. If you could do me a favor and stay with her for the night, I would appreciate it.” “Gladly,” I replied. “It would be an honor.” “An honor bestowed to one of my loyal guards supplied by my former student? Rhinestone, the honor is mine that you still wish to guard me.” “A former princess is still a matter of importance to us, Celestia.” She laughed. “I’m glad you are assigned to me. Now, for the time being, could you make sure my former student doesn’t burn down her castle if things go awry?” I saluted her and smiled. “Yes, ma’am.” She chuckled at my display of loyalty, before she turned and waved, bidding me goodnight. I returned the gesture, as I stood diligently, waiting for Princess Twilight to emerge from the bathroom. Hopefully things will go well. We only had that, after all.