Spa days. Days where one visits healthcare professionals, dedicated to helping others through relaxation techniques and calming atmospheres in an attempt to relieve stress and rejuvenate one's body. I’d always been curious about them ans wanted to try going to one of the many famous ones in New York to try their treatments; The mud baths, the saunas, the massages, facials, hair and skin treatments, manicures and pedicures…the list goes on really. It sounded luxurious and way out of my realm of comfort, but still a part of me was curious what a spa day would have been like back on earth. However…
“I thought this would be relaxing! Why the hay does that one pony look like a living pincushion!? And why does he look like he’s enjoying it!?” I thought to myself as a rather large stallion drove another metallic pin into a pony who seemed to be in heaven. I’ll never understand acupuncture…
Rarity must have mistaken my distress for awe as we walked into the “spa” together. She drew in a deep breath, enjoying the incense and scented oils that wafted through the building before turning to me, “Isn’t this place simply wonderful?”
She seemed perfectly relaxed as she made her way up to the receptionist, contrasted by me as I tensely followed closely behind her. The receptionist, a light violet colored pony with light cerise hair held back with a white headband, cheerfully greeted us with a thick Swedish accent, “Welcome back, Miss Rarity! I’m glad to see you could make your appointment today. Will you be having your usual?”
“Yes, please,” Rarity responded with a smile, “for two,” She added, pointing a hoof at me as I awkwardly stood there and waved.
The receptionist positively beamed at me, obviously more excited for me to be here than I was. “I haven’t seen you here before! Are you visiting from out of town?”
“I guess you could say that.” I said stiffly as I rubbed my foreleg with a hoof absently. I really wasn’t good with introductions, and the happy groans from the porcu-pony weren’t helping in the slightest.
“Now there’s no need to be so shy, Zinnia. We’re here to relax and enjoy ourselves! Especially you after all that you’ve been through lately.” Rarity said as she lightly tapped me with a hoof.
“Well then, you’ve come to the right place! Now, there are a few things I’ll need before we can begin your appointment today,” the receptionist said as she pulled a clipboard from behind the counter. “Miss Rarity, if you would like to sign in while I have Miss Zinnia fill out a brief health history form, then I’ll bring you both back.”
“Health history form? I thought we were here for a spa day, not a check up.” I said as I looked at the paperwork placed in front of me.
She stifled a laugh as I clumsily picked up the clipboard and a quill, “I see, so this is your first time at a spa then. Other than some basic information, the form asks a few questions about any previous injuries or skin allergies you may have so your beautician knows to pay special attention to, or avoid, them.”
“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.” I mused as I looked over the short form, trying to think of something else to ask to prolong having to exercise my lackluster writing skills again. After reading it over I took the clipboard to a sofa and began slowly filling out the form, doing my best to write as clearly as possible.
The form wasn’t too complicated, thankfully. Besides asking my name and a few questions about allergies and any self-care procedures I’d had done before, which I left blank, there was a single section at the bottom before the signature that I was unsure how to answer. “Do you have any other special needs or physical or medical conditions your beautician(s) needs to be aware of?”
“How do I explain that one? Do I just avoid the wing issue entirely? What if Fluttershy and Rainbow were right and I do have some sort of nerve issue, and this only makes it worse? I guess that means I should mention it then… I’m sure I can’t be the only one that has an issue like that, right?”
“It’s ok, darling.” Rarity said from beside me, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin.
“When did you…?”
“Oh, I finished signing in a while ago. We’re just waiting for you to finish,” She said with a smile, which made me feel embarrassed for taking so long to do something so simple. “But I see that you appear to be stuck.” She leaned over to inspect my form a little closer, noting that most of it was blank.
“I uhh…well, I’ve never been to a spa before so most of these questions don’t really apply to me.”
“Well…what about the last question? You were just recently released from the hospital after all. Just fill out that little section if something’s still troubling you, like your leg or your wings. The staff here are quite professional, so you wont need to worry about them releasing your personal information. Confidentiality and all that.” Rarity said, seeming rather eager to move on.
“True, I almost forgot about my leg. It might feel pretty nice to…wait, Rarity?” I gave her a pointed look, “I never said anything about my wings, so why bring that up?”
Rarity’s smile took on a forced appearance, and I could almost imagine a bead of sweat forming as she nervously laughed. “Oh, did I say wings? I mean, you have been favoring your leg. I would have assumed you’d wish to stay off it as much as possible, but I haven’t seen you using your wings at all, so I assumed that they might be a tad sore as well. A pegasus’ wings can be rather fragile, after-all.”
Something about her change in tone didn’t sit right with me, but what she said seemed plausible enough. I thought about pressing the issue, but the lobby of a spa wasn’t really the place to be having that conversation. I sighed before noting my leg injury and “stiff wings” on the form before sloppily signing the form. “Sure. I believe that settles the paperwork then?” I asked as I returned the form to the receptionist.
She looked over the form for a bit longer than I would have expected, scrunching up her muzzle in confusion as she read across what must have looked like moon-runes to her. After several seconds, I could see realization hit her and she nodded in affirmation, “Everything looks in order! I’ll make sure to let your beautician know about your special needs before they get started. Now if you follow me, I’ll give you a quick tour before your treatment.” Rarity stood up to follow us as the receptionist led us into the spa. I could have sworn I heard Rarity breath a sigh of relief, but I let it slide.
“Rarity wouldn’t be trying to hide anything from me. It’s probably just me being paranoid again. Besides, she’ll probably hear about my wing problem sooner or later from AJ or Rainbow, so what’s the harm in telling her about it. Better to get over the embarrassment of it now than to have it hold me back more than it already does.”
After showing us, well…mainly me, around the spa, the receptionist, who’s name I learned was Lavender Essence, led us to a locker room. Inside, there were several lockers set aside for guests to store their belongings, as well as towels and robes to change into and several showers to wash off in both before and after the treatment. I wondered to myself why a pony would need a bathrobe when most of them just went around naked all the time anyway, but assumed it was some sort of comfort or courtesy thing. Once we were prepped and changed, we began our long day of “relaxation.”
To be fair, it wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be. Our beauticians, a pair of twins named Lotus Blossom and Aloe Vera, explained each step of the treatment to me as we went. We were taken to a sauna first. I was told that it was to help relax sore muscles, as well as hydrate the skin and open pores. It was a bit more humid than I would have liked, but I felt my sore leg easing up and my skin felt cleaner than it had ever felt. I hadn’t realized how much tension I still held, not only in my leg but just in general. It was as if the steam was melting away the stress.
Next they brought us out to the main floor, where there were several raised platforms with mirrors and pillows, as well as some reclining chairs, two small pits filled with some strange thick substance, and what I believed to be a large wooden bath or hot tub. They led us to the platforms first, where they spread some strange green paste over our faces and placed cucumber slices over our eyes. I was told they were masks meant to help pull toxins from our pores and the cucumbers were to prevent puffiness around the eyes. The masks tingled, almost burned at first, but as they dried and shrank I could feel them working the oils out of my skin.
Whilst we waited for these masks to do their thing, Aloe and Lotus set about cleaning, trimming, filing, and polishing our hoofs. It sounded like it took them longer to finish with Rarity, but when my mask came off, I realized they were filing her horn. Somehow that seemed as though it would have been uncomfortable, every time the file scraped across her horn I couldn’t help but cringe. “Yeah…kinda glad I wasn’t turned into a unicorn now.”
Next, they brought us to the pits, which I learned were mud baths. I wasn’t too sure about that one until I saw Rarity willingly leap into one, her aversion to anything unclean obviously not on display. The mud was infused with minerals and oils to essentially perform the same task the masks did for our faces. The mud was warm and oddly comfortable, though I was afraid that it would stick all in my hair and feathers, though that worry was set aside when it washed off as cleanly as soap suds.
At this point of the treatment, I finally had to admit that it was pretty awesome. Once we were cleaned up from the mud bath, we were laid out on cushioned lounge chairs and given a few magazines to look through while Aloe and Lotus left us for a few minutes. I wondered how much longer this whole experience would take, not that I was ready for it to end quite yet as being treated like royalty seemed rather addictive. They returned with several bottles, hair rollers, some kind of foil, and some other items I recognized as brushes, combs, and straighteners.
They set about washing and conditioning our manes and tails, another experience I found to be supremely enjoyable. We were asked to look through the magazines and pick out a mane style that we liked, which proved to be a daunting task for me. Humans had a large variety of hairstyles to pick from back home, but with our tails included the sheer amount of options were staggering. There were probably hundreds of different combinations, all of which were only the “popular” ones that were “in” this year.
Rarity tossed twenty or so different options my way before I finally decided on one, just in time for them to style my mane. I had remembered Rarity saying how thick my mane was, and if Aloe struggling with its volume was any indication I believed her. Since I hadn’t the slightest clue how to braid my own hair, and most of the other styles in the magazines were way too over the top for me, I picked a simple “side tail,” much to Rarity’s dismay.
By the time we arrived at the massage portion of our treatment I felt exhausted, but not in a bad way. I laid there with my eyes closed as Aloe prepped some pleasantly scented oil on her hooves and enjoyed the feeling of my body feeling more at ease than it had ever felt. Not a single muscle was aching, or felt tight, which only heightened the bliss I felt when Aloe began to dig her hooves into my upper shoulders near the base of my neck.
Rarity, who apparently was receiving a slightly different massage from me, chortled as I turned into putty beneath my masseuse’s hooves. “I see you’re finally enjoying yourself, dear.”
I simply moaned in return as Aloe kneaded my neck and shoulders before moving on just past where my wings connected to my back. “I should do this more often…”
“I can’t believe you’ve never had it done before! You simply must take better care of yourself, Zinnia. Especially since you spend a lot of time out there in the wild doing…whatever it is you do.” Rarity said, waving a hoof around in the air causing Lotus to stop her work while her client gestured.
“Mhmm.” I responded, dumbly as I buried my face into the pillow they gave me to rest my head on during the treatment.
“The girls and I come here together at least once a month or so,” Rarity stated, almost sounding proud of her patronage when Lotus chimed in with a thickly accented but playful scoff.
“The Elements, yes. You? We saw you just last week, Miss Rarity.”
“I can’t help that my work is stressful. Why just last week I had an order for twenty dresses to be made and shipped to Fillydelphia and I had only four days to complete it!” Rarity lamented, throwing a foreleg over her face in a dramatic fashion.
“Wow, how did you…ohhh, right there…How did you manage that?” I asked as Aloe continued to work her way up my back towards my wings again.
“Well, it’s a long story. Filled with trials! Tribulations! Thimbles!” Rarity began, “I had received the order from none other than…”
“Aaand you lost me. And from the looks of it, Lotus too. Aloe seems interested though, it kinda feels like she stopped.” I cracked open an eye to see Rarity going on about her ordeal, with Lotus rolling her eyes as she continued her work. Aloe, on the other hand, was indeed paying more attention to Rarity, but she was still moving as though she was working on my… “Uh oh…”
“Umm, excuse me, Alo…” I was too late. Before I could warn her about my wings, she had gotten too close between them and started moving flight muscles around. One nerve trigger was apparently all it took for my wing to launch into action, flinging itself straight up into the air like a mainsail being raised on a boat’s mast. Aloe let out a small shout and stumbled backward and onto another massage table before rolling off it and tumbling onto the floor, holding a hoof to her chin.
I hopped off the massage table and made to assist my masseuse as quickly as my body would let me, “Aloe! I-I’m so sorry! Are you ok?” Her sister was also quickly by her side, checking her chin for damage before shooting me an angry glare.
“Miss Zinnia! If you were uncomfortable with what she was doing, you simply had to say so!” Lotus chided as she helped her sister to her hooves. I stammered to try to defend myself, but between worrying about Aloe and feeling completely mortified that I nearly knocked out a beautician, all that came out was a garbled mess.
“Miss Lotus,” Rarity broke in, still perched on her massage table, “I believe that Zinnia’s form stated that she has recently been to the hospital, and that her wings may be…sensitive. As you can see, Zinnia may not be in full control of her actions either,” She pointed to my wing, standing proud and erect, pointed straight at the ceiling and as stiff as an oak plank. “Though it may also partially be my fault as well, for distracting everypony with such a riveting story.”
Lotus looked at my wing for a moment before sighing and shaking her head. “My apologies. We should have taken more care with our client. Zinnia, if you please, return to your bed so we can finish.”
“B-but…I nearly took Aloe’s head off!” I argued, but Aloe held up a hoof to stop me.
“It’s ok. I was just more startled than anything. I’m fine.” She said, still rubbing her chin. “No one here is to blame but us. It’s our job to bring comfort to our clients, and I obviously failed in doing so. I apologize, Miss Zinnia.” She gave a little bow and came back to guide me to the table to finish, but I wouldn’t have it.
“No! I should have told you personally that I was having a problem with my wings. I didn't think that it would happen again, so I opted not to tell any of you since it's…embarrassing.” I took a deep breath and explained what had happened with Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash the previous day, and their diagnosis. Sure, it was still embarrassing to have to admit that I was a broken pegasus, but that paled in comparison to the humiliation of nearly knocking somepony’s lights out because I was afraid of something I didn’t even understand.
After I finished explaining everything, Rarity had taken a thoughtful, but not very surprised look, while Aloe and Lotus whispered to each other. I simply wished I could disappear. After a moment, Aloe was the first to speak up, “Miss Zinnia, would you allow us to try something?”
“What do you want to do?”
“Well, we would like to try a deep tissue massage. Typically, that’s not possible since pegasi are extremely sensitive in the space between their wings; but for you, it may help.”
“We are also trained chiropractors, so we’d like to see if a realignment might help you.” Lotus added.
“I don’t want to hit you again…” I mewled, feeling absolutely pathetic about myself.
“We will be more careful this time. You can trust us, Miss Zinnia.” Aloe said with a smile, which, thankfully, revealed no broken teeth or bruising from my wing’s outburst.
“I agree with them, darling.” Rarity chipped in. “We won't know if it’ll help unless we try.”
I reluctantly agreed, to which the sisters smiled happily and went to work oiling themselves up again for the task at hand…hoof. Within minutes they had managed to work my wing back into place and began pressuring various spots between my shoulders, causing my wings to twitch or move of their own volition. Once satisfied with their findings, they set about their impromptu tag-team session.
There was one additional incident of an errant wing rocketing off in a random direction, nearly sending a shampoo bottle careening through a window, but for the most part my useless wings behaved.
I had never had a chiropractic adjustment before, and they were too busy with their work to walk me through what was going on, but there were several times something popped that I was pretty sure wasn’t supposed to, and once where I thought they broke something before noting that pain never came. Each time something snapped or cracked I could feel a cool sensation rush through the affected area until they ended with a large spinal adjustment that left me breathless after half of my vertebrae seemed to shift out of an awkward position.
The sisters stepped back, admiring their work while Rarity had stayed nearby with her muzzle in a magazine, though admittedly she looked a little greener than normal. “How are you feeling now?” Lotus asked, sounding almost out of breath. I couldn’t blame her, it seemed like it was a lot of work.
“Uhh…” I tried moving my wings again, but nothing happened. I did note that they felt…strange. As though they had fallen asleep and were just starting to wake up, just before the pins-and-needles phase of getting the blood flow back into a limb after having laid on it for too long. “They feel funny…”
Both the sister’s faces brightened up and the green in Rarity’s face dissipated, replaced with an excited grin. “Oh, Zinnia! That’s wonderful!” Rarity exclaimed.
“It…it is? Doesn’t feel so wonderful to me.” I said, pawing at my useless wings as they sat with an uncomfortable weight now apparent in them. “Am I just imagining that? I mean, I think I kinda feel them, maybe? I don’t like how heavy they seem though…”
“Of course it is!” Aloe chimed in, “Feeling anything is a huge step forward! Rarity’s friends may have been right about your problem, or close enough to count! Though it may take a few sessions to work out that area and have your wings functioning correctly again.”
“Hmm…” I continued pawing at my wings, trying to get used to the new sensation between my shoulders. It was little more than weight, but it was a feeling. Small victories.
After the “excitement” of the massage tables, we soaked in the hot tub while Rarity went on and on about how great it was that the sisters were able to help. I was only half listening though, as I continued to fiddle with my wings. Something still felt wrong about them, but I wasn't sure what it was beyond them still not feeling right. Like they weren’t really mine, but something I stole.
By the time our soak had ended, so had our appointment and both Rarity and I were looking forward to leaving. She wanted to go tell Twilight all about today, and update her about my wings. I just wanted to go back to the farm and think.
Rarity settled up with Lavender Essence, who insisted that my extra session was free of charge this time around, and we headed on our way. I couldn’t remember what all we talked about the rest of the day, lunch was a bit of a blur, and most of the things in the market were uninteresting shapes in my memory. We parted ways shortly before sunset, Rarity exclaiming it to be a “fabulously successful day.”
The entire way back to the farm I fought with myself, trying to figure out why I felt the way I did. I should have been just as ecstatic, if not more so, as Rarity and the Spa twins. Why wasn’t I? I had a feeling that I was starting to forget something important, but I couldn’t place what it was.
Applejack filled me in with what the next day’s chores entailed, the normalcy of which helped ease my mind back into reality long enough to make it though dinner, then I excused myself to bed. After all, we were going to have a busy day on the farm tomorrow. It was supposed to have been a spa day; a relaxing day to recharge and rejuvenate, but I fell into an uneasy sleep, more exhausted than I’d been since the first few nights in Equestria.