4
They’d barely made it past level ten before Sling simply froze, her insides beginning to tingle with a cold itch she could not explain or even remember feeling before in her lifetime. For some inexplicable reason, she simply felt that something in her world was not right.
Gun’s fine, she began to rattle off in her mind as she tried to force her legs to start moving again. Don’t feel like a canned meal anymore, don’t hear the bugs in the vents or the halls, Butterscotch is breathing and walking on his own…why do my insides feel like ice…
Cloud Wind’s hoofsteps came to a halt as she sorted through her thoughts, and her head craned around to the side once she’d noticed that only one pony was following along behind her. “….Sling?”
“….something’s wrong,” the unicorn breathed slowly in reply, her legs beginning to respond to her mental demands for movement. “Like…gut-level wrong, like there’s something I ought to know right off, but I don’t…”
Windy and Butterscotch each gave her a face of utter confusion and uncertainty as they tried to make sense of what she’d just uttered. “….I’m sorry, I don’t speak your crazy moon language, could you try that again in plain Equestrian?” Butterscotch asked with a flippant pitch.
For his sarcasm, Windy rewarded him with a slap to the back of his head that sent him crashing onto the floor, clutching at his new headache in vain. “Ignore him, that’s the concussion talking,” she grumbled derisively. “What ar—“
“Aaaaaoooowwww,” his grunt of pain interrupted her briefly. “What concussion—“
A second THWACK! sounded off as she trotted past his body, likely from one of her rear legs that had just jerked out behind her, and aside from a painful yelp they heard nothing more from him as they talked. “The one I just gave you, smartass.”
Sling couldn’t figure out whether to be angry with her for roughing him up like that, or to be laughing her tail off at the whole thing. She didn’t even know why she found it so funny right then when they were supposed to be trying to get him to the infirmary in one piece, but she did.
And yet she still felt like something was just not right.
With Butterscotch’s sarcasm muted for the moment, Windy was free to press the unicorn for a clearer message. “What are you talking about?” she queried with a quizzical glare. “I know it’s weird not hearing the air vents and environmental systems humming all the time bu—“
“That’s not it,” Sling butted in before she could finish. “I just…something’s wrong and it’s scaring me to death. I don’t know what it is, but…something’s wrong, I just know it. I don’t know what, but…oh gods, maybe I need a new job…”
The pegasus’s gray eyes studied her for a few moments, lost in her own mental musings. “…your quarters aren’t too far out of the way,” she said at last, turning back around and stepping over Butterscotch’s twitching—but breathing—body. “We’ll budge the door open, brighten the kid’s day up a little. That always sets you straight.”
--------------------------------------
She’d never imagined the sound of an angelic savior could be so…disgusting. Even with her shrill, deathly screams of terror, it was impossible to miss. The bug’s gleeful, terrifying chirps came to an incredibly brutal end courtesy of a thick frying pan, and though the harsh clang of metal helped alleviate her rapidly beating heart, what made it truly stop was just how hard the thing had been smacked.
Her eyes shot wide open to the sight of Emerald’s mouth clenching the frying pan in her jaws in a death bite, slamming the pan into the bug’s head with all the strength her tiny earth pony body was capable of. And it was enough to shear the bug’s head off of its body with a wet, sharp crunch that caused a surge of bile to shoot up into her throat. Only her fear kept her from upchucking all over her friend.
Emmy wasn’t satisfied with the bug’s instant death—or didn’t notice that she’d taken its head clean off. She followed it as its course shifted off to the right, onto the floor near the unicorn, and brought the pan down on its back with another hateful swing and a wordless grunt. That same stomach-churning crunch rang out again, and again, and again, until Emmy had squeezed its innards out onto the floor beneath it.
And then she hurled.
“Oh Luna, Emmy STOP!” Grape Jam’s voice shrieked with horror, her forelegs pulling the stunned unicorn away from the bug’s beating and her small pile of vomit. “It’s dead already quit it you’re making a sick mess!“
The red-coated earth filly finally stopped her savage act, momentarily baffled as to why her friends would ask her to stop trying to save their skins. “Bwuaf!?” her muffled snout uttered, shooting her head back behind her, and then back at where Light Tail had been lying moments earlier—
—her eyes shot wide open, and she quickly scrambled backwards away from the bug carcass and the mess that the unicorn had unwittingly created. “O’ crad!! ‘Orey—“
She stopped speaking when she heard how mangled her words were when she was trying to talk with a mouthful of iron, and spat the pan onto the floor. “Sorry El-Tee!!” she squealed. “Ah didn’t mean it ah just was tryin’ ta kill th’ stupid thang—“
“Just…get the door shut!!” Jam’s voice screamed back, her forehooves keeping Light Tail’s head from turning back towards Emmy’s creation of violence. “El-Tee, I know your head hurts but you gotta get that vent shut before more of ‘em come in—“
Now that her brain remembered that it had been smacked around, that pulsing, pounding ache returned to her with a vengeance, reaching deep through her skull into what felt like a slug-sized portion of her frontal lobe. But the thought of more of those bugs dropping into the living room with little to resist them except gravity gave her the adrenaline to fight through it and focus her magic into her horn once more—
But the presence of magic in her horn seemed to double the pain, making that pulsing section of her brain feel like it was being over-inflated like a balloon. Oh Luna this hurts!
Her eyes opened to give her magic a focal point—the displaced vent cover that had nearly beaned her when the bug had crashed through—and with considerable effort she was able to wrap her levitation spell around it and allowed it to float up from the table of its own accord. With the weight of the covering taken out of the equation, her telekinesis spell took much less effort and therefore didn’t hurt nearly as much, allowing her to slap it up onto the exposed air vent with little more than a flick of her will. The screws had never fallen loose from the grating, and forcing them back into their screw slots proved a little trickier, but doable. For added measure and a peace of mind, she overdid it until the things started fighting her efforts to tighten them in further, and only then did she quit the magic tricks entirely and allowed her head to fall back onto the carpet.
With all of her concentration focused on re-fitting the vent cover—and her headache—she’d never even noticed that Emmy had just now gotten to fighting with the manual door controls until she heard the door slam shut with an echoing, chest-thumping shudder. Or that the earth filly had that kind of strength to start with—
“There, ah shut it!” Emmy gasped heavily amidst her heavy, frantic breathing. “And ah even…tossed the dead bugs out….’fore ah did!”
Upon hearing the words ‘dead bugs’, Light Tail’s mind replayed the heated, rage-fueled violence that Emmy had unleashed upon the thing with her second-best frying pan, and if she hadn’t already lost her breakfast, she’d have tossed it up right there. Her gagging was brief, but clean. This time.
“….I hate bugs,” she moaned weakly into the floor, her front legs wrapping around her skull in some vain effort to try and rub the pain away. “I’m never cooking with that pan again…”
“Ahh, don’t worry none, just need ta wash it real good first,” Emmy’s voice bounced into her ears, inadvertently causing the pounding in her head to get even worse. “Ah’ll…umm…ah’ll clean the place up, kinda my fault it’s messed up….hey Jam, see if that first aid cabinet’s got anythin’ for her head, her mom’ll freak out if she sees her like this.”
Shutting her eyes seemed to make the pain a little more bearable (and kept her sense of balance from getting whacked out), so she allowed them to stay shut and immerse her in darkness. She got up to her hooves and shakily stumbled her way around until her nose tapped into the coffee table, and then started to feel her way around it to the couch, where she carefully pulled herself up onto its cool, invigorating cushions. “…just don’t touch the gun,” she warned weakly as her forelegs reached out to draw a small pillow towards her.
“Yeah, I saw what it did to your face when you grabbed it with your magic!!” Jam’s voice rang out, rising to a shriek at the end as she invariably discovered the object in question. “What’s it doing out of your mom’s safe in the first place?!”
Jam’s shrill voice made the pain spike upwards briefly, and she clawed at her forehead to suppress it. “Don’t shout,” she pleaded through her suffering. “….she took me shootin’ this morning, left it on the table….’n case those bugs got in. Forgot to load it first…”
“Does she usually put a curse on ‘em first?!” Emmy’s voice yelled out, completely ignoring the little unicorn’s request, and she groaned into her pillow as the pulsing aches reached into her eyeballs. “How’d sh—“
“Eeeeemmmy…” Jam’s voice growled darkly—
“Oh! Sorry…..ah mean…what’s wrong with ya? That stuff on your face don’t make the blood look any better.”
She heard Grape Jam’s hooves began to scrape against the first aid cabinet mounted against the far wall on the right, and prayed that the pegasus would find a good-sized healing potion inside very soon. “…what blood, I feel fine…’cept for this freakin’ headache, ooowww…”
It wasn’t very long after before she began to feel a slick, sticky wetness on the cushion beneath her head, and before she could say anything Emmy had somehow darted across the room to her and began to press a dampened, cold rag onto her head where the pain was at its worst—
“Ya must’ve cut yer head on that table when ya fell off,” the earth filly whispered, her strong voice faltering slightly. “Just stay still, Jam an’ I’ll find somethin’ real quick…”
Now that she was aware of a head wound, her headache’s pulses began to synchronize in an attempt to make her feel every drop squeeze out, but Emmy’s stubborn hoof refused to allow it and kept enough pressure on it to keep it from escaping. Still, she couldn’t shake off this gnawing touch of light-headedness that was starting to make the room feel….bigger? Denser? No, wait, that didn’t sound right…
No, scratch that, it’s not right period, she amended when the feeling got stronger, and the room around her began to seemingly enlarge itself and muddling up what few senses she had left. “….think we oughta just skip the first aid, go right to the doc…”
She thought she heard Emmy’s lips smacking wordlessly at her, or maybe it was all the blood on the rag as she turned it around in her hooves to get an unsoiled portion of it on the wound—
“...y-yeah, screw the box on th’ wall,” Emmy agreed, for once simply going along with the unicorn’s idea instead of arguing over it. “Jam, keep some pressure on ‘er head, ah’ll get the door open again.”
There was a slight shift in pressure as hooves switched places and Emmy made a mad dash for the door, but oddly enough she could barely hear it this time. Everything around her just seemed to be moving away from her, strange as it sounded to say. Even her brain felt lighter, didn’t hurt as much now. Everything was so much….
…so much…softer? Ah, jeez, really don’t feel good now…
“E-Em, something’s n-not right,” she thought she heard Jam croak fearfully as one of her hooves pulled away from her head and started pressing into her side. “S-she shouldn’t be like this, not from just a scratch to the head—“
She supposed she should have been scared to hear her friend say that, but the only thing she could feel right then was…disconnected. Separated from everything around her, like it was being pulled away from it. The kitchen felt like it was miles away. The coffee table where Mom had left the gun might as well have been at the bottom of the Stable. Even Jam seemed out of reach despite the fact that she was touching her and poking her.
…was this what dying felt like? Should she feel so…okay with it?
She didn’t get to ponder these thoughts for very long. A metallic part of the world screeched in agony, jolting some sense of liveliness into her nerves and filling the air around her with a gentle intrusion of cooler air—
“Whoa watch it—“ Emmy’s voice cried out in surprise, only to have her shouts (and body) trampled by what sounded like another pony—
“El-Tee!?” Mom yelled into the world, unknowingly spiking her headache into another sharp series of pulses with her frantic shrieks. “Honey, are you—“
She seemed to have found the answer to her question with just a quick look around, because her voice went from frantic to some form of controlled hysteria and panic. “…o-oh gods, El-Tee?! What happened?!?”
She knew Jam was going to try and answer right away, but the poor thing barely got a word out before Mom’s body did the same thing to her as it did to Emmy—bumped into her and bowled her over in a crazy dash to find herself a spot beside the couch.
“…hit my head,” Light Tail mumbled through the growing fog in her mind and body. “Don’t think it’s going well….”
Mom’s forehooves went and did the same that Jam had been doing, one keeping pressure on the rag while the other carefully poked about her lungs and neck. Funny enough, Mom’s hooves were more ticklish than her magic, and she couldn’t help but giggle softly as she pressed into her sides for whatever reasons she had—
Mom’s head joined her hooves, pressing one ear close to her chest and letting it lie there for several moments, as if listening intently for something inside that might tell her whatever it was she was looking for.
And she found it. “…oh thank Luna, normal heart rate,” her soft voice cried softly in relief. “Honey, do you feel lightheaded? Sick? Tired, anything like that?”
Well, now that she mentioned it… “….wouldn’t mind a nap, if this headache would just go away,” she moaned into the pillow. “And it feels like I’m shrinking, or somethin’….”
Mom’s presence faded from her side, and for a minute she thought she’d been left alone, but a sharp, clean click of metal nearby amidst the faint song of an extended telekinesis spell quelled the brief surge of panic. More than likely, Mom was just picking up the gun from the floor—
—the ghostly, tingling touch of a telekinetic spell washed over the soaked rag, pressing lightly onto her head as Mom’s body began to dig underneath her and roll her onto the larger pony’s back. It became something of a struggle to find out exactly where she was at, but her forelegs found Mom’s neck quickly enough and wrapped themselves around it so she wouldn’t fall off. Oddly enough, the effort seemed to revitalize her sleeping nerves slightly, though her mind was still fogged and struggling to keep the world around her straight. If anypony else was around or saying anything around her, she didn’t hear it.
“We’re going to get you to the infirmary,” Mom’s voice cried quietly to her left ear as her head began to droop down past the mare’s neck. “I want you to count backwards from a hundred, slow and steady. Can you do that?”
She couldn’t for the life of her figure out why Mom would ask her to do something that silly, but if counting numbers could help take her mind off of this headache, she’d give it a try. Heck, she’d give anything a try at least once. “…hundred….ninety-nine….”
Mom’s body began a gentle trot, doing her best not to rock about too much lest the filly loose her grip or her sense of balance. “Thatta girl, keep going, we’ll be there before you know it…”
If you say so…. “Ninety-eight….”
Mom’s attention split off from her for a moment to start barking orders at her friends, but she was a little busy focusing on her counting to care. “You girls come with us. You can tell me what happened later, but we need to get upstairs. C’mon—“
“Ninety-seven….ninety-six….”
….what came before…oh right… “Ninety-five….”
….weird. She never got sleepy counting before….
“…ninety-four…”
….could she do this the whole way?
“…nine…ninety-three…..”
Her hold on her Mom’s neck began to slacken. Her muscles went from taut to rubbery as she tried to keep up her count….
“….ninety-two….”
The fog in her mind began to draw her consciousness away, calling her into its dark recess.
“……nineyone….nine….ni…”
And she followed it all the way into oblivion.
--------------------------------------
Her brain was always reluctant to follow her body when it stirred from deep sleep. And this time she’d really been out of it, because as her mind began to pull itself out of its cave in her skull, she couldn’t even recall what time she’d gone to bed, or even any snippets from whatever she might’ve dreamed about. It was as though the world had skipped a couple of days and forgot to plant its events into her brain so she’d remember.
Perfect excuse to just stay put and go back to sleep. ‘But Mom, I don’t even know what day it is’, she’d say once said mother barged in and demanded her to arise from the seductive pull of her blankets….
…no, wait, that sounded gross just now. Who in the world called their bed seductive? She was in no shape to be awake, not with a thought like that coming out of her head. Time to go back to sleep, she needed another four hours or so. Maybe even a whole day. Yeah, that would be fine with her.
….except that her body didn’t agree. Nerves and tendons began to scream in agony, crying for the release of tension and aches from a night of absolute stillness, and to make them stop (and hopefully coax herself back to sleep), she began to stretch her four legs out and about, ruffling the blankets draped over her….
…wait a sec, my bed only has one blanket…
Her brain responded to this additional stimulus, forcing itself further awake in order to clarify that she was, indeed, covered by more than one blanket. And when that was done, she began to take greater notice of everything else touching her body at that moment.
The mattress was not hers. There was too big a depression in it, for starters. This was the bed of a larger pony, one addicted to comfort and warmth if the chilly air around her head was any indication. And there was something wrapped around her head, keeping a larger…something, pinned to her forehead above her left eye. A quick brush of a forehoof revealed it to be gauze padding and wrap, with a bandage applied underneath for added security against whate—
—her body tumbled off the side of the table, her head smacking into a metal table leg on the way down and drilling her brain with an invisible sledgehammer—
She snapped herself out of her memory flash before it could finish, her senses becoming far more alert with the realization that she hadn’t gone to bed in the same shape she’d been in when she left it. In fact, beyond that little mishap, she couldn’t even remember what happened the last two days, save that she’d hit her head on the table, for some reason.
But what she was doing on the table in the first place?
She’d made up her mind to force herself out of this strange bed when the door opened wide, bringing with it an explosion of blinding white light that pierced straight into the front of her brain through her eyeballs, and she reflexively closed eyelids she didn’t remember opening—
“Ahhh, shut off the light it hurts—“ she begged of whoever had just barged in—
The lights dimmed considerably upon her request almost immediately, and then a set of hooves galloped across the carpet to be at her side—
“H-honey, you’re awake!?” Mom’s cried excitedly, her voice practically gushing with relief (and a few tears), and in the next moment the filly found herself trapped in a tight, life-crushing hug from the one that given her life to start with. “Oh thank the stars you’re awake—“
“I….might not be….if you don’t let go,” she gasped between the three breaths she was able to steal from the world and no more. She swore she heard her Mom’s throat squeak with embarrassment as she relaxed her death grip into something softer, but still clingy.
“Sorry!” she choked after taking a deep breath herself. “Sorry! Just…just had me freaked out these last two days, I just….when did you wake up?”
…two days? “….just now,” she answered hesitantly, only opening her eyes when they were assured by her brain that it wouldn’t hurt this time—
Mom’s teal-blue coat was a mess, she noticed right off. Her mane too. She usually kept it tied up into a braided ponytail (a cool pun if there ever was one) and brushed down, though this time the individual knots were considerably more frayed than she was used to seeing. Like she hadn’t taken a brush to it for a couple of days. “….what’s going on? Where am I?”
Perhaps sensing the unaired fear growing in her tiny chest, Mom sought to answer not just that question, but the next two she was already cooking up. “….you’re in my bed. You took a pretty hard hit to the head...do you remember anything?”
“….just the part where I hit my head,” she said, growing uneasy with herself as she began to take fuller stock of her situation. Hit on the head—and badly enough to not remember anything else about it other than that it hurt. Stuffed in her mother’s bed, which made sense since Mom liked to keep her room at autumn weather temperatures when she slept so that it made her three comforters really cozy and warm. And then there was… “….what are you talking about? These last two days? What happened to me?”
Mom finally let go of her and allowed her to settle back under the sea of blankets. “….you really can’t remember?”
“Would I have asked if I did?”
Mom’s face didn’t seem to like her snappy comeback, but whatever had happened to her must have been bad enough to make her let it go so easily and not punish her or anything. “…sorry,” she mumbled, suddenly too ashamed to look at her directly and settling for the floor. “….we had an outbreak. Radroaches damaged some major power relays and camped out in the generator levels. You managed to get the door open so you could get to the bathroom and your friends followed you back. Emerald was trying to get the door shut when one of the bugs waltzed in underneath….”
“….that’s what knocked me off the table?”
“No,” Mom said quietly. “I…I’d left one of my guns on the coffee table, in case you needed it. I put a marking spell on it to keep you from playing with it needlessly. Your friends said another bug managed to break through the air vent covering and fall right on top of you while you were trying to load it and get a shot off, and when you bucked it off you lost your balance and fell off the table. Hit your head on one of the legs. Emerald wound up killing both of them with a frying pan….think the sight of it made you sick to your stomach or something, or it could have been the concussion. This was all yesterday morning, and you’ve been asleep since then. It’s Friday afternoon. Five thirty-two, I think.”
Light Tail couldn’t bring herself to think clearly for a couple of seconds, trying to process how or why she would have gotten the inclination to pick up a gun and try to use it since she couldn’t even remember Mom showing her how to do it….or maybe she had and that was one of those things she couldn’t remember now.
“….I’ve been asleep almost two days?”
“…day and a half, but close. When we brought you to the infirmary you’d already slipped out, and Nurse Tender Mane went right to work on you. Wasn’t as bad as the blood suggested, but the concussion had us all worried. No permanent brain damage, but since you were out that’s all she could tell us. She put you under an anesthetic spell to keep you asleep and let her healing spells work. She’s been in and out of here every four hours since. You got off real lucky.”
She didn’t know exactly what a concussion was—only that it was a head injury and that one’s brain could get scrambled because of it. Memory loss and headaches were just a couple of the nasty side effects one could get from it. She supposed that if those were her biggest issues, then yeah, she got lucky. The way Mom was saying it, though, there were ponies that weren’t quite as fortunate. She wasn’t sure she wanted any details.
Fortunately, Mom wasn’t interested in giving any, and quickly changed the subject. “You feel okay enough to eat something?”
The mere mention of food brought her empty stomach to life. It growled with the fervor of an angry cat, and she swore it actually caused ripples to spill out over her flesh in the process. “….long as Aunt C ain’t doin’ the cookin’.”
Mom’s light chuckle seemed so much louder when she was right next to her. “Nothing extravagant like what you might whip up,” she laughed. “Just some daffodil sandwiches and the last of our grapes for the week. I wouldn’t let you cook anything anyway, you’re supposed to be resting.”
“Think I’ve done enough of that,” she whined as she began to crawl towards the edge of the mattress. “And I can’t stand to do nothin’ all day—“
She had more complaints about not getting past chapter 27 on The Mare of the Everfree yet, or trying to find out why Grape Jam was acting so funny around her yesterday or—
Er…I guess that would be Wednesday, actua—
Her journey through Mom’s bed ended quite abruptly when the forward half of her body unexpectedly ran out of mattress and stuck itself out into the chilly air, and before she knew it she was sprawled out on the floor at Mom’s hooves with the dignity of a four-left-footed cat—
“….smooth, El-Tee,” she grumbled to herself as she forced her legs to stand up for the first time in what felt like days. They didn’t want to completely cooperate and felt more like rubber sticks than organic limbs of bone and muscle, but at least she could actually stand. And walk without the world trying to spin itself in every direction when she moved, though she still looked like she’d been hitting hard cider for a half hour.
And through it all, Mom just snickered and kept pace behind her, never letting her get more than a few feet away. She had to side-step back inside her chosen path once or twice to get through the bedroom doorway, but she did eventually make it out of Mom’s room and into the warm interior of the kitchen and living room space—
Tender Mane’s snow white coat was there to greet them in the living room, her medic’s bag settling down onto the coffee table with the delicate touch that only a medical unicorn pony could impart in their telekinesis spell. Cloud Wind was milling about the kitchen, setting out plates and hoof-friendly drinking glasses but was oddly quiet for some reason.
“Well, look who’s struggling to walk in a straight line,” Tender Mane laughed at the sight of the filly stumbling about in her journey to the kitchen table. “Yeah, that settles it, concussion.”
“You were guessing?!” Light Tail choked incredulously, stopping in place when her right rear leg couldn’t seem to find the floor like her other three legs could.
Tender Mane’s snout dipped into her bag and began pulling various medical instruments from its tightly-packed interior, much to the little filly’s dismay. “I prefer to call it guesstimating. All the things your friends pointed out seemed to fit the symptoms—headache, nausea, disorientation, vomiting. Your lack of direction is just one more sign that I’m right—“
“Memory loss, too,” Mom offered freely and perhaps a tad too quickly. “She doesn’t seem to remember anything about the last day or two other than when she hit the table.”
Tender Mane paused in place momentarily before resuming her search through her bag for whatever she thought she might need in the next few minutes. “….okay, then, six signs that I’m right. Don’t worry, dear, memory loss isn’t uncommon with a blow to the head. What’s the absolute last thing you can remember, aside from the hit that put you down for thirty-plus hours?”
Light Tail had to rack her memory pretty hard to answer that question as she was inevitably re-directed towards the white-coated unicorn nurse, and by the time her unsteady body finally managed to bump into the couch next to her the only memory she could latch onto with any degree of certainty from…Wednesday afternoon? Evening? So hard to remember….
“….I think the last thing I can remember is bumping into Grape Jam in the shower section of the washroom, but I can’t remember when that was,” she answered tentatively, her forelegs trying to find enough purchase on the couch to pull the rest of her up onto it. And failing miserably, all she could manage was to look like a floundering fish. “…now that I think about it it’s kinda weird, the washroom on her end of the level is closer. If it was broke I don’t remember that either…”
Tender Mane’s magic enveloped her body and lifted her up onto the couch before she could embarrass herself any further, and the cold touch of her steth….ste….that cold-metal thingy that she used to listen to heartbeats and lungs and stuff, gods why did medical equipment have to have such obtuse names?! “Do you recall anything about it? What you might have talked about?”
“I don’t remember that thing being so cold before!” she squeaked in protest when the instrument prodded her side, even going so far as to scoot away from it before it could defile her body warmth any further.
Tender Mane’s solution was to simply huff a breath of warm air onto it before sticking it back onto her side, and it no longer felt like a cold pin prick in her coat. “Better?”
“Much.”
“Good, now you can answer my question.”
Crud, almost worked. “…no, I don’t know anything other than that we met there,” she sighed in defeat. “Ask her about it.”
“I might if she becomes another patient,” Tender Mane muttered quietly. “Which reminds me, your friends are fine, physically. Psychologically, it’s a wait-and-see kinda thing. Not ideal, but at least they’re breathing. Their sneaking away from their parents actually saved your life, so of course they’re squirreled away in their rooms like scolded pets. Gotta talk to those numbskulls about that…”
There was blissful silence afterward, Tender Mane content to simply do whatever it was that medical ponies did to make sure those under their care weren’t going to drop off and die on the spot. It took her about two minutes and two additional instruments, a tiny flashlight that was poked in her ears and a thermostat that thankfully went into the ear, and a slight satisfied grunt signaled the end of her routine.
“Sweet, I love it when these visits end painlessly,” she chuckled deviously as she swiftly re-packed her bag. “By the time you’ve washed up and had dinner, that silent healing spell I just cast should be taking hold. Another night of deep rest and you should be able to use your magic again without risk.”
Light Tail’s body jerked slightly, her mind racing through the last three minutes of her life and couldn’t figure out how a spell had been cast right next to her without her knowing it. “…s-silent? You mean you were casting a spell on me the whole time and your horn didn’t glow or nothin’?”
“Oh, it was glowing, you just weren’t looking hard enough,” Tender Mane’s voice assured her in that same devious laugh. “It doesn’t make noise or require any degree of concentration on my part. And with your attention focused on ignoring me you never noticed what little sign there was of the spell. Therefore, ‘silent’.”
Wonderful, Light Tail groaned to herself at Tender Mane’s exaggerated grin. Of all the medical ponies in the Stable, I had to be visited by the comedian. “Funny.”
The snow-white mare flashed a forehoof across the air in front of her as she floated a roll of gauze and a clean bandage pad out of her bag. “Pffft, naww. You should see the show I put on every Wednesday evening at the diner, now that’s funny.”
Light Tail simply groaned in despair and allowed her face to plop down into the couch beneath her. “I should have stayed knocked out…”
--------------------------------------
The squirt was getting her wish a quarter-hour later.
Dinner was a quick five-minute affair, thanks partly to the kid’s ravenous appetite after a day and a half of unconscious slumber, which helped mask the mild sleep-aid additives they’d snuck into her meal. She knew her daughter well enough to know how to help the stuff kick in even faster afterward—a hot shower. For some reason, heat seemed to lull Light Tail into a dazed, lazy stupor and made it easy for her to just conk right out if she closed her eyes long enough.
And even as the first streams of hot water began to pour down upon the trio, Sling realized that this time she probably didn’t even need to do that. El-Tee was struggling just to stand in the first place, and her drowsiness made it almost impossible to do much of anything except topple over onto the tiled floor and lay there.
“….you guys drugged my food, didn’t you?” she moaned sleepily, even managing a massive yawn as her mane and tail were quickly becoming soaked down to the last hair.
“Caught red-handed, darn,” Cloud Wind deadpanned, her voice holding none of the fear or frustration at having a devious plan ousted before it could even begin. “Whatever shall we do.”
El-Tee’s answer was a second yawn, somehow even bigger than the first, and her eyelids began to slide shut over her electric blue irises. “’xplain yerselves, fer a start…”
“Healing spells work best when you’re asleep,” Sling replied unapologetically almost immediately, dipping her head low to allow her shower head to soak the rest of her mane fully. “And like Tender said, you need the rest.”
“Not that,” her night light groaned through her sleep-addled speech, rolling up onto her unsteady legs. “…thought youse guys had twelve-hour shifts, what happened…”
Sling’s eyes snapped open, tracing a stream of water as it rolled down the side of her head and into the soulless gray marble beneath her, becoming part of the shimmering pool of water forming a thin layer beneath her hooves. She’d almost allowed herself the illusion that the kid wouldn’t remember the change in her working hours, but her memory gap only seemed to stretch back to some part of Wednesday afternoon. So of course the intelligent little bugger would wonder why they were off-duty instead of slaving away in their extended hours.
“Don’t worry about it,” Cloud Wind tried to reassure her, stepping forward slightly to shower the back half of her body with water in preparation for a lathing of coat shampoo. “We’re just glad you weren’t hurt that bad.”
Windy, do not give the kid any kind of a hint—
Light Tail’s nagging sensation that things weren’t quite right kept her from succumbing to the effects of the sleep aid drugs and gave her enough clarity to see through the pegasus’s desire to steer away from the subject. “What? Happened?” she repeated again more insistently.
Her parental instinct to admonish her child for such a forceful tone towards her elders flared to life, but at the last second stopped short of actually saying anything. Instead, she found herself only capable of staring down at the floor, watching the water flow around her head and into the floor....
….watched, and began to wonder at how similar it looked to the flow of fresh blood….
--------------------------------------
“WHAT? HAPPENED?”
Sling’s head shook away the ghastly images floating in front of her, forcing her gaze away from the gray floor and the streaks of blood that had dabbed up around her forehoof….
….her daughter’s blood….
The sight before her wasn’t much better. Chief Farsight’s furious scowl was a rare sight, and one that never brought good tidings. His body was practically seething behind his desk, and with what she’d just seen earlier in the morning, she didn’t have the capacity to even think of a reply. All she could do was stand there, her forehooves coated in crimson, and stare back at him in disbelief at just how wrong her morning had been.
And they hadn’t even had lunch yet.
Cloud Wind was no less shaken, but her more disciplined quality of training allowed her enough clear thought to try and answer an unreasonable pony’s question with a logical response. “You’ll have to be more specific, Chief, a lot happened this morning.”
“Down there,” Farsight bellowed, his left foreleg swiping downward over his desk. “In maintenance! Two-thirds of the first shift crew heard a gunfight down there! Where all of our generator’s waste exhaust and coolant water is funneled through, you idiots! What were you thinking?!”
Her memories flashed across her eyes again, this time with the flare of a 10mm muzzle blast as she saw her pistol sights floating from one target to the next with every squeeze of the trigger—
“We were thinking of taking out a swarm of radroaches that had just ripped Hacket Wrench apart!” Windy bellowed right back. “And they would have done the same to Butterscotch if we’d turned tail and ran off!!”
“By opening fire in the one section of the Stable where our EFS and S.A.T.S. systems don’t even work?! What if one of your rounds hit the ingoing supply pipes, or the outgoing waste pipes?! What about the power relay conduit at the other end of the hall?! Have you forgotten that we haven’t had the ammunition to afford to practice for the last two years?!“
“No, we haven’t,” the sky-blue pegasus answered back with a combative tone. “Which is why we rehearse drills and routines with snap caps during off-duty hours, and which we have suggested time and again for the rest of the department! Some practice with trigger manipulation is better than not touching the thing at all!”
Farsight’s body quivered with rage at her words, as if he’d only expected the words “Sorry sir!” or “You’re completely correct sir!”. “By Celestia, you two are beyond controllable. You could have displaced the entire Stable onto the surface! We have enough problems with the bugs popping up all the way up to level five!”
Sling purposefully tuned out the shouting with a subtle application of her hearing protection spell, turning the words into muffled throbs as mare and stallion battled it out with words and lung capacity. She just didn’t care anymore.
The only thing she cared about was getting back to the infirmary. Butterscotch’s leg wound was deep, but not grievous or mortal, and his timely first aid ensured that the healing potions and spells would leave minimal scarring and that he wouldn’t be walking with a limp. But Light Tail…
Just thinking of her name stopped her heart cold. The blood, from her little girl’s head, on her forehooves and face and she’d not even had time to wash it off. Her listless, limp legs, the way her brain seemed to have trouble keeping up with simple speech….
…o-oh stars is she even gonna be the same Light Tail if she wakes up—
“—nd you, Sling Shot!!” Farsight’s voice blared through her protected hearing somehow…at least, it was a “somehow” before she’d been snapped out of her wandering daze. The light, muffled tingle of her hearing was gone, bringing full sound back into her world. She was so distraught that she couldn’t even focus on her most ingrained spell….
“What the hell were you thinking on level fourteen?!” Farsight roared at her when she thought to turn her head towards him. “Socket was brought in with a mild concussion less than ten minutes after you passed through! Toolbox and Torque had to carry him up to medical and I have ten eyewitnesses that all say you flung him into the ceiling without warning!”
Her answer was so automatic and instant that the damage was done before she regained her senses enough to realize it. “I told him he could move, or be moved. I moved him.”
“So that’s what you call unprovoked assault?!” he yelled back, his body shifting around behind the desk to take her in more fully—a sign that she’d just garnered his complete attention. “Is that how we trained you to perform your back-up job?!”
“Chief, not a damn pony in that department ever listens to us—“ Cloud Wind began to fight back.
But the chief would not hear it. “I’m sorry, I was under the impression that I was speaking to Sling Shot! Is that you?!”
The pegasus, for once in her life, had no counter to the screaming male in front of her. Her second and a half of silence was all he needed to turn his attention back to the unicorn.
“Is that how we trained you to perform your called-upon duties as a reserve security officer of this Stable?! Are you expected to allow your personal issues to affect your job performance?! Are you instructed to assault Stable residents without due cause or provocation for not understanding your directions?!”
Even in the disheveled emotional state she was in, worried almost to the point of vomiting about whether or not her only child was going to be okay or destined for a worse fate, she could already see the signs of something much larger behind his “drill instructor” behavior. This was not a mere after-action review, or a spoken reprimand to be added to a written demerit. This was a career-altering—perhaps even ending—attitude, the kind of threatening, verbally bullying approach a boss might take towards a worker that had willingly broken and flaunted the rules and regulations they were expected to adhere to. He wasn’t testing her, he didn’t even care about any potential answer she might have had. He just wanted to throw his fit in front of her, in front of her best friend, so that the rest of the department would know not to ever dare risk a similar outcome to their jobs if they wanted to stay clear of his wrath.
She was a sacrifice. He would do whatever he’d already decided he wanted to do when she and Cloud Wind had walked in here, no matter what she said or did. And that was not a fight she felt worthy of her time.
With deliberate and swift thought, she practically willed her 10mm pistol out of its holster, the steel scratching across the leather as she snapped down on the magazine release and flicked the falling magazine out towards the desk. As it landed and skipped across the surface to smack into the Chief’s chest, her spell field gripped onto the slide and yanked it back so hard that the chambered round flew out over his head and clattered against the wall. And with one final mental command, the unloaded and locked-open pistol was slapped down onto the desk, next to the magazine, with the barrel pointed out to the right side….
—Light Tail’s slumbering body was splayed before her on the nurse’s table, blood spilling down onto the worn padded mattress as she struggled to answer the nurse’s questions—
…and her security I.D. badge following right behind it just as the unchambered round clanked onto the desk and rolled to a stop against the chief’s desk light.
Now she had his attention. Angry, and slightly confused attention, but she had it.
“I’m done,” she spoke, her voice and emotions becoming surprisingly crisp and calming, even emotionally invigorating despite the unknown terrors awaiting her in the infirmary. “An entire stable that calls me a slut and a whore to my face is not worth laying down my life for. The whole lot of you can burn in Tartarus.”
She’d barely even turned around on four amazingly steady legs when Farsight’s familiar growl of authority curled up over her back and into her ears. “Don’t turn your back on me, Sling Shot, we’re not done yet. You don’t get to go back to slutting around, not on my watch. You will not abandon your own in a time of crisis like this so casually—“
She thought she heard Cloud Wind utter something very profane and vulgar beside her, but she’d stopped listening to anything anypony had to say to her after the chief of security had so callously disrespected her in the very manner she’d just described as her reason for quitting on him. Her anger obliterated her self-control as her rear legs bucked out behind her, taking an upward motion as they connected with the desk and sent it into a tumbling jump upward—
—a gray whirl swished across her vision, her body seemingly teleporting itself back towards the chief as her magic callously slammed the flying desk out of her sight—
—Chief Farsight did not even have time to completely process what had just occurred in front of him when she tackled him up against the wall behind him, her front legs pinning him up and into the wall—
“I look out for me and mine,” a dark, insidious voice from her throat throttled out into his shrinking pupils, the drying blood of her night light becoming smeared into his coat. “That don’t include anypony I don’t conjure it to.”
As quickly as she’d assaulted the chief of security, she ended it, unpinning him from the wall and letting his shaken body slide onto the floor as she walked away. She wasn’t aware of her own magic reaching out and putting back into place everything she’d just tossed aside in her fit of madness, only that two levels down was a daughter that she’d once thought invincible, laid out on a nurse’s table with a bleeding head wound that had shaken her small world into scattered pieces.
--------------------------------------
Her eyes blinked the fresh memories away and returned the wet floor of the showers to her vision, and she allowed herself a small, hopefully unnoticed breath before she took a couple of steps forward, shaking the water out of her face as the warmth began to spread across her back and flanks. “I don’t work in security anymore,” she answered quietly.
If anything in the world could make her night light shrug off pharmaceutical effects like insects to be flicked aside, it would be anything that involved her mother’s life. “What?” the little one wondered aloud, forcing herself upright in a battle against her drugged body that splashed everything around her with a quarter gallon of water. “You…you didn’t get fired, did y-you?”
“No, nothing like that,” she answered, truthfully and as calm and collected as she could manage. “I…I can’t explain what happened. Not until you’re older. But I’m happier this way. I never liked my job to start with.”
As her levitation spell took hold upon a bottle of coat shampoo, Cloud Wind’s voice broke into what had been a mother-daughter conversation with some less-than-desired reality. “I don’t know many ponies in the Stable that likes what they do to keep it running,” the pegasus muttered over the running shower heads. “But we all do our part. It’s how we’ve survived.”
“And I’ve decided my time is spent better elsewhere,” the unicorn mare returned evenly, floating the shampoo bottle up to her chest and squirting a portion of it onto herself. “Parchment has been asking for an assistant librarian for years after Quill Scent passed away and left her to learn the rest on her own.”
The mere mention of the squirt’s favorite after-school nesting grounds was enough to make her not ask about her previous job anymore, even though she was likely still worried about how it had become “previous” to begin with. “…the library? Really?”
Stick with it, make it conversation topic number one ‘till bedtime. “Not yet, but I’m the first pony to become available for the job,” she said softly as her telekinetic touch began to lather the shampoo gel across her coat. “And the library’s been a one-pony department since Parchment took over, so she can just go right to the Overmare about it. In fact, she was supposed to have done it yesterday afternoon. I’ll need to pay her a visit in a few minutes to see how that went.”
“Well, you go on and do that when you’re done here,” Cloud Wind’s voice suggested hastily, before Light Tail could start going on and on about whether or not she’d find those Daring Do books within the next week. “I got the kid covered.”
The unicorn’s only response was a muted grunt of approval as she continued to spread the foaming shampoo across her sides and back, absently dabbing Light Tail with a second streak of gel across the length of her spine and neck. The sooner she got everything out of the way and back to quarters, the sooner she could get some much needed sleep.
And hopefully not see the constant recurring images of a broken, blood-covered daughter in her dreams…
--------------------------------------
She hated these stupid drugs FOREVER. Ponies weren’t supposed to be taking pills or icky-tasting liquids to sleep. She was supposed to wait until her body said “STOP MOVING”, and then she could fall onto whatever looked comfortable and snooze away right there.
When said body wanted to drop to the floor without reason with every step, it got a lot harder to think or do things, because all she wanted to do was close her eyes and let the emptiness of sleep claim her. Didn’t matter if it was a cold, wet floor or a carpet, she just wanted to sleep.
At least, until Mom said, “I don’t work in security anymore”. Just like that, no drama, no remorse, no nothing. It was like she’d just been talking about what their next breakfast would be, or the next play or concert act going on in the auditorium. It might’ve taken her a few seconds to actually answer when she got entranced by the water dripping down past her face, but she’d have expected an announcement like that to come with a little more fanfare. Or a warm-up sentence, something like “Honey, I have something important to tell you”. And the last time she checked, losing your assigned job was pretty darn important!
And Aunt C was a better bet for a clear answer than Mom. As soon as she stopped poking her in the flank to keep her moving across the living room floor, anyway.
“Hey, keep moving,” Aunt C prodded firmly. “You’re going to need another bath at this rate and I’m too tired to put up with it again.”
“Not my fault my legs don’t wanna work,” she grumbled darkly, pulling her slightly dampened body across the carpeted floor with her forelegs while trying to her rear legs to do something for once. But every muscle in her body was just so freaking tired, she was impressed she was moving at all. “So what really happened? How’d Mom lose her job?”
“She told you already, she wasn’t fired,” Aunt C’s voice answered dismissively, becoming slightly irate with the filly as she began using two hooves to prod her along instead of the one. “This is grown-up stuff, you don’t need to worry about it.”
A flare of anger rushed throughout her body and finally enlivened her legs enough to plant their hooves onto the floor, though she still didn’t have the strength to stand. “It’s my mom, I’ll worry as much as I want!” she hissed back. “What? Happened?!”
Aunt C must’ve been really tired, because she didn’t try to answer or be friendly and stuff. She just went and acted like most adult ponies would have. “You raise your voice at me like that again and I’ll—“
“You’ll what?!” she snapped, cutting her ‘aunt’ off before she could finish her grown-up threat and probably ensuring she’d get an earful from Mom later, but whatever! This was important! “Everythin’ around me’s gone crazy, last thing I remember is seeing Grape Jam on my way out of the washroom, hitting my head on a table leg and when I wake up I find out I’ve been out almost two days and Mom looks like she ain’t slept for none of it! Then she tells me she don’t work security anymore and she ain’t the least bit worried or angry over it?! Or did you even notice that?! It’s like her mind’s snapped or somethin’! What’s going on?! Why is my mom acting so weird, it’s starting to scare me!”
Aunt C’s eyes stopped glaring down at her, her scowl quickly fading into a look of pity as her shoulders began to slump. “….I…I didn’t…”
And then, before she could make her futile attempt to escape it, Aunt C had her swept up in a one-legged hug, ruining her strenuous efforts to get up on her hooves. “….sorry, El-Tee,” the pegasus whispered sadly. “I…I didn’t think how things must’ve looked like to you. Being out almost two days and not remembering the day before that…your mom’s been stressed out all week. Like, more than usual…”
With her limbs and body numbed into near submission by sleep-inducing chemicals, she could barely muster the strength to put up any kind of meaningful struggle, but if Aunt C’s grip of pity got her an answer or four, then she’d put up with it. “Define ‘usual’.”
“I meant…I don’t know,” she sighed in defeat, her wings opening out and dropping down to the floor as her mood continued to sour. “Butterscotch went missing, we had to put down curfews for non-working hours, we kept expecting radroaches to start skittering out of the vents everywhere we went…and I think she heard something yesterday morning that just pushed her over, she blew up at me when we were searching the Dungeon…”
That, she could believe. Sometimes it seemed as if Mom was always just one misplaced word away from exploding and taking out everything around her, and yet she always seemed to have this last measure of control she needed to keep it from happening. But the threat of a radroach outbreak would push that stress past those limits at some point. And if what Sun Star said to her last week was any hint of how everypony actually treated her Mom….
“What kind of something?” she asked gently of the leg trapping her onto Aunt C’s chest.
“….I didn’t understand it,” the pegasus dodged uneasily, and Light Tail began to doubt that she’d get any clear answers from her as well. “….but right before we found Butterscotch, when we first started hearing the bugs crawling around us, she froze up on me. Scared to death.”
“I thought you security types were fearless.”
“It’s not like that!” Aunt C shouted defensively, but quickly changed her tone to a more apologetic one as she explained, “Look, the last outbreak we had, five years ago…your mom wasn’t out with the rest of us. The chief had her locked up in the armory, to “guard” it, while the rest of us took care of it, and he even locked out her access key to the weapons. The bugs were all over that armory door, scratching and clawing and screeching at it. When we polished them off and got her out she was a mess, darted right out the door and kept going until she hit a dead end….and found what was left of Kick Start’s kid….”
The schoolroom tale of “Bloody Hoofprint” suddenly didn’t sound so farfetched. “…y-you mean…Hoofprint? The story every kid in school tells all the time? That really happened?”
“….the story is kinder than the truth, but…yeah. It happened. And your mom was the first to find him. She wouldn’t come out of her quarters for a month, you’re probably too young to remember it. And then yesterday morning when we came by to see if you were okay, and she found you covered in blood and with two dead bugs shoved out in the hallway….I think it all just came down on her. The stress, the fear, the….everything. I seriously think she needs help, and not just from a friend. I haven’t told her yet, but…I think your mom’s going to need some counseling. Compulsory, if we have to, she hasn’t been herself since yesterday morning.”
“….yer holdin’ up just fine,” was all the little one could think to squeak out loud, apprehension growing in her chest as implications began to run wild within her muddled imagination. What if they decided her mom wasn’t fit to work and kept her penned up and drugged? What if they decided she wasn’t fit to be Mom and took her away?!
“I have ways of coping,” Aunt C countered calmly. “But your mom isn’t coping well. She hardly has any friends besides me, she’s gotten obsessive with you—“
“After what you just told me, she’s got a right to be,” she shot back sharply, her fears giving her words the bite they needed to be heard. “C’mon, admit it, if I looked as bad as you say you were freakin’ out too. Mom’s just takin’ it worse ‘cause of what she saw happen to Hoofprint.”
“Exactly why I think she needs to get some help—“
You can help her, you dodo! “So what’s stoppin’ you? You said even one word to her about it, or were you just gonna go behind her back and get her thrown into the counselor’s chair by force—“
She felt Aunt C’s lungs briefly hold her breath inside them, very briefly, before they continued their rhythmic cycle of in-out, inhale-exhale, but that tiny pause gave it away. “…you haven’t.”
The pegasus’s grip on her faltered, and even the coordination challenged filly had no trouble pulling herself free from the older mare’s reach to give her that patented (pending) “You know you should” stare.
Aunt C’s will to resist collapsed within just three seconds, her eyes no longer willing to look down at the glaring child before her. “….o-okay, okay, I’ll try,” she conceded. “I don’t even know what to say, but…I’ll try, at least.”
Works every time, Light Tail’s triumphant mind squealed silently, and she began to stumble off towards bed as best as she could manage. Now if I could just get my stupid legs and body to MOVE…
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Parchment was in tears when she caught up with her outside the library. The exact words and sentences weren’t quite that clear, but the general message was hard to miss amidst all the cries of “Thank Luna and Celestia” and “FINALLY!!”. Come Monday morning, Sling Shot was going to be the new assistant librarian and learn (with little difficulty as she was already familiar) the indexing and number system for the library’s collection. Not vast compared to say, the ancient libraries of the big cities in the time of Equestria That Was, but considering that the Stable’s library took up three quarters of level seven it wasn’t anything to sneer at either. She didn’t remember the exact number of books—just that Light Tail managed to read most of the ones she found interesting by the time she’d turned ten five months ago. And that Parchment was still trying to get them all back in their proper place after said child had managed to dismantle the place trying to get her cutie mark. Someday she was going to get the whole story from one of them about how such a thing could happen.
For now, the only thing on her mind was making sure her child was well and truly okay, and not breathing funny or bleeding from the head again, and able to sleep comfortably, and then she could try and get a nap in for herself. Not a long one, just enough to get some energy back in her so she could keep an eye on her a bit longer. Until she was up and moving on her own without looking drunk, she was never going to rest easy.
Maybe we shouldn’t have drugged her food, the train of doubt began as she trotted through the corridors on muscle memory alone. What if it throws off Tender Mane’s spell and her head doesn’t heal all the way? What if it makes her memory problems worse or starts eating away at that blessed mind of hers?! Wh—
No. No no no. Not like this, couldn’t be thinking like this. Had to look like everything was going to be fine, couldn’t let the squirt know she was deathly worried at every turn or she’d just catch on and bug her about it for eternity plus one. By the gods, sometimes that kid’s intelligence was a curse! Sh—no, no, bad thought, there was nothing wrong with her daughter’s brilliant mind. It just meant she had to be real careful what she said or did, and hope that she was smart enough to understand any explanations she gave or why she wouldn’t give certain ones just yet. Although…
…..although it would be nice if she never remembered that conversation yesterday morning. Her heart ached just wishing for it, her ever-vengeful brain always eager to make her recall snippets of it as though it were happening again. Never again did she want her daughter to hear anypony call her mother such things with impunity. Or hear it herself, for that matter. One way or another, this constant shunning and slander was going to stop. It was just the one night, ONE! And they talked like she did it all the time! What was wrong with everypony?!
Burn in Tartarus, indeed…
In short order, her dark thoughts melded into gentler musings and the desire of enveloping warmth from her three thick blankets as she found herself swishing through the door to her living quarters, passing by a swiftly-moving Cloud Wind without so much as a word spoken between them. Another mindless flare of her magic set the lock on the door, her attention focused solely on a quick—but thorough—checkup on the air vents above her as she trotted towards her daughter’s room. The initial outbreak of the radroaches yesterday had subsided quickly, and by the time she’d quit her job and stomped out over a hundred of the suckers lay dead across the hallways. But until a proper sweep of the vents and maintenance tunnels could be conducted, an all-clear was not forthcoming, and she didn’t want the things getting in again.
With her attention occupied on security, she didn’t notice the absence of a filly’s body in the bed until she’d bumped into by accident and tried to apologize, only to find nothing in front of her to apologize to. Panic and terror gripped her thoughts, freezing them into the singular notion that she needed to find her precious treasure right now, and barreled out of the bedroom at blinding speed. A quick check of the couch showed nothing but bare, freshly-washed cushions and pillows, nor did she see anything nestled into her bean bag chair that she’d moved next to the coffee table.
Only one other place to put a filly to sleep.
She tepidly sauntered to her bedroom door, surprised to find it open and inviting the warmer air of the living room into its walls, and sure enough Light Tail’s head was plopped down upon the dark-blue cushioned pillows once she’d flicked the lights on. With three blankets covering her body she couldn’t tell if the poor thing had already fallen, but the child was quick to answer that lingering question as the door swished shut behind the approaching mare.
“Ooooooh, yer blankets….so warm,” her high-pitched voice whispered tiredly, her eyelids not even capable of opening. It was quite possible she could have fallen into deep sleep had the mare not walked in when she had. “….bed too….so nice….”
“Y-yep, that’s definitely my bed you’re in,” she sighed heavily, drawing closer to the edge of the mattress, a levitation spell already beginning its mental incantations within her mind. “....why don’t we get you to your room? I’ve been selfish enough with where I put you.”
Her night light’s answer was slow, her fight with her drowsiness quickly becoming a lost cause, but she was not out of it yet. “…fine right here. Thought you’d sleep better if I weren’t so far away…”
Truthfully, she would, but keeping her little girl close to her just because she was deathly afraid of the shadows themselves dawning upon her was borderline possessive. No matter how much she might’ve wanted it. “I’ll sleep fine as long as I know you’ll be okay. That’s all I need.”
Light Tail’s answer brought her nearly to tears, for all the right reasons. “…just wanna know you will be, too. Lemme stay this once, Mommy….”
Sling could not find her voice for a moment. And when she tried, her vocal cords simply refused to vibrate and flex in any manner of recognizable speech. She had to suck in three large, cold-air breaths before they would work properly. “O-kay, then, honey. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Light Tail’s head burrowed further into the pillow, shifting around to either a warmer or a more comfortable position. “Not goin’ anywhere.”
She managed to make it to her daughter’s room before a single salty tear found a way down the side of her face, which she wiped off with her left foreleg as she quickly scanned the squirt’s unoccupied bed for—
Gotcha! She cheered silently upon spotting the snow-white, filly-sized plush toy of a white fox, a family heirloom since the first days after the Sealing. Perhaps the only remaining visage of the arctic wild animal in the world, it was continually handed down through her family over the last two hundred years to each newborn child, and was now one of Light Tail’s three personal and highly prized possessions. One which was always within reach of her whenever she slept.
She carefully seized it from the bed with a gentle telekinetic touch, and floated it out in front of her all the way back to her own room. A second spell lifted the layers of comforters up enough for her to slip in beneath them, and she’d hardly settled down into the mattress before the little one curled up against her chest and pulled the plush toy down into her forelegs.
“….oooh yeah, now I can sleep for half a day,” Light Tail murmured, and by the sound of it she was already drifting away into a better world than the one she lived in. “Nighty-nite, mommy…”
This close together, Sling could feel the faint pounding of her night light’s heart as it fell into a slow, gentle crescendo, her lungs synchronizing themselves to the same beat as sleep claim her senses. Even the soft crinkle of gauze and bandage became a ritual, her light breathing shifting her head slightly with every breath taken.
It was hard to hold back a joyful tear or three, so she didn’t bother. She just flicked the light switch off as silently as possible, allowing her right foreleg to find a home around daughter and plush toy and draw it ever closer to her. And for the two and a half minutes it took for her own body to succumb to its exhaustion, she could have believed that the world beyond the door was not one of steel and wire, but of the Equestria That Was that she dreamed of on a regular basis.
It was those old world dreams that finally lulled her into a painless, blissful slumber, and into the hope that for the first time in ten years, her life was finally starting to brighten up.