Dream Whisper

by Dream Whisper

Chapter 3: The aftermath

I woke up. The sun had just risen over the horizon. Was all of that real? It took me just a moment to realize. It was real. The pain started to pulse once again. This time there was no unconsciousness to ease it.

I somehow had to get to the hospital in Frozenfalls, which was the closest one right now. How could I get there in my current state, though? I looked at my body: Front left leg probably broken. Several rips either broken or just sprained. I would only be able to walk properly after stabilizing the leg, but first I had to get the bandages out. Furthermore, I would need a couple of strong sticks from the forest to support the leg. For that, I could use my magic. I pulled myself into the kitchen, where my medical aids hung in a shelf right next to the door.

After dripping some strange medicine – Don't ask me what it was, the pony from the shop never told me – on my bandages, I finally put them on. I found a stick outside my window, which was perfectly straight and seemed strong enough to carry me. After opening my front door, I was able to hover it in and fix it onto my leg with the bandage
As soon as I was finished, I started to prepare with supplies, I was ready to head off, leave home for an uncertain time. I also took the sleeping potion with me, not knowing, if it worked or not.
I hobbled a bit, when I started my journey, but it was fine for now.

When I finally arrived at the shop in the town, my whole body was hurting with every pulse of blood flowing through my limbs. It was bearable, just a deep knocking, but it started to get more and more intense. The sun had climbed up to the zenith by now, warming me up and brightening the day. Most clouds had moved to the south already, so we were left with wonderful weather. There were even two ponies outside, but neither did I want to speak to them nor did they want to speak to me. I headed straight towards the shop to ask the shop pony what the matter was with this sleeping potion. To my surprise, he was not there. His doors were closed and locked. Wondering what might have happened, I decided to go on. I had all the supplies I needed and it would be a long trip. The thing I feared the most right now, was dreaming again.

I wandered for a while through the calm forest; Sometimes stopping to rest my legs, sometimes just to check on the bandages. After my fifth stop, I had a strange realization. The sun was still in it's zenith; Immediately those throughts returned. It was my fault, that the sun did not lower. Princess Celestia was probably too busy with her sister right now to lower the sun. This was bad, very bad.

If anypony knew, who I was and what I had done, they would probably try to capture me, imprision me, hold me there until I was a rotten corpse. As much as I knew from my guilt, there are days in your life when you just have to lie, because you are unable to face the consequences of the truth.

My steps faded one into another, repetitive and slow. My mind wanted to go back to the bitter truth, but I forced myself not to. I was not ready to embrace it anyway. Step by step. Much like a walk of shame, but more like a walk of regret. I didn't even look up. My eyes were focussed on my hooves. Slowly lifting from the ground, gliding forward and dropping down again, leaving some proof for whoever might find it.

This trotting with feelings of pain, regret, fear and still a little bit of disbelief went on for a long time. A very long time. For myself, it felt like time was standing still. After this whole march, at some point, I got tired. Not the kind of 'I want to sleep now'-tired, but the 'I am dying for sleep'-tired. My steps were not straight anymore; One hoof was catching me right before I fell, and the other ones were bringing me out of balance again. My eyelids were falling down from time to time. Without even noticing it, I seemed to have passed out again. The dream I entered wasn't fully developed when I got inside. It seemed like my magic did not fully put me inside the dream. All I could see were black and white schemes floating through a grey space. There was no gravity here, not physical laws. Somehow, in some strange unexpected way, it was nice to finally be able to relax.

I wonder what pony dreamt that dream. The dream must have been from an unconscious pony as only those dreamt these weird dreams with nothing inside.

When I woke up again, the sun was still high in the sky. Although that didn't mean no time had passed. I started walking again, some power recovered, but still weaker than usual. The city, Frozenfalls, was not really far away from my home. Usually one day of journey, however that was measured in case you could gallop. In my situation, it would probably need 2 days. How in Equestria should I know, how long a day was, though? My part of the journey before collapsing would have been at least a quarter day, because the sun was half way over the sky, but after it stopped moving? How long would it take me? It was not only the boredom and the impatience, but I was also really serious about my injuries.

After what seemed like an eternity, the city finally rose from the horizon. I was standing in a clearing on a hill just inside the forest. In the distance I could hear the dim roaring of tons of water crushing against the stone relentlessly. The city was very flat, no high towers or such, but it was huge nonetheless. Like a giant puddle it expanded to all sides around the river. I would probably arrive at the borders of the city very soon, but the hospital was on the other side of the river.

When my small forest walkway met the giant street leading towards the city, the tranquility was over. The clopping of hooves and voices of these hundrets of ponies had been drowned out by the sound of the waterfall before, but now it crushed into my face. I tried to evade an old pony, who was slowly walking along the side of the busy road, but to my great displeasure, I stumbled right into the masses. First, I got hit by a young colt, trying to catch up to his mother. I could barely evade the giant stallion, which was pulling a carriage filled with all kinds of colored bottles. As I just got my balance back, a magically powered strange cart thingie hit my side.

I was kinda surprised. What were they talking about?
„H-h-hey you?‟

Why do I always have to run into crazy ponies, if I run into any?
„Can you please just stop?‟

This was going too far.
„No, I am not. STOP.‟
I would not have thought it could work, but they actually stopped singing.
„Can you just bring me to the hospital, please?‟
They put their heads together.
„It would mess up our appearance around 9'oclock at the Fallsranch. We could lose lots of time and time is money, brother of mine.‟
„If we let her through, we could get in trouble. Serious trouble, worth more time and money. Look at her.‟
Just how far was this going to go?
„Hey, I can still hear you both!‟
Now they turned towards me again.

Maybe I would be better off, walking to the hospital. This was really terror for your mind. Their machine was designed for two ponies, but I would fit on there somewhere. Of course, the two brothers sat on the sofa, while I was lying on the ground. I didn't care, at least not walking anymore; I would not have been able to handle the masses anyway. For now, I could relax.

Luckily enough, the two did not annoy me any further. The one with the beard started to sleep after a couple of minutes of their strange machine rumbling along the road, the other one seemed to ungulacurei his hooves. It was much more interesting to look at all these ponies streaming into the city like water streamed through a creek. How many different ponies could even walk on a street? Small fillies and colts, huge stallions, friendly mares, thin unicorns and big, bulky pegasi. Not something you would expect: How could they even fly? The big white pegasus, I am referring to seemed to be very strong, but had tiny wings. How often do you want to flap those if you want to fly? I guess, it works out in the end. As if he had heard my thoughts, he yelled 'YEAH!' for no appearant reason. You really see some strange ponies in big streets.

I arrived at the middle of the city in a while. With a magical cart I was a little bit faster than by foot. The hospital was still some minutes of trotting away, since we had yet not crossed the river.

Then, something strange happened. Most ponies were leaving the streets, in a rush to see something else. Even the Flim-Flam brothers stopped moving their strange cart. They jumped off without a word to me, running into the streets to my left. In a couple of minutes, the streets were empty. There was complete silence. Silence. Where there had been the roaring of the waterfall from before? A strange feeling, to miss the loud crushing noise. Why was it gone?

I have only heard stories. In some rare occasions, every ten years or so, the river completely froze down. This freezing was not, as you would expect it, bound to the seasons. The water was turning into ice without notice. Some say, when the water fall freezes, you could see your biggest dreams in the frozen crystals. Some people even tried to aquire some ice crystals.

Until now, no pony had been able to actually cut into the ice. It is told, that the ice is incredibly powerful with storing magic. It had become a great tradition to try to get some ice crystals out of the frozen fall before it started flowing again. For the next couple of minutes, the whole city would try it's luck on this rare occasion. If you could get one of the ice crystals, it would be worth a fortune. Most people were stunned by the sparkling ice crystals, which were supposed to fall down from the cliff, but seemed to be stuck in time. I have never seen it, but I always dreamt of it. Now, I had to go to the hospital. This was a not a hard decision: I also sprung down from the cart, nearly crushing under my own weight. I had to catch up.

Even though I had problems with walking, I managed to arrive at the huge bulk of ponies surrounding the frozen waterfall. The area was crowded and I would probably not get through to see the beauty of the drops of water, which are not only frozen, but also frozen in time. After a short while, I finally found a way to get closer. The crowd was getting thinner the closer to the cliff you got. I just had to walk along the cliff to get to the waterfall.
It was not very pleasant to look to your left and just see the ground missing. After a couple of hundrets of hooves you could see the white bed of clouds. However, I was willing to find my way.

If the frozen fall had only a fraction of it's described effect, it would blow my mind away. I came closer and closer to the frozen fall. I could smell the catchy smell of water and a cold, fresh breeze from the countryside. Believe it or not, it literally got colder the closer I got to the stream of frozen water; Almost as if the cold was creeping out of the river bed and latching onto the surroundings. A chill ran down my spine. The crowd was not in commotion as I had expected. The crowd was standing quietly, without words or movement. I further approached this rare event.
Then, I had my first glimpse. It was super-duper-tremendeously-incredibly-hyper-dazzling. By no means I could fully describe it, but I will try to anyway:

The first impression that outclassed every other impression was the reflecting light. Not only one color, but every possible color was refracted into the sky, into the city, onto the clouds. Everything shined and glowed and sparkled. In addition to that, the colors didn't stay on one place: There were multiple movements, the darker colors moved faster, while the lighter colors were almost standing still. In every heartbeat, you could see a new arrangement of colors, a new wonderful picture in the sky, down on the clouds and just everywhere. The second impression was the steady glowing of the crystals. They did not only reflect and refract the light, but they somehow glowed in themselves. It was a cold, white glow, but it was somehow calming. This calming glow was the reason for the incredible, unexpected silence. It was also baffling me. I could not have brought out a word. It was just... glowing, as if the water was replaced with white light, which was now flowing through the crystals.

The third impression came to me only after a while, but when I saw it, it caught me, took me with it into some other land. From one heartbeat to another I was lost in the shards of ice. The world around me faded as I was being pulled in. It sounds stupid, I know. This is the part, that is not really easy to describe. Sometimes you get the feeling, that you are standing somewhere else and your current life can be seen like a movie. My mind was just suddenly blank. I was staring. Without the slightest urge to ever stop.
You could say, I lost myself.

There is just one thing, when you are so deeply entranced by those shards, that can lower your mood. That is, if you are forced to stop watching them. I would have probably stood there for the rest of the day and the following night, which is as long as the freezing lasted. If I can trust my sources, that is. I was just watching a yellow circle hushing over a red surface, while a green twinkling arose from it. Then, a blue, long and sharp line cut through the surface. There was a purple triangle just about to join this fight, when suddenly my left hoof lost a bit of ground. Looking there out of reflex was probably the best thing that happened to me for a while. I was standing right on the edge. Just a few crumbling stones were holding me from falling. Somehow, I must have slid downwards without noticing it. I jumped back, making some kind of weird noise, probably to scared to even scream properly. It was about time, I headed towards the hospital.

The way towards the hospital was not hard to walk. My legs had recovered a bit already from the long march and now it felt good finally moving them freely again – At least as free as the supporting stick allowed it. I don't even know, how long I stared at those ice shards. Time was difficult to measure, now that... things had happened. I guess, today was my lucky day. The hospital was opened. Harder than the way to the hospital was the way inside. Even though ponies care quite much for each other, sometimes there are just one or two of us, who deny any ponial interactions and the mare from the check-in counter was one of those.
Her first words were:
„Hey you, over there. Stop making a diry floor with your bandages.‟
I don't know about you, but have you ever tried to pick up bandages with your hooves? Not? Well, I can tell you: It's nearly impossible. Not that is was a problem for me as an unicorn. But earthponies? Or pegasi? What are they supposed to do? Some parts of my bandages seemed to have loosened while I had watched the frozen falls. I quickly gathered some magic to pick them up and throw them over my back. Then, I went to the desk to register:
„Could you please be so nice as to ask a medical pony to help me – I have got some serious injuries.‟
„No.‟
She obviously did not want to speak with me.
„Could you at least tell me, where I can find somepony to help me. Please, I am in serious need for medical aid.‟
„Ponies like you are so annoying. You come in hear, with such dirty bandages and filthy excuses and expect me to help you? This is a hospital, not a daycare.”
I stared at her, completely caught off guard by that behaviour, then she resigned.
“Fine... There should be somepony somewhere.‟
What a great help. I probably could have figured that out all by myself. I would have liked to know, whether her grumpy mood was a result of not being allowed to leave her working place and watch the frozen falls, or whether she was just generally a grumpy pony.
This called for searching: Firstly, I went to my left, hoping to find just anypony that could help me a bit more. In the left wing though, there was just nopony. It was completely quiet. I turned around to the right wing and there he stood: An old, but seemingly friendly unicorn. He had a cutie mark of a droplet of blood.
„Hello! May you help me?‟
Hopefully he was not as grumpy as the lady from the check-in counter.
„Hello! Oh dear, you look like you need help. Come on into this room right here.‟
His right front hoof pointed at the door at his side.
„Most ponies are gone for seeing the frozen waterfall. Only us, who we need to care about sick or injured have to stay. Don't worry, I have seen it often enough. Another time would be another time too much. Life is short and I don't want to waste any. You know, it is a beautiful event, and it is a beautiful distraction.‟
A beautiful distraction? Probably. I gained nothing by looking at it, except losing my time. Then again, it was just magnificant.

The room for operations was very small. There was just a big bed and a couple of sharp hoof attachments. Some ponies operate with their mouths, but I like it more when they have the control with their hooves. The thing about being operated is mostly, that it usually hurts very badly, except the hospital has good coverage with medical plants.
I mean, you could use magic, and it was quite often used to help with the wounds. However, magic is not the answer to everything. On the one hand, it is quite hard to use the magic to heal. On the other hand, you have to be very exact and knowledged. In the end, it was just more professional to do the operations with hoof attachments. Not that magic was overall bad to heal. It's just not the best possible method for serious injuries like mine.
You need to know, where exactly the muscles run and if any veins were cut. You need to know, how to precisely limit your magic to a small area.
The bigger problem was getting ponies to a deep rest.

Sleeping potions were quite common, but so were medical plants, who just numben your body, instead of getting you to sleep altogether. The old stallion was quite surprised when I took my own potion out.
„Ahh, you already have something. Can I take a quick look at it? I just want to make sure, that it serves it's purpose.‟
I guess, it was alright. Even though, I had no idea, how he should see, whether the potion worked or not, I gave it to him. His horn started glowing as he lifted the potion in the air. He took out a couple of leaves and dropped some into it, taking them out again. Some changed color, others did not react.
“I am sorry, but you cannot use that one. It's a simple imitation. Take this one instead. It just arrived last week.”
He showed me the bottle from the hospital. I can just thank Celestia, that hospitals in Equestria do not charge you for your needs. Only the care above the needed often has it's price.