Letters From a Little Princess Monster
Thoughts, Shots and Lollipops - Part Two
“Just one last tooth to check. I told you this wouldn’t take long.”
The continued rasping of the pointed wire prodding her teeth made Monster’s mane stand up on end, but she kept her mouth open and her horn quiet while the oddly-familiar dentist worked. Minnette. The name seemed comforting for some reason, as well as the unicorn’s cheerful laugh and the way she had greeted both Trixie and Monster with the familiarity of somepony who had not seen a friend in a long time. She had even allowed Trixie up into the dentist’s chair first, and her teacher had only moaned and groaned a little when she was being dentisted, barely flinching for the needles and the drill that had Twist quietly slipping back into the waiting room before she hy·per·ven·ti·lated herself. It was a nice word, and the nice dentist had taught her several new words like bi·cus·pid and mo·lar, carefully explaining her actions the whole time she was jamming cotton balls in Trixie’s mouth and injecting anesthetic. Minuette had even offered to let Monster poke Trixie a few times with the needle or use the drill, but it was probably a bad idea.
After all, Monster had gotten a look at Luna’s checklist, and it looked like the whole day was pretty well scheduled with no time for accidents.
* * *
“There we go, nice and clean. Unlike your teacher.”
Minuette packed her collection of medieval torture devices back into their steel box and pointedly avoided looking at Trixie, who returned the favor. After all the misery she had endured, Trixie had taken to huddling up against one wall of the examination room, holding her jaw while a thin line of saliva trickled unnoticed out of the corner of her mouth.
“Sadist,” muttered Trixie with a little excess splatter, scowling at the sudden way that Monster’s ears popped up and swiveled to point at her. A flicker of blue light and a Ventriloquist spell later, Trixie’s voice began coming out of Menace’s mouth. “I mean, thank you Doctor Whatsyourname for taking time out of your schedule for a cleaning, three cavities, and a fluoride treatment. And Menace’s cleaning. Are you sure there’s no cavities in there?” Trixie smiled, or at least showed her nice clean teeth when she pulled her lips back and dripped drool onto the floor.
“You’re welcome, Trixie,” said Minuette, lifting the paper napkin off Monster’s chin and rubbing a hoof in the little filly’s sparkly mane. “Never thought I’d say that.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Anyway, I’d like to see you both in six months for a checkup. Make sure you’re brushing every morning and every night.”
“So our teeth will be all shiny and bright,” echoed the little alicorn, looking at her plastic package of tooth cleaning devices with the joy normally given to a Hearth’s Warming present. “Bye Miss Minn…” She paused and took a breath. “Minuette. Thank you.”
The dentist grinned as the little filly fairly bounced out of the room, waving her new toothbrush and accessories overhead as if they were a flag. And, of course, somehow during her exit, the dentist had slipped a bright purple lollipop into her little mouth mid-bounce, which only made her bounce higher.
“Cute kid. Still bright, polite and sweet as ever.” Minuette looked at Trixie. “So how’d you wind up with her?”
“Very funny.” Trixie mopped her face with a paper towel and cast a longing look at the jar of lollipops, which the dentist finally acknowledged.
“Paperwork first. Sign here. And here. Initial here. Sign and date here for the bill.”
“I thought the Crown was picking up the bill,” slobbered Trixie, holding the paper towl under her chin and splattering a little saliva on the paperwork.
“Oh, that’s right. Then you’ll need to sign these other forms. Here. There, there, and there. All done.”
“What about the lollipop? I’m sure somewhere in the paperwork it says I get a lollipop.” Trixie held the paper towel over her mouth while she looked fruitlessly around the floor for the scrolls and forms.
“The little fillies and colts get regular candy. Old ponies who don’t brush their teeth right get the sugar-free ones.”
The lollipop that Minuette popped into Trixie’s numb mouth had only one ‘taste’ to it, and that flavor fought viciously against the residual flavors of anesthesia, mouthwash and fluoride treatments to emerge as a combination that locked her jaws together so she could not even spit out the horrible thing.
“Well, you better hurry up.”
“Why?” choked out Trixie in a splatter of saliva.
“She took your checklist.”
* * *
... went to the dentist and it was not nearly as scary as i thought. Minuette taught me how to hold the tools and all about growing teeth, but i’m not sure about the tooth flutterpony. it dosn’t seem very likely that there are little flutterponies who collect shed teeth and leave coins. they would need to sell something to get the coins or have a job.
next we’re going to the doctor and i’m getting shots to keep me from getting all kinds of diseases i didn’t know of before. Trixie has been a good big sister and went first at the dentist, so maybe she will do the talking to the nurses and doctors at the horse pistil.
This is going to be so much fun!
* * *
“This isn’t fun,” groused Monster as she glared up at where the nurse was laying out hypodermic syringes across a metal tray.
“You don’t see Trixie complaining, do you?” asked Sweetie Belle, sitting at her side with an innocent look.
“Actually, yeth,” said Twist from her other side. “I don’t think the’s thtopped. The’s jutht a lot quieter.”
“No, I’m fine,” growled Trixie while limping back and forth in the doctor’s office. “I needed to have my vaccinations updated anyway, what with all the traveling I’ve done as the Princess’ student. I still say I’ve already had my Pony Pox shot.”
“Booster shot,” chirped Nurse Redheart with a cheerful grin. “As our new librarian, you’re going to come in contact with a lot of little foals when they come in to check out books, and we wouldn’t want any of them getting sick, now would we?”
“What do you mean, check out books?” grumbled Trixie. “I don’t think I’ve seen anypony in the library since I moved there.”
“Yes, I was wondering about that. It seems the last four times I’ve dropped by the library to check out a book, the door has been locked.” The nurse produced a sheaf of papers and fanned them out in front of Trixie before she turned to the little fillies all watching with wide eyes. “Now if you just turn a little bit… That’s it. You may feel a little sting.”
“In the wallet,” groused Trixie, signing away on the forms. “I don’t even recognize half of these immunizations.”
“That’s because nearly all of those diseases have been knocked down to nuisance levels by a broad immunization program. A well-immunized population — there we go — provides herd immunity for the few that catch a disease, and prevent it from becoming an epidemic. Just two more, Twilight.”
“There needs to be a shot for paperwork. There, finished.” Trixie looked up as Nurse Redheart slipped an even thicker stack of papers in front of her. “What!”
“Those were for her. These are yours. Only one more shot left, kiddo. How are you doing?”
“I’m confused. How does it work?”
“Well, it’s a little complicated for a little filly, but the shots have just a little of a really weak disease that your body can fight off, and then it knows what the disease is like and can fight it off even better if it gets attacked again. There we go, all done. Now hurry on down the hall to room 105 for your school physicals.”
Trixie paused in her paperwork as the three happy little ponies all skipped out the door, each happily sucking on a lollipop, and Twilight with a bundle of informational brochures. With a pained sigh, Trixie turned to the nurse and asked, “Can I have one too? I’m done signing.”
“Yes,” announced the nurse, peeling the wrapper off a lollipop and sticking it into Trixie’s waiting mouth. “It’s Sour Apple, just like you.”
“Urk!”
“Whoops,” said the nurse after reading the wrapper. “I gave you one of Pinkie Pie’s Ultrasour Puckermaster Pops by mistake. You better hurry up if you’re going to get to the physical exams. Down the hall, first door on the left.” The nurse fairly shoved Trixie out the door and waved with a cheerful grin as the sour unicorn limped away, lollipop stick poking out of the side of her mouth.
“That was fun, and vaguely cathartic. So why do I feel guilty about it?”
* * *
“Miss Trixie, you can get off the scales now. It’s going to give you the same answer no matter how many times you try.”
“But they’re lying! Are you sure you’re moving the little weights around right?”
Doctor Stable took a deep breath and tried not to smack his fellow adult unicorn. It was difficult, but the big eyes of four little ponies, one of which had a camera, helped. The little alicorn seemed to attract her little friends like electrons around a nucleus, which was a fairly good analogy for the speed at which the little ponies tended to dash around the examination room.
The papers he had been so abruptly presented with described the little alicorn, “Twilight Sparkle,” as being over twenty years old, but from physical appearance and developmental progression, he could not make up his mind just exactly where she fit on the chart, in particular when he caught her reading her own records. Hearing phrases like “Widespread diffuse axonal injury” and “Orbital part of inferior frontal gyrus” from a pony that was even smaller than Sweetie Belle was a little disconcerting, but when she stumbled on simple words such as “chair,” it really sank in just how injured she must have been. Still, from the papers Trixie had given him, it seemed that alicorns could regenerate nearly any amount of physical damage, and the primary concern of Princess Luna was the environment in which she would be recovering. Around the office, there had been a great deal of speculation about the identity of the bearer of the Element of Magic, and with the little alicorn showing up at nearly the same time as Princess Luna…
Doctor Stable paused with his stethoscope on the little alicorn’s back and considered the probability of an adult alicorn being freed from the moon at the exact same time a little filly alicorn ‘just happened’ to show up in Ponyville. It was not unheard of for a young mare to vanish from town and reappear with an infant ‘cousin’ a year or more later, but then again, alicorns did everything on a much larger scale. And as a small scale unicorn doctor, he preferred it that way.
“Sol omnia regit,” he sighed. “You can put your cloak back on and go play with your friends. You’re as healthy as a horse, other than a few issues what I’m assured your friend will be helping—” Doctor Stable glanced over at where Trixie was nudging the counterweights around on the scale with her magic while standing on tip-hooves.
“We have an appointment at school,” said Twilight. Her big eyes blinked once and seemed to become limpid pools he was in danger of drowning in. “How’s my sister?”
“Fat,” he responded without thinking. The sudden pained look he got from both the arrogant blue unicorn and the little filly knocked him back a step, but before he could recover, something even stranger put him at a loss for words.
“I’m sorry,” said Trixie. “I know you’re angry at me, and I’m sorry for saying you only had six weeks of medical school when I was here the last time. You did a fine job with the cast last year, and I can’t even remember which foreleg I had fractured any more. And I’m not fat. I’m…”
“Tubby,” suggested Twist.
“Large and in charge,” said Featherweight.
“Big boned,” said Sweetie Belle. “That’s what my sister says whenever any fat ponies are fitted for dresses.”
“Out of shape,” suggested Twilight. “But we can fix that.”
“Cutie Mark Crusader Personal Trainers!”
Trixie watched the four little ponies gallop out of the exam room with an unfathomable expression, and slowly turned to face the doctor, but before she could say anything, Doctor Stable opened up his cabinet and rummaged around inside. Four lollipops floated out in his green magic and he passed them to Trixie with a nod.
“Where’s mine?” she asked.
“They’re all yours. The Cutie Mark Crusaders have just adopted you as a project,” he said with a subdued smile. “You’re going to need some unburnt calories in the next few weeks.”