Derpy Hooves walked down the hallway of her house, knowing that a certain untested form of medicine was in her saddlebag. She turned into her daughter’s room and leaned on the door jamb, hesitant to enter. The mare stood in place, not wanting to cross the threshold but also wanting to do it with all her might. After what seemed like hours, the pegasus crossed it, gingerly placing one hoof into the room and waiting for something to happen.
She did it again, this time with her other foreleg, once again waiting for something to lash out at her for doing so. Still nothing happened. The intrusion of her front legs were followed with those of her rear legs as the mother stared at the filly on the bed for signs of wakefulness.
Derpy continued to slowly tread into the filly’s room, taking one tentative step after the other until she reached her daughter’s bedside. The pegasus’s eyes followed the rise and fall of her daughter’s chest, making sure that it was still moving, but not too fast, and yet it was.
The caring mother’s wing slowly opened out, stretching to its full length to make sure it would not catch on the saddlebag. She curled them downwards, fiddling with the flap to open the one on her right. The very tips of her feathers hooked under the fastener, a muffin- shaped metal clip that held the bag closed. With a small twitch of her wing, the clip was unlocked, granting full access to the bag’s contents. She used her entire wing to lift up the flap, opening the bag and revealing its contents.
Derpy turned her head around, sticking her muzzle in the bag to pull out a single syringe, placing it gingerly on the nightstand beside her daughter.She also pulled out a single glass vial, the contents of which sloshed about. She filled up the syringe, double checking to make sure she was filling it to just the right amount that Nurse Redheart had told her.
The pegasus slowly lifted the covers of Dinky’s bed, pulling it just enough away from the filly to reveal one of her forelegs. ‘Please don’t wake up,’ Derpy thought, lifting the leg up and slowly pulling it out of the pseudo blanket cave. She let both the blanket and the appendage down in a way that left the leg still exposed. The mare lined up the injection with the filly’s fetlock, gently resting the needle’s tip against the skin under the layer of fur. ‘It’s now or never.’
Derpy’s hooves shook while she held the needle up to her daughter, afraid of the effects the medicine might have. “I’m so sorry for this,” she gently whispered, driving the syringe deep into the filly’s leg. The pegasus could feel the needle slide through the muscles in her daughter’s body, the sensation of stabbing her own daughter making her feel sick and uneasy. At long last the syringe stopped; the needle was fully inserted into the filly’s leg. Derpy slowly pushed the plunger of the syringe down, pumping the liquid into Dinky’s bloodstream and mixing it with all the blood in her body.
And yet the filly still slept soundly, unfazed by the horrors being done to her body without consent.
Derpy retracted the needle, the probe following the exact path it entered from. She put the tool away and leaned in towards her daughter’s forehead, giving it a light kiss before speaking. “Goodnight, Dinky,” she whispered, slowly pulling herself away from the filly. The mare stepped away from the bed, her eyes still locked onto the slumbering filly. She walked backwards in order to continue staring at her daughter, only averting her eyes to blow out the candle on her night stand. Derpy backed up through the doorway, slowly closing the door while keeping her eyes on the filly for as long as possible.
Derpy sat at the kitchen table, a thin stream of white morning sunlight streaming in from a crack in the curtains. The strip landed perfectly on the table, its glow illuminating only a thin line of her breakfast of choice, a muffin, along with a cup of coffee. She had chosen a very uncommon muffin flavor today; its bread-like structure was filled with dozens of tiny pomegranate arils, their juicy goodness perfectly suspended in the confection.
But today Derpy wasn’t hungry; she had no motivation to eat. She sat and stared at her muffin, picking it up to inspect the pastry. She stared at each individual pomegranate seed, their perfect roundness tantalizing her as she longed for their juicy goodness. ‘Curious little things...’ she thought, picking at the seeds with her hoof to try and dislodge one. Her attempt was futile as the arils stayed in place. The mare put the muffin back down on the table.
The pegasus picked up the only other object on the table, the cup of coffee. She tilted it towards herself, giving it an experimental swirl to watch the contents flow around inside. ‘I don’t even drink coffee,’ she thought, ‘what am I doing with a whole cup of it?’ She smelled the drink, sticking her nose in the mug and inhaling deeply. ‘Smells like Carrot Top’s coffee. She’ll kill me if she finds out I took some of it.’ The cup was placed back on the table.
Derpy pulled out a chunk of the muffin, dunking it in the coffee and watching it turn to mush. She dropped the wet pile of muffin onto the plate, listening to the squish it made on contact. ‘What am I doing here? Why don’t I just go back to bed?’
There was but one thing that Derpy feared more than having to take a bite of her muffin with a full stomach: the dreaded click of a doorknob that signaled her room mate’s entrance. The previous night had been a rough one with Carrot Top, having yelled at her just for entering her daughter’s room.
The mare began to rock back and forth in her chair as she played through the awkward conversation that would follow in her mind. Many of the imaginary responses from Carrot Top steered the conversation straight downhill, as many of her actual responses did anyway.
But today was different.
Derpy was determined to stand up to Carrot Top without having another episode. She would not be verbally pushed around by her room mate, deciding that she would fight back in exactly the same way if things got nasty.
The grey pony stared at the table in thought, watching the thin line of light move as it crossed over her breakfast. At long last the beam lined up, falling onto both the muffin and the cup of coffee.
The dreaded click came from behind, resonating through the hallway as it spiraled towards her. It was followed by the sound of hooves on tile, the arrhythmic steps making a strange metallic clicking rather than a dull clopping. There was also another unexpected noise: the sound of scraping metal, the sound drilling itself into the mare’s ears
Derpy slowly started turning around in her chair, speaking to the pony that was coming towards her. “I’m so sorry about how I acted last night, I shouldn’t have-” she said, freezing mid sentence at the horror that lay in front of her. The pony that moved towards her wasn’t Carrot Top, but Princess Celestia herself. It wasn’t the fact that the princess was in her house that frightened her, but her appearance.
The princess marched on with her head down, staring at the floor. Her normally long, slender horn was replaced with one that had been snapped completely off, leaving a short, jagged stub—just like Dinky’s after the accident.
Her mane and tail were made of real hair instead of a magical aura that flowed in the wind, completely disheveled and tangled. All the hair on her body was covered in a mixture of milk and blood—just like Dinky’s after the accident.
She had a large gash in her side, a small rock still lodged in it as it oozed blood, causing drip after drip to fall on the floor. Her front right leg was bent at an unnatural angle, obvious to Derpy that it was broken—just like Dinky’s after the accident.
Worst of all, Dinky and Carrot Top lay on top of her, their flaccid bodies rocking back and forth as the princess limped forward. Several large needles stuck out of their backs, flopping around with the swaying of their bodies.
Derpy quickly got up from her chair as the princess continued to limp in her direction. The pegasus ran over to the house’s entrance, twisting the knob back and forth as the door held shut, the key missing from its hole in the lock. She spun around, looking directly at the limping princess that was coming right for her.
“You killed them,” said the sun goddess. She let out a low laugh with her head still down, her neck bobbing up and down with the action. The quiet chuckles sent shivers down Derpy’s spine as she remained helpless, pinned to the door out of fright. “You killed them both.”
“No! No I- I didn’t!” Derpy retaliated. “I didn’t! I swear! I didn’t do anything! I didn’t hurt anypony!”
“You poisoned them.”
Derpy’s eyes went wide in fear, the realization setting in. “No! I only gave the medicine to Dinky! I didn’t do anything to Carrot Top!” Her eyes darted around the room, looking for an escape. Seeing that there was nothing else she could do to save herself, she resorted to other tactics. She had to find a scapegoat. “N- Nurse Redheart made me do it! I didn’t want to! I had no other choice!”
The princess finally stopped in front of Derpy. She raised her head up, her bloodshot eyes looking directly at the smaller mare. “You killed them,” she said once again, laughing quietly in the pegasus’s face, “and there’s nothing you can do now but watch yourself be killed, too.”
Princess Celestia looked straight up, her head pointed at the ceiling. She opened her mouth, and out slid a large syringe tipped with a long needle, sticking straight out of her mouth. She lowered her head again, pointing the instrument directly at Derpy.
“No! I Didn’t! It was Nurse Redheart!” The pegasus tried to back up even farther, only causing herself to hit the back of the head against the door and her hooves to slide against the ground.
The goddess took a few more steps forward, standing at her full height before the pegasus. “You killed them both,” she repeated, the needle dancing about as she spoke. “And now I’ll kill you,”
Derpy screamed as she bolted upright, the blankets of her bed flying forward with the sudden surge of motion. She looked around the empty room expecting to find a crazed Princess Celestia attacking her with a syringe full of poison, but found nothing. She scrambled to light the candle on her adjacent nightstand, finally lighting it and casting out the darkness within. She grabbed the candle holder and headed out of the room.
She wandered into the kitchen, her eyes darting about and her ears perked up to detect the first sign of an attacker. Her legs shook as she pushed onwards, fearing that her dream would come true at this very moment. She walked back to the hallway after patrolling the kitchen, taking a peep into Dinky’s room. The little filly slept soundly in her own bed, snoring lightly as she dreamed. She found Carrot Top’s room to be completely empty; nopony was found inside the bedroom.
Satisfied with her search, Derpy returned to bed, exhausted from the day’s events and having to wake up in the middle of the night twice already.
Derpy Hooves slowly opened her eyes as a thin slit of sunlight hit her directly in the eyes. The sun, window, and her face lined up perfectly with the sole purpose of blinding the mare, causing her to awake from her slumber. She rolled over in her bed, the bed sheets spread out all over the place from a long night of tossing and turning. ‘Oh dear Celestia I’m tired...’
The grey mare walked over to the bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror. ‘I’m a mess,’ she thought, noting the bags under her eyes. She ran the sink and splashed her face with water in and attempt to wake herself. She dried her face off and shambled to the kitchen.
The pegasus dragged her hooves into the room, looking around to see if anypony was awake yet, even this late into the day. She walked over to the coffee machine, an act committed for the first time for the mare; she normally didn’t need to drink Carrot Top’s coffee. She started up the machine, setting a mug underneath and selecting the “single cup” option. Once the device had started, she walked over to the fridge to find that only a single muffin was in stock.
A pomegranate muffin lay on the middle shelf.
The dream of the night before suddenly came back to Derpy’s mind in vivid detail, the sight of a bloody Celestia etching itself into her mind. The coffee machine behind her rang loudly, the loud ding startling the grey pony. The mare picked up the cup of coffee, taking a seat back at the table after grabbing the only remaining muffin from the fridge and a small plate from the cupboard.
She set the coffee and the muffin on the table, noting a thin beam of sunlight on the table. She watched the line as it slowly moved across the table over the course of several minutes, the streak lighting up a single line in an otherwise dark room. She continued to stare at the line as it crossed her breakfast, illuminating every single pomegranate seed embedded in the muffin as it crossed over. The line eventually lined up with her full breakfast, slowing a bit of both the muffin and the coffee at the same time.
Click.
Derpy froze in place as soon as she heard the sound behind her. She listened closely, hearing the sounds of hooves on tile coming closer and closer. “Please don’t kill me,” she whispered. “Please don’t. I’ve done nothing wrong, I was just following Nurse Redheart’s directions. Please don’t kill me.”
“What, mommy?” came the reply from behind.
Derpy spun around in her chair, spilling her coffee and knocking the muffin to the floor. Dinky stood in the doorway leading to the hallway, the exact place that Carrot Top had appeared several nights ago.
The mare got up to her hooves, accidentally smashing the muffin that lay on the ground. She soundlessly rushed over to her daughter, crouching down in an embrace as the filly stood upright. Her eyes teared up as she stroked Dinky’s mane. After several intimate moments, the pegasus let go of her daughter, leaving her where she had remained standing.
“How are you feeling?” a teary-eyed Derpy asked, sitting down on the floor.
Dinky looked down at the ground, looking back and forth with her eyes to help her judge exactly how she was feeling at the moment. “Good,” was all she could say, not being completely sure how to explain the situation.
“You’re not feeling weak? Or tired? Or sick?” the mare burst out.
“No...” the filly cautiously said, choosing her words wisely as to not unintentionally lie to her mother. “No, I can’t say I am.”
Derpy hugged Dinky again, leaving her still awkwardly standing in the same place. While the two snuggling ponies were locked in the clasp, the front door opened behind them, revealing an orange earth pony.
“Oh, maybe I should come back later,” she said, backing out of the house again. Derpy let go of Dinky, running over to Carrot Top to hug her instead of Dinky. The earth pony held out her front hooves, fending off her attacker with all her might. “Please don’t touch me,” she requested, pushing Derpy away. Regardless, the pegasus locked her forelegs around the other mare, squeezing her in a tight embrace and preventing her from leaving.
“I’m so sorry,” Derpy said, still locking her hooves around Carrot Top. “I shouldn’t have acted that way last night.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Carrot Top tried to escape, but was still stuck between the forelegs of her room mate.
“Will you forgive me?” The mare locked her legs even tighter around the earth pony.
“Sure,” she replied, “just let go of me.”
Derpy did as requested, backing up from Carrot Top to inspect her, smiling as she did so. The earth pony’s normally curly mane was unkempt, pointing in every direction while all its tangles kept it stiff. She had bags under her eyes, the blue sagging skin pulling her eyelids down while her upper eyelids remained half-closed.
“Why are you still here?” Carrot Top said, swaying back and forth tiredly. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I’ve been taking work off for the past couple of days,” the pegasus explained. “For Dinky’s sake.” She gestured to the hallway, pointing in the general direction with her hoof as she pulled her room mate with the other. “You should probably get some sleep. We have some things we need to catch up on.”