"Twilight?"
An elegant feminine voice tickled my eardrums as a hoof prodded at the upper part of my left front leg. I gave a tremendous yawn, arching my back as I rose from my contorted position—partway on a table, partway on the floor. I stood up straight, all four hooves eventually finding their way to the ground, and faced the direction of the voice. A snow-white unicorn with a royal purple mane stood in front of me, a concerned expression on her face and a pale yellow vest adorning her front. Drowsy as I was, I could never mistake my dear friend for any other pony.
"...Rarity? What are you doing here?"
"Honestly, darling," Rarity said, adopting a weak smile. "I could have asked the same of you. I'm just glad that you are alright."
I looked about my surroundings after realizing that I was not, in fact, in my home. It was a fairly bare room that I was in, all things considered. A single couch with one headrest was on one end of the room, a pair of curtains above demonstrating the existence of a window. In the opposite direction, there was the table that I had fallen asleep on, and past that a closed door with a peephole in it. The peephole, though, was currently plugged by a cork that was attached to the door with a bit of dirty string. A partially-ajar door on the other end of Rarity most probably led to the rest of the house. The only interesting feature of the home was paper—there were scraps of paper everywhere. Pinned to the curtains, all over the table, on both of the doors, notebook paper was attached to nearly every key feature in the room.
"Actually, Rarity... What are we doing here? Where are we?" I reached a hoof back to itch at the back of my head in thought, but instead found a cloth wrapping. I followed it down to my chin, and up again to the side of my head, finding that almost half of my head had been wrapped in cloth. I added a followup question, asking, "And what's this on my head?"
Rarity opened her mouth to answer, but was interrupted by the door behind her. A massive stallion carrying a bucket of water by one hoof swung it open. He eyed me, then turned to Rarity.
"You got 'er up?" he asked. Rarity looked back with no small amount of distrust in her eyes.
"That should be self-evident at this point."
"Good," the stallion nodded, either ignoring or oblivious to Rarity's disdain. "I brought a rag and some water, so we can change the bandages."
The bucket shimmered a light blue as Rarity snatched the bucket with her magic, spilling a bit of water on the dusty wooden floor as the bucket's contents sloshed back and forth before it settled on the floor.
"You mean, so that I can change the bandages. I'll start cleaning, and you will get the new bandages." Rarity huffed. "Unless you planned on re-using the ones that she's wearing."
The stallion nodded with a slight cough from the back of his throat, and then quickly trotted back into the door from which he came. I reflected on that exchange. Fortunately, it did answer my most recent question, by affirming that the things on my head were bandages. Unfortunately, it did little else to reveal the nature of my current situation, and raised a more ominous question. Namely, why did I have bandages on my head?
"Rarity," I asked, "What's going on?"
"Not right now, Twilight." she said, furrowing her brow in concentration as she levitated a rag from the bucket and wrung it clean. "First things first."
"Rarity, what is going on?" Rarity ignored my plea at first, the aura around her horn growing more intense as cloth bandages peeled loose from my head. As they were set down on the table, I noticed the self-similar spots of dark red on every layer of the otherwise pristine white fabric. It did more than a little to unsettle my already uncertain disposition, and Rarity's response didn't do much to help, either.
"Give me a second, darling."
Rarity seemed too focused on getting that wet rag up to my face to care about my protests. I was far too uncomfortable with my lack of knowledge about the situation to sit with my questions unanswered, though.
"Rarity, just explain to me what's going on, please!"
Rarity paused, and turned her head to the side as she furrowed her brow further. "You know," she said, "I would, truly. If only I knew..."
I reached up a hoof to push the rag out of our way, so that I could properly look Rarity in the eye. She looked at me for a while, gave a sharp exhalation, and dropped the brown fabric into bucket.
"Alright, Rarity. Enough ambiguity. If you can't tell me what's going on, tell me what you know." I spoke quickly, knowing that it wouldn't be long before Rarity took up her original mission of cleaning whatever wound I had on my head.
"Very well. Long story short? I was looking for you all morning, darling! You do remember our appointment, don't you?"
I nodded, seeing as we did have an appointment planned for ten o' clock tomorrow... or, since it was light out, would that be ten o' clock today? In any case, that seemed to satisfy her, so she continued. "In any case, I could not find hide nor hair of you anywhere in town! I asked around, and simply nopony had seen you! Disastrous! And I knew that you were no pony to simply miss an appointment. It would drive you mad! But then, a delivery pony spots me, and gives me a telegram from you! But then—"
"But then I was there, an' you didn't know what to think." The stallion from before re-entered the room, ducking under the door's frame to properly fit into the room. He had a large red medical bag around his neck, hanging down in front of his chest. "Look lady, I know you're in a tizzy, but you best save your story for later. She'll have you tell it again later, anyway. To write it down, see? So let's take this slow."
Rarity thought for a moment, and then turned towards the stallion. Her horn shone as the medical bag floated off from around his chest, and was deposited next to the bucket. I felt a tension rise in the room as Rarity's eyes began to bore holes into his block-like head, her glare seeming to shrink the massive stallion to a foal as he quailed before the baleful vision of my ivory ally. Rarity's voice came out quiet, but I held no doubt as to whether or not the stallion could hear what she had to say.
"Mr... Bigs, is it? I have been looking for Twilight for four hours. Four. Hours. I find her in a back alley boarding house in a completely different city. You just talked over me when I was talking to Twilight Sparkle, my long time friend, and may I remind you, the mare I have been looking for over a period of four hours. You, as the one who brought me here, you, as the one who lives in this suite, and you as the only pony I could possibly imagine as the culprit of all this mess... You are in no place to interrupt me. Do. You. Understand?"
"Bigs" was nodding so fast, I might have sworn he was a life-size bobble-head doll. I pitied the poor stallion—never before had I seen Rarity so angry, not even when Pinkie tried to roast marshmallows using a pair of her scissors. As she turned back towards me, though, Bigs cleared his throat. I winced as Rarity's head pivoted back towards him almost instantaneously.
"...What?" Rarity's steel-cold whisper sent visible tremors through Bigs' knees.
"I um... see I was just thinking that Twilight wrote... uh... all these notes to herself..." Bigs' voice started quiet, but rose slowly as confidence waxed. "Yeah! She should prolly, read them, y'know? She's smart, right? So she uh, she probably wrote something to herself about her amnesia, see?"
Rarity harrumphed, and Bigs deflated as he prepared for what most certainly would have been another browbeating had I not chosen to intervene.
"Rarity," I began, gears in my head turning. "I don't know what's going on here. At this point, I'm prepared to listen to anyone's advice—my own sounding particularly solid. So let me ask a few questions, and let me get a few answers, okay?"
Rarity looked at me, sighed, and then nodded. "I do suppose I'm getting a bit hasty, wouldn't you?"
I silently agreed before turning to the remaining occupant of the room. "I have a gap in my memory, and you said something regarding amnesia. Mr... Bigs? Did I hear Rarity call you that?" He swallowed, and then nodded. "Could you tell me what you know about my amnesia?"
"Well uh, you said somethin' about having A-somethin' Amnesia, and you kept forgetting things I told you. You started to write everything down, see?" Bigs pointed towards the papers on the table. "That's probably all your notes an' such."
"A-something?" I thought out loud. "Did I say... anterograde?"
While Bigs mulled about uncertainly, probably eventually giving me an affirmative answer to that question, I peered over the paper about the table, which had been strung together by bits of yarn. The very first paper warned me that I had anterograde amnesia, and should not use my magic. I waved Bigs silent with my hoof before reading through the notes. Two particular sheets of paper waited at the bottom, the first with extra-large text announcing its importance.
QUESTIONS SHEET: TWILIGHT, YOU NEED MORE INFORMATION, ASK THESE QUESTIONS
WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN
I winced at the obvious over-use of ink, but the importance of the paper was established well enough, so I supposed that it was not in vain. I lowered my examination to the following page, and began to read through a list of questions and missing information.
1. Bigs should bring a friend. Ask them to give testimony as to everything that happened since last night.
I looked up from my list. Bigs was sitting on the couch, head laying on the headrest as he gazed at the wall without much expression. Rarity was standing in the corner, near the door with the peep-hole in it—presumably the front door. She was glaring at Bigs when I raised my eyes from the paper, but upon noticing my movement, her attention was immediately redirected to me.
"Rarity—"
"Oh, no, no you don't!" Rarity interrupted, walking towards me swiftly with her horn aglow. "Now that you are finished, I will not let you say a word until I get you clean!"
"Ow—Ra—Oww!" As I attempted to lodge further protest, I was accosted by a flying rag, which caused a stinging pain as it landed on the top of my head. It was the best I could do to have Rarity slow down and give me her testimony while she meticulously re-bandaged my head.