Twilight first met Enigma the day after he was born. Then, he’d seemed just like any other baby, except both his parents were in their late forties and… he was born with a cutie-mark. At the time Twilight had thought it might just be a fur discoloration of a pure white circle, coincidentally, mirrored on both sides of his flank, but as he grew older she became certain it was true.
When he was two months old, Twilight visited home for the summer holidays and was met at the door by her mother, looking more haggard than she’d ever seen her. This was explained a few minutes later when one of Starknight’s teats began glowing in the pale blue aura of Enigma’s telekinesis which began tugging, hard, in the direction of Enigma’s crib; unconcerned that there was a wooden wall in the way. Twilight had thought it was funny; her mother finally had a child that she couldn't ignore.
Next summer Twilight visited again; her father had taken time off work to help with the baby. Starknight less tired now, but more stressed; now whenever Enigma needed feeding he simply used a locater spell to find her, and then teleported her to a kneeling position over him in a position so he could suckle. Twilight was amazed and inspired; teleportation was abstruse, with even some of Celestia’s personal students never making a successful jump. If Enigma could master teleportation at one… maybe she could be the second youngest unicorn in Canterlot who could reliably teleport. She practiced and practiced, but Twilight never succeeded until she was eighteen.
Twilight visited home again when he was two. Enigma was bottle fed now, walking, and had moved into the basket of Shining Armor’s dog Morning Star, who he’d left behind when he joined the Royal Guard. For several weeks, Starknight tried moving Enigma back into his crib, but Enigma proved the more persistent and eventually got his way.
Morning Star seemed delighted by his new tenant and Twilight wondered if Enigma was making some statement about wanting attention; but that didn’t seem to be the case. So long as he had a milk bottle within reach, he indifferent to who or how often he was touched, regardless of whether it was from mother, father, Twilight or dog.
The next time Twilight visited, Morning Star was dead. At the time she’d been told that he’d fallen off the balcony, but much later she learned that after seeing dad pick Morning Star off the ground with telekinesis, Enigma had tried picking him up, by his eyeballs.
Enigma didn’t seem to understand Morning Star’s adverse reaction, but eventually tried giving Morning Star’s eyes back to him, unsuccessfully, and the dog was put down later that day. Like her last two holidays, both parents stressed the idea on Twilight that she shouldn’t tell anyone about what Enigma could do, especially Celestia.
When Enigma was four, Twilight visited him at home for the last time; and much of them were spent helping her parents look for Enigma after he’d teleported away to go exploring. The tracking device implanted in his coat made him easy to find, but reaching him rarely was as Enigma explored Canterlot, seemingly at random; entering stores, schools, businesses, factories and homes; including cloud houses – which he maneuvered without the slightest difficulty.
With three days left before she needed to return to the palace, Twilight, determined to keep his attention focused, bundled him up to her room and began demonstrating advanced spells for him, but Enigma was too busy staring listlessly at the neighbor’s cat, standing on a tree branch outside the window. His horn flashed, and when Twilight looked back, the cat had separated, seamlessly, into its skin, skeletal, muscular, organ, circulatory and nervous systems; all complete in themselves, rotating slowly in Enigma’s telekinesis as he ‘ba’d quietly in excitement.
After a few minutes he put the cat back together and let it go. When it fell down dead he picked it up and put it back on the tree branch but when it fell down the second time he lost interest and walked off. Twilight was disturbed; partially because she knew the neighbors, but mostly because nothing was preventing him from examining her in the same manner.
When Twilight got back to the palace, she broke her promise, and told Celestia everything. Celestia came back with her to visit Enigma, and after two days of observation, made the firm recommendation that Enigma be institutionalized. Twilight’s parents agreed and Enigma was transferred to the asylum later that week. Since then, these four grey walls had made up his entire world, invaded occasionally by aliens like Twilight who came attempting to make contact.
After finishing going through the first bag of glass Twilight had brought with her, Twilight and Enigma sat down for dinner with Cognastruct at six zero-three PM exactly for the kind of meal Enigma always ate at six twenty-three on Fridays. Everyone had one carrot stick - seven inches long, one hundred and thirteen peas, thirty-seven grapes, thirty-one beans, and eighty-three noodles; all counted out by Brace Wits who then excused herself so there would only be three diners. Having different numbers were OK, but there needed to be a prime number of diners, who all ate the same prime number of dishes, whose portions were always primes.
After dinner, everyone watched a short movie, filmed on the schoolyard of a class of particularly well behaved foals, who were about Enigma’s age. After the movie ended with a game of tag; Twilight, Cognastruct and Brace Wits held their own game, trying as hard as they could to encourage Enigma to join them. Unsurprisingly, he sat calmly on the floor, watching the three adults around him act like children, but at least he looked at them, and that was something.
Cognastruct and Brace Wits had always tried encouraging Enigma into physical exercise, but so far they’d failed. Enigma usually didn’t even walk to places, finding teleporting faster and more efficient, and everything in the room was easier to grab in his telekinesis then with his hooves. Thankfully and inexplicably, Enigma’s muscles did seem better formed then one would expect for someone who lived without physical activity, although no one would consider him to be fit. Twilight wondered whether or not this was connected to the fact that, in his entire life, Enigma had never once been sick with any conventional germ or virus.
When it became clear that whatever Enigma was going through, hadn’t changed his mind exercise, they finished the game, and Twilight, Cognastruct and Brace Wits each took a turn in reading to him. Twilight chose a chapter from an adventure novel, Cognastruct a book on advanced physics, and Brace Wits chose a cook book with lots of pictures. Sometimes Shining Armor would join them and they would each read to him simultaneously, from opposite corners of the room, hoping he might gravitate towards one of them and declare a preferred topic, but he never did.
After reading to him, the adults made the decision to ignore him for the next hour. A normal child wouldn’t have the undivided parental attention twenty-four seven an Enigma needed to see that their relationships with each other were just as important as their relationships with him. Brace Wits asked about how Twilight was dealing with the loss of her parents; personally Twilight would have preferred not to answer but she did anyway, emphasizing some of her uncertainty how she should feel losing her parents when she almost never saw them to begin with. Enigma was on the other side of the room, balancing loose hairs on top of each other, but out of the corners of her eyes, Twilight thought she saw his ears cock towards her.
After the therapy session; Twilight helped Brace Wits give Enigma a bath, which he accepted with a sort of contented pacifism that made Twilight think he enjoyed the feeling of warm, aroma-therapeutic water on his skin. Then again, maybe it was just the bubbles that he liked; Enigma always seemed to be giving them a great deal of attention as the mares rubbed sponges over him so, maybe he was counting them.
When the bubbles were gone, Enigma got out of the water and did something Twilight didn't understand which made him instantly dry. Cognastruct convinced him to take his medication and Brace Wits actually managed to brush his teeth. Usually, both these tasks would have been complex, stressful, or even dangerous; but whatever had gotten into Enigma had made him unusually cooperative.
It was now eight fifty-three PM. In ten minutes it would be time for Enigma to go to bed. Usually by this time Enigma would be acting sleepy; his eyes would get droopy and his mouth would start hanging open. Instead he was wide awake; fidgeting with Brace Wit’s mane and giving sudden jerks as though he was being stabbed with a needle from different directions. Occasionally he would teleport across the room and sit there, only to teleport back a moment later; like he was looking for the perfect spot and never finding it.
Cognastruct and Brace Wits both looked scared; this was how the previous nights had started, only now he was degrading even faster than before. Whatever good Twilight had accomplished there, hadn’t helped his affliction. “Enigma.” Said Twilight softly, “You need to go to bed soon, you know that. If you don’t sleep, whatever’s bothering you is only going to get worse.” Enigma tossed his mane, caught it in his mouth, and started pulling like he was trying to rip it out. “…If you want, I’ll lie down with you until you go to sleep.”
Cognastruct looked at Brace Wits and then said what everyone was thinking; “Twilight; we all love Enigma, but if the pattern he’s shown continues this room will be three thousand degrees or hotter by midnight. None of us can survive that.”
“You two can’t” correct Twilight, “I can. My parents died a few minutes past midnight, and you say that Enigma starts hurting around nine, peaks at midnight, and then calms down by about three or four. The time when he needs help the most is when he’s dangerous, and I’m the only person available who can take those kinds of temperatures.”
“Really?” skepticism and hope muddled together on Brace Wit’s voice.
“… I think so. When Spike attended The Great Dragon Migration I lost a chance to help him because I couldn't survive lava. When I got back I started experimenting with heat shields.”
“Experimenting?” growled Cognastruct, “Twilight; there’s nothing noble about suicide. Grief of lost loved ones often results in high risk behavior, especially if it isn't dealt with. If the room gets too hot -”
“I’ll leave.” Said Twilight, “It’s as simple as that. I can sustain a heat shield for about half an hour which is enough time for me to leave, even if Enigma tries to keep me here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Twilight should have known better than to lie to a couple of psychologists; she was about eighty percent sure she could take the heat, and about sixty that she could leave, but that still left her with a ninety-two percent chance of survival. “Leave me the keys to get out, a photo album of my parents, pen and paper to take notes, and some more glass for us to play with, and I’ll stay the night with him.”
Both psychologists stared at her; Twilight was sure they were both going to object and she wasn't sure she had the courage to insist on staying another time. She knew she was blinking and sucking on her lip, two tell-tale signs she was lying that they would never miss. Cognastruct opened his mouth for the objection that would talk her out of this, but before he could speak, Brace Wit’s rushed the narrow gap between them, and threw her hooves around Twilight, drawing her into a fast, desperate and grateful hug.
“Thank you!”