//------------------------------// // Love at First Impact? // Story: Love Heals // by OrpheusMorpheus //------------------------------// I came into consciousness out of seemingly nothing. I didn't know where I was or what time it was. I tried to open my eyes, but the huge migraine I had prevented the action from coming to fruition. I moved my hooves around beneath me and felt grass. The grass felt dewy, so I assumed it was the early morning since I saw no light through my eyelids. I tried to stand up, but the immense pain in my head prevented that, too. I had never experienced such a strong migraine. It felt as if my horn was on fire. I had an idea. I tried using my magic to heal my head, but I couldn’t muster enough magic to do much of anything. I would have to suffer through it. I lay in the grass for the longest time until I felt the pain receding slightly. I finally opened my eyes and looked around. It was very dark outside, and I was lying in some sort of grass field. I turned to my left and saw the lights of Ponyville nearby. I looked in front of me and saw some sort of box. The lid lay next to it on the ground, and it appeared to be empty. I approached the box and saw that it was some sort of coffin. Strange, nopony had died recently. I turned back around and saw my imprint in the grass. I walked over to it and felt the wetness once again. It wasn’t just wet, though, it was also sticky. I couldn’t make out the substance in the low light. My mane suddenly felt bothersome on my neck, so I reached up to brush at it with my dry hoof. Strangely, it felt wet, too. I first thought it was just from the ground, but my entire mane felt wet. I felt my tail to see if it was wet, but it was dry. I was confused. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something glowing. I turned around and saw an extremely bright, reddish light coming from an object in the grass. It almost hurt my eyes to look directly at it. I started walking towards the object, but my legs suddenly felt weak. I tried to continue moving, but my legs gave out completely. I was still about twenty feet from the object, so I started crawling. For some reason, I really wanted to know what the object was. As I neared the object, my legs began to hurt more and more. About ten feet from the object, they felt like they were being stabbed. At about five feet from the object, it felt like my legs were being amputated. Then the pain spread to all other parts of my body. Arcs of pain shot through my back, and my neck felt like it was being twisted off. I could see part of the outline of the object. It was rather small and seemed roundish. After five more feet of hell, I finally reached the object. It glowed so brightly that I couldn’t look at it. I turned away from it and lay there while I caught my breath. My body felt like it was being stabbed everywhere. I began to feel something running down my head. The liquid made its way down my forehead, and I closed my eyes. I guessed that it was the liquid running down from my mane, so I stuck out my tongue as it ran down my muzzle. After a few drops landed on my tongue, I retracted the pink, fleshy muscle and tasted the liquid. It was blood. Out of nowhere, all the pain in my body ceased. Everything felt normal. I frantically reached a hoof towards my face and wiped the blood from around my eyes. Opening my eyes, I turned towards the object. It had stopped glowing completely. I reached out a hoof and picked it up. Since it was once again very dark, I brought the object close to my bloody face and examined it. It felt hard as I ran a hoof over its conical surface. It had small circular ridges parallel to the circular base that went up the entire surface, and the apex was round. I suddenly realized what it was. I was holding my horn. I dropped the horn in front of me. I reached hooves up to my head and felt where my horn should have been, but I felt nothing. I began to panic. My horn had come off, I was lying in a field, and an empty coffin was nearby. Had I died? Was I now a ghost? Nothing made sense. A bright flash forced me to close my eyes. I opened them slightly and looked down at the horn, which was glowing once again. The glow intensified until it was brighter than before. I tried to close my eyes fully, but they were forced open by an unseen force. As the light burned my retinas, it seemed to become brighter than the sun. The glow went from a red to a pink to a pure white. I was sure somepony would notice the glow and would come help me, but nopony came. The glow eventually became too intense for my eyes. I went blind. The blackness suddenly rushed in on me like a wave. I could see nothing. No lights, no brightness, nothing. I tried to move, but I had become paralyzed. I felt like a rock. Out of nowhere, my body started moving. I, however, was not moving. I felt like some sort of horrible marionette. I was put into a standing position. My tail and mane blew behind me and suddenly stopped moving in mid-air. My eyes were then abruptly forced open. I tried to blink and move my eyes, but was still completely immobile. I was standing in the same field, except it was daytime. I felt slightly taller than usual and realized that I was on some sort of raised platform. I could see row upon row of chairs stretched out to one side of me from the corner of my eye, but there was nopony to be found. I could see something wooden beneath me from the corner of my eyes. My skin felt desiccated and was burning under the hot sun. Although I couldn't blink my eyes, they didn't feel as if they needed moisture. I could feel my horn safely upon my head. I continued to stare forward. Eventually, a figure came into view from inside Ponyville. It was moving slowly towards me. As it got closer, I could see that it was a pony. The mysterious figure slowly moved closer, and I could tell that it was wearing some sort of cloak. I was beginning to become anxious; I had no idea who the pony was and why it would be coming to see me in my current state. As it came closer, I saw that its legs didn’t appear to be moving, and it appeared to be floating. I started panicking. The figure was finally standing on the ground in front of me. I couldn't make out whether it was a mare or a stallion because its black cloak covered its entire body. The pony began to slowly raise its head. I looked for the distinguishing features of gender on the pony's face but found none. In fact, the pony had no face, head, or body at all. It appeared to just be an anthropomorphic cloak. Frightened, I tried running away but remembered that I couldn't move. The cloak started lifting an empty sleeve towards me. I was helpless as it slowly touched my front right hoof. Instantly, my body expanded, breaking the shell in which it had been encased. I looked around me and saw that I had been covered by stone. Or had I been the stone? Either way, I felt much better than before since I was actually able to move. I started stretching my legs, but when I lifted a hoof to my face, I almost vomited. The hoof had had no skin attached to it. In fact, it had no had no muscle, either. It was just a bone hoof. Freaking out, I saw that the rest of my leg was also bone. I turned around to look at the rest of my body and saw that it was also bone. I looked down and saw that I was standing on a stone pedestal. I must have been the statue. Throughout this, the empty cloak simply “stood” there. I looked down at it in complete fear. In a flash of light, the cloak disappeared and left me alone in the field. I looked around me frantically in my panic, hoping somepony would notice me, but I was still alone. I looked towards the chairs and again noticed the wooden box. Looking down at it, I realized it was a coffin. In fact, it was the same coffin I had seen before. I jumped down from the pedestal, somehow able to move despite being a skeleton. I pushed the top off of the coffin and looked inside. This time, I actually vomited. All of the vomit landed on my corpse inside the coffin. My horn was still detached from my head. My front legs were crossed, and the horn was poking out from inside of them. I was perfectly clean. I turned away from the coffin and looked at the chairs. They were all occupied by ponies. All of the ponies were dressed in nice black clothes and were crying. I looked back behind me and saw that the pedestal was occupied by a statue of me. I turned away from the people, the statue, and Ponyville and began galloping away from the horrid funeral. I didn’t know where I was going, but I kept running. The field seemed to stretch on forever, and I could see no end to the grass, but I kept running. I began to see a faint purple haze in the distance. I tried to find a way around it, but it seemed to occupy the entire horizon. I ran towards the purple haze and saw it become more pronounced. It appeared to be some sort of purple fog or mist. I ran towards it. I finally reached the purple haze, my bones somehow starting to hurt. I ran straight into the haze and continued on through it. The haze became darker and denser until it totally obscured my vision. The ground below me stopped feeling like grass and felt more like fabric. My legs suddenly gave out beneath me and I fell onto the fabric. The haze cleared, and I could see where I was. I was lying in my bed in a cold sweat. My covers were on the floor, and my pillow was on my desk. I looked at my hooves and was relieved to find skin on them. I felt my horn on my head and successfully levitated my pillow back to my bed. As I fixed the covers, I glanced at the clock. I did a double-take as I realized that it was 9:30. I was supposed to be at the hospital by 9:00. I dropped the covers haphazardly onto the bed and ran out of the bedroom. I grabbed a mint from the kitchen jar as I galloped through and started frantically chewing it. I leapt through the front door and ran down the street. I'm going to be late! So late! Late, late, late! I was already galloping as fast as I could, but there was no way I would make it. The hospital was all the way across Ponyville, and I could feel a cramp coming on. Why can't I just go faster? Should I exercise more? I turned a corner and almost ran straight into an apple cart. The owner appeared to be pushing it to the market. She had a small filly jumping up and down behind her. "Ay, watch it!" she yelled, her Southern drawl very apparent in her speech. "Sorry!" I yelled back, not even turning around to see who it was. I couldn't waste any time. I was beginning to hyperventilate. My legs weren't meant to run this much, and I could feel pains shooting up the sides of my legs and my flanks. My short, curly, black mane bobbed in the wind, and my tail trailed behind me like a cape. I rounded another corner, narrowly missing a group of three mares having a conversation about clouds or something. I sidestepped the one on the right and kept moving. I jumped over a crate, sprinted up a hill, and kept running no matter what happened. As I ran, ponies turned to look at me, wondering why I was in such a hurry. I may as well have been running to a meeting with Princess Celestia the way I was galloping. Almost there! I had just passed the library, so I knew that the hospital was only a few blocks away. I turned another corner, my hooves almost slipping on the asphalt. I closed my eyes for a second, focusing on controlling my breathing. I had heard somewhere that controlled breathing helped with long-distance running, and I needed all the help I could get. I calmed my breathing and opened my eyes, but the force of the impact forced my eyes shut again. I felt the huge impact force, some motion, and then I was on the ground. Surprisingly, I didn't feel very much pain. I guess I just hit the pony the right way. I had only seen the pony for a split second before colliding into her headfirst. She appeared to be purple, but that was all I'd seen. She was looking for something in her saddlebags and probably didn't even hear me coming. As I opened my eyes again, I noticed a sharp pain in my horn. Still dazed, I rubbed it with my hoof and looked for any other signs of damage. I was a relatively weak stallion, so even the smallest scrape scared me half to death. Finding nothing, I was about to start galloping off again when I realized I'd come off very rude if I didn't at least apologize to the pony I'd smashed into. "Hey, are you okay?" I said halfheartedly, hoping that I would still be able to make it to the hospital in time. I looked around to make sure nopony had seen the crash. There wasn't a soul to be seen. "Yeah, I think so," said a voice underneath me. I hadn't even bothered to look at who it was. As I looked down at her, my knees instantly went weak from the beauty that was sprawled before me. Her pink and violet mane was a mess from the impact, and loose strands of it strayed all over her face and the ground. Her small purple horn parted her mane down the middle. Her big purple eyes stared into my brown ones, and I noticed that I had marred the beauty by giving her a black eye. Her tail lay in a heap behind her, and her legs were slightly bruised. There was dust covering her cutie mark, so I couldn't make out what it was. Her delicate muzzle was scrunched up, and she looked in pain. "Oh my goodness, I'm...I'm so sorry. I just need to...to get to the hostipal...I mean hospital. Oh man, let me help you up." I was blushing, and it only got worse as I helped her up. I brushed off some of the dust on her, and I saw that her cutie mark was some kind of star thing. She was eying me up and down, and I suddenly felt bashful about my appearance. I had been up all night reading and hadn't bothered to wash up. My ecru coat was dirty, and it paled in comparison to her beautiful light purple coat. "Let me fix you up," I said, hoping to redeem myself. I concentrated on the unicorn, trying to block out any thoughts other than healing. I could feel the magic flowing through me and into my horn. I could see the red light emanating from the horn, and the purple goddess was enveloped in a red glow. The bruises faded away, the black eye healed, and the various scrapes and scratches all along her body disappeared. I stopped the magic and looked at the mare; she appeared to be perfectly healthy. "Wow, that was..." the unicorn started. Before she could finish the statement, I was already galloping off, my whole face red with embarrassment. Who was that beautiful creature? I thought. Why did I feel so weak before her? I'm usually perfectly fine when talking to mares, but there's just something about that purple pony that make me feel... I paused my thoughts for a second. Could I be in love? I stopped dead in my tracks. Then my cynical side kicked in. Nah. Love like that only happens in movies. It's classic: two people bump into each other in the street and instantly fall in love. I'm making something out of nothing. Besides, I'm too young to be in love, and I need to focus on my studies. I started galloping at full speed again, trying not to think about the filly, but I couldn't help it. She just kept wandering into my thoughts. Even if I did like her, she would never return the feeling; I committed a pretty bad faux pas back there and I doubt she'll soon forget it . It's best that I just put her out of my thoughts completely. I finally reached the hospital, panting and covered in sweat. I burst through the door and was greeted by the receptionist. "I'm here for my internship under Dr. Scalpel. Sorry if I'm late," I gasped out between breaths. "Honey," said the concerned looking mare, "you don't work today." At that, I collapsed on the floor.