Chapter 2: Hopeful Wishes
Snowfall continued to stare at her daughter in disbelief. There had to be an explanation, blind ponies didn't just get their vision back, especially not if they were born blind. She must have just heard her parents talking about the gift some time, and wanted to play a prank on them.
"Sweetie, what do you mean they look like bracelets?" Riptide asked his daughter, just as confused as his wife.
"They're shaped like bracelets!" the little blue unicorn replied enthusiastically, unable to recognize the look of concern on her father's face.
"But, how can you tell?" Snowfall was starting to get worried, and it must have shown.
Cryssy frowned a little, "Are you okay Mama?"
That didn't help her parent's worries. They should be excited, their daughter could apparently see, but they hadn't done anything that could explain why.
"Mama, Daddy, why do I have to go to the doctor?" Cryssy asked from her mother's back as they walked through the town.
Snowfall had to think for a moment, not sure how to respond to her daughter without worrying her. "Um, we just...want to make sure you're not going to get a cold, like you did last year."
The filly frowned again, "Am I sick again? I don't like bein' sick" she asked her parents.
"No sweetie," her father replied, "this is to stop you from getting sick" he lied. It was the first lie he ever told to her, and he wished he didn't have to.
Both him and Snowfall had agreed to take Cryssy to the hospital within minutes of her admitting to 'seeing' her gift. They had never heard of anything like this before, and they were a worried, and actually a bit curious, as to if their daughter actually could see. They tried to hide their concern for her by disguising the trip as a checkup.
"But I don't feel like I'm gettin' sick" she argued.
Her parents had run out of things to say, and so the rest of the walk to the doctor was silent, with a few quips from Cryssy about her new bracelets. Snowfall had placed them on the little filly's legs while her husband got their scarves from the kitchen. It had actually made it HARDER to leave then, because her daughter refused to stand still in her excitement about the gifts. Luckily the pegasus managed to calm her down enough to get the scarf on and put the filly on her back.
The family turned into a pale grey building in the town square, which was covered in snow as always. The doctor was waiting for them in the lobby, a smile appearing on his face at the sight of the trio.
"Good evening Riptide and Snowfall" the doctor greeted them, then looked to the filly, "Hello again little Ice Crystal. I heard it was your birthday today" he greeted her with a big smile.
Cryssy's face lit up again, "Yeah! I'm 5!" she squeaked to him.
"That's great," the doctor turned back to Riptide, "did she get sick again this year too?"
Cryssy had visited this doctor more times than her parents could count in the past 5 years. At first it would be due to her falling or bumping into something too hard, but most of her visits were for illnesses. Most notable was her yearly visit for the flu. She seemed to catch it right around her birthday each year, but luckily this year she had yet to catch the bug.
"No, not yet," Snowfall responded for her husband, "it's..."
The doctor looked to the pegasus with a raised eyebrow, "What's the problem?"
"Well, we got Cryssy these new bracelets for her birthday," Snowfall started to explain what happened as the filly on her back threw up her hooves to show off the little silver bands, "and, after she opened them..." She paused, for some reason nervous about saying what had happened. "After she opened them, she told us that she could see them."
The doctor's eyes widened, "She...she said that?" he looked to each the concerned parents, "How do you know she isn't joking?"
"We never told her what the gift was" Riptide explained, "and after that, she asked us why we looked worried."
The doctor's mouth dropped open, "I'm...I don't know how to..." he was at a loss of words. Even as a doctor, he had never heard of a blind pony regaining sight. He shook the shock from his face and composed himself, "Take her into my office, I'll see what I can find out."
"Okay Cryssy," the doctor shuffled into his chair across the room from the little unicorn sitting on the exam table, "I'm going to show you a few things, and I want you to tell me what you see."
"Okay!" she squeaked happily.
The doctor lifted a ball in his hoof. "What do you see?"
"A ball!" the filly squeaked again, a big smile on her face.
The doctor put the ball down and picked up a doll from behind him, "And what is this?"
"A doll!"
He put the doll down and thought for a moment. Obviously this was no longer a joke, she could see, but how? As he looked at her, he noticed a small spark shoot off of Cryssy's horn. His eyes widened, and he pulled the ball back out. "What do you see now Cryssy?"
"Another ball!"
This time he kept the ball up, and asked a second question, "Can you tell me what color it is?"
"What's a color?"
"It's...well it's..."
The filly's face twisted in confusion as the doctor stumbled over his words.
He put the ball back on the ground and tapped one hoof on his chin as he thought about what the filly had just said. It made sense that she didn't know about different colors, he doubted her parents would teach her about something that she would, or at least should, never have seen. He had to think of a different way to ask the question.
A thought popped into his head, and he pointed a hoof at his lab coat, "This color is called 'white'," he pointed away from his coat and toward the wall, "and that color is called blue."
"They don't look different" she stated after a moment of looking between the doctor and the wall.
Great, he was making progress. He continued to watch Ice Crystal as she looked back and forth trying to figure out why he told her the wall and his coat were supposed to look different. This seemed to be some kind of miracle, until he noticed that her horn continued to spark every few moments.
"Okay Cryssy, I just have one more question," he pulled out a pencil and wrote on a piece of paper from his desk. "Can you tell me what is on this paper?"
He held up the paper with a big picture of a butterfly drawn in the middle.
Cryssy cocked her head to one side, her silver eyes staring at the paper, "That's just a square, not paper!" she smiled and giggled.
The doctor smiled and put the paper back on his desk, "Thank you Cryssy. Do you want to go talk with the nice nurse while I talk to your parents?"
"And then, Mama put on my scarf and we came to the doctor!" the little unicorn finished the exciting story of her day.
"That sounds like a great day!" the nurse smiled to the excited little filly.
In the office behind them, the doctor finished writing a few notes in his chart before looking up to Cryssy's parents. "I...I'm not sure how to explain this." He paused and leaned toward the unicorn and pegasus sitting before him. "Your daughter...she IS still blind."
"But," Snowfall was the first to speak, "how did she..."
After waiting a moment, and seeing that the pegasus didn't know what to say, the doctor continued, "She is blind in the conventional sense. I don't think she sees with her eyes."
"But...how then?"
"I did a few tests, just showing her a few different objects. She always knew what I was holding. I didn't know what else to do" the doctor paused for a moment, "Then I saw a spark on her horn."
Riptide nodded, "I saw the same thing right before she opened her gift earlier today."
"It gave me an idea," the doctor held up the ball from earlier for the parents, "I asked her what this was, and again she knew it was a ball; but this time I asked her what color it was as well. She of course didn't know what a color is, after all, she's never seen them before."
Snowfall looked at the ball in confusion, then back to the doctor. He could tell what she was about to ask, and continued, "I tried to explain it to her by telling her that my lab coat and the wall are different colors. She told me they looked the same," he put down the ball and picked up the picture of a butterfly, "so I drew this, and asked her what she saw. At first, she didn't say anything, as if she was studying it. When she finally answered, she told me I was just holding a square" he put the paper back on his desk. "I have a theory, but I have no way to confirm it."
"What is it doctor?" the parents asked in unison, both with looks of confusion and wonder.
"I think...I think she somehow uses magic to see."
Riptide's jaw dropped, unable to comprehend what he just heard. Not only had her daughter used magic for the first time, but she may have used it to SEE.
"I don't know for sure how it works, or if that's even what it is, but it makes some sense. I can only guess that it may work similarly to how a bat sees at night. I think her horn shoots off small waves of magic, which bounce back to her and allow her to paint a mental picture of what is around her. It only appears to show three dimensional objects. She cannot see anything written on paper, and it doesn't show different colors, everything looks the same to her.
"Either way, if this is what is happening, it shows a huge amount of magical potential. I'm not sure if she even realizes what she's doing, or how accurate it is; what I do know, is that this is incredibly rare. I'll ask a few colleagues what they think, but I doubt anypony will know any more than I do."
"So, what do we do from here?" Riptide asked, after a moment of shock from what he was just told.
The doctor smiled, "Go on like you did before. This is big news, but your daughter shouldn't change at all. I think she'll still be the same little ball of laughter she's always been, the only difference is that she'll be able to do so much more."
"Do you think we should tell her now, or wait until dinner?"
"I'd say tell her now, she'll never finish her food if we get her too excited while she eats."
"You mean like the time we told her about her first day of preschool?"
"Exactly."
"Okay then. Cryssy! Can you come here please sweety?" Snowfall yelled for her daughter.
The young unicorn's parents had big news for their daughter. After only waiting 3 days for a reply, they could finally tell her the big news, and knowing their daughter she resulting excitement would leave smiles on everypony's face for hours at the least.
Cryssy trotted into the living room, her horn shooting off a small blue spark every few moments; the assumed secret to her 'vision'. "Hi Mama, hi Daddy." She sat in front of them with a smile.
"Sweetie," Riptide started, sitting down in front of his filly, "your mother and I have good news for you."
Snowfall simply nodded her agreement. Her and Riptide had decided that the filly's father should tell her the good news; after all, this was a big day for any unicorn, and Snowfall thought her husband should tell her, being a unicorn himself.
Riptide's voice filled with pride, "Today we got a letter from Canterlot. There is a big school there, started by Princess Celestia."
The filly's smile widened, "What did the Princess write to us for?"
Riptide chuckled a little, "Well it wasn't a letter from the Princess herself, but it was from a very important pony at the school" his horn glowed blue and a letter floated beside him. "It says that they heard about how you use magic to see-"
"Batty Vision!" she corrected with her nickname for the spell.
Her father couldn't help but chuckle again, "That's right, they heard about Batty Vision, and they want you to go and take a test at the school."
One of Cryssy's ears flopped down, her face twisting with confusion, "Why do they want me to take a test?"
"Because if you pass, you'll be admitted to Princess Celestia's school, where they will teach you all about magic" he told her with a smile.
As they predicted, their daughter's face lit up, and the little blue unicorn started bouncing up and down. "Really? A school all about magic!"
Snowfall bent down and hugged her daughter along with her husband. "Congratulations Cryssy!" they told her in unison.
"Aww, can we please read one more Daddy?" Cryssy whined as her father tucked her into bed.
"Not tonight sweetie. You need your sleep, you have a big day tomorrow" Riptide told his daughter.
"Aw, okay" the filly's horn stopped flashing as she closed her eyes. "I love you daddy."
Riptide bent over and placed a light kiss on his daughter's forehead, "I love you too Cryssy."
He turned off the light and stepped out of the room, slowly closing the door so there was barely a click. After almost two months, his little girl's big day was almost here; the day of her entry exam at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. They would have to leave pretty early in the morning, before the sun even peeked over the mountains in the east if they were going to make it on time; but no matter how early they had to leave, it couldn't change how happy Riptide was for his daughter.
He lay in his own bed beside his wife, and planted a kiss on the back of her mane. "What did you study tonight?" she asked him softly.
"We finished the book on levitation magic" he told her as he closed his eyes.
His wife giggled, "Did she ask you to read another book again?"
"Yeah, she did."
Ever since they had found out she would be given a chance to go to the school, Cryssy's parents had taken turns reading books about magic to her every night before bed. They wished they could help her more, but with work getting busier for both of them to plan an upcoming blizzard, they only had time at night. Their daughter always listened attentively, and asked a lot of questions about some of the spells they read about.
Usually Riptide had an answer, being a unicorn himself, but Snowfall had to ask her husband about most of the questions her daughter asked. Not being a unicorn meant she had no experience with magic, but she still wanted to help her daughter any way she could. She even took some of the books to work most days, so that she could read ahead and hopefully be able to answer more of the questions from their curious daughter.
"She'll do great tomorrow," Snowfall assured her husband, "she had a fantastic teacher."
"No, she had two fantastic teachers."
The next morning, Snowfall was the first to wake. She rolled over and kissed the unicorn laying beside her, "Time to get up dear."
Riptide opened his eyes slowly, "Five more minutes Mama" he joked with his wife.
Snowfall giggled, "I'll go wake up Cryssy, do you want to get our saddlebags downstairs?"
"Yeah, I'll meet you down there" he smiled to her.
The pegasus rolled out of bed, stretching her wings and straightening out her feathers as she walked to the end of the hallway. She slowly pushed the door open, and tiphooved over to the small bed in the middle of the room. She softly nudged the sleeping unicorn with her nose, "Time to get up sweetie."
Cryssy rolled over as her horn sparked, "Five more minutes Mama."
Snowfall had to stifle a laugh as she pulled the blanket off of her daughter, "But don't you want one of those muffins I brought home yesterday?"
The filly practically shot out of bed and galloped down the stairs to get a muffin. Her mother smiled and grabbed her daughter's forgotten scarf from the closet before following the blue blur downstairs.
Downstairs, Riptide walked into the kitchen to find his daughter pulling herself onto the table, with one hoof stretched desperately toward a box of muffins; just barely out of reach.
He lifted her up magically and sat on the other side of the table, "You woke up fast" he told her with a smile.
Cryssy walked to the middle of the table and picked up the box of muffins in her muzzle, smiling as she carried it over to her father. She sat on the table in front of him, with the box hanging in her mouth by a string.
"Aren't you going to eat one of those?" Riptide asked her with a smile.
The filly shook her head and put the box down in front of her, "You get one first Daddy."
The lid lifted off of the box and 3 muffins floated out, all shrouded in a blue aura, "How about we all get one at the same time?" Riptide asked his daughter with a smile.
"Okay!" Cryssy squeaked as she grabbed one of the muffins in her hooves.
The second muffin floated in front of Riptide, while the third floated across the room to Snowfall, who had just entered; a teal scarf already around her neck, and another hanging from her muzzle. She placed the scarf on the table and bit into the muffin floating before her, "Thank you dear."
Five minutes later, after everypony had eaten their muffin, and Cryssy had eaten a second, the family stepped out into the cold morning. A yellow chariot pulled up in front of their house, being pulled by the two pegasus cabbies. Riptide apologized to them for having to show up so early, but the pegasi shook it off and assured him it was alright.
"We're gonna fly?" Cryssy asked her parents as they sat in the chariot behind the pegasi.
"That's right" Snowfall told her daughter.
"Just like Mama!" the filly yelled excitedly, eliciting a laugh from her parents, and the two pegasi pulling them.