//------------------------------//
// Chapter 3: Truth Set In Stone 
// Story: Drowned In Secrets 
// by Darkie 09 
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I shifted my body weight and looked over at the clock. I felt a sharp tug in my wing. I turned my body back to the way it was when I woke up.
"Oww." I groaned as I slowly adjusted to the throbbing pain in my wing. I flew out of bed and immediately fell like a stone. "Again? Damn it!" I walked around my room, trying to shake off the pain in my wing. Maybe it'll go away, I think to myself. I stopped walking and thought back to last night. I thought about what happened, where I went, and other things like that. It suddenly all came back to me. I remembered how I hurt my wing. I remembered the voice... Trying to a heroine, eh little filly? I think not! I was then thrown back by what had to be magic. I remembered that when I was hurled through the air, my wing landed on what felt like a large rock or something. The pain didn’t bother me so much yesterday, but today it was absolutely agonizing!
"Midnight?! Are you awake?!" I heard my Mother's voice call from downstairs. It was a relief to hear a familiar voice after trying to remember everything that went down last night.
"Yes, Mom?" I shouted down the stairs. I paced around my room, still trying to shake off the pain after my little tumble last night.
"You need to come downstairs! The police are here to talk to you and Aqua!" I tried my best to make it look like I was perfectly fine. I didn't want my Mom to know about my injury and I was certainly in no rush to pour salt in my wound. I made my way downstairs and sat at the table. Aqua was sitting right next to me, sobbing with her head face down on the table.
"I'm sorry about Dad, and what I said to you." She didn't look up at me. She simply continued to bawl.
"Hello, I'm Officer Swift Force," he said to me, extending his hoof out to shake my hoof.
"Hi, I'm Midnight Strike," I said to him, shaking his hoof. I then point to Aqua, who was still crying, and said, "This is my younger sister Aqua Blossom."
"So, uh, I'm going to have to ask you some questions about your Father's disappearance. First question: What happened that night?" he asked me as he pulled out a notepad and a pen.  I sighed as I tried to dig through my brain to find the information I was looking for. I looked over to Aqua, who, unsurprisingly, was still sobbing.
"Um, let’s see... I came home, and Dad was mad at me. He went outside, so I followed him back down to the Swamps. He shouted some curses at him-"
"How did you know he came down to the Swamps and shouted these things?" he asked me cutting me off.
"Oh, I followed him," I said, feeling quite guilty about it now. “This voice came up out of nowhere and told him he was a 'worthless sack of piss' and dragged him into the swamp. I tried to help him, but that thing - the voice - was really strong and it said to me, 'Trying to be a heroine, eh little filly? I think not!' Then it tossed me back, at least twelve feet." I heard Mom's heavy hoofsteps. I looked over and saw her stomping towards me with a frustrated look on her face. When she reached me, she gripped my shoulders tightly, which startled me. I turned to face her.
"Midnight! How could you forget to mention something like that?! You made contact with it- No, it made contact with you?! Do you know what could've happened?! The same thing could've-"
"Mom, I know! But it didn't! I'm still here, and I was trying to help Dad!" She released me from her iron grip and I turned back to the officer.
"What happened to your wing, Midnight?" he asked me. I looked over my shoulder and down at my wing. There was a big bruise the size of a cantaloupe and dried blood smeared on my wing. "Did your Father do that to you?" He asked me, jotting something down in his notepad.
"What? No! Of course not! I was pushed back..." I told him. "Hard," I added.
"Are you sure? Did you land on anything or did anything land on you?"
"Um, I-I think I landed on a hard, sharp rock," I told him, trying to divert attention away from my wing.
"Okay. Who pushed you?" he asked, jotting down another thing in his notepad.
"The voice,” I answered, “I was trying to help Dad and a green beam lifted me up and threw me about twelve feet, I think." He stared at me for a second before breaking his gaze and going to his notepad.  
"Okay, so it was a unicorn. Can you tell me anything about the voice? Did it sound feminine or masculine?"
"I-" I stopped. It wasn't exactly easy to recall as I really didn’t know what to make of the voice when I heard it, "I think it might have been a masculine voice." I looked at him as he wrote again in his notepad.
"Okay, thank you for your time. I think you may want to see a Doctor about your wing, Midnight. There may be a muscle or something that has been torn or displaced from the socket. I’d stay on your hooves for now if I were you. Thank you again for the time. We will call you if we find anything." He walked out the door and closed it behind him.
"Is this true, Midnight? Did you fall on a rock and hurt your wing?" I nodded miserably as I got up and off the chair. Mom looked at me with those fierce, stern eyes of hers. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?" she scolded.
"It didn't bother me last night!" I snapped back. That was a total lie. It didn't hurt immediately after I came home, but it started acting up a while after I filed that report.
"Okay, well, please... Next time something like this happens, tell me!" my mother begged. I nodded, and then she did the thing I feared she would do next. She started playing Twenty Questions with me. “Okay then, does it hurt when you move it?" she asked with a worried look. I flapped my left wing.
"Um, yeah. It- It hurts really bad when I move it. Why?" I asked her.
"Okay, on a scale from one to ten, how would you rate your pain?" She sat down in the chair next to me.
"Like a, um, maybe a high eight, or a low nine," I told her. She looked at me with concern. I watched as she walked back over to the counter and grabbed her purse.
“Oh, great! The last thing we need...” I muttered under my breath. “Mom! Please, don’t make a big deal about this. I know what you’re thinking, and I’m feeling fine.”
“I doubt that. Let’s go! Aqua, come on, you too! We’re going to Urgent Care.” I rolled my eyes and walked out the door trailing behind her. We walked down to the train station. “Come on, get on the train, girls.” I trotted onto the train and gently sat down onto a seat.
“Mom, why-” I looked at her as she sits down next to me. This was exactly why I usually hide my injuries from Mom. She would always make mountains out of molehills about this kind of stuff and I hated playing Twenty Questions with her about my injuries.
“Because, Midnight, I am not taking chances. Not this time! Not after what happened last time with your hind leg. We waited almost two full months, and then you almost had to get surgery. It’s a good thing you didn’t need surgery; otherwise we might have had to sell the house to get the money to pay for it! So, in other words, we are not putting this off.” I looked out the window and watched as the scenery changed from trees, to flat land, and then to mountains. It was a long ride, but we finally made it to the Urgent Care. We walked in and saw that, aside from us, there are only four other ponies inside. My Mom flew over to the counter.
“Hi, I need to admit my daughter to the Urgent Care.” The pony gave my mother a clipboard with three sheets on it. Mom sat down in the chair next to me and began to fill out all the things on the form. (Patient's name, home number, how it happened, etc.) I rubbed my aching wing. My mother must’ve noticed because she wrapped her hoof around me. She got up and handed back the clipboard to the pony behind the desk when she was done filling out the paperwork. She then sat back down and we waited until they called our names (or my name to be more specific.)
“Midnight Strike?” I got up and trotted over to the door, she led us through a small hallway and into a small room. We walked inside. There were a couple of chairs and a small doctor’s counter with a sink and some puzzles and books. We waited for a little while. I watched as Aqua solved puzzle after puzzle and read all the books, too. They were mainly for five year olds, so it wasn’t like she beat any record time. “Midnight Strike?” A pony wearing a white doctor’s outfit came in. She looked down at her clipboard. “Hurt left wing?”
“Uh, yes.” I told her.
“Okay.” She sat down in the doctor's chair and placed her clipboard on the counter. “So, what did you do to your wing, Midnight?”
“I was hurled through the air by magic and I landed on a rock.” I told her, rubbing my sore wing.
“Okay. Well, we’re going to take an X-Ray of your wing and see what kind of damage we’re dealing with.” She looked at me and wrote something down on her clipboard. “Please follow me.” She led me to a big room with a table and told me to get up on it. She placed some sort of blanket thingamajig on my body and went into the backroom. “Stay completely still until I tell you to move.” I heard the beeps and boops of the X-Ray machine and I hear the click. She took a couple more X-Rays of my wing and then helped me off the table once she was finished.
“So, what do you see?” I asked her as she leads me back down the hall and back into the room where my Mom and sister are waiting for me.
“Well, I am not sure yet. I’m going to send it to a lab. You can get the results in a few days. I’ll send them to you, but until then I can’t tell you anymore than it’s definitely more serious than just a twist or sprained wing.” She walked us back to the main lobby and whispered something to the pony at the front desk. We walked outside and began to head back to the train station.
Midnight, please tell me the next time something like this happens.” She looked really concerned, so I agreed for about the fifth time now.
“I will,” I promised her. We began to walk to the doctor. We walked the full 17 block trip to the hospital. The trip seemed to take hours, but we eventually got there. We walked inside.
“Girls, go sit in the waiting room, I’ll be right back,” my mother said as she left us in the lobby. We sat down. Aqua hugged me.
“Will you be okay?” she asked as she tightened her hold around my waist. I looked down at her.
“Of- C-course.. I’ll be- can’t... breathe... too... tight!” She loosened her grip around my waist and looked up at me.
“Yay! So you’ll still play with me… right?!” she asked me with enthusiasm.
“Yeah! C’mon, of course! I’ll always play with you.” I told her. Mom returned to the waiting room with a doctor. “Hi, Mom.”
“Girls, this is Doctor Blaze. He’s going to help see what’s wrong with your wing, Midnight,” my mom tells me. Doctor Blaze gestured for me to follow him into a tiny room. Once I was inside, he closed the door and began to talk to me.
“So...Midnight Strike? How does your wing feel now?” he asked as he reached for his notepad.
“Uh, bad, I guess. It hurts badly regardless of whether or not I move it.” I tried to smile, but that was insanely difficult to do. With the intense amount of pain coursing through my body, trying to make a poker face was next to impossible.
“Okay, I have received the results from your X-Ray and I’ve examined it. You said you fell, correct?” he asked. I nodded and he continued, “Well, the X-ray says that the injury is not even in your wing. It says that you have hurt the rotator cuff in your shoulder. In fact, it’s possible that you have been injured in two places. We are going to do an extra X-Ray to see if your wound is as serious as we think it is.” I nodded as he led me to yet another X-Ray room.
Oh boy, I thought to myself. I climbed on to the table and the doctor went into the backroom. I heard the clicks of the machine and, since I’ve had some practice, made sure to stay as still as a statue. He came back out and helped me off the table.
“Glad that’s over.” I told him.
“Well, not quite. It turns out from the pictures that you did hurt your wing in two places.” He told me uneasily. I gulped. I would have been screaming right then and there if my mother hadn’t walked in at that very moment.
“So, what happened?” she asked, “Is she okay?” She anxiously looked down at me. Aqua practically tackled me to the ground when she hugged me.
“I’m so glad you’re alive!” I looked at her with a bewildered look. Then I suddenly remembering that she has radiophobia, a fear of anything having to do with radiation, and particularly… X-rays. (In this case.) I sighed.
“Of course I’m alive,” I told her as I pulled myself off the ground. The doctor and my mother walked outside and closed the door behind them, leaving Aqua and I in the X-Ray room. Well, the minute they stepped out of the room, Aqua freaked out. She backed herself in a corner of the room as far away from the machine as possible and conjured up a wall with her magic. There are two things in Equestria I’ll never understand: unicorn magic and my weird sister.
“Aqua, it’s not going to try to murder you!” I told her.
“I don’t know that!” She snapped back at me. I gave up on her and waited on the table for Mom and the doctor to come back. Luckily, at that moment they walk back in. Mom’s first concern was Aqua cowering in the corner of the room.
“So, Midnight?” I look up at the Doctor, he looks back on his clipboard. “From the X-Rays, we know that you in fact did hurt your shoulder in two places. The first place was in your rotator cuff, which is fractured. This is leading to the pain in your wing since there is a bone above it called the clavicle. The rotator cuff is connected to a little, thin wire bone that is the beginning of the wing. Basically, it’s a joint that connects the shoulder to the wing and you have severely injured said joint. So, don’t try to fly. We are going to put a cast on it. Come back in three weeks and we’ll see how you’re doing.” We walked out of the X-Ray room. We went back into the room where we met the doctor and he plastered the cast onto my wing and onto a section of my arm.
We walked out of the Doctor’s office, happy that that ordeal was finally over. We thanked him, and on the way out, I got a sticker for being such a brave patient! I wore that sticker all the way home. Proudly!
We got back on the train and went home. For the entire train ride, Aqua was cuddled up on Mom’s lap. 


 
(The chapter art was done by me. Midnight Strike: Left. Aqua Blossom: Middle Mother: Right) 


The first thing my Mother was concerned about was about me ‘not protecting’ Aqua during time she and I were in the X-Ray room. So for the entire ride home on the train, I had to listen to my mother endlessly babble on about how I was not being a good sister and how I need to look after my little, poor, innocent sister because one day, when she’s not around, Aqua won’t be able to cuddle up in her lap and I’ll be responsible for her. I told my Mother not to talk like that, as it was very uncomfortable for me to hear her talk about her inevitable demise. We made it home. Finally… Aqua was told to go up to bed. I was tired, too, but Mom insisted that I stay downstairs for Celestia only knew what. Apparently, there was something so important that Mom needed to tell me that it couldn’t wait until tomorrow.
“Mom, are you sure this can’t wait ‘til tomorrow? I’m so tired, and my wing is really sore.”
“I understand,” she said as she turned to face me.
“Is something wrong, Mom?” I asked her. She begins to pace around the house cleaning everything in sight; something she does when she was anxious.
“Midnight, I know you heard your Father and I talking out on the porch the other day.”  I stared at her in utter disbelief. How the hell did she know?!
“Wh-What?!” I stammered, trying my best to play dumb, “Wh-what are you talking about?!”
“I know you heard all about our little chat on the back porch before we left. About your grandparents, the shifting, and all the other things we were talking about. Oh Celestia, you must have a million questions.” She sat down at the table and sighed.
“Wh-what? No, I- Me? No.” Oh, shit! She knows!