When the Sky Isn’t High Enough

by Keeper of time RD

Chapter 6: Destiny

Light Seeker’s world had become one of darkness. Darkness and sounds, after a while he realized he must be asleep and couldn’t seem to wake up. With that he figured the sounds were voices but nothing they said made any since. As if his ears were hearing but his brain was refusing to interpret the sounds and give the words any meaning.

With one exception, one voice reached him in the darkness, one pony’s words came to him clearly, Scootaloo’s. This proved to be both a blessing and a curse. Hearing Scootaloo’s voice gave him comfort, but listening to her words gave him pain as she was always saying things like ‘He has to be okay.’ ‘Please wake up.’ ‘It was our fault, my fault.’

Light Seeker wanted to tell her that it wasn’t her fault. That he was hurt because he had failed to understand how hard it would be to get down from above the sky. He knew his own failing were to blame for his own injuries, not hers and not the crusaders’. But he also knew that no matter how much he shouted it at the darkness his words couldn’t reach her, as long as he couldn’t wake up his words were trapped in his mind with him.

Eventually something more than Scootaloo’s words reached him, “Please get better. It was all my fault,” she said, but with the filly’s words, Light Seeker felt something, a hoof on his foreleg.

The sensation lit up his mind like a firework and he grasped on to it with every fiber of his being. He reached across with his free foreleg and pinned the hoof where it was. “Not your fault,” He moaned, finally feeling his eyelids lift.

“Light! You… you’re awake!”

“I heard your voice in the darkness, it showed me the way. Now would you please stop blaming yourself for my mistakes and promise me you won’t give up on your dream?” he asked weakly.

“It’s a deal, if you help me, I’ll never stop chasing my dream.” Scootaloo was both smiling and crying as she answered.

“No, you’re better then that, promise me you won’t give up, with or with out my help.” He insisted, fighting the weariness that surrounded him the moment he woke up.

She paused for a moment surprised by Light’s response, then she put on a brave face and answered with a simple nod.

“Sweet Celestia, he is awake!” The unexpected voice of a stallion brought the two foals attention to doctor now standing in the doorway.

As Scootaloo stepped back and the doctor stepped forward. Light Seeker’s senses shook off some of the grogginess and he began to notice things like the beeping machine beside him and the fact that he was covered from head to hoof in bandages. He had awaken in a hospital, a perfectly reasonable place to wake up now that he was remembering how he had passed out, but something felt wrong, felt missing.

“Can you tell me your name?” The doctor asked.

The colt realized what was wrong, he felt the pressure of the bandages, but nothing more, only an all-encompassing numbness not too unlike the one he felt in the darkness and he found it more painful in his mind than actual pain. “Light Seeker, and I really don’t like pain killers.” He finally answered.

“Well you weren’t exactly awake to object to them before. Although I’ll still leave that call up to your mother.” The doctor said, then turned his head to the nurse that now occupied the doorway into the room he added, “Speaking of the mother, once she’s finished eating, will you tell her that her son is awake?”

“You want me to wait until after she finishes?” The nurse seemed to find the request as odd as the foals in the room did.

“As far as I can tell she hasn’t eaten anything since she got here and the last thing I want is to have to treat her for starvation, so yes, let her eat something before you give her a reason to come running back up here.” The Doctor clarified, then turning back to the colt in the bed he added, “As for you, do you know where you are?”

The question brought back the feeling of wrong-ness that Light had felt a moment ago. As he looked around it was obvious that he was in a hospital. But the walls weren’t as white as they should have been, the bed was made of a stiff foam mattress and none of the voices from the hall sounded remotely familiar. “A hospital, somewhere, not Cloudsdale.” He answered.

“Close enough, at least we don’t have to add brain damage to the list.” The doctor added, with a hint of a laugh.

Light Seeker’s mind was awake now, even if his body wanted to go back to sleep. His curiosity had won, “So, doc, what’s the damage report?” he asked.

Any attempt at lightening the mood vanished from the doctor when he heard how the question was asked. Light couldn’t help but wonder if the stallion had picked up on the casualness of the question, he had basically used the same line he always did when he got another machine to fix at the machine shop after all.

With a harsh look in his eye the doctor answered, “The ‘damage report’ is, you’ve managed to acquire micro-fractures in most of the bones in your body. You dislocated your front legs. You’ve suffered a moderate concussion, minor burns. You had already gone into shock by the time your friends brought you in and almost died form it. And to top it all off you, by some miracle of all miracles, you’ve somehow acquired a case of arcaneotoxicosus.”

“Arcaneo what?” Light Seeker asked.

“As the name implies arcaneo, magic, toxicosus, poisoning. It’s a vary rare illness that, if left untreated, is always fatal. It’s normally caused when a unicorn who has tremendous magical power but very poor magic control conjures up too much magic but fails to use most of it in their spell. At that point the extra magic just seems to become energy that harmlessly absorbs into their body, but once the levels of energy absorbed into the body get past a certain point the cells in the body react the same way they do to poison. The reason why it’s so rare is that usually only unicorns that are too young to have any real power are that sloppy with their magic and any unicorn practiced enough to have the power also has the control to avoid that mistake. And until yesterday I could have sworn it was a unicorn-only affliction. How you came down with it is truly beyond me.”

If the doctor had been trying to scare him it worked. “Am I gonna…” Light Seeker muttered.

The hint of regret appeared in the doctor’s eyes as he seemed to think he’d gone too far with his lecture. His next response was with a more comforting tone, “I said ‘if left untreated’ didn’t I? We started wondering why you weren’t healing like you should have, so we started running more tests and found that you were emitting energy like those suffering arcaneotoxicosus. And while we don’t have anypony on staff that knows how to treat it, it turns out that the local librarian is a unicorn that knows how, she gave you your first treatment last night. That’s probably why you were finally able to wake up.”

“Tell her ‘thank you’ for me.”

“You can thank her yourself, you’ll be seeing her four times a day for the next few days as she administers your treatment.”

The doctor stepped back but Light Seeker could see in his eyes that the stallion wanted to say something more, so he gave the doctor the excuse to continue, “Was there something else I should know?”

“Just… whatever you did to yourself, don’t do it again. I expect you to make a full recovery now, but these are the kind of injuries that will come back in twenty to thirty years as constant aches and pains to remind what you did to yourself when you were young.”

* * * * * * *

The following week proved to be painfully slow, as Light Seeker found the boredom to be more painful in his mind than the actual pain his body was in. (once his mother agreed to have him taken off the painkillers anyway.) While visits from the crusaders were a welcome distraction they were too infrequent and too short when they did happen, and even the comics they let him borrow didn’t last but an hour or two before he’d burned through them.

The best distractions actualy came from the unicorn who was treating him for the magic poisoning, a unicorn named Twilight Sparkle, who oddly enough, seemed more in the know as to how he’d been injured than anypony at the hospital. When Twilight came to treat him she’d always have a bunch of questions regarding his flight. His conversations with her taught him a lot, like the fact that astronomers had theorized that the sky had an upper limit and Twilight seemed thrilled that he seemed to confirm the theory.

The downside to his conversations with Twilight was they were followed by the treatments for the magic poisoning. Together Light and Twilight theorized that he must have absorbed the energy into his body when he was above the sky. Nice as it was to guess the source of the illness, that didn’t change the fact that the treatment was both painful and tiring. Something that was apparently made worse by the fact that he wasn’t a unicorn and couldn’t help Twilight separate his own energy form the energy poisoning his body.

* * * * * * *

On the day he was to be released from the hospital, Light Seeker awoke to the sudden feeling of anxiety. A quick investigation found a small army of ponies had somehow snuck into his room. Along with his friends and family there were several strangers he’d never met before. Light really didn’t like being the center of attention to a crowd, maybe that’s why he liked fireworks so much. Everypony paid attention to the colorful explosions and nopony noticed the technician working the launcher. Not to mention that fireworks were best viewed at night so the launcher and its technicians usually couldn’t be seen at all from the stands of any organized event. That thought aside the stranger that Light Seeker had heard too much about not to identify as Rainbow Dash broke the silence.

“Hey there, when Scoots told me that a fellow awesome record holding pegasus was cooped up in the hospital I had to come visit you. And what better day to do that then when they let you out of here right?” Dash said, stepping forward. Her eyes then fell on the stack of comic books next to Light. “Really Scoots? You let him borrow the Daring Doo comics but didn’t you didn’t give him the novels too? Those things are just as good as the comics and take way longer to finish. And in this prison that’s a good thing.” Despite her choice of words Dash’s voice wasn’t one of criticism for the orange filly, but of sympathy for the colt in the bed. “Speaking of this prison, now that he’s awake can we get out of here?”

“Not yet Rainbow Dash,” Apple Bloom said, as she stepped forward. “The cutie mark crusaders have something to say first. Thing is, after everything you did to take that flight and get your cutie mark we got think’n that it just didn’t seem right that you couldn’t be a crusader anymore. So we got talk’n and decided that we needed the title of ‘honorary cutie mark crusader’ for any crusader who actualy earned their mark.”

As Apple Bloom finished speaking Sweetie Belle pulled a light blue cape out that had the same insignia as the capes the three fillies wore. Light Seeker glanced at the cape, then Rainbow Dash’s coat, then his own tail. All were the same color. Sweetie Belle noticed Light’s eyes “Yeah, we may have given Scoot the final say on what color the ‘honorary crusader’ cape would be. Should’ve guessed she’d pick light blue,” she commented, rolling her eyes.

“I don’t remember ever joining your club, but I would be honored to join you. Though I’m not sure what use I’ll be to you unless you need a pyro-technician for something.” Light answered his friends.

Twilight then stepped forward and said, “Light, I was hoping to ask you something.”

“Then ask.”

“I wanted to ask a small favor actualy, that is. Would you mind taking some extra tools and measuring equipment up with you the next time you…” Twilight’s question was cut short when she felt a small hoof on her chest and saw the colt was already shaking his head.

“There won’t be a next time.” Light answered.

“But, your cutie mark? Your destiny?” Twilight stumbled for a thought.

“Yes I touched the realm of the stars, and I found my destiny up there. But that doesn’t mean my destiny is to go back.”

“Then what does your cutie mark mean?” Twilight asked out of genuine curiosity.

Light Seeker brushed his new cape aside to reveal the mark in question. “You may see a pegasus flying among the heavens, I see one who found a light worth seeking. A light worth sharing.”

“Okay, but if you don’t plan on taking a camera up with you to take pictures how do you plan on sharing it?” Twilight asked, with a slight glimmer of hope in her reasoning.

Light Seeker knew that the ‘light’ he was talking about didn’t exist physically, that it existed everywhere and nowhere all at once. Se he closed his eyes to search for answers and once more and gazed out at the memory of the heavens in all their splendor. Like the greatest fireworks finally ever, frozen in time. He thought. He might not be able to do anything about freezing time but he could recreate a vision of that light for a brief shining moment as many times as it took to inspire that ‘light’ in others.

He smiled and simply said, “I have a few ideas.”

Author's Note:

So the ideas I had with this story were, first that the CMC needed to make some progress. And the only way to do that without earning their own cutie marks would be to help someone else earn one.

Second while making Light Seeker I wanted to try to give him the personality types I felt were missing from the mane six and crusaders. Namely the tactician and philosopher with some other traits thrown in to fill out his personality. For those who have been giving me feedback on my stories how did I do? did he come across as an interesting character? Does he feel like he has some depth to him?

Comments

[NJH12]

*Speechless*

[EmperorSabbath]

Love it

[Kenshinryuu]

Awesome story, well done. I love Light Seeker and his rocket packs, I can totally see him sending rocket cameras up to get pictures of the sky. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if Luna and Celestia come to visit and find out who was up above the sky.

[Keeper of time RD]

4543339

Thank you. You are actually the first person to give me any feedback on how well/poorly I did writing any of my own characters. I'm glad you enjoyed the story, and I'm truly glad that Light Seeker came across as a well written character to you.

[We Cause Chaos]

Keeper of time RD:
Your avatar photo thing is my iPad screen saver. Love that pic!

[bkc56]

That was a fun story. I enjoyed reading it.