The Stepmother, Finale
The aircraft climbed into the sky, racing towards its destination at best speed; the jet, a 6th generation Hondajet, was the latest in over-the-wing engine technology. Now that technology was being pushed to its limit as it cut through the clouds and approached its cruising altitude.
In the cabin, two men sat, both bound for the same direction. The first one was a bundle of nerves, jittery, nervous, slumped over in a chair, looking like his world had just ended. The second one, while not as anxious as the first man, still understood his sorrow and sat in a silent sympathy. After a few minutes, the second man got up and poured a drink, scotch, neat. He then went over and handed it to the first man saying, “You look like you could use one. I’d offer something else, but somehow in all this time I never seemed to master bartending.”
Richard took it and gave the man a wan smile. “Look, Mr. Kirkland—”
He waved it off. “Robin, please. Anyone says ‘Mr. Kirkland’ and I start looking for my father.”
That brought a smile to the first man’s face. “Fine, and I’m Richard.” Richard offered a hand to the other man.
Robin took and shook. “I would have hoped to have met under better circumstances, but don’t worry. We’ll get you to Atlanta in no time flat. And don’t worry about the contract or anything; as far as I’m concerned it’s a done deal. All you need to do is focus on your wife.”
“Thanks,” he said, though the confidence was gone in his voice. Burying Melissa was bad enough, but if Pia was now gone…. He forced the thought from her mind, dismissing it immediately. Pia would be okay. She was a unicorn, after all, and that meant a number of spells she could use aside from her natural talent of telekinesis – like shields, for example. He’d seen her use a shield in lieu of an umbrella plenty of times.
And then a thought crept into his mind. But what if she wasn’t? What if she blinked at the wrong time, or she got sideswiped, or…. His eyes went bleary as a shudder roared through his body. He’d just married her a couple of months ago. They had a whole life together ahead of them, right? She couldn’t be gone, not now…
Robin saw the look on the man’s face and knew he had to say something. “So, tell me about your wife. I’ve heard Pia – it is Pia, right? – is an amazing photographer.”
“She is. I’ve never seen anyone as talented as my Pia, and she lives up to her cutie mark.”
Robin’s brows rose. “Cutie mark? You married a pony?”
Richard sat back up, his mind removed from his cares for just a moment. “Yes, a unicorn mare. Pia’s short for Sepia Tone. Something wrong?”
The smile on Robin’s face widened. “Nothing at all. It just took me back to when I was younger. I dated a mare myself; beautiful gal from Canterlot. It didn’t work out; our lives were too different,” Robin said, nostalgia coloring his memories of his beloved, a beautiful young woman hiding the truth of a beautiful midnight-blue alicorn. “But while we were together, I loved her like no man ever did a woman and she loved me like no mare ever a stallion.” He looked back at Richard and his smile was wide. “You are a truly blessed man, Richard. You have the love of a life unlike no other. They say it’s humans who are overemotional, but it’s ponies that are filled with pure joy – and I’m sure your love for your wife is true.” Robin poured himself a drink and toasted his counterpart. “Here’s to your wife. May you two be happy forever.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Richard said, his mind grateful to have focused on something else.
Emory University Hospital was considered by far and away to be one of the finest medical care centers in all of the southwest, if not the nation. But despite all its lauds and accolades, there was a large gaping hole in the medical knowledge and experience at Emory, and as Pia was wheeled into the trauma center, that lack of knowledge suddenly became paramount.
The first doctor to see her immediately looked at the nurse and said, “What have we got in terms of EqDs in town?”
Nurse looked right back and him and said, “Already did; we’ve got nothing, nor does anyone within driving distance. But Johns Hopkins up in Baltimore has a ton of them and we’re getting word to them now.”
The doctor looked unnerved by that. “So we’re going to have to play the waiting game until one gets here? Okay, let’s get the patient stabilized and do what we can, we’ve got a few others coming in.”
Meanwhile, Richard’s parents had driven like the proverbial chiropterids out of chthon. Arriving at the school to pick up their grandson, they immediately rushed to the hospital. When Jack asked as to what was going on, while at first they both feigned as if it were a surprise, after a while they chose to tell him the truth. Both Nelson and Joyce knew of Jack’s dislike of his stepmother, so they were both prepared to have to scold him if necessary. What they got instead was rather surprising – nothing, not a peep.
Maybe Jack was starting to realize the magnitude of what was going on, they reasoned. Or maybe he just figured out that now was not the time to bring up how much he hated Pia. Either way his silence was a much-needed relief.
Standing in the hospital next to his grandparents as they tried to get information out of doctors, something suddenly felt very wrong to Jack and he wasn’t sure why. Hospitals were for sick or hurt people, right? The unicorn weirdo was here, which meant that she’d been hurt or got sick. Maybe she’d be here a long time and Dad would forget about her and things could just go back to normal; they hadn’t been that way for over two years now.
And yet…why did everything feel so empty? He won, right? He was getting rid of her. So…why did everything feel so wrong? He had no way to explain that, no method to decipher the cold feeling gnawing in his stomach. And as he stood in a forest of labcoats and sterile, muted colors there was nothing there that could give him any answers.
Finally, his father arrived and the first thing he did was to hold his son, tears coming from his eyes as he murmured, “It’s going to be alright, Jack, everything’s going to be alright.” That confused Jack even more so. If things were going to go back to normal, his father should have been thrilled about it. But instead, he saw his father, as badly shaken as the time Jack had fallen off his bicycle. It was enough to make Jack wonder that maybe things weren’t going to be alright this time.
In a room in intensive care there was the erratic beep of a heart monitor; normally it would be alerting the medical staff that the person the monitor was attached to was in need of assistance, but the monitor had been designed for humans in mind and not its current user, so as things were stabilized the doctors understood the “danger zone” was still within normal baselines for the patient. Accompanying the beeps was the steady pump of oxygen being fed to the patient via a mask; once again only human equipment was on hand so a lot of jury rigging had to be done to fit the mask. Lastly, the steady flow of an IV drip kept time with the other two machines. This last piece of equipment was thankfully universal enough that it wouldn’t be too much of a problem.
And somewhere in the pile of bandages was his wife. Somewhere in the mummified layers of gauze that kept the breathing mask on was his Pia; just enough of her mane poked out to confirm it. She looked so tiny and frail in the bandages against the size of the human-standard bed; the only thing clearly he could see of her from this angle was her left forehoof, laying on the bed, stilled and unmoving. It was unnatural for it to be that way, Richard thought; that forehoof, like its twin, were as animated and excited as any human hands could be, lively and full of joie d’ vivre.
But now they lay, silent as a forest at the edge of dawn. And he would sit here, tending a lonely vigil. His parents had already gone to his house with his son in an attempt to take care of the boy. Several of their friends from the A-Frame had been by, save for Gladys, who’d called to offer a teary apology for switching with Pia; Richard knew it wasn’t the gryphoness’ fault and insisted there was nothing to forgive. But that had all been hours ago, and now all he could do was to sit here in a hospital completely unprepared for an equinoid patient – for any non-human patient, one of the doctors sadly admitted – and hope help would be soon in coming.
He didn’t have to wait long. Excited conversation started filtering down the hall, as well as the steady rumble of something being pushed down the hall. Finally, as they approached, she saw one African-American woman in her late-20s or so arguing with the person assigned as Pia’s current doctor. The woman said to him, “And it never occurred to you guys to have anything on hand? Proper bandages, masks, life support systems?”
“Look, we didn’t expe—”
“According to the last census, there are twenty-seven known NHSes living in the metro Atlanta area,” the woman said, slapping a hand against a clipboard. “Didn’t anyone think something was going to happen sooner or later?” She then looked past him and to the two beefy orderlies with her and said, “Dave, Max, get that stuff in there and get going. We’re running against the clock and we’re already critically behind schedule.” They immediately went to task without acknowledging her; they’d worked with her long enough to know that was merely wasted time.
“You can’t do that,” the male doctor sputtered. “She’s m—”
“She was your patient, Dr. Munroe,” the woman said. “The moment I stepped in here, she became mine. Now I’m sure you’ve got a lot of human patients to deal with, so please, let me do my work.” She rudely did a brushing motion with her fingers to dismiss him; he in turn muttered something under his breath but she ignored it. As he walked away, she brushed the hair out of her eyes before turning to Richard and offering a hand, saying, “Mr. Byrd, I apologize that you had to see that. I’m less than pleased that a major hospital wasn’t prepared for any of this. But I’ll do everything I can to get your wife out of here better than she arrived, sir.”
Richard hadn’t expected the sudden change in demeanor. “I’m sorry, you are?” he asked as he shook her hand.
“Erica McAllister, MD, EqD. Just arrived from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore a few minutes ago.”
“Wait – a few minutes ago?”
She nodded. “We went to the Equestriani Embassy in DC, then from there used the portal to the consulate down in Miami. From there, a group of Guild mages were able to bounce-teleport us here.” She faked a look of queasiness as she added, “In all the times I’ve traveled via teleport, it never gets any less stomach-churning, let me tell you.”
There was a confused look in his eyes. “I…I’d thought Equestria would send a doctor.”
She gave him an understanding smile. “And right now you’re wondering how a lady in her late twenties and normally just out of internship is doing here, right? Well, let me tell you: I’m the best there is when it comes to taking care of ponies. I was trained by Dr. William Hilton, the founder of equiniatric medicine, and I’ve worked under him until his retirement earlier in the year. I assure you, sir, as a doctor, my non-human patients are very important to me, especially my pony ones.”
Richard sensed there was a story there. “How so?”
She laughed gently. “Well, I’m only one of a handful of people who grew up with one before First Contact. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Alien Girl – or the Lost Foal, considering you’re married to a pony. She’s my best friend, like a sister. And though she’s always been reluctant to admit it, she’s a pony with a pretty unique perspective on life. It was actually worrying about her that sent me into the medical field – to always protect my friend, so she’ll always know she’s not alone.”
“I see,” Richard said, feeling better now. Whoever she was, this doctor was willing to be upfront with her motivations, which was better than he’d seen so far.
“Let’s see,” she said, sitting down next to him, going over the chart. “Have you been appraised on your wife’s condition?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No I haven’t.”
“They should have told you right at the beginning,” Erica replied. “Your wife is lucky to be alive, though there are some complications. Multiple fractures to bones in her body; her left radial and right pastern bones will need to be outright cloned and replaced. Plenty of contusions, not many lacerations but some internal hemorrhaging…but the biggest issues are potential nerve damage and the ACS. That last one, I’m afraid, is the big one.”
“ACS?” Richard was unfamiliar with the term.
“Acute Corneal Separation. In layman’s terms, your wife’s horn’s been broken. I haven’t seen it yet and the report’s not clear, but in any case…it’s bad. In many cases, ACS causes temporary or permanent paralysis of the limbs; your wife could be in a wheelchair for the remainder of her days. In severe cases, it can even cause death, though thankfully that wasn’t the case here. But what it will mean regardless is that your wife will never be able to use her magic again.”
Richard looked at Erica in shock: Pia’s magic was as much a part of her as her tail and hooves. “I don’t understand.”
“Unicorn horns aren’t like antlers, which grow back; or regular horns, which don’t. Unicorn horns are more properly protrusions of the skull, and that means a lot of nerve clusters are in there. For example, the magos nerve cluster is in the center of the horn, the part of the horn believed to pull the magic from its reservoirs in the body and direct them as needed through the ley cells.”
“Ley cells?”
“Plasma cells in pony blood responsible for magic storage, generation and transmission. Most laypeople call them ‘midichlorians’ after some old sci-fi term, but I’ve always found that disrespectful to my patients,” she replied. “Now, as for her horn, she can get a prosthetic – my understanding is that they look quite accurate – but it won’t work like a real one any more than an old metal plate in some elderly patients’ heads is a proper replacement for bone. Fact is, her magic is gone and you’ll have to help her through this difficult time.”
“I see,” he said. “When will she be conscious? When can I see her?”
“We’ll be taking her into surgery tonight to replace the bones requiring it and to doublecheck for anything Dr. Munroe’s team may have missed. She should be up and about by tomorrow evening and you can see her then. But I caution you to be careful, Mr. Byrd. She’s been through a lot and has a lot more of a way to go.”
It was actually over a day later, Saturday afternoon, when Pia came to. And the first thing she felt was emptiness. There were very few leylines on this earth, so unlike the symphony of lines that she could normally feel on her homeworld, the ones here stood out in stark contrast; solo singers on a hushed stage giving a grand performance. And now, she couldn’t “hear” those, either.
What she did feel was numbness. Pain. Dizziness. The last thing she remembered was a black out as the airbag—
Her eyes opened with a start, followed by the needle-sharp pain as sensoria from the light above filled her eyes for the first time in days. Through a billion miles of gauze she could hear a voice saying, “It’s okay, honey, you’re awake now.” Slowly but surely her eyes started to settle and she looked at the face of Richard, looming over her, tears in his eyes and a smile on his face. He reached down to kiss her gently and she felt the wetness of his tears on her face.
Standing aside from them, Gladys wiped a tear from her eye. She was still down from the feather flu, but she’d risk it for her friend. Turning to the doctor, she asked, “How long is she going to be here, Doc?”
“Probably for another week more,” Erica told the gryphoness. “She still needs time to recuperate in a medically safe locale. But I’ll do everything I can to make sure she’s okay.”
Hearing the doctor’s statement, Richard didn’t care about that at the moment. Pia was alive – that was the only thing that mattered. Tomorrow they’d have to deal with all other troubles and worries, but for now, she was alive and her would do any and everything to make sure she stayed safe. She’d be here another week, but after that, she could come home and the real healing would begin.
“Son, your mother will be coming back from the hospital tomorrow.” Richard sat down with his son at the table and looked at him firmly. “She needs a lot of help and I expect you to do so, understood?” Jack sat there silently, not saying a thing. Richard took that as a sign that his son wasn’t in the mood to argue and left it at that, instead changing the subject. “So, how’s the tacos?”
Jack scrunched up his face; was it really okay to tell his dad the truth? “Well….”
Richard rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I think they suck, too. I’ve never really been a good cook, you know that.”
Jack nodded. In fact, since the day the weirdo unicorn got thrown into the hospital and they were back to his father’s cooking, the menu…had gone slightly downhill. In truth, well…the weirdo did know how to cook, and her food was good, so maybe…having her back wouldn’t be all that bad….
Pia looked in the mirror and tried not to cry. She looked at the remains of her once beautiful horn, now a jagged, ugly-looking wreck.
Richard noticed and said, “Here, love, let me help you with that.” He gingerly lifted the prosthetic to her head and with a flash of cerulean magic – the color of the unicorn who created it, not the orange hue her aura was – the artificial horn immediately and perfectly imitated her original one, completely with the soft, velvety fur that had covered it. But she knew it was a lie. Just like so much of her life was now.
Reaching over to caress her cheek, Richard smiled. “Are you ready?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not sure I’ll ever be. But I’ll try.”
He reached over and kissed her. “That’s my gal. C’mon. Let’s get going.” He got out of the new car, a minivan he’d purchased to replace hers and he did, on the other side, the side gate opened. A motorized system pulled her wheelchair back from the passenger seat, then pulled it even with the gate before the platform turned stretched out, allowing the lift mechanism to slide to the ground. Richard had been told that newest technology in ADA-compliant vehicles allowed for a modular use; in a few months with a small fee he could reverse the configuration so she could do her own driving, and once she was back to normal, they could eventually turn this back into a normal minivan.
As for Pia, each agonizing moment waiting for the servos to do their duty only served to remind her just how imprisoned she was now. So much was now gone because of her wounds: Dr. McAllister had found extensive damage in the nerves and muscles in Pia’s forelegs; while she could carry some things and with strength training increase the load bearing capacity, she could no longer support her own body weight. While her hindlegs were still injured and healing, those stood a better chance of complete recovery. But what it had meant was that at best, she’d be bound to upright walking for the rest of her life. Dr. McAllister had often mentioned her best friend, DJ Martinez, the Lost Foal, and how she’d adjusted to a human lifestyle with no problem. But at the end of the day, Pia had gone one step farther: the Lost Foal was still, when push came to shove, an earth pony with all the strength and agrimancy of one. Pia, now cut off from her magic and forced to walk upright for the remainder of her days, was closer to human than Martinez would ever be.
Unaware of her thoughts, Richard checked the mail and found a letter from San Diego. Opening it, he smiled. “Well, looks like we’re in luck, love: Ms. Martinez got Dr. McAllister’s note and said she would be happy to record a few videos for you on hoofspace dexterity and strength training. She also said she’s got a book tour at the beginning of next year and would be happy to swing by, if we want.”
“Sure,” Pia droned, dejected, looking at her forelegs, which she could barely lift at the moment. Right now it was taking all her strength to just lift them this far. She looked at Richard as he approached her and she didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t even lift her forelegs – “arms”, that’s what they are now; they’ll never be forelegs ever again – to cry into them.
Richard went to hold her. “We’ll get through this, Pia.” Slipping behind her, he pushed her wheel into the home. Once there, she was surrounded by both Nelson and Joyce, who embraced her and ensured her she wasn’t alone. She didn’t want to hear any of that right now; if anything, she wanted to be left alone. It would be easier to deal with the sorrow and emptiness she felt at the moment. She felt hollow, as if something essential had been scooped out of her and the hole sewed back up; no one would understand the loss of the connection, but she always would, forever and eternally.
She turned to look in a direction and, to her surprise, found Jack looking at her from the safety of his bedroom door before he slid behind it and closed it. Well, that was already a battle she’d lost and she now had her own health to deal with, first. She would have to just settle down to a miserable life.
Joyce noticed the look on her face and said, “Y’know, when I was a little girl, Pia, I fell off a horse and broke both legs. Took a long time to heal, but I was strong enough to do it. You’ll do just fine, I’m sure.”
“Yeah,” she replied. She just wanted to hide, and maybe the world wouldn’t notice her. Maybe she could just die in peace.
It was a week after she’d returned from the hospital. She was on indefinite medical leave from the A-Frame, with Fred giving her no other orders than to get healthy. Richard assured her that everything would be okay, and even if she decided she needed to resign from the company, they were well off enough that they could afford it. But even mentioning that to Pia put a new dent in her heart as it only served to remind her how useless she’d become – she’d become nothing more than a decoration on wheels in her own home, no different than a plant that needed to be watered and aired out occasionally. And each day served up a new way to slap her in the face with this new reality.
Even now, she watched the cheerful pony onscreen as she effortlessly twirled a pen in her hoofspace. The dexterity – there was no other way to describe it; it certainly wasn’t normal unguality but instead well beyond it – shown by Ms. Martinez in the video was nothing less than incredible. She then slowed down the process, her voice coming over the laptop’s speakers:
“…and it’s simple: put the pen in between your first extensory and your third one, then pick up the pen within them, then start rotating them amongst the various extensories you can create from your hoofspace. I know of some ponies who do up to eight; I prefer using just five, because, well…I’m sure you understand.” Ms. Martinez shrugged on the video, then continued. “What you can extend is up to you, but I don’t recommend more than eight, because the more extensories you create, the more you’ll physically exhaust your hoofspace musculature in the same way a human ends up with sore hands.”
Pausing the video, Pia then reached out to the pen, and gripped. The extensories, the radial portions of the hoofspace assigned to certain hoofspace muscles picked up…
…and promptly dropped. The pen fell, bounced off the table and clattered onto the floor, where it would sit, well out of her reach. She sighed, but she also knew this wasn’t going to be easy. She was about to reach for something else that she should start with, something a little easier. Maybe the pencil; it’s got flat sides unlike the pen, so it should be a little easier to grip….
Clik. She turned her head slightly and found the pen sitting on the table. She also noticed Jack walking away from the table, headed back to his room. Had he just…? She wanted to call out to him, but realized she had to have imagined the whole thing. And she wasn’t really in the best of shape, mentally; the wounds were still too fresh and the pain still too real. Turning off the video and reaching over to close the laptop – broad motions that she could do with basic moves of her hooves – she then wheeled herself back to the bedroom to get some sleep. Tomorrow she’d try again. But for now, there was just the confusion and pain in her mind.
When Richard came home that night, he’d had a rough day. Fortunately, it had been one of those days where it was a school holiday for Jack, though the news never stopped; Pia was obviously home, so they didn’t have to arrange for babysitting, but even still, with Pia at a distinct disadvantage, Jack was going to be unimaginably problematic, held only in check by the fact that Richard’s temper was shorter than usual due to the added stress.
So it was a complete surprise to him when he came home to find his son, hunched over the stove, stirring something in a pot. That was unusual in itself; Jack had professed absolutely zero interest in cooking whatsoever even before Pia had come into their lives and Richard, as the adult, had either done all the (admittedly substandard) cooking or they went out or ordered delivery. But here was Jack, now suddenly at work in the kitchen. Then as the scent hit Richard….
Tomato soup? But Jack hates tomatoes, with the exception of tomato sauce and ketchup. Come to think of it, I’m really not much of a fan of it, either. In fact, the only one who really eats it is…. Richard froze at the complete schizophrenia of that thought: why on Earth would Jack be making soup for Pia?
“Uh, Jack, what are you doing?”
“Um….” The look on this kid’s face was as clear as day. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“No.” And with that, he walked away. Richard went over and found the soup, ready to go and everything. Prepping it, he went over to the bedroom just in time to find Pia struggling with getting herself onto the bed. After assisting her, he then fed her the soup while talking about his day. “Everyone misses you, Pia. Especially Gladys – she’s constantly complaining she actually has to work now instead of just wandering around the offices with her coffee cup like a social butterfly.”
Pia laughed slightly at that. “Yeah, that sounds like her. Maybe we need to hire a young gryphon stud to keep her busy?”
“Almost did – gryphon working out of Milwaukee, works for the Milwaukee Express-Herald. Sports reporter, and we certainly could use one. Unfortunately, his current bosses upped their counter-offer, so he opted to stay there. Such is life, I guess,” he answered. “But speaking of life, how about you?” he asked, spooning a dab of tomato soup her way.
“Not going to be easy,” she admitted. “I’m trying, but…well, Martinez makes it look so easy. I really never had to use hoofspace as much because I had my TK. But now….” She smiled, swirling the soup in her mouth. “Ah, being hand-fed by my husband: a gal could get to like this,” she teased. “But thanks for the soup, hon – how’d you know to make it? You’ve only been home a couple of minutes, right?”
“Let’s call it serendipity,” Richard replied. It was too soon to tell if the truth had actually been the truth, or just some weird coincidence that had unfolded in front of him.
It was now Christmas Day and just a few days after Hearths Warming Day, she noted with a soft smile, as the tree in their home was decorated with ornaments from both holidays. She was walking around gingerly, now that her new doctor, a colleague of Dr. McAllister’s who had just been hired on by Emory as part of their brand-new Non-Human Sapients Medical Care division, had advised Pia to take small trips out of her comfort zone now and then. Dr. Eris DeLancie was nearly as impish as her trainer, and as a result she and Pia got along well. A former vet much like the founder of equiniatric medicine had been, Eris gave Pia a number of suggested exercises that she could use to strengthen her legs quickly enough to get out of the wheelchair, but that once that was done, physical therapy would be much different. The “pseudocorn”, as Pia had labeled herself, agreed wholeheartedly. It also helped that Eris and her husband had found a house down the street from them.
As she wobbled unsteadily into the living room, Richard and his family gasped and soon surrounded Pia, embracing her and congratulating her on her success. It wasn’t much; five minutes later her legs gave out and she had to return to the wheelchair, but it was a starting point. The first true goalpost had been reached and things were going to be okay after all. But just in the corner of her eyes, just for a second, she thought she saw Jack smiling at her. Maybe it was just her imagination, or maybe it had been a facial tic on his part. But as much as the love she was being given by her husband and in-laws counted, that smile, real or imagined, warmed her heart even more.
“…Nine…hngh…Ten,” Pia gasped as she fell to the ground, spent and sweaty. She was now out of the wheelchair permanently; that was the good news. The bad news now was that strength training was commencing and that meant doing a lot of exercises she’d never done before. With ponies, it was easy: sprints, canters and trots for all, with additional wingwork if you were a pegasus. But with her condition, she was on a human workout regimen, and she'd discovered quickly how (mind-bogglingly) complex the regimen was: walking on a machine called an elliptical, then something called “pushups” to help with her upper body strength, and a few various other exercises. Pia wasn’t exactly the athletic type of mare, and she had to admit, this was killing her.
She tried to bring herself back into pushup position, but her forele—arms—gave way and she collided with the ground again. Deciding that enough was enough she sat back up, toweling herself off and deciding she was going to need a long shower before figuring out what to do with her day. After all, four months after the accident, she had plenty of time on her hands, since she resigned from the A-Frame the week prior. That had hurt a lot; in the years she’d been there the staff was like a second family, something always important for orphans such as her. But with her still having problems with fine motor skills and grasping, she stood no chance to ever hold a camera again, especially not with the extremely sophisticated human-style models she’d grown accustomed to; pony technology wasn’t even remotely close to the same resolution. So she did the only thing she could, in order to focus on her healing.
It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt, and now, looking at the February sky outside, it dawned on her how much she’d lost. If she’d still been on staff, likely she’d be out right now covering the new senator and her attempts to make up for Lydon’s errors. Or she’d be taking pictures of the exclusive interview DJ P0N-3 was giving the A-Frame as she recorded her new album here in Atlanta. Or any of a number of assignments. But instead, as officially nothing more than a housewife, her only duties were to continue her healing and keep the house clean…
…and on that point, she’d had the strangest help. Jack, maybe because he was growing up or because he’d started to listen to his father again, started to help around the house. But one thing was for sure: she and Jack were not on speaking terms. Dinner was mostly silent. Whenever she’d asked Jack to do something, he’d do it, but he wouldn’t acknowledge her outright. Did he still hate her? Did he blame her for what happened and the trauma they’d all been through? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she still cared about Jack and that his silence in many ways hurt even more than his prior outbursts.
Walking into the bedroom, she undid her docktail – she wondered where humans had ever picked up the term “ponytail” for the same manestyle – threw her clothes into the hamper and took a quick shower. Once that was out, she dried herself off, threw a new set of clothes on and went to the kitchen to see what she could make for dinner. She was doing well enough that she’d taken over the cooking again, and just in time, too: while she loved her husband very much, cooking wasn’t one of Richard’s better skills. After flitting through a cookbook, she found a nice four-cheese quiche that she could whip up relatively quickly. As she set things to get ready, she suddenly felt light in the head. Maybe I need to sit do—
She never finished the thought as she hit the floor, already unconscious and convulsing.
Jack got off the bus, glad to be home. Since the unicorn couldn’t take him to school anymore, his father suggested he’d ride the bus. And since it picked up and dropped off a couple of blocks away from home, he didn’t have a problem with that. In fact, it was fun: he got to spend more time with his friends at school and meet new kids his age…as well as staying away from his former friends. Jamie, well, he turned out to be a huge liar about everything; and Tommy, if you didn’t agree with him, he’d try to boss you around for everything.
It was also during those times that he found out that maybe stepmothers weren’t as bad as expected. Lyle said that while his old mom never cared, his new one always spent time with him; Karen said that her old mom was in jail but that her new mom was an Air Force fighter pilot – and everyone knew that was a cool job! And, he had to admit, now that the unicorn was cooking again, food was getting better, and Dad was happier, and as for Jack himself, he really didn’t mind helping around the house. It was almost like old times. Better, even.
One day, Jack even almost admitted to his father that it wasn’t bad having the unicorn around, after all.
But as he began to admit that to himself, a new thought came into his head: how mean he’d been to her before all this. He knew how much he’d been at fault for her accident. How much he wanted her to go away…and how much he’d wanted her to die – and she almost did. She probably hated him now, any of those words of love and warmth now as far gone as her ability to use magic, another thing no longer around the house. He’d caused her to lose so much, so how could anyone like that still care? They hadn’t really spoken in months, mainly because he was afraid of what he knew she’d say: how much she now hated him. And truthfully? He knew he probably deserved it.
So as he entered the house and found her unconscious on the floor, shaking, his first reaction was one of shock. The second, however, was borne of everything that his dad taught him: he raced over to the phone and punched 9-1-1 on the keypad, hoping to get emergency services immediately.
“This is 911 Emergency Services. Please state the nature of the emergency.”
“I…uh, the….” He didn’t know what to say. “Please, I need some help here.”
“Young man, is there an emergency?”
“Yes! She….” Jack suddenly became tongue-tied. He had such an easy time telling her how much he hated her, why was it so hard to save her life? If she was gone, everything would be back the way it w…no, it won’t ever be that way. Dad wouldn’t want to lose her.
I don’t want to lose her.
And then Jack uttered the words he never thought he would ever say: “I need help. My…my mother…sh-she’s been injured.”
“Pia?”
Pia opened her eyes slowly; the familiar sting of sensoria blinded her for a second but just a second, leaving the afterimage of the LED bulb burned into her retinas before quickly disappearing. She sat up, in bed again. Looming over her was her doctor, a smiling, tanned woman with hazel eyes and a well-styled coif of platinum hair. “Pia, how are you feeling?”
“Like hell.” Her eyes then focused a little more and she suddenly realized who it was. “Eris?”
Eris flashed a wild, uncouth smile. “Glad to see you’re amongst the living. But I’ll have to admit…it was a close one.” When the look on Pia’s face was a blank puzzle, the doctor continued. “Blood clot – must’ve formed from the car crash and no one noticed. Anyway, it placed itself in the remains of your horn – you been having headaches lately?”
“Yeah, but I thought it was just phantom pain from losing my horn,” Pia replied, her mouth tasting like cotton.
“Well, it was actually pressing itself against the majority of your nerve cells in the horn, which gave you a seizure. If we didn’t get you here in time, well….” The doctor shook her head. “There’ve been several cases of magic flares with a broken horn. The results would have been ugly. As it was, we were able to find it with a quantum scan and laser scalpel it from outside, so you should be good to go home tomorrow, right as rain.”
“How did I…?” the mare asked. She’d just remembered being dizzy and then all of a sudden, she was here, so…how?
Eris merely moved out of the way, revealing a worried and teary Jack standing there. The doctor smiled and said, “I’ll let you two talk a bit. If you need me, I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.” With that, she walked away, only pausing to pat the boy on the shoulder. And then she was gone, leaving the two to look at each other.
The pair stared at each other for what seemed like the better part of eternity, before Pia dared say something, “Jack, I….” She didn’t get any farther than that before the young boy rushed the bed and glomped the older mare in a hug.
“I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “I’m sorry I said I wanted you to die,” he moaned, holding on to her tightly. “Please don’t die, Mom, please don’t die!”
“It’s okay, Jack,” she said, stroking his hair before the word registered. “Wha?”
“I’m sorry! Just…don’t go, okay? Don’t leave us!”
With her hoof, she raised his face, a smile on hers and tears of joy in her eyes. “I won’t, Jack, okay? We’re a family, and I’ll always be here for you.” She kissed him on the cheek and then the two embraced once more, mother and child.
“Pia!” Richard and Gladys raced into the room, expecting the worst. As they arrived, they found Pia asleep on the bed, head curled over that of Jack, who was hunched over the bed and also relaxed.
“Well, Richard,” the gryphoness said to her friend’s husband, “Looks like things are back to normal.”
“No,” he said, a grin on his face. “They’re better than that.”
Pia’s hooves jittered as she held the camera. I can do this, she snarled mentally. I can do this! She focused everything into holding the camera and aiming, while jutting out an extensory to hit the shutter button. Part of her hoof warped as it indented, the muscles rippling as they reached out—
—and nearly dropped the camera—
—only to be caught by Jack. “Need help?” he asked.
She smiled, then looked at her subject. “You mind sitting there a few more minutes, hon?”
Richard, sitting on the sofa nodded. “For you two? All the time in the world.”
She looked at Jack. “If you don’t mind, then….”
“No, not at all.” Several seconds went by then as Jack, holding her hooves together and trying to stay out of the way of the shot, let Pia stretch out with her extensory and with a click, take the picture. A second later, the image was on the back screen of her camera. Her right hoof was sore from stretching out farther than she’d ever done before, and the picture looked like something an amateur would have taken, but for now, it was a beginning.
Jack hugged her. “You did it!”
She returned the embrace, holding her son tight. “No, Jack. We did it.”
“Mom, can I go to the park?”
Pia looked at Gladys and Eris, who were over for lunch to hear about Pia’s new job. She smiled at her friends, muttering in jest, “Kids are sooo impatient these days, aren’t they?”
The young voice cried out again. “Mom, can I?”
Eris grinned. “You’re not going to get any peace at this rate, you know.”
Gladys shrugged. “Just another reminder why I’m single.”
“Mom!”
Pia sighed. Turning slightly, she said, “You really need to learn patience, you know that?”
“I’ll learn patience later!”
“Fine, ask your brother,” Pia replied.
The voice screamed out, “Jack! Mom said to take me to the park!”
A couple of seconds later, 14-year-old Jack poked his head in to look at the trio of ladies. “You really didn’t say that, did you, Mom?”
“You know your sister. Just...if you’re taking her, she can’t have any ice cream, since dinner’s going to be in a few hours.”
“Got it.” Turning his head, he shouted back, “Okay, Melissa, go get ready. We’re going and you’re not going to give me any grief, got it?” There was a groan of a little girl agreeing to her older brother’s demands, and then all was silent.
“So now that that’s done, tell us about the job!” It had been five years of practicing and practically relearning to shoot, but for Pia, it had been paradise. Without the handicap of her magic to fall back on, she’d forced herself to shoot photos in the same way humans did – naturally – and in the process had become even better at her craft. Now, five years after having left the A-Frame, she was now a very much in-demand studio and freelance photographer.
“Well, Princess Celestia will be visiting Atlanta for the first time next week, and I’ve been asked to be the exclusive photographer for her jaunt here. Apparently she was impressed by some of the landscape photos I did last year and specifically asked for my services. This is going to be the chance of a lifetime!”
“I’ll say,” Gladys replied. “You were always good, Pia, but now – I’m utterly jealous of your photography now.”
“And just to think,” Eris added, “just a few years ago you were far from this – kid who hated you, never thought you’d have a second one, were afraid you weren’t even going to walk again much less have human-level dexterity in your hooves. You’ve done well for yourself, Pia, despite losing your magic.”
Jack poked his head in. “Okay, taking her now, Mom. We’ll be back in a couple of hours.” Pia merely looked at him and nickered slightly. His response was to roll his eyes, then with the embarrassed reaction every teen ever had, went and kissed his mother on the cheek. As he pulled away, he laughed. “And you say I need to shave….”
As he walked off, Pia lifted her cup of coffee and smiled. “Yes, I miss my magic and lost a lot that day. But if it wasn’t for that loss, I’d not have gained so much more. I’ll take that trade anytime.”
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Very good. Very good indeed.
This second part didn't go the way I was expecting at all. I guess I thought it would be more than a two-parter, but the amount of feels in this took me by surprise.
Also, was it a in-joke or a coincidence that Pia's new doctor has the last name DeLancie?
2009101
...with a first name like Eris, I highly doubt a coincidence...
2009295
Forgive me for being oblivious, but what is Eris?
2009301
Tenth planet in the solar system (or the second major dwarf planet, if you use the new planetary layout.) Oh, and common female
GreekRoman name.2009311
Right.
Sorry, but my knowledge of trans-Neptunain objects has been lacking in recent times.
2009301
Explaining would ruin the joke. Just don't go accepting golden apples from her is all I'm sayin...
2009101 Just noticed that... silly little John De Lancie reference. He he...
Uh oh.
I just realized I can connect pretty much every character in this side story to the main chart through Eris and Erica.
More mental storage-sharing for EVERYBODY!
2009350
4.bp.blogspot.com/-n6K4Y1sXvXI/T9kZ_SsNW9I/AAAAAAAACVI/MeOEeOXKXQc/s1600/facedesk.jpg
You know, sometimes I really am that oblivious.
Interestingly enough, I think I found a main character should Shinzakura ever do a crossover with Pen Stroke.
Wow that was so lovely.
Keep up the great work!
Eris DeLancie ... is she Screwball in disguise or something? Or you simply used that name to mess with us? D:
Happily ever after?
2009301 And a common name for Rule 63 Discord.
2009744
Other people besides the august actor (who, if I may remind, didn't work on a project for Hasbro, so he's still best known for Q) have the name DeLancie. And strangely enough, Eris is still a commonly used female name, go figure. So with that in mind - why would Screwball be that eloquent and have a husband and live in Smyrna, GA (metro Atlanta)?
2010072
I guess so, still I'm sure you know giving someone that name is gonna make any brony's eyebrow launch skyward. Its just begging to have a hidden meaning.
2011695
Lots of things beg for a hidden meaning. Doesn't mean it'll happen.
Sad start, happy ending, all of it was good.
The master of sidestories you are.
Loved the Star Wars reference I did.
2011740
Well okay then. I'll leave it at that.
I'm loving how your expending this universe.
Damn you Shinzakura! Why you make such an awesome, distracting story!?
And...well...Sepia Tone...there goes that OC idea.
A great story. As a photographer myself I couldn't think of a better name than Sepia Tone. And speaking of names love the little Greek Goddess of Chaos reference there with Eris DeLancie.
...Is it bad I kinda blame Richard for the hostility Jack had? He just suddenly announced "This is your new mom." And didn't seem to actually talk to him about it outside of saying "This is the way it is now."
Anyway, if he did end up sending Jack away, he probably would have taken it as badly as possible, and any rift from then on between Jack and his parents would have been completely Richard's fault.
Broken unicorn horns are canon
derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/10/8/1268020__safe_screencap_bandage_injured_broken+horn_unnamed+pony_spoiler-colon-s06e23_where+the+apple+lies.png