All the Lost Pieces

by Voltage Drop

Chapter 3

Years ago, when I was still a student at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, or CSGU as we students called it, I was walking to classes on a particularly cold and snowy winter morning. The sun had been raised only minutes before and a sharp wind blew from the northeast, cutting to the bone with its sharp bite. I was a filly nine years of age, and my cutie mark, being a stick and point visualization of the Gemini Constellation, sat upon my light amber flanks for the first winter. Being the headstrong foal that I was, I found it quite appalling to even consider covering the mark with cold weather wear, so I on that particular day, as many others, was walking to class wearing only a scarf and glasses, my teeth chattering all the way to the school.

It was a small price to pay so I could easily brag and show my butt to whoever would look at it, but such is the innocence of youth when you just don't understand just what you are doing or likewise comprehend why a grown stallion found a cartoonish constellation so... invigorating to look at.

Nonetheless, I finally arrived at school albeit half frozen, and quickly made my way to my seat in the classroom. A flash of magic came from my horn, and I pulled from my notebook every page of notes that I had taken for the past few weeks on the subject of magically guided meditation.

It is at this moment, I want to digress again and say something to all the unicorns reading this, or to anyone who knows unicorns who don't use their magic much, or especially to those who have children who are unicorns. Your magic is very special and a key part of your psyche, so don't under value it. We all are well aware how fundamental flight is to pegesi and their emotional wellbeing – being grounded for a few weeks is enough to drive the average pegasus loony. Countless studies prove this, and each of my pegasus friends will vouch for me on this fact and add that it isn't only the act of flight which does them good, but also feeling the magic of the air and weather. Likewise, for earth ponies, being in touch with nature and their own bodies is important to their happiness.

For unicorns, being in touch with your magic is much the same, yet entirely different. Though at a fundamental level pegasi and earth ponies experience their connection to themselves and the world around them through a passive method that does not require direct thought (though it does help to focus one's attention on such matters), unicorns must make the conscious effort to connect to our natural medium. Yet, because of the business of our everyday lives, we often fail to spend a few minutes each day lost in magic, and often, we fail to even learn how to do this in the first place. There is a reason unicorns are the most likely race to take their own lives or suffer mental instability, and though it is true that the additional complexity of our brains and the immense energy which runs through us play a very large factor into the higher risk for mental illness, proper habits should not be overlooked for their therapeutic and emotionally uplifting benefits.

So unicorns, and especially parents of unicorns, keep this in mind as you go through your lives. It is not hard in the least – the Creator Faust made us to be able to do it and, with just a little time, it will come as naturally as sleep. Even if you are sure you can't do it yourself, I cannot stress how important that your children get at least a basic education in this regard.

Now I end my digression, but in many ways, this last bit has not been off topic at all, for you see now how important I hold a unicorn's connection to magic to be. When I lost my horn, my connection to magic was severed, but the fundamental pining for it was still there. Though I am not certain it could be called withdraw, it is the easiest term I can use to describe the experience because all the other appropriate terms are unpronounceable and require a Ph.D in medicine to understand their meaning.

Returning to the day in my youth which I was describing, this was the day the entire class had been awaiting since they gained their cutie marks. When the makr appears upon a foal's flank, it represents the creation of their connection to magic, and is an explanation for the zeal with which foals search for their talents; at a subconscious level, their mind is pushing them to find unity with their natural medium. For unicorns such as myself, that means a strengthening of our magic, a deepening of our skills, and it says we are ready physiologically, mentally, and thaumaturgically for our first deep forays into the dimensional planes of magic. When I had gained my cutie mark, I was moved up from the pre-mark classes, as they were called, to a special semester long series of courses where I and my fellow classmates would learn how to control our magic and meditate into the realms of energy and pure being.

My notes detailed the many steps and aspects of these planes, with there being many different planes, each with multiple levels. The class and I had been taught to observe with our extra senses the most conceptually basic realm, our own – a feat otherwise known as clairvoyance. Simply put, it is like seeing with your eyes closed, except with practice the level of detail increases to a staggering level and it is possible to see things which are not directly in your line of sight. For those of you who wonder why it's hard to sneak up on a unicorn who has even the most basic magical training, this is the reason why.

For the past week and a half, the teacher had been prattling on about expanding our 'field of vision' in the planes of magic, and had been teaching us pieces of a new type of meditation which would let us peer into the nearest plane to our own – the thaumostatic field. The principles built upon clairvoyance, and we were to practice the new components we had been taught alongside basic clairvoyance. These components of meditation I cannot easily describe to non-unicorns because they are reliant on parts of our nervous system and brain associated with our horns. When I lost mine, I ceased to be able to meditate in such ways and, quite distressingly, memories cause my forehead to burn with phantom pain of a horn I no longer have.

But on that day so long ago, I had my horn and we were finally ready to put all the pieces together and peer into the plane from which spells draw their energy and shape. We had been told by everyone older than us that this was to be one of the greatest experiences in our life, and so were naturally excited. For the past week, I had been practicing every chance I had had, such to the point that I was able to see definite silhouettes, shapes, and colors through clairvoyance. I was more than ready for the final instructions for this peering between planes.

Anxiously, I reviewed notes, folded multiple paper airplanes at once with my magic, then eventually devolved into gnawing on the end of my pencil as our teacher sluggishly called role, asked us to turn in the last night's homework, and assigned us a new chapter to read for the night. Eventually, though, he reached the point in the class we were all waiting for as he, with a smug smile, asked, “So are any of you ready for today's lesson?”

Of course the class burst into controlled mayhem. When the excitement died down, he smiled again and began teaching us the final bit we needed to know in order to glimpse into the thaumostatic field. We closed our eyes and were stepped through the part of the meditation, each of our horns glowing as we followed his instructions. Thirty minutes later, we all left our desks to sit on our meditation pillows where we were taught how to tie all the components we had learned together. I shan't go into detail, but for those of you interested, we were learning the Brünhoolf-Ferdineigha methodology.

Since we already knew all the underlying steps and had practiced them well, the final step of tying them together was superbly easy, so it was not long before, one by one, we began slumping as our consciousness turned to realms beside our own. I can still remember my excitement as, peeking through squinted eyes, I saw the foal sitting next to me hunched at the shoulders with his head drooping, all the while I felt myself stepping more and more into the same altered state of consciousness.

It had been a slow, gradient-like process where I became less and less focused on my surroundings, but at one point, I felt a rush of movement in my head as I passed a threshold and, the best I can describe it, I opened my eyes without opening them. Surrounding me was the most intricate and beautiful swirls of color I had ever seen and I can only liken the sight and patterns to highly detailed images of nebulae. I felt like I was weightless as I marveled at the tendrils of energy and thaumic matter which twisted and webbed through three dimensional space like a spider's colorfully painted construction. In every direction, the breathtaking, misty structure floated and morphed peacefully, and I felt an indescribable peace glowing within my inner being as I moved like a phantom through the softly illuminated thaumic matter. In this plane, I saw ghostly white dots of dull light which I somehow understood to be some of my clastmates' consciousnesses drifting through this marvelous realm.

Periodically, I heard our teacher talking to us and understood he was helping the half of the class who had been unable to achieve the right mental state, and as time passed I saw one or two of my classmates' motes of consciousness flicker out and disappear from the Thaumostatic Field as they were pulled from their trances for whatever reason, whether it be a passing thought which broke their concentration or an urge to use the bathroom. More time passed, and I heard the bells ring for lunch time and recess, but I and many of my classmates chose to stay where we were, which is impressive given we were hyperactive foals who, to an outside observer, had been sitting quietly with our eyes closed for the past three hours.

More time crept passed and many of my classmates eventually lost interest and left to go take a late lunch and recess. The number of meditating students trickled down from a dozen, to just myself by the end of class, yet I somehow managed to keep focus through the loud uproar known as elementary school and did not leave my trance. At any moment, I was expecting the teacher to interrupt me and tell me it was time to resume class, yet that did not happen until the bells rang telling it was the end of classes for the day. I was aware of the my fellow students filtering out of the building, and I did not care that it was time to leave – sitting there experiencing, existing, was so unbelievably peaceful that I did not want to stop.

“Castor, it's time to go,” my teacher said softly, putting a hoof on my shoulder.

My words were slow and dreamily content, an effect of the meditative state I was in. “I doonnn'ttt waaannnnttt ttooo.”

“Alright.” He made a thoughtful chuckle in the back of his throat. “How would you like to learn a lesson I usually save for second semester students?”

“I woouulllddd liikkkeee thaaattt...”

He sat down next to me, and over the next two hours showed me how to move and manipulate the tendrils of thaumic matter, which he told me were natural rivulets of flow between disturbances in the uniform forces found in the thaumostatic field. With a little practice, I learned how to create my own disturbances by moving my own magical energy into the thaumostatic field and effecting a new density. It might have been a small thing, but my heart fluttered to be told I had taken my first step in understanding how spells work at the most fundamental level.

“I believe she's... yes, she is in here.” I heard the headmaster's voice.

“Oh thank goodness,” Mom gasped, and I could hear my dad let out a stressed exhale.

“Hello, you must be Castor's parents,” my teacher said. “I bet you've been worried about her since she didn't come home.”

“Yes, we were,” Dad replied walking into the room.

“Well, there isn't anything to worry about here. The class is learning about guided meditation, as I guess you must be aware since I've given a lot of homework on the subject. I must say, I am impressed by how well she has taken to exploring the different planes of magic. She's been in this trance without taking a break for over seven hours now.”

“Really?” Dad asked with amazement.

“Yes, and I've already shown her the basics of manipulating rivulets of magic. She'll make a fine spellcaster some day. I'm certain of it.”

Dad knelt next to me, and so did Mom. Both wrapped their forelegs around my shoulders, and I felt their magic glowing beside me. A few moments later, I saw two motes of light glowing beside me in the thaumostatic field and could feel their energies warming my own. They hugged me, both physically and meta-physically.

“This is wonderful.”

“We're so proud of you, Castor.”

---

The institutional, whitewashed walls of the room I occupied in the hospital at least had the decency to be clean and free of any kind of cracks or dirt, though perhaps some grunge would have made some more interesting patterns to look at as I whittled away my time. It is doubtful I would have been able to see it anyway, though because anything beyond a few feet from my bed was glazed over with a dull blur which stole every entertaining detail from the room. There were few other colors than white, gray, or brown, though there was a vase of spring lilies next to my bed which were an explosion of orange, yellow, and green in an otherwise lifesucking room. For some time, they had provided a distraction for me to look at as, by doctor's orders, I was to let my brain heal and so was not to read, talk, or even think too much for the next few days.

When one is injured for any length of time, one soon finds that the terrible dragon known as boredom makes its lair within the halls of hospitals and preys upon the hapless patients who have been bound as sacrifices in its hunting grounds. After the initial shock and disbelief of my loss had shaken my world, I settled like a thundercloud hanging perpetually in the room and had little else to entertain myself with than my own, sullen broodings.

My magical senses were gone, stolen away which in many ways was almost worse than losing my ability to perform magic. I had been torn from my clairvoyance and plane hopping senses which had tied me to my natural medium, leaving me anxious and tense. Anger welled in my chest, fear ate at my stomach, loss burned in my throat, and they so many times left me wanting to scream in agony over my blindness. And blindness it was. At CSGU, I was taught to weave my magical senses into my normal perception of the world. To look at, per say, a pencil on a table, I saw more than a pencil as a non-unicorn would see it. I could see magic flowing around it and being repelled by the wood while flowing freely though the graphite. I could feel its shape and nature, and from the realms of mind and thought came trickles of pure being from which I could sense the most fundamental ideas that a pencil embodies.

If I turned my senses towards any kind of life, I was treated to an extrasensory feast of images, feelings, and understandings. Looking at a even the most simple plants, I could see the life energies flowing through it and composing the unimaginably complex spell nexus which is as integral to the continued living of the plant as its physical parts themselves. And keep in mind that when I say 'see' I do not mean observe with eyes, but rather use as an analogy for 'feeling at a fundamental level with magic'.

These sensations I mention were only magnified when focusing on another pony (or sentient being). Emanating from them would be a distinct magical signature with a certain 'charactaristic' which varies day to day with their mood and well being. With familiarity, I could tell how my friends were doing just by feeling this aura which was unique to each individual.

Now by comparison, my world was a faded, monochrome photograph which was taken with an out of focus lens. My mother sat beside my bed reading, but it wasn't her – I knew it was her, and it was her image, but there were none of the characteristic energies around her which I had come to know to be her. My dad and each of my friends were no less different; when they were in the room, I saw and heard them, but some part of my brain simply could not understand those were living ponies in the room with me. I talked with them, and they responded as I expected, yet it took my constant effort to remind myself that I was not in the room alone. Devastatingly, this applied to myself as well. I felt removed from my body without the constant feeling of my own magic and the magic of the planet reaching my mind. Everything was. Just. Dead.

It did not take me long to get into the routine of living in a hospital, even if the monotony of the experience was stifling. Get up, take my medication, have doctors evaluate my condition, eat miserable food, then spend most of my free time either sleeping or bored to tears. For better or worse, over that first week I was awake, my concussion started healing and my brain began adapting to having part of it gone. The headaches declined and the phantom pains in my horn became more... tolerable, but they never went away and I still suffer them time to time even to this day.

The downside of this healing, though, was the doctors knew to administer less morphine, a drug I had come to love by the second day I had been awake from my coma. I had come to look forward to the booster I would receive in eight hour periods dawn to dusk each day, for the effects sapped away a majority of my pain and made my mind so hazy I didn't care that I lost my horn and magic. Almost always, I was guaranteed a good few hours' sleep after I received my next unit of morphine, and I was sad when the doctors told me on the fifth day after I had been awake that they were going to start reducing my dosage.

By the next day, I was mostly weened from the morphine drip and put onto a non-opiate painkiller which left my mind much sharper than the medicine's much more potent counterpart. The downside was my mind was more active and, aside from the intensified boredom, my subconscious was looking again for the stimulation that should have been coming from my lost senses.

It was a small thing at first, the equivalent to a flash of jagged white light in the corner of my eye, except resident within my non-functional magical senses. I reflexively jerked my head to the left to center my focus on where the sensation would have been coming from if it were real, but there was nothing there other than a bland table holding a variable sunstone-moonstone lamp.

“What is it?” Ivy, who was sitting in the room with me at the time, asked, looking over to where I was looking.

“I thought...” I paused for a moment, “I just thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye.”

“Oh, okay.”

She returned to reading and I to trying to fall asleep. I drifted between waking and sleeping for some time, then there was another flicker of illumination in my senses where, for the briefest of moments, I thought I glimpsed a detailed spectral image of the room around me. With a start, I sat up as best my balance would permit me.

“Are you okay?” Ivy asked with alarm.

I held a hoof to my chest and lay back down, “Uh, yeah... yeah, just had a weird feeling.”

She snapped her book closed and stood. “Do I need to get help?”

“No, no... I guess it was just a dream.”

“Well, okay. Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Now that I think about it, I know it couldn't have been anything else.” Ivy reluctantly returned to her book, and I, being tired, tried to sleep again. I experienced several more events such as those through the day, but kept them to myself because I thought they were a symptom of my concussion and didn't want to worry my friends and family.

The next morning, I was taking a bowl of soup and some scrambled eggs with the assistance of a nurse when I, through force of habit, accidentally tried to pick up my cup of apple juice with my magic. Obviously nothing external happened and I was left feeling nauseated with a sore head for my troubles; however I could have sworn I felt the cup in my grip.

“Hold on,” I ordered the nurse through my grit teeth as he tried to help me bring a fork of eggs to my mouth without dropping it.

“Are you okay?”

“Just... give me a minute.” I focused on the cup and tried, for all I was worth, to wrap my magic around it. For the past two days, my headaches had been significantly decreasing in magnitude, and it was that which allowed me to even try using magic without being driven into living agony. Closing my eyes while trying to channel a telekinesis spell onto the cup, I felt faint tinges of the cup's essence and experienced fleeting glimpses of its form.

A delighted squeal escaped my mouth and I held a hoof up to it in a failed attempt to contain the sound. “I can-” the words were choked out of my throat glee which had been infused into me. “I can still see magic!” I squealed again and bounced up and down on my haunches like an excited child. It was undignified and I spilled juice all over myself, but I didn't care. I had my senses back, and maybe, just maybe, I could regain my magic too. Anything is possible, right?

The nurse was clearly dumbfounded by my sudden change in demeanor and it took him a few moments to regain his composure, but when he did, he moved my food tray to a table and stepped towards the door to the room. “I am going to go tell your doctor about this. Will you be okay while I am out for a few moments?”

“Yes! Yes, I will be more than okay!” I enthusiastically said, already trying again to sense the world around me with a simple clairvoyance exercise. Not even bothering to close my eyes this time, I suddenly experienced another 'blink' of my magical senses as the blurry images they produced flickered with motes of light which floated around like grapefruit sized snowflakes. The images lasted for only a few seconds before the phantom pain in my forehead became too great and I could focus no longer.

A sob, one of un-conveyable joy, escaped from my throat as hot tears wetted my face. It was many minutes before Doctor Apple came into the room, and by the time it took for her to get there I had managed to make myself see several solid and highly detailed images of the room and various objects in it.

Unable to contain myself, I squealed, “I sill can feel magic!” when she walked over to my bed.

She smiled with a sad expression. “I am happy for you. Would you consent to a quick checkup?”

“Yes,” I said, suddenly cautious because of Doctor Apple's reserved demeanor. “Of course,”

She checked my vitals and my pupil dilation, then asked me to answer a few basic questions. Writing some things on a clipboard, she pulled a chair up next to my bed and sat down in it. “Will you please describe what you saw?” I did as she asked and was quite enthusiastic about the details. She sighed and, pulling at the collar of her white coat, put on an compassionate face. “Castor,” she said very sternly. “It is my deepest hope that you are in fact seeing the world with your actual senses like you are saying, but my experience as a doctor tells me that just isn't so.”

My heart sank. “What are you saying?”

“I just don't want you to get your hopes up only to have them dashed.”

“No, no. This is real! I know it. What I'm seeing is as real as anything I've ever seen before.”

“And I hope you are right, but unicorns who lose their magic often suffer what is known as sensory release hallucinations. What that means is because your brain is expecting information and is not receiving it, it fills in the gaps with what it thinks should be there. It is similar to what sufferers of blindness experience shortly after they lose their sight.”

“Oh.” I suddenly was cold on the inside.

“I don't want to take any happiness from you, but I think it would hurt less with you knowing the truth if this doesn't pan out the way you are hoping.”

“Of-of course.”

“As it is, I just don't know how it is possible for a unicorn to sense the things you said you just sensed, given that everything a unicorn's brain needs to do that is either inside the base of the horn or a part of the brain which would be connected to the horn.” The wind was ripped from my lungs, and when I didn't respond, she continued, “I am going to schedule some tests for later today to determine the extent you can still use your senses. I hope deeply for you that I am wrong and that you will surprise us all, but being pragmatic, I don't know how that is possible.”

“Oh.” I was ill to the stomach.

Doctor Apple picked up her clipboard and, balancing it on a foreleg, scribbled a few more things onto it with a pen held in her mouth, dropping both into her saddlebags when done. “I've made your appointment to be at one thirty today.”

That would be a little over four hours from then. I knew I should be thankful that it wasn't going to be four days, but four hours of not knowing for certain was stifling. Still, I agreed to the time and thanked Doctor Apple for setting the appointment. As she walked out, I felt like a bucket of nails had been dumped in my stomach from the anxiety I was feeling. I can't, just can't be imagining this, I thought over and over to myself. As a confirmation of this, I closed my eyes and attempted to reach out with my senses. It was warm consolation when, in reply, my senses told me about the shape and contents of the room I was in, though the images were blurry and, upon closer inspection, off ever so slightly.

I had been so excited earlier when I first felt those echoes of my senses that I had not paid too much attention to their details, but now that doubt had been sowed into the mix and I had had some time to calm down, I noticed features and geometries which, though normal on first glance, were distorted and nonsensical when scrutinized. This wasn't something that was easily discerned, since strong images came only once every few minutes or so and persisted for, at most, only a few seconds.

It was enough to dampen my enthusiasm, but not my beliefs. Several times in the past I had suffered 'ghosting', as it is called, when an image gets burned into one's senses due to experiencing a powerful surge of magic, either external or internal. One time in particular, I was standing next to an old enchantment I and my colleagues were studying when it channeled enough magic to light several small houses and then exploded. No one was hurt, but for days afterwards, my magical senses experienced those few seconds on an unending repetition. The images were very peculiar and as detailed as any real image I might have seen, but they felt 'off' on some level and I could easily tell that they weren't real.

Those that which I was experiencing in the hospital were different. On a large scale, the characteristics were dead right and there was no single glaring deficiency, but there were countless tiny discrepancies which, when added together, threw things into question. A pencil on the table might be in a slightly different location than I saw with my physical eyes, there might be two fewer lilies in the arrangement than there actually was, a railing on my bed might have a slightly distorted shape, or any other small detail might be ever so slightly wrong. Disturbingly, these things were open to change when I looked away, meaning things in my eyes' peripherals were apt to 'jump' around while things completely outside my physical sight could be in a completely wrong position in relation to where I remembered it to be.

Despite this, I was growing increasingly optimistic about my prospects. I realized that, after all, I had suffered a severe injury and was still nursing a concussion, so it was logical my senses would be frazzled. I spent several hours mulling over these things and by lunch time I was convinced my senses were returning. I was expecting Mom to be over by noon, as she had told me the day before she wanted to take an extended lunch break at work so she could come be with me. I imagined countless ways she might react when I told her the news, and the more I thought of her coming, the more excited I became.

By the time I heard the door to the room open, I still had not decided how I would break the news to Mom so I ended up just letting my emotions flow out. “Oh-mom-I'm-so-happy!”

“What?”

I gave a small squeal of glee. “I can sense magic again!”

She stood dumbfounded just inside the doorframe for several moments as she processed just what exactly it was I had just said. “Wait! You mean-”

I grinned ear to ear. “Yes!”

In a flash, she was over to my inclined bed where I was sitting up. She wrapped her forelegs around my shoulders and I hugged her back. “Castor! This is incredible! I'm so happy for you.”

“I'm so happy too! I just can't believe it!”

We were ecstatic, making the lunch we shared one of the happiest of my life. Between mouthfuls of food which somehow tasted oh-so-perfect, I explained to her what I had been sensing, and her reaction only bolstered my optimism. I then told her about the test I was scheduled to take, and she insisted she be there when I was finished. Mom quickly packed up her lunch and hurried off to work, saying she was leaving to go tell her co-workers she wouldn't be there for the rest of the day and, if she had time, get Dad from where he worked.

With Mom gone, I did not have anyone to help me eat. Fortunately, by several days ago we had figured out foods which were easy(er) for me to eat on my own, so it wasn't much of a problem. Soup was hard; grapes, hay fries, carrots, and PB&J sandwiches I could handle and made good practice for smoothing out my motor control. I ate lunch and even dropped a record low number of grapes to where I couldn't reach them: six in total, but that's not counting the ones that landed on my sheets and I could still get to.

I suddenly felt a lot better now that I had a bit of my magic back. For a time, I found myself fantasizing about how much of my senses I might get back. At first I didn't dare think they would return to be even a tenth of what they were before I lost my horn, but then again, I had been convinced that I would not even get this much back, so who was to say what might or might not happen. Maybe a quarter of my senses would return, I bet I could do more than just use clairvoyance if that were to happen. What about a half? What would happen then? My magic sense would be sharper than my eyes. I could go blind and not care. Did I even dare think I would fully regain my senses? Not at first, but my mind eventually wandered there after I experienced a strong, persistent image which, unlike the others before it, had sharp edges and clear detail.

Could I even say it would end with my senses? At that moment, it felt fully possible I might regain use of my magic, even though I knew it was outright impossible. For a time, I fantasized about what it would be like to have my magic again, how good it would be to lift things telekinetically, cast complicated spells... No, it didn't seem that impossible at all that I might regain my magic. Maybe the doctors had missed something, or there might be something just a little bit different about me. Who knew, maybe I would get some phenomenon named after me, and just in case, I already had a name for it. The “Castor Redux”. I can't say how many of these mindless wanderings I actually believed, but I can strongly say that I didn't disbelieve them either. This was a glimmer of hope, and I clung to it no matter how foolish it might be to do so.

The time for my appointment finally came, and I was helped into a wheelchair. For the last two days, I had regained enough balance to sit fully upright so long as there was something to support my back, so I had no trouble with falling once I was in the chair.

I was taken to a small checkup room room, about fifteen by twenty feet in size, on the main floor. The walls were painted a shadowy tan and had dark oaken paneling from the floor to halfway up, giving the illusion that, though several moonstone lamps were on, the room was barely lit. It was a calming yet neutral scheme which doubtlessly was an intentional ploy to set patients into the proper mood for testing.

In my mind, I had already passed the test and I was just proving it to the doctors by submitting to their evaluation. Oh, how I looked forward to seeing the surprise on their faces when I showed them I could sense with my magic.

“Hello, Castor Star is it?” the nurse administering the test asked me as the nurse who had brought me to the room left us.

“Just Castor, Ma'am.”

The nurse laughed, “I'm not that old.” She was, by all appearances, a grad student working on her doctorate and was around my age.

I felt a little foolish but rebounded. “I'm just feeling very good today, that's all.”

“So it seems.” Against the wall was a table, and on that table was a small apparatus three small wooden drawers wide by five tall. Next to that, cutting the table in half, was a dividing curtain made of some type of thick black fabric. The nurse pushed me to the apparatus and then sat down on the other side of the curtain. I heard her tear a piece of paper and throw it into the trash. “This is a clairvoyance acuity test we will use to determine how clearly you can see physical objects with your magical senses. Are you ready to begin?”

“Yes I am.”

“Goody. Here you go.” She slid a tray with three geometric shapes under the curtain which had been cut to fit to the contours of the table. “There is a cube, four sided pyramid, and a sphere in that tray. In front of you, you will see a stack of small drawers, each holding one of those three shapes at random. Look to the very top at the container lettered 'A'. Using clairvoyance, and nothing else, try to see what is inside.”

“Okay, but my senses kind of come and go and I can't really control that. It may take a while.”

“Take your time and we will get as far along as we can.”

Closing my eyes, I performed the mental steps to summon my clairvoyance. It was a minute before the first image of the boxes' interiors flashed before my consciousness, but they weren't very clear and told me little about their contents. Another half minute later, a better image made itself known to my consciousness. “Container 'A' is a sphere.”

“Okay, what is in 'B'?”

During that last series of images, I thought I had seen another sphere in 'B', but I decided to wait until I received another flicker of clairvoyance just to make sure. Another came shortly and I saw 'B' was in fact a sphere, and 'C' contained a pyramid and I told the nurse as much. We moved onto the next row and I continued as before, though several especially clear visions helped speed me along. My heart was light in my chest as I finished the last container.

“Okay,” the nurse said somewhat flatly. “We're done with this. I'm going to move onto the next portion.” The stack of drawers had little wheels on the bottom of it, allowing her to reach through the curtain and pull it to her side of the divide. I heard a jingle of keys and several drawers being opened as she opened a lock and then removed the contents. A few minutes later, the apparatus was on my side again and another tray was pushed beneath the curtain, this one holding two egg shaped crystals which glowed with light. “These two crystals are identical in every way except one is enchanted to produce a bright flare which will be visible through your sense of magic. Inside each of the drawers will be one single crystal like these, and it may or may not have this enchantment. Using your magical senses, look inside each drawer and tell me if it has an enchantment or not.”

“Okay.” For the first time, I wavered slightly because, as far as I could tell, the two crystals were identical; however, that did not stop me from trying. I performed the simple mental exercises required to overlay an image of the thaumostatic field onto the image from clairvoyance, but something felt to be missing, causing me to take several minutes as I repeated the exercise several times. I received several strong clairvoyance images of the crystals as I focused intensely on them, scrutinizing their every detail as I looked desperately for any tiny glimmer which might distinguish one crystal from the other. I eventually saw something, though I wasn't sure what it was, and I applied what I saw to the testing apparatus in front of me.

“'A' has an enchantment,” I said eventually, thinking I could see a faint twinkle coming from within the drawer. The remaining drawers went a little faster, but my answer was always uncertain because, though I could faintly sense magic coming off some of the crystals inside the drawers, it felt off somehow.

“Okay, that's it,” the nurse said upon me answering what I thought the contents of the last drawer were. Sliding the curtain back, she retrieved the two crystals which had been sat in front of me.

“How'd I do?” I was certain I had done well on the clairvoyance portion, yet the second half had shaken my confidence, leaving my chest fluttering with worry.

“Well, I need to turn the results into the lab for processing, then a doctor will get the prognosis to you.”

My voice was excited and quick as I spoke. “I'm not asking for a prognosis, just the stats. How many did I get right?”

“Eh.” she tapped her hoof on the table as she looked over her shoulder at her notepad, suddenly appearing nervous.

“What is it?” I asked, suddenly feeling more nervous as well.

She hesitated for a moment. “You scored six out of fifteen on the first part, then eight of fifteen on the second. Statistically, it is the same as if you were guessing.”

An icicle plunged into my chest and tendrils of sickly cold wrapped around the rest of my body. “Wha... No. No.” my hooves went to my mouth in horror. “No, I know what I am sensing. I just can't...”

“I know, but the numbers just don't say that.”

“Then do the test again! It's wrong somehow!”

“I don't know how,” the nurse said carefully. “As per procedure, I checked your answers against the contents of each drawer as I removed them, and I checked each of my notes as I went. I couldn't have been wrong that many times.”

“It~” my voice wavered and cracked. “It just can't be.”

“I'm sorry.” The nurse squirmed slightly. “The numbers just don't say that though.”

“I- I want to take the test again and see for myself. Put the wooden shapes back in the drawers and open them after I tell you what is in them.”

“This isn't how the test is supp-”

I cut her off, “It doesn't matter. Please, just do it!”

For an instant, a piteous look flashed across her face, then she reached over, pulled the rolling set of drawers to her side, and reset the curtain to be between us. I heard her open the drawers again and put something in them. A few moments later, she pushed the drawers back in front of me, then opened the curtain between us. “Okay, the top two rows have been set. Tell me what you see in the first one.”

A quick flicker and I quickly knew the first one to contain a cube and had a reasonable idea of what all the others contained, but I took my time and awaited another flicker which came in about a minute. “First one is a cube,” I said. The nurse opened the drawer and my heart almost leaped out of my mouth when I saw I was correct. Bolstered by this I immediately followed up saying, “Next one is a pyramid.”

When she opened the drawer, ice filled my veins again when I saw a sphere. Don't get cocky, you're still hurt and can't sense things well. Take your time on the next one and you'll get it right, I reassured myself. But I was wrong on drawer three and four as well, and even though I guessed right on the fifth, I was wrong several more times after that.

Eyes downcast, shoulders slumped, I let my hoof slide from the leg rest of the wheelchair and I mumbled, “Thank you... I'm sorry I wasted your time...” Hot tears streamed down my cheek and dripped into my lap. “I was so stupid, utterly stupid, to hope...” She grabbed my hoof and squeezed it, but she didn't say anything. “It's just... so real... I can't tell the difference.” I rambled then managed to look up at her, “You're a unicorn... like I was.”

“I um, yeah...” she carefully replied.

“You know your senses, how things look when you see them...”

“Yes.”

“This... I don't know what it is I'm seeing... but these images are so real, I can't tell it apart from the real thing... I spent years honing my senses, and-” My voice cracked, “Now they're gone and I'm left with these 'specters' which taunt me with what I can't have.”

“I can't imagine what it must be like. I'm so sorry for you.”

“Thanks. Trust me, you don't want to be going through this.” Suddenly, I broke and started crying too hard to carry on a conversation or even think beyond beyond the sea of emotions in which I was drowning. Distantly, I was aware of the nurse asking me if I wanted to go back to my room, to which I emphatically nodded 'yes' through my tears. She wheeled me out and up two floors to my room where my parents were most likely waiting.

I felt like the world's biggest idiot when I was pushed in there. I had raised my hopes so high along with Mom's and Dad's, only for our expectations to be cruelly smashed by reality. In the end, it was good that they were there, even if originally they had come for much more happy reasons.

Things were not good, but they were better because they were there, and they listened with me to the neurology doctor as he explained these 'sensory deprivation hallucinations' and said they were a perfectly normal thing to expect as over half of all unicorns suffer them in one way or another after losing part or all of their senses. With time, I could expect them to diminish and go away, and for the time being, I should take comfort knowing that they are not a sign I was going insane.

All this was blurred in my ears though, and eventually, I reached a point where I could stand no more. Rolling onto my side to face away from everyone, I quietly murmured, “I need to be alone to grieve right now.” Everyone present had enough insight into my state of being to not question me and left without needing any more persuasion.

So there I lay for some time, tears burning my eyes and suddenly finding myself wishing for one last big dose of morphine. I was physically exhausted by the wide gulfs spanned by my emotions in such a few hours and was sick to the stomach from the stress I was enduring. I drifted in and out of sleep for some time and eventually found myself wanting to wither away and die. It was about that time I heard a light tapping on the door and I assumed it to be one or both of my parents coming to check on me. “Come in,” I rasped.

“Hi,” a timid voice said, causing me to roll over and be surprised to see the nurse who administered the tests earlier. She was standing on three legs and using her forth to hold a small white teddy bear to her chest. “Do you mind if I come in?”

I did not feel like being comforted and in fact was feeling utterly inconsolable, but I could sense that she was being nice and I didn't want to turn her away. “It's alright.”

Stepping in, her demeanor was very meek as she cautiously looked around the room. “My supervisors tell me I can't get involved with patients, and there are all these rules about it too, but you were so distraught and I just wanted to try to help...” She trailed off, perhaps waiting for me to reply. The poor thing squirmed in the silence that followed as I waited for her to continue, “I know this is silly of me, but you reminded me a bit of my mom. When I was younger, she got really sick and while she was in the hospital, the doctors and nurses didn't treat her very well, even when she was at her worst and was really depressed. One of them even told her not to worry about dying because her family would be able to 'move on' without her. I think I am going into medicine because of that, at least indirectly. I mean, how terrible is it for healers to be so nasty? I don't want anyone to go through that, and maybe it's naive of me to think I can change that, but so help me I want to!”

I smiled slightly as she came closer and handed me the teddy bear, “It's silly, we're both grown mares, but I hope maybe this might make you feel better. If you don't want it, then you can throw it away or something else and I wouldn't be hurt. I just want to express how much my heart goes out to you.”

For a long time, I simply held the teddy bear and stared deeply into it's button eyes contemplating the wonderful feeling taking root inside my chest. I must have appeared unsatisfied in some way or another, because the nurse turned around and started walking away. “I hope I haven't bothered you too much,” she said in a melancholy tone.

“Wait, come back,” I asked, and she turned around and did so. The second she came close enough, I wrapped my forelegs around her neck, saying warmly, “You don't know how much this means to me.” Tears were forming in my eyes, but they were not tears of sadness but rather tears which sprang from how tenderly her simple act had touched me. When I let go, I put my hooves on her shoulders, looked her firmly in the eyes, and said in a very serious tone, “Don't you ever become bitter like some doctors do. I don't know Doctor Apple that well, but she has only been wonderful to me even though I've been a terrible patient. Learn from her, and please don't forget who you are today, because the world needs more like you.”

For the record, I would never, ever, ever throw away Autumn – that's what I eventually named that teddy bear. She always sits where she is safe and I can see her every day. The name stands for the last colors of the season which parallels the last 'colors' I had seen using magic. Likewise, the name means that, though there is a bleak winter ahead, it is part of nature and that not only will things survive, but they shall also flourish in even greater color once spring arrives.

As for the nurse, I never saw her again after she left the room, but she was a lesson on what power simple love and kindness from even a stranger was capable of doing. Inexplicably, I was suddenly thankful for the love of my parents and friends, but, perhaps, I needed to be reminded just how much they loved me.

I never learned that nurse's name, but I remember from her nametag that it started with the letter 'A' and sounded musical. That is where the name 'Autumn' came from and, should I ever have children, my first shall be named that name.