"Somepony! Help! Princess Celestia Has Lost Her Memory!"

by Kevin Lee

The Rising Sun In The Long Tree Saloon

"Twilight!" Luna spoke out as she came upon the lavender alicorn in the dead of night, who was once more pining at the memorial that had been set up for those lost to the wild lightning strike that had taken down the chariot. "It has been a year since the accident. You must learn to move on past your grief."

"How can I, Luna?" she asked, choking back a sob. "To lose her like that! And the others! How can I forget it? And it was all my fault! If I hadn't agreed to Cadance's request to return the portal to the Crystal Empire—"

"I'm not telling you that you should forget her, or them!" Luna snapped. "I'm telling you to let go of your grief! We are alicorns are immortal! However, we will outlive hundreds of generations. We will outlive even some long-lived friends like dragons. I've lost friends. Even my sister has. And it is unfortunate, but entirely true: accidents will remove our friends all that much quicker."

"It shouldn't have happened! It should've been me!" Twilight protested. "It should've been my broken body. Not hers!"

"No, Twilight!" Luna chided her. "Never think like that! Being an immortal alicorn doesn't mean the same as being invulnerable. After all, Celie and I lost our parents, who were also alicorns! The wrong situation can take out even one of us!

"That lightning strike was in no way 'your fault', Twilight Sparkle!" Luna said, continuing to chastise her. "Nopony could've anticipated anything like that. Nopony! Not even the Wise-and-All-Knowing-Twilight-Sparkle!"

"Don't worry, Twilight. There's no way we'll ever forget her," Cadance said, coming up on the two of them.

She looked at her two friends and finally nodded, accepting the truth of what they were telling her.

But there was still something about that incident that felt—odd.

********************

"Well, now I've seen everything!" Gallup (Doc) Apple grumbled as he stepped through the swinging leaf doors to the Long Tree, to take in the sight.

The 'patient' he had been told about was lying apparently asleep, her nose just short of a shallow empty bowl setting on the floor. The tan colored, red maned owner of the saloon was on the far side of the alicorn working a soapy sponge over the alicorn's right fore-shoulder. With her head turned to where Doc could see her, the mare's face was mostly cleaned, revealing an almost ethereal white fur underneath the dirt that remained.

As he came on in, Doc noticed the damage to the saloon.

"Land sakes!" he exclaimed, looking at the destroyed bar. "Did she do all that?"

"No," Filly responded. "She did this," she said, lifting a hoof to point at the shiner around her eye. "Tumbleweed and I did all that," she finished, gesturing about to the demolished saloon. "Hey, Doc. You remember, you once told us about how in one of your medical journals there is a passage about horses being dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle?"

"Yeah," he absently muttered, still taken aback by the visage of his 'patient'.

"Well, your medical journal forgot to mention that pegasi and alicorns are just as dangerous on either side!"

"I'll keep that in mind," Doc fervently assured her. "How bad is she?"

"Well, if the desert wasn't still out there, I'd swear she came in here wearing the entire thing!" Filly muttered, getting back to her washing. "Her mind seems gone, but let's just hope that will pass. I've given her some water, not too fast, mind you. Just sips. But she sucked it up faster than that desert does! I can't find any obvious wounds, but with all this dirt, there's just no way to tell."

"I'll give you a hoof," Doc said, picking up a spare sponge and got to work on her other side.

It took almost an hour just to wash down the alicorn's front third before the wings. They skipped the wings because they didn't have the right cleanser for the feathers. And based on Filly's recount of their meeting, and how she was able to get them folded again after getting her to lay all the way down, it didn't seem the wings were giving the alicorn any problems. They then started washing off her flank.

As Doc worked on her left side, he noticed numerous signs of really deep bruising over large areas and in various locations under the coat, so he was trying to give a more thorough cleaning, making his progress slower than Filly's, who was aiming to clean off as much surface area as possible and worry about "immaculate" later.

"Dear Sweet Celestia!" Filly suddenly screamed, getting Doc's instant attention. The saloon's owner was staring in horror at the alicorn's flank.

Puzzled, he stepped around to see for himself, hoping it wasn't a horrendous injury that had caused Filly's reaction. Instead, he was now just as dumbstruck as she was.

"'Sweet Celestia' is right!" he said, finally able to get his voice to working again, as they stared at the exposed sunburst cutie mark on the alicorn's flank.

"Is there a problem?" a deep voiced stallion asked from the doorway. They looked over to see the town's marshal, Mustang Mack, staring, having caught them in the act of washing down the large figure lying on the floor and all the damage to the saloon.

"You'd better come take a look yourself, Mack, and tell us," Doc said to him, still staring at the uncovered cutie mark.

"Hey, Mack," Filly Rustler happily greeted their mutual friend. The large russet colored stallion with a blonde mane wearing his light tan vest with his badge and topped with his ever-present Stetson looked every bit as handsome as ever. "Tumbleweed found her wandering outside a bit ago."

"Yeah, Tumbleweed tracked me down just now," Mustang Mack said as he walked over to where the others were standing. "I got here as soon as I—whoa!" he hoarsely whispered, upon seeing the cutie mark.

"Mack? You don't suppose those old rumors about how Nightmare Moon beat Princess Celestia were true, do you?" Doc asked.

"If they are, that might explain her condition," Filly Rustler softly said. "To be wandering the wilderness all this time—?"

"I—I couldn't tell you," Mustang Mack admitted, uncertainly as he adjusted his hat back as if to give him a clearer view of her. "That one Canterlot Times newspaper took years to get here. It's a four-month trip in winter, after all, just to get to Last Gasp. And that's just one way! Then you have to wait until the next winter in order to get back. Not only that, but you have to account for the routes to the rest of Equestria and the time it takes to get there."

To simply say Dry Gulp was isolated was a tremendous understatement.

At least twenty years previous, an event happened somewhere close to a town called Bug Tussle that tore up the rail lines between all the towns in that part of the Badlands. The Crown, however, never got around to trying to repair the damage. The only way in or out of Dry Gulp was by hoof or by flight.

But since there were no pegasi living in Dry Gulp, that left flight out of the picture. However, going by hoof could only be done during winter, with the hope for some snows to blow enough moisture into a traveler's way to make the crossing onto the next nearest town of Last Gasp which lay beyond Bug Tussle. Sometimes, even that didn't happen, not to mention other dangers that might befall a pony. And crossing during summer, like it was now, was strictly out.

Except, somehow, this alicorn princess just did it.

"Well, there's somepony here that might know," Filly said, almost growling just thinking of her.

Up until seven years ago, Filly recalled, Marshal Mustang Mack had been the tallest pony she knew in Dry Gulp. Then she showed up. But she really didn't count as a pony. Certainly not in Filly's estimation. But this alicorn, she might have a few inches on even her.

And if this was the legendary Princess Celestia…? she wondered. Then who's been raising the sun all this time?

The three of them worked together to clean the evident Princess Celestia of the remaining dirt while the alicorn continued to sleep, sponging off the worst of the dirt over her coat, working at cleaning her mane and tail, and finally her wings.

After her mane and tail were washed, revealing their multi-colored bands with hues like the aurora borealis. And weirdly, once they were roughly dried, they in turn started lifting and waving as though in a steady breeze—from a breeze that didn't exist.

The three of them took turns fetching tubs of clean water, more soap, removing the tubs of dirty water, rolling her first to one side and then to the other so they could clean off her legs and belly. And then they mopped up spilled puddles of muddy water, especially as they began using mugs of plain water to sluice off most of the dust from her feathers in order to not risking damaging them with the harsh soap.

As they worked through the rest of the night, Doc shared his observations of her condition.

The alicorn had some widespread and extensive deep bruising all over her left side some time ago. While most bruises only lasted a couple of weeks, if the trauma was severe enough, the signs might be evident for months or even be permanent. However, bruising such as that was usually accompanied with other injuries, like broken bones, and severe damage to muscles and internal organs.

But Doc could find no other signs of such severe injuries.

Of course, he reminded them, as he often did whenever the opportunity arose for him to talk about it, that his medical knowledge was mostly self-taught: about how his predecessor took him, literally under his wing, when Doc's cutie mark made itself known, to begin teaching him his medical knowledge. However, the old doctor died of old age while Doc Apple was still just a colt, and the earth pony had to study what medical journals and books left behind on his own. That, and what Doc learned by practicing medicine for nearly fifty years by treating what patients came his way.

Filly Rustle and Mustang Mack had heard the same story from Doc for nearly as long—at least thirty-five or forty of those years. Of course, they had their own stories they often shared—repeatedly—with each other and other friends and acquaintances they had in the town. There was little to do in a place as isolated as Dry Gulp.

Other than the old deep bruising, she seemed fine. At least physically.

When Filly told them how she acted and spoke when Tumbleweed and Filly found her, Doc agreed with Filly's concern that the sun and desert may have affected the alicorn's mind.

The sun rising caught their attention.

"If this is Princess Celestia, then who's been raising the sun all this time?" Filly suddenly asked, as she looked through the windows at the view of the town in the morning daylight, finally giving thought to the puzzle she had been wrangling with all night.

"Could it be Nightmare Moon?" Doc asked.

"But she was quoted in that paper that the night 'would last forever'," Mack reminded them.

"Even Nightmare Moon must've realized that keeping the sundown like that would eventually doom the planet," Filly argued.

"That's true," Mack said. "There had been that day of the Summer Sun, where it didn't rise for nearly an entire three days a decade ago. But then it did rise up as normal after that for a time. At least until that period of the crazy stuff going a year later and then again, a few years ago. That very first time corresponds with the date on the paper. But the few papers that showed up since then must have been rather slow news days. They never mentioned those other events."

"Neither did they ever mentioned Nightmare Moon again," Doc muttered. "But I do recall they spoke of a 'Princess Luna'."

Their conversation was ended when they suddenly heard a grunt behind them. They all turned to look and saw the alicorn mare quickly jump up to her hooves and begin fidgeting and looking about wildly.

"Easy, Princess!" Filly exclaimed while trying to keep a calm voice throughout her own panic as she rushed up to her.

Except the alicorn didn't seem to hear her. Instead, after several more panicked turns, she spotted the open double doors and suddenly rushed out through them.

"Oh, roadapples!" Doc exclaimed, as he and the other two ran after her.

Fortunately, they didn't need to go very far. The alicorn had halted her own run just a few paces beyond the boardwalk, still looking about and spinning around wildly on her hooves.

"What's she—?" Mack began to ask when the figure suddenly stopped and then squatted, lifting her tail.

All three of them winced in horror and dread.

"Well—that's not the worst thing that's been dumped on the street in front of the saloon," Filly grumbled as the alicorn emptied her bladder.

What was impressive was the fact she poured out nearly as much water as Filly had given her last night. About a quarter barrel's worth.

Comments

[Sigmacipher]

Well the genre for the crossover is either western or Sci-fi and I can't tell which.

[Kevin Lee]

7115780 Sorry. No points for you, yet. As I said, the actual show related to the crossover is only 1 point because it's too easy, as are most of the so-far named characters. But guessing who Tumbleweed's character is based on from that show is worth 5.

[Razzy]

Classy, Sunbutt.

Wow, that place seems more isolated than the moon.