The Second Dream

by totallynotabrony

Make Your Mark: Hoof Done It?

For the second time in my life, I took horse tranquilizers.

Like the first time, I didn’t remember much after that.

Unlike the first time, it wasn’t voluntary. I figured Hitch had authorized them. I trusted him. Well, maybe he was slightly power tripping by seeing me vulnerable like this, and I couldn’t blame him - it was probably good to rebalance our relationship anyway. At any rate, I had other things to think about, such as the whole childbirth thing.

So when I finally returned to lucidity sometime later, I had a lot of questions.

But that was nothing compared to when the girls finally overran the nurses and burst into my hospital room.

“Where is the baby!?” Pipp shouted, cell phone at the ready.

“And how are you, Sentra?” Zipp asked.

“We brought some snacks,” said Sunny.

“And glit-” Izzy was abruptly tackled by a nurse and dragged back out of the room.

The rest gathered around the foot of the bed with Hitch. Looks of confusion propagated across the crowd. I could barely tell. Still coming out of anesthesia, my vision was blurry.

“So, uh…what are we looking at?” Sunny asked. Strange, she couldn’t tell either and she wasn’t the one on drugs.

“Oh thank hoofness, I’m glad I’m not the only one who was thinking it,” Pipp said. “It would have been a really ugly for a foal, but I guess it’s not a pony.”

“It what?” I interjected.

Everyone looked at me. “Sentra’s starting to wake up,” Hitch noted. The expression on his face was strange, an odd mixture between confused, worried, and yet loving.

He turned to show me the tiny bundle of blankets that he cradled.

“Can’t see,” I said.

Hitch swallowed. “It’s…a goat.”

I burst out laughing.

I’m going to blame…maybe sixty percent of that on the drugs.

“What day was he born?” Izzy said.

He, huh.

“I don’t know,” Hitch admitted. “It was pretty close to midnight.”

“On the dot,” one of the nurses confirmed. “So decide which day you want.”

“Both! Two birthdays!” Izzy shouted.

I focused on the more important thing, though. “So, a kid. A goat kid. A kid kid.” I snorted.

Downgrade that drug influence to just half and half.

Hitch brought him over, not that it helped with my eyes still fuzzy.

“A boy?” I confirmed.

“Yes.”

“Billy goat.”

“That’s his name?”

“You know what? Sure.”

I saw Zipp put a hoof to her chin in thought and then blush, which with my vision still coming back I could really only tell because her face briefly went as pink as her sister. She turned to a nurse and I barely overheard, “Is mare milk safe for other species?”

Oh right, that was going to be a thing.

“Honey, at this point, I don’t think this postpartum could get any weirder,” the nurse replied.

She turned out to be wrong about that.

With the birth at midnight, we’d all been awake too long and not even the snacks Sunny had brought could stave off exhaustion. Izzy had the bright idea to just sleep in the other bed in the room, but upon pulling back the curtain, discovered that we’d all forgotten that Misty was lying there.

“What in the world have you all been up to?” she asked, voice still nasally through her broken nose, glancing between the unpregnant Hitch, the loopy me, and the clearly adopted natural birth that had just entered the world.

That was when I noticed the magic mirror that Hitch and I had interrogated her about had been here the whole time.

I started to get up and fell before I even got out of bed, which was probably better than after. Hitch steadied me, and while he was close, I whispered, “Mirror,” to him. He caught on instantly.

Whoever was on the other end of the mirror, the mysterious figure that Misty still wouldn’t turn over, might have just heard everything. There was no telling what they might do with a record of the weird birth - hopefully it would freak them out just as much as it had Misty - but we couldn’t know. If nothing else, they would know that the only two law enforcement personnel in all of Maretime Bay would be distracted from work.

“Huh, that’s weird,” Sunny broke in just then, looking at her phone. “The web-enabled security system I put in the Brighthouse is going off.”

“Did you get the cameras?” I asked.

“No, just the one motion detector.”

“You let a tech company have access to your phone and your house and didn’t even take full advantage of their offer in return?”

“It’s just the pain medication talking,” Hitch quickly interjected over me.

Sunny gasped, holding her phone closer. “My magic lantern has just been stolen!”

“It’ll tell you that, but not who did it?”

“Not on the freemium service!” Sunny quickly pulled out her credit card and started hammering in the numbers, but I had a feeling that it was already too late.

“We should do something,” Hitch said. “A burglary isn’t good, but this timing is pretty suspicious.” He glanced down at me and the new baby. “But-”

Sunny looked despondent, realizing that both cops in town were down.

“You should deputize somepony!” said Izzy.

“Zipp,” Hitch and I chorused.

Comments

[Amos Anon]

“Zipp,” Hitch and I chorused.

I concur. Really the only choice.

[frostfiresnow]

I focused on the more important thing, though. “So, a kid. A goat kid. A kid kid.” I snorted.

"FOALISH MORTALS! IT IS I! GROGAR.FATHER OF MONSTERS! "

Hitch: uh..did Anypony else hear that?
Izzy: hear what?

[Telly Vision]

I’m glad this is still going