Potion Panic

by Uber_Shy

I'm still grey and Tempest is still a dunder-head

Bella looked down at her now dark grey hooves. ‘Oh no,’ she thought. ‘This isn’t right at all. What could have possibly gone so wrong that this could happen? No it couldn’t be my coat.’ She shook her foreleg around waiting for residue to come off. It didn’t. She started to panic. Tempest was just floating there staring wide eyed at her. What if she had damaged her coat? She couldn’t live like this forever. Already she was missing her dark blue complexion. She didn’t even care that other ponies all too often compared her to princess Luna. Tears began to well up in her eyes. She took up part of her mane in her right hoof. It was still bright sky blue as usual. At least one aspect of the potion had actually done its job. Bella looked back at Tempest. He seemed deep in thought. ‘Now what could he possibly be pondering?’ She thought.

“Hey cheer up. The stuff you tried on me wasn’t permanent and neither should this.” Tempest Finally said.
Bella was a bit surprised at Tempest’s sudden sincere nature. He was almost always sarcastic and witty (or at least in his mind) even at inappropriate times. She didn’t even think it he was capable of being serious. He was right though. All she had to do was wait a while.

“I’ll tell you what,” Tempest said, “ why don’t we go and have a fun rest of the day out by the river and forget all this. Then when we come back you’ll be nice relaxed and ready to start again.”

“Yeah you’re right. Let me just pick up a-” Bella stopped mid sentence. She noticed the box that held the dragon lily petals in it. Or, more accurately, the box that she thought contained Dragon Lily. The box containing the Dragon Lily was labeled as such. This particular box was unlabeled. That meant it was from her most recent gathering expedition, and THAT meant… no, it couldn’t be. She zipped over to the box and picked up a pedal. She looked closely at it. What she saw only confirmed her fears. What she thought was dragon lily was really equestrian heart flower. She could tell because of the tiny red veins that ran along the pedal. The sudden realization of what she had done hit her hard. She couldn’t help tearing up again.

“What is it,” asked Tempest.

“It’s going to be permanent!” Bella blurted out.

“What? How do you know?” Tempest just stood where he was instead of coming to investigate for himself like Bella thought he would. It seemed odd, but she disregarded it and continued.

“This is equestrian heart flower,” she explained, “it is a preserving agent I commonly use to extend the longevity of some of my potions. However, it is very powerful. Just two pedals could have made my potion last a year!”
Tempest looked over and saw that the box was nearly empty “…oh” was all he could say. Bella was crying openly at this point.

“With the amount I added, my bones will be this ugly grey five thousand years from now!” Bella lowered her head and sobbed.

“Come on now, that’s not true. Listen here,” Tempest said as he flew over and laid a reassuring hoof on her shoulder. Bella looked into his reassuring eyes and stopped sobbing momentarily. He looked back and smiled. “From what you told me… I’m pretty sure this potion only affected your coat. Your bones will be fine.” At this Bella scowled and knocked away Tempest’s hoof. She turned and walked towards the mirror on the far side of the room. Why could he not take anything seriously?

“Ok I admit that was cheap,” Tempest said and flew in front of her again, “but seriously I’ve never seen you back down from a problem before. So what if you added this ‘equestrian heart flower’ stuff. I’m sure you of all ponies can figure out how to fix this.” Once again Tempest surprised her with his sincerity. She walked past him and took a look in the mirror. She was basically exactly the same. Same short legs, same long blue mane, and same violet eyes. The only difference was this new dark grey coat. She turned so she could see the rest of her profile, but before she could Tempest jumped between her and the mirror.

“I know where you can start,” he said rather loudly, “you can try some of that freaky deaky magic of yours.”
Although she didn’t appreciate him referring to her magic as “freaky deaky”, he was right. She turned back to the big round table in the center of the room. She thought of a few spells that could counteract the effects. She charged her horn with magic and began to preform the most promising one.

“Wait!” Tempest yelled. Bella looked at him as he sped into her kitchen. He reappeared a few seconds later with some popcorn. “I love magic shows,” he added. Bella rolled her eyes before closing them so she could concentrate. She prepared an advanced restore spell. She focused on her coat. In theory this spell should restore it to the way it was this morning. She released the magic and felt it sweep over her body. She felt it run from her horn to her tail. She opened her eyes and looked down at her forelegs. She was dismayed to see that they were still grey.

“You can do it Bella. Try again.” Tempest said enthusiastically as he threw another piece of popcorn into his mouth.

Next she tried a modified version of a cleaning spell. She had used it once before to strip the paint off of her house. She focused the spell on her right foreleg so she could monitor the progress. She immediately stopped the spell as pain shot up her leg. Instead of stripping off the color, it pulled hard on her fur. She looked at Tempest again. He was waving a small hoof held flag that said “Bella #1” on it. Her curiosity as to where he got that flag almost made her forget the last spell she was going to try. It was a difficult one.

This time she would attempt to drain the magical essence from the potion. There was still a bit left in a pool on the table. It was extremely dangerous for a unicorn to absorb pure magical essence, but if she could do it, she could directly counteract the effects. A purple ring of magic formed around the potion and it started to glow. “Oooh,” she heard Tempest say. She could feel the magic slowly coming out of the potion. It was working, she could feel it. She stayed focused, making sure none of the raw energy escaped. Suddenly a large torrent of energy came out of the small puddle. It took all if her effort to keep it contained. She could hear crackling as sparks started flying around the room. She had to release the spell. There was no way she could contain it. She might explode if she tried to absorb it all. She let the magical essence bond with the potion again before releasing it from her containment field.

“That was amazing!” Tempest was on his feet now. “Any chance you could do that again?” He stopped when he saw the tired and dismayed look on Bella’s face. He zipped over next to her and wrapped a foreleg around her. “you know what this calls for,” he asked.

“Not really,” Bella responded.

“This calls for a nice relaxing trip to the river so we can come back and try this later,” Tempest said as he walked her to the front door.

“But…” Bella began.

“No buts,” He insisted, “you look so down it’s making me depressed. So we need to go fix that.” He opened the door and pushed her outside.

Bella turned around and took a deep breath. She liked being outside. Her lab was always so stuffy. She tried to take her mind off of her current predicament as they walked to the river.