Babe, Why Is She Saying That Word?

by Soaring

First published

Flurry Heart learned a few new words that Shining is way more worried about than Cadance.

Flurry Heart learns some new words. Shining Armor is worried.

Cadance just wants to make sure she's not going to make her foal a mute.

Luna just wants to buy nuclear laxatives.


Was going to be a submission to Muggonny's Princess Cadance is a Terrible Mother contest. Shitpost galore inbound. Hope you all enjoy!

Pre-read by FamousLastWords.

First part written on my birthday. Second part written the day after.

Babe, Why Is She Saying That Word?

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“Babe, why is she saying that word?”

Shining Armor and Princess Cadance were sitting at their dining room table. Their daughter, Flurry Heart, was finally quiet as she sat across from them in her high chair, gnawing on the top of her formula bottle.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Princess Cadance replied to her dear husband. She said this with a noncommittal shrug, like she was trying to featherdust the question away.

Unfortunately for Cadance, Shining Armor wasn’t finished beating that feather duster against every surface his mind could come up with. He leaned forward, his brows furrowed. “Cady, I don’t want to say you’re lying, but I’m going to anyway. You’re lying. You know what I’m talking about.”

The princess sunk back in her seat, eying down her empty plate like she wished she had something else for her hooves to do. Instead, she just levitated it a bit before letting out a harrumph, the plate falling back onto the table with an inharmonious clickity-clack.

“Then what do you want me to say, Shiny? That I shouldn’t speak to our daughter? She’s the firstborn fruit of our royal loins. Communication is essential right from conception!”

Shining Armor rolled his eyes. “No, that’s definitely not what I’m wanting you to do. I’m just… worried. Flurry Heart and I were playing with her playset we got her last week when suddenly, out of nowhere, she just got up and said—”

Abortion!

The couple glanced over at their filly who had placed her empty bottle of formula right next to her empty bowl. They were so befuddled by the shock and awe of her verbose verbiage that their common sense was no longer within the ballpark. In fact, it was so far out of left field, it was still at home digging through the couch cushions for change to get bus fare to go to the stadium. She was sitting all delightfully, while sporting a toothy grin that made Shining Armor’s stomach queasy.

“There she goes again.”

“I know.”

Shining Armor growled. “So, what do we do then? We can’t have her out in public, especially while saying… that.”

Cadence just sighed. “Well, I can’t tell her to not say that word.”

“Why not?”

“That would just stunt her growth, Shiny. If we tell her she can’t say a word, then she might become a silent baby, who chooses not to speak because her mother said so! It starts with a single word she can’t say… then there will be full sentences, then paragraphs! Soon we’ll be adding Prancer in the Sty back to the banned reading list in all our schools and society will crumble!”

Shining Armor clanked his head against the desk. “You’re just being over dramatic! The worst thing that will happen is she’ll have that goth phase for a few years where everything has to be about screamo and death, and to be honest, I don’t think it will be an issue. Colts nowadays like the quiet ones.” Shining Armor sighed. “All I’m saying is that she just can’t say that word.”

“Abortion?” Cadance said with a raised brow.

“Yes, Cady! She shouldn’t be saying that at her age! That word is reserved for the clergy and fifteen-year old mothers! That’s just asking for the Crystal Empire’s Foals and Family Services to launch an investigation on us, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to hear from Princess Celestia that she wants to abort us from existence!”

Cadence waved a hoof nonchalantly at her husband. “Pfft, now that is highly unlikely. You know I have connections, right? Besides, nopony said this parenting thing would be easy. There are actual books written about how hard it is. And even if it were easy, we would probably have three Flurry Hearts running around. Wouldn’t that be… a delightful experience?

Shining Armor opened his mouth to reply, but their foal ruined his chance to jump in when she let out a loud earthquake-inducing burp. The walls of the Castle rumbled under the power of it. When Flurry Heart’s stomach finally subsided, so did the Castle, leaving Cadance and Shining Armor with windswept manes and a whole plate full of whiplash.

“Uh… well... that happened,” Shining Armor muttered.

“That definitely did happen,” Cadence said with a nod. “Was that the same formula we gave her last week, Shiny?”

“Thought so. It was right next to all the other bottles we had in the ice box. Unless somepony grabbed the other bottle…”

“Was that the one labeled ‘Liquid Laxative?’”

Shining Armor raised a brow. “That’s a thing? Back in my day, we just ate some Mexicolt food, closed our eyes and hoped for the best.”

Princess Cadance frowned and looked at her filly. She was sitting there still in that chair of hers, rocking back and forth like a crazed psychopath with a thirst for bloodshed that was ready to launch herself out of her seat. “Luckily for us, we don’t have to use that tactic. Luna had bought some for us off some seller out East. Thought that if we needed it, that we should make sure it’s preserved in ice, otherwise that laxative would turn into a bomb that could take out the whole entire Crystal Empire!”

Shining Armor’s eyes widened. “And we just gave that to the baby? We gave explosive materials to an infant… as nourishment?!”

“No, I’m pretty positive we gave her the right bottle.”

“Neckbeard,” Flurry Heart replied, before yeeting the bottle of empty formula into the next room.

“I’ll check for you real quick, Shiny. Don’t get your hooves all bunched up like an accordion.” With that, the alicorn blinked out of existence, leaving Shining Armor with a ticking time bomb thy name is Flurry Heart.

“Flurry Heart?”

The filly stopped rocking her chair and stared up at her father, her eyes beady and glistening in the light. “Diabetes?”

Shining Armor’s heart nearly came out of his porthole when his daughter said that. She was so damn adorable, even if she was saying horrific words that would cause the whole entire nation to wonder if royalty meant living in a luxurious, traveling dumpster fire. Shining Armor hugged the filly close. “Even though you’re saying things that you shouldn’t be saying, I’ll be here while your mother figures out what she gave you.”

The filly sighed and hugged her father back. They stayed quiet for a moment. Everything was well. Flurry Heart wasn’t calling him a neckbeard. She wasn’t proclaiming abortion. She was just Flurry Heart.

“Say, honey, I don’t know about you, but we may have given her a completely different bottle.”

“Euthanasia!”

His world crashed back into reality, where his daughter was rocking around in her seat again, while his wife was trying to read the back of the poison that she gave that poor filly of theirs.

Shining Armor groaned. “So, what’s the verdict?”

“Guilty, of all charges,” Princess Cadance said, giggling to herself behind her forehoof. She levitated the bottle over to her husband. “Looks like we gave her her normal formula, but I think this bottle had something else in it.”

“Why do you say that?”

Princess Cadance flipped a hoof in her husband’s direction, all while plainly displaying her case to the court. “Well, I did tell you about Luna, right?”

“Yes, the one that could destroy all of the Crystal Empire, right?”

“Right…” She coughed. “I’ll make sure the guards dispose of that later. There was one other bottle that we used to dispose of leftover poison joke for the apothecary. Unfortunately, I may have not gotten all of it out and it seems that our daughter possibly, maybe, perhaps... has the case of ‘the joke’.”

“ABORTION!”

Shining Armor gasped. “So, she’s saying these words because you used a baby bottle to dispose of poison joke?!”

Princess Cadance tapped her chin. “Actually, it was to give him it since it was all liquefied and what not. Don’t want it to go to waste!” She sang those last few words like they were fluffy and not something she could care about. “Don’t worry, Shiny. I think this will wear off in the next few hours. Or maybe a few days. I can’t remember what Twilight told me the last time she mentioned poison joke.”

Shining Armor was baffled. How does he deal with something like this? Maybe he should just stay in bed… until Flurry was eighteen.

Groaning, the stallion held his head in his forehooves. “I need to reconsider my life choices…”

“What?” Princess Cadance said with a head tilt.

“Nothing,” Shining Armor replied lamely, his eyes drifting to the empty bottle of formula in the corner. He’d have to pick that up later. “Anyway, now that we know our daughter is dealing with poison joke, then all we need to do is take her to the apothecary and—”

“Steroids!”

“Honey, I think I broke our daughter.”

Shining Armor stifled a chuckle. “Glad you figured that one out so quickly.” He reached over the nearby countertop to grab a contact list of all the street addresses in the Crystal Empire. His eyes darted over each page, before finally landing on the exact listing he needed. “Ah-ha! He’s apparently a few blocks away. As long as we can restrain her to the point that she’s in that room, then we should be fine, right?”

“Right,” Cadence said, her eyes bouncing with the hyperactive cracked-induced alicorn known as Flurry, who was carrying her own high stool with her magic. “So how would we do that?”

Shining Armor ignored her daughter’s journey as she slammed against the fridge. “You know that spell I taught you last week with Celestia?”

Cadence nodded. “Yeah. Although Celestia was there to make sure I wasn’t going to blow a hole in the castle’s walls.”

“Right…” The stallion cleared his throat before continuing, “So if you could cast that spell nullifier, then maybe it would buy us a couple hours before she’s able to levitate the entire apothecary off his hooves.”

“Wait, you were talking about the spell nullifier?” Cadence blinked twice, her maw agape.

“Erectile Dysfunction!” Flurry Heart hummed, before she slammed into a wall.

Shining Armor nervously chuckled, pushing her most recent choice of words to the shame corner of his mind before he slowly lit his horn and settled Flurry Heart’s high chair back into place. He then quickly morphed his frown into a smile. “Of course! What did you think I was talking about?”

“Oh… N-Nothing, then.”

His wife’s blush told him everything he needed to know. She looked so cute when she was embarrassed. “I see. We will... re-enact that later when Flurry Heart inevitably knocks herself out from a concussion.” Shining Armor paused to make sure his daughter wasn’t looking like a Department of Foal and Family Services case. The little filly smiled back, which made his heart feel more conflicted than ever. “I just want to make sure our daughter isn’t going to have any side effects from this. Well, and making sure my wife wasn’t waging a war against our foal.”

Cadence cracked a smile through her facade. “Honey, this is why we’re married. If you weren’t around, I’d get an—”

“Abortion!”

Shining Armor couldn’t take it anymore. He fell on his back, laughing like a maniac too.

“What? What’s so funny?”

Oh, that's why.

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“Oh, that’s why.”

The apothecary smirked. On the table sat a vial of a blueish-green substance. It was a liquid when it had been put in it, however, once he casted a spell that heated the vial, the substance had changed to the consistency of gelatinous dessert.

“Now if only we can recreate this to assist with digestion…”

The stallion hummed to himself, rubbing at his gray beard with his brown hoof. He sighed and slicked back his light brown mane. It was a job well done. He had discovered a possible way to combine two ingredients that may or may not be associated with creating bombs and somehow transformed it into a creative solution to resolving stomach aches. He had, in fact, ran out of the right ingredients to fix a stomach ache, so he had to improvise. Guess improvisation led to another invention. It’s the Equestrian way.

With a smile on his face, he shoved the vial into a corner of the table, the glass clinking against the wall. He’ll leave it there for now. Unopened. He’d let it ferment in its own goodness while he turned to clean up the mess on the counter—

“Shiny! Hold the door open while I throw her in there!”

“Throw?”

Suddenly, the front door of the stallion’s apothecary flew open, and a mare with an agenda walked in, her foal floating in a protective bubble.

“Uhh…”

“Hello, are you… Magic Mushrooms?” Princess Cadance asked, her burning desire for situational rectification growing by the millisecond.

The apothecary gulped at the fierce determination in his latest patron’s eyes. It was going to be a day.

Why did I open this store again?


Princess Cadance stared at the apothecary with tenacity. She had just catapulted her daughter, Flurry Heart, into the store. Now with her dear offspring floating above her in her protective spell nullifier, she was able to get her out of the castle and into this establishment without having anypony stopping to bow at them.

Shining Armor had also stumbled into the store, his head apparently on a swivel. Cadance was thankful she had him in her life. Without him, this foal would’ve not only not existed, but even if her lovable nightmare did exist, she’d be raising it on her own. And honestly, she would’ve actually—

“Yes, I am, your… Highness?” The stallion at the counter tilted his head. “Am I seeing a mirage or are you actually the leader of this somewhat free land?”

Shining Armor, thankfully, piped up before she gave the apothecary the riot act. “We’re real. Don’t worry, I checked.”

“You checked?

“Let me handle this, Cadance. Mr. Shrooms here believes we’re not real, and if I convince him—”

SNIFFFFFF.

The two royals were left with their jaws on the floor as the apothecary suddenly took a whiff of the mysterious substance on the table behind him. They heard the stallion cough a bit, sputtering out whatever the heck he just took a hit off of, before he turned back around and blinked rapidly.

“So I wasn’t imagining you two. Great, and you brought your foal, Princess Flurry Heart. Glad she’s… s-she’s doing w-well.” He once again eyed the fact that she was locked inside a bubble. “I hope?”

Shining Armor took a deep breath and approached the counter. “Yeah, well, she’s not actually doing that well.”

“O-Oh? Well I-I hope I can help, because I am d-doing great! I’m pretty s-sure I’ve got some p-positive vibes I can share.”

Princess Cadance tried to keep herself together, holding a hoof to block her giggles from view. She watched as her husband was reasoning with the stallion. “Well that’s good. Hopefully you can help us make sure our daughter doesn’t spout off random horrific things while she—”

“Urinary Tract Infection!”

“—tries to go to school. Sorry, she’s not saying you have a UTI.”

“I… gathered,” the apothecary replied, rubbing his chin. He looked at the foal and then back at Shining Armor. “Y-You ever considered… going to a doctor?”

Princess Cadance sighed and stepped forward. “We did, but we realized that there was no way we could schedule an appointment without inconveniencing other ponies, or threatening the doctors with their lives and what have you.”

The apothecary’s eyes widened. “I see…” He cleared his throat and shifted his imaginary tie. “Well, what do you think caused... h-her words to come out in t-this… manner?”

“Well,” Shining Armor began as he planted his forehooves on the counter. “Cadance did it!”

“Hey!” Cadance interrupted. “Just because I didn’t want to stunt our foal’s growth doesn’t mean I’m the direct cause of it all! And to be fair, we did have Twilight babysit her a few times. Maybe she could’ve learned all these words from her? I don’t know, we just have—”

“Anorexia!”

Cadance glared at her foal before she continued, “We just have a baby that’s way too happy to say, well, unpleasantly titled medical conditions.”

“Didn’t know neckbeard was a medical condition,” Shining Armor said with a raised brow.

Cadance smiled. “Actually, it’s a debilitating condition listed in thirty-five different territories of Equestria! And all of them agree it’s a crime against ponykind.”

The apothecary, once again, cleared his throat. “So what was causing this sudden… expulsion of verbiage?”

Princess Cadance smiled. “Leftover poison joke!”

What.

“I wish Cady was joking, but she’s not.”

The stallion blinked. “How large was the dosage?”

That froze both the royals in their places, while Flurry Heart floated rather happily in her bubble.

“Uh… we’re not sure,” Shining Armor said, breaking the silence. He flipped his hoof rather flippantly. “Knowing Cady, though, she’s pretty thorough when it comes to cleaning baby bottles. I once saw her run the dishwasher twice in a row with the same dishes!”

“Glad you have that much faith in me, Shiny. Yet again, love comes in all forms. Like loving my husband and cleaning my daughter’s baby bottles!”

“Well,” Magic Mushrooms began as he turned around. He rummaged through his cabinets, searching for the proper antidote to recommend. “I think if we give her a joke cocktail, then we might be able to lessen her symptoms.”

“Shaken Baby Syndrome!”

“How do you make this… cocktail?” Shining Armor said, watching the stallion running through his inventory.

At first, Magic Mushrooms had opened his mouth, but then, for some reason, he stopped, his mouth left slightly agape for the two to see. It made Princess Cadance wonder what was going to happen next, like if this apothecary was contemplating his life choices before the two royals. Instead, however, he decided to do something different, something that made everyone, including Flurry Heart, watch in awe from afar.

Magic Mushrooms was running around the room once again. He flung open many of his cabinets, drawers, and even tampered with his chemistry set he got from what Cadance assumed was his mother. Yet she didn’t judge. She just judged his skills, and Magic Mushrooms was definitely showing his talents. He had so far accrued quite a large collection of ingredients in his magic, which floated delicately above his head. It made Flurry Heart giggle happily as she clapped her forehooves, before yelling, “Penile Cancer!” Cadance instantly blushed an even stronger variation of pink, but yet again, she was more concerned about her daughter’s wellbeing, even if she should have been contemplating it earlier than this.

Sighing, Cadence looked at what the stallion placed on the table behind the counter. There was a red bag full of powder, a black keg labeled ‘oil that’s generally not for consumption’, a green container with a radioactive symbol on it, and a bunch of jars containing chocolate pudding were plopped onto the table. Honestly, it really made Princess Cadance think back to Twilight, who, at one point, mirrored this behavior. Although, there were two stark differences here. One, she was not a drug addict, and two, she was not a drug addict.

Wait, that was the same difference.

Suddenly, Magic Mushrooms threw a vial from the corner into the mix. Then, he turned and presented his findings. “Well, here we are. All these things w-will help us with c-curing your daughter.”

“Is that… chocolate pudding?” Shining Armor pointed out with his hoof.

Magic Mushrooms nodded. “Chocolate pudding will help her digest the cocktail.” He lifted one of the jars and smiled. “I will use this as a base for the remaining ingredients to reside in.”

“Reside in?”

“Yes,” Magic Mushrooms replied with a smirk. He set the jar back on the table and placed his hoof on the table. “Each ingredient here will help assist your daughter’s poison joke problem. The problem is that… well, I need to make sure you both agree to have your daughter ingest this.”

“Are you warning us that these are toxic or something?”

“Yes and no. I’m bound by law to be transparent with what your daughter is taking. If I don’t, then I would be shut down, you two would be in the papers for foal neglect, and Sombra would rise again.”

“Derangement Syndrome!”

Cadance turned to her daughter, who was clapping still in that bubble of hers. She sighed. “We wouldn’t want any of that to happen. Besides, we weren’t neglecting our foal, we just mistreated her. Only one of those is worth actual jail time.”

“Semantics, of course,” the apothecary began, trying not to eyeroll. “Well, don’t worry, that won’t happen at all. I don’t plan on my store being closed up for at least a few more years!” Magic Mushrooms let out a laugh. He smiled and stepped aside. “Anyway, the following ingredients are all going to be shredded in the mixture, except for the liquid in the keg.”

Shining Armor looked past the apothecary to see the keg. “Why is there a highly flammable tag on the keg?”

“It’s… a rare oil we got from the fields in the Dragon Lands. Highly toxic when ingested, but perfect when combined with radioactive waste from the Changeling Hive!”

“Uh, do I dare ask why?” Cadence asked, slowly backing away from the counter.

“Sure!” Magic Mushrooms excitedly replied. “To put it in short, the oil’s toxicity gets counteracted by the radioactive elements of the excrem—I mean, slimy goop from the hive to create a natural compound that will only cause second degree burns and possibly autism, which is arguably worse!”

The tilted head of Shining Armor threatened the apothecary menacingly. “And what about the bag?”

“Oh, that’s full of shredded mint leaves and nicotine. Helps with countering the burning sensation of the compound and provides a nice addictive quality to ensure she takes the entire dose.”

Princess Cadance tried to crack a smile, but her stutter was not reassuring. “S-So what makes this safe for my d-daughter to have?”

“Well, to put it in short, with the added stomach ache remedy I created out of dynamite and shredded tomatoes I found under my table this morning, this joke cocktail will make your daughter return to normal. It’s totally safe, dude, trust me.”

Shining Armor and Cadance both look at each other before looking back at the apothecary. “Can we… talk about this before we give you an answer?”

“Sure,” Magic Mushrooms replied with a nod and turned to tend to his craft.

Shining Armor and Cadance huddled together away from the counter. The two had their heads hung low, away from their daughter’s peering gaze.

“Look,” Cadance whispered. “We should just go threaten a doctor’s life. This doesn’t seem safe.”

“And getting caught abusing doctors is?” Shining growled quietly, which earned him a glare from his wife. He sighed. “We should just go with his remedy. Seems like he knows what he’s doing.”

“Shiny, I love you, but he said he’s giving our daughter Changeling feces.”

Shining Armor threw his hooves up. “And? The chocolate pudding would mask the taste… I think.”

“You think?” Cadance said with a slight head tilt. She adjusted the crown on her head. “Because I don’t think you do.”

“Well what other options do we have that don't involve us being on the front page of the Daily Crystal Mail?”

Cadance’s wings stood at attention, her urge to slap the side of her husband’s head with one of them nearing potential, only for them to sag to her sides. “Y-You’re right. This is my fault anyway so—”

“Babe, you did use a bottle that was for disposing of poison joke to feed our daughter her formula, but that’s in the past now. It’s good to reflect on what we did wrong and learn from them.”

“Really?” Cadance said, a frown manifesting destiny on her face. “So you’re not disappointed or anything?”

“Not now. I was about ten seconds ago though.”

“You jerk,” Cadance said, playfully swatting her husband’s side with her hoof.

Shining Armor winced with a smile on his face. “Point being, let’s just get this over with. That spell that has Flurry Heart in it will only last for about thirty minutes. If we can get this over with, then she’ll be back to normal. Hopefully.”

Cadance nuzzled her husband. “Okay, I trust you. Love you.”

“Love you too,” he replied, and nuzzled her back.

The two turned around and faced the apothecary. “Magic Mushrooms?”

The pony in question jolted back to life. “Yes?”

“How much does this cost?”

“For the average consumer? Twenty bits. Since I know you have money… fifty.”

“What?!” Shining shrieked. “You can’t do that!”

“Well,” the apothecary responded. “That’s where you and our capitalist society part company. Fifty bits.”

“Fine,” Shining Armor muttered.. He fumbled with his saddlebags and pulled out a bag of bits. He tossed them on the counter and smiled. “This better cover the cost of privacy as well.”

The coins click-clacked on the counter, leading the apothecary to scurry to it. He murmured to himself, counting each bit with care. Then, he gasped and his eyes widened. “That definitely does. Do you need this done in the next thirty minutes or something?!”

“Yes, actually. Our daughter is currently nullified for the next…” Shining trailed off as he squinted at the clock above the exit. “Twenty minutes.”

The apothecary suddenly scrambled to his station. “I’ll have this ready in ten!”

“Perfect!” Cadance chirped, fluttering her wings. She gave the stallion a smile. “Thank you for helping us!”

The apothecary smiled back as he prepped the ingredients. “No, thank you for swinging by. I’m glad to be able to assist in curing a princess!”

The couple smiled. They watched as the stallion diligently worked on their daughter’s potion. It was like watching their problems being handled in real time, hoping that this will save themselves the headache of getting into a clinic.

Unbeknownst to them, the bubble began to waver.


It had been ten minutes exactly since Shining Armor stared at his only hope of sanity. The apothecary had combined, stirred, and concocted several brews to create the ultimate vial, a glowing purple sludge that definitely didn’t look appetizing. Yet, from the distance he was from, it smelled… nice. Like somebody shoved lavender up his nostrils and hoped he wouldn’t notice the actual smell of the potion, which probably smelled like Changeling feces.

Anyway, he and his wife had sat down, making sure they were keeping an eye on the apothecary to see if they could recreate this for future use. Cadance was keeping watch on their daughter anyway, so he could watch the behind the scenes action unfolding in front of him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that interesting. Just a lot of measurement and trial and error, but it seemed that the apothecary was almost done—

“And… done!”

With a grin akin to a maniac smeared on Magic Mushrooms’ face, the stallion presented his solution to the couple. “One poison joke cure for the royal couple as promised,” the stallion said with a bow.

“Thank you!” Princess Cadance said with a smile. She grabbed in her magic, levitating it just above the counter. “Do we just let her drink it all or?”

The apothecary hummed to himself before he nodded. “Make sure to not spill it, as it may or may not burn a hole through anything it touches.”

“Uhh…” Shining Armor said. “Let me handle this, babe.”

“Okay,” Cadance replied. She levitated it over to her husband, who promptly took it in his magic. Cadance turned to her daughter. “Let’s get you down from the rafters, Flurry.”

Flurry Heart’s prison slowly gravitated down to the ground, hovering just in front of her mother and father. Carefully, the Princess lifted her daughter from her prison, leaving her to—

“Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder!”

“Okay, we definitely need to get you to stop saying those things,” Cadance declared. She gently propped the foal on her leg and smiled. “Okay, honey, she’s ready.”

Shining carefully trotted over, keeping the potion level. “Open up her mouth so I can get this in her—”

“MENSTRUATION!”

The foal cried and cried and cried, her eyes full of tears. They gently raced down her face.

“Okay, just have her keep saying things while I angle this just right—”

“YEAST INFECTION!”

“Almost! Keep her propped up, and maybe this time it’ll actually land in her—”

“STREP THROAT!”

“Basically,” Cadance said nonchalantly, earning her an eye roll from her husband. She giggled at his pain. “Sorry.”

“You’re totally not but no time to debate that.” He tipped the vial gently toward his daughter. “In comes the train, choo choo!”

“DIABETES, DEMENTIA, ABORT—”

The foal was corked with the vial, and the inappropriate protest was silenced with the cure to their problems. The foal slurped it down, leaving none to remain in the vial.

Shining Armor and Cadance looked on expectantly, their eyes wide and glistening. No one said a word.

Then, Flurry Heart looked at her two parents and smiled. “Mama! Papa!”

“Flurry Heart!”

The family embraced, much to the apothecary’s delight. He cleaned off his station and left the family to their heartwarming moment.

Cadance nuzzled her pride and joy. She was so happy that Flurry Heart was back to normal. “I’m so happy she’s back to normal.”

“Yeah, me too,” Shiny replied, giving his wife a nuzzle. “Glad that’s over.”

“Well, Shiny, I guess we can lift that spell nullifier now and get back to the—”

“Erectile Dysfunction,” Flurry Heart said of her own volition with an entirely unwarranted smile.

Shining Armor sighed. “Great…”