For the first seconds of the pain, he didn’t grasp the causal relationship between the screaming and the fact that he was expelling air from his lungs as hard as he could. There was so much pain that he didn’t know how to feel it all at once. He screamed wordless sounds through his wide-open jaws, and when his bruised and bloodied lungs were empty, he forced air back into them and screamed again.
It didn't end after the second scream. It didn't end after the third scream. It didn't end after the fourth scream. It didn't end, it didn't end, it didn't end even when he was tired of screaming and could only fill his lungs halfway between screams. It didn't end until he remembered how to be scared and began silently praying that it would end. Even while he screamed, he prayed to be saved from the pain, and that was when the last of the air left his lungs and it ended.
~~*~~
He breathed: he took a long, slow breath, like the second breath after waking up from a peaceful sleep. There was a firm pillow beneath his head, cradling his neck. His lower body was covered by what must have been a sheet. His upper body was warmed from above.
He opened his eyes. The warmth on his chest was from sunlight falling through a window. The ceiling was white, and might have borne a pattern, but his vision was blurred. He saw only a shadowy white ceiling, and the hazy outline of a light fixture.
“Hello!”
The voice was breathy and girlish. He might have jumped in surprise, except that the voice was so gentle that it wouldn’t have frightened a nervous rabbit.
The source of the voice hovered into view before he could turn to look for it--a yellow pony head with a pink mane that waterfalled down toward him. Her face was nearly as blurred as the ceiling, but she was audibly smiling when she spoke again.
“Don't worry, I'm here to help. Try not to move too much, okay?”
He took another deep breath and closed his eyes again.
“You the nurse?” He felt his tongue roll with a slight slur.
“No,” she said matter-of-factly. “I always come to help ponies who need me, that’s all.”
“I feel fine,” he said.
He didn’t realize that it was a lie until after the words had left his mouth. He tried to turn away from the pony hovering over him, only to feel his head flop onto its side--his neck lacked the strength to lift his head back toward the ceiling.
From his new point of view, he saw that there was a low bench next to the bed. The yellow pony with the pink mane walked into view and sat there.
He frowned at her--or at least he felt like he did; his mouth moved only slightly. His words, fortunately, were still coherent enough. “Can I leave?”
She looked at the bench, closed her eyes, and shook her head no. “Not now. You’ve had a very rough day, and now you need to rest.”
“I want to leave,” he grumbled. “How much longer?”
“Don’t worry, you won’t be here much longer at all.” She spoke to him as if comforting a child. She even rested a hoof on his shoulder. “I’ll make sure of that.”
“Good.”
He didn’t have the energy to hide the resentment behind that word. And besides, he realized with another frown that he didn’t believe her. He could hardly see straight, much less lift himself to his hooves, and here this mystery mare was telling him that he “wouldn’t be here much longer.”
“Why do you want to leave so badly?” said the yellow blur. It was condescending and it wasn’t; the question itself was annoying, but the tone was only annoying in that it was so earnest.
“I have work to do.” Those words somehow weighed heavier than all the others combined; it took all of his breath to say them, and it took a little extra force to fill his chest again afterward. For the first time since awakening, he felt pain--an ache in his chest and a prickle in his hooves.
“Oh? What kind of work?”
He summoned the strength to add an edge of spite to his answer. “Important work. Weather crew director. In charge of--” He sucked air back into his lungs. “--of a lot of ponies.”
“That does sound important,” she said.
He set his jaw, and accidentally ground his teeth. “It is important,” he said.
“It sounds like hard work, too. Why do you want to do it so badly?”
His facial muscles strained with the effort of shaping themselves into a glare. “I worked hard and earned my position. Worked harder than anypony else on the team. I care about my job!”
“I see!” she said, still speaking through a smile. “Did the accident happen while you were on the job?” A pause, and then she lowered her pitch for an addendum. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
Just the word hurt brought back some of the pain from--it felt like it had happened yesterday, but there was no way to know. It wasn’t just an ache this time. It was a throbbing crush in his neck and torso, punishing him whenever he tried to breathe or swallow. Celestia knew that he had a high pain tolerance--the ability to work through exhaustion and the occasional close call with a primary feather was what separated weatherponies with leadership potential from those who were destined for a long career of overcasting duty. The trouble was that the pain was oppressing his body, gripping his muscles and forcing them into a cringe.
He forced a deep breath before speaking to his yellow “benefactor” again.
“I was taking laps and stargazing. After a trip to the bar. I clipped a tree, and...” Some of his breath came out in a frustrated groan as echoes of the crash wracked his mind and body alike. It felt like his chest was being prodded with sticks, while shaking, unsteady griffin claws grabbed at all four of his limbs. When the pain stopped, he inhaled again so that he could say, with as full of a voice as he could:
“I’ll never do something that stupid again.”
He thought he saw her nod, but the light in her voice was faded. “I’m sure you won’t.”
“I mean it! A better stallion wouldn’t be so reckless!”
He surprised himself with the force and clarity of his words, but the mare seated next to the bed was unmoved. In fact, her head drooped a little.
“Why not?” she asked. She was still talking to him, but she was looking at the floor.
“Maybe because it was dangerous?” he said incredulously. “Look! I ended up here!”
“You didn’t hurt anyone except yourself.”
“It was a stupid risk.” He closed his eyes and sighed bitterly. “I’m lucky I didn’t end up crippled for life.” Then he let out a low groan as the pain grabbed at his chest and joints.
She turned to face him again, and his vision cleared enough so that he could see the sea-green of her irises.
“Is the work what makes you happy?”
Tact prevented him from speaking his mind to this sweet-talking mystery mare whose idea of “work” was talking to sick and injured ponies about nothing.
“Life isn’t about only doing the fun things that make you happy.” He tried to snort, but it came out as a feeble puff. “My foal looks up to me. That’s what matters.”
“Oh? Are you a father?” Her voice regained some of its original cheer.
“One. Nine years old.” Talking about his son was a relief--it made the effort of breathing air and expelling words seem to disappear. “Still a blank flank. I think he’s going to be a weatherpony like me.”
This time, the cheer in the yellow mare’s tone was quite obvious. “I’m sure he was raised by two very loving ponies.”
He nodded, sideways. He also managed to smile back. “His mother takes good care of him. He’s a good kid.”
She brightened further and nodded eagerly. “Yes? How is he doing in school? Does he have nice friends?”
“He mostly talks to his mother about his grades. She keeps him in line.”
“What about his friends?” she pressed.
He took a moment to search for the answer. The kid’s social life almost universally happened while his father was working the sky.
“He invites them over once in a while. I’ve met some of them. They’re good kids too.”
He grimaced at the assumption that he would be so familiar with his foal’s schoolyard days. From the looks of it, this mare’s job involved little more than administering small talk to sick and injured ponies. A harder worker would understand that weather work demanded real dedication.
The yellow pony blinked, and her pink mane shifted as she tilted her head. “What’s it like when your family is together?”
“Oh, you know,” he said.
She blinked again, waiting.
He opened his mouth, then closed it again with a shudder as a sudden shock of pain passed through his ribcage and legs. Fortunately, his lungs were still strong and his vision was almost entirely cleared.
“Usually I tell her about my day at work, and sometimes we all have time for dinner together. The boy says he's getting good grades.”
Another expectant silence followed the end of that sentence, only a few seconds long this time.
“That sounds very nice,” she said, with an unbearably gentle, genuine lilt. “I’m sure they both love you very much.”
He said, with conviction, the truest thing he possibly could have said: “I’m lucky to have them. They’re absolutely the most important things in my life.”
And then he said something equally true, but he felt his spirit sag as he said it.
“And I shouldn’t have taken a stupid risk when I have them.”
She brushed a hoof through his mane, as if soothing a child or comforting a lover. “Everypony makes mistakes. You’ve had a good life and done lots of good things for other ponies.”
He closed his eyes. This time, there wasn’t another throb of pain.
A voice from behind him said something indistinct. It wasn’t the yellow mare’s voice; it was deeper, and smoother. His eyes snapped open and he rolled to his other side--
“It’s them!” he cried, leaping to his hooves and rearing up to welcome them with forelegs spread. “Hey, kid! Come here and give Dad a hug!”
Three ponies crowded in through the open doorway. There was a stallion wearing a white jacket who was keeping his eyes downcast. He was followed by a beautiful--the most beautiful mare--who walked toward the bed with tightly controlled fear behind her pursed lips. Finally, a nine-year-old colt cannonballed in from behind them, jostling his mother in his haste to reach the bedside.
The pony in the bed jerked violently, then lurched and squirmed like a fish out of water.
He turned around and looked back at his bed, and saw that he was strapped down by the wrists and ankles. Thin crisscrosses of dark red stained his ankles in the places where he had cut himself by thrashing against the hardened cuffs binding him. He clenched his jaw so hard that he heard the low rumpling sound of his teeth grinding. He huffed and shuddered wordlessly through locked-shut teeth and flaring nostrils. His eyes were wide open in an expression that was somewhere between final peace and final terror, but his gaze was empty and unmoving even as he thrashed mindlessly in place.
The colt jumped onto the bench, planted his forehooves on the bed, and shouted something into the dying pony’s face. When the little colt shouted himself hoarse and then broke into sobbing, his mother pulled him down from the bench. He kicked and screamed only briefly before melting into helpless gasping panic and trying to hide in the embrace of a parent who could still protect him.
The dying pony stood and watched the scene for a few more moments. The colt’s mother cradled her son and tried to soothe him, casting occasional glances at the bed. Her words were soft, but her hooves and her chest were trembling, and her eyes held no fewer tears than those of the child she was holding to her chest.
The yellow mare walked up to stand beside him.
“Who are you?” he said.
“I told you,” she said in the same sweet voice as before. “I’m the Element of Kindness. I came because you needed me.” She was smiling.
He thrashed one last time, then lay still. His chest, however, still shuddered as if he was trying to breathe in the freezing cold.
“Can I say goodbye?”
At that, the mare’s smile turned sad. “No,” she said. “But I think they know that you love them.”
She gestured, and he turned to look. As they watched, the little colt climbed onto the bed and wailed openly into his father’s neck. The little one’s mother, still trembling, bent down and wrapped her forelegs around both her husband and her foal. She tried to hold onto her entire family.
He tried to speak, but he found that his jaws were clenched shut and his chest was seizing in desperate, shallow breaths.
The screaming and the unbearable agony—it was finally, finally coming to an end, after what felt like ten lifetimes. Ending: it was ending, it was finally ending, and he didn’t have to scream any more. He had been afraid, but now he wasn’t. It was ending.
There was a song creeping in from somewhere just beyond the edges of his world, a lullaby carrying him into the darkness that came after the end.
Hush now, quiet now, it’s time to lay your sleepy head
Hush now, quiet now, it’s time to go to bed
Drifting off to sleep, exciting day behind you
Drifting off to sleep, let the joy of dreamland find you
Hush now
quiet now
