All the Lost Pieces

by Voltage Drop

Rating: everyone
Tags: Slice of Life, Sad, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 64636

A young unicorn faces the harsh reality of a life without her horn.

A unicorn's magic is a very personal thing, it being a vital component in their lives and their primary means of interacting with the world around them. However, for some unicorns magic is something much, much more. When Castor's horn was lost due to an unfortunate injury, this budding young spellwriter's self image was taken with it and she was left no longer knowing who she was. Physically surviving the blow to the head was one hurtle to overcome, but the days, weeks, and months following the injury revealed just how large of a piece of herself that she had lost.

Published 2015-12-06 06:00:02 UTC
Last updated 2017-02-11 04:19:37 UTC

Chapter 2

My bowl of tomato soup could be most briefly described as nutrition, whether or not it was actual food was questionable. It was warm and may have once had an appealing flavor, but now it tasted like I was drinking a bowl of rust. Downing another spoonful with the assistance of my mom, the sharp and metallic taste was enough that if I was any less hungry I wouldn't be able to stomach it. Next to my soup was a cup of apple juice which suspiciously looked more like a specimen bottle of pee which, again, would be unpalatable were I not starving.

“I'd like some more juice, Mom.”

“Okay.” She picked the cup up and held it to my lips. The sweet flavor helped wash down the metallic edge of the soup. After the drink, Mom asked, “More soup?”

“Yes.” I continued eating with Mom's help.

As I neared finishing, Doctor Apple knocked on the frame of the open door. “Come in,” Mom told her for me. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes. You have been expressing interest in being told more about your injury, and I thought you are doing well enough for me to give you the specifics. Also, I will be discussing your fMRI scans later today, so I thought it beneficial if you knew ahead of time what specifically you have been through.”

“I would like that. It's hard not knowing...”

“Are you finished with your breakfast?”

“Mostly, if you can call soup breakfast. Why can't I have some haycon, eggs, and biscuits? I'm starving.”

“Your body has suffered a lot of shock and hasn't been fed these past five days. We are easing you back onto solids so you don't get sick when you finally do get to eat something more substantial. Now, if it is okay, I would like to talk to you about what's happened since you were injured.”

“Can I get more soup?”

“In a little bit, but I want you to give what you just ate some time to settle before you eat anything more, alright?”

“I don't want tomato soup next time.”

“Okay. I'll make sure the nurse knows when you call for food.”

“Thanks. It would be nice...” my thoughts were drifting away from me and it took effort to even form sentences. “I-” Blinking the fog out of my head, I was suddenly brought back to the conversation after drifting off. “I'm sorry, I was talking about something and forgot what it was.”

“It's okay, you are on some very powerful pain medication and you have quite the concussion. I would be surprised if you were thinking clearly.”

“I do feel pretty dull right now.”

“If you would like,” Doctor Apple offered. “I can come back and talk to you about this in a couple hours when you feel more up to it.”

“No, I want to know what you are going to say.”

“Alright. I'll try to explain everything as simple and concisely as I can.” Doctor Apple pulled up a chair and sat in it.

“As you know four and a half days ago, you were rushed into the emergency room with a severe blow to the head. When you were struck, it released the base of your horn and pushed it back into your skull along with some of the surrounding bone. When you were admitted to the emergency room, your brain was already swelling and the surgeon made the judgment call that, in order to save you and help ensure you would not suffer brain damage, a keraectomy would be performed. Your horn was amputated and the bone surrounding it removed to release pressure building in your skull. In total, it ended up being around three square inches of bone which was taken out.”

“What!?” I startled and my hoof flew to my forehead which was heavily wrapped in bandages, “You removed part of my skull!?”

“Temporarily. It will be put back once the swelling has gone down.”

“Put back? What do you mean? Where is it?”

“In you,” she replied flatly, then pointed to my abdomen. “The bandages on your abdomen are covering where the swatch of bone is. During surgery, as each piece was removed to release pressure, they were placed inside your abdominal cavity. There your body will nourish the bone and keep it alive and healthy. Once it is time for it to be replaced, we will take it out and put it back where it belongs where it will begin to heal naturally.”

“Are you saying that I don't have anything between my brain and the outside world?” My mind tingled to think that I was missing part of my skull as well as my horn. “The swelling will go down soon, Right? You will put it back in in a few days, won't you?”

“You are right on the first point, mostly. There is little more than skin and bandage covering your brain, but it will be at least three months before your brain heals enough to replace the bone.”

“I have a hole in my head and y-” my voice hitched. “Y-your saying it will be there for several months?”

Doctor Apple stoically nodded. “I wouldn't put it quite so bluntly.” She adjusted her white doctor's coat. “But, technically, that is correct. You will need to wear a special protective helmet to keep from hurting yourself, but you will still need to be especially careful that you don't accidentally jam something where it might hurt you.”

My hoof had blindly wandered to my bandaged forehead until I touched it, causing a noticeable twinge of pain. Can I feel the edge of my skull? I grimly pondered if I could poke my brain through the bandages and skin, but I knew better than to try. Celestia knows that I didn't want to find out.

“It would be best if you refrained from touching it, for the time being,” Doctor Apple said as if knowing my thoughts, gently grabbed my hoof and pulled it away from my head.

“Oh... right,” I replied dumbly, letting my foreleg flop to my side. “I wasn't really thinking.”

“You'll be fitted for a protective helmet once you've healed up a bit and will be able to wear it. When that time comes, you will be expected to keep it on at all times except when sleeping and washing your hair.”

I couldn't deny the logic, but even with protection of my forehead paramount, I was not enthusiastic about wearing something on my head all hours of the day. In the very least, though, it might help me hide my missing horn. Celestia, what do I even look like now? I imagined I looked quite miserable, but as it was, I hadn't seen my reflection yet. Frankly, I couldn't even imagine what I looked like without my horn. And that begged a question I had been fretting over...

“Doctor... what about my horn? Where is it?” It made me sick to think that it had been thrown into a hazardous material bin and then incinerated while I was in a coma.

“It is in cold storage. In most cases, we hold onto the tissue for a number of weeks as reference should any complications come up in the patient's recovery.”

“What will you do with it once that time is passed?”

“It will be disposed of in a sterile manner.”

“How?”

“Cremation with other byproducts of the hospital.”

“No.” My stomach pulled tight and hollow. “I don't want that. I-I want it separate from all the other-” It was too much to think about my horn being incinerated with countless soiled bandages, dirty blood vials, and bits of flesh from other ponies and the the ash, My Ash, intermingling with the ash of others and being thrown away like garbage.

“It isn't all that common for the hospital to release anything from the storage faci-”

“No,” I interrupted as forcefully as my weak body would allow. “It's my horn, it's part of me. I don't want it mixing with anyone else.”

“It will take a lot of paperwork to do that.”

“I don't care. I want it back!” Even being heavily medicated, my head had begun to throb
again.

“And what would you do with it?”

“I-I guess have it cremated... or something like that. This is so sudden, I don't know what I want to do with it, but I know I don't want it to be thrown away so heartlessly.”

“It's not heartless. However, the hospital considers it a hazard that needs to be taken care of, just like used bandages or a pair of tonsils that have been removed.”

“But it's not bandages or tonsils. My horn, my magic, was everything to me. Without it I don't know what to do with myself. Just letting it get burned up like that with everything else... it feels so cheep... it's devaluing...”

“We aren't saying you or your magic is worth any less.”

“When a pony dies, they have a funeral and are buried or at least cremated individually, but certainly they aren't burred or cremated together en-mass. It's disrespectful. I know my situation is different, but it is the same too.”

Doctor Apple was silent for a few moments to consider my words, then came to my bedside and pressed the nurse call button. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to help,” she answered. “I'm not the one saying 'no' to you. It's the hospital's policy to be reluctant on releasing tissue to patients, but if it were my choice I would let you have it.” A few moments later a nurse was at the door and Doctor Apple addressed her, “This patient's horn was removed recently. Please have storage and biohazard mark her horn to be kept for an extended period and do not have it destroyed without my prior authorization,”

“I will take care of it.”

The nurse turned and was about to leave before Doctor Apple added as an afterthought, “Also, for this patient's next meal, please make sure she is not given tomato soup.”

“Okay.” The nurse nodded and left.

She turned back to me, “I will try my best on this, but this isn't a normal request. It may take me some time to fish out the correct paperwork for this - if I can find it at all that is.”

“Please... don't let me lose my horn.”

“I can only promise that I will try my best.”

“Thank you.”

Doctor Apple nodded, “For what it is worth, you are welcome. Now there are some other things I want to talk about.” From here, Doctor Apple delved into the semantics of my injury and how to tend my wounds. I was not to let my forelegs rest on my abdomen where I had been cut open to have bits of my skull put in. The same went for my head – I and everyone else was to refrain from touching anywhere except my face and the backside of my neck. I had a small fracture running from my forehead to my temple but more worryingly was the concern that I had a contusion to my frontal lobe, the same place where I had severe hemorrhaging when I was first brought into the emergency room. The wraps around my head would be changed at least once a day to check my stitching, and I could expect at least one CT scan in the coming day to check for any hemorrhaging or hematomas that might be forming.

“Excuse me,” a nurse interrupted as he poked his head in the room pushing a cart. “It's time for your medicine. I hope I'm not disturbing you, doctor.”

Doctor Apple shook her head. “No. I was just finishing up with Castor.” Turning to me and giving a soft smile, she added, “You've been through a lot and there unfortunately will be more pain to come. However, you've been incredibly fortunate and are through the worst of it. Just stay strong a little bit longer and things will get a lot better.”

I managed a faint smile back to her.

“Thank you doctor,” my mom said as the doctor left.

“It's why I'm here,” she replied and walked out the door.

The nurse, meanwhile, wordlessly pushed his cart to the foot of my bed and, after referring to a sheet on a clipboard, stooped down and reached into a cabinet underneath the cart. He came up with four paper cups, setting them on my bed table and pouring water from a pitcher into one of them. “You have six pills to take: these two are Anaprix, an anti-inflammatory, these two are Laudanum, your pain suppressors, these two are your antibiotics.” As each cup of medicine was named, it was pushed in my direction leaving three cups with colorful pills resembling a foal's game with candy.

Even though I was on a morphine drip, I had been in an increasing amount of pain since I had first awakened so the first cup I reached for was the cup of painkillers. My hoof trembled as I grabbed for the cup and only managed to accidentally knock it over and spill the pills out on the table. With a pained expression, I looked over to Mom and she gave me a knowing look as she leaned over, put the pills back into the cup, and held it to my lips. I let the pills roll onto my tongue and then swallowed them with a mouthful of water when Mom got the other cup to my lips. I did the same with the other pills while the nurse washed his hooves and pulled out a roll of gauze and bandaging from under the cart.

“I'm going to give you fresh dressings,” he said then picked up a pair of specialized scissors in his teeth and started cutting at the bandages wrapped around my head. The bandages were not tight per say, but they were firmly wrapped and my head hurt with the slight change in pressure as they came off. “I'm going to remove the gauze pad over your stitches now. I can see a little bit of blood through it, meaning there might be some dried fluids adhering the bandage to your head. If that is the case, it may hurt as I remove the gauze.”

I took a moment to ready myself, “Okay, go ahead.”

The nurse took his cue and, with gloved hooves, began pulling at the edge of the gauze. At first, it pulled away with ease, sending out the strong smell of ointments and causing little discomfort. Suddenly, about the time the gauze was a quarter of the way off, my head erupted into a fiery pain as my breathing hitched.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Just-keep-going,” I said quickly through grit teeth. Closing my eyes as the nurse continued peeling off the bandages, I tried to lose myself in a spellcasting meditation I often used to hone my focus. My breathing was becoming labored and ragged as cool air poured upon my naked forehead, stinging it like acid. Opening my cringing eyes, I saw the nurse pulling away the bloody gauze and, mercifully, I passed out.

The next thing I remember is Mom squeezing my hoof and saying, “Castor, Castor! It's over now, are you okay?”

I mumbled something incomprehensible.

“Castor?”

“W-w-wha.” My lower jaw trembled “What happened?” My cheeks, like the rest of my body, were unpleasantly warm.

“You fainted,” the nurse said flatly, turning from the monitors. “The bandages came off without too much trouble, but you are extremely sensitive. I am sorry that hurt so much.”

My head sunk back into the pillow. “Let's not do that again.”

“It was, necessary... given that the bandages were old. We did not change them yesterday because we did not want to add undue stress during a critical juncture of your recovery. That gave time for some of the seeping fluids to coagulate and stick causing the discomfort. The wound has since stopped seeping fluids, meaning so long as the gauze is changed daily, this will not happen again.”

I groaned, “I feel terrible. Can I go to sleep now?”

“I am finished, it's okay go ahead and do that.” I didn't protest and let my eyes fall shut. Instantly, I drifted off. What felt like moments later, the pangs of hunger awakened me and I saw by the clock on the wall that it was around 9:30. I noticed Mom was gone. Must have gotten up to get something to eat.

Addled with morphine and other pain suppressors, I lay in bed and stared blankly at the wall across from me, thinking of nothing in particular until boredom finally needled me to look about the room. My eyes couldn't help but linger upon the other patient in the room where a nurse had come in earlier, about 8:00, opened her privacy curtain, rolled her onto her right side such that she was facing in my direction, then left. This roommate had been present through the drama of my emergence from the coma as well as everything else since yesterday when I awoke, yet I had forgotten entirely that she was there. Watching her, it was as if she was in a deep, dreamless slumber. She was blemishless – if she had been injured when she came in, then she had been unconscious long enough to have healed entirely. It may have saved her some pain, but my heart went out for her, wondering if she would ever awaken.

I wanted to cry again. I could have easily been like her, then I remembered I had been like her until yesterday. The thought, the fear it elicited, the seeping mortality it imbued, they were too much and I had to distract myself with something.

I'm hungry. Where's some food? Yes, the immediate problem of hunger would be a nice distraction. The remnants of my tomato soup from earlier, now dreadfully cold, sat beside the half filled cup of apple juice on a tray atop the table next to my bed. I wanted more to eat, yet the food was mockingly just out of reach as I could just barely touch the edge of the tray without being able to pull it closer to me. Laying how I was, there was nothing I could do to reach it, but it would be a simple matter if I could just manage to sit upright.

I leaned my head forward off the pillow and tried to anchor my sense of balance using my vision. 'Down' wasn't pointing in the correct direction and was instead wobbling, making sitting upright difficult, yet I managed to reach the tray and pull it across the table where I could pick it up and set it on my lap. I laid myself back down, eased my head into the pillow, and stared into the ceiling for a few seconds while I bizarrely felt like I was falling upwards.

With my bed not reclined like it was, bringing anything to my mouth would have been difficult normally, let alone considering the state I was in. Reaching down on the side of the bed, I began searching for the control leavers. I nearly slid out twice while I reached my hoof under the bed's edge and groped about, but eventually, I found one and I nearly splattered soup all across the place when my hind legs unexpectedly shot up and tilted the tray onto my lap. Tartarus claim me, this would be so much easier if I had my magic. I pulled another leaver which rapidly inclined the bed's back to a higher angle and nearly launched me face first into my soup.

Somehow through the chaos, the bowl remained unspilled and I leaned back onto the inclined bed to get accustomed to how off-balance I felt before I tried feeding myself. Gravity lurched from side to side like I was drunk, but that very well could have been from copious amounts of opiate painkillers playing games with my mind. This, however, was not to stop me from getting my food; I was to be a grown mare feeding herself.

“Castor? What happened in here?” Mom asked, voice incredulous.

“I tried to get myself something to eat,” I said with as little explaining as I could manage.

“Then why is the bowl all the way over here by the door?” Mom tapped the overturned tableware with the tip of her hoof.

“When I was taking my first sip, I threw up and spilled my soup and apple juice all over myself. I got angry and threw it across the room.”

“Castor! You are an adult!” You should know to behave better than this.” She motioned to the bowl.

“I know.” If I had not thrown my soiled blanket on the floor, I would have been hiding my face in it. “I've just been having a very, very bad day.”

“That doesn't matter!”

“I know.” I tried to push myself as deeply into the pillow as possible as if it would suffocate my embarrassment.

“And I was only gone for twenty minutes. How long did it take you to make this mess?”

I groaned and facehoofed, “I think maybe, five or ten?”

Mom sighed, rubbed the back of her neck then pointed at the mess, “I... I really don't know what to say about this.”

Pulling the pillow from behind my head and pressing it over my face in humiliation, I groaned again. “I know.”

The generic hospital clock read a little past one thirty when Doctor Apple came into my room to give a report on the fMRI scans. I had been twitching with nervous energy ever since that previous night's scan, and jumped like I had been stung by a bee when the door to the room clicked as Doctor Apple walked in.

“Good afternoon,” she said.

I feigned a smile back as my eyes followed the contents of her bag as she placed them on a table next to a backlit whiteboard. Soon, several black and white images of my head were clipped upon the viewer.

“First, I want to say to you, Castor, that things are very promising,” she said then pointed to one of the images. “Right here, we can see that your frontal lobe is fully intact and functioning, as shown by the bloodflow in the region.” She illustrated at several brightly colored blotches. “This is despite the trauma to the posterior region, your praecantor cortex, which was directly connected to your horn. Speaking of-” Doctor Apple pulled two more scans from the envelope. “Here, I have a scan of your brain while you were stepping through the motions of using telekinesis, and here is a scan of a healthy unicorn casting a similar spell.” Doctor Apple pinned the two upon the board. “I know that this entire event has been devastating to you, but I think that you may at least like to see this.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“As you can see, the scans share semblances. Basically, what they say is that the regions of your praecantor cortex which are undamaged are still working properly.”

“What does that mean?”

Doctor Apple turned from the white board. “Unicorns, when they have had their praecantor cortex damaged or removed, will lose their magical aura and die within a few weeks unless they have more energy given to them. Essentially, they starve without daily medical intervention and the solution is like feeding someone without a digestive system using an IV. Not very healthy or successful. You, however, are still able to make your own magic, so that is not a problem. In all likelihood, you will still be able to properly regulate your natural energy levels, which means you won't have to worry about the complications associated with artificially infusing you with an aura.”

“I... I don't know what to say. I guess I am glad that it isn't any worse than it could have been. I just don't feel any better now that you've told me this.” In truth, I didn't know what to feel. Mortality, fear, thankfulness, anger, joy, depression, they all swirled within me like blotches of dye suspended in water, mixing together until they produced an appalling black sludge. I had been hoping to hear that I would regain use of my magic, but I suppose I should have known better than to hope for that.

“I know this is difficult to take in, but this is excellent news,” Doctor Apple said. To me, though, this was anything but 'great'; it was fate taunting me.

“Tell me, what happened to my horn? If my brain is so okay, why did you amputate my horn?”

“Ah yes.” Doctor Apple reached to the manila envelope, half sliding out two CT images on which I saw my head and fractured horn, but she hesitated a moment before pushing them back in. “When you were brought into the emergency room, your horn was broken off at the middle and its base was pushed back into your praecantor cortex. As you were rushed into the surgery room, you suffered a severe seizure because your damaged horn was rapidly depleting your magical reserve and was arcing into your brain. We performed an emergency CT scan to evaluate the damage we would be trying to fix and the immediately took you into surgery to have the horn removed because it was continually causing you to suffer violent seizures. If we had delayed any longer, then you most likely would not be sitting here right now.”

“'Most likely' you say?” I stated.

“Yes,” Doctor Apple replied flatly.

“So you are saying there was a chance my horn could have been saved?”

“Castor, I cannot stress how slim those chances were. It was a risk not worth taking. As it was, the surgeons barely managed to stifle the hemorrhaging you were suffering.”

Laying my ears back, I crossed my front legs. “Maybe you should have asked my opinion of the operation before you went and wantonly lobotomized me.”

“You were unconscious, and if we had delayed even a few minutes, then you probably would not have survived.”

“Probably this, probably that! You know, maybe I would rather be dead than be like this!” I propped myself forward with a front leg and pointed at the doctor. “Would you rather be alive with your eyes plucked and all your legs cut off or just be dead and have it all over with? Because that's what I am experiencing right now!”

“That is not a valid analo-”

“Don't tell me that you can understand my loss! You're an earth pony! You've never seen and felt what I have, so you can't possibly imagine how empty this has left me!”

I huffed, thinking about the other patient in the room, half envying her because at least in her slumber, she was resigned to blissful oblivion and free from pain.

Doctor Apple took a reserved sigh and stoically closed her eyes. “I can see that this did not go as I had hoped. I believe it would be best if we all took a couple of hours to cool down before we say anything else.” She began collecting the scans off of the viewer.

“Don't turn away from me! I'm not done talking!” I yelled.

Standing from his seat, Dad scowled at me and stepped to where I lay. “Castor, calm down. Doctor Apple is partially responsible for saving your life and you are attacking her.”

“Don't admonish me.” I rolled my eyes. “I know that you and Mom had to sign papers to let them mutilate me like this! So go home and cut the wings off the wings of a pegasus or something. Just Buck Off!” To this day, I still regret those words, but at the time of their utterance, I am ashamed to say that I did not regret them half as much as I should have.

“Castor Star!” Dad's voice thrummed fiercely. “That is NO way to act and I Will Not Tolerate Such!”

My dad had yelled at me only a few times in my life, all of which when I was much younger and genuinely deserved it because I was acting up. I wilted under the yell, suddenly feeling like an irresponsible child. Ears laying back on my head, I began crying again. “I'm sorry, I'm just so overwhelmed. I need some time alone...”

Mom, visibly shaken, stood and wordlessly pulled at Dad's elbow, motioning for him to leave the room with her. He shook his head 'no' and turned back to me. “I think we need to have a long talk, Castor.”

Reminded of times years ago when I had gotten into serious trouble, I had thought I would never hear my father say those terrible words again. Meeting Dad's intense gaze, I felt like a foal in the principal's office at school as I sheepishly broke eye contact with him.

“I don't know what has gotten into you, Castor, but the way you just spoke to everyone in this room is inexcusable!” I only flattened my ears harder and turned my head farther away from Dad. “Castor, Look at me when I am talking to you!”

I begrudgingly rolled my head back to meet my dad's eyes. “Am I a foal now?” I asked, voice cracking as my throat burned with anger.

“I don't know. Maybe you are, because you certainly aren't acting like the daughter I and your mother raised.” My eyes trailed away from my dad's stern visage. “Look,” he said, reaching out and gently sliding a foreleg behind me. “I know that you are feeling worse than you ever could have imagined before this happened, but lashing out at those trying to help you is Not the thing to do.” His voice was stern. “Tell me something.”

“What?”

“Do you actually believe what you said? Do you think that your mother and I would have let these doctors amputate if we did not believe with every fiber of our being that it was the better of two terrible choices?”

“...” Could I really think death would be better than this?

“Castor, answer me.”

“I was thinking... and the answer is no. I know that you would only choose what you think is best for me... but I am angry...” I looked deeply into Dad's eyes. “I am so angry that this has happened to me. I can't imagine... just can't imagine what I am going to do with myself now. The only thing I was good at was magic, it's my special talent. Without it... I wish I had never woken up. Dad, what am I going to do?”

“You are going to keep living, and you are going to never, Ever, say anything about wishing you had never woken up to your mother.” His voice was stone cold, almost deadly. “Those are dangerous thoughts, and I don't want you even thinking about it because it-”

His voice cracked, and he turned away as tears filled his eyes. A moment passed, he wiped his eyes, then continued, his voice filled with emotion. “It would break our hearts if you were to do anything to yourself after we got you back. We were so afraid you would end up like the other mare in here: she's been out for six months, her family's given up on her, and I know we wouldn't have the strength to-” His voice hitched again. Taking a deep breath, Dad steadied himself for a moment and continued in a much more controlled manner. “Castor, where there's life, there's hope, and where there's hope, we must fight with all our might. Stop underselling the miracle Faust gave us all when you woke up yesterday, and please don't ever prefer death over life.

“I know that you are good at many things, even if you can't see them right now. But this anger, this fear, gives you no excuse to say what you just said. Talking about how you would rather be dead – you scared me, and you scared your mother, and you hurt us both very deeply. I hope that you don't actually believe we would have approved the keraectomy unless it was the last possible option.

“As it was...” Dad sighed, “We didn't even know about it until the procedure was already finished, and we signed the papers afterwards to show our consent once we were certain there were no other paths the hospital could have taken. You owe Doctor Apple and us a sincere apology.”

Closing my eyes, I groaned, “I know...”

“Good,” Dad gently acknowledged, then began speaking in a much more soothing tone, “And I hope you know that I only say this because I only want the best for you. Who we are – who you are: that is defined by how you act in your most difficult moments. Sure it's easy to be a good pony when things are going your way. But when our lives fall apart around us, that is when it is most important to be firm and persevere despite the obstacles that affront us, because that is when our true character shows.” Dad sighed and shook his head. “Whether or not you want to accept what happened, these next few months will be some of the most important of your life, and these few weeks that you are first coping with you loss: you will always remember how you acted.” Dad gave a gentle smile and looked deeply into my eyes. “Because you will always remember these few days, I don't want you to look back weeks, months, years from now and regret things you said and did. But more importantly, I want you to be alive to remember these things. No talk of death, Okay?”

I nodded in reply, clumsily wiping away the tears in in my eyes. “Okay.” my voice cracked.

Alright,” Dad replied and he hugged me close. A few moments passed and he eased out of the hug. “Do you still want some time to yourself?”

“Yeah Dad. I think I need to sort some things out in my head.”

“Alright,” he replied and began to turn away.

“Dad?”

“Yes?” they answered.

“Thanks... for being patient with me.”

Dad, for several seconds, continued to look at me with raised eyebrows as he expected me to continue, but I could not yet bring myself to say 'I'm sorry' as I think he had expected me to say. He turned away and left. Doctor Apple, not wanting to get involved, and Mom, shaken by my outburst, had already exited the room, so I was then alone discluding the comatose mare.

I closed my eyes and sighed for what seemed like the hundredth time that day as my head and chest swarmed with emotions. It was nearly too much to process – the anger, hopelessness, and the sorrow. The pain throbbing in my skull helped little in sorting through the jumble of emotions swelling inside of me, but that did not stop me from spending time trying to figure out how I should feel and act given my circumstances.

At some point, I turned my attention to an apple, a remnant of my mother's lunch sitting on the table next to me. It glimmered pristenely across from me, its red hue a shining beacon of color in the otherwise sterile room. Some odd trait emanating from its unblemished surface annoyed me to anger; it was like an idealistic companion grinning at me like an idiot.

Yes. It's happy, complete, existence annoyed me.

Grabbing it, I took a sizable bite of its glossy red surface and savored the defiant knowledge that Doctor Apple would not approve of me eating solids yet, but I relished even more the simple act of bringing a once whole object into a state of brokenness. It was an utterly eccentric line of thought, I knew as much, but if I was too weak to vent my anger by punching a pillow, I would have to settle for more obscure methods of alleviation.

I took another bite of the apple, this time driven to do so out of pure hunger. It was the first solid food I had eaten since I had awakened and soup broth could only go so far to cure the gnawing hunger in my stomach. If I hadn't dropped it a few bites later, I would have completely devoured it down to the core.

“This hospital sure has a thing for apples,” I thought to myself. Apples, apple sauce, doctors named Apple, apple juice which looked like pee... speaking of which, I suddenly realized I needed to do just that and quite badly too.

I looked at the door to the bathroom and groaned at the thought of the impossible journey that lay between me and it, yet I certainly was NOT going to use the bedpan again. The last time I had needed to go, I had at least been given the dignity of having a nurse help instead of Mom, but it was still a humiliating experience.

Sitting up in bed, I immediately felt nauseous, but I convinced myself the dizziness was not as bad as it had been earlier. I tested my fortitude for a minute before sliding out of bed, taking as much caution as if I were repelling down the side of a cliff using a rope and no harness. On the ground, I sat on my haunches for a few minutes, nearly tipping over several times before I felt like I could even try standing. Somewhere, in the back of my head, I heard Dad's voice admonishing that I should get back in bed, but the disgust towards using a bedpan urged me to ignore good sense.

Summoning my fortitude, I put weight onto my front legs and tried to get my hind legs under me. My sense of balance, though, had other plans and I fell flat on my side, narrowly keeping my head from striking the ground. I grunted and decided it would be better to crawl to the bathroom. Flopping onto my side multiple times, crawling had proven to be absurdly more difficult than I had expected it to be.

Once I had reached the door, I instinctively tried to reach out with my magic to grab the handle, sending a hot spike of pain through my skull. “Shi-” I bit my tongue, cradling my head for the moments the pain lasted, then felt completely stupid for having tried to use magic. Reaching up to the knob, I was like a little foal struggling to reach a cookie jar as I clumsily fumbled it several times before rotating it enough to open the door.

Entering through and swinging the door shut behind me, my head buzzed with a strange warm numbness I had come to understand to be an aftereffect of any of my attempts to use magic, but at least this served a reminder to me to physically switch the control to the crystal lamp in the room. There were two bars on the wall next to the toilet where I could steady myself – for this I was glad. After several failed attempts, I managed to prop myself upon the toilet and somehow do my business without making a mess, though I catastrophically fell to the ground when I was finished. The wind slightly knocked out of me and my chest sore, I thanked my good fortune to have again narrowly managed to keep my head safe and un-jostled during the fall.

I was, however, suddenly more disoriented than before. The door was more stubborn to open this time and I knew I was not going to be able to reach up far enough to turn the light off.

It was somehow an even greater struggle to crawl back to my bed than it had been to crawl away from it. The world now reeled side to side as if I were spinning on some ride at an amusement park and keeping balance, even on flat ground, was about as easy as standing on polished ice. Ending up on my side more times than I recount, my sense of orientation had completely abandoned me. Where I once had been able to sit up on my haunches, I could now only lay on my side. By account of my senses, I might as well have been hanging upside down.

Laying there, defeated for the moment, my body was cold with hopelessness, though the marble tile floor was also quite chilling to the touch. I had actually believed I could make the trip to the bathroom and back without anyone finding out, but I couldn't even do that anymore. “How hard should it be to go take a wiz?” I griped to myself, feeling completely useless.

Above me, the mattress hung like a cliff and I was a drunken climber with no gear. Sitting on my haunches, I wobbled side to side as I sat, waiting for a sense of balance to return, all the while fearing that someone might walk into the room at any moment and find me out of bed. I regained enough stability to make an attempt to climb back in, and I sat both of my front legs on the edge of the mattress to balance myself as I stood. Slowly, I put my rear hooves to the ground and began to put my weight on them until I was shakily standing. A throw of false motion took me off balance and nearly sent me falling to my side yet another time, but I managed to catch myself and hold balance. Bringing one of my rear hooves up to the metal frame of the bed, I carefully transferred my weight onto it as I pushed myself up.

Suddenly, the whole world tipped to its side and I felt like gravity was pulling me backwards off the bed. I struggled to find something to keep from falling, but the loose sheets offered no reprise as I tipped backwards and fell on my back. This time, my head was not sparred from striking the ground.

My vision flashed from black to white as motes of light danced in my vision. If pain could be likened to heat, then a solar flare engulfed my head as I gripped it and curled into the fetal position, loudly crying out in pain.

“Castor!” Mom yelled in fear, rushing into the room after some delay and coming to my side. “Castor! What happened!?!”

I was in too much pain to reply and only moaned. Several seconds later, Nurse Cross was at the door to the room. “Mrs. Star! What is going on in here?”

“I, I think my daughter fell out of bed. Is that what happened Castor?”

I nodded my head and was instantly overwhelmed with more pain and motionsickness.

Coming over to me, Nurse Cross stepped between me and Mom. “Ma'am, I must ask that you please step away from her.” Reluctantly, Mom complied as Nurse Cross addressed me, “Castor, can you hear me?”

“Ye-es.” My reply was ragged with pain.

“When you fell out of bed, did you hit your head?”

“Yes.”

Nurse Cross' face turned somber. “I will be right back with help,” she said to us and, without waiting for a reply, bolted from the room. At the time, I did not know this, but I was later informed that I had started bleeding profusely from where my horn had been removed.

Shortly, two other nurses were in the room along with Nurse Cross and they ordered my parents to leave after assuring them everything was okay. I was promptly placed back onto the bed and then relocated to another room where my condition was evaluated. As a relief to everyone involved, I remained conscious through the translocation and, by the time my state of being had been diagnosed, I was feeling reasonably well – 'reasonably well' of course being defined to mean feeling like my forehead had been impaled. It was determined the bleeding was superficial and I hadn't suffered any injury too severe, though they did have to change the bloodied bandages on my head where the impact had agitated my injury.

The whole unpleasant event lasted an hour and a half, so it was that long before I, on my wheeled bed, was pushed back to the room where I was staying. Inside, my parents were waiting and I could tell by their expressions that they were most certainly not happy. Once the bed was wheeled and locked into place, Mom and Dad rose from where they sat while the nurses all exited; though, Doctor Apple remained in the room.

“Castor, are you okay?” Mom asked.

“Yeah... I'm fine. My head hurts like Tartarus though.” I put a hoof up to my temple and rubbed it.

“I am glad you are okay.” Her gaze hardened. “I want you to be truthful to me, Castor, what were you doing when you fell out of bed?”

“You should listen to your mother, Castor,” Dad sternly said.

I could feel my ears flatten against my head as I avoided eye contact. “I... was trying to adjust the leavers that raise and lower the back of the bed.”

Mom gave me a withering look while Dad coolly added, “Are you sure Castor? Maybe that fall shook your memories a bit.”

“I... no...” I sighed, “I got up to use the bathroom... and I fell trying to get back in bed.”

“We know,” Mom stated. “The light wasn't on when we left, and the toilet wasn't flushed when we investigated.”

This was one of those times that I would have died of embarrassment such a thing were possible.

“I can't stress how stupid that was of you,” my dad admonished. “By Celestia, you are being the most stubborn mare I know, and I am ashamed that you didn't listen to a single thing, not a single thing, that I said to you earlier.”

“I just... I hate using the bedpan.”

“That is what it's there for. You may think it is demeaning, but there is nothing wrong with using it. Getting out of bed like this, on the other hoof, was very immature and dangerous!”

“I don't think I need to explain to you how brain surgery can be complicated by blunt trauma to the head,” Doctor Apple said after several seconds of silence. Her voice was devoid of the warm Southern charm which typically graces her tones and, instead, was replaced by hard, clean spoken Equestrian with no detectable accent or warmth. “You are very smart, from what I have gathered, but if I have to lay it out to you, then I will. Understand that for the next two or three weeks, you must avoid worsening your condition by doing things like this because you are in a very delicate state of recovery. Ignoring your concussion which you most certainly have made more severe, there are several blood vessels in your brain which have been very meticulously closed off so they will not bleed out and cause hemorrhaging. By their very nature, they are delicate and are prone to rupture when subjected to a sharp impact like the one you just suffered. It is none of my business if you refuse to listen to your parents' advice, but you are obligated to listen to and obey what I say, and if you refuse, I can have you forcibly restrained for your own benefit. If you still refuse to listen, I can and Will have you thrown out of this hospital so I can treat patients who actually want to get better? Do you understand me?”

I nodded sheepishly.

“Good. As of now, you will be under twenty-four hour surveillance among your friends, parents, and the nurses to ensure you don't pull another stunt like that.” Doctor Apple said nothing more, turned, and left.

“I think she summed up everything I wanted to say,” Mom said dryly. “It seems as if we can't trust you to act like an adult, Castor, so we will treat you like a foal if that is what you so desire.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, eyes downcast.

Dad frowned. “Oh, you'd better be, Castor. You'd better be.”

Chapter 3

Years ago, when I was still a student at Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, or CSGU as we students called it, I was walking to classes on a particularly cold and snowy winter morning. The sun had been raised only minutes before and a sharp wind blew from the northeast, cutting to the bone with its sharp bite. I was a filly nine years of age, and my cutie mark, being a stick and point visualization of the Gemini Constellation, sat upon my light amber flanks for the first winter. Being the headstrong foal that I was, I found it quite appalling to even consider covering the mark with cold weather wear, so I on that particular day, as many others, was walking to class wearing only a scarf and glasses, my teeth chattering all the way to the school.

It was a small price to pay so I could easily brag and show my butt to whoever would look at it, but such is the innocence of youth when you just don't understand just what you are doing or likewise comprehend why a grown stallion found a cartoonish constellation so... invigorating to look at.

Nonetheless, I finally arrived at school albeit half frozen, and quickly made my way to my seat in the classroom. A flash of magic came from my horn, and I pulled from my notebook every page of notes that I had taken for the past few weeks on the subject of magically guided meditation.

It is at this moment, I want to digress again and say something to all the unicorns reading this, or to anyone who knows unicorns who don't use their magic much, or especially to those who have children who are unicorns. Your magic is very special and a key part of your psyche, so don't under value it. We all are well aware how fundamental flight is to pegesi and their emotional wellbeing – being grounded for a few weeks is enough to drive the average pegasus loony. Countless studies prove this, and each of my pegasus friends will vouch for me on this fact and add that it isn't only the act of flight which does them good, but also feeling the magic of the air and weather. Likewise, for earth ponies, being in touch with nature and their own bodies is important to their happiness.

For unicorns, being in touch with your magic is much the same, yet entirely different. Though at a fundamental level pegasi and earth ponies experience their connection to themselves and the world around them through a passive method that does not require direct thought (though it does help to focus one's attention on such matters), unicorns must make the conscious effort to connect to our natural medium. Yet, because of the business of our everyday lives, we often fail to spend a few minutes each day lost in magic, and often, we fail to even learn how to do this in the first place. There is a reason unicorns are the most likely race to take their own lives or suffer mental instability, and though it is true that the additional complexity of our brains and the immense energy which runs through us play a very large factor into the higher risk for mental illness, proper habits should not be overlooked for their therapeutic and emotionally uplifting benefits.

So unicorns, and especially parents of unicorns, keep this in mind as you go through your lives. It is not hard in the least – the Creator Faust made us to be able to do it and, with just a little time, it will come as naturally as sleep. Even if you are sure you can't do it yourself, I cannot stress how important that your children get at least a basic education in this regard.

Now I end my digression, but in many ways, this last bit has not been off topic at all, for you see now how important I hold a unicorn's connection to magic to be. When I lost my horn, my connection to magic was severed, but the fundamental pining for it was still there. Though I am not certain it could be called withdraw, it is the easiest term I can use to describe the experience because all the other appropriate terms are unpronounceable and require a Ph.D in medicine to understand their meaning.

Returning to the day in my youth which I was describing, this was the day the entire class had been awaiting since they gained their cutie marks. When the makr appears upon a foal's flank, it represents the creation of their connection to magic, and is an explanation for the zeal with which foals search for their talents; at a subconscious level, their mind is pushing them to find unity with their natural medium. For unicorns such as myself, that means a strengthening of our magic, a deepening of our skills, and it says we are ready physiologically, mentally, and thaumaturgically for our first deep forays into the dimensional planes of magic. When I had gained my cutie mark, I was moved up from the pre-mark classes, as they were called, to a special semester long series of courses where I and my fellow classmates would learn how to control our magic and meditate into the realms of energy and pure being.

My notes detailed the many steps and aspects of these planes, with there being many different planes, each with multiple levels. The class and I had been taught to observe with our extra senses the most conceptually basic realm, our own – a feat otherwise known as clairvoyance. Simply put, it is like seeing with your eyes closed, except with practice the level of detail increases to a staggering level and it is possible to see things which are not directly in your line of sight. For those of you who wonder why it's hard to sneak up on a unicorn who has even the most basic magical training, this is the reason why.

For the past week and a half, the teacher had been prattling on about expanding our 'field of vision' in the planes of magic, and had been teaching us pieces of a new type of meditation which would let us peer into the nearest plane to our own – the thaumostatic field. The principles built upon clairvoyance, and we were to practice the new components we had been taught alongside basic clairvoyance. These components of meditation I cannot easily describe to non-unicorns because they are reliant on parts of our nervous system and brain associated with our horns. When I lost mine, I ceased to be able to meditate in such ways and, quite distressingly, memories cause my forehead to burn with phantom pain of a horn I no longer have.

But on that day so long ago, I had my horn and we were finally ready to put all the pieces together and peer into the plane from which spells draw their energy and shape. We had been told by everyone older than us that this was to be one of the greatest experiences in our life, and so were naturally excited. For the past week, I had been practicing every chance I had had, such to the point that I was able to see definite silhouettes, shapes, and colors through clairvoyance. I was more than ready for the final instructions for this peering between planes.

Anxiously, I reviewed notes, folded multiple paper airplanes at once with my magic, then eventually devolved into gnawing on the end of my pencil as our teacher sluggishly called role, asked us to turn in the last night's homework, and assigned us a new chapter to read for the night. Eventually, though, he reached the point in the class we were all waiting for as he, with a smug smile, asked, “So are any of you ready for today's lesson?”

Of course the class burst into controlled mayhem. When the excitement died down, he smiled again and began teaching us the final bit we needed to know in order to glimpse into the thaumostatic field. We closed our eyes and were stepped through the part of the meditation, each of our horns glowing as we followed his instructions. Thirty minutes later, we all left our desks to sit on our meditation pillows where we were taught how to tie all the components we had learned together. I shan't go into detail, but for those of you interested, we were learning the Brünhoolf-Ferdineigha methodology.

Since we already knew all the underlying steps and had practiced them well, the final step of tying them together was superbly easy, so it was not long before, one by one, we began slumping as our consciousness turned to realms beside our own. I can still remember my excitement as, peeking through squinted eyes, I saw the foal sitting next to me hunched at the shoulders with his head drooping, all the while I felt myself stepping more and more into the same altered state of consciousness.

It had been a slow, gradient-like process where I became less and less focused on my surroundings, but at one point, I felt a rush of movement in my head as I passed a threshold and, the best I can describe it, I opened my eyes without opening them. Surrounding me was the most intricate and beautiful swirls of color I had ever seen and I can only liken the sight and patterns to highly detailed images of nebulae. I felt like I was weightless as I marveled at the tendrils of energy and thaumic matter which twisted and webbed through three dimensional space like a spider's colorfully painted construction. In every direction, the breathtaking, misty structure floated and morphed peacefully, and I felt an indescribable peace glowing within my inner being as I moved like a phantom through the softly illuminated thaumic matter. In this plane, I saw ghostly white dots of dull light which I somehow understood to be some of my clastmates' consciousnesses drifting through this marvelous realm.

Periodically, I heard our teacher talking to us and understood he was helping the half of the class who had been unable to achieve the right mental state, and as time passed I saw one or two of my classmates' motes of consciousness flicker out and disappear from the Thaumostatic Field as they were pulled from their trances for whatever reason, whether it be a passing thought which broke their concentration or an urge to use the bathroom. More time passed, and I heard the bells ring for lunch time and recess, but I and many of my classmates chose to stay where we were, which is impressive given we were hyperactive foals who, to an outside observer, had been sitting quietly with our eyes closed for the past three hours.

More time crept passed and many of my classmates eventually lost interest and left to go take a late lunch and recess. The number of meditating students trickled down from a dozen, to just myself by the end of class, yet I somehow managed to keep focus through the loud uproar known as elementary school and did not leave my trance. At any moment, I was expecting the teacher to interrupt me and tell me it was time to resume class, yet that did not happen until the bells rang telling it was the end of classes for the day. I was aware of the my fellow students filtering out of the building, and I did not care that it was time to leave – sitting there experiencing, existing, was so unbelievably peaceful that I did not want to stop.

“Castor, it's time to go,” my teacher said softly, putting a hoof on my shoulder.

My words were slow and dreamily content, an effect of the meditative state I was in. “I doonnn'ttt waaannnnttt ttooo.”

“Alright.” He made a thoughtful chuckle in the back of his throat. “How would you like to learn a lesson I usually save for second semester students?”

“I woouulllddd liikkkeee thaaattt...”

He sat down next to me, and over the next two hours showed me how to move and manipulate the tendrils of thaumic matter, which he told me were natural rivulets of flow between disturbances in the uniform forces found in the thaumostatic field. With a little practice, I learned how to create my own disturbances by moving my own magical energy into the thaumostatic field and effecting a new density. It might have been a small thing, but my heart fluttered to be told I had taken my first step in understanding how spells work at the most fundamental level.

“I believe she's... yes, she is in here.” I heard the headmaster's voice.

“Oh thank goodness,” Mom gasped, and I could hear my dad let out a stressed exhale.

“Hello, you must be Castor's parents,” my teacher said. “I bet you've been worried about her since she didn't come home.”

“Yes, we were,” Dad replied walking into the room.

“Well, there isn't anything to worry about here. The class is learning about guided meditation, as I guess you must be aware since I've given a lot of homework on the subject. I must say, I am impressed by how well she has taken to exploring the different planes of magic. She's been in this trance without taking a break for over seven hours now.”

“Really?” Dad asked with amazement.

“Yes, and I've already shown her the basics of manipulating rivulets of magic. She'll make a fine spellcaster some day. I'm certain of it.”

Dad knelt next to me, and so did Mom. Both wrapped their forelegs around my shoulders, and I felt their magic glowing beside me. A few moments later, I saw two motes of light glowing beside me in the thaumostatic field and could feel their energies warming my own. They hugged me, both physically and meta-physically.

“This is wonderful.”

“We're so proud of you, Castor.”

The institutional, whitewashed walls of the room I occupied in the hospital at least had the decency to be clean and free of any kind of cracks or dirt, though perhaps some grunge would have made some more interesting patterns to look at as I whittled away my time. It is doubtful I would have been able to see it anyway, though because anything beyond a few feet from my bed was glazed over with a dull blur which stole every entertaining detail from the room. There were few other colors than white, gray, or brown, though there was a vase of spring lilies next to my bed which were an explosion of orange, yellow, and green in an otherwise lifesucking room. For some time, they had provided a distraction for me to look at as, by doctor's orders, I was to let my brain heal and so was not to read, talk, or even think too much for the next few days.

When one is injured for any length of time, one soon finds that the terrible dragon known as boredom makes its lair within the halls of hospitals and preys upon the hapless patients who have been bound as sacrifices in its hunting grounds. After the initial shock and disbelief of my loss had shaken my world, I settled like a thundercloud hanging perpetually in the room and had little else to entertain myself with than my own, sullen broodings.

My magical senses were gone, stolen away which in many ways was almost worse than losing my ability to perform magic. I had been torn from my clairvoyance and plane hopping senses which had tied me to my natural medium, leaving me anxious and tense. Anger welled in my chest, fear ate at my stomach, loss burned in my throat, and they so many times left me wanting to scream in agony over my blindness. And blindness it was. At CSGU, I was taught to weave my magical senses into my normal perception of the world. To look at, per say, a pencil on a table, I saw more than a pencil as a non-unicorn would see it. I could see magic flowing around it and being repelled by the wood while flowing freely though the graphite. I could feel its shape and nature, and from the realms of mind and thought came trickles of pure being from which I could sense the most fundamental ideas that a pencil embodies.

If I turned my senses towards any kind of life, I was treated to an extrasensory feast of images, feelings, and understandings. Looking at a even the most simple plants, I could see the life energies flowing through it and composing the unimaginably complex spell nexus which is as integral to the continued living of the plant as its physical parts themselves. And keep in mind that when I say 'see' I do not mean observe with eyes, but rather use as an analogy for 'feeling at a fundamental level with magic'.

These sensations I mention were only magnified when focusing on another pony (or sentient being). Emanating from them would be a distinct magical signature with a certain 'charactaristic' which varies day to day with their mood and well being. With familiarity, I could tell how my friends were doing just by feeling this aura which was unique to each individual.

Now by comparison, my world was a faded, monochrome photograph which was taken with an out of focus lens. My mother sat beside my bed reading, but it wasn't her – I knew it was her, and it was her image, but there were none of the characteristic energies around her which I had come to know to be her. My dad and each of my friends were no less different; when they were in the room, I saw and heard them, but some part of my brain simply could not understand those were living ponies in the room with me. I talked with them, and they responded as I expected, yet it took my constant effort to remind myself that I was not in the room alone. Devastatingly, this applied to myself as well. I felt removed from my body without the constant feeling of my own magic and the magic of the planet reaching my mind. Everything was. Just. Dead.

It did not take me long to get into the routine of living in a hospital, even if the monotony of the experience was stifling. Get up, take my medication, have doctors evaluate my condition, eat miserable food, then spend most of my free time either sleeping or bored to tears. For better or worse, over that first week I was awake, my concussion started healing and my brain began adapting to having part of it gone. The headaches declined and the phantom pains in my horn became more... tolerable, but they never went away and I still suffer them time to time even to this day.

The downside of this healing, though, was the doctors knew to administer less morphine, a drug I had come to love by the second day I had been awake from my coma. I had come to look forward to the booster I would receive in eight hour periods dawn to dusk each day, for the effects sapped away a majority of my pain and made my mind so hazy I didn't care that I lost my horn and magic. Almost always, I was guaranteed a good few hours' sleep after I received my next unit of morphine, and I was sad when the doctors told me on the fifth day after I had been awake that they were going to start reducing my dosage.

By the next day, I was mostly weened from the morphine drip and put onto a non-opiate painkiller which left my mind much sharper than the medicine's much more potent counterpart. The downside was my mind was more active and, aside from the intensified boredom, my subconscious was looking again for the stimulation that should have been coming from my lost senses.

It was a small thing at first, the equivalent to a flash of jagged white light in the corner of my eye, except resident within my non-functional magical senses. I reflexively jerked my head to the left to center my focus on where the sensation would have been coming from if it were real, but there was nothing there other than a bland table holding a variable sunstone-moonstone lamp.

“What is it?” Ivy, who was sitting in the room with me at the time, asked, looking over to where I was looking.

“I thought...” I paused for a moment, “I just thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye.”

“Oh, okay.”

She returned to reading and I to trying to fall asleep. I drifted between waking and sleeping for some time, then there was another flicker of illumination in my senses where, for the briefest of moments, I thought I glimpsed a detailed spectral image of the room around me. With a start, I sat up as best my balance would permit me.

“Are you okay?” Ivy asked with alarm.

I held a hoof to my chest and lay back down, “Uh, yeah... yeah, just had a weird feeling.”

She snapped her book closed and stood. “Do I need to get help?”

“No, no... I guess it was just a dream.”

“Well, okay. Are you sure?”

“Yeah. Now that I think about it, I know it couldn't have been anything else.” Ivy reluctantly returned to her book, and I, being tired, tried to sleep again. I experienced several more events such as those through the day, but kept them to myself because I thought they were a symptom of my concussion and didn't want to worry my friends and family.

The next morning, I was taking a bowl of soup and some scrambled eggs with the assistance of a nurse when I, through force of habit, accidentally tried to pick up my cup of apple juice with my magic. Obviously nothing external happened and I was left feeling nauseated with a sore head for my troubles; however I could have sworn I felt the cup in my grip.

“Hold on,” I ordered the nurse through my grit teeth as he tried to help me bring a fork of eggs to my mouth without dropping it.

“Are you okay?”

“Just... give me a minute.” I focused on the cup and tried, for all I was worth, to wrap my magic around it. For the past two days, my headaches had been significantly decreasing in magnitude, and it was that which allowed me to even try using magic without being driven into living agony. Closing my eyes while trying to channel a telekinesis spell onto the cup, I felt faint tinges of the cup's essence and experienced fleeting glimpses of its form.

A delighted squeal escaped my mouth and I held a hoof up to it in a failed attempt to contain the sound. “I can-” the words were choked out of my throat glee which had been infused into me. “I can still see magic!” I squealed again and bounced up and down on my haunches like an excited child. It was undignified and I spilled juice all over myself, but I didn't care. I had my senses back, and maybe, just maybe, I could regain my magic too. Anything is possible, right?

The nurse was clearly dumbfounded by my sudden change in demeanor and it took him a few moments to regain his composure, but when he did, he moved my food tray to a table and stepped towards the door to the room. “I am going to go tell your doctor about this. Will you be okay while I am out for a few moments?”

“Yes! Yes, I will be more than okay!” I enthusiastically said, already trying again to sense the world around me with a simple clairvoyance exercise. Not even bothering to close my eyes this time, I suddenly experienced another 'blink' of my magical senses as the blurry images they produced flickered with motes of light which floated around like grapefruit sized snowflakes. The images lasted for only a few seconds before the phantom pain in my forehead became too great and I could focus no longer.

A sob, one of un-conveyable joy, escaped from my throat as hot tears wetted my face. It was many minutes before Doctor Apple came into the room, and by the time it took for her to get there I had managed to make myself see several solid and highly detailed images of the room and various objects in it.

Unable to contain myself, I squealed, “I sill can feel magic!” when she walked over to my bed.

She smiled with a sad expression. “I am happy for you. Would you consent to a quick checkup?”

“Yes,” I said, suddenly cautious because of Doctor Apple's reserved demeanor. “Of course,”

She checked my vitals and my pupil dilation, then asked me to answer a few basic questions. Writing some things on a clipboard, she pulled a chair up next to my bed and sat down in it. “Will you please describe what you saw?” I did as she asked and was quite enthusiastic about the details. She sighed and, pulling at the collar of her white coat, put on an compassionate face. “Castor,” she said very sternly. “It is my deepest hope that you are in fact seeing the world with your actual senses like you are saying, but my experience as a doctor tells me that just isn't so.”

My heart sank. “What are you saying?”

“I just don't want you to get your hopes up only to have them dashed.”

“No, no. This is real! I know it. What I'm seeing is as real as anything I've ever seen before.”

“And I hope you are right, but unicorns who lose their magic often suffer what is known as sensory release hallucinations. What that means is because your brain is expecting information and is not receiving it, it fills in the gaps with what it thinks should be there. It is similar to what sufferers of blindness experience shortly after they lose their sight.”

“Oh.” I suddenly was cold on the inside.

“I don't want to take any happiness from you, but I think it would hurt less with you knowing the truth if this doesn't pan out the way you are hoping.”

“Of-of course.”

“As it is, I just don't know how it is possible for a unicorn to sense the things you said you just sensed, given that everything a unicorn's brain needs to do that is either inside the base of the horn or a part of the brain which would be connected to the horn.” The wind was ripped from my lungs, and when I didn't respond, she continued, “I am going to schedule some tests for later today to determine the extent you can still use your senses. I hope deeply for you that I am wrong and that you will surprise us all, but being pragmatic, I don't know how that is possible.”

“Oh.” I was ill to the stomach.

Doctor Apple picked up her clipboard and, balancing it on a foreleg, scribbled a few more things onto it with a pen held in her mouth, dropping both into her saddlebags when done. “I've made your appointment to be at one thirty today.”

That would be a little over four hours from then. I knew I should be thankful that it wasn't going to be four days, but four hours of not knowing for certain was stifling. Still, I agreed to the time and thanked Doctor Apple for setting the appointment. As she walked out, I felt like a bucket of nails had been dumped in my stomach from the anxiety I was feeling. I can't, just can't be imagining this, I thought over and over to myself. As a confirmation of this, I closed my eyes and attempted to reach out with my senses. It was warm consolation when, in reply, my senses told me about the shape and contents of the room I was in, though the images were blurry and, upon closer inspection, off ever so slightly.

I had been so excited earlier when I first felt those echoes of my senses that I had not paid too much attention to their details, but now that doubt had been sowed into the mix and I had had some time to calm down, I noticed features and geometries which, though normal on first glance, were distorted and nonsensical when scrutinized. This wasn't something that was easily discerned, since strong images came only once every few minutes or so and persisted for, at most, only a few seconds.

It was enough to dampen my enthusiasm, but not my beliefs. Several times in the past I had suffered 'ghosting', as it is called, when an image gets burned into one's senses due to experiencing a powerful surge of magic, either external or internal. One time in particular, I was standing next to an old enchantment I and my colleagues were studying when it channeled enough magic to light several small houses and then exploded. No one was hurt, but for days afterwards, my magical senses experienced those few seconds on an unending repetition. The images were very peculiar and as detailed as any real image I might have seen, but they felt 'off' on some level and I could easily tell that they weren't real.

Those that which I was experiencing in the hospital were different. On a large scale, the characteristics were dead right and there was no single glaring deficiency, but there were countless tiny discrepancies which, when added together, threw things into question. A pencil on the table might be in a slightly different location than I saw with my physical eyes, there might be two fewer lilies in the arrangement than there actually was, a railing on my bed might have a slightly distorted shape, or any other small detail might be ever so slightly wrong. Disturbingly, these things were open to change when I looked away, meaning things in my eyes' peripherals were apt to 'jump' around while things completely outside my physical sight could be in a completely wrong position in relation to where I remembered it to be.

Despite this, I was growing increasingly optimistic about my prospects. I realized that, after all, I had suffered a severe injury and was still nursing a concussion, so it was logical my senses would be frazzled. I spent several hours mulling over these things and by lunch time I was convinced my senses were returning. I was expecting Mom to be over by noon, as she had told me the day before she wanted to take an extended lunch break at work so she could come be with me. I imagined countless ways she might react when I told her the news, and the more I thought of her coming, the more excited I became.

By the time I heard the door to the room open, I still had not decided how I would break the news to Mom so I ended up just letting my emotions flow out. “Oh-mom-I'm-so-happy!”

“What?”

I gave a small squeal of glee. “I can sense magic again!”

She stood dumbfounded just inside the doorframe for several moments as she processed just what exactly it was I had just said. “Wait! You mean-”

I grinned ear to ear. “Yes!”

In a flash, she was over to my inclined bed where I was sitting up. She wrapped her forelegs around my shoulders and I hugged her back. “Castor! This is incredible! I'm so happy for you.”

“I'm so happy too! I just can't believe it!”

We were ecstatic, making the lunch we shared one of the happiest of my life. Between mouthfuls of food which somehow tasted oh-so-perfect, I explained to her what I had been sensing, and her reaction only bolstered my optimism. I then told her about the test I was scheduled to take, and she insisted she be there when I was finished. Mom quickly packed up her lunch and hurried off to work, saying she was leaving to go tell her co-workers she wouldn't be there for the rest of the day and, if she had time, get Dad from where he worked.

With Mom gone, I did not have anyone to help me eat. Fortunately, by several days ago we had figured out foods which were easy(er) for me to eat on my own, so it wasn't much of a problem. Soup was hard; grapes, hay fries, carrots, and PB&J sandwiches I could handle and made good practice for smoothing out my motor control. I ate lunch and even dropped a record low number of grapes to where I couldn't reach them: six in total, but that's not counting the ones that landed on my sheets and I could still get to.

I suddenly felt a lot better now that I had a bit of my magic back. For a time, I found myself fantasizing about how much of my senses I might get back. At first I didn't dare think they would return to be even a tenth of what they were before I lost my horn, but then again, I had been convinced that I would not even get this much back, so who was to say what might or might not happen. Maybe a quarter of my senses would return, I bet I could do more than just use clairvoyance if that were to happen. What about a half? What would happen then? My magic sense would be sharper than my eyes. I could go blind and not care. Did I even dare think I would fully regain my senses? Not at first, but my mind eventually wandered there after I experienced a strong, persistent image which, unlike the others before it, had sharp edges and clear detail.

Could I even say it would end with my senses? At that moment, it felt fully possible I might regain use of my magic, even though I knew it was outright impossible. For a time, I fantasized about what it would be like to have my magic again, how good it would be to lift things telekinetically, cast complicated spells... No, it didn't seem that impossible at all that I might regain my magic. Maybe the doctors had missed something, or there might be something just a little bit different about me. Who knew, maybe I would get some phenomenon named after me, and just in case, I already had a name for it. The “Castor Redux”. I can't say how many of these mindless wanderings I actually believed, but I can strongly say that I didn't disbelieve them either. This was a glimmer of hope, and I clung to it no matter how foolish it might be to do so.

The time for my appointment finally came, and I was helped into a wheelchair. For the last two days, I had regained enough balance to sit fully upright so long as there was something to support my back, so I had no trouble with falling once I was in the chair.

I was taken to a small checkup room room, about fifteen by twenty feet in size, on the main floor. The walls were painted a shadowy tan and had dark oaken paneling from the floor to halfway up, giving the illusion that, though several moonstone lamps were on, the room was barely lit. It was a calming yet neutral scheme which doubtlessly was an intentional ploy to set patients into the proper mood for testing.

In my mind, I had already passed the test and I was just proving it to the doctors by submitting to their evaluation. Oh, how I looked forward to seeing the surprise on their faces when I showed them I could sense with my magic.

“Hello, Castor Star is it?” the nurse administering the test asked me as the nurse who had brought me to the room left us.

“Just Castor, Ma'am.”

The nurse laughed, “I'm not that old.” She was, by all appearances, a grad student working on her doctorate and was around my age.

I felt a little foolish but rebounded. “I'm just feeling very good today, that's all.”

“So it seems.” Against the wall was a table, and on that table was a small apparatus three small wooden drawers wide by five tall. Next to that, cutting the table in half, was a dividing curtain made of some type of thick black fabric. The nurse pushed me to the apparatus and then sat down on the other side of the curtain. I heard her tear a piece of paper and throw it into the trash. “This is a clairvoyance acuity test we will use to determine how clearly you can see physical objects with your magical senses. Are you ready to begin?”

“Yes I am.”

“Goody. Here you go.” She slid a tray with three geometric shapes under the curtain which had been cut to fit to the contours of the table. “There is a cube, four sided pyramid, and a sphere in that tray. In front of you, you will see a stack of small drawers, each holding one of those three shapes at random. Look to the very top at the container lettered 'A'. Using clairvoyance, and nothing else, try to see what is inside.”

“Okay, but my senses kind of come and go and I can't really control that. It may take a while.”

“Take your time and we will get as far along as we can.”

Closing my eyes, I performed the mental steps to summon my clairvoyance. It was a minute before the first image of the boxes' interiors flashed before my consciousness, but they weren't very clear and told me little about their contents. Another half minute later, a better image made itself known to my consciousness. “Container 'A' is a sphere.”

“Okay, what is in 'B'?”

During that last series of images, I thought I had seen another sphere in 'B', but I decided to wait until I received another flicker of clairvoyance just to make sure. Another came shortly and I saw 'B' was in fact a sphere, and 'C' contained a pyramid and I told the nurse as much. We moved onto the next row and I continued as before, though several especially clear visions helped speed me along. My heart was light in my chest as I finished the last container.

“Okay,” the nurse said somewhat flatly. “We're done with this. I'm going to move onto the next portion.” The stack of drawers had little wheels on the bottom of it, allowing her to reach through the curtain and pull it to her side of the divide. I heard a jingle of keys and several drawers being opened as she opened a lock and then removed the contents. A few minutes later, the apparatus was on my side again and another tray was pushed beneath the curtain, this one holding two egg shaped crystals which glowed with light. “These two crystals are identical in every way except one is enchanted to produce a bright flare which will be visible through your sense of magic. Inside each of the drawers will be one single crystal like these, and it may or may not have this enchantment. Using your magical senses, look inside each drawer and tell me if it has an enchantment or not.”

“Okay.” For the first time, I wavered slightly because, as far as I could tell, the two crystals were identical; however, that did not stop me from trying. I performed the simple mental exercises required to overlay an image of the thaumostatic field onto the image from clairvoyance, but something felt to be missing, causing me to take several minutes as I repeated the exercise several times. I received several strong clairvoyance images of the crystals as I focused intensely on them, scrutinizing their every detail as I looked desperately for any tiny glimmer which might distinguish one crystal from the other. I eventually saw something, though I wasn't sure what it was, and I applied what I saw to the testing apparatus in front of me.

“'A' has an enchantment,” I said eventually, thinking I could see a faint twinkle coming from within the drawer. The remaining drawers went a little faster, but my answer was always uncertain because, though I could faintly sense magic coming off some of the crystals inside the drawers, it felt off somehow.

“Okay, that's it,” the nurse said upon me answering what I thought the contents of the last drawer were. Sliding the curtain back, she retrieved the two crystals which had been sat in front of me.

“How'd I do?” I was certain I had done well on the clairvoyance portion, yet the second half had shaken my confidence, leaving my chest fluttering with worry.

“Well, I need to turn the results into the lab for processing, then a doctor will get the prognosis to you.”

My voice was excited and quick as I spoke. “I'm not asking for a prognosis, just the stats. How many did I get right?”

“Eh.” she tapped her hoof on the table as she looked over her shoulder at her notepad, suddenly appearing nervous.

“What is it?” I asked, suddenly feeling more nervous as well.

She hesitated for a moment. “You scored six out of fifteen on the first part, then eight of fifteen on the second. Statistically, it is the same as if you were guessing.”

An icicle plunged into my chest and tendrils of sickly cold wrapped around the rest of my body. “Wha... No. No.” my hooves went to my mouth in horror. “No, I know what I am sensing. I just can't...”

“I know, but the numbers just don't say that.”

“Then do the test again! It's wrong somehow!”

“I don't know how,” the nurse said carefully. “As per procedure, I checked your answers against the contents of each drawer as I removed them, and I checked each of my notes as I went. I couldn't have been wrong that many times.”

“It~” my voice wavered and cracked. “It just can't be.”

“I'm sorry.” The nurse squirmed slightly. “The numbers just don't say that though.”

“I- I want to take the test again and see for myself. Put the wooden shapes back in the drawers and open them after I tell you what is in them.”

“This isn't how the test is supp-”

I cut her off, “It doesn't matter. Please, just do it!”

For an instant, a piteous look flashed across her face, then she reached over, pulled the rolling set of drawers to her side, and reset the curtain to be between us. I heard her open the drawers again and put something in them. A few moments later, she pushed the drawers back in front of me, then opened the curtain between us. “Okay, the top two rows have been set. Tell me what you see in the first one.”

A quick flicker and I quickly knew the first one to contain a cube and had a reasonable idea of what all the others contained, but I took my time and awaited another flicker which came in about a minute. “First one is a cube,” I said. The nurse opened the drawer and my heart almost leaped out of my mouth when I saw I was correct. Bolstered by this I immediately followed up saying, “Next one is a pyramid.”

When she opened the drawer, ice filled my veins again when I saw a sphere. Don't get cocky, you're still hurt and can't sense things well. Take your time on the next one and you'll get it right, I reassured myself. But I was wrong on drawer three and four as well, and even though I guessed right on the fifth, I was wrong several more times after that.

Eyes downcast, shoulders slumped, I let my hoof slide from the leg rest of the wheelchair and I mumbled, “Thank you... I'm sorry I wasted your time...” Hot tears streamed down my cheek and dripped into my lap. “I was so stupid, utterly stupid, to hope...” She grabbed my hoof and squeezed it, but she didn't say anything. “It's just... so real... I can't tell the difference.” I rambled then managed to look up at her, “You're a unicorn... like I was.”

“I um, yeah...” she carefully replied.

“You know your senses, how things look when you see them...”

“Yes.”

“This... I don't know what it is I'm seeing... but these images are so real, I can't tell it apart from the real thing... I spent years honing my senses, and-” My voice cracked, “Now they're gone and I'm left with these 'specters' which taunt me with what I can't have.”

“I can't imagine what it must be like. I'm so sorry for you.”

“Thanks. Trust me, you don't want to be going through this.” Suddenly, I broke and started crying too hard to carry on a conversation or even think beyond beyond the sea of emotions in which I was drowning. Distantly, I was aware of the nurse asking me if I wanted to go back to my room, to which I emphatically nodded 'yes' through my tears. She wheeled me out and up two floors to my room where my parents were most likely waiting.

I felt like the world's biggest idiot when I was pushed in there. I had raised my hopes so high along with Mom's and Dad's, only for our expectations to be cruelly smashed by reality. In the end, it was good that they were there, even if originally they had come for much more happy reasons.

Things were not good, but they were better because they were there, and they listened with me to the neurology doctor as he explained these 'sensory deprivation hallucinations' and said they were a perfectly normal thing to expect as over half of all unicorns suffer them in one way or another after losing part or all of their senses. With time, I could expect them to diminish and go away, and for the time being, I should take comfort knowing that they are not a sign I was going insane.

All this was blurred in my ears though, and eventually, I reached a point where I could stand no more. Rolling onto my side to face away from everyone, I quietly murmured, “I need to be alone to grieve right now.” Everyone present had enough insight into my state of being to not question me and left without needing any more persuasion.

So there I lay for some time, tears burning my eyes and suddenly finding myself wishing for one last big dose of morphine. I was physically exhausted by the wide gulfs spanned by my emotions in such a few hours and was sick to the stomach from the stress I was enduring. I drifted in and out of sleep for some time and eventually found myself wanting to wither away and die. It was about that time I heard a light tapping on the door and I assumed it to be one or both of my parents coming to check on me. “Come in,” I rasped.

“Hi,” a timid voice said, causing me to roll over and be surprised to see the nurse who administered the tests earlier. She was standing on three legs and using her forth to hold a small white teddy bear to her chest. “Do you mind if I come in?”

I did not feel like being comforted and in fact was feeling utterly inconsolable, but I could sense that she was being nice and I didn't want to turn her away. “It's alright.”

Stepping in, her demeanor was very meek as she cautiously looked around the room. “My supervisors tell me I can't get involved with patients, and there are all these rules about it too, but you were so distraught and I just wanted to try to help...” She trailed off, perhaps waiting for me to reply. The poor thing squirmed in the silence that followed as I waited for her to continue, “I know this is silly of me, but you reminded me a bit of my mom. When I was younger, she got really sick and while she was in the hospital, the doctors and nurses didn't treat her very well, even when she was at her worst and was really depressed. One of them even told her not to worry about dying because her family would be able to 'move on' without her. I think I am going into medicine because of that, at least indirectly. I mean, how terrible is it for healers to be so nasty? I don't want anyone to go through that, and maybe it's naive of me to think I can change that, but so help me I want to!”

I smiled slightly as she came closer and handed me the teddy bear, “It's silly, we're both grown mares, but I hope maybe this might make you feel better. If you don't want it, then you can throw it away or something else and I wouldn't be hurt. I just want to express how much my heart goes out to you.”

For a long time, I simply held the teddy bear and stared deeply into it's button eyes contemplating the wonderful feeling taking root inside my chest. I must have appeared unsatisfied in some way or another, because the nurse turned around and started walking away. “I hope I haven't bothered you too much,” she said in a melancholy tone.

“Wait, come back,” I asked, and she turned around and did so. The second she came close enough, I wrapped my forelegs around her neck, saying warmly, “You don't know how much this means to me.” Tears were forming in my eyes, but they were not tears of sadness but rather tears which sprang from how tenderly her simple act had touched me. When I let go, I put my hooves on her shoulders, looked her firmly in the eyes, and said in a very serious tone, “Don't you ever become bitter like some doctors do. I don't know Doctor Apple that well, but she has only been wonderful to me even though I've been a terrible patient. Learn from her, and please don't forget who you are today, because the world needs more like you.”

For the record, I would never, ever, ever throw away Autumn – that's what I eventually named that teddy bear. She always sits where she is safe and I can see her every day. The name stands for the last colors of the season which parallels the last 'colors' I had seen using magic. Likewise, the name means that, though there is a bleak winter ahead, it is part of nature and that not only will things survive, but they shall also flourish in even greater color once spring arrives.

As for the nurse, I never saw her again after she left the room, but she was a lesson on what power simple love and kindness from even a stranger was capable of doing. Inexplicably, I was suddenly thankful for the love of my parents and friends, but, perhaps, I needed to be reminded just how much they loved me.

I never learned that nurse's name, but I remember from her nametag that it started with the letter 'A' and sounded musical. That is where the name 'Autumn' came from and, should I ever have children, my first shall be named that name.

Chapter 4

“You're doing really well, Castor.”

“Thanks,” I replied with a hint of annoyance. He was patronizing me, there was no doubt in my mind. Since when was a grown mare being able to sit upright on her own something special?

“Okay, I'm right here next to you for support. Let's try standing for a minute and then I will help you back down.”

I gave a fake smile and nodded to him as he gave support on my left. “Alright,” I said.

It had been a week and a half since I had first awakened from my injuries and for the last six days I had been seeing the physical therapists for several hours in the afternoon each day. It had been a long journey up until this point, the first two days of therapy focusing on my abilities to hold small items and feed myself, the latter four moving more towards sitting upright and holding my balance. It was all trivial practice mostly, something that annoyed me more than anything else. As it turns out, though, a unicorn's sense of body and orientation is quite unique in that they do not rely only on the feeling of bodily locations and the inner ear the inner ear. Instead the senses are directly tied into one's magical sense. Naturally with my horn gone my magical senses were taken as well, meaning that if I were blindfolded, I could not correctly tell where my legs were.

In fact, much of my therapy up until the day I am relating had been focusing on that very issue. I would sit on my haunches, blindfolded, with a nurse at my side steadying me as he also moved one of my forelegs around, asking me to keep track of its position and periodically tell him where I thought it was. Needless to say, it was unnerving when I thought my leg to be folded in my lap when it was in fact being held straight out to my side. Again, I say that all of my perceptions as to bodily location were rooted in the extrasensory 'map' that I no longer had, leaving my normal orientation senses struggling to cope with the massive workload suddenly laden upon them. Much the same way was my balance.

These problems converged quite disastrously upon what many take to be a simple act – that of walking. I want to take this moment to assure that, most certainly, walking is not simple in the least bit: it is a carefully choreographed dance between your four legs, your shoulders and hips, your center of mass, and many other tiny little things that we overlook in our daily lives and only stop to consider when put into circumstances such as mine. The only reason we find the act easy is much the same as how an accomplished golfer finds that particular sport easy – we have been practicing it our entire lives. That said, with judging the orientation of my legs being so difficult, and my balance so skewed, it was like learning how to walk for the first time, except as an adult I was a lot higher off the ground when I fell opposed to if I were small child.

So, as it was, eleven days after awakening from my coma, I was about to stand for the first time. With the support of Nurse Free Weight at my side, steadying me with a wing draped over my back, I slowly put weight onto my hooves and lifted myself off the ground.

I cannot convey the exhilaration I felt to be standing again, even if I were being assisted by someone else. My legs shook underneath me and I leaned against the padded rail to my right for balance, but I knew I could do so much more if only I tried. I lifted my right hoof and threw it down slightly ahead of where it had been. To anyone else, that would have been a stumble, but to me, it was a leap.

“Easy now. Let's just stand today and get used to keeping balance, alright.”

I don't want to stand, I want to run. I thought to myself and half mumbled aloud.

“What's that?”

I hesitated for a moment, but then resolved to the nurse, “I don't want to stand. I want to run.”

“That's good enthusiasm, Castor, but let's take things one step at a time.”

I had hardly let him finish the statement before I brought my hind left leg forward and took another step.

“Stop,” he ordered. “We're just standing today.”

“I want to do this,” I replied firmly. Just a few more steps, that was all I wanted.

I put more weight onto the two legs I had just moved in preparation for another step.

“You can do this later, maybe tomorrow. What we are doing today will lead to walking, but now now.” I ignored him, lifted another hoof and began to step. “Castor, Stop.”

I didn't listen.

“Stop!”

I shifted my weight and lifted my right rear hoof, but halfway through the nurse pulled just a slight distance away and denied the support he had been giving. I promptly lost balance and, for an instant, began to fall to the side before he caught me and eased me to the ground.

“See, you can't balance on your own yet – that's what you need to learn how to do before you try walking,” he rebuked.

“I was doing just fine,” I said back with a slight snarl.

“You are doing extraordinarily well given your circumstances, but we have to retrain your balance to function without being able to magically sense the direction of gravity. To do that correctly and without risking hitting your head again, I want to spend a few minutes today just standing and readjusting because you aren't steady enough to try walking.”

“I've got it. I just need a few steps today.”

“You have a hole in your head on top of some severe brain injuries. Even with the helmet on, a fall is still very dangerous to you, that's why we have to take things slowly.”

I let my eyes wander to the padded rail, “Okay, but tomorrow, I want to make it a few steps down this, okay?” I pointed a shaky hoof at the rail.

“How about we take each day at a time?”

I shook my head. “No, I want to be able to do this. I Need this,” I pleaded, drawing out the word 'need' for added emphasis.

“Let's focus on today. Okay? I am going to help you sit up for a few minutes and then we will end the session by trying to stand again. How's that sound?”

“Alright,” I begrudgingly agreed.

“Okay.” Nurse Free Weight walked behind me and tapped me on the back. “I am ready to steady you. Try to sit upright when you are ready.”

Lying on my stomach with my hind legs under me, I planted my front hooves firmly and began pushing myself up. The world tipped and wobbled around me, but these past few days the sensations had not been nearly as extreme as the first few days that I had been awake. The floor was no longer on the wall and that day I had been able to sit upright for fifteen minutes straight before I began to get dizzy.

After a few minutes of sitting and adjusting to my faulty senses, the nurse began stepping me through rotating my head side to side to acclimate to balancing while looking in different directions. “Left-two-three-four. Front-two-three-four. Right-two-three-four,” he counted off as if he were some sort of drum major in a parade. I obeyed, rotating and tilting my head through the ordered motions.

To my right, just beyond the cushioned rail, was a mirror covered wall much like that in a workout room in a gym. Each time I looked that direction, my eyes would dart to my image and fixate upon my forehead. The thick bandages and bulky helmet that I wore to protect my head in case of a fall prevented me from seeing my head without my horn, which was a relief on a certain level. But I still could not shake the horrible fixation my eyes had with my reflection. I was a shadow of who I was only weeks before: my face was gaunt, eyes baggy, my expression sickly. Altogether, it was a little to much for me and I eventually asked the nurse if we could turn to where I wasn't forced to look at the mirror.

He agreed, and we continued, but it wasn't the relief I had been hoping for. Being turned towards the center of the room, my attention was now drawn to the few dozen occupants whose struggles and triumphs hinted at their own sad stories.

Nearby, an elderly unicorn with a half absent expression sat staring off blanking across the room. Somewhere else, a frail looking earth pony sat in a wheelchair struggling to lift a set of small weights as he was cheered on by a nurse, and across from him was a pegasus foal stretching her braced, crippled wings getting ready to exercise them.

One particular patient, however, held my gaze longer than the others. He was a unicorn close to my age. From his flank down, he was covered in burn scars and was missing both his hind legs just below the knee. From there on, instead of flesh and bone, there were prosthesis and metal. His nurse, a pegasus like Nurse Free Weight, wrapped her wing across his back and steadied him as he wobbled on the artificial legs.

The sight of so many needing help was depressing and I suddenly felt shallow for being ungrateful for my relatively good physical well being.

I continued the regiment dictated by Nurse Free Weight, turning and tilting my head until I was distracted by a loud clattering. I and my therapist jerked our attention to pinpoint the source of the sound just in time to see the unicorn I had noticed earlier swear loudly while lying on his side and, out of anger, cast a small ball of fire which dissipated harmlessly against a nearby rack of weights. Several nurses rushed to him as a unicorn warded the room with a spell I recognized to be a pretty powerful anti-spell field. Tears crept into my eyes as I watched the stallion swat away a nurse while trying to stand, and I shamefully let out a whimpering chuckle when he fell on his face a second time.

“That's me,” I croaked, looking to Nurse Free Weight who stood poised to go help the situation.

He returned my sad smile, “See, you aren't the only one adjusting to some unfortunate events.”

Things quickly settled down, my therapy continued, and soon Nurse Free Weight informed me the believed it was time I try standing again.

“Alright,” I replied with more than a little enthusiasm. He sat down beside me, and stood in unison with me with him acting once again as my support. I swayed and wobbled like a drunk and several times would have fallen over if it wasn't for the steadying wing my therapist had draped over my back.

“Tell me...” I started conversationally, “Are pegasi normally assigned to assist those relearning to walk.”

“The wings do help, but not as much as you might think. Basically, the answer is no, we don't do it too much more often than the others.”

Several seconds of silence passed, giving my mind enough time to wander from the question I had just asked. “I want to walk so badly,” I wished aloud.

“With time, with time,” he assured. “I take it you feel like you could keep standing for a while longer?”

“Yes.”

“Alright.”

Standing for a few more minutes, if it were not for Nurse Free Weight, I would have tipped over a dozen times. Soon, the session was up and the nurse eased me back into the wheelchair in which I had been pushed into the room.

“That was a lot easier this time around,” I said after I was settled into the chair.

“Yes it was,” he responded. “Your improvement today is excellent.”

“Is it enough that I can try to walk tomorrow?”

“Usually, I like to space things out a bit more than that, but I think in your case it would be best if we were to proceed with that stage as early as possible.” He gave a small wink.

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome.” Nurse Free Weight began pushing me out of the room.

“Is it okay if you push me over to that unicorn so I can talk to him?” I pointed to the stallion with the prosthetic legs.

Giving him a slight glance, the nurse shook his head. “He has his own therapy to go through right now, and I am afraid I have other patients to help.”

“Oh,” I uttered, feeling a little foolish for not recognizing those facts. “Sorry, I guess I should have realized that.”

“It's fine. Maybe some other time.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“You're doing great. Excellent!”

“Thanks,” I responded,my voice peppered with excitement as I focused on not falling. Like a foal taking her first steps, I grinned ear to ear a vibrant, beaming smile.

It had only been two days since I had first stood, and already my sense of balance was rapidly returning to me. By Nurse Free Weight's support, I took another step as he stood ready to catch me if I were to fall.

“Good, keep it up.”

I took two more steps, then I swayed and leaned against the padded rail for a moment's support. Nurse Free Weight was ready to catch me if I were to fall farther, but I righted myself and corrected my balance, saying, “I'm fine.”

“Alright. Do you want to keep going?”

“Absolutely.” I stood for a few seconds as I savoured the moment and focused on what my balance was telling me. Tentatively, I took a step, then another, and then four more before I was forced to lean on my nurse for support. Before long, I had made it fifteen feet down the rail.

Oh, by no means was this a graceful canter – not by a long shot. I had seen ponies hauling five hundred pounds on their back move more fluidly than I had just been. But I was walking! What a fantastic thrill! I was eased to the ground several times after I lost my balance or stumbled, and just as often I was forced to take long breaks when my sense of up and down became tilted to the side, but over the course of the next half hour, I, using my therapist and the rail as braces, made it the remaining twenty feet to the end of the rail.

I was smiling again by the time we reached the end and I laid down on my stomach. It was a happy moment because, for once, I didn't care about what I had lost. I had worked so hard to get to the point of being able to perform this simple task that in and of itself, I was proud of what I had accomplished.

“That was great,” Nurse Free Weight chimed. “Now, if you are up for it, let's turn around and walk back to where we started.”

“Just a minute, my head is spinning too much for me to stand right now. I was really pushing it those last few steps.” I lay resting my head, perfectly still, on my crossed forelegs as I waited for my sense of gravity to be pulling downwards again. It was bothersome in many ways, but also satisfying to compare against how I had been only a few days ago and see how much I had improved. I eventually became steady enough to stand again.

The therapist squatted down at my side again and laid a wing over my back to steady me as I raised up. It was a quick albeit difficult task to stand, but I did so anyway and, with his support, began walking down the line again. My steps were no more smoothly composed than the previous time, but I could swear that I was tripping over my own hooves a little less. I counted one or two fewer times I had to lie down to reset my balance, and I only needed to lean against Nurse Free Weight or the rail five times when I swayed or stumbled. It still took a long time to reach the other end, though, and that gave my mind time to wander.

In many ways, I could liken relearning to walk like casting a multi-layered spell. You learn the foundations, then repeat them until they become easy albeit unpolished because they are incomplete without the higher layers of the spell. Slowly, more complicated parts are added as the caster gains familiarity with the components so the greater whole of the spell is completed. That is when the spell is learned.

I thought the analogy good, but it also saddened me and managed to bitter my happy moment with the metallic tang of loss It was still... emotionally trying, to say the least, adjusting to the disability of being unable to use magic. Despite the shock being partially gone, I was raw inside. I had no idea who or what I was without my magical talents, I couldn't imagine working a job that didn't employ such skills, and I certainly could not even conceive of what I was going to do with myself for the rest of my life. Still, I was gladdened by the progress I was making and could look forward to, in a couple of days, not being forced to use the bedpan anymore.

When we reached the other end of the rail, I lay down to ease the burden on my legs which were becoming fatigued. Those long days and nights doing nothing other than laying in a bed had taken a toll on my physique. “By Celestia, I am so weak!” I looked down at my legs and rubbed a thigh, thoughts turning to how much weaker I would be if I had been bed-stricken for any longer. Something about my legs hurting reminded me of someone, and I looked across the room to see if he was still there, “Nurse, do you think I can go over and say hi to that stallion?” I lifted a hoof and pointed at him. The unicorn in question sat in a chair beside his wheelchair and, in his telekinetic grip, tipped his cup of water back all the way and then asked his nurse if she could go refill it.

“It looks like he is taking a break, so you can talk for a few minutes if he is up for it, I suppose. What are you thinking about saying?”

“I'm not sure.” I felt like the nurse was prying, but I also supposed it wasn't often when patients wanted to talk to other patients during therapy and he wanted to ensure I wasn't going to say anything stupid. “I just wanted to say 'hi', and that I feel like we share some common ground.”

He smiled but did not say anything more as he quickly walked to the edge of the room and brought me the wheelchair I had been pushed in on. With his help, I was soon in it and he pushed me toward the unicorn where he sat next to a pair of padded rails. Coming from his side, he didn't see me being pushed in his direction until I and my therapist were close. Even then, he paid us little attention until I began speaking. “Hi,” I said with an edge of nervousness.

Hearing my voice, he turned to look at me. “Hello?” He was apparently surprised someone had said something to him.

“I've been here for a couple of days now trying to... “ I was walking on eggshells because I didn't know what might or might not hurt him if I said it wrongly, “Relearn how to keep my balance while walking and I... I saw you and thought maybe... that we have a bit in common.”

His eyes took a moment to look me head to hoof while his face remained neutral. He shook his head to clear a couple of thoughts from it, then gave a soft smile. “I guess we probably do.” He leaned forward from where he sat and offered a hoofshake. I reflexively did the same but immediately felt like I was going to fall out of my wheelchair when my back left the rest. “Sorry,” I gave a nervous smile as Nurse Free Weight pushed me a little closer to him so I could reach. “I don't balance too well.”

“It's fine,” he said back, accepting the hoofshake I was finally able to extend. “I don't walk too well. My name's Dauntless Query.”

“Castor Star.” I shook his hoof. “You have a very interesting name.”

“Thanks, most everyone just calls me Dante, though. Anyway, I'm an explorer, someone who likes to go off the edges of the map and fill in the gaps in our knowledge.”

“You must have some great stories to tell.”

“Maybe.” He then grinned wryly and laughed, “Fair warning, if you ever travel with Griffons, they make some of the strongest vodka I know of. One sip will knock you right over.”

I smiled back. “I don't think that will be a problem for me. I've never really traveled much, but I know what to drink if I ever have a bad day.” My expression saddened. “Come to think of it, I could've used some of the stuff this past week and a half.”

“Yeah...” Dante looked down at his prosthetic legs. “I know the feeling. Don't think the doctors would like me sipping on the stuff here in the hospital though.”

“I would wager they would be more okay with that than you shooting off a fireball though.” I exhaled, “The way things have been going, I bet I would have done something like that several times by now if I could...” I trailed off.

“The docs weren't too happy bout' that. Outright steamed under the collar in fact.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I barely talked them out of having some anti-spell field cast on me.”

“Probably would have been a counter-ward. That's what is commonly used to disable someone's magic.”

“Right. I remember now,” he said absentmindedly. “Anyway, I already can't walk so I wasn't too thrilled on having my magic taken away on top of that.”

My eyes fell downcast, “Tell me about it.”

“Well, don't worry,” he reassured. “Earth Pony magic is incredible when it comes to healing. I'm sure you'll be healed up really soon.”

Eyes jerking upward to meet his gaze, I gave him a long withering look as a surge of pain coursed through me. Reaching up to my forehead, my heart sunk slightly as I rubbed a hoof over the smooth, protective helmet where my horn should have been. “I'm not...” I heard the melancholy edge of my words and caught myself, forcing myself to start over in a slightly lighter tone. “I am a unicorn... or guess I was...” I continued to rub the space where my horn should have been. “I don't know what I am now.”

Dante cringed under the weight of my reply.

“I think it's time we continue your therapy,” Nurse Free Weight interjected.

“No,” I, throat burning with rising emotions, slowly replied. “I'm okay. This sort of thing is something I'll be dealing with a lot now, and I need to learn how to cope with it.”

“Just let me know if you want to leave.”

“Okay.” I turned back to Dante. “I...” The words wouldn't come. Beneath my emotions, below the anger and the sorrow, I realized this was the first time I was explaining my injury to someone else. For the past week and half, I had been been living a waking nightmare in which I had become numb to my disability, yet when I suddenly was pressed to describe my circumstances, things suddenly felt dreadfully real and choked the words from my throat. “I... got hit in the head... really hard... The impact broke my horn and pushed some of it back into my brain...” I shivered and listlessly wrung my hooves together. “It couldn't be saved.”

“Oh... I'm so sorry. And what I said was really inconsiderate, I didn't mean to-”

“Don't worry... I guess I am just sensitive,” I gave dejected laugh. “I guess you probably understand the way I feel right now.”

“Yeah,” he replied with a sad smile. “But I guess since I kind of know what you are going through, I should have known to be more careful.”

“Well, it's okay, I guess.” I didn't sound like I believed my own words, and to an extent that was true, but I was suddenly so sad that the emotion was overwhelming. “Like I said, I am going to have to learn to accept this,”

We were silent for a few moments as I wished I had something to wipe my nose on. “Well...” Dante began, being cautious with his words, “I know I can't fully understand what it's like to... well... you know...”

“Lose your magic?” I offered glumly.

“Well, yes. But if it helps, my legs were really important to me – I don't know how I am going to keep doing a lot of what I normally do, no matter how good the prosthetic ones are. I know it's not the same, but... I feel ya, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” I blinked some tears from my eyes. “I understand. Thank you. And I guess I 'feel ya' too.”

“Thank you too.”

We looked at each other for a few seconds, then Nurse Free Weight interjected again. “Well, what do you say about letting Mr Query get back to business and we do the same?” Nurse Free Weight tactfully motioned to Dante's therapist, who had returned without my noticing.

“Oh, I hope I haven't been holding you up.”

Dante waved a hoof. “Not in the least. It's been nice talking to you, Castor Star.”

“Just call me Castor.”

“Well, I hope to talk to you again, Castor.”

“And you too, Dante.”

We shook hooves again, then Nurse Free Weight pushed me back to where we had just been. Once there, he helped me out of the wheelchair and I spent the last thirty minutes of therapy practising sitting upright while moving my head around. I tried walking again at the very end of the session, but only managed to get so far as to stand up without assistance. It was frustrating, but I my success earlier still swelled warmly in my heart. I was seated again in the wheelchair, and Nurse Free Weight pushed me through the main doors of therapy gymnasium into a room where two bored looking nurses sat behind a counter against the wall. A short exchange of words later, and Nurse Free Weight left me to go get his next patient and one of the nurses who had been behind the counter came to me and pushed me down the old and hallway, into an elevator, and to my room.

I was not expecting anyone to be inside when the door was opened, so was surprised to see a Pegasus laying on the short couch as I was pushed into the room. Laying on his stomach with his legs under him, he picked up his head and looked to me and the nurse. He opened his mouth to say something, but coughed nervously and looked around the room with a worried expression.

“Hello?” I asked with an aggressive edge to my voice.

“Hi.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Please, don't be mad,” he pleaded, “I came here to apologize.”

The nurse by this point had me pushed me beside the bed, “I don't want to interrupt, but let's get you into the bed so I can leave you alone to talk.”

“Okay.” The air between my friend, Silver Lining, and I was frosty, to put it nicely, and I, in retrospect, feel sorry for the poor nurse who got caught in the frigidness rolling off me.

Silver Lining stepped off of the couch, holding off the ground a hind leg which was encased in a cast. “Please, just hear me out. I feel terrible about all this.”

“Be patient,” the nurse calmly ordered. “I will be done helping your friend in just a moment. Ready to stand Castor?”

“Yes,” I answered and threw my foreleg around the shoulders of the nurse. We stood together and I climbed into bed with his assistance. In bed, I crossed my front legs and glared at my friend as the nurse removed my protective helmet and placed it on a table in the room.

“Please don't look at me like that,” he pleaded, wilting under my penetrating leer.

My eyes narrowed, “Silver, you have a lot of guts coming here after what you did to me.”

“It was an accident, I never meant to cause this.”

“Well, that solves everything doesn't it?” I threw my front legs wide and gave a mocking laugh. “If you didn't mean to do it, then that means it never happened, right?”

“That's not what I'm saying; you're acting like I did this on purpose!” He raised his voice, “Stop being this way and try to understand I'm sorry about this!”

“Understand? Understand!?! You try to understand me! Do you even realize what I am going through because of your stupidity!?!”

Silver grimaced and looked away, “That's why I'm here. Its killing me that this happened to you and that it's my fault.”

“So you think that coming in here and giving me some lame 'I'm sorry' spiel would make everything better?”

“It's not like that. I wanted to say I'm sorry and... I mean I didn't really expect it would make everything better, but I thought it might help.”

“Well it didn't.”

Uneasy silence followed, “What do you want me to do then?”

“Go away,” I snarled.

“I... I want to talk about this.”

“There is nothing to be said,” I locked my face into a vicious scowl as I glared at Silver Lining.

“This isn't like you. Please, let me say I'm sorry.” His ears flattened nervously on his head as he skirted eye contact. “You don't have to forgive me, but please don't turn me away like this.”

“You're right...” I paused to raise the tension between us, “I don't have to forgive you. Now like I said. Go. Away!” I curtly pointed to the door.

Silver Lining's wings drooped at his sides as he fell crestfallen. “If... I mean... Please...” He sputtered a few broken lines of thought before he sighed and skulked from the room like a dog that had been kicked. He closed the door behind him, leaving me alone. I slowly rubbed my face and sighed, curling up on my side and pulling the sheets close up around my head.

For a time, I pondered that Silver Lining right. I was not acting like myself and had been in fact quite nasty just then. The whole exchange sat ill in my stomach; however, I somehow felt vindicated in how I had acted. It was a strange dichotomy where I knew the way I had acted was not right, yet it certainly felt right and I dared anyone in my position to do better. I rationalized that, after all, I was going through more than anyone should be forced to go through, and it made sense if I was a little moody. I should be given some leeway, especially since I was suffering from those terrible headaches.

I massaged my temples. Sometimes, it was almost more than I could take, and that outburst had caused a migrane to set in. They were the worst I had ever experienced in my life; all prior paled in comparison. The pain was insidious, boring into my forehead like a severely overcast spell, and they were getting worse. Medication would only do so much to ebb the suffering it oppressed upon me, and even then, it was getting to where the best I could hope for was that I would be too delirious and sleepy to care about the pain.

I rubbed my head more forcefully, begging for relief as I cursed the growing pain. This headache, I could tell because it was like oh so many others, was only going to get worse before it would begin tapering off in about two hours. Until then, it would be like someone was driving a tent stake into my forehead.

I pulled the blanket all the way over my head and tried to fall asleep, hoping that it would bring relief from the pain.

Chapter 5

“Aaahh!” I awoke in the middle of the night clutching my head and screaming in pain. My hoof glanced off the bed's rails, rattling them loudly as I blindly pounded for the nurse call bell. Eventually, my I found it, and in the room's dark lighting, the button's soft red glow glared painfully in the corner of my eyes.

I had suffered terrible headaches before and they had awakened me countless times during the course of my recovery, but this one was different, being cripplingly painful and coming from the very core of my head and not from the surface as many of the ones from before had.

A nurse rushed in and flipped the switch to the sunstone lights in the room, innodating my sensitive eyes with an ocean of burning light. He came over to my bed where I lay, shaking, curled and clutching my head.

“What is happening?”

“My head... Agh! My HEAD!”

“Are you in pain? Where on your head does it hurt?”

I groaned in agony. “Everywhere.” I pointed a shaky hoof at my forehead. “My horn, it feels like my horn is in boiling water.”

The nurse nodded and pulled a pen light from his chest pocket using his teeth. “I'm going to check your pupil responses. Look into the light.”

When he clicked the light on, it was like having by face slammed into a bed of nails.

“Your responses are sluggish. Scale of one to ten, tell me how bad the pain is.”

“Eight before the light. Ten now...” I groaned. “And there's pressure. Lots of pressure...”

“How much pressure?”

“It feels like my head is going to explode. AGH!” A sudden bolt of boiling heat plunged through my forehead. “It hurts so much.”

“I will be right back.” He turned and briskly walked out of the room, leaving the ceiling lamps on. I pulled a sheet over my head and closed my eyes to shade them from the light, but it didn't help.

When I heard voices coming towards my ward, I sat up, wobbling like I was drunk, and nearly tumbled out of bed.

I can't balance. The words screamed in my mind. No, NO! I pushed myself back up, grabbing both rails on the bed for support. I quickly lost balance and flopped back onto the bed. No! I've worked too hard. This can't happen! Unthinkable - that's what it was to have been set back after having relearned to walk and take care of myself. Looking to the doctor, a unicorn, who was gently holding me down on the bed with his magic telling me to not sit up, I asked, “What's happening to me?”

“That's what I am going to figure out,” he calmly replied, flipping a lever on the side of the bed and looking to the two nurses that had followed him in. “Get her ready to move.” He turned back to me. “Tell me everything that you are feeling. Give as many details as you can.”

“My entire head is being crushed in a clamp.” I pulled a shuddering breath and pointed to my forehead. “It feels like someone is driving a molten spike into my head right here and my horn is on fire and freezing at the same time.” I winced as the pain throbbed some more.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Your face is moving sluggishly. Try to smile.”

“I'm not feeling... optimistic... right now.”

“That's not the point, I am checking for a stroke. Do what I say.”

My blood turned to ice in my veins, “You-I-wha?... okay...” I bared my teeth and grinned for him.

“Okay. Can you feel both sides of your body?”

“Y-yes.” I wrung my forehooves together to reassure myself that I could still feel them, “I can feel everything, but I feel like I am trying to move through water.”

“Are you having any trouble seeing?”

“No... I mean, I don't think so... It's just everything is so bright. The light makes the pain worse.” The doctor asked me a few more questions and in that time I began to shiver. My bed covers damp with sweat, my body was unnaturally hot and cold at the same time while my extremities and forehead started to tingle. My headache was quickly becoming worse and I began to feel a very particular phantom sensation coming from my missing horn.

“I... I feel something.” I said through clenched teeth so they wouldn't chatter together while speaking.

The doctor gave me an expecting look. “What is it?”

“I feel like... I am overcharging a spell... a really big one. Like one that's gonna drain my magic for a week.”

The doctor, being a unicorn, appeared to follow what I was saying. “Is the magical pressure concentrated in your head, or is it spread over your entire body?”

“It's everywhere. I'm tingling all over...”

The doctor quickly scribbled a few details down into his notepad then turned to a nurse “Let's get her inside a MEV after a quick CT scan.” The nurses unlatched the wheels on the bed and began pushing me out of the room.

The movement of the bed as I was pushed down the hallway spun my sense of orientation which, coupled with the passing of bright lights overhead, made even more dreadfully sick. Bringing a hoof up to my face to wipe my brow, my leg was heavy and its movement hard to coordinate. I had started to tremble.

When the gurney came to a stop to be pushed through a pair of doors into another hallway, I had started to shake uncontrollably. “Wha-” I gulped. “happening?”

“You're suffering a magic buildup. We had thought your body was discharging the magic created in your praecantor cortex, but it appears we were wrong. We're taking you to a MEV where we'll tap some of it off and hopefully help you.”

As I was rushed down the hallway, I began to become aware of a creeping lethargy in my extremities. It was subtle, like the weakness experienced after running a short distance, but by the time we were nearing the end of the hallway, my hind legs were numb. The feeling continued to seep farther up my legs and into my body, leaving in its wake a cold lifelessness.

When I realized something was happening, I attempted to say something to let the doctor and nurses know something; however, all that came out of my mouth was a long trailing whimper.

“Are you okay?” the doctor asked.

Trying with all my might to scream, I only managed to muster a moans.

“Castor?” the doctor asked again.

Again, I tried to control my voice, but again I only whimpered. My had been tingling like a leg that had fallen asleep, yet, as the numbness spread through my body, up my neck, and into my head, the tingling became a constant, mind numbing buzzing layered over the crippling pain. Locked blankly on the ceiling above, my eyes began to blur and burn with dryness as my eyelids refused to blink.

“Step it up, she's going into verefictic shock. We need to get her in the MEV now!”

The bed accelerated, and the sudden change of momentum caused my head to roll to one side where I could only stare blankly at the side of a nurse pushing the bed. The buzzing in my head escalated quickly, and a sudden, aery feeling entered my senses as I felt myself oddly drift backwards in a strange, disembodied fog. My consciousness pulled farther and farther back from my body, the frantic throbbing of my heart fading away as if projected far away from where it should be beating. Outside of my command, my lungs breathed air a thousand miles from my mouth.

All at once, my vision receded away from my mind, leaving me floating in a silent, black void. My dismembered senses were hazy in their great distance from me and lay strewn about like pieces of a smashed clock in the empty expanse my consciousness had been drawn into. For an unknowable period of time, I floated weightlessly in my own mind, unable to form thoughts in words but rather was limited to the most basic of feelings. Fear, confusion, anger, more fear... It came to a point where those feelings were all I was able to comprehend

After a span of time which was both an eternity and nothing, this abated and I was able to think somewhat clearly. My mind floated within its own expanse as I struggled to understand the feeling of having no body and what it was like to feel fear disjointed from physical sensation. There was no chest to be tight, no guts to cramp, no beating heart to feel. There was only pure, unadulterated terror and darkness: both existing alone without any sensation which I can define for a reader to understand.

I again receded into a state of only comprehending emotions and I slowly felt a warm, fuzzy peace spread from my very core and encompass my whole essence. If I were to directly translate my feelings into words, they would form the question Am I dead? To which I answered, in feelings, to myself, I don't care. I can only liken this blissful state to a direct injection of morphine.

Then suddenly, I became intensely fearful. I was dead. I was actually dead. My mind suddenly became crystal clear Oh Faust NO. I don't want to die! Please, let me live! I don't want this, not if this is what death is. An endless expanse of blackness, forever alone, never to feel my body, nor the warmth of a loved one's voice, nor see the beauty of the sunlit mountains. Faust no!

As a formless being of pure thought, I let loose the most harrowing series of screams which have ever been heard by mortal minds. I tried to struggle, I tried to thrash, yet having no body I felt nothing other than fear and hopelessness. I just couldn't believe it.

I was dead, and there was nothing I could do about it. My mind buzzed horribly with the realization for another unknowable period of time, but I eventually settled into a sort of acceptive lifelessness where I felt little and thought even less.

I can't be quite sure when, but I suddenly became aware of a tiny pinprick of white in front of my consciousness. It was small, like a hole poked in thick paper, but it was there. Naturally, my attention was drawn to it as it was the only other thing in the void with me, and I pondered if I was in some sort of transitional state between life and death, and before me lay some unknown realm.

There was a natural fear what it may be, but even though I kept my distance from it, the pinprick of light was drawing ever closer. As it came closer, I began to see small details within as if I were peering through the wrong eyepiece of a telescope. Suddenly, the light rushed towards me and engulfed me, the feeling of my body returning as I was overtaken.

I was in some dark chamber. A coffin? But then why was I restrained and in so much pain? “HELP!” I screamed so hard my throat hurt. “Faust! HELP” Thrashing against the straps which held me down, I failed to loosen them. A masked figure peered over into my view and we locked eyes. How was someone in a coffin with me? How could I see him? Was he dead too? Above me was a bright light, but what was it?

“Where am I?” I cried out, yet I didn't understand the reply I was given.

The figure reached towards my face and grabbed my head. Feeling something moving on my head, my head erupted in intense pain. He was pulling my horn off! I wriggled and thrashed with every ounce of my strength, trying to both break free of my bondings and kick him. “Stop! PLEASE STOP!”

He pulled back, yet, the pain continued. Why was it continuing? He said something again, which I didn't comprehend, but I got the feeling he wasn't trying to hurt me.

“Where am I?”

He said something incomprehensible again; however, there was one word I did understand: Castor.
It was... it was familiar. That's right, it's my name. I was Castor, I had been sick, or was it hurt? I couldn't remember, but the familiarity with who I was and that there was something wrong with me struck within me with a queasy feeling.

“Where am I?”

“Castor, you're in the hospital.”

I ruffled my brow and tried to fully comprehend the doctor's words and form my reply. “I'm hurt?” It was more a statement than a question.

“Yes, you are. But we're making you better.” The doctor hardly glanced away from where he was looking at something else.

“What happened?”

“You had a buildup of magic, so we're siphoning it off.”

“D-did I-” I swallowed hard. “Did I die?”

The doctor suddenly stopped what he was doing, turned from the machine he was at. “No, you didn't.” Silently looking at me from the corner of his eye, he turned fully back to what he was working on.

“Oh,” I finally said a few seconds after the statement would have been appropriate. My mind was hazy and it was so hard to comprehend anything that was going on. “Where am I?”

“You're at the hospital.”

“I'm at the hospital?”

“Yes Castor, you're at the hospital.”

“-and that's why I haven't been around these past few days.” I finished relating my story to Dante.

“That sounded horrifying,” he replied, walking beside me with a clumsy gate.

To an outside observer, we, in any typical place, would have been quite the sight to behold. I, with my wobbly, choppy steps and Dante with his hind legs goosestepping wildly could have been likened to a pair of grounded birds as we plodded another lap around the small courtyard in middle of the hospital's facility. Yet, those who surrounded us -patients with their own physical difficulties to grapple with- gave normalicy to our oddities.

“I've had nightmares about it every time I've slept. Well, no, that's not right. I haven't been able to sleep right, not since...” I trailed off.

“Not since it happened?”

“Yeah. That.” We finished the lap in silence before I spoke again. “I just can't believe it, you know...”

“Yeah?” Dante gently asked.

“I had a seizure – a bad one – and they don't know what caused it.”

“I thought you said it was because you were magically overcharged.”

“Yeah, and why was that!?!” I snapped. “They said my magic was draining normally, that I wouldn't have any of these problems. Now, they've run tests one me, poked me with a dozen needles, and they can't figure out why I'm not radiating away my magic. If they can't figure it out, I'm going to have to come to the hospital at least once every week for the rest of my life so they can sap me of my magic which will leave me feeling half dead just so my magic doesn't kill me! Of course, I could just have a lobotomy where they cut out the part of my brain which makes magic, then, I'd only have to come once a month so they could artificially charge me with an aura. At least then, I'd only live a decade – tops – before this killed me! Ugh!” I slumped my shoulders. “Now, they've put me on some anti-seizure medications. They help with the headaches a bit, but I just feel... wrong.”

“Well,” Dante thoughtfully started. “With the alternative being another seizure like that, isn't it better this way?”

“Only because it scares me so much. I don't like the idea of getting messed up by this stuff, especially since I'm already on pain meds, plural, that I know aren't the best for my liver, some alchemist's healing tonic to help with my concussion, and then this. I can handle stuff that might mess up my body, but not my head. I'm already messed up enough there...” I trailed off.

“This is just for a short time, I'm sure. You're barely two weeks out of this injury, so there are going to be a few minor complications from something like what happened to you. Once you've healed a bit more, I'm sure this will pass.”

“But that isn't even the worst part of it!”

“Oh. Um, well... then what was?”

“When I was having that seizure, what I experienced was so terrifying... they say I didn't die, but I came so close... dear Faust, it was so close. They told me out of body experiences are to be expected in severe seizures, and they tell me that what I described fits, but this was different. I've had out of body experiences while spellcasting, doing it on purpose is one of the ways we learn to see the thaumostatic field. But this was entirely different.” I shivered. “I was so scared, terrified! I was certain I died, and even now, I can't shake it off.” Dante was silent. “It was terrible,” I eventually continued. “Blackness, nothingness. No sounds, no body. You just exist, and mostly in a state of terror and confusion. I don't want to go back. I-I can't. It is so terrifying.”

“Well, then try to focus on how good it is to be alive.”

“I don't know if I can. What if that is what death actually is? I don't know what I really expected it to be like. I had hoped, maybe I would wake up in Faust's embrace, or maybe I would just go 'poof' and not be anymore. I could handle that because at least I wouldn't be driven insane by the cold, empty, unfeeling nothingness of that horrible void.”

We both fell silent as we walked another lap.

“Let's not forget,” Dante said. “that this may have been part of the seizure and nothing more.”

“I wish I could share that sentiment. Ugh.” I rubbed a hoof along the side of my neck. “I'm sick of dealing with all this. Why did this happen to me? Why can't I just go back to the way I was!?!”

Dante put a hoof on my shoulder, “Castor, please, calm down. You can't let yourself get so upset. It doesn't help anything.”

“Yeah?” I snapped, “Well, you know what, it's hard, alright!”

“Like I don't know?”

“Well... I mean... That's different! You didn't lose your magic.”

“And you think it was any less hard for me that it's been for you?”

For a moment, I couldn't meet his eyes and I looked away. “Your legs might have been a part of your body, but my magic was a part of me. A part of my being.”

“And I was a cartographer and field researcher.” Dante laughed lightly, “Tell me, how am I supposed to go out and do my job with a pair of false legs? But this doesn't matter anyway. The point I was getting at was that you can't go around being bitter just because something bad happened to you. It only makes your life needlessly miserable.”

I rolled my eyes. “You sound like Silver Lining.”

“It seems like he is a pony who knows what he is talking about.”

Sighing, I offered no further reply, to which Dante eventually said, “Just remember you're not the first pony who has lost something dear to them, and you won't be the last.”

Wanting to grumble something snide in reply, I realized that I had certainly lost Silver Lining as a friend and that I would rather not risk pushing Dante away too.

It was late summer and even in the relatively drab courtyard which was surrounded on all four sides by the hospital, there was much green. Trees and decorative shrubs lined the brick and glass walls of the building while the grass, a deep, lustrous green, carpeted most of the ground which was not part of the cobblestone walking track. It was a gorgeous day with the sky above, from which the sun shone onto my back, colored a welcoming pale blue, but, to me, all was ashen.

The colors were pale and the gentle summer scents were less soothing to the soul. I felt like a mare with her eyes closed, being unable to see the beauty which I knew to be there. The placid breeze on my skin was spiritless, lacking the life it normally bestowed.

“Castor? Are you okay?” Dante asked, suddenly in front of me.

“Huh?” I replied, startled back to reality. “What?”

“You out of the blue stopped walking and started staring at nothing.”

“I was just... thinking.”

“Are you okay? Do I need to get a nurse?”

“I'm fine.” I said.

Dante was still skeptical. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, okay...” his gaze lingered in my direction a fraction of a second longer than was comfortable before he dropped the subject and we continued to walk around the track.

“Back to the subject from earlier,” I began after a short lull in conversation. “I was worried during two days I couldn't come see you in therapy that you wouldn't be here when I came back. After all, you said that you were leaving the hospital in a couple of days.”

“At long last too.” He exhaled. “I've been stuck in this place for months healing, getting skin grafts, healing some more. They don't let you move a lot either, not that I would really want to because it usually hurt, a lot. I'll still be coming back for several more weeks though because I'm still really sensitive to temperature where I got burned. They tell me that sitting in hot water will help my body readjust, but it hurts like Tartarus while I'm in the therapy tub. Besides, I wouldn't leave without saying goodbye.”

I nodded in response, “That relates to what I am asking about. I don't want us to just drop away, so I was wondering if we could exchange addresses so we can keep in touch.”

“Sure. I don't have anything to write with right now, but I will be sure to give you my address sometime sooner or later.”

“Same here. You live in Canterlot, right?”

“Yes,” he said. “And you live just outside the city if I remember correctly.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Good. Like I said, I will be leaving here in a few days, but I will be staying at my older brother's house because it is closer to the hospital than mine is and, well, I still have a lot of trouble standing again when I fall down.”

“I didn't know you had a brother.”

“Yeah.” Dante grew pensive. “I have a younger brother and sister as well... but Mom doesn't want me around them anymore.”

“Oh. What um...” I trailed off into silence.

“You're wanting to ask me what happened. Don't worry, I was going to tell anyway. The right time hadn't come up yet, but now it has, so don't worry.”

“So... what happened?”

“Well, you see, it happened about three months ago...”

I had just gotten off in Canterlot Station from an old train hailing from the deep south where I had been studying the local plantlife and fauna in the most vicious place I’ve ever been.

It is here that I shall let the uninformed know that paper and water don’t get along very well, and, mind you since I was returning from an extended research expedition, I had lots of paper and journals. The 131st Canterlot Weather Division, on the other hoof, provided the water because, naturally, it just so happened to be raining when the train arrived. No, I mean really raining, and it was the kind of rain that isn’t friendly. This is important later, so remember this.

My saddlebags would only keep out so much water - and by so much, I mean none; therefore, I was running as soon as my hooves hit the station’s tarmac because my house just so happened to be all the way across town. If I had had any presence of mind, I would have waited out the storm in the station. But I, being far too clever to have packed an umbrella, decided to brave the weather.

The short story is that I lost. By a block down the road, I was soaked, and my notes only a little bit more so. Then, my common sense, winded because I had left it back on the train and it had to run to catch up to me, finally told me to get inside. There just so happened to be a coffee shop beside me at the time, so I went in.

The owners of the establishment, a charming couple from Mainhatten, were less than pleased to see a full grown stallion, drenched head to hoof with water, making a mess as he waited in line to buy an overly priced hot drink and cookie. Upon confronting me, I smiled like an idiot and played the part of someone completely oblivious to the fact that he was soaked.

They were less than amused, so I purchased the most expensive drink on their menu to appease them and asked for five hundred napkins because I am a notoriously messy eater... or maybe because I had several hundred pages of wet journals in my pack.

Anyway, I sipped my drink, promptly scalded my tongue, and meticulously soaked up every drop of water I could. Three hundred ink stained napkins later, the entirety of my journals were as dry a bone - that is to say a as dry as a bone at the bottom of a river.

Stepmother nature, being the homicidal loon of a parent she always is, parted the clouds against the weather team’s permission and turned the day absolutely gorgeous.

Once I was done using the napkins to sop up my tediously gathered research, I tentatively exited the establishment -much to the owner’s happiness- and looked for a dark raincloud reserved especially for me. Instead, I was given a sign from above. It was a plaque from the lingerie store next door, more precisely, and it fell squarely on my head as prompted by a generous gust of wind. Stunned for a bit, I eventually stood up and counted my lucky stars that I had not barged into there instead because, knowing myself, I would have immediately asked for five hundred pairs of frilly panties to dry my notes, some of which detail the reproductive system of the endangered hag snail. Don’t ask why I found it so fascinating to study, please, I don’t remember nor do I wish to do so.

Being the drenched, ink smeared wreck I was, I decided to clean up at my parents’ house which was only a few blocks away instead of trekking across the city and receiving condescending glares from the more snooty citizens of Canterlot.

I soon arrived at the house and knocked at the door. Mother opened it and only raised an eyebrow as opposed to the most logical reaction of calling the police when she saw my drenched, ink covered, unshaven mug.

“I told you to take an umbrella this time,” she said flatly, well knowing from experience what had just happened.

“I opted to buy waterproof ink and then forget it at home,” was my reply.

“Clever boy.” She replied, patting me on the head.

“Thanks mum.”

As you can tell, this sort of thing happens regularly.

I went to the upstairs bathroom and grabbed the white shower towel to wipe the ink from my face, then put it back remembering the bulging veins on mother neck last time I had used it to wipe- shall we say- slug ‘puss’ from my entire body. It wasn’t really puss so much as it was something else, but I am sure you already figured that out. Again, I request that you don’t ask about my more questionable fields of research or any of the disasters which inevitably accompany them.

Denied the pristine white fabric, I therefore opted for the microfiber hoof towel instead because, after all, it’s probably already dirty and a little ink wasn't going to do much to hurt it. The screams which issued later proved my hypothesis wrong. However, in respect to the events later that night, I could have used the towel to collect the blood of a sacrificed chicken and the outcome, as judged after 3:47am of that night, would have been the same.

Still blissfully unaware of the now black hoof towel, mother invited me to stay for dinner and spend the night in my old room. Naturally, I would never expect such generosity from mother and would have never purposely appeared on her doorstep because I was hungry but lacked the motivation to prepare anything other than burnt toast. Don’t judge me.

It was three fifteen, and my brother and sister, thirteen and fourteen respectively, arrived home from school. I told them about my adventures in the ‘Fire Swamp of Death’, to which they corrected every single exaggeration I made to enhance my story. I tell ya, kids get smarter every day.

I was going to show them who was the adventurer in the family, I swear, but dinner spared them the humiliation I was going to bring down upon them once I had figured out what it was and how I was going to enact it. It was just that I was slowed down when father joined in on their critique of my story when he returned from work.

Gathering around the table, a delectable array of food was prepared before us. Baked potatoes, peas, fried... I’m not sure, and salad whose dressing tasted suspiciously a lot like some slug 'puss’ I had taste tested to determine its acidity levels. I will have you know that I correctly estimated the PH to be 7.5 on the standard PH scale, a result that can be backed up by a surprisingly expensive test I had run on the ‘puss’.

I looked to mother as soon as I tasted the salad dressing, to which she responded innocently with a simple ‘What?’ which I knew was her way of saying ‘The ball is now in your court. Top me if you dare.’ I then regretted telling my family about my endeavors and took another bite of the salad without making eye contact with mother because the dressing actually tasted really good.

We finished the meal and, while mother was putting the dishes in the kitchen sink, I contemplated hiding razor blades into her lemon meringue pie, then realized that would be too subtle a retort.

The family went into the living room, played a few board games, and then ejected me from scrabble because I played the word triskaidekaphobia and ironically beat mother by thirteen points. To this, I shrugged to her and responded guilelessly with a plain ‘What?”, which I knew will only escalate the invisible war we were fighting.

I swear, one of these days, I am going to wake up with my room filled with a shrine made only from smiley face balloons. Inside will be a card that says “I hope you like the flu” and a picture of the time I shaved my entire body because I was certain there were tiny little bats living in my hair.

For a few minutes, I sat mortified as I watched my father furiously beat mother and my two siblings at a series of games of go-fish, knowing that one of these days, he is going to eat a bowl of salad that tastes like slug ‘puss’, and he is going to like it almost as much as I did.

After watching him dig his own grave, climb into it, and hand mother the shovel by winning the third, fifth, seventh, and eleventh games he played, I decided to go upstairs and see how wet my notes still were.

Seriously, though, the first four primes after I won by thirteen points on the thirteenth game (which is the fifth prime) by playing a word that means the ‘fear of thirteen’ which makes like... three thirteens, and three is another prime...

Celestia help us. I was certain mother was going to bury us both when she finally bothered herself with getting back at us.

Now I was well and truly concerned for my life because I shall no longer be able to sleep without fear that she had sneaked into my bedroom and swapped my pillow with an exact replica of one that had been starched into the firmness of a rock. Sure, it only happened once as a filly, and she had the excuse that she unknowingly spilled an entire box of starch into the washing machine... But you flop down on your bed once and smack your face on a rock that looks like a pillow, and you stop trusting reality.

I opened my old closet and pulled out a set of sheets stained with blood from this one time I broke my nose on a pillow, laid them flat on my bed, organized my wet notes on them, and sighed because of how wet they still were. I felt compelled that it would be easier to brave a fire swamp than to decipher these irreparably smudged journals, but I suppose my life insurance agent would flip out - again - if I were to go back there before I rolled over onto my next bi-monthly allotment of ‘dangerous things you shouldn’t do but technically can and still keep your policy’.

Salvaging my notes was really my only choice, and the old fan on my desk looked promising, the only problem I noticed was that my journals smelled like someone lit a bonfire on them (because of the fire swamp) which would make my room smell like someone lit a bonfire it it. Naturally, if something is going to make a room smell like smoke, one should put said thing in the bathroom because, after all, every bathroom in middle and high school smelled like smoke, so that must be the natural condition they gravitate towards...

I... don’t know if that is sound logic.

Ignoring that, I dropped a soaked bag of seeds I had collected at the bathroom door, promptly forgetting it, and placed my notes in a good spot in the tub where the fan, when oscillating, would blow over every single open notebook.

I spent fifteen minutes tending the notes doing what I could to salvage them. I don't really know why I was bothering at this point – they were already hopelessly damaged and anything I did then was not going to be able to fix that. I had them mostly memorized, at least, but I was compelled by laziness to not spend two weeks reconstructing something that I had already made. It was a welcome break when mother, carrying a load of towels up to the bathroom, let out a tensed squeek when she saw the ink stained towel next to the sink.

“DANTE!”

Ah yes, that word... how many times have I heard it said like that, particularly from mother? Yet even after all those times over all those years of my life, it never fails to strike the same fear into me as the first time I heard her yell it.

I jumped, startled, and turned eyes wide in fear to look at her, veins bulging, as she dropped her load of towels next to the bathroom door.

“Yes?” I asked sheepishly, knowing I would face execution tomorrow for whatever crime I had absentmindedly committed.

She gave me a deathly glare. Without a word, she reached out and lifted the once yellow now black microfiber towel which rested on the sink's counter.

“Oh... Well, hehe... you know...” I timidly started “You could just... run some water over it to get the ink out? I mean... it worked for my notes here....” Mother was not happy. “Oh shoot.” A more abrasive sound alike for this word would have been more appropriate for this situation had it not been my mother standing right there.

Not a syllable was uttered by her. She telekinetically lifted the towel, turned and left, leaving me there knowing I was well and truly dead. I was only still alive at that moment because my body had been so immediately expunged from the realm of the living that it had been knocked dumb and therefore oblivious to that it was no longer alive. If you have had your mother angry at you, then you understand this state of purgatory.

I was hesitant at first, sitting next to the dropped pile of laundry listening her vent loudly to father about what I had just done to her towel. She eventually cooled down, and I shyly walked downstairs and poked my head into the kitchen where she was using some ammonia, an excellent improvised explosive material, in a partially successful attempt to remove the ink.

Knowing better than to confront her directly, I approached father and got his opinion on his situation. He jokingly said. “You'de better be glad that you don't live in this house anymore, because you certainly wouldn't be living here after this stunt.” Then again, I never am sure when he is being serious.

Now, I wasn't about to let this situation pass me by without sticking my hoof in my mouth and thoroughly chewing it, so I hesitantly stepped into the kitchen like I were stepping into the den of a bear. Now, in the fireswamp, I spent many tense moments lightfooting around the fierce animals which inhabit the Faust-forsaken place, so I had a lot of practice being quiet. I have become quite good at that sort of thing, my being alive speaking to you right now being ample evidence of this, yet it wasn't good enough to evade my mother's 'Mom Sense' despite her back being turned to me.

“It's not coming out.” She immediately informed, nearly sending me reeling backwards like I had come face to face with a cerberus. Instead, I thought of an ingredient of homemade plastic explosives that just so happens to be very good at removing stains.

“Have you tried using bleach?”

Remember what mentioned about sticking my hoof in my mouth?

Mother glared at me and I smiled like an idiot, hoping that she would take the stupid thing I just said as a joke.

“Oh Ha-ha,” She mocked a laugh. “Why don't I just set it on fire as well? That'll be sure to remove the stain.”

I held my stupid smile, still having not figured out why using bleach on the towel would be bad. “Yeah.” There was a long silence when she returned to washing the towel. I had to find something to say to mitigate this situation, “Umm... Do you think you can get the stain out?”

“I don't know.” Mother gritted her teeth and scrubbed harder with the brush, clearly giving a threat display.

“I'll buy you another set if you can't clean it.”

“That never was a question.”

“I'm glad you trusted me.” The actual meaning of what mother had implied flew strait over my head and would have smacked into a china cabinet if it (the implied meaning, not the china cabinet) was physical.

Mother let out an exacerbated laugh, crossed her forelegs on the rim of the sink, and gently thumped her head against them. “Dante, that wasn't what I meant,” She laughed harder and thumped her head harder against her crossed front legs, “You are impossible. I give up.”

“Oh, you meant I would be buying a new set because you were going to make me do it, right?”

She thumped her head again and said irritably, “Yes!”

“Oh.”

Behind me, I caught a snicker from my little brother and dad. If I hadn't lost my dignity years ago, I would actually have cared that they were watching me make an idiot out of myself – again.

I stood by another minute to watch the stains rinse out, hoping that I wouldn't have to spend a coinpurse worth of money on something as simple as a hoof towel. Eventually, she finally grumbled to herself, wrung the tow, and held out in front of her. “Looks like that's all I'm getting out.”

I knew then was buying a new towel.

I called upon the entirety of my lightfootedness to edge my way out of the room, hoping that mother would not notice me leave.

“Don't think I've forgotten what you promised.”

Shoot! I really need to figure out how she knows what I am doing even when her back is turned to me.

She needed some time to cool down, so I asked father if I could borrow his saddlebags to run to a nearby store in town to replenish my supply of paper. He gave me a curious look, and I promised not to lose or damage his bags in any way. He agreed, and pulled them out of his bedroom for me while I chuckled to myself that I could still modify, augment, or use the bags as a weapon, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The walk to the library was pleasant in the early spring weather, and it went briskly by as I pondered to myself how hard it would be to beat a dragon to death using only a saddlebag filled with paper. With the exchange of a few coins, I now had enough paper and ink to reconstruct the entirety of my notes if I needed to and still have enough left over to make an entire airforce of paper planes. I mused upon the novelty of conquering an empire using only origami as I walked back.

There was a small study adjacent to the living room where my family had resumed playing games. I sat down at the writing desk and began penning some of the more esoteric parts of my research in the fire swamp, lest I forget them later.

“Folds, Rips, and Tears – How to cripple an empire with paper planes.”
That was a good title, now for the preface.

“If the pen is mightier than the sword, then onlookers should wet themselves at the sight of paper.”

A little too pleased with my handiwork, I pulled out another piece of paper and actually began working.

“Edgar's Laughter – Assumed to be mythical until year 950 of the common era, this bulbous shape of the white heads of this fungus strongly resembles a skull when viewed from behind. Growth patterns expand radially outward from the parent mycelium as the fungus expands to produce new bulbs of growth. Commonly, the new growth extends in one particular direction, each new bulb being roughly uniform in size with its neighbors. When viewed at the proper stages, the ring of smaller bulbs might appear to the untrained viewer as a row of teeth, thus further extending the association of this fungus to a dismembered skull. Bulbs mature into large, multichamber spore pods which, when disturbed, release a cloud of gray spores similar to disturbed wood fire ash but the particles are finer and more uniform in size...

This was going to be a long night of writing, but at least the subject was interesting.

I continued writing well into the night until I fell asleep with my head on the desk.

At some point, I awoke to the smell of smoke in the air. For a few confused moments, I blearily believed myself to be back researching in the fire swamp having fallen asleep doing some important task. I sat back up in my chair, my back and neck stiff, and slowly recognized my surroundings. I was back home, yet I was choking on smoke and heard the distinctive crackle of fire, making me almost certain that I was either dreaming of having some sort of hallucination. Either way, I realized that I should be working, so I tried to awaken myself.

Everything stayed the same.

Suddenly, I was jolted to life by a shot of adrenaline and snapped my head in the direction I heard the crackling come from.

Fire!

My body was in my parents' room awakening them before my mind could catch up.

“Mom, Dad, Fire!” I yelled, shaking them.

He slowly roused, then shot strait up in bed, eyes wide. Mother followed suit and they both were out of bed in mere seconds.

It was then my younger siblings' began screaming for help.

We froze in soul rending horror as our eyes searched the ceiling above for the source of the screams, barley audible over the roar of fire. Judging by how the roar had grown from the softer crackle of only a few seconds ago, I realized that the fire was spreading ravenously. I didn't even give my parents time to break from their frozen stupor where they stood, transfixed at the ceiling for precious seconds. I grabbed them telekinetically and pushed them to the door of their room, breaking them from the hypnotic terror they were gripped in.

They ran out in front of me into the main livingroom. A fierce orange blazed from up the stairwell adjacent to the livingroom, sending my body into cold shock. “Windy! Tink!” My mother's terrified scream stood my hair on end, something about the yell making this nightmare suddenly more real.

I bolted into action, charging to the stars but falling loose in the legs when I looked up and was blinded by heat and light.

“I've been through hell and back, almost literally, I can handle this.” I assured myself, remembering the months of preparation I had made before delving into the fire swamp. I turned to mother who was shifting her weight frantically between her legs as she looked up the stairwell. I yelled, “Get out of here, get help.”

Father was a half second from bolting up the stairs in front of me, but I reached out and caught him before he threw himself into the flames. “No, I can handle this.”

“No.. you..” His face went from incredulous to understanding. “Go, Now!”

I didn't bother replying as I closed my eyes and focused a spell that would give me basic protection from fire. Spellcasting isn't my thing – I've never had any kind of special ability that set me apart, but I had learned this spell for if I was ever in a tight spot while doing research at my most recent venue.

My horn was enveloped in its normal pale carmine color as I drew my mind away from the immediate threat and focused upon the building blocks of the spell. The heat on my face and body was intense as the spell began to fall into place and my body was enveloped in a tight orange aura, not unlike an ethereal skin, which expanded outward from my horn. As the skin spell slid over my body, it cast a cool shadow over the regions it protected like I were holding a physical barricade between me and the flames.

I had managed to hold this spell for several minutes while practicing it, and then for a full seven minutes the one time before that I had needed it. I could do this.

I had to do this.

Once I had the spell fully formed, I locked it in place with the most stable binding I knew and took several deep breaths. One small problem with this spell is that, though it protects you from the heat, you can still walk into the middle of the fire then instantly suffocate. Holding my breath and batting the smoke out of my eyes, I charged up the stairs where blinding light glowed menacingly.

This was like no fire I had ever been through, my spell which had worked perfectly every time before, was letting an uncomfortable amount of heat pass into my body as I reached the top of the stairs. Suddenly, I was eye to eye with a flower of fire, and I am not speaking metaphorically. Literally, it was a flower made out of fire. Its stem and leaves were hot orange tipped with white while its bloom was an indescribable cobalt blue licked with traces of purple at the tips. And it was hot – very hot.

Despite my shield, I felt my skin begin to blister in its presence in the half second I stopped to understand what I had just seen. The bloodcurtaling screams of my sister snapped me back to reality and I charged into her bedroom.

There was the pungent stench of burnt hair, hers and mine, and then another scream, worse than the last.

My eyes jumped to where she thrashed about on the ground and-

Great Celestia! Her wings were on fire!

My heart stopped despite my body leaping to her as she thrashed about in the only corner of the room not burning, futilely trying to flap the fire from herself and screaming all the while. I tackled her to the ground and bear hugged her to snuff the fire. She only screamed louder.

I pulled Windy up and focused my skin spell to flow onto her. It didn't work and instead, the entire spell failed, bathing us both in scorching heat.

“You're okay, you're okay.” I hugged her and comforted her as she cried in fear. I was stalling for time, trying to regain the stamina to cast the spell again so I could cast it on her and carry her out. It didn't matter what happened to me; I was aware by this point that all of this was my fault.

Suddenly, my eyes fell upon a window. Without a moment's hesitation, I hit it with the hardest telekinetic slam I could muster, which was just enough to blow out every shard of glass and dislodge the wooden frame. “I'm going to levitate you out and down.”

“Okay...” her teenage voice replied with sound of a much younger child.

Her body was enveloped in my magic and I strained to lift her out the window, but lifting her weight was within my capability. I could have managed levitating her out, I really could have, but the floor at the top of the stairs caved in the moment she was out of the window, which startled me and I lost my grip.

I heard her scream, and I knew she fell at least fifteen feet to the stone alleyway below, but I couldn't hear the ensuing dull thud because of the raging fire. Between me and the window was flaming carpet and floorboards, I couldn't run over to see if she was okay. I needed to tell Dad she was out there, but I couldn't do that until I had recast my fire resistant skin, which I feared was outside my stamina and concentration to do.

I closed my eyes and tried to block out the chaos surrounding me as I slid into rebuilding the spell. The closest thing I can liken the difficulty of this to is solving a four variable second order differential equation using a Laplace Transform and partial fraction decomposition.

I failed and tried again, then failed again.

The only benefit is that for simpler spells like this one, you are solving the same problem over and over again so that, even if you don't understand it, you can memorize the steps and eventually muddle through it.

That's what happened the third time I cast the spell.

My body again was physically cool again, and I charged out of the room to the top of the stairwell.

The floor had collapsed completely in that area of the house, and continued to do so at an alarming pace, but that proved to be the break I needed. The fiery blossom had fallen into the basement where it had grown larger and produced an unbearable heat which pierced my shield despite being a full story and half below me.

Carefully, I balanced across the gaping hole upon two floorbeams which had remained largely intact until I was on the other side of the foyer at the top of the stairwell and standing at my little brother's door.

“TINK!” I yelled reaching his door. He always locked his door because he didn't like his siblings barging in on him. “TINK! YOU IN THERE?” I yelled, my lungs burning as they filled with smoke. “I NEED YOU TO OPEN THE DOOR!” Why did he have to lock the door!?!

No reply. I couldn't wait for a reply. In many places, the door had already been burned away, and I could see where the fire had spread into his room.

Even now as the door burned, I couldn't get through. Unlocking the door from the other side with my telekinesis was out of the question – I have never been good enough to grab something I don't have direct line of sight with my normal vision, my extra senses just aren't that strong.

I am strong, however.

I turned and bucked the door. My hind legs were powerful, they had always served me well. This time was no different as the door splintered. I kicked at the where the wood connected to the bottom hinge. The door splintered more, breaking clean off at the bottom hinge and tearing loose at the two above. It was enough to dislodge the door's bolt and let it swing open.

I coughed, hard, and looked in to see my brother collapsed on the floor in the far corner, laying motionless.

My blood turned to ice.

I didn't even check if the floor was safe as I rushed to his side. I wish I had.

It caved in underneath my weight by the time I was halfway across the room. I screamed as my body punched through the fragmented, burning wood and plunged into the room below. I was fortunately stopped from falling all the way through when my shoulders caught in the hole and I strained my front legs to hold me in.

My skin spell does nothing to protect from punctures, so sharp splinters of the wood cut long gashes into my skin and muscle. Further, those splinters which were hot embers punched through the protective layer and into my flesh, sering me – the spell does nothing to stop heat that is already inside of it.

I was in serious pain, but my body was so high on adrenaline that it only served to rally my strength to first save my brother and then get myself out.

I pulled myself out of the hole, digging some shards of wood deeper into me than I would have liked, but if I didn't press the initiative, both my brother and I would die anyway, so it had to be done.

Once I was out, I stood and plucked several very large pieces from me using my magic, not noticing the pain as they came out leaving behind inch deep punctures in me. I charged over to my brother who was – Thank Celestia – still breathing, and cradled him using my telekinesis. I charged to the window that pointed out towards the street and began lowering him down to the ground.

Both my parents were outside along with many of the neighbors as they all stared up in awe at the inferno which was the house.

“Windy's in the alleyway, go make sure she's safe!” I yelled at no-one in particular, making sure they heard me. Dad and two of our neighbors immediately ran out view into the alley as Tink safely reached the ground and was immediately scooped up by Mom.

She looked up at me, eyes frantic, and yelled, “Now it's your turn, get out!”

I looked down at her and then at the ground below. I hesitated, knowing that Mom might not be able to catch me with her magic. This being a townhouse in a city, there was no first story roof to get onto; it was a plummet to the cobblestone two stories below. It was a long jump, and I couldn't telekinetically lift myself down. Technically, when you lift something or someone, their weight is transferred into the floor you stand on so energy is conserved. Trying to lift yourself telekinetically with basic level spells like what I know is like trying to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

“I think I can make it back down the stairs, I'll be right back to jump if I can't.”

Mom looked pensive and was about to to say something as I turned and left the window.

I made it across the room to the stairs by moving around the edges of the room where there still was support for the floor. I poked my head around the door frame and looked into the foyer at the top of the stairs.

It's funny how in moments of pure terror where every thought counts, you still have frivolous little distractions which, given even a slightly different situation, might delay you long enough that they get you killed. I spent more than a few seconds with an odd sense of realization of how the house was laid out, never having given it much thought until the holes in the walls had been created by the fire, letting me see into several different rooms at once.

Snapping back to the moment, I decided it would be better to chance jumping out of the window onto the ground than to try to get out normally.

I turned and went back the way I came when a lurch in the floor threw me to the ground. Before I could stand or even react, the entire floor gave way and I fell into the dining room, landing painfully on my side and cracking several ribs. If I had been only a few seconds faster, I would have made it to the window.

Instead, now I was immobilized with pain, having been winded when my lungs already didn't have enough air. Then, my spell started breaking.

Drawing back to the math analogy I made earlier, when your spell is breaking, it is like you just solved the problem incorrectly and now have less than five seconds to both figure out what is wrong and how to fix it.

I am not that deft, but I managed to reinforce the foundations of the spell that held the field around most of my body and wiped clean what I couldn't reconstruct in a few seconds. Basically, this served as a soft reset as the spell essentially was recast without the cost on my stamina.

The only problem was that I was forced to wipe half of the control portions of the spell, unshielding half my body. Everything from the naval down (minus one extremely tender part of my anatomy which I explicitly saved) was unshielded, and I happened to by lying in the middle of a fire.

If my body would have let me, I would have screamed as my skin instantaneously cauterized, but I was still winded. This most likely saved my life since I was lying in a fire and breathing in anything would mean breathing in a mouthful of deadly air. I didn't have the air to waste on screaming.

I managed to hobble out of the fire and drag myself to safety using my font legs, but not before my hind ones were thoroughly cooked.

Fortunately, where I crashed through the ceiling into the kitchen was close to the front door which was wide open. I somehow found the strength to push past the pain which made me want to just die and, on shaky legs, I hobbled out the kitchen door and into the front foyer. I briefly made eye contact with someone outside, then, I collapsed and passed out.”

“Someone dragged me out of the front door, and the house eventually burned completely. It was several days before I was fully conscious. By then, my hind legs had been amputated.”

“Oh.” I gasped. “Dante, I... I'm so sorry for you. Are your siblings alright?”

“Yeah, mostly,” he replied, his face for the first time turning truly melancholy. “Tink had a lot of burns, but not as many as me. Windy though...” he drew a hard, wavering breath. “She broke a lot of bones in her fall, some of them in her wings. They haven't healed right yet, we don't know if they ever will, and she has enough burns that many of her feathers aren't coming back in. From what Dad has told me, she's seeing a specialist who is good with pegasus wings, but he sad that she may need to get artificial implants to replace some of the feathers that don't grow back.”

“She'll be able to fly again, right?”

Dante sighed deeply. “She'll... Yes... maybe, we really don't know. Bless her heart though, she's been a little jewel the entire time. So bright and optimistic, she says that she's fine even if she can't fly again.” As Dante spoke of his sister, I could see such a heartbreaking twinkle in his eyes that told me how much he loved his siblings and how much their injuries pained him. “The times I've seen her since the fire, she's been so bright and peppy even in all those casts. Those times where she was at my bedside smiling and joking with me, I could forget that we both were wrapped head to hoof in casts and bandages. I could~” Dante's voice broke. “I could forget it was my fault. It's my fault her wings are like they are, it's my fault Tink is covered in scars.”

“It was that flower in the stairwell that caused this... wasn't it?”

Dante nodded with grim affirmation. “I found those seeds in a pile of ash, couldn't identify them, so I packed them in my bag and carried on with my research.” Dante stomped his hoof, “Why wasn't I more careful? Those were Phoenix Orchid seeds, they lie dormant until they get damp, then start making heat. Blasted things burn everything around them to ash, feeding off the heat and fertilizing the soil with the ash of the plants around them. Except, these seeds bloomed in the house, underneath a pile of laundry that served as kindling.” He swore again and stomped his hoof harder. “If I hadn't been so careless, I wouldn't have picked those infernal things up! If I had been more patient, I would have waited for the storm to pass before barging outside! If I hadn't been so forgetful, I would have moved those seeds some place where it wouldn't have started a fire! If I hadn't been so lazy, I would have gone home and it would have been my place which burned down instead!”

“But you risked your life to save your siblings. That was very brave.”

Sighing, Dante let his head droop. “I know. I've had three months of monotony laying in hospital rooms to come to terms with this, and I had, at least I think so. But you're the first pony I've really talked to about this, and I'm letting a lot out a once.” He exhaled, “And yesterday, I spent some time with my sister again. The bandages were off her wings, and I could see how they were physically deformed by her injuries.” He rubbed a hoof through his mane, “I haven't been able to get that picture out of my mind. I keep seeing her, standing there, smiling at me and our older brother with those bare spots on her wings where I could see her mangled... I don't even know what you call the fleshy part of a wing underneath the feathers.”

“How is she handling it?”

“Wonderful. Simply wonderful. Every day I see her, she's all smiles and not for one moment have I ever seen her the least bit sad for herself. She loved flying, but she's said she's thankful to be alive, and if losing her wings was what it took, then she's content with everything.”

My throat tightened as a particular feeling of self loathing took root in my guts and I suddenly felt childish for becoming so absorbed in my own problems. Momentarily, I remembered the little pegasus foal I occasionally saw in therapy, though she wasn't Dante's sister. I never once saw her cry, even as I was driven to the point of tears because I was unable to walk.

I couldn't form words for several seconds as my mind was momentarily staggered, but I eventually managed to cough out a reply to Dante. “She's been through a lot, like you I guess. How's the rest of your family?”

“Well... Tink hasn't spoken to me since the fire. Both him and Dad are really angry at me, but otherwise are fine. Tink's staying with our aunt where Mom is at. Windy went home with Dad so she could come visit me: Mom and I aren't on the best of terms right now, and she doesn't want Windy to ever talk to me again.”

Shards of glass settled in my stomach, “Your parents... they're not... divorcing? Right?”

“They had an argument about me a few days ago – needed some time to cool their heads before they tore eachothers' throats out. Don't worry. I don't think it is anything permanent. Dad said it was just so they didn't say anything too hurtful to eachother.”

“I'm glad. I couldn't imagine...” I shook my head, cringing and pulling a sharp breath at a spike of pain struck me.

“You okay?”

“Agh...” I was breathless for a moment, “Yes it's just... well you know. There's always pain, you get used to it, but sometimes it gets really bad and catches you off guard... Sorry.”

“Don't be, I understand. Okay now?”

Wearily, I blinked my eyes and choked out, “I've got my guard back up. Let's keep talking, get my mind off it. What... agh... what was the argument about?”

“That's kind of the kicker. Mom's really angry at me for nearly killing Tink, Windy, and to a small extent, myself. After it was clear I was going to survive my injuries, she fell away and has barely said anything to me. What she has said, though, kind of makes me wish she just stopped talking altogether.”

“What did she say?”

“...” Dante didn't reply.

“Oh no, that was too much. I didn't ask. I'm sorry.”

Dante flashed a sad smile. “Don't worry. If I wasn't open to answering questions, I wouldn't have mentioned it. It's just... hard to acknowledge. Just give me a minute.”

“Okay. Can we... sit? I don't feel well.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. How's that bench right over there?”

“That's good.” It was a short distance to the bench, onto which we both climbed with some difficulty: I because the intense headache had come with nausea and a slight loss of balance, and Dante because of his limited mobility in his hind legs. Finding something about our shared plight to be uplifting, I laughed grimly and said, “We're quite the sight, aren't we?”

“These sure are clunky.” He said, looking at his prosthetics as he struggled to get them in a comfortable position where he lay. I myself sat on my haunches, propping myself upright with my front legs planted on the edge of the bench between my knees and letting my hind legs stretch off the bench. I felt like I could lose my balance at any time. “Well, you do just about as well with them as I've been managing with my real ones these last few weeks.” I looked to his legs, then to his horn. I subconsciously rubbed the empty space where my horn should be and where, instead, a coal hot pain glowed. “What did we do to deserve this?” I sighed to myself.

“Isn't it ironic? I spent three months in a fire swamp, sleeping in tents, nearly getting blown up in firejets, but didn't get hurt, then, I nearly die in a housefire when I got back.”

“That is a bit ironic. Come to think about it, I lost my-” I couldn't bring myself to say 'lost my horn. “When I got hurt... it happened at a foalhood favorite picnic spot.”

Dante chuckled. “It's settled then, it's too dangerous to be someplace safe. We all should start living in the most deadly place we can think of, and everything will be okay.”

“I don't know. I mean, you still have the option of using protection spells.”

“Hmm.” He held a hoof to his chin. “I don't know any of those spells.”

“What? I thought you said you knew a fireshield?”

“I mean, I know that one, but that's a ward and not a protection spell.”

I furrowed my brow. “Well, yes, I know, but in layman's terms, it is a protection- oh.” I blushed then said in a raised tone, “That Wasn't What I Meant!”

“Sure it was, you just didn't know it!”

My face burning, I turned my head away and glared at Dante out of the corner of my eye while he chuckled to himself. Filthy minded gutterbrain.

Chuckling a bit more to himself, Dante sighed and stopped smiling. “Well, as I was saying.. Mom told me that she didn't want to see me again, that she didn't want me around my siblings. At least, not until I had become more responsible.”

I thought to myself what it would be like to go through his recovery with one of my parents so angry at me, and I suddenly felt my heart go out to him. Face still uncomfortably warm, I was drawn back to the somber conversation we had been having before. “I'm so sorry.”

“She was right, you know,” Dante wistfully said. “I seem to be a magnet for trouble.”

“Really? Aside from an obscene sense of humor, you don't seem like it.”

“Well, I never do anything 'illegal', but I've done a lot of stupid things. When I was nine, I mixed some household chemicals to see what would happen; nearly killed myself because they were ammonia and bleach. Two years later, I found out how to make explosives using detergent and some other things. Tested the concoction in the alleyway and blew out every window on the block.”

I snickered. “Seriously?”

“Yeah.” Dante laughed back.

“I've done a few stupid things too.”

“Like what?”

I looked around as if someone was watching, then said in a low voice, “I've always had a fascination with warspells.”

His eyebrows lifted. “A meek little thing like you? You sure don't look the part of a battlemage.”

“Oh, no. I'd never be good at that, but...” I grinned, “It's always such a rush going over those old tomes, reading their contents. I've always fancied the air and ice spells.”

“Ever cast one? Cuz, if you haven't, then I don't really know why you are bringing up reckless actions,” he chided in jest.

“Ehehe...” I rubbed the back of my neck and looked nervously about, “Well, you know, I should really be careful about what I say in public.”

“But you didn't answer my question.”

“I can trust you, right?”

Dante returned with a wry grin.

“A year ago, I was visiting the Canterlot Royal Library for some research when I decided to just start browsing the archives. After all, it is the largest library in the kingdom and some ponies can only dream about going. Anyway, I was passing by the different rows of shelves, pulling a book here and there and skimming the summary at the start of each one. Eventually, I ended up wondering through the older sections of the library where a lot of old, outdated tomes are stored. I doubt people go back in there very often because it is only open to those with a class 4W practitioner's license, or else are a graduate of Princess Celestia's School and have a perfect tract record – everything was kinda off limits. Anyway, I came across an entire shelf of books with dark titles. Things like, 'Calciphus - A Mortician's Guide to Bone Magic', 'Eternal Flames, the Consuming Fire', and other stuff like that.”

“So naturally, you snatched all those tomes up and took them home, right?”

“No. Never!” I was suddenly serious, “There's no such thing as benign dark arts, no matter how mundane they might seem. I wouldn't ever tamper with anything like that, but I did find a book with a safe title. It was called 'A Whirlwind Tour of Aer and its Components'.”

“So what did you do with it? It sounds like a pretty normal magic guide.”

“That's what I thought too, and so must have the librarian because she let me take it home, but that wasn't the case. The entire thing was an instruction manual for, eh... dismantling your enemies with Air and Wind magic. There was a spell that let you conjure a scythe made of compressed air that could throw tornadoes. Oh! And another that created a compressed sphere that explodes on impact when hurtled at the enemy. It has the power of a small bomb and was said to be able to dismember violently!”

Dante leaned away from me. “You ever cast those?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why do you think I am mentioning them?”

“And how do you know the airbomb dismembers?”

“I told you, I read it.”

“Just read it?”

“Yes.” I said, barely keeping a smile from breaking through my mock threatening face while Dante feigned being scared. “I got pretty good wielding the scythe, and that thing was sharp too. Could split small rocks in half if I tried hard enough. Then, I got the bright idea to cast the airbolt, as I called it, and try to slice it in half. It exploded in my face and left my ears ringing and nose bleeding. I was too afraid to cast it since.”

Dante broke out laughing and I quickly joined in. “Agh... It hurts to laugh!” I grunted while grabbing my head, still chuckling and altogether not too put off by the pain. Altogether, I think we found the moment a little too funny, but it was a delightful release from the dour atmosphere which had been settling upon us a few minutes before.

“Hehe...” Dante snorted, “You sure we aren't related?”

“Who knows.” I snickered, then became serious. “Look, you can't tell anyone about this. Even with my credentials, spells like that are to be read for reference only. I have a Class 3-General, 4-Special permit, and war magic isn't covered in that. If it gets out that I was using those spells, I could have my degree revoked and-” I stopped short.

“And what?”

“And, well, my ability to use magic taken away. But it's a little late for that.”

“Eh, I don't know. I'd like to see some of those paperpushers spin their gears over taking away magic when that's already happened. I bet they'd just sit there with steam coming out of their ears till they fell over.”

“Maybe.” I realized what Dante said was supposed to be funny, but I didn't feel like laughing.

“Whelp, anyway...” he continued lightly. “Long story short, because I've done so many stunts like, well, splitting an airbolt with a scythe,” he gestured to me, “my mother doesn't trust me around my younger siblings. Honestly, I don't know how much I can fault her on that point. I guess I need some time to let things simmer down between us before I talk to her again.”

“She is your mom. Surely she can't give you the cold shoulder forever.”

“Yeah. I'm sure everything will work out fine... But I guess it's time that I finally got my act together.”

“Hopefully she'll warm up to you again and everything will be better soon.”

“I hope so.”

We sat beside eachother for a few more minutes before one of the nurses whose task it was to watch over patients as they walked the track came over to us. “Just checking in, are the two of you okay?”

“Just resting,” Dante answered.

“Actually, I feel pretty lousy right now. I want to go back to my room and rest.”

“What's the issue?”

“Severe headache, nausea.”

“What's your name so I can get in touch with the nurse on duty?”

“Castor Star.” I turned to my friend, “I'm sorry Dante, I really feel like I need to sleep this one off.”

“It's fine,” he replied warmly. “Will you be back tomorrow?”

“I don't know.”

Within a few minutes, my therapist came with a wheelchair, helped me into it, and was kind enough to fetch some paper and a pencil so Dante and I could give eachother our addresses. That done, we bade eachother goodbye and I was returned to my room.

How many times in the last three weeks had I been anxiously awaiting some information, prognosis, result, or something else of dire importance, only to become increasingly stressed and overburdened by my imaginings of the worst possible outcome? I at the time would have rightly guessed no more than a half dozen times, but the nervous anticipation of each instance spilled over and filled in the gaps in my memory such that the lines were blurred and I could only remember a perpetual dark cloud which hung over my head.

This marked yet another such instance in my life where I bristled with worry and dark speculations, only to find myself a nervous wreck by the time the news actually came.

Doctor Apple, being a specialist with unicorns with magic problems, had told me the day prior that a prognosis was in the works, thus justifying the countless tests, the multiple humming machines I had been hooked to, and the four magic transfusions I had endured where part of my energy was captured and sent off for testing. Now, my parents and I sat in my hospital room, eager, nervous, and altogether ready to hear whatever news there was to come.

The door clicked, my ears picked up, and I saw the doctor entering the room. “Good evening,” he said.

“Hello Doctor Gurney,” I answered with a tight chest. I had been hoping Doctor Apple would be the one to give me the news – I liked her – but someone else had come instead. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes.” His single word baited me to listen for more, yet he turned away with nothing further to add as he pulled some paperwork off of his clipboard and neatly set them on my bedside table. Taking his fair time, he then flipped back several pages on clipboard, muttering something to himself as he quickly read them over. He finally addressed us again. “As you know, three days ago you suffered a severe seizure resultant from the injuries you had sustained several weeks ago. At the time, we had correctly assumed it to be caused by the misfiring of your praecantor cortex due to over saturation of thaumic energy; something caused by your distinct lack of a horn.”

“Thank you for reminding me,” I groused.

“Right, well... As I was saying, a unicorn's horn is singularly responsible for controlling and directing the energy harnessed by your body; however, that means you have no way to regulate how quickly excess magic is radiated away. In nine out of ten cases of keraectomy, the result is an opening of a pony's thaumic reserves to the outside environment, causing an equalization of energy. Typically, this means a slight weakness of body and sickliness for the pony in question, but little more of consequence as they have slight deficiency in their natural magic field.

“However, in your case, it appears just enough of your horn's root, or vis radix, has survived to maintain closure of your thaumic reserves, meaning a buildup of energy is inevitable. With normal unicorns, the rate of energy buildup would lead to T.H.S.S. or Thaumaturgical Hyper-Retention Stress Syndrome by no earlier than four weeks, but in your case, because you have spent your life developing your spellcasting, your body is accustomed to generating a very generous amount of energy.

“We've calculated that at the rate of buildup in your body, you would have reached the threshold for suffering this syndrome within only a few days if you could only store the typical amount of magical energy. However, again, you have trained yourself to have what is, frankly, a staggeringly large reserve of energy; something that has very likely saved your life given the rate of energy generation. Nonetheless-” He adjusted his coat. “You still have reached the threshold for T.H.S.S. far earlier than the average unicorn, at which point your praecantor cortex became saturated with energy and began operating improperly, resulting in what we believe to have been a widespread seizure which would have killed you if we had not gotten some of the excess magic drawn away from your body using a series of energy diffusers.”

“Killed?” Dad asked with eyebrows raised.

The doctor nodded grimly. “Yes. Because of the large amounts of energy present in Castor's body, the thaumic energy began overflowing into her regulatory systems and interfered with the very sensitive magic which, in addition to her nervous system, helps her body keep her heart pumping and lungs breathing in.”

Voice wavering, I asked, “This is going to happen again, isn't it?”

“That is one of the reasons I am here.” Doctor Gurney produced from his pocket a small cloth bag with pull-strings. Pulling the neck of the bag open, he gently pulled out a small, torrid shaped piece of metal from it.

“What is that?” I asked.

“A magic siphon.”

I stared at the small amulet held in the doctor's grip. As far as magical devices go, this one looked completely mundane. With no ornate decoration or sense of aestetic, it was a simple, bronze colored ring with violet glass filling the center. At its edges were small brackets like that on a watch where bands attached at the edges and, said bands, permitted the siphon to be strapped onto one's head almost like a cycloptic set of aviator's goggles.

“So, this will pull away my magic when I put it on? If I use it, I won't have to worry about T.H...”

“T.H.S.S. And yes, this will alliveate the symptoms. With proper use, this will perfectly augment your natural radiation of magic.”

“This feels so... wasteful. Just throwing away my magic like this.” I could be using this to cast spells... but it's just going to be wasted.

“I realize what it must seem like, but this is magic that would have been dissipated by your horn anyway. It isn't that much energy after all, and you need to do this, otherwise, you would suffer another saturation event in no sooner than a week and would most likely die.”

Such a waste of ability. Squandering energy like this. I shook my head to clear it; I needed to focus on something that actually matteredd and ask questions while I could. “This will keep me from having seizures?”

“Yes, assuming that you are in fact suffering from T.H.S.S. and that you use this like I am prescribing you. However, this will alleviate other symproms of T.H.S.S as well. The most immediate will be the headaches and nausea you are suffering from. Mind you that your discomfort will not be removed in it's entirety as there are other factors causing the symptoms I just mentioned: your concussion, the phantom sensations you've mentioned, and perhaps even some of your medication, but I believe this will be a tremendous help for you.”

“Really?” I said, suddenly feeling a jolt of enthusiasm, “You really think it will help that much?”

“We'll just have to see.” Placing the device gently on the bedside table, Dr. Gurney picked up the bedtray I often took meals on, unfolded it, and set it over my lap. Upon it, he sat the small stack of paperwork he had previously sat upon the bedside table. “This is the release form for the siphon. All you need to do is sign it, and I can begin instructing you on how to use the device.” The doctor pulled out a pen and set it on the table. I picked it up, holding it in my mouth and glancing over the contents of the page as I skimmed each paragraph, flipping back through pages to read them as well.

Suddenly, my eyes fell upon one number and the pen slipped from my grip, clattering to the table. “I-I-I can't...” were the only words I could utter.

“Castor, what is it?” Dad asked, pulling in and looking at the sheet that had left me in a stupor. “Oh.” He immediately jerked his head to the doctor and demanded, “Is this the right price?”

He nodded grimly.

“No, it can't be. Surely there is some mistake!”

“As per procedure, I checked the papers as I came in. I am certain that is the correct price.”

“It's so expensive~” My voice shook so much to be almost unintelligible.

Doctor Gurney nodded. “I know.”

“C-c-can-I rent it? Or... let you keep it and I come when-when I need it?”

“You must understand that after this device has been used, it becomes imbued with your magic, after which, it will not work on anyone else. It, in every sense, becomes yours once you use it, so the hospital cannot allow you to rent it.”

“What about alternatives? Isn't there anything that doesn't cost this much?” Dad asked.

“The only other device in the hospital capable of radiating away latent magic is a MEV, which costs ten times as much and is not suited for prolonged use because it causes severe deterriation in the spell nexus which helps regulate your bodily functions. Further, it can only handle a fraction of the energy that would need to be dissipated, making it inferior to this siphon in every imaginable way.”

Choking on a knot in my throat, I managed enough control to utter, “I can't afford this.” Mom and Dad pulled close around me and Mom whispered to me, “It's okay, we'll pay for it, honey. Don't worry, we'll make sure you can get it.” I latched my front legs around them and embraced them for all I was worth, and then some. I didn't want to let them pay. I couldn't! They've done so much for me, raised me, loved me, paid for so much... But I couldn't imagine forcing them to lose so much of their money on my behalf when they had nothing worldly to gain of it. But... I didn't have enough money to pay for this either, and I knew I would die without it. I Had To Have It, and there wasn't a single thing I could do otherwise.

Hugging them tighter, I couldn't utter enough thanks to tell them what they meant to me, so I didn't even bother and instead held onto them for just a little bit longer.

A minute later, with misty eyes and a tight chest, I turned my attention back to the release form on the table and slowly picked up the pen. The price, though just another figure among a field of ink, stood out as brightly as the sun in the noon sky. All I had to do was scribble my name a few times over a few pages, yet as I leaned in to bring pen to paper, it was like sticking myself with a needle. I flipped back to the page with the price, a knot forming in my gut as my eyes once again were magnetized to the price which amounted to over six years full pay at my current job – a job I was no longer able to perform.

I pulled away.

“I can't.”

“Castor, don't worry,” Dad assured. “We'll find some way to pay for this.”

'Some way to pay for this'. Oh Sweet Celestia! He doesn't know how we will be able to afford it. The words jumbled around in my head as the realization struck me. “It costs as much as a house... I can't do that to you! It's not fair!”

“Castor, it's okay.” Mom put a hoof on my shoulder and gave me a caring look. “We will get through this just fine.”

“Yes, it's okay,” Dad added.

I whimpered and picked the pen back up, leaned in to write, but failed to keep my resolve. Casting a dirty look at the doctor, I rolled the pen to one side of my mouth and growled, “Do you want me to sign in blood as well? Cause' I'm already selling my soul.”

“Castor!” Dad scolded.

Doctor Gurney looked offended. “These siphons are not all that common,” he chided in a gruff tone. “You should count yourself lucky that we have this one, because it's the only one we have. If we didn't, it might take weeks to get another and by then you most likely would be dead.”

I felt like I had been kicked in the gut, but worse, I felt violated. I HAD to have this, which meant I was going to commit to paying for it no matter what the cost. But it was so expensive...

Taking a breath, I steadied myself and wrote my name in the blanks. A stifling chill flushed through my body as I finished the last letter and gazed at my name on the line, signifying that I bore responsibility to pay for the siphon. It felt like I had been kicked again. “That's it.” I said.

The doctor picked up the device by the strap and began loosening a knot. “I know it was an impossible decision, but you had to make it. Your life is worth a lot more than what it costs to get this.”

Somehow, that statement made me feel like a hostage who had just paid an exorbitant ransom. The doctor gripped the siphon at the end of his hoof and told me to unstrap and remove my protective helmet. I complied and set it on the nightstand.

“Alright, so do you see the red band that runs along the circumference of the ring here?” The band was on one of the flat sides of ring.

“Yes.”

“This edge needs to be face down against your forehead and should be placed directly where your horn was, directly over your praecantor cortex.” The doctor delicately placed the siphon over the bandaged part of my head where my horn had once been and then fastened the band behind my head. “Until we replace the bone in your skull, you will need to be very careful using this because the only thing between your brain and everything outside is a thin layer of skin we grafted over the injury.”

“Okay. I will be.”

He stepped back. “Alright, the rest should be very simple for you. All you do is channel magic like you are casting a spell, except you Do Not want to structure the magic into a spell because you don't have a horn to sculpt it. Doing that will only put strain on your body because it is expecting the feedback from your missing horn.”

“What happens if I do try to cast a spell?”

“You will experience a sensation very similar to motion sickness, except accompanied with intense, burning pain. The onset will be nearly instantaneous.”

“Right. Can I try using it now?”

“One last thing, then certainly. As you focus your energy, it taps the reservoir that your horn normally taps, and then dissipates it. Have you ever tried to cast too much magic at once?”

“Yes.” I momentarily was reminded of one of the war spells I had told Dante about.

“Then you know that a unicorn's horn can only process so much magic in a given period. The same is true for this device, though it can process a lot more because in the same period because it isn't shaping or sculpting the magic like your horn would – it's only dumping it into the surrounding environment. However, since it isn't a part of your body, you will not feel pain when you are using too much magic, so you must use your own good judgment in the amount used. Keep in mind that you don't want to deplete your reserves, just skim off the excess which has been accumulating. Venting out too much will leave you athaumic, which can cause just as many problems as hyper-thaumic.

“Okay.” I felt cold at the thought I could damage this lifeline – or worse, myself – but I assured myself that I could still control my magic well enough to not let that happen. “I can give it a try now?”

Doctor Gurney nodded.

“Alright.” I let a trickle of energy seep from my reserves into the front of my mind. For the past three weeks, an eternity it seemed, since I had been injured, my magic had been stagnating inside of me like stale water held for hours in my mouth. This trickle, though, was not only like spitting the warm, stale water out, but also refreshing like taking a drink of cold, pure water as well.

In response, I let loose a torrent of energy.

“Ah.” I let out a gasp which sounded like a whimper of pain instead of a moan of delight.

“You alright?” Mom asked tensely, but I was too preoccupied to answer as I closed my eyes and rubbed the temples of my skull.

“Mmmm...” I hummed dreamily and smiled. The energy flowing out of me left me feeling like I was receiving a massage of the best kind as much of the pain in my head melted away, leaving the most heavenly of delight in its place.

“Good, good,” The doctor commented. “Looks like that is helping with your headache, isn't it?”

“Mmm hm.” I kept my eyes closed, reveling in the soothing rush pouring out of my body. The sensation was so right. Magic was flowing freely as it should, and in this moment, I felt whole again, almost able to feel my horn and see through my magical senses again.

Stopping, I opened my eyes and looked up at the siphon on my head. “This is wonderful.” Oh, how wonderful indeed, I felt to be positively beaming with happiness.

In that moment, the siphon felt to be worth its steep price.

Chapter 6

Sitting up in my bed, I cradled a small, oaken box in my lap, gently rubbing my hoof over its varnished surface. It was heavy for its size, its sides strong from the thick wood from which it was made. Contained inside, plush cloth swaddled my new siphon, protecting it from damage should the box fall.

“Have you ever wondered what it feels like to hold your own life in your own hooves?” I said to no one in particular as I stared at the box.

“Not before now.” Ivy, who was in the room along with Dante.

“I hadn't before now either... Of course, now I actually know what it feels like. Without this,” I pointed at the box. “I'll die.” I fell silent and leaned back harder into the bed, staring blankly at the box again. After a few minutes passed, I adjusted my position on the bed and carefully moved the box to a different position.

“Do you want me to put it on the table for you?” Ivy asked after a few minutes passed.

“On my nightstand, if you would. Staring at it isn't going to help me.” She came over and took it from my lap. “It was worth it.” I said as she moved my tray of half eaten food to set the box down.

“The siphon?”

“Yes. I feel a lot better now. I'm not good... but I am better.”

“I know you are, otherwise you wouldn't be going home today, but I'm still glad to hear you say that. I'm just ready for my parents to get back so I can leave.” By that point in the day, they had been away for several hours getting some loans from the bank to help cover expenses. After my parents and I had been confronted with the staggering cost of my siphon the day before, we requested a full write up of the costs I had accumulated.

It wasn't pretty.

Altogether, it amounted to six years pay at my current salary, and I still had not had the procedure to replace the hole in my skull.

“I just don't know how I am going to be able to come back from this. When I think about it all, it sometimes make me wish I had never woken up.”

Ivy stood up like she had been bitten. “Don't talk like that Castor!”

“I don't like feeling that way, but that's how I feel right now.” I looked over at the unconscious mare I shared the room with. “Every time I see her, I realize that I could be her. I could have never woken up, and I know I should be happy with what I have been given. But I still fell so empty, like I'm missing an important part of myself and I just can't get over it. I don't know how I am going to keep my position at the CIM not being able to cast magic. I don't know what else I can do with myself.”

“There's more to magic than just casting it. You possess a deep understand magic that so many ponies cannot even hope to grasp. Writing spells is easy for you.”

“Yeah, but that's not what I really know. I mean, I know how to structure a spell as well as anyone, butthat's only half of the equation. I can promise you that when you write a spell and put the different components together, there are always interactions you don't expect. If I can't actively test them while I am writing them, I can't know what those effects are. How am I supposed to compose spells like this?”

“Please,” Ivy scoffed. “Earth Ponies and Pegesi can write spells just like any unicorn can, and they don't have truesight either.”

“And that's my problem now. Scribes and spellwriters are much easier to find than adept spellcasters.” I shook my head and sighed, “And things aren't the same anymore either. I've felt so hazy since this injury; I can't think clearly and everything's just so... dark now that I don't have truesight.”

“I may not be able to fully fathom it, Castor, but I can empathize with losing a sense like that.”

“Same here,” Dante added. “I think I can imagine how unsettling it would be to lose my truesight.”

“Thanks.” My mind slowly drifted back to the financial burden I was suddenly under and I recalled something I had been meaning to ask. “I may need help moving out of my house in a few weeks. I'm not sure I'll have the money to pay rent... or eat.”

“I won't let it come to that,” Ivy said to me. “Not that I will need to. But if I had to, I'd make sure you had a place to stay and as much to eat as you want.”

I wanted to cry again, but I was too drained. I looked to Dante and his prosthetic legs and knew he was in the exact same boat as I was, except he didn't have his parents to help mitigate the cost of his time here. I don't know how long I was lost in thought, but at some point I realized Dante knew I was looking at his injuries. I looked away. “Sorry,” I said and rubbed my my helmet where my horn should be.

“Don't worry. It doesn't bother me.”

“But it bothers me.” I thought in reply, feeling sad for him and myself. I wished I could be as accepting of my own injury as he was of his, but every time someone made eye contact with me or even looked in my direction, I could only think that they were looking at me, at how wrong I looked. I felt exposed, and I knew if I were to catch Dante or Ivy staring at my injury like I had thoughtlessly been looking at his lack of hind legs, I wouldn't have been so gracious.

I looked back to Ivy. “Ivy, thank you for offering me a place to stay... It's just.. I already owe so much to the hospital and my parents... I don't know if I could handle owing something to my best friend as well.”

“Gifts don't leave you owing anything.”

I didn't know how to respond to such generosity, but I found myself smiling, even if only slightly.

She smiled in return.

“I guess the expense of everything ended up helping a bit.” I laughed, but my voice did not convey the pleasant tone I had intended. “I mean, I am going home today because of it... cause', well you know, I can't really afford to stay here anymore.”

“It's more that you don't need to stay here anymore. All the complications of your injury are pretty well under control,” Dante softly corrected. “Your head's had time to heal, and you don't have a bad concussion anymore. Speaking from experience, doctors only want to keep you around until they are sure if something comes up, it will be minor enough that you can get yourself to the hospital.”

“I know. I probably would have been going home sometime soon anyway, but since this came right on the cusp of finding out how much I owe, it feels more like I am running away than walking out.”

“You aren't running away, you're leaving because you don't need to hang around here anymore..”

“Well... speaking of leaving, my parents, Ivy, and I are going to go to a restaurant later today after I get out. Would you like to join us Dante?”

“Which one are you going to?”

“My parents made it seem that going to one of the nicer ones would make me feel better.”

“I would love to go but... eh...” Dante stretched out one of his false hind legs and looked at it, “Restaurants like that tend to cost a couple of legs to eat at, and I don't have any to spare.”

I laughed. I am a terrible pony, but I laughed. I tried to stop, but I snorted loudly which only made my head hurt. Then I realized Dante was leering at me with a paralyzing, deathly glare. “Oh no. Don't be angry at me. I thought you were joki-” Dante's face broke into a wide, toothy grin. He chuckled out and he began laughing harder than I was when I snorted. Though my magic was balanced, it still hurt as a lot when I laughed. For this one moment, I didn't care.

“You ready to go Castor?” Doctor Apple asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I've spent too much time in this room.” I looked to my parents who had brought me my glasses from home while they were out. “I'm ready to go home.”

My mom sat my personal effects on the nightstand and smiled. “We'll step out for a minute to let you dress.”

“Thanks.” They stood by ready to help as I carefully got out of bed which still wasn't easy, but it wasn't hard anymore either. After I had my four hooves on the ground and they could see I was able to handle myself, Doctor Apple pulled the privacy screen shut around my bed.

I slipped out of my hospital gown with more than a little difficulty, but I eventually managed to get it off and place it disheveled on the bed. I donned my glasses which were a unobtrusively thin frame with a set of elongated lenses, not of the ugly circular type which had dominated popularity in decades and centuries passed. It was a challenge unfolding them and placing them on my face given the clumsiness of my hooves, but I avoided breaking them which, I had to conceded to myself, was all I could have hoped for.

Looking in the small mirror which rested on my nightstand, I adjusted the glasses and tried to make my midnight blue mane a little less disheveled. In the end, I tried to tell myself that I didn't look too bad if I overlooked the white helmet protecting my head; however, by my gaunt face and tired eyes, I could tell just by looking at my reflection that I had been through a lot of trauma these past three weeks. Even my light amber coat seemed to be a sickly pale color. I hoped I didn't look so terrible to everyone else, and I tried to hide my haggard looks with another smile, managing to put on a convincing expression. I could only hope Ivy, my parents, and Dante would buy it.

“That will have to work.” I said to myself, eager to be home.

I turned around and pushed through the curtain. “It's time I went home.” I sounded exactly as pleasant as I had hoped I would, and my expression felt spot on. Everyone's faces, excluding Doctor Apple, brightened. A wheelchair sat next to the doctor and I had already decided to myself that I wouldn't argue with her about riding in it. I had been a tough patient to deal with, and it was high time I acted right.

“You've already signed the outpatient papers, so you're ready to go. You've done good, Castor, and I wish you well.” She nodded to me and I sat down in the wheelchair. As I was pushed out of the room, I cast a sidelong glance at the mare who had been my roommate. She lay unconscious like the first day I saw her and I knew that I could have just as easily been her, laying there, asleep, alone. Thank you that I'm awake and not like her. In the back of my mind, I hoped she would wake up soon.

Doctor Apple pushed me out of the room. Nurse Cross stood waiting outside. “Escort her to the main lobby, if you will. Castor, do you think you could walk the distance?”

“Wha-” the question took me off guard for a second. “Yes, Doctor. I think I can.”

“Of course,” Doctor Apple said, then looked at me. “If you'll please stand, Castor. We won't be needing the wheelchair.”

I grinned ear to ear as I set my four hooves down and the nurse pushed the wheelchair back to the kiosk nearby where it was normally kept. “Follow me,” she said when she returned and we started walking down the hallway.

This hospital was a large, grand old building like many others in the city, having long corridors of marble floors and smooth plaster walls with carved stone arches standing boldly at the more prominent intersections. We followed the main hallways into the centuries old center hub with a large, cathedral like lobby with several long desks at the end which were manned by secretaries and clerks. This was the first time I had been in this vast lobby which had once been the main sanctuary of a cathedral before the Church of Faust moved into a more humble complex and founded the hospital in their old building. Noting the intricate architecture and breathtaking artisanship, I wished my room had been this stimulating – I'd been going stir crazy in that room with its simple whitewashed plaster walls.

The nurse pointed at the main entrance at the other end of the former sanctuary. “Good luck Castor. Don't forget your checkup a week from now, and don't be shy about coming back if you feel anything might be off.”

“Thank you,” I and my parents said, and we started walking to the door.

“So, Dante, have you re decided on joining us?”

“Naw. I've got plenty of burnt toast back home that I need to eat.” He waved me off, then stumbled and fell flat on his face. “Thanks for the offer though,” he said as if nothing had happened, then added, “Dang this marble is slick.”

I smirked, but didn't offer to help him back up, knowing from times past he would tell me “You want to stand on your own, so do I.” Even if I was going to help, Ivy would have beaten me to it.

“Oh dear.” She said, reaching out a helping hoof. Dante smiled and wrapped his wrist in hers, and she helped him stand back up.

Great. Now I feel heartless. He's done so much to help me and I didn't even offer to help him up. I hoped no one noticed that I didn't offer to help him.

We walked out the door and I saw a small open air carriage waiting for us.

“So, Castor. I was thinking about going to, ohh..” Dad paused playfully, “maybe Sweet Treat to celebrate you getting out of the hospital?”

I was afraid that restaurant would come up. Some of my best memories happened there: my cutimark party, when I was accepted to Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, when I graduated. To go now, it would be wrong, all wrong.

“This doesn't really feel like a victory, Dad. I feel like I got my flank handed to me and now we are turning tail and running. We would be celebrating a successful retreat. Maybe... Maybe later, when I've...” I sighed. Why was this so hard to say? “When I've come to better terms with what has happened.” I rubbed my helmet with my foreleg... and conceded to myself that I had turned that little fidget into a bad habit.

“Well,” he said after a while. “I don't see it like that, but I don't want to force you to do something you don't want to. Where do you want to go?”

“How about-” I started but was cut off.

“Hey, I recommend Forest Garden Rubin. You were complaining about how bland hospital food is. I promise they are the total opposite. Great place to eat. Then again, don't listen to me. I go into fire swamps.”

“That sounds pretty good actually. Where is it? It's been a while since I have eaten food from the Griffin Empire, and I want something spicy to make up for all this hospital food.”

“It's on Canterwalk Ave. Middle of the commerce center. Look for a big sign with a bigger picture of a pot of curry on it.” Dante scrunched his brow and scratched his chin, “Don't really know a picture is bigger than the sign it's on, now that I think about it.”

“Everyone okay with that? I want-”

“Ah Yes!” Dante exclaimed, cutting me off as if some great revelation had struck him. Everyone stared at him, and he stared back for a moment. “My brother's here with his cart. Keep in touch, Castor.” He started with the intention of quickly turning around, but fell flat on his face when his hind legs flailed out from underneath him. He scrambled back up and trotted away like nothing happened.

I snickered ever so slightly.

“I heard that little miss protection spell!” He yelled without looking back. I blushed brightly as heads turned to look at me.

“What does he mean by that, Castor?” Mother asked sharply, catching the innuendo that I really didn't want to explain.

Lunch went as well as could be expected – we sat down, ordered our food, and I only spilled one cup of hot tea in my lap. Of course, handling the silverware was difficult as always, and I had to ask for clean replacements several times as I kept dropping my fork.

But once we had gotten back to my house, if there was one thing I wanted to do when I got home, it was to lay out on the deck with a book that I wasn't going to read, take a nap in the sun, then come in and take a long, warm bath. I had been dreaming of doing that ever since a couple days after I had awakened in the hospital, and I thought I was finally going to get to do that.

It was rainy when the carriage arrived at my house. It wasn't coming down too hard, but the sky was overcast and the day just wasn't going to be good for being outdoors. Looks like sunning is going to have to wait a bit longer, I thought as I was helped out of the carriage by my dad and rushed under the overhang above my front door. I reached back into my saddlebags, but stopped when I realized something. “I don't have my keys.”

Ivy was following right behind me, quickly hopping under the overhang. “I have them,” she said. “I was holding onto them for you until you came home.” She pulled my ring of keys out of her saddlebag. “After the...” She paused, “thing that happened... I took your stuff back here and then forgot to give you your keys back.”

I quickly opened the doors with the keys, spitting them out onto the table as I walked in and flicked my wet tail. “We're drenched, so I'm going to go get some towels for us.”

“Naw.” Ivy waved a hoof, “You enjoy yourself. I'll get them for you.”

I really couldn't complain – I had been dreaming of being home for a long time now. Closing my eyes, I breathed a deep breath through my nose. The scents I breathed were as sweet as I had expected them to be: it was very good to be back. “Okay. Don't take long, though, I'm getting cold.”

“Sure.” Ivy trotted to the bathroom.

I turned back to my parents and waved. “See you later tonight.” They smiled, waved, and asked the carriage puller to return to their home. He pulled at the harness, and they were away.

I turned back to the interior of my house and reveled at being home, looking forward to sleeping in my own bed that night.

My house itself was a loft, giving the entire place an nice aery feeling that was a wonderful change from the stifling hospital room. The living room was to the left of the main door, partially overhung by my study loft, the same loft my bedroom was on, where my personal spellbook library was stored. The walls in the main room were colored cheery amber swirled with midnight blue symbolizing the elements of air and ice. I had painted the room with a lot of ease using my magic and only after the matter recognized that it matched my own color pallet.

Ivy appeared out of the bathroom carrying two towels. “Here.” Before I could react, a towel slapped me in the face and wrapped around my head. “You need to dry off.”

She chuckled as I mumbled a mouth full of muffled words around the towel which ended up getting inside my mouth. “Mmmanks' ah lot.” I could really go for a whirlwind spell right now: gentle, not too hard for me, harsh and icy like a blizzard for Ivy in return for hitting me in the face. If I could still cast one, I was certain I could make the water in her hair freeze stiff.

I rubbed my body down, then my legs, and tail. I was dry, mostly, but there was still one part of me that needed drying. “Ivy?” I asked, “My bandages are wet. Can you help me get them off?”

She smiled softly. “Sure.”

I lay down on the floor with my head up, cautiously removed my helmet, and tilted my head down to give her easy access to the knot in the back. She untied it so gently that I couldn't even feel her movements.

With the knot unraveled I felt the bandages immediately lose tension. I winced as the pressure released and my head throbbed with a slight pain.

I never let my parents see me without my helmet; they had already seen enough when I was first injured and at death's doorstep, when I was rushed into the operating room bleeding, when I was so frail... when I was broken. I know they had seen my forehead, wrapped in bandages, lacking its horn. But I still wanted to spare them from the sight when at all possible, much like myself who had not yet even looked at my reflection without the helmet on.

“Ivy... I'm sorry you have to see melike this.”

She placed a hoof on my shoulder, “I know that you wouldn't let just anyone see you like this, and, I'm touched that you'd open yourself this much to me.”

I put my hoof over hers, met her eyes, and smiled. We shared this moment for several seconds more, then she grabbed the towel that was draped around my neck and began carefully drying my head and hair.

I've always been a 'touchy' type of pony who is not afraid to hug or physically contact my friends and family to convey emotion, and this was one of those moments I was glad to be that way. Feeling my friend's touch on my head was oddly therapeutic despite the shoots of pain.

She finished drying me and when she pulled the towel off of my head, I reached up and hugged her. She hugged back and we hugged her until I was afraid she might be getting uncomfortable. “Ivy... I don't know what I would do without you.”

“I'm glad I can help you through this. I just wish there was more I could do.” She released our embrace. “Let me get you wrapped back up,” she said, reaching into her saddlebags next to her and pulling out a roll of gauze bandages. Carefully, she wrapped my head as per the instructions of one of the nurses, being extra careful around my forehead where grafted skin was stitched over the patch of bone missing from my skull.

When she finished, I redonned my helmet and stood. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Now mostly dry, the first thing I did was walk over to the couch, flop down on it, and close my eyes.

It was very good to be home.

I rolled over and lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, the skylights illuminating the room enough to keep it cheery and bright despite the cloud cover. I closed my eyes for a few minutes, never really falling asleep, but coming pretty close several times.

For normal houseguests, I would have felt bad for not having entertained them; however, I had long ago made sure that Ivy understood my home was as much hers as mine, and I told her that she had free reign of my possessions.

I blinked my eyes and sat up when I heard her move upstairs. Looking up at the second floor, I saw her sitting at my desk up in my study reading a book. I wanted to talk with her, and I mean normal talk – none of the touchy feely conversations like the ones I had so often been having recently – so I got up an walked over go up the stairs

I stopped at their base. They were only thirteen steps, but this was the first time I would have ascended an entire flight of stairs since I had relearned how to walk. I didn't know if I could do it alone, and I certainly didn't want to try, but I still had enough pride left that I was hesitant to ask her to come down and assist me up the steps. I figured, if I needed to, I would crawl up them later when nobody could see me do it; in the meantime, I turned my attention to the pots, pans, and other things I had left on the kitchen counter when I headed out to have a picnic with my friends nearly four weeks ago. The dirty ones went into my washing basin, the clean ones went back into the cupboard next to my hybrid gas-magus oven.

An old memory of modifying the oven's element surfaced. Magus ovens tend to be painfully expensive because the skill that goes into their construction and the only reason I had this one was that, one month, I got the notion in my head to make one. By the end of my little project, I had spent over two hundred hours researching and building my own transduction element to put in a normal gas heated oven. Functionally, this kind of oven pulls the latent magic from the food in order to heat it, making it is a fuel-less oven, but I had calculated it would take six years or regular use to pay off the expensive components I had purchased. However, the spellwriting lessons I had learned and the experience I had gained were well worth the cost.

This memories of making the element were not lost on me as I moved pots and pans with weeks old grime into the sink, clumsily clattering the pots together as I tried and half failed to stack them neatly inside the space I had to work with.

I had finished putting them aside and decided I was up for something sweet to snack on by the time Ivy walked down the stairs, so I moved over to the icebox and opened the door.

“Sweet Celestia!” I swore, gagging at the sight and smell of rotting food and quickly slammed the door shut.

“What is it?” Ivy asked.

“My icebox's frost charm ran out of energy.”

Ivy reached the bottom of the stairs and cocked her head. “Really?”

“Really,” I replied.

“Things really aren't going your way this month.” She commented walking over to me and opened the door to see for herself. “Oh goddesses!” She quickly shut the door. “Why did you have that many bottles of milk?”

“I was at the market and a farmer was closing up the stall. He practically gave those to me, and I was going to bake some cakes with them.”

“Not now, you aren't.”

“Nope.” I then added, “I need to go by some groceries, because I am not eating anything that was in there.”

“Want to walk to the market and get some stuff then?” Ivy offered.

“I don't know if I can walk that far yet, and it's still rainy.” Despite my hesitation, the thought of getting outside after being cooped up for so long was pleasant.

“Well, we'll wait a bit and see if it stops raining, and I'll catch a carriage if you don't feel like walking at any point.”

So we waited, and Ivy and I got to have the that pleasant conversation I mentioned earlier as we played a game of chess. An hour later, Ivy had another victory tucked under her belt and I was feeling better about the icebox despite how expensive I knew it was going to be to recharge the enchantment since I wouldn't be able to do it myself. By then it had stopped raining, so we grabbed our saddlebags and stepped outside into the clearing weather to hail a cart.

Where I lived could be considered small town separate from Canterlot proper. With its tightly packed enterprise and market center surrounded by the much more spread out residential areas where I lived, it had the feeling of a small town in many ways. Houses were spread far enough to have yards of decent size with trees and meadows and beautiful views of the land off the mountain, making it a nice trip down the tree lined dirt road to the market.

Ivy and I spent time milling from store to store, paying out coins which all too often came from Ivy's coinpurse to purchase goods. The bread shop, the fruit and cheese store, an thaumaturge's store to restore the cooling element of my icebox: we went to all these and more.

Since my parents and friends frequented this market as often as I did, word got out about what had happened to me. It did my heart well that many of the familiar faces which operated these small stores told me they were glad to see me doing well, and many even said that they were afraid and praying for me while I was in the hospital.

Legs shaking, body fatigued, I was barely able to walk when we arrived by carriage at my house. There, I unburdened myself, moving my sattlebags off my back and onto the counter.

“I need to rest a minute... that took a lot out of me.” I shuffled over to the couch and flopped down upon it again. Ugh, I thought, holding a hoof out. Why am I trembling so much?

Slowly, my hunger for something sweet came back.

“Ivy, I know we just ate, but I want something sweet. Would you like some melopan and honey?” I asked, referring to a delightfully sweet, light bread which was one of my favorite snacks.

“That sounds lovely.”

We had all the supplies we needed, so after taking a few minutes to lay on the couch and rest, I pulled out a large mixing bowl and sat it on the counter as Ivy measured out the flour needed. I drew a pot of water from the tap above the dish basin and was moving to set it next to the stove, but spilled it halfway there. I pretended nothing happened and grabbed the towel Ivy had dried me off with from its hanger in the bathroom and dried it up.

After we had water, Ivy measured some and poured it into the bread bowl. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the movements of her shoulders, the coordination of her front legs, and the grip she held the beater with as she stirred the ingredients together. I was beginning to appreciate how much I had overused telekinesis to do things, because I was woefully unpracticed with the even the familiar act stirring something. To clarify, it was like trying to use the non-dominant side of my body.

The rest of our baking session went much the same, me trying to re-learn the fine motions of each task while Ivy sped on ahead with ease. While kneading the bread dough, I nearly fell to the floor several times when my hind legs began to move out from under me, but Ivy was there to catch me each time.

Two hours later, we had enough melopan for Ivy and me to eat and then have plenty left over for dinner later that night. Evening came, and so did my parents and some other friends, each bringing loads of food with them. We sat down to a delightful meal, I gorged myself on the flavorful food, then we played games for the remainder of the night until it was time for bed.

“Goodnight, darling.” Mom hugged me as she stood at the threshold of the door, and I reciprocated, wrapping my front leg around her. We all needed to sleep. My parents had their jobs to tend to, and I still needed to heal. “Are you sure you are okay staying here by yourself?”

A mother's concern can be the simultaneous the most touching and most irritating thing about her. “I'm fine. Really.” I replied for the tenth time that night. “You can stop worrying.”

“Well,” Mom was hesitant, “Okay. If you're sure.”

“I am.” I had shown everyone, especially myself, that I could handle the stairs earlier when I had purposely fetched a boardgame from upstairs. “I can handle myself alright,”

“Alright. Well, goodnight.”

We hugged. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight Castor.” Dad added, “I will be by tomorrow morning to check on you.”

“Goodnight, Dad.” He smiled, then filed out the door behind Mom. The door shut. Ivy, Cloud Mason, Sugarsilk, and Cloverberry, who had all been at the meal, had all left some time ago.

Now, I was alone.

My only companion was the coldfire lantern which idly flickered as it sat upon the living room table, casting long, melancholy shadows across my house. I walked over and tapped the top of it with my hoof, turning it off and plunging me into darkness as I moved my mind through the motions of casting an illumination spell. A spike of pain plunged into my head, and I cursed myself for again giving into the thoughtless habit of casting magic.

I tapped the lantern again, it sparked to life, and I sat it next to the bathroom door to provide light for me to carry my hot water from the stove to the tub. Having already set several very large kettles to boil, two were already starting to give off steam, so I picked one up and very carefully, ferried it to the large clawfoot tub in my bathroom. The other three boiling kettles soon were set next to the tub, and I slid into the cold water.

The chill shocked my head clear of any dullness, and I let myself acclimate to its frigidness before I poured the hot water in so the warmth would feel all the better.

This was perfect.

I laid my head back and slowly began to drift into sleepiness as the darkness swaddled me like a blanket and the warm water carried my mind away to better places. Finally, I was here in the bath.

In the darkness.

Alone.

A nagging fear told me I couldn't defend myself if someone were to break in, but Canterlot was a good city – robberies just didn't happen within my part of town. I was jumping at imagined threats so I ended up imagining defending myself every time my mind began to fret over my safety.
A masked bandit smashed through the window, rope dangling from her mouth. I startled, sloshing water out of the tub. “GET OUT!” I screamed, pulling the attention of the robber to me.
She stepped in my direction, letting the rope unravel from her grip as she methodically paced the distance between us. My pulse raced, I scrambled out of the tub with my wet hackles raised. “Don't come any closer!” I threatened, lowering myself into the most threatening stance I could muster.
The bandit made no change in her imposing advance.
“I'm warning you!” My eyes blazed with rage as I focused a spell.
The bandit, only a few steps away and seeing me ready to strike, blitzed at me and lept with suddenness that would have caught me off guard if I had not been preparing for her exact actions. In an eyeblink, the floor crackled with a growing sheet of dimly glowing blue ice which flashed out from my hooves and instantly coated the tile in a frictionless covering. This happened in the brief instant the bandit was off the ground, leaving her no surface with traction to land upon when she landed. I sidestepped her as she violently slid into the side of the tub and grunted loudly.

I smiled at the thought and slid myself deeper into the bath.
I heard a yell from outside which perked my ears up and left me staring at the shattered window with woeful anticipation as another bandit entered. His hooves hit the ice after bounding through the broken window and immediately slid out from under him, slamming him down onto the shattered fragments. Blood mixed with ice as he was sliced to ribbons on the shards of glass which had been frozen upright by my spell. He didn't get back up, and I flushed cold at the realization that he was dead. But he was robbing me and... I had to put him down for my own safety, right? It wasn't even my fault that he...

After weeks of stress and worry, I was finally starting to relax.
I heard another yell from outside. I tensed myself and prepared a spell in anticipation of another robber bounding through my broken window. Unexpectedly, there was a brilliant, blinding flash which exploded from nothingness in front of my face. I fell back in a futile attempt to dodge the flash which seared my vision, leaving opaque red blotches over the entirety of my field of sight.
“Ah got yuh now!” A disreputable voice chuckled from outside, and I heard a thump as what was presumably a unicorn hopped through the window and landed on the dead robber, using his bleeding corpse for traction.
I couldn't see anything except at the rims of my vision, but I didn't need to see in the first place. Closing my eyes, I released a clairvoyance spell to aid my already naturally acute magical senses and a rushing like that of a waterfall filled my mind as the world around me lit up in vibrant detail far greater than what anyone could ever see with her eyes.
At the robber's side, I saw a twin set of gold engraved scimitars which he unsheathed with his magic and leveled at me.
“Ah'll have yer head fer a truphy!” He proclaimed, giving me time to ready a spell.
I had already wrapped my telekinesis around the first robber when the unicorn launched himself and his scimitars at me. My timing aided by the slowed reality of my extrasensory vision, I swung the she-bandit like a baseball bat. She screamed as she was thrown around by her hind legs and was impelled when the unicorn tried to block her with his swords but failed. Her momentum carried through and she impacted the other, throwing them both against the wall where they thudded loudly.
Skewered in the gut and chest, the she-bandit lay moaning on the floor as I wrapped my magic around the ends of the two swords and bent them to keep the unicorn from pulling them back out and using them against me.

Despite the growing headache which I nursed in this perfect bath, stress flaked off me like scales molting from a dragon.
The unicorn grunted and stood, wiping blood off his chest and casting a sideways glance at his ruined swords. With trained precision, his saddlebags unbuckled and a score of throwing knives swarmed out, floating in motes of magic and pointing their tips in my direction.
This was trouble, but I too had tricks I had honed to perfection. The twenty knives accelerated in my direction, leaving me facing down a hailstorm of deadly blades ready to shred me. In this tight space, there was no way to dodge, but that wasn't my intention in the first place.
I had by this point finished forming a spell that I have for my entire life had been daydreaming upon but never was able to complete. However, now with my life on the line and back against the wall, the pieces fell into place.
The closest knife was only a few feet away from striking me in the chest and was rapidly closing the remaining distance when I released the spell. A powerful torrent of magic rippled throughout my body and formed a deep, midnight blue sheet of ice around it. With my accelerated senses, I watched the knife glide within inches of my chest... an inch... half inch... With its tip buried only a hair's depth into my chest, the surrounding air suddenly crystallized and caught the knife inside the brestplate of my new set of armor.
In real time, the other knives shot towards their mark, hitting me perfectly but clattering to the ground with deafening metal clangs as they impacted my ice armor and bounced off.
The full suit of ice armor bending dexterously to match my body, I stepped forward towards the robber whose smug look quickly shifted into terror. Cracking my neck, I smirked devilishly. “I am Castor Star, warmage of Her Royal Highness, and you just gave me a reason to pulverize you...”

My body flushed with a warm tingle at the thought of that, so I let the thought roll off my imagined tongue again, “I am Castor Star, warmage of Her Royal Highness...” That had such an excellent ring to it.

I carried this line of thought for a long time, knowing and not caring that even before my injury I could never have cast any of the spells I was daydreaming about. Eventually, I began to bore of the thoughts and an oncoming headache made dreaming all but impossible, so I laid my head back, focused on the pleasantness of the water, and began exploring the strange phantom sensations my extrasensory abilities had been reduced to.

They were, at times, bizarre sensations which were more like ghosts at the corners of my vision than actual senses. I knew they were hallucinations, I had experienced first hoof the humiliation of having thought they were my real senses, but I wanted them so badly to real. I needed this to be a real, honest to goodness, surviving remnant of my senses and, hoping beyond hope, I thought that maybe with enough practice, I could regain my truesight and start seeing the world as I had always seen it before.

I only managed to study the sensations a few minutes before my headache overpowered my ability to think on them, so I just lay there a few more minutes, gritting my teeth and hoping the pain would pass soon.

It didn't.

Then, there was a dull white flash in my left eye.

Oh Celestia, not another migraine. Thinking those words, I, to my horror, remembered what happened the last time I had suffered one of these migranes. Frantically, a voice in my head screamed, Get out of the tub! Now!

It was like a syringe filled with ice jabbing into my chest as I threw my body upright in terror. My hind legs were already starting to fall unresponsive as I clamored my front side over the tub and used my front legs to pull my almost dead hind end over the rim where I ungracefully flopped to the ground with a wet slap.

“Oh Celestia...” I lay on my side at the verge of hyperventilating, as I realized another seizure was coming, and I tried to force my mind away from the from the dark mental images of me sitting in the tub, unaware of the... wrongness... taking place in my head until my lower body went limp. I could see myself struggling, feel myself screaming as I fought to pull myself from the tub until I couldn't, forcing me to settle for keeping my head above the water until even that was too much and I slipped under and water rushed into my lungs...

Oh Celestia, Oh Faust, Please.

If, in the hospital and surrounded by doctors, I was stricken dumb with terror, then now, as the numbness possessed my body like some devil, I was deathly shaken to the soul. Time and time again, my mind fixated upon having been told I would have died last time had it not been for outside intervention to drain my excess magic. Struggling, I tried to claw and drag myself out from the bathroom to the stairs and up to my bedside safe where I had placed the siphon earlier that night. Yet the seizure continued to steal control from my body, and I lay on my side, prey to the necrotic ebbing as I tried to drag myself farther. My whole being was on the verge of plunging into a ravenous void wherein my strength was consumed in full.

I lay on the ground like a doll, discarded by its owner, immobile and alone. Oh Faust, I beg of you, please don't let me die, please, don't let me die. I cried out unendingly. If only I could reach the siphon, I might be saved, but I was a captive in my own body and lay completely paralyzed on the cold, wet floor. There, my affliction held me submissive for several harrowing minutes.

By the grace of Celestia, my mind remained within my body and was not torn away into the netherrealm, that terrible void, which I had visited the last time I was struck down by a seizure. Cold, wet, and confronted with my raw mortality, I became aware that I was shivering as my body slowly returned to my control.

I sat up and pressed my hoof to my chest feeling my quivering heart and screamed a scathing obscenity towards Faust, fate, or whoever else might be responsible for cursing me with these damned seizures.

My head ached with more pain than I can convey, and, sitting in the darkness, I could feel the disembodied sensation of my horn which was no longer on my head. Particles of glaring light danced where my truesight had once been, making me wince with pain as they scorched paths in my brain behind my eyes. As the streaks of light faded, haunting afterimages hung in my sight, marred with corrupted, twisted forms and ghastly figures.

The horror of these non-existent forms lie beyond what I can describe, but in the dark, as I sat on the floor immobile with fear, I jumped, screamed, and nearly passed out at the sight of some such phantoms whose shapes took the form of horribly twisted and distorted faces. I tried to tell myself I was hallucinating and that my reeling senses senses were tricking me as the siege of unspeakable sights continued assaulting my truesight.

The magic siphon in my wall safe upstairs beckoned me with a promise to end my suffering should I only be able to reach it and open the safe. Yet, as I sat a struggling hoof on the ground to take a step, I found that my sense of body was utterly wrecked such that I fought to even stand.

So I crawled. On my belly, I crawled out the bathroom. In the open space of the livingroom, what felt like a thousand eyes bored from the shadows. I hastened my pace and crawled to and up the stairs, fighting with all my courage to peek over the top level and see what horrid figures might lie in my room. Strange, ratlike thinks lurked in my truesight, flitting in and out of existance as they scampered about on the floor and walls.

They're not real. Ignore them. Oh please don't be real. Steadying my courage, I crawled to the safe tucked beside my dresser.

The pain in my head tormented me and befuddled my attempts to turn the safe's seven tumblers which I had instinctually reached out with my magic to touch. For my thoughtlessness, I was rewarded with an electric shock behind my eyes which sent me to the floor in agony.

I whimpered, bit my lower lip, and, through tears of pain, clumsily rolled the tumblers into their correct configuration and pulled down on the safe's handle. The latch clicked, I swung the door open, and yanked the siphon from its case, frantically holding it to my head. A cold wave of relief coursed through me as I channeled my magic into it and I gasped uncontrollably at the alleviation. Whatever doubts I had ever had about this device's value were now put down; there was now no question that I needed it for, if nothing else, the pure easement it brought.

I sat at the safe for longer than I can recount, pouring myself into the siphon and reviling in the delightful relief it gave. It was only once I fully depleted my magic and could give no more that I stopped.

Pain shot through my head like someone took a metal spike and drove it through my skull when I cut off the flow of magic. My jaw clenched, biting my tongue and drawing blood as I grunted under the deluge of agony. I nearly dropped the device when I was overcome with the pain, my body flushing cold with horror when it tried to roll from my loosened grip.

“Ok-k-kay... Let-t-t's p-p-put you b-b-back-k-k...” The sharp points of my words stuck on my lips as my mouth spasmed to utter them. Ever so cautiously, Iput the siphon back in its velvet lined case and closed the safe, rolling the tumblers to random locations.

Around me, the visions had left me and I was alone in my dark, moonlit room, though I had suddenly found a new and terrible hatred for darkness.

Drained, I managed to stand and hobble to my bed.

I was exhausted mentally and emotionally, feeling queasy and week in the knees knowing that I could have very easily drowned in the tub. I shook my head to clear away the terrible thought from it and climbed onto my bed. I was too stressed to sleep, too scared to feel at ease, but I wanted to lay down, close my eyes, and wish my crippling headache away.

Unfortunately the night was not restful for me in any sense of the term. The unspeakable hallucinations abated shortly after I siphoned away my magic, but the pain and phantom sensations of my horn never went away.

The agony in my head waxed and waned like the lapping of waves on the shore, coming in as a rush of pain and waking my fatigued mind from its futile attempts to slumber, then slowly pulling away and cradling me in a swaddle of half sleep as the pain receded. I can only guess at how long I was subject to the ravaging cycles, but I place my guess upon three hours. It was in one such cycle of respite that I lay on my back trying with no avail to blink away the intangible motes of light which danced in my truesight. The darkness surrounded me and sat my nerves alight by hiding the occasional dark form in the shadows, to which my hallucinations applied life. I sat up in bed terrified and screaming each time as I thought I saw with my clairvoyance a dark, ratlike form with a pony's head lunge at me.

It was an empty fear, I knew, but fear is still fear and, no matter how seemingly trivial it might seem, it forced me awake as I lay there well aware that I was utterly defenseless. It was then, in the second hour of the morning, that my ears, having played tricks on me the entire night, heard movement below. My body stirred with the physical drive to run, cooling my limbs and easing my headache slightly. Holding my breath and tensing perfectly rigid I awaited the sound of rustling, hoofsteps, the rubbing of clothing as someone walked, the creaking of boards as they were stepped on – hoping that the silence I heard instead would belie the certainty in my mind that a robber had broken in.

Then, after many tense moments passed, I heard the rustling again, followed by the brutal shattering of glass. My body shocked itself alive with a flush of energy, snapping my mind into perfect clarity and imbuing me with enough courage to risk making a sound, get out of bed, and hide.

But that was the issue. My loft had no walls to separate it from the lower floor, and I knew the closet to be a terrible place to hide as any thief would certainly check it should he come upstairs. I was completely exposed and with no weapon to use.

Why is this happening now? I, both disgusted at my luck and horrified at the circumstances, asked myself in my head, knowing that I, without my injury, would have had ample time to prepare a spell which might dispatch the intruder.

I pulled out of bed, cringing as the springs creaked and groaned, and, with as much silence as my clumsy body would offer, lay down in the wide gap between my bed and the wall. A wood base surrounding the brass body of the bed hindered me from hiding underneath, so I pressed as close to the wooden planking as I could and draped the comforter off the side of the bed and over me. I wasn't that well hidden, but if I was still, then maybe the burger wouldn't notice me.

With each quivering breath I pulled, I cringed at how loud my breathing was.
Please don't find me. Please don't find me.
I listened intently for a sound -any sound- that would indicate what was going on downstairs. Hoofsteps, silverware being shoved into a bag, the creak of the steps as they were stepped on. Anything! But there was nothing beside the gentle songs of the crickets outside.

The fear struck me that this was a master crook, moving about with no discernible soundprints. I prayed that the lock on my safe would prove steadfast if it were to be tampered with, knowing if my siphon were to be stolen, I would have only a few weeks to get another before I... I really didn't want to think about the ramifications at the time.

For many tense minutes, I lay still listening, yet hearing nothing. There arose in my head doubts that there was anyone but me in the house; however, the sound I heard earlier was unexplainable and I was too petrified to even move, let alone risk peering over the banister to see anyone below.

More time passed. The initial fear receded and, despite my anxiety and returning headache, I caught myself starting to doze. I fought a steadily losing battle, telling myself that if I fell asleep, I would be jeopardizing my safety. It didn't help.

I was being pressed into a corner and needed to act without any further hesitation lest I lose my window of opportunity to save myself. I cautiously peered out from the comforter. I saw no one in that half of my bed loft and slowly urged myself onward by the absence of immediate danger. Soundlessly, I crawled to the edge of my bed and peered around to the rest of the loft.

It was clear.

Eyes forward, gaze locked on the stairs should a dark figure appear on them, I crouched and slowly made my way to the railing which overlooked the kitchen and living room below. My shaking body moved clumsily with each step, creaking every board I moved over.

All I needed to do was look over the edge and make sure I had a clear path to get out of the house, yet when I reached it, my body began trembling even more.

What if the intruder heard me? What if he saw me if I were to poke my head, with its brightly colored fur into, view of the first floor? But I had to. If I ran, I could be out the door in just a few seconds, then in another fifteen, slamming my hooves on a neighbor's door and screaming to let me in.

Swallowing hard and holding my breath, I peered over and saw what had shattered the glass.

Chapter 7

As I peered over the loft's edge, I could see little through the darkness, and it took many minutes of staring into the inky abyss before I worked up enough courage to slink down the stairs and start investigating the noise.

Descending was difficult, and along the way I realized how wrong my earlier estimate of only needing ten seconds to reach the door was. If my life depended on me outrunning a pursuer, then I was dead. Despite my fears, as I reached the bottom of the stairs, I began to realize that the windows and doors were intact and that, most likely, nobody had entered my house. A quick exploration of the house revealed an overturned bag of mason jars which someone had forgotten to replace after digging it out of the cabinet in search for enough place settings to seat everyone for dinner. I remembered them sitting on the edge of the counter earlier, and I supposed that their weight had shifted and sent them plunging over the edge; however, I still did a good once over of the house, going as far as checking the back porch through the rear door's windows.

Could someone have broken in? Unlikely, but I was still rattled.

After half crawling back up the stairs, I laid my weary self back in bed, prickled with embarrassment, and too worked up to sleep, so I simply stared through a skylight into the overcast night. Oh how I wished the clouds would part even for just a minute so I could see the stars I was named after; I needed to regain some sense comfort, and I thought their glimmering presence might help set my mind on the right track.

The overcast clouds never broke their blockade of the night sky above. I never saw Castor.

The rest of the night was not much better.

My headaches, nerves and jumpiness withheld any meaningful rest from me. It was sunrise before I stayed asleep for more than a few minutes and, even then, I never slept uninterrupted for more than a half hour. The old pendulum clock downstairs chimed eleven thirty before I had enough strength of will to rouse myself from bed.

Weakly, I stood. My body was sluggish, more so than what should follow a bad night's rest, as I staggered to my mirror to comb my unkempt mane and tail. I gulped on the thick lump which hung in my throat, trying to sooth myself by saying I felt this way the last time I had suffered a seizure and that I recovered from the feeling.

Looking at my reflection, I met my own gaze. Had I not already been acclimated to seeing myself sickly and withered, the shock of seeing my thin, pale face with dark bags under my eyes would have been overwhelming. Instead, I was only saddened, knowing how much it must hurt my parents to see me like this too. Fumbling my comb, I brushed my hair with coordination on par with a small child just learning how to groom herself. The result wasn't good, my mane was still shaved on the front half of my head, but I looked a little better, save for the bandages and helmet. I applied makeup to the bags under my eyes, masking the darkness under them, resulting in a reflection that almost looked healthy when I smiled, even if the smile was hollow.

I carefully descended the stairs and sighed when I reached their bottom. I had planned before the incident last night to get up early and clean my house. Several dirty bowls, pans, and utensils still made their home on the counter space next to the oven and the broken mason jars and their contents were still on the floor. And now that I thought about it, the tub still had a bath's worth of water in it, and the floor was probably soaked.

I sighed, having wanted this all to be clean so I could show Dad he didn't have to worry about me, but it was not in me to clean a single spoon let alone the whole house. Decidedly against doing anything, I flopped down on the couch and immediately fell into a fitful sleep.

The knock on the door which pulled me out of a delirious half slumber came a little after twelve. Hearing the noise, I weakly stood, walked over to the door, and opened it.

“Hi Dad.” My voice wavered despite my best efforts to make it chipper, and I felt the frayed state of the expression I had practiced earlier. I knew I was the picture child of misery.

“Castor, Hi.” He gave me a concerned look, “Are you okay, honey?”

Yes I am, everything is fine. A voice in my head begged me to say. I didn't want to put him through what I was about to. I shook my head, drawing a breath to steady myself. “No. I.. I had another seizure last night and... I was in the tub when it happened.”

Dad's eyes widened as I spoke. “Oh no, Castor.” He reached out to hug me and I threw myself to him and met his embrace.

“Dad, I was so scared you'd come in and find me dead in there. I'm so sorry, I was stupid to lay down in that water. I was stupid to stay here alone.”

“How did you get out?”

“I felt it coming on and managed to drag myself out.” I sniffed and rubbed my eyes. “It was so close, Dad. I had maybe thirty seconds, max, then I wouldn't have been able to do anything to save myself. How am I going to live like this?”

He continued stroking the back of my neck, “You're okay now. You're okay.” He paused and then tentatively added, “But I think you shouldn't pour a full tub of water anymore.” He pulled away and looked me in the eyes. “Are you okay now?”

“No. I can function, but I'm sluggish and I didn't sleep at all last night. I siphoned out all my magic last night and now I just feel sick.” Even for healthy unicorns, completely depleted magic is not only unpleasant, but dangerous as well.

“Do I need to take you to the hospital? I will do that in a heartbeat if I need to.”

I shook my head. “There isn't a point. They couldn't do anything to help me last time, and this time is the same. I used my siphon and that helped, but I still feel terrible.”

“Are you sure you don't need to go?”

“Yes..." We were still standing in the doorway and I looked back in. “I should have invited you in right away instead of dumping myself on you.”

“No. It's completely fine. You had every reason to.”

We walked in and I filled him in on more of the details of last night. Dad offered to help me clean up the broken mason jars and he told me that he was going to drain the tub. The voice in my head chided back, I don't need help.

“That would be nice. Thanks.” I said instead, choking on my pride but thankful he was helping.

As he used a rag to swab up the tomatoes and jams which had splattered across the floor, I watched his movements and his horn glow as he moved pieces of glass into a bowl. I was still envious of all those who could use magic.

My body still was weak and uncoordinated, not permitting me to do much, but I was unwilling to just lay on the couch while Dad did everything. I stood and walked into the bathroom to wipe up the wet floors. “I know what you're thinking, so please let me pull the plug myself. I don't want you near that after last night.”

“The floor's wet. I'm just going to clean it up.” I took one my towels, threw it on the floor, and began sopping up the wetness despite my sluggishness.

It was a decent enough day outside, and a half hour later I managed to convince Dad that it would be good for me to go on a short walk and collect my mail from the office, since for the past few weeks it had been held at the station since I was unable to collect it. I had quite a bit of mail, and I didn't read through most of it at that moment since I wished to drop by the Canterlot Institute of Magic, otherwise known as the CIM, and talk with Dr Rushlight who lead the spell design team I was a part of.

We arrived by carriage to the CIM East Division's building complex, a very academic looking place, having a quite outstanding stature with its marble pillars and rich mahogany doors.

I stepped up the slate gray stairs and pushed through an immense set of heavy wooden doors, entering into a large room with polished tile floors and ivory columns which supported a mezzanine which ringed around the circular main lobby. The ceiling was a vaulted dome with a stained glass skylight in the center which, in the noon sun, cast onto the smooth floor a purple, six pointed star.

“You can wait here. I shouldn't take long,” I said as I turned to Dad.

“Are you sure?” he replied, turning his head around and looking at the steps to the second floor. “I'm not really comfortable letting you walk up stairs without help.”

“Dad. I'm fine. Stop worrying.”

“Well...” He seemed indecisive for a moment. “Okay. You know what you can handle.”

“Of course.”

Dad sat down on a padded bench near the door as I walked to the curved staircase rimming the edges of the circular room. With a moment's hesitation, I ascended the staircase and breathed a bit easier once I was at the top. From there, I followed a hallway to the left which lead to the office belonging to the unicorn responsible for heading the project of which I was an active member.

As I approached the door, I saw it to be closed and heard dampened voices from the inside. I sat upon one of the padded benches outside his door to wait and pulled out my mail, leafing through it to keep myself occupied. I came across one which was addressed from the CIM. Upon opening, it read simply:

Get Well Soon, Castor!

We miss you!

It was signed haphazardly by many of my associates here at the CIM, including a signature from Dr. Rushlight. Who would think that those few words would make me feel better, but they did and I smiled a true, honest smile.

Looking over the letter a few more seconds, I set it aside and continued looking through my mail until I came across a letter postmarked from Dr. Rushlight. It read:

Dear Castor,

It has come to my attention that you have recently suffered an injury which jeopardizes the position you currently hold within the CIM as a leading spell tester. While I am fully aware of your competency in the field of casting spells, I am afraid I will be forced to reassign you to a different position to comply with the demands of our work. Furthermore, I must apologize that upon your return to the spellwriting table, you will find your position filled with a replacement. Again, such are the demands of our work. I wish I could reassure you that you will have a place in our project when you return; however, all required positions are filled as we have two very adept unicorns testing the components of the spells which Key Lime and Ruby are writing. I wish to further discuss your prospects in person because I believe you deserve better than the detachment offered by a written letter. At your next convenience, please visit me in my office.

Formally,
Dr. Rushlight.

Oh Celestia, I can't lose this job. I just can't. I sat there in a silent panic, reading and re-reading the letter, hoping beyond hope that I was misinterpreting it.

Several minutes later, the door to his office swung open. “Thank you again, Doctor, for clarifying those questions I had concerning the composition of that particular section of the spell.” A young unicorn mare stepped from the office, “I was sorry to hear about the loss of one of your assistants, but I am glad to have the opportunity to be a part of this project.”

She was my replacement.

“Of course,” Dr. Rushlight replied, neither of them having seen me yet, “Castor was an excellent mage. But hopefully you will be able to fill in for her.”

“You're talking about me like I'm dead.”

“Excuse me?” Dr. Rushlight replied, looking out the door at me, eyes brightening when he saw me. “Oh, Castor! Good to see you. We've been worrying about you these past few weeks.”

I stood from the bench and walked to the doorway. “A lot of ponies have as well, including myself. It's been rough, but I'm about well enough to get back on the team.”

“You must be Castor.” The mare told me, extending a hoof to shake. “I'm Meadow Zephyr.”

I met her extended hoof with my own, giving her a quick once over. She was a pale yellow with a navy blue mane.

She looks like me.

I let go of the hoofshake, rubbing the front of my helmet with a foreleg. “So, you are replacing me? Heh.” The laugh was a bit too forced. “Didn't take long.”

“Well, this is important work. After all, we are making sure they get clean water.”

That was true. A little over a month ago, a small mountain villa's underground water supply had become contaminated with lead and other toxic materials when the channel cut by an underground river collapsed and was filled with the tailings of an abandoned mine. Their water was rendered undrinkable, so several geological universities were contacted to find a solution. After an initial assessment, it was determined that for the foreseeable future, the groundwater would remain contaminated by the tailings from the collapsed mine. The CIM was contracted to provide a spell to coagulate the suspended metals into a solid aggregate which would fall like pebbles to the bottom of the purified water. Without this spell, the villa would be forced to continue importing water for an unknowable period of time, likely years, which ultimately would be an unsustainable effort. It would be inhumanely selfish of me to expect that I would not be replaced immediately.

I smiled a false smile back at Meadow Zephyr. “Of course,” then added, “Oh, by the way, I hope I wasn't interrupting.” I looked to Dr. Rushlight. “Am I coming at a bad time?”

“Not at all. Please come in.” he said to me.

Sitting at his desk and moving a stack of papers which rested upon it, he sighed and closed his eyes. “Castor, what I am about to tell you is one of the most difficult things I have ever been forced to say-”

My stomach went hollow – this was not good.

“First, I want to clarify that you are fantastic at what you do, and it pains me that someone so young, so talented, should have her abilities cut short like this. Second, I know that you are an excellent spell writer... but that is not what you are here for.” He sighed and looked me in the eye. “I am afraid I cannot keep you as an assistant.”

I choked on the lump in my throat. “Oh.” The word squeaked out of my mouth. “Are you sure?”

“I've tried to keep you on with this project, but between Kettle Steam and Golden Locket, the writing of the spell is well covered and there would be nothing you could do.”

“What about other spells? You know I am fully trained in composition – I'm almost as good at that as I am casting. Request the council to arbitrate another task for me to start on. When this is finished, we will have a head start.”

“I'm afraid it isn't that simple. The overseer of finances has, despite my persuading, refused to add a fifth salary to the team's expenses.” He put his elbows on the table and pressed his front hooves together, “I even inquired the other supervisors about any openings they might have and, simply put, they only are in need of unicorns with upper level spell casting abilities.”

“Wait, you're saying...” I sat shocked in silence for many long moments. “There isn't... anything for me?”

Dr. Rushlight shook his head. “No. But the first opening I get, I promise you will be back on the team, and I have let the rest of the CIM know that you are a good spellwriter with a solid background with the organization. I am certain you will be back working here in a matter of weeks.”

A matter of weeks. If I could be certain I would have an income after that period, the wait would be bearable, but as it stood, I didn't have money enough to last that long.

I was pleading now. “Isn't there anything? Anything at all?”

Again, Dr. Rushlight shook his head. “Like I said, I've checked everywhere, and dedicated spellwriters are not in as high a demand at the moment because any race, earth pony, pegasus, or unicorn can write a good spell. Just give us some time, and I am sure the CIM will get back to you soon when a position opens.”

I wanted to cry, to scream at the unfairness of this, but not in front of the doctor; I had to show a strong, controlled face before we went our separate ways. I knew this was outside his control, but it just wasn't fair!

“The CIM drew up your salary so that you get paid for your last week of work.” Dr. Rushlight started, “Now, that said. This does not sit well with me, so I pitched in what I could, and so did most everyone else on the team.” He reached into a drawer in his desk, leafed through some papers, then pulled an envelope which clattered loudly with currency when he put it on the table. “The total amount comes up to around a full month's pay, so it's like you are getting paid through the end of next week.”

Breathlessly, I reached out and took the envelope. “Thank you.” The words were strained to the point of a whimper when they were uttered from my mouth, I didn't think Dr. Rushlight could hear them.

“Thank Kettle Steam. It was his idea.”

I held the envelope and mindlessly looked at it, rubbing on my helmet where my horn should be as I realized this was the last time I was to be paid for my abilities to cast spells. Sorrow stung in my chest. “So, I guess that's it?” I eventually asked.

“I'm afraid so. Again Castor, I can't tell you how hard this was for me to do. If you find work elsewhere and they begin asking about your background, I only have good things to say about you, so give them my office number and address and I'll put my best word in for you.”

“Thank you. Do you maybe know of anyone outside the CIM that is in need of a spellwriter?”

“My work keeps me at my desk most of the time so, aside from a few academic connections, I don't know anyone who is in a position to look for someone of your talents. I'm sorry.”

“Okay... and, you promise to hold any openings for me and let me know?”

“Of course, Castor.”

“Thanks.” I expected him to say something else, but in the following period of uneasy silence, I realized that there wasn't much else to be said. “I guess I should go now...”

“I promise you Castor, if anything opens up I will let you know.”

“Thank you.”

Lethargically I stood and walked out in a daze. I was in shock, too shaken to feel anything my legs dumbly carried me down the hallway to the workspace I had shared with my colleagues.

Suddenly, I was pushing open the door to the room without having remembered gotten there. Inside, Kettle Steam and Meadow Zephyr looked from chalkboards scribbled with magical notation, and Golden Locket placed a beaker filled with water back onto the chemistry table. Harmony Strings, the team's other unicorn, disengaged the spell she was casting when she saw me.

I mustered a pleasant expression that I knew, in contradiction to my best efforts, must have looked shocked and weary. “Hi. Looks like I'm not working here anymore.”

Excluding Meadow Zephyr, those in the room expressed their condolences and offered words of encouragement. Kettle Steam and Golden Locket even promised to keep in touch after I was gone, but I knew they were just being nice. Without the convenience of being in the same place, I knew we would inevitably fall away from each other, most likely never speaking again after I left the room despite the assurances otherwise.

I promised them I would keep in touch as well and thanked them profusely for my final paycheck.

Slowly, I exited the room and walked back back through the hallways until I was out of earshot.

“IT'S NOT FAIR!” I screamed, slamming my hoof against the wall and immediately breaking into tears. “It's, just not fair.” For several minutes, I sat quivering in one of the chairs outside someone's office, ignoring anyone who passed by me while biting back on the tears. After a few minutes, as the tears began to fade, I wiped my eyes and slowly walked back to the main lobby. Descending the curved stairwell to the first floor, I saw Dad looking anxiously in my direction.

“Bad news?” he asked as I neared him.

My head drooped, “I am afraid so.”

“What happened?”

“Dad... I don't have a job anymore.”

“Okay...” He said, exhaling and rubbing a hoof across his face. “Okay, we will find a way to work through this.”

I sat down on the bench, gripping my head. “This is more than I can handle. I feel sick.”

He sat down next to me and rubbed my shoulder. “Do you feel like going home?” he asked after a few minutes.

“Yes.”

“I'll go hail a carriage.”

“Thank you.”

When the carriage arrived, I laid myself in one of its seats and shielded my eyes against the outside light, desperately trying to ward off yet another migraine. When the carriage finally arrived home, Dad walked me to the front door of my house. “You feel okay being alone now?”

“Yes. I'm going to try to sleep.”

“Okay.” He hugged me around the shoulder. “I and your mom will be back later tonight.”

With him gone, I shuffled upstairs and lay on my bed with only the ticking clock downstairs as company. What am I going to do now? How am I going to pay rent? What about food? Should I move someplace else?

I rolled onto my stomach and buried my head under a pillow. I'm so useless now. I don't want anyone seeing me like this. They think less of me... I'm so useless. Where should I look for work now? Should I wait until I feel better? Will I ever feel better?

There I lay, assaulted by these thoughts and many more as my attempts to sleep were thwarted.

I can't stand this any longer.

Standing, I looked around myself for anything to keep my mind off the worries which wrapped around and smothered me like a thick, wet blanket.

Somehow, even with my absence, the house had gotten dirty. A thin film of dust covered the second floor railing and some of my furniture, and spider webs hung in corners.

Hugging the rail tightly, I walked down stairs to the the kitchen where my cleaning items resided. Opening the cabinet, I, like a thousand times before, reached out to grab the rags and bucket with my magic. The ever present pressure in my head spiked and a metallic taste filled my mouth.

Mentally cursing myself, I leaned in and pulled several rags out with my mouth, spitting them back out when I tasted them. Those things are revolting!

It was something I had never considered, but now that I was aware of it, I was going to throw these rags into the wash bin the instant I was done with them.

With the supplies, I cleaned the surfaces of my house; though, I still struggled with coordination and didn't do a good job.

I kept myself busy until five when I sat down for a long break. My hind legs under me, I laid my chin onto my crossed front legs, eyes alert and ears up like a guard dog as I stared at the pail and rags which had been used more by my hooves that day than they had been all other times combined.

Not entirely sure why I was doing it, I closed my eyes and focused my senses, reaching out with my truesight to observe my surroundings.

Flashes, gentle like the glow of embers rising from a fire, glimmered in my truesight as if glimpsed from the corner of an eye. They carried with them a presence of familiarity, whispering that, should I catch one long enough to observe, I might for the briefest of moments see the world around me as I once did.

Castor, what are you doing? You know you can't see anything.

With each scintillation, I cast my focus out to study the fields of, what I figuratively refer to as white light. Don't get your expectations up. I told myself each time I saw an image flash in my truesight. Laying there, I closed my eyes again and called upon a lifetime of mental discipline to work out a clairvoyance meditation. Just focus.

Two dull glows radiated to my left, then nothing for five minutes.

Focus Harder. I ordered myself.

A dim sensation streaked in front of me, leaving dancing embers of white in its wake.

Just reach out and see it like you've done all your life before.

An amorphous gray blob expanded in my truesight like phantom shapes burned into one's eyes after staring into light.

Yes. Hold onto it.
The blob swelled under my focus, then contracted into oblivion.

I started over.

Five dull glows tinged the edges of my vision.

Yes, just focus. Repeat the steps.

A blazing white burst streaked from top to bottom, burning a swath of dancing pinpricks of white in my truesight.

Touch them, pull them together.

The pinpricks gravitated towards the center of my focus and coalesced together into a single conglomerate.

Come on... Do something! I could feel the outline of my surroundings not through sense, but through memory. I could see faint outlines bending and twisting in front of my mind as if staring into the darkness. The shapes, contours and features were vaguely defined, but I couldn't tell if it was memory or truesight from which the vision came.

The bucket in front of me: I could clearly remember its form, I knew what it 'looked like', so to say, and I strained my mind in the darkness to see it.

The white blob in my truesight shuttered and faded against my efforts to hold it in my mind. But as it dimmed, there, ever so clear in my mind, I for a breathless moment saw the outline of the bucket.

I sat up and smiled.
It's a phantasm Castor. Don't believe what you saw.

But how could I deny my very senses?

Those aren't your senses.

Then what were they?

Dreams. Empty hopes.

I couldn't accept that.

Don't lie to yourself.

I wasn't. I actually saw with my mind.

Remember the tests. Remember your failure.

I sat there arguing with myself until I heard knocking at my door which I opened to see my parents standing there. “How are you, dear?” she asked.

“Awful. I guess Dad told you about what happened?”

“My poor daughter.” She hugged me, “Just relax and I'll take care of dinner for you.”

“Thank you.” Escorting them in, I helped her unload her saddlebags.

“Go on, lay down on the couch. I've got everything taken care of.” Mom said. I wasn't about to argue the point, so I lay on the couch and dozed off until around six thirty when I was awakened by Dad gently nudging my shoulder.

“Dinner's ready Castor.”

I rose from the couch where I had collapsed and shuffled over to the dinner table in a haze. Scooping some pasta onto my plate, I stared at the spaghetti and realized that I couldn't stand the sight of food even though I hadn't eaten anything at all that day and my body needed to regain its severely depleted magic.

I took a bite chewed it slowly. Bleh. It tasted good, but I just couldn't stomach a single morsel.

“Aren't you going to eat anything Castor?”

I looked over to my Dad when he spoke. “Huh?”

“You've hardly touched your food. Are you feeling alright?”

Realizing my parents had already finished half of their meal, I suddenly felt like I had just missed a gap in time. “I blanked out for a minute.” I took another bite of food and had to force myself to swallow it.

“Castor. Your father and I have been talking and... well... I don't think we're comfortable with you living here alone.”

“I'm fine...”

“No Castor, you're not.”

“...” I didn't answer.

“It's just... After what happened last night, Minscy and I didn't want you to have another seizure without anyone to be there with you.”

“That's right,” Mom said. “I mean, what if you were to fall down the stairs, of, heaven forbid, collapse in the tub like you nearly did? I was horrified when I found out what nearly happened!”

I twirled my fork aimlessly in the spaghetti until I dropped I sent it clattering to the floor dragging spaghetti with it. Before I could even reach down to grab the fork, Dad got up from his chair and picked it up.

“I'll get you another one.”

Fussing over me like this was unreasonable – it was like I was a foal again. “So are you wanting to stay over tonight?” I asked.

“Only if you want one of us to. And please don't take it that we think you can't take care of yourself, it's just that we don't want anything to happen to you.”

The rest of dinner passed in silence which was only broken by the occasional clink of cutlery on the plates. I downed one or two more bites of food, but by the time they were washing their dishes, it still looked like I hadn't even touched what was on my plate.

“Aren't you going to eat anything more?” Mom asked.

“I'm too upset to take another bite.” A pained expression flickered onto her face. “I'm sorry, but it's not something I can help. I'm going to put it away in the ice box for tomorrow.” I stood to go get a container, but Dad walked by and whisked away my plate.

“I'll take care of it for you sweetheart.”

I can take care of myself! nearly sprang from my mouth, but I was too tired to have another argument and dropped it. I walked across to the living area and sat down on the love seat. In the kitchen area, my parents tidied up, washing the stove, cleaning dishes, and such. “Do you want any help?” I offered.

“We're fine. Do you feel up to a game when we're done?”
You think I'm a child? “You sure you don't need any help?”

“It's fine. We don't mind.”

So I sat there, feeling useless as they fawned over me like a foal. I tried to ignore the thought – they were trying to be nice by helping – but that did little to help.

Not once during this entire night did either of them use their magic either. Physically, they carried dishes, washed pots, wiped surfaces: no magic was ever used! If I were blind, would they go about with their eyes closed? Were I like Dante, would they drag themselves around by their front legs?

I fumed for several more minutes before I realized I was angry at ponies who were trying their best to help me.

Just drop it Castor. Drop it!

Sighing, I tried to ignore the nettling urge to confront my parents.

I'm useless, I can't even clean dishes. I rolled slightly to make myself more comfortable. I can't do anything now. They're doing everything for me now because I can't do it.

That was it; I wasn't going to put up with this self badgering any longer. “I feel horrible... really sleepy, so I'm going to bed.”

“Okay dear. Well be finished soon and I'll be out of your hair. Would you be alright with your Dad staying over tonight to keep you company?”

Be calm Castor. Don't start an argument. “Yeah. That would be fine.” I stood and started towards the stairs.

“Let me help you walk up.” Dad came to where I stood at the base of the stairs and wrapped a foreleg around me.

“I'm fine. Really. You don't have to help.”

He rubbed my shoulder. “I know, but watching you walk up the stairs makes me nervous.”

You can't do anything, Castor. Shoving Dad's foreleg from my shoulders, I snarled, “I can do this. Just Leave Me Alone!”

He blinked and backed a few steps away from me, standing in shock as I slowly ascended the stairs. He finally spoke when I was about halfway up. “Castor, I was just trying to help you.”

“I've gone up and down these stairs before, so that means I can do it now as well.” To prove my point, I released the deathgrip I held on the hoof rail as I climbed the rest of the distance to the top.

“Please be careful.”

I didn't say anything else until I reached the top of the stairs and started towards my bed. “Goodnight.”

Chapter 8

The next day, it was two before I dragged my body, wrought with stiffness and headaches, from under the waning comfort of the sheets. I wasn't hungry, yet nitari burned in my chest, sending chills into my phantom horn as my body screamed to replenish my reserves. Opening the icebox, I pulled out an apple and took a bite from it, but sat it aside afterwards, slouching down in a kitchen chair and resting my head on the table.

Please just make it stop.
I sat like that for some time until I slowly stood and shambled outside to check the mail. There was only one letter, and it was from Silver Lining.

I tore the letter in half and shredded the pieces over a storm drain. Storming back inside, I climbed up the stairs and flopped down at my writing desk, pulling out a pen and some paper.

Silver Lining

I just received your letter, and I wanted you to know that I shredded it without so much as bothering myself to look at its contents. I don't care what you have to say, I don't care if you're sorry.
Look at my penmanship: see how messy it is, how I can't even stay within the lines. I've had to relearn how to write just as I have had to relearn everything else because of you. I struggle with the simplest of things, and I don't know what's worse: that I am in constant, unbearable pain, or that I am functionally blind and paralyzed
I hope you are happy with what you've done to me, because I sure am miserable.
You've done enough.

GET OUT OF MY LIFE!

Castor Star

Haphazardly cramming the letter into an envelope, I sealed and addressed it to Silver Lining and placed it in a mail pickup box at the corner of the block.

Later that day, as the sun was falling from mid into late afternoon, my friends, Ivy, Cloud Mason, Sugarsilk, Cloverberry, and Dante, were walking together with me down a old cobblestone pathway running through a park. The wind carried the whispers of summer on its breath, telling of the warm, life filled days ahead.

The sun shone warmly in the cool air, warming our bodies as we walked along the path to a less beaten trail leading off into the mountainside. My friends laughed and bantered amongst themselves, while I, feeling distant, only occasionally added a phrase or two into the mix. Dante laughed loudly with the others as my mind drifted to darker thoughts and I looked at the washed out, dreary colors of the world.

The cheery blue sky peaked through the leaf covered branches arching over the path, and lively flowers poked up through the ground to display their vibrant colors. I lowered my head against the trees' ashen gray color and let my eyes fall to the sepia toned path.

It's just not the same... I can't see anything anymore.

“Hey, Castor? You feeling okay?” Sugarsilk asked me.

Still downcast, I looked to the snow white unicorn. “It's a beautiful day,” I sighed.

“Then, why don't you sound like it?” she asked.

“Close your truesight, see only with your eyes, hear only with your ears, feel only with your body, then tell me if you can appreciate the day in the same way.”

“Oh,” she said and was silent a moment. “Well, it isn't bad only seeing this gorgeous day.”

“I don't think you quite understand what I am saying.”

“Saying about what?” Ivy asked, looking at me along with Cloud Mason, Cloverberry, and Dante.

“I was just saying...” I hesitated, looking at them. Dante, the only other unicorn, was the only one who might -I stress 'might'- have understood what I meant. “I was just saying, it's a beautiful day.”

“It is, isn't it?” Cloverberry said, looking about herself at the scenery around us.

“Yeah,” I replied. “It's just...” my mouth dumbly continued on.

“It's just what?” Ivy asked.

“It's just... I wish I could appreciate today. I can't quite see as well as I could.” I adjusted the glasses which sat on my nose, then added, “And I don't mean with my eyes.”

“Personally speaking, just seeing with my eyes isn't as bad as I think you think it is.”

I bristled. Leave it to an earth pony to think that. Everyone should know they see and hear better than unicorns do anyway. “Tell me, Ivy, do you think you could enjoy a day like today just as much if someone were to rip out your eyes? Huh?”

“That's not what happened to you.”

“That's Exactly What Happened!”

“I didn't-”

“You don't understand what happened to me! None of you do, so stop acting like you understand!”

“That was unnecessary, Castor.” Cloud Mason said in the ensuing silence. I glared at him, but no one said anything else.

The park lay on the line between urbanized Canterlot and the mostly natural countryside. The most commonly walked path looped around a small clearing with a mountain brook running through it and was overshadowed by ancient trees. From this path, several other trails, mostly ill maintained, broke away from the main common grounds and followed the contour of the mountainside some short distance. We turned onto one of these paths which lead through the treeline some several hundred feet before opening onto a small, grassy meadow. It was well removed from most of the park, and the gentle slope off the path into the meadow provided a wonderful place to lie in the grass and flowers and enjoy the gentle passing of time.

“So, anyone up for a game of soccer?” Cloud Mason broke the silence I had created, pulling a soccer ball out of his saddlebags as we neared the clearing. He threw it to the ground and kicked it to Sugarsilk, who tapped it over to me.

I didn't really react as it bounced against my hooves. For an instant, I nearly tried pushing it out of my way with telekinesis, but caught myself and gently tapped the ball to Ivy. “I don't feel like playing.”

Cloverberry looked over to me as I started to walk away. “You sure?”

“Yes.” I replied, pointing to the helmet on my. “I got a pretty bad hole here. I'll stay back and watch.” I sat down in the tall grass on the hill, falling back on my haunches for a moment before I lay down fully on my back. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath through my nose, trying to make the deep ache go away.

Somehow, the shining sun and welcoming scenery only plunged the knife deeper into my heart and then tore downward through my diaphragm. Why did I think it would feel better if I were to wrap myself up in some dark room and watch it rain?

In the background, I heard the gleeful shouts of my friends as they ran and passed the ball back and forth among themselves, playing with two invisible goals at the ends of the meadow. I stared up at the sky, watching clouds drift by, but eventually sat back up to watch my friends play.

Ivy, Sugarsilk, and Cloverberry were on one team, while Dante and Cloud Mason were on the other. In the back of my mind, I noted that the lineups by tribe were Earth Pony, Unicorn, and Pegasus verses Unicorn and Pegasus. If I were to join Dante and Cloud Mason's team, I could be the team's Earth Pony.

Except, I was still physically a unicorn; I was brittle.

I was easy broken...

I was broken...

I rubbed the forehead of my helmet where my horn should be and continued to stroke the spot.

Cloud Mason took the ball and ran towards Sugarsulk and her team's invisible goal when Cloverberry came from his side and tried to steal the ball away, forcing Cloud Mason to pass to Dante. The pass was bad and sailed behind Dante who turned rapidly and fell on his shoulder.

Despite myself, I chuckled lightly until as he lumbered off to help Cloud Mason stop Ivy from scoring. He gimped past them unnoticed to place himself between the goal and the ball right as Cloverberry, the only among us who was remotely athletic, took possession of the ball and kicked it towards the end of the meadow with all she was worth.

Poor Dante didn't even have time to react before he the ball struck him squarely in the face, sending him comically rearing backwards onto his haunches. I snickered at his expense again as everyone stopped what they were doing and crowded around him as he sat there dazed for a moment.

“You okay?”

“That looked painful.”

“I think you're bleeding.”

“Everything okay?”

Dante rubbed his snout with a foreleg, and looked at the thick blood stain left behind. “Ah, will you look at that.” His eyes fell to the soccer ball. “Alight, enough to this.”

Awkwardly standing, he wrapped his magic around the ball, lifted it above everyone's heads, and began trotting merrily to the other side of the meadow.

“Hey!” Ivy yelled. “That's not fair. Sugarsilk, could you please?”

She grinned, ran past Dante and turned, lowering herself into a playfully aggressive stance. “Put it down,” she ordered in a lightsome tone.

He brushed passed without paying her mind.

“Alright then,” she chuckled.

The glow of her magic wrapped around his and the soccer ball, some ten feet in the air, stopped moving. Dante stopped and physically tugged like he was pulling on a line connected to the ball, though I'm not quite sure why - that's not how magic works.

“We really going to do this?” he said.

Sugarsilk smiled wryly and gave a sharp tug, jerking the ball slightly in her direction. Dante, in turn, replied with his own magic and the ball jerked back a foot towards him.

It was like watching the two playing tug of war with a physical rope as they strained to overpower the other. Cloud Mason and Cloverberry hoovered next to the ball, cheering their respective team members on while Ivy sat below, looking a little miffed.

As Dante and Sugarsilk heaved against their invisible tethers, they made little progress. If I had my magic, I could take the ball from both of you.

They tugged and yanked at the ball until they spent their magical reserves and they strained to even keep the ball off the ground. A thin trickle of blood still flowed from Dante's nose when a vacant look filtered over his face and his brow furrowed into what looked like confusion. A moment later, he sneezed and a great plume of particulated blood sprayed everywhere. Ivy and Sugarsilk screamed and jumped back as the soccer ball to dropped to the ground.

Cloud Mason quickly kicked the ball to the other side of the field, and Cloverberry chased after.

“Sweet Celestia...” Ivy said, looking at Dante. “You look like you murdered someone.”

Dante looked to his chest. His ash gray coat was speckled with his blood, his front leg smeared with it where he had wiped it away, and much of his face was stained crimson.

“How'de you know about him? I thought I hid the body better than that, well at least the top half of it.” He smirked and trotted away. “Don't hold up. I'm just going to wash myself off a bit.”

Sugarsilk appeared ill at the sight of so much blood, and was visibly on the leading edge of an energy crash as she hazily walked towards where I sat. “I think that's enough for me today.” She flopped down next to me and exhaled. “I haven't used that much magic in a long time.” She opened one of her saddlebags and pulled out a paper wrapped sandwich, unfolded it's covering, and began munching on it, without using magic.

“Sugarsilk,” I started as calmly as I could. “You don't have to be so careful using your magic around me.”

“What?”

“Everyone is so careful about using their magic around me. I can handle seeing ponies use magic.”

“Oh, no, that's not it. I'm just a little stretched at the moment and I am afraid I might drop something if I try to levitate it.”

She's lying. Can someone please just act normally around me? “Well, you don't-” I cut myself off. “Never mind. Just forget it.”

“Forget what?” she asked.

I waved her off. “Just, never mind.”

“Um... okay...” Reluctantly, she returned to the piece of bread. We sat by each other watching the rest of our companions play for several minutes before a distant scream echoed across the clearing.

“What was that?” Ivy, in the middle of the meadow, asked, looking down the path from which we came.

“I don't know.” I replied, turning to the direction of the sound.

“I'm going to go make sure everything is okay.” Cloud Mason stated and began flying briskly in the direction of the scream, followed closely by Cloverberry and more tentatively by Ivy. For one brief moment, my mind raced over several defensive spells that I knew before I remembered I couldn't use any of them.

I jumped when a hoof came down upon my shoulder. “You okay Castor? You look scared.”

“I'm fine, Sugarsilk. I just feel so powerless. I mean, what if I need to defend myself? I can't do anything.”

“Everything's fine, I certain.”

A few minute passed and there were no further sounds which we could discern, so Sugarsilk leaned back and lay in the grass, looking upwards to the clouds in the sky. “I wish Silver Lining had come, but he's really thrown himself into his work these past few weeks.”

“Hmf”

“He's been really upset about what happened to you. He feels bad. Really bad. These past weeks, I can honestly say I don't recognize him.” She shook her head and looked over to me. “I'm worried.”

I rolled my eyes. “He'll be fine. If I haven't curled up and died yet, then he won't either.”

“I'm not afraid he's going to die, or you for that matter but... I'm worried that he's changing.” She paused to consider her words, then gently added, “I am worried you are changing too.”

“I'm the same as always.”

“You're so bitter.”

“Look, I don't think you realize how bad I feel.”

“That doesn't give you an excuse.”

“So you expect me to be acting normally right now?” I huffed. “I'm sorry, Okay! There, I said it! I'm sorry I can't be happy for everyone. It's sooooo unthoughtful of me to drag you down.”

“I'm not saying you should be happy, but you shouldn't be so mean to to Silver Lining.

I threw my forelegs out to my side. “I've been handling it the best I can!

“He's devastated, Castor. He is your friend, just like he is mine.”

“Do you see this?” I pointed to my forehead. “This will last A Lifetime!He isn't my friend anymore, not after this.”

“Don't say that. He didn't mean to hurt you. We've all talked with him about this – I've talked with him. He wants to make things right.”

“Don't give me that! He took everything that made me who I was, and what happened to him? Just a sprained tendon. That's it. He went home, was not dismissed from his work, and gets to keep on living like nothing happened. Then there's me, stuck in purgatory, not knowing what I am going to do with the rest of my life or even if I will ever be anything more than some store's retarded janitor!” I put on a mock, haughty accent. “Oh, I saw that poor dear Castor over at the market today. The miserable thing was trembling as she swept the floor. You would think someone who has spent their entire lives doing such menial things would have figured out how to hold a broom right without her magic. But I guess such things are beyond her ability to do since she got kicked in the head.”

“That's not going to happen, Castor, so stop telling yourself that!” Sugarsilk yelled at me. “And again, Silver Lining didn'tmean for this to happen, so stop forcing yourself to drink this poison that's hurting you both and causing you to be such b-” she cut herself off and stormed away.

I threw my forelegs out from my sides. “I am coping with a lot of loss right now! I'll be fine, just give me a blasted chance to adjust, Alright!?!”

She kept walking away.

Bitch.

I sat there, fighting off another headache as she disappeared down the path the rest of my friends had gone down earlier. How dare she lecture me on how I should treat Silver Lining. He deserves everything I can throw back at him. I dug into my saddlebags, pulled out some crackers with sliced cheese wrapped in paper, and crammed the morsel into my mouth. What does she know about being too negative? Lop her horn off too and see if she says I'm being too negative.

I pulled out a metal canteen of water and tore the stopper from it's mouth, splattering myself with more than a meager helping of my drink as I took a hearty swig.

Condescending swillhead, born with a silver spoon plunged up her ass as well as in her mouth. She doesn't see -doesn't understand!- what I am going through. Thinks she knows everything, but doesn't.

A few minutes later, I heard my friends' dampened tones as they walked back up the path. So help me if she's going to get everyone to gang up on me. They entered sight behind me over the edge hill and were talking about something that did not sound too serious.

“What happened?” I asked when they came up upon me.

“Ah, well, this all would be my fault.” Dante replied with a grin. “I was over in the creek which feeds into the pond washing myself off when a mother and her two kids walked by and saw me. She overreacted, really, but I played into it by putting on a backwater accent and saying I had just cut up some varmint I had caught. Told her it was my lunch, but offered her a bit of it as well.” Dante broke into a wide grin, “The prissy rich lass screamed in horror and fainted. I couldn't have asked for a better reaction.”

I chuckled.

“What happened to her?”

Dante shrugged as he walked past me. “Don't know. I figured it best I get out of there before she reclaimed herself and called the law upon me, so I rather hastily retreated.” He stopped at the soccer ball and looked down at it. “Oh, and also, I got the ball.” A swift kick sent the ball sailing across the field and he took off running towards the far end of the meadow as fast as his false hind legs would permit.

Ivy, Cloverberry, and Cloud Mason's eyes went wide as they realized the game was back on and they broke into a full on run after him. Sugarsilk lingered slightly, going out of her way to brush into my side as she walked passed me. “Don't think this is over.”

I said nothing as she continued on and caught up with the others.

I stirred from my study loft the following morning as knock came at my door. Setting aside the quill and parchment I used to practice my penmanship, slowly I made my way down the stairs. The knocking came again before I reached the bottom, to which I answered by yelling, “Give me a minute. I'm coming.”

Reaching the door, I opened it and was met by Silver Lining standing at the threshold. I blinked, taken aback for a moment as he shifted uneasily and started talking. “Castor... I got your letter and I-I just don't know what to-”

I slammed the door in his face, locked the deadbolt, and walked away.

He pounded on the door. “Castor! Please,” he yelled from outside. “I'm sorry. Please just let me talk.”

I turned around and faced the door. “GO AWAY!!!”

“Please, Castor. I don't expect you to forgive me, but I want to talk. Please!”

I shook my head in disbelief and stormed up the stairs, stomping loudly with each step. Why won't anyone leave me alone about this? What does he expect will happen? At least he realized I will never forgive him.

“Castor, Please!” he yelled, pounding on the door again as I reached the top of the stairs.

“I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU!” I screamed back down, breathing through grit teeth in the following moments as I expected him to continue groveling at my door. A faint noise, maybe that of a whimper, made its way to my ears, but I heard nothing more from Silver Lining. Slowly, it became clear that he had left.

Heading back towards my writing desk, I let out a long sigh. I hope that's the last I hear from him.

Author's Note

Chapter 1

The first thing I remember is blinding light in my eyes and a headache so intense that I thought my head was being crushed. Groaning, my body was stiff and ached as I swatted weakly at the space above my face and attempted to roll away from the light.

My eyes flitted open and darted frantically about the room to take in its contents consisting of sterile white walls, nondescript furniture, drab blinds, and an opened privacy curtain. I was in my bedroom... no, something wasn't right. Things were, different. Across the room, I saw another bed in which someone lay unconscious, though my delirium, I half dreamed, half hallucinated that I was looking down upon myself from outside as I looked at the other patient. Where am I? My head throbbed with pain as I racked my memory for the answers.

I lay motionless, not understanding my surroundings for a long time, then drifted off again. In what felt like seconds, the sun had moved to a different spot and no longer shone on me. I felt like time had passed, but I couldn't explain why. Where am I? I hazily thought, half remembering having thought those words several times before.

There was the smell of harsh chemicals. I knew that smell. It was from... I couldn't remember, but I knew that smell.

I felt dull in the head -nebulous- as if I were half lucid in a fever dream. Am I sick? The thought crossed my mind more in feeling than in words. I was weak and tired, so it made sense, but something else was off. I hurt and felt delirious, or was I? Wasn't my mind as clear as it always was?

No, I don't... I'm not... thinking straight. Consistent thought eluded me, but I was clear enough to realize something was wrong. So, sleepy, I felt my eyelids begin to droop. Tired... just a little... sleep. My eyes closed, yet, before I fully drifted away, I startled awake with a single thought, I don't know where I am.

I opened my eyes again and looked at the whitewashed wall across from me and rolled my head to the side, only to have my entire skull erupt with pain with the slightest movement. I sucked in a ragged breath and groaned as the hurting subsided. With the breath came a familiar scent which summoned images of sick and hurt ponies.

I'm in a hospital. That made sense. Hospitals were for hurt ponies and I was hurting.

But who am I? My mind clouded, it took a moment for a name to come. I'm, Castor Star, I blearily thought as through the haze, fighting desperately against the overwhelming urge to fall asleep.

Slowly I came to remember other things about myself: my date of birth, a favorite childhood memory, the faces of my family and friends. But why was I here? I recalled every last memory my mind could grasp, but my most recent recollection was sitting with my friends having a picnic in a meadow, then the very next thing I could remember was awakening here a few minutes ago.

Using my magical senses, clairvoyance as they are called, I tried to see my surrounding room, yet I felt blindfolded because I could see nothing. My headache worsened immediately after trying, and I regretted attempting to do anything; though, the pain seemed to awaken me a little more from my stupor.

I must be hurt badly, I concluded after some difficulty. What's happened to me? Looking around for a nurse or doctor that could tell me, each time I moved my head, the world tipped on its side and I was struck with intense dizziness and even more pain.

I sighed and let the back of my head press firmly into the pillow, mulling over the feeling of bandages wrapped around my head. Feeling sick from my reeling balance and disturbed to be lying there thinking about what injuries I might have, I shifted my attention to the machinery on my left which hummed and beeped quietly to record my pulse. I wasn't quite sure how long I spent motionless watching the glowing crystals and the magical displays they controlled, but the entire mechanism made me feel very mortal – something I was not too fond to contemplate upon.

As my faculties returned, I recalled that these systems are usually linked to a monitor in the nurses' station to give them a live feed of the patients. Lifting the sheets and looking down my body, I saw a strip of thick bandages wrapped around my diaphragm and stomach. On my chest I saw pads with wires glued to square swatches of shaved skin. Somewhere on or near the bed, I supposed, there was a little button to call a nurse, but, keeping in mind that I felt like vomiting last time I tilted my head in the slightest, I didn't feel like looking for it.

Focusing on the electrodes adhered to my chest, I tried to magically pull them off only to find my headache worsened to the point of living agony. My vision began to tingle with the subtle pulses of black and white that forewarned of a terrible migraine as spots quickly started dancing in front of my eyes. Grunting, I was forced to stop the spell. In response, most of the discomfort subsided, but some remained.

Perturbed that I couldn't focus my magic, I was also concerned that I could not really sense the wires or even the large magical device next to me. There typically isn't that much detectable magical output for machines like the monitor, but being this close I should have easily gotten the impression that there was magic in it. In fact, the impression I had gotten earlier from clairvoyance was the same: it felt as if someone had thrown a thick blanket over my magical senses, blinding them like how a burlap bag over one's head blinds their sight. There was just... nothing.

I reached out with a hoof and plucked the pads off my chest by the wires and the machinery began screeching irritatingly, which only agitated my hangover like state. It was at that moment I reconsidered how good my idea was, especially because the high pitched tone was very obnoxious.

Shorty, two nurses rushed, glancing over to me in bed where my shaky hoof held up the wires. “Cou-” my weak voice cracked and I coughed to clear it. “Couldn't find the button to call you.”

Did I really sound as feeble as I thought I just did?

“The button's right over here if you need it,” the nurse informed softly and pointed to the foreleg-rest of the bed where a bright red square button with a white cross resided. “How do you feel?”

“Like I got kicked in the head. What happened to me?”

“I am going to check your vitals first and ask you a few questions.” The nurse looked over to a clipboard which was on the wall next to my bed. “Doctor Apple will inform you of your circumstances when she gets here.”

“Okay.” I stared blankly at the drab, white wall in front of me. It was decorated with the occasional health poster, plastered up as if only an afterthought when someone noticed there was literally nothing else on that particular wall. The closest one seemed, in my opinion, to be a typical, disappointingly layman's description of the sneezing process and how to contain germs. But all that was only my opinion as I squinted to read the incomprehensibly blurred text with my nearsighted vision.

There was a series of truesight spells that I commonly used to enhance my natural clairvoyance and, as I could see absolutely nothing with my magical senses, I closed my eyes to begin forming a spell to hopefully brighten my senses up a bit. Typically, when casting a spell such as this particular truesight spell, the ten components slot together like blocks in a puzzle cube. Laying in the hospital bed, I suddenly found myself in extraordinary discomfort the moment I attempted to form the first of the ten 'puzzle blocks'. I jerked back from the pain and immediately stopped forming the block, causing the pain to subside almost as quickly.

I was... alarmed, but because the pain wasn't persistent, I thought that maybe, just maybe I had malformed the building block, so I tried again with another.

The same thing happened, except the pain I had caused hung around longer.

Frustrated and now sustaining an even greater headache, I watched the nurse out of the corner of my eye. Her name tag read Cross. I giggled, finding it a fitting name that played well into the stereotype of nurses with terrible bedside manners.

Nurse Cross turned a dial, picked up a pen in her mouth, and scribbled something on a clipboard mounted on the vital monitor. She turned the dial another increment to show the last thirty minutes, and I began to drift off as she scribbled more messy writing onto the clipboard. When I was well along the way to being asleep, she turned to me and nudged my shoulder. “Castor, do you feel like answering a few questions?”

“Wha? Where... where am I?”

“You're in the hospital, Castor.”

“Oh... what happened to me?”

“You had a bad head injury and have been in a coma,” she answered, then picked up the clipboard. “Now I'm going to ask some questions. You try to remember as best you can and tell me the answeres.” She looked down to her clipboard and checked a box with every answer I gave. "What is your name?”

“Castor Star.”

“Place and Date of birth?”

“Canterlot. May 5th, 990.”

“Who are Gazing Star and Meniscus and what is your relation to them?”

“They are my parents and I am their daughter.”

“Where did you attend school?”

“Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.”

“What do you do for a living now?”

“I work as a spellwrite and composer at the Canterlot Institute of Magic.”

“What is today's date?”

“It's... it is... I don't know. How long have I been unconscious?”

“Just tell the last day you remember being awake.”

I strained for a few moments. “I think... it was in May?”

“Okay.” Nurse Cross put the clipboard on the table next to my bed while I, motion sick and in much pain, stared blankly at the ceiling wishing I would just puke already and feel better. “What happened to me?”

“Castor,” Nurse Cross replied. “You got kicked in the head and... there was significant damage.”

My stomach hollowed. “W-what? H-h-how much damage?”

“It was very significant.”

“How significant?”

Nurse Cross shook her head, “The doctor will be in shortly to tell you.”

“Please, tell me what happened.”

“The doctor is just a few minutes away. You will have to wait until she arrives.”

“I don't want...” I tapered off, being too tired and miserable to do fight her anymore, “Okay.”

Thinking about what had happened to me, my skin crawled with a cold, sick feeling and my heart fluttered. It was in the following minutes while I unavailingly tried to ignore this and the crippling pain in my head that an olive green Pegasus, eyes sleepless with bags underneath them, stepped into the room carrying a tray holding enough filled coffee cups to cause lifelong insomnia. We made eye contact at roughly the same time and he froze for a split second before hastily setting the tray onto a table and rushing to my side.

“You're awake!” Cloud Mason exclaimed.

“Yeah... This headache is kinda making me wish I wasn't...” I weakly rubbed the temple of my head. “Can't seem to use magic for some reason...”

The expression on my friend's face flushed through several stages, going from confusion to concern to a very remorseful look that made me go cold. “You don't know yet, do you?”

“Know what?” I asked, my voice cracking with fear. “Mason, what don't I know?”

He chewed on the inside of his cheek and looked away from me. “I need to go tell your parents that you are awake. They should be the ones to tell you.”

“Tell me what? Cloud Mason!” I yelled as loudly as my weak body and throbbing head could muster. My friend's short tail disappeared through the door and he was gone, leaving me alone with Nurse Cross.

I choked on the taste of bile as I clamped my jaw shut against the rising fear in my chest. Mason acted strangely, like he was tiphooving around something so blatantly obvious that I should have already figured it out. The way he looked at me – it made me go cold to think about.

A sob escaped my tightly clenched jaw as tears rolled down my cheek. What's wrong with me? Thoughts running away from me, so many 'what ifs' flashed through my mind in the next few minutes that by the time Doctor Apple walked in, I was a nervous wreck.

“Hello Castor,” a mellow voice said as its owner, a cream colored mare, walked into the room. “I'm Doctor Apple. I've been helping to take care of you these past few days.”

“H-hello.” I fortified myself as much as I could while I looked over to the mare who had just entered the room.

“You have been in a coma for about four days now, but you've made it past the worst of it and I am certain you are only going to get better from here.” The mare, redheaded and with a gentle southern draw, smiled down at me as she spoke the end of her last sentence, but she paused and her face changed to a somber expression. “I saw your parents coming down the hall behind me, Castor, and I am afraid that there are some very unfortunate things we must tell you.”

I swallowed a lump that was working up my throat and, my mouth dry, I responded with a quiet, “Oh.” Within only a few seconds, my mother and father tensely entered and pushed passed the doctor.

“Castor, I am so glad you are okay!” my mother, named Meniscus but known as Minscy, exclaimed leaning across me and gently embracing me in a hug while my father, Gazing Star, gently put his hoof atop mine. I simply lay mute in too much shock to respond properly to what was happening.

“We were so worried... I... I just couldn't think straight.” Dad choked up, leaning in and hugging me after Mom had let go.

I looked from my Dad, Mom, to Doctor Apple, “What happened to me? I... I don't remember...”

Mom and Dad turned to Doctor Apple who closed her eyes and nodded back to them. Turning to me, she in a factual tone said, “You were struck forcefully in the head when one of your friends slipped while trying to buck a tree you were sitting next to. By all accounts, it seems as if you were trying to stop him from doing it before you had gotten out of the way. He kicked but missed the tree,” Doctor Apple looked me dead in the eyes, “The kick landed squarely on your forehead, shattering your skull and giving you a severe concussion. Furthermore, he impaled his leg on your horn and-”

There was a deathly pause, “Castor, there is no easy way to say this, so I will be blunt. Your horn was partially torn free from the surrounding tissue. There was no way to save it.”

The words knocked the wind out of me as if I had been thrown to the ground by a griffon. Eyes wide in terror, I reached up and groped clumsily for my horn which was no longer on my head. Passing over bandages and shaved mane, the once familiar protrusion was gone – simply gone.

There is no way this is real, my mind buzzed in terror.

This was impossible.

Outright impossible!

It must be a nightmare, I concluded as my heart pounded in my ears. This can't happen to me! Yet as I stared wide eyed at nothing, the reality was inescapable. Adrenaline coursing through my veins, I frantically tried to prop myself into a sitting position as I laid a hoof across my chest and began to hyperventilate. I felt a hoof on my shoulder and, looking at Doctor Apple, I saw her mouth move and was dimly aware that she was saying something, but the words were indecipherable as my lungs uncontrollably gulped air and my eyes flitted about the room looking for an escape from this unimaginable nightmare.

“B-b-but.. but it isn't... I mean...” I stammered.

“Shhh... shhhh.” Mom tried to calm me, leaning in and gently rubbing my back. “It's okay. It's okay.” Dad embraced us both as my mind reeled madly.

Eyes tearless, mind racing, I was too shocked to cry, though that would come shortly. “I-I-I'm not able to use magic?”

“No.” Doctor Apple shook her head. “And there is nothing known to modern medicine which will ever be able to change that.”

I swallowed despite my mouth being dry. Mom leaned in, kissed my cheek, and gently stroked that of my hair which had not been shaved off in surgery. “It's okay dear, it's okay.”

“I know how much magic means to you, but you are very smart. I know you can find other things that will mean just as much,” Dad said, but how could he think such a thing? Magic was my life! Magic was Everything I knew!

Doctor Apple took this moment to step away and start writing on the same clipboard Nurse Cross had been using. From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of one of my friends, Ivy, staring in from the door frame at me. She looked little better than my parents: eyes droopy, hair frazzled and unkempt, creating an altogether ragged appearance about her. “Ivy...” I called to her weakly.

Mom heard me, turned to the door, and waved my friend in. “She's awake.”

Ivy, hearing this, briskly entered the room and hesitantly asked, “How is she doing?”

Mom gave her a sad look while I, independent of the exchange, moaned, “T-this isn't real... it can't be real,”

“It is real, Castor.” Dad gently squeezed my hoof. “I'm so sorry, but it is.”

No. It isn't, it can't. I'm dreaming.

“I was there when it happened, I was so scared for you.” My friend shuddered as she came to the bedside. “I could have never in my worst nightmare have imagined seeing you like that. But I am so glad that you are awake and okay.”

Seeing the pain in my friend's eyes, then that in my parent's expressions, reality began to dawn upon me. “I'm not okay... am I?” The burning in my throat worsened as I spoke those words; I was on the verge of crying harder than I had ever cried before.

“You're awake and talking to us. That's more than we had just a few minutes ago, and I'm so thankful to see life in you again.” Mom squeezed my hoof.

Doctor Apple stepped behind Ivy and motioned for her to move aside so she could move to my bedside. “You are injured very badly, but you have made it past the worst parts. Though you have a long recovery ahead of you, it is very doable and I can assure you that you will recover.” As she spoke those words, my hoof returned to my forehead for confirmation that I had lost my horn, though I almost could not bring myself to feel it again. It felt so wrong when my hoof passed through where my horn should be and I very gently patted the bandages on my head.

“I am sorry, but it's gone, Castor.” Doctor Apple gently reached out and pulled my hoof away. “You don't need to be touching the wound; it hasn't healed yet.”

“I-I've lost my horn.” My eyes became blurred from tears as my injury was becoming progressively realized and the numbness of the sudden shock began to fade away. I looked in desperation to Doctor Apple. “Horns grow! It'll grow back, won't it!?!”

She stoically shook her head 'no'.

But, that means... “M-m-my magic?”

Another stoic shake of the head.

A broken sob escaped my mouth as tears came rolling down my cheeks in torrents. Within moments, the sobbing became overwhelming as I broke into a full cry. Dimly, I could hear the words of comfort of my parents and Ivy, but the only firm connection to the world outside of my broken wailing was the comfort of my mother's foreleg wrapped around my shoulders.

As I cried, my head throbbed violently because not even the slightest snivel managed to escape my mouth without irritating my injury. I whimpered with each tear while my mom continued to stroke my hair whispering to me that everything was okay.

But I knew it wasn't going to be okay. I had lost everything I had spent my life working towards.

What good is a mage who can't cast magic? The thought elicited an especially strong wail to break from my mouth. I felt Mom's foreleg hug me a little bit harder. “Oh Castor. My dear sweet Castor.”

I cried for a long, long time, during which Doctor Apple and the nurse had stepped from the room. Mom, Dad, Ivy, and Cloud Mason remained behind at my bedside. Mom and Dad were next to me the entire time, crying with me, while Ivy and Mason sat awkwardly in some chairs in the room, both looking utterly despondent.

“I j-j-just can't believe it. I can't use magic... I can't use magic...” I repeated aimlessly through my tears periodically as some new wave of disbelief washed over me. Mom brushed the tears from my cheek with her handkerchief as they rolled as a torrent from my eyes. At one point, I flinched and moaned as a wave of pain from my head overwhelmed me.

“Are you okay, dear?” Dad asked.

“It hurts... It hurts so much.”

“I know Castor.” He put his hoof on mine and squeezed it gently. “I'm so sorry.”

“It's my head... It hurts so much that I can't think straight.”

He exchanged a worried glance with Mom, she nodded, and he in response pushed the nurse call button. Moments later, a nurse was at the door.

“Castor's head is in a lot of physical pain. Is there anything you can do to help her?”

The nurse walked over and looked at my IV stand, checked a clipboard, then turned a dial.

“I've upped your morphine drip. It was set low because you were unconscious and did not need it.

Within moments, the pain began to dull as the cold liquid swirled about in my veins and I felt the it flow its way to my heart. A certain lackadaisical euphoria began to glow in my chest and spread to my extremities as the pain subsided and my focus began to blur. I could feel myself losing consciousness, but through the artificial bliss could not fully recall what was happening.

Sometime immediately after, I blacked out.

My stomach growled and my hoof went to my belly to rub the spot where an intense hunger was declaring it was time to eat. My eyes, dry and crusted shut from tears, protested when I tried to open them, the underside of my eyelids sticking like sandpaper to my eyes underneath. I felt utterly decrepit and run down, which at least meant I was better than earlier. The pain in my head remained, dull and throbbing as it was, but it was manageable even though I had little to distract myself with as I stared blankly through the room's window at the gray world outside the hospital window.

A broken sigh escaped my lips as my heart sank deeper, Why is this happening to me? I groaned to myself, half remembering a happy dream where I had awakened in my own bed to find myself whole and well. Running my hoof up to touch the empty space where my horn once was, I felt my gut go hollow as my head continued to throb. The back of my throat burned raw with grief yet, despite how much I wanted to cry, I could not get the tears to come.

A friendly touch reached out and stroked my back. “Hey,” A voice gently called. Begrudged to move, I lay on my side to avoid provoking my injury to further pain.

“Hi,” my faint voice replied.

I heard Ivy's chair scrape on the floor and a moment later I saw her, a cambridge blue earth pony with a dark carmine mane with streaks of seashell pink, rounding the bed to sit on the side I was facing.

“I... I'm sorry I...” Using a foreleg, I wiped away a tear rolling down my face. “Sorry I worried you...”

“Don't be,” she replied.

I managed a faint smile, but the expression faded as my mind was drawn back to my condition, “I keep thinking this is a nightmare... but it isn't. I'm scared...”

“I'm here, Castor, and I'm scared with you. I know you'll get through this.”

I strained to sit up in bed and hug Ivy, but I was too weak and the pain was too great, so I settled for propping myself up on my side and reaching with my free foreleg. Ivy leaned in and hugged me back. We embraced for several blissful moments until my head started hurting worse and forced me to let go, but as we parted, I looked into her eyes and saw them to be tear filled and bloodshot. She sniffled slightly. “I can't imagine what you are going through, but I'm here for you...”

It was touching, seeing her moved so deeply on my behalf. Something about seeing her sadness tickled my own sadness and my eyes began to water again, so I latched onto her and we both cried together for a long time.

At some point, my stomach growled loudly, prompting Ivy to laugh say, “You sound like you're hungry.” Her laugh was forced and slightly unnatural, but I appreciated that she was trying to lighten the mood.

“I guess I haven't eaten since... how long has it been since...”

“Since... the injury?”

I nodded.

“Four days.”

Four days, I thought to myself, it doesn't seem that long. The pain and dizziness I was experiencing made me wish I had been out for two weeks as so to give my body time to mend itself. I supposed the wish was selfish, understanding the pain my loved ones were experiencing as they waited for me to awaken, but with the life changes I was facing, wasn't it okay to be a little selfish? I managed a small, sad smile in the corner of a cheek, “Something to eat sounds nice.”

“Will you be okay while I go ask the doctors to get you something?”

“Yeah...”

“Alright,” Ivy said, giving my hoof one last gentle squeeze. “I'll be back in a few minutes, hopefully.”

After watching my friend slip out of view from the room, I tried to adjust my position in the bed so that my reeling senses would hopefully stop giving me butterflies in the stomach. At the corners of my hearing, I heard Ivy mention to a nurse that I was awake and hungry. My parents must have been nearby, as I heard Dad ask Ivy to repeat herself and the following tapping of his hooves as he walked towards the room.

“Hi,” I said staring at the ceiling, not daring to roll my head to look at him and Mom as I had found an angle to hold my head at that would offer some respite from the dizziness. From the corner of my eye, I could see Dad walking towards me, yet I was no less surprised when he embraced me. We were close, yes - we got along very well – but the last time he had hugged me so affectionately was years ago when I was a foal. There was a firm, securing comfort in his hug that I had forgotten and I stopped him as he began to pull away. “Don't let go...” Dad listened and we embraced a little bit longer.

I didn't feel good, but I felt better.

Doctor Apple was standing behind Dad, coming into view as we let go of our hug. “I'm glad you are awake, Castor. How are you feeling.”

“I'm cried out for the moment.” I sniffed and lightly wiped my nose on the sheet.

“I have been talking with your family about running a fMRI on you just to be sure everything is okay, but since you are over twenty one and conscious, I need your oral consent to proceed.”

“Okay.”

“Very good. Your parents have already filled out the paperwork which you will need to sign sometime in the future. Your scan is scheduled for eight tonight.”

“Can I have something to eat? I'm very hungry”

“I know, Ivy already told us and Nurse Cross has sent for a tray of food for you. Your body has been under a lot of stress these past few days, and I want to ease you back into eating normally.”

“Yeah,” I hazily agreed.

In a few minutes, a tray with a thin broth, cream of celery to be specific, was brought into the room. Several times, I tried to sit up to eat more easily, only to feel like I was freefalling. Even if I could have sat upright, I couldn't hold a spoon with my shaking hooves, so any hopes of feeding myself were shattered. With the bed inclined at a slight angle so I could lay with my head propped up on a pillow, it took me well over fifteen minutes to adjust to my new position and stop feeling motion sick. By that point the soup had grown cold, but I didn't care.

Mom set herself in the chair next to the bed, picking up the spoon with her magic then, after looking thoughtful for a moment, let go telekinetically and held the spoon at the end of her hoof with the weak magical grip all races of ponies share. Ladling the broth into the spoon and bringing it towards my mouth, Mom stopped when she saw I was blushing profusely.

“Mom?” I asked, seeing her concern.

“Yes dear?”

Feeling embarrassed, I looked away, “Is it okay if Ivy feeds me instead? I don't... I mean, it's just that I feel... kind of like a sick foal... It isn't anything you are doing... it's just having a parent-”

“I understand,” Mom said. “Don't worry.” She exchanged a glance with Ivy, gave a nod, and they exchanged places.

I managed to eat a fair portion of the broth, but turned it away with a quarter remaining when I became dizzy again. Doctor Apple and Nurse Cross had long since left, but a young stallion came in and took the bowl and tray away a little later. It was six thirty by then, and I urged everyone that they needn't stay the night with me. Ivy insisted that she stay, though after some persuasion she and Cloud Mason agreed to go home, get a good night's rest, and come back tomorrow to visit for a while. Mom insisted on staying the night, urging Dad to go home to rest up for work the next day.

Shortly after they all had said their goodbyes, two nurses entered the room and told my parents that they were going to have to leave the room while I was prepped for the fMRI. Giving them my assurances, I insisted to them that I would be fine for however long the scan would take.

Watching from the corner of my eye as everyone vacated the room, I was given a small paper cup with two capsules containing antibiotics and reflexively tried to reach out with my magic to grab it. I swore aloud when a hot spike of pain being shot through my skull where my horn once was.

“Are you okay?” one of the nurses asked, hearing me curse and seeing me wince.

“It hurts when I try to use magic,” I moaned. Reaching out a quivering hoof, I then added, “I don't think I can pick the cup up without dropping it.”

“Let me help.” The nurse picked up the cup for me, held it to my lips, and tilted it back, letting the pills roll into my open mouth. She did the same with the cup of water and I managed to swallow the pills down without choking.

Meanwhile, the other nurse had made quick work of unhooking the electrodes on my chest so I could be pushed down the hall to the lab where the fMRI, or flashed Magical Radiation Imprint, machine was.

Such a scan, designed to give a full image of the inside of a target's brain, is performed by setting a pony in front of set of thin, rectangular crystals stacked into the shape of a cube whereupon, the thaumaturgical shadow of the brain belonging to the scanned pony is imprinted in real time into the crystalline lattice of the cube by sending powerful flashes of a specific type of magical energy through the pony's brain and into the crystalline sensor. By this method, a full 3-d scan of the brain is mapped into the thin slices of crystal which then can be taken and viewed individually as a cross section representing anywhere from a few second's to a few minute's worth of images of the pony's brain. By inserting a thin obsidian rod into a specially crafted hole, the time stamp can be changed by varying how deeply the rod is inserted so that moving images of brain activity marked by discrete time units can be observed.

All fascinating, but if it wasn't a slap to the face that I could have been sleeping at that time, then the fact that the entire contraption was powered by unicorn magic was. I felt visceral envy towards the lab coat clad operator of the machine the instant the doors to the room were pushed open and I could see the unicorn sitting at his console, magically holding a cup of coffee and taking notes on a clipboard all while initializing the machine with a constant focus spell he was focusing onto a receiver node.

After being moved next to the machine, I was gently lifted off the bed and lowered onto the sliding table of the fMRI machine. As parts of my neck and head were loosely restrained, my thoughts again fell upon the morbidity of my situation. Each new experience: first waking up, learning what I had lost, seeing the hurt expression on my loved ones' faces, and now being scanned, added a new layer of surreality to what was happening.

“Alright, now try not to move while the scan is running or we might have to do another,” one of the nurses, all of which I had been largely ignoring until this point, reminded me. Being moved around, no matter how gently, had been worsening my headache increasingly, and even through my head rested gently in the padded restraints, it throbbed fiercely.

“Everything is ready,” the other nurse said to the operating technicians then turned to me. “We are going to push you back into the chamber, then we are going to ask you some questions. Please remember that we need you to be absolutely still for the scan to be readable.”

Only half lucid, the only thing I cared about was getting back into a stationary bed where I could fall asleep. If I was capable of speaking without incurring more pain, I would have said, “Just get this over with.” Instead, I said nothing.

After the bed was pushed into the chamber designed to block stray magical energies, the technician pushed a button which lowered a large array of finely tuned magic emitting diodes, or MEDs, into the opening I had just been slid through, sealing me into the chamber. A few moments later, they lit up and cast their energy down the length of the cylinder and illuminated my body.

“Let's get started.” A voice, disembodied by a ventriloquism spell, crackled with static in front of my face. “I am going to ask you a series of simple questions, and I want you to answer as best you can.”

“Mmhm.” I really didn't feel like talking.

“What was that?”

“Mkay.”

“Alright, what is your name?”

“Castor Star.” I grit my teeth slightly.

“Where do you live?”

“Southeast Canterlot.”

“Where specifically?”

“822, Stellar Summit Road.”

He proceeded to ask several more questions, most about my family and friends.

“We're moving onto the logic part now. If I have five oranges and three apples, how many oranges do I have?”

“Five.”

“What is four plus nine minus three?”

I hesitated a moment. “Eleven.”

Several more questions, similar to those, were asked and we were done with that line of checking. “Okayyy...” the technician chewed on the word as he read the next part of the itinerary, “Do you see the small compartment in front of your face?”

“Yes,” I replied, looking at the delicate metal doors skillfully crafted into the wall of the cylinder above my face.

“I am going to open it up, and there will be pictures inside. Please tell me what you see.”

The panel flipped open by an actuator and behind was a laminated photograph. “I see a tree.” The image slid away and behind it was another that I identified. The process continued for about ten more pictures, then the hatch closed.

“Very good,” the technician said. “Now, I am going to ask you to channel some magic into a telekinesis spell as if you were casting it. Don't use much energy – less than a quarter you would use to lift a cup or something else small. Pull on the little red sphere you are about to see.” The panel flipped open again, this time containing a red stress ball. “Try to give it a gentle squeeze for five seconds and then let go.”

I was hesitant. “Do I have to do this? It hurts when I use magic.”

“Use as little as possible.” The technician's voice crackled back after a few seconds of silence. “But we need this scan to see where that magic goes so we can be sure it is not building up inside your body.”

I wasn't even sure if I could even control how much magic I used: when I tried picking up the paper cup earlier, it stung like I had horribly overcharged a spell and nearly fried myself. “Are you sure this is safe?”

“Yes,” he replied immediately. “It is really important that we do this. If it turns out you are dissipating too little or too much magic, then you risk suffering severe brain damage within the course of just a few weeks.”

I had been strong up until this point. I really had. There had been times I had felt like crying over my loss as I was being pushed down the hallway. I had remained under control as I watched ponies pass by, hollow husks that I felt them to be without my clairvoyance. I even managed to keep a straight face as I was asked to step through a spell, knowing well that I might never cast one again. Frankly, though, I had been too tired and worn out to be pushed to the threshold of crying, but I finally was forced beyond that point.

Over the gentle magical hiss of the ventriloquism spell, I could hear the nervous voice of the technician dropping in and out, “...what am I supposed to do? ...no... why are you telling me to say something?... I know I'm the only one right now who can talk to her using this spell, but do you really want me to talk her though this?”

There was a hiss of static as the spell was altered to originate from a different source. “Castor.” a much more confident said. “Castor, I know this is traumatic for you, and I am so sorry that you have to be going through this, but the chances of us finding anything bad are slim. We would likely already know about anything life threatening, but we are doing this scan to be safe.”

I kept crying.

“Okay,” the new voice said. “Do you want to come out of the chamber for a few minutes to catch your breath?”

About half a minute passed before the bed which I lay upon shifted and slid out of the chamber. I saw the unicorn technician as soon as I was out and could tell that he and I were the only ones in the room at the moment.

“Sorry,” he said to me as he stepped in my direction. “I didn't mean to... uh...” He scratched the back of his head. “I didn't mean to exacerbate the problem.” I attempted to say it was okay, but I couldn't form the words properly. Instead, tears streamed from my eyes; my nose was soon to be a wet mess.

“Here.” The unicorn offered a handkerchief, gripped in his magic, to me and attempted to dab the tears running down my cheek.

My skin crawled having his magic so wantonly shoved into my face. “Please, don't...”

“It's okay, I don't mind if you use my handkerchief. I'd rather it do some good instead of staying folded up in my pocket,” he wiped my nose for me as I tried to push the handkerchief away from my face.

“Lorenz Fields! You dolt!” A nurse, the one who who had been speaking with me in the fMRI chamber, yelled at her colleague as she stamped towards him.

He cringed and laid his ears back. “What? I was offering her my handkerchief.” Fields was pushed aside by the nurse as she gently loosened the restraints holding my head still and then she handed me a wad of tissues.

“Unbuckle her and let this poor mare take care of herself.” She turned to me as I crumpled up a tissue I had already used and dabbed my eyes with a second one. “I'm sorry about him. He means well, but can be real dumb about these things from time to time.” She looked back to him, narrowing her eyes, and murmuring under her voice, “I stepped out for one minute to get her some tissues. Fields, couldn't have gone that short amount of time without screwing up?”

“It's fine.” I wiped my eyes with the last tissue, then blew my nose on it. “I... I'm sorry, I lost control of myself in there.”

“It's alright. We still have some time before the next patient is in for a scan, so you can take a few minutes to gather yourself before we continue.”

Over the next few minutes, I regained a bit of my composure and was ready to be put back in. I wasn't fully collected, but it was enough that I could notice that by this point Lorenz had hidden his face behind the operator's console and was avoiding looking at me. As the bed slid in, we briefly made eye contact.

He hunkered his head behind the indicator panel of his station.

“Can you hear me?” the nurse's disembodied voice asked once I was in.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” The compartment's doors flipped open. “We only need you to cast a small telekinesis spell on the ball, but you need to hold it for a few seconds to make sure we get a good reading. If at any point you think you need to stop, do it. Start when you are ready.”

I hesitated a moment as I stared at the red ball, but I overcame my apprehension and tried to let out a small trickle of magic. The moment I began letting the magic flow, the smell of copper filled my nose and my entire forehead tingled warmly. As for the feeling of the magic itself, I am sure fellow spellcasters are familiar with the feeling severe magic backlash, but for those not experienced with magic, the sensation is a very sickly feeling which can most easily be likened to drinking a mouthful of rotten water that burns horribly as it goes down your throat.

It took a second for the sensation to reach thresholds I was uncomfortable with, but suddenly the pain spiked as if I was pressing a hot iron into my flesh and I immediately dropped the spell. “Is that enough?”

“We won't be able to tell until we've collected the scans and have read them,” the nurse answered over the spell.

It's going to have to be enough. I'm not trying again.

“Okay, we're opening the chamber and are going to take you back to your room.”

As soon as I was out, a second nurse was brought into the room and they both helped me roll back onto the hospital bed. The mere act of moving had left me feeling dizzy to the point of being sick to the stomach, but at least my headache was bad enough to distract me from wanting to vomit on my bed's clean linen. Being pushed down several long hallways and around numerous tight corners did not help the dizziness, but I was unnaturally tired and had begun to slip into sleep as we got to my room. Once I was in there, I incoherently mumbled about wanting another bowl of soup, but was infuriatingly denied any more food for the night since I had 'already eaten dinner'. I was too tired to argue the point and fell asleep; however, for a final insult, a nurse came in and awoke me at two in the morning to give me another round of antibiotics and some painkiller.