Bonk! Crash!
“OW!” The cry echoed through the crystal halls of the castle.
“Spike! Are you alright?” Twilight burst through the doors of the library, locating the source of the shout in seconds.
“Y-Yeah, I’m fine…” Spike said, rubbing his forehead as he sat on the floor.
“What happened? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, Twi. I uh...wasn’t looking where I was going and accidentally walked into that.” Spike grinned sheepishly, pointing to a knocked-over chair in the middle of the room.
Twilight's face was one of sympathetic pain and confusion. How did Spike even end up walking into the chair in the first place?
“Well, sorry to make you worry!” Spike said, hastily walking past Twilight to leave the room.
Thonk!
“OW!”
“...Spike? The door is over there.” Twilight raised an eyebrow, pointing her hoof a few feet to Spike’s right.
“Heh heh...I knew that!” Spike chuckled nervously, staring at the door, trying to find the doorknob.
Twilight grabbed Spike and spun him around, extending her wing to hold up three of her primary feathers. “Spike, how many feathers am I holding up?”
Spike squinted, leaning in as he stared at her wing. “Uh...five?”
Twilight raised an eyebrow.
“No wait! I was just kidding! It’s seven, isn’t it?”
Twilight shook her head in disappointment. “Spike, I think there’s something wrong with your vision.”
Spike took a step back, “What? No, my eyes are totally fine! …It was six feathers, right?”
Twilight silently glared at Spike, impatiently tapping her hoof against the floor, leaning in to make sure that he could see her.
“Ok, so things miiight be a bit blurry for me…” Spike cringed.
Now that Spike was starting to tell the truth, Twilight’s tone eased up. “So...Any idea what caused all this?”
“Well, I’ve...kinda been reading comics late at night...” Spike started rubbing the back of his head in shame.
“And just how long have you been doing this?”
“O-Only for the past few days!” Spike lied, looking away from Twilight, knowing the truth would infuriate her.
“Only a few days did this to your eyesight?”
“...Okay, a few weeks!”
Twilight tilted her head in silent fury.
Spike could feel the glare hitting the side of his head. “...Months...” he said, defeated.
Twilight let out an exasperated sigh. “Alright, we gotta take you to the optometrist, ASAP.”
Spike groaned. “Fiiine, let’s get going then…”
Thonk!
“Ow…”
“Right...I’ll carry you over there…”
“...And that’s the situation. I know that we didn’t schedule an appointment, but this is very serious, Dr. Crystal Clear.”
“Well, I’m not sure how different dragon eyes are from pony eyes, but we can at least go through a routine eye exam,” the mare said, looking down to do a preliminary scan on Spike’s eyes, which were constantly squinting in order to look around.
The doctor lead Spike into the exam room, with Twilight following behind.
Crystal Clear sat Spike down on a chair and handed him a wooden spatula. “Alright, Spike. Cover up your left eye with that and read as many letters as you can.” she instructed, pointing to a chart, the letters getting smaller with each line.
Spike focused his attention on the letters.
“A.” That was easy enough, the letter was huge. There was no way he could get that wrong.
“Q, E.” Still no difficulty.
“R, Z, C...” Spike had to squint a little to focus in on the letters, but they were still mostly clear.
“Uh...T, Q, C...H?” Spike leaned forward, guessing what the blurry shapes vaguely resembled.
Spike squinted until his eyes were nearly shut, leaning in as much as he could without falling over, but the letters on the line below were nothing but blurry smudges.
Crystal Clear replaced the chart with a new one, instructing Spike to read the new chart with his right eye. The results were about the same as before: easily reading the big letters, but serious difficulty reading the lower lines without leaning in and squinting hard.
Twilight cringed with worry with Spike’s poor performance, trying not to show her growing panic, and failing at it.
Crystal Clear then lead Spike and Twilight out of the exam room.
“Alright, I’ll need a moment to analyze the results before we move on to another test, so if you’ll excuse me…” she said, sitting down at her desk to examine all her notes.
“Huh, I wonder what Applejack’s doing...” Spike said to himself, looking out the window.
Twilight looked around. “Applejack? Where? I don’t see her.”
“Right there, see?” Spike pointed to a small shape out in the distance. “Applejack’s right there.”
“I…that orange blur in the distance?” Twilight pressed her nose against the window, squinting as she struggled to identify what Spike was seeing.
“Yeah, that’s Applejack! She’s walking away, but she was probably out shopping, judging by the bags on her back.”
“I...guess that looks like her? I can make out her flank, but that’s about it...”
“And right there by that house is Lyra, who’s probably talking to someone around the corner,” Spike said, directing her attention to the left.
Sure enough, Twilight could see the back-half of Lyra, but just barely. “Spike, how can you tell who a pony is just by their butt?”
“I’ve been standing at eye-level with them for almost my entire life, Twilight. I’ve become very familiar with what they look like.”
“I’m...gonna ignore that," Twilight said, her cheeks getting redder the more she thought about it.
Crystal Clear’s ears perked up upon overhearing their conversation. “Hold on, I have a new test I want to try…” Crystal Clear grabbed onto Spike and yanked him back into the exam room, sitting him back down on the chair.
“Alright, Spike. Who is this?” Instead of the letter chart, Crystal Clear opened up a drawer, and pulled out a stack of photographs. She put up a photo of a pink butt on the wall, the picture barely bigger than her own hoof.
“Easy, that’s Pinkie Pie.” Spike said without missing a beat.
“Alright, and this one?” Crystal Clear took the photo down and quickly replaced it with a different photo of a different flank.
Spike casually leaned back in his seat. “Moondancer.”
“Yes, that’s exactly right!” Crystal Clear said, grabbing another photo to show.
“Wait, why do you just have pictures of other ponies’ butts in your office?”
“Focus, Spike! Who are these?” Crystal Clear hastily changed the subject, putting another photograph on the wall.
In rapid succession, Crystal Clear went through over a dozen photos, and Spike had correctly identified every single one of them in an instant.
“Rose, Ms. Harshwhinny, Nurse Redheart, Octavia Melody, Mayor Mare, Lemon Hearts, Zecora, Strawberry Sunrise, Fluttershy, Shining Armor, Minuette, Sunburst, Cheerilee, Berry Punch, Dr. Fauna, Matilda, Fleetfoot, Junebug...”
Twilight paced back and forth across the floor. Her worry increasing the longer she had to wait in silence and isolation. Spike would almost certainly need glasses based on the events of this morning. Do they even have glasses for dragons? How would they fit on his head?
Twilight’s worrying was interrupted by Crystal Clear and Spike exiting the exam room.
“So, how bad is it, Doctor?”
“Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news.”
“Alright...What’s the bad news?”
“The bad news is, I’m afraid that all those nights spent reading comics in the dark have severely deteriorated his eyesight to a 20/80 visual acuity. I believe we can do something in the future to bring his sight back to normal, but for now, we’ll need to get him a prescription pair of glasses or contacts as soon as possible.
Twilight let out a groan of unease. She figured that was coming. “...And the good news?”
“The good news is that I quizzed him with twenty different photos, and he correctly identified every single rear. Spike’s ability to identify ponies by their flank is impeccable, so his hindsight is 20/20.”
