Glimmer

She'd been told that the tall pegasus mare's injuries merely needed treatment, weren't anywhere near life-threatening -- and yet, as she waited within the enforced solitude of her rather odd basement 'quarters', tracking it all from below... Trixie still found herself with a truly rare opportunity. And, once she had both fully recognized its nature and acknowledged that it might not come again, privately indulged.

Time of death --

-- and that was where she had to stop, because the room didn't have a clock.

(It didn't have a lot of things.)

Not that she typically relied on clocks: carrying one along in the caravan would eventually see the jolts of the road knock all of the gears out of alignment. It had forced her to master a much rougher, if decidedly more reliable system for telling time -- but that method had a fundamental requirement, and she currently lacked it.

There were no windows in the basement, and something about the slanting of the air vents allowed them to pass atmosphere through without granting the same privilege to light. She couldn't see where Sun was, and so marking even a estimated Official Time Of Death was effectively impossible. But still, a death had taken place, and somepony needed to certify that.

"...I don't understand," declared the unsteady voice of a recently-concussed mare, made all the shakier by the nature of what had likely been an unintended passage. "Why would somepony just go and... and --"

"-- the current stage of your treatment," the closest medical equivalent cut in, "requires a certain degree of vocal feedback from the patient. With absolutely no more clouding of judgment than has already been inflicted. Your injuries are beyond minor painkillers. I can't use anything stronger on you until the last stage, and then we will be unable to discuss anything for some time. Do your best to focus."

Because when it came to surgery, the first thing the lilac unicorn had done was to locate the concept of 'bedside manner' and removed it from the dictionary.

"...I don't understand," the pegasus decided for the fifth time, because the repeated kicks to the head had made it rather difficult to remember the previous four. "Why would --"

"-- this," Starlight placidly announced, "is going to hurt."

Excision of definition. With a scalpel.

"W --"

After that, it could presumed that critically-wounded syllables had been left to bleed out on their own.

The resulting choked-down scream, even after being forced through the narrow travelway, still managed to echo for a while.

Although you could also argue that it had just been a matter of some rather minor editing. Swapping out a few letters. Starlight didn't have bedside manner: she had bedside matter. Stand in the general vicinity of the bed and the rest didn't matter.

The performer looked at the closest little circular hole in the basement wall again. Rotated her left ear. Focused.

"...they saw her," the decibel-incarnated illusion of Mane Allgood murmured, somewhere above and to the rough left. "They must have. It's the same town. They saw..."

"Drink this," an equally-distant Starlight instructed.

"...why would somepony just --" Which was abruptly cut off by a burst of retching.

"The taste resists adjustment," the unicorn stated. "The effects justify use. Nausea is momentary. Healing lasts until a new injury occurs. Swallow."

And Trixie waited.

She didn't have many other options. The performer knew basic first aid -- and somewhat more, as spending a life on the road meant both an increased chance of injury and potentially not being able to reach the next hospital without doing something to help herself first. And she would have willingly assisted in the mare's treatment -- but Starlight had stated that she wished for Trixie to wait in the 'guest quarters'. (There had been no truly audible quotes, but the fresh awkward hesitation had nearly substituted.) So Trixie was doing exactly that. Waiting and listening, because somehow, listening was an actual option.

It was arguably one of the lesser bits of strangeness to be found in the room. And Trixie, who had time to kill (and couldn't jot down the moment of demise on that either), could always go back to examining the oddities of her quarters, within the scant quantity of lumens which had been offered for doing so.

It just tended to leave her doing very little else.

Starlight wanted Trixie to stay with her and in Truedawn, whatever the lilac unicorn wanted, she apparently got.

What Starlight had also wanted was for Trixie to wait outside the workshop while her room was prepared. Made more... suitable.

It had taken a while, and being outside had made it easy to measure by Moon. Trixie had spent nearly two hours in shuffling her hooves under southern starlight before Starlight had emerged again and, with nothing more than a light flicker of corona as a signal to follow, effectively invited her in. Trixie had spent the previous night sleeping within the results, and... it was possible to sleep there. You just took every last question which had been raised by the room's existence, told them to battle each other for the honor of being the first one investigated and, while the mass brawl was still getting under way, curled up and went to sleep.

She hadn't gotten the best look at the rest of the workshop on the way in. This was partially because some sections had been covered. Cloth was loosely draped over oddly-shaped mysteries: wall racks, tabled items, a few cabinets -- although all of the bookshelves were still fully exposed. But she'd managed to spot a few things. Just not anywhere close to all of it. The interior was compartmentalized, and several doors had been closed.

Trixie's guess was that one of them led to Starlight's bedroom. It was possible to judge the size of other sections by measuring them as hollows: take what you could see, then subtract what you couldn't. Most of the results left more than enough space for one mare to be comfortable working by herself -- while still creating some serious questions as to how two were supposed to manage the feat. But the largest blocked section had to be where Truedawn's leader slept.

But it looked as if many of the working areas would be cramped. And there were numerous comments which could be made about operating in that kind of environment, if you had an audience which was receptive to a little humor. How working so closely together would have to mean working -- closely. In frequent, direct, almost intimate contact...

Trixie hadn't said anything like that to Twilight. For starters, the tree's basement was decidedly roomy.

...not roomy enough to have prevented Trixie from backing into a table.

If I hadn't jolted the device fragment...

The thought wasn't so much postponed as redirected towards the nightscape to await her future arrival.

The tall pegasus was currently in the treatment area. That had been easy to identify and effectively impossible to miss: discount a small entry foyer and it was just about right on top of the door. The space took up a surprising percentage of the workshop's known floor plan: two beds of standard Truedawn 'quality', multiple medical devices and instruments which Trixie recognized, a few which she didn't, a number where the modifications were still being worked out, and a very comprehensive pharmaceutical selection in a huge glass-faced cabinet -- all of which was kept behind lock, key, and a touch of glow.

There was plenty of room to move in the medical section. All the better for Starlight to freely roam about the rough vicinity of 'bedside,' which was the only thing which truly mattered. But there were areas which would likely have them right on top of each other, and...

...Trixie was already working out the limits. She'd already failed with one joke about Starlight effectively trying to pull her aside for sex. Commenting about how her quarters somehow hadn't been set up with a bed for two was right out.

The lilac unicorn had barely managed floor padding for one.

Trixie hadn't been surprised to find that portions of the upper level were currently closed to her, and the complete lack of shock had easily carried her past the numerous locked doors on the lower one -- or at least, the lowest one she'd been permitted to enter. She suspected there might be at least one other.

There was an open room across the little hallway, and it hosted -- mushrooms. Fungi. The few plants which were normally only found in caves. Anything which flourished best in the dark, and Trixie knew that some of it was present to assist the pharmacy. And Starlight hadn't bothered with planter pots, or special lights. (Trixie wasn't entirely certain that earth pony assistance was even possible in Truedawn.) Instead, she'd taken the extremely direct step of eliminating the middlepony. The mycology fruiting room had a dirt floor, and everything had been planted directly into the ground.

It also had soil which radiated the intense residue of recently-cast magic. Cast and recast: the signature naturally tended to blend into itself, but it was possible to determine where some portions had faded more than others. And while most of it was new to her (although not so strange that she couldn't start puzzling out what it might have been meant for), she recognized quite a bit of the mesh as reinforcement spells. Things meant to add a sort of density to an area, making it that much harder to push through. Trixie's current guess was that there was an extra space somewhere under the mushrooms, which needed surprisingly heavy protections. Because based on the sheer amount of power which had been channeled into the area, it felt as if Starlight was trying to make dirt substitute for stone.

(She could try to puzzle such things out during a broad-spectrum use of her feel -- in the basement. There was so much active magic on the upper level as to force focus onto a single effect at a time, lest sensory overload create an instant migraine.)

As with so much of the workshop, Trixie's granted room was stone.

Solid.
Dark.
Heavy.

All of those could be dealt with and, in a workshop, each of those qualities could be welcome. But when it came to her sleeping area, there were at least three others words to deal with.

Total.
Decoration.
Failure.

Why would so much of a workshop be closed off? It was hardly exclusive to Truedawn, and it certainly wasn't just because of Starlight. Any researcher worth the thaums they were burning was going to have secrets, if only because they didn't want anypony else getting a look at the latest experiment and publishing first.

Additionally, in terms of intimacy implied by access, getting into a workshop was the step above entering a bedroom. A workshop could be an incredibly personal space -- even if, when viewed from the outside, the most personal signature about Starlight's workshop was the utter lack of personal touches.

But once Trixie had gotten inside...

There was an intricate cradle made of gold filigree and platinum which had been drawn into the finest of wire, and the only reason it didn't come across as a creation of art was that every bend and curve was rendered precisely as the formulae dictated. Nothing more.

That was where the notebook went.

Starlight had carefully placed it there as they'd passed, removing it from her saddlebag with care. A levitation which was likely repeated every night, to the point of automatic reflex, had been directly supervised until the book's spine was flush against metallic shine. A pair of similarly-manufactured hooks in the nearby wall took the weight of the saddlebags -- and placed them just above a second set: smaller, meant to be worn closer to the hips in conjunction with a normally-sized pair. It was the sort of thing you saw in Manehattan when shoppers claimed to be 'quadruple-wielding', and the second set was full.

One uncovered wall hosted what appeared to be multiple large samples of thin, light fabric. All sorts of colors were available. Multiple bins held narrow balsa rods and dowels. Six fully-wound reels of thick white string were arranged on a special rack.

Biology dictated the requirements for a bathroom and when it came to the things which could be placed within the one which was reached from the treatment area, Starlight had very nearly stopped there. However, divination happened to be one of the rarest magical talents known -- fake foretellers were everywhere: the real thing had a talent and mark manifest rate which just about matched innovators -- and so Starlight couldn't reasonably expect to get a recent reading experience from a sink. As such, there was a shaped, elevated personal bookshelf at one end of the toilet trench. The available reading material was stored behind glass.

Twilight would say something about trying to protect the pages from microdroplets.
Or maybe she'd say a lot of things.

The other thing you could say about the bathroom was that it was utterly clean --

"I do realize," Starlight's voice drifted in, "that this would be an exceptionally bad time to ask what you might happen to recall regarding Gez."

The pegasus didn't exactly go silent with thought. The little groans kept breaking in.

"...who?" finally emerged.

"After you recover," Starlight said. "Should the opportunity arise. But I will speak with your spouse."

-- and featured a selection of bone combs in a cylinder near the door, just in case anypony wanted to do up their mane on the way out.

In that sense, you could argue that there were some true personal touches within the workshop. Things which only Starlight might have done, because the odds were rather low on anypony else replicating any of it by accident.

...and when viewed from that perspective, Trixie's sleeping quarters were the most personal creation of all.

The walls are solid, heavy stone. They're also dark, and that's because we're going with the natural hue. Somepony extracted this from the earth, took some of the dirt off, shaped the results, and then knocked off for the day because they were late to their worship session at The Temple Of Anti-Paint. No brighter hues have been added to the walls, and any occupant could expend a lot of time in looking. Those with talents which grant enhanced senses will have the option to get lost within fifty shades of grey, but they're probably going to pass out from boredom around the time they hit two dozen. Assuming the eyestrain doesn't force them to quit first, because it's very dimly lit in here. (Starlight's promised to bring in an extra light source later.) Shapes are easy enough, but reading is going to need some help and while just about any unicorn past puberty doesn't have to worry about the dark, Trixie isn't going to ignite her horn here. There's very little she can do about the color of such shed light, and the glow of her field will always distort whatever it's coating. The performer prefers to see things as they are.

A basement space... well, you could have a small window at the very top. You don't and as mentioned earlier, the air vents aren't helping.

The walls haven't been painted. They have been altered. Small, shallow holes show signs of thread lines along the interior. These are regularly spaced, and feature most prominently along the far wall. Other gaps are somewhat larger and deeper.

Eight more such holes are in the floor: all much smaller in diameter than a hoof. Stepping into them or even catching more than a tiny edge of keratin on the gap is effectively impossible -- but they're present. There's also a drain cover. This can be removed, and the little tunnel underneath has been cleaned.

Some of the dirt was taken off the walls. Nearly all of it, actually. You'd have to deliberately rub your fur against the stone in order to create a transfer. But where the dirt remains, it tends to be in long, exceptionally shallow scratches, and the soil matches the shade of that in the mycology area to the finest degree.

Little holes, which seem to be present as anchor points. One of them goes much deeper, then takes a turn and goes straight up.

The performer is fully familiar with listening tubes. (For that matter, she's been trying to work out whether the sound conduction offered by taut string could somehow be used in her act.) Run a long hollow through stone, connecting any two points you desire. Speak at one end, and somepony will hear at the other. You get them in government buildings, if a pair of offices need to almost constantly communicate and can't have ponies perpetually galloping back and forth. Others will try to eavesdrop. Or summon servants, call guests up to dinner... there's all sorts of legitimate uses. The important thing is that this room has one and wherever the other end is, it's letting Trixie hear something of what's going on in the treatment area.

There's no bed. Thin summer blankets have been carefully (or exactingly) placed on the floor. They are, even in the dim lighting of the cell, a steady orange, off-white, and warm yellow. Two full trios have been used to build the sleeping area, and they match. Perfectly. It suggests a mare who owns at least three sets of bedding: one will be in use, the other goes onto the bed while the first is being cleaned, and the third is there for backup because sheets wear out and the buyer wanted to make sure these colors would always be available -- something which suggests a fourth set. And possibly beyond.

Storage space is currently limited to 'floor'. Not that Trixie exactly got to bring much of anything with her on this trip -- but if she had, there would be no place to put it. Another Starlight promise was to bring in some reading material before Sun-lowering, and Trixie is dearly hoping there's going to be a shelf to go with it. Possibly a desk, because it'll take more light than this to comfortably read and the lamp has to go somewhere.

The door is... rather heavy. There's some spells worked in, because there's at least a few spells on just about everything. There's also an irregularity in it. The stone has a patch of milky quartz embedded at just about eye level, and there's another one in the ceiling. It's possible to pick up on magic there, but it isn't currently active.

Naturally, there is a lock. It's of Mazein manufacture: all metal, reinforced and, thanks to Starlight, enchanted.

It's also on the outside.

This isn't a guest room. It's currently being asked to serve as one, but... it's an area made up by a mare who understands that ponies tend to sleep with blankets and therefore, if you provide the blankets, sleep is going to happen.

The space normally has another function.

Trixie is almost completely certain that she's been asked to sleep in a repurposed prison cell.

...which, from a certain point of view, made perfect sense. It was just that most of that perspective happened to be historical. Because a magic workshop was a place where experiments could be reasonably expected to go wrong, often with great force. They were designed to contain explosions and there had been times when, after a researcher permanently left their space behind (sometimes by using the front door, but rather more often through the window), somepony had asked why all of that abandoned, somewhat-charred security couldn't be used to hold prisoners. Some of the oldest jails in Equestria had begun their existence as research facilities.

Looked at that way, Starlight had simply decided to skip another step.

It made sense, if you wanted it to. Truedawn was trying to be a full community. But no place was perfect. Eventually, somepony was going to break whatever a local law happened to be. And you had to keep the offenders somewhere.

Securing them in the place where the spells were already meant to be trapping things inside was just practical.

...and it wasn't as if it was her first cell.

The Princess will speak to me soon.
The Princess will sentence me soon.
The Princess will raise a giant white hoof over my head, look at that twisted patch of fur where the Amulet was, shake her head, and then silently bring her leg down --

-- that thought was also sent off to await her in dream, working in tandem with the earlier one. Trixie distantly wondered what they would mutually come up with.

The sounds coming from the listening tube stopped.

Trixie immediately moved away from the wall and started counting her own breaths. It took seventy-four of them before the hoofsteps stopped outside her door, and then Starlight's field swung it open.

"I'm done," the lilac mare stated. "You can come up. We'll resume what we were doing before the incident."

Trixie nodded. Followed the somewhat-smaller mare down the hallway, past another door and up the ramp.

"How is she?"

"Injured," came across as a statement. "But not beyond recovery. The observed impact pattern involved in the bruising suggests the assaulting party was trying to land as many kicks as possible within a limited time frame. And because she prioritized in that direction, she effectively traded force for speed. The damage could have been considerably worse. But there is still a degree of head trauma."

"How are you treating it?" Concussions weren't something to be dealt with casually. Not that Trixie could really picture Starlight dealing with anything casually, but --

"There is a brew which, when consumed by a pony, dedicates nearly all of the body's resources to healing," Starlight stated. "Should the pony have already been hurt, that is: otherwise, it only produces illness. But if left in that state for a sufficient amount of time, she would fully recover at a greatly-accelerated rate." This slight pause represented the duration required for the lecturer to fetch the next intangible note card. "However, while the concoction is in effect, the subject sleeps. And will not wake. It is not a state I wish to leave ponies in for long, as anything more than a few hours requires constant monitoring and care. However, I can determine the time spent unconscious by dosage."

"I'm guessing you can't space out doses," Trixie reasoned. "Six hours on, six off."

Starlight didn't glance back at the trailing mare, and the head shake mostly seemed to exist in the event that a very short word got lost somewhere. "No. Once every three moons is the maximum. There's a surprising degree of strain on the body. Accordingly, I gave her enough to bring her through the first stages of recovery. The priority is to make sure her mind returns to its base state. And should the results somehow be insufficient, I will simply bring her to a hospital in Manehattan and let her finish the process there."

Trixie's mind automatically filed that detail away.

"How often do you use this?"

"Only when necessary," Starlight calmly said. "But there have been previous treatments. Of residents, out of necessity."

"Ponies try things here," Trixie lightly proposed, "and sometimes it feels like they're trying to get hurt?"

Starlight's next hoofstep briefly hitched. The streaked tail started to go limp --

"-- is this something sexual?"

Trixie blinked.

"...no..."

"I'm aware some ponies have managed to convince themselves that sexual pleasure can be directly linked to experiencing pain," Starlight didn't quite announce. "Interestingly, they're not entirely wrong. Mindset is a part of it. But nerves under high stress can misfire in all sorts of fascinating ways. So if you were making another attempt at erotic humor --"

Hastily, "-- I wasn't."

"Oh." This pause was longer. "I'm... trying to be on the lookout for that sort of thing. In... case it helps. Follow, please."

They made their way through the surface level. Some doors were closed. Others weren't. One had opened for the first time, and it was the door into --

"-- you're not moving," Starlight observed. 'I can hear that. Also, the natural prey sense of a pony, while generally annoying, can sometimes be used to determine when somepony has stopped following."

"...that's your chemistry lab."

"I didn't feel it could be mistaken for anything else."

and vials and compounds and mortars and that pestle is enchanted to always shed every last bit of powder, and that's practically a full set of elements for the ones we know about, a full set of everything and that's almost impossible to stabilize, it should be burning through the cork and it's just sitting there, I don't even know what that red powder is, but the beakers are going to be self-cleaning with perfect temperature control on the burners and dear Sun, I'll swap half my mane for that miniature crucible.

Half my mane and all of the tail.

I can stay off the road until they grow back.

"What's the thin yellow liquid? The one in the wonder vial."

Starlight still didn't glance back. "Your chemistry knowledge is well beyond the default level," was delivered to the forward portion of the hallway. "Very few ponies would recognize that pegasus techniques were woven into the glass."

"The copper wire is a clue," Trixie noted. "But it's obviously something you need to keep at high atmospheric pressure to have it as a liquid. And I don't recognize it."

The other mare offered a bare nod. "I only stabilized the compound recently. The process was a challenge."

A new creation... "What's it called?"

"I don't name failures."

Trixie blinked.

"What does it do?"

"Absorbs humidity and heat," Starlight said. "Rather efficiently. To the point where, if a pony made extended contact with the compound, they would suffer frostbite. Along with a chemical burn. And as absorbing that heat outside of the pressure environment would render the compound into a gas which would enter their lungs, they would become nauseous, dizzy, and experience some loss of alveoli function."

There was something almost -- tense about Starlight's posture. The muscles which often seemed to barely be under their owner's control were visibly tightening.

"It would have some potential use for temperature control in enclosed spaces. It also destroys ozone. A function with very little immediate utility beyond clearing the air after pegasus battles, while possessing tremendous potential for long-term harm to the environment. And my experiments suggest that truly vast quantities introduced to the atmosphere would, in time, lead to the air retaining too much of Sun's heat. I'm trying to remove the less desirable effects -- but if that proves impossible, then we currently have one planet." A few of the long tail hairs were vibrating. "As such, I'd like to retain it. So I'm mostly hanging on to that vial until I can find a way to either make the compound fully safe -- or destroy it without harm. The current theory is that overloading it with thermal energy may manage the feat. And until I'm sure there are no side effects from that, I will not be attempting to teleport the vial to Sun."

"Um," Trixie said.

"Of course," Starlight added, "there are known difficulties in teleporting to extremely hot areas. It's reasonable to expect that Sun makes that worse. And a lower temperature than Sun is likely more than sufficient for destruction of the compound. Follow, please."

They mutually resumed the trot. Another opened door was passed, and Trixie spotted the translator. It was surrounded by strange devices, and some of its own trailing wire had been placed into contact with --

"-- why did you attach it to your teleport device?"

"Spells are, in a way, their own language," Starlight calmly considered. "I wanted to see if anything would translate. But I'm not quite ready to test. A few more adjustments."

They went through the treatment area. The tall peach pegasus, with one ear heavily bandaged and poultices across much of her body, was asleep on the left bed. She was curled so tightly as to be at risk of having her head slip under a wing.

And then they left the workshop. A flicker of turquoise closed the door behind them, and Trixie felt a dozen spells engage.

"I have to monitor treated patients after a few hours," Starlight said. "But not before. We can finish the tour --" and noticed where Trixie was looking. "We won't be ascending the cliff path just yet."

"It goes somewhere important?"

"Extremely," Starlight didn't quite explain. "But it should wait until after you see the first direct demonstration."

"And that'll be with one of those two?" Trixie asked. Because the couple who'd arrived through the gatehouse had marks --

"No," Starlight stated. "One should not begin a study of the rule through starting with the exception."

The performer thought about that.

Reluctantly, "I don't get it."

"There's no fault," Starlight determined. "You lack the context."

And began to move away from the cliff: a calculated tail flick told Trixie to follow --

"-- alongside my flank, please," the lilac mare said. "There is no hallway to deal with. We have more space."

They trotted together. Heading into Truedawn.

"My recruiters," Starlight eventually continued, "do not count as normal subjects. In a sense, one could say that they've been through the process too many times. For a new arrival, even one who has been taught to think, there is a certain degree of -- resistance. Innate, most likely. The final protest from a lifetime of deliberate miseducation. It's to be expected. But those two have lost all of it. Their situation isn't the default. So in that sense, they are better suited for practice after mastery than the subjects of your first witnessed Freedom ceremony."

Open the same lock too many times, and the tumblers start to smooth out...

"I understand." And, because the phrasing had been calling for her attention, "Taught to think?"

Starlight stopped moving. (Trixie froze just before overtaking her.) And everything about her speech changed. Became... awkward. Exceptionally so.

All of the little hesitations. The micro-freezes. It was the verbal equivalent of watching a newborn foal trying to get up for the first time, knowing only that they had four (or six) dangling limbs attached to their body and the hooves were clearly meant for something. You struggled until you figured it out or results occurred.

Except that newborns could be up and trotting within a minute of birth. Because ultimately, they didn't have to reason through the process. It was all --

"I... usually have to -- teach ponies how to think," Starlight slowly managed. "Or... ask somepony who's been taught to go in my stead."

Stopped. Eyelids did their job, then went on break.

"Recruiters -- select their students and... conduct private classes," she tried to continue. "But I had to teach them, Trixie. I've -- tried to teach so many. And when it comes to passing it all on, they're -- better at it. They can both talk. But they also know how to listen. It's... so rare..."

One slow breath. All available alveloi presumably cooperated.

"I had to teach them everything," Starlight stated. "And then they had to do the same with others. Always from the start. Always needing to convince those who could... never conceive of the possibilities on their own. Because in so many ways.. we're taught not to. And you... appear to have potentially recognized some of my conclusions. Independently."

Lilac ears rotated, checking the area for stray sound. Ears did that sometimes.

"Non-imposed sanity..." the mare quietly said -- and then resumed her trot. "We'll complete the tour. But when it comes to allowing your talent to experience the process of Freedom -- we'll begin soon. The opportunity is already here."