Anchor Foal II: Return Of The Cringe

There were terms which didn't really apply to the cottage, and Fleur was truly hoping that one of them was 'sapient'. It was an inanimate structure. The fact that it had a near-endless supply of life scurrying about within the walls couldn't possibly be granting it any capacity of thought, and the Protoceran was going to keep making herself believe that until the thing stopped openly plotting against her.

You couldn't describe the cottage as a thinking being or rather, you really couldn't do it in public: the low end on possible reactions started with some rather odd looks from the audience, while the worst-case had Dr. Lorem engaging Spike's services again. Looking for an emergency referral, because the mare who'd made that decision was clearly beyond the current level of non-help.

But there were descriptions which, when applied to the uneven, frequently-repaired sprawl, found themselves sliding off. Starting with 'still'. It should have been easy to think of the cottage as being motionless: it was a construct of stone, wood, sod, and a few stray metal parts. Absolutely nothing about the whole was capable of moving on its own. There were places where 'with assistance' barely applied, because a powerful (and presumably unscheduled) wind gust could hit that one window shutter, test itself against the hinges, and nothing would happen because some birds liked to perch sideways and the protrusion of the hinge was perfectly suitable for establishing a talon grip. Which didn't exactly damage the hinge to the point where a shutter would no longer function, but birds also tended to lighten their personal loads as they took off again and when it came to where those expulsions would land, the gummed-up hinge was right there.

The cottage didn't move. But with so much life inside it, forever scrambling to reposition for best advantage on pouncing, playing, or being the first to the food -- there was just about always a sense of movement about it. That there were so many kinetics bounding about the interior as to potentially lend walls the ability to walk. All the cottage had to do was ask, and Fleur wasn't exactly going to start discussing that thought with her psychiatrist either.

It was hard to think of it as still. 'Quiet' also refused to stick, because there was no animal species in existence which didn't produce sounds. There were a number for whom vocalizations were comparably rare: Angel was (somehow) in that category, compensating with back leg thumps and a surprising capacity for withering looks. But he could make sounds. A sort of clucking: that was the most common thing to hear. Then you had the irritating grinding of bruxism: this could be a means of expressing stress, and more often simply helped him to keep his teeth down. As a lapine, they would continue to lengthen for the whole of his life, and he needed things to chew if he was going to close his mouth properly.

Rabbits, like cats, were capable of purring. Most ponies were fully unaware of that, because it took an exceptionally content, safe-feeling rabbit to purr and when that sound came from Angel, the first instinct was to wonder what he'd gotten away with.

And rabbits could scream.

Those who heard that never wanted to hear it again.

Rabbits were generally thought of as being near-silent, and their throats produced a number of sounds. Now: work out the typical population of the cottage, recognize just how many residents were regarded by ponies as being fairly vocal, then take every individual production of decibels and start asking some hard questions about how the overlaps managed to add energy to the system.

The cottage's owner was quiet. The pegasus sometimes seemed to exist as an occasionally-flying sound absorber, with fully-drained echoes plummeting to the ground in her wake. But when it came to the cottage itself, 'quiet' just about never applied. To the best of Fleur's knowledge, she was the only pony other than Fluttershy to have ever slept in the building, and that still required the occasional use of an enchanted, sound-suppressing blanket.

(According to Rainbow, Fluttershy had once tried to host a sleepover for her friends. And while Fleur did understand that a typical session had the participants come very close to greeting Moon and Sun in turn, it was meant to actually end in sleep. Fluttershy's lone attempt had wrapped with five reluctantly-departing mares wearily looking for any rest site which might offer less in the way of racket and in Rainbow's case, that included the clock tower at Town Hall.)

Motionless. Silent. Terms which never fully applied. And yet, as Fleur held her position in the sitting room, looking up at her mourning box... she began to realize that both qualities were just a little too close to actually existing.

The appointment book had been set for a slow day: it was part of why Fluttershy hadn't possessed any true concerns about letting Fleur have the time off. And Fleur had known when those appointments were supposed to take place, had carefully measured the hours she'd spent in town and then gotten a good look at the sitting room's clock when she'd come back. Finding the waiting area empty of ponies and their companions was a reasonable expectation.

But the animal residents were... subdued. Sounds were minimal, and a number of movements came across as hesitant. Several looked at Fleur as if openly questioning what was supposed to happen next. And when she rotated white ears, strained for the faintest traces produced by Fluttershy moving about the cottage -- she didn't hear anything at all.

She could just be on the grounds. It was the most likely explanation. There was always something to be done on the grounds, although Fleur wasn't quite ready to start questioning whether those were sapient. (And if they were, then it most likely counted as an extension of the cottage.) I can just go back outside and look. Which didn't necessarily mean using the front door, because so much about Fluttershy had been steadily darkening since Zephyr's arrival and the graves had never been so clean --

-- Fleur, upon returning, had let herself in. Casually, because the front door had been open. The cottage had an unsurprising number of locks (or rather, the count tended to surprise newcomers until the moment they figured out a few things about the mare who owned it), but Fluttershy didn't like to seal them during the day. A second spent dealing with locks was likely a second which the next emergency patient was going to need and in any case, the majority of the cottage's security came from residents who were fully aware of when ponies were supposed to be there.

Many locks, seldom utilized -- when the pegasus was within, or close enough to the door that she could watch. Further out if she was still within sonic range of an avian alert, and of course there would be animals scurrying to find Fluttershy if anything truly went wrong. So an unlocked door during the day wasn't fully unusual. And yet, when combined with the behavior of the animals...

Don't panic.
Do not panic.
We have an agreement.
Just look in the usual place.

Her legs seemed oddly stiff. Knees flexed under protest, then filed formal complaints and threatened to go on strike. But Fleur turned, began a careful trot as fretful residents trailed in her wake.

A mission could come at any time. For Fluttershy, it had been over a moon since the last, and there was this nasty little factor in the mares' lives: the non-cursing description was Cumulative Odds. Eventually, the palace would send for the pegasus, and royalty seldom deigned to let Fleur accompany her love into danger. There had been one time when her first hint of something being wrong was finding the Princess-designated fill-in personnel starting to set up shop, and none of them ever put the instruments back in the right places. And other occasions had found Fleur engaged in an increasingly-desperate search of the grounds, because there were a lot of non-mission reasons for Fluttershy to not be present and she really, really wished somepony had bothered to tell her what the current one was. It was rare for the pegasus to practice veterinary care as a home visit, but some patients just couldn't be moved and when that happened...

Fleur, who'd found herself in a situation where even the explained absences had the chance to turn fatal (although not necessarily for the pegasus), had made the sensible decision to deal with her stress through giving it to somepony else. A dream therapy session with Princess Luna had been paused long enough for a few Words to emerge and after the younger of the Diarchy had agreed that Fleur had a legitimate point, there had been an upgrade to WORDS. And ever since then...

If a mission was called while Fleur wasn't in a position to see the Bearers being assembled -- if, in fact, the palace summoned the group for any reason -- Fleur had to be contacted. For that matter, any Bearer family members residing in Ponyville got the same treatment, and she'd convinced the palace that the same needed to apply with Snowflake. Celestia certainly had her own capacity for sending scrolls: dispatching a quick round to inform all associated parties that Classified was under way hardly put a dent in the alicorn's day. And if all else failed, Spike now had a stack of mini-scrolls in a library desk drawer, ready to go at all times: Mission started: details if I'm allowed. It at least gave everypony some idea of what was going on, if not whether it could be reasonably survived.

And because there were numerous reasons for Fluttershy to leave the cottage, along with a perfectly-suitable desk in the sitting room -- Fleur had asked Fluttershy to use a similar system. Create a group of prewritten notes, because the pegasus could genuinely have the sort of emergency which didn't leave time to compose one. In fact, there didn't even have to be much writing involved. Color-code the paper. This hue means she just stepped out for a few minutes, that one is a veterinary emergency (while a double-underline on the destination meant Fleur should try to reach it), and this much-loathed shade means Scroll To (Hopefully) Follow. Designate a desk drawer, tell the animals not to touch it, then create a place to put the note and make sure everyone knows not to touch that. Not repeating the instructions with every generation and species of newborns had meant spraying a lot of bitter apple.

All Fleur had to do was -- check the right place on the desk. And if a note was present --

she could die
on any given day, at any moment, the palace can send for her and
at some point, one of them isn't coming back
if she doesn't

-- then she would at least know what she was trying not to panic about.

She moved carefully, perhaps too much so. Forced her eyes to focus --

-- yellow.

Somepony came to the cottage with a veterinary emergency. It was important enough to get her off the grounds, but she doesn't need me to be there and she's expecting to return in a few hours. Which, even with the days getting longer, may mean she doesn't get back until well after sunset -- but she didn't see any need to bring in a temporary to take over the cottage.

...of course Fluttershy hadn't worried about evening duties. She'd known Fleur would return.

She's -- gotten too used to my being here...

Fleur closed the last of the distance to the desk. Verified the lack of underlining, then read the actual words. The very fact that Fluttershy had been comfortable enough to pause and add anything to the generic emergency form had already told the unicorn that the current problem was the low end of the scale.

And there it is. 'Communication.' Somepony really needs her to speak with an animal, and it can't be brought here.

No mission.
No lying awake for hours within the nest, staring at billows which had lost all ability to comfort.
No treating every twinkle of light as if the scroll was going to coalesce on the spot, as her imagination rendered every stray sunbeam into an imminent notice of death.

"There might always be missions. And... I need to know if you can be strong enough. To take a chance on me, every day. To... believe I'll come home. And, if I ever don't... to move on. To try and be happy."

"I lost everyone. Everyone I ever loved. I -- I don't know if I can..."

"...we'll work on it."

Progress had been slow.

Okay. It's got to be really minor or Bertha's doing much better. Possibly both. Even with her knowing I would be here, I don't think she would have left if she thought it would all --

Raw meat tried to press itself against her brain.

-- come back out.

And had Fleur possessed a more normal life, that would have been it. A working partner making a house call for the job, and the unicorn with a night alone at home.

But it was the cottage. Fleur was just about never alone. And when it came to being home...

Duties unending. Having no substitutes on the way in meant there was nopony else to perform them. And when it came to using her field, she was still somewhat strained

what if it comes back out?

but she would be capable of normal casting. She just couldn't do anything too strenuous for at least one more day.

(She'd done all of the actual labor in putting the organ back, and was trying not to resent it. Horns had their uses and while Fluttershy's instruments would have substituted, her field had been more efficient. And still, half of the things she'd picked up during the day felt wrong...)

There was a lot of work to do, because there always was. She needed to get started.

what if it comes back out?

And for obvious reasons, there was something she very much needed to do first.

The cottage wasn't sapient, and Fleur was going to tell herself that (in public) because her current slate of counseling sessions was already more than enough, thank you. By a similar token, her legs were absolutely not capable of thinking for themselves, and so the unicorn truly resented the knee-locked decision which represented her having taken one look at the mastiff's resting area and having her limbs decide they weren't going in there. It was her body. It was supposed to obey a certain number of orders. 'Don't age' was more or less hopeless, but 'trot forward' was supposed to be built into the species.

She marshaled herself, forced shoulders and hips into cooperating: the last had no true sway at all. The knees, which were in something of a huff about having been overridden by a higher authority, finalized the strike and began to compile a list of demands: the first one could be presumed as New operator.

Bertha's head came up as the door opened. Dark, near-liquid eyes regarded Fleur with a variant on the mastiff's default natural expression of 'Something has gone horribly wrong': this one heavily implied that she didn't need a pony making it worse. But there was a soft snuffling sound to go with it and along the exposed belly, puppies suckled, wriggled, jostled for position, and failed to have any early understanding of what housetraining was for.

Fleur forced herself to look. Then she silently regarded the curtain of blackness which had just descended, wondered exactly how tightly the lids were pressed in order to create the black-and-gold fireworks which were dancing in her private night, and made herself do it again with her eyes open.

The stitching had held. There was still some distension in the general area, but -- that was normal. And Fleur had just spotted some discharge: greenish-black, with a consistency which -- well, which was utterly disgusting while still representing a significant improvement over asking her field to move a living organ. It was just standard afterbirth.

She cleaned the area. (The cloth which was partially held within her field mostly came across as cotton.) Checked on the puppies: temperature, degree of activity. And after that...

The first attempt to display the leash got her a light growl for the trouble, and Fleur kept a very close eye on the mastiff's jaw. But it had to be done. Nursing canines needed a few minutes away from their puppies. Food was important and in a room which already had five newborn digestive systems at work, so was getting a chance to go outside. At best, Fleur would be able to keep her on the grass for a few minutes -- but that time could be absolutely vital for the mother's health.

It took two more displays and a few strategic applications of corona, but she got the mastiff on the leash, then managed to make the new mother stand up. The big dog softly padded towards Fleur, and the unicorn continued to keep a very close eye on Bertha's mouth. There were only two canine breeds in the world which could exert more bite pressure than a mastiff, and if a hormone-soaked new parent decided to become upset...

But it didn't go badly. Fleur sent a secondary flicker of her energies to the makeshift bedding, got the confused puppies briefly levitated away from it before sending the filthy cloth to a nearby wastebasket and swapping in a new one. A blanket was carefully placed over the lowered newborns, because the first weeks of their lives required extra warmth and they were too young to maintain their own body temperature. And then she carefully guided Bertha out the door.

The mastiff's central source of confusion was probably due to having a stranger walk her. (Fluttershy would have known, and could have explained the necessity.) But she really didn't want to stay outside. Fleur just barely cleared the cottage before Bertha, without anything in the way of sniffing ado, picked a patch and used it. And after the cleanup, it took an extra effort to keep the mother from immediately returning to the puppies: it was easier to check on their health without a very large, protective dog in the way.

The newborns were... fine. A quick check of all vitals came up with a diagnosis of 'puppies', which at their current barely-age meant they never stopped wriggling and kept trying to figure out where the milk had gone. Fleur collected a few drops from Bertha, put them in a vial, checked color and scent, then let the mother back in to resume nursing.

But milk wasn't produced from vacuum. The big dog needed food. And when it came to cottage duties...

Psychosomatic reactions. Fleur knew that was what she'd been experiencing. Part of her was still trying to deal with a fully-unexpected advanced live tutoring session in veterinary duties, and some section of her brain had decided the best way to avoid having that ever happen again was though providing negative reinforcement. Go ahead: resume picking up things with your field. See if having all of them come across as possessing the texture of that one thing does anything for you. And if you aren't particularly enjoying the experience, have you considered the benefits of a quickly-packed set of saddlebags and a clear path to the door?

It was all just mental trickery. The mind trying to set up conditions for future avoidance. (Fleur had gone through a mandatory psychology course as part of escort training, then added some personal studies once Dr. Lorem had been inflicted upon her. She'd needed to know if the tiercel was doing anything wrong.) And it didn't matter right now because when she was in the cottage's kitchen, cooking up a stew for resident and visiting carnivores, that was what it was all supposed to feel like. Her brain was insisting that she was carrying raw meat in her field? Congratulations to her senses on their temporary 100% accuracy rating. Let's try to have that apply for more than a few minutes.

Fleur got the pots out, preheated a few things, allowed corona-held objects to slice, sort, and stir. Most of it felt -- normal.

Separate mix for Bertha. Bump the protein and fat content. Plus sweet potatoes. You just about couldn't go wrong with dogs and sweet potatoes. Let's see what's in the meat storage area... She began to walk over and because her mind was about to deal with the real thing, decided to distract it.

I need to speak with Miranda. Soon. If Dr. Lorem made the trip for Spike's services, then there's just about no way she would have stayed out of the police station. I've got to find out what she -- Well, the day had already been nauseating. -- 'instructed' Miranda to do. And maybe she'll have more news on Zephyr.

Somepony has to know more about him.

She opened the storage area, examined the raw cuts. Her body didn't attempt to pull back, and she directed her corona towards the first choices.

Of course, the first and best suspects for that are probably going to be --

-- the meat felt like -- meat. She would have expected nothing less and even with her own senses in open rebellion, she didn't think they were going to come up with anything more. And when it came to the impression of texture through a field, that was all she got. Meat, dead and cold.

The scent, fully unblockable because half of it had been constructed from memory, shot directly into her nostrils, saturated the olfactory bulb, and directed the whole of its intangible bale-tons to lean into a button marked NO.

Her own mind was fighting her. The knees were still deciding how far to carry the strike. Reflexes, by definition, weren't allowed to think about anything.

She came within three hoofsteps of reaching the sink in time.

Cleanup was... slow. Fleur had a lot on her mind.

Years.

Still, the scent of vomit was less offensive than what had triggered it. And once she applied the soap to any impacted areas...

It's been years since that happened.

She'd been a ranch kid. Her parents had known she would need to become accustomed to bloodscent: when you raised monsters as a food source, the stench of rust and iron was just part of life. The same applied to dealing with the actual meat. It was why they'd given her basic butcher training, with a vomit bucket on perpetual standby. And every time she'd lost the battle against her instincts... they'd comforted her, assured Fleur that none of it was her fault, that she'd get better. Given her some time to rest. Recover. And when she was ready, sent her back into the processing room again.

The unicorn had never been very good at it. The fine control offered by a horn allowed her to do some decent rendering, but -- she didn't have a natural talent for the job. It was probably harder when you couldn't personally appreciate the direct results. Which didn't prevent ponies from manifesting marks for the art every so often (and the palace had its very own meat station chef), but it hadn't taken long for everyone to figure out that Fleur wasn't going to be counted among those numbers.

Still... exposure had its own power. Repetition. She kept going back into the processing room and in time, the bucket had been retired with honors -- along with a little teasing, added to a hefty amount of congratulations. That was what you did for someone who so obviously had a griffon's heart.

Years since she'd last had a reaction. Years.

It's temporary.
It won't linger.
And if it does... take the pain.
Forge it.
Turn it into a weapon...

...against what? Assorted cuts of meat? Canterlot's butcher shop? The concept of non-plant biology?

She finished cleaning. Rags were carried to the laundry and added to the puppy mess.

Then she went back to the meat storage area and started over.

It didn't take very long to completely empty her stomach and after that, finishing the stew was mostly a matter of turning her head away from the pots during the dry heaves.

Bertha still needed to eat. All of the cottage residents needed to eat. And on that night, there was nopony else.

Feedings. All of them. She took care of Angel personally, because that was just a salad. Her tentative attempt to nibble at a leftover leaf didn't go well.

Check on Bertha again. Check on the puppies. Get some laundry going. Also, there were always areas which needed cleaning and as long as she was putting a washload up, might as well dirty enough rags to make it a full one.

At one point, the cleaning process put her in the main bathroom. She shifted the stick supply without breaking any, then looked at The Square for a while. There was absolutely no need to have the calendar near the mirror. She knew when the deadline was, if not whether it would come to pass exactly on schedule. The calendar wasn't necessary. But Fluttershy had a way of claiming small victories...

I had a thought earlier. Or almost had one. About Zephyr.

But she couldn't seem to recover it.

Maybe if Zephyr's the one who starts a fight with Snowflake.

It wasn't an unreasonable expectation. Zephyr struck Fleur as exactly the type of stallion who would find his own public commentary on the personal appearance of others to be incredibly amusing. Especially if he decided there was going to be an automatic head start. Nopony ever looked at Snowflake and expected him to have genuine speed in the air, and the sheer maneuverability of the big body...

...which was being performed with half-amputated wings. All things considered, that was a good reason for nopony to expect it.

She briefly entertained the fantasy of cerise eyes being blackened shut. Then she gave it a longer running time, added some strategic slow-motion to the finer details, and finished up by assigning herself a producer's credit.

If I had an in with Zephyr... if there was any degree of control, and I could set things up so that he'd just happen to say the wrong thing...

But Snowflake wouldn't respond to verbal attacks. Not when they were against him.

If I got Zephyr to make a comment about Applejack?

A stronger possibility, at least in that the odds had decidedly shifted away from zero. But -- that wasn't her any more.

...was it?

She checked the weather schedule before going out to the grounds. More spring rain, although most of it wouldn't hit until well after midnight. Even so, she knew that Fluttershy would have been out at the border with a lantern.

But Fleur didn't have pegasus senses. What was she supposed to be looking for, when she was effectively blind to the magical aspects? What could she even do about it if she did find something?

She almost scheduled it anyway. Just so there would be one less thing for Fluttershy to deal with upon return. But then the chicken coops loomed large in her sight and a split-second after that, the stench took over the whole of her snout.

It was still an improvement over the meat.

Sun was lowered. Patients were checked again. Fleur took an inventory of the attic herbs, making sure that her hooves came nowhere near the well-anchored dome which kept the residents away from a single potentially-deadly flower. She gave various animals some time, which included taking a few vital minutes for Katherine. The shrew, aware that a long day was coming to a close, snuggled against white fur.

And then she was in the bedroom.

Technically speaking, it was too early for Fleur to be settling down in the nest. In more practical terms, sleep was supposed to be a restorative. And like most of the restoratives sold in the Tangle, it was at least partially a lie. Slipping away from the waking world meant landing in the nightscape, and -- the nest no longer offered the same degree of protection. There had been a new nightmare to go with changed dreams, and if anything from her personal catalog of night terrors chose to inflict itself upon her...

Still -- it was one of but two passages into a fresh Sun-raising. The other was staying awake for the rest of her life and for a pony who absolutely refused to sleep, that was just about a guaranteed way of never dealing with The Square.

A bad day. A very-likely-to-be-worse night. And once they were over? Get up. Because the duties renewed with Sun, and somepony had to take care of them. The cottage demanded it.

Stupid cottage.

Fleur arranged her form in the nest, tried to get comfortable upon the billows. Closed her eyes.

Waited.

I'm hungry.

It didn't matter. Yes, she needed food. She was also giving her stomach a few empty hours to itself. Maybe that would make it more willing to retain custody of any offered contents by morning.

I should have cleaned myself again.

No. The little discolorations and stains were gone. Any additional maintenance would threaten to tip over into compulsion. She was fine.

Her hooves kicked at the billows. Solid vapor absorbed most of the impact, then rebounded a little back.

Sleep.
Sleep, Sundammit.
Sleep --
-- I could clean the bedroom.

Fleur got up.

It would been more practical if she'd thought of it before starting the washload. This was just going to generate extra used rags. But cleaning up was something else which the cottage effectively made perpetual, and so she dusted furniture, straightened paintings, moved the journal which recorded sexual activity for Dr. Mester and tried not to think about how few recent entries had been placed --

-- instinct. Action without thought. That was what did it. You were cleaning, so you cleaned under the bed. Perfectly natural. It was just that the two of them slept on a Cumulus. A cloud which had been so saturated with pegasus magic as to allow any living being to rest upon it, molded into the shape of a griffon nest.

There were some limits. A Cumulus couldn't be used to substitute for a cloudwalking spell through making a city out of repurposed mattresses: the wonder stopped working once it got past a certain size, and placing multiple specimens in close contact would eventually see the magic leak. In fact, a Cumulus in a cloud house needed a frame: the other option was to try sleeping in a very thin puddle. Fluttershy's bedroom, predominantly wood in its construction, didn't have that issue. The thick mattress rested directly upon the floor, and seemed happy there.

A living body treated a Cumulus as solid. The same applied to blankets, at least after they'd been left near the mattress for a few hours. A field, however, attempted to surround vapor and found the bubble closing on air.

Fleur, who hadn't exactly been in the best of moods to start with, found her grumbling mind considering that they owned a mattress which allowed dust to drift through the bed and thus there remained a certain need to clean under it. And if it wasn't solid to her field...

Her left foreleg nudged the side billows. They indented slightly.

She pushed. The cloud slid.

And then she was looking at the book.

The Manual Of Equine Reproduction.

It was a medical textbook, and the thickness alone told her it was a comprehensive one. And when she factored in what had to be an utterly hideous cost...

Why is this here?

But she knew the answer to that. They were attempting to use the Most Special Spell to bring about a pregnancy. And Fluttershy likely trusted Dr. Mester (and probably more than Fleur did), but -- it was still having two medical professionals in the same room.

Fluttershy was a vet in all but mark. She also knew a fair amount about pony medicine and was always trying to learn more, because there was always the chance of somepony needing emergency treatment on a mission. If anything ever truly went wrong --

-- if she's the one who gets hurt --

-- then the caretaker would be the closest available equivalent to a physician. And Fluttershy, faced with the prospect of a pregnant partner, knowing how much could happen during animal births -- had decided to look into the pony category. Just in case.

It was probably mail-order. With a stamp. She wouldn't have wanted Spike or Twilight involved. There might have even been a drop address, so I wouldn't see it come in. Fleur brought in the mail on most days: her field just sorted envelopes more quickly than Fluttershy's mouth. She wouldn't have wanted me to know she was worried.

Because a pregnancy created through the Most Special Spell was fully normal in all ways. And that included every last means by which it could go wrong.

She's just trying to make sure I'll be okay. That she can be the first to act if --
-- it's because she cares about --
-- she lov --

It was... a very thick book. Give it minotaur binding, place it next to the Mazein guide, and watch new friends go to war against the world. No softcovers would survive.

A comprehensive medical guide. There would be far more information available than in what Twilight had offered up, in exacting detail.

Fleur's horn ignited.

The book felt like a book, and she settled into the nest with it for some bedtime reading.

It only took four pages before her body began to feel like a badly-designed prison for the soul.

Breech births. The foal is trying to emerge tail-first. The resulting mental image is almost comedic, and remains so until you realize that the head is supposed to be smoothing the passage for all of the considerably-wider parts which come after it. It's possible to survive a breech birth, for both foal and mother. The possibility of surviving also includes the chance that at least one of them won't.

Fescue toxicosis. Better check your grass for fungus if you want your foal to be born on time. Or to be born healthy. Or at all.

Nuchal cord. The umbilical is the lifeline. It provides the nutrients which the foal's body can't acquire on its own. Oh, and every once in a while, it gets wrapped around the neck. The unborn, not truly breathing yet, can still be strangled in the womb. Or on their way out.

Ectopic pregnancy. Congratulations: the Spell took, and the egg is fertilized. Pity it didn't manage to reach the womb. So now it's going to develop right where it is, and will continue to do until the increasing mass ruptures the surrounding tissue. There won't be a foal, which means the surviving member of the adult pair isn't going to be a single parent.

Uterine torsion. The good news is that the egg got where it was going. The bad is that the host organ isn't sitting properly, and that's going to cause some complications. But at least it's still in the body, right?

...prolapsed uterus. Because of course.

Turn a few more pages, and here's the birth defects.

Missing limb. Prosthetics exist. If the substitution is for a leg, then the foal can have a nearly-normal life. No wing and... still the case, but those artificial limbs can never seek the sky. Still, the child would be healthy in all other ways. Consider yourself lucky.

One or more sense organs don't work. Well, the blind can do a lot. Deafness? Speech and music are lost, but at least you can see where you're going.

Internal organs weakened. Maybe it's the heart. You get a few years. If you're lucky.

Possibly organs are missing.

Nothing forms below the rib cage. Above the neck.

A fertilized egg partially splits. If the division had been full, you would have had twins. You're still going to have twins. They're just sharing aspects of their conjoined body. For an hour or two.

And then there's Lavender Foal Syndrome.

Picture Twilight's parents -- or rather, imagine, as Fleur had never seen them. The delivery is complete, and the doctor tells the mother that her daughter has a rather pleasing hue to her newborn coat. Also, said hue means they have to run a full slate of tests immediately, because there are two possible results. The first is that the foal has natural lavender fur. The other option is a neurological condition which triggers seizures, hyperextension of the spinal cord and, long after the suffering becomes too great, death.

Fleur's field flipped pages. Her eyes went from left to right and back again. Nothing else about her moved. There was no need. She had all the horrors in one place, packaged into a single convenient bundle. What purpose was there in seeking out anything else?

The equine body. There were those who claimed it was both fearfully and wonderfully made. To Fleur, this mostly indicated that the quality control team had never gotten back from lunch.

Would anypony ever risk pregnancy if they knew how much could go wrong? Because the brain could gloss over physical pain -- after it ended. Start applying coatings of cloaking relief, as the doctor smiled and got ready to present the newborn to her parents. The agony ended, and you started to forget how bad it had been. That was why mares were willing to become pregnant twice, after facing the horrors of labor for the first time. They truly forgot how bad it had been.

The brain could gloss over pain.
But not knowledge.
How was she supposed to do this?
How was anypony...?

Griffons had live births. Even if Fleur's body had matched her heart, there would have been no escape.

...seriously: what was wrong with external, hardshelled eggs? Spike was fine...

She read for a while. Then she closed the book, got out of the nest, and put the too-thick volume back exactly where it had been.

There was no need to mark her place. She wasn't likely to forget that either.

Fluttershy returned to the cottage in a good mood, because it had been a rather silly sort of emergency. There were simply times when animals looked at the protective hollows offered by pony homes and decided to do some rent-free subletting. She'd only been gone so long because negotiations had become involved and somehow, the hardest part had been convincing the weasels that a water heater wasn't a viable home centerpiece. Or, viewed from another angle, a viable hostage.

The pegasus was happy when she came in, especially when she saw that the cottage had been properly tended and her partner was still awake. It led to a suggestion.

The unicorn refused.

There was some talking. A few careful, half-whispered uncertain queries formed one side. The negation from the other was consistent. And in time, a yellow form timidly got into the nest, and the pegasus did her best to snuggle close. The unicorn half-scooted across billows, winding up pressed against the vapor borders.

And so they remained, as neither truly slept.