Amblyopia – a condition of the eye in which the brain does not fully acknowledge the images seen by the effected eye. This commonly results in poor depth perception, double vision, and loss of sight. This condition is not correctable by artificial lenses and not caused by any bacteria or virus.
Strabismus – a disorder in which the two eyes do not line up in the same direction, and therefore are not aimed at the same object at the same time. This results in two different images being sent to the brain (one from each eye) which confuses the brain. This will eventually cause the brain to learn to ignore the image from the weaker eye. If the disorder is not treated, it is likely that the weaker eye will eventually develop amblyopia.
Neither of these conditions are in any way indicative of any disorder or malignancy of the mind.
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It was some time ago that Bright Eyes realized what she had to do. The moon had been her inspiration, or rather the pony imprisoned inside of it. She had realized it one night, as she peered simultaneously up at the night sky and at the bush in her back yard. Her thoughts drifted, as they almost constantly did, to various abstracts and historical stories and baking recipes. It was on that particular night that she was reminded of the stories her Mom used to tell her during their moments of bonding while chopping wood and knife juggling (not at the same time of course, that would be silly). Those moments never seemed to last very long or happen that often, but she so cherished them. Her mind wandered a bit, first around to the kitchen to get something to eat, then it washed up, and then started to go for a jog before remembering that it was supposed to be recalling the story of the mare in the moon. That fable had always particularly interested her, but for very different reasons than it did for most ponies.
Luna, the sister of the night, had been destined by her very nature to be confined to her solitude of watching over Equestria while all her beloved ones slept. She alone would see the full beauty of what she had brought about. It wasn't her fault that the bitterness and rage of being all alone had twisted her mind and heart into a schizophrenic pretzel-noodle. It was like when Bright Eyes would throw parties for herself and be the only one there: not really that fun at all. Why, she had a good mind to throw another one right then and there, just to prove to herself how much it would suck. She then thought better of it and refocused, this time on omelettes.
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The next night she found herself in the same place staring up at the same sky and suddenly found herself finishing her previous chain of thinking. It was not Luna's fault at all that she had to be imprisoned inside the moon, just as Bright Eyes was not at fault for her own appearance keeping her from any meaningful social interaction. It wasn't her fault that she was socially awkward from the isolation, or that her home happened to be hidden by the tall trees on the very outskirts of Ponyville so she that never had neighbors or visitors. It was definitely not her fault that she was never able to make that little cloth doll stop showing up on her doorstep no matter how far away she took it. Seriously, that thing was creepy as hell. It wouldn't catch fire either, or she would have destroyed it long ago. She finally decided to just toss it in a box in the back of her closet just to get it out of sight, but some nights . . . she was VERY conscious of it being there.
All this and more were not the things that she could control, yet they all conspired to keep her from being friendly with any pony other than herself. This was not at all bad, since she enjoyed being friendly with herself, but occasionally wanted some other pony to join in. It was then that it struck her that if anyone were to have the ability to see a running dialogue from the thoughts in her head, that the last few moments may very well be misconstrued in a way she did not at all intend. Well then, that would be even more reason than she already had to stay away from mind-reading wizards in ugly hats.
Her Mom never liked the ugly hat wizards. In fact, in her last days she never really seemed to like anyone. Maybe that was why she had moved all the way out to the very edge of town. Maybe it had something to do with her Dad. Bright Eyes was never really brave enough to bring that question up though. A shame she would most likely never know now.
To her credit though, her Mom did everything within the constraints of her failing strength to try to raise Bright Eyes as a thoughtful, sensitive, and kind pony. Unfortunately her illness had left the older pegasus grounded for almost as long as Bright Eyes could remember. Growing up, she had often dreamed of the two of them playing together in the clouds, and even now years after her Mom's death, she would have those dreams still. She would, at times, be instructed to go out to practice flying by herself. She had no qualms about this, but would always catch her mind wandering back to her flightless guardian. She simply couldn't bring herself to fly off and frolic around knowing that her Mom would be left there all alone.
In those last few days Bright Eyes had ended up having to provide only a minimum of care for her matron. She had kept nearly all of her ability to go about her daily routines right up till her last day. This was no doubt due largely to the restorative powers of the exotic plants and herbs she collected and raised in her green house.
Bright Eyes had always really enjoyed the fact that the sun windows in the ceiling of the attic allowed for the keeping of a large variety of odd looking vegetation. She used to go there and play jungle adventurer. In fact she had been doing just that on the day she discovered the secret room. Neither she nor her Mom knew why it was there, but there was a hidden door disguised as a plain old wall. Beyond it was a small room lined with bookshelves, all of which were crammed from floor to ceiling with old musty tomes and scrolls and charts. Bright Eyes loved the stories from these tomes. They were all so different from any of the other stories she would read. Since her Mom had taken it on herself to allow the merits of home schooling, these books and papers had been a major source of the education Bright Eyes received during her formative years. Sometimes, when her Mom would send her on trips to the market, she would overhear other ponies talking rather negatively about the outcome of home schooled ponies. Although she never said anything, she could not agree with them. After all, just look at how she had turned out.
Unfortunately many other ponies would not agree with her. Not only would they not agree with her, they would at times act downright mean to her. She pretended not to hear them, just as much out of politeness as out of fear for what they would do if she did speak up for herself. They would whisper and chuckle behind her back, and she would just trot on by and keep holding the tears in. She was the outcast, and this was not her fault.
“No friends,” once again she was looking to the night sky, speaking to only herself and the moon. “Very much like you, Luna, and I'm sure you felt it too. The contempt. The jealousy when you looked at your elder sister. The pain of eating pizza too quickly right out of the oven . . . or did you have the ability to turn pain off? Most likely not, since it drove you CRAZY.”
“I wonder if there was a point where you could have stopped yourself. If there was a point where you realized you were losing your self to the bad stuffs. It just doesn't seem fair that there are certain ponies born into this kind of situation. The no-friend situation.”
She breathed in a deep draw of the night air and then turned to enter her empty house. Closing the door she surveyed the damage caused by her recent tirade. She had become much better at controlling her rage. She no longer hurt herself anymore, and only one vase was broken this time.
“Oddly enough,” she again spoke to the only one who would listen, “I never have the guts to lash out my anger at the ponies really responsible for making it this way.” She pulled a chair into it's upright position and wondered why she even had a piece of furniture that she was physically unable to use. “And who would I lash against, Mr. Chair? The world? HA! We BOTH know it isn't any one single pony's fault. The difference between us is that I'M the one willing to admit it. One pony living all alone without a clue how to relate to any other pony, and every other pony more or less avoiding that pony since she avoids all the other ponies. Pony pony PONY!! AHAHAH!” The laughter was thick with bitterness, and she somewhat surprised herself at this.
“OK, so I'm sort of off-putting to look at. So what?” She stared at the chair again and began to frown. “Oh, don't you pull that crap with me, Chair. I DO try to talk with them . . . sorta'. They just don't at all understand. UG! Especially the little ones. I was never that cruel when I was that age. They can be so merciless. I realize that they have not learned what tact is yet, but there's no need for the harsh name calling.” She inched closer to the chair, looking down at it with a deeper frown. “You KNOW which name I mean. I don't have to say it here, and YOU can't make me!”
She rushed into the kitchen to open the refrigerator. After retrieving a stick of butter she trotted back to the chair and pressed it firmly into the fine red upholstered seat. “Ha! What do you say to that, Chair? Nothing, that's what! Because I buttered you up! Haha!” The victory was short lived though, as her mind wandered back to the source of her outbursts.
“But the mean little ones are only saying what all the others are thinking. No, it's not telepathocity. I can see it in their faces, in the way they refuse to look me in the -,” she felt the tears coming again. That ugly wave of sadness made a tension in her stomach and chest that felt almost like the gas produced from eating stink-weed greens. She recalled the stew she had made from them some weeks earlier. She had to keep all the windows open for days to get the smell out. She was just glad that it had been summer time then.
“Heh.” She made a raspberry sound with her tongue. “Heehee. PFFTTT! Hahaha! PFFFTT! HAHAHAHAH! PRRFFTTT!! I bet this would be double-fun while eating tacos!” She jolted once more into the kitchen.
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An hour later Bright Eyes found herself out in the yard staring up at the moon once more. The bad thoughts had again crept up on her as she stared at the waning orb in the sky. It had been like this for some time now. In the quiet hours, when distractions were at a minimum, she found herself reflecting on the mistreatment she had to endure from her peer-ponies.
She had found only one way of combating the insults and negativity, if “combat” was even the word for it. She simply went about her daily delivery route in a quick efficient manner making as little contact as she could with the rest of the town, and all the while fixing her face with a blank stare in preparation to pretend not to hear or understand any of the bad she knew she would be waiting along her route. Then she could count on coming back to her empty house, and trying to distract herself from getting bogged down in the rage and despair and soul-crushing loneliness that would come trotting out from the shadows.
She wondered at how long this would keep happening, or for that matter if there would be any reason it would stop. Maybe one day she would wake up and every pony would be happy to accept her as she was, even with her tourette syndrome. She was pretty sure that would never ever happen. If anything was going to change it would be from some pony taking control of her situation. What a marvelous coincidence that she was some pony and was right there in the middle of the situation. There had been plenty of bad that had been tossed at her that was not her fault, just as it was with Luna. She decided then that, just like Luna, she would have to take matters into her own hooves. She felt the twinge of fear that blossomed in her chest as she made that connection.
“It will be just fine,” she stroked her mane as she spoke her own comforting words. “What is the worst that could go wrong? I mean, things can't really get much worse, with the exception of having the house burn down and becoming a quad-amputee who is forced to stand out in the rain and endure the indignity of messing myself in full public view. No worries other than that.” Her gaze was fixed onto the moon. Shining bright and beautiful, it made her good eye start to water, and she thought again of such a shame it was that Luna's wonderful creation was usually completely missed by most of the population of Ponyville. She blinked away the tears.
“Fine then. This is where I start to correct things, and where I start to come out on top.”
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Her Mom's green house had been home to some of the most rare plants in Equestria. She had taken considerable effort and time to have them collected from far off places, many of which Bright Eyes had never even heard of till the packages showed up at the office. She saw it as her duty, the one task her that had been left behind, to keep the collection watered and well groomed as best she could. She had also kept the stack of notes and journals that her Mom had used to record all her experiments in horticulture and herbal medicines from over the years. The effects and the dosages were very specific. The one she was interested in now was the extract of the root of a particularly rare plant with a name she didn't care to learn to pronounce, so she just called it Ted.
The Ted root, when boiled down, provided a clear sticky liquid toxin that could be easily absorbed through the skin. The effects of this toxin were a temporary blindness that could last anywhere from a day up to about a week or so, depending on the dose.
Bright Eyes had discovered this journal entry only in recent weeks when the urge to see the familiarity of her Mom's writing and recite the contents of the books while wearing her Mom's burial dress had proved to be too much to resist. In the weeks that followed she had wrestled with the moral implications of taunting her gold fish with horseshoes and making up rhymes about how he had no feet. When she finally decided that this would have been too cruel, she decided to create a small quantity of the Ted toxin to try out on the tree in the back yard. She was both overjoyed and unnerved by the results. She was absolutely certain the tree couldn't see a thing. Now came the question of actually using it on the population of Ponyville.
How beautiful would it be to venture down to the market one day and find all her tormentors stumbling around in a discordant panic. They wouldn't have any way of knowing the effects were not permanent, and what wonderful chaos they would cause then. They would no longer be able to judge ANYONE by their appearance. This would be the lesson she would teach them all. She would open their eyes to their cruelty by shutting off their sight.
“Then I will be the ruler of ALL THE OCEANS!! MUWWAHAHAHAAHAH!!”
It would take effect about an hour after exposure, and it would be easy enough to disperse the toxin through the mail. Bright Eyes particularly enjoyed that part. She really did enjoy her job when there were no ass-clowns to ruin it for her.
The only problem would be that she would have to grow enough of the Ted plant to get a large enough quantity of the toxin to drug the whole town. That would take a bit of time, which was fine by her since she was working on becoming immortal anyway. It's a well known fact that the time which surrounds any pony who wears a wristwatch will lose its potency when the watch stops. She was now on the fifth wristwatch to have stopped of natural causes. By her calculations this would keep her the same age for the next 73 years. Her mind boggled at the thought of how many time pieces Princess Celestia must have at her disposal. Though she was the ruler of Equestria, so it really wouldn't be hard for her to obtain them. If worse came to worse she could just impose a clock tax, and take them from the general public.
*****************
It had been more than a month since she first sat out under the stars and made her declaration. It had been a day less than that since she had begun taking cuttings of the Ted plant to cultivate more little Teds. They grew fairly quickly when given the right amount of Ted care, but she still needed much more before she would be able to implement her plan. Based on the calculations from her abacus, another four months would still be needed. She thought on this as she again as she sat beneath the starry sky and stared up at her lunar muse.
“The story says that you'll be able to return after one thousand years. If what I read in the tomes is true that means you'll be coming back this year some time.” She paused for a moment and allowed the full weight of her statement to sink in. When that failed to happen, she let that weight slide off her back and land with a “moosh” sound on the ground.
“If it's really true, if you really are more than the fairy tale all the other ponies think you to be, then maybe I won't really need to do this at all. Maybe you will be able to harvest out revenge on the whole world in the name of all the outcasts.”
“Wow, I didn't know that I would become so vindictive that I wanted the whole world to suffer, but apparently I don't really care if it gets hurt or not. I wonder if this emotion is similar to what you felt back then, at that time, only yours was magnified by about a gillion.”
She stared in silence for a moment more and an empty place in her heart begin to ache. She knew that she was the bad guy here. She seemed to want it. She imagined all the damage that could be done by an eternal night. Eventually the entire world would grow cold and die. That couldn't be compared to the small hurt that she would cause with just a week's worth of blindness. No way, not a chance. How much could be done then, in her little circle of the world? How many lives would be crippled or ruined or even ended within the time? What would they finally do when they found out she was the one who had caused it. They would know eventually, she was sure of that. The Ponyville Police Department were not complete morons. They would find that the letters were what the toxin was being spread by, and it would only be a matter of time then. Then she would be punished. She knew this just as certainly as she knew she would be deserving of what ever they did to her once they caught up to her.
“But it needs to happen. I need to extract at least some measure of dance-dance from them. And they will hate me for it, just as sure as I am most likely sitting here talking to myself. Probably none of them will be able to see beyond themselves to what I was trying to show them.”
“Hmm . . . . Crap. So this is what the bad guy feels like. I wonder if either of us could be redeemed after deliberately committing such blatant crimes against friendship.” She chuckled to herself on this and wondered why it was that she seemed to still care about things like that. She paused and thought as deeply as she dared to on this matter.
“Perhaps I should just toss this whole thing away, just forget the plan and be a good pony, and go about the rest of my life enduring the rest of my life.” That thought made her cringe inwardly and out.
“No. That wasn't what you did, and you had every chance that your sister gave you. The only one giving me my chances is myself, and they all point down your same path. I have no excuse for backing out. I have . . ,” and she was about to say that she had no one to back out for, but stopped short of that. The dull ache shot through the empty space inside her heart again, more intense this time.
“Maybe. If there was still a chance for the outsider. If there was some way for a pony who had attempted so much against the forces of good . . . if there was a way for you to be accepted into the world again, then certainly there would be some place for me too. There would be some pony for me too.” Bright Eyes felt the tears running down her face now and made no attempt to stop them.
“I'll make you this promise Luna. If there would be any way that you could throw away the destiny that had been hefted upon you, then I will not give up hope for being able to escape my own. I will consider that I may still find a way to walk in the light.” She stared up at the moon a little longer, hoping to still believe she didn't have to do these things. She then promptly decided it was time for bed and collapsed down with an unceremonious 'thud' before falling into a very sound sleep.
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Bright Eyes awoke the next day, very early just as she always did, and rushed through her breakfast of juniper water and lime shavings. After a quick staggering dash into the closet to retrieve her mailbags, she was off. As her flight path zigzagged through the still dark morning sky she had the notion that, some day soon, she should take a picture of the dawn, in case one day it didn't happen. That way she would have her own personal sunrise that she could use anytime she pleased. Why, she could just have the sun rise and set thirty times in one day, if she wanted. It would be like making thirty extra days all crammed into one. The only problem would be that she would probably get fired for not showing up for work on all those extra days. Even if she tried it while she was already at work, there was still her route she had to consider. She liked to think that she could fly fast, but she knew she wasn't fast enough to do that much delivering in so short a time. Perhaps if she had not abandoned her plans to build the mail cannon. It would surely speed things up and was worth considering. She made a mental note of it, which promptly got lost in a stack of other notes that may or may not ever be seen by her mind's crooked eye again.
She looped around and down through the still morning mists, landing just outside the post office with a few minutes to spare. As she took out her magic marker to scribble her initials on a randomly chosen cobblestone block (a practice she enjoyed doing to mark the start of each new day), she happened to look towards the town's magic fortune-telling board, which was just outside the office. It had grown a new flyer over night. She enjoyed reading them since they always seemed to come true. She had tried fortune telling herself, but she never seemed to be able to get it right. Somehow this magic poster board always knew.
Today it announced that Ponyville had been selected to host the Summer Sun Celebration this year. She was somewhat excited on this, since she had always heard it to be a fun time. She also knew that the Princess would be there. She had never actually seen Princess Celestia live and in person, but had heard that she exuded an aura of sublime goodness, able to inspire even the worst of minds into throwing away their evil ways. She pondered the possibilities of such a thing. Perhaps she would allow herself time to dance that night away. She thought herself pretty good at the cha-cha as long as there was nothing in the way to stagger over, like a dance partner.
She refocused on her task. Now, it was time to deliver the mail.
