- Recovery
- >Antiseptic filled the air, making the whole building smell unnaturally clean.
- >Doctor Shoal trotted through the halls, checking in on patients in their respective rooms.
- >He was on his way to check up on a young filly who had broken her hoof in a scooter accident.
- >Shoal had been working at Ponyville General Hospital for fifteen years now, and he'd seen it all.
- >He was content that nothing extraordinary was happening at the moment.
- >He recalled the time he had many patients suffering from injuries due to excessive amounts of soap and chocolate milk at one time.
- >That had been the strangest thing he had ever encountered.
- >Trotting into the young filly's room, he could see her bright smile greet him.
- >"Alright Scootaloo, how are you feeling?"
- >Scootaloo beamed at him, showing off the cast on her hoof.
- >Scoot: "Much better, thanks Doc!"
- >Dr. Shoal smiled, and began writing down notes on a clipboard near Scootaloo's be.
- >Then it got all sorts of loud.
- >Light and stars blasted into the room, blinding Scootaloo and Dr. Shoals momentarily.
- >Looking toward the dark blue mist, he saw what he thought he'd never encounter.
- >Royalty.
- >Princess Luna stood tall in front of them both, wings outstretched with a righteous gleam in her eyes.
- >She looked at the good Doctor, then at Scootaloo sitting in her bed.
- >Magic enveloped Scootaloo as she was lifter out from where she rested and was dropped lightly into a puffy chair a few feet away.
- "We require your sleeping arrangements. We apologize."
- >She glided quickly over to the bed, her horn shimmering with magic yet again.
- >Dr.S: "Your highness, what are you doing? I can't just allow you to come in here and-"
- >His lecture was cut short when Luna levitated what looked like a corpse from her back to the bed, previously shielding it with her wings.
- >Dr.S: "What-.. what is that?"
- >The body was bloody and beaten, spatters of crimson staining his very skin.
- >Was this the human Celestia had banished?
- >Shoal had heard rumors, but he never once thought he'd see them be true.
- "Fix him."
- >Shoal shakes his head quickly to break his line of site with the mangled corpse.
- >Luna has an incredibly stern look on her face, Teal eyes burning with a kind of fury.
- >Dr.S: "I'm sorry, wha-"
- "WE DEMAND YOU FIX HIM."
- >Her voice booms throughout the hospital waking sleeping patients.
- >Shoal nervously approaches the human on the bed, examining him.
- >Dr.S: My god he-... what happened to him? He looks like he's been to Tartarus and back...
- "Can this one fix him or not?"
- >Dr.S: "I'm not sure. He barely even has a pulse at this point, and he's lost so much blood."
- >Shoal looks to the Princess, but her gaze is elsewhere.
- >She's staring intently at the human, fear and sadness in her eyes as she lightly bites her lip to control herself.
- >Dr.S: "...but I can try to stabilize him with a drip, for now."
- "Do it."
- >Days pass.
- >Luna sits by the broken body of the thing she came to cherish most in this world, gently looking at his broken form.
- >Shoal had done his best to clean all the wounds he could, and now the human's left arm was missing all together.
- >There was no possible way to save it after what it had been through.
- >The thing's spinal column was also damaged irreproachably, and if it were to come back to consciousness, it would never walk on two legs again.
- >If it were to come back to consciousness...
- >Luna hadn't left the human's side in all this time, and whenever Doctor Shoal passed by its room, he could swear he could hear faint singing.
- >Luna brings her face to that of the human's, softly nudging its cheek.
- >Nothing.
- >She had never thought that he would end up like this. She had hoped to have more time with this creature she had come to care for.
- >That she had come to love.
- >Solemnly, she placed the human's intact hand on top of her hoof, laying her head on his chest, and closed her eyes as she listened to his shallow breathing.
- >And then, in that final moment of peace, she felt his hand grip her hoof ever so slightly.

