She was conceived in love, brought into the world in love, and given love every day of her hopeful little life.  Meeka, a beautiful little filly with curly brown mane, big pouting eyes, and a shiny green coat had everything going for her at the date of her birth.  That is, of course, until the doctors and nurses took a good look at her.  They prodded her, took her blood, took her from her parents and put her in an incubator.  Meeka's parents were devastated.

Gold Glory and her spouse, Arc Aurus weren't devastated because they didn't know the doctors would do that, but rather that they did.  The two of them had a congenital heart defect, as well as a long family history of just the same condition.  They weren't related, but they both did have the issue, and everybody in their family died young, so they were a natural match.  Everybody told them not to have children, for knowledge that it would be a one in a hundred chance that they could live past 40, but Gold wanted nothing more than to be a mother, and Arc shared her desire for parenthood.

She took her vitamins, took care of her body, and did everything she needed to to make sure that their foal would have the best possible start.  Even Arc went to great lengths to help, despite his condition.  He did all the lifting, cooking, and cleaning while his wife was pregnant, and worked two jobs to make sure that they would have plenty of money saved up for a college fund, and for all the expenses that came with a bundle of joy.  Before their foal was even conceived, they were the perfect parents.

When that fateful day came, Arc never left his wife's side, he didn't pass out, and he even helped steady a nurse's hoof as she tried to find a vein for Gold's IV drip.  Everything went absolutely perfectly.  Until the tests.

"I'm afraid your daughter has the same condition that you two have...  but you knew the risks; you came to every consultation, you read every pamphlet...  Are you prepared to take care of her?" Nurse Redheart asked, a note of concern on her face.

"Of course we are!"  Arc said, he'd wanted this day to come just as soon as his love had told him.  He wanted to be a father -- to raise a son or daughter, whichever fate gave them -- and would be grateful no matter what.  "She's our whole word now.  What do we need to do?"

"Well...  Her heart is very weak, even weaker than yours.  She has palpitations at only minor things, and I'm afraid that she may have a heart attack if she's put under too much stress...  There is no medication we can prescribe that can help with this, so the only thing you can do is to keep a very watchful eye."  The nurse never let her distraught expression go as she spoke.  "She will not be able to play outside with other foals, and if she makes it to puberty...  even something as innocent as affection could be fatal.  Do you understand?"

The two parents slowly nodded; they answered the questions in the "correct" manner and said everything they needed to say, but the gravity of their situation took quite some time to sink in.  Growing up, their daughter Meeka had no friends, she had few toys, and was never allowed outside.  Every single sneeze, cough, or scraped knee was life threatening as far as her parents were concerned, and the filly was absolutely smothered in their parents' protective love.  

One day, just a few weekends after Meeka's 6th birthday, Arc and Gold were sitting in their kitchen, watching their daughter build ever more complex words with letter blocks.

"We're failures as parents..."  Gold Glory piped in.  Arc wanted to object, but he couldn't think of anything to say.  "We knew this would happen...  We had to grow up like this and it was miserable...  We did this to out daughter."

"Sweetheart, stop...  We didn't do this to her, it was unavoidable."

"They told us not to have children!  If we had listened it would have been avoided."  Gold stifled her shout, letting the assertiveness come out in the form of an intimidatingly motherly tone.  "We knew she'd have to grow up without friends...  Everyone knew it, and we had her anyway."

"There was a chance that she would have been fine--"

"And there's a chance that we would have been, but it didn't happen."

The ponies ended their conversation after that final blow.  They stared down into their teacups, the dark fluid reflecting their sadness in a rippling mirror.  Gold looked up to see Meeka staring out the window at three fillies playing ball.  The pane of sterile glass separating their daughter from a life of fun and social development served as a painfully real reminder of their limits as parents, and as citizens.  Arc had worked so hard during the time that his wife was pregnant, that he nearly had two heart attacks himself.  Meeka, if she grew up (the "if" in their thoughts cutting like a sword), could never have a child.  She could never even have a love without...

Meeka stood up from her boring playtime and wandered into the kitchen with her parents, child's intuition telling her that something was wrong.  "Here you go!"  She handed a crayon drawing that she had spent some time on up to Arc, and it made him smile.  Gold, however was still distracted with her tea and stifling her frown.

"Mommy?"  Meeka asked her, after noticing her mental distance.

Gold's lips quivered, but she tried to mask her deep, stinging sadness for her daughter's sake, "Y-yes dear?"

"How come I can't go out and play with those three?"

Gold clenched her eyes shut and contorted her mouth as she tried not to burst into tears.  The question finally came, she had dreaded the day it would.  

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you sad, Mommy."  Meeka said innocently, she just couldn't understand what was wrong.

"No!  Dear, no, you didn't do anything wrong.  You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."  Meeka's mother had been used to not picking her up, so she slid out of her chair, fell to the floor, and hugged her filly into her chest.  She kissed her on the top of the head and sobbed into her curls, never wanting to let her go.  Arc sat in his chair uncomfortably, the drawing resting face down on the kitchen table by his teacup.  He joined his family on the floor after a few seconds and gave them both a hug.  It was true that he felt like he'd failed to protect them; he felt like a failure of a husband and father, despite how hard he'd worked.

They sat there on the floor together for about ten minutes, through many tears and many more explanations about how they were "tears of joy" so there wasn't anything to worry about.  Finally, after Gold had composed herself, she wiped her eyes clean on her foreleg and spoke up.

"Meeka...  Please go wash your hooves, it's almost time for dinner."

"Okay, Mommy, I love you!"  The filly's mother was very nearly crippled by those words, but had a very practiced response ready.

"I Love you too, Meeka, more than anything in the world."  The green coated filly turned and bounded up toward her room.

"Slow down!  You'll hurt yourself!"  Arc yelled, his own heart literally skipping a beat as he watched her energy bubble out like that.

"Sorry!"

Arc and Gold sat still on the floor for a few seconds.  Arc had nothing else to say, his wife's words had hurt him more than anything he had ever experienced, but he knew that she had hurt herself even worse with them.  The only thing he could do was to pick up the drawing and bring it down into his lap, and share it with his wife.  It was a touching picture of their nuclear family standing outside; the Green and Yellow stallion that was her father, and the brown and blue mare that was her mother stood side by side with the filly standing on their heads.  Both of the parents had fake, poorly drawn smiles on their faces, but above them was their daughter, placing two halves of a heart together; one for each of them.  The picture would stay framed in their home until that very building was torn down.  It stayed framed long past Meeka's death, and longer still past her parents', stained with teardrops from the time they spent looking at it.