NURSE

“I'm sorry, Miss Doo.”

“Isn't there anything that can be done?”

Nurse Snowheart sighed. It was the part of her job that she hated the most: delivering bad news, especially when it was to young foals. “The deterioration of the eye muscle has progressed too far for even surgical methods to repair. We can try corrective lenses to minimise the loss of your depth perception, so you'll still be able to go to flight school.” Snowheart tried to smile encouragingly. “But there's nothing we can do to restore the physical functioning of your eye.”

“But,” Ditzy protested, tears streaming down her muzzle, “all the other kids … you don't know what it's like. You don't know the things they say. The horrible things that they call me.” The young grey pegasus snivelled pathetically, wiping snot and tears away with her foreleg.

“I know it's tough,” the nurse replied sympathetically, placing an affectionate hoof on the filly's shoulder, “but they're just kids. They'll soon get bored of teasing you and find something or somepony else to mock.”

“And?” asked Bombolla, looking over her magazine at her daughter. She was trying to conceal her anxiety behind a hopeful expression; her little Ditzy had wanted to visit the nurse alone to prove that she was a big filly now, and so she had been sitting here for the past twenty minutes, reading the same page in the magazine and trying not to tear her mane out.

Ditzy shook her head forlornly. “They can't do anything about my eye,” she said as stoically as she could, but you didn't need to be a mother to see that a dam was about to burst.

Bombolla tossed the magazine aside and pulled her daughter close to her. “Sh,” she said, ruffling Ditzy's raggedy blonde locks tenderly. “It's okay.”

The memory of her mother's embrace was something that Ditzy fought never to forget, even in the worst of days after her passing; she still didn't know what had happened, only that, after getting home from school one day, she'd arrived to find police officers talking to her despondent-looking father while an ambulance crew wheeled her mum's lifeless body away.

Her father took to drink in a big way after Bombolla's death; Ditzy grew to loathe apples for what they did to her dad, and for what they made him do to her.

“I'm sorry,” he said, breaking down in a fit of sobs after another alcohol-fuelled rage had left his daughter shivering and broken in the corner. “I'm so sorry.”

“Hey,” a tall, muscular colt called out to Ditzy, who was simply trying to eat her lunch quietly, unnoticed, at the back of the cafeteria, “what's up with your eyes? I guess you don't even know where up is, huh?” Though it wasn't a very funny joke, his posse proceeded to burst out laughing, anyway.

Ditzy's muzzle turned cherry-red from the attention and she looked away, hoping that they would simply move on when she didn't respond to them.

No such luck, she thought as a meaty hoof connected with the side of her face; a stinging blossom of pain shot through her whole head as it snapped back viciously, and tears began to flow.

“Aw,” the colt said with a trace of mock sadness, “I thought that would've worked. Guess there really isn't any way to fix them. Worth a try, though, eh?”

A circle of three or four jeering pegasi had formed around the weeping filly; judging by the looks on their faces, Ditzy was certain that they all wanted to have a go at correcting her little flaw.

The leader of the little gang was just about to have a second swipe at Ditzy when his foreleg was restrained. Ditzy looked up to see another colt; he was a little shorter than her attacker, a little podgier, but his mien was one of barely-restrained fury. “Really? This is how you get your kicks, Crescent? By hitting little girls?”

Crescent Moon narrowed his eyes at his captor. “I'm gonna give you one chance to let go of my leg, Turner. I won't ask you-” He never got the chance to finish as a driven punch burst his nose open.

“Pick on someone your own size in future,” Turner said.

Ditzy was on her feet. “Please, don't do this for me. I'm not worth it.”

It didn't take long for Crescent Moon's compatriots to react; Turner was grabbed, thrown to the cloudy ground, and his body was repeatedly pummelled. Once Crescent had recovered sufficiently, he took great joy in returning the favour and soon, the pristine white fluff was soaked through with red. Even when the bell rang for the start of classes, the assailants were so lost to their fury that they completely missed it.

“Next time, bro',” Crescent said, delivering a swift kick to Turner's ribs that made him double over, coughing and wheezing, “think twice before you play the hero.”

Ditzy half-carried/half-dragged her rescuer to the toilets; she hoped he wouldn't mind that it was the girls' bathroom, but it was likely that Crescent, or at least some of his crew, would be hanging around near the boys' one. They weren't exactly serious about their studies and would avoid going to class whenever they could.

“You okay?” asked Ditzy, using a handful of paper towels to wipe away as much of the blood as she could. Soon, Turner's face was revealed to her, including his radiant blue eyes.

“Apart from the dizziness,” he replied with a rakish grin creasing his muzzle, “I've never felt better. How about you? That looked like a sore one.” His hoof went out to stroke the welt from where Crescent had beat her earlier.

“It's nothing worse than usual for me,” said Ditzy nonchalantly, pulling away from his touch.

“I-”

“It's okay,” snapped Ditzy, a little more harshly then she'd intended. “You don't need to tell me how badly you're feeling, or you wish there was something you could do, or how awful it is.”

“I was going to suggest, since I feel like I've just been hit by a buffalo, that we skip our next class and maybe hang out together.” He shot the filly a lopsided smile. “I know a place that does pretty good hayfries.”

“I'm sorry for shouting at you.” Ditzy looked away, embarrassed by her outburst. Turner was just trying to help, after all.

“It's fine.”

“No,” said Ditzy, releasing a sigh that had been months in the making, “it's not. Ponies have been queuing up to tell me how sorry they are for what I've gone through, but nothing ever changes. I'm sick of hearing nothing but words.” Her body was trembling with repressed anger.

Turner got shakily to his feet and Ditzy steadied him with her wing. “Doctor Hooves,” he said, offering one of his forelegs to her. “Time Turner's a nickname I picked up due to my fascination for all things horological.”

“Ditzy Doo,” she replied, encircling his leg with her own.

“May I just say,” began Doctor Hooves as they left the school grounds together, “that your eyes are the most beautiful thing I've ever known.”

Ditzy blushed. “By the way, do they do muffins at this place you mentioned?” Next Chapter: Power - Octavia/Vinyl Scratch - Slice of Life Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 2 Minutes