Willow groggily opened his eyes and quickly turned his head away from the harsh fluorescent light bearing down on him. Adjusting to artificial glow granted him a view of a sparse, white room, empty save for a sink, a collection of cabinets, and the bed he’d awoken on. Glancing down revealed that thin sheets were draped over his body.

Why am I in the ho—

He remembered being at Aria’s side, grasping her hoof and shouting encouragement. The screaming and cries as the nurses had darted around the two of them still rang through his head. There had been a split second of silence after all the chaos, broken by his foal’s first cries. He remembered glimpsing its tiny from.

Then, nothing.

He rose up from the bed, only for a sickening wave of pain to slam into the left side of his head, blurring his vision as intense nausea bubbled up in his throat. Collapsing onto his back, he gasped for air as the room spun around him, slowly solidifying when he managed to gain control of his breathing. The pounding in his head receded to a dull ache, and he became aware of a chill on his left hindleg that drew his attention to an ice pack haphazardly resting atop it. Picking the pack up and placing it on his head further reduced the ache to almost nothing.

“Nurse?” he rasped. “Doctor? Somepony?”

Muffled voices could be heard from outside the room. Two stallions, from the sound of it. A third voice, deep and raspy, entered the discussion and silenced the other two, but the door prevented Willow from making out the specifics of the conversation.

The bronze door knob twisted, and a unicorn stepped into the room. Upright, Willow would have stood half a foot over his head, but would be level with his horn. His azure coat was so matted and ruffled in the areas where it stuck out of his medical jacket that it looked like dulled steel. The same could be said of his grey mane; a proper combing would make the unicorn appear far younger.

The unicorn slouched as if his jacket weighed him down. Deep bags rested under his eyes, and his lips flaked in multiple spots. Even his cutie mark had an aged feel with its depiction of a weather-worn stone covered in etchings.

“Hmmm,” he murmured.

“Doctor?” asked Willow. The unicorn’s eyes narrowed and slowly swept across Willow’s body, coming to a stop when both ponies were looking straight at each other. “What’s going on? Where’s Aria? Where’s my foal?”

The unicorn blinked before trotting over to Willow’s bed, summoning over a chair, and falling into it with a relieved sigh.

“Let's take things slowly.” The unicorn rubbed his left eye with a hoof. “I’m Doctor Pasture, and I ca—”

“I don’t care! Willow snapped. “Where’s my family?!”

With a heavy grunt, he slammed down his hooves into the bed in an attempt to get up, but his head exploded again, and a queasy feeling once more welled up in his stomach. Pasture shot out a leg and sharply jabbed it into Willow’s chest, pinning Willow down. His lips stretched into a harsh frown that matched his piercing eyes.

“You have my sympathies for the slipshod way the nurses restrained you when you had your incident.” Pasture pressed down harder. “But I won’t have you running amok here.”

Willow's eyes widened, his breath rasping harshly as he struggled uselessly against Pasture's hoof. However, soon enough, the exertion coupled with pain was too much, and he fell limply back onto the bed, Pasture snorting once before finally easing off the pressure a little bit.

“Where’s Aria?” Willow managed to groan when the room finally stopped heaving underneath him.

Pasture moved his lips soundlessly before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.

“Can you remain reasonable?” he asked.

Willow nodded. “Yes, but I need to see my family.”

“That’s part of the issue.” Pasture took another deep breath, dry lips vanishing into a tiny line as he leveled his gaze. “I’ve already explained this to your wife, but there were some complications in the birth.”

Willow's stomach churned. A chill spread across his body as he slowly curled into a ball and he buried his face in his pillow. Coughing into it, he shivered as cradled his head with his hooves. He remembered his foal crying. It was pink like Aria. He’d seen that much before he’d woken up in the bed. What was wrong? Its horn? Its wings? Its whole body? I don’t even know what type it is!

“No,” he sobbed. “No, no, no, no, no...”

“Mr. Reed, stay focused,” said Pasture, pressing his hoof a little further into Willow’s shoulder. “It’s not fatal, so we can give your foal all the help it needs, but you have to talk to me. Can you do that?”

Willow sucked in some air, getting more controlled with each breath. Cleaning his face up with a hoof, he sniffled, inhaled deeply, and slowly nodded. With a sigh, Pasture fell back into his chair, summoning a notepad, a quill, and an ink jar out of his jacket’s pockets and floating them close to his face. Poising the freshly wetted quill over the notepad, he looked over to Willow

“I need you to answer these questions,” Pasture explained. “They’ll help diagnose your foal and give it proper treatment. First off, did your wife ever drink while she was pregnant?”

Willow scowled.

Sighing, Pasture brought the quill down and quickly scribbled something. “Did either of you ingest Zap Apple Jam in the month prior to conceiving your foal?”

“No, but I don’t see what tha—”

“Any unicorn ancestry in your family before your marriage?” Pasture continued while his quill furiously moved across the paper.

“My great-grandmother, but we don’t keep a lot of records, so I don’t know much before her.”

“I see,” Pasture muttered. “Have either of you ever eaten rainbow concentrate?”

“Once... in flight school. The other colts dared me, but it was just once.”

“You haven’t done it recently?”

“No,” Willow replied with a bit of force in his voice.

“Have either of your ever been exposed to poison joke?”

“Um, do you mean poison ivy? Aria told me she fell into a some when she was a filly.”

“No,” Pasture said and jotted down some more notes. “While poison joke’s effects are contracted through touch, similar to poison ivy and oak, it contains magical properties that can severely impede ponies and, in this case, a developing fetus. However, your unfamiliarity with it eliminates it as a probable cause of defect. It does lead to my next question though: Have either you or your wife ever ventured into the Everfree forest?”

“The Everfree? No, I can’t think of a reason to even go close to there.” Willow gingerly leaned over to the notepad, but the writing only appeared as scribbles to him. “H-how many more questions are there?”

“We have to narrow down all the events that could have caused the defect.” Pasture flipped past page after page, revealing that each was covered in ink. “I can request some water.”

“I just want to get this over with!” Willow screamed. “What will it take for you to get that?!”

Gritting his teeth, he quickly pressed the ice pack against his pounding head, the returned pain ebbing into a numb throb. The relief also came with the awareness that Pasture was staring at him, a sharp frown creasing his lips.

“Are you done?” Pasture asked.

Loosening his muscles, Willow sunk back into the bed. His teeth disappeared back behind his lips, leaving him with a partially closed mouth that dangled open slightly.

“Maybe a drink would be good,” he mumbled after a moment.

Pasture called in a nurse, a gruff stallion with a mechanical walk and a coat that blended into his ill-fitting green scrubs, and made a few sharp orders. He gave Willow a short glance and disappeared as quickly as he’d entered the room, scrubs loosely rippling from his gallop.

After the nurse dropped off two hard-plastic glasses and a pitcher of ice water and left, the questions resumed, punctuated by an occasional pause when either pony had a sip. Family history, job history, and relationship history were all given their own collection of inquiries, and, by the time the water ran out, Willow had lost track of how many times he’d answered “yes” or “no.”

“No,” Willow repeated.

“Thank you, Mr. Reed. This information will be very helpful.” Pasture flipped through his notepad, pausing to re-read a page here and there, and then shoved it back into his jacket, along with his ink jar and quill. Standing up, he scratched at his mane. “There is one final matter.”

“What?” Willow croaked.

“You and your wife will be questioned by Social Services to ascertain your capabilities in raising an impaired pony. The medical and emotional toll is harsh for parents in your situation. Systems are in place to take care of such ca—”

“Stop.” Willow drew his face close to Pasture’s, allowing the doctor to feel the hot blasts of air coming off of him. “This is our foal you are talking about. It’s Aria’s choice too, and whatever I did before you knocked me out will be nothing compared to her if you even think we’d do that. Now, I answered your questions, so let me go.”

“Very well,” said Pasture. “Your foal is still in medical isolation, but your wife is down the hall in room twenty-three.”

Willow sat up from the bed. However, his head began to throb again, forcing him to tightly clench his jaw as he carefully swung his hindlegs over the bed and onto the ground. Pasture trotted over and offered his shoulder as a balance while Willow inched over to the edge, and, after a few seconds of precariously standing on only two legs, was finally on three hooves, a fourth holding the ice pack. Letting go of Pasture, he limped his way across the room, but fumbled his ice pack when he attempted the open the door. With a small burst of magic, Pasture opened it for him.

Mumbling a “thank you,” Willow reaffixed the ice pack to his head and shambled out into the hall. He went right before coming to a sudden halt, twisted his head to look at the numbers carved into his door, sighed, and then changed directions, huffing as he made his way left down the hall.

Pasture stood still and waited until he could no longer hear Willow’s labored trot. When the hallway grew silent, he turned his head in the opposite direction. “You can come out now.”

The nurse from earlier marched out from around a corner, scrubs done away with, allowing wings with a few missing feathers and scars running across them to freely move around his back. He rolled their joints as he made his way over to Pasture, never breaking eye contact with the doctor.

Another pegasus trotted directly behind him, his sunflower yellow coat standing out against the white walls. His wings were still pristine, save for a small knick across his left one. Like the nurse, he kept his eyes forward, but didn’t stare straight at Pasture, instead looking down at his many pockets.

The two stepped in tandem, eliciting a sigh from Pasture while he beckoned them into now-vacant room. Once they were inside, he silently closed the door and faced them.

“Do the words ‘act normal’ not register with you?” Pasture hissed. “You are off duty. Looking like civilians is the only thing that’s kept those two from becoming complete wrecks.”

“Sorry, old habit,” the yellow pegasus replied while his eyes drifted toward the empty bed. “I thought we were keeping them isolated though.”

“We are keeping the foal isolated,” Pasture corrected. “I interrogated them each for nearly two hours. Not to mention the head injury. He at least deserved to see his wife.”

“Did you find any leads?” the green pegasus asked.

Pasture scowled and gave his head a harsh shake, further disheveling his mane. “Nothing. He wasn’t very knowledgeable on his wife’s magic capabilities, but her answers gave no indication of abnormalities there either. No diseases or medications that could cause deformities, no exposure to undefined magic, and nothing remarkable in the gene pool.”

Puffing up his chest, the green pegasus stepped forward. “What are our orders then, Sir Mystic?”

“You can go report my findings back to the Princess, since you forgot I’m Pasture here.” Mystic dismissed the green pegasus with a slight twist of his head and focussed his attention on the yellow one. “Cumulus, come with me. I need some coffee, and then you’re on standby duty.”

The trio walked out to the hallway, where the green pegasus split away and disappeared down a corridor. Mystic and Cumulus went in the opposite direction at a brisk pace. They arrived at a small break room and sat at the single wide table in the middle of it. Mystic poured himself some lukewarm coffee, took a gulp of it, and sighed.

“Since questioning the parents proved ineffective, I’ll need to analyze the foal’s capabilities,” Mystic explained with his eyes locked on the brown beads of liquid that remained at the bottom of his cup. “There’s a risk I may trigger an involuntary use of magic. If magic levels are on par with the Princess and there’s a surge, I’ll stay back and try to minimize the damage as much as possible.”

Cumulus’s eyes widened and he choked out a few words. “Would that require harming the foal?”

Mystic kept his attention on his cup. The miniscule amount of coffee left caught the light and reflected a tiny, distorted version of the room. He was aware that Cumulus was still staring at him, waiting for an answer even though they both already knew it. He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, his reply having already played in his head countless times and now welling up at the back of his throat like bile.

“I pray it doesn’t come to that.” Mystic looked up at Cumulus. “But we can’t risk an uncontrollable alicorn.”

Willow stared at the black twenty-three etched into the wooden door before finally closing his eyes and knocking on it. The knock rang in his ears, echoing around him as he held his breath and waited. Silence greeted him.

He raised his hoof and prepared to knock again, when a wispy voice came from inside the room.

“Doctor? Is that you?”

Clenching his teeth together, Willow felt his eyes sting again as he bit back more tears. He stepped forward and entered the room, leaving a sweaty stain on the door.

She rested upon the room’s bed, her body sunken into the mattress and pillow. Parts of her pink fur that weren’t covered up were either matted to her skin or poked up in sharp curves. Behind strands of a messy blond mane, hazel eyes lazily traced their way over to the door. She paused for a moment to stare at the ice pack clutched in Willow’s hoof and then moved up to the purple bump above his bloodshot eyes.

A small shaky grin came to Aria’s face. “You’ve looked better.”

“You too.” Willow’s wings sagged as he made his way over to her bed, legs all moving at different times in a jumbled shamble. Placing the ice pack on a bedside stand, he reached out and gently caressed Aria’s foreleg. “How are you feeling?”

“Drained,” Aria sighed, melting further into the bed. “Nopony ever brought up how tired you are afterwards.”

“You did great,” Willow said with a weak smile.

“Willow.” Aria’s leg reached up and clasped Willow’s, pressing into his fur but lacking the power to dig any deeper than that. “The doctor told me about what happened.” A dry laugh flew out of her lips. “Asked me a billion questions too.”

Aria slightly eased her hold around Willow’s leg and raised her head, showing off that her eyes were a little raw and red. “I told him I didn’t care. I just wanted to see her.”

“Her?”

“I made sure he answered some questions too.” Aria gave a small chuckle before she pulled Willow into a hug. Some leftover condensation from his ice pack streaked in between the spot where Aria’s head nuzzled his neck. “We have a daughter.”

“A daughter...” Willow repeated. His legs tightened around Aria and his smile grew. “Guess we’re going with your name then.”

“Cadenza.” Aria sniffled, burying her head deeper into Willow’s chest. “I’m sure she’ll love it.”