Cogs awoke at six-thirty on the dot, as was his routine. Scrambling into a standing position, he started a quick trot towards the kitchen, and ran headlong into a wall.

"Who put a wall here?" he said groggily, looking around the room and stopping to focus on a blue figure near the doorway.

"And here I thought I'd have to wake you, but I come in to find you wide awake and hitting your face against the wall; first standing under a tree in the middle of storm and now this?  There are better ways to go if you've got a death wish, you know."

Cogs dismissed the jibe as part of Noteworthy's gloomy personality.

"Yeah, I'm suicidal.  When's breakfast?"

"It's almost ready; and speaking of death wishes, it's Vinyl's turn to make the grub this morning, so don't expect much."

"It can't possibly be that bad."

Noteworthy merely shrugged, then left the room.  Cogs lifted himself back to his hooves gingerly, taking special care not to worsen his injuries.  He trotted at a leisurely pace, taking in his environment as well as his tired mind would allow, but froze suddenly when he spied a pair of amber eyes staring at him.  At first he thought it was the mint-green entertainer from the previous day, but when he looked closer, the eyes were the only thing two had in common.  The latest stranger was a stallion with a light grey coat and shaggy brown hair.

The two held the fixed gaze for what felt like several minutes before Cogs dared to step forward.  The stranger also stepped forward.  He then realized that it was his own reflection he was seeing.  He had read about mirrors before, but never actually seen one.

Cogs ran his hoof lightly along the mirror's surface, then tried moving it around to catch different angles, stopping from time to time when he caught an especially interesting sight.  With the ninth adjustment however, he found himself staring down a long curving hallway filled with countless pairs of those amber eyes.  He looked back and saw another mirror behind him, then turned back to first.

Suddenly, half the eyes started moving shiftily.  Cogs thought, but couldn't figure out what possibly caused this, and decided to turn back to the second mirror.

"Boo!"

He recoiled in shock from Lyra, whose face had been an inch away just moments ago.  She let out a small chuckle.

"Sorry, couldn't resist.  Anyway what's so interesting; never seen a mirror before?"

Cogs recovered his senses and made a mental note to steel himself for any of her future antics.

"Actually I haven't."

"Well I suppose it's not that unusual; the mirror was a fairly late discovery in human culture, so it would only make sense that there are still some remote areas of Equestria not familiar with it.  I wonder what other things we have that you won't recognize.  Oh, and speaking of things you can't recognize, Scratch's breakfast should be ready by now, so you'd best get it while it's hot."

She trotted off, leaving Cogs alone with the mirrors.

He sighed.

"It's going to be a long stay."

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

In stark contrast to the dilapidated mess-hall of Cogs' old residence, the kitchen was warm and inviting; with rosewood fixtures and red pinstriped walls.

He entered and sat in the only unoccupied chair, which was shoved into a corner of the square table.

"So, whaddya want for breakfast Coggles? We've got hay-strudel, apple-strudel, and cherry-strudel."

It was then he understood the others' negative remarks about her cooking, apparently she only knew how to make this one item.

"What's strudel?"

His simple question seemed to horrify the DJ.

"How can live without knowing what strudel is?"

He was hungry and didn't have time to play culture-catchup, so he dismissed her reaction, deciding instead to reply to the original question.

"I like apples.  I'll have the apple strudel."

What he was served next resembled nothing he had ever seen or read about before, so he gave up on trying to determine what it was and started eating.

It was much sweeter than he had expected, and lacked the fresh taste that had belonged to the home-grown food served at the orphanage.  He swallowed and took another bite; this time chewing slowly, trying to identify what types of vegetables had been used in creating the food.  Nothing.  There wasn't a hint of anything green.  'In hindsight,' he thought; 'that would explain why it tastes more like a dessert than a breakfast item'.  Not wanting to be rude, he refrained from asking for vegetables that He knew Scratch couldn't cook, and decided that he would go eat some grass outside later.

As he shoveled the final portion into his mouth, he noticed that a pair of amber eyes was once again staring at him, though this time they were not his own.  He swallowed and turned to face Lyra, intending to ask what she found so interesting about him, but he hesitated when he saw the way she was sitting.  Rather than leaning forward with her back hooves on the chair, she was slouching against the back of the its back.  Her posture struck Cogs as odd, but after thinking about it for a second, he decided that it made sense based in the design of the chair.  He tried it.  Weird as he felt, practically lying down on the chair, it was more relaxing than he had anticipated.  He rested contentedly for a few moments, sipping from his glass, before realizing that the other three had joined Lyra in staring at him.

He suddenly felt the urge to defend his actions.

"What?  It's actually quite comfortable."

The others ceased their staring and resumed with their breakfasts; all except for Octavia, who looked blankly into space with an expression halfway between anger and quizzicality.  Cogs excused himself and started to make his way back to the lounge by an alternate route, stopping when he noticed a third mirror, this one affixed to the wall across from a window.  He stood for several minutes, all other tasks set aside as he thought about how the mirrors worked.

He determined that they reflected light, which in turn traveled to the eye.  He looked at the mirror once again, moving his head to catch different views; one of which was the sunlight pouring through the open window.  His vision went dark as as the light hit his eyes, and he flashed back to the sight of the lightning bolt hitting him.

'That's it!' thought Cogs; 'Lighting is light of such high intensity that it's powerful enough to shock and burn anything it touches.  But lightning behaves differently than light.  I must be missing something.'

Cogs wandered through the halls puzzling over the matter, and it was too late by the time he noticed he was lost.  The room be had just entered was unusual to say the least, the main piece of furniture being a cross between a couch and a bed, and the white walls covered with framed drawings of odd bipedal creatures.  The upper rows of the bookshelf on the far wall were full of books with nonsensical titles, such as 'Iliad', 'Aeneid', and 'Odyssey'; the lower rows, meanwhile, contained an assortment of books with names like 'A Comprehensive Guide to Sign Language' and 'The Life and Legacy of Nikola Tesla'.

"I've already entered the room, I'm sure no one would mind if were to have a quick glance at some of these books." Cogs said to himself.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

"Helios."

Cogs heard a distant voice calling to him.

"It's impolite to barge into somebody else's room and act like your at home."

At this, his knowledge-induced trance shattered; he shot upright and started apologizing.

"I'm so very sorry, I didn't mean to be rude.  I merely-"

"Just kidding!"

Lyra had once again baffled Cogs with her odd behavior.

"I would normally complain, but this is the first time I've met somebody else who is interested in my books."

"I don't quite understand the setting, but some of the theory discussed is quite amazing.  I find it odd though, that such information could go unnoticed for so long."

"It's 'cause these books were at the back of the mythology section.  Few have ever read them, and even fewer have considered what they say."

"Mythology, huh?  That would certainly explain it.  Would you mind terribly if I borrowed some of these?"

"Nope!  Just leave the sign language book, I need the diagrams for an experiment."

With that he grabbed the Tesla book in his mouth and retraced his steps to the lounge; upon resuming that odd slouching position upon the couch, he opened back up to the page he had been reading.

"'Chapter Two: the Voltaic Pile to the Tesla Coil', this should be interesting."

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

"Oi Coggles!"

"Yes?"

"I'm takin' ya to see the doc, c'mon!"

Helios trotted Scratch's side.

"Good, I had been wondering when I might ascertain the extent of the damage done to my wings.  Shall we go?"

She eyed him with confusion for a second before slipping on her shades.

"Off we go."

He chatted with her throughout the journey, learning particulars, such as that he was in a town called Ponyville where she was (according to her) the most popular DJ; he even learned more nebulous facts of which he was unaware, like how the ruling monarch supposedly controlled the sun and the moon as they made their courses across the sky.

At last they arrived at hospital; or rather the urgent care, seeing as how the town lacked an actual hospital.

"Well here we are, let's-- what are you doing?"

"Opening the door for you; isn't it customary for colts to open doors for mares?"

"Well yeah, it was, like a hundred years ago; it's pretty old fashioned."

"Well pardon me, but it is my personal opinion that chivalry never ages."

'It's like being with Octy but worse.' Scratch thought to herself as she entered the urgent care.

The nurse came when she rang the assistance bell.

"Hello Vinyl, what's the problem?"

"This guy next to me, got crushed under a tree; we cleaned and wrapped him up, and now we're here to see how bad it is."

The nurse turned to Cogs,

"The doctor will be with you momentarily, in the meantime please fill out this form."

She put down a clipboard in front of him, then walked away.  On the clipboard was a single sheet of paper with a few simple questions and a diagram asking him to label where it hurt and how much.  He breezed through it until he came to the question 'How often do you use the affected area?'.  Even greater than the pain of his injury was the pain that he felt when he realized, he had almost never used his wings, and now he might never use them again.  After hesitating, he checked the box that said 'Rarely.'

He completed the rest of the form with relative ease, and with perfect timing, Nurse Redheart entered just he put down the pencil.

"The doctor will see you now."

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

Cogs galloped out of the ward, finally free of the bandages, and with a bounding leap, he took to the air with his set of powerful, perfectly fine wings.  He soared so freely, until he felt them being cut away; he turned to see a scalpel acting of its own accord, sawing off first his left wing, then the right.  He let out a scream as he hit the ground with a resounding thud.

Cogs awoke from the dream; mind reeling as he tried to figure out where he was now.  He was lying on a white bed against the wall of a white room, from the ceiling of which hung a white orb glowing with magically distilled light.  Suddenly, Cogs found that he didn't care where he was, or why he couldn't feel his wings, or whether or not he was dreaming; all he could think about was that orb.

'This country's great economy depends so much upon magic,' he thought; 'unicorns obviously have their raw magical powers, and we pegasi have our ability to control weather, (something that still amazes me, seeing as how I only learned it earlier this morning,) what do the earths have?  The land we live on must have some kind of innate power within it, I just know it! The land, the earth, earth, dirt, soil, minerals, metals-- wait, I remember reading something about certain kinds of metal, copper and zinc I think it was?  Lyra might not be as crazy as I first thought; those books might actually have some virtue.'

His thinking finished right as the door to the room opened, and in walked Scratch.

"Heya Coggles, how're ya doin'?"

"Well there's no pain anymore, but I can't feel my wings; so I'm assuming they were amputated."

Cogs' cold and straightforward attitude shocked both Vinyl and himself.

"Yeah; you kinda freaked out when the doctor told ya 'bout it, so I hit you on the head like I did last time, except I think I must've hit a little too hard this time, seeing how you were knocked out 'n' all."

"I thank you for that.  Now to wait for the reality of it all to sink in and for me to freak out a third time."

He gave a small smile that Scratch returned.

"Ah well, you did say on the way over that ya never did fly much, so it's not like you're losing anything that important to you."

"On the contrary, Scratch, I have always wanted to fly, but I never had many chances, and when I did have one I procrastinated.  Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.  And so now, though I have lost my wings, I will not give up; because on the off chance that there is a possibility of flying in the near future, what an utter waste it would be to miss it."