So a few weeks ago, there were a pair of unicorns who crossed paths in the hospital. You may have noticed Sparkle at the side of the blue striped bunny’s drying photo a few posts back. The other unicorn was Ruby. They had similar issues and so I wanted to share their stories together. I figure a Monday is a good day to bring some of these magical creatures to share with you. :-)
First off, was Sparkle. Here are the diagnosis photos:
Her person wrote: “She’s seen damage from two dogs and a lifetime of wear and tear, and while she’s stable, I think she could be better.”
As you can see, Sparkle was missing an eye, and two hooves! And her remaining hooves were worn to the bone. The plan was to give her a spa, reconstruct her missing hooves, recover and repair her surviving hooves, and give her one new eye as close as possible to the original one.
Ruby was the second unicorn. She too had hoof problems. They weren’t missing, but both her hooves and horn were worn to the quick and had lost their metallic shine. They needed to be recovered. Somewhere along the line, she lost her mane, and her tail had some balding issues as well. Here are Ruby’s diagnosis photos:
She was going to start with a spa too, so here’s her bubble bath photo:
Now when recovering unicorn hooves, it’s important to get the shine just right. We had a few options for Sparkle, from gold like her horn to shimmery. Here are some of her options (you can see her new eye is already in, so she could help choose the new material):
Ruby, on the other hand, was looking at silvers for her metalic hooves and horn. Here were her options:
Choices were made and surgeries proceeded. First, hearts went in. A white shimmery heart for Sparkle would match her new hooves:
A ruby heart with Ruby flowers worked well for Ruby:
Then on to the hooves. Ruby went for shimmery silver for her hooves and horn. An interesting side note, that fabric was originally used for the eyes of a purple alien. :-)
Sparkle was soon dancing on shimmering hooves as well:
Sparkle was ready to fly home at that point, but Ruby still needed her mane and tail fixed.
Here’s Ruby with her new mane, and initial tail surgery. Her person had opted to fully recover the tail to match the mane:
The tail position wasn’t quite right, but after a few adjustments, Ruby was ready to fly home too. You can see the striped bunny in the background again too :-). Ruby isn’t quite the dancer Sparkle is. She prefers to stand tall, but can bow her head majestically when desired.
Both unicorns flew home safely to be reunited with their families early last month.
Here’s hoping you all have a bit of magic (even if not unicorn) in your Mondays as well.
“Rabbit of the Wind,” by Silverweed, as recited in the great warren.
The wind is blowing, blowing over the grass. It shakes the willow catkins; the leaves shine silver. Where are you going, wind? Far, far away Over the hills, over the edge of the world. Take me with you, wind, high over the sky. I will go with you, I will be rabbit-of-the-wind, Into the sky, the feathery sky and the rabbit.
The stream is running, running over the gravel, Through the brooklime, the kingcups, the blue and gold of spring. Where are you going, stream? Far, far away Beyond the heather, sliding away all night. Take me with you, stream, away in the starlight. I will go with you, I will be rabbit-of-the-stream, Down through the water, the green water and the rabbit.
In autumn the leaves come blowing, yellow and brown. They rustle in the ditches, they tug and hang on the hedge. Where are you going, leaves? Far, far away Into the earth we go, with the rain and the berries. Take me, leaves, O take me on your dark journey. I will go with you, I will be rabbit-of-the-leaves, In the deep places of the earth, the earth and the rabbit.
Frith lies in the evening sky. The clouds are red about him. I am here, Lord Frith, I am running through the long grass. O take me with you, dropping behind the woods, Far away, to the heart of light, the silence. For I am ready to give you my breath, my life, The shining circle of the sun, the sun and the rabbit.
*Chucks this in here* Sometimes you just gotta draw the trio hugging to get through your day <3
I drew this for the lovely @noxstrages with their Nimbasa trio kiddos, I,, love the idea of them being paperboys somuch,, I will protect them with my life
its really comforting to know that all the times i was at my lowest and loneliest in the past the whole time i had my self in the future and present who had survived those things looking back with love and tenderness and wishing desperately to offer comfort…i am my own guardian angel and i can use that knowledge when im struggling now and remember that somewhere there is a version of me that has survived this and is watching me with love and pride and joy in her heart
thinking about the video where a bunch of guys get together to un-corrupt a blastoise that got bad egged years ago in a leafgreen game and how that whole scenario is like. the loving side of cosmic horror.
you are a blastoise. you trust your trainer. you’ve been through countless battles together, and while they never say anything, you can tell your trainer loves you.
what you don’t know is that your trainer is, at all times, being puppeted by intelligent forces outside of your dimension, holding knowledge far beyond the scope of anything you could ever know. they know things about your world that you do not; that nobody in your world ever could. the distinction between your trainer and this creature is minimal.
at the same time, this creature is not god. it does not have infinite knowledge; it understands far greater than you, yet in still a very limited capacity. they understand what your world is made up of and how it can be manipulated to fit your whims.
this creature loves you. your trainer loves you.
they love you so much that they want to help you become stronger. they manipulate the very laws of your world to attain this feat. however, they did it wrong. they didn’t know what they were doing, and the makeup of your being- everything you ARE- was twisted.
you are no longer a blastoise. you are a bad egg.
your trainer remains the same as ever. everything continues on, the same as it ever was, yet you cannot be what you once were. your trainer tries over, and over, and OVER again to hatch you, but you never become what you once were. you are a bad egg. there are other bad eggs now, other pokemon you used to know; pokemon you helped your trainer catch, pokemon you may have even fought alongside. now you’re all bad eggs, sealed away by ancient protective magic known as Code. you never knew such a thing existed. you wonder if you’re dangerous now.
your trainer sets you in a box. over the years, he forgets which box you’re in.
unbeknownst to you, the creature is panicking, trying everything it can possibly think of to restore you to your blastoise state. the creature is just a child. he carries the pain of your loss long into adulthood; in his mind, he is responsible for your death. in the grand scheme of the universe, you do not matter; you’re a “game”. a few lines of code and some pixels. you do not Exist.
and yet, you are mourned.
and yet many others just like you are mourned by many others just like him.
the world has been still for many, many years. you don’t know this, because your world does not contain an internal clock. time doesn’t really exist for you; it’s a concept far outside of your reality.
and yet, it is important.
your creature contacts another of its kind. it shares the story of its sin, the insignificant act of corrupting you beyond repair. it shares this story in hopes that it could save you.
the other creature recalls its own destruction of a world not unlike yours. it agrees to help.
many creatures within the world outside of yours have gathered all together, using technologies familiar and unfamiliar with one collective goal in mind: to rescue you. specificallyyou.
your loss is widely considered nothing. and yet, they put in incredible effort. obstacle after obstacle, they perform miracles for your sake. they copy your world; they use strange windows to view it, they layer your world over itself many times over to view it from every angle. they dig deep into the very makeup of your universe just trying to findyou.
one of them uses a method that only he has access to, in all the world, to find you.
and they do. you have lost your name and everything else that makes you you, but there is something that remains in tact, that makes you findable; a piece of “data”, an invisible quality to you that you and your trainer would never see, something you could never possibly know about. this is what ultimately makes you you,and not another blastoise.
slowly but surely, they begin to put you back together. it’s much harder than it needs to be, it is far too much effort for one
creature in one game that will never be touched again, and yet they do it. they race against the clock, stressing endlessly, sweating bullets and crying out in relief when they finally find the exact values, the last pieces of invisible quality that makes it YOU.
you are now a blastoise. you are now “legitimate” to the game.
you do not know it yet, but your trainer - your creature - is waiting for you, excited to Transfer you into new worlds until you are where he wants you. until you are safe.
you also do not know that at this time, two of you exist. there is the You, here, being put together, manipulated through the fabrics of reality to restore your original form.
and there is the Original you; the one waiting home, on the cartridge. the Real you.
you are a clone, but you are not. you are a new pokemon, but you are the original. you are both corrupted, and legitimate. you are many things.
the new you is saved, and this version of your world- this version that has fixed you, and only you- is re-uploaded, overlayed and overwritten to the original.
you safely arrive.
You are a blastoise. You were a bad egg, for a short time. But now you are a blastoise again. your trainer acts the same as ever, because he cannot display anything that would suggest he notices the difference.
In most of my AUs, some Air Nomads survive (in this case in a mountain range in the Earth Kingdom), and here we have Aang meeting the oldest of them. His name is Pasang, and he used to live at the Southern Air Temple as a young boy, so he and Aang knew each other or at least knew of each other when they were children.
[ID: First Image: A drawing of Aang and an old man (Pasang). Aang is on the left, a few years older than in the show, and turned so that only about half of his face is visible. He is dressed in orange. With a slight smile and his eyebrows drawn together he is looking at Pasang, who is about half a head shorter than him and holding Aang’s face in his hands; his thumb is on Aang’s cheek and his fingers on his neck. Pasang is shown in profile, on the right side of the drawing and in front of Aang. He has dark skin, grey hair shaved very short and the blue arrow tattoos that show he is an airbender. He wears dark red and yellow robes with an orange scarf wrapped around his left shoulder. He is looking up at Aang with parted lips and saying: “You’re here … You’re real.” The background is yellow and orange.
Second Image: A drawing of Aang and Pasang, with Aang still on the left and Pasang on the right. They are hugging now, with Aang’s arms wrapped around the old man, and Pasang’s head resting on the young man’s shoulder. Their eyes are closed. Pasang is smiling, his eyebrows drawn together. Aang is saying: “… I am …” The background is yellow and orange. End ID/]
