Patches stared out one of the lone windows by the kitchen table, listening to the dead silence as she sat there, bored out of her mind. One of her hind legs was in a splint after she broke it during one of her master's excercises, and now she was stuck until it healed. She could not continue her training until it healed, and she couldn't even keep herself occupied with chores around the house. She had nothing to do, and she had already read all of the books that her master kept in the shack.

So she sat there, just waiting for her leg to heal. She had been like this for about a week now, and her master said it should take about two or three months to heal on its own, and then it would take a few more weeks to get used to it again. It was its own kind of torture, to be confined not by a room but by your body's physical limitations; and it was something that she knew all too well.

It was just about time that her master would finish working in the forge, and she could hear him starting to tidy it up. Rubbing a hoof across her face, she looked at the door just as her master walked in. She looked at him with a apathetic yet somewhat downcast look on her face as she said in as even a tone she could muster, trying to hide her boredom, "Hello Master."

He looked at her and cocked his head curiously. There wasn't much that she could ever hide from him, he just seemed to know what she was thinking most of the time, so she could never really surprise him. After a few seconds of looking at his crippled and bored student, he sighed and a more concerned look crossed his face as he asked, "My student, how are you faring? Be honest with me."

She looked at him again and took a deep breath. She always tried to hide her discomfort from him as complaining was a sign of weakness and disrespect, but he was asking what was bothering her, so she figured it was okay to answer, "Master, my apologies, but since I broke my leg, I have been confined to either this chair or my bed. You have forbid me from doing any training or doing any of the chores around the house so that my leg can heal properly, but I feel helpless. Is there nothing I can do while I wait for my body to heal?"

Her master hummed in thought as he stroked his chin, looking from the floor to the ceiling in thought before finally looking at her and narrowed his eyes, as though deliberating whether what he was thinking was good enough. Finally he spoke up again and said, "I will be back, my student."

She watched as he disappeared into his study, the one that was forbidden to her for a few minutes. Her eyes were glued on the wood of the door as she strained to listen to what he was doing in there, but she couldn't hear his silent hoofsteps. When he finally stepped back out from it, he was holding something that she had never seen before, and she looked at it curiously as he walked over to the table, setting it down on it for her.

Patches looked from the object to her master and asked, "What is this, Master?" He smiled and answered in kind, "It is a violin, Patches, an instrument that is used to create music. I'm sure you have noticed how quiet it gets in here, so why don't you take this time to learn how to play it?" He must have noticed how unsure she looked, because he stood up and levitated it towards her chin and said, "I will show you how to use it. Hold it here like this..."

He then showed her the basics of playing the violin, showing her a few simple notes and how to glide the bow across the string properly before he left her alone with it, going back outside to finish cleaning up the forge. For the following weeks, Patches strung together and experimented with all of the notes on her free time, creating a few songs that gave the silence of the shack something pleasant to listen to in its stead.

When the three months were up, and her leg was fully healed and out of the splint, she sadly went and fetched her violin, offering it back to her master since she no longer needed it. When she did this, he laughed and said with humour in his voice, "Patches, you can keep it! I have not the time to play the instrument, let alone as well as you. You have shown me that you have the dedication and patience to learn it, and I do not wish to take the ability to take something so beautiful as music away from you." His smile widened as he watched the smile on his student's face grow wider. He patted her on the shoulder and said, "Now go put that in a safe place and come along outside, we must see if your leg still remember your forms after all its time spent healing."