Day Nine: Marsday
7:01 AM
It's the damnedest thing to wake up as something you've always been.
Hmm. No, you know something, I think I screwed that up. Can I get a redo? No? It's already been recorded? Oh well, I'm doing it anyways.
It's the damnedest thing to wake up transformed into something you can vaguely remember being.
Good, that's how I wanted that to go. Now, onto the story itself...
I woke up at seven oh one in the morning. I know this because, as is my routine, upon waking up I smacked my phone to get the time. Of course, given the transformation that happened the night before, it was somewhat harder, but I somehow pulled it off. The white hoof somehow entirely failed to register with my mind, probably due to a combination of my being sleep drunk and just not particularly paying attention. The time determined, I considered my options. I could lay here for five minutes, get up, and freak out my parents, or I could try to get back to sleep and get up sometime around noon.
I promptly chose the latter. I know, I'm such a morning person.
I should explain quickly- my room always has the door open, so my dogs can find their way in and out in the morning without any effort on my part, and said door opens on the laundry room. This particular morning, my mom decided, for whatever reason, that she needed to do the laundry early, instead of later in the day, when she usually does. I heard her walking by my door, and, realizing there was no way I was going to get back to sleep, I decided that I might as well get up.
With a weary sigh, I rolled to the edge of my bed, easily rotated so my lower body was hanging over the edge, and hopped onto my feet. This, of course, had the obvious, and at this point practically cliche, side effect of throwing me directly to the ground, muzzle first. Face met concrete, and concrete won. I am not embarrassed to say that I cried like a little girl. This, in turn, lead my mother into the room to see what was wrong, at which point she started laughing at me, the model of maturity that she is.
Eventually, when I regained the ability to see something other than stars, and my mom regained her ability to breathe, it was time for what would undoubtedly be an awkward conversation. First I'd have to explain what happened, then who I was, and blah blah blah. I decided to start on the best possible foot for any potentially awkward conversation. "So."
She turned to stare at me.
"So."
"What's going through your head right now?" It seemed a reasonable place to start.
My mom turned to look at me, a single eyebrow cocked. "I'm wondering how we're going to get you to New York."
It would be fair to say that my brain ground to a halt at around this point. It would be more accurate, however, to say that my train of thought jumped the tracks and promptly crashed full speed into a box labeled 'basic motor functions'. As a direct result of said wanton destruction, I was left more or less incapable of formulating a significant response, and was left merely able to stare at her in confusion. On the plus side, I did manage to prevent my jaw from dropping in shock.
After a short while, I managed to collect myself. “I... New York... what?” Now, to be fair, that was an improvement. Technically.
Amusement dancing in her eyes, my mom finally decided to let me in on the secret. “You really should watch the news more. To sum up what you’ve missed- people have been turning into ponies from that show you watch. Some princess or something is asking the ponies to come to New York for something, and the calendar has been seriously messed up. Honestly, how can you be so out of touch with the world?”
I traced a hoof in a slow circle on the ground as I remembered what my last week had consisted of- in short, Pokemon, Pokemon, Pokemon, some silly online games with little to no chat functions, a little writing, and a TON of procrastination. It honestly wasn’t that surprising that THIS was the time something weird happened, because of COURSE it would happen when I was purposefully avoiding major media.
Well, I thought to myself, step one in this whole thing is obviously to catch up on what I’ve missed. I pulled myself onto all fours, awkward though it felt, and started trying for the door. I will spare you the tales of my failure, because ten minutes of me describing the various ways I encountered the ground over the next thirty minutes would be, frankly, ridiculous. Eventually, with some help from my mom, I made it out of my room, having developed a sort of alternating and swinging motion for walking- front left and back right, then front right and back left, over and over again. Shortly after mastering this skill, I realized this was how every pony in the show actually walked, and I just never took the time to notice. I felt very, very stupid for not realizing that a quadruped wouldn’t walk one leg at a time.
I finally reached the computer, and pulled myself up into the chair, mimicking Lyra’s peculiar sitting posture from the show. Considering it was that or learn to hover in order to see the screen, my head now coming up to about a foot lower than my desk, that was the best option. Of course, being the inimitable genius I am, it took until I was sitting in front of the computer before I realized the issue of controlling it.
I glared at the mouse for a moment, before reaching my hoof towards the it, desperately trying to move it in the desired direction while the screen winked into life. I gained a small amount of control, quickly moving the cursor over Firefox, my web browser of choice. I carefully attempted to press down on the left mouse button, and instead accidentally pressed the middle one. I shifted my hoof a little, trying to get an angle on the annoying button, and pressed down again, which of course caused the mouse to slide out from under my hoof, and off the edge of the desk.
“You’re going to make me ask, aren’t you?” I sighed, resigned to the answer I already knew was coming.
“Ask what?” my mother chirped, far, far too pleased with herself. That woman is a menace, I tell you.
“Mother, would you be so kind as to assist me in browsing the internet for information as to my current state?” I droned, managing to keep a bored monotone even in spite of my new vocal chords. My mother smiled so sweetly one might almost mistake it for genuine kindness with not an ounce of sadistic glee, and stepped forward to take control of the computer, pulling on the cord to retrieve the mouse. With a few deft clicks and some quick typing, she had begun a google search for news relating to ponies, and clicked the first result for me.
New protest group, People Against Ponies Association, protests against rights of the transformed
For a first impression of the week’s news, it wasn’t a bad start. In fact, it might have been the most important thing I read- it immediately told me there were going to be conflicts, and, perhaps more importantly, that there were other ponies out there who would undoubtedly need help.
When I confirmed I had finished reading, my mom pulled up the next news item- a fairly bland opinion piece which claimed that those who were being transformed were proof that god was real and responding to the desires of people or something or other. I will admit that I lost interest in that one far too quickly to know what it was actually about. I waved my hoof, and my mom, realizing the problem, opened a more fact-based report from a few days ago.
Creator of hit TV show ‘My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic’ transformed into winged horse, urges gathering of others in New York city
*****
Shortly after I finished reading the news(nothing else of particular interest had appeared after the third article, and we eventually shut the computer down), my mom declared that I needed a device with a touch screen, in order to keep in contact while I was journeying. She had also decided that she was going to get me a pair of saddlebags. I refused to dwell on where she planned to get it from, because the answer likely involved an awful lot of money.
After she had left, and I had made my way upstairs, I decided I needed to know what I looked like. I had, in fact, entirely refused to consider looking at my own rump to determine who I was by that means, and so the only option left was the mirror in my bathroom. Pardon me if I skip the dramatic reenactment of my long voyage from the kitchen to the bathroom, but I feel that I can focus on other areas to greater effect.
When I finally reached the mirror, I began to catalogue the changes in as scientific a manner as possible. A description which here means I put on a bad english accent and began to describe myself in the most detached way possible. “The subjects hair has lengthened and turned a much lighter, almost bright yellow colour. The hair itself is in fact near perfectly straight, and whether this difference is a result of the subject’s prior hairstyle, or some unknown factor of the being whose form the subject has taken is unknown. The subjects new fur is near perfectly white, showing a near non-existent transformation in colouration from his prior skintone. His eyes remain bright blue in colouration, but somehow lighter, and they seem to almost sparkle. Whether this is a direct result of their increased size is unknown.”
I stopped, perplexed. I was, by now, almost one hundred percent certain of which pony I had become. Obviously, I was Surprise, because who else matched those colourations? But even given that fact, I pondered my mane, which had none of the natural bounciness and curls that both she and Pinkie were usually depicted with. Instead, it was somewhere between the straight hair typically attributed to Pinkamina and the rough, short hair Rainbow sported.
I’m not sure exactly how long I stood staring at my reflection, but eventually a few required bodily functions made their desire for my attention known. I refuse to put absolutely any detail into anything else that happened before I left the bathroom.
After leaving the bathroom, I had one more task to complete- I needed to get food and drink. Food was easy enough to find, though the question of moving it was more perplexing. I pulled myself up level with the bowl of apples, and glared at it. My hooves would hardly do for the thick enamel surface, and carrying it in my mouth seemed... gross. Still, I didn’t have any other options, so I leaned forward, grabbed the brown bowl in my mouth, stepped back from the counter, and began the treacherous trek to the couch. Once there, I carefully set the bowl down on one cushion, before pulling myself up beside it.
I briefly considered attempting to show some level of decorum while eating my apples, but when I picked up and tasted the first apple, I knew that plan was out the window. I immediately jammed my entire face into the bowl, grabbing and crunching apples with my jaw, working the delicious spheres until I could swallow them, and then starting again. I think it would be fair to say that I had not been expecting such an intense taste.
When I finished eating, I looked around the room. There was, essentially, nothing for me to do. I had no means of controlling the television, using a computer was entirely beyond my reach, and I didn’t want to risk going outside just yet- not when there wasn’t anyone else around, in case something happened. I sighed, setting my head down between my extended forelegs, and closed my eyes.