Motherland

II — Conscious

I blinked, expecting the same drab corridors of New Moscow to immediately reappear. Instead, my surroundings changed drastically, and I found myself lying down, looking up at a brown roof that was full of small, patterned black cracks that swirled and ran along vertically, as if trying to outrace each other. Maybe it was made of wood. I could feel something covering me. It was smooth and soft, unlike my rough apparel.

Panic filled me when I realized that I wasn't wearing any clothes. Straining, I forced myself into an upright position. My chest burned like Satan had left his mark when I did, and I couldn't feel my left leg at all. A plush, white blanket had been placed on top of me, and I was completely naked with my clothes nowhere in sight. Slowly and steadily, I brought a hand to my face. Where my nose should've been was a thick, hard cast, and alongside that were some stitched-up cuts that would definitely scar.

I looked around. I was in a bed that was quite low and too small for me—my feet dangled off the edge, and I could touch the floor with minimal effort.  The walls looked like they were made of wood, too, and a short, squat side table was decorated with a vase of brightly coloured flowers. Aside from the bed, table, and a single window that showed blue sky, the room was empty. There was a single door, also made of wood.

Almost as if looking at the door brought it to life, it opened, and in walked two of the mutant ponies. I recognized the first immediately as the one that dragged me away from the peaceful area. The other, however, I did not. It was a little bit taller, coloured white where the first was yellow, and the 'hair' that grew was a lighter shade of pink and—stylized? I glanced at the yellow pony and noticed that, yes, that one's hair was stylized as well. Curious.

The mutant ponies, deep in what appeared to be conversation, didn't look at me right away. They were speaking—I was sure of that—but I didn't understand any of it, which made perfect sense: why would I understand mutant pony language?

When they finally noticed me sitting up and alert, they rushed over to the bed, one on each side. Using their hooves, which felt surprisingly soft, they gently changed my posture and made me lie back down, cooing softly as they did so. The fiery pain that had been present since I first sat up rescinded back to a mere dull ache. As the newcomer gently went over the bandages on my chest, I tilted my head and looked up at the pony who had dragged me. Their blue eyes were even larger up close, and I swear I saw concern present on its face.

"Where—" I tried to say, but it came out as more of a wheezing cough. The white pony stopped tending my bandages for a moment, and placed an ear against my chest. I resisted the urge to squirm away. I felt the ear twitch. It tickled. Only after listening to my heartbeat for nearly half a minute did the white pony remove its ear from my torso, nod, and say something to the other pony.

The white pony lifted up a corner of the blanket with its teeth, revealing my left leg. Or rather, where my left leg should've been. From my position, I could only see the whitish grey of a large cast. That explained why I couldn't feel my leg.

As the white pony checked over my cast, I took a second to compare them, and thought that maybe they weren't mutants after all.

From what little experience I had with the hybridized creatures in the wastes, I learned two things: one, they never, ever helped anyone other than themselves or their offspring; and two, none of them had the same exact body shape. Even mutants that were originally the same species of animal became so drastically different that they may as well have been unrecognizable from their base form.

These... ponies—if they even were ponies—were more identical than any two mutants I had seen, even though they still differed in slight ways. Also, for not having arms or hands, they seemed to manage pretty well.

The yellow one exited the room, leaving the door open. I heard the flap of wings before I saw the bird. In a flurry of feathers, the same bird that had landed on my chest when I was dying flew into the room and perched upon the end of the bed. It stood there silently, looking like a majestic statue, and stared at me once more.

It felt like the bird wanted something from me, but I had nothing to offer it. The white pony seemed just as surprised as I was at the bird's arrival, for it attempted to shoo the bird away, albeit without success.

Thankfully, the yellow pony was only gone momentarily, and it returned with a bottle gently clasped in its mouth. After placing the bottle on the table, it softly spoke to the bird, which cawed once, then flew away and out of the room.

I tried to process what had happened. Was the yellow pony the bird's owner? It made sense: that could've been why the pony found me in the first place. But how did a pony keep a bird as its pet? Thinking of the pony as having human-like intelligence was difficult enough, but nothing else seemed to fit.

My musings were interrupted when the yellow pony popped the cork of the bottle. I turned my head, and was immediately shocked when the lip of the bottle was placed into my mouth. A viscous, somehow dry liquid began bubbling out. It tasted like a combination of rotten cabbage and mouldy socks. I gagged and tried to spit, but the bottle was held firm by the white pony, and the liquid had nowhere to go but back into the bottle, which eventually fell back into my mouth.

I both saw and felt the yellow pony's hoof against my throat. The pony made a shushing noise as it rubbed my throat, relaxing my muscles and forcing me to swallow the disgusting concoction.

As soon as I swallowed, the world expanded, and then shrank to the size of a pinpoint before being enveloped in darkness.