Collision

Joan was standing outside the Silver Maple bureau. The building was two stories tall, surrounded on all sides by grass, and had a big fence going around the back. The first thing anybody who looked at it would tell you was that it just seemed happy, somehow. Which is what you needed, at a time like this. The architecture was decidedly premodern, she decided as she went in the door, past the front walls that were trying very hard to pretend to be a natural material.

The whole place was in stark contrast to the boxy and stiff buildings that made up the rest of the city, this place flowed, somehow. There weren't a lot of hard edges on the outside, as if the architect had gone at the model with a power-sander.

Inside was similar, faux-wood tiles intermixed with fauxer-marble. In the center of the room was a unicorn pony with a light blue coat, and greenish-blue mane done up in a bun in the back, and draped long and loose in the front. She was doing her hooves,  and sitting at a desk that was trying very hard to be wood-grain.

"Oh hey," said the unicorn, dropping her hoof-file on the desk and sitting back up, "you here to go pony?"

"That I am," she replied, resting the elbows of her crossed arms on the desk.

"Okay hon, my name is Morning Frost, and I just have to ask you a few questions, won't take but a moment."

"No forms? I think I like ponies already."

"Nah, we phased that out ages ago, after people wouldn't stop filling in made up information."

"Oh?"

"After two or three forms claiming the person who filled it in was Zap Scattergun, hero of the cosmos, we started to realize that people don't care about forms when they're not thinking about coming back. Anyhow, name?"

"Joan Feldton."

"Emergency contact?"

"Don't have one."

"Allergies?"

"Nope."

"Reason for leaving?"

"Ah, personal."

"Favorite kind of pie?"

Joan stared at Frost. Frost laughed, which was one of the things Joan liked about ponies. They had an infectious kind of laugh, that worked its way inside your head and made you think everything was going to be just fine. Frost's was well rounded and hearty, kind of like the pony herself.

"We make desserts every few days, just want to make sure you get the kind you want."

"Blackberry, then."

Frost clicked that into the computer and then handed her a card. "This'll let you into your room, which is just down that hallway, and to the left."

As she entered the hallway, she noticed a white pony with a short dark red mane sneak behind the desk and drape herself on Morning Frost shoulder.

“Hey, Bedside. Steady doesn’t have you working right now? Not that I mind, of course!”

“Nah, conversions are fast, and usually clean! Say, you don’t suppose you can sign up to go pony if you’re already a pony, do you?”

“I’m quite sure you can’t. I like you the way you are, though!”

“You’ll just have to be my second pony, then!” she said, and kissed Frost on the cheek.

She opened the door to find the room was a double bedroom, with two beds. The rightmost of which had a pegasus stallion who was the brightest green she thought a pony could be sat on it, wearing eye scarringly bright pink and white polka-dotted socks, and an equally pink neckband.

"Hey, you're my new roomie?" he asked cheerily, and his voice buzzed with the same sort of glowing energy and buzz his socks did, and he liberally applied vocal fry to random words like someone might tell him it was out of style and he should stop doing it before the vocal fashion police came to get him.

"That's me, I just got here. My name is Joan, and-"

"Name’s Sour Kiss, and you absolutely have to let me show you around. Please?"

"I've only been a here a few minutes-"

"Even better!" he said giddily, and nabbed her hand with a wing, then led her out of the room.

They strolled down the hallway, past the stairs to the second floor (there weren't any bedrooms on the second floor, since newfoals had a habit of accidentally falling down them), into the lobby ("Hey Frost!" "Hey hon!") and over into the cafeteria.

"This," he said, pausing dramatically, "is the cafeteria."

"It's okay, I guess?"

Undaunted, he led her over to the window at the end of the cafeteria. "And out here, is the yard," he said, rearing up and holding his hooves out to the side, as if he had just opened the winning game-show door and revealed a car being driven by a goat.

"It's very green."

"I know! Isn't it the best? That's also the end of the tour unfortunately, they won't let me into the conversion room again, or the janitor's room, security room, or the storage area. I only ran into Ray once, and that puddle he landed in was not my fault."

She rolled her eyes and looked over at the cafeteria that seemed to have opened recently.

"What's the best thing to eat, here?"

"Oh man, they have the absolute best oat burger..."

The yard, as it turned out, was indeed nice, as she found out the next day. Sour Kiss was sitting next to her, since Raspberry seemed to be off doing something. She spotted an earth pony watering some of the vines growing up the gazebo, who her roommate said was Steady Hoof, the doctor at the bureau, but liked to unwind by taking care of the plants sometimes. Given the trees and bushes arranged around the outside of the yard, he'd done a good job of it. Steady waved to her, and came over.

"You're next on the conversion list today after lunch, just head to the right from the lobby, goes straight there."

"Thanks."

"You're next?” asked Sour Kiss, grinning, “It's so much more fun having hooves, I have to say."

"A little biased there, huh?" she said, and grabbed one of Sour's forehooves and tickled the bottom of it, causing him to laugh and nearly fall off the bench they were sitting on.

"N- no!" Sour said, getting his breath back, "They're really awesome, I swear! Can I come with you? I want to see what it looks like on the other side of the potion."

"The Bureau rules do allow you to bring one person with you," Steady said.

"If you like, I hear it's kinda weird to watch," she said, then tickled Sour again.

Lunch had ended, and Joan and Sour had started heading the the conversion room, taking the scenic route - around the yard, through the cafeteria, upstairs, back downstairs after getting chased by Ray back downstairs - until they wound up where they were supposed to be.

Joan hopped up onto the table in the conversion room, and Sour made an attempt to sit on the chair beside it normally and failed. Steady Hoof and Bedside Manner followed her in.

"Are you ready?" asked Steady.

"Ready enough," she said, feigning confidence. She wasn't sure there was ever a good time to change species and leave your planet behind.

"All you have to do is drink this potion, lie down, and after the potion gets warmed up you'll wake up with hooves."

"And you're statistically unlikely to die!" Bedside Manner chimed in, cheerfully.

She looked over at Sour Kiss and he grinned. "You're so ready for this."

She slammed back the potion, and doomed herself to miss Frost's lecture about 'professional conduct' entirely. It turned out that the potion didn't actually melt you down and sculpt you back up again, because that would be incredibly wasteful, since humans and ponies had most of the same bones and muscles in most of the same places anyway. The result was Joan got to see her stomach, legs and arms start changing - the potion was painless since by the time you noticed anything was happening you didn't have any nerves to notice it with -  before the potion got through with her brain and knocked her out.

"I've always been fascinated," said Bedside, totally ignoring Steady Hoof’s speech about the legal and biological ramifications of lack of politeness in a doctor's office, "with the sounds the bones make during a conversion. You think anybody has ever recorded those?"

Sour Kiss made some grossed out faces at Bedside, making her grin even more than usual.

Joan opened her eyes to find herself in a field that seemed to go on for miles in every direction, and empty. She felt totally and completely calm, and supranaturally steady, as if her hooves had been made for this, and were offering her an unshakable foundation, if she wanted it.

She woke, and sat up.

"How do you feel?" asked Steady Hoof.

"Good. Like nothing could knock me over. I thought the Princesses took care of conversion dreams, though?"

"Well, they can't be everywhere. They tend to focus on those who really need it. You must be holding it together pretty well!" said Bedside,

"Yeah, if I had to wake up with human hands, I'd be freaking out! Those are crazy weird."

"Be careful with your first step, a lot of newfoals are a little shaky at first."

"I know I was! Total faceplant," said Sour Kiss.

Joan slid off the side, and her back hooves hit the ground, and stayed there, followed by her other two. There it was again, she thought, the feeling of being unshakable, but-

She slipped as she took a step, and ended up in a bit of a pile on the floor.

"That happens to everypony," said Bedside, "it doesn't mean you're broken! Which is good because ponies don't come with warranties or anything."

She worked her way back up standing again, and caught a glimpse of herself in the large mirror they had on the wall. She was an earth pony, rugged and strong, with a grape colored coat and a dirty orange mane. She looked herself in the eyes, and felt steady again.

Joan was sitting on a bench in the yard again, watching the other newfoals. Weird how close pairs of newfoals ended up, she thought. On the other side of the yard, near a bush in bloom, a pink unicorn and her roommate were making out, and she could see a beige unicorn mare and a grey earth pony stallion cuddling on a bench.

"Not into the mushy stuff?" asked Ray, in a ragged cap and caretaker's overalls, and sat next to her on the bench.

"What? No. I mean, I could be, but the newfoals here don't seem to be terribly picky about who they decide to be mushy with."

"Ah. Combination of conversion high, and the natural pony disposition to love harmony and kissy stuff."

"That's not a thing."

"Is too! All the Equestrian pamphlets talk about how loving everypony there is."

"Not that loving. I best most of them break up in a month"

"You're a bit of a cynic for a pony, you know that?" the man said, laughing.

"What can I say, I haven't changed too much. I also don't see myself making out with whoever I happen to meet first, that's just silly."

"Well, never say never, your special somepony could be just around the corner!"

"Man, those ponyisms sound ridiculous."

"You'll get used to them. Everypony does."

"They're ridiculous, and I totally won't."