Our Town (a tf/tg clop)

Thirdly get as far away as possible in the darkness.

I dare to swivel my eyes back towards Our Town. Nothing. I'm grinnning into the desert night, even as tears of relief are streaming down my face. Nopony has noted my leaving, not Party Favour, not the pegasi guards and not Starlight Glimmer. Hope forces itself into my mind and my limbs, making me feel light. My heels (fetlocks) kick up... I'm prancing through the desert! It's all I can do to stop myself laughing. There's little I can do to check the hysteria.

Well there is one thing. I think of home. The memory is fuzzy, but a pink human face with a tousseled brown mane... um 'hair' looks back at me from a bathroom mirror, and small hazel eyes poke out from a freckled face. The feeling of my hand taking the soap and clutching it as I squeeze the suds through my fingers. The sight of my pale furrless legs and feet which stand on a white tiled floor. The sound of the knocking on the bathroom door and my father's voice as he wonder's when I will be finished...

The energy I had enjoyed dissipates and I plod on through the desert night. My 'skin' (fur) prickles with a new feeling - Equestria's alienness. I mean I'd always known Equestria wasn't 'me'. This world is ridiculous. Its sapient horses reminiscient of the tacky toys sold to girls which, as a kid, I'd disparaged... and later as a teen had actively hated. The thought that my pink furred mare form would be petted back home sickened me.

Plodding on, thoughts of home settle on me thicker than the desert dust - filling me with a sick longing. This was not an unfamiliar feeling. The last time I had felt that was during my depression after I came here from earth, when I still yearned for home and before I encountered the Sphinx that had, accidentally, shown me the identity that had imprinted itself on my body: that the only place I needed to belong was in the moment.

As I sink into this funk, another feeling arose in me - one which was just as horrific, but much more immediately concerning. I was lost. For the first time since my Mark appeared I gazed at my surroundings without a feeling of groundedness or familiarity. The desert rocks stretched into the hostile distance on every side. I looked to one side and a distant mountain-range soared brutally against the starry sky. To the other side, the empty sandy plain. With a suffocating yet eerily calm feeling I realised that only one direction felt safe and familiar: back to Our Town...