No Fungus Among us

by bloons3

Rating: everyone
Tags: Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Other, Crystal Ponies, Random, Slice of Life
Length: 1578

The true origins of Garden Hose. Written on a lark

Who is that mysterious pony watering the plants in the Crystal Empire? Doesn't she know it's snowing outside?

The origins of Garden Hose, written for the SFNW's 6th contest.

https://www.fimfiction.net/group/916/school-for-new-writers/thread/244227/announcement-s6-premiere-short-story-contest

Published 2016-04-18 22:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-04-26 17:00:59 UTC

Fungicidal Tendencies (Edited)

My life is a lie.. Every day I perpetrate this falsehood over my fellow ponies. Each morning, ponies wake up and put on a mask to start the day Perhaps mine is the most literal.

At times like these, I wonder if it would have been better to have been born a changeling. Yes, they were the instigators that vile incident so long ago, but ponies are forgiving. They take those whom they see as enemies and make them into first into friends, then into allies or compatriots. Ponies have done this with every species they have met, from the griffons to the zebras. Ponies are the very soul of friendly and welcoming. They emphasize, sympathize, commiserate, and articulate with those who would rather see them drop dead, and turn them from foe to friend.

It might be better to be a changeling for no single changeling was responsible for the invasion itself, no single changeling responsible for the woe and misfortune that befell the city before the horde was driven away. But my own hoof alone, I am responsible for the death of thousands.

In a way, I envy the changelings. While they looted and plundered that day, it was only a single day and they were quickly beaten back. For time immemorial, the ponies have sought a way to fight me, and have always been unsuccessful, for I am the creeping death. I am the scourge of life, decay ponysonified. I am a living affliction, an avatar of death and decay, mycelium given form and mass.

In the beginning, I simply was. As a collective of fungus, my function was simple. Being saprotrophic, I returned the nutrients locked inside organisms to the earth, performing an essential in life’s great cycle. While I was death, I was also life.

For the longest time, I held no intelligence. I was a large hyphae of some import, for indeed you could hardly cross a forest without encountering a spore of mine or my offspring. Indeed, I was the largest hyphae of them all… at least until the event. I know little of the circumstances that lead to my creation, other than at one moment I was it, then I was me. My first memories are of a massive explosion of color and light, a great feeling of harmony and peace washing over me. I felt a presence, the great patriarch of the forest weighing heavily on my mind. It imbued me with purpose, with life itself. No longer was I to be a simple fungi, I was destined for greater things.

I awoke in a forest, a mycelium given the shape of an equine. At first I cried out for my kin, and they comforted me, their fruiting bodies showering me with spores of awe and praise. In their eyes, I had ascended, shedding my earthly limitations. Personally, I felt cut off and isolated from the community that I had created and fostered. I was a creature of instinct given form, frightened and scared.

In time, I grew and explored the world that lay around me, gaining reason. I discovered what ponies were and so I fashioned my form to more resemble theirs.

Starting simply, I altered the coloration of my main mycelium mass to a light purple while the basidium that made up my mane and tail brightened from their usual mud color into a golden brown sheen. I commissioned myself a cutie mark, a grain stalk partially consumed by Aspergillus, an homage to my progenitor. Giving careful consideration, I decided to name myself Garden Hose. It was a good name, not too flashy but not too bland. It was a good name to make a good first impression.

I strode forward that day into the town of Ponyville, where I made many a mistake, but learned more than enough to make up for my initial bumbling. Eventually though, all things must grow and adjust, and I was no different.

While fungi are organisms of change, my pony-form served me so well that I eventually adopted it as my own identity. I was still the mycelium who had grown up in what I now knew as the Everfree Forest, but now I was more than that. Now I was a pony, even if I was only a pony skin deep.

Unwilling to change my form, I decided to change the circumstances that defined me. That afternoon, I bought a ticket and was on the first train out of town. After several hours of tedious locomotion, the train came to a halt. Stumbling out of the car, I walk into the strange city of crystal and gems and proclaim myself its newest citizen.

It wasn’t hard to find gainful employment. After demonstrating my ‘green-hoof’ to the city manager, I was sent to work with the gardeners. It wasn’t hard work. In fact I spent most of my days simply wandering the city and watering the plants, taking in the sights and wonders of a city left a thousand years in the past.

I don’t feel the cold like other ponies, so it was a surprise when the plant I was watering suddenly froze solid. Looking around, I saw other ponies in states of panic. I wondered at the cause, until the crackling thunder of the snow clouds overhead made me look up. While I had been watering, the city had been slowly freezing. Frightened, I turned tail and fled, seeking the company of other ponies.

Eventually, after wandering through the empty city, I discovered a congregation of ponies all gathered near the pedestal of the Crystal Heart. I couldn’t see what was happening, so I slowly shifted towards the center of the crowd. What I saw astounded me. The Crystal Heart, earlier a collection of fragments, was mending. Finally, it let loose a burst of light that illuminated the crowd. A wave of magic issued forth, spreading throughout the crowd. I could feel it on my coat, at first a comforting warm glow, then a burning pain.

Gathered so close to the Crystal Heart, in the crush of the crowd, I turned tail and fled, trying to escape the light before I burned alive. As the crowd gave a gasp of excitement for the royal foal, I pushed through, fighting for my life.

One of the guards at the edge saw my distress and galloped toward me. I was focused on him, he was focused on me, and neither of us paid attention to where the other was moving and so we collided. One moment we were running towards each other, the next we were dashed to the street, a confused tangle of limbs

In my haste to put distance between me and the Crystal Heart, we both collided, flung to the ground in a sprawl of limbs.

The guard was the first to recover, but he simply lay on the cobblestones, his mouth open and gaping at me like a fish out of water. As fast as the fiery pain from the Crystal Heart had come, it vanished, leaving me clear headed once more. I tried to get to my hooves, but I was unable. Something was blocking me from standing

A quick glance towards my hindquarters revealed that when we collided, the guard’s spear had penetrated deeply into my flank, skewering me like a common mushroom on a kebab. In that moment, it made sense to me. The guard had frozen in shock because he thought he’d given me a mortal wound, and all by accident. Well, I’d show him that a mycelium was tougher than a mare.

Once more, I tried to stand and again I fell, but this time I focused on where the spear was and how it was shifting inside me. It was pinning one of my back to my barrel. The spear didn’t hurt, it simply interfered with the proper motion of my legs. He solution was simple. I craned my neck around and grabbed the potruding part of the spear with my teeth and gave a good yank. The spear came out as easily as it went in, the tip and shaft stained with a straw-colored fluid. I let it clatter to the street as I got to my hooves, properly this time.

The guard continued to stare as I got back up and started trotting quickly down the street. As I rounded the corner, I cast a glance back. Other than the guard that I smashed into, no one noticed the incident. But still, I kept up my pace, hurrying towards the train station.

Now that I’ve finally arrived at the train station, I’ve realized something important. I could stay here… no one would believe a lone guard’s story that he accidentally stabbed a mare, especially when said mare hadn’t a scratch. I really don’t want to leave the Crystal Empire. I’ve built relationships here, made friends, and had many a great experience. But, in another sense, I’ve spent too much time here. I’ve seen the same sights, done the same rigmarole, and and lived the same life for far too long. I’ve stagnated. I need to move on.

I’m on the next train out, destination unknown, arrival long awaited.

Author's Note

I hope that you guys like this edited version more.

Thanks to Brony By Night for giving my work a once over, he really caught most of my mistakes and horrid grammar.