The loud hum and noise of the train station almost deafened you. This wasn't the first time, but your ears still couldn't get used to the sounds. You really need to get some protection.
Popping your headphones on, you weave around the lines of humans standing around waiting to finally get their ticket to somewhere else other than here. You clutched your little ticket in your pocket.
The bag on your shoulder really doesn't make this much easier. Also, the long scarf was choking you, so you tie it around the bag's strap to make some space.
As you're approaching your terminal, you notice that the train is leaving in two minutes.
"Oh, shit."
You speed up.
Finally, peace and quiet. And the quiet clanking of the train. You sit on one of the many empty seat rows. Carefully drawn slurs and reproduction organs, lazily repainted walls and doors of the car and the smoked stained seats and floor soothe your nerves.
Well, it's not exactly quiet, it's actually quite loud. Concerningly loud.
You hear grinding of the wheels on the track. The train is turning on a straight path, it seems.
You sit calmly on your seat, while a couple other people are banging on the door to get out.
"Damn, that's a tight roll."
You almost fall off the seat, before being crushed by the roof of the car.
Goddammit. You actually liked that body.
You wake up from the pain.
It fades away instantly, like after a bad dream.
Maybe it was a dream, you don't even know at this point.
The only thing that you know for sure, is that you're...
"In this fucking place again."
White walls surrounding you, complete silence consuming you, and a little bit of a scent of rust makes you wonder how is it that nothing's changed since you were here last time.
You're lying in a bed, tucked tightly, despite being fully clothed in your favourite flannel shirt and dad jeans. Dying from the heat, quickly get out and sit on the edge.
You hear some bizarre sound coming from somewhere upstairs. Like a yell. Or a loud yawn.
Then, steps. Slow, heavy, lazy steps on the floor upstairs. And after a bit of that, a familiar figure appears.
In a flight attendant suit that's a little undersized, and what looks like a wizard hat a tall, orange-haired man appears, making his way down the stairs. He smiles upon seeing you.
"Dusky!" He says, coming closer to you, with his arms armed for a tactical hug.
"Stop calling me that," you mumble, rolling your eyes for comedic effect. This is a family show, after all.
The man puts his arms down and sits on the end of your bed.
"Aren't you happy to see me?"
"We-e-ell..."
You think for a moment.
Are you?
Well, you just died, so you guess it's kind of better than it could be.
"Not really," you finally finish, crossing your arms and feeling like a huge tsundere.
He looks sad for a moment, and instantly gets back into his cheer-y mood. He didn't see you in a while, and you're pretty sure you're the only person he sees anyway, so it's understandable.
"Fine, then!... Hm." He starts the sentence, and stops there. "Do you... want to go now?"
"Wait."
You turn fully to him, almost ready to get up from the bed.
"You're gonna give me that briefing about hazardous materials and species and all that again, aren't you?"
"It's a part of the thing, Dusky," he tries justifying it once again.
His face looks like he doesn't want to, though.
With a sigh of defeat, you get up.
Your limbs ache; neck feels like it was crushed.
All fingers are numb, spine's twisted, all nerves except those stopped working altogether.
You say the only thing you can in this situation.
"Ouch."
“Yeah, that’ll go away in a minute,” the man says, rising up.
“How do you know?”
“Had this happen to me a couple of times.” He catches up and looks down on you. “Let’s go.“
“Do I really gotta go?”
“Well… It’s either this, or you die for good.”
“I never know with what crazy shit you come up this time, though. Last time it was what, mermaids? I still have nightmares.”
“Damn good-looking mermaids, I’ve been to that place. But I’m fairly certain that you’ll like what comes up next, Dusky. It’s completely harmless.”
“Then it’s already good in my book.”
He pats you on the shoulder.
“Also, no swearing.”
What.
“Aren’t I like about a thousand years old at this point?”
He rolls his eyes.
“More like several thousands.”
You two are still walking on what looks like thin air, pure nothing, but it still holds you up pretty well. There are no additional features on the walls, literally nothing is surrounding you, except the staircase behind you, the bed, and the corner to the “Boring” room, which you clearly see, despite everything being pure white.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“You gotta get used to it. The next place doesn’t really have swearing as a concept.”
“Alright.” You pause. “Then it’s a 9.”
“Also no smoking.”
“Didn’t like it that much anyway.”
“And no sexual stuff.” He glances at you knowingly. You shiver.
“I guess I could live with tha…“ Wait… “…Wait. How do they reproduce, again?”
“This is none of your business, Dusk.”
“I told you to stop calling me that.” You try piercing him with your gaze, but he doesn’t even twitch. You don’t have enough experience.
“Stop calling you by your real name? And what do you intend I call you? Any of the other million?”
“Well… Yes?”
“Fine, Dusk.”
“Hey.”
“Come on, one of them has gotta be Dusk. You don’t get to choose.”
“Ugh.”
You turn the corner.
There’s the familiar room. The “Boring Room”, how you call it. Here you get a briefing of the situation, sometimes a cup of tea, and then finally go to your destination.
A big whiteboard, a small glass coffee table and a white sofa, and the teleport room.
The usual movements. You take your place at the sofa, and your mentor takes the marker.
“So, Dusk. This is a pretty important milestone for you. The body you are in right now was your last. After this short trip, which you should consider more of a vacation, I will give you the all honours you’ve deserved.”
“What. Am I done? Really?”
Oh shit. You’re pumped about this.
“Now-now, don’t be so impatient. You’ll know when the time comes.”
“Aw.”
“So, he’s a quick rundown on all the stuff, in case you forgot.”
“Which I didn’t.”
“Look, I don’t like this either, but I have to do it. So shut up and let’s get this over with.”
You’re a part of a species that is able to control space and time itself, travel through it, change forms, and get along with pretty much every species in the Universe, due to your innate abilities. But you gotta train first, so at birth you get a teacher who will guide you through the smallest part of your life of about 10,000 years.
You are considered the loneliest species in the Universe, since you never actually see any of your kind for thousands of years.
So here’s your mentor, Solaris. A great fellow, but he’s not actually the same species as you. You don’t really know what he is, but he’s been a lot more fun than guys of your kind, if his stories are to be believed. And well, you believe him. He’s the only family you have, after all.
This “training” includes going into a world you’re designated to, and learning everything you can through the lifespan of a human, in this case. If you die not of old age (which happens more often than you want to admit), you’ll have to pay the fee of living in some place different to test out your skills of fitting in and using your experience collected through past lives. Pretty fun.
“So, this is the plan.”, Solaris draws the last piece of the horrible mess of scribbles on the whiteboard he usually calls a “plan”.
“Ponies, really?”
“Well, um…” He glances at the whiteboard again. “It’s complicated.”
You raise an eyebrow.
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
"Look, I'm not the one choosing."
"But this is just stupid. Can't I go back to the mermaids?"
"Sorry, no, but what you can do is just stay somewhere and relax. There are no catastrophes, no revolutions, no villains to kill."
Well, that sounds more like your kind of place.
"Hm. Alright, I guess I'll try it."
You stand up.
Solaris was right; your limbs stopped aching like crazy, now you just don't feel them.
With numb legs you proceed to The Room. The place where magic happens, or just "very complicated whimmy-whammy", as Solaris likes to say.
The Room is just the same white room as any else in here, but with a glass chamber taking up half of it.
The other half houses just one panel with wiring and the Big Red Button. Nothing special.
You go into the chamber, the glass door seals behind you. Solaris is already prepared to operate The Button.
He shouts something at you through the glass.
"ARE YOU READY?"
You nod.
He disappears in the wiring under the button.
"Hm."
You've never even thought of this – what happens if you touch the glass while it's vanishing into nothing when you teleport?
You feel like it's gonna fuck something up, so you decide not to do that.
Your legs hurt. You wanna go home. Like, you're tired of all this shit. Want to just sit and relax. Maybe make some coffee. Or a cup of good old tea. Maybe some cookies, maybe with chocolate.
You hear a click. The room starts spinning, twisting, turning, stretching and finally collapses into nothing. The last thing you saw was Solaris saluting to you.
Everything went white.
Author's Note
Phew. Finally.
The usual routine continues. You’re put in this… Thing, looking like one of the inhabitants with basically nothing else.
You’re used to it, so you get the feel for the legs pretty soon after the teleport.
“Still better than the mermaids…” You say, but then remember one thing. “…Wait.”
You pull your hair down with these hooves to where your eyes can see it.
Purple.
Really?
“Well, at least not bald.”
Then you look around to see if there’s anything interesting.
Empty green hilly fields full of grass, colourful flowers, and clear skies, a weak breeze ruffling your hair around, and some sort of a city with high clocktowers and small houses in the distance. You decide to check that out later.
You also notice a river just a couple meters down the hill you’re currently on, so you decide to go get a feel for how these horses look.
Oh, right.
Now comes the hard part.
Hills.
“Come on Dusk, you can do it,” you mumble, taking a deep breath. “You’re a big boy.”
Stumbling and nearly falling thrice (you counted), you make it to the small river, and almost fall face-first into it. But you don’t, since you’re a big boy.
You look into the crystal-clear flow of the stream. Soft, curvy lines of your white horse face, the deep purple mane falling down between your eyes in two delicate streaks, your big emerald eyes shined from the sunlight reflected off the river gazed at you.
Horses drink water straight from the source, right? You’re pretty sure that it’s what they do.
So you decide to take a sip.
You close your eyes, and get close to the cold water surface. It emitted chill air right into your face, helping out quite a lot on this warm and sunny day. You never liked the sun anyway.
The icy water touches your lips, embraces your now small and thin tongue and goes down your throat, freezing it from the inside. It felt like fire burning a path though you, but it was a good kind of burn—
And then you notice it.
Well, not it, them. A second pair of eyes were gazing at you through the improvised mirror. They looked curious enough to not be dangerous, but you squealed and jumped just in case.
It starts laughing and wheezing like crazy. And it sounds kind of girly.
As soon as you come to your senses, you realise that it's an another horse.
Well, that's lucky.
You get up and dust yourself off.
What do horses say?...
"Neigh?"
Soon it stops laughing, and asks:
"What?"
Oh, apparently that's not what horses say.
"Uh, I mean hi."
The horse's face straightens out.
"Yeah, hi. Haven't seen you around these parts," it says with a wide smile.
Oh, right.
Backstory.
Usually Solaris gave you that during the briefing, but you were too busy dying inside.
"Uh, I just..."
Think, Dusk, think...
"You alright?" the equine asks carefully.
You don't even know anymore. All you know is that you're feeling really tired for some reason.
You're losing control of your body. The wings you never knew you had spread out, your legs collapse under the weight, and you stop breathing, before falling into the river.
The next thing you feel is soft fur under your wing. Also you're moving while lying. Is she carrying you? You gotta check.
So you open your eyes a little bit, just to see where you are. The eyelid barely gives, feeling like it's made out of lead.
You see the horse's fiery-orange side, and a bunch of other pones, all different colours walking beside her, talking between each other.
"Do you know him? I think I've heard Granny Hoofkins say that she heard a loud noise outside the city earlier this morning." some horse said.
Are they talking about you?...
You blink and wake up on a bed.
"Well," you whisper to yourself, "that's unfortunate."
Seems like you're in a hospital.
More like "Horsepital".
You giggle softly, trying not to get anyone's attention, then you feel a sharp pain in your right wing. Again, unfortunate. You probably somehow damaged it when you fell into that river. Ugh. This never happened to you after teleports, why is it like this now?
Turning on your left side, which is your preferred position anyway, you notice that the pony you met earlier was sitting beside the bed the whole time.
Your eyes meet.
"How long have you been here for?"
She seems quite chill, despite just carrying you to a hospital probably through the whole city.
"It's been about 30 minutes," she says in a monotone voice.
"Oh," you turn your eyes away from hers, "sorry for what happened there."
"It's alright, I'm always happy to help out, but..." she stops for a moment, before continuing. "...What exactly happened? I'm sorry if it's none of my business."
You finally got to look at her properly while she was talking.
Fiery-orange coat, yellow-ish mane, her color scheme was quite clashing with itself... Oh, and a horn.
So she's a unicorn, right?
"Uh."
Turn on your think tank, Dusk.
"Hard to remember?"
"Um, kind of, but I am starting to recall it," your bullshit dump is running dry, to be honest. "my friend was trying out a new spell he found in an old book, and it had probably gone wrong somewhere."
Well, it's half-true.
"Aw, that's quite unfortunate." yes, it is. "Do you remember anything else? Like, his name, where you were and all of that?"
"Not really."
Only now the nerves in your wing start working again. Feels like there's bandage all over it. Well, as long as you try not moving it, it'll be fine.
You can't move it anyway, you still haven't learned how.
"Feeling alright?"
"Yeah, I think." you try moving your body a bit, to get the feel for your limbs again. They feel fine, for walking, at least.
"Wanna get out of here? I'm kinda bored."
Eh. You're nervous about going out there...
"I don't really know if I do."
"Come on, it'll be fun!"
Oh, you forgot one thing.
"Oh, I totally forgot. What's your name?"
Is she laughing? Did you say something funny? Do horses not have na—
"It's Firy."
"Fiery?"
"No-no, just Fi-ry."
Eh, a pretty cute name.
"I'm Whitedusk," you try giving your best non-creepy smile, "pleased to meet ya."
"Heh," she stands up and flexes her legs like a cat, "shall we go, then?"
"Alright, alright. I'll try. Don't know if I can still move, but... Points for effort, right?"
You tumble out of the bed and masterfully stand up on all fours. Quite a vulnerable position, you must say.
"That's the spirit."