Chapter One- The First Chapter
Author's Note
Notes- The place where you place all of your notes. That was noteworthy, was it not?
Okay, so, lets get to it I suppose. You'll probably notice that I'm pretty bad at writing so if you have any advise or criticisms they are welcome. If you notice any errors, feel free to point them out. If you want to say literally anything (so long as it pertains to the sites regulations) go ahead. Who am I to stop you?
I know that all of this seems to make for a trash tier story, and it probably does, I would very much like you to read it. I did put effort into it and I have an actual story planned but you'll have to bare with me while I get used to writing. This isn't my first fanfic but I'm still not very good at it. I can only guarantee that it won't be the worst thing I've ever written but that's not saying much as the worst thing was a flutterdash fic I wrote a few years ago.
Enjoy if you want, it's not like I care or anything b-baka.
Chapter One- The First Chapter
Typically when you wake up in a strange place, not knowing exactly what just happened, it would involve drugs or some sort. I can confirm that, having a small brush with drugs at one point, this was pretty much that feeling. I had three of four major points from the ‘you had a good time last night’ scale. Bizarre feelings coursing through my entire body: check, headache: check, fuzzy recollection of last night: check. Two issues flawed my theory though. The first being that I hadn't woken up next to something vaguely fuckable and the second was that, barring the annoying headache, I felt good.
Good was a rather funny feeling to be honest. As I grew older my body started giving up quickly so I quickly grew accustomed to back aches, acid reflex, joint pains, and a general ‘you may just fall apart at any moment’ feeling. Eventually, since I didn’t stop doing what I was doing, the pains just blurred into a constant annoyance that would probably cause me trouble down the line. The state I found myself in was… almost jarringly calm. Serene even. In the distance I could hear the splashing of a waterfall, the birds were singing their clear, pure song, and there wasn’t the drone of people anywhere.
The most noticeable thing, however, was the lack of things rather than what I could feel. In their absence I could almost ignore the disturbing feeling radiating from every nerve in my body. It wasn’t bad per-say but it was odd. Like the functions of major parts of my body had been shuffled and taken out at random leaving gaps of phantom feeling and areas felt tacked on.
I shifted onto my side with a grunt and opened up my eyes to try and figure out what the hell I had done to myself.
Oh. Well. Ah. That’s probably a problem. Probably.
In place of my smooth, if somewhat pale, skin was a layer of thick chestnut brown fur. Rather than feet I had hooves. For arms: legs. For a body: a fucking horse. What in the hell! There is no way in fuck I managed to do this to myself.
“Aaah, this makes absolutely no since!” Came a surprisingly sweet, almost sultry, voice from. Well. Me. “This isn’t even my voice!” I screamed frustrated. How! Why! What the fuck!
Ohhh, this is so not good. Something absolutely terrible has happened. Sudden equineification is not something anybody wants to wake up to. I pulled myself into a sitting position with a grunt of effort and almost threw up at how fucking ‘weirdH that felt!
I appeared to be in some sort of forest, next to a dirt road that lead to god-knows-where. The forest was almost one that you would find in some sort of fantasy novel: ‘a far glade with a clearing lay in eerie moonlight, shrouded in a veil of mystery so thick Sherlock Holmes couldn’t solve it with a spoon’. Or something like that. But instead of a glade, it was just a road with a bunch of big sunlit oak trees surrounding it, little god rays peeking out at every chance through the canopy.
Humm. Well. That was useful. Turns out I randomly passed out in a forest and turned into a pony. That’s not vague and totally-not-what-happened at all. Okay, I just have to retrace my steps. Figuratively…
So I was going to Cal’s, or, wait, I went there and then ended up at Ben’s… Or was it Jerry? It was guy. I think?
I gave a mental sigh; my brain is even more useless than ‘a forest’. Brilliant. Well, I suppose I’ll make the best out of the situation. What more useful animal could I have turned into other than a horse?
One with opposable thumbs, the snarky side of my brain mumbled. Or one with some sort of real defense, the logical side of my brain agreed. One with a brain larger than a peach. Literally any bipedal animal.
Okay fine, being a horse is probably going to suck. Unless this is some kind of prank… I have been pranked this well before. I frowned at my furry leg. Then I lunged and bit it as hard as I could.
Ow. Okay. So I’m a horse. Awesome. “‘Sigh’, fine. This is probably going to cause a bunch of problems isn’t it.” I mumbled as I started to walk off in a random direction along the road. Only to end up face first in the dirt.
I just let gravity take my alien body down on it’s side with a thud. “Okay. I was right. Just walking from point A to point B is going to be a trick.”
-
Turns out, it’s less of a trick than I thought. Really the bizarreness kind of fell off as I was flexing the individual muscles and beyond that it was just a strange feeling of an off balance length I wasn’t quite used to. The legs themselves, however tacked on they may fee, worked just fine and pretty similar to my old ones. There’s just four now. And I don’t have arms. And I have a muzzle. And a tail…
I say walking itself was pretty easy, I mean that in a relative since. I thought it was going to be much more difficult, and while I did keep stumbling and not using my front legs to walk, it wasn’t impossible to get around. I just had to be careful with how and where I stepped. Walking is so easy when you’re human because you have dozens of years worth of experience under your belt but when you take all that natural instinct and make it completely irrelevant, not just that but hindering, I expected it to be completely impossible to even stand up. I’m quite proud to say that only took me three tries.
Another thing I noticed was that my eyes were ‘huge! Like some sort of chibi monster but with somehow even larger eyes. I didn’t know if I kept my natural eye color but my hair and fur certainly did not. I had dyed, well, bleached, my hair white awhile ago and just kept it that way. But the hair on horse me was naturally white and my fur was brown, not a pale white as my skin was. So my eyes could either be blue, like they are naturally, or red like my contacts. Not that I needed contacts I just liked having red eyes.
Simultaneously taking my mind off the grueling task at hand and focusing every bit of effort on it made the walking a little more natural. Somehow. Not even close to natural but as long as I didn’t completely lose focus It didn’t seem likely that I would just fall over.
Then a sensation like no other sent waves of ‘oh that is not right’ through my head, a sensation that made me want to tear my own head off: my ear swiveled. As a human that was not a feeling that I had ever had, nor had I ever expected to experience in my lifetime, but here I was; a pony with swiveling ears. The sound they had swiveled to was the sound of a babbling brook farther ahead on the path. The sensation was then completely swept away by sound of water and the sudden realization that I was completely famished! It felt like I hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for weeks!
I picked up the pace as much as I dared and silently contemplated whether or not I could eat the grass. I decided that experimenting wouldn’t really be the best bet in this case and focused on the task at hand; getting some water before I turned into a giant razen.
The stream turned out to be a small river with a quaint bridge over it following along the road. I glanced upstream for any contaminates and, finding it clean, threw my head completely under the refreshingly cold water and started taking greedy gulps of the fresh, clean water.
My head had obviously had quite enough of this feeling of comfort and fulfillment and decided to rebel from my refreshing drink with a sudden and brutal headache.
I jerked back out of the water and reached my hand up to my head. Well, I tried to do that. I actually fell backwards and smacked myself in the face with an uncontrolled hoof, landing with a squish in the muddy soil. I took it a little slower this time, hoisting myself up with a hoof and setting up an easily maneuverable sitting position. I shook myself thoroughly but whatever affect it would have had was completely ruined by the splitting feeling that shot through my head causing me to stop moving.
I tenderly, meticulously moved my hand up to my head to check for some sort of injury I may have managed to sustain in the thirty minutes of being here. There was a large something that had attached itself to my head like a leach. I felt along the rough, slightly textured thing and- ouch! And forced my hoof away from the very sensitive thing. Now that I could accurately identify exactly what was causing my discomfort, other than the entire situation I was in, I just had to figure out how to get rid of it.
Looking at my reflection in the water made it pretty clear that was going to be an issue. You probably could have heard my vulgar, blunt, loose string of gradually more explicit profanity through the entire wood.
-
Some time later, how long exactly was lost somewhere around the fifteenth ‘fuck’ and the seventh ‘dammit all to hell’, I finally calmed down enough to figure out what to do next. Instead of actually doing something useful my mind decided that now would be the time to analyze my entire performance thus far. The earthshattaring conclusion was that I was pretty screwed. Thanks brain.
Normally, I don’t exactly consider myself to be the most emotional of people. As a matter of fact I actually tend to just fake emotion and really any inflection at all with anybody who isn’t a few close friends, so the fact that I’ve completely lost myself to a freak out in only forty minutes was slightly concerning. I kept insisting that I had better things to do and to be worried about but my brain was just fuel for this specific though apparently and no foam would put it out.
The fact I was a horse was, in-and-of-itself, very odd. It wasn’t just odd, it was actually quite a hindrance. Apparently I had an extremely sensitive horn stuck on my head that protruded about four or five inches. I felt like an alien in my own body, with as many things that felt similar but somehow different as there were things that felt completely nailed on, like my tail which had about a fifty/fifty chance of having feeling or not. The real nail in the coffin was that I couldn’t move without putting almost all of my focus on it.
Basically the conclusion from the rational side of my brain was: you should really learn to use your body in order to improve your chances of survival and the conclusion form the ‘oh fuck’ side of my brain was: yeah, u gon die.
I cut myself out of my stupor by staring at my reflection in the water. It was slightly distorted and folded because it was flowing water but it was flowing slow enough that I could see pretty clearly. My horse body wasn’t really that different from my normal body. I know, I know ‘really, you’re a horse now and it isn’t that different’ but in the face, no. Barring the ridiculously large chibi eyes and my muzzle it was pretty similar. I even had my red eyes… I wonder if any other augments to myself were still there…
For as much as being a horse was strange, I got the distinct feeling that I was just going to have to get used to it. This clearly wasn’t a dream, I couldn’t make this up if I tried, and it wasn’t just going to go away like magic, so I didn’t really have a choice. I had four legs. Oh no. I can’t walk. Figure it out.
I stared at my reflection and got the strange feeling a long lost relative was staring back. Maybe some cousin was into bestiality or something. And science. My eyes trailed along the entire length of my neck, up to my eyes and over my horn. Maybe mad science. Again and again I looked over the fine details of my face. Magic. Mad scientist magic. Witchcraft. And science. Sciencecraft? Nah, that was probably a Minecraft mod.
I forced my eyes away from my reflection farther downstream towards the road and got a look at the bridge crossing the large stream. It was just a simple oak bridge a few meters across. I looked down the road father. Where was I going? I had literally no destination and no desire to find some nook to carve out. If there even were other people. Well, there obviously was some kind of sapient life here, since there was enough technological advancement for a sturdy bridge to be built and enough of them that it was deemed necessary to have a bridge along a well used road.
I started walking as absentmindedly as I physically could back to the path when I heard the jingling of a cart. Hah, I was right! There is life here. Unless the cart was moving by itself.
“Miss? Would you mind getting out of the way please? I can’t exactly walk around you with all of this stuff.” A old sounding voice close enough to make me jump.
“Habuztza?” First contact people. Brilliant just brilliant. “Ah, I mean, yes. I was just lost in thought.”
“Oh good,” The old stranger said in a bizarre Manhattan accent. “I thought you were going to try and rob me. Without any clothes on no less! My name is Fumble Scroll, nice to meet you.” He finished before sticking out a dull grey hoof for a… what? Hoofshake? Hoofbump? His entire body was mostly covered by a overly large blue robe and a floppy blue hat. The rest of him was covered by straps connecting him to the cart so only his face was really visible.
“My name is Jesse, nice to meet you Fumble.” I slowly pushed my hoof onto his and shook it up and down. To my immense relief he did so too.
“Humm, that’s a strange name.” Wow, blunt much.
“Actually, this whole conversation is really tripping me out because you’re a talking horse with a horn.” Fight fire with fire I suppose.
“You know that you are too right?” He said, giving me the ‘are you crazy’ look I had come to dread. Horses could make the ‘are you crazy’ look apparently so that was good. I guess.
“Well, obviously. I’m not that deep in denial but ten minutes ago I swear I was in my house enjoying a glass of tea. Or at a friends house. I think.” Truth be told I didn’t really remember what I was doing just prior to my equinification.
“Humm,” The old… buck I suppose, mused, stroking his beard in a pensive manner. After a moment his eyes lit up and he put on a bright smile that seemed to be rather out of place. “Well, seems like you have a case of crazy! Well, no need to worry; you’re in quite good company. This whole world is going crazy. Why, just yesterday the Celestia ordered a decree to kick all the gryphons out of Equestria because of the war. Wouldn’t have happened before.”
“Kick all of the… gryphons… out. Gryphons. You mean the half bird half lion hybrid things from greek mythology?”
“I don’t know about any Greek mythology but half bird half cat sums em’ up well enough. You aren’t from around here are you? Lemme guess, the Zebra Lands?”
“Ahh, not quite. You were right when you said I wasn’t from around here but I’m not from the Zebra Lands. I’m pretty sure I’m not from this world at all actually.”
“Not of this world? An’t that a thing, aliens on Equus. Next thing you know we’ll all be techno-ponies and the sun will stop moving across the sky.” He chuckled out in a cherry old man-esk way that one could only pull off with some sort of joy in their heart. “I guess that means you don’t know where you are oh Jesse the extraterrestrial?”
“You would be right. I’m not even sure exactly what I am. Where I come from we’de be called unicorns but I guess that isn’t right.”
“Let me be the first to congratulate you on being a unicorn pony. And while I’m at welcome to Equestria Miss Alien. The most rapidly declining place on Equus. We’re right on the edge of Equestria actually, about ten miles short of Border Town.”
“Unicorn pony huh. I guess I wasn’t all that far off. Odd. Wait, If I’m actually an alien than how come we speak the same language?”
“Heh, I don’t know that. I was just going to chalk it up to advanced alien translation magic.” He said before winking at me. He didn’t believe me did he? Understandable I suppose. If I went up to somebody on Earth and said ‘look at me, I’m an alien from the mythical Equus’ they would have put me in an asylum.
“Yeah, I guess that makes since. It’s fine that you don’t believe me, it is a pretty far fetched story isn’t it.” I sighed before mocking myself in a funny voice, “Hey, look at me! I’m an alien from another planet that looks just like you, isn’t wearing any clothes, and speaks the same language.”
He frowned at me and said, “Who said I didn’t believe you? With all the things going on right now an alien is probable enough, and who am I to judge? If you say you’re an alien from some distant planet than you’re an alien from a distant planet. I’m just a old mage looking for a place out of the way to settle down.”
I listened to his sad tone and decided to change the subject. “I don’t want to be a beggar but since you pointed out the fact that I’m naked I suddenly feel really weird, would you let me borrow some pants or something to cover up with?”
“Oh sure. I have plenty of robes.” His horn lit up in a shimmering amber hue and I watched with awe as the straps covering his shoulders and chest were covered in the same effect, then they started moving. I guess I didn’t really appreciate what he meant by mage. It was just a word that slipped over my head but looking at the amazing feat of law-defining awesomeness right in front of me only one thought went through my head: I want to do it. I want to do it right now. It looked like it was linked to his horn so maybe mine could also do it?
I was so transfixed by the magic going on right in front of me I only heard the tail end of his question. “Humm?”
“I wanted to know if you had magic where you came from?” He said while rooting around in his wagon. “You didn’t seemed to really like some basic levitation.” Did he say basic? That was basic magic? There was more! That was easy!
“N-no. We don’t have anything like that where I come from. Only frauds pretending they could.” I had always wished I could even be one of the frauds but I was never very good at the subtle mechanics of card tricks. It was always just difficult to get my fingers just right so quickly.
“Well, it’s not that difficult to get into it. Spells get more and more complex the more advanced you get but basic spells are pretty easy. Mind you, I’ve been doing this for a very long time so I’m a little bit biased on what’s easy and what is difficult.”
“I don’t really care whether or not it’s difficult. I’m pretty good at throwing myself at a wall over and over again until it breaks. Or so people say”
“What people? I’ve always found ponies are slow to comment on anything good about somepony else unless everypony else is already doing so.” Huh, who would have pinned the old wizard as the wise one.
“My brother mostly. He was always supportive of whatever I did. I didn’t do a lot mind you but whatever I was into he encouraged me to be the best at it I could possibly be.”
“So you applied yourself at throwing yourself against a wall?”
“W-well. N-no. That’s not what. I mean. Umm.”
He cut me off with a wave of his hoof and a chuckle, “I’m just playing with you.” Oh. Yeah. I knew that. Just playing with me… “Here,” He tugged a teal cloak out of one of his many sacks and handed it to me. “You can just keep this, It’s too small for me and I was going to sell it when I got into town anyway.”
“Umm. Thank you.” I took it in my mouth and thought exactly how I was going to put it on. Horse limbs aren't really known for being particularly dexterous.
“Here, let me.” He took the robe in his magic and folded it out into a position that I could just step into it. Feeling a little bit childish I stepped into the floating cloak and let him fasten the strap that held it around my body.
“Thank you. Why exactly are you being so nice to me? We’ve only just met and from what you described the world to be it doesn’t seem like the place where kindness gets you very far.”
He gauged me with old amber eyes then finally said, “This world isn’t going to be particularly long for me. I lived a good portion of it being an old sorry fool, even when I was young, and I don’t want to keep driving ponies away with bitterness and sorrow about the world around me. If I can, I want to make as much of a positive impact as I possibly can before my days tick up. You didn’t try to steal from me, bribe me, kill me, or mess with me in any negative way. As far as my old eyes can tell, and they can tell far more than you think, you’re just a lost little girl looking for a place.”
“I know the feeling. I actually lived like you for a long time, driving away the world that I thought was only filled with horrible people and horrible things while accidentally also driving away all the good that made it worth living.”
“Precisely.” He looked hard and long at me again with his old, wise eyes for a solid minute. Without blinking I unconsciously added but I didn’t say anything. I did shuffle around nervously after the twenty second mark but he finally said, “Do you want to join me?”
I cocked my head to the side slightly, “Join you where? Didn’t you say you were settling down in Border Town?”
“Pardon me, I was thinking about something else. What I mean is I was wondering if you wanted to be my… er… what’s the word. Apprentice, that’s it. You seem to be more interested in magic than most other unicorns I’ve met who aren’t mages already and I have been wanting to find somepony that I can pass my knowledge down to directly. Books are great and all but in the end I’m probably just going to be a lost name in a library somewhere. If they even get that far.”
I- I was stunned. I met this person on the edge of the country claiming to be an alien and not fifteen minutes of talking to him he offers to teach me how to do real magic. An offer to dedicate his time to teaching me. Like we’ve known each other for years.
“You know that I don’t have any money to pay you with right? And I don’t even know the first thing about my own body much less the fundamentals of magic. Spell casting is something out of a high fantasy book for me.”
“Payment isn’t a concern of mine, I have plenty of bits to blow, and I’m sure you’ll catch on quickly. In the very beginning magic is very much, how did you put it, ‘throwing yourself at a wall over and over again until it breaks?’”
“Y-yeah. Something like that.” I could feel myself getting flushed up! This whole scenario broke down every defense I’ve built up in my head over years instantly and I could even feel tears start to from. Somebody, some random stranger, was willing to do something so nice for me. Nothing in my life had ever prepared me for how to react to this scenario.
“T-please, err, I mean. Don’t cry please. I don’t like it when ponies cry.” Ponies.
“Heh,” I wiped away the slowly building tears and canceled the emotion out by focusing on something else, “Ponies, is that what people are called? Ponies… that’s so weird…”
“Yeah, we call each other ponies.” He finished strapping himself into his cart and started walking onwards. “Well, I suppose you can follow me or not. Though, I would like it if you did. I think that we’ve been walking on our own for too long.”
“Sure,” What am I doing? I just met this guy and I’m agreeing to go with him to a strange bordertown because he wanted somebody to teach magic. “It’s not like I have anything better to do.”
“Ha ha, that’s the spirit. With how you looked at something as simple as levitation I’m sure you’ll love it.”
“I’m sure I will.” And with that we set off. To boldly go where no human has ever gone before. To the home of a strange old man.
Ponies, magic, strange old people teaching me magic. Maybe, just maybe, this won’t be bad. I didn’t really have much going for me back home so maybe this was some higher being’s way of giving me a second chance. Or I’m just here for God’s amusement, either way I’m thankful.
