The Slow Transformation of Oliver Sanderson

Chapters

Arrival to Paradise
Nell and Summer
Best of Both Worlds
All's Fair in Love and War
Beautiful Sickness
Bring Out Your Dead
Reconciliation
The Stallion in the Mirror

Arrival to Paradise

Personally, I thought it was a lousy time for a trip.

True, it was stuck right between the spring and summer semesters, and it’d been six years since we’d seen Dad’s significant somebodies. But my thesis portfolio wasn’t even halfway done, and what drawings I’d found time to crank out weren’t anywhere close to polished. Dad insisted I come regardless, in his “Remember Who’s Paying Your Tuition” tone. Easy enough for him. Psychiatrists don’t need their hands to diagnose people. Hell, the Conversion would probably do wonders for his practice. Nothing like an uncontrollable mass extinction to bring up some emotional baggage.

For now though, the only luggage I had was at my feet, in a rollaway bag stuffed with jeans and sweaters. Not the usual ensemble for an early May trip, but the cold fronts and perpetual rains demonstrated Portland’s nonconformity spread to its weather as well. Dad sat next to me, his smaller carry-on resting on his lap and swaying with the light rail’s turns down the narrow street. The clean shaven face he usually presented to his clients was already starting to give way to a default scruffiness. His attire similarly demonstrated an autopilot mindset, with long khakis and a thin blue windbreaker with a broken zipper he refused to replace.

I glanced down at my smartphone, flipping through apps as fast as the Metro’s Wi-Fi allowed. A half-dozen updates flashed on the screen, all stating how the apps were not responsible for a lost signal within the next three days. “Please consult your local Conversion Authority for accurate listings about your area’s Conversion period,” they all read with only slight differences in wording. I wanted to laugh. Leave it to corporate America and Silicon Valley to treat humanity’s annihilation like a brief software update.

“We’re here,” Dad said, pointing out the window. I glanced up and caught the unmistakable view of the Moda Center, a white dome sitting against the dreary landscape. The news on the plane ride over said the Trail Blazers and the whole NBA may be going out of business soon, since basketball doesn’t really work if you need all four limbs to walk. At least they’d get good severance packages. What were artists going to get? Free classes on twirling pencils in a hoof instead of hands? More grant money from the National Endowment for the Arts?

We were soon over the Willamette, the hard rails of the Steel Bridge letting out a low rumble below us. Downtown Portland would soon be upon us in whatever splendor it had left. Word back in Orlando was even an invasion of neat, colored equines with chipper personalities and literal magic couldn’t do jackshit for the drug-addled metropolis, now filled with more homeless people than actual citizens.

“I hope Chinatown’s still okay,” Dad said when the rail finally crossed the river. “Bob and I used to go there for some good Sweet and Spicy Chicken.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” I said, staring out at a bearded man shuffling down the sidewalk with a full grocery cart. The wheels let out little eee-eees, the upper basket loaded to the brim with rattling soup cans and overextended trash bags. A uniformed man, either Army or National Guard, eyed him for a moment before wandering onwards.

A thin grimace stretched across my face. “This place looks like San Francisco and Detroit had an abortion.”

“Pessimistic as usual,” Dad sighed. “Common trait for an artist.”

“Realism, Dad. If a city looks like crap, it’s not usually a good city.”

“You spent three years in Baltimore. You seriously saying that place was a bed of roses?”

“Baltimore had some interesting things to it. This place…” I gave a dismissive wave towards a passing lot, packed to the brim with shambling people snaking through lopsided tents. “I don’t give good odds.”

“Well, you can always be surprised.”

The rail came to a stop, and half of the car got up to descend into the light rain tapping a rhythm on the windows. The brave and the foolish shuffled their way out, and another group soon filled their place. I looked back at my phone. Same updates. I put it away and reached into my bag for the sketchbook and pencil located under my underwear. While Dad had insisted I come down with him, I’d won at least a small victory in bringing my one release from this situation. It wasn’t the greatest escape in my disposal, but it would do for today’s purposes.

The black book soon sat upon my luggage, and I flipped through pages cluttered with physical half-thoughts and flights of fancy. Past images, consisting mostly of various walking positions and nude models, flashed across my eyes until a blank page came to view. My pencil touched paper, my mind racing for inspiration.

That’s when I heard one of them come aboard.

The unmistakable clop-clop noise followed behind me, until I heard it stop right behind our seats. I couldn’t look; a dozen fights in middle school had taught me eye contact was the first step to getting a fist to the face. Besides, being stuck on the inside seat required me to twist my whole body around and would easily give away my prying eyes. So I positioned myself like I was looking out the window, adjusting until I could get the creature’s dim reflection within the dingy glass only a little bit cleaner from the rain.

A long, black mane hung off her head, with her aqua fur coat clashing against the red seat she’d taken. The thin, orange scarf hanging around her neck shifted in time with the starting rail car. She pulled out a phone much larger than mine, better suited for her wide hooves and nonexistent fingers. Yet the phone scrolled like any other device, her eyes moving with each new screen her hoof pulled up.

The eyes. Yes, those were the strangest things about her. The rest of her body at least seemed like a reasonable corollary for a horse from another dimension. But the eyes took up fifty or sixty percent of her head, absorbing more stimuli than the little beads in my own could ever hope to. How did they even fit in her head?

A nudge in my ribs interrupted any further reflection.

“Here’s our stop,” Dad said.

I grumbled before grabbing my bag, getting up just in time for the train to slow to a crawl. Dad got himself situated as well, though he wavered a little with the rail’s sudden stop.

“Current Stop, Oak Street and Southwest First Avenue,” a robotic voice called over the intercom. Within seconds, the doors opened and we began shuffling towards the outside world.

I sniffed the air and cringed. An unmistakable combination of marijuana smoke and decaying feces filled the air. The nearby porta-potties provided no alibi, nor the people stumbling out of them with dazed and far-off looks. The smoke leaking out the johns dissipated in the rain still falling steadily upon the streets and our heads. Across the street stood a man with no shirt and ragged shorts, proclaiming himself to be the next Messiah in a high-pitched falsetto. The price to get into Heaven was fifty bucks or a bottle of oxycodone.

I shook my head, a mirthless smile filling my face. “Well, no surprises so far.”

Dad gave a heavy sigh. “Well, we ought to go-”

“Excuse me, sir!” a soft voice called out. We turned to see the mare from the rail trot out, walking on three legs. Her right hoof held aloft the thick, brown mass I recognized as Dad’s wallet.

“Oh, thank you!” my father said. He reached for the wallet, though he took a moment to gauge how to take it from her foreign appendage. After a moment, he just opened his hand and let her drop it down. “Would’ve been a pain to leave that lying around.”

“I’m sure,” she said. “You guys tourists?”

“No,” I said, crossing my arms.

“Well, kinda sorta,” Dad said. “We’ve been here a few times, but not in a while. We’re visiting my sister.”

Sure, Dad, tell her your whole life story, I thought. Aren’t doctors supposed to know how to keep their mouths shut?

“How nice,” the mare said. “Family can be quite wonderful in times like this.”

I couldn’t help but appreciate the mare’s abilities in downplaying. “The times” instead of “the Conversion”. Just another large scale event destroying an entire species. Nothing special, as the dinosaurs can attest.

Behind the mare, the light rail doors closed. Another minor victory snaking in-between the dark cloud.

“Oh dear,” Dad said. “Sorry you missed your train.”

“That’s alright,” she said with a smile. “There’s quite a few coming through here.” She wasn’t wrong; Portland’s hardly a quiet town in the late afternoon rush hour, a fact the honking Priuses driving by made clear.

“Well, have a nice day,” the mare said.

“You too,” Dad said.

I stayed quiet while she trotted back to the station, a contented look upon her face. Have you ever come across someone who seems a little too genuine? This mare fit the bill to a tee. She had so little motivation other than to be helpful that I couldn’t help but suspect her of some unseen ill. Maybe Dad would find a twenty or two missing.

“Have to keep this in my side pocket,” Dad said, shaking his wallet. “Back one always seems a bit loose.”

“Mmm,” I said. I did my best not to stare back at the stranger, but only the flashing crosswalk and the National Guard troop staring us down kept me from seeing her disappear into a new rail car.

Nell and Summer

The walk to Nell’s seemed longer than the five blocks the map had promised. I’d have liked to say this was ameliorated by Downtown Portland’s unique hominess, but that would imply there were any homes not made of lopsided tents and tarps strung across alleyways. We passed at least three dozen urban outdoorsmen, wiggling their cups with either rattling loose change or cheap bourbon beside barely-maintained methadone clinics.

“Another day in paradise,” I said.

“Things will be different after the Conversion,” Dad said. “Consider this the last sour taste of back-asswards humanity.”

“And what about all the sweet things?” I gave a thick sigh, kicking a plastic bag in the air. “Seems more like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.”

“We’ll get used to it, son. Just like every other change in life.”

“Sure, everybody gets over turning into a horse just fine. I think Kafka wrote a particularly sunny story like that.”

“Some things you can’t do anything about, no matter how much you try. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Ah, the “you’ll get it when you’re older” bit. Every parent’s ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card for their children’s complaints, even at age twenty-three. I could’ve pressed the point, but I stayed silent. Dad wasn’t the argumentative type. Half his relationships, professional or personal, ended because the other party would be “too aggressive”, a definition Dad kept rather broad. Any hint of conflict, be it a soon-to-be ex-girlfriend arguing over where to eat or a client insisting he only owed this much, and he’d freeze you out. How he kept me in his life was a mystery never to be solved in the near future.

We remained silent while our destination became more and more familiar the closer we got. The building was unremarkable by most standards, a plain brownstone only staying up this close to downtown because the Portland Historical Society held more power than the Zoning Commission. A dozen childhood memories filled my mind. All consisted of summer vacations and Christmases spent up in the third story apartment we’d live in the next three days.

Two button presses and an elevator ride later, we made our way to Apartment 314. Dad rang the doorbell, and we could hear a shuffle behind the door before it opened.

Nell looked roughly the same since the last time I had seen her, the only indication of time being her new attire of grey sweatpants and a loose red sweater. Her rough face stuck out between immaculate brown hair, like she’d doubled up on shampoo but skipped on moisturizer. Her spindled arms shook as she leaned on the door, her hickory walking cane in her right hand. Her legs seemed thinner now, and I could tell she leaned more on her left foot.

“Hey guys,” she said. She stepped aside, and we rolled our baggage into the apartment. Much like the building, it seemed as basic a domicile for a woman in her mid-fifties as you’d expect. IKEA couches and chairs surrounding a big screen TV, and an adjacent dining room that was more an extension of the kitchen than its own room. I could hear the kitchen sink running from behind the kitchen wall, its water flow interrupted every few seconds by someone I couldn’t see past one of the many decorative art pieces hanging off the walls. A vague smell I suspected to be pasta wafted out into the living area.

“Nell,” Dad said, giving her the closest thing to personal affection he ever showed: a light side hug. I think I’d gotten the one greater gesture: a light pat on the shoulder. “You been doing alright?”

Nell shrugged. “About as well as one can with everything going on. Been some pretty crazy days here.”

“The riots, you mean?” Dad said. “We saw the soldiers wandering around out there.”

“That, and everything else. Surprised you two even managed to get a flight out here.”

“Former DOD credentials have their advantages.”

She turned to me. “And how about you, Oliver?”

“Hey, Nell,” I said. I gave the same awkward side hug, rubbing her coarse sweater with my palm in wax-on, wax-off motions. I prayed my touch was tender enough. The last thing she needed was a bear hug sending her sprawling onto the hardwood floor.

“Still drawing?” She said it as if she didn’t notice the sketchbook stuffed under my arm.

“Sure. Trying to wrangle together a thesis before things change.”

“Speaking of changes…” Nell turned back toward the kitchen. “The boys are here, Summer!”

The movement in the kitchen stopped and faint steps echoed our way. I wasn’t terribly surprised; Nell always took in exchange students as often as she could. She’d spent a lot of years travelling Asia and Europe before the ALS set in, so it made sense that if she couldn’t go out to the world, she’d bring it to her. Everybody from Japanese to Chilean students seemed to flow through this apartment every time we visited.

Foomph, foomph. Foomph, foomph.

Boy, I thought. This ‘Summer’ sure took quick steps.

I didn’t say anything when she appeared from behind the kitchen wall. Her bright red mane and tail swished over her tan body, bobbing in time with each step forward. A deep hazel filled her eyes, like she’d stared into emeralds a little too long. Little slippers covered her hooves, fuzzy and pink.

“Hello!” she said, giving a wave.

“Summer’s part of an Equestrian program integrating pony and human cultures,” Nell said. “She’s going to be staying with me for a little while.”

If Dad was surprised, he did a better job of hiding it than me. He wandered up to her, hand outstretched to take her slipper-laden hoof. “Nice to meet you, Summer,” he said. “I’m Jack, and that over there’s my son Oliver.” He pointed at me, and for the first time in a while, I wanted to be anybody else but Oliver.

But I put on a happy face, despite my still-narrowed eyes. I gave a nod and a little wave. Summer seemed to find this acceptable and wandered back into the kitchen.

“Put your things away and we’ll eat,” Nell said with a wide smile.

Soon, our things were stashed away near our respective beds and we sat at the dining room table. Summer seemed to have a different kind of chair, slightly wider and more rounded than our flat seats. She showed no discomfort climbing into it, nor when the plates began to be passed around the table.

For the first few minutes, everybody talked like nothing was wrong. I decided to maintain the illusion, doing my best to keep my mouth filled with the vegetarian pasta and kumquats sitting before us. I nodded and smiled along, making clear I was involved in the conversation without being the main focus. Neither Nell nor Dad seemed to notice, catching up on the past six years and remarking on events long past.

But every visage breaks at some point, and Summer cast her gaze toward me. Her eyes could not be more curious and warm, but I could see nothing but a predator’s eagerness towards their next meal.

“So Oliver,” Summer said. Her voice was extremely pleasant, the same kind a con man used while taking the shirt off your back. “Nell said you draw?”

“Yes,” I said. If you can’t avoid a conversation, keep your answers brief. Folks lose interest quite fast.

“What kind of drawings?”

“Humanistic objects. People doing things, like walking upright or painting with their hands.”

“Sounds fascinating.” Obviously, she wasn’t catching on to the imagery. Fantastic. A pony who didn’t even understand passive-aggression.

“We did the same thing back in Equestria,” she said. “With ponies instead, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Art can be quite wonderful,” Nell said. “It’s been helping me get through all of…” She glanced toward her cane. “... All of this.”

“Well, hopefully the Conversion will help in that regard,” Summer said, putting her hoof on Nell’s hand. “I’ve heard it heals certain ailments.”

“I’ve heard that, too,” Dad said. “Bunch of colleagues in the APA are throwing an absolute fit, now that they may not have any chemical imbalances to treat anymore.”

“That’s odd,” Summer said. “You’d think doctors would be happy to have healthy people.”

“Hah!” I said. “Doctors are the one group of people that will suffer if everybody got well. Of course they don’t want everybody to get better.”

“That’s an awfully cruel line of thought,” Summer said with a puzzled look.

“It’s human.”

A silence passed between the table. The torrent outside came down harder, the rain and wind playing a duet upon the living room windows.

“Well,” Dad said. “I think the pasta is very tasty.” I always applaud Dad for his conflict management skills, even if they mostly consist of deflection. The conversation soon deviated into some long-forgotten relative on Granddad’s side, and Summer’s once confused look gave way to a charming smile and shimmering eyes.

I ate my remaining meal in silence, my eyes never wandering from the invader across from me.

Best of Both Worlds

I spent the morning trying not to stare at Summer Breeze. Not out of worry about her committing some skullduggery, but because I’d drawn the short straw on bedroom choices. Summer had taken up residence in the guest bedroom I usually occupied, and Dad flouted his superiority as “the Parent” to grab the remaining room. So I found myself on the living room foldout couch, staring above the television at some Scandanavian painting that used paint blotches to represent people, all varying colors and dotted along a rocky landscape.

I didn’t wake up until late in the morning. Back home, I would be lucky to even get seven hours of sleep a night, an unfortunate result of combining early morning starts and late night touch-ups on my private Picassos. But here I slept all the way to nine, stirring only when the faint clattering and shuffling from the kitchen became unignorable. The foldout creaked when I sat up, and Summer’s head shot out from the kitchen doorway.

“Good morning,” she said. Her trademark cheer filled her voice, but it seemed restrained. Maybe Nell whispered to her about my disposition, or she actually had enough smarts to recognize she needed to tread carefully around me.

“Morning,” I said. I pulled my Golden Knights T-Shirt and black jeans out from my bag, bedecked in only boxers and walking slowly despite the alien peeking out at me every few seconds. I suppose I should have felt uneasy, but months of wandering around naked ponies at university and Summer’s own relaxed clothing policy assured me she wouldn’t be put off. In fact, she probably wanted to see me.

I hoped she took a peek right then, the bright yellow shirt still hanging over my head and my bare chest visible. Not to see her face turn red in embarrassment or provoke some deeply repressed lust or any melodramatic crap. Just a flagrant hosting of the thing she wanted: humanity in any form. Broad chests, bare skin, mammalian bodies. Something as alien to them as they were to us, only to disappear once when their interest peaked.

Look, little horsie, I thought, the jeans stretching over my legs and covering once-exposed flesh. You’ll only see something like this for a few more days. Don’t get attached to it.

Strange, how sketches and naked parading were the only revenges I could enact in our dying days. For now though, it was enough. Just more minor victories in a lost war.

If Summer had seen see my display, she didn’t indicate so over breakfast. She just sat there, a thin smile always threatening to burst wider any moment. I knew it could not be the breakfast itself, consisting of sausages and bacon hash browns. She stuck to the celery from yesterday, along with a bowl of oats. The only moments her smile faltered came with each new bite, her eyes looking across at these strange foods she couldn’t eat. I’ll admit, I felt a little bad for her.

Emphasis on little. I still ate the food, chewing as slow as possible and shooting the occasional contemptuous glance her way. I waited for a flash of disgust or wonderment, some sign she would falter and rage at me for taunting her. To know she wouldn’t be this pleasant automaton, a statue carved into eternal happiness by foreign values and all-powerful beings.

But she just kept smiling.

The rest of the day consisted of the drudgery I had expected. Nell and Dad sat around, talking about far-flung relatives and glancing at black-and-white photographs from their childhood home back in Manitou Springs. Summer egged them on, her head nodding with each detail and interrupting whenever some human term came up.

“What’s a Cadillac?” she asked when I inched my way back to the living room. The stories themselves were etched in my memory, Dad’s consistent remembrances taking over many a weekend. But familiarity breeds boredom, so I sat on the couch and opened my laptop. Before I left Florida, I’d submitted select drawings to various art magazines. This was another reason for my thesis’s sluggish progress, as the time polishing the submissions had taken up the experimentation time I might’ve gotten. But money and exposure are the primary desires for any artist, and anybody who could give me both before my crippling was worth the time.

My e-mail sat cluttered with new junk mail and reminders from the few social media sites I frequented. Facebook and Twitter announced they would be going down in two days, when “electrical interference” crossed their server sites in Silicon Valley. Another from the National Weather Service announced the Wave was halfway across the Pacific, keeping at a steady fifty miles-per-hour and expected to hit the West Coast in two and a half days.

But nothing appeared from Farthem Heights, Trail Blaze, or any other submission site. Of course. Like any great Hitchcock picture, the suspense would stretch as far as it could before I snapped.

After I erased my junk mail, I became distinctly aware of green eyes looking at me from the dining room. I turned my head, and Summer’s legs shifted on the mahogany carpet. Her body tensed, like she was ready to bolt any second.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” I said.

“That’s an interesting device,” she said, walking towards the couch with a hesitant step. She stared at the laptop screen, still glowing with received e-mails and ads for malware detection.

“Yes, it is.” I turned the screen toward her, not to be friendly but to prevent her from leaning over my shoulder.

“I hope these will still work after the Conversion. I’ve heard about how useful they are.”

I nodded. “Be a shame to lose this one. I’ve done quite a bit of work on it.”

“Like what?”

I gave a small shrug. “Writing, messaging, watching videos. The usual things, I guess.”

She looked down at the ground and kicked at the floor, her hooves still bedecked in the pink slippers. “Sounds nice. We don’t use them much.”

“Keyboards not big enough?”

She shrugged. “I honestly don’t know. Princess Twilight and the others talked about teaching us, but they never got around to it. I think it’s because they were worried we’d get…” She looked away in embarrassment. “Sorry. It’s rude of me to say.”

I held back a laugh. Her species wiping out ours, and she’s worried about offending us. My tightlipped conversation technique gave way to nibbling curiosity.

“I have thick skin,” I said.

Summer smiled a little, then said: “They didn’t want us becoming… oh, what was the word? Hooked on computers.”

“A surprisingly perceptive critique. Many health organizations warn about computer addiction.”

“That, and I think the Princesses just weren’t sure Earth would be able to hold onto your technology once the Wave comes. Everywhere else that’s been hit hasn’t been able to restart their electronics yet.”

I pursed my lips. “Must be a bitch to have a pacemaker.”

“Pacemaker?”

“Device that makes your heart beat on time. Some people have hearts that are a little out of sync.”

“Oh dear. Well, I heard the Conversion was healing lots of people. Maybe it heals their bad hearts when they convert.”

I nodded, more out of acknowledgement than agreement. How the Conversion worked and its physiological effects upon humans was a mystery to me. I’d assumed it was like those transformations in anime: a shooting pain, a quick burst of energy, then viola! The new you standing where the old once tread. Uncle Sam must’ve known something more though, given he spent the last six months commanding folks with heart conditions to go to a hospital when the Conversion came through.

“Hope for the best, plan for the worst,” I said.

“Is that a human saying?” Summer asked.

“For now. In a few days, I guess it’ll be a pony saying as well.”

“Not bad advice.” Her smile fell somewhat, and she stared out into the still-soaked city streets. “Maybe we would’ve been better off had we planned for the worst.”

With that, she wandered back to the dining room and the competing voices debating which cousin pranked Uncle Jeb back in 1957. I looked back to my screen, now on life-save mode and empty. What was now a man stared back at me from the dark reflector.

All's Fair in Love and War

We left that evening to see Bob, Dad’s old college friend in his UCLA days. Bob had never struck me the wrong way in all the times we’d met, even if he seemed to make one too many jokes just this side of tasteless. But he knew when to crack wise and when to clam up, a rare gift in today’s world oversaturated with opinions. He’d moved out to Portland a few years back, when roses were the city’s primary output instead of drug addiction. The reasons for his staying eluded me, though Dad mentioned something about a steady accounting job. Made sense; money often convinces people to continue their suffering.

We drove a few miles out of the city in Nell’s car, settling in some suburban neighborhood with a foreign name I couldn’t pronounce and passing two National Guard checkpoints with relative ease. The meeting place was an English pub, a local establishment called Victoria’s, decked in black and red overhangs. Customers with cigarettes in their mouths sat under the shade, empty plates and glasses sitting before them. A faint memory returned, one where seventeen year-old me had been thrown out because Victoria’s allowed smokers inside. But the sign out front said outdoor smoking only, so now the nicotine clouds swirled down the sidewalk instead of within the bar.

“What’s the point of a pub if you can’t smoke in it?” Dad grumbled.

“You don’t smoke back at O’Sheas,” I said.

“O’Sheas isn’t British. Smoking is a proud British tradition.”

“Good thing we aren’t British.” I shot a glance across the street, where a pink sign flashed “Tiny’s Adult Club” with three X’s glowing bright red alongside. No windows dotted the brick walls, painted a dark black that clashed against the rolling suburban hills behind it. A large fence blocked the side area, though I could see the chair and table legs sticking into the ground.

“How about that?” I said when we walked into Victoria’s. “A strip club with outdoor service.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” Dad said.

“What? They might let you smoke inside.”

Dad scanned the restaurant before catching sight of a balding man in a grey polo waving from the restaurant’s back. Bob never seemed like the kind of guy who would care about looks, but two hair restoration drug trials later proved otherwise. Getting closer to him, it became clear he probably should’ve just used a toupee.

“Hey Jack,” he said, giving Dad another Sanderson side-hug. He nodded toward me. “Oliver.”

“Bob,” I said, taking my seat.

“You guys staying in a hotel?” Bob said. “I figured you would be staying somewhere near the airport.”

“Nah,” Dad said. “Nell’s letting us stay at her place.”

Bob nodded. “Saves you a lot on hotel bills.”

I sat in silence for several minutes while the other two continued chatting about subjects I didn’t care about. Tales about hippies streaking through the university mall and a professor who smoked more pot than Cheech filled my ears, all about as interesting as the last twenty times Dad had told them. To hear him tell it, the seventies had been the peak of his life.

However, my existence as the dinner’s third wheel provided its own enjoyment opportunities. I absorbed my surroundings, noticing the floor and ceiling shared the same dull brown color. Exiling the smokers outside meant a bland, starchy smell was the sole scent flowing through the place, a mixture of various malt liquors sitting behind the bar. A faint ditty played from the speaker behind me, using the tune of a raunchy English drinking song while excising the bawdy lyrics. It seemed the smokers weren’t the only neutered element around here.

Only the walls showed any semblance of risqué personality, filled with pictures back when the British Empire were the world’s master instead of Equestria. Hunters in giant headwear posed with shot lions and other exotic creatures from past colonies. The HMS Hood sat docked in a Scottish port, years before her Danish funeral courtesy of the Führer. The bitter Boddington flowing through my system made me all the more appreciative of the painting hanging across the aisle, depicting a Redcoat cavalry charging straight into Napoleonic forces.

Weren’t those the days? You just had to defeat your enemy in battle, then you could rule the world. Environmental destruction? Just plant a tree where the shells landed. Death of millions? Give it a few years for birth rates to pick back up. War crimes and general disregard for human life? Not even an issue as long as you’re the winner.

Not that it mattered. War probably wouldn’t have even worked against the ponies, what with their spells launching up to 100 megatons of energy. But compared to the Conversion, a brutal and senseless war would at least give humanity something to show for. Not this lounging about, reminiscing about a past three generations from now wouldn’t even recall apart from history books and lame Hollywood biopics.

“And you, Oliver?” Bob said. I snapped back to reality and looked toward Bob with the closest thing to an earnest face I could make. “You holding up alright with everything?”

I shrugged. “About as well as anybody else could in this situation.”

“I know what you’re saying. I still don’t have a damn clue how it all came to this. This shit’s trippier than anything the Profs offered us.”

“I didn’t take any,” Dad said a tad defensively.

“Either way, it’s going to be a bitch dealing with this change,” Bob said. “Money sure won’t be easy to count anymore.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Bob chuckled. “It’s not widespread knowledge, but…” He glanced around before leaning into the table. “Rumor is the EU is going to fully convert over to Equestrian currency once France and Britain finally get turned. Apparently the two years they spent palling around in Germany gave them special insight, and they offered the Germans millions of...whatever their currency is.”

“Bits.”

“Yeah, bits. Made of solid gold apparently, and worth a lot more than Europe’s fiat money. And this Princess Twilight leading them has a head for planning and brought just the right amount: enough bits to be plentiful, but short enough to keep the gold somewhat valuable. The magic number for hard money.” He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “I’d be pissed if I wasn’t so impressed.”

“Pissed?” I said. “You of all people should be happy. A worldwide shift in monetary currency should make accountants all the more necessary.”

“You’d think that. But the word upstairs is people are hiding their money away for the Conversion, given Congress can’t make up their minds whether to keep the dollar or move to bits. Until they do, nobody in the office can do anything for their clients since they don’t know whether to convert the books or keep them the same.”

I gave a thin smile. “Guess not everybody’s enamored with our new overlords.”

“Yes-siree. I can deal with the goofy names, the magic crap, and all those frou-frou outfits they wear. But they’ve crossed the one line they shouldn’t have: our bottom line.”

A thick scowl came across my face. “It’s all about the money, huh?”

Bob must not have caught my countenance in the dim light or maybe just didn’t care, because he just laughed. “When has it not?”

Before I could verbalize further disdain, I saw two figures walk through the front door. The first was a man in a thin turtleneck and jeans, his blonde hair sticking out only a few inches from his skull. An unmistakable frame of thick-rimmed glasses stretched across his eyes, and his body shook with an unrestrained joy towards his companion. Said guest trotted beside her host with the same gleeful body language, and her silver mane glowed even in the dim bar lights as they wandered to a table. Once seated, he put his hand on top of her hoof, giving her smooth fur a gentle rub.

Huh, I thought. I suppose Portland is more liberal than I thought.

I turned back towards my own tablemates, desperate for refills and boring college stories to overwhelm any thoughts of interspecies copulation. I came in just as Bob described an extinct volcano on the city’s edge, where he’d encountered Steve Whats-His-Name from the Who-Gives-A-Shit Department down in Berkeley.

I nodded with each discussion, even laughing at Bob’s jokes every now and then. Most were about as funny as getting turned into a horse against your will, but it was at least something else to think about. I did my best to dodge any further questions, merely giving the occasional “uh-huh” or brief overview of how drawing can actually be an occupation. I could tell neither Dad nor Bob really cared, particularly when the latter’s eyes glazed over on each description about proper penciling technique and the underrated genius of Pascin.

But with each drink and dull reminisce, I couldn’t help but stare back at those two...What would be the phrase? Species-Crossed Lovers? Interdimensional Beaus? Or just plain Romantics? Whatever they were, they could sit there and be happy, comforted by the fact the Conversion would make things better for them. They would hold hooves and cuddle in some far off bungalow in the hills, spending their years in comfortable bliss.

And me? I stared past them, out at Tiny’s with its flashing sign and lifeless dubstep blasting in the wind, wondering if the establishment would even be there once we were all furry nudists and love never felt human again.

Beautiful Sickness

The next day began with the same Pablum: a little stirring in the kitchen, my unsubtle display of my near-naked body, the gang all gathering around the table. For the first few minutes, I half-expected everything would progress in its usual form. My hangover kept me focused on Dad’s voice, announcing we were going to Pittock Mansion on the western hills of the city.

“Owned by a big shot publisher in the early 1900s,” Dad said. “Figured we’d look at a little bit of local history.”

The closest thing to a smile I ever made came across my face. This was the little bone he was throwing my way, a chance to glance at a classical structure for my sketches. For all my issues with him, I couldn’t help but-

“Can I come too?” Summer said. “I’d like to see this place if it’s historical.”

My blank expression twisted into a clenched jaw and a tight-lipped smile. Just passable as subdued agreement, as long as I kept staring down into my peanut butter celery with scrambled eggs.

“Sure,” Dad said. “It’ll give you a glimpse of human culture from way back when.”

Emphasis on glimpse. What was even the point? Weren’t we all living in the past now anyway? The future contained nothing but horseshoes and fur, the only memories being paintings and pictures from olden days. Did she think we were a goddamn zoo exhibit, ready for her inspection?

Eat, damn it, I thought. Eat and keep your mouth shut. It was all I could do to keep myself from staring daggers at the interloper sitting across the table.

Afterwards, we traveled up the hills in relative silence. Dad due to driving narrow mountain roads, Summer from her private excitement, and me from the rage nibbling at what little self-control was left. Sobriety took hold before I could lower the passenger seat on her, but the idea still bounced in my mind until we pulled into the mansion parking lot.

The house itself looked rather ornate, an intricate combination of the Victorian and French Renaissance architectural styles Mr. Pittock had apparently fancied. The bricks were a dull grey and in pristine condition, giving the mansion a subtle glow amongst the tree line. The roof slanted downward, the tiles jagging out in a stuttered design rhythm to prevent snow build-up. An elaborate garden filled with petunias and violets surrounded the home, nameless gardeners in white uniforms spraying a mist of strong smelling chemical into the buds.

The view the hillside provided was nothing to sneeze at either, with all the mid-sized skyscrapers and compressed buildings in the valley below us. The Columbia and Snake Rivers flowed around the protruding metropolis, their shimmering and winding waters cluttered with sailing boats and clippers. Snowy peaks sat to the north and south, still unconquered by Portland’s denizens.

“It’s beautiful,” Summer said, scanning the horizon between Mt. Hood and Mt. Saint Helens. “With the mansion sitting here right between the mountains, it reminds me of the hilltop mansions back at Canterlot.”

Funny, I was thinking about her being back in Canterlot as well. The garden and mansion soothed my mood somewhat, the knowledge that they would still be here after the wave giving a certain hope things would remain the same. A fool’s hope, I know, but sometimes playing the fool can be more satisfying than the all-knowing cynic.

It was with this suppressed mindset that we walked through the main doors. Other tourists muddled about, some following a tour guide pointing down each corridor while others simply stared and wandered around the four story domicile. Clear tiles covered the floor, painted a light tan to contrast with the marble staircase leading to higher ground. A variety of pictures and paintings lined the walls, most in black and white save the few extravagant portraits in the former owners’ likenesses.

We joined in with one group and began to wander the halls with a bit more direction. A few people cast looks towards Summer and murmured unintelligible phrases, but they soon found their attention diverted back to the topic at hand. Stories about each room filled our ears, from the architect’s frustrations with American architecture during World War One to Mrs. Pittock’s ghost supposedly lurking around the grand suite she and her husband shared. All the stories made a certain excitement rise within me, knowing I would have understood and seen this place before the changes happened. To see history untainted by the wave consuming us all.

Summer demonstrated a similar sentiment, raising a hoof whenever some strange plumbing device or antiquated cooling system was introduced. My fists clenched ever tighter with each room and each question in the same cool voice. But her eyes were what pissed me off the most. So open and eager, ready to absorb the dead culture’s experiences while the living dead still walked. A little token for her back home, where she could flaunt her knowledge on this absolutely fascinating group of apes like she was a goddamn trivia machine.

My anger concealed itself as I pressed myself between tourists I could tell had forgotten to apply deodorant that morning. The tour wandered up the stairs and between a half-dozen bedrooms. The last one we visited sat at the eastern corner of the house and seemed much plainer in decoration than the others. A thick quilt covered the bed, with antique teddy bears and wooden trains covering the floor behind plastic barriers.

“This is one of the sick rooms,” the guide said. She was a middle-aged woman with black hair and a loose-fitting sweater. “The family used it whenever somebody fell ill.”

“Handy,” I whispered to Dad. “Less chance of infecting other family members.”

“But it wasn’t just run-of-the-mill colds and fevers that sent people here,” the tour guide continued. “Many family members came down with tuberculosis and stayed here for a long time.”

Summer’s hoof shot up.

“Yes, you in the back?”

“Why didn’t they just treat the tuberculosis with medicine?” Summer said.

“Well, they didn’t have any effective treatments for it back in those days,” the guide said. “Best most people could do was live in an arid climate and stay away from other people. With how contagious it was, it was a practical death sentence back then.”

Summer nodded and kept quiet for the remaining tour. When we filed out back into the main hallway, she looked back at the sick room.

“That sounds so horrible,” she said. “Just laying in there, coughing and waiting to die.”

Dad nodded. “I experienced TB a lot during my residencies. Never caught it, fortunately, but a nasty disease nevertheless.”

Summer looked down at the floor. “Well, it’ll be ancient history soon. Equine medicine learned how to fix respiratory diseases like that hundreds of years ago.” She gave a small smile, and her eyes lit up in a warm gleam. “It’ll be good for some human things to be history.”

A brief silence filled the room before the words came out my mouth.

“Fuck you.”

“What?” she said.

“Oliver!” Dad snapped.

“What the hell gives you the right to consign tuberculosis to the dustbin?” A fire built up in my lungs, my mind spilling a hundred thousand obscenities that somehow formed coherent sentences. “Just because it’s an ugly part of this beautiful place? News flash, sweetheart, history often chomps a chode.”

“Relax,” Dad said, inching towards me. Summer just stared up, somewhere between horrified and shocked.

“You come down here, all smiles as your world takes over ours and wipes us out. And you have the gall to bitch about our history not being a goddamn coloring book? Well, excuse the fuck out of me if I can’t relate.”

Her eyes filled with tears now, sniffles escaping her mouth. Dad only winced.

I broke away from the two, marching back to the front door and out into the garden. I knew what would follow for the next hour. A stern finger wagging from Dad in the parking lot, lecturing about being kind to neighbors like the God neither one of believed in taught us to do. A silent drive back to Nell’s, punctuated only by the wind rushing by the car and the occasional sniffles from the back seat. The awkward dinner, with glances shot each other’s way and eyes focused on plates instead of each other.

None of it was new to me, the perpetrator of a dozen different family fights. I took some comfort in the process’s preordained regularity as I looked back over the beautiful view. God, to float down the rivers now, away from the angry man and the saddened alien behind me would’ve been Heaven. I’d just float out into the Pacific, gliding like William Blake into the afterlife Nobody sent him into. Maybe ascend before the Wave hit me, floating over the Earth into Paradise like all the prophets I couldn’t name.

But like most dreams, it was too good to be true.

I stared out in the distance as long as I could, until I could hear Dad’s heavy steps coming behind me. With a quick breath, I prepared myself and began the post-fight tradition anew.

Bring Out Your Dead

The rest of the evening followed the cautious decorum every argument in the family always did. Everybody tiptoed around one another, fully aware something would go wrong the second somebody began to talk. Summer excused herself for the remaining daylight hours, disappearing within her room and leaving us all to read our respective laptops and phones in awkward silence.

Dinner happened right on schedule. The same glances and eyes on the plates where once plenty of chatter followed, as per tradition. Summer again excused herself and wandered out into the night. A part of me wanted to ask if it was safe to be out on the streets at night, but a vestige of anger kept me from voicing any concerns. For all I cared, running into a crackhead or a brand new riot would be a good character building exercise.

I volunteered to load the dishes once our meal concluded. The best way back into the Sanderson clan’s good graces is doing something useful, no matter how small. For a few minutes, I rinsed out the gravy stains and ketchup marks in peace. Nothing but the running sink and the occasional car outside accompanied my scrubbing. I couldn’t complain; post-argument silences provided the most peaceful times in my life.

I was just polishing off the last fork when I heard Nell’s cane thumping across the floor. Her haggard face stared at me, my body still leaning over the sink and water splashing upon my thin arms.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” I replied. My eyes returned to the fork and scrubbed the mashed potatoes still stuck in the slots.

“Heard you and Summer got into a little scuffle.”

Heh. Only in this family would telling someone to fuck themselves be called a ‘scuffle’. “A heated exchange of opinions. That’s what I'd call it,” I said.

“Well, Summer gets the distinct impression you’re angry with her.”

The faucet water flowed down the drain uninterrupted. “I am.”

“Why?”

I flipped the faucet off. “You need to ask?”

“I used to be a therapist, Oliver. Unless you’ve got paperwork and a medical history form for me, how am I supposed to know what’s bugging you?”

I shook my head. “Don’t play this ‘I-Don’t-Know-If-You-Don’t-Tell-Me’ game. You know damn well.”

“Just because things will be changing soon doesn’t mean you have to take your anger out on everybody else.”

“And what am I supposed to do? Sit back and enjoy as we get swept away? Stand by while ponies like her dip into our history and culture like it’s some kind of amusement park?”

“Some minorities might say the same thing about us Americans.”

“You’re right. I remember when the slave traders turned Africans into completely different biological creatures.”

“Just…” She closed her eyes. “Just remember that this is as difficult for them as it is for us.”

“Yeah, controlling a world currency and getting an entire new extension of their race. Sounds like a real drag.”

“They lost their home to that...thing. How would you go about it?”

“I’d have a little more respect for my hosts.”

“Oliver…” She hobbled over and put a hand on my shoulder. I wanted to pull away, but even I wasn’t going to jerk a crippled woman around. “Do you know why I took in Summer?”

I shrugged. “You like exotic people. Or ponies. Whatever.”

“Yes, I like exotic people. I like acclimating them to our society and learning what’s going on in their perspective.”

“A noble goal. Doesn’t mean its noble all the time.”

“But there was another reason. A reason I thought you would’ve put together now, but I guess I put too much trust in your powers of observation.” I shot her an angry look, but she didn’t skip a beat. “I didn’t want to be alone.”

“Who does?”

“I’m serious. I'm not an idiot. I know you want to be here about as much as a mouse in a trap. I get it, you’ve got things you want to do back in Florida. This will only happen once, and if you’re going to do it, do it somewhere you love.” She motioned toward the living room. “That’s why I took in Summer. She taught me about Equestrian culture. Helped with chores around the house when my legs became too weak.”

“Then what do you need us around for?” The words held more sting to them than I thought they would. “Isn’t this supposed to be an easy process?”

She looked at the ground, silent. “Oliver, have you been reading about the people changed over in Asia and Europe?”

“Not really.”

“Well, there have been reports that people have been healed of diseases when they change. Genetic disorders, chronic illnesses, you name it. And me, well…” She wiggled her cane. “...I don’t find that too bad a deal.”

“Sure.”

“But something else I’ve been hearing is that some people…” The cane shook a little under her weight. “Some people don’t make it.”

For a few moments, a car horn was the only sound in the night. I only stared at Nell, who now seemed smaller.

“What?” I said.

She nodded her head. “I’ve heard the elderly, young children, even people with neurological disorders don’t make it. They just…die. Their bodies can’t take the strain, and they flop dead the second they transform.”

I shook my head. “No. No way. They’d be reporting this, telling everybody to go to a hospital.”

The concern in my voice seemed to soften her gaze somewhat, and she shrugged. “Maybe. But would you put it past the government to hide that? To stop mass panic and calls for certain people to be moved before the Wave hits them? Hell, they can barely keep things together as is.”

I didn’t want to consider it. I hated the Conversion, all aspects of it. But thousands, maybe millions dying by the end of it? Was it really possible?

“The reports might be exaggerating,” I said. “Playing things up so that people are ready for the Wave. Besides, how can anyone prove these claims? Half of Europe and all of Asia are still offline.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe.” But looking into her eyes, now shimmering in the dim kitchen light, I knew my words meant nothing to her.

In her eyes, she would die tomorrow.

I noticed the cane shook harder and soon began to lean far to the side. I grabbed Nell under her arms and lifted her up as the cane fell away. The force sent her falling into my arms, and she grabbed at my back in desperation. I thought it was her trying to push herself back upright, but I realized she was just clawing for something to hug. The sobs soon reached my ears, and her tears began to stream down the back of my shirt.

“Shit, I’m so scared,” she said. “Goddamn, I’ve never been so scared in my life. Not even when they first told me I had this.”

I nodded.

“Shit. Shit.” This became her mantra for the next few minutes, and me as her unexpected comfort pillow. But I took it, putting my arms around her and tapping her back with gentle pats. Intoxicated vagabonds shouted from the street and the ketchup sticking to the sink’s sides floating a sweet smell through the air. But they all felt far away, some distant things beyond the two of us and the hell we lived in.

“Whatever happens next,” Nell said, her sobs eventually slowing down enough to allow understandable speech. “Promise me you’ll at least talk to Summer. I don’t want you to be friends or pen pals, but just please don’t leave Portland hating her.”

And as I felt her trembling in my arms, I couldn’t help but stare out into the empty living room, with its foldout couch and kitsch artwork stretching along the walls. I wanted to say something, anything. Just a witty comment about how the ponies couldn’t knock Nell off that easy. Even a quick reassurance about how this was all just a brutal misunderstanding, that everybody would be alive and happy when everything was done.

But I could only say the truth: “I promise.”

Reconciliation

The morning breakfast proceeded much how the others did. If Summer held any resentment, it wasn’t clear upon her smiling face. The only indication of our fight seemed to be glances somehow shorter than the ones we’d shared in days past. I didn’t speak just yet, privacy being a necessity for our discussion. If I was going to play Mr. Apology, I would have the dignity of one-on-one. None of this telenovela bullshit where everybody in the family reveals their deepest secrets at Abuela Maria’s ninetieth birthday.

The flight left in a few hours, so Dad and Nell spent the time catching up on various family business I couldn’t understand. Their whispering implied they wanted a modicum of privacy, so I went back to the laptop. The screen lit up, and my e-mail appeared once more. The inbox was larger this time, but most of it was advertisements the spam filter missed or NWS updates about the Wave, now four hundred miles off shore. Not a word from any of the zines. I shouldn’t have been surprised; a world-changing catalyst gunning for the West Coast, and here I was expecting them to still be reading submissions.

“Uh,” a low voice said. I found Summer standing next to me. She seemed scared to meet my eyes, shuffling backwards once I turned my head to her.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.”

An awkward silence passed, then I patted the adjacent couch cushion. “Do you want to sit down?”

“Um, okay.” She waddled over, still glancing towards me as she settled upon the couch. Her hips didn’t lift as high as they did for the chair, given the sofa’s closer proximity to the ground.

“Nell told me what you did for her,” I said.

She nodded, her mane bobbing in time with the dips. “I just thought she seemed so sad and-”

“You don’t have to explain yourself. I’m no doctor, but I know ALS isn’t something that makes life any easier.”

She looked up at me, giving the first solid gaze since the fight. “Anyway, about yesterday... I was more surprised than hurt. You didn’t talk much when you were here.”

“I don’t usually have a lot to say,” I said.

“Your father said you drew. Maybe that’s how you talk to others.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. I haven’t really thought about what I want to talk about.”

A knowing look came across her face. “I don’t think that’s true. You’ve been thinking a lot about us, haven’t you?”

I tried to look quizzical. “Us?”

“Ponies. Equines, whatever it is humans say. You’ve never been able to look at me normally the whole time you’ve been here.”

I shrugged. “Sorry. I’m just not used to the idea yet.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t be. I’m not sure how I’d react if strange beings from another world came to ours and changed us to their form. I don’t know a lot of things.” She pointed a hoof my way, a serious look on her face. “But I’m sure you don’t understand plenty yourself.”

“You’re right. Some things are too complicated to really put into coherent sentences. Sometimes, you just have to say everything that comes to mind. Put it all out there, so you at least know what’s on your mind.” I looked down at my feet, cringing at what would come next. “I’m… sorry that you had to be on the receiving end of such thoughts.”

She nodded. “I understand, and I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable. It’s just…” She dropped her hooves to her side and sighed. “Everything’s happening so fast. Two years ago, we were in a foreign land, surrounded by strange two-legged creatures and a complex world. Now, we’re hours away from a world just like our own, and with you all paying the cost.” She shook her head, a tired expression on her face. “It’s just too fast.”

I leaned back into the couch and stared up at the Scandinavian drawing once more. “It is,” I said. “Too fast, I mean. I wanted more time, just to draw something. Because without these…” I held up my hands. “I’m nothing. Hell, maybe I’m nothing even with them.”

“That’s not true,” she said, a firm confidence in her voice. “You’re something now, just like you’ll be after the Conversion.”

“Pleasant thought. Not sure I buy it.”

“Well, I can’t force you how to think. You’ll just have to come to that realization yourself someday.”

I chuckled. “Never thought I’d see you this firm.”

“Never thought I’d see you talk this much.”

“Well, you can always be surprised.”

We stayed silent for a few moments, breathing in the smell of leftover toast emanating from the kitchen and eyes wandering to the artwork providing ample distraction from any further sentimentality. But our eyes eventually returned to one another, and I took a deep breath.

“So...are we good?” I said.

“I’d say so,” she said, sticking out a hoof. “Friends?”

I held back a laugh. “That’s a little bit of a stretch.”

Her face twisted into scorn and the hoof fell back to her side.

“For a human, that is,” I added. Her face softened with this. “Maybe ‘amicable acquaintances’ would work better?”

She nodded. “It’s a start.” Pulling her hanging mane back over her shoulder, she chuckled and shook her head in disbelief. “As odd as this sounds, I hope we see each other again. When everything’s over and we’ve figured ourselves out.” She held out her hoof once more.

“Yes,” I said, taking her hoof in my hand. The soft fur stuck through the gaps in my finger. “That’d be nice.”

The Stallion in the Mirror

The flight back home was as mundane as expected. Shorter lines, given the oncoming Conversion caused many to think twice about traveling, but otherwise no different than any other flight. I tried to spend the flight either sketching or reading a copy of Walden I’d brought, but the seat was too cramped for a good hand position, and Emerson’s musings stimulated me about as much as drying paint. So I just stared ahead at the television embedded in the seat in front of me, tuned to the National Weather Service and a Hispanic man pointing at the oncoming Wave off the coast.

“The Conversion Wave, as of now, has reached about three-quarters across the Pacific,” the subtitles read. “Civilians on the West Coast are ordered to stay home and be prepared for physical discomfort for the Wave’s landfall, now expected to be within the next five hours. We’ll provide updates as they come in.”

“Ain’t that something?” Dad said, shaking his head. “We missed it by just a few hours.”

“It is certainly something,” I said. “Would you call it good or bad luck?”

“Depends on how you view it all.”

Three hours later, we landed back in Orlando and drove back towards UCF. The ride was quiet, the two of us stirring in our own thoughts the whole way. We hadn’t talked beyond brief sentences since the Pittock Mansion incident, not so much out of resentment as a realization we both needed time to cool down. But after flying over a whole continent and the Knights water tower closing the distance, I decided to break the silence.

“Nell’s worried she’s going to die.”

“I know,” Dad said.

“You heard us last night?”

He shook his head. “She told me today, while you and Summer were sorting things out.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Did you tell her anything? Say she didn’t have to worry about it?”

“Sort of.” He shifted to the right lane, propelling ever further down the road. “I asked her if worrying about whether she’d die would make her any happier.”

“You think she’ll be alright?”

“As alright as anybody can be with this.”

Soon, the dorm grounds came into view and Dad turned right into its entrance. The soft, white buildings greeted me with a comforting familiarity, and after a few speed bumps, we sat outside my dorm room. I hopped out and wandered to the rear, grabbing my suitcase and backpack from the luggage compartment.

“Be safe, son,” Dad said, leaning against the car while I closed the trunk. “Don’t do anything too strenuous when that thing comes along.”

“Alright,” I said.

“And be sure to drink plenty of water. I hear the turn makes you really thirsty.”

“Sure,” I said. Then I leaned against the car, scratching my jeans, now uncomfortable in the Florida heat. “I’m sorry if I caused you any trouble.”

Dad shrugged. “On the trip? Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“The trip, college, Summer. Maybe even the last twenty-three years.”

He shook his head. “Don’t go thinking like that. Everybody gets better with a little bit of time. You may have a stick up your ass, but you’ll get it out someday.”

I chuckled. “Alright then.”

“Alright then.”

“See you when it’s all over.”

“Sure thing.” With that, he got in the car and drove off. I thought about waving, but I just stared until he pulled beyond the trees and back onto the road.

I grabbed my bags and entered the dorm. Still dark. Neither Nate nor Harris had come back from their dalliances either. I flipped on the lights and made my way to my room. I tossed the backpack on the floor, shoved the suitcase in my closet, and flopped down on the bed.

It’ll be over soon, I thought. I’ll be a pony and so will everybody else. Everypony. Everypony else. Better get used to saying it.

After a few minutes, I sat up and walked over to the bathroom. I turned on the light and looked in the mirror. A young man with a thin scar underneath his lip stared back. His brown hair hung loosely, curling in various directions wherever it grew out. His blue eyes stared at himself in a strange trance.

I blinked.

A pony stood there now with the same features. Same hair, same teeth, same beginnings of a beard on his chin. The only differences now were his body now covered in a dark red coat, and he leaned on the sink to keep himself on two legs.

I looked down at my hooves. No, not hooves. They were hands. Still human. So was the rest of me.

Back to the mirror. The man stared back once again.

I took a nice long look at myself. I looked until I couldn’t bear it anymore and sat down at the drawing board beside my desk.

I don’t have much time, I told myself. I whipped out the charcoal and began to create a face and body, the figure’s legs walking in some nondescript landscape.

Better enjoy this while it lasts.