The doctor moved her strange magic wand over Wild Oats's bloated belly. It hummed and tickled. The young earth filly looked up and noticed an expression of relief on the unicorn's face.
"Ah, good news," she said. "Sorry for the intrusion, Miss Oats. It was very unlikely that you were... with foal, but with your recent weight gain and stomach symptoms, especially since your mother provided us with no medical documentation..."
"Stepmother. What does 'with foal' mean?" said Wild.
The doctor cleared her throat. "Pregnant, dear. As in, going to have a baby."
"What?!" said Wild, nearly rolling off of the examination table in surprise. "That's impossible! I haven't even had my first heat. My stepmom says I'm due in a month."
The doctor wrinkled her brow as she cleaned off the magic sonogram wand. "Well, I'm afraid your stepmother is incorrect. Based on your examination, you should be at least a year away from your first heat," she said. "Does she write you?"
"Nah, I haven't heard from her since she dumped me in Ponyville," said Wild. She noticed the doctor's grimace and added, "but, that's a good thing! Winter... she's cruel. All the mares where I come from are stiff, like wood, and the stallions are all boring. My foster family here is way nicer."
A smile returned to the doctor's face. "It's good to hear that things are better for you now," the mare said, then handed her patient a lollipop. "If I may ask, when did she make that prediction?"
"When I was born, I guess? I mean, she wasn't around then, but every filly in the Grove has her first heat the day she turns eleven," said Wild.
"Really? I'm afraid that's not how it works," said the doctor.
Wild nodded. "I heard. Miss Cheerilee taught me fillies get their heats at different times, but... I dunno. Maybe things are different where I'm from."
The doctor nodded and led her patient to her foster family in the waiting area.
"Wild, sweetie, wake up," said her foster father, shaking her awake. As Wild rubbed the sleep from her eyes, she looked up blearily and noticed he had tears in his.
"What... what's going on?" whispered Wild. "My birthday isn't until tomorrow..."
"It's your stepmother. I tried to send her away but she threatened to break down the door. My wife is headed to the Guard so we can sort this out, but... Winter says she's here to take you back to the Grove," he said. "I know she mistreated you, but it was mentally, not physically, so it's harder to prove it happened. We're going to find a way to save you from her if we can, but she has the legal right to take you right now so we may need to get a Royal Order to remove you from her care. If I can't delay her long enough..."
"Oh no," croaked Wild Oats, and her body began to shake.
The ride to Duty Grove took all day and passed in sullen silence. The snowfall in the trees was beautiful, but Wild Oats hardly noticed. She just sat motionless in the cart with the rest of the supplies her stepmother had picked up, curled up tightly in her down coat and stocking cap. The only other possession she had was a set of saddlebags containing her sewing kit, a recent hobby.
Eventually, the creaking sound of wooden wheels came to a stop. Wild looked up to see her family home, a tiny cabin in the middle of the 'village', if you could even call it a village when no two houses lay within a mile of each other. As she saw her stepmother unhitching herself from the cart, Wild leaped onto the ground, galloped to the front door, and threw it open.
"I can't believe you brought me all the way back here!" she shouted, throwing her things on the floor. Her stepmother followed her in and shut the door behind her. The cold wind whistled angrily against the building, rattling the wavy glass windows.
"You will pick those up now, young lady," said Winter's Chill. Her voice wasn't angry in the least. It lacked any hint of emotion, just as it always did.
Wild frowned and stomped a hoof, but then she felt a shiver up zip up her spine. A sudden memory of the last time her stepmother had sent her to bed without supper came rushing to the fore. She'd been so hungry when she first arrived at the Ponyville orphanage the next morning. Now she felt like a foal for believing she'd managed to escape. Maybe her new parents would come to save her, but until then she had no choice but to comply.
The little filly sighed and slowly picked up her things, dutifully hanging them on hooks by the door. "I apologize, stepmother," she mumbled, through gritted teeth.
The mare raised a brow. "Hm. Marginally better than my expectations. I'd been most concerned that Ponyville had sewn every manner of inappropriate thought into that little brain of yours, but an iota of proper manners remains." Every word she spoke was a crisp and perfect staccato, like the chitter of a well-oiled machine. It was unnerving, but every mare in the Grove was just the same. If not for the colors of their coats, Wild would be hard-pressed to differentiate between them. She used to believe they practiced being weird whenever the foals weren't around, because nopony could be like that all the time, could they? She'd grown up here over seven years, but never got used to it.
For a moment, the filly held her tongue, but Ponyville had changed her. She wasn't about to hide the only thing she'd ever taken pride in. "Ponyville lets foals be foals," she said, briefly mocking the monotone of her elder. "And the adults are normal ponies. They laugh. They have fun."
Winter narrowed her eyes. "What is 'normal' for those foalish adults is not normal here, my child. In the Grove, foals grow up. It is your time to blossom into a proper young mare. Your roots are here. This is the only appropriate place for it." She turned and walked into the living room. Her steps had the same precision as her syllables.
Wild followed her in. "Why couldn't you let me do that in Ponyville? I was happy there!"
The cyan mare twisted her head backwards and made a nasty clucking sound with her tongue. "Asked and answered, but I knew you would not be satisfied with the obvious truth. To placate your abominable spirit, I shall extend an olive branch," she said, holding a hoof to her chest as she turned about. "Once you become a mare, you may choose to return to your... carefree, I believe the term is... life in Ponyville." The slightest smile graced her thin lips. This was a rare occurrence, one to Wild far more disturbing than no smile at all.
The filly paused for a moment, then walked over to the couch and slumped down onto it. "By 'become a mare', all you mean..."
"Your heat, as is tradition," said Winter. "It comes for you tomorrow, hence your rapid return to Duty. After dawn, if it is your choice, I shall sign your emancipation."
"You mean I can go back to my guardians, right after I have my heat? You're serious?" asked Wild.
"Dead," said Winter's Chill. The smile remained.
Wild Oats looked up to the dilapidated mansion as she tailed her stepmother up the steps to the front door. It was hard to see in the moonlight, but the upper story of the building was clearly crumbling. "This is the Adjuvant Estate? What in Equestria happened to it?"
"It's been like this since long before you were born," said Winter. "The property has no value. It is simply a convenient location in case you make a mess."
"I guess I've never been here before," said Wild. "Is this some kind of initiation thing to scare me, or something?"
"Or something," said Winter, unlocking the door with a rusty-looking key from her pocket before turning to face her stepdaughter. "Wild Oats, listen to me very closely."
The filly swallowed hard and looked up to the elder mare. "Okay."
"You are to become a mare tonight," she said. "I expect you to face it, and all the responsibility it entails, with bravery. This is a part of nature. Trying to fight it is foally. You must allow nature to take its course."
Wild rolled her eyes. "I don't care about making you proud of me, but I'm not afraid. I know what to expect already," said the filly. "In Ponyville, they teach you what the 'red drops' mean. Wait... please tell me there's like, tissues inside?"
"The bathrooms are stocked, and the toilets function, even if nothing else does. We're not savages," she said, and opened the front door.
Inside, at the other side of the foyer, Wild Oats saw a young filly. It was too dark to make out details. There were magic crystal lamps on the walls, but they were all very dim. The other girl quickly stiffened her back and stepped forward in a mechanical fashion. "Hello," she said, crisply.
"To the both of you: do enjoy your last evening as foals," said the mare. With sudden force, she kicked Wild Oats into the foyer and slammed the door shut. The lock clacked behind her.
"Celestia," cursed Wild, then she stepped forward. "Oh! Ginny, is that you?" she asked, recognizing the brown-pelted earth filly. "That's right, we have the same birthday! They've got you doing this stupid thing too, I guess."
"It isn't stupid. It is tradition," said the smaller filly. Her words were crisp, but her voice faltered.
"Don't tell me they've convinced you to act like them," said Wild, frowning. "You were actually cool."
"I... need to be a mare," she said. "If I don't start acting like one, they'll punish me."
Wild Oats shrugged. "Of course they will. Why else would everypony lose their sense of humor the moment they go into heat?" she said. "You don't have to do this act. I'm never going to be that way."
"Wild, come on! Do you want to get us in trouble?" Ginger Root whispered, as though they weren't the only two souls in the building.
"I don't care! My stepmom said she'll let me go back to my new home after my heat if I want to," said Wild, taking off her hat and scarf and tossing them on the floor. "Besides, we're not having our heats tonight."
"What? Of course we are. That's why we're here," said Ginger. "Why would you say that? We're both going to turn eleven in the morning!"
"That isn't how it works. Fillies can have their heats at any age," said Wild. "I learned that while I was gone. This is just pretend. They're going to try and scare us or something, I don't know."
Ginger furrowed her brow. "Maybe it's just different in the Grove." She pointed toward what looked like a kitchen. "Let's go in there, there's a table and some chairs."
Wild Oats trotted after Ginger and sat down at the table with her. "Look, I've been in Ponyville for the past—"
Ginger's eyes lit up like a forest fire. "Ponyville? That's where you were?"
Wild held a hoof over her muzzle in surprise. "They never told you?"
"Nope. They just said you were disobedient. I thought you were permanently grounded or something," said Ginger.
"Wow. This place is terrible. You have to leave Duty Grove with me, Ginny. Adults aren't like this in other places," she said. "The mares laugh and smile and play games! And the stallions don't have that empty look on their faces, either. They actually talk, and do things, just like colts."
"That sounds impossible," said Ginger, but her eyes were wide with wonder. "A place where you get to stay a foal forever?"
"You still grow up, but it's not like this," said Wild. "Oh, and Ponyville has stuff besides earth ponies, too! They have unicorns, and pegasi, and even other kinds of people, like cows and gryphons sometimes."
"Wooooooow!" Ginger rocked back and forth in her seat. Though small, her belly was round and the chair creaked. "Did you see any of the colts who disappeared? Was Pusher there? Or Gypsum?"
Wild pursed her lips in thought. "I don't know where they ended up. Same place my Daddy went, maybe? I didn't meet anypony from the Grove in Ponyville, but there are way bigger cities out there," she said. "I'm glad you're here, though. It's too bad Patty's not around..."
Ginger shook her head very rapidly back and forth. "No, no, no. She's one of them now. She's older than us, remember? She changed the next day, just like they all do."
Wild's eyes widened. "That... that can't be right. She's gotta be faking."
"She fakes as good as my Mom, then," she said. "It's gonna happen to us, we can't stop it." Tears started to form in her eyes.
"C'mere," said Wild. She got off the chair, and pulled Ginger onto the floor and into a hug.
"What... what is this?" said Ginger.
"It's called a 'hug'. It means I care about you," she said. "Ponyville taught me all about friendship."
Ginger sniffled. "It... it helps, but what are we gonna do?"
Wild Oats broke the hug. "I don't know what this spooky overnight thing is, but I do know one thing: we're not having our heats tonight."
"How do you know that?" asked Ginger.
"Mares don't go into heat in months when it's snowing. It's too cold outside. And you can't know without doctors doing tests," she said. "They did tests on me after I gained weight, and I've got another year to wait."
"I'm kinda fat too. Mom says it's genetic. But we're all related here, you know? I'm like, your second cousin or something, I think," said Ginger. "But it sounds crazy. If you're right, in the morning we'll know they lied, and then what are they gonna say? It was all a big joke?"
"I guess it doesn't make sense. Winter raised me since I was five, and she ain't never made a 'joke' before," said Wild Oats. "Either way, I'll just pretend I've gone into heat. She might be dumb enough to believe it, and then I'll get to leave."
"I was practicing my 'adult voice' and stuff 'cause I figured I'd have to act like that when it happens for real," said Ginger. "I mean, it might be a good idea to pretend it happened, but I don't think I can fool Mom. She can tell when I'm fibbing."
"We'll have to wait until morning to find out, I guess. This sucks. Is there any place to sleep?" said Wild. "The floor's all splintery, and... what's that smell? Is that cleaner or something?"
"I dunno. The bathrooms are even worse. I bet they got beds upstairs, though," she replied. "Mom doesn't like me, and Dad never talks at all, but they wouldn't put me in some place to sleep on a splintery floor... I think."
Wild Oats got off the chair and walked around the table when she felt something tacky under her hoof and looked down at the shiny patch on the floor. "Oh, that's the stink. They put new varnish on, or something," she said, though it looked more like varnish had been haphazardly poured onto various random sections of floor.
"Okay. Let's go upstairs and see if they got..." said Ginger, and then she winced and grabbed her barrel. "Ow! Ugh... my tummy hurts. Mom made me eat a lot tonight."
"You're lucky. I haven't eaten anything," said Wild. "Just rest here, okay? I'll go check it out, and let you know."
With that, the little filly trotted off toward the staircase and started up a set of misshapen wooden steps, careful not to slip on the ones which had partially collapsed. The house was even colder up here, the drafty air making her wish she'd left her coat on. At the top of the steps was a small landing which opened to a hallway with several doors.
There was fresh varnish on parts of the landing and down the hallway. Wild Oats stepped gingerly into the hall. "Gotta be brave for both of us," she said. One by one, she opened each door. The first three led to dark, completely empty bedrooms with more rotting wood. Some of the floorboards popped and cracked, and she was careful with her weight lest she end up falling through a broken patch of floor.
"This place isn't up to code," she said. She didn't really know what 'up to code' meant, but Ponyville buildings were much safer. Opening the fourth door, she felt a blast of cold wind. Part of one wall of this bedroom had crumbled, leaving a gaping hole overlooking the pointy iron fence that surrounded the house. Luna's pregnant Moon hung in the sky above, so full it looked ready to burst.
Wild stepped into the room. It was completely barren like the others, but she wanted to see the hole up close. "Maybe we can escape here," she said. "If we can make it back to Ponyville they'll see Winter abandoned us, and maybe..."
For a moment the only sound was the wind. Then an ear-splitting scream echoed behind her.
"aaaAAAAAAAAAaAAAAA!!!"
Everypony—especially new parents—knows the distinctive sounds of a foal at play. Those high-pitched squeals and screams of laughter are every bit as shrill as they are normal. This was the other kind of scream, and Wild Oats had never heard anything like it, but she instantly knew what it meant. Unfortunately, her hooves had frozen to the floor. For a moment, she thought she must have stepped in a fresh puddle of varnish.
"GINGER!" she shouted back, turning her head over her shoulder to where her legs wouldn't follow. "I, I'm coming!"
Something finally gave, and her legs obeyed. Wild galloped into the hallway and toward the landing, and halfway there the sensation of an iron club hit her square in the gut. She spilled head over hooves and fell into a crumpled heap near the edge of the landing, her muzzle resting on the floor right next to a foul-smelling coat of that nasty brown lacquer. She turned her face up, looking up at the peeling ceiling as she struggled to right herself. In the process she scraped her forehoof against the varnish, peeling some of it off.
There was another scream, somehow even worse than the first. Much worse.
"AAAAAAAAEEEEEEEooookhhhh," came the wail. It was clearly Ginger. The last part was punctuated by a sickening glottal sound like somepony choking on a thick metal pipe.
Wild Oats managed to sit up on her haunches, hooves shaking, and only then did she realize the pain in her gut was severe. Between her legs was a drizzle of what looked like black fluid, but it was dark in here, and she knew what it must be.
"NO! Not now!" she yelped, her voice cracking, and with primal fury she kicked herself in the gut as hard as she could with a forehoof.
Visual stars came next, then strangely enough... the pain abated. She managed to get up onto all fours. Her saddlebags had come loose and rested on the edge of the landing, where a thin, slipshod railing was the only guard against a nasty fall.
It took a moment for the cobwebs to clear. She could feel herself dripping back there, but it didn't matter. She needed to check on her friend—but how long had it been since the scream? Time didn't seem to be moving properly. Wild Oats turned and walked to the top of the stairs, ignoring her saddlebags entirely.
Somepony was already there at the bottom.
It looked like Ginger Root... and it didn't. Its mane and tail were drenched in a dark fluid that shined in the dim light from the downstairs lamps. It definitely had Ginger's face, but it was severely emaciated.
"Everything is fine, Wild Oats," said the thing, in a pitch-perfect staccato. "Here, let me calm you down." It began walking up the steps, slowly but insistently.
"Y-you're not Ginny," said Wild, pointing at the abomination with a shaky hoof.
"You don't want to admit it, that's all," it said, halfway up the stairs. "I'm a mare now. I can clean up and go home with my family in the morning." Wild shuddered. The thing sounded exactly like Ginger would... if she were one of them.
"You don't even look like her! You're like, not even twenty pounds, including the, th-the," she stammered.
"Blood?" it said, without a hint of emotion. "It's fine. This is just what happens. I had to vomit some, but I'm cleansed. I'm not in any pain now. You'll see."
Wild backed up as it topped the stairs. "No," she said, more to herself than the creature who claimed to be her friend.
"Yes. Come now, you knew this would happen," it said. "I need to go downstairs and eat to refresh myself, but I think I should stay with you first."
Wild bolted toward the bedroom with the hole in the wall, and heard hoofbeats thumping behind her. She tossed open the door and ran right up to the edge, then turned around to see... Ginger?
Here in the light of the moon, the thing looked even more like Ginger, or at least a version of her that hadn't been fed in over a year. It wasn't blood that covered her body, however. It was too black. It looked like somepony had poured oil or hot chocolate all over her.
Then again, her mouth was ringed and dripping with red, and that did look like blood.
"You have nowhere to go, Wild Oats. Please, be a mare about this. Logic dictates you should step away from that precipice," said Ginger.
"You're too thin to be her," said Wild. "It's not possible."
"It's the magic of marehood," she said, walking right up to her. "Out with the old and in with the new. You might say... the renewal takes a lot out of you."
Then Ginger Root smiled, ever so slightly, just like Wild's mother had, and something inside Wild snapped.
In a flourish, she fell on the floor and swept her legs under the rail-thin filly, like a breakdancer. Ginger fell onto Wild's body with a wet splat. Everything smelled horribly like unwashed privates and blood, and then Wild kicked upward with all her might.
Suddenly, Wild realized her twenty-pound estimate had been grossly inflated. There was a 'crack', indicating she'd smashed at least one of Ginger's ribs, and the body flew up through the air like a ragdoll until it escaped her vision. Then there was a sickening 'chunk' sort of sound.
Wild stood back up, and looked down. Ginger's lifeless body lay impaled on the fence, hollow eyes staring upwards, jaw slack. It looked like the spikes had gone right through her chest, but with the mess all over her, she couldn't tell from up here if there was any more blood.
"I killed my friend," said Wild Oats, pausing to let the horrid idea sink in. "No. No, no! Th-that wasn't her! It couldn't be. And, and she was going to hurt me!"
Wild turned and ran back to the landing. "M-maybe she's still downstairs," she said to herself, reaching out to retrieve her saddlebags. A stabbing pain in her gut floored her again. "Aaaaugh! Stop it stop it stop it!" she cried, and a thick jet of black fluid spurted out from between her legs, splattering against the wood. The pain kept her from rising.
Her breath was taken from her as her hind legs spread wide and something crumpled and black pulled its way out of her body. It hurt like Tartarus! Her mind spared her from the pain with a strange detachment. It was like she was watching herself do this awful thing, from afar. No, not afar... she was watching from the black mess...
"I can't have a foal, I can't," she gasped, and the mass uncurled. "I'm too young!" But this was larger than a foal. It seemed impossible this thing had come out of her body. It slowly inflated and solidified, and it was...
It was a thin version of her, covered in oil from crown to hoof.
It coughed and turned its head, still forming. "Hello Wild Oats," it said, with a crisp intonation in her own stolen voice. "It is I, Wild Oats. Relax."
Wild Oats lashed out with her hooves, but the thing dodged. The filly was too fatigued to stand or even crawl, but she was able to grab her saddlebags with one hoof.
"Don't be angry," said the beast with her mangled face, as it slowly became less mangled and more like its mother. "You see? We are one. I know everything you know. You cannot hide from me." It pointed to a thick cord that connected its belly with... with Wild's opening. Wild Oats recognized it as an umbilical cord.
The thing reached out and stroked the cord as if it loved it. "Now then. It is time to grow up, young lady," it said, gripping the cord tightly in both forehooves.
"B-buck that," said Wild Oats, pulling out a pair of sharp sewing scissors from her saddlebags and slashing the cord in two.
The creature screamed and gasped as though it could no longer breathe, and it fell motionless onto the floor next to Wild's saddlebags. Wild Oats stood up, painfully. Blood and tar trickled out of her body and down her legs, but she could walk.
She threw the scissors over the edge of the landing and carefully walked down the stairs. The pain started to fade, and she wondered if this was what dying felt like. The 'rope' was still hanging out of her body like a second tail, but she didn't care. Cheerilee had taught her that it would come out by itself, and she didn't want to think about any of this right now.
Wild Oats walked into the kitchen, and immediately retched onto the floor.
This time, it wasn't from her ordeal. On the floor was a bloody mess that looked like a doll that had been pulled inside out, only the doll was Ginger. The only part of the filly's pelt she could see was her posterior and her two hind legs, which were spread too far apart to still be connected. Between them emerged a mass of viscera, pulled directly through the vagina. No head or forelegs could be seen, but entrails, broken ribs, heart, and lungs were clearly visible. Wild regretted learning pony anatomy. The lungs looked like they'd been shredded... or eaten.
At the end of the mass was the umbilical cord. One end had clearly been chewed off. The other was attached to what must have been her tiny womb. It wasn't just an umbilical cord, however. The twisting, fleshy rope looked thick and fibrous, and those fibers clearly weaved into and among all the organs of the chest cavity. Wild felt her stomach turn again.
"Oh Ginny. I... I don't know why I'm not screaming," said Wild Oats. Against every instinct, she walked around to the 'front' of the mass, opposite the womb, and pulled it slightly open with her hooves. Inside she could see Ginger's forelimbs, broken shoulders, and head. Her face was the most disturbing thing Wild had ever seen, which at this point was saying something. The jaw seemed to be missing, perhaps pulled through her mouth, but her eyes were sunken in and the skin of her skull stretched tighter than a fresh canvas.
"It's like... she got pulled through the place babies come from," whispered Wild Oats. "But, backwards. And this isn't how babies work. This isn't how your heat works. This, this isn't how anything works!"
Wild stepped backwards, and vomited on the floor a second time. She turned and trotted—the fastest her body would allow—to the front door, but it was locked from the outside. So she put on her coat and hat and returned to the kitchen. As Wild tried her best not to look at Ginger's remains, she stepped over her two puddles of sick and trotted over to the staircase. "I guess I just have to jump out the hole. I have to get out of here," she said out loud, as if to convince herself of the obvious. "It's the only thing I can do. I have to do it. I have to do it. I have to do it."
Once again she climbed up to the landing. Fortunately, the creature was still there, just as lifeless, sprawled over her saddlebags. She paused for a moment in fear, but the other Wild Oats didn't move. She stepped over it to reach her saddlebags, and looked down.
The spot she'd scratched the varnish with her hooves had red dust beneath it. Even in this lighting, she could tell it was too red to be rust.
"This... this happened before," she whispered, and she felt a strange pain tickling her belly, but ignored it. Closing her eyes for a moment, she took a deep breath and turned for the hallway, then felt a tug. She looked over her shoulder and her heart nearly stopped.
"Sad, foalish filly. I know everything you do, remember?" said the young, oil-splattered yet responsible mare named Wild Oats. Its sticky hooves held the umbilical cord, freshly reattached with needle and thread from the sewing kit. With a mature and logical look in her eye, she gripped the cord tight like a vice.
Then she yanked.
