I really hate snow. Well, that’s not entirely true, I don’t exactly hate snow, but I don’t exactly like it, more so I start to feel less favorably towards it the more of it there is around me at any given time. Like right now, there was a fuckton of snow around me, on the ground, in the air, slowly forming over my body. Yeah, I was out in the middle of what many would probably recognize as one of the biggest blizzards of the year. But I lived in Wisconsin so what are you going to do? It was constant cold and snow through the winter so it wasn’t as if today was exceptionally special or anything, in fact it wasn’t even excessively cold, as evidenced by the fact that I was trudging through this blizzard with just my regular clothes, sweatpants over my pants, a winter coat on, the hat and the scarf were more for keeping the snow directly out of my face, not that it mattered since I couldn’t see more than a foot or so in front of me due to just how much snow was falling down. I could barely see where I was walking, multiple times I had to look up to make sure I was even still on the sidewalk, there was so much snow I was meandering over into the road whenever I wasn’t paying close enough attention to where I was stepping. Not that it mattered all that much, no sane person would be out driving in this mess to begin with, but you know, why was I WALKING in it? Because I walked home from school, that’s it, no big reason, I did this every day, to and from school, sure it was annoying but honestly it wasn’t much faster riding the bus given my stop was the last one.
Though today might have been a good day to try and phone my dad to come and pick me up, sure it hadn’t looked much worse than usual, but after about twenty minutes out from school, things began looking much, much, worse. The sky was getting darker, not that such a thing was really the big kicker in my mind, I could already barely see because of the snow, and the entire sky was coated with dark clouds, so it being less than light out was par for the course, especially during the winter time. No, the thing that tipped me off was that it was getting dark dark, like, it was night dark. The sun fell sooner in the winter, but this was ridiculous, looking up at the sky, what I could see of it through waves of snow, it was as if there was no sunlight shining behind the clouds, no moonlight either for that matter, not that I remembered which phase the moon was currently in. So here I was, trudging through the snow, darkness was literally falling around me, the streetlights weren’t coming on either, something was up, or at least I thought it was, my mind liked to play tricks on me, I was somewhat paranoid like that, but even I wasn’t stupid.
Then it went, I could see more clearly than I had for the last twenty minutes, since I’d left school even. A bright flash of light lit up the clouds, the sky sparkled around me as all the little swirling bits of snow refracted the sudden glow emanating from the clouds. I was practically blinded by what little I could suddenly see for a split moment. My brain could barely process what I saw, ‘was that lightning?’ I began thinking to myself when the thought was completely cut off by the thunderous sound of thunder booming throughout the entire area. I would have jumped if I’d been able to, with the snow weighing down my feet I sort of just tripped and stumbled to the ground. Impacting into the cold snow as my hands leapt over the portion of my hat that was covering my ears, far too late for it to matter, thank goodness I was already partially deaf in the right one. It didn’t take me long to get my thoughts together and realize that I had to get away, this was way too close for comfort. But where could I go, it was too dark for me to go anywhere but straight, for some reason it seemed like every light in existence had gone out, perhaps the blizzard had caused some power lines to go down due to the amount of snow, which would certainly explain the lack of any light, but it didn’t explain the astounding darkness I found myself in. Scrambling back to my feet, slipping a few times on the slick snow before I got back up proper, I began to run, well, move faster, it was hard to run through what was probably two feet of snow, not that I could properly tell right now.
The rational part of my mind was even wondering why I was running, the chances of getting hit by lightning specifically were astounding, it had plenty of other, better targets to hit other than me. But then I quickly reminded the rational part of my mind that nothing that was going on right now was dictated by logical chance. A lightning storm in the middle of winter preceded by a blackout during a time of day when there should still be at least some natural light!? It was insane, and maybe I was insane for thinking it, but I didn’t bother to keep that train of thought going and thankfully I didn’t have to bother to keep it going because as I continued my stumbling run across the snowy tundra of my towns back roads, a bright flash of light suddenly encompassed all my vision.
Waking up was weird. Probably for various reasons, one of which being that I pretty much thought I should be dead. My eyes fluttered open, and I was not prepared. Everything looked, off, I wasn’t sure what exactly, or why exactly, but it didn’t look right to me. It was as if I was looking through a filter, but how could I be? All the thoughts in my brain quickly came rushing back to me though, instantly I sprang to my feet. But I didn’t, I attempted to stand up, got tangled in my coat, lost balance, and fell back onto the snow. Snow? Honestly, you’d think a lightning strike would have melted all the snow in the area, to think I’d survive a lightning strike though, well, it was amazing to me, well it was for about a fraction of a second until I shook my head. Hair fell in front of my eyes, nothing unusual about that, my hair was fairly long, but the thing that caught my eye was the color, it was distinctly dark red.
“The hell?!”
The words slipped from my mouth before I could even contemplate them, what was even more disturbing was that the voice I heard did not sound like my own, I was used to my own voice, and I’d heard it played back to me, I thought I kind of sounded like a bit of a twat, but the voice that just came into my ears was higher pitched.
“Uuhhh..”
There it was again, that foreign voice slipping out of my mouth without much thought behind it. I needed answers, and I wouldn’t get them wrapped up in my coat. I moved my arms, flailing myself out of the top after forcing the buttons that were clasping it shut open. My eyes went wide as my ‘arm’ came out into view. That wasn’t an arm, nor a leg, it wasn’t an appendage I was used to in the slightest. It looked like a leg, a horse’s leg. But not any horse I’d ever seen, though I was no expert on equines. I sort of just started at it, far longer than I should have for sure, then I moved it, I moved it. It moved when I tried to move my arm. This was my arm. This leg was somehow my arm. I think I wanted to scream, but consciously, no sound came out, I should have been absolutely horrified, but I wasn’t? It was an odd sensation, to look at a body part you controlled, that was under your control, and to have so very little understanding of how it could be under your control, much less masquerading as another part of your body. Of course, there wasn’t much else to do. I kept working my way out, crawling out onto the snow in front of me. My other arm was also a leg, and my legs were legs. My torso, was still a torso? I didn’t know horse anatomy, I hadn’t taken any biology classes, I took meteorology instead. I laid there on the snow, quickly realizing that I was not human anymore, but horse. Well, maybe horse was wrong, but definitely some kind of equine like thing. I had a tail, dark red and dark purple. It draped down and sort of came up in a light curl at the end, my hair, well, my head hair, mane? I think that’s what it was on a horse, was also dark red and dark purple. The split seemed to be right down the middle, and much like my tail, this main seemed fairly curly as well, give that I had curly hair before, though brown curly hair, the fact that was curly still, well, it was a thing to be sure, I just didn’t know if it was because I had curly hair or if this is just how horse hair worked wherever I was.
Now, as for my body, well I was yellow, I had yellow fur, sort of like a lemon yellow? At least that was my best guess for now. Either way I was now aware of what happened to me as I laid there on the snowy ground. It was actually really cold there on the ground, so my first thought was to stand up now that I wasn’t weighed down by my clothing. So, up I went, pushing myself onto my legs, er, hind legs I guess, I stood. While this felt correct, it also felt incorrect. My arms, or rather, my front legs, felt extremely heavy, unlike arms that felt natural to have at my side, these felt like they wanted to stand on their own, you know, like legs do. Not to mention I felt an odd pressure on my back and neck in this position, sure I could maintain it, but something told me I shouldn’t bother, not to mention my head felt unbalanced standing like this, way too top heavy. So, putting my arms out, I fell onto them. Standing on all four of these legs was weird, but also not weird. It felt wrong and right to do, my body wasn’t complaining about this posture for sure anyway. Now I had to figure out how to move. Just staying upright was rather easy, four legs and all that. Even just lifting any one of my legs, I found it pretty easy to keep balance just by shifting my weight onto the other three. Now was the time for movement. At first, I moved one leg at a time, you know, something I was used to, except I had to move twice as many legs. Right front, left front, right back, left back. I was moving, but I wasn’t doing it at a good pace to be sure. The cold snow pushing against my feet, hooves, was a constant reminded that I needed to learn how to move. It was morning, as evidenced by the sun shining overhead, though still plenty of clouds, and this new fur thing was keeping me warm enough, but I needed to go somewhere, I was apparently just in the middle of the woods, woods that were obviously nowhere near where I had been before either, given that I had to be somewhere new. I don’t know what happened when I got hit by that lightning bolt, but either I died and this was some kind of afterlife situation, or I somehow got sent somewhere. Either way, both were better than being dead I supposed. Eventually I changed my tactics, I thought back to being a human again, how I moved when I walked, one foot, than the other, but I couldn’t just rely on that here, could I? I never had to worry about where my arms were when I walked before, it was its own thing, they just went back and forth as I walked... Wait. Usually when I walked the opposite arm would swing outwards to the foot, I put outwards, left foot, right arm, right foot, left arm.
So, I tried it out. I was definitely unsteady at first, having to balance on just two hooves on opposite ends led to my falling over a few times, but soon I got the hang of it. Sure, I was walking a little stiffly, but I was walking, or whatever it is you call a horse moving. Galloping? No, that was running, whatever. I had mastered movement, for now anyway. With my somewhat stiff gait I went back and looked through my belongings. My backpack and coat were still here, but my clothes were gone, no pants, shirt, shoes, socks, underwear, nor my hat, scarf, and gloves. Not that most of it would fit properly on this new form of mine, but it was still odd, why the backpack and coat only? Well if anything that was the best-case scenario, the coat and backpack had all my stuff in it. Of course, opening it was another matter, I didn’t even try to grab it with my hooves, instead using my hooves to hold them down, reaching with my mouth to grab the zipper and pulling them open. Emptying out my stuff, I had lint, good start. A small tube of chapstick, a pen, geography homework, a blank notebook, a usb stick, half a bottle of Mt. Dew, and one strip of mint gum. I threw most of it back into my backpack. I chugged the remainder of the Mt. Dew, thankfully I was rather adept at opening things with my mouth. From there I used the bottle to scoop up as much fresh snow as I could, given I could feel thirst and such, I figured I might still need water. I managed to get a little more than half of the bottle filled with snow, which was good enough for me, so I shut it, and threw it into the backpack. After that I went ahead and managed to get my coat back on, which was surprisingly easy, my front legs fit through the top well enough, and I flipped it over to drape my back, which it covered entirely, I was definitely smaller than I used to be for sure. After doing the same with my backpack, slinging it over my back, I spent a little while working out how to walk without it jostling too much and falling off, in the end I managed to pull the straps as tight as I could to stop it from falling off. From there, I left, I was in the middle of the forest, and how would anyone know where to find me? No, there was no sitting and waiting for rescue, I’d just have to hope I wasn’t that deep in this forest, and that it wasn’t huge. Hopefully if I just kept heading in one direction, I couldn’t see over the treetops, which was weird, it was the middle of winter, and I didn’t see swathes of pine trees, so why did so many of these tree’s still have leaves? I put the thought aside and looked to the sun, deciding to head north.
Well this was, interesting. It didn’t take me long before I felt like this forest was, not great. Like, this wasn’t a normal ‘forest’ I felt like I was being watched by it somehow, maybe that was just me being paranoid, or perhaps that was a byproduct of whatever had happened to bring me here. I didn’t know where I was, were there other horse people? Is just like where they lived? Why did I end up in a forest? Too many questions zero answers, and nothing to think about but them. It was during my conversation with my inner thoughts that I suddenly heard something. The sound of something snapping, instantly my ears swiveled towards the nose with my head following suit in another moment. I didn’t see anything, but I couldn’t not hear that, whatever it had been. Picking up the pace I began moving as quickly as I could, not wanting to stay around and find out what caused that snapping sound, maybe a branch with too much snow just snapped suddenly, who knows, I didn’t. Eventually after running for a bit, I had to slow down, coughing a little, I wasn’t in great shape, or well, I hadn’t been in great shape, sure I walked to and from school but I hardly did anything else, and I might have had asthma, we never did get that checked, but regardless of how I used to feel, it seemed my physical ineptitude had transferred over to this new form at least a bit, since this is exactly how crappy I felt after a slight run before. So, after I coughed my lungs out for a hot minute, I stopped and nosed around some of the snow, deciding to simply lick it off of the ground where it looked like it was fresh and undisturbed. With my coat on I actually felt kind of hot, probably due to having fur now, so the ice-cold snow melting into water inside my stomach felt nice. All this walking, around, I was certainly getting tired of it, but I had to keep going, I wasn’t just going to stumble upon civilization by eating snow. Heading through a few bushes I overstepped and tumbled over into a new clearing, except it wasn’t a sunny little clearing like the one I’d come from, this one was predominantly dominated by a large tree in the middle, on closer inspection, it was actually a house of some kind, built into the tree.
There were little jars hanging from it’s branches, which were devoid of snow. There was no snow around the tree either, at least not directly, like there had never been snow there, or perhaps it had been melted, or well, moved. There were also a few, masks, one off to the side, and the other hanging over the doorway.
“Interesting.”
I came closer to the tree, the first signs of civilized life and it looked like some kind of witch doctor lived here. Maybe it was just an aesthetic, but given I was now a small horse, well, anything was possible right? I stood in front of the door for some time, wondering if I should knock, I mean it could belong to anyone, there could be a crazy hermit living here ready to murder me. Or it could be a regular person who happened to like this sort of stuff. In the end, I figured why not, I didn’t have many other options, and if I walked past here without even trying to see if someone was here, well, I’d probably regret it in five miles when I was still wandering aimlessly through the forest. So, I knocked, a bit quietly all things considered, I was kind of an awkward sort. After waiting around for a moment or so I heard noises, someone approaching, the door opening.
Standing there in front of me was quite obviously a small zebra, or well, maybe a normal sized zebra? It looked like a zebra and was much bigger than me, that was the point. But the next point was what she said.
“~~Hello my little friend, what business is yours here at my end~~?”
Of course, it was complete gibberish. Couldn’t understand a word she said, figures, I get turned into a horse, and I don’t get to understand horse language. But whomever this was, they were looking at me expectantly, expecting and answer I presume, so I replied.
“Hi. I’m Kayla.”
It was actually somewhat humorous to see the zebra’s reaction, what was once a polite smile shifted into an annoyed frown.
“~~While humorous it may be, I don’t take kindly to those who mock me~~.”
“Look lady.” She sounded like a female anyway. “I don’t know what you’re saying, I can’t understand you.”
For emphasis I shook my head and used one hoof to point to my ear to try and get the point across. The zebra’s look shifted, from annoyance to concern, stepping back, the zebra pointed into her home, motioning for me to come in, which I did, against my brain’s better judgement. The door was shut behind me and I surveyed the home I was now in. It was pretty simple, a single wide area with the walls being filled with shelves of jars and other stuff, the center of this place was dominated by a large cauldron, which was currently bubbling with some substance, and was the main reason for the heat in this place. In fact, it was kind of sweltering, I’d remove my coat, but I honestly didn’t want to try doing it in front of the new person I’d just met.
“~~The language you speak sounds very neat, but unfortunately I understand not a peep~~.”
I wanted to answer her, but honestly it seemed pretty fruitless, besides, she was already walking around this place, I could see her grabbing various things and I didn’t know what she was doing, so I just held my silence and watched. It looked like some kind of chemistry was going on, since she was grabbing various powders and stuff, but it could just be that she was cooking something, how would I know? Regardless, eventually she got done with whatever she was measuring over on the nearby counter, and she went over and scooped out some of what was in the cauldron into a small bottle, like the stereotypical potion bottle, I thought it was cool anyway.
“~~We may find out just what you think, all you must do is try out this drink~~.”
Suddenly I’m being handed a bottle of deep blue liquid. She’d put the powder stuff into the bottle and shaken it about, it looked kind of mesmerizing in a way, as it swirled in the bottle. But I didn’t have much time to think about that as it seemed she wanted me to drink whatever it was. I don’t know if I should, what if it was poison? Well if this zebra wanted me dead, I couldn’t really stop her, now could I? She was twice my size; she could just force me to drink. Sitting on my butt I used both my hooves to grasp the bottle, sniffing it, the smell coming off it was like a thick woody smell. I shrugged a little and lifted the bottle to my maw and began to drink it down. It didn’t taste good, or bad, it was kind of like drinking paper honestly, so not all that pleasant. Once I finished drinking it, the zebra took the bottle from me.
“~~It should take effect in a matter of moments, as long~~ as you don’t react poorly to the components.”
I had to do a double take and shake my head before responding.
“Wait, what did you say?”
“It is not important, what I just said, but better that we can converse now instead. My name is Zecora, and this is my home, I daresay you are far from where you roam?”
I got back up onto four legs and said.
“Yes you could say that, wow, that was like, a real magic potion or something, I can understand you and you can understand me, incredible. I mean I guess I should have known something was up, what with how I got here and all, but for actual magic to be real? Wow.”
Zecora seemed to cock her head at my speech as she said.
“Hm? A unicorn surprised by magic. Isn’t that a schtick.”
I looked back at her with surprise on my face as I said.
“Wait what? A unicorn? Did you just call me a unicorn?”
From here Zecora went over and picked something up, bringing it over and showing it to me. It was a mirror, aside from the fact that I could see the color of my iris now, a distinct light pink color, I was a little saddened by that, I liked having brown eyes. I could also see a spiraled yellow horn sticking out of my head, making my pink eyes go wide and causing me to utter.
“Well, look at that.”
