The light of the sun crept its way through the gaps in the forest canopy and onto the eyelids and the mane of moss of the sleeping puca below, Mossy. He stirred under his makeshift blanket of branches and leaves in an attempt to get back to sleep, grumbling as he did so. After several minutes cursing the sun in his head while lazing around, Mossy tossed the blanket off himself and pushed up onto his hooves.
The little puca then began to stretch himself out, dropping his front half down with his forelegs out in front of him and sticking his hindquarters into the air while his leopardine tail curled back on itself. He then repeated this, except with his front and back half in the opposite positions. And when he felt that he had worked the sleep out of himself, he yawned widely, showing off his large canines and pushed his mossy mane out of his face with a hoof.
Mossy shook himself like a dog to dislodge any dirt or leaves that might have stuck onto his coat from his blanket or the ground while he slept before pounding the tightly interwoven branches that served as his hooves against the ground to knock out anything that might have gotten caught in between them. He then turned to walk towards a large stone pine. When he arrived, Mossy shifted himself into a feathered serpent and flew up to the large crotch in the tree’s canopy formed from several limbs.
When he landed, he shifted back into his original form and walked over to a large hole in one of the limbs. Once there, Mossy removed the large, wadded-up mass of blankets and towels he used to fill the hole before reaching in and retrieving a large book.
A look of contentment spread across his muzzle as he set the book down on the blankets and looked at the cover. It was a book he had received as a gift from his best friend that detailed all the creatures of Equestria. It was supposed to be a birthday present for him, but since neither of them knew when he’d been born, they just decided to call the day they first met as his birthday. Since then, he had done everything he could to keep the book in immaculate condition, even risking his life once just to ensure not a drop of rain would touch it.
And today marked the seventeenth year since he had gotten this present.
Mossy always felt slightly bad when he looked at the mass of cloth he used to plug the hole in the tree. He had stolen it from his friend’s home after he’d left to try to protect the book from the elements. Before that, he’d always have to transform into a creature that could produce something that could seal the hole, but he hated doing that because every time he would have to destroy the seal to get to the book, undoing all of his hard work.
Mossy opened the book to a random page and began to look over it with determination and excitement plastering his face. He had opened the book to a section detailing a penghou. Focusing, Mossy closed his eyes in concentration and allowed his body to shift into the canine in question. After he felt that his flesh had finished rearranging, Mossy reopened his eyes to glimpse at himself, happy to see that he had successfully become a black dog without a tail.
To make sure he had transformed correctly, Mossy jumped into the air and dove straight down into the tree. However, instead of his forepaws connecting with the tree and stopping him, he phased right through the wood, entering the tree as if it were nothing more than mist. When he felt that he was fully inside the interior of the tree, Mossy focused on his surroundings, feeling every tree in this forest though the invisible bond they all shared, eventually concentrating on exiting a tree on the edge of the forest.
He walked forward in the semi-void surrounding him and watched as he reemerged into the real world. At that instant, he knew that he had been successful, seeing grassy hills in front of him that led to the town his best friend would go to with his family every so often.
Satisfied with his success, Mossy doubled back to the tree’s interior, returning to its void, and jumping forward. He reemerged from the tree he’d started from and landed next to his book. He once again shifted back into what he liked to call his true form before grabbing the book and beginning to put it back in the hole.
Whenever his birthday came, he would always pick a random creature from the book to transform into it for practice. He did this cause he wanted to impress his friend when they would surely meet again. He had studied the book extensively since receiving it, to the point that he had once written an entire entry on several sheets of paper from memory to see if he had fully memorized it. And despite all the time that had passed and the use the book had seen, it was still in pristine condition. Mossy had done everything over the years to make sure it remained in the same state as he had received it. It was the only thing he had left that connected him to the one pony he could proudly call a ‘friend.’
It meant everything to him.
When the book was finally returned to where it belonged and the hole had been restuffed, Mossy’s stomach let out a loud rumble, demanding that he find breakfast. Mossy sighed to himself, as he shifted into a raven before flying towards his best friend’s house.
It was a short flight, as he had always preferred to live close to the house. It meant he was always close to his friend. Flying over, Mossy couldn’t help but remember the first day he had met his friend. He had been flying around as a sparrow at the time, and when his soon-to-be friend saw him land on the ground, he rushed into his house and brought out a large bag of seeds.
Although his parents weren’t happy with him, Mossy felt an immediate bond with the colt. After that, he made sure that he returned every day to see his friend. He would always hang around the house and listen to his friend and his family, or play with him whenever he could. It was on one of those days when a storm was over the forest and soaking everything in freezing rain that he finally revealed to his friend what he was.
He had been out in the cold and the rain all night, huddled under branches and leaves as his body slowly lost more and more of its own warmth, but he struggled through, needing to endure so that he could visit his friend again. After he arrived at the house, knocking on his friend’s bedroom window as a crow, and was let in, he had barely made it past his friend before he had blacked out from hypothermia.
When he came to, he noticed several things instantly. Firstly, he was laying in front of a large fire, feeling warmer than he ever had before. Next, he was not transformed. He was in his pony like form with the leopard tail wooden hooves, the one he always felt was the most comfortable staying in. And finally, there was someone laying against his side.
When he was at last able to process all of this, he panicked. He jumped up and away from the pony laying against him and ran towards what he later learned were drapes and hid behind them. Seconds later, Mossy heard the sound of someone slowly getting up, followed by the sound of hooves softly connecting with the floor, causing it to creak. These hoofsteps ever so slowly drew closer and closer to where he was hiding.
When he felt he had gotten close enough, the pony stopped and told him not to be scared, that he wasn’t trying to hurt him. Mossy recognized the voice as his friend’s, which only caused him to try to shy further away out of fear. He’d felt that he was going to be rejected, chased away now that he knew that he was not a normal pony. None of his friend’s family looked like he did, and after all the time he’d spent around them, he had never seen one of them transform.
However, contrary to his fears, when he said this, when he was forcing the words out through frightened tears, his friend said he thought him being able to transform was really cool, and that him not being a pony made him unique. Caught by surprise, Mossy didn’t know how to react. Deafening silence filled the air, broken only by the crackling of the fire and the drone of rain hitting the windows and ground outside, forcing Mossy to process what his friend had just said.
Ever so slowly, Mossy crept out from the back of the curtain, his muscles strained and ready to spring backward should the colt be lying to him. But, the foal who had brought him here and had been sitting beside him in front of the fire was merely standing there and watching him intently, with a toothless smile on his muzzle and his head slightly cocked.
After he had fully emerged, the colt who had helped him introduced himself as Kind Spirit, before sticking out a hoof. Mossy hesitated, his eyes staring down blankly at Kind’s extension. Seeing the doubt in Mossy’s eyes, Kind explained that this was a hoofshake, and that he should do the same thing. Mossy did so, but with a moment of contemplation, allowing Kind to grab his hoof with his own and slowly go up and down with them.
When he finished shaking Mossy’s hoof, Kind let go before asking if he could touch his tail. Not sure what was going on, Mossy nodded before he could even think through the decision. The next thing he knew, Kind was next to him, petting and holding his tail. It was so weird to have someone else touching his tail, but he just stood there in partial shock as Kind oohed and aahed at his tail while stroking it, seemingly marveling at just how different the tail was to his own, and how it would bend and flick, giving away subtle hints to Mossy’s discomfort. After admiring the strange tail Mossy had, he moved on to examining his mane of greenish moss, but upon noticing how uncomfortable Mossy looked, he invited him to come back and sit with him by the fire. The two of them laid next to each other in front of the fire after this and talked, mostly about his fascinating ability to transform, but also on what it was like to live in a house, or a manor as his friend called it.
That had been a little over twenty years ago, yet the memory was still as clear as if it had happened yesterday.
Mossy shook his head vigorously to clear his mind when he finally reached his friend’s house. He always had time to remember the great times with his friend after he filled his stomach with some food.
When Mossy landed at the back door of his friend’s house, he shifted back to give the door a slight push, causing the door to open quietly, revealing the familiar, dark, and dusty interior. He trotted inside and closed the door gingerly before beginning to make his way towards the kitchen.
Walking into his friend’s home uninvited never felt right to Mossy, as his gut always told him that what he was doing was violating his friend’s trust as though he was taking advantage of him. It made him feel awful to do this, but over the years, he had learned the hard way that he needed to store his food in his friend’s home if he didn’t want to have to hunt or scavenge for food every day.
When he arrived in the kitchen, he immediately went to the pantry and opened the door. Along the bottom-two shelves was all of the food that he had collected. He grabbed some mushrooms, wild cabbage leaves, and dried meat and popped them in his mouth before closing the door and hopping onto a counter to eat.
It was awfully quiet in the manor, as it always seemed to be. This was another reason why Mossy didn’t like the manor all that much, as he felt that it was too detached from the nature he was so used to. However, Mossy resolved to just finish his breakfast so he could go to his friend’s room to reminisce.
Mossy slugged down his simple meal and quickly trotted out of the kitchen and towards the stairs. He passed by the front door on the way and smiled tranquility to himself at the memories he’d had there. The outside of the door had a lot of cool, artistic carvings on it, and he and Kind loved to come up with stories about what they were about.
He would have to remember to clean it this week so it wouldn’t get damaged. It meant too much.
He made a beeline for his friend’s room when he got upstairs, and when he arrived, he quietly pushed the door open to reveal the messy room of a ten-year-old colt. Toys, drawings, and games littered the floor haphazardly, but Mossy didn’t care; this is how his friend left this room, and this was how he was going to keep it.
Mossy walked into the room and looked at all the toys and games he would play with his friend when he would come over. He always made sure to be careful though so that Kind’s parents would never see him. He was always afraid of them, especially after they had scolded Kind over feeding him as a sparrow.
However, what he was most interested in were Kind’s drawings. He went over to the stack of papers on a chest next to his friend’s bed and sat down to look at them.
The first image was of him and Kind in front of the fireplace on the night he had revealed himself. It was also the day he’d gotten his name. He’d never had a name, nor even any parents as far as he could remember, and after he told Kind this, he decided to give him a name. Seeing that his mane was made out of moss, Kind decided his name should be Mossy, and he agreed.
Mossy flipped to the next image, revealing it to be one of him and Kind going through the forest, with him being a timberwolf at the time. Kind had shown him some books about timberwolves before this and had convinced him to take him through the woods as one. He even convinced him to let him ride on his back, saying it would be fun to get a piggyback ride from a dog.
Remembering these days made him grin widely at how much fun they had had, showing off his fangs while letting his tail flick back and forth.
Finally, Mossy flipped to the drawing at the back, the one he liked the most, of him transformed into a cockatrice. His friend had just given him an encyclopedia describing Equestrian creatures and was encouraging him to transform into creatures with magical powers. After he successfully morphed into a cockatrice, he thought it would be funny to pretend he actually was one and stare at a robin on the ground near him. He was horrified when the robin actually turned to stone. Scared that he might have killed an innocent creature, he began to running around in a panic, thinking that his actions were permanent. Eventually, Kind was able to calm him down and show him that a cockatrice was able to undo turning a creature to stone if they just concentrated.
His friend had left with his family shortly after he had sketched that drawing, telling him that they would be back soon so that they could play with each other again.
As Mossy looked down at his friend’s drawings, remembering all the fun they had had, the smile on his muzzle slowly began to fade as his eyes started to water and his lips began to tremble. He tried to stay composed, to not give in to his sorrow yet again, but in a matter of seconds, tears were rolling down the little puca’s face uncontrollably and landing on the drawings, staining the papers.
“Please, I don't want to be alone anymore,” Mossy said between his sobs. “I… I… I want to see you again. I want to play and have fun and tell funny stories about the carvings on the door.”
He dropped the pile of drawings on the ground and curled into a fetal position on the floor while weeping into his forelegs and curling his tail around his front. His cries weren’t loud wails, but simply the quiet sobs of a broken child. Every time he came in here he would break down in tears. He hoped he would eventually be able to hold himself together when he came in here, but nothing ever changed.
When Mossy found his voice again, it was hoarse and barely more than a whisper. “I… I want to… I want to laugh again. Please, I... I miss laughing.”
Mossy curled deeper into himself as he slipped back into meek, despondent whimpers, his body having run out of tears a while ago, yet the aching of his heart refused to go away. He simply laid there on the floor of his best friend’s room and wept himself to sleep, wishing for anything to take away the hurting.
