Everything ached, my head pounding like it was about to split open. I could feel sunlight on my skin, although it felt strange as if I had a thin sweater on. With a groan I drew a breath, feeling cool crisp air travel down my throat. My ears finally hearing something as a chorus of pained groans rose. Another breath as I steeled myself, on three I was going to force my eyes to open regardless of how bright it probably was. 3. The groans behind me grew louder. 2. I heard a sharp intake of breath. 1. My eyes opened, immediately watering as the bright sun shone straight through the trees above and directly into my sensitive retinas. With effort I tried to look around, my neck felt odd, stiff but at the same time far too flexible. Eventually, I spotted something groaning next to me, it's body rising and falling as I heard it breathing. It took a moment but I realized there were another two of the things lying nearby, although I seemed to be the only one moving.

Mentally I checked myself over, breathing was starting to hurt less with each one. I could see and hear clearly. Slowly it dawned on me that there was a dark grey something in the middle of my vision, tentatively I tried to lift a hand to poke it only to see a charcoal grey stump lift. Distracted from the grey something I fixed my eyes on the stump, moving it about slowly. It looked almost like a hoof, and upon further investigation I could see where the actual hoof started, barely darker than the fur above it. Filling that information under investigate more later I poked the shape in the middle of my vision. Feeling the slightly cool hoof press against what my brain identified was my nose and a moment later I realized my mouth was right there as well.

"Muzzle? Is that the term?" I muttered to myself, hearing my voice and letting out an involuntary sigh of relief. I still sounded like me. I felt my ears swivel as behind me someone gasped. My head turned almost 180 degrees as I looked over my shoulder to see a horse? Wait no it has a horn. To see a unicorn staring back at me, it's lips moving slowly before it finally spoke.

"A-asher?"

I blinked, stunned as my brain tried to process. That voice belonged to Katty, one of my best friends. Why was it coming out of a unicorns' mouth? At the same time, I had a muzzle and a glance revealed the small horse body my head was attached to.

"Katty? Is that you" I asked, my voice the only thing breaking the silence that fell through the forest. She blinked before slowly nodding, tears welling up at the corners of her vast silver eyes. Her ears pressed flat to her skull as my brain immediately recognized that she was terrified.

We remained still for a moment, her tears building as the other two creatures started to stir. A grunt escaping my lips as I stood, or tried to. My forelegs slipping from beneath me as I flopped forwards. I tried to visualize the movement in my head, setting my hooves beneath me before easing myself up.

By the time I'd managed to take my first shaky step towards Katty, the other two creatures had opened their eyes. One looked similar to Katty, except two small wings adorned its side compared to Katty's horn. Both of them had cream coats, and orange manes although with a second look I could see streaks of red through Katty's mane. The Other creature looked different from all three of us, large wings covering most of its body, and from what I could see it appeared to be a Griffon.

Finally, I staggered over to Katty, collapsing next to her and draping a foreleg around her neck, trying to comfort her as best I could. The cogs inside my head turned as I felt Katty press her muzzle against my neck. The similarities in their appearances could mean that it wasn't just me and Katty who were here.

"Maya? You in there?" I asked, looking at the Pegasus lying on the forest floor. She looked back at me before smiling and nodding quickly. I felt Katty's ears perk up at that reveal, springing to her hooves and with impressive grace staggering over to her sister before burying her face into Maya's surprisingly fluffy looking neck.

"Can't you be quiet? I'm tryna nurse a hangover here" the Griffon complained, his voice identifying him as the last member of our usual group, Benjamin or Tibbs as we called him. Tibbs' head lifted and turned to look at us, his wings moving to reveal a muscular body. He stood and looked at us as I couldn't help but feel unnerved by his gaze, my eyes drawn to the sharp talons at the end of his forelegs. Following my eyes, Tibbs looked down and I saw his beak curl into a smug grin, flexing his talons experimentally.

"Asher, where are we? What happened?" Maya asked, her voice clearly a forced calm. The occasional muffled sniffle or sob coming from Katty. I didn't know, but we were in the middle of a forest with no clear path to civilization if that existed wherever we were. I stood, far more stead now that I figured where to put my hooves. I could feel soft grass beneath them which was a small shock. With a shake I looked to my friends, Maya and Tibbs watching intently, clearly hoping I'd have some kind of plan.

"I don't know where we are, as to what happened? The last I remember we were in Tibbs' car headed to London. We can deal with that later though, priority needs to be survival." I announced, training taking over as I tried to locate the sun, finding hovering at what either was 7 am or 7 pm.

"Food, Shelter, and clean water. We won't survive long exposed in a forest, I'm assuming this place has wolves or something of the sort." Maya seemed shocked before nodding slowly, one of her wings unfurling to cover Katty's head and body. I tried to walk over to Tibbs, stumbling a little before finding the right rhythm to move my hooves. He rose onto his hind legs, taking one step forwards before collapsing backward with a squawk of panic. The soft pomph sound of his feathered and furry body hitting the ground was followed by a snort of laughter from Maya. Time felt like it slowed as we watched Tibbs flap his wings against the ground, struggling to get onto his paws again. Eventually, he managed to roll over, standing again and shaking himself like a dog.

"These things are frustrating" he complained to nobody in particular. I attempted to pat his shoulder only to faceplant straight into the ground, a bolt of pain shooting through my head. Sitting back on my haunches I reached up and felt my head, realizing that I had a horn like Katty. Maya and Katty’s laughter rang out across the clearing, Tibbs helped pull me to my hooves. My ears swiveled in the direction of the trees around us, a shiver rolled down my spine as I realized what was wrong.

“What happened to the birds?” I asked, my voice alone in the silence rapidly surrounding us. Katty and Maya stood up quickly, moving over to my side and pressing against me. Despite the building sense of concern, I felt slightly comforted by their behavior. Tibbs walked to us, his eyes moving from the three ponies pressing themselves together to the treeline around us. My brain worked slowly, processing wilderness survival training for what we could actually use. Predatory animals would probably be waking up or at least moving through the woods, we needed something that would keep them away or at least make them hesitant to approach. A fire would be our best option, but we didn’t have anything to start a fire with. Katty, Maya, and I jumped in surprise as Tibbs let out a shrill cry, the sound echoing through the trees around us. The silence of the forest fell over us again, seconds passing by as I felt the fur by my neck start to rise. The silence was broken much to our relief by a series of chirps of birdsong.

The sense of panic that was building in my stomach relaxed as I shook my head, trying to think clearly. Katty blinked as she realized she had pressed herself against me, I could tell she was confused. “I think that was caused by a panic response? Herd instinct and stuff” Maya mumbled before stepping away from me.

For the first time I tried to take in our surroundings properly, we weren’t on too steep of an incline but heading downhill might bring us towards the edge of the forest. I could hear the sound of water from downhill as well if I focused on it, both of my ears facing ahead and twitching slightly. Katty and Maya’s ears soon swiveled to listen and I could see their expressions change as they realized what I had heard. Tibbs stood by us, his face flickering between confusion and annoyance.

“Mind letting me in one whatever it is you’ve heard? Or should I say you’ve herd” He laughed at his own joke, the sound coming out like a mixture between laughter and birdsong. I cracked up at this, the friend I'd always known as the bulky restaurant manager for arguably the toughest place in town was now a Griffon cracking bad jokes. The whole situation was surreal and once we weren’t preoccupied with survival the whole insanity of this situation would finally hit me.

“We can hear water downhill, if we find that we might be able to follow it to a town or village” I confidently stated, putting on a bit of bravado to try and calm my friend’s nerves. It was bizarre, I could practically feel Maya and Katty’s agitation and fear, presumably because horses and ponies were herd animals of some kind? It could also explain why Tibbs’ gaze made me shiver when he first looked at me.

I started to try and trot downhill, focusing on getting my hooves on stable ground as each step risked a faceplant. The soft grass and occasional moss-covered rock beneath my hooves were surprisingly easy to trot on, my hooves not sliding when I stepped on a rock. Progress towards the water was slow, we could hear it when we stopped and focused to listen but it wasn’t close enough to hear otherwise. As we walked darkness continued to fall, the sun setting and lighting the sky up with gorgeous streaks of purple and orange.

We reached a clearing after another few minutes of walking and stopped. I was tired, my body was cold and I needed sleep however as we collapsed to the ground as a group I saw the night sky. My jaw dropped as I stared upwards, lost in the perfectly clear night sky. The vast inky blackness above us dotted with shining stars, twinkling almost hypnotically as I realized if I looked at the constellation above us I could clearly make out a bearded unicorn. The vast gas cloud seemingly filled in the beard as the unicorn's entire body was made out of stars, blue dwarf stars forming a massive wizard's hat on his head.

As I watched the stars I saw it moving, the entire constellation almost animated. Katty and Maya realizing what I was staring at and joining me in stargazing. The Unicorn in the sky tilting his head forward as a star at the top of his horn went supernova, the blast of light shining forth from his horn and washing away two massive dark gas clouds revealing yet more intricately arranged stars, this time an immense tree with 6 vast glowing symbols decorating it. I couldn’t tell quite what the symbols were apart from two, one was a massive Apple glowing a bright red, and the other was what appeared to be three butterflies in a tight group together.

“T-that can’t be real” I heard Tibbs mutter as we watched the night sky, as my eyes grew more used to the spectacle I sensed something else at work. Squinting to try and focus I saw ripples of dark blue light wafting through the stars, guiding the next great movement of them as I watched the Unicorn in the sky light up his horn once more before vanishing in a great flash leaving the night sky dark. Seconds passed as I watched the sky, trying to determine what was going to happen, the dark blue light was building to something and it must have been the climax.

“It’s like a firework display” Katty blurted out as we watched the sky. Our patience was finally rewarded when we saw the moon rise into position before stars around it burst to life, illuminating into the shapes of two immense horses. Crowns of yellow suns residing on their heads, long horns from the top of their heads meeting above the moon as their manes and tails were shown using four gas nebulas, two a dark blue like the light I had spotted, the dark blue dotted with white like the night sky. Whilst the larger of the two horses had three colours of its nebula mane and tail, A bright pink, light green, and soft purple. We watched as the pair of horses in the sky spread their wings, the smaller horses blue wings reaching out to mimic the larger horse's vast white wings as they remained in the sky.

“I feel like we’re missing something, they’ve stopped moving,” Tibbs said what was on all our minds. “Maybe a speech or something is going on? Like whoever is creating all that in the sky could have stopped the display to leave all eyes on them?” I answered, I’d had to attend addresses where the Station Commander hadn’t thought of that and was forced to yell over the sound of fireworks. Whoever must have been behind the stars clearly had enough intelligence not to distract their audience.

“They’re moving again!” Maya yelled as we saw the two horses move down, their heads meeting in what I think was a nuzzle before there was a burst of light and the night sky returned to some semblance of normality. Albeit with far more intricate constellations and a worrying absence of the north star. The night sky had confirmed what I was feeling, wherever we were was clearly not earth but I doubted it was even the same dimension. As the excitement faded my body sagged, tired, and desperate for rest.

“I’ll take the first watch, Ash I’ll wake you up for the second watch and that should see us through till morning,” Tibbs announced, his catlike eyes reflecting in the dark. I simply nodded before trotting over towards Maya and Katty, Maya’s free wing lifting into the air to allow me to press myself against her. As I lay down beside her, I felt her wing drape itself over my back, it was amazingly warm and soft compared to the bedding I had last time I went camping. Shuddering slightly at memories of basic training I rested my head on my forelegs and shut my eyes. “Night Kit Kat” Maya mumbled, only to hear a snort from Tibbs and me as Katty mumbled something inaudible in protest.

Author's Note

Minor revisions made as of 14/01/2021