Everything is Fine

by hyreia

Rating: teen
Tags: Slice of Life, Human, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Second Person, Original Character, Comedy
Length: 11908

You wake up a little pony. That's kind of weird but that's no excuse to be late for work!

You wake up a little pony. Like from that cartoon. That's kinda weird. How did this happen? You have a few ideas. Don't really have time to figure that out though: you need to get ready and get to work.

A story: Wake up. Eat breakfast. Shower! Get dressed and ride the bus to work so can go to that unnecessary meeting.

So, a pretty normal day, really. Besides the pony thing. Everything is going to be fine.

Published 2022-11-10 07:10:00 UTC
Last updated 2022-11-10 07:10:00 UTC

Everything will be fine

Your screeching alarm brings you out of your uneasy dreams about blood contracts with chaos demons and blue, interdimensional winged unicorn goddesses. The first thing you notice is you’re in bed cuddling that silly stuffed my little pony toy that came in the mail yesterday without a return address. Except it’s a little bigger in your hands now. Wait... where did your hands go?

You look down at where your hands used to be and instead of your hands you see hard hooves. What used to be your arms are covered in the same light orange coat as the plushie you were just cuddling. You sit up to search your bed for where your hands went. Your search is interrupted by a huge lock of orange-red hair that falls across your face. You brush it aside with one of your appendages. You graze your muzzle with your hoof as you do.

Light orange fur, orange-red mane, little muzzle.

You examine your little pony plushie resting on your pillow. You match now. Her irises are yellow so you assume yours are as well.

You’re too tired to deal with this shit right now.

You drag yourself to the edge of your bed towards your blaring alarm. Your covers seem a little heavier because of how much smaller you are now; your bed dwarves you.

You can just barely stretch out far enough across your nightstand to hit the big snooze button on top of your alarm with one of your hooves. It finally shuts up. At least for nine more minutes.

You think you’re hungover from last night. You’re not sure what the alcohol percentage of that Chinese liquor you drank last night was. The guy in China Town who sold it to you didn’t seem to understand you. The weird generic aspirin you took for the ensuing headache from it didn’t seem that effective either. Then the weird takeout from that shady vegetarian restaurant wasn’t a great idea either, according to your gut this morning.

Really, what the fuck is wrong with you? You just need to stop all this risky behavior. Who knows what could happen.

You roll over onto your huge pillow and pull your mini me close to your body for more snuggling. Your plushie is so soft. Your pillow is so soft. The way your covers tickle the fur on your body puts your mind at ease. You feel your tail shift away from your legs as you get comfortable again.

As you drift off back to sleep the revelation that you have a tail doesn’t shock you but puts you at ease. You suspect you look just like your plush so it makes sense you have a tail. Just like the hooves and mane make sense. You don’t need to check what you look like, you already know you look like your new cuddle buddy. You even know your eyes are yellow. This transformation should be worrying you but you’re still very tired and very comfortable; you can deal with it in a minute. Everything is fine.

Your alarm clock goes off again. You’re still a My Little Pony. In the dim light of your apartment you can see your little pony smiling at you with her perfect little smile and her beautiful eyes. You admire her cute freckles. You must have cute freckles now. You look into her beautiful eyes with your own beautiful eyes and return her perfect little smile with your own perfect little smile. Your covers are so heavy. Your bed is impossibly comfortable. You roll over to hit snooze one more time and come back to cuddle your pony plushie that’s almost a quarter of your size.

You can’t hit snooze anymore. You know when it goes off next you have to get up to get ready for work or else you’re going to be late to the office. Shit, you still need to deal with this ‘pony thing’ too. You know you should probably get up now so you can have a few more minutes to figure it out but you would rather sleep more.

You make your last nine minutes count and be the best big spoon to your plushie possible. The way her minky fabric rubs against your chest fluff has a mind-wiping effect. Dreamless sleep comes to you easily again…

…but your alarm wakes you up again. So soon? You could have sworn you just drifted off to sleep a few seconds ago. The only thing that makes you sit up is seeing the time on the alarm clock. If you don’t get out of bed soon you’re going to be late. You have to get your day started! Pony or not.

Right, you’re a character straight off of My Little Pony now, somehow. That’s kind of weird. Wonder how that happened? It’s probably fine. Wasn’t that happening to people occasionally? Or was that your dream? Or was it in a story you read? You can’t quite remember now and the alarm clock going off isn’t helping.
Reaching over to the alarm clock one more time wasn’t any harder but sliding the alarm from on to off took slightly more coordination with your hoof than just hitting snooze. Then again, it always took more coordination with a hand too.

You get out of bed back legs first- -and fall a good foot onto the floor and break your fall with your forelegs, collapsing in a heap.

Right, everything’s bigger now so your bed is more high up. Or more accurately you’re smaller now. You try to stand bipedally on your back legs but find your spine just doesn’t do that anymore. After a certain angle standing upright your significantly thicker and shorter thighs start to ache like they don’t bend that way.

Oh well. No reason for walking on two legs anyway: you have four legs now. Your spine curves upwards in a way you can lift your head up and look forward easily enough. The new positioning and lengths of all your body parts is a bit weird but not unlike how your coordination changes when you’re drunk.
Before you even take one step though, you have to stop to think about how a horse does that. It shouldn’t be that hard: a newborn horse can do it.

You cautiously shuffle all four legs forward little by little. Then take more confident-sized shuffles. The natural pattern to how you start moving your limbs reminds you of bear crawls. You were always bad at those because your legs were too long then. Now with all four limbs the same length it was just as easy as crawling on all fours. Except, now, it felt more like tiptoeing than crawling.

You lift a front leg up and take more of a step than a shuffle. Then the other front leg follows. Then the back in the same pattern. Then you notice as one fore leg goes forward you it’s easier if its back leg follows shortly after. The legs on your other side are following the same pattern but are halfway behind in step. The pattern repeats itself as you move towards the bathroom in your tiny apartment for your morning piss.

You put your front hooves up onto the counter to lift yourself up towards the light switch in the bathroom. When you hoof it on you’re familiarly blinded like always but it’s even brighter today. You flinch your eyes shut. Pony eye sensitivity? Hung over sensitivity? Both?

You stand there for a bit leaning on the counter as you adjust to the brightness through your eyelids. When you finally open them you see yourself in the mirror.

Your eyes really are pretty. Your irises are spring yellow and the faint brown streaks in them immediately remind you of sunflowers. Your large black pupils aren’t hurting the imagery either. Your eyes are fucking huge in general. The array of long black eyelashes arranged around your eyes emphasizes the size even further.

Sure enough the freckles are there on your cheeks just like on your plushie, somehow standing out against your light orange fur. Wasn't there a cartoon character that kind of looked like you? She was blonde and had a hat though. Your fiery orange-red mane desperately needs to be tamed with a brush. You know just how you want to brush it too: your pony wears it down the right side of her face. Doing it the same to your mane would look ‘right’ in your mind.

But first back to business: you look over at your toilet. The giant porcelain throne is too big to stand in front of. And now that you thought about it you weren’t sure where your junk went.

You look underneath yourself to look for it but don’t see anything beyond your little belly; you really ought to stop drinking so much.

You carefully lean on one foreleg and two back legs to use your other foreleg to probe around. There has to be something there, right? Your plushie didn’t have genitalia or an anus but you could clearly feel the urge to piss rising. Surely whatever this was didn’t forget the plumbing.

You think you find your balls but when your hoof brushes across two sensitive, little nipples you realize the mounds aren’t testicles.

You’re so close to pissing yourself but you still don't know where the piss is going to come out. The urge to piss is rising from the urgency of how close you are. You try flexing your dick and find something respond back. It’s way back there and smaller than you expected. Good enough!

You climb onto the toilet seat and practically fall in from how small your ass is. From the shock of nearly falling in, your muscles relax and you start pissing while still stuck in the toilet seat. You’re pissing and you still can’t find your dick. You apparently don’t have balls now either.

“Ah fuck, I’m a girl now,” you say aloud as all the clues add up. The higher, girlier voice you hear saying the words confirms your suspicions as you finish emptying your bladder.

It takes a minute to push yourself out from your toilet with your forelegs but you thankfully didn’t actually get stuck. You flush then examine your face in the mirror again. You just assume something like your gender couldn’t change even if you became a little pony but now that you look at yourself it was pretty obvious even from your front end you were female. It just didn’t register to you because all you saw when you looked in the mirror was ‘you’ and you just figured ponies would look kind of girly regardless?

“Well,” you say to yourself in your new register. You think to yourself about how you can possibly deal with this circumstance...

And nothing comes to mind. So with nothing else to do you decide to continue your routine like normal and get ready for work. Breakfast is next! Some food will help you think of something. You walk out of your bathroom and towards the kitchenette area of your tiny studio apartment.

You don’t feel like cooking anything and you probably don’t have time so you decide on cereal. You should be able to get the milk out of the fridge fine enough but the bowls and cereal are high above you in cupboards above the counters. Are you even four foot tall? Maybe? Your small height finally sinks in. They seem impossibly high up as if you’re the height of a small child.

So you do exactly what you did as a small child when you needed to get into the top cupboards: you push a barstool over and use it to climb onto the counter. Once you’re all four hooves onto the counter you find your head just clears the ceiling. You try to grip the cupboard door to open it and find your hoof comes up five fingers short.

Right, no fingers.

You nudge the cupboard with the bowls open with your muzzle then gently bite down on a bowl. Then, carefully, you carry it in your mouth across the cold stovetop to the other cupboard. With your mouth full you stop to think what else you have to use to get this one open. You find yourself naturally sitting down to think... and realize with your weight off your front hooves they’re now free to manipulate things with them. With just enough coordination you get the cupboard open with your hooves and set the box of store-brand cornflakes down on the counter with your front legs.

You sit the bowl down next to your cereal box and fiddle with the top for a bit until you get the loose flaps open. You carefully hold it between both hooves as you pour the cornflakes into your bowl. You pour way more than you meant to but that isn’t as bad as the flakes you spilled onto the counter. You try to sweep them up into your hoof but you have no fingers to grasp and no palm to sweep them into. Trying to pick them up just smashes them a bit.

Welp.

You lick the spilled cornflakes off your countertop and get a bit of dust and a faint salty, chemical taste along with it. You chew on your spilled, contaminated flakes as you push the flaps of the box shut again then stuff the box back into the cabinet so you can close that back. You look down at your very full bowl of dried cornflakes. You’re almost there!

You grip the rim of the bowl with your mouth and step carefully around your burners back to the side of the counter with the barstool you used to get up here. Confidently, you close the other cupboard with the plates and bowls shut with one hoof and then eye your barstool.

You stare down at your barstool from the counter for a few seconds to figure out how to get down now.
You place one foreleg onto the stool, then the other, careful not to spill your cereal. With the bowl filling almost your entire bottom half of your vision you can’t see where your legs are now. As slowly as you can, you move one back leg off the counter towards the stool... and find your other back leg can’t stay very far behind from the rest of your body. Your entire body moves forward onto the bar stool. Your much more horizontal body.

The forward momentum carries you forward and off your perch. You try to jump off but you’re too late, and already falling.

You land on the ground with a surprisingly loud thud. As you impact cornflakes explode around you and rain down everywhere. You look around shocked for a moment at the mess you made and feel relieved you didn’t just break your neck making cereal.

Oh! And there’s plenty of cereal left in your bowl! Well, that worked out.

You sit the bowl down among all the cornflakes and kick some of the mess away to clear a path to the fridge. You open it to find the milk.

…only to find no milk. You remember now you ran out of milk yesterday.

“Shit,” you try to growl. How childish your voice sounds ruins the impact of your cursing. Your anger evaporates. It’s hard to stay mad when you can’t take your own voice seriously. You sound like a cartoon character in your own head, who knows how ridiculous you’d sound to anyone else.

“Dry cereal it is then,” you accept your fate. You close the fridge back, kick some of the cornflakes on the floor out of your way and head for the couch just in front of your bed so you could eat. You remind yourself to sweep later because you know your floors aren’t clean enough to eat off of.

The only light filtering into your studio apartment right now is the faint shaft that hits the brick building a foot outside your single, large window. As you plop down on your old couch in the dark you dare to check the time again. Even if you skipped your shower, you were probably going to be late for work now. You accept that now. Better call ahead and let them know.

You dig into the dry cereal with your muzzle. The pieces tickle your nose as you lap the crunchy bits into your mouth with what seems like an appropriately longer tongue for your slightly longer face. You swallow a bit more cereal then finally climb off the couch and go grab your phone. It’s right where you left your phone last night: on the nightstand.

The hard outer part of your hoof can’t activate the touch-sensitive screen but the inner part of your hoof could. But it’s like using your palm; totally useless. After some experimenting you find to your surprise your nose works. Thank god your password is short. Once your phone is unlocked you hold the corner part of the screen down with your nose until you hear your phone beep. You pull away and look at it. The phone says it’s listening.

“Call work,” you command in your tiny, girl pony voice. After much longer than normal the phone finally shows that: yes, it is calling work. You fumble to pick up the phone until you finally just tilt your head and press your face against the phone resting on your nightstand.

You recognize the receptionist who answers the phone, Stacy. She’s hot as hell and you think you hit it off with her well enough but she’s dating Brad.

“Hey! This is Anon!” you inform her with forced enthusiasm and wait for a reply.

“Anon? Anon who?” She seems confused.

“Anonymous. I work here. I, uh, I’ve had a weird morning. Let my department know I’m going to be a little late, alright?”

“Oh… is Anon okay? Can you put him on the phone?”

“I am on the phone. This is Anon,” you tell her patiently. There’s a long pause on her line.

“Oh. Sorry, you sound a little weird. Are you feeling alright?”

“No, everything is fine. I just... woke up a little horse,” you say to your own amusement. You can almost feel the universe roll its eyes.

“You don’t sound hoarse. You sound...” she doesn’t finish her sentence. “So you’re calling in sick? Anonymous… What department are you in?”

“Software,” you remind her. “No, no, I’ll be in. I’m just... having trouble getting around. Just give me an extra hour or two,” you try to not sound too desperate. Today’s the deadline for your part of a big project and you still have a few test cases and debugs you want to run. It’s Friday and it can’t wait until Monday because your ass is already on the line.

“Alright. I’ll let your department know,” she promises. You trust her. Normally she would transfer you to let you tell your boss directly but you know because it was Friday the fuckface wouldn’t be in for a few hours anyway.

“Thanks, Stacy. See you in a bit,” you tell her and lift your head from the phone. You watch the screen to confirm the call disconnects from her end.

You pick up your phone in your mouth, as unhygienic as that is, and carry it to your couch next to your bowl of cereal.

The call bought you some time. Your team wouldn’t care about you showing up late just this once, but you still have to get there before your manager otherwise you just knew he was going to complain about your “excessive tardiness” at your year end review. You aren’t going to give that fuckface the satisfaction! Pony or not you were showing up to work today and kicking all the ass.

Without getting back onto your couch you bury your head into your cereal bowl and chow down the rest as quickly as you could. You even lick the bottom a little bit to get some of the residual powder off the bowl. Dry cereal was still damn satisfying. You wonder why you even bother with the milk. You walk your bowl over to your sink, pull yourself up onto your hind legs and drop it in.

Now it’s time to get ready for work.

You walk back into your closet-sized bathroom. Shower time. You know it will be difficult but you just can’t start your day without one.

Working the knob isn’t too hard and before you know it you have a warm shower. You climb in and just let the water do its thing to soak your long mane and tail all the way through. Once you are sure you are thoroughly wet you sit down and work your body wash open with your mouth. Thankfully it didn’t taste awful because you get some in your mouth as you squeeze some out directly onto your mesh body sponge on the ground.

You pick it up in your mouth, now having a mouthful of body wash, and move out of the direct path of the shower head as you lather your legs and stomach up. You think you wouldn’t have any good way to get your back but you’re surprised just how far around you can turn your head. You can’t get very far back but right behind your neck is oddly doable.

Waking up further, you come up with another idea and just drop your sponge onto the mat on the tub floor and roll around on it. It doesn’t quite go where you want it to go but it gets some of the rest of your back and you figure the suds will get the rest.

As you sit back up you are thankful you have a mat in your shower now because otherwise you know hooves on porcelain would be a death wish. The heat of the shower air and the pleasant scent from your body wash wake you up further. The scent is more masculine and overpowering than you remember but you probably need it to cover up smelling like a girl pony. Speaking of which…

You look down instinctively to look at your crotch… but you’re standing and there’s certainly nothing between your front legs save some wet fur…

You haven’t had a good look at your female genitals yet but you know they still need to be washed. So you just sit and grind on your mesh sponge for a bit.

The grinding feels good. The texture tickles. Some parts seem to like it more than others. Despite all the soap and water you feel dirty. You really want to experiment but you don’t have time to mess around in the shower today. If you’re still a pony when you get off work you can figure out how to masturbate tonight. Hell, if the urgent clinic has no way to turn you back you might have until they figure out a way to reverse whatever this is.

You sit and lather what felt like your ass as well then thoroughly rinse yourself until you’re satisfied your body wash was off then start on the shampoo. It’s difficult working a lather through your whole mane and tail with hooves and it seems to take a shit ton of shampoo. You’re careful not to work too much in because you know it will take even longer to work it all out. When it is finally ‘good enough’ you thoroughly rinse your mane then your tail. Both seem to take an excessive amount of time, but you have to make sure you don’t leave any shampoo in your two feet of mane and tail.

As you stand in the warm water slowly getting colder you think about how you are going to function at work. You could barely operate your phone and that had voice controls. You seriously doubt you could operate your keyboard and you certainly can’t text-to-speech code at work and operating a mouse without fingers is going to be a bitch.

As you run your hoof through your mane to test for any remaining shampoo you examine the size of your hoof. You brainstorm what you could use at work as you turn around and start rinsing your tail. You find you can lift your tail up and to the side. You lower your front half to help get underneath it more and line up the shower head perfectly. The water hitting below your tail feels nice.

You tell yourself to think about your work-hoof problem but your mind remains blank. After a few more minutes of squatting head down ass up you realize the sensation from the water is nice but in a sexual way.

You ‘rinse your tail’ for a few more minutes. You know you’re done showering now that you just want to play with yourself. Especially when you wonder what the ‘massage’ setting would feel like under your tail.
This doesn’t even strike you as particularly weird, wanting to masturbate like this, after all, whatever this is, it’s your body. No weirder than doing it yesterday, you reason.

Reluctantly you turn the water off. Knowing you are dripping wet you try doing what your old dog did. You shake yourself off. Water goes everywhere but your shower curtain catches the water from getting out. You stand there a little bit longer to gauge the effectiveness of shaking. You are a little drier but can still feel water running down your body. You shake a few more times even harder than the first time.

Satisfied, you get out. You are still dripping, but no more than when you were human. You dig a fresh towel out from underneath your sink and dry yourself off as best as you can. When your hooves can’t get the remaining spots you roll onto your back and roll around on it. Satisfied your fur isn’t wet anymore but just slightly damp you have to contend with your giant mops of red hair on both ends of you.

Drying it off takes forever and you know you can’t get it completely dry either with just a towel. You are going to have to let it finish drying on the way to work. Maybe if you are stuck this way for a few days you’ll invest in a blowdryer.

Satisfied with your shower you stand up on your hind legs and get a good look of yourself in the mirror. You are still an adorable orange pony with giant daffodil eyes and a mane not unlike a sunrise but now you were freshly clean. You felt good and awake now and ready to take on the day! Hopefully as you finished drying you didn’t start to smell like a horse. You shake your head forward and a little to the side hard to make part of your hair fall forward. A giant lock of hair frames the side of your face. Perfect.
You bite down on your towel on the floor and drop it onto the hamper as you step out into your apartment.

You wonder what the hell you are going to wear. You sleep in the nude but the dress code at work isn’t that kind of casual. You open your closet and look inside. You look around at your dress shirts until you spot the sky blue one that accidentally got washed and dried with the towels weeks ago and shrunk. It was one of your favorites and you just couldn’t stretch it out to ever be the same. You were holding onto it so you could use the tags to remember exactly what it was when you were going to order another.
You never got around to ordering the replacement. You don’t exactly have any spare cash at this time. It was either a new shirt or eating every day that week.

You gently pull the shirt down off its hanger and try to get it on. After a moment of awkwardness you get both front hooves through the arm sleeves.

Well holy shit. It’s only a little loose on the ‘shoulders’ since you don’t really have those anymore. Otherwise it fits pretty well.

You spend several minutes fiddling with the second from the top button until you finally give up. You’ll figure out buttons later.

Buttons…

Your problem solving skills formulate a solution to your computer interface problem. You start breaking it down into smaller parts and slowly work away at each individual part until you could mentally step back and imagine the workflow. You just need one thing to make it work.

You walk away from your closet and back towards your couch. You look into the corner of the room by your old TV. On top of a video game console a generation old is your beloved fight stick. As you approach it you see the dusty, plastic cover can still reflect a bit of light from the distant window. Across the top is the familiar form of a joystick and eight buttons.

You used to be in the fighting game community but you haven’t kept up with anything for over a year. You once placed in a regional tournament but that was a distant, teenage memory. You test your joystick and hear the familiar switches click. You can easily make a circle with it even with your hoof and and feel the octagonal gates force your positioning into the cardinal and diagonal directions. Eight directions. You test the eight buttons. Your hoof can easily hit each individually. You can even hit two next to each other.
You get a good look at your alarm clock. You are doing okay on time. Normally you would have left earlier but you have an extra or so hour today.

You drag your fight stick over to your computer and plug it in. The detected hardware wakes up the operating system from sleep mode. You’re a lazy jerk and thanked yourself for never putting a password on your computer. It’s not like anyone else was ever over.

You pick your fight stick up and sit it onto your desk. You manage to knock your open bottle of aspirin off the desk and spill white tablets everywhere. You don’t have time to pick them up. You aren’t even sure how to pick them up without using your mouth and they would probably just dissolve and stick together. At least your takeout boxes are empty and stacked out of the way.

You left your web browser open last night. There are unfamiliar tabs open. Last night, after drinking that weird Chinese sake, it was a blur. It looks like at some point you abandoned your porn and you were trying to figure other things out.

“Orange horse with red hair and yellow eyes”
“Types of chinese alcohol”
“Chinese alcohol auditory hallucinations”
“short fingers orange hair hallucinations”
And the last one, “hasbndsa vbecomiong hooveds”

You must have been really drunk before you got to bed!

With great effort and patience with your keyboard and mouse you manage to get accessibility options open and get voice commands on. It’s slower than you would like but you manage to get to the site you want and get what you want downloaded. You have to work quickly.

In five minutes you have your joystick controlling your mouse and some of your buttons operating as the mouse buttons, even crude mouse wheel up and mouse wheel down buttons.

In ten minutes total you program a smaller function key on your fightstick to swap from your mouse mode joystick profile to a crude keyboard profile with each button then responding to ‘A’ to ‘H’.

In fifteen minutes total you have that keyboard profile swap which keyboard keys the buttons are mapped to based on the position of the joystick.

In thirty minutes total you have all your keys mapped, a few combination shortcuts, and a simple ‘tooltip’ appears when the joystick is held in a direction that reminds you which button is which in that orientation.
You can operate your mouse and keyboard all from your stick, but it’s still a little too slow to type. You use your new accessibility to run a web search for a free text auto-complete program. You download the first one you can find. Installation is as easy as normal with mouse control.

You start typing, ‘t’, ‘e’, Blue text appears to auto complete your word. You hold your stick to ‘down’ and press the button now responding to the spacebar. ‘test’ finishes appearing and your cursor moves past it on its own.

You try several more words. ‘Manager’, ‘script’, ‘financial’, ‘anonymous’.

This is working.

You save your joystick mapping profiles and the installation files onto your flash drive. You check the time as they transfer.

You’ve been at the computer for forty-five minutes. It’s time to get going.

You safely remove your flash drive from your computer then carry it over in your mouth to lay it on your phone. You pick up both with your mouth. Then you walk them over to your backpack next to your door. You raise the flap and drop them both inside. Not forgetting the most important part, you walk back over to your computer and unplug your fight stick as well. Grinning like an idiot you carry it over by the ball of the joystick and slide it into your bag as well.

You bite down on the zipper and zip the bag closed then put one fore leg through one loop and throw it over your shoulder. You put your other foreleg through the other strap. You bite down onto each adjustment strap and pull both straps as short as they go. You carefully stand up.

The bag stays in place on your back. It’s a little heavy but not terribly so. Your button up shirt prevents the bag from chafing. Perfect.

You look around your apartment. What are you forgetting? You mentally ‘pat your pant pockets’: what should be in your pants?

Phone and wallet are on you but your keys aren’t.

You walk over to your counter and stand up to spot them on the counter. You grab them with your mouth and hold them as such. You would need them to lock up in a second. What else are you missing?
Probably just your shoes and pants. Obviously shoes don’t fit. You know none of your slacks would fit… but females generally had a looser dress code at your work than the males so you figure they’d let it slide. Besides, you don’t feel all that naked covered in orange fur. With how short you are right now and with your big tail blocking the view from behind you think it’ll be fine.

Your worries satisfied, you walk over to your door and stand on your hind legs and fiddle with your door handle. It takes an awkward moment to undo the lock and turn the knob but you manage. Once you are out in the hall you do your best to carefully pull the door shut by the doorknob with a hoof. When it clicks you get onto all fours and intentionally drop your keys.

You search your keyring on the ground for your apartment key. When you find it you move it with your hoof away from the others then without any hesitation you grab it off the ground with your mouth. You can taste hallway dirt on the metal keys. You ignore it.

You fumble with the key in your mouth until it points out. You try to feed the key into the lock. You drop your keys. You try again, more carefully this time. You push it into the lock with your tongue. You let go and see your key in the keyhole. You bite down on your key and crane your neck into the ‘lock’ position. With a bit of force you hear the deadbolt inside the door slide out and lock the door. One more small victory.

You are on your way to work!

As you walk down the hall towards the stairs the clip clop noise from your hooves was now much more prominent than ever from it echoing off the walls. You hardly even notice the squeaks and squeals of the old wooden floor over them, the ones always threatening to give way and make you fall into the floors below.

Walking down the stairs head-first terrifies you and your progress on them is a slow crawl. Each floor was a blessing until you walked down the hall and started the next set of stairs. You live on the fifth floor. There is no elevator. It makes rent cheap and gives your skinny ass a little bit more exercise. It also means you are less likely to leave the apartment once you get home. You keep to yourself mostly anyway.

On the second floor you encounter your first person of the day, Mrs. Willis. You’re sure if she wasn’t alone in her old age she would be living somewhere better. She’s leaning on the window sill at the end of the hallway catching her breath. She lives on the third floor. She has her mail in hand. When she hears you clip clopping down the hallway she turns to look at you. She seems intensely confused and she is looking right at you.

You stop in your tracks and look behind you. The hallway behind you is empty. When you turn back to look at her you see the confusion on her face is replaced with curiosity.

“Good morning, Mrs. Willis. Are you okay?” You ask her in your little cartoon mare voice as you approach her slower. She is a little old lady, she’s barely a head taller than you at your current height.

“Are you… are you a pony?” she asks as you take a step closer to her. Her curiosity is bewilderment now.

“Yeah, I think so,” you say as you look down at your hooves to check.

She approaches you with awe and a hand outstretched, palm up. You don’t know what she’s doing until she’s finally in front of you and the outstretched hand reaches up and pets your mane.

“You’re a cute little pony. Where did you come from, girl?” she asks as she pets you more. Her normally stiff, arthritic hands seem to have a renewed grace to them.

“Uh, I live here. I’m Anon on the fifth floor,” you shift your balance to one side so you can point up with your hoof on the other side. “I just kind of woke up like this.”

“Oh,” she states simply. “Hi, Anon. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you,” she says as she pets your long neck now. Her old hands feel so rough against your soft coat.

“It’s fine,” you say with a little shrug.

“This is a cute look for you. You should keep it,” she reassures you as her petting hand moves down to stroke under your chin. The little strokes make your legs shiver. You feel your whole body relax under the weight of your backpack. This was nice.

“Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe,” you state noncommittally. Just as you start to relax in her hand you suddenly remember your urgency to get to work.

“Sorry, Mrs Willis, I can’t stay and chat anymore. I have to get to work,” you say then look down at your unbuttoned dress shirt. “Hey, would you button my shirt for me? The buttons are too small for my hooves.”

You lean back onto your haunches to give her a better angle.

“Of course, Anon,” she says as pulls your collar forward more out from the straps of your backpack and does the first button then does three more until she can’t bend over any farther. Really, the bottom ones were underneath you anyway.

“Thanks! You’re a lifesaver. I’ll see you later,” you tell her as you head for the stairs to the first floor with renewed confidence.

“Bye, Anon!” she calls behind you.

You push out through your building door and out onto the cold, gray morning. The streets are already alive with people all going about their errands. You head down the street towards the bus stop. There should be a bus coming pretty soon heading towards work.

On hooves, the sidewalk doesn’t feel much different from when you had shoes on. As you walk down the sidewalk you notice a lot more looks your way than usual. It was probably the pony thing. You try making eye contact back with a smile to make the staring stop. A few stop staring. Most didn’t.

You pass the broken bottles from last night. With all your weird food, aspirin and alcohol you didn’t see the little old man carrying those. He seemed really upset when they broke and you apologized profusely but he started cursing at you in some foreign, melodic language. Made a lot of hand gestures too, those were probably rude from wherever he came from.

Anyway, if there is one amenity to your apartment it is the closeness to the bus stop. Not even a block and you have arrived. There are several people crowded around inside and near the shelter. Probably fearing the overcast threat of rain.

As you step inside you see a few people shrink back politely to give you space. They look at you with curiosity as you just stand there. Your attempts to avoid the stares bring your gaze to outside the shelter.

Someone outside the shelter smoking is staring directly at you. As you briefly make eye contact you see he has a shaved head and several visible tattoos on his arms and face. He has visible gang colors tied around his arm. You look away hoping he’ll look away too. When you look back up a moment later you see he hasn’t. Instead he tosses his cigarette to the ground and grinds it out with his boot without breaking eye contact. He walks directly towards you in front of all these people. As he comes closer you see a teardrop shaped tattoo below his eye.

“Excuse me miss, are you a pony?” he asks you. You look around wondering who this ‘miss’ was until you remember again you’re a girl now.

“Oh,” you look back up at him now confident he’s addressing you. “Yes.”

You see a glimmer of excitement in his eyes. You see him reach behind him and pull something out of his back pocket. It’s a phone.
“May I get a picture with you? My daughter loves My Little Pony,” he asks looking at his phone, presumably getting to the camera feature.

“Um, sure. I guess,” you agree to the photo opportunity. He gets one of the younger bystanders to put his own phone down to take the picture. You do your best smile you can as he leans down next to you and smiles for the camera too. You see his hand go around your back as if to hug you for the picture but don’t feel it touch you.

The people at the shelter aren’t bothered by this picture taking, they are amused if anything. You realize almost everyone in the general area is on their phone and they’re facing you too. They must be taking pictures and videos of you too. When he gets his phone back and he seems satisfied with the pictures he turns back to you.

“What’s your name? Do you have a number?” he asks you.

“Uh. M-my name is Anonymous,” you tell him. You pretend you didn’t hear the second question.

“‘Anon’? Really? You look more like a Sunrise to me,” he tells you. You aren’t sure if this is flirting or a genuine name suggestion. “What’s your number? Do you do birthday parties?”

You are getting flustered by this press for personal information. You are going to have to firmly put your hoof down.

“Hey, sorry, I-I’m not a performer. I’m just on my way to work,” you shut him down.

“Oh. Sorry, m’am. My name is Carlos. Thank you for the picture. It was nice to meet you! My daughter is going to love this!” he says as he turns and heads back outside the bus shelter.
“Huh,” you respond to what just happened. You look back at the rest of the strangers standing near you. You realize two young girls standing next to who you think is their mom have large, excited eyes staring at you quietly. You look back and forth between them and awkwardly look away from them across the street. The mother seems to notice this interaction.

“It’s rude to stare at people,” she scolds the two quietly.

“But it’s a talking pony!” the girl on her right replies in a very loud child whisper. You realize everyone in listening range is staring at this scene with the girls about you. ‘The ball is in your court’ so to speak. You decide to speak up once again.

“It’s fine, m’am. I would stare too,” you chuckle awkwardly. You note in almost horror your voice doesn’t sound much more mature than the children’s voices. “I just kind of woke up this way today. It was probably something I ate,” you address the children directly, they are a bit taller than you. This unleashes the floodgates.

“What did you eat?” the older girl asks you about what made you into a pony.

“I think it was that falafel I had down at that new vegetarian place on the corner. Kind of had a weird taste,” you suggest.

“How old are you?” she asks you.

“Twenty-five! Just had my birthday actually,” you tell her.

“Will you give me a pony ride?” the younger one speaks up. There’s awkward laughter from a middle aged man eavesdropping across from you. Everyone was amused by what was happening and to be honest you were kind of having fun talking to these kids. You always kind of had a soft spot for kids but didn’t dare interact with them in fear of being seen as a creep.

“Will you give me one too?” the older girl requests as well.

“Girls, please,” the mother begs for them to not bother you with silly questions. You see the one younger guy who took your and Carlos’s picture was nonchalantly still recording what was going on: the back of his phone was in your general direction.

You were normally quite invisible to strangers and suddenly found you were enjoying all this positive attention now. You were feeling more energetic. You look back at the girls. You want to make their day.

“If it’s alright with your mother, I can give you a little ride around the shelter,” you say as you check Mom’s reaction as you begin taking your bag off.

“No, m’am, you don’t have to do that,” she tells you before the younger one walks over to you to climb on. She was clearly not at the developmental point yet where she had any hesitance to interact with strangers. Three? Four years old? You squat down a bit for her to get onto your back; you’re actually doing this.

“No, it’s fine,” you insist as the younger one crawls onto the back. She’s not much heavier than your bag. She slides a bit from your shirt. She grips you by the shirt collar and it chokes you a bit.

“Hold on lower, near the sleeves,” you instruct her. Obediently she does so as she starts laughing and moving around a bit as she adjusts into a comfortable sitting position. She was about the perfect size to ride on your back, really. Cautiously you take a few steps forward, then slowly turn around in place.

“Mom! Look, look!” the girl on the back starts laughing as you walk back to where you were then out in front of the bus shelter. She seems careful not to move much so as to not hurt you.

“My name is June. Can we keep you? I promise to be really nice to you and feed you and comb your hair everyday,” she tells you as you do your little walk to the other entrance of the bus shelter.

Across the street your attention is caught by another child walking with his parents shouting he wants to ride the pony. There’s a small crowd of people looking over at you from across the streets. Others keep walking either not caring or not noticing you.

“Your name is ‘Sunrise’. I don’t like ‘Anemesis’,” she butchers your name.

“No, sorry, I…” your mind is brought back to the child on your back. You take a moment to find the right words. “I have to work and take care of my home, just like your parents do.”

“But you can come live with us and be our pet!” she offers. You feel strange that a child would see you as a potential pet, like a stray animal she could bring home. As you head inside the bus shelter you look up just in time to see Carlos snap a picture of you as you pass him. He has a big, gentle smile on his face.

“Just because she’ll give you a ride doesn’t mean she’s a pet,” her mother scolds her for the offer.

“But I want a talking pony!” June hugs your neck and whines a little too close to your ear.

“She can talk, that means she’s a person,” the older girl tells her sister. “You can’t keep another person as a pet..”

“But parrots can talk and they’re pets!” she tells her sister from still on your back. You walk over to the older sister and mom and try to look up at them. This close you can’t look up at them so you just listen to them.

“Parrots don’t talk, they just repeat words they hear,” her sister tells her something she was probably told once. “If you make her your pet then she would be your slave. Slaves are bad,” she informs her sister. This conversation is starting to make you uncomfortable. You see others around you gather their things. You look down the street and see that the bus is coming.

“Alright, June, the bus is coming. Get down so your sister can have a turn real quick,” you mediate the conversation.

Surprisingly, June climbs off obediently to your command. The other girl approaches you hesitantly then swings a leg over your back. She sits down gently. She was a little heavier but not terribly so.

You decide to do the same small circle in front of the bus shelter again. You wonder how to start the small talk. “Well I guess my name is Sunrise now. What’s your name?”

There’s giggles from your back. “April,” she replies quietly.

You reenter the bus shelter just as the bus pulls up. April hops off your back and reunites with her mom. Her mother offers you your bag you had set down and she quietly helps you put it back on. April gently pulls your mane free from underneath your bag. The group of people around the bus shelter start to gather into a messy line around you as some people get off the bus exit.

“Thank you,” April politely tells you. June chimes in as well.

“Thank you Miss Sunrise!”

“I’m sorry about them bothering you, miss,” the mom apologizes. All of these ‘misses’ aren’t phasing you anymore.

“It’s fine, I understand; I’ve never met a talking pony either,” you tell her with a forced laugh.
As you’re next to board the bus after the mom and kids you realize you didn’t get your bus pass out. You start scrambling as you step up onto the first step to get your bag off and dig your wallet out; you were going to be one of those people. The mom turns back and sees what you’re doing.

“I’ll take care of it, sweetie,” April’s and June’s mother runs their passes and puts change into the coin slot for you.

“Oh, thank you,” you smile at her as she goes to wrangle her kids. You look up at the bus driver as you pass. He hesitates on you for just a second but ends up just smiling at you instead of saying anything.

You can feel eyes on you as you find an empty seat. The silence of the morning bus ride seems hushed a little more. You end up sitting next to some tired middle-aged guy in a business suit with hair everywhere but on his head. He turns away from the window to study what just sat next to him. The seat feels somewhat sticky against your bare furry flank.

“Are you a little horse?” the aging business man next to you asks.

“Yes,” you admit quietly and simply.

After getting his answer he replies with an “...oh” before staring for a few more seconds then turning back to looking out the window.

Without a window seat you’re left with looking about the bus. There are kids up front who keep turning around to take peeks at you and look away when you try to make eye contact. In contrast, the two guys about your age sitting across the aisle from you keep looking over at you and whispering, probably about you. You don’t like their grins. The smiles look... predatorial. You pray they aren’t going to talk about you as you look away. You could feel your ears slump against your head.

Fortunately they get off at the next stop and never talk to you. The last you see of them is one of them looking over their shoulder as they get off. Once they’re off a group of kids run down the aisle and sit down in their seats. A girl and two boys sit down across from you. One of the boys has his phone out, probably recording you.

“Mister, your pony is really pretty. What’s her name?” one of the boys asks the bald guy sitting next to you.

“Can we pet her?” the girl chimes in after. You turn to look up at the guy sitting next to you who feels as awkward as you do.

“I don’t know this… person,” he tells the kids while pointing at you.

“Uh. Hi, my name’s Anon,” you say as you turn back to the kids and hold out a hoof. None of the kids reach out to shake it so you retract it. The kids’ eyes grow wide and you can see people nearby turn to look at you again.

“You can talk? Are you from Ponyville? Do you know Minty?” the girl asks, being the first to recover.

“Um, no. Sorry. I’m from Iowa. I live here in the city. I work at an insurance company,” you say feeling a little disappointed to give such a boring answer.

“Can I touch you?” the boy with the phone asks.

“Like pet me? Sure,” you smile reassuringly and lean towards him a little. His free hand brushes down your mane until a bit behind your ears then scratches. He moves his hand behind your ears and continues the scratches. You shiver a little from the way it makes your muscles relax.

That felt so good you close your eyes and smile as you push more into it. You feel another little hand stroke under your chin. Then felt another hand get behind your other ear. You can feel all the energy in your body drain out in a sigh.

If a girl around your age was stroking and giving you this much attention you would probably be seriously into it.

You flinch back from these minors and raise a hoof to make them stop. “Th-that’s enough,” you stutter. “I, uh, thanks. But you’re making me... sleepy.”

“Are you tired? Would you like some apple?,” the girl asks as she pulls out a lunchbox. You see her unzip it and pull out a baggy with apple slices in it. The cereal you had seems unfulfilling now. What was that about taking candy from strangers?

The older gentleman sitting next to you gets up at his stop and a few more kids pile in next to you. All the kids tell you their names and the school they go to. You tell them how you were a male human last night and woke up like this. The girl insists on braiding your mane and tail and you give in while you answer twenty questions.

You can still taste the apple slices with hints of lemon juice they fed you by hand when you get to your stop.

They are disappointed to see you go and all the kids hug or pet you one last time after you get out of your seat. You were enjoying your popularity, even if it was with kids. You never had been the center of attention before. You didn’t even mind the pictures.

“‘Ey, Sunrise,” you hear someone to your right say as you’re walking down the aisle. To your own surprise you turn to look who called out. It was Carlos smiling down at you knowingly. “Think about my offer: my girl’s birthday party. I’ll see you around.”

With fleeting, only half-serious thoughts about a career change dancing in your head you confidently walk off the bus and head towards the nearby building where you work. The automatic doors don’t give you any trouble.

You head through the lobby towards the wall of elevators. Despite your short stature most people seem to give you a respectable amount of space. You get some more stares, especially when you finally get towards the front of the crowd and onto the elevator. You can tell people are staring at you in the elevator but it’s a bit hard to look up at them at this angle; it’s always pretty crowded in here. Fortunately someone already hit the button for your floor.

At this height you can tell who’s cleaner than everyone else. The worst culprit in the elevator isn’t too bad though.

You like the skirt of the lady standing next to you. The geometric pattern on maroon certainly broke up the monotony of the sea of suit legs.

“I like your skirt,” you decide to speak your thoughts. The woman looks around until she sees you straining to look up at her. She seems surprised.

“Oh! Thank you,” she says. You can’t quite see her face but her tone seems positive. That’s the only thing said before your stop.

When the door opens you step off and head towards your business. The cheap, worn carpet muffles your hooves a lot better than your apartment. You startle a few people as you round the corner but they aren’t very scared. You’re not exactly an intimidating size, after all.

Once you get to your work you have to stand up on your hind legs again to really get enough leverage to get one of the doors open. The receptionist, Stacy, the lady you talked to on the phone, just sits there and stares at you as you succeed with the door and come on in.

When you’re about to pass her you hear her on the phone.

“Yes, hi. There’s a small horse in our office,” she tells them. You stop dead and turn back around. She startles back a bit and half-hides behind a potted plant.

“Stacy?” You question her. You wonder who she’s talking to. You see her peek around the potted plant at you and you give her a bit of a wave and a head tilt.
“...horsey?”

“It’s Anon,” you explain. “I said I was going to be late? Did you tell Software I was coming in?”
She blinks, stares, and then hangs up without saying anything to the person on the other end of the line.

“Oh... okay,” she states dumbly. “Are you sure you should be coming in? You look… orange,” she tries to explain.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” you assure her. Her phone rings again and she picks it up on instinct and answers it.

Both satisfied, you turn back to head to your cubicle. You spot Rachel standing and looking over the cubicle wall you share with her. You make eye contact.

“Hey, Rachel! Sorry I’m late. I’ve had the weirdest morning!” you tell her as you press your rolly chair against your desk and climb into it. You use your fore legs to turn your chair around to face your monitors.

She brushes her black bangs out of the way of one of her eyes and stands there for a bit while you remember what’s in your bag.

You zip it open and dig your head inside to grab the joystick. Then with that on your desk you stick your head back in and fish for your flash drive.

After a lot of fussing you find it, gently bite down on it and pull that out too. As you come up with it you see Rachel is still standing there, looking at you.

You glance up at her and smile again before looking around your desk and spotting your pencil. You fumble with that until it’s in your mouth and start slowly punching in your username.

You look up from your work to Rachel. Oh, she’s still looking at you. You thought maybe she was just stretching her legs.

“Hey, Rachel. You alright? You got your packages ready for today?” You ask around your pencil. After you hit TAB and start putting in your password she finally speaks up.

“Oh, yeah. We’re good to go… Anon?” she asks you. You find a nice stopping point for your password and make eye contact with her again. She’s smiling at you now, a bit in awe. She looks really pretty like that. You always thought she had a really great smile.
“Yeah?”

“You’re a little horse,” she says.

“Yeah, a pony even, I think,” you agree with her while still biting your pencil. You ‘pencil’ in the last few keys to your password and hit ENTER.

“How long have you been a pony?” she asks. You gently drop the pencil back onto your desk and relax a bit further back into your chair before answering.

“This morning. Just woke up like this! It made getting ready for work kind of hard. I’m sorry I’m late, but I didn’t want to let you guys down!” you explain.

“Aw. That’s really thoughtful of you...” she tells you then hesitates before continuing. “I... I like that shirt on you. It contrasts really well with your... colors.”

“Oh, thank you! It’s my favorite shirt,” you say looking down at your sky blue dress shirt. This is the longest conversation you two have ever had that wasn’t about work. You used to try to talk to her because you had a bit of a crush on her but she didn’t seem interested in being a friend. You would have jumped at this chance any other day, but right now you’re more concerned about getting your flash drive in and your fight stick plugged in.

“So, I think I should be good too,” you reassure her as you work on getting the setup you had at home working here. “There’s a few more edge cases I want to test, just to make sure nothing weird can happen, but I think we’re good!”

“Oh. A-awesome! We’ll totally kick ass in that meeting! Or… right?” she agrees. She seems… shy today?

“Totally!” you agree and nod but don’t look up from the installation programs you got running. Once you do, you check out your joystick setup. You control your cursor with your setup and launch your development environment and the last package you had up. Satisfied now, you look up at her. “So, uh, this won’t take long. I gotta make sure we’ll ‘kick ass’!”

“Okay! Yeah, sure! We’ll… talk more later,” she says before hesitantly sitting down and disappearing from your periphery.

Despite a few setbacks, it was finally time to get shit done today!

You quietly work through the checklist of things you wanted to go over. Your fightstick setup is a little slow, but fortunately you’re just tweaking things you already wrote and cleaning up comments.

A lot of people come by your cubicle to say ‘hi’ to you today, a lot more than usual. They’re probably just concerned about you calling in late. You’ve been feeling really popular today with all of the attention you’re getting. You were getting a lot of compliments about your hair, your ‘mane’. Janet all the way from HR came by while someone was petting you.

“...well, this definitely counts as a physical impairment but you seem to have figured out a setup that works for you. Call me if the petting gets out of hand. Otherwise… I like your new look?”

“Thanks! I’m starting to like it too,” you agree. The fightstick setup is working pretty well and you're pretty good at multitasking so it’s all fine.
Unfortunately, the day has to get a little worse when everyone’s least favorite person finally comes in: your boss, the fuckface himself.

Fuckface usually has to start the day talking to Stacy for fifteen minutes while she’s trying to do her job.

Surprisingly, he cut it short today. You can hear him making his way to come talk to Rachel after only five minutes. Surprisingly, he comes to you first?

He seems irritated at you. Damn it, this is about coming in late.

“Anon?”

“Yeah?”

He seems unsure from my response for a second.

“...you’re breaking the dress code. Men have to wear dress slacks.”

Shoot. You panic slightly but a loophole comes to mind.

“Uh. I cleared it with Janet from HR. My physical impairment makes dressing difficult. My tail keeps everything pretty covered.”

“Oh. Uh…” Fuckface sips his coffee while he thinks of something else to bother you with.
“Are you, uh, I can’t help but notice… the voice. Are you presenting as a female now?”

Shoot. This is getting pretty serious. You don’t know how long you’re stuck like this. Maybe a new name, for at least the time being, would make this less weird. You knew you wouldn’t get fired at least.

“I don’t know. I guess?”

“Well, alright… contact HR to update your badge info. Do you have a new name?”

One comes to mind.

“...Sunrise?”

He sips his coffee again before answering.

"Alright, Sunrise… you’re not contagious, right?”
You don’t have any symptoms like you’re having an immune response and something makes you think this doesn’t spread like that.

“Pretty sure I’m not, no.”

“...okay. Well… give me an hour and we’ll have our meeting. You’ll be ready, right?”

You said you would be, and you were. You showed up and kicked flank, er, ass. You didn’t let the group down on the project.

Leaving the too-long meeting Rachel gives your mane a little ‘good job’ ruffle and Sean gives you a fist bu- er, hoof bump.

“Anon- uh, Sunrise?” Sean says after the bump.

He points behind you, you look. No, he was pointing at your behind. A picture of a sunflower is on your flank now. You brush a hoof against it, thinking you sat on a sticker or something. It’s part of your fur. You check and see you have one on both sides.

“It's a cutie mark. I saw it appear when you were giving your presentation,” Rachel admitted. “I didn’t want to interrupt."

“Huh,” you say, and rub it again. You smile at your sunflower butt picture. "Cutie mark," you repeat. Something about it just looks right. You feel a sense of wholeness looking at it. “...I like it.”

“It’s cute,” Sean agrees. “Sunrise, you wanna go out for lunch today? My treat.”

“Oh heck yeah,” you agree.

“Rachel?” Sean checks with her as well. Sean was a really cool guy. He smelled really nice today too. Did his soap always smell so… strong and comforting?

“Thanks but I already got plans. Go on without me.” she waves you two off. “Go have fun.”

So, you go check your computer is shut down, grab your bag, then meet Sean at the elevator.

It was raining hard outside but you didn’t mind getting your hooves wet. You walk close next to your friend under his umbrella as you two go to your favorite burger place just down the street. You’re comically short but you feel like you’re walking tall today.

You get a lot of stares on the way and even more when you come into the restaurant. Sean does what you’ve been doing all day and just rolls with it. He even picks you up and helps sit you down at your usual barstool.

“Sir, you can’t bring your pet in here,” a waiter came by to bring your celebration to an early end.

“I’m not his pet,” you defend yourself. The waiter looks at you confused. Counterproductively, Sean gives you a reassuring scritch behind the ears. You feel your mind reflexively lull into it.

“Uh. What are you then?” he asks.

“...hungry,” you decide. Maybe a little thirsty too. You look over the menu then at Sean. “You down for a few beers?”

“Sure am,” Sean agrees.

Sean gets his ID out then helpfully pulls yours out of your bag for you. The waiter takes them both, not seemingly sure what to think. He hands Sean’s back to him and after a moment of going back and forth between you and your ID he speaks up.

“Really?” he asks.

“It’s me,” you insist. “I… probably need to get that updated,” you admit.

He hands yours back to you. “...you know what? Fuck it. You seem nice.” He shrugs then leaves to go get you your drinks. You check the menu while he’s gone.

Normally you’d go for a double bacon burger but you were thinking cheese fries. Or maybe even a salad today. Either way, you were sure it was going to be delicious.

“Excuse me, miss?” Someone drags you back out of your menu skimming. Obviously, they were talking to you. The stranger sitting on your opposite side offered his hand to shake. You offer your hoof and they hold it and give it a shake. “Hi, you’re Sunrise, right? You’re the talk of the city right now. I don’t want to interrupt your meal but after you're done do you think I could get an interview with you? Everyone wants to know who you are.”

You shrug. “Sure. That’s fine.”

“Awesome. Thank you. Actually, allow me to pay.” He places a shiny black card down. “You finish up. I’ll just be over here prepping my questions.”

You agree to the generous offer just in time for the beers to come. Yours has a bendy straw in it.

Really, things are going pretty well today. You’re not sure you’re even going to urgent care after work anymore.

You sip your beer with your straw. You sigh.
It was perfect.

“Sean, I think everything is going to be fine.”