The Six of Us

Chapters

The Reflection
The Farm
The Lunch
The Fall
The Library

The Reflection

“... And that, ladies and gentlemen, was B.Y.O.B. from Mezmerize, System of a Down’s latest. A fine piece of NU metal just for you, here on this beautiful autumn afternoon on Life Radio 88.”

Behind the wheel of a Chrysler New Yorker, 83 years old Stefanos Anastasis harrumphed. “A fine piece,” the radio announcer said. And what in the bloody hell even was “NU metal?” After more than eight decades on this rock, Stefanos had more and more trouble following today’s musical trends. Why he decided to power through the entire piece, he could only attribute to morbid curiosity. See how the youth of today treated their eardrums. He wasn’t left very impressed.

“Now this may come as a surprise to some, but this song was actually written as a protest against the Iraq War. When Mr. Tankian sings all those heartfelt thinkers, such as how our troops must march and carry orders without asking questions, well, it makes us wonder when this whole situation will get resolved, doesn’t it?”

The pretentious English radio station host was getting on the veteran’s nerves. On the field, it gets a little more complicated than this. He had firsthand experience, after all. Now, Stefanos had retired years ago, so he wasn’t one to get too worked up on such trivial aspects. Sure, he had his own pockets full of opinions – a long and fulfilling life will do this to any man. But to hear yet again another unsolicited take on Bush’s quest for oil, well, it takes the old man back. Geopolitics and all the baggage it carried.

“But that, my friends, that’s a topic a bit above this poor guy’s education, hehehahaha!”

He got that right.

“Aaanyhow. Today’s November 2nd, 2005, and we’re just a little past 5:30 in the afternoon. I dunno about you folks, but it’s getting rather chilly here in Kalamata. Remember to bring a nice coat if you’re going to go out, wherever you may find yourself.”

Definitely could use one, in the case of Stefanos. In fact, even though he was as far South of Europe as he could be, 13 degrees was nevertheless a bit too low for the senior. His health was not what it used to be, making him particularly susceptible to harsh temperature shifts.

Cruising on the Peloponnese peninsula, he was happily taking himself and the family car back from a poker game he gracefully lost against some of his lifelong friends, people he served with. They lived on the West coast, more precisely in the small municipality of Pylos, whereas he had been born and raised in the bustling city of Kalamata. Thankfully, both places were only an hour apart by car, and Stefanos was already halfway through his return trip. He could even see the impressive Taygetus mountain range by the horizon.

As per tradition, the missus voiced her concerns. She was always worried whenever Stefanos decided to drive. She had been for the past three years, after their 23 years old grandson donated the family car to him, what with him finally acquiring his own set of wheels. You are getting too old to handle two pedals, Stef, she religiously narked. However, her protests stemmed from love; that didn’t go over his head.

She has nothing to worry about, mused Stefanos. Today’s conditions were superb, and he knew it well. There was nothing but a gentle breeze, and the streets were scarce with traffic. The Mediterranean climate was benign and simply begged for joy rides. He could handle it.

Heck, he handled much worse in his life. A little trip down the country roads was nothing short of a footnote amongst the myriad of obstacles the aging Greek had to endure.

November 2nd, as the radio stipulated. Has it been that long already? Hardly believable.

One day short of 65 years ago, an 18 years old Stefanos found himself in the middle of a pincer maneuver against an Italian spearhead in the North of Greece. Indeed, he proudly served in the 1st Infantry Division of the Hellenic Army in the Battle of Pindus during the Greco-Italian War of the Balkans Campaign, successfully pushing the Axis back into Albanian territory. That day was regarded as one of the first major victories for the Allies. Underdog Greece managed to impress the whole world after ensuring the failure of Mussolini’s finest.

Nevertheless, as much as the thrill of victory upped the morale of his comrade in arms, the Second World War had this funny way of turning everything for the worst when you least expected it – or even when you did. It didn’t matter. It was an ugly business all around. Because when the Italian Spring Offensive of March 1941 came knocking at their door, the young soldier found himself present at the unforgiving Battle of Hill 731.

Simply put? It was a bloody massacre.

The battle bore that name, since it took place on Height 731. Today, that name was inaccurate, since the peak was truncated and now sported a real height of 729 meters. How did it end up losing a little bit off the top? Oh, only because it was relentlessly leveled via an unforgiving bombardment of many, many shells (around a hundred thousand). That was the true nature of the Battle of Hill 731. Explosions.

Explosions, and close-quarters combat. Infantrymen on both sides of the conflict found themselves getting real close and personal with their enemies. So much so, that Stefanos ended up being incapacitated when an Italian bayonet wounded him with a painful stab in the upper left pectoral muscle, briefly missing the lung. Thankfully, he prevailed, but the damage was all but superficial. He was deemed unfit to rejoin his battalion, although it would hardly matter since the 1st Division disbanded (temporarily) a month later after the capitulation of Greece at the hands of the flanking German forces.

In today’s times, Stefanos still bore sequels of that nasty wound. His military career ended as abruptly as it had begun. He still partook in the uprising of the rebellion by the end of the war, however. Although he regretted not serving longer than he had, holding a rifle being his true vocation, Stefanos was beyond proud to have defended his home country from the invasion. He had taken lives to protect his family and those he loved, and he’d do it again if Greece was endangered again.

Thankfully, years have been kinder after Fascist Italy surrendered, as Stefanos found himself enamored with the love of his life. Happily married with his better half for over fifty years, he built a wonderful family, and pursued a modest carpentry career. He was pretty much the poster child of a self-made man. His retirement years on the South coast of Greece couldn’t have been any comfier...

“Next up, Best of You by the Foo Fighters, another great hit of this year. Requested by miss uuuhh... Pa... Panagiotopoulos, of Filiatra. Excuse my Greek if I butchered that, ha. Alright, let’s hear it folks-”

... Save for that annoying man behind the speakers, of course. With his borderline sycophantic kiss-ass voice. The driver had enough of his little experiment, and decided to switch to a different local FM station instead, tuning in to one that played melancholic waltzes he loved oh so much. It reminded him of his better years, where his younger self was still peppy and active. Stefanos sure could dance! But with his artificial hip, he was more into singing nowadays.

Which is exactly what he started doing. Humming the soft yet powerful tones of the violin, Stefanos would’ve closed his eyes if he didn’t have to keep them peeled on the road. The deep green 95 car was softly turning the snaking road, lone and placid, surrounded by acres of fields chock-full of olives.

Stefanos’ Chrysler swerved slightly in the opposite line when he suddenly coughed heavily. He corrected course and resumed his singing, albeit hesitantly. His chest was pounding, and he was wondering if he should manage his voice from there onward.

Coughing violently again, he understood that today wasn’t his day for happy songs. He weakly turned the radio off, having to cancel his one-man concert. The coughs weren’t leaving however, and the chest pains doubled. He really wished he had his water thermos with him, but alas.

The coughs led the way to a throbbing migraine. Stefanos wasn’t unfamiliar with headaches; these became more and more common as he aged. This time however, it was accompanied with partial blindness, at first in one eye, then in both. The road became a misty blur, and he had more and more trouble concentrating. He tried to turn the handle to his left to open a window and cool down, but he couldn’t even grasp it properly. His coordination tanked to uncontrollable levels. Even holding the steering wheel became an adventure of its own.

He tried to blink the foggy vision away, but nothing yielded. In fact, his facial features became softer than pudding, with subtle drool escaping his lips.

It’s at this point that he understood. All symptoms pointed toward something his ever-increasing confusion clouded. It all clicked in a swift moment of lucidity.

He was having another stroke.

And this one was bad. He had powered through two others over the past few years. He’d been told that he was an especially resilient man, that he fought like he did in the war. But this time, it felt different. He knew a lost battle when there was one. He couldn’t fool himself into believing there was a happy ending at the end of the tunnel. The pain... This was as ferocious as the blade that impaled him years ago. He couldn’t delude himself into thinking there was a way out.

He had no mobile device to call for an ambulance and he was essentially on his own, between towns. There was no one else to aid him, and he was going to wither away alone. No one would be the wiser. Why did it have to happen now of all time? If... if he stayed home, he could’ve benefited from his soulmate’s support. It was so unfair.

With a last burst of efforts, he managed to park the vehicle by the side of the road, groggily turning his hazard lights on. With a little bit of luck, that would flag another compassionate driver to rescue him. The Chrysler came to a halt, haphazardly stationed on the gravel, next to a small brick wall. No longer at risk of colliding into something, the war hero clutched his chest, focusing solely on the pain at hand. His whole body, not unlike his face, felt numb. There was nothing he could do anymore.

He winced and cried in agony. It worsened and it worsened. It felt as though something was eating him from the inside. That a bomb detonated behind his ribcage. He was starting to lose grip with his consciousness, and soon, eternal darkness would claim him.

Moments before he couldn’t find the strength to keep his eyelids opened, images of his family blessed his sufferings. As if he was owed a denouement before he surrendered his life. His two successful sons... his beautiful grandchildren. His sister, still kicking and healthy. His ever-loving wife. She had been by his side from the beginning right until the end. She was beautiful. So, so beautiful. She was his reason to live. And... and he couldn’t...

She was going to be left all alone. That, he knew for sure. To think that they were together and happy just this morning. And now... He was abandoning her. Without even saying a proper goodbye.

For Stefanos Anastasis was living his last moments on Earth.

I coughed three times. My oesophagus was clamped shut in on itself, as if malignant phlegm acted as makeshift glue to clog my windpipe. Finally getting a decent mouthful of air into my lungs, I continued the exercise with another volley of dry coughs, my irritated trachea demanding more unsophisticated chimney sweep jobs.

Hurnnk...

As far as I could tell, I had never suffered from sleep apnea. But with a forehead that was burning like a stovetop, I could not help but wonder how long it had been since I last tried to reach for air. It was a good thing my body reflexes screamed “enough” and yanked me out of my peaceful slumber. It would have been a shameful waste of 22 years of life only to die because I failed to execute the most basal human reflex.

In and out, in and out. In with the dioxygen, out with the carbon dioxide. Respiration.

So, this is where I was. A killing fever, a breathing rhythm leagues above my regular one, a jackhammer pounding in my chest, and a body covered in sweat. And that there was a euphemism. My bed – or rather, my waterbed, was completely dank from my own secretions. I was well acquainted with my usual disdain for heated nights, but come on now, this was beyond ridiculous. I felt as though I had lost pounds, literal pounds, just in skin piss. I was in a sarcophagus of waterlogged sheets, bundled atop a mattress on which fungi had fertile ground to proliferate, given the ideal humid conditions.

In a few words like many: I was cooking. My body was a few degrees short of sizzling. A doctor would’ve been concerned with imminent hyperthermia. This was an odd and sharp contrast with the cool ambient air of my bedroom. My bank account has always been rather modest, but even I knew the perks of spending some extra monthly greens by cohabiting in an apartment with a functioning AC unit. So, in conclusion: Me, hot; air, cool. This wasn’t computing all too well in my nauseous noggins. Maybe I had gotten sick? I felt a little bit sick...

More coughs, by the way. Just to confirm the hypothesis. I was unable to get rid of this unpleasant throat itch. As if someone strangled my neck (forgive the pleonasm) like playdough, stretching it beyond reason. It did seem like it took longer for me to feel oxygenated whenever air passed through my nostrils. After many years on Earth, it wasn’t a daunting task to notice these kinds of subtleties.

Ark! Koff! KOFF, KOFF! Ungh...

Oof, this last set of coughs was violent, not going to lie. It was a proverbial punch right in my diaphragm. I could feel each and every singular alveolus burn. I began to think that I simply couldn’t shake the physical malaise off. And to remedy that, I will have to march to the bathroom to pop a honey lozenge or something. Otherwise, at this rate, I’ll end up waking up the entire neighborhood. Even a good old-fashioned glass of water would do the trick. Anything to subside this meltdown sensation I was feeling, please!

Nyark, how I loathed leaving my bed in the middle of the night on a workday. I always had trouble falling asleep thereafter. I wondered what time it was even. My room was still semi dark, but that was a moot observation. I slept with the double set of curtains drawn, after all. Did my brittle musical number circumvent my daily dose of Z’s before or after four in the morning? If it was the former, then it was annoying, because it cut my nap time in half. If it was the latter, then it was doubly annoying, because that’ll turn me into a corpse on autopilot in the morning. “Zombie mode,” Vince called it.

So, before I pried myself out of this lakebed, I tried to reach for my phone on the bedside table.

Clonk!

Aheh, excuse me, but did someone drop a dumbbell next to me? That there was a hard and heavy noise that reverberated at the end of my arm. All I did was bump it onto the wooden surface of the table. That was... peculiar, to say the least. I was already in a state of illness; last thing I wanted was for my limb to suffer the nighttime curse of the pins and needles. But my arm, well, it felt... stubby. For lack of a better word. Shorter, and heavier. Stout and numb.

So not only was I weak from a sudden sickness, not only was I tucked in rags wetter than shower curtains, but I also apparently fell asleep onto my arm. Great. Cool start for a Wednesday, my guy. Seriously, it was such a displeasing feeling, having your blood circulation cut from your fingers. Your fingers that you couldn’t feel anymore, like they became twisted subjects of phantom limb.

And to say that I had been top shape yesterday. I almost wept. Maybe Vince coughed some Covid leftovers in the curry he cooked the day before yesterday. The curry that I demolished with no afterthoughts on my last lunch break. Dammit Vince, if you passed some kind of freakish variant to me during crunch time...

Well, the four AM question remained unanswered. So, not giving up without a fight, I tried the right arm this time around. You know, us humans having two members linked to our torso and etcetera.

I started to feel apprehensively cautious when my second arm felt exactly the same as the first. Freakishly alien, barely controllable, not responding all too well to my brain synapses. How could it be? Did I toss and turn that much during the past few hours? Had I really been that restless? My ex told me countless times that I slept like an angel. “Fit to be rolled into a morgue drawer,” she teased. It was her word against... whatever was happening to me.

Man. You never know how much you feel your fingers’ presence until you don’t. I could have testified right there and then. But you know what? I had enough of this sham. If my arms didn’t allow me to execute the simple task of grasping my smartphone, then I’d smack them into submission myself. A man can only tolerate so much.

My morning grogginess fading away a bit, I lifted my two rebellious arms in front of my face to make a visual survey of the damage. If I was greeted by gangrene, I’ll call in sick today.

And if only.

The second my eyes registered the new information I was presented with, it took a lot of mental fortitude to hold my colon from bursting at the seams. I clenched my butt cheeks together as hard as I could, for I knew a catastrophe was forthcoming. My heart, which was oh so busy drumming to a Megadeth crescendo moments ago, ceased all operations, going “wait a minute…” I had a passing apologetic thought for my red cells, for their O2 supply was halted once again. But... who could’ve blamed me? Who in their right mind could’ve blamed me!?

How could I have had any semblance of rationality when...

I-I... f-fucking hell, I... I’ve been...

I’ve been AMPUTATED!

Oh God, my hands, I could see their lack of presence at the tip of my wrists in the faint shine of the rising sun passing through the curtains. Just two stumps where fingers should’ve wiggled. I had no hands! I had NO hands! They had been sliced off my arms – my purple arms, and-

My purple arms?

Colors of the room were darkened, so a thorough assessment was difficult to make, especially given my increasing panic, but that there to me sure looked like a shade of purple!

What the fuck was going on!

“Aaah... AaaaaAAAAAHHH!” I began to shout, with a concerning lack of energy. “ARRRHHHHHHGGGHHH! AAAHHH!” I shouted some more, this time, a lot surer of myself.

I had to scream. I had to let out powerful decibels. I had to exteriorise this growing anguish. I would not be silenced!

Maybe something shifted near me, but I couldn’t really tell. My attention was so not on the surrounding details. It was entirely dedicated to my loss of the greatest evolutionary trait that defined our species. I just laid there, sandwiched between soaked bed sheets and soaked mattress. My mouth quivered; my pupils turned to singular dots. The breathing and the heartbeat both resumed on cue – though what for, I didn’t have a single clue.

I had... but... what... someone ran away with my digits! And they didn’t even toss me into a bath full of ice too. Shit shit shit, did they also borrow a kidney or two? Jesus Christ, this couldn’t be possible, couldn’t it? How could I have slept through such a barbaric operation? How could one have simply unscrewed my palms without me realizing what the heck was going on? Did I get sedated or what? I didn’t pass out drunk out of my mind in a shady back alley yesterday evening, I remembered this much. My hands... my GUITAR PLAYING HANDS! Oh Christ almighty, this was not okay! This was NOT okay!

A million thoughts ran in my mind like a marathon of desperation. Who would do this to me? Did I have a beef with someone I accidentally flipped off? Could this be fixed? Could surgery reverse my hex? Would I ever be able to pluck the strings of my Stratocaster ever again? Would the band break up in the failing case? Could I even type on my computer anymore, let alone write the old-fashioned way? Why were my arms purple? Why that color? Was I missing blood in my arms? Was it why they felt so... bizarre? Should I have been in more pain, or was I merely in shock? Should someone call the cops? An ambulance? 911?

“V-Vince!” I shouted for my roommate. He was stationed in the adjacent room. “Vince! Help! C-call... call an amb-”

My arms might’ve been in a state of total mutilation, but I still had enough control to put them in front of my mouth, shushing myself.

What. Was. That. Voice.

My screams from earlier were higher pitched than I would’ve liked, sure. I figured I just didn’t have a manly soprano, what with me having collected a grand total of zero screams ever since I had hit puberty (the 21st century was relatively safe, after all). But this speaking voice of mine? It was most definitely NOT my usual sandpapery, deep-toned voice. It sounded squeaky, girly even. A couple of octaves higher for sure.

Oh no.

Maybe the intruders didn’t take my kidney(s) after all when they ran away with my hands. Maybe they took something much more precious. A body part that dictated whether you were going to sound like my little cousin, or its polar opposite, Morgan Freeman.

I swore, I SWORE, if they took my testosterone factory, I WOULD find the nearest cliff and call it quit.

With some clever shifts of my legs – which were as estranged to me as my handless arms had been – to get a good tactical feel of my in-betweens, and I realized... I realized...

...

This couldn’t be happening.

I would NOT suffer through a hardcore chemical castration in one lifetime! This was intolerable! Inacceptable! Dishonorable! Intrusive and malevolent! Torture straight out of the Dark Ages! The biggest insult to my family name the ruffians could’ve ever pulled! Not only had they snipped the family jewels, but they chopped the rod as well. No wonder my voice became effeminate! I wasn’t PACKING ANYMORE! MY Y CHROMOSOMES NO LONGER HAD ANY MEANING! MY SUPPLY OF MASCULINE HORMONES HAD BEEN CORKED!

SOMEONE. WAS. RUNNING. WITH. MY. COCK.

IN AN ICE PACK! MY DINGALING IN AN ICE PACK!

SOLD TO THE BLACKEST OF ALL ORGAN MARKETS!

DIS-GUS-TING!!!

I didn’t want to piss sitting, I didn’t want to piss sitting, I didn’t want to piss sitting...

“GWAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!” That was me blasting my girly-girl voice once again, like a bullhorn on steroids.

Something shifted somewhere in my room once again. I wondered why I took notice of that. Why did I care given my current predicament? Priorities! My dick had effectively abracadabra’d out of existence, how could anyone focus on anything else but that?

I have had enough. I was done. Done with finding more and more pieces of my massacred body missing. The more astute I became, the more I found other parts of myself stolen. I was not a mere doll to be disassembled with so little empathy for my well being! I needed to beeline to the nearest hospital, right there and then. Pronto. Asap. To get my hands stitched back where they belonged; to get the external bit of my reproductive system welded back above my taint.

Out of the pool/bed, now!

Out, out, out!

I arched my torso up, and kicked my legs to the side. I tried hard to ignore a sting in my oddly bent spine, for the floor was all but calling my name. I could worry about lumbar support sometime in the future. Terror crept into the entirety of my body when I fully took notice of how my legs’ condition paralleled that of my arms. Knobs at the end, and damned be my toes. My non-existent toes. Did I have no right to have any nail-bearing supports anymore!? What the hell was this cruel and gory body damage of a joke that had been bestowed upon me? And look, my legs, my poor poor legs, they were entirely coated in that same purple hue as well. Go fucking figure!

In the midst of my panic, my brain laughed, probably on the verge of total self-destruction via hysteria, imagining Eric André saying: “What if it was purple?” Which, in turn, made me wonder if my cerebrum had been altered as well. The end of all four- five of my limbs had been hacked away; what were the odds of a lobotomy at this point? If I was to become physically invalid, bound to be pushed in a wheelchair for the rest of my pathetic life, might as well have crowned this masterpiece with some well-placed brain damage. Then I could be the bestest human eggplant in America.

I dropped my fatalism at the same time I dropped my toeless feet (in name only) on the floorboards. How I was supposed to keep any balance on what essentially amounted to cylindrical stilts was a riddle for the ages.

Clop clop!

“Two clops, ha ha ha!” the Count from Sesame Street said in my head.

Seriously, why did my feet reverberate like... I dunno, like oversized tumblers? As if I didn’t feel sufficiently alienated in my own flesh.

I digressed. I digressed so hard. The hospital was still waiting for my presence. Because soon – and I knew – soon the adrenaline would peter out, and the pain of missing a quarter of my body would stake me like hot iron. I needed to reach sweet lady morphine before it could be so.

“Vince! Call a goddam ambulance!” I tried again. “T-this... this is an emergency! Vince!” More unanswered shouts followed.

This all seemed futile. Beside the shuffling noises I was occasionally hearing, nothing seemed to take the bull by the horns on the subject of getting me onto a stretcher. Having only myself to rely on, I chose to power through what could have potentially brought me so much pain, and took the inconsiderate decision of standing out of my bed. They say never to move an accidented victim. Well, today, the accidented victim took a different approach.

Knees unbending to bring me to my five feet eleven of height, I trembled unsteadily. The pain I felt in my lower back was no longer ignorable, and with a total lack of stability, I-

“YaaaAAAHHH!”

-fell forward, straight onto the floor. Million upon million of years in evolution, only for me to have failed at the simple task of standing. The jaw was the impact point, and I felt my teeth clack together. My big, squared teeth (???). That was wild man, so wild! It’s as if my body – my OWN dismantled body – fought every instinct I had to take the bipedal stance we loved oh so much. All it wanted was to bend forward, as if such a position was comfier; more natural. But that was a preposterous thought, no? When a force in my torso tried to push me to my arms on all-four like a released spring that had been under tension, I didn’t have the reflex to cushion my fall – because why would I? I wasn’t a goddamn baby. Just a man, a purple man, with a brutal vasectomy, and a plethora of botched amputations.

Sigh...

Here I was, on the floor, unable to make heads or tails of anything ever since my coughing session took over my dreams. What did I ever do to deserve this kind of fate? Had I not been enough of a good lil’ Christian boy? Did I insult my coworkers perhaps a little too much? Was I too egotistical within the band? Did I burn one too many anthills? Whatever the case was, it sure made me start to hyperventilate. I was but a rag, deformed and afraid. I was on the floor and I couldn’t get up. Just like in the stupid meme ad. I had become as autonomous as that old lady. Whyyy!

“Twilight...?” tentatively asked a voice that sounded petite, although maybe not as much as mine.

“V-Vince?... Vince! Oh, oh thank God! Vince, you gotta help me! S-something happened to me, I...!” I desperately tried to reach for the only aid around.

“Are you okay?” the voice’s worries increased tenfold.

“Nooo!” I moaned. “Call 911!”

Click.

The lights turned on.

Light usually shed perspective on an impasse. Light was the source of enlightenment, of questions answered. With light, we could see. With light, we could understand. Not so much here. It just multiplicated my confusion by, like, a billion gazillion.

I WISH that was an overstatement.

But you take a look at my hyperbole and you try to explain to me why in front of me stood a bizarre creature, as purple as I was. Purple being the theme of the night, so it seemed. At the height of approximately two and a half feet, the interloper looked a bit lizard-like in design. Like us humans, it stood on two feet, and it had the luxury of bearing what I now lacked: Fingers. Albeit, clawed. That there was red flag number one. Its relatively small mouth was hung a bit agape, revealing sharp triangles. Red flag number two. On top of its head stood an array of big lime-green scales, shaped like domes, going down what I assumed to be its spine, kind of like a stegosaurus. Elongated and thus threatening. I filed this as yet another red flag. The pièce de resistance were its eyes. Huge freaking saucers, taking about half of its stout skull, ornated with green irises. Of course, the pupils had to be vertical lines, why wouldn’t they have been. That just highlighted how much more of a predator this intruder was, like a cat about to pounce. Though puny, it could still have kicked my ass ten times over.

I could’ve tried to pretend that this uncharted critter was naught but an animatronic, or an automated puppet that was sent to my room to deliver the punchline to the worst prank that’s even been pulled on me, but that would’ve been beyond dishonest. There was no denying that this monster was purely biological in nature. That there was the real deal. A quick look at its malleable facial features would’ve made you instantly agree with me; not to mention the shine on its skin that highlighted every singular scale, all of which crafted with masterful precision. It was too organic to have been engineered, and too realistic to have been bioengineered.

Given the nice portrait I’ve given you, it was only natural for me to shout some more, trying to push myself away as far as my destroyed body allowed me to. With shy kicks of tree-trunk legs, I backed into the side of the bed, something hairy squished under my buttocks making me wince. Pain in a region I’ve never felt before.

“Vince! H-holy shit! VINCE! Hurry the HELL up! T-there’s a monster in my bedroom!” I called out for my rent buddy. He talked to me two seconds ago; what the hell was taking so long?

“T-Twilight? Are... are you okay?” demanded the thing before me with anxious undertones.

I saw its mouth move. I saw it match the words uttered. One plus one equals two.

“AAAHHHH! AND IT T-T-TALKS TOO!” I cowered behind my lumpy forearms.

The purple lizard did the last thing I wanted it to do: It approached me. I wanted it to retreat, to disappear from the shattered fragments of sanity that I had left for myself. But no such luck was had tonight. It would keep on getting worse and worse, I just knew it. Being alarmist was the winning move all along.

“Hey hey hey…!” it said, with a tone that could’ve almost passed as soothing. “It’s okay Twilight, it’s okay!”

Houston, physical contact had been initiated.

Its skin had the toxic warning coloration, and it touched me. I already had a foot in the grave.

My throat managed to become drier than it was when I woke up. Cold sweat ran down my still too-hot forehead, as my hyperventilation worsened. I was going to die. That there was an empirical certainty. I was going to get nibbled by this carnivorous crooked comodo dragon. A slow and painful death. Being eaten alive: The number one primal fear. I was incapacitated, my body slaughtered to the point of making me unable to even stand up to plot an escape. I couldn’t punch it, I couldn’t kick it, I couldn’t fight it. My missing appendages rendered me as helpless as a car crash dummy. I shouted as a final act of defiance, a terrifying bloodcurdling noise my new shrill voice managed to produce, but it fell on deaf ears. Vince would be none the wiser later in the morning. He’d find skeletal remains of a human being he once called friend, and the coroner would simply wonder why the beast seemingly swallowed my hands and feet whole.

As I waited for the end, with many thoughts going to family and friends, it took me a moment to realize that no harm has been had so far. I attempted to open a frightened eye, only to find out that my attacker was holding me in an embrace. It nuzzled its head on my neck. I could feel the warmth of its skin rubbing on my trembling own, despite it being what I thought to be a cold-blooded lifeform. I was shaking profusely, simply unable to wane down the stress of everything I had to endure this morning. But that didn’t discourage the dinosaur mutant to try and mellow me out. The more I shuddered, the more it tried to calm it down with gentle pats.

“It’s okay Twi,” he repeated once more, sadness oozing from its little mouth. “You had a bad dream. You overworked yourself and you had a nightmare, that’s it...”

I gulped. “P-p-pretty sure I-I’m having a nightmare r-r-right now...” I whimpered with a tremolo.

He hugged me some more, his grip hardening, as if he was trying to squeeze the misery out of me. I settled on the “he” here, because his voice sounded masculine enough. Something my testicle-less body wished it still had. And he did seem to have a good grasp on the English language. Mashing syllables into words, packaged into cohesive sentences. Linguistic knowledge meant scholarship, and scholarship was fueled by cognition. So yes, a sapient being deserved to, at the very least, have less pejorative pronouns. No matter where he originated from.

He did a couple more shh shh shh’s to sooth me. We both let three to four minutes pass.

“W-what... what are you?” I huffed out with all the strength I could muster, barely having regained control of my breathing.

His little yet disproportionately large head lifted to meet my gaze. He suddenly became a little too close for comfort. A mere bite to my neck and it was game over, you know?

“Uhhh, why are you asking me this?” Sadness was substituted for confusion.

“Are you... are you an... alien?” I probed further.

“Twilight?” was his single worded answer. Was that his name? I needed to be more assertive. These were unprecedented times.

“I’m serious! What- who are you? Please answer, I’m not joking...”

“I’m... I’m Spike, your dragon assistant? Why are you asking me this?” he asked once again.

For the second time in a row, I did not give him an answer. I just stared at him, brow furrowed, but fear still omnipresent in my eyes. I think I even felt my left cheek push up, making my eyelid twitch.

A dragon? An assistant? What in the world of piss was even happening? This was way past my area of expertise. I wasn’t one to try and catch pictures of the Sasquatch and dabble in hoax communities. I was a disgruntled guitar picker, not one with an affinity for the unknown. The paranormal? Urban legends? Bleh. Hard pass. And now, this “Spike” fellow, he barged in, going all “oh yeah I’m a dragon wassup,” like I was supposed to gobble this insanity up. Plus, he didn’t have wings. So, checkmate, liar.

“Are you... feeling well? Twi, maybe, maybe we should- do you think you need to go to the hospital?” Spike, my ‘assistant dragon’ asked, as if he was running out of options.

My eyes widened like a psychopath. “Yes! Yes, I need to go to the hospital! I lost my fingers! And my...” I looked down at my nether region. The dragon backed away slightly, utterly discombobulated. “Call... call the police – or better yet, ask my narcoleptic roommate to call them!”

“We have a roommate?” Spike tried to catch some middle ground between him and my distressed self. “Err, since when?”

“Vince, he’s my roommate!” I nodded frantically, only answering his first question. “VINCE! VINCE! GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW, YOU BASTARD!” I shouted.

Spike, meanwhile, held two clawed indexes into something that had the morphology of ears, cringing at the noise. I sort of went full WWE announcer two inches away from his face, so, ah, that kind of response was not unwarranted.

“Twilight, it’s just the two of us in here, always has been! Maybe you just dreamt of this ‘Vince’ pony and this is why you’re confused?” I looked at him, borderline disgusted. “Chin up, you’ll find a stallion of your own one of these days, I’m sure of it!” he teased with a wink.

Okay, wow. Clever little quippy Mc. Gee, huh? We oughta learn to know each other before either of us started with the homoerotic teasing. Dragon or not, extra-terrestrial invader or not, self-proclaimed assistant or not, Spike should have kept his class act before he dissed my homie and I like this.

“I- Vince and I have been living here together for two years now! I-I-I don’t even know you!” I pointed my maimed arm toward his face. “And also, also, why are you in my apart- And WHY do you keep saying ‘Twilight?’ What does that even mean!?” I rapid fired a bunch of questions, my brain nearing an aneurism.

If he was confused before, now he was in total incomprehension. “Uh, I keep saying it because that’s your name? Duh!” He smacked his own cranium.

“No!”

“‘No?’” he repeated.

“That’s not my name, why would you assume that!? I’ve never seen you before!”

Was it customary for beings from outer space, or I guess, beings from tales and fables to give names to people they encountered? To me, that seemed like a very bold move, especially when he appointed me such a terrible one. Twilight. Ugh. I suppose they didn’t have Stephenie Meyer’s finest on Mars, or something.

“So you’re saying your name’s not Twilight Sparkle, huh?” he crossed his arms with his head tilted slightly, a smug yet incredulous expression painting his now punchable face.

Sparkle! Twilight fucking Sparkle! Get a load of this horseshit! That little fucker flung gay innuendos at my bud and I’s expense, and now he labelled me with the stupidest godawful nickname that would make the pinkest glitter cry in embarrassment. Well suffice to say, I was worried for my life in peril mere minutes ago, but this... unwanted guest actually managed to reshape that into anger. I grinded my teeth – my still WAY too big teeth – and I swore you would have seen a cloud thundering over my frustrated face if we were in a cartoon. The nerve! To kick me while I was already down. My body was bastardized, and that overgrown lizard was spending its jolly good time throwing childish insults at me.

Though, I did have to admit that he hugged me into submission moments ago. That helped me to calm down somewhat, so I guess he bore some good in him. My nerves kind of owed him one.

Ugh, what a damn rollercoaster of emotions. I wished I still had mini-me down there to help me control them better.

The tiny dragon etched a smile on the corner of his mouth, but I could tell he was conflicted about it given my unstable state of mind. In the end, he lost the internal war he tried so hard to fight.

“Hehe!” Spike snickered. “You’re the only pony I know who gets this red when she gets flustered,” he tried to suppress his amusement, but did not succeed.

Pause.

Rewind.

Play.

Pony?

SHE?

I would have loved to explain these as harmless Freudian slips. Or perhaps this creature did not exactly have 20/20 vision. But... I re-analyzed these lavender arms and legs. This lavender torso. This... mop of navy that seemed to follow my ass wherever I shifted it. The one that tickled my pain receptors when I wedged it awkwardly under my own weight. The one that- oh my GOD, it was a fucking tail, wasn’t it? No way, no goddamn way! We evolved out of this archaic shit millennia ago! I couldn’t possibly have an ancestral relapse! The more the day advanced, the more we scratched the realm of impossibility. What, did my assailants tax so much out of me that they kindly paid back their debt by transplanting a bundle of hair onto my coccis? Were they TRYING to make me feel any less human? Not enough that they escaped with my genitals, but they also had to humiliate me further?

This was now officially entering war crime territory. I knew for a fact the Geneva convention would’ve outlawed in a heartbeat the torment I had to endure if the officials caught ear of it.

My internal cogs were working at Mach five speed. I didn’t understand. I COULDN’T understand. This whole trip became more and more eldritch in nature. I’ll blow a brain vessel before I can even begin to figure this puzzle out. Even if I tried to-

“I-I’m sorry Twilight. I know I shouldn’t tease you when you’re having a bad time,” apologized Spike.

If by “bad time,” he meant “mental breakdown,” then yeah, we stood in agreement. Spike turned around swiftly back to the stairs he came from. Wait, since when did stairs led to my bedroom? Two years in my shared one-floor 900 sq. ft. apartment and you’d think I would know the layout by now.

“Lemme brew you some of your favorite tea. I’m positive that’ll help you relax,” he added. “I think you just woke up brusquely. IIIIII’m not sure you need to go to the hospital just because of a few nightmares,” he concluded, sure of himself.

Wrong! So wrong! DEAD wrong! And- and how could he pretend to know what my preferred brand of Lipton tea was? I didn’t even LIKE tea!

I. Didn’t. Know. This. GUY! And he was acting like we had been brothers since the dawn of time.

I buried my head in my hooves, grunting in exasperation.

Wait.

Did I just seriously fucking call them “hooves?” Oh no no no, Sir, I will NOT entertain the seed of an idea my mischievous new “friend” implanted in my mind. My misadventure had nothing to do with Inception! I lived in the real-ass world, worked on a real-ass computer, strummed a real-ass worn-out guitar, was part of a real-ass pretentious post-rock band, drank some real-ass porters, and vibed with my real-ass friends. So what if I was a teeny tiny bit deformed? So what if a creature from the cosmos rocked up and decided to play-pretend with me? These were big problems that needed to be dealt with, but they were still grounded in the grand scheme of reality. And I intended to prove it to this creature, this walking impossibility, whom I’ve never met in my entire damn life.

I looked at my flank- HIP! I looked at my hip and was greeted by yet more purple. Just… purple for days. And fur. God fucking shit fuck, I really was covered in a layer of velvety carpet, was I not? I dismissed it for the time being, much to the relief of my sanity. Then, hesitantly, I turned my attention back to the disappearing form of Spike as he was reaching down the floor below (that we had, apparently).

“Please can you... can you also bring a mirror?” I whined, my confidence flushing away faster than I would’ve hoped.

“Hum, you know there’s a mirror in the bathroom, right? Why not groom yourself there?” said his voice from afar.

“I can’t... I don’t want to get up,” I bitched back, being completely honest with myself. My legs were still dancing in epileptic shivers, and walking had once proved unsuccessful.

After a small moment passed, “Sure Twilight, I’ll bring a mirror, if that makes you feel better,” is the response I’ve been given.

Argghnn! Next time he’s going to call me by that degrading name, I’ll retaliate with a hoof to his face. I mean- FUCK! A Fist to his face! A stubby fist with a hand that’s been expropriated!

As I’ve been left alone to my crazy thoughts once again, I took this time to regain control of my neurotic self. Who wouldn’t panic in such a situation though, right? You live 22 years of normal life and then suddenly, purple, dick off, hands out, feet nullified, midget dragon. I was amazed I didn’t succumb to a more severe panic attack or didn’t straight up pass out... yet. That was still a prospect for future me, depending on what mirror, mirror on the wall would say about my looks. About my face. The articulations, the joints and the muscles felt wrong for sure, as did my weirdly tubular neck. If the rest of my oddly metamorphosed body was any indication, then these were bad omens.

I tentatively touched my visage to- Nope! Nope nope nope SO MUCH NOPE! I couldn’t even feel my ears on the side of my dang head. I solemnly swore not to test the field any further until I had my face in the reflective glass.

My mind wandered to the room instead. My room.

Not my room.

Not by a slim chance.

This was not my bed I was laying next to. This was not my floor my rump was caressed with. These were not the walls that housed me for six hundred something days. That ceiling had never been above my head before.

Wood. Wood for days. Wood for years. The floor was, well, floored by planks. Nice varnish too. Problem was, I vividly recalled my bedroom having an uncleaned white carpet turned beige that was so out of style even my boomer parents pitied it. The walls did not meet in those 90 degree angles any building worth their foundation had; rather, they were undulated, and textured almost as if they were made of stripped bark. It looked like a chaotic, organized mess of a structure. The architect must’ve snorted a fat line before he came up with that stuff.

I certainly didn’t own a cuckoo clock, or a telescope, or a large replica of a white knight chess piece on a chevet table, or bedsheets with some kind of constellation on it. My bookcase was slender and on wheels, not recessed into the very wall. And what about that giant bay window, the one displaying the rising sun? I told you before: Curtains drawn, that was my way of doing things. But here, the glassed wall cavity had no coverings. And I’ve mentioned the bedroom staircase too; that was a weird one, right?

Wherever I was finding myself at this point in time, it was most definitely not my apartment. I’ve been dumped into a completely unfamiliar environment, perhaps after the rogue surgeon who toyed around with my genetics was done with his violation of my privacy. This would have explained why Vince refused to heed my cries for help: He simply was not here. Lucky bastard was still probably fast asleep back in his cushiony cot. Why had I been the chosen victim and not him? Wait- That was a terrible thing to think! Why me and not no one? There, better.

Maybe this dwelling – if this counted as a dwelling of any kind – was truly the little dragon’s home (because dragons were totally a thing, don’t you know?) I could definitely sniff influences of fantasy from how this place was carved, so that would be befitting for a creature of folklore.

Speaking of the devil. I still hadn’t moved when Spike returned upstairs with the hot drink and a little stand-up mirror three quarters of his size.

“Here you go, that oughta put you right back on track!” he said optimistically.

The steaming cup was deposited by my flaaan- side, my side, by my erfin’ SIDE. My “favorite tea,” apparently. I stared at it, then at my voided hands, then at the tea bringer. I did it again. And again. This little exchange continued, but the dragon remained unperplexed as to what the problem was.

“Why are you doing this to me? Haven’t I suffered enough?” I accused.

He scratched the tip of his greenish scale in return. “What now, Twilight? I brought you what you wanted.”

I lifted my sawn-off arm to better demonstrate the little conundrum we just ran into.

“I don’t have hands, smartass! Not anymore! Somebody took them away!”

He flinched at the insult. I felt a minuscule tinge of regret at that.

“S-some-body?” He stressed the last part of the word, as if I said it wrong.

“That’s right, somebody! That’s why I needed to be rushed to the hospital, before the pain kicks in!”

“You’re... in pain? You didn’t tell me you were in pain!” His eyes swelled up perhaps twice their size.

“I mean... not really, no. I think?” Once again, t’was the truth. “I coughed a bunch when I woke up, and I think I drained three gallons of sweat, but...”

I shook my head, intending to return to the issue at hand.

“Spike, you’ve seen my hands, right? Look at yours,” which he did, “then look at mine. Do you see the problem? Unlike you, I can’t grasp the handle of the cup without fingers. You need to bring a straw, or something, if you want me to indulge.”

I couldn’t believe that I picked this moment to give a lesson on amputation. Even if this creature somehow didn’t originate from Earth – which I was 100% in-line with, by the way – he should have understood the issue, seeing as he too did have flexible digits. He brought the accursed thing with them, for crying out loud!

“Riiiiight. Your ‘hands’ and your ‘fingers,’” he raised a suspicious invisible eyebrow. He even added mocking air quotes to top it all off. “You’re being weird again, Twilight. Are you subtly boasting about how you can grab stuff with your horn? Kinda been there, done that,” he tapped his chin.

“My horn? What are you... I don’t have a...” I shook my head. “Please give me the mirror,” I somehow managed to say matter-of-factly.

“Heh, okie dokie. You really have quite the bed face this morning,” he chuckled, unaware of my regrowing distress.

The tea went ignored as I refocused onto my declining sense of identity. Spike dropped the bathroom accessory by his side. My deprecated hands still nowhere to be seen, I knew I couldn’t simply get a hold of the reflective object. Such a simple task rendered unachievable just because my greatest human trump card had been circumvented. So freaking pathetic. So freaking dependent.

I didn’t even try to stand again. The mirror was laid on the floor, so I had no reason to ascend. Instead, I tried my best to bend forward from my uncomfortable sitting position, until my atrophied limbs had to put kinesthetics at work to make me approach my target. I opted for the simplest solution: Crawling. Prone onto the parquetry, with even more loud CLOPS, I anchored my arms firmly to the floor like sturdy pylons, and with efforts through my still bendable elbows, I dragged myself forward. I wasn’t so heavy that my arms couldn’t locomote me.

Meanwhile, Spike was bewildered at my show of force. I thought then that he must’ve expected something out of me that I clearly didn’t have. Best I could tell with how little I knew at the time, was that he had me confused with someone else, perhaps due to the global plastic surgery my body went through without my consent.

“Hum, what are you doing?” he finally found the guts to ask.

“Hush.”

Another bit of propelling and I was about to get all of my answers. I just hoped I hadn’t been disfigured beyond recognition. Face/Off was just a movie after all, and I was neither Travolta nor Cage. I silently prayed that my face remained fit for use for our album covers. My charm could sell.

One final horizontal pull-up later, and I had met my mirrored self. Except, this mirror was taunting me, that’s what it was doing.

For my beautiful and handsome scraggly guitarist face was not the one portrayed there, but something completely bonkers, completely outlandish. Perhaps even more so than the dragon by my side. It didn’t have an unshaven stubble, it didn’t have eleven hour shifts baggy eyes, it didn’t have coffee-stained teeth, it didn’t have skin cratered by years of violent teen acne, it didn’t have my signature scruffy eyebrows.

By all accounts, it was a horse.

A purple horse, as purple as the hide that clung onto the entirety of my being like an invasive parasite. She looked devastated, as though her world crumbled into microscopic specs of shattered hope. Uh, ‘she?’ ‘Her?’ Well she looked female enough to me. I couldn’t put my finger as to why – probably because I didn’t have an effing finger anymore. See, she even took a cautious look at her hoof to confirm it. She was splayed on the floor like I was splayed on the floor, her long and slender neck craned upward so that her eyes could peer into mine. Eyes that screamed terror, intimidated by how I stared her to death.

Body shape aside, the resemblance to horses pretty much stopped there. She was equine-moulded alright. But that face she bore lodged somewhere between “uncanny” and “Matt Groening drunk at 3 AM.” All thanks to those damn aforementioned eyes. Gi-gan-tic, my friends. That, they were. Spike had to eat his carrots for his ocular diner plates to match her ocular frisbees. As far as I could gather, her irises were a darker shade of purple compared to the one that coated her pelt. And her pupils were itsy-bitsy. Minuscule, singular-dotted pinpricks. I wondered if it was a bug or a feature. Atop her panic-ridden expression was a mane, a bit scruffy around the edges, but overall well-tended (everybody’s a critic). It was mostly indigo in color, but it was decorated with two perpendicular stripes; one cardinal-red, and the other, magenta. Her ears were two equilateral triangles to the back and above her rounded head, twitching attentively like small antenna dishes.

The weirdest bit, la crème de la crème: In between two locks of hair, riiiiiiight above those flabbergasted eyes, centered on the forehead, stood a rather unfortunate malformation in her skull. A bone cancer growth that didn’t receive a proper MRI in years. A probed out nubby spire that would be naught but inconvenient. Spike would call it a horn; I’d call it a tumor shaped like a fat popsicle stick.

When I tried to get a better look at the ass tattoos, moving my bum sideways so she could move hers, the tail flailing in all sorts of directions all the while, I started to have quite enough of this mimicking minigame. Not that I was particularly upset or angry, no no no.

I was just a little too close to shitting myself for my taste, see.

But make no mistakes. I knew something. I knew something and I knew it well. There was a lingering axiom floating about that had no right to be ignored. I could not postpone my acknowledgement of its existence any further.

All of this?

It was really happening.

Sure, I had played Radiohead’s How to Disappear Completely in my head when I took a good look at what I’d become, and the advice sung by Thom Yorke stipulated the opposite of the thesis I just posited. Because deep down, I knew that this was more coping than accepting. The sick sad truth went beyond Kid A’s finest.

This was not a dream. This was not a euphoric hallucination. This was not the fabrication of a coma. This was not a simulation. The Metaverse didn’t take over. I had coughed, I had ached, I had suffered an inhuman amount of heat, I could feel it all with such lucid tangibility, and I most definitely was NOT having fun. It had been nothing but discomfort, pain, anguish, and confusion. This. Was. Not. Fake.

Reaffirming this washed yet another wave of craze all over this body I inhibited. My delirium reached its apex precisely then.

With a burst of strength, fueled by too many weeks without uncle Xanax, I jolted backward, to return to the sitting I abandoned earlier. I pushed myself away from the artifact of doom (i.e., the mirror) the same way I had pushed myself away from Spike the first time he rocked up. The difference, this time around, being my accusatory hoof/arm pointing – if one could’ve pointed without any fingers – at the face that greeted me six seconds ago.

“What the heck is THAT!?”

“Somepony who hasn’t brushed their mane?” comically shrugged my extraterrestrial acolyte.

“That couldn’t- That wasn’t me, right?”

Spike deadpanned. “Who else would it be?”

“Why am I a horse!?”

Spike groaned. “Isn’t it a bit early to have delusions of grandeur? I don’t think it’s even possible to go from pony to horse, Twi. You should know, right?”

“From pony to... I’m a pony!? That’s what this disgusting purple mongrel is?”

The hoof trembled at my contorted doppelganger. My self-appointed assistant drooped, saddened to deal with even more of my shenanigans. Self-deprecation was on the menu this time around.

“H-hey now, don’t say that...” I felt his sorrow penetrating the marrow of my bones like radiation.

“I-Is... is...” I sniffled, finding it particularly hard to continue. “Is this o-one of th-those... deforming mirrors from circus f-f-freak shows? Is it? Is it??”

There was a lump in my throat. A big lump jam-packed with mucus.

“Oh, Twilight...” he sympathized, the sorrow being doubly potent now. But I had my answer. That there was a genuine mirror with no tricks up its sleeve.

He wanted to approach me, to keep my growing sense of dread in check. But instead, I crawled back to the mirror. I had to see that face again. I had to see that ugly bitch’s mug, her mockery of humanity, just one more time. I had to see it with her own bare eyes. I had to imprint it in my gray matter. I had to make sure she and I were one and the same, that it was indeed me, the sucker who had been stripped away from everything he had once loved about himself.

Back in the oval, she stood true once more. The purple pony. That thrice be damned mare from hell. But something was a bit different from my first checkup. She now had enormous crocodile tears bawling out of her reddened puffy eyes, streaming on her fluffy cheeks like endless waterfalls, and dripping onto the oak planks. She hiccupped; I hiccupped. She wept even harder, the waterworks flooding every spot that wasn’t already wet on her face; and I did just the same.

I was tearing up so hard, moaning at the injustice, at the finality that had struck me. So, so hard, that I turned silent for several seconds before gasping a huge chunk of air into my depleted reserves, returning with loud pleading howls. I repeated the process for far longer than I could remember. I didn’t even register that Spike had returned a hug, rubbing his fingers on my hunched back. But I kept at it. If you thought my salted water tanks were close to being emptied, you were very very wrong.

I had not cried in what amounted to years. Last I did was when my grandpappy passed away approximately four years ago, when I was on my way out of high school. Ever since then, I went cold turkey on mushy emotions. Outside of songwriting, not much in my life prompted me to get in touch with my sensitive side. It’s not that I didn’t want to cry, it’s that I didn’t have a reason to.

Here though? This was four years of repression leaking out all at once. And I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t strong. I wasn’t resilient, tough, and courageous like those heartbroken protagonists me and the guys wrote lyrics about. I was just so utterly crushed beyond redemption. I lost total control of myself. I allowed myself to lose that control without any resistance. I didn’t even try to fight back at the anvil that wedged itself in my guts. I cried so hard that I was blowing hot snot out of my nose – my snout. My snout. My fucking snout!

Just when I thought I had let it all out, I went at it again. I started to fear that the wood near my feet... hooves... would start to warp if I kept raining on it like this. My face even began to sting. My cheeks felt like they were made of lava, and I could barely see anything past the misty screen that blurred my vision.

“This isn’t... this isn’t me... I’m not...” I sobbed in between tears, barely managing to get the words in the right order.

“P-please don’t cry... Please,” tried to comfort the valiant little dragon, only for him to start having tear bubbles around the corner of his eyes. “I’m there for you, Twi. Always.”

“I-I... I don’t... d-don’t want to be this repulsive thing...”

I burrowed my head in a depression made from my two forelegs. Forelegs... Now resting on the floor in supplication, as though I was ready to be chastised by a vengeful God.

“Twilight, how could you say that!? You are one of the most beautiful ponies in town! It’s true! A-and I’m not just saying that b-because I’m your number one assistant, I...” He wiped a tear that was running down his face with the back of his scaly arm. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to upset you!”

I turned the head that wasn’t mine, but that was mine regardless, to face the self-incriminating reptile. His head hung low, and he was fighting really hard to not completely break down as I had.

“Wuh- what? Spike, you- why would you have upset me? Y-you didn’t do anything!” I tried to deescalate the situation.

“N-no, I-I did! I made a distasteful joke about this Vince stallion you dreamt about, about how you’d- a-and... and then I got the giggles when you got irritated. I never wanted to shatter your self-confidence like this, I would never want that!”

“Spike, this isn’t...” I lowered my head, torn with shame. “This isn’t about you, I promise. You have nothing to do with any of this,” I reassured him, my hooves trying to clear my big eyeballs from the last of my tears. “This is about me. Trying to... figure stuff out. I’m not in- in a very good place right now. I don’t understand what’s going on, or anything, and it’s gotten me so afraid... I’m just all jumbled up.”

Spike came back to nuzzle my whimpering form once again. It’s been a lot of dragon to pony contacts in one morning. I never really was one to get physical like this. For instance, I only gave the occasional handshake to my old folks, perhaps three to four times a year, but that was the pinnacle of how close them and I wanted to approach one another. Not that we didn’t love each other – we really really did – but we just didn’t want to express it by being all touchy. My friends came from that same school of thoughts. Hugs were a once-per-decade deal for me. I don’t think I’ve even touched Vince once. With that in mind however, I couldn’t describe how nice it felt to just go with the flow together with Spike; him caressing me, me caressing him back.

I stressed once again that my detachment with myself had not been in any way, shape, or form prompted by him, and that seemed to have successfully put him at ease.

The two of us sighed in contentment, the moment of weakness having mostly passed. I almost felt a bit cathartic after this bumpy ride of a wake up.

After a few more minutes of pure blissful silence, Spike finally nudged me lightly.

“I think you should drink your tea before it gets cold. Trust me, it’ll make you feel super-duper back in no time,” he suggested.

“Ok...” I said, a bit resigned and fatigued at once. Crying took a lot out of me.

Drinking something smooth and calming didn’t seem like such a bad idea. My many coughs did leave me completely dehydrated after all.

I tried to push myself up, but my trembling legs could no longer support my decaying leftovers of strength. So I did the best next thing and I slumped to my side lazily, my hind legs crossed a bit to mask my nakedness. I had just gotten out of bed after all; I did not have time to sport some trousers or anything, really – and yes, I did make a habit of sleeping in my birth suit. Forever an enemy of the nightly heat, I was. Spike didn’t seem to mind my show of exhibitionism however, which was a microscopic plus if there was to be one. But once a prude, always a prude, and you couldn’t sue me for trying to conceal myself a little bit, no matter which form my body took.

With this out of the way, I took a timid look at the lukewarm tea, the one that my compassionate friend had delightfully poured just for me. I then sent a sheepish smile his way.

“Um, would it be alright if you brought it to me and helped me drink it?”

Christ, I felt like an invalid. I was still in the golden years of my life. In the prime of my 20’s, and this is what I’ve been reduced to? In one measly night too? I could see many more crying sessions queuing up already. I for sure would have to make a schedule down the line. Cry on Thursday, cry on Saturday, etc.

Spike, probably thinking I’ve worked myself to exhaustion emotionally, physically, and mentally, did not hesitate one second to tend to my request.

“Sure Twilight, I’d love to.”

Author's Note

Hey would you look at that. I'm trying to do the HiE thingy all the cool kids and their mom did, in 2023 no less. You know what they say: Better later than never.

Now, gotta toss this lil' disclaimer out there, but English ain't my first language. So if you spot weird shit and/or butchered grammar that would get me bullied by a class full of smug fourth graders, pretend that's the reason why. Definitely not because I'm incompetent, or because I don't reread myself enough, or because- and I will stop talking now.

That's all for today, guys! Remember to like, comment, and subscribe if you want to see more videos like these!!! 👌💯😎😎😎

The Farm

I acted impulsively, and made a promise to a child that wasn’t mine. A pinkie promise too, as if that made any difference whatsoever. At 22 years of age, I still didn’t feel like an adult, and I wasn’t prone to make the soundest decisions. I definitely botched my priorities with what I had thrown myself into, and I had no one but myself to blame for it. Returning home was the end goal. All I had to do was to wait at best a couple of hours, get a good night of sleep, and pop back into my respectful existence. Instead, I enrolled myself into a stupid side quest that made zero sense.

As if anything else did, really.

Now, I was being forced out of my safe space. To expose myself to the outside world. Christ, I could feel the flow of anxiety pumping into my veins. Anxiety practically became my middle name. If I had any nails, I would’ve chewed them to smithereens.

Apple Bloom was already outside, baking under the warm midday late summer sun. Meanwhile, I was grounded by four legs like the stupid goddamn pony I was, still in the middle of the center room of the library, paralyzed by fear.

“Ya’ll are comin’ with?” she asked.

“B-b-but I’m naked...!”

And so was she! “Oh excuse me officer, yeah, I was just taking a nudist walk with this little girl who isn’t mine, also, I’m tots not a pedophile.” Yeah, not only was I a pony, not only was I not at home, not only was I coerced into helping a total stranger, but I was now under the threat of being tossed in jail. My freedom was the last boon I had. Freedom was the remaining beacon that made me human! It was a beautiful ideology that defined us, and I was not ready to have it stripped away so easily!

Oh God oh man oh God oh man...

“Stop stallin’, Twilight! Ye’re wastin’ time! Daylight’s-a burnin’!” she complained, stomping in place on all four hooves like an angry Yosemite Sam.

Naked, and on all fours. All I needed was to wait for someone to doggy style me from behind. I had never felt this humiliated in my entire life. Even when I hurled in the middle of an oral exam in fourth grade. God, what I wouldn’t do to be put back in front of Mrs. Lisa with a shirt stained with my lunch right now. A laughing class was heaven to today’s hell.

If my face was purple, it sure as shit was red now.

Well, if I didn’t have time to walk like a sophisticated human, then I’ll have to bite the bullet and take a note from Apple Bloom’s book. Carpe Diem, motherfuckers, I was a horse, and I was going to be forced to move like one. Farewell, humanity. We had it good, didn’t we?

A step forward. Another one. Holy moly, was it awkward to figure out which limb had to do what. What was the process here? Was there a manual or a For Dummies guidebook I could borrow from this library? Save for my automated gallop to the door earlier, I only ever had to deal with two legs moving – and even then, coordination was not my forte. Now, I had to deal with twice as many legs? This was madness! How did the majority of Earth’s terrestrial vertebrates do it?

I tried to do a weird cross-country skiing technique. Left legs advanced first in a synchronized effort, then right legs picked up the slack together. It made me approach the door in a slanted way, but heck if I wasn’t moving! Feeling like I could do better, I attempted to simply bend my body down and stretch my front hooves further up, and bringing my rear thereafter. I must’ve looked like a broken slinky. Or a mentally defective caterpillar. Not as effective of a method as I thought. Experimenting further, I tried to-

“Huuuuuurrrryyy up!” Apple Bloom complained.

“Eek!” I squeaked out like the man I wasn’t.

My coach’s encouragement did its thing. I instinctively hasted myself, for fear of being banished to the Shadow Realm by the little yellow filly, and I awkwardly trotted to the door. Crazy how well we could perform whilst under pressure. My limbs just moved one by one, albeit with a good lack of grace.

And shit, was that the trim of the door passing me overhead? Yup. Now substituted for the sun. Of the outdoors. I was outside. Naked and outside. Alarm bells rang so loudly in my cranium, I thought I had reached DEFCON 1. I had to focus on something else before I promptly self-destructed.

I brought my vision down from the sky where my escapism sought refuge.

The brain did not appreciate what it was processing.

“What.”

A large road network fully paved by round chiseled stones, interlaced with sandy mortar. As though Roman legionaries themselves did the roadwork.

“Whaaaaaat.”

Rows upon rows of establishments not all too different from those found in Renaissance fairs. Antiquated medieval-looking houses with skeletons of archaic wooden lattices. Constructed with a structure of dark timber, filled with contrasting white wattle and daub. Casement windows with diamond panes plastered on every flat surface, every cross-gabled roof, every overhanging chunk of house, every dormer. Topped by sharply angled thatched roofs, giving the overall scene the vibe of a kid drawing an old-timey Swiss village with wax crayons.

“WHAAAAT!”

Banderoles of triangular multicolor flags, lush climbing vegetation attached to the walls of the houses, century-old lanterns on every corner of the streets, a buttload of decorative evergreens, hedges, and other verdure clashing against the city vibe, dirt paths branching off the mainline, buttresses as far as the eye could see, conical tents, heart-shaped decorative ornaments, food carts happy to serve, stone curvy bridges, a snaking river-

“WHAAAAT IS HAPPENING!?”

Apple Bloom questioned my outburst, but I tuned her out. I was busy keeping my stroke in check.

Truly, this carnival-ass area was the cusp of my insanity. I yet again managed to outdo myself on the matter. Because you know what was the most upsetting about this whole ordeal? The grand finisher? The ultimate kicker? It was the anachronistic nature of the environment. This did not scream post 2020 at all! Where were the cars? Nothing was driving, nothing was parked. What about the pedestrians bustling the sidewalks? The typical beggars sheltered on park benches, housed by nothing but moldy newspapers? The random mutt barking? The occasional car horn dribbling in road rage? The loud music playing out of an inconsiderate passerby’s phone? The planes high up in the skyline? The weather and news choppers circling about? The distant yet constant sound of traffic? The vines of electrical cables webbing from building to building?

The fire hydrants? The radio antennas? The endless array of AC units? The catwalks? The speed limit signs? The spray tagged walls? The oversized and obnoxious billboards? The overflowing trash cans? The pollution, the sewage, the liter, the smog, the sickening smell of exhaust?

WHERE WAS ANY OF THE STUFF THAT MADE ME FEEL AT HOME!?

Wherever I had been displaced was a far cry from Baltimore. Want some proof? Here was some proof! In the form of hundred of pastel-colored splashes wandering around the place, populating the city into the liveliness it was built to accommodate.

Someone had dropped a gigantic bag of Skittles into Ponyville, except, these weren’t rainbow candies at all, but moving parasites, all of them in the form of living ponies. Breathing, existing, going from point A to point B with purpose. Commuting. Busying themselves with day-to-day work. They were as I was; we were one and the same. Me, Apple bloom, and the rest of the gang: All ponies. Ponies ponies ponies PONIES!

Frantically looking around like a madman, panning my terror-stricken eyes, it became obvious that I could not find a single human. No one around that could have had a claim on this Candy Land of a ranch. Either humans were extremely shy around Ponyville, or they simply did not want to coexist in this mad land. Or maybe they were a safe distance away and they were making astute observations about this crack pot of an ecosystem? God I sure hope that was the case. With any luck, I’d escape before they dropped the nuke.

...

Ponyville.

Fucking Ponyville.

Why did you have to be so literal? I should’ve figured that something was amiss when I got a hold of your name. The irony of this journey imposed upon me was palpable. My unforgiving metamorphosis had some common sense in its execution, didn’t it? What a cruel and twisted joke. Now I was a pragmatic and informed member of this batshit insane society; I could fit in like a glove! And I lived happily ever after!!!

I expected humans. I really did. I wanted humans. I didn’t want to be seen by them, sure, but I needed to acknowledge their existence nonetheless. I needed a surgeon, a lawyer, and a banker, to reshape me physically, legally, and monetarily, respectively. Maybe a priest too. An exorcism could do some good in these troubled times. But yeah, with no workers around to aid me, I was getting more and more into “shit outta luck” territory. I didn’t want to be on my own when I needed a shoulder – a HUMAN shoulder – to cry on.

Apple Bloom turned forward before she could take a good look at my eyes that were practically falling out of their socket. I did my best to nervously follow her, but boy, what a task that was.

“H-hang on Apple Bloom, I just gotta...”

If we were going to venture further into these unknown streets full of clowns, then I had to make sure I could find my way back. Without a phone or, in other words, without the guidance of Google Maps, a visual survey of my “house” was all that I had. So I turned around to-

A tree.

The library was housed inside of a tree.

No, no! Come back, last brain cell! I still needed you!

Ugh. So absurd. So asinine. I felt like I was in the Smurfs. This tree was pretty chunky by tree standards. I suppose in a way, this explained the hard-on for wood that decorated the interior. The tree-library (treebrary?) basked into a big deciduous hat of green leaves. I saw many balconies protruding out of many different doors. It was peppered by rounded windows, giving some Shire vibes from Lord of the Rings. It even had a beehive dangling under a branch because common sense was for losers.

“Unnnghh...” I moaned out loud, eyes close, hoof trying to rub the forehead but failing at it.

“Wuzzat?” dumbfounded Apple Bloom quizzed.

“Nothing... nothing. I’ve just parted ways with logic. Lead the way.”

Okay, so everyone was naked. I didn’t know if it was a good or a bad thing. Some of these ponies bore a minimal number of accessories that reflected the job they were doing, almost in an idiosyncratic way. A chef’s hat to the left, a construction helmet to the right, etc. But no one seemed to mind exposing their nads and shit. Even the kids. What a freaking nightmare. Was I the only one who saw how wrong this whole fashion laissez-faire was? At least, I wasn’t going to be slammed onto the hood of a police Ford. Pfew, could you imagine how awkward it’d be to handcuff a pony? Maybe being clothed was this society’s backward way of thinking about nudity. Like, in a twisted Uno reverse card kind of way. Perhaps this was why Spike gave me the stink eyes when I implored him to find something to cover my shame with.

In any case, the nakedness elevated something weird. Nearly everyone around seemed to have a marking engraved on their flank, near their rear legs. On either side, too, in perfect symmetry. Seemed like only the older-looking ponies had them Lucky Charms decals. I thought my body merely had a slutty tramp stamp, seeing as Apple Bloom was young and had an untainted back, but nope. It was a societal thing, so I thought. A rite of passage of some kind. A religious celebration, a sinister Bar Mitzvah, that got you, a newly branded taxpayer, to be tattooed and subsequently easily identified by your peers. Somehow, that made this town feel a whole lot creepier than its cheery outlooks. Like, something straight out of The Purge, or The Wicker Man. The smiles and colors were nothing but an elaborated façade. Underneath, a crazy coven blanketed by a false pretense of happiness. A well-oiled masquerade.

But when you thought daddy government had your back, indoctrinating you to believe you could sleep on your laurels, your ass got stigmatized by a mark to secure your place in this fascist neo-Nazi town against your will. Flower-marked ponies were only to mate with other flower-marked ponies! No mixing the castes! No tainting the blood! Blue collar tattoos meant you hailed from a lower class of workers, and porcelain tattoos meant you were with the bourgeoisie! Liberty and choice of career took the backseat as your forced identity was stamped onto you forever! Institutionalized by Equestrian autocracy! Argh!

God, I was scaring myself out of my mind.

...

I needed to get out of this hellhole, and quickly. I had a star on my butt. What did this mean about me? Was I into astronomy? Was I to become a spaceman against my will!? No fuckin’ way, man! I didn’t want to go from guitar scratcher to NASA’s first man on Mars! I didn’t want to be sent to the moon!

Like, damn...

Oh, as it turned out, I wasn’t alone with an ice cream cone of chitin fastened on my forehead. I’ve spotted a couple of other pony-citizens that also bore those strange lighting rods sticking out of their mane. Didn’t look like one third of the local population would require chemo after all, myself included. Gotta be a perfectly normal syndrome, right? As if “normal” had any meaning in this bad trip I was having. At least, it meant I wasn’t an unusual specimen. Relatively speaking, of course.

To add insult to injury, horns weren’t the only form of standardized mutations. There were also the ones with wings. Wings! Shaped like angel wings, you know, with feathers and all that jazz. Now, I never nose dived into animal almanacs, but would I venture a wrong guess if I said that ponies were supposed to be terrestrial animals? Yes, no? Was I onto something, there? Okay, then why the wings? That made no sense. You couldn’t just randomly slap new body parts onto animals, R&D some impossible chimeras, and send the whole shebang to marketing. That’s not how the world operated. Charles Darwin would’ve called bullshit at the sight.

I was so dead sure of that, that when I saw one take off to the skies, joined by many others floating amongst the clouds, I decided that my rationality was the odd one out after all. Why make sense of anything anymore? Nothing operated by the laws of physics, so why question the non-sequitur crap when no one wanted to play by the rules?

Fucking ridiculous, this whole everything. Absolutely maddening. And I was stuck in the middle of it!

“Hi Twilight! Hello Apple Bloom!” two colorful nobodies waved their hooves when they walked past us.

“Hullo!” replied my usher.

“Sup?” I then replied, oh so sure of myself.

This kept happening, by the way. Equine dudes and dudettes greeting me like Ned Flanders, not a smidge of prejudice in their voice. But why did everyone had to keep calling me by this silly name? It was so offensive from where I stood. Spike and Apple Bloom mistaking me for someone else, okay, sure. I could let it slide. But random pedestrians (quadestrians?) joining in on the charade? Filling it as a coincidence became more and more improbable.

“Oh hello there you two! Twilight, how are you feeling this wonderful morning?” another random fuchsia pony said to me.

“Eh.” I left it at that, shoulders shrugging. ‘Wonderful’ my ass.

And, see? See? I wasn’t crazy! Everyone pegged me as someone I wasn’t!

Shit, did I body snatch an innocent bystander or what? Or had I been cloned in her image? Whatever the case was, people believed me to be someone else, and that would become a big problem down the line, wouldn’t it? Someone would eventually wind up asking me what my favorite color was and I’d be blasphemed as an impostor on the spot.

Dwight’s words of wisdom from The Office rang in my mind: “Identity theft is not a joke, Jim! Millions of families suffer every year!”

Wasn’t that the truth, Mr. Schrute. Wasn’t that the truth. Both Spike and Apple Bloom reacted negatively when I failed to “recognize” them, as if it had been my job to do so. I think that was a pretty strong indicator that I had usurped the identity of this Twilight Sparkle everyone thought I was. This effectively meant that I wasn’t just a new body tossed into a bizarro city, nay, I had straight up taken a role that was not mine. That seemed pretty clear to me, now. Probably why I woke up in Twilight Sparkle’s apparent home, the library.

So the big question now was: Had I been reconstructed as a being sketched after the real Twilight Sparkle, or did she and I swap souls or some other mumbo jumbo? Had I been grown in a test tube overnight, or had my conscious aimlessly floated to this body so that it could claim it as its own? Had I been sufficiently Frankenstein’d that I was in a ship of Theseus kind of situation? Who the hell was I anymore?

Shit, was the old me, the real me, even alive anymore? H-had I been killed in my sleep? Was my body just limp in bed, left to be rotting? Would Vince be accused of murdering me?

“Twilight, why d’y’walk all funny-like?”

Apple Bloom brought me back to Ponyville. I turned to her by my side, and blinked a couple of times in confusion. Sure, I wasn’t an expert walker, having learned to coordinate four limbs no longer than twenty minutes ago, but hey, I was giving it a solid effort!

“Yer tail’s between them legs o’ yours, wha’sup with that?”

“Oh?” I craned my neck backward. Holy shit that neck was flexible.

Yeesh, I saw what she meant. I had subconsciously wedged that big fluffy tail of mine between my two rear legs, holding it tightly in place. It curved under the back of my tummy.

“Oh. Well... huh.”

I was shocked that I moved this bundle of strings without even noticing. And the reason why I did this was obvious. I’ll take “Awkward Conversations” for 500. Seriously, what a fine choice of a topic to not discuss with a person who could count their age on their proverbial fingers.

“Guess I’m just trying to apply a bit of modesty. Y’know, hiding my rump and all that.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t feel like flashing my back cheeks to the world?”

And all the treasures beyond, of course.

“That never seemed to have bothered ya before?” Her eyes bulged. “Oh no! Is it ‘cuz ya’ll’re hurt? Ah once fell from this here tree we’ve got on tha farm, right on mah bum-bum, an’ Applejack said ah had to use cream for-”

“A-Apple Bloom, please! Can we talk about something else?” Beads of sweat adorned my forehead.

“Shucks, okay Twilight...”

Apple Bloom brought me to the outskirts of the city, following an excavated dirt path. It made sense, to be fair. I didn’t expect a farm of all places to be plopped smack down in the middle of an urban area. At least, panels shaped like arrows by the side of the road indicated that there was still civilization out there. Yippee ki-yay.

We walked past a lot of... Okay. I know this wasn’t too accurate, but I’m going to henceforth describe the movement with which we changed our position as “walking.” Much easier on the sanity bone. Anyway, we walked past a lot of interesting looking shops and boutiques alike. The majority were plain buildings, but we did cross the occasional oddball. The gold medal unquestionably went to the gingerbread house. With the delicious waft of pastries emanating from within. I did wonder if a family of gingerbread men actually lived in there. That’d make them the closest thing to humans in Ponyville so far, heh.

The town centre was also interesting in its own right. I assumed for it to have been the town centre, because all roads led to it in a circular fashion, reminiscent of old European cities. The townhall in the middle of the city quarter was a tall spire, extravagantly decorated. Pretty nifty. Now I knew where these ponies’ taxes went.

Further up the cobblestone path, the buildings became more modest and scarcer as we approached the forested clearing surrounding Ponyville. And now, here we were, on a private piece of land owned by farmers. There were orchards surrounding both sides of the path. Really well-furbished orchards, should I add. Apple orchards. Like, geez, there sure were a lot of trees. I once went apple picking as a snotty toddler with my parents, and the land didn’t have shit on this larger-than-life field of apple trees. I could see ponies getting lost in this battlefield of Cortland. Overkill much?

A couple more steps forward, and a two-storied farmhouse drew itself upon us. Cute dwelling, they had. They seemed to have a sturdy installation. There was a barn, stacks of haybale, chicken coops, a carrot farm further ahead, a mill of some kind, a cornfield on the left side, and I think I even heard some pigs oink. There was probably more to it than my brief enumeration, but this is all that I could see from here. This whole place was wedged between rolling hills. Bob Ross would’ve cried tears of joy at the picturesque scenery. An overhanging wooden banner above the road indicated the name of the place: “Sweet Apple Acres.” Well, there you had it. Our destination, so said Apple Bloom. All in all, I was quite happy we didn’t need a motorized vehicle to reach this place. We journeyed for like, what, 20 minutes tops? It could’ve been much much further, considering I was basically wandering aimlessly.

So yeah. A multifaced farm that specialized on keeping doctors away. Smart that they decided to vary their crop rotation in case of, oh I don’t know, an economic recession? Or perhaps because of a sudden downfall in demand for a given product? What about an unexpected wave of parasites ruining a particular harvest? Just trying to find credit where credit was due. All in all, they seemed well prepared, and they must’ve ran this business with a dozen farmhands or so of to get the place churning. Mad respect for all of them dedicated laborers.

Near a fence proudly stood a tall and well-built red stallion, with a work collar around his neck. It just dawned on me how freaking bizarre it was for me to sort these creatures as male or female with such ease. I just, you know, I just could tell. Maybe it was due to its squared jaw? Its strong muzzle? His bulkier frame? The distribution of his muscles? Whatever the case, it was unquestionably a dude, so said my brain. Sue me. Under his yellow scruffy mane were two lazy set of green eyes. Actually, I think they were more relaxed than lazy. Scratch that, they had hints of worry in them. Even his mouth was curved downward. Mmmmh.

On the floor next to him, I ended up spotting my client in question, seeing as her morose expression told a million different stories. Slouched on the fence, she was an orange mare. See? I knew she was a chick, just like this! She shared the stallion’s eye color. Her mane was cream colored, and just like her tail, it was tied with a red elastic band by the tip. She sported some kind of cowboy hat to finish the ensemble. A Stetson, mayhaps? She had three apples as her state-printed mark, whereas the red pony had a lone chunky green one. Coincidence? Nope! See, I knew it! The job lottery forced these poor saps to be stuck in the fields for the rest of their days! Too bad if they had other ambitions. What a mad world...

Anyway, above Orange’s freckles were two big bags that indicated a very poor night of sleep. Yeah, welcome to my world, martyr. I approached her and my GOD did she look done with life. To say that I thought I was the one who was drowning in misery; she might’ve beaten me to the punch. Yikes.

And I was in charge to cheer THAT up? Well, this was a disaster in waiting. Even the best diplomat would’ve succumbed.

“Twilight,” simply said Reddie McRedface.

“Hi. So ah, what seems to be the problem here?” I asked him back.

Maybe this adult could give me a better picture over what the little filly had told me.

“Sister’s not well.”

...

And that was it.

Ladies and gentlemen, you may now exit the theater, the curtains were drawn, his sister was not well.

Should I pry him for more data? Christ, give me something, anything! Well, he made sad eyes, so, uh, maybe I should keep to myself. I didn’t want him to explode on me like Apple Bloom did. That’d be... yeah...

Oh wait, sister, he said. These three were all siblings, weren’t they? Touching, touching.

Why was I here, again?

Ugh, let’s get this over with. I just wanted my damn jeans and a damn lift to Baltimore. I edged closer to the emotional black hole that was... Applejack, was it? S’what Apple Bloom yapped back in the treehouse.

“Heya... you. What’s up?” I simply said to her like the bumbling buffoon I was.

She lifted her face to match my gaze. Cool bloodshot eyes, girl. Green and red, a perfect match with the theme of apples! Well, seeing as she didn’t talk back, I had to up my game.

“So, why the long face?”

...

Why the fuck did I just say that? Did I seriously make my grand entrance with a goddamn “a horse walks into a bar” joke? What was I, an immature prick? For all I knew, it was like trying to bond with someone of a different ethnicity over a racist joke! God damn did I suck ass in social interactions.

And boom went the dynamite. She didn’t find my quip funny at all. Like, at all. She hid her face behind her hat, her neck sagging like my best efforts at a soufflé. She started to sob, and I could hear the plick plick of tears meeting dirt.

Awwwwww shiiiieeeeet. Looking up toward the brother and the sister, I could see disapproval. Unnamed Reddie had an eyebrow raised, his head tilted a bit. Apple Bloom was more expressive with her face full of horror. Fuck me sideways. Task failed successfully. I didn’t want to be under fire from dedicated siblings as I ruined my little session with Applejack. If anything, I wanted them to be far away. Faaaaar far away from the next stupid trick I would inevitably pull. In no way did I want an audience squinting at me as I fumbled to do a job I had zero experience with. Especially an audience that had strong ties with the victim at hand. Southerner wannabees, no less! I could feel the sawed-off shotgun coming.

“U-ummm... Uh... W-would it be okay if, uh, Applejack and I had a private moment? You know, to get this whole thing resolved and all that?”

Red stallion dudebro rubbed a hoof under his chin, pensive. Pupils lost in the corner of his eyeballs, thinking real hard about my proposition.

“Eeyup,” he just wound up saying.

Okay, so we were on the same page, right? My brother in Christ, could you be a little more concise, if you please?

“But Twilight, ah wanna see ya zap tha curse away!” protested Apple Bloom.

“That’s not really how depression works, Apple Bloom...” Wait, don’t say that, dummy! “N-not that Applejack necessarily has depression! It’s just... Ugh, help me out bro, why don’tcha?” I asked the only male around.

“Eeyup.” There he went again. Then, his attention went to little Apple Bloom. “C’mon on sis, Twilight knows how to help out. An’ ah could use some help to make up for tha time we lost this mornin’ on tha farm.”

“Noooo, c’moooon! Ah really really wanna see tha curse being punished, like kapow!” she uttered, doing a weird karate move with her back leg and promptly falling on her ass.

“Apple Bloom,” he kept it short, as per tradition.

“Awwww...” she sulked.

He did a head movement toward the house, and Apple Bloom complied. Head low, moping like the kid she was. Heh, kids. Now that my ball sack had been snipped, I wasn’t in a position to be a parent for a long time. Unless... Uh wait, hang on a minute...

“Listen, Twilight,” said the big red guy to me. “Ah’ve rarely seen AJ like this. If she’s feelin’ this low, then mahbe take her kindly back witcha to tha library an’ have ya and tha girls talk it out? Ah want what’s best for mah sis.”

The library! My crib! My bubble! My bunker! My sanctuary! My sacred grove! Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, I would love nothing more than to go back to the only place where I could safely apply social isolation.

“Will do, friend.”

At this point, asking for his name would’ve been too awkward. Maybe I was “supposed” to already know it too, I didn’t know. So “friend” sufficed. And “friend,” satisfied with my answer, started to trot away to join his overzealous younger sister, hopefully, someplace that wasn’t in the vicinity of this crime scene. Because during this whole exchange, Applejack had not once looked up. She remained focused on what was eating her.

I knew I had a lot of shit on my plate, but seeing someone as beaten as her wasn’t right. I did feel bad, I genuinely did. I might’ve been a dumbass, but I was a dumbass with a heart. A heart that gave me hypertension, but a heart nonetheless.

So, trying a different approach, I slid to my rear, next to her. From afar, we looked we were having a siesta. Man, what could I say to make her feel better? Normally, I’d have thrown booze at her, but that was a bit of an unrealistic plan, wasn’t it? So instead, let’s just fall back on the mundane small talk.

“So, how ‘bout that weather, huh? Ponyville sure gets its fare share of sun.”

She didn’t move, but she began to timidly speak. “T-Twilight Sparkle?”

Groan. Yeah yeah. Play the role. That mare was already destroyed enough as it was. Telling her that I wasn’t who she really thought I was would’ve been synonymous with acting like a douche.

“That’s what they call me, yep yep!”

“You’re my friend... right? They said you could help...”

We were supposed to be BFF? Cripes. Way to raise the stakes. Now I truly was disallowed to fail.

I sighed. “Applejack, I’m sorry if I came as abrasive. I want to help you, I really do. You can talk to me, I won’t judge you. It’s just the two of us, girl. We can work this out, I’m a hundred percent sure of it,” I tried to put that new smooth voice o’ mine to good use.

“I... I want my parents back...” she whispered.

...

Ah.

I-I see... Is this why Apple Bloom went nuclear on me when I suggested for her to get her mommy and daddy involved back at the library? Were these siblings parentless? Well shit, I might not have had my dick anymore, but I sure felt like one. Numbero uno dicko. Me. Purple bitch-ass pony, insensitive and putting her hoof in her own mouth. I’ll be more cautious down the line.

“Oh. I’m sorry, Applejack. This is a terrible thing, losing those who raised you. Saying that I relate would be a blatant lie, but I can say that I sympathize with your situation. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”

She turned to look at me, searching for more kind words. Maybe I could quote a song or two we wrote. What was the point of angst if it didn’t have any applicability?

“But I do know one thing, my friend. Even beyond the grave, your parents will always-”

“M-m-my parents aren’t dead!”

Goof number two, checked. Man, a gaffe per minute; I was pretty skilled. She was going to call me out on my bullshit, wasn’t she? You’d think that friends would keep the status of their parents in check a little better than my poor assumption.

“O-of course they aren’t dead! It was just a metaphor, see? I read it in a book in the library I totally live in,” I said, almost choking on my own spit.

She gave me that look. Fudge. Toss the ball back in her camp, man!

“A-anyway, uh, care to talk about them then? Just, y’know, so I can level with you better? S’part of helping one another, Jackie-girl!”

I tried awkward humor, but nope, no dice. She was back with the flopped head.

“You wouldn’t believe me. It’s like I said to the others!” Applejack said, a bit more determination in her voice than before.

“Yeah, your sister told me you had been cursed or something?”

“I don’t have a sister! I only have a brother!”

“What, the red Hank Hill lookalike?”

She didn’t catch the reference. “The red horsie? Big Mac?” she asked.

“... Yeah sure, Big Mac.”

It’s not because I was stuck with hooves that I couldn’t mentally facepalm. Big Mac. What a name. Was I living through a re-enactment of Idiocracy? The shit that I was putting up with...

“He’s not my brother!”

Smelled like DID. I sort of had firsthand experience with that ever since this morning, ironically.

“Um. Are you reeeaaalllyyy sure about this?” I timidly asked. “He seemed to care an awful lot about you.”

“Yes, I’m sure! Oh, see? I just knew you wouldn’t understand! I knew!”

She wasn’t too far off shaking a fist- a hoof to the skies.

“Big Mac and Apple Bloom both said you would help, but you’re just like them. Y-you don’t understand, you don’t-... oooohhh...” she sighed, defeated.

Recover dude, recover! “Slooow down Applejack. I’m not here to accu-”

“A-and my name’s not Applejack!” she scowled.

“Buh? Uh, okay then, sure, okay. Yep. What is it then, uh, pray tell?” I indulged her. Man she was going to bite my neck off if I didn’t relinquish some territory to her side. I had to play it cool, right?

“Amy.”

“Amy?”

“Ya-huh. Amy Jones.”

...

“Listen, Applej-”

“Amy!”

“-Amy. A wise sage once told me: ‘You overworked yourself and now your nerves snapped.’ Would you be compelled to agree that you may find yourself in that sort of situation?” I parroted what Spike told me before he left.

She stared down, more in frustration than in desolation. “Big Mac told me that I should take the day off...”

“Yeah, I’ve been getting a lot of that at home,” I rolled my eyes, thinking of Spike some more. “Still, bam, there you go! That there’s some pretty juicy advice Applej- Amy. Big Mac also suggested for you to come to my place to get you back up and about. How about it? We could chill, y’know, read comics and all that swag.”

“Okay...” she said, dejected.

“Cool beans!” I bounced, now up on my four legs (ugh). “I’m sure a change of scenery from this farm of yours will do you some good.”

“This isn’t my farm,” she said, also getting up awkwardly.

“Say what now? You don’t live in that big ol’ house over there?” I asked, raising a hoof at said big ol’ house.

“Nope!”

Great, more rejection of her reality. What was she, me? We already had one pony in this city trying his best at sneaking into a life that wasn’t his, we didn’t need another one going cuckoo. Especially when these two found themselves in proximity. That was just ground zero for some crazy shenanigans. Suddenly, I felt less and less qualified to handle this. Not that I was in the first place, but. Apple Bloom and Big Mac both seemed to think she just needed a friend to talk to, but from my POV, I believed she required medical treatment more than anything. Penicillin needed to enter her system. Zoloft, anyone?

“So, let me get this straight. These two ponies who were very concerned about your wellbeing are not your siblings, and you’re not Applejack the farmer, but you’re Amy from...?”

“Oregon.”

“From Oreg- Wait, seriously? You’re from America too?”

Applejack (or Amy, take your pick) gestured positively. Oh wheeew! Well that’s sort of a relief. See? I knew my home country wasn’t too far out there. Spike was just uneducated, that’s what it was. Some assistant Twilight had! Hahaha, I felt better about my situation, all of the sudden! Because for a moment, I actually believed that...

... Well, let’s not dwell on outdated what-ifs. Mmmmh, as much as I loved this unexpected good news, it did raise a couple other troublesome questions. First of all, assuming she spoke the truth – and I sort of had my doubts, she seemed a bit unstable – then what was she doing here in this Ponyville biome? If she travelled from Oregon all the way to, uh, Equestria, surely it meant she knew her way around, right? That could be my ticket home if I played my cards right. I could ask her for the nearest airport, or harbor, assuming either of these districts existed around this place.

Another strange aspect was, well, if she truly was from Oregon, USA, then uh... Why and how have I been kept in the dark about magical talking ponies my whole life? Let alone flying ones? Shouldn’t this have been common knowledge? More mediatized? History classes didn’t say jack about the culture of other sapient animals populating Earth, and they lived in my home country for Pete’s sake! Shouldn’t the internet have leaked something by now? There were 330 million of us in America, you’d think that a random shmuck would’ve caught sight of technicolor ponies with their phone by now. We had satellites and cameras everywhere in today’s times. Was the government of Oregon that competent at hiding their otherworldly experiments from the public eye? A government showing competence... now THAT was the most ludicrous thing I’ve heard today – and I woke up as a pony!

Did Applejack escape an oppressive lab, or was she just free roaming in beautiful paddocks with the liberty she deserved? Were there other cities like Ponyville scattered across America dedicated to the upbringing of cartoon ponies? Had no whistleblowers leaked anything about this yet? Was the existence of talkative little ponies a conspiracy that actually eluded the mainstream? Hardly seemed possible.

So many questions. Whatever Amyjack’s situation was, she definitely was my key outta here. Again, this all hinged on the hope that she wasn’t lying to me. Given that, I had to be kind and gentle to sway her on my side. And for now, that meant turning that frown upside up. Her mal de vivre was an obstacle to my quest home. I would rectify that. For I was Twilight Sparkle 2.0, and I wasn’t going to give up without trying!

I blinked my mental gymnastics away from my head, and looked back at the mare next to me who was seemingly waiting for me to keep the train on rolling.

“Huh. Oregon. Well color me surprised, girl.” I nodded to the path ahead. “Alrighty then, let’s blow this popsicle stand and go to my place!”

That is, if I could find my way back. Apple Bloom and I swayed from street to street on our way here, and I kind of got turned around. I should’ve left a trail of bread crumbs, or something. Ah well. Live and learn.

Once more, I pranced back into the busy streets of Ponyville – this time accompanied by Amy – where resided normie ponies, ponies with carrots on their head, and ponies with wings. That got me to think which one of those three candidates was the master race. Probably the flyers; they’d have the high ground. Truly, we lived in a society.

“Whoa...!” Applejack/Amy couldn’t help but gasp out loud, looking at everything that surrounded us.

She was mighty impressed by the liveliness of the hamlet. She kept looking at all these ponies doing various tasks. Selling and buying and reselling and rebuying. She drank it all. I couldn’t help but wonder how often she left the countryside to be this enthralled by the urban life. At least, I was glad that upped her mood. I didn’t think anything could, honestly.

“Yup, that’s uh, quite the sight, right?” A little bit of my own awe leaked there.

“Oh yeah, this is soooo cooool! Look at all- all that, uh...”

“Stuff?”

“Yeah! All that stuff! Super awesome!” she cheered.

Heh. Even if she claimed Apple Bloom wasn’t her little sister, she was almost as impressionable as her. You could say that the apple didn’t fall far from- NO! I was NOT making that lame pun. Like Christ, what was wrong with me?

We continued onward, going toward where I thought the big tree library was. All the while, we were saying more hi’s to ponies we encountered. I was getting used to it, but Applejack was reluctant to wave her hoof back. Given her mental state, I couldn’t really blame her. She was sufficiently jovial now, but mere minutes ago, she was at the end of her rope. Distancing herself from her own life and all that, down to her very name.

“Whoa, what the fuck!?”

Applejack backed away a bit from me, taken aback by my sudden surprise. But hey, not my fault! Because seated on her haunch by a small rounded table outside of a café was one of them horned ponies. She kept to herself in contentment, eyes busy with the observation of Ponyville’s activity. But the thing that made me cuss was the little coffee cup she was drinking from.

The hovering coffee cup.

The glowing, hovering coffee cup going to her mouth so she could take a sip.

Her horn was also glowing, and to add insult to injury, the aura it radiated was the same hue as the one surrounding the cup. Was she mind controlling the dang object? No, of course she wasn’t. That was outright impossible! So what then? Strings? No, not strings. The cup rotated and tilted with all the delicateness in the world. Plus, there was no puppeteer on the roof as far as I could tell. Moreover, the pony seemed too much in control of her cup, occasionally placing it back on the saucer with finesse. She would’ve lifted a pinkie had she been human as I once was.

Magnets.

Had to be magnets.

But just to make sure, I had to get a second opinion.

“Applejack, are you seeing this? The levitating cup? What the hell?”

My slip of the tongue about her name went unnoticed. Her big green eyes were blinking at me in confusion, then to the physics-bending show ahead. She seemed to be impressed by what she was seeing as well. Good, so it wasn’t just me tripping out of his mind, right?

“How is she doing that, Twilight?” she thought. “Oh! Is that magic?” she added impulsively.

“No of course not, don’t be ridiculous. Magic’s a hoax. Penn and Teller told me so.”

“Who are they?”

“Eh, it don’t matter none. But their stance on magic is stone cold solid: Just a showbiz tactic to appeal to gullible spectators. It’s easily debunkable.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said with disappointment. “But then, how is it floating?”

“Magnets.”

“Magnets? Like, uh, the things mom and dad use to hold my A+ homework on the fridge?” She thought for a second or two. “... Are you sure?”

Huh, that comparison was a bit juvenile, but okay.

“No. But when you don’t understand something, always blame it on magnets.”

With my total lack of confidence about my bootleg application of the scientific method, we once again continued our expedition. Applejack seemed hesitant for a moment, as if she needed permission to speak. After a couple of minutes in silence, however,

“Twilight, you swore,” she said out of nowhere.

“Huh?”

“You said a bad word when you saw the magnet cup.”

“Um, did I? Hrrmmm... yeah, I guess I did?”

Gosh, what was the big deal with having a filthy mouth every now and then? Were both Applejack and Spike Christian moms or what? Like damn, lemme express myself. I changed species less than 24 hours ago, I was entitled to be a little agitated! ... Maybe Ponyville had decreed cussing to be heretic, I don’t know.

“That means you have to put money in the swear jar!”

“A swear what now?”

She nodded her head, confident. “A swear jar, silly! You have to put one dollar in per bad word. That’s what mom and dad said.”

“Are you shitting me, sister?”

“Rooooh! Two dollars now! You’re really bad at this, Twilight,” she giggled.

Well, the giggles were contagious, because I found myself laughing alongside her. I’m glad she was slowly feeling better, yet I found myself estranged by the idea of a swear jar. My parents certainly never cared. My dad used to swear like a sailor. I practically grew up in a minefield of F bombs. Whenever us three watched the Flyers get their ass kicked during the series, them and I turned into a hurricane of beautifully patented four-letter words. No one rightfully cared. Good times, good times.

“Hehe, cute, Amy. What are you, eight or something?” I smiled.

“Nu-huh. I’m not a child anymore! I’m nine! But I’ll be ten in one week! It’s my birthday soon!”

...

“Wait, you’re serious?”

I obviously wasn’t a connoisseur in pony biology, but that to me sounded like bona fide bullshit.

She frantically nodded again. “Mmh-hmm! Me and Marie-Anna and Emily, we have this big day at the waterpark organized by mom and dad. It’ll be sooo cool! I can’t wait, and I hope it’ll be all nice and sunny, and that I’ll get a bunch of presents, and also-”

Splurt!

Huh? I turned around and saw that my orange friend had tripped and fell on the floor. And I thought I was the clumsy one, heh. Still, I felt bad about Amyjack’s little oopsie. She got overexcited and she forgot how to walk, it seemed. And to say I was just getting the hang of this myself. I walked by her side to help her out. Thankfully, that little fall didn’t disturb the peace, and other ponies around us carried on without making a fuss.

“Crap! Are you okay, Amy?”

She groggily got up, a hoof to my back to give her leverage.

“T-three dollars now, Twilight! Gee, you’ll be poor if you continue like this,” she said.

“Har har, Amy. Seriously though, you didn’t scrape your knees or anything? T’was a pretty violent trip to the floor, my friend.”

“Yeah... yeah. I’m okay. S-sorry about that, it’s just...”

She rubbed her hat, as if that would accomplish anything. Once again, she became a bit hesitant to keep on going. Awww come on girl! You were just getting over your sorrows! I won’t chew you out for what you have to say (having lost my canines and all that).

“Yes, Amy?” I prompted her.

“It’s just, it’s weird. Walking on all fours. It’s just... soooooo weird...”

“Gosh, I know, right!? Finally, someone who understands! Thank you!” I lifted my forelegs and threw them up. I sounded exasperated, but my outburst was comedic in nature.

She chuckled in relief, having found the courage to keep on going, given my unconditional approval of her problematic.

“I guess that’s what happens when you go from human to pony... ah well,” she sighed.

Waaaaaiiit. Wait wait wait. Wait.

My periscopic ears picked up on that.

Did she just imply that I...?

“Excuse me, do you mind repeating that?”

“Oh um...” she tapped her front hooves together, as if she accidentally said something she didn’t mean to say. “Transforming from human to pony. That’s the curse thingy I told Apple Bloom. But I dunno why I tell you this, you wouldn’t know anything about that, so forget it...”

Oh! OH! Well that was just rich!

That deceiving bitch!

She knew! She knew what happened to me! She knew and she hid it from me until she accidentally slipped!

I completely flipped my lid. I lost my temper right there and then. I was absolutely done being played like a damn fiddle. I had a life; I was no marionette with strings so easily pulled. She knew of my condition, she knew of my home country, and she will tell me absolutely everything without sugar-coating any of the details! I had many things to go back to, and I was officially done lollygagging in this bloody fursuit!

I was this close to rip her a new one!

“T-Twilight?” she quietly said, seeing the heat rise to my ears.

“Are you fucking with me right now?” I took a step toward her.

“Wha... what?” her voice quivered, surprised by my sudden change in emotions.

“You’re fucking with me, right?” I approached her some more.

“N-n-n-nuh... no! No!” she said, backing away in fear. “P-please, f-forget I said... Please don’t be a-angry!”

“Do you think this is a goddamn joke, taking the piss out of me like this? Who told you about my condition anyway? No one, huh? So that implies you had SOMETHING to do with how I turned out!”

“I don’t... I don’t...” tears formed around her eyes. I didn’t care.

“Don’t give me this shit, Amy! Or Applejack; I don’t fucking know anymore! God! You’ve done nothing but lie out of your teeth ever since I got you off your sorry arse! And to think I was ready to give you unconditional help!”

I seethed like no one seethed. Another angry step toward her. A few heads in the distance started to shift their attention toward us.

“Now riddle me this: Did you do this to me!?”

I presented my body with my hooves, standing on my rear legs for but a moment. Applejack just whimpered with a high-pitched moan. More and more ponies around us were staring at she and I with worried looks. They were whispering, but were hesitant to intervene. Good, exert your bystander syndrome, cowards. Because that gap in inaction allowed me to grab Applejack’s shoulders, my angry eyes looking directly into her soul.

“You KNEW I was human and you didn’t DO SHIT about it! Now you’re acting all coy about it!? How LONG were you withholding this information from me? Were you ever planning on telling me? Now, swindler, change me the fuck back before I lodge a knuckle sandwich right in the middle of that stupid orange snout of yours!”

“No! No! I’m a h-human! I mean, I was. I mean...”

She fell in a seated position and exploded in cries, her whole body vibrating under my iron grip. How did I even manage to grip her? Wait uh, something felt uber wrong right now. Lucidity was nesting back into me as I took a look at her miserable form. B-but I had every right to be angry at someone deceiving me, right? S-she was never consistent from the start, I-

And then it hit me. I realized what I had just done.

She was being completely honest, wasn’t she? Children were pretty much pillars of honesty; they might as well have been honesty. She was no different in that regard.

Which in turn, meant that I had straight up shouted and swore in front of a nine year-old girl who had lost the protective guidance of her parents. That’s why she was in an emotional turmoil when I first met her. A deeply traumatized toddler still not out of primary school, having her whole world flipped upside down. And I screamed in her face. She couldn’t even do fractions and I berated her like I would never berate an adult of my age. I was straight up an abductor, an abuser, a vile sorry excuse of a man. I was as far from a Saint as I could’ve been. It was indisputable: I had acted like the biggest asshole ever. I had failed terribly not only at keeping my composure, but at being an overall pleasant, tolerable, and decent person.

Maybe I deserved to be stuck here. Maybe this was the hell that I had made for myself. Something something making your bed and not wanting to lie in it.

Using verbal violence against a kid, who does that? Me! I did that! Oh God, why did I do that!? And that crowd around us... oh the glares, THE GLARES! Guilty as fucking charged, my fellow ponies. Throw the tomatoes for all I cared: I deserved it.

Jesus tap dancing Christ, how could I recover from this? Amy was still sobbing, deeply afraid of me. I thought I was a monster before? Good, now I sure acted like one!

“S-shit, A-Amy! I’m... I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to- I’m so sorry! Please!”

I approached her, but she scooted away. Still on the floor. As if she was trying to distance herself from a knife wielding psycho.

“L-let me make it up to you! I... Oh man, you have no idea how terrible I feel! I didn’t mean... I...”

Golf clap dude, golf clap. Now you made two children cry in one day. Maybe three if Spike counted. Wow, maybe giving little kids traumatic experiences was my special talent after all? Why did I ever go into music!?

I wish I had the mental fortitude to allow myself to give her a comforting hug to make my pathetic apology seem more genuine. But once again, I was a bit reluctant to go body-to-body with other people. I wasn’t strong enough to remove that stick out of my ass. Handshakes were all I grew up with, remember? And fat chance at that with no hands anymore!

“I-I t-thought- I thought w-w-we were f-friends... W-why... Why d’you yell at m-m-me?” she desperately asked.

My heart twisted in a knot.

“Because I’m... I’m scared. And confused. And I have no idea how to deal with any of this. I’m in the same situation as you Amy, and... and I’m terrible at keeping my cool about it. I’m under the same curse. What you said, what had happened to you? It just... It caught me by surprise, and I reacted poorly. That’s no excuse, I know it’s no excuse! I just hope you can be the better person here and forgive me for my awful anger – anger that I had NO right to direct at you.”

She sniffled, trying to calm her tears. “Y-you mean it? You... you’re really sorry?”

“Of course! I couldn’t mean it any more if I tried. I’m so sorry, Amy. A thousand times sorry! I do not deserve your forgiveness, I really really don’t! But if you could ever find in your heart the place to forgive this sorry excuse of a man, then I would be infinitely grateful...”

She remained silent for a bit, considering my words. She slowly got back on all four, having calmed down a tad. She had trouble looking at me in the eyes, and merely glanced sideway to the floor.

“You’re... a man?”

I bit my lips, an Armageddon of shame haunting me. My new unwanted gender, my poor handle of my emotions, my public lapidation of a kid, everything, really.

“Yeah... yeah. I was a guy. And now...” I didn’t finish that sentence.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I understand why you’re angry...” she said, still not looking a me.

“You’re sorry? Amy, no! Listen, it’s me, I’m the one who royally screwed up here. Let’s not flip this apology around. I’m the one trying to make it up to you.” I held up a hoof toward her. “So please... l-let’s shake on it and make up? I’ll try- no. I promise to never yell at you like this ever again! You have my word.”

She cautiously approached me, finally daring a look to my eyes.

“We’re in on this together, Amy. It should be us against the world, not us against each other. We have to act as allies. As... as friends. Me shouting in your face accomplished nothing but dividing us two humans. That was the lowest I’ve ever sunk, I swear.”

She kept approaching me. My hoof was still dangling in mid air. She walked past it and-

I deserved it, really.

No no, she didn’t slap me to oblivion or nothing. She merely grabbed me in a tight embrace. I had to return the embrace for stability sake. Our head were side-by-side, resting on each other’s long neck. The circle of distant rubbernecking ponies even d’awwwed in unison, satisfied with this beautiful conclusion. Once again, I deserved it. This was my punishment. To have a cringey moment straight out of sappy sitcoms. I dug my own grave. The capital punishment of a hug was my sentence.

Amy then whispered something in my ear that made me shiver.

“You owe the swear jar at least a hundred dollars, mister.”

It didn’t take us long to bury the war axe and reconcile. I was immensely glad for this. Not sure I deserved it.

“How old are ya?” said Amy.

“Twenty-two, and still breathing.”

Amy stuck her tongue out. “Ewww, you’re old!”

“What? No I’m not!” I faked being offended. “I’m definitely younger than your parents.”

“Mmmh, true. How many kids do you have, then?”

Buh!? Me, having kids? It’s as if someone decked my guts. Gosh, kids were so innocent, weren’t they?

“I don’t have any kids, Amy. And I can’t have any either: I’m a lone wolf.”

She laughed. “No you’re not! You’re a horsie, not a wolfie!”

I laughed as well. She could be pretty lively when she wasn’t stuck being depressed and all that.

“So, should I call you Mr. Twilight Sparkle, then?” resumed Amy.

“Um. No. Probably not. Somehow that sounds creepy as hell,” I raised an eyebrow.

“Oh! Oh! Is Twilight Sparkle even your real name?” curiosity having piqued her.

“No Amy, it is not. My parents didn’t completely hate me,” I chuckled.

“Mmmh. It’s like me. The horsies-”

“Ponies.”

“-The ponies in the city kept calling me ‘Applejack’ for some reason. But like, they’re sooo wrong about it! Even Big Mac and Apple Bloom called me by this name. Why?”

“Yeah, why. That’s the million-dollar question, Amy. But ah, I don’t really know myself. I do have suspicions however. And- wait, have you told the two farm ponies your real name?”

She lowered her head, distraught.

“... No. I was too sad back then. Like super duper ultra mega sad. I barely managed to tell them that I had been cursed.”

I pondered. “Mmmh. Better keep it this way for now. You should probably not deny when they call you Applejack, or AJ, or whatever. It’d be a bit mean to cause these two mental anguish when we don’t know half the variables ourselves.”

She tuned out my adult talk. “Oh! So what’s your name then?”

“Han?”

“Well, you said your name’s not Twilight Sparkle, right? So what is it, huh? Oh, I bet it’s Dan or something. Or Benjamin! I love that name. No, no... you’re more of a... mmmh... William, maybe? Or Ricky, or Oliver, or Gabriel, or or-”

“Geez Louise, calm down, kiddo.”

“Hmmmphh! It’s Amy, not Louise!”

I rolled my eyes. “I know, it’s just an exp-”

A pony was in front of the library door, eagerly waiting. God dammit, what now?

This was after thirty minutes of superfluous walking. We didn’t take the most direct course to the treehouse, because we accidentally detoured in all the wrong alleys. You couldn’t blame me, I was new to this city still! The extra time wasn’t lost on us however, because it helped us both to simmer down. We talked a bit more about our predicament, and that seemed to have appeased the atmosphere. I hoped we could continue to smooth things out between the two of us. She was the only other “human” around, after all. I had to cherish the only familiar thing in my vicinity.

And now, another intruder, facing the two of us. She was probably just a client, right? In and out, rent a couple of books, and voilà. No more adventures involving me, hopefully.

The mare was most certainly flashy, in any case. She had a pale blue coat, which was a poignant contrast with her magenta irises. Her mark of totalitarian dictatorship was a cloud with a rainbow lightning bolt striking out of it. The rainbow had some significance, considering her mane. Now, I’ve seen a couple of ponies thus far, but none had been as straining to the eyes as she was. Her mane was scruffy and somehow unkept (a bit à la Big Mac), but the colors. Oh lord, the colors. The Care Bears could’ve sued for copyright infringement. Her mane was completely multicolor. From purple, to blue, to green, to yellow, to red, to orange. You name it; she had it.

The freak show didn’t stop there, for she was blessed with a pair of wings. A lucky member of the elite, indubitably.

But, oh? It appeared one of her wings, the right one (my right, not hers) was wrapped in gauze. Bandaged after an accident, maybe? Yikes. I pitied the wound. I didn’t know how many nerves canalized through an animal wing, but I sure hoped she wasn’t suffering too much for it.

She scanned the two of us with shifty eyes. I thought she was confused for a moment, but then, all doubts evaporated when she etched a big toothy smile.

“Heya Twilight!” confidently said the rainbow flying pony in a raspy voice. “Just the pony I needed!”

...

Well that sold it.

Why did everyone need my attention today? First Apple Bloom, now her? What was I, the town’s guru or something? I didn’t know stuff about anything; why did they need MY help of all ponies? Did everyone flock to the library every time they got a splinter or something? I just wanted to be left alone, yet somehow I felt railroaded on the path of most resistance. Amy and I had lots to talk about. Very important stuff, too. But now, our human council was going to be interrupted by this meddling pony. Another thorn in my side. My side was just a big fat pincushion.

Unnngh. Well, no escape from her now. Let’s she what she needed out of me. Maybe she just wanted a good book to read?

Naw, let’s be real here. Fate had been sufficiently tempted today for me to know where this was going. I was going to be in hot water again, wouldn’t I? Yeah. Welp, time to invoke Murphy’s Law and cash in some bad karma.

The Lunch

The rainbow pony approached Amy and I, full of enthusiasm. I had to play it cool lest I would cause another public scene. Had enough of that for one day.

“Oh hey! How’s it hanging?” I said, trying to be as nondescript as I could.

She knew my name; I didn’t know hers. She had the home field advantage.

“Well, could be better, frankly,” said Rainbow Incognito, her head signaling toward her busted wing.

“Oh no! What happened to your wing?” said Amy in lieu of me.

Rainbow Mare sheepishly rubbed the back of her epilepsy inducing mane. She bit her lip, possibly attacked by hints of regrets. Or was it shame?

“Ah, this ol’ thing? Um, t’was just a small accident, you know? It happens,” she nervously laughed and mumbled something. “I’d rather not get into details, m’kay?”

Agreed. The lesser we interacted, the better we were. Amy and I had no business postponing our human-to-human conversation any longer. Cyan pony over there was merely an inconvenience. Last thing I needed was for us to start chit chatting – especially when I knew squat about the lifestyle of a miniaturized horse. She could easily trap me with personal questions, to which I’d answer incorrectly, exposing my cover. We had to take her out of the equation, pronto. Some of us had a home country and a schedule to return to, you know.

“Well, I hope you recover soon,” I still offered kind words. “But on a different kind of topic... what can I do you for? You said you required my assistance, right?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I needed to ask you a bunch of- um, well, actually, I’d like to check out some books first?”

“Okay well, why didn’t you just, y’know, go inside the tree and do your thing? It’s a public space, you know. You don’t have to wait for a custodian or anybody to browse,” I said. Did I sound like a dick? I hoped I didn’t sound like a dick.

Something I said seemed to have rubbed her the wrong way. Yeah, maybe I’ve been too abrasive after all.

“Oh! Well, I did come inside, but I thought you were closed since no-, uh, nopony was in. ‘Sides, Twilight, I need a librarian to check stuff out, right? That’s kindaaaa how it works.”

I gulped. Don’t blow my bluff, pony! Though to be fair, if she just stole my merch, I would have been none the wiser. I oughta learn to lock the door next time – lotsa valuables to be robbed inside. The real Twilight Sparkle would be pissed at my carelessness, I presumed.

“Yes! Yes of course! Hah, you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve been pretty bamboozled lately. Right?” I nudged Amy.

“Mmm’yep. He really has.”

“He?” repeated the multicolored pony.

“HahahaHAHAHA!” I laughed like I was overdosing on cocaine. “See? That makes the two of us! Two confused ponies. Too much sun on our noggins, right? Curse you, summertime! Okay let’s go in, yes, in we go, chop chop!”

I went past my client and barged into the tree, with Amy following me whilst shrugging. Decisively, I was pretty terrible at this. Mrs. Rainbow Mane rubbed a hoof on her head, a bit confused by our neurotic behavior. But I had to try and pretend anyway. Last thing I wanted was for me to be lambasted by the local community and crucified on the gallows because I erased a trusted member of Ponyville by my existence alone. That blue pony could’ve easily gone to Ponyville’s equivalent of the FBI and have ponies in black suits snatch me away.

Eventually, she gave up, and she made her way in as well. Good. Stealth 100. Her gaze wandered across the many many books, slightly impressed by how much lecture this tree held. You could almost swear she’d never been in this place before. And maybe it was her first time in the library. I didn’t know her, so I could only speculate. She was just a modest client anyway, right? It’s not like the two of us were well acquainted, or anything. She knew my name, sure, but maybe I was, like, the sole librarian of this town. You get to know the neighborhood at some point.

Now, before anything could happen, I had to beat her to the punch. If she truly was unfamiliar with this place, then she’d logically go to me to help her find what she was looking for, or to fetch recommendations outta me. Since I had a null amount of knowledge about any of the material this library offered, I had to skedaddle out of her sight. And for that, I had a mind numbingly simple plan. I would craft a dumb excuse and kill two birds with one stone.

Sky-blue pony opened her mouth to say something, but I rudely decided to interrupt her.

“Um, I really hope this doesn’t come off as impolite, but would you excuse us for a moment? Feel free to browse, though; I just need to go upstairs and have a little private talk with Applejack.”

“Twilight,” Amy said, a tad disappointed, “how many times do I have to tell you that my name’s A-”

“APPLEJACK, yep, yep, got it, hehehehahaha!” I snorted my second daily line of coke.

I nervously pushed Amy up the stairs with my front hooves, and she complied, albeit not without a smidge of resistance. She was confused by how unhinged I was acting. I couldn’t really blame her, but it highlighted how much we needed to have that talk. It was getting harder and harder to keep everything under control.

Once again, Rainbow gave us that look. Damn, it really felt like she was two seconds away from shouting J’ACCUSE! She was ogling us the entire time we ascended up the stairs. Just before I could slam shut the bedroom door, I spotted her shrugging, and making her way to a random bookshelf. Wheew! Saved by the bell, they said.

I wiped the sweat off my forehead. For a moment, I forgot that I was a horned creature, and I nearly stabbed myself. Feeling the pressure off, I greeted the floor with my bum. Amy was still on all fours, looking at me, as confused as ever. She was waiting for me to explain myself. Good kid, raised well. Letting the adults introduce the subject first.

And since I was the adult in question (allegedly), I was going to commence this little debate with rationality, calmness, and tact.

“Holy shit, that was SO FUCKING CLOSE!” I huffed out in panic.

Amy shook her head disapprovingly. I held my hooves up and pushed the air.

“I know, I know. Swear jar. Sorry.”

“Why’d you call me ‘Applejack’ downstairs?” she simply asked.

“Because- Look. I have no idea how to proceed right now. We’re both humans, right?”

Yes, she signaled.

“But they don’t know that,” I added, pointing at the door from whence we came.

No, she signaled.

“Right. So, how do you suppose these strange ponies will react if they find out our secret? Our curse?”

She tapped her chin, pensive. “They’ll probably help us, because they’re nice? Or maybe they’ll just ignore us, like the horsies- the ponies did on the farm.”

Naïve. So, so naïve, these kids. She was still at that age where the Tooth Fairy was the real deal yo. And wars could be solved by hugging it out. Newsflash, Amy: The world wasn’t this colorful paradise you thought it to be; it was a dull shade of brown.

“Wrong answer, Amy. The only right answer here is, we don’t know what they’ll do to us. There’s a fifty-fifty chance that they’ll react positively or negatively in the face of us deceiving foreigners. It's a tossup. Will they dismember us limb by limb? Will they ship us to their biolabs to scalp our brains? Will they exile us? Will they tie us to balls and chains? Or will they just scoff at the notion and leave us to our troubles? We have one life to live, Amy, and I will not gamble on it. Being ponified is still a far cry from being dead. At least, I think it is...”

She recoiled in fear at the explicit descriptions I gave. Man, she looked like an adult, it was hard to remember that under that cowgirl persona was a lassie not even in high school yet. Still, that realization raised another supportive point in my favor.

“You’re only nine years-old, soon to be ten. You have a ton of life potential ahead of you. I will not allow these freaks to circumvent it pre-emptively. We all have loved ones that’d rather see us alive than, uh, ‘gone.’ It’s our job for their sake to ensure our self-preservation. This is a tender situation right now, and we need to be extremely cautious about it.”

“W-w-why would they d-do anything l-l-like this?” she trembled under her cowboy hat.

Oops. Maybe I was a tad too alarmist for her tastes.

“Because... because I think we involuntarily stole the bodies of ponies that already existed.”

“W-what?”

“Why do you think people refer to us by names that aren’t ours? Why do total strangers wave at us like they’ve known us for years? Why did Big Mac and Apple Bloom label you as their sister? Why did that rainbow pony downstairs look for me with glee?”

Amy just breathed in and out, letting me steer that ship.

“Amy, I truly do believe that not only these bodies aren’t ours, but they belonged to two other ponies before. What happened to these ponies, I don’t have a single clue. And sadly, I don’t care much about it either. But what if families and friends find out that a pony they immensely care about is being manipulated by an intruder of a different specie? They’ll do their best to set things right, with little regards as to how we might feel about it. If anything, they’re probably part of a hateful and intolerant race running amok in disharmony.”

My interlocutor held two hooves to her mouth. “Oh no...!” she said, gasping in terror.

“Yeah, oh no indeed! And their local authorities, the Equestrian Federal Police Force or whatever, well, it’s safe to assume our wellbeing isn’t on top of their list either. We’re probably parasites to them – enemies of the state. We’re talking about a society that marks their citizens, you know!” I looked at my butt, and so too did Amy. “So until we figure stuff out, we’ll need to be very subtle and play out the fake role that’s been given to us. We cannot risk being found out until we have a clear way out. Our temporary stay in these lands must contain as few speed bumps as possible.”

Sufficiently soaked in my infectious paranoia, her head hung low, titled slightly. A short moment passed. It gave my thoughts a bit of rest to be scrambled back into place.

“S-so we have to lie to them, right?”

I nodded. “A bold way to put it, but in a nutshell? Yes.”

“Isn’t lying... bad?”

“Sometimes, a little lie can be the right thing to do.”

“Mom and dad always told me to be honest... this doesn’t feel right, Twilight.”

Was I going to tell her the Godwin example of the person housing fugitives during WW2 while a member of the SS knocked on their door, asking them if they were harboring any stowaways? The ultimate situation in which lying saved lives, proving that there could be some merit in withholding the truth at times. Then again, Amy probably hasn’t even learned of the global wars humanity went through in the 20th century, so that was moot. Seriously though. Not being on par with honesty could be used for the greater good, as was the case with our situation. Why did she have so much trouble understanding that? It’s not like I was purposely trying to red pill her.

“None of this situation feels right, Amy,” I concluded. “But we have to do the wrong thing to do the right thing, do you understand?”

“I... I think so,” she mumbled. She still looked conflicted, but that’ll do for me.

“Good. Now, let’s figure out what happened to us. We need to recap the events that have brought us here, if we’re going to make it back to sweet mother USA.”

She acquiesced.

I went first. I retold my impossible tale, from the moment I woke up this morning, to the point where I met her. I even went far and beyond to recount my previous day, to see if the circumstances of my slumber had any worthy data in it. Rubber ducking felt good. I omitted the part where I probed my private parts; no one ever needed to hear this, let alone a child.

Amy described her situation next. She had a normal day in school. A typical Tuesday anyone her age would experience. Her parents picked her up, she was given a ride home, she had mac n’ cheese for diner, she did a bit of homework, she went outside to play with her golden retriever, she filled her coloring book some more, she watched a bit of Teen Titans Go, then she snuggled in bed after cookies and milk.

As she told me her day not without overblowing details (heh, kids, they loved the attention), it made me yearn for the simpler times. I had become so cynical as I aged. I had to; I had expenses and stress. I juggled two careers with conflicts of interest. One paid the bills and the other was a passion project. Who wouldn’t feel beaten down by our fast-paced way of life? Overall, it was a shame how you had to give up a part of yourself when you parted ways with your innocent childhood. Like, accidentally stumbling upon kid cartoons while channel surfing and going “I am arbitrarily not allowed to like this anymore.” Ah well, melancholy was a cruel mistress.

“...and then, and then, that’s when I woke up, Twilight! I woke up, and, and I was sleeping under a tree, outside. But I didn’t fall asleep outside!” continued Amy.

“I know, Amy. Like I told you, I also woke up in a different spot than my apartment. But carry on, please.”

“Okay... so, I woke up, and I was all yucky. Full of sweat, like ew, so gross!” I had the same experience; this checked out. “There were baskets full of apples next to me, and a large cart, also filled with apples, and, oh! I remember seeing a horsie running away from me when I spotted them.”

Intriguing. “Really?”

“Ya-huh! They were on the dirt path where you found me, Twilight. I tried to run after them, because- I... I don’t know. I was soooo confused. When I followed the horsie, that’s when I realized that I was ALSO a horsie, and I had trouble following the horsie, and then, and then-”

“Take it slow, Amy.”

“... then I didn’t know what to do no more. The other horsie had vanished, because I couldn’t walk or run good. It was also super early and I was still tired. So I just waited by the fence on the path – that’s where you found me, by the way. But before that, Apple Bloom came to see me, because I started crying super loud. I was crying for like, hours! It took her some time to find me.”

Memories of me shouting at Amy back in the streets of Ponyville were flowing back. I would be eternally ashamed for what I did. She deserved none of that crap. Were I her age, I would’ve given up completely. I was already weak at 22; I couldn’t imagine how quickly I would’ve abandoned hope in Amy’s shoes.

“Sorry you had to go through this. I... If it makes you feel any better, when I realized what happened to me, I also lost my marbles and bawled my eyes out. Just completely broke down for a solid ten minutes. Never felt like this before...”

“Y-you did? Oh, then I’m sorry too...” she lowered her head.

I simply smiled at her candid affection.

“Apple Bloom she... she was sad to see me sad. She was really nice with me. She was patient and kind, even when I told her I didn’t know her name. She reminded me of Corry, my little brother and- are you sure these ponies want to be mean to us, Twilight?”

“I just said that we don’t know for sure. Please, Amy, finish your story. Apple Bloom found you, then what?”

“Well, she asked if I was under some kind of spell, or curse, cuz she said I even sounded weird. She said I had a strange ‘axe scent.’ S-so I said yes, cuz I didn’t know what was happening. When she heard this, she rushed to get her brother Big Mac to watch over me, and she told me she was going to get one of my best friends to help me out: You.”

“Well, I’m flattered, heh,” I said, feeling a little burn in the cheeks. Another body response I didn’t command. Get it together, corpse of Twilight Sparkle!

Alright, seriousness regained, I couldn’t help but think back about that fleeing pony she first encountered.

“The ‘horsie’ that ran away when you woke up, was it either Big Mac or Apple Bloom?”

She shook her head. “Nope! She was a different color. I think she was a girl, at least...”

“How did she look? Did you have enough time to check her out to describe her to me?”

She pondered, pensive like a detective. “Hmmmmm. I think she had cream fur and purple hair.”

“Purple like me?” I pointed at my own fur coat.

“No, no. A little, like, redder, maybe? Oh! Violet: That’s the color!”

“Hmmm. And what else about her? Did you get to see her ass mark?”

“Twilight! It’s called a bum-bum,” she scolded me once more. “And no, I didn’t see it. Oh! But wait; she had wings, like the rainbow pony. Also, she had jewels in her hair and her tail. That’s... that’s all I remember.”

Progress was progress. We had to take crumbs of info as they came.

“Mmmh. I have no idea if it’s worth investigating, but maybe we could try to find that mysterious mare of yours. Don’t know how we’d pull that little number, but if she saw you transition from pony mind to human mind, maybe she knows something? Maybe, like, you physically flashed and your transition just frightened the snot out of her? This could get ugly if the word gets out...”

Amy had trouble parsing my crazy theory. But I was not willing to let go of the only lead we had thus far. It probably meant nothing, and I knew I was reading too far into it, but I was just so enamored with the idea of reconciling with my body... my lifeless, decomposing, soulless human body... Damn, I really hoped this library had some kind of census record with photos or something. Or maybe the townhall I saw earlier could lend a bureaucrat or two to help me identify our enigmatic guest? Having ideas was better than not having ideas.

“So, um, Twilight?”

“Yeah Amy?”

“You still haven’t told me your real name.”

That I have not. Buuuuut...

“You know what? Maybe this is for the best. This could avoid potential slips of tongue. You already said ‘he’ to me in front of that rainbow lass.”

“But Twilight, I said ‘he’ because you’re a guy, no?”

“Born as one, will die as one.” Amy cringed again at how I said ‘die.’ Will avoid the D word in the future. “But as of right now? I’m inside a girl’s body, sooo...”

Ugh. Thank God she was too young and too unaware to pick at the obvious sexual innuendo I just spat. Vince would’ve jumped at the occasion with way too much pleasure for his own good.

“Ah, gotcha! I won’t make it weird,” Amy said confidently.

I was about to thank her for her resolve, but-

Knock knock!

“Twilight?” said an all too familiar draconian voice.

“Okay, so don’t freak out, Amy, but a tiny dragon totally lives here. He’s contracted to serve me or something. He’s chill,” I whispered to my orange friend. She didn’t have time to ask any further questions.

“Come in, Spike!” I said.

The door did its thing and rotated around its hinges. And who should appear but Mr. Spike himself. Amy reacted with surprise, as I fully expected. It wasn’t enough to draw suspicion, however. Good work, Amy! Your composure was thrice mine! I thought Spike was going to suck my blood the first time I saw him, but Amy over there merely recoiled. She really was courageous for her age.

“Hey Twilight! Hey Applejack! Rainbow Dash told me you two were upstairs.”

Ah-hah! Ladies and gentlemen, the plot thickened: We had a name. “Rainbow Dash.” No doubt as to whom this name belonged. Thanks Spike, you truly were a savior. You would make info kiosks proud, my little drake.

“Yup. We were just, uh, taking it easy, you know?” I told Spike. “Taking a load off and stuff.”

“Well, it’s a relief to know you’re relaxing! You had me sooo confused this morning, heh,” he snickered. “But getting your friends over to help you with your reg- rete-” He sighed. “-your memory loss? I think it’s a wonderful idea, Twi! I’m sure Dash and AJ can get you back on your hooves.”

Crap on a stick. More problematics tossed my way! Rainbow Dash was supposed to be yet another friend of mine? Christ, how many friends did this purple drifter had? Friendship is Gonorrhea; you don’t pass that shit around willy-nilly. At some point, collecting too many buddies removes any meaning behind true friendship. Treasure the strong bonds you have instead of stacking them on a display shelf.

I made a terrible impression to ‘Dash’ earlier – probably why she looked at me funny. She saw her friend acting all bizarre. This also implied that Amy – or rather, Applejack – was a friend in this trio of ours. We will have to be doubly cautious from there onward.

“Oh no! You have memory loss?” Amy said to me.

fgsfds! Why did I have to play mediator all the time?

“No no, it’s okay, Applejack. I feel much better since I woke up. That goes for you too Spike. You shouldn’t worry about me anymore, heh. I can take care of myself,” I told him, trying to remain convincing.

“Mmmh, if you say so, Twilight! You still feel a little out of it, but nowhere near as bad as when I found you on the floor after your nightmare. Just don’t be tempted to go back to your work! That’s a job for tomorrow’s Sparkle,” Spike said with amusement. “Now come downstairs! I uh, found the stuff you needed... for some reason. Didn’t exactly get everything. I did what I could with the budget I had!”

Hallelujah! Sweet mother of clothes, here we come! Time to teach these ponies a thing or two about modesty.

Shopping bags and shopping bags and shopping bags. How many clothes did we now have? A “yes” amount. We must’ve tripled our current inventory. Rainbow Dash was still book spelunking, though her attention was halved toward what we were doing. The bags were piled on the middle table of the main room. As I was digging my hooves in to collect my goods, I lost Amy from my vision. I knew she didn’t go outside, so I didn’t need to babysit her that thoroughly. Anyway, my attention was elsewhere.

“Unfortunately, Twilight, I had to go to the general store to get the articles of clothing you asked for, because Rarity wasn’t home,” justified Spike.

Then, he kept on going, scratching his scaly head. “... Which is weird, when I think about it. She’s usually working double in the middle of the week.” He drooped, disappointed. “Ah well, that’s too bad... was really looking forward to see her.”

“That’s okay, Spike. You did your best and that’s all that matters. You’re a good assistant,” I tossed a bone his way.

It worked, because he perked up. Good, still got it, dude.

I pulled out a pair of jeans out of the bag, by holding them awkwardly between two stumpy hooves. Neat, that was one of the most important pieces I requested. I should’ve expected it, but they were shaped rather differently than human pants. The pockets were angled differently, for instance. It even had a backward strip band with a cavity underneath, most surely to let the tail through. Tche, tails. With the right bend in a spine, who needed stupid tails for balance? Humans had it so right. Anyway, the material wasn’t exactly your typical North American denim (didn’t have the classic diagonal stitches inside), but it wasn’t a fashion trainwreck nonetheless. I could make due.

Next, I pulled out a generic belt. Wasn’t made of leather. Why? Dunno. Some kind of sturdy polyester, perhaps? Well, no matter the case, at least, it meant that I could walk without my pants falling off like a dumbass.

Up next in the magical bag of surprises, the shirt, and the jacket. Dark gray and chestnut respectively. The latter having the squared pattern I wished for. As Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys would say: “Deeeecent!” I also found the sunnies, albeit not aviator-shaped. Instead, they were huge and diva-like. Insert sad game show chime here.

Missing pieces were the cane, the boxer, the socks, the shoes. Okay, I could live without those, sure, whatever. My feet weren’t exactly suffering, as I found out, walking on the paths and stuff. I will admit that there were some perks to having sturdy hooves, but that didn’t mean I was ready to abandon picking linen out of my toe creases.

The rest of the shopping bags were grocery related, as far as I could tell. So little Spike over there got busy, it seemed. Wait- How the heck did he even transport all of that? I hoped he lifted with his legs and not his back.

But hang on, over there, in this other bag-

“Hum, what’s this, Spike?”

He turned to look. “Oh that? That was a hundred and fifty bits, that’s what! Gee Twilight, I didn’t know you were into collector items! That one was rare, and the broker I bought it from only had a few copies left. That was a hard catch!”

I didn’t know what the exchange rate between USD and BITS were, but I could take a hint that this item was rather overpriced. I could hardly believe that a baseball cap of all things could send you straight to welfare.

“But I don’t understand? That’s not what I... What’s with the logo here?”

It was the black silhouette of three flying ponies in the middle of striking a pose, a bit reminiscent of the Powerpuff Girls. One in the middle looking up, two by his side curved outwards. All three of them pumping one hoof out. They were encompassed in a bright red shield. Under, two big bold letters in white: FF.

“That’s the Fillydelphia Flyers, Twilight. They’re a pretty talented unit performing shows airborne. That’s what you asked for, remember?”

...

“T-thanks, Spike,” I said, fighting back tears of frustration.

Rainbow Dash took this opportunity to approach me.

“Hey, cool hat, Twilight!” she said, maybe to make me feel better? I dunno.

“Appreciated, my comrade in friendship. You’re into that stuff, air stunts and such?” I put the hat on my head, my horn still poking out under the sole.

Rainbow Dash froze at my question a bit, her eyes going from Spike to I. Shit, did I ask something stupid? God dammit, I really needed to learn to keep my mouth shut. I was there to find my way home, not to endanger my position via needless chatter. The more I talked, the more I risked.

Rainbow Dash, looking oddly nervous, raised a hoof, about to say something, but Spike nudged me on the ribs with his elbow.

“Twilight, ha! You’re seriously asking this to Rainbow flippin’ Dash? The biggest Wonderbolts fan out there?”

“Yeah Twilight, what’s up with you?” immediately jumped back Dash with that chalkboard voice of hers.

Tension: Building. Heart rate: Increasing. Protocol suggestion: Abort! Abort!

“Gotcha both! Ha, your faces: Priceless!” I smiled perhaps a little too widely. “Of course Dash is numbero uno Wonderbolts fan; who doesn’t know that? Because, I, Twilight Sparkle, certainly did.”

...

I wished I could go back to writing music already. I missed venting by cranking up the treble, tuning down to drop C, and strumming aggressive power chords.

Spike was still giving me a funny look and Rainbow Dash tried to make it even. Suddenly, blessed be that incredible timing that yanked me out of this supremely awkward moment, a loud and muffled thud made us three turn toward the source of the sound. Turns out, the perpetrator was Amy. She carried a large jug she found from God knows where (hypothetically the kitchen; Spike DID get some grub) and deposited it on a reading table near a couple of shelves.

“AJ? What’s that for?” curious Spike asked.

Amy leaned next to the jug, satisfied with her deed. “That there is the swear jar!”

Next objective: Crawling into a blackhole and disappearing forever.

“A swear jar?” asked Spike and Dash together.

Amy nodded with fervor. “Ya-huh. Twilight over there? He- She wouldn’t stop saying meanie words on our way back from the farm. So now, her punishment is to put money in there every time she says an oopsie.”

“Oh, I love this!” Spike said a bit too cheerfully, clapping his claws. “Didya know Twilight ALSO said a no-no in front of me this morning? So that’s an extra bit just for that!”

“Roooh nooooo you didn’t, Twilight!” turned Amy to me.

Ok, stop. Pause. Halt. CEASE and DESIST!

“Alright, that was cute at first, but aren’t we going a liiiittle bit overboard with this whole ‘no swearing’ policy? I thought it was more of a figurative thing than actually having a real-life mother fucking jar.”

“TWILIGHT!” shouted Rainbow Dash, Spike, and Amy in unison.

“Ugh, tough crowd,” I exhaled. “Spike, just drop them bits.”

I changed clothes. And by changed, I meant, I ACTUALLY put some clothes on.

Yeah, that was quite the challenge. I managed to slide into my new jeans. They were a bit loose, but they did provide the necessary cover I yearned for. My shirt was not too tough to manage as well. The belt, however. Oh boy. I heard boss music.

Hooves, man, hooves! These things had the agility of hollowed-out sledgehammers. And my torso was perpendicular to gravity; the belt was nowhere near where my arms used to dangle. I tried to put the belt on: I faceplanted. I tried to put it on while seated: I reverse faceplanted. Backplanted? Impatience building up, I yelled for Spike’s backup. He obliged, strapping the back flap thingy of my jeans correctly, and passing the belt through the hoops with dexterity I should’ve had.

“You know you could just use your magic for that,” he said.

“I don’t need your sass right now.”

He rolled his eyes. “Obviously you’re not used to wear anything but dresses.”

“You’re pushing it buddy,” I said, shuddering at the thought.

Spike sighed. “You sure you need all that stuff? It is pretty hot outside. With your fur, well...”

“Yes, Spike. We’ve been over this already. Look, let me just have this, please? I’m not budging on the matter.”

I hated how he put my ‘fur’ in the limelight. Unnghhh. Fur was supposed to be macho, not cutesy-cuddly. I used to have sideburns, thick eyebrows, and a goatee. Just the right amount of manly facial hairiness.

“Your funeral,” he simply said, hooking the buckle tightly. “Just make sure Rarity doesn’t see you like this... wherever she might be.”

A little awkward having someone else do something I’ve done every day since I started wearing adult clothes. But less awkward than not being civilized. It felt like my dad tying my ties all over again.

Spike left the bathroom for me to tend to my own. Cool. I looked at the jacket, and saw the array of buttons. Then, I looked back at my fingers on vacation. You know what? Fuck the jacket. Shirt, pants, belt: The three bastions of sanity. S’all I really needed. The hat was a nifty bonus.

Coming back to the hub, I just had to grunt. You know what Spike did to Amy’s artifact of doom (i.e., the jug)? He inked “SWEAR JAR >:(” on it. To baptize it, to make it official. Yes, he even did that little frowning emoticon next to it. He also added a line near the rim of the jug, where it read: “To the moon.” I had no idea what this inside joke meant, but I swore to myself to never reach that threshold.

Rainbow Dash was still there, grrrr. She had a mountain of books by her side. She looked a little lost, like she was trying to find something specific and not succeeding at it. It was any moment now that she’d require my help, and I was going to buckle under the pressure.

Fate had its way, because Rainbow turned her concentrated head toward me. She looked at my clothes with a bit of stupor, but then, she returned to her mission at hand: To throw me an uncatchable curveball.

It’s at this point that my stomach told fate to go take a hike.

Grrbbllmmblll...

“Looks like somepony’s hungry,” laughed Spike.

“Ha ha ha,” I said, annoyed he heard that.

Look, it was true. I didn’t eat anything yesterday evening in my old human body. I didn’t know if it accounted for anything, but fact was, this pony didn’t ingest squat since she woke up screaming and coughing. Tea was hardly sustenance. And it was what, 3 PM now? A guy was entitled to get his daily dose of calories.

“Oh, I’m hungry too, Spike!” Amy kindly added. Her stomach soon confirmed it.

“Good thing I just refurbished the ice box, eh Twilight?” winked Spike.

The ice box? As in fridge? Oh no no no. Ain’t happenin’, buddy. I needed an excuse to interrupt Dash’s quest to pester me. I certainly wasn’t going to stand idle in here, chomping away whilst she had me all for herself, more than ready to probe the book expertise I didn’t have.

Time. I needed more time. I needed to at least familiarize myself a teensy bit with my work place before I could let other ponies walk all over me. Just, you know, until I could figure out this whole human-to-pony situation. But right now? I was unprepared beyond unprepared. Rainbow would sooner or later realize I was only playing with a 2’s and 7’s while everyone else was drowning in full houses.

“Y-you know what?” I clopped my hooves.

All turned to listen to my impromptu seminar.

“It’s a beautiful day, I’ve got these cool new clothes to show off, and... Howzabout we go out and have lunch somewhere, han? My treat!”

“Yay!” Amy bounced.

“Mmmmh, well I do feel a bit peckish myself, Twilight,” hesitantly said Dash.

Spike, meanwhile, merely smiled at us, ugh, “ladies,” getting giddy about our daytrip. How many times had I wished to be struck by lightning in one day? Could I get an estimate to the nearest dozen?

“Ah, you girls go ahead,” Spike brushed off the offer. “Twilight had a rough day. I’m sure she’ll enjoy a little moment with her friends. I’ll tend to the library in the meantime, no biggie. Besides, I already snacked on a couple of topazes on my way here.”

Excuse the bejeezus out of me: He what!? Did he just imply he swallowed a bunch of geodes? Was that some kind of insane dare? I knew we all needed minerals to balance a healthy diet, but come on now, that was a little bit too literal of him.

“You ate what now?” I aimed confusion at him.

And it struck true. He held his claws in front of his mouth, as if he’d been caught red handed.

“Uh, uh... I m-meant, um...” His forehead became red and sweaty. “I-I’m s-sorry Twilight! I know I’m n-not supposed to snack before supper, but, uh...”

Alright. He danced for long enough. Next time, I’ll teach him to eat actual food instead of stocking rocks in his tummy like a child. Last thing I needed was to deal with the epic misadventures of Spike and his stomach clog.

“Sure bud. Your sins are forgiven.” I nudged with this elastic neck of mine toward my jeans. “Pocket me some cash and your debt shall be erased. Oh, and go fetch my shades too; gotta get the look right.”

We were once again among the quadestrians of Ponyville. The activity hadn’t died down. We could easily blend in with Equestria’s crowd. Except,

“Uh, Twilight, are the clothes that necessary?” asked Rainbow Dash.

This was some Spike shit all over again. “Ugh. Yes, Rainbow. It is.”

“But e-everypony else is staring at us,” Dash lowered her head, slightly ashamed.

“They’re just jelly because they haven’t advanced to the next age as I have.”

Whatever. I felt a million times better this way. Sure, it chaffed a bit on my forsaken pelt. Sure, I felt a bit hot and sweaty under the cloth. Sure, my movements were a tad more restricted. Bah! That little voice in my head telling me I was buns out piped down. And that, that was worth everything. I would never again venture to the outside world like a damn nudist. Amy was just too young to understand what “flashing” meant, that's what it was.

“Where should we go eat, Twilight?” Amy interrupted the pointless debate between me, Dash, and my mind.

Mmmh, good question, my friend. I wondered if this city had any fast food. I wasn’t in the mood for something too lavish. I woke up feeling like shit, and usually, an effective remedy for me was to gobble down greasy diabetes type 2 trash. Comfort food was a good fallback option in dire times. You didn’t have to choose between the seafood or the duck risotto; no, you just dove in your salty fries without second guessing your life. Look, I was American. Ronald McDonald practically raised me. Unfortunately, however, I spotted no familiar joints thus far. No Subways, no Five Guys, no Wendy’s, no Chick-fil-A, etc...

“I dunno, Applejack. What do you feel for?”

“Oh, oh! I want chicken nuggies!”

“Nice. I could go for a good quarter pound beef burger myself,” I rubbed my chin. “And a metric ton of beer, heyooo!”

We turned to Rainbow Dash. “What about you Rain- uh...”

Why was she looking at us with flabbergasted eyes?

“Um, Dash?” I nervously said.

“Huh? Oh! I was just- sorry. You blindsided me a bit,” she blinked. “Y-you can eat that sort of stuff? I just, I had no idea. It’s just weird to me, is all.”

“What are you on about?”

“Meat-derived products. I didn’t know ponies were built to digest that stuff. Aren’t we supposed to be herbivorous?”

“Choice of diet is in the eyes of the beholder, pal. We’re free to consume as we please. I sincerely doubt being served a healthy protein is parallel to giving a dog chocolate,” I said with confidence. I was going to hold my ground for that one. “I take you’re not one to enjoy a succulent rack of prime ribs every now and then?”

She stuck her tongue out. “Uh yeah, no thanks. I’m a vegetarian.”

I mentally rolled my eyes. Right. One of those people. I respected her choice; we were who we chose to be. I just hoped she wasn’t one to shove down that style of life down our throat. She seemed nice enough in any case, so maybe my concern was unwarranted. The internet made me so jaded.

Once again, I suppose this was a piece of trivia from Dash’s life I should’ve known already. She was a friend of mine, and I didn’t even remember an important detail about her. So, Dash: Liked the Wonderbolts, got into wing accidents, and was a veggie eater. Okay, we were starting to draw a comprehensive portrait.

I cleared my throat. “Y-yeah we know that, I was just pulling your leg, heh. Anyway, no biggie, I’m sure we’ll find a place that caters to us all.”

She added nothing and fell behind Amy and I. She looked deep in thoughts. Amy gave her a concerned look, then edged closer to me. She started to talk lowly, so that Dash wouldn’t eavesdrop what she had to say.

“Hum, Twilight?”

“Yeah Amy?” I mumbled back, keeping our conversation sufficiently secluded.

“S-something seems off with Rainbow Dash...” she said, turning to her and smiling, making sure our private chat didn’t look too off putting.

“What do you mean? You think she found us out?”

“No, it’s... no. At least, I don’t think? But I feel like she’s hiding something. Like, she’s not being entirely honest with us,” Amy hesitantly said.

“You think so?”

She thought for two seconds... “Yes.”

“How can you tell?”

“I... I don’t know. I just, I just can. I just feel it.”

“That seems like a strong leap of faith from where I stand, Amy.”

“It’s not though! Twilight, I swear, she’s lying about something. You hafta believe me! Something tells me so!”

“Well, your ‘something’ definitely wouldn’t hold in cou-”

Dash reappeared to my left.

“What are you girls talkin’ ‘bout?” she asked.

“Oh, uh, food stuff. We didn’t want to disgust you with our barbaric meat talk.”

She nodded, cashing in the lie. 10 points for Twilight.

Turns out, we did not find a place that catered to us all.

I thought for a moment that we’d have difficulty finding a restaurant that came with a vegetarian menu, but in a sick reversal, it’s the opposite we couldn’t find! Seriously, everything offered was naught BUT vegetarian stuff, and meat main courses were the oddity! And by oddity, what I meant was, we didn’t find a single establishment that offered the measliest morsel of meat. Lamb was inexistent, chicken was nowhere to be seen, and beef was unheard of. Even shrimp appetizers went extinct.

We flocked from place to place, looking at the A-frame sidewalk menus, disappointed to find nothing but burgers filled with “hay.” My allergies practically made my eyes water at the thought of deep throating grass.

Stupid city. Stupid country. Stupid society. This was an insult to every steakhouse I’ve ever been to. If eating – eating well – was that much of a struggle, then I wouldn’t last days here. I was too cocooned in my comfortable life, and I was rendered weak in the face of adversity. Good times create weak men, etc. An unquenched grumbling tummy just made things 100% worse. Being “hangry” was a science of its own.

Giving up our quest for something medium-rare, Amy and I had to resign ourselves to settle down at the next place we’d find. Our hunger could hardly tolerate our pickiness anymore. I was seriously considering shoveling sand in my mouth just to subside the growls. At least Dash wasn’t sharing our burden, lucky her.

And here we were, seated at a terrasse under a cozy parasol. And thank heavens for that, for my armpits were turning to swamp pits. I was to keep my clothes on, though! I was as stubborn as a muuuu-nope. Wasn’t gonna finish that expression. Amy and I sat on our bottoms, tail casted to the side, legs dangling off the chair. Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash preferred to sit on her haunches, just like the magnet pony we saw earlier. I wondered if we were supposed to adapt this position ourselves to blend in better. Food for thoughts.

There weren’t too many other patrons around us. Given our odd time to eat, halfway between lunchtime and dinnertime, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. Once again, I was okay with this. The lesser the number of ponies around me, the more at ease I felt.

Checking out the menu gave me a second wave of disappointment. My perfectly imagined Swiss cheese chipotle mushroom burger did not materialize itself on the pages. Instead, they had... they had-

“Daffodil sandwiches?” Amy queried. “What’re daffodils?”

“They’re flowers with yellow petals, AJ,” said knowledgeable Rainbow Dash.

“Ewww! Flowers in a sandwich?” she exclaimed.

I had to echo Amy’s thoughts there. I was once dared to eat a mouthful of dandelions when I was young and stupid. Naturally, I did it, and I got my twenty dollars. My puke was a lovely shade of Spring green.

Dash tilted her head at another nearby client consuming a copy of the sandwich pictured in our menus. When I saw the flower stem poking out of the bread slices, I suppressed a gag. The masochists, the lot of them!

“That stallion seems to be eating it just fine...” Rainbow said, a bit confused at Amy’s outburst.

“His side dish... is it a bowl full of weeds?” I added.

“... that’s orchard hay, I think,” Rainbow continued. She was seriously getting weirded out by Amy and I’s reactions.

“That’s just stupid,” I nonchalantly retorted. “The FDA would have a field day here.”

Deciding that it was rude to stare, us three flicked our attention toward another pony who didn’t learn that lesson yet. He was standing next to our table, a dickey and a red bowtie around his neck. He somehow managed to balance a pad in that hoof of his. His mane was coiffed nicely, his brown fur was groomed to perfection, and his blue eyes screamed customer service. Right now, them eyes were staring at my garments – more precisely, my dark shirt. I understood I stuck out like a sore thumb amongst preachers of nudity, but come on my guy, try to be at least a little bit subtle about it.

“I’m taking that black isn’t your favorite color?”

He shook his head. “Buh? Oh, uh, sorry madam. I mean um,” he coughed, “m-my name is Quick Service and I’ll be your waiter this afternoon. May I take your order, ladies?” he said, regaining his professionalism.

It took me some restraint to not yell “who’re you calling ‘lady,’ lady?” Fortunately, my easily provoked anger was currently on probation, substituted with starvation. Also, I thought that with a name like his, the poor stallion had suffered enough.

“Yeah, gimme uhhhhhhhh-”

I droned out, my eyes scanning the menu line by line. I didn’t know what to take. Something flowerless, that much was obvious. But nothing really screamed eye candy for me. Truth was, I was still undecided. No sirloin steak to make me drool, not smoked meat poutine to remind me of hockey nights, no duck breast to make my bits bleed. I hated being put on the spot like this.

As I tried to jumpstart my brain with imaginary booster cables, it occurred to me that Amy and Dash both placed their order. Amy took their “jumbolicious” grilled cheese with a bowl of onion horseshoes (???) while Dash opted for something a little classier with her deluxe garden salad and buckwheat wafers. The waiter turned to me, hoping to finally be relieved of duty from us nutjobs.

“-uuuuuuuuuh-”

“Madam?” asked Quick Service.

“-uuuuh yeah I’ll take your minestrone soup with cheese bread and deep-fried cauliflowers on the side.”

Why did I just order soup in the middle of a hot day, again? Going back on my choice was poor etiquette, so I dropped the idea. Instead,

“Wait. Toss in an ice coffee too.”

Didn’t see it on the menu, but-

“Oh, I’m sorry miss, we do not serve coffee at The Fifth Corner. We do have tea, though.”

“Pass.”

No coffee? Blasphemy! How did they keep their citizens indoctrinated without overcaffeinated beverages? The promise of some sweet wake-up-in-a-bottle was usually an efficient way to turn people into mindless obedient slaves. “Work you shift, earn your Starbucks latte, and ask no questions.”

Quick Service left, scribbling on his pad with a quill. That he was holding in his mouth. I’m sure that was a completely OSHA-approved sanitary work practice that wasn’t prone to bacterial infections at all. I just had to wonder though: Why did everyone stroll around with some ye ol’ quills? H2 lead pencils anyone? No? Was it too inconceivable that there were better alternatives than carrying a stupid ink pot everywhere? God dammit, whatever man. This backward city kept finding new ways to irrationally aggravate me to no end.

I simmered down. Amy, Dash, and I talked for a bit, waiting for our order. We weren’t asking anything too personal to each other, which worked just fine by me. We maintained decorum and kept it on the safe side. Our subjects of conversation were sooo generic and uninteresting, anyone in the world could’ve had them. Blabbing about this restaurant, the demeanor of the waiter, our favorite meals, my new clothes, and of course, the king of all unsubstantial talking points: The weather. Eventually, the food arrived, and not a moment too soon. We stared at our plates and smiled at the butchered “Bon appétit” Quick Service was contractually obliged to utter.

So.

Alright.

Heh.

...

How the fuck do I eat this?

Why did I order soo-oo-ooup! I should’ve taken a note in Amy’s book and asked for something that could be held between those hydraulic presses we called hooves. She was already nibbling on her sandwich, while I was stuck staring at the maroon liquid in my bowl. Maybe I could dunk the cheese breads and let them soak the minestrone via osmosis? Then grab the sponged-up results and munch in peace?

Rainbow Dash, meanwhile, had taken a fork, impossibly holding it in her hoof. As if an invisible fist squeezed it tight. How? That didn’t make a lick of sense! There was nothing to vice-grip cutlery in a pony’s hoof. No creases, no protuberances, no suction cups, no adhesive slime, no nothing to handle any object that needed to be held. The utensil should’ve found its way to the floor, but somehow, it remained perfectly balanced in her “palm.” Peristalsis, gravity, and friction all collectively gave up that day.

“H-how?” I asked her, as she dragged a mouthful of lettuce to her mouth.

“Hmmm?” she looked up from her plate.

“How are you grabbing that fork?”

She looked at the fork, then back to me, frowning. Then, it was Amy’s turn to be impressed by the feat.

“Oh wow, that’s cool! Look Twilight, it’s holding super steadily!” She looked at her own unused fork. “I gotta try too!”

And try she did. It took two or three attempts, but she ended up handling the fork the same way Dash did. As if this was a totally normal thing to do.

“Yes! I get it! It’s super duper easy! Now you try, Twilight,” said Amy to me.

“Oh alright...” I reluctantly agreed, not all too convinced.

And there were reasons for that. Because after my eighth attempt at handling these utensils? Still couldn’t grasp zip diddly. I was just about to throw them in the street. I couldn’t even stab anyone with my butter knife to blow some steam! Seriously, how were these girls doing it so casually? Did they secretly fetch the roll of adhesive tape while I was blinking? Did they have a better build than my own? I tried as I might and still nothing would yield. My spoon was just sliding off my useless hoof. It even fell into the soup after a particularly bad maneuver, making a mess. Would it be socially unacceptable to flip the table? Asking for a friend. My eyes were making a sharply angled V, and my sweat multiplied tenfold. I was at the point of giving up.

“God dammit, I can’t do it! It’s just not possible!” I moaned in defeat.

“Keep trying, Twilight!” encouraged Amy. “You just gotta flex that weird muscle near the tip of your hoof. It’s like, uh, like ah uuuuhhhh, a m-membrane? A weird muscly membrane. When it’s pushed out, it just clasps to stuff.”

“Yeah? Well I don’t feel it at all, Am- Applejack.” I threw my arms up. “How am I supposed to feed myself if I can’t even grab anything? Huh? I’m going to starve!”

I looked at Rainbow Dash for some moral support, but ah. Well. I wasn’t exactly acting all-pony like, wasn’t I? I didn’t know how old this body of mine was, but it was fair to assume it survived a good number of years before my apparition at least. Twilight must’ve been able to feed somehow for her to have persisted for this long. So there must’ve been a trick to spoon-feed oneself. But what was it?

Dash was looking elsewhere, so I followed her glance. Her eyes were glued to another stick-head pony at a neighboring table. She was in the middle of lifehacking a cracker from her plate to her mouth. Her horn was doing the same inexplicable show of colors the pony at the café did. What the heck, were they in cahoots? They were both using the esoteric magnet strategy I couldn’t quite comprehend. The cracker was also surrounded by a matching aura. Horn and food: Both acting like an emitter and a receiver. As if they were both conveniently communicating via some kind of WIFI signal. How unfair was that? It’s almost as if she could will the food to her cakehole. Boooo! You weren’t impressing anyone, show-off!

Grmblblbl...

Rainbow Dash craned her neck back to me. She became in trance with my forehead, analyzing it with intensity. For some reason. Then her thoroughly unimpressed magenta eyes went back to pierce my soul. Her brow was furrowed, and her mouth was horizontal. She had the look of a parent who caught their kid doing something incredibly stupid and forcing them to admit it.

“Hum, something on my face?” I cautiously asked.

She remained absolutely nonplussed. Top eyelids semi closed, like she was the queen of ennui.

“Look I- I’m just having a bit of trouble with my hooves, hehehe! You know, cramps?” I said, wobbling my front leg as if to relieve invisible pain. “Can’t grab stuff without hooves, right?”

She still didn’t talk. Instead, she crossed her “arms,” an eye cocked.

“C-cramps?” I squeaked out.

Out of nowhere, she slammed the table. My soup splashed.

“Alright, you two clowns can drop the act,” she said calmly, but firmly.

...

I could’ve heard a penny drop. Amy stopped waving her fork in the air like it was an airplane. She froze solid, as I did. We both exchanged a worried look, and then back at Dash.

“Errr... what do you mean by that, good ol’ buddy bud Dashie?” was my godawful defense. “W-what act?”

“I said drop it, ‘Twilight!’ I know something’s up with the two of you. You’re going to tell me what it is, okay? No tricks, no shenanigans, just...” she sighed. “... just tell me what’s going on.”

“But we’re not-”

“Twilight!” she boldly cut me off. “Explanations. Now!”

That was it, wasn’t it?

I didn’t see an easy way out of this. One day- ONE day in Ponyville, and that’s all it took for me to act like a fool. Multiple times. A fool that just wouldn’t know when to quit. I didn’t even last a single Earth rotation before my secret identity was put on trial. I didn’t even make it to dinner, for crying out loud! Wow that felt like a freaking blow to my fragile self-confidence. What did that say about me, really? That even during critical times, I was still the poster child of failure? And so quick at tossing the towel too? Was I that unreliable, that incapable? Better not to trust me with your life, everybody, because I was the antithesis of success incarnate. Ask for my hand and I was going to find a way to let you fall.

I was not trained to act like a secret agent, okay? I was emotive, ill-tempered, and just so tired. So, so tired. I hadn’t made it to boy scouts, boot camp, or even so much as taken yoga classes. I wasn’t one to be in touch with his placidity. I didn’t learn to keep my chill. Why would I EVER suspect that this was a requirement to living the good human life? School didn’t say shit about this!

I had an alternative, mind you. When I felt like there was too much bottled up inside this milquetoast body of mine, I took that repression to local show floors, blasting my Fender amp. That’s all I needed. Me, my Stratocaster, a microphone, and a good sound system. Ingredients to get in the zone. Here though? Couldn’t even so much as to practice my pentatonic scales. I was as instrumentless as a bloke stranded on a desert island. I was deprived from my token of sanity.

In the matter of hours, I had panicked, bawled my eyes out, made people around me feel like shit, and leaked my alter-ego with maximum transparency. I didn’t have my bandmates, I didn’t have Vince, I didn’t have my parents, I didn’t have my supportive coworkers, I didn’t have my internet buddies, no. My music, my Camaro, my games, my career, my projects, my life: All of it walked the plank. All I had was my loss of control. All alone, incapable of funneling that sense of being played with toward something more productive. I was on my knees, and mischievous Gods still found the need to kick me down.

I fumbled the one and only objective I relayed to Amy, and I was going to pay the price for it. Yes, there was no sense in denying it: I’ve been found out. Exposed, busted, and off with my head! My acting was so poor, that I even made Amy suffer collateral damage. The poor girl was going to be pilloried by proxy, and it was all my fault. I finally understood why I lost my wiener: To prevent me from becoming a terrible dad...

Dash was waiting impatiently for my next move. But there was no next move. Just resignation.

“Sigh... I guess we should come clean. But first, I oughta ask: What gave it away?”

The Fall

Sleep paralysis.

I have always been suffering from sleep paralysis. It was borderline unmanageable when I was a teen, but as I got older, the occurrences were reduced to three to four times per year. On one hand, it was a good thing, because who needed to be stuck for two minutes or so with a little uncanny imp nearby to torment you, waiting to wake up? On the other hand, it was also a vector of problems, since it desensitised me to the occurences.

You could say that at 25 years of age, I was getting quite tranquil with my regular nights of sleep queuing themselves without issues. That peace of mind molded me as an unprepared victim when my nighttime arch nemesis decided to sit on my ribcage seemingly out of nowhere. Guh.

And it was happening again.

Again.

But this time, Mrs. Buttugly (that’s the name I gave to my personal demon) was feeling a little sickly. She was rather different in appearance than she had been these past 10 years.

I was used to an anthropomorphic form of something vaguely suggesting a human. She was skin on bones, arms lengthier than they had any right to be, taking some creative inspirations from Slenderman. The naked figure’s limbs all ended up in mashed up fistulas of bones, erected in singular jagged scythes. The face was pure nightmare fuel. Mrs. Buttugly had a long mop of black unkept hair parted in the middle, going all the way to her oddly bent knees. It paved way for a visage of horrors: No nose, a large opened mouth, and two gouged out eyes. The cavities went nowhere. They were just hollowed in, pale skin covering the back where eyeballs and teeth should’ve been. It’s as if she had an invisible ghoulish bodysuit on her head, vacuum sealed tightly around her every features.

However, what I saw in the corner of my room was pure brain bleach by comparison. It was a tiny horse with forest green fur. Her mane was turquoise and ended in little rolls, the kinds you’d see on the rim of columns from ancient Greece. Very aesthetic. Her irises were red, but not the evil kind of red. If anything, her palette was more Christmas-y than anything. Look, she even had the wings, just like those gingerbread angels my mom used to bake. I could practically feel the holidays coming, hah. Dare I say she was, gasp, cute? Well, the only thing that betrayed the pure goodness emanating from her figure was her mischievous grin. I suppose she could still trample my ribs if she so desired. A demon hardly had any other agenda, no matter the form it took. And to think we were so close to have a semi pleasant sleep paralysis session! I would’ve sighed if my body allowed me to do anything at all.

So, my bedroom was the decor in which the horse and I basked. I was in my bed, and she was by my clothes drawers. But this was merely a mind trick, you see. For I knew I wasn’t home. I vividly remembered falling asleep at... at...

Ah fudge nugget. I done did it. I fell asleep on my desk at work again!

So I was in my office. Door closed. Drooling on my wireless keyboard. If I concentrated hard enough, I could almost feel the coolness of the AC caressing my skin. That alone betrayed the bedroom vision my brain falsely fed me. Busted, defective neurons!

The implications of that were very bad. I remembered crossing the new day threshold when I last looked at the time on the taskbar of my computer monitor. I had pulled eighteen-hour shifts before, and I was militant enough to do it again. Gavin & CO Techs LTD needed the push of a strong employee, and I was the woman to dutifully fill that call. Five years in this box had prepared me so. No way was I going to go limp on a career I was deeply in love with! No, if anything, I absolutely adored these endless work days. It gave me all the purpose I desired out of life. Had I not sufficiently studied to allow myself this sort of lifestyle? I even managed to juggle uni when I started my internship in this renowned high-tech firm. People called me mad; I called them mad for calling me mad. In the end, I rose above expectations, and they were fools for ever doubting me.

Though, maybe their naysaying wasn't completely unfounded, because here I was, snot bubble under my nose. What was I, weak sauce? I needed to wake up from my paralysis already. Sorry demon horse newbie, we’ll make a proper acquaintance next time. Take a number and wait in line. The head mechanical engineer from my department needed my heat monitor PCB prototype, like, yesterday! He’s been under the radar from upper management, having fallen behind on schedule. His stainless-steel parts had been machined at a reduced pace due to an employee shortage at the shop we had a partnership with, and that in turn forced me to postpone the development of the electronics that would be housed within. I wasn’t at the end of the chain of operations, but just like those poor assembly technicians that waited for my electrical baubles, I too was highly dependent on the performance of those who came before me. So, given the increasing impatience from our clients, my superiors, and my friends down in the warehouse below, sleep was an afterthought: Waking up was priority number one.

Shame I was the only soul left on this floor of the skyscraper at this hour. Maybe a janitor or a night guard would see me downed on my desk and shake some sense back into my narcoleptic body? Wishful thinking is practically what paved the way for my electrical engineering career!

At long last, the stars aligned, and I let out a gasp of air intake. My muscles twitched. Finally, finally, consciousness and I reunited. Me and self-sufficiency: We could work together once more. I blinked the gunk out of my eyes and immediately wished for a double espresso.

Alright Roxane, back to work.

Back to work...

Back to...

Where in the blazing layers of hell was I?

Oh no! It was day time already? How long did I sleep for? I saw all around me the gradient of pale blue to orange, and a ball of nuclear fusion by the horizon. The morning sun rising! Cursed be my nap! How could I sleep through a whole night like an unambitious nobody? I was past these rookie mistakes! A whole four to six hours wasted by my needy recovery! How could those who generated my T4s ever forgive me? Next time, I’ll drug myself with four Red Bulls instead of three. My liver became too good at purging the toxins.

As I was shaking myself awake, I saw a moving silhouette a fair distance away. Its shrinking form suggested that the distance between it and I was increasing. I was idle, so the only logical conclusion was that the social distancing came from the unknown object.

The weirdly, oddly shaped object. Wait. Squinting a bit through the misty morning eyes, I could see its features with a bit more clarity. It was... It was my punch-clock demon! The new one, that is. Not Mrs. Buttugly, no no. It was Santa Claus’ Rudolph, in horse form! Her green “skin” sold her out. And she was flapping her wings as well, so that too was irrefutable proof vis-à-vis her identity. Where was she going? Did my bed face scare her off that badly? I was pretty low on the sexy scale, but come on now, that was just plain rude.

Hang on one sixtieth of a minute! What was that equine creature doing out of my subconscious? I didn’t dream this flying critter? She truly was flesh and bones? I guess my opened but not quite awakened eyes picked up on that. But that was... huh? I, what? No, this made no sense. How could this make sense? I was a city girl above all, but I wasn’t completely illiterate on the matter of nature. Horses weren’t green. Horses didn’t have red eyes. Horses COULDN’T FLY! Because then, that’d make her a pegasus, and ah, that sort of balderdash was the stuff of legends. Legends were cute in theory, but legends were oversaturated with plot holes in practice. Legends belonged in books, not meters away from my nose. So I did as anyone worth their wisdom would’ve done and I rejected that reality. I’d rather pass the sight as a bizarre hallucination. One rooted from a severe lack of sleep. It’s with great disgust that I admitted to myself that maybe I overworked a tad... maybe. Maybe? Maybe!

Horse demon was merely a dot by the horizon now. Good, disappear forever, vile mirage! I had some CircuitMaker projects to go back to, after all. Return to the magical land of my severed subconscious. I didn’t need for my boss to file me as clinically insane and discharge me with some forced vacations. I had avoided taking any for the past three years, and I intended to keep my record clean. So begone, sky horse! Begone and never come back! Leave me alone and lose yourself to the infiniteness of the sky!

That’s right, the... sky?

Since when did I install a skylight on the ceiling of my office? I had a prestigious middle-sized room all for myself, but I hadn’t earned that luxury quite yet. Scratch that, I had the fifteenth floor above me! It was Jean-Marc’s R&D lab just above these neon lights! How could I be gazing at the passing clouds while lazing on my back?

Speaking of which, why was I on my back to being with? Did I fall off my chair? Oh, the humiliation! What was I, an effin’ drunk? No way! Last time I ingested anything remotely alcoholic was years ago. Maybe someone spiked the coffee pot in the kitchenette. Would explain the pegasus – my personal version of the pink elephant.

Since I was obviously going completely nuts, might as well question the watery sensation I felt all over my carcass. I must’ve oozed liters worth of sweat. Felt like I just came out of a Finnish sauna. This was almost inconceivable, seeing as I was in the cool open air of the morning. I was still years away from menopause consarn it! Gimme a couple of years before my inner temperature regulator goes kaput!

Okay, okay. Summarise, Roxane.

Tiny flying horse. Sleeping someplace that gave me a view of the cloudy heavens. My body damper than a swimsuit. Me on my back, resting on a texture reminiscent of flossy silk. This odd sensation of vertigo I had. How to mash all of this data into one cohesive explanation? I was a lady of the sciences and even this had me stumped.

I decided to do the one and only sensible thing: To get some visual reconnaissance. I was pretty positive that I was in my office still, because where else would I be? I suffered from sleep paralysis, not sleepwalking. Kiiiiind of two opposite disorders. So yeah, finding out where I was, that seemed sound. To that end, I looked around me a bit and-

W-whoa!

Whooooa!

WHAT THE-

I couldn’t believe it myself. I was hanging a third of a kilometer up in the air. In the open sky. Mid skydiving! Actually no, not falling; couldn’t feel the effects of terminal velocity threatening my life. The airflow didn’t feel right, and I couldn’t find any acceleration giving me some G-force jitters. But I was positively hanging in midair; that was just a fact! As if I had been frozen in stasis. I could clearly see the landscape dangling under me. It was greener than gray, so I believed I had been displaced above one of the many provincial parks surrounding Vancouver rather than acting as a human mistletoe leaf over the metropolis itself. There was a forest, and a village, and farmlands, and rolling hills, and a tall spire of a mountain, and an overhanging castle, and, and-

WHY WAS I FLOATING IN THE SKY?

I didn’t care about what was under me, I just cared that there WAS stuff under me! How could I find myself perched all the way up here? This was impossible! Just plain impossible! A factual fallacy that was doing a good job at sending my common sense AWOL. One did not simply fall asleep in front of their e-mails to remerge higher up on the Y axis via some... some sort of witchcraft noclipping!

I touched my body in the search of a harness of any kind. Or a parachute bag. Or a jetpack. Or a tiny set of carrier drones. Or Superman’s arms. None of the sorts! None of it! It was just me, myself, and I, left on my own, hundreds of meters above the ground.

And whoever’s body I just probed; it wasn’t mine – how ‘bout that? It was pale blue, it was cushiony and soft, it was shaped like a teddy bear, and it certainly wasn’t Roxane Dubay!

I tried to back away a bit from this weird puppet that made a mockery of my body. I didn’t expect it to follow along, but it did! It certainly did! Those noodle appendages, they kicked when I kicked. These oddly articulated arms, they thrashed when I thrashed. That turf of rainbow by my “feet,” it followed along when I tried to clear some distance away from it. All of it wouldn’t go away! All of it answered the commands I gave them!

“Get away from me!” I yelled at this pale blue pile of organic matter that tried to mimic a rattled engineer.

Gah!

Oh wow, that was not my voice! What, did I just de-age by ten years? I swore on my mother’s head I would never R&R at work ever again. This wasn’t how HR usually dealt with subpar performances! I had learned my lesson! Lord have mercy on my soul already! Make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop!

I just wanted to get the heck away from whatever was happening to me. In a fight or flight situation, it was a no brainer for me: I chose flight. And I would keep choosing that option, every single time. Gym was the only class this studious gal consistently failed, after all. It at least made me smart enough to understand battles I had no hope of winning. I grew up with encyclopedias, not with brass knuckles.

Given my predicament, I flopped to my belly, albeit with some great trouble.

When I saw the silky surface I was laying onto, I just completely lost my mind. It was white, it was fluffy, it looked like cotton candy, it was made of condensed water vapor.

It was a small cumulonimbus.

I, Roxane Dubay, was napping on a cloud! On an intangible surface! On a gas form that decided to screw over physics and steal some properties from its cousin, the solids. I couldn’t be on a cloud. I just couldn’t. I was going to fall any moment now. Just like Wile E. Coyote realising he’d been running in midair. All I needed was my “Uh oh!” sign.

“AAAHHHH! JESUS MURPHY, I’M GONNA DIE!” I shouted, my crispy voice echoing into the stratosphere.

Panic had successfully entered my system. I scrambled away to a location even I wasn’t sure about. After fighting with my unresponsive discoloured body like a beetle on its back, I ended up tumbling in a mess of tangled rainbow-colored hair.

Off the “““edge””” of the cloud. As if such things could offer any support to begin with. Ha! Now how silly was that? Almost made me want to laugh! ... Oh God I was going to die.

Boiling poop-sicle, I really was going to die!

It’s a bird! No, it’s a plane! No, it’s Roxane falling like an anvil to her doom!

25 years of wasted potential. I was born, I studied hard, I kickstarted an amazing career, I made a name for myself, and then I ended as flat as a pancake, fit to be scraped off the pavement!

No no no no!

I flailed like a drowning animal. Everything that I could move from my transmogrified body, I moved. By the love of me, I was going to punch the air if it was the last thing I did. I wasn’t going to go out gracefully, no. I wasn’t going to go limp and merge with the floor with a smile, NO. I was going to be distasteful and embarrassing every centimeter of the way. Until I went splat. I was mad with the world and I was going to show the world! This was my testament to the injustice I had been subjected to. A hate letter sent posthaste to the heavens. Go choke and die, world! I hated you! I hated you!!!

I kicked, I punched, I yelled, I cried, I twisted, I rolled, I stretched my wings-

Waitwhatdoyoumeanwings?

I had wings?

Hahaha, I HAD WINGS!

There was a way out in this whole malarkey! I could be salvaged – and question my sanity later! How did you like that, world? You tried your best, you played a good game, but I rolled a natural 20. Roxane was back with vengeance! This wasn’t the end of my story! I had plot armor by my side. The universe deemed that Gavin & CO still needed their ace player, and I would live to prove it right.

I had the wings, I did. I unquestionably did. It was nothing short of miraculous. The only snag here was to learn how to use them within the few seconds of life I had left as the planet menacingly came closer and closer to me. I tried to flap them like a wet chicken, flexing ball joints on either side of my spine I didn’t even know I had. I stretched newfangled tendons and synapsed muscles around near the base of the wings, and everything responded without protest! As if new biology sprouted out of me overnight. It would be extremely fascinating if I wasn’t in such a terrifying situation.

However, bossing my new wings around in such a disorderly fashion hardly achieved anything. I had no rhythm, let alone any strength to articulate anything correctly. But that green-red avian horse made it look so easy, so natural... It was almost insulting.

Realising that flapping and fluttering with no coordination was a recipe for disaster, I opted for a different stratagem. I simply opened the wings all the way and stretched them to cover as much surface as I could, parallel to the ground. If I couldn’t fly, I could at least try to glide, yes? Lift, drag, and all those beautiful aerodynamic buzzwords: They didn’t hold many secrets from me. I was more on the electromagnetism side of physics, but mechanics had been mandatory classes on my way to my diploma, after all.

My quick thinking was rewarded, and not a moment too soon. I was meters away from reaching the apex of the tallest trees from the woods that surged under me. My vertical descent slowed down to reasonable levels, which was good. The problem was, my horizontal acceleration had picked up the slack. So I wasn’t going to end up as a purée of organs, but as a tumbled mess of broken bones. I picked up involuntary speed, seeing conifers and peaks drift past me at an alarming pace. I had more or less turned into a gliding bullet.

I had but a few seconds left for myself to think this through as my diagonal approach brought me closer and closer to the preserve below. And I used these seconds to realise, I had no answers. I was just stalling for time. Truth was, I was a dead woman standing – gliding, in fact. And there was nothing I could do about it. Because the moment I would try to flap my wings again to reduce my speed or to regain altitude, I would pivot back straight into a ninety-degree fall.

Out of solutions, the obvious became obvious: I was quite effectively cruising to my death.

And it was beautiful.

Gliding at mystifying speeds, flying with total freedom: Every human’s dream. And I was living it. I was living it, and it was going to be the last thing I would ever live. It was almost cathartic, in a way – therapeutic, even. I had been so caged up by my tightly held life at work, and this right here felt like the liberation I didn’t even know I yearned for. Held by merciless and greedy executives, gagged by years of staring at a 2560 per 1440 rectangle of pixels, restrained by unpayable student debts and a mortgage of epic proportions, castrated by days upon days of commuting through endless traffic. But right now? Pure jubilation and elation. The proverbial phoenix rising from its ashes. I burst out of my chrysalis, and stretched my new wings – literally! I just had to accept it. My life wasn’t a crapsack martyrdom; but it was a six by eight meters office. Here? It was the unbounded freedom of the airspace. It was large and grandiose. It was the exploration of a world only a view from my bay window could let me dream of. It was the last bit of dopamine I was allowed to have before the final crash tugged me to my coffin.

I took a deep breath of fresh air. I smelled pine and morning dew. Maybe I panicked and thrashed less than a minute ago, but now? There was that blissful smile I swore I wouldn’t have. I had poured all that I could, and I was proud to have given my 110 all the way to my bitter end.

Goodbye, cruel world!

My feet scratched upon a large spruce tree first. It sent the upper part of my body tumbling sideways, and I was rolling like an uncontrollable torpedo. I slowed down a tad, but not enough to make my landing any less mortal. Then, my ribs attacked the treetops, and this time, instead of ricocheting, I sank through the sea of leaves. Among a noisy ruckus, a large branch hit me on the left side, and I heard a crack that sent white hot pain through the entirety of my body. I even took the time to grit my teeth. My future dead body closed the gap with the humus, soon to turn into a tumbleweed of gore. I saw rocks, stumps, and twigs; all dangerous weapons at the speed I was going.

Miracle number two of my fall occurred precisely then. As I almost scraped the floor, it rebelled and bent down in a steep rocky slope. This lower elevation bought me another second to enjoy life and-

T-the bend! It dug deeper into the soil, because it was part of the perimeter of a lake! And I was on a direct course with the crystal blue water! I had a nanosecond to register this cosmically improbable luck. Maybe I could still, maybe I-

KA-SPLOUCH!

I entered the lake at an almost horizontal angle. I went head first into the clear liquid. It’s as if I pierced the world’s toughest water balloon like a needle. This sincerely felt like someone snapped a giant rubber band directly on my head. Hot dang did the whiplash give me great pain in the neck. A tornado of bubbles surrounded me, as my deceleration finally came to a halt.

For a moment, I just let myself float in suspension in the depth of the lake, so bewildered by how I survived my personal Darwin award. Even within the hypolimnion, it was still unusually warm. I was incubated in peace, in the effervescence of a vat that was placed exactly where it needed to be to save my life. I felt like I was back in the womb; that I had been baptised for a second time. I could’ve closed my eyes and fell asleep in this aquatic heaven. I was floating and protected. Nothing could hurt me anymore. I even smiled at the trout and basses that passed me by. Hi, finned friends!

Here was a toast to water! I loved water! Water was the best! Water prolonged my stay on Earth! Water was the source of life, and the source of saving my life! Water was surprisingly tough to breathe in! Water made me choke for air! Water-

Gack!

I shook my head, my inflated cheeks telling me that I had an urgent rendezvous with the surface. I tried to swim up, and moderately succeeded. This body still felt super weird. I might’ve fared poorly in sports, but swimming was my cup of tea, and I used to be a better swimmer than this for sure. I felt... I dunno, miniaturised? Like my legs weren’t long enough to push me upward. I could see that I was still dyed cyan and deprived of hands and feet – that didn’t change. Why didn’t it?

“GuaaaAAHHHHH!” I inhaled a fistful of air, mouth wide open, as soon as I reached the top of the water.

I was in so much pain. So, so much pain. Was I in pain? Yes! I could only “feel” one of my wings anymore, and I didn’t know why. But to me, that was cause for concern. My life was: Home → car → office → car → home. I was not used to deal with this amount of excruciating pain. That’s the sort of thing action people dealt with, but me? I was more passive than growing mold! Pain was not welcomed in my world!

I tried to swim toward the closest bank I could see, and once again, that felt forced and awkward. My crawl was a sorry excuse of what it once was. As soon as I managed to eject this not-Roxane body out of the water, I was face to the sand, huffing and puffing. I panted for a solid five minutes. I would’ve rejoiced, celebrating my survival, but my everything hurt too much. I looked to my left to see what was throbbing with ache so badly and saw a sky-blue wing. One with mangled feathers. One that used to be straight.

It now looked like a wrecked boomerang.

“... eep!”

My brain took pity, and I passed out.

The Library

Welp, it was official: I had been gender flipped. The “she’s” and “her’s” finally found some justification. And I was certainly not okay with this. Not okay at all. I couldn’t be any less okay if I tried. I would never be okay ever again.

Let me explain how I came to this realization. I had just finished my tea, with Spike pouring it into my gullet like I was a paraplegic hospital patient, when he shyly announced that he had to use the little colt’s room. Something about the sound of sipping “not helping?” At first, I was ignorant as to what he had meant by any of that, but then, his little jumpy dance painted an obvious picture. So he excused himself – not that he needed my blessings or anything – and just like that, I was thrown back into the nauseating silence.

By this point, I had remained as immobile as a statue. Still on the floor, still unwilling to budge an inch.

But see, the silence, it brings forth introspective thoughts. I now had some time to observe myself even more meticulously. I came to understand who I was, or at least, the physical envelope of who I was. And with not even a single ounce of perverted thoughts, I couldn’t help but think again about my external plumbing system; or my lack thereof. The embarrassment was creeping back in, and I couldn’t delay my morbidly curious mind anymore. My changed voice, my elongated eyelashes, my curved features, my slender barrel, they all pointed toward something completely heretic. A taint not even the strongest soap in the universe could cleanse.

I investigated with my arm turned hoof, and it didn’t take long for me to find between my two back legs a linear cavity that was supremely out of place. I never imagined I’d bear something of the sorts, ever ever ever. I wasn’t unfamiliar with the physiology of vaginas – I DID have an ex-girlfriend after all – but to have a second pair of lips myself? That wasn’t right. That was so wrong, on so many levels. And I felt it, too. It wasn’t just slapped on with some Elmer’s Glue. It gave out sensitive tingles. That fucker had functional nerve endings. I knew it dug deeper into my body, tunneling to foreign reproductive organs I desperately wanted scooped out of myself. It was real, it was on me, and the thought of hanging myself suddenly gave me a bit of respite.

So that’s how it was going to be, huh? That’s how life wanted to kick me while I was already down? I was absolutely not ready to mourn the loss of writing my name in the snow. Of relieving myself in urinals. Of whacking my stick to some real good computer shit. I wasn’t overly proud of my junk, but I was quite happy with being one of the boys. I felt content, at peace. I actually enjoyed dealing with issues like trouser tents, morning woods, concealing a boner in public, or being vulnerable to nut shots.

And now, not unlike Spike over there, other people would start seeing me as the female I undeniably looked like, because of course ponies had sex dimorphism. They’d say scandalous crap like “miss” and “madam” and... brrrrr. Jesus that thought made me feel like a sack of dog shit. I felt something in my stomach trying to crawl up. Well, to hell with anyone else! In my mind, I would always be a boy, a manly man, the duderino mom and dad proudly raised. The guy who downed porters. The guy who enjoyed a good hockey game. The guy who burped the alphabet. The guy who laughed at armpit farts. The guy who drew dicks on restaurant napkins. The guy who rated hot babes on a scale of 10. The guy... the guy who...

Oh who was I kidding...

I just, I didn’t feel like myself anymore. Even more so with this treacherous discovery. And if I wasn’t myself, then I didn’t want to be anyone. I would try really hard to not let this slit define who I was, but I felt like the battle was already lost. Curtains of depression started to grow out of my shoulder blades – if one could call them shoulder blades anymore.

Luckily, Spike returned, with me being even more envious than I ever was of his hands, his easy-going two-legged stance, and his precious manhood. I would’ve copped better if fate had turned me into his kind instead. But alas... I’m a chick. A pony chick. Fuck me and fuck my life and fuck everyone else who had a part in this diabolical ploy. Those responsible could all rot in hell for all I cared.

I needed to change my thoughts, because I was letting myself getting charmed by very dark ideas. Ideas like, how it would feel to have a bullet pierce my forehead, and having it pop out of the back of my neck (God, wouldn’t that be liberating?) I shook my head, and I reengaged in small talk with Spike, hopping that the black cloud over my head would dissipate.

“Um, so. Spike. That’s a uh, very nice house you have. A bit ah, peculiar... but nice?” I said with a smile I hoped wasn’t too dishonest.

“Thanks? But I think it’s more of your place than mine, really,” he shrugged.

“Really? Who signed the deed at the notary? Like, whose bank account gets drained whenever the city yells for its municipal and scholar taxes?”

Spike found the question riddled with weirdness, yet he actually mused, considering it thoroughly.

“Uh, I don’t think we ever signed a contract of proprietorship on this library, come to think of it...”

My head tilted. “This is a library?”

“Last I checked, the Golden Oak Library hasn’t magically changed overnight, yeah- Listen, Twilight, are you poooooooositive you’re doing okay? You’ve been a bit out of it since this morning, and I thought the tea would’ve helped, but-”

“I never said I was peachy!” I squeaked out. “A-and the only thing I’m positive of, is that this?” I waved a hoof, pointing here and there at the scenery encompassing us. “This isn’t my place. I live in apartment in Baltimore for crying out loud, not in a library!”

I was about to double down by telling him how I loathed books and reading, but Spike held up his paws at me, pushing the air, perhaps to appear more diplomatic within this conversation.

“Whoa whoa, hol’up. You never told me you had a second home in Baltimare?” he nervously pondered.

Probably because I had never met this strange little character before? Gee, that would make sense, wouldn’t it? Spike was so obstinately trying to pretend we’ve been pinky buddies since the dawn of time. He certainly has acted altruistic toward me, even at my lowest when I was naught but sobs and tears, but that didn’t mean he could forge a fake backstory involving the two of us. Was I not sufficiently confused as it was?

“In BaltimOre, yes,” I corrected his mispronunciation with extra emphasis. “And this isn’t my second home, it’s my only home.” Spike lifted a claw, perhaps to protest, but I simply giggled. “As if I had enough dough to afford more than one rent.”

“Um...” he droned out, unsure how to steer this discussion anymore.

“So, where are we anyway?”

“Whatchu mean?”

“The city. I never heard of an old-timey wooden library in Baltimore, and I know the city quite well...” I trailed off, met only by big blinking Spike eyes. “... we ARE in Baltimore, right?”

“Oh come on Twi, now you’re just being ridiculous,” he said, his knuckles to his hips.

Grrr. I rubbed my temples. Good, I could still do that. But yeah, stop making this difficult for me, Spikey-boy! I had no desire to tread on eggshells. I just wanted to geographically recalibrate myself and drive home. Blast some QOTSA as loud as I could out of my jury-rigged car sound system ‘til I could kiss my doormat. And then I’d crack a few cold ones with Vince... who would then... see me like this. Bleh. Anyway,

“Please, pretend I bonked my noggin or something, childhood friend of mine.” If that’s what he believed, then let him have it. It could only make it easier for me to fish for answers. “Imagine I’m now stuck with, uh, let’s say, retrograde amnesia. What would you say to fill my thirst from knowledge, then?”

“Oh! I get it, like a test, or- or a game, right?” he bounced.

“Sure, whatever,” I rolled my eyes. And whoa, pupil revolutions sure were disorienting when your eyes were the size of skillets.

“Okay, then I’d say you’re in Ponyville.”

“Ponyville?”

“That’s right.”

“Never heard of it.”

Ludicrous name aside, I certainly was NOT a bookworm, and so, perhaps I simply wasn’t well-read enough. I knew a lot about the wonderful realm of music, but if you asked me to name the capital of, say, Turkey, I’d flinch and yield. I played Geoguessr with the gang once, ONCE, and I cried “uncle” after I pegged Copenhagen in Argentina. So given that, let’s see how far deep the rabbit hole we could go with this impromptu game of trivia.

“In what country are we then?”

“Pfah, easy peasy! Equestria’s your answer, Twi!” he said, a bit more bombastic than I would have liked.

I squinted. Now I wasn’t sure if he was trying to mess with me. “Equestria... thaaaat really doesn’t ring a bell, buddy. How far is it from America?”

“A-mare-rica?”

“America,” I corrected, once a gain. “Well?”

He scratched his cheek, uncertain. “Gee, I don’t know, Twilight. This one is a bit tougher than the others. Can’t say I know the answer to that question. I don’t know what A-mare... America is.”

“Wait, what? Really? The United States of America? USA? Eagles, hot dogs, baseball, viral patriotism?” Still no answer. “O say can you see~... no, nothing?”

He just silently shrugged. Ha, now who was being the silly one? There was being bad at geography, and then there was him. What was he, from a different planet or something?

Oh. Wait.

Yeah, maybe he was. That’s what I posited earlier, did I not? Well shucks, whoopsy daisy. Perhaps not the best candidate to have interrogated. Possibly Equestria was synonymous with ‘Murica wherever he came from. Chances of that were slim, but I’ll hang onto them for now. All in all, I probably tripped myself up with this little back-and-forth between him and I.

Sigh, it was back to square one.

...

“Twilight?”

I pouted, the absurdity of my shortcomings hitting me in the face like an eighteen-wheeler.

“Twiiiiiilight!”

More pouting. I was thinking, since Spike hadn’t been of any help, that maybe I should just head out, and find my damn way home on my own. But that raised the issue of nudity. I was not ready to brave the busy boulevards of “““Ponyville,””” especially not with new female gonads to show for it. That there was an obstacle that needed to be overcome at lightning speed. Maybe there was a wardrobe here or something that I could-

“Twilight!”

“Gah!” I yelped in surprise. Damn, I had a hard time registering this as my name. You know, seeing as it WASN’T MY OWN F’CKING NAME!

“Are- you’re not really suffering from reto- regot- retrot- uh, memory loss, aren’tcha?”

“Yes!” I hovered my face over his, making him back away slightly. “I mean- no! I mean... I don’t know.” I facepalmed. Facehoofed? “I’m... I’m so confused...”

“Oh dear,” he held a claw in front of his maw. “Like I say many times, overworking’ll do that to ya. I was wondering when you were going to snap.”

Almost on cue, one strand of my hair, or I guess, mane, curled up out of place with an audible TWING. What the crap? This, accompanied with an obligatory eye twitch. Body, cease! I didn’t want it to do things I didn’t mean for it to do. But alas, Spike picked up on the mental asylum signs I was displaying.

“You know, how about you take the day off, Twi? I think you deserve it. Celestia’s study cases can all wait until tomorrow; I’m sure nopony will mind. Maybe next morning, your memory problems will have fixed themselves?”

Celestwho? Ah, who cares. Probably someone thoroughly unimportant.

And hey, maybe the little guy was onto something. If I could make it through the day, it wasn’t inconceivable that I’ll wake up back in the comfort of my true self tomorrow morning. Maybe today was a one-time deal; some kind of otherworldly acid trip of an experience? A fluke in the matrix. Or maybe I’ll instead wake up as a sapient green giraffe. Everything was so damn plausible ever since I took the role of a miniature horse. Man, at this point, not much else to do but pray for the best. I’ll cross that bridge when I’ll get there.

Spike saw that I was still deep in thoughts. “You’ll see, taking a day off is not that big of a deal, you workaholic,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “Plus, I’ll be right here, dusting off and cleaning the library.”

Earth back to me. “Huh? Why would you do that?”

“Uh, because you told me to do it yesterday?” Then, he immediately realized the implications of what he just said, and he smacked his own head. “Oh yeah, duh. The memory thing.”

“I would never tell you to do such demeaning work. You’re not a slave.”

“Eh, that’s okay Twilight, I’m happy to oblige. Besides, it is preeeeeetty dusty.”

I shrugged. Shrugging could still be achieved with this body, huzzah.

I certainly didn’t mind living in a dirty environment. Never had. Vince and I were both grotty roommates. Not to the point of being slobs, but y’know. Rule of sitcom stipulated one of us had to be the neat freak, but lo and behold, it wasn’t so. On our defense, we did do our Spring cleaning (and then took the rest of the year as one very long sabbath day). The apartment certainly wasn’t proud. For instance, my workspace was so crass, you could draw with your fingers a couple of cool S’s on my computer desk – or as Vince baptized it, “dust land.”

“So? Who cares about dust,” I finally admitted.

“‘Who cares about...’ Okay, that confirms it. Now I know you really have a head trauma!” Spike laughed.

“I don’t know why you insist on doing that over walking on all fours.”

“Because! I’m not a damn animal! That’s degrading as hell!”

“Is this some kind of snobbish Canterlot haute-culture thingy majiggy I’m not aware of?”

“It’s not- unngh!”

I was hunched over the railing of the curved hardwood staircase that led up to the elevated platform where I had apparently slept. My objective was to try to go down a level. Easier said than done for sure. I was standing up – if by standing up you meant, trying to imitate those inflatable dummies wailing about in front of used car dealerships. Yeah, I was having a bit of trouble. But damn me if I wasn’t going to make this work. These front hooves would not be part of my walk cycle, I would die on that hill. Homo Sapiens ruled, the rest could eat my ass.

Spike, meanwhile, from down there, was cautiously observing my sad display at making my ancestors proud. He was dressed up in a small apron that reminded me of Mrs. White’s costume in the board game Clue. I was the one pussy out and I’m not sure if I was the most embarrassing living being in the room, heh.

Still, I shouldn’t be cocky at all, seeing as I was in a world of agony, what with trying to stubbornly avoid walking like a house pet.

“I-I’m... I have already... e-enough handicaps a-as it is...!” I complained between hot tears of pain dampening my vision.

Christ on a bike, it felt like acupuncture gone wrong. Gone wrong? Gone TERRIBLE. Every step I took made my spine furious, as if I was trying to sabotage it on purpose. But hey, baby steps were still steps. No one could argue semantics with me. I was doing it, albeit poorly. And if I sniffled a couple of times through all sorts of ways my back was punishing me with an unreasonable amount of pain receptors, well, it was still worth it.

Oh, by the way, the knees (the back ones) also said hi and filed a complaint, for they did NOT enjoy having to suddenly support that much more weight. And being unbent like broken staplers too, shit, why not. It was most unnatural for them. Too bad. Suck it up, knees! We powered through worse cramps in our life!

I was working against every instinct in my body – this impostor of a body. It begged, begged for me to just slump down and take a breather, but I was the one in control, not it. I was the boss, and if walking on two legs was good for the morale, then we could afford to take a hit or two. Nature could go suck my cock – the one I no longer had. I was born human, and humans were A) egotistical, B) prideful sons of bitches, and C) constantly working against the grain. I just did what I did because I’ve been programmed to do it. As long as I retained memories of two decades atop two legs, then I’ll honor them until I collapse from exhaustion.

I reached the end of the railing, clearing the last step with a tinge of delight. And then, I saw it: The brown cabinet. Laden with clothes, one would hope. It looked like an antique, beautifully carved by an artisan and all that. With two large doors in the front. That’s what we wanted, baby! It was time to put my shame to rest and rummage for a pair of pants.

The only problem was the few tens of feet I had to cross to reach it. For you see, it was resting on the opposite wall. And unfortunately, that meant I no longer had any railings on which I could slouch when the discomfort became too much. I’ll be on my own, faced with my greatest challenge yet.

Come on, man, not the time to give up yet!

I took a deep breath.

“LEEERRROOOOYYYYY!” I shouted, preparing to make a run for it...

And then off I went.

“JENNNKKAAAAAAARRGHHHH!”

Okay. Two things happened there.

One: Never shout legendary memes with the voice of a twelve years-old girl. You’re just doing the internet a major act of disrespect, and the cringe will taunt you for years to come.

Two: Holy mother of balls, this hurt. This hurt, this hurt, this HURT! I never had a power walk as excruciating as this one. I felt my torso bending more and more to be parallel with the floor. Soon, the angle would be too acute for me to bounce back properly. So I decided to go Super Saiyan, and just like how mothers could miraculously lift cars in a burst of adrenaline to save their endangered children, I drew all that I had, and made myself as perpendicular as I could. I was straighter than an arrow. Posture of an athlete, yo. The fact that my hip bone felt hotter than the sun went without saying. The fact that I had to clench my teeth and stop my breathing due to how hard I winced ALSO went without saying.

Only a couple more steps, and I would reach the goal line.

Only a couple more... Stop it, tears! Couldn’t you see how close we were? Recede back to my eye sockets!

Just a teeny-tiny final push. A few measly inches that needed to be traversed. Mere crumbs of distance in sight.

Annnndddd, theeereeee, weeeee, GO! WOOT! SCOOOOORRREEE!

I collapsed on the floor, having succeeded at the monumental task of telling quadrupedalism “up yours!” My entire back was pulsating with pain spots, as if the local mafia smacked me a bunch with baseball bats. But touching my side was unquestionably the wardrobe. My best friend the wardrobe. I triumphed; I crowned myself victorious.

“You’re cuckoo,” is all that Spike had to say about this, turning a claw to the side of his head.

“I don’t care, I win,” I moaned, sobs drowning my voice.

Well, this whole little fiasco sure distracted me from how boned I felt earlier this morning. But the reality of the whole affair sunk in deeper than the American debt when I noticed how bare this wardrobe turned out to be. Friendship over, traitor.

Seriously, where were the underwear? The footwears? The jackets? Heck, I’d even rock a raincoat at this point. Shit, I’d kiss a pair of Crocs if I could. But yeah, all I could see there was, like, three dresses. Extravagant ones, too. I was not having any of this shit. I had to weight my options. Killing my pride by going butt naked, or killing my masculinity by making myself look like a pwetty pwincess?

I wish I could have taken a shortcut and opt for a hidden third option.

Mmmmh, maybe I still could. Maybe?

“Spike, are these the only clothes we have?”

Because yes, surely, there was more to this house, right? That right there was just the closet of falsehood. I had yet to reach the real walk-in, chock-full of cloth and denim. Scarfs and hats and shoes for days, hahaha!

Spike was busy dusting off this bedroom (which maybe was “mine,” I didn’t know anymore). He lifted his scaly head, took a quick look at me, then returned to the task at hand. I was still a recovering lump on the floor, by the way.

“Yup. Why’d you ask?”

“What, are you serious!?”

Spike sighed. “Yes, Mrs. Memory-Loss-Pony, I’m serious.”

“Fuck...”

Spike jolted, then did the quickest one eighty I’ve ever seen. “Did you just cuss!?”

“What? No I didn’t, I just said ‘fuck.’” Spike gasped super loudly, hiding his dislocated mouth with his hands. “I wanted to go outside to find my way home, but there’s no way I’m going out without something decent to wear.”

Spike tapped his foot. “Twilight! You know you shouldn’t cuss like this!” he scolded.

Wait a minute. Did he just completely ignore what I said? Why did he care about a modest F bomb? What was he, a kid or something? If it took him this little to preach for censorship, then I bet he would have a field day with the lyrics I wrote, ha!

“Oh calm down, what’s the big deal?” I scoffed whilst waving a hoof.

“... It’s okay for anypony to cuss, but when I accidentally do it, I get the soap treatment, s’not fair...” I heard him grumble lowly.

“Spike, focus please. I...”

Well, what was the plan, big guy? You needed clothes, but you couldn’t go out because you HAD no clothes. It was like the paradox of calling a tech guy to tell him your phone line wasn’t working.

Maybe, just maybe, Spike could do me a solid? The little dragon didn’t mind not being draped by shirt and pants, and why would he? He was a dragon. Dragon wearing clothes, now how silly was that? Now I, on the other hand...

“You don’t think, um. Maybe you could do me a favor? Maybe? You can say no if you want to!” I immediately tried to make it clear that he didn’t have to indulge my hectic ass.

His grumpiness seemed to have waned down. “Oh, sure! What can I do you for? Do you need more tea perhaps?”

“No, no, I was thinking, maybe, you could sort of kind of go out and buy some clothes on my behalf? I’d pay you back, I swear!”

I tapped my left pocket as if to prove I’d honor my words, but as it turned out, it’s only my bare hip that I was tenderizing. No sweet ca-ching ca-ching to be heard. Which meant-

...

Shit shit shit.

Shit.

And another one for good measure: Shit.

I didn’t have my wallet. I didn’t have any cards, any means to access my savings. No liquid assets of any kind on me. No cash and no credits made me a dull boy. Crap! And my driver’s license too! Uh oh. That wasn’t ideal. That one prospect seriously limited how I was going to seize the day from there onward.

“Crud...” See? I said ‘crud’ instead of ‘shit.’ Spike had no reason to give me the belt now.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have my wallet. I wouldn’t be able to pay you for the errand. And that goes for your, um, maid services too. I don’t think I have the means to give you a salary,” I said, ashamed to exploit a free laborer.

Well, that didn’t seem to have phased him too much, given that he was simply chuckling to himself.

“Memory loss at it again, got it!” he said, strangely amused by my ‘condition.’ “We’ve got the bits down in the vault downstairs. I’ll just grab a couple of ‘em, no biggie.”

Bits? I hope he didn’t mean bitcoins or anything. Cryptocurrency was too volatile for my tastes. What store even cashed them in anyway? Oh well, I shall let that one pass, seeing as I had too many other problems to juggle regardless. Let’s just pretend he said “dollars” instead.

“So, why do you need new clothes anyway? You goin’ somewhere fancy? I thought you said you couldn’t remember stuff and yaddi yadda.”

“No, none of the sort. Merely want to go outside, you know?”

“And somehow, you need clothes for that?” he said with mild disapproval.

“What the-? Yes, of course! Look- Do you want to help me or not?” I replied, my patience tried.

“Alright alright, don’tcha explode on me, Sparkle. What d’ya want?”

“A bunch of stuff...” I sheepishly smiled.

He rolled his eyes and moved toward a little storage cabinet not too far from where we were.

“I can take a hint. ‘Spike, take a note!’” He tried to mimic my new voice. Ugh.

He came back with a parchment and a quill, ready to take my order. A parchment and a quill... how quaint. I could just imagine him strolling in a thrift store and herald shoppers around with a buisine, going “HEAR HEAR!”

“Alright, lay it on me!” he said, pointy tip of the feather eagerly tapping onto the fibbers.

“’Kay, so I want: A pair of straight fit jeans, a leather belt, a logo-less black t-shirt, a jacket with a checkerboard pattern of the color of your choice (except purple), a pair of socks, underwear, a Philadelphia Flyers flat brim cap, a pair of aviator shades, size 11 running shoes, and OH! Maybe a cane or crutches to help me walk or something, if you can find any? That’d be pretty swell.”

I didn’t know if I was demanding too much, or if I was being eccentric, but Spike looked up from his list with a long cold sweat running down his forehead. Panic was clearly visible in his quaking eyes.

“I uh, ah...” he droned, his fanged mouth slightly opened.

“Ah don’t sweat it. And wing it for the size, I don’t care. Just go to a Walmart or something and get as much as you can.”

“A wall what now?” He shook his head. “No Twilight, it’s just that, I don’t think I quite understood half of what you asked for. And undies? Eee-ewww, I ain’t touching that!” he stuck out his tongue.

“Fair.”

“And also, not that I should judge your fashion choices, but aren’t some of those items a bit… masculine in nature?” he arched an eyebrow.

Ding ding ding! We had a winner, ladies and gentlemen. My little fairy tale creature figured it out. I wasn’t no stinkin’ lady. And if that made me a tomboy, then so be it. I needed to sport something that made me comfortable. The way one dressed spoke volume about their character. And I wanted MY character to be more in line with myself, my true me, that was for dang sure. I was not about to put on a skirt to play my fake role better. Sorry to disappoint you, destiny!

I raised my shoulders. “So? What about it? Iiiisss that a problem, or...?”

“No but-” He put two fingers on his forehead and rubbed it. “Unngh, I can’t wait for tomorrow already.”

Same, buddy. Same.

“Alright, Imma go then. I pretty much finished cleaning this room anyway; I’ll do the rest this afternoon.” He then mmmh’d, pensive. “Maybe I could give this list to Rarity, I’m sure she could patent something on the spot.”

“Ayyy, you do you, little buddy!” I tried to finger gun but failed.

Yeah, by the by, I had no idea who or what kind of store Rarity was, hahaha. But somehow, the idea of going there seemed to have enthralled Spike, like he suddenly became that much more excited to execute my needy task. Oh well, as long as he was happy about it, it was a big thumbs up from me. Get it? Because my freaking hoof was nothing but an inflated thumb.

Before he made his exit, though, we had to be intelligent about this. I was already lost enough as it was. I didn’t want my situation to worsen because we weren’t thorough with our plans.

“What’s your number, Spike?”

He blinked.

“You know, so I can ring you if anything happens?”

He blinked again.

“On the phone?”

Blink, blink, blink.

“We don’t have a phone, do we.”

He slowly started to make his way to the door of this room.

“Errr, take it easy, Twi. I’ll be back before you know it,” he simply stated. “You rest that puzzled brain of yours, m’kay?”

The door shut itself.

“Fuck.” This time, I whispered it, so that my TV-Y friend wouldn’t start bible thumping me.

Spike left 30 minutes ago. I was done being laxed on the floor like a useless mat. I brought that deformed body of mine back on its hind legs. Until I figured how to walk without strangling my spine in all the wrong places, I did the next best thing: I slinked against the wall. Like Solid Snake. The wall was good support; the wall was kind and benevolent. The door handle gave me a run for my money, but luckily, I got that sucker to open. If it had been one of them rounded handles, then I would’ve had that much more to complain about.

When I was greeted with yet more stairs, it took me a lot of mental fortitude to not raise the white flag. And yet, another 30 minute later, and I had vanquished my slanted nemesis. Tche, stairs. How tall was this house, or library, anyway? Verticality seemed to be omnipresent, and that did not spark joy for me. I hoped my misadventure would end with this new room I found myself in, and perhaps it was so. Because that to me looked like the kind of central hub worth its name. If this wasn’t the main room, then you could nick my left ball. Hehehahahaha- oh. R-right...

Aaaanyway, yeah. The room. T’was circular. You know, just to keep in check with the rest of the gaudy architecture. In the center was a work table of some kind. All around me were bookshelves. Soooo many bookshelves! Not a space was wasted; everything was filled to the brim with colorful tomes. Suddenly, this place truly put the “Library” in “Golden Oak Library.” It was almost a relief knowing Spike didn’t make that bullshit up.

I really woke up in a darned library. How and... just, how? Again, I didn’t have a night of debauchery yesterday evening. In fact, I simply came back from my killing work shift, browsed the web, abused my Spotify subscription, practiced this pseudo power ballad Stacy started to write, and then I crashed like a sack of rocks. I didn’t even have dinner or nothing. How could such an unassuming evening have brought me to a library of all places? In a pony suit too, let us not forget about that.

Questions that would remain unanswered, I’m afraid.

I slid my bum to the wall some more, keeping to the circumference of the room. As I said, this was the only way I could move without resorting to the lesser option. I spotted pillows near the center of the room, so with a bit of a struggle, I launched myself on one. A big fluffy cushion. Neat. My purple posterior likey. I took another ten minutes, just to rest my sore tendons, and my sore lungs.

So, a plan. I needed a plan. What was my next move? How would I play my cards? Spike was going to bring me my clothes, and you know, yippee and all that, but what then? Could I even jump in my Camaro with this kind of body I had? How could I reach the gas pedal and turn the steering wheel?

Wait.

Was my vintage ‘72 ride EVEN around? It probably wasn’t, was it not? I had left it by the curb of my apartment complex, and unless it too teleported neatly parked in the parking lot of this old-timey library, then I was shit out of luck. The other option would be to call for a taxi with the phone we didn’t have and pay the driver with the money I didn’t have. Yeah, ok. To imagine that such... unnecessary problems could arise in the information era, yuck. My life was not a series of peripeteias: My life was simple and grounded in routine. Why did everything have to be so complicated all of the sudden?

Erf. Maybe I could hail a cab outside. I dunno how it worked in Ponyville (goddamn, that name), but if it was anything like the metropolises of good ol’ US of A, then I wouldn’t have to look very far. Maybe I could even bug a pedestrian to borrow their smartphone for a minute or two and call myself an Uber.

That is, if anyone was willing to give attention to the freak I now was. I’m pretty sure my body would instill panic, right? Civil unrest, triggered by a man turned pony. Government officials, men in black, bringing me to the FBI headquarters to brain scalp me. My organs on display in a museum. They’d have every right to treat me as such, too. I was a monster, after all. A purple menace. Who would give me the time of their day? No one, that’s who. If I was someone else and faced the new me, I sure as hell would bolt the other way.

I know I’ve said it before, but it couldn’t hurt to reiterate: Fuck my fucking life. Maybe I’ll write a book about what happened to me one of these days. Heh, maybe this library would even sell it. That was a funny thought in a situation that was oh so not funny.

A sigh of melancholy escaped my mouth. If the clock face on the wall rang true, then it was nearing eleven o’clock. I’ve been swapped for a pony for less than half a day, and still I ended up feeling nostalgic for my old human form. But uh... c-chin up? As Spike said, everything would revert back to normal tomorrow, right?

...

Right?

Knock knock knock, answered the door.

Someone was knocking at the door?

Crap, this couldn’t be good! Why did I have to leave the seclusion of the bedroom?

I remained utterly quiet. I wished really hard for the intruder to move along. Wait, the intruder, or the customer? This- this was a library, was it not? A public one? Duh, of course it was a public one, dumbass! What kind of library isn’t opened to make a profit? What would be the point?

But then, if it were so, why did the stranger knock instead of, y’know, simply walking in? This was not a private property, my unseen client. Not that I was unhappy about the hesitance. Maybe that person was polite to a fault?

In any case, my lips were sealed. Theirs, however, were not.

“Hullo? Anypony there!?” said the stressed voice.

Okay, first of all, that sounded like a she. A young she. Second of all, she said “anypony,” which was just hilariously insensitive, given my new form.

As for my answer? It was a no-brainer: I kept my mutism. Not a word would escape my mouth. Not a twitch would move any of my body parts. I would remain as loud as the quiet ambience. I would not allow a human to see me as I was. I made up my mind on the matter. Sorry for being rude, but some of us have been transformed into naked ponies.

Oh, how I wish Spike were there. I’d tell him to answer and have him relay to the young girl that the library was closed for errr renovations or something. But he was gone, and I was home alone. Weren’t the circumstances of my torment just so epic? Me being the most unfortunate lad on the planet didn’t sound like doomer speech no more.

“Twilight? Twilight? Are ya in there? Ah need ya, Twilight!” frantically resumed the voice.

More desperate knocks.

I almost picked a southern accent there. Georgia or Texas was at the door, so it seemed. And-

Hang. The fuck. ON.

D-did...

Did she say “Twilight?” As in, the nickname Spike instinctively gave me?

No.

Shit no, this wasn’t happening. Thom Yorke was right after all. ♫ I’m not here... this isn’t happening~ ♫.

“Twiiii-liiight, pleaaasseee!” she moaned.

Shit shit shit, what do I do? What do I DO? She was looking out for me, that much became obvious. The name she said couldn’t have been a simple coincidence. Unless Spike decided to have a giggle and orchestrated this, which I highly doubted. For a dragon, he didn’t seem to be the kind of person to be so evil. But why then? Why was she so insistent on barging into this place? Couldn’t she leave me alone? I had enough stress, life. I didn’t need to share it with another person.

I heard a sob, then some sniffles.

She was crying.

My alias of a name was called a few more times, quieter and quieter, as hope dwindled from her broken voice.

Good.

Cry your life, kiddo. I couldn’t give less of a fuck if I tried. Gaze upon then barren fields of fucks I gave! Your resignation made me safe and sound.

And before I knew it, I was on my legs, all four of them, approaching the door.

What in the goddamn WAS I DOING? No no no, stop this! Body, you were acting out of line! You were not to toss yourself out of the oven and into the frying pan. Bad pony body, BAD! T-the kid, she was merely acting, you gullible moron! You were going to straight up spring a trap card, fool! Now stop prancing like a repulsive farm animal, and return to whence you came.

In the end, my empathy won over my enraged brain. I cracked the door open, letting the faintest amount of light in.

“H-huh... yes? Hello?”

“Twilight!” Oh man, the sheer happiness in her voice could’ve cured cancer.

What happened next had me confused for a moment. The door flung open, not by my doings. It knocked me out a bit, making me move backward, dazzled. I saw in the corner of my eyes something make its way inside the library uninvited, dashing so fast even NORAD would've failed to catch it. The door was slammed shut thereafter. As I was rubbing my muzzle, a pain spot having formed there, I felt something bounce by my feet, excitement blooming out of the darned thing.

A custard yellow, Spike-sized bouncing little ball of energy.

She had a red ribbon tied into a knot on top of her head, she had amber irises, she had a reddish mane flopped on her forehead, and she was a pony.

Much smaller than me, but pony nonetheless. With the same sort of alien features I bore (disproportionate eyes, unrealistic animal colors, animated facial expressions, etc.). She was as much of a caricature as I was. A noteworthy difference was her lack of “horn” on her head. I guess that confirmed that I had an anomaly on me; that perhaps I truly was terminally ill. Her eyes had dried tears, and her smile was large and wide, full of enthusiasm. All and all, she looked like she came straight out of a pumpkin patch on crack.

She was still vibrating like she downed four cans of Rockstar. “Oh thank you thank you thank you Twilight! Ah really need yer help! Sumethin’ terrible happened to mah sister, an’ I, an’ I-”

“E-excuse me, but who are you?”

That visibly shook her. Her exhilaration subsided a bit.

“Oh no, not you too, Twilight!”

“What? What!?” I held my hooves up, as if I was trying to get her to spill the beans.

Just strike me dead already, God. I had enough of these mind games. The last thing this enigma needed was more puzzle pieces. Too taxing for an underachiever like me.

“Did you get transformed into this too?” I worriedly asked the child.

“Wha-? Twilight, we dun haf’tha time for games! Applejack’s in trouble!”

What followed was even more incomprehensive blabbering between the two of us. She couldn’t understand what I wanted to know, and I couldn’t understand her cries for help. As far as I gathered, she wasn’t under a malevolent spell as I had been. She was straight up a talking pony, who had been born as a talking pony, and who would live the rest of her life as a talking pony. Oh, and also her name was Apple Bloom. I managed to extract that information out of the overexcited ankle-biter. But yeah. Horses using English like it was the most normal thing ever. Just like Spike did...

I knew today wasn’t going to be kind toward me. I was so lost and confused. I just kept getting more lost and more confused. At the end of the day, they’ll have to keep me strapped onto a metallic bed and shove handful of painkillers in my mouth.

“Now ‘nuff foalin’ around, Twilight! Mah sister’s in danger I tell ya!” she ordered, pushing my bum toward the front door with her head.

I put the breaks on. “Now hang on a minute. What’s going on with her exactly?”

It wasn’t my battle to fight, but I sure was forced into it for reasons that escaped me.

“Ah found her in front of tha farm this mornin’. She was up real’ early to buck sum apples, but instead, she was on tha ground mournin’ an’ weepin’. Ah thought she was hurt, but ah couldn’t make sense of what AJ was cryin’ about. She seemed scared, sayin’ that she’d been cursed or sumethin’. That’s why ah rushed to see ya as soon as ah could! Oh, an’ ah left Big Mac to watch over her,” she rapidly explained, the words meshing together.

The fact that she left a McDonald’s burger as a makeshift sentinel notwithstanding, I just couldn’t help but wonder how this little family issue had to involve me somehow.

“Uh, sorry about that, kiddo, but what do I have to do with this? Why did you come and get me specifically?”

“Du-uuh! So ya could work yer magic to make tha curse go poof!” she rolled her equally big eyes, then tapped her forehead for an inexplicable reason.

Work my magic uh. Well sorry to break it to you, young one, but I was no therapist. In fact, I grew up as a lone child, so I had no idea what to do to comfort someone with mental issues other than going “there there.” Sibling issues were out of my domain.

“Listen, Apple Bloom. I appreciate the sisterly solidarity, but I’m really not your guy for this situation.”

“Your guy? What’re ya-”

“Yup. Have you tried talking to an officer perhaps? A policeman or anything? I’m sure they’d be more than happy to assist you. Y’know, ‘serve and protect’ and all that.”

“I... whaaaaaa?” she said, tilting her head and making a funny face.

“How about your parents? Have you tried talking to them? I’m positive your mom and dad are more than capable to help Applejack. That’s what loving parents are there for, right?”

...

I think I’ve said something wrong. Oh so very very wrong.

The little filly, that little firework of cheerfulness, now turned sullen, backed away from me like I suddenly turned into a serial killer. Her four legs trembled, as did her jaw. She pulled the saddest, gloomiest puppy eyes I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life. Christ, even her ribbon drooped. No longer in control of her limbs (and her emotions), she fell onto her rear, her head completely locked on my eyes. It’s as if I had just told a child that Santa Claus died from hating them so much.

A couple of muffled sniffs later, and Pandora's box was opened. Huge streamers of high-pressurized water leaked out of her eyes. Large rivers of tears endlessly flowing, and flowing, and flowing. Niagara Falls would’ve told her to take a chill pill. She could’ve filled the entire room with these tears. I had to do something before I drowned!

“W-wh-why... why w-would...” She chocked on a big hiccup. “Why wo-ould ya say tha-a-a-at!” More tears. Infinitely more tears.

“W-what? I didn’t- I’m sorry!” I panicked. “I’m super duper sorry! Sorry to the max! Sorry to infinity and beyond! I didn’t mean shi- stuff! I didn’t mean stuff about anything! I apologize! Mea culpa, mea culpa!”

I somehow fell on my knees and welded my front hooves together in a poor display of a prayer. But the little filly was not appeased. The fuck did I do? Did I say something ultra taboo? Come on dude, you had to fix this! You hated to see kids crying, you knew that! That’s what made you answer the door in the first place!

“O-okay, okay! Imma go with you! We’re going! See? I’m walking!” And I was. Slowly. “I’ll help your sister, I promise!”

She wiped a big wet spot from her scraggly cheek.

“P-pinkie promise?” she said with a worn-out voice.

“Sure! Anything you want!” I begged.

“Cross mah heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in mah eye!” she beamed.

“Gesundheit?”

“Ya hafta say it!”

“Why?”

“Say it! Ya made me sad!”

Ahhhh! Oh shit, she was threatening to resume her crying session if I didn’t comply. Dang kids. Always made us adults hold the shorter end of the stick. Blackmailing with emotions; not cool.

Unnnnghhhh. As far as lyrics went, these were terrible. I could write better ones in my sleep. I really didn’t want to taint my career with this stupid nursery rhyme. MVK and Stacy would exile me out of their life if they found out. The band would collapse; everything would be done for.

Sigh. Come on, bro. If anything, do it for your ears. There were just so many tantrums you could take in one day.

“C-cross my heart, uh, hope to fly, and then, um, s-stick a cupcake in my... eye...?” I repeated with the excitement of a teenager forced into doing their math homework.

Still, it worked. She jumped up, her smile returned, the sun shined once more, and she trotted past me.

“Yay! Now c’mon, let’s go to tha farm!”

Yeah. Let’s go to the farm. And if I'm lucky, I’ll find a rope and a stool on our way there.