Fractures

Stars.

So, so many stars.

An unbelievable number of stars.

More stars than she could even begin to count.

Were… were some of them moving?

She slowly blinked, tired eyes shifting from the dots of light all around them to…

Lisa.

Lisa was carrying her. Through… wherever they were.

Lisa will take care of it.

Lisa will take care of her.

She drifted back to unconsciousness with the rhythm of her mentor’s footsteps.

“Zoey.”

Something fuzzy nudged at her side.

“Zoey.”

Zoey groaned, rolling over onto her back. She batted away whatever it was that was prodding at her.

“Zoey, wake up.”

Wait, that was Lisa’s voice!

Zoey shot up with a heave, final glimpses of a star-studded expanse giving way to a midnight landscape. Also star-studded.

Also, a horse. Pony… Thing?

The purple horse poked her again, speaking with Lisa’s voice. “Zoey, Earth to Zoey.”

Wait.

That was Lisa’s voice.

“…Lisa?” Zoey slowly rose to her…

Hooves.

She teetered back to her haunches.

“As Lisa as I can be at the moment I guess,” Lisa-pony did what kinda looked like a shrug but as a horse thing. Actually wait, was that a horn on her head? Was Lisa a freakin’ unicorn?

“Take your time, I freaked out when all my people things became horse things too,” Lisa sat down beside her in the grass. “And for what it’s worth, you’re a unicorn too by the way. I see exactly where you’re staring.”

Oh. Okay.

“Smurf horse.”

“Hey—” Zoey scowled at the sudden new nickname. “Where’d that come from?”

“You’re blonde now and you’re a fuzzy blue furball of a filly.”

“Oh.”

“And if you’re gonna ask me how I’m taking this so well, then I’ll say that this is wonderful compared to when I was thinking that I was putting the both of us out of our misery!”

“Wait so you were lying then!” Zoey pointed a hoof at her mentor. “You said that we weren’t gonna die, and then you dunked us both into this place!”

Lisa cringed. “Yeahhhh, not exactly a great call in hindsight I guess. We’re alive though, and that’s that. Just…” she hoofed at the ground. “Have to deal with this now instead.”

“How long were you awake for before me?” Zoey climbed back to her hooves again, teetering a little before steadying herself. “You said you already had your own freak-out earlier.”

“Mmmacouplahours,” Lisa tilted her head. “I took some time to look around a bit as well. A good chunk of the house came here with us if you wanna come check it out. It’s got the whole basement and most of the first floor, and a lot of the foundation and whatever else there was underneath.”

Her eyes drifted downward. “I… didn’t see any of Caleb’s friends though. It’s a bit hard to check inside since much of the place is actively crumbling. But I don’t have much hope for finding them.”

“Oh…”

Lisa fidgeted with the dirt mound she’d accumulated in front of her. “For now, I think our top priority is finding a place to stay. We’ve got some food for now from the cans and stuff that I collected from the rubble mound. Should last about a week, I think. There’s a small town not far from here as well. I spotted lights in the distance when I was checking around for the boys.”

She stood up. “Anyway, we should pick out whatever we want to bring with us first before we go. I’ve got those cans I mentioned stacked up in an old wagon I used to use for carting around my scrapheaps, but there’s still plenty of space for more… actually, hold on a moment—here, come with me.”

Zoey lifted a brow as Lisa took off. She clambered to her hooves, teetering as she sought her balance mid…run? Trot? Was she trotting since she was a little unicorn now? Or was she just running?

Either way, something must’ve clicked, ‘cause she sure as heck wasn’t falling over anymore.

She stopped beside Lisa, staring up at the looming wreckage that was once part of a house. There was an unnatural smoothness to the ground that the remaining structure stood atop. Like someone had taken an ice-cream scoop and carved out a nice big dirtball and dumped the house on top as a topping.

…Probably shouldn’t be thinking about the ice cream she missed out on right now.

“Woah.”

“Yup,” Lisa nudged the wagon in front of her. “Home sweet home. Or what’s left of it. There’s still a few cans scattered around, but they’re pretty hard to pick up since we don’t exactly have hands anymore. Have you ever tasted the label on canned corn before?”

Zoey blinked. “…No?”

She watched her mentor walk over to another stray can and dunk her head down. She stared back, now with the can gripped tightly in her muzzle. “Well ash oth tonighth, I dethinithly hathe!”

Lisa spat the can out onto the wagon. “And before you say anything, yes, I know it’s dirty. But it’s either this or starve if we can’t get some food and shelter in that town I saw, so I think I’ll risk a stomach bug or two in the meantime,”

Zoey’s gaze shifted to the surrounding grass.

“I am not eating grass,” Lisa tapped the cans piled into the wagon. “…Yet. Let me savor the last dregs of my dwindling humanity before I start ponymoding.”

“Byyyyy eating refried beans straight out of the can?” Zoey peered at the loose cans sitting in the wagon.

“By eating refried beans straight out of the can.”

Zoey turned her attention to the surrounding debris as Lisa continued her quest for canned food. Much of what littered the ground around them was expectedly just rubble from the house, though just like with the cans and stuff, there were a number of other things that fell out from places.

A little blotch of dull yellow under the moonlight caught her eye.

“Ooh,” she muttered to herself. She scampered up a sagging part of the land-ball that was the sagging structure, grunting as she pulled herself up and over the larger chunks of rubble that’d fallen in the way. There was some other stuff on top of the yellow thing, but even from afar and in the shadows, it was still plenty noticeable against the greys and browns of everything else that’d fallen around it.

Her steps slowed as she approached. A hint of blue peeked out from just behind the yellow now that she had a better view.

It was her old plushie she used to bring to Lisa’s place. One that she lost somewhere ages ago and kinda sorta forgot about since then.

One that looked just like she did now.

She sat down in front of the stuffed animal, staring into its glassy eyes.

Same light blue coat.

Same dirty-yellow mane. Just not tied into the same hairstyle as her own.

“Gadget,” that old name escaped her lips. It’d been a long, long time since she’d thought of this little pony.

And now, here she was, looking just like a plushie she got some… what? Three? Four years ago? She was pretty sure it was four.

It was also squished under some hunk of a wall or whatever.

“Zoey!” Lisa’s voice echoed up from below. “You find anything up there?”

“Yeah, one sec!” Zoey stepped closer to her plushie, hoofing at the crumbling drywall keeping it in place. She frowned at her current lack of opposable thumbs, or any fingers at all for that matter.

She opened her mouth and carefully bit into a leg of her plushie. She gave a tentative tug. The entire stuffed animal shifted a little under the weight of the drywall.

Another tug. She cringed a little at the feeling of some seams snapping that time.

She stepped back a little, angling herself for a better grip now that about half the plushie was sticking out from the rubble. How did dogs and cats pick up their babies? By… she bit into the scruff of the toy’s neck, pulling a little harder this time now that she had it by a thicker part of its body.

Still stuck a little.

“Zoey?” Lisa’s foot…hoofsteps? Approached. “Zoey, you need help with something?”

Zoey planted her hooves firmly in the debris beneath her and gave one final yank. The chunk of drywall clattered down to fill the gap the moment she tumbled backward.

“Got it!” she scrambled back to her hooves, searching around for the plushie she’d inadvertently sent flying. She picked it up again, running down to meet up.

“Oh neat, you found Gadget?” Lisa stopped midway up. “Where was she?”

“Yufh!” Zoey dropped her plushie in front of her. “I have no idea, but she was squished under a wall over there when I found her.”

“I’m… guessing you want to bring it with us.”

“Yeah.”

Lisa looked over her shoulder, back down to that little wagon of stuff she’d scavenged.

“Alright. Just try not to lose her again, ‘kay? I think we’ve got enough food collected now to last until we get to town. We can figure things out from there.”

Zoey nodded, snatching Gadget from the ground. She caught up to Lisa, nearly tripping over her own hooves as they descended the heap of rubble. “How long do you fink we will vee stuck in dis flace?”

“Don’t know. Maybe a few days. Maybe a few months.” A snort rose from her as they reached the wagon. “Heck, maybe we’ll be here for the rest of our lives.”

She kicked at a length of tie-down strap. “Mind helping me get this on by the way? I am not pulling an entire wagon full of canned food by my teeth.”

The rest of their lives.

Zoey lowered her gaze to her hooves.

This was absolutely not the body she wanted to grow up in.

She placed Gadget in the wagon and bent down, taking one side of the tie-down strap in her mouth. She nearly gagged at the taste of nylon and dirt, pausing for a moment to spit out the grossness. Lisa probably went through all of this already while she was still knocked out.

Whatever. The sooner she could hopefully find a way to not need to grab everything with her mouth, the better. She picked up the strap again, paying close attention to not lick it as she pulled it over Lisa’s back.

“Wait wait,” Lisa turned her head. “I’ve got another idea. Let’s try and make like, a harness out of it. Something that can slip over my head so that we don’t have to tighten and untighten it all the time.”

She craned her neck, grabbing part of the strap with her teeth. “Okay, I’m holding this part down for you. Try and make a loose knot with the rest of it. Kinda like a lasso, I think. Do you know your knots?”

“Nope,” Zoey looped the strap over itself.

“Well. Uh, neither do I in that case. Maybe just double-knot it like you would for shoelaces for now. I’ll…” Lisa scanned their surroundings. “I’ll see if I can find a board or something as a spacer so that I don’t choke myself.”

Zoey looped the strap again, pulling the second knot tight against Lisa’s own tugging. The other part was a lot harder to do without fingers—tying it to the wagon’s handle. It was weird trying to get it tied. Like, she looped it around the shaft of the handle a few times, the hard part was trying to get it back through the loop afterwards. Best she could do was leave a big loop dangling underneath so that she could toss the end through. It wasted a good chunk of the strap’s length, but it’d do for now. Maybe. Hopefully.

“That good enough?”

Lisa stepped forward a little. The wagon followed, bumping up against her hind legs when she stopped.

“Yeah.”

She tugged at the strap a little with the tip of her hoof. “Anyway. I think we should probably get going now.”

Zoey took one final look at the looming structure above them. The remains of the house creaked in the wind, as if threatening to further collapse at even the lightest touch. Aside from the food, there really wasn’t much else they could safely scavenge from the site. Lisa apparently picked up a pillow and a couple of small blankets at some point, so at least they had a more comfortable way to sleep once the time came for it.

Her eyes turned to Gadget, who laid atop the bed of cans filling the rest of the wagon.

When would she see her mom and dad again? Or her friends at school? It’d hardly been… what, an hour or so? And she already missed her hands.

Still. There wasn’t anything she could do about it. Figuring out what the heck happened in the first place wasn’t even their top priority right now. That spot went to surviving.

“You think we’ll make it to town by morning?” she scampered up beside Lisa. “What if they’re suspicious of us and don’t take us in?”

“That’s what we’ve got the cans for,” Lisa kept walking. “If this town doesn’t accept us, then we’ll just go to the next one, or the one after that, and so on and so forth until we find a place to stay in the meantime.”

“And then we can start thinking about how to get back.”

“And then we think about how to get back,” Lisa nodded. “We’ll figure it out from there.”