The diner is a cozy, familiar place. The smell of coffee tints the scent of any food in the kitchen, a bar separates the dining area from a single waitress, backlit by 3 menu panels showing homestyle food. A jukebox faintly blasts The First Edition’s “Just Dropped In” throughout the building. Warm lights shine down on checkered tile floors and red leather seats. Booths line the walls, giving seated customers a perfect line of sight to the rich views outside. I sit alone in one of these booths, an unread menu rests in my hands, forgotten. I am absorbed by what I see outside.
Overcast, just after a round of rain. There’s still a little mist left from the last downpour. The road is wet, reflecting the neon lights that line the top of the diner. The scenery through the window is preceded by a single road, stretching out of sight from left to right, an asphalt line splitting the sea of iconic deep green pine trees on rolling hills that emulate waves. This must be the single most beautiful spot on the planet. And I’m not there.
I wish I was, but no such luck guides me. Alas, one can dream. However, these dreams were ripped from my lethargic, waking mind from the sobering realization that I actually didn’t know where I was. I was laying on my back on something as soft as it was coarse, sand. The sky above was a brilliant, cloudless blue. The sun felt twice as bright as it should’ve, and exponentially hotter. Laying on the sand probably didn’t help with that part.
A desert. A pure ocean of sand as far as the eye could see. At least my eyes, still at ground level. How did I get here? As I wracked my memory for any possible clues as to how I ended up in the middle of sandland, I came to the second horrifying realization in five minutes: I couldn’t remember anywhere I’d ever been. Obviously I'd been in places before, as I exist, but for the life of me I couldn’t recall any details.
Before I could continue any track of thought, I realized just laying in nature’s frying pan forever would have consequences I wasn't truly willing to deal with. When I raised my arm to twist around and stand up, what rose instead caught my eye. Not a normal, fleshy, contoured human arm complete with hand, but a hairy, tubular, approximation of an equine leg ending in a hoof.
It was coated in pale blue hair, the hoof even paler, to the point it may as well have been gray. Now I’m not an expert on horses, but those seem like colors a horse should not be. At least, I didn’t think I was an expert on horses. Horror flooded me as I noticed that I couldn’t remember what I was at all.
Not what I did for a job, not where I lived, not what schools I went to, none of my friends if I had any, not even a hint of any hobbies or personal pleasures. All I could remember at this point was that I seemed to have a base level knowledge of many things. Oh, and that I was human. With hands. Without fur. Definitely not some sort of technicolor horse.
Reality caught up to my racing mind while I stared at the horse leg attached to me where a human arm should be, and I did what any reasonable human being would probably do:
“What the fuck!” A shrill, piercing voice shrieked out into the open sky. Some confusing seconds passed before I linked the voice with my own words.
Slowly, carefully, “What in the hell?” I spoke again, paying attention to the pitch and tones of the voice. In the breathiness, there was a light rasp, little tonal variation, and emphasized vowels led to high pitched breaks in the monotone. A distinctly female voice. There was a wince when that word crossed my mind. Hmm.
So just to take stock, I woke up in the desert, with barely any memory of who the hell I was. As bad as it gets there, it gets worse. I was no longer a human being, but some sort of pastel horse capable of speech. Fantastic.
“In what sort of world does shit like this even happen?” I continued to lay there, wondering what god I must have angered to end up in such a shit situation. Shituation. I giggled at the portmanteau as it passed through my mind. Giggled. Ugh.
At some point, you can only freak out about your whole world being ripped out from under you and replaced with nothing but questions and mysteries for so long, and you gotta stand up and stick to your original plan. I spent almost a minute, probably, trying to stand up forgetting that a quadruped body is not bipedal nor does it work the same way.
Instead of getting up and on my way, I writhed my way deeper into the sand much like a desert predator. Why the hell did I know how sand lizards catch food but not how I was in the god damn desert in the first place? Didn’t matter right then; if I died of heat stroke before I even stood up, I’d never get my answers.
Deliberately, I twisted and jerked my four legs until I was laying right side down, resting half of my face on the griddle that made up the land. Dully, some part of me was unsettled by the discrepancy between sensations in a muzzle compared to a human face. I couldn’t dwell on it; for now, priority number one was to get moving. Coiling my right legs below me, I sprung up aiming to catch myself with the left half.
Now, the funny thing about sand: It is not a very solid nor reliable platform on which to land. When my left legs made contact with the ground, they did not stop in place. Instead, they slammed into the sand and began to slide. When they slowed to a stop, I found myself in an awkward position. I had barely managed to keep myself from starfishing in the sand, but that did leave me doing some sort of hybrid horse plank-splits.
Shimmying my way up to a normal way of standing, I surveyed the landscape with my new perspective. Sand. Sand. Sand. A bland, tan sea of dunes was nearly all I could see. Far, far into the horizon, barely visible through the pale atmosphere, I could make out shapes reminiscent of a jagged crown reaching towards the sky. A mountain range or some grand, crude architecture. Either way, It was enough of a break in the scenery that I was willing to bet it was the best way forward.
I won’t bore you with the exruciating process of learning how to walk as a horse. I will, however, delight you with the frustrations that began to plague me as my trek progressed. A new sensation that is absolutely disgusting: sand getting stuck in your coat. It gets even worse when you pair it with its evil twin: sweat soaking into the same coat.
In the fringes of my view, I occasionally caught glimpses of what must have been my mane. Somehow, it was duotone, two alternating distinct shades of red. An almost pink salmon color, with highlights of a much moodier maroon. Once again, not really colors a horse should be. In that matter, my new legs weren’t nearly as skinny as a horse’s should’ve been. Whatever I had become, I was certainly a fucked up little creature.
At one point, I turned back to take stock of my progress only to be met with dismay. I hadn’t even crested a single dune yet, I could still see the divot I carved into the land when I awoke here, as well as a trail of circular hoofprints from it to me. Beginning to grasp just what the journey I'd undertaken would require, I turned and got back on my way.
Time began to lose meaning as I continued my monotonous march across the monochrome landscape. I tried to peek up at the sun as a method of keeping time. Sadly, the massive, constant nuclear explosion in the sky was too bright to even catch a glimpse. With my luck, it probably wasn’t even noon yet.
“Hind left, front left, hind right, front right,” I repeated to myself, trying to keep my focus on the next step. It’s easier to do that when you’re actively learning how to walk. I stopped speaking aloud when my mouth started to feel dry. I tried to keep the words cycling in my head, but my brain had other trains who wanted their turn on the track.
Questions whirled through my mind, popping up and being replaced just as fast. Why can’t I remember who I am? Why am I a horse now? How did I end up in a desert? Which desert even was it? Saharan? Mojave? The one by Mongolia? What was that one named again? Why was my knowledge and memory so spotty? I thought retrograde amnesia couldn’t be that precise. Then again, different parts of the brain stored different types of memory. But would personality be in the implicit or explicit memory clusters? Did that even matter? If my body was different, my brain would probably be different too, right? Why did I know enough about memory to ask these questions, but I couldn’t even remember what my name was?
I realized something that snapped me out of my reverie: I was going through the desert… as a horse… with no name! I stopped walking as a melodious laugh filled the air. I barely managed to keep myself standing while laughter wracked me to the core. When cackling gave way to giggling, I came to the conclusion that I needed to tell someone the joke, and soon. I began trotting before several concerns with that goal came to the forefront of my mind.
How would I even interact with someone like this? Surely any regular person would freak out in the face of a pastel horse talking to them. Was I the only creature like this? Did every other human become sapient equines? Maybe I wasn’t even on Earth anymore. Maybe I was the only living creature in this desert. Maybe this whole world was my own personal hell.
I had to pull the brakes on that train of thought before I was convinced this was purgatory, I had to come up with some other questions fueled by hope rather than despair. Rule number one: Let’s assume there are other sapient creatures, human or otherwise. Rule number two: let’s assume this wasn’t the world I was from. I would come up with other rules once other concerns arose.
A nagging sense of thirst started to make itself known, proof I was probably alive, and not some spiritual prisoner. I could feel the heat of the sun on my back, and reflecting off the sand through the dull filter of my hooves. Heat that wouldn’t let up anytime soon. With new rules and concerns in place, I let my mind journey while my legs carried me forward.
How long was it even going to be before I saw someone else? I was far from any sign of civilization. Would I even find someone before the heat got to me? I was already feeling thirsty, and the distant mountains were barely any less a part of the horizon than before. I began to confront the very real chance that I could die out in the endless sands before finding another living being.
It wasn’t quite fear of death that quieted my mind, but a sort of virulent frustration. I wasn’t scared of the reaper, but angry with the idea of being faced with all this mystery and not even catching a hint of answers to any of it. I knew so little about myself and my situation that I was eager to discover anything at all. I needed to figure out how I got here, I’d be damned if ‘here’ killed me.
My steps became less wobbly, less uncertain. I was now marching with a clear mission: find another living creature before the sand wrenched my answers away.
What could’ve been minutes or hours passed before any clear thought returned to me when I came to the crest of another dune. There was a scene in John Wick 3 kind of similar to this! At least I wouldn’t have to worry about some high council mystic guy cutting off my finger, since some mysterious force went Scorched Earth there… My voice cracked with disuse and dehydration as I shouted into the wasteland,
“Why the fuck do I remember any of that!?” My shouting was met with empty sand and soulless space.
As I surveyed the land, I came to two conclusions. First, time was most certainly passing, as shadows started to form in between the ridges of sand. Second, I was making some form of progress going off of the mountains being ever so slightly closer. Still part of the distant horizon, but closer nonetheless. A third, more grave observation made itself known. I was starting to feel slightly lightheaded.
Fairly certain that could’ve been the beginning of heat exhaustion, I set out once more. My steps were tinged by a similar uncertainty to learning earlier. This only served to contribute to the gravity of my mission.
This is where words began to fail me, and my thoughts embarked on a trek away from coherence. Shadows closed the gap between ridges in the sand, while the wretched heat continued to hammer down. With what mental energy I had left, I contemplated my lack of a name. If I met anyone, saying I was nameless probably wouldn’t go down too well.
My coat being blue, Blue Sky crossed my mind. I didn’t want to share my name with an animation company. I also couldn’t fly. Redmane was on the board for a bit, but it felt too pirate-y, and I don’t think I could’ve been a pirate with my apparent education. My mane was also more pink than red anyway.
My mouth was dry to the point that I could taste how bad my breath must have smelled. Disgusting feeling, but at that moment I couldn’t do anything to fix it.
Dry Mouth would’ve been an apt title, but it was an unpleasant mental image and wouldn’t have made for good first impressions. Sandman wouldn’t have fit with recent changes, Sandwoman was unwieldy, and Sandmare just lost the plot.
The corners of my vision began to fade from focus, “Not a problem,” I thought. Tunnel vision would only give me a better focus on my goal.
Mystery Mare? No, that was a superhero name from something. But from what? What superhero media starred a horse? Tangled didn’t count. Spider-Verse sequel? No, the horse had a different name. Spirit would be an interesting name, but he wasn’t a superhero. Did Centaurworld count? What was the horse's name? I think it was literally just Horse.
My legs burnt with exertion, the toll of walking for hours making itself known. The air above the sand rippled with heat, giving the impression of some otherworldly steam rising from the ground. Similar distortion encroached from the fading edges of my vision. I desperately needed to sit and rest for a few minutes, if not hours.
Trying to focus on moving, I saw that before me was a long incline up the highest dune I had seen yet. My shadow stretching out before me told me that if I could just get past the top of this dune, I would have some reprieve from the vicious sun. Just a little bit further, and I could finally rest.
Every step was a battle as the sand fought to root me in place. Balance was a concept quickly leaving. It would’ve been more accurate to say I was stumbling up the hill. Just a little more. A blue tint began to filter my vision. A few more steps to freedom. My legs, my haunches, my chest, all burned with effort.
Just barely a few steps from the top, my legs finally failed me. My chin slammed into the sand, hours of traveling weighing not just on my body, but my mind. Walking no longer mattered, just movement.
I dug my front right hoof into the sand ahead of me. My muscles screamed as I dragged myself further. My left hoof dug into the sand ahead of me. Agony, as the blue tint got stronger. Right hoof, agony, blue, the edges of vision closed in. Left hoof, agony, blue, closing in. Right hoof, agony, blue, tunnel vision. Left hoof, the edge, agony, blue, pinprick. Right hoof, agony, something different at the bottom of the hill, falling, rolling. Nothing.
Author's Note
Yeah most of this was written real late at night as a practice exercise.
Its 4 am as I write this, actually.
Hopefully you enjoyed it, sadly I doubt Ill write enough to ever make a second chapter. Feel free to expand on this yourself, as long as you credit me.
If you have any criticism, please don’t be mean. Peace.
