Becoming Raindrops

The first thing that I did upon returning home was grab an ice pack. My cheek still hurt like hell. I wasn’t bleeding anymore, thankfully... but it still bloody hurt. TJ and Andrew were going to hang around until my mom got home so that we could explain what happened together.

“When is your mom supposed to be back?” TJ asked.

I carefully unlocked my iPhone to check my texts. “Not long now. Should be a few minutes.” Of course, that was exactly when the garage door started to open. “Or a few seconds. Hey Mom.”

“Oh, you’re home!” She called from down the hall, putting her stuff down. “I thought you’d be out later.”

“Something... came up...” I began to say, and that was when she finally looked towards me and a worried look immediately appeared as she came over. The items remaining in her arms were dropped and abandoned.

“Oh my God, are you alright?” She asked, kneeling in front of me, where I sat on my haunches. It took a bit of convincing, but I let her gently peel away the towel-wrapped-ice pack. “What happened to you?”

My friends jumped in on the conversation here, helping me explain that I had been attacked and who by, and that charges were being pressed. It didn’t sound all that special when it was just recited like they were doing, but it still made me rather upset, considering how quickly that stupid group had found and hurt me. And in front of my friends, no less. I’ve been stewing about it all day, and even though my face doesn’t hurt as much as it did, it was the damage they left behind on my heart that hurt the most.

I mean, I’d been human only three days ago! Don’t they realize that? I never asked for this to happen to me! I wasn’t born a mare! Someone else was, and Discord decided to stick me in this bloody body. It’s not my fault...

So why did they think I should be they should punish? It didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t fair. I know that life wasn’t supposed to always be fair, but this was just... I took a deep breath.

“Are you going to be alright, sweetie?” Mom asked gently, wrapping me in a tight hug. I felt the tears coming forth again, and I let them flow once more.

“I’ll... I’ll get better.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that...”

“It’s not your fault.”

With a shaky breath, she pulled back and thanked my friends for taking care of me. They said that it was no problem, gave me a final comforting pat on the back, and bid farewell as they left for their own homes.

“Is there anything you need?” Mom asked softly.

“Not right now... thanks, Mom.”

She softly kissed my forehead, something she hadn’t done in years. It really helped my emotional state, because it let me know that like my friends had promised earlier today, she would do everything in her power to prevent this from happening again. I don’t know if she or my friends fully understood how comforting such a promise was. I’d already eaten with my friends when we’d changed places for our games over to Clayton’s house.

That had certainly been interesting, especially when his brothers and father came home. The older man had been very reluctant to let me stay, worried I’d share the “curse” with his sons, as he’d so kindly put it. Clayton had told him off, saying that since we were friends, I was allowed to stay as long as I wanted, or at least until my mom told me to come home. After that, we’d moved on to getting some dinner set up. Some of us went out to the nearby Fred Meyer’s and grabbed some soda, some chips, and just for me, a small veggie tray. None of us were sure of what the soda and chips would do to my pony body, so I simply stuck to water and the veggies. Let it be known that the tray was empty in about five minutes, and I was still rather full from that, as I told my mom. It wasn’t all that long after that I decided to head to bed.

Today had been extremely exhausting, and I could feel it catching up to me. I gave my mother a good-night hug, took a few minutes to, er... relieve myself -- which was still incredibly awkward for me -- and crawled under my sheets. After this long and tiring day, it didn’t take very long for me to fall into a deep sleep.

It felt like I had just fallen asleep when I had the irresistible urge to wake up. Groaning at the very idea of getting up so soon, I forced my eyes open and blearily looked around me. It took me a moment to wake up enough, but when I did, I frowned. This wasn’t my bedroom.

“Where am I?” I asked the empty air, looking about as I slowly stood.

I was surprised to find my balance slightly different from what I had recently gotten used to. Looking over myself, I was honestly shocked to find that I wasn’t Raindrops here. I was still a Pegasus, but other than that, I was completely different. First of all, I was actually male, thank God. My coat was a fairly dark purple, and it ended just before my hooves, where I could see a dark brown.

Has my mane and tail changed, too? I wondered silently, looking about for a mirror -- but then I noticed what was around me.

“Hey... those are the Fiorello set boxes!” I found myself wandering over to two very familiar wooden boxes on wheels.

They were from the first theatrical production I had been in that wasn’t a church skit, during my freshman year in high school. The musical, Fiorello, required lots of scenes with lots of backdrop changes, so to make it easier on us and to be unique, we built two big, wooden boxes. Each of the outside walls was for a different scene, and they opened up to have another scene on the inside as well. Looking over from them, I found the set pieces for the next show I’d been a part of, Cheaper by the Dozen.

“This is...”

I found myself getting lost in all the memories that appeared upon seeing all of the old high school drama club sets for our shows. At least, the ones I participated in. Props, set backdrops, costumes, stray scripts... it all brought back lots of memories as my hooves crunched the soft, green grass they all sat on.

In between them sat a few bookshelves, and above those shelves were projections of my imagination on overdrive for whatever sat in the shelves. For the most part, they held chapters of fanfics that I written, as well as a few of the role plays that I had participated in. A lot of the bookshelves held notebooks, which seemed to hold all the ideas for stories that I’d had over the years. I recognized the scenes flashing by above these areas, rewinding, and playing again. Scenes that I would imagine happening, right down to the sound effects, all from my stories or from my imagination simply running wild.

“This is... my mind...”

“Yeah, about that...” Wait, I wasn’t alone in here?! “Could you, uh, put the more, er... explicit stuff in a place where I don’t have to constantly watch or hear them?”

Hold on... I knew that voice. “Raindrops?” I turned around, and found the body I’d been controlling for three days hovering in front of me. “No, wait, what was that about explicit stuff?”

She just pointed a hoof towards one of those bookshelf and projector pairs. There was sign in front of it that said four letters: NSFW. My cheeks turned red, especially at the scenes playing there. A moment later, a bunch of walls appeared around the entire section, hiding it from view and locking in the sounds. She gave a sigh of relief as she landed next to me.

“Thank you. That was getting really annoying.”

“...Sorry.” I mumbled, rubbing one leg against another as I suddenly found the ground interesting. Maybe I would find a nickel or something there.

“It’s fine, I mean, it’s not as bad as Cloud Kicker,” Raindrops giggled.

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not gonna ask how that’s possible.”

“That mare is nothing but that kind of stuff.” She grinned a bit before walking past me. “Although everything else in here is really cool, Thomas!”

“Heh. Thanks.” I didn’t need to ask how she knew my name. I mean, she blatantly said that she’d been browsing my memories, so that was obviously where she’d heard it.

“I mean, I have trouble coming up with how to write the reports every day after weather duty,” She continued, waving me over with a hoof. I caught up quickly. “Granted, it’s not that hard, but I have to word it in just the right way so that I’m not rambling on and on.”

“Like you are now?” I teased.

She smacked my shoulder, “Shut up!”

“Where are you taking me?”

“To my area.”

“Your area?” I frowned. This was my mind, wasn’t it?

“Yeah. I don’t think you’ve noticed, mostly because it hasn’t really started yet, but... because you’re using my body, my mind came with it.”

“And then suddenly my mind’s in control instead of yours.”

“That was really freaking weird, let me tell you.”

“Not as weird as being a guy one day and waking up a mare the next.”

She giggled again, “That’s true. Anyway... as far as I can tell... because of the sudden mix, or because of Discord, or whatever, our minds are slowly merging.”

I stopped at that, and stared at her. Merging? But... didn’t that mean that part of my mind was going to go away as a result? I looked around myself, and found that we were getting close to what looked to be a sharp change in scenery. Behind me lay all of the set pieces and shelves and screens and memories of my mind. In front of me I saw grass of a different tint, as well as cobblestone roads encroaching on the soft grass I currently stood on. That must have been her mind. Raindrops gave me a sad smile, knowing what I was feeling at the revelation.

“Yeah... I’m really scared about it, too.” She said softly, as we started walking again.

At least I wasn’t alone. “What... what kind of merging? I mean, what exactly would we be losing in the process?”

“Well, when I first found out about it, one of your, uh... characters told me more of what was happening.”

“...One of my characters? Really? Which one?”

“He was an orange unicorn, and he called himself --”

“Muse Scroll?!” I did not expect to hear that my pony character not only lived in my head, but that he had also made conversation with Raindrops at one point.

“Uh, yeah. Him. Really weird seeing him here, I have to admit.”

“Why’s that?”

Raindrops’ muzzle scrunched up a bit as she thought, “He just acted really... weird. Kinda like he was in a trance or something. Anyway, according to him, in the merge, we’re only going to be losing the worst parts of our minds. The best parts will remain.”

I remained silent at that revelation. Our hooves started to click more loudly as the grass sharply transitioned into the less forgiving cobblestone road. After a bit, she stopped by one of the houses that resembled the ones from the show, straw roof, outer walls painted sky blue, and a masterfully carved wooden door. That sort of place. It looked very... nice, actually. I liked the gentle, welcoming feel it had. She opened the door and welcomed me inside. I stopped upon noticing the mirror near the entryway, and studied my reflection carefully.

The dark purple coat and the wings and brown hooves I had noticed already, but then I’d gotten distracted from figuring out the color of my mane and tail. They were a mixture of off-white and maroon. I hadn’t expected my tail to be as long as it is, but it wasn’t too bad, it only reached a couple inches off the floor. My mane was slicked back slightly, in a style that reminded me of Spitfire’s. The off-white coloring was surrounded by the maroon in both areas, with a small stripe in my tail reaching from my butt all the way to the very tip of my tail. As for my mane, rather than be the orange and darker orange that was Spitfire’s coloring, it was red surrounding light gray.

“You know, most stallions don’t have tails that long,” Raindrops commented, getting my attention. “I mean, a few do. Soarin’ for example. His tail’s as long as yours.”

“Yeah, but as you’ve seen from my memories, I’m not most stallions,” I grinned, coming over to where she was relaxing on her couch.

She giggled again, “That’s true. Now, I need to talk to you about my wings.”

“Uh... what about them?”

“I need to teach you how to take care of them. I mean, all you’ve used them for is when it’s an automatic reaction or something like that.”

I shuffled my hooves a bit at that.

“The muscles will... atro... atro...”

“Atrophy?” I supplied.

“Yeah, that. Not to mention the feathers are...” Here she grimaced, looking disgusted. “Yuck. Gross.”

“Sorry...”

Raindrops waved her hoof in dismissal, “It’s fine, you just don’t know how to take care of them, that’s all. Thank Celestia you’re a Pegasus here, because that means I can teach you right now!”

The grin on her muzzle made me rather nervous about how exactly she was going to do so. She started by making me turn around and sit with my back to her. Taking care not to be too invasive, she spread open my wings one at a time, and let me feel where the muscles were.

“I know that you opened my wings once or twice without it being a reaction. But you were trying too hard... right now I’m going to focus on teaching you how to preen.”

With that, she had me turn back around to watch her do it. It took only a few minutes for her, but it took practically forever for me to finish. And by Luna, I am not doing that in front of someone ever again, because that was beyond awkward.

“Yeah...” Raindrops agreed when I mentioned this. “Preening’s a private thing. The only time I’ve ever heard it not being is if it’s between you and your lover or something like that. And even that’s rare.”

“I noticed you were really careful about, uh, opening my wings,” I mentioned, hoping to steer away from the awkwardness.

“That’s because touching somepony’s wings the wrong way can be seen as, uh... coming onto them...”

Great to know. I’ve just made things even more awkward.

“Enough of that! Time for the actual flying lessons!”

She dashed out of the house with a giddy look on her face, and I followed shortly after. Raindrops took almost no time at all in making sure I knew how to flap properly. She also made sure I knew that when I was using her body for flying and not this one in my mind, the balance for turns and stuff would be different. I am proud to say that I got the take off stuff down pretty quickly. I could now take to the skies with a running start or from a stand still, although the running one was a lot easier.

Landing, however, was not fun. I kept making friends with gravity and the ground, to the point where she moved my landing practices to the clouds. Those, by the way, are way softer than they have any right to be. Except when crash landing into them. Then they suck just as much as hitting the ground. It took what felt like forever for me to be able to get in the air from a stand still, hover for a bit, and land on all four hooves.

“You did it!” Raindrops exclaimed with a happy grin from where she hovered in the air, as I stood on the large cloud she’d put together.

That knowledge may or may not have caused me to cheer like a little kid who just won a raffle for fifteen pounds of German chocolate. Not a minute later, I could feel myself getting dizzy as my mindscape blurred. Raindrops appeared worried for a moment, but the next thing I knew, I jolted upright and knocked my sheets off in the process. Blinking away the temporary light headed feeling, I frowned. Was that all just some lucid dream? Crazy dream, if it was.

“Not a chance.”

Okay, so it wasn’t a dream. That voice echoing from the back of my mind definitely belonged to Raindrops. With a yawn, I checked my clock, and sighed at what I saw. Six in the blessed a.m.! Wait. If it’s this early... I listened carefully, and seeing as it was Sunday, Mom was still asleep. As was probably the whole neighborhood. I moved the curtains to my bedroom window aside, and grinned at all the clouds up there. Perfect! After a quick visit to the office for a pen and paper, and Raindrops’ help in properly writing with no hands, I left her a note on the hall table and snuck outside. The moment the door was closed, and I knew the coast was clear, I took to the skies.

“Whoa!” I exclaimed when my balance threw me off for a moment. At least I caught myself before I hit the ground and rose up to the lowest cloud level. “Ha! This is awesome! Thanks, Raindrops!”

She gave a distracted ‘you’re welcome’ from the back of my mind. Probably enjoying my reaction as I flew for the first time. I lost track of time as I flew about, getting used to the feel of the wind in my feathers, the sensation of the ridiculously soft cloud material below my hooves, and amazing view. Actually, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that last one, because dear God, this was incredible. Not even flying in a plane could beat this!

“Plane?” Raindrops asked. I directed her to my many memories of flying in them. “Whoa.”

“Thomas?” I heard my mom call from the ground. “Can you come down here for a minute?”

I did as she requested, and flew down to hover in front of her. “What’s up?”

She frowned, “When’d you learn to fly?”

I took the time to explain all about the dream and meeting Raindrops and being taught how to fly by her. She sighed and made me promise to be careful. Don’t ask why, but I immediately did the Pinkie Promise. Mom’s resultant look and Raindrops’ laughter at it made me remember that, no, my mother was not a Brony. After explaining that such a promise was taken more seriously than the most secure documents in the world, she nodded and let me return to my morning flight. It didn’t last much longer, because my stomach growled loudly soon after she went back inside.

The moment my gut voiced its complaint, I landed and went inside for a big, big breakfast. I wasn’t sure what was coming later today, but I knew that I would enjoy flying. I also knew that I was most certainly not going to church like this, not a chance. Maybe I could visit my friends later... yeah, that sounded like a plan! The moment it was later in the afternoon and not six in the morning -- seeing as my friends had a tendency to sleep in that late -- I was going to fly over for a visit, assuming they’d let me, of course.

Oh man, I can’t wait to see their faces when they see that I can fly now...