Becoming Raindrops

“Thomas! Your phone’s ringing!”

My phone? Who would be calling at this time of day? Granted, it was only about eleven in the morning, but most of my friends were asleep right now. Mostly because they most of them liked to stay up into the wee hours of the morning. I still don’t understand the appeal of that. It took me a minute to land and take the phone from my mom’s hand.

“Yo.”

“Thomas, that’s you right?” It was Clayton. Probably calling to see if I can hang out.

“Yuh-huh.”

“Your enthusiasm is contagious. Anyway, can you come over in a few minutes?

“Are you setting up another party?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” I knew it!

“Cool! Who else is coming over?”

“Uhh... right now, Logan, Chris, Emily, Tanner are here... oh, and Audrey’s coming over later.”

“...What.”

“She’s come home for the week.”

“And since a week is now 365 days long...”

“She’ll be here for a while. I told her I’d pass the message on for her. Anyway, when can you come over?”

I went inside and covered the mic in my phone. “Hey Mom, do you mind if I go over to Clayton’s?”

“Not at all, I was going to go see Ginger.”

“I’ll probably come over right away. I’ve got a surprise for you all, anyway!”

“What is it?”

“I can’t just tell you! It’s called a ‘surprise’ for a reason, Clayton. Should I bring anything other than cards and stuff over?”

“Nah, just your cards should be fine. Oh, and I’ve told everyone here of your, er... situation. They don’t really believe me right now, but they’ve said that if it’s true they don’t really care.”

“Eh, that’s fine if they don’t believe it since they haven’t seen me like this.”

I talked with my friend for a couple minutes longer, got the expected time of arrival for Audrey, and hung up shortly after. Raindrops seemed to be busy looking at the memories of some of my stories, but she did answer my mental question of what kind of bag would be easiest to carry. A messenger bag, huh? Those are pretty cool, but unfortunately I only had a laptop bag that wouldn’t be able to hold my cards.

Anything with a strap big enough to hang around my neck was apparently fine, though. So I went for my usual method: the old purple gym bag my mom no longer used. Putting my cards in there with my phone and house keys and dice, I threw the strap over my head before taking to the sky again. It took almost no time at all to get to my friend’s house, considering he was only a couple blocks away. Spotting the place, I decided to land in the backyard as quietly as possible.

“So Thomas is coming over?” I could hear Chris asking from inside.

“Yeah, should be here soon,” Clayton responded.

I waited another moment before a grin appeared on my face and I knocked on the back door as loudly as I could without breaking the glass. Their resulting reactions and expressions made me collapse onto my haunches as I burst out laughing. Clayton came over and opened the sliding door, glaring at me as I continued to laugh.

“Th-The looks on your faces!” I pointed a hoof at them, a couple of them still wearing their freaked-out expressions. “That... that was perfect!”

“How the hell did you get to the backyard?” Clayton asked, as I headed inside, still laughing quite a bit. “You didn’t go through the neighbor’s, did you?”

“Nope! I flew!”

There was silence for a few minutes.

“But... yesterday you said you couldn’t fly. How could you possibly learn how to fly over night?”

“I think a better question is, what’s it like being a pony?” Chris asked. Now that these friends of mine, the ones that hadn’t been there at Clark College yesterday, knew that Clayton was telling the truth, the curiosity was clear on their faces.

I just shrugged, “It’s not all that different from being human, to be honest. I mean, there’s the lack of hands and all, but aside from that and the fact that I’m now a mare... eh. Nothing to freak out about or anything. As for the flying thing... well, this is the body of Raindrops, I told you that, right?”

There were a few nods.

“Well, the mind of Raindrops came with it. But it’s my mind that’s in control. Last night I had a lucid dream where we met in my mind. I happened to be in the form of a pegasus stallion while there, and she took the chance to teach me how to fly. So, I can fly now. I can also talk to her in my head.”

“What’s that like?”

I just shrugged nonchalantly. “Boring. I mean, she never has anything interesting to say. Ow!”

Tanner chuckled, “Did she hit you from your mind or something?”

“You earned it for saying that.”

“Yeah, something like that. So what’s the plan for our party?”

There were a few shrugs, making me laugh again. Things haven’t changed a bit with my friends, even with all this pony transformation insanity. Despite having probably seen my memories of other hang out sessions like this one, Raindrops still felt it necessary to comment.

“Your friends really aren’t freaking out about you being a pony, are they?”

Pff, we were crazy before all this started happening.

“So, what’re you guys playing?” I asked, coming over. “Cards Against Humanity? Oh boy...”

“What?”

I just used a hoof to point to my head. They just grinned and told me to relay how Raindrops reacted to the cards. With a grin that matched theirs, I scrambled onto the open chair and grabbed myself a few cards. The first card I saw said ‘Panda Sex’.

“What the -- What IS this game?!”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her reaction. I had to take a moment to catch my breath to explain to my friends, who laughed as well. Although, she did get a pretty good kick out of a few of the other cards I’d gotten. She said something about Cloud Kicker most likely loving this game to death. I told her that’s who this game was for: the inappropriately immature. I picked up one of the black cards, and laughed at Raindrops’ resultant reaction.

I grinned as I read it, “Why am I sticky?”

“Oh Celestia, it’s even worse when you read it out loud!”

We all shared a bit of a laugh, but it was even worse when I got the answers. The winner was easy to pick: ‘Pulling Out Early’. Raindrops lost it at that one. We paused the game upon hearing a rather tentative knock on the front door. Clayton put down his hand and went to check.

“Uhh... I’ll be right back, one moment.” That was an odd thing to say to one of our friends. He came around the corner and gestured quite urgently for me to follow him. I saw why upon seeing who was standing at the open door.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, recognizing the pony. I frowned a moment, trying to think of the name. “Cloud... Chaser! Cloudchaser! Right?”

“Uhh... y-yeah. At least, that’s the pony,” She nodded. “Raindrops, right?”

“Yup. So who’s the lucky one that got to be Cloudchaser?”

“Uh... Audrey. It’s me, Audrey.”

There was silence for a minute. Then I hug-tackled her.

“Oh my God, it’s been way too long since I last saw you!”

“W-Wait, I don’t even know you are!”

I pulled back with a grin, “Thomas.”

“No way.”

“Yes way.”

“Don’t just stand outside, come on in,” Clayton said. “I’m tired of holding the door open.”

“Sorry.” We both said at the same time. I pulled out of the game so that I could chat with Audrey for a while, the two of us climbing onto the leather couch.

“So what’re you doing here? I thought you were in Ohio with your dad.”

“Yeah, well, I was until...” She paused to use a hoof to gesture to herself. “This happened.”

I nodded at that. “But that doesn’t explain why you came back here.”

Audrey looked at her hooves, rubbing one against the other. I frowned and looked a little closer at her. There wasn’t anything to indicate some sort of wound or attack. At least none that I could tell. But her wings did twitch a little bit. Unfortunately, being able to fly and able to read the emotions a pegasus shows through their wings were two different things.

“Something big happened back in... Ohio...? Am I saying that right?”

Yeah, that’s right, but what could’ve happened...? I told Raindrops before speaking aloud again. “Audrey. What happened?”

She tightened her hold on her foreleg. “I... I was attacked.”

Our friends at the table behind us gasped and stopped giving only partial attention to our conversation. I didn’t need to guess who.

“People Against Ponies Association, right?”

Audrey looked at me in surprise. “How did you...?”

I pointed a hoof at the bruise on my cheek. “We were hanging out at Clark yesterday, a whole bunch of us. Two of those jerks came up and punched me while in their PAPA uniforms. Clayton was there; he saw the whole thing.”

She remained silent at that for a while. Everyone at the table quietly asked if she was alright, worry for her well-being taking hold.

“I... I’m fine. They didn’t hurt me.”

All the worry I had felt when she mentioned being attacked, and by those fiends no less, left me. And all I could do was hug her tightly. It took her a few seconds, but she returned it. Just a way for us to make sure we were alright... especially now that we had run into somepony else in the same situation. Not a moment later, we were both engulfed in a big group hug from the friends that were with us. We just... held each other for a bit, before finally separating, and by the time we did, Audrey was wiping away some tears.

“I forgot... forgot how awesome you guys were...”

There was a few minutes of quiet. Not the kind of awkward silence where nopony knows what to say. More like the kind where we’re just enjoying the company of those who support us no matter the circumstances.

“You know, enough of the sad stuff,” I begin to say after a while. “Have you flown yet?”

Audrey raises an eyebrow at me, “No... I don’t know how.”

“I could teach you!” I exclaim without thinking. “You are missing out, dude, seriously.”

“And it’ll prove that you really can fly,” Clayton pointed out.

I paused to think about that before nodding. “Yeah, that’s true.”

Audrey thought about it for minute, but ultimately decided to agree to it. Our group of friends joined us outside, right when a couple others joined us, Spencer and Andrew. They were quickly brought up to speed on who the other pony really was, and what we were about to do. Like Clayton, Andrew had a bit of a hard time believing that I could suddenly fly when the day before I was still having a bit of a hard time walking.

“Assuming you can fly,” Andrew said calmly. “How will you be teaching Audrey, anyway?”

“I’ve got some help in here,” I replied, pointing at my head.

Audrey gave me a look, “You do realize that most people would throw you in the rubber room for saying that?”

I laughed at that, “Yeah. Like I told these guys earlier, the mind of Raindrops came with the body. It’s just me that’s in control, but I can still communicate with her. You’ll probably meet the real Cloudchaser sooner or later, too.”

“So I’m guessing Raindrops is the one who taught you to fly sometime last night?”

I nodded to Spencer, “Pretty much, yeah.” I paused a moment. “We’re gonna need a cloud for this, it’s a lot softer than the ground...”

With that I took off towards one of the clouds hovering above us. It took a while to find one that was completely dry, then I tore off a small portion and brought back down to the little group waiting out front. Thankfully, the neighborhood was fairly empty as it was, so we weren’t getting too much stray attention. Our group of friends were a bit surprised at how I could simply push around a cloud, and that it held together this low to the ground. I explained it very simply as “magic.” They stopped asking questions after that.

After helping Audrey climb onto the cloud, and enjoying her reaction at how unbelievably soft it was, I started the lessons on flying. With Raindrops helping me out, telling me what to start with and how things work and all that, it wasn’t all that difficult. I started with pushing the cloud up high and teaching Audrey how to preen, after which she swore to never do that in front of somepony ever again. I could only agree. Shortly after that, I moved us back to the lower ground and told everyone that it had been some private grooming stuff.

Thankfully, like it had been with Raindrops’ body, the instincts for flying were still hardwired into the brain. It just took a lot of practice and some instruction to learn how to associate what instinct with what muscle. Or, more often than not, what motion associated with what desired result. Such as landing and taking off from a stand-still. It took a few hours, and by the time we were finished, it was well past lunch time and nearly time for dinner.

“Okay, you were right,” Audrey said with a big, goofy grin on her muzzle. “Flying is awesome.”

I just grinned in return, “Yeah, but it makes you really freaking hungry, huh?”

Our stomachs growled really loudly at that exact moment, and we both laughed. Our friends had long since gone back inside. We moved the cloud to the backyard, where Clayton let us in. I was able to convince him that the cloud would be fine inside, it wouldn’t make anything wet. Besides, it was far comfier than any of the furniture he had.

Although Clayton didn’t agree with me, considering that when he tried to touch the cloud, his hand just went right through it. Raindrops was certainly interested in that, and I pointed out to her that humans didn’t have magic of any kind. She immediately went searching through my mind, trying to find some sort of memory that had magic in it, something about “no magic” being impossible.

“So aside from being a pony and all the insanity of PAPA, what’s up with you?” I asked Audrey, as we got back into playing Cards Against Humanity.

With a bit of a smile, she started to talk about all that she’d been up to in Ohio. While laying upside down on the cloud. Not that I could blame her, it was super comfortable. We all just continued to chat after that. Mostly about how things had changed for us since we split up after high school, how our friends were doing, those kinds of things. After a while, my wings started to twitch on their own, as did Audrey’s. Raindrops told me it was the natural pegasus desire to go flying. So that’s what we did. Today was just a hang-out day with our friends and with each other as we got accustomed to flying and being with somepony else that used to be human.

We didn’t say it out loud, but we sincerely hoped that the next few days would be this peaceful...