A Mirror, Brightly - Ch. 2

 

That one word slipped through the fog that enveloped her thoughts. Several more words attempted to follow in its wake, but they all fragmented well before reaching the surface of her addled mind. None of them were important enough to spend any energy clinging onto, and so she didn’t. She couldn’t.

 

Warm.

 

It was a good word. It was an apt word. Her whole body radiated a gentle heat that enveloped her like a thick blanket on a cold winter’s night, smothering any other attempts at coherent thinking in its all-encompassing heat. It replaced any other weight, any baggage she’d accumulated over the countless weeks with the comforting heft of pure, distilled coziness.

 

Another good word, that: cozy. She was warm. She was cozy. She was--

 

Asleep. Or rather, she was balanced on the knife’s-edge of restfulness and wakefulness, a pleasant limbo which she wished she could luxuriate in for the rest of time. A lazy, incoherent murmur fell from her muzzle as she shuffled in place, hoping to find the most comfortable position from which that warm, cozy void would take her once more.

 

But she could not. Hmm. She frowned and adjusted her position again, using her foreleg as a makeshift pillow, hoping to alleviate whatever niggling discomfort yet plagued her. It worked for a time, a hoofful of seconds maybe, but it soon returned with a vengeance, a knot slowly tightening in her belly. Now that she acknowledged its existence, she found she could not ignore it. Not that she knew what “it” even was beyond the vaguest sense that--

 

‘Something isn’t right.’

 

It slipped through the fog unbidden, a bolt of ice that quickly melted in the face of the omnipresent warmth suffusing her being but that chilled her nonetheless. Groaning, she rolled onto her side, a petulant act of defiance that did nothing to fight off the rising tide of awareness threatening to pull her out of her sleepy bliss. This was the best she’d felt in months, and she’d be darned if she gave it up without a fight.

 

But it was a losing battle. Her senses were returning to her, and though her thoughts were still slow as molasses and suffused with just as much syrupy, sticky sweetness, she regained enough cognizance of the outside world to feel something other than that wonderful heat. Her hoof pawed restlessly at the floor--

 

Ah-ha. That was it. No wonder she couldn’t get comfortable; she was laying on the ground! A terrible place for a nap, all things considered. The worn-down rug could only do so much to cushion the hardwood floor beneath, even with her own fuzzy plushness adding to the padding. Why the hay didn’t she just sleep in her own bed, or on the couch at the very least?

 

‘Because something isn’t right.’

 

Agh, that nagging voice again, dousing yet more of the gentle warmth suffusing her. The cold was creeping in, bitter like bile, gnawing away at her good vibes, and she wanted none of it. She needed a way to stave it off, and she wouldn’t find it on the floor.

 

With a huff of displeasure and a flick of her tail, she rolled back onto her belly, then rose to sit on her haunches. A yawn split her muzzle wide, and she stretched her forelegs high to work out any lingering cricks. Idly, she wondered what time it was. Her phone was around here somewhere, but she’d have to actually open her eyes to find it.

 

Prying her eyes open was like lifting lead weights with a toothpick, and what little she managed to see was a blurred, undecipherable mess. She rubbed her eyes with a foreleg and tried again. This time, the bleary film was gone, and she could at last see clearly.

 

A human sat cross-legged in front of her.

 

The first things she noticed were his eyes. They were so dark, like the spark of life had been sucked from them, and they were weighed down by bags so heavy she had first mistaken them for mascara. His dirty brown hair was short and in desperate need of a comb. A rumpled blue button-down adorned his skinny body, a red tie loose and askew around his collar. His khaki pants sorely needed an ironing, and his loafers were maybe one or two long walks away from giving up the ghost entirely.

 

He stared at her with those sunken eyes, and she stared back. Yes, those were his eyes reflected in the mirror.

 

Paul’s eyes.

 

The warmth that still suffused him dissipated instantly, and the chill rushed in to fill the vacuum. Paul looked down at himself, saw chocolate-colored fur and hooves, and sharply gasped. He leapt to his feet--or tried to, at least, but his muscle memory was tuned for a body he apparently didn’t have anymore. He didn’t quite fall, but he did wobble; his proper human reflection was just as inelegant as he stood up, and equally as shaken.

“What the fuck?” Paul croaked, then immediately clamped his mouth shut, breathing too quickly in and out of his nose. The voice was soft, sweet, unmistakably feminine, and absolutely not his. He snapped his head around, off-white tresses of hair whipping along with it, and stared at the rest of the alien, vaguely equine body he was trapped in. He locked on to the image of a cinnamon roll emblazoned on his thigh--flank--whatever, and his breath hitched.

 

He’d become the horse he’d seen in the mirror.

 

It was patently ludicrous, and yet here he was. Could he be dreaming? It certainly made more sense than any other alternative, but no, this was too vivid, too coherent, and he’d never been lucid in a dream before. Drug-induced hallucination? Unless someone spiked the water cooler at work with LSD, no. Stress-induced hallucination? Now ‘that’ was more likely, but that would mean that he’d finally cracked, and he’d really rather that not be the case.

 

His quick, shallow breaths were making him faint, so he forced himself to take big, heaving gulps instead. The air filled his chest in unfamiliar ways and made him shiver, but at least his light-headedness cleared after a few moments. He wouldn’t solve this by freaking out. He forced himself to ignore all the strangeness of that body and think.

 

His gaze drifted over to the mirror, where his real self was also recovering from a near-panic attack, and it clicked. Of course it was the mirror! He’d touched it and…what, swapped places with the horse in the reflection? It sounded crazy, but it was the best lead he had. And if he swapped into this horse with a touch…

 

He gracelessly stumbled the few steps over to the mirror, which now towered over him. In fact, everything around him seemed giant-sized now. He’d lost three feet of height, but his brain was too used to his full six feet. He shook his head, banishing the errant thoughts--it wouldn’t matter since he was going to turn back now!

 

He lifted his forehoof, watching as the image in the mirror hunched slightly and lined up an open palm to match. Trepidation roiled in Paul’s unfamiliar guts, a mental wall keeping his hoof locked in place. What if this made things worse, somehow? He’d rather be trapped in the body of a small horse-thing than dead, right?

 

No, he needed to try. Then he could panic for real. Squeezing his eyes tightly shut, he pushed the limb forward. The hoof faintly clopped against the glass; somehow, he could still feel the cool smoothness of the pane as though he’d touched it with his fingers. He didn’t dare breathe as one heartbeat passed, then another.

 

Nothing. But that’s what he thought the first time, so surely any moment now--

Just like before, he felt a shock. Unlike before, it was less a lightning bolt and more like he’d rubbed his feet on the carpet and touched a door handle. There wasn’t even a pleasant tingle, let alone that near-orgasmic bliss he could only half-remember.

 

He waited a few seconds more just in case, but even before he opened his eyes and saw his human self peeking down at him, he knew he was still that same pony.

 

Paul paused. He looked past his rounded muzzle at his hooves and around at his flanks, gaze lingering on the cinnamon roll tattoo which stood out sharply against his mocha coat. His pointed ears twitched, and his long ivory tail flicked.

 

“I’m a pony,” he whispered hoarsely, flinching at his new dulcet voice. Of all the appellations he’d given the creature he’d first seen in that damned mirror, that one resonated the most. He was a pony. A ‘female’ pony. Paul was pretty sure he should be panicking right now.

 

He tapped the mirror again. A spark, then nothing. He tapped harder. A spark, nothing. His eyes darted across the mirror, hoping to spot any clues as to why it refused to change him back. He looked up at the gilded statuette of the winged unicorn--an alicorn, his brain helpfully supplied. It stared out to an unseen horizon, wings spread majestically, its ethereal mane frozen as it swayed in the wind. It may have just been his imagination searching frantically for any explanation, but he could have sworn it seemed duller than before. Even if it was true, though, it didn’t exactly tell him much.

 

He gave the mirror one final, pitiful tap. There was the shock, and nothing else. Frustration welled up inside him, and he only just managed to stop himself before he slammed his hoof against the glass. His uncle warned him not to break it, and--

 

His uncle. The letter.

 

Uncle Dane ‘knew.’

 

Instinct took over. Paul cantered over to the couch, where thankfully he’d left his phone. If it’d been in his pocket, it might have been whisked away along with his clothes. He very much doubted he could use it normally with hooves, but he didn’t need fingers to make a call.

 

He clambered onto the couch and pushed his phone, a blocky Samsung seven years out of date, out of the pile of his belongings. His--the pony’s--face stared back at him from the dark screen, its large, innocent eyes dilated and nostrils flared. After a few moments of fumbling with the device, he managed to press the correct button on the side. His lock screen lit up, the pony’s visage replaced with a picture of Paul and his girlfriend Lucy holding each other close, and the phone gave a little chirp, signaling it was ready to take voice commands.

 

“Call Uncle Dane.” The words tumbled out of his mouth, but the software was able to parse it and put the call through. Paul didn’t take his eyes off the phone, heart thudding in his chest. It rang once…

 

Twice…

 

Thrice…

 

It took six rings total before the call connected. Paul’s heart leapt to his throat, but the voice on the other end spoke before he could.

 

“Howdy!” Uncle Dane’s cheery drawl crackled through the phone’s aging speakers. “Dane Jensen here. Real sorry I couldn’t take your call, but if it’s important you can leave me your name and number and I’ll get back to you in a jiffy. Thanks!”

 

Paul felt like he’d been stabbed. Of course the one time he needed to talk to his uncle, he wouldn’t pick up the damn phone. Hell, ‘he’ was the one who told Paul to call in the first place! Paul pressed his hoof against the “end call” button and tried calling again, and again, each time to the same result.

 

After the fifth call, he knew he wasn’t getting through any time soon, so he just decided to leave a voicemail.

 

“Uncle Dane, it’s Paul. I…”

 

Paul’s throat tightened, emotions threatening to overwhelm him. He took a deep breath, dabbed at the corner of his eye with his forearm, and tried again.

 

“...Look, I need help. I touched the mirror, just like you said to in your letter, and now I’m…some kind of pony. I tried touching it again to turn back, but nothing happened. I just really need you to tell me what the hell’s going on and how I can fix it. Please call me back as soon as you can.”

 

He ended the call and promptly collapsed onto the couch beneath him. Uncle Dane was hard to get a hold of at the best of times; who knew how long it would take to get a call back. A day? Two? He couldn’t step outside like this, let alone go to work! Mr. Lawson would probably keel over on the spot if a talking pony trotted into the office. A wry smile briefly tugged at Paul’s muzzle at the thought, but reality reasserted itself too quickly for the humor to last, and he felt tears welling in his eyes.

 

Forget about work; Lucy would be back home any minute now. How the hell was he going to explain all this to her? How was one supposed to tell their lover they've been magically transformed into a pony, and a female one at that?

 

He shuddered, his tail pressing between his legs involuntarily. He’d been trying not to think about that too hard. If he was going to turn into a pony, why couldn’t he have at least been a stallion? Was the universe hell-bent on destroying what little scraps of dignity his wage slavery hadn’t managed to beat out of him yet?

 

Paul felt wetness on his cheeks. Sniffling, he scrubbed at his too-large eyes. No crying. He hadn’t cried since his mother died eight years ago, and this wouldn’t be what broke him. He took deep breaths, in, out, and the urge to curl up into a ball and weep receded.

 

He checked the time on his phone: four minutes to 7:00pm. It’d been less than thirty minutes since he got home. Just a half-hour ago, he’d been blissfully ignorant of magical mirrors that turned you into a talking pony. He’d said he’d wanted an escape from the banality of his existence, but this isn’t exactly what he’d had in mind.

 

With a sigh, he held out a foreleg, tracking it as he turned it this way and that. He was surprised at how…he didn’t want to say how ‘natural’ his pony body felt, because he knew it was anything but, but he couldn’t think of a better word. He expected to have much more trouble adjusting to his radically altered physiology, but the only discomfort he felt at the moment was purely psychological.

 

He ran a hoof across his foreleg, quivering at the sensation. His rich brown fur was impossibly soft, and simply stroking it seemed to soothe the harsher edges of his anxiety. A subtle fragrance tickled his nose, and he sniffed himself curiously. Rather unlike what he imagined an actual horse’s odor to be (not that he’d know, city-boy that he was), he smelled like a bakery with a tinge of heady earthiness, not at all unpleasant. Fitting, he supposed, given the baked good that was stamped on his haunches, but it only added to the unreality of what he’d been turned into. Right now, he’d look more at home in a children’s cartoon than on a farm.

 

He turned his head to really look at the rest of his body, noting the curve of his belly and flanks. He would hesitate to say he was pudgy, because he wasn’t even that large (though it wasn’t like he had any frame of reference for what the “proper” size of a pony was), and his softness wasn’t at all lumpy or unflattering. Rather, he was…plush, like a pillow, or a baker who’d taste-tested her own creations just a few too many times. He pressed a hoof into his side, shivering as a thin layer of doughy softness yielded to his touch.

 

He was beginning to feel an undercurrent of the warmth he felt on first waking as a pony. Laying there on the couch, idly exploring his new body…it was relaxing, in a strange way. He still didn’t dare peek under his tail--he was not at all ready for that, thanks very much--but for now he was almost too willing to distract himself from his myriad troubles. His eyes drooped closed, and he found himself humming a nameless tune as he continued to stroke a hoof across his fur. His real voice couldn’t hold a tune to save his life, but his new one was innately melodic, and he started to drift off to the sound of his own improvised lullaby…

 

That is, until his ears perked up and swiveled towards the rumble of a car’s engine as it pulled into the driveway. His eyes shot open, and he scrambled to his hooves with a yelp.

 

“Idiot!” he berated himself. He ‘knew’ that Lucy was coming back soon, and all the time he could have been preparing…something, he’d been off in la-la land! His gaze went right to the first and most important issue: the mirror. He couldn’t just leave it out in the open, but he really didn’t want to risk moving it in such a hurry. Thinking quickly, he hopped down from the couch and took the white tarp that originally covered the mirror in his mouth. With a bit of luck, he was able to toss it up and drape it back over the mirror. It was still standing in the middle of the living room no less conspicuously, but it would have to do.

 

Outside, he heard the engine cut and a car door slam shut. He needed to hide, at least until he could come up with a way to explain all this to Lucy with the least amount of freaking out as possible. Unfortunately, given that he wasn’t confident he could open any doors with hooves, his hiding places were limited. In the end, he settled on darting into the kitchen and hiding behind the counter. Even a child would have found him immediately, but the house was too small to think he could hide from Lucy for any real length of time, anyway.

 

It was too late to reconsider, anyway. With a faint jingling of keys, the front door opened.

 

“Honey, I’m home!” a bubbly alto sang, footsteps clacking on the hardwood, “And I’m so glad to be back. Did you see there was a seven-car pile-up on the interstate today? Luckily they cleared most of it up by the time I…”

 

Lucy trailed off, and he could almost picture her wavy blond tresses swaying as she scanned the house for her conspicuously absent boyfriend.

 

“Paul?” she called out, and he had to bite back his reflexive reply. Oh, how he wished he could tell her he was here, that he was okay. He needed to think, and think hard about how he was going to proceed.

 

“Paul, honey?” Lucy tried again, but still Paul kept his mouth shut. Maybe he could deepen his new voice enough that she wouldn’t immediately think it was someone else. Maybe he just needed to prep her, convince her that she was speaking to her boyfriend, then reveal that he, Paul, was currently a talking female pony and please don’t freak the fuck out. It was a plan with more holes than swiss cheese, but it was the only one he had. He sucked in a breath, heart racing in triple time, but before he could respond she spoke again, this time to herself.

 

“What is this thing?” she asked nobody, and Paul’s blood turned to ice. Of course. The mirror. He couldn’t let her touch it! To hell with the plan!

 

“Lucy, wait!” Paul cried as he galloped out of the kitchen, “Don’t touch it!”

 

When he skidded to a stop between his girlfriend and the tarp-covered mirror, panting slightly from the exertion, he realized he might have jumped the gun a bit.

 

Lucy stared down at him with wide, baby-blue eyes, mouth agape. Her purse fell from her slender shoulder and onto the floor with a crash that caused Paul’s ears to fold against his head, but even that wasn’t enough to shake her from her stupor. The two were locked in an impromptu staring contest, with only their faint breathing breaking the silence.

 

Paul was the first to blink. He fell back onto his haunches, blood rushing in his ears as he scrambled to find something, anything to say.

 

“Uh, hi?”

 

Real smooth, Paul. Real smooth.