In the eye of the beholder (pastejam entry September 2023)


                                            They all gathered around the camera, Twilight gingerly lifting the Obscura as they approached.


                                            "Well?" Rainbow Dash asked impatiently, "It's pretty difficult to stand still while pretending to trot for twenty minutes."


                                            Applejack nodded.

                                            "Yep. I could see it in her eyes; Dash wanted so badly to move. I've never even seen her sit still for twenty minutes before; standing dead still must'a nearly killed you," She added, placing a sympathetic hoof on her friend's withers. "How did you feel, Flutters? Couldn't see ya back there."


                                            Fluttershy rolled her neck, scratching it with her forehoof.

                                            "I, um, wish I had settled into a more comfortable pose before we had to stand still. I had both of my left hooves nearly off the ground the whole time," Fluttershy quietly replied.


                                            "Oh, that must've been absolutely dreadful. I settle on my front right and rear left raised. It is just as well I have such poise and grace, for I surely would've fallen over otherwise," Rarity said.


                                            While they talked amongst themselves about the struggles of having their picture slowly taken, none seemed to notice the utterly perplexed and confused expression growing on Twilight's face. She held the slowly developing photo aloft, shaking it, twisting it to every angle, trying in vain to work out exactly what had come out of the camera.


                                            Rainbow Dash, after showing Fluttershy a few ways to stretch and work the acid out of her aching legs, finally noticed the growing confusion and shock on Twilight's face.

                                            "Everything okay? How did the image turn out?" Dash asked.


                                            Twilight swallowed. Her immediate temptation was to study this... Thing that the camera had spewed into the universe. To dissect and magically analyse this strange object.


                                            But her friends were waiting to see it. They hoped it would be a nice photo to send off to their friends across the world as this year's Hearts and Hooves card.


                                            "Well. It certainly is a photo. I think?" Twilight replied, turning the image towards the four of them.


                                            The first thing the four of them noticed was that it looked nothing like them. It didn't even look real. Gone were the vibrant and sharp simple colours and flat background of reality. In its place were strange soft hues, a mist that seemed to descend upon the world only a few feet away. And their normally perfect shadows shifted into an amalgamated blob of darkness.


                                            "What in tarnation?" Applejack said, the others too stunned to speak.


                                            The more they looked, the harder they studied the strange image, the more they noticed the other oddities.


                                            "Why is ma hair pink?" Applejack asked. "Wait, Rarity. Did you get my hair?"


                                            "I seem to have also stolen your coat colour too. Oh, and it does seem that my rear hoof cuts off at the end. I have no hoof," Rarity said in bemusement. As if to assure herself, she leaned her neck down and looked across her body to make sure it was still there.


                                            "This is some bullpoop! My awesome coat has been made brown, and I lost my wings! I had them in such a cool pose; I was preening them for hours last night! And they're gone!" Rainbow Dash shouted, bearing her teeth to bite into the photo and tear it apart.


                                            "You preen?" Rarity mumbled.


                                            "My, um, rear left leg appears to have... Two hooves. Growing out of each other," Fluttershy mumbled in abstract horror. Twilight turned the photo to face her, and sure enough, the strange being that was apparently Fluttershy in this photo did indeed have a hoof growing out of its hoof.


                                            "Speaking of, I don't think I've got a back leg or nothing," Applejack pointed out. "Nor does Rainbow Dash. And Fluttershy's other leg has a fourth joint."


                                            The four girls stared at Twilight.

                                            "Just what on earth in this thing?" Rainbow Dash asked. "You said this camera would take a coloured photo of us! It's certainly in colour!"


                                            "Yeah, just ta wrong ones," Applejack added.


                                            "And these... Poor Malformations," Rarity whispered. "They are just ghastly."


                                            Twilight sighed.

                                            "I don't know what happened. Honestly, I tried it with some stop signs, and they came out fine," Twilight explained, nervously fiddling with the photo in her telekinetic grip. She didn't want to touch it with her bare hands.


                                            "Also, is it just me, or are the proportions entirely off?" Rarity asked. "The length of our legs, body and head simply do not match. Dash, if you don't mind me saying, your rear is quite... How to put this delicately."


                                            "It's enormous," Applejack interjected.


                                            Rainbow Dash's face flushed red. She bit into the photo, snatching it out of Twilight's magical grasp and holding it in her mouth.

                                            "Shut up! Yours is bigger!" She shouted.


                                            "Well, that's true in reality as well," Rarity pointed out.


                                            Applejack shot her friend a dirty look.

                                            "It sure as sugar ain't that big," She said.


                                            Twilight looked at Rainbow Dash, and looked cautiously at the photo still between her teeth.

                                            "Dash, I wouldn't bite down on that too hard if I were you."


                                            "Why! Is it cursed? Is that why it came out like this?" Rainbow Dash nervously asked around the photographic paper. "Oh Celestia, am I going to turn into this... Monster? Am I going to lose my wings! Twilight! What's happening to me! I can feel it! IT-"


                                            "Well, no. The camera isn't cursed. I don't quite know what happened there, but it isn't cursed. But you are getting photographic ink on your teeth."


                                            Gingerly, trying to maintain a more relaxed, cool demeanour, Rainbow Dash spat the photo onto the ground.

                                            "Plpft."


                                            Twilight hoisted the photo up once more, staring at the strange simulacrums of her friends on the paper.

                                            "I don't understand what happened? This makes no sense."


                                            "It's cursed," Applejack said. She looked at everypony. "It's a modern doohickey, what did y'all expect?"


                                            "Please don't make that the Hearts and Hooves card," Fluttershy whispered.


                                            "Well, that will teach us for doing this without Pinkie. I have no doubt she would've turned out totally fine," Rarity said.


                                            "But what happened to it?" Twilight asked.


                                            ______________________________________________


                                            Abominationlight looked at the finished photo.


                                            Rather than their usual selves, of twisted, malformed limbs growing out of other limbs, strange hair that seemed to join the rest of their skin and an odd number of limbs, she was instead struck by an image of four seemingly running creatures. Regularly proportioned, Euclidian physics obeying, with simple, sharp colours and outlines.


                                            One of her three mouths opened, the sound of a dying world escaping between her cavernous maw before a more intelligible, less upsetting sound quickly followed.

                                            "What the fuck is this?"