GREEN
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6548 36.97 KB 413
6548 36.97 KB 413
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>Outside your window, snowflakes glittered down to the earth in an overwhelming silence.
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>The forest outside your house was a perfect sheet of alabaster, stabbed through with voluminous green columns of black spruce and illuminated by the full moon that had caught your attention moments ago, as it broke through the clouds.
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>Even as you stared, the snowfall began to wane, and the dim grey ceiling of cloud retreated.
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>The moon beamed down, and its rays struck the shimmering ice glazed woods below.
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>A smile crept over your face, and you felt that kind of comfort that you only get in the intermittence of reading a fantastic book.
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>To read, stop, appreciate, then seamlessly begin to read again, and feel as if you never stopped reading.
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>You swept your hair out of your eyes and scanned the room for a moment, checking that the fire didn’t need feeding.
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>Then you shifted your posture a bit, while remaining comfortably sheltered under your wool throw and your fleece blanket.
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>With your free hand, you grabbed your mug of Irish breakfast tea, and took a sip, before flipping to the next page.
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>It was an excellent hardcover copy of Le Morte d’Arthur, with a nice weight and size to it that let you splay it easily upon the teak wood coffee table.
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>The Questing Beast was passing by Sir Lamerok and Sir Tristram, before Sir Palomides, who’s quest it was to pursue the beast, threw them both from their horses and carried on pursuing.
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>You laughed a little at the abruptness with which the knights were overthrown, and pondered the beast’s bizarre physique.
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“Head of a serpent, body of a leopard, buttocks of a lion and feet of hart... With a belly that yaps like 20 hounds as it moves...”
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>It made you think of what you’d seen on the news earlier, all those people transfigured irreversibly into bizarrely truncated horses by that mass tainting of Tylenol bottles.
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>Some had even become “Changelings”, insect-like beasts that could transform further, and at will.
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>The story was all like some fairy tale, even though it was true.
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>It was like some wicked witch, or a mischievous sprite had been let loose to cast spells and sow confusion.
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“...Ah.”
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>Your thoughts had strayed a bit too far from your book, maybe it was time to take a short break.
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>That was your last sip of tea anyway.
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>You pushed your blankets off, and set them aside before getting up.
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>The wood flooring was pleasantly toasty on the soles of your bare feet, as you walked over to the fireplace to toss a log in.
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>Walking around the counter, and into the kitchen space now, you yawned and stretched your arms high above your head.
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>For a moment you caught your reflection in the frosted up window across from the dinner table to your right.
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>Your hair was a bit everywhere, black strands floating thither and hither from all the static the fleece had made.
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>And your nightwear wasn’t really draping over your slight figure the way it should.
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>You wrinkled your nose in passing frustration, and flattened out all the creases, so that the white nighty hung just right.
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>While you worked on making your hair behave too, you made your way over to the kettle.
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>Your speaker system booted automatically, and started up the playlist you’d set just for nights like this.
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>First came the kettle, water in, flicked on...
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>Dishes away...
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>Spices back to the cupboards...
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>As you were putting the cinnamon back in its place, you spied your vitamins and remembered you’d neglected to have your magnesium earlier.
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>With how much vitamin D you were taking, that just wouldn’t do, so you grabbed the bottle and popped out a tablet.
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>It was a simple, little white circle, with a crescent shape pressed into the face of it.
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>Now you set the magnesium aside, to take with your peppermint tea, and set to work cleaning the rest of the kitchen up.
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>Eventually the kettle was whistling away, just waiting for you to pour.
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>It was half past 8 as you dropped another teabag in and topped up your mug.
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>You had always been particular about that 7 minutes steeping time.
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>The speakers were going to switch off soon after you left the kitchen, but the music had hooked you, so-
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“Time set: 7 minutes.”
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>You ordered the system.
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>May as well ride out the rest of the song, and steep your tea just right.
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>Humming along to the tune, you picked up your mug and your pill and returned to the comfort of your sofa.
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>Your toes had started to cool so it was with a particular relish that you got back under your blankets.
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>Just as you started to read again though, your phone buzzed and nearly vibrated off the coffee table.
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>”Chad --- Calling...”
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>...As much as you liked the guy, you weren’t really in the mood to hear whatever demented sounding, but probably true, take he had on this Pon-E business.
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>With a sigh, you hung up the call, and shot him a quick text.
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>’Reading. Text me now or call me in an hour, thanks. -Aisling’
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>Now, it was back to the adventures of Sir Tristan.
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>You caught your flow almost right away, and followed along with the brave knight’s travels at a cantering pace.
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>Seven minutes later, the music stopped, and you didn’t waste any time swallowing your magnesium tablet with that first sip of tea.
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>The fragrance of the peppermint was as delicate to your palate as it was calming to your nerves, an impressive feat, considering how calm you were already.
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>You smiled at your own, kind of lame, joke, and set down your mug.
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“Hmm...”
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>Chad was blowing up your phone with texts, which wasn’t really unlike him at all.
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>He was like a dog with a bone, whenever there was a news story developing.
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“’PONY... PON-E... Masons... No pills... Globalist plot... 2050... South Pacific infinite oil... Mr Beast supplements...”
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>You only glanced at the messages really, not taking in the full contents.
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>Really, you just wanted to get back to your book.
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“Whatever, I’ll check it after this chapter.”
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>With a touch of regret for not responding to your friend when he was trying to reach you so desperately, even though it was for a cause that would likely never affect either of you, you set your phone back down.
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>Just as you had started to flip to the next page however, a sudden twinge in your nerves made you recoil.
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>You frowned and stared at your suddenly rebellious right hand.
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>Even now it shook and underwent an additional spasm, sending a strange shock up your arm.
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>With a rising panic, you realized your whole body was beginning to feel the same way, dulled in the extremities, yet electrified along the main nerveways up to your spine.
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>Your hair stood on end, you breathed deep.
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>And quelled your panic.
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>And thought.
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>Black fur was sprouting up and away from your wrist in a crooked lightning zigzag, as fast as crows flew up and away from cars.
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>Chad must have wanted to tell you that it wasn’t just Tylenol bottles that were tainted with Pon-E.
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>Your toes were stuck together, you couldn’t pull them apart at all.
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>Pon-E took effect quickly, and came prepared in single doses of 500 mg, it was practically tasteless.
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>You could feel two sensitive bits of flesh were pushing up past your hair, as your ears sunk into the sides of your already furry black head.
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>Your magnesium tablets were 500 mg, and didn’t come with crescent shapes pressed in them.
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>You sighed and fondled your hair-
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“Mane.”
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>...watching it turn a dim argent hue, you could feel strange crackles like pinpricks, all the way down the nape of your neck as more of your mane grew.
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>Maybe it was just like you, to fall so easily into this, even with all the warnings in the world.
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>A wholly new part of you at the base of your spine was wrenching its way out, making you sit up to avoid it getting squeezed.
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“It takes two tablets, so this isn’t permanent.”
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>You managed to utter, before your jaw painfully jutted forth along with the rest of your face.
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>With a morbid kind of fascination, you shoved your blankets away, pulled your nighty up and ran your hands along your core, feeling it push out into that unmistakable barrel shape.
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>The fur had started up your legs maybe 10 seconds ago, and it seemed to be toning your flesh as it went, it was hard to see past your snout though.
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>You’d barely noticed that your feet were already silvery hooves, and your ankles already fetlocks.
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>Your hands worked down your hips, grasping their new width, and rested a moment on your new ebon thighs.
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>They really were rippling with muscle, it was like, just by touching them, you understood the muscle memories every horse is imprinted with.
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>Bucking, galloping and cantering seemed like wholly different words now.
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“Oh, a tail.”
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>You picked it up in your hand and let the fine silver strands fall back against your buttocks.
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>But now it seemed, that was to be the end of your explorations.
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>You lost all sense in your fingers, and then they in turn lost all their shape, melting into a whole mass of keratin, before hardening into dense hooves.
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>Your lower body gave way with a great jerk, forcing you to all fours lest you smash your head.
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>Gruesome sounds began to worm their way out of you, and you couldn’t help but start to breathe heavier.
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>Must have been your lungs getting bigger.
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>Your legs shrunk down like two taught elastics being let go, bringing your back down and parallel to the floor.
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>This was really a strange sort of feeling now, like your butt was just too high, a sort of permanent yoga pose.
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>Your insides squirmed so queerly, organs shifting to their new positions.
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“Aaaahn... Ah! Ahhh...”
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>The range of your voice had shifted too, you’d gone down, from your angelic soprano to a melancholic contralto.
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>A few more fleshy noises...
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“Done?”
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>Just as you lifted one hoof, you were struck by lightning.
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>You blinked, wondered where you were, then you were struck again.
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>It was all you could muster to see the brilliant flash of turquoise, instantly burning off into a glaring white like aluminum burning confusions mustered instantly rising droning telling knowing overthrowing.
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“Huh?”
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>Another strike, and this time you smelled burning, knew burning, was fire, knew fire, knew beasts, knew floating, knew-
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>You couldn’t really breathe, you were struck so dumb, or maybe smart?
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>Ideas swept through your mind, as fast as that flash of light maybe a millisecond ago, yet you grasped each one completely.
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>It was like walking through a library, and literally picking every book off the shelves to read, one at a time, or more like reliving a past memory of doing that.
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>You clung to that idea, to rationalize what was happening in your head.
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>The memory seemed to slow at parts, and you grasped more then, things like the principles of gravity, electro-magnetics and water were paid special attention.
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>Gradually the slowed parts became less and less frequent, and you found yourself just speeding by vast conceptual matrices of thoughts and ideas that frankly you were more interested in than some lame understanding of gravity.
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>For once you tried to reach out of yourself in this abstraction you’d invented for what was happening to you.
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>In a flash, you’d stopped dead in the ‘memory’, with your hand grasping a book titled: Prudence.
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>You peered at the book, then the shelf, then down the hallway to nothing...
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>There was no ‘you’ proper either, just a ‘hand’.
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>Something was off about everything, it put to your pseudo-mind the images of fractals, and made you think that if you were to back up a single step, all of this would melt away into a repeating, senseless pattern.
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>It seemed pointless to think on that any more than you already had, so you cracked open the book.
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>The first page read: “The proper motto is not ‘Be good, sweet maid and let who can be clever,’ but ‘Be good, sweet maid, and don’t forget that this involves being as clever as you can.”
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“C.S. Lewis.”
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>You whispered, and turned the page.
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>Next came: “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”
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“Matthew 10:16.”
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>You muttered, and frowned a little. Then shut the book and looked at the back.
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>Embossed in silver were the words of Thessalonians 21.
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“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”
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>These were things you’d already read before.
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>The illusion was shattered, and your abstraction fell apart, you weren’t acquiring any new sort of knowledge at all, this had been just a re-examination.
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>In an instant you were on your floor again, still a little horse, and a little hoarse.
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>You coughed and stood up on all fours, trying to bat away the heavy, cloying blue smoke that was about your head.
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>Eventually it dissipated, and you had the sense to put a hoof up to your forehead.
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>Clearly it was a horn, maybe two hoof lengths long, poking out between your silvery bangs.
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“Did it mess with my brain or something?”
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>It was certainly sensitive enough, you considered perhaps that the formation of such a tight bundle of nerves right next to your skull must have caused some kind of feedback.
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>But then again, there was the smoke, so the lightning must have been real.
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>Looking around at the floor, you could see scorch marks where electricity had clearly been arcing too.
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“Damn, arcing through the air?”
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>You pawed at the ashes with your right hoof, brought them to your snout, and sniffed suspiciously.
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“Magic.”
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>Immediately you snorted with laughter, and in the same action, sucked all the ashes down your nostrils and started choking half to death, which only made you laugh harder.
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>You keeled over and rolled all along the floor, coughing and giggling, sometimes in the same breath, making a mess of the nightwear that still dangled loosely from your body, and scratching marks into the floor with your horn.
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>Once half a cogent thought of yours managed to sneak past the giggle fit, you slipped yourself out of the silk nighty, picked it up in your mouth, and set it up on the couch where it wouldn’t get every last speck of ash in the room on it.
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“Alright, let’s take a look at this magical horse hmm?”
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>Still laughing, now at how strange it was hearing such a different voice come out of your mouth, you swept your mane out of your eyes and started a trot for your bedroom.
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>On the way, you nabbed up a hunk of wood with your mouth, and gently pushed it into the fireplace.
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>The fire was down to embers small enough that it was pretty easy to avoid burning yourself, thankfully.
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>It made you think about how marvellously you’d adapted to moving on all four hooves.
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>Maybe this Pon-E stuff was something of a nootropic.
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>There was definitely a sharpening effect on your senses, but a lot of it could be attributed to the new physiology.
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>Your ears were like little radar dishes, it was fun just pointing them around and picking up sounds you’d have easily overlooked before.
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>Left, the sound of water in the pipes under the bathroom, right, the faint breeze slipping under the door, back, the low electronic buzz coming from the speakers in the kitchen.
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>Hm, that last one could get annoying actually.
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>On a whim, as you waltzed into your dimly lit bedroom, you trotted up to the window and very nearly stabbed a hole through it with your horn.
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>Giggling, you turned your head left, pressed your cheek up against the glass and rotated your ears towards the woods outside.
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>...
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>*crick*.... *crack*....
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>Yes, that was definitely the ice on the tree branches cracking, the snow must have frozen over by now too.
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>In your mind’s eye, you pictured yourself driving your hooves through the icy crust with great cracks and snaps, cantering and laughing.
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>There was an idyllic meadow perfect for that sort of fun, not far from your house either, and ringed with blueberry bushes.
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“Ahh, now I want to go for a walk.”
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>The weather was just right, the noisome wind had died down, and the moon was so bright it was like a demi daylight outside.
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>Hm, that could just be your new eyes too though.
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>Now you thought on just how many things you were attributing to this “new”ness, and laughed.
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>Finally you pushed that all to the back-burner, and got a good look at yourself in the mirror.
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>From the top of your head, to bottoms of your hooves, you were beautiful, and around 4 feet tall.
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>You were so black you had to flick the lights on to see yourself properly.
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>Your mane and tail were straight as sheet metal and fluid like molten silver, rippling and shimmering by the lamplight.
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>Normally you’d have to drop 200 dollars in a salon twice a week to get anywhere close to this.
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>Upon your flanks were a pair of ivory coloured markings you instantly recognized as olive trees, by their strange twisted trunks.
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>The horn, nay, the alpenhorn on your head was a work of the purest driven platinum, spiralling in such a tight wind all the way to the tip as to be impossible for human hands to reproduce.
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>And at that tip you could see a single burning spark of turquoise, like a gem in a sunbeam.
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>Your eyes were the same colour.
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>But the gaping expression on your pretty face nearly ruined the entire effect.
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>You gasped and laughed and laughed.
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“Hhhoooo noooo I’m hoottt!!!”
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>Maybe you should take a second one?
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>You nearly choked on the thought, and fell down laughing all over again.
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>I mean you had HOOVES for Pete’s sake, you were practically an amputee.
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>No, no, no this should all wear-
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>A sonorous *THUNK* from the living room stifled your giggling, and made your ears spin right round to follow the sound.
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>Plastic with metal inside.
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“Chad, texting me, right. Phone vibrated off the table.”
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>Yes, it would be best to let him know you were alright, and hadn’t overdosed or anything.
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>Still laughing a little, you walked back into the living room, picked your phone up from off the floor with your mouth, and tried not to think too hard about how many germs you just fast tracked into your system as you tossed it up onto the couch.
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>You crawled up after your phone and pulled your fleece blanket over yourself to get comfy, because this was obviously going to take forever.
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>Considering the nature of keratin, your hooves should still carry enough of a static charge to at least work a touch screen...
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“Right?”
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>You stared at your little black rectangle down over your scrunched up muzzle and set to work.
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>With an inordinate amount of effort versus the reward, you eventually managed to kind of smoosh the sides of the phone between your hooves and depress the power button, bringing up the lock screen.
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>5 missed calls from Chad, 137 text messages.
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>Actually not the highest you’d seen, thinking back to 2016.
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>The bulk of them always came in the form of ALL CAPS ONE WORD repetitions of what he wanted to emphasize from his last message.
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>...The phone had relocked.
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>With some consternation, you did your smooshing between the hooves trick again, still a little worried you may wind up breaking something.
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>Now for your first real attempt; you lifted your right hoof... lowered it... and... dddrrraagggeddd up...
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>Nothing at all.
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“Pffffffffffffffffffffff..........”
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>You lied flat on your belly and blew all the air from your lungs in an exasperated sigh.
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>At least you were warm, under this fleece, and in your fur.
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>But if anything you wanted to be cold right now, outside cantering around.
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>Common sense was keeping you at this phone operating business though, you couldn’t just leave Chad out to dry like that, and if anything were to happen while you were like this, he was definitely the best person to notify.
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“And not just because he’s the closest friend to my house.”
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>You added.
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>Alright, back to it.
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>You tried again, this time using more surface area, and the screen started to move...
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>Then flopped right back, still locked.
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>You whipped your tail into the sofa, producing a muffled thump.
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>Reflected in the phone screen, you could see your snout all scrunched up.
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>Time was seriously wasting at this point.
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>The weather outside was still nice, but this close to the mountains, it could change at any time.
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>Sighing, your frustration drove your thoughts inward.
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>You lounged sulkily, swishing your tail and flicking your ears.
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>Why would someone take a recreational drug that physically handicapped you like this anyway?
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>With psychoactives it was just a consequence of the desired effect.
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>There had to be some detail to your new form that you were missing, on TV you’d seen that little blue horse with no horn using a touch screen just fine.
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>...something more-
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>You slapped your head with a hoof, and immediately regretted it for all the pain it caused.
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>But, now you had a very silly idea.
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“Magic.”
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>You uttered the word like a slur.
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>It had been so obvious that it had become almost tastelessly improbable, what with all the sparks and the lightning strikes and that vision of the library.
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>But now that the thought had struck you, you felt like you had no choice but to at least try.
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>Sighing with disbelief at your own foolishness for even thinking this could work, but simultaneously half convinced that it would, on the merit that magic worked precisely because it shouldn’t...
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>You stared up at your horn with eyes crossed, and slowly, you lowered it all the way down to just a hair’s breadth of the screen.
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>The moment you touched your horn to the phone, you thought: “Open”.
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>And it ‘worked’.
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>Your phone opened up like an exploded-view in CAD, screen, casing, motherboard, individual little screws and wires, all floating in that turquoise glow you’d seen earlier.
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>With the barest thought of turning your head to see if anyone else was seeing this, even though you knew you were alone, the phone in suspension turned.
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>The parts swirled in orbit around a set axis, and began to slow to a stop as soon as you stopped thinking about “turning”.
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>Alright...
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>There was a lot of risk here.
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>I mean if you thought the wrong thing right now-
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>You could possibly-
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>I mean there was the chance that you-
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>...You couldn’t even think it, lest you risk that it be done.
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>So you focused on “fixing” things first.
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>With a measured, clockmaker like deliberation, the parts pulled back together and began to reassemble.
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>You could even see some bits of glue “un-drying”, sticking back together, and re-bonding to the surface.
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>The turquoise light seemed to be manipulating it all somehow.
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>And you, it.
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>Once the phone was all back together, you dared to think anything besides “fix”.
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>A cold sweat ran down the nape of your neck as you exclaimed,
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“I was so close to setting my phone on FIRE! Or throwing it IN the fire! Or setting MYSELF on fire...”
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>But now a warm elation was pouring from your heart, and finally it bubbled up to the top.
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>You could cast MAGIC.
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>You could BEND physical laws!
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>You were practically like a... Like some kind of myth for goodness’ sake!
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“Ahaha!”
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>Giddy with excitement, you battered your sofa with your forehooves in rapid fire.
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>If it operated off thought, you thought, then all you had to do was compartmentalize your thinking.
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>It shouldn’t be any different than something like driving, people practically did that unconsciously, lifting and using a phone with magic should be even easier in fact.
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>Embracing that usually contrary notion, you set your mind on your phone again, this time with a clearer mental image of “grasping” it.
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>Your phone was gradually wrapped in that glow again, and rose a couple centimetres, but ultimately the magic petered out and your phone fell back down.
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>Immediately you could see the problem, it was like those secret eye illusions, where you had to keep your eyes crossed for just long enough that seeing the illusory hologram came without maintained effort.
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>Such it was with imagining ‘what’ was “grasping”, you settled on a definite shape rather than just the idea of “grasping”, that would be easier to maintain.
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>For now you just thought up a cartoonish hand with a thumb and two fingers, to keep it simple.
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“I could even say that I conjured a hand, ~Oooo...”
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>Giggling, you waved your hooves around in front of your face while you levitated the phone up.
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>The rest came easy, you just touched the magic thumb thing from the conjured hand macguffin to the screen and...
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>You had attained the bare minimum of modern human functionality; unlocking your smart phone.
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“That felt like it took all week...”
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>Much more at ease now that you were finally getting somewhere, you stretched out under your blanket, enjoying the feel of the fleece on your short fur.
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>You brought up the chat with Chad, scrolled past the now 200 odd messages he’d sent, conjured a second thumby glowing hand to type with and started on a response.
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>”Hey Chad. Yeah I took one, don’t worry, just one. It was in my magnesium tablets. Thanks for the heads up though lol!”
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>Before hitting send, you attached a cutesy pic of yourself on the couch, doing a ‘reclining figure’ pose, copied from a renaissance painting you’d seen last week.
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>It looked goofy with your horsey legs, but damn if magic wasn’t convenient for taking good pictures.
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>You hit send and waited, humming tunelessly and kicking your hind legs around.
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>You’d gotten the rest of your tepid peppermint tea drunk by the time Chad called.
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“Hello?”
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>”Say Jesus Christ is lord you damnable horse or I will aggressively hang up on you and tragically break down crying over the assumed death of my friend Aisling.”
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“Chad the lllaaaaddiesss mannn~”
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>You laughed, this was even better than you expected.
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>A loud ‘frsssssssssshhhhhhhh’ sound came out Chad’s side, nearly blowing your ears out.
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“What was that?!”
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>”Salt, you fucking LITERAL nightmare, I’ll be there to exorcise you when you least expect it.”
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>Faintly, in the back, you could hear a feminine voice cursing mightily “Chad is that her?! What the fuck-” before the line cut out.
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>You blinked and stared at your phone for a moment, before shrugging and tossing it aside.
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“Guess Chad’s coming to visit.”
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>Laughing, you hopped off the sofa and grabbed a white scarf off the hanger with your magic.
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>You wrapped it in an almost comically big bow around your neck, and tucked your mane inside for some extra warmth.
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>Hopefully your fur and body heat was enough.
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>Heedlessly, you swung your door wide open and charged out into the frigid air.
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“O-o-o-o-ohhh...”
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>You shivered, your teeth were rattling, and your hooves were pitter pattering.
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>Your cheeks were instantly flushed, and your breath came out in big chimney puffs of steam that floated straight up, with no wind to blow them apart.
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>Thinking fast, before you lost your courage and retreated to the wools and linens inside, you lit your horn up and thought; “heat”.
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>Heat passed over your body in smooth and heavy rivulets, like a massive egg was cracked open on top of you.
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>Wherever the warmth passed, you could see your magic emit a turquoise flash, before shimmering off into a faint spattering of distant-star like sparkles that remained and dappled your black coat.
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>The effect was marvellous to the eyes, although you were a bit apprehensive doing a spell like that right off the bat.
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>So you spun around for a quick body check to make sure you hadn’t set yourself on fire, grinned, and then leapt off the porch.
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>Your forehooves broke through the icy crust first, with a satisfying crunch that was quickly muffled by the snowy landscape, then your hindhooves followed.
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“Hahahaha!”
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>Cackling away, you hopped up and down, stabbed your horn into the snow just to see what would happen, and made a general ruckus of your frigid front yard.
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>The snow was hard, but not so hard you had to worry about breaking a leg, although you really should have checked that beforehoof.
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>As you gambolled around, it suddenly hit you that the transformation had definitely induced a kind of euphoria.
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>It wasn’t just that the situation was so ridiculous all you could do was laugh, it was like a wind or a power you were swept up by.
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>You were following it eagerly, but that’s just it, you were following.
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>There was something a little outside of you that was in the lead.
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>This made you press the brakes, just a little, it wasn’t like you were going to stop being happy or anything, but your silliness had begun to wander into the territory of the wanton.
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>Nonetheless, you were smugly satisfied with your hoofdiwork, as you looked it up and down.
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>You were breathing heavier now, after all that jumping around.
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>While you caught your breath, you craned your long and slender neck to stare up into the endless night.
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>Your eyes were dazzled by the moon, and the real stars up there, that made your little magic ones seem like so much cheap glitter.
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>Out here at the foot of the mountains, there wasn’t much light pollution, so the whole Milky Way could be seen.
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>You were never any good at picking out constellations, but the sight of the clear night sky had always mesmerized you in other ways.
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>It was a strange thing to think, considering how distant it all was, but there was something so visceral about that wheeling dome of stars, especially on a night like tonight.
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>That visceral feeling was queerly amplified by your transfigured body, or maybe it was the other way around.
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>There had been a touch of the dreamlike when you were a pony in your own home, but now that you were outside where things were much realer to your sense perceptions...
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>You were suddenly feeling your new shape as if it really was your own, for the first time.
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>This brief interval of self-discovery stretched back through your past, and linked with one of the earliest memories of your childhood, staring at the same stars in the same sky, held tight in your father’s arms.
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>What would that Aisling think of Aisling now?
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>What would your father think of you now?
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>...What did God think?
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>You lifted up one argent hoof, glistening with melted snow, and peered at it.
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“Have I truly become an animal?”
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>The sound of a branch snapping struck the rest of your thoughts dumb.
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>You whipped your head around to stare into the trees where you’d heard it, and for the barest moment, you could almost swear you saw a smear of red vanish around a spruce trunk.
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>A shiver travelled up and down your spine.
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>Your gut instinct left you certain that you had been watched, but for who knows how long?
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>And by what?
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>You racked your brain to think of anything “red” this time of year, and you didn’t like the sane answers any better than the irrational ones.
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“Thank God it’s not hunting season right now...”
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>With a few deep breaths, you quickly regained your calm.
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>It had just been some trick of the eyes, you’d panicked because you were surprised in a moment of contemplation.
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>Nothing more to it than that.
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>You laughed and started walking off into the forest, towards that meadow you’d been anticipating so eagerly.
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>It was also where the sound had come from, but you easily swept that fact aside in your mind.
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>On your way over, you passed by your car, and felt totally dwarfed.
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>Then you walked under the massive pine that stood vigil in your backyard, before you finally planted your hooves up to the edge of the forest.
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>The snow cover was thinner through here, so you decided it was high time to do what your body was really meant for.
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>You snorted and pawed the icy turf, tossing your head round like you’d seen horses in movies do before.
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>With a strong kick from your hind legs, you started off at a gallop.
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>Your silver hooves clove cleanly through the snow and ice with swift sharp crunching blows.
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>You planted your hooves firmly, and with all that leverage and grip, you weaved gracefully between the conifers.
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>Everything was in perfect alignment, this was the “truest” you had ever felt in this pony figure.
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>The automatic, rhythmic pumping of your legs, matched the steady and strong beating of your beautiful heart.
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>Your mane and tail trailed behind you like banners, and shone in the light from the Moon that watched you from above.
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>The forest was all asleep; no matter where you pointed your ears, you only picked up the sound of your breath, the thumping of your heart and the stomping of your hooves.
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>But your nose was picking up scents you never used to catch, even through the snow and ice you caught the distinct scent of sap.
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>Long before you leaped ‘round the last spruce, you knew the maple trees were ahead.
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>Now that there weren’t any branches in the way, you could find out what your top speed really was.
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>A satisfied grin crept up your face, condensation was rushing from your nostrils like smoke from a steam engine.
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>Your legs were rushing below you at an almost frightful pace now.
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>Tree trunks just flashed by, left to stand in the wake of the tumultuous din of your thundering hooves and the cloud of powdered ice you had kicked up.
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>Surely you had never felt your heart beat this way before, the difference from being human was so drastic it made every other new thing about being a pony seem practically the same as before the pill.
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>Everything was “on demand” physically, if you wanted power there, you got it, speed here, you got it, oxygen now, more like oxygen yesterday.
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>You went like that for what felt like forever at the time, and mere moments after the fact.
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>The maples were interspersed with pine now, and now and again you skipped over fallen logs.
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>It was only when the blueberry bushes came into view that you started to feel your muscles begin to ache.
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>You caught yourself breathing from your mouth too, in big sighing draws and exhales that clouded your eyes with the condensates.
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>With one last grand effort, you planted both fore hooves straight through the snow, then drove them irresistibly upward just as your chest came up even with the bushes.
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>You tucked your hind legs in and cleared the hurdle deftly, then lowered your fore legs for the landing.
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>The green earth gratefully received your moonlit hooves.
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>It took twenty strides to slow down and rein yourself in after that rousing bit of athletics.
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>Your body radiated heat like a furnace, if that spell from earlier was still active it certainly didn’t matter now.
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>Sweat dripped down your flanks in beaded lines, your back was rising and falling with each tremendous breath.
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>The condensation was like a localized nimbus around your body.
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>When you had finally come back to your senses, you took the time to actually appreciate the view.
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>The meadow was a windblown, frosty little Eden.
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>Drifts of snow sparkled hither and thither like dunes, rising out of the verdant carpet of frost touched mint, melt dappled clover and amethyst violas.
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>A stream, like a silver ribbon, lay curving from your end of the meadow to the other.
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>The entire place was ringed in snowberry bushes, heaving with bright red fruit that was just waiting to be plucked by chickadees.
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>Just when you thought you had processed the whole of the entrancing locale, a cloud covering the moon swept past, and your gaze was held fast upon the landscape with an awful wonder.
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>The refracted moonlight from the ice on the ground and the frozen glaze covering the bare branches glowed with such a white brilliance that you felt like you were caught in the spotlight on a stage.
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>A brief gust whipped up a swirl of icy flakes like diamonds, and spun them across the whole meadow.
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“Gorgeous...”
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>You tried not to say any more, knowing it would just come out in a singular stream of synonyms.
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>...Probably should have waited for Chad.
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“Hahaha!”
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>The thought of him possibly missing this made you tumble onto your rump with laughter.
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>Of course you were going to drag him out here, you’d strap him to your back if you had to.
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>For now though, you decided it would be best to just relax and enjoy.
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>He was all the way in town after all, it would be a while yet before he got here.
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>You settled into a more comfortable position, lying down on your belly, with your legs tucked for a bit of warmth.
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>The cold was starting to nip at your skin, so the spell must have been nearly worn out at this point.
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>But with how overheated you were from the gallop over, the chill was actually a pleasant treat.
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>So you lay, sometimes staring at the moon, sometimes the stars, oftentimes the verdant sprawl.
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>After a while, you started to think maybe you should try eating a bit of the mint.
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“It’s... safe right?”
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>You snuffed at a mint plant with your snout.
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>It was growing straight in front of your chest, well within munching range...
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>You had a little bit of experience with horses, since the last town you’d lived in had a ranch.
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“Mint. Mint. Mint?”
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>The memory you were looking for seemed out of reach for a second there, but you finally got a hold of it.
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>Right, you’d fed that brown horse, Lucky Sands, some mint once.
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>You licked your lips with eyebrows raised, and pondered the total lack of reluctance you had for eating vegetation right off the ground.
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>Maybe it came easy because it was an herb.
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“Aahm.”
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>You lowered your head, and took three frosty leaves with one bite.
by meslam