Emotional trauma was extremely unpleasant to wake up from. Day came slowly to consciousness amidst a swirl of emotional backlash. While only a dull echo of his recent experience, he couldn’t help but shy away from the agony he’d felt. Insanity and pain - that was what his mind had to endure for so long. Locked away deep inside his mind were memories that spanned eons and yet only moments seemed to have passed for him. He could feel they were there, but now that he’d remembered them in full they were like an intellectual exercise - the trauma was there but the experience was once again detached. And in spite of being forced to essentially decend into insanity, he was still whole. He didn’t know what to make of his experience. The backlog of emotions made it hard to think clearly. So many things overlapped in his mind: sorrow for leaving his family behind combined with the loneliness of the void and the smaller loneliness he felt away from his family which stacked neatly with the rage and pain and fear of dying and existing in the void which warred with a sense of rightness which permeated everything. The last emotion served to terrify Day more.
He lay quietly and listened to his surroundings while he tried to calm down. He could hear the comforting sounds of the forest coming from his left - a quiet thrum of life and the harmony of chirping birds, chattering little ones, and occasional sounds from the larger forest creatures. To his right was the peaceful pseudo-silence of a field only broken by the sound of wind disturbing grass. He couldn’t tell if he was alone or if Luna was still with him. The forest slowly fed him information of what it had seen and heard during the night. The additional load of information forced him to wake up fully and he managed to finally push away his emotions until he could function. His eyes opened and he sat up slowly with a groan.
“Ah... you are awake.” He turned his head to the right and saw Luna laying beside him with a few feet of space between their sides. Her eyes were bloodshot and her head hung tiredly. She looked sleep-deprived and care-worn. Her ethereal mane billowed slowly and the stars within flickered bleakly.
For the first time since he’d arrived, Day felt angry, rage-filled. He struggled to keep his voice even, “Yes. Now what the fuck happened?” He failed to maintain an even tone.
Luna’s head hung lower dejectedly, “I-I... needed to change everything. You were here a-a-and I knew if I... acted... I could save everything - save Tia, save you, all my ponies... everything.”
“That’s all well and good but that doesn’t. Answer. My question.” Day rubbed his eyes tiredly. The screeching sound of metal on metal reminded him that he wasn’t human anymore. His previously suppressed panic immediately jumped to the fore. He stared at his hands that suddenly terrified him.
“What’s happened to me?” He asked in despair.
“You... ‘tis hard to explain something like this. I suppose the first thing you should understand is that this,” Luna gestured tiredly at his blue metallic body, “is a gift. I realize you do not see it as such now, but truly if it had not been given to you things would be much worse.”
Day snorted, “Yeah right. I’m a fucking metal blue elf.”
“You would have been returned to the void.” Luna replied quietly.
Immediately, Day cringed at the memory that resurfaced. He deflated and his anger abated slightly, “Okay... maybe you’re right. But still this is orders of magnitude more screwed up than I usually deal with.”
Luna shrugged helplessly, “I do not know anything about your previous life or experiences. You never tell me of it nor did you speak while you slept or relived your death and isolation.”
She continued before he could speak, “Everything that has happened - at least until I arrived at Lady Fluttershy’s home - were predetermined. Your death, isolation, awakening, and transformation were all planned and executed and will always continue to be executed. Everywhere but here, that is.”
Luna’s roundabout language and confusing explanation made Day anger return and he almost yelled, “But. What. Happened?”
Luna sighed, “I defied the Creator. I took you from the path it designed and bent it - destroyed it. Everything that should have happened will change. I changed your future. What you saw in the forest the first time you awoke. It will happen. You will meet my sister at the end of her life and she will send you here, to this time, as a last mercy to one who provided her a reason to die.”
Luna straightened and she adopted a determined expression, “But also, you will not meet her. You will have a second future - one that begins here and continues on to that time and place. Everything that was - is; you will force time and destiny to change and bend.
“I forced you to confront your memories; the ones the Creator locked away for another time and place for you to uncover. I needed you to see. Now, I need you to understand. We are parts in the Creator’s machine and it is watching. I, to borrow one of your phrases, through a wrench into its machine and now we are here, temporarily free from the path that was determined for us.
“The Creator cares nothing for us. He will sacrifice us for the continuance of its project, he has before many times and in many places. No longer.”
Day interrupted, “I’m sure you feel strongly about this but I don’t really believe you. So, you’re saying that God... the all-powerful being that supposedly made everything... fated me to come to this world, meet a demi-god, and turn into a robot? Oh, and I can’t forget the torture of dying and the emptiness of the void.”
His earlier anger had disappeared into a sort of sick fascination with Luna’s explanation. Everything he’d experienced so far had been through a shield of emotional repression and now that he was fully capable of feeling again, he couldn’t help but start laughing at the sheer impossibility of everything.
“And I’m arguing... haha... with a horse about God. Haha-hehe, this is such bullshit,” Day’s laughter turned hysterical and his earlier panic once again attacked him, “I just want this to end. It’s too much.”
He collapsed on the ground and let his despair wash over him, “You know, today was supposed to be normal. I was going to see my sister. She’s getting married in a month. She had a friend she was going to introduce to me.” Day’s new body seemed to lack the ability to cry though he desperately wanted to.
A blue draped itself over his torso. Day couldn’t even muster the motivation to knock it away and couldn’t help but admit that it was a somewhat comforting though alien experience.
“I do not know what I can do to help you.” Luna said softly, “But I do know what it means to lose our family. And I know what it means to wish to go home when everything in the world stops you. I am sorry that this has happened to you.”
Day remained silent and gave in to the urge to wallow.
~^~
He didn’t keep track of how long they remained silent. All he had to go by was when the princess succumbed to sleep and laid her head down next to his shoulder. Her wing remained where is was.
Day stared up at the sky and tried to think. He felt slow and off-balance. He idly wished for the fake calm he’d had before - at least then, he could think clearly. He started with what he knew most intimately, the forest.
“Of everything that’s happened... I think the forest’s the one thing I can handle. At least it hasn’t tried to kill me or anything. And it’s... nice... like a safety blanket or something.” The forest’s connection was once again running smoothly in his mind after the large influx of information about the goings-on from his night spent unconscious. Interspersed with the raw, factual information were bits of emotions and impressions from the forest and its tenants that made his calm and peaceful. It knew he needed comfort and it tried to provide.
“I can sort of see how this new body is a gift. Aside from the headache, there’s nothing wrong with me.” He looked at his hands and shuddered, “Nothing except I’m blue. And I look like an elf. I can’t believe I’m starting to freak out about this now. How did I accept it the first time?”
Luna’s wing shifted on his chest and came to rest beneath his chin.
“At least I can feel, though I’m not even going to ask how that’s supposed to work.” He stroked his fingers through the downy feathers on the wing’s bone structure. His sense of touch seemed unchanged though now that he was paying particular attention to it, he acknowledged it might be a bit clearer. His fingers’ exploration coaxed a slight shiver down the length of the wing. He stopped to make sure Luna was still asleep before resuming his stroking.
“What the hell do I do now?” He gently banged his head against the ground. “There’s no way that God or The Creator or whatever put me here. But she thinks so. And she’s got a reason for me to be here - a purpose.” He closed his eyes and draped his free arm over them with a quiet clink of metal against metal. “Do I help her? If anything, I’m alone here. I’ve been sent to the past.”
A pang of resentment and anger at the situation raced through him but he forced it under the surface again. It was still there and he could feel it normally, but he didn’t want to be distracted. “I’m not going back. I don’t have the time to dwell on it, as much as I would love to hit something it won’t fix anything.”
The forest sent him a bit of sympathy, “And the forest needs me. It all comes back to that doesn’t it... Celestia and the forest, me and the forest... I can’t walk away from that.
“So... I help her... At the very least, she’s trying to save people or at least she says she does. And honestly, Celestia looked like she wanted to die when I saw her and that’s depressing in an of itself - a demi-goddess wanting to die - that’s just disturbing.” His fingers stroked down the wing on his chest following the layers of coverts and primaries. The feathers were surprisingly waxy and pliant. They bent at the slightest pressure.
He couldn’t help the feeling of optimism that welled up from inside, not that he knew where it was coming from considering everything that had happened. “So, all I have to do is save a demi-goddess by helping a demi-goddess using a forest and my own natural charm. Shouldn’t be too hard. Hopefully. Or something.”
He looked down his body and noticed that all the feather beneath his hand had fluffed up and the wing beneath him was rigid. He poked at it gently for a moment to find out what he’d done when he heard a quiet squeak next to his ear.
He turned to look at a very red-faced Luna.