//------------------------------// // Prologue // Story: Changing Anatomies // by BlueAlicorn //------------------------------// I got home from work at Farm & Fleet more exhausted than ever. I normally worked as a regular cashier, but my friend, Dominic, our designated strongman and box-picker-upper, had the day off, so it was up to me to lift all of the boxes that were in need of relocation. Still, today was an extremely weird day. Two girls had bought a shit ton of supplies, allegedly for their farm. There was this one farm about 1-2 hours away from us, outside of town. They were known for their excellent organic corn. No other farm could ever reach the quality of their food, ever, even if they tried. Hard. Sometimes we came for a visit there, but not often. The owners were... Jack and... Alan maybe? Definitely not girls. Not really important anyway, I guessed. Marta, the cashier who saw all that, was talking about how the girls talked about eating raw alfalfa. Raw alfalfa? Really? Of course it was highly unlikely, so I dismissed it as Marta’s bad hearing. Dominic had the day off because it was his birthday, after all. The birthday party was coming up, but he wanted to wait for me and our common friend, Cynthia, to become 25 as well. You see, our birth dates were extremely close together, and since we were very close friends since Junior High (which is, by the way, the stupidest thing in connection with schools to be invented ever), we always had our party together at Cynthia’s. Generally we’d also stay there another two or three days and do something together, like going sightseeing and playing games. Dominic was born on the 2nd of May, I was brought to the world on the 3rd, and Cynthia had her date of birth also on the 3rd. She still lived with her parents which I couldn’t blame her for because they were really rich. Really really rich. We could have our birthday party anywhere in their mansion and they wouldn’t hear anything if they just went into another wing. They even had a huge, and by that I mean HUGE garden. Cynthia had always tended to the garden with great care, which was good, because she ate a lot of her own veggies. One of the many, and perhaps the best thing about her was that she didn’t play the ‘rich card’ out much, meaning that she wasn’t a spoiled brat, she just tried to be ‘normal’ and fit in. Then again, what was normal in this world? But that didn’t always work. With her parents being so rich, she attracted a lot of ‘friends’ who wanted nothing but her money. Luckily, it was pretty easy to distinguish between real friends and moneygrabbers. Anyways, I made myself some corn-on-the-cob for dinner and turned on the TV. Just as I got comfortable on the couch, I facepalmed. “I forgot to congratulate him, goddamnit!” Of course I would congratulate Dominic at the birthday party, but it was just polite to be on time. I got up hastily and scrambled towards my phone. *beeeep* *beeeep* *bee.. “Hello?” Dominic sounded a bit distraught with a smidgen of exhaustion in it too. “Hi Dominic, happy birthday to you, man! Also, what’s with your voice? You didn’t move boxes all day, like me, did you? How come you seem so out of breath?” I could practically see him scratch his head while he was searching for an answer. “Hello back, Anon, and thanks for the congratulations. I’m exhausted because, well, you see, today has kinda been a weird day for me.” I chuckled. “You know, me too. Marta said that there were two girls who wanted to eat raw alfalfa. RAW ALFALFA. Although, I don’t really think that she heard that right. Also they bought farm and horse supplies for almost 500 Dollars.” Dominic was soundly impressed. “Not bad, pretty weird. But mine’s been even weirder.” I retorted. “Aha. And how so?” I could hear Dominic shuffling around. “Yeah, nah, I’ll tell you tomorrow at Cynthia’s. I have to process the things that occurred today.” I got a bit worried. “Hey man, what’s up? You can tell me, we’ve been friends for ever now. If you have a secret, you can tell me, I won’t tell anyone else. Except maybe Cynthia. I Pinkie Promise.” Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I’m a diehard brony. So is Dominic. Cynthia technically is too, but she preferred to call herself diehard ‘pegasister’. Ever since the show was cancelled after season five (with an absolutely horrible ending, I might add), the fandom had slowly died down. Less fan-made art, animation and fanfics were showing up, but we still liked the show, listened to all of the music the fandom had created (20% cooler!) and watched reruns of seasons one, two and three. I had no fucking idea what Hasbro was thinking for seasons number four and five, it was just... so wrong. We still clung to the show, though. Dominic sighed loudly. “Okay. I Pinkie Promise that I will tell you both tomorrow, okay? Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye. But then you don’t tell anyone either, okay?” I laughed. “Dominic, it’s me! Anon! One of your best friends. We don’t have secrets. You sound almost afraid, man! Nothing can scare you! Come on, you’re Dominic, the guy who actually LIKES Thunderstorms! What in the world could you be scared of?” I thought that I heard a wince on Dominic’s end of the phone, but I dismissed it and cotinued. “ Okay man, I’m content with you telling me tomorrow, but then you better have something for me!” Dominic let out a dry laugh, but with no humor behind it. “Oh, believe me, I have something for you in store. And I think I know who did it.” “Huh?” “Like I said, I’ll try to explain everything tomorrow. I’d recommend that you get a good night’s sleep.” I was confused. “Okaaaay, see you tomorrow at 2.” “Goodbye, Anon.” “Bye, Dom…” He had already hung up. I was quite confused, yet again. “Oh well, maybe he just doesn’t want me to know that he has a huge surprise planned and he wants us to be really overwhelmed at the sight of it.” I went back to my plate at the couch and finish the rest of the corn. Damn, that was good corn. Clearly from that farm. Just then, I felt like going to sleep for some reason. “Man, did they put sleeping pills in the corn or what?” I thought to myself that with my big day tomorrow, becoming 25 and all, I should probably get some rest. I put the plate in the dishwasher and poured myself a drink. Some water. I gulped it down and made my way up to my bedroom, past my ‘hobby room’, which was where I kept my, you guessed it, hobby. I was totally into minerals and crystals and had a huge collection of them, ranging from Amethysts to many kinds of different Zeolites (get it? A to Z? Horrible jokes for LIFE). I had always had a thing for gems and the sorts and I had started collecting them from a young age already. I got to the bedroom door and opened it. Through my sleepiness, I thought about tomorrow again. “The day is going to be packed full with stuff to do.” I slowly drifted into sleep, not knowing just how correct my statement was.