All the King’s Horses
A Conversion Bureau story.
Chapter Twelve: Wish you Were Here
Across green fields of the endless prairie the herd ran, bringing with them a cooling wind that soothed the pain of existence. Thundering hooves drove a bass of tremulous vigour through the very earth itself, rising up through her naked feet and permeating her very being. On the whisper of ghostly motivations the herd turned towards the watcher, moving as a single being to sweep around and through her brief, physical body. Laughter and joy shone from every mare and stallion, each calling to her to run in harmony with the infinite green lands.
For the first time since her ordeals began, Katrina felt alive. The world was no longer an unreal place beyond a pane of hazy glass. Deep in her heart, the crevasse of pain was filled with love, belonging and hope.
Enraptured by unchained happiness, Kat reached out into the ethereal herd just as the last trailing mane flowed past, sprinting away to encircle the youngster in a blurring wall of sinuous colours. Somehow, without truly understanding why, the lonely girl knew that they were waiting, waiting for her.
“Saigo no kōgō wa, taiyō-shin kara nani o shitaidesu ka?”
Motherly and gentle, the voice wafted close to her ear, carried on a breath that tasted of mountain springs and stardust.
“Ketsumatsu.” Kat replied, the answer braking through unbidden from her wounded soul.
Soft fur of a majestic muzzle brushed kindly against the awe struck teens neck, filling her with a comfort long forgotten. “Ahh, the one thing I cannot bring you. But perhaps, a new beginning?”
Vertigo spun the green world into a warm embracing darkness. Renewed lungs took their first breath in earnest as the girl floated just below the surface of consciousness, drawing in the scent of sanitising agents and antiseptics. Laying on her side, Katrina’s tingling body brought affirmation of the metallic table, against which her right arm was uncomfortably pinned. This was strange, because she was also fairly certain that her arms were lazily draped in front of her, their hard hooves rasping gently against the metal bed.
Misplaced muscles pulled her hearing around in a dizzying Doppler effect. Nearby, voices were in hushed discussion about colours and unfamiliar measurements, strangely mobile ears swivelling with little effort to get a better scoop of the conversation. Sadly the analysis cut short as the participants noticed their subject stirring woozily. Follicles of freshly grown fur tingled at gentle wakes in the air around her relaxed body. Without even opening her twitching eyes, Katrina could ‘feel’ the doctor approach, vaguely sensing his outreached hand just before it brushed softly along her shoulders.
Eliciting a small happy sigh, the gentle touch lifted Kat the last step to the waking world. Eyes like giant emeralds opened unto a world filled with subtle colours and tones. Bland white walls revealed their subtle hints of turquoise, even the once grey O.R table was now glossy silver, laced with an oily blue sheen. A curtain of pastel lemon hair obscured the other half of her vision, wafting slightly in the girl’s steady breaths.
“Ah, you’re awake. Deep breath… And out again.”
Craning her surprisingly long neck, Kat turned to see Dr Malcolm beside her, listening attentively to the stethoscope held against her chest. Acutely away of her nudity, Katrina’s eyes took in the scope of her new body, especially the absence of livid scars and burns. Lush green fur flowed across perfectly formed equine withers, falling away beneath a lazily relaxed wing and rising once more along smooth flanks. Feathers twitched at her attention, stretching like fingers as she tried to move the now absent digits.
“Pulse is good, no obstructions in the lungs. Everything looks to be in order at least. We’re going to try and stand you up now. Nurse, lower the table would you kindly.”
With a hiss of pistons Katrina’s metal bed descended to floor level. Though the difficulties of standing after the transformation had been mentioned at orientation, Kat had not expected things to be as comical as they turned out to be. As the doctor looked on in disinterest Kat wiggled herself to the edge of the table and slid off. Legs crumpling in perfect symmetry, the disorientated Pegasus began a most graceful descent through onehundred and eighty degrees, pushed on when her other two legs overcorrected and locked their joints. After a slow smooth roll across her flank, Kat found herself resting on her back.
“Would you like a hand there, dear?” Malini offered, leaning over the tortoised pony with suppressed entertainment.
Normally such a show of weakness would have greatly irritated the youngster. Instead a feeling of embarrassment was quickly swept away by a rising fit of giggles, unable to overcome the image of just how silly that must have looked from the attendant’s perspective. For the first time in a long while, Katrina felt the urge to return the grin. Not the grimace of someone lost in their own private hell, but the genuine thing backed by a rush of elation that filled her from head to toe. Kicking her legs in a slow bicycle motion, the little Pegasus couldn’t help but burst out laughing at her predicament.
A little help from the attending nurse soon had the vertically challenged equine onto her hooves.
Undeterred by the giddiness shared by the females, Malcolm slid a hand beneath Katrina’s reflexively folded wings and stretched out each of them in turn. Carefully feeling the bone and taught muscles for deformities, he remained stone faced to the filly’s impromptu giggles as his fingers brushed sensitive spots. Assessment complete, the doctor stood up to scrutinize the newly formed Pegasus from afar, as an artist would a disappointing sculpture.
Careful not to trap her tail, Kat sat down awkwardly and turned her emerald eyes to the doctor filling out the last gaps in his report. Intuition had never been one of Katrina’s strong suits, being about as attentive to the emotions of others as a random insult generator. Despite this, something about Malcolm’s aloof demeanour struck a chord with some untapped empathy in the feathery pony’s recently rewired brain; This man begrudged his work.
“What’s wrong doctor?” Queried the newfoal, a part of her wondering why she felt the compulsion to ask at all, “You look worried.”
When only a grumbled response about paper work seemed to be forthcoming, Nurse Malini ducked down to Kat’s new eye level and offered a reassuring smile.
“You look wonderful, Hun. How do you feel?”
“Like the total opposite of what I was expecting.” The pony replied, with absolute sincerity. “I’m not sure what I was hoping for anymore, maybe some bright light and then nothingness. But I’m still here… mostly. And I’ve got this strong urge to run around.”
“We get that a lot with Pegasi, they always seem to be ready to run a marathon the moment their eyes open.” Melini reassured, brushing away her uncooperative fringe, “Completely counterintuitive. Unicorns and normal ponies usually come too feeling completely drained.”
Something in Katrina’s expression made the nurse pause, a fleeting look of rising panic that was quickly buried beneath the exaggerated grin.
“Okay then… Well let’s try walking back to your room, shall we? Just take it slow, you’ll find yourself taking more tumbles otherwise.”
Escorting the pony through the clinic proved a lot more difficult the Malini had expected, even with a fresh conversion. Unable to keep track of her additional limbs, the Pegasus kept getting mixed up between wings and forelegs, throwing her already frail balance and resulting in an odd wobbly goose step. To make matters worse the ex-human seemed completely distracted, stumbling whenever her concentration slipped from the process at hand. Even with the kindly nurse’s help, it made her first walk into a trial of frustration.
“Carefully now, you’re doing so well!” Malini said, her encouragement driving the Pegasus the last few feet to her dorm.
“Nearly there. And here we go! Now, do you remember how to-”
A buzz of magnets cut off the attendant mid sentence, Katrina smirking from around the bit hanging next to the doorframe.
“Ah, so you didn’t actually sleep through orientation then?”
“Nope! Still slept through it,” Replied the filly, “But I kinda guessed it was either a door handle or an alarm. So I pulled all the one’s down the hall first night I was here.”
Rolling her eyes, the nurse gently pushed the door open and waited for the pony to amble over the threshold. “Well I’m glad it wasn’t the latter. I’ve got to get back to the clinic now, so if you need a hand getting around, just use the call button on the wall there. There’s still a few hours till dinner, do you want me to come by for you?”
Kat shook her head, “No, that’s okay. Thank you though.”
Carefully nosing the door closed, the filly turned towards the sparse interior, listening to the footfalls as the nurse went back to her work. As the sounds faded, a void of stillness opened up in the small sterile room, the ubiquitous hum of florescent lights seeping from their milieu to torment those unfortunate enough to take notice. Katrina Weatherly, stripped of egocentric blinkers, rested her forehead against the textured surface of the far wall.
“Baka.” She muttered in barely a whisper.
Drawing back slightly, Kat let her head fall back against the white washed concrete, cursing her own selfishness.
“Anata orokana, riko-tekina, muchina on'nanoko!”
--
With the last traces of dusk vanishing beyond the lonely cityscape, Katrina sat in the cooling night air and watched the inert husk. For several hours she had searched the extensive grounds, knowing only that Sarah would not have roamed far from the world-corp faculty. Eventually she had walked the circumference of the ornate building, at last finding what could be considered a ‘corpse’ stood before the Bureau service entrance.
At first she had pleaded, begged the unblinking eyes to simply acknowledge her presence. When the accusing silence became deafening, she had cried, soundless tears staining her muzzle and pooling before penitent hooves at which she stared. Now she simply sat, unable to do anything bar gaze at the empty vessel. Seeking even so much as a comforting touch would have invited the cold wrath of the machine.
Deep in her melancholy, she barely noticed the bump of an outer door opening, looking up only when the approaching clatter of hooves paused. Their owner was the lively earth pony whom had first greeted them to the Bureau, now subdued and carrying a tray of food on her back.
Ignoring the other equine for a moment, Dizzy walked slowly alongside the forlorn Pegasus and craned her neck to look up at the spectre.
“Hello Sarah.” She said aloud, tone chirpy but lacking the abundant energy associated with the young secretary, “You’ve been out here a while, and I thought you might be hungry. Didn’t know what you’d like though, so I brought a bit of everything-“
“She can’t hear you.” Kat croaked, red ringed eyes studying the floor, “Even if she could, she can’t respond.”
Dizzy smiled softly, “I know. But I’d rather be sure then leave her out here alone. What does she like?”
“Doesn’t eat. Just bio-gel and glucose.”
“That’s a shame.” Said the pony, reaching around to the tray and placing it down at her hooves, “The hay fries are getting cold.”
Katrina shivered against the chilly air, the scent of fresh food caressing her senses even through the emotion induced mucus. Up till now, missing dinner hadn’t bothered the filly. Now an empty stomach began voicing its complaints to the management in loud bubbling groans.
A plate slid across the rough concrete, bearing a cargo of tossed salad and what looked like brittle straw. Wide and inviting, the platter filled Kat’s vision and assailed her taste buds with promises of the divine.
“No sense in wasting these then.” Dizzy suggested, looking back to the statue like figure before the pair. “You don’t mind if she has yours, right Sarah?”
Tucking into her own pile of greens, the little pony remained carefully aloof as her companion tentatively sniffed at the presented ‘food’. It was unlikely that the girl had seen or tasted grown produce in her life before coming to Portland. Yet the plate before her must have seemed a paradox of unappetising temptation. Like most new convertees, she started slowly, eventually braving the golden stalks to the private delight of her one mare audience.
There was a moment of pure gastronomic joy, the broad goofy smile escaping the edges of the new pony’s melancholy as she chewed heartily on her first meal. But gradually the smile bled away and, after swallowing the first bite, Kat nudged the plate aside.
“I don’t deserve this.” She muttered bitterly, “After what I’ve done, I don’t deserve to be happy ever again.”
Shuffling until she could lay on her stomach, Dizzy continued to explore her own meal, more out of a need for focus then hunger.
“It’s okay, I think she wanted it to be this way. She seemed oddly happy about it, just pleased that you’d be safe.”
Kat shook her head solemnly, “You don’t understand. I knew this was going to happen and I didn’t care. Didn’t stop to think.”
Once again there was a gentle patter of tears striking dusty concrete. Above them, the unchanging constellations that had once guided ancestors across oceans revelled in the freedom of their renewed sky, oblivious to the torment of man’s fleeting existence.
“I killed her… mu-murdered her. I’m a horrible, selfish monster.”
A strong neck suddenly wrapped around the despairing pony’s own, guiding Kat’s chin to Dizzy’s soft withers. Dams finally broke within the comfort of the earthpony’s embrace, the compassionate nuzzling and hushed soothing reassurances drawing out her grieving in great wailing sobs. Beneath the statuesque shade of Sarah’s ambulatory remains, apologies and stories flowed freely between the two, now more human than they ever had been when they walked on two legs.
And in the cold space where there had once lingered a mind, a recently re-written set of standing orders lay, waiting for its mission to commence.