"What do Newfoals eat?" Kim asks, her voice its usual deadpan tone, as she examines the contents in the fridge. "My assumption is that you aren't the ravenous carnivore you used to be. So, are you a ravenous herbivore now?"
Martha laughs and nods. She has always be drawn to Kim's awkward quirks, has always found them to be rather adorable, and she has to restrain herself from nuzzling her -
Nuzzling. That would be an odd thing to do. Would she have felt the urge to nuzzle into Kim as a human? Martha makes a quiet "hm" sound as she ponders this.
She is brought back to reality by Kim's own musing:
"I have salad. Ponies like salad, right?"
Martha blinks. Kim nods, as though affirming something, and comes to the conclusion that "Ponies like salad."
~~~
Martha and Kim are seated together at a table. Kim has not made herself anything to eat; she has only pulled a can of Diet Coke out from the fridge. She takes a sip from it. Martha looks at the salad placed before her and reaches her head down to nibble at it. When she was younger, her parents jokingly told her that humans do not eat with their faces in their food like animals. As she remembers this, Martha feels her face flush and her heart beat softly, nervously against her chest. She lifts her head up from the plate, places a hoof to her mouth as she clears her throat, and asks Kim in a voice that is a whisper, "Could you look away while I'm eating?"
Kim nods and turns away. Martha eats in silence. Even though Kim is no longer looking, she still feels like there are eyes on her, eyes that are watching her eat like a... like an animal. She brings her forelegs up to her food and scarfs it down, hoping to make the feeling go away. Her ears twitch as she hears Kim take another sip of Diet Coke. Her appetite vanishing, Martha shoves the plate of salad away. She looks at Kim and clears her throat. As Kim glances over her shoulder, Martha quickly scans through a mental list of conversation starters and decides to settle on: "So, how have you been?"
"Fine, I guess," Kim responds with a shrug. Another sip. Kim places her drink on the table. She turns to face Martha and crosses her arms. She says in a somewhat quiet voice, "I'm going to admit that I called you over for a specific reason."
Martha's ears prick up. "Oh?"
Martha wonders if Kim notices how her eyes are slightly widening; if she can hear how heavily her heart is pounding right now; after six years, Kim will finally say that she loves her, and Martha will embrace her and say how she has felt the same way; and she knows it's ridiculous imagining how passionately they will kiss each other; she knows that her corny, overly-optimistic, and borderline sexual fantasies resemble her ex-partner's terrible self-published romance novels, but she can't help but have them, and they swirl and swirl about in her mind because soon, soon, fantasy will become reality -
"I wanted to know what the process of becoming a Newfoal is like."
The stupid, vivid fantasies vaporize. Martha looks away from Kim, unsure of how else to conceal the furious blush that is burning on her cheeks. "Why do you want to ask me about this?" She brushes her foreleg and gives a small, involuntary shudder. "Why not ask somepony more experienced than I am about what being a Newfoal is like?"
Kim shrugs. "You're my friend. You could tell me about it, couldn't you?" She reaches her hand forward - to what, Martha doesn't know - then draws it back.
You're my friend.
So, Martha thinks, I still mean something to her. And maybe telling her what being a Newfoal would be helpful... She won't go through what she was...
Martha continues to rub her foreleg, her gaze still averted from Kim. "What about the process do you want to know about?"
Kim shuffles in her seat. "What is it like going through the Bureau?"
"Well, the Bureau is pretty huge." Martha's head lifts up, her eyes on the ceiling; they squint slightly as she tries to remember the details. "They're absolutely crowded with humans," she says. "Some of them cry really loudly, which can be pretty distracting, especially when you're trying to accept the fact that you have to change your entire body for the sake of - " She cuts herself off and says, "Anyway - There are Equestrian ponies there that come over to try and reassure the humans..."
Human.
Newfoal.
Both alien words.
She continues, "And soon your name gets called on a loudspeaker, along with some other names, and then you get taken into a room by someone - somepony - who also tries to reassure you and comfort you..." Her voice drifts off as she remembers the kind unicorn Blue-Pop, and how gently her hoof stroked her bare skin (Martha realizes that she has forgotten what bare skin feels like) and said... She remembers how the unicorn's voice reminded her of her mother, but the words Blue-Pop said... The words, perhaps, did not matter so much in the moment. Perhaps that is why she can't remember them.
"So you're taken into this room, and the unicorn - pony - that escorts you in stays with you while this doctor-pony prepares to inject the serum into you - "
She hears Kim chuckle and looks at her. "Doctor-pony," Kim repeats with a tiny grin. "So, was there a big whooshy blue telephone box in the room?"
Silence. Then Martha slowly replies, "No, Kim. There was not a big whooshy blue telephone box in the room."
Kim crosses one leg over the other. "Do they try to ask those layman questions?"
Martha's head tilts to the side. "What layman questions?"
"You know, ask you how your day was while they jam a needle into your skin."
"Um..." Pause. "That's... That's what they do, actually, yes..."
Kim nods. "What does getting injected with the serum feel like?"
That was... Strange... Not that Kim was ever not-strange, but... If Kim's bizarre quips were meant to pull away the invisible claws that were beginning to dig into her neck, then why were those claws now sinking further into it?
Then she realized: it was because Kim wasn't asking something that she wanted her to.
She shoved this realization to the back of her mind and answered Kim's question: "There is this warmth that spreads all over your body, and then you fall asleep."
"Did you have any dreams?"
Many Newfoals have reported, before waking up in their new bodies, to have had dreams that they soon realized were reflections of their thoughts, their memories, their aspirations, their fears... Some have even claimed to have been visited by Luna, the Princess of the Night, and a Walker of Dreams.
Martha hastily answers, "I did have a dream, but I don't remember it so well. And then I woke up, and now I'm a pony." No, not even a pony. "A Newfoal."
"What does it feel like to be a Newfoal?"
Martha places her forelegs on the table. She looks down at her hooves. "It feels... Strange, I guess..."
And then, without giving Kim time to say anything, without giving thought to the words that tumble out, she says to Kim what she has realized only moments ago:
"You haven't asked me how I am."
Kim doesn't respond, so Martha says in a harsher tone, "You asked me what being a Newfoal is like, but never how I was."
Kim asks, her voice soft, "What are you upset about? I don't understand."
Something is churning within Martha, and she slams her hooves against the table, causing Kim to jolt back. She screams, "Am I still even Martha to you!?"