17 - Water from Stone
Lyra returned home to find Sweetie Drops still behind the counter, and two ponies for customers, and she recognized them. Darrell and Shattered Stone were seated side-by-side, sharing candies and chatting. They looked happy enough, though Lyra began to wonder what they were up to.
She crept up quietly to Bon Bon, staying below the counter. Bon Bon looked down at her with a raised brow and Lyra waved for her to come down with her.
Bon Bon sighed, then lowered herself. "Stop being weird, Lyra." Then she rose up without listening to anything Lyra had to say.
Lyra pouted, but gave up her attempt at stealth and stood up. Darrell spotted her instantly. "Hey Lyra! We were hoping you'd get here soon."
Shattered bobbed his head. "We got you a special treat."
Bon Bon dipped down and pulled out a large box and set it on the counter. "They wouldn't stop pestering me until I told them."
Lyra used her magic to quickly open the box, jittering with excitement. "You didn't have to...?" She trailed off as the inside was revealed to be a smooth sphere, like a great big marble of dark cyan. "What is it?" She was hoping for a carrot cake, considering the box's size. This thing could have fit in a much smaller box, being only softball sized.
Darrell reached in and scooped it out with a hoof, setting it on the counter. "It's a focus, for 'especially talented unicorns.'"
Shattered brushed his wing over it, polishing it to a shine. "The pony at the store said it helps keep spells going."
Lyra grinned like a fool. She should have recognized it. She snatched up the marble in her magic and could feel even the touch of her horn's almost passive grip flow so smoothly around it. "How did you get enough bits for this? These things are only made by, like... two ponies in all Equestria."
Darrell and Shattered shared a look before Shattered answered. "Well a lot of it was Sunny. Her parents wanted to reward you for keeping her safe, but we all chipped in."
"Except Sam." Shattered stuck out his tongue. "He didn't even want to talk."
Lyra pouted a moment. "I'm working on that, but thank you all so much. This is too much." She wagged the orb around, considering what to do with it.
Darrell started to look nervous and Shattered swatted her on the back. "Go on, ask."
Darrell cleared her throat. "Well, uh, I was thinking maybe... if it wouldn't be so bad, you could use it to make me a stallion?"
Bon Bon snorted, barely fighting down a laugh. She wandered off towards the kitchen where she could laugh without hurting their feelings.
Lyra bobbed her head. "A fine test! I'll make you such a stallion!"
Shattered chuckled. "Let's not go overboard. He has to fit you know."
Lyra looked confused a moment before bursting into laughter. "I'll keep that in mind." She focused her magic through the orb she held and bathed Darrell in the warm glow. To a human, the difference between a mare and a stallion was all in the muzzle shape, but Lyra knew there was so much more to it, and took her time. It felt so easy to do with the orb to help lay down the semi-permanent tracks. A shame the orb could only hold up one spell at a time, but ah well. Soon Darrell was a fine specimen of masculinity.
Darrell giggled, then cleared his throat and let out a deeper laugh. "I'm fixed! I knew you could do it!"
Lyra waved the orb. "Fair warning, it only holds one spell at a time. If I use it for anything else, it's back to mare for you."
Shattered tilted his head. "So why not just put it away?"
Lyra considered that with a soft chin tapping. She didn't have the orb before that day, and Darrell's joyful expression was something she wanted to last. "Well... alright, for now. Find another way before the year's up though. It wouldn't be healthy to hold it that long anyway." No sooner than she finished than Darrell lept over the counter and tackled her to the ground, gushing his thanks and squeezing her tightly.
Eventually the two departed. Lyra noticed that Darrell didn't mention once any dissatisfaction with his pony self, and hadn't in some time, and felt happy. Both he and Shattered had come around a good way. Lyra took over cooking that evening, letting Sweetie take a break and be fed for a change. They enjoyed their meal together, and the day ended.
Lyra woke the next day and found Cheerilee on the way to her office. The school-mare smiled brightly. "I was hoping to see you. Can you tell me more about Lucy?"
Lyra tilted her head. "Hey Cheers, what about her?"
Cheerilee rolled a hoof. "She's behaving better, and thank you for that, but I can't shake the feeling there's something... off about her. She doesn't know things that should be obvious, but pulls out things no foal has any business knowing. I just don't understand how she knows what she knows."
Lyra cringed a little, pondering quickly what she should say. "Well... she is a special foal. She just wants to learn, and to teach. It's her cutie mark even! She wants to be a teacher like you, Cheerilee."
Cheerilee reacted well to the idea of being copied. "Oh that's sweet, did she says that?"
Lyra bobbed her head. "She definitely wants to be a teacher. She, uh, said she was a teacher in a past life." Not technically a lie.
Cheerilee tilted her head, leaning in a little. "You believe in that? I would laugh, but she really does act like that, doesn't she? Maybe it's a crystal pony thing... Well, thank you, Lyra. I'll try to be patient with her." She walked off towards the market, leaving Lyra to get to her office and flip the sign over to 'open'.
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This story.....
Great premise, but you are doing a poor job at the "Show vs Tell" bit.
6022091 I've been told I show too much, and I've been told I show too little. Can you be more specific please?
Yes, I am indeed reading this story as well. It has Lyra and possibly displaced humans, now it just needs another 10,000 more chapters so I can be reading the final chapter on my death bed in 50 years or whenever I get sucked through a hole in space time and plopped somewhere else.
Hope Sam feels better, he seems to have no reason to enjoy being a pony, but at the same time he doesn't WANT to because he'd rather be himself rather then some forced form given upon him.
I can empathize with that, my body aint perfect but it's better then something drastically different.
6022100
Hmmm..
From what I see, if actually take the time to flesh out the chapters, each of them would be two or three times bigger and still be functional.
As I understand it, at any rate.
6022188 Heh, wild conspiracy theories were spooking some of our readers something awful, and was a powerful distraction from the core themes of the fic. Let us soak gently in the slice of life times of Lyra and her patients, though with them recovering so well, soon they will 'graduate', what then?
Good chapter, Glad Darrel could find a way to be a male again, even if he's still a pony and it's only a temporary solution. At the same time it could lead to a funny situation xD. Imagine he's in a romantic situation with a mare and then lyra decides she's going to use the magic orb thing for something and bam Poor Darrel xD.
6022228 What if she's into that? It could be the start of something!
6022100
Yeah, "show vs tell" doesn't really help much. As a rule of thumb, I like to think it's best to go into detail about what the character's are thinking, using less or more detail depending on their mood, and only describe things that the characters notice, are important to the scene, or that set up dramatic irony.
...Also, to be honest, any rules of thumb I could give won't really help much. You can learn rules that would take pages or books to write in their entirety by practicing, and the only way you can perfect the smaller details (like characterization in stories or accent in speech) is to have someone constantly check them and tell you the difference.
Ooh, a semipermanency focus. Neat. And now Darrell has an old friend back.
Also, Lucy's precocity doesn't go unnoticed. Darn therapist-patient confidentiality, making Lyra look like she believes in something as hokey as past lives when the filly's really just a dimensionally displaced alien plains ape. So much simpler and more believable, that.
6022258 Yeah
6022421 Cheerilee> ... If you didn't want to tell me, you could have just said that.
Oh good, that's a relief that things got resolved in a semi-permanent sense for Darrell. Also very good to see Lyra taking patient-doctor confidentiality so seriously (I can forgive her telling Twilight since she is a princess and should be kept up to date about something like that). Another fine chapter yet again!
6022495 She also blabbed to Sweetie Drops, but Lyra just can't say no to Bonnie.
6022512
Well who could say no to BonBon, she's adorable!
6022258
Well that's one way to help resolve that, and give it more of a dilemma for Darrell. What would he be willing to give up for a relationship?
This story makes me want to strangle it's Lyra. For incompetence
6022554 That's the joke. She is really trying her best though. Best friend, shitty therapist.
6022188 ..It's spoiled to want your body that you've become accustomed to your entire life back rather then living life as a sudden quadruped?
Nice chapter, but there's a minor thing you may want to edit.
You're missing a quotation mark.
6023282 Oopsie, fixed!
6022893 Exactly! Sam also seems to be the only one of the group who is really concerned about being human again.
The introduction of conspiracy wasn't bad. It was how you did it and how fast it both happened and resolved, with the resolution barely making any sense. A game? Really?
And the "Sunny transformed into Samantha" and you mentioning fingers and hands... So she turned into a human?
Good story, but the whole thing is seriously starting to bug me. Assuming they all were human before, then their adaption seems too fast. It can take months or even years for a person to adapt to the loss of a single limb, even with therapy. These people have had their entire bodies ripped away and replaced with something alien. That doesn't seem to be something that could be adapted to so easily.
From another angle, some people define themselves solely by their mentality, or "who they are". They would have less trouble adapting overall but are a minority. Others, define themselves purely by their physical appearance or "what they are" and would be losing their minds every time they saw a reflective surface. They are less of a minority, but are still uncommon. Most people sit somewhere in between these absolutes, and would struggle significantly with the physical identity crisis whilst remaining certain of their humanity mentally. Therapy to convince them otherwise would be the worst possible option and should lead to hostility, resentment and eventually suicidal tendencies and total mental breakdown as their sense of self crumbles. A burden like this cannot be shared with strangers, which is essentially what these people are to each other. Strangers forced together from different walks of life by circumstance. So far, only Sam has showed any real signs of resisting therapy and emotional breakdown, whilst the others have just accepted things and moved on, despite the possibility of a human existence, even a parody of it, being possible. If that hope exists, why are they simply sitting back and accepting what they've been given? It doesn't make sense from a psychological point of view, at least not as I understand it.
Throwing themselves into work like the butcher did can be a coping mechanism, which could partly explain him, but Lucy the teacher has no such mechanism, beeping placed under the additional stress of going through schooling a second time and being told much of what she knows is either wrong or too advanced for equestrians to understand. If anyone should have snapped by now, it should have been her. Also, Sunny being a pony the whole time would be a sudden blow to all of their mental fortitude.
In summary, the story quality is good, but the reactions of the humans don't always ring true.
6024601 I fully admit to not being an expert on this subject. Besides one moment of action, this has been a fairly laid back story, rather than a tale of humans-in-pony-bodies breaking down into quivering masses of miserable flesh. While their wails would be more realistic, it wasn't quite the story I wanted to tell.
Please forgive me.
6024601 Well, wouldn't a realistic story be much much longer? And less of a plot and more of a life story, which frankly, aren't very interesting in my opinion. Just my take on it.