3. Learning Curve
After a series of bumbling attempts to make it upstairs, Lyra learned a few things about her current body, which essentially boiled down to it somehow being awful at navigating stairs. Lyra wasn’t sure if it was because she was thinking about it too much, or because the stairs were made for a quadrupedal pony half her height, or what, but she slipped twice just trying to climb them with two legs. She blamed it partially on her hoof-less feet and paws. Hands. Whatever – it was, regardless, a miracle that she didn’t slip and break her neck, which she was pretty sure would be considered bad no matter what body she was in.
She made a point of ignoring the fact that the bath was actually easy to handle. Whatever had happened to her front feet, whatever creature she had become, it was obvious that her paws were made for grabbing and manipulating things, and they were almost as good as unicorn telekinesis in that respect – she had no problem turning the faucet to start the shower water flowing. Drying off would be an interesting experience, though; she had no idea how she was supposed to use what was now a tiny towel to that effect, not to mention the cramped quarters in Trixie’s bathroom that already meant that she was mostly kneeling in the shower as she scrubbed off the paint. At least the bathroom had only one small window with its curtain already drawn; no pegasus pony would be flying by and chancing upon the sight of a pale-skinned monster taking a shower.
Once she’d washed the paint off and used a couple of towels to dry herself, she chanced another glance at herself in the mirror. She couldn’t be precisely sure, but she was fairly confident that the face that was looking back at her was not happy.
“I don’t believe this…” she intoned as she began trying to navigate her way down the stairs. It was easiest, she found, if she simply sat down and scooted down them one step at a time. “And of course it would be today. You couldn’t have turned me into a…a…”
Lyra paused in her descent, looking herself over. “A naked bear?” she asked. “No, even bears have muzzles and tails…” with a sigh, she resumed her descent. “Couldn’t of been tomorrow, couldn’t of been yesterday, nooo…”
A notable part of Lyra pointed out that she was the one who had been stupid enough to agree to a transmutation ritual only a few hours before her show in Canterlot, that it wasn’t like Trixie had the book on loan from somewhere, and that this whole thing most certainly could have waited until tomorrow and it was Lyra's own fault that they hadn't.
Lyra told that part of herself to go to the sun at around the same time that her stomach grumbled. She was getting hungry…Lyra made her way into Trixie’s kitchen, the paused, arms one more crossed, as she considered the room and the food she knew was inside.
“Okay,” she intoned. “What do I eat now…?”
---
Fluttershy’s day, so far, was wonderful. She’d had a great and full breakfast with her animal friends, written a letter to her family back in Cloudsdale and sent it off with Ditzy Doo, while also spending some time chatting to the mail mare who was one of her two best (and, admittedly, only) friends. Ditzy Doo had looked like she’d needed the brief break at her house, too – she worked so hard for Dinky Doo, her little foal. Or not really so little anymore! The pegasus pony smiled as she went outside. Foals grew up so fast…which, Fluttershy supposed, was only putting extra strain on Ditzy. She had tried, several times, to work up the nerve to offer financial help to Ditzy Doo, but had never been able to go through with it.
Fluttershy’s pleasant thoughts were interrupted when she saw the door to her chicken coop was open. “Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed, wings fluttering to lend her extra speed as she dashed over to it. “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, how did this happen? How long was it open?” The coop was quite warm, she knew, as long as the door was kept closed, but if it had somehow opened up during the middle of the night…the sound of them all squawking and chirping in panic, however, put even more speed behind her step.
“Mister Fox!” Fluttershy exclaimed as loudly as she could. “If you broke into my chicken coop after how nice I’ve been to you, I’ll…I’ll…”
Fluttershy hadn’t been entirely certain what she’d do if the fox had tried to get to her chickens once more, but on reaching the chicken coop and looking inside, she found a distinct lack of foxes. What she did find was a chicken suspended several feet off of the coop’s floor, wrapped in an unearthly cerulean aura as it flapped and cawed like mad.
“Uh…” a voice said. “Nopony in here but us chickens…”
Fluttershy stared.
“Us smelly…loud…chickens…” the voice said.
Fluttershy stared.
“Are you okay?”
Fluttershy stared.
The chicken began advancing, slowly, hovering towards Fluttershy. There was the sound of hoof-steps on the ramp that led into the chicken coop. A few moments later, a large cloud of blue smoke seemed to appear from nowhere, and just as quickly flowed away in the slight breeze, revealing a blue-coated, purple-eyed unicorn pony, wearing a purple, star-studded cape and matching wizard’s hat. The unicorn raised a hoof slowly, waving it in front of Fluttershy’s face.
Fluttershy stared.
“Okay,” the unicorn said, looking behind her. She closed the chicken coop’s door securely, then reached out with telekinesis and lifted Fluttershy, then brought the pegasus back to her home, where she set her down inside.
“Um,” the unicorn said, holding the still-squawking chicken forward. “I have to borrow this, um…chicken. Borrow. Every intention to return.” After a moment of waiting for a response, the unicorn shrugged. “Um…nice talking to you.” The unicorn turned around, closed Fluttershy’s door, and left, galloping off back towards Ponyville.
---
“Ngh…hng…stupid…useless…paws!” Lyra exclaimed as she continued trying to unscrew the jar of honey, to no avail. If she’d had a horn, it would have been easy: she’d just work the ethereal energy of her telekinesis under the cap. It might have taken a few moments, but the jar would have been open by now.
But these paws (hands, whatever) were useless! Trying to open the jar with what constituted ‘normal’ pressure in her new body hadn’t worked. Trying to apply more had just made her hands get sweaty. The sweat had made it more difficult to open the jar! She didn’t understand how hands could be so great at fine manipulation and so useless at it, at the same time!
“Fine!” Lyra exclaimed after a moment, glaring at the jar of honey before setting it back where she’d found it. “I won’t have any, then!” Lyra glared at the pantry, looking it over before settling on a breadbox. That, at least, was easy to open, and she found a loaf of pre-sliced bread inside. She sniffed it a few times, found that it wasn’t offensive to her nose, and took a bite out of it, chewing and considering.
Well, whatever her new body considered a ‘normal’ diet, it didn’t react violently to bread. That was probably a good sign. She grasped several more slices, then set to work experimenting with various ingredients.
Hay – no. Daffodils – no. Alfalfa – most certainly not. Lyra managed to make it to Trixie’s bin and spit out the alfalfa she’d tried to eat before her new body took it upon itself to throw up.
Lettuce – yes. Tomatoes – yes. Cheese – still good. Pickles – just fine.
“Good,” Lyra decided, as she finished assembling a pair of sandwiches and biting into them. I won’t have to starve. Or kill somepony. That was a major piece of good news: like many bears, it seemed that whatever Lyra was now, it was omnivorous, and she wouldn’t have to become some horrible monster living in the Everfree, stalking and killing animals for their meat.
“Of course,” she said as she took an experimental bite out of a pear and found it fine, “I won’t have to do that anyway because I’m not going to stay like this.”
Lyra set her pear down on a plate, on which she’d set her sandwiches as well, and made her way into Trixie’s living room, sitting down on the floor and grabbing the translated zebra spellbook, beginning to look it over as she ate, trying to find out what went wrong.
And the first thing, she decided as she flipped through the book, was that whoever had translated the spells, but not translated the magic words, had made a huge mistake in deciding to not include a translation for them anywhere. The former-unicorn-now-naked-bear-or-whatever grit her teeth as she paged through the book with one paw-or-hand-or-whatever. Even if the magic words somehow lost their power if spoken in Equestrian, the translator should have at least included a translation somewhere, in an appendix or something.
“Okay,” Lyra said, turning back to the spell that had started this mess. “Okay…wewe ni binadamu. That phrase keeps coming up, so it’s got to be important.” She considered. “It’s probably…probably, like, the core of the spell. Right?” She flipped to the first, failed counter-spell. “Wewe ni tena pundamilia. Okay, so that wewe ni keeps popping up…”
Lyra paused, considering. She turned to another transformational spell, this one supposedly how to turn a zebra into a bird. The phrase wewe ni ndege stood out immediately. Flipping through the book again, she found the counter-spell for that one, and found that the last lines in its magic words were nearly identical to the last lines of the initial counter-spell:
Wewe ni tena ndege
kuwa pundamilia tena
“Okay,” Lyra said, finding another spell, this time turning a zebra into a snake. Strewn throughout its incantation was the phrase wewe ni nyoka…and, turning to its counter-spell, she found the lines wewe ni tena nyoka, kuwa pundamilia tena.
“Okay,” Lyra repeated. “Okay…so if I were guessing…wewe ni whatever has to mean something like ‘turn into this.’ Wewe ni tena whatever is ‘stop being this,’ and kuwa pundamilia tena is…”
Lyra paused as she considered. On a hunch, she started paging through the spell-book, finally finding a spell that would turn a dog into a cat. Sure enough, the phrase wewe ni paka was found – when she turned to its counter-spell, however, the phrase kuwa pundamilia tena had been replaced by kuwa mbwa tena.
“Pundamilia means zebra,” Lyra reasoned, as she turned, once again, to the spell that had started this entire mess. The word pundamilia was not to be found, anywhere, in the spell that was supposed to turn a unicorn into a zebra.
“Great,” Lyra said with a sigh, putting the book down and finishing her pear and second sandwich. “So…so all the steps in the spell were fine, we were just casting the wrong spell. And the counter-spell didn’t work because I wasn’t a zebra, so of course a spell to turn me from a zebra back into a pony wouldn’t work.” She eyed the spellbook, and the magic words that made up the spell. “This is why I hate you,” she informed it, when she heard the door burst open.
The former unicorn let out a yelp as she stumbled over her own malformed front and hind legs trying to dash and hide behind something, succeeding just as a blue-coated, white-maned unicorn dashed into the living room, an incensed-looking chicken in her telekinetic grasp.
“Lyra!” Trixie exclaimed in between gasps for breath, looking right at Lyra’s hiding spot behind the couch. The former unicorn poked her head up at the sound. In response, Trixie pushed the chicken forward, showing Lyra. “Chicken!”
Lyra stared at Trixie, then glanced at the clock. It read 12:45. “Twenty minutes?” she asked.
“You…galloping…try…hate…” Trixie heaved, swaying back and forth a few moments before letting herself fall onto her side. Lyra stood to help, but Trixie waved her away even as she did, barrel heaving. Her horn still glowed, though, holding the chicken suspended in the air. It was still flapping and cawing madly. The unicorn and the thing that had once been a unicorn did their best to ignore it.
Lyra shook her head at Trixie’s objection. “No, I mean I’m impressed. I thought it’d be nearly one o’clock before you made it back.”
“Oh…well, no…back now…”
Lyra considered, biting her lip, a remarkably pony-like action as she considered Trixie. “It’s not your fault,” she said after a moment. “What happened, I mean. I was paging through the spellbook and I think the spell was mislabeled or something. I don’t think it was ever going to turn me into a zebra. So…it’s not your fault.”
“Yay…”
“But that’s a pretty big oversight…who translated it?”
“Dunno,” Trixie admitted as she climbed to her hooves and half-trotted, half-stumbled to the spellbook, looking down at it. “Somepony who clearly needs to brush up on their Zebra. I’ll tell Luna to fire them.” She considered. “Twice.” She paused. “With real fire.” Trixie frowned. “She won’t listen. But I’ll tell her.”
Lyra nodded. “So…Zebra cure-all, then, right?” she said. “How does that work?”
Trixie sighed, looking to the chicken, as did Lyra. The chicken paused in its flapping and cawing, staring back.
---
“Fluttershy is never going to forgive us,” Lyra said as she plucked the last of the feathers from the chicken’s back. Held in place as the chicken was by Trixie’s telekinesis, it was incapable of stopping Lyra as she put her fingers to use. “I’m never going to forgive us. This chicken didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
“Fluttershy doesn’t even know you’re involved,” Trixie noted. “And feathers grow back.” She considered her words for a few moments, looking to Lyra. “Right?”
“How should I know?”
“Because you grew up in Ponyville.”
“Trixie, I’ve never seen a real, live chicken in my life before today.” Lyra grimaced as the hen continued squawking in defiance. “And now I’m plucking the poor thing…”
“Not all of it, just from the back…”
“I still feel bad.”
Trixie nodded, eyeing Lyra. “The spell says that the chicken feathers have to have been plucked within two hours of casting. So that’s why I didn’t have them ready.”
“Makes sense…” Lyra intoned as she gathered the plucked feathers and began laying them down as a second magic circle, just inside of the first one. She looked at the chicken. “What now?”
Trixie considered, moving the bird onto the floor and staring at her, horn glowing brighter as the unicorns’ eyes seemed to turn into spirals for a few moments. The chicken, staring back due to not having any other choice, stopped cawing, blinking a few times before settling down, tucking its head into its wings and going to sleep.
Lyra blinked a few times as Trixie leaned back from the chicken, shaking her head to clear it. “You know a spell for putting chickens to sleep?” she asked, making a face. Enchantments such as the one Trixie had just cast could almost never be applied to any given creature, due to major differences in how brains worked.
Trixie looked to Lyra, shrugging. “I do now,” she said.
Lyra stared. “You…made a spell up on the fly,” she stated.
Trixie shook her head. “No…I just took a sleep spell that I did know and changed it to work on chickens.”
“On the fly.”
Trixie blinked a few times. “Um…yeah,” she said, as though it were both obvious and easy. She pointed to her cutie mark. “Special talent.”
Lyra grunted a little. “So glad you didn’t actually go to the Academy…” she said. “You’d have been hated by everypony. But especially me.”
Trixie shrugged, trotting over from where she’d left the hen and to the spellbook, frowning as she read. “Okay,” she said. “Magic circle of salt this time…candles…chicken feathers…silver. We need a pound of silver inside the circles.”
“A bit coin is about a third of an ounce,” Lyra noted. Trixie grimaced at that, leaving Lyra alone in the kitchen for a few moments as she went into her office and her desk there, opening the bottom drawer and retrieving a bag full of bits. Returning, she began counting out silver pieces, then lay them in a pile at the center of the magic circle.
“Okay, silver,” Trixie said, sighing.
“What, turning me back into a unicorn isn’t worth a few bits?”
“It’s worth forty-eight bits, not a few, and yes, it is worth it, but I wish it didn’t have to be.”
Lyra shrugged. “Guess I can understand…”
“So, anyway. Silver…now let’s see…asphodel flowers wrapped around quartz crystals and soaked in lantern oil – ”
“Who came up with these?” Lyra demanded. “I mean, our magic is right there in us. Learning to use it is like learning to speak, you know? But how the hay did some zebra come up with all this? Who looks at a perfectly good flower and thinks ‘I’m gonna wrap that up and soak it in oil and say some ridiculous junk’!”
“I don’t know,” Trixie admitted as she finished dipping the flowers into oil and put them into the magical circle. “Last, but not least, the pony we’re trying to cure.”
Lyra stepped into the magic circle, careful not to disturb it as she did so, and stood in place, arms crossed. “No paint this time?” she asked.
Trixie shook her head. “No. Okay…here we go…
“Mara tatu paka brinded kwa sauti
“Mara tatu na mara moja, nguruwe ua kuitwa
“Mchezaji analia ni wakati! Ni wakati!
“Pande zote sufuria kwenda
“Katika matumbo sumu kutupa
“Chura, kwamba chini ya baridi jiwe
“Siku mchana na usiku ina thelathini na moja
“Jasho sumu kulala alidai
“Chemsha wewe kwanza katika sufuria uganga!
“Mara mbili, mbili, taabu na shida
“Moto kuchoma na sufuria chemsha!”
Lyra blinked. She may not have had a horn, but she could still feel the magic beginning to work as she stood in the center of the circle, and couldn’t help but smile. Yes, okay, this day had been…interesting. But this was about to end, she was about to be turned back into a unicorn, and then this whole mess would just become some funny story she could tell at parties in the future.
“Kipande cha nyoka kuumiza vichwa vya
“Katika sufuria chemsha na kupika
“Jicho la mjusi, na toe ya chura
“Pamba ya popo, na ulimi wa mbwa
“Uma fira, na minyoo kipofu kuumwa
“Mguu mjusi, na bundi wa mrengo
“Kwa ajili ya charm ya taabu nguvu
“Kama mchuzi kuzimu kuchemsha na chemsa!
“Mara mbili, mbili, taabu na shida
“Moto kuchoma na sufuria chemsha!”
The air was visibly glowing now, a silver fog as the silver coins and oil-soaked-and-flower-wrapped quartz coins dissolved into mist that rose straight up, completely filling the magic circle. Lyra held her breath.
Come on, she urged mentally. Come on, come on, come on…
“Mara mbili, mbili, taabu na shida
“Moto kuchoma na sufuria chemsha!”
There was a flash, and the mist suddenly burst out from the magic circle, becoming a long line…it soared around the kitchen as Lyra and Trixie watched…its argent form whipped around, aiming straight for Lyra…and at the last moment it turned, and instead plunged into the still-sleeping hen.
Needless to say, the hen woke up, eyes glowing brightly as she was lifted up off of the ground, arcane power pouring into her, filling her up…there was a second flash, and the hen landed, shaking itself slightly. Except, it was now slightly larger, and sported a much more impressive-looking comb and wattle.
As if to emphasize what had happened, the former hen stood up proudly and let out a cock-a-doodle-doo.
Trixie and Lyra both stared at the rooster. The rooster stared back at them.
“…so I’m guessing it wasn’t just the turn-unicorns-into-zebra spells that were mislabeled, then,” Trixie noted.
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Oh, Lyra and Trixie. You didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?
EDIT
Yay featured!
Bwahahahaha!
It's a crying shame that Zecora's an antagonist in this setting... at least from Trixie and Lyra's point of view.
Good luck trying to get Ditzy to take your money, Fluttershy. If she didn't earn it herself, she won't touch it.
It's a really good thing the spell missed the target.
Well, at least they didn't add switched gender to the list of Lyra's problems...
By the way,
> She closed the chicken coop’s door securely, then reached out with telekinesis and lifted Fluttershy, then brought the unicorn back to her home
I assume it should be 'the pegasus' here, unless in the Lunaverse Fluttershy changed races
*Collapses in laughter*
Lyra's continued analysis of the usefulness and uselessness of human limbs was most amusing, as was the way she referenced them. I especial enjoyed all the variations paw-hands-whatever. Watching her experiment with foods was also great, as too was her relief at being omnivorous rather carnivorous. Of course now that the supposed counter spell has failed, things can only get
worsemore hilariously amusing.And poor Fluttershy, just peacefully minding her own business when she gets rendered catatonic by a ghostly chicken thief.
A giant cock and a naked girl in the same room.
Nope, not suggestive at all.
Did Zecora have a hoof in mislabeling the book on the off chance it would cause general chaos and hilarity (which it is) or are more of Lunaverse's scholars operating to Trixie's rigorous academic standards?
Hahahahahahahah!
Oh, my.
Oh, my, oh, my. I just don't know what to say.
Oh boy this is not good. They're gonna need some sort of translation dictionary.
831586
Ritual magic does exist in FiM; Granny Smith uses it to raise Zap Apples. Pony magic (for all tribes) works differently from the wild magic of Everfree, and said wild magic still works outside of the forest.
Oh, this is so hilarious!
I wanna feel sorry for Lyra... but I'm too busy laughing. 
The way I see things:
- Ponies all have natural, inborn magic. Each of them have different ways of expressing it, but it boils down to them all being a variation on spontaneous spellcasters - sorcerers - who simply use and manipulate their own internal magic.
- Zebras, of course, have some magic of their own (everything has a little magic), but they have no means of accessing it the way unicorns, pegasi, and even earth ponies can. Thus their reliance on ritual and rote - they are, essentially, classic wizards and witches, using hermetic spellcasting and hacking reality by knowing all the backdoors.
831779
True enough, but she looks completely crazy and is treated by others like she's completely crazy, at least until she finally explains herself and her results. Thus I gather that while ponies are capable of ritual magic, it's almost completely unknown.
831524
Oh my God I totally didn't realize I had done that.
That is hilarious! I'm glad I have you people around.
Wow, this is turning out to be an incredibly awkward experience for Lyra. Though, as terrycloth said, it is a good thing that spell, or a variation, didin't hit her.
All in all? Damn well hilarious
831524 DAMMIT Blackbelt.
Aww part of me was really hoping Fluttershy would chase after the ghost chicken thief and discover the human and try to talk to it making some new connections in the process. Oh well poor Fluttershy in this universe. Maybe she'll go all survivalist now with traps, motion sensors, and such to protect her animals from rampaging ghosts. Heh anyway very nicely told and written. Love these characters and really love how you're getting Trixie across highlight of the piece for certain.
Are you CRAZY?!
You just canonized a gender swapping spell!
831524
I think they're OK as long as Trixie is sober in that scenario.
So now we have references to the "Lyra and Guyra" meme, as well as the "human Lyra" meme? Excellent. Also more D&D references!
I do like the way Trixie can mess with spells on the fly. It fits in with her approach to magic as an art much more than a science, compared to Lyra and Twilight. I wonder how this compares to other unicorns? Where does Rarity stand on the "art versus science" scale? And how will Dinky turn out? She's actually a pretty lucky filly to have the Element of Magic teaching her magic.
831509 How do you do the word crossing out thing?
835377
Hmm...
testOkay, figured it out easily enough: (s)test(/s), but replace the parenthases with brackets.
... I will read this... but I will not read the other stories of the Lunaverse... Why? Because I wan't to see it all in order
Finish this story so I can move on and ignore the voices in my head
Edit: Y'know what? Scrath my previous comment cause Imma read the other stories. But Im still waiting with bated breath for this one. Also is Lyra going to make a second connection with similar words like what you did earlier?
Frankly I'd say Lyra dodged a bullet there. Sure it didn't work,but at least she's still ONLY turned human, not human and Rule 63'd.
Yeah, rather fortunate the chicken got Spell 63'd. Nopony's freaking out about the naked because ponies, but the male bits aren't sheathed quite as well...
The "couldn’t of" error. Do it once, shame on you. Do it twice in a row, shame on…you. You really think I'd blame myself?
After figuring out that the original and counter spells were incorrect, what made them think that the catch all was going to work?
Marshmallows. Humans eat nothing but marshmallows. Trust me, it's entirely healthy for you.
Now go kill Rarity, you're going to need a considerable food source if it's going to last you until this gets fixed.
Wow. Two passes through Google Translate really mangles the all-purpose counterspell. I'm lucky to have identified it at all.
There should be a spell in that book with magic words along the lines of "mgeni kijinga, unafikiri unaweza kweli kutupwa pundamilia uchawi." Don't ask me what it would claim to do, though.
851285 I'm not sure Lyra'd care, really. Her body is plenty weird already; it may have already maxed out her ability to be bothered by strangeness.
>Couldn’t of been tomorrow, couldn’t of been yesterday, nooo…
Both instances of "of" should be "have"
Yay, problem-solving via linguistic analysis! As a Ling major, I find this especially awesome.
Ooh, nice touch that the coins are silver instead of gold.
Mislabelled spells, always a good source of endless amusement. I'll have to remember that idea.
Lol, well I'm glad they were saying "bear" rather than money which is cliched enough that it would have been annoying.
3280325
Maybe Lyra never went to a Zoo? And Flutters only, near biped, is a Bear. Well at least something that looks human-ish.
Well...at least the hens are going to be happy for a while
I don't know about you, but something about that sure doesn't sound quite right to me.
wait.. alfafa is edible for humans (though old stalks are mildly toxic)
9080209
Her human palate might just not like the taste.