• Published 22nd Dec 2016
  • 5,490 Views, 1,260 Comments

Perchance to Dream - David Silver



Linda settled for bed, only to awaken in the middle of a garden of statues of horses. She was one of them, only not so stone. When she eventually slumbered there, she returned home. Living two lives, can she make sense of it all? Fix it, or enjoy it?

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38 - When it Rains

I woke up with a languid stretch. My first day of work had gone reasonably well. Not perfect, of course, but I felt good about it, and most of the clients brave enough to try me agreed. I was smiling as I sat up, just for that to be wiped away.

Starlight was leading another pony in slow little steps. "You're doing great," she told the mare. "One and two and three and one and..."

For just a moment, my mind flailed trying to figure it out before the obvious came crashing on me. "Did you just turn Kevin into a girl pony?"

Kevin(?) squeaked in surprise and fell right over in a gangly bunch of alien limbs. "O-oh! Hello, Linda!" She sounded like Kevin, a little, enough that I could recognize him, but I put that up to the fact that I knew it was him before hand. "Um... mad?"

Was I mad? "Assuming she can put you back on two legs before we drive, no." I put my feet on the ground and stood up. "So, why a mare?"

Starlight had the answer to that one. "I'm more familiar with them." Her horn glowed and she helped Kevin up to her new hooves. "Reversing this shouldn't be a problem, but it has yielded valuable information that I plan to use going the other way."

Kevin bounded towards me in a clumsy gait that wasn't quite a trot. "Look, I'm a magic pony!" She had soft aqua-green fur with two tone blue/red mane and tail. She looked quite happy about life in general. "Starlight said if everything works out, I can try being a pegasus next time."

I had to ask, getting myself together as I did so, "So, mare? I know I'm in no situation to even raise a finger, but isn't that bothering you a little?"

Kevin shrugged. "I'm in a room of women I respect and have already shot me down. My prospects of 'living it up' as a guy is currently minimal." She stuck out her tongue a little. "Besides, it's just for fun. It's like putting on a really awful-looking hat for giggles."

Starlight came up beside him and gave a light nudge. "Are you implying that females are bad accessories?"

She turned red. "I didn't mean that and you know it!"

Starlight leaned in. "That's good. Nothing's forcing me to turn you back."

Kevin took a step back. "I'm sorry! Seriously, Jesus..." She looked around the room with her big eyes. "Everything's different as a pony."

Starlight heaved a light sigh. "That means it will all be different as a human. Something for me to look forward to, but if Twilight managed it, I will too." She clopped a hoof down and looked quite determined. "How was your sleep, True Shot."

"That's Linda," I reminded, holding up a finger. "So long as I have two legs, Linda. Four, True Shot, but since you asked, everything went well."

"You looked very happy this morning. Did something happen?" She raised a brow.

"I started my business. I shot ponies with arrows, but only if they asked, and made some ponies happy, one pair cry, and a few ponies consider things." I was in one piece, relatively, though I was considering a shower. Being on the road was no excuse to be stinky... "You two already freshen up?"

Kevin was doing a slow circle on herself as if chasing her own tail. "I should get a pony name..."

Starlight raised a brow at that. "I don't plan on getting a human name. What's wrong with Kevin?"

"Or Linda," I tossed in there as I made my way to the bathroom. "I'm going to sh--" I paused mid-word as Kevin rushed right past me and did a quick little spin to face me at the door. "Or not? Kevin, shoo."

She shook her fuzzy little head.

Starlight's horn began to glow and picked her straight up. "She asked you to move, Kevin."

Kevin squeaked and began to flail. "I'll never get another chance! Linda, can you wash me?"

I gave the slowest blink. Had he, er, she, just asked that? "What?"

She found her balance, hovering half a foot in the air. "I'm a pony. Washing a pony isn't so strange, right?"

Starlight rolled her eyes. "If we're making this a communal bath, fine, we may as well all get clean."

What did I do to deserve this? I let out a little half-laugh. "Look, you're still a guy under those long lashes. You want to see me naked."

Kevin frowned a little. "I've seen naked women before. I'm not a teenager." She rolled her oversized eyes. "We both have the internet when we want random naked people. I want this." She tapped her own chest. "I'll be good, promise."

There were a thousand reasons to push him/her aside, but Starlight had trotted right underneath Kevin and was already getting the water going. I either joined them, or waited. "Is that tub even large enough to consider it?"

"It's surprisingly roomy," reported Starlight before I heard her hooves touch ceramic. "It'll be cramped, with the three of us, but not impossible."

And so that happened. I'll spare the details, this isn't one of those stories, but we managed to take a tight-fitting but pleasant enough washing experience. I washed them, they washed me. It was, literally, a good clean time. By the time we emerged, we were all ready to grasp the day. I still kicked them out to get dressed in peace.

By the time I came out, Kevin was back to being Kevin, and dressed. I let out a sigh of relief. "Oh thank god. I was sure this would be the time to run into one of those cliche bad ends."

Starlight looked baffled. "Transformation is cliche? I thought you said it was completely impossible with the magic of humans?"

Kevin did get the idea. "Linda's talking in a literary sense. It would have been a cliche for someone transformed by an alien to have it go wrong, one way or the other."

"Ah." She shook her head. "For not having magic, you certainly do entertain the thought sufficiently." She looked up at Kevin with a confident smile. "So, how did you like your time as a mare? Can you answer what it's like being a pony now?"

Kevin was struck by the question, lapsing into thoughtfulness as I gathered up what we would be bringing with us. "It feels warm. The fur tickles just a little, which I bet you eventually tune out. Not having fingers kind of sucks, and it feels like my arms go on forever. My eyes... Everything looked different, and I had a wider field of view that kept throwing me off. My ears--" He reached up to tap his human ones. "It was kind of crazy to have directional hearing, for things to literally get louder when they were turned towards the sound, which they liked doing on their own."

I moved for the door. "Time to go invis, Starlight. Grab her, Kevin. You take first drive duty today."

And so we went, devouring more distance and getting closer to California. While we went, Starlight seemed quite busy. She kept checking her notes and muttering to herself. "If Sunburst were here..."

I had heard that. "Hmm?"

"Oh, um, a friend. A foal-hood friend, a unicorn. He has exceptional talent with theoretical magic, but limited practical skill. He would have this spell together by now, then look to me to actually cast it." She made a scratch with a pen we had gotten for her the day before. "This self-inking quill is quite a delight. I'm telling you, you have so much magic. Just like our ticklish fur, you just get used to it after a while."

Kevin gave a little chuckle at that. "It's true though, it does tickle."

Starlight pointed her pen at him. "I'm sure I'll feel dreadfully cold at first, but I will have to get used to that as well. How you manage being so very naked..."

"Let's stay focused." I pointed at her journal. "So what, exactly, do you plan, becoming a human?"

"Precisely. To complete this disguise, we'll need some clothes. Being a human without clothes would just draw more attention of the wrong variety, I imagine, considering how timid you were about the bath this morning."

Kevin held up a hand. "I hope you're not sore about that. It was all in good fun."

Good fun... "We all got clean and nobody made any strange moves, besides the whole thing in the first place." I tried to set the whole thing aside. "I noticed Kevin didn't have a cutie mark."

Starlight lifted her shoulders as she wrote. "He hasn't found his life's purpose, at least as a pony. It's probably for the best. Gaining his mark mid-transformation could make reversing it more complicated. At the least, he'd probably keep the mark." She paused and tapped her chin with the pen. "Good thing you tend to cover your flanks anyway."

I smirked at the idea of Kevin getting a magical tattoo for the rest of his life. "Would that do anything, besides make for awkward conversations at the beach?"

Starlight hiked a brow. "To be honest, I don't know. It may do nothing, or... a lot. Who could say until we try?" She looked towards Kevin. "Do you want to try that?"

Kevin shook his head as he started towards an exit. "Let's get some lunch, and we can pass on those experiments until we get somewhere more steady than a U-Haul across the country."

"Precisely what I thought." She jabbed her journal with the pen. "I want to come with you, let me try this."

I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. "This is another spot where we could mess up in an easily predictable way. Rather than you trying to transform here in the front, I motion we slip into the back where we can close the door and keep any light shows from drawing all the wrong kinda of attention. Speaking of which, Starlight, what will you wear?"

Starlight pointed at me. "You have more than one set. I can borrow one of those, can't I?"

"I... there's no promise we'll be the same size."

Starlight's brows lowered. "Says who? I'm the one deciding that. Your idea is good, so you'll carry me into the back, and I'll have you right there to make sure I get the dimensions right. I'd want to have the target species there anyway without full comprehension of the anatomy involved."

I reached out and gave Starlight's nose a thwip, which got quite an expression as she covered her snout with her hooves. "Calm down, princess. You're not in charge here. Kevin, you grab us something to eat while we give this a try."

Kevin looked ready to complain, but I wasn't having that. "You had your daily dose of nude women. Let Starlight have some privacy."

Author's Note:

It's time to get some lunch! And maybe make human Starlight? How many typos await in this new spell?

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