My friend Tray and I were having a good time talking in the lobby of a hotel that day. He was getting into another one of his rants about My Little Pony while I just nodded and made noises of agreement at the appropriate times. He was a big fan of the show, and while I didn’t care for it myself, I wasn’t one to look down on him for it.
After all, the show did have some good moral values from what he told me. I just didn’t care for cartoons. I had my own obsession: flying. Well, not really flying, but any way I could get in the air and feel it was an avenue I pursued. I had skydived multiple times for the thrill. The unbridled joy of swooping through the sky was amazing.
Now I was trying something new. I was going to base jump with a squirrel suit. I had taken all the classes and even done some test jumps from relatively low elevations. This time I had found myself a real mountain to have fun with. There would be an obstacle course of sorts that we had found out about.
I was going for a dangerous route right from the start. There wasn’t much sanity in it, but gliding swiftly no more than a few meters off the ground was my idea of fun. Tray and I had been able to justify our trip to come to South America through a study abroad program, but this was my reason for it.
When he started talking about the flying characters I smiled thoughtfully. If there was one thing I liked besides the principles behind his favorite show, it was the thought of wings. This squirrel suit idea was one of the best I had ever encountered. It was probably the closest I would ever get to real flying.
Glancing at my watch I cut him off. “Tray, we need to get going. Our time slot for the jump is coming, and I don’t want to miss this. Especially after we forked over so much money for it.” I was referring to the obstacle course. It was really just a bunch of balloons in strategic points to fly close to, but the difficulty of placing them was the reason for the expense.
He chuckled, “Yeah man, I know. Don’t worry. We’ll be there in ten seconds flat. Relatively speaking” He snickered at his joke. I had to sigh at the obvious reference. While I usually didn’t pay attention to the plot lines, I had definitely picked up on the memes that he spouted so frequently.
As we walked towards the front doors ribbing each other in a good natured fashion, we were stopped by a luggage rack rushing in front of us, an employee of the hotel chasing after it. I wondered how it had picked up such speed when I noticed that there was now someone in front of us. Creepy. It was like he had popped out of the floor while the cart was in front of us.
Shrugging to each other we continued on, but he grabbed my right shoulder rather forcefully. I was taken aback as he stared into my face and began speaking in a rough voice. “I heard you and your friend talking over there. What would you say to going to Equestria?”
I stared back at the man and took in his features a bit more. He looked haggard. Like he had just broken out of prison a week ago and hadn’t shaved since. The stubble growing from his face gave it a very unpleasant look. He wasn’t dressed too good either. He was wearing what looked like a really old hunting outfit that hadn’t been washed in days, maybe longer. It didn’t fit him very well and was quite baggy. The jacket was open, showing he had a dirty green shirt on underneath.
I pushed my glasses up my nose a bit before answering. Oh, right. I was wearing glasses because I have an interesting problem with my eyesight. Rather than being nearsighted or farsighted like most people with glasses, I had a condition called amblyopia, also known as lazy eye. My right eye was practically worthless without a lens over it. So I literally had no depth perception. To top it off, my left eye had better than perfect vision. Imagine being able to read a fine print book from across the room (or from a normal distance too) with one eye but having to hold it an inch from your face to barely make out the letters with the other. It was really annoying.
However, I had lived my whole life with it, so I didn’t really know what it felt like to have depth perception. I made do and gauged how far away things were by their relative size to the stuff surrounding them. It also made my gliding idea for later that day significantly more dangerous. Small annoyances were not really a concern to me though. I had a great life.
This weirdo was asking something completely ridiculous. Tray had already gone through the door, not realizing I was still standing there. “Look man, I don’t care about that show. My buddy loves it, but I’m more into flying. That’s my passion.”
I tried to brush his hand off, but he tightened his grip on me significantly. Smiling toothily, he spoke again, “Flying, you say? What if going to Equestria meant you would get wings?” His face was uncomfortably close to mine, and I could smell his breath. It was bad, like sulfur water. And his teeth were crooked and yellow. This guy really needed an orthodontist, or maybe just to replace those teeth with dentures.
“Heh, I’d almost give my left eye for wings. Almost.” Answering his question didn’t seem like it would hurt. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some gliding to do.” I wrenched my shoulder out of his grip and sprinted out the door, where Tray was just turning around having realized I wasn’t there. That weird guy had seriously creeped me out, and I wanted to get as far away from him as possible.
As we left, I could have sworn I heard the door open and a voice mutter, “I can work with that.”
Eventually we were finally at the starting point for the jump and I was suited up. We had only just made it due to the local taxi driver being completely unintelligible and taking us the wrong way. We had been able to hitch a ride with a chicken farmer (who thankfully spoke understandable, if broken, English) in his noisy pickup truck. That was really annoying, but not much else.
As I grinned wildly and scanned the landscape around me Tray was reading through the rules for the course out loud again. I was supposed to stay as close to the red balloons as possible while completely avoiding the blue ones. This was going to be fun.
When he finished reading, he put the pamphlet away and slapped me on the back. “Have fun buddy. I’ll be watching from here to make sure you don’t hurt yourself. You don’t want to try your luck too much.”
He and I laughed at our little joke. Truth be told, I had extremely good luck. I had never lost a game of chance and always made it out of danger unscathed. I had crashed once while skydiving because my parachute had ripped in half, but I landed in a very large bale of hay instead of splattering all over the ground. I suspected that if I played the lottery I would win on my first try.
Turing to face him still laughing I said, “You know me Tray. I don’t gamble unless the odds are in my favor.” He chuckled a bit more, and I straightened my flight goggles. I had those on because glasses aren’t very practical when you’re angle is such that they’ll easily fall off your head.
“I’ll see you at the bottom.” He said. I finished adjusting my flight goggles. With that I took a running leap off the cliff, not knowing that would be the last I would see of my best friend and almost the last I would see of my perfect little world.
As soon as I had achieved a proper gliding position, I sang one of my favorite pieces of music: I Believe I Can Fly. I really just knew the chorus though. I had trouble remembering the rest of the song.
After singing it a few times I noticed that the sky was getting considerably darker. Risking a loss in lift, I did a quick turn over. It wasn’t quite the barrel roll I had hoped for, but I caught a glance of the dark clouds that were now rumbling over me.
Huh. I thought to myself. There wasn’t anything about cloudy skies in the forecast this morning. I continued soaring through the sky, but I was doing something horribly wrong without realizing it. I was getting distracted. The clouds were rather thick, and it started to bother me, especially when I heard one of them thunder menacingly overhead.
I was starting to have trouble focusing on the course. In fact, the clouds actually seemed to be blocking out most of the sky above me. Even though it was midday, I was actually starting to have trouble seeing. The colors underneath me were getting rather dim. If this kept up I could crash in a very unpleasant manner.
I didn’t realize that I had completely gone off the course by this point. I was merely following what looked like balloon shapes. Grumbling, I figured I would have to pull my parachute early and activate my emergency distress beacon. They’d probably find me pretty fast, but I hated to end my fun early. I decided to wait just a little bit longer.
Suddenly there was a flash of light in front of me. A lightning bolt struck ground, and I was unfortunately going at just the right speed to hit it. The only thing I became aware of right then was pain.
Most people figure that when you die, all your pain goes away. You see a bright light and some family member who has already passed on is there to show you the way. While my experience was missing a couple of those things, my first cognizant thought was the assumption that I had died.
Groaning, I opened my eyes. They hurt quite a bit, and I couldn’t see anything. Everything was dark. I rubbed my face with my hands as best I could. They didn’t feel quite right either. I tried looking around, but there was still nothing to be seen.
“Am I in limbo?” I asked out loud. It was one of the ideas I had heard of. Darkness with nowhere to go. It couldn’t be Heaven since I could tell I was lying on my stomach on what seemed to be a cold hard floor. Definitely it wasn’t Hell due to the lack of fire and brimstone.
I figured poking around couldn’t hurt things. I got ready to stand up, but everything seemed off all of a sudden. My limbs weren’t the right size. I started feeling my arms first to see what was wrong. They felt…rough. Like someone had taken sheets of sandpaper and layered it over my arms like paper-mache. That was certainly different.
As I continued feeling down the length of my left arm, my hands reached each other. The roughness continued, but my fingers felt enlarged. They were slightly thicker and a fair amount longer. My fingernails felt quite sharp as well. They almost felt like claws.
I decided to try moving the other extremities of my body and found a few more muscle contractions than I should have. Besides my arms and legs I appeared to have a much longer spine now as well as something sticking out of my back. I could feel the muscles moving around slightly as I shifted.
At this point I was very confused. I exerted control over my elongated spine and felt it swipe to the left. I shivered at the strange new feeling. I could feel the floor behind me with it. The sensation was like that of a phantom limb almost. Only, this was real.
It was returning its findings to my brain. It looked like the surface I was on was fairly smooth. Also it seemed that this limb was fairly long. I could only really describe it as a tail. That was bizarre. Since when do dead people get tails? I thought to myself.
Ever more confused, I moved on to the things coming out of my back. I could feel a slight draft of air running across them, but it wasn't enough to determine their shape. I pushed myself up into a sitting position for greater mobility, which felt weird in and of itself.
I tried tensing my back muscles to see if that would work. Sadly, whatever had sprouted from my back didn't even twitch. I reached a hand backwards to feel one of the odd protrusions. As I did I was able to experience a sensation similar to that of touching an arm of my own, but it wasn't quite right. I tried imagining that I had two extra arms sticking out of my back and attempted to move one of them as such.
Surprisingly, that actually worked. It flexed kind of like an arm, and I could definitely feel it waving against the air. I tried folding it like an elbow. That worked too. Huh. I thought. What is this? I tried manipulating it a bit more, but it seemed to be limited to waving and folding. There weren't even any fingers one it. So much for an extra arm.
I brought the “arm” in front of me and explored it a bit more with my hands. I still couldn't see it, but I was starting to get used to the darkness. The “arm” had a rough long ridge running along the top which ended in a sharp claw-like nail. It also turned out to be quite a bit larger than I had thought. There was a thin, leathery texture hanging down from the ridge that was also sensitive.
I folded the “arm” a bit and found that the leather crumpled together around thin “fingers” that were laced through it. Unfolding it I felt around the overall shape. “Verily the elephant is like a fan, said the blind man.” I quoted an old poem to the best of my knowledge. Heh. I couldn't tell exactly what it was, but the closest thing I could think of was a large fan coming out of my back. Two of them.
Wait.
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Only one thing fan-like came out of any living thing's back like that. Wings. I had wings. I HAD WINGS! I waved, no flapped them softly through the air together. I could feel the fluid currents flowing around me. If I was dreaming, I didn't want to wake up. This was amazing! I folded them against my back only to unfurl them right away again. I could hardly contain my excitement. Wings. That meant flying, unhindered and without any form of artificial aid. This was almost too good to be true.
That last thought brought everything to a jarring halt. If something ever seems too good to be true, chances are that it is. If there was anything I had learned in life, it was that. I was lucky enough to have avoided getting my identity stolen several years ago when I had first tried to order something online. The scam should have been obvious, but thankfully my parents had stopped me from hitting the send button in time.
I silently sat there pondering, arms and wings hanging limply to the ground. It was then that I heard what sounded like an echo of sorts in the distance. I couldn't tell how far away, but it sounded like running water. This made me also realize that I was somewhat thirsty. Not parched, but enough that the idea of liquid refreshment sounded very tantalizing.
Attempting to stand up, I found that having additional limbs makes it very difficult to balance if you're not used to them. I found myself falling on my sides a few times following that experiment. Since I still wanted a drink, I opted to go on all fours which turned out to be very easy. Well, it's just a right old mix of the good and the bad here, isn't it? I thought to myself. What in the world is going on?
I had a little difficulty going forward mainly because it was dark enough that I still couldn't see anything. The floor turned out to be less than even, and I had to be cautious in order to avoid bumping into anything. It was slow going, that's for sure. Eventually, I reached the source of the water without hitting any walls. There's luck for you. I could only tell that I had really reached it because as I was feeling ahead with my hands I dipped them in it.
Kneeling on the ground I slowly reached into it with my cupped hands and brought some out. It didn't smell too bad, but I wasn't sure that it was sanitary. So, I took a small sip just to test it out. It tasted just fine too. Throwing caution to the wind, I quickly brought more water up to my face several times and drank as much as I could. I could only be patient for so long.
Having sated my thirst, I sat up and listened to my surroundings. Perhaps I could find some light. Stuff usually grew around water, and most of the time there was light to help it along as well. I couldn't hear much besides the water next to me. I dipped my hand in to see which way it was flowing. Determining that the water went left, I decided to go right. That's usually the safer direction to go.
I continued along this route for what I guessed to be about half an hour before there was any real change. The bank didn't exactly stay straight, but that wasn't really anything major. Eventually I was able to hear crickets. Hmm. I mused. It must be nighttime. A pitch black night. I guess that explains why it's so dark. By this point I had come to the conclusion that I had definitely not died, or at the very least was currently alive. Just because you die doesn't mean you can't come back to life somehow, albeit this was a pretty strange somehow.
I also started feeling grass underneath my hands and feet. It was the soft and spongy kind. I realized that wherever I was, I was now outside. As long as it didn't rain, this was a definite improvement from before of having absolutely no idea. It seemed peaceful too. If I was in the jungle, I couldn't hear any animals being eaten. I considered that to be a good sign.
I still didn't have any clue as to what was going on though. So, I figured I could take a nap and wake up when it was light again. Then I could actually get a good look at my surroundings. I settled down in the grass and got comfortable. I was actually able to curl my tail up to my face. This seemed like a good position. With that, I returned to my slumber.