The episode begins, and already I know it is going to end. I don’t want it to end, but it always does. I’ve watched it a dozen times. I’ve seen them those dozen times, the little cartoon ponies on my screen, doing incredible things. I’ve seen ponies who don’t just control the forces of nature, but are the forces of nature, ponies who, despite this, live humble, content lives full of happiness and friendship. Everypony has a place in the world, and nopony lives an unfulfilling life.
It’s all so beautiful it makes me want to cry, if I could cry anymore. Watching these ponies makes me forget my aging back, ruined from decades of sitting. It makes me forget my penis, which demands that I penetrate a girl, something I’ll never be allowed to do. The show makes me forget the cravings that have hounded me since puberty, to be the girl, penetrated. An emptiness in me that I can never fill, a child I can never bear, and a hairy, tall, deep-voiced body that many people would find handsome.
I’ve even found myself handsome! There’s nothing about my body that I really hate. It’s just not me. I see a stranger when I look in the mirror, stranger and stranger every day. Is that bad? Maybe. Is it bad that it’s something I can never escape, that will never change in any way that I want it to? It feels... horrible...
Except some minor health adjustments, due to exercise, I’m just stuck like this. I could exercise, and try to be healthier, but why bother? I’ll never be an alto, no matter how hard I train, so it’s just... easy to forget about taking care of myself. The rewards of hard work and exercise feel like a booby prize to me, and it’s all that there is for me.
I looked into surgery once. Everyone curious about changing sexes would. All I found were superficial procedures that only gave you a crude, limp facsimile of a vagina, and never, ever a womb. I found hormones that poison your glands and leave you dependent on the drugs for the rest of your life. I found genetic engineering that can’t even make a rose blue, much less change a single celled zygote. Altering a creature of billions of cells, and of many decades of aging and maturing? By the time anyone figures that out, I’ll be dead, and no one will care.
No, my only hope is magic, which is good as saying I have no hope. The voice I long to sing with will never come, because there is no magic in the world. I’ve hoped for it, sought after it for almost my whole life, but all that I’ve found are charlatans and madmen. Years, decades, I just can’t keep up hope with so much time to see that there is none.
We’re all trapped in a cage with no key, no lock, and no door. People will pretend that someone is going to come save us, but no one ever comes. One by one, we can do nothing other than age, and die. Success, failure, benevolence, malevolence, none of it can help a dead man, and that’s all I’ll ever get to be. My accounting studies just move numbers from one place to another, and the universe is a zero sum game. Once I’m dead and forgotten, there’ll be even less evidence that I ever existed, than evidence for the purple unicorn in the television set that I watch. Twilight Sparkle is more real than I’ll ever be.
It’s not my laptop, but an actual television monitor that I sit in front of, slouched on the couch, watching Twilight Sparkle jump into yellow booties, so I can forget about how I’m going to lose all this stuff, and my home, and live out on the streets, because I can’t be assed to renew my certification this time. I just don’t have it in me to care anymore. Why bother?
My laptop is off to the side, currently unused. The only computer-like thing I’m using is attached to my TV, a recording and playback device that I managed to load with good quality versions of the My Little Pony episodes from a er... questionably legitimate source. I don’t really have much else on it, never have a reason to watch “real” TV. Just... ponies. And the occasional nature documentary.
Why do I like ponies so much? I don’t know. I don’t know why I insisted on them, all the way back in my childhood, when I refused toys like trucks and blocks, and made up stories about the ponies going on adventures. Who cares about stacking Legos, when Clover and Diamonds are trying to defeat the evil sea serpent in the bathtub? Something about ponies, and animals in general just... resonates with me, in the same way that my male body does not. They walk on four little hooves beyond the screen in front of me, and just look so... stable, so sensible. And me, some kind of tottering behemoth only able to stand because of my flat, wide clown feet, with no way to get on all fours and just... run.
If I ever had any hope to be a female human one day, being a fantasy animal like one of those ponies was just outright ridiculous. And yet... it’s the only thing I’ve ever really wanted. The magic to be something like Twilight Sparkle, or Pinkie Pie, or any of the ponies. Even a background pony—preferably one, in fact—because I would probably screw up in a main-character role.
I’d do just about anything to make ponies a reality. But no amount of bargaining will ever make it happen, so I have to live from day to day, struggling to find something worth living for, when everything that sings to my soul can only ever do so from behind a TV screen.
The song Twilight sings is stupid and forced, but the chorus is timeless and catchy. I’ve sang along with it before, in my horrible voice: a perfectly decent voice with nothing wrong with it in any way, except that no one will ever love me in the way that I need to be loved. Twilight goes about the song trying to find her place, never giving up hope that she can find it. If only that wasn’t such a beautiful lie.
That’s when things start getting odd. There’s been something wrong with my TV for a while, which has made me worry that I’m going to have to replace the cheap, secondhand thing. The defect is something like a rainbow (no really) aura where the color starts spreading out from brightly lit parts. Like pressing your finger against a computer monitor, kind of.
I’ve had that problem for a while, trying to make full use of the television set, but the distortion starts to get worse during the end of the song. At first, I think that my TV is just finally giving up the ghost, but then the playback starts to skip, and finally stalls out on the last note of Twilight’s soliloquy before the final chorus.
I get up in alarm with her sweet high voice continually ringing like a bell, worried that my television might be shorting out or damaging my television recorder, which was a pretty expensive little device. The dancing pegasi frozen in mid-air dissolve more and more into rainbows, like looking at the show projected onto a soap bubble... prism... thing. Then my TV explodes.
No, really. I’m actually knocked back by some sort of concussive shock wave that... oddly makes no sound at all. Toppling off-balance onto my butt, I stare open-mouthed as the bent wreckage of my television just sort of... crumples in on itself, before an expanding something overcomes it. It looks kind of like a floating mirror, but what it reflects is not my crummy, 1-room apartment.
What I see before me is a quiet, snowy wood. I crawl to my knees, looking at the bizarre projection in space, that looks not like a television screen, but like... a portal. Then... I feel cool air caress my cheek. It’s... it’s...
Is it a portal to Equestria?
For all I know, it could be a portal to Minnesota. Why would a random space-time anomaly just happen to point to the one place that has both magic and ponies? Just because my TV was playing the show? What am I looking at, some kind of alien technology? I look around me, but there’s no one else in the room with me. Just me in my underwear, my pony laden laptop, and a quietly humming hole in space.
It looks like a strange sort of projection, but the scene within moves three dimensionally as I walk around it, and a slight breeze in the branches of the sleeping trees makes it clear that this is not just a floating portrait. Peering at the glowing, ethereal edges gives me no idea what the nature of this portal is. Looking at it from the back shows the other side of this snowy forest lying through it.
If it is Equestria, could they help me? Could I find Twilight Sparkle, and... and annoy her until she changes me into Filly Anon? I can’t believe I’m even considering this. There’s no way this is what it looks like. There has to be some catch.
God, what I wouldn’t give to be Filly Anon.
I’ll probably die if I just jump through. I should probably get help, take pictures, call someone about it. I should go to the other room, plan my course of action, put on some clothes. But how long is it going to last? If it... if this portal disappears before I go through it, I don’t think I could live with that. I’d be the man who took the blue pill, never able to forget the only chance he ever had for happiness, an opportunity that just closed in front of his eyes, while he stood there and did nothing.
I dive through the portal.
Hey as far as suicide methods, that has got to be one of the coolest, right?
The pain hits me like a truck. It’s excruciating and horrifying on a level I can only barely comprehend. It feels like it’s shattering me and flooding into the cracks. It’s the only time I’ve ever been unable to stop screaming. And yet... as this crawling burning madness invades my deepest core, I can’t feel like this was a huge loss. My essence feels laid bare before a howling wind, but I have nothing worth hiding. My only secrets caused pain. And what have I got to lose?
As I... distort, it oddly stops hurting as much. I can see the world around me exploding, snow flying everywhere, trees erupting by their roots out of the ground, and all the while this sort of pulsing drone that makes my tormented bones feel like chalk on a blackboard.
I don’t even know what’s happening at this point. I figure it just killed me, and the fading pain means that my body finally failed, and soon I’ll be nothing more than a frozen corpse somewhere off in the forests of Minnesota. The human teleportation experiment was a success. There were no survivors.
After a while though, I just... start to feel cold. A chill breeze blows through my... arm hair? The rumbling thrumm is dying down, and I realize that I’ve stopped screaming. I also realize that my throat is sore. I open my eyes and see white. No not the snow. I see white ...arms. A white chest, and a white belly, and a pink...!
I stare unbelievingly, even now, at a soft pink tail coming out from under me. I’m lying on my back, vaguely, and the only salient fact about myself that I can tell is that I have a tail. No really, I’m not even a recognizable anything at this point, my body and my arms are just... shapeless and twisted in a way that should have hurt terribly if I remained alive.
As I lay there, I still find myself for the most part helpless to move. My body continues to shift around in strange, nauseating ways. The bones slide under my white skin, no my white furred skin, distorting its surface with their impossible movements. I can’t stop moving my bones in that... way. I’m still getting pulled and tugged around unnaturally. But the pain is fading, and my arms and legs are curling all by themselves above me, in bizarrely satisfying cracks and pops, to resemble the forelegs and hindquarters of a... a pony.
I don’t know why it changes my gender last. Whatever this magic is flowing through me, it seems... confused, like it got halfway done assembling a machine and then found an extra part that didn’t go anywhere. Me being the machine, I suppose. But my masculinity, or stallioninity stubbornly holds on, until my arms and legs are no longer shifting, curled above me in such a strange fashion. All but one of my fingers are gone, making my hands feel... incredibly strange. There’s this creamy white fur already thick over my whole body. Then... I feel it.
Because of more nerve endings I guess, the one change I feel most strongly, is the one I care about the most. That is compared to say, my spleen or my heart, which is beating at a thousand times a minute right now, mind you. I breathe in short gasps, as I... respond physically to something very provocative happening between my legs. It’s still a very... male anatomy. I’m not especially concerned, because if I can change into a pony, then I sure as sugar can find a way to change into a mare! I wouldn’t let h... h-uh, hell...? That place I’m thinking about won’t even stop me. I’ll one-on-one with Tirek as a cute little mare, if that’s what it takes to be a cute little mare. Oh please let me be a mare....
Turns out I don’t have to worry though, because then there’s this incredible release of pressure. My groin just... I don’t want to say it just falls to pieces, but it changes, dramatically. No blood at any point, but things are certainly starting to look fleshy down there. The whole process is about as comfortable as pulling away from really gluey tree sap, along with the rest of my body’s bizarre movations.
There is a sudden pain then, as two certain somethings draw up tightly against me. “Achtchsk!” is sort of the sound I make at the suddenly increasing discomfort and tension, though it’s barely a tiny hint of the pain that suffused my every cell a moment ago. This tension too releases then, the two little spheres popping up into my pelvis and just... vanishing within me.
It’s so strange that none of this really hurts anymore. I felt like every molecule was igniting into sparkles, but now the flashes of pain and discomfort feel like they’re... restoring, rather than further distorting. Everything about me seems to be finishing up, as I lie there in exhaustion, surprised that I’m alive, and even with how strange my whole body’s experience has been, surprised at what’s happening between my legs. .
The heavy pressure feels like I’m being filled with clay, as my pelvis collapses and widens before it. I can actually feel it pushing up into me, like an inflating balloon, except I’m the balloon. I feel pressure like that all over my body, molding me and shaping me, but nowhere else is the feeling quite so... concave. My vision wavers between blurry to clear, as I manage to roll onto my side, feeling... things moving inside me, under my nose, in my chest, and between my legs seems to be... it must be... a...
“Thank you,” I manage to croak out, as tears start flooding my eyes. Those words are in a voice I never thought I’d hear. Not a man’s voice, but high and sweet. Not a voice I knew, or recognized, but one I wanted. I knew I wanted this badly, but I never realized just how badly until now. “Thank you,” I repeat in that strange voice, thanking whoever, or whatever did this to me. “Thank you—” I manage to say a third time, before I start getting choked up with sobs. And that... changes everything.
I don’t know if it was just me or... guys in general, or humans in general, but you know that burning sensation when you cry? Think of that times ten. As puberty came upon me, it was like I was using lemon juice for eyedrops or something, in the rare instances when a tear came to my eye. I stopped being able to cry almost entirely, lucky if I could get even one tear to trickle down my cheek, no matter how distraught I was.
I think something was wrong with me, allergies I guess, but I don’t know for sure. I was a guy, so nobody was really concerned with of all things, a man’s inability to cry. Sad things left me dry eyed, and hopelessness made it harder to feel sad about anything. My burning, reddened eyes would feel gritty and raw, yet I was so desperate for some sort of expression that I sought out this pain, and did it deliberately. I came to treasure the few sad songs that for all it hurt, could at most give me a single tear.
So yeah... I got a vagina, maybe, I think, but what’s really a life-changing experience is breaking down into sobs there in the strange looking pit that’s replaced the forest I thought I was entering. Feeling my own tears hit the frozen ground. I can’t stop crying, but I don’t sound like a dying babboon in making these sounds. I sound like a... like an emotional wreck of a girl. I only have the vaguest ideas about what just happened, but being able to cry and not feeling bad about it, that’s... that’s something I would never deny to any girl or guy, if I had the power to do so.
Emotional release is great and all, but it isn’t very good at keeping you warm. I’ve got a pair of... er... very large men’s briefs barely hanging off of one of my feet. And... that’s about it. I lift my head, looking around for the portal... nothing. I think I really would have missed it, if I didn’t jump through right then! Then again, I have no idea how long I’ve lain here in violated agony. Maybe it was minutes, maybe hours. Am I... done?
I... don’t feel any weird movement within my body anymore, so maybe it’s done? Maybe I could try to move now?
I test moving my left arm, then my right, then each of my legs. My tail continues to lie there limply, but the rest of me seems to respond with relative familiarity. My feet have grown long and slim, and my knees feel sort of stuck in a crooked position. Almost half the length of the arms curled above me is what used to be my hands. Though naturally crooked when lying down, I can curl my the ends of my arms even further, curling my arms into two crude looking but hopefully functional hooks. The tips of those off-white cylinders, my forehooves... they feel sort of like my middle fingers.
Curious, I try to move my other fingers, besides the middle ones. Nothing happens, of course. My thumb doesn’t even... I don’t even have a thumb pad to move it with, just a long, slim palm, that forms my lower leg. My hoof crooks down at my wrist, where you’d think my elbow would crook up, and my elbow crooks up right next to me, where my shoulder would go. My hind legs are... a little easier to comprehend, odd as that may sound. One toe for each of them, with a heel almost halfway up, and my knees more fixed in place than I’m used to, within two broad, wide thighs.
I manage to roll onto my side, and it’s pretty obvious I have no wings. Am I a unicorn then, or an earth pony? The encroaching chill has me worried, so I twist a front... arm/leg around and rub its thick side against my forehead. There, I only find the smooth, round curve of my cranium, beneath a bountiful bush of pink hair. I’m an earth pony.
Sighing in relief, I let my hoof curl back down in front of me, and try to start thinking about getting up and finding my way out of this place. If I could get on my belly, maybe I could—wait um—
I have to struggle there for a while, growing less cold as I try to roll over with my ungainly limbs tangling against the ground. Finally, flopping back my side with a sigh, I try rotating only my upper torso, bracing my forehooves against the earth one after the other like I’m crawling out of a pit, then pushing myself up on them. My hindquarters remain limply on their side, but I’m at least... halfway standing? This is an... incredibly awkward position, but there’s only one way out of it. The twisting tension to my lower body gives me leverage to swivel my hips, curl one of my crooked hind legs tightly underneath me, and plant it down.
Okay three hooves down, one hoof to—woah. Actually, up on three hooves like this, there’s nowhere for my fourth to go, besides putting it down beside the other rear hoof. I lift my head up, continuing to lift it up far further than any terrestrial horse, until my neck settles against my shoulders, and I’m... standing, I suppose.
I feel like I’m going to fall forward, like this comfortable stance has me off balance somehow, but I hope that’s just a temporary thing. My head feels... independent from my body, like my shoulders were just a place for it to land and roost. I can still feel the rest of my body though, the icy chill against my skin, the weight on my legs, the tail dragging...
Oh, hey! I can feel my tail! The soft pink hairs drag against the earth as I stand, and belatedly, I realize that I can feel them dragging, tugging at me. In fact, the earth feels kind of... gritty underneath them. I’m not sure what I’m feeling there.
Standing, I have no wings to learn about, so I guess this is pretty much it. I try to take a step and immediately faceplant. Ow... pony snouts are more sensitive than I thought they’d be! It’s really, really chilly out here, and I’m not sure on my hooves. I seem to be standing in some kind of cavernous bowl carved out of the earth, with... oh dear. With torn, fallen trees lining the border.
“Did I do this?” I ask fearfully, looking around as I stand on four shaky legs. There is nothing around me but a chilly silence. At last, I try cautiously reaching one forehoof out, before trying to sink my weight on it. It works, and I move a hind foot. Two limbs later, my underwear catches on my trailing hind leg and I fall on my face again.
I manage to turn my cheek this time at least, so my sensitive snout doesn’t get smacked right into the dirt. Groaning, I carefully collect my legs under me and, shakily, stand again. It’s easier the second time, but I still feel really unsteady. Kicking my hind leg to discard those accursed briefs, I try to walk again. I succeed surprisingly easily, simply by alternating the limbs I move forward. It works just like I had planned in my madness. A madness in which a creature who would never be able to stand on four legs spent a lot of time figuring (among other things) that a trot is the equivalent of a four-legged skip, and a gallop would be a rapid series of powerful leaps, with the hind legs and the forelegs moving together.
...maybe I’ll just stick with simply plodding for now.
I wobble unsteadily forward in one, two, three steps, and then I almost run into the portal again.
It balloons open smoothly in front of me, appearing out of nowhere as I rear up in panic, flailing my forelegs, and thening learn firsthand what it feels like when a mare’s rump smacks onto frozen, gravelly dirt. I start to scoot back in fear, but the portal is just... sitting there, serene and smooth, with a barely perceptible hum. Through it, I see my apartment again, the couch that I was sitting on, the kitchenette/bar behind it that I heated coffee on, despite hating coffee, the pillows that my parents sent to decorate my couch with, because they didn’t know what else to do, the bottle of lotion whose... uses are better left unsaid.
My laptop’s open on the coffee table as I peer at it curiously through the edge of the portal. It seems to be still displaying its contents, some... questionable acts with a stallion, that may have had something to do with the bottle of lotion and tissues.
A warm breeze wafts from the portal.
I look around at the edge of this... crater I’m standing in. The sky is white overhead, and the trees are bare of leaves. Snow lies everywhere. I look back at the portal, already feeling a chill pervading me. Ponies don’t care about the cold, right? I can just... do this naked, right? But where do I go? I have no idea which way Ponyville, or even Equestria is. I’m pretty obviously a pony, so there’s no reason to think the rest doesn’t exist, but not a sound comes to my ears, no matter how hard I listen. Only the hum of the portal, the rush of automobile traffic, and the quiet whirr of my laptop’s cooling fan.
I should go back. This portal seems to open in my presence, so it should be safe to go back through it and get some supplies. I could get some warm clothing, some pony appropriate food, my laptop, and any number of things. I could leave a note for anyone who came by, to stay away from the portal unless they want to be painfully transformed into a pony, and possibly one of the opposite gender. I could call my parents, tell them I’m going away for a while. I could call NASA, or... whoever you call about stuff like this. I could do all that stuff, but in order to do so, I might have to change back into a man.
It’s almost vertigo I feel, as if the ground is a cliff, and the portal in front of me is a pit below me. I’m afraid to get up, because I might get closer to it. I should go through it, just temporarily, but I just can’t.
Swallowing my fear, I rise to my er... wrists, and then manage to get my hind hooves planted under me. Straightening one foreleg and planting the hoof of another, I manage to stand sideways to the portal on my left. I’d rather be standing facing directly away from it, but I don’t want to risk learning how to change directions when I walk. Not so close to this thing. I simply walk sideways to it, distancing myself until it closes again, leaving no evidence that it was ever here. You know, except for the giant crater and all.
Once away from the portal, I test my weight on each of my four hooves. It feels like standing on the tips of my toes, except those tips are broad, flat and stable. I guess I traded clown feet for clown toes, then? Are my hooves slim and dainty, or large and brawny? I’m...
I’m standing on hooves. I’m a mare! Can I get pregnant now? Did the magic go so far as to grant me that? I can’t see why it wouldn’t! What if I get raped? Do ponies have abortion services? This is amazing! I look around at the quiet woods.
Are there any ponies at all?
A chill sweeps through me as the wind blows overhead. Looking at my fallen underwear, it smells of the spicy saffron cinnamon of a man’s groin. I don’t think I smell like that, anymore. Wincing, I bite the edge of it in my teeth, and clumsily throw its fabric over my back. It’s... all I’ve got to cover myself with. I look longingly back at where the portal was, still trying to convince myself to go back to being human, just for a little bit. If only I had the courage to go back long enough to get a coat. Maybe I should just—wait. No.
No no no. I hobble away from that portal as fast as my pony hooves can take me. How did I not see it before? How did I not realize the connection here?
There was a story I read long ago, but have never been able to find since. It told of a man who came upon a group of old men weeping in the desert. He asked why they were so bereft, and they pointed him to a door standing there incongruously in the sand. “Through that door lies only sorrow,” they told him. “Through that door lies the greatest treasure you have ever known.”
The man did not understand, and the old men refused to explain, stating that it would do them no good. But curiosity burned in his breast, and he opened the door, preparing for the worst. He went through to find a great city hidden beyond it. In his adventures there, the city’s beautiful princess came to fall in love with him. Wedded to her, he one day became the king. People respected him for his judgement, the city prospered with trade from mysterious sources, and his wife eagerly accepted him into herself, until she gave birth to his son. He could never have imagined his life would have gone this way. Truly things could never be better for him. Could they?
Years passed, and the question hounded him. Was this all life had to offer? They said the greatest treasure lay through this door. Was his city, his wife and child that treasure? Or were they only the beginning of an even greater journey? In his older years, the man was not as able as he once was, and longed for the adventures of his youth. He wondered if something more lay beyond that door, and one day he made love to his wife, kissed his new daughter, praised his son’s achievements, then went through the door to see what was on the other side.
On the other side was the group of old men, weeping in the desert. The king saw them, and remembered their strange words so many years ago. When he turned around, the door was just a door. There was nothing through it besides the empty desert sands beyond stretching as far as the eye could see.
My hind legs kick frantically as I scramble out of the crater and then stumble into the woods. Only sinking up to my heels in icy snow stops me from senselessly fleeing further away. Looking back at the dark brown crater, I find myself shivering, not just from the cold. I remember that story, how horrible it was, and how I would never, ever look a gift horse in the mouth. No, I’m not going back there, not if it risks me being in an aesop about how terrible it is to explore, how awful you are for hoping you can find a better life for yourself.
I never in a million years thought that my wish to be the one who does not go through the door twice would ever actually happen. To me, it was just another adventure I could never have. Baseless speculation. What happened just now is impossible. This... this incredible experience has got to be a dream. Some kind of delusion. I feel fine, if cold, but I’m standing on four legs. I have a fluffing horse pussy. And that’s about all I know about myself, but it’s more than I ever could have hoped for.
Stories like the old men in the desert, they don’t really happen, but people dream that they do, and the way to end the dream is to end the story. To walk through the door, and find yourself waking up boringly human again... and...male. You can’t stop it, because you can’t avoid waking up, so the dream will always find a way.
I’m fine. I’m doing... fine. So I’m shivering, that’s nothing to worry about. Ponies can handle the cold. I can handle the cold. I have fur now. If my subconscious mind is going to give me a wonderful dream like this, it wouldn’t go so far as to make me perish from exposure to end the dream, would it? As I gaze with confusion and dread at the source of my coming, that dark pit in the woods, soft white flakes start to descend from the sky, landing on me, and painting the dirt of the crater in white speckles.
Okay, moving. Right. I gotta get moving. That’ll warm me up good. But where to go? The woods are all around me, in a frustratingly flat landscape. Underbrush isn’t thick in the winter, but I can’t see any sort of a landmark except for the crater. If I could climb a tree I might have better luck finding landmarks, but like this, I can barely walk. Any direction I go could end up being the complete opposite direction to wherever the ponies are living.
All I can do is wander in wider and wider circles, until I come across a landmark, or some sort of creek. You can almost always find civilization if you travel downstream far enough. I don’t know if there’s any better way to find your way. Maybe walk in one direction until you find a landmark? Well, the crater is pretty visible for now, so I can use that as a landmark. If I also mark my trail, I can probably keep up the concentric circles plan just fine.
So I take my first step into the unknown, trip over a hidden branch, and fall flat on my face in the snow.
This could... take a while.
A while is right! I barely manage to make two circles of the crater, before visibility is poor enough that I can’t see the crater anymore, through the falling snow. Are there pegasi above, making it snow? I am in Equestria, aren’t I?
“Hello!” I call out in a sharp, bell-like lilt. Then with my butt sinking into the icy snow, I lift my forehooves to my snout and shout as loudly and harshly as a little girl can do, “Hello?! Is any— anypony up there?!”
No answer.
I can’t lose hope though. I’ve transformed into a pony, so there has got to be some significance about that. There have to be other ponies somewhere. I just have to suck it up, and keep going, and... going... and going...
An unbearable amount of walking later, I groan to myself, “I’ve never walked before in my life,” after standing up from tripping over something, again. My muscles are aching, and my hooves are sore, and I can’t figure out how to lift my tail so it’s becoming heavily encrusted with snow, dragging behind me.
I can’t stop though. The wind whipping through my mane seems to steal the warmth away from my skin, but I don’t feel as cold if I keep moving. As long as I keep going, the icy chill won’t eat up through my legs into my chest. I’m getting hungry, but there’s no berries, or even leaves to eat, not that I’d know what was safe around here. At least there’s plenty of water to eat.
To my horror, the light starts to fade. I’m falling over exhausted by now, and I’ve still found nothing but dead underbrush and sleeping trees. No landmarks, no creeks. My thought to mark my trail has saved me a few times over the day: noticing a tree that I kicked until there was a gash in the bark, making sure to keep those far to my left, so that I can increase my search radius. But now it’s... it’s getting dark. I try to quench my thirst with some frozen snow, but that just makes me feel horrible and shiver even more. All I can do is walk forward, step after pony step. How could I have actually walked for so long, that it’s getting dark?!
Despite my earnest effort, everything around me dims to blackness, then utter blackness. If the moon is out, it can’t be seen beyond the thick cloud cover. When it’s too dark for me to even see, it becomes painfully clear how I’ve lived my whole life surrounded by bright city lights. I can’t even see the hoof in front of my face. I’m cold, tired and sore, and I can’t even walk anymore, because I’ll run headlong into a tree trunk that way.
I—I’m shivering so hard, and I can’t walk to keep myself warm anymore. I’m not going to make it, am I? I should’ve gone back. I should’ve found somepony by now. I stand there shivering in an immense darkness more profound than I’ve ever seen. It feels like I’m a tiny speck lost in an empty, black void, nothing in existence besides me, the snow I’m ankle deep in, and darkness beyond. I just...
I just collapse onto my belly. Not from exhaustion, but in frustration, because I don’t know what to do, and I don’t want to die. Not now! Not when I finally became the most beautiful thing I could imagine! My belly is so cold against the snow. I can’t stop the cold, can’t stop just dying here stupidly with not even a chance to survive. I hate it so much.
Do I get to go to pony heaven, or is it just ontological annihilation like with humans? I don’t know. I’m so scared... my cannons scrape against the frozen ground as I curl up and just shiver, trying to stay awake, curling everything tightly underneath myself, trying to make myself fluffier, trying to keep warm somehow. I lost the underwear somewhere back... there, but it was useless anyway. Just like everything in this stupid, horrible nightmare of a stupid, horrible world. I just wanted things to be better, and now all I get to do is... die?
At some point in my bitter, terrified sobs, I realize that I’ve passed out. There’s this cold... heaviness all over me, and I can’t feel even the slightest warmth within me. I jerk up in terror, at the primal fear of being trapped in a dying body, paralyzed for my last moments. Doing so makes my head pop up out of the snow into the bright, morning daylight.
I... what? I look around at the serene, snow-covered forest, a shining whiteness covering over everything, including myself. Apparently it started snowing again during the night, while I was... sleeping? Looking up, I shake my head to scatter the snow that’s piled on top of it.
“I...” I say in a girl’s voice, in utter befuddlement, “I survived the night?” My sweet voice is tired and scratchy, but... intact. Everything feels cold and sore, but I try standing up. One after another, my hooves plant underneath me and raise me up out from where I was lying in a pit in the snow. That snow cascades off my back and I look back at my own cream colored, pink tailed rump with astonishment, before throwing my head back and declaring to the world, “Aw, yeah! Earth pony master race!”
Of course, then I have to walk some more.
I start shivering again, once I start moving, strangely enough. I wonder how close I did come to dying back there? I try to occupy myself as best I can, and distract myself from the pit of hunger in my stomach. “W-winter W-wrapup, Wint-ter W-wrapup~“ I sing in the silence. My voice is... well it’s honestly higher in pitch than I’d find ideal. There’s nothing I love more than the sexy caramel voice of Nowacking making that DJ-horse sound absolutely incredible. But at this point, I’m not even close to complaining.
Maybe when I find out that I’m magically barren and also made out of cloth and stuffing, or maybe cheap rubberized plastic, with a snarky cowboy teasing me for thinking I’m real, then I’ll be upset. Having a voice that sounds even girlier than I wanted? Honestly the little particulars like voice, height, tightness, and uh, species, never really mattered all that much to me. As long as I could be... what I needed to be, I was fine with everything else. Being a soprano is qualitatively better than being a baritone, for me at least.
As I trudge on, I get through all the songs I can remember, and turn to impressions. I can actually do a pretty good Twilight, I think. I try to do Pinkie Pie, but I get as far as “I’veneverbeensoex” before I fall over my words since I’m doing nothing but shivering it seems, since I’m still not used to having this (relatively) long, flexible snout, and since I’m already exhausted halfway through the day. In fact, I was exhausted and hungry when I started out today, and so very thirsty. But I survived the night, when I thought I was gonna die. So now all I can do is trust that this body will hold out long enough for me to find help.
I really am exhausted though. I can’t keep walking all day. I have to stop, and take more and more frequent breaks. Once I even doze off on my feet, half leaning against a tree. I snort awake, and woah it sounds like a horse. But then I realize I drifted off, and I can’t waste this precious daylight, since I’m basically stuck in one spot all night.
Then, I have to figure out how to unlock my legs.
That uh... wow, they’re really—oh there it goes I can lift that hoof now.
Then, I can get on with my adventure!
I stop walking at one point and try to dig through the snow some, to see if I can find anything edible under there. The rotting leaves laying beneath the snow taste horrible. I can’t believe how hungry I am. I’m only walking forward at this point, because I think there’s food waiting for me there. I’d go all the way back to where I started, if I could just get some food in my belly. It audibly growls, just like in the show, but unlike the show, this isn’t adorable at all. I can’t...
I can’t keep walking like this, if I don’t find something to eat. I feel so weak and hungry and tired. Can—can ponies eat holly? They can eat poisonous stuff, right? Well, I don’t even find any holly, just oaks, ash and maples all bare and dead asleep. And it’s... it’s getting dark again.
I’m a little prepared for the darkness, this time. I try to find something to make a shelter with, but I’m not exactly what you’d call a wilderness survivor. Plus I’m too tired to try and gather this stuff. I feel like I can barely lift my legs to move forward! But I do dig out a sort of... shallow pit, at least, so I don’t have to melt the snow under me this time when I sleep.
Then I just kind of collapse into it, curling up in the fetal position, as my whimpering turns to crying, because I’m going to have to walk more when I wake up. It’s only been two days, and I already feel like I’m dying. Heck, I felt like I was dying on the very first night! I just... didn’t.
Sleep doesn’t come easy, believe it or not. I have to fight down the powerful urge to get up and go find something to eat, even though I know I need sleep, and there’s nothing out there to eat. I wonder for a moment if I would even like grazing, and I swear it’s like a punch in my gut as visions drift through my mind of standing in fields of juicy green, tilting my head down and biting, uh, grass. What I wouldn’t give for some grass... or some more conventional pony food too. Cupcakes, and fritters, and apples, and pies, and birds, and milkshakes, and muffins, and potato chips oh I want some chips so bad.
Somewhere in that... thing, I once again fall asleep, and when I awaken the morning er... gloom greets me. The sun isn’t out, but at least the landscape is visible. I look around dully, and I just want to go back to sleep. I just want to lie here and let this stupid world finish me off, like it seems to insist upon. Is this how dreams really go, before you wake up? All this pain and walking and joy, and hope will be forgotten, and when I awaken I’ll only remember disconnected moments from my journey?
At this point, that’d be better than remembering the whole thing. I can’t possibly be dreaming anyway. I’d have woken up in my bed a thousand times over the past two days. No, what’s happening to me is so surreal, that it has to be real. I try to climb to my feet, and just... collapse. Frustration wells up in me as I sink down, wondering why I even bother to try.
Then a... white rabbit comes out of the undergrowth, and hops past me. Not even seeming to notice me, or care, the little thing twitches its nose and swivels its ears around in a most unconcerned fashion. Then it leisurely hops across the surface of the snow into some other dry bushes.
“What was the point of that?” I mutter.
But somehow, it helps. I pick myself up again, and return to my widening and increasingly wandering circles. I push through bushes of my own, pondering the significance of that morning as I walk. “That’s the first living...uh...” I stare dully at the trees before me, “...animal I’ve seen since coming here,” I finally conclude hoarsely. I’m so thirsty, I stop to try to eat some snow, but it makes me so cold, and... I am having a hard time thinking about whether it’s worse to be cold, or to be thirsty. I just can’t bring myself to do it. I feel parched, but... huh, I don’t feel hungry at all.
Indeed, I feel like I’m on the precipice of collapse as I slog on through the snow, trying not to trip over anything... again. But my stomach is oddly quiescent. I feel kind of... woozy, but otherwise fine. I’d eat something if it was right in front of me, but... I dunno, maybe this is some kind of earth pony power. I just don’t care enough to want to eat anything.
When I find the creek, I almost can’t believe it. I hear it before I see it, when one of my wonderful, beautiful, conical ears turns towards my salvation. Snapping my head around, I can’t believe it but I hear a tiny, muffled trickling. Abandoning my awful quest to walk in circles, I shove my body in that direction and hurry on towards the noise.
I find a creek, a frozen creek, mind you, with only a little trickle of water dribbling through a shrinking hole in the ice.
“Oh thank—” I start to exclaim, but the only word I can think of for God is “God” and that sounds way too evil and nasty to be the word I was thinking of. Shrugging, I fall back on, “Thank Celestia this is here.”
I can see myself in the twisted, frozen ice. I see vague, distorted reflections, mostly just a sheen of pink that’d be the mane on my head. My fur doesn’t really register, so similar it is to the color of the snow around me. No way I could see myself in this thing, I guess. Maybe if I find a pond, or... a mirror I guess. I wonder what color my eyes are.
I know this is probably definitely a really stupid idea, but I do stick my head down and try to take a drink from what part of the creek is still liquid. I manage to at least get a little water into my mouth. I guess I’m thinking that giardia can be treated, but dying of thirst cannot, but I don’t really think I’m thinking very much at all anymore. Not with more walking to do, nothing to eat, and the icy chill in the air penetrating even my bones.
No, I just... stick with the plan. I turn away from the trickle, and plod downstream, down the slight downward grade that directs the creek’s flow, when the water isn’t mostly frozen solid. As I walk, the creek meets with another frozen creek, so my idea of following the creek is looking promising already. I have to run into civilization soon, if there’s any to be found. I can’t really find it in me to be excited though. I’m just worn out, and ready to be done, and safe and warm with lots of food and happy ponies and stallions and—
...and things.
I have to avoid the creek’s banks, which grow kind of steep at some point. It’s a pretty young creek though, so I don’t think it’s gonna turn into a huge canyon any time soon. I think about singing, but my throat kind of hurts from being so dry, and I thought I told myself I wasn’t going to drink from the creek, didn’t I? Did I drink from the creek? I don’t even know anymore.
Am I really going to be... going for stallions? My thoughts turn back to those lines, and it’s kind of weird to think about. I’ve always liked “stallions” I mean, but with me in the equation, sex always felt wrong. Now I could actually court straight stallions, and... and have their babies, I guess? I feel remarkably unenthusiastic about that, much like I remain unenthusiastic about anything at this point. But it is an... interesting thing to think about, if I ever...when I find civilization.
It’s kind of nice to be able to think about it in a detached sort of manner. If I’m going to be a mare, I’m probably going to have stallions trying to get inside me. If ponies go around naked all the time, it’d be too easy to get impregnated, just like on your way to the market or whatever. I’ll have to learn about defending myself, not that I don’t want stallions inside me, but I really don’t want to get stuck with pregnancy. But why would I want to be a woman, if not to get pregnant?
I wonder what gender ratios are like in Equestria? I don’t wanna be a lonely single mare just like I was a lonely single man. Am I going to have to share a stallion with other mares? Do ponies form harems? But the show is so locked down that it only depicts monogamous happy couples. That’d be good for me though, because more stallions means stallions would be more desperate to get inside me. Wait no that’s bad, isn’t it.
I really hope this isn’t Minnesota.
I collapse again, when I see an actual walking path. When it passes close enough to the creek for me to notice the break in the trees, I slow and turn my head to see the path, then just... topple in exhaustion. It’s a relief that fells me, and also drives me back to my four feet: a sign of civilization. Lurching out of the bushes, I’m lucky I’m on the right side of the creek. I don’t think I could navigate the steep banks to cross it, with how tired I am. I end up wobbly legged but standing; standing on a snowed over, but well beaten path, a clear break in the trees. Now the only question is... which way leads to shelter, and food, left, or right?
Left is the direction that continues to follow the creek downstream, so that’s the way I go. The path curves away from the creek, and I lose sight of it, but a path this big has gotta lead somewhere. If I can just keep going a little further, maybe I can find... something. Anything but these snowy woods. I’m so cold, my limbs are sluggish and weak. I can’t feel my hooves anymore, and my tail is still dragging in the snow. At this point I’d almost have accepted the fate of being a stallion, if it meant finally finding someplace warm. Almost.
I round a bend, finding a break in the trees that leads to...
I stop and stare.
Am I hallucinating? I thought I was in Equestria, but I never believed it. I turned into a pretty pink-haired mare, and even that wasn’t enough to drive it through my head that things are different now. That good things can happen. That amazing confluences of events can come true. I see serendipity.
What I see before me across a snowy field, is a row of cottages. Like candy houses, their eaves and windowsills are a soft pink. Carvings of hearts and leaves decorate the shutters. Each cottage is built on a sturdy, unpainted wood frame with creamy white walls the same color as my fur. Generous heaps of straw form thick slanting roofs, that are covered in white snow. Smoke trickles out of little chimneys embedded in them. In the dimming evening light, the windows are glowing with cozy warm fires from within.
Beyond the cottages, there are ever more cottages lining well trammeled snow covered paths. The paths lead away from where I stand, further into town, and on those paths... there are ponies. Colorful ponies trot to and fro, standing on four hooves just like I am, but living in a village that they built with those hooves. I would recognize these cottages even if I hadn’t seen them for a thousand years. I can’t believe it, but I know exactly what I’m looking at right now.
Ponyville.