Language check. All in English.
Joyce read over the notes Mike had been leaving, and her heavy heart lightened a little. "They never did get up to anything. I wouldn't have begrudged it if they had, and yet they were responsible." She was seated at the kitchen table, a plate of fruit sat beside her.
"Mike should have some pups. It would do him good." Ever willing to have an opinion on any topic, Tufts hung from a perch that had been set up for him at the table. "Of course, I think another pup or two would do you go—" A grape shoved into his mouth left Tufts no option but to start chewing on it.
"Three cause enough trouble for me already." Joyce grabbed another grape and popped it into her own mouth. The first bite and her slight frown was reversed. She chewed on the grape, sucking the juice from inside. "I told you already, we can't… you aren't big enough to do anything like that. And besides, I don't…"
Tufts worked on his own grape for a few more moments before he leaned to the little bucket beside his perch and deposited his spat. "Life is about change. Who is to say what will happen? Maybe I will grow hooves and become your batty stallion."
Joyce just rolled her eyes and held another grape out to Tufts, which he took delicately from her fingers. She looked at her hand, fuzzy with black fur, and gave a sigh. "You aren't wrong about changes, although unless you are hiding some hooves somewhere,"—Joyce reached over to Tufts and ran her fingers up his spine—"then I don't think you are turning into a pony."
Leaning into the attention, Tufts tilted his head and angled it just right to encourage the rubbing to extend to his head. He didn't offer up any further words, focusing his attention on chewing the grape in his mouth and savoring Joyce's efforts.
"I guess it was lucky I wasn't a surgeon." Looking at her fingers (of the hand not rubbing Tufts), Joyce flexed them, and noticed a slight stiffness. Just as she was reaching for her cup of tea, someone knocked at the front door. "Coming!"
Standing up, Joyce gave Tufts one last stroke. "Be quiet in front of them. The last thing I need is someone going to the funny farm because they think they are hearing things."
Depositing his spent grape in the little bucket, Tufts twisted to look at Joyce. "Maybe they should just stop listening."
Joyce rolled her eyes. "Tufts—" Her remonstration was cut short by more knocking. "Coming!" Walking down the hallway to the front door, Joyce suddenly remembered the diary was still open in the kitchen. Ignoring her misgiving, she opened the door.
Maureen stood huddled on the step. She was wearing a big raincoat (strange mainly because it neither was raining, nor had rained for a week) with the hood pulled up, although the rest of her clothing looked normal. "Joyce! Can I come in?" Voice full of worry, Maureen was all but hopping from foot to foot.
Watching as Maureen's gaze rolled up to her own head, Joyce saw the woman's eyes widen further still. "You can see them?" A silent nod was her answer. "Then come in. I'll put the kettle on." Turning, Joyce left Maureen to decide if she was going to come inside or run in panic.
Moving swiftly, Maureen slipped inside and almost slammed the door behind herself. "W-What is going on?" When she followed Joyce through to the kitchen, she saw the doctor cleaning up a pile of what looked like logbooks. "What is all of this? I'm not the only one?"
"You're not." Joyce started filling the kettle back up with water. "You probably have a ton of questions." As the water nearly reached the top mark on the kettle, Joyce turned the tap off and set it back on its cradle. Turning the device on, she turned to see Tufts looking right at her.
Joyce narrowed her eyes and mouthed, "Don't you dare," at the bat. Stepping up to where Tufts was perched, Joyce grabbed the plate of fruit and set it beside his perch.
Tufts, of course, happily reached out and plucked up two grapes—spearing one with each of his wing claws—and started munching on them happily.
"Kelly wasn't lying, you really do have a pet bat." Maureen looked just as stunned by the fact as she had at seeing Joyce's features. "What is happening?" She lifted a trembling hand up and pushed back the hood of her coat and revealed the two tufted bat pony ears, both of which were folded back.
"You are turning into a bat pony." Joyce pushed some more grapes to within Tufts' reach and returned to the bench. "I hadn't realized it was affecting anybody else yet."
Maureen blinked. "A bat… pony?" At Joyce's nod she continued. "And what is causing it? A virus? Is this something the government has done?!"
"The mine. Near as I can tell, there is something,"—Joyce didn't want to say magic for fear of losing any trust Maureen had left—"coming from there, and the closer you are to it more often, the more you change. Maybe we need to have a town meeting?"
"That…" Maureen trailed off, watching Tufts stuff another grape in his mouth. For a moment her face softened. "She's quite cute."
"He." Tufts managed to get the word out of the corner of his mouth, so it was, Joyce was thankful, muffled.
Maureen nearly jumped out of her chair. "W-What?"
"I said, 'He.' " Joyce gave Tufts another glare. "Sorry, how do you take your tea?"
"White, no sugar." Maureen watched Tufts closely for a minute, and nearly jumped again when he winked. Turning back to Joyce, she saw a big mug of tea being offered. "Oh, thanks."
"I don't think what the mine is… what it is doing is going to spread beyond the town, but things might get a little more odd here." Taking a sip from her own cup, Joyce thought on the changes, and how easily she had accepted them. "It might be time to call in some outside help."
"B-But if the government finds out they might take the mine and make us all move." Maureen sipped from her cup more, and her ears slowly perked up. "So if it just takes being near the mine, can't we all just move a little bit away?"
"There is more to it than just that. Steve and Dave are already quite…" Joyce remembered how stubborn both miners were. Steve's last visit had his fingers and toes starting to meld together, and he asked if it would stop him working. "Do you have a—a pattern on your hip?"
"I don't have any tattoos!" Blushing at the very idea of it, Maureen looked about ready to storm out of the kitchen.
"Well, it will be simple. Move away and you should change back."
Joyce looked around at the small sea of faces. They had a hall, but on such short notice it hadn't been free, so all the adults of the town were gathered in the church. Most of the pews were pulled to the back of the room, but the thirty or so people looked to be huddling together a little.
She had said the same words to Maureen earlier in the day, and she said them again to the crowd. "Move away and you should change back." Among the crowd were a smattering of bat pony ears, and by the way some of the residents sat Joyce could tell they had tails. "Simple as that. I will be contacting the authorities tomorrow."
"Well, I for one don't overly care." Paul Harrison, the owner of the town's auto-repair shop, stood up. "Daveo and Steveo are the best customers I have ever had. Most of my investment is in my shop, so if I leave I lose all that." Atop his head, two bat pony ears showed the sum total of his change. "Besides, I was half deaf in my left ear, now it works great!"
With a joke made, it was like the tension in the room drained out through a hole in the floor. Murmurings ran around the group, but they were accompanied by chuckles.
"I am not going to put up with this. I will be taking my daughter and leaving!" Jenny Stein, Rose's mother, jumped to her feet. There was no visible sign of ears on her head, although she was wearing oversize sunglasses and a scarf around the lower half of her face. "And I will be reporting this… this madness!"
"Guess Dave is out of money?" Whoever asked the question couldn't be ascertained, but it got some chuckles out of nearly everyone. Just when it looked like Jenny would blow a fuse, the voice came again. "Or she can't shag him enough to get at it."
"What're you implying?" Glaring around at the crowd, Jenny pulled off her sunglasses to reveal slit, bat pony like eyes. "You are all going crazy, and I don't want any part of it!" Stomping for the door, no one stopped her before she was out and gone.
Robert turned back from watching Jenny Stein's little tantrum, facing Joyce. "So what is the short and the tall of it, Doc?"
"If you stay, you might keep changing. If you get a pattern appear on your hip, it seems like you will definitely keep changing. If you leave, you might come better." Joyce felt defeated. Nothing she could think of, short of leaving Cowwarr and never coming back, would stop the changes.
"Well the way I figure it, Doc, you have two little ones here, you have as much at stake as any of us. What are you doing?" Robert's eyes spoke of someone who was world-savvy, who was thinking as best he could in the situation. Although his hand did reach around to his back, as if to scratch himself.
"I'm staying so long as they are—they are okay." Closing her eyes, Joyce collected herself. Despite Mike's few bad spells, she had never seen him so happy, and Robin was thrilled at the prospect of getting wings and being a pony. "They are okay with this, even if it doesn't stop."
"What do you mean, 'Doesn't stop'?" Paul's voice was recognizable as the unknown heckler from earlier. "What are we going to end up as?"
"That's my cue, right?" Candela was hiding in an alcove to the side. When she saw Joyce's nod, she walked out and climbed up on the dais with Joyce. "As best we can tell, you will end up something like me."
"Except battier." Joyce's words were loud over the suddenly silent crowd. With each resident starting to change, and seeing their own changes, they could see Candela for what she was. "Candela is a pegasus pony, and what I believe is happening is that everyone here will be turning into bat-themed ponies."
"But I thought you said we would be bats? How did Candela turn into a pegasus?" Maureen looked from Candela to Joyce in confusion.
"Candela was always a pegasus. The mine is—is a portal to another world. That is where the change is coming from." Standing beside Candela, Joyce felt a soft wing reach out and curl around her lower back. Returning the gesture, she put her hand on Candela's opposite shoulder gave a little rub. "But she isn't at fault, she came through after Steve started changing, after all."
Robert stroked his chin in thought. "So why didn't she look like a pony before?"
"It's magic." Giving a little more of a tug on Joyce, Candela betrayed a little fear. "On my world, Equestria, there is magic. It is leaking out."
"Out to here?" Robert pointed down. "So that is what is changing us, magic?"
Joyce nodded. "As far as I can tell. I can't exactly measure it. Maybe if I call in the authorities they can do something about it? I bet they could seal up the mine an—"
"Whoa!" Robert smiled broadly. "Don't be so hasty. This town has survived gold rushes, floods that put the whole town underwater, and worse. I am sure that whatever this is will be sure to bring a lot of visitors to the town." If it had been a cartoon, there would be dollar symbols in Robert's eyes. "Maybe we need to do some advertising?"
"Advert…" Joyce shook her head in exasperation. "The more people that come here, and the more that find out about this, the sooner the government are going to send people to deal with it. I am already planning on sending all my notes to the HHS."
Robert, his dream of tourists starting to shake, crinkled his features in a frown. "What's the HHS?"
"Health and Human Services." Giving a sigh, Joyce lifted a hand up pushed some of her hair aside. "I would have reported it earlier, but every time I contacted them, they asked me for the name of the disease."
Candela laughed. "I heard one of those calls. They told you to stop calling them."
Joyce remembered that particular call, being on hold for over an hour, and then being told to stop calling had been disheartening. "So, I am going to send off my notes. There isn't much more than that I can do to alert them. As for what is going on…"
"No advertising?" Robert looked crestfallen.
Joyce rolled her eyes, but could see Robert understood the gesture.