I noticed a few smartphones were out, snapping pictures and taking videos no doubt. Some of them were broadcasting to the web, good. The more angles, the more people, the better. My mother suddenly tapped me on the head. "You must be exhausted from all this. Shouldn't we be getting you to somewhere to... recover from all this?"
In a sane world, that would be exactly what one would do when one wakes up another species, sure. This was far from ideal. "I'm ready to continue. I have to. Who has my phone again?"
My cousin raised a hand. "It's with your friends and my son. Should I get them over here?"
The interviewing newscaster put a hand to her ear a moment. "Excuse me, Miss Frohein? Would you be willing to submit to a proper medical examination?"
On one hand, that could be great for my case. On the other hand, if Director Swanson had put in a call for it, that was literally my ticket to possibly-permanent jail time. "I'm still a little shaken. I would prefer my family remain with me at all times. If they can come with me, I suppose that isn't an unreasonable request."
My cousin moved in beside me, flanking me with my mother. "We're here for you."
That reminded me. "Where is your wife in all this? Tell me she at least knows where you are."
"She's... We can talk about that... later." He looked patently uncomfortably. Damn it all. Had I ruined my cousin's marriage? He didn't deserve that, and poor Tod. Damn it. One fire at a time, right.
I rose up to my hooves and nodded at the camera, then the interviewer. "Where are we going?"
"The closest would actually be where this was said to occur."
That was a red flag. "You'll fo--"
Father cut in, "They just made my daughter into... this!" He waved a hand at me for proof. "You want us to go back there? There is no way in hell."
"I'm a doctor," came a new male voice. Emerging from the crowd came a well-dressed man wielding a small briefcase. "It was hard to not notice the growing crowd. If it's acceptable, I would be happy to verify, or disprove, this."
I looked between him, the Italian-appearing doctor, and our interviewer.
She seemed to be talking on her headset, nodding. "My heads are telling me that they can't authorize a payment for a medical person they have no prior arrangements with outside of a clinic or hospital."
He waved a hand. "I want to know just as much as everyone else." He waved to the murmuring crowd. "Blood tests will require payment, but not to me. I'm not outfitted for blood drawing regardless." He nodded to me. "Miss, may I?"
I was to be examined on the sidewalk? That was to my benefit in the end. I nodded firmly. "Go ahead." I didn't sound like any miss, but we knew that."Need me to do anything?"
He pulled out a little mallet, little more than a rubber ball at the end of a metal stick. "I'm going to test some reflexes to start. Just relax."
As it turned out, I still had human reflexes in most of the places he tried, layered on top of some equine ones. Imagine my surprise when he basically pet my back with the tips of his fingers and I felt my spine bending down against them. He could make me turn this way and that and I giggled. It was like being tickled. He pulled out a tuning fork and struck it firmly against his other palm before pressing it to various parts of me to see if I could feel anything before pressing it to the next part. He checked legs, along my barrel, and even my tail.
My cousin looked skeptical. "Why do you have this stuff just walking down the road? I can't imagine a doctor needs this on a sudden call."
He slipped the tuning fork away. "I saw this on television, I admit, and came to see it with my own eyes."
That made more sense than random luck. The interviewer smiled brightly. "You watch us all the time?"
"All the time," he agreed as he nudged me to lay down on the sidewalk. "Now, I'm no veterinarian, but your anatomy isn't quite right for a horse, or a human." He ran a hand over my exposed side.
Mother folded her arms. "Well, Mister Doctor, that makes sense for a person that is a horse now don't it? It'd be even more bizarre if she did have all the horse parts in the right place."
The interviewer suddenly raised a hand to her ear and turned to the camera that panned off of me. "We're getting something to protect Miss Frohein's decency."
Oh. Right. Naked, on live TV. That was a thing that I was. I had the decency to blush since it had been brought up. That got the doctor's attention. "How..." He leaned in to peer at my cheeks, which is not a place I'm used to people staring at. It only got more interesting when he started brushing them to get to the bottom of how I blushed through fur.
A secretary, or a lady who looked like one, came rushing out of the station and threw a blanket over my back half, returning my decency. She was out of there in a flash. That's about when I felt a hand where no hand uninvited belonged. I snorted like a champion racer and twisted to see the doctor was casually examining my altered sexuality. "Excuse me?"
"You said you were female, as of twenty-four hours ago, correct?" He drew his hands back, apparently satisfied with whatever he found. "I can't find any scar tissue."
I waggled my ears about before focusing on him. "One, I'm covered in fur, that's going to make that harder. For two, it's not my job to explain how any of this happened." Not that anyone would accept 'magic' as a valid reason. "Actually." I rose to my hooves, my blanket hanging from me. "My next stop is the DMV." Everyone suddenly looked at me like I had said something crazy. "What? I have my documents. I am getting an updated identification. I'll get a new license when I go home..." Oh, right, I had a flight to take. "Actually..." I turned to Mother and Father. "I think I'm ready to go home now. I have to get ready for a flight."
That should be fun.
Trixie tilted her equine head. "It sounds like she's going home."
Starlight hopped to her hooves, but the leap kept going. She landed on human feet. "We should be there too. Tod?"
"Ye--" His reply was cut off as he noticed Starlight was naked, human naked. "Yeah?" He had turned away from her. "We're heading back?"
Starlight nodded firmly. "I'll call for a ride. It's time to get everyone back together, I think."
Trixie let out a weary sigh. "Hold on a moment, she will get you back to travel-ready." She lowered her horn at Night, and soon they were both bipedal and getting dressed.
They were soon out to catch their ride and get on their way home.
The interviewer rolled a hand at the doctor. "So, what have you found?"
"It's not mechanical." He counted off a finger as he spoke. "It's not a well-trained horse. Whatever it is, it's here and very real. I couldn't tell you what 'it' is, human or something else, but I can very that 'it' is not being faked by any means I can easily determine. Miss Frohein's case defies easily explanation. I would very much like to see a full chem panel and x-rays, but we're not getting that."
Both of them looked towards me, but I was hurrying away with my family. Horse ears are great for snooping though. I had them both turned back to hear them.
That stopped once I slipped into the car and sat like a person--human to make room. "Thank you, all of you, for standing by me."
Father got the car in motion, pulling away from the media. "So, now you're going to tell us what in all the bloody hells is going on?"
Mother nodded. "Please. We're ready to stand behind you, hon, really, but that works both ways. Tell us."
Cousin reached over and ran a hand down my side. I think he wanted to pet a pony as badly as anyone else. "Are you alright?"
"No." I smiled in my equine way. "But I'm surviving, as a pony, a male pony." I wasn't sure how much I could say without complicating their lives. "I can't be sure it was a thing the hospital... did specifically, but that's where it happened, and it's the angle I have to follow until it's set in stone that I am Linda Frohein, legally."
Father let out a grunt and slammed an open palm against the rim of the steering wheel. "Bloody hell! This is not even on the list I expect to go wrong at a hospital!" He drove along, but he was clearly angry. "The hell happened? I mean, at the beach. You were gone, just like that."
"That's not a bad summary." I let out a sigh that had a bit of a nicker in it. "I was washed out to sea, but I fought my way back with the help of a..." Crap...
They noticed my hesitation. Mother reached back around her seat and her hand landed on my left knee. "Whatever you tell us, stays with us. Just tell us."
"It's going to sound patently insane."
Cousin laughed, a single strained sound. "More than my cousin, the lawyer lady becoming a horse that probably has a bigger dick than I do? If you can top that crazy, you deserve a prize."
I could hear hurt there. What had she said to him? "Alright, full disclosure." I leaned back against the seat I was crammed in. "I am not the only equine in America, of the sort that can talk. I'm legally forbidden from going into details. I met one though, in the ocean. She was a fish horse, adorable really. She got me back to land, but by the time I got there, it was dark, getting cold fast, and I cut myself on the trip like a big idiot."
I could see Father's fingers drumming on the steering wheel. "Riiight? Look, you know how impossible that sounds, right? I mean, if there wasn't a horse in the backseat..." He was stressed. It was obvious, and could anyone blame him.
Mother's hand remained, squeezing me gently. "Linda, dear... We're on your side. You've been there for us, for the family. This isn't exactly what I had in mind as the payback, but life rarely asks our opinion before flinging its nonsense at us. We'll get through this."
I smiled at that. I loved my mom... "Thanks. I meant what I said though. I plan to get on that plane. I have to. If they let me on, it's just another tick in the box of 'I am legally Linda Frohein.' I have to try."
"But you'll be so far away..." Her hand withdrew a little. "Especially at a time like this. Not everyone will be understanding."
I'd settle for not being shot on the way to get a cup of coffee. On the plus side, horses are not predators. More people would be amazed instead of immediately prompted to self defense at the sight of a four foot tall pony trotting around. "I have friends. Speaking of those, where are they?" I imagined Trixie and Starlight, alone for so long. "Tell me they're al--"
"Hello!" Twilight's voice was coming from the windshield that was lightly shimmering but not impeding sight. "Linda, are you there?"
Poor Father almost crashed us all into the nearest solid object.