Language check. Anything wrapped in < > in this chapter is spoken Equish, everything in [ ] is spoken ????, and everything else is in English.
Joyce heard Mike and Pinkie "sneak" down to his bedroom, and she was more thankful than ever to Pinkie Pie. Turning her mind back from her daughter, she realized the group of doctors were looking at her. "You will have to excuse me, I have had a rather trying day. What do you need me to do?"
"Clinical notes. We need to know what therapies you have attempted." Doctor Ward, the apparent leader of the group, let out a slight huff of annoyance. "The sooner we find the source of this hallucination the better."
Staring at Dr. Ward, Joyce couldn't believe what she was hearing. "M-Mass hallucination? You think this is mass hallucination?" She gestured up at her ears for effect. When none of the doctors actually looked up, she groaned. "You already have all my notes."
"You haven't tried a single treatment?" The latecomer of the group (and only female) Doctor Elizabeth Clark flipped through her notes—a folder of copies of Joyce's journals.
"This was useless. Lady and gentlemen, let's get to work." Ward turned and marched from Joyce's kitchen, leading an exodus of his colleagues. "If we need your help, Doctor Robertson, we will let you know."
Joyce waited until she heard the front door closed before she took a deep breath. "Fucking wankers!" She stomped to the kettle and with angry motions, filled it up with water and turned it on. "I can't believe those—those tools thinks this is an hallucination!" She held up her partially changed hands and tried to ball them into fists.
When the front door opened again, her anger flared. "If you fucking bastards think that you can come back and—" She stomped to the hallway and her tirade died in her throat. "H-Hello? Can I help you?"
"<It's me>!" Dream Thunder bounced in place, her wings squirming at her side. "<Misty. Well, Dream Thunder now>."
Joyce wasn't as quick at switching languages as her children, and mentally made the shift to thinking in Equish. "<Dream Thunder? What do you mean? I don't>…" She trailed off when she saw Dream's flank had become adorned with a circular snake pattern, and a dark cloud filling the middle of the ouroborus'. The snake was visually striking mostly because despite Dream's stormy colors, the serpent was festooned in bright dots of color; red, yellow, even orange made up the snake's patterns. "<You got your cutie mark>?"
Dream spun around in three circles trying to get a good look at her flank, before she stopped and just stared for a minute. "<This is the best thing ever>!" Despite not having the room to stretch her wings, Dream Thunder tried to extend them and flap excitedly.
"<I tried to tell you, but you kept getting excited>." Marble, looked a little sheepish as she peeked in the door behind Dream. "<The snake is very pretty. Is that the one you were talking to>?"
"<Yup! They sounded really nice, and said I should tell everypony about what has happened>." Dream Thunder managed to get her wings under control and tucked them at her sides. "<These things are awesome. Look, I have fingers>!" She waggled the two thumbs on her wings, cackling like mad.
It finally occurred to Joyce that Dream's wings no longer had any feathers on them. "What happened?" In her shock, she had dropped back to English. "The same thing happened to Mike. One minute she was almost a pony, and next she turned full pony."
Before Dream could reply, the back door of the house clanged, and Robin's voice rang out clearly. "Mum! Something crazy has happened!" When she rounded the corner and saw Dream Thunder, her fuzzy jaw dropped open. "When did that happen?!"
"When the tunnel to Equestria exploded!" Dream danced in place and stretched one wing out to the side to show Robin. At that moment, however, Candela walked in behind Robin. "Mum! Look!" Dream bounced up to her mother and turned to one side. "I got my cutie mark!"
Joyce watched Candela's face fill with joy. "Whoa, slow down. You said you had to tell us something important?" She was learning that ponies were harder to herd than cats.
"Yes!" Dream cleared her throat. "The mine—"
"Wait. The kettle is just boiling. Wait in the living room and think about what you saw, and put it into order for us." Pointing her partly-changed hand at the living room, Joyce gave Candela an ever-suffering look.
"Go on, girls." Candela shooed Robin, Dream, and Marble into the living room. Once they were moving, she shared an inquisitive look with Joyce. "When the explosion went off, it did something really odd."
"Tea, first. I have my own story to explain." Joyce started lining up cups, dunking teabags in each. When Candela came up beside her, they got the tea brewed even faster. "Mike's in her bedroom. Whatever this is turned her fully. She had some trouble with magic."
"I thought she might, when she finally changed all the way. It's called a surge, and it shouldn't be dangerous." Pulling a tray from a cupboard, Candela began loading cups onto it.
"Probably more just some shock, and…" Joyce trailed off, as Mike and Pinkie walked down the hall and both poked their heads into the kitchen. "How are you feeling?"
"This is normal?" Mike's full attention was on Candela. "I mean, the magic stuff. Is it right that I just can't control it?"
"Keep in mind that it normally happens to foals when they first get their magic, but yes." Candela lifted the tray up with one wing and started making her way to the living room. "Family meeting in the living room, get your hooves in there." Stretching her free wing out, Candela ruffled the back of Mike's head.
Joyce grabbed as many cups as she could carry safely—hooking two for each hand—and followed Candela. She turned her attention, briefly, to Pinkie Pie. "Thank you, dear. Mike needs a good friend right now."
"Lyra, you mean." Pinkie smiled as if she had just made the best joke ever. "When the doctor lady looked at us, she expected to see two girls, so we made up a name for Mike."
"Good thinking, but it makes me a wonder. Is it common for ponies to change their name at adulthood?" Joyce made her way into the living room, and spotted Mike settled in between Dream Thunder and Marble Pie. "Are we all here?"
"I am!" Pinkie Pie waved her hoof in the air excitedly.
Dream opened her mouth, and almost managed to get the first word of her story out when knocking on the front door interrupted her. "Oh come on!"
The banging continued, even as Joyce made her way out and opened the front door to find Dave, Steve, and Rose. At least, she assumed it was them. Steve was the easiest to pick out, what with being an earth pony with a green coat and light red mane and tail. Rose and Dave looked very similar, both bat ponies like Dream Thunder, but unlike Dream they seemed more stocky.
Just before any of the three could say anything, Joyce threw the door wide open. "Come on in. It's story time in the living room." She pointed.
Steve was first to trot past Joyce. "W-What's goin' on, Doc?"
"We all need to find out. Park your butt in there and we will hear the story together. Congratulations, I think you just volunteered to start it off." Joyce watched Rose follow right after Dave, and Steve brought up the rear. "Dream Thunder—Misty—has the important bits, but we should start at the start."
Following Dave, Joyce closed the door this time, and found a spot to sit by it. She couldn't help but giggle at the excited look on Dream's face. "Why don't we start with the mine. That seems to be what caused this, right?" When most heads around the room nodded, Joyce looked to Dave and Steve.
Steve sighed. "I've done hundreds of blasts like that—a lot of them bigger—it shouldn't have done much more than crack the rock we had dug into. It all went normal, I had Dave on the pony side to keep anyone from entering the mine, while I watched our side. Rosetta was with me, and despite her wanting to press the button, I did.
"It was crazy. The explosion went just as it should, but the ground rumbled much longer than anything that size should cause. Next thing I know Dave is with us, and we are all ponies!" Steve gestured to Dave and Rose—who sat beside each other—with a hoof.
Joyce raised one almost-hoof in the air to get everyone's attention. "Wait a moment. I just want to check—"
"Yes." Rose cut in, and shifted a little. "It turned me into a stallion, as we thought."
"And it turned me into…" Steve trailed off, her voice sticking in her throat. She didn't see Mike until the teen was right beside her, and when Mike settled beside her, she continued. "It turned me into a mare."
"It seems random, like neither our bodies nor our gender matter." Joyce tapped her chin with her hand. "Just remember, being a little different to what you have known is not the end of the world."
"It's more than that." Looking around the group, Candela pointed to Steve with a wing. "She isn't just a mare, she is a young mare. Same with Dave; he is a young stallion." The revelation seemed to stun everyone else in the room. "And unless I miss my guess, Joyce, you are looking younger too."
Everyone looked at Joyce, but without a mirror she couldn't confirm the prognosis. She turned to look at Mike, and could see realization, and confirmation, in her eyes. "Huh." It was odd for her to think about, and the first thing she wondered was if she was forgetting anything.
"How long do ponies live for?" Mike looked to Candela, asking the question she thought her mother would want to know. She did herself, now that she realized it.
"From what I understand, a little longer than humans do. Most ponies live long enough to get everything they want to do, done." Candela spread her wing out and over Dream Thunder, and she couldn't resist leaning down to nuzzle her daughter—pride written large on her face.
"I just realized I know next to nothing about Equestrian ponies." Joyce stared ahead, looking between Mike and Steve. "C-Candela, could you get me some medical textbooks from there?" Her gaze turned to Candela, and while she saw amusement—and a nod—it was Dream who lifted a wing. "What is it, dear?"
"Can I tell my part now?" Dream was almost bouncing in place, eyes bright.
"I think others have more parts to tell, but you might as well go first." Clearing her throat, Joyce gestured to Dream with a hand.
Dream took a deep breath. "So me and Marble were—"
Candela cut in on her daughter. " 'Marble and I.' I don't care how excited you are, Dream, you will use correct grammar."
Eyes showing the groan she didn't want to make out loud, Dream Thunder cleared her throat. "Marble and I…" She looked around, making sure no one was going to interrupt. Content, Dream continued. "We were just walking along when the explosion happened." She looked between Steve, Dave, and Rose.
Marble lifted her hoof into the air, half hidden, but to her shock Dream pointed to her. "Um…" She trailed off, the little confidence she had fleeing when she remembered that there was people she didn't normally associate with present. "She fell asleep. I couldn't wake her…"
Dream giggled. "Maybe. But I dreamed about flying around over Cowwarr, and there was someone else there. They didn't tell me their name, but I saw the huge coils of a snake wrapped all the way around town. Err, towns now."
"Towns?" Joyce was about as confused as she could be. "What do you mean?"
"Do you have some paper?" Dream was quickly passed paper and a marker. Grabbing the marker in her mouth, and pinning the paper down with her hooves, she started to draw. "This's the mine, both ends." She drew the mine, and three ponies right beside it. "This is where the magic is coming from. It's like—like ripples in water."
Dream Thunder drew large, concentric circles around the mine, radiating outwards. "So in the first one the wave is dipped low: no magic."
"Like standing waves." Mike gestured at the paper Dream was scrawling on. When she got nods from all the adults, she continued with a question. "So where does it stop? Standing waves don't stay like that unless something is causing them to flow back on themselves."
"The snake!" Dream waved at her cutie mark. "The snake's huge, and it's doing what it can to stop the magic from pouring out."
"I know where I've seen that before." Mike shot to her hooves and took a step. Unfortunately, said step was not as steady as she hoped, and Mike tumbled to the floor. "Okay, maybe I won't be getting the book. But it is totally the Rainbow Serpent."
"He was really nice; explained what this meant,"—Dream pointed a thumb at the map she had drawn—"and told me to tell you all about it." She kept adding more detail to the map, showing her home, and indicating it was a low-magic region. "All the Equestria bits are in the high-magic areas, and all the Earth bits in the low."
"If the Rainbow Serpent is real, does that mean other gods are?" Mike looked right at her mother.
"We're turning into magical ponies, Tufts just started talking one day, and a whole other world of magic opened up. Who knows?" Joyce's eyes, however, betrayed the excitement she felt. Despite years spent studying medicine, in institutions that were as far removed from magic as was possible, there was something literally fantastic about magic.
"We are getting sidetracked." Candela reached a wing forward and touched the primary feathers' tips on Dream's back. "Are you done, dear?"
"He told me one more thing. I think I was dreaming, but he told me the world was real, but different. How did he put it…?" Fumbling with her thoughts, Dream suddenly smiled. "[If you do something here, it happens there. The other is also true]."
Joyce blinked in surprise, and looked to Candela. Her friend looked shocked, but she had to ask her about the language regardless. "Is that another Equestrian language? I didn't understand a lick of it." The way Candela shook her head in response told Joyce all she needed to know. "Mist—Dream, can you repeat that in English or Equish?"
Dream blinked in confusion, then shrugged her wings. "It means if something happens in that dream, it happens for real, and I think it works the other way. That's it. He was really nice, though. I think he is trying to protect the rest of Australia."
Candela beamed at her daughter. "Three languages now? You are my clever filly." She spread her wing over Dream's back when she returned to Candela's side. "Who is next?"
"Might as well be me." Joyce raised her hand as if she were back in school. "Wait, no. My bit is after Mike—"
"Lyra!" Cutting in, Pinkie Pie giggled after correcting Joyce.
"Really?" Joyce looked right at Mike.
"Maybe? Kinda? I guess it doesn't really make sense to be a unicorn mare named 'Mike,' but you named me Mike…" Looking up at her mother with obvious distress, Mike seemed stricken.
"Lyra is a bit short. Most ponies have longer names, or two shorter ones." Candela looked from Mike to Joyce.
"Please, mum?"
The tone in Mike's voice was just short of begging, and Joyce couldn't handle it. "Come here, Michael." She waited for her daughter, once her son, to walk over and sit before her. "Lyra is a fine name, and I think it matches what you are. But you need a second name that encompasses what you do."
Mike looked up at Joyce, and didn't say a word. The look on her face—in her eyes—was rapturous.
"Since you got your cutie mark, every song you have played called to me. You don't play music, Michael, you play emotion." Joyce closed her eyes to remember each and every piece she had heard her son, now her daughter, play. "That blasted guitar of yours, I can't get the image of you playing it out of my head, or the sound it made out of my heart."
Joyce paused a moment, feeling over the name she had thought of. "I named you Michael because it was a fine name, and bespoke a strong man."
Mike lifted one hoof and set it on Joyce's changing hands. "Mum…"
"Heartstrings. Lyra Heartstrings." As Joyce opened her eyes, pure golden light started to flood Lyra's horn. "Whoa! I said, 'No magic in the house'!" Her protest—in regards to magic—was heeded, but Joyce was wrapped in a tight hug from her eldest daughter.
With her mother's arms around her, Lyra squeezed tight. "H-Hey, I stopped it!" She rolled her eyes upwards, trying to look at her own horn.
"Our house is low magic, remember?" Joyce barely held back a chuckle at Lyra's expression. She paid attention to every feature on her daughter's face, and despite the complete change of species—and reality—Lyra still had some features of Mike about her. "You have your story to tell."
Lyra looked around and slipped back to sit beside Pinkie Pie. Putting a foreleg around Pinkie's back, Lyra closed her eyes to think back. "It's a day off school, so we were trying to waste it as best we could. Sitting in the back yard, I was struggling to play my guitar. I had just gotten it right when the explosion happened."
" Right'?" Joyce raised an eyebrow.
"Well, basic chords; my hoof kept getting in the way of my frog." Holding up a hoof, Lyra wiggled the soft flesh under it to indicate what she meant. "As I was saying, 'badda boom.' "
"Big badda?" Her mouth curving up, Robin's eyes danced as she looked to her big sister.
"Big badda boom." Lyra nodded her head in confirmation, and got a few chuckles from the others. "So suddenly Ball Clay's house is just—just there. It was so freaky, like the old, empty place just shifted over to make room. So anyway,"—Lyra turned to wink at Candela—"Pinkie and I went over to see what happened."
Giggles erupted around the room, and Lyra had to wait for them to die down before she could continue. "There is a barrier there. It felt like the skin of a huge bubble."
Pinkie Pie nodded. "I could see it too, but it wasn't easy."
"I could see it too, when I was dreaming. When I woke up, all the rings were invisible." Dream Thunder's words caused absolute silence to reign. "Can anyone else see them?" Heads shook around the room.
Candela squeezed Dream's shoulders with her outstretched wing. "It could have to do with Mi—with Lyra's magic. Unicorns are tied to magic like a pegasus is to the sky."
"Cool." Lyra Heartstrings grinned at the thought of magic being so accessible. "So anyway, the moment I walked through the barrier my horn glowed. There was suddenly magic everywhere. It poured through me, and roared out my horn. I couldn't stop it.
"Pinkie saved me. She dragged me back to the other side, and like a thunderclap my magic stopped. Also, like a thunderclap, it hurt!" Lyra turned to her mother and nodded.
"Which is where my story started. Pinkie Pie carried Lyra inside, and I sent them through to here. There was a knock at the door, and it turned out to be a team of emergency doctors." Joyce watched as Dave and Steve both suddenly got a jumpy edge about them. "Apparently they finally read my reports,"—she held her hands up to placate the room—"none of your personal information was in it, like I promised.
"So they turned up, and started talking about everything being a hallucination. Apparently I am affected too, and they didn't want my help with any of it." Joyce was about to repeat some of her swear words when she remembered all the children that were present.
"Which is when I came in." Candela looked around at the foals in her class—nearly all of them actual foals now. "As most of you knew, despite giving everyone the day off school, I couldn't just sit by and not do anything. I went for a walk with Robin just before the blast happened."
"Everything from Stonecrop's there!" Cutting in, Robin was clearly overexcited to finally get to tell some of her own story. "But Candela said we shouldn't wait around for something, and should come and check at home."
"And that puts us all here." Joyce looked around the room, and realized that she was the most human out of everyone present. Taking a deep breath, she looked at her hands. For a moment she almost said the wrong thing. She was a doctor twice over, she was somehow the head of the craziest little family to exist, and everyone was looking up to her. She had almost asked what to do next.
"Okay. Robin, help your sister get—" Freezing, Joyce felt a strange sensation pass over her. The rush of feeling seemed to coalesce on her hips. Everyone stared at her, and though it was going to compromise her modesty, Joyce looked down and tugged on her jeans. The fabric slid down her hip and left only her boxer shorts behind for modesty. Gulping, she pulled the hem of the shorts up and revealed the pattern now embossed into the fur on her thigh.
A large, bright red cross with a pair of bat wings spread across the length of it, now adorned Joyce's body. She looked at it, and couldn't keep a smile off her face.
"Healing, and batty things." Lyra managed to not fall on her face as she walked across to her mother. "I know this suits you."
"Yeah, mum." Balanced on her pony-like legs, Robin stood beside Lyra and looked up at Joyce. "It's just telling you what you already knew."
"Yeah, but this is mine." Joy bubbled out of Joyce like steam from a boiling pot. She reached out her arms and pulled Robin and Lyra into a tight hug, but looked over their shoulders at Candela and Dream. "You all make me so happy I could cry." She took a few moments to do just that. A scratching at the living room door plunged the room into silence. Everybody turned and looked, each imagining their own horror.
"Let me in! My darling needs me!" Tufts' voice was clearly heard from the other side of the door, and nervous laughter shot around the room. When Joyce got up and opened the door, Tufts was laying on the floor, unable to find any purchase on the door itself. "Well? Pick me up so I can hug you."
Reaching down, Joyce gave Tufts a good part of her sleeve to latch on to, and lifted the bat up from the ground. "You could have just asked. We were talking about—"
"About all the magic that flooded around. I heard." Tufts climbed along Joyce's arm until he could grip to her shoulder. Carefully, the bat extended one wing out to hug the arm he was previously clinging to. "I flied to the edge of it, and it just stops. I flew outside and then back in."
Everyone went silent immediately, letting Tufts have his say. But when he didn't continue, Joyce tickled his chin. "Was there anything strange at the edge?"
"Answers cost bananas." Tufts angled himself so he could look up at Joyce's eyes.
"If I give you a banana, you won't talk at all." Joyce booped Tufts on the nose with a careful tap. "But I promise I will get you banana when you are done talking."
Tufts eyed Joyce for a few minutes, then shrugged. "Not much else to tell you. I flew out, everything was normal, and I flew back into bizarro-town." He took nearly five seconds before he opened his mouth again. "Can I have a banana now?"
Joyce rolled her eyes. "Okay. But just this once." She walked out of the room, and felt the elation of getting her cutie mark hanging around her still. "Did you see my cutie mark?"
"My beloved finally got her cutie mark?" Tufts launched himself into the air, giving repeated screeches of joy before landing back on Joyce's jumper. "Does it have me on it?" Rolling her eyes, Joyce shook her head. "Would you like me to be?"
Having never seen such an expressive face on a bat before, Joyce was astounded to see Tufts' eyebrows waggling in a great imitation of a suggestive gesture. "Well, it does have bat wings, but I think those are mine." Fetching a banana from the fridge, Joyce headed back into the living room only to see three ponies exiting it.
"I think we're going to head up to the mine again, Joyce." Steve gestured to the front door with a hoof. "Not like the magic up there'll change us anymore."
"Be careful, all of you." Joyce noticed, as Steve, Dave, and Rosetta left, that Dave and Rose kept sharing glances. She realized why the relationship between the former girl and her former son hadn't gone too well: Rose liked guys. Lyra just wasn't doing it for Rose anymore, it wasn't like Rose's preference would change just because she did.