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// Labor Pains 
// Story: Survivors 
// by Redcoat 
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Which was stronger? The searing hunger that tore and ripped at her stomach, or her own self control? 
The answer seemed readily apparent to any observer who watched her jerky, anxious movements as she somehow managed to hobble down the empty street. Her eyes were crazed, twitching at the slightest sound and fluttering at the faintest scent. That sweet, seductive smell of young flesh, the hickory-smoke scent of corded muscles hard from years of labor, the heady waft of aged meat, ripe almost to rotting. How easy it would have been to gobble them up. With just a twitch of her new appendages still wet with birth she could have knocked down those flimsy locked doors, shattering the clouded windows those silly ponies managed to feel safe behind.
The observer would have been wrong. Perhaps they could console themselves thinking, 'Even as a monster, I'd never go about terrorizing villages, nosiree. Tis a silly hobby.' But how could anypony comment without ever having felt that nagging hunger? The seemingly unquenchable thirst that now assaulted her throat? The hole in her belly that threatened to tear her to pieces? Yes, the observer would be very wrong. Her will was iron clad, and she possessed self control that would be envied by the sagest of Camellayien monks. Even as she stalked down the street, warming the cobbles with her own unequine breaths, not a home was molested, not a shop was intruded upon.
When she sensed the arrival of six new ponies, her heart leapt into her sizable throat. They were young, from the smell of it, and female at that. She just knew the meat would melt in her mouth. Her body whined at her, demanding  satisfaction. 'Nopony would miss them', Her mutinous stomach seemed to whisper. 'Nopony would miss ponies so stupid they don't hide from monsters.'
She almost agreed with herself, which was why she stopped stock still, waiting for the new arrivals to catch up with her. She turned towards them and they looked delicious, with every kind of meat you would ask for. Plump, lean, muscley, marbled. They stood arrayed in front of her like cakes in a sweet shop, each with a grim expression of varying severity on their faces. She dwarfed them all, even in their miniature herd. they'd probably not even put up a good fight. Ponies were soft, peace loving creatures, after all.
Her heart and body went to war inside her and she froze. She did nothing but watch as they approached, trying to talk to her? She couldn't tell, her ears had long since passed the threshold of uselessness. She took a shuddered breath, their scent filling her lungs. She wouldn't last at this rate, and neither would the foolish ponies. She tried to warn them, tell them to hide away and lock their doors, but all that came out was a low, hungry sounding groan.
In that way, her body was more honest than she was. The group of mares backed away, their faces set. One tried approaching her again but was stopped by her friends. They took another formation, and their necks began to glow, the crystals she had only just noticed shining like stars. A blast of rainbow as those stars' ascension came to a crashing crescendo, then the world was white and the pain of hunger was the tiniest pinprick compared to the searing judgement of Harmony. It tore into her skin, ripping at her hair, blinding her with pain and light. The sound of her screams were drowned out by the rainbow flood.
Then Love craft shot awake, trembling and covered in a cold sweat. She drew her covers around, her eyes flicking around her old bedroom. In the quiet of the night, it struck her that it hadn't changed at all from her childhood. Not the army of stuffed animals that guarded her hooves, not the muffled ticking of the clock downstairs, and not the soft glow of the moon as it shown its rays through her opened window.
She was home. Not on the streets, not drowning in Harmony, not feared by everypony she ever loved. She took a breath and smelled the old wood of her home, the scent of her shampoo, the slightly musty smell of her stuffed animals and nothing else. She stared at her hooves and coat. Not split onto razor hooks designed to rend flesh from bone. Not long and shaggy, covered in ichor and sweat. She was normal. She'd been fixed, cleansed. She drew her covers tighter, maybe to battle the chill making its way down the nape of her neck.
She was clean, the Elements had made sure of it. 
So why, after a whole year, did she still not feel like it?