Crystal Reincarnation

by Charles Farrow


2 - Realisations take form and a filly takes action

The door closed with a mighty slam of that peculiar golden light. The loud noise and the sight of the light, startled me enough to make me jump a good bit into the air.

Said jump, plus my currently abstract motor functions, managed to make me fall flat on the floor. Dazed, I couldn't help but just lie there and stare at the doors.

I was angry, stressed, scared and confused as all hell, but that little fright had somehow distracted me from the deafening panic I was in. If just for a moment.

The doors had closed seemingly on their own accord, after something unceremoniously threw that ominous horned Pegasus out.
I hesitated for a second, but then looked around the room for any signs of something that could have been the cause of what transpired.

My eyes locked onto a balcony of sorts. Big, open and blotted to the clear morning sky.

'Could have been the wind... No, no that can't be right. It would have to be storming outside for any chance of moving doors that big.'

I looked back to the large double doors

'But what then?'

Even as the flood of upheaval in my head was starting to calm, nothing came to me as I stared at the portal.

The handles looked somewhat bigger and were placed lower on the door than what seemed sensible.
The door itself seemed to be made of some kind of stone, in contrast to whatever the walls and ceiling were made of, though it shared the same obnoxious trait of gleaming.

It didn't make sense, but as my mind was acutely aware of at the moment, it was but another thing to add to the growing list of things that refused to do so.

Like the fact that I felt the... wings, on my back twitch and move, as if they had a mind of their own.

I looked back at myself, spotting the monstrously large limbs on my back.

I had wings.

I never had wings.

I wasn't supposed to have wings...

I wasn't supposed to have hooves, or be in this bizarre shiny room, in this place that I'd never seen before, but which somehow felt disturbingly like home.

This wasn't right.

I jerked my sight away from myself and stumbled onto my feet.

The thoughts in my mind began descending into chaos again as I slowly crept backwards away from the doors, and collapsed into myself at the foot of the bed.

Without noticing, the wings on my back closed themselves around me, hiding me from the madness of the world that tormented me so.

As my thoughts quickly span out of control, a small few managed to stick out from the rest, all of them carrying one question.

"What am I?"

I lifted my head from the oddly nice warmth of my wings and looked around the room. I needed to see myself, see my face... I... I had to see.

My eyes ran across several especially shiny walls that reflected the furniture, but only in a blurry, useless way. And then I spotted the mirror. The same one I had been woken to.
A tall glass surface surrounded by a steely frame and plastered with several small pieces of clean looking parchment with depictions of a plenitude of different horses. I couldn't make them out from here though.

Slowly and gingerly, I got up to my feet and with my wings still clasped around me, I made my way over to the mirror.
And to my credit, I only tripped 4 or 5 times. over a 7 meter stretch.

As I neared, I abruptly stopped near the edge of the mirror. A solitary chill ran up my spine and my gut clamped shut.
It took a heavy amount of willpower and approximately 20 seconds to shove all of that out of the way and step in front of the blasted thing.

What I saw made my brain reboot.

It was the same horse body that I'd seen earlier, which in and of it self was befuddling, but it was the face that made the gears in my mind grind to a halt.

That was my face.
it wasn't my face, but it was my face.
I reached a hoof up to poke my cheek and saw the filly in the mirror do the same.
My vision blurred a little.
What was I doing again?

Realisation struck me a moment before my hand did the same and I backed away from the mirror.
I had faded there. For just a moment, I had felt that same feeling that had been present for longer than I cared to think about.
I glanced at the mirror again with apprehension, taking notice of a strange contraption clamped around the base of my horn.

'Hold up, what?'

I faced the mirror completely again, staring in blank awe at the bony protrusion that grew from my forehead.
It must have been around 20 centimetres long and had small ridges edged into it with an almost mathematical design, from the bottom to the top, which ended in a somewhat dull tip.

Some of it was obscured by my very curly hair, but the strange device that sat mounted to the bottom was still visible.
It seemed to be made of some kind of copper and iron like material, as far as I could tell, with small colourful stones filling various sockets in it.

I sat down, looking at the entirety of the impossible little filly sitting in the mirror. It was a slow process, but slowly the realisation made itself clear in my mind.

I was a horned pegasus.

probably a child of the species as well. If that large creature from earlier was anything to go by.

I watched the filly in the mirror silently. studying the features and anatomy that now made up my body.
My body...

A queasy feeling rose from my stomach as I looked at the creature in the mirror.
With a start, I jerked my body to the left and heaved all of the nauseous feelings out.
A smelly, foul looking ooze slowly pooling on the floor.

'I can't do this. this is wrong. I'm not, I'm not this creature!'

I collapsed, disregarding the mushy wetness that stuck to my fur and just curled into myself.

Feelings and memories that weren't mine were trying to push into my mind. Only just staying at the edge of whatever sanity I had left.

I felt tears stain my face as I lay there whimpering. As I lay there frantically trying to sort out my mind, a tiny part of it cleared, and I became woefully aware of what I was doing.
I didn't have time to cry like a little kid, I needed to do something.
I needed to escape. I needed a weapon and an escape.
I had to get my body back and I had to find a way home.

Trembling, I stood up. With a goal in mind and a small, but building ember of determination.
I had to get out of here and that was just what I was going to do.

With a few carefully calculated steps I reached the door and ran into a small problem. The handle. Looking around to see if I could find something to open it with, I heard a click and brought my eyes back to the now slightly open door.

I tensed for a moment as I looked at the now open door.
'...Must have been the wind.' I dismissed it, trying my hardest not to think about it.

Just as I was about to head out the door, I caught a glimpse of a small snail like doll in the corner of my eye, I hesitated for just a moment, before grabbing it almost out of instinct. With plush under wing I made my way out into the enormous corridors, and tried to find some kind of exit.