Marie did not have good dreams. Her entire world was a raining, stormy mess, flashing white as she bumped and rolled down an endless hill. The impact at the end was always the same, violent enough that she could hear it through her bones instead of her ears.
But then there were others. She was still asleep, that was undeniable—but somehow she wasn’t alone anymore? Like a crowd of ghostly spectators were crowding around her. Not to mock—this wasn’t school—they were here to help her.
Maybe the unicorn would help her. She knew one now, and a dragon too. Maybe they were already helping her.
Then she heard a voice, and color returned to life. There was something bright and warm out there in the waking world, where she wanted to be.
“It’s time to wake up now,” said the voice, and at once Marie recognized it. It was the unicorn, she knew it even though she’d never heard another being’s thoughts before in her life.
“Where am I?”
“Asleep,” answered the voice. “Your friends are very worried about you, and the sun is rising. You need to wake up. Come towards me.”
She tried. It was like so many of her running dreams, where something terrible would be chasing her and yet the world underneath somehow held her fast. She pushed, and was pushed back in return.
“Good. Keep going. I can’t do it for you.”
“It hurts!” she protested. “Something is holding me! How do I get out?”
She kicked out again, and this time felt her legs clearly for a second. That gave her a point of focus, a reminder that she was alive.
Marie pushed again, and something tore. She felt moisture against her legs, and the chill burned her skin. She winced, curled back up.
“You can’t stay,” said the voice, firm. “If you stay, you’ll die. You have to come out now.”
Die. Marie was not ready for that, not after discovering that everything she’d been told was wrong, that magic was real and the world was beautiful. She couldn’t leave it now.
She kicked again, and this time she actually heard something tear. There was a splash, and the comfortably warm bubble of moisture around her suddenly felt more like a tent with all the supports pulled out.
Marie struggled out of the opening and onto a stone floor. Her eyes wouldn’t open, yet somehow she could feel the others all around her. Eight of them in all, though some were further away and asleep. They lit up the space around them like the glow of little candles, somehow illuminating the stone floor and ceiling above her.
I’m in the cave with the magical creatures. My friends are with me.
“That was… disgusting,” David muttered, his voice barely a whisper.
“Like to see you do better,” Helen spat. “Now get out while we clean her up. I’ll tell you when it’s safe.”
“What happened?” Marie asked, using the simplest method she had. It took her a few seconds to realize her voice hadn’t actually made any noise, even though it had felt the same.
“They can’t hear you like that,” the unicorn said. “Can you open your eyes? Try opening your eyes first.”
Marie stirred, trying and failing to push herself into a sitting position. Her head ached, like it sometimes did on the days when there weren’t enough cans at home and they didn’t eat much. It felt strange, but it wasn’t the only part of her that did. Her skin still burned where it touched the air, though that sensation was dying down everywhere but her back.
Then she opened her eyes, and was washed in a world of grays. The cave floor below her, her own hand, the distant fire…
But then she looked up, and saw the towel in Helen’s offered hand. Slate gray, except where her hand touched it. Helen herself looked unchanged, bright orange hair and green eyes and brownish freckles on her face. “Here.” She put the towel in Marie’s hand, and the bright from where she’d touched turned gray like everything else. “If you can move, you can get that slime off. We got your clothes dry by the fire, they’re right there.” She pointed “Boys are gone, you can get dressed.”
“Not that it makes any sense,” said the dragon, emerging from the cave. Bright orange, her scales almost as bright as Helen’s hair. When she stepped near the fire, it got its color back too. “There were more important things to save from the Solidarity than our clothes, we didn’t even bring any. Dunno why you wanted Gallus and Sandbar to leave.”
“Same reason David had to leave,” Helen answered, defiant. “Look at what’cha bloody did to ‘er, Ocellus! Have ‘ya ever met her mum? She’s gonna burn down half of Brighton when she sees, see if she doesn’t.” The colors around Helen changed as she spoke, from warm and inviting reds to sickly, disgusted greens. And was that a smell too? Like week old fish or the garage whenever the council let her mum get out of hand.
What she did to me, Marie thought, holding out the towel in one hand. It looked the same. She sat up, and had to resist the lightheadedness as blood rushed momentarily down. And into… what? Why did her back feel so cold?
“I’m sorry,” said Ocellus’s voice from beside her. But when she turned, there wasn’t a unicorn sitting there. Ocellus’s voice came from the body of a creature that had shrunk considerably, with a pastel blue shell and red frills down its back. Its eyes were blue and lacked a pupil, as insect-like as the rest of her. “I didn’t know what else to do. You would’ve died.”
“That’s what’ya keep sayin’,” Helen snapped. “But we didn’t try to get ‘er to a hospital, did we? Might be we could’a… got there in time.”
“Maybe,” Ocellus agreed, and this time Marie could watch her speak. She was the same being, though she looked nothing alike. “Now we don’t get to find out.”
Marie started getting dressed, her body moving sluggish and strange. Mostly she was going through the motions, getting the slime off as best she could. “What happened to the color?” Marie asked, and this time she said the words out loud. Moving was helping her, reminding her of the way her body ought to work. “Almost everything is…”
“It’s yer eyes,” Helen answered, stopping Ocellus with a glare. “They’re, uh… they ain’t good. And there’s…” She reached up, touching her own forehead with her hand. “Yeah. Not lyin’ to ya,’ Marie. Might not need a Halloween costume next year.”
Marie finished with her clothes, and as the top went on she could feel the fabric against her back in a way that didn’t seem natural. Something moved back there, lifting the cloth up and away from her skin for a moment.
“Could you…” She nodded back towards Helen. “I can’t see behind me. Unless you have a mirror.”
Helen nodded, expression softening. “Course, Marie.” She circled around, then lifted the cloth away with one hand. Marie could feel it shake, and in it somehow taste Helen’s disgust. It mixed with the sympathy and kindness, turning what should’ve been delicious into a disgusting mess.
“Christ almighty, those ‘er wings. Why in god’s name does she have wings now?”
“I told you!” Ocellus was on her hooves again, and when she did she was taller than either of them. “She was going to be different! If I knew another way to help her I would have!”
“Where’s my phone?” Marie asked, searching around in vain. “I, uh… I need to see.”
“You can come back in, David! She’s decent. Might need some scissors to fix that top, though. Don’t look comfortable like that.”
“Isn’t,” she responded. David emerged through the opening in the cave a moment later, along with… two creatures she hadn’t seen before. Well, not in person anyway. She’d seen these blurry outlines from pier security cameras. One of them looked like a horse, except that his colors and proportions were wrong. The other… she’d seen an animal like that on the crests of some mainland countries. But they’d always seemed more regal than that, not chicks that had flown from the nest a little too early.
David stopped dead in the cave entrance, staring openly.
“I don’t understand…” Marie squeaked, finding that at least her voice still seemed the same. She had so many questions, but this one came first. “We were… here to bring food to the magical creatures. Going to meet them all… how did I…” She reached up, to run her hand through her hair as she always did when she was nervous.
Except it bumped into something in the way, something sharp and…
She froze, eyes widening. There was a horn poking free of her forehead, crooked and misshapen but still unmistakable.
“What happened to me?”
“Let her tell,” Helen said, sitting down on one of the large stones beside the fire and pulling out her phone. “She did it.”
“She helped,” the dragon said. “I don’t appreciate you talking to my friend like that.”
“I don’t understand what everyone is so upset about,” said another of the strangers—like the horse one and the bird one had a baby together, and the result was something somewhere in-between. At least she didn’t seem angry, or disgusted. “She’s fine. Ocellus’s magic worked, look! She’s up and walking and even has a nice new set of wings. Ponies go crazy to get a set of wings, you should see. Unless you prefer swimming… changeling wings don’t do well when they’re wet.”
“Not now, Silverstream,” the dragon said. “Changelings and hippogriffs are the exception—most creatures don’t even transform. I’d be confused too.”
Despite how excited Marie had been to meet all of these strange and interesting animals, she found their words seemed hollow now. She couldn’t bring herself to want to learn about them when she didn’t even know what had happened to herself. Mum is going to strangle me.
“You were hurt,” Ocellus said. Her voice cut through all the others, seeming somehow more… real. She wasn’t just speaking out loud, but her voice came with thoughts at the same time. “You fell trying to make it to us. Hit your head.”
“Hey, uh… horse things… there’s a… some stuff outside…” David’s voice seemed so distant to Marie, like an out of tune radio station. What was he talking about again?
She remembered—or remembered something about hitting her head. There had been lots of falling in her dream.
“I fell.” Marie sat down on the cave floor, glancing briefly out the entrance. “Where’s my phone, Helen?” I want to see.”
“Your phone… didn’t make it,” she said, tossing something onto the cave in front of her. It had snapped almost cleanly in two, with only a little bending in the middle and a web of cracks along either side of the screen. “It fell too. You can use mine. Maybe use your reflection or something.”
Marie took it, though she was still listening to the one called Ocellus. “And you—why are you different? You were a unicorn, I remember.”
“I looked like one, because… changelings scare some creatures. They remember the way we used to be, not the way we are. You’re… more the former, but I can help you get through that.”
She had no idea what that meant, and just now Marie didn’t really care. She needed to see. So she turned, until the sunlight just peeking through the cave entrance was behind her, and she could use an off screen as a mirror.
It wasn’t as bad as she’d expected from their reactions. Her eyes were the worst, a solid gray lacking a pupil or iris. Her teeth looked a little different, canines maybe a little longer than they’d been the night before. And she had a horn, about as long as her thumb. She could probably hide it in her hair if she really tried, but… the eyes would be tougher.
And the wings, can’t forget about the wings.
Some quiet part of her mind far in the background almost laughed. You asked to go to Hogwarts, didn’t you? You wanted to be magic. You get your wish.
Except now she wanted nothing more than to go home and forget this had ever happened.
Marie passed the phone back, nearly dropping it. “H-how long…” She found the buglike Ocellus, the “changeling.” “How long does this last?”
“Forever.”
“Guys, you really need to see this!” He held out his phone, then pulled out the earplugs he was wearing. Its speakers filled the cave, a bit washed out but still impossible to miss.
The voice sounded as gray as most things looked—like an object. “Tsunami warnings include mandatory evacuations for the following North Sea villages. Scarborough, Bridlington, Hornsea, Filey…” The list went on, but that was when Marie finally noticed what was on the screen.
It was a satellite image of the Earth, aimed straight down at the North Sea. Except that a good third of the “sea” was no longer there.
She wasn’t the only one to notice, either. “I dunno how we got so lost. Equestria was right there the whole time.”