//------------------------------// // Prologue: “Why the hell are my eyes crooked?” // Story: Bubbles and Other Things // by LunaScribbles //------------------------------// Ever since I was a kid, my left eye’d always laze around; looking at anything but the thing that I wanted to look at. What’s that? You want to read a book normally? Well too bad, you’re other eye is constantly looking somewhere else, distracting you like some kind of child pestering their parents for McDonalds during a car drive. By now, you probably figured out that I have something people call a lazy eye. Yep, that’s right. A lazy eye. To be honest, it’s not as bad as people make it up to be… I think? Having a lazy eye wasn’t anything too serious, but my parents would always make a big fuss about it whenever it showed in public, but I kept telling them that it’s alright. Whenever my left eye would wander off, I could just blink and regain my focus. Yes, it is annoying, but it didn’t get to a point where it was causing me physical pain. Thus, I never really cared for it. I’ve lived my whole life living just the way I was. I was a pretty normal kid for the most part of my life. That was until I woke up one day with a huge problem… how huge? Well… a pony sized problem, that’s for sure. Now you might be thinking to yourself: “Has Martin lost his marbles?! What problem could he possibly have that would have anything to do with “ponies”?”. Well my friend, let me tell you a story that still makes absolutely no sense to me. It all started one day when I woke up as a character from a cartoon show. Now pause. See what I mean by “absolutely no sense”? Yeah… maybe all of you would understand better if I gave you my shoes and wore them… that’s how that saying goes, right? Whatever, time I ditch the crappy narrative flashback and get into this huge crap storm. Ugh, damn… I thought as I rolled around in my bed, clutching my blanket around me. I was suffering from the aftermaths of an exhausting Friday all-night game session with my best friends. I knew I shouldn’t have drank all those energy drinks. Being the irresponsible seventeen year old I was, I regret drinking about five or six cans of those branded drinks in one go. Note to self, don’t do that, unless you’re an idiot like me. After rolling around in my blanket for god knows how long, the few loose wires in my brain finally connected and made a decision to finally get up from my bed and eat some breakfast. I pushed the blanket down to my waist and opened my eyes, and immediately I noticed that something was… off. My room was normal; walls painted blue with a few cabinets nailed on the walls, with the light of the morning sun shining through my window… yeah, I do enjoy mornings like these… but not when I see one half of it. One looking at the window, one looking at the bed… yeah yeah, I know. My eyes were looking at two directions at once, that’s old news for me, yeah, but what was worrying about this was I couldn’t force it back! Usually blinking would’ve brought my left eye back in its place, but after several blinks, it did nothing! Already, several rusty gears in my brain started turning, setting my instincts to panic. Had my pre-adolescent irresponsibility with caffeinated beverages finally caught up with me and is now giving me the finger, cursing me with crossed eyes forever? Maybe… it could just be those several cans of energy drinks and the fact that I’m too tired to even think straight. However, that didn’t mean it wasn’t so god damn annoying. I tried to bring a hand up to reorient my eye manually like a glass eye. Sounds painful, yes, but I just wanted my eyes to be straight, no matter how painful it would be. Thankfully, I wasn’t able to do that because that’s a job that would require fingers… good thing I don’t have them with me, or else my idiocracy would’ve gotten me screaming in pain. What’s that? You’re wondering why I have no fingers? Well, you think I know? Well, I don’t. I just lifted my hand to my face in order to attempt the “manual eye movement”, but instead of a hand coming to view, I was met with a single gray appendage. A hoof. Could you believe this? I didn’t. To be honest, I didn’t even know if what I was seeing real or not because, you know, being sleep deprived and abused with carbonated caffeine juice and all. I figured “Bah, this is just the side effects of being a sad display of immaturity and some mix of my deep escapist fantasy of becoming a magical creature fueled by the excessive consumption of those cans… it’ll go away.” and tried continuing on with my Saturday morning as usual… if I could get out of bed, that is. My legs didn’t feel like the legs I know and love; two straight simple bones with a joint in the middle. They feel broken or something; three bones and two joints, if that makes any sense. I had trouble getting out of my bed due to said anatomy I was just suddenly introduced to… a.k.a. I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up. At this point, I refuse to. I’m tired as all hell from the gaming hang-out. The only thing keeping me from going back to bed was my stomach growling at me like a wild dog. I removed the blanket and saw that I was still in my pajamas… but the leggings were ripped to accommodate the new form of my legs. Also… my toes are gone! Just like my hands, they’re hooves. “What the hell?” I muttered under my breath with a slight feminine voice escaping from it. Confused as I was, my brain was still set on that ‘this whole thing was just a dream’. But why a feminine voice? Why hooves? Until it all hit me. “Why the hell am I a pony?!” It was nearing the end of breakfast time in the Parson household. “Cid, could you call your brother please?” asked a lady around her middle forties carrying a plate of omelettes to her son. “He’s usually awake for breakfast, even with his… constant ‘video game’ playing.” “Alright, mom.” answered Cid with no hesitation. He went upstairs and, because he has close relations with his brother, didn’t bother knocking and just went straight inside. “Martin, we have pancakes for-” his eyes darted towards the gray equine which lay before him on top of Martin’s bed. “-whaaa…” His voice faded as he finally finished processing that said gray equine was dressed in his brother’s pajamas from last night. “Oh, hey lil’ bro! Didn’t expect you to be in this dream!” Cid just screamed and ran downstairs. “Mom! Mom!” Maria, clearly disturbed by the scream she had heard upstairs, listened attentively to what Cid had to say. “What is it, Cid?” “There’s a talking horse in Martin’s room!” Taken aback to what Cid had said, she laughed. “Oh silly, Cid. There’s no such thing as talking horses! We live in the suburbs. Far from farms that is. We don’t have horses around here.” She then held Cid’s small hand. “Don’t worry. Let’s wake your brother up together.” “But I’m telling you the truth!” Cid whined, trying to pull himself away from his mother’s grasp, but is not strong enough to successfully escape. They then walked up the stairs and towards the hallway together. Maria then opened the door gently to Martin’s room. “Martin, what did you do to Cid to get him sca--” her eyes then paid attention to the gray equine creature that seemed to be trying to take off its pajamas. “Excuse me, can a pony have some privacy?” the creature said with evident enthusiasm but with a slight of embarrassment in its voice. “Oh sweet Jesus.” Maria then fell as she fainted, with Cid quickly catching her before she hit the ground. Cid then screamed loud and ran downstairs, pulling his mother by the hair, outside the room. The gray equine was left alone in its room, with a confused look on its face, “Ugh, this is such an embarrassing dream…” the gray equine muttered to itself as it continued to remove the pajamas it was wearing. “Ugh, this is such an embarrassing dream…” I muttered to myself. “I hate how realistic this dream is even when it’s purposely trying to be silly at this point.” I then removed my pajamas, and threw them on the bed. “Gosh, this dream is so reeaaa-- what the--?!” my complaints were quickly interrupted as a new set of appendages were revealed to me… Wings. “Wow, talk about Red Bull staying true to their slogan.” I chuckled to myself. I then realized had to learn how to walk… even in a dream I still needed to obey the laws of gravity and anatomy… to walk like an actual pony. That’s stupid. My conscience is stupid. This entire dream is stupid! Eh, whatever, how hard could it be? I took my first step and instantly had my face fall flat on the floor. “Ow.” I picked myself up from the floor and rubbed my nose, or more commonly known as a snout, to ease the pain. “That… hurt.” Pain. You can’t feel pain in a dream… I blinked, yet my eyes were still crooked. I blinked, yet I’m still two feet shorter than my usual height. I blinked, yet I seem to still be a pony. I blinked, yet again, but nothing seems to change back to normal. I’m a pony. What in God’s name have I gotten myself into?