Kyle’s mind raced, and she turned desperately towards the door. It shook and rattled, and something metallic slid inside. She only had seconds then to stop her, before she found her own way in. Her voice would sound absurd, but at least there was still a chance of fooling her with it. She clutched the little bundle that still held a damp and squirming Fay in her forelegs, as though some instinct demanded she protect her even from Kara.
She cleared her throat, making her voice as low as it would go. It still sounded more like Kara doing an impression of him than the real thing, though. “I’m so sick,” she said. “Don’t… come in. You’ll get sick too.”
The door stopped moving. “Holy crap, Kyle. You sound shitty… I’m definitely coming in.” The lock clicked, then the door swung open, and Kara strode in.
She stopped just a few steps into the doorway, staring slack jawed at the two of them. Even wearing just her morning bathrobe, Kyle could see Kara’s legs twitch—like she was trying to run away in terror, but couldn’t quite muster the strength.
“I don’t have an explanation for this,” Kyle said, still speaking as low as she could. Though she suspected the illusion would come off as even less effective without the walls to distort her voice.
“Oh, good.” Kara caught herself on one of the posts of Kyle’s bed, wrapping an arm there and holding herself in a standing position only with great effort. “That makes me feel so much better.” She closed her eyes, running two fingers along her temples for a moment. “Please tell me this is some kind of… extremely gay ventriloquism project?”
She laughed bitterly. “I wish.” She rose, half to put herself between Kara and Fay, and half to shut the bedroom door so none of their conversation would reach down the hall towards her parents. But even as she reached out, the door swung closed, and she didn’t move. Thanks breeze. “That would be an explanation, and I just told you I don’t have one. Well, sorta. I have her.” She moved her forelegs to the side, exposing the bundle of fluff and feathers that was Fay. The baby squirmed and shuffled nervously, squeaking until she put her legs back. Apparently humans made her nervous.
“Oh, of course!” Kara seemed to be collecting herself more and more by the moment. “That makes total sense! The horse that sounds almost like my brother has a smaller horse. Thanks for clearing things up.” She slumped down to the edge of the bed, groaning. “What drugs did you slip me, Kyle? Dick move, whatever it was. You know it takes more than one day for this stuff to come out of your system. We have school tomorrow.”
“No drugs!” she insisted. “Fuck I wish I was drugged right now.” She reached down, unwrapping Fay from the towel and gesturing to the side. “I went hiking yesterday, and I found this little cuti—creature, abandoned by herself in the woods. She didn’t seem like any animal I’d ever seen before, so I brought her back. I was going to call animal control and see who’d lost their exotic pet.”
“Exotic pet?” Kara repeated, voice indignant. “Do you need your prescription adjusted, bro? That thing is pink. She’s got bones sticking out of her head, and wings, and… she’s some kind of… mythical creature.” She glanced at the door once, shivering.
You’re right to be afraid. But Fay was feeling the agitation too. Even if she couldn’t understand English, she clearly wasn’t happy about Kara’s tone. She made a few frightened sounds, scurrying behind Kyle.
“Your story leaves out the most important thing,” Kara went on. “The part where you tell me how you’re a fucking horse.”
She sighed. “I wish I understood. After I brought Fay back here, I tried to care for her. But she wasn’t happy with the job I did. She… blasted me. From her horn. I woke up like this, and I’ve been trying to get her to fix me ever since.”
Kara glanced between them, mouth hanging open. It looked like skepticism, and Kyle could hardly blame her for that. But she hasn’t doubted who I am yet. That’s something. Considering as bad as she’d imagined—with Kara screaming at her, or calling the police, or something else horrifying—this felt almost polite.
“Talk about screwed,” Kara said. She reached out with one hand, touching the edge of Kyle’s wings. Then she yanked, pulling out a blue feather.
“Hey!” Kyle squealed, jerking her wing back. “You can’t just… that bloody hurt!” She pulled the wing in close, licking at the sore spot where the feather had been removed. It probably didn’t help her look more human, but it hurt!
“Real,” Kara said, turning it over in her fingers. “Now I’m going to, uh… go get dressed. And if I haven’t collapsed from an overdose, and this feather hasn’t disappeared, we’re going to have a talk. I guess we’re gonna talk either way, I just won’t be very happy that you lied to me.”
She got to her feet again, still holding to the bed to keep herself standing, and turned to leave.
“It’s not a lie or a trick,” she called. “Please, just… don’t tell Mom and Dad. I’m not sure what the hell I’m supposed to do about all this. I’m just hoping that it’ll all sorta… fix itself? Maybe it’ll wear off?”
Kara laughed, though her voice sounded more crazy than amused. “I won’t say anything yet. But if this is real, Kyle, you’re going to have to tell them. You really think you’re going to be able to fix this on your own?” She slipped out the door, shutting it quickly behind her.
Meanwhile, Kyle’s companion was apparently hungry too, judging from the way she was nudging at her legs. So maybe she hadn’t been trying to hide from Kara after all.
“I don’t really want to let you do tha—” But that was a lie. Even thinking about her brought that alien pressure back to the forefront of her mind. Not feeding her was more painful than just fighting the shame of it. “Fine.” Finally she rose to her hooves, looking determinedly away from Fay and back into her bedroom. “I should’ve asked Kara to bring some breakfast or something. Did I leave any snacks in here?”
Then came more sensations that didn’t make sense, ending with a gradual relief of the pressure she’d been feeling all morning. The baby-horse’s bizarre curse had forced her into their weird symbiotic relationship—even if she wanted to escape feeding her like this, she wouldn’t be able to without feeling like she was going to explode. But how could she be angry at a baby?
Ten minutes later and Fay was clearly feeling better, judging by the way she bounced energetically past Kyle to inspect the half-open door to the closet. There rested the toys that had once been her life, long enough ago that she could barely remember. She reached out, and the clear box filled with thousands of multicolored Lego bricks lifted right off the shelf.
“Wait!” she said, hurrying to catch up. “There’s no lid on that, sweetie, you’ll…”
Almost as though she could understand her, Fay giggled, and spun the entire thing upside-down. A mountain of different-sized bricks dumped onto the floor at her hooves, with little yellow figs scattering from the point of impact. “That’s… yeah.” She sat down beside her, glaring. “Babies aren’t supposed to play with Legos, lots of little parts. I’m watching you, Fay. If even one of those goes in your mouth, I’ll take them away. Got it?”
She cooed happily, shifting through the pile with uneven waves of golden light. Thousands of blocks scattered at the force, leaving behind only the ones she was most interested in. Mostly the people figs, though there were some wheel pieces and plastic animals as well.
I still need to get you a diaper before you make a mess on my floor. She watched in relative silence for a few minutes, alert to the baby trying to put any piece in her mouth, and creating even more trouble for her. Because despite being much larger, and theoretically having the same powers as the kid—she didn’t actually know how to use any of them.
“How do you do that?” she found herself asking, though of course she didn’t expect an answer. “Moving things around… your horn lights up, and they just move on their own. I can see why you’d want an adaptation like that, with stupid stumps like this.”
Her attention seemed to work. Fay turned towards her, dropping the stack of attached figs she was making and babbling something.
“I’m going to pretend you’re trying to answer me,” she said. “Thank you. I wish I knew how to do… whatever it is you just said.” She reached out with a hoof, trying to pick up a nearby piece. But even getting the proper leverage on just one regular brick took more precision than she could manage with a stupid gigantic hoof.
The door swung open again a few minutes later, and Kara slipped nervously inside. She’d dressed in casual clothes for a Sunday at home, though she was wearing a hoodie and the hood was pulled over her head. Are you really going to put the hood up when you’re doing something shady?
She clicked the door closed behind her, holding the blue feather in two fingers. “It didn’t disappear, and I’m not drugged. I did one of those drug test things on YouTube.”
She spun around, finally seeing the two of them in the corner of the room. Her eyes wandered past Kyle to the glob of a structure Fay was building by sticking pieces together. “Y-you’re… what poltergeist shit is this?” She pointed a shaking hand at the ball, her face twisting in horror.
Fay mimicked her fear, following her gaze as though she expected something terrible in the closet. The ball tumbled to the floor, exploding in a shower of bricks all around them. The baby whimpered and squealed, then started to cry.
“H-hey…” Kyle reacted instantly, scooping her up as best she could with awkward forelegs. “Hey, they’re just Legos. They’re supposed to break.” She spun slightly, so she could meet her sister’s eyes. “That wasn’t nice, you know. She’s a troublemaker, but she’s just a baby.”
“You’re… insane,” Kara said. She wobbled for a moment, glancing at the door for another second, then folded her arms. “I was just about to say I accepted what I was seeing had to be real. There was… some reason we couldn’t understand. But that? I’m running out of explanations, Kyle. Is this why you’re so antisocial lately? Demonic possession?”
Her tension and anger wasn’t helping little Fay calm down any faster. If she got much louder, even the ancient house’s thick walls wouldn’t be enough to keep the sound of crying from getting downstairs, into the ears of whichever parent happened to be home. “Shh… hey, it’s okay. Calm down, Fay. This is just Kara. She’s my sister, and she’s nice. Okay?”
It probably wasn’t her words, but the calm in her voice and the constant motion seemed to be having an effect. Fay sniffed, whimpering, climbing weakly onto her back. It seemed a natural place for a little horse to be, considering she was a much bigger horse.
Bigger than Kara, for that matter. She’d been taller than Kara since puberty, but now she could probably pop on a saddle and give her a ride around the property without much difficulty.
“How do you know her name? And… why do you sound so much like me? You haven’t sounded like that since we were ten.”
“I made it up,” Kyle said, ignoring the second question completely. It wasn’t as though she was wearing anything. She’d probably be dying of embarrassment about that right now, but at least being a horse had some advantages. Anything she didn’t want her sister to see was behind her, out of mind. Until Fay is hungry again and I feel like I’m going to pop.
“Hey, can you bring me something to eat? Like… I’m so starving I don’t care what. But I don’t think I should just head into the kitchen downstairs and make breakfast for myself.”
“Dad would love that,” Kara said. “Seriously, you’re asking about food? I just said I thought you were possessed, and all you can do is ask for Eggos?”
“Please,” she repeated. “Like… maybe a dozen, with syrup and butter and—” She probably would’ve gone on, but Kara’s indigent expression silenced her. “I don’t want Mom and Dad to see.”
“I can get breakfast,” Kara finally said, exasperated. “That’s a few minutes away from that Satan baby. But I hope you realize you can’t keep hiding for very long. You think you can pull that note to get out of school tomorrow? You really think that Mom won’t want to take you to the doctor? And when she comes knocking…” She gestured. “There’s a county fair in your bedroom, you sound like me, and also maybe some low-key ghostbusters shit.”
She wasn’t gone for long—but all this excitement was apparently too much for the baby on her back. This time Kyle carried her to the sitting room, dragging a few blankets along in her teeth. She did her best tucking her in for a nap, then shut the door.
Unfortunately her room was only becoming more of a mess the more time went by, and now she didn’t even know how to clean it. Or how to fix the chaos in the rest of her life. Priorities.
When Kara returned with an overflowing plate of waffles, she set all that aside for something much more important: food.
“I hope you thought about what I said,” Kara said, settling the plate on the edge of her desk. “You can’t hide from this and hope it will go away. Or… I assume you can’t. That actually might not be true.” She glanced around the room, eyes settling on the shut door. “What happened to the little nightmare?”
“Resting,” Kyle said, settling onto her haunches in front of the desk. She reached for the fork Kara had brought… then realized how stupid that was, and just took an entire waffle in her mouth. If she was waiting for some strange epiphany about how the powers of an abomination horse worked, she would need to keep waiting. Or maybe she should keep her eyes open for a chance to be part of a mythical training montage?
“So what the hell is your plan, Kyle?” She settled onto the edge of the bed, glancing around the dirty room with barely restrained disgust. “You can’t seriously just be hoping it wears off before Mom and Dad notice. You’ve got to tell them.”
“Okay, sure.” She turned slightly, glaring over her shoulder at Kara. “How am I supposed to do that? How do I tell Mom and Dad that a supernatural horse I saved in the woods transformed me into her babysitter? ‘I’m a horse now! It’s not a phase, gosh! Lots of kids have to nurse a baby horse before they graduate.’”
“Uh-huh.” Kara’s eyebrows went up. “Foal, by the way. Nurse a foal. And I wouldn’t think… you do sound like me.” She twisted suddenly around, lifting Kyle’s tail with the back of one arm and squealing in surprise. “Oh my gosh. I was right!”
“Yeah.” Kyle’s ears flattened, and her wings slouched weakly off her back. “Thanks for rubbing it in. I should kick you or something.” She didn’t, though. Somehow, a situation which would’ve been indescribable horror to her a few days ago was now only mildly annoying. She twitched her tail a few times, until Kara let go, and went back to the rest of the waffles.
They tasted weird in her pony mouth, not sweet in quite the ways she expected. They were strangely… flat, and processed. She craved something with a bit more texture to it. A fresh salad, maybe, maybe in a 50-gallon drum. But she was hungry enough that she wasn’t going to say so, and she kept going until the entire plate was empty.
“I don’t know if there’s a way to tell them,” Kara said. “But I’ll tell you what’s even stupider. Hiding up in your room until they find out unexpectedly. With my help, you could… let them down easy?”
She laughed, her voice bitter. “Oh yeah, easy. Nothing easier than finding out your son is a horse. Happens to everyone.”
“Unless this is some kind of… magic spell, and it’s going to wear off, you’ll need to tell them,” Kara repeated. “It might be impossible, but it’s not different than any other problem. You’ve got to march through it, and you’ll survive on the other side.” She slipped one hand into her pocket, removing her phone, spinning around suddenly to pose beside her. “Smile!”
You’re kidding me. She didn’t smile, but she wasn’t sure her expressions would even be that clear for her sister to read. Even so, she waited until she’d finished. “And what the hell was that? You’re taking selfies with me now?”
“In case it does wear off!” she said. “You’ve got to admit, this is crazy. It’s the kind of thing you’re going to wish you had pictures of when you’re older. We’ll laugh about it during family reunions.”
“I hope so,” she said, her head slumping against the desk. Hard enough that the old wood actually strained under her weight. “At this rate, it feels like those reunions are going to happen at the zoo.”