Being stuck in a hospital ward had given Radiant Dawn plenty of time for self reflection.
Perhaps, when she finally met her lonely demise, the ones back home would remember as a foolish little filly who sweet talked her way into space, never to be heard from again.
Or maybe they wouldn't, and the most recognition she'd get would be in the form of a passing remark at the bottom of a history book.
Maybe that would have been for the best, given the circumstances.
To be honest, most ponies in her circle had tried to persuade her into withdrawing from the program. Petramgenics was still in its infancy, and as novel as the thought was, Radiant did not want to come back as a pile of marble chips.
The irony was not lost on her: years of living at the brink of death should have made shelving those thoughts easier for her. That was the whole reason why she was picked in the first place.
Of course, nopony had said that to her face, but she suspected as much. For lack of a better term, she was disposable.
Radiant had never given serious thought about how she would go, but as the days drew closer, she was unable to shake off the dread that something might go wrong during the launch.
Of course, she didn't actuay tell anypony that she was afraid though. Given the right evidence, even the princesses could be swayed. Radiant wasn't going to let somepony finding out that she had the jitters rob her of her spot.
So, she turned to the one thing that wouldn't betray her for comfort: the dusty history books that nopony bothered to read. If the great adventurers of old had no qualms about venturing into the unknown with nothing but a map and compass, then why was she fretting about the outcome?
Nopony would have discovered Griffonstone by being intimidated by the featureless Luna sea, and Startrotter wouldn’t have been the first to put a mare on the moon if they had played it safe.
The stories had help inspire a truism that generations of adventurers swore by: Fortuna audaces iuvat, or so it went.
That quelled the butterflies in her stomach. It gave her the courage to face her parents once last time before the launch.
It was too bad that fate cared little about one liners.
If fortune had truly favored the bold, then Radiant wouldn’t have ended up stuck here after Celestia knows how many years as a statue. Granted, ending up on Earth was an achievement in itself. She would have thrown herself into the mission if she could, but there wasn't much for her to learn by languishing in a ward. All she had managed to do so far was to trade a slow painful death as a pony for a slower, more miserable death as a human instead, confined to a bed while dozens of humans hovered around her and fretted over things too complicated for her to understand.
Frankly, she wanted nothing more than to run away from this place. Being at the receiving end of all this attention was suffocating - Radiant had never liked being mollycoddled as a foal. Hoffmare's syndrome sucked, but she had made it clear to everypony around her that she wasn't going to shatter if she fell. The humans were treating her as if she was some kind of porcelain doll was the kind of attitude that she had wanted to avoid.
Voicing her concerns to the people tending to her had done little in easing her worries; they had dismissed her concerns as nothing more than an expected side effect. Then again, even if they did, the effort would have been wasted on her anyway.
One of them, with an outrageously bushy beard that rivaled Starswirl's, had tried to explain her situation. He was patient, but it was too bad that half of what he said was too technical for her to understand - maybe a grand mage would be able to discern whatever kind of magic 'nano' fell under.
What she did understand however, was that it would take weeks, maybe even months before she regained the same level of dexterity with five digits instead of one. In his words, she “just had to be patient.”
What did they know about patience? It was easy to dispense advice like this they weren’t the ones who had to rely on a nurse just to use the bathroom. Having to depend on somepo- somebody else was embarrassing and humiliating. Radiant had tried, but her patience was starting to wear thin.
Not being able to hold anything with her stupidly flexible fingers infuriated her. She had tried to imitate the motions the nurses had demonstrated to feed herself, but the most progress she had managed so far was to clumsily prod the spoon off the serving tray after an entire week of effort.
True, it was an improvement over sending the tray, priceless titanium cutlery and all flying across the room days before, but it wasn't what Radiant would have considered progress. What use was there in being a scribe when she couldn't even put quill to paper?
The cynical part of her couldn’t help but wonder if they were deliberately trying to keep her helpless. It didn’t make much sense to her how a race so powerful could have changed her into one of them, implanted their language into her brain, somehow lack the means to stop her from flopping around like a helpless foal. Unless, she mused darkly, it was to keep her dependent on them.
Radiant shook her head. That didn’t make much sense in the grand scheme of things, except for the plot of some motion picture maybe.
Why would anypony in their right minds go through the trouble of creating this charade if they wanted to keep her dependent on them? It would be far easier to overpower a pony as frail as her. From there, they could have just forced whatever knowledge they wanted out of her. Instead, they had shown her nothing but concern and understanding. Maybe they feel guilty for what they’ve done?
In any case, she didn’t really know.
A knock on the door snapped Radiant out of her musings, bringing her back to the real world with a jolt.
Her body went slack as the one named Moriah stepped into the room, shutting the wooden door behind her with a soft click. Moriah smiled, pawing at the wrinkles in the doctor’s coat that she was wearing. It hung loosely over the grey shirt that she was wearing, its inoffensive shade blending in with the room rather nicely.
Even as a pony, Radiant never quite understood the obsession that some of her species had over clothing. The thought of being wrapped in layers upon layers of fabrics felt uncomfortably claustrophobic to her, and she didn’t see much point in baking the heat of Celestia's sun just to look pretty.
That was evidently not the case with humans, especially with how their concept of modesty seeming to depend entirely on clothes. Radiant had given up on trying to rid herself of the scratchy paper gown that they had provided her with. To them, seeing someone else naked was a source of great embarrassment, and they were very insistent that she kept it on at all times each time she asked about taking it off.
Perhaps it was because they lacked fur to cover up their… parts. In any case, it was an interesting quirk in their culture. A quirk that she couldn’t pen down for the record, all thanks to her new body.
She realized that she was scowling, and she quickly changed her expression to something more neutral. Thankfully, Moriah paid no heed to her looks and had eased herself into a nearby chair instead.
"Good afternoon Radiant.” She said, crossing her legs as she sat down. The motion was fluid, a far cry from anything that Radiant could have managed. "How was your day?"
Radiant allowed herself to smile. "Hello Moriah! It's nice to see you again" And she had meant every word of it. Moriah was nice - she no longer had that nervous stutter from their first meeting. Her voice was smooth, almost like chocolate to her ears and hearing her speak made all of Radiant's worries melt away into nothingness. “I've been better I guess… but that's to be expected, isn't it?"
Moriah raised an eyebrow, tilting her head questioningly.“How so? Did you try to walk again today?"
"No!" Radiant yelped, shelving that idea before Moriah could stir up more memories of that particular attempt from her mind. "You're... close though. I can't help but keep thinking about it, since I’m like, this now." She said, stealing a glance at the shape underneath the covers.
"Oh?"
"Well, remember when I told you that I wanted to get to work as soon as possible?" Radiant sighed, willing her arms to move from their resting place. She strained from the effort, her limbs trembling pathetically in the air as she ignored the burning sensation in her arms.
Moriah nodded. Her task to document everything was general knowledge by now, and the humans were more than happy to answer her questions. Except for the ones related to her recovery, or her friend. All that they had said about Seefi was that she shouldn't worry too much about him.
“Well, I can't do my work in this body. Not like this. No matter how hard I try-” Her muscles couldn’t take any more of this, and they flopped uselessly back onto the mattress like a puppet with its strings severed. “It’s been an entire week and I still can’t even eat without somepony helping me! I’m useless!"
“No,” Moriah's voice cut through her loathing. “you’re not.
Radiant sniffled, blinking away the blurriness in her vision. "I'm not?"
Moriah shook her head. “No. It’s normal to be angry and upset that your new body isn’t working out like your old one, especially considering the circumstances." She said, her voice quavering slightly. "But you have to understand that biofabrication is no panacea. Even humans have trouble regaining control over their bodies after the procedure. What you need to do right now is to try and relax, Radiant. Stressing yourself out is only going to slow things down, not speed them up.”
She should have shrugged it off, but what Moriah said kept echoing through her head. Stress? Stress?! What the buck does she know about stress? “Trust me, Moriah. I’m trying really hard right now. And if I could stop being stressed right now, I would.”
She let out a cold laugh, glaring at the human with a gaze that could have frozen water. “But I guess it’s too bad that I don’t appreciate you people robbing me of my body huh!? If only your people had asked me first before turning me into some magic experiment! You think that it’s better to save me when you turned me into one of you?!” She hissed, tensing up.
“ Well, guess what? It’s easy for you to tell me to be patient when you’re not the one who has to deal with the bucking problem!” Radiant shouted until stars crept into her vision. She had slipped back into her native language, her tongue flexing and straining to form syllables unsuited for human mouths.
Radiant glared at the human, waiting for a reply that never came. If Moriah had any objections to what Radiant just said, she didn’t show it. The human looked unfazed as she sat stoically in her chair, her arms crossed. Minutes ticked by without anything happening and an uncomfortable silence simmered in the room, broken only by the periodic hum of something in the background.
Moriah sighed, leaning forwards in the dinky looking chair.“You know what?”
Radiant gulped, her heart pounding against her chest. Is this the part where she tells me to buck off for being ungrateful?
“You’re right."
The mare blinked. Wait, what?
“I can’t begin to imagine how you must feel right now, Radiant.” Moriah said, planting her feet on the ground. The chair creaked in relief as she made her way to the window, the forest of golden yellow still as impressive as ever. “I’m sorry that we didn’t seek your consent for the procedure. But I need you to pull through this Radiant, because right now, nothing is more important than you getting through this.”
"You’re stronger than you think, Radiant. I don’t know about your world, but it takes more than bravery to compel take the first step into that ship. You knew the risks, and here you are.” She tapped on the glass, turning to face Radiant. “Alive. Now, you’re at the doorstep of something greater than the two of us. Are you going to give up now? Because that's going to leave a lot of disappointed humans and ponies alike."
Radiant didn’t meet her gaze. Truthfully, she didn't know what compelled her to step into the pod. Foalish naivety perhaps, or a fear of meeting the grey mare before her parents did. But Moriah had a point. Breaking down in the face of calamity never got anything done.
She had never expected to find herself on Earth. But discovery was the reason why Startrotter was formed in the first place, and creatures from all over Equus had banded together in the hope of finding somepony else out there in the inky darkness of space.
The discovery of the Arion probe had given them that hope. Changelings, Griffons, Hippogriffs had all come together with the hope of sharing friendship with its creators. Could she live with knowledge that she had squandered the efforts of the creatures that had gotten her here?
It wasn't like anypony would know of her failures anyway; she could still bail out on them, and nobody would be any the wiser. She could still run away from all this, but where would she even go to hide on an alien planet?
The princesses knew everything that went on within Equestria's borders, and if this world was anything like hers, she wasn't particularly keen on incurring the wrath of their Princesses. Radiant wasn’t particularly eager in exploring just how powerful human magic was. If they could change her into one of them, what else could they do?
Her new body sucked, but it was free of the flaws that had once tied her down. She had promised herself a long time ago that if a second chance ever came her way, she wasn't going to waste it.
And now, by some miracle of Celestia, that chance was staring at her right in her face.
No. Moriah was right.
“You know what Moriah?” Radiant said, sitting up straighter in her bed. She sucked in a shaky breath, looking at Moriah with the same confidence that had compelled her to volunteer for the trip. "No. I'm not going to give up just yet."