//------------------------------//
// Winter in Canadia 
// Story: Legends of Equestria: the Sorceror's Apprentice 
// by The Blue EM2 
//------------------------------//

Sara sighed as she sat back in her desk chair to check her messages. The cold night whistled all around her and the apartment block in which she lived, perfectly amplifying her feelings at the moment. Life was pretty cold at the moment, and that brought with it some challenges, piled on top of the global health crisis.

Sara Smith was, for her age, a fairly typical young woman in her mid twenties with medium length brown hair and blue eyes that were unusually pale. This was complemented by her skin, which was also untanned and similarly pale. This was partly a consequence of her country of residence. Sara lived in Canada, a nation that is cold and where it rains one in every four days, on average, due to being a very long way north. Although currently resident in Calgary, Alberta, in a relatively flat part of the country, she had moved around a lot during her life due to her parents being in the military. As a consequence, she was the sort of person who felt she didn't really belong anywhere, having no real sense of 'home'. She lived somewhere, yes, but she was certain it wouldn't be long before she moved onwards again. This may have seemed like an awful state of affairs, but to her it was normal. Don't get too attached to a place and you'll spare yourself the heartbreak of leaving.

"Right, email from Tom," she muttered. Tom Haddington was an English guy whom she'd met through Facebook, seeing a group entitled Transformation which linked her to a page on Fimfiction. She liked My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, being a pegasister, but what was detailed within was totally bizarre.

There was a group of people who had all claimed, or had at least written about, being changed into various different My Little Pony characters. Whilst she had seen reference to the WDW incident on the news, she was pretty certain that was false. Talking with them, however, had revealed they were in fact completely serious. The issue had started with Jimmy, a man who lived somewhere in North Carolina, who had reportedly been changed into Sunset Shimmer in a high school as a result of a bizarre magical process, which had rewritten his DNA. He had spread this to Tom, and onwards to a girl called Katrina Miller (another friend of Tom) at Walt Disney World, which had resulted in all sorts of interesting videos, such as one called 'Man turns into Vapour (sic) Trail' which had gone viral.

Then, it had spread to even more people at Universal Studios. Or so they said. Sara was pretty convinced they were pulling her leg. Whilst the idea of exploring new identities and feelings through the genre of transformation was appealing from a literary standpoint, it was biologically impossible. Besides, magic didn't exist.

Tom's email was talking at length about a book he had bought in a book sale that was written in a very odd language. He had sent a scan of the cover through, and Sara thought it looked oddly familiar. "That looks to be the cover of Starswirl's Journal, or at least a very convincing replica," she commented, starting to type her reply. She got about halfway through her email before hearing her stomach start to make its emptiness known.

"Right, time to get some food," she said, walking off to her kitchen. It was a fairly small place, really with only enough space for one. If she ever got together with anybody (something she thought unlikely), it would prove to be too small. She fished into the fridge and looked through. "Why did I think getting poutine was a good idea?" she asked herself, before settling on a burger sitting in the frozen section. "Right, time to defrost you."

She had set it into the microwave to defrost when she noticed something odd on her door. Hanging on her door was a cloak. The cloak was a dark blue, combined with light blue trim running along the side and a similar set of light blue stars along it too. It had a clasp in the same colour as well, which made it look very odd, and there was a set of glasses above it too.

"Who left these here?" she asked. "How did they get in my flat?" She picked them up to return them to lost property downstairs when an electrical jolt from the glasses through her backwards and against the edge of the cupboards, stunning her.

"Huh, what?" she said quietly, sitting up as best she could. She brought a hand up to try and rub her aching forehead. Only it wouldn't open for some reason. She brought it over to look at it.

Her hand was now a hoof!

"WHAT THE FUCK?" she screamed. "WHAT IS HAPPENING?"

She was about to get a pretty big clue as suddenly her skin tingled with an odd energy. As her other hand morphed into a hoof and her arms snapped backwards into a position that resembled legs, orange fur erupted out of her left (former) arm and began to spread rapidly, soon covering her entire body in a thick coating of the fuzz. The exception to this rule was from the knee joints down as far as the hooves, which were now white. Or was it a cream colour? It was rather unclear to her, but when one finds themselves being changed into a weird creature, the first thing that tends to get chucked out of the window is rational thought.

As her face stretched out into an odd, box shaped thing, her mouth and nose merging into a single structure, her tongue thickened greatly and her teeth were flattened. She could wave goodbye to eating meat. These teeth were for herbivores, which gave a further clue to what was going on.

Further changes to her upper body shifted her biology further towards an equine as an orange horn erupted from her forehead, followed by her hair being pulled back and turned red, sitting in an awkward red and lighter red combo atop her head and down her neck. Her body swelled, limbs thickening like tree trunks and her chest expanding as if she had been breathing in. There was a loud ripping noise, and her clothes were torn apart, falling onto the floor in tattered rags.

Sara was no longer registering any particular points, just random surges of pain all over the place. Soon after, she felt her breasts shrink into her chest. Presumably horses didn't have those there. As her hips were pulled in, she became aware of an odd sensation 'down there'. Something was being added to her somewhere. She looked between her now four legs to see what was wrong with her.

Or rather, by that point, what was wrong with him.

Sara reacted the way anybody would in this situation. Scream, as his voice dropped in pitch into a male tenor range. A tale in the same colours as the mane popped out of his ass as the feet morphed into hooves and gained the same shape and colouration as the front legs. The process seemed to be complete when the cloak and glasses floated into place on his face and back.

He had no chance to react to that either, as there was a bright flash and she was suddenly in the middle of a square. He recognised it almost immediately.

"OK, three things," he said to himself. "Firstly, why am I Sunburst? Second, why have I changed gender? And third, WHY AM I IN VANCOUVER?!"

"Are you feeling OK, Sunburst?" asked a voice behind him. Sunburst swung around to see Starlight Glimmer looking at him, a mixture of concern and confusion clouding her face.

"How can I possibly be OK?" Sunburst replied, panic striking her voice. "I've swapped genders, something which may I remind you is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE without surgery and somehow warped across the country! So no, I'm not OK! OK?"

Starlight sighed, and shifted her mane a bit. "OK, sounds like we need to get somebody up to speed. There's been all sorts of weird phenomena going on across the world turning people into ponies, and it doesn't seem to be at all random."

"There's something incredibly random about finding items that belong to a character from a cartoon!" Sunburst replied. "Besides, I'm incredibly confused and disoriented right now! Switching species isn't fun, but genders too? This is like something out of a weird horror movie!"

Starlight looked surprised. "So you switched from female to male? That's a first. I'll need to write that one down. Until you get everything figured out, I'll happily accomodate you in my home in this part of the world."

"Won't people react weirdly to ponies?" Sunburst asked.

"We're in Vancouver!" Starlight replied. "The home of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic! Besides, we're in Canada. They accept practically anypony!"

Suddenly, there was a bright flash in the sky. "What was that?" Sunburst asked.

"It came from the viscinity of the Lions Gate Bridge!" Starlight said. "I'll get things set up at home, you go investigate."

"Yeah, thanks, let the guy who's all discombobulated investigate the weird thing," Sunburst grumbled.





Sunburst made his way through the dark streets. It still felt odd, suddenly being the opposite gender to the one you were born as, and the slippery path and itchy fur certainly weren't helping things. This was like that time she had visited the Crystal Empire-

Wait, what? That was all fiction! There was no way that had happened.

"Just what I needed, my memories blurring together with those of Sunburst," he groaned, as he reached what looked like the bridge. He trotted along it, and sure enough saw a being atop a platform near the top of the bridge. He clambered up the ladder as best he could, his hooves sliding on the cold wet rungs, and eventually pulled his way up to the top. Standing there was a wizened old pony with a white beard and tale, wearing an elaborate cloak and a giant hat with bells on it. He was looking up at the skies, seemingly confused.

"If only the stars weren't so murky!" the pony grumbled. "All this light and smoke is making it hard to see where I am in the world. I wonder if anypony will actually know where I am."

Sunburst decided to help this individual, who if nothing else seemed to be as confused as he was. "You're in Vancouver," he said.

The other pony turned around to look at him, eyeing him over slowly and with slight suspicion. "Another pony? Here, in this world?" he asked, as he descended to Sunburst's level. "I say, these are most strange times. Tell me, what is your name?"

"Sunburst," Sunburst replied. He decided to go with identity for now. If nothing else, it kept things less confusing. Besides, this pony would probably think him completely mad if he told the truth. "And you are, sir?"

"I am Starswirl," the pony said. "I see a very accomplished wizard before me."

Sunburst subconsciously gasped in amazement, as yet another memory dump occurred in his head. "Y- you're Starswirl the Bearded?! None other than the Father of the amniomorphic spell, the most important  conjurer of the pre-classical era, the creator of more than two hundred  spells, and you even have a shelf in the Canterlot library of magic  named after you! Sir, it is such an honour!" He lowered his head so low his muzzle was scraping the floor.

"Rise, Sunburst," said Starswirl. "As much as I appreciate the sentiment, we sadly lack the time for such formalities right now. As I speak, there is a sinister  plot afoot that requires us to do some research. I cannot collect  information from the stars owing to the brightness of the lights and the smoke."

"Light pollution sucks," Sunburst replied. He certainly knew about that from his past life. "It makes stargazing very difficult. But we can do other things! How about I take you to where I live?"

"Does it have a library?"

"Yes, it does!" Sunburst replied. "It's an absolute haven for a bibliophile such as myself!" Not questioning how he knew this all of a sudden, the pair set off for where Sunburst would be resident for quite a while.