//------------------------------//
// Moody 
// Story: Beyond Me 
// by Boopy Doopy 
//------------------------------//

“Hey, Asher?” Holiday said quietly as she brushed the filly’s mane. “Sweetie? It’s time for you to wake up.”
She opened her eyes groggily, forgetting for a second where she was and looking around confused. What was she doing in a little girl’s room? And why was there a horse touching her hair?
“What am I doing here?” she asked tiredly, not fully coherent.
“You fell asleep while I was brushing your coat, dear,” Holiday answered, chuckling a bit at how adorable she thought Asher was.
“Oh yeah, I did fall asleep didn’t I?” she yawned, continuing without thinking, “The brushing felt really nice though.”
“It must have. It put you to sleep almost on the spot. You slept right through dinner and the entire night, but now you need to get up for school.”
“How long do you guys go to school?” she asked as she stretched her legs. “It didn’t feel like it was that long before I don’t think.”
“That’s a question you’re going to want to ask Miss Cheerilee when you see her. For now, though, why don’t we get you downstairs with Scootaloo so you can have something to eat? The last thing you had was at Pinkie Pie’s party I’m sure.”
“Yeah, I’m kind of hungry,” she admitted as she started to wake up, then suddenly thought of something. “But, um… I- I have a question first.”
“What’s that?”
“Um… how old do I look to you?”
“Well, how old are you?” Holiday joked with a grin, planning to just return her answer to her, but saw the filly frowning still and dropped her smile.
“I… don’t know.”
“You don’t know how old you are?”
“No…” she trailed off, then continuing, “I mean, I know how old I am, I’m about to turn twenty-five, but… I don’t look twenty-four to you, do I?”
“Well, how old do you feel like you are?”
“I don’t know… as old as Scootaloo? And she seems like she’s eight? Or ten?”
“Well, I’d say you look about that age, but why do you want to know?”
“Well, um…" she said awkwardly, embarrassed, for some reason thinking about the fact that she was near the age of puberty. "I- I just, um… I just- I… nothing. Never mind.”
“Are you sure? You can talk to me about anything you want to.”
“It’s nothing,” she assured her. “I might ask about it later though, but… not right now…”
Holiday wanted to press, but decided not to, instead telling her, “If you're sure, then you can head on downstairs. Miss Lofty already fixed something for you before coming back up here.”
“Okay, thank you. I appreciate it.”
The mare watched Asher quickly leave, and then, after waiting a few seconds for her to get down the stairs, went to see her wife in the other bedroom.
“Have you heard anything from Cheerilee or Mayor Mare about her yet, Lofty?” she asked as she entered, the pegasus laying back in bed, reading.
“Huh? Oh, no, I haven’t,” she answered. “Actually, I saw her a bit while I was out yesterday, and she said she still hadn’t gotten anything back from Canterlot, and most of the other nearby towns have said they haven’t had a missing pony reported..”
“It’s really strange, isn’t it?” Holiday said aloud, half talking to herself. “That she just showed up in Ponyville and after two days still nopony can say she’s the filly they’re missing? And how she said she was a boy and thinks she’s an adult… she seemed genuinely surprised and happy when I helped her find her hoof grip.”
“You don’t think she’s actually being serious when she says she’s from another world and didn’t use to be a pony, do you?”
“Well, no, but… it is worth considering at least a tiny bit, right?” Holiday suggested. “I mean, I honestly think both Cheerilee and that nurse are just brushing her off, truthfully.”
Lofty thought for a second, then responded, “Well, if you ask me, I don’t think she’s from someplace outside of Equestria, I think she has some..." She tapped the side of her head with her hoof to indicate what she wanted to say, then continued, "But I do agree that at least Cheerilee seemed like she was brushing her off a little bit when I talked to her, and Mayor Mare, too.”
“You think they were?”
“That’s what it seemed like to me. But honestly, if I had to guess…” She trailed off, leaving a bit of silence hanging in the air. Holiday raised her eyebrows at her, and then figured out what she was thinking when Lofty grimaced.
“You think-” Holiday started, then, as though somepony were listening, looked around and whispered, “You think she was abused? Like they were asking her about at the hospital?”
“It would make sense at least, why she’s so shy and says she’s an adult and a colt and why nopony’s reporting her missing,” her wife explained. “But either way, I think she might need to see a therapist. She’s kind of… weird…”
“She didn’t have any problems when she was around me. At least, none that I could see.”
“Are you going to try to talk to her?”
“I want to try, if you think it’s a good idea.”



“How often do you guys have school?” I asked Scootaloo as the two of us made our way over to Cheerilee’s schoolhouse. “Cause it feels like it’s summer to me, and I think I heard Cheerilee say something about a summer festival.”
“We have school on Tuesday and Thursday during the spring,” she explained to me, “and then it’s all week during fall and winter.”
“Is it not summer yet then?”
She shook her head, continuing, “Summer isn’t until the Summer Sun Celebration. It’s the longest day of the year.”
“Oh, the solstice,” I commented, only to get a strange look from her. “Never mind. It’s just a word for the longest and shortest day.”
“Ohhh… are you really not a pony?” she suddenly asked me, catching me completely off guard.
“What?”
“You don’t act like a pony to me, and talk kind of like an adult… you’re not just pretending to be an alien are you?”
“Well, I’m not an alien,” I started, “I’m just not… I mean, I’m not supposed to be a horse. I promise I’m not lying when I say I’m not… oh no…”
I couldn’t help but fall down and tear up once I started thinking about the fact that I was a pony, and put my head in my hands as I started to. No, my hooves. These dumb hooves that I now had that I absolutely didn’t want.
“Asher?” Scootaloo asked as she stood next to me, sounding concerned as I started to cry.
“I’m not a human anymore,” I got out. “I’m not a human and I’m supposed to be, and it’s killing me. I don’t want to be this… whatever I am!”
I didn’t know why it was taking me so long to accept what happened. Up to that point, I felt like there were a few times I was able to cope with it, and then other times where it just became completely overwhelming. It was just… a powerful sense that I wasn’t supposed to be what I was, and I absolutely hated it. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I found myself wanting to just be able to accept that this wasn’t going to change so the feeling would go away.
“Is this dysphoria?” I thought to myself as I cried. “Is that what I have? Lord, please, I pray that, whatever this is, you allow me the strength to accept what’s happened to me and you take this feeling away from me.”
I lay there for a few minutes, hoping something would happen right then, but not being surprised when nothing did. I did think though that I started to feel a little bit better, but much more slowly than I was hoping for.
“Stop acting like this,” I told myself. “You’re supposed to be an adult and yet you’re acting like a child. Just grow up and accept that it won’t change. Why can’t you just accept that?”
I lay there quietly crying to myself for a few minutes, Scootaloo speaking up after a while, saying, “Um… I think, um, we should…”
“Just go ahead of me,” I sniffled out. “I’m just going to lay here for a little while if that’s okay.”
“Uh, okay. If you say so.”
“Just accept it, Ash,” I told myself as I watched her walk. “Just accept that nothing’s going to change. You were put here and that’s it. What’s taking you so long to get that through your head. You’re not a human anymore. You’re not an adult anymore. You’re not a boy anymore. Just get that through your head. You’re not a boy anymore. You’re just a…”
I growled to myself as I dug my hooves into my forehead. Why did I have to be a girl? I could see a pony and a kid since everyone else here was ponies and I wouldn’t have any place to stay if I was an adult, but why a girl? What was the point of that? 
“Why couldn’t I have just been a boy?” I asked myself aloud. “It’d make this so much easier to get over if I could’ve just stayed a boy…” I closed my eyes, another couple of tears running down as I whispered, “I don’t want to be a girl."
“Why are you laying on the road?” a familiar voice, Diamond Tiara I remembered, called out to me. “You’re gonna mess up your coat like that,” she told me as I rubbed my eyes and sniffed a little bit, turning around to watch her and her companion walk up to me.
“I’m just feeling really terrible cause...,” I started without thinking as they approached before stopping. “It’s… it’s nothing. Never mind. What are you two doing here?”
“It’s Thursday,” the pink girl, filly, answered. “It’s time for school.”
“Oh yeah…” I said, forgetting about that. “I guess that’s where Scootaloo and I were going.”
“Did you two fight?” Silver Spoon asked. “She didn’t hurt you, did she?”
“No, I just-”
“You should walk with us since you’re our friend now,” Diamond interrupted as she held out a hoof to help me up. “You’re totally coming to our sleepover next week, right? It’s going to be on Thursday, and we don’t invite just anypony to hang out with us.”
“I mean, I guess,” I answered automatically as the three of us started to walk back to the schoolhouse. “I’m just a little-”
“That’s perfect! It should give you a break from having to live with her,” Silver Spoon said.
“It must be awful,” the other agreed. “How do you do it?”
“Asher!” I heard Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo call before I could answer. “What are you doing with those two?” she asked as she and Sweetie Belle came running up to me.
“She’s walking with us to school cause you abandoned her on the road, Scootaloo,” Diamond Tiara answered before I could.
“Yeah, she’s our friend now,” Silver Spoon added.
“Scootaloo didn’t abandon me-” I tried to get out.
“I didn’t abandon her! She told me to go ahead! You probably found her and started making fun of her!”
“We weren’t making fun of her! She wanted to come with us! Right, Asher?”
“Yes, I did, but-”
“How can you want to be friends with them?” Sweetie Belle jumped in. “They’re the meanest ponies in class!”
“I don’t even-”
“She wants to be our friend cause she’s pretty like us and she…”
I stopped listening and sighed to myself as they began to argue back and forth. I didn’t want kids fighting over being my friend, and grumbled to myself because of it. This was exactly like being back in elementary school, and it made me frustrated that I couldn’t really do that much about it. From what I could tell and from what I was told yesterday, it didn’t seem like this fighting was something that would just end, so I did the next best thing I could and simply walked away towards the schoolhouse that was only a couple of dozen or so yards away.
I sat down quickly in my seat and put my head on my desk, sighing again in frustration and still a bit emotional from earlier. I wanted to be able to go into work or study for school or go to church or something, but all I could do right then was sit at my desk and think to myself about my problems and make myself more frustrated.
“If I could just figure out what I’m supposed to be doing here-” I said aloud, exasperated, before Miss Cheerilee came up to me.
“You don’t have to be in here quite yet,” she told me, responding to my comment. “We still have some time before class starts. You can go out and play with your friends for now if you’d like.”
The fact that she used the word play didn’t help the bitter mood I was developing, and I angrily told her, “I don’t like kids.”
“You don’t like kids?”
“They’re out there fighting over being my friend and it’s annoying,” I explained grumpily. “They did it yesterday at the party and the day before that at recess. I felt bad the first time, but now it’s just irritating. I don’t want to have to hear fighting whenever I’m around them. I can’t even get a word in with them.”
“I see… I’ll have a little chat with them soon. But other than that, how are you doing?”
“I’m fine I guess. Miss Holiday showed me how to use my hooves to grip things, so I’m better. I’m just… being emotional again right now…”
“It’s okay to be emotional. It’s not good to hold everything in. Can I ask if there’s anything else making you upset besides your friends fighting?”
“No. I’m not in the right headspace to talk about it right now.” She gave me a look like she wanted to know more, and I continued, “It’s about the everything else I told you yesterday that you didn’t believe.”
“Asher-”
“I’ll be fine. I promise.”
She squinted at me before finally saying, “Okay, but if you need to tell me anything, you can talk to me anytime. Let me go speak with your friends now though.”
I rolled my eyes as she left, mumbling grumpily to myself. I guess I could tell her anything, but I knew she either wouldn’t believe me or would just take what I said out of context. Not that there was anything I could do about it, or any real reason to tell her anything anyway.
“The best I can do for now is go through the motions, I guess. I just wish I knew what I was supposed to be doing…”



The silver-coated filly sighed to herself often as the dull school day seemingly dragged on forever. She was used to taking classes, and in fact remembered driving into class the day before she became a pony. However, she wasn’t particularly used to being taught things she already knew. From what she could tell, this was third to fourth-grade level education, and found herself extremely bored because of it.
She did pay more attention once Cheeilee moved into history, and was a little bit interested in what she had to say then.
“As most of you know, our very own Ponyville is holding the Summer Sun Celebration very soon, but do you all know how many years it will have been since the first one was held?” The foals didn't know and no hooves raised up to answer, so she continued, “It was one thousand years ago. This is the one-thousandth Summer Sun Celebration.”
Asher looked skeptical at that and asked aloud, “Was it exactly a thousand years ago? And this exactly is the thousandth anniversary?”
“Yup! This is number one thousand,” Cheerilee confirmed, forgetting to reprimand her for not raising her hoof to ask a question. 
“That… that can’t be a coincidence, can it?" she thought. "I’m sent here on exactly the one thousandth sun fesitval?”
“Legend has it that during the celebration, a pony’s magic gets stronger, so pegasi fly faster, earth ponies become stronger, and unicorns can cast more powerful spells.” It was all things she told her class the previous year about the festival, but Asher found herself very interested in what Cheerilee was telling them.
“This… this can’t be a coincidence. And it’s in this city?”
“And Princess Celestia will come right here to Ponyville to raise the sun in the middle of the night!”
“And the princess is going to come here to raise the sun? This can’t be a coincidence! I’m sure God put me here because of something to do with that!”