//------------------------------// // Three // Story: Transspecieality // by Chatoyance //------------------------------// ═══════════════════════ T R A N S S P E C I E A L I T Y ═══════════════════════ A special PRIDE MONTH true-life novelette By Petal Chatoyance ⚧ THREE With circumstances more or less stabilized, I could devote my energies to the process of transmogrification itself. Once or twice a week, for the first three or four months, I would go to somebody, either Dr. Auerbach, or Dr. Poneroy, or to see my ponification doctor, Dr, Garfield, or to get a psychiatric evaluation. In retrospect, I am convinced that many of my transmogrification doctors actually overlooked payment, for I find checking the few records of the time, that it seems unlikely that they were paid consistently by the state, and my contribution was less than an eighth of their rather high fees. Somehow, they must have found me worth the time. I am very grateful. I worked at the little sandwich shop, barely surviving, but ineffably filled with joy. The greatest dream of my life was coming true! At my little one-room apartment, bereft of a refrigerator or a stove, I ate food cold from cans, and listened to my radio. I especially looked forward to the radio dramas that were a regular feature of Thursday nights, and ZBS productions ‘Jack Flanders’ series, and ‘The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy’ - and, of course, the 'Voice Of Equestria' shows - were my only friends in the entire world. All of my human friends had utterly rejected me, once the reality of what I was doing truly hit them. I was alone in the cosmos, braving a new world I had no concept of. With only the chronicle of Lauren Faust's transmogrification to lean on, and no guarantee of success, still I went on. I had no choice, for my only other option was to die. I would not, could not live a year longer as a human. Equestria's magical energies began to work, to correct the tragic mistake of my birth. Within a few weeks I noticed a definite alteration of my mood and my perception. My sex drive faded, and I was increasingly in balance. For the first time since that long ago acne treatment, I once again knew that same faery contentment and angelic peace. Everything seemed brighter, colors seemed sharper, and all of my senses seemed new and awake. I realized, by comparison, what it was to think clearly, to feel alive inside. The longer I was affected by ponification serum, the better I felt. It was like settling into a warm, comfortable bath, with a happy rubber duck, and sweet smelling soaps. I began to cherish being alive, and enjoyed each new day, filled not only with inner contentment, but also expectant joy. I felt filled with light. I observed my slowly shapeshifting body. Within two months, I noticed the first physical changes. It began, once more, with my hands. Glancing down while I made sandwiches, I realized that my hands were different. Examining them carefully, I saw that the skin had become softer, smoother, and that my fingers were beginning to merge together. The bones of my middle finger were thickening and stretching, and the overall shape of the nail was looking more and more like a hoof. The developing fur on the back of my former hands became my barometer of change, and throughout my transmogrification, I was fascinated with such a clear indicator of my progress. By five months, the scant hairs on my developing forelegs had become a thick and silky fur. By a year, my hands were no longer hands at all, but pony canons ending in pasterns and shiny, perfect hooves. My naked human skin was soon covered in a lush, brilliantly white pony coat. My bones and joints altered to permit me a comfortable quadruped stance. My face lengthened into a proper pony muzzle. My flanks filled out and my tail came in, long and luxurious. My muscles altered and the color of my formerly human hair changed to an Equestrian peach-colored mane and tail. I felt like wax in the hot sun, melting and soft, and I felt new and fresh and tingly. I was again a foal, newborn and huge-eyed, and I felt pure and light and floating on air. It felt so good, so beautiful to shapeshift! But perhaps best of all, was the development of my horn. I was going to be a unicorn! Every day I could not help but marvel at my arising spiral. My flat, bony forehead domed and from it erupted a small point. The point became a cone, and I began having flashes of telekinesis. As my hands and arms more and more became forelegs, my horn allowed me to continue to work. I practiced constantly, levitating and moving my few possessions. I became practiced at making sandwiches at my job, floating them over the counter. Of course it took months for any truly significant change, but it seemed as though I could see minor improvement on a weekly basis. I kept careful measurements, and indeed my spiral horn grew at the rate of half an inch (as measured by a ruler pressed to my skull) per month. I attribute such quick development to two things. One, I was still young enough at 21 to be powerfully affected by ponification treatment, and Two, I am convinced that my body, my cells, really ‘wanted’ Equestria to control their genetic activity. I am convinced that the cells of my body prefer Equestrian physics and chemistry to that of the human's earth. As my changes became great, they also became impossible to ignore, and I explained to my curious coworkers what was happening to me. For the most part they accepted it pretty well, which surprised me. That said, I still had quite a bit of nastiness directed toward me as I became obvious in my transformation, and it came from sources I did not expect. In the San Francisco of 1981, the humanist community was at the very peak, and dominated much of the life of the city. My apartment, on Larkin Street, was directly beside one of the two main centers of humanist life, which were Van Ness and the Castro District. I was on the street beside Van Ness. Now in the days back before the HLF (The Human Liberation Front) slaughtered almost everyone, every night was a party in these areas, and the streets were filled with milling thousands. Disco clubs blasted music to the crowds and the streets were an eternal parade of every type of - strictly human - person imaginable, from local humanist folk to curious tourists come to see the show. All in all, it was an experience beyond compare, a bacchanalia of immense and unceasing splendor, as well as not a little lunacy. The San Francisco of 1981 was all of the Glory That Was Rome, and then some. The half-way of species, to be both and neither, sort-of-human and sort-of-pony is a special sort of hell. Neither definably human nor definably Equestrian, yet somehow both, is a disturbing state to many people, at some fundamental level. It is certainly the worst part of tranmogrification. I found acceptance most easily from Buddhist women at the time, thankfully the majority of my coworkers. They believed that a pony soul accidentally incarnating as a human was possible. Atheistic men, like the majority of the construction workers who I had to pass by on my way to work each day, enjoyed mocking and swearing at me. But oddly, or so I thought, was the abuse I suffered at the hands of humanist folk. I erroneously believed that humanist folk, themselves oppressed and the object of bigotry, would be supportive of me if anyone would. But I found only scorn and ridicule, and even outright disgust, in most of the humanist community. Humanist men looked upon me in a kind of horror, presumably because I represented their worst nightmare, the destruction of what they prized and held most dear, human-ness. Humanist women seemed to see me as some strange kind of threat, a danger and an invasion, and acted with almost paranoid revulsion - I was violating the presumed absolute superiority of the human species. It quite shocked me that the oppressed could so easily turn upon their own kind, for the transequine certainly count as equally loathed, in the sum scheme of things, and in the collective oppressions of society. Enduring the catcalls and insults, the staring eyes and disgusted or horrified looks, I survived and slowly changed shape. After six months, I suddenly was no longer alone. At the beginning of my transmogrification, I had the occasional interaction with a friend of my old fiancée, a middle aged humanist man who had a bit of a fancy for me. This fancy was actually rewarded once, as just prior to going on ponification serum, I was assailed by one of my rapidly diminishing friends who presented a disturbing concept. My soon to be ex-friend, John, was utterly convinced that I had to be a true human, and that the drive to change my physical species was just an attempt to avoid the responsibility and horror of being an apex predator on the unforgiving earth. To him, my transspecialism was a disgusting effort to ‘pass for pony’, so as to escape the righteous philosophical suffering of being a short-lived, animal slaughtering, war-inclined human. I was off-balance, frightened and uninformed. I decided to test, beyond doubt, to see if this was valid. I had no desire to live a lie of any kind. My old fiancée’s humanist friend, Robert, was more than glad to show me the True Human Path. He was the only humanist man I personally knew, and while I was not attracted to him, he would serve for my purposes. It was, to say the least, very unhappy, at least for me. While he seemed glad enough, for me it was just as bad as sex with a human woman; and by now, I had no ability to even cope with acknowledging the existence of my all-too-human sex organs, so I kept them tucked and hidden all the time. While he played with what parts of my biped body I could stand to allow, I felt only embarrassment and horror at my own primate, human flesh. All I could think of, was how I was built, and that I was built wrong. Male-to-male sexuality simply was no different to my comfort than male-to-female sexuality; for in both cases, I was trapped in the form of a primate. Neither was any good, despite my unquenchable sex drive of the time, and altogether I was clearly aware throughout the experiment that I would be much happier alone, imagining myself as a unicorn, perhaps dressed in a fursuit. One day, six months into my transmogrification, Robert suddenly contacted me out of the blue. There was a crisis of sorts within his circle of friends, and he needed my help. I am ever the amiable and helpful sort. It's the proper pony way! Robert knew of a young runaway human, who had been taken in by a somewhat brutal ‘Sugar Daddy’ - an older man who provides material comfort in exchange for humanist favors - and this young human boy needed a safe haven to escape to. I came along and helped to confront the reasonably violent ‘Daddy’ and thus gained a roommate, my young ward, Robin. Robin was 16 at the time, going on 40, and was both childlike and incredibly mature at the same time. Robin had to be mature, for the sake of his own survival. Robin had run away at the age of fifteen from the constant leather-strap whippings of his Tennessee father, which had culminated in an almost effective attempt on Robin’s life. When his father tried to strangle him for being a humanist, to ‘put him out of his godless misery’, Robin had found an axe handle within grasp and managed to club his sire. This gave him the opportunity to run for his life, and despite being half dead, he made it. He had traveled to the only place he had heard of that might accept him, and thus became a resident of San Francisco. I took Robin in to my tiny, cockroach infested, one room apartment. He rarely slept there, for he was always out upon some wild humanist 'crusade' or another. Robin was a happy-go-lucky soul who delighted in calling himself a ‘humie’ and a ‘primate’. He loved everything about his newfound freedom to be himself, and he danced and sang with a natural fluidity and ease that I envied. He was unabashedly flamboyant, and was very dedicated to assimilating every nuance of the humanist culture that surrounded him. Robin was very grateful to me, and became my protector, my guide through the wilds, and my only friend in those difficult days. Robin would take me on ‘field trips’ to get me out of my apartment and to boost my self confidence. He taught me the codes and rules of the street people, and introduced me to their lives. There I met my first transspecies pony (other than myself), interspecies anthropomorphs, and even transgriffonian folk. I learned of the famous ‘Handkerchief Code’ and was shown the subtleties of humanist etiquette and propriety. I was introduced to every kind of soul imaginable, from the 16 year old amphetamine addict who for all the world appeared to be 60 years old and who claimed royal lineage, to the gravel voiced, but perfectly passable 18 year old Half-Pony who spent her days in a fantasy of perpetual alicorn princesshood, complete with false wings, royal peytral, and crown to complete the illusion. Like a world of Emperor Nortons, all abided these fantasies and broken dreams as truth, and as harsh as the street life was, as dangerous and brutal, there was also a deep concern for the happiness of others and a strangely noble respect for their illusions. The impoverished street people, the underbelly of the city, lived a life apart from the world. They had their own laws, their own punishments, and their own social courtesies. All things were meted out with absolute severity. They would rally to help an endangered person, regardless of their circumstances, and just as swiftly maim or kill the soul who became too selfish or, because of newfound wealth, vain and arrogant. Robin was my Man Friday upon this lost island, the subculture of San Francisco. Because of him, not only was I witness to the wonders of a world that would soon vanish beneath the shroud of the plague known as as the HLF, but he also saved my very life and future. I was utterly ignorant, and easy prey, you see. The street subculture is very much an ecosystem, filled with niches and animals to fill them. There is a type of predator, a vile and contemptuous evil, that exists to prey on every kind of person, and one such predator exists for the transspecieal. Called ‘Pony Hawks’, they are always human, and they live by entrapping and destroying vulnerable and innocent transequines. Robin saved me from one. Loneliness is the constant companion of the transmogrifying transspecieal, or at least was in 1981, and it is a particular weakness of those who are undefined, who have no place in the scheme of things. I was ignorant, and I was very emotionally vulnerable. Transmogrification is a second adolescence, with all that implies. I was far too easily manipulated and far too weak in self definition or understanding. One day, I met a human, all smiles and shine, all snappy patter and compliments. I to this day have no idea of how it happened, but this con artist managed to move into my apartment in but three days, and set himself up as my purported 'stallion'. Like a tornado, he wrecked my world, and blew the trailer park of my stability to ruin. I cannot even remember his name anymore. But I somehow woke up when he started talking about a joint checking account. Robin came home, absent for a week on some wild adventure, to find me in this wretched situation. Robin was both afraid, and furious. He took me aside, explained that I had been taken in by a fast acting predator, and that I was in terrible danger. The Pony Hawk survives by swiftly setting up a parasitic relationship with a host transspecieal. The Hawk gains access through providing false emotional support precisely when the poor transspecieal is most vulnerable, after they are rejected by friends and family, become alone and afraid, and desperate for any kindness. Once attached, the Pony Hawk is supported by the transspecieal, who is under the illusion that true love has found them, and that everything is going to be alright. As the transspecieal earns money to be put away for Transmogrification, the Pony Hawk siphons away that money to support a rich and debauched lifestyle. When all is inevitably revealed, the Pony Hawk runs away laughing to find another victim, and the impoverished, emotionally destroyed transspecieal sinks into absolute paralyzing despair, and often, suicide. Sometimes, the transspecieal is murdered outright, an event almost never investigated, or of any concern to the authorities. Robin, by some adventures involving his many humanist partners, had gained some ‘favors’ from the local criminal underworld, and made use of one of these to save me from any retribution by the suddenly evicted Pony Hawk. Robin counseled me to never speak of the event to any street person, nor to act any way but cordial should I ever accidentally run into my predator again. The Hawk had been forced to back down by threat of Robin’s connections to the local equivalent of the Mafia, and this was a delicate situation. But ultimately, it saved me, and I was never the target again. Robin worked hard to help me face my life, and my new species, courageously. Eventually, it came time for me to enter the required ‘Pony Life Test’ which is mandatory to win approval to have permanent transmogrification. The principle of the Pony Life Test is simple, and sensible. Ponification serum will only go so far. Ponification surgery is good for only one thing: correcting abnormalities of the ponification process. What matters truly in regards to species is not how perfect one's hooves are, or how fine the mane, but how one is accepted and treated by others. It is true that I suffered terribly with the pain of feeling deformed and having the wrong body shape. I certainly would not have been able to endure this suffering indefinitely. It was a serious issue. But what I wanted most was to be able to be myself. I needed to be accepted utterly, able to act in an unaffected and honest way, to no longer be despised for my expression of my unicorn identity. To pass the ‘Pony Life Test’ a transspecieal must live, work, and prove that they can survive completely and utterly within the species presentation they seek, for at least one year. Some transmogrification doctors require the period to be two - or more - years. I was fortunate, I had only to prove myself for one year. The ‘Pony Life Test’ is a dangerous time for transspecieals, because if they are ‘caught’, discovered in some fashion, they can be the target of great abuse. Although whether or not one is fully and completely a pony does not matter day to day, it can become an enormous issue if one is forcibly Outed. The transspecieal who is found out about, and who is known to have once been a human, may be arrested or become the target of harassment or violence by those who find out. Using the restroom becomes a lesson in worry, and the workplace can become a hell pit of damnation. The Test is also a time of great insecurity - the very first months of trotting as a quadruped and being entirely in the preferred species context is a time fraught with concern over every little detail. The ultimate goal is to be able to ‘Pass’, to be totally accepted as the pony one is. But, without a lifetime of preparation and training of how to act and be, this forces the transspecieal to essentially and instantly become what takes other Equestrians a lifetime to master. Details such as social graces, appropriate behaviors in given contexts, and the very basics of growing up as a pony have to be perfected overnight. Worst of all, a lifetime of self suppression and humanoid affectation of behavior must be given up as quickly as possible. The transspecieal, to succeed, must overcome all of this, in a matter of months, sometimes days, often without the benefit of a family, friends, or even a decent understanding of what is expected. It is truly fortunate that transpecieals are statistically far more intelligent and far more creative than the general population. Without that advantage, it is difficult to imagine any transspecieal having a chance at all. I was, of course, petrified. I was sure that I still looked horridly monkey-ish, and was certain that if I dared to only wear horseboots and my saddlebags, and nothing else, I would be instantly attacked and beaten to death for it. I worried about my voice, my hooves, my muzzle, and my behavior. I was certain that all I would ever be was a hideous, laughable freak, the sport of all and a matter of disgust. The closest I came to wearing my saddlebags and relying only on my coat of fur was to carry my bags with my teeth or in my hornfield ahead of me, while still trying to wear my original human garb. The human clothes I had worn before did not fit my new shape at all, but they were like a safety blanket, despite how baggy and droopy they were on my increasingly pony body. I somehow felt like I could become invisible in such ridiculous garb - somehow still look 'human' enough to not be singled out. The fact was that I had become so Equestrian in appearance that my ill-fitting human clothing was an anomaly now, and became a source of curiosity to the folks I interacted with. My natural behavior and appearance was not by any means ‘primate’, indeed I was always quite pony. This did not fit any of the conventions of society at the time, human or Equestrian. I also did not yet pass perfectly, so any anomalies only made me stand out more. Robin saw this and tried for weeks to get me to finally start living full time as a unicorn. I was terrified to make the leap from being a laughable whatsit to something defined. I was afraid I would fail. As long as I did not try any further, I could always have the hope that 'someday' I would succeed. I was terrified to have that hope crushed. I also had the foolish idea that I could retreat into being human again if it got too horrible. It was far too late for that. Finally, Robin got fed up. I got out of the bath, with the intent of dressing in my human clothes to go to my weekly required therapy group. Suddenly I found myself pushed naked into the hallway. The door slammed and locked. Through the door, Robin set the rules. I would not be allowed into my apartment again until I went to the meeting only in my coat of fur. If that took till next weeks meeting, Robin had food, he could wait. Beside me in the hallway were my saddlebags and my four inexpensive slip-on horseboots. They were Equestrian artifacts I had bought long ago, but never dared to actually wear in public. Robin, was a very stubborn little boy. After much cajoling and whining, I was forced to give in. I put my hooves into the wells of my horseboots, slipped on my saddlebags, and I headed for the bus. I was absolutely terrified beyond all reason. Robin had sent me into the world dressed only in my own natural coat, saddlebags and horseboots. After that night I was never allowed to go back - Robin had disposed of every last trace of my former, human wardrobe. I could not bring myself to purchase another human article, and he knew it. He, like a mother bird, had forced me out of the nest, to fly or die trying. I made it official with my doctors at my next meeting with them, my Pony Life Test had begun.