Peter awoke with a snort. They stared blankly for a moment, devoid of focus. The body was awake, but the mind was still a step behind, it seemed. Sucking in a breath, he- 'wait hold on,' I forced my way back into consciousness, as one learns to do when sleep is limited to a college schedule. He- ' No... fffffffeck I must be tired, but what's up with the third person stuff?'
I shook my head and forcefully blinked my eyes a few times, working moisture back into them. The colours were so vivid that it made it hard to focus.
I felt the weight of something fall off my forehead, along with a kind of crumbling noise. Something about pebble sized bounced off my forearms, while another something light and flakey collected in the same general area. It felt kinda like fresh snow sticking to your arm hair. This sensation could also be likened to something else I've experienced…
Opening my now perfectly functional eyes all but confirmed my suspicions, as little light blue flakes slowly rained down from above the center of my vision. My face fell into a deadpan, carefully developed as a result of dealing with one particular classmate as I sighed wearily. 'He crushed more candy on my forehead, didn't he? Friggin Alex… honestly, how did he even convince me to go to another party after last time?'
My shifting expressions only seemed to dislodge more of the desecrated sugary treat-come forehead adornment. 'and so step one on the list of morning activities will be a shower.'
My face scrunched up in a yawn as I stretched. The faint but distinct sound of something twinkling made my ears twitch, but I more or less ignored the odd noise in favor of the fact that… Well, I couldn't feel my fingers.
I looked down at my arms, paused mid stretch. Where I should have had my hands balled up into fists, I didn't see anything but some fuzzy, thistle purple tube– 'oh, that's just a blanket.' Alright, so a fuzzy purple blanket wrapped around my arm and nothing else as I could see the cream white sheets of the bed… 'uhh, sleeve or cast, maybe?'
I squinted at the covering, trying to discern its… make up? What it was. I wanted to know what it was made of. I experimentally tried to turn my arm over, expecting some kind of discomfort if it turned out to be a fuzzy cast for whatever reason. Instead the limb turned over easily, bending at the visible wrist and upturning what should have been a palm for me to look at.
Now why this was a problem was I could feel the fuzz spreading over the blankets. I could feel the muscle groups working and they were basically, entirely foreign. I could feel the glittering substance sticking to the hairs.
I could feel this, and that was definitely not my arm. It felt deceptively like an arm, for about a third of its total length. The middle of the limb? That felt like my wrist. My palm felt stiff, and long, and my fingers felt fused. It ended in a semi stiff rounded tip that was not covered in fur, and some weird flexi group that was entirely foreign.
It was as I was staring down in morbid fascination at my transformed limb, that I realized that I was both laying on my stomach and was still able to do so.
Several swear words battled in my mind to be the first uttered. In the meantime I just squeaked in alarm and jolted at my impossible – or at the very least inhuman posture.
I looked over my shoulder, disturbed that said shoulder was nowhere near my point of view, and saw that the changes were not contained to just my arms, my entire body had changed.
My breathing became the ragged gasps of hyperventilation. My once-hands-but-now-something-different curled up to my face reflexively, hitting painfully into my new muzzle. I felt my eyes sting with tears as my panic stricken mind made me try to worm under the covers to hide.
It took me several minutes to focus enough to force myself to calm down. Carefully, slowly sucking in each breath before letting it hiss out through my teeth. The weight of the sheet over my head was grounding as I mentally beat my panic into a corner with the biggest stick I could find. 'M'kay Peter, Calm the hell down, nice and calm. Let's think about this for a minute. Evidence suggests that you're no longer human, which is pretty bad. But! But you're in a bed, not your bed but still a bed. Maybe someone around here knows what happened to you?'
'Something that… happened to me.' I rubbed a… forelimb against my chest, as a phantom chill crept out of my heart. I shivered involuntarily as remembered the events of last night. Half a dozen horse-things–
'Two, wait three including the big one had horns, so those must have been unicorns. But two of them had little wings, so what, baby pa… P… "P" something. Pegasus! Two pegasuses… that doesn't sound right. Pegasi? Pegasi, two pegasi and two… normal ones?'
I had calmed down considerably while trying to remember a more popular piece of Greek mythos, so with a clearer head and only a little bit of a shake in my limbs, I slid out of the covers, propping myself up to sit kinda like a dog.
Something on top of my head was pressed down by the sheets, and once free of the covers, sprung back to attention. They felt suspiciously like my ears, but… not.
They were just way too big and all kinds of mobile. I didn't get to think too hard about those, because a curtain of something bright and silky and voluminous robbed me of sight. I reached up to the… really light blue – Alice blue? – mass with a… forelimb, and, no other word really fits but pawed, it back out of the way. It felt exactly like every other time I'd brushed my hair back with a hand. Mostly. What with the lack of fingers or actual hands, plus my hair being way longer than normal.
I paused mid-motion – 'This is going to be a thing today, huh?' – to stare at the patch of colour on my once-arm. 'How did I miss a bright blue splash? Do both of them have that?' I looked down at my right and, no. There was no blue, but there was a kinda faded, creamy orange. Curiosity forced me to look down at my legs. The left was coated in a rosey red, and the right was purple… a different, darker purple.
With nothing else to really do, y'know, besides crumble into a hysterical wreck, I decided to get my feet – paws, nubs? – under me and distract myself from myself. 'That sounded better before I put it into words.'
With a certain level of resignation, I attempted to swing my legs out over the edge of the bed, bringing myself to a regular sitting position. 'So far so good.' Next step was to push off with my not hands and, well, do what I did every morning, more or less.
As my rear legs impacted the brown tiled floor with a resounding clack and clip, I felt a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. And my chest. Long-ish neck, arms, and possibly even my head. 'Wait no, that's just falling, just the pit of my stomach then.' Were my thoughts as I waved my arms in front of me to ward off the rapidly advancing floor.
Alas, the well trained floor broke my sloppy guard and struck me repeatedly in a single fluid motion. I felt the hit on my chest, the rolling strike on my neck, the painful vibrations up the hard outer layer of my arm-thing endings- and the dazing blow to my chin.
'...dazing is correct, because I totally remember being beaten by the ground, all martial arts style, and that cannot be correct.'
All this, and my rear legs stayed basically exactly where I planted them, stubbornly locked up and leaving me in what would have been a compromising position, under normal circumstances.
Shaking my head to banish the pretty, vibrant stars, I placed my arm-things hard-bit down and pushed myself up. I was expecting that uncomfortable sensation all up your legs and lower back, like a normal person gets when trying to stand like a quadruped. Instead it was… pretty damn comfortable actually.
'I kinda get how horses can sleep on their feet now, huh.'
…
…
…
'Wait.' I lifted my right not-hand – wobbling unsteadily for a moment on three legs before I shifted my balance properly – and turned it up, down, and spun it around. 'Now that I think about it, these look exactly like hooves… fffff… I'm a horse thing like the ones before, aren't I?'
Looking away from my upturned probably-hoof, I looked around the room, spotting two doors.
One was closed, but the other had been left ajar, allowing me to see an odd looking toilet, and a shower. 'Bathrooms have mirrors, let's get a solid idea of what I look like.'
Shakily scooting across the floor, water skimmer style, I inched my way over. Something around my rear end seemed to flare whenever my balance got too shaky, and I wanted to avoid thinking about that for the moment.
Not fully trusting my ability to stand on just three limbs at the right then, I hooked my chin around the edge and swung my neck outward, tottering around as the excess momentum unbalanced me. The door slamming into the wall startling me didn't help.
I scooted into the bathroom, finding the lightswitch to the left of the door at eye level. I booped on the seesaw-ish button style switch with my nose, and was rewarded with a gentle yellow glow quickly filling the room from the three bulbs overhead.
Able to see into the now lit room more easily, I was able to see the full length mirror sitting between the sink and the shower.
'Somewhat odd choice, But I won't complain about not having to clamber up onto the sink to get a look at myself.'
Carefully settling onto my haunches before the looking glass – that's the fancy name for a mirror, right? – I attempted to mentally prepare myself before looking up.
Slate blue eyes stared back at me, which was nice! Because that was my normal eye colour, and that would be the first thing familiar about this whole thing. Mostly. Little blue and purple highlights had wormed their way into my peepers, left and right respectively.
Looking up from my face – which was longer than a human, but nowhere near as long as a regular horse's and was frankly, unfortunately, adorable, with the button of a muzzle and the anime-esque giant expressive eyes – 'I might be a guy, but I'm an art student, and I can admit when something is cute to look at... when/if I get back to my normal body, I'm going to make a killing selling plushies of myself.'
My, mane? Yeah, mane, was fluffy, mussed with bedhead, and had body that shampoo commercials wished they could put on camera. It also wasn't just blue. Faded streaks of orange, pink, and red lazily wandered down from my scalp, between my fuzzy radar dishes masquerading as ears to make things pop.
Anyway, looking down, splattered proudly over my chest was a somewhat dull splatter pattern, like on my legs. This one being half pink, half yet another shade of purple. Further down and behind me something pale blue sat limply, but now that I was aware of it, I could somewhat feel it, and after a bit of frustrating twitching, I got it to flick around my legs.
'I have a tail. Y'know what? Sure, why not. Makes sense.' Thwipping the extra limb – kinda? I think that's the proper term?– around between my ar- forehooves? – I got a good look at the two shades of purple, and the solitary streak of darker blue from the very ends of the hair all the way back up to the… 'I have no idea what the base of a horse's tail is called, let's just stick with base, can't go wrong with base.'
Speaking of the tail's base, following it back had brought my attention to my… outer thigh, on a person, not sure what it is on a horse, and the six gray dots emblazoned upon it, spaced around my outer leg in a circle. I pawed at the dots, but only succeeded in mussing up my fur.
I looked back to the mirror, giving my reflection another quick once over before my head – tail, and ears – drooped as I heaved out a sigh. A very put upon, weary, strangely but not all that unexpected at this point high pitched sigh.
"I look like a friggin tye-dye shirt." Those were… actually the first words I had said today, huh? And just like the sigh, they were dripping with tiredness, croaking, slightly awkward and way too damn high pitched. I winced at the sound of my own voice.
'Okay, so that's… sight and touch, fully functional, might as well run through all of them. Hearing is either shot or… it might be pretty damn good, what with the movable ears, I'm going to have to get used to that.' First item on the list; smell. I stood up and, slowly, stumbling, walked back into the main room, and sat down at its center, eyes closed to focus solely on my nose. I blew out a quick breath from my lips, then sniffed, and was nearly floored by how intense everything was. The smells just wafting through the air all around me, somehow unnoticed until I went looking for them.
I gagged a bit, the smell of disinfectant, medication, strong soap, the smell of unwashed animal and more were all just far too intense. I coughed hard, gagging again as the next breath brought in more overwhelming smells, blood from somewhere distant, foul medical paste, ground keratin – like what you get when you trim a dog's nails, but different – along with something… vaguely appetizing? I gagged more. 'Nope, nooo, don't think about food right now.' I mentally pleaded to… myself, clamping a foreleg over my muzzle as I let my body settle into how strong smells were going to be from then on.
'M'kay, so, I'm a bloodhound, at least in comparison to before.' I noted, finally releasing my nose and taking only the lightest sniffs of the air. Things were still way too strong, but I was more or less ready for it now, and only had to grimace through it. I decided that taste should be next, since I had caught a whiff of something good to eat earlier. Granted I'd never smelled anything like it before, but that didn't necessarily mean anything, what with my nigh-purely american diet.
I slowly homed in on the smell, following it around the bed and to the night table beside it. 'Where in the frick am I? This place feels like a weird cross between a hotel and a hospital.' I hooked my hooves over the lip of the table one at a time, before hoisting myself up, looking for whatever smelled so good.
The nightstand was empty, save for the pair of flowers sitting in a vase, one blue, with five large, swirling petals, and one white, with lots of little thin petals.
I'm not a flower guy.
'But then… Why do I smell food?' A few cautious sniffs confirmed that the smell wasn't coming from the woefully empty drawer, but atop the table. Infact, it seemed to be coming from the general direction of the vase… 'why do the flowers smell so good? Wait no, not specific enough, why do the flowers smell appetizing?'
I shakily reach forward, pawing futilely at the flowers with a blue splashed forelimb. On the fourth or fifth pass, I finally managed to get a grip on the thing, and tugged. It was only after the petal had come loose, imparting enough momentum to knock me on my back when it detached, that I wondered how in the hell I grabbed anything with a hoof?
With that thought the thin white petal came unstuck from my hoof, and I had to scramble to keep it from falling, because if I was going to try eating a freaking petal, like an idiot, I at least wanted it to not be floor food.
'I'm actually going to try eating a flower, aren't I?' I withheld a groan, narrowed my eyes at the piece of plant, and gingerly dropped it onto my tongue.
I had been expecting something like that time I ate turf… or grass, after being beaned in the back of the head during some sport or another. Not an experience I remember fondly or well, due to the ball, but I remembered spitting out the grass, and how awful it tasted.
What I got instead was, actually quite pleasant. It was... kind of hard to describe. The texture was well… a flower petal, but also kinda like a chip. Little flavourful somethings flaked off on my tongue as I chewed, like the artificial cheese on a cracker. Overall, it was pleasant, but it could have done with some spices, maybe some dip, maybe cooking it?
"I'm talking about a flower here…" I squeaked, grumbling, trying to clear my throat and find a familiar register to speak in. None seemed to exist.
After evaluating my senses, I decided that I was tired of fumbling around like a newborn. I saw two solutions. Do that as little as possible, jump back in the bed and go to sleep, or start practicing.
I grumbled mentally at each stumble, rolled wrist, and bump into the furniture. On the bright side, I had graduated from 'toddler with long legs' to 'canine with back problems' in terms of mobility. "At least this is going quickly." I muttered, ducking under the bed to add a bit of variation to the routine, and work on my balance.
It was somewhere around the tenth lap after speaking, thinking really hard about how horses are supposed to walk, that I heard a few steps outside the room. I had been so absorbed in walking that I hadn't heard the figure approaching until the door was already opening. I paused and turned to the door midstep, lost my balance and over-corrected to keep from landing on my face, essentially throwing myself into a sitting position.
Pink was the first thing I noticed. Nestled atop the pink was a little white nurse's cap, decorated with a pink outline of a cross and four hearts in each of its corners and one in its center. Wearing the hat was a nearly white furred equinoid, kinda like what I had become. The being's large eyes scanned the room in what appeared to be long practice, gliding over the bed and nearly slipping back out the door before they noticed that it was empty.
The horse-ish entity stepped into the room fully, eyes casting about looking for something. Probably me, considering how they locked onto me a moment later, and they breathed a sigh of relief.
"Oh, young one, you're awake! This is wonderful!" She – and it had to be a she, if the voice was anything to go off of – exclaimed, coming to stand in front of me and… nose my side?
'Young!? Wait… she's three times my size, so I'm either a dwarf or… lets just go with she's correct, I guess,' I thought, before ordering my thoughts to reply. "I, Uhhm, yeah?"
It turns out that I was still a little caught up in the face of talking to a horse. Horse-like individual?
She nodded, before continuing to prod me with her muzzle, now with enough gentle pressure to force me up into standing. "It's great to see you up and full of energy, but why don't you go back to bed? I know it must be boring, but you've been asleep for almost a week straight, so you shouldn't push yourself." An expression easily recognized as a smile – apparently these horse people emoted the same way humans did, and it wasn't all that strange to see – graced her features.
"A week!?" I squeaked, too stunned to notice exactly how I had gotten back on the bed until the covers were being tucked in over me. 'How in the actual fuck has it been a week? I don't feel like there is a gap in my memory… which I probably wouldn't notice. At the same time, if I've been unconscious for a week, I would have expected some kinda dream to happen, even if it was just the kind barely remembered, where you really only notice that time is passing, but it's dream time, so you don't know how much is passing.'
My internal monolog went unnoticed, and the nurse mare pulled back, offering me a reassuring smile. "I've got an idea, how about I go get you something yummy from the cafeteria, that sounds good, doesn't it?"
My stomach grumbled loudly, as is practically required to happen by the universe when that question is asked. I sheepishly nodded. "That would be, good. Th-thank you… uhh."
The mare looked at me for a moment, before her eyes widened a bit in realization. "Oh, I'm Nurse Redheart, sweetie."
"Nurse Redheart." I nodded gratefully. She smiled again, and turned to leave. "Uhm." I called out to her before she opened the door.
The- Nurse Redheart turned to look over her shoulder, an action horse like individuals seemed far more capable of, compared to humans, as the motion was only neck up. "What is it, my little filly?"
I… blanked for a minute, my brain trying to process what she said before deciding 'screw it' and threw that train of thought into a dumpster and lit it on fire. I shook my head and went on with my initial question. "You, uhh, wouldn't know how I got here, would you?"
The nurse's smile lessened by an amount, her ears drooping a fraction of an inch. "That's, a little difficult to answer, young one." I withheld a pout, as that wouldn't be helping with the whole 'seen as a child' thing, even if the way she treated me like one was a bit bothersome. "I can tell you that a nice group of mares brought you to our hospital here, but that's about it."
I hummed in acknowledgment, my brow furrowing in thought. "Would they know? How I got here?"
"They might know a little more than me, but probably not much. They found you deep in the woods of the Everfree, do you know how you got there?" She asked in turn, fully facing me now, sat in front of the door.
I shook my head "...the last thing I remember is going to sleep in my bed." 'Omitting the whole, "I'm supposed to be a different species" thing, and all, that's true.'
"My, that must've been scary then, waking up in the hospital, all alone." She said, her tone conveying deep sympathy.
I nodded absently, staring down at the bed in thought.
"Well, I'm going to go get you that food." She smiled at me, standing to leave once more. "Oh!" She looked back at me again, one hoof on the door. "One of the mare's who brought you here is actually in the hospital right now, would you like to meet her?"
I "hmm"-ed in thought for a moment. 'Can't be a bad thing, besides, she said that they might know more of how I got here.' "That sounds like a good idea! I… need to say thank you. For getting me out of the woods. N' stuff." I finished lamely, but my thoughts had turned inward, and she had started to inch out the door. I looked back down at the blankets, specifically at the lump signifying my obscured body beneath them, a single question bubbling up over my other thoughts and worries.
'What did the word "filly" mean again?'