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// Morning Time 
// Story: Beyond Me 
// by Boopy Doopy 
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The rules list was quite something to read through. Most of them made sense, like no yelling after a certain hour of night and no running around, as if I was going to do those things. A few of them though were something else. Bathing was only allowed on Tuesdays and Fridays for some reason, and friends were only allowed over in increments of three. Some of them went into extreme detail, saying for instance that exactly twenty chips were allowed per bowl, or that a minimum of twenty five thousand words was required to be read per month to, quote ‘keep your mind in top shape’. It was strange, and I had to wonder if this pony had OCD or ASD. It would be interesting to learn, but not surprising in the short time I’d known her.
My theory was only intensified the following morning when she came upstairs to call me down to breakfast. She had a list in hand… err, magic, to go through, and spoke to herself as she did. It was a bit weird to see, but the thing that made me start to wonder if she had something wrong with her was her comment about how she needed to make time to make another list for tomorrow because she forgot to put it on the schedule today. There was definitely something off about her, that I knew.
“As if there’s not anything wrong with me,” I thought to myself, looking down at my female body. “I probably look like a complete idiot saying I’m a man, or mentally ill or something. I need to fix my mentality and stop looking at people the way I do, even if those people actively make me dislike them, especially since… nope. Not thinking about that.”
I followed her downstairs and sat down to eat, and to my surprise, saw fish and eggs with everything else. Princess Celestia made it seem like it was something uncommon, and I thought I recalled Nurse Redheart being upset when I said I ate meat. Seeing it out like this was strange to say the least.
“Don’t you guys hate meat?” I asked curiously, raising an eyebrow. “That’s what I got from some of the people here. They looked surprised I had sharp teeth. Not to mention, fish isn’t really a breakfast food. It’s something you’d serve at dinner.”
“It’s not something I have all the time, but it’s good in amino acids and protein, so I eat it. I’m not sure why anypony would hate it, though,” she continued. “It’s just fish. It’s not like ponies in the mysterious south who think it’s okay to eat cows… well, that’s not a conversation I should be having with little fillies.”
I made a mental note of that, not to bring up eating beef. I would have to play the food I liked by ear. I also noticed Twilight once again trying to start an argument, but I didn’t bite. I liked fish, but that didn’t mean I was a fish. I wasn’t going to take the bait.
“But anyway," she started after a brief pause, as though waiting for me to respond to her little filly comment, "if you want some, you can have it. I don’t expect you to like something like this, though, even if you do have canines. Most ponies outside of Canterlot are fish averse.”
“Well, I’ll have you know, salmon is my favorite, even when it’s served as a breakfast food,” I told her. “It would go good with some spinach and rice, or mashed potatoes and peas if you like that better.”
She rolled her eyes, but didn’t say anything else, and made me a plate of food. It was fish and eggs, along with pancakes and grits, the latter being something I only had a few times. It was a good breakfast all in all, although I did think it was interesting that Spike was the one who took the dishes back and washed them. I didn’t comment on it though, instead heading back upstairs to shower. Before I did, though, Twilight stopped me.
“Did you read through that rule list?” she asked. “Because I want to hang it up down here for both of us if you already did.”
“I did,” I replied, “but I do have some issues with it. Like why bathing is only allowed on Tuesdays and Fridays and why one of the rules is that I’m not allowed to have drinks after eight o’clock at night? And a whole bunch of other rules that seem absolutely ridiculous.”
“Bathing more often than that is how your coat gets matted and twisted and sheds, and I’d rather not have fur all over Golden Oaks Library, thank you very much,” she explained. “As for drinking times, I was having a conversation about you with the school teacher, Miss Cheerilee, yesterday evening. She told me that you wet the bed because you didn’t use the restroom but continuously drank water all day, so I’m putting a limit on the times you can have it.”
I had to force myself not to have my cheeks go red in embarrassment. I could not understand what purpose Cheerilee had for bringing that up, but it made me want to die of shame at the memory. Honestly, I couldn’t believe I even let that happen. It was so obvious I wasn’t dreaming, I couldn’t believe I convinced myself that I was. Just denial of my circumstances, I guess, but now it meant this pony was telling me I couldn’t have a drink of water after a certain time of night, which was a bit silly, in my opinion.
“I’m pretty sure I can hold it,” I told her flatly. “And bathing only twice a week sounds absolutely disgusting.” I could only imagine how knotted up my fur would get bathing that little. I wanted no part of partaking in such a rule.
“Well, those are the rules,” she told me, “and I’d appreciate it if you’d follow them. If you want, I can show you studies on bathing more than twice a week and its effects on ponies' fur. I’ve done the research.”
“That seems like a weird thing to research, but whatever I guess. If I feel disgusting though, I’m gonna take a shower, and if I’m thirsty, I’m gonna have a drink. Also, I’m gonna reiterate that I’m not a child.”
“I know you’re not, but places have rules that are expected to be followed. Suggesting that you can ignore the rules is setting yourself up for failure and disrespectful to those around you who do follow them.”
“Yeah, well…” I had to close my eyes and force myself not to argue with her. “I’m going to take a shower now,” I said firmly. “I can’t remember if it’s Friday, but I feel disgusting.” She didn’t argue as I went upstairs and turned the water on.
I knew this was going to be a lot of work. Arguing with her wasn’t going to help anything, that I knew, but my inclination to argue was strong. Just staying with her for one night and speaking to her only a few times, I felt like our personalities clashed too much… or rather, they were too similar. I liked to think we weren’t the same, but I almost began to imagine we were, or at least had the same basic personality. Except she was much more anal about things, it felt to me, and kind of vitriolic. It honestly showed me what I should be working on personally, which was a lot of things.
"I need to work on a lot of things," I thought to myself, "and I have a long, long time to work on those things. Hundreds of years, apparently..."
I sighed to myself as I laid on my stomach in the shower, closing my eyes. I was suddenly thinking about the fact that I was a pony again and that I was going to be here for the rest of my life. I was going to be going through the motions of being a kid for the next twenty five years, and there was nothing I would be able to do about it. It was a depressing thought, one that made me tear up as it wormed its way through my head. I was here, didn’t know why I was here, and there was nothing I could do about it. Maybe it was for no reason. Maybe God wasn’t involved and it was a random one in a trillion years coincidence based on whatever laws this universe went by. That possibility made me just want to roll over and die.
I didn’t bother praying and asking God why this happened to me again. I didn’t care. I just hated it all. I was a dumb little kid who was a pony in a universe where a unicorn princess who was working against the best interests of her subjects was convinced I’d be so happy being a girl. 
That was another thing. Why did I have to be a female? Why couldn’t I have just been kept as a male? It made this whole thing feel one hundred times worse. I absolutely hated how I felt in this body, ninety five percent of the reason being that I was a girl now. I couldn’t say I had very much sympathy for transgender people before, but now I did, along with a whole boatload of empathy. I wished I didn’t though.
“Hair,” I thought to myself, shaking my wet mane, not able to speak out loud because of how my voice sounded. “I need to brush my hair. I hope this still works like Rarity said it would…”
It did, and seeing my hair brushed as I dried myself off made me feel much better. I really did think it did a lot to make me look more masculine, which made me happy. The only thing that I thought would make it better was if I had my eyelashes plucked, but for now, this was great. I could feel a wave of soothing calmness wash over me as I took myself in. I looked… not normal, not in the slightest, but less off-putting to myself, which was something. If only I could be a human though. That would at least make things easier, even if it was still as a girl. It would be a place to start, anyway.
“Lord, please… eh, forget it.”
That was bad, and I knew it was. I knew I shouldn’t have been falling into the mentality of saying just forget it, but I couldn’t help it. Even despite my hair helping, my mood was still too angry and bitter with how things were. It was better to forget about it for now and come back to it later when I wasn’t so upset than potentially say something I didn’t want to. Not a habit I wanted to fall in though.
“Does it even matter?” something in the back of my head asked. “It’s absolutely unbearable being here, especially being here as who you are. What’s the point? It’s depressing.”
I had to shake that thought clear of my head. That was not thinking I wanted to fall into. It was too easy to fall down that spiral and think all was lost, especially since all really was lost. I knew nothing was going to change, at least, the odds were very much against it, but I couldn’t think like that. I learned that much just working in the kitchen every day and managing my restaurant. Sure, there might have been days where most of the kitchen staff called out, but as long as you believed you could get the work done, then you could get it done.
Except in this case, I’d be mostly pretending to believe that my situation wasn’t hopeless, but as long as I pretended, it would translate into actual hope eventually. It was too easy to say that God didn’t care about me, a line of thinking I definitely didn’t want to start down.
I just had to put it away and pretend everything was fine when it wasn’t. I had done that before, and I would do it again, even if it would be extremely hard to do.
“Asher!” Twilight suddenly called from outside the door. “Hurry up in there! I don’t want you to be late to see Nightmare Moon… err, Princess Luna, apologize!”
I’d forgotten about that, but quickly got dried off and headed out. I wanted to be there for it, mostly to see if Celestia would be there and what she would have to say. I wondered if she would be giving an apology, too. She certainly should’ve been, although I wasn’t sure Twilight would like seeing that very much and would find a way to blame me for it.