This Time, Done Right

by PerigeeTheBat


A Strange Purgatory

She couldn’t remember her name. She did almost remember basically everything else. She was a woman, right? She remembered dodging her classes in college, having just recently celebrated her twenty-first birthday. She remembered the job she just attained to earn enough money to help pay her dad’s rent and her car insurance. But the most impactful memory was also the most recent. She was in the passenger seat of her car, and something happened. She remembered the boom and then the shockwave. Her brother, driving the car, told her to duck, but she must have been too late because everything went black only a moment later.

Was this death? She wanted to shout into the darkness, but she couldn’t. It was as if she were floating in a black void, her limbs tightly curled against her as she was stuck in a fetal position. She didn’t want to move out of the position, as the warmth she felt actually made her a little comfortable, but her inability to move did give her the smallest bit of anxiety. Time seemed to pass, but all she felt was the warmth.

As the time passed, little details began to change. At one point, she began to hear sounds. At some times, it felt like she heard soft classical music, but music that she didn’t recognize. At other times, it was electronic or another genre. These couldn’t have been memories. They were different, the words hard to gauge. They were English, but she had trouble keeping up with more than one or two words at a time.

Music wasn’t the limit of what she heard. She would sometimes hear faint voices, these voices just as hard to concentrate on as all the lyrics within the music. She didn’t know the voices, but when they stopped, she yearned to hear them again. It was just so boring here.

Boring; that’s the word. She didn’t understand why her brain wouldn’t let her use the term ‘lonely’. She should’ve been lonely, right? She was floating in this warm darkness, sometimes being shaken around. The shaking and movement would often lull her to sleep.

Sleep? She was sleeping again. This was wonderful! If she unlocked the ability to sleep, then maybe there were other things she could try to do in this strange purgatory. She spent the next few… days?... trying to move or discover what else she could do. Sadly, nothing came with the effort.

She wouldn’t have to wait long, though, as one day, she opened her eyes. It was as if they’d been closed the entire time. She’d see only a dim red, though, and it would get darker at different points in her “day” before lighting up again. This was strange. She would try to look at herself, but only be met with the same pink, although she did feel the pressure of her face pressing against her chest. It was weird how it felt, and that easily overtook her thoughts, not much else to think about during this time.

She noticed that she was moving, but at the same time, she was equally perplexed with what was happening to her face. She didn’t understand the feelings of her face gently nudging against her chest. It was as if part of her face jutted out a little bit, like a… muzzle? That would be her best explanation at the time.

‘Wait.’ If she could giggle, she would’ve, trying to explain her predicament to an audience that wasn’t there. But it didn’t answer why she had a muzzle. Maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t purgatory. Maybe this was a lucid dream, and she was slowly finding her ability to break out. It would explain why she had a muzzle. She had always wanted to be a cute anthropomorphic animal.

She spent the next few ‘days’ trying to figure out how to better shape her lucid dream, but she would only be able to move just a tiny bit. After little to no progress, she decided to just try to sleep for as long as possible. She had all of eternity, right?

Too bad purgatory was against this. She could see the dim redness when it happened, but she felt a gentle rub right against her face; well, more accurately, her “muzzle.” She reached back for the rub. What was rubbing her? Whatever it was made her thump a little bit, excited by the feeling of a rub against her. Well, it felt like a rub, but through a soft, warm wall of something.

Maybe her dream was of being trapped in a cocoon, and something was trying to get her out. She couldn’t get herself out, so that thing would need to do more than just rub her to break this carrier.

Throughout all of this time, she didn’t stop hearing the voices and music, although she tended to drown out the voices. Now, though, she heard this voice in a new way. It was as if it was talking straight to her, right outside of the shell.

“Hello,” said the voice. It was a very gentle, tender feminine voice, but she recognized it. It was the voice she heard the most, although it was usually not as tender and gentle. She wanted and tried to respond to the voice, but she just couldn’t make any noise, only able to move her mouth.

The voice talked more, but like before, the words came too quick for her to process much more than the last two.

“-see you,” The gentle, kind voice told her, and her heart beat hard to it, her face pressing against that soft cocoon. She wanted to see and hear what made that voice. It sounded so melodic; so caring. She really needed that, having missed the true human connections that she lost when she died.

The time went on, her listening and feeling for the visitor. She would be visited by many voices now, some masculine and others feminine, and all of them joined with a gentle rubbing to her arms or face. She found this attention to be very nice, helping her through the long, boring days within the cocoon. None of the attention compared to that of the voice she heard the most. When it spoke, it felt louder and more connected to her. She wished she could comprehend more of what it said, only hearing the first and last couple words of each speech.

Eventually the voice began to sing to her, and it somehow managed to lull her to sleep every time even as she really wanted to hear it to the end.

Time went by again, her being happier than ever as she listened to this voice on the other side. Today, she would have a self-surprise. She could control her movements a bit more, and she felt at her cocoon. It was all around her, holding her tight. It even seemed to be getting a bit tighter with each passing day. She still couldn’t feel her fingers and toes, but that touch should come back with time. That’s how everything else went at the very least.

Today, she listened to the voice read a story to her, not understanding any details about the story, but instead focusing on the excitement with which the voice was reading it. It sounded like one of the characters she wrote in her own stories, the voice having such an optimistic tone to it. It plagued in comparison to most of the tones she heard in her own world. She felt she could be happy just listening to this excited voice. It helped her create her own stories in her head that she could just remember on her own.

When she got out of this cocoon, she would tell the voice all sorts of stories.

Like before, more time passed. It felt like she had been in this cocoon for a year, and she wanted out. She pushed a bit, wanting to break through this wall until suddenly, she felt a shake within her chamber. Everything became tight around her, eliciting a… whine? She could make noises with her mouth, and she tried, only able to let out weak moans. She couldn’t quite understand her own noises, but she was uncomfortable.

She felt around a little bit, trying to move, and she felt her head gently pressing into what felt like an exit. She’d be held there for a while, her cocoon shaking and moving before she felt a familiar hum. The hum was almost like an electric car in its intensity, and a few thoughts filled her head. She was about to be broken out of the cocoon! She only needed to wait for them to bring her to the place where she could be taken out.

Soon enough, it felt as if she was being moved by the cocoon itself. She tried to help it, but she ended up going limp, her body stopping entirely, out of her control now. Wait, why did she hear cries of pain?


“It’s a filly!” She heard as she opened her eyes, and immediately closed them, everything being so bright. She was so cold and wet, whimpering and whining.

“-quiet one too!” The same voice shouted, her feeling something soft and warm holding her. It felt so big, but whenever she opened her eyes, she had to close them immediately due to the brightness.

“-see her!” Another voice shouted, but she recognized it right away. It was the feminine voice that she heard, and her heart leaped. She whimpered more, letting out weak coos as she reached out for that comforting voice. Warm, wet cloth rubbed over her body as she whimpered, just wanting that voice.

It wouldn’t be too long under the large appendages put her down into a new warmth, but this warmth was new. It was soft, dry, and… it was right. She pressed her body into the warmth, her whimpering subsiding, eyes still closed.

“-name her?” The first, unknown voice asked.

That voice responded, and it was close to her. No, not close to her. It was the warmth that was holding her. She was on the chest of… did she… is this…

“Perigee. I’ll name her Perigee. My little filly, Perigee… that’s your name… Perigee.”