(Edits made on 8/15/23)
Reality began to take hold, the shackles of unconsciousness slowly leaving my mind regained control. I was… nowhere. Somewhere. I was in my mind.
I realized that I was currently talking to myself, in my own mind. The more I tried to grasp the environment around me, the more it confused me. The darkness around me was blinding. It was as if I was floating aimlessly through the outer reaches of space, distant from even the closest planet. There was nothing, and yet at the same time everything.
The first things I became aware of were… memories. Memories of my life… my past life. The hospital… my parents… my death….
Though out of nowhere, it was as if my soul was being pulled toward an unknown force. A sensation, a feeling from the real world that begged entrance into my reality. It started off gradually, a small tug trying to guide me in the right direction.
I made no resistance to the force that was trying to move what was left of my existence.
But it quickly went from a gentle tug to a forceful realignment, my very soul being dragged across reality to a destination unknown. By a force, I could not comprehend.
I could only watch as the universe itself flew past me, my form only able to hold on for the ride as I was dragged toward whatever the universe had in store.
A cool, crisp breeze blew through the air. Its soft hands grazed my unconscious form, causing my mind to stir. A short breath of air escaped my nostrils as my mind began to reboot, a mind that had just experienced the universe.
My ears were the first to regain a tether to my mind, the gentle sounds of the world around me greeted my consciousness. The gentle rustle of leaves as a breeze flew through them, echoed by the chirps of birds who were stirred by the sudden movement. Off in the distance, the soft pitter-patter of water against stone could be heard.
The vibrations of a groan echoed throughout my body, making me aware of another sensation.
The refreshing air flowing down my esophagus, causing my chest to expand before slowly exhaling. It was the freshest air that had ever graced my lungs.
It was chilly, though not cold. A nice fall day, one with light winds and a very temperate climate. It was likely approaching winter if the dryness of the air was any sign. I could feel the chill of the air, yet it felt as though I was wearing a jacket. The nip of the air glanced off of me, my body not feeling the slightest bit cold.
The soft prickles of grass could be felt against my skin, I was currently lying down in a grassy area somewhere. Each fiber of grass poked at me, its pointy texture mixed with that of dirt against my skin was instantly recognizable.
My mind began to piece together all the different inputs and sensations, each one being consumed by my brain and deciphered into a feeling.
I was just missing one crucial item, vision.
A shudder emanated throughout my body as my eyes fluttered, my entire body seemingly unable to tie the connection between my eyes and my mind.
Grabbing ahold of my senseless mind, I pulled my various scattered thoughts and feelings together. Each one slowly calming before reconnecting to my mind, returning me to my previous state.
My mind fixated on the simple action at hand, opening my eyes. Quelling all my strange senses, pushing them into the corners of my mind for the time being, I opened my eyes.
It felt as though I was trying to lift a thousand-pound dumbbell with my eyelids. Each millimeter my eyelids traveled demanded the utmost focus, a mind-boggling feeling of concentration to perform such a menial task.
My focus nearly faltered as the bright rays of the sun pierced my pupils as I was greeted by a glimpse of the world around me. I had to squint as my pupils hastily adjusted to the brightness of the scenery. Though it didn’t take long before the world came into focus.
My eyes didn’t move, my mind sputtering as it tried to make sense of all the new sensory information that was being unloaded upon it. I slowly pieced together the colors first, the green and brown being the most dominant. Each one came in layers. First green, then brown, then more green. Grass, bark, leaves.
I was on the ground, in a forest.
The figures of trees, shrubs, and grass all began to comprehend as I continued to sort through the collage of information. Trees filled the entirety of my vision, grass, and shrubs filling in the remaining space.
My mind was finally able to put two and two together, I was in a forest.
“Why am I in a forest?” I thought, my mind halting.
My eyes went wide as recollections of the hospital, my parents, and my final moments flooded my mind. Each memory forced itself into the forefront of my attention, making me relive every breath, every moment up to my death…
My heart stopped, my mind churning as it fought with itself over the impossibility that it was currently in.
“I’m dead…” My inner voice repeated, to which my mind agreed. Only my eyes disagreed, throwing my mind itself into question causing me to repeat the statement. The cycle continued, festering in denial and contradiction. Growing and growing only for it to all explode in a blink.
My mind went blank, redirecting to my eyes for confirmation. Slowly, my eyes begin to glide across the landscape in front of me, analyzing everything I was seeing for even the most minuscule error.
But it was flawless. Everything around me was… picturesque.
Every leaf, every blade of grass moved with such precision and detail that it couldn’t possibly be a figment of my imagination. The beauty and detail of mother nature were undeniable, my eyes weren’t lying.
The memories replayed from my memory, my mind analyzing them again and again. Scouring each moment for a clue as to how I ended up here.
But there was nothing.
Those memories felt so real… they couldn’t be fake they were my memories. But it was undeniable that I was currently lying in a forest with absolutely no recollection of how or why I was there.
My mind was doing backflips trying to make sense of the information, but suddenly my reflections ground to a halt. It felt as though another voice had managed to weasel its way into my mind and was attempting to… reassure me.
My mind relaxed, and my thoughts calmed. It felt as though my mother was right beside me, assuring me that everything was all right. The very fabric of my existence felt… calm. Everything was as it should be. I belonged here.
While strange, what was more surprising was that I felt... okay. While more than a little stressed out at the moment, my body felt good. My life had been plagued with chronic discomfort and pain and for it all to just be… gone. I couldn’t comprehend the feeling of nothing.
My mind was in a state of shock… again. Being bombarded with new experience after experience I felt like my brain would explode.
The swaying trees brought me back to reality, the sparse grass, and the thick shrubs being all that surrounded me. The rays of the sun peeked in through the treetops around me and through a clearing above, lighting my immediate area while leaving the surroundings shadowed in darkness.
I needed to sit up in order to see the rest of the environment around me, my eyes were only able to take me so far.
So with a little focus, I tried to sit up.
Pain shot down my spine, my body stiffening at the slightest movement. My teeth clenched as my eyes slammed shut. I groaned as I quelled the pain, not moving as it slowly subsided.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and forced my body to move again. I felt my muscles contract, but it wasn’t right. It felt like all my muscles were in the wrong place. My arms moved clumsily, as though they had weights on the ends of them. My hands were completely numb and my fingers had lost all feeling. My legs moved the wrong way, and my head felt heavier than ever before. I was like a fish out of the water.
Falling back onto the ground, my eyes clasped closed in frustration as I cursed through gritted teeth. I opened my eyes and glared at my hands in frustration, only there were no hands.
Charcoal stumps were all that greeted my eyes. I tried to move my fingers, the stump twitching as a result.
My mouth opened and closed, staring at the appendages before me. Quickly closing my eyes and inhaling a deep lungful of air I began reassuring myself, before reopening my eyes.
The same charcoal stumps stared back at me. My breathing halted and my heart beat fast. Tears poked at the edges of my eyes, the arm… my arm shaking.
This caused me to glance downward toward the rest of my body, quickly wishing I hadn’t. What made up the rest of me was of equal coloration and equally bizarre proportions.
Where my legs should have been sat two appendages with stumps on the ends, except that they bent the wrong way. A long body connected my arms and legs, all leading up to a long neck.
“H-how…” I tried to squeak out, my voice cracking as my mouth moved uselessly, only for the words to fall out of my mouth a jumbled mess.
My hindered speech caused me to cross my eyes, peering down toward a dark protrusion filling the bottom of my vision. My eyes widened, my mind stopping as it tried to make sense of yet another abnormality that it couldn’t make sense of.
I lifted my dark stump and hesitantly poked the snout protruding from my face. My new nose scrunched up as my arm made contact, causing me to yank my arm away.
My heart rate spiked, my arm collapsing to my side. My mind now awfully aware of the existence of my new snout on top of everything else. While I had just confirmed its existence, my mind still wanted to deny everything.
“What’s next?” I moaned, clasping my arm over my mouth once my voice reached my ears.
Slowly removing my arms hoping it hadn’t just been a terrible voice crack, I took another breath.
“Hello…” I said, my heart deflating as I heard the same voice once again.
My eyes widened as I quickly looked down where the sun doesn’t shine.
Quickly looking away, not seeing something very important to me, I just hoped that maybe my new body was just that different, I shuttered as I knew that I was lying to myself.
A mirror was now the next step. I needed to know what else happened to me, and seeing my own reflection would be the easiest way to do that.
As I lay in the grass, my mind doing backflips, the sound of running water in the distance caught my attention. While it may not be optimal, it would allow me to take a look at my reflection. I’d take any win I could get right now.
With that in mind, finding that water became goal number one. A goal that would provide me with a few answers, but also get my mind to focus on one task.
My heart finally began to slow, my thoughts beginning to reconnect. My eyes narrowed in concentration, I needed to move.
Quickly gathering my will, I pulled my arms and legs in close to me, and began to rock my body back and forth. My eyes clenched shut as the pain shot through my body, but I pushed through. I would have to get moving at some point.
The grass deformed under my strange body, my coordination with my new appendages quickly increasing as they moved slightly to shift my body weight.
While it likely looked very strange from the outside, I quickly found myself crouched down on my arms and legs. A small smile spread across my face, my arms and legs extending a moment later pushing me into a standing position.
Blinking a couple of times, it felt astonishingly natural to stand in my current four legged position.
I craned my neck around to look over myself, my jaw dropping. I looked like a horse. The idea had flown over my head, but it was so obvious. Hoofs, hind legs, fur, forelegs, barrel, and a snout. I had it all. Though it didn’t look… right?
Staring at my legs, my brow furrowed. I looked like a drawing a child would make if you described a horse to them. The proportions were off. My legs were thick, not skinny, and had no clear separation between where the leg ended and the hoof began.
There were a few similarities with regard to general shape and fur, but it was still a bit unnerving how different yet similar I looked to a horse.
My gaze moved back toward my rear, raising a brow as I spotted a tattoo on my flank. It was like a branding a farmer would put on their cattle only it looked… natural? It looked as though it was a part of the fur itself.
It looked like a star, trailed by what looked like some kind of writing. It looked like nothing I had ever seen before, though patterns in the shapes led me to believe it was some form of writing.
My attention was brought back to the world in front of me. Before stood trees and vegetation, but off in the distance water could be heard. A strange sensation occurred on top of my head, realizing a moment later that if the rest of me looked like a horse, then I likely had a nice set of ears. Another reason to find a mirror.
Looking down at my legs, my body sank as it dawned that walking with two legs versus four legs were two very different processes.
My gaze wandered off into the distance as I tried to recollect how a horse would walk.
Front legs then back? Back then front? Alternating?
Chewing on my tongue for a few moments, I pondered the optimal method of four-legged locomotion. Ultimately deciding that alternating legs would be the best course of action.
Glancing down at my forelegs, my core tightened as I lifted my legs, doing my best to keep my balance. While it wasn’t hard, especially with three legs instead of one, it was certainly unique.
My eyes stared intently at the ground in front of me as I did the same with my back left leg, steadying myself as I moved.
A bead of sweat rolled down the side of my head. Repeating the process with my other two legs, coming to a stop about two feet away from my starting point.
I exhaled, looking at the distance covered. My fist… hoof dug into the ground. Having been through hundreds of hours of physical therapy, this was just another session.
Taking a few more deep breaths, the objective at hand refocused.
The soft ground deformed beneath my hooves as the weight of my body shifted across the ground, crawling forward at a snail's pace.
While not easy, the action of movement quickly cycled through my mind like a set of instructions. The beginning to a very long set of instructions.
After but twenty minutes, the painstaking process of movement felt engraved in my brain. While it still took a bit of focus, one leg was confidently placed in front of the other. A smile slowly formed, the small accomplishment being the only upside of the day. That smile was quickly wiped away as I tripped on a pebble and ate dirt.
Checking to make sure nobody saw that, I brushed myself off and continued on.
My eyes jumped from one plant to another, their vibrant colors enthralling me. The differences in the world, especially how colorful everything was, quickly became noticeable.
The leaves, shaking in the wind, were a deep green. The thick tree trunks were a shade of vibrant brown. The shrubs were equally vibrant, even a few flowers dotted the vegetation adding bright splotches of color.
Even the ground seemed almost colorful. I didn’t know how to describe it, it was like if you took a picture and cranked the saturation all the way up. It was very strange to look at.
My eyes got pulled toward the trees in front of me, a large amount of light pouring in from between their trunks. Perking up, I quickened my pace, the sounds of flowing water growing significantly.
It didn't take long to finally emerge from the dense forest and into a clearing.
Before me sat a small river, its white and bubbly water flowing past. It took a few dozen steps to make it from the tree line to the edge of the embankment.
The same river extended to the right and left in both directions, eventually curving out of sight around more trees.
The portion of the water Infront of me was calm enough that the reflection of the trees on the opposite side of the river were visible. But it was still flowing fast enough that safely crossing it was not possible, not without getting swept away.
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, before taking a few steps toward the river bank.
Mere inches from the water, I hesitated. Something had happened, and whatever it was would likely alter my psyche forever.
I opened my eyes.
Staring back were two large green eyes, eyes that were filled with life. A charcoal-colored face, with a horn extending sharply from between two ears, reflected off the water. The creature that stared back was instantly recognizable.
I was a unicorn.
Not moving an inch, my eyes froze in place. Their eyes stared back into mine, unmoving and distant.
My mind sputtered, and my lip quivered, as it tried to understand what happened to me. How had it occurred? Any explanation short of magic or some other wacky sci-fi trope was hopeless. I was a unicorn for crying out loud!
The eyes that stared back at me in the reflection belonged to someone else, something else. Not the someone that greeted me in the morning, an alien.
Backing up, my eyes didn't leave the ground. The ground thumped as a charcoal unicorn took a seat, staring a thousand yards away.
The dark thoughts began to take hold, the hopeless thoughts of self love and inner being fending them off.
“Not if you’re a mythical unicorn… a messed up one at that,” I grumbled, resting my chin on my hoof.
My mind simply could not process everything, from waking up in a forest to being a creature I previously thought didn’t exist. Everything…
The sound of a stick snapping caused my head to spin around, my eyes scanning the forest behind me. The forest seemingly stood still, not a sound could be heard besides the flow of water.
I stood up and turned toward the forest, its large form now towering ominously above me. The silence was deafening, I didn’t dare move. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rise, but I stood tall looking for the cause of the silence.
My eyes darted to a section of the forest where a green light emanated, a pair of green lights. While dull, they easily stood out against the dark backdrop of the forest.
My breath caught in my throat, only able to watch as another pair of green lights appeared. Then another. Then another.
In a few moments, the single pair of green lights had turned into about a dozen pairs lining the forest's edge. Surrounding me.
I took a step back, cautiously eyeing the spectacle unfolding before me. I felt my body tense as the lights all closed in around me, each one growing brighter by the second.
Taking another step backward, the glowing lights continuing their approach. Each one seemed to be about a foot apart from the other, unwavering in its ominous glow.
I looked between all of the lights with a quizzical expression, not really sure of what to make of the whole situation.
My eyes quickly darted between all the lights as they all seemed to be gathering exclusively around me, each pair now on the cusp of the tree line.
Not a moment later, the first pair of lights broke the tree line. A mass of wood nearly double my size stomped into the clearing, a vaguely wolf-shaped creature staring me in the eyes.
I did a double take, my eyes scrutinizing the creature as it stopped its approach a few yards away.
A low growl emanated from the creature, now barring a set of wood teeth. Drool dripped from its mouth as it continued its growl, not letting up as more creatures broke the tree line.
Each one carried a sort of glow around it, a dim green color, that seemed to stem from within their bodies. Almost as if it was what was holding them together, their bodies appearing to be made of no more than sticks and bark.
My eyes danced between the creatures as they appeared, each one nearly identical to the first save for being noticeably smaller. All of them were letting out an equally low growl as they approached, encircling me and the largest creature leaving no room for escape.
I didn’t know much about animals, but I did know that a growl generally wasn’t a good thing. Especially when said growling animal was barring its teeth at you.
I hesitantly back peddled, my eyes never leaving the creatures in front of me. My legs shook, trying to put a bit more distance between me and the creature. My back hoof slipped a moment later as the river blocked me in, leaving no avenue of escape.
My breath caught as the growling stopped, the largest creature taking a step forward.
My body quivered, my eyes wide, as the largest creature dropped its head close to the ground. Its eyes trained on me, motionless, as though it was considering its next move.
“This is how I die…” I thought as the creature and I stared into each other's cold eyes.
A scream barely escaped my mouth as it pounced, its body crashing into me as we both tumbled to the ground.
It quickly pinned me to the ground, its sharp, wooden teeth snapping at me. My trembling arms now the only things standing between me and certain death.
The creature was much bigger than me, my arms barely keeping the creature far enough away that it wouldn’t instantly tear me to shreds. But I would have to make something happen, fast.
The monster continued to bite and grab for my neck, a wave of nausea spread throughout me as a smell equal to death filled my nostrils. The wretched monster's breath nearly caused me to puke, stopped only by another bout of pain as the monster landed a slash on my chest.
Bits of wood covered my body as I attempted to drive the monster's head away, kicking with my legs in a futile attempt to get the creature to stop.
Its razor-sharp claws dug into my arms, tearing away fur and flesh as it fought, causing me to cry out in pain. Tears poured down my cheeks as the burning sensation of wood cutting through my skin began to take hold, the pain instantly becoming unbearable causing me to let out a scream.
I continued to slam my hind legs into the monster's stomach, a few painful howls emanating as a result, in an attempt to fight back. Only for the monster to snarl and bark in anger, causing it to double down on its efforts.
Its muddy, wooden claws sank into my chest and arms, and blood began to pool on the ground below me. My arms were almost completely useless in stopping its flailing claws from reaching me, each one now stained with my blood.
My legs could now only flail uselessly, catching the occasional hit against the creature. But I continued to fight, not letting up for a second. Adrenaline rushed through my body, masking some of the pain allowing me to fight a little more.
Adrenaline, however, would not be enough to save me as I could feel the darkness slowly beginning to creep into my vision.
A pool of blood now surrounded my body, my arms, legs, and body completely covered in gashes.
Crying out in pain, I felt another claw rip through my arm muscles.
My arms fell to my side, my body going almost completely limp as my muscles gave out. My mouth was wide, gasping for air, as blood pooled beneath my quivering body. My vision was almost completely gone, the howling form of the monster being all that I could see.
A thought crossed my dying mind, my brain piecing together one last course of action. If I was going to die, it wouldn’t be as something else's meal.
My eyes closed, tears staining my cheeks as I summoned up all my strength.
I kicked my hind legs, the sounds of agony filling the air as my unconscious corpse fell into the river.