🎂
I felt the solid ground, but my head still felt like it was spinning. I opened my eyes with a groan. There it is, the spinning earth. Except really, really bright green. I could make out a blurry tree, swirls of blue and green. I assume that was the sky and a grassy hill. The sun must have come out. But how’d we end up outside?
“M-m-m–Robin?” I tried asking. That was weird. My voice sounded weird. I tried clearing my throat.
I turned my head and saw a black pony billboard next to me. He kind of looked like Matt’s OC. Maybe that’s why I accidentally said Robin instead. It looked a lot like his OC. Same peanut brown mane, and crystal blue eyes. It almost looked like it was moving, looking itself over with a concerned look.
My vision settled, and multiple things occurred to me at once: First, everything was a hyper-saturated pastel, secondly, the billboard was Robinwind, even down to the grey star on his muzzle. Thirdly, it wasn’t a billboard; it was moving.
I shot up. But something was wrong. My legs didn’t respond the way I expected, and my arms felt like they bent oddly, yet my head lifted up higher than I expected. A yellow lock on hair fell into my sight, obscuring the worried looking charcoal-colored pony in front of me.
I looked down. My eyes were met with two baby blue hooves resting upon the green, butterscotch cream curls dangling down. And I could just make out a blue protrusion where my nose ought to me.
At this point, I knew what had happened. A part of me understood it completely. Of course, we’ve been turned into ponies. Not just that, but our OC’s! Yet the rational side of me rejected the idea. Whatever part of our brain that understands the basic laws of nature, the part that tells us ‘you are you, and I am me, and that person is that person,’ simply couldn’t process it. A fundamental rule had been broken. The sort of rule I had to accept when I realized as a child that I wouldn’t become a DigiDestined and no magic ring would ever be gifted to me, by uncle or alien. It was sort of like that feeling you get when someone very close to you has died, and for a full month, even though you know they're gone, your brain just won’t accept it and keeps wondering why they’re late for dinner.
I lifted my front side and leaned back, plopping into a sitting position, without looking up. The cartoon blue noodles obeyed me. I lifted both front legs to frantically inspect both of them. My eyes darted back and forth, desperately trying to understand the simple fact that I was looking at. Oddly, it seemed like I could see really clearly, almost like they were closer to my head then I thought there were. Wait, were they?
But I was distracted by my dangling hair. Hair. My hair. Wait, did that mean… Warmth flushed to my cheeks.
“Am-m I a g-girl?” said a quiet cute voice. I was the one asking the question.
“No, no, no,” whimpered a different voice. I looked over to my black-furred companion. My friend. He dropped to the ground and covered his gigantic eyes with his hooves. “Tell me this is a dream. I died and went to purgatory. Why am I a horse? I don’t want to be a horse!” His voice wasn’t much different from before. Maybe a tad deeper? No, there was an edge to it, a subtle rasp that had been absent previously.
“M-m-m-m-Robinwind!” I called out. Why can’t I say his name? “M-m-m-m-m-Robinwind!” Again? “What?”
He uncovered one eye with his hoof. “No. no. Go away. I don’t want this.”
I stomped my right front hoof. “M-m-Robin! It’s me! And you… we’re ponies!” I said with a cheer.
He uncovered both of his eyes and looked up with a most glum expression. I smiled a little.
“I–I’m Lilyheart, right?” I asked.
He frowned. “An-n-n-n-n-Lily? What? An-n-n-n-n-Lil-no-n-n-n-Lilyheart! What?”
“I can’t say your name either. Maybe we can say our own? My name is Lilyheart!” I blinked. “That’s not what I meant to say.”
Matt began a cough stutter. “M-m-m-Robin! My name is Robinwind! No! M-m-Robin! No!”
He covered his eyes again and began rolling about in the grass. “Why am I a horse? I don’t want to be a horse! This is a dream. This is a dream. Please, God, please let this be a dream. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Hail Mary, full of grace…”
This continued for the next several moments while I watched. Soon, I tried lifting up my back legs. The motion caused me to shake. But somehow, the moment I began getting up, I felt a strength in my legs. Like springs pushed in, ready to bounce over a roof. There was an energy, and solidiness within my legs which the shakiness couldn’t suppress.
Once on my… hooves, I felt charged with confidence. Still shaking, I leapt towards Robin and embraced his head with my front hooves, pulling him into a hug. I felt quite epic and heroic, even though there was less than a foot between us.
“Calm down!” Ow. That pitch was sharp. “M-m-m-m-Robin! Blah! It doesn’t matter! Look, I’m here, okay! We’re both here and I need you to calm down!”
He stopped rolling and rested his head into my… arms? Legs, I guess. Front legs. “There, just breathe. Just breathe. You’re okay.”
What happened next surprised me. I heard a sniffle come from under the peanut butter-colored mane. A warm and wet sensation dripping onto my chest– no, barrel? I don’t know. But he was crying.
“How did this happen to us?” he asked between sobs.
“Shhhh,” I whispered and began stroking his mane. “Don’t worry about that right now. Focus on what you can control. You can keep praying if that helps you; but I need you to know that you’re okay. It will be fine.” Where did that come from? I was never this caring before. I mean, I cared. But even when I worked with the little preschoolers who got hurt, I never knew how to comfort them. I just sort of awkwardly led them to the first aid kit and asked them what happened. If anything, Matt was the one who normally comforted me.
“An-n-n-n-Lilyhear–Dang it!” Matt muttered.
“Shhhhh,” I childed again. “It’s okay. Just call me Lilyheart.”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know. But we don’t have a choice. Don’t fight it right now. We’ll figure it out later.”
He lifted his head up. “Let go, I want to wipe my face.”
“Okay.”
I untangled my hooves from around his head and backed up; then watched as Matt glared at his hoof before using it to wipe the tears from his face. “Ow! I can’t tell how far they are from my face! Stupid eyes!”
“Yeah, my vision is still a little weird.”
“It’s the size,” Matt explained. “Bigger retina means objects further away will be blurrier, but we can see up close better. Which doesn’t make sense for horses at all, because they need to see predators from far away.”
“My vision seems fine,” I quipped. Well, it did. But as I looked out into the distance, I realized the trees did seem a little blurry. But it also felt like I could see more of them. Like someone put my vision in landscape mode. “Our eyes must be further apart,” I mused.
“Well, yeah, horses,” said Matt once he finished wiping his face. He still looked a little pathetic, poor thing.
A single lock falling into my vision reminded me of my previous revelation. “I…” my cheeks felt warm again. “I’m a girl.” My right ear did an involuntary flick.
“How do you know?” asked Matt.
“Well, I… give me a moment.”
Since I was back in a sitting position, I scooted around to face away from him, and looked down. I wasn’t entirely ready for what I saw. At first, it seemed entirely plain color, just like the show. But when I focused my eyes, certain anatomy became clear. My cheeks were very warm.
There was a moment I just froze, again not able to process what my eyes were telling me. Finally I forced myself to look away. “I’m a girl,” I said.
“Oh…” muttered Matt.
Amidst the embarrassment, there was another emotion, slowly building up and quickly overwhelming me. The sort of emotion I normally stifled. The sort of emotion I shouldn’t feel. Joy. I let it bubble up and fizzle in my heart, until I decided to just do what I felt like. Throwing caution to the wind, I let the feeling fill my entire little pony body, and leapt up into the air.
“I’M A GIRL! I’m a girl! I’m a girl! Haha, hehe! I’m a girl, I’m a girl!” I kept jumping about. Am I frolicing? It doesn’t matter, I’m a girl! I can frolic if I want! I swung my hooves in a dance mid air between each hop, continuing in a series of giggles. At least until I tripped over myself. “Oof,” I said as I crashed into the ground. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt much.
Somehow, that made it funnier. “Hehe. Haha, hehehehehehe!” I exploded into maniacal laughter while rolling around in the grass. Oh, my belly, pain! I need to stop! I need to stop. I hugged my legs over my belly, desperately wheezing. “Okay, okay,” I gasped.
“I’m happy for you,” Matt told me, with a supporting smile on his face.
“This… this is what I’ve always wanted.”
“I know. Well, the horse part, too?”
“Well, no. Not the horse part. But I’ll take it.” My eyes were a little wet. Oh great, now I’m going to cry? Is this something you just have to do when you first become a pony?
An awkward silence fell between us while I wiped my eyes. I was on my back, and I could see him upside down. The sky, though. Oh, how beautiful was the sky! It was still the same simple pastel blue. But if you looked closely you could see all the different subtle hues. Such a pretty blue, and the warmth of the sun tickled my belly. Just like a cat laying at the sunlit window, I could just nap, right there. Completely free.
“So,” said Matt. “How do we get back?”
“I don’t know. Is there anything like a doorway near us? A portal? Anything?”
I watched Matt look around. I suppose I should get up and help, but I was sooo comfortable! “I don’t see anything. It’s just… the hill. And the trees.”
“So it’s like we were plopped right into the middle of the universe. Not the best sign if we want to get back. But, I assume Twilight might have a way. Even if it means a lot of studying.”
“Twilight?” asked Matt. “She’s not real.”
I frowned at Matt. “We’re ponies. It’s true she might not exist here, but there’s a good chance she just might be real. This is the sort of the stuff I grew up thinking about all the time, so I think I have a pretty good guess as to how this all works.”
“Okay… How?”
“Well, option one is the simplest: Equestria is real. Somehow, and we don’t know how, the show either caused the world to exist, or the show just somehow copied something that was actually happening in another universe.” I used my hooves to make quotation marks over the word universe. “In that case, it’s just a matter of hopping through universes, and we’ll have to find a way. Hopefully, that’s the case, because in that case, we’re just in the middle of one of the seasons.”
“And the other option?”
“That’s the more complicated and scary one,” I answered. “That the show we watched was based loosely on the real Equestria, or the Equestria that spawned from the show is really different. Because, if that’s the case, then you’re right about Twilight not existing here. And in that case, we don’t know anything about the world we just ended up in.”
“How do you think we’re in another world? We could just be in some sort of virtual reality. Or a hallucination of some kind?” Matt asked while looking around, a frown on his face.
“We could be. But the simplest explanation is the best assumption for now. Besides, even if that was the case, we’re technically still stuck in a different world, regardless if it’s contained within our own or not.”
“And that simple explanation is…”
“That we just got ponified and sent to Equestria!”
“But how? Magic?”
“Arthur’s law of magic and all that. I think it was Arthur. Any magic is just advanced technology. Even the elves in Middle-earth just thought of their magic as art. Here–assuming we are in Equestria, and the same Equestria–then the ‘Magic,’ in this world is really just this world’s version of physics.”
“It was Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law,” said Matt. “But that doesn't actually answer any of my questions.”
I shrugged, which was a little uncomfortable to do on my back. “Some things you just kind of have to accept. Like the Trinity. As long as we can understand the concept, that’s as good as we’re going to get. We don’t have all the pieces, but we have enough to get a general outline of the puzzle.” I grinned. “And that’s all we’ll need.”