He hadn’t known who or what the PER were before the attack, but he’d had plenty of time afterward to learn. They’d been the ones to make him what he was, and to get him stuck where he was.
He’d been enjoying a day in the park with some friends, playing soccer more-or-less according to the rules, when the strange purple gunk had begun raining down from the skies, the pegasi dropping it with precision. He’d been the first one hit, but from the way things looked, his friends had gotten away.
He had changed, then, from an active, healthy 12 year old boy to an active, clumsy 12 year old colt. He’d had one of those ‘conversion dreams’ newfoals all spoke of, but between the fear and the chaos, he couldn’t remember any of it. What he could remember was waking up before the attack had ended.
An adult unicorn had him on her back, and was whispering comforting noises in Equestrian to him. She didn’t seem to realize that he couldn’t understand her, but it helped all the same. She said something else as she sat him beside a group of scared younger foals, then smiled as her horn lit up. A strange series of circles scorched themselves along the ground, and suddenly neither he nor his now-fellow foals were there anymore.
Instead, his vision swam in a multitude of colors, ponies of every tribe and hue filling it. Gold-armored guards were nearest him, their blank-to-stern stares lancing through the room. One looked down at him and said something incomprehensible.
Between the shock of having been transformed into a quadruped, from suddenly being taken who-knows-where, and suddenly having this authority figure demanding something of him, he did the first and most sensible thing he could think of: he ran.
Around the startled guard, through the crowd, and out a window, his panicked state of mind took care of the operation of his legs; he would learn to walk when the running was over. The guards assigned to watch over the group of foals had no chance of catching the panicked colt as he sped into the depths of the city known as Canterlot; and as he came to learn as the months passed, Canterlot was a very long way from Chicago.
Months had passed, and in learning how to survive he’d picked up bits, pieces, and fragments of the language until he’d been able to understand what the ponies around him were saying most of the time. He’d picked up the name Cobblestone, thanks to his initial trouble walking on the rougher surface. He had also let a very kind earth pony, some sort of social worker, talk him into joining her in her home for the winter season. It had gotten very cold at night, so he thought he’d at least get a warm place to sleep out of it. Good food, too; he’d found he could eat grass, but there wasn’t much of it in Canterlot, and less of it you could eat without getting chased away by guards.
Things were comfortable for him now, but sometimes, away in the long winter nights, he couldn’t help but think of home. His missed his family, his mother, his father, even his snotty little sister, and there was nothing his hostess could do to comfort him. His somewhat limited Equestrian vocabulary and her absolute lack of English knowledge didn’t allow him to convey just how he felt, what he needed, what she could do to help him. As Hearth’s Warming Eve approached, she decided that what he needed was a proper family to enjoy it with, even if for the one night. She began looking the next day.
Hearth’s Warming Eve was coming ever faster, and she hadn’t found a family for him, yet; many didn’t want a newfoal in their home, out of some irrational fear; some were simply too full; others had slammed the door in her face. It was beginning to look like the two would be spending that day together after all.
When she knocked on the last door, however, a small family of newfoals answered. They were willing, though their Equestrian was awful, to take him in. They hadn’t been in the city long, nor, from what she could understand, had they even been ponies very long. Watching them move about awkwardly, she could believe it. The little daughter moved best, as younger newfoals had always managed to do, and bounced around excitedly at hearing there would be another foal around the house. The family had lost one before moving to Canterlot, and still set an empty place at their table, in memory.
She was excited, and ran to let him know. While she regretted that in doing this, she would be spending Hearth’s Warming Eve alone, to her it was very much more important the colt had a safe, loving environment to, perhaps, heal a little in. He wouldn’t, or couldn’t, say it, but she knew he was very much alone.
Hearth’s Warming Eve soon arrived, with all the decorations and scheduled snowfall. It was cold, now, just cold enough to make winter wear comfortable again. She’d set him up, thanks to a donation, in a nice Hearth’s Warming suit, and guided him to the newfoal’s modest home. She knocked, and the family of three’s mother answered.
The decorations were nothing like his hostesses, instead reminding Cobblestone of Christmas back home. He gazed about the foyer, mind drifting across the very newfoal-style decorations. This family had yet to acquire much in the way of Equestrian winter holiday decor.
His eyes shot open, that voice assaulting him with the feeling of home, of a life he’d thought lost, of the good times had, sharing in birthday cake, of meeting his tiny baby sister for the first time, of skinned knees and camping trips. the good times, the bad, all vying simultaneously for a spot in his heart. tear began flowing, as two more voices in the background began asking if something was wrong. One voice strong, one voice effervescent in youth.
“Mom?”
“Nathaniel?”