CHAPTER IX
Down on the Corner
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village;
if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
-Charles Caleb Colton
+ + +
Uh. Which...uh... North is...
Wait.
OK, so... If the sun is over there, and I'm a pony, then...
Wait.
Oh god.
I’m outside I’m outside everyone can see me and they can see I’m a pony...fuuuuuck! Why do I have to even deal with this!?
The sensation of my moving limbs seemed to be fighting through a mass of coal tar suddenly filling my brain, as a lifetime of human bipedalism fought for dominance. I wanted to run, to get home and be forever safe from human gazes, but I felt so contorted that all I could manage was a clanking, almost autistic powerwalk.
As if I didn’t feel feminized enough, I was forever limp-wristed now, with what used to be my hands drooping down as new shins to catch me as I fell forward with every other step, the resounding ‘clop’ sending the force of reaction up my middle fingers and into my narrow shoulders.
Biting my lower lip, I continued down the alley. I rotated my left ear to scan behind me, but didn’t hear any signs of the authorities widening their search. I’d gone thirty feet at most; how long would I have to go before I could safely duck into a side alley and try to hug myself with my forelegs until I wanted to cry with frustration? They thought I was a dumb animal, didn't they? There's no way they'd look behind or under any place a pony could squeeze. I'd be safe if I could just—
No. If I were strong I wouldn’t stop, right? I’d keep going until I got home, without rest or distraction. That’s what the truly admirable did, the kind of men and women who achieve so much that their examples of fortitude are worth relating in the first place.
I mean, really, this wasn’t too different from trying to get home while piss drunk, except instead of muggers I was looking out for everyone.
I’d gone about ten more feet down the alley, fighting to maintain a decent speed while cursing the clatter my hooves made on the cement, then, reaching to my right, I was able to deftly tack around a corner and into a side alley bordered by two wooden fences. I felt like I could maintain this pace for quite some time, but at some point I would need to stop and thoroughly check I was moving in the right direction, and more than anything I just wanted to stop and break down for a while.
Now that I was fully in the present, no immediate circumstances forcing me to plan ahead or maintain an image, the texture of awareness felt even more uncanny and false than usual—The dissonance was actually painful, in a way, and I clenched my teeth in the face of how hobbled I felt simply trying to walk home.
It was that same feeling of impotent rage as when, as a child, you're forced into an awful, scratchy turtleneck or your mom gives you a terrible haircut, but magnified to self-flensing, thermonuclear intensity. I was desperate to get home and under the covers and close my eyes and do whatever it took to not... feel like a quadruped anymore. I was a piece of PlayDoh being perpetually squeezed through a pony-shaped hole, and the pressure and confinement were maddening.
I was cute, but that just felt like a part of me had been annexed for the enjoyment of others—"Everyone come hug the pony, she has no agency of her own and is only here for your squee-ing pleasure!"
Pshhhhhhhhhhh, you love it.
Like hell. OK, Maybe for like, half an hour, but I have things to do. I have a life, and plans, and—Christ, I can’t believe I’m talking like this—dreams, and all the rest. I could still play music as a pony, certainly, but what about studio time, or live shows?
Maybe I could just be some secret of the music industry: Decades from now, some spotted, emphysematous old rocker would be interviewed against a pure black background, his gaze momentarily distant behind opaque sunglasses, before leaning in to belly laugh and wheeze out, “Oh, Blue Shift? Yeah... it’s true—She was a little unicorn chick. We all knew it. It was just one a’ those things. Crazy times back then, crazy times,” before a hologram of two well dressed young people would interrupt the program to ask you to donate to... Space PBS.
But that was ridiculous—Everyone would find out I was a pony right after my glamorous overdose, naturally.
What? You don’t even like heroin.
On cupcakes, obviously.
But I had no way to know how long this was actually going to last. A day? The rest of my life? Both extremes felt unlikely—This was too big to be a just minor speedbump in my week, and too meaningful and organized a change to work on someone and then simply forget about.
However I'd gotten like this, it had to be for some... agenda. It's not like I was just sick: "unicorn" is simply not a failure state of the human body, or any reasonable vector for contagion, since it makes you want to avoid humans. Someone had to deliberately conjure this new form, and then seamlessly “transplant” my brain into it. My only way forward was to find out who and what they were, and what they hoped to accomplish by doing so.
But would I want to go along with it? Would it be right to go along? What if this were the opening pawn move of some sinister game to somehow exploit Earth or Equestria? No doubt everyone’s wondered if they’d have the courage to stand up to a tyrant or conqueror at great personal risk, but would I really do it? Granted, being a pony for the rest of my life was certainly better than being executed or languishing in a dungeon, but what if I were really forced to make that decision? And even if what I was expected to do with this form seemed evil, might it just be stupid to second guess any entity advanced enough to do this to me? Or should I trust my own moral sense no matter what and not simply be awed by power, like Captain Kirk standing up to some... brony V’Ger?
Dammit, this was not fair! I hadn’t done anything wrong, I wasn’t a bad guy, and now I had to hide like some kind of falsely-accused fugitive! It was as if Alfred Hitchcock and Franz Kafka had conspired to ruin my morning...
Everyone else was in on the conspiracy to catch me, just by being human. They didn’t even know they were working together. Maybe they’d take pity on me if I explained I was human once, too, and had just been transformed into this, but... That was just the thing. Pity. Saying it out loud—actually admitting this had been done to me—made me a victim.
As Rob I was powerless, without agency and at the mercy of everything, but as Blue Shift at least it was still my life. I could be here for my own reasons, and all I needed from anyone I met was to simply not hassle me for what I looked like. What I was doing here was my own business.
I’d rather be seen as Blue Shift the adventurous unicorn mare than Rob the human... victim.
I could have it a lot worse. I was a cute little unicorn, which in terms of otherworldly creatures is about as non-threatening as you can get. I could have been grotesque or frightening, or simply too alien to even consider engaging with, but just as is so unfairly the case with humans themselves, I was lucky enough to be pretty. Almost certainly no one was going to attack me on sight, and no one would believe an eyewitness report about me or likely even a photo—My blurry flank might pop up on The History Channel and that would be the end of it.
I noticed my breathing had become somewhat ragged, and that I’d made another turn—left this time—pointing me back in my original direction. I desperately hoped that was south, as my apartment was just over two miles in that direction, but without a good view of the skyscrapers to the east or a street name I recognized, I might as well have just been spun around blindfolded.
The clatter of my hooves suddenly snapped me back to the present. I stopped, relishing the concealing silence, and what I realized was a numbness that had been building in my hooves gave way to a mild ache of exertion. Good lord, would I need to get... shod, or something? How much was there about this body that needed maintaining? What different things would I take for granted about myself if I’d actually been born and raised in this body?
I certainly could have been. There could have been, from the beginning, a real Blue Shift and no Rob LeCroix. It’s not like there was anything wrong with this body—I didn’t seem to be sickly or weak, beyond a kind of atrophy born of so many parts being “fresh out of the box,” so my problem, my situation, was never a function of this body in-and-of-itself so much as its being socially unacceptable. And it was only unacceptable because it was unprecedented.
Was that it? Was it my responsibility to break some kind of... species barrier? I fell to my haunches with a sigh, catching myself off-guard with the pitch of my voice, just as a cold, gritty sensation between my legs shot to the forefront of my consciousness as it contacted the ground. Is... Is that another thing I’m going to have to do now!?
I’ve heard of having sand in your vagina, but thiiiis is ridiiiiiiiii
Yeah, yeah. I stood up, vigorously shook my flank, then clenched what I figured was the right layer of shielding and sat on my haunches again out of pure pique. I knew I’d need to clean myself back there eventually, but right now trying to touch it felt like some form of acquiescence, not to mention gritty hooves wouldn’t be any help to begin with. This time, at least, everything felt normal. From the waist down, anyway: Being the first time I’d sat on my haunches, the top-heaviness of it, and the way so much of my weight was still carried in my shoulders, was immensely disturbing, and I let out another angry, impotent yell between clenched teeth.
Forgetting myself and my earlier determination to sit however I wanted, genitals be damned, I fell forward into a full pony sitting position, the gritty cement mussing the hair of my stomach, and my rear hooves once more pressing into my sides. My eyes were squeezed shut, but I forced them open and took stock of where I was.
Above me was the black rectangle of an apartment’s fire escape, concealing me in shadow. I crawled toward the building until I hugged the wall, then forward until I was hidden behind a parked hatchback. I heard myself hiccup, which was apparently all the signal I needed, because immediately I felt my mouth twist into an exaggerated grimace and my chest spasm with the first of many dozens of sobs. I was completely silent save the occasional slurping inhalation, but to anyone who saw my prone form hidden behind that powder-blue Geo Metro, it would have been obvious I was a pony in trouble.
It was pure, simple frustration.
It wasn’t even so much what I was, but what I didn’t know about what I was. I wasn’t so much a pony as an infant again—Just as ignorant and just as helpless. And in this moment, just as incapable of expression beyond tears.
My breath caught in my throat as I exhaled, and then leapt some brand new inner hurdle to come out as an inhuman whinney. I clenched my teeth and screamed once more in anger, but that was again interrupted by a sob. I felt tears drip from the corners of my eyes into the fur of my cheeks before spreading out and becoming intangible.
I lay still for several minutes, listening to my breathing. My nose lay on my forelegs, and I could smell my own sweat and oily, dirty coat, the gasoline and old exhaust on the car at my side, day-old mushroom and sausage pizza from the apartment above, late-season dandelions in the patch of grass I’d just walked over, wintergreen gum on the railing of the fire escape overhead, garbage in the dumpster across the alley, human urine on the telephone pole next to it, several more things I’d simply never smelled before at all, as well as an acrid, alkali stench that I realized had been assaulting me ever since I left the house. I tried to plug my nostrils, but I had to press uncomfortably hard on my muzzle if I didn’t want my chin resting on the ground. This could not go on.
Maybe I should call my mom, I thought.
“Hello?” She’d say.
“Hi MommmMs. LeCroix,” I’d say, suddenly reminding myself of my female voice, “this is Rob’s friend, uh, Alex.”
“Oh, hi,” she’d respond, “I’m not sure I’ve heard Rob mention you. How’re you doing?” We’d exchange pleasantries and I’d tell her I’m a
Horse whisperer
The daughter you always wanted
I dunno, a barista or something, and I’d say Rob has laryngitis but wants to say hi, and now I’ll hand off the phone to “him,” and if you would please just say a few encouraging words... Thank you, Ms. LeCroix, he said he really appreciates that. Yes, I hope to meet you in person, too, sometime. No, that’s alright, no need to get a plane ticket—I’m sure he’ll feel better before you even make it here. Put him on again? Oh, I’m not sure he—OK *croak*hyi mahm*croak*
...Well... that kind of got away from me.
I sighed and wiped my nose with the back of what used to be a finger. My fetlock? Pester? I again became determined to google horse anatomy once I got home. I didn’t want to look at my forelimb for fear of noticing the snail trail no doubt smeared across it now, and I certainly wasn't going to use that same area to wipe away any tears. I was filthy enough already; surely that would all come off just as much as the rest of the dirt—Once I got home.
I sniffed, my unnaturally long nasal passages finally feeling clear, and rose to my hooves. They tingled a little, no doubt a remnant from the earlier force exerted on them, but they felt strong and I felt ready to move again.
No, better than that. I felt cleansed—almost giddy—from muzzle to tail, and even claiming those parts no longer seemed like admitting my life was in ruins, or that its reset button had been suddenly and sadistically pressed—This was just... one of those trials that happen from time to time, and before long it’ll all work itself out.
I looked up at the sky and smiled. Normally a day this gorgeous would lift my mood to the point that I almost swaggered down the street, and now that feeling of breezy, cosmopolitan confidence returned, running as a kind of warmth down my legs and into my hooves. My tail swished involuntarily, and I took that as a signal to set off for home, with a subtle but unsinkable bounce in my stride. The motion of my shoulders made it easy for my head to nod along with the rhythm of my walk, and I started humming an impromptu melody, playing with the timbre and other qualities of this new voice.
You know what? I didn’t even really care if someone saw me. Being an alien creature among humans, it was a bit like I was in a bad neighborhood, but then the number one rule of bad neighborhoods still applied: Sheer bravado. Look like you belong there. If they were so ignorant they’d never seen a talking unicorn before, that was their problem. I’m not causing trouble, so nobody had a right to cause trouble for me, no matter how many legs I walked on. If they’re not cool with a magical pony, they’re welcome to fuck right off.
As if to illustrate my point, I suddenly bucked the empty air behind me. It felt good, though I wasn’t exactly sure how I did it. It was like jumping and punching backwards at the same time, and a timid second try just had me barely catching myself with my back legs before falling on my knees. I decided to keep walking, then, remembering the sequence of turns I’d made so far, rounded another corner to travel perpendicular to where I thought home was.
I emerged into the grassy back yard of a small apartment building, a dark plywood concatenation of a fire escape and a series of decks winding its way up the rear of the full three stories. A high wooden fence bordered it on all sides, with only a small mesh gate providing access to the proper back alley and its dumpsters. It was the most secluded place I'd encountered so far, and I decided to take a quick rest and collect my thoughts.
Before I could do so, however, my stomach growled fiercely and I realized I still hadn't had a proper meal since waking up. I certainly wasn't strolling on into a Jimmy Johns for the #2-hold-the-mayo or stumbling on a quaint little diner, and I didn't have any money, anyway. I could corner someone and beg (or threaten) them to go buy me a meal, but that was tempting fate on an insane scale, and I winced at the very idea.
I continued across the grass to hide for a moment under the wooden stairs, and the feel of my four hooves on the softer surface caused in my mind the reconstruction of a now very practical syllogism:
-Oh my god I am actually a pony I am actually a pony this is really happening to me that is insane.
-All ponies are mortal eat grass.
-I was standing on my own food. Q.E.D., baby.
Ugh, could I really eat the grass, though? I mean, really? It was still grass, the same grass it had always been—That stuff I'd spent years just pulling out of the ground when bored on field trips or while waiting my turn in gym class; that fibrous, surprisingly durable stuff that just grew out of the dry, gritty dirt I sat on in my proverbial short-pants.
What if I was wrong and I couldn't eat this grass? What if it was the “wrong kind” of grass, or was covered in some nasty yard chemicals? Would I get sick, or would it just go right through me if I couldn't digest it?
I approached a healthy-looking patch and sniffed it. It didn't obviously reek of any kind of pesticide or other 'Hank Hill'-ery, so I leaned my neck down and—I can't believe I'm doing this please don't let my nose touch the dirt—bit off a mouthful of lawn.
The whole motion was so strange that it took me a moment to even register what the stuff tasted like. I frowned as I felt with perfect clarity that I had a mouthful of grass, but I shifted it to the side and began chewing.
If you've ever gotten bored at a restaurant while your companions are nattering on about NCAA brackets or babies or whatever, and just idly eaten the garnish, it had the same dry, card-stock quality, but as I chewed and it transformed into an abstract mouthful of food, wet by saliva, it released several flavors that weren't at all unpleasant. It had a whisper of sweetness not unlike sticky white rice, and a subtle but unfamiliar savory quality that was entirely new to me.
Those were quickly overwhelmed, however, by a battery-like alkali taste, and I swallowed to get it out of my mouth. It lingered for a second or two, and I hoped it wasn't an indicator I'd just eaten Panamanian Death Grass, or some other hypothetical poison strain popular in lawns because it looked pretty and no idiot would actually eat the fucking grass, but now that it was simmering in my mouth, the same metallic, alkali aroma was cast into relief against the cornucopia of city smells I'd been wading through since I'd escaped the house. It was in the grass, it was in the air.
It's just harmless pollution, dude! Dig in!
Not since noticing the total absence of mosquitoes when I moved to the city had I been more relieved to encounter industrial waste. I didn't want to ingest too much of the contaminated grass, but I was breathing the crap in already, and I was so hungry that I felt compelled to tell myself pony tongues were probably just over-sensitive to the artificial, and that a few more mouthfuls wouldn't hurt me—It wasn't like the lawn was getting sick from it, right? I mentally saluted my possibly-magical gut bacteria and gulped down about a half dozen mouthfuls before their alkali marinade became too obvious, and made a mental note to monitor my stomach(s?) for any signs of distress.
The stuff wasn't very filling, but my hunger was momentarily thinned, and I decided to continue slinking through the back alleys towards home.
Rounding the corner, I finally saw it—One of the titanic steel and glass obelisks that rose from the city center. I had been doing alright, navigation-wise: I had mainly been travelling west instead of south, but since my apartment wasn’t exactly due-south anyway, I had been covering a component of the distance I would have needed to travel later in any case.
I nodded with self-satisfaction, but my ears were suddenly pulled behind me by an aggressive barking. My stomach turned inside out and my neck snapped around, and I found myself staring at an improbably tiny gray, button-eyed dog behind a wrought iron fence. The little guy was free to roam around this stinking back yard, but fortunately couldn’t squeeze through the bars, as I didn’t have the confidence to stand on three legs while simultaneously giving him a gentle push away.
I began a halting retreat, when I heard a husky female voice yell something unintelligible from inside the apartment. I scrambled towards the corner to hide myself behind the building, my hooves intermittently slipping in my haste, when I heard the screen door creak open and saw, over my shoulder, an almost perfectly square older woman waddle out onto the raised wooden steps above the grass. She yelled several clipped Spanish phrases at the dog, but didn’t seem to see me at all, the noisy pet occupying her whole attention. After no more than a second or two, I rounded the corner, then stopped to catch my breath. The sudden silence made me realize just how much of a racket my hooves had made as I was running away, and I hoped she hadn’t noticed it over the barking dog. I held my breath and listened for any sign of pursuit, literally straining my ears forward to catch even the softest footstep.
She muttered something, and I thought I caught the word “caballo,” before I heard several more heavy footsteps and then the screen door open and close once more. I waited for at least twenty more seconds before moving again, then turned around and headed in the direction I was now confident was south.
Ten or fifteen minutes passed in uneventful walking. Fortunately I'd managed to avoid any large streets, and in the few instances I needed to cross one, I was able to move a block up or down and stick to areas shaded by overhanging trees.
I was much, much better at walking now, and could direct myself around with almost the same ease I enjoyed in my original body. “Go there,” I could simply think, and both sets of legs would oblige, carrying me along and minding themselves well enough to step over or around any minor obstacle or unsure-looking footing.
Despite violently resenting my new four-legged posture not long before, having a degree of mastery over it now filled me with a sense of agency and control of my situation. I considered trying to move faster, beyond just a walk—What was that, a canter? Trot?—and hoped that whatever little module I'd assembled in my brain would be able to keep my legs moving properly without tripping over themselves, but decided I didn't want to risk falling and hurting myself out in the open.
On the other hand... What if I got cornered and needed to make a break for it? Did I want my first attempt at anything faster than a leisurely stroll to be that desperate? I resolved to try for a little bit of speed as soon as I came across a long enough stretch of alley to approach the problem gradually.
I peeked around another corner, and with the coast clear I moved behind a dumpster, then slunk around the corner of a chain link fence to park myself behind what appeared to be a gas meter. But I immediately noticed some intolerable acrid stench coming from the baseboards of the corresponding apartment (Is this how rumors about where the meth labs are get started?), so, feeling a twang of rage that the increased sensitivity of my nose was coupled with an inability to hold it shut, I padded through the grass in between the buildings and around the corner to hunker down on the cement, between an old couch and a discarded Ikea bookshelf. I heard voices and music coming from one of the upstairs apartments through the fence against which the furniture was set, but a quick glance over my shoulder showed me that they were all still inside. This flexible pony neck certainly did make a good periscope.
I scanned some of the other apartments, but didn't see any presence of people in the alley—Everyone was either safely contained inside or simply not home. I peeked out from around the bookshelf, and saw that I was in a narrow concrete back street, lined with garbage and recycling bins against the fences on either side, as well as the occasional bicycle or moped chained to a street light or chain link fence post. It went down as far as I could discern, cutting across several “real” streets before disappearing into what was less a vanishing point than a Cubist explosion of urban detritus. The corner I had just turned was the very start of it, and up in the other direction it simply ended in a “T” at the tall wooden fence marking the perpendicular alley I had come through.
The back street was no blinding-white lake bed out in the New Mexico desert, but for my purposes it was enough of a proving ground for going experimentally fast. I glanced around one more time to make sure no one could see me, then stepped into the center of the alley and tested my footing.
I began walking at a brisk pace, planning to stop at the intersection where it met a normal street. At the moment, my hooves were making a syncopated four-beat rhythm so familiar from the movies I half expected a cowboy to start singing over it, but as I picked up speed, the syncopation grew more pronounced until they blended into a two-beat stroke and I found I was launching myself into the air with the combined motion of diagonal pairs of legs. That was a 'trot,' right? It felt a little bit like a combination of jogging and jumping rope. Regardless, I was almost out of Runway and began to slow down before I reached the intersection, stumbling slightly as I searched for my original four-beat walking rhythm.
I pressed against the corner of the building bordering the sidewalk, and not hearing any footsteps I peered around the corner. The brick was scratching my side, and not for the first time I wished I had one of Twilight and Pinkie's espionage outfits. If nothing else maybe I could pass for a giant black dog from behind.
The coast being clear, I stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked across the street for another suitable alley to duck into, but presently I head two muffled voices around a corner ahead of me and the automatic turning of my ears toward them only served to startle me further. I jumped into a hollow in the side of the building next to me, and realized to my immediate horror it was the entryway to an apartment. An intercom was set into the wall just above my eye level and a big glass door was right beside me, a staircase leading up and out of sight immediately on the other side. I was exposed in two directions, and counting on both the pedestrians to pass by and no one to come down the stairs was more of a gamble than I'd anticipating making. I turned around and pressed myself into the wall right below the intercom as hard as I could—thankfully the side in shadow—hoping to somehow blend into the brick and remain out of sight, blue against red in the purple shadows. It was scratching me and pulling painfully on the hairs in my coat with every breath, and I excoriated myself for even noticing discomfort at a time like this. My eyes darted between the stairs and the sidewalk, dreading the moment someone would inevitably appear in either.
After about ten seconds of nauseating anticipation, a man and a woman strode into view from behind me, past the corner of the entry alcove, and after the instant of terror where we were side-by-side, they mercifully continued past me down the street.
I looked towards the stairway again, not daring to step out just yet, lest the sound of my hooves make the pair turn around. I don't think I was even breathing at this point.
That was fortunate, because I might have cried out in surprise when the intercom directly behind my head suddenly and insistently buzzed. I realized to my absolute horror that I had been pressing one of the buttons with the solid base of one ear, and whoever was up there had decided to let in their visitor. How long had I been pressing it? Would they come down if no one answered? I hadn't taken too seriously the idea that someone would pick the particular minute or so I was hiding here to use this door, but of course it was a different matter if I called them myself.
I could still hear the man and woman on the sidewalk talking, though they were at least fifty feet away by this point and seemed involved enough in their conversation that a minor noise or two wouldn't make them turn around.
I was paralyzed with indecision. Stay and be discovered or throw myself into plain sight?
Oh hell! It was a terrible hiding spot anyway!
I shoved away from the wall and winced as the rough brick yanked at every hair from head to tail. Stepping carefully into the street, I scanned the length of it until it disappeared behind the lines of parked cars and leafy trees on either side. Each step I took sounded to my paranoid ears like the banging together of two world-sized coconuts, and I felt fear rising again as my pace slowed enough to set my hooves down silently. I pressed myself into the parked cars on my side of the street as I went along, and then slithered around a curved headlight to peek out from between the bumpers of two aerodynamic minivans.
On the other side of the street was a line of wrought iron fences, their spindly black gates barring entry into every alley. With increasing urgency I scanned back and forth, until I saw the line of townhouses end in a strip of grass dividing them from the scruffy beige siding of a cheap apartment. It was easily a hundred feet away, however, in the same direction that pair of humans had gone, and dangerously close to an intersection well-traveled enough to deserve a stoplight.
They say if you're ever separated from someone and want to be found, just stay in the same place, so I imagined that I then had to keep moving, and I had to take risks. I reflexively shook my head to either side to check for cars, then propelled myself across the street as fast as I could, managing a successful trot for a second time.
I squeezed myself through the nearest space between two cars, then letting my two left hooves step down from the curb, I pressed myself against the door of a boxy white sedan as I scanned around once more.
“Hello?” I heard a man say from across the street. Whoever I'd buzzed at that apartment had come down to greet me. I glanced back to make sure no part of me was sticking out from cover, but it was all I could do not to peek around the corner and size up whatever hornets' nest I'd disturbed. “Hello?” he said one more time, then, straining my ears up by the hood of the car, I heard a slow hydraulic hiss and burst of tiny clicks as the door was left to swing shut. These pony ears could be pretty useful after all.
Immediately, however, they swiveled to focus on something behind me that my conscious mind hadn't yet registered. Someone was opening one of the iron gates, maybe sixty feet behind me. My head jerked around before I could think, and I saw a squat woman in a green tent of a t-shirt stepping through the gate, holding something small in her hand. She gestured into the air with it and I was almost deafened by two deep chirps from the nearest car opposite her from where I was standing, exposed right there on the sidewalk.
Viscous, smothering panic rose from my stomach. I didn't know if I should just run, or if I should get behind another car, but either way I had no more than a second or two to act. Unthinkingly I tried to squeeze myself into the space between “my” car and hers, but it was too tight for my body to fit through and my chest was now smashed uncomfortably into the rear of her minivan.
It was right then that I saw, however, that the car and I were almost exactly the same color. I didn't dare look back but I knew she must be heading in this direction and could only hope with all my might that being silhouetted against it gave me an extra second or two before she noticed me. I prayed to every party-trick flaw in the human perceptual system as I shoved myself away and almost shoulder-checked her car again as I scrambled along it to slide around its front bumper. There was enough room on this side to fit through, and I ducked down and pressed close to the car's opposite side as I sat exposed in the street, jerking my head in every direction to see if I'd been spotted.
The coast was clear, and I quickly walked up along the line of cars to hide in between another pair, two car lengths away. Being about as long as I was tall meant I couldn't turn around in there, and had to be content with my head facing the sidewalk, and my rear end sticking out towards the street. I lay down, hoping the shadows the cars cast on me in addition to the leafy overcast from the trees above would keep me from being too conspicuous, since I didn't dare move from this spot until I was sure the woman had gotten into her car and off the sidewalk.
As soon as I heard the car door open, I stood again and checked both directions on the sidewalk, then ran as fast as I could towards the grass alley still up ahead. But I'd run faster than I could, apparently—I'd never moved this fast in all my bipedal life—because after an achingly short interval my rear legs stumbled as they lost their rhythm and tripped each other just as they were pushing off. I felt my hips skewing off to the side just as my front hooves contacted the ground again, causing me to pivot around them with a stomach-churning twinge of knee pain, and I spun out onto my left side, facing the other direction.
Fortunately my rump had absorbed most of the impact, and I was too full of adrenaline to let the throbbing dullness into anything but the very back of my mind. I threw my head back over my shoulder and let the momentum corkscrew me around until my front legs could reach forward again to contact the ground. I pushed up with them and waited the instant for my back half to catch up before pushing off again with the inside hoof and starting a brisk walk. I let myself gather speed gradually this time, but as I did so I noticed a pain in my right front “knee” with every step. I'd overextended myself and this was the price.
Automatically I began favoring the leg and my rhythm began to falter again. I slowed down considerably, and though now the alley was only about thirty feet away, I became so much more aware of the sound of every step that I screamed inside my head to go faster. I felt like I was a chain between a heavy anchor and a speed boat straining at full throttle, every link beginning to bend from the tension.
“Leg be damned,” I thought, “It's not that bad!” and shivered as I firmly stepped down with it to push myself into a trot. I covered the remaining distance in under ten seconds and kept pushing into the alley until I could unclench my teeth and lie down on the grass around the corner of a wooden fence, where I hid behind a large plastic garbage can.
My right front knee ached dully, but I could already sense the pain was on its way out. It wasn't actually the pain that had slowed me down so much as an unvocalized dread of permanently damaging it somehow if I wasn't perfectly careful. Somehow in that moment the idea of being a female pony for the rest of my life seemed positively golden compared to the idea of also having a gimpy knee.
Fortunately, however, these pony legs seemed very sturdy, and again I thanked whoever was responsible for this body that it was evenly filled out, without the bony, fragile-looking legs of the equines of Earth.
I looked myself over, and didn't seem to be too banged-up anywhere, though I certainly wouldn't win any prizes for grooming. My coat was matted and sticking up in places, with a few grains of dirt or gravel caught in some others, but it seemed to have been a good layer of protection and kept me from getting any actual road rash when I fell, though already being naturally so low to the ground probably helped a little. I had scars on my original human knees from falling off bicycles, and I didn't want to lose my clean dermatological slate so soon.
I sighed and let my tongue roll out of my mouth. I had, what? Two miles to go before I got home? How many more times was I going to have to do this? Should I even be trying? But where else was I going to go? Could I hide out somewhere and wait for dark? Where? Would it even make a difference? It was a Saturday, and a Saturday night was not the time to be outside if you didn't want anyone else around.
I imagined just giving in and somehow calling for a taxi, and pretending to cast a “make tons of money” spell on the guy's cab or something in lieu of payment, but if there's anyone I didn't want seeing me it was someone with access to a city-wide radio network in a language I couldn't follow. If he blabbed on the radio or his little Bluetooth gizmo he'd probably have to take me back to the hangar and make me bless everyone's cab, then their families, then... I couldn't even guess how something like that would end.
I briefly imagined a life of criminal adventures as an underground secret of the taxi industry, and from there other shady circles, inventing magic to forge green cards or turn bags of cocaine invisible, and consorting with a series of unnaturally glossy women I suppose one could term “dames.” What prison would they put me in when I finally got caught?
Dude, I bet you could totally just use magic to escape! You should do it! Go all Walter White on this shit!
No, you maniac. The plan is to find out how I got turned into a pony and reverse it, not use unicorn magic to rise through the ranks of organized crime.
“Oh my god, there it is! We were totally right; I knew that's what I heard!” I heard a young woman's voice frighteningly close by and my ears turned back in the direction of the street. I looked around the garbage can I'd used to somewhat conceal myself, and saw the same man and woman I'd avoided earlier standing by the corner of the fence, staring right at me.
Damn hooves made too much noise.