//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: Windcatcher // by Makitk //------------------------------// You reach up to rub a hoof at the side of your head. "I didn't remember our story being this long?" "It's been a year," Windcatcher returned, and you muse on that a moment. "Do I really have to write out all of it?" "Maybe just the highlights?" "Just how many of those are you thinking?", you ask with some trepidation, and you hear Windcatcher hum a bit. "Six, seven.. just the big events. They don't need to know about the rest." You stare at the stack of blank sheets and do a quick count. "Only the really big events then. Or we'll have to get some more paper." "There's two more packages in the bookcase. We got plenty." "Let's hope so," you sigh, leaning your head down to pick your pencil up between your lips again and continue writing. "The growling of my belly snapped us out of our flashback, and I found myself shaking my head at the new viewpoint on what had happened before. "So you really thought I was stupid, did you?", I chuckled, and Windcatcher muttered a halfhearted apology. "It's ok, though. I was pretty stupified with suddenly finding something in front of me which, as far as everyone on Earth is concerned, was highly improbable, if not downright impossible." Windcatcher giggled softly at that, and I felt her presence lean into my side. "That's kind of what the general feeling is about humans over here." "Well, there you go," I smiled, but my smile quickly faded as I looked at the plate still resting on my lap. "There are no utensils?", I asked, and I could feel the question coming already. "What are utensils?" "Forks, knives.. stuff to lift the food up to your mouth with," I answered, and Windcatcher giggled again. "Just lean in, silly. Only unicorns lift their food up with their magic." I groaned at that, in perfect sync with my belly as it growled again. The scent of the food had been silently working on making me more and more aware that I was feeling quite peckish. Actually, the more I was thinking about it, the more I started craving a bite. "I really don't see why you have this problem with eating flowers," Windcatcher sighed. "Humans don't eat flowers," I retorted. "It's just not something that we think about." "Well, then, don't think about it," she suggested. The hunger was getting to me, and Windcatcher's voice in my inner ear was not helping either, so I closed my eyes and leaned in towards the plate. I tentatively closed my teeth around one of the petals of the daffodil and with a little pressure felt them cut through the soft material. The juices that leaked from the cut touched my tongue before the piece had itself settled on it and I found my eyes opening in surprise at the taste. It was not an unfamiliar taste, slightly tangy, sharp, like a type of onion. But there was something else to it that I couldn't quite grasp. I carefully moved the piece of flower around in my mouth and gave it another bite as it slipped between my molars. The wash of flavors spreading through my mouth made me shiver in delight. There was a certain sweetness to the flower which the sharpness of the initial bite had hidden from me, and I savored the taste for as long as I could, closing my eyes again in blissful response to it. Windcatcher chuckled at my expense, but I waited until the taste had all but dissipated before snorting at her. "What?", I mumbled before chewing on the remainder of the petal again and shivering happily as I was rewarded with another wave of the pleasurable sensations. "I thought you said you didn't eat flowers?", Windcatcher jabbed, and I shrugged lightly. "If they all taste like this," I started, "I may end up eating that statement as well." We both giggled a little at it and I swallowed the chewed-up piece of the flower. "This is normal for you, isn't it?", I asked of Windcatcher, nodding to the plate before us. "Pretty much, yeah." "Is that why it almost feels natural for me to use this body when I don't think about it?" Windcatcher pondered that a moment before answering, "I don't know. We could ask Triple Lightning when we see her again." I nodded to that and finished up our lunch while thinking about how that meeting would go; "Hi, I'm Triple Lightning. Hi, I'm Windcatcher. No, you're not. Yes, I am. I'm going to use my magic to send you back to earth now, fake pony! Oh, no I'm back on earth but still a pony! We're going to dissect you now, because we're the government! Noooooo!" Windcatcher stared at me. I couldn't see her, but I felt her eyes on the back of my head. "Your imagination," she started, "borders insanity." "I'm a cartoon pony in a cartoon world," I retorted. "I don't think my imagination can top that." "Who's to say you're not just imagining this, too, hm?" Windcatcher teased. I looked around myself a moment, licking around my muzzle to get the remaining jello out of my fur as I did. "If that gets me home before the party this weekend," I mused. Windcatcher's mood dropped at that and I sighed out myself, feeling my ears flatten on my head. "I really don't know how this happened," Windcatcher sighed, and I felt her hooves hug around my neck as her body settled against my back. I shivered as I realized the impossibility of her actions once again, what with my back resting against the pillows on the hospital bed. "I don't even know if Triple Lightning can reverse the spell," the pony-in-my-head muttered in my left ear, resting her chin on my shoulder. "How are you even doing that?", I wondered, maybe a little more bewildered than I had thought I was about it. I felt the weight of her head shift as she tilted it. "Doing what?" "How are you leaning against my back?", I voiced my question properly, "I mean, I'm laying against the bed myself." "Well, see," Windcatcher started, leaning her head in against mine as she did. "To me, you're sort of here. You look like me, sure. But you're just sort of floating here in this space?" "Space?" "Well, it's like a bubble? With a big window up in front of you?", she tried. "A bubble?", I repeated again. Windcatcher's right hoof lowered to poke me in the side. "Yes, a bubble. Are you going to repeat everything I say?" "I just don't understand what you're saying," I returned with a frown, rubbing my right hoof to the side of my head. "There's a bubble in my head?" Windcatcher sighed in an annoyed fashion. "My head, dear. But yes. It's like we're in a spherical room with the walls curving inward." I tried to imagine what she was describing to me. "A spherical room with a window in it?" "Uh-huh." "Inside m.. our head?", I corrected myself. "Uh-huh." "And we're inside of it?" Windcatcher sighed and poked her hoof at my right side again and I found myself automatically turning my head to face her. "Yes, we are in it. I dunno how it works, ok? I'm just saying what I'm seeing. Can we stop with the fifth degree?" I felt my cheeks blush and leaned back against the bed, my movement making the plate wobble a bit on my lap. "I'm just confused about it. This is the first time I heard I had a room in my head," I giggled a bit. "I mean, my friends joked about me having a hole in my head before, but to have you come out and say it is really there is a different thing altogether." Windcatcher fell silent at that, and I let my eyes drift down to look over my body again, tentatively trying to flex some muscle groups that were very different than what I had been used to as a human. It's not that the muscles were located in different areas or anything; they were pretty much the same muscles, connected to largely the same things they would've been connected to if I had still been human. It was more that these muscles were longer, shorter, stronger, weaker, or more or less inhibited by the different shape of my body. My fingers? Forget about those. The few that were left were just clumped together to form my forehooves. While I could feel the muscles tighten when I focused on them, I could not move them individually. I did notice that my hooves were more sensitive than I would have thought, initially. They were basically marshmallow-shaped blobs that seemed unforgiving when I had stood on them, but I could feel the stitching around the edge of the bedsheet as I ran my hoof over it. As I pressed my forehooves together in front of my face, I could see them bend and stretch a little to accomodate the pressure upon them and I amused myself for a few minutes by just seeing how far they would bend out of shape before they would start to hurt. "You're acting like a little filly," Windcatcher threw my way, as I was giggling excitedly at learning more about our body. "It's new to me, ok?", I sighed, but dropped my hooves on the bed on either side of me anyway. "I'm not the one who's been a pony all her life. I was just trying to figure out how things work." "I didn't mean to berate you," Windcatcher muttered in a low voice, and I looked away with a feeling of embarrassment at having misjudged her intention. "It was kind of cute to see," she added, and I felt her lean into me again. "If you have any questions, you know.. about being a pony and all, I can probably answer them." I thought that over for a little while, then looked back at my wings. "What's it like?" "To fly?", Windcatcher wondered, noticing what I was looking at. I nodded to her return question and carefully stretched my unbroken wing out to the side while studying how it moved. "I remember asking my mom that when I was just a filly," Windcatcher revealed. "Not all pegasi get born with the knowledge of how to fly, you know? We have the ability to, but learning how to keep yourself from tipping over mid-air, or falling out of the sky altogether, is a process in and of itself." I noticed how I could tilt my wing a little this way or that as it was extended to the side, and remembered seeing a documentary about how birds tilt their wings while in flight. "But you did manage to fly, right?", I asked, trying to coax Windcatcher to reveal more about herself. "Oh, yes. But it wasn't easy," she chuckled. "If it wasn't for the clouds drifting by, I would have crashed into the land below many times before I learned to navigate the thermal pockets." "So you soar more than you fly?", I wondered, likening the Pegasi to big birds barely moving their wings as they simply used the updraft to stay in the air. Windcatcher pondered that question, but then chuckled lightly. "Sometimes, yes. If there's a gust of wind I can catch, I feel it's better to do so than to tire myself out flapping all the time." "Pacing yourself, like with running? I see how that works," I nodded. "That's smart. Can you teach me?" "If we ever get out of here, sure," she offered, nuzzling her cheek to mine. "You'll have to learn how to fly anyway, since my home's up in Cloudsdale." I turned my head to look out of the window at that, seeing the clouds in the sky drift by lazily, and idly wondered what that city would look like. With the feeling of Windcatcher's hooves holding me to her, I slowly found my eyes closing as I drifted off to sleep, my dreams filled with the promise of flight."