I had asked Cherry Blossom to get me a mirror, and dipped my head and horn underwater while she went to retrieve one. Little trails of blood leaked away from my horn and I let out an occasional set of bubbles until I ran out of air and had to come up.
The feeling of the water rushing down my horn to then leak down my face was interesting in and of itself, the grooves in my horn working like a kind of water slide which aided the flow of water until it would impact with my forehead. I let out a surprised squeak at the feeling, and Rhonda giggled a little.
"I'm not the only pone who feels weird, then?", she offered, moving her newly formed pony legs through the water to form waves on the surface of it.
I stuck out my tongue at her and finally dared to reach up to gently touch my horn's base. It was still sensitive, but the warm water had helped it heal and my fingers playing over it only sent shivers down my back, not pain.
"I wonder what your coat's color is going to be, RhoRho," I mused, then held my arm up in front of my face and chuckled. "Or mine, for that matter. With your pink hair, I would imagine something like Fluttershy's colors; yellow coat. But with my green?"
"Why not white for my coat?", Rhonda frowned, and I stared at her.
"Well, I dunno," I started, "Pink and white.. that makes me think of those nurse ponies."
"I could be your private nurse pony, princess Josey?", Rhonda winked, and we both giggled a bit.
"Gods, I never thought I'd end up a princess," I sighed out, still a bit overwhelmed at the idea. "But if Celestia is right, that means my wings would come before my hooves.. and you already have yours.."
I started to feel a bit uncomfortable at the idea. "Rho.. my horn coming out really really hurt me."
Rhonda looked down at her hooves as if trying to come up with a response to that, but then suddenly moved her hands up and started to feel over her face. Ah, she finally noticed.
"What happened to my face?!?", she cried out, and I smirked at her.
"Same thing that's happening to mine, RhoRho," I offered, and Rhonda stared blankly at me as if she had only now seen my eyes change.
"But they're like these big round.. things," Rho breathed out. "How did I not notice it changing before?"
I looked down at the water in front of me and tried to get a good look at my eyes. "Where's Cherry with that mirror?", I mumbled, the water's reflection showing me only part of what I wanted to see.
"Josey? What's my eye color? I can't make it out. It looks like pink?", I heard Rhonda say beside me, and looked up and straight in her eyes.
"Yeah, they're a lighter shade of pink than your mane," I agreed. "I would call it orchid?"
"My mane," Rhonda tasted the word, then looked back at the water. "Fuchsia mane and tail, orchid eyes.."
I looked behind me at my tail and pulled the hairs up out of the water. "My hairs are jade, aren't they? What are my eyes like?"
Rhonda looked over at me again and I kept my eyes open for her to look at. "Mint."
"Mint?", I repeated.
"They're more of a pine green, miss," Magnolia interjected, looking at me as well.
I looked over at the blue pony and nodded. "Thank you."
"So.. pink for you and green for me. Really wondering what our coats will turn out like," I mused.
"Yeah.. me too," my sweet girlfriend sighed, pulling one of her legs out of the water again and staring at the bald limb. "This should have fur on it. It looks weird all bald like that."
I cast a sideways glance at her and nodded. "Yeah."
"Do you have any shampoo, Magnolia?", Rhonda wondered, "I want to wash my mane while I still have fingers to work the shampoo in."
I chuckled at her. "Good idea, Rho. I'll just relax a bit myself until Cherry comes back."
With that, I leaned back against the tub's edge, only to wince and jump forward again the moment my back touched it!
I quickly glanced over to Rho to see if she'd noticed it, but she was looking in the other direction, watching Magnolia pick up a bottle of shampoo.
I sank down until my chin hit the water, then reached behind me and felt two nubs growing out of my back. They were set in-between my shoulder blades, or bordering the edges of both, and even my soft presses were painful.
I looked up towards the door, wondering what was keeping Cherry. How difficult was it to find a damned mirror??
The pain in my back increased by the moment, and I was feeling the nubs grow even without having to touch them with my hands. I squinted my eyes closed at it and tried not to make a sound. I did not want to upset Rhonda again now she was feeling relaxed enough to enjoy washing her hair.
I tried to focus on other things but the growing pain in my upper back. Puppies! Puppies were always cute. How they would.. but the pain cut my train of thought off and I let out a soft whimper. It was quickly getting unbearable.
If it had just been a continuous pain it would have been fine, I would have been able to tune it out a bit better. But this pain was pulsating. And the nubs in my back grew at the apex of every pulse, then stopped for a moment to make the pain recede before starting the cycle all over again.
Celestia had been right; Spritelight's magic loved to hurt me.
I reached behind me again while doing my best to stifle my whimpers and groans. The nubs were protruding about two finger-widths now and a large area around them was sensitive to the point of hurting if it received any pressure.
The next wave of pain came with specks of light mottling my vision, and I had to grab the edges of the bath to not slip down in it. "Hnng.."
"Jo?", Rhonda perked up at finally hearing my groan, her shampooed mane sticking up weirdly from the top of her head.
I gave her a weak smile, pointing behind me as I did not trust my voice.
"Magnolia, her wings are coming out! Go get Cherry! Or Celestia! Or BOTH!", Rhonda cried out, clambering out of the bath with her awkward pony legs and moving beside the tub I was in, reaching for my left hand with both of her own and squeezing it softly. "I'm here, Josey. Focus on me."
I tried, but the pain was just too much. I screamed out in anguish as the next wave came, and as blood started to drift around my body from the back, it mixed with the salty droplets of my tears hitting the water's surface.
With Rhonda by my side, I weathered the pain as good as I could. Which, to be completely honest, was not at all. There was no defense I could put up against the pain spreading from my back, and if it wasn't for Rhonda pulling me back out, I would have drowned a couple of times already as I smashed my face into the water from involuntary spasms and then couldn't straighten my back on my own again.
It was impossible to measure time, and I lost track of how fast the spasms were following one another. My breathing came and went with the pain, I took my breaths in the shallows, and exhumed in agony at the peaks, and I was feeling lightheaded from lack of oxygen.
At some point a whole bunch of ponies rushed back into the room, Celestia among them, and that rhyming Zebra soon pushed something to my lips and told me to drink.
I must have started to hallucinate at some point, as the ponies became more and more blurry with every breath I took. They were talking, but I was barely registering what they were saying. All I knew was the pain and the blood.
So much blood.. I think there was more blood in the bath than actual water.
I drank the potion Zecora pushed up against my lips of course, I mean I wasn't really able to protest or think clearly at that point anymore. When somepony tells you to drink something, you'll drink it.
I don't even know what the taste was. The room bathed in the smell of blood, scented shampoo, and the pheromones from every pony in the room, and the taste was corrupted by it. It could have been blood. Or shampoo. Or pheromone extract. I wouldn't have known.
Whatever it was, it made the world around me fall away into darkness but just as I thought I was going to fall asleep from it, I instead found myself drifting up and out of my body!
The room around me was dark, excepting a small circular area around my body still convulsing involuntarily in the bathtub. The ponies, Rhonda, and Zecora were standing in the light radius, and I could see them talking among themselves while they were keeping me from dropping in the bath.
From up here, I got a good look at my back and the awkward way two long bones were sticking out from it. They looked a bit like a pair of long fingers, and with each spasm from my body they slipped out a bit more.
Celestia's horn started to glow and I saw the same glow around my body as it got lifted up by Celestia's magic, Cherry Blossom and Magnolia rushing to Rhonda's aid as the girl sank sideways, her shuddering shoulders clearly indicating she broke down crying.
Who was that beside Zecora? I didn't know that pony. She had a purple mane and tail, with lighter streaks going through them, a blue coat, and a pair of glasses on her nose which she was moving a little with one of her hooves. She looked to be responding to something Zecora said, stretching her own wings out as much as they could so the zebra could look at them.
I realized the blue pegasus' eyes had two different colors! Huh.. heterochromia in Equestria? Her right eye was blue, and her left brown. They had a bit of a painful look in them as she looked at my body spasming while in Celestia's magical grasp, and I turned my attention back to my body.
The bony fingers had slipped out enough to show joints, and I could see how they would be similar to the bone structure the blue pony's wings would have underneath the feathery exterior.
Zecora seemed to have come to the same conclusion, nodding at Celestia as the blue pony folded her wings again and settled them to her side.
Wait, her side?
My wings were growing from my back, not from my side!
I stared down at them as they continued to grow, while the spa ponies worked on cleaning Rhonda's mane and help her stand on her pony limbs. I could see them from a corner of my eyes but my wings were more interesting.
Muscles and flesh grew out over the wings as they were stretched out to my sides, Celestia's magic still helping my body stay up above the surface of the water, and as the wings finalized I started to see feathers growing from them.
They were stained with blood, but I could see their actual color emerge the more of them sprouted from my wings; yellow. Lemon yellow.
Zecora used a hoof to wash water over my back, and I felt the shudders of my spine as I started to slowly drift down again towards my body. It was a weird feeling to reconnect like that, and I glanced over towards Rhonda before I sank low enough to make it impossible for me to see her.
Her hooves had started to sprout fur the color of pink lace. A pink mane, pink eyes, and now pink fur?
I shook my head and snapped to consciousness as my horn hit the side of the tub, sending a searing pain through my forehead!
"Ow," I whimpered, and felt Celestia's magic slowly let go of me. I put my hands on the tub's edge in front of me and supported myself, feeling the muscles in my back twitch involuntarily.
The wings themselves felt like I was wearing a backpack with something inside of it poking me at my shoulder blades. They were a little uncomfortable, and I mostly felt their weight pressing down on me.
"Welcome back, Josey," Celestia offered, staring down at me from where she was standing. I peered up with weary eyes, feeling the fatigue of the transformation in every limb.
"Are they done now?", I asked, my throat raw from the guttural sounds I must have been making while going through this.
"Your wings are fully formed, my dear," I heard Zecora's voice from behind me and to the right, "But you are far from done, I fear."
I sighed out and dropped my chin on the edge of the bath, leering tiredly over it. "Somepony shoot me."