//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Of Forests and Adjustments* // Story: Trust in the Night // by JumpingShinyFrogs //------------------------------// I screamed until I couldn't scream any more. Slightly dizzy from the loss of air, I struggled to comprehend this revelation. I was a horse. I was a horse. I made an effort to move my new wings. It was a foreign sensation, that felt akin to wiggling my shoulder blades. I found that they folded neatly against my back without much difficulty. I poked my horn. It was a hard kind of a bony material. It wasn't keratin like a rhino's horn, but it also didn't seem like it was ivory. I don't think it was standard bone, either. I examined the horn in my reflection. It spiralled like a narwhal's tusk. Thinking about the fact that I was prodding a horn, using my hoof, made me start to panic again. I could have sworn I saw a turquoise spark come from the horn, bit it might have been a visual trick. Suddenly, I heard the clopping sound of a horse's hooves on stone. Then voices. Quiet at first, but steadily growing louder. "Hurry, girls! It came from over here!" shouted a voice. "Oh, I do hope that whoever it was is alright..." said a quieter voice. Whoever was speaking must have heard me screaming. I couldn't let them see me like this! What would they do when they saw a black winged horse with a horn, and a purple cloud for a mane? I scrambled towards the monument in the room, but fell before I reached it. Stupid different motor controls. I dragged myself as far under the monument as I could and crouched, hoping that my black coat would blend in with the shadows. What ran into the room is quite possibly the weirdest thing I have ever seen. Six small horses, two with wings, one with a horn, one with both and two with neither, came rushing into the room. Their coats and manes were all manner of impossible colours, and they had little butt tattoos, the same as me. Some were carrying sponges and buckets in their mouths. A few sweeping brushes and paintbrushes were floating in the air, sheathed in a pinkish-purple glow. I filed that under 'things to never be brought up again' in my mental filing cabinet. The horses were accompanied by a purple bipedal lizard with green spines, who carried a backpack. "I don't see anypony," said a cyan winged one, with a crazy rainbow mane and tail. They could talk, apparently. Into the filing cabinet it went. I had the feeling that that file was going to be seeing a lot of use soon. A pink one, with neither a horn nor wings suddenly lifted her leg and examined her knee. "My knee is pinchy! That means something scary is about to happen," she said matter-of-factly. "Oh, I don't like scary things," said the quiet one from before, who turned out to be yellow, with wings and a long pink mane. "Hey y'all, what's that under the thing that used to have the Elements o' Harmony on it?" asked the most normal looking of the six, an orange horse with a blond mane who wore a cowboy hat. "Hey, Applejack's right! There's something up there," said the rainbow one, pointing her hoof at me. The group dropped their buckets and brushes, and approached the monument. Oh lord above. I did my best to shimmy back, but the six horses were charging up to me. "Are you alright?" asked the horse with both wings and a horn. Her coat was lavender and her mane was indigo with purple and pink stripes. She was taller than the other five, but not as tall as me. She peered down at me. She froze. Her face contorted into a mix of fear and anger. "Girls," she said, backing away, her voice low and serious. "We need to get to the Tree of Harmony, now. We need the Elements. Quick!" A white, horned one with a curly purple mane gasped as she and the others backed away. "Scary indeed," she said quietly. Scary? I was scary? Not a description I was fond of, to be honest. As the horses prepared to bolt, I decided there was no point in hiding any more. I drew myself up to my full height, which was a good deal taller than that of the other horses. The yellow one gave a quiet squeak. The orange one narrowed her eyes. The pink one was less worried. "Ooh, hiya, Black Snooty! I remember you!" "Pinkie, come on!" urged the lavender one, who seemed to be the leader. She and the rest of her little band of horses were getting closer to the door. They seemed anxious, like they were waiting for something to happen. "Ooh, I have to go! Bye!" said the pink horse, running after her friends. The group was gone before I could say anything. I stumbled over to the arch they had left through, where the tools lay strewn around the place. I looked at the things, and wondered how the horses were meant to use them. Seriously. With their mouths? That said, some of them were floating, so anything was possible. I walked through the arch, which led into a corridor. It had more tapestries hung up, and a lot of ivy and other vegetation growing on the walls. Buckets of soapy water and soaked sponges were laying around the place. I stepped on one of the sponges. The metal boot I was wearing kept me from getting wet, but it didn't stop me from tripping. I smacked my new horn off the wall as I fell. It stung. A lot. It was as if someone had taken a hammer and stabbed me with the claw thing on the back of it. There were tears in my eyes when I picked myself up. I drunkenly staggered forward, careful to avoid any more sponges that might be waiting to sabotage my strange expedition. After a few more minutes, I was starting to get this walking thing down. But I was going painfully slowly. Could I speed it up? Apparently so. I broke into a little trot of sorts, and only banged my hooves into each other once. Pretty good progress. At the end of the corridor was a huge set of doors. It's a good thing they were open already, because I had no idea how I was meant to open them with no hands. Outside, there was a huge chasm with an extremely unsafe looking bridge stretching across it. I gingerly stretched my front right leg out and stepped onto the bridge. It made an unsettling creaking sound, but it held. I slowly crossed the bridge, knocking a few planks out of place as I went. At the other side of the bridge, I stopped to allow my nerves to settle. I looked up at what lay before me, and groaned out loud. A huge tangle of dark vegetation, most of it with thorns, lay before me. I looked from side to side. There was no way around it. I really didn't want to go into it. I also didn't want to just sit there. Sitting there is what I ended up doing for a while. I wondered where those little horse things went. They probably knew where we were and how to leave. Eventually, I stood up, took a deep breath, and marched forward into the forest. I regretted it almost instantly. Even though it had been daylight when I was crossing the bridge, it was pitch black in the trees. I surprised myself, however, with how quickly my eyes adjusted. I could see quite well, given the total lack of light within the tangled mass of plant life, which reminded me of my hair in the morning. After a while, things brightened up. I came to a slow moving river. I couldn't see any way of crossing it easily. I opened my wings and looked at them. Nope. I wasn't going to try that. I folded them up again with a sigh. I was going to have to swim. I crouched, and then kicked with my hind legs, jumping fairly high into the air. My landing in the water wasn't nearly so elegant. I belly flopped into the river and began to doggy-paddle across. When I reached the other side, I shook myself like a dog. Despite how efficient it was, I was still quite wet. I shuddered. The feeling of wet fur clinging to me was a foreign and uncomfortable one. My starry cloud mane stayed floating around the place, billowing in non-existent wind. I came to another dark area. I kept crashing into trees and snagging my horn on branches. It got really annoying really fast. Eventually, I broke into another place with light filtering through the forest canopy. I saw a gigantic footprint, like the footprint of a cat, in the soft mud. It was huge. I could fit two or three hooves into one of the toes. I certainly didn't want to run into whatever had made that. Passing the trail of super-cat pawprints, I saw a pile of scree that looked as though it had been there for a while, at the base of a cliff. How was I supposed to get up that? Once more, I opened my wings. No. I was not going to kill myself trying to fly up a cliff after being turned into a black horse thing with wings and a horn. I wasn't even sure that I could fly, to be honest. My wings were entirely too small to lift me. I glanced around, seeking another path up the cliff. There was a place a bit to my left where the slope was slightly less vertical. I approached the base of the precipice. A few rocks rolled down, coming to a stop next to me. I gulped. Stretching out my wings for balance, I began to climb the slope. Loose stones, soil, and gravel tumbled down with each step I took. I stopped multiple times, terrified that I would cause a landslide. After what seemed like hours of climbing a precipice which seemed to be a mile high, I reached the top. It suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea where I was going. I had just been going in a straight line, but what if civilisation had been in the opposite direction from the building I had woken up in? I realised just how out of my element I was. I was cold, wet, confused, and had somehow transformed into a black, winged, horned horse. I was alone in a dark forest with cliffs, landslides, rivers and super cats. My college course hadn't covered this. I decided to keep walking in a straight line. It wasn't like I had a better plan, and I really didn't want to go back and try and find those other horses again. Fortunately, the rest of the path was fairly uneventful. No more rivers or cliffs, and I saw no sign of the super cat; though I did hear a roar in the distance. Finally, I saw a break in the trees. I broke into as quick a gait as I could muster. I almost tripped over my own hooves again, but that didn't deter me. I kept running towards the sunlight, which was in that instant the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I emerged from the darkness of the forest into the light of the sun. I stopped for a moment to bask in it, relishing in its warmth. My sunlight induced high ended when I realised I still didn't know where I was. But it returned in full force when I realised what I could see, not too far away form me. It was a building. Not a crumbling stone piece of history like the place that I had woken up in, but a cute little thatched cottage, surrounded by more like it. Civilisation! I had found it! I gave a whoop of joy as I galloped over to the little town, but stopped as I considered what would happen when I was seen. Based on the reaction that the other horses I saw in the forest had to me, who knew how the people in the town would react to me? Screw it, I thought. I can get a phone off them, and then scientist or someone like that, and everything will be fixed. I rushed into the town. There was a square ahead of me, where market stalls had been set up. But I was still too far away to see the people who were hanging around there. As I approached, I noticed that everyone seemed to be kind of small. Maybe a school was having a day out in the market. Drawing nearer, I noticed that they all seemed to be crawling on their hands and knees... Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Horses. An entire town of brightly coloured horses, chatting, selling fruits and vegetables, super small and actually quite cute little foals running around playing tag. Everything you would expect to see in a normal town, except they were horses. Some were flying around, and stuff was floating all over the place, sheathed in glows of different colours. Well, at least I fitted in. I continued on into the town. I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but the reaction I got was not one I had hoped for. Every single horse turned its head to look at me. None of them said anything. "Uh...hi?" I said. All hell broke loose. The horses began screaming and running around panicking. They knocked over barrels and market stands, sending food and wood splinters flying everywhere. "Wait! What did I do?" I called out. The horses were too busy freaking out to answer me. Their screams were mostly incomprehensible, but I clearly heard one say "Don't take away the sun!". What did that even mean? How would I take away the sun? Was it because I was black while they were all colourful? Racists. After a few minutes, the square was quiet, all the horses having run away. I was incredibly confused. I had started a mass panic attack by walking into town. These horses were the most skittish things I had ever encountered. I chose a street leading out of the deserted square at random and walked down it. Up ahead was a huge tree, which as I drew nearer to it, I saw had windows and a door. 'Ponyville Library' proclaimed a sign out front. Wait Ponyville? These things were ponies? I guess that would explain the small size. Wait! This was a library. Maybe there was a book I could use to figure out what was going on? Surely someone so well-learned as a librarian wouldn't freak out over seeing me. I pushed on the door, but it didn't open. I looked at the knob; a cruel thing to be on a door in a town inhabited by horses—sorry, ponies. I grabbed the knob in my teeth, which was incredibly awkward to do because of my horn, and twisted my head, pulling as I did so. The door didn't budge. I tried the other way, with similar results. It seemed the library wasn't open. "There she is!" cried a familiar-sounding voice. I turned around to see the six ponies I had seen in the castle, as well as the lizard, who was hiding behind them. Five of them were wearing necklaces with gems of various shapes and colours embedded in them, but the lavender one was wearing a crown. "Luna! Why are you doing this?" asked the lavender one, her voice pleading. "Huh?" I said. "There's no need for this!" said the white one. "We don't want ta have ta send ya back ta the moon. Will ya stand down?" said the orange one. "What are you talking about? Who is Luna?" I asked. "What do you mean, 'Who is Luna?'?" asked the lavender one. "I mean, who is this Luna? And who are you, for that matter?" I asked. I was quickly getting confused. These ponies were acting like they knew me. "Aw. You don't remember us?" asked the pink one. "I've never seen you before in my life. I would probably remember talking pastel-coloured ponies," I said. The group paused. "Really?" asked the lavender one, slowly and deliberately. "Really," I answered. The rainbow one descended from the air and leaned into the lavender one. I heard her say quietly, "I wouldn't trust her. She's probably tricking us, Twilight." The lavender one, whose name was presumably Twilight, gasped, before narrowing her eyes again. She seemed to choose her words carefully when she spoke next. "You're coming to Canterlot with us. Princess Celestia might be able to talk some sense into you." She waited. It almost seemed like she was trying to provoke a reaction from me. "Um, alright?" I said. I didn't know what else to say. This seemed to confuse Twilight. She quickly returned to 'serious' mode. "Don't struggle. If you do, we won't hesitate to use the Elements of Harmony on you." As she said the words 'Elements of Harmony' I felt myself give an involuntary shudder. My still damp wings fluttered without my consent. Twilight's horn began to glow, in the same pinkish-purple sheath that had surrounded the floating sweeping brushes back at the old stone building. I felt a constriction around my midsection, pressing on my wings, and my horn felt odd. Well, odd-er. Twilight's horn stopped glowing. I crossed my eyes and looked up. There was a circular ring, the same colour as her horn's glow, around my horn. I turned to look at my back and saw a rope made of similar, glowing material tied around my wings. "Applejack, Rainbow Dash, you two make sure that she doesn't try to run. Pinkie Pie, Rarity, you girls keep her from lashing out. And Fluttershy, be prepared to give her 'The Stare' if necessary," said Twilight, pointing to each of her companions in turn. As they moved into positions around me, Twilight turned around to face the bipedal lizard. "Spike, take a letter."