//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2 
// Story: Allen to Ashes 
// by fellstorm 
//------------------------------//


Allen to Ashes


Chapter 2


I cleaned up the bathroom as best I could, even though it meant basically rubbing my face on the grimy floor while I held a wad of paper towels in my teeth. I ended up using all the paper towels in the dispenser by the time I was done and I still couldn’t reach the places high up on the wall where I’d splashed. I stuffed the used towels in the trashcan and tamped it down as best I could. The toilet-hole looked pretty heavy-duty, but I figured the “don’t flush paper towels” rule probably held pretty consistent across parallel universes or coma fantasies or wherever I was.
Thankfully, whoever invented the sink here made it more hoof-friendly than whoever invented their utensils. The tap was pedal operated and I was able to wash my forehooves and face, though I still ended up splashing water all over myself and onto the floor.
By that point, I figured it was better to cut my losses. I stumble/walk/fell/crawled back to my bed and hauled myself up to sleep for the rest of the night.


***

The next day, the doctors had a lot of questions for me. Doctor Stable introduced me to a trio of unicorn “nerve specialists” that I guessed were what passed for psychiatrists or psychologists here. They all had thick glasses, long beards and German accents, though I have no idea if there even is a Germany here. From what I know of pony naming conventions, it’s probably called “GerMANEy” or something similar.
They bombarded me with questions. Sticking to my strategy for staying out of pony Belleview, I clammed up when they asked me about “human beans,” a cart that ran by itself or the whereabouts of my alleged friends. Unfortunately, I also couldn’t answer any questions about “my” (that is to say Charcoal’s) life or past, and this was nearly as suspicious to them as any wild ramblings about being human.
It also didn’t take them long to figure out I couldn’t walk. Nature called again during the day and though I held it for as long as I could, I eventually had to make the long trek back to the bathroom.
Watching me try to walk must have been quite a sight. The only way I could get from place to place without falling over was to walk my front legs forward as far as I could stretch, then walk my hind legs to catch up with them in a sort of “slinky dog” motion.  I could feel the eyes of everypony in the ward on me as I inchwormed my way down the aisle between the beds toward the lavatory.
I’ll spare you the gruesome details of my second trip to the bathroom. Suffice to say I made a huge mess. I had to go number twos and the result more or less cemented in the doctors’ minds the idea that something was seriously wrong with me that their x-rays weren’t picking up.
I wasn’t allowed to leave that day, nor the next, nor the next. The only advantage to being cooped up in the hospital was that while I was there, they put me through physical therapy that, among other things, taught me how to walk a little more like I’d been born with four legs instead of none. I also learned a little bit about unicorn magic.
When Charcoal had his accident, he suffered a hairline fracture to the horn, which gave me a good excuse for being clumsy when it came to manipulating objects with my mind. It would heal, but for a long time I sparked excessively whenever I tried to use magic.
For those of you humans who might be reading this, using magic is nearly impossible to describe, as I can only analogize it to one of our five senses and it’s not really like any of those. I’ve never taken psychedelic drugs (unless I’m on an extended trip right now), but if you have, it might be whatever is comparable to when you experience one sense switched with another. “Feeling smells” or “hearing shapes” or something. It was amazing and terrifying at the same time.
Using it to move things is even more of a trip. I’ll try to explain:
Take one of your sense organs. Your eyes, for example. Imagine if they not only received light, but could provide feedback through the same medium. I’m not talking about if your eyes could glow, I mean what if you had an input on what you saw. You observe a green object, but you decide it should be red. It becomes red. Not only for you, but for anyone else who sees it as well.
This is a rough sketch of how unicorn magic works. There’s an ambient magic field (I’m sure human scientists would identify it as some sort of gestalt psychic phenomenon or electromagnetism or something) that permeates everything. In some places it’s thicker or more powerful than others, and it has ebb and flow like a tide. Living organisms generate their own fields that add to the atmosphere while inanimate objects passively accept whatever comes their way. Solid objects act like sponges for magical energy, and the greater an object’s density, the more magic it takes to achieve a desired effect. Unicorn horns are like transceiver antennas for this magic field.
As I sent my magic feelers out into the world, I noticed that some spots in the magical field were significantly denser than others. At the center of these dense patches were little knots of energy that were almost organic in their way. They creeped me right the eff out and at first I was sure they were some sort of otherworldly parasite that would leech onto me and try to suck out my soul. I learned later that these were what unicorns called “spells” (as opposed to how we typically think of spells being a set of symbols or spoken words). The one that ran the artificial lung for the comatose patient across from me looked like a squat little sea anemone that constantly squashed and stretched as it worked the bellows keeping the patient alive.
In order for a spell to function without continuous input from the casting unicorn, it had to have a self-sustaining structure that could draw energy from the ambient magical field and apply it to its task, while at the same time replenish itself, hence their organic appearance. Each spell is essentially a simple organism with a digestive tract that absorbs magic and converts it into kinetic energy (or light, or whatever the spell is supposed to do). A unicorn skilled in spellcasting is one that can memorize all the requisite organs and structures of a living creature and then reproduce them on command.
I couldn’t do any of that. I was just satisfied when I could levitate a forkful of food and not jab myself in the eye.


***

As much as I was learning about my new body and how to function normally, I wasn’t any closer to being released from the hospital. I spent long hours talking to the psychiatrist trio, trying to sound as sane as possible and wincing whenever they asked me questions about Charcoal’s life. I knew nothing about his past or his current relationships, and the subtleties of human idiomatic speech sounded strange to their ears. I didn’t consistently use the phrase “everypony” to replace “everyone” and any reference to something being “handy” or “on the other hand” or “a handful” raised curious eyebrows and provoked furious scribbling in notepads.
Frustrated with my confinement, I became short tempered and agitated, which did nothing to help my situation. My appetite waned. I snapped at the nurses and doctors when they asked me questions and isolated myself from conversation with the other patients. The doctors developed the vague notion that I suffered from some form of dissociative identity disorder.
In my second week, I started attending group therapy sessions where I got to see the face of pony insanity. Every morning at ten, I sat on a cushion and shared my feelings with a circle of caricatures straight out of a politically insensitive 40’s cartoon about crazy people. There was an honest-to-goodness “Napoleon” there, as well as a pony that was literally “barking mad.” Most of their cutie marks were all eerily appropriate to their situation. I saw a lot of flanks with screws, nuts (the seed and the fastener) and cuckoo clocks and there was much lip-bibbling and off-key opera singing.
As chilling as the idea that there were ponies out there whose special talent might actually be “being insane,” at least they seemed happy enough. The scary ones were the ones like me; seemingly normal ponies that were nonetheless deeply disturbed. I learned quickly that in contrast to what we saw on the TV show in our world, ponies could have problems just like us. Their parents could beat them, their creepy uncles could molest them. They burned themselves with cigarettes or cut themselves with razors just to prove to themselves they could still feel. It was really depressing and I always left the group therapy sessions thankful to be sane and well-adjusted… to certain perspectives anyway.
If it helps you feel better, from what I understand, instances of mental illness are far, far less common among ponies than they are among humans. This was a good thing for all the happy, well-adjusted ponies out there, but not as great for the handful (see?) that did suffer. With fewer instances of mental illness, the incentive to develop a comprehensive science of psychology was nearly absent, and they were barely coming out of the “electroshock therapy and laudanum” stage. All the more reason for me to find a way out of there.


***

I had just about resigned myself to living out the rest of my miserable life sharing a padded cell with Screwloose (what kind of parent names their kid that?) when I got a visitor.
I was on the treadmill, perfecting my prancing when someone called me from across the ward.
“Hey, Charcoal!”
I couldn’t believe my ears! It was Laura! The last time I heard her voice, she was drunkenly trying to explain to me what it was like to be an animal soul in a human’s body (a situation with which I could now readily sympathize) and making out with me while growling like a wolf. This Laura sounded sober, but there was no mistaking it was her.
I looked around, frantically searching the gym for any glimpse of my girlfriend and praying I wasn’t hearing things. If Laura was here then she could prove to the doctors that I wasn’t insane and get me out of there.
She giggled.
“Charcoal, over here!”
She waved at me from behind a high and tight-cut pony that was learning to use his artificial hind-leg. My heart fell. It wasn’t Laura. The pony that spoke in Laura’s voice (it wasn’t just like her voice, it was her voice, down to the last subtle quaver) was a seafoam-green unicorn with a pale blue mane and a lyre for a cutie mark.
“Laura?” I asked, peering at her. Just as Charcoal’s face strangely resembled mine, this pony looked as much like Laura as a pony could, she even did that goofy, wide-eyed grin Laura used to do.
“I just heard about the accident,” she said, trotting up alongside the treadmill “I was so worried after you disappeared. Everypony freaked out when they heard you never made it to the meet in Fillydelphia. Why didn’t you try to contact me?”
I pulled the emergency stop key on the treadmill and dropped it in the tray.
“Laura, I had no idea you were here! Jesus! I’m so relieved! Nobody-”
“Why do you keep calling me Laura?” she cocked her head “Gee-zus?”
“-here believes I’m human… Wait, you are Laura, right?”
“I’m Lyra. Your mare-friend? The doctors told me you were confused, but did you really forget me?”
“No, no. It’s me! Allen.”
Lyra looked around, her expression suddenly tense. She lowered her voice.
“Charcoal, have you been telling the doctors that you’re human?”
“Only the first day. Nobody here believes me. Even you probably think I’m crazy.”
“I believe you,” she said, lowering her voice even more.
“Thank God, you do? So you’re really Laura?”
“I’m Lyra,” she huffed a little “And of course everypony else thinks you’re crazy. Normals never understand. I don’t know what got into you that you thought blabbing about being an otherkin would be a good idea here.”
“What? Normals? What are you talking about?”
She searched my face for any sign that I might be messing with her, but found none. Her face tensed with worry.
“Please, you have to get me out of here. I can explain everything!” I pleaded.
“Of course I’ll get you out. Just stay calm and try not to act crazy,” she said.
“That tactic’s been working great so far.”
“Celestia, even with amnesia you’re still a sarcastic asshole.”
“Luh-ay-ra… please.”
“Okay, okay. Keep your horseshoes on,” she said, turning and trotting off to find a doctor. I watched her go. She walked with such natural ease, there was no way she’d been the victim of the same transformation that affected me. It was as if she’d been a pony all her life. Nevertheless, it was definitely Laura. She even bickered like her. Did my other friends have pony parallels here, too? Were there a pony Eric and a pony Carl?
I prayed that maybe one of them was in the same situation. I don’t know if Laura/Lyra was really a pony or if she just played the part better than me and didn’t want to give herself away, but I had the sinking feeling that the Laura I knew was in another time and place, as inaccessible to me as yesterday.
Lyra spoke to the doctors. I don’t know what she said, but she talked them into releasing me into her custody. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem all that difficult. I don’t know how pony HMOs work, but I got the impression that keeping me there for an extended stay was going to start costing someone a lot of money and they were glad for someone to come and take me off their hands…
Hooves.
Anyway, I didn’t have any personal effects at the hospital so checkout didn’t take long. I signed a bunch of discharge papers and was rolling out of the hospital in a wheelchair before lunchtime.
The orderlies dumped me unceremoniously to my feet once we got outside and took the chair with them back into the hospital. I dusted myself off and got my first look at the pony world that wasn’t through a window.
It was as if I’d stepped out of a dreary, period drama about mental asylums into the rolling, green hills of Narnia, or Middle Earth, or at least New Zealand.
The scenery was breathtaking. I’d never been in the midst of nature so lush, and I lived in rural New England for most of my life. The sky was a rich blue and the air was crisp and clear. We tune out the garbage smells of life in the city, and even the air of small towns is heavy with car exhaust. Here, there was nothing like that. I was breathing air like most Americans hadn’t breathed in hundreds of years. The atmosphere was so clear; I could see mountains that must have been forty or fifty miles away, and even make out the delicate, gleaming latticework of a palace that had been been built right into the side of a distant cliff. Colored specks drifted around the distant, gilded city and my heart did a flip when I realized they were airships.
I spent the walk into town gawking at everything. Even after life in the hospital proved to be all too realistic, I guess I’d still assumed that the world outside would look like a cartoon; trees that were just green lumps on brown sticks and grass with only by a few strokes to indicate individual blades. What I saw was quite different. The trees, the leaves, the birds. Everything was just like ours. If kept Lyra out of my field of vision and forgot I was walking on four legs, I couldn’t have guessed I wasn’t in my own world.
The ponies here might have had exaggerated, cartoon proportions, but the other animals did not. Squirrels and birds and other critters looked just like they did in our world, even if they didn’t necessarily behave so. I got the idea that they might be smarter than they let on, as they watched our passage with a curiosity that almost seemed intelligent.
I tested my theory by stopping and waving at a squirrel. I nearly jumped out of my skin when it waved back.
“Did you see that?” I asked Lyra. She’d trotted on ahead.
“See what?”
“That squirrel, he just waved at me!”
“Oh, do you know him?”
“Know the squirrel?”
“Yeah. You said he waved at you.”
 “No… no. I don’t know him,” I said, a little disappointed. Back home, this would have been big news.
Lyra gave me a funny look and we continued on down the road. Eventually, I realized we’d nearly reached the edge of town and I had no idea where we were headed.
“So… where are we going?” I asked.
“I thought we were going back to your house,” Lyra answered.
I shuffled uneasily. My ears rolled back involuntarily, betraying my apprehension.
Lyra watched me.
“You don’t…” she began.
“I don’t remember where I live. No.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Come on, we’ll go to my place.”
She picked up the pace and I did my best to keep up. My stomach growled and I realized I’d only eaten mashed potatoes and gelatin (seaweed-based, I’m going to go ahead and assume) for breakfast.
“Do you have anything to eat at your house? I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.” I said.
“Yeah, sure, we can-”
Lyra did a double take. She fixed me with the look of fear and revulsion society normally reserves for dangerous psychopaths.
“What did you just say?”
I backpedaled as fast as I could. Betrayed again by human idioms. Thank God I hadn’t used that one with the doctors.
“Sorry, bad mental patient joke. I’ve been on the ward too long,” I laughed, nervously.
She kept her eyes on me, but she took a few cautious steps and, when I still didn’t murder her, started walking again.
“What in Tartarus is wrong with you?” she grumbled.
“Sorry. I am starving though.”

I really am starving…
I’ll write some more after dinner…