Follow the Wind- Every Journey Starts Somewhere.
My typical morning for me feels like the beginning of the Gym Class Heroes song saying how they wake up in the morning and didn’t really sleep well. I was inside my room upstairs in the two story house that I call home. Normally, you would think that someone around my age would be in school and having to learn AP Calculus or getting copies as a student aide for some teacher that really doesn’t give a crap if you’re busy or not. However, that’s not exactly the case for me. Right now, I’m at my house because I already graduated High School two years ago and my younger brother Alex just graduated a few months ago.
Today was Tuesday and it was the day where Alex and quite a few of his friends decided to meet up and be thankful that the school year was done for (given that he already graduated before my parents went to New York City from San Diego for their Anniversary two days ago). He walked out the door around 8:30am, addressing me not by my name, but by the name he used to playfully tease me with. “See you later Ponyboy. I’ll make sure to tell everyone you said hi.”
Yeah. Given the choice of words, being called Ponyboy was basically for two reasons. It was either the fact that he was trying to make you look like the main character of “The Outsiders” or the fact that I’m a Brony. My answer would be the second one. My name is Raven Soresu. I’m a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and also an artist. I draw and even write about characters I come up with in my spare time, sometimes scanning my drawings to trace them out later in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. My brother on the other hand, looks at me with an expression of ‘Why?’ on his face. At least he’s alright with it (most of the time).
Anyways, I went through the morning just like how I would normally do things on a weekday. I ate breakfast, changed clothes, the normal morning routine. However, I had a weird feeling that something was off when I entered my room again after breakfast. Like I felt something that made me uncomfortable or that I thought that something was out of place. Maybe it was because I didn’t get the chance to get some fresh air by walking to Starbucks down by Telegraph Canyon road. It’s the closest place in Chula Vista from my home that has coffee and there’s a donut place not far from it that makes good glazed twists.
Now though, I refocused my attention to what I was drawing. It was my Original Character that I came up with after getting into the fanbase. However, it wasn’t a Pegasus, Earth Pony or Unicorn. Especially since none of those three species have paws where the hooves would be.
My OC was a Wolfpony. Yeah, call me Crazy, but I’m not talking about Werewolf ponies. My character, Rufus, has a Wolf Father named Azzuen and A Unicorn Mother named Snowheart. Because of his mother being a Unicorn, Rufus was special in the fact that he had markings along his body that allowed him to control magic. However, unlike Unicorn Magic, his was strictly spiritual and Growing up in the Cold mountains of the North led to him learning a powerful source of magic called “Aura” like what Lucario uses in the Pokemon games.
I personally thought it would be a good new idea, but the fact is that I had a gut feeling that my ideas would get negative responses. I’m not the best when it comes to explanations and when I try to explain things, I find it easier to show things rather than tell it. At times, it even drives me crazy with how much stress that causes for me. Anyways, at the moment, I was drawing Rufus by a campfire that he tried to make on his own using a pile of twigs and some flint. It was during a cold night in the Crystal Empire and he was going to rest there and move on to the rest of Equestria when he woke up.
After finishing the details and taking over half an hour to try and trace everything though, I found the results ending up less than satisfactory with the amount of times I kept on screwing up with following the lines. Dammit!! I should’ve thought about scanning it to my USB before I went to work on this.
“Okay, just calm yourself. You just need a small break.” I told myself as I went into the den back downstairs. Inside was a HDTV, PS3, my computer with two monitors so I read and work at the same time, and one of my pets sitting in my Dad’s office chair. I have two cats, a brother and a sister who get along from time to time (even though the sister looks like she ate her brother and begs like a Princess for food 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week.)
Acting comical, I approached the cat that was on the chair, which turned out to be the sister. The one that my Brother named “Charger” after the San Diego Chargers like he named the other cat “Capital” off of the Washington Capitals Hockey team. (Don’t ask, my brother really is into sports like he got possessed by ESPN ever since our family first got cable.) Picking her up, I cradled her and acted like BAYMAX from Big Hero 6. “Hhhairy Baby!!”
After petting her a little, I sat down on the floor like a Samurai with the second half of his legs holding my weight and my hands around my lap. Before I wanted to do anything like play Destiny or one of the Kingdom Hearts collections, I thought that I would use the chance to clear my mind and meditate. I was only up for about an hour and a half and I already had a lot on my mind that was distracting me. Maybe it would be best to try and clear my mind a bit.
Breathe in… Breathe out… Breathe in… Breathe out… Now close the eyes and concentrate. Focus…… Don’t become distracted by anything on the outside. Not even Charger pleading for food and sounding like when Rarity whines.
Clear your mind… This won’t take long. Everything’s going to be just fine.
Turns out, what I was thinking and trying to tell myself was completely inaccurate.
After five minutes, I began to have the feeling that I wasn’t exactly inside the den anymore. For one thing, I could feel a cold breeze go past my face and a source of warmth right in front of me. For a minute, I thought it was a beam of sunlight against my face. But then again, I felt my feet walk across something cold. Like it was snow or something.
Wait a minute… Snow?
On the thought of that, I opened my eyes. I was greeted by the sight of a campfire in front of me and a huge valley of snow and cold that drifted for miles. Like the scene I was drawing earlier today. Holy Crap!! This place feels like Big Bear Mountain! But in the distance, I thought I could see something that looked like a castle or an Empire out of crystals as I partially shiver in my jacket, t-shirt, socks and jeans.
Wait… Empire… Crystals………… Crystal… Empire?
“Oh sh-!”
My mind felt like it was a computer about to crash from the shock of everything that was happening by the time I heard another voice. I didn’t even hear them move up and sit across from me nearby the fire. And normally, I can hear things from a few rooms away.
“Welcome… I’ve been expecting you.”
I turned around and faced the flickering campfire. Only to be greeted by the one thing I never expected.
Rufus.
My character. Right in front of me. Sitting with his back legs on the ground. He was sitting calmly like he was waiting for my arrival in the middle of god knows where. Matter of fact; in the middle of the Crystal Empire with snow falling around the two of us. Before I could even speak, the Lupine creature cuts my off and answers a question I was just beginning to form inside my head.
“Don’t be afraid, Raven. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“H-how do you know my name?” I asked with a shocked tone to my voice. I was surprised that he actually knew who I was.
‘Well, he did say he was expecting you.’
*Sigh* You’re not helping me right now, brain.
“I know about you because I am you. You created me based off of yourself,” the Wolf told me. “Still though, that’s not the reason why I brought you here. Something is happening back in your world and it’s going to happen to you as well.”
I raised an eyebrow, confused by what he meant. “What exactly is going to happen?”
Rufus gave a heavy sigh as he looked at me. Something in my head made me think that what he was going to say was something involving my “Destiny” (Which has nothing to do with a rock in the middle of nowhere) or something like that. Turns out, it was nothing like that. Instead, it was something that made me think twice about what I know.
“You’re going to be turning into me.”
Now that didn’t make any sense. Me? Turning into him? Unless someone used one of those weapons in Ratchet and Clank where it turns the bad guys into sheep or another crazy animal, how exactly would that be possible. Looking at him, I saw the markings across his body slightly glow a little as he tossed some dust into the fire. Like it was a Native American ritual, the smoke that rose from the fire began to form… images. I saw people like me, but changed. A college student with holes in his arm and a little girl with stripes. Another one that had talons alongside his friend that had pony ears and a pair of hidden wings. It kept showing different people with different changes happening to each one of them.
“Right now, a lot of people in your world have already experienced changes like this, but based on their own creations,” Rufus explained to me as I tried to stay warm by the fire. “I don’t know much, but I only know what I’ve seen in recent visions that I’ve had.”
Wait a minute; visions?
‘Well, duh. You had him be able to communicate with the spiritual plane that you came up with, idiot.’
Damn it, Brain… now isn’t the time to rub this in my face.
“Rufus? Can I ask you something?”
“Yes, Raven. What is it?” the wolf replied.
“What changes are going to happen to me? Would you happen to know?” I asked him in hopes that he would know since he knew more about what was going on than me.
“I don’t know about what will happen to you. All I know is that the changes start slow, but gradually increase over time. My guess is that one happens when the sun rises and another change happens when the sun fall.”
“Dawn and Dusk.”
“Exactly,” he told me. “Those you consider as family and friends might also be affected by this as well. But there is hope though.”
Hope? Hope of what? Not making this happen in the first place?! God, I feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. “What do you mean, Rufus?”
“One of the visions I’ve seen has a number of the people you’ve seen on a journey that you need to take as well. One that takes you out of your home in the state you call California and to a city where the four winds meet and cross through a city by a great lake. I believe you are to go to that place as well. It’ll be a long journey, but no wolf said that you would be going alone.”
‘No wolf? Must be what he means by Nopony,’ I thought to myself. I saw the Lupine Figure move his paw as a gesture for me to come closer. I did so. When close enough, he dropped two items in my lap. One looked like a crystal pendant. The other looked like one of those sticks you would find in Tron Legacy that if you cracked it open, it would turn into a light cycle.
“Keep these on you for your journey. The necklace will allow me to reach you if trouble arises. The second item is to protect yourself in case you run into trouble.”
Rufus now looked at me and put his right paw on my shoulder in a gesture of goodbye as I put the stick in my pocket and the Pendant around my neck. “Stay safe, my friend.”
“You two, Rufus.”
With that, the marks on Rufus began to glow again, shining brightly and blinding my vision with a flash of white light. It felt like I was falling… Falling into the abyss………
I woke up again with a shock like I reacted from a jump scare in a horror movie. I was back in the den again. Was what I saw a dream? It looked too real to be one in the first place. But that’s when I felt the weight in my pockets and the string around my neck. I looked downward to see the sapphire crystal from earlier… and then stared shocked at what was on my hands.
Oh god… The first change.
They looked like the markings you got if you accidently got marker in on your hands. But I had a theory that this was more than it seemed. Getting off the floor immediately, I rushed to the downstairs bathroom and closed the door so I could have some privacy while taking off my top layer of clothes. That’s when I was greeted to the change that I could recognize immediately. It didn’t look like much, but it covered the entire top half of my body.
Tribal markings. The same ones that I saw on Rufus that glowed before I returned to my home. The Navy Markings that allow him to channel his powers… were now on me like I just went to a tattoo artist. They even pulsed and sometimes glowed when I flexed out the muscles in my hand. Most of it could be covered with my clothes, but two markings that look like scars on the bottom of my cheeks stood noticeable. Like I had whiskers despite the fact that I’m turning into a wolf instead of a cat.
With my mind going on Autopilot, I do the first thing that came to mind. To the internet!! Maybe he could figure out what “city” that Rufus was referring to. Fifteen minutes and a few internet searches later, I find a link to a website where some guy was saying about how this phenomenon was happening to him and how he was calling everyone to meet in Chicago.
Chicago… The Windy city… a city that was by Michigan’s great lakes. So that’s what Rufus was trying to tell me. Just how the buck was I going to get to Chicago-.
Wait a minute… Did I just say buck? This transformation affects my speech too!? God, why isn’t there like a list of side effects that I should’ve known about?!! Grabbing my keys, wallet, Iphone 5s, pen & pencil, and some cash; I put my jacket and shirt back on and head towards the garage to get my shoes. What I did not expect though, was getting a phone call right as I was standing on my left leg, putting my other shoe on.
The surprise of hearing of hearing the Knife Pony remix of “Jealousy” by Feather almost made me fall backwards and hit my head against the concrete floor. Looking down, I saw the caller ID on my phone.
It was Chloe Wilson. A former classmate of mine that graduated with me two years ago. She was also a pegasister and her little brother, Shay, was a brony.
Groaning a little, I unlocked my phone and answered the call. “Hello?”
“Raven! Oh, thank god you picked up!!”
I raised an eyebrow upon hearing this. “Chloe… Please don’t speak so loud. I have a major headache after something weird happened.”
“Did it involve a strange dream and a bright flash of light? Because that happened to me last night and Shay about two hours ago.”
That took my breath away. Then again, Rufus’s words echoed in my mind from our conversation earlier.
‘Those you consider as family and friends might also be affected by this as well.’
Oh crap, he was right. “Yeah, it did.”
“Well, looks like we're stuck in the same situation.” She told me. “Would you mind letting us in?”
I was confused right now beyond belief. What exactly did she mean by that? It felt like Deja vu based off a scene in Moneyball, because a few moments later, Chloe told me that they were at my front door and waiting for me to let them in. Telling them yes, I shut off my phone and walked to the door to unlock it and let them in. When I saw the two of them, I was just as shocked as I was surprised.
The two of them have already undergone changes as well. Chloe’s brown eyes from the last time I had seen her, now turned magenta and her 12 year old brother’s hair had changed color from black to a navy blue similar to Soarin’s. “Sorry about that, I didn’t know you were at the door. Come on in.”
Being a respectful gentleman, I held the door open for them as they walked on inside. They took a seat at the dining room table nearby from where I sat down at the table. Now, the conversation begins.
‘Just don’t try to screw this up, buddy.’
Shut up, brain.
“Thanks for letting us in. My mother would flip if she saw us like this when she comes home,” Chloe told me. Her mom was a biologist who worked at the University of California: San Diego or UCSD for short. With Chloe’s father on tour for the U.S. army, it was hard for her manage her time between work and family for taking care of her kids.
“You’re welcome. I noticed that both of you look… different.”
“So you noticed? My eyes and Shay’s hair.”
I nodded, rolling up the sleeves of my jacket to show them my marks. Both of them gasped upon seeing it for the first time, especially when it pulsed a little when I stretched my hands. But then, they got confused. “Are those supposed to be stripes or something?”
“No. They’re tribal markings,” I told them, getting out my phone to show them a older picture of Rufus that I completed and posted on my DeviantArt page. “Chloe, Remember when I told you about this guy?”
Her response was a nod of the head and a brief yes, followed by a raised eyebrow. “So what exactly do you think is going on?”
Sighing again, I accessed the same link I found out earlier about what was going on in Chicago and showed it to them. Both of them were quite surprised about the whole ‘changing into ponies’ bit of it and were surprised when I told them that I saw Rufus in a dream before I received the marks. Additionally, I told them how I was able to see other people undergo similar changes. Now, I wondered about one other thing.
“Hey… Since I’m turning into a Wolf… Do you guys have any idea what you might be possibly turning into?”
Chloe sighed. “I’m not sure… I might need to wait until a few more of these changes happen before-.”
My phone went off again. This time, it’s a text. Checking it, I’m surprised to see who sent the message to me.
It was from Alex.
“Who texted you?” I heard Shay ask me.
“My brother.”
“Well, what did he say-?”
“Shay! What did I tell you about snooping into other people’s business?”
I sighed. “It’s alright. Besides, we might need to help him out. It looks like he’s in the same boat as us.”
That’s when I showed him the photo he sent me. A selfie of himself… and the two curved horns on the back of his head.
End Chapter 1