‘I wonder how long it will take for AJ to forget about me?’ I thought as my body floated around in an empty abyss of silence and nothingness. ‘I really do wish I had taken her up on her offer and gone with her. Life back home sucked anyway. Really, no one would miss me anyway. Sure, I owned everything I could have ever wanted, and I had the means to get whatever came around that I would want as well. But I never got what I needed. The intangible things. No real friends, no family. And, no real love.’
As this thought crossed my mind, I was overcome by a deep, overwhelming feeling of sadness and loneliness.
‘I was never anything more than a toy.’ I continued to think, tears beginning to well up in my eyes. ‘Granted it was always fun while it lasted, but that’s just it. It never lasted. Then she came into my life…’
The moment I thought of that night Applejack and I first met, an emerald flash filled the void. And there, off in the distance floated the girl that fell into my life, changing it forever, even if I hadn’t realized it till it was too late.
I tried calling out to her, but the words caught in my throat. I tried reaching out, but my ethereal limbs refused to move.
“Applejack!’ I thought, tears now flowing freely down my face. ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be forgotten. I want to come with you! I want to meet your friends, your family! I don’t care if I’m the only human living in a world populated by magical, talking ponies! I want, no. I NEED YOU IN MY LIFE!’
As if I spoke some magic phrase, I was suddenly enveloped in the brilliant green light. Moments passed, and the light slowly gave way to the darkness once more. However the perpetual silence that once prevailed began to give way to the rise of random noise. But as it grew louder, I quickly realized the noise wasn’t random. They were voices.
I tried to open my eyes and have a look around, but when the darkness didn’t give way, I began to panic.
‘Am I alive?’ I thought as I began to thrash around a bit. However I suddenly felt a light pressure being placed on my shoulder. But it couldn’t have been a hand, there were no fingers. Yet I began to relax all the same. The feeling was pleasant, comforting even. I felt at ease. I tried to speak again, this time managing little more than a muffled mumble.
“Twi!” Shouted a voice from right next to me. “Twilight! Get in here, ah think he’s comin’ round.”
For some odd reason the voice seemed familiar, but I just couldn’t put my finger on who it could belong to. I tried to speak once more, this time I was able to get out a low whisper.
“I can’t see. Why can’t I see.’
“Oh,” said a different voice, this one coming from the opposite side of the first. “That’s because we put a sleeping mask on you so that you could get some rest while you recovered.”
“Recovered?” I asked, my voice gradually growing stronger as I relaxed more and more. “So, I’m not dead?”
“Nope,” said the familiar voice. “We were able to get you to the hospital fast enough to get ya all fixed up. You’re as good as new.”
“Bringing you here was made easier after you had finished changing. I was afraid the spell wasn’t gonna work but I’m relieved it did.” Announced the other voice.
“Changing?! Spell?! Just what happened to me?” I shouted as I began to panic again.
“Calm down there partner, it’ll be easier to show ya rather than to tell ya.” The familiar voice said, which now sounded like she was right in front of me, filling my nose with the smell of...apples? “Just let me get this here blindfold off ya.”
As the mask was removed, my eyes were blinded by a flood of fluorescent light. Seconds passed, and after much blinking, my eyes had fully adjusted. As soon as I didn’t need to squint, I took in my surroundings.
It was as the voices had said. there I was, lying in a hospital bed, the sheets pulled up to my chin. As I glanced to my sides, I finally came face to face with my visitors. One of them was lavender colored unicorn. The other was an orange pony wearing a cowboy hat. I thought that the hat wearing one looked familiar, but I dismissed it.
“Are you, ponies?” I asked, looking for confirmation that I wasn’t imagining what I was seeing.
“Well duh sugarcube. I did say that that’s what I was when we first met.” Replied the normal pony.
‘Sugarcube?!’
“AJ?” I asked the orange one, my voice shaking in disbelief. “Is that, is that really you?”
“Sure is.” Applejack answered, tipping her stetson in confirmation.
At this point my mind was running a mile a minute as I tried to process everything. However, my train of thought derailed just as fast as I recalled a detail that was forgotten by me and AJ's reunion.
“You said that you used a spell to change me? What did you mean by that?”
“It’s like Applejack said, it would be much easier to show than to tell.” The unicorn replied.
With that, a purple aura appeared around her horn and out of no where, a mirror popped into existence. She then hovered it in front of me, and what I saw staring back at me left me speechless. My reflection wasn’t that of a human anymore. Instead, it was a light brown pony with a darker brown mane with black tips. I quickly threw off the blanket further revealing I had a pony body as well.
'Earth pony?' I thought to myself.
“You turned me into a pony?”
“Yup.” AJ chimed in. “Twilight here is a real wiz when it comes to magic, more so than any other unicorn in all of Equestria. Ah wouldn’t be surprised if she became as good as either Princess Luna or even Princess Celestia!”
“Now I wouldn’t go that far Applejack.” Twilight said, her face growing darker with embarrassment. “It’s like I said. I wasn’t even sure if the spell would work. I was changing the genetic and physical properties of a living being.”
“When none of that fancy science stuff matters cause it work!” AJ retorted, a smile splitting her face as she looked at me. “Ah do wish that ya didn’t take so long to wake up though.”
I turned my head towards the cowpony and cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Whatcha talking about Applejack? Just how long was I out for?”
“‘Bout five months. Give or take a day or two.”
“FIVE MONTHS!” I shouted, stopping a pony it their tracks as they walked passed my room’s open door.
“Yeah,” Twilight said, raising a hoof to scratch the back of her head. “You passed out from blood loss just before Princess Celestia transported you through the portal. Once on this side, we tried to heal your wounds, but our magic wasn’t working. We believed that it was because you weren’t a pony. So I cast a transformation spell on you. Once you changed, we were able to stop the bleeding and brought you here to recover.”
“I see.” I said as I went back to processing everything. “Twilight was it? I’m feeling a bit tired and I was wondering if it would it be alright if I spoke to AJ alone? I want to talk to just her before I go back to sleep.”
“Of course.” Twilight said with a smile. “You two talk, and I’ll see you in the morning. Now that you’re conscious I would like to run some tests on you just to make sure everything is working the way it should before you get discharged. Have a good night I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Alright, see you in the morning Twilight.”
“Night Twi!”
As Twilight left the room, she closed the door behind her, leaving me alone with Applejack.
“AJ,” I began, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I left you alone, for five months. And we didn’t even find your friend.”
“Ah, its alright sugarcube. As a matter of fact, a few weeks after we got here, the Princess was able to find RD and bring her home. And on top of that, a month or so after, the human that was taking care of her somehow managed to make his way here too. Even turned into a pony without the use of a spell. Twilight’s even more curious ‘bout that. So in the end, everything turned out alright. Ok sugarcube?”
“Yeah,” I said as I felt my eyelids grow heavy. “Hey, AJ?”
“What’s up?”
“Thank you, for coming into my life.”
“No problem Jay. Now you go ahead and close your eyes and get some sleep. We have a long day tomorrow. We need to come up with a new name for ya.”
‘Ha, a new name?’ I thought as my eyes closed once more. ‘A new name for a new start. I think I might just come to love it here sooner than later. As long as she’s by my side.’
And just as I was taken by sleep’s welcoming embrace, I felt Applejack rest her head on my chest, and I never felt more at home.