//------------------------------// // May 23rd: First Journals // Story: Perilous Postapocalyptic Podunk Ponyfly Proceedings, or: How I Went From Pathetic to Powerful! // by Masterweaver //------------------------------// The following is a combination of original journals from my first day as what I now know is a Breezie, recorded via iPhone voice-to-chat reminders, and supplimentary materials detailing what I didn't write down between journal entries. The journals themselves will be in blue. Due to the recording, some words are translated incorrectly; these words will be marked in red with a grammatical translation following every section. ------ Well today has been confusing. I wake up on my pillow. The floor is very far away. Also I don't hear anyone. On the upside I can flying* now! Took me a while to minister**. Especially with the ceiling fan but now I can get around. I should go find something to eat. *fly *master In my original journals, I didn't see a reason to explain that I had awoken naked on my pillow and had a very brief panic attack when I realized I had shrunk. Oddly enough, finding out that I had a dragonflyesqe wings and a pair of antenna did calm me down somewhat, as it convinced me that I had merely been transformed into an insectile species; for some reason I found this far more acceptable than just being shrunk. The tail and hooves threw me for a bit of a loop, as I recall, but not enough to restart my initial panic. I spent some time afterwards jumping on my bed, trying to figure out how my wings worked; I was not going to just jump off the edge at my size. Eventually a small gust from the ceiling fan did get me over to my desk, where I keep my laptop and iPhone. After entering the journal--apparently Breezie hooves are small enough to count as fingers for a touchscreen--I aimed myself for the door. Thankfully, I had gotten up late last night to take a bathroom break, so the door was still open a crack and I could easily squeeze through. While I did glide down the hall toward the kitchen, I was only just able to make it to the dining room table before I had to take a breather. After that, though, it was only a short flight to the kitchen counter, where I kept my cheap poptart knockoffs. I did topple over one of the boxes and I did manage to rip open the metal wrapper around a pair, but... well, I could only scarf down a quarter of one of the things. So I got my breakfast and managed to slip into the bathroom. It took some effort to turn on the light switch but I did it. Turns out that my reflection in some strange sort of gangly tell me* bug thing. I also buzzed up against precious his** door. I couldn't hear anything. I hope she isn't dead. *pony **Precious's Precious was the name I called my grandmother. At the time, there was a mutually beneficial situation going on; I would help her around the apartment because, well, she was old and infirm, and she would use her social security check to keep the bills paid. Of course, I was earning just enough money from commissions to buy my own groceries, and I did intend to build up enough of an income to eventually be self sustaining. Still, being transformed into a microhorsebug was definitely going to put a damper on that plan, in more ways than I even realized at that point. I went back to my room after that, putting down another journal, and turned on my laptop. It wasn't all that hard, even if my hooves were now just a touch smaller than the keys themselves. But when I opened up my browser like I usually do, there was... quite a bit of delay on the various tabs I had Chrome set to open automatically. At first, I just thought the laptop was having yet another technical problem, but after a half hour of refreshing I found that, well, nothing was coming up right. Up until that time, a large portion of my life had been online, so I understandably freaked out a bit. Yes, I know, it was rather immature, but... Well, I have an issue with face-to-face speech. Always communicated better with written words, and even talking was easier over the internet. I'm not going to go into detail about my freakout, because nothing long term happened because of it. Aside from me realizing that it wasn't just me in this weird situation, probably. Once I was done, though, I buzzed up to my bedroom blinds and squeezed my head through; even then, I didn't really pay that much attention to what went on outside to see anything different. Oh, and I decided to check on my grandmother in person... which really meant I spent a good ten minutes trying to push down on the door handle and another twenty realizing I couldn't fit through the crack at the bottom of the door. Okay so I can't open doors anymore. Is there another Whitney down to* this appointment**? Oh yeah! I am at*** small enough to fit in that happens then**** *way around **apartment ***This "at" shouldn't even be here, how did it get here?! ****air vents now! As you can plainly see, my small size was somewhat warping my voice, and my poor iPhone had to work overtime to get anything out of it. Of course, I wasn't too concerned with that at the time--finding the familiar to be difficult to traverse usually gets attention more readily--but I should have remembered that later when... well, that'll come up when it does. Nevertheless, my plan at the time was to get through the airducts to check on my grandmother. This... would take some doing. Finding a screwdriver was easy. Flying up to a nearby grate with it... yeah, that was tiring. Then I had to get the point into the slant of the screw driver while still hovering there--a lot more difficult then anyone thinks--and then, when I tried to rotate it the screwdriver fell out of my grasp and onto the distant floor. I'm not going to lie, I grumbled a lot while I went to retrieve it. Mostly in made up words and half syllables, because I don't actually swear that often but my mind meanders a lot. The second time, though, I kept a hold of the screwdriver with all four of my hooves--rear to rotate, top to press in. Fortunately there were only two screws in the grate, and I was able to dodge with it fell to the ground. I stabbed through the air filter with the screwdriver and poked my head through... and then realized how dark it was. I'm pretty sure it was frustration that made me curl my antennae--and pure chance that I managed to trigger their natural bioluminescence. So that was how I discovered that they could glow. After that, I pushed through the filter and put my hooves down on the dark dirty metal of the air vent. I'll admit I felt a little trepidation walking through that tunnel, dragging the screwdriver after me, the only light source my own two face bulbs, but I've always been spatially aware of my environment--I can navigate an area much better without a map than with one, I use landmarks to mentally locate myself, that sort of thing. It wasn't long before I was over the grate leading to my grandmother's bed room--- which, unfortunately, was not directly over he bed, so I couldn't tell if she was there. But then, that's why I had brought the screw driver. I raised it up and swung it down hard, wailing away at the filter and the grate below me with as much strength as I could muster, focusing on the weak points where metal bent and met metal. It took some time, but eventually I had broken through and managed to buzz down. And she wasn't there. In fact, having seen the Dark Crystal I could tell that the sheets had... collapsed, for a better word, around where she would have been sleeping. Yeah, that... stunned me, not going to lie. My whole ordeal with the screwdiver and the air vents had tired me out quite a bit, so I didn't really freak out, but... I sat on that bed for a while. Eventually I found myself licking my lips in thirst. So I buzzed to the attached bathroom, grunting with effort as I turned on the sink faucet, and tugged at that... thingy, that makes the sink plug descend. After the sink was decently full, I pushed the faucet back shut and buzzed low, carefully bringing my head down and licking up a few gulps of water. I didn't even care that I was drinking like a cat, I just... I was mentally exhausted. Once I had had my fill, I opened the stopper--still water breeds mosquitoes, and at my size I really didn't want them around--and buzzed back up to the air vents, making my way back the way I had came. After that, I basically... well, I'm not going to describe what I did, but I figured out how to relieve myself while hovering just under the lip of the toilet bowl in the bathroom. I mean, the thing was the size of a swimming pool now! Luckily enough I was still strong enough to push the handle down.... And then, well, I headed to my room, completely drained mentally and utterly exhausted physically. I checked the clock and discovered that it had taken me two and a half hours to travel the vents. At the time, I didn't care. I just... settled down on my pillow for a nap.