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// 3: A Walk with Nietzsche 
// Story: Hoofing It 
// by secondVendetta 
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	We covered dreams and their wild nature before.  How they were the wildest screams of your subconscious, wild and sometimes ‘unimaginable.’  They still come from your mind, though.  They are subject to our thoughts and feelings, whether they are hopes or fears.

For a moment, I was back in my own life, my own body.  There was nothing in specific, just something.  A thing that I was working on with my hands.  Could have been electronics, or sewing, or one of a dozen things.  Even my once intended career, data points flying by.  But it didn’t matter.  I knew two things now; what fingers felt like and what they didn’t.  My brain just had to fill in the gaps for me, determining what method was best.

My brain reached for the feeling of hot wax, sending it through my mental digits, a hot almost stinging sensation with the almost latex feel that wax holds as it hardens, moving down as they faded from my palms, leaving me with vaguely stump like appendages.  What’s worse is I almost felt like I was watched for a moment, my horror and fears out for all to see.

I awoke with a startled gasp that morning, finding myself in bed with no memory to how I got there.  I sat up for a minute, bringing the world around me into focus and gathering my bearings.  The dream was fresh enough that I could still remember it.  I brought my hooves up in front of me, flexing them as best they could, trying to move limbs that weren’t there.

I wasn’t sure what was worse for me.  The idea that those were lost to me or that I couldn’t even imagine the digits there.  There was no ‘phantom limbs’ effect.  I couldn’t even get that, the feeling of fake fingers as portrayed by my mind.  Those connections in my brain must no longer exist.  It was one of my worst fears come true, only behind losing my sight.  I sat there for some time, for the first time really contemplating what life really was going to be like without something I had relied on for more than two decades.

A wet tongue on my face dragged me from my stupor, my eyes staring numbly at Mischief as he tried to get my attention.  His tail was lax, ears laid back on his head.  I blinked at him before it dawned on me that he was worried about me.  What else could I do but seek the nearest comfort and family I had?  I just took him up into my forelegs and just sat there hugging him for a while.

The release of tears may or may not have been part of the process.  I refuse to confirm anything on that regard.  What mattered is much of the stress of being like this and my family disappearing had eased.

Getting out of bed was easier than it had been the past two days.  I almost considered it an achievement that I hadn’t managed to floor myself for the third time in a row.  So proud was I of that achievement I never looked down as I moved to leave my room.  Wolf had laid there on the floor, a lump of blue on a blue carpet.

His response was quick and loud, a yowl coming out of him as my body fell over him.  My world was first filled with the familiar sensation of falling.  But before I could quite make it to the ground, I felt his massive paw grab my leg and that sensation was replaced by sudden upwards acceleration.  Hanging there upside down, I waited for a moment while his eyes blinked and focused on the world around him.  Which was all fine, seeing as my head was still getting a handle on its current orientation.

"Morning..." he finally said after a moment.

"Yes, I can tell by the fact that I just about landed face first on the floor again."  Sort of, kind of, close enough at least.  My hooves crossed over themselves like I was crossing arms, and my eyes narrowed a bit on him.

Comprehension of the world around him looked like it struck hard.  "Oh! Whoops."  He took some care to try and set me down upright, which I appreciated a lot.  "Sorry, your floor looked so ... Inviting" he stated with a big stretch.  "And good for the back"

I winced at one of the pops his bones made as he stretched himself before turning towards my door and heading back through the house.  “I'll stick with the comfort of cushions.  Come on, everyone out!  Time to go potty."  The house erupted in a flurry of barks again, 4 blurs blasting past me towards the back door.  As I headed there myself, Wolf instead directed himself towards the kitchen.

It had almost become a morning ritual for me, finding it easier to slot myself into the routine than I had before.  Where before I had a sleep schedule that was best described as chaotic and I only took care of the morning needs of the pets on the light of a blue moon, suddenly I was moving through things like this had always been.

Admittedly, this didn’t help keep my mind off of things.  Even with having to think so much about all my movements for the last few days, there still seemed a capacity in there for panic finally.  Now with the initial crisis over and a certain ‘normality’ returning to the air along with having someone else around, I was free to panic, wail, and cry freely.  Each of my movements was as smooth as a three-day old adult could manage, but they held that sluggish stiffness of distraction and exhaustion, like a zombie shambling about in a mockery of life.

Dogs, then the cats.  Those were easy.  You could just sorta ‘hug’ the bags and tip them into bowls  We had a bird, too.  Hades, I didn’t even think about the bird the day before!  It had a wing missing!  I couldn’t take care of it for that long!  Not with things like this.  It would also be a pain in the butt to feed like this.  I didn’t really want to use my mouth on anything in that cage.  I sufficed with clamping my hooves onto the edge of the food tray and carefully wiggling it out through its gate.  I just poured food into it.  There was no using the little cup like this.

What about my poor, half-broken turtle?  We’d found him after a local flood years.  He’d done much better since, but would he do well in the wild now?  The bag with his food was ziplocked.  I contemplated that for a couple minutes before finally deciding he was eating fresh today.  It wasn’t like anyone else was going to be eating all this food.

The fish outside needed to be fed, too.  Probably the only thing I’d finally considered putting my mouth on, tipping the plastic container over a little over the pond they were in.  At this point, I could also catch the new smell that had entered the air.  I took a few more sniffs at the air as a concept attached itself to the smell: Pancakes.  At least I had something to look forwards to that wasn’t the idea of using the PETA approach to dealing with abandoned pets.

Heading back inside, I finally spoke up.  If I kept focusing on what was ahead like I had before, kept giving myself time, I wouldn’t have time to feel sad or panic.  "I've been gathering our camping supplies from around the house.  We can use the truck and camper out front.  But that's basic stuff.  It's not food and it will only last for so long.  We need to figure out what we need in the long run."

“Food is going to be key, that’s for sure… Got any sporting stores around? That dehydrated hiking food keeps a while”

I let a moment pass while I pondered that.  “...Gander Mountain.  It’s up University Drive near my school.”  Chewing on that thought more, I made an addendum after another moment.  “...More hunting, camping sort of stuff, though.  Dicks and places like that are around though to be frank, my store has those on the shelf.”

The spatula in his hand, which could probably be used by pinching it with two fingers, worked at the pan and its food.  “That'd be my target for food.... And jerky."  He licked his chops at the thought of that.  I was fairly sure he did it absent-mindedly.  "Why is that so GOOD all of a sudden?"

“Anyway!” came poignantly, like he brought down a verbal blade down on that line of thought.  “That's shelter and food, but after last night's entertainment I can't shake the need for a little self-defense."

I couldn’t argue with that.  I doubted anyone would be in a condition to do anything, but people weren’t the only things that could be a threat.  How long before everything we knew went wild around us?  It wouldn’t be hard, though.  It was north Alabama.  Gun shops were everywhere though I couldn’t help one thought.  Why just get any old gun when you could Military grade gear?  “How do you feel about raiding a military armory?"

"There's a phrase I never thought I'd hear played straight."  The humor in his voice was lost to me.

"Not like there is anyone there to lay claim to it.  Or if there is, I want to see them try aiming that with their hooves.”  I let myself stop do double check that thought for discrepancies.  “...Discounting they end up like you."  Such as that one.  Important detail.

“Still need a bigger trigger guard.”  His eyes gazed down into his paws as he said that.

“We’ll just cut it off.”

"Forgo safety for usability, aren't we just the survivor stereotype."

“We are the stereotype because we are in that situation.  I'm bitter about it, but it's done.  All we can do now is act."  The words tasted about as bitter as they sounded.

Wolf frowned at his pancakes as he moved them off the pan, perhaps hoping I didn’t notice.  It disappeared as he finished his stacks.  “Order up!” was bellowed out, proceeding him as he delivered it to the table in a similar presentation.  Nothing flashy, just big and present.  A smile came over me for a moment before I let the pets back in.  Thought the window, out into the yard, I looked out at the two beehives out there, dozens of them flying in and out.  “I’m going to have to pack up my hives to bring with us.”

He might as well already been out there with them with the look on his face at the thought of that.  “... Shit, of course you would take the bees."  His paw smacked into his face and slowly dragged down it. "And Why wouldn't you? It's a good idea. God, I hope I'm not allergic anymore."

I loaded up on pancakes.  Hunger, no matter how depressed or helpless I felt, was a pretty basic need to fill.  "One of the first forms of sweets used by man.  Transporting is the easy part, though.  ...Or at least a sweetener that lasts a while when it reaches the proper water content.”  Was it actually one of the first?  Where did I get that fact from?  I gave pause and corrected myself.  "Was that one of the... You know what?  Doesn't matter.  It will be one of our first at this rate."

"Sounds like we've got a day of gathering ahead of us, best get those carbs in ya," he stated before shoveling another chunk of pancake in his mouth.  It didn’t last long, adding to what he was saying after it was devoured.  "And hey," he let out a low breath of air, "I haven't said it explicitly, but I'm glad to be here.  With you, I mean."

Smiles were hard to find in the current happiness economy.  I was glad he could find some in me.  If not for Mad Max the previous night, I think I would have slated myself as being in a depression.  But even then this was different.  That was mostly just fun.  Something was different about this.  It was the sense of togetherness.  several seconds, maybe a minute, was spent simply enjoying that feeling of ‘together’ while we ate before I spoke up again.  “This would have been much harder alone.  Just the idea that I could get to you all meant so much."

That feeling of togetherness lightened the mood a bit as he returned the smile before we dove back into our plates.  Sweeter than I was normally used to, almost marshmallowy in flavor, almost ‘burnt’ and ‘woody.  As I tried to put my finger around what it was, Wolf had blurted it out.  “By the divine that rum is good!"

Of course.  My Zaya.  That glorious hound had nicked my Rum.  I didn’t complain, it turned out well.

Rather, I drifted us back towards reality.  "Before we go anywhere I need to take the mutts on a r-u-n.”  You had to spell it out or no one would be able to hear each other over their barking.  The looks they gave me and the back door made me worry that it might not work any more real soon.  “It'll give me another chance to practice and let them get themselves spent before we are gone all day.  Maybe we can jack some more of that rum from the ABC while we are out."

The response I earned from that was a massive, energetic thumbs up followed by another massive bite.

I took my time with it, though.  It wasn’t even a matter of not having hands.  I just didn’t want to rush my meal.  Meal time was one of two things for me: Family time or contemplation time.  The family time portion was more or less spent already and instead I reserved myself to my thoughts for a bit, just wracking my head at all that laid before me.  Not just thinking about the difficulties before me due to my current, er… deformities, but the frightful idea of actually going from merely dealing with myself to trying to deal with the needs of whoever survived.

The lack of food on my plate jolted me back into reality, blinking as I acknowledged the world around me once again.  I craned my neck towards the back door for a moment before hopping out of the chair and heading for the door.  “Do you want to come?”

"Me?"  He looked like he hadn’t been expecting the invitation.  "Well, I haven't done any real running since Track in college... Ah what the hell."

The mutts knew what was happening just from how I moved towards the door.  As soon as my mouth pulled it open, something I didn’t think I’d ever get used to, they burst out at all speed and waited by the back gate.  I made my way out at the best speed I could: walking.

As soon as they were away from us and waiting, I could talk again.  “We both have to get used to these forms.  There are only two possibilities: We are stuck like this or we’ll find a ‘fix’ and regain our original ones.  Even in the case of the later, we don’t know how long it will take until we achieve that.”  It was the analytical reality of the situation as far as I saw it.

"I won't lie, I've probably spent more time behind the wheel than on my feet so far.”  It showed how he moved.  He could still technically move on two legs, much like the hunchback of Notre Dame might.  It was clear he was conscious of it too, as he tried working at it as we moved down the hill to the gate.

“Doesn’t matter.” A half-smile came to my lips.  If I was going to be in this situation, I could make fun of it.  “Even if I'd done the same, I'd still be on my feet twice as much."

“Oh, ha ha,” he responded flatly, before bopping me on the shoulder.  “Funny.”

It wasn’t a hard or solid bop, but with my current sense of balance, there was a stumble to my step before I righted myself.  “It also means I need twice as much practice,” came the inevitably more bitter side of my self-depreciating humor.

“Amazing how that works out, eh?”

"Sort of.  It's worrying in some ways.  Our brains were specifically wired for the bits and pieces we had.  Or have, as it were.  Now I have an additional limb and lack digits.  I am at least vaguely functional, which suggests a certain amount of instinct, not too different from a foal standing shortly after birth.  How sure am I that the person I am was not compromised by the process that rewired the rest of my brain?"

I moved to open the gate with my mouth, just as I had to two days ago.  Whatever, it worked, complaining would do nothing for me.  I’d find a way to make this work.  I pushed open the door and let loose the dogs, the four of them bursting out the gate and tearing off into the woods again.  I started walking along the path while I finished explaining myself.  "I seem to act as I did, but could I tell if something was different?"

The dogs tore by us in our pause, though Chief and Billie slowed up and started sticking close to us.  That was the norm for them.  As much as they enjoyed running, they were quite fond of people and always did stick close.

"Herein lies madness," he stated, wafting his hand low through the air as if presenting something on a table before him. " What's the use in worrying about it?  Either you are the same, or you're new. In the end, it's what you do now that matters."  I noticed as I looked over how he had taken a moment to study his hands and arms as he continued speaking.  "Because the way I see it, the fact that we're still cognizant AT ALL is so astronomically lucky that everything else is a wash."

"It's not that there is use in worrying about it, but that it is something that I came to pondering about this effect.  Was it some sort of attack?  Or maybe a horrible fffff--” inside me a little volcano bubbled in my head.  It was how I visualized that frustration at not being able to use those words out of context.  “Really!?  ...I mean a mess up.”  Considering my current status, I found it far more likely someone made a horrible mistake and we were unfortunately in that path.  “I've got two book series that are coming with me that started like that, you know.  There's a certain irony to that because they both involve a human town going to the past and messing history up."

The two ‘large’ dogs blasted past us again.  This pass, I decided today would be another shot, attempting to pick up my pace again and mimicking their motions to a degree.  It got me moving faster than a walk as long as one discounted all the times I stumbled, but it was better than my attempts two days ago.  At least I was eating less pine needle this time.

"Look, I can't even begin to wrap my head around how this happened either.  The best I have is that somehow our constituent parts all decided to exert their infinitesimally small probability to flip their state at the same time ... in an organized way... all over the world."  He chewed on the thought as much as he chewed on his lips before adding onto that.  “I’m just sure it can’t have been random…”

“If it were…” I began, raising my volume as a gap started to form, “What’s the odds of being lucky?”

“Enough that we should have bought the Powerball.”

I slowed up (not that I was going fast, per say) after a bit, stopping and turning about waiting for him a moment.  “I think we already bought the farm with that and I don’t know how well you play fetch yet.”

“Nah, we’re too fleshy to be dead.  Also, food’s still delicious.”  After a moment of pause, he made an addition.  “Any time you can wonder if you are dead.”

I started moving as he caught up again, again making some attempts to try something that resembled a run.  It did a better job of getting me to run my mouth and complain, though.  “You would think if this fuuuoooo- this fudging body has instinct enough to stand and move but not enough to move.  It’s frustrating!” I declared, a little ‘growl’ to my voice though it was a rather pathetic growl.

“Maybe you’re just lacking the right motivation,” he stated.  I’m sure he had a sly grin showing on his face when he said that, curling up into twirls on his faces as if he were the Grinch who stole Christmas while he let those words hang in the air.

I wasn’t quite paying attention, too busy focusing on my own efforts and making snarky comments that would come back to bite me.  “Like what?  You gonna chase me?  You’re probably as uncoordinated as-”

I could feel it as much as I heard it, the sound hitting me as much as my ears and my body took over as the hairs along my neck and back all tried to reach for the sky.  I was moving fast as I had wanted to, with no clue how.  I didn’t have enough time to think on how either, as just about as soon as I was moving, I stopped with a sudden dull thud as I found a tree the hard way.

The ground was not as uncomfortable as I would have thought.  “Is it night time already?” came from me almost whimsically, “Look!  There's stars!”  To this day, I can swear I actually saw the darn things.

Wolf was wincing as he came up over me and giving me a good glance over, probably to make sure I hadn’t done more damage to myself than the tree.  I was a small equine now, one could only imagine how much easier it would be to hurt myself.

“...I think I’ll just stay a while and listen.” I said as my bearings finally started to straighten themselves in my head.”

“Sorry, I… didn’t actually think that would work.”

I finally felt like moving again.  Probably not the smartest plan, I could have had a concussion or whatever else, but I felt fine at the time.  I rolled over onto my belly, reaching up to my head with a hoof and rubbing it, feeling for blood and not finding any.  “How did I not break something?”

His arm raised up as if he was presenting something.  “You sure about that?”

Looking back to where he gestured, I found the tree half-uprooted, now leaning at about a fifty-degree angle.  “Ok, correction, how am I not dead?”

“Evidently you’re made of tungsten under all that fluff.”

That didn’t make sense, though.  I didn’t feel that heavy as I moved off the ground and back onto my hooves, not that I could really tell since that would have always been the case.  I hoofed at the soil for a moment.  before it struck me what probably happened.  “...Naw.  It's not anything like that.  I still hurt, for one.  Fact is, this is a wetlands.  It's been raining lately.  Look how soft this soil is.  I bet you this tree was just teetering on the edge of tipping.  There's another tree not far from here that fell of its own volition a while back.  Just dumb luck."

His paw sunk right into the soil, an entire handful of it coming up with frightening ease.  Even easier than I was expecting, to be fair, given what the area’s ‘soil’ was normally like.  “...huh,” was all the response I got from him as he stared at the soil contemplatively, rolling it in his paws for a moment and testing it.

I began moving again now, a bit worse for wear, but not broken in any way thankfully.  Still hurt, though.  An entertaining thought came to my head as I thought on painkillers.  “...Should I use the 12-year-old instructions for Tylenol when we get back?  I don’t think my mass justifies adult dosage.”

He tipped his hand over, letting the dirt and soil dribble off in wet chunks. “What are you now?  Like sixty pounds?”

“We have a scale at home if you want to experiment with that,” I said while I began moving back towards the house.  “I would bet that being slightly larger than my dogs that I weigh in the 100-pound range, though.”

Even with the dirt long gone from his hand, he continued to stare at his arm for a minute or so before we moved on.  I’d like to say it was silent, except the forest now was seeming alive more than it did before everyone was gone.  Like it knew everyone was gone now.  The ‘talk of the town’ for the creatures living in it.  As we got closer, my focus shifted to calling the dogs back, letting Wolf go ahead of me, people and mutts piling into the house one at a time while I closed the gate behind me.





That night we had all somehow ended up on my bed.  I’d just given in to how my new body wanted to work, curling up on top of it like the rest of them.  I was finding it rather annoying how this body wanted to lay compared to how I wanted to lay.  It left me caught someplace between ‘this is how I settled’ and ‘this is not how I sleep.’  I even got some pajama pants on since I was sharing this time.

I lay up near my pillow, Wolf was down at the foot of the bed.  There was an intense comfort in having someone there in proximity, anyone, that I hadn’t felt during this event.  I guess at the time I was still feeling more of the shock than I wanted to admit.

Not that we could completely calm ourselves immediately.  We were still winding down from messing with the dogs, helping them spend the last of their energy from the evening.  That left us with time to talk about the rest of the day’s events.  Which in the end, wasn’t much.

We had ended up getting food and getting my head straight on ‘we don’t need to carry off half the store.’  With how I had been feeling earlier, we had decided to leave the base for the next day.  A whole, abandoned military site once belonging to the now defunct government of the United States of America.  All to ourselves.  That would be interesting, right?

With how the next day played out, I would have been lucky with just interesting...