The Anthropologist

by Weavers of Dreams


-6- Monday Part: Six

“Now, sir, I understand this is quite the shocker,” Lyra said, trying to calm her next patient down.

“A shocker?” he demanded. “I’ve just fallen into magic la-la land, was chased by a four headed monster, a bunch of tiny horses rescued me from wolves made of wood, and I can taste the floor through my feet.”

“Sometimes there are complications when people fall through the portals,” Lyra explained hurriedly as she attempted to gather up the multitude of falling flower petals in her magic and burn them with a combustion spell. “Sometimes humans are so incompatible with magic that it alters their bodies in deliberate and extreme ways, tending to copy the most magically inclined specimens in the immediate vicinity.”

“I can taste sunlight, for crying out loud.”

“That what’s called photosynthesis,” Lyra informed him. “It’s very… natural?”

“Is that all you’ve got to say? Aren’t you going to fix this problem?”

“We can’t really cure the condition, sir,” Lyra explained, jumping back as a set of black tentacles involuntarily lashed out at her. “B-but we can try and reverse some of the more extreme points of the transformation.”

“Like the gills?”

Lyra nodded as she cringed in the corner, shielding herself with her baseball bat and clipboard. “Along with the carapace and the bunny ears, sir.”

“What about these stupid flowers?”

“The poison joke will be the first thing removed, sir,” Lyra cried out.

“My name is Phillip.”

“I’ll be sure they give you your mouth back too, Phillip.”

“What?”

“Oh, dear.”

“I don’t have a mouth?”

“Er, no, Phillip. Aaauuugh.” Lyra suddenly found herself hoisted into the air by a back hoof grasped in one of the man’s tentacles. She shrieked in terror as it swung her through the air like a ragdoll.

“Where’s a mirror? I want a mirror.”

“Put me down and I’ll find you one,” Lyra pleaded earnestly. Upon finding herself in solid ground again, Lyra rushed to the nearest bathroom and yanked the mirror off the wall, ignoring the cries of protest from the occupant. “Sorry, sir, I need this.”

“Could you at least close the door? Miss? Hello?”

Lyra practically flew back into her office with the mirror and held it before what she hoped was his face. The roar of horror and disgust was deafening.

“Oh, hell no. What are those things?”

“Those are slimes, they like living in rotten vegetation.”

“What about these? Please tell me that they’re not…”

“I’m sorry, sir’eerrrr, ah, Phillip.”

“And these?”

“I shudder to speculate what you picked up from the depths of Froggy Bottom Bog.”

After that final appointment of the day, Lyra rushed to the spa and took a curative bubble bath for possible poison joke exposure, along with half the ponies from the clinic. A wise business move on Zecora’s part.

Lyra found she could at least take comfort in the fact that Phillip was nowhere near the scariest patient she had ever had to deal with in her career.