I woke up in a new situation; there was a slight swaying motion around me like I was on a boat, or drifting somewhere.
I opened my eyes to find I was suspended from a ceiling somewhere. The cavern or grotto or such had pods hanging down around me, some clearly within my vision, others just in my peripheral if I strained to discern them in the semi-darkness.
With the world around me tinted green thanks to the goop surrounding me, I could not be assured of the other pods' colouration - or that of their inhabitants.
They held ponies.
The ones right in front of me, close enough that I could reach them if I stretched out my arm, but spaced out differently so I was effectively hanging in-between them, had ponies in them.
I could see one of them twitch a leg in the pod to my right, and I felt my right leg twitch involuntarily as a reaction.
My body felt... less constrained. I still could not move much, and especially not beyond the confines of the pod I realized I was in, but I could sort of tense and release my muscles and move my limbs a few inches in any direction.
The goo would strain, and pull, and eventually pull me back to the neutral position I woke up in, but I felt kinda good about this. As if I was given some reprieve from this strangeness.
A couple of shadows moved around beyond the edge of my vision. I could just barely make them out as they moved.
A bright light erupted from one of them, and I had to pinch my eyes closed from how sharp it was!
Some muffled talking... again nothing I could really make out. The light danced a little on the other side of my closed eyelids and a shadow moved in front of it.
When I dared open my eyes again, another pod had appeared, right in front of me, severely limiting what I could actually see! My vision now was pretty much restricted to the pods on my left, right, and in front of me, and a small sliver of space in-between them!
I struggled a bit in protest, but then realized something; the new pod's occupant was not a pony! It was a human!
I could clearly see them in the light shining from the other side of their pod; a human figure caught mid-struggle against the goo that was now their pod.
The light dimmed as the pod affixed itself properly to the ceiling, and I had to strain my eyes to watch the figure before me again in the darker environment.
In the minutes, hours, or days even that followed, I watched their limbs move from their frustrated position in which they were captured. Their arms slowly moved to the side of their body, their legs untwisted and came to a neutral position hanging down, and... was it my imagination or were they shrinking as it happened?
Their head was not shrinking in the least; if anything it was growing larger! And so was their torso...
It took me another... however much time it was that went by before it dawned on me; I was watching another human being like myself... slowly transform into a pony.
...
I flexed my toes. No, I flexed... a toe? The muscles reacted differently to my attempt to curl and uncurl my toes.
My heart sank and I tried to do the same with my fingers. No go. There were no fingers, nor a thumb, to speak of anymore. What I felt where I expected fingers was a bundled-up collection of muscles converging upon a singular digit. Hooves, I guessed, as I could not tilt my head to see.
I shivered and felt it go down my spine until it hit my tail...
Bile rose in my throat and I tried to hammer down my rising panic with memories of the show I watched so eagerly back home; There were good things to being a pony! If this was truly... I could not finish the thought. To think this was Equestria would be pushing it. Would I really be sent to such a wondrous place where ponies actually cared for one another as opposed to the human negativity I had grown up in?
I could still breathe. I could still think. I had seen the other two ponies speak, before they...
Wait.
Green goop.
Pods.
...CHANGELINGS?!?
I struggled again, enough so that my pod bumped into another. A moment after and there was a swinging of various pods bumping into one another as their occupants had woken from the disturbance!
The bright light flashed through the room again, and my pod stopped moving immediately, and so did the others. We were held in place by some kind of magic, I supposed.
I supposed that that must be the case, yes.
My eyes closed to ward off the light, and I felt myself calm down.
It was okay now. We were being cared for; that could have been one hell of a mess if a pod were bumped into enough to break open or away from the ceiling.
Better to just calm down, relax, go back to sleep. It would all sort itself out...