The Herd Evolved

by Spyderwillster-TLP

Revelation

The Herd Evolved

Chapter 1 - Revelation

Sleep. A deep period of thought and recollection, a journey through an alternate reality existing purely in the mind experiencing it. Something accomplished by most beings during the dark period of the night.

This period rushed away quickly, which was unusual for me. Most mornings, I had to use some crazy means of motivation to even convince myself it was worth it, or let my body get myself out of bed some time later, when I felt rested and ready.

Feeling began to return to me. I was now aware of my bodily state, but something seemed unusual. A foreign sensation told me that I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes. There was another muscle as well, located at the bottom end of my back.

This fact confused me. I tried moving the new appendage, and felt something hairy brush past my leg. Apparently, I had grown a tail overnight, which I hadn’t imagined as even scientifically possible. Unfortunately, I was unable to look at my new body, partly due to the fact that it wasn’t morning yet, and my room was clouded with the looming fog of darkness itself.

I slid out of bed gently onto the floor, making sure not to hurt myself. Usually, I would roll out of bed into a combat maneuver, getting up to my feet with one deft motion. This time, I noticed a difference in my anatomy, as I failed to stand up on two legs like I always had. Light shifted to the top of my list of priorities, and it didn’t take long to remember the light switch by the door of my room.

Giving it my best attempt, I tried to crawl across the space, which I knew like the back of my hand. My eyes had adjusted just the tiniest bit, and I was able to make out the immense, white figure of my door, not at all contrasting from the paint on the walls of the same color. The large wooden panel seemed larger than I remembered, and the jet-black door knob seemed to be much higher off the carpeted floor. The light switch was located on it’s same level.

Using the wall for support, I was able to get myself up to a fair height, but still not enough to change the polarity of the switch. I got back down, and did my best to sit. Almost naturally, my tail obediently moved out of the way, and my legs spread and curled up in a manner that felt strange, while at the same time completely natural. The position reminded me of a pony sitting on it’s haunches. My tail swished from side to side as I thought of a way to cast the room into illumination.

I remembered the flashlight that I kept on my nightstand, or even better the lantern on the bottom shelf of the same piece of furniture. Crawling again, I made my way over to the other side of my bed next to the window, curtains closed. A small spike in my curiousity told me to open the window, but my current mission still remained. When I reached the nightstand, I used the shelf, which was about a foot off the ground, to support myself as I felt around for my lantern. Eventually I found it, and I brushed it off the ledge, sending it plummeting to the ground.

The small grey button on the side of the lantern was easily located, and I pressed it quickly with my numb hand. The blinding illumination caused me to close my darkness-adjusted eyes to avoid temporary blindness. After letting the light seep into my head through my eyelids, I slowly began to open them, looking away from the illumination device.

Once my vision had completely adjusted to the new light level, I looked down at my legs, or rather, where my legs should’ve been. Instead of the long, skin colored legs concealed by my black and white tie-dye pajama pants, I saw light grey, furry legs much shorter than I was used to. At the end, they came to a flat plateau.

This revelation stirred up a sea of questions and emotions inside my mind. Stuttering, I looked at my hands, which had also turned into light grey hooves. My tail, which was indeed a tail, was a red and white form that swayed from my feelings of curiosity, confusion, and fear.

Against all points of logic and common sense, I diagnosed my current form in the truest way possible. I was a pony. And with that out of the way, I brought rationality back and began to think of the way that this had occurred.

Nothing worked within the boundaries of reason, so I came to the assumption that I was simply having a lucid dream. The concept of such an experience was simple. I was still very much asleep, my mind knowing that I was in such a state, and allowing me to control the environment around me. My sense of fear turned to interest, and I decided to enjoy this dream while I was having it. However, a small sense of doubt still lingered in my mind, and I had to think of a way to prove that this was just an alternate dreamscape, and my current form was nonexistent in the waking world.

More thinking and sitting on my now-proven haunches followed. I had a small amount of knowledge about lucid dreaming, so I consulted that memory bank and eventually came up with a technique to determine the reality in which I currently abided. I would look into a mirror, and if I saw no reflection, then my existence in a dream would be proven.

First I needed to get through my bedroom door, then my bathroom door. Knowing that I could control my dream, I stood up, closed my eyes, and imagined a mental setup of the space around me. Focusing on the doorknob, I thought of turning it and swinging the door open to grant me passage.

When nothing happened, I slumped down onto my haunches to think of another solution to my dilemma. Knowing I was a pony, there was a small chance that I was indeed of the unicorn variety, capable of levitation magic. I used my hoof to feel around my head, touching one ear, then the other, and finally discovering the pointed, spiraling appendage poking out from between a small split in my mane. I smiled, and with my newfound knowledge I decided to test out my telekinetic ability, if I had it at all.

My lantern seemed to be a good test subject, so I crawled back over to it and closed my eyes, once again creating the image of my surroundings in my head. What I did differently was focus my horn, which began to buzz the tiniest bit. The more I focused, the more it buzzed, and I then began to feel the surface of the object with my magic, almost like I was touching it. I shifted my thought process, and tried moving the lantern over to me. I poured more focus into my attempt, and eventually felt it brush up against my forehoof, informing me that I had been successful.

With a now positive mindset, I practiced moving the lantern around the room, floating it up and down, around the space as I slowly gained experience with my clumsy, amateur telekinesis. When I had sharpened my ability to an acceptable degree, I cast my gaze at the door knob once again, and closed my eyes. When I felt the click! of the doorknob and the gentle squeaking of its brass hinges, I gasped in amazement and satisfaction. My crawl resumed and I ventured out into the hallway.

The bathroom door was no more of a challenge, and I dragged the lantern along on my short, slow journey. The four-legged shadow cast before me when I was ahead of the light was a little bit unnerving, but I couldn’t remember if having a shadow was an indicator of existence in the real world. I tried hitting the switch with the hovering lantern, and with a click the bathroom was bathed in a warm glow. I switched off my portable light source and took in the view of the room before me.

The toilet and countertop seemed much larger, and the showerhead very well could have been in orbit from my new vantage point. From the same viewpoint, I was unsure whether I should’ve been able to see my reflection in the mirror that spanned the length of the countertop on my right side. Determined even more from being so close to discovering the looming question of which reality I truly existed in, I started to form a plan on how to get up to the countertop to view my reflection, if I had one at all.

I telekinetically closed the lid to the toilet and used it as a ledge to help me get up onto the counter. Once I was firmly standing on the white stone surface, I rotated myself ninety degrees to look at the reflective glass fixture.

Instead of the back wall of my bathroom reflected cleanly in the mirror, I was met with the gaze of my pony self. My muzzle was straight and angular, indicating I was a male and hadn’t switched genders during my transformation into a small, colorful equine, and my horn was smaller than I had imagined it. My ears perked up once again at my mix of confusion and several other thoughts, as if they functioned on their own. Curious, I tried to move them by my own will. Crazy enough, I was able to change their position independently, something I hadn’t been able to accomplish as a human.

Realization set in, and I backed up quicker than I would have liked, I tumbled off the counter and onto the tiled floor of the bathroom, which shot a quick jolt of pain up my back. If I was dreaming, the pain would’ve snapped me back into the real world as a human, warm in my bed. Instead, the bathroom still existed around me and I was still the same form I had been just moments ago.

“I-I-I-I-” I stuttered. The words wouldn’t come out, and hearing my new voice, which in the long run wasn’t much different compared to my human voice, just a bit higher in pitch, did nothing to help my feelings return to their usual calm state. I backed up to the wall and looked at my hind legs, my whole body shaking from the discovery I had just made.

My words finally came out, just a high-pitched squeak that surprised me. “I’m not dreaming!” I repeated the phrase several times, each one in succession, calming myself down to a more relaxed state. I mouthed the phrase again. “I am not dreaming,” I admitted, letting out a heavy sigh. For a while I sat on my bathroom floor, failing to process my realization, even with the large mental capacity I possessed.

“What the hay is going on here?” I whispered, taking short pauses between each word. When I processed what I had just said, my heart rate ascended again. “Did I just say hay?” I asked myself with wide eyes.

I did indeed, and I now realized my mind had changed as well, to the point where my vernacular was that of a small, colorful pony, just as I had become. Calming down this time was a tad bit harder, as I had a somewhat different mind then I had going to sleep. After the struggle of once again calming my spirits, I willed myself into a positive mindset, which proved to be quite difficult. The list of experiments I wanted to conduct started to compose itself inside my mind.

My first priority was to make quadrupedal movement a second nature, as it would prove a crucial skill required for my new form. Deciding the bathroom probably wasn’t the optimal place for re-learning to walk, I made the educated decision to make the living room my temporary classroom, and gravity my teacher.

Wanting to remain as unharmed as humanly- I mean ponily possible, I continued in my crawling state to transport my body to the living room, where I began the bothersome task of moving my various pieces of furniture aside to make room in case I made a rather large misstep. For safety reasons, I wanted the chance of injury to be as scarce as possible. I wasn’t willing to risk banging my head on the sturdy leg of a plush futon.

Now ready to begin my learning experience, which I assumed was going to be quite a strenuous mission, I stood at the middle of the room on all fours. Closing my eyes to think, I tried to imagine the typical walk cycle of the pony that I now was. I lifted up my front left hoof, put it a few inches forward, and leaned on it. The immediate reaction of attempting to balance myself caused my body to wobble a little bit. Eventually catching my balance, I then lifted up my back right hoof and moved it forward the same distance as I had my previous limb.

I repeated the motion with the opposite hooves, and sure enough I had made my first true step as a pony. Smiling, I moved my front left and back right hooves in the same manner as I had before, moving me even further across the learning space.

Even though I had moved a mighty few inches in the last five minutes that I had spent learning to walk like a pony, and the sequence I was using was relatively ungraceful, I was beaming with pride that I had even been able to accomplish that much in the time that I had. I spent the next long while practicing my steps, streamlining the process until I was able to move around the circular learning space quite quickly. Eventually, my amateur walk cycle morphed into something much smoother, and I was walking like an experienced pony.

I stopped confining myself to the carpeted room and started to stretch my hooves a bit. I trotted back into my room where I had been failing to walk earlier, laughing at my past, inable self as if he were still sitting there on his haunches, thinking about how to open the door to my bedroom. I revisited the bathroom as well, looking at my smiling reflection in the glassy surface of the mirror, drastically varying from the scared look I had given myself upon finding out I wasn’t dreaming.

A feeling nagged at me suddenly, introducing itself from inside my gut. That feeling was hunger, and a need for food urged me to trot to the kitchen pantry, where I kept my delicious sustenance.

I levitated the pantry door open and settled on a crunchy granola bar, which sounded like it would cure my sudden case of the munchies. I fumbled with the ever-annoying wrapper until I tore it open, and I then levitated the delicacy into my mouth, biting down with a satisfying crunch! It tasted no different as a pony than it did as a human, and I enjoyed the bar bit by bit until there was none left. Hunger dealt with, I became oblivious on what to do now.

Practicing my movement again, I made my way to the glass sliding door which led out to my balcony, several stories above the city streets. A gentle, black sky loomed overhead, devoid of stars due to the presence of the city’s light pollution. The diamond-towards headlights of the tiny cars far below made me feel small.

The thought of the adjective brought another question to mind. How tall was I in this form? With a new challenge, I left the ambiance of the city atmosphere behind me and made my way back into the apartment, where I pondered the location of my tape measure. Having a faint idea of where it might be hiding, I trotted back into the kitchen to a particular drawer which I had dubbed my “junk drawer”. I enveloped the silver handle in my magic, and I slid it out of the counter so I could examine its contents. I quickly opened my eyes and caught a quick glimpse of the aura before it could fade away entirely, and was a little surprised by the color, which was a deep green similar to the tint of my irises.

I was able to get up onto the granite countertop using a nearby stool, which was pushed underneath the stone overhang to save space. I looked down into the drawer, confused as I always was by the supernova of infinite junk that resided within. Pencils, erasers and the like were pushed aside by my hoof as I searched for my prize, which I eventually located at the very back of the drawer, tangled in a mass of paper clips.

I levitated this, as well as a pencil, down with me to the ground, practicing my use of magic with my eyes open, as well as using my telekinesis on multiple objects, which overall was turning out to be quite successful. I found a nice spot on the wall near the door to the apartment, and stood as flush with the wall as I could. The pencil hovered above me until I could feel it brushing against the top of my mane, and then I pushed it sideways and held it there as I stepped back to examine the light, grey mark which I estimated to be about three or four feet off the ground. I unrolled the tape measure, extending the long, marked, yellow strip until it was a little more than the length I had estimated, and held it up to my mark to figure out exactly how high off the ground it was.

As I had predicted, I stood at a height of three and a half feet tall, which as I thought back to a fan theory about the precise height of the kind of pony I resembled, I realized that I wasn’t big enough to match the size of most full-grown ponies, but at the same time not small enough to be considered a colt. I decided that my height was not an accurate estimate of my age, as I was well past high school with a few years of college under my belt.

A quick feeling reminded me how late it probably was at night, or how early it was in the morning, if that much time had passed. Curious, I made a quick glance at the digital clock on my oven, it’s neon green time read that it was a few minutes after eleven. Strangely, no feeling of sleep invaded my mind. I was completely rested, and had the energy I usually had during a normal afternoon.

I returned to the balcony where I once again looked over the railing. Less cars ruled the long valley-like streets, but the feeling of insignificance still remained. I was just one being in this world, which brought another question to mind. Was I the only miniature, colorful pony on this planet? Had any other people experienced the transformation as I had? I guessed once more that I would have to wait until the next day to answer my inquiry.

I was about to return back to my apartment when something in the corner of my vision grasped my attention, dragging me to the very edge of the balcony. I scanned my eyes through my entire window of vision until I spotted something inside an apartment across the street, through the only window that was lit on that building.

Whether it was a hallucination or pure luck, I could’ve sworn that I saw another pony, I couldn’t pinpoint its distinct features, but I could tell the general shape of the being. I rubbed my eyes, looked again, and the pony was still there. Maybe I wasn’t the only one here!

With a determined mind, I decided my new mission was to get the attention of the pony below.

Author's Note:

7th draft! Hopefully my last! If there are any mistakes let me know!

Comments

[Dark Nightshade]

Wow, this is good!

[AsherThePhoenix]

Wow! Sounds like an interesting story so far!

[ferret]

Hmm, some intriguing inner dialogue here, but running the risk of drowning in introspection.

You count your drafts? And you organize your memory in banks?

huh