2. Don't Panic
Lyra fidgeted as Trixie used her telekinesis to apply the black paint to Lyra’s front and hind hooves. “It’s cold,” she noted, before a thought occurred to her. “And this washes off, right?”
“Yes, yes,” Trixie said, waving a hoof as she worked the paint across Lyra’s face now. “I tested it on myself, though the ritual says that the paint will disappear anyway. Um…hold still, I have to get your horn, too…”
Lyra kept her mouth tightly closed as Trixie applied the paint across her horn, coating it completely. She had to fight hard against the instinct to immediately use magic to clean it off as Trixie finished, stepping away from Lyra. The unicorn was now painted, hoof to head, shoulder to dock, in black paint, made from several natural ingredients that Trixie had prepared the previous day. Thanks to Trixie’s telekinesis, it had taken only a few minutes to apply it all. Only Lyra’s mane and tail were uncovered by the paint at this point.
“It’s not a terrible look,” Trixie said with a wry grin, grabbing a mirror from her kitchen’s counter and showing Lyra herself. “Very…bold, anyway.”
Lyra stared at Trixie. Hard. The clock on the wall read 11:57
“Okay, okay, time limit, I know,” Trixie said, levitating the spellbook over to her and looking it over. The spell they were casting was three pages long, most of it ingredients and how to prepare them, with the last being dedicated to the spell’s magic words. “Okay, most of this spell-thing is just in preparing everything. Paint, check, magic circle…” Trixie looked up from the book, glancing down at Lyra’s hooves. The mint-green unicorn was standing in a circle made from powdered coal, about five feet in diameter. Trixie examined it carefully, as did Lyra. “…no breaks, check. Candles…I think the candles are supposed to be a little closer to the circle.”
Lyra eyed the tall candles, five of them arranged evenly around the circle, warily. “They’re close enough as-is to the coal, thanks,” she said. “if they’re too far and the spell fails, then the spell fails.”
Trixie sighed. “Fine,” she conceded, looking the book over again. “Dust…” Trixie hefted a bag of dust with her telekinesis, levitating it over Lyra’s head. The musician let out an annoyed sigh as Trixie emptied it over her. “Sprinkle of pure water…” Trixie hefted a bowl, and used her telekinesis, again, to splash water across Lyra body, circling her as she did. “And last, the magic words…”
“That’s a really weird concept, by the way,” Lyra said. “I mean, I know that sounds weird coming from me…but words can’t hold magic on their own. They’re mnemonics. When I do my spells through song I’m really just using them to help me focus, the words themselves don’t usually matter…”
“Well, they matter to zebras,” Trixie said as she finished circling Lyra, looking her in the eye. “Okay, here goes…” Trixie closed her eyes, focusing, as Lyra readied herself as well. Both their horns glowed slightly. According to the spellbook, this was the most important part: it wasn’t enough to simply say the words, you had to believe in them.
“Nini ana miguu nne asubuhi,
“Miguu miwili katika mchana,
“Na tatu miguu jioni,
“Wewe!”
Trixie’s eyes were closed, so she didn’t probably didn’t notice the lights in the house dimming – but Lyra did. Her eyes widened as she channeled more magic into her horn. There was definitely something arcane happeing here. As she focused, to her eyes, she could see the magic taking shape around her. Strangely, despite Trixie’s chanting in zebra, the magic didn’t seem to be coming from her at all – but rather, from the paint on her body, which was glowing blue now, and the circle of coal dust, glowing green, and the candles, each of which took on a red aura. The auras seemed to reach out and coild around each other and around Lyra. Lyra was more than enough of an adult to admit that she was wrong: apparently magic words did have power, and she had to admit that the zebra magic seemed to have power to spare. It was as though the spell, rather than taking or even touching Trixie’s own magic, was being pulled from the very air itself and shaped by the words Trixie was speaking.
“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Kutembea kwa miguu miwili!
“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Kushikilia kwa mikono miwili!”
She remembered after a moment that she was supposed to be observing and learning. Focusing, she tried to identify what the magic was actually doing. Definitely transmutation, Lyra observed. Despite the alien source, zebra magic was certainly working along familiar lines as it moved across her body. But…with elements of conjuration? Is this spell from two schools? Is that – is that possible?
Lyra had never heard of a spell somehow being part of two schools at the same time. As Lyra understood magic, it was fairly rigid: Everything could be grouped into the eight schools of magic. Then again, she knew that the schools of magic were, ultimately, created for conveniences sake, and had little to do with magic itself, instead having been named and organized by unicorn wizards long ago. It wasn’t impossible for there to be magic that Lyra didn’t recognize as being part of one of the eight schools, but it was certainly a jarring experience.
“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Ngozi yako ni wazi!
“Wewe ni binadamu,
“Msimamo wako ni mrefu!”
Lyra wasn’t certain she could observe much more – magic positively flooded the air around her now, hurting her eyes and her horn to look at. She’d learned just about all she could, anyway, and so settled back, ‘turning off’ her horn, as it were, and waiting. The spell would take effect in just a few moments, and she’d get to see what it was like as a zebra. She didn’t imagine it would be too different…
“Wewe ni binadamu!
“Wewe ni binadamu!
“Wewe ni binadamu!”
Lyra convulsed at the last word. She had the very distinct sense that whatever was happening should have been immensely painful, but thankfully, it wasn’t – but that didn’t change the fact that all the magic in the room suddenly seemed to collapse into her, as though she had become a sinkhole for it – and began to shake her body around like it was a rag doll. That was when the first sickeningly wet crack split through the air. Lyra had just enough time to wonder if her neck had been snapped, when suddenly everything went black.
---
Hearing was the first thing to return, and the sound of paper rustling and books being thrown around and landing on a wooden floor.
“No,” Trixie’s voice said, clearly in panic mode. “No…no…no…!”
“Trixie?” Lyra asked, as her eyes fluttered open. Or she tried to ask, anyway – she couldn’t move her mouth, so all that came out was a muffled noise. Her eyes still worked, at least. She realized on opening that she was suspended in the air, held aloft by a blue glow – probably Trixie’s magic, seeing as her horn was glowing brightly.
The unicorn jumped at the sound of it, turning around and looking at Lyra, recoiling slightly as she did. “Oh,” the unicorn observed. At some point during her unconsciousness, Lyra had apparently been brought by Trixie into the unicorn’s living room, where a steadily increasing pile of books had been growing all around her. The blue unicorn’s eyes were wide, and she was shifting in place nervously for several seconds before walking forward, looking up at Lyra.
“Lyra,” Trixie said, in a slow, loud voice, as Lyra felt the telekinetic grip on her jaw loosening. “Can you understand me?”
“Yes,” Lyra responded. “Why woo...woush…” The unicorn-turned-zebra paused a moment, feeling around inside her mouth with her tongue. She hadn’t expected such a small mouth…nor the disturbing number of sharp teeth, four in particular at the front of her mouth. “Why wouldn’t I be able to?” she continued after a moment. “Also…ow.”
“You’re in pain?” Trixie asked, eyes somehow widening more.
“Not…not really…I feel like I should be, though. But no. Just…weird.”
Trixie nodded. “Weird. Right. That’s…yes.”
Lyra blinked a few times, moving her eyes around. She looked down the length of her…well, where her muzzle should have been. “What’s wrong with my face? Why can’t I see my snout? I’m still breathing through my nose…why is my nose tiny? And…” she tried to eye the tip of it, but found it was only just inside her field of vision. “And…pink?”
“Um.”
“Trixie…”
Trixie wet her lips, then swallowed, then wet them again, trying to buy time. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I want to take this slowly, okay? Keep in mind that as bad as this was for you, I…watched this happen. So it was pretty bad for me, too – ”
“Trixie!”
Trixie swallowed again. “Okay. I want to describe you to…you. Take this in tiny steps. Okay? So we prevent freak-outs. We can’t freak-out right now. Freaking out would be bad.”
“I’m getting pretty freaked out, Trixie,” Lyra noted.
“Okay,” Trixie said. “Okay. All in one go: your coat is gone, you’ve just got this kind of pinkish skin. You don’t have a tail. Your hind feet now have no hooves and five…I think the term is toes. Your hips are wider. Your front legs don’t have feet at all, they have hands with five…fingers…on them. Or four. Four and a half. Your…your barrel has…has some kind of lumps, I don’t know, they almost look like udders. You have two of them. And your face is…is…is something I really don’t want to describe. And you’re about twice as long as you used to be from head to…toe.” Trixie looked Lyra over. “Your front legs aren’t nearly as long as your hind legs. I think you’re bipedal now.”
Lyra blinked several times. She let out a nervous chuckle, which made Trixie back away slightly. “And you have a few sharp teeth,” the blue unicorn added when she saw into Lyra’s new mouth. “Um…not all of them, but a few.”
“This isn’t funny, Trixie,” Lyra noted.
“No,” Trixie agreed, before turning around, going back to her books. “But it’s fine. It’s fine! I just have to find out what you are now and then – ”
“Trixie, let me down,” Lyra demanded.
Trixie turned, wide-eyed. “You…you don’t want to see yourself.”
“Trixie, put me down!”
The blue unicorn backed away at the force of Lyra’s words. “O…okay,” she said. Lyra felt herself being lowered to the floor, slowly, on her barrel and stomach. It was then that she felt the two…lumps…that Trixie had described earlier, on her barrel. Slowly – very, very slowly – Lyra began extending her forelegs into her field of vision, as Trixie watched, biting her lip.
Lyra couldn’t stop herself – she let out a low groan when she saw her foreleg, what had happened to it. It was…it was just wrong, the forearm, the knee, the pastern and fetlock…and her hooves! Trixie was right, they were just gone, replaced by things that looked like nothing so much as the front paws of a raccoon or squirrel. The fingers on them were trembling slightly – Lyra let out a gasp of surprise and shock when she found she could move them, though it was an incredibly bizarre feeling to do so. Flex them in, bend them back out, one at a time or all at once…
Lyra closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath.
“Discord's mismatched horns, Trixie, what in Tartaros did you do to me?”
“I don’t know!” Trixie exclaimed. “Everything was – look!” Trixie’s horn glowed, and she brought the spellbook over to Lyra. “Look! I did everything right! I double-checked! I triple checked! You saw too!”
“Well, you better – wait. Wait. How long was I out?”
Trixie blinked a few times, glancing to the clock on her wall. “Five minutes,” she said. Lyra turned to look, and saw that, indeed, it was only 12:09. Taking the ritual’s time into account, it really had probably only been five minutes.
Lyra tried to stand, but let out a slight yelp of pain as the unfamiliar shape of the limbs made her stumble and fall onto her side. She glared down at her treacherous hind legs, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Among other things, she got her first look at the fleshy lumps on her barrel that Trixie had mentioned. They didn’t look a thing like udders, except insofar as she was fairly certain that the pink points to them were probably teats. Further down, her hips were wider than they should have been, leading to long legs that ended in hoof-less feet, instead possessing only five small, useless toes. And her hind legs' shape! It was completely wrong, her hocks having somehow inverted so that her lower leg would bend backwards rather than forwards.
“Trixie…!” Lyra exclaimed, turning to face Trixie, forcing her forelegs and hind legs to work. She ended up on her hands and inverted hocks – knees, now, she guessed – and glared at the blue unicorn. “This is not what a zebra looks like!”
“I know!”
“Will the counterspell even work?”
“I don’t know!” Trixie fidgeted. “Wait here! We’ll try it!” The unicorn dashed past Lyra, out of her living room and into her kitchen.
Lyra closed her eyes again. Transmutation, she reasoned, falling back into what she’d learned in the magic academy. This was a transmutation. A polymorph. It turned me into another creature. My consciousness remained separate – I am still Lyra – but my subconscious has been completely rewritten. I need to stop thinking about what I want my limbs to do. Stop thinking. Just do it.
Lyra took a few deep breaths. “I want to sit down,” she said aloud, then simply willed herself to sit. She didn’t think about how her hind legs were bending wrong, she didn’t think about how her forelegs couldn’t be used for balance, she didn’t think about trying to bend her spine the wrong way. She simply told her body to assume what it considered a sitting position, and then sat.
As it turned out, a sitting position for her body was sitting on her buttocks, hind legs crossed in front of her, almost wrapped around herself, while her forelegs – or whatever they had become – were simply crossed over her barrel and the two bizarre udders. “Okay,” Lyra said, breathing in and out steadily, slowly opening her eyes. “Okay. Keep calm, Lyra. Keep calm. Freaking out will not help. Freaking out will nooooaaaaaahhhhh!”
Lyra had the misfortune of opening her eyes, and seeing herself reflected in the glass door of Trixie’s record cabinet. She recoiled in shock, falling backwards as she saw her face, now completely, utterly different. Her horn was gone, but that had been expected. Her muzzle was gone, too, and her face had been flattened against her skull. Her nose now consisted of a protrusion sitting in the center of her face, over a pair of pinkish lips, and her chin had become incredibly prominent. Her eyes remained gold, but had shrunk – they were maybe half the size they were before. Her mane, too, was identical, still the combination of white and mint green – a part of Lyra wondered if this was because it hadn’t been covered in paint – but it no longer travelled down the entire back of her neck – that had shortened considerably as well – instead stopping just at the base of her skull. And her ears, they had moved down as well, to either side of her head, and now were rounded and completely unable to move – wait, no, not quite. Lyra found she would wiggle them a little, albeit pathetically.
Slowly, Lyra crawled towards her reflection, and against her better judgment, she smiled – and saw the teeth. White and pearly, the teeth in front were basically the same, albeit much smaller – but she also saw the sharp teeth that Trixie had mentioned and which she had already felt in her mouth, the four pointed ones, two on top and two on the bottom.
Lyra hadn’t done particularly well in biology classes, but she knew for a fact that those were the teeth of a predator. “Trixie…?” Lyra called.
“Yes?”
“You might want to hurry up…”
“I’m going as fast as I can!”
“It’s just that, I’m getting a little hungry…”
---
Trixie double-, triple-, and then quadruple-checked everything, Lyra helping, though all the while glancing at the clock. By the time Trixie had set up everything, it was 12:17, and Lyra was once again covered from head to toe in black, cold paint, except for, once more, her mane.
“Okay,” Trixie said, looking back and forth from the book to Lyra and the magic circle. “Okay. Circle of coal. Black paint. Water. Candles. Dust. Dust? We got dust, right?”
Lyra glared at Trixie. “You just poured it on me!” she exclaimed indignantly. Indeed, sticking to the paint that covered her body was a sizeable amount of dust. Against her better judgment, as well, the candles were now exactly as close to the circle of coal powder that the ritual proscribed.
“Dust! Okay. Okay. Um…okay. Here goes…
“Kupoteza kupigwa yako
“Na kuchukua pembe yako
“Wewe ni tena pundamilia
“Kuwa nyati tena!”
Lyra, sitting cross-legged and with her forelegs crossed over her barrel within the circle, found that she was tapping one finger on her arm as she waited.
And waited.
And…
“Trixie…”
“That’s it!” Trixie exclaimed, grabbing the book and looking it over. “That’s all there is!”
“Is it all there? There isn’t a missing page or something?”
“No!” Trixie exclaimed, holding the book up so Lyra could see. She once again found her body moving of its own accord, comfortably grabbing the book with both hands and reading. “See?” Trixie continued. “Page hundred and twelve, then hundred and thirteen, then hundred and fourteen! They’re numbered! And half of fourteen is empty because the spell ends there, it even says that it ends there, so it’s not like we’re missing the last page!”
Lyra glanced up from the book. “Then what did you do wrong?” she demanded.
“I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“What about those…those magic words. Did you pronounce them right?”
“Yes!” Trixie exclaimed, then paused. “I…I mean, probably…there’s a phonetic guide, I practiced it over and over again, it has to be right!”
Lyra flipped through the book – not easy with fingers as compared to unicorn telekinesis, she found – and returned to the original spell that was supposed to turn her into a zebra. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. So…so something must have gone wrong here. It must have, right? That’s why the counter-spell isn’t working, because you did something wrong – ”
“No I didn’t!”
“ – you did something wrong, Trixie.”
Trixie fidgeted. “Maybe…” she said. “Maybe you did something wrong!”
“How?”
“I don’t know! Maybe it’s because you were using magic inside of the circle! Maybe it didn’t interact well with the zebra magic.” She stomped a hoof on her kitchen’s floor. “Or maybe it’s because you wouldn’t have the candles closer to the circle!”
“An extra two inches of space changes the spell from zebra to…to…this?” She waved a hand up and down her new body. “And I was only examining the spell because you told me to!”
Trixie shook her mane, whickering and taking the book back into her telekinetic grip, looking it over as Lyra looked to the clock on the wall, now reading 12:22. “We need to do the other counter-spell,” Trixie decided. “The zebra magic-eraser…thing.”
“Okay! Get moving!” Lyra said, throwing her arms up in the air. When she wasn’t actively thinking about moving her body around, she was apparently very emotive with her gestures. “I’ve still got a show to get to!”
Trixie glanced up from the book, offering a pained smile. “Eh…um…” she intoned, looking like a foal caught with her hooves in the cookie jar.
Lyra’s eyes widened at the expression, before narrowing to slits. “What?”
“I…don’t have all the ingredients for the other counterspell on hoof.”
“What?”
“I didn’t think we’d need them! And…and I didn’t even know where to find chickens, and – ”
Lyra pointed a hand at Trixie’s door, single finger on it outstretched. “Fluttershy’s,” she said. “Everypony in town knows that Fluttershy keeps chickens! She supplies the Cakes with the eggs for baking!”
Trixie paused. “Fluttershy…Fluttershy…I know that name…”
Lyra again threw her hands in the air in exasperation. “I don’t believe…Fluttershy! Remember? I introduced you to Ditzy Doo so that she could take you to her cottage?”
Trixie considered. “Oh!” she remembered. “Oh yeah! I remember her! Wait…wait, how could that introvert sell anything to the Cakes?”
“I don’t know!” Lyra exclaimed, standing up fully for the first time since being forced into her new body. “I think Rainbow Dash is involved in some way. I don’t care! Just…just get galloping before I see how good I am at kicking now!”
“Okay!” Trixie exclaimed, holding up a front hoof defensively. “Okay. You stay here and keep reading that book, see if you can find out what went wrong. I’ll be back with a chicken. Stay away from windows!”
Lyra sneezed. Without her coat of hair, and covered as she was in black paint, she was freezing. “This?” Lyra asked, standing as best she could in what was now the small, confined space of the Residency, making her way forward and searching for Trixie’s bathroom. “This paint is coming off before I freeze.”
---
At first, as Trixie galloped, she tried to think of what could have gone wrong. She knew for a fact that she had gotten everything right. She knew she wasn’t the best at friendships, but even she knew better than to try out an unfamiliar spell from an alien system of magic on somepony without making sure everything was right.
No, the only explanation she had was that Lyra’s magical examination of the transmutation had somehow done…something…to the spell, and turned her into that giant, pink, misshapen monstrosity.
Or, Trixie’s subconscious pointed out, maybe it was your own telekinesis. Zebras don’t have telekinesis, maybe that interacted with the setup of the spell.
“Then it’s both our faults!” Trixie exclaimed to nopony in particular as she galloped. Lyra used telekinesis too, plus that would mean that her examination had to of done something wrong, since it’s not like zebras could do that either…
But it didn’t matter, because she could fix this. She had the general counter-spell in the book, she just needed chickens. Lyra missing the one o’clock train to Canterlot was inevitable at this point, but there was the three o’clock, she’d arrive with plenty of time…
She could fix this.
There weren’t many ponies on the street as Trixie galloped. Due to having had a mad alicorn trapped inside of it for a thousand years, most ponies sought shelter indoors during the noontime, wanting to get out from the point in the day when the sun was directly overhead and shown brightest. Traditionally, one stayed indoors for a full hour, but necessity meant that some ponies nevertheless ventured outside sooner than that.
But it did serve to spur Trixie on as she ran as fast as her hooves would take her, trying to ignore the burning feeling in her lungs, the pain in her canons and fetlocks as she ran from Ponyville, down the road that lead towards the edge of the Everfree Forest and towards Fluttershy’s cottage. She slowed down only when she spotted a mare walking along the road as well, a gray-coated, blonde-maned mare wearing the blue uniform and cap of a mail pony…
“Trixie?” Ditzy asked, as the unicorn skidded to a halt in front of Ditzy Doo, the Element of Kindness, mail mare, and probably the only pony that Trixie ever made special effort to be nice to, for reasons even she didn’t understand. “What’s wrong?”
Trixie tried to speak, but could only suck in air for a few moments – unicorns were frail compared to the other two pony tribes to begin with, and Trixie was frankly used to a life of relative comfort and luxury in Canterlot. She waved off Ditzy’s concern with one hoof, however. “Nothing!” The unicorn lied when she could speak. “Nothing. Everything’s fine. Everything’s in hoof. In hoof." She emphasized that point when she remembered the hands and feet that Lyra's hooves had become. "Fluttershy has chickens, right?”
Ditzy stared, or at least turned her head slightly so that one of her eyes was looking at Trixie – the pegasus was afflicted with strabismus, after all, meaning that even as one of Ditzy’s eyes focused on Trixie, the other was wandering, looking at the clouds overhead. “Trixie, normally you’re a lot better at lying than this.”
“Lying?” Trixie asked, eyes wide at the implication. “Moi?”
“Vous,” Ditzy confirmed.
Trixie was somewhat surprised that the mail mare knew Prench, or even just a single Prench word, but then she had been full of little surprises ever since Trixie had first met her. “Alright, I’m lying,” Trixie admitted, “but it’s almost certainly nothing permanent as long as Fluttershy has chickens and I get them to Lyra in…” beneath her hat, Trixie’s horn glowed as she closed her eyes, performing a minor time-telling cantrip. It failed, though, due to the mild panic that was gripping Trixie. “Soon,” she settled on.
“In soon?” Ditzy echoed, concern obviously mounting.
“Yes. Chickens? Fluttershy?”
“What did you do to Lyra?”
Trixie cursed herself for even mentioning Lyra rather than just letting herself come across as being in some kind of vague panic over nothing. “Probably nothing but I don’t really have time to explain it,” Trixie half-lied. “Unless Fluttershy doesn’t have chickens. Then I guess I have time.”
Ditzy’s concern peaked at that. “Yes, she has chickens – ”
“Great!” Trixie said, getting ready to set off again.
“Wait!” Ditzy interrupted. “You’ll probably need me to talk to Fluttershy if – ”
“See, that assumes I’m asking permission, which I don’t have time to do,” Trixie said as she took off at a gallop, horn glowing as she cast her favorite spell, turning herself invisible. To Ditzy, it would look as if some invisible eraser was simply rubbing her out of existence. She paused, though, turning around, though Ditzy Doo couldn’t see her. “Don’t worry!” her voice, now without an obvious point of origin, called back – and lied, once more. “All I need are a few chicken feathers!”
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Behold the hideous creature that Lyra has transformed in to!
Specifically, the one holding the crown. Except that Lyra is even more hideous, for her pale, fur-less flesh is apparent for all to see, rather than mercifully covered!
It's kind of fun to write a pony trying to describe a human in pony terms, or at least terms that a pony would understand. On a related note, there was originally a scene of Trixie watching the transformation go down. I cut, it, though, because I managed to make it read like something from The Thing, and it substantially changed the tone of the story towards more horror than anything, despite Lyra becoming what would, to us, look like a perfectly normal young woman. Except for hair color, but whatever.
Incidentally, the magic words are Swahili, inasmuch as anything from Google Translate can be said to be in a given language (I do not speak Swahili). I won't provide translations, though, 'cause I think it's more fun if we don't know the meaning of the magic words. And also they're kind of lame.
779967 That's adorable
Fingers!? THE HORROR!!!!
So Lyra is home alone at the Residency, and Trixie is getting chickens.....
Oh god, Bonbon is gonna wonder what's keeping Lyra so long, and than.....Oh man.....
EDIT: And I just noticed Trixie was lying about needing only the chicken's feathers........She's not gonna hurt the chickens, is she?
Wonderful!
Poor Lyra. She just can't get a break in the Lunaverse lately, can she? :-) I loved the interaction between Trixie and Lyra here. Very well done.
RDD, ONLY YOU could get away with this.
And thus a major fanon thing is turned sideways. I love it.
yes, we would be rather hideous to ponies, wouldn't we? At least if turned into one.
And much later, the L6 find out what Lyra got turned into...
Something more substantial than myth, but less than truth. An ugly creature of strange habits, but crafty and cunning and I just made humans sound like dwarves, didn't I?
OH MY GOD, CHANGE HER BACK, FOR THE LOVE OF - wait. She's naked?
i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/130/126/130714336837.png
img.ponibooru.org/images/5d/5d9f68862c61cd339a1ecaf6caa4db6c
I love this story.
798420
Yup, naked. The spell doesn't magic in clothes.
Does this technically mean I should up the rating? It's not like anypony will be interested in taking advantage of this fact, or even really acknowledging it...
Eh, probably not.
Which story is the scene with Ditzy a callback to?
Trixie really isn't very good at admitting her mistakes, is she?
I never thought about the fact that humans have canines. I like the idea that that's what freaks Lyra out the most, more than the ridiculous udders or the lack of hair.
Love the twist on fanon, and it is nice to see the other story that was happening alongside Family Matters.
OH THE HORROR!
THE HUMANITY! 
Humans! Horrible half-minotaur-half-ape naked creatures! Cursed to wander the world without fur they kill other creature to WEAR THEIR SKIN for protections!
AAAAAH!
Anyway this is hilarious... do they need to sacrifice a chicken to make the counterspell work?!
Predatory teeth are great motivators.
Oh the possibilities this opens up. How exciting.
798713
It ties in to another Lunaverse story, Family Matters. Which is happening in the same time frame. The scene with Ditzy is in there too, but from her POV instead of Trixie's.
This is hilariffic! The description of a human through pony eyes was very amusing, and Trixie is always fun when she gets into her panicky moods. (She has more in common with Twilight than either of them would probably like to acknowledge.)
I'm looking forward to the further developments, and whether Lyra gets to Canterlot in time! (Also, curse the lack of L6-based smileys! Derpy and Trixie are not enough!)
Hah. Great so far.
Is that a typo or does she only have one?
797854
Poor Lyra!
What an ugly creature did she become?
I was really surprised that Lyra become truly a human. I mean I knowed from Boast Busted that Lyra's Hooves become Hands and from Family Matters that she become depedal.
But I didn't have the confidence in Lunaverse Trixie that she really transform a pony in a complete human.
Last but not less I have really fun when I put the spells in the Google Translate. Particularly the contra-spell. The Pony which translate the book did a lousy job.
804493
Whoops, typo.
Ah I see so one of the later stories that did a call back to this mentioned that she grew to like something that happened here. What does she try to play her lyre and have far more manual dexterity then she is used to resulting in a new kind of music for ponykind? Because I could easily see that as being very tempting indeed for her...Story going to end with a mysteriously missing book and a guilty mint green unicorn?
Lyra needs
i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/166/030/lyra_in_pants_by_egophiliac-d46alho.png?1314225399
I hadn't expected Lyra to turn into a full-fledged human, an anthropomorphic pony yes, but not a literal human
This line made me LOL so hard. It's just so very, very Trixie.
Actually everything shortly after it is great to. Lyra's annoyance at Trixie skirting around what happened. Trixie reassuring Lyra not to panic, though obviously trying more so to prevent from doing so herself.
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I might bump it to teen, just to be on the safe side and avoid offending anyone. I suppose the fact that you're using equine terminology to describe the human anatomy might be enough to avoid that, but if she stays completely naked for the whole story a teen rating still might be safer.
Oh, and on the subject of equine anatomy, wouldn't it be more in line to use the word "teat" instead of "nipple"?
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Of course it freaks her out. I mean do you have any idea what teeth like those are used for; eating meat, MEAT! Given that the transformation also came with a matching sub-conscious mindset, she's probably terrified she might try to eat somepony.
815835
Hmm, good point on the teats thing. Huh. The things you never expected to have to think about...
Though as for Lyra running around completely nude, do remember that it is still winter when this takes place.
To be technical, a knee isn't an inverted hock as much as a hock is equivilent to the heel. It's the far end of digitigrade posture ("toe angle": the toe digits, and "grade" like a steep road has a 'grade'), with hooved animals (unguligrade) could be said to be walking on their toenail (singular per leg, anyways), while digitigrade animals, like dogs and cats, the foot-pad correlates to standing on the front half of the foot, ahead of the arch, with the heel up. The closest a human can make to a hooved posture is the "runner's crouch" wgte.org/portal/members/LauraMusser2925/content/149_VH_skeleton_standing_web_8457_8115_7186_7823.jpg visualphotos.com/photo/2x2651968/runner_crouching_in_ready_position_sfi075.jpg bodyworlds.com/download/pressimages/previews/1292251314.jpg cmsimg.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?NewTbl=1&Avis=D2&Dato=20110506&Kategori=NEWS&Lopenr=105060809&Ref=PH&Item=8&Maxw=600&Maxh=500 Meanwhile, plantigrade ("flat angle") bipedals like us--- well, any skeletal system can be understood as a system of levers, pulleys, and counterweights, since muscle tissue can only pull, not push. And a pony "wrist" is basically the knuckle on us. Like when Pinkie was doing this: img.ponibooru.org/_images/67c8582416051873cb0c4dea8da0a6c5/9958%20-%20animated%20derpface%20no_loop%20pinkamena_diane_pie%20pinkie_pie.gif Imagine someone doing an impersonation of a praying mantis.
SWAHILI DETECTED
Mumble mumble... not ridiculous... mumble mumble...
I'M SENSITIVE ABOUT MY SPECIES' APPEARANCE, OKAY???
797854 Poor, poor Lyra. But in response to her pose: SHE GOT THE THIIIIIING!
"…in her canons…"
I think you mean cannons. And I don't mean the pirate's weapon.
hilarious! love it!
Without reading a word beyond the chapter title, Id like to say: this is the perfect time to panic.
Trixie, Google translate says the answer to that riddle is not "pundamilia."
Consider yourself lucky, then. Apparently that was only a 10-20% chance.
I'm not jealous, though. There are better things to covet than the ability to wiggle your ears.
Well, you found one of the spells you wanted to use . . .
The counterspell calls for chicken blood, doesn't it. Better not get caught, Trixie.
797854 Everybody knows Zebras always speak Swahili, and nobody who writes MLP fanfiction actually speaks Swahili. Or, usually, Prench or Griffon (AKA German) or whatever other language might be useful. The world would grind to a halt without Google Translate to rely on.
Like the Swahili Shakespere.
>The auras seemed to reach out and coild around each other
coild?
Luna damn, Trixie is best Element of Magic. XD
Just put the spell through Google translate... I can either blame Trixie or the Zebras, because that spell never mentioned ONCE about turning into a zebra. Then again, the counter-spell has nothing to do with turning back into a pony either.
This is really minor but I find it odd that Ditzy would use the formal vous ratehr than the informal tu. For me vous is for your boss and starngers and tu is for your friends. Though you then have folks who just always use vous or tu but they come across as a frigid hardass and a stoner with no sense of boundaries respectively.
2687417 that's assuming that she has enough knowledge of french to differentiate between the two.
Turning Lyra into a human... classic.
Considering that this Lyra isn't actually obsessed with them, it was pretty hilarious.
This is a fun story so far. :D
*actually looks up the words on google translate* you clever bastard! That was awesome and...I got to practice my Swaili again
Anyway, one thing I love about this chapter is the nudity description. You didn't sexualize it, you didn't make it dirty, you treated it as a human body and what it looked like. the breasts would look lik lumps and of course the nipples are teats. That was an excellent way to look at the human body without turning it into something perverted.
Good. I like how you call them "lumps". That just made my day, good sir.
wrap
[or collide, but wrap sounds more accurate.]
______________________
Just wondering. There's a huge [canonical] group of Zebras in Neigh Orleans. And they made the Voodoo subculture there. How does that Zebra Sub-culture, and the native Zebra Culture differ?
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I second this comment. But what's more impressive, that he pulled a rather clever use of the Bilingual Bonus Trope, or making the poem-spell fit Swahili?
Oh, wow. Praise ever-merciful Luna that this didn't go so much worse. What if she had accidentally cast one of the curses instead?
5166367 I think 'coil' is the word they were going for.
7182223
coil is another one. But wrap is a synonym of coil. Still yes, that work. But yeah coild isn't a word.
Okay... maybe Trixie could've been a little bit better prepared, even with everything else that happened.
I'm starting to think the person writing this played Dungeons and Dragons.
Chicken feathers. Yes. I'm sure that's all that's all that's going to be needed.