The Narrative That's Built
I didn’t believe what she said. I didn’t think I’d have other ponies in my life to care about, mostly because my main reason for wishing to come here wasn’t to get better, it was to meet Twilight Sparkle. Getting better was mostly an afterthought at the time I made my wish. Besides, even if I wanted to care, I didn’t think I could. I was too dumb and stupid to make friends who didn’t use drugs, and I had a strong feeling that this colt body didn’t have any friends of its own.
Doctor Spark quickly realized that I didn’t believe her, and frowned. “You’re going to make friends, Leo,” she tried to encourage me.
I sighed sadly at that. I wasn’t going to make friends here. All of the ponies in my age group were four to six years old, and I had a feeling I wouldn’t be connecting with them very well. I might be able to connect more with adults or teenagers, but I didn’t think I’d be actively sought out by them.
“You’re going to make friends, Leo,” she told me as though it were a fact. “But for now, I’ll be your friend. And so will Herbal Essence and Thundertail.”
“If you say so,” I said with a whisper.
“How about we work on your magic, kiddo?” she said quickly, trying to change the subject. I didn’t respond, instead simply watching as she took out the black box of chips, once again dumping them in front of me. “Do you remember what to do?” she asked kindly.
“I think so,” I told her.
We worked on it for a while, and it was a bit easier today than it was yesterday. By the end of a couple of hours, with a great deal of effort, I was able to grip things with my magic and pick up the smaller chips a few inches.
“I’m done,” I eventually told her, tired from using my magic.
“How about lunch then?” Doctor Spark asked me, retrieving the tray of food she brought in earlier and setting it in front of me.
I sighed, wanting to go to sleep at that moment, but opting to follow her instructions and eat. However, just before I could grab something with my teeth she stopped me.
“Nope,” she told me. “I want you to use your magic to eat.” Before I could even start to complain, she broke in, saying sympathetically, “I know you can’t pick it up that well and you’re tired from using your magic, but we need to build up your magic field to what it should be at for your age.” She then picked up an apple and held it close to me. “I’ll hold it out for you to grab, and you take it from me to eat, okay?”
She might have been trying to build my magic up, but I knew this was mostly about getting me to accept help. “Well,” I thought, using my magic to grab it, “she is helping me eat, but not technically.”
Piece by piece, we worked through the tray of food until most of it was gone. It was much more difficult than working with the chips, and she effectively was feeding me while I simply gripped it and followed her magic. Regardless, it was exhausting, and by the time I finished, my eyes were getting heavy. My breathing was also heavy, and it felt like I just finished a round of heavy lifting.
“Tired after all of that, huh?” she commented. “Did you need to go to the bathroom before you went to sleep?”
I nodded my head yes, too tired to be resistive, and was helped out of bed. A few minutes later, after the embarrassing, yet uneventful, ordeal, we came out to see another mare who looked remarkably like Herbal Essence, except older than her with a bit darker of a coat and a brown mane. I was starting to notice that all of the ponies I met thus far had darker shades of coats than what I was used to seeing on TV. Even the stallion who claimed to be my father’s coat was a more muted shade of bright orange. I wondered if it had something to do with the region we were in, or if it was just a coincidence.
Doctor Spark gently put me back in bed, asking, “What is it, doctor…”
“Willow,” Willow informed her, “And, um, I’m the receptionist.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Doctor Spark apologized. “Is it about visiting Leo?”
“Yes, um, well, Lucky Day and Blue Mist are wondering when they can see Leo.”
Those names made my ears prick up, and my eyes automatically stopped being heavy. I’d never heard the names before, but automatically recognized them as my mother and father. They gave me a sense of dread, and Doctor Spark quickly took note of this.
“Leo,” she told me once again, “you can tell us if you don’t want to see them. You’re not going to get in trouble if you don’t want to.”
“I do,” I said quickly, unconvincingly, as I scratched at my cheek. That was a lie. I didn’t want to see them, and neither did this pony body. But somehow, I felt… afraid. Afraid of what might happen if I said no. That I’d be punished for saying no. So I doubled down. “I... want to see them,” I whispered in a voice filled with nervousness and fear.
She could tell how much I wanted to say no, but couldn’t do much about it since I already said yes. So, instead, she tried to reassure me. “I’ll be here, and so will Herbal Essence if you want, okay? And if you feel overwhelmed, just let me know and I’ll make them leave.”
“What about Thundertail?” I automatically asked.
“He had to leave, but he promised he’d be here tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered, feeling the tiniest bit better.
“You can bring them in,” she told Willow in a neutral tone. Once the receptionist left, she knelt down next to me. “If you want them to leave or feel like they’re going to hurt you, just touch your ear and I’ll make them leave.”
Before I had a chance to respond to her, three ponies were entering the room, the first being the orange stallion who I somehow knew to be named Lucky Day. I didn’t have the reaction I did earlier, but I still tensed up at his sight.
Before, this pony body was shocked at his appearance, and sent fear through me with no explanation. Now, however, I felt myself fearing what would be behind Lucky Day, and flinched as I saw Blue Mist walking into the room. Behind both of them was Herbal Essence, who quietly took a seat in one of the chairs in the room as this colt's parents quickly made their way up to me. “Son!” They both exclaimed as Blue Mist made her way around the bed.
I closed my eyes and clenched my jaw at that, flinching. “Please don’t touch me,” I thought as I scratched my face, hating the feeling I was getting about her.
“Ma’am,” Doctor Spark spoke before she could lay a hoof on me. “I can't let you hold him.”
She looked at her, seeming confused. “Well, why not?”
“Well, he’s still feeling a bit sore from being outside for so long, and we don’t want to make him uncomfortable.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Leo,” she told me, and put a hoof on the inside of my calf, a gesture that nearly made me jump.
“She did that on purpose,” I thought, repressing my urge to shudder. I needed to calm down. She was just trying to comfort me. It was no different than if Herbal Essence or Doctor Spark were trying to comfort me. Although, I didn't think that either of them would put their hooves on my calf. Then again, neither one of them was my mother.
Doctor Spark explained to them the general condition I was in as Blue Mist rubbed my calf. It felt like a familiar sensation, an unwelcome sensation, and it took all of my will power to keep from freaking out. "Nothing bad is going to happen," I told myself. Even if she tried to do something, assuming that she did, in fact, have bad intentions, which probably wasn't the case, there were at least two other ponies in here that would stop her.
I was overreacting. It wasn't going to come to her having to be stopped because there was nothing bad or devious going on here. My pony body overreacted to seeing them the first time, and that fact was making me overreact this time and putting unpleasant thoughts in my head now. She was just a mother trying to comfort her son. Still, the feeling of her hoof creeping up my leg was making my skin crawl.
"If she gets to my thigh, I'm going to touch my ear," I thought, feeling my itching start to come back again. "But it won't get to that point because there's nothing bad happening here. I just think that because of the narrative I put in my head."
I looked at Herbal Essence, and she forced a smile my way. She looked uncomfortable, likely because of my discomfort, and seemed like she wanted to say something. "I need to calm down," I thought. "I'm giving these ponies the wrong impression. I'm a drug addict human being in the body of a pony who wasn't abused. I overreacted to seeing them because this pony body thought they'd be mad I ran away, and that's why I'm nervous now. My tension is just feeding into what they want to believe, and that's making me more nervous."
Even as I tried to tell myself that, I couldn't help but flinch and flex away when her hoof suddenly touched my thigh.
I saw a flash of… something. A memory, maybe. I couldn’t tell. But I didn’t like it. It sent a shudder through me. I felt like something familiar, something I should have known, something I almost knew, but couldn’t comprehend. Regardless, I hated it. No, I was absolutely terrified by it, and gave me the sudden urge to break down.
I quickly touched my ear in panic, and was breathing hard. "She didn't mean to do that," I thought, closing my eyes and trying to calm down. I took a few seconds, and once I reopened them, caught looks of surprise on everyone's faces. I paid particular attention to Blue Mist. She looked completely shocked by my reaction, and held her hoof in the air, halfway between her and I. Either she was a very good actor, or she was genuinely surprised. I wanted to believe the latter, but, so far, all the facts were pointing to the former. Still, though, this could all be a misunderstanding. I started scratching my cheek, and my pony body whispered a fearful apology, hating all of the tension it just brought in and all of the attention now focused on it. "I'm sorry," I whispered, tearing up.
"It's time for everypony to leave now," Doctor Spark said. "I need to talk to Leo alone."
I watched as the group left, Blue Mist looking over her shoulder before she left, the look of shock still with her. I suddenly felt bad about my reaction, and wanted to believe she was just a concerned parent, and that my anxiety was because of the narrative that was built.
"Leo," she whispered, wanting to help, "what happened?"
I was silent. Despite all the facts and everything I felt telling me the opposite, I didn't want to incriminate a pony of something they might not have done. I suddenly remembered how exhausted I was, and decided not to deal with all of this right now. "I'm sorry," I said, trying to apologize.
"You don't need to apologize for being scared. Did she try and touch you somewhere you don't like?"
"I'm just tired," I told her, turning away from her and closing my eyes. She reached down to try and stroke my mane, but I moved my head away from her hoof. “Don’t touch me,” I whispered, shivering slightly, trying to keep myself from crying at the memory Blue Mist gave me.
For the second time, I dreamt that I was back in the real world, staring at my human body. This time, however, I was watching my human body vanish, already knowing its destination. I saw a crowd of people cheer, as though a magic trick was performed, and then quickly disperse.
I saw the guy who did this to me stood up and turned towards me. "James! I mean, Leo!" he called to me, smiling. "I did not expect-"
"Change me back!" I yelled, interrupting him. "This is not what I wished for!"
He paused at that and frowned, seeming confused. "I believe you wished to be a pony in Equestria, did you not?"
"I didn't wish to be an abused five-year-old!"
"Did I not ask if your life being difficult was acceptable?" he asked. That confirmed my fears. I was an abused colt. It just made me that much angrier "And I believe,” he continued, “I told you that once your wish was granted you wouldn't be able to take it back."
"Why can't you?" I screamed at him. "You did this! You can take it back!"
"It is not as simple as you make it out to be. Besides, you have already done so much good for this child."
"How could I have possibly done anything? And if there's someone else here, then where are they? Why haven't I heard him?"
"Because he is in your human body.”
“You put a five-year-old in my body?” I asked, although I clearly knew what he meant.
“I put Leo in your five-year-old body,” he told me. I wasn’t surprised. The real Leo wasn’t with me, and I didn’t think this guy would just stick a five-year-old on the street. “To him, his previous life was no more than a bad dream, quickly fading away.” Before I could ask my next question, he continued, “With you, however, you remembered so much of your previous life because you lived so much of it.”
“Oh, okay,” I said bitterly. “He gets the best life ever and doesn’t have to remember this one, but I have to sit here and suffer through both.”
“You told me you would not care what became of that life, and said that you would rather wish to be where you are now than for a better one.”
“That's not an excuse!” I yelled, starting to get choked up. “That’s not an excuse to make me deal with all of this! I have my own problems to work through!”
“There are people around you to help you,” he tried to tell me. “They can help you with your problems.”
“And they couldn’t have helped this colt through its problems?” I asked.
“You saw how much you struggled to will yourself through that forest,” he told me. “Leo would have laid just by its edge, never going in, not being found until after he passed away.”
“Oh, well I guess that makes it okay to stick all of this on me. Cause it’s too much trouble to just make a new body for me.”
“It is not that simple.”
“Yeah, right.”
“If I could have done that, believe me when I say that I would have,” he said, sounding sorry. “And I truly thought you would not care. When we spoke, you gave off the persona of someone who would not be bothered by this. You seemed like you would be able to push through this without much trouble, and I expected that before you could make your mistakes again, you would find someone to help you care about yourself. I did not think you would have this reaction.”
“Well, you thought wrong. I do,” I said through tears, and laid down on the sidewalk. I was glad he was there now. I wanted him to see how much he hurt me. How much he was making me suffer. I hated him for the position he put me in, and hoped he felt bad about it. “I hate my life,” I sniffed.
I watched him as he walked over to me and leaned down. “Don’t touch me,” I told him aggressively, and he stopped and stood back up sadly. He paused, as though he couldn’t find the words to say, then told me, “I truly do wish you the best, Leo.”
“If you did,” I said angrily, “you would take my wish back.”
“As I said, it is not as simple as you make it out to be. I can only grant wishes, and only one per person. If I could do more than that, I would have helped you both, as well as many others. That is why I asked if you if it was acceptable that this wish was permanent.”
“Liar,” I said bitterly, closing my eyes and turning away from him, scratching my cheek. "If that were true, you wouldn't be here now."
"That's not true. I can be here in your dreams because it's not reality. But even still, it can only be done rarely."
"Liar," I told him again, this time in a whisper.
He paused at that, and sounded hurt. Like he didn’t know good and well what was going to happen once he did this. I hoped he was hurt. I hoped he realized how much I was suffering, and was going to suffer, because of him. It wasn’t much, but at least he could feel bad about the situation he set me in.
“I apologize for this, Leo,” he told me genuinely. “I truly didn’t expect this reaction from you, and I am sorry for making you hate your wish. But I know you can push through this on your road to somewhere else, my friend,”.
"Don't call me your fucking friend," I cried. "This is the most screwed up thing you could put on anybody, whether you think they would care or not."
He paused once again, saying sadly, "Goodbye, Leo. I'm truly sorry for this. I hope that someday we can meet again under different circumstances. However, I do truly have faith that you'll be able to preserve."
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No battle plan (or story idea/plot) survives the first five minutes of its activation intact... unless it is very meticulously-planned and the story outline adhered to stringently. At least it is holding together and is coherent in some manner, instead of falling apart and becoming just a random collection of ideas and scenes (like some of mine have done in the past, I will admit.) Keep going. Take time to think through where you want this to go and how you're going to get it there.
Got the "nice" like. For a good story too, keep up the good work cant wait to see how it all goes.
Can't wait when we finally learn the history of the colt. It can't be good, that is quite obvious.
Yes, surprisingly, kids this age, it's more often the mother, not the father
Yes! How DARE he believe what you said!
You were a drug addict & lying is like breathing for you -you do it without thinking.
Very ungratefull! I think the wish granting individual did a very good thing.
Leo is the Architect of his own life , previously and now... The only one he can really blame is himself.
Hope be learn to start 'pretend to be a adult' and start to act like one.
Need help? Take whats there!
Need education? Study hard!
Need to tackle a problem? Think how to archiv it!
He might have a colt body BUT a adult mind. He can become a 'very smart pony' or even a 'protige' if he start to work for it.
Checklist: Can he-
- read , write , do math (+ - × ÷ %) , paint , higher thinking /- think abstract/outside the box & many more!
/////
Great chapter
Not care? That was his problem before, just doing drugs and not caring. If he were to really not care he would have just laid there until he died, or just walked to the hospital and cooperated like a limp doll letting them do whatever. Leo obviously has problems but he does seem to be at least attempting to change things for the better. The genie dropped Leo into the middle of nowhere as a foal without knowledge of what way to go, and has no resources or knowledge aside from what can be gleaned from the show. On top of that, he was likely molested.
But what really gets me is him implying that he did nothing wrong, and anything disliked is Leo's fault because he is ungrateful for getting "what he asked for". Apologizing to Leo means shit if it isn't sincere, and here he pretty obviously means that he isn't sorry, and that Leo should be the one who is sorry. Doubtlessly he'll continue to press Leo in his dreams to try and make him agree, saying it is his own fault for it all. And it really isn't, since coming ti equestria he's been trying to move on, and the genie zaying he got what he asked for is rather cruel since he took advantage of someone under the influence of narcotics and thusly not in their right mind.
One good thing about the chapter is that it settles the question of whether the genie was malicious (yes), so now Leo can move on from him. There's nothing he can do to fix his "gift" nor is he actually sorry, so he really isn't Leo's friend at all and can be blocked out or rejected without worry.
Edit: The way I see it since the genie isn't ernest or sincere and cannot/refuses to fix his mess, there's nothing to be done about him. Just saying he's doing Leo a favor doesn't really work if there is no action that can be taken to prove trustworthiness, they're past the point now that words can settle it. I say just write him off and move on.
Thinking it over, if *I* was the genie, I would have told Leo "The reason that I could do this is because you were BOTH going to die Real Soon Now" Then, I'd have invented some cause of death & added "You'd have died even sooner than the colt"
That would have "shut his yap"
(to use an old expression. Do people still say that?)
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I mean, his chances of living a long life as a homeless drug addict weren't amazing
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Well, yeah. But when your THAT age, in your heart you feel
"It's not going to happen to me"
It's why people smoke
No, being told "The bill's come due. Time to pay the piper" will pull up anyone who isn't stoned out of their mind
That little "visitation" scene triggered a rather nasty memory from another fic, though the abuser was instead an older brother. Flipping freaky. It's going to bug us how we can't recall which story that memory is from...
So we have a few things come out of this dream sequence:
1. The genie was NOT malicious, and actually thought this would be an improvement for both.
2. Leo is now alone in this body -- there is only one mind here. He has full (authority? authorship? control?) over what happens, and does not need to be concerned about a foal's mind.
3. He has confirmation that the parents of this body were cruel to this body, and should NOT be listened to -- he should now tell the doctor that he does not want to go back to the old parents again.
If this body has been subject to abuse, then there might even be physical traces that would show up on an exam. Maybe he should request that now? He does, after all, have a grown mind, and knows there's problems with this body and those parents.
Now, here is the problem I see. "Leo" is his name, and it's not a pony name. Why is the pony parent of this body referring to him by name "Leo"?
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Cause they're both named "Leo", although ours has Leonard as just his middle name
Leo you idiot!
I know you have problems but come on!
Your making your life for the better as this Colt!
y’know, herbal essence is the name of the shampoo and conditioner brand i use