Chapter 5: A Whole New World
Chapter 5: A Whole New World
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” André Gide
Daphne
There were only so many strange, new things a person could take in one night. I’d wrestled with an alien, been transformed into a figment of my imagination, and fled through the woods from Heaven-only-knew-what, and it had all taken its toll. After coming so far and enduring so much, though, a line had to be drawn.
“No! I won’t accept it!” I declared, stamping my hoof.
Naomi patted the air in front of her. “Daphne, please, be reasonable.” Her braid had been loosed, and Equestria’s vibrant moon cast silver moonbeams through her red curls.
The subtle colors of our campsite could be picked out in that dim moonlight, too, yet it still possessed the same ethereal grace of the moon back on Earth. Imperfections in the surrounding forest were forgiven in the deeper shadows, and a gentle pond glowed silver.
All told, it was a majestic sight all by itself.
All but for one little irritation.
“That is a silver fern!” I declared, pointing an accusing hoof at the offending flora. It spread its leafy, argent fronds near Naomi’s tent. “It’s native to New Zealand and surrounding islands! It doesn’t belong here!”
Marcus paused in the midst of unfolding his pop tent opposite of Naomi’s. The fire would go between them. We had carefully selected a space that was as open as possible, but the trees were so dense that it had been difficult finding a place where a branch wasn’t likely to fall and crush someone.
“It’s a plant,” he pointed out.
“Yes, and it’s wrong!”
“Sweetie,” Naomi stepped delicately between me and the fern, casting a wary gaze my way, “we really don’t want to attract anything that might come looking to see what’s shouting. Besides, is it really that much more unlikely than anything else we’ve seen since coming here?”
“Just because we’re in some magical fairytale land doesn’t mean things shouldn’t make sense,” I protested firmly, my nostrils flaring. Ever since we had stopped running, my breath had been coming in tight, ragged gasps, and my head felt hot and heavy. “It shouldn’t resemble any Earth species except that which blew across the barrier!”
Naomi raised her brow. “What if there’s other entry points?” It was disgusting. She had no right to be that patient and level-headed when everything was so wrong. I hesitated in answering, my scowl deepening. “Daphne, this isn’t really about a plant, is it?”
“Of course it’s about a plant; it’s about a stupid little fern that belongs halfway around the world!” I pawed roughly at the ground as I stared her down. How dare she talk to me like that? Where did she get off telling me what I’m saying is one thing or another?
“Daphne, you’re hyperventilating. Just calm down, we can talk about this.”
"Don't you patronize me!" I snapped, jolting forward. "We're in a mysterious, magical forest where the laws of reality apparently don't apply! Don't you get how twisted and wrong this whole place is? Being a little stressed is a perfectly normal reaction to cause-and-effect taking the day off!"
“Okay, Daphne. You've been through a lot tonight.” A curt note had entered her voice. Taking a tone with me, was she? "I know you’re upset, but didn't we talk about this earlier when you went running off through the—"
“Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!” I shouted at her, rising up and stamping my forehooves again and again. "You don't know a damn thing! You've never woken up as the wrong species! You haven’t spent your life trying to convince yourself your best friend wasn't real—wondering if you were insane! You've never had your sister taken right from under you! Don't you dare tell me to calm down! You’re just a spoiled, silly little daddy’s girl getting her sick kicks on me being a pony! You don’t even seem to care that we’re in a freakishly unnatural forest that’s probably stuffed to the gills with monsters; it’s all a game to you!”
Naomi rocked back, her eyes wide, her mouth falling open. I felt like I was trying to swallow a brick. My… chest? Sides? The bit where a pony’s ribs are—was vice-tight, and my breaths were coming in shorter and shorter gasps. My whole body was tense, wound like a spring, my tail lashing back and forth.
"You should be ashamed! You…" I gasped, trying to find my breath again.
Okay, maybe “ashamed” was a bit extreme.
"You don't... you don't appreciate how important this is. How…" How something… Where were the words I needed when they had been coming so fast and hard just a few moments ago?
Dead silence. No one spoke. I faced the both of them down, my eyes blazing. Slowly, so very slowly, my raging heart cooled. My mouth felt dry, and my head began to pound. All that righteous fury dripped out with my adrenaline, leaving my tensed muscles feeling cramped.
I regarded Naomi. The pained look in her eyes. The way her shoulders were slumped. She looked hurt, wounded.
"You should... You shouldn't tell me to calm down!" I rasped at her, my throat dry.
"You shouldn't," I said again, my voice dropping a little.
She got it. No need to… rub it in.
Naomi, and Marcus now, too, regarded me, their gazes weighing heavily. It no longer seemed so clear and simple as it had been earlier. I scraped my hoof against the earth, bringing up little stones in the dirt.
“It’s just that… I… I have a lot of reason to be worried.”
Like I had reason to yell at Naomi—she’d belittled me, dismissed me.
Hadn’t she?
“I-I j-just don’t want…” What didn’t I want?
“Naomi, please,” I wheezed, looking to her, only to see she’d turned away. Her arms were clutched across her chest, and her head was tucked in against her shoulder.
Oh no.
My eyes stung as I tried to comprehend the enormity of my own stupidity. I shrank back, unable to even look at Naomi now. More than that, I wished I could have crawled out of my own skin and died, right there. I didn’t want to be on the same planet with someone who had said something that monumentally revolting. It was still a quick jaunt back to Earth. Just leave myself to rot.
Who the hell did I think I was, talking like that?
Who was I, even? Some spoiled, self-obsessed little cretin, crawling along seeking others’ approval before I could so much as choose a pair of shoes in the morning?
If only I could have taken it back. If I could have snatched the words from the air and shoved them back into my stupid mouth, I would have. I scrambled forward a step, stumbling over more of my words, “Naomi, wait, I—”
Naomi turned, and I fell silent. She didn’t have to say anything. Her eyes had gone flat, her lips were a thin crease, and her features were as still as granite as she looked down upon me. Nothing else existed at that moment, just her disapproval and the sick feeling in my gut.
“Sometimes,” her voice was dangerously quiet, “we’re very honest with these outbursts. We say things we meant to keep hidden.”
I wanted to bury my head in the ground. I wanted to run as far away as I could. I wanted to jump into the fire we didn’t have yet. Anything rather than listen to her, each word biting at me. Instead, I stood there, head lowered, bearing it.
“But do you really believe that, Daphne? Do you really think I came out here, stealing from my parents, risking my life—and Hector’s—just so I could have a little play time?”
My knees had begun to shake. I shut my eyes tight and trembled along with them. Her hand brushed my mane, but, instead of a blow, I felt it caress my cheek, sliding down to cup my jaw. The relief I felt at that touch was soothing, better than any balm I could have applied.
It put into context how much I was hurting. My outburst and her touch illuminated how much my identity had been compromised. Sleep-deprivation, physical trauma, and remembered pain blended together into a disastrous recipe that had left me irrational and so wound up I was ready to snap at everyone and everything at the slightest provocation. It was no wonder I didn’t feel like myself any more.
Could I really say that I had been myself for years yet?
Naomi kneeled in front of me, sliding her hands around my neck. “Do you, Daphne?”
“No.” I shook my head frantically. “No, no, no, no. I don’t believe it. Naomi, I—”
“Shush. It’s okay. Just breathe,” she said gently, silencing me with her embrace. Thick red hair fell over me, and I pushed my nose into her awkwardly, nuzzling at her. Would that I had a pair of proper arms to embrace her. Forelimbs would have to do, and I held her tightly.
“It’s going to happen again,” she murmured softly, her voice familiar and honeyed again. “Probably soon. You’re going to have to get through this, Daphne... but I won’t let you do it alone if I can help it.”
There was a leafy rustle and a quiet tearing noise as Marcus bodily hauled the silver fern out of the ground, chucking it down to the stream bed. It lay in the water, rippling the silvery reflections with black swirls. “Problem solved!” he announced brightly. He shrank back at a look from Naomi, his hands up defensively, and went back to pushing the pegs in for his tent.
“Good riddance,” I muttered, trying to laugh, which didn’t work very well. My ribs still felt tight and constricted, and my knees had begun to quake again. Sighing, I rubbed at my sore eyes with a forelimb. When I pulled it away, I was surprised to see the coat there was wet and stained.
Naomi and I stood like that for a while. I didn’t cry anymore. Neither of us spoke. Her presence, though, her closeness, her almost palpable love, seeped into me and filled me with its quiet, gentle strength.
I pulled away once I felt I could speak clearly again. “Naomi, I—”
“Shh,” she whispered, cutting me off, and dabbed at my eyes with a handkerchief. “You’re tired, Daphne, and still hurting. Tell you what, I’ll forgive you for calling me a spoiled little girl if you can forgive me for calling you a shallow, self-obsessed brat.”
I knit my brow, confused. “You didn’t call me anything, though.”
“Just did! Deal?” She stuck her hand out. She giggled as I rolled my eyes and stuck my hoof into her hand, shaking it. “That is so cute, the way you shake.”
That, too, was part of the healing process, I realized. The humor was a signal that things had returned to normal between us. Perhaps more than normal, really. It wasn’t a regular, everyday friend who could take that sort of abuse and then turn it around in a way that helped the person who had tried to hurt them.
“Now, why don’t you get some sleep?” she suggested.
It took some effort to get a hold of my treacherous body. “I’m not that tired,” I lied. Having been up all day and running all night had taken a great deal out of me, but a guilt-ridden conscience wouldn’t let me rest just yet. Emotional fatigue was the least of my worries at that point. “Besides, the tents aren’t up yet. I’ll start a fire,” I announced, resolving to be useful at the very least.
There was a meaningful pause.
“Shut up.” I cast my head down. “I know. No hands. Realized it the moment I said it,” I groused, swishing my tail irritably. It helped me wake up a little bit, at least. “I’ll get firewood, I can do that. No one brought any, right?”
“We didn’t exactly have time to stock up for the winter,” Marcus grumbled. Up until now he had kept pretty silent on his feelings about the new world he had been roped into visiting, but there was a faintly wild look in his eyes. He also stared up at the giant moon a little too frequently for it to be coincidence. Maybe his aggression towards the fern had been more cathartic for him than it had been for me.
“We did the best we could, Marcus,” Naomi said evenly. Then she nodded to me. “All right. I don’t need to tell you not to stray; you probably know what’s out here better than we do. What did Leit Motif say about this place?”
“Not a lot.” I scuffed a hoof on the dirt. “She said she had to pass through what she called the Everfree Forest to get to me, and I always thought she meant the state park. Like she was just in the town across the way.”
It felt more than a little weird hearing Naomi refer to my friend so casually. It was difficult enough just trying to sort through that tangled mass of emotion that was the knotted memories of my and Leit Motif’s time together. Accepting her reality back into my life had given me mixed feelings of elation, relief, and more than a little guilt. Hearing Naomi speak her name in that familiar fashion lit up a peculiar spark of jealousy I didn’t understand, as if I didn’t want to share her.
“Did she describe the way she took at all? Landmarks, dangers, anything?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve gone over it a few times in my head already, trying to remember. She did tell some stories, said that everypony—”
“Everypony?” Naomi asked, grinning.
“Shut up, it’s how she talked!” I shot back, stamping a hoof. Continuing on, I said, “That all of the ponies avoided it, I meant to say. She said that it isn’t natural, but she never mentioned having any problems getting here.”
“I suppose it would make sense that a forest containing a magical barrier that leads you to another world would be unnatural to anypony,” Naomi mused aloud.
“Anypony...? You did that on purpose!”
“Go fetch firewood, honey,” she said airily. “I’ll help Marcus finish setting up here.”
“I won’t go far.” I flicked my tail at her as I went. Damn her, she had to go and make me feel better with all that banter. Didn’t she know when someone was getting a good panic attack going?
Tension melted away from my bones and limbs, leaving exhaustion in its wake as I pawed with my hooves under hollows and brush for dry wood. Removed from the others, the sounds and smells of the Everfree were undimmed, and I searched to the accompaniment of nature’s orchestra. The night air was alive with the cries of insects and birds, and the distant coughs of things unknowable. Great sheets of moss blanketed the earth and the low trunks of trees, and, unlike the cold and temperate Everfree I was familiar with, it was humid enough that I wondered if the Everfree Forest wasn’t, in fact, a swamp.
My hysterical reaction to the silver fern earlier was, I quickly discovered, more than a little premature. Even if I had been a better student of botany, naming all of the different fronds and flora I found would have been near impossible. There were hundreds of different species, growing in clusters and lonely clumps, all within a few dozen yards of our chosen campsite.
A mossy cliff face looked out over a shallow valley. There was a croaking noise that carried on for a while—rather reminiscent of a heron—and I squinted down the scarp, trying in vain to spot the bird. Fireflies danced in great profusion in that misty valley, conducted by little blue fires. Far away, the trees gave way to a rocky ravine, and, for just a moment, I thought a pair of shadowy stalks had risen above the rocks there. I tensed, but they were gone a moment later—either moved away or never there to begin with. In my current state, it was hard to tell.
I rubbed my eyes. Definitely far, far too tired.
Lacking suitable limbs, I made do with grabbing a hold of the branches I had kicked together under my mouth and returned to camp. No one had dug a pit yet, so I put my hooves to work. It was fairly easy to dig out a small rut with my front legs, before putting my back pair to work to widen it into a proper pit. My legs pumped powerfully, still strong despite all that exhaustion and fatigue had taken out of me.
Once we had a small, neat little fire going, I flopped down next to Naomi. With the veggie burger I had scarfed down, the trail bars Naomi and Marcus had eaten during the trip, and an uncertain length of time between now and reaching our destination, cooking was a low priority at the moment. Of course, there were other reasons to have a fire going while in dangerous woods at night. We wouldn’t need to dry off or boil water just yet, but the fire helped keep the insects away, and, if it came to a dangerous predator, very few things were quite so terrifying to an animal as a burning brand thrust at its face.
That, and having an open campfire made us feel a little more at home than the light of an alien moon.
The forest was doing its best to remind us that we weren’t home, however. In the shifting shadows, it seemed as if the trees were recoiling from the flames, their branches held back. With my mind playing such tricks on me, I wondered if it might not be better to curl up and go to sleep. Doing so would have meant going back to being alone with myself, though, and I wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
Naomi sighed. “Wish I’d thought to bring some hot chocolate.” She was wrapped up in a big blanket, and twitched a corner at me. I scooted closer, letting her drape it around my barrel.
“I’m just glad those things stopped chasing us,” Marcus said, pulling his jacket off. “I’m having trouble believing some little horse kid made it all that way without being devoured.” I noted—completely disinterestedly, of course—that he had not slacked off in the least since we broke up. He wasn’t broadly muscled by any stretch, but there was a certain strong ranginess to him.
He still looked totally disreputable, of course.
“I don’t know what path Leit took to get to me. She said it wasn’t very far, and we were planning to go together before—well, my parents interfered.”
“That’s just—” Marcus paused, shaking his head. “I guess they thought they had a good reason, but it’s not right to screw with a kid’s head.”
Now he was trying to ruin my perfectly good image of him.
“And, you know, I suppose this could be worse, all things considered,” he added.
“How could it be worse?” I asked icily. Here it came, the snide comment that would ruin what good will he had built up.
“You’re actually kinda pretty.”
“Well you’re—wait, what?” I lifted my head, my eyes narrowed curiously, one corner of my mouth curled up in incomprehension. He’d caught me up short with that comment, and I wondered if there was some barb in that I wasn’t seeing. It had been months since he’d been this nice.
“I mean, you seem to have it fairly good, as far as it goes. You don’t look like an animal, not really. Sure, it’s kinda weird, but it’s kinda cute. You even sound like yourself—if I couldn’t see you, I could honestly still picture you.”
I stared at him for a moment, totally at a loss. My mouth worked for a moment as I tried—futilely—to process this sudden spate of nice behavior. Part of me felt touched, which might have explained my utterly bewildered response.
“Well, I—I still can't stand your fat ugly face! Made only worse by the fact that it's in front of your defective brain,” I spat at him.
Marcus immediately choked on his water bottle, coughing and sputtering for a moment. He almost looked taken aback, but that was obviously just a ruse. Maybe that hadn’t been the best way to come back at him, but it was hard to believe he meant any of it innocently, or even sincerely. Of course, being as tired as I was may have inhibited my ability to come up with any good insults.
“Oh, and that jacket makes you look like a tool.”
“You sure seemed to like it when we were dating,” Marcus said. That might have been seen as an attempt to head the fight off before we could really get into it. I knew what it was, though: he was trying to make it seem like I had it much better when I was with him.
“Sure, when I was humoring you for being a ten year-old in a teen’s body. A girl would have to be insane to like you.”
“And you almost went to the loony bin,” Marcus braced his elbows on his knees, “so you must have loved me. Not that anyone needed to tell me that you were crazy.”
“I am not crazy,” I growled. “Nothing I ever wanted was unreasonable!”
“Oh, sure. Not unreasonable. You practically redefined ‘demanding,’ Daph.”
Thoughts of knocking him into the river fell away before I could even construct a good mental image of it. It was just too exhausting to fight right now. I gathered a breath to retort, but even that felt draining, so I just sighed and laid my head on my legs. “Yeah. Whatever.”
My defeated tone served to suck the fun right out of the atmosphere. The night air felt, if anything, even more lonely, with a cold distance creeping in. For a time, no one spoke, and Marcus went to inspecting his rifle. Naomi set the blanket over me and went over to check on Hector, who was pawing restlessly. He had not looked secure ever since the transition into the Equestrian side of the Everfree Forest, and she did her best to soothe him.
“I’ll take first watch,” Marcus offered. “I don’t think we want anything sneaking up on us here.”
“Makes sense,” I mumbled, snapping my eyes open. I stretched my arms and legs out in all four directions with a great big yawn. Rising, I glanced around. “Naomi, where’s the third tent?”
“I didn’t bring one,” she answered. “Use my tent.”
“Won’t you be using it?” I asked, suspiciously.
“Daphne, hon, it’s a two person tent. I wasn’t going to snuggle up with Marcus, and you certainly weren’t going to sleep outside.”
“Not that I would object,” Marcus interjected, cheerfully. Sleaze.
“Oh. Obviously,” I muttered. Laying down had apparently been too much for me, and I practically oozed into the tent. Someone could have poured me into a glass and I would have slept right there, taking the shape of my container like any good liquid. “I’ll take the third watch. When I get up,” I called, slurring heavily.
The inside of the tent was dark, and I was comfortable in my blankets. Like a warm little cave. It swallowed me up, and I faded away into nothingness.
* * *
Water closed in.
I couldn’t breathe. The water crushed me, pressing in on all sides.
The moon shone down at me, rippling through the surface of the water and refracting off the bubbles that rose up from my struggling form. I raised a hand, trying to swim back up, but the skin and bones shifted even as I tried. Silvery light played off the tip of my hoof, and down I went.
I struggled and surged upward despite my altered limbs, only to feel bonds tighten around me. Straps of white leather were wrapped around my barrel, each tied to something below—a gnarled wand, which cinched the straps tight. Even as what strength I possessed began to waver, I stretched and strained to try and get a hoof around the wand, but all I could manage was to touch it with my hooftips.
The moon’s light had formed into a ring above, and I twisted my neck to gaze down. Curved walls encircled me, a cup of water that would soon be my grave. A sword, its steel rusted and its leather-bound hilt torn, was embedded in the side of the cup. I tried to reach that, too, kicking with my legs.
I got my forelimbs around the hilt, but my stupid, useless hooves could only fumble with the blade. It tumbled down, down, down, settling far out of reach.
Darkness crept in around my vision, and my lungs felt like they were about to explode.
Sobbing, suffocated, I let go, all four of my legs drifting up and longing for the light.
My eyes shut. My burning lungs cried for air and I prepared to open my mouth and silence them once and for all.
A howl rippled through the water, and I jolted, startled by the sound that had issued forth from my own mouth in spite of the choking water. It sounded so wrong.
Dreaming. I was dreaming!
Kicking, coughing, I fought off my enclosing blankets. My limbs were no longer heavy with asphyxiation but with slumber. Another howl sent my heart racing, and adrenaline propelled me up and out of the tent, eyes wide and ears swiveling.
Our camp was now much darker, for the moon had fallen beneath the level of the trees on the way to its bed. The dim firelight made wavering, flickering shadows out of us and our tents. Everything had an unreal, spectral air that made my hair stand on end.
The yelping and snapping of the things that had chased us earlier were all around us now. Eyes watched us from the wood, reflecting the firelight back in snatches as they circled. It was impossible to count them, for they were less shapes in the woods and more ideas, nascent on the liminal edge of consciousness but threatening at any moment to spring fully into our attention if we slackened.
Naomi held the small pistol Marcus had brought in one hand, her jaw tight and her eyes wild. Her other hand held tight to Hector’s reins, and the big horse was snorting and stamping his hooves threateningly, rolling his eyes and trying to look everywhere at once. Marcus was checking the action on his rifle, making sure he was clear. It seemed as though Marcus, too, had just woken, so the howling had roused him as well.
Feeling utterly useless beside my armed friends, I selected one of the branches of firewood that we had and lifted it in my teeth, setting it against the fire. The dry twigs and leaves still clinging to the branch easily ignited, and I carried it forward to stand beside my friends. I’m sure that I looked stupid, with my unbrushed tail slanted to one side and my hair matted from sleeping. A useless horn and useless hooves rounded out my stupid, useless body.
Glints of teeth and the hungry panting of eager hunters closed in around us. Soft feet padded on the leaves as they circled. My ears swiveled every which way, trying hopelessly to track them.
“They’re coming closer,” Naomi whimpered. “I think they’re coming closer.” She twisted in place, trying to look around as much as her horse did. The pistol was held in a very professional grip, as might have been expected with her family being the way it was, but, if she had ever been menaced by a pack of unspeakable predators before, it wasn’t showing.
Marcus, too, looked nervous, but he was holding together much better than she was. Even though it appeared as if he had been yanked from a deep sleep himself, with his shirt thrown on inside-out, he was alert and intent upon protecting us. He half-lifted the rifle, trying to spot targets among the shifting shadows. For a moment, I felt like cursing Naomi for putting on a poor showing for our gender, and the thought almost made me laugh.
Maybe I was developing an unhealthy response to my situation. Then again, I was getting pretty close to losing it. The beasts started to bark, baying in low, hungry voices.
“We shou’ try t’ scahe t’em ohff,” I muttered around my branch. “If ‘ey get ‘old, wehr skewed.”
“What?” Marcus demanded of me, looking down briefly.
“She said, ‘We should try to scare them off. If they get bold, we’re screwed,’” Naomi supplied.
“Okay,” Marcus muttered. “Okay,” he added, as if the first time wasn’t enough. He lifted the rifle butt to his shoulder. “Fire two shots, no more. We’ll need it if they rush.”
“Fire where?” Naomi asked, squeaking slightly.
A hulking shape presented itself.
“Anywhere!” he growled. “One, two, three!” Quickly, I flattened my ears.
The rifle barked twice, the sound painful from this close. I never heard what happened to the first bullet, but the second hit something hard, off in the darkness. Belatedly, Naomi’s pistol rang out its own song, and an unoffending tree took a round nearby. A lupine yelp signalled that the second round had found at least some portion of our assailants. Hector screamed and reared, but Naomi had him well in hand and tugged hard on his reins, holding him still.
Trees erupted as, for probably the first time in its history, the Everfree Forest was violated by gunfire. Birds squawked and fled in panic, barely visible shadows of wings and feathers taking off in all directions. Around us, the creatures melted away. Some splashed across the stream below, some crashed through brush as they dove off the cliff I had seen, while others simply melted away into darkness. As quickly as it all started, all was silent. It was as if someone had gone and switched off the world’s volume.
The crack of the fire as some of the twigs collapsed jolted us out of our stupor. Marcus turned to Naomi, giving her an annoyed look as he asked, “Why didn’t you fire on three?”
“You never said fire on three. I thought you were going to say ‘Go!’ or something like that,” she protested. She was having her own little panic attack and had put the gun down to stroke Hector’s mane. Seeing as how the horse had already settled, it looked rather as if she was trying to comfort herself instead. Oddly, that made me feel better—seeing her freak out somehow blunted the shame I felt in panicking earlier.
Spitting the branch on to the fire, I paused to consider something. “It’s almost morning. Why didn’t you guys wake me for my shift?”
Naomi ceased her ministrations toward Hector. Marcus looked up from checking his rifle by the light of a tiny flashlight. They both looked to one another.
“Let me guess, you switched off at midnight instead of doing three shifts.” Not waiting for confirmation, I sighed and waved a hoof, continuing, “Forget it. I get it, I can’t defend myself so all I could have done is screamed and cried anyway.”
“No,” Marcus said. I started to cut him off, but he got there first. “Daphne, hold on. You can stop right there. You were barely managing to stay on your feet at all last night and it was already late. We didn’t switch off at midnight because it was midnight. We only had two shifts and we wanted to give you a chance to sleep.”
I shut my mouth quickly. The full moon had been directly overhead. Of course, that could have meant anything on an alien world, but we had been so far relying on that correlation with our world. ”Sorry.” I said tersely, hanging my head. “Don’t tell me to shut up,” I added, half-heartedly. So what if he hadn’t actually said the words? He had meant it.
“Stop being stupid and I won’t have to.”
“You little—!”
“If you two start up again I am going to shoot you,” Naomi said curtly. “Save it.”
I scuffed a hoof. “Fine.” Damn Naomi, stopping us before it could get good. “He started it, though.”
“Who accused who first, again?” asked Marcus.
Naomi picked her pistol up and clicked the safety off. We wisely decided that there were better things to do at that point.
“What time is it?” I asked. Experimentally, I stretched out my legs and was rewarded with pleasant pops. There was soreness there and a potential for cramping, but that would be something to worry about as we went on.
Naomi lit the screen on her sports watch. “Five-twenty-two. Should be seeing the first slivers of twilight soon, if it’s the same as back home.”
“Should we try to get some rest?” Marcus asked, keeping the rifle on his legs. Doubtless, he planned on staying up regardless of what we did.
Naomi shook her head. “I don’t think so. What if those things come back? We do not want to be here.”
Stepping forward, I shook my own head as well, disagreeing. “No. If they come at us while we’re moving, they could be on us before we even knew they were there. We still have the fire while we’re at camp.” I butted my head against Naomi’s side and nudged her towards her tent. “You go get an hour or so of sleep. You were up last.”
Reluctantly, Naomi let me push her back into the tent, and I returned to sit opposite the fire from Marcus with my haunches on the ground. My poncho and scarf were shed and packed away, given the rising warmth and cloudless sky. I considered making breakfast briefly, but decided to wait a while so Naomi could at least nap for part of the morning.
Of course, I hadn’t exactly worked out how I was going to do any cooking in my present state, but I was sure I could figure something out. It couldn’t be disastrously difficult to set up Naomi’s little field stove—I hoped. Worst case scenario, I could prepare the cold food and granola. The fire rose higher as I pushed a heavy branch—a log, really—into the pit and let it catch.
Awkward silence fell over me and my ex-boyfriend, even as the sounds of night in the Everfree returned. For all that the illusion of security had been stripped away by the menacing of our camp, the building up of the fire had banished the eerie shadows and made the center of the cleared area warm and inviting. Even the nightmare seemed distant and unimportant.
Looking down, I lifted a hoof to consider it. Hard, keratinous, and uncaring, it stared back at me. Perhaps the nightmare wasn’t so irrelevant after all. A dream about drowning and fumbling every attempt to save myself because of clumsy, inadequate hooves was about par for the course.
“So,” Marcus broke the silence that lay between us, “you look different now. Don’t tell me, did you do something with your hair?” Cheesy jerk. Never was as funny as he thought he was.
“I cut it, actually, yes,” I answered, not letting him bait me. The last thing we needed was for Naomi to wake up and come murder both of us in a justifiable homicide. I would beg her to kill him first, so I could watch.
Or equi-cide. What does one call a pony murder? Probably a tragedy.
“It is shorter now. I actually kind of liked it long. It looked good on you.” Putting his sidearm pistol aside, he began to field strip his rifle. With no hope of replacing our gear barring a trip back to civilization, prudence in care would go a long way towards keeping alive our one advantage over the monsters.
There he went, trying to emotionally manipulate me again by complimenting me. “Funny, I wasn’t thinking about you at all when I cut it.” Oh well, Naomi would just have to kill us.
“Oh, right, you’re a horse, now, too,” he replied, his tone flat. “How’s that working out for you?”
“Great! It’s not like I’m going to be stuck like this or anything.”
“That’s okay. You’ll be the prettiest girl in the petting zoo.”
I scowled and looked towards the ground. A brass glint caught my eye, and I pushed some grass aside to find a casing from Naomi’s handgun. Experimentally, I tried to pick it up. No dice—it just tapped against the edge of my hoof and stayed right where it was.
“How did it happen again?” he asked after another moment of silence.
“I was wrestling with some ugly guy for a magic wand and it took me right in the chest,” I answered, gritting my teeth in concentration as I pressed at the spent casing, trying to will my hoof to pick it up. This only served to bury it into the soft earth and make my hoof dirty.
“Is that horn supposed to be good for anything?” he asked. Actually, it was rather nice having an opportunity to talk to someone normal about all of this. Naomi was definitely curious, but the hungry light in her eyes could be a little off-putting.
“Yeah, it is. It’s supposed to let me do magic,” I grumbled, giving up on the cartridge. Let it rot there for all time, or be picked up and used as material for a crow’s nest for all I cared. “Damned if I know how I’m supposed to do that, though.”
“Have you tried anything with it?”
“Yeah, setting you on fire.” I tried to keep the tone more joking than spiteful. Maybe just a little spite leaked in; it wouldn’t hurt anything.
Marcus shrugged, and began to reassemble his rifle. “I don’t feel like I’ve been set on fire. Maybe a little warm. You probably ought to review your technique.”
“Hold still a minute and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Yeah? Well, so long as you don’t try singing, I should be fine. Your voice could kill wildlife at twenty paces.” He rose, rifle in hand, going over to the packs. I stuck my tongue out at his back.
I was about to add something curt, but he pulled his shirt off and started searching for another. A turn to see the fresh shirt in the light exposed his bare chest to me, and, somehow, I had lost what I was about to say, my mouth having gone completely dry.
Shaking my head, I snorted noisily. I must have been more tired than I thought. Thankfully, the logistics of a hot breakfast occupied me as I made my way over to the packs myself. Out came the collapsible grill and the pot. Packets of oatmeal, sausages, and other useful goods stayed where they were until I could figure out cooking without hands.
Just as Naomi had surmised, the first edges of twilight were soon staining the horizon, meaning that Equestria matched up with Earth in surprisingly exact ways. The fantastic cover of stars, undimmed by city lights, had not yet surrendered to the dawn. I wished Amelia were here beside me, so she could point out the constellations and brattily assert her astronomical know-how like she always did.
Said wish was accompanied by a heavy heart, and I bit back a pained whimper. With the grill held in my mouth, I roamed back over to the fire and considered how best to approach the problem at hand. Carefully, I unfolded the grill and was relieved to find that it had a high, plastic-coated handle that would allow it to be moved in or out of the fire without risking fingers—or my hairy face. Leaving it there, I went back for the pot.
Briefly, I considered telling Marcus to go fetch water. The thought of sending him on errands greatly appealed to me in general. Maybe he could do it without his shirt on.
All thought was shoved violently out of my brain as I grabbed the pot’s handle in my teeth and trotted down to the stream. Dunking it in like a bucket, I let it sink a bit before pulling it up with only mild strain. It was strange how used I was getting to carrying things like that. The branches had been rough, but they didn’t bother my mouth as much as they would have as a human, and my neck was more than up to the task of carrying a heavy pail of water.
While Marcus kept watch, I gripped the grill with my teeth and put it closer to the fire, then left the pot on top to boil and kill off any alien bacteria. By the time the pot was bubbling I had gotten three bowls on the grass and a packet of oatmeal ready. Very, very carefully, I managed to open the packet and upended it over the pot with my teeth. The now-murky water stopped boiling at once, and I grabbed a long wooden spoon and started to stir.
“That’s actually kind of impressive,” Marcus said. “I’d say I’m shocked that you didn’t manage to seriously burn yourself, but that you did it at all is fairly incredible.”
“Could have lent a hand, you know,” I mumbled around the spoon. Of course, I had very deliberately not asked him for help and would have been grievously offended had he done so, but that was a detail he didn’t need to know.
Instead of retorting, he went and fetched some of the sausages, taking a long fork to put them on the grill beside the pot. They sizzled immediately, and he had to raise them manually to keep them from burning, turning them over each in turn.
A monster could have attacked us right then, and I don’t think we would have cared.
Naomi, surrounded in a halo of red hair that could have been its own sunrise, crawled out of her tent with a wondering expression. “Wow. That smells fantastic. I know that’s hunger talking for the most part, but just wow.”
As dawn’s first light chased the stars away one-by-one, we prepared our first breakfast on an alien world. Naomi had brought along snack-sized juice boxes and set them beside the bowls, along with some trail mix and a small bag of apples. Hector got one of them, the greedy beast, before he contented himself with the nearly virgin grazing. Great clumps of long grass, thick with clover, meant that we wouldn’t need to use up any of the feed Naomi had brought yet.
Of course, it probably wouldn’t be hard to find horse feed where we were going.
“You know, you could join him,” Marcus said, prodding my side, which made me jump slightly. “Probably save us a lot of trail food.”
I glowered at him, and carefully moved the grill back from the fire so as to take the heat off the oatmeal. Looking out at the little clearing, it wasn’t hard to remember a dawn long ago when that very same question had come up.
Conjuring the scene up, I could see a dark-coated unicorn filly sitting beside a makeshift tent that was more bedsheet than anything. She watched a little blond girl beating an egg with a fork in a small bowl, licking her lips hungrily.
“Be patient,” little Daphne told her friend, as Leit Motif tried to push her nose in.
“You burned them last time,” the filly pointed out. “Nearly set the whole forest on fire.”
“I’m going to get it right this time, and we got the fire out!” Daphne groused, elbowing the other girl back. “Besides, can’t you just munch on some grass if you’re hungry?”
Leit narrowed her eyes, snorting. “Oh, yeah? Just graze anywhere, huh?”
“Yeah,” young Daphne said, “we’re surrounded in the stuff. Don’t ponies eat grass?”
“Yeah, sure, on sandwiches, and it’s grass we’ve grown, not picked up off the ground.”
“Have you ever tried it?”
There was a pause. Daphne then boldly picked some grass off the ground and bit into a handful. Leit Motif dug in, too, pulling some up with her teeth. Both started to chew thoughtfully. Daphne’s face slowly started to pale, while Leit’s soured.
“Thif taftes awful,” Daphne whined through grassy mush.
“Yuff,” Leit agreed.
“Daphne?” Naomi called, interrupting my reverie. “Do you want cinnamon and sugar in yours?”
Snapping out of my recollections, I turned to find the bowls already spooned out. She had even gone so far as to cut my apple into slices and stick a straw into my juice box. Both she and Marcus were already digging into their sausages. All around us, birds were greeting the dawn with glorious song, while the penetrating rays of light set the nearby stream to sparkling. The richest green grass I had ever seen warred with clusters of violet and blue flowers, while the beds of red and golden leaves from those trees which had shed their burdens glowed with autumnal radiance.
“Yeah…” I was momentarily transfixed by my first true glimpse of this new world. “Yeah, I would, thanks.”
Settling down, I tucked my legs up against my body and lowered my head down. In full view of the others, I very nearly asked Naomi to help take my bowl out of sight so that they wouldn’t see me reduced to stuffing my face directly into my food. That was a mildly irrational thought—after all, Naomi had seen that last night, and it wasn’t like Marcus couldn’t see for himself that I was practically an invalid. Still, knowing that they knew, and seeing their faces as I ate…
Stalwartly, I dug in anyway. Let them stare if they liked. At the very least, I took the time to carefully slurp up the hot oatmeal rather than shoving my face into the bowl. Naomi’s family only stocked steel-cut Irish oats and, while they weren’t quite as good as when cooked in a crock pot overnight like they did at her place, they were still delicious. The apple slices were crisp and crunched pleasantly between my broad teeth, adding a satisfyingly fruity bite.
It took me longer than either of them to finish, so they set about packing up. By the time I was done, I felt replenished. With most of a night’s sleep and a full belly, it was almost as if I were whole again. That didn’t stop me from licking up every last speck of oatmeal, though, closing both of my forelegs around the bowl to hold it steady. Taking the bowl in my teeth, I ran it through the stream water before returning it to Naomi’s packs, then glanced around for more chores.
With little else to do to help them pack up, I kicked sand over the fire pit and tamped it down with a hoof. “Well, at least we won’t be in trouble with park authorities, whoever or whatever they may be.”
“Oh, can you imagine how cute a pony in a ranger hat would be?” Naomi said as she cinched the straps of Hector’s saddlebags. “Or even better, a Canadian Mountie uniform.” She patted the big Arabian’s flanks, cooing to him softly. “It’s all right, dear. Even though you can’t talk, I still love you.”
Watching her perform dexterous tasks with her hands was giving me a distinct sense of inadequacy again. Like everything else around here, it just served as a reminder of the terrible changes that had been inflicted upon me. Walking around on all fours was humiliating enough without having lost the ability to perform basic tasks. If I’d had shoes I couldn’t have tied them, and the fact that I didn’t need them was just one more sign.
Sitting around and sighing wouldn’t accomplish anything, however.
Actually, thinking about how strange my body was reminded me that I hadn’t really had an opportunity to examine myself. There had certainly been points during the night where I had taken stock, but it had been through a haze of exhaustion and hunger.
The creek afforded me a little distance from the others, so I moved behind some brush along the shore line that was within range of their voices, but would obscure me enough to afford a modicum of privacy. Sitting down, I went about examining myself properly. My forelegs were the natural place to start. Though strong and stocky, they had a peculiar flexibility about them, the joints bending quite easily and offering what seemed to be a full range of motion. Reaching up, I could touch the top of my head and scratch my own back.
This was all done with one forehoof braced against the ground, but it didn’t seem as if that was as necessary as I had thought. I tried to sit upright, craning back little by little as I lifted my other hoof. At first, my spine protested, but the proper angle wasn’t hard to find, with a little experimentation. Gesturing with both hooves to test my balance, I grinned and even folded my arms. It was fun to imagine the look on someone’s face if they came and saw me like this—perhaps a good trick to play on Marcus later.
Just as I was getting cocky, though, I craned a little too far and flopped on my back, hooves splaying in the air. I turned over with a grumble and shook grass and leaves from my coat. I’d already examined my coat, of course—cream hair, very unlike the coats of horses I knew from the farm and definitely unlike Leit Motif’s own navy blue. My tail smarted from where I had landed on it, and I reached back to massage the dock.
A tail, now, was probably one of the strangest parts about this experience, aside from the hooves. Humans hadn’t had tails for ages, barring some congenital abnormalities, and certainly never one like this. It was still mostly clean from the washing Naomi had given it, a sandy blond that was the same color my hair had been before. Getting used to it had been almost automatic after the first few steps—it seemed to have a mind of its own, tilting this way and that to help me keep balance.
Remembering once having turned a light on with it, I found that it could be swished back and forth with a little concentration. It could be flipped up or down, swung in a circle, or even tilted at odd angles. Now that was something Hector might envy.
“Daphne,” Marcus called, making me jolt, “are you done playing with yourself back there or could you answer a few questions?”
“Go to hell.” I swiveled my ears in his direction and rose up on my hind legs to look. He was busy cleaning his rifle again, while Naomi was making a hand-drawn map. “What do you want to know?”
“We fought off hell-only-knows-what last night. Do you have any idea what else might be lurking around the bend to gobble us up?”
“Uh.” A dim memory of seeing tall, dark shapes in the distance last night came to mind. Perhaps that hadn’t been a sleep-addled hallucination. “Yes and no. Oh, hey, I can stand on two hooves like this for a whi—eep!” My balance gave out and dropped me back to the forest floor.
“Well? Which is it?”
Spitting up grass, I walked over to join them. “Leit did tell me a little bit about the forest. She said that most ponies were afraid to go into it, and that all sorts of strange things would come out of it.”
“That stands to reason,” Naomi said, not looking up from her work. “Like the plant from New Zealand we found, there may be other places this forest opens up to. It bodes interesting questions for species migration.”
Marcus knit his brow. “Am I the only one not noticing that if that were true, we’d have monsters coming out in Massachusetts all the damned time?”
“As I said before,” said Naomi with a sigh, “there have been a lot of strange sightings going on for centuries near the park. Don’t ask me why no one’s ever caught a monster, though. Planetary travel is a new one on me.”
“Perhaps the ponies know more than we do?” I glanced up at my horn. “Unicorns do magic, and if that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.”
“You probably don’t.” Pedantry was one of Naomi’s favorite pastimes. “Keep in mind, if you have no idea of what the capabilities of magic are, it’s pointless to speculate about what it may or may not do.”
I poked her with a hoof, grumbling. “Would it kill you to pick a stable identity? One minute you’re a girly-girl, the next you’re a veterinarian, and now you’re a philosopher. Most people pick one and stick with it.”
She smiled beatifically. “Simple categories never capture the whole essence of a person, I say to the unicorn who was an airhead.”
“Hey!”
Marcus snapped his gun together. “So, you were saying about monsters?”
“Oh, right. Well, she thought I was ridiculously brave for coming out into my neck of the woods all the time. She asked me if I’d ever seen, uh...” Concentrating, I stared at a nearby patch of grass, reaching back into memory.
He gave me a steady look. “You’re doing that thing again.”
“What?”
“Ignoring me and spacing out.”
“I’m not ignoring you,” I said, distracted. “Nor spacing out, for that matter.”
“Sure,” he said in a tone that suggested he rather didn’t agree. “How many times did you blow me off like that, exactly? At least once a day?”
Growling, I rose to respond, but Naomi put a hand on the back of my neck and stilled me. I settled back down on my belly, snorting in a particularly horse-like fashion. “It’s not... look, when I was a kid, I read a book about memory techniques. There was a section about what are called memory palaces; they’re used to visualize information so you can remember it better later on.”
“The hell kind of childhood did you have, exactly?” He shook his head. “Running off with unicorns and reading dry textbooks.”
“Oh, shut up.” Settling back to find my thoughts again after the distraction was difficult. Strictly speaking, I had never had much need for an actual mental space to categorize things.
Normally, memories and imaginary images leap forward without much prompting.
For whatever reason, it always helped—and still does help—to think of water. I pictured an island, somewhere subtropical, or maybe Mediterranean, with a calm sea contrasted against a raging waterfall that cascaded down from high cliffs. The river atop those cliffs came from a spring, a fountain lined in marble and protected by columns. Chambers had been cut into the living rock, and from one emerged the thread of the memory I sought.
An image was conjured as I dove into the cave, and little Leit Motif appeared on the grass. She was looking at someone from the eye level of a sitting child. This was an early memory, from when they were still figuring each other out. It was easy to tell—back then, Leit had been a much more timid creature. She seemed to be hunched in on herself in a manner so habitual even she didn’t notice it, her green eyes wary. That brought a bit of a frown.
It had never really occurred before, but had she been running from something when she first found me? She’d had food with her, and it had to have been a pretty long way to walk.
“Daph?” Naomi asked, prodding my side.
“Oh, sorry.” I shook off the memory and turned back to Naomi. “She said there were timberwolves out here, as well as bears, karkinos, cerastes, lindworms, carbuncles—”
“Stop,” Marcus said, lifting his hand. “I don’t even know what most of those are and you’ve barely started.”
“Well—” Naomi began.
“No. I take it back. I’d rather not find out until I have to shoot it in the face. The last thing I want is to be paranoid about what might get me.”
“So,” I said, “you’d rather leave it to your own imagination about what horrible thing is going to leap out and eat you?”
“My imagination is nice and sedate. I’ll stick with bears and wolves, thank you.”
“Have it your way,” I said with a shrug of my shoulders—a motion that felt more awkward as a pony than I thought it would. “Say, are we about ready to go?”
“Yup!” Naomi said, rising as she folded up her new map. Hector, who had been waiting, stamped a hoof and chuffed as she slid up onto his back. “I was just about to ride around a bit and see if I can’t find a good path.”
“Don’t go too far,” Marcus said, slinging his backpack and rifle on.
Standing, I stared off into the distance. Birds were singing, and the wind rustled through the trees. In just a little bit I would be taking my first real steps into a new world. Even with the dire conditions surrounding my entrance here, there was still just a breath of excitement. A whole new horizon waited, just over the hill.
* * *
The wild wood that was the Everfree Forest was not lightly tread by ponies—nor by men.
Where Everfree State Park had been sane and reasonably safe but for the occasional bear and other hazards, the version near Ponyville was an altogether different beast. Even in late autumn, the air here was warmer than in Massachusetts. It was also far wetter. Marshy swamps made travel circuitous and difficult. The land rose and fell at its own whims, and we had to detour several times just to get around a fall that looked too dangerous to attempt.
Where moonlight had lent an ethereal beauty to our travels and made the darkness a terrifying unknown, dawn had brought a fresh new objectivity to the forest. A fog that had risen just after twilight still clung stubbornly to the low areas in a cloying mist, but the searching rays of sunlight revealed much. Patches of brambles warred for space with shrubs and ferns among the trees. Birds, many of them exotic, flitted from place to place, completely unafraid of us.
Attempting to mentally catalogue all the species in sight took up the first hour of the trip, at least. After spotting an honest-to-goodness green-billed toucan sharing a branch with an Egyptian vulture, though, my brain underwent a hard reset. There would be plenty of time to go birding when Amelia was safe.
Instead, I opted to fight with Marcus. He may have started it this time, actually, but it was hard to tell who had begun what once we started bickering. Being the generous and gracious girl—or mare—that I was, I chose to believe he was responsible.
“I really don’t see where you get off saying that my relatives are crazy. You got along fine with Naomi’s and they’re at least ten times crazier.” Marcus carefully strode over a green, moss-covered puddle. He was in the rear of our little party.
“So you admit that yours are at least a tenth as crazy as hers.” I glanced up at the sky and frowned at a potentially ominous cloud front. The last thing we needed was a storm.
“I already told you, that incident with the molasses tank was not their fault.” His face darkened. “And lay off my family. They’re quirky, sure, but they at least care what happens to people.”
“And just what’s that supposed to mean, you—”
“Guys,” Naomi interrupted from the front. “I know you two want to have it out, but please try and keep an eye on the forest.”
“He started it.”
“She started—” The sentence went unfinished. Marcus had stepped a little too close to the edge of the short cliff we had been following, and the loose earth there gave way, looking to take him with it. I turned at the sound, and managed to leap back and bite the front of his jacket before he tumbled into the ravine below. My own strength surprised me again as I reared back. Instead of merely hauling him to stable ground, I yanked him nearly on top of me.
We landed in a pile, him sprawled over me and barely catching the ground with his hands. My hooves were up, tucked close to my body, as our faces nearly touched, eyes staring wide into each other.
“Heh,” he said, after a moment’s silence. “Thanks.”
“Abluh,” I mumbled, incoherent.
“I should get up.”
“Habluh.”
Marcus rolled off, while I remained stunned on the ground for a moment. My increased bulk had brought us uncomfortably close to kissing. Even the thought of actually doing so as a pony was mildly revolting—especially with Marcus. For just a moment, though, I had felt like my old self there. Just a girl with a boy.
Naomi poked me with a long stick she’d picked up off the ground. I twitched.
It was ridiculous, of course.
“Daph.” She leaned over me, hair draping across one side of her face.
There was no reason for it. All we had done since seeing each other was argue and fight.
“Daphne, time to get up.”
“Huh?” I asked, staring up at her. The cool wind pushing ahead of the storm tossed loose autumn leaves through the air around her.
Naomi giggled. “Has your brain reset yet?”
I scowled at her and turned over, standing back up. With a disdainful flick of my tail, I trotted ahead, checking out the path, if it could be called that.
Travel through the Everfree was not as straightforward as I might have hoped. I was fairly sure that Ponyville lay to the west, but traveling as the crow flies had only gotten us into trouble. We had wasted most of the day circumventing a fast-flowing river until it could be safely forded. Now we found ourselves staring at a rock wall that towered no shorter than ten feet, an escarpment that ran north to southwest and cut off any direct passage further west. This, with the sun already partway down. Leit Motif must have known some other way, or she was the most determined little filly who had ever lived to come through all this just to see me.
At the very least, no more monsters had presented themselves—yet. Maybe as a little girl I would have been excited to see monsters, no matter how dangerous they were, or maybe if it hadn’t have been for the danger Amelia was in, but now…
Responsibility is almost as good at killing dreams as my parents, it seemed.
“Come on,” I called. “I think we should head south. The forest’s edge can’t be that much further.”
* * *
The best laid plans oft go astray. In this particular instance, the plan that involved getting to Ponyville in a reasonable timeframe had been sidelined by the reality of Everfree geography and our utter lack of experience at navigating it. The sun rose and set in the proper places, certainly, and the full moon followed its opposite course in the expected manner that night. It was little help when the straight line we had taken crossed the path of so many natural obstacles, from the river to the escarpment, which continued the next day until we hit another river. That one fed into a ravine that forced us to backtrack for several hours before we found a way through.
Without anything like a GPS or range finder it was impossible to tell for sure, but Naomi comfortably reckoned that we had traveled no more than five miles due west. If we could have found a clear view of the eastern horizon, we could have looked upon the area of our first night’s encampment with the naked eye and even made some details out with Naomi’s binoculars.
My watch—which lay now in my pack, staring up at me as I dug through it for a candy bar—had stopped at eight-thirty-four, fairly close to the exact moment of my transformation. It had been well over twenty-four hours since my transformation, and the possibility of catching up to those creatures who had taken Amelia was dwindling. If there was to be any further hope of rescuing her, it lay with the race of creatures Leit Motif belonged to.
The duration of our trip was reason enough to feel depressed. My parents would have called Naomi’s sometime yesterday, or her parents them, and they would have realized that none of their girls were home. Marcus’ family invested a great deal more independence in him, but they, too, would find it strange when he didn’t check in by morning at the very least. Someone would probably find his bike soon, no matter how well it was hidden. Then Naomi’s parents and Marcus’ uncles would notice the firearms, ammunition, and supplies missing. In a few hours, Everfree State Park would be lit up with search teams.
They would find my discarded clothing and smashed cell phone pretty quickly, since they weren’t all that far from Naomi’s place. It would be the first and worst sign.
School would have started by now. I sighed, and pictured it in my mind, though I didn’t distract myself by projecting it onto the environment as I often did with my other daydreams. They would be putting up Halloween decorations now, a couple weeks beforehand. In another few days, parties would be formed and invitations sent about by word of mouth. They were always great parties, too.
After a few more days, there would probably be an announcement. There would be memorials some time after that.
Gloomy and perhaps a little depressed at these thoughts, I wondered if Marcus would be up for another fight. That would cheer me up. Sadly, it seemed he was busy taking up the rear guard.
Maybe I would let Naomi have her way and brush my mane, but that would have to wait until we stopped for a bit. My hooves were—after nearly two days of walking and running—exceptionally sore, and a rest would be appreciated, but determination drove me forward.
Ahead of us lay two different possibilities. In one direction was a rocky wash, which must have been a dry streambed, and in another lay a meadow filled with rich blue bell flowers. Both were heading west, which was the way I figured we had to go.
I took a step towards the meadow. “Let’s go this way, it looks easier.”
“Hold on,” Naomi called over to me. She turned her attention to Hector. The big horse was balking, looking around wildly.
“What is it, boy?” Marcus asked. “Did Timmy fall down the well?”
Droplets of rain misted through the tree cover above. It looked like the front was going to break over us after all.
I groaned, trying to stay under the tree cover while we waited for Naomi to calm her mount. The last thing I wanted was to get soaked with all of my hair. At least this time I wasn’t liable to go into hypothermia. Before I could really start feeling sorry for myself, though, Marcus pulled out my poncho from the packs.
“When did you find time to buy all of this crap, Naomi?” He stepped over to me.
“That I took from Daphne’s house, actually.” She grunted, tugging on Hector’s reins as the horse started to jump a bit, firmly admonishing him. “Honey, stop it.” With a sharp tug, she pulled his head around to her own, looking him right in the eye. Hector snorted once, and pawed at the ground in a manner that was almost sheepish. “What’s got you so unsettled, boy?” She gave Hector a cross look, but unless he had become an Equestrian and gained a couple more pounds of brain matter, it was unlikely he’d respond. It wasn’t the first time he had gotten antsy with nothing to show for it, but Naomi still looked around to see if anything might have spooked him.
“Thanks,” I told Marcus. “I had forgotten about that.” Displaying once again the surprising agility of an Equestrian pony, I craned up on my hind legs and let Marcus help stuff me into the rain coat. It fell across my back, not quite covering my hind legs down to the ankle, but easily keeping most of the rain off. My forelegs stuck out of the sleeves, and I must have looked absolutely ridiculous.
“You look absolutely adorable,” Naomi gushed. “Now pull the hoodie up so your little mane stays dry. Hee!”
“You’re disgusting,” I muttered, doing just that. I was going to murder her one of these days.
Even as we readied to go, though, Hector started whickering in fright again. This time, I noticed something as well. My ears twitched, searching around. There was an odd sound, a slimy rustling in the leaves. It seemed to be coming from all around us.
“Guys, what is—Holy cats!” I screamed as a vine snapped up at me from the leaf-strewn earth. The moment’s warning given to me by the sound let me leap back, just barely in time to avoid being caught. The forest around our feet came alive.
Two muddy vines whipped around one of Marcus’ legs and nearly dragged him down. Squirming and thrashing, roots and ropy tendrils lashed for anything they could hold. Hector stomped furiously, screaming and crushing roots to pulp, while Marc tried to pull himself free.
I leapt, landing hard on the vines holding him and crushing them under my own hooves. They spasmed and released, but more were rising up, and I soon found my own legs held. Crying out, I tried to struggle free, but more and more latched on, and their combined strength exceeded my own.
Marcus was there then, cutting with a heavy survival knife, and together we worked free. Naomi leapt expertly onto Hector’s back and charged by, heading for the wash, which was free of plants of any sort, and we raced after her.
My hooves and Marcus’ knife gave us purchase. We skidded into the now-muddy river bed, hurrying after Naomi, who was ducking to avoid the grabbing arms of the trees that lay on either embankment. Some terrible, verdant laughter chased after us, a chattering of wood and vegetation, and I dared not look back as we ran.
Just as all hope seemed to be lost, just as it seemed we would have no choice but to cower against the onslaught of animated plant life, we broke free. Not only of the suddenly hostile vegetation, but of the forest and even the weather, as well. One moment, we were running under a hail of whipping branches. The next we were clear, running out over the grass of a rich, green plain under direct sunlight.
Stunned, I slowed and stopped. Looking back, I could see that the wash had led us right out of the forest and that the rain stopped mere yards from where I was standing. The wind gusted it against my face occasionally, but it was like someone had gone and drawn a curtain across the field.
All three of us stared around, poleaxed. Fresh air carried by a gentle breeze caressed us, and I exhaled, reluctantly. Tension that had built up in the night and the morning’s chase ebbed out, leaving only a few hard knots—those remnants would probably take weeks of relaxation to smooth out.
Naomi and Hector ranged out ahead, the horse and rider exulting in the land, as Marcus and I caught our breath. It was a far cry from the claustrophobic enclosures of the Everfree—a land of rolling, grassy hills, dotted with trees and run through with clear, sparkling rivers, all framed by gentle, purple mountains. There was no sign of Ponyville, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that we were near.
It just reminded me so much of Leit Motif. Something of sunshine and gentle innocence.
Whatever had been after us in the Everfree didn’t seem able to exert influence over where we were now. The branches of the nearby trees stretched out to us, but their ardor cooled, and they stilled. At least it hadn’t been a dragon or something more tangible. Somehow, I didn’t think a mere biome change would have stopped one of those.
I trotted after Naomi, shuddering at the thought, and was rewarded with the warmth and freedom of the sunlit hills. A trot turned into a canter, then into a gallop, the wind running through my mane. I couldn’t help myself any more—I shed my raincoat, tossing it at Marcus, before giggling like a child and rearing with all hooves flailing. I ran.
I’d run a few times as a pony, but never in broad daylight, and never for the sheer joy of it. Soft earth vanished under my hooves and my mane and tail blew in the breeze behind me. I ran up hills and across grassy fields. I sharpened my hooves on lone boulders and ran through clear puddles. I chased swarms of butterflies and laughed as they tickled my coat.
I had never felt so good just being me.
Surmounting a rise, I caught my first glimpse of pony civilization, and I knew that I had, at last, truly come into Leit Motif’s world. A slow river eased its way across the countryside below the cliff. Beyond that, orchards of apple trees coated the land. They radiated out in waves, a fertile explosion of cultivation that centered on a barn and household that looked tiny in the distance.
Ponies running a farm. That was just weird to think about.
Turning, I hurried to gather the others, taking the time to leap a fallen log just because it was there.
Marcus was sitting on a rock, watching the river go by with an unreadable expression on his face. He had his jacket off against the warmth of the day and was leaning back. I slowed, and then began to creep up on him. With my body low in the tall grass, I stalked him, my tail flicking in eager excitement. Lifting my back, I set my rear legs and leapt.
He cried out in shock as I swept him from the rock and bore him down onto the grass. We rolled together for a time before I landed on top of him, my forelegs draped over him. The look on his face made me burst out laughing. After a moment, he started laughing, too. He rolled and pushed me off, and then pounced while I was on my back. His hands quickly found my sides.
“No, wait!” I cried out, and squealed as he scratched my sensitive sides. “S-stop!”
He grinned villainously. “Don’t think I forgot that you were still ticklish.”
“I’ll k-kill you!” I laughed, flailing my hooves in a futile attempt to stop him.
“Should have thought of that before you decided to pounce me!”
My squeals drew Naomi, who grinned as she saw us down there. “You decided to play ‘tickle the pony’ and didn’t invite me? I am deeply offended.” Hector could be seen near the top of the hill, rolling in the grass with abandon. “And, as I recall, didn’t you two break up?”
Marcus and I paused. Instantly, we darted several yards away from one another. Marcus picked up his jacket, busying himself with it, while I smoothed my sides and mane as best as I could. “I was just... you know, after the Everfree...” I searched for words without much success.
“Just needed to relax a bit,” Marcus explained.
“So I see.” Naomi crossed her arms, her grin growing wider.
“I found Ponyville!” I pointed a hoof the way I had come. “Or at least, part of it. There’s a farm and an orchard over the hill that way.”
A hungry light came on in Naomi’s eyes, and she snapped her head around. Her fingers twitched, but she smoothed her hair to occupy them. “We should... scout ahead,” she said at last.
“That means me.” I took a few steps forward. “Let’s go around the farm, actually. They’re not likely to know where Leit is—well, maybe, but she never mentioned living on a farm, just in town.”
“All right.” Naomi sounded anxious. Eager, even. “Come on, we’ll find a good place to hide.”
After collecting Hector, Naomi met Marcus and me at the ridge, and we started down to circle around the farm and head for Ponyville. The urge to break into a gallop and race all the way there built up inside of me, but I tried to restrain myself.
In a very short while, I was going to discover the fate of my old friend.
* * * * * * *
I'm really glad we've gotten to this point. Just over the hill is Ponyville, a place Daphne has dreamed about since her earliest childhood. In recent years, she has come to believe she will never see it, that it was just a beautiful figment of her imagination.
Now it is here. It has lain waiting for her for eight years, and someone – somepony – there has been waiting for her in it.
I'd like to thank Morning Angles for busting his rear in getting these chapters ready for publication. We couldn't be here today without him.
Stay tuned next time to see where Amelia has gone. After that... well, you'll see.
Please remember to comment below. It's a journey you and I are taking together, after all, and I want to hear from you. You're all my Marcuses and Naomis and Leit Motifs.
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Twelve thousand, nine-hundred and seven words.
Five days.
Four reads through.
All for you, kind readers, so you can continue your journeys. Please, enjoy~
This continues to be one of my favorite stories.
3167308
3167406
Nom nom delicious praise.
Any thoughts?
I love this story!!! Chapters never fail to keep me enthralled! Keep up the awesome work!
3167690
Great to see you like it! Any good thoughts on this chapter?
Well, a change of scenery seems to have done them some good. If I remember my map correctly, they should have come from the south-western side of Ponyville, somewhere close to Fluttershy's home. Perhaps it's time to see the state of affairs in Equestria proper.
2 chapters! In a relatively short time too! Me gusta!
Okay, Marcus. I'm starting to warm him a little more. He's got a goofy sense of humor but it builds up on you after awhile. Plus that scene where he hides the plant to keep Daphne from freaking out... you're a good guy, Marcus. Keep up the good work, son.
I like Daphne's characterization too. Obiviously she's kind of a bitch right now, but that just means plenty of room for character development! Also she's totally tsundere for Marcus. We all see it, Daph. You're not fooling anyone. Ah, oblivious teenagers.
One thing I just realized though, you violated one of the HiE commandments! Thou shall not have thy characters wander out of the Everfree! Ah well, since you've done such a wonderful job so far, I suppose I shall forgive you. This once.
More mysterious monsters in the murky marsh (and other words that begin with m) that is the Everfree. Although I'm glad we're getting to Ponyville, I'm going to miss the encounters with the unknown that we've seen in the previous chapters.
Are bits getting added on to chapters already written and published, or is that just me skimming it?
Either way, Marcus is still a bit of an arsehole, and Daphne and him are getting back together for some reason. In fact, for some reason they broke up too, which isn't a problem that's been adressed. That seems a bit backwards to me.
Not going to stop reading though, unless something really fucks up. Like it turns out Massachussets was a hoax all along and everyone is ponies and just never noticed.
3168886
If something that stupid ever happened in the story, I wouldn't be editing it.
A little bit of why Daphne and Marcus broke up is addressed this chapter, between the lines. It's my notion that it's a fresh break up, within a couple of weeks, but I don't know the whole story yet. That's still locked up tight in Ether's head. As for them getting back together? We'll all have to wait and see. I can't pry an honest answer out of Ether about that, either.
He's playing things very close to the vest, even with me.
And, no. Once the chapters get submitted now, they're largely set in stone—barring some major formatting faux pas.
3168118
Wow, I have no idea how you did that, but you nailed the geolocation. Daphne passes right by Fluttershy's house without remark, of course.
3168628
The Everfree is significantly important to the mythology, or else I wouldn't have done it. I'll give you a hint: what's related to multiple worlds and forests also.
Amelia will get her fair share of weirdness, believe you me. She's the one who gets to have the strange and mystical adventures.
3168886
First chapter had a serious revision since I first published it, once I got a hold of Morning Angles. Nothing significant changed in terms of content, but grammar and such had to be cleaned up.
It's not been explicitly stated why Daphne and Marcus broke up. They both definitely had their reasons, but I'm a'gonna say right now that it was mostly Daphne's fault. Marcus isn't the most mature of human beings, but Daphne was in many ways not ready for a relationship of any sort.
Consider how emotionally crippled she was after Leit Motif left her and you might start to get an idea of what she was like. Even though she's trying to put herself back together, she isn't the same person she was as a kid. Trauma leaves deep scars.
Marcus being a dick is just him acting out on his sense of hurt and betrayal. He wouldn't have come all this way if he wasn't genuinely compassionate.
3168935
Oh, dear gods, I hope that's not what I'm planning.
3169003
*whistle*
Of course it isn't Narnia, but I loved the imagery so much.
It actually won't come into play during the story directly (though it will appear again), but that lantern marks a road into another world entirely. The moon that Amelia saw then was neither Equestria's nor Earth's.
Daphne is such a great teenager. Practically everything she says and thinks in this chapter reads like a Livejournal entry from my classmates back in high school. But rather than being annoyed when she talks about a fight with her best friend, how useless she thinks she is, or how hot her ex is, I really feel for her. It's like she's a friend on LJ, rather than a random acquaintance. If you can get readers feeling like they're friends with the protagonist, you're really doing something right.
Under normal circumstances, I might be creeped out by Marcus' continuing attraction to Daphne even as a little pony... but in this case, I think it's selling me on him more. There's just something appealingly honest about it.
Also, holy crap, fan art! Nice. I pictured Naomi's hair as being huge, but man, that is like anime-level hugeness. And of course it's blowing around like there's a nearby supermodel fan. I'm not knocking the artist here though, I think it's cute.
3165907
You're a machine. Thank you!
3169384
Marcus is not attracted to ponies, it's just very easy for him to imagine Daphne still being there. Their leftover romantic tension is doing the rest.
I'd like to hope Daphne's problems are a little bigger than just a livejournal entry!
However, it could be worse! I'm glad you at least can empathize with her!
But hey, keep in mind, she's been bloody exhausted this whole time. She pretty much collapsed into her freakishly symbolic nightmare. Still, I have very deliberately tried to capture the teenage mentality - she totally is still one, after all.
Also, yes, that artist is fantastic.
3169384
You know, the odd thing is, I still feel as though I'm not working all that fast.
That said, I'll be starting on chapter six after an oil cha— I... I mean, a drink.
The more I read this story the more I like it.
Hhhhhhhnggggggh. So we don't get to have a meeting between humans and ponies this chapter, and next chapter we'll be with Amelia... Why must you tease me so?
3169668
Hey, if you want to be really specific, Marcus and Naomi won't get to meet ponies for several more chapters to come.
3169797
Don't tell him that, you monster.
3169943
Ahahaha. HAHAHA. AAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
3169797
FUUUUUUUU-
Wait, you didn't say Daphne. I wonder what that could mean.
I thought you said the next 2 chapters would be about Daphne and the others during the week covered by Amelia. now the next chapter is Amelia again?
3172660
Not precisely. If I did that, we'd need to wait until Chapter 9 or 10 to see her again.
Which is... doable. I've discussed that.
3172660
As it stands, I don't think anypony gets the protagonist spotlight for more than a solid chapter before switching off. At least for a little bit. Likely done on purpose, but what purpose that is—other than to drive us all INSANE—is beyond me.
3173150
I thought you fixed the ramblings? jk.
/but i did think the chapters were going half to 1 of the girls and half to the other.
3173214
More or less, yes.
That was...
Extrordinary.
This needs more notoriety.
3175670
I can't agree more
. I would welcome – indeed, encourage – you to promote this!
Poor Naomi, kind hard to watch Daphne chew her out like that for little reason. Although understandable on her side; she had to crack at some point, having one's species altered would have to really, really screw you up mentally. Good to see Naomi knew how to handle it though.
Well, looks like it is the real Ponyville afterall. Who knew? Interesting the portal between worlds was in the Everfree, guess that explains how Leit found it but most others haven't. But then why put copies of the Mane 6 in place? (I saw your post about put the pieces together and take a guess but didn't have time to do so as of yet, I may or may not in the end but I thought it was a cool idea)
My guesses on Leit Motif...
1. She's in town, we'll met her, they team up
2. She's been replaced by the bad guys as part of their plan, they need to rescue her and Amelia
3. She's the Biggest Bad behind all of this. Why? I dunno.
3176127
Well, it's not 3, I can tell you that right now.
3176140
Worth a shot. Daphne didn't exactly do too well in the years since, Leit having gone through similar heck wasn't too farfetched...And ponies have gone off the deep end and tried to destroy the world for less on this show (NMM, Sunset). We'll just have to wait and see how it really turns out.
3176192
Ponies have a disturbing habit of going flying off the deep end.
3178172
Every time you reply to News, I think you're making a joke, like you're making an announcement or something. And then I feel bad because that's just the guy's name.
And it's an excellent name.
Sorry, News~
3179168
Breaking News!
What? I was just shouting his name.
I now know how a heroin addict feels when they need their next fix. COME ON! I NEED ANOTHER CHAPTER!!! *shivers and rocks back and forth*
3187098
*dangles Chapter 6*
Come and geeeet it.
3187106
*pops you with a tranquilizer dart and takes chapter 6* .....if only.... LOL!
3169456
I think my comment came off more flippantly than I intended. Let me clarify/backpedal a little bit. The tone of her narration and the words which Daphne actually speaks form an elaborate and sympathetic model of a troubled and (as you noted) very stressed young mind. The mingling of really important troubles, like her sister being kidnapped or herself being turned into a little pony, with more every-day troubles, like arguments or romantic tension, makes her more believable, not less.
And Marcus can justify his desire to make out with pony-Daphne however he wants.
But in seriousness, what you say works too. Having his ex change into an alien will really put to the test how much he cares about her. I think that's a very interesting conflict on both sides.
3197601
Glad you think so! Stay tuned, because we're updating in just a few hours.
3197628
You can't count just the hours you'll be awake, Ether.
Especially since I'll be awake for all of those hours, more than likely. Buck insomnia.
But, yes, update incoming, folks!
Ah, this is the sort of story that fills me with jealousy and awe in equal measure. Thank you for making me feel inadequate, and for giving me something to aspire too. I cannot wait for more.
3197792
Ether will be very pleased to hear that—when he wakes up.
I'm pretty pleased about it, myself, even for the two bits I contribute to things. One of these days, I need to actually write something of my own, as well. Editing for Ether has put all sorts interesting ideas in my head. Stick around, chapter six is coming in short order.
3197792
I am indeed filled with glee. Should I feel bad for gloating?
Ah! The sweet sting of conflict.
I really do appreciate the sentiment, though!
It is not a shame, but a crime that this story doesn't have over 10,000 vies and a thousand likes. What can we do to change this.
The only way I really find new Good stories on this site is to look under the fav's of good authors I've found, and so on and so forth.
I can follow a chain all the way back to the first one I read, Past Sins I think. I found this one from looking at Deamon of Decay's page.
Naomi has such epic hair. That fanart is fantastic.
I'm really liking Marcus. He seems like a nice guy, and the mildly uncomfortable attraction he is having for Daphne is fairly hilarious.
Sounds like a band.
Chapter 5 ending: In a very short while, I was going to discover the fate of my old friend.
Ominous line is ominous?
I think I missed something. Did Leit Motif ever actually mention Ponyville? Or is that just me missing something?
3486743
Leit Motif regaled Daphne with an unspecified number of stories about the pony land, which are recalled as convenient, for a girl who was born in a sad, sad world where MLP:FiM never aired. aka it's magic
3486743
3532481
If she'd seen the show (which doesn't exist in this setting!) then she would know a lot more useful information~
So she avoid the Apple family.