Spritelight

by Makitk

First published 27th of June, 2013

The borders between planets are disappearing, and a human girl and her girlfriend are the only ones able to stop it.

Princesses are not all born into royalty. Sometimes you can find them in the oddest places.
Like on Earth.

When her girlfriend reveals she's growing a tail, Josey is far from realizing she will be the last hope for both Earth and Equestria.
Nor is she prepared for the hardships that come with the task.

Josey 1, Chapter 1

"It's not something you can see, really. I mean, I hide it well. A few long sweaters, a little tucking here and there... it's easy enough to keep people from seeing it. But it starts to hurt after a while, you know?", my best friend Rhonda told me, and I looked up from our homework assignment to look at her in mild confusion.

It was just past 4pm on a Friday and Rhonda had followed me home from school to stay the weekend. We're both students at the only public school in the county, and with my house just a block away and hers outside of the town's borders we often spent our free time at my place. She spends more time in my room than I do myself, really. My mom sometimes jokes that Rhonda should just bunk up with me since she's practically living with us anyway.
The sun's light was shining into the room from the rectangular window in the West wall, reflecting off of the mirror over the dresser, and illuminated Rhonda's face in a way that made her curious statement and worried look all the more daunting. There was a light in her eyes that wasn't supposed to be there and I wasn't sure if the sunlight was the only reason for it.
"What are you talking about, Rho-Rho?", I wondered, lifting my left hand up to shield my eyes from the sunlight trying to blind me. "I thought we were doing calculus?"
Rhonda looked down in sudden embarrassment and her hands dropped to her lap to fidget. "I... I dunno? I guess I just need to talk about it to someone? And you, er... You're my best friend, Jo. You know that, right?" She looked up with a hopeful expression at that and I dropped my pencil on the table and reached out to hold her hands in mine.
"You know I am. Rho and Jo forever. We made that promise when we were like ten." I smiled, and saw her lips move into a thankful smile as well before her face darkened again.
"You can't tell anyone, ok?", she asked with a light tone of fear to her voice, and I nodded.
"You know I keep your secrets safe, hun. Now will you spill it already so we can finish our homework assignments before dinner?", I joked, nudging her side with a wink, but Rhonda looked down at our hands in her lap and seemed to need a moment to steel herself. "Rho? It's ok. Whatever it is, it's ok. You know that. You can tell me anything," I tried, moving my right hand up to lift her chin a bit and make her see my smile, hoping to help her relax.
Rhonda tried to look away as I did, but then her eyes locked with mine and her shoulders dropped in defeat. "I'm growing a tail."

I blinked as my thoughts ground to a halt. "A... tail?"
"I'm growing a tail, Jo. I don't know why or how... I just... it's," Rhonda continued, breaking away from me and standing up. "Don't laugh, ok? Don't. Just... Look at it!", she exclaimed, pulling her long brown sweater up to reveal a bundled up collection of purple hairs just above her hip-hugging jeans. Where her tail bone would be.
I stared at it for a moment, then blinked and stared at it again. I don't think I moved in the time it took for my mind to come to the realization that something - a tail or a ball of hairs of some sort of twine or whatever it was - was stuck to my dearest friend's back.
I found myself reaching out with my left hand to touch it, and it moved when I did! I could see the muscles underneath Rhonda's skin contract as it did as well! I backed away immediately as it did, putting my hands to my mouth and trying to come to terms with the impossibility of it: Humans didn't grow tails! It was evolutionary impossible! Or so our biology teachers had told us, right?
"Jo?", Rhonda wondered, looking back at me and quickly hiding her tail from sight again as she saw my shocked expression. "I... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have bothered you with this. I just... I don't know what to do with this," she muttered, falling down on her knees beside me and looking up in great worry.
I brought my hands up from my mouth to rub heavily at my temples, trying to get my thoughts organized. I was trying to figure out how that tail could have come into existence. Evolution? Magic? Religious retribution for the pranks we played in the past? Even if I was more of the instigator in those and Rhonda just followed along?
"Jo? Are you mad at me?"
I quickly snapped out of it at that question and reached down to grab Rhonda's head with both hands, leaning in to press a kiss on top of her head. "Never. I'll never be mad at you. When have I ever been mad at you, Rho-Rho? I just... how... er... I don't..." I pulled back again and my confusion must have been clear enough to be felt from miles away.
"I don't know how! It just started as some small pains and then the hairs started growing. And they kept growing! Every day they just got longer and longer... I don't know what to do about them! And I feel it... I felt you touching it. I felt it twitch... I don't know what it means," Rhonda whimpered, tears forming in her eyes.
I slipped off of my chair and wrapped my dear friend in a tight embrace, feeling her shudder against me as she started to cry, gently rubbing her upper back while we sat like that. "It's ok, you're still you. Nothing changed. Let's find out together, ok? We can go to the library and look up what could have been the cause? Or just look it up online if dad ever stops playing his silly games."
Rhonda sniffled and poked my side. "Your dad."

I snickered at my own mistake. "Right, MY dad. Sorry. You're just the closest thing I have to a sister, Rho-Rho. And we'll deal with it as sisters if you want. We got all weekend, right?"
I felt her head bob up and down as she tried to compose herself again, her hand moving up behind my back to rub at her face. "You're still the same girl I played hopscotch with back in elementary. I'm never going to abandon you. And I won't tell anyone about it. Cross my heart and hope to die," I moved back a little and crossed a finger over my heart with Rhonda smiling up weakly and mouthing the second part of the sentence with me, "stick a cupcake in my eye!" and we both covered an eye with an open hand while laughing at the craziness of it all.
It was a silly little thing we picked up from a show we watch every Saturday; My Little Pony. I never really got into the old series since they were far too childish for my tastes. But the new series that started back in 2010? Friendship is Magic? Rhonda and me watched that so often that we memorized almost every episode of it.
The mane six - Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy - were kicking ass while looking cute and had decent stories written around them to boot!
"You know, come to think of it," I started, motioning for Rhonda to turn around and watching her faithfully follow my suggestions. She really was too much of a follower. "Lift your sweater again?" She did, and I stared at the way she'd used several hair bands to make a bundle of hair. "Would you mind if I untangle this, Rho?"
She looked back with a painful expression. "Please be careful if you do? I keep pulling the hairs out whenever I try to."
"That's because you're working behind your back, silly. I can actually see what I'm doing," I chuckled, and she relaxed a little more. "Ok, let me find a comb first."

"Top drawer."
I gently slapped the back of Rhonda's head at that. "Why do you know my room so much better than I do?" I got up and picked the comb and a hairbrush from the top drawer of the dresser, then moved back to where Rhonda was still sitting on the floor and looked down at her.
"You know, this may work better if you lay down on the bed," I realized, and helped her off of the ground. "Higher work area and all that. And you can just let me do my thing while you watch ponies or something."
"Dragonshy?"
"Didn't we see that yesterday?", I asked, but Rhonda immediately put up her puppy eyes at me. "You know that doesn't work on me, but sure," I sighed, dropping the comb and brush on the bed and walking over to the television to put the right disc in.
"You just lay down while, er, it's not still in the tray is it? Oh, yes it is," I sighed and went through the menus to find the right episode, pressed play, and walked back with the remote still in my hands to drop down on the bed beside Rhonda. "You ok, Rho-Rho?", I asked, and she nodded slowly while focusing on the television more than on me.
I smirked and turned to face the bundle of knotted-up hairs and carefully started to undo them while the title song to the series played in the background. "They're not exactly purple, though," I mumbled, trying to find the right word for the color of the hairs as they got untangled from the multicolored hair bands.
It didn't look like there was much hair to begin with, but as the knot started to get unraveled the hairs got longer and longer. When I finally got the last hairs freed up I had a bundle of hair in my hands that I could wrap both my hands around and still have it stick out. The hairs stuck to the hair bands were of similar length and were straightening themselves out on the bed beside Rhonda.

"It's more of a fuchsia?", I commented, looking at the strands as I grabbed the brush and gently combed through them.
"Isn't that purple?", Rhonda wondered, looking up from the end credits and blushing lightly. "That feels nice, Josey."
"It's pink, actually. How does it feel exactly? A bit like when I brush your hair?", I asked, taking my time with her tail.
"I think they're technically my hairs as well, Jo," Rhonda remarked, and I smirked.
"We could just start referring to your hair as your mane. This looks like a pony's tail," I rebutted, and Rhonda went pale. "Just relax, Rho-Rho. There's a lot of knots in this. How long have you had them bundled up like that?"
"It started last week after I came home from watching the rerun of 'It's About Time'."
"So six days ago. But they couldn't have been this long back then?", I reasoned, putting the brush aside and taking the comb to a particularly nasty patch of hair that just wouldn't come loose with the brush.
Rhonda sighed and buried her face in the pillow she was lying on. I could barely make out her mumbling into the fabric. "Tuesday."

I looked at the hairs and tried to judge their growing speed. Six days. Two hands and a bit. About nine or ten inches, or around 25 centimeters to keep my math teacher happy, so a growth rate of about one-and-a-half inch per day. And my math teacher can do the metric conversion on that if he so badly wants it. "So you've just been adding hair band after hair band whenever it got too long to keep in place otherwise?"
Rhonda nodded and looked back at me with a painful expression. "I couldn't let anyone see it! You know why."
"Rho-Rho, those movies aren't real. They're not going to lock you up and experiment on you," I sighed, finally freeing up the hairs I was working on and combing through the entire length of her tail without encountering more issues. "That's about it then. Shall we put a little bow around it?" I winked and Rhonda's face turned beet-red.
"Don't you dare, Jo! Don't joke about it!", she exclaimed, turning her body to move her tail away from me and flicking it in the process. I raised an eyebrow at that, then poked Rho's side.
"I'm not judging you, silly. But I'm still getting to terms with this as well, ok? You're the one with the tail, but I vowed to protect you back when David and his "gang" tried to make you into their designated victim. Remember? I'm wondering how we can keep you from feeling uncomfortable while also hiding your tail. Or at least making it seem like a fashion accessory. Maybe I could start wearing a belt with a fake tail attached to it and we could act as if we're just starting a new trend?"
Rhonda bit her lower lip at that while she pulled herself into a little ball on the bed. "I never asked for this."
I reached out and gently stroked a hand through her hair. The ones on her head, that is. "I know. But we're in this together. I'll always be there for you." I smiled down at her and she gave a weak smile back, reaching up to grab my hand in hers.
"Thanks, Jo."

"Kids! Dinner!", my mom called from downstairs, and we both looked up at the door before looking at each other again.
"Ok, so, let's get you one of my baggy pants and we'll tuck the hairs in there for now?", I offered, and got up to get them when Rhonda's hand stopped me.
"Let me?" she asked, moving to get off of the bed herself.
I blinked back at her but dropped back to sit on the edge of the bed at her insisting gaze. "Er, sure?"
"You wouldn't know where to find them anyway," Rhonda joked, flicking her tail at me as she walked away. I'm not sure if she did so consciously or unconsciously, but it was too cute a move for me to be able to come up with a reply.
She walked over to my "walk-in closet", which was basically just a door with a foot of shelf space behind it, the shelves removed to allow me to hang up my jackets and dresses on one side and stack up boxes with shoes and out-of-season clothing on the other side.
As she rummaged through the boxes, half bent over, her tail was flicking idly this way or that, happily using its newfound freedom to show itself off like a diva on stage. It was almost hypnotic to look at.
Rhonda finally found the right box and pulled some baggy slacks from it before turning to return to the bed. Seeing me stare at her with a blush on my cheeks sent her own cheeks ablaze and she quickly raised the pants up to hide her face with. "What?"
I grinned and pointed behind her at her tail flicking restlessly. "That tail makes you look so incredibly cute, Rho," I couldn't help saying to tease her, "you have no idea."
Rhonda threw the pants at me with a frown. "No fair joking around it. You have no idea what it feels like. It just keeps twitching," she muttered, taking off her jeans and throwing them my way for good measure as well. I held out the baggy pants she threw at me and got up from the bed, moving behind her to help her tuck the hairs down in them so they would stay out of sight from my parents, then gave her a soft hug.
"I'm actually kind of jealous of you, Rho-Rho. That tail just looks like the ultimate fashion accessory. If we ever find out how this happened to you, I may need to get myself one as well." I winked at her and turned for the door. "Want to go ahead so I can watch your rear?"
Rhonda winced at that. "If you keep saying stuff like that your mom is going to think we're lesbians, you know?"
I shrugged at that and looked away at a random corner of my room. "Better that than having her try to marry me to yet another dumb jock who happens to be her colleague's son. Erf. Frederick was so..."
"So not you?" Rhonda giggled softly, passing by me onto the landing.
"Exactly!", I exclaimed, throwing my hands up in the air before following behind and closing the door behind us.

I didn't notice it back then.
I attributed the shimmer in the center of my room to the sun's rays as it dropped down after another successful day of warming up the region.
It looked similar to the shimmer you see over the streets on a warm day; The distortion shown over any hot surface.
The strangest thing about it, the thing my brain immediately threw out as being just my imagination, was that it was shaped like a pony.

Josey 1, Chapter 2

Dinner helped Rhonda relax a little even if she kept blushing at the jokes my parents kept making. How they would have to hire a moving truck whenever she decided to move in with us, the expenses that would bring with it, how they would have to get a second job just to pay for Rhonda's tuition, and not to mention the amounts of extra groceries they had to buy...
Mom at least shut dad down when he started about "female hygiene products", saying she could tell him a thing or two about them that would make him lose his appetite and wondering if her cooking was really bad enough that he would chance that. Dad immediately jumped in with all sorts of reasons why mom's cooking was the best, and mom milked it for all it was worth.
When we were finally done with dinner, we excused ourselves to return to our homework assignments and I caught mom and dad share a glance between one another. Maybe Rhonda was right and they were starting to think I was lesbian even before I was really sure of my own sexuality? What is it with parents?
I followed Rhonda up the stairs, making sure her tail would be hidden even if there was some reason why the hairs would poke out of her pants, and we went back into the, now darkened, room. I turned on the lights while Rhonda freed her tail from its confinement, and I reached for the brush to help her.
"Hey, didn't we leave the brush here on the bed?", I wondered, not being able to find it, the comb, or any of the hair bands where I had last seen them.
Rhonda absentmindedly responded as she was far too occupied reaching back to feel at her tail as if she was still coming to terms with the whole idea of having it. "You must've put it back in the dresser before we went down?"
I was sure I hadn't done so, but when I opened the dresser I found the comb, brush, and even the hair bands all neatly organized within. "Hm. I suppose I did," I mumbled, picking up the brush and staring at it a bit.
It was clean. Not a single hair on it. Not mine, not Rhonda's, not Rhonda's tail's. No hair. The comb and hair bands were similarly void of hairs and this made me frown. No matter how hard I tried to keep things like those clean, I was always left with a hair or two on it. It made no sense.
I closed the drawer with a suspicious look on my face, caught myself in the mirror, and shook the feeling off. It was just another mystery on top of my best friend suddenly growing a tail, and Rhonda's problem came first on my list.

I gently combed out her tail and we went to sit at the desk again to finish our homework, with Rhonda leaning into me a little more than usual. I didn't mind. I was trying to focus on the problems we needed to solve so I wouldn't think about how the brush could've cleaned itself and put itself away.
Something didn't add up, and that was the whole problem with calculus. I found Rhonda correcting me several times as I made some mistakes that I should have normally caught, but we got through the assignment before bedtime at least.
Rhonda put on one of my longer nightgowns so her tail wouldn't be inconvenienced, and I slipped into my regular PJs. While it would help her overnight, her tail did keep flicking as we were brushing our teeth, sending the gown moving this way or that as if there was an odd breeze localized around her.
It made me giggle and spill all of my toothpaste over the bathroom sink until Rhonda realized what was going on and moved to stand behind me so I wouldn't get distracted by it. She was done brushing her teeth before I was, of course. I mean, I had to clean the toothpaste from the sink and mirror and walls. It was a mess.
Rhonda had already fallen asleep by the time I entered my room again, laying as close to the wall as she could, with ample space for me to crawl in bed beside her. She had taken to hug a large teddy bear I won at a carnival once and which she'd adopted as Mister Safety after it helped her calm down when she'd suffered a particularly bad panic attack.
I didn't know everything there was to know about Rhonda, but she was a collection of fears and shyness wrapped in a bundle of cuteness and I had felt I needed to protect her ever since I met her in elementary.
She was a bit like Fluttershy, in a way, and her innocence was refreshing in the otherwise dark and gloomy world around us. I turned off the light, crawled in bed beside her and closed my eyes to go sleep.

Two hours, and a dozen restless turns later, I found myself laying on my left side staring at the alarm clock on the dresser. Just a few minutes past midnight. We'd gone to bed around ten. What was it that kept me up?
It wasn't the tail. It was just another facet of Rhonda to me. I had accepted it as such and moved on. Of course there were the questions of why and how and what next, but those could wait. We would take care of those questions together.
Was it the brush? How did it move to my dresser? There was no-one in the house except for me, my parents, and Rhonda. And all four of us had been at the dinner table.
My window wasn't easily accessible from the outside, mom's thorny rose bushes underneath it made sure of that. The dining room was right next to the hallway and we would have seen anyone going up or down the stairs. How did it move? On its own? Objects like that couldn't move on their own.
I sighed and blinked at the clock. 0:14 just ticked away to 0:15. I reached up to rub at my forehead a bit. It made no sense. The tail, nor the brush.
I stopped rubbing my forehead as I felt something odd on it and sat up in bed to feel at it. There was a bump there that shouldn't have been there. It hurt a little as I pressed against it. Had I bumped my head and not realized it?
I pushed it again and winced from the pain. Whatever it was, it didn't feel right. I pushed up out of bed and walked over to the dresser, trying in the light of the moon to figure out what was on my forehead but couldn't see it. I had no choice. I had to turn on the light and hope Rhonda would sleep through it.
As I turned for the light switch near the door, I caught a glimpse in the mirror of a shadow moving behind me in the darkness and quickly whirled around to look at it. As I did, a dizzy spell overtook me and I slumped to the ground like a puppet suddenly getting its wires cut.

It was there that I woke up, with Rhonda gently nudging me as she sat beside me with a worried look on her face. "Jo? Wake up please, Jo? Are you ok? What happened?"
I stirred and felt my muscles cramp up. I had been laying in the wrong position, on a cold floor, and every joint in my body protested as they had to move again.
"Ngrrf," I groaned, reaching up to rub at my forehead in an attempt to wake up and snapping to full consciousness as I felt the bump in the middle of it. "OUCH!", I exclaimed loudly, the pain from touching it even worse than it had been during the night.
"Did you hit your head, Josey?", Rhonda asked, helping me get up and sit on the side of the bed. "Did you really sleep on the floor all night?"
I stared blankly at her, using both my hands to feel at the area surrounding the bump. "I don't fully remember. I think I went to bed?", I started, wincing lightly as I found the edges of the painful area surrounding the bump as I gently prodded at it with my fingertips.
"I got up after midnight to, er..." The memories were there, but they were getting more and more foggy as I tried to recall them. "Went to the dresser? I..." The shadow!
I quickly looked around the room but got a dizzy spell immediately following the rash movement of my head and sank sideways against Rhonda's form while trying to stop the room from spinning. "Not feeling too good."
"Want me to get some water?", I heard Rhonda ask, but her voice sounded like it came from far away. "Jo? Josey?", she called out in concern as I lost consciousness again, the darkness at least giving me a respite from the pain.

I woke up with a wet cloth getting dabbed to my forehead, laying on my back in the bed with the blankets covering me. I blinked up at Rhonda's worried face staring down at me again and a feeling of Deja-Vu came over me.
"Why is it always you who comes to my aid?", I asked her, and she smirked while taking the cloth from my head and dabbing it in a bowl of water.
"Because it's always you who comes to mine, Josey."
Rhonda smiled weakly, putting the cloth back to my forehead. The cold thing felt like a saving grace to the headache I had, dampening it a little and allowing my thoughts to surface more easily.
"What happened?", I asked, trying to remember what happened through the fog in my head.
"I woke to find you on the floor. You must have hit your head because there's a big bump on it. When I asked you about it earlier, you suddenly fainted again. I don't know anything beside that," she offered, and I freed a hand from under the blankets to reach out for hers.
"Thank you for taking care of me," I sighed with a smile, closing my eyes and falling asleep properly.

It was dark when I woke up again, and found Rhonda snuggled up to my side in the bed again. The smell of soup lingered in the air and I tasted some remnant of it in my mouth.
I licked around my mouth a little to get the taste out and my saliva production going, while trying to get the shadows in the room in focus and failing miserably at it. I noticed a slight movement in the room and tried to look at it, but something kept me from moving my head.
An unfamiliar voice whispered something in my ear, but it wasn't in a language I knew. It just sounded like "boshashdemburibiboshbu," or something... I don't know, I was not in the right state of mind to memorize it.
Somewhere inside I felt that it was all going to be ok, but I don't know why I felt like that. It did help me close my eyes again to sleep, all fears surrounding the shadow or the voice disappearing from my mind.

Josey 1, Chapter 3

I woke up refreshed in the morning, with Rhonda still clinging to my side, and turned my head to face her. Something moved with my head and I frowned a little at it. When I tried to turn my head to get a better look at it, the darn thing moved with my head again, constantly staying just out of sight!
I could barely catch a glimpse of a shadow of a thing that looked like I was wearing a baseball cap or something, but not as wide. But I couldn't tell what it was exactly. My movements roused Rhonda, and I turned my attention back to the sleepy girl blinking her eyes open to the morning light.
"Hey, good morning, Rho-Rho. Did you sleep well?" I asked, my voice sounding a bit raw due to lack of moist in my throat.
Rhonda stretched herself with a long yawn, which had me yawning with her, but then nodded and looked up at me to answer. Her mouth opened, but instead of words coming out of it, I saw her eyes go wide and her face get pale while her mouth just opened up a little farther.
"What? What's wrong? Do I have something on my face?" I asked, snapping to full consciousness, and she nodded quickly. "I do? Well, get it off then!" I meeped, and Rhonda quickly shook her head.
"Rho? What's going on?" Rhonda pointed silently at the mirror above the dresser, and I sighed while moving to pull the blankets off of myself. I swung my legs to the side and put my arms underneath me to push up into a sitting position. "Fine, fine, I'll go look," I muttered.
With Rhonda still in a state of shock, I pushed up from the bed to walk on over to the dresser. I still felt a little dizzy, and had to put my hands on top of it before I felt stable enough to look up at the mirror suspended above it.
"I don't see any," I started, not seeing anything out of the ordinary on my face, but stopped mid-sentence as I spotted the protrusion extending about two inches from my forehead.
It looked like, well, as if there was a bone growing underneath my skin.
My skin looked stretched out over it. Just my normal skin. Nothing abnormal about my skin, except for how it was sticking out. It looked a bit cone-shaped. A round, cone shaped, protrusion...

"You're growing a horn," I heard Rhonda gasp from the bed, and swallowed at the reality of things.
I was.
There was a horn growing out of my forehead!
I had to stabilize myself against the dresser as I felt my knees grow weak staring at the thing.
"How is... What... I don't even," I started, dropping to my knees and still staring at my reflection in the mirror. Here I was, a human girl, with a horn protruding from my forehead!
Rhonda quickly rushed to my side as I fell down, supporting me both physically and emotionally as I felt my tears break when her arms wrapped around me.
"I don't," I started, then turned toward Rhonda's form and cried without reservation. Rhonda let me. Even if I was parched from having just woken up, from not having had more to drink than whatever Rhonda had fed me during the previous day as I had laid unconscious in the bed, the tears just rolled down my cheeks and dropped onto her shoulder and upper back.
We sat like that for a few minutes until Rhonda's words started to register in my mind and I slowly started to regain my composure while listening to her babbling into my ear.
"...maybe a hat or something. I could go wear skirts again, I guess? We'll go through this together. You said so yourself. I'll never leave you, Josey. You've always been there for me and didn't throw me out when you saw my tail. I will help you with finding something to mask this. Cause I love you, you know? You've been my best friend for so long, I wouldn't know what to do without you. I just wish you'd had a tail as well. I don't think we're allowed to wear hats in school."
I rested my head on her shoulder and squeezed her gently. "Rho and Jo forever," I muttered through the tears, and Rhonda leaned her head sideways against mine and repeated the last word.
"Forever."

"Forever is a long time, you know?" Discord's voice sounded in the room, and both Rhonda and me looked up and around ourselves to try and find where the words came.
It took us both a moment, but then Rhonda gasped and pointed to a poster on my wall. The poster featured the actor John Barrowman in his role as Captain Jack Harkness, wearing a military overcoat. He looked quite the imposing figure, if not for the Draconequus curled around the man's shoulders like a boa.
Discord looked far too real to be there, and his movements, while the rest of the sun-bleached poster remained stationary, was enough to cause a feeling of unease in the both of us.
He didn't look like how he was depicted in the show at all. Well, he did, goatee and all, but he didn't look drawn. His head looked like a real goat's head. His claws like real claws. His scaled tail like real scales. They shined in the light coming in from the window as if he was really there in the room with us. As a two-dimensional representation of himself simply projected onto the poster.
Except he wasn't projected onto the poster. He really hung over Captain Jack's shoulders. His body disappeared where it went around behind the man's neck. He even had the tip of his tail tucked into Jack's overcoat, the dragon talons of his right leg disappearing under a lapel of it.
He seemed to bask in the attention that we gave him as our minds tried to come to terms with what we were seeing. His bird-like claw was stroking his goatee slowly while he was waiting for us to make the next move.
"You're not real," Rhonda finally breathed out, and I shook my head to it as well.
"I'm not?" Discord returned, mockingly pretending to be hurt at her statement. "Maybe you would listen to me better if," he stated, disappearing from the poster and suddenly appearing on the television - which was turned OFF - and continuing, "I was here instead? A media personality coming to you live from Equestria?"
We turned our heads to follow the sounds and Rhonda shivered. I pulled her a little closer against me and frowned at Discord on the television leaning against one of the edges of the screen as he proceeded to do stretch exercises.
"Is this your doing?" I bit to him, pointing up to my forehead.

Discord stopped doing exercises and moved his head closer to mine to inspect my horn. It was a really strange effect to see his body in the television but his head mere inches away from mine.
It was like watching a 3D movie but the effect was accompanied by a feeling of unease worse than any movie I'd seen before then.
"Why, you seem to be growing a horn. How quaint," he remarked, and I felt the urge to punch him. "No, that's not me. That's you and you alone."
Discord smiled and pulled himself back into the television with a sucking sound that only added to the uneasiness. It sounded somewhat like the sound wet dog food makes as it drops out of the can, but played in reverse.
"Well, maybe you did have a little help. You see, we have a small problem which has regrettably galloped off into this world," Discord continued, and Rhonda and me shared a glance between us.
"What kind of a problem?" I asked, seeming more up to the task to talking with a fictional character than Rhonda was at the time.
"Well, one of my, ahem, students... has gone rogue," Discord admitted with a flush, seeming genuinely embarrassed for just a brief moment. It didn't take long before he reasserted himself as the king of chaos however, and he returned to smiling enigmatically toward us.
"She's got the weird little idea in her head that Earth should become the new Equestria since it has so much more room than we have in this little box here," he offered, growing in size on the screen until he had to fold himself up just to fit within its borders. "See how cramped it is?"
I sighed, then mumbled under my breath, "I wonder who gave her that idea."
Discord fell out of the television screen and onto the table my television was set up on, falling flat on his back and gripping at his chest.
"Oh. OH! I'm HURT that you think I had anything to do with it!" he decried, then got up to sit on the edge of the table staring at us, one leg hooked over the other and his arms folded in front of him.
"Now look here, I do love a bit of chaos now and again. But Fluttershy opened my eyes to the concept of moderation. If Earth succumbs to this filly's magical tricks, it will offset the balance in a way that goes beyond chaos. There are things out there that are far, far worse than I could ever be," he revealed, his eyes narrowing at us.
"The more she destabilizes this dimension, the more they're drawn to Earth to destroy everything and everyone within it. And how can I play with this dimension when there's nothing left in it? Hmm? You tell me that."

I stared at him, flabbergasted at his sudden candor. Rhonda was the first to snap out of it and pushed herself up from the ground to approach Discord.
"Rho?" I tried, but she made a motion with her left hand that silenced me again.
"I have a tail," Rhonda started, as Discord just peered up at her in mild amusement.
"So have I, aren't they great?" Discord replied with a grin, flicking his tail behind him.
"Josey has a horn growing out of her forehead," Rhonda continued, and Discord reached up to his own horns.
"Oh, just wait until the skin breaks. Fever dreams are so wonderfully chaotic," he offered to me, looking past Rhonda and almost missing the movement of her hand until it was too late.
Just as I thought she was going to hit him, he disappeared in a flash and appeared life size beside me in the middle of the room. "Now that wasn't very friendly," he huffed as Rhonda's attempt to slap him ended in her moving her hand through empty space.
She let out a frustrated sigh and turned to face Discord again, her eyes glaring at him with barely held-back anger.
"To be fair, I don't think either of us is very happy with what happened. First she grows a tail, then I grow a horn, and then you drop in and... what? What do you expect of us? Why do you explain these things to us?" I asked, feeling my own anger rise at Discord's continued games.
Discord knelt down beside me and reached out to tap my horn once with his bird-like talon. "Because your magic potential is the highest of all her victims so far."
I winced at the pain shooting through my head, then looked up in confusion once it settled. "What does that even mean?"

"There's no magic in this world," Rhonda stated, joining me by my side again and helping me stand up so we were both at Discord's eye-level.
Discord smirked at her statement and placed his feline hand on her left shoulder.
"Au contraire! It has always been here. And some of you have been using it. But now this filly is unlocking it at a faster rate than it gets used and is drawing the wrong kind of attention to herself. Zecora came to check up on you yesterday, as she has with all of this filly's victims. All the princesses are hard at work to find a solution for this problem. So, they sent me, her teacher, to come explain things and, well... take you to Equestria."
He moved his paw from Rhonda's shoulder and waved it toward the center of the room, a portal appearing there as he did. The shimmering oval showed a colorful landscape behind it, with the white walls of Canterlot not too far away.
Rhonda clung to my side and shivered uncontrollably, and I looked down at her to see her face wrought with fear. "You can't make us," I told Discord, pulling Rhonda closer and letting her hide her face against me. "I'm not going unless Rhonda's going and you can see how she's feeling about the idea."
Discord smirked at us both, then stuck his head into the portal and looked around to the left and right before pulling it out again. "I will be right back," he stated, disappearing in a flash and leaving the portal there in the middle of the room.
I helped Rhonda shuffle over to the bed and sat us down on it, pulling her close and just softly stroking her back. "It's ok, ssh... it's ok," I cooed to her, but I wasn't too sure myself. I had to keep up appearances for Rhonda's sake though. I had to be the strong one. All those panicky thoughts could wait until after Rhonda calmed down.

Josey 1, Chapter 4

We didn't have long to wait before Discord's voice started drifting into the room from the other side of the portal, sounding as distorted as the shimmering of the world we saw through it. It sounded like he was approaching it from the other side, but he was nowhere that I could see.
"...have to explain it to them. I'm not getting anywhere. Rainbow sorbet?"
Another voice replied, sounding almost an octave lower than Discord's, "No thank you, I had a big lunch."
"Suit yourself," Discord continued as he stuck his head around the left side of the portal - right into the room - and looked around to find us.
"Ah, there they are. I'll leave this to you then," he spoke to his unseen company, and pulled his head back. "Are you sure you don't want one?", he asked to someone to his left, but then shrugged at them repeating their earlier sentence and started walked off toward the walls in the distance, holding a sorbet that looked to be made of rainbows in his clawed hand.
I looked down at Rhonda who was still shivering in fear, but as Discord moved away she seemed to shiver a little less so. I wondered at the significance of that and totally missed the stallion stepping into the room until he stood right in front of us.
His coat was blue. Blue like the kind of blue you find at the bottom of swimming pools. His mauve eyes were staring up at us and his unicorn horn was so close to us that, if I would have reached out toward it, I could have touched it without stretching my arm out fully.
He was standing on all four hooves and he barely reached four feet from his hooves to his mane. The term 'little pony' really applied to him. His light purple mane had been combed back and looked like it took a lot of grease to keep it there, and his tail flicked idly behind him.
I couldn't see his cutiemark until later, but it was a quill on an open roll of parchment. He cleared his throat at my scrutinizing gaze and raised an eyebrow at me. "Do I have something on my face?"

I didn't know if I had to laugh or cry at that, and ended up doing both. "Yes you do!" I exclaimed, "And so do I!" I continued, and Rhonda peered up in confusion, her panic spell broken from my sudden eruption.
"Oh gods. This is so... so crazy," I sniffled in-between giggles, trying to calm down again. "So crazy. This. I don't even," I stumbled, ending up crying more than I was laughing and just staring at the colt's horn.
"How, er," I tried, wiping a bit more at my eyes while calming down again.
"You both have horns," Rhonda stated the obvious, and sent me back into a giggle fit.
"They're quite common for unicorns to have, yes," the stallion offered. "I'm Magic Ink. You can call me Magic, or Ink. Either works. As long as you don't call me Mink."
I just couldn't stop myself laughing from the absurdity of it all until I suddenly felt Rhonda's hand impact with my right cheek in rather a painful way. "Snap out of it, Josey! You're being hysterical!"
I reached up to feel at my burning cheek and stared up at her in shock. "I... I'm sorry?" I offered, but Rhonda already moved on to kneeling beside Magic Ink and smiled at him.
"It's nice to meet you, sir," she offered, making the pony blush lightly.
"Oh, I'm not a sir. Just Magic or Ink would work? Ink would be shorter," the pony responded in an awkward fashion.
"I usually spend my time in the archives, but now with everypony so riled up about this situation, I guess mister Discord couldn't find anypony else to help you two out? Er, I mean, it's nice to meet you two as well, misses Rho and Jo?"
"Rhonda and Josey," I corrected him, still rubbing at my cheek. "Is there any way to get out of this with our sanity intact? Because if my cheek wasn't hurting so badly I would be thinking this was all a dream."
"I'm very sorry, miss Josey," Magic apologized at my correction. "Mister Discord is the one who told me your names."
I smirked at this as I had half expected that to be the case.

"If it was a dream, you'd be talking with Princess Luna, miss. Not to me," Magic offered in response, and took a step away from Rhonda who had leaned in to look at his tail. "Er, I don't know what your local customs are, but could you not do that please?"
Rhonda pulled away as well, blushing fiercely as she moved to my side again.
"She's grown a tail of her own in the past week," I explained to the pony. "I think she just wanted to see the difference between hers and yours. Look, I know Discord said we are to come with to Equestria and all, but can we get dressed first please? We're still in our nightclothes."
Ink looked between us a moment, unsure of what I meant, and I realized the concept of nudity being an embarrassing thing was unfamiliar to him.
"Humans don't usually show themselves naked to others," I tried. "We don't have fur to cover us?"
Ink stared blankly at my further explanation, but then his ears suddenly perked up and he took another step back, right into a chair that fell over with a loud sound!
"Oh! I didn't... I don't usually... Oh, I'm so sorry! Let me, er... I will just be on the other side of the portal then. I won't look!" he quickly decided, galloping through the portal and moving to stand in front of it on the other side with his eyes facing away.
"Ah, Ink?" I called out after him.
"Yes miss?" came the reply.
"Do you think being in Equestria may speed up whatever's happening to us? Because if there's any other changes we're going to look forward to, we may not want to put on too tight-fitting clothes?", I asked, "I mean, Discord did say that someone is trying to make the earth into a new Equestria, and suddenly we have pony stuff growing on us. What's the end result?"
"Er... none of the old texts said anything about Equestria speeding up anything, but the spell she stole was created to make a pony out of something else, yes. You're most likely going to be like us if we can't stop its effects," he returned.

I sighed and looked at Rhonda, who looked back with big eyes filled with fear. "That's what I feared ever since Discord showed his face. Ok, easy-to-dispose of clothes it is."
"Halloween last year?", Rhonda quipped, and I winced at that.
"I'm not going to walk around Equestria looking like a pirate."
"I thought you looked cute," Rhonda replied with a shrug, trying to keep her fear down while focusing on getting us some clothes.
"Are you sure we're not a couple?", I sighed, walking over to the dresser and pulling out the brush, a pair of scissors, some needle and thread and the first-aid kit.
"Rho-Rho? If the skin breaks," I started, putting everything in a shoulder bag and putting it aside as I joined Rhonda near the bed, looking at what she'd put out for me to wear.
"I'll be there to help you through it," she offered with a weak smile, looking at my horn with a bit of trepidation.
A pair of baggy pants, a baggy shirt, and some walking shoes without laces later and we were ready to head into Equestria. I grabbed the bag, slung it over my shoulder, and joined hands with Rhonda as we stepped in front of the portal.
"We're ready, Ink. Unless you want us to step on your tail, you may want to move out of the way," I joked, and Rhonda looked up with a frown.
"Don't joke about that. You don't know what it feels like to have those hairs pulled," she muttered.
Ink moved out to the side and looked in our direction. "Just step through. It won't hurt you."
Rhonda and I didn't move. We just held hands and looked at one another, steeling ourselves for what was to come. And it was in that moment that I realized how deep our relationship had grown. How much I needed her.
And I saw it in her eyes as well. A shimmer of a tear growing in the corner of her eye. I reached up and wiped it away with my thumb. "Rho?"
"Yes?", she said, her voice laced with emotion.
"Forever," I told her and smiled as she nodded softly in reply.
"I'll never leave your side," she almost whispered as her tears started to roll.
"I'll never leave you alone. My Rho," I promised, and pulled her to me.
It wasn't until she clung to my chest that I took the step that sent us both through the portal and into Equestria.

Josey 1, Chapter 5

The feeling of passing through the portal was a little bit like stepping into a store that has a large heater hanging above the entrance; A waft of warm air that washed over us until we realized that it was warmer in Equestria than it had been in my room.
Still holding onto Rhonda, I looked around and noticed the portal shimmering and disappearing as I looked at it. There was no way back anymore unless someone could make a new one.
It appeared we were standing in one of Canterlot's gardens, the white walls we had seen in the distance being the outer walls of the capital itself. The inner walls were not two steps away from us and looked as imposing as they probably should, given the castle's position as the seat of government.
The movement of halberds along the top of the walls, and the clanging of armor from up there, clearly indicated Celestia's guards were moving around just out of sight from us. Fierce ponies doing important work. I was feeling a little awestruck at it all.
"You arrived just as the guards are changing," Ink explained, following my gaze, while Rhonda slowly detached from me and reached behind her to feel over the area where her pants were hiding her tail.
"Something wrong, Rho?", I asked, already digging into my bag.
"It's tingling," she answered, but meeped as I produced a pair of scissors, "Don't cut it off!"
I stared at her with a dumbfounded expression. "Now why would I do that? I was planning to make a hole in your pants so your tail could be free to swing about."
"Oh," Rhonda replied, biting her lower lip in embarrassment.
I moved toward her with the scissors and carefully cut a hole out of the back of it, then reached in with my fingers to pull her long tail hairs out in small bundles.
To my surprise I could see them grow as they came out of the pants and by the time all of them were out they were already hanging down to her knees.

"You may want to write this into the archives, Ink; Hairs do grow faster here than they do on Earth," I chuckled weakly, putting the patch of cloth and the scissors back into my back. "Let's hope unicorn horns don't," I sighed, moving my eyes in an attempt to stare up at the thing.
"Well, hm... Let me take you to the guest wing of the palace then. Princess Twilight and her friends left for the Crystal Empire to confer with Princess Cadance, so the rooms should be empty," Ink decided, and moved to lead the way.
I pulled Rhonda to my side and smiled at her. "We only need one room anyway. But let's. That way, if I end up fainting again, we'll have a bed I can collapse onto," I sighed. "Like I did yesterday."
Rhonda looked around at the colors surrounding us while we followed behind the blue stallion. Where Discord had looked a bit too real for comfort on Earth, this trend continued in Equestria; The colors were more vibrant, and there were more of them than in most places on Earth, but it all looked too real.
The stone was real stone. It looked like real stone. I was afraid if I touched the pristine white walls I would smudge them.
The grass was real grass. Brighter than that at home, but it looked very real indeed. There were all the slight blemishes in the otherwise unbroken grass field that we had at home. Small weeds trying to grow where they shouldn't, little flowers and other plants poking their heads up above the grass shoots. It had looked a lot more uniform on the television than it did in reality.
Heh, reality. "You're sure we're not dreaming, right? This is real, right?", I asked of Magic Ink as we headed for an opening in the inner walls. A long flight of steps was waiting there for us to climb it and two white-coated stallions in armor were standing guard on either side.
"If only it was a dream," he sighed, nodding to the guards as he passed them. I noticed their glances at us, but they didn't stop us.
"We must look so odd to all you ponies," Rhonda giggled softly.
"There are records of humans having visited our world before, miss Rhonda," Ink offered, "But we haven't seen one here in centuries. Or none that still resembled their old selves, that is. There are records of ponies who were formerly human, or even of ponies disappearing from our world and being found again on Earth. Some ponies have claimed the barriers between our worlds are growing weaker every day. There are even some that claim Equestria and Earth were once the same place. And it's that dangerous assumption that is giving us so much trouble right now."
"You mean Equestria could have been a place on Earth?", I wondered, trying to keep up with what Magic was saying.
"Or Earth a place in Equestria. Both are possible," Ink mused with a light smile, looking back and stopping dead in his tracks. "Miss Rhonda, your mane!"

I looked at Rhonda as well and noticed her beautiful brown hair was changing color. "Oh dear. Rho, your hair is turning pink!"
Rhonda went pale and flailed her arms at the pony before us. "Quick! A mirror!"
"This way!" Magic exclaimed, galloping ahead with Rhonda not far behind.
I found myself watching them run off before I realized I had to follow them! I tried to set my legs in motion, but every step I took felt like a chore, causing me to follow at a slower speed than intended. A great feeling of exhaustion and despair fell over me and I barely managed to make it up the steps before I had to sit down to catch my breath.
I stumbled to the left of the stairway, dropping heavily onto the edge of the nearest wall. My mind was in turmoil, going over the events of the previous days and trying to make sense of it all.
I looked up in time to see Rhonda and Ink disappear into the main building just ahead of the stairway, unknowing of my inability to follow directly behind. I turned my head in the opposite direction and found myself looking out over the lands of Equestria.
There was a train moving through the land, smoke wafting up from it as it took its passengers where they wanted to go. Lakes, forests, fields of grass, the occasional city here or there. I idly wondered where Ponyville was.
A guard moved up to me and looked out over the lands as well. "Are you ok, miss?", he asked casually, and I looked over to him.
"Isn't it strange to see a human here?", I asked instead of answering him.
The Guard set his forehooves up on the wall beside me and stretched himself a little, looking down at the lower plateau. "Not as strange as you would think, miss. The Princess has a lot of visitors. Not all from this realm. I will always remember the Changeling invasion. Captain... I mean, Prince Shining Armor kept us up day and night guarding this place. Compared to those pests, you're a welcomed guest."
I chuckled at that. "Back where I'm from those tales are told as a form of entertainment, sir guard."
"It does make for a good story to tell one's grandfoals, yes," he offered. "Be careful not to fall. It's a long way down."
"Thank you, I will. By the way, would you know which town out there is Ponyville?" I asked, waving my hand toward the towns in the distance.
"I think Ponyville is on the other side of the palace, miss. But I wouldn't know. You could ask lady Zecora if you see her? She's roaming around the palace grounds somewhere," he replied with a shrug. "If there's nothing else I can do for you, miss, I'll be returning to my rounds now? Have a good day."

I nodded and felt a little dizzy as I did. "Thank you. I think I'll find Magic Ink and see about that guest room he was talking about. I'm starting to feel a little dizzy," I returned, and stood up from where I was sitting, starting off toward the main building.
I was surprised to find the guard moving to my side after only a few paces and only then noticed I wasn't walking in a straight line. "Please lean on me, miss. I'll take you to the guest rooms," he suggested, looking up with concern on his face.
With my right hand resting on the guard's flank to stabilize myself, we made it to the guest room where Rhonda was sitting in front of a mirror watching the last few strands of her formerly brown mane turn pink.
I sank onto the bed and moved to lay on my back when I felt the muscles in my lower back contract. It was only a small spasm, but the tingling that followed lingered and I didn't even have to look to know I was starting to grow a tail as well.
"Rho? I don't feel too good. I'm going to lay down a bit," I exhumed tiredly, "Can you get the scissors out to cut a hole in my pants please?"
Rhonda turned away from the mirror with a blank look on her face and nodded. "Your tail came out too, didn't it?"
"It's starting to, yes... but my headache is getting worse and I'm feeling dizzy," I replied, turning over on my right side to have my back exposed toward the edge of the bed. "It feels like my horn's growing as well."
"Fascinating," Magic Ink breathed out, producing a small notepad and scribbling some things down.
"Glad to hear you're having fun," I groaned, and he blushed as he looked away.
Rhonda took the bag from me and pulled out the scissors, then knelt beside the bed and I felt her tugging on my pants as she started to cut into them.
"He's just doing his job, Jo," she muttered, then pulled my pants down a little and pushed my shirt up. "Yours are green."
"Eh?"
"Your tail is green," Rhonda remarked, and suddenly I felt a sharp sting where my tail would have been. "Sorry for that. Here, look," she said, offering me a small green hair which she held between her thumb and index finger.
I groaned and swatted it away with a hand. "Could've waited until my mane changed color?", I snapped, but then had to squeeze my eyes closed from the pain radiating from my horn.
"Is there a thing like aspirin here? Anything to keep this headache down?" I asked of Magic Ink, and he nodded.
"Miss Zecora has a lot of potions for that. I'll go get one for you," he offered, and ran out the door.
"You hear that, RhoRho? Zecora has potions for that. If we have to deal with that rhyming zebra, will you please shoot me?", I sighed, my head feeling far from wanting to deal with rhymes of any kind.
"You'll be ok, Josey. I'm here with you. Forever," Rhonda offered, gently helping my growing tail hairs out through the hole in my pants while leaning her head against me.
The gentle strokes of her hands on my tail, while soothing, were not enough to keep the pain and dizziness from getting worse, and soon I had to close my eyes as the room started to swerve and sway around me in an increasingly chaotic manner.
It didn't take long before I was lost to the fever dreams.

Josey 1, Chapter 6

"Blond hairs turn green if you use too much bleach, you know?", the cookie offered as he lazed in the hot batter springs beside me and a pancake holding onto a spoon. "You don't need to be a rocket scientist to tie your shoelaces, but it helps."
I agreed with a nod that made the world around me shimmer and get replaced by an endless desert. A scarecrow was swatting at a vulture sitting on top of a large cactus plant with a face cut into it.
"Do you know the way to Tipperary?" the cactus asked, as if it was the most normal thing to do, and I stumbled sideways into a wall of ice cream.
"There's only so much fun one can have sliding down a slope. Why not slide up it?", Discord's voice called out, and I saw him ice-skating up a vertical slope.
"Didn't I tell you fever dreams are amazingly fun?" he asked with a wink, but then I fell backward into a tub of red gelatin. The taste of strawberries hit me and I felt panic rise up.
I had to swim! I would drown if I wasn't swimming! I flailed my arms around and hit something that shouted "OUCH!"
I sat up straight in bed and looked around me at the things surrounding me. It was so NORMAL! There were no talking cookies! "WHERE ARE THE TALKING COOKIES?!?", I demanded, while blood leaked down from my forehead into my eyes.
A pink-haired girl with one eye looking bigger than the other moved into view, her one hand rubbing at her face while the other started to push me back.
"NO! You can't make me drown in the gelatin tub!" I exclaimed in fear and panic, but as I fell backward I saw the world around me starting to spin until the ride stopped and everyone climbed out of the teacups to go to the other rides in the park.
I had a biiiiig fluffy ball of cotton candy in my hands and they were sticking to everything! I was trying to get out of the ride, really I was. But the cotton candy spider wouldn't let me. She was weaving me into the teacup web and then the world started to spin again spinning around and around and around.
And then it stopped and something started to push everything away. I was all alone. Just a little child sitting on a black plane. Nothing around me for miles. The floor wasn't even really there. It was just a black plane without form or definable surface.
But from the darkness a pair of eyes started to form, and then the shape of a horse followed behind. The stars came out around her, spreading out through the sky, and the plane I was sitting on became a comfortable bed.
"Calm down, little Josey," Princess Luna cooed, sitting down beside me and using a wing to pull me closer to her. "Let us sit and watch the stars. You're doing very good. You just have to hold on for a little longer. Do you understand?"
I nodded and pressed my small form to the side of the big pony lady, smiling up at her as her wing folded around me to protect me from the scary things. She had a calming aura around her. I liked her. It was easy to calm down and just lay against her and fall asleep and know no fear.

I woke up to the sounds of talking in the room. Rhonda lay on the bed beside me, half covered by the bloodstained sheets. I stirred in shock as I noticed them, but then felt a dark wing drape over me and felt peace return to my mind.
I slowly turned to see Luna standing beside the bed, a wing casually draped over me while she was talking to her sister Celestia. I wasn't fully awake yet and only got shards of their conversation. Nothing I could make sense of.
Instead of focusing on them talking, I looked up at the big thing poking out of my head. I knew it was a horn. It was a big one too. It stuck out of my head several inches to the point where I could actually see the tip of it if I looked up.
Ten inches at least. Thin and wiry and looking a bit like mint canes with the dried-up blood still in the dimples of the otherwise white object. I blinked my eyes at it a few times, then reached up to touch it but was stopped by Luna moving her wing up as well.
"You don't want to touch your horn just yet, little Josey. Give it some time to settle," she spoke to me directly, and I turned my weary eyes in her direction.
"You've been in and out of your fever dreams for the entire night. Rhonda wouldn't leave your side. Celestia and I have been taking turns watching over you as well. It is not often that we see a true princess being born."
"A princess?", I wondered.
Luna nodded toward my horn. "It is as long as our own."
Celestia joined her side and smiled lightly. "Zecora said you had magic potential, but to find one of our own among you humans is a rare gift indeed."
I felt my cheeks burn at all that, but didn't really know what to say, so I looked off to my side instead. A lock of green hair fell over my eyes and I absentmindedly blew it out of my face before realizing what it meant. "My.. my mane!"
"It was an interesting sight to see, miss Josey," Magic Ink offered. "The process was very gradual, quite similar to what happened with miss Rhonda's mane."
I stared at the blue pony on the other side of the bed, still with the notepad and quill floating in front of him and watched him scrape a hoof over the floor in an uneasy manner before he walked over to hide behind Celestia.
I then looked up at the sisters Celestia and Luna and reached a hand up again. Luna moved to stop me with her wing, but I moved my arm around it and rubbed at the side of my head, taking her note of leaving my horn alone for now for good advice.
"I have no idea what all happened. I think I ate a cookie with Discord or something. I wake up with this bump sticking out of my head one morning, and the next I know we're whisked away to Equestria to do... what? I don't even know what is expected of us."

Celestia and Luna shared a look between them, then looked back at me and Celestia took a step closer to the bed. "This situation is new to us as well. It has been hinted at in the archives for thousands of years, but to have somepony go out and try to prove it is... unheard of. We sent Twilight Sparkle out to the library in the Crystal Empire in the hopes there are any records there that were lost in time when the empire got sealed away, but we're unsure if there is anything to help us with this. Zecora tries to slow down the growth of Spritelight's magic on Earth, but it's a losing battle. The more humans that get affected by it, the faster they change. Discord has been keeping an eye on Earth and said we've got a little over two-hundred cases already. Most of which are bronies."
I just stared up blankly at that. "We're pegasisters," I offered, reaching sideways to lightly brush my hand through Rhonda's mane.
"We are still learning the right terminology," Celestia replied with a smirk. "What Discord has found is both discouraging as well as remarkable. Most of the affected humans are hiding their newfound changes from the rest of the world or are using little tricks to make them seem like a new fashion style. It's actually catching on to those that aren't affected yet. Discord tries his best to keep the two separate and only send Zecora to the affected ones, but it's proving difficult. Zecora has already visited several people that were not yet changing."
"So... what you're saying is that people are turning into ponies and they're ok with it?", I wondered, not sure what to think of it all.
"It's more that they're treating it like a fad, Jo," Rhonda muttered, crawling up a bit closer to my side and resting her head against my bosom. "You bled a lot... I did what I could to stop the bleeding but it just wouldn't stop. I was so worried."
I looked down at her and gently stroked my hand through her mane. "I'm.. feeling ok? I could use a drink, but I don't have a headache anymore? It's just a little strange.. the weight of the thing," I pondered, moving my head about a little and feeling my horn swish through the air as I did. "It's not heavy, but it's.."
"Awkward?", both Celestia and Luna offered at the same time, and we all giggled a little at that.
"Yeah.. it feels weird to move it around. I'm not used to it," I decided with a shrug.
"Hm.. I remember when we were just young foals. I kept popping the balloons at our birthday party by looking around myself," Celestia chuckled. "It'll grow on you. Just give it a few centuries."

Luna frowned at that. "It doesn't really take that long. Just look at Twilight," she remarked, and Celestia turned her head to face her sister's, the tips of their horns barely missing one another as she did.
"Twilight was a good student. I expected nothing less," Celestia stated, beaming proudly at that. "Cadance had more trouble with it."
"You don't just turn a Pegasus into an Alicorn. I could have told you that, dear sister," Luna snorted, shaking her head a little. "If I hadn't been stuck in the moon at the time, she would've still been a Pegasus."
"And we would have Sombra in charge of the Crystal Empire, dearest sister," Celestia retorted, to which Luna blushed and looked away.
"Er.. excuse me.. are we still in the conversation?" I quipped, blinking between the two a bit.
"Since when was Cadance a Pegasus?", Rhonda asked with a frown.
"They're all yours, big sis." Luna grinned, stepping away and looking out of the window. "It is daytime, after all. I will come back when night falls."
"Very mature," Celestia chuckled, giving a nod to her younger sister. "See you tonight, dear sister."
Luna bowed to us and then stepped out of the door, spreading her wings and taking to the air. Magic Ink had to close the door behind her.
Celestia then turned to us and smiled weakly. "When I first met Cadance her loving heart had helped a poor deluded pony see the error of their ways. Missing my sister Luna and finding the Pegasus had no family but the Earth ponies that adopted her, I decided to adopt her as my royal niece and gave her the gift of being an Alicorn."
Rhonda nodded at that. "Like with Twilight?"
"Oh no," Celestia offered with a smile, sinking through her hooves so we wouldn't have to look up at her too much. "Twilight did that all on her own. I just helped guide her to her destiny."

"So what's going to happen to me?" I asked, not getting much help from those explanations.
Celestia sighed and looked a bit more solemn. "Your bodies will adjust to become like ours. Rhonda's horn would have started to grow already if she were a Unicorn. Unless she starts sprouting wings soon, she will become an Earth pony. In your case, Josey, your wings will start to sprout soon. And I'm sorry to say that Spritelight's magic seems to enjoy hurting you.. We will do everything in our power to keep you from going through another fever like that."
"Oh, joy," I sighed, while Rhonda clung to me a bit tighter. "Any idea when that will happen?"
Celestia shook her head. "Magic Ink here is keeping track of your progress so we can help others like you if it ever happens again. But you're the first ponies we felt we could bring to Canterlot. Your magic potential combined with the love you two feel for one another reminds me of Cadance and Shining Armor."
"We're not a couple, though," I protested, but Rhonda poked me immediately after I said so and looked up with her puppy eyes.
"Or.. maybe we are," I corrected myself at seeing her, and she broke into a smile which could have raised the sun if Celestia hadn't done it already. I had to chuckle at it and reached down to gently pet the top of her head.
Celestia just watched us with a smile on her face. "As I said, you two are special."
"Is this allowed, though? In Equestria?", I wondered, looking back up at the princess. "I mean, we're both girls.. Or fillies.. or mares.. or how you want to call us. There are some people on Earth who are very opposed to our kind of relationship."
Celestia frowned at that. "It is impossible to put restraints on love, Josey. Anypony who would try such is deluding themselves. As Chrysalis found out; true love will always find a way to break through any restriction."
Rhonda nodded at that. "Josey and me have known each other for years and years now. We're never going to be apart. Rho and Jo forever, right Jo?"
I smiled down and just continued petting my sweet.. well.. girlfriend. "Forever, Rho. I will never leave you alone."

"Forever is a long time, you know?", Discord offered, sticking his head in the room. "Hello Celestia, how are the kids?", the Draconequus wondered, sauntering into the room as if he owned the place.
"The kids?", Rhonda meeped, clinging a bit tighter to me.
"Why, you of course. It's such a precious sight seeing you two grow up to become proper ponies," Discord spoke with a wink in our direction. "I had a lovely time ice skating, by the way. Thank you for dreaming up that mountain," he offered to me in particular, then sat down on Magic Ink's back. "Is this seat taken?"
"Discord..." Celestia sighed, standing up and walking over. "What did we tell you about using ponies as chairs?"
"That they weren't as comfortable as they should be?", Discord grinned, but got up regardless. "So this is where I give him a cloud sorbet?"
"What is it with you and sorbets?", I cut in, "Didn't you already offer him a rainbow sorbet when you made the portal in my room?"
"Ooh, she's witty," Discord gasped in amusement, snaking past Celestia and holding out a pair of rainbow-colored sorbets to Rhonda and myself.
"Er.. no, thank you. I saw how Pinkie Pie reacted when she had a taste of rainbow.. that stuff is a little too spicy for my tastes," I offered, warding it off with my free hand while keeping Rhonda nice and close with my other. "And I don't think Rhonda trusts you," I sighed, looking down at her while she tried to hide away from him.
"Suit yourself. More for me," Discord giggled, putting one sorbet on top of the other and taking a bite out of the upside-down glass bowl covering the top one.
"Discord! Was there anything you wanted to say?" Celestia demanded.
"Fine, fine, be boring like that. I found another couple of affected humans. That brings the total to," he looked over to the side where a large sign appeared with "This many humans turned into ponies:" with a digital counter underneath quickly counting up from zero. As the counter hit 255 the numbers started to blink and confetti cannons shot colorful snippets of paper up in the air to fall around us. "Two-hundred and fifty-five humans!", Discord exclaimed like a television show host, taking on a very dramatic pose.
The room got quiet as everypony in it just stared at him until he finally straightened his back, patted himself down, and made the counter and confetti disappear with a snap of his fingers. "You're all boring," he huffed, then disappeared himself with a flash.

"I don't even," I started, shaking my head a little while Rhonda dared to let go of me a little more.
"He tries to be good, but it is difficult for him to control his urges," Celestia smirked, then looked towards Magic Ink. "Got that? 2-5-5. Let's send a message to Zecora in case Discord conveniently forgets to fill her in. And while you're out there, have a bath prepared. Josey and Rhonda look like they could use one."
The blue stallion nodded at receiving his orders and galloped off while Celestia approached us again. "That said, you dears may want to get out of bed so we can have housekeeping clean the sheets. And to be on the safe side, I'll have a guard keep tabs on you at all times until your wings sprout. We don't want you falling off of the walls before you learned how to fly, do we?"
"Yeah.. that would be bad," I agreed, helping Rhonda sit up before pulling the sheets off of me. "It does look like a lot of blood for something that grew out of my forehead, though.. I mean.. I don't feel lightheaded or anything? I would have expected at least that much?", I offered, moving my head around a little bit to see if the dizzy spells would come back, but they didn't.
"It's a magical horn. The blood did not so much come from your body as from the manifestation of your horn appearing," Celestia explained. "It's purely because of Spritelight's magic that this happened. She used a very old scroll from before the pony factions joined together. I think it is known as blood magic? It is a long lost dark art. We rarely speak of it."
"Is it the kind of magic Sombra was using when he was in charge of the Crystal Empire, princess?", I wondered, pushing up out of bed and noticing how tall Celestia really was.
I mean, she had looked tall both in the show as well as when I was laying in bed, but standing up.. she still towered over me. I was just five foot, four inches myself. The princess took a foot or two on top of that.
"I didn't realize," I gasped, reaching out with my hand towards her face. "You're as big as the horses on Earth."
Celestia allowed me to touch the side of her muzzle and smiled down at me. "Rhonda said the same thing, but no. Sombra's magic wasn't blood magic. True, it was very dark magic, but if it had been blood magic not even Luna and me would have been able to stop him."
"So we're dealing with magic that you and Luna can't handle by yourself? And what about the Elements of Harmony? Or Twilight's own magic? Or a combination of them all?", I inquired, trying to figure out why something was not done about it already.
"Calm down, dear," Celestia offered with a warm smile, "there's ample time for questions when your transformations are complete. Why don't you two take a bath first and join me for lunch in the great hall?"
I looked back towards Rhonda who was climbing off of the bed as if she had trouble finding her footing. "A bath does sound nice," I mumbled, reaching out a hand to help my girlfriend stabilize herself. "Dizzy?", I asked, but she shook her head at my assumption.
"Tingly. Like my legs have fallen asleep," Rhonda replied, moving to my side and wrapping her arms around my waist to keep her balance.
Celestia's eyes narrowed slightly at the answer, but then turned for the door. "Guard? Bring these girls to the bathroom in the East wing and keep watch over them."
"Erm.. he will be standing outside, right?", Rhonda quipped, and I couldn't suppress a giggle.

Josey 1, Chapter 7

The bathroom we were led to was just like one would have expected in a palace; marble and lavish decorations were found everywhere and gold accents were the norm rather than the exception.
The baths themselves were varied, with single-pony baths in their own rooms and multi-pony communal baths of varied shapes and designs in larger rooms.
All smaller bathrooms were connected to the main room, which held an Olympic-size swimming pool and various benches in niches in-between the entryways.
The room we ended up in held just two square bathtubs, sunk down halfway into the floor so any pony could easily step over the edges into them, and long and wide enough for them to disappear fully underwater if they felt the need to.
The room was more sparsely decorated than the main room, but still overwhelmed us as we weren't used to this kind of luxury.
The guard left us at the door, but we were greeted by a couple of mares who looked not too dissimilar from Ponyville's spa ponies Lotus Blossom and Aloe; Expertly done makeup, smartly polished hooves, well-kept manes and tails, they clearly knew how to keep themselves - and others - looking their best.
The one thing that set them aside from the spa ponies were their cutiemarks which were a bar of pink soap with a waft of fragrance seen drifting up from it on the blue pony, and a mascara-wand and an eyelash-curler on the pink mare's flank.
Rhonda seemed a little calmer among mares than she had been with the stallion around, and let the blue-maned pony with the pink coat guide her to a table where her bloodstained clothes were carefully taken from her.
The pink-maned pony with the blue coat waved a hoof toward a similar table and, following Rhonda's example, I walked over to it to undress myself as well.
Remembering Luna's warning about the sensitivity of my horn, and not knowing how to get my shirt off without touching it, I decided to start with my pants.
I hooked my thumbs over the elastic band and moved to pull the pants down in one go, but was immediately stopped by a sharp sting in my lower back before they had dropped even so much as an inch!

"Oh dear, you really should be more careful with your tail," the pony gasped, rushing to my back. She moved to use her hooves to gently help my pants down lower, all the while making sure I didn't pull more hairs out.
I felt quite embarrassed about the situation, but Rhonda saw the lighter side of things;
"I told you," she chuckled from the other end of the room, "you got to be careful with your tail, Jo."
I stuck my tongue out at her and felt my tail flick at doing so. It was a rather odd sensation, feeling muscles in my lower back contract and release that I had not felt before.
It was somewhat like the contraction of butt cheeks when making certain dance moves (hey, I played DDR in my day!), but a little higher than expected. Plus, I wasn't dancing.
I looked back at it and it flicked again. It didn't feel like I had much control of it, it was just moving on its own accord.
The pink-maned pony cut into my thoughts, leaning into my field of vision while looking up at me. "Your shirt, miss?"
I sighed and looked up at my horn. "I dunno if that's wise.."
"If you tilt your head down, miss, your horn will point toward the ground and you could let gravity do the rest?", she offered, and I felt a blush creep on my cheeks. I should have come up with that idea myself, but this whole situation had my brain quite occupied already.
"Ah, thanks," I managed to mutter out, starting to slip my arms out of the shirt's sleeves to bundle it up around my neck for the great escape trick to follow.
Lowering my head, I glanced sideways toward the pony standing ready to help in case I needed it. "I didn't quite catch your name, miss?"

"It's Cherry, miss," the pink pony offered, gently helping me slide my shirt up over my head.
Once it slipped passed my ears, we both let go at the same time and the shirt just dropped down to the floor without touching my horn even once.
"Cherry?", I asked, lifting my head again and pulling my hands up to cover my chest even while I was wearing a bra.
"Yes miss," Cherry answered, moving in to fold my shirt up neatly. "It's short for Cherry Blossom."
"And your.. coworker?", I continued, looking over to the blue pony who was helping a naked Rhonda into one of the bathtubs.
"Sister, miss," Cherry corrected me, putting my folded shirt away. "Her name's Magnolia. May I please have the rest of your clothing?"
I obliged with the pony's request, slipping out of my underwear and handing them over. They joined the pile of clothes already folded and the pink pony motioned toward the unoccupied tub.
I looked over towards Rhonda as I approached, and she looked up with one of her eyes a fair amount larger than the other. I frowned at it a little as I put my foot into the bath, but as soon as the warm water slipped up around my leg, I stopped caring about what other changes my girlfriend was going through. They could wait. This was bliss.
I let out a happy sigh as I climbed in the tub properly and sank down into the water until it came up to my neck, feeling the warm tingles going over my skin. When was the last time I had a proper bath? Several years ago at least.. we only had a shower at our place, and we had lost contact with the uncle and aunt who did have a bath. My last bath must've been in their place.

I slowly sank further down in the water, immersing my head in the warm liquid while the world around me muted. When my horn finally broke the surface and slipped down, I felt the water flow around it as if it had been an arm or a leg, but about twice as sensitive.
It made me moan in pleasure, air escaping me in a long stream of bubbles, which forced me up again to get my air back.
Rhonda sounded like she was making small-talk with the pony caring for her, but my ear was filled up with water and I couldn't quite make out what she was saying. It was all a muted buzzing that made little or no sense to me.
Another voice spoke up, but on my other side, and I turned my head towards Cherry. "Huh? I didn't quite.. my ears are full of water," I explained, and she shook her head at me.
Why would she say no? It's like she. Oh! Right! I shook my head quickly, feeling the air whish around my horn, but also feeling the water break out of my ears, restoring my hearing again.
Cherry's head ducked down as my horn passed over her, but she smiled up weakly again once I stopped shaking my head.
"..and then he put down a portal in the middle of the room," Rhonda explained to Magnolia, and I nodded to myself.
It was good for her to be able to talk to somepony about this, even if it was a pony who would forget about it all moments after we'd leave out of sheer respect for their clients' privacy. Or so I would guess. I never worked in a spa myself, after all.
"Thank you, Cherry," I offered to the pony beside me, and watched as she approached with a soft brush in her mouth.
She put it down on the edge of the tub and smiled up at me. "Until you get your ears, miss, you won't be able to flick them to get the water out. Shall I brush your mane, miss?"
I smirked at her first statement, reaching up with a hand to feel over my human ears. Of course they would change at some point as well. And, looking at Cherry's ears, they would probably move a little up as well.
I sank down in the water to allow the pink pony to reach for my hair without having to stretch herself too much, and closed my eyes as I felt the brush make contact with the back of my head. I knew she was holding it in her mouth, but her brush strokes were gentle and expertly weaved through my hair.
The brush strokes, the warm water, and Rhonda's voice babbling on to my left all helped soothe my worried mind and I ended up drifting on a cloud of contentment.

I don't know how long I was subject to this wonderful feeling, but I woke with a shock when Rhonda let out a shriek!
"Something's wrong! Oh nononono.. what's going on?", she cried out, and I pushed up in a sitting position in my own tub to look her way.
"What's happening, RhoRho?", I asked, reaching out towards her with my left hand, but blinking as she turned her face towards me.
Besides the shock and horror at whatever was happening that she had shrieked at, there were two large eyes on her face that didn't look to fit on it. They were pony eyes. Proper pony eyes, the pupils currently small from her rising fear, which only helped to make the whites of her eyes look that much bigger on her changing face.
"I can't feel my legs anymore!", Rhonda whined, looking between me and the tub before splashing her face down into the water to look at her limbs.
I stared at her strange behavior until she came up again with water flowing past her blinking pony eyes. "They're changing," she sniffled, reaching up to rub at her eyes with hands that looked comically small in comparison.
"Can you lift one up, sweety?", I asked, casting a glance down at my own legs but they were as I expected them to be. 100% Human.
Rhonda bit her lower lip, then slipped down a little in the water so she could pull her right leg up.
I stared at it as it changed in front of my eyes; the toes started to merge together, forming a hoof, her foot grew in size while her lower leg seemed to shrink, her former ankle-joint rising up closer to her knee as it did.
Soon enough she had two fully formed pony legs attached to her hips. There wasn't any fur growing on them yet however, and it only made them look more alien from the human limbs they had once been.
"You're not feeling any of that?", I asked of Rhonda, and she shook her head.
I reached up for my horn and dared to finally touch it, letting out a sigh. She went numb, while I got hurt. Life was so unfair!

"Josey, how am I supposed to walk with these?", Rhonda whimpered, and I shook my head softly.
"We'll work it out together, ok?", I offered, reaching out with my left hand again until she put her right in it and then squeezed it. "But at some point we'll have to get used to walking on all fours."
Rhonda sighed at that and looked down at our joined hands. "I guess."
I looked past Rhonda to see Magnolia stand beside her tub, her tail flicking nervously behind her. It made me wonder about the other one and I looked around the room until I spotted Cherry Blossom walk back in from the door leading outside.
"Hey, I think your sister's a little overwhelmed," I started, and Cherry nodded to me as she moved towards Magnolia to give her a soft nuzzle and whisper something in her ear. Whatever was said, it visibly relaxed the blue pony, and she moved over to a table to get a brush not unlike the one her sister had used on my mane before.
I squeezed Rhonda's hand again and smiled at her. "Whatever changes, my love for you will remain. You'll never lose me. I promise."
Rhonda smiled weakly at that and nodded. "I know.. thank you."
I let go of her hand as Magnolia moved in with the brush and sank back in the tub I was in since Rhonda was no longer in a state of panic.
As Cherry joined me again, I looked up at her with a concerned frown on my face and motioned towards my eyes. "Did they change yet?"
The pink pony nodded slowly at that. "One is almost fully changed, the other looks to be halfway there."
I nodded back at that and sank down further in the bath again. I had not even noticed anything changing in my perception. I looked through one eye, then the other, then the first again, and slowly it dawned on me.
While my eyes had been growing, giving me a slowly increasing field of vision, the process had been so gradual that my mind would have automatically corrected anything that would have otherwise led to me noticing it. I just accepted it because by the time I noticed the changes, my brain had already accepted them as default.
I would have facepalmed if I did not have my horn there..

Josey 1, Chapter 8

I had asked Cherry Blossom to get me a mirror, and dipped my head and horn underwater while she went to retrieve one. Little trails of blood leaked away from my horn and I let out an occasional set of bubbles until I ran out of air and had to come up.
The feeling of the water rushing down my horn to then leak down my face was interesting in and of itself, the grooves in my horn working like a kind of water slide which aided the flow of water until it would impact with my forehead. I let out a surprised squeak at the feeling, and Rhonda giggled a little.
"I'm not the only pone who feels weird, then?", she offered, moving her newly formed pony legs through the water to form waves on the surface of it.
I stuck out my tongue at her and finally dared to reach up to gently touch my horn's base. It was still sensitive, but the warm water had helped it heal and my fingers playing over it only sent shivers down my back, not pain.
"I wonder what your coat's color is going to be, RhoRho," I mused, then held my arm up in front of my face and chuckled. "Or mine, for that matter. With your pink hair, I would imagine something like Fluttershy's colors; yellow coat. But with my green?"
"Why not white for my coat?", Rhonda frowned, and I stared at her.
"Well, I dunno," I started, "Pink and white.. that makes me think of those nurse ponies."
"I could be your private nurse pony, princess Josey?", Rhonda winked, and we both giggled a bit.
"Gods, I never thought I'd end up a princess," I sighed out, still a bit overwhelmed at the idea. "But if Celestia is right, that means my wings would come before my hooves.. and you already have yours.."
I started to feel a bit uncomfortable at the idea. "Rho.. my horn coming out really really hurt me."
Rhonda looked down at her hooves as if trying to come up with a response to that, but then suddenly moved her hands up and started to feel over her face. Ah, she finally noticed.
"What happened to my face?!?", she cried out, and I smirked at her.
"Same thing that's happening to mine, RhoRho," I offered, and Rhonda stared blankly at me as if she had only now seen my eyes change.

"But they're like these big round.. things," Rho breathed out. "How did I not notice it changing before?"
I looked down at the water in front of me and tried to get a good look at my eyes. "Where's Cherry with that mirror?", I mumbled, the water's reflection showing me only part of what I wanted to see.
"Josey? What's my eye color? I can't make it out. It looks like pink?", I heard Rhonda say beside me, and looked up and straight in her eyes.
"Yeah, they're a lighter shade of pink than your mane," I agreed. "I would call it orchid?"
"My mane," Rhonda tasted the word, then looked back at the water. "Fuchsia mane and tail, orchid eyes.."
I looked behind me at my tail and pulled the hairs up out of the water. "My hairs are jade, aren't they? What are my eyes like?"
Rhonda looked over at me again and I kept my eyes open for her to look at. "Mint."
"Mint?", I repeated.
"They're more of a pine green, miss," Magnolia interjected, looking at me as well.
I looked over at the blue pony and nodded. "Thank you."
"So.. pink for you and green for me. Really wondering what our coats will turn out like," I mused.
"Yeah.. me too," my sweet girlfriend sighed, pulling one of her legs out of the water again and staring at the bald limb. "This should have fur on it. It looks weird all bald like that."
I cast a sideways glance at her and nodded. "Yeah."
"Do you have any shampoo, Magnolia?", Rhonda wondered, "I want to wash my mane while I still have fingers to work the shampoo in."
I chuckled at her. "Good idea, Rho. I'll just relax a bit myself until Cherry comes back."
With that, I leaned back against the tub's edge, only to wince and jump forward again the moment my back touched it!
I quickly glanced over to Rho to see if she'd noticed it, but she was looking in the other direction, watching Magnolia pick up a bottle of shampoo.

I sank down until my chin hit the water, then reached behind me and felt two nubs growing out of my back. They were set in-between my shoulder blades, or bordering the edges of both, and even my soft presses were painful.
I looked up towards the door, wondering what was keeping Cherry. How difficult was it to find a damned mirror??
The pain in my back increased by the moment, and I was feeling the nubs grow even without having to touch them with my hands. I squinted my eyes closed at it and tried not to make a sound. I did not want to upset Rhonda again now she was feeling relaxed enough to enjoy washing her hair.
I tried to focus on other things but the growing pain in my upper back. Puppies! Puppies were always cute. How they would.. but the pain cut my train of thought off and I let out a soft whimper. It was quickly getting unbearable.
If it had just been a continuous pain it would have been fine, I would have been able to tune it out a bit better. But this pain was pulsating. And the nubs in my back grew at the apex of every pulse, then stopped for a moment to make the pain recede before starting the cycle all over again.
Celestia had been right; Spritelight's magic loved to hurt me.
I reached behind me again while doing my best to stifle my whimpers and groans. The nubs were protruding about two finger-widths now and a large area around them was sensitive to the point of hurting if it received any pressure.
The next wave of pain came with specks of light mottling my vision, and I had to grab the edges of the bath to not slip down in it. "Hnng.."
"Jo?", Rhonda perked up at finally hearing my groan, her shampooed mane sticking up weirdly from the top of her head.
I gave her a weak smile, pointing behind me as I did not trust my voice.
"Magnolia, her wings are coming out! Go get Cherry! Or Celestia! Or BOTH!", Rhonda cried out, clambering out of the bath with her awkward pony legs and moving beside the tub I was in, reaching for my left hand with both of her own and squeezing it softly. "I'm here, Josey. Focus on me."
I tried, but the pain was just too much. I screamed out in anguish as the next wave came, and as blood started to drift around my body from the back, it mixed with the salty droplets of my tears hitting the water's surface.

With Rhonda by my side, I weathered the pain as good as I could. Which, to be completely honest, was not at all. There was no defense I could put up against the pain spreading from my back, and if it wasn't for Rhonda pulling me back out, I would have drowned a couple of times already as I smashed my face into the water from involuntary spasms and then couldn't straighten my back on my own again.
It was impossible to measure time, and I lost track of how fast the spasms were following one another. My breathing came and went with the pain, I took my breaths in the shallows, and exhumed in agony at the peaks, and I was feeling lightheaded from lack of oxygen.
At some point a whole bunch of ponies rushed back into the room, Celestia among them, and that rhyming Zebra soon pushed something to my lips and told me to drink.
I must have started to hallucinate at some point, as the ponies became more and more blurry with every breath I took. They were talking, but I was barely registering what they were saying. All I knew was the pain and the blood.
So much blood.. I think there was more blood in the bath than actual water.
I drank the potion Zecora pushed up against my lips of course, I mean I wasn't really able to protest or think clearly at that point anymore. When somepony tells you to drink something, you'll drink it.
I don't even know what the taste was. The room bathed in the smell of blood, scented shampoo, and the pheromones from every pony in the room, and the taste was corrupted by it. It could have been blood. Or shampoo. Or pheromone extract. I wouldn't have known.
Whatever it was, it made the world around me fall away into darkness but just as I thought I was going to fall asleep from it, I instead found myself drifting up and out of my body!

The room around me was dark, excepting a small circular area around my body still convulsing involuntarily in the bathtub. The ponies, Rhonda, and Zecora were standing in the light radius, and I could see them talking among themselves while they were keeping me from dropping in the bath.
From up here, I got a good look at my back and the awkward way two long bones were sticking out from it. They looked a bit like a pair of long fingers, and with each spasm from my body they slipped out a bit more.
Celestia's horn started to glow and I saw the same glow around my body as it got lifted up by Celestia's magic, Cherry Blossom and Magnolia rushing to Rhonda's aid as the girl sank sideways, her shuddering shoulders clearly indicating she broke down crying.
Who was that beside Zecora? I didn't know that pony. She had a purple mane and tail, with lighter streaks going through them, a blue coat, and a pair of glasses on her nose which she was moving a little with one of her hooves. She looked to be responding to something Zecora said, stretching her own wings out as much as they could so the zebra could look at them.
I realized the blue pegasus' eyes had two different colors! Huh.. heterochromia in Equestria? Her right eye was blue, and her left brown. They had a bit of a painful look in them as she looked at my body spasming while in Celestia's magical grasp, and I turned my attention back to my body.
The bony fingers had slipped out enough to show joints, and I could see how they would be similar to the bone structure the blue pony's wings would have underneath the feathery exterior.
Zecora seemed to have come to the same conclusion, nodding at Celestia as the blue pony folded her wings again and settled them to her side.

Wait, her side?
My wings were growing from my back, not from my side!
I stared down at them as they continued to grow, while the spa ponies worked on cleaning Rhonda's mane and help her stand on her pony limbs. I could see them from a corner of my eyes but my wings were more interesting.
Muscles and flesh grew out over the wings as they were stretched out to my sides, Celestia's magic still helping my body stay up above the surface of the water, and as the wings finalized I started to see feathers growing from them.
They were stained with blood, but I could see their actual color emerge the more of them sprouted from my wings; yellow. Lemon yellow.
Zecora used a hoof to wash water over my back, and I felt the shudders of my spine as I started to slowly drift down again towards my body. It was a weird feeling to reconnect like that, and I glanced over towards Rhonda before I sank low enough to make it impossible for me to see her.
Her hooves had started to sprout fur the color of pink lace. A pink mane, pink eyes, and now pink fur?
I shook my head and snapped to consciousness as my horn hit the side of the tub, sending a searing pain through my forehead!
"Ow," I whimpered, and felt Celestia's magic slowly let go of me. I put my hands on the tub's edge in front of me and supported myself, feeling the muscles in my back twitch involuntarily.
The wings themselves felt like I was wearing a backpack with something inside of it poking me at my shoulder blades. They were a little uncomfortable, and I mostly felt their weight pressing down on me.
"Welcome back, Josey," Celestia offered, staring down at me from where she was standing. I peered up with weary eyes, feeling the fatigue of the transformation in every limb.
"Are they done now?", I asked, my throat raw from the guttural sounds I must have been making while going through this.
"Your wings are fully formed, my dear," I heard Zecora's voice from behind me and to the right, "But you are far from done, I fear."
I sighed out and dropped my chin on the edge of the bath, leering tiredly over it. "Somepony shoot me."

Josey 1, Chapter 9

The spa ponies came around to gently brush the blood out of my wings after they were done with Rhonda, and my, now satyr, girlfriend came to sit on the floor in front of me, awkwardly folding her hoofed legs underneath herself.
We held hands and we looked at one another in silence for a long while.
I barely registered Celestia excusing herself, Zecora and the blue Pegasus lingering for a little while longer. The Pegasus left before Zecora did, but to me it was almost like everything was a dream I was trying to wake up from. I barely heard them talk, I barely saw them go, I only stared in my girlfriend's large orchid eyes.
The soft strokes and dabs of cloth and soft brush that hit my wings helped me to relax however, and I pulled Rhonda a little closer to carefully press a kiss on her forehead. "How are your legs feeling?", I asked, scraping my throat a bit as my voice still sounded raw.
Rhonda looked down at her hoofed limbs with a blush. The fur had almost completely covered them now and it only enhanced the cute marshmallow-hoof look they had going for them. "Tingly. I'm going to be a bad excuse for a pinkie pie replica, aren't I?", Rhonda sighed, and I had to giggle a little at that.
"Nonono," I started, smiling at her. "You're entirely your own pony, my love. Just because you share a similar color scheme doesn't mean you have to start pulling confetti cannons out of thin air, ok? Although it would be awesome if you could."
Rhonda smiled weakly at that and pulled her hands away from mine, turning sideways a moment and making grabby motions with them at the air in front of her. "Nope.. not yet."
I laughed at her antics and felt my wings move with the shuddering of my form. "Soon!", I exclaimed, and Rhonda giggled back up at me.

"Your wings are clean, miss," Cherry Blossom's voice came from behind me, and I turned my head to look over my right shoulder at the large collection of yellow feathers protruding from my back. They looked as pristine as a canary's freshly preened plumage, and I found myself tilting my wing a little to see the damp feathers glisten in the light.
"They look beautiful, Jo," Rhonda breathed out in admiration, and I found myself smiling back down at her with a small feeling of pride.
These were my wings. No matter who caused them to grow on me, no matter the magic used, no matter the painful way in which they appeared. In that short moment I felt my mind connect to my wings and I spread them out behind me, feeling the shiver run down my back as I imagined myself as majestic-looking as an eagle depicted on ancient Roman standards.
The moment didn't last, and I came crashing down from it as I realized in horror that my wings had effectively robbed me of the ability to wear a shirt. I looked down at my naked chest and the way I had pushed myself up in a standing position in the bathtub, and felt my cheeks start to burn.
"Rho-Rho?" I started, and my girlfriend peered up from a point lower on my body to stare up at my face with her big eyes.
"Yes, Josey?"
"I'm naked, aren't I?" I asked, swallowing some saliva down my throat.
"Yes, Josey," came the truthful answer. "But everypone here is right now."
I sighed and slowly sank down in the tub again, my wings folding on my back as I did. "But you three at least have fur," I muttered, looking away in shame.

"I still have a bare chest, Jo," Rhonda retorted, and I looked back at her, trying very hard to not look at that particular part of her body. She had her arms folded in front of it anyway.
"We're the same in that regard then," I chuckled softly, then closed my eyes and rubbed at my forehead, my fingers sort of automatically moving underneath my horn while my thumb moved to stick up, the soft skin between my thumb and index finger bumping into my horn's base as I rubbed around it.
"Ok, let me get up out of this bath before I get all wrinkly and end up looking like Granny Smith," I finally decided, pushing away from the bath's edge and standing up in the middle of it. My legs were still fully human and I wriggled my toes in the water a bit before moving to step out via the long side of the rectangular bath.
Cherry approached with a towel, and I thankfully accepted it to dry myself off. My mane and horn were surprisingly easy to handle, even if my hairs felt like they were thicker than my human hairs had ever been, and I soon got to the point where I would usually just wrap the towel around my back and sort of zig-zag it down to get the water from it.
"Rhonda, can you help me with my back please?" I asked instead, and she pushed up on her hooves to walk on over with an unsteady gait. I handed her the towel and leaned in to give her another kiss on her forehead, then turned my back toward her and sighed as I felt her soft hands gently dab around my wing bases.
"How do Pegasi do this?" I asked of Cherry, who smiled up enigmatically.
"They just turn their heads, miss. Like so," she explained, turning her head around and nuzzling herself in the side. My jaw dropped and I moved my hand up to slap my forehead, but stopped myself in time before I would have hit my horn again.
"I should have realized," I smirked, using my hand to rub at the side of my head instead. "So how come you're taking us being humans transforming into ponies so easily while everypony else has been gawking at us since we came here?"

Cherry shrugged at the question. "You're ponies inside, miss. It is only what's inside that matters to me. While it is true your forms right now are strange and exotic, the Princess told us you will look the same as any pony in Equestria when your transformations are complete. Why would we treat you any different than any other Equestrian if that's the case?"
Rhonda's face moved in to nuzzle at my wings and she sighed out warmly as her arms wrapped around my waist. "I like that."
I looked back over my shoulder, but my wing was in the way of seeing Rhonda properly. "The sentiment, you mean?"
She nodded into my wing and I shivered from the feeling.
"I agree it is a good thought to have. Thank you, Cherry Blossom," I smiled, turning my attention back to the pony before me.
"It is only natural for me, miss," Cherry smiled up with a light blush on her cheeks.
"Not everypone would agree," I offered, and the pony nodded slowly.
"Yes, that is a shame," she sighed. "I would think we'd have a lot more Nightguards here if they were more accepted."
"Hmm? Nightguards?" I wondered, dabbing at my upper legs with the towel Rhonda was still holding onto.
"Yes Miss," Cherry offered with an eager smile. "I must admit I love their leathery wings. It is a rare treat when one of Princess Luna's private guards comes in and allows me to rub oils in their wings. It's such a pretty sight to see them shine in the moonlight."
I chuckled a bit at the pony's obvious admiration for something that few ponies would have a second thought about. "So what you're saying is that feathery wings are not half as interesting to you, hmm? I see how it is." I winked, and Cherry's blush deepened immediately.
"Oh, no miss! I mean.. they're lovely and I enjoy working on them but.. I.. erm..."
"I'm just teasing you, Cherry," I offered, slowly sinking through my knees with Rhonda still clinging to my back. "You've been a great help to me while we've been here. You and your sister both." I added the last bit, looking over in Magnolia's direction and motioning for the two to come closer.

"Rhonda and I appreciate what you've done for us, don't we Rho?" I offered as the two spa ponies drew near, reaching my hands toward them and gently placing it to the sides of their muzzles. Magnolia inched away from my hand at first, but then carefully placed her muzzle against it as she found I didn't do anything scary to Cherry.
"Hmm-mm," Rhonda replied, still having her face buried into my feathers, her weight leaning into me.
I gently stroked my hands over the sides of the spa ponies' muzzles, and Cherry quickly closed her eyes while she leaned into the stroking. Magnolia tried to fight it, keeping her eyes on me, but soon succumbed to the stroking as well and closed her eyes with a soft whimper escaping her.
"I hope you accept this small gift a simple human can give you as a thank you for your caring attentions," I continued, leading my stroking hands up to softly scritch behind both ponies' ears. "I won't be able to do this once my hands turn to hooves."
The spa ponies sank through their forehooves at my continued scratching, and I leaned in a bit more to trail my hands down their mane line while gently scritching through their soft fur.
Soon I, too, would wear such fur on my form. Like Rhonda, it would most likely start at my legs and then.. go from there. I idly wondered how much longer it would take, and smiled at the blissful look on the faces of the ponies before me.
This Spritelight pony the Princess had told us about was changing humans into ponies. Hands would be turning into hooves. There would be so many pets to go without pettings.
I sighed and pulled my hands back, and Magnolia almost immediately jumped up with a blush, moving back and hiding behind her sister. Cherry was slower to come out of her reverie, and had to blink her eyes a few times before she could push up on her hooves properly, her ears turning on her head as if she was feeling confused at what just happened.

"I'm sorry if that was too forward of me," I started, "but this is how humans back home reward other creatures for having done a good job."
Cherry shivered in place, her cheeks reddening. "You mean pets."
I shrugged at that.
"It felt nice. Thank you, Princess Josey," Cherry smiled up weakly, idly scraping her right forehoof over the floor.
I heard Rhonda giggle at that and looked away with a blush. "I'm not sure I'm a princess yet, but it was the only thing I could think of to show our appreciation."
Magnolia mumbled something I couldn't quite catch, and I peered over Cherry's form to look at her sister. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that?"
"She said thank you, Princess," Cherry responded in place of Magnolia, and I smirked at the title being used again.
"I'm not sure I can get used to that title," I muttered, and Rhonda gave me a squeeze. "Or to having a Rhonda backpack. Are you going to let go at some point in time, love? We have to meet Celestia for lunch soon."
"But your wings are so soft!" Came the reply from my back.
"You can nuzzle into them at any time, Rho-Rho," I sighed, moving my hands down to try and pull myself out of Rhonda's pincer-like grasp.
If it wasn't for her also trying to hold onto the towel, I would not have succeeded, as she hid some surprising strength in her arms, but fortunately for me having knelt before, I was able to slide her arms further down and sort of step out of the circle she was making with them.
"Aww," Rhonda pouted, and pushed up on her hooves, clinging the towel to her chest instead.
"Cherry, do you have anything that could cover us up a bit before we go meet with Celestia?" I wondered of the spa pony, and she tilted her head at me. "Maybe something ponies wear that could be a few sizes too big so any further changes won't damage them?"

"We could probably find a coat for miss Rhonda, Princess Josey, but your wings come out at the wrong angle for any Pegasus outfit to work on you," Cherry replied in all honesty.
"What about some pants?" I pressed, but Cherry raised an eyebrow at that. "Ok, so a skirt?"
"Skirts should be no problem at all," the pony nodded. "We have a wide variety of those."
"Can you find us a couple that works with our colors?" I asked, "I would think my coat will look yellow as well, considering my wings?"
"Most likely, yes Princess Josey," she agreed. "Shall I send a guard out to find the court tailor for your top?"
I looked back at Rhonda, still hiding her chest from sight with the wet towel, and then stretched my wings out behind me to look at their size. "That might be wise, yes. Maybe something with an open back would work, until we change more."
"Like a chest guard, Princess?" Magnolia piped up, and I looked in her direction with some surprise.
"Er... yeah, like a chest guard, I guess," I replied, reaching up to scratch an itch behind my right ear.
"Just make sure it's made of cloth and hangs down to about waist level," I continued, marking the location by placing my left hand at my lowermost ribs.
Magnolia nodded and turned to her sister. "I'll go get their clothes then, Cherry?"
Cherry nodded slowly, the movement of her ears and tail indicating she was as surprised as I was at the other pony's sudden initiative, and Magnolia all-but galloped out of the bathrooms.
"Perhaps she was a bit more overwhelmed by us than she let on?" I mused, and Cherry smiled up weakly.
"It looks to be that way, Princess. I do hope she remembers to bring the skirts as well."
I moved to pull Rhonda into a hug, her naked form pressing into mine, and I smiled back at Cherry while Rhonda rested her head atop my chest. "It's not like it will matter in a few hours. At the rate we're changing, we'll be fully transformed before the end of the day."
Cherry nodded slowly at that, flicking one of her ears, and I felt a twitch to the side of my head. So the ears would be next, then. I leaned down to press a kiss on top of Rhonda's head and looked past her mane at her right ear, letting out a soft chuckle as it started to look a bit elven in appearance...

Josey 1, Chapter 10

With new clothes courtesy of the court tailor Uniquity, a flamboyant unicorn who looked as much like a stereotypical gay fashion designer as any pony could, Rhonda and I left the baths in search of the main dining hall, where Celestia would be waiting for us.
Followed by two of the princess' guards we walked arm-in-arm to allow Rhonda to use me as a crutch. She had some trouble keeping balance, but with every step I felt her lean into me for support less and less.
By the time we made it to the great hall, she was walking beside me as if she'd always walked on hooves instead of feet, and I gave her a warm smile before turning my attention to our hostess.
"Thank you for not letting me drown just now, princess Celestia," I offered, bowing down lightly and feeling my wings spread behind me almost automatically.
Rhonda giggled and played her fingers through my feathers as my wing stopped her from moving forward, and I felt a shiver run down my spine at the nice feeling it evoked. I was going to miss her fingers most once our transformations completed.
"Of course, princess Josey," Celestia smiled, bowing her head a bit to me as well. "Would you both join me for lunch?"
I straightened my back again, my wings folding in the same motion, and smiled up. "We would be honored to."
Celestia took a few steps aside to show the long table filled with platters of varying sizes on which a large assortment of food was laid out for the taking. There were cupcakes, truffles, layered cakes, and ice cream for those with a sweet tooth. Carrots, celery, lettuce, and a variety of flowers and leaves I didn't recognize for those seeking a healthier diet. And then there were at least six pails of liquid of various colorations standing around a glass punchbowl in the center of the table.
I looked around myself in wonder and did a quick head count. Besides Celestia, Rhonda, and myself, there were eight guards standing along the long sides of the room, two off in the distance near the doors leading further through the palace, two behind us at the doors through which we made our entry, and the two which had been following us.
"Do the guards eat with us, princess?" I wondered, and she let out a curious chuckle.
"Now that would be an idea," she giggled, but shook her head immediately after. "No, it's just us three."
I stared at the food on the table again and then scratched the back of my neck. "That's a lot of food for just three ponies, princess."
Celestia raised an eyebrow, nudging her head toward Rhonda. "I would not be too worried about that, dear Josey. But please, call me Celestia. We're both princesses."
I turned my head to look at Rhonda and immediately saw the hunger on her face, her ears tilted forward a little even if they still looked far too human, and her tail flicking behind her as if she was waiting to be told she could dig in.
"Rho?" I tried, but Celestia chuckled.
"Why don't you two sit down and we can talk some more while we're having lunch?"
There was a pink blur before Celestia was good and well done with her question, and I followed it to see Rhonda seated on one of the cushions set out around the table, eagerly scanning all the food in front of her.
I followed at a slightly slower pace, taking my seat beside Rhonda and watched as Celestia set herself down opposite us rather than at the head of the table.

The princess' horn glowed as she reached for a pail of milk and poured herself a glass of it, then offered it to us.
"I didn't know ponies drank milk?" I wondered, holding my glass up with my hand for her to fill.
Celestia smiled enigmatically and filled my glass halfway, then moved the pail back to its original position. "Have a sip, Josey. And please feel free to take what you want to eat. The palace staff can make more when necessary."
The latter sentence was aimed more at Rhonda than at me, and my girlfriend moved along the table like a whirlwind, scooping up food from several different platters before sitting down beside me again and stuffing her mouth.
I shook my head in amusement as I lifted the glass of milk to my face, and sniffed it. It smelled like normal milk which we got from cows back home, but there was a light tinge of acidity to it which cow's milk only had when it started to go bad.
Celestia noticed the pull of my facial muscles and leaned in over the table. "It is mother's milk, donated by pregnant mares who started to lactate before they deliver their foals. It is a delicacy in our world."
I stared down at the milk and raised an eyebrow. "Donated?"
"There's a rare condition in our world where pregnant mares start to lactate several months before their foals are ready to be born," Celestia further clarified. "Their breasts fill to the point where they start to leak, but there's no foal to drink from them yet."
I nodded slowly, taking a soft sip from the milk. It tasted different from cow's milk back home, but it didn't taste bad at all. The mild acidity actually helped its unique taste to come out better.
"In the past, such mares would turn to their stallions," Celestia continued, "which had the unintended side-effect of their stallions getting drunk."
I peered out over my glass and raised an eyebrow, but still took another sip of the milk. It was strange to think someone could get drunk over a glass of milk, but there was still something about the taste I couldn't quite place.
"You see," Celestia chuckled, taking a sip from her own glass before continuing, "there's a relatively high amount of salt in mother's milk. This won't affect a newborn foal, but an adult pony is more susceptible to an overabundance of salt and will get drunk from it. Especially when the milk is consumed in large quantities."
Salt. That was it. It was slightly salty. I took a bit of a bigger gulp of milk and let it rest in my mouth for a moment before swallowing. "You're right. It is somewhat salty," I nodded, putting my glass back down near my plate and promptly watching a chunk of cake fall in it.
"Rhonda, love, do watch where your food is flying?" I sighed, plucking the cake out of my glass and dispensing it on my girlfriend's half-empty plate.
Rhonda, her face and hands smeared with chocolate and bits of cake and other confectionery, nodded to my words and jumped up to get a refill.
I looked down at my own empty plate and smirked. "Perhaps I should get some food for myself before Rhonda finishes everything that's on the table?"
Celestia smiled in my direction and her horn glowed as she levitated some plant leaves over, and topped it off with a few flowers.

"Can I," I started, hesitantly, then looked up at where my horn was. "How would I... er..."
Celestia tilted her head at me. "How would you use your magic, you mean?"
I nodded and reached up to touch my horn, playing my fingers along the grooves.
"I'm not sure if you're able to yet, considering your half-finished transformation," Celestia spoke her concern, "but if you feel you are ready to try, it is fairly simple to explain but difficult to master."
I looked her right in the eyes and nodded. "I want to know."
"I assume you want to learn how to levitate things first, considering the question came up as I filled my plate?" Celestia chuckled, and I blushed as I nodded.
"It looked a whole lot more effective than running around grabbing everything separately. A lot more hygienic as well."
The princess looked down at her plate and levitated a small flower over from it to mine. It was a daisy, looking to be freshly cut from its stem as its petals were still brimming with life. "Let's start small. Focus on the daisy and imagine it floating upward from its plate. When you have that image in your head, try to push that image into your horn and, from there, to the daisy."
I stared at the flower on my plate and narrowed my eyes at it. "Ok, little thing, you're going to go up a few inches until you're hovering above the plate. I'm going to imagine you there now," I mumbled to myself.
In my head, I tried to place the image of the flower as an overlay over where it was as I looked at it, then tried to push that image through my forehead into my horn. I needed a few tries before I got my thoughts under control, but then had enough focus to make the image drift off until it hovered where my horn was.
"Now from my horn to the flower," I whispered in utter concentration, moving the mental image down to the plate until it was a perfect overlay again.
Nothing happened.
Nothing continued to happen.
I blinked and looked up at Celestia, who was staring very hard onto her own plate, her face scrunched up as if she was holding back her laughter.
I sighed and folded my arms in front of my chest. "That's not fair, Celestia," I pouted. "You've had a thousand years and then some to perfect your magic. I've only started to turn into a pony yesterday."
Celestia tried to regain her composure, but I saw the twinkle in her eyes as she turned them up to look at me.
"You knew it wasn't going to work, did you?" I asked, and she immediately turned serious.
"No, Josey, I didn't," she assured me. "Trust me when I say that, over the years, a lot of different ponies have amazed me with what they could do against all odds. I did warn you that it may be too soon, but I was rooting for you."

I sighed and looked down at my plate, noticing the daisy had gone missing from it, but a pair of chocolate smears had been left in its place.
"Rhonda," I sighed, looking beside me and seeing Pinkie Pie look back at me. "Rhonda?"
"Yes Josey?" 'Pinkie' said, pausing a moment from stuffing her fully formed and furred muzzle with food.
I tentatively reached out to touch her cake-stained face, shaking my head in bewilderment. "Wow.. I didn't.. How did that?" I stammered, and Rhonda nuzzled softly into my hand.
"Hmm," Celestia hummed, calling one of her guards over and sending him on his way to fetch Magic Ink.
I was still captivated by my lover's fully formed pony face and did not notice the other changes, until a pink hoof moved up to touch my hand.
Shocked by the touch, I fell over backward and shook my head at the fully formed pony sitting where Rhonda had not a moment ago.
She was pink. Everything about her was pink. Pink mane, pink coat, pink eyes. Different shades of pink, to be sure, but she was pink all over!
Rhonda looked confused at my reaction, but followed my gaze downward until she spotted her forehooves and quickly held them up in front of her face. "My hands!"
"Hooves," Celestia corrected.
"When did this happen? I didn't even notice!" Rhonda exclaimed, looking around herself from where she was sitting. "I was just eating until Josey called my name, and then she went all confused and now I have hooves?"
"I wonder if it's the food," Celestia mused, leaning down to take a bite out of her own while studying Rhonda's responses from the corner of her eyes.
"I had some of that milk, Celestia," I reminded her, "Shouldn't I be showing signs of changes as well if that was the case?"
Celestia narrowed her eyes at the thought, then swallowed and looked back at Rhonda again. "Can you please stand up, dear?"
Rhonda blinked up and turned her eyes toward the princess. "Stand up?"
"Yes, my little pony," Celestia offered with a smile. "Just stand up from your cushion, please."
Rhonda shrugged and put her forehooves down on the ground, then pushed her rump up so she was standing on all fours, her clothes dropping on the floor beside her. "Like this?"
"Does that feel natural to you?" Celestia asked, and Rhonda shrugged lightly.
"I guess?"
I got up and walked over to my girlfriend, looking down at how small she was in comparison. Her flank barely reached up to my hips, with the top of her head still below where my breasts... had been.
I stared down at myself and patted down my chest area. "Where'd my boobs go?"
Celestia's laughter filled the room again and I looked up to watch her move a hoof in a downward motion.

I pulled my shirt up to look at my belly, and there they were; two floppy-looking teats.
"That's..." I started.
"Pretty normal for a pony, dear Josey," Celestia finished my sentence for me. "You will find Rhonda's in the same location."
"I didn't even notice the change!" I exclaimed, then pointed back at my wings as I spread them open. "I FELT THOSE!"
"It may have something to do with the nature of the mother's milk, dear," Celestia smiled, lifting her own glass to her lips and taking a sip of it.
I stared at her in confusion, my wings still spread but slowly sinking down a little as my arms fell down to my sides again. "I'm not a foal."
"But you are a pony," Celestia returned. "A pony who may be slightly intoxicated already. Are you, by chance, feeling dizzy?"
I shrugged and reached a hand up again to feel at the side of my head. "A little. I wasn't going to bring it up."
Celestia just nodded with a knowing smile. "You may not want to finish your drink then, Josey."
I sighed and folded my wings again, looking down at the pink pony called Rhonda beside me. "You were eating way too fast."
"And you've not eaten anything yet, silly," she chuckled up at me, licking her muzzle clean.
"You look too cute like that," I sighed, sinking through my legs and wrapping my arms around her neck, leaning my head in against her mane. "Not as puffy a mane as Pinkie's, but it suits you."
I felt her lean in against me as well and she nuzzled back up at me. "Probably because I'm not Pinkie Pie. I'm my own pony."
"Without a cutiemark," I chuckled, poking her blank flank with a finger.
Her head turned to look back at herself and her ears flopped down against her head. "Aww.. I was actually curious at what it would be."
The doors opened and Magic Ink trotted in, moving to Celestia's side and pulling his notepad out of a saddlebag. I could hear Celestia's whispers as my ears turned in their direction. She was filling him in on what had happened so far.
"Josey?" Rhonda wondered, and I pulled away from her a bit so she could turn to look at me.
"Yes Rho?"
"You should eat something," she offered with a concerned look on her face. "And take another sip of that milk too."
I looked up at the table, then winced a bit from a twinge of pain shooting through my leg. "I'm not feeling that hungry, Rho."
"Trust me. You want to go eat something," Rhonda insisted. "And don't try to stand up."
I raised an eyebrow at that last part, then looked down at my legs as I felt another flash of pain.
"Oh. Oh, right," I stammered, looking away from what looked like boiling bubbling flesh surrounding my lower limbs and crawling over to the table to grab a hold of the glass of milk. "Damn the consequences, I really don't want to feel this!" I cried out, downing the remainder of the milk down my throat.

Josey 1, Chapter 11

My head was throbbing by the time I woke up again, and I groaned in misery as I carefully opened an eye to the darkness of the room. It was clear that it was the middle of the night, and I was resting on my back in the room Rhonda and I had stayed in before.
A weight shifted against my right side and I looked at it, watching pony Rhonda rest with her back against me, her head on a pillow and my arm stuck under her neck.
She was sleeping soundly and I didn't want to wake her, so I reached my other arm up and held my hand up in front of my face. "Still human," I croaked, my throat feeling dry.
A movement near one of the windows drew my attention to it and I watched as Luna moved away from it to silently walk over to the bed.
"I'm glad to see you have regained consciousness," she spoke in a soft tone, pouring some water into a glass and lifting it up toward me with her magic. "Drink some. It will help against your hangover."
I reached for the glass with my hand, but grabbed thin air instead. I was sure I had aimed correctly, but my hand was slightly to the left of the glass.
I tried again, moving my hand sideways until it bumped into the glass and then closing my fingers around it once I was assured I had it. Success! I reached the glass down and proceeded to splash the contents of it over my face rather than pouring it down my throat.
Luna raised an eyebrow and levitated the glass out of my hand again. "It is common for a state of inebriation to affect one's motor skills. Don't worry. I will move the glass for you."
I nodded up while carefully lowering my hand so I could wipe my face. "Thank you."
"My sister told me what happened," Luna smirked, bringing a newly filled glass to my lips and tilting it a little to let the water flow into my mouth. "You are a lightweight by our standards, but it is to be expected. Have you ever had any salt before?"
I swallowed the water and felt it rush down my parched throat, nodding softly as Luna lifted the glass a little again. "Back on Earth it's used to add flavour to various dishes. Humans don't get drunk from it," I explained, pushing myself up a little on my left elbow and carefully trying to slide my arm out from under Rhonda.
A dark blue light enveloped the pony beside me and she was lifted gently up in the air as I pulled my arm out from under her, then laid down gently once again. Rubbing my right arm with my left hand to get the blood flowing through it again, I nodded in Luna's direction.
"Thanks."
"You would have woken her. And she is having such a sweet dream right now," Luna revealed, smiling in Rhonda's direction much like a parent would to their sleeping child.
"Oh, right," I realized, "You can see into others' dreams. I just thought you had to be physically there?"
Luna reached the glass back up to my lips and I took a sip from it as she tilted it, moving the muscles in my back a little without opening my wings up. I could feel the tension in them from having laid on them.
"Dreams are not physical, Josey. I would not be able to have a physical presence in them," Luna smiled. "It is purely a representation of my spiritual energy which transfers into other ponies' dreamworlds."
"I see," I mumbled, daring to stretch my wings out slowly over the bed and Rhonda on one side, and out beside Luna on the other side.

"Do you remember what happened before we put you to bed, Josey?" Luna asked, and I shook my head slowly.
"I remember sitting on the floor with Rhonda, and then.. something.. and OH!" I reached down and flung the covers off of my legs, staring down at the bare pony legs attached to my hips. They felt normal enough, from the hip down to the hoof, but it was still a weird thing to see after almost twenty years of having had feet.
Luna looked down at my legs as well, and I could feel her breath fall over the exposed limbs.
"I'm not wearing any clothes," I realized, and Luna shrugged lightly.
I didn't feel embarrassed even with Luna looking me over. She felt safe. I had felt this before, I realized. Luna was safe. "Safe from the spiders," I mumbled, vaguely remembering part of the dream.
The princess of the night looked up with a smile and moved the glass over again. "It is always nice to hear somepony remembering their dreams," she confided in me as I drank more of the water. "Most ponies forget them as soon as they wake."
I gave her a nod and emptied my glass, then reached out to put it on the bedside table. Only with Luna's help did it make it there in one piece, and I looked down in embarrassment.
"I've never been drunk before," I offered, "It's very strange."
"You were acting very strange yesterday as well, as far as I heard," Luna chuckled. "Once the shock of your transformed legs had settled, you apparently danced on the table kicking food around everywhere."
"I... did?" I blinked, moving to turn so I could dangle my legs over the side of the bed and face Luna properly. They hit the ground before I had thought they would, and I had to move a little to sit comfortably.
"Oh, it did not end there. You ran off into the palace garden, disrobed yourself, and started to eat from Celestia's prized flowerbeds. If you are feeling a stomach ache, that would be why."
I looked down and poked at my stomach, a pocket of air quickly rising up through my esophagus as a result. I stifled my burp with the back of my other hand, but Luna still shook her head.
"There is a reason why some flowers are for eating, and others for looking pretty," the princess smirked. "I would not recommend eating nightshade, for example."
I blushed deeply and nodded at her. "Noted."
I looked at Luna's mane and watched it as it moved as if there was a gust of wind moving around the princess' head, and reached my hand out for it. "May I touch your mane, princess?"
Luna raised an eyebrow, but nodded slowly. "If you feel the need to?"
I gently brushed my hand against the dark form, feeling the soft hairs flow around my hand like a cool night's breeze. With my fingers parting the hairs I could make out the individual strands which flowed together so perfectly to form the illusion of a starry night's sky.
"It's beautiful," I breathed out, and Luna smiled up more.
"It took some time to grow it out to this length," she muttered.
"I saw your mane after the Elements of Harmony had broken Nightmare Moon's spell," I offered, and Luna winced visibly. "Your mane wasn't this long then, and it did not move like this."
Luna shook her head at that, gently pulling away from my hand and I withdrew it. "No, it did not."
"Did Celestia's look as it does now, back when she was young?" I inquired, and Luna shook her head. "So you both used magic then."
Luna looked away and licked her lips, not answering my question.

I studied her for a moment, but then shrugged and looked down at my hooves standing on the ground beside the bed. "It doesn't matter. It looks good on you."
Luna dared to look back at that, her smile returning.
"But there's something wrong with my legs," I huffed. "They're too long."
Luna moved closer and turned to put her own back leg beside mine and then looked back at both of them for a size comparison.
"Maybe a little," she agreed, "but they're still shorter than my sister's."
I pushed up from the bed into a standing position and looked at where my hip was in relation to Luna's, and nodded. "I'm sorry if this puts me in-between you and Celestia, height wise."
"Why would you apologize for that?" Luna wondered, turning around to face me again. "I am still catching up to a thousand years of development. Even Cadance is slightly taller than me."
"She is?" I wondered, and Luna nodded.
"Her horn is smaller than mine, but she is a few inches taller overall."
I looked between Luna's flank and my own hips again and flushed as I realized something. "That puts me between Cadance and Celestia, then."
Luna smiled and nodded. "So it seems. Let us wait until your transformation completes, Josey. It is easier to see that way."
Luna walked over to a box set up on the dresser and lifted the top off of it with her magic. "Would you care for a midnight snack? As far as my sister told me, you have not eaten anything all day yesterday."
I felt my stomach growl and nodded, walking closer to find a stack of sandwiches on a silver platter hidden within the box.
"I am hungry, yes. But will this force my body to transform faster, like lunch did to Rhonda?" I wondered, motioning back to the still sleeping pink one on the bed.
Luna shrugged and sat down on her haunches. "That question goes beyond my knowledge. It is mainly alfalfa bread with some grass and flowers."
"Any daisies?" I asked, giggling softly as I sat down opposite Luna beside the dresser.
"Why are daisies so funny?" Luna wondered, lowering the box between us so I could more easily reach for the sandwiches within and pulling one out for herself.
I shrugged and reached for a sandwich with my right hand. "It's just that Celestia tried to teach me how to levitate a daisy during lunch. Didn't work. It didn't move at all."
"She did the picture thing again, did she not?" Luna wondered after swallowing the bite she'd taken.
"Yeah, imagining the flower to fly up or something," I muttered, lifting the top piece of bread up a bit to look at the green stuff held in-between. "Looks like mostly grass and some leaves I don't know."
"Every pony is different, Josey," Luna sighed, using her magic to close my sandwich up again. "If you are going to be a picky eater, I will not help you to understand your magic."

I looked up at her frowning face and took a quick bite from the sandwich in my hands. "Sowwy."
Luna nodded and continued with a light smile. "When we learn to use our magic, we instinctively use what feels right to us. In my sister's case it was to envision what she wanted to have happen in her head, and then make that image a reality."
I nodded while chewing on my food. It had an odd taste to it, not unlike tea drawn up from nettle leaves, and I was surprised by how well it worked with the grass and bread together. My stomach growled again to remind me how hungry I was, and I quickly swallowed to take another bite from my sandwich.
"Other ponies are more instinctive and do not need to build a picture in their head to focus their magic. I personally believe it allows for us to respond quicker than those working along Celestia's image magic."
I finished my sandwich and nodded, reaching for a new one to resume eating.
"My sister and I fought Discord together, and I sent off a volley of magic bursts into him before Celestia even hit him once. She took too much time preparing her spells and we would have lost if she had not quickened her pace halfway through the battle. She slowed me down. It did not work to help me fight my jealousy afterward, when she received all the praise."
I reached for my third sandwich but kept my ears perked, this was something I didn't know yet!
"In time it caused me to rebel against Celestia. We stood opposite one another on the battlefield with our armies ready to gallop forward and see which would be stronger; the day, or the night."
Luna sighed and took a thoughtful bite out of her own sandwich, while I reached for the fourth or fifth? I don't know, I lost count. It tasted so good I just had to continue eating!
"By the time I realized she had been working on a spell long before we met for the final battle, it was too late. She had been powering it up for a long while and I could see the exhaustion in her eyes as she banished me to the moon. Nothing but a shadow printed on its surface."
A light chuckle escaped her and she shook her head. "What I mean to say is that if you have the time to use Celestia's technique, by all means do so. But if you need to respond quickly, there is no use in creating an image in your head and only then putting it out there. You will want to put it out there immediately."
"Take these sandwiches, for instance," Luna offered, looking down and motioning at the, now empty, box with a forehoof.
I swallowed my last bit of sandwich and fell back, sighing out in relief. My stomach was nice and full again and I was feeling oddly ecstatic.
Luna raised an eyebrow at me. "So you did," she mumbled, then finished the rest of her own sandwich in silence.

Luna remained silent, even as my body convulsed and spasmed as it transformed further with the help of the Equestrian food fueling it.
I felt sick laying on the ground in front of the dresser, puking out blood as my internal organs rearranged themselves and generally feeling like I was going to die on the spot. The blood rushing up through my throat had one positive; I could not scream out in pain, leaving Rhonda in blissful sleep on the bed.
Before my bloodshot eyes I saw my hands bloat up into hooves, the joints popping and shifting as my arms turned into a pair of forelegs. As with Rhonda before, the changes passed by faster than they had in the past, and it didn't take long for them to subside, leaving me shuddering in the cold early morning air.
I pulled my hooves up close to my chest underside and trembled from the cold, spitting out a few remaining bits of blood from my newly formed muzzle.
Luna stood up and I felt myself get lifted up by her magic. The blood I had been laying in dripped down from my form and I watched her levitating some water from the jug on the bedside table over to gently wash it out of my coat and mane.
I had some difficulty focusing as she did, getting moved around by her magic, but once she was done I was lowered onto the bed beside my love Rhonda. I almost automatically wrapped my forelegs around her and pulled her close, with me being the big spoon.
Luna tucked us in under the blankets and cleaned up after me, and I took the time to stare down my muzzle at the pale yellow fur covering my newly formed limbs. I felt a little like a citrus fruit.
I lay my head down on the pillow and mused at feeling Rhonda's smaller form. As far as I could judge she was about half my size, and she fitted perfectly as little spoon as we rested on the bed.
I brought my head forward a little to sniff at her mane and smiled at the scent coming from her. Definitely my Rhonda.
Comforted by the familiar smell, and exhausted from what must have been the final stage of my transformation, I closed my eyes with my chin resting on top of Rhonda's head.

Josey 1, Chapter 12

Luna remained in our room until we woke up, Rhonda's excitement at seeing my changes finalized causing her to jump around me like a puppy getting a treat. She even shot underneath me from left to right and back again, making it difficult for me to walk toward the door.
"Thank you again for keeping watch over us, princess Luna," I smiled at the, now shorter, princess and she nodded slowly.
"I guard the night, princess Josey. I was happy to help." Luna opened the door and motioned toward it. "Cadance and Twilight have arrived from the Crystal Empire. My sister is expecting us all for breakfast."
I stretched my wings out a bit as I let out a yawn, and felt they were more comfortable stretched than they were folded at my side, I looked over at Luna and realized hers were unfolded as well.
"I'm starting to see why all Alicorns keep their wings stretched," I muttered, but then put a hoof down in front of Rhonda to stop her from running around. "How about we focus on getting some breakfast first, and you can run around me after?" I suggested, and she went wide-eyed at the thought!
"YAY! FOOD!" she exclaimed, and rushed out through the open door before I could comment on her seemingly boundless energy.
"Does she remind you of somepony?" I wondered of Luna as I passed her by, shaking my head lightly as Rhonda had already disappeared down the next hallway.
Luna closed the door behind us and trotted up to my left side, looking up. "She is just as excited, yes."
"And as pink," I added.
"If not for her eyes, they would be a perfect match," Luna nodded, leading me into the turn to our right.
I smiled down at her before looking up ahead at the double doors behind which the great hall was located.
"I did not do too much damage, did I? Just some flowerbeds?" I asked with some trepidation.
"You have already been forgiven for what you did," Luna replied, smiling up at me. "Do not worry. The most she would do is banish you to the moon for a thousand years."
I missed a step and had to find my hoofing again, but Luna was laughing merrily at her own joke.
I caught up to her and snorted. "That was not funny."
"Indeed. But I do so love how you responded to it," Luna grinned mischievously.
We stopped at the door and Luna motioned to the guards to keep the doors closed for a moment longer, turning to face me.
"Before we join the others, there is one thing I need to ask of you," she said, her tone as serious as the look on her face.
I raised an eyebrow. "What would that be, princess Luna?"
"If you ever feel any jealousy, any dark thoughts, any desire to do harm to another, please let me know?" Luna almost pleaded, and I could see how deep her fear was of another Nightmare Moon rising.
I reached my left forehoof up and held it to my chest. "I promise, Luna. Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a cupcake in my eye." I mimicked the last bit, putting my hoof over my closed eye.
Luna chuckled lightly, turning back to the doors. "If there was any question of why your girlfriend turned into a Pinkie Pie clone, you just answered it."
"Oh, ha-ha," I stated, before taking a deep breath and turning for the doors myself.

Luna gave a nod to the guards and they moved to push the doors open, revealing the large table with its many cushions stacked around it and with various items used during breakfast laid out on it. A few ponies were sitting around it already.
I raised an eyebrow as Rhonda was seated all cuddled-up to Cadance's left side, her forelegs hugged around the princess while Cadance gently stroked a hoof through Rhonda's mane, but I followed Luna into the room regardless.
"...but found no useful information," Twilight Sparkle finished what she was saying, then looked up and waved a wing in our direction.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Twilight. But all hope is not yet lost. Josey here may prove to be our trump card," Celestia smiled, and I felt my cheeks darken.
"Trump card? I'm not sure what you're talking about, Celestia," I smirked, returning the wingwaves from Twilight and Cadance both.
Luna walked over to sit on the left beside Celestia, stifling a yawn before levitating some food her way, and I looked between Celestia and Luna on the one side of the table, and Twilight, Cadance, Rhonda, and Shining Armor on the other.
"Would you terribly mind if I come sit beside you, Celestia?" I wondered, and the sun princess laughed softly to that.
"Not at all, Josey, please feel free to," she returned, pulling a glass and a plate over from a stack further down the table and setting them down in front of me as I sat down on the pillow to her right.
I looked over at Twilight Sparkle's face, her pondering gaze having followed me as I made my way around the table, and tilted my head a little at her. The movement shocked her from her thoughts, and she looked down a little.
"I must say, I would have never imagined myself to be sitting opposite the world-famous Twilight Sparkle," I started, and Twilight's face darkened with a blush as she looked up. "Do you know that your adventures are broadcast around the world back on Earth? So many little girls and boys look up to you, although they can't seem to come to a consensus about whether it was a good thing you became an Alicorn or not. I'd imagine they'd say the same about me," I chuckled.
Twilight just stared at me, so I looked around at the items on the table. There were a few types of cereal, some bread, two types of cupcake; one set with glazing and one set without, and an assortment of freshly picked greens with some flowers on the side. To drink there was water, several types of juice, and a pail of milk.
"More mother's milk, Celestia?" I wondered, but the pony to my left shook her head. I turned mine to face her and noticed we really didn't differ that much in height. I was only a little shorter than her.
"This is fresh cow's milk," she revealed. "Also donated."
I shrugged and moved some cereal into a bowl, then poured some of the cow's milk over it. "As long as it doesn't make me drunk, I'm fine with it."

Celestia's giggling reached my ears at about the same time as I reached a spoonful of cereal to my lips, and I looked up to see practically every pony around the table looking at me with various odd looks on their faces.
"What? Did I say something wrong?" I wondered, putting my lips around the spoon and licking the cereal off of it.
Celestia was laughing too hard for me to get anything worthwhile out of her response, Luna just smiled with some sense of pride in her gaze, but otherwise remained silent. Across the table Shining Armor looked at me as if he was trying to judge whether I would be a threat, and Twilight's jaw had just about dropped under the table. Rhonda was staring at me as if she'd seen a ghost, and that just left Cadance.
I pulled the spoon from my mouth, swallowed, and looked her straight in her love-filled eyes. "What's going on, Cadance?"
"Celestia just told us you were incapable of using your magic," Cadance offered with a warm smile. "Whatever happened overnight, you just made yourself breakfast. It's quite an achievement to go from being unable to use your magic, to levitating items across a fair distance with not so much as a wobble."
"Impossible, I'd say," Twilight murmured, having finally gotten her composure back.
"Now why would it have to be impossible?" Luna sighed, "Did you not write in one of your reports that a newborn unicorn foal had given your friend Pinkie Pie a run for her money?"
"That's different," Twilight remarked with a snort, "Pumpkin Cake was born a unicorn. Josey has been a human all her life."
"But she was reborn as an Alicorn during the night, Twilight," Cadance cut in again, but then looked down at the catatonic pink pony to her side. "Although perhaps Rhonda was not aware she could do magic yet."
"Calm down, everypony," Celestia finally stated after recovering from her laughing fit, and turned to face me.
I was feeling just about like the joke of the century here. I had not even realized I was using my magic!
"Josey, dear, do you know what you just did?" Celestia asked, and I shrugged dumbly.
"Apparently I used my magic," I responded.
"Not only that, but you proved you're the best pony for the job of dealing with Spritelight," Celestia smiled.
I turned my head down to look at my cereal. "Why's that?"
"Shining, how high was her mana expenditure there?" Celestia asked, and I looked up at the stallion at the unfamiliar sentence.
"Very low. I could barely register she was using any at all," Shining replied, shaking his head in disbelief. "Does this mean what I think it does, Celestia?"
The sun princess turned to her former student. "Mana expenditure is related to what, Twilight?"
Twilight coughed and recited "The amount of mana expenditure per magic act is directly related to the amount of total mana a pony can tap into."
"And a low mana expenditure means that such a pony has? Anypony?" Celestia asked as if she was teaching a class of foals.

"The sheer.. unlimited.. things... we could... do with that.." Rhonda gasped, and everypony's head turned to her.
"Pardon?" Celestia blinked.
"JUST IMAGINE!" Rhonda exclaimed, jumping up on the table and pointing around as if seeing the whole world unfold in front of her. "We could end wars! Bring happiness to the depressed! Rain chocolate from the sky!"
I felt my ears tilt down and winced as a tricolor of magic enveloped Rhonda, sitting her down beside Cadance again. Celestia, Luna, and Twilight frowned at my girlfriend and Cadance wrapped her forelegs protectively around her.
"Ssh," Cadance hushed, and Rhonda slowly calmed down again.
A collective sigh came from around the table and Celestia turned her suddenly weary head toward me. "And this is what happened to Spritelight. It is these, and thoughts along a similar vein, which make her so dangerous."
I nodded slowly and felt everypony except for Cadance looking in my direction again.
"I don't think it's right to take choice away from anypony," I started softly, but then scraped my throat and looked up, directly into Rhonda's eyes. "If Earth changes, it will be because its people decide to change. I can't make that decision for them."
Rhonda opened her mouth, but Cadance put her hoof to it and Rhonda's eyes turned down.
"A superhero back on Earth kept repeating the same sentence; With great power comes great responsibility," I continued, looking away from Rhonda as I saw she got it and looking at each of the ponies around the table in turn, until I looked in Luna's eyes. "I don't understand how I'm suddenly able to use my magic. I don't get this talk about mana. But I do get the gist of the conversation."
Luna smiled weakly under my enduring gaze, and I smiled toward her. "I had a great teacher in Luna," I turned my eyes back to Twilight, "in Twilight," and then finally turned to look at Celestia, "and in Celestia. The show back home taught us so much about how some would abuse their power and only hurt themselves and others in the process."
I paused a moment and felt my tail twitch. "I don't want to be that pony."
Everypony nodded at that. "This is what we all decided, Josey," Celestia offered in a soft tone. "At one point or another the choice comes for us all; do we want to use our power for good, or do we want to force our opinions upon others?"
Luna sniffled and I looked up to see her leaning into Celestia's side, one of Celestia's wings folded around her.
"Luna made a mistake, once. Blinded as she was by her jealousy. As did Twilight, when she forced the citizens of Ponyville to fight over one of her toys," Celestia continued, and I looked up to see Twilight looking away. "But they both returned to doing good. They learned from their mistakes. We're able to keep Equestria a safe place because of their choices."

"And now I must make one," I cut in, knowing where this was headed. "Do I want to help Spritelight by doing everything I can to find her and make her see what she is doing? Giving her the choice to make things right again? Or do I want to hunt her down and kill her for the pain she's caused me and others?"
Celestia nodded at that. "We did not kill Discord. I did not kill my sister Luna. In both cases I chose to give them time to think about what they had done. In the hopes that they would turn for the better."
"Sombra is a lost cause," Shining sighed.
Celestia agreed, "Yes. Unfortunately some are too lost for us to help them. We will have to keep Sombra away from the Crystal Empire for now. But I still have hope he, too, will come to see the error of his ways. It may take a thousand years, or a million. We may not be here when it happens, but one day perhaps."
I nodded in unison with the other ponies around the table. "When Discord came for Rhonda and myself, he made mention of the borders between worlds. Of creatures far worse than him waiting for their time to strike."
Twilight perked up and nodded quickly. "Yes, we read about that in the Crystal Empire library. Worldeaters they're called."
"I don't care what they are called," I shrugged, and looked around the table. "If I find Spritelight. If I manage to help her become good again, or even if I don't. Is there a chance for these things to be locked away again?"
Celestia looked over at Twilight, and everypony else followed her gaze.
"I," Twilight started, looking troubled. "There was no mention of any ritual or spell that locked them away. All the books said was that they would appear when the dimensional walls would break. That they would cause the end of the world."
"Then it is high time I started to look for Spritelight," I decided, pushing up from my cushion. "When do I leave?"
Rhonda jumped up and ran around the table, quickly clinging to both my forelegs. "WE! You mean WE! You're not going alone, Josey! Together forever, remember?"
I winced and looked down, nuzzling my muzzle in against Rhonda's mane and pressing a kiss on top of her head, feeling my tears press against the back of my eyes. "I can't, Rhonda.. You're an Earthpony with no magic potential. What if we were being chased by Earth's governments? What if Spritelight decided to use you as a means to blackmail me?"
Rhonda looked up with tears rolling down her face. "B..but you promised. Y..y.. you promised, Jo... Rho and Jo forever.. You'd always protect me, you said."
I sank down through my hooves and let her hug her forelegs around my neck instead of around my own forelegs. "That's what I'm doing, Rho. You'll be safe here, with the other princesses. Maybe you can visit Ponyville and get Pinkie to teach you how to pull things out of thin air, hmm?"
A tear drooped down my muzzle and I shook it off before it would have landed on Rhonda's back.
"She's right, Rhonda," Celestia spoke gently, her face wrought in pain at the inevitable parting to come. "We will keep you safe here, but Josey needs to go alone."
"It's not fair!" Rhonda cried out, bawling loudly as she clung to me for dear life.
"No, it's not," I sniffled, not able to stop the tears from coming no matter how strong I wanted to appear to her. "But I will make it right, Rhonda. And then we'll be together. Forever."

---

End of book 1.

Spritelight 1, Chapter 1

"And in local news, several students of the Martin Luther King Jr. high school have gone missing after the school instituted a rule banning the new ponygear fad from their grounds," the human on the news said, and the screen cut to a video of children wearing potentially fake pony tails, fake pony ears, and some who had shaved their hair to make it look like a pony mane.

"Parents are blaming the school for the disappearances," the voice continued, "and the police have started an investigation in the mass disappearance of these students, aged fourteen to eighteen." The screen returned to showing the presenter again, now with a number overlayed on the desk they were sitting behind.

"If you have any information with regards to any of the children as shown on these photographs, please contact your local police station or call the national Amber alert hotline on this number. And now for sports, with..."

The room returned to darkness as I pressed my hoof down on the TV-remote, which rested in front of me on the couch, and I shook my head at what I had just seen. It had taken me a few weeks to familiarize myself with the devices the humans used to keep tabs on what happened around them, since there was no Free Pony Express here.

The papers the humans did have contained unintelligible letters I could not decypher, no matter how I tried with my magic, so they were of no use to me. However, this 'television' thing worked fairly well to keep track of how the humans responded to the chosen few I had transformed so far. And it was not how I had expected them to respond.

"Gone missing," I snorted in disbelief, "I give them the best gift they will ever know, make them the ambassadors of the new times to come, and they hide away?"

I got up from where I had been lying on the couch and walked out to one of the streetside windows, pushing away the dark drapes with my left hoof as I drew near. The night was mostly quiet, the streets illuminated by the tall lamps on either side of it.

The building across the street was where one of my newest targets was sleeping. It was not someone I had imagined choosing for this important task, but I had been forced to deviate from my original plan several times now.

Zecora, and my former mentor Discord, were hot on my hooves and I had resorted to randomly selecting new ambassadors to keep them from anticipating my next move. There was no time to select humans on their magic potential, their good will, or even whether they liked equines or not. I instead moved from one town to the next, randomly picking a school, and just used my spell on whatever group looked most like the ones before them.

It depended on the day and town whether this meant transforming just a few, or more than a dozen, and there had been many a restless night where I had sat in whatever shelter I could find - usually the empty home of some human or some other place like it - silently hoping Discord would not find me before my mana replenished.

As a result of these weeks of restless nights, I could feel my head pounding from a headache that just wouldn't go away. I had been going through the humans' storerooms wherever I managed to gain access to their homes, but few of the items I had found in them matched up to Equestrian products. And some tasted downright nasty when I had sampled them on the tip of my tongue. If the humans had medicine against headaches, I could not find them.

The young boy across the street would wake up tomorrow with the start of a tail growing from his rear. I could just imagine the excited squeal the human foal would give upon realizing he would be turning into a proper colt, instead of having to deal with this damaged human society.

Once the worlds combined, he would have a future that actually led somewhere, instead of dealing with these weird machines and inedible items the humans surrounded themselves with. For a moment I caught myself wondering whether the combining of the worlds would also fix the changes that had happened to me?

Back in Equestria, before I opened the portal to bring me here, my colors had been vibrant, my hooves smooth and functional. Once I set hoof on Earth however, all that changed. My former bright blue mane and tail started to feel heavier on me, their sheen lost when I saw them in the mirror and rogue hairs sticking out from them at odd angles.

My hooves had taken an awkward turn for the worst, with my recent pedicure barely covering the imperfections on them anymore. Had my silver coat covered them in the past, now the hairs stopped just short of them almost like fetlocks. It was a big shock when I first arrived here.

Without the vibrancy of colors of my coat and mane, I could hardly be called Spritelight anymore. Had I been born with this dreary grey coat, I would have perhaps been called Spritedark... It would have launched me into a depression, if I did not have a task to complete.

I nodded to myself and turned away from the window again, looking at the ornaments placed in this abandoned house's living room. Half of the items made no sense. Oddly shaped figurines which looked like nothing in nature that I had ever seen, humanoid figures with parts missing, a bag with weirdly shaped sticks and white balls with little dents in them in a corner of the room. Humans were weird.

I headed back to the wall of glass at the back of the house and used a quick spell to allow myself to pass through the material as if it was not there at all. I lowered my head as I reached the edge of the pool and took a careful sip of it. I would not normally drink from a pool, but the faucets used by the humans were impossible to operate with hooves and I was trying to conserve my magic.

Some of these humans used additives in their pools which made the water taste weird and which made my eyes sting from the fumes coming from them, but there was either a very low concentration of it in this one or not at all. I silently thanked the absent home owner as I needily drank from their pool, my ears turning as they caught the night's sounds.

There was some car revving off in the distance. Probably an impatient driver waiting for the red light to turn green. Those things were nasty. The difference between an Invisibility spell or an Invincibility spell were that the former did not protect against cars speeding towards you, and the latter is non-existent. I already had to jump out of the way several times now on account of drivers who did not see me crossing the roads due to my invisibility spell.

I do not have wings, like the Alicorn princesses or the Pegasi back home, and the transformation spells drain my mana too much to use teleport spells effectively, so walking was how I got from one place to the next.

It took some effort to stay out of sight, but I felt I was making some good progress nonetheless. I did not get to follow my original plan anymore, but I was still making more ambassadors who would lead this world into the new times. Any progress is good progress, right?

I looked at the stars above and tried to gauge the time by them. It was still early in the night, I knew, and the humans had a strange way of filling up empty streets shortly before midnight as they returned home from wherever they had gone earlier that evening, so I knew I should stay away from the main roads for a little while longer.

Still, I could start making my way to the next town and arrive there before morning if I galloped along the highway. I would have to see about finding another school and place to rest at when I arrived there.

I pushed my way out of the backyard of the house through the broken fence and hid behind a small bush as I surveyed my surroundings. It was nice and peaceful except for a man and his dog walking across the road. The dog was leashed, of course. I had yet to see a human who allowed their pets to roam free.

I waited for them to pass, then quickly cantered in the other direction. There was plenty of shelter between me and the main roads, and I stuck to the shadows where possible to evade what few humans were actually outside as well.

I had to duck behind a house when a car suddenly swerved into the street from a crossroads up ahead, a bright light mounted on top of it swerving left and right as it surveyed the area around it. Police officers, I knew. They were most likely looking for the 'missing' children or anyone who may be responsible for it. There was no way I was going to show myself to those people.

Once the car pulled away I moved away from the building and watched the red lights on the back of the car disappear as I rounded the corner from the driveway onto the sidewalk again - straight into some human walking there.

"Ooph," the human exhumed as I bumped into their stomach, and they fell back onto the pavement while I felt all my hairs stand on end.

I swiveled my head back to face the human on the ground before me, and before I realized I was doing it, I felt my magic leave my horn... My sensitive ears, perked up as they were due to alarm, picked up the human's faint groan as they got hit again - and then they emitted a louder one as the changes started...

I watched in amazement as my transformation spell, fueled by my sudden panic at being discovered, forced this human into a faster transformation than any of my previous victims: I gasped as I saw their body deform under cover of their clothing, accompanied by the loud snapping of bones being restructured and the painful whining of the soon-to-be new pony.

I quickly moved in to put a hoof to their muzzle as it grew out of their human face, but could not prevent their glasses from falling off of their nose in the process. The fortunate soul stared up at me with fear and confusion as their eyes grew into proper pony eyes, and I soon was fighting off randomly flailing limbs as they tried to push me away.

"I'm sorry for the unexpected change," I started, looking around to see if anyone had come to the sounds the thrashing pony was making, "but it's for the best. I promise. You're receiving a gift that would be yours eventually anyways, you're just lucky to get it before most others."

My words were met with a loud howl as the changes finalized, and the human's clothes tore open around the pony's new body while fur sprouted all over their form. It was a light blue, almost the color of turquoise - although it was hard to tell exactly in the orange light from the streetlamps.

The pony's struggling wound down while they closed their rose-coloured eyes, and I lifted my hoof from their muzzle as they stopped grumbling, moving it instead to wipe their long mane out of their face. It was shaded in a darker tone at the base, leading to lighter tips, but it had a rose color to it as well.

I sighed and looked them over, using my magic to disintegrate their clothes from around them and realizing at once the former human had turned into a small mare. The fur of her coat was stuck together in places from the sweat of the transformation, but that was nothing a brush couldn't fix.

Her former jacket had hidden a pair of lovely wings from sight, and I admired them even as they twitched from the mare's brain finishing the connections to her new limbs. If she managed to use those, she could do what I could only dream of, or do with great magical effort; to soar above the clouds and see my magic wash out from human to human - turning them all into proper ponies.

"Ah, but I'd have to be an Alicorn for that to work," I chided myself, and turned away from the new ambassador to the Earthborn Pegasi to continue on my way.

A pair of hooves immediately grabbed a hold of my right hindleg and I jerked to a stop, looking back to find a determined look on the new mare's face as she held onto me for dear life, her ears facing front and trembling lightly.

"What's the big id-eep!" she exclaimed, then immediately moved her wings to cover her muzzle at the sound of her own voice. Her eyes grew even more when she realized what she was covering her mouth with, and I could just see the cogs turning in her head as her body language revealed all.

"Yes, you're a pony. Yes, you're a mare. If you weren't female before, I'm sorry. You are now. Also, I kind of have to go, so if you would let me go?" I offered, but my words only led to her clinging to my leg tighter than before.

"No, really. I have to go," I repeated, trying to tug my hoof out of her grasp.

I needed a few tugs to get it free, and I briskly turned back for the direction of the main road. My ears turned on my head as I heard awkward flapping and stumbling hoofsteps behind me, but I had no time to wait for the newfound pony to find her hoofing. I had to get as close to the main road as possible before the nighttime traffic would catch up to me.

"Hey!" the mare called out, and I sighed to myself as the hoofbeats started to fall in with a proper trot. I sped up to a canter, which led to more stumbling behind me, but then I heard the mare's speed up to a gallop..

I, too, started to gallop to stay ahead, chancing to look back to see the stumbling pony follow me with her wings flapping oddly in an attempt to get her more speed. She was swerving left to right and barely managed to get her hooves under her each step she took, but was still closing in for some reason.

I grumbled and slowed to a trot again, my ears falling back in annoyance as I waited for her to catch up. It didn't take long for her to fall in with my trot to my left side, her wings still moving awkwardly as she tried to get them to fold to her side.

"Hey, don't go like that!" she snorted, half out of breath, and I looked sideways at her.

"I told you I have to go. I can't wait for some random filly like you to come to terms with the gift they're given. I have a deadline, you know?" I bit to her, and her ears flopped down while she fell behind a little, a flush marring her cheeks.

"Well, I didn't want to.. Hey!" she started, then realized she was falling behind and ran up to close the distance. "I mean, I just wanted to.. er.. Am I dreaming or did I die or something?"

I shook my head at the stumbling mare, crossing the empty crossroads over to the next block of houses. "Not a dream, and my magic was certainly not intended to kill," I answered. "Why?"

The mare finally got her wings to fold right and looked thoughtful. "Not a dream?"

I shook my head, flicking my left ear from annoyance at having to repeat myself, but turning for the nearest bush as I saw some headlights in the distance. "No, not a dream. Now get down here or they'll see you."

The mare obediently followed me to hide behind the bush, awkwardly sitting herself down beside me with her eyes flicking back and forth between her own legs and mine as if trying to see if she did it right.

"Well, I mean," she started, then blushed deeply and looked away.

"What?" I asked, my ears turned up to listen for the sound of the approaching car.

"I can't fucking believe this is real!" the cute mare exclaimed, and I felt the need to facehoof.

Spritelight 1, Chapter 2

The car passed us by without slowing, and I pushed up on my hooves to look down the road to see if any others may follow. Seeing another car come from the same direction as the first one had, with more headlights trailing behind it, I lowered myself on the soft grass with a deep sigh.

"Well, this is just marvellous," I grumbled to myself with a quick shake of my head. "I should have reached the main road already instead of being stuck here with a hopeless mare."

"Hey!" the mare to my side exclaimed to that, but I paid her no mind. I instead reached out with my magic to tentatively feel for the energy signatures of Discord or Zecora.

"Ooh," the mare cooed, and I flattened my ears. "I didn't know unicorn horns really glowed when they used magic. I always thought it was just a gimmick."

It was difficult to focus with someone babbling in my ears, but I managed to finish my sweep of the surrounding energy. Zecora's was the only energy signature I could find, and she was still two towns out from where we were. I smiled at that, knowing my decision to transform groups, instead of individuals, was making it harder for her to follow behind. She had to go visit each and every single one of my ambassadors, while I could just gallop ahead.

"So did someone transform you too, or were you born like this? It hurt a lot when you transformed me, but I guess that's natural? It's not like I didn't know pain before this; I've always had bad knees," the babbling continued, and I turned my attention to the turquoise mare beside me.

"Do you have an off switch?" I asked, not trying to hide my annoyance in the least.

The mare scrunched her nose and huffed, then looked down. "Well, I'm sorry for just trying to make conversation," she grumbled.

"You'd better think of how you can make this world accept you as an ambassador. Accept the inevitable merger between this world and Equestria. Accept that they will all become ponies before this is done," I stated, lifting myself up from the ground a little to look down the road.

"Or maybe you should just wait until the traffic dies down and return to your home," I added. "I need to be in the next town over before dawn."

"Why?" the mare wondered, looking up at me again. "Can't I tag behind? I have so much to ask you!"

I shook my head at that. "I can't be slowed down by a stumbling mare who doesn't have her proper hoofing yet. I need to stay ahead of things and get enough ambassadors made on this planet to make the humans see there's no stopping this."

"Stopping what?"

I facehoofed. "Didn't you listen? The merger of Equestria and Earth."

"When's that going to happen?"

"When there's enough of you to automate the process, I'd imagine," I sighed. "I know there needs to be enough magical potential on this world to establish the link, and there should be enough ponies to get the desired effect. The last we'd want is to give the changelings more of an edge than proper ponies, right?"

"I'm not sure what you're saying," the mare muttered, looking completely lost.

"I'm saying I'm wasting my time trying to explain this to you while I should have been on the highway leading out of town already!" I snapped, and her ears flopped down low as she looked away in shame.

I turned my attention back to the road, while trying to figure out my next move. This new pony was testing my patience. It was no use explaining magic to a Pegasus anyway, but this one used to be a human. I had yet to see a human wield magic in any of its forms.

The mare beside me coughed uneasily, and I glanced in her direction again.

"Er, if you're trying to get out of town, why are you on this road?" she asked carefully, her ears moving on her head as if she was expecting me to snap at her again.

"Because this road leads out to the main road which leads out to the highway," I explained, but the mare quickly shook her head.

"No it doesn't," she offered, and I frowned at her.

"What do you mean, it doesn't?" I asked.

"The main road doesn't connect to the highway for a while. They removed the overpass that used to be there after a truck flew off of it and into a building last year. They're still busy building a tunnel instead. Traffic has been redirected through town ever since the accident. If you want to get to the highway, you have to use the detour which goes that way." she explained, pointing behind us with a hoof, and almost falling over where she was seated.

I turned my head to look in the direction she was pointing at, and raised an eyebrow. "But every town before this had its highway connected to the main road," I started.

"Yeah, but the accident caused such outrage against overpasses that the town council decided to dig a tunnel instead. Did you use an old map or something?"

I flushed and looked away, frowning at myself. "I can't read your stupid human alphabet."

"Oh," the mare realized, looking away herself but then quickly looking back at me again with a bright smile. "I can!"

I raised an eyebrow at her and tilted my head a little. "So?"

"So, I could help you read things you can't read, duh," she returned.

I blinked as I realized with a shock that she was right. What was the one thing that had stopped my progress in the past weeks? Not my former mentor Discord. Not Zecora. It had been my inability to read up on where I was headed. My inability to read maps.

Sure, I could go stand at one of the maps around town and sort of plot my course on it, but I mostly had to go from the layout of things. The red dot was me, I had quickly figured out, and then there were all those lines that were roads, and the blue things were lakes and rivers... It had not been too different from the maps back home.

The real issue had been the names of places, roads, everything. I could not read any of it. Nor the signs plastered over the maps. Nor those along the road. Considering what the mare had told me earlier, I must have missed something important on the yellow and red and white and blue signs on the lampposts on either side of the road I had been following.

"You know," I started, smirking lightly to myself, "you have a point there."

"Yeah, see? You need me!" the mare exclaimed excitedly. "And I can hang about and ask you questions in return for my help, right?"

I sighed and stared at her. "Don't you have other things to do though?"

"Like what?" she wondered.

"Well, job, school, working to get the humans to accept your new fate?" I mused.

"Can't do my job with hooves, don't have school, and if I show myself like this to the wrong kind of person they'd capture me and dissect me," the mare shrugged matter-of-factly.

I felt all blood pull away from my face and shook my head in disgust. "Dissect you?"

The mare smirked and nodded in shame. "Yeah, humans aren't that good at accepting people or ponies who differ from the norm..."

All of a sudden the disappearances of my ambassadors started to make sense, and I felt my stomach turn. Could this mean that they... No. No, I couldn't think like that. This mare here followed me into hiding within moments after she was transformed. The others would have done the same. I had to think they were still alive, but in hiding.

This changed everything, however. No longer could I just randomly select my ambassadors. If they were to be taken by the humans, and murdered for being the ponies they had every right to be, I had to pick those capable of dealing with it. No longer going for the innocent ones who would be most accepted, but for the stronger ones who could actually make a difference.

A turquoise hoof moved in front of my face and I blinked.

"Hello? You still there?" the mare wondered, looking concerned.

I smiled at her and offered my right forehoof to her. "Yes, I am. If we're going to be traveling together, we may as well exchange names. My name's Spritelight. What shall we call you?"

Spritelight 1, Chapter 3

I stared at the slight curl in the mare's tail as it flicked this way and that while she ambled along the road. Soft muttering came from her as she led me down the right road leading for the quickest way out of town, and I shook my head as variations on the same name broke through the silence of the night:

"Turquoise Flyer, Turquoise Speedster, Turquoise Runner, Turquoise Cloudchaser, Tur..."

"Turkey Headless," I suggested, making the mare in front of me stumble over her own hooves and turn back to face me with a flush on her cheeks!

"H...hey, that's not fair," she pouted. "You have a neat name already and I just have my stupid human name that doesn't fit me anymore."

"You do know you don't need to have a colour in your name, right?" I returned to her as I continued walking, passing her by as she worked on a reply to that. "Or have two names, for that matter."

"But you have two names too," the mare protested. "Sprite and Light, right?"

"You might think that," I started, with an annoyed flick of my tail in her direction, "but, contrary to popular belief, it's just the one word; Spritelight. No space."

"And you don't have a family name or something?" came the question as the mare hurried to trot up to my left side.

I shrugged at the question. "Never knew my family."

The mare's head dipped down a moment, and I suddenly found her bumping into my side, her head nuzzling up at the side of my neck. I immediately stopped walking and watched her need another step or two before she did as well.

"What was that?" I demanded, feeling my ears twitch on my head from the strangeness of what had just happened.

The mare scraped a hoof over the ground and shrugged lightly. "I dunno... I felt like you needed some comforting. I don't know how ponies usually do it, but that felt like the most natural?"

I snorted and made a show of stepping around her before continuing on my way. "I did not need any such thing," I dismissed her words, trying to fight back the tears I felt burning behind my eyes. "Don't do it again, ok? Or I may call you Turkeyhead from now on."

There was a stomp of a hoof behind me as the mare clearly disagreed with my words, but then I heard her hooves fall back in rhythm with mine and a meek voice said "Have it your way..."

I nodded quickly to that as I regained my composure, but stopped walking as we reached the crossroads we had been heading for. I looked in all directions, trying to remember what the other mare had told me. "We have to turn right here, right?"

"Left, actually," she mumbled as she moved past, turning for the direction she had said.

"Right," I nodded, falling in line behind her again.

"No, we went left," she corrected me, and I sent a spark of electricity from my horn to her flank. She yelped from the sensation, launched herself forward, missed the step she was trying to make, and fell down on her face.

"Don't be wise with me, you know what I meant," I chuckled, using my magic to help her up on her hooves again.

She smiled weakly at me, and I found I could not but smile back. "Just get us over to the next town before dawn, ok?" I asked, "We'll need to find a shelter there before we can make plans on what to do exactly."

"What do you want to do, exactly, anyway?" she wondered, trotting up to my right side for once and looking sideways at me.

"I already told you; I need to turn the right kinds of people into ponies, so that Equestria and this world can merge, and you all can lead happier lives. The two worlds were torn apart in the past, and nopony has tried mending it before, to my knowledge. It has led to such destruction on Earth, and so much pain. This has to be corrected."

She nodded slowly at that, but I could see she didn't grasp it in its entirety.

"Don't worry, I'll deal with the details," I offered, "You just find us a shelter and whatever else we need along the way."

The mare put her right forehoof up to her head in an awkward salute. "Yes ma'am," she stated, then faceplanted herself on the pavement again.

"And you may want to work on your balance," I decided to add, shaking my head with a chuckle as I lifted her from the floor again.

We walked side-by-side until we got to the highway. We quickened our pace to a canter as we traveled along it, gallopping in short bursts before returning to a canter again to save our energy. The turquoise mare was still trying to come up with a name for herself, and her lack of focus caused her to have to catch up to me more often than not.

We eventually made it to the next town and came to a stop in a copse of trees between the highway and the nearby buildings. I checked the sky again to see how much time had passed, but a mass of clouds had moved in and it was impossible for me to get any hint as to where the moon could be.

"Damn clouds," I grumbled, and sank through my hooves to catch my breath.

"What's wrong with the clouds?" the mare wondered in-between panting breaths.

"I can't see how low the moon is with the clouds hiding it away," I offered, "I don't know how much time we have remaining before dawn breaks if I can't see the passing of time in the sky."

"It's about five," the mare shrugged. "The sun comes up in an hour or two."

"How do you know?" I asked in confusion.

"There's a clock down the road there at the bus station. It says 5:03," she explained, and I stared in the direction she was pointing at.

"Yeah, see, that's not a clock," I snorted. "A clock is round and has two or three horns to point at the time."

"Horns?"

"Or feathers, or fake hoofs. It depends on where they were made," I nodded. "Now what you have over there is just some weird display thing with wobbly lines and scratches over it that I can't make heads or tails of. That's not a clock."

"Yes it is," the mare decided. "What you're talking about sounds like an analog clock. But that there is a digital one. Most clocks around are digital these days."

"Which is why I have to look at the sky for the time," I sighed. "I can't read that digital stuff."

"But you have me now? I can tell you what the time is?" the mare offered, and I smirked back up to her.

"The time, yes. Your own name, not quite."

She huffed and looked away, and I grinned at the back of her head. She was so easy to tease! I was starting to enjoy her company.

Spritelight 1, Chapter 4

"Ok, so the recent economic crisis hit hard in this state. A lot of buildings that were under construction never got finished, and those that did have been empty ever since," the mare spoke as we trotted into town, and I found myself nodding slowly at her words.

"If we're lucky, the local mall should have some empty stores which could make for great shelter, and we could probably get some grub to boot!" she stated excitedly, grinning back at me.

I raised an eyebrow at her. "Get some grub?"

"Get food. I don't know about you, but I'm as hungry as a horse!"

"You are a hor... you know what, never mind," I sighed, rubbing my face with a hoof. "Where is this mall you spoke of?"

"Just around the corner, really," she giggled, leading the way.

I followed her around the corner, but stopped as the place got into view. A large tarmac field stretched out for what seemed like miles, with storefronts found on three of its sides. Hedges, streetlamps, trashcans, and rectangular stones were placed in an odd pattern on the tarmac, creating a strange sort of maze.

The mare was trotting past the stores on the left, but was not even paying them much attention. She looked to be heading for the largest storefront at the back of the tarmac, a store with a large red sign over the entrance.

"This is a mall?" I asked, looking around and feeling about as small as when I first set hoof in Canterlot.

"Well, these are just the outside shops. Over there's the actual mall. Sixty stores with supermarkets and shoestores and everything under one roof," the mare chuckled, pointing over to the large glass wall under the big red sign.

"Sixty?" I repeated, looking around myself at the dozen stores on either side. "Including these ones?"

"No, these are just the outside stores," the turquoise mare sighed, stopping to look at me. "I just told you, Spritey."

"Spritelight," I corrected her. "You mean to tell me that there's three times as many stores inside there than there are outside here, 'Turkey'?"

The mare's ears drooped a bit as I used that name for her, but then she nodded slowly. "Two floors of stores, thirty stores per floor."

"And you think we're safe there?" I continued.

"Well, yeah.. the beauty of it is that there's so many stores there that they can't possibly find us," she reasoned.

I shrugged and cantered over to the glass wall, peering through it at the heavy metal shutters behind it. "And you have a plan to get us inside, I take it?"

The mare trotted after me, looking up at the wall herself. "Well, I was thinking..."

I turned to face her, "Yes?"

"With your magic and all," she coughed uneasily.

I sighed and looked back at the glass wall. "Great. I do need to conserve my mana so I can do what I came here for, but sure... how does this work?"

"Well, when they open the mall they put a key in that device over there," the mare pointed at a small box, "and then the shutters will roll up. The doors are automatic and should open once the shutters are up."

"Or I could just use a spell to make us ethereal so we can walk through these walls," I shrugged.

"YOU CAN DO THAT?!?" the mare shouted, and I winced as her voice rang out across the tarmac field.

"...don't shout, Turkey," I chided her, then focused on the door again. "Glass and some kind of metal. Few inches between. You should go first because I have to focus my magic to surround you. Don't hesitate, just walk forward when I..."

I stopped as the mare promptly walked forward - into the glass wall. She shook her head from the bump, and stumbled back.

"As I was saying," I sighed, "Walk forward when I say so."

The mare rubbed her forehead with a hoof and nodded in embarrassment. "Thanks for the warning."

I shook my head in mild amusement, but then focused my energy into my horn, sending it off to surround the other. As the silver light of my magic covered her, her colours became more vibrant and for a moment I caught a glimpse of what she would look like in Equestria.

"...beautiful..." I gasped out.

"Huh?" the mare wondered, and I shook my head.

"Nothing! Just walk forward," I quickly stated. "It should be fine now."

She raised an eyebrow in confusion, but still turned around to tentatively push a hoof up against the glass. It passed through without effort, and she quickly cantered through with a squeal of excitement! I waited for her to pass through completely before I pulled my magic away from her. A moment later, and I passed through the double walls myself.

The mare was happily gallopping around in the large space behind the walls, running circles around a large fountain set up in the center of the place. A place far larger than I had ever seen. Large hallways led off in four directions from the center plaza, each holding some fifteen stores on two levels.

Most of the upper level stores looked to be vacant, with large signs plastered all over the glass walls and nothing in the displays. There were just one or two of them with their displays filled with assorted items, but even those had signs plastered over them.

I slowly walked up to the center plaza, looking around in amazement, up until the other mare cantered over and grinned at me. "What do you think, Spritelight?"

I shook my head a moment. "It's big."

"And largely empty. We have plenty of space to choose from!" the other grinned.

"Considering most of the upper level stores seem to be empty, those would be our best bet, right?" I asked, and she nodded. "Although I can't understand those signs."

"Oh! Right, so most of those say "space for rent"," the mare offered, pointing around. "But those stores there which aren't closed yet have signs that say "sale" and "closing soon". Most of the items they offer are down in price for like 75% or so. It will attract a lot of customers when they open."

I pondered that explanation, looking at where those stores were located. "Ok, so we may want to find a place out of the way of those places."

"Good thinking," the mare giggled.

"Thinking is one thing I'm good at, Turkey," I winked.

"My name's not," she started to protest, but then she lowered her head. "Fine. I guess I'm going to have to watch my back around Thanksgiving now..."

Spritelight 1, Chapter 5

The storefront was empty, dark, and had about a year's worth of dust covering every surface. From the empty shelves to the register, to the rat's skeleton in a corner of the room - there was dust everywhere.

The employee lounge in the back was not much better off, although the mice and rats had had a feast on whatever had been left in the storage cabinets long before we arrived. There were droppings everywhere, and it wasn't long before I felt one fall apart under my forehoof.

"Ew," I said, lifting my hoof and using my magic to get the gritty material out from under it.

"Yeah, it may need a bit of cleaning, Spritey," Turkey offered, "but that's easily done with your magic, right?"

I glared at her and took a step back, poking her left wing with my horn. "How about I open the door, and you use your wings to blow all of this stuff out through it?"

Turkey blinked and looked back at her wing, tentatively lifting it from where it had rested against her side. "Oh, hey, forgot I had these things..."

"You also forgot my name is Spritelight, not Spritey," I smirked, walking over to the front of the store again and opening the door. "Go on, flap them. Get a storm going. Should be easy for a Pegasus like you."

Turkey stood in the opening of the employee lounge, just looking at me in confusion.

"Your wings. Flap them," I repeated.

Turkey looked back at her wings and slowly unfolded them. "Just flap them?"

"Yeah. Just flap them," I told her.

Turkey slowly moved her wings up and down, looking very uncomfortable at the motion. Even with them moving at such a slow speed, it was enough to cause the dust in her immediate area to move and drift up in a small cloud.

"Ok, so just flap them a bit harder, and don't breathe in," I warned, placing my hoof to my forehead - just beside my horn - as she did just that.

"Ha..." Turkey started, her wings moving up a bit, and I took a step back out of the store.

"Haa..." Turkey continued, and I took another step as her wings rose up higher.

"TCHOOO!!!" Turkey finally sneezed and, with a massive flap of her wings, launched herself deeper into the store!

The fast movement of her wings was all the dust needed to blast out of the open door like it got shot from a cannon, and I had to jump to the side to prevent getting it all plastered over my coat! Laying there off to the side, I heard Turkey prepare for another sneeze, and quickly used my magic to keep the door open.

Another blast of dust flew past as she did, and I shook my head at the poor Pegasi inside. "I told you not to breathe in," I muttered as a third sneeze followed, then a fourth, with considerably less dust following after the sounds.

When Turkey finally calmed down I chanced to look into the store and saw her laying in a crumpled mess in the far corner of the employee lounge, somehow having turned herself upside-down with her rear up against the wall and her wings drooped to either side of her. She was still sniffling and her eyes looked red from the dust that had gotten into them.

There was little dust still floating around, the majority of which having been ejected through the open door, or forced in a thick layer up against the glass panes to either side of it, so I trotted back inside and closed the door behind me, pulling the curtain down to keep prying eyes out.

"I told you not to breathe it in, Turkey," I muttered, walking calmly into the employee lounge while the mare rubbed at her muzzle with a hoof.

"I don't think I've ever sneezed this much when I was still a human," Turkey muttered from her upside-down position.

"I would imagine human noses aren't as sensitive as ours, considering how small they are," I chuckled, using my magic to pick her up and turn her right-side up. "You have some powerful wings there, hun."

"I thought my name was Turkey?" Turkey wondered, trying to get her wings to fold again.

"You may want to preen those before you fold them. I see some misaligned feathers here and there," I warned her.

"Preen them? Are you serious?" she returned, letting out a whine after as she turned her head to look back at her wings. "Aww, man... I don't know the first thing about preening."

"Well, don't look at me. I'm a Unicorn," I sighed. "Ask me about magic, and I know what to do. Wings, not so much."

Turkey sat down on her rear, moving her wings a little awkwardly. "Oh, great."

"Hey, you used to be a human, right?" I asked, prancing about a little.

"Until you bumped into me, yes," Turkey muttered, trying to get at her wings with her hooves and failing miserably.

"I think Pegasi use their teeth," I commented. "Do you know of anything that could get rid of this headache I've been having? I've tried to find some in the last few houses I stayed at, but I haven't been able to find any."

"Yeah, it's called aspirin," Turkey replied absentmindedly, reaching down with her head to bite at the rogue feathers sticking out of her wings.

"Asprin?" I repeated, and raised an eyebrow at her humming an answer.

"Asprin," I said to myself, looking around the empty room. "I won't find any asprin in this place. Where do humans usually keep it?"

"Drugstore," Turkey mumbled, her eyes focused on nothing in particular as she was putting her feathers back in place.

"Hey, are you ok?" I wondered, lowering my head to look at her. Her eyes looked a bit glazed over, and it took her a moment to realize I was staring at her.

She pulled back with a flush on her cheeks, blinking her eyes heavily. "Huh? What?"

"You zoned out there a moment, didn't you?" I realized.

Turkey blinked some more, then lowered her ears and nodded with a dumb smile on her face. "Y...yeah."

"So, asprin?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Er, well, can I finish this first?" Turkey asked, and I sat down with a sigh.

"Yeah, sure, don't mind me..." I muttered, watching with some annoyance as Turkey returned to straightening out her wings with a look as if she was in some kind of trance.

"Heh, Turkey Trance," I chuckled to myself.

Spritelight 1, Chapter 6

The light of the early dawn shone through the windows above while the sound of our hoofsteps reverberated in the empty mall. Turkey was leading me to something called a "drugstore", to get some "asprin".

"Aspirin," Turkey corrected me again.

"That's what I'm saying; asprin," I threw back at her. "Besides, I don't care what it's called, as long as it gets rid of this headache I've been having."

"It should," Turkey mused, "unless pony physiology differs too much from that of humans. We're here."

I looked up at the metal shutters of the store and then back at Turkey. "Really? More of these things?"

Turkey shrugged helplessly. "It's to keep thieves out. And, considering I don't have my wallet on me, we kind of count as thieves ourselves."

"It's a necessity in our case," I returned with a smirk. "Ok, same as before; you go first and I'll follow behind."

Turkey nodded and I sent my magic out to help her through the shutters, then followed behind immediately after. Turkey continued into the store, nodding at some weird gates.

"Make sure to levitate the package I'm giving you over those gates or the alarm will go off," she warned. "All of the stuff in the store is electronically tagged."

"Er, sure.. whatever," I shrugged, following behind.

Turkey turned into an aisle and looked around herself, then pointed a wing at one particular section of it. "There it is. Do you know if you get side effects from caffeine?"

I just stared at her.

"Yeah, let's play it safe. Take the white box there," she pointed. "Second from the left next to the one with the yellow stripe on it. That's without caffeine and should be strong enough for any headache."

I stared at the box, a few shelves above us, and rose up on my hind legs to take the package between my teeth. "Fwish one?"

"Yeah, that's it," Turkey giggled as I fell down on all fours again.

A sudden noise startled us, and all four of our ears turned to the back of the store.

"That sounds like a store employee arriving early," Turkey offered with a wince. "We got to get out of here, now!"

We both ran for the front of the store, and I started to prepare my spell to let Turkey through - completely forgetting about the alarm. The high-pitched sound made my headache only grow worse, and I heard the sound of something falling further back in the store.

Knowing we had little time before whomever was there would come rushing to the front, I continued with my spell and Turkey quickly passed through the shutters. I looked back at the store employee rushing into the front and fired off my transformation spell at them before passing through the shutters myself, gallopping after Turkey - back towards the safety of our store shelter!

As we passed the other stores along the way, some of the shutters started to slide up, adding to our sense of urgency. We galloped up the stairs to the upper floor, down the gallery, and skidded to a stop in front of the store we chose as a shelter.

Turkey waited for me to unlock the door, then bolted through it, and straight into the employee lounge. I closed the door behind us, followed behind, and spat out the box to the floor of the lounge once I had closed that door as well.

"That was close," Turkey panted, and I nodded at her.

"But I have a new ambassador because of it," I chuckled.

"A new ambassador?" Turkey wondered, nudging the box on the floor with her right hoof.

"That employee will be a pony like yourself in a few days' time," I revealed, and Turkey's eyes went wide. "Call it an extra safety measure. She won't cause a scene once she realizes she's growing a tail. You said it yourself; humans dissect people who look funny."

"I didn't say that!" Turkey protested, shaking her head. "But even so, you shouldn't turn random people into ponies!"

"And why not?" I asked of her, raising an eyebrow. "Everyone on this planet will be transformed into a pony before the worlds merge anyway, what does it matter who gets transformed first?"

I didn't wait for her to answer, but levitated the box of 'aspirin' in front of her face. "Now can you please tell me how to use this stuff so I can get rid of my headache?"

Turkey walked me through the steps of using the medicine, but the small package meant I had to use my magic to get the pills out. She said I had to drink water with it, so we looked around for something to pour the water in. One of the cabinets had a package of plastic cups, and I pulled some from it to give both of us a cup of water from the faucet.

I left the knob turned loose enough when I closed the tap to allow Turkey to open the faucet with her teeth if needed, and lay down on the ground while the aspirin did its work.

"So all I had needed to look for was a box with these symbols on it?" I asked, but Turkey immediately shook her head.

"No. Unless you actually know how to read what's in the package, you shouldn't open what you find," she answered. "There's some dangerous stuff in this world, which could cause you to feel really sick, or even cause you to die if you ingest it."

"Why would humans store something that could kill them?" I wondered.

"Because it's not for them. It's mostly pesticides to keep unwanted insects and animals out of their homes, stores, farms..."

"Oh. And they store that in with their medicines?" I asked, taking a sip of my water.

"Not usually, no. But out of the way of children and pets where possible," Turkey stated, taking a sip of her own cup of water but spilling most of it.

"Don't worry about that. You get used to it eventually," I told her, smiling gently in her direction.

"And you turned me into this because the worlds of Earth and Equestria are supposedly merging together?" she asked, wiping some droplets from the fur on her chin.

"Well, more to let them merge together again. They were once the same place, you know?" I offered.

"No, I don't know. That's why I'm asking," Turkey said. "What if this doesn't work out? What if you only end up with a bunch of ponies here on Earth and a bunch of ponies there in Equestria, and these worlds just stay apart?"

I stared down at my cup and shrugged softly.

"You don't know, do you?" Turkey mused.

"I don't, no. I only know what I've managed to put together from the information in the Canterlot archives, the Crystal Empire's library, and other lost tomes," I explained.

"There's every evidence that these two worlds are supposed to be the same single world, but I don't know how they split, or if this is even going to work. But it's the best bet I've got," I told her.

"So what if you transform some humans into ponies and they feel absolutely miserable about it?" Turkey asked.

"Do you?" I returned.

Turkey looked down at herself but shook her head. "Not me. I actually feel liberated."

I chuckled at that and rested my head on the floor, falling sideways. "It's been a long night, Turkey. I need to get a few hours of rest in. We can talk about this after I wake up again, if you want?"

Turkey nodded and stifled a yawn. "Good idea."

"I'm full of good ideas," I chuckled, closing my eyes to rest.

Spritelight 1, Chapter 7

I woke to the sound of heavy breathing, and blinked my eyes open to the most awkward-looking sight I had seen since I had seen myself do it in a mirror; Turkey lay with her face smooshed against the floor, one of her forelegs resting beside it. Her hind legs held her rump up in the air, her tail resting over her back, while the other of her forelegs was awkwardly rubbing up against her wet vagina.

I blinked a few times, then felt the need to squeeze my hindlegs together as the sight stirred something inside. I had seen Turkey in the light of my magic, her colours as vibrant as they would be in Equestria, and it had been enough for me to develop feelings for her. Feelings I couldn't quite explain.

No, wait. It had started before. When she leaned in against me on the road. That soft touch I had been so unfamiliar with.

Or had it been the simple fact I had watched her transform while I held her down with my hooves? Had that created some kind of magical bond between us that had festered and taken possession of me?

I fidgeted a little as my mind was trying to figure out when I had started to feel for this former human, this pony now exploring her mare bits in plain sight of me, but my mind was slowly drowned out by the smells and sounds wafting through the air.

Ignoring the sounds of a thousand humans all talking among one another while shopping. Those were two closed doors away. No, the stuttering breaths let out by Turkey, the withheld moans as she imagined me still being asleep, the soft squish of her hoof pressing up against her nethers.

The smell of her arousal was clear, even above that of the cinnamon buns wafting in from the mall area. To be honest, the cinnamon scent added to my own arousal from the smell, and I soon was on my hooves to push my muzzle up against her wet rump, breathing her scent in deeply!

"A-Ahn!" Turkey exclaimed as my muzzle joined her hoof, and I felt her shudder in place from the unexpected touch. Knowing she would protest if I gave her a chance, my tongue quickly lashed out to lap over her crotch and I found her hoof fall down as she lost all control over it.

I licked my muzzle and ducked my head between her hindlegs, making sure my horn rested right up against her vagina. "Tongue or horn?" I simply asked, and I saw the confusion on the mare's face.

"I... I don't... I..." Turkey started, and I pressed my horn up against her nethers a bit more, the tip barely slipping in. "AAH... H...hor... nnngh..." she gasped, and I tilted my head to let my horn slip in more.

Turkey moaned from the feeling and I tilted my head further, letting my horn slip in until it was at the right angle, and then pushing it slowly into her body. I stopped as her rump hit my forehead, and then grinned softly to myself as I focused my energy into my horn, making it spark with magic potential.

It was just a tease, really, I did not mean for her to suddenly orgasm on my face... but she did, and I closed my eyes from the splashes of her climax washing out against them! The mare's voice rang out in her excitement, and her wings were flapping oddly in just about any direction, but there was nothing I could do about it. Trying to silence her with my magic would just send her into another orgasm...

As her first orgasm as a mare ran its course, I felt Turkey's weight settle on my horn and slowly lowered my head to let her rest on the floor, then pulled my horn out from her once she stopped grabbing at it with her inner muscles. I lifted a hoof up to wipe my face clean, then looked at the spasming pony on the floor.

"Well, now... I said you were getting a gift when I accidentally transformed you," I started with a grin, still keeping my hind legs close together as the event had made me quite aroused myself. "I just didn't know you were this excited about it."

Turkey cast me a hopeless attempt at an evil stare, but then drooped her ears while trying to catch her breath. I took a few steps around her to stand closer to her face, then put my soiled foreleg in front of her.

"Now, considering I was so kind to help you just now," I started, and I saw Turkey's eyes grow larger as she seemed to get the point before I had voiced it, "perhaps you can repay the favor by cleaning my hoof for me? Just look at the mess you made."

Turkey swallowed and looked up from my hoof, shaking her head meekly.

"No?" I wondered, raising an eyebrow and feeling something wet slide down the side of my face. "It's a natural thing for us ponies to lick each other clean after copulation, you know?"

Turkey winced and struggled to scamper away, only leading to her falling properly on her side and flailing her weakened limbs at me. "Please..."

I frowned at Turkey and felt a larger blob of wetness droop down in the middle between my eyes, then off the side of my muzzle. I licked it away and had to close my eyes a moment as I savoured the taste. "Hm... for Celestia's sake... if you don't do it soon, I'll have to lick it myself. You taste... hmm..." I found myself muttering.

Turkey let out a soft whine, but I felt her head move closer to my hoof and then a tongue carefully touching just a single part of it before retreating again. "Ew..." she muttered, and pulled back again, trying to get her hooves under her.

I shrugged at her and leaned my head down myself, watching droplets fall on the floor as I proceeded to lick my own hoof clean, then used it to wipe my face again. "Suit yourself," I shrugged.

It took me a while to get everything out of my fur, and I even had to use my magic and some tapwater to clean my face properly. All the while Turkey just stood awkwardly in a corner of the room, her rump up in the corner, her head hung low, and her eyes watching me in a mixture of horror and genuine interest at watching me clean myself.

Considering she most likely would not come out of that corner on her own, I simply picked her up with my magic, turned her upside-down so her flailing hooves would be facing the ceiling, and used more tapwater to clean her where needed. Once that was done I set her down again and snorted at her.

"You're going to have to face facts here sometime, Turkey hun," I offered to her. "Next time I may not be around to clean you, so you best get used to doing it yourself."

Turkey shuffled a hoof over the floor and blushed, looking away. "I just..." she started, and I turned an ear to her while using my magic to clean the wet spots off of the floor.

"You just?" I repeated.

Turkey shrugged and flopped down on the floor, and I could clearly hear her stomach growl. My own decided to follow suit and I raised an eyebrow.

"Turkey? What time is it?" I asked, turning the faucet off and walking over to the lounge door to look out into the storefront. "It's still light outside, so it can't be evening yet."

"Around four in the afternoon, I would guess?" Turkey offered, happy for the change in subject.

"How would you come to that conclusion?" I wondered, looking back at her past my rump.

"Well, there were a lot of children coming in a little while ago," Turkey revealed. "The schools close around three and it takes them a bit to get from there to here, so it's somewhere between half past three and four."

"It's amazing how you were able to deduce that what with your hoof half buried in your crotch, hun," I joked, but Turkey immediately looked away again. I closed the door and wandered over, moving my right forehoof under her cheek and lifting it so she was looking at me.

"Hey, it's ok. I used to experiment as well when I was going through puberty," I offered to her rose eyes, and she stared up at my own blue ones. "It's a perfectly normal thing for mares to do. Don't let anypony tell you different."

"Yeah, but that's the whole problem, isn't it?" Turkey wondered, her cheeks flushing again.

"Is it?" I asked, letting my hoof drop and sitting down in front of the Pegasus mare to get on the same level with her.

Turkey nodded and started to look away, but as I raised my eyebrow she stopped herself. "Y...yeah, it is."

I shrugged and leaned in to kiss her on her nose. "So you weren't a mare before, big deal. The fact is that you are one now. Whatever you were when you were a human, it doesn't matter," I told her.

"It doesn't?" she asked, her ears flicking in confusion.

"No, hun. You're a pony in your own right, and cute to boot," I offered with a wink. "As for hoofing yourself off just now, I already said that that's natural. Don't be too embarrassed about it, ok? I'm not."

"You weren't the one getting fucked by a horn," Turkey muttered, then went wide-eyed and repeated it to herself. "I got fucked by a unicorn's horn..."

I rolled my eyes at her and used a hoof to give her a noogie. "Right, and if you're a good filly I may do it again."

Turkey's face blanked at the offer, and I shook my head at her in amusement.

"So, how about we figure out where that cinnamon smell comes from and we go steal us some food, hm?" I tried, changing the subject for the benefit of the turquoise Pegasus' mental health.

Spritelight 1, Chapter 8

The mall was packed. Packed with loudmouth foals, rushed elders, and every color and breed of human I could have imagined. They moved in waves, going in one store, coming out another, and they were all carrying bags and pushing trolleys about as they went their merry ways.

Turkey and I stood on the balcony in front of our hiding place, my invisibility spell keeping us out of sight while we looked over the railing at the movement below.

"There is no way I can get us through that mess, Turkey," I offered to the turquoise mare to my side, and she turned her head to look at me. "This spell only hides us from sight, it doesn't make us incorporeal. They'd be bumping into us every other step."

"Can't you do that thing that you did to the doors?" Turkey asked, and I shook my head slowly.

"Not at the same time as making us invisible, no. The spells require a lot of energy and focus, and I can't keep that up while weaving my way through that crowd."

Turkey turned her head back to look at the people below, a thoughtful frown moving on her face. "I could do it."

"Hm?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "Do what?"

"I could go down there and walk among them without them noticing," she started, turning her head to look back at me, "as long as you keep me invisible, that is. I'm used to crowds like these. I used to be human, I know the way they think. I would be able to navigate the pockets between them, see?"

She pointed a hoof down at a small gap in-between groups of humans, then at another, and I started to see a pattern in them. These pockets would open up whenever a human would decide to walk into a store, and fill up again when someone moved out of one. They'd appear when someone would sit down on a bench, move in line, or otherwise disrupted the flow of bodies, and then slowly fill up again as the event was lost to the tide of new humans moving into the same general area. Even so, I could not find a link between these empty spots. They appeared seemingly randomly throughout the crowd, and then disappeared again moments later.

"Are you sure?" I asked Turkey, turning back to face her. "I can't see how you would do that."

"Well, if I get in danger of being stuck, I could always fly out, right?" Turkey shrugged, looking back at her wings. "I mean, these should work?"

I glanced back at the crowd, then at Turkey again. "If they give you enough room to fully extend them, yes."

"I could always just bowl a few of them over," Turkey mused. "If I'm invisible they'll just blame each other."

I sighed and stared back down. "I don't know..."

"Well, you want to eat, don't you?" Turkey asked, and I licked around my lips before I knew what I was doing. "How else are you going to get the food up here? By levitating it with your magic? Can you do so and make the food invisible at the same time? People would follow floating food right up to us if they could see it, you know?"

"I was aware of that, thank you," I grumbled, judging the distance between the nearest staircase leading down and the food vendors. "You'd have to be quick. Grab some food and run back up the stairs. There's no time for secondguessing what you're taking."

"Right. Which leaves me with one problem; how do I take stuff with me?" Turkey asked.

"Just grab something between your teeth. You need your hooves to run, and there's no room for you to spread your wings," I shrugged.

"If you say so... can't promise everything will make it up in one piece, in that case," she winked, and I narrowed my eyes at her.

"I could just take away my spell just as you're in the thick of it," I suggested, feeling my mouth pull into a sly smile.

Turkey's eyes grew to twice their size and she immediately shook her head! "No! I'll behave, I'll just have to keep from biting too hard then!"

"Good girl. Now I'm going to have to stand in the shadow here, because if I'm turning you invisible I can't do so to myself," I told her, and withdrew into the darkest corner I could find. "We're lucky they turned the lights off in this section, or I couldn't do this at all."

"I think the lamp's busted, actually," Turkey mused, looking up at the ceiling.

"The lamp's not the issue; our lack of food is. Get going already, silly filly," I sighed, moving my invisibility spell from surrounding the both of us to only covering Turkey.

I watched her as she turned tail and ran to the staircase, the sound of her hooves barely audible over the murmur of people talking and the PA system reminding people to be mindful of pickpockets. If it wasn't for the bond my spell created between us, I would not be able to see her at all, and she made her way down to the lower steps of the staircase in a few short moments. It was there that she paused, and I saw her ears turn on her head as she scouted the crowd in front of her, waiting for the right moment.

I increased my focus on her and time seemed to slow to a crawl as I did. It felt like it took forever for her to finally make that first step to push herself into the crowd, using a small pocket between people, and I followed her as she weaved her way through the larger bodies in the mall. It was a bit like watching someone in a river try to fight the current; there was a definite drift of her moving away from the vendors, only to suddenly make some strides back toward them, and back around them, to return to the front from the other side.

Turkey hopped up on a bench, and from there into the foliage set up for decoration, most likely to catch her breath before she would cross the remaining distance to the vendors. The nearest was still several hoofbeats away, and there were over two dozen people in-between. Turkey glanced back in my direction for a moment, then turned for the crowd and spread her wings.

"No.." I started, but it was already too late; with a quick push of her wings, she soared into the air - flying over the heads of the crowd parting her from the vendors, and straight into a spiraling dive as she lost control.

I watched with horror as her form impacted with a queue of people waiting for assorted drinks, and tried my best to keep up my spell while Turkey flailed wildly around herself trying to get her hooves back under her!

It was to no avail. The humans believed someone had intentionally shoved them aside and a small fight broke out, the chaos only increasing as a mall cop walked up to the area and tumbled over poor Turkey. The mare was being shoved left and right by people who didn't even know what they were pushing about, and with one fell move, Turkey was lost to me.

One moment she was there, the next I lost sight of her and my magic lost its target.

It didn't take long for the crowds to realize something was going on beside the fight, and when I found Turkey again I noticed there was a ring of people forming around her... all staring straight at her with various expressions of confusion, downright denial, and horror.

"Damnit, Turkey... This was what I was afraid of!" I shouted, my voice ringing out in the, suddenly, dead silence that fell over the mall, and a hundred pairs of eyes tried to find the source of my voice.

There was only one way out. Only one way that would prevent these humans from seeking authorities.

With a sigh I powered up my transformation spell and stepped into the light. Gasps came from the crowd as they realized there was not just the one Pegasus, but also a Unicorn with her horn sparkling in bright blue. These gasps quickly turned to a panicked frenzy as I unleashed my spell upon them. My magic washed out over the humans like a tidal wave, its energy washing out over every human, in every store, in every last corner of the mall - and the transformations were quick to follow.

"OHMYGAWD I HAVE A TAIL!!!" someone decried, "What's happening to my ears??" another demanded, and the sound of popping bones and cries of pain soon filled the mall, with Turkey standing among them in sheer shock.

"Move, you ridiculous excuse for a foal!" I bit to her, both audibly and mentally, and Turkey snapped out of her stupor, grabbed something from the ground near to her, and rushed back through the crowd of spasming and transforming almost-ponies - back up the staircase.

We both pushed back into our hiding place, and I opted to lock the door leading in before joining Turkey in the employee lounge in the back again, and closed the door behind me.

Turkey sat, panting, in the very back of the room, her eyes wide open but her pupils as small as they could be. Dangling from her mouth was a plastic bag, half filled with whatever groceries its original owner had managed to buy before the chaos unfolded. I sat down on my rear as I felt the onset of a headache, and just looked at her from across the room.

Turkey was the first to move, dropping the bag in front of her and watching an orange roll out of it until it came to a stop against one of the table's legs.

I smirked at that, but returned my attention to her as she scraped her throat.

"So, er," she started.

"Yes," I responded flatly.

"That didn't go as planned, did it?" she mused, her pupils slowly growing to a normal size again while she awkwardly moved her wings a bit.

"No," I stated, again in a flat tone of voice.

"So is that... out there... what happened to me?" she asked, and I opted to nod. "Oh."

"It wouldn't have been necessary," I sighed, sinking through my forehooves until my chin came to rest on the ground, and looking up at Turkey with a smirk. "If only somepony could have kept her wings to herself..."

Turkey looked away at that.

"I expended more energy just now than I had left," I muttered, closing my eyes. "I need to take a quick nap."

Turkey mumbled something in response, but my ears didn't quite get it, and my brain didn't register it as I fell unconscious. At least I would not have to feel my headache as I slept.

Spritelight 1, Chapter 9

I woke to the sound of hoofpounding and shouting, and flicked my ears at the sounds before I was truly awake. As I opened my weary eyes, Turkey was still sitting in the back of the room, staring in my direction. Not at me, but at something behind me - the closed door, perhaps. It was also the direction the sounds were coming from.

There was evidence that Turkey did move in the time I had been unconscious, as the groceries from the bag were now placed on the table, instead of resting against one of its legs. The bag itself was pinned under Turkey's left forehoof, and she was nervously sliding her hoof back and forth over it without applying much pressure.

"Hmn... Turkey, how long have I been out?" I wondered, knowing Turkey could read the time on the display of the microwave on the counter.

"Three hours," Turkey coughed uneasily, "or just about three hours anyway."

"And what's that infernal noise about?" I continued, and watched Turkey wince.

"Those would be the humans you transformed. They have been pounding on the door for a while now," Turkey muttered.

I turned my head to look at the door separating the employee lounge from the storefront, and tilted my ears up toward it. "What's their deal? Can't they let a pony get her rest?"

"I don't think they're very happy about what you did to them," Turkey murmured ever softer, her voice barely audible over the shouting outside.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, then pushed up properly and looked over the items Turkey had managed to gather during the chaos. Some biscuits, a few oranges, a bottle with orange juice, and a pacifier.

"Why is there a pacifier here?" I wondered, but Turkey's response was inaudible.

"Have you even eaten any of this?" I asked her, but as I turned to look at her she had fallen flat on the ground and was covering her ears with her hooves.

I turned my attention to the door, and levitated an orange over while I made my way to the front. As soon as I opened the door leading into the storefront, the sound doubled in intensity and I felt my own ears fall flat against my head from the ferocity of it.

"Will you cut it out already!?!" I shouted, and there was a momentary respite of yelling as my voice carried out through the glass door.

I unlocked the storefront door and moved into the opening as I pulled it open, sitting down on my rear and starting to peel my orange while looking at the multicolored crowd of ponies standing in front of it. There were looks of confusion at my actions, but some were looking at me with anger and disgust, and it was they who resumed their shouting first.

"What's the big deal?" "How did you do this?" "Turn us back!" and various sentences in the same vein were uttered, and even with my ears flat against my head the volume was enough to make my headache return.

"As I said;" I started, using my magic to boost my voice to carry across the crowd of ponies leading from my hiding place all the way down to the lower level, "WILL YOU CUT IT OUT ALREADY!?!"

Silence fell again, and I nodded slowly as I put a piece of orange in my mouth.

"Thank you," I offered after swallowing, "Now, can ONE of you please tell me what this commotion is about?"

A number of ponies started shouting through one another again, their faces livid with anger, and I rolled my eyes at them as I teleported them out of the crowd to random locations on the ground floor of the mall.

"Again; one at a time," I stated to the remaining ponies, who looked around them in surprise at the others having disappeared from where they had stood. They looked between themselves for a moment, before a small Earthpony colt pushed forward through the crowd and pointed his hoof up at me. His dark blue coat was accented by a yellow mane, and his blue eyes showed signs of an intelligent mind behind them.

"HOW did you DO this??" he demanded, and I offered a smile in his direction while chewing on another bit of my orange.

"Magic," I shrugged. "Next question?"

I noticed some of the ponies in the crowd had sat down, or were attempting to, and the general mood started to calm down as well. Behind me I heard the sound of Turkey's hooves approaching, but carefully so, and they stopped once she reached the door leading out of the employee lounge.

"Can you change us back?" the blue colt wondered, but I saw he was dreading the answer.

"Yes, I can change you back," I nodded. "At least, I think I should be able to." I broke another piece off of my orange and moved it to my mouth. "But I'm not going to."

The crowd erupted in angry outcries again while I chewed on my food, but the colt in front of me just sat down, his ears moving on his head as he tried to come to terms with what I just told him. I waited for the rest of the ponies to calm down as well, finishing with my orange as I did.

"Can you get me another orange from the table, Turkey?" I called back, "And would you come sit with me?"

Turkey mumbled something, but soon moved up beside me with an orange held between her lips. I took it from her with my magic, peeled it, and offered her a piece as the last of the crowd calmed down.

"Why did you do this?" the colt finally asked, over the last remaining vocal protestors.

I made sure Turkey ate her piece of orange before I returned my attention to the colt before us.

"I have my reasons. Why, are you not happy to be ponies?"

Some voices in the crowd started to protest, but they were quickly silenced by the rest as they realized I was just going to wait for them to be calm enough before I would answer more of their questions.

"It's... different?" the colt remarked, and I noticed several heads moving up and down in agreement behind him.

I continued to feed Turkey her breakfast while looking at the colt, waiting for him to bring his next question.

"I've seen reports of this on the news," the colt started instead, and I nodded in tune with some others around us, while hearing the whispers of those passing on the conversation to those unable to hear it themselves.

"A pony fad in schools. Children suddenly wearing all kinds of strange pony-related gear. Fake tails, ears, manes," the colt continued, and I sensed his question coming before he voiced it.

"Yeah, they weren't fake," I shrugged matter-of-factly, and pushed the last of the bits of orange into Turkey's mouth.

"So, them disappearing?" the colt wondered, looking up while already knowing the answer.

"As Turkey taught me, humans are not the best at accepting those who differ from the norm, right?" I asked him, and several in the crowd turned away in shame. "They hid away."

The colt nodded and held up his right forehoof. "I'm Bill. I was a mallcop here before... this."

I smiled and pressed my own right forehoof against his, gently shaking it up and down. "I'm Spritelight. May I suggest that you all find somewhere else to sit so we can talk about what is going on exactly? It's a bit cramped here, don't you think?"

Bill looked back at the crowd and nodded. "There's a stage we use for special events. We rolled it over into the unused part of the mall after last event. There's a presidential candidate coming here in a few weeks, so we thought we'd best keep it around. If we move the vendor carts out from around the fountain, there's plenty of room to set it up again."

"If you ponies set it up, and get everypony to stay calm, I'll answer every question you have for me," I offered.

Bill made an awkward salute with his forehoof, and turned to the rest. "You heard her. Let's set up the stage. Those of you who still have trouble with our new bodies can just sit out of the way. We'll get our answers yet!"

"Who says she's going to give us anything?" One of the mares wondered, casting me an angry glance.

"I'm not going anywhere," I shrugged, getting up and turning back for the store. "Are you coming, Turkey dear?"

Turkey quickly scrambled to her hooves and rushed back inside as I closed the door of the store again behind us. Bill would sort all that stuff out.

"Now we're in a pickle," Turkey sighed, shaking her head as she passed me by to grab her plastic cup from the floor.

"I don't think so," I returned with a smile. "I am getting the feeling I should have done this a long time ago. Did you see all those ambassadors just now? They could spread the word so much faster than I can alone. And if I teach the unicorns among them how to use my transformation spell, that might get Discord off of my back."

Turkey shook her head at me and refilled her cup with water from the tap, then carried it back to where she had the plastic bag laying around. "I hope you know what you're doing. That could have been a lynchmob out there just now."

"No, dear," I corrected her, "a pony mob."

Turkey groaned at that.

Spritelight 1, Chapter 10

After having calmed down, and having had a drink or two between us, Turkey and I left our store to find a bulky Earthpony stallion waiting outside of it, looking like he didn't know what he was doing there either. We watched from the balcony as the Earthponies used their strength to move items aside, while the Unicorns tried their hardest to get their glitchy magic to help out as well.

They had only been ponies for about four hours, but I was already spotting some who were faster at learning the potential of their magic than others. I even saw a pair of foals playing with a ball from a toy store, pushing it back and forth between them with their magic as if they were playing soccer.

And then there were those who were hopelessly lost to the idea of moderate use of magic. Exploding fruit, drinks splashing into faces, and the occasional two-by-four flying off in a random direction - only to be caught by someone more versed in magic - were among the humorous misjudgements of just how much energy needed to be put into items to make them levitate.

And all the while we were watching them clear the area and build up the stage, the Earthpony stallion was uneasily shuffling a hoof while he was watching us.

I turned to him and looked him over. White coat, muscular, blue mane and tail, he could almost be one of Celestia's guards if he were to apply to the position. He had the build for it. Looked a bit like Shining Armor, but there were clear differences between the faces of the two.

"Are you ok, dear?" I asked of him, and a blush immediately crept onto his cheeks. "You keep rubbing your hoof over the floor like that and you'll grind it down until it's useless."

The stallion looked down at his hoof and stopped it moving about, his ears flicking uneasily.

"You look like you have something to ask me, but you're unsure where to start. Am I right?" I tried, and the stallion nodded in silence.

"Ok, so let's start with the basics; I'm Spritelight," I introduced myself. "I'm a Unicorn mare from Equestria. Now who are you?"

The stallion drooped more and then a quiet voice came from his large form, "I'm Stacey, I'm a girl... or I was... I don't know."

Turkey perked up at this revelation and moved up to my side, looking the stallion over. "No you're not. You're a stallion," she corrected the other.

The stallion looked away more, and quietly shook his head.

"Hey, look at me," Turkey demanded, stepping up to the stallion and putting her hoof under the other's chin to force him to stare at her. "What I used to be, what you used to be, what we used to be, it doesn't matter! I'm a Pegasus mare now, named Turkey. That's who I am."

I tilted my head at this interaction, and the stallion cast a pleading glance at me. Before I could open my mouth, Turkey had moved in-between us.

"Am I getting through to you? I'm a Pegasus mare. I didn't used to be, but I am now. That's all that matters," she told the stallion again, and locked eyes with him. "And you are a stallion. An Earthpony stallion. A strong and fierce pony, who may one day be a royal guard."

"R... really?" the stallion stuttered, his ears turning indecisively on his head.

"Yes! Now repeat after me; I'm a fierce and proud Earthpony stallion!" Turkey all-but shouted.

"I... I'm a fierce... and... er... proud... Earthpony st... sta..." the stallion started, but Turkey narrowed her eyes at him and hit him in the side of his face with her left forehoof. Hard enough to cause the stallion to back away from shock, but not hard enough to break anything.

"Not good. Again!" Turkey shouted like a drill sergeant, and I sat my butt down in amazement at her assertiveness.

"I'm a fierce and... proud Earthpony stall... stallion!" the stallion whined.

"Again!" Turkey demanded, standing in a proud stance herself, her chin up, her tail held up just enough to still keep her modest.

"I'm a fierce and proud Earthpony stallion!" the stallion cried out, his eyes closed.

"Again!" Turkey repeated, and I raised an eyebrow.

"I'm a fierce and proud Earthpony stallion!" the stallion droned, and at the last word opened his eyes to stare straight at mine.

I stumbled back a little from the sight of those eyes. Gone was the embarrassment and unease in them, and what had replaced them was a grim determination.

"I'm a fierce and proud Earthpony stallion, and I am to keep watch over you to make sure you don't leave before we get to question you!" the stallion repeated, putting his hooves down and pushing his chest forward as he took a proud stance.

Turkey smirked and gave a light nod. "It's in there, you see? It's been part of you since before Spritelight came to our world. It was the same with me."

I flicked an ear in confusion, looking between the two. The stallion slowly relaxed a bit more, and looked over at Turkey.

"I wouldn't accept it. I was still in shock over what happened. Tried to stick around her, to find out what exactly happened. I couldn't believe it," Turkey rattled, but then turned to me and nuzzled her cheek up against mine. "I was a mare before I was transformed."

I just sat there, with Turkey nuzzling into me, while the stallion tilted his head at us. "Yeah, I don't know either," I offered with a shrug.

Turkey punched me in the chest with her right forehoof, then broke away from me and sat down a little to my left, letting out a snort. "You should know! You said your magic turns us into what we are inside. Our deepest desire. Our true identity!"

"I didn't actually say," I started, but Turkey snorted again.

"That's what was implied!" she shouted. "I used to be a businessman. I used to go about from one house to another, buying up property and renting it back to people for more than it was worth. I was a despicable person. I'm GLAD I'm a mare now! Clean slate; tabula rasa!"

I could do nothing but blink at that, and Turkey continued her ranting.

"You know what I was doing when you bumped into me and transformed me? I was on the way to some girl's place. Someone I met in a bar who was only after my money. And I? I was only after her... well, you know."

Turkey paused a moment and looked down between her hind legs. "And now I have one of those myself."

The stallion let out an awkward whistle, then turned to look at me. "Hey, does this mean I won't have a period anymore?"

I glanced between the two, then put my hoof to my face to rub at it. "Ok, so I didn't know all of that about you, Turkey. But I'm not going to judge you for something you did as a human. As you said; clean slate. And, no. You won't get a period anymore because you're a guy now, Stacey. You may want to think of a new name for yourself."

I lowered my hoof to the ground again and smirked up at Turkey. "You, on the other hoof, can start to look forward to when you get your first heat. If you think that little self-exploration you did the other night was strange and confusing, you have seen nothing yet."

Turkey's face went blank and her ears and tail slowly drooped down as she slowly started to realize what my words meant.

I cast a glance over the balcony's edge and realized the other ponies had just about finished setting up the podium below.

"We may want to start going downstairs," I suggested. "They're going to want some answers soon."

As the stallion named Stacey nudged Turkey into motion and I fell into line behind them, I found I started to feel a bit nervous.

Nervous not in the sense of "oh shit I have to talk to a lot of ponies", but more of the "oh shit someone is watching me" variety.

I looked behind me, but there was no-one there. I quickly checked for the presence of Discord or Zecora, but they were probably in Equestria somewhere, as I could not find their energy on Earth.

But there was someone, somehow, staring at me. I could feel their eyes on me, I could just not find where they were looking at me from.

I shook off the feeling as we reached the top of the stairs. My audience was waiting. My ambassadors, waiting for an explanation. Waiting for someone to tell me what to do next, now they were no longer humans.

Spritelight 1, Chapter 11

Rows of ponies had gathered in front of the stage by the time I got to the ground floor, and Bill, the colt, had taken to stage to remind them all to stay calm. After all, I had told him I would explain everything, and, he trusted to them, he had seen I was a pony of my word.

I shook my head lightly at that, but took to stage while the stallion moved to join the others in front of the stage. Turkey stopped at the edge of the stage, but followed me quickly as I zapped her butt with my magic.

"Ow.. That wasn't fair, you know?" she muttered, and I motioned for her to sit beside me to my left as I looked the crowd over.

There were more ponies than I had initially realized, and they covered the ground from side-to-side and even into some of the stores. And all were looking at me. About a hundred ponies if not more. I could feel the pressure rise again, and scraped my throat before I started.

"Hello everypony, I'm Spritelight. And I am responsible for giving you the gift of becoming ponies," I started.

Half the crowd erupted in angry shouting, and I used my magic to dodge a couple of items that were haphazardly tossed at me with the use of magic, wings, or hooves.

"As I said;" I resumed, a little louder to overpower the neighsayers, "I gave you all a gift. You are the forerunners of the new times to come. It is only by chance that you were chosen as ambassadors, but you are in no way any less important than the others who already learned to live as ponies."

Bill jumped on stage as there were more shouts of anger and frustration, and he slammed both of his forehooves onto the wooden stage. The resulting sound caused everypony to fall quiet again and he glared over the crowd. "I told you; be quiet! Let her speak, let her answer our questions, and let us decide what to do with her and ourselves AFTERWARDS!"

Several heads bobbed up and down, and some of the more outspoken angry ponies were calmed down by those sitting around them.

"Thank you, Bill. I already said I would answer all your questions, but I hope that I can answer most of them already in explaining why I am here, and why I have done this to you all."

I half expected another eruption, but the few who started to voice their concern were immediately faced with others urging them to be quiet.

"I'm a Unicorn mare from the land of Equestria," I continued. "I have studied magic and history for most of my life, and managed to gain access to some ancient tomes hidden away in Equestria's eldest libraries. These tomes date back thousands of years - back to when Earth and Equestria were still the same planet."

The faces before me almost all showed their confusion at what I told them. Equestria and Earth having been one planet in the past? How could this be? I knew their thoughts well, as I had had doubts myself when I first explored the ancient tomes.

"I know what you are thinking; Earth and Equestria are two separate places! How could they have been one and the same? Why, here on Earth it is even thought that Equestria is an imaginary world only real to foals!"

There were some nods from the crowd, and I noticed I had got the attention of most of them.

"As you may notice from me being here, from your new pony bodies, Equestria -IS- a real place. As real as Earth. It has its own economy, ecology, even its own markets spread around the country. Instead of humans however, ponies make up the majority species."

Bill turned to look at me, and I smiled at him as I waved a hoof over the crowd. "Ponies, like you. Earthponies, Unicorns, Pegasi..."

"AND ALICORNS!" a voice called out from the back, and I squinted my eyes to try and figure out who said that, and with such a powerful voice...

I did not have to wait long before I saw her; an green-maned Alicorn, with a canary-yellow coat, with the light of the sun following in her wake - illuminating her from behind.

She made her way through the center of the crowd of ponies scurrying away from her with gasps of "this can't be real" as they did, until she stood face-to-face with me in front of the stage. I mean, I was standing on my hooves, on a stage, and she was standing in front of the stage, on only her hooves, and was still on eye-level with me.

"This... I..." I stammered, trying to remember if I had seen this Alicorn in Equestria before. She wasn't Celestia or Luna, not Cadance, not even that fool of a filly Twilight Sparkle - who bested me at magic long before she was given the gift of being a princess. No, this was someone new.

"Spritelight, I presume?" the Alicorn princess offered with a slight rise of an eyebrow, and I nodded automatically. "We need to talk."

"Er, sorry, but who are you?" Turkey wondered, pushing herself in-between the Alicorn and myself.

The green-maned one turned to look at Turkey, and I noticed the green glow of her horn as she looked her over. I felt my own energy force itself out of my horn as it grabbed a hold of Turkey, and I teleported her behind me.

"Don't you lay one iota of energy on Turkey," I warned the Alicorn before me, my horn sparkling with magic potential.

The Alicorn's own magic dissipated from around her horn, and she smirked in my direction. "I'm Josey. Princess Josey, according to most I meet these days," she chuckled. "And I guess I have to thank you, Spritelight, for what you did to help me become myself."

I froze, my magical energy dropping away from the realization. "Wait... you're one of my ambassadors?"

Turkey pushed up to my side and looked at this Josey. "She is?"

Bill rubbed the side of his head with a hoof. "I don't know if you ponies realized, but there are women and children here. People who used to have a life and had places to go, appointments to keep. If we can get back to the part where one of you - ANY one of you - could explain what exactly is going on, that would be great."

Josey nodded slowly and turned around to face the crowd. "I am sorry for the interruption, dears. And even more so for the news I am about to bestow upon you."

The crowd of ponies slowly gathered around the stage again, having pretty much pushed themselves out of the way and into the surrounding stores when Josey first appeared. Their faces were full of wonder, confusion, denial.

"All of your questions will be answered. But not here," Josey spoke, her horn powering up until it sent a large amount of energy out from it in a wide circle. I could hear the ping as it rang through my horn and, from the looks of the Unicorns in the crowd, so did the others who were magically affiliated.

Josey looked back at me past her large form and smirked. "Wait for it; he loves a dramatic entrance."

I opened my mouth to ask who, but then immediately dove down onto the stage as the fountain behind me exploded in a sea of...

"Hey, that's lemonade!" Bill exclaimed as the sticky fluid washed over everyone present.

"Grenadine, actually," Discord's voice came. "Oh Spritelight, my dearest student. How I have missed you!"

I groaned and turned to face the Draconequus, who was wearing a large-rimmed hat and held a cocktail glass in his claw-like hand. "I was just over in Mechico, and, well, don't you just love this sombrero?"

"Mexico, Discord," Josey corrected him. "Could you please open a portal to Equestria? These ponies need to be evacuated."

"Bah, you princesses are all business," Discord pouted, but snapped his fingers to make an oval portal appear on stage. "All aboard!"

"Wait, evacuated?" Turkey wondered, and I put my hoof around her withers to pull her close.

"If you would please step through the portal, dears? We will explain everything on the other side," Josey offered to the crowd, who started to queue up for the portal with complete looks of confusion and devastation on their faces. They clearly didn't know what else to do, and with an Alicorn and a Draconequus around, magic portals leading who-knows-where were the least of their concerns.

Bill was one of the few who actually remained where they had stood, and I could see him thinking deeply about something as the others slowly passed into the portal.

Josey turned back to the stage, nodding at Discord. "So, Mexico?"

Discord smirked. "It is as you expected, which was quite unexpected to me, really. I mean, who would have thought a former mortal might actually be right?"

Josey shook her head and I could see a tear leak down her face. "It's coming up here next then. We don't have much time left."

Turkey looked between the two, but it was Bill who opened his mouth first; "I'm sorry, but I have to ask this; what is the big idea here?"

Discord wafted a claw at Josey, who rolled her eyes at the former and then looked between Bill, Turkey, and myself. "Spritelight's magic has been upsetting the borders between worlds."

I sighed. "Duh. That was the whole idea. To bring Earth and Equestria back together."

"Except, that you're not bringing Earth and Equestria back together, Spritelight," Josey stated. "All you've done is give entry into this world to demons that are more powerful than you could ever imagine."

I frowned at that and shook my head in denial. "No I haven't! The ancient texts said that Earth and Equestria were once the same planet! I'm just restoring the balance!"

"What you read was Chancellor Puddinghead naming the land of Equestria "Earth". Not this planet," Josey sighed. "Pegasopolis, Unicornia, Earth, they all became one Equestria when the Windigoes were defeated by the warm hearts of the three tribe leader's assistants."

"But," I started, feeling my beliefs starting to shake - as well as the ground under my hooves.

"H...hey, what's going on?" Turkey wondered.

"EARTHQUAKE! EVERYPONY FOR THEMSELVES!" the crowd suddenly screamed, and the organized queue of ponies going through the portal fell apart in a stampede of ponies running for safety as the mall shook around them!

"There goes the neighbourhood," Discord offered, and disappeared in a flash.

Spritelight 1, Chapter 12

With the mall shaking on its foundation, various objects falling off of the myriad of shelves in it, the Alicorn princess Josey tried to lead the remainder of the ponies into the portal to the safety of Equestria. Turkey and I looked up as parts of the ceiling started to come down around us, and I used my magic to blast away the pieces coming too close to us or the stampeding crowd. Turkey did her part by shielding me and little Bill with her wings, but soon enough we were staring up at the swirling red sky above.

"Hey, guys?" Bill was the first to remark, "Is the sky supposed to be the color of blood?"

Turkey swallowed as she looked up as well, and I took the moment between falling debris to stare up at the demonic eyes in the swirling mass of blood staring down at us from above.

"Spritelight, I need to know what the name of the spell is that you used to turn these people into ponies, and where you found it!" Josey shouted over the sound of the wind howling around us. "The only way to restore the balance is to reverse your spell and return these ponies to human form!"

I blasted away another piece of the ceiling that would have otherwise struck the portal and the last few ponies rushing through it, then shook my head to Josey. "You can't do that! At least give them the choice! Turkey here is happy to be a pony! You can't take my gift away from them!"

Turkey slapped me across the back of my head with the wing she'd used to cover me before, and shouted at me; "I DO feel better as a pony, but it's not worth the destruction of Earth, you daft filly!"

"And I think a lot of those ponies who just ran through into that portal thing would love to be human again, actually," Bill added. "I would too."

I shook my head at them and backed away. "But that would mean all of my work has been for nothing..."

"Nothing is exactly what this world is going to be if we don't do something," Josey shouted back, ushering the last of the ponies through the portal before turning to face me. "Spritelight, please tell me I don't have to take your knowledge by force."

I backed away from the Alicorn princess and shook my head. "You can't! I had such big plans! These humans would get an actual future in Equestria! Didn't you see how bad this place has gotten? Don't you watch the news? So many murders, people suffering in countries I didn't even know existed. We ponies take much better care of our own!"

Turkey approached me and put her forelegs around my neck, pulling me into a tight hug. "You're right. But if this world is destroyed, nopony will live to learn from their mistakes. Nopony will get to live in peace and harmony. Do you really want to be responsible for the deaths of over six billion humans?"

I froze. "I didn't know there were that many..."

"Equestria has no room for all of them, Spritelight dear," Josey offered, taking a few steps closer. "You know we are going to have to put this right. Restore them to their true forms."

"But they are ponies inside," I tried.

"Some are. Some are foxes. Others are wolves," Bill spoke. "Then some are birds, or aquatic animals. There are a lof of animal spirits in this world, not all equine. You can't force them all to be ponies against their will."

A large portion of the wall behind me collapsed, and we collectively jumped up from the sound.

They were right, I realized, as the dust flew past me. How could I have made that mistake? How could I have done this? The flesh in the sky, blood rain, demon eyes watching us from above.. that there was my fault. I caused that. An entire world in danger of dying, being eaten by something worse than Discord could ever be.

I shouted the name of the tome to Josey as the contents of a store were swept up by a hurricane wind, and she nodded, using her magic to pull Bill back toward the portal. She told him something I could not hear as the howling wind overtook all other sounds, and thrust him through the portal. I saw the green light of her magic as it dispelled the portal, then as it took a hold of Turkey and me both.

- and then there was silence -

We were in a dark room, the window showing the light of the moon partially hidden by normal looking clouds. The Alicorn princess sighed deeply as her magic receded, then put a hoof to a lightswitch on the wall.

We were in a room I faintly remembered. A room with a large bed, posters, a mirror, a television.

Josey moved to lay down on the bed, using her magic to levitate a remote control over and turned on the television. "Come lay with me for a moment, Spritelight. And you as well, Turkey was it?"

Turkey nodded and carefully climbed up on the bed. "Yes ma'am."

"Call me Josey, please," the Alicorn offered. "Everyone's been calling me princess this, miss that, madam such, since my changes finalized. It's a bit tiring."

I looked up at the television where an emergency news broadcast was showing pictures of a highly unnatural storm going from town to town. I spotted something and lifted my hoof to point. "Wasn't that..."

"The mall we were just in, yes," Josey sighed. "We barely made it out alive."

I blinked and moved to lay down on the bed beside Turkey, looking around the room again.

"I think I know this room," I realized.

Josey smiled in my direction. "It's mine. It's where Rhonda showed me her tail, and where my horn started to grow. I think I saw you during that first night, but you knocked me unconscious, didn't you?"

I swallowed at the flashback. "How is your friend doing?"

"She's the spitting image of Pinkie Pie," Josey chuckled, "with her own unique attributes of course. We sent her to Ponyville to keep her safe."

"We?" Turkey wondered.

"Us princesses; Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Twilight," Josey paused a moment, then shook her head at herself, "and me."

"So what's the plan now?" I had to ask, looking up at the television just in time to see a reporter being pulled out of screen by something I could not even try to describe.

Josey shook her head and looked out of the window. "This destruction will continue as long as there is an imbalance. The other princesses are working on finding a means to stop it by turning your victims back to human form. And I'm here... as the secret weapon."

I hung my head low at the word 'victim'. "I guess I really screwed up. Story of my life, really... My parents must have left me because they knew I would never amount to anything."

I felt the tears break, and then felt a pair of feathery wings fall on my back, Turkey's smaller one underneath the larger of Josey.

"I don't know your past, Spritelight. I don't know what hardships you've gone through," Josey offered in a soft tone, "But you alone did what no princess could have done. You used a kind of magic nopony realized was still in existence. You've stumped all of us, and Celestia has a few thousand years on us in terms of magic knowledge."

I shrugged at that.

"What I mean to say is; as long as you don't go throwing worlds into disarray, I think you'll be offered a good position in Canterlot's magic university," Josey continued. "This is a whole new field of magic they want to explore. To defend themselves against it if needed, but also to work on practical applications for it. We couldn't stop Twilight talking about those; the practical applications of it."

I carefully lifted my head to look up, and saw Josey - all smiles - looking back with nothing but genuine love. Turkey looked like one confused Pegasus what with all the talk about magic, but she nodded as she noticed me looking back at her as well.

"The only problem now is to fight these demons until they return to their own dimension," Josey stated. "And I'm going to need your help with that."

"You have my horn," I offered up to the princess.

"And my wings!" Turkey added with a grin.

"You need to learn how to fly first, Turkey," I told her, shaking my head a bit.

"Hey now, I was doing ok," Turkey protested.

"Oh, right, flight," Josey realized, looking back at her wings.

"Don't tell me you're a princess who doesn't know how to fly?" I gasped, shaking my head. "I'm a Unicorn! I know next to nothing about flying! Who's going to teach you two?"

"Tadaa!" Pinkie Pie offered from behind us.

All three of us turned our heads back to watch not one, but two Pinkie Pies stand behind us as if they'd just walked out of the wall. One with her usual blue eyes and balloon cutiemark, the other with pink eyes and a party cannon for a cutiemark.

"R...Rhonda?" Josey stammered, and I looked between them.

"I'm called Patty Cannon now, but yes Josey, it's me," one of the pink ones said, and I realized it was a cannon firing patties that was pasted on her flank.

"What are you doing here? I thought you were in Ponyville?" Josey asked of the pink ones.

"Ah, well, see," the one with the cannon cutiemark started, but another voice came from behind her.

"Can I come out now?"

"Sure, Dashie!" Pinkie Pie giggled, producing a small square gift box and pulling the lid open.

A rainbow-colored mane was the first to push out of the box, then followed by a blue coated body, and a rainbow tail, which left a rainbow trail behind it as Equestria's foremost flyer launched herself into the room, bounced off of a wall, and came to a stop in the dead center of the room, her wings flapping lazily behind her.

"No way," Turkey gasped.

"Oh, didn't I see you at Twilight Sparkle's coronation?" I wondered.

"What's the meaning of this, Rainbow Dash?" Josey demanded.

"Oh, you know, just Equestria's number one flyer coming over to help out," Rainbow chuckled. "I heard somepony needed to learn how to fly, and I taught Twilight all she knows about flying, so Celestia decided I should teach you as well."

I turned back to look at the two pinkies, who had mysteriously vanished. "Where'd they go?"

"Oh, they'll be back," Dash offered mysteriously. "Now, then, shall we begin the lessons?"

Full Disclosure

Full disclosure for why this story is not continuing;
It has been plagiarized. Word-for-word copypasting, direct use of scenes from Spritelight have been used in a different story on this site.
I had reported it in 2013, before I stopped writing on it.
Admins on this site did nothing. I was told it was going to be allowed.

It stopped me from wanting to write.

They win; Spritelight will not continue.

Plagiarism is a very bad thing. When the admins on a fanfiction site pretend it does not happen, it makes writers stop writing.
It means the site itself is partaking in the criminal activity of plagiarism.

I won't say who plagiarised my story. I won't say what story plagiarised mine. I won't say which admin(s) refused to act on my behalf.
Only a site admin will get that if they bother to ask me about it.
I won't openly break someone's reputation even if they deserve it.

Spritelight remains unfinished.