Something to Someone

Standing in my sister’s bedroom unannounced was probably not one of my better plans. My sister sleeps there in her bed, on dissheveled crimson sheets, with her cat there against her belly and over her hooves, providing more comfort to Rarity than I ever could. I’m not jealous though. After living with cats enough, you just have to accept that cats have such an uncanny power to be comforting.

I look around nervously, trying to figure out how I’m going to turn around without making any noise. Okay this might be a problem. But what’s also a problem is Rarity seems a lot more upset than I thought she’d be. I mean, she weathered all this crap I gave her, and then one little argument with our parents and she’s crying herself to sleep, well before the sun has even gone down.

Wait no, Sweetie Belle’s parents, who just feel like my parents. Ugh, this is so confusing. I hope Sweetie didn’t go silent because we started to merge or something.

Oh no, what if we did start to merge! They might not be able to get us apart again! I mean, that wouldn’t be bad for me but for Sweetie Belle it would be just awful! I uh... I think so, at least?

Sweetie seemed a lot cooler with a lot of things than I thought she’d be, when I started hearing her. I really don’t know her very well, I guess. But it does lend strength to the idea that she’s just a delusion I was comforting myself with. Probably foolishly in hindsight, I try to put myself in Sweetie Belle’s mindset, to see if that gets her to come back. I mean if we did merge, I should be able to know what she thinks about, right? I don’t mind if I end up being her, but she—well—I mean, I guess if I am her, then she doesn’t mind, by definition.

My worries are slightly distracted by my fath–her fath—our father poking his nose in the doorway. I silently lift a hoof pointing at Rarity and give a hopeful grimace, swirling it around, like I’d really like to turn around and get out of there. I think he gets the message, because he tip-toes (more so than usual) in and picks me up, then backs out the door with me in uh... mouth. Once outside and standing, he sets me down. I manage to head a safe distance away from her room, while he pulls the door quietly shut behind me.

“What were you doing?” he whispers at me harshly. “Can’t you see she was tryin’ to sleep?”

Oh. I guess he didn’t get the message.

“I just went to check on her,” I whisper back, “I didn’t know she was sleeping. And then I had to stay there, because I don’t r-remember how to turn around very quietly, and we haven’t practiced walking backward yet.”

He gets a troubled look in his eyes, and says on a different subject, “Sweetie, you can’t just practice with Rarity. This is something serious. You gotta see a doctor about this!”

I blink at him.

Oh. “Rarity took me to the hospital right away!” I assure him. “I meant practicing with the physical therapist... that I’ve been seeing all this week. Rarity’s been really good about getting me there.”

He still frowns though. “I see,” he says unreadably, and turns to trot over to the stairwell saying, “C’mon Sweetie, we can’t keep the carriage rider... oh right, you can’t walk.”

My head snaps up straighter, and I give him a very disappointed look, saying, “I can walk! See?” And I—er, 1 is the walky foot, so I’ll call it the walky foot...hoof. I wobblingly move towards him, without falling over at all. Walking, yes. I am totally getting the hang of this, and don’t have to count anymore. I am totally kidding myself. At the top of the stairwell, I do have to pause. I look warily down the stairs, and say to him,

“Um... but I probably shouldn’t try stairs yet.”

“Well, hop on, then!” dad says, presenting his side to me. He doesn’t sit down. I guess...that’s just something Rarity does. It’s fine though, I’ve been practicing climbing a lot! I rear up and... gosh he feels warm. I’m... I’m not sure I want to climb up this... stallion.

“C-can mom carry me?” I stammer out, dropping to fours again and wishing I hadn’t gone and jynxed it by touching him. He’s a... I mean there’s nothing wrong with him, but I’m a filly. I have different... things now, and... it just feels weird. I can’t just think about him sexually; he’s my dad and all, but he is also very powerful and warm and... nice to look at.

“I suppose,” he says thoughtfully. “I’ll go get her if ya need. Something wrong with riding me?”

Yeah, that’s what it is. I’d be riding a stallion. Something I am not ready for. I—I mean, the real thing I’m not ready for is a stallion riding me, and then pregnancy, and labor, and childbirth, and well, shoving things in there in general. I’d like to penetrate myself, to see what it feels like, but definitely on my own terms, with my own... penetraty thing. For all I know, a pencil will be too big. So it’s me not him that’s the problem. With that in mind, I say evenly, “I’m just a little unsure about um... s-stallions; it’s something that h-happened to me. I didn’t think it would apply to you, but... it sorta is.”

“Did a stallion do something... not so good to you?” he asks quietly, with a dangerous glint in his eyes.

...wow. I am never, ever, ever telling him. If he found out what I did to Sweetie, he’d... oh my gosh I can’t believe I was ever even considering it. He’d kill me! Or at least hate me, until he got us separate, then kill me. So “No,” I lie, “A stallion never did anything to m...me,” but thankfully that’s all the lying I have to do for now.

The rest is the truth, when I say, “What happened was a lit up machine...thing, that me and my friends found in the Badlands. We were trying to find a meteor, but there was this instead. I had a horn surge that messed it up, or Twi—or Rarity’s friend told me that, but there was no stallion anywhere the whole time. I had to ask my friends what happened, but I don’t remember anything that happened until after the machine broke, and... after I woke up from that, I couldn’t remember most of anything else, either.”

“I can’t tell you why I’d be leery... yeah, leery of stallions though,” I say, technically telling the truth. Even though the reason is that I don’t want to die, rather than I just don’t know, I definitely can’t just go and tell him.

“Asides just being a little filly, that is,” I add, with a bit of a nervous laugh.

“Well, you just talk to the doctor,” he says uncertainly, “Uh, talk to the doctor yeah, and see what you can do.”

He doesn’t know what to do any more than I do, but at least he has the excuse of being ignorant. On our way down, on my mom’s back, I see that pile of crayons and have a thought. I wonder if she... “Hold on, I need to draw something!” I call out quickly.

“Sweetie, the carriage driver won’t wait forever,” mom says to me in irritation.

“It’s important,” I clarify. “It’s um, for Rarity.”

Mom pauses then, and sighs as I lift my leg off her back and start to slide down anyway. “Just hurry it up Sweetie,” she says, “I’ll have a talk with him, but we want to get home before it’s dark out!”

“Okay, thanks m...mom!” I say with a bit too much hesitation for anypony’s liking. But wobbling my way over to the bench, I pick up the blue crayon in my mouth. Whew, made it that far. Okay... it’s the closest I have to black, and it does look black-ish against the pink paper. I work out the outlines as best as I can remember them, then grab the white... oh hey, an actual use for a white crayon.

I’m... pretty sure the real Sweetie Belle did a much better job of this, but I finish the crude scrawl as quickly as I can, and attempt to draw a heart around it. The purple doesn’t really look great as a heart though, and blue would really look better, if I had something thicker that was blue, maybe to glue on the... okay, no. No. Just, no. Purple heart. Not doing that again Assuming Sweetie Belle did it the first time, in this... world, but it’s likely. I think the message will get across just fine, without ruining another of my sister’s entire days of gem collecting.

Anyway, at least that important task is out of the way. It’s very important, considering my sister’s ...considering her sister’s reaction earlier. This Sweetie Belle feeling I’m feeling is going to get really annoying fast, I think. If only I could talk with her about it... there’s got to be a way. She can’t be gone. I just have to... put up with my parents, and find somepony with the skills needed to help.

My crude artwork being done, I hurry out to the... I creep out to the outside of Rarity’s boutique, looking around for my parents so I won’t have to strain my brain thinking about moving my limbs in the right order. They are thankfully still waiting there, because I’d hate to explain to Rarity that they got bored of waiting and abandoned us, or anything.

Mom and dad are standing by a red and yellow checkered carriage, piloted by a strange pony with a yellow coat and a green mane. Mom smiles as I come out saying, “Oh, here she is. Sorry for the trouble miss Trailer.”

“Kids, right?” the carriage pony says gruffly, flicking her tail. “Just hurry it up ‘cause my fare doubles after sunset.”

We um... hurry it up, and I end up being the only one riding the carriage actually, because it’s mostly holding our luggage. Which is mostly my luggage. Did I really have to pack an entire bed? Probably not. Sweetie Belle didn’t, at any rate. My parents trot along with the carriage pony, making smalltalk about Ponyville and what’s to get up to around here. Something about the uh... pony fair, coming up. It’s not a very descriptive name. I don’t really ask questions, because I’m relatively safe surrounded by all this luggage and free to dwell on the horrific existential dilemma of the real Sweetie Belle.

I do look around for that spiral tower as we travel along, trying to find it, so I can gauge the distance that I’d have to... walk. But if it’s ever visible, I miss seeing it, before we get home.

The carriage continues down a hill and around a ridge as the daylight dims. There’s not much to see at this point. It’s all shades of black and shadow. Sweetie Belle’s house is... tall. Infuriatingly tall, for one who can’t stairs. A three story, single family cottage, with planters, and a bush garden, and a forested area behind it, beyond which I can only see darkness. As the carriage stops, I start to hear the rush of water from a nearby stream of some sort, and a soft creaking issuing from the building across from us. I look up, and see shadowed above us in silouette to the red sky, the steadily turning motion of four broad flat panels set in a fan shape. Turning in pace with the evening breeze.

It’s a windmill... we live next to a windmill...

I am going to go into that building. I am going to explore every inch of the inside of that building, and I am going to follow every cog in that mechanism, and I am going to find out what in the name of Equestria and Earth, that ponies use a windmill for. But maybe when I’m better at walking, and when my parents—her parents aren’t right there, and maybe when it’s not getting dark. That is a freaking windmill. That is so cool!

Mother pays the carriage driver, in the first actual display of bits I’ve seen since coming here. From the driver’s wide smile and the way she rears up when driving away, I’d guess the amount was the evening rate after all. It’d be really cool if my mom was loaded. Sweetie’s mom. Whatever. Just the thought of my mother having money, not going for want of anything, all mysterious and stuff, and leaving me to my own devices, to teach me about self reliance and modesty.

Why yes, I fantasize about being in an allegory. Doesn’t everyone?

I’m careful to climb down from the pile of luggage, my bare hooves scuffing the grass as I er, tumble to a heap on the ground. It’s a soft landing though, so once I get my tail out of my face, I smile at them—comfortingly as I can, at least, and look at the door.

They seem to be wondering if I need any help to get in, so I say, “Don’t worry, I got this under control.” Then I dramatically lift a hoof and... whoops, wrong hoof. Okay, starting with the left hoof, I carefully walk forward, slipping a bit once I inadvertently transition from grass to a stone road made of what look like broad, flat cobbles, leading right straight up to the threshold of the door. Mom’s easily keeping pace. Actually she’s taking multiple trips there and back while I slowly work my way to the door, until I feel the coarse roughness of a welcome mat beneath my hooves. Mom opens the door for me with a nervous smile, her broad pink hoof just pushing it open, giving me a chance to shuffle through the darkness, going from scratchy cloth to the clunk clunk of a wooden floor.

In the house, the encroaching darkness is driven away by the same pleasant lighting as you’d find in Rarity’s boutique, as mom turns on the lights with the flick of a switch on the wall above and behind me. I look around the room, seeing wooden floors, floral rugs and a peach colored wallpaper decorated with embellished swirls and hearts. I stand there feeling a bit lost, while behind me mom says, “Just make yourself comfortable. Your father and I will get our luggage.” I um...

I guess this is supposed to be my house now.

It feels like a silly thing to realize, but the whole afternoon has been kind of a bombshell. As if attack by giant plant monster weren’t the craziest thing to happen to me this week. I have parents. Sweetie Belle has parents. I walk forward a step, just to make sure I can, that I’m not just imagining the surreality of standing inside somepony’s house and feeling like it’s my own. It’s not just a strange house. It’s an impossible house. It just looks like an ordinary house from the inside, but that wallpaper is so ...distinctive, and the floors are just so... wooden! It’s hard to explain. This is a house right out of the show, is what it is. Rarity’s boutique is so blatantly obviously impossible, that you don’t feel strange about thinking it impossible. Here, everything illuminated in subtle brown and sepia tones, it looks normal at first... until you realize the portraits hung on the walls are of ponies, not humans, that the books on the bookshelf over there are in an unreadable cursive, and there’s not a computer or television set to be seen in here.

My parents walk in, heavy with the burden of luggage on their backs as they plod over to a wooden staircase, going up a stairwell in the back of the house, then turning the corner out of sight. I only watch for a moment before springing to action. Waddling to action. I make my way back outside, and there’s a bunch of other luggage there. But I can at least help carry the... hmm... where... oh, there it is! I spot the carry suitcase harness thing.

Biting down on the handle of that suitcase, I try wiggling it, and it pops loose. With the whole harness telescoped out, I can push the suitcase with my hoof to tip it over onto my head. Um, it’s backwards whoops. I’m facing my luggage instead of away from it. Okay, I lay down, twisting around trying to turn around. When I stand up in triumph, with the harness successfully aligned to my chest, my parents are watching with what can only be described as confusemusement.

“I’m helping!” I explain quite clearly.

Dad gets it, and he clops forward saying, “Thanks a bunch Sweetums, let me just load ya up.” He puts a bunch of stuff on my base ...case thing, and I start leaning forward into it, once again summoning my will to move my hooves in the proper order. I actually stumble and lose a bag once, but these cobbles are really uneven! No, I mean they’re flat, but there’s little spaces in them that the wheels can get stuck on. Once I’m in the house I can move smoothly...until I hit a rug, but with a little grunt I manage to get it moving over that too, all the way to the base of the stairs.

I’m not stupid or anything, so I leave my stuff there, flopping on my side to wriggle out of the harness, then pushing it up with my forehooves until my head is free. I sit up like a... dog, and mom is there beside me, carrying something on her back. “Good job, Sweetie!” she says happily, “You sure are a little darling, arentcha?”

“Eh heh... um, you’re welcome,” I say trying and failing not to blush. I feel a little proud though. I really want to help out as much as I can! So climbing to my hooves, I once more make my way outside, and grab another big bag in my teeth. Pulling back on it, I fail to remember that I have not yet been trained on how to walk backwards, and just have to stop pulling and look at my hooves in confusion. But then I scoot around, using the bag to pull myself around it, until I aim my sights at the front door. Lowering my head, and just pushing it with my foreh—ow wow, I have a horn. Whoops.

My horn is too blunt to push through the canvas, thankfully, but it does give me an idea. I don’t know if this is the way you’re supposed to use a horn, but I hook it under the handle to the bag, and try to straighten my head up, getting pulled forward as the bag tilts my head back down in the opposite direction. I can’t really... walk like this, but I can brace my forelegs on the bag, and push with my hind legs, sliding it across the road towards the door step. Yeah, I’m a little white suitcase moving unicorn dynamo!

I think my parents deliberately slow down on unpacking, just to watch me attempting to push, pull, or crawl my way in with another article, but heck if it isn’t just so much fun. I have to be really creative, and I bet it totally counts as walking practice, and I’m not just sitting there being a useless lump, even if I can only move it as far as the bottom of the stairs. I’m helping!

I’m getting way too excited about this. I have a giggle bubbling up in me when the last suitcase is inside the house, and I’m standing in the doorway looking out into the darkened evening. The house is lit making out there look really dark and ...intimidating, but also making me feel so incredibly safe. I have a house to stay in, and Rarity’s boutique? Isn’t that just so cool? Isn’t it? No? Well it feels like it, so nyuh!

It’s probably more physical labor this evening, than I’ve done since waking up; actually... before my awakening was also kind of miserably idle. Only reason I wasn’t a fatass back then, is from a distinct loss of interest in bothering to eat anything. But I’ll eat something now! I’m totally hungry! And I feel safe in this warmly lit house, and excited and... kind of wobbly but that’s okay.

After they get all my stuff—and really the vast majority of that luggage was Sweetie’s—up the stairs, mom reveals the other ground level room, a modest kitchen with nice oak cabinets and a smooth white countertop that feels like porcelain. It’s high enough for me to see over, but more their height for bracing your forehooves.

I’m surprised to see them come down from upstairs completely naked. I mean, I was expecting it with how I’ve been a naked little unicorn during this whole process, and they explained about the clothing. It’s just startling to see how different they look. Mom actually isn’t... as fat as I thought she was. The pants really made her butt look big.

No, seriously.

But what’s striking is how bright pink she is from nose to butt. Somehow her vivid purple hair makes her seem even pinker. Like, my hair is a pale pink, at best. She’s got this pretty pink fur all over her though. She keeps her earrings on... wait how the heck do ponies have earrings? It certainly isn’t the way you’d expect creatures with ears like that to have earrings: large golden orbs hugging the base of her ears, instead of rings embedded in the lobe of the ear. Then again, who wants to have heavy metal dragging them down whenever they swing their ears around?

Her cutie mark is a simple three cookies, chocolate chip from the looks of it. Three guesses as to what my new favorite food is going to be, and the first two don’t count. She doesn’t smell like cookies though (not yet at least). She has a more sandy, oceany smell along with their luggage and stuff, because...she just went to a tropical island, of course. How did they... get there?

Father isn’t as strikingly colored. His pale tan coat leads up from his broad, dark hooves, to his short brown tail and moustache. He has kindly looking bushy eyebrows, and a mop of brown hair for a mane. It probably could be combed around his horn better. He has a huge horn, by the way! It’s really uh... unicorneriffic. He doesn’t have any more accounterments or jewelry, which makes sense in a sexist sort of way, but he looks just fine without anything on at all. It’s only fair really; if men get to be the only ones with facial hair, women should have something distinctive about them too, like jewelry. Not that men have any choice about having facial hair... jewelry that grows back, now that would be a horrifying concept.

His cutie mark is three footballs. They look kind of...fuzzy though, like the lines don’t quite match with what I imagine. Cutie marks really are part of your fur coat, I guess. Wasn’t there that episode when Snips and Snails shaved their cutie marks right off? These emblems shining on my parents’, and Rarity’s ass aren’t projections, but careful inscriptions in the fur, as if an individual one of Rarity’s white hairs suddenly transitioned to blue, and then back to white again. An impossible thing to grow, but certainly possible with magic. I really do kind of wonder if a cutie mark could change.

I try to avoid looking at his genitals, not that he’s making a show of sticking them in my face or anything. But he has balls, same color as his coat, and... well I don’t really look further than that. At least I’m not getting nauseous anymore. It’s kind of cool that he has a... er, which is to say not that I would ever think of doing anything with him, because that would result in retard babies. I wouldn’t want something like that to come out of me.

A–and also because I’m totally not into stallions! That’s exactly what I am thinking, and not anything like a little filly would think! I swear I’m not gay! Or, I’m lesbian, or whatever you call it! Or maybe I shouldn’t kid myself, but I’m not going to come onto my freaking father. That’s just too weird. Also the fact that he’s a four legged animal. And male. I’m totally not into men, and the thought isn’t totally threatening to turn me into a blushing mess of giggles.

...football.

There in that cozy warm kitchen, the three of us gather around the short squat table in there, to sup on the exquisite gourmet meal my mother prepares, of cold peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I am absolutely starving, and... well, standing around our little kitchen table, I’m actually extra eager to start eating it so that I don’t have to watch them eating it. The easiest way I know to avoid getting grossed out by people eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches is to eat them yourself. So I do, bending down and lipping up the bread sinking my teeth into it and taking a big satisfying bite. Oh my gosh it’s raspberry jelly. I think I can officially consider my parents sort of maybe on the level of really cool. Wait...

Wait no, Sweetie Belle’s parents, not mine! Mine are jerks! Well, a jerk, and dead, respectively. Did I like, merge with Sweetie Belle and just lose her memories permanently? But I’ve been feeling like this the whole time, just not so weirdly family-y.

Is that why she can’t speak to me? Her feelings are blocking her off or something? I wish I could say my bubbly mood continues throughout the sandwich, but by the time I’m done, I’m feeling sad and scared again. I don’t want to kill her. I just have to find a way to bring her back. I just... I’ve been really busy this afternoon and... and I don’t really know what I can do without being able to walk...much. I’ve got to find that magical unicorn science building. If not the aptly named Lyra, surely there are some smart ponies there who could... like... not be my family, or go straight to the police, or... something...

......

After I’m done with that big old huge yawn that consumes my attention, I guess I might have been overdoing it a bit today. Starting to feel sleepy, now that I have a chance to relax. My parents get the hint of my gaping maw, thankfully yawning after I finished swallowing, and mom says, “Well we’re fed and we’re home, I guess you could skip brushing your teeth just for this meal if you wanna go to bed.”

“No that’s okay,” I say fighting back another yawn. “It’ll...just a few minutes. Can skip the bath, though...”

They glance at each other, and dad says, “Don’t worry, you don’t need to take a bath tonight. Just come on up to your... mother will help you up to your room. I’ll just make sure it’s all... set and stuff.”

He gallops up the stairs, and mom looks at me seriously. I look at her like a deer in headlights, while she takes some time to inform me in melancholy tones, “Your father really needs you, Sweetie. You can’t go tellin’ him that you... just... get better soon, okay honey?”

“I...”

I don’t know—she looks so... sad!

I try to comfort her, saying, “I shouldn’t have any... problem. If I do, I’ll... I’ll tough it out, until I’m ...okay.”

“Okay Sweetie, just... do your best,” mom says with a frightened grin. “And try not to get into any more dangerous ruins,” she says in false amusement. “You’ll be okay. You’re Sweetie Belle! You’re a very brave, wonderful little filly.”

“Thanks m—” I start to say it, then stop myself. Then I have to stop myself from stopping myself, because even though I feel like I shouldn’t say it, even though I feel like I should, actually I should.

...okay try that again.

I’m still supposed to say it. It’s not true, but it’s an... okay thing for me to say. It’s not true, but I feel like saying it, and I’d alarm everypony by not saying it. “Thanks mom,” I repeat more evenly, the simple act of saying it making a flutter of emotion in my chest. “A little help to the bath—tooth brushing room would be nice.”

“It’s called a washroom, Sweetie,” mom says, accomodatingly. “And the bathroom is behind the kitchen, and the toilet is out back.”

“Okay,” I say submissively, and... then sidling before me, is her broad pink flank.

“Go ahead and uh, climb up,” she says. “You’ll be walkin’ soon, just gotta get that Ace fellow to show you about stairs and things.”

I gratefully climb up on her, and only have to kick my hind legs a little bit to get up on her while she’s standing. As a two headed pony duo, we go up to the... I can’t help but realize I’m actually laying against my mom’s flesh, not a blanket or anything. Have to ask Rarity for that blanket, but until then, mom feels... nice and warm on my belly, and soft.

As a two-headed pony duo, we go up the stairs, and I get to see the second floor, where the washroom is located. So called, because you wash there, but it’s too small to have a bathtub. So, basically a convenient sink to spit your toothpaste into. Same peach colored wallpaper, but more pictures I don’t recognize, portraits really, of bright fields of flowers and a blue pony standing next to a tree.

One of those bags we brought with us is in here, and apparantly it’s Sweetie Belle’s bathroom bag, because mom lifts a toothbrush out of it in her magic so like Rarity’s. It’s the toothbrush I’ve been sticking in my mouth the past days. Nice big handle, easy for a foal to hold onto, who hasn’t figured out magic yet. I should mention that their toothpaste also tastes like hay. I think it’s intentional. After I demonstrate the incredible grace and beauty of a pony brushing her back teeth I’m pretty much droopy eyed and ready for bed.

The bed isn’t even uh... put back together really. The mattress is whole there next to the partially assembled frame, on the floor with a sheet hastily thrown atop it and a soft pillow at its head. I slide off my mother’s back straight onto the soft mattress, and squirm to pull the sheet over myself—it catches in mom’s magic, pulls tight in the air, and snugs down right around me. Made into the bed heh... it feels so freaking good to lay down. I don’t even look at the room I’m in. I just want to collapse after... after all that. My eyes are already closed, when she kisses me good night. I feel so safe here...

I’m not exactly sure when Rarity is going to be finished sewing. She hums pleasantly, her little machine purring away as she feeds the fabric into its cycling needle. I’m getting sort of bored waiting for her. There’s really nothing to do but sit here in her boutique, listening to her work away. How long am I going to have to sit here? The sewing machine stops.

I look up at that, and Rarity is looking very weary, and confused. “I’m sorry, Sweetie,” she says pushing back and stumbling to all fours. “I’m afraid I don’t feel very well.” She goes upstairs to lie down, leaving the brightly colored boutique a very empty place. Worried for her, I climb up the stairs and go down the dim hallway to her room.

Rarity really doesn’t look so good. She lays there in her bed, looking run down and weary, and so old. Her mane is looking grey and limp, and there are deep bags under her eyes. Everything about her is just getting really... bad!

I tell her something is wrong, and she seems to realize it for the first time, looking at her skinny, wrinkled hooves. “What is happening to me?” she says looking at them in horrified alarm. I don’t know though! She’s getting old so fast, it’s like she’s wasting away! “Sweetie Belle, you have to find Twilight,” Rarity says in a frightened tone. “She can fix this.” Nodding in a fright, I gallop out of her room and down the stairs, where the ground floor of the boutique seems weirdly round around me as I charge forward, seeking the egress into Ponyville.

Ignoring the ponies outside, pushing past them in a panic, I charge into Twilight’s library, where the librarian’s desk has been replaced with a simple platform on which she is standing, the purple unicorn a more welcome sight than I’ve seen in a while since coming here, and sneakily trying to be Sweetie Belle.

“Sweetie, what’s wrong?” she says leaning down to look at me in alarm.

“Rarity is getting old!” I shout at her.

Twilight smiles at me and says that ponies are going to get older, and it’s a natural part of the cycle of life. But “No!” I tell her. “Really fast!” Twilight doesn’t want to believe me, and I follow her around the library trying to convince her, as she shelves books, begging her to help my sister. She doesn’t believe me until... until a book falls from her hoof, and when she goes to pick it up, her hoof is shaking tremulously. It’s sagging and shrivelling up all boney and knobby right before my eyes and—and Twilight is too! Her mane is already gray and her back is sagging and weak.

“Stop this, Sweetie!” Twilight tries to shout to me, but she’s stumbling and quavering in her voice. Her eyes look so old but they’re so scared. “What are you doing to me?!” Twilight says accusingly.

“I’m not doing anything!” I cry. I try to help her, but nothing I do works. Twilight is just getting older and older, so fast, and I can’t hold her together.

“Sweetie... please... help me...” Twilight begs with terrified tears in her eyes as her arm just—just comes off in my hoof. And she screams a horrible hollow wail that sounds like the wind blowing over a dirty desert ruin as she just shrivels, drips, dissolves, her skin barely clinging to a pony skeleton that crumbles to dust before my eyes.

Twilight is wrong. I can’t be doing this! I’m just a little filly! I don’t even have my magic yet! My hooves are so dirty... her black ashes make my forehooves gray with soot. My harmless little unicorn filly forehooves. I didn’t do this to her! I didn’t mean to! The library looks... old.

Time is going by so fast, the library looks so old around me. Wasn’t it a living tree? Why is there dust everywhere? How long have I been standing here? Did I lose track of time? The shelves start to collapse, and the ceiling creaks overhead, and I just run. I just gallop away, trying to get out from there before I wait too long and the library falls apart on top of my head.

I make it outside with the groaning collapse of old, neglected rotting wood behind me, and for some reason Rarity’s boutique is clearly in a straight line downhill from this very library. I know it’s a straight line because... because every pony I pushed on the way here is there, and they’re all so scared, and they’re aging so fast they’re dying right on their hooves. I know it’s a straight line because... because I did it. Something infected me. It must have! Why would I be standing here young and spry while everypony in town is old and enfeebled, passing away before I can even remember who they are?

My friends, they don’t want to go! They’re hugging each other, but they can’t stop it! They’re begging me to help, to save them and I don’t know how! I can’t keep them alive if they just keep dying so fast! The hollow wails fill the air now as ponies succumb to the final sleep so goddamn quickly. The boutique—in Rarity’s boutique, I rush into her room, but there’s nothing left but ash, a pony shaped silouette of ash, forever stained in her decaying bed. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I...

I’m doing this! I have to get out of here I have to stop this! Ponyville needs me to get away because of this c-curse this thing that’s making bad things happen. How am I going to get away though? I’m in the middle of town, surrounded by unsuspecting ponies that I can’t pass without them dying forever! I have to... have to get to a forest, where there aren’t any ponies. Right over...there! I run out of the boutique and around the corner and abruptly I’m in a moonlit forest, absolutely and totally alone.

I’ve never been so glad to be alone. No more cries of fear and anguish torment my ears. I may be f-forever cursed like this, but if I stay here in this quiet forest completely alone, I can keep the other ponies safe. I start walking through it, finding myself captivated by the light that can be found here. Not just the moon and stars, but luminescent flowers in shades of purple and pink, some even bigger than myself, coming from trees and vines so mysteriously entwined in the shadow those flowers do not cast. It’s awe inspiring, honestly. Where am I, even?

I walk around a tree and suddenly I’m right in front of a shocked looking Sweetie Belle. I’m staring nose to nose with her. I thought I was supposed to be Sweetie Belle! Oh no!

“Get away!” she shrieks, stumbling back shouting, “You have to get away! Before...” her outstretched hoof pointed at me is quavering like an old lady.

“Oh no,” she says, walking in anxious circles, “No no no no! I made it! I escaped!”

Sweetie Belle is such a tall, graceful pony above me. “You have to stop it!” she yells at me, pushing me down in her big, strong grown-up form. It’s... it’s not staying strong though. She’s past the prime of her life, already!

“I can’t stop it!” I bawl back at her. I didn’t mean to! I didn’t want any of this to happen! Something about me keeps infecting these ponies, making them get so old, and waste away.

“Not me too!” Sweetie wails in tears, her body shriveling into that of a creaky old mare. “I don’t want to go!” she begs me, with a shaking hoof that can’t stay—a colossal spear descending from the sky slams into the torso of the ancient Sweetie Belle before me and obliterates her mid-shriek, her entire form just blasting apart in a wave of the deepest blue.

I literally have no idea what the fuck just happened.

“Cursed things!” comes a familiar voice from above, a rather awkward looking Princess Luna in ill-fitting armor descending, to yank the spear from where it is embedded in the bare ground, with her teeth. It’s... actually kind of a dinky looking spear, more of a toy really. “You cannot have her!” the princess shouts angrily around it, into the dark forest, where, now that I look I can see ponies hovering there, just at the edge of my vision, just standing there, staring with empty eyes.

Luna turns over her shoulder to me, and stares at me with an enraged expression. She angrily bites out, “Oh featherblight!” just as I feel like I’m falling and I—

I wake up upside down on the floor, tangled in some bedsheets, next to a... mattress that is also on the floor? Was that a... oh please tell me that was a dream! I roll painstakingly to my belly, not standing up, but just huddling forward on my haunches, staring at the floor and shivering in the warm night air. What did Luna mean? Why was she... does she know? Did... I still felt like Sweetie Belle though! I didn’t even tell her. All she saw was Sweetie being... saw her making ponies get older and older.

“I’m sorry, Princess Luna...” I whimper in the silence. “I’m sorry S-sweetie,” I say, not expecting an answer, “She thinks she’s saving you... she thinks she’s saving you and all she’s doing is saving me...” My expectations are more than met, when the only response is the steady creaking of the windmill outside my house. Because... I’m in Sweetie Belle’s actual house, that she has apparantly. And her parents came to pick me up! They were on vacation! I—!

I could probably get them to comfort me right now.

As I start to walk, the sheets fall from around me, but I... need something covering me right now. So I just sort of bite the sheets and pull them over my head, using my tail to... oh and my butt to stabilize them, as I stumble out of my room, to seek comfort from ponies I don’t even deserve to be in the same room with. I reach the... stairs.

Their bedroom is downstairs. Of course their bedroom is downstairs! Of course Sweetie has to sleep in the attic! Of course she had to vanish on me, just when I was starting to feel okay about things! I just... I make it to the top of the stairs, but I just refuse to leave the top of those stairs. I know my parents are okay, that it was just a stupid dream, but I’m so scared, and I can’t reach them!

Even with my sheets wrapped around me, I can’t sleep at first because I’m too busy crying bitterly. But that too fades away, and I just slip off into an exhausted slumber, far more exhausted than from just loss of sleep alone.

I think there’s no better way to wake up in the morning than by your father falling over your body on his way up the stairs to wake you up. Oh wait, did I say no better way? I meant many, many better ways. He didn’t continue to fall down the stairs, thank g—thank whoever, but he just face planted on the top of the stairwell after tumbling over me on his way up, like the little lump underneath the sheets that I was.

“Holy Crackerjack, Sweetie,” I hear his surprised, if casual sounding voice say, while he picks himself up there. “Why are you sleepin’ all the way over there?”

I really kind of don’t want to answer. Maybe I can just pretend to be a blushing red lump under these sheets here. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. “I–I was uhm... trying to g-get down the...stairs,” I force myself to admit. At least I can say that much. Was I really going to just crawl into bed with him? With them?

Where the holy heckbunnies did I ever get the right to expect Sweetie Belle’s parents to comfort me? Oh no, I had a big scary nightmare. Time to trick and deceive more ponies, and pretend to be just somebody’s darling little girl, just so they’ll take care of me and I don’t have to be scared anymore.

I don’t even get to telling him about my nightmare though, before dad picks me up, sheets and all, and with a dizzying swing, he’s slung me over his shoulder. he’s uhm... biting the sheets I think, and wrapping them around him, so that I dangle there against the side of his other flank? It’s hard to tell, since I’m sort of entirely wrapped in my sheets at the moment. His flank feels so warm through it, I can already feel my heartbeat evening out from the shock of being fallen over.

When dad heaves again, I land on a couch, and just as I do so, the sheets spread back to drape neatly over that couch, leaving me curled in a seated position on its cushions, a surprised looking pretty little unicorn girl exposed in full. I just kind of sit there a moment, blinking silently at him and... at mom standing over at the table.

“Good morning?” I venture at last.

Mom’s face breaks in a smile. “Good morning, Sweetie,” she says easily, going back to sip at her... is that a cup of tea?

“Hey it worked, didn’t it?” dad says snarkily, dragging my ear his way. Resolutely, I drag the rest of my face his way too as he adds, “Sometimes you just need a little ride downstairs in the morning, eh?”

I look at the sheets around me, and then up at his strong, powerful frame, and say softly, “It wouldn’t be called a... swinger ride, would it?”

He purses his lips at that, under that moustache. “Can’t say I think it’s called something, Sweetums,” he tells me honestly, “But that sounds like a pretty good name for it!”

I remember the day when my dad...my other dad returned from college, and couldn’t give me swinger rides anymore, because I’d gotten too heavy, and he’d gotten too mean. It wasn’t really something I missed terribly, but it was a... landmark in the downward spiral that was my life, if you could even call it a life. A landmark that’s sort of gone now... not that there won’t be a day when Sweetie Belle’s father can’t lift her anymore, but... actually that might be not true, if she’s going to be a petite or a skinny unicorn. He does look awfully strong.

But even if it is true, I still got a swinger ride today, nothing more official than a term for being carried in your own bedsheets. He doesn’t even know how such a mundane act was something I was never, ever supposed to be able to experience again. It really gives a sense of impermanence to things, that certain permanent landmarks in my memory, irreversibly declaring the end of my childhood, suddenly aren’t so permanent anymore, or irreversible.

I think I’m really beginning to like impermanence.

Breakfast is... good. We have more of that tasty amaranth, with butter and some kind of sweet, dark jelly. Elderberry sounds familiar, but I don’t think I’ve had it before. It certainly is tasty! The house is back to normal again. My parents were unpacking while I slept apparantly, so mostly my room is the last place with suitcases left lying around. I feel bad for making them pack up my whole entire room for just a week across town, until I remember that it was Sweetie Belle who did that, not me. Because I am not merging with her. She is real. And we can get her back. Somehow.

Mostly breakfast sticks with me because of where we eat it. It’s not unusual, just in the kitchen as with Rarity’s, but it’s a kitchen I’ve never seen in the show. For all I might be Sweetie Belle now, I don’t recognize the place at all, and that makes it seem fresh and new. Even if it has that homey feel to it. A feeling that I lost forever at age... well, I sound like a broken record thinking like this. It’s really nice to have it back. Even if I don’t have the fond memories associated with the wallpaper, with its horizontal leaf print stripe on it, or that portrait hung by the oven, not of my parents, but of ponies nonetheless. It’s a pleasant combination of familiarity and wonder, which is... probably pretty unique to my current situation.

“Who’s in that portrait over there?” I ask excitedly, for instance.

“Oh, those are my baking buddies!” mom says. “The ponies I work with at the bakery. Do you remember the bakery?”

“I remember you talking about it,” I say graciously, “Perhaps I can visit it sometime, to see you work?”

“Maybe even jog your memory!” dad says happily. He seems oddly content with my situation, like it’s just a case of the hiccups, as opposed to a serious mental illness.

“Is it uhh do ponies get amnesia often?” I ask. “I’m glad you’re not upset, but I wouldn’t mind if you were a little.”

“Oh I’m furious Sweetie,” he laughs, ruffling my mane. Um. “But it was just some contraption that did it, and the problem is past us now. Don’t you worry Sweetums if I see hide nor hair of anything like that, I’ll buck it so hard the Sprockets’ll feel it!”

“Sprockets?” I ask curiously.

When dad looks away, seeming embarassed, mom speaks for him, saying, “It’s a story series your father likes to read, about little mechanical ponies that walk around on their own!”

“Oh, that’s so cool!” I say brightly, giving him as approving a look as I can manage. “Maybe I could r—” Sh...oot. I can’t read, can I? Again. Oh, there! That’s proof that Sweetie Belle is real, because you don’t start being able to read and then stop, unless you are two different ponies! Or unless you’re severely delusional with dissociative—no, no, bad brain, Sweetie is clearly real. I just... don’t know if she’s still...there anymore.

“You wanna read ‘em sometime?” he asks, looking at me pensively. “They’re the kind of books that don’t have pictures in them, just to warn ya.”

“M-m-maybe I’ll just stick with foal um... picture books... for now,” I say shrinking to my belly and blushing at the edge of the table.

Oh, I should mention this table has no chairs! I mean, the table at the coffee shop just had bales of hay you could sort of crouch on. Or eat, probably. The lunch place Rarity liked to go when eating out had chairs, and her kitchen table had stools, so maybe she just likes chairs? But it is simply no trouble to stand and eat. I feel perfectly relaxed standing in place, and not even stiff. Though standing to eat does kind of occupy all four of my legs, it doesn’t take hoof grips to pull up a piece of bread in your lips and bite off pieces with your flat incisors.

I’m really going native I guess, heh. Uhm. Heh. I’m using my mouth not just sloppily and awkwardly, but actually starting to be careful and neat with it. I can keep all the crumbs that fall landing safely on my plate. I just lick them up afterwards, leaving nothing but slight smears of jam behind.

It’s weird because... it’s not something I should be good at. But I’m a pony, so it just feels natural, and I do have a very flexible and supple set of lips and tongue. Oh yeah, I totally went there, but no seriously. I’m not doing anything more than eating with my face, but I’m starting to feel less like an animal, and more like simply... a... person, who picks up their bread with their lips.

“You sure do like toast!” mom says cheerfully, after I mop up the last of the crumbs. Looking up from the plate somewhat guiltily, with my tongue literally covering like half of the plate, I pull up and close my mouth on the big orange thing. It really isn’t a tongue at all, when you think about it. It’s a different organ that appears to serve the same purpose, but whenever I try to lick the plate it just extends and spreads out like it’s growing, yet somehow fits nice and compactly in my mouth afterward.

Welcome to the world of my little pony, where you stand on your fingers and toes eating baked grass for breakfast with your prehensile lips and your amazing telescoping tongue. Wow that sounds weird when I think about it. Ponies are a lot weirder than I thought. It’s kind of scary, how this is my body now, not something I just experience from a third party perspective. I wish I could ask how ponies are different from humans, but I don’t even know if humans are a thing here, much less if they’re something a kid unicorn would ask about.

“I do like toast,” I say to her, pausing at a thought. Something I remember from the show back then. “Maybe not if it’s black, and liquid though,” I make sure to add.

Mom and dad share an adoring glance with each other, and mom says, “It was very bright of you honey. I bet you’re gonna be a great cook one of these days, just like your mother!”

“I’ll um... try later, maybe,” I acquiesce with a reluctant look from mom to dad and back. I wish I knew how what she was talking about matched with the show, but I’m too nervous to... well, just going over the possibilities for... I’m feeling shy, okay?!

Stupid filly body making me feel these stupid shy thoughts; no who am I kidding. I was shy as a six foot tall, older adult male. I don’t feel anxious or anything, just... can’t think of a good thing to say, so it’s pleasant to just... listen to people, and be with them, while ruminating over what I’m going to say. Until everyone leaves to live their own lives, and nobody notices I’m just left all alone again.

There’s a knock at the door. “Come in!” mom shouts over her shoulder. Two rooms away, the door opens, and coming into our house is my beautiful white unicorn sister, Rarity. Elegant as the unicorn I would wish I could be, slender and sure of her movements, and so tastefully dressed in what amounts to a saddle for little fillies.

“Hello, Sweetie!” Rarity says, giving me a pleasant smile on seeing me looking right at her. “Good morning mother, father! Is Sweetie ready for her morning exercises, yet?”

I look between them a bit confusedly, and mom says to me, “Ya know, that thing where you walk better?”

“Oh right, I still get to do that!” I say in honest surprise. Dishonest surprise would honestly serve me better, since I keep blurting stuff out honestly, stupidly revealing stuff when I’m honestly caught off guard. “I mean, I still have to do that,” I correct myself. “It’s so much trouble, but I think I can put up with it.”

Father actually chuckles at that, which kind of worries me, because I don’t get the joke, and he doesn’t explain it. Nevertheless, a new day has dawned, and I’m one step closer to walking again, and I am going to figure out a way to get my gimpy little self down to that spiral tower thingy which was a... laboratory or something? I don’t remember. Then try to find Lyra, and... just sort of test the waters to see if she’s the kind of pony who would help me instead of send me up the river without pause. Obsessively eager for knowledge would be good; I could work with that sort of a personality.

I hate just stewing like this. No, really. I want to do it right now, every second going by possibly one second too late. I hate having to wait until I get done with Ace, and done with Rarity and all this stuff, and I just want to go play! Work, I mean. Work to bring back Sweetie Belle. It would be so easy to just tell them, but I just... I’m just not ready to give up myself, just for an irrational hope of saving her faster. If I was sure Rarity could bring her back, or if my parents could rush me to the... her parents could rush me to the soul restoration chamber, maybe I’d... trust them. But otherwise, Rarity’s still a sister, and they’re still parents, with that dangerous glint in their eyes at the very thought of their dear little daughter coming to harm. They might regret killing me, just to bring her back faster. Maybe. But one look at her sweet, happy, smiling face and they’d know that my murder was all worth it. Loving parents are... freaking terrifying.

I don’t even know why Sweetie came back! Or where she went! Or if she’s still here? All I have is her silence to comfort me. Even my own family, I just can’t trust them, because they may mean everything to me, and Sweetie Belle might mean everything to them, but... I’m not Sweetie Belle. I’m nothing to them.

Oh dear...