With a snort, I jolt awake. Everything is rumbling and clattering around me. I lift my head to find myself on a moving cart. And Sweetie Belle.The various and sundry on the cart seem to have been pushed aside to make room for me and for one other. Above me is a thick canopy shading the cart I’m riding in. Facing away from the front of the cart as I am, I can’t see who’s driving, or rather, pulling it. My arms and legs are all tangled up in—oh that’s Apple Bloom.
Apple Bloom is right up against me, belly to belly, sound asleep and breathing softly. Through the wooden slats in the cart I can see Rarity trotting along beside it, and a pony on the other... oh my gosh that’s Applejack! Of course it’s Applejack! Because Apple Bloom is here cuddled up to me and she’s so soft and cute and oh gosh
...one fangasm later I can’t help but wonder where is Scootaloo? I daren’t look for her, or even move around for fear of disturbing this beautiful little filly cuddled up against me. I can feel the texture of our furs intermeshing, short but not scratchy and very dense, smooth where it slides along the grain. I um...
I probably shouldn’t be hugging her like this.
I try to extricate myself as gently as I can, and she responds by grabbing me tightly around the waist and hauling me over her like a ragdoll. I wiggle my arms but it’s no use; she’s got a death grip on me. Is she... she is! She’s still asleep!
“Apple Bloom!” I whisper urgently. No answer.
Well, at least my back is to her now. Plus I can’t be very old with how everyone is treating me like a baby, so I can’t be... well I can’t be you know, fertile so I don’t have to worry about it, right? Feeling like ...that? Come on me, learn to walk first before you... experiment. I am kind of tired still. Whatever hit me before is taking a long time to recover from, I guess. I just nestle against Apple Bloom and close my eyes, trying to ignore any untoward thoughts. Thankfully I find myself drifting off right back to sleep.
It’s a ground shaking crash that really wakes me up. “Cracker!” someone exclaims in alarm as I lift my head up along with Apple Bloom, and what the hot steaming hell is that?! It is three times the size of the cart itself, and has two great arms extending from its brown hairy body each one ending in a claw that looked like it belonged on a lobster, if that lobster was 20 feet long.
After it opens a slavering fanged mouth and gave an ear splitting roar, I become much less concerned with what it is, and more concerned with how to hide from it and remain totally still so that it can’t get me. My inability to walk nonwithstanding, I manage to bury myself halfway underneath a knocked over pile of junk before Apple Bloom pulls me out saying, “It’s okay, Sweetie Belle! It’s just a Cracker! They’ll just chase it off an–” and then it leaps into the air like a grasshopper, its shadow sliding smoothly along the ground to settle directly over the very cart which we are sitting in.
“Out of the cart out of the cart!” Apple Bloom shouts, shoving me bodily over the edge to land with a huff on my back outside. She is halfway out herself when there is a loud bang, and the grublike mass of hair and claws abruptly stops descending, flying directly sideways from there, contorting bizarrely as it smashes into the rocks across from us, rubble flying everywhere and filling the air with cloying dust. Something hit it like a cannon ball!
I manage to get up on my hands... forearms and squint my gaze into the dust, just as another crack erupts through the air and the thing flies upwards again, this time away from the cart. I can barely see it rolling around and around as it recedes like a strange pinwheel. There are several bright flashes as bolts of ...something follow it, almost too quickly to see, and it gives another terrifying screech upon their impact.
Then a sudden wind blasts around me, pulling my hair into even more disarray. It clears the dust and– and it was like the dust just disappeared instead of merely being blown away. There is a thin layer of dust all over me now and I rock back trying to brush it off with my forehooves before it turns muddy with sweat. That accomplishes buttfuck nothing other than me now lying helplessly on my back. Huh, you know I have to wonder, why is there not even a single cloud in the sky?
“Awwesome!” comes Scootaloo’s excited voice from... on top of the canopy of the cart. I guess that’s where she was all this time. Wait, so she didn’t even get off when that thing tried to squash us?! Movement over by the ...Cracker makes my head snap around, but it’s just the other ponies who have gathered in a shield wall and... holy Jesus fuck it really is a wall, because above line of the ponies on earth, there is another layer of three winged ponies hovering in the air, their wings slowly flapping in asynchronous motions. And one of them is none other than– well, there’s no mistaking it, even from a distance. There are another two bright flashes, and then the beast slowly turns and starts to rumble away.
Only when its noise dies down do the defending ponies rejoin the two still standing around the cart, and a trio of fillies I suppose. The winged ones come first, as they are terribly fast. And one in particular swoops right up to Scootaloo and says,
“How about that, huh?! Did you see me? I sent that thing flying! Gave it the old one two!”
“You’re the greatest, Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo exclaims confidently.
Yeah that is... that is definitely Rainbow Dash. A vertical horse angel above us all limned with sunlight, fur the color of the sky, and a verdant mane of the brightest rainbow, a true rainbow not the evil false rainbow of which we will never speak again. She looks... incredible. I don’t even know how to think about it. She just looks so alive and powerful. She looks, well... she looks like Applejack, except wings and blue. Yeah I don’t know how to explain it. She’s kind of scary.
I don’t know the other two pegasi. I didn’t even know pegasuses were accompanying us. Or that we were going somewhere that would need accompanying. Or what the fuck was that? I don’t remember giant grublike lobster clawed hairballs from the show! Did that thing even have eyes?
“Oh, Sweetie Belle!” comes Rarity’s voice, then Rarity running up to me in fright. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine, Rarity!” I assure her, “Just a little shaken up.”
“How did you fall out of the cart?” she complains, fussing at me with her nose until I’ve been rolled onto my stomach again.
“Apple Bloom pushed me out,” I explain causing Rarity to zoom back and zip around, snapping directly at Apple Bloom saying, “How could you? Sweetie could have gotten hurt! Why would you–”
“No!” I shout. Apple Bloom is giving me a betrayed look, and Rarity has stopped silent, and looks at me uncertainly.
“We thought it was going to fall on the cart,” I explain in the correct order this time. Apple Bloom relaxes as I do, not looking hurt anymore. “I couldn’t get up fast enough, so Apple Bloom pushed me out. And she was going to come too, then something hit the monster on the side and knocked it away.”
“That was Rainbow Dash!” Scootaloo exclaimed from her perch atop the canopy.
“It was?” the words escape my mouth, before I put the pieces together. Of course it was. Why use a cannon ball when you can use your fists? Or, hooves. You get the idea. I’m surprised in fact that a rainbow colored disc of light hadn’t erupted from her path before she hit that thing. Was... was that Rainbow Dash holding back? I wish I could say I was impressed or that it was megawesomecool like Scootaloo was saying, but I find myself trembling instead. These destructive super beings are hovering over my head, and I can barely even stand up.
“How are you doing, Sweetie?” Rarity asks me concernedly, “Do you feel like you can walk again?”
I grimace at that. Keeping up this half truth of amnesia is just turning so ugly. I wish I said something else like I was paralyzed or something. Well, not really, as that actually would have been a complete lie, and I know how terrible those end up. So I just keep sticking with the truth like I always ...try to do. Reorienting my hind legs Scooty Belle style, and levering up on my arm... legs... my forelegs, I get to my feet relatively naturally this time. I’m still pretty wobbly though, and I gulp nervously as one of my feet jutters to the side, to distribute my weight splay leggedly, and make it harder to fall over. My tail is just laying there limply. I wish I could figure how to move it.
“I can’t move my tail,” I say honestly, wincing at her look of horror. “No I can still feel it! Just... it won’t um.. lift. It doesn’t hurt. A-and I’m not dizzy at all I just...” I try to walk again, sticking my arm forward, then the opposite rear leg, then ...the rest arranges itself fairly automatically, this time. I try it with the other arm first, instead, and... almost lose it. “I don’t really r-remember how to walk,” I continue uneasily, trying to frame this as amnesia... somehow. “I mean, I forget how to move so it’s walking. I mean–”
Rarity comes next to me as I stand there vacillating. She crouches down and sits beside me. “There, there darling,” she says, in a tone I would have thought patronizing if it wasn’t Rarity. “We’ll just help you up into the cart, and get you to the hospital first thing, and they’ll be able to make you all better!”
All better, great just what I wanted. I won’t have any problems walking, or exhaustion, and as a bonus they’ll fix that little problem where I have someone else’s brain in my head, erasing all those troublesome memories and personalities who don’t belong there. I have to say, a proclamation of impending doom is a lot scarier when you don’t even have the capability to walk. Say for instance, to walk away from said impending doom.
“Okay,” I say miserably.
They probably have a fancy soul scanner at the hospital or something. I’ll just have to... enjoy it while I can now, and then... I’ll just have to tell them, I guess. Thankfully Rarity interprets my look of misery as Sweetie Belle being sad that she’s crippled herself, and leans over me with a compassionate feel, biting down on the... back of my hair? Then she pulls and before I know it I’m up in the air! I’m too stunned to struggle until she puts me down in the cart again, where I again sink to my belly. Do... do I have a scruff?
Again she misinterprets my emotions, turning her nose down and saying, “Oh Sweetie I apologize. I know you don’t like to be treated like a baby I just... you couldn’t walk and I wasn’t thinking, you see.”
My shock softens a bit, and I manage to smile at her saying, “Thanks for caring about me... sis.”
Rarity utters some triviality and retreats, clearly flustered, and Apple Bloom jumps up in the cart next to me, easily clearing the railing holding everything in.
“Golly, that was sappy even for you!” Bloom declares.
“Yeah, heh heh, totally,” I say, laughing nervously and turning my head away... the one action I seem immanently capable of doing. I was surprised then by Apple Bloom crouching down and shoving her head under my chin, then pressing her neck against my chest, sort of the reverse of what Rarity did when I first tried to walk.
“Ah was worried for you,” Apple Bloom tells me in an unsettled tone, “They say you’re never supposed to go to sleep if you got a head injury and they said you was okay, but ah thought...”
Oh my gosh, she’s right! They probably thought I would never wake up again, and go into a coma! I lean my head against her as... comfortingly as I can manage with this peculiar gesture saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know...”
Apple Bloom pulls herself back then looking at me and saying, “You’re sorry? Nothing to be sorry about! It was an accident!”
I shake my head slightly, correcting myself, “No I mean, I’m sorry you had to feel that.” At a blank look, I tried, “I... sympathize with your plight?”
Apple Bloom covers up her mouth with a hoof in a poor excuse for holding back a laugh saying, “You are such a dictionary, Sweetie Belle.”
I am? Oh wait that... oh hey, that is a joke from the show, isn’t it? Maybe I can not get totally exposed if I accidentally use complex grammar, then! Still have to watch my language though, and not reveal too much.... Luckily I am far more prone to compulsive word play, than compulsive vulgarity or spoilers.
“Indubitably,” I say a bit smugly, touching a finger to my... a hoof to my chest. That makes Apple Bloom laugh, flopping relaxedly on her back. I have to smile too; her joy is infectious. I can’t help but feel a bit envious about how easily she can move around though. Don’t these sort of situations usually come with automatic walking instincts? I hope this problem I’m having will only be temporary.
“Physical therapy?!” I exclaim. Whoops, too far forward. Back to the cart ride!
“You know, Scootaloo was worried about you too,” Apple Bloom points out, glancing up at the canopy, “Even if she shows it different.”
“How does she show it?” I ask curiously, thankfully not knowing better than to shut my big mouth.
Apple Bloom actually thinks for a moment and says, “I bet you ten to one that Scootaloo avoids you until you track her down again and hug her to let her know you’re gonna be alright.”
I wince slightly, saying “Scootaloo doesn’t like hugs much, though.”
“Yeah,” Apple Bloom said with a nod, leaning closer to me and saying in a harsh whisper, “That’s what she’ll say, at any rate.”
Huh, so Scootaloo does like hugs after all. I mean, there isn’t a pony alive who wouldn’t, unless you were being hugged by queen cheese grater legs maybe. But, good to know nonetheless.
The cart travels into a narrow pass in the mountains, passing through several unnatural looking tunnels whenever the rock face becomes too sheer. Nothing else leaps out to attack us thank god. Or maybe it should be thank Celestia now? Celestia probably doesn’t want to be god though, and I sure don’t want to casually lay blame on someone who’s real.
Yeah even when I’m thanking the bastard it’s like “thanks God you didn’t screw up this time.” It’s fun and relaxing to blame someone for everything wrong with the world, as long as they are just a character in a story. But as fun as it is to have a divine punching bag, it would kill me to think my casual insults and slurs are going towards someone, someone who could be hurt by them. Especially someone who wasn’t a murderous lech like God.
...I really hope Princess Celestia isn’t a murderous lech.
I certainly doubt Princess Celestia intentionally put me here, or else she’d be right there in the welcome wagon, so there must be something involved beyond her powers. Regardless, I have no idea how god-like she is, so I can’t really judge her myself until she passes judgement on me, no doubt shining with the incandescent flare of the sun as she accuses me of murdering Sweetie Belle and wearing her body like a suit.
...
I scoot away from Apple Bloom a little bit. Here I am getting all chummy with my– with Sweetie Belle’s best friend, and I’m just a big phony in her place. I didn’t want to do this, and I wouldn’t if I could. ...probably... But I still enjoy the experience of being this tiny little impotently magical unicorn, more than I should. More than I can even describe. It isn’t fair to any of them, and I should tell them, but... but this is my chance to be Sweetie Belle! Things have worked out so unbelievably wonderfully for me that I just can’t not take this chance I have, even if only for a little while!
I... I really want what Sweetie Belle has, with her wonderful friends and loving family, and her entire future looking bright and full of fulfillment. I just want a taste of that, even just for a little bit, before I die and can’t have it ever again. Sure as rain, I’ll get to restoring the real Sweetie Belle any day now.
At last we start passing trees and grass. I can’t see above me, but beyond the mountains we’re emerging from the sky is full of beautiful puffy clouds. The only noise is the quiet clack of the cart, that beautiful quiet just music to my ears. It’s like the sweetest song, or... more like if Scootaloo has been singing in your ear the past 34 years and just now she stopped. The quiet is like a blank canvas, or an empty plate pulled clean and sparkling from the soapy sink.
No matter where you go, it seems like humans are unconcerned with sound, filling the world with noise without concern or even thought for who they may hurt by doing so. It forces you to make a hard decision, between lonely isolation, and well... automobile traffic. I’d like to say I valued companionship, more than being bothered by the few especially annoying truck drivers with acoustically amplified exhaust pipes, but... I often did find myself alone and isolated, walking out along the roadway long after the witching hour, in the time of night when all you could hear was the freeway far away, and it was... really nice.
I can’t yet say ponies are any different than humans about noise, but now I can’t even hear a freeway. If what I’ve been hearing (or not hearing) so far is any indication, it might be okay! Though I suspect that I will be avoiding Manehatten like the plague in my forseeable future. I worry that the quiet may have just been our desolate surroundings, but as the mountains leave us behind and a dense forest rises to the right of our dirt road, civilization finally comes into view... and it is very, very quiet.
Oddly, the dense forest to our right comes right up along the trail we ride down. Whether this road was built alongside the forest or the forest conformed to it I can’t tell, but it is an abrupt transition. On the left of the trail is a less dense forest, an orchard it seems, with the strangest looking trees. Their leaves are entirely pink, making the trees look like giant cotton candy sticks. Appearing frequently all over the branches are the stems of little red berries of some sort, each growing in a pair. There are a few yellowish white flowers among the berries. The trees look familiar somehow, but I can’t remember ever seeing a tree like that before. Pink flowers sure, or purple leaves, but nothing like these.
The cart slows to a halt, making me lift my head up from where I’m leaning against a box of stuff. There is a monstrous lack of roaring, thank god. Applejack sticks her head in, saying, “We’re takin’ a break before the last stretch. Either of you need to pee?”
Oh... dear and, just like that my thoughts go straight below the belt. I don’t have a piss fetish or anything, but it’s just that even thinking about it reminds me I don’t have anything to pee with. Couldn’t I have gotten transubstantiated into a stallion instead? Nah, that would have been traumatizing in its own right. Thankfully I don’t need to pee, but it’s something I’m going to need to do eventually, just as sure as that fake Southern accent said a few seconds ago that peeing is a thing that exists.
Apple Bloom speaks up, saying “Naw, but ah’m gonna go stretch mah legs. Sweetie, you wanna... um...” Apple Bloom looks at me uneasily. I wave her off saying,
“No, no it’s fine. I’ll just stay in the cart until we’re... there.” It occurs to me I have no idea where we’re actually going. Ponyville, I guess?
Apple Bloom jumps down, and I’m left sitting there all antsy now because stretching my legs sounds really good right now. If I could only figure how to walk on them. But instead I have to sit here like an invalid in a cart full of junk, with nobody in the cart besides me, and nopony around me, or ...watching me. It’s then that I realize that, for the first time since waking up as Sweetie Belle, I... actually have complete privacy right now.
I gulp, looking down the smooth curve of my white furred belly. Of course I’d just happen to be propped up on my back again; it’s a great position to have embarassing truths practically smacking you in the face. I can’t help but be curious about it though. I tentatively press a hoof against my chest, and there’s nothing there but ordinary pudge. The same sort of combination of fat and muscle as I ever had, albeit under much softer skin that dimples slightly at my touch. It’s just a chest. The nail of my hoof feels hard.
Gulping again, I move my hoof down lower prodding at my lower abdomen. Sure enough the lumpy nipples that used to be on my chest are nestled right against my legs, uncomfortably close to where the curves of my thighs come together to frame a pert little mound.
“Hello Sweetie,” Rarity says sticking her head in the entry part of the cart, as my hoof flies away from my groin like a dignity seeking missile. “How are you doing?”
“I’m... fine,” I say with a nervous smile. My cheeks feel hot. I hope I’m not blushing. “Doing just great!” I chirp, trying to slump less and sitting up more against my impromptu backrest. Rarity has a cute little blue parasol shading her face that’s... strapped to her back, huh.
“Apple Bloom was upset that you couldn’t come out,” Rarity says, “But I think you made a wise decision. We’ll be on our way from here in a few minutes at most, and you can... stretch your legs as much as you want when we arrive.”
“Um, where are we going?” I ask, squirming my legs stiffly. “I was... asleep when you said.”
“Why, Dodge Terminal,” Rarity answers. “A quaint little lumber town on the edge of the eastern Palomino. There, we can find a train that can take us home straight away!”
“Oh...” I say dimly, “Right, home. Can’t wait.”
Rarity turns her head and turns back to me saying, “It seems we’re about to get going again. I would join you, but it would be quite unladylike of me to make others plod through the dirt for my sake.
It makes me blush at my situation, again. “Sorry,” I say guiltily.
“Oh, no no no, none of that,” Rarity chides, “It is only unladylike if you are not otherwise indisposed. I assure you were I in your condition, I would feel no hesitation to let these fine mares take me in their cart to safe harbor! You take as much time as you need, darling. A lady such as you will show her best by recovering her strength, and relying on others as she does so.”
She turns her head again at some words that Applejack is saying to her, and says to me, “Gotta go. Take care, Sweetie!” She stretches her neck out and kisses me on my curl covered forehead, then pulls out of the cart, clip-clopping away.
It’s only when Rarity is entirely gone I mumble lovingly in her direction, “Sister, my ass.”
As the cart lurches into motion again, Apple Bloom jumps on with a water canteen awkwardly draped by its strap over her shoulders. “Drink up, Sweetie,” she says tossing the round cloth wrapped cylinder in front of me. “We got plenty of water now.” Something about the way she emphasized that last part makes me think.
“We didn’t have any water going out there, did we?” I ask somewhat certain of the answer.
Apple Bloom shrugged... somehow. “We did pretty good until we snuck on this cart here, but there ain’t any water in the Badlands.”
I reach down and wrap my hooves clumsily around the canteen, managing to lift it up to my chest. “Why were we even out there?” I ask, trying to figure out how to open it.
“Here, you need some help with that?” Apple Bloom asks. I gratefully let her take the canteen and she practically spins the cap off with her teeth and lips. I... hope that’s sanitary. She tilts it towards me again and I try lifting it. It’s so tricky though, when you basically only have two things to hook with and nothing else.
“Use your hooves, Sweetie,” Apple Bloom prompts.
“I um... am?” I say uncertainly.
“No, the ends of them,” Apple Bloom clarifies. “You gotta really get your pad into it.”
Oh... dear.
I try pressing the flat of my hoof against the canteen. It feels weird kind of depressing slightly when I put pressure on it. I can’t feel any sort of magic hands or muscles, or anything that would help with grabbing. I know ponies in the show have done it before, G4 ones at least. But I guess, it’s something just too alien for me to wrap my head around, or my hooves for that matter.
“Sorry, I can’t,” I say reluctantly. “I forget how.”
“Golly, Sweetie Belle,” Apple Bloom says breathlessly, “You really are pretty messed up! You just... you know, like this.” She pulls the canteen away from me with... just her hoof. “Ah’ll hold it for ya,” she says decisively. Blushing I can only nod in acquiescence.
Apple Bloom is not as gentle about it or controlled as Rarity, but Apple Bloom doesn’t have a magic horn, so I’ll cut her some slack. I’m not nearly as dehydrated anymore either, so I don’t have any trouble drinking my fill. We do laugh nervously though when it overflows from my cheek splashing down onto my belly.
“Thanks Apple Bloom,” I say rubbing at my now matted fur, leaving her to swig the rest of it. “You’re a really good friend.”
“Shucks Sweetie,” she says wiping off her chin, “Ah’m just glad to have some water again. Ain’t no trouble to help you if you got problems with your hooves.”
“Why were we even out there?” I repeat. “This doesn’t seem like a normal field trip.”
Apple Bloom gives me a cautious look saying, “You really don’t remember anything about it?” I shake my head.
She sighs, setting the empty canteen aside, sitting on her haunches like a dog. I try to emulate her position, as the cart rumbles and bounces beneath us. It’s really nice to see her face to face. A guilty pleasure, even. Apple Bloom’s giant pink bow frames her cherry red hair so appealingly, keeping her coat and mane from color clashing. That bow was one of the great design decisions of the show, I think. ...I wonder how it’s attached.
“We were just tryin’ ta get our cutie marks,” Apple Bloom says to me, pulling me back to the topic at hand. “A fancy space rock that contained ‘all the knowledge of the ages’ was sure to have the answer to that. That’s what Miss Twilight called it, at any rate. She could have been exaggeratin’, but when she couldn’t stop it from landin’ way out in the Badlands she went and packed up a whole crew and camped out there! Do you remember how Scootaloo wanted to...?”
I have to shake my head. While I wish this was an episode, there’s no way in heaven or hell that an awesome premise like that would ever be allowed. Maybe a feature length movie. My Little Pony: The Fallen Star? I’m fairly sure “The Fallen Star” is already taken, but I can’t remember what movie that one is about. Probably Pokémon or something dumb like that.
Apple Bloom huffs, “Well, ah’ll tell you then. Scootaloo was feelin’ put out, and don’t tell her or she’ll deny it, but she was missin’ Rainbow Dash something fierce, so we kinda came out here to find the meteor and also impress her so’s she’d let Scootaloo stick around an’ help. ...didn’t work so well.”
“What happened?” I ask curiously.
“Well there weren’t no meteor is the thing!” Apple Bloom said in a hurt voice, “They were all about explorin’ some ruins way underground. That was where Scootaloo thought we’d... learn how to get our cutie marks. It seems kinda silly to think now, but if the grownups were all interested in it... ah thought it’d be somethin’ cool. And we were all the way out here, so...”
“Whatever happened to me really messed up your plans,” I point out a bit glumly. At least nobody, er, nopony got hurt, er, no, Sweetie Belle sort of did get hurt. Hopefully not horrifically or lethally. At least uh... at least... yeah it was pretty bad.
“Ah don’t get it,” Apple Bloom said with a horsey huff, “Why would you have a surge then? And why would there be a magic... machine thingy all the way underground? We shouldn’t a tried to get you to use it.”
“It’s okay,” I lie. “It could have been a lot worse,” I truth.
“It just don’t make sense. You ain’t got a lick of magic, then you’re brighter than a lightbulb? They say it was blocked off, but your horn ain’t no different than it was. Nothin’ popped out of it or nothin’! Ah just don’t unnerstand the first thing about all that crazy unicorn magic,” Apple Bloom confesses frustratedly, “It’s so confusin’!”
I smile weakly at her, saying, “I don’t think it is any less confusing for unicorns. I don’t even remember using magic! I only remember waking up with Rarity there.”
Frowning, I touch my horn with a hoof experimentally. It doesn’t feel like a bone precisely, and it’s kind of sensitive to tapping. I try to feel a ...something in it, but nothing really comes to mind. I probably shouldn’t mess with it anyway, considering what happened the last time I... the last time Sweetie Belle used it.
“Am I good at doing magic?” I ask suggestively, uncrossing my eyes and looking back at Apple Bloom again.
Apple Bloom bites her lower lip adorably, saying, “Uhm, well not to offend you or ah mean you’ll get pretty good you just gotta practice and ah’m sure you’ll be right as rain.”
I give her a flat look. “That bad, huh?”
Apple Bloom blushes in her face, and, I can totally see her blush. Is her fur getting transparent or turning red or what’s going on there?
“I-it’s okay Apple Bloom, I don’t mind,” I reassure her hastily.
“Ah know how sensitive you are ‘bout it–”
“No really, it’s okay!” I say, then catch myself. Wait, what if Sweetie is supposed to get upset? Is she embarassed about it? The show never said!
“If you insist, Sweetie Belle,” Apple Bloom says a little uneasily. In the silence that follows I look up at the slats on the sides of the cart.
“Hey, can you lift me up so I can see over the cart?” I ask hopefully.
I spend most of the time watching from my awkward perch, with my front hooves hooked over the slats of the cart, which Apple Bloom had to help me up into. She really has been just great, even staying with me in the cart the past hours. She’s not just doing it for my sake of course, as even her short filly legs tire out quickly trying to keep up the pace of the taller ponies. She told me as much after I noticed her jumping down to run around them playfully but always returning to the cart before her pace had settled to any level of stability. It must suck to be a foal on a forced march, if there wasn’t a cart you could rest in, or a sister you could rest on.
The three pegasi, including Rainbow Dash, are very easy to miss, since they keep a holding pattern in the sky most of the time, high enough where it’s hard to make them out. They occasionally fly down to check on the cart but seem perfectly at home up there in the sky. The two ponies pulling the cart, green and red, both mares and both earth ponies, infrequently chatter with each other about what they’re going to get for the return trip, and what their plans are for the summer. The rest of the entourage walks in a loose circle accompanying the cart, with Twilight Sparkle and others up front, and Rarity and Applejack and one other pony behind, strange ponies to either side.
Beyond them, down the path, I can see distantly approaching buildings, as we pass beyond the orchard. The land to the left now is dry, rocky and desertlike, a striking contrast to the continually dense forest on the right. Our path seems like a delimiter for these disparate biomes, but looking down I can see the dry flatland is on both sides of the path, and to our right it just sort of ends with burgeoning tufts of grass, and then abruptly trees so thick, the distance underneath them is too dark to see. The town I can see runs right up to the edge of the forest, but the buildings are definitely built on the more open desert land.
As we come closer to the town, a possible hitch in my hopes for a quiet life comes up: railroad tracks.
As much as I may disparage the nature of humans regarding noise, it’s actually a very new phenomenon, even among humans. Before the ubiquity of automobiles, not that I was there to verify this, but there wouldn’t even be ambient noise back then, much less deliberate noisemakers roaring by for no purposes other than to fill the air with sound.
So, even though the cartoon show had a quiet and serene world, the ponies in it may be just as vulnerable to noise pollution as we are. Maybe they just haven’t yet had the technology and marketing that made noise socially normative. Emphasis: yet. But it started with humans, with the railroads, so the railroad can tell me a lot about what the future holds for ponies.
The ponies slow past the the point where the tracks would cross over the road, if the tracks didn’t end. The tracks end just before they reach the road, though. The cart rattles to a halt at that point. There’s a train station at the end of the line here looking strangely familiar. It’s a square wooden building painted smoky blue, with a brown wood sign on top that has a picture of a train engraved or etched into it, and a bell to ring for when the train arrives, as well as a public outhouse on the right.
“Oh I thought we would never arrive,” Rarity says behind me. “I think I shall fall fast asleep the moment I am on the homeward train.”
“You’re even more in a hurry to get home than I am!” exclaims Applejack beside her.
“But of course!” Rarity responds enthusiastically, “I can’t wait one more minute for dear Sweetie Belle to get the medical attention she desperately needs!”
“Um... it’s not that desperate,” I say trying to diffuse her enthusiasm, but all to no avail. Rarity practically flounces over the tracks trotting up to the train station, and I can do fuck all to follow her because whatever benevolent god threw me into this situation didn’t think to teach me basic four legged locomotion. I watch her engage with the ticket master, feeling despondent, sad that my adventure and life are so quickly being ended by the love of one’s older sister. I wish I had an older sister like that myself. Or at least someone who cared about me. But eh, bygones. Not like anyone would miss me when I get exorcised or whatever.
...
Crap, now I’m crying. Trying to suck it up just isn’t working. I’m a little unicorn filly, a girl, and I’m even more helpless than a babe. I’m just in the way of everyone who really loves Sweetie Belle.
“Sweetie Belle, what’s wrong?” Apple Bloom whines beside me. She hasn’t even left the cart, before I go and have an emotional breakdown. I wipe at my eyes furiously saying, “I’m okay! There’s nothing wrong! I’m just–” and then my voice just cracks and I don’t trust myself to continue trying to talk. What finally gets me out of this funk is the sight of Scootaloo, just her head hanging down over the canopy with her short little purple mane dangling down, looking across at me with concern. Her pupils narrow when she sees that I see that she sees me, and she jerks her head up out of sight.
Hah, Apple Bloom was right. Scootaloo is so guilty about this, that she’s shy as a kitten.
“I’m just scared that when I get to the hospital I’m not going to be okay,” I tell Apple Bloom carefully. “It’s just irrational, there’s no reason I can say for feeling like this.” God I love being technically honest.
“Well, maybe we could stall her somehow?” Apple Bloom says thoughtfully. Huh I didn’t take her for being a tricksy pony. Then again, these three did seem to get halfway across the country without supervision, or permission. Should I trust her to have an innate grasp of the art of subtlety? She’s just a little kid though, she can’t possibly have earned the sheer amount of sociopathic cynicism that a lonely adult can. And I sure don’t want her to have that. Not now, not at age 97.
Rarity solves my dilemma quite handily. It’s easy to hear her, even from this far away, shouting at the ticket master at the top of her lungs, “No train until tomorrow?!!”
I purse my lips, trying not to break out in a smile, saying, “I guess that solves that problem.” Apple Bloom fails to not break out into a smile.
“You shouldn’t be so scared of hospitals though, Sweetie,” Apple Bloom says to me with a note of concern, “They’re all ponies who want nothing more than to make you well again! Don’t you want to remember?”
“Well...” I say reluctantly, “I do want to be able to walk again.”
Apple Bloom just answers with a “Hmm,” dropping to her haunches in thought.
The Dodge Terminal Forest Lodge is the building on the border of the forest, made from the trees it’s practically a part of. I wonder if ponies ever heard of a fire code. But, they probably have a different way to deal with it. Rarity helps carry me inside, with hopefully little embarassment to herself. (Of course I remain immune to ridicule, to the point of absurdity.) Then she goes off with the others who don’t have more permanent lodging. That’s pretty much the Three Sisters, and a grey green pony who I don’t recognize.
On the ground floor of the lodge is a large well lit room, with a fireplace and sunlight pouring in through the west windows. It’s got the smell of warm pine, and it’s probably the first time in my life I’ve ever been able to enjoy that pleasant smell without having an allergy attack. There are a few ponies walking in and out, travellers mostly. More than one of them have some sort of compass rose cutie mark. The floor is smooth and sanded, which is good considering I have not many options other than sitting on it right now.
Of course me sitting there on the floor, and looking at cutie marks, means I’m getting a really good look at a whole lot of asses, from low enough that the tail doesn’t cover up anything. It wasn’t a possibility from up on the cart, but down here? These magic ponies from the show all walk around like they got ginger stuffed up their butts, generally carrying their tails in a high arc, and that doesn’t leave anything to the imagination at all. Of course, absolutely nopony is giving one single fuck about this aside from me. It’s really not as bad as I expect though. It’s worse.
Oh sure, everypony looks beautiful from head to tail, don’t get me wrong, and I have no moral objection to the mares just blithely walking around with a perky little... slot for lack of a better word protruding from between their butt cheeks. It’s the same color as their fur other than a slight bit of pink mottling, not huge in proportion with their asses or anything. Their assholes aren’t huge either though, just... present slightly above the sort of envelope they got between their legs. Really, it’s about as conservative and understated as blatantly explicit ponies could be. The only problem is looking at them is starting to make me recognize the sensations I’m feeling in my own butt plopped down there against the floor.
So nope, not gonna look at mare butts, very bad idea, nope nope nope, making me think of myself in ways I absolutely am not comfortable with. So instead I focus on the few stallions, who have an equally apparant but conservative setup that I’m considerably more familiar with. Their balls tuck neatly against their pelvis on either side of the root of their penis, which remains entirely folded up behind a neat sheath, and said root curves smoothly up from there to where the asshole is, in both genders, close to the base of the tail. The trouble now is, looking at stallions is making the setup I’ve got between my legs even more apparant, and harder to ignore.
So, I end up pretty much gobsmacked, trying not to make my face flush, and trying not to make my ...other things flush either, yet simply unable to tear my eyes away. I wish I was a fly on the wall, because at least then I could appreciate this beautiful parade of posteriors without feeling myself as a participant in it. (OK full disclosure there are like 6 strange ponies in the room total, but that’s six more crotches than I’m used to having access to.)
Don’t get me wrong, I feel so much better about what I’m seeing than if I had the horrific experience of being dropped into a universe of ponies with no genitals at all, and I’m just tickled pink with the idea, the abstract idea at least, that I get to feel what a girl feels, no matter what her species is, but to actually experience it... I’m just feeling a little shell shocked right now.
Thus I feel a great sense of relief as my– as Sweetie’s friends come over to see me. Apple Bloom is pretty much pushing Scootaloo across the floor, despite the pegasus’s protests. Once Scootaloo sees me see her, Scootaloo stops fighting being pushed forward. She jumps up on four hooves with a catlike grace, half closing her eyes and looking aside disinterestedly, trying so hard to be cool and aloof as she walks up to me casually.
“So,” Scootaloo says, “I hear you’re still having trouble walking, and can’t sneak up on me and hug me or anything, and say it’s okay.” She rambles quickly in her rascally voice, “And I’m sorry and I know you’re not okay and sorry that was stupid of me to say it was my idea to go in after all and sorry I I can’t do this.”
Scootaloo spins on her heels to run off so fast, that I almost miss getting a single word in before she’s gone, but I’ve been around the block a few times, and I had a few seconds in her slow approach, so I at least have thought of enough to blurt something out.
“Scootaloo, it’s okay!” I shout, drawing her up short. “I mean, I know it’s not okay really, but it’s not your fault and it’s not that bad!”
“How is it not my fault?!” Scootaloo exclaims with sudden emotion, rounding on me as soon as the words leave my little unicorn mouth. “I was the one who said you should go in! You didn’t want to do it and I just had to make you!”
“It’s all our faults, Scootaloo,” Apple Bloom says gently to her. Oh no, you’re not gonna make that mistake, apple teeny. I’m not going to let my whole semester of Introduction to Philosophy at that community college go to waste, especially not with the A for effort I got!
“No,” I say, with an authority that surprises even me, but I press on saying, “It’s nobod–it’s nopony’s fault at all, and I can prove it.” Apple Bloom actually laughs at that, making me frown saying, “I’m serious!”
“You can’t prove a feeling,” Scootaloo says discouragingly. “Did you hit your–um, I mean–”
“You don’t even feel like it’s your fault Scootaloo,” I point out matter-of-factly, “You just think you have to feel that way.”
“Well what’s the difference!” she accuses back at me.
“Scootaloo, uh...” I say to her halting to collect my thoughts. “You are a real um, adventuresome pony,” I venture, “You like to do exciting and cool things, and that makes you exciting and cool. That’s why I um... why ponies like you, and it’s why you like Rainbow Dash. You like exploring and adventure and challenges, and that’s a good thing about you, right?” Dear GodCelestia, it’s so awesome to be able to tell these ponies why they’re so awesome.
“I... guess so?” Scootaloo says, looking taken aback by probably what’s the longest utterance I’ve made so far.
“She kinda hit the nail on the head there, Scoots,” Apple Bloom says frankly, turning to me and asking in a more inquisitive tone, “You sure you have amnesia?”
I can’t not blush at that, because they think I sound like I’m their old friend, not a weird outsider. “I–I really do, I promise,” I say uneasily, “I’m just trying my best to remember what I can.”
“Ah frankly don’t even know what it is you don’t remember,” Apple Bloom drawls out in her cutely cheery childlike tone of voice.
“Well, don’t ask me!” I say in a jovial lilt.
...well it was supposed to sound like I’m joking. See? Scootaloo gets it, Apple Bloom. You can snicker too, you know.
“I don’t remember going into the cave, so I can’t say for sure,” I admit, “But if you told me to go in, you probably wanted to find something or make something cool happen or ask for help, and all those are good things. They’re not faults!”
“But I put you in danger,” Scootaloo protested acidly, “And your memory, and... and look at you. You can’t even stand up!” I wonder if she realizes how mean she sounds, while trying to apologize and be sympathetic. I know she didn’t mean to remind me, but it still hurts to hear about my problems. But, I have a point to make here. These fillies were not going to have to suffer from this particular poison of insecurity, if I can help it. My sister back home can go fuck herself. (She sure never fucked anyone else, ha!)
“The reasons you did that, they were not because of anything wrong with you,” I insist calmly, “They weren’t faults. They were ...” shit I don’t know the opposite of the word fault. “...not-faults.” Smooth. I conclude, “Therefore, it can’t be your fault that caused it. It was just an accident.”
They don’t seem to understand what I’m getting at, so I repeat, “It’s not your fault.”
“Well... maybe... if I had listened when they said not to go there, and that it was dangerous,” Scootaloo countered with difficulty. “But I didn’t, because I never listen. And that’s a fault!”
I shake my head. “Could you still be as cool or ...adventuresome if you always did what you were told?” I say sweetly like a spider laying web. “Is um... Peppermint Twist,” I shoot for the moon, “As cool as you are?”
“No!” Scootaloo exclaimed hotly. She actually blushed then and lifted her hoof in a cute self conscious way saying, “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with her I wasn’t making fun of her or anything just–”
“I know,” I emphasize to her, “She makes really nice candy and she’s really helpful and ...stuff, but she’s not as awesome as Rainbow Dash, or Scootaloo.”
Scootaloo kept right on blushing, saying, “So, what’s your point?”
“Not listening was wrong. You found out that was true because...” I reached a hoof to tap it on my head clumsily. “...this. But if you had listened then you wouldn’t be here at all. You would be back at your home somewhere, making candy or something else, and somep-pony else would be here telling me to go explore instead. So, not listening was bad, but... it was part of something that’s good overall, so it’s still not a fault. Just a...” oh, right!
“A qui҉rk!” I say with a smile.
Dear Jesus God Almighty—I mean—Dear Neopolitan Sunny Delight, I totally just squeaked right then, didn’t I.
“That’s what you’re sayin’?” Apple Bloom says with a raised eyebrow. I grit my teeth in uncomfortable silence before she adds, “...well at least amnesia didn’t make you any weirder.” Whew, safe.
“No, no it helped,” Scootaloo says to Apple Bloom. “...a lot...” she mutters embarassedly. “But um,” she says loudly again, “So it’s never anypony’s fault when anything bad ever happens?”
Oh the schools of philosophy who have fought over that needlessly for centuries, Scootaloo. “When it’s something broken about you that’s not good at all,” I say as plainly as I can, “Then it’s your fault, and you need to get better. Like a crack. Otherwise it’s not.”
Might as well rely on my old example. Apple Bloom might get a kick out of it, if her special talent is what the “this is your special talent dammit” episode claimed. “If you can’t hammer a board because the nail is bent, then it’s the nail’s fault,” I say smoothly, “If you can’t because the hammer handle is cracked, then it’s the hammer handle’s fault. And it’s just the same with peo–onies.”
“Peonies?” Scootaloo sounds out uncomprehendingly.
“I meant ponies,” I say a bit discomfited.
“Ponies are a lot more complicated than a hammer...” Apple Bloom cautions me.
“I know,” I admit, “But that doesn’t change what a fault is. It’s just... more complicated.”
Our moment of quiet contemplation (also known as a moment of not being able to think up any good retorts) is interrupted by a familiar, doubly familiar now, voice behind me.
“Alright every pony, it looks like we’re all set for the night!” Rarity says clopping up to the three of us. She cheerfully adds, “So how about we all go and take a bath!”
The three responses to this are:
“Ugh...”
“Aww!”
(gasp)
Can you guess which one mine was?
I wish I could say this was a self insert, but the protagonist is turning out to be way more of a suave motherfucker than I ever was. I hope it’s not too OP
