Another sunny morning in Ponyville. I entered the Apple family kitchen with a yawn. “Good morning AJ.”

“Morning Toffee. How you feeling?”

I took a seat at the table and stretched out. “A bit sore.”

Applejack looked bashful, “I have been workin’ you hard these past few days.”

“I don’t mind. It keeps me healthy...” …And helps balance out the absurd amount of pastry that I was expected to eat every day. I still didn’t know how they found the time to produce such a prolific amount of food at a moment’s notice. Somebody was missing.

“Where’s Mac?”

Applejack put down her cup, “Oh, he’s got a day off.”

“Mac has days off?”

“Yup.”

“Oh, is this when he goes and does his singing thing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s on the cards for me then?”

“We’re getting into the slow season, slow by our standards anyway.”

Applejack was visibly conflicted about something. The element of honesty? Struggling to say something that was on her mind? I had a bad feeling. “You look like you’re sucking a lemon, what is it?”

Applejack rubbed her pony shoulder, “Well, the thing is, Twilight asked me to talk to you about something thorny.” Twilight didn’t have much tact, so I understood why she’d delegate the task to somebody who knew me better. But even so, it would be nice if she didn’t pawn off her responsibilities to her friends all the time.

“How thorny?”

“Uhm, gender changin’ thorny?”

I slumped in my chair, “Just hit me with it AJ.”

“Well, Twilight asked me to talk to you about… sex and stuff.” Applejack blushed a bright red at the thought of discussing sex, of all things. How old was she again?

“I’m an adult AJ, I think Twilight’s being overzealous again.”

Applejack shook her head, “She just wanted to give you fair warning about the heat and all…”

“The heat? What heat?”

“Whaddya’ mean? Everypony goes into heat eventually.”

I should have seen it coming. Ponies were… ponies! Of course they’d have a heat season! My idiot little peanut brain had gotten into thinking that just because they could talk, they wouldn’t have to deal with stuff like that.

“Okay, maybe I’m not quite as educated as I said before. How bad is it?”

“It’s kinda’ like having an illness, you get really hot, even when it’s cold. Lightheaded. But Twilight told me that it’s all in the mind, whatever that means.”

“I think she means that it’s not an illness, it just feels like one.”

“The heat itself ain’t nothin’ too much to worry about. Just be careful ‘cause it’ll get the stallions into a right old mood.”

Images of stallions trying to hide boners popped into my mind. “Well that’s wonderful.” I was of course aware that ponies didn’t wear clothes, and I’d seen my fair share of asshole and ballsack. While at first it was kind of off putting, I soon realized that it was just a fact of life – nobody would be getting up in… hooves about it. Tails usually blocked most lines of sight anyway.

Applejack drank down the last of her cup, “It’s a good thing that you know. If you have any questions you wanna’ ask me, go right ahead.”

“No, I’m good for now. Thanks.”

A day off. That was rare. For the past few weeks I’d been run ragged helping Applejack and Mac clear out the farm before the end of the season. Kicking trees, clearing animal pens (I still didn’t know what they used the pigs for,) and patching up the house and barn. My motor skills had taken leaps and bounds, I was less Bambi and more like a functioning pony adult.

There was only one thing on my mind though, trying to get my hands on Twilight. To say that she had been elusive would be an understatement. There wasn’t a week gone by where she wasn’t on some kind of errand for the Princess. Who is more like a Queen, let’s be honest. I wanted to talk to her about the whole being a mare thing.

I rapped the front door to the library and waited. After a moment the door was pulled open by Spike. “Is Twilight here?” I asked.

Spike seemed reluctant to tell me so, “She’s buried under a pile of books right now.”

“Perfect.” I pushed through and walked inside. Books were scattered everywhere, on every surface and all over the floor. It looked like a tornado had blown through. “Twilight, are you alive?” I saw a flash of purple fur underneath one of the book piles. Like a shark’s fin underwater, Twilight’s horn navigated the edges of the books before she crawled out of the other side.

“Oh, Toffee.” She looked almost as messed up as her library.

“Have you been sleeping Twilight? Or doing anything that isn’t this.”

She shook off her drowsiness and took a seat at the central table. “No, not really.”

“I wanted to come see how your… progress was. But I’m guessing from the mess you haven’t made any.”

“Much to my frustration, no. I have not.”

I sighed and picked up one of the books from the ground. “Wendigos and you, the power of emotion.”

“Oh, that’s a good one.” Twilight smiled, “Very important for advanced magic users too.”

“How so?”

“The way that the caster feels can impact magic spells. Wendigos are another example of a magical creature that is affected by this. It was a pioneering piece of study when it was written. There are ponies who’ve dedicated their whole lives to the field.”

“This magic stuff’s a bit beyond me.”

Twilight scoffed, “No way, you’re really smart.”

“Smart about farming.”

Twilight wasn’t having it. “Smart about critical thinking, and you seem to understand most things I mention. I can’t say the same for everypony else.”

I took the seat next to her and hung my head, “Is there any chance of me getting home? Or at least getting my privates back?”

“There is a spell that can make you a stallion…”

“Wait, really? Why didn’t you say so before?” I asked, outraged that this had been kept from me.

“Because I would be required to follow you around for the rest of your life, continuously recasting the spell every few minutes to keep it working.”

“Alright, put that idea on ice for now. We can come back to it later.”

Twilight’s face told me that she disagreed, “As for finding your home. Astral navigation turned out to be much more complicated than I anticipated, and Princess Luna doesn’t have the time to teach me herself. But that’s not the biggest problem, I fear that Celestia may have placed a hoof into her own mouth.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Princess Luna did find the time to reply to one of my letters, and our previous idea of searching for non-magic planets may not be… doable.”

I knew this was coming. “Why?”

“According to the Princess, all magic radiates from a location close to Equestria. It flows outwards. Which means that the planets without magic are very far away.”

“If that’s true, how did you bring me here?”

“Hm, it’s like a river that only flows in one direction. It isn’t the magic that’s the problem, it’s finding your own planet amongst them. There are a much greater number than I expected!”

“I was jumping to conclusions, sorry.” I apologized. Even though it is all her fault.

“What I’m saying is that whether the planet is magic or not is irrelevant to you being pulled here. But it is relevant to finding it again.”

I sighed. Fantastic. “Just be up front with me, do you think you’ll ever find it?”

Twilight considered her answer. “As things stand, no. If we were to make a breakthrough on charting the universe, maybe.”

“That’s a no to me.”

Twilight took issue with my attitude. “Don’t be like that, there are a lot of things that we thought weren’t possible just a few years ago that are taken for granted now. Some unicorn somewhere in Canterlot could be on the verge of making it happen right now.” Twilight shuffled some of the books near her with her magic. It was the most confrontational I’d ever seen her, and she was visibly uncomfortable with it.

But a part of my mind said that she was right. I was being overly pessimistic about it. It was a shit hand I’d been dealt, but it could have been worse. The march of progress would surely deliver me back to my home.

“Do you think there’s a way to make the gender spell permanent?” I asked, moving back to what I’d learned beforehand. Twilight looked to the ceiling in thought.

“Not that I’ve seen. The principle of transformation spells is that they’re difficult to maintain. It’s a high-level spell that modifies the nature of a being from top to bottom! Maybe with an appropriately large pool of magic, you could maintain it for longer. But storing it would be a challenge.”

I fiddle with a few books of my own as I thought it over. “Have you ever heard of dysphoria Twilight?”

“I have, a state of unease.”

“That’s the dictionary definition, I mean as a condition.”

“No. What does it mean?”

I flipped through the pages of the book, watching the words go by without taking them in. “Where I’m from, it means that you don’t like your own body.”

“Like… self-esteem?”

“Worse. Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and you were… in your father’s body.”

Twilight frowned, “I wouldn’t like that.”

“Exactly,” I placed the book down and started into Twilight’s eyes, “Every word is like a little stab at your heart. When people won’t acknowledge the problem. Did you ever consider how I felt when you just started calling me a mare?”

“You are a mare…”

“I know. I know I’m a mare Twilight, but I don’t have to be happy with it. Or accept it. Every morning when I look in the mirror, I see a stranger looking back at me. If I could I’d shave myself bald.”

Twilight couldn’t make eye contact with me anymore. “I didn’t know.”

“Well, I could have said something earlier, but I didn’t because… I didn’t think you’d understand. But you do, if you feel bad about it then you do.”

“It’s not good to feel bad.”

“But it’s good to talk about feeling bad, isn’t it?” Twilight nodded below the rim of the table. “I don’t want you to kill yourself over this. When was the last time you slept?”

“A couple… days…”

“Get some damn sleep. I’m not having you feel like crap too.” Twilight rose back up but still remained locked onto the ground.

“You haven’t changed. You’re still foul mouthed, and honest…”

“…You like that about me? Or is that something I should work on.”

Twilight shook her head, “No, it’s good.”

I took a deep breath and realized something else, “You don’t even know when I’m swearing Twilight.”

“I can guess!” She objected. “With all your damns… and fucks…”

I nearly doubled over in laughter, hearing it come from the mouth of one of the super nice and friendly ponies was too much. “Please don’t do that! You’re gonna’ kill me.” Twilight had a little giggle of her own.

It was moments like this when I remembered that Twilight was a full person too. So why didn’t I feel like forgiving her? What was it that eluded me at the time? Was I just angry? It didn’t have to be rational. I was in an insane situation, put into an alien body because of a stupid accident. I couldn’t just let it go. Not until I knew that she’d tried everything.

It was my fault, wasn’t it. I couldn’t see them as people like me. They were an alien species that had some resemblance to my own. A parody, a joke, every time I learnt about a pun-named city like Manehattan, I wondered if this wasn’t just the machinations of somebody with a pen and pencil. Were intelligent species destined to do the same things?

“Seriously, go to bed Twilight. You look like a zombie.”

She yawned, “I will.”

“In fact, I’ll leave you to it.”

I got off the chair and headed for the front door. Maybe forgiveness would come tomorrow.

Author's Notes:

I'm a shameless man and started a patreon.

Here is the beginning of my dedication to keeping a regular schedule. I saw a lot of people worried about how dark things were going to get, and I can only say that it'll probably get worse. Soon Mac will start sniffing around and things will get weird. Toffee's talk with Twilight might have some unintended consequences...

Check out my other new story, Changeling With You. It's another transformation tale about changelings and stage acting. I'm trying to update it between Adjustment chapters, back and forth. I'm not planning on making Adjustment overlong because it's a simple story so it'll be finished before CWY. This one doesn't have any dysphoria talk if you find that offputting.