Tears dribbled down by cheeks as the bright light searched my retinas for signs of anything being wrong. We'd been shuffled into an even smaller room, and I had been told to do an eye test to make sure that the changes hadn't damaged them. Annoyingly the chair and equipment was far too short for me to use normally, so I was forced to kneel down and bend my spine to an awkward angle to fit. Twilight and Applejack had to wait outside.

"So what's the issue here?" the optician asked, "I'm not seeing anything too out of the ordinary."

"My sight is fine, the colour of my eyes changed a day ago, and I don't know why."

"Well," he sighed, "I've never seen anything like that before. The only explanation I could provide is that you're under the effect of a spell or curse; they're known to change the colour of the victim's eyes on some occasions."

"The only person I'd met before it happened was Twilight, so unless she was the one who did it that's very unlikely," I grumbled.

"Well it couldn't hurt to go through the full test anyway," the optician leaned back into their chair and ignited their horn, pulling a chart of letters onto the wall. I didn't recognize them, these ponies spoke English, but didn't write in it, how bizarre.

"Uh, sorry, I don't know what those are," I admitted. There was another thing I'd probably have to learn during my time here. The optician shook his head for a moment, before pulling open a drawer in his desk and pulling out a new sheet of paper. Instead of the strange lettering from before, now there were a series of small images, like an apple, a tree, and a cart.

"It's very rare that we get to use this," he commented, pulling down the previous chart and replacing it. As if I didn't feel like an idiot before.

"So he didn't find anything?" Twilight asked as we hobbled back to the lobby.

"He said there was nothing wrong from what he could tell, that my eyes were pretty much the same as yours, and that they were in good condition. He said something else though, that a change in eye colour can be brought on by a curse?"

Twilight nodded, "True, they're specific to what curse has been cast. I don't believe there's a curse that makes your eyes orange."

"Something to consider when we get out of here," I mumbled, placing my face into my palms. We sat there for what seemed like an hour, but in reality was about twenty minutes. I passed the time by studying the other ponies sat in the lobby with us. Some of them had bandages wrapped around them, one pony in particular was bloodied by a gash on his head.

Eventually one of the nurses approached us, "The Doctor will see you now."

The Doctor gave us a smile upon us re-entering the room. The kind of smile that you give to somebody before telling them that they have three days to live, or perhaps that a close family member has died. It did little to settle my nerves, or the rock that had settled in my gut. A feeling of tense anticipation that I did not like. My leg twitched involuntarily, a new ache spreading through it.

"Let's take a look here," he mumbled, hovering a beige folder in front of his face. "Most peculiar."

"Don't keep me in suspense, what's wrong with me?"

The Doctor grimaced and placed the folder back onto his desk, "What I can tell you is that the material on your foot is actually hardened nail. Not dead tissue as I originally suspected. I can't say whether that's a relief or a worry for you."

"Nail? Like a toe nail..."

"Like a hoof," Twilight butted in.

"Yes, like a hoof."

Twilight frowned and looked me in the eyes, "I think we need to run some more tests but I need my equipment, we should head back to the library."

"But what if it's something the guys here can help with?"

"I don't think they can Gerry, unless there's an illness that afflicts you that does this."

"No, there isn't," I admitted.

"So, my line of thinking is that this is a magical problem. And for magic problems you're not going to find anypony more knowledgable than me, unless we resurrect Starswirl or get the arch-mage down from Canterlot."

"She's right fella', whenever this town has a problem, Twilight is always there to help!" Applejack declared, wrapping a foreleg around my shoulder.

"It's up to you. We can discharge you if you really want to, or you can stay here under observation," the Doctor said, rummaging under his desk and pulling out a new paper form. He scribbled down some mysterious writing and handed it to Twilight.

"I think I'll go with Twilight on this," I answered; being proactive was probably better than wasting away in a hospital bed for god knows how long anyway. "Is AJ okay with pushing me all the way back?"

"I'll be fine!" the cow pony declared, "Ah wouldn't be a good farmer if I couldn't pull some heavy loads."

As I stood to move out, I was glad that AJ was so eager as I tumbled to the floor with a gasp; nearly catching my face against a nearby chair. "Holy shit my legs! I can't even get up!" Looking back, I noticed that they seemed to be out of alignment, throwing me completely off balance.

"I'll carry him with my magic Applejack, we better hurry up, these symptoms are getting worse!"

The ride back to the library was something of a fever dream. Flashes of rational thought blanked out by long spaces of deep internal panic. Was I going to die here? Billions of miles away from my home? Mangled and mutated by whatever strange force seemed to command the universe I lived in?

I only came to when Twilight pulled my limp body onto the bed in my room. Applejack looked mighty worried about my condition, something that didn't make me feel any better. Twilight once again carted in her absurd collection of do-dads and devices. She hooked them up to me with practised ease, but even I could tell that her pace was a little more frantic than usual.

"Do I look okay? What's happening?"

"You look fine sugarcube, we're gonna' fix you up right as rain, you hear?"

The machines beeped, spewing out roll after roll of paper with more unintelligible squiggles on them, "It looks like your magical absorption just tripled overnight! I've never seen anything like it. If we were to put it in pony terms, you have the magical ability of a new born foal," Twilight rambled.

"And how's that killing him again?" AJ asked, poking her snout into the rolls of paper. Twilight bit her lip and hesitated for a moment.

"I have a theory about what's happening."

"What is it?" I snapped, suddenly very awake.

"If we consider what we've seen so far, the eye colour, the hair, the hardening of your feet, and the... whatever happened to your legs, you're starting to... resemble one of us."

You could hear a pin drop in the silence that followed.

"You think I'm turning to a... pony?"

"Yes, that's the only thing I can think of."

"How hold on a darn minute Twilight, how in the world could that happen?" AJ objected, "You just show up and get turned into a pony? Something stinks right nasty about that to me." I couldn't help but agree.

"It's only a theory for now. But consider what the good Doctor told us, you are growing hoof like nails from the bottom of your feet. And your leg structure is starting to go a similar way too."

"So I'm fucked then? I'm just going to get turned into an entirely different species and essentially trapped here forever?"

"Perhaps there's a mechanic about this kind of travel that we don't understand, what if we travelled back to your world and turned into humans? Alternatively, your body may be having an adverse reaction to the ambient magic found here, and is changing to adapt somehow."

"Twilight, how do you stop it?" I yelled, cutting off her long winded explanation.

"We'd have to isolate you from any source of ambient magic, which would be impossible given that it's everywhere. And that's just to possibly prevent it, reversing this is another story. Only the most powerful magicians in history could come close to casting a permanent transformation spell like that."

I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, pulling the sticky nodes from my chest and tossing them to the floor. I gripped the sheets between my fingers and screamed at the top of my lungs, "Fuck! As if my fucking useless life couldn't get any fucking shittier! God damn it!"

"Calm down Gerry! We're here to help," Applejack interjected with a wince.

"You just said you can't help me though! We may as well give up!"

Silence.

"See? You don't even know anything! How the hell could you possibly fix this bullshit if you don't even know what's wrong! All I wanted to do was fucking get out of my bunkhouse for a few minutes! And now I'm fucking stuck here, turning into some kind of mutant fucking horse! You know what? I'm never going to get home right? You don't have the faintest fucking idea how I even got here, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

"And even if you do manage to get me back, what the fuck will I do when I'm a crotch high fucking grass eating cunt like you! Neigh at them? Get fucked in the ass by the stallions in the stable? Maybe I'll go shit in a god damn field to make myself feel better, knowing on some level that at least it could be worse, maybe if I got turned into a fucking slug instead!"

The tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife. I was shaking with anger, my blood boiling with barely restrained fury.

"Of all the indignities huh? Of all the people, of all the things, it had to fucking happen to me. Because whatever deity runs this fucked up reality can't go one day without taking a big shit on me, stupid mother fucking Gerry, the spineless bastard who spends all of his time ploughing fields and dreaming of his ex."

My breath was heavy, a thin sheen of sweat on my face and body. I suddenly felt a deep sense of embarrassment at my outburst, like somebody had poured battery acid into my chest and it was burning away at my organs. I looked away, trying to find anything to occupy myself with that wasn't Twilight and Applejack's stunned faces.

"Do you need some time alone?"

"Yes."