Chapter Two

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Applejack," I said, offering a hand. She looked confused for a moment, before flattening her hoof against my palm and vigorously shaking it. I was too off-balance to try grasping it like with a normal handshake, which was probably for the best.

"A pleasure, Ah think," said the mare wryly. She looked back to where Twilight was twitching over a whiteboard I'd found when I first moved into the apartment. "Ah've seen Twilight get into a lot of her... moods, but Ah've gotta say you have a better success rate than Pinkie, which is just astoundin'."

"Thank you! I think," I mimicked back. "So you drew the short straw this time?"

She shrugged. "Basically. Ah only saw a little bit of the city last time Ah was here, thought I'd take the chance to meet a local up close and personal."

"Anything you'd like to see in particular?" I asked. "I can't say I'm much of a tour guide, but I spend a lot of time wandering around. See?" I whipped out a spare notepad.

Applejack leaned in and read, "Go outside, damn it. You're turning into a shut-in again." She blinked. "Well... alright then. Let's... go outside?"

"An excellent suggestion," I replied. "Twilight, we're getting fresh air! Come on!"

The alicorn twitched. "I can't leave this now, look at this equation!"

"It's very pretty," I admitted. "In a modern art sort of way, if you're into that. Come on- you can pick my brain for stuff on the way. Anything you like, and I'll cut the sarcasm by half."

"Well then!" The violet mare turned in place and trotted up with a smile. "I'll hold you to that promise."

"Stuck between two snarky dames," said Applejack, shaking her head. "What'd Ah do to deserve this?"

"You were either very good in a past life," I said. "Or you paid my going hourly rate. Come on."

I hid the satisfied little smile as Applejack chuckled and Twilight sputtered about not being some 'mare of the evening'.

"We've all gathered here today for a very particular reason," I announced to the table at large.

Crazy Dan nodded, and raised his rubber ax. "To slay those evil spider men."

Jill petted her fake mouse. "To finally get the experience points you forgot to give out last time?"

I grumbled, but threw out the chart for all the table to see. The three players got to copying down the figures. Really, player characters were insatiable creatures, barely even human. It was why I, as a dungeon master, had to keep their attention with an iron fist.

"But no, not actually any of those things," I told them once they were finished. "Instead, I... am going to do magic."

"Point of order," said Linda. "You're not a sparkly little pony."

"Don't say 'point of order'," I told her. "You make this sound like a democracy. It's a tyranny. And I am going to cast magic, and... I really want your guys' help."

"Deal!" said Crazy Dan.

"Alright," said Jill.

"Why not?" asked Linda.

That, however, was not according to the script, so I ignored them and pulled out my speech. I had typed it, yes, but I had printed it out in very fancy calligraphy fonts.

"Now, your first reaction is to say 'no'," I told them. I ignored the rolling eyes. "But I want you to hear me out. My magic book lets me cast spells, and since the rift has tipped the other way, I think that gives us the chance to send somebody the other way. The information gleamed from this might allow for more stable travel, and promote peace and unity between two different cultures."

I cleared my throat. "More than that, you are all the best friends I've ever had. Never before, not in my old home town, did I find people to trust and sort of vaguely tolerate like I have you. I hope you'll accept becoming my anchors on this side of the rift, not just because of all the wonderful things we might accomplish, but because something something blah blah magic of friendship. End, speech. Hold for applause." I frowned. "Wait, those last bits were in brackets, and I wasn't supposed to read them."

I was cut off when all seven feet of Crazy Dan grabbed me up in a hug. "That was so, so beautiful," he said, voice choked with tears. I kicked at the air- who the hell was actually seven feet tall, these days?

"I said I'd do it, you spastic head case!" said Jill, adding to the hug.

"I'm not actually going to, like, touch anyone, but I feel the same way," said Linda, still at the table. I let that one pass- we all had our little quirks.

"What do we have to do?" asked Crazy Dan, letting me back down.

I smoothed out my skirt, grabbed up my bag, and pulled out both Tom and the three scrolls I had made.

"This is my magic book, which lets me do magic," I announced. "I love it, and it loves me. Its name is Tom, short for Tome. When I write spells on it, they get cast, and I totally made it work. These scrolls," and here I passed them all out, "Are made from pages I took out of Tom. They'll make you my anchors, I think."

"You think?" asked Jill. She was holding her page like it was about to explode.

"I've been short on time!" I said, sounding only slightly insulted. "I've been doing a lot of, you know, copy and paste. Only without a computer. These spells are organized like a drunk's refrigerator, only without the elegance. If I were inventing spellcraft, I'd do a hell of a lot better."

"Of course you would, dear," said Jill, patting me on the head. "Now, can this wait until after the game, or is this time sensitive?" she asked.

"This is day three," I said, suddenly feeling most of the last few sleepless nights. "You heard Twilight- this is our last chance. So as much as I'd like to ambush you all with brigands and highwaymen-"

"Spoilers!" shouted Linda.

I ignored that and went on, "I think it's now or never. Ready to see if this will work?"

I got a round of 'yeses' and 'get on with its', which touched me on a deep and emotional level. Really.

"You are all such dorks," I told them, wiping at my eyes. Obviously Linda's loft was very, very dusty. For a compulsively clean person.

I pulled out Tom, and set it on the table to a solid reaction of approval. It looked very mystical, of course.

"I'll get the candles!" said Linda. "Magic spells need candles."

I was almost certain they didn't, but decided it would make her happy to dim the lights and light some... vanilla-scented candles. 'Way to go on the atmosphere, there, Linda.'

One of the things I had noticed was that, every time I used Tom, I lost the space used to write down my spells. They could only be cast once, I supposed, so I had tried to write tiny. More than that, it seemed like paper disappeared from the back of the book with every spell cast, as if it were being burnt up as fuel. It was like that metaphor about burning the candle at both ends -which I had also been doing, in my rush to finish the spell- except applied to books.

I had torn out four pages for each of the tightly-sealed scrolls, with the first pages bearing dense spell runes. That was the anchor spell, as well as I could piece it together. Tom now had an additional three full pages of text.

I held the tome to my chest in my off arm, and motioned for everybody to hold up their scrolls. I brought up a pen with my free hand and wrote the tiny rune I'd come to call 'execute spell' on each paper cylinder, lighting them and my tome up in sequence. Crazy Dan, Jill and Linda all went quiet with a kind of atypical reverence.

I stepped away and opened Tom to the last filled page, pen in hand. I paused. Memories of the last three years, of getting away from home and making a life in the distant city, of finding people to depend on and be happy with, of starting my career. Of everybody knowing and respecting the name of 'Tamara', as if I'd never had any other.

I was afraid to lose all that.

This was the greatest risk I had ever taken.

'And thus conscience does make cowards of us all,' I thought. 'Though maybe not today. Let me just be brave, just once.'

My hand came down.

-Execute spell-

The light was overwhelming. Gravity had let go of me, and I was tumbling at speeds unimagined through an impossible space and, for that single moment, I understood, as I never would again.

"I'm sorry!" I screamed it, and wasn't sure why. "I'm so sorry! Please, forgive me!"

The weight of the impossible drew me forward.

And then I fell.

I woke up clutching Tom. I heard flames. And shouting- that, too.

"Get the princesses! We have a breach!"

I cracked my eyes open at the too-blue sky, and saw a mountain. And then I knew pain.

In the distance I saw hurrying, panicking figures. Definitely equine. I had arrived, at least.

Something Twilight had said to me, once, occurred to me just then: 'There is magic in everything, back home. In every creature, in every particle. Being here, in your world, feels like swimming through ice.'

I felt like I was on fire, and wondered if maybe I physically wasn't meant to be there.

Out of options, I opened Tome and came to the first fresh space. It was hard to see- my glasses had shattered in the fall from... wherever I had been. The memories had already faded, and I found myself grateful for reasons I couldn't explain.

'I need a pen,' I thought, numbly. Then I noticed that my fingers were smearing the pages with red, and I figured that would do as well as anything else.

-target(this self) make designated to equals(reference(self)) as...

I heard the strange but distinctive sound of teleportation, only multiplied.

"Tamara? Tamara!" It was Twilight's voice.

I went back to writing with my own... red stuff -'Don't say blood don't even think it.'- because I couldn't bring myself to talk and, therefore, explain. There wasn't time to try to spell my way back to Earth, I didn't think. The best I could do was this horribly clumsy spell with syntax like out of a ten year-old's first computer program.

...gain reference(target) apply to equals(reference(self))...

I was writing too large, but then I couldn't see well. Nor did I expect that, even if I survived, that I would ever get the chance to do magic, again, anyways. Half of Tom's pages had already been consumed.

"This is the human you meant? She needs medical attention!" Going by the voice, and what I remembered from the show, that would be Princess Luna herself. I was honored.

"My goodness, this has turned out to be an interesting day," said... John de Lancie? Oh, right. Chaos god. There was no time to fangirl, though, over the demi-immortals running around.

...set final, by terms-setting this(element(not-element))-

I swallowed, but my saliva was coppery and thick. I tried not to look at the skin of my arms, which was literally boiling away. I was only concerned with not blotting out my already-shaky lines.

Twilight appeared like a great violet blur in my faded field of vision. I tried to smile, and hoped it didn't look too gruesome.

"S...sthorry..." I slurred.

-Execute spell-

I woke up alone, and in a dark place, and everything was horribly cold. Though I did not know it, the end of the world started there, with me, and with that cold that crept and filled every cell in my body.

I curled up in on myself, not knowing where I was and not remembering where I had been. There had been... something fantastic. I had been happy. Why had it gone wrong? Why was there blood on my fingers?

I woke up again, I'm not sure just how much later, under a blueberry pie tree. I blinked. That was... odd.

As my vision cleared, I saw that it was not, in fact, a blueberry pie tree. This was as much of a relief as it was a disappointment. On the one hand, pie that grew on trees might very well prove to be the greatest discovery of all time. On the other, my mind was feeling pretty shaky, and that kind of discovery might send me off the deep end.

It was simply a tree with wide, spreading branches, upon one of which somebody had placed a pie to cool. This made less sense than I might have liked, but I could rationalize it away.

'I am alive, am no longer on fire, and there is pie nearby. Things could honestly be much worse,' I thought.

Before I could start counting my blessings, a nearby bush rattled. I watched, curiously, as a little pony -a brown filly- crept up on her belly, eyes on the pie branch. 'There,' I thought, 'Is thievery afoot. Ahoof. Nope, one more quarter in the pun jar for that one.'

At least, I figured, I was both still in Equestria and safe from what felt like more magic than any being should experience and live through. Deciding to try out the whole 'good citizen' bit, I hissed.

"Kiddo, stealing pie is bad. Stop that this instant."

The filly hopped in place and squeaked. Upon seeing me, her eyes went wide and she bolted around the tree.

"Not what I had expected," I admitted. "Am I really hitting all the warning signs for 'stranger danger', or something?"

Not more than a few seconds later, filly and... mother, maybe? Appeared around the side of the tree. The filly led the both of them up to the branch, and started babbling and pointing from me to the branch, and back.

My hearing was apparently off, or something, but I understood a frame-up when I saw one. The little bugger was trying to claim I had stolen the pie!

In response, I settled for raising one eyebrow to Spock levels of incredulity and staring down the child. She wilted. Her mother seemed to have gotten the idea, too, and used her tail to give the filly a quick, but utterly painless, swat before going into lecture mode.

'That was weird,' occurred to me. 'She ought to be freaking out about the ape monster coming to steal her pastries and children. Why-'

And then I noticed how sharp my vision was, like, unrealistically sharp, without my glasses. The way my range of vision itself had stretched to either side. The fact that I could see way more nose on my face than I was used to, though some of the detail was somehow lost.

"What-" And my voice, far too high. I'd at first thought my throat was dry or something, but no. And it sounded too breathy, like I'd spent a lifetime trying to lose my gag reflex the hard way.

Well, now. It seems that I screwed up my mishmash, last-minute, ignorant-of-all-theory spell. Who'd have thunk it? It had been a desperate attempt to somehow graft an element of adaptation to myself, based off of any native targets the spell was able to pick up. Instead it did... something weirder. Much weirder.

I looked down and saw that, yes, that was a hoof tucked under my fuzzy, cream-colored chest.

Well. At least I was alive. An alien, yeah, but alive.

The mare was talking to me, now, babbling, and I suddenly realized that I couldn't understand what she was saying, at all. There was nothing wrong with my hearing- my hearing was great!

'There is only one possible way out of this,' I thought. It was cliche, and my inner story-writer was rebelling against it with every ounce of strength it had. I mimed a heavy 'thunk' to the side of my head, crossed my eyes, and said, "I have amnesia, and stuff. I think I hit my head. You don't understand me, but it also probably effected my fine motor coordination. Also, I am a banana."

The mare seemed suspicious, but even that was tinged with sympathy. It wasn't until I tried to get up and flex my limbs that she began to look scared.

Scared of what? I was just stretching my...

"Oh. Hey. Wings," I said. I tried to poke at one, but it retreated. I guess moving my arm... foreleg, back, pushed wrongly on the new, strange muscles that I'd never actually operated before. Annoyed, I spun and tried to chase the feathery thing, only to fall over.

I whined. Then- oh, I have a tail! And my nipples migrated south for the winter. Golly, I was taking this well. And by taking this well, I meant I began to cry. Trying to wipe away my tears just meant bumping my new forehoof into my muzzle.

"I'm alone and I don't have my body and I got wings but I don't know how to fly and... and..."

A tiny hoof place itself on my side, and there was a soft, shooshing babble. I grabbed the first available thing for hugging and cried on it.

After about a minute of being pathetic, a larger, more tentative hoof pulled at me. I glanced up, red-eyed, at the mare, who seemed to be asking for her daughter back. I awkwardly handed the filly over, though the little thing was still trying to pat my head. The mare looked me over, rolled her eyes heavenward, and sighed before beckoning me along.

"Really?" I asked. She got impatient and waved me along harder, so I stumbled after her. Walking wasn't that hard, so long as I didn't think too hard about it. It was sort of like crawling, but more elegant. Well, the other mare moved elegantly- I just moved like I was trying to crawl on my toe tips. Which I no longer had.

We rounded the massive tree trunk, where I was surprised to find a kind of hard-packed dirt ramp going into the earth, where there was clearly a door set into the arch made by the roots where they reached the trunk. I shakily navigated my way after the two ponies, and offered a quick prayer that I wasn't about to be eaten.

The mare babbled at me, which I didn't understand, of course. Thusly, I provided her end of the conversation through the powers of imagination:

"You seem like you'd go well with barbecue sauce. Would you like to sit down?" She gestured to one of the two stools in the incredibly spartan, one-room living space.

I sniffed, and nodded. "I'm probably delicious, but I'd thank you not to eat me. Sitting down sounds good." And it was great, once I remembered to move my tail to the side. Literally nothing about my body was strictly familiar, but at least I hadn't sat on my tail.

"Do you want an infusion of slood?" she asked. "Mini-me, don't! You'll catch the rabies!"

I jerked, slightly, to the side at the touch of something on my left wing. The filly looked guilty, in a defiant way. I was a little confused- they looked as if I had strong-armed them or something, and the filly acted like she'd never seen a pegasus before. These ponies were... plainly speaking, poor. The delicious pie had been baked in a plain, clay oven. They had one large sleeping mat that they likely shared. While I'm aware that 'My Little Pony' was likely the least accurate way of viewing an alien world, there hadn't been hints of anything like this.

I lacked perspective, and a means of gaining it. Really, all I had was myself.

I accepted a glass of water, politely refused the slood, and made my way out the door.

Sleeping in a tree was not... the worst place I'd ever found myself staying. Or at least it was, but only after I'd gotten sober back in the day. My day after leaving the tree ponies had been a short lesson in familiarizing myself with... myself. My voice had sounded normal, if still a bit breathy, after I'd stopped having to compensate for my shitty vocal cords. I'd officially broken the record on sexual reassignment procedures, and not had to pay a red cent, minus the horrifying trauma. Neato!

That alone would have made me give serious thought to doing this voluntarily, had this all been something other than a stupid accident. Gender... validated! Species... working on it.

I could walk, 'jog', and run, for all that the movements themselves were unfamiliar. My joints were weirdly flexible for a four-legged critter. I could touch my nose with my tongue, which was awesome. I was really, really missing my fingers. And toes.

I was a smallish, short-coated, cream-colored pegasus with red mane and tail. The wings had little graphite-colored speckles in the outer primaries, which I thought were a nice touch.

"Oh, magic. Why don't you make sense?" I asked the air. I stretched, as apparently sleeping in a tree was, despite being surprisingly not terrible, still did funny things to my funny new limbs.

The branch was wide, low to the ground, and offered little protection whatsoever from the elements. Mostly I hadn't wanted to sleep on the ground, last night. With a short hop -which probably looked equal parts adorable and ridiculous- I landed, and apparently my wings flair automatically when I do that.

Okay. Fire, shelter, food and water, in whichever order. I can do that. I only had to figure out how to manage tools without fingers, protect myself against dangers which are, currently, complete mysteries, figure out what foods won't kill this body, and purify water from the... ground. Water just lying there, and not from a tap.

Oh god oh god oh god-

Two weeks. I looked like hell, felt like hell, but I was flying.

The tree filly was there below, laughing or clapping depending on whatever I was doing being triumphant or stupid. Face-planting earned laughter. Hovering in place got clapping. Flying backwards on accident got laughter. Going up and picking apples for both of us? Solid applause!

The little girl babbled away happily, as little girls do, and dug into her apple. Not for the first time, I stared. She was holding it. I poked unhappily at my own fruit, and it rolled away.

The filly saw my trouble and, instead of laughing, ushered me toward a large root that surfaced nearby. At her clear instructions, handed out as if from a plushy dictator, I took the place opposite her.

She began rhythmically tapping her forehooves on the rough surface with sharp clacking noises, drumming it in time.

"Hylothi li,
Vrofa hsi,
Huatha satha mu."

Then the noise by her drumming changed. Soft, pattering sounds.

"Isthzo sjay,
Mistho hway,
ava thothi ju!"

I slowly, tentatively, made to mimic her.

"Hottie chi..."

"Hylothi li!" the filly corrected me. It was like staring into the soulless eyes of my fourth grade teacher, and I could do naught but obey.

After a short age, we got through the first verse and I was happily tapping away like a moron, because children are awesome, and I am powerless to refuse them.

Pat.

Pat. I stared down at my forelegs. Hmm. I brought my hoof up, twisted my fetlock, and my hoof flexed too. I looked to the grinning filly, then back to my hoof. I did the little tapping trick again.

Pat, pat, rap, rap, pat, pat.

I reached over and touched the apple, and my hoof curled around it. I brought it up, took a bite, and felt unto a god. With my other hoof, I tested my weight and found it as solid as it ought to have been. Putting less weight on it let me flex it, putting more on forced it into a tougher solid...

"I win, I win, and everything is wonderful," I declared. Sure, there was as much dexterity to it as a mitten, but at least I had grip. My monkey hindbrain was happily chittering and flinging feces with wild abandon.

"Thank you," I told the filly, and was suddenly struck with how stupid I had been, the past thirteen days.

"My name is Tamara," I said, pointing to myself with my free hoof. "Tamara."

The filly's eyes lit up. She babbled cheerfully, hopped, then introduced herself as 'Hayli Hwali'!

If the show was any indication, it was probably something adorable in English. Like, Maple Flower, or something. And that would make sense, because she was a tree filly! Oh, how I amused myself.

"Thama! Thama!" The filly pointed up toward the tree. "Alvi, Thama!"

"Alvi, then?" I asked, and she nodded. With more concentration than I hoped would be necessary in the future, I fluttered up and grabbed two more apples. Back on the ground, I held an apple out on my hoof -no longer having to cradle it to my chest- and waved it. "Alvi?"

"Alvi!" she agreed. I passed Hayli the apple and smirked.

'And 'A' is for 'Alvi'. I wonder what 'B' is for.'

And thus began my language lessons.

I had magic. Not like I had before, with sweet, dear Tom, but real magic nonetheless. I was lying on a cloud -softest thing ever- and molding vapor into fun, interesting shapes. I could condense it into something like the consistency of wood, too, so so long as I concentrated, I had ready-made tools. Flimsy tools, yeah, but tools.

Grinning and flaring out my favorite appendages, I flipped back over the edge of the cloud and dove.

It was a private little secret of mine- back as a human, I had sometimes pretended to have wings. I would flex the muscles in my shoulder and back, telling myself that 'this' would flare them out to catch a thermal, and 'that' would rotate them out to let me cut curves through the air. Some instinct, a blend of my new body and old, wishful thinking, felt absolute and unending joy because I was flying.

"Thama!"

And the crowd goes wild, yes, in the form of one little girl. I angled toward Hayli.

"Hello, Hayli! You happy good?" I asked, in my terrible Equish.

"Thama! Me and mom going flibber-flap orchard!"

I was paraphrasing, of course. Mostly substituting nonsense for the words that I didn't understand.

Hayli and Theratha were both walking along one of the area's thin game trails Theratha -and getting her name from a filly that only ever called her 'mom' had been hell- were headed for the half-wild orchard that provided half their food. Being able to fly had given me a good handle on the local geography, up to and including the small settlement ten miles to the north. I hadn't approached that, yet- I hadn't seen a single flying pony, and Theratha's behavior earlier on had made some lingering suspicions take root in my head.

I was somewhere very, very backwater. Maybe. I had other suspicions, too, but didn't like to think about those too much.

I followed them, and Theratha more or less ignored me. Hayli had become the unofficial pegasus ambassador in the family. This wasn't their 'harvest' day- Theratha came out every other time and, true to her cutie mark of a thriving oak, tended to the flora without taking anything. I had no idea of how good she was at that, since the trees... didn't seem to be doing so well.

I watched, listening to Hayli's enthusiastic language lessons with half a perky, revolving ear, and watched Theratha grimace as she removed a brittle, dying branch from some sort of prickly pear tree.

"Momma, what's wrong?" asked Hayli, seeing it too. Kids saw a lot, I knew, and parents rarely hid how they were feeling as well as they thought they were. Theratha put on a smile and whispered to the filly, but Hayli frowned.

"No!" She spun in place and glared at me. "Thama! Make hersh!"

"Hersh?" I asked. A new word.

"Hersh!" she shouted. She sat on her haunches and brought her hooves down slowly, wavering. "Pshh!"

Hersh. Rain.

"Huh." I was a pegasus. Pegasus equaled weather.

Theratha was worriedly trying to hush Hayli, looking nervously at me, but the filly shrugged her off.

"Thama! Make rain, please? For mom?"

Well. No time like the present. I saluted the little filly, who smiled cheekily, and I shot straight upward.

The joy of flight combined with the thrill of discovery and magic, and I rose in a spiral. A clearing just south of the orchard sent up the most awesome thermal- one of my favorites in this forest, and sent me up even higher. I was at the cloud layer. The sun glinted harsh and white in my eyes, but I felt none of the usual pain. I was built for this.

I spun, pushing and condensing at all of what I felt to be the right places, and the cloud bank grew darker and thicker. It was big. It seemed more than I should be able to handle, but I was patient and persistent. I knew I wanted it all in one place, so I got up top of the gray mass and began plowing it toward the ground. Once I reached the altitude that, what... felt? Yeah, it felt right. I left off, flew to the side of the could bank, and kicked.

Magic, or at least pegasus magic as far as I could tell, was about intent.

'I intend for you to take it like a cheerleader!' I ordered, and lo, there was rain. Heavy, wet droplets that had come out at just the right density and I wasn't sure how I knew that, but there it was. The job well done, I spiraled down through the rain, which swept right off of my feathers but tangled my mane in a way which actually felt very, very pleasant.

Hayli was bouncing in a puddle, chattering and hopping and just being a hyper-active six year-old, bless her tiny heart. Theratha was staring up with wide eyes at the cloud, absently stroking the bark of an apple tree. When I stuck the landing, she actually bounded up and hugged me. I only caught every other word, and only understood half of that, but I caught 'thank you'.

"Um, is okay. Is nice," I told her. "Good for Hayli, good for Hayli mom."

"You bluh bluh want for bluh?" she asked, and that worried look was back.

I scratched at my neck, nervously. "No want. Hayli want rain. Hayli talks words. I know words."

And thus did I become the orchard's weather director, Hayli's foalsitter, and Hayli's student. And, just barely, Theratha's friend.

Two more months. In that time I had picked up on a lot. Not just flight, or pegasus magic. This world was weird. The length of the days varied immensely, the sun and moon were either too large or too close, compared to Earth, and the flora was just different enough to throw me off-balance.

Everything was strange. Still, I wasn't completely alone. Even on those nights where I spent too much time thinking about my friends, my three 'anchors'.

"Happy Tuesday," I told myself, having assumed for lack of knowledge of the actual date that the days were assigned by however I felt when I woke up. Saturdays were great, Wednesdays were middling, and Mondays... Mondays were bad.

I rolled out of bed and let myself fall through the floor. My little cloud cottage -much better than trying to cut planks out of fallen trees- had plenty of windows, no doors because they were sort of pointless, and was basically fluffy all over. It only needed a little bit of periodic maintenance, and I was getting ridiculously good at it.

Today was a Tuesday, which meant I felt... weird. Really weird. I did my best to listen to my new, strange body, but some signals just didn't check out. Did I need more iron, or something?

For lack of anything else on my busy, busy schedule, I went down to see the tree ponies. Oak Branch, which was apparently what Theratha meant in English, was outside dusting off the family sleeping pallet.

"Hello, Oak!" I said, making a three point landing and waving with my free hoof. She didn't jump at my appearance, anymore. She actually favored me with a smile, and went back to dusting. "How are you this day?"

"A little sad," she admitted, which shocked me less than it used to. Ponies were, in general, terrible liars and had less of a sense of interpersonal boundaries. "It is garble in year, I something something old home," she explained, nodding toward the distant community of earth ponies.

As we talked, I ended up building a bit of a fascinating picture. Oak had been in a herd, a legitimate polyamorous arrangement of happy little ponies, but the 'head mare' had been very traditional. On the one hand -and damn me if I sunk to saying 'on the one hoof'- she had been 'volunteered' to try to attract the attentions of a second stallion for their farmstead. On the other, her attempts had ended in one pregnancy, no extra herd member, and that was apparently a shameful thing.

The poor mare had ended up leaving under increasing pressure from the head mare of the household, and had made a little life for herself out in the forest. Of course, out here the weather was wild, and she wasn't under the umbrella of the deal that the distant community had made with the local tribe of pegasi.

That... confirmed some things. Some suspicions I had had for longer than I'd care to admit. A few minutes of dialogue out of the good old pony cartoon -and lots of debate about comparative history with Twilight and Aplejack- had built a very, very basic idea of the history of this world, and I was definitely displaced.

That hurt more than I cared to admit. If things had been different, and gone like I had hoped, I could have been back home and human with my old friends, or even stuck with ponies I actually knew. And had translation spells.

I missed organizing game campaigns with my human nerdbuddies, and I was way overdue -or maybe underdue? Timewise- on updating my online stories, and I missed eating unhealthy foods with my pony princess friend and laughing at how wrong we humans had gotten their lives.

"You okay?" asked Oak.

I nodded... then stopped and shook my head vigorously. I might as well repay honesty with the like.

"I want my friends. Very, very far. Lonely day, feel... weird. All over."

She gave me a look of sympathy, but there was a hint of mischief in her eyes, too.

"Feel garble grumble funny too. Funny week, gibberish time."

"Gibberish?" I asked, which came out as 'hwosis', mimicking her.

Oak laughed, really laughed, and gave me a look I could hardly identify. "Hwosis," she confirmed. "Like so."

And she leaned in and licked my cheek.

A jolt of heat, and heat, ran through my body. It was tingling and electric and familiar in a very different way. I whimpered.

"H...hwosis?" I asked, voice unsteady. She nodded, and slowly lifted her hoof to touch one of my wings which, contrary to my even being aware, had flared out. Like I was subconsciously trying to grab attention for...

Oh.

Oh my.

I was alone, and lonely, and feeling so mixed up about my situation that it hurt, but...

A thought occurred, and I glanced around nervously. "Hayli?" I still hadn't figured out what, if anything, the filly's name meant.

"Out play grumble hum. We can whisper mutter play," Oak told me.

'Okay, I could work with this,' I thought, my breath quickening. I glanced, and found a thick, tufty area of grass and, swallowing, placed my wing over Oak's back and started guiding her over. She was delighted to see that I had understood, and leaned in to lick my cheek again. I whined, and couldn't bring myself to care about how it came out disturbingly like a whinny, and licked her right back. I wasn't sure what the etiquette on kissing was, so I restrained myself to following her lead.

I was quickly reminded of just how strong earth ponies were when Oak rolled me over back-first into the heavy grass, which pressed against my wings and ruffled my feathers in a way that I couldn't believe I'd never felt before.

My tail was trying to rise, and just ended up pressing firmly into the brush under me. Oak leaned in, drawing her muzzle from my chin down to my throat, and trailed off to my collar bone where she gently but firmly bit me. God but it was too warm and I didn't care, I just felt my legs stretching and trying to spread further than my hips would allow.

Oak was eager. For however long it had been for me, and an entire body ago, I didn't think she'd done this since before having Hayli. She crawled back, past my chest and rested her head on my belly. She grinned up at me, and I had to exercise my terrible pony language skills and hiss, "Please."

Her long, flexible neck drew her back and, just while I was figuring out that the usual modest fur and skin under my tail had pulled back wide and had begun dripping, I was sharply reminded of just how large a pony's tongue was. A sharp, wet rasp traveled up my lower lips and I bucked up against her forelegs, which held against my movement like they were made of iron. I moaned. I'd never before moaned in my life, not even for that, but I was moaning.

She parted me again, and again, and at the crest of her tongue's short, hot path she twisted it, and I almost cried. I was almost desperate to do something back to her, I'd never before gotten more than I'd given, and I liked to give, so I twisted violently until we were parallel to each other.

"Tham'ra? Tham'ra, what- oh!"

I blessed my long, flexible neck as Oak twisted above me while I sought to repay the favor. Her warm, soft body covered me completely and pressed me further into the grass, and it ached in the best way possible. I let myself be crushed, feeling the rhythm of Oak straining against a body that wasn't there, and filled the gap with my lips and tongue.

I whispered to her in English, putting to use the harder syllables which were absent from the pony speech but, as I soon discovered, had a wonderful effect on the soft, pink folds between her legs. It took her a long time to remember just what she had been doing -which I didn't really mind, given that meant I was doing well in finding what buttons made her groan- but when she did, it hit me harder than ever.

I bucked and writhed, and my cries sent my lips in new, spasming shapes against her sex. I came, and again, and Oak finally almost collapsed when I brought her to that same peak. She was shaking and flushed, so I eased back a bit. I moved more gently, cleaning the thin rivulets of liquid that had painted the inside of her thighs, and she cooed.

My neck ached, so I let myself fall back onto the little nest of mussed grasses that we'd made, and tried to settle my breathing. That sharp heat had faded to a dull, still-glowing warmth. I hardly noticed when Oak turned around, delicately minding my own spread body, and tucked her head over mine.

"Good, whisper not hum, so long. Lovely soft hushing Tham'ra."

I licked her throat and let myself relax against her barrel. Minutes later, I heard a soft snore. If I had been in a position to pat myself on the back, I would have. More than the sex, there had been something so gratifying about satisfying somebody, when everything else felt so out of control.

"Momma?"

My eyes opened and I flinched, which Oak seemed completely dead to, tired as she was. I glanced toward the house to see Hayli, and she was... smiling. She looked like it was Christmas morning as she glanced between Oak and me. The filly trotted over, stepped on my wing, stumbled over my stomach, and fell into the thin corner of space between myself and the other mare.

"Momma, staephi sill." She nuzzled us both and fell asleep then and there.

Author's Notes:

This story is going to be a long road, but pretty compressed. Months or years will take place between chapters. By necessity, there are going to be a few 'noodle incidents'.

Also- can I get a few comments when it comes to downvotes? (Not that I don't appreciate them with upvotes, too...)

Seriously, are you disliking the theme, plot, mistakes on my end or what? Problems need fixing. If you don't like the direction a story is going, leave. If you like it but have a valid concern? Lay it on me! One of the benefits of web media are that they can be updated. Let version two-point-oh have less dialogue confusion, or more scenery description, or whatever.