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Redux: Life In A New World

by Tohshi

Chapter 1: Chapter One

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Huddling tightly I tried to ward off the cold of the streets. One was never truly warm on the streets during winter. As if the cold night sucked out so much heat from you that you had a deficit to pay back when you did finally find a place warm to stay during the day. For me that was the library and I found books to be my most precious of companions. I could bring them with and read when I could find light enough to even if it was too cold to sleep. Still it was about time I wandered off to find food. I could expect meals here and there from generous people but often I had to steal to find the food I needed. Today was one of those second times. I had time before the library opened.

The grocery store was six blocks from the library which was about four times as much time as I needed to plan a run through the place. Even if it was necessary I always liked to plan a route through it to have maximum chance of not being caught. Five dollars wasn’t much to most who lived in the city but to me that was as much money as I would see in a week frequently and so one sandwich proved prohibitive. Still I only felt the slightest hint of dread as I walked into the grocery store. I kept to my route picking up a sandwich then swinging by the soda isle for a drink. I knew it wasn’t as healthy but calories were calories even if they were empty ones. Besides I often reused the bottle for water. On the way to the exit I was spotted. One of the employees was following me and I decided it was worth darting for the door. I didn’t want to be caught. There were always other grocery stores but a couple of nights in jail wouldn’t do well for my health.

Being trans made certain things less than safe even when really they should have been. Did I choose the bathroom that I got yelled at in or the one where the men thought I wanted a fuck. I sure as hell didn’t want to find one who was surprised by what was in my pants. I’d lost a friend that way already. She bled to death on the bathroom floor, other men walking over her as I sat there crying her head in my lap. Prison didn’t strike me as much safer.

A man behind me shouted stop but I kept running as I sprinted towards the door. Cops were outside and I ducked as they all drew their guns on me. There was no way the six cop cars were for me and I turned down the side of the building. I ran as one officer chased me but the rest watched the door as a squad car came up. I hated places with only one public entrance it lead to being trapped. Here I was being chased by a cop who had his gun drawn. I could hear his shouts but not make out the words over my headphones but I didn’t have the wherewithal to take them off. I turned down the alley way and immediately tripped over something. I fell but the ground never caught me instead I kept falling through the ground and away from everything I had ever known.

Panic over came me as I fell through a dark void. Was I dead? Had the cop shot me? I could still feel my body and move around though it did little than send me twisting more. Despite the spinning it was my panic that really stirred up my stomach. I couldn’t think straight anymore and I couldn’t breathe. No how much I sucked in I could find anything to grasp. Yet my head didn’t grow fuzzy and heated. In that moment of death I floated for what seemed like forever.

Then a light pierced the darkness and I tumbled through a series of strange things Each seemed like a wall of energy that washed over me fusing with my form and twisting it into odd shapes. By the fourth one I didn’t feel anymore and what I could see of my body was unrecognizable. A terrible pain spread through my mind as I passed through seven more barriers. Then it stopped and I came bursting out into a cool air.

I could barely think let alone keep track of where I was falling but the fear of the ground quickly cleared the jumbled mess of my brain. I needn’t worry as when I hit the ground I only threw up a large cloud of dust. My head still spun and I realized that while I could feel that which touched my now spherical mass I couldn’t see nor hear anything.

Time passed though I could not tell how much had. Something breathed against me as I felt the warm air it pushed onto my side. I must have smelled decent as a wet tongue scrapped across my glassy surface. Something happened in that moment just before the tongue would have left my surface a jolt of energy ran between the two of us and I felt the creature get sucked into my form. It twisted and struggled for a moment before everything stopped. I felt the deer for what it was a simple creature looking for salt and I could feel the two of us become one. Her memories faint though they were flooded into me as I consumed her being too complex for her mind to survive. I could feel a form shit and change as the area around was eaten to power my transformation. The mass of the ground and the plants that had somehow already started growing in the pit I had made with my landing became part of me and I felt whole for the first time in forever.

My form was not like either of my prior parts had been while I had four feet I also had two hands. I could feel how I should walk like this but I was strangely top heavy and the horns on my head seemed too big for me to carry. I could feel an energy around me as I touched on the spirit of the plants and animals who had come to watch. Even large wooden creatures of hate and wrath stayed back though and I found some peace on the ground as I tried to gather my senses. It was odd having eyes once more. I suddenly felt like it had been a great deal of time since I had last been able to tell the passage of time and all my senses felt foreign except for touch. The hate beasts wouldn’t stay their hunger long and I knew I couldn’t fight them like this. No they were best avoided and ran from said the part of me that had lived in this twisted forest for all her life. I stumbled to my feet letting primal instincts tell me how to walk and I ran from the monsters that eyed me hungrily.

It was all the indication they needed to chase me. My legs were not used to my weight and they didn’t jump as far as my amalgamation of memories said they should and so the tree wolves filled with spite gained on me. I had but one choice hide at the stone place of horror. Even the wrath wolves wouldn’t follow me. I needed a better name for them but language had long since left me and I only for that moment had my instinct. I passed the bridge just in time to avoid being pounced on and soon I was inside the stony ruins of a castle.

The place did give me the chills but less because of the ambient energy that had once scared me away but from the magnificent of it all. Despite being obviously old the castle had worn the test of time better than it had any right to. It had a elegant design to it and tapestries covered the walls. Most were still in good condition and I found upper torso shivering in the chilly halls. I pulled a smaller one off the walls and wrapped it around my torso.

I felt female and whole again. The cloth around me helped me feel safe and yet it was my form that somehow kept me the most safe feeling out of it all. Like something had clicked into place that had never fit before and it dawned on me as I searched my old memories of steel jungles that I had not always been so equipped. At least one good thing had come of it all.

The run had worn me out and I found a small place to sleep for the time being. It was nearing night and I remembered the cold of that so I pulled down another tapestry and snuggled in it though finding a proper position proved hard. Soon I was on my side buried under cloth. My dreams were odd and strange and a pony visited it. She was clad in blue and looked strange to me but only just so. She only watched as I floated on dreams of the abyss that I had traveled through.

I woke to find the pony standing above me her horn was lit and for the briefest moments I could see the intricate lines that made up that glow like a thousand little layers of a spell. Her face softened though as she looked at me and I lifted myself up. She spoke but the words felt foreign and not like the language I once spoke. Yet I knew it to be the tongue of the ponykind. It was musical and soft as she spoke. She switched through a few tongues but I didn’t know any of them. Still it was interesting to hear the range by which she could make noises.

I tried to call on my memories from eons ago when I walked the streets of the Iron and rock jungle. They were a jumbled mess of things and much of it bleed into each other in ways that felt wrong and off. I remember that it was harsh and hard life but more than that I couldn’t place anything. I got to my feet standing at eye height to the dark pony. I pulled on the strongest happiest memories of worlds I wasn’t certain weren’t real and I pulled a name from them. It would be my name as it had lost all meaning in the mess of my head.

“Persephone,” I said. I pointed at myself. “Persephone.”

“Luna,” said the pony mimicking my motions. She then pointed at me with her hoof. “Persephone.”

I nodded and smiled. It felt like I had accomplished a lot and I felt drowsy for some strange reason. I stumbled to my knees no longer able to hold myself up as the weight of the last forever crashed down on me. The pony lifted me in her magic and said my name once more along with some more words of her language and then my stomach was ripped out of my body. When I came to from the lurch I found myself in tack though down what little had been in my belly. My two hearts beat violently in both of my rib cages. I was struck for a moment how weird my body was but I pushed that away for another time. I was lifted once more as throwing up had sapped any energy left in my body yet something prevented me from passing out. We had appeared in a stony room similar to the place we had just left yet more cleanly and of different style. If it weren’t made of stone the two places would not be alike at all and yet I felt like thy were made by the same people.

I watched as we passed through the castle going left, right, left, left up a set of stairs, and to the right once more, to the base of a tower. It was wide enough that Luna just flew straight up the middle of it. The rush of air felt good on my form the tapestry long lost at the bottom of the flight of spiral stairs that ran up the length of the tower. Every so often doors would open at various intervals but the top opened up to a large hallway. We twisted and turn again but I found the exact route easy enough to memorize. Luna was large, as I now had seen others and she finally stopped in an area with lots of guards. She spoke something to them then entered a room.

The night had been pulled from the sky and used as a ceiling and it seemed to almost not be there though I could see the seems in the stone dome. A large circular bed with white sheets dominated the center and book shelves the walls. We only briefly paused in the room as we entered another smaller one. A large tub took much the space in this one and Luna set about making a bath. As soon as the water was warm I was plopped down in it and Luna hopped in with me. She held me upright as my body lacked the strength to do so and she gentle bathed me. I wondered why someone so important as to her with all her guards and castle would be the one to wash me but I didn’t dwell on it for long. Her magic was soft to the touch and she slowly worked out all the grim and crap that had somehow acclimated onto my form. I hadn’t realized how dirty I had been till she had to redraw the bath water for fresh unsoiled water. My lower half had a sheen of white fur and my hair which I had barely noticed came white as well. The horns she carefully trimmed the ends to make them blunt but other wise left the obsidian colored horns alone. With the grim off my upper half it was far easier to see how pale my skin was and I looked albino to myself. Not that I knew what that would look as my memories of others like that were a mess.

After our bath as Luna had also washed herself of the grime of the forest and that which had clung to her from my own body, she put me on her bed and crawled up onto it as well. There she started to talk though I couldn’t understand. After a moment her horn lit up and I felt drawn into another realm. It felt like falling through one of the dimensional barriers once more but this time didn’t sear my flesh or alter me. Instead I found myself swimming in a warm misty place. Some of the mist coalesced into Luna and she started to talk to me. Her words had more impact on my mind and soon I could follow parts of it. I didn’t know how but I was learning to speak again.

Next Chapter: Chapter Two Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 22 Minutes
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