Okay, let’s recap.

“What the fuck?”

What the fuck?

What the fuck!

I don’t even know... what is going on?! Twilight fooled us into... something? She was evil? What? How. Where? We’re... all of us human ponies are gathered in a confused cluster out in a field in the middle of the night, with the acrid char of a burned out spell circle wafting around. But but but

But what did she fool us into??

The aurora overhead shows no sign of diminishing, and I just know that’s gotta be what Twilight Sparkle is talking about. The whole night sky is glowing in coruscating, sorta kaleidoscopey sheets of pink, purple and blue light, twisting around itself in surprisingly complex patterns. From horizon to horizon, it seems like there’s no end to it. But... it’s not doing anything! It’s just sitting up there. It’s pretty but...

“Okay, everybody!” shouts um... Patricia, an eerie glow illuminating her fur in the soft light from far overhead. “Everybody meet me in the barn, we need to figure out what the fudge just happened!”

There’s light in the barn. Well, lanterns at least. A warm, yellow glow, a lot cheerier than the cool serenity of the aurora we inadvertently created, which is bad somehow. The lanterns’ light fills a small area inside the dark barn, as if it could drive back whatever it is that we’d done. We all huddle together in that light, surrounded by darkness, just laying against each other and worrying.

The rest of the barn is forbidding and dark, but it feels warm and safe in the light with these ponies, inside these walls, and... many of us really need to feel like that right now, especially the foals. Many of the younger ponies have abandoned any semblance of bravado, clinging fearfully to whoever happened to be close enough to embrace.

My foal is a blue haired, red-furred filly, the one I remember rescuing from the house that Mira was holed up in. “What is even going on,” she moans, hugging close to my belly as I sit on my side, just... being there for the filly. Her um... her rear hoof keeps poking my nipple.

“I have no idea, but I think... Twilight is gone,” I reluctantly say, wishing there was something useful I could say.

“Great observation, Captain Obvious,” Nick says bitterly, the lantern’s warm light illuminating his features in edges of shadow. “What’re we gonna do about it though?”

“We need to call the police,” a green-haired brown mare who I don’t know says.

“We caused this!” a blue haired green unicorn filly says who I... also don’t know. “They’d blame us, and they’d be right! Twilight screwed us all!”

“I can’t believe she did that,” a... I should stop pointing out just how bad I am at getting to know other people, or ponies. Another pony whom I don’t know says, “I can’t believe she did that. Why did she even help us if she was going to screw us over?”

“She must have needed us to cast that... spell thing,” Nick says, shaking his purple topped head.

“Why not keep leading us on, then?” Nick’s foal says tearfully, a tannish looking colt, “We would’ve kept helping her. We were her friends!”

The colt buries his head in Nick’s grey furry side, mumbling in a muffled tone something about “why are we these things?”

We don’t have any answers, and nobody sleeps very well. Or nopony, I should say. A day passes, and you can even kind of see the glowing sky pattern faintly against the blue of the sky. Still no sign of the truck, that brought supplies to us from wherever the humans were carting it. We’re not in need of supplies yet, but some ponies are already thinking, or, wishing at least, to form some kind of garden. Planting the seeds from what food we have left, at least.

None of us have any idea what to do, how to contact the outside world, or whether to contact the outside world. We’re definitely not prepared to leave this hideaway, so we all sort of pitch in with the planting effort over the next few days. Someone finds blackberries, so there’s that.

The phenomenon in the sky overhead fades day by day, until we’re once again greeted with ordinary nights, dark as nights can be. Less dark perhaps because of our huge eyes, because seriously, it never gets pitch black anymore, just sort of pitch... blue.

But I don’t care how amazing pony eyes are, we’re not gonna grow food in a few days, not even in the beginning of summer. Got some seedlings from the apple cores we planted, but that’s about it. There was, at least, grass to eat, though all but a few ponies found it very unsatisfying. I certainly did. And the ones who weren’t complaining about feeling ill don’t want to... talk about it.

So it’s in those circumstances that Donald returns to us. The golden orange maned, blue pegasus mare named Donald was the pariah so to speak that catalyzed this whole operation. She left the day before... this happened. And now she’s returned, but without the entourage she left with. I don’t know what happened to them, or why Donald is returning alone, but her wings might play a factor in her decision. She doesn’t come diving in like the minions of Hell are on her tail, but she does swoop down from high up in the sky, all alone, to land before a couple of ponies across the field from me at the moment.

I look up at the commotion, and stop trying to chew the boring grass, while ponies congregate in that direction, calling out, “Donald! It’s Donald! He came back! She came back!”

Donald is speaking quickly, frantically, but I don’t hear all but the tail end of her desperate entreaty, once I come trotting up to the rest of the group around her. Donald stands amid a growing circle of us saying, “I promise I—I come in peace. I’ve got something really important to tell you. Where’s Twilight?”

Everyone’s speechless for a moment, but then we all try to answer at once, leaving Donald crouching and spreading her wings, going, “Okay, okay, jeez I can’t—everybody quiet!”

Once we’re quiet, of course she has to turn to me, and ask, “Okay, you. Just you. What happened to Twilight?”

...

“She be–” is all I manage to get out before choking up. I can’t believe she would betray us like that... I can’t believe she’d be so evil!

“She betrayed us!” a squirrely voiced pony says in my stead, while I try not to cry, more, again.

“She used us to cast a spell,” a stallion (not Nick) declares vehemently.

“A big spell!” shouts a filly.

“W-whatever you were going to tell her, you better not,” I say, swallowing and refusing to let this get me crying again, stepping forward to address Donald. “She was lying to us, and... and she disappeared a few days ago, as soon as you left. She said she was going to find someone, but... when she said it, she said it really mean!”

“She called us perverted ponyfuckers,” a mare behind me says flatly, “And told us that we couldn’t wipe our own asses, even though most of us can.”

“Twilight’s gone, and I hope she doesn’t come back,” the filly who just spoke says, with a stomp, “So whatever you were going to tell her, you gotta tell us instead.”

“I... I came to negotiate...” Donald says tremulously, sinking to her belly and staring forward in dread, “T-to find out what it would take for her to... change everybody back.”

“If Twilight was gonna change us back, she would have done so after she used us to cast her spell,” I tell Donald uncertainly, “Even if she could change a whole convention center full of people back into people—”

“No you don’t understand,” Donald replies, struggling to her hooves in agitation and looking at me worriedly, “Everyone is a pony now.”

“We know she changed us into ponies,” some pony says irritably, “What does that have to do with—”

“No!” Donald shouts, spinning to stare wildly at that mare instead, “You don’t understand! Everyone. Is a pony now.”

“Everyone?” I ask in dawning horror, “You mean—”

“Everyone,” she says in the dolor of a hopeless finality.

“The atmospheric phenomenon,” Donald continues as solemnly as a slim blue pegasus mare with bright orange hair can be, out in the middle of an abandoned farm, surrounded by other colorful, childlike ponies, with birds chirping in the distance. “Everything that happened in that convention center started happening to everyone. It... the scientists were trying to study it but they’re... they’re all ponies! That’s all I know really. All I know is it originated from this farm, and I only know that because I saw it happen! It had to be the spell Twilight was talking about. I... I left the farm because I was just trying to get some ponies out of there, in case... when Twilight did something bad, but I never expected...”

She shook her head, saying, “We reached a town, but it was just utter chaos. Everyone everywhere was freaking out from turning into ponies. They... I found a phone, and tried my commander, but the whole chain of command has gone black. I don’t... I f-found someone eventually, but it took me all day to... find someone who could answer their phone. The um... Lieutenant Colonel’s uh, secretary said that I needed to find out what Twilight’s demands were, as if this was a...”

She stomps angrily, saying, “As if this was just a hostage situation! As if this was just another everyday... I don’t know if the whole world is ponies! Humanity might’ve just gone extinct in... in two days!

“And Twilight’s not even here?!” she practically shrieks, “She just disappeared and didn’t have any reason for doing this at all?!” okay, definitely shrieking. Ow.

“Donald, calm down!” I try to tell her, since I’m the closest to her, and I have a nasty habit of trying. “You won’t figure this out by panicking! You want to send us all... panicking and running away in all directions? We’re all scared enough as is!”

“I... just don’t know what to do,” Donald says, sinking to her belly again, “People are gonna start dying, and I don’t know what to do. I’m a cartoon character, without any hands. I have wings, that I never felt before, and I’m a girl and probably pregnant and I just don’t know what went—” and that’s about as much as I can understand from her, before the orange and blue pegasus descends into helpless sobs.

So, we’re all just kind of laying together with Donald, a bunch of us at least. She doesn’t seem to mind being the center of it. Her crying dies down, and her body slowly relaxes against mine. And it’s tragic and traumatic and all, but the most I can feel at this point is that I’m hungry. We all need to go grazing again or something, because we have to eat so gosh darn often. Grass doesn’t have much in terms of calories in it, I suppose. So I graze, and... and we graze, and just... stay with Donald until the night falls, and we’re sleeping together in an emotionally exhausted heap.

Morning dawns, and with it dawns Donald, the fiery haired blue pegasus, who just... squirms out of the pony pile, then walks to the edge of our camp and sits there, watching the sun slowly creep over the horizon. Until we had no electric lights, I never realized just how incredibly long it takes the sun to rise. It moves too slowly to see, and even after dawn breaks, you can fall asleep from the boredom of waiting for the sun to fully crest above the horizon.

It’s... seriously weird living without electricity, since the generator we were using has been deemed emergencies only, since we no longer have any humans delivering fuel for it. The reason for their mysterious disappearance came clear with the arrival of this pegasus, and I think the full impact still has yet to hit me. The world? The whole world? Even overcrowded African nations? Did they turn into zebras, or is that too racist? What about people who never even saw a television, much less had the show translated into their native language? What about the war torn countries, or the cruel ones, who’d probably kill someone for the crime of getting turned into a pony? But what happens when everyone gets turned into a pony?

I dunno. I don’t even know the name of the town that Donald found. I don’t know how far it is to my house, but I’m certainly not prepared to walk there. What kind of ponies did my parents turn into? Or my grandmother. Is she a... is she happier as a pony? She’s the... only grandparent I have left. Kind of loopy all the time from the pain medication they have her on. It’s that time in life when we don’t have much to do other than wait for her to die. Was the transformation too much for her? What about other people who are... even older, or sicker?

What I do know is this pegasus who I gaze at, she doesn’t look like she slept well at all. Donald looks like death warmed over, really. Just... devastated. So of course I have to stick my big fat butt in the way. I should give her some space, but I just... can’t stand to see someone like this. I walk up as gently as I can, and sit next to her in the grey of the predawn light.

“Pretty...” I say with a hesitant wince, “Pretty terrible, huh?”

“Huh?” she says a little dazedly, looking at me with scared, amber eyes.

“What happened, I mean,” I clarify cautiously, “With the spell and the... world turning into ponies.”

“I just feel so terrible...” she says in despair, staring forward, as her eyes tear up again, “All those people who’re gonna get... hurt and dying.”

“There were a lot, huh?” I say with a sympathetic whuff, my tail flopping against hers as it swishes, “People getting hurt... I guess you saw a lot of car accidents?”

“Oh, I... no, it’s a mess, but I didn’t see any car accidents,” Donald admits, glancing my way, “The transformation wasn’t as... quick as with us, so everyone I saw got their cars stopped in time. I–I’m sure it’s much worse elsewhere. Everyone in town was just... really, really confused.”

“Well, at least that part of the world’s okay?” I say with what I hope is not a patronizing smile.

“Y-yeah,” Donald half smiles back, “I guess it is.” Her smile dies though, as she goes on, saying, “But the rest of the world... I just dunno what to do.”

“There might not be anything you can do,” I caution her. “You just... find everything you can do, and if you can’t find anything, then there might be nothing to do about it.”

“But how do we help those people?” she asks tensely.

“We don’t?” I suggest, trying not to sound too terrible in saying that. “If you can help people, then yes, please do help people,” I add hastily, raising a forehoof vaguely in her direction, “But there’s gonna be a lot of people you can’t help. So... get used to it, I guess?”

“So what,” she says bitterly, “I should just let people die and do nothing to help them?”

“No...!” I fuss defensively, “If there isn’t anything you can do to help them, then how can you help them?”

“That’s the problem,” she says with a shudder, “Seems like whatever I do, I can’t save people from...” Donald lifts a blue furred hooved foreleg and stares at it, “...this.”

“Is that a problem?” I ask, putting my own pony foreleg on her own, “Why can’t other people save them?”

“Because it’s my fault!” she shouts, pushing my arm...leg away.

Donald stares at me defiantly a moment, before casting her gaze down and mumbling, “If I could’ve gotten the courage to leave earlier, if we could’ve... prepared some kind of resistance...”

I have to tell her something. This just isn’t healthy, blaming herself like that. “Don, she got us to do the spell as soon as you left,” I assure the distraught pegasus, “She said you were bringing back the army on us! If you went earlier, she would’ve just done it earlier. We all screwed up, and... and that’s fine, because it’s her fault, not yours. So just... you won’t trust her next time. If you’re doing everything you can to fix her disaster, and someone halfway across the world dies because of it? It just... it happens. We can’t be everywhere.”

She gives me a long look, then asks, “Did you just call me Dawn?”

Blinking, I blurt out, “Yea? Your name’s Donald, right?”

“No I meant like Dawn like when the sun rises,” she says, shaking her head.

“Oh,” I say, eyes widening, “Oh, no I meant Don, just short for Donald.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” she says with a bemused smile, “Actually I kind of like it.”

“Oh,” I say, smiling a little myself, glad I can at least help her with her feelings about that, “Okay... Dawn.”

She looks off toward the horizon, and... did I mention the sun takes a while to rise? It’d have been really poetic if it rose right then. Oh well. But we sit there for a while, at least she doesn’t object further to my presence, until at last she says out of the blue,

“Hey... thanks.”

I turn to her in puzzlement, and Dawn looks at me and adds, “For... I don’t know. I just feel kind of better now. I don’t know what to do, and... you’re okay with that, so I guess I can be... okay with that.”

A warm blush tints the smile that grows on my face, as the sunlight finally peeks over the horizon, illuminating us in its light.

I guess I helped somehow, but Dawn seriously doesn’t know what to do at this point. When she came here, she was going to negotiate for... humanity with Twilight, but obviously that’s not gonna happen. She just... leaves then, because she has to report to her commanding officers that Twilight is AWOL again. Seeing Dawn soar off into the distance fills me with both curiosity and dread. Somewhere miles away from here, there’s an entire world going through an unimaginable upheaval, while here, this collection of people who’ve been ponies for months just continues on, going about what we were doing, mainly because nobody can think of anything better to do.

The group is holding together for now... even though people say the government’ll hold us accountable for what Twilight made us do. More people stay than leave, at least. Maybe it’s because nowhere else seems any safer right now. Maybe it’s just comforting, this sort of solidarity we’ve formed just from having to live together. Maybe it’s because everyone’s friends and family are a thousand miles away, and those of us left know little about how to survive a journey like that, much less cross an ocean.

Maybe it’s because Dawn swore up and down that the military wouldn’t hold it against us, and just wants a solution to this mess. Some people think that the military can’t hold it against us, because they’ll be falling apart just like any organization who suddenly lost access to all of the hand-focused technology. Who could pull the trigger on a gun with these hooves?

“What if they do come after us?” a grey pegasus stallion named Luke says at one point, but Patricia’s quick to counter his fears, saying,

“If they’re going to come after us, at least we’ll be together. I’d rather fall here, than get picked off one-by-one if we just try to walk home.”

What really helps keep us from panicking and scattering is that Dawn keeps coming back. Week after week, she flies in again and again, with news from outside, that communication is still cut off, and electricity is still out, that cops are forming militias or something like that. Some of the other pegasi go with her, but of course us earth ponies don’t have super fast flying powers, so I get to just sit around on the farm, out of the loop, and... do whatever it is earth ponies do.

Pretty much, we earth ponies go about our days, just... taking care of the things around here, with me checking the fruit trees, vegetables, earth pony stuff I guess. It seems easy enough. You just plant seeds from stuff you ate, plant ‘em in a sunny location, and water them now and again. Pegasi actually can control the weather with a scary amount of accuracy, so we’re never stuck without free rainwater. Good thing too, because most of this farm doesn’t even have working irrigation, the fields left fallow and wild until now.

There’s some trees around here producing a... a something like an apple, but crisper with a thicker skin. The pony managing it has no idea either, she says, “I just looked around for fruit trees until I found these. They’re not exactly Zap Apples, but...” So we have that, at least, in addition to grass, but not much else.

It’s in those slow, quiet days, and long whispery nights that I find myself, all of us living, on this abandoned farm for the interminable future. Most of us have nowhere to go. Nowhere you could get by walking, at least! Even the everpresent rush of cars from the distant city has died to silence, and it’s scary, because I never even realized that sound was there, until it was gone.

I wish I could be entirely sad, but... I mean, yes. I am a powerless little earth pony female, but I am a pony! I walk on four strong hooves, I have a thick, powerful neck that curls back naturally in a graceful, swanlike curve. Or ducklike I guess, if you’re short like I am. Still, it looks pretty in the mirror. I may have to sleep on straw, but I wake up without a scratch on my deceptively soft, supple skin, covered in a dense layer of pale yellow fur. I can run, and... I can really run like super fast. Not as fast as a pegasus could fly, but... faster than anything I ever could do before.

I wish I could be sad for the people who got caught entirely by surprise, transforming into ponies like this, but it’s just such a fascinating experience, to wake up and be this. It’s so exciting the times we’re living in, where one mare can stop our armies, and commuters and shipping fleets in their tracks. And it doesn’t sound like things are going to be going back to normal any time soon. It’s terrible, but... I’m so glad to be alive right now. If this sort of disaster was unavoidable, at least I got to... live to see it.

That’s as best as I can understand how I’m feeling, when I get Mira to completely blow up at me. Everyone else’s retreated for the warmth of the straw, but I’m hanging out in the dark, moping as I idly poke at the embers of the campfire with a hoof. The underside of a pony’s hoof is a sensitive place, but the thick nail itself that protects my inner hoof? You can even kick embers around, without feeling like you just got burned. It’s the same pale yellow color as my fur, but it’s definitely a stiff nail.

“Still up, huh?” Mira says, fluttering out of the darkness to land lightly beside me. The brightly fruity colored bat pony still has those bat eyes that make her even better at seeing in the dark than the rest of us. I can see shapes, and details, and everything just looks all blue to me, but I don’t think I could fly safely in the night. But she just flies up, casually says, “Still up, huh?” and doesn’t crash into anything at all.

“Yeah just...” I say in a girl’s voice, because there ain’t no guys around this campfire. “Thinking about Twilight.”

“She really played us,” Mira groans, slumping to her haunches next to me, “It just pisses me off so much that people like her even exist.”

“Oh, she’s not so bad,” I say unthinkingly.

Mira gives me the most incredulous look, her catlike pupils wide in the darkness. I try to explain.

“I don’t know if she doesn’t deserve to exist,” I say, “What she did is pretty terrible, and it was terrible that she was so...” I can still see that manic look in her eyes, that fateful night, “...happy about it. But I mean... we’re still doing okay. She didn’t kill anyone, and a lot of the stuff she taught us is actually very useful. Besides, being a pony’s not that bad.”

“Not that bad?!” Mira retorts hotly, staring at me like I’m a few cards short of a full deck. And I don’t get it at all. What’s her problem?

“You wanted to be a pony!” I whine, “You were so happy when you finally transformed!”

“And what about everyone else?” she says, scraping the ground for some reason.

“Well, they were bronies...” I offer uneasily.

“What about everyone else?” Mira shouts, “What about all the people who are f-ing dying because the whole world’s falling apart? You think she’s not so bad just because she didn’t kill anyone? What about them? She was laughing at us! Twice! You think there’s anything good about somepony—about someone who laughs at people because she ruined their lives?”

Mira just breathes hard, staring me nose to nose with the intensity of a cornered wolf. Then she abruptly turns away.

“I love being a pony, thank you very much,” Mira grumbles, striding away from me in graceful agitation, “But I don’t appreciate having to hide out in the middle of nowhere, because every government in the world is screaming for our blood, because they think we did this, again.”

“I really do wish Twilight hadn’t done anything bad,” I tell Mira, “And it was... terrible that she just left us like this. She was so...

“...

“...sad,” I conclude in confusion. Twilight was laughing, so how could she seem so sad?

Mira herself sounds like she’s about to cry, when staring away from me, she quietly says, “You can’t say anything bad about her. You’re—enchanted, or you just have a fucking crush on her. Even now.” But she’s spitting fire when she turns back to me and gets in my face and shouts, “She’s not so bad?! Twilight Sparkle is the worst pony who ever lived!”

No, I mean literally spitting fire. With an unladylike squeal, I leap back like ten feet, when for the briefest moment, a bright orange flame bursts from Mira’s mouth with a rush of heat in my face. She looks at me in bewilderment, and then a dawning horror, as my sister stands there, wings half spread and stammers, “I... I didn’t... I didn’t mean to...”

She slumps down on her haunches then, staring forward, then covering her face with her forehooves and moaning, “Blguh... I didn’t... I’m just it’s just everything weird and and ugly and monster...”

Mira’s not getting shrill or crying. If anything, she’s getting quieter, as she collapses within herself. I rush forward with worry, any thoughts of spouting flames out of my head. Butting my head urgently against her chest, I kind of... push up against her so Mira has to hug me in her forehooves.

And she does. Mira hugs me, and shudders against me. She’s just shaking like a leaf. Her forelegs wrap like soft, warm, thick hooks around my sides. She lays her head against the fluffy fur on my chest, silent and utterly inscrutable in that darkness, just holding me close to her warmth. Her wings spread, and she wraps them around me. It’s like being swathed in a warm, living blanket that smells and feels of Mira, but I don’t think she’s doing it for my comfort.

“I freaked out at my own reflection, the other day,” she says quietly, after her shaking has stilled, and the warm bat pony is just quietly holding me. “These eyes are so freaky. They just s-started dilating like a cat and I just... I couldn’t stand being so freaky and scary and ugly.”

“You’re anything but ugly, Mira,” I murmur into what’s probably her shoulder. I don’t really understand our anatomy nowadays.

“You don’t have to sugarcoat it,” she mumbles, “I know what it looks like. I got... fucking bat wings, and these eyes are like some kinda monster pony. I–I just wanted to be a pegasus, not this... this bat thing.”

“Your wings are beautiful,” I fuss at her distressedly, and all I get in response is her tensing against me, and saying,

“You’re lying. I try to tell myself they’re fine, but everyone knows they’re not. They’re just big bony s-skeleton hands wrapped in skin.”

“I don’t know what other people think, and your wings are kinda bony,” I murmur honestly, “But we’re all skeletons wrapped in skin. Your wings just have to be thin to... to fly better.”

“And the spitting fire?” she replies in tail swishy agitation, stammering, “I–it just keeps happening to me, and I don’t know why, like I’m some kinda demon. I don’t try to do it, it just started... coming out.”

“I don’t know why you’d be spitting fire,” I say with a sigh, as the bat pony sinks more heavily against me. “You were getting kind of angry, but...”

Mira separates from me, and pushes my chest to brace her hoof on it at arm’s length. “It’s been happening when I get too excited,” she says tensely curling her hooves back against herself, looking down at them, “Just... just bursts outta me, and then nobody notices anything happened.”

“Nobody notices?” I squeak, “But it’s fire!”

Mira’s chest shakes with a laugh at that. “Never happened to me at night, not when anyone was around who could see it, until now,” she says, tilting her head up to look at me, “Kind of hard to see the... the flames during the day.”

“Well, I sure saw it,” I emphasize firmly.

“It was fire, wasn’t it?” Mira asks suddenly hopefully, peering at me with open curiosity. “I think it’s fire, but I can’t tell since it’s coming out of me. ”

“...it must feel pretty crazy,” I reply quietly, looking at the pony’s soft features in the darkness.

“I can kind of feel it,” Mira says softly, in a haunted tone, “Feel something, n’any rate. There’s this spinny... thing coming up my... throat or the back of my neck, or... and... then I just... have to open my mouth. It’s like yawning but really fast. I’m laughing or yelling, or opening my mouth then... fwoosh.”

“It’s probably an instinct, to keep from burning yourself,” I postulate desperately, “That makes sense, right?”

“None of this makes sense!” she hisses harshly, “Everything about me is so weird and everything about ponies is so weird.”

“Haven’t you told anyone about this?” I ask, full of worry for my beleagured and apparently fire spitting sister.

“I didn’t even know if it was a thing,” she says irritably, “And I can’t figure out how to just do it, so nobody believes me! I asked Twilight, and she just...”

With an angry sigh, Mira grumbles, “She just made it sound like I was making it up, and I couldn’t prove it to her because I don’t know how to just do it. A-and I didn’t have any evidence, and...”

“What else did Twilight lie to us about?” I whine in frustration, “And why? Why lie about something like that?”

The cool night gives no answers, but for Mira, who sighs and says,

“Your guess is as good as mine. What she told me is it’s alright to be confused. That I might not be thinking straight that the... the transformation might be messing with my head. And she said that she’d do everything she could to undo what Sunset did, and restore my h-humanity.”

Eyeing her, I ask, “Did you tell her you wanted to be a pony?”

“No,” Mira states grimly, “No I... I’m glad I didn’t tell her. She doesn’t deserve to know anyone actually likes being a pony. But I just wasn’t sure that I wanted to be one anymore, back then. It’s just too... weird.”

“Hey, if you think spitting fire when you get mad is weird,” I tell her with a giggle that gets a surprised look from her. “Then you should try escaping solitary confinement using some sorta cartoon physics.”

“Cartoon physics, really?” Mira says, blinking in the dim night. “I thought they just carried you out.”

“They... I don’t... understand how, and it’s actually... kind of hard to think about,” I say with some difficulty, “But somehow I ended up outside my cell. When they came to rescue me, I was just in the hall, trying to figure out what to do.”

Sighing at the troubling experience, I add, “Pinkie Pie makes it look so easy.”

Mira doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

So... strange things are happening. I’m starting to get the impression that Twilight wasn’t entirely forthcoming about what a pony is. There’s the thing with Mira that I don’t even know, more cartoon physics I guess? There’s the sex. If that Twilight was the same Twilight I knew, then I know for a fact that she’s not prudishly opposed to the notion of ponies having sex.

I mean... it could’ve been a second impostor, but what are the chances that you run across a pony disguised as Twilight Sparkle who loves to betray her friends, twice? So on the assumption that this... was the same pony, all that getting shocked and offended because some ponies were having sex must’ve been an act too!

I try to understand why on earth Twilight would need to keep secrets like that, and mislead us so cruelly, but the only thing I can come up with is that she’s... evil. I want to deny it, and it feels so bad to just condemn someone like that, but maybe that’s her fault too. She probably did enchant me to be unable to hate her, because whenever I try to get upset over what she did to us, all I can remember is the pain in her eyes, when she freaked out at me just because of how much she missed her friends.

That was probably a lie too, though.

I’d like to say that she needs help, compassion, and loving care, that she’s doing all this because she was somehow hurt inside, and not just because she’s a total bitch, who delights in the suffering of others, but the evidence is just too damning even for me to deny.

Twilight Sparkle... is just pure dag nasty evil.

“Okay, uh...” Patricia says as we all assemble before a cold fire pit, more because we want to get warm, rather than any sort of duty or discipline. The sun’s going down, and we want a little more warmth and light than it could provide. Since there’s no electricity, batteries have to be conserved, so I guess we’re caveponies now.

“So...” Patricia continues to hemm and haw, pacing back and forth before the unlit pile of branches, “So everyone knows how Zeke was using that static shocker spell to get the fire going, right?”

A few murmurs of assent, but mostly of “What’s the holdup already?”

“And you know how it takes like five minutes?” Patricia says louder, spreading her blue, feathery wings, “Or however long until he can get the sparks to catch the tinder long enough to get kindling to start burning?”

“When she wasn’t shocking someone with it!” shouts a voice from the crowd.

“Yeah, so... not ideal right?” Patricia replies, folding her wings, and rubbing a forehoof on her other front leg, “What I’m trying to say is we might have a—” Descending from the sky, Mira lands behind Patricia, facing the fire, and fa-whoomp, the campfire’s started.

“...better way,” Patricia says, almost as shocked as everyone else, looking over her shoulder at Mira, who just dances there on her hooves before everyone, shouting,

“Haha, yeah! I told you it wasn’t just my imagination!”

“Tail!” Patricia shouts in alarm.

Mira looks back and, “Hoshit!” jerks her tail out of the way of the growing fire, and frantically stomps the tip until it stops smouldering.

Yeah, that’s... um... Mira.

Our campfires are certainly taken care of after that. It isn’t even Mira who does it all the time either. Other ponies can do... the fire thing I guess. I don’t really pay attention to it honestly. Long as there’s a fire, I don’t care whose... weird, freaky magic got it lit. I’m too busy these days spending most of my time trying to figure out what to eat around here. Foraging is a lot harder than it looks, and there’s really not a lot to forage around here. At least we have grass.

All this and more flees out of my head when Nick’s driving phallus slides into me again and again. Oh, I can’t say I’m exactly eager to be a mare. Being female has tons of problems to it, which... I guess is true for males too. At least if I was male, I wouldn’t have to worry about being pregnant.

But actually being fucked, it’s just so... sublime. It makes me feel fuzzy and content, and also excited and electric. It’s less of an achievement than when I was male, and more of an... experience. I can feel him sliding inside me! Just sweating and rocking and panting, and getting pumped like an engine. I just ...it feels good, alright? I can’t stop my body from feeling good, if it got changed to do so!

About the only thing I really don’t like about it is when Nick pulls out. He’ll be just warming up, and getting in gear, and... oh I dunno then I just end up on the edge of climax, when his steady pistoning is gone, and once again I’m standing there watching Nick take care of himself outside of me. I don’t know why he likes this, but I feel both excited, revolted and intrigued at the thick ropy jets of white that erupt from his penis. That could’ve been in me.

I don’t have enough presence of mind to do much of anything at that point, besides rub myself to climax. I’m so glad I can at least do that, but... Nick just enjoys the show, I guess? With my tail up, and my hind legs stiff, I have to lean on one foreleg to um... stroke myself with the other. It works, but I feel a little embarassed. Shouldn’t I be orgasming during sex?

“You okay, Meadows?” Nick asks afterward, when I just kind of groan and flop over on my side, so tired of that stupid quivery passage in my belly running my life, just begging for a cock in it.

“Just a little... horny, still,” I say distantly, looking the other way at nothing in particular.

“You want me to—” he says, sidling closer to me.

I turn to look, waving a hoof at him and saying, “No! No it’s... the moment’s passed. That’s not really what’s bothering me, anyway.”

“So, something is bothering you?” he asks cagily.

“Well it’s just...” Groaning and gathering my hooves under me, I stand from where I’m laying on my side in the dirt because we just went and started fucking out back in the moonlight behind the barn, because that’s a thing I do now, I guess. Staring at Nick owlishly, I don’t want him to think I actually want it but...

“I just don’t get why you never finish in me anymore,” I finally bite out bitterly.

He looks at me like... that look, which I get a lot. “I’m serious!” I whine, “If I’m okay with you in there, then your s-stuff is just a bonus! Don’t try to tell me you don’t like finishing inside.”

“Well yeah, but you know...” he says tentatively, wincing at me in sympathy.

“No I don’t know,” I tell him with a blush creeping up my face, “Is it because I was a... because I’m a guy? I don’t know how to act like a girl! Or a girl... pony or whatever. I’m just some stupid masculine... chick I guess. Tom girl? I don’t even know what you call it!”

“Meadowsweet, you’re upset that I’m not cumming inside your vagina,” Nick says flatly, “That’s about as girly as you can possibly get. Most girls aren’t even that girly.”

“Well... you... ugh,” I say with a snap of my tail, “You know what I mean!”

“Yeah, but it’s not because you’re a guy,” Nick says appeasingly, “Because you’re really not. I mean no offense it’s just... wow. You’re like a... supergirl.”

“I... I don’t know whether to be insulted by that or not,” I tell him at a bit of a stumbling loss there. “I just don’t understand why you keep pulling out before you cum inside. It can’t be for your sake, or my sake, so... what is it?”

“Well, you know, the whole... pregnant thing?” Nick says with a grimace that might pass for a worried smile.

“Yes I know, and that’s what doesn’t make sense,” I tell him with a huffy stomp, “I’m pregnant so no amount of... of cumming inside is gonna make me more pregnant. I have to g-give birth and nurse and—and do all the stupid things girls, no, mothers do. It’s all h-happening already, so I...”

Casting my gaze off to the side, I tell Nick sadly, “I’m not gonna deny it. It feels really good when you cum inside. And I don’t even care what you do down there, since the foal’s gonna do a whole lot worse, coming out.”

Looking at him again with tears in my eyes, I say, “So now that I have to be pregnant, why’re you taking away the one thing that I like about it, and just letting me just stand there, finishing myself?!”

To my tirade, Nick replies in a humorless tone, “Meadowsweet, you’re not pregnant.”

“Yes I—what?” I blurt out, completely flabbergasted. How can he say that? “How can you say that?” I squeal at him in something between rage and terror, “You were there! You climbed on me and... and I wanted it, and then you came inside! Like a whole lot! How could you of all people say that I’m not pregnant?!”

“Because you’re not?” Nick attempts awkwardly, “You could’ve gotten pregnant, but you didn’t. You seriously didn’t know?”

“Y-you’re lying,” I tell him angrily, backing up a step, “I might not be a real girl, but I do know about periods now, and I’m not having one!”

Nick grumbles something about could’ve fooled me.

“Sorry, what?” I ask, flicking an ear.

“Ponies don’t have periods, Meadowsweet,” Nick tells me honestly, “Didn’t you ask Brian about it? She knows, and... well I thought everyone knew by now, but I guess not!”

“Ponies... what? Ponies do have periods,” I insist in utter confusion, “You told me about them! You said—”

“I was dead wrong, apparently,” Nick cuts me off, “Only apes have a... menstrual cycle I guess. Animals that aren’t apes go into heat, once a year.”

...

“And.... then I start bleeding out of my...?”

“No, no bleeding, no red stuff,” Nick says emphatically, “Ask Brian about the details, or someone else who knows something about horses.”

“But then...” I say uncomfortably, “Where does the uterus lining go? Don’t tell me ponies don’t have those, either?”

“For all I know, we lay eggs!” Nick declares frankly, “I don’t intend to find out either, which is why I wasn’t cumming inside you.”

“I—I’m not... pregnant?” I say with my rear end slipping to land on the dusty ground. My... not pregnant rear end.

“God...” Nick says, hanging his head, “Meadowsweet, I’m so sorry. If I knew you didn’t know I... I thought you knew.”

“S-so I could still get pregnant,” I say, looking down at my unremarkable, but female belly, all covered in soft yellow fur, “I-if someone cums inside, but if it doesn’t happen, then I don’t have to be pregnant, and I can just be... myself?”

“If your self is a yellow and green mare named Meadowsweet,” Nick unhelpfully points out.

I’m too shell-shocked to think of a snarky reply.

“So ponies don’t have... that thing?” I ask Brian, walking together with her along the edge of the farm. It’s a beautiful day. Some colorful winged ponies are dragging clouds around overhead through the clear, blue sky. And I’m not pregnant.

“Ponies could lay eggs, for all I know about their biology,” the green and blue pegasus grumbles cynically, “But yes, horses, and... ungulates in general I’m pretty sure, do not have any sort of menstruation. There’s a yearly heat cycle, and... the uterine lining gets absorbed, if you think that happening inside you is a comforting thought. It doesn’t get shed and get expelled like with humans, so... no bleeding.”

“I just can’t believe I thought literally every pony was pregnant,” I groan in embarassment, “After Nick and Mira told me about periods, I just... I never knew humans had such a...” glancing down at my plodding hooves...

“I never knew humans,” I say in bitter resignation, “Had such a weird thing about their mating... sexual...”

“Habits?” Brian prompts.

“Stuff,” I clarify.

We walk a while further, before Brian says softly, “So you really... went all the way girl, huh?”

“You mean mentally?” I ask in confusion, “I never thought it was what I’d call a good thing to be a girl, but...”

“No, no I mean... you thought every pony had been having... sex, but actually most... um...” Brian gives a dissatisfied snort, “Okay, so I still don’t know how often people are having sex. It’s kind of hard to measure something that... personal.”

Laughing I say, “Yeah, it sure had me fooled. I thought everyone was doing it. Maybe we should be more open about this stuff. It’d clear up a lot of confusion.”

Blushing, Brian stutters an answer. “B-but you definitely are one of the former guys who... you know... went full girl and had sssex, right?” making me stumble in my tracks a little.

“Y-yeah I guess,” I say in resignation, trotting a bit to catch up from where I fell behind there, “It was sort of... overwhelming I mean. I didn’t exactly choose to do it. I just sort of... didn’t know how to deal with it, and Nick—I mean, a stallion was close to me all the time, and it just...”

Head dipping, I reluctantly say, “I guess girls aren’t exempt after all from wanting to have sex when you’re horny.”

“I have been pretty... horny,” Brian says leerily tilting an ear, “And it has gotten pretty um... compelling at times. Must be nice... I–I mean to find out what it feels like.”

“Yeah, that’s how it gets you though,” I tell her in a secretive murmur, “You just start feeling curious... about... stuff you’d never be curious about as a guy, and it all seems so innocent and not... part of being a girl or anything. But it is. You don’t feel like you’re doing anything girly, but one thing leads to another, and soon you’re being the girliest girl who ever... girled.”

Brian can’t help but laugh at that. “I don’t think girl is a verb,” she says in an equally secretive whisper.

“Yea well... so... well,” I say, unable to just keep walking along at the thought of the things I’ve been doing, that I could be doing. Brian stops too, and glances back at me. It’s embarassing, but it’s also... fascinating, being this way. “So I uh,” I say with an unusual surge of self-confidence, “Have done the whole... girl thing, yes. It um... feels as good as girls make it look, when you do it right.”

Brian’s turned to look at me head-on, while I sigh and confess, “But then you had sex and his stuff’s i-inside you, and you don’t know why you love that so much, but... it means you’re pregnant... back there.”

I almost say “down there,” but alas both my and Brian’s asses are well and truly behind us.

Glancing downward, I mumble, “So the sex thing is... really good, and I don’t miss having a... dick or anything, but then you realize what you just did, and... and it’s t-terrifying to think that I might have to give birth out of that thing.”

“Seriously,” Brian groans in agreement, “You don’t even realize how weird a vagina is, until you get one and... it just seems even more impossible that you could push a baby’s head through it.”

We start walking again, and the old barn is up ahead, slowly approaching as we walk down the beaten path. “I thought I was pregnant for the longest time, because of the whole... no period thing,” I say with an unconvincing laugh, looking the blue/green pegasus’s way, “I don’t know why I didn’t get pregnant. I mean of course it doesn’t work every time, but he really um... there was a... a lot.”

“Didn’t you get sent to some prison or something?” Brian asks curiously.

Nodding in surprise, I say, “Yes, that’s pretty much true. They just wanted to know where Twilight Sparkle was, but things got... really bad after that.”

“Yeah I know...” Brian agrees with a cute little sigh, “Starving ponies, broken w-wings.”

Just in the slight shifting of Brian’s wing, I can tell how unnerving the thought of that is to her. I guess it’s not my place to judge whether she’s being... affected by her wings, but it’s weird how strongly pegasi and... bat ponies come to feel about them. I mean I can understand in the sense that losing a limb would be pretty terrifying for me, but... Brian lived her whole life without wings. And yet now she cares about them so much.

It makes me feel guiltily relieved beside Brian here. I may find it feels... too normal to be walking on all fours, but I don’t have wings. I don’t have these mental changes, making me... care about wings as though I couldn’t live without them.

I guess what I’m saying is it’s nice to be the boring, ordinary, normal one sometimes, at least relatively. I wonder if Twilight knew that, when she transformed me into just... an earth pony. That I’d actually start feeling kind of okay with it.

No, no I know her true colors now, and if Twilight Sparkle knew I’d be feeling relieved at this, she’d no doubt have made me an alicorn princess, just to make me as uncomfortable as possible.

So as an ordinary pony, I suppose it’s up to me to help Brian understand people, without thoughts of what they might have done to her wings clouding her judgement. “People were just really upset,” I say with a shrug, “It was wrong of them, but I can understand why they’d be... not very pleasant people at the time.” Shuddering, I add, “I don’t even want to imagine how they’re reacting now that everyone’s a...”

We walk in silence for a few seconds.

“So you were one of the ones who got starved, right?” Brian asks in a deliberately casual tone.

“In a sense, yeah,” I say noncommitally, swishing my tail uncertainly, “They just kind of forgot about me. I think that’s what happened, at least. I was pretty darn skinny when I got rescued... I look a lot better now.”

“Did they... hurt you, like... with the wings, or hitting you in the head, or cutting into your uh... hoof—” Brian blushes, anxiously adding, “Okay I heard some horror stories, but I’m just trying to get an idea what you went through.”

“I dunno why they didn’t do a lot to me,” I confess, a little shaken at the thought that they’d been messing with ponies’ hooves. “I kind of felt like they gave up on me, I mean... I was pretty pathetic, I guess. All they did really was shoot at me a little, just to scare me. A-and boy, it worked. But other than that, just... stuck in a little room all day with... water if I’m lucky.” Snorting, I say, “It doesn’t sound bad, but it was seriously the worst thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. I’m just sheltered, I guess.”

“Well I’m not judging,” Brian chirps with a conflicted expression on her muzzle, “I was just asking because I think it’s possible you might’ve been pregnant after all.”

Stuttering to a halt, I say, “W-what? No, please. Don’t—don’t even joke about that. If I was pregnant I’d be eating more, and getting sick and... and you know the details. S-so I’m absolutely sure I was just being dumb, and I’m not really pregnant at all.”

“Oh, you’re definitely not pregnant now,” Brian says frankly, looking back at me, “If our biology is in any way similar to planet Earth’s, that is. No, I was thinking that you might’ve been pregnant at the convention center, because you were um... the only one of us who was a pony before that. And... people were saying you and Nick had... you know, sex.”

And how do you answer that? That I loved it? That I hated it? That sex with Nick is one of the best parts about being a pony, and a girl? Can I even talk about this stuff with others? Well, in my pensive silence, Brian persists, saying,

“So if you were going for weeks without food, you may have been pregnant.” She seems conflicted as to what to say next, but finally admits, “And starving um... females will often spontaneously abort, especially since you’d only been pregnant for a few weeks so far.”

Oh, that’s... kind of true, I guess. Is that why I’m not pregnant, even after Nick went and... impregnated me?

“I was the only pony, when we first had sex. Nick was still a human,” I tell Brian uncertainly. “So I don’t know if his sperm were pony sperm yet. The second time they definitely were, though.”

Brian tilts her head, raising an eyebrow, saying, “Seriously? Come on, I’ve seen how huge humans are now. How would he even... fit?”

“It did hurt, I guess,” I tell Brian tentatively, “B-but it did fit.”

“Yeah still it’s pretty hard to believe,” Brian says, giving me an intrigued look, “So this giant human just... crouched way down, and...?”

“I l-laid on the bed, and he stood beside it...” Face growing hot at the memory of the experience, and at having to admit it, I manage to squeak, “...then just started going in.”

Brian stares off dazedly at that, murmuring “I guess that would work, just...”

“It worked with Twilight,” I mumble, blushing heavily, “So I figured it would work with me.”

“Nick had sex with Twilight Sparkle?!” Brian exclaims, staring at me in shock with her soft purple/pink eyes.

I stare at her for a moment as we walk along, before replying irritably, “No, Nick didn’t. I did.”

Brian stops at that, and I turn to look back seeing the pegasus appraise me thoughtfully.

“Oh,” she says, “So when they said Twilight seduced you into...”

Oh. Yeah. Anxiously, I admit, “S-she did sorta literally seduce me. I mean c’mon, it was Twilight Sparkle! Who could say no to that?”

“She didn’t even give you the time of day once you got to the farm,” Brian says disaffectedly to my nervous smile, lowering her ears and trotting forward again, to join me in our walk toward the barn.

“Oh, no Twilight was... different than before. She was friendly enough, but... yeah I dunno,” I say shaking my head, “I figured the real Twilight wasn’t into um, sex, and the Twilight that I had sex with was an impostor.”

“Well, at least according to Occam’s Razor she wasn’t,” Brian says wryly.

“Oh, I heard of that thing, but I don’t really get it,” I tell her curiously.

“Occam’s Razor?” Brian asks with a curious head tilt.

“Yeah, it means... go with the simplest explanation I guess?” I say, trying to recall what little I know about it.

“It’s just the idea that assumptions are bad,” Brian says easily, “Because any assumption could be wrong, and there’s no way to check. So if you have two possible explanations for things, go with the one that makes less assumptions.”

“So, assuming the first Twilight’s an impostor...” I suggest carefully.

“That’s the bad explanation,” Brian says with a half smile, “Doesn’t mean it’s not true, but without any more evidence, it’s just another assumption.”

“So the other explanation is that Twilight is...”

“...not an impostor,” Brian concludes for me.

“What is she though?” I ask.

With a discontented nicker, Brian replies, “I don’t think anybody knows.”

Author's Notes:

And now, 10 chapters of nothing but world building, character development, exposition and smut, as our heroes slowly learn the full extent of what they’ve done. By the time they figure out what the fuck to do, and the plot actually the fuck resumes, I’m optimistic I’ll have driven away all three of the readers I have left.