Kyle had hoped they’d just head straight in, but the baby had other ideas. She wanted to explore the grounds, and Kyle couldn’t fight the thought that trying to grab her would only make her stay further away. She followed close enough, making no attempt to grab her again and urging her towards the stable.

Whatever gravity-defying “magic” the baby was doing, at least it seemed to take her energy. Eventually she started to sag in the air, expression turning frustrated as she started to dip. Kyle moved quickly, snatching her out of the air and settling her into place on her back. “Alright, sweetie, you’ve had your fun. Now it’s time to get settled in our doghouse.”

Fay squeaked happily, her legs kicking out weakly. “Yeah, you had fun. You probably would’ve liked it more when there was still a garden out here. More to see than overgrown statues and lots of mud.”

She crossed the grounds quickly, resisting the temptation to try running out in the open. It was nice to have open space around her, and not have to worry about being caught. At least for a few minutes. Just so long as nobody comes out for a walk and notices the hoofprints going everywhere.

The stable building looked even sadder now that she knew where she was heading. The century-old tin roof sagged in places, and each of its thin windows were well above eye level and impossible to shut. What a great place to spend the day. A cement floor and a few dark rooms.

Some part of her was actually relieved that the proper stable door wasn’t open. Kara had left the side entrance swinging open, rather than the huge wooden ones that would ordinarily be used for horses. She didn’t feel self-conscious about having to stoop to squeeze through, or having her wings catch on the doorway as she moved. I hope I didn’t leave any of these feathers in the house. That would be a hard one to explain.

A single naked bulb hung on the celling, lighting a storage area filled with dusty equestrian equipment. There were helmets, crops, brushes, other things she had no names for, all in various stages of decay. Here were the spiders, ready to creep across the room and bite while she slept.

Not gonna think about that. You’re an alien horse with an alien baby who could kill you with her brain. Maybe focus on that one.

The stables themselves had divisions for three horses, though the old wood between them would probably collapse with a slight breeze. At least the ground was clean cement—she’d half expected it to still be covered with gross stuff.

The smell was still here, almost exactly as she remembered. The years without an actual horse to occupy the stable hadn’t done much to mellow it out.

“Does my room smell like this?” she asked, making her way to where her sister was piling up supplies. She’d spread a picnic blanket out on the floor nearby—At least there was something a tiny bit better than naked cement.

“Not really,” she answered, tilting her head to the side. “Though it did smell like… something in there.”

“The kid had a diaper when I found her,” she supplied. “I think we’ll probably have to get some. And… maybe you could empty the trash up there for me, just to be safe?”

“My sister gets pregnant and I’m the one who does the chores,” Kara chided, grinning mischievously. “See Kyle, this is why you pay attention in sex ed. You wouldn’t be in this position if you’d used magic protection.”

Kyle shoved her with a wing, finding that it responded almost exactly how she expected this time. She couldn’t push as hard as she could manage with one of those thick legs, but it was enough to make Kara stumble backward. “Hey!”

“If you were the horse right now, I’d be nicer about it,” she said, dropping to the ground and settling Fay down beside her.

The baby took a few nervous steps towards the edge of the blanket, her eyes wide and frightened as she looked out at the darkened stable with its many strange shadows. She tucked her head in near Kyle’s side, then closed her eyes.

Kyle draped a wing protectively over her, without even thinking. “Anything else you want, princess?” Kara asked. “Since I won’t be able to check on you again until tonight, not if we want this to stay secret. If they don’t watch when I leave on my evening jog, I’ll make sure everything is okay then.”

“Uh…” She glanced at the pitiful-looking duffel. “Every sleeping bag we have in the garage, and maybe, uh… maybe the propane lamp?” She looked around again, without getting up. There was a hose on the wall, and a drain in the center of the room. Not so much as a sink, let alone a toilet. “How am I supposed to use the restroom in here?”

Kara shrugged. “A horse needs help with that? I thought you just usually sorta… went.”

She rolled her eyes. “Horses, maybe. But I’m not. And I don’t think the baby is either, since her family had her in a diaper.”

“Her owner, you mean,” Kara corrected, bending down beside Kyle and inspecting the baby for another few seconds. Kyle wasn’t even surprised when she pulled out her phone for another picture.

“That doesn’t go on your fucking Insta,” he snapped. “Not now, and not ever.”

“I wasn’t going to…” she began. “Until… it’s over. Then they won’t know it’s you!”

She groaned, but didn’t argue. At this rate, she wasn’t sure it would ever be “over.” No sense denying her sister her fun when she was already being incredibly helpful. She could’ve screamed and turned this into a nightmare. Fay might’ve blasted them all, or maybe animal control would just shoot us. “Fine, fine. Just get the rest of that stuff before Mom and Dad get back.”

She returned a few minutes later, with her arms full of camping supplies. She dropped them onto the ground beside Kyle, loud enough that she twitched reflexively, pulling Fay a little closer to her. She could tell the baby was getting antsy about not eating, but she’d put that off. Being naked around her sister was already weird enough. “I got everything except the light,” she said. “Unless we black out the windows or something, we’ll probably even have to turn off that light when it gets dark. You know Mom—if she sees a light on, she has to come out and switch it off.”

“Save the trees,” Kyle muttered back, groaning. She rocked gently, holding Fay back. Just a little longer, sweetheart. Please don’t kill me. “I don’t like the idea of hiding in the dark all night. Look at how gross this place is. I can’t even clean it up without hands.”

Kara shrugged. “Sorry, Kyle. But you should be worrying about learning kung-fu and the mystical arts, not how dark it is. See if the baby can give you any pointers. Once you’re back to normal, you can come in.”

She reached into the duffel, lifting up something Kyle hadn’t even seen until then. She hadn’t been the one to put it inside. A change of clothes. “This is for when you’re back. You know, so you don’t make Mom and Dad check you into an institution.”

“Got it.” She leaned forward, resting her head awkwardly on Kara’s side. Even sitting down, she could almost reach her eye level. “Thanks for helping me through this, sis. I don’t know what I’d do if you hadn’t believed me.”

Kara wrapped an arm around her, as awkward as ever. “Of all the people who didn’t need this in their lives right now, you would’ve been number one. Just hold on, bro. You’re smart, you’ll figure this out. I’ll get you as much time as I can.”

She let go, then turned back to the door. “I’m going to lock it from the inside, just in case. I stole the key from the closet—hopefully looking for a spare is too much trouble to bother, if anyone else comes this way. For… whatever stupid reason.” She clicked the lock, then stepped through and pulled the door closed behind her.

Or was that because you don’t think I can open locks? You think I’m gonna run away or something stupid? I’m the one who didn’t want to go into the wilderness, remember?

Fay squeaked again, nudging her side sharp enough that she winced. “Alright, alright. I just didn’t want her to see.”

Kyle rose to her hooves, twisting to the side. It was time for another embarrassing ritual.

It probably wouldn’t be if it weren’t for how strange everything felt. It was the opposite of pain—Fay seemed to be operating on the same frequency she was. Kyle had known she was going to be hungry more by the pressure she felt than anything the baby did.

I’m going to have some fucking wild stories to tell about this when it’s over. I’ll never lose those lying games ever again. ‘Remember Loki? Yeah, I did that too, but without the extra legs.’

When Fay was finished, she seemed to want to lay down again. She hadn’t been up for long—but she was a baby, so it wasn’t that surprising. Kyle stretched out one of the puffiest-looking sleeping bags, then settled another on top of it. “There. That should be comfortable, right?”

Fay looked up in her direction, spreading her wings in the expression that Kyle imagined was indignance.

“Look, I want to be inside too. But this is what we get.” She gestured around with one of her own wings, retreating a step. Were her eyes watering? No, the air was dusty from being undisturbed so long, that had to be it. “If you wanted somewhere nice, you should make me human. I could tell Mom and Dad I found you, and I’ve been taking care of you. They’d probably be thrilled I finally took an interest in something, and help with anything I asked. Just… poof me, go on.”

Instead of poofing her, Fay curled up on the makeshift bed, covering her face with a wing. Was that the baby’s way of expressing unwillingness to talk to her? No way she’s that smart. Stop anthropomorphizing her. At least she was soon asleep, leaving Kyle to her own devices at last.

Her own devices, trapped in an abandoned building on the back of the property, with a single lightbulb that they wouldn’t even be able to use.

Fay had already demonstrated she was a sound sleeper, so Kyle took a chance of retrieving her laptop bag. Getting it open wasn’t so hard, though the lock on the computer’s lid was a little harder.

Then it opened, and the little infrared scanner flashed.

“Windows 10 can’t quite recognize you. Sign in with your PIN?”

No fucking kidding.

She reached out, then stopped a few inches from the screen. Her hooves were covered in dried mud. Even if the touchscreen did recognize “hoof”, she’d never be able to press those little numbers.

Metal. I need something conductive. She fished around in the bag a little longer, emerging with a pen in her mouth. She made sure it was retracted, then lowered her head to the screen one key at a time, until she was logged in. There was at least one mercy for her today: the Wi-Fi worked.

It took her almost ten minutes to google “turned into horse.” The results were unhelpful. She tried “horse wings horn” and got new age artwork of majestic winged creatures, with huge white wings like swans. Nothing that even remotely resembled the creature on the ground in front of her, or even herself.

She tried “horses” next, with similar results. She did look over a few of the first image results, struck by just how unlike her they looked. We might have the same basic shape, but Fay and I don’t have anything else in common with you. Those eyes in particular seemed flat, just as she remembered. Would it be better if I’d learned to ride and care for horses like Kara? Could I use any of that to help Fay?

Probably not without hands she couldn’t.

She spent another hour or so keeping a sharp eye out for creepy bugs, and going through the painstaking process of logging into Tor and checking a prominent paranormal forum on the dark web.

There was a veritable smorgasbord of conspiracies and “sightings” provided with different levels of falsified evidence, but nothing close to what she’d been hoping for. Her search for “horse” just referenced back to mother horse eyes copypasta.

Dammit.

Kyle smiled into her crappy webcam, and took a photo of herself looking bewildered and confused. Compared to how slow she did everything with the pen, waiting for the upload on Tor took no time at all.

She called her thread: “Help: Am Horse”

If she had a way to write properly, she’d probably put every detail she could think of. But with each keystroke taking several seconds of concentration, she wrote as little as possible.

“Found weird baby horse--she made me this. Please help.”

She stared at the screen for several minutes more, listening to the distant sound of a lawnmower as her dad started it up for Sunday chores. She winced as it got closer, glancing sidelong at the baby. The stable had thick insulation and sturdy walls, but if Fay was startled badly enough… was any wall thick enough to keep her?

Fortunately, she didn’t wake. When the baby wanted to sleep, she slept.

The sound got closer, then further away again, and no one stormed the door. No one replied on her thread either, which was more disappointing. Didn’t they like her poorly lit webcam photo? The backdrop of rotting wood stable would fit right in with some of the eastern-European-looking scenes of abandoned houses and rusty tools she usually saw there.

I’m wasting time. Changing back is the only thing that matters. No one online is going to be able to teach me how to use these powers.