Oliver had managed to drag himself to class the next day despite a throbbing headache. The lecture hall echoed the professor’s words into daggers as they reverberated around in his head. He felt like he was a few seconds from throwing up. With one arm he propped his head up, and with the other he dutifully wrote down abridged notes. Most of the other students were simply capturing the lecture on handheld recorders.

He felt silly for even being there, surrounded by real people working towards bettering their lives. He was scum for taking a seat which could have been given to an actual student with actual prospects and hopes and dreams. He couldn’t stop thinking about killing himself, even as the lecture was passing through the front of his mind.

The reality is that you are worthless. Every moment you are alive you soak up attention and energy and time that could have been given to another. The longer you shirk away from the responsibility you have to remove yourself from the world, the worse of a person you become.

He shut his eyes and tried to slow his breathing, calming himself. Pain from his headache shot across his head and he doubled over in his seat for a moment. Tears were forming in the corners of his eyes for no reason. The knowledge he was falling apart from literally no external stress made his heart sink even more.

Through gritted teeth he whispered to himself.

“Nothing has even happened today, fucking sit up.”

His body obeyed, despite the protestations from his chest. It felt like his heart and lungs were in a vice, desperately working themselves into a frenzy to avoid being crushed. The notes he was taking were rapidly degenerating into scrawl as he struggled to keep his hand from shaking. The professor cleared his voice and directed the lecture hall’s attention to a projected diagram of a quaternary protein structure. Oliver felt his eyes sink into their sockets as he stared at the image. The words of the professor slid out of his brain a moment after they entered, crowded out by the internal screaming he was utterly failing to reign in.

A moment of lucidity flashed across his mind. Unlike the catastrophizing slew of suicidal ideation he couldn’t dismiss it or even disagree with its statement.

You don’t belong here when you are in this state of mind.

The catastrophizing slew of thought reformed around this accurate assessment of himself.

You can’t do this. You can’t even get yourself through a class before you fall apart and start crying. You are wasting everyone’s time by being here. You are eating up resources meant for genuine human beings. Fuck you. It would have been better for everyone involved if you had actually managed to kill yourself any of the times you failed. You can’t even kill yourself, how can you expect to fufill your academic obligations. Only a retard or a fucking insane person would think you even had a chance of doing this. Kill yourself promptly so you can free everyone from the burden of being in your presence. Fuck you. Kill yourself.

Oliver pulled his right hand away from the paper, and impaled his left hand with the pen he was holding. It sunk half an inch into his hand. Blood started pooling up around the puncture.

He felt his lungs tighten into a vice, and after a moment of pause he carefully exhaled as slow as he could manage. The girl sitting a foot next to him must have seen because she scooched herself a foot or so further away from him. Never mind the residual spotty colouring across his scalp, he must have looked like a crazy person. But the sharp pain which screeched from Oliver's hand cleared his head. There was lovely silence for once. He felt tremors shake his body from the pain but he inhaled and exhaled, savouring the clarity it had provided. His face softened out of the snarling rictus it had been stuck in for the past few minutes. He swallowed, before pulling the pen out of his hand and wiping it off on his shirt. He left his left hand laying flat on the desk, and returned to taking notes with his right hand.

He smiled in satisfaction.

The lecture only continued for another fifteen minutes, after which Oliver headed back to his dorm. He kept his left hand stuffed in his pant pocket the way back, not wanting anyone to see his self-inflicted injury. Everything was quiet and serene. Even his head.

The snow from a few days ago had melted, and a warm autumn breeze was accompanying Oliver through the campus. It was probably the last warm breeze of the entire year. Absentmindedly he wondered what it would feel like on his wings if he was a pony right now. As he came up to his dorm the despair from earlier was kept at bay through an internal promise. He knew exactly what he was going to allow himself the moment he was back in his room. As he opened the door to his and Tyler’s dorm Tyler called out to him.

“How did class go?”

“It went pretty okay. I think I’m gonna chill for a minute and then go for a walk.” Oliver said with a practiced felicity.

“Sounds healthy!”

Tyler approved of the cardio apparently. He probably wouldn’t if he knew Oliver intended to have hooves while he did it, but what Tyler didn’t know wouldn’t bother him. Oliver slid into his room and locked his door behind him. He quickly threw off his clothes and popped a couple of the pills from the bottle of M4re. He waited until the euphoria and sensation of comfort began to take effect, before opening his bedroom window. It was only a four foot drop out of it onto the ground. The same breeze from earlier gently swept through his bedroom. He could already imagine how it would feel on his coat, on his little horse face.

The transformation probably took four minutes from start to finish but to Oliver it felt instantaneous. When he opened his eyes the embers of the transformation were fluttering in the breeze. The open window was calling to him, and every ounce of his tiny body glittered with anticipation.

His wings gave a few testing flaps before fanning out. With a short run, he leaped towards the window off his bed and gave as hard of a flap of his wings as he could manage. He ducked his head down to miss the top of the window frame, and for a glorious moment he was flying in the afternoon sun. He inhaled the fresh air and his big eyes marveled at the sky before him. If he had been less overcome by the beauty of the world he might have remembered to try flapping his wings more than once. The feeling of weightlessness was quickly replaced by the sinking inevitability of gravity. Oliver plummeted the short fall downward into a convenient pile of leaves one of the groundskeepers must have raked. A screech of fear was soon followed by delighted giggles as he poked his head up and out of the pile of leaves.

--

Tyler took another swig from his can of monster and slumped forward as his fingers danced across the keyboard. He had gotten into a groove with his work, and the caffeine was fueling a fevered pace. He might end up finishing his work a couple hours earlier than planned. It had been easy with how quiet things had been.

Tyler paused and gave a glance to Oliver’s door, taking a moment to listen.

Oliver had been very quiet ever since he got back to the apartment. Tyler couldn’t tell if he had gone for a run yet or not. He hadn’t heard him leave. Still, run or not, it was good Oliver seemed to be doing better. The M4re stuff might actually be a good way for him to relax and get his mind off- whatever it is that had been bothering him. If being a pony for a night let Oliver blow off some steam and focus on his studies the rest of the time, then it was probably worth it.

He hummed and turned back to his work, typing out the final page. With a satisfying final tap of a period, Tyler finished his writeup. As he pulled up another document, his phone dinged with a notification. He ignored it. A second notification. Then a third. Exasperation gave way to curiosity and he finally checked the phone. Multiple of his group chats were lighting up, as was his snap chat.

Tyler’s eyes widened and his expression morphed into a grimace. “Holy fucking shit, that rotten fucking depressed junkie.”

Oliver galloped as fast as his little hooves could carry him, ducking back and forth between young trees which had recently been planted in the greenspace behind his dorm. Surprise and pride filled his heart as he realized just how much more agile he had become since his first time.
With a leap and a flap of his wings he easily cleared another of the leaf piles. The momentum of the jump was harder to control than he expected and he skidded on a pathway that cut through the greenspace. He looked behind him at the distance he had just raced and gave a whinny of excitement, followed by a celebratory little trot in place.

“Woah what's that?”

His ears swiveled to locate the sound and he turned his head to see two girls farther up the pathway pointing at him. They were calling out to him, patting their legs and waving him towards them. Somewhere inside of his head he heard a voice screaming to run away and get out of sight, but it went unheeded.

Oliver instead found himself trotting towards the two girls. He thought he might have recognized one of them from somewhere, but he couldn’t place it. As he got closer, any apprehension he might have felt melted away. All he could think about was how good it would feel to get some scritches from them. When he was finally a few feet away from them he stopped. The taller of the two reached out with a hand and said something warm sounding. Oliver couldn’t make it out, but he didn’t really care. His eyes were too busy staring at the outstretched hand. He was quite a bit smaller than them—he only came up to their knees.

“Psspsspss. Come here little pony,” one of the girls said as they crouched and reached out.

A final threshold in his head was crossed and he pressed himself into the open palm of the taller girl. She giggled in delight and gave a few testing pets before reaching out with her other hand and scratching behind Oliver’s ears. She turned and beamed at her friend.

“Oh my gosh she likes me! Ellie, get a picture!”

Something about the statement perturbed Oliver, but he couldn’t understand beyond a vague feeling. That too melted away when the girl began scritching under his chin.

“Aaaaaaa she’s just like a kitten look at her! Look at the lil pony-wony!”

The snapping of a few photos went almost unnoticed by Oliver, too wrapped up in the sensations of petting that were quickly unraveling his mind. The other girl kneeled down next to him and began petting and brushing his mane with her fingers.

“She’s just like the ones on youtube right?” the one named Ellie said.

“Oh no, she’s much better behaved! Aren’t you~ Aren’t you just the sweetest little pony there is!” the tall one said in an intoxicating baby voice. She held Oliver’s head in both of her hands and gave little scritches with her fingers as she continued

“Who's a good pony? Who's a good pony?”

Oliver felt a welling up of excitement and joy. Again something inside of him screamed, but it was smothered under the torrent of pleasure from the pettings.

“I am! I am a good pony!”

At least that is what Oliver had *tried* to say. What the two girls heard was a singsong whinny of excitement. This was more than enough for them though.

“Oh my gosh she can speak! Speak, c’mon speak more!”

Oliver again uttered something between a song and a whinny, unaware that the two girls couldn’t understand him. They both looked like they were going to melt from the cuteness.

“I have to get a video, give me a sec,” Ellie said while pulling out a phone. She handed it to her friend and then scooted around so that she was sitting next to Oliver on the ground. She reached around and picked Oliver up from under his forhooves and pulled him over onto her lap. Instead of protesting, Oliver went limp and felt a sort of comfortable helplessness lull him into acquiescence. For nearly half an hour Oliver continued absorbing all the pets he could from the two girls. Near the end he had even started to pose and model for their pictures, loving the attention. Eventually though, the taller one started to try and drag Ellie away from the little pony they had found in the park.

“Can’t we keeeeeep her?”

“No, pets aren’t allowed in our dorms.”

Pet?

A strange sadness grazed Oliver as he watched the two girls jog off back to their dorms. It was quickly put out of mind though when a falling leaf grabbed his attention. He poked at it with his snoot as it danced in the wind. Pretty soon the whole interaction with the girls was out of mind as he returned to racing around the greenspace. After another hour or so of running around like a dog off its leash, Oliver finally made his way back to the open window to his bedroom. With a loud clattering, Oliver clipped his legs on the bottom of the window and corkscrewed through the air before making a relatively safe landing on his mattress. He whinnied in delight as he stood up on his mattress. Everything had gone *mostly* perfect! He trotted around in celebration. He was so happy that for a few seconds he didn’t even notice the loud banging on his door. Tyler was angry about something.

“OLIVER I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE.”

Another set of loud bangs made Oliver flinch back. More screams followed.
“OLIVER I SWEAR TO GOD ILL FUCKING GET CAMPUS SECURITY TO BUST DOWN THIS FUCKING DOOR IF YOU AREN’T GOING TO OPEN UP!”

With a scramble Oliver jumped off his bed and called out to Tyler.

“I’ll unlock the door. Just give me a second okay.”

That is what he tried to say at least. He didn’t notice, but again his speech had become the singsong nonsense and pony noises from before. Either way it at least got Tyler to stop screaming. He raised up on his rear legs and twisted the lock with his forhoof. It took a moment but he managed to get it. He called out again to Tyler in an unintelligible speech. The door opened dreadfully slowly, and suddenly, Oliver was filled with a fear that wasn’t there a moment before. He resisted the urge to scurry under his bed and hide from his roommate. Instead he simply sat upright, trying not to look terrified. Tyler entered the room, his eyes jumping from the open window to the little blue mare on the ground. His face was deathly serious.

“Oliver, we need to have a talk.”

Oliver quivered, a heavy feeling settling in his gut.

“You barely go to your classes, you barely manage to feed yourself,” his voice grew dire.

“And now you’ve fucking wandered around the campus while high off your ass on a HIGHLY ILLEGAL drug. Those dumb fuck girls didn’t know that you were just some student on M4re, but cops will. Feds will know. Half the fucking campus is shit posting about the little pony that was found in the park. And I don’t know if you’ve heard, but M4re users have been getting fucking tracked down and abducted to who knows where.”

He paused for a moment, and Oliver felt the pit in his stomach grow three times over.

“We need to get rid of the M4re. I’ll let you have an ounce of weed or something in exchange, but we need to flush the M4re.”

The little mare at his feet stared at Tyler in a stunned silence, before exploding into more of the unintelligible babble from before.

“What? What the fuck are you saying Oliver. Fucking speak clearly.”

Oliver continued with more and more of the singsong babble. Tyler ground his teeth.

“YOU AREN’T FUCKING SPEAKING ENGLISH. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SAYING OLIVER?!”

Oliver looked confused for a moment. He tried to ask what Tyler meant, but as he did he realized Tyler wouldn’t understand that either. Piercing pain rolled through his head, and a blaring ring filled his ears. After a moment it stopped, and he tried again to speak. His voice was unsure and alien sounding to him, but he could tell he was speaking English again.

“I… I just needed a bit of a run outside. You don’t know how it feels. It's so amazing being—”

“I don’t need to know how amazing it is Oliver. You fucking put both of our fucking educations at stake. If they find out that fucking horse was YOU, they’ll definitely end up searching our apartments. Do you even know if anyone else saw you? What if someone was filming when you went back to your room?”

Oliver felt his ears flatten against his head.

“N-no one saw me, I don’t think,” he said.

“You mean you don’t know?You could have just fucking gotten both of us kicked out or arrested. I’m not going to let you fucking ruin my degree. The best thing to do now is to flush the M4re—”

“NO” Oliver screamed.

“Oliver, listen to me. We need to make sure this doesn’t get back to either of us okay?”

“NO” Oliver screamed again, getting more frantic.

“Oliver-”

“DON’T CALL ME THAT”

Tyler fell silent. His chest rose and fell once before he continued to speak.

“What would you like me to call you?”

Oliver’s face softened, and a sunny disposition filled his little horse features.

“Seafoam, um.. please”

Tyler’s eyes squinted and he looked Oliver over, measuring him up.

“You aren’t taking this seriously enough, Oliver-”

Oliver gave a small huff and a rotten look. Tyler paused again.

“Do you really expect me to call you Seafoam?” Tyler said.

Oliver looked down at himself. When he spoke, his voice was lowered almost to a whisper.

“Tyler, you don’t know what it's like. It feels weird for you to call me Oliver when I’m…”

Tyler rolled his eyes.

“Oliver, You really need to listen to me and understand this drug isn’t doing good things for you. It’s messing around with your head like this. You have responsibilities for school, and you are endangering both of our education and freedom if you keep using this shit.”

“It's doing great things actually. If you tried some you’d understand”

“That is never fucking happening.” Tyler said authoritatively.

“You would really like being a pony I bet-” Oliver started

“If I could trust you to only use it while in the fucking dorm them maybe it would be okay with you to keep the fucking M4re, but you are straight up delusional right now. We need to get rid of it.”

Oliver screamed.

“Tyler no! We, we can do something else c’mon I need this. You don’t know how good this is for me.”

The little mare just wouldn’t shut up, and Tyler had already spent his patience. He spotted the bottle of M4re on Oliver’s desk and stepped forward reaching out for it. Oliver responded by jumping up against Tyler trying to push him back. His little pony body wasn’t much of an obstacle and Tyler easily pushed him away. He swiped the M4re and quickly turned around heading for the washroom. Oliver jumped forward at Tyler’s leg, biting down as hard as he could.

“FUCK,” Tyler exclaimed.

He dropped the bottle of M4re and the little blue pills spilled out all over the floor of Oliver’s room. With a hard kick Tyler sent Oliver flying backward into his bed frame.

“FUCKING JUNKIE. THIS ISN’T GOOD FOR YOU YOU LITTLE SHIT”

Oliver could barely hear Tyler’s screaming over the ringing in his ears from the impact with the bedframe.

“YOU AREN’T A FUCKING PONY. YOU ARE A FUCKING WASTE OF LIFE. YOU CLEARLY CAN’T FUCKING-”

Tyler stopped as he felt blood trickling down his leg from the bite. His eyes went wide with rage.

“YOU FUCKING ANIMAL HOLY FUCK”

Tyler screamed while clutching at his leg, the pain of the bite really setting in.

“YOU- YOU FUCK. YOU USELESS FUCKING JUNKIE SHIT, FUUUUUUUUUCK”

Oliver crawled under his bed as his roommate continued screaming. Everything felt wrong and bad. He reeled in trying to process what had just happened.

Tyler is only acting this way because he doesn’t know what it’s like to be a pony

Oliver curled up and felt tears filling the corners of his eyes.

If Tyler could only try it once, he would understand everything

From under the bed Oliver watched as Tyler stomped out of the room.

He would understand that you are meant to be this

Tyler’s mutterings eventually faded.

He would know that you were both meant to be this

[email protected]

Hey there Seafoam!

I saw the video of you in the park with those two girls on youtube btw! It was very cute, and made me want to get out and stretch my hooves. Normally I stay cooped up in my apartment while ponified ^w^

After your last couple emails I asked around and a few other ponies have also experienced the speech symptoms you discussed. They all had used M4re more frequently than recommended or in higher dosages. It seems to be a later stage symptom. Moon told me it is something called “Equestrian” but she refuses to elaborate, as usual.

As for your specific questions on dosages you really shouldn’t use more than 5 or 6 pills at once, depending on your weight. The body can have difficulties re-manifesting. Speaking of extreme dosages, I was unable to contact the pony I told you about before, and with the increased fervor that the police are hunting down M4re distributors and users I am starting to fear the worst. For this reason I am going to urge you to lay low for the next few weeks and avoid going out in public.

Moon has been getting antsy. She says that the authorities are getting scared. I don’t know how she gets her information but she has never been wrong.

Take great care in these trying times, and may the Sisters protect.

-Glitter