Missing Feet
You find walking unexpectedly hard after your change. Hooves are much harder to balance on than feet, and your legs have changed slightly too - they've become more like a horse's, the bones of your feet lengthening and becoming upright, so you feel like you're walking on your toes (or what used to be your toes, anyway). You're just not used to it. Your legs quickly start to ache. You have to stop every few minutes and rest. The unicorn you're following is patient with you (does he meet humans-turned-unicorn often?), but you get the impression he'd like to move faster. He seems agitated, looking around constantly every time you stop to catch your breath. You can't help but wonder what else lives in this forest. It seems oddly quiet.
Finally, he seems to come to a decision. As you stagger along, wincing with each step, he stops (to your great relief) and shoves you, gently but firmly, onto a fallen log by the trail. You've figured out how to sit by now, even with legs that don't bend the way you're used to.
The unicorn holds up one finger in a simple signal: wait. Besides that one "speak" when you met him, he hasn't said a word you can understand the whole time. He seemed to understand the stone's English, but English is meant for human mouths, after all. Perhaps that's the only word he's worked out how to pronounce. As you sit on the log, panting, he kneels on the ground and carefully places the palms of both his hands flat on the grass.
Nothing happens.
He sits there for a few seconds.
You're starting to wonder if he's either hurt or performing some sort of ritual when, with a muffled creaking sound, he starts to expand. Bones stretch like pistons, muscles bulge to fill expanding skin, joints crack and grind as some straighten and others bend, and his hands seem to melt and reform into a second set of hooves. In less than a minute, your silent humanoid unicorn guide has become an equally silent quadrupedal unicorn guide.
Stunned, you blurt out the beginning of a question, but stop when nothing comes out except a few rather strangled neighs. This is really getting frustrating. The sooner that rock teaches you how to speak again (or whatever it's planning), the better.
You calm down a bit and just look. After all, this is your first sight of a normal unicorn (if unicorns can ever be called normal). It - no, he - looks more or less like a horse, so white he almost glows, but more slender than most horses. There's something deerlike about him. His tunic-like clothing seems to have vanished during the transformation, but the bag is still looped over his shoulder (or whatever it's called on a unicorn), hanging down beneath his chest.
He stares at you for a moment, then tosses his head meaningfully. He seems to be motioning towards his back...
Oh.
Written by Chrysalis on 24 October 2007
