06-29-2015, 08:00 AM
Both of her ears have now broken off, and her right hind leg has also caved into her side from the repeated slamming. Most of her silver and green mane and tail are on the floor when she'd been slammed. Her head has twisted all the way around on her body so that she's looking at her own rump, but she remains entirely prone. Bite marks
Front legs both caved in
Despite her ardent wishing, Ephrelle doesn’t die.
She simply stares, blank-eyed at the well-defined pectorals of the doll beside her for what feels like years. She sees the fingers twitch every now and then, and wonders if he, too, is wishing for a swift end. Can he still wish without a head? How?
The answers to her questions haven’t come to her, but before they can, she is moved. The human fingers are familiar, and Ephrelle wonders why Nerissa had decided to play with her again after declaring her to damaged. But the voice of this human is not high and shrill, but rather gentle and soothing. “Oh no. Another one. Poor dear.”
It reminds Ephrelle of the way that her mother would talk to her after she’d woken up from a nightmare. Soft and calm and reassuring. “She really did a number on you, huh, little one? I’ll see what I can do to put you back together. Or…well, barring that, at least turn you into something beautiful again” Ephrelle begins to hope again.
She is so full of hope that it must be bursting out of her battered body.
For quite a while she remains in the dark, rustling about with objects she cannot see. One she does recognize, Ken, who was pulled out of the trash with her. His headless presence is comforting, and for a while Ephrelle drifts off into what must be plastic-toy sleep.
When she wakes up she is alone on a large wooden surface. She is unable to move, and when she sees the mom-voiced human come back into the room she knows why. At least she’s not with Nerissa. Mom-voiced Human has her arms full of a wide variety of somethings, all of which she dumps onto the surface beside Ephrelle. She is humming something to herself, and while it is not like anything Ephrelle has heard before, she is sure that it is a song her own mother would know too. It seems like a mother sort of thing to sing.
Though she cannot see what is happening from where she lies on her side, Ephrelle listens to the sounds that Mom-Voice is making. There is rustling and a sharp metal slicing. When she is picked up at last she doesn’t tense – she is sure that she will be alright. The metal slicing comes very close to her twisted around head, and Ephrelle watches as the last strands of her silver and green mane fall to the table. In their place Mom-Voice tucks a bobby-pin into the slot at the top of Ehprelle’s neck. She’s tied purple thread to it, and after she’s secured it with an uncomfortably (but not entirely painful) dollop of hot glue, she brushes it smooth against Ephrelle’s purple neck. A bit of white modeling clay is glued to the place where Ephrelle’s ear would be, and she can hear again.
There’s pressure on her hindquarters and she can feel her back leg being pulled out to where it belongs. “You little ponies are tough,” the Mom-Voice says, “though I don’t’ think your front legs are going to do as well. ” Ephrelle feels fingers tugging at her recessed front legs. The left one pops out after a good bit of tugging, but the right one refuses to do the same. Clucking her tongue, the human lifts up something else that glints like the metal slicers. This is not so benevolent a tool, it would seem. Ephrelle feels the plastic on the right side of her chest being sliced open by the little X-acto knife.
She sees her leg fall onto the table and feels the air flow into the hole in her body.
It feels so strange.
“This one doesn’t quite match,” she hears, “but maybe we’ll do the same to your other one and it’ll look alright.” There is more hot glue pressed to her, this time it rings the hole where her leg had once been. Something is pressed onto the hole, but she doesn’t have time to see what it is before she’s flipped over and her other leg is being sliced off. No! She wants to shout; No, that one is fine! But she can say nothing, and waits for the glue and the thing to be attached to that side as well.
Mom-Voice stands her upright, and Ephrelle realizes that whatever the human has attached to her, they are working exactly like her legs did at holding her up. Mom-Voice starts to pick up another handful of purple thread, but then pauses and makes a thoughtful noise. She says something that sounds like “Ee-kwee-sore”, which is obviously a word that Ephrelle cannot recognize. Something solid and not at all like thread is affixed to her rump with still more hot glue, and then more modeling clay is affixed down her spine.
Mom-Voice blows on Ephrelle’s statuesque figure even as her hands snap open a tube that she squeezes onto the table. It’s gold, almost like Nayl’s eyes, and Ephrelle suddenly wonders what her friend is up to. She does not have time to wonder for long, as the paint is brushed onto her body with the delicate strokes of a paintbrush. First it covers the modeling clay on her spine, and then her ears – both the natural one and the repaired one. Mom-Voice paints all four of her legs and then the thing where her tail had once been. She puts the paintbrush down and Ephrelle thinks that perhaps she is finished with the paint. But no, she picks up a toothpick and murmurs something about “It’s all in the details. Let’s add some scales”, before dipping the end into the paint. The toothpick looks sharp but she is very gentle with Ephrelle. Mom-voice dabs it around her face for the most part, and around the edges of where she has already painted gold.
“There,” says Mom-Voice, and she pushes herself away from the table to stand over Ephrelle. Though the filly cannot turn to see what Mom-Voice is doing, the sounds she is making are pleasurable ones. Perhaps she has made Ephrelle pretty again. That would probably be too much to hope for, but Ephrelle is just so very good at hoping.
It takes several more hours for Mom-Voice to leave the room, but when she does, Ehprelle sighs happily. She has four legs again, and really that’s all she needs to be a good Amazon. But what exactly are these legs?
She lifts one up curiously. The gold paint is still a little tacky and it takes her a moment, but when she extends it in front of her at last, it looks like no leg she recognizes. Instead of a hoof there are five short, wide toes with short, hoof-like tips. The other leg is just the same. She can wiggle each of the toes individually, which is rather fun, and they hold her weight as she steps forward.
When she falls over, it is not the fault of her new legs at all. The something where her tail had been swings to the side and unbalances her. Ephrelle topples over with a grunt and feels the strange pressure of the modeling clay additions to her spine. What are those? Without standing up, Ephrelle flicks her tail to the side (or rather, does what she would have done with her regular body to flick her tail to the side). To her surprise, her tail responds.
The problem is that it is not the tail she is used to. Where is her lovely long-haired tail? This is a tail like she has never seen before! It is painted gold like her legs, and there are four spikes at the end of it. There are also alternating golden plates that run up the length of it, and are presumably just like the ones that are now on her spine. She tries, but cannot move the ones on her back. Her tail though, is responsive and she flicks it around a few times before trying to stand. Knowing now that her new tail is quite heavy, she takes a step forward with her right leg and swings her tail to the left. The motions offset each other perfectly, and after a bit more practice Ephrelle is galloping along the tabletop with her new legs.
When morning comes, and the door to the kitchen opens, it is not Mom-Voice who sees Ephrelle first. It is a smaller person, but not Nerissa. The scream that she lets out is equally as shrill though, and Ephrelle wishes that she could wince away from it. The hands that reach for her are gentle like Mom-Voice’s were. The girl starts shouting “Mom! Mom did you get this for me?!”, and Ephrelle’s world is once again a blur as the girl races through the house to find her mother.
“Yes, she’s for you.” Ephrelle hears Mom-Voice say, and the filly puts the facts together. So Mom-Voice really is a mom, and this other human must be her daughter. “She’s an Equisaur. I thought she might make a good companion for you on your paleontological expeditions.” Ephrelle doesn’t quite know what all those words mean, but she’s put on the floor for a moment while the girl hugs her mother in gratitude. “I’m so excited! Thank you Mom! I’m going to go show her the dig site right now!” Ehprelle is picked back up at carried, full speed, out the back door. The girl, who Ehprelle decides must be Lena if Mom-Voice saying: “Don’t forget your sunblock Lena,” as they left was any indicator.
Ephrelle is placed on the lip of a sandbox littered with buckets, shovels, and assorted sizes of paintbrushes. Lena talks – mostly to Ephrelle but also to herself – about the dinosaurs that they are looking for. She starts with shovels, and then when she hits something begins to brush away the sand with the paintbrushes. A dinosaur emerges from the sand one body part at a time, and the process is repeated until Lena has four lined up beside Ephrelle on the lip of the sandbox. Mom-Voice calls out the door that it is lunch time, and as Lean disappears inside Ephrelle turns to the dinosaur beside her.
“Hello.” She says, pressing her new gold nose to the Hadrosaur’s shoulder. “I’m Ehprelle.” The dinosaur blinks slowly and then shakes the sand off its sides before looking at Ephrelle. “Oh hello there miss,” He replies, tilting his narrow head as though to see her better. “You must be new, and from the looks of it another rescue. Bet you’re glad to be away from the Monster?” Ephrelle, knowing that he must mean Nerissa, nods. The Hadrosaur seems intrigued by her feet and tail, and circles her slowly.
“Looks like you might have been one us at some point. Did Lean’s mom fix you up too? I think I recognize Steggo in those feet – guess she didn’t make it. That’s such a shame, she was a kind one.” Ephrelle isn’t sure how to reply. What does one say to the friend of a toy whose body parts you’re now composed of? But it doesn’t seem that the dinosaur is really looking for a reply; he’s just talking.
“No! I saw them! Those are my toys and you stole them!” The shouting comes from inside the house, and Ephrelle winces. That is not a voice that she’d wanted to hear again. “Just because I didn’t take them out of the bag for three years doesn’t mean I don’t want them! I love dinosaurs!” There are quieter voices, something about ‘don’t put things on the curb if you want them’ and ‘we could play together?’ but there’s not an answer from Nerissa before the back door swings open and the blonde monster emerges. She races over to the sandbox, walking over the half-completed tyrannosaur dig and kicking over the Hadrosaur beside Ephrelle. A pink shoe is swinging back to kick Ephrelle too when it suddenly freezes, and the filly knows that she’s been recognized.
She should have known it was too good to last.
Front legs both caved in
Despite her ardent wishing, Ephrelle doesn’t die.
She simply stares, blank-eyed at the well-defined pectorals of the doll beside her for what feels like years. She sees the fingers twitch every now and then, and wonders if he, too, is wishing for a swift end. Can he still wish without a head? How?
The answers to her questions haven’t come to her, but before they can, she is moved. The human fingers are familiar, and Ephrelle wonders why Nerissa had decided to play with her again after declaring her to damaged. But the voice of this human is not high and shrill, but rather gentle and soothing. “Oh no. Another one. Poor dear.”
It reminds Ephrelle of the way that her mother would talk to her after she’d woken up from a nightmare. Soft and calm and reassuring. “She really did a number on you, huh, little one? I’ll see what I can do to put you back together. Or…well, barring that, at least turn you into something beautiful again” Ephrelle begins to hope again.
She is so full of hope that it must be bursting out of her battered body.
For quite a while she remains in the dark, rustling about with objects she cannot see. One she does recognize, Ken, who was pulled out of the trash with her. His headless presence is comforting, and for a while Ephrelle drifts off into what must be plastic-toy sleep.
When she wakes up she is alone on a large wooden surface. She is unable to move, and when she sees the mom-voiced human come back into the room she knows why. At least she’s not with Nerissa. Mom-voiced Human has her arms full of a wide variety of somethings, all of which she dumps onto the surface beside Ephrelle. She is humming something to herself, and while it is not like anything Ephrelle has heard before, she is sure that it is a song her own mother would know too. It seems like a mother sort of thing to sing.
Though she cannot see what is happening from where she lies on her side, Ephrelle listens to the sounds that Mom-Voice is making. There is rustling and a sharp metal slicing. When she is picked up at last she doesn’t tense – she is sure that she will be alright. The metal slicing comes very close to her twisted around head, and Ephrelle watches as the last strands of her silver and green mane fall to the table. In their place Mom-Voice tucks a bobby-pin into the slot at the top of Ehprelle’s neck. She’s tied purple thread to it, and after she’s secured it with an uncomfortably (but not entirely painful) dollop of hot glue, she brushes it smooth against Ephrelle’s purple neck. A bit of white modeling clay is glued to the place where Ephrelle’s ear would be, and she can hear again.
There’s pressure on her hindquarters and she can feel her back leg being pulled out to where it belongs. “You little ponies are tough,” the Mom-Voice says, “though I don’t’ think your front legs are going to do as well. ” Ephrelle feels fingers tugging at her recessed front legs. The left one pops out after a good bit of tugging, but the right one refuses to do the same. Clucking her tongue, the human lifts up something else that glints like the metal slicers. This is not so benevolent a tool, it would seem. Ephrelle feels the plastic on the right side of her chest being sliced open by the little X-acto knife.
She sees her leg fall onto the table and feels the air flow into the hole in her body.
It feels so strange.
“This one doesn’t quite match,” she hears, “but maybe we’ll do the same to your other one and it’ll look alright.” There is more hot glue pressed to her, this time it rings the hole where her leg had once been. Something is pressed onto the hole, but she doesn’t have time to see what it is before she’s flipped over and her other leg is being sliced off. No! She wants to shout; No, that one is fine! But she can say nothing, and waits for the glue and the thing to be attached to that side as well.
Mom-Voice stands her upright, and Ephrelle realizes that whatever the human has attached to her, they are working exactly like her legs did at holding her up. Mom-Voice starts to pick up another handful of purple thread, but then pauses and makes a thoughtful noise. She says something that sounds like “Ee-kwee-sore”, which is obviously a word that Ephrelle cannot recognize. Something solid and not at all like thread is affixed to her rump with still more hot glue, and then more modeling clay is affixed down her spine.
Mom-Voice blows on Ephrelle’s statuesque figure even as her hands snap open a tube that she squeezes onto the table. It’s gold, almost like Nayl’s eyes, and Ephrelle suddenly wonders what her friend is up to. She does not have time to wonder for long, as the paint is brushed onto her body with the delicate strokes of a paintbrush. First it covers the modeling clay on her spine, and then her ears – both the natural one and the repaired one. Mom-Voice paints all four of her legs and then the thing where her tail had once been. She puts the paintbrush down and Ephrelle thinks that perhaps she is finished with the paint. But no, she picks up a toothpick and murmurs something about “It’s all in the details. Let’s add some scales”, before dipping the end into the paint. The toothpick looks sharp but she is very gentle with Ephrelle. Mom-voice dabs it around her face for the most part, and around the edges of where she has already painted gold.
“There,” says Mom-Voice, and she pushes herself away from the table to stand over Ephrelle. Though the filly cannot turn to see what Mom-Voice is doing, the sounds she is making are pleasurable ones. Perhaps she has made Ephrelle pretty again. That would probably be too much to hope for, but Ephrelle is just so very good at hoping.
It takes several more hours for Mom-Voice to leave the room, but when she does, Ehprelle sighs happily. She has four legs again, and really that’s all she needs to be a good Amazon. But what exactly are these legs?
She lifts one up curiously. The gold paint is still a little tacky and it takes her a moment, but when she extends it in front of her at last, it looks like no leg she recognizes. Instead of a hoof there are five short, wide toes with short, hoof-like tips. The other leg is just the same. She can wiggle each of the toes individually, which is rather fun, and they hold her weight as she steps forward.
When she falls over, it is not the fault of her new legs at all. The something where her tail had been swings to the side and unbalances her. Ephrelle topples over with a grunt and feels the strange pressure of the modeling clay additions to her spine. What are those? Without standing up, Ephrelle flicks her tail to the side (or rather, does what she would have done with her regular body to flick her tail to the side). To her surprise, her tail responds.
The problem is that it is not the tail she is used to. Where is her lovely long-haired tail? This is a tail like she has never seen before! It is painted gold like her legs, and there are four spikes at the end of it. There are also alternating golden plates that run up the length of it, and are presumably just like the ones that are now on her spine. She tries, but cannot move the ones on her back. Her tail though, is responsive and she flicks it around a few times before trying to stand. Knowing now that her new tail is quite heavy, she takes a step forward with her right leg and swings her tail to the left. The motions offset each other perfectly, and after a bit more practice Ephrelle is galloping along the tabletop with her new legs.
When morning comes, and the door to the kitchen opens, it is not Mom-Voice who sees Ephrelle first. It is a smaller person, but not Nerissa. The scream that she lets out is equally as shrill though, and Ephrelle wishes that she could wince away from it. The hands that reach for her are gentle like Mom-Voice’s were. The girl starts shouting “Mom! Mom did you get this for me?!”, and Ephrelle’s world is once again a blur as the girl races through the house to find her mother.
“Yes, she’s for you.” Ephrelle hears Mom-Voice say, and the filly puts the facts together. So Mom-Voice really is a mom, and this other human must be her daughter. “She’s an Equisaur. I thought she might make a good companion for you on your paleontological expeditions.” Ephrelle doesn’t quite know what all those words mean, but she’s put on the floor for a moment while the girl hugs her mother in gratitude. “I’m so excited! Thank you Mom! I’m going to go show her the dig site right now!” Ehprelle is picked back up at carried, full speed, out the back door. The girl, who Ehprelle decides must be Lena if Mom-Voice saying: “Don’t forget your sunblock Lena,” as they left was any indicator.
Ephrelle is placed on the lip of a sandbox littered with buckets, shovels, and assorted sizes of paintbrushes. Lena talks – mostly to Ephrelle but also to herself – about the dinosaurs that they are looking for. She starts with shovels, and then when she hits something begins to brush away the sand with the paintbrushes. A dinosaur emerges from the sand one body part at a time, and the process is repeated until Lena has four lined up beside Ephrelle on the lip of the sandbox. Mom-Voice calls out the door that it is lunch time, and as Lean disappears inside Ephrelle turns to the dinosaur beside her.
“Hello.” She says, pressing her new gold nose to the Hadrosaur’s shoulder. “I’m Ehprelle.” The dinosaur blinks slowly and then shakes the sand off its sides before looking at Ephrelle. “Oh hello there miss,” He replies, tilting his narrow head as though to see her better. “You must be new, and from the looks of it another rescue. Bet you’re glad to be away from the Monster?” Ephrelle, knowing that he must mean Nerissa, nods. The Hadrosaur seems intrigued by her feet and tail, and circles her slowly.
“Looks like you might have been one us at some point. Did Lean’s mom fix you up too? I think I recognize Steggo in those feet – guess she didn’t make it. That’s such a shame, she was a kind one.” Ephrelle isn’t sure how to reply. What does one say to the friend of a toy whose body parts you’re now composed of? But it doesn’t seem that the dinosaur is really looking for a reply; he’s just talking.
“No! I saw them! Those are my toys and you stole them!” The shouting comes from inside the house, and Ephrelle winces. That is not a voice that she’d wanted to hear again. “Just because I didn’t take them out of the bag for three years doesn’t mean I don’t want them! I love dinosaurs!” There are quieter voices, something about ‘don’t put things on the curb if you want them’ and ‘we could play together?’ but there’s not an answer from Nerissa before the back door swings open and the blonde monster emerges. She races over to the sandbox, walking over the half-completed tyrannosaur dig and kicking over the Hadrosaur beside Ephrelle. A pink shoe is swinging back to kick Ephrelle too when it suddenly freezes, and the filly knows that she’s been recognized.
She should have known it was too good to last.