A tongue lapped at a smooth surface.
A chinking sound. Colorful little morsels fell into place.
The tongue swiped across the phone screen. Two sounds of bursting candy; a combo. More fell down.
She lay on her front in bed, a phone underneath her muzzle with a game on it. Over an hour had passed like this, the filly wasting away her time on the device, blasting away at a silly grid of arcade marvel.
The screen went black then, showed the Apple logo for a moment, then shut off. She sighed. She reached up and bit down on the power button, hoping it would light up the screen like it did when she found the phone. Nothing. The battery was dead and she would have to find something else to do now.
↷
The elevator descended.
Cala sat, staring up at the dial showing the floor number. On her left there was a bucket full of water. On her right was a tabby with a rubber ducky in its mouth.
While she had been filling up the bucket in the bathtub, the cat had come in and examined the toys strewn across the bathroom floor. Not enjoying getting his paws wet, he had taken one of the toys and left quickly enough. She had then struggled for a while pulling the bucket across the floor. Not an enjoyable chore, but necessary for her to go somewhere new.
Ding! They arrived at their floor and the doors opened. The cat was quick to leap out, having stood on the wet floor of the elevator long enough, and wandered off somewhere with his new toy. Cala watched a moment as a little bit of the water spilled out onto the floor of the basement level. This ground was made of bumpy concrete; she had forgotten about that. But of course there wasn't any carpet on this level, due to its nature. She looked left at the water she had brought along to help her. Might as well.
She tipped the bucket over. Water splashed into the hallway. The floor became wet.
She crawled across the floor to the entry room of the pool floor. There was a small desk where someone was supposed to be managing the pool every morning, but they were gone. She went ahead past it to the direct access doors, and they looked out on a dark room. Very, very dark; no windows to illuminate it. She went back to the desk and took a minute to find a light switch, then to the doors again.
There. That was the sight of the day, for sure. It used to be a boring place that she would visit every so often, because she didn't really appreciate swimming as much as she could. But now it was a haven. To be able to finally swim freely in the new form she was gifted with. She couldn't imagine leaving after she went swimming around in there, other than maybe in search of a larger pool.
She went inside and up to the side of the pool. She was about to dive right in, but then something caught her eye. On the other side of the room was a diving board. She was never allowed on it before. But now she was alone.
There was no decision to be made. Her first time in the pool as a seapony was going to be radical.
↷
She lunged upward and her teeth nabbed the final rung. She gasped a moment, then released her tail's grip, slowly hunching up and wrapping it around the next bar up. She tensed her muscles and lunged. Her upper body flopped onto the end of the board. The vice-grip her tail had on the ladder slacked and she lifted it up to grasp the final rung below her. She pushed herself further onto the board, then finally relaxed her body as she lay there.
She was getting a workout just trying to accomplish what seemed like mundane tasks to her. Crawling around on the floors all the time, dragging a full bucket, climbing a ladder, navigating a ventilation system... No, scratch the last one; that had been pretty epic. But if she knew how hard it would have been to do that, she wouldn't have started. Once she was halfway up the ladder she hadn't had a way back down.
Now she was on top, though. She wiggled to the end of the board and looked out on the pool. It was a small, dinky thing, really; a low end over there and a deep end under her. There were probably a hundred of these across Seattle alone. Right below her it was fifteen feet deep, and she was several above the surface. Her red reflection looked back up at her from the still water. The pool was usually rippling all over, with at least a few people basking in it or swimming laps back and forth on one side. But now there was nobody around — seriously, people, it's the weekend! Where'd you all go? — so the water was still, and she gazed into her own soft, amber eyes in the still reflection below her. She smiled as she psyched herself up for the dive.
She dropped.
Her nose hit the water first, and the rest of her narrow form slid in after, her elongated tail stretched straight and slipping easily in at last. Her whole body was encompassed by sweet, plentiful water around her. Her skin felt tingly at it all, like she had finally made it where she belonged and her body was thanking her for the relief.
Her breath was still held and her eyes shut closed out of habit. She opened her eyes, and looked around at the space around her. At her own body, floating in the water, suspended without being held flat by a bathtub. Her eyes, too, tingled at the water; she had never been able to open her eyes underwater before. She stayed like that for a few seconds, her heart racing.
Her breath fell short. She understood that she could probably breathe underwater, but she had never done it before, so she continued to compulsively hold it in. But then, it was too much, and she let it all out. Little bubbles and big bubbles flowed out her nose and mouth, and she relaxed and let the water around her embrace her.
She breathed in.
❗
Burn!
Burn fire hot burn sting!
Breathed water, filled gills. Poison! Hurt respiratory!
Skin tingled; skin stung, skin burned. Skin hurt bad! Bad bad bad bad!
Hurtness!
Eyes popped open wide. Muscles all contract. Writhing.
Ants crawled; termites; scorpions burrowed in encapsulating scales. Lungs fire — magma — molten. Reacting to heat!
Saw terrible fortune. Vision: green, white, gold. Pierced. Glow.
Everything glowed goldeny and all hurt and everything! Pain! Paaain!
Black.
⇌