“Mom, I’ll get you back to normal,” I said.
“Neeeeiiiggh!!!!” my mom whinnied, suddenly lifting her long neck to my surprise.
“Whoa, mom, do you understand me?” I asked, afraid it had wrecked her mind.
“Neeeiiighhh!!!!” she cried out again.
“Mom, nod your head if you understand me.”
At that moment my mother looked at me intently.
“Mom, do you understand me?”
She continued looking at me. For the first time since she was a baby, she wasn’t thinking in words. In fact, though she knew the sounds the human boy was making stood for communication, she just couldn’t figure out what it meant. She couldn’t remember what any words meant. As he spoke to her, it was just like a foreign language. It seemed familiar, but strain as she might, she couldn’t make sense of it. She knew she was existing in a strange state. She knew without thinking it in words that she had lost her human intelligence and capacity for language, yet she knew at a purely abstract level what language was, that the sounds were important information. She still had experience and understanding that she couldn’t have gotten without language, even though she no longer had the language, and so could cooperate and act less animal-like than a normal horse. In a way she was still herself, as much as she could truly be herself as a horse.
I got the stone again. “All right, you,” I said to the stone angrily. I didn’t want to be too short with it because what if it really was conscious, and vindictive? It was my only chance of fixing anything. “I wish my mom kept her human mind and personality with her human life memories.” I hoped that would work.
To my horror, her horse human hybrid “hands” merged once again into full hoofs! What was going on here!? In moments, my mom was physically entirely a horse with no human trace at all. My mom looked at me. “Do you understand me, nod if you do.”
The horse nodded. My suspicion was that her “hands” were the one part that didn’t completely become equine when I wished she wasn’t turning into a complete animal, but when I specified the part that didn’t change all the way, her hands became 100% horse again. Which meant by not being a complete animal, the stone had interpreted that as her being almost one with just one part left, and once I specified what part that was, there could be no humanity left in any of the rest. I guess it was a bad choice of words. If I hadn’t panicked and said them, this might have been fixed, but now, my mother was a horse, physically. This meant that she was probably stuck this way permanently now. So much for the damn horseshoe being good luck.
My mom whinnied softly, trying to speak and failing. She could think, she could understand, but she couldn’t speak.
“I’m sorry mom, I may not be able to fix this. Whoa! And by whoa, I didn’t mean, to rub it in, that, you know…”
She had just gotten up to stand on all four legs. She experimentally tapped her right front hoof on the floor, astonished at the apparent fact that she not only had a hoof instead of fingers, but couldn’t even imagine what it would feel like to have fingers. She took a stride forward slowly with all four legs in sequence. She swished her tail a few times, swiveling her long neck back to look at it in amazement. She truly was a horse, even in her mental image of herself.
“Suddenly I’m reminded of something. In Mandarin Chinese, the word ma means mother as well as horse, when spoken in different tones, so in your case, it…”
“Rararaaa” my mom grumbled at me.
“I should shut up?” I asked. She nodded.
“Well you’re a horse, but at least you’re still you…”
“Huruhruh” my mom vocalized, as if to say that’s not much consolation.
“EEEEEE EEEEE EEEE!!!!” screached a small animal as it stumbled into the room, making me recoil. It was a rabbit.
“Oh, Zoe, is that you?” I said in further despair. This shitty evil stone, there’s no reason it needed to have interpreted it this way! Was it actually evil after all?
The rabbit like my mother at first showed no sign of comprehension.
“Oh, Zoe…” I tried to say, but it was hard, I couldn’t even think straight because she was still screaching. “Zoe, … stop, I… stop…” I said.
“EEEEEE EEEEE EEEEEE.EEEEE!!!!” continued to screech the rabbit. I didn’t even know rabbits made any sound at all, and she was driving me nuts.
“I wish… you were… a talking rabbit…” I said. After saying it, I realized how horrible what I just said was. I was too distracted. But if I wasn’t careful and hurry to elaborate, she wouldn’t even be Zoe any more, just a talking rabbit, so I scrambled to say more “with your… original… mind… and memories… and enhanced intelligence… higher than before…” what else could I say to make it any better? I couldn’t think of anything. With shapeshifting powers who could take human form, I thought of, but it was too late. The stone was hot and granting the wish.
Zoe stopped screeching at least.
“Jon, what, what’s going on…” Zoe the little rabbit said, on the precipice of a mental breakdown. Her condition was a little better than mom’s at least, she at least could talk. And just on a whim, trying to give her more advantages in life, I had actually asked her to be made smarter than she was as a human. So she was now a genius bunny?
“Mom’s a horse and you’re a rabbit,” I said. Probably permanently, I thought without saying.
“How did this happen?” Zoe cried. “What the fuck! Do you, know, anything, about this, is there any, anything, that can, can… fix…” she was crying too much to finish the sentence. It was stranger in a way to see a bunny rabbit crying like a human than it was hearing it speak, and in Zoe’s voice no less.
My mother’s a horse and my sister is a genius rabbit. It’s my fault. Should I tell them about the stone? Maybe tell them later? It could backfire pretty badly if my mom found a streak of animalistic aggression in her as a result.
