Keepsake's Tale [Fruit Inflation Apocalypse]

Our first patient arrived in a fury. A patch of red discoloration rested on the nose of an otherwise pink pegasus mare who barged into our clinic, her reddish mane disheveled as tears streamed from her widened eyes. Panicked and out of breath, she told us that she woke up to find the unusual feature, demanding us to examine and treat it before the redness moved anywhere else. We at first scoffed and passed it of as an allergic reaction – someone’s nose turning red, after all, is no cause for alarm if she just caught a piece of the hay fever spreading around the town. We further thought our suspicions were abated when she told us that the last item she ate was a bowl of cherries before going to bed. At that instance, we simply advised to avoid consuming cherries in the future, and the reaction will subside in time.

What we did not anticipate was the redness deepening and spreading across her face, swelling and plumping her cheeks while complaining that a strong cherry taste lingered in her mouth. Both she and her nurses were horrified when they found the same color staining the otherwise pink coat on her stomach, bulging slightly in the spot as though a fluid had built up inside. Our previous diagnoses of allergies or simple indigestion were ruled out instantly; the pony in our care was patient zero for a previously unseen condition, and one which had to supervise around the clock.

Despite physical therapy and attempts to push the fluid out of her system, the spread of the discoloration proved unresponsive. The red color only deepened as it coursed throughout her entire body, spreading from her stomach to her chest and rump and multiplying the rate of her swelling to obscene levels. Her body eventually started to develop a spherical shape, her back arching and swelling in such a way that it equaled the radius from her center to her midsection. Her wings had become helpless stubs along with the rest of her limbs, as resting her on her stomach or back prevented her hooves from reaching the floor. She lost all capacity to move on her own after only a matter of days, and her only method of locomotion at this point was for our nurses to push her. Because of her uncontrollable tendency to stain the sheets beneath her, the nurses and I had the arduous task of pushing the heavy mass from bed to bed daily. Strangely, her hide had developed flexible, even malleable property, and each hoof which pressed against her tended to sink in by a few millimeters. Her body still felt like a pony’s flesh and all of her hair seemed to remain in place, but simultaneously she had a taut, balloon-like hollowness which echoed the sloshing of the juice inside each time we had to roll her to another room.

Within the first week, our patient was more cherry than mare, a giant specimen of perfectly spherical fruit which only had a few indications of her previous pony existence. Five indentations across the juice-filled balloon replaced where her legs and head were, the bottom of her hooves sunken deep inside the smooth hide which once could be defined as connective joints. Her head was a gurgling, sputtering mess of attempted communications which only leaked a dark red fluid from the mouth, and each breath she made filled the room with the scent of freshly picked fruit.

I could easily perceive her shame in her debased position from the juice-colored tears dampening her plump cheeks, but our nurses did their best to make her feel comfortable as they transported her to different rooms. The fact that she leaked from every pore and orifice seemed to do little to reduce her swelling, and it likely did not help that she was constantly in full display. I dared to believe that she was experiencing some arousal from the whole ordeal, though whether the continuous torrent of liquid oozing from her sex was a passive attempt at her body’s release of fluid or a genuine indication of her pleasure, I never figured properly.

Just when we believe we had our first patient settled into a routine, a surprise second patient entered showing many of the same conditions. The yellow unicorn stallion had developed a patch of orange on his stomach, having a rind-like texture in contrast to the fuzzy coat around it. When asked, he assured that he had consumed an orange he picked from an orchard just the previous day, and by then we understood that this was no isolated incidence. By now, no one was without their concerns, and the entire clinic’s staff began hypothesizing and expecting the worst. What if these fruits were already delivered to markets? What if these incidences spread throughout Equestria? What if it already has? Are there already hospitals elsewhere stuck with the same problem? Would it be possible to develop a cure? If all of the fruits from this orchard or network of orchards were tainted with some sort of magic, and more than one pony visited it or ate a fruit from it within the past week, we had to prepare ourselves for an influx of rounded, fruit-colored ponies walking through our door and taking up every room possible. The entire nurse staff set out and made as many beds as it could, anticipating a full epidemic state of emergency which may have arrived in the near future.

Unfortunately, our predictions and suspicions proved all too accurate. In addition to our cherry and orange ponies, an entire fruit basket showed up to our doorstep, all of whom confirmed their consumption of fruit within the past twenty-four hours. Some of the ponies still maintained their coat as they swelled – a peach, a blueberry, a pear, a strawberry. Others mutated in a slightly different way and, like the orange, found their coat replaced by the rind of their fated fruit – an apple, a cantaloupe, a pumpkin, and one poor sod who kept poking himself and everyone around him with his pineapple spines. More than one patient was too late in identifying the problem, as their progression had gone so far that they had trouble fitting through the clinic entrance. We had to pull on them a little until we could finally get the roundest point of them onto the lobby floor, and our doorsill began to look worse for wear as a result.

At first, we pinned this influx of already progressed fruit ponies on negligence for not realizing the problem sooner, but one stallion who had to speak for his watermelon of a wife stated that her condition arrived suddenly. There was no denying that more than one orchard had been afflicted with the same magic which swelled its consumers, and judging by some of the more recent stories, the magic had already adapted in such a way that its effects were arriving at greater speed and intensity than our initial cherry-flavored patient.

By now, everyone on the staff had sworn off of consuming any fruit, as there was no telling which sources had the magic, or if there were any unafflicted fruits left in existence. We received word from Princess Celestia that hospitals across the region were almost literally filled to the brim with fruit ponies of all varieties, leaking juice and requiring the few ponies who are still mobile to push them where they need to be. No city or township could avoid having a population of bloated, sloshing ponies amidst their population, for the prevalence and ubiquity of fruit in the pony lifestyle made condition all the more difficult to restrain. At long last, however, the number of victims stabilized, and no new reports were received.

The damage had been done, however; no less than half of Equestria’s population was reported as being affected in some variety, and every hospital, even those situated in metropolitan areas, were severely understaffed to the point that many ponies remained at their homes, left to the care of loved ones. For the first time in a month, however, it appeared we had finally won, defeating the cursed spell at its own game. Once the news spread that no new ponies were coming in to report any signs of transformation, any citizens who could still work set out to maintain their numbers. Fruit farmers who were fortunate to not eat their crop destroyed their orchards entirely and worked toward replacing them with vegetable gardens or grain fields, for leafy greens and cereals remained outside of the disease’s influence. We may not have had as many ponies actively moving, but at the very least, everyone survived. Moreover, the giant fruits started to become content in their condition, grateful to still be alive after the initial shock, and Equestria as a whole lived peacefully once more.

However, no one could have expected the disease to take a new form. Or rather, it adapted once again. We first noticed it when one of our nurses, after tending to a patient, developed a bright raspberry-colored splotch on her nose. She belched out a fruity scent as a spot on her undercarriage developed a peculiar, yet all too familiar texture, though she insisted that she had consumed neither a piece of fruit nor any juice from one of the patients. More and more of our staff began to produce juice and grow rounder in just a matter of days, but strict monitoring of all our staff revealed that no one had consumed anything sweeter than salads or bread. It dawned on us in an instant, though no one wanted to believe it – the pandemic, as though it had realized our plans to reduce its spread, had mutated to become an airborne contagion. We were all in the vicinity of numerous patients, and we were all prime targets for becoming exactly like them in a matter of time.

We could only wait and watch, in both fear and some degree of morbid curiosity, as every nurse and doctor in the establishment expanded, rounded out to grotesque proportions, changed color and texture, and started drooling the sickeningly sweet fluid in such a way that rivaled our peers. Our growth seemed more gradual than many of the more recent cases, more resembling the speed at which it consumed patient zero – perhaps a side effect of the disease adjusting to its new dispersal tactic. The slow pace, however, made the process all the more torturous; we all knew what we would become, and we all have to feel every inch of our bodies creep slowly to peak ripeness as the juice wells like a bubbling spring within us. I often wished that the condition would just take over already so I could adapt to a new life, though I am also somewhat grateful that I have at least a few more hours in which I can write these letters.

Perhaps that first pegasus who arrived with a cherry-colored spot on her nose will become an example for us. I understand that, in the month she had as a giant fruit, her restlessness refused to simply keep her an immobile juice balloon. She began to develop a method of using what little function of her muscles she had to roll at her own will, and even though she has a hard time speaking without a spray of cherry juice escaping from her lips, she learned how to remain coherent despite her slobbering, overfilled cheeks. Before, she had only impressed us on the level of making the most of an unfortunate circumstance; now, we all look to her in the hopes of following her lead, learning from her so we can remain a society of functional, if mildly compromised, beings. We may appear helpless, comical, and even stupid, but at the very heart of us, we are still ponies. We just happen to be victims of a fate which none of us could predict.

So for the moment, we have to make the most of our problem. We understand that the princesses are locked away, safely avoiding contact from any fruit or fruit pony until they can develop an antidote. We are unsure if their research will bear any results any time soon, or even if they will develop a cure at all. In the meantime, however, we shall exist to the greatest extent we can as a community of living fruits, sustained only by our determination to adapt to the world just as our plague adapted around us. If, by any chance, these words meet the eyes of another individual, whether you are a spontaneous stranger or Princess Celestia herself, just know that we are nothing which warrants your alarm. We live with the cards dealt to us, and we are fortunate to claim that we have not surrendered yet.

It pains me to know that this may be the last time I may ever write for a long time, if at all, but I have already grown comfortable with the idea of what my body will become by the time I wake up in the morning. I can already hear my oversized stomach churning and groaning as the liquid builds and sloshes inside of it, and my once light-blue coat has discolored into a rich violet-black before my eyes. The taste of grapes is unbearable on my tongue, but I was assured I will learn to accept it in time. Not even my cutie mark was safe. What was once a locked chest and key on my hip had vanished, a bunch of grapes now in their place. If this was, in fact, my new destiny, I might as well accept it gracefully.

My forelegs struggle to hold this journal as I can barely reach them across my widened chest, and this pen is gradually becoming harder to keep a hold of in my teeth the more I drip juice all over it. I fortunately have just enough leeway and range of motion to finalize these notes before I lose access to my limbs altogether, and never before have I been more grateful to at least have that ability. If at some point I return to my normal shape, or I can at least uncover a way to hold a pen and paper without ruining them, I promise myself to never again take such dexterity lightly.

I implore anyone who happens across this message to entirely disregard the stains on the pages, and instead take to heart the meaning of the words on them. I write solely for the purpose of maintaining my identity, as well as the identities of my fellow ponies. By this retelling of events for any audience who bothers to read it, I only wished to chronicle, to the best of my memory, the reasoning for which we became this way, and to clarify any misconceptions about our true nature. If anything in this passage can be used to set matters right and return us all back to normal, I would be humbled to know that I at least played my part, however unintentional it may have been. If, however, no one finds my story at all and these words remain an obscure relic for my eyes only, I will be content in knowing that, at the very most, I have an internal indication of who I was – or, rather, who I still am.

Yours truly,
Keepsake