Awareness was limited to occasional sensations of floating, warmth, and a dull pounding that Brian both felt and heard. Periods of wakefulness got longer, and there were the first stirrings of movement. It was a strange environment, pitch black and surrounded by thick fluid. Lungs did not move, but there was no sense of needing air. Muted sounds got easier to make out, and muscles responded feebly. Brian began to remember things as brain cells multiplied and the new body grew within the mare. A foal. He had asked to be a foal when Mike mounted a mare. The other boy. Dar. He had put him in the mare's womb. It took a while to understand that he'd started as an egg, his identity magically preserved. As he came closer to term, Brian remembered more, but also became aware of a curious shift in how he thought. The elf he had been was odd in his memory, the mares and stallions normal.
It was more than just the look. The two-legged creatures seemed to communicate with odd sounds and squiggles. Brian tried to remember words and symbols, but even though he knew he had used them himself, he could not comprehend why. More time passed, with Brian now aware and getting stronger. At the same time, the way he thought had continued to simplify, his basic awareness and identity reformed with his body. No longer a transformed elf, Brian was a foal in all ways, with only vague memories of a human past as evidence he had ever been anything else.
The foal felt pressure all around, squeezing, sliding. Something tugged its forelegs, and it slid out into the first light it could remember seeing. Something slick got pulled away from its head, and instinct drove it to take a first shuddery breath. So weak. There were scents all around, all unknown except for the large creature beside it. A two-legged being watched as it struggled to rise, driven by a need, a hunger. After a short time the two-legger came close and used forelegs to help the foal stand on wobbly legs. The foal staggered under the warm scent of mare, and found a teat. It was aware of afterbirth being pulled away, being stroked, soothing sounds, but all that really mattered was the rich milk. The effort of nursing exhausted the foal, and she collapsed in an awkward tangle of spindly legs and fell asleep.