Aiden definitely hadn’t joined a cult.

Well, he had joined an isolated community of like-minded individuals. Specifically, he’d joined a community built around weird quasi-spiritual practices. But it still wasn’t a cult! Even if it had very culty vibes.

He sighed and pulled his phone out of the pocket of his overalls, which was the easy part. The clothing was designed for clumsy hands, with velcro, large pockets, and a loose fit. Unlocking the phone was not so easy.

Facial recognition had started failing within a week, a testament to the accuracy of the technology given he had still looked mostly the same in the mirror then. Unlocking it with his thumbprint was even more of a problem: the digit was clubbed with a thick black fingernail. He didn’t even have recognisable whorls anymore, and his phone refused to acknowledge the attempt to swipe his thumb over the scanner.

It took him two tries, but he managed to stab his passcode into the touch screen. From then on, he could use voice control. “Search warning signs for a cult”. At least the voice recognition still worked with his new bass voice.

And the warning signs that came up were all about authoritarianism, about isolation, about control. Aiden wasn’t exactly a prisoner; they were happy to let him hike two hours up this mountain, which was the nearest place to have any cell phone reception. Authoritarianism? They didn’t even really have a leader. If anything, this place was more hippie commune than cult. Although, to be entirely fair, they were absolutely a cult in the old Latin sense of the word. There was a giant pagan idol, and they gave it sacrifices…

It was really hard to beat the ‘cult’ accusations if your hippie commune was ritually burning grain mixed with incense. Like non-starter levels of hard.

Since he had already made the hike and unlocked his phone, he updated his social media page. Aiden wasn’t much of a social media personality; he just posted a fairly dry account of his week at the commune with a selfie.

No one believed him, of course – he was just ‘writing in character’ and ‘had world-class photoshop skills’ – but the endless notifications and comments that filtered in were an infinite stream of dopamine hits. No matter how much he scrolled, there was always more.

He didn’t try to read them all, instead flipping through the countless pages, letting the overall tone wash over him. Of course, there were the inevitable haters as well; it was the internet, after all. It didn’t matter. The commenters saying that his ‘photoshop’ was obviously fake were entertaining in their own right. He enjoyed laughing at them almost as much as he enjoyed the positive remarks.

But, of course, it didn’t stay just there; that wasn’t how these devices worked. It was all interlinked from offtopic comments to things reposted by his friends to what the various inline advertisements displayed. Everything from the rest of the larger world was being shoved into his face, and the phone wanted nothing more than to lure him into that web, to trap him online, endlessly engaging with more content.

And, not to put too fine a point on things, it was not going well in the outside world – the news was a never ending sea of horror, terrible events to read about for as long as he wanted to scroll. It was all too much – there was a reason he had joined basically the pagan version of a monastery, after all.

When he looked up from the screen, he suddenly realised he was nearly blind – the sun had set, and his vision was still adapted to the bright screen. He was alone in a black void, only a blinding white square in his palm. He put the phone away and velcroed the pocket closed. After waiting for his eyes to adjust, he started the long hike back down.

Thankfully, he had excellent night vision these days. Well, only in his right eye, the one with his pupil melting into a square shape. But he also found he relied less on depth perception these days, so it all worked out.

***

The following day it was Aiden’s turn at the grain mill, which was not as fun as it sounded, and it didn’t sound very fun in the slightest. He needed to walk around and around in a circle, pushing on a large handle, which rotated a large, heavy millstone. It was incredibly heavy work, which is why there was another handle on the opposite side.

He’d been paired with Kevin again. Their organisation didn’t have any formal hierarchy, but cynically, it was because they didn’t need any artificial hierarchy. Kevin’s head was already fully covered in grey fur with long ears. He could still speak, though the large tongue in his muzzle-shaped mouth rendered his words mushy and unclear.

And, of course, he was ludicrously strong. Aiden wasn’t even entirely sure he was needed because Kevin was doing most of the work in rotating the thing. Every step he stomped against the ground with his powerful hindquarters caused the wheel to rotate forcefully. Aiden was practically dragged along by it before he could catch up and push against the ground.

No, they didn’t need badges and titles, not when the goddess so clearly marked those she deemed worthy. Aiden tried not to focus on how far behind he was and pushed harder against the heavy wheel.

“Are you okay?” Kevin asked lightly. Aiden could understand him easily despite the mumbling – he was even capable of understanding the braying of those who had utterly lost their human vocal cords. Their goddess was generous with the gift of comprehension.

“I guess,” Aiden shrugged before stamping the ground again, his legs burning as he pushed. “It just sucks the world is going down the drain, and we’re doing nothing about it.”

“We are,” Kevin said. “We’re milling grain so that our brethren can eat, and so that we have something to use for the rituals. That’s making the whole world a better place in a small way.”

“You know what I meant,” Aiden said.

“But I don’t think you understand what I meant,” Kevin didn’t pause the grinding as he spoke, his voice level despite the significant physical effort involved. “Wheat flour is cheap. It would be much more effective if we got satellite internet and then did gig work online and used the money earned to buy bulk shipments of wheat. But we aren’t doing that.”

Aiden bit back his first reply, which was that it obviously wouldn’t fit the vibe of the place if they did that. He took a moment to genuinely think about it. “I guess it matters in, like, a spiritual way? Helps me gain an understanding of the goddess?”

“I prefer to think about it on a slightly larger scale. It matters on a spiritual level for the community, not just yourself. It means something to have traditionally prepared foods; for people who eat it to know someone worked for it. For most of history, people had no concrete concept of the larger world and precious little say in its direction; they just focused on doing their individual little bit of good in their immediate community. However that looked for them.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Aiden said. His shoulders and legs were already burning, and their work shift had only begun. He worked silently but kept mulling Kevin’s words over in his head, mostly because contemplating abstract philosophy was more fun than contemplating the burning ache in his muscles.

What did this even have to do with a donkey goddess?

And then suddenly, all the pieces came together in his head, a genuine insight of the kind he hadn’t had in a while. Pain flared up from the ground into his legs as if he had stepped on a burning spike with each foot. Jagged lightning bolts of pain that made everything go far away, pulsing with his heartbeat.

He leaned against the pole, and he dimly heard the tear of velcro as his slippers burst open. He took deep breaths, waiting for his heartbeat to go back to normal. The sensation was already fading – it didn’t hurt anymore, but each thud still sent pins and needles shooting up his legs.

Had he suddenly gotten taller? No, he was just standing on tiptoe.

He looked down eagerly. His toes were gone completely – all melded into one whole now. He couldn’t come down to stand on flat feet anymore, even if he wanted to. Not quite a hoof, at least not yet, his melded toes shared a single thin rim of pearlescent toenail. It would blacken and widen as he meditated further on this latest bit of enlightenment.

Kevin had stopped rotating the mill, waiting patiently for Aiden to recover, and now he was staring expectantly. It wasn’t mandatory to share insights, but it was common politeness. No amount of words could further someone else’s transformation; you couldn’t cheat your way up the ranks by just asking others what they had learned. But sharing perspective sometimes helped others along, giving them a tiny piece of the puzzle they had to assemble.

“I was thinking of animals, I guess,” Aiden said, which was kind of obvious considering he was sporting a new pair of proto-hooves. But it was hard to explain enlightenment with mere words, and he had never been that good with words.

“People think animals, especially donkeys, are stupid,” Aiden continued. “Because they don’t, like, build a civilisation. And I realised that's wrong because there are lots of ways to be smart. They have friends, they can use tools, and they can solve puzzles. The one thing they can’t do is worry about the wider world – they always live in the present, what they can see in front of them, and take the future as it comes. And I realised… I would be happier if I did that more often.”

Kevin just smiled at him and started rotating the mill again. Aiden wasn’t surprised; he wasn’t going to tell someone more senior than him anything they didn’t already know. He started pushing again, and it was shockingly easy. His bare feet bit deep into the sand with every step, carving circular divots, and his legs felt twice as strong. He could do this all day!

He carried on with his now much lighter work. Sometimes, it helped to be reminded of why he had come here in the first place. When he rotated past his abandoned slippers again, he kicked them out of the way. He didn’t need them anymore.

***

His next hike up the mountain for cellphone reception was more effortless than ever, physically at least. By now, his hooves were covered in proper horn all around, and he practically leapt up the treacherous slope.

And yet, it was starting to feel less worth it. He still diligently updated his profile with a picture of his hooves and started scrolling through the comments and likes under his last post. There were more every week, all the same set of standard reactions over and over and over again.

He didn’t know any of these people really. How could he? There were simply too many of them, an anonymous cheering crowd scattered across the world. Did it really matter exactly how big the crowd was? Did he care that it was a bit bigger this week than the last? And, as always, the horror that was current events was there waiting for him, just a link away, just a scroll further down.

Aiden started walking back before the sun had even set, feeling tired and unsatisfied. He’d reached the point where his fingers were beginning to melt into each other, which meant he couldn’t use the touchscreen at all anyways. He had to jab at it with a stylus held in his mouth, which was a frustratingly inconvenient experience.

***

The following week, his task assignment had changed to working to help plough a field. He and another initiate were together on a single plough. The plough was an entirely custom design made here by a blacksmith; it could either be pushed by two (mostly) humans or pulled by a single four-legged donkey in harness.

Jen was standing next to him, and ‘yes that was really her name, no she hadn’t changed it, yes what a funny coincidence’. She hadn’t been here long – she still looked almost entirely human except for her bulging eyes, which were fully brown without a hint of white and two large square pupils.

No one else Aiden knew of had received the gift of the eyes first, and the effect of the animalistic eyes staring out of a human face was striking. Like the donkey she would become was already here, merely covered by a thin layer of human skin.

Aiden was doing most of the work, but Jen still gamely did her best to help push the plough forward through the hard dirt. “Have you ever wondered,” she asked, “if this nameless donkey goddess is even real? Has anyone done radiocarbon dating on this supposedly ancient statue?”

Aiden was so surprised he actually stopped pushing the plough forward, which caused it to ground to a shuddering halt. He turned to look at her in confusion before gesturing at himself. He wasn’t anywhere near fully transformed, but there was scarcely a part of him left that was fully human. It wasn’t exactly subtle.

“Yes, yes,” Jen waved his objection away like a buzzing fly. “There are miracles that defy our current scientific understanding, and they seem correlated with certain ritual practices, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s an anthropomorphic asinus goddess with agency that rewards faith. That’s a very human way of looking at it, you know.”

Aiden crouched a bit and kicked hard against the ground, and they got the plough moving again. “How is being turned into a donkey a very human thing?”

“Because humans want there to be a human mind behind everything!” Jen said cheerfully as she helped him push the plough forward. “Ice crystals on the window? Hand-painted by Jack Frost. The sun moves across the sky? Dragged by Apollo. If this goddess even ‘exists’ as a deity, it’s the older pagan kind, the kind that doesn’t care about faith and that accepts your sacrifices as part of a transactional relationship.”

“It feels like you’re overcomplicating it,” Aiden shrugged. “Worship the donkey goddess, and she will turn you into a donkey.”

That didn’t seem to deter Jen very much. “You can’t just shove everything inexplicable in a box, give the box a label, and say you understand it because you named it. These are the questions that need to be asked! My leading theory is still that it's related to a particular state of mind, and all these rituals and traditions are just to help you get there, but you don’t actually need them.”

Aiden was about to say something dismissive again when he realised something. “Wait, does that mean if you can learn to keep the right mindset, you can leave here and keep the gifts?”

“Conceivably!” Jen said brightly, still trying her best to help push the plough along. “It must be a very specific mindset because it’s not like random grain farmers in Idaho are growing donkey ears. Also, it must be a very community-focused one because when people leave, they generally lose the gifts. But I think it must be possible!”

Aiden said nothing. He was still reeling. He’d had an insight, a genuine one, of the kind that was usually accomplished by the gut-wrenching pain/pleasure of transformation. Instead, he just suddenly understood his future, and he knew what he had to do.

It wasn’t for him to hide in this isolated place, connected to the wider world by just the thin parasocial strands of patchy phone reception. He couldn’t and wouldn’t judge those who came here to stay forever. That just wasn’t the best thing for him.

Call it a divine message from the goddess or just a regular epiphany. Either way, he was going to reenter the larger world. He would step back into his old life with the lessons he had learned here.

***

Years passed after he left. The world continued to get worse. Aiden persisted nonetheless. Helping those he could, doing whatever little bit he could, even when it felt like a pointless struggle against insurmountable odds.

After all, if nothing else, he had learned the merits of stubbornly persisting. The value in doing honest work in service of your immediate social group, perhaps better than any fully human person could ever know.

He was framing a clipping from the local newspaper, which included a nice picture of him and a few other volunteers at the community centre when he suddenly froze. Hands shaking, he dug out a magnifying glass and examined it closely, close enough to see the individual speckles of ink.

In mirrors, he still saw himself as he was when he had left the compound. Even digital pictures showed him that way on his own devices. Usually, most of the changes were hidden by clothes, but his one donkey eye always stood out sharply, as if it were an unfinished poem, the missing half of a rhyming couplet. It never let him forget the lessons he had learned or the lessons he still had to learn.

And yet, newspapers were different from mirrors or electronic devices: they were cold and dead. Frozen ink on static paper. They always showed him the way others would see him. Fully human.

But now, looking through the magnifying glass, he could see grey fur starting to grow on his slightly elongated ears.

***

I took this tweet as a prompt: https://bsky.app/profile/paulabrayd...../3lhbnljac622m

Wonderfully edited by Zilepo :)