“But I have an interview in an hour! I need this job or I’m going to lose the apartment! I can’t go in looking like this!” she said, mashing the heavy lumps of fatty tissue that protested with sudden pain signals. Her ears flattened against the fluffy tufts of pastel rainbow hair, and white-hot sparks dribbled from her horn. “And stop calling me ‘ma’am!’ I’m a guy! I don’t care what your freaky candy did to me, I’m a guy! I’m going to have the cops shut you down! You can’t do this to people!”

“Now now, ma’am,” the storekeeper said with a smirk as he held up a handmade lollipop. “If you need a job so badly, I need a new clerk here at the store. Sounds good, doesn’t it?”

The colorful confection’s spirals began to twist, rotate, to pull. Pulling the world into itself, pulling her eyes towards the center of the sugary twirls, pulling her attention away from the anger and stress into a calm, rainbow-colored tunnel that was too small for such feelings. Too small for memories to follow. Too small for anything burdensome.

“It would be good to work here at the store for me,” a voice said, guiding her down the tunnel of endless loops and swirls. It was the only other thing in the tunnel with her, that question. The only words. It would be good to work here at the store for him. The only coherent thought in her world at the moment. It would be good to work here at the store for him. The only feeling there was any room for. The feeling, the thought, expanded out to fill the void left by the tunnel of swirling colors.

The thought and the feeling built a tiny island in the tunnel of colors and motion, a seed that could catch and hold her.

“Eye candy sells more eating candy. It’s a good thing to be eye candy when you work at the store for me.” New words began filling the tunnel, attached to the seed of the old words. Their newness was growing out from the existing ones, making the island bigger and more substantial, anchoring her in the swirling colors. An expanding ground truth.

The new words carried the same feeling as before. It would be good. This was the core of the new little world being built around here in the color void, it suffused everything of substance that was coming into being for her.

“Beautiful girls are eye candy for everyone. Everyone loves beautiful girls. It’s good to be a beautiful girl to sell candy in the store. It’s good to be eye candy to work for me in the store. It’s good to be a beautiful girl selling candy for me.”

The voice built out more of her world, adding new truths brick by brick, all with the same feeling. Good. It was good, it would be good, it will be good. A good thing. It’s good. Good. There was no feeling for her other than the one given, the one that permeated the things of substance and reality. Good.

“Sex sells. A beautiful, sexy piece of eye candy sells more candy, and that’s good. It’s good to sell candy if you’re a beautiful, sexy girl.”

Sex sells added to the geography of her little island, shaping it and adding texture like mountains added immovable landscape to their terrain. She saw her world building itself with those truths.

“Everyone loves fantasy,” the voice decreed from someplace unreachable beyond the colorful swirling tunnel, someplace unassailable from which truths can come but no challenge could ever reach. “Kids love unicorns, kids love candy, kids love pretty girls. It’s good to be a pretty unicorn girl when selling candy to kids in my store.”

Like glistening lakes fitting the shore, kids love candy and kids love unicorns fit together without a gap or incongruity in the new land being built for her. Everything led perfectly to the next, they all had the Good shape in common. Such truths as these left no room for doubt or dissension to even exist. It was good to work for him in the store, selling candy, and it was good to be a beautiful girl, a unicorn, eye candy, pretty, sexy, all good for selling candy in his store and working for him. The land laid out for her was marvelous in its completeness, it lacked nothing, and everything went together with the same Good feeling. A perfect little world of nothing but goodness and truth.

At the completion of Creation, the spiraling walls of the tunnel began to tighten and narrow. There was no longer room for her and the world in their confines, so they were moved out into a place of light and angles and corners, and colors that could exist in places beyond the spiraling pattern of the tunnel… of the lollipop. The lollipop in the shopkeeper’s hand. In the store. Where it would be good to work for him!

She blinked, aware once more of herself. She looked away from the lollipop at last, after what had felt like an eternity, at the shopkeeper. He raised an eyebrow, expectantly.

“OH! Um, y-you said I could work here for you at the shop?” she asked. Something about that felt right.

“You know, I could use some more help here. Someone to sell candy at the counter and all that,” he said, nonchalantly. She bristled. How could he treat her working here as something that might not happen? Didn’t he understand how good it would be? Why she… she…

She looked down at herself and was greeted once again by the new features projecting brightly underneath her chin, hiding her feet from view. Sexy, that was good for selling candy! Sex sells, and eye candy sells more eating candy. She glanced at one of the glass cases and saw a beautiful girl looking back at her, a pretty girl, a girl with the fantasy hair, horn, ears, and eyes of a wonderful unicorn.

“I’ll take you up on that!” she said decisively. “You won’t regret it! I’m going to sell you so much candy!”

“Well,” the shopkeeper said with a grin, “That sounds good to me. What’s your name, ma’am?”

“It’s…” nothing. Nothing came out, nothing volunteered, she reached into her head, into the little world of perfect truths so recently revealed to her, and found no names of any kind. Only how good it would be to sell candy here…

“Well that’s okay, I’ll make you up a name tag anyway,” the shopkeeper said, his grin widening into a hard-edged smile. “Something along the lines of ‘Princess Sugarlump’ or such. Wouldn’t that just be perfect for selling candy?”

Princess Sugarlump. She pictured a nametag with that moniker pinned to her vast bust, in great big letters, maybe candy-themed or something with wands and stars and rainbows… Oh yes, that would be awesome for selling candy!

“Yes sir, I think that’s perfect!” she beamed.

“Great! Let me just taking this thing here,” he said, bending down to pick up an old briefcase that had been at her feet, somehow familiar but she couldn’t place… she had a vague recollection of holding it before, when she’d come in. Maybe it was her application to work here? At any rate, he took the briefcase in hand and turned to the back of the store. “I’ll just sort out these papers and get your nametag printed out, Sugarlump. I expect we’ll be selling a lot of candy soon.”

@Background Pony #4439
“I’m sorry ma’am, but please read the label more thoroughly in the future – ‘any prior biological information or genetic structure is permanently lost following ingestion.’”

“Will one of these other candies turn me back?”