The long walk back from Everfree after a patently exhausting and largely unfruitful trek through the forest’s depths weighed heavily upon Mercury as she skirted the woods on her way back to Ponyville. She’d been searching for new species of plants to document and test the properties of, for often they prove useful in alchemical experimentation. The mare yawned to herself, half lidded expression betraying her sleepiness even though the sun was still high in the sky.
 
Mercury stumbled and tripped, nearly falling on her face and bringing her out of her sleepy delirium with a start… she hadn’t even noticed that she’d strayed from the path and evidently gotten herself tangled up in a dark brown vine with deeply hued leaves. It looked remarkably out of place, she thought to herself as she grumpily looked back at her hooves, twisting side to side to extricate herself from the offending plant. It looked almost like an Everfree species she’d heard of before, but she was safely outside the bounds of the forest, surely it couldn’t be?
 
Her movements however, they seemed only to cause this vine to constrict around her hind hooves, tightly squeezing them together as the vine takes on animate motion, creeping and twisting, twirling and growing around her hind legs and enveloping them. The sticky tendrils grip her fur and venture upward, curling around her chest, flanks, and up to her neck, squeezing tighter and tighter. Mercury felt a tug on her hooves that were securely encased in the vines as they began to fuse together at the base, turning to a much stiffer sheath of wood and rooting her hooves firmly to the ground.
 
The mare yelped as the embrace of the vines thickened around her, wildly flailing her limbs and tugging at the roots that held her fast to the spot. The spreading wood from the base of the vines crept further upward, encasing her hind legs up to her hips and squeezing almost painfully tight. She felt the tingle of magic in her legs, sensation deadening as the wood bulked up around them, seemingly as if she were merging with the wood… to her dismay she spots the bark upon the trunk forming around her leeching the color of her coat upon itself, a sandy beige, lightening all along its length.
 
Mercury turned to panic, yelping and calling out for help to any pony that may have been around… but she was thoroughly alone: this was not the most traveled of roads and it could be hours before another pony happens along, and by then… by then…! She didn’t even want to ponder the possibilities as a new force swept over her, movement of the trunk and the vines as it tilted backward, pulling her forehooves from the ground and lifting her upward onto what had been her hind hooves. She twists and bucks as much as she can, but the vines now looped around her forelimbs too, restricting any movement she could think to make as they snaked around her neck and chest, their vice grip restricting her breath. Small purple buds had popped out along some of the vine’s length, growing alongside the mysterious plant and hapless pony trapped in its embrace.
 
The vines surged forward with new energy as they covered her core, lightening all around to her sandy beige and drying out, forming a papery striped bark that enveloped her form. She felt her forehooves wrenched to each side at impossible angles, stretched outward and upward as the vines had their way with her, bones popping and crackling as it went along, magic taking hold. She could barely do more than twitch and shiver in the grip of the plant, her forelimbs being stretched out longer and longer, until with a crack and a pop they split at the ends. Mercury would have called out in fear at the sight, but a stray vine now twisted around her muzzle, clamping it firmly and permanently shut, she could barely manage a muffled squeak.
 
Willowy grey leaves spread out in huge tufts from the ends of her hooves… no… they were no longer hooves, they now more appeared like branches to her, eyes darting around from side to side, desperate for any help or way to escape the magic. More volume built up in the leaves, encroaching upon her vision as the vines formed around her head. In the corner of her eyes before the vines covered them she saw the buds sprouting out, spreading into very familiar purple flowers.
 
In mere moments the mare was gone from sight, utterly encased in the unyielding prison of wood and bark as the magic worked further upon her. She felt her bones stiffen and creak from within, her limbs and spine turning to the dense, heartwood of a tree as her flesh followed suit, blood being converted to sticky sap and sapwood. Her mind swam, overwhelmed by the intensity of the sensations that pervaded her remaining senses as her form grew taller and wider, leaves turning to a full, dangling and flowered canopy that swayed slightly in the wind that blew down the path.
 
Mercury couldn’t move even the barest fraction of an inch now as the magic began to fade, her full form changed unrecognizably into that of a mere tree. Her sense of touch was dimmed, the feeling of flowing air on her bark a bare tingle, and the bizarre feeling of her roots stretching deep into the soil below her soaking in the moisture she now needed to survive. Her hearing remained somehow, but muffled, as though she were listening through a thick wooden door, and no amount of sight remained for the poor mare. And yet… she had a vague sense of the shapes and position of what was around her, the path, the grass below, and a few feet in either direction, some aspect of the magic? She couldn’t tell for sure.
 
No trace remained except for the slight resemblance in the color of her bark and leaves to those of her mane and coat, but nopony would ever make such a jump and conclusion… she was trapped here, for as long as she could imagine, for who would ever suspect the willowy tree along the path to Everfree was ever more than it appeared?