3/3
 
He steels his resolve as the spell works onto his chin and over his lips, the feeling of his jaw fusing shut and the cold tight grip of stone overtaking his muzzle inside and out with the alien sensations of inanimate existence overwhelming his mind. Sylvan furrows his brow as the stone reaches over him like a rising tide, capturing his eyes as it swept over his face, smoothing his features down and leaving him in mere moments an anonymous statue of stone and gold. His eyes were locked forward, still able to see, but dimmed in his vision, the grain and veins of stone a transparent hue over what he could see.
 
He could hear too, but muffled, as if through a thick stone wall; not that there was anything to hear in the silent museum. He felt the last crackles as the stone settles into his body, one last shiver shuddering through him before all went still, the magic spent. The Pegasus was stuck, his mind reeling on that fact, unable to fully comprehend what it meant. Try as he might, not an inch of him responded to his mind’s desperate attempts to move, feeling the tenseness of his muscles vanishing away, his pose permanently forced upon him.
 
It felt oddly comforting, feeling his body settle into the form and his temperature equalizing over the hours that followed until the last of his body warmth had dissipated from the cool stone he had become. Nopony gave him a second glance the next morning as guests and staff alike walked past him. None could hear his mental pleas for help and attention as they walked by, admiring him, some taking pictures. The staff never questioned the arrival of a new statue in their collection, while nopony admitted to being the one who set it up, they figured it was just one of the many pieces of the museum’s collection that weren’t documented in their catalog; it often seemed like artifacts appeared from nowhere in their collection, so it wasn’t unusual to them.
 
Without his name on the sign in sheets, it was never known to look for him here, and even if it were there was little left to indicate that the statue he’d become had ever been a pony, his features smooth and polished over. After a few days the trapped pony stopped pleading for help, knowing it would never come. He resigned to finding the positives of his permanent predicament. He’d never age, never ail, never die… he was appreciated too, albeit as a work of art, merely an inanimate object and nothing more. Every so often he was polished by the staff, the touch and interaction filling his stony heart.
 
He’d have all the time in the world to get used to it, all the time to think…
 
…Perhaps it isn’t all bad.