//------------------------------//
// Car Wrecks and Conversations 
// Story: My Little Smokey 
// by HaveBookWillTravel 
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Briar Sycamore glided happily down a side-street of Downtown Los Angeles on a pair of roller blades, whistling a made-up tune as he dodged fellow pedestrians and the occasional cyclist.  It was another normal Saturday for the young man; he'd woken up, watched some early morning television, then headed to his job at one of L.A.'s many medical marijuana dispensaries.  And now, after eight hours digging around in soil and harvesting five months of hard work, he was heading home with a few ounces of the plant he worked with nestled safely in his bag.

To most people, his life wouldn't be considered ideal.  He lived in a loft, not large by anyone's standards, which was fairly close to most modern amenities like the laundromat and convenience store across the street, but the landlady was very nice and didn't bother him when he sometimes brought work home with him.  He had a car, but rarely used it unless he was going out with friends, preferring instead the workout his roller blades gave him.  The only true luxury he had in his home was the grand piano he'd come into possession of down the line.

But he enjoyed what he did, and he was rather pleased with how his life had turned out so far.  He was currently studying botany at the university, and he hoped to one day conclusively prove one way or another whether or not his favorite plant could do anything positive for the human race.  Other than getting them high, of course.

A buzz in his pocket caused him to pull out his phone and check the screen, which announced that he was receiving an incoming call.  Before he could answer it, however, a loud, blaring honk screamed at him from the right just before that side of his body was delivered a punishing blow.

Look both ways, Briar's grandmother had always told him.  Shoulda looked both ways, he thought before slipping into unconsciousness.

The next time he floated back into the waking world, he heard several voices around him.  He tried to open his eyes, but a painful white light above him forced his eyelids to stay shut.

"...found it like this at the edge of town," came the concerned voice of a young woman.  "Must've been  attacked in the Everfree Forest.  Do you know what it is, Nurse Redheart?"

"I'm afraid not," a more mature woman's voice replied somberly.  "It seems like a large ape of some description."

Groaning, Briar began to sit up, only for pain to lance up his right side from his hip.

"Oh, dear!" the younger female said.  "I need to send a letter to the princess

"You do that, Twilight," the older one answered distractedly.  Briar felt...something on his forehead before it was removed, and he felt the cold ring of a stethoscope as it was placed against his chest

"Am I in a hospital?" he managed to force out of his lazy lips.  He heard a quiet gasp and the sound of footsteps backing away.

"You can talk?" wondered who he guessed was Nurse Redheart

"Obviously," he answered.  It would take a lot more than a car accident to stifle the dry, sarcastic humor he'd inherited from his grandfather.  "Why?  Did something happen to my throat?"

Too quickly, he tried to reach for his neck, only to be halted by a spike of pain lancing through his right arm and into his chest.

"Please, try to limit your movements," Redheart cautioned fretfully.  "You were found very badly injured near the Everfree Forest.  We're doing everything we can to make you comfortable until Princess Celestia arrives."

Everfree Forest? Briar thought.  I've never heard of that...maybe it's a new area of Baldwin Park?  Man, I must've been hit by a freakin' semi or something.

"Can you tell me which hospital I'm in, ma'am?" he asked, trying his luck at opening his eyes again.  This time, the light wasn't as harsh, and he took in a ceiling much like every other hospital's ceiling.  There were instruments one would probably find in most medical facilities, although the chairs and counters seemed a bit stunted to him.  

Then he looked over at his attending nurse.  She was pure white, with pale pink hair sticking out from under her nurse's cap.  She was also a horse.  Nurse Redheart smiled what she obviously thought was a reassuring grin.  "Why, you're in Ponyville Hospital, of course!"

Briar decided that it would be best to fall back into unconsciousness.

When Suddenly, a Wild Page-Break Appears!

Twilight Sparkle had been having a perfectly normal day until that flash of green light had interrupted.  She had been studying the effects of ambient magic on simple plant life, and had just begun quantifying the background magic in the area near her library when a horribly loud screech assaulted her ears.

Looking toward the noise, she spotted a glimmer of verdant light just inside the Everfree Forest.  For a moment, she debated with herself over the prudence of wandering into the dangerous woodland alone, but her curiosity won over her common sense, and she entered warily.

She had only been wandering through the trees for a minute or so when she came upon the most odd creature she'd ever encountered or read about in all her time on Equestria.  It was much larger than she was, with dark brown fur only on the top of its head and on its face.  What parts of it weren't covered by some type of clothing was soft skin, only sparsely covered in fur, and a much lighter brown than its mane.  In its hand, it held a small rectangular device.  When she got closer, Twilight saw herself reflected in its face and assumed that it was a mirror.  Looped around its shoulder was what appeared to be a bag of some sort.

"Hello?" she asked hesitantly.  After all, she was  in the Everfree Forest, and practicing caution in a place like this was only  natural.  "Are you alright?"

As she circled the creature, she was shocked when she noticed that parts of its clothing on the right side were covered in splotches of red that obviously didn't match with the rest of the dye.  She belatedly realized that those spots were blood!  And before her rational mind could react, she'd lifted the creature as gently as she could with her magic and began racing back to Ponyville.

In what seemed like no time at all, she was recounting her day's events to her mentor and role model, Princess Celestia, who had come immediately after receiving Twilight's first frantic, panicky message.

The princess stared out the window contemplatively.  "Have you  checked this being's bag?" she asked finally.

"Um, yes, Princess," Twilight answered.  "There were a few bags of some kind of dried plant, two separate outfits, some pipe-looking things, a few lengths of strange rope, lots of little plastic rectangles, some notebooks and pencils, and a large device I can't really understand the purpose of."

"No weapons?"

"None that I could discern," Twilight said, frowning.  "There is a small piece of metal, and I'm sure that parts of it flip out, but I can't really get them open with my hooves, and the type of metal seems to repel my magic."

"I see," the princess hummed thoughtfully.  "Very well, let us see who or what this creature is."

When they entered the private ward Twilight had managed to hook for her discovery, Nurse Redheart bowed low to the princess.  "My Lady, it speaks, and I believe from its tone of voice that it is a male."

"He awoke?"

"Briefly," Redheart said, glancing over to it.  "He seemed to be cognizant enough to ask where he was, but when he laid eyes on me, he sort of...fainted."

Celestia silently regarded the creature for a long moment, using her magic to lift its clothing and retrieving several items from pockets in its jacket and pants, none of which seemed to be dangerous.  Once she had them replaced, Celestia turned her magic instead onto the creature's body, prompting its body functions to accelerate in order to heal more quickly.  It still amazed Twilight to see her teacher invoke such powerful magic, even after all the years spent in Canterlot and here in Ponyville where she'd witnessed plenty of extraordinary feats of supernatural prowess.

Slowly, the creature's eyes fluttered open, and it spent a while gazing up at the ceiling.  Then it spoke.  "Nurse Redheart, when i look at you, will I find an equine creature with a white coat and a pink mane and tail?"

It certainly sounded like it was a 'he'.

"Er, yes," Redheart answered uncertainly.  "Ah, do you have a name?"

"Briar Sycamore," he answered, still scrutinizing the tiles above.  "Can I ask what you are?  And where I am, besides the Ponyville Hospital?"

"You are in Equestria, and I'm a pony!  Well, an Earth Pony to be precise, but a pony nevertheless," Redheart said  with a hint of pride.  "But a better question would be, what are you?"

He seemed to consider the question seriously for a moment before answering, "I'm a human, Hispanic to be more precise, although there's a lot mixed in..."  He trailed off, muttering under its breath.  "Either I'm really high or I got hit a lot harder than I thought I did."

"Excuse me, Briar Sycamore," Celestia said politely, but with the undeniable authority of a princess.  "But I would like to ask you a few questions, the first of which is: Where do you come from?"

"Eh?" Briar scratched the patch of fur on his chin absently.  "Well, if this isn't a dream, and the vague theory formulating in my mind isn't just horrible brain damage, then any answer that I can give probably won't mean much to you.  And if this isn't a dream, then I'm in a much bigger pile than I imagined."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Twilight huffed indignantly.  "Princess Celestia asked you a question, and it would be in your best interests to oblige my lady with an answer."

Briar gave her a look that might have been exasperated annoyance, but she couldn't read such an alien face properly yet.  "Fine.  I'm from the city of Los Angeles in California, the thirty-first of the United States of America, which is located in the North-Western Hemisphere of the planet Earth.  That ring any bells?"

Nurse Redheart raised an eyebrow and shone a light into Briar's eyes.  "You might have a concussion, dear, make sure not to fall asleep again."

Twilight, however, saw the way Celestia's eyes narrowed.

"Do you remember anything prior to waking up in this hospital?" the sun-raiser inquired insistently.

"Not really," Briar admitted.  "I got a call, checked my phone, looked up and saw a car headed right at me, and then boom, I'm here."

"What is a car?" Twilight asked despite herself.

Again, Briar had to think for a moment before answering, "Er, it's a self-propelled carriage. You've got carriage-level technology, right?"

"Of course we do!" Twilight snapped defensively.  "Do you think we're a bunch of primitives?  Wait, why don't you know that?  Every sapient species on Equestria has at least some form of wheel-driven locomotion."

Briar pinched the bridge of his snout with the first two digits of his left hand.  "Oh, this can't be a dream; this migraine is too painful not to wake up from.  And that means that I am in a big steaming pile of---"

"Perhaps," interrupted Celestia pointedly, "you can give us a bit of insight into what it is you are thinking, Mister Sycamore."

The human had the good grace to look sheepish (or at least that's what Twilight thought that expression was, anyway).  "I'm either dead, and this is a radically different afterlife than I'd been brought up to expect, or I'm somehow in another...I dunno, dimension?  Reality?  Something like that."

Twilight scoffed.  "That's silly.  Star Swirl the Bearded wrote off dimensional travel centuries ago as a pipe dream.  The very idea of the Multiverse Theory is foolish to begin with, and I for one---"

"I think your hypothesis may be correct, Mister Sycamore," Celestia said gravely, cutting off Twilight before she could work up a proper head of steam and causing her speech to come to a crashing halt.

"You do?" Briar asked blankly, with Twilight echoing the sentiment in mortification.  "Oh, because I thought you might have been some crazy version of God I hadn't anticipated."

Celestia smiled wryly.  "I'm not quite at that level, I think.  Just a humble princess trying to look after her subjects as best she can."

Briar rubbed his bandaged ribs absently as he looked out the window.  "So...talking ponies, huh?  And unicorns and pegasi to boot.  I have some really bipolar luck.  I wonder how that happened, though..."

Twilight noticed the slight reddening of her mentor's face, and the subtle shifting of her weight from her forehooves to her hind legs, like she was restless and...guilty.

"Princess Celestia?" the lavender unicorn asked hesitantly.  "Er, have you been falling back into your experimental phase again?"  To Twilight's horror, the snowy alicorn's blush grew deeper, and her wings folded in slightly.

"Maybe?"

Twilight fought off the urge to facehoof.  For most mares, an experimental phase might result in a little girl-on-girl action behind closed doors.  For Princess Celestia, it meant toying around with the laws of nature and the very fabric of reality.  Nobody else was powerful or daring enough to do such things, but Celestia...well, Twilight knew from experience how odd the millenia had made Equestria's solar princess.

"What am I missing?" Briar piped up tentatively.  "Is it something important?"

"Er, maybe?" Twilight echoed her mentor helplessly.