//------------------------------// // Enjoy Your Stay // Story: In Another Life I: Week One // by Bateman66 //------------------------------// A few hours later, within the comforting confines of Twilight Sparkles tree home, the mare herself sat intently upon her work station, casually sifting through layers of old diagrams she’d been needing to dispose of. They’d been blueprints for a particular alchemy setup she no longer required but felt the necessity to keep around. She never knew when a graduated cylinder of Nightingale extract needed to be angled precisely at fifteen and a half degrees, or when a Mustafarian stone would need heating from its left corner and nowhere else. Now, however, the untidiness had gotten to her and she was shuffling the papers accordingly into a small stack with her hooves. Sliding them across the wooden table, a new pocket of space was now open to whatever she wished to put upon it. Smiling at the miniature success, she began to reach forward for one of the Canterlot magazines she kept on the adjacent table, when Spike came dashing into the room faster than he normally decided to waddle. Spinning around in her chair to face the baby dragon, his face immediately told her something was amiss. His eyes were sunken back into his sockets, while the scales around his face seemed to be a much more paled color than they normally appeared. But most startling was the absence of any exasperated call from Spike, which normally alerted Twilight to which level of problem was at hoof. Now, he stood there in silence, looking up at her, quivering. “Spike,” she said carefully but attentively, “what’s wrong?” “T-Twilight…” he managed slowly, his voice at a near whisper. “I think you should look outside. I think I saw something…” Spike’s body trembled greatly as he nervously nibbled at the ends of his claws. He looked over his shoulder then back to Twilight to make sure that, whatever he saw had not followed him inside. Twilight’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you see this?” Spike nodded his head and pointed downstairs. “The window by the front door, that’s where it is.” Twilight placed both hooves on his shoulders and looked the baby dragon directly in the eyes. “Spike, stay right here. Everything’s going to be fine.” Moving away from the shell-shocked Spike, Twilight bounded down the stairs hurriedly, and approached the front door. Inching up close to the thick oak exit, she peered through the small glass slit to its side that barely accounted for being a window. At first she could see nothing, the thick gray clouds from earlier had descended upon Ponyville in full wrath, bringing hell and high water that had not been seen in the small village for quite sometime. Wind threw leaves and stray paper from side to side as rain pelted and pounded whatever was unprotected by a roof. Large puddles were forming alongside the roadways and even in the roads themselves, giving an almost marshy appearance to the typically mild looking Ponyville. Most notably, was the near blackness that the storm was causing, blocking out even the moonlight from the evening sky and casting blindness upon anypony that was in the thick of the monsoon. And for a moment, Twilight would count herself among them, for she could barely see past the thin transparent glass to the outside. Yet, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the mayhem around her home slowly began to come into focus, including something else. Off to the corner of her small grassy property, beside a quickly growing puddle, a peculiar sight was to be had. A large clump of mud seemed to have somehow shifted itself next to a roadside puddle and remained statically next to it. She could clearly see the mud and puddle meeting, yet it did not moisten and clump together as would normal muck/water solutions. And, looking at it further, a tree branch seemed to have also been jabbed right into the bottom of the muddy pile. Its outer-coat was an uncanny whitish pink, and it had crooked ends that twisted out of the center branch like a colored claw or talon. The branch’s ends were raised slightly upwards, as if the inanimate object reached out towards her home in yearning, surrounded by the blackness of the storm. Twilight shivered from the window and quickly threw the curtains back over it. She could see why Spike was so startled by the passive object. It looked so alive yet so detached, as if an artist had carved a wax sculpture but then left it to melt half ways in the sun. The mere thought of something like that deliberately outside her door made it appear as if some sort of practical joke or prank. No way could something like that have naturally occurred, especially in the past few hours since she’d last been outside. But yet again… She wanted to be sure. If Pinkie Pie or Rainbow Dash were pulling one of their tricks again, at least Twilight would be able to put a stop to it before it progressed any further. Grabbing an umbrella off the coat rack with her levitation spell, Twilight opened it abruptly, and slowly unlocked the thick door to the outside. Pulling it open gradually, she was met by the rushing rumble of the still raging storm. Outside, a greenish fog hung gloomily in the air. He eyes had adjusted to the darkness around it, but she hadn’t been able to see the near pea soup thick haze around her. Holding the umbrella over her head, she stepped out of the lip of her house and unto the squishy mud path below her. The rain pellets pelted her umbrella like a swarm of arrows, making the striking of water against fabric even louder than the clapping thunder that occasionally boomed in the distance. Squinting through the smog, she spotted the peculiar mud pile, and approached it carefully. There was no telling what Pinkie, if she was behind it, had rigged to the slop. Everything from cake batter shooters to water balloon catapults presented themselves as plausible possibilities. But as Twilight got closer, it was clear that this was no fooling prank. The “mud” clump, seemed to actually be a large brown cloth tossed over something medium sized and slightly bumpy. Sighing in relief that it wasn’t a party balloon time bomb, Twilight inspected the pile further, and suddenly, her eyes grew wide. The “branch” she’d seen earlier was no branch at all, but an actual talon, or something resembling one, sticking out from under the cloth. It rested against the muddy earth and slimy puddle, still outstretched hopelessly towards Twilight’s now opened front door. A quiet gasp escaped through her throat, as a creeping suspicion began to be confirmed. Reaching down anxiously to the brown cloth, she tugged one of its ends with the tip of her hoof, and flipped away the entire piece all together. The cloth, caked with pieces of brown sludge, flipped up into the air by Twilight’s force and a little bit of wind, and rested by the object’s side. The object in question, was a being Twilight hold only seen in still grainy photographs from over a century ago. Its body was absent of any fur or considerable patches of hair, minus a moderate amount on the top of its head and above its eyes. This left the beings bare skin, a whitish-pink mixture, open and exposed to any ambient harm around it. It had an angular but still softened face, with mild puffiness on its cheeks but with a very pointed and cleft chin that shot vertically downwards instead of curving forward. The being had four appendages, two along its sides, while two where attached to the end of its antimony. The side set had a matching set of talons along the end of each appendage, while the bottom two had flat slabs of flesh that were divided into five along its tips. However, the being looked different from the ones she’d observed from her large collection of recent archives. The face was more angular and thick, the hips much more pointed forwards instead of sloped, its hair seemed considerably shorter, and it lacked breasts on the center of its torso. Perhaps this was a male? Without question she could confirm that this was most definitely a human. Their peculiar physique made them indistinguishable from nearly all known forms of life in Equestria, acting as a sort of beacon that shown when ever one turned up. What puzzled her though, was not only its incredibly random appearance upon her property in the middle of the evening, but its mere presence in general. The last time she checked, it had been a century since a human had been recorded to be within the confines of Equestria, and more than likely in the confines of the entire planet. In turn, the entire chance meeting of one practically being laid at her hooves made it appear as some sort of trick or illusion. Was she dreaming? Had a hex been put over her mind? A distant thunderclap and flash of light from the thickened clouds above shattered this notion and snapped her out of her momentary thought. She looked back down at the human, who still lay motionless along the putrid ditch. Not a sound of recognition or life had come from him since she’d first walked out, which slowly began to startle her. Tapping the top of his back with her foreleg, she was met with silence. Panicking now, she immediately took both ends of the human’s shoulders, thrusted him upwards (with minimal effort) and placed him steadily upon her back. Galloping forward, she stampeded back into the tree house and slammed the front door behind her.