Chapter 3
I didn't remember going to bed, but it sure felt like I was in one. My eyes weren't quite ready to open and my head was pounding harder than after a weekend of partying back in my college days. As I waited for my body to catch up to my brain I struggled to think, trying to recall what had happened.
I made it back to the hills after that creature attacked me, that much was clear. I could almost still feel the sun's merciless rays beating down on me as I trudged on and on for what had seemed like forever. Eventually my water ran out but that didn't stop me, not at first anyway. The miles went on, slowly and painfully, as I edged closer and closer towards the end of the desert. I reached my limit before the barren hills ended but I pushed past it, ignoring the desperate cries of my body. In the end though, my resolve counted for nothing. I was out of energy, I wasn't going to make it.
I had stumbled and fallen, not the first time, but certainly for the last. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get back up. There was sun... and heat... my body was burning. Water, I needed water so badly.
I lay there for I don't know how long, looking up at the sky. It took all my willpower just to keep my eyes opened but time was running out. My vision began to blur, the weight of my eyelids slowly overwhelming me. Each time I blinked it was harder and harder to get them back open. Just before they closed for the last time, I saw movement. Something was circling overhead, a vulture perhaps? Come to feast on my flesh?
I hoped it would at least wait for me to die, I didn't want to feel that. It was hard to tell through my blurred vision but it looked like it was starting to descend. The last thing I could remember thinking was that the colors were all wrong for a vulture, then my eyes shut and everything went dark.
"Uhhhhhh," I groaned, slowly opening my eyes. I looked around and froze. I was in a bed, it wasn't mine, which made sense but still caused a moment of confusion. The whole room had a rather rustic feel to it, unpainted wooden walls, a small fireplace in the corner and exposed log rafters made me think of some of the old historical homes I'd visited as a child. The kerosene lamp on the table next to the bed only added to that feeling. Next to the lamp was an old fashioned style doctor's bag. Sunlight streamed through a small window, it appeared to be late morning.
The room was warm but not uncomfortably hot, still I shivered and then noticed I wasn't wearing my shirt. I looked around the room and spotted my clothes, they were folded up in a neat pile sitting on a chair across the room. The belt, holster and revolver were sitting on top of the clothes. I peaked under the covers and confirmed that I was, in fact, completely naked.
Ignoring that embarrassing piece of information, I reached up to scratch my itchy head. My fingers brushed up against something made of cloth. It was a bandage, someone had wrapped up the bump on my head that I had gotten when it smashed into truck's window. I searched and found a few more bandages covering some of the scrapes I had managed to get trekking across the desert. That had to explain the lack of clothing. Whoever had found me had checked me over to see if I was still in one piece. I felt mildly uncomfortable, knowing some stranger had stripped me down. Still it was better than bleeding all over their bed.
I did one more quick look around the room, double checking that no one was in there with me; then I got out of bed as quietly as I could and snuck over to my clothes. I threw them on as quickly as possible, then put on my belt. I took out the revolver and opened it, it was still loaded. That was... odd, but also reassuring. I thought it unusual that someone would leave a stranger alone in a room with a loaded gun. At the same time, between dressing my wounds and leaving the gun it was pretty clear they had no intention of hurting me.
Everything else in my pockets was still in place, but I was disappointed to find that my phone battery had died and while looking in my wallet I noticed I still couldn't read anything. I found my backpack leaning up against a wall and gave it a quick check. Apart from the extra ammunition, I found my emergency blanket, folded up and stored inside. I could have sworn I had lost it at some point, maybe whoever found me had found it as well.
That's when I realized I could hear talking, coming from another room.
"...This is what I can tell you, its very likely that you got to him just in time. He's very weak and I'm not sure how much longer he would have lasted without your help. He was severely dehydrated and probably hasn't eaten in a while either. He's also had some pretty bad exposure to the sun. I'm very proud of you Golden, if it wasn't for your help he'd likely be dead. Apart from exposure and dehydration the only real serious injury I could find was the bump on his head, the rest were just minor cuts and scrapes and of course the sunburn."
Reaching up once more I gently touched the side of my head, prodding at the bandages. That was not my smartest decision and a sharp jolt of pain combined with a wave of dizziness washed over me. I lost my balance and fell over, landing on the floor hard with a loud thump.
As I pulled myself up off the floor, the voices stopped. Then I heard a clopping sound as if someone was riding a horse indoors. As the sound grew closer, my head was still spinning, so I walked back over to the bed. I leaned up against one of the posts for support while I waited for the door to open.
I wasn't waiting long and less than a minute later the door slowly swung open up. In walked an old country doctor, at least old country doctor was the first impression I got. He had a grayish white beard, around his neck was a rather outdated looking stethoscope, he was wearing a button up shirt and suit jacket right from an old western movie, the cowboy hat didn't help things. Oh and he was a horse, a dull green horse.
My thoughts turned back to the head wound and my inability to read. Now, more than ever, I suspected some sort of brain damage, but damn if this wasn't the oddest hallucination I'd ever heard of. Was anything I had seen since crashing real? That monster in the desert could have been a twisted tree branch for all I knew. A part of me wanted to start screaming like a raving lunatic, but I knew my best course of action was to keep calm and try to find out what was going on.
I say horse, but in truth he wasn't really a horse, that's just the closest looking animal he resembled. He was perhaps comparable to a horse in the same way that a human was to an ape. His face was only vaguely horse-like. Though his muzzle did stick out a bit, he didn't have that long horse face. Instead his head was much rounder than an actual horse's and quite big. His legs were much wider around than a horse's legs and much less angular.
His eyes were large, huge in fact, though since his whole head was easily twice as big as mine they didn't look too out of place. In addition he had a grey beard, a feature I'd never seen on a horse before. There was nothing of a wild animal about his face, it looked as intelligent and expressive as any person's. Curiously there was an image that matched the doctor's bag on this horse's flank. It looked like a tattoo but I had no idea how one could tattoo horse hair.
A moment later a second horse stepped into the room. This one had a less pronounced muzzle, with an even softer and rounder face. At a guess, she was the female sounding voice that I had overheard. Unlike the doctor, she wore no clothing at all. She had a pale goldenrod coat. I wasn't sure what colors horses could come in, but hers looked a bit more natural than the doctor's green coat one. That thought stopped when I noticed her mane which was a impossibly beautiful mixture of colors that flowed from red, through orange and all the way to a bright golden yellow that reminded me of the sun rising up over the horizon. Somehow none of the hairs were out of place, so the flow color was even and smooth, I couldn't imagine how much work it would take to produce the effect nor how it would stay in place as she moved around, but there it was.
Looking at the two was surreal, between the green doctor horse and the fiery mane of the female. I almost imagined I was looking at a cartoon. These weren't horses, they were horses as if horses had been designed by and for a little girls. They were, and I hated to say it, cute. They could give all the cats on the internet a run for their money.
My eyes skipped back to the female. She also had a tattoo, for lack of a better word, on her butt. It looked like a piston, out of an engine or maybe from a train. A flash of bright color drew my eyes towards her tail. It matched her mane perfectly. Even though it bounced around as she trotted into the room, all the strands stayed in place. I hoped that when whatever brain injury that was causing me to hallucinate these people as horse creatures wore off, that her hair would remain that way. It was so mesmerizing that I almost missed the pair of wings tucked up against her chest...
"Wait, wings?" I thought to myself as my eyes spun back, focusing on the creature's side.
It was impossible but there they were, a pair of wings. They were folded up, making it hard to get a a true judge of their size but they had to be at least a few feet long when extended. In any case that was far too small to carry something as heavy as a horse, even a small one, into the air.
Then again, neither of them were quite as big as an actual horse. At a rough guess they were between three and four feet long, standing somewhere between four and a half to just over five feet tall with the horse dressed up like a doctor being a little larger than the other one. Their long necks and large heads made getting an accurate estimation of their height difficult but they were certainly shorter than a normal horse. I guess that made them ponies instead of horses, adorable alien ponies.
The doctor pony looked at me and smiled.
"How are you feeling son?" he asked.
"Uh, that depends. Are you really here or is this just a hallucination as I slowly die of dehydration?" I asked.
He chuckled at that. It reminded me of my grandpa laughing when I was still a kid, warm and full of care.
"You're safe now, we're here and we're real. Can you tell me your name?"
"Yeah, it's Harold, Harold Storm," I answered hastily.
The pony said something unintelligible followed by the word "Storm."
"Harold." I said repeating my name.
Once again the pony seemed to have difficulty pronouncing my first name.
"Most people just call me Hal," I said. I had never really liked the name Harold.
"Hail Storm."
"No, not hail, Hal."
Because this was a horse and not a human, I wasn't sure I was reading the baffled expression he gave me, but it sure looked like he was confused.
"Hail?"
"Eh, sure whatever," I said with a shrug. A mispronounced name was the least of my problems. "How did I get here?"
"Miss Golden Dawn," he said, glancing at the winged pony. An unusual name but it fit her coloring perfectly, which kind of made me think that also suffering from auditory hallucinations. What kind of a name was Golden Dawn?
"She found you out in the Badlands, you were in a bad state, but she got to you in time. Gave you some water, then brought you back to town. Does this ring a bell?"
"I found your wagon, at least I think it was yours, I saw the arrow you made of rocks and followed it north till I found you." Golden Dawn said.
"Wagon?"
"The big black thing, I know it isn't actually a wagon but I don't know what else to call it," she said.
"Oh, my truck," I said.
"Truck," she said slowly as if the word was strange to her. "It's still in one piece, at least as far as I can tell. Though getting it unstuck is going to be difficult. I've got some ideas though. The smaller silver cart looked like it took some damage, but the weird part was the wheel tracks, they just kind of started from nowhere."
I was beginning to wonder if I was hallucinating the entire conversation. It was one thing for me to see a couple of people as ponies, but how the heck could they not know what a truck or a trailer were? Still I agreed with her about the tracks.
"Where exactly am I?" I asked.
"You're in my home," he said. "Oh I didn't even introduce myself, name's Dusty Heart, I'm the local doctor here in Hoofston." He extended his hoof, slowly I reached out and he shook my hand. "I run my practice out of here. When Golden Dawn brought you in you were unconscious. I looked you over as best I could and bandaged up your wounds."
"Thank you for that," I said still rather confused.
Dusty Heart, another odd name. I had to be hearing things as well as seeing them. That was the most likely scenario. I really hoped I still wasn't out in the desert. Still, if this was my brain coping with imminent death, it seemed a pleasant way to go. Anyway it sounded like that pony saved my life. I guessed there was no harm in being polite to a hallucination.
"And thank you, uh, Golden Dawn. I'd be dead if it wasn't for you. I owe you my life."
She blushed slightly, which looked strange on a pony.
"Anypony would have done the same, don't worry about it," she said.
Any...pony? When my brain decided to make things up it sure went all in.
"Look, doc, you said you looked me over already, that bump on my head, is it bad?" I asked.
"I don't think so, looks worse than it is, but its hard to tell, why do you ask?"
"I think I might have brain damage," I said seriously.
"Are you having trouble remembering things?"
"Maybe a little bit, mostly just around the point where I crashed my truck which I'm pretty sure is when I banged my head. Also, the last few hours in the desert."
"Hmm, you were severely dehydrated when Golden found you, that can cause confusion. Anything else?"
"I can't read anymore. I noticed it soon after I first woke up. The dashboard in my truck, the dials, my phone. The numbers and letters all look like gibberish. I can't make heads or tails of them," I said. "Also there's the hallucinations." I mumbled under my breath.
"Hallucinations?"
Damn that doc had good ears.
"What are you seeing?" he asked.
"When I was out in the... Badlands you called it?" - Dusty nodded - "I ran into something, some sort of creature, or at least I thought I did."
"What did it look like?" Dusty asked.
"A graboid," I said flatly.
Or a really small sandworm if you prefer Dune. I kept that thought to myself.
"A what?" Golden asked.
"A graboid, you know from the film Tremors?"
Both ponies tilted their heads in confusion.
"1990 for the first film I think. Low budget monster movie series, Kevin Bacon is in the first one, had a bunch direct to video sequels which are surprisingly good."
"Kevin Bacon?" Golden Dawn struggled with the pronunciation of the name. There wasn't even a hint of recognition.
Who hadn't heard of Kevin Bacon? My explanation was going nowhere so I decided to start over.
"Ok it looked like a large worm like creature, it was nearly big enough to swallow me whole. It burst up from under the ground and attacked me after eating a coyote."
"Oh! A tatzlwurm, must have been a young one if it was that small." Dusty Heart said. "Those are pretty rare and very dangerous, you're lucky that you survived."
My jaw just dropped and I stared at the pony doctor. Some kind of professional he was, here I am trying to explain the impossible crap I'm seeing and he's playing along with it.
"Look, I'm really grateful for your help but encouraging my delusions is just plain wrong, unless you're just making fun of me and I can't decide which is worse. This is serious... and besides that's not the only weird thing I'm seeing."
"Oh, um, what else are you seeing?" he asked, he seemed unsure of my outburst.
"Okay, this is going to sound really strange and I'm not bullshitting you, so please believe me and don't just run with it." I said as seriously as I could.
"Okay..." Dusty replied.
"I get seeing something that isn't there but could a hallucination make one thing look like something else?" I asked.
"It is possible..." Dusty started to say but I interrupted him before he could finish.
"Like with my issue with reading, I remember letters and numbers but when I look at them written out, that's not what I see. It's as if my brain is showing me one thing when I look at them but that doesn't match up with what they actually are."
"Brain injuries can affect the ability to process languages, it could be some form of aphasia..."
I interrupted him again, not normally my style but I was getting pretty anxious.
"And if that can happen, could my brain show me... say a false image when I look at something that isn't text? Like for example I look at a person and see... not a person?"
"Can you be more specific?" Dusty asked.
"Well yeah... I suppose I can be blunt. When I look at you, I don't see a person, same thing with Golden. I uh" - I fidgeted on the bed - "I see a pony."
"Of course you do, that's what we are, ponies," Golden said, speaking out before Dusty could reply.
"Oh come on! I told you I'm not joking around here, something is wrong with me." My breathing became rapid and shallow as a hint of panic began to set in. What kind of people would do this? First one of them rescues me from almost certain death, then they clean me up as best they can, but when I try to tell them what's wrong they fuck with me?
"Look son, you need to calm down. Golden Dawn is right, we're ponies, I don't know why that's making you so nervous but its the truth."
"Oh sure, I'm a pony, you're a pony, we're all ponies," I said sarcastically. This was pretty sick, they just kept up at it.
Golden Dawn frowned at that, "your not a pony, we don't know what you are."
This threw me over the edge and I shouted back at her.
"Of course I'm not a pony, I'm a human! There's no such thing as a talking pony, or a whatzit worm that jumps out of the ground and eats me. I'm pretty sure I'm not dead so either I'm having a very strange dream or I'm hallucinating this entire thing, probably conversation included because I can't think of anyone that would kind enough to save my life and then turn around and spew bullshit to my face."
You know what that pegasus pony did next? She walked over and kicked me in the shin. Fucking hooves, they hurt!
"Owww! What was that for?" I asked, rubbing my leg. I lifted my pant leg to see if her kick had broken my skin, but everything looked okay.
"Golden, that wasn't very nice," Dusty Heart said with a frown.
"Now he knows he isn't dreaming," she said smugly.
She kinda had a point, that sure felt real. Which wasn't possible. I backed up, bumping into the bed and I sat down hard. I closed my eyes tightly and took a couple of deep breaths, then opened them up again. The two ponies were still there, watching me. The doctor advanced and held a hoof up to my arm.
"Why don't you lie down, let me get you something to drink," he said
I could feel the hoof on my arm, some of his coat brushed against my skin as he pulled it away. I've had dreams before, they never felt real. Real like that, or real like the kick Golden Dawn had inflicted on me moments earlier. I could still feel the fading pain in my shin. It was too real.
I felt a chill run down my spine, it all felt real, everything about this. The rapid beating of my heart as I tried to calm down. The old wooden smell in the air from the house I was currently occupying. The squeak of the mattress as I moved back on the bed. The chill worked its way out of my back and into my arms and legs, and I shivered in response. A wave of nausea started to creep up on me. I slumped forward, holding my head in my hands and tried to take slow deep breaths to hold it at bay.
"This is impossible," I said muttering to myself. "It doesn't make any sense, I was just trying to get home. I was in my truck and then there was that green light. Next thing I know I wake up in the middle of a desert and I'm seeing monsters and ponies. How could this happen? THINK HAL THINK!"
I tried to go back, to the start of all these troubles. The truck ride home, the green light. I was awake when I went through it. I hit my head and lost seconds, or minutes, maybe even days, I wasn't sure. But they were there, just beyond reach.
It was still dark out when I ran through that green swirling light. Then... then it wasn't. Daylight surrounded me and the truck, it was was skidding and sliding over a rough rocky surface. The lost few seconds rushed back and I could remember it all. I fought to keep control of the truck but I knew it wasn't going to happen. But it was that green... thing. It wasn't just a light, it was something. And when I went through it I appeared somewhere else. The lonely and cold mountain road surrounded by trees, it vanished when I drove through, instantly replaced by a dusty desert landscape.
I was no stranger to science fiction and fantasy but having something like that happen in real life, the very thought was preposterous... wasn't it? Yet here I was, sitting in a room with talking ponies. Ponies that felt and sounded as real as anything else I had experienced. I looked up at both of them, they were still watching me, both looking rather concerned. I suddenly felt even more ill, I rushed over to the corner of the room where there was an old metal waste basket, leaned over it and threw up. It stung coming up and it was mostly just liquid, the result of not having had any real food in at least a day or two... and it stank. The stench of vomit, and the pain in my throat, like everything else, they were real.
I sat there, not bothering to get back up, even after the heaving stopped. Dusty Heart asked if I was alright and I just nodded to confused to really reply. He excused himself to go get me some water and something to clean up the mess I had made; the wastebasket was a wire mesh and the gunk I had spewed was leaking out the sides. A moment later I heard the other pony approach slowly. I felt a hoof rub across my back as she tried to comfort me.
"I'm sorry I kicked you," Golden Dawn said "are you going to be all right?"
"I don't know," I said truthfully. "Physically, I think I'll be fine, at least I hope so, but... I don't even know where I am anymore."
"I take it you aren't from Equestria?" she asked.
"Equestria?"
"Yeah, that's where we are, well we're in Hoofston, a small town about 200 miles south of Appleloosa, we're right on the south-western border of the Badlands."
"Hoofston... yeah I think... Dusty... I think he mentioned that..."
Dusty walked back in carrying a tray on his back with a glass of water on it. Somehow he had a mop hooked around one of his front legs with a bucket full of water hanging from the mop handle. Because he was carrying the mop, he was only using three legs to walk, and while it looked a awkward for a four legged creature to walk that way to me, not only was he still maintaining his balance but he also was somehow managing to not drop the tray. It was an impressive show of dexterity, one that I focused on, desperate to try to not think about the impossibility of my situation. He set the mop and bucket down, then turned his head around, grabbed the tray in his mouth and set it on the table next to the bed.
"I've got that water for you, drink it slowly," he said.
"Thank you," I said, picking up the glass. It was cool and refreshing and helped with the aftertaste of vomit. My stomach was already starting to feel better.
He walked over to the mess, rose up on his two back hooves and proceeded to mop up the mess I had made, somehow holding the mop in his hooves. The first thing that stood out at me is these ponies might have been shorter than me, but the height difference made judging overall size deceptive at first glance. Watching him stand up on his rear hooves gave a good sense of how much larger he was than me. I wasn't all that tall, standing just about six feet, but with Dusty Heart on his rear hooves he had almost half a foot on me. He was also quite a bit bulkier than I was, I wouldn't be surprised if he was double my weight.
The next thing I noticed was that somehow he was both holding the broom with one of his hooves. It was so strange that it completely distracted me from both offering to help clean up the mess I had made, and that fact that Dusty wasn't wearing any pants. In retrospect Golden Dawn wasn't wearing anything at all, maybe their species didn't have a nudity taboo. I guess it made sense, ponies wearing clothing seemed more unusual to me than ponies not wearing clothing but still, these were ponies in name and general appearance, they clearly weren't wild animals.
He finished cleaning up the mess, I apologized for not taking care of it but he didn't seem to mind.
"I'm a doctor, I've seen far worse than this," he said with a shrug. Or at least what I assumed was the pony equivalent of a shrug.
After everything was cleaned up he cracked a window to let out the smell and then asked if I would be more comfortable talking in another room. I followed him and Golden to what looked like a combination waiting room / living room and took a seat. Surprisingly the chairs, and the couch, looked normal, if a tad low to the ground.
"Why don't you tell us what you remember, and then Golden can fill the rest," Dusty said.
So I went through my story, from start to finish, telling them pretty much everything that I could think of. I had to fill in a few extra details, like I was a human, what at truck was, where I was from, that kind of thing. Eventually I got through everything that had happened in the last month. How my dad had showed up at my door, the bad news, him dying, me driving up to his place to clean it out, the notes and pictures I found. I got a bit choked up when I was talking about that last part, the memories fresh in my mind. Golden Dawn, who was sitting next to me, put a wing on my shoulder and gave me a comforting squeeze. It was strange, telling these two... aliens, because essentially that was what they were, about everything that had happened, but once I started talking I found it hard to stop. Finally I got to to the end of my tale.
"So I left while the sun was still down, I had a long trip back home and I wanted to get an early start. I had only been on the road for a short time, when I saw something glowing up ahead. I thought it was a flare but when I got closer it... well it grew. It was this strange green swirling surface suspended in the air. It almost looked like like a sheet of water except for the green glow. I tried to avoid it but I was going too fast to stop. When I drove through it.. I don't really know how but a moment later I was somewhere else. The truck was skidding badly and I was fighting to keep it under control. I hit something, that's how I smashed my head, and lost consciousnesses. When I woke up I was in a desert."
The old pony sat there stroking his beard, "None of those places sound familiar to me, Wyoming, New Hampshire, America, or even Earth. You're in the country of Equestria, this is the planet Equus."
This was the kicker, and it was a doozy. Unless this pony was outright lying to me, he just confirmed what I had begun to suspect once I realized that this wasn't a dream or hallucination. I wasn't on Earth anymore. I gulped.
"I don't get it, how did I get from my planet to yours? This is impossible."
"I'm no expert but it sounds like some form of advanced magic to me. We'd have to talk to a unicorn who knows more about such things to be sure."
"Magic? Wait... there are unicorns here too?" I said raising my eyebrow in surprise.
"You know what a unicorn is?" Golden Dawn asked.
"Well, I know what a unicorn in terms of human mythology. It's a magical horse with a horn. Just like there was a horse named Pegasus that had wings, but neither Pegasus nor unicorns nor were actually real, they were just made up. Earth has ponies, and horses, but they aren't sapient, they're just animals."
"That's strange," Golden Dawn said. "I'm a pegasus pony, Dusty Heart here is an earth pony, and we've also got unicorns. Alicorns would be the fourth type but it's only the four princesses, so you're not likely to run into them.
"Alicorns? What do they have?"
"Everything," Golden said with a laugh. "Horn of a unicorn, wings of a pegasus, endurance of an earth pony, the magic and abilities of all three races concentrated into a single pony."
"Magic? Abilities?"
"Yeah, like flight and weather manipulation for us pegasus ponies. Plus we can walk and sit on clouds, they're super comfy! I'm much more resistant to cold than a unicorn or an earth pony, I have better vision, faster response times and I'm better at coping with the lower amount of oxygen in high altitude environments," she said, stretching her wings out a bit.
They were larger than I had thought, she had at least a five foot wingspan, maybe even six. Impressive but hardly enough to fly. The weather cloud thing didn't make much sense to me. I just kinda of stared at her in confusion, then Dusty spoke up.
"Earth ponies are much stronger and have more endurance. We're also usually better with living things, especially growing things. Most of Equestria's farmers are earth ponies, and we make good doctors, if I do say so myself. We can promote the bodies natural healing abilities without using spells. We also have the longest average life span, alicorns excluded of course. Unicorns are the weakest physically, but they are the only ponies who can cast spells. This is of course all on average, every pony is different, you can find earth ponies who can tolerate the cold just as well as the average pegasus or a pegasus pony who can outlast earth ponies in a marathon."
I chuckled a bit, "Using magic? Casting spells? Being able to fly? And you can't walk on a cloud it's nothing but a mist of water droplets suspended in the air. Come on, I'm on another planet with a bunch of aliens, not in a fairy tale."
Golden Dawn looked at me, tilting her head a bit, "what do you mean?"
"There's no such thing as magic, not real magic anyway, and flight? There's no way you can fly, your wings would have to be humongous to generate enough lift to pick up something so heavy."
Golden Dawn's eyes narrowed. "Are you calling me fat?" she asked.
"What?" I sputtered, "no, I... look, I'm just saying that... look on Earth we have animals called birds, they fly. Their bodies are much smaller than their wingspan," I gestured out the approximate size of a small bird with my hands. "They need such big wings so that when they flap them, they can generate enough lift to fly."
"Well there's your problem right there, you're comparing ponies to birds, we have birds here too, and like you said they need a fairly large wingspan to body ratio to fly, but their flight isn't powered by magic. Pegasus ponies have passive magic that allows flight, we don't need a gigantic wingspan," she said as she trotted into the center of the room. Then she unfurled her wings again, extending them to their full length. "For a pegasus pony, flight comes naturally," she gave her wings a couple of lazy flaps.
My jaw dropped as I watched her rise into the air. I wanted to say something but my brain couldn't figure out which words to use or what order to put them in, so all I managed was "buhhhhh."
Each wing-beat was slow and they were spaced rather far apart, there was no way she was generating enough lift to fly but I couldn't deny that she was hovering in place right in front of me.
She landed, sat back down and smiled at me. I continued to stare until my stomach growled loudly, shocking me out of my stupor.
"Excuse me," I said. It occurred to me that I hadn't eaten since the previous night.
"Oh I'm terribly sorry, I haven't offered you anything to eat, and you haven't had anything in days." Dusty said.
"I... you don't have to feed me, you've already gone way above and beyond anything I could expect. Plus... I don't think my money's any good here, I can't pay you back," I said dejectedly.
"Oh nonsense, what kind of host would I be if I didn't offer you something. Besides as you say, it's unlikely your money is good here. It's not like if I turned you lose in town you'd be able to buy any food. I've got some daisies, I could make daisy sandwiches."
Uh oh, if ponies only ate flowers and grass, I was going to be hungry for a while. Dusty must have noticed my hesitation and quickly spoke up.
"Can you eat daisies?" he asked.
"Uh no, I don't think so anyway, I mean I don't think it would kill me but I doubt I'd get any nutrition out of them. You did say sandwiches, do you mean on bread?"
"What else is a sandwich on?" Golden said with a laugh.
"Well just bread I guess but its not every day I wake on on another planet, I figured I'd double check."
"You can't just eat bread," Dusty said. "Golden, can you run down to the market, get some apples?"
He turned to me, "you can eat apples right?" I nodded yes in reply.
"Sure thing, I'll be back shortly." She walked up to the front door, next to it was a coat rack looking thing. She pulled a pack of some sort off of it and draped it across her back, careful to not cover her wings. I guessed it was the ponies version of a backpack, or perhaps a purse, though it seemed rather large for that. After that she headed out the front door.
"Now that she's gone, I'm going hazard a guess about your preferred foods." Dust said, looking at me.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You're an omnivore aren't you, meat and plants right?" he said looking at me.
"Yeah, so?" I asked, slightly confused. "Oh... OH!" I said as it hit me. Horses, as far as I knew, were herbivores. Was this going to be like a planet of vegetarians? Not that I've got anything against them, people can eat what they like but if I'm stuck here for any length of time, meals were going to suck. I love meat. Especially smoked meat... mmm ribs.
He nodded, probably guessing what was going through my head.
"So, I'm guessing you don't eat meat?"
"For the most part, no, the vast majority of ponies do not eat meat; though there are a small number who do, it's a bit more common among pegasus ponies than the other races. There's actually a subrace of pegasus, thestrals, that actually eat meat a great deal. They're very rare though, and most of them work in the night guard so many ponies almost never see them. In fact there's so few of them that many ponies don't even know they exist as a separate race or that they eat meat. A common misconception is that the night guard armor is enchanted to make the ponies look more fearsome, but I'm getting a little off topic.”
“Anyway, thestrals, they're true omnivores. The rest of us ponies... well we're not strictly herbivores, our bodies can digest and process meat, though it is not nearly as good for us as some of our more traditional foods. If you are around here for any length of time, well you may find some ponies might be fearful of a meat eater. Many others won't care, I don't think Golden will, but I figured I would let you know."
"How did you know?" I asked.
"Saw your teeth when I was examining you. It's good you aren't limited to just meat. If you were, finding you food could prove to be difficult, unless you are willing to hunt for it yourself."
Dusty Heart went on to describe the types of things ponies ate. I was pleased to find out that my initial fear of a flower based died was misplaced. While ponies did eat flowers, and grass as well, they also had a huge variety of food and all of it similar to what I would find back home, the big exception being the lack of meat.
"Well, I've never hunted before but I guess I can go sans meat for a while. All this talk of magic and spells earlier, got me thinking. You said unicorns can do magic so all I need to do is find one and have them send me home right?"
"I can't say for sure, but this is a small town, we don't have any unicorns with a special talent in magic. Your best bet is to talk to the sheriff, Justice, he's a unicorn but he's not going to know any spell to send you home. However he might know where you can find such a unicorn. More than likely you'll have to travel to another town, a bigger one, to find what you are looking for."
"Special talent?"
"Everypony has a special talent, it is represented by their cutie mark," he said, pointing to the doctor's bag tattooed on his flank. "Mine is a doctor's bag, it indicates that my special talent is at helping ponies get well, whether from sickness or injury."
I sat there in silence for a moment, processing what Dusty had just said. Cutie marks? I questioned their sanity in choice of tattoo names, but I guess it fit the whole tiny adorable horse motif these ponies had going on.
"So when you find out what you are good at, you get a tattoo about it?" I asked confused.
Dusty laughed at that. "No Hal, a cutie mark isn't a tattoo, it's created by the magic that exists inside every pony. When a young colt, or filly, discovers what they are best at, the cutie mark appears. Earning a cutie mark is a very important part of a pony's life, it's the moment when they find out their true calling."
"So one day, that just appeared on your body?"
"Eeyup, happened when I was ten. My best friend and I were enjoying the summer together. It was a partially sunny day out, quite warm as well, so we decided to head to a nearby pond hidden away in the woods to go swimming. We were jumping into the pond off a large rock but she wanted to make a bigger splash so she took flight and headed even higher."
"Oh she was a um pegasus?" I asked.
"Nope, a thestral. That's one of the reasons we headed to that pond. It was heavily shaded and that was easier on her eyes. Thestrals don't handle bright light as well as other ponies."
"Ah."
"Anyway up she went, but when she folded up her wings she didn't fall straight, she headed off to the left a bit. She didn't see the rock sticking up out of the water till it was too late. She hit her head and it knocked her out cold; I pulled her to the shore, but she wasn't breathing. If it wasn't for the training I had taken in school, I might not have known what to do. I cleared the water from her lungs, and got her breathing again. She coughed a bit, woke up, saw my cutie mark and kissed me. I had been too focused on saving her to even notice that I had gotten it."
"So you got a cutie mark because you rescued your friend?"
"I had always been interested in helping ponies. Whenever anyone in my family got sick, I'd care for them as best I could. During the school year I had taken first aid and CPR courses, even though I was still fairly young. I'm glad I did though because without them I might not have been able to save Moon Glow's life."
"Moon Glow was your friend in that story?"
"Friend, then wife."
"I guess that explains why you knew about their eating habits," I said. "Where is she now?"
"She passed away two years ago, we were married for 75 years."
"Oh, I'm sorry," I said truthfully, I hadn't meant to bring up any painful memories with my questions.
"No apology is necessary, I do miss her but we had a good life together. I remember the time we spent together fondly."
There was a knock at the door and then it opened and Golden Dawn walked in. One side of her pack had a large paper bag sticking out of it, the other had a smaller one.
"Why don't we head to the dining room and have some food," Dusty said.
We followed him into his dining room and Golden pulled both bags out of her pack. Out of the larger bag she pulled a great quantity of food, mostly fruit and veggies but also some flowers and a few glass jars of what looked like condiments. She picked up an apple with her wing and tossed it over to me, luck was on my side and I actually managed to catch the unexpected flying fruit. I took a bite and followed quickly by two more. This apple was amazingly good, so fresh and juicy that I wondered if she had picked it on the way back.
I watched as she pulled out a smaller bag from the large one. Inside were some rolls, she opened one up and put a carrot into it, then opened one of the glass jars and spread some sort of glaze on the carrot.
I laughed and then "Just like a hot dog," slipped out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying.
"Hot dog?" Golden asked, looking at me. "What's a hot dog?"
"Oh... uh... its um, its a food where I'm from. We stick them in rolls like you're doing with the carrot."
"You... you eat dogs?" Golden asked, looking horrified. That's when I found out that ponies can turn pale.
Even Dusty, who had just finished telling me his dead wife was a meat eater, looked kind of disturbed.
"What? No! It's just a name, I don't eat dogs. Humans don't eat dogs, well I guess some do, but I don't. In fact it's generally frowned upon in my country." I babbled at high speed, somehow under the impression that the faster I talked the less awkward this conversation would get. Which in fact seemed to be the opposite.
"Why are they called dogs then? What are they?" she asked, clearly unsatisfied with my rambling answer.
"Uh, beef," I mumbled under my breath.
"Beef? Like... cow?" Golden Dawn said.
Earlier she had blushed, then I made her go pale and now she was turning green. Quite the range of colors that could somehow show through her coat. How exciting.
"I... I roomed with a cow, in college."
Now it was my turn to be confused.
"You did what?" I asked.
At this point Dusty Heart spoke up, he explained to Golden that I ate meat and then to me that Equus was not just a planet of ponies. While ponies were by and far the most numerous, especially on this continent, there were many other races. Zebras, griffons, donkeys, cows, yaks, buffalo, minotaurs and even dragons were among the list that he went though.
"So, these are all intelligent races, and you mentioned that griffons, dragons and even some ponies eat meat. What are they eating? I hope griffons don't eat ponies or talking cows or something."
"Thousands of years ago, maybe, but now, virtually no intelligent race eats another, rumors persist that in the dragon territories across the sea, you should always be wary of a hungry dragon, but I don't know if there's any fact in them. There are still wild animals to be found, both here and in other lands. In Equestria, wild animals are more rare, mostly existing in places like the Everfree Forest and the Badlands. But outside of Equestria they are far more common. Because of this, much of Equestria's meat is imported." Dusty explained.
“Thanks for taking the time to explain all this. It might not seem like much but when you’re stuck in some alien place that you know nothing about, it’s good to learn a bit about it. Helps me feel not so out of place,” I said.
"Don't worry about it, anyway I think we've talked enough, let's eat."
Golden and I both nodded in agreement.
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I like what you've posted so far! Dusty and Golden are well written, and I am so very glad to see that the ponies aren't having panic attacks due to his appearance or diet. I'm looking forward to the next chapter!
This is great will wait for more!!
7876189
Oh good someone picked up on that reference.
To be honest, I'm not sure if I'd ever write that as a side story, I love Trek and Ponies but I don't know if I could write that story. Who knows though, I won't rule out the possibility.
7876315 Oh, I'm a sucker for any Discord/Q shenanigans, as you can tell if you look at my stuff.
Plus, I really like how you put a huge amount of thought to making so much plausible explanations to what has been given as show canon--the reasons why Celestia pawned off so much to Twilight and her friends: Nightmare Moon, Sombra, Discord, why she failed so spectacularly with Chrysalis. Fantastic job with that!
7876347
I'll have to check em out
Thanks!
I adopted the concept of Celestia and Luna being a tier (or many tiers) above regular ponies. I really like to look at them as, at the very least, crazy powerful immortals, all the way up god like entities. (As you might have noticed from my other works) That being said, MLP the show likes to treat them like punching bags any time a villain shows up (or, since we were talking Star Trek the good ol Worf Effect) so I spend a lot of time thinking of reasons as to why they keep getting so handily beaten.
7876716 I quite understand and agree.
Of course, we fans go and make them "god-like" in power, where the show never really portrays them that strong--but we're all justifying our head canons because they're moving the freaking sun and moon! Even given the "science" I used in Weirder Than Normal, they'd have to have power right up there with a fully-charged Green Lantern battery (not just the ring), a Kryptonian, or anyone from Mount Olympus. And they'd have to be even more powerful if gravity were normal, their sun really was the same size/distance/mass as our sun, and so on...
I just finished what you've done so far, and-- I! LIKE! IT!
Over all, this is VERY well written, although I did find a few glaring errors, which I'll send in PM. (just a few, really)
Heh! That’s a really useful "bucket" to have in a doctor's exam room!
I also like how you made the ponies closer to pony-sized rather than “small dog-sized” that so many others are using--about the same size I'm using for mine.
7876819
Yeah, I've seen a lot of different fan scalings. I tend to prefer ponies on the larger end of what I've run across (so like... pony sized.) They are ponies after all.
I found myself doing a bit of info gathering on actual pony heights and weights and used that as a base. It isn't exact because MLP ponies have different proportions (body isn't as long, legs are thicker, head is much bigger, so I had to kind of guess at a bit but I tried to be as accurate as possible in that regard.
very, very well written, does not hurt my eyes nor my brain from reading!
woot!
I'm surprised this story hasn't gotten more views, it certainly deserves more......kudos for being well written, you get a yay, better make that several.
Dafuq you talkin' 'bout Hal? You already damn well know how he knows that... You commented to him about how he knew.
7934944
It's shockingly new for its size.
Daisies are tasty and you can eat them, the petals anyway. I think the roots are supposedly pretty decent cooked.
8061240
8061334 Ive seen an image like that before what is your avatar from?
Have to say the pacing in this is EXQUISITE. The details are the perfect balance of description and speech, a very difficult balance to obtain. Overall I have absolutely no idea why this story doesn't have over a thousand Likes. I love this story.
8176789
Thanks for the kind words, I hope you continue to enjoy it!
Pacing. Grammar. Action's of the characters.
Perfectly balanced, as it should be.
You've caught my attention, let's see how it goes.