//------------------------------// // Chapter 1 - The Forest // Story: Miracles // by awesomesauce4 //------------------------------// He woke up in a forest. The sun shone down on his face, the leaves gently swaying as a pleasantly cooling breeze wafted through them. It took his mind a solid minute to remember to get up, and even then he was sluggish, as though he were wading through water. His name was Josh. He was an average-height, skinny Caucasian college student with a slight paunch of a belly, rectangular glasses that were never clean, and stormy blue-gray eyes. His hair, which had once been a brilliant copper, was now slowly dulling to brown, and he liked to joke that it was slowly oxidizing from fatigue. Groaning slightly, he rubbed his eyes with loosely-balled fists, his vision fading into churning purple-and-red as he attempted to knead the ache out of his face. That done, he brushed off the bark that had been pressing into his back, his black-and-white striped sweater already wet from morning dew. “The hell…” he muttered under his breath. “Hey,” a familiar voice greeted off to his right, and Josh’s neck snapped over, a small crack resonating through the trees. The person to his right was Ben, his best friend since middle school. If Josh was skinny, Ben was nothing but bones, and his slight height advantage over Josh made them almost look like an old-timey comedic duo. Had Josh been just a little shorter and fatter, they could have pulled it off, but alas, he was only a few inches down from Ben. Anyway, Ben had a curly brown afro that seemed to defy physical reality in its non-Euclidean curvature, bending in on itself as space-time compacted to provide more room for his unreal levels of hair. His brown eyes were the same shade as his hair, which combined with his even paler skin than Josh’s made him look like one of those chocolate-and-vanilla-flavored specialty treats that would occasionally be sold at grocery stores before slowly fading into capitalist oblivion. “Finally awake, huh?” Ben asked, hunched over. “Yeah,” Josh groaned as he sat up, stretching out. “Wait… what the hell, man? Where are we?” Ben shrugged. “Dunno, I woke up a… an hour?... a while before you did. Last I remember, I was just about to head out to school.” Josh snorted. “Last I remember, I was over in Cleveland, not doing anything even remotely resembling work. So unless I got drunk again and messed with the teleporter, I don’t think our being here at the same time is possible.” There was no teleporter, nor had Josh ever swallowed a drop of alcohol in his life. Due to his longstanding passion for science and engineering, Ben had early on dubbed Josh “a literal science,” which was by now an old and favored in-joke between the two. Ben, following customs they had never deviated from since they had met, chuckled at the joke. “Yeah, yeah. All things considered, though, you think we got kidnapped and dumped somewhere?” Josh shook his head. “Nah, bro. If we were kidnapped, they’d never just dump us. At least, not alive.” He took a moment to search around, and quickly discovered that he had nothing in his pockets. "Where's my phone! Where's my wallet? I've been robbed!" he exclaimed, frantically pulling at different pockets in his jeans in an attempt to find his missing items. Ben, meanwhile, simply shrugged, a smile tugging at his face as he observed Josh's antics. "Same. Looks like whoever dumped us here took our stuff, because I definitely had my phone and car keys and stuff in my pockets." Josh sighed angrily, adopting a pouting expression. Ben tugged at the collar of his t-shirt awkwardly, glancing around. “…Right, yeah. Well… shit, what now?” Josh shrugged, which was his go-to reaction to any and all things that happened to him. “I guess… we head for civilization. Hell, it’ll make for an interesting story to tell, at the very least.” The pair of them got up, stretching some more as they shook the last of the exhaustion from their bones. “So… um… do you have any idea how to get back?” Ben prompted, sounding nervous. “Yeah, we gotta look for a river first. Civilizations are always downstream… or is it upstream? No, it’s downstream, upstream wouldn’t make any fucking sense,” Josh mused. “Well, at least one of us was a Boy Scout,” Ben muttered. “Damn skippy. I just wish I remembered how to tie more than two knots,” Josh joked. “Still, I have no clue how to find a river, so I guess we just pick a direction and start walking?” Ben held up a finger. “Wait. You hear that?” Josh fell silent, ears straining to pick up sounds underneath the background noise of the dense forest they were in. “…No,” he admitted after a moment. Josh loved to listen to loud music, so it was entirely possible his ears had lost some of their prior hearing capabilities. “I think I hear water rushing,” Ben declared, striding off in the complete opposite direction than Josh had picked. “Come on.” Josh looked after him for a moment, then shrugged, rolled his eyes, and followed. To his mild surprise, Ben had been right. A river gently babbled before them, songbirds chirping over the rush of the water. “Well, what do you know,” Josh declared, raising an eyebrow. “This’ll do.” Ben pumped a fist. “Score one for me!” Josh chuckled, surveying the river. “Damn, this would be a fantastic place to go gold panning if I had my stuff with me.” Ben smirked over at him. “Oh? Gonna get rich off of this river?” Josh, who had been scanning the river, remained silent, walking forward into the river and ignoring the freezing temperature of the water. “Hey, what the-“ Ben began, but stopped as Josh stooped over and plunged his arm into the water. Pulling his prize out, he walked back to the shore, struggling slightly against the current but grinning like a madman. He unclutched his fist to reveal his new treasure: A thumb-sized lump of gold, glinting bright yellow in the sunlight. “You know what? Maybe I will,” Josh finished, a hint of excitement creeping into his tone. “H-holy shit,” Ben breathed, staring at it. “Can I… see that?” For a moment, Josh stared at Ben, wondering what his intent was. Then, he shrugged and deposited the nugget in Ben’s hands, grinning. “Sure. After all, if there’s one, there’s more…” Josh and Ben set about looking for more gold nuggets. To their half-elation, half-disappointment, there was only one more, a smaller chip hidden under a boulder that Josh had just barely managed to push over. “Well, hey, look on the bright side: Any amount of gold is a good amount,” Josh quipped. “Besides, we can just come back here with proper equipment without telling anyone. Hell, if this is unclaimed land, we can submit a claim with the money we get from these two nuggets.” Ben was still clutching the piece Josh had given in delight. “Holy shit, man, we’re gonna be rich!” he repeated for the fourth time. Josh rolled his eyes, though his belly shaking gave away his laughter. “I know. But… hmm. I might just use a bit of this for some gold chemistry. Not much opportunity for that as an amateur, y’know?” Ben laughed. “Dude. Sell the nugget, you can use the money to buy tons of science stuff!” Josh stroked his beard in thought. “You may be on to something. Anyway, let’s move on. We can always come back to this place, and we need to find some food soon.” Ben’s stomach grumbled in agreement, and he looked sheepishly at Josh as they started walking downstream. “Yeah… do you know what’s edible in the forest?” Josh shook his head. “I didn’t pay too much attention to that, so I’m going to go with ‘trust nothing.’ Every berry, mushroom and plant in this place could be edible, or they could be really bad for us. We’ll probably have to stick with animals if we’re going to be in here for a while.” Ben hummed in thought. “So, should we craft weapons and stuff to hunt with?” Josh nodded. “Look for some decent size sticks. If we’re lucky, there’ll be some rocks in the river that have been freshly split instead of rounded; we can use those for carving.” Ben whistled. “Damn, yo, for someone who claims they never pay attention, you know your shit.” Josh laughed. “Honestly? I’m making half this shit up.” Ben snorted, and began to look for fallen tree branches. An hour later, they had two wooden ‘spears’, and a bow Josh had managed to fashion out of a particularly springy stick and some grass he’d woven together. “Fuck – this bowstring keeps snapping!” he complained as it did so for the fifth time, flicking him on the face. “What did the Scouts use?” Ben asked curiously. Josh rolled his eyes. “Plastic bowstrings that were in a kit. Historically, they used the tendons of animals, which worked really well but probably degraded quickly.” They trudged onward, their initial joy at finding precious metal dampened by the aches in their stomachs. “Hey, you know what I just noticed?” Josh thought aloud a while later. “What?” Ben asked, sounding a bit tired from all the walking. “The sun hasn’t moved for the whole damn time we’ve been moving, and it’s been hours. It’s just stayed up there in the sky.” Ben followed his gaze to the ball of light, shielding his face from the glare before removing his hand in consternation. “Hey, I can look at it without blinding myself. What the hell?” he asked. Josh tried this for himself, and squinted at the white circle in the sky suspiciously. “That… can’t be right. The rods and cones in our eyes shouldn’t be able to handle any amount of light from a black-body like the Sun. What the fuck…?” he wondered. “Okay, now I’m scared,” Ben announced, drawing closer to Josh. “Josh? Is there… is there some sciency explanation for this?” Josh thought hard. “Well, two things. Either the Sun has gone so far through its lifespan that it's now dying, which means we’ve traveled at least a few billion years forward through time, or… we’re on another planet entirely, which somehow has the correct concentration of oxygen and recognizable lifeforms. Those are the two most likely occurrences I can think of,” he theorized. Ben began breathing heavily, and Josh paused a moment, a momentary flicker of regret showing on his face. “Hey, hey! Calm down. Neither of those two possibilities necessarily prevents us from getting home! If we traveled forward through time, or landed on another planet, there might be a more advanced civilization than humanity that can help us get back!” Ben took a few deep breaths. “Right, right… okay. Calming down now. Um… so how exactly did the two of us travel through time, again?” he asked. Josh shrugged helplessly. “Hey, don’t look at me. I’m working off of pretty much nothing here. For all we know, we’ve landed in fucking Narnia.” Ben paused a moment. “You know, the really sad thing is that’s actually a reasonable possibility,” he considered. "Yeah, I can’t wait to meet Jesus Metaphor er I mean Aslan,” Josh grumbled. Ben’s eyes widened. “Wait… holy shit.” Josh laughed, caught off guard by Ben’s look of shock and realization. “Did you seriously not catch that?” Ben shook his head. “No! I mean… dammit Josh!” Josh laughed again. “We could also be in Equestria,” he joked. “You wish!” Ben shot back. “I do wish, that’d be pretty cool. Although, maybe not if it’s one of those Equestrias where everything is terrible and the Princesses are xenophobes or nymphomaniacs or something like that,” Josh rambled. Ben rolled his eyes. About a half hour later, they had resumed silently trudging next to the river. Suddenly, there was the sound of a snapping branch behind them, and Ben whirled around, Josh turning around more slowly. A few feet back, something ducked into the trees, a glimpse of black and dark blue all that was visible as it quickly vanished. “The hell was that?” Ben asked. “Probably some local wildlife that was trying to hunt us. Relax, it looked smaller than we are,” Josh dismissed. “Which means, if I remember right, that it’s either poisonous or a really vicious predator,” Ben pointed out. Josh considered this, a worried frown appearing on his face. “Point taken. Okay, if they ambush us, head for the river and jump in. They probably can’t swim much faster than the river current if they’re land animals, and you can easily gain some distance.” Ben looked at Josh. “Wait… why haven’t we just floated down the river this whole time?” Josh leveled his gaze at him. “Hypothermia, fish that can bite, rocks, rapids, waterfalls…” Ben slapped a hand to his forehead. “Okay, okay, point taken.” To their relief, nothing else disturbed them in the following hours. The sun was still high in the sky, a fact which both of them refused to acknowledge or look at. “Damn, this goes on forever. We might have to make camp,” Josh declared. “Oh shit, I think not,” Ben teased, an unmistakably excited tone to his voice as he pointed. Josh followed his gaze, a grin coming to his own face. Just barely visible over the treetops was the unmistakable gray of a building. They ran towards it, laughing and crying as they tossed their makeshift weapons to the side. “Home free, fuck yeah!” Josh exclaimed. “FREEDOM!” Ben cheered, raising a triumphant fist in the air. Their enthusiasm was short-lived as they entered a new clearing. The building was very clearly destroyed, the rubble of carved stone bricks and shattered glass windows littering what used to be a courtyard. “…Shit,” Josh exclaimed, looking around. “If we’re in Narnia, I think this is Book 4. What with the ruined castle of the Pevensies, and whatever...” Ben gazed up at the ruined building. “This does look weirdly like a castle. But… it looks like there are a few sections with the roofing still intact. If nothing else, we’ll have a roof over our heads.” Josh nodded. “Right… let’s see if we can find our way inside.” To their surprise, the building had its own moat, though the water had long since drained. “Ah, hell, what now?” Josh complained, searching for a way forward. “Nah, it’s cool, there’s a rope bridge,” Ben commented, pointing over at a dilapidated bridge about thirty feet to their left. Josh examined the bridge with a critical eye. “Old ropes, rotten planks… Ben, that’s not a bridge. It’s a death trap,” Josh rebuked. “Any better way forward? I’m not staying out in the cold with a building right in front of us,” Ben shot back. Josh moved over to a nearby tree. The wood was slightly rotten, and the roots didn’t look too big… “Help me push this,” he commanded. Ben, seeing what he intended, rushed over to help, and the tree just barely moved from the strain. “This… might take a while,” Josh noted uncertainly. “If we give it one big push, it should move it more than a sustained little push, right?” Ben posited. “Yeah… coefficient of static friction is higher than coefficient of kinetic friction, or something,” Josh huffed. “…I… don’t think that’s what’s going on here, but whatever. Slam this sucker, on three! One… two… THREE!” Ben yelled, charging forward. Josh hurriedly joined in, and between the two of them they managed to tilt the tree just a few degrees. Josh went around the side to examine this, and gave the thumbs-up to Ben. “Keep going, it’s working!” he declared. “One… two… THREE!” Ben repeated, and they bashed it again, Josh grunting as he put his full weight onto the tree trunk. This time, it moved more, branches shifting in the wind. “One more!” Josh called out, wondering how the two of them were strong enough to move the entire root system of a tree. Maybe it was old? They repeated once more, and the tree slowly creaked and groaned before falling forward. “TIMBERRRR!” Ben called out gleefully as the tree came crashing down onto the opposite ledge of the moat. The two of them sat down for a moment, panting at their exertion and hunger. It took a few minutes, but the two of them finally picked themselves back up and made their way across the bridge. The tree creaked some more, and it wasn’t easy to keep their balance on the log, but eventually they made it across without incident. “Just like a balance beam back in gym class,” Josh remarked, breathing a sigh of relief as he hopped down onto safe ground. “Okay, so. We’re in a destroyed castle. Still no sign of civilization, but we know they exist at the very least. No food, and if I don’t eat something soon I’m going to pass out,” Ben recapped. “Let’s see if there’s any storerooms in this castle. Grains keep pretty well if they’re dry, if I recall correctly,” Josh noted. They entered the courtyard proper, the ruins of smashed statues and torn cloth strewn about. “Hey, look here,” Josh pointed out, examining a banner. Ben walked over to join him, and he pointed at some stitch marks. “These are a different thread than the rest, and in a lot better shape. Looks like it might be part of a restoration effort,” he theorized. Ben brightened. “So we just landed somewhere in Europe, or something?” he wondered. “Hopefully, yeah. In that case, there should be an area where the restoration workforce rests, or hangs out, or something,” Josh added. “Let’s keep moving.” They had almost made it through the courtyard when Ben did a double take, Josh looking back in confusion after he realized his friend had stopped. “What’s up?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. Ben walked over to a particular piece of debris, kicking it with his boot. “No way. No fucking way,” he muttered under his breath. “What are you…” Josh trailed off as he too examined what Ben had found. It was the head of a statue, but not anything human, or recognizable from Greco-Roman or modern interpretations of sculpture. No, this was a decidedly alien style. The face was round and smooth, not terribly detailed but all the more beautiful for it. The eyes, taking up perhaps half the height of the head, were wide open, with no pupils or irises – just a pair of convex ovals set slightly inward from the face. The ears were pointed, and facing directly upwards, reminiscent of a deer’s or other such non-human fauna, but significantly larger. One ear had been chipped halfway off, and the other was cracked enough that Josh was sure it would follow suit as soon as he touched it. Finally, to top off the whole thing, a spiraling gray horn was set directly into the middle of the forehead, tapering to a lethal point. It stared at him blankly, almost daring him to ruminate on its appearance. For a moment, neither of them dared to speak. Josh's vision swam as he tried to think about this artifact, only to find that his brain had checked out, leaving the note "Nope, not putting up with this shit anymore" as it slammed the door behind it. “Oh my god,” Ben whispered as he knelt down. “Josh, do you know what this means?” Josh took a seat beside the thing, running a finger over the smooth marble surface. For a moment, he couldn't bring himself to speak. “We’re in Equestria. The Castle of the Two Sisters,” he answered softly. And then it really hit him. They were actually in Equestria. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god…” Ben trailed off. Josh remained silent, though inwardly he was reeling. It was finally happening. He’d written about this countless times, dreamed about it, thought about what he might do, who he might talk to… but this was the real thing. They sat for a while, just the two of them, alone with their thoughts and the statue. Ben began hyperventilating, managing to calm himself down with what seemed like a heroic effort. Meanwhile, Josh simply sat there, blank, unable to rationalize or even think. All thoughts of survival had been driven out of their heads, replaced with a single, unanimous "what the fuck?" that refused to disappear from their thought processes no matter how hard they tried to move on. Eventually, however, their stomachs reminded them of their true mission, and Josh shifted awkwardly. “Okay… well… we know we’re not alone,” he announced, managing to string together a coherent thought for the first time in a solid half hour. “And we have people – uh, ponies – that have some experience in cross-universe teleportation. Hell, things are looking up. We’ll get y- us back to Earth in no time. All we have to do is punch a few manticores, and befriend Twilight Sparkle.” Ben looked at him strangely, and Josh stared right back – it might have been a Freudian slip, but there was no way he was admitting it. “…Anyway… first things first. There’s gotta be some food around here somewhere, Twilight wouldn’t fix up this place for hours if she didn’t store snacks,” Ben declared, striding off towards the nearest hallway. Josh noticed that Ben treated the door with a lot more reverence, electing to gently open it instead of yanking at the handle. Almost as if Ben thought that now they were in Equestria, the place deserved a lot more respect. Josh smirked, catching the door as it swung back and stepping into the hallway before gently closing the door behind him. “They could have brought some food in a picnic basket, and then packed it out,” Josh pointed out, as they traversed the randomly chosen hallway. It was lined with pony-shaped suits of armor, which Josh and Ben stared at in far more intrigue than would be given to the human equivalents. The metal was untarnished, despite clearly being centuries old, and the chiseled features in each suit appeared to be custom-made for specific ponies. “Let me dream, Josh!” Ben called back, examining a different suit before continuing down the corridor. Josh snorted with amusement and followed after, a slight feeling of excitement burning in his chest. It took a while, but they eventually found what appeared to be some sort of kitchen, after a few hours of searching. To Josh's surprise, Ben was right: Twilight had food stored here. A few sandwiches were lying out in the open, unblemished despite the plates having dust on them. “Are we sure these are safe to eat? They’re probably rotten,” Ben worried. Josh picked one up to examine it. “Looks like they’re good – at least, the bread is. Nice and soft. So I guess it’s some kind of preservation spell? I really hope that doesn’t apply while inside our stomachs, because otherwise this’ll accomplish exactly nothing.” Ben chuckled. “Hopefully magic is a little more advanced than that.” They bit into the sandwiches gratefully, scarfing them down with barely a thought to manners or the fact that they were stealing. “Disgusting, but probably healthy,” Josh quipped, swallowing the last of his only meal for what felt like six hours. “Eh, mine was alright. Some fruit spread,” Ben remarked. “Lucky. I got the flowers, I think,” Josh grumbled. “Hey, at least we’ve got food. There’s a couple more back here,” Ben pointed out, and Josh brightened. “Okay, let’s take a rest here, and pack those for tomorrow. Wait!” He called out as Ben made to do just that. “Don’t touch those yet. The spell or whatever might stop if you pick them up.” Ben nodded, moving his hand away from the tantalizingly close slices of bread. “Good thinking,” he replied. “Let’s go find a place to sleep for the night.” They decided to sleep in the beds of the Princesses themselves, as these were by far the best kept in the entire castle. “Whoa, the sun dropped,” Ben exclaimed as he viewed the night sky, moonlight filtering into Luna’s room as the two of them explored the room in the darkness. “Hey, what’s this?” Josh wondered, leaning down to examine one of the objects in Luna’s cluttered room. It was a tiny bed, complete with a pillow the size of Josh's head and a little tucked-in blanket. “A baby crib? I didn’t know Luna had a kid. Though, I haven't watched anything past season 3...” Ben commented. “Neither did I. As far as we know, she doesn’t. The hell does this say…” Josh trailed off as he tried to decipher the name inscribed into a brass plaque on the side of the miniature bed. “’Miracle Matter.’ Sounds like a really bad sexual euphemism,” Josh remarked. “For what… oh, come on!” Ben caught on, elbowing him in the shoulder while Josh chuckled. “What? It’s an awful name. Whoever had it should be ashamed of themselves for having it,” he continued. “Pfft. Whatever, dude. I call Celestia’s bed,” Ben answered, walking over to a side door that connected the two sisters’ rooms. “Fine by me, Luna’s bed is pretty sweet,” Josh shot back. “Hey, there’s another one here!” Ben called out. “What?” Josh replied. “Another baby crib! This one says… ‘Clockwork Chronology.’ I guess he had power over time, or something?” Ben wondered. “Damn, that’s a way better name than Miracle Matter. Celestia’s kid must have been cool,” Josh commented. Ben laughed. “Better not mention that in front of Luna, she might just flip,” he teased. Josh laughed in return, and they made their way to bed. Some time later, Josh tossed and turned, unable to get to bed. One thought just kept nagging at his mind… “Hey, Ben?” “Uh… what is it, dude?” “It really sucks that we’re not black.” Ben burst out laughing. “What?” “Think about it!” Josh exclaimed. “I’ve read, like, a thousand fanfictions about this place. And in all but three of them, maybe, the protagonists were white American males. We’re not setting a good standard here.” “Oh my god, Josh. Go the fuck to sleep.” “…Fine…” And all was silent.