"Ah told you, Ah got this Twi." Applejack looked back at her friend. Twilight was sitting on the wagon that AJ was tethered to, making sure the big mirror didn't fall over. "Jus' hold it steady. Did Princess Celestia say why we couldn't take this on the train?"
Twilight opened her mouth, fully prepared to give Applejack the full description of why such a device shouldn't be transported on anything that can give sudden jolts, when one of the wheels of the cart hit a rock and bounced. "Applejack watch out!" Twilight had to steady herself first, and by the time she did the mirror was falling sideways.
Toppling from the little cart, the Crystal Mirror fell down with a plop into the mud beside the cart. Twilight and Applejack froze and each gave a sigh as it seemed the thing hadn't broken. "Okay, just lift it back up and put it back in, just easy-like.
As soon as Twilight's magic grabbed the mirror, it soaked some of it up. Mud poured through the mirror, leaving the alicorn gasping and quickly pulling her magic back. It took a few moments for the mirror portal to fully consume the magic she had tried to lift it with. Applejack had unhitched herself from the cart. "Maybe we should lift it in the old-fashioned way?"
~~~~~+++++~~~~~
Twilight Sparkle was on her way to school. She got off the bus and turned to look at the big building when the stinkiest, most horrible mud ever started appearing right in front of statue.
"Ew, what is that?"
"Where is it coming from?"
"What is that thing?"
Being genuinely curious about nearly everything, Twilight advanced on the scene and followed a few girls' gazes to something squirming in the mud. Thoughts and memories flooded together and the answer unfolded. "It's from Equestria…" Unhitching her backpack, Twilight lifted out the jar she had her science experiment in. Quickly unscrewing the lid, she tipped it upside down and dumped the frog out on the grass. "Come here, I can keep you safe." She scooped up some mud before she got the tiny creature.
"Twilight!" Fluttershy rushed over. "What are you doing? Is that a little creature?" Leaning closer, she saw a tiny face pull back and hide in the mud within the jar. "Where did you find it?" From Fluttershy's bag came a bark of excitement. "Spike, please be careful, your leg isn't healed yet."
"He is getting better?" Twilight's attention was still locked on the mud. "I hope he isn't being too much trouble?"
"He is a perfect angel." Fluttershy reassured her friend, just as focused on the mud as Twilight was.
Gesturing to the huge pile of mud, Twilight saw the little face peek out her side of the jar and smile at her. A tiny hoof-like foreleg waved. It was impossible for Twilight not to both giggle and bring her face closer. "Hey, are you okay in there?" The tiny head nodded. "You can understand me?" Another nod.
"She is a little shy, we could take her-" Fluttershy stopped, watching her friend suddenly running away from the school with the little creature. "Twilight! You will be late!"
"Can'ttalkscience!" Twilight's heart was pounding as she raced back to the bus stop and looked in at the creature. "Can you talk?" They shook their head to her. "Do you think you can learn?"
Twilight saw both the little pony-like creature's ears perk up dead straight and giggled more. "I wonder what you eat? What you…" She trailed off as her new friend started squirming rapidly. "Are you okay?" Reaching her hand in, Twilight offered her fingers to the tiny thing and marveled as it climbed out and up her arm, its tail curling around her wrist. But it didn't stop. "Where… where are you going?" Pausing on the girl's shoulder, the creature lifted a hoof and tapped at Twilight's lips. "What-" Twilight didn't get any further, the hoof pushed into her mouth, soon followed by the Equestrian creature's head.
A little panic set in, Twilight's eyes went wide and her first instinct was to close her mouth around the thing that seemed intent on getting inside. Fear combined with worry however, and rather than bite down and risk hurting the creature, she reached up to grab its body with her hands. Blinking again, she clamped her eyes down as her hands slipped on the mud-covered creature. A tiny hoof braced on the inside of her gum and pushed. Something odd was wrong with her gag reflex, her throat not reacting properly to having something strange trying to crawl into her. It struggled and squirmed in the back of her throat, its tail pulling into her mouth.
Twilight had a decision. It wasn't going down her throat and it seemed quite resilient to being removed from her mouth. Taking a deep breath, she started to swallow. It pushed down her throat, blocking her airway and causing her to gag at last. Strong muscles combined with a slightly slimy body meant it didn't take long to go down and exit her esophagus. "What the…" Twilight panted, her hand flying to her chest to feel for a bulge. There wasn't one, of course. "Why did you do that to me? I only wanted to help!"
An odd feeling inside her stomach made the girl blink rapidly, it was like she suddenly got a lot less full. "Wait, you are some kind of parasite…" A little tap was felt deep in her chest. "Two for yes, one for no." Two little taps came and excitement returned. "You feed inside someone, in their body?" Two little taps. "Okay, you aren't… you aren't going to do anything crazy, like burrow in and lay eggs in me or something?" One tap, a hesitant one. "That was two questions," she quickly thought, "you aren't going to hurt me?" One tap. Just then, however, the bus back to her house arrived and she put the lid back on the mud and got on.
Flashing her school pass, she took a seat and set her bag down carefully. "So you aren't going to hurt me, will you lay eggs in me?" Two hesitant taps came. "Can… can you come out when you are fed? I want to see you again." One tap, then another one came a moment later. "I promise you I won't hurt you. I will teach you how to talk properly, if you help me with some study." Twilight froze a moment. "So yes to eggs. Will... will they hurt?" One sharp poke came, along with a rush of relief.
There was the oddest slithering sensation inside her, causing Twilight to giggle. "Okay, so do you have a name?" One tap. "Well, once you can start talking, we can see about finding one you like." The ride was otherwise normal, Twilight felt normal, but her brain couldn't get past the fact that she had an intelligent parasite living inside her now.
"My friends!" She pulled her phone out and her thumbs were soon flying across the screen.
Feeling like I have a stomach bug, can't come in to school.
She mass-texted it to everyone. "There, that should-" Twilight reached out and hit the "stop" button. "Phew." Getting up and walking to the door, she gave a distracted wave to the bus driver before getting off the bus. All too soon Twilight was closing the door to her bedroom-apartment and set her bag down. "Okay, you eaten enough?" Two taps came. "Okay… oh gosh, you can get out again?" Two more taps. "Through my mouth?" Again, two more taps and a slight squirm. Is it laughing at me?
The oddest feeling made Twilight's eyes go wide; her little passenger was coming back up. Gasping and taking a deep breath, she rushed to her en-suite. Not the toilet! She put her hands to the sink and leaned over it. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't "lady like," but soon Twilight had the little parasite sitting in the sink and a horrible taste left in her mouth. "Gah, urk…" She spun the tap on and leaned in, guzzling water, swishing it in her mouth. About to spit it out, Twilight gagged a little and rushed to the toilet to spit there.
With the big head so close to her, the little creature reached up a hoof and booped Twilight on the nose, giggling nervously.
"You can definitely understand me," Twilight picked up the little creature and helped her under the water to clean off, "but you can't talk yet… there are not a lot of reasons for a human to not be able to talk…" With the little creature clean Twilight offered them a towel—that they dived into—to dry off. "Let's see, young children can understand language but not speak it. Oh, maybe you don't have the right mouth-parts?"
"No!"
Twilight froze. "You can talk?" She looked down to see the tiny, pony-like creature covering its snout with two forehooves. "You can or just learned?"
"Jus' learn."
"Oh my gosh this is exciting. Okay, come on and you can get up to speed." Twilight offered the little creature her palm, unable to hold back a giggle as they climbed up and slithered at the same time. "Do you have a name?"
"No!" The creature looked up at Twilight. "Wha you?"
"My name is Twilight Sparkle, my friends—and you are one of them—call me Twi or just Twilight. But you need a name." Twilight walked over to her desk and turned her computer on. With one finger still resting on the computer she giggled. "I could name you after one of the smartest women ever. Would you like to be named Ada?"
"Ada?" Ada blinked at the name. "Ada! Like!" With that Ada started bouncing up and down, her tail still secured to Twilight's forearm. "Ada! Ada! Ada!"
"Okay, let's find you some important things…" Twilight gestured to the keyboard and mouse of the computer. "First, you can use this thing," she wiggled the mouse around, clicked the buttons, "to control this little pointer on the screen." She pointed up to the cursor.
Tilting her head to the side, Ada climbed down from Twilight's arm and shivered a little. Reaching out a hoof, she looked up at the screen and leaned on the mouse to push it. "Oh!"
"Ada, you really are clever." Twilight pulled a notepad over, starting to scrawl observations on it. "What would you like to learn first? Language should really be the first thing." Twilight's hand sped over the keyboard, watched intently by two little eyes. "Here, learning English."
The site loaded and Ada bounced off the mouse and onto the keyboard in her excitement. Lots of things happened at the top of the screen but she was blinking at the pictures. "Wha' dis?" She pointed a little hoof up at three squiggly patterns.
"That is A, B, and C. Those are the first three letters in the alphabet." Twilight pointed to the keyboard Ada was now climbing all over. Realizing things might go poorly if she kept her position, Twilight offered her palm to Ada. "The A," Twilight pointed to it, "makes a sound like 'aye' or 'ah.' "
"Aye, ah!" Ada dutifully followed along, sounding out each letter after Twilight, watching when the girl pulled up a new "letter" to work out. Once they had been through them all once, and then a second time with Twilight asking Ada what each letter sounded like, Ada bounced out of Twilight's hand and—carefully moving around the keyboard, and not on it—she tapped A, D, then A again. "Ada… hungry…"
Twilight reached a hand down to rub Ada's shoulder gently. "What would you like to eat?" The moment she asked, Twilight knew what the little creature would want. "Oh… you are going to need to be…"
"Ins-eye!" Ada bounced in place and nuzzled Twilight's lax finger. "Eat nice fings?"
Seeing more chance to learn and teach, Twilight offered her palm to the excited and adorable parasite. "Why don't you pick some things out?" She waited for Ada to scurry up her arm before walking to her kitchenette. Opening the refrigerator, Twilight held Ada out to see inside.
"Col!" Ada squirmed and suddenly scurried up Twilight's arm, working under the sleeve of her hoodie and gripping tight to the girl's wrist. With her nose poking out, Ada was able to pay more attention to the contents of the cooler. "That!"
"Lettuce? Anything else?" Twilight lifted out the small head she still had left. In short order she had a small pile of things on her bench, each personally chosen by Ada. "Now, what are we going to do with these… a salad maybe?"
Ada contemplated the question with all seriousness. Squirming out from under Twilight's hoodie, she jumped down to the bench and broke off a tiny bit of the lettuce, then nibbled on it. "Ugh, cwunchy."
"I guess you get it a little after it is… well, chewed." Twilight pulled a bowl over and immediately Ada jumped into it. She was just thinking how she would need to wash it again when a nervous giggle rose up in her throat. "Well, you are going to go to the same place anyway…" She broke off some lettuce leaves to curl around Ada, then cut a few cherry tomatoes up. Slowly, Twilight Sparkle built a salad around Ada so that when she finally put some dressing on it she got splashed by it. "You really need to be inside me to eat, don't you?"
"I do." Ada could sense Twilight's reluctance. "I go in easy, you see." She squirmed around, making sure she had a good portion of the salad dressing all over her. At last she plucked up half a cherry tomato, worked more dressing on it, and offered it to Twilight.
Twilight took the "sample" from Ada, partially focusing on those little hooves and how they held the hemisphere. It's just a tomato. She popped the fruit in her mouth and started chewing. The sweet taste of the tomato flooded her mouth and she gave a happy sigh at the dressing—it was in her fridge for a reason, after all.
"No chew." Ada lifted both forelegs up, offering another of the little tomato halves.
"Okay." Taking the second piece, Twilight slipped it in her mouth and closed her eyes. She didn't bite, didn't chew, instead the girl just gulped and swallowed the fruit whole. It felt like she remembered the first time Ada had gone in, felt. "Be careful…" Twilight reached down with her hand and felt Ada, don't even think the word "parasite," and slowly lifted her hand up to her face.
"Open pweese." Ada tapped Twilight's closed mouth with a hoof. Her new friend's maw opened up but before slipping inside, Ada leaned up to kiss Twilight's nose. Lowering back down, she pushed forward and into Twilight's mouth.
It was hard not to panic, so Twilight focused on things to do. She grabbed the bowl of salad—still with Ada crawling into her mouth, don't think about it—and headed for her desk again. Squirming and wriggling to the back of her throat, Ada actually tasted good. Without thinking, Twilight's throat worked and she started to gulp just like she had with the tomato. Ada was suddenly gone from her mouth—most of her, her tail still was sliding further back—and headed down her throat. Moments later and Twilight sat in a bit of surprise. "You okay in there?" Two little taps were Twilight's answer. "Well, time for your meal then."
Twilight started in on the salad, taking particular care to chew everything before swallowing. Reaching one hand up she opened a new tab on her browser. "Stomach parasite… Oh no, nothing like that!" She hit the back button quickly. "Mythic? Mythical? Mythological? Magic? Ugh!" Twilight banged her head on the keyboard. "What are you, Ada?"
The odd sensation of having the inside of her stomach gently stroked made Twilight reach a hand down and press just below her chest. "You know? Or you just want company?" The soft stroking continued. "Or is it time for a nap?" Two little taps came and Twilight smiled. "Well, I could always go to school for my afternoon classes..."