//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2: Humphrey Dinklehuegen 
// Story: Humphrey Dinklehuegen and the Talking Horses 
// by Unwhole Hole 
//------------------------------//

	The door slowly creaked open.
“Wow. It sure smells in here.”
Humphrey Dinklehuegen- -or Humph as he was more commonly known to the several individuals who actually knew of his existence or bothered to care- -said the exact same thing every time he entered his home. His reaction was not out of compulsion so much as of perpetual amazement: he had no idea how his house managed to smell different- -and generally worse- -every single time he entered it. 
He flicked the switch on the wall, and the lights did not come on. Surprised, he flicked the switch several more times, wondering if he had a wiring problem. Then he remembered that, as a wizard, his house was not connected to the power grid. 
“Oh,” he said, saddened. He closed the door behind him and let the whole front area of his house fall dark. It was nearing nightfall, but more importantly, it was Britain, and as such was perpetually cloudy. This left Humph in the dark most of the time.
The first thing he did in this darkness was to take off his trousers. He then took a step forward- -and promptly tripped over his wire-spool coffee table. This resulted in a great crash as he knocked the piles of mail off of it and fell to the ground, swearing with various British curses that were probably unintelligible everywhere else in the world. 
“Stupid bloody coffee table! I don’t even like coffee! I would turn you into firewood if my fireplace wasn’t already filled with old tires and that one gnome- -you know what?” He whipped out his wand. “That’s the last time you trip me! REDUCIO!”
A bolt of violet light shot out of the tip of his wand, striking the wire spool. It shuddered, and then grew at least thirty percent. Humph almost panicked, but then it promptly shrunk down to the size of a tater tot. 
“Ha! Take that, spool! Humph is victorious!” He paused. “And…no longer has a table. Darn it.” 
Slightly saddened by this turn of events, Humph stood up and fumbled his way around the room, finding the various torches that he left sitting on his various pieces of second-hand furniture, flicking each one on as he went. Within several minutes, the room was filled with various spots of bright light. 
Humph sighed, and then sat down on his couch. He stopped, holding his arms out as the internal architecture of the seat creaked and gowned, shaking and vibrating with the strain of his butt. Humph was by no means fat, but he was pretty sure that the innards of the couch were made of wicker, the worst possible structural element for just about anything. 
The couch stabilized, though, and leaned forward, emptying out a small burlap sack. Several smartphones tumbled out onto the floor. Normally, Humph would have placed these on his wire-spool, but it was indisposed at the moment meaning that he had to use the worn hardwood floor instead. Once they were out, he turned them over, observing the various notes tied around them indicating their owners and their extensively shattered screens. 
He pointed his wand at each of them. “Reparo, reparo, reparo, reparo, reparo dinero- -” The last one burst into flames with a small explosion, and Humph watched it burn. Then she shrugged. “Eh. Four out of five isn’t bad. Better than usual, even. And that’s like…” He counted on his fingers. “16K. In rubles, which is…” He counted again. “One hundred ninety pounds. I think. That’s some heavy cash.” 
In celebration, he leaned back on the badly stained couch. It creaked again, but once again did not fall. Even if it did, it was not as though it cost anything. He had gotten it from the dump. Apparently, it had once been to Hogwarts. From the smell of it, it had probably belonged to the Hufflepuffs. Which, of course, meant that the couch had more magical training than Humph ever would. 
Humph waved his wand in the air. There was a small burst of energy, and a leek appeared. It dropped into his hand, and he sat in the near-darkness as he ate it, trying to remember the spell to get his coffee table back to its right and proper size. 
Once he decided he did not know, Humph stood up and finished his leek. He then walked over to the back hall of his rather crooked and unleveled home and entered his study. This area of his home was actually well lit, with all of the light coming from a quartz jar hung from the ceiling. It contained a writhing mass of living fiendfyre, something he had accidentally conjured while he had been attempting to create a spell to summon bootleg maple syrup. It was not happy to see him- -it was never happy to see anything. And if the jar ever broke, Humph would probably be burnt to a crisp along with half of England. It made light, though, and he had never quite figured out what to do with it apart from keep it as a pet.  
Sitting down at his desk, Humph opened one of the many used textbooks that littered his office and got to work on his rack of potion-making equipment. He flipped through the pages of the textbook he was using. He had several, but this particular one was the best. It had apparently once belonged to someone named “Goyle” who barely had the coherence to write his own name without putting the “G” backward. It was torn in places and filled with every manner of stain- -including one that Humph hoped was a crushed chocolate frog wedged somewhere in the eighth chapter. 
It was better than the “Prince” copy, though. Someone had written in all the margins there with highly impractical and pretentious modifications to the recipes and equipment. Humph had barely been able to cobble together a proper distillation apparatus from rusted muggle car parts, let alone afford an actual cauldron. The Goyle copy was far more practical for his use.
“Let’s see,” he said. “Six months to brew…well that’s a fat NOPE.” He looked up at the equipment which had been running all day. “If I purposefully contaminate the main line with bacteria, I can accelerate the fermentation process. And the sixth and twelfth distillations steps aren’t necessary…and I can probably replace filtered tincture of thyme with pickle juice.” He picked up a half-drank bottle of pickle juice, drank half of it, and then poured it into the top of the reflux apparatus on the machine. It smoked wildly and released a choking gas.
“Should make a smell like fresh raspberries…no, but close enough. Might have been phosgene. Oh well.”  He turned the stopcock at the end of the device and let out the prepared potion. It dripped slowly, but eventually collected in the small glass container. Humph held it up to the light of his pet fyre. “The book says it should also be a clear to golden color…and this is cloudy green.” He shrugged. “Eh. I’m ninety three percent sure this is proper Felix Felicis. This time. Gonna turn my ‘L’ up to 10.” He popped the cap off the container and swallowed the contents.
“Hmm,” he said, grimacing. “Tastes like…somebody stored cosmoline in an old boot. With a hint of…mint.” His eyes widened as his stomach gurgled. “Yep…I just poisoned myself. Again.” 
What came next was a blur. Humph felt himself sprinting through his house and out his back door, nearly slipping on the uneven and crumbling stone step as he entered his backyard. He ran through his mandrake patch, desperately trying to hold the potion in long enough to get past the rock wall that bordered his back yard proper with the forest beyond. 
Eventually he made his way through the twilight and to somewhat secluded spot on the edge of the forest. When he finally deemed the spot suitable, he began to produce a technicolor yawn of the most intriguing of colors. 
This lasted for some time, and Humph finally stopped retching. 
“I knew…owww…that I should have skipped the THIRD distillation step…”
Almost as soon as he had said this, a resounding explosion echoed through the forest. There was a brilliant flash of blue light, and Humph felt something land on his back, flattening him to the ground. 
“Huh- -what- -who?” cried an unfamiliar female voice. “I’m- -I’m alive! HA! The Great and Poweful Trixie is indeed great and powerful! See?”
“SEE?” cried a much smaller but equally female voice. “Do you have any idea- -a STARSWIRLIAN MECHANISM- -that spell- -do you have any idea- -”
“Oh rellllax,” said the first voice. 
“I’m trying,” said a very soft third voice. “But I’m having a hard time. On account of the intense and soul-shattering terror.” 
“You can trust the Great and Powerful Trixie. She knows what she is doing.”
“It wasn’t even your spell!” cried the youngest voice. “That was Starlight’s magic and you know it!”
There was a gasp. “How dare you accuse Trixie of- -”
“And STOP reffering to yourself in the third person! It’s REALLY annoying! You’re just lucky I still have my horn or I’d- -”
“You mean that little nub? Trust me, you would hardly even notice if you were missing it.”
“MY HORN IS AN AGE APPROPRIATE SIZE!”
“Trixie’s horn was at least twice as long and hard at your age.”
“Um…I hate to disrupt your horn measuring contest,” said the soft voice, sounding completely sincere, “but…did one of you…you know…spill your oats?”
“Um…no,” said the first voice. “Not this time.”
“Me neither,” said the other. “But I think I am sitting on something…”
Humph sat up, reaching behind him and removing something soft from his back. Confused and still bleary from having drank an extremely spoiled potion, he blinked and looked down at the small animal he was holding. He quickly realized that his hands were beneath the forelegs of a small white unicorn. 
“Oh,” she said. “Hey.” 
Hump looked over his shoulder. There was another unicorn behind him, a blue one wearing a cape and a hat. There was a third that was pale yellow in color who was looking up at Humph with terrified blue eyes.
A pair of extremely high-pitched girly screams tore through the late evening. One came from the yellow small horse, and the other form Humph. He tossed the white unicorn over his shoulder and dove head-first into a conveniently placed nearby hedgerow. Only after he dove in did he realize that “hedgerow” was basically French for “rocky thing overgrown with lots and lots of roses”. 
“ACK! THORNS! This was a bad idea! BAD IDEA!” The situation only got worse from there. Something began to tug at his feet. “NUUU! NO WANT! NO WANT! This is worse, WORSE I TELL YOU WORSE!!”
He could not resist being pulled out of the shrubbery, though. He writhed and tried to escape, only to find that his legs were covered in some kind of blue gelatinous substance projected from the blue unicorn’s horn. 
“Wow. It sure is ugly,” said Trixie, grimacing. 
“For once I agree with you,” said the white unicorn, rubbing her rump from where she had been thrown. “And it smells really funny…”
Humph curled into a ball and started rocking. “It happened…it finally happened…”
“What happened?” asked the pale yellow horse, poking her head out from behind the blue one. “Is something…something wrong?”
“I died,” wept Humph. “I’m dead! I poisoned myself, and I died!”
Trixie smirked. “You mean because Trixie looks like an angel, you think you’ve gone to heaven? Yes, this praise is indeed worthy of Trixie.”
“Heaven? No! I went to the other place!”
Trixie looked shocked, and the white pony snorted as she tried to suppress laughter. “The…the other place?”
“YES! I’ve died, and now all the women are horses, and it makes me feel confusing feelings about myself that I’d rather not know about! I’ve never even got to kiss a girl- -and now- -now I’m going to have to kiss a HORSE!” He started balling.
“Well, you’re certainly not going to be kissing me,” said Trixie. “And calling me a horse is a little insulting…”
“Aww,” said Fluttershy, her sympathy immediately overcoming her fear. She stepped forward, and Humph nearly dove back into the shrubs behind him. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You’re…you’re not?”
“Oh no. I would never hurt a helpless animal. Or…you.” She sat on her haunches and spread her front legs in the air. “Do you need a hug? Hugs make everything better.” 
Humph leapt forward and squeezed so hard that Fluttershy audibly squeaked. She still managed to hug back, though, if only weakly. 
“I’m so sorry, tiny horse! I didn’t mean to kill myself! I’m sorry! You smell like cat pee!”
“Um, side note,” said the white unicorn. “You’re not dead.” 
“I’m…not?”
“No. But with as hard as you just squeezed Fluttershy…”
“I’m…okay,” she wheezed in response. 
“I’m…I’m alive? I’m alive. I’m ALIVE!” Humph stood up suddenly, cheering for his newfound lack of decesement. “I’m alive! Thank you tiny horses, I’m alive! And...pantsless.” 
“Eh,” said the white unicorn. “We’re all naked, so it’s not that big of a problem.” 
“Speak for yourself,” said Trixie. “Trixie is wearing a hat and a cape.” 
“Fluttershy, any clue what he is?”
“Um…no. I’ve never seen anything like him before.”
“I am Humph,” said Humph.
“A hump?” said Trixie. “That makes Trixie even more uncomfortable.”
“No. H-U-M-P-H. With a silent –H.”
“So, Hump.”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“I’ve never seen a hump before.” 
“There’s a speed hump outside of the schoolhouse. It’s nearly offed Scootaloo, like, seventy times. I try to tell her that that’s not what the ‘speed’ in ‘speed hump’ means, but she never listens to me.”
“No, you don’t understand,” said Humph. “My name is Humph. I’m a wizard.”
“A wizard?” said Trixie, her eyes lighting up. “What a coincidence. I, the Great and Powerful Trixie, am also a wizard- -”
“No you’re not!” said the white pony. “You can’t even do simple tricks without Starlight holding at least two of your hooves! TWO!”
“I beg to differ. I performed excellently for years until that bit- -”
“Fluttershy,” said Fluttershy, stepping forward. She raised a hoof, and Humph took it. 
“Pleased to meet you, Fluttershy. 
“Sweetie Belle,” said Sweetie Belle.
“Trixie,” said Trixie. Then, catching herself: “I mean the Great and Powerful Trixie!”
Humph giggled. “You all have funny names.”
“Oh, yeah. Says the guy named Hump.”’
“There’s a silent H in it! Oh well.” Humph spread out his arms. “Okay. You might as well get it over with.”
“Get what over with?” asked Sweetie Belle. 
“Eating me. That’s what you’re here for, right? Go ahead. I know I deserve it. I’m probably pretty tasty, too.”
“We’re not going to eat you! Why would you even think that?!”
“Well…” muttered Fluttershy. “I was thinking of taking just one bite. Just a little one.” The others glared at her. “What? He smells like leeks. And I’m hungry.” 
“I can get more leeks if you want them,” said Humph. “And I have an ornery gnome, if that’s something tiny horses eat.”
“Ponies,” corrected Sweetie Belle. “We’re ponies.” 
“And unicorns.”
“I’m not,” said Fluttershy, raising a hoof. Humph knelt down and pushed her hair back. 
“I see,” he said. “You’re a hornless unicorn.”
“No,” said Fluttershy, spreading her wings. “I’m a Pegasus.”
“Wings? Horse-feathers!”
“Literally.” 
“Well, that’s just weird. And ridiculous. But, hey, there’s a strong possibility that I am just hallucinating madly. I mean, unicorns can’t talk.”
“I only know one unicorn who can’t talk,” noted Sweetie Belle. “That weird albino who hangs out with Octavia…” 
“Don’t know what that means,” said Humph, pointing. Then, almost at random, he started walking. The ponies looked at each other, and then followed him. Mainly because they did not have much else to do. 
“Mind the mandrakes,” said Humph.
“Mandrakes? Are they edible?” asked Sweetie Belle, salivating slightly.
“Dunno. Probably. They were supposed to be beets. I think Ivan gave me the wrong seeds…”
The ponies came into view of Humph’s house, and Trixie stopped. She looked up at the crooked, poorly made and slightly mossy brick structure and stuck her tongue out. 
“Please tell me this is an outhouse or something.”  
“No, the outhouse is there,” said Humph, pointing. “I moved it out because…well…reasons. This is the in house.” He pulled on the door and it came off the hinges. “Oop. I’ll glue that later. Probably.” He paused at the door.
“What is it?” asked Fluttershy.
“I just realized. I have hardwood floors. Your hooves are probably going to scratch it real bad.”
“No they’re not.”
“Really? Three horses clip-clopping in my house?”
Fluttershy spread her wings and took flight, hovering level with Humph’s face. “But look how soft my hooves are!” She poked Humph in the face. Then poked him again. And again. 
“That is a soft hoof,” he admitted. “And it’s weird that it’s the same color as your weird horse fur. Usually unicorn hooves are gold colored.”
“Not a unicorn.”
“My sister sometimes has golden hooves,” said Sweetie Belle, “but usually only when she makes them out of edible dust. I say usually because, well…I’ve eaten more than a few boots.” 
“Really?” said Humph. “So have I. They make great broth.” He turned toward his house. “Alrighty, then. Soft hooves are okay. Just don’t slip. I’d hate for one of you to break a leg. I don’t know horses too well, but I know there’s usually only one treatment for that.”
“There is?” said Sweetie Belle. “What is it?”
“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” said Fluttershy. She landed and followed Humph into the house. It was actually unusually dark, and smelled strange.  
“And…light,” said Sweetie Belle, igniting her horn and producing a blue glow throughout the room.
“I can do that too!” Trixie lit her own horn, also filling the room with light. 
“So can I!” Humph drew his wand. “Lumos!” A jet of flame shot out of his wand and lit something on fire. The ponies jumped back and stared at him. “That’s weird,” he said. “The fire almost never goes out of that end…” He shrugged, and then pointed the wand at his crotch. A pair of camouflage shorts appeared. “Magic pants,” he said. “Now who wants a leek?” He waved the wand again and several leeks appeared, dropping onto Trixie and Fluttershy’s head. 
“You can conjure pants AND food?” asked Sweetie Belle, seeming immensely interested and taking a leek. 
“Pft,” said Humph. “No! You can’t conjure food! And the pants are only temporary.”
“Then where did the leeks come from?”
“There’s a muggle grocery a few miles away. I just summon them from there. Don’t know why it only works on leeks though. Except that one time I got a potato. That was a gooooood day.” 
“Town?” said Fluttershy, looking nervously across the room. “What town?”
“Yes,” said Trixie. “I’ve been all over Equestria- -”
“In her hobo cart,” added Sweetie Belle.
“In my hobo cart- -I mean, Trixie’s Great and Powerful cart! But I’ve never been here. Where are we?”
“Uh…somewhere between Wigglesworth and Tosside, I think,” said Humph. “A little more north, though. Or south. I can never remember which.”
“Wigglesworth?” snorted Trixie. “That’s not a real place.”
“It is. It’s over there somewhere.” Humph pointed. “Or there…”
“I have a worm friend named Mr. Wigglesworth,” said Fluttershy.
“Really? I have a worm friend too. I don’t know his name. The doctors say he irritates my bile duct, but I just say it’s a fluke.” 
Groans erupted from all three of the ponies. “But that doesn’t explain what happened,” said Trixie. “That spell was foolproof!”
“Clearly not, because you were involved,” said Sweetie Belle. She whispered loudly. “And by that, I mean you’re the fool.”
“I get it,” said Trixie, darkly. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Really? Because I saw that spell, and if you were willing to even get near that thing, you might just be touched in the horn. I mean, did you see what it did?!”
“It wasn’t supposed to do that. Starlight and I- -”
“Meaning all Starlight.”
“- -Have been working on that trick form MONTHS. It worked…on paper.”
“I’m not paper.”
“But something happened. There was…interference.”
Sweetie Belle paused. “Yeah. There was. I saw it too.” She looked down at her necklace, which was now much more narrow in shape. The gemstones had clustered into a mechanical cube in its center.
“Sweetie Belle,” said Fluttershy, “that necklace, can I see it?”
“Sure,” said Sweetie Belle, removing it only to find that it had left a mark around her neck. “Great,” she said. “The one disadvantage to having a beautiful and perfect white coat. Everything stains.” 
“You should try having a silver main.”
“Not until I’m at least seventy.” 
“You little- -”
“Sweetie Belle,” said Fluttershy, her unusual seriousness causing the room to almost physically chill. “Where did you get this?”
“My sister found it at a garage sale or something. I don’t know where it came from exactly.”
“Of course,” sighed Fluttershy. “Rarity picking out something because it ‘looked pretty’ with absolutely no idea of the consequences. This isn’t the first time. It won’t be the last.” 
“I don’t get it,” said Sweetie Belle. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” said Fluttershy- -even though she was a terrible lier and it was highly apparent that she knew far more than she was letting on. She gave the necklace back to Sweetie Belle. “Just keep this as safe as possible, okay? It’s a very old artifact.”
“Old? How old?”
“As in it predates your species.” 
Humph suddenly snorted himself awake. “Huh? What? Where did I go…” He looked around the room. “Oh. I’m still hallucinating. Hello pretty ponies.” 
“Humph,” said Fluttershy, now sounding slightly more calm but still serious. “Have you ever heard of Equestria?”
“No.”
“It’s where we’re from. And from what I can tell, we are very, very far away from it.”
“Clearly. Because I’ve never seen a unicorn, let alone one who can talk. Or one with wings.”
“Not a unicorn. But that aside. Do you know a way to help us get home?”
Humph’s eyes went somewhat cloudy, and he leaned against a wall. He thought for a moment, and then replied. “Nope.”
“Well, great,” said Trixie. “That’s just great.”
“Hey,” said Sweetie Belle, picking up a tiny wooden spool from the floor. “Has somepony been sewing?” 
“I’m not exactly known for being smart,” said Humph. An idea appeared to occur to him, though. “But we can talk to Sunflower! She knows all sorts of stuff!”
“Sunflower?”
“I know. Weird name. But she knows what she’s talking about, unlike me. She even went to Hogwarts, I think. Until they gave her das boot.”
“That means ‘the boat’,” pointed out Sweetie Belle.
`	“What the hay is a ‘Hogwarts’?” asked Trixie, making a face at disgust. “It sounds like a disease.” 
“A wizard school for rich people. But if anyone here will know, it’s her. She’s probably still awake, too. If not, she’s about to be. Come on, let’s go!”