When Boston awoke, his feet felt cold. He had a dream where he had had his feet stuck in an iceberg, he could still feel the cold permeating to his ankle.
His thin blanket apparently hadn’t been enough to protect him from the cold. The outer layers of his body felt numb, and the lack of heat made its way up from his nose and into the deep recesses of his brain. All of this made him feel lethargic.
Regardless, he pushed right up through it like he did every morning. Whether he had pine needles in his pants or not.
He looked over and saw that the orange Pegasus, still unaware of his waking, was picking at some berry bushes outside of their little clearing. After some deliberation, Boston went into his backpack, rummaged through some garbage in it, and found the last snack he had. It was a mini bag of Cheetos.
His stomach rumbled. He hadn’t had anything since his meager breakfast yesterday, and despite Cheetos not being the healthiest thing for breakfast it was all he had. When he opened the bag, it made such a resonating sound in the empty wilderness that the Pegasus immediately looked back in surprise. Just like in Montana it seemed that every little noise echoed for miles.
She made her way towards him at an alarming pace on her tiny wings and stopped right before she hit him outright. She made a confused and then interested expression at the small orange packet he was carrying, a slightly lighter tone than that of her own fur.
Boston decided then to pull a Cheeto out of the bag and make a sly expression that just says ‘You want it?’ She hesitantly put her hoof down on the hand he was displaying it on and seemingly defying the laws of physics picked it up. Instead of eating it she studied it in her hooves. He imagined her wondering what such a deformed and weird looking thing would ever be useful for.
To prompt her on, Boston acted like a mime and pretended he had a cheeto in his hand. He then motioned the imaginary Cheeto into his mouth and bit down. He made sure to emphasize the crunch. The Pegasus, understanding the gesture, looked at him with a disgusted but still interested expression.
Boston watched as she reluctantly put the cheeto in her mouth and took a long slow bite out of it. At that moment he worried whether he had given her some kind of poison and that the Pegasus would die if exposed to a product of his modern world. However as soon as she had taken that first bite Boston could see the large grin creep onto her face. In less than a second it was gone and she held out her hoof as if asking for more.
Somehow, nonverbally they were able to communicate to each other a 50-50 compromise in which they both took half of the orange snacks. Her eyes narrowed when he tried to take more than his share.
Since she loved those cheetos so much, Boston decided he would mentally call her Cheeto from now on. Her fur color was just icing on the cake. Her real name was probably something like a weird assortment of horse noises, but Cheeto would work for now. Despite being kind of silly, he figured it would be a bit wieldier than ‘orange pegasus’.
After they both finished, ‘Cheeto’ led Boston down the trail along the stream. The stream’s refreshing water made a great source for his water bottle and the trail meant they could travel a lot further than yesterday.
Beneath the surface Boston was a mix of worry and excitement thinking about what was going to happen next. Cheeto likely didn’t make those shoes herself. The specific design of the shoes with those laces along with the leather indicated some kind of specialization of labor, however they also brought up more questions. For instance, did the leather mean this world had cows? And did that mean these ponies killed them for their skin like on Earth?
Just when it seemed like walking behind an alien creature was getting boring the landscape shifted. Almost like coming out of a cave, the dense northern forest gave way to flat rolling hills planted with what at first seemed to be corn. The border land between these two worlds was only marked only by a few stumps poking out of the ground. To Boston they looked just like the fields of Oklahoma did during the fall, with large areas of the corn fields already harvested but others not.
When they got closer to it though Boston could tell it was not corn. Even from far away he could see that the stalks were a lot less green than he remembered, more like a golden brown, like another plant he knew. It was amazing how tall they were, wheat usually at its highest was only to his waist, but here it was only slightly less soaring than he was.
He remembered from some history books that ancient and medieval wheat was a great deal taller than the modern-day plant. This was because of unintended selection by ancient farmers. In the old fields, wheat had to compete with other wheat for light by growing taller than its competitors. By Boston’s day though, the farmers hoped to get higher yields from their plants by intentionally breeding them to be shorter.
That was what he had read anyway.
And so Boston figured quite early on that they might be in some kind of medieval society by Earth standards. His notions were confirmed when he saw more horses like Cheeto at the border of the cut and uncut wheat.
While Cheeto was mostly in the nude except for her shoes, the ponies cutting away at the crops of wheat were dressed in sack clothing that looked a lot like the attire worn by peasants and serfs in medieval Europe (they seemed smaller than horses, so the name pony seemed to fit). The clothes themselves looked like they had been specifically adapted from the European peasants to fit the ponies. They didn’t even have any holes for their wings to come out of. Maybe these ones didn’t have any? Boston sensed that something was going on in those differences between Cheeto and the ponies, he would just have to wait and see.
Cheeto let out a loud ‘Neigh!’ to the working ponies. They all turned around and looked at the pair. Before Boston could read their reactions, they were on him.
Boston read a lot about early modern Europe. One interesting tidbit was how over 50,000 ‘witches’ were burned, hanged, and tortured over the course of 400 years.
Luckily, Boston wasn’t stabbed through by a pitchfork or otherwise brutally murdered. He was surrounded by the ponies who were bowing in his presence and others who were literally jumping for joy just looking at him. A cacophony of horse noises streamed into his ears.
As if this new world wasn’t confusing enough.
In all the confusion, Boston noticed one… He forgot the word for male horse.
Oh right! Stallion.
One stallion stood more stoic among the rest. He was pale green with only a straw hat and just stood there looking inquisitively at Boston before smiling softly and putting out his hoof. Despite his bewilderment at the whole situation, Boston grabbed the hoof and shook it. The stallion’s smile grew larger when he did.
After a little while, Cheeto whooped a rallying whistle, somehow using both her hooves to increase the volume of the sound, and made a motion over her ‘shoulder’ much like she had done with Boston yesterday. It seems that the rag-worn ponies forgot all about their harvest and started following Cheeto along the path on the bank of the stream.
While they walked along it seemed from context to Boston that they were all talking about him, but the nerving attention caused him to casually slip to the back of the crowd. Despite having been so enraptured with him earlier they didn’t seem to notice. That was, except for the pale green stallion. His body seemed more scruff and worn than the rest of the ponies, but his sharp blue eyes shined through it. Funnily enough, the stallion was among the tallest in the group but still only stood to Boston’s shoulders.
The large yet also small Stallion lagged behind with Boston and seemed to make some of the same noises that the rest of the ‘herd’ was making except slower and somehow more understandable, even if the interested human still couldn’t understand a word of it. Then he slowly phrased out what Boston could by some mysterious instinct tell was a question, this place was weird in so many ways to him. The Stallion finished with a point from his hoof to Boston’s two backpacks. Maybe he was asking what was inside them?
Not sure what to say, Boston decided to just joke “Lo siento, solo hablo un poco español.”
They both just shrugged.
As they walked through the cut fields it became clear to Boston that the peasant ponies were almost done with their harvest, as they had already passed most of the uncut fields. Along the way, more and more ponies seemed to join the procession when they saw it pass them by.
The stream turned up ahead and the path morphed into a small bridge to cross it. Across, Boston could see a village that reminded him of the illustrations of medieval manors he had seen.
Knowing what he knew about medieval villages he was glad that he had a terrible sense of smell.
When the group entered into the village the bystanders appeared to initially look confused at the large group. However, when Boston saw their eyes lock with his they all had the same unknown revelation. Their confusion just evaporated. It was almost always replaced with a star-struck grin and excitement.
That was, except when his eyes locked with the other pegasi. Apparently Cheeto wasn’t unique amongst her race. There weren’t as many of them, but Boston saw them doing a variety of different things, like operating as a blacksmith or making shoes, most wearing no clothes. All of them looked nervous at the sight of the crowd and their expressions worsened when they saw Boston. One pegasus mare who was wearing an ornate dress with a cone hat even ran away at first sight of him.
Walking through an alien and medieval manor, time seemed to slow as Boston took in all the sights and sounds flying about. This was the kind of stuff he had dreamed about throughout his life, looking around at the wattle and daub housing, seeing strange people (errr… ponies), and the thrill of not knowing what lies next. Up ahead of them was a surprisingly large mansion. Its three stories seemed to tower over the all the other buildings, you could tell who owned this town.
It seemed like that was the direction the crowd was heading.
When they got closer Cheeto, who was still triumphantly leading at the front of the pack, was intercepted by a dull purple mare without wings. When Cheeto stopped, so did the rest of the crowd. Boston could see the concern in the mare’s eyes, they looked sympathetically at Cheeto but also showed some worry which doubled when she noticed Boston.
Both of them ‘talked’ back and forth for a few moments in whatever horse language they had. To Boston, it looked like the mare was trying to warn Cheeto of something, but she only grew louder and looked more convinced as their conversation drew on.
The mare finally seemed to let off, letting Cheeto rally the crowd once again.
When the crowd finally got to the wooden doors of the mansion, they all started yelling and hollering at the building. Cheeto made her way to the back to drag Boston by the hand right up to the doors.
Seeing Boston right at the steps to the entrance, the crowd silenced. He had no idea what they wanted him to do.
Sensing his confusion, Cheeto smirked and made a motion imitating a knock on the door.
Ok then, he thought.
Boston gave a single light knock on the door. His fist shaking too hard to make a real loud sound.
Expecting a long and drawn out wait before anyone answered, he tried to go knock again, but was startled when the door immediately flew open. Right there was an imposing rose colored mare with a death in her eyes.
With her elegantly embroidered dress Boston could only wilt to the side while she stared right through him and into the large crowd gathered outside of her home. Her hair was so grey it shined. He could still see the crowd’s fury and anger from earlier, but it was now lace with a trace of fear.
Nobody said anything.
Time came to a standstill as the crowd glared at the mare and she right back at them. It was like the time as a kid when Boston tried to blow up a balloon by slowly pumping in air. He could see it was about to burst when suddenly a bee, mistaking Cheeto’s nose for a flower, softly landed on it, and thereby caused her to sneeze.
When the dam broke, it broke hard.
Boston panicked as he heard screaming explode from the crowd, and he got stuck in a fearful flight or fight paralysis. The shouting was not directed at him but they would still likely rip him to pieces just to get at the mare.
Luckily for him, a loud commanding shout drew above all the others. It came from the angry mare.
It was just enough that the ponies of the crowd all went silent. After only a moment, the mare then let out a long series of noises that Boston had long since identified as the pony’s language, and despite the language barrier, by the tone and cadence he could tell that this speech was a very eloquent one. The tone of her voice resonated down and then burst up with the power of an exploding sun. Boston had always wanted to see the speeches of the great orators like Cicero, and even though he couldn’t understand anything she said, those were the kinds of words he imagined coming out of her mouth.
At the end of whatever was said, the crowd murmured and begrudgingly dispersed. One of the peasant ponies shook one of his hooves at the mare as he walked away. Boston was speechless.
After not too long only three ponies remained at the scene, Cheeto, the purple mare who had talked to her before the whole fiasco, and pony cicero. Only now did Boston notice that she was actually a pegasus as the wings that splayed to the side were the exact same color as the fabric that surrounded them.
The pale purple pony was talking to the steely eyed and aged mare, who listened and nodded as the mare continued on. Meanwhile to the side the Cheeto just looked down in a weird mixture of shame and anger. She fiddled with her hoof and occasionally turned her head.
After a little bit of talking, the mares nodded to each other, and the purple one made her way into the mansion. The crowd pleaser then turned to Cheeto and made flailed her arms in a way that reminded Boston of whenever he got scolded by his own parents. The whole time Cheeto just continued sulking, but with anger still visible on her face. After she was done, the older pegasus wacked the orange one across the head and then pointed her inside. It kind of hurt Boston seeing his new friend get hit like that.
Much to his anxiety, the mare then made her way to him with a just as ever determined look on her face. He imagined she had made a mental checklist of people to talk to, and now his name was the last one on the list and circled with blood red ink. He imagined that she might fly up and crack his skull, and seeing her face it took a lot of mental steeling not to immediately run off into the woods. Amazing how a creature only slightly more than half his height could make his heart pump at twice the speed.
Instead of immediately killing him though, she threw on a smile and flew up to him. Boston could still the hostility in her eyes though. Under that grin she held out a hoof asking for him shake it like that one stallion from earlier. He never trusted what he crassly called lady smiles, most of the time they screamed fake to him. For now though he would have to accept it. So he took the hoof and shook it; he figured at least she did bad in store for him, not right now atleast.
She led him through the towering doors into the mansion, which itself was on a small hill overlooking the entire town. When he got inside he looked up into a large space which went up three floors, and hanging from the ceiling were two ornate, but small chandeliers. It looked like one of those tall expensive hotels where when you came out of your room you could see down into the lobby 35 floors below you, except a lot smaller.
Some parts of the overhang that looked out into the open space didn’t have railings for some reason. What was really neat were the bridges that crossed over the room, both on the second and third floors.
His curiosity as to the missing sections of railing was immediately blown away in a sudden realization when he saw the rose mare fly up to and land in one of those spots above him. It seems that she had forgot he didn’t have wings and left him behind, but Boston was too amazed at the design and use of the building that he didn’t even notice.
She let out an exasperated sigh before coming back down and leading him to the stairwell in one of the side rooms. He had worried he wouldn’t be able to fit into any of these ponies’ houses, but luckily for him, the rooms here were tall enough that he wouldn’t have to slouch over. Maybe that was so that the pegasi had room to fly?
He just remained in awe at the idea of the building. They could just hover up to wherever was convenient, and for some reason that just blew Boston’s mind. Why they even have stairs then though?
While they walked up the stairs, a pony dressed in servant attire and without wings went down right next to them. So that was why. When she passed them, the pony looked at Boston weird.
They went up two floors to the very top of the building and Boston was then directed to two large doors by the mare. The door had some of those knocking things on them.
With half closed eyes and a small frown, the mare knocked a couple times.
For some reason at this moment, Boston seemed to not be able to recall what those things are on the door are that you use to knock with.
This time the mare seemed to get angry and knocked even louder and in quicker succession.
What was wrong with just regular knocking? What are those things even useful for anyway?
Now the mare was actually trying to open the doors, but they wouldn’t budge.
Seriously though what were those things called again? Sucks he didn’t bring a dictiona…
Suddenly Boston was drawn away from his mind mumblings when the insanely ‘frustrated’ (his parents insisted that there was no such thing as angry, only frustrated) mare landed on her front hooves and gave a kick with her back ones that completely annihilated whatever lock was there and sent the doors flying open.
When he looked into the room he saw a wide king-sized bed decorated with ivory white blankets and an ornate canopy. Other than the fancy bed, by modern standards it was a pretty normal room. It had a mirror, drawers for clothes, some shelves with random stuff sitting, and a closet. The mare made her way over to that closet and quickly threw it open.
Boston was usually reluctant to judge people off of looks, but the nude stallion hiding in the closet was the most pathetic looking sight of all time. He had a yellow coat and purple hair(or whatever the fur on the top their head is called), and he was shivering in the corner with his front legs up covering his eyes. Pathetic whimpering actually made Boston wonder how someone like this could actually exist, it was straight out of a cartoon caricature.
Naturally, the mare whacked the guy just like she had done to Cheeto earlier. Instead of holding back a cringe, now he had to hold back a laugh.
The stallion shot up like a cat out of the closet, and before he could fly away on his tiny yellow wings the mare grabbed ahold of him and explained something to him in a manner much like she would to a child. She then went to the side and made movements that Boston recognized as some kind of introduction.
She pointed at the Stallion, whinnied out something, and then pointed to Boston with her head tilted. Getting the memo, he looked towards the stallion and introduced himself as “Boston.” Seeing the teen’s outstretched arm and hunched down posture the stallion unsteadily put up his hoof and blurted out what was probably his name in the weird mixture of horse and almost human noises. Hopefully he would never have to learn this language.
It wasn’t a second after that that the rosy mare essentially pushed him out of the room and made him follow her to an empty one down on the second floor.
The rectangular room was only about half the size of the one he had just seen. It had a twin-sized bed and a few bookshelves lining the walls. At least these ponies had invented the codex book already. There was a small but openable window on the wall opposite of the door, but he could only see trees through it. For some reason there was also a wooden bucket. He sure hoped that this wasn’t just a prison cell.
With an uncountable few alien words the mare slammed the thick wood door behind him. He threw his backpacks down and watched them bounce on the bed. He thought about going to read the books, but he knew the horse words would also be unknown to him. So he just sat down on the bed and let his tired body fall on its back, letting whatever material that was in the bed envelop him while his feet hung off the bottom. Of course the bed wasn’t even large enough for him. At least he had a bed though, he remembered reading that beds in medieval Europe were rare enough that whole families were usually lucky to have even one.
The room was completely silent. There were probably bugs chirping in the mid-afternoon sun outside, but their noises couldn’t penetrate into Boston’s room. With all that had happened, like encountering his first alien civilization and almost being killed in a riot, the silence was nice bit of respite.
He wasn’t going to just be able to just sit there forever though, boredom had already taken hold and he realized that if they left him in here until it was dark he was going to have to find a way to light the candles that were scattered throughout his room.
So he got up figuring he had nothing else to do.
He had a nightstand by his bed, but it didn’t have a drawer where any fire-starting equipment could be stored. What did they use back then to start fires? There was nothing in the mysterious bucket, and they had given him a small closet, but when he looked in there he saw it was filled to the brim with absolutely nothing.
He then tried to open the door and leave to maybe find someone to help, but he quickly noticed the guard standing outside of the door. The guard was dressed in some leather armor that was decorated across by red stripes. He did not look happy when Boston peaked open the door, so he turned and pointed his pike straight towards him before Boston slinked away. So that was how this was going to be then? At least the fear on the guard’s face was kind of funny
He would have to somehow ask about candles later as he now saw a much more urgent and deadly problem, he finally understood what the bucket was there for.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After having been in the room for a quite a few hours and having not been able to find any fire lighting tool, Boston started to grow impatient of waiting. His stomach was tying itself in knots. He had barely ate anything over the last two days and he was thinking of ways he might be able to sneak past the guard and steal their food, or at least escape into the woods to find something edible.
It was then that he heard a knock on the door, and when he heard it he quickly stuffed his bags in the closet. He knew that this probably wouldn’t do anything to keep them from stealing or snooping in it, but he wanted at least some peace of mind.
Just as he had shut the door to the closet, the one into his room opened. It was the same grey-haired mare from earlier. She signaled for him to come out and having now learned that he was being kept against his will, he shot her a deadly look.
They made their way down the stairwell again to the bottom floor, where he was then seated across an oversized table from the bright yellow stallion he had met earlier. He seemed to have regained his composure from when Boston had last seen him. Instead of being nude like when they had first met, the stallion now had on a black shirt with a white undershirt, it did not go well at all. Sitting to his sides were the grey-haired mare, and surprisingly, Cheeto as well. The hardened rose mare still had on the same large flowing dress.
Surprisingly Cheeto was wearing one too.
The orange pegasus did not seem as happy or as joyful as when Boston had known her in the woods. It looked like the red dress she was wearing was made of osmium (the densest and heaviest material known to human kind) with how much she was slumping down. Her nose was constantly pointed down into her plate. She smiled a bit when she saw Boston sit down.
Some servants, including the pale purple pony from earlier, brought some bread, cheeses, weird looking carrots, onions, and a few other foods. What surprised him most were the trout they brought out, apparently these ponies were omnivorous? Once they were all done, the servants sat down on the table between Boston and what was apparently the noble family. He was a bit overwhelmed by all the food they served. His diet beforehand had consisted of fifty percent chips, thirty percent fries, and twenty percent burgers. The all-American diet.
He looked at all the food apprehensively, and he was torn both by his sense of disgust and by a hunger that he had rarely experienced in his modern upbringing. He decided that he would try the milk that they had given him, it tasted like almonds.
Naturally his history-based paranoia took over and he mentally yelled ‘holy shit! They poisoned me!’
but then he thought back to his history books and remembered that cyanide wasn’t used for killing people until the Nazis tested zyklon B on Soviet POWs. He doubted that these ponies were on the same technological level as 1940s humanity, although there was no way to be sure.
Eventually his hunger overruled his nervous brain, and the teen scarfed down the dish he liked the most, the bread. Cheeto giggled from across the table, but the mare who was maybe her mother gave her an angry snort. With his hunger a little bit satisfied, he only took tiny, painfully slow bites of everything else. The servants chatted amongst themselves, but relations in the noble family were not quite as friendly.
It wasn’t until they were almost done with their meal that the rose mare said anything to Boston’s first friend in this weird new world. He felt left out since he couldn’t understand anything, but that wasn’t a new feeling for him.
The gist that he got from their conversation was this.
“Hey you want to do this thing?” the rose mare suggested
Instead of saying no like he expected , her features lit up in a face that screamed “Yes! Yes please, please, please, pleaaasseeeeee!” She almost got down to begging over whatever it was.
So her ever benevolent grey haired mother nodded her head in approval, and those little orange wings fluttered up in absolute delight. It was kind of cute. Now if only he could riddle out what the thing was that she was going to do. Afterwards Cheeto seemed a lot less sulky.
After they finished eating, Boston was escorted back up to his room. It would figure that it was as dark as a joke about the Nazis, specifically one about how they made candles. Sucks he hadn’t found anyway to light them. It didn’t matter though, in fact it was great, as he was tired beyond belief from today. He was asleep before he hit the bed.