My head felt fuzzy, but I slowly pulled myself out of my slumber. The phone was ringing, and I sat up to look at who would be calling at this hour. When I identified the name, I inhaled a long deep sigh. Already there were at least four missed calls. I had expected her to call, but not that quickly. “Ingrid! What a pleasant surprise. Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Fitz! You stupid asshole!” she shouted back to me. “What the fuck are you trying to pull? I literally have a serious thing going on here trying to help these people, and you sent that stupid jackass to come here and completely undo everything! Not only did he cause a ruckus, but now everyone thinks that he’s either a pony that’s from Equestria, or some human who’s come back! Do you not understand how impossibly irresponsible that was to do? It’s going to take weeks, months, or maybe even years to fix this bullshit! What made you think that it would’ve been a good idea to let him come to this meeting! He doesn’t know anything about ponies! Nothing about the show! He’s a layman who—”
She was speaking so quickly it was hard for me to catch some of that, so I cut her off.
“Ingrid, as much as I enjoy being shouted at in the middle of the night, would you mind telling me what exactly went wrong?”
“Fitz. That guy you told me about came to the BA event.”
“Oh? That’s great!”
“No. No, Fitz, it wasn’t. It was anything but great. What the hell did you tell him?”
That confused me. “I only told him to come and see what it was like. That’s all. I didn’t tell him anything beyond that. I take it from your voice that something happened.”
There was a lull in the conversation as Ingrid mulled the question over. After a dozen silent seconds, however, I had to say something. “You’re going to have to tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know, Fitz. He acted as if he didn’t know what it was like to be human. The things he did were… bizarre. Then, when he left, he… implied that… Well, he didn’t say it exactly.”
“Didn’t say what, exactly?”
“Didn’t say that… he said… he acted like… he just… but his acting was spot-on, so now everyone believed… that… that…”
She was hesitating, but I wanted her to say it.
“Believed what?”
“He’s… Equestrian.” She whispered the name as if it were taboo.
“And?”
“And? And!?” She screamed back. “What do you mean ‘and’? Are you nuts? You know damn well that this isn’t right! Fitz, what the hell did you think you’re doing? After all these years you’re just going to undo all my work? I am helping these people. I’m going to—”
“Brian.”
Ingrid stopped. “What did you say?”
“Did he mention… Brian?”
“What are you talking about? Brian? Brian from…”
“Yes. That Brian.”
Silence. She was waiting for me to continue. I could hear her on the line.
“He’s from Equestria. I’ve talked to him and he essentially confessed. He somehow managed to go to where they are, Ingrid. And he went there and came back,” I said carefully, emphasizing each word. “He knew Brian. Described a guy who he’s never met. A guy whose criminal record and file were both hushed up so nothing online can be found. The only things we have left are what little we could collect from Brian’s old place before he disappeared. He didn’t bat an eye when I showed him Brian and Rainbow’s picture.”
Still, Ingrid said nothing.
“Ingrid?”
Still nothing. So I pressed on.
“Also, Brian’s not doing so well. The kid told me that. That he got sick. Then he returned here to Earth. Now that he's here, he’s not sure what to do. So I sent him your way to see if he could get some help.”
There was a long pause. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? You shameless bastard!”
“He knew, Ingrid. He’s the real deal.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“Neither did I, but there are circumstances. They go beyond any reasonable doubt. You do not know what this guy looked like a week ago. If I showed you a picture of him from then and you compared it with the guy you saw, you wouldn't believe they are the same guy. We both know that time here flows a lot slower than over there.”
She said nothing. At this point I knew I was losing her.
“Look, I thought you’d want to know. You and Brian were… friends, I would think. Weren’t you?”
“Fuck you, Fitz.”
“Hey, no need to be rude. Look, I just thought you’d be the right person to help the kid out. I never knew he would disrupt your group like that. I’m sorry. Would you like me to send you the picture of him? I’ll do that anyway.”
“Fuck you, Fitz.” And with that, she hung up.
Slowly, I pushed myself out of the sofa and walked over to my cupboard again to pour myself a drink. A part of me was getting a bit excited. Things were certainly going to get interesting.
I unlocked my phone and placed the photo of John on the table before taking a picture of it. I then forwarded it to Ingrid and dropped into a seat..
The hot water washed the night off my back as I leaned against the shower. I closed my eyes and thought about what I just did. What I had done to those people weighed heavily on my mind. The heat from the shower soaked into me, freeing my mind from the negative thoughts., but I couldn’t forget. What the actual heck was wrong with me?
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuuuck. Why can’t I just say it?”
And that was true. I could say the word, but it wasn’t natural. Not like before. Before it was a part of my regular vocabulary, but now when I wanted to say it, I had to force it. The word didn’t feel natural to me, as if by saying it, it would somehow… ‘hurt’ me.
After last night’s BA meeting, what happened next was an absolute shitfest. After that, after I ran and hid in the alley, after what I had done, a bunch of them had come out to look for me. I felt awful. How could I do that to those people?
But Simon? Simon was different.
While the others tried to come and find me, it was poor Simon that haunted me. The way he called for me. The shaking in his voice. But what really hit me hard was that look in his eyes. I remembered looking into them and remembered how he begged for me to answer him.
I turned the water as cold as it could go and tried to rinse the image from my mind. It was painful to remember.
“Pathetic. I’m so pathetic. How could I do that to him?”
I turned the shower off and stopped myself from continuing that train of thought. His face refused to leave my mind. I had to take my mind off of things; off of him. Slowly, I got dressed and sat at my table. My empty table with nothing. I stared at nothing and focused my attention on nothing. Why had I gone there? To destroy someone’s life? Why had I gone to that meeting? To show off?
Why would that detective recommend I go?
A soft buzzing sound made me realize that I had somehow sat there until the light of the dawn broke over the horizon. Looking down at my phone, I noticed a couple messages from the detective in question and made a face. I stood up and walked over to the window and stared out at the empty street below. The sounds of the city waking up. The people going about their lives.
I stopped myself. That felt familiar. Like I had felt this feeling before.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, filling my lungs full before letting out a long sigh. Couldn’t dwell on it. Still, there was no avoiding the knowledge that I had done something completely terrible to the people at the BA meeting and I needed to find out how bad the damage really was. Walking over, I pulled my chair out and sat down heavily before reaching for my mouse and dragging it over to the browser.
I dragged the cursor to the search bar and typed the words I never expected to.
My Little Pony Episodes.
There were quite a few different ones, but I wasn’t interested in any of them except for one. So I typed in Twilight after the search and scrolled down until I saw her face.
“My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic…” I said out loud to myself. It was indeed the right one. Twilight, Applejack and Pinkie were there along with Spike and the others. But Spike was an infant, or at least very small. I scrolled down and read the description. Generation Four, or G4, it said. At least now I knew what it meant in relation to the BA meeting.
Then I clicked play.
As the episode began, I was struck by how accurate a lot of the show was. True, there were some inconsistencies, but for the most part it looked accurate. It was uncanny how the town looked almost the same. There were a few differences, but for the most part it was them.
The girls appeared and my heart leaped to my throat. I watched them. Watched the girls appear one by one. When Princess Celestia was on-screen, I noticed that my hand automatically touched the chest where she had tried to cast that failed spell on me. I took off my shirt and looked and stared at it. It was there, a mirror image of the knife scar that I was given.
Then I saw their lives and how they lived.
I laughed with them. I cried with them. I felt the emotions surge through me as I watched them all. And I didn’t eat or sleep as I devoured the episodes one by one. I watched the ponies that I had come to love live their lives, and I realized just how much I missed them. How being away from them hurt so much. I had no one here. They were everything to me, and it killed me that I could not be there with them.
I couldn’t bear it any longer and in my frustration I grabbed the shit on my desk and threw it across the room.
I flipped my table and picked my chair up, ready to smash it into the wall, other furniture, anything. I wanted to break something. I wanted to destroy everything and just… just… be free. Free of the pain.
… smile, smile, smile! Fill my heart up with sunshine, sunshine…
I stopped.
Turning around, I saw Pinkie singing on the screen. My mouse must have hit play or something when I tossed the things around my home.
It was Pinkie. It was her. The voice was hers! That song was hers. I dropped the chair and fell to my knees. I slammed my fist onto the ground and tried in vain to hold back my tears. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.
Some time later I looked up at the window and noticed that the sun was low on the horizon. I had been asleep for nearly the whole day. The screen was still playing, but I didn’t really pay attention to them. After a point I realized that the show was now nothing more than that. A show.
It wasn’t real.
I had marathoned the seasons, not really watching the episodes, but just looking at them. I didn’t care that Twilight became an alicorn because that wasn’t what had happened. She wasn’t an alicorn. She was a princess in name because of her relationship to the Princess Candance through her husband, Shining Armor.
I didn’t care about the bad guys attacking or doing whatever it was they were doing because that didn’t happen. Or if it did happen, it happened before I met them.
The realization hit me in the face.
It was so obvious! The show was a show. Like a fictional documentary of what had happened. It wasn’t real.
I met them. I traveled with them. I lived with them. I laughed with them. I cried with them.
In the show there was no Brian. But he was there. I had met him. There were similarities, and that in itself was crazy, but it wasn’t Equestria. It was completely different. What I had been through and what I had seen was not the same.
Standing up, I walked to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. I stared long and hard because I wanted to understand what was going on in my head. As annoying as she was, Tutela would never have evicted me from her world unless something had happened. Something that was bad enough that it required her to force me out.
“Tues. I know you can hear me. I can’t remember anything after I came out of the Everfree. Please. If you’re there. You have to help me. Give me a sign. I need to know. I am just… I feel so lost, and you’re the only one I can turn to.” I touched the mirror. “Please. Anything.”
Just then the doorbell rang.
For the briefest of moments, I expected Tues to appear and joke with me. But this wasn’t my shitty laptop and she couldn’t reach out to me without some link. I had nothing.
I walked over to the door and looked through my peephole to see who it was.
“John? You there?”
It was that detective.
“What do you want?” I shouted.
He held up something. “Just a chat. Heard you made quite a show last night.”
I unlocked the door and opened it. “That’s putting it mildly.”
He walked in and stopped when he saw the place. “Redecorating?
“More like venting my frustration. Coffee?”
“At this time of night?”
I shrugged. “Why not. There’s nothing else better for me to do.”
“Look, I can’t pretend to know what you’re going through. Jumping between worlds, dimensions, or whatever it is is way beyond my comprehension—”
“Bullshit!” I growled.“You have no idea what it’s like. At all.”
The detective looked at me and furrowed his brow. “I know. That’s literally what I just said. Still, I have a vested interest in you only because of your predecessor…”
I raised my eyebrow.
“Brian. Because of Brian. So, I wanted to show you something.”
He opened the envelope and dumped a DVD out onto my shitty excuse of a dining table.
“You’ll need to use my computer. I don’t have a DVD player.”
“Oh? Well, I brought a USB too.”
“DVD should be fine. Give.”
I took it and loaded it in. There were a few files on it, but it was the pictures that drew my eyes first. They were all different photographs of what looked like a natural disaster. I double-clicked one and it opened to show a street and mall in ruins. Cars were burning, most windows were smashed, and a lot of people were panicking.
“What is this?” I asked.
The detective nodded. “You might’ve been a little young, but those are pictures of the Fort Pleasant bombings.”
“Oh. I think we covered those at school,” I said nodding in recollection. “I heard that the people responsible were caught and jailed.”
The detective nodded. “Not completely true, but true enough I guess.”
I looked at him. He pointed at a video. I doubled-clicked on it. For a few minutes, I saw a father taking a video of his child learning how to walk in the park. Everything looked pretty normal when a violent explosion suddenly erupted. The camera shook wildly, the two girls in the video screamed, and a second later the video snapped to the sky where a rainbow-colored circle started to spread out rapidly. I sat there dumbfounded with wide eyes.
Another video showed the same thing from a different angle.
And another.
And another.
And another.
They all showed the same thing and I knew exactly what it was.
... she's so fast, she can do a Sonic Rainboom...
“I take it you know what it is.”
I couldn’t deny it. “That’s… That’s a Sonic Rainboom.”
The detective grinned. “Exactly.”
“I had no idea that… that was what had happened.”
Fitz was looking at the mess behind me. “You seem to have had a bad day.”
“Redecorating,” I countered.
Fitz barked out a laugh. “Well, I think you should get a second opinion. Anyway, whatever it is going on from now on, you’re stuck here. And yeah, this world has got its problems, but I don’t think you should knock it until you actually lived it a bit more. You’re still pretty young.” He started to pick up the mess. “You’ve got your whole life ahead. Who knows? You might learn something.”
That made me stop and turn. That rung a bell. Those words, or something like it, hit me in the gut. Where had I heard that before?
“Learning things is a good way of gaining insight. Sometimes all it takes…” He picked up a mirror and held it at an angle showing me my reflection, “is a different perspective.”
I took it and stared at myself. “Yeah. A different perspective.”
The sweat dripped from my head. I stopped and stared at the door from outside the room. It had been a month since the last Brony Anonymous meeting, but I needed to learn more and give proper closure to one person in particular. First of all, I needed to understand what it was. If there were others like me in this world, then I had to know.
With trepidation, I took a deep breath and pushed the doors open. Immediately all conversation died and all eyes were on me.I felt the blood rush to my face, setting it on fire, and almost immediately turned around to flee when I saw Clara looking right at me. For some reason her being there calmed me down a bit and I sighed, closed my eyes, counted to five, then started looking around the room again.
He wasn’t there.
“If you’re looking for Tisha, she’s not here.” Clara stated. “She’s busy tonight.”
There was something very oddly familiar about the way she talked.
I smiled awkwardly, “I’m not looking for her.”
Just then the door opened and Simon stepped in, saw me, and his mouth dropped nearly to the floor. He was about to say something when I shoved him out of the room letting the door close behind us with a clank.
Simon was taken aback by that. “W-what… W-what? Huh?!”
“No time to explain!”
I literally dragged him out the door of the community center and into the parking lot where I practically threw him into the car I had rented. He was both shocked and more than a little afraid, but still he complied. I think in his heart he knew as well as I did that we needed answers and doing this in front of the others was not an option.
I started the car and pulled out just as a few of the people from the BA meeting appeared at the door. They saw us exit the parking lot and I could only imagine what they were thinking.
We drove in silence for a while, Simon sitting awkwardly as he leaned as close to the door as possible. He was pressed up against it until a few miles down the road when a dinging sound broke the silence.
“You need to wear your seatbelt,” I said stupidly.
“Oh. Yeah. Okay.” He sat down properly and clicked the belt into place. The beeping stopped and we drove on in silence.
“So… um… what you wanna eat?”
“You kidnap me and you want me to—”
“I need to know about your story. I need to… understand.”
He stopped. “Why?”
“I need to figure some things out and I don’t know who else to turn to. I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t know what to do.” I sighed. “And I thought it would be better to talk to you out of earshot of all those guys.”
“Wait. You… You believe me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because it’s impossible.”
I clenched my jaw in annoyance, but I knew what I saw and the truth was written all over his face. “Did you, or did you not, go to Equestria?”
Simon stared at me. “Chinese.”
“What?”
“I’m hungry. I would like some Chinese.”
I sighed. I literally ate Chinese food almost every day thanks to living above a Chinese restaurant. I mean, he must have smelled it on my clothes. “Chinese it is.”
We continued driving on in silence for a bit.
“I didn’t go to Equestria.” Simon was looking at his hands now.
“What?”
“I said I didn’t go there. I’m from Equestria. I’m Equestrian. I don’t really know how I came here. I went to sleep one night and when I woke up I was in this body.” He looked down at himself, like he was studying himself, before looking back out the window.
A moment later, he pointed at a small place.
“Let’s go to that restaurant.”
I looked to where he was pointing. It was a very sleepy looking place, but that was fine. I pulled into the parking lot and parked as close to the door as possible. We walked, the greasy smell of good Chinese food smacking us in the face. In the back of my mind I wondered if that was the smell that followed me everywhere I went. My clothes must have—
“Table for two, please.” Simon shoved me inside. “Don’t mind him.”
I blinked.
“What’s wrong with you?” He whispered when the guy who wanted to seat us walked off. “You just stood there doing nothing?”
“I was deep in thought!” I whispered back.
“Were you?”
We were led to a booth and we took places opposite each other as the host put two glasses of water on the table.
“Your waitress will be with you in a second.” He walked off and sat himself in a booth, immediately pulling out his phone and watching something a little too loudly. It sounded very much like a Chinese show, but what did I know?
We didn’t have to wait for long before a waitress walked up to us wearing a mask. That made me furrow my brow, but I’ve seen other waiters do that in the Chinese place I lived above. She placed two menus, her mask crinkling a bit as she smiled, and walked away without a word.
That was weird. Didn’t they usually say something?
I picked up the menu and looked at what they had on offer. Most of it I could have rattled off by heart; most of the items were common fare for Chinese places, but I wasn’t really interested in eating. I was here on a mission to learn more about this guy. Already what he had said to me in the car had started the wheels turning in my head. What were the odds of two ponies coming together in the same city under strange circumstances?
He was looking at the menu as well, occasionally stealing glances at me. I could tell there was a lot on his mind, but I needed to do this. I needed to understand. I needed to know. Maybe he held a clue as to why I’m here.
“What’ll you have? It’s on me.”
He put the menu down and looked over to me. “You need to tell me the truth. The real truth. Were you…” He paused, shaking his head slightly as if trying to come to terms with the question, “did you…”
“Relax. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s order first. Then we can get into it. No rush. I’m not going to run out on you this time. I promise.”
He looked at me, then nodded. “Okay. I’ll trust you.”
The waitress appeared just then, silently, like a ninja, and placed two ice-waters on the table along with a jug. Again, saying nothing she smiled, giggled, then walked off.
I found that amusing somehow.
When she was out of earshot, Simon leaned forward and put his arms on the table. Again, he was hesitating but I knew he wanted to know. Instead of asking them however, he continued to deflect.
“What’ll you have?” he asked.
“Let me hear your story first,” I stated, “from the beginning. I think it’ll be better if you did.”
At first he hesitated, but seemed to reach some conclusion and shrugged. “What do you know?”
“You were in an accident. After that you slipped into a coma. Your friend told me that.”
“You make it sound so blase,” he laughed mirthlessly. “Tisha said all that?”
“She did. She said that you kinda… Lost your mind, but I don’t think so. Let’s just say that… There are things you can fake, and there are things you can’t.”
Simon picked up the water and leaned back. He took a long sip and sighed. Slowly, he put the glass down on the table and leaned forward again, obviously trying to organize his thoughts.
“I don’t know about the accident. From what I gathered, I… My predecessor… The original Simon, had gotten drunk and veered off the road. He stupidly did not wear a seatbelt and was ejected from the car. When they found him, he was a good distance away from the impact area, which ironically might have saved his life seeing as the car was on fire. As for what happened, the main thing apart from the broken bones and the question of being able to walk again was the extensive head trauma. That’s what the docs said.”
He paused.
“And because of that trauma, my memories had gotten confused.”
“Confused?” I asked.
“That my childhood memories somehow fused with my recent ones. That I watched a certain show as a child that gave birth to strong dreams while I was in the coma that essentially confused me and made me mix up what was real and what wasn’t.”
“That’s a thing?”
He shrugged. “Easier than accepting a man claiming to be a child from another world.”
The thought hit me like a ton of bricks. If what this guy was saying was true, then I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he must have gone through. When I left my world, I was a fully grown and somehow well-adjusted young adult — for the most part. Not a child lost in a world without anyone.
“That must have been terrifying for you.”
“It was at first. But over time my memories started to fuse with Simon’s. Then I was able to cope. If it were just my own, I don’t think I would’ve been able to cope much less ‘get better’. Simon’s still in here with me, but he’s not ‘on’, if that makes sense. I can sense him, like he’s there, sitting in the background and watching me. But not in a hostile way. More like in a ‘bemused older brother watching his clumsy younger brother’ way. Like he’s just behind a locked door. And he’s here with me, listening, and ‘knowing’. Like, he’s half asleep; aware, but can’t wake up enough to ‘take over’. Does that make sense?”
I blinked.
He grunted in frustration, waving his hands as if they were trying to explain it instead of his words. “He’s like a sleeping copilot, and is waiting for me to leave.”
That made sense. “So, they thought that your watching… That show led to your memories being confused.”
“If by ‘they’ you mean the doctors, then yes.” Simon had smirked when I avoided naming the show. “That’s what they thought.”
“And? They were wrong?”
“It’s hard to describe. Like I said, I ‘remember’ this Simon’s memories. It is like I know the memories, but I also know they aren’t mine. I am Simon, and I do have his memories, but I am also not him. But there is one thing that I am absolutely sure of. Before the accident, he’d… I’d… we’d never seen the show. I had never seen that show.”
The implication staggered me. How would he have memories of a show that he had never seen before? How could the memories fuse if he never had memories of the show in the first place?
“Okay. So, I think I understand it, but that’s from this Simon’s side. Tell me how you think it went from that Simon’s side.”
Simon looked at me. “Number twelve.”
“What?”
“I want a number twelve.”
“Oh. Yeah. The food. Got it.”
I raised my hand to grab the waitress's attention, but she was already right there next to us. I flinched. How’d she do that?
“We’ll have the number twelve. And a cola for me. Please.”
“A beer for me,” Simon muttered, blushing profusely.
I raised my eyebrow. “Didn’t you say you were just a kid?”
“I need it. And besides, this body isn’t that of a kid. One beer is fine.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Fine!” Simon muttered. “Another cola for me too.”
The waitress giggled again, then gave us a thumbs up and left to get our order.
We waited till she was out of earshot before Simon continued.
“I’ve been here for a long time now. It’s been years since the accident and, well, I don’t think I can be considered a kid anymore anyway, like I said.”
“You’re still not getting a beer.”
Simon frowned. “Not that I was going to!”
“So, you claim you came from Equestria,” I continued, ignoring his protests. “Can you tell me about that?”
“You really wanna hear that?”
I nodded.
“I remember it clearly. The day I ended up in that coma. I was at school, and just got home. I remember putting my jacket up, using the levitation spell I had just learnt and hanging up my scarf on top of that. I ran to my mom’s office but she wasn’t there.” He looked at me, his eyes starting to fill with tears. “I was hungry, so I went to get something to eat from the kitchen. That was where I…” He paused for a moment, fiddling with his fingers. “I was trying to get something out of the freezer. I think my magic snipped or spiked or something happened, I’m not sure, but when I tried to pull the freezer door open…”
I instinctively put my hand on his twiddling fingers. He didn’t pull away and I felt the first drops of his tears hit my hand.
“I was just looking to see if there were any ice lollies. I didn’t mean to… I tried to call for mom, but I couldn’t shout… It was too heavy…”
I gave his hands a gentle squeeze.. This was a child. A child who I had forced to remember what was likely the most traumatic memory of their life.
“She didn’t hear me. Nopony could…” He sniffed and wiped his eyes with his shoulder. “The next thing I knew I woke up in the dreams, and after that at the hospital.”
“I am so sorry that you had to remember that.”
Simon laughed mirthlessly through the tears. “Don’t be. It’s not like I forgot anyway. You don’t forget something like that.”
He pulled his hands from mine and took one of the napkins and dried his eyes. “Sorry, I know this isn’t what you wanted, but this is my story.”
“It was far more than I thought it would be. I’m sorry I made you remember that.”
He shook his head slightly and smiled. “The guys over at BA humor me, but they don’t really believe it. And who could blame them? Right? Not until you came along.”
That made my stomach feel tight.
“Now nobody is sure. Two people in the same BA that have had ‘apparent’ experience with ponies. Who could ignore that?”
I made a face. “Sorry about that.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me. I don’t even know if you’re actually the real deal. The only reason why I decided to humor you was because, for me, the risk is worth it.” He coughed and straightened his shirt out. “But now it’s your turn.”
“Not so fast. Why did you ask about Princess Luna?”
Simon looked at me in a mixture of stunned silence and annoyance, but decided to continue just the same. “When I landed in Simon’s coma, it was in that dream world.”
I looked at him for a moment.
“You… You do know that Princess Luna can walk in dreams, right?”
I had heard that from somewhere, so I nodded.
“Okay… After what happened, I woke up there. While I was in that coma, I was scared, alone, and completely lucid. I remembered everything. I was just so scared and I didn’t yet get Simon’s memories, so I was lost. I didn’t understand what was happening; it was terrifying. I was in this black void and my mental state had started to regress. I was turning into a baby and the mental image of me or the dream version of me started to shrink like that. Cold, alone, scared.” He shuddered. “It was like something was watching me from beyond where I could see. Like looking down into the ocean depths. You know there are things down there, but you can’t see them from where you are.”
“What happened?”
“Luna happened.”
“Princess Luna?”
He looked at me and nodded. “Princess Luna. Or, as I would go on to eventually call her… Mother.”
“Princess Luna was your mother?”
“No! And… Yes? I guess. I mean, I called her that, but no. She isn’t really my mother. But in that fragile state of mind and loneliness, I decided that I needed her to be my mother. When I was there, in that coma world, she was. When I woke up, I remembered her. When I asked for her, those dumbfucks at the psych hospital didn’t get it. Deep down I knew she wasn’t my mother. I knew who Simon’s mother was and seeing her, while it did make me happy, I wasn’t her little boy.” He made a face. “At least, not yet. And then again, not quite. When my mind was like that, I needed Luna to be my mother and I think she understood that. She took care of me.”
“Did she… talk to you?”
“Of course! Talked. Sang. We played board games, tag… everything a child could do. She even tried to help me find my family, but… somehow, that didn’t work out. I remember my mother’s face and everything, even her cutie mark and even the city. I let mommy-Luna peek into my memory to see her, but no matter how hard she looked across our kingdom my mother couldn’t be found. At least, when I was there she couldn’t. Who knows what happened after I woke up.”
I smiled. “I’m sure she tried her best to find your family.”
“I know she did. I believe that she did. That’s what she does. She helps others. Helped me, guided me, taught me, and kept me company when she could. She would spend hours with me, listening to me, caressing me. I felt her touch, I recall her scent. Her breath, everything. I remember everything about it. The laughter and the way she would just wrinkle her nose when she was about to laugh… I love my mothers, mine and Simon’s, but I also loved her like a mother. And she was there for me.”
“Then?”
“I woke up. After that, I spent two years in and out of psychiatric hospitals to ‘break my pony obsession’. My father here in this world was really… he was an asshole about it. I mean Simon’s father. His mother was a little more understanding, but with Dad’s constant bickering, she had no choice. So, I woke up in this world and ended up being called crazy.”
“It’s hard to differentiate between the two of you.”
“Yeah. I know. Like I said, now we’re just the same. I am sure that when I go, he’ll remember me and my memories. I just hope that he doesn’t mind them too much.”
“Being in that void must’ve been scary.”
“It was. I mean, I was very young. The body I… this guy’s body was already an adult. The things I’ve had to ‘learn’ were difficult, but I managed. Luckily for me, Simon’s job was his whole life, so most of his memories of work were easy to do. Boring, but easy. To be honest, I tried to adapt. I tried to forget the pony side of me, believing it to be false memories for a long time, but I couldn’t really push it out. There were too many things that pushed back on logic, and I just wasn’t prepared to give up all that so easily. And because of that I’m still being called crazy.”
“How do you know you’re not?”
Simon raised an eyebrow. “I could ask you that.”
“Aren’t you worried? What would happen if you can’t ever go back?”
He shrugged. “At this stage, I don’t really care. I’ve been here for so long now that I really don’t mind never going back. I’m sad that I can’t, but if I do go back and retain my memories, then I won’t be a child anymore. I’ll be a middle-aged foal!”
We both laughed at that. “Won’t that be something.”
He guffawed a bit more then sighed. “Still, I would love to see my mother, my pony mother, one more time and make sure she’s holding up okay.”
Suddenly, two colas were placed on the table, and we both looked at the waitress who smiled with her eyes again, then walked off. How long had she been standing there?
“So, now it’s your turn. Are you from Equestria?”
I shook my head. “No.”
Simon did not expect that answer. “Then? What are you if not Equestrian?”
“I’m… I guess you could say I’m both.”
He leaned forward, his face contorted with confusion. “Explain.”
“I’m human. Through and through.”
“And?”
“Look, it’s not easy for me to actually say this out loud. But, yes,” I took a deep breath, “I have been to Equestria and back.”
Somewhere the sound of glasses smashing on the ground made me and Simon jump. We looked and saw the waitress picking up some empty cups from the ground, the owner or someone of higher authority shouting at her in broken English. She kept apologizing for what she had done, but kept on cleaning the mess.
I turned towards Simon.
“Unlike you though, I went there in this body.”
He looked at me, then turned his head. “How did you fit in? Ponies are—”
“I was a pony. An earth pony!” I smiled. “And I won the RACE!”
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. You know what the Race Across Equestria race is?” He asked, his eyes going wide as he asked.
“Of course! I did the final biathlon.”
“But… but that’s impossible. That was years ago. I… that was…” he looked at me. “When I… when what happened to me happened, it was several months away, but everypony was talking about it and… it hadn’t happened yet.”
“Yeah! Time flows differently here and there,” I said nonchalantly. “Here’s much faster.”
He was struggling with this concept. “Then… I’ve only been here for a few months?”
I put a hand on his shoulder, “Yeah, dude. Take your time. Take all the time you need. Time flows slower there. At least, I think it does. Well, when I was over there it was only three days here.”
Simon looked at me and furrowed his brow. “You really are an idiot.”
“Oi.”
“No, really. What you said is completely backwards. It’s slower here. Otherwise you would’ve spent more days there.”
He was right. I smacked my forehead with my hoof— hand.
“So, how? How did you go?”
“Well,” How do I explain the next part? “You see, I was sent there on a bet by a changeling.”
“A what?”
“A changeling?” I replied. “You know what that is, right?”
“Of course I do, but why would a changeling send you there?” he asked.
“I dunno. Said something about using me to eat. Something about me being the source of her food, and that I needed to learn stuff. She wanted me to learn the true meaning of friendship, but there were rules.”
“True meaning of friendship?” He smirked at that. “Did you win?”
“Nope. There were rules. The first was…”
“Yes?” Simon asked.
“The first rule was…”
“Forest?” he asked. When he said that name, I jerked my head towards him.
“How do you know that name?”
“Um… you introduced yourself as Forest at the last BA meeting, remember?” he replied. “Are you okay? You’re spacing out quite a bit there.”
“There were three rules!” I shouted. “Three rules! The rules were…” I searched my memory as far back as I could go, but nothing came. Nothing at all! How the fuck could I forget something like that! For an entire month I spent trying to win that bet and now I can’t remember them at all?!
Simon jumped when I slammed my head on the table.
“Ow,” I intoned.
What was happening? I remembered the bet. I remembered it. How could I forget the rules? It didn’t make sense. What was going on? How did I not notice?
“Forest?” Simon asked in a gentle voice. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I muttered with my head still face down on the table. “Gimme a minute.”
“I didn’t tell you everything,” Simon said slowly after a long period of silence. I kept my head down. “After I grew up a bit in that world, I came to understand a few things. A kid like me didn’t know much, but as my memories and ability to think grew there were things I started to understand. That was when I realized that I was different from mother-Luna. That didn’t matter at first, but I then started to realize that I was no longer what she was. I was no longer a pony. I felt it. My body did. Things were changing and I remembered understanding it bit by bit over time.”
I still had my head down.
“That was when Luna told me that my body was cured. Healed. Then she said something that I will never forget.”
I looked up.
“She said that I didn’t need her anymore. That she didn’t need to come back. And I got scared again, and angry. But she comforted me and made me understand. I think she was waiting for me to mature enough before doing so. She told me that my body was dying and that if I didn’t wake up soon, the body would eventually… die. That if I didn’t go back soon, that I could never go back at all. My new adopted mother told me to leave and never come back. And yes, I knew she was saying it for my own good, and yes, I knew that she was right, but do you know how much it hurt? To be told that I had to go away, and that there was nothing I could do about it? Do you know how that feels?”
My eyes hurt. “I know. Oh boy do I know that feeling.” I reassured him. “Very familiar.”
Just then two plates were placed in front of us. We both sat up straight and turned to the waitress, but she had turned around and walked off before we could say a word.
Simon reached over for a fork and poked his dish with it. I stared at mine with mixed feelings. I hadn’t realized it was a vegetarian dish. Had I been unconsciously eating vegetarian dishes? I thought about it.
“The maddening thing is,” Simon continued, “that I know that she can hear me when I call to her in my normal dreams. I spent a lot of time with her in that dream world. She just chooses to ignore me. And it’s frustrating.”
“Why would she ignore you?”
“I think she thinks it’s unhealthy. Or something like that. I think she thinks she knows best, and that's just… well, it is really friggin’ frustrating.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“Into my coma world?”
“Well, no. I meant—”
“Of course not. I just want to talk. That’s it! I don’t understand why she avoids me.”
“Maybe she’s busy?”
“In a world where time doesn’t exist? Sure. I know she cares. I do. I just wish that she would just say hello once in a while.”
I nodded.
“So, what now?” He asked.
At this I sighed. “I’m not sure, but something is telling me that I have to look for a way back. That I have to find my way back there. It’s just… I can’t explain it.”
“You miss your life there?” Simon asked.
Again, I nodded, then shook my head, then nodded. I ate some of the food, which was pretty delicious, chewed, swallowed, then opened my mouth to say something, but couldn’t think of something to say, so took another bite of food.
“Yes,” I said after the end of that bite.
The look Simon gave me spoke volumes.
“Okay. I don’t know. I just need to get back there, okay?
“Are you insane?” He asked. “There’s no way back there.”
“I was there,” I replied.
“Yes, but you had help. And without that help, you’re not going to be able to. There’s no magic in this world. Trust me. I’m a unicorn. I know magic.”
“Wait. You’re a unicorn?”
“Wasn’t that obvious from the story I told?” He asked. “I literally… the kitchen… fridge…”
“Oh yeah!”
“I won’t stop you from trying,” Simon said with a bemused expression on his face, “But then again, I won’t hold my breath. But if you are so keen on going back, why come here in the first place?”
“I wouldn’t have come back unless there was something that had to be done. Maybe to prevent something bad from happening.”
“Like what?”
I furrowed my brow. Then, I pulled up my shirt and showed Simon my scar. “This scar I got here. And this scar,” I said, pulling the shirt further up to show my other side, “I got there.”
Simon looked at it, then his eyes opened. “I… I can feel it.”
“What? No! No you can’t touch it!”
“No, you idiot. I can literally feel it. I can sense… I…”
Suddenly Simon’s eyes glowed with a bright yellow light and something like electricity zapped through me making my body shudder in pain. Then, as if it never existed, the pain was gone in something akin to an explosive blast. Like a balloon popping. Simon’s eyes stopped glowing, and the plates of food and drinks dropped onto the table, floor, and us. Simon coughed and put his hand to his forehead, rubbing it quickly as if something hit him hard on that spot.
I put my hand on my scar and rubbed it too. It felt awful. Like… like…
"Are you okay? Quickly! We must get him to the infirmary!"
"We have to do something!"
"Forest! Wake up! You have to help us!"
"Forest! Wake up! You have to help us!"
"... You have to help us!"
I snapped up and looked around. Nothing. Nothing at all. The sounds of Twilight’s voice in my head echoing into oblivion.
“What the fuck was that?” I shouted at Simon.
Simon shook his head, still rubbing his forehead. “That was magic.”
“Yeah! No shit! How did you do that!”
“I had it! I was able to use it, but then… something broke the connection.”
I touched my chest. “I’m allergic to magic.”
He looked at me as if I had said the dumbest thing in the world. “You’re… you’re what? Nopony is allergic to magic.”
“I am!” I protested
“Impossible.”
“My MA count is zero!” I exclaimed, pointing at my chest as if that explained everything.
“MA count?” Simon looked at me utterly puzzled. “What’s an MA count?”
I blinked. I couldn’t recall. “Something to do with magic and how strong you are with it.”
“I didn’t know I could do that… but when I felt it, it was like I understood how to use it. It was so pure. And warm. And cozy. Like… like…”
“It was Princess Celestia’s magic,” I said bluntly.
“Yes! That’s right!” He rubbed his head. “You really were there…”
“Did I tell you she shot me? Damn near killed me?”
“No way she would do that,” Simon said, now standing up and touching my chest, rubbing his fingers over the smooth texture of Celestia’s scar..
I batted his hand away. “Stop that.”
“But… but how? Magic doesn’t exist here.”
“Like I said, she shot me.”
“Why?” Simon shouted.
“Long story short, by accident. Anyway, what did you do? That felt awful. And I know awful. Magic and me just don’t mix.”
“I don’t know! I just did… it!”
“What was ‘it’, you idiot!” I shouted.
“Don’t call me an idiot, you idiot!” Simon retorted.
We both found ourselves shouting at each other and standing face to face with one another. Then I stopped and looked around. “Simon?”
“Yeah?”
“Where the fuck are we?”
He looked around too and scratched his head. “Um…”
“Can you guys explain what is going on?” A voice said. We both turned to see the waitress, now with her mask off, looking at us with a very bemused expression. “Because this isn’t coming out of my paycheck.”
She thumbed at the restaurant.
“Tisha?” we both asked. And indeed it was her. Naked.
Simon looked away immediately, but I couldn’t stop staring. I tried, but my eyes were glued onto her. Eventually, I did manage to pry my eyes away and it was then that I saw that we were in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night, with half the restaurant’s interior surrounding us. A few seconds later, the lights that were on in the place shut out, and we were all bathed in complete darkness.
What the fuck just happened?
“Tisha?”
“Yes, Forest?”
“Why are you naked?”
I heard her giggle. “I have no idea. Did you like it?”
A part of me was glad it was pitch black, because my face was probably bright red. I was blushing so hard, it hurt my cheeks.
“... yes.”
She giggled again.