Twilight's grin faded. "What am I doing? Of course he doesn't speak our language..." she chided herself.
Brandon nodded that yes, he could understand her.
The unicorn's eyes widened. "Wait...you can understand me?"
Brandon's head bobbed in a 'yes'.
"...Wow! This is AMAZING! How can you understand what I'm saying? Could humans have known our language? Maybe we even spoke the same native language! I've got to make sure I take notes on everything!!"
The excited equine rushed off to get more paper and ink, giving Brandon a few seconds to ponder a few of the million questions flying through his head, like how she knew he was a human, or how she even knew what humans were, or how they all spoke english, or why it seemed so unsurprising to him that this unicorn would be obsessed with taking notes.
Twilight came back, an absurdly large pile of paper and inkwells levitating behind her. She can't possibly expect to use all that, he reasoned.
"Now, do you know how you got here?"
Brandon's head shook. Twilight's pen scribbled.
"Do you know where you are?"
Head shake. Pen scribble.
"Can you give me a verbal response?"
Shake. Scribble.
"...Wait, you mean you can't talk?"
Nod.
"So humans can't talk?"
Shake.
"Uh, no they can't, or no they can?"
Brandon rolled his eyes and held up two fingers.
"Oh, ok." Her pen scratched furiously. "So why can't you talk? Could you talk before you came here? Is it an injury from the explosion?"
Aha! So there was an explosion! thought Brandon. He nodded and pointed to his throat.
"Oh, your vocal cords? I guess that would make sense. Being that close to the explosion and all, you're lucky you didn't suffer worse! But don't worry," she said, seeing the look of dread on the boy's face, "I'll fix it right away! Now, where was that book...?" Her horn glowed and books began to fly off the shelves, spewing out the occasional dust cloud when she looked at one that had lain unused for a while.
"Hmm...V...vocabulary...vocal arts...vocal spells!" she levitated a book over to the table triumphantly. After reading for several minutes and mumbling to herself about doing things by the book, she turned to Brandon and closed her eyes in concentration. Her horn sparked and glowed, and a beam of purple leapt from it to Brandon's throat. There was an intense tickling sensation, and as soon as she was finished, he started coughing violently and fell to the floor. Twilight backed away. Oh, no! she thought. Did I do something wrong?! What if he can't breath?!?
To the purple pony's relief, he finished coughing and sat up. He felt his throat. And then he spoke.
"Thanks."
Twilight stared. And then she started cracking up.
Brandon sounded like he had just inhaled a ton of helium. It did sound pretty ridiculous. However, he did not find it as amusing as Twilight. "Hey, it's not my fault! You did the magic!"
Unfortunately, his second instance of speech was no less funny than his first; Twilight was now incapable of talking, much less casting magic. She was laughing so hard that she was now having trouble breathing. Brandon sighed, and decided it would be better to refrain from speaking until Twilight had regained her composure.
Twilight snorted a few times, let out some final giggles, and then took a deep breath. "Well, it would appear that I-". She giggled a bit more. "...It...it would appear that I miscalculated the thickness of your vocal chords. I'll...I'll fix that..." she said, barely able to suppress her laughter. She cast the spell once more.
"Whew...that's much better," said Brandon, grateful to have his regular voice once more.
"No problem," said the mare. She snickered. "And don't worry, I'll keep quiet about this little incident if you will. I would be kinda embarrassed if everypony heard that I messed up a spell that was that basic, and...well...I doubt you would ever live that kind of thing down."
"Don't worry, I have no intention of telling anyone about this." he smiled. "So...your name is Twilight? I'm Brandon." Which was pretty much the only thing he could remember...
"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance! Twilight Sparkle, element of Magic, at your service!". She curtsied -- well, as well as a pony can manage.
"Element of...Magic?"
Twilight remembered that this human didn't know anything about her world. "Oh, right...My friends and I, we represent the six elements--"
Her lecture was interrupted by a sharp rapping on the door. They looked at each other, eyes wide. The new friends were suddenly reminded that they had left everypony else outside arguing.