It took several, long minutes for Blue and Twilight to calm down enough about dinner to explain what all had transpired. Though it ended with the two of them blushing in deep embarrassment while the young dragon and filly were left laughing on their backs on the floor.
“Well, guess that’s my first humiliation in a new world,” Blue commented, clearing his throat. “Like the first scratch on a new car, best to get it out of the way.”
Twilight was quite red in the face from being caught by her daughter and little brother in such a predicament. She cleared her throat to try and calm her emotions. “That’s enough, you two. It’s not all that funny.”
Spike wiped a tear from his eye as he sat up, “Sorry, Twilight, but that’s a pretty funny reason to be yelling at each other for.” He pushed himself up onto his feet, dusting his scales off from being on the floor as he offered a claw to Blue. “Nice to meetcha, I’m Spike! Twilight’s number one assistant!”
With a smile, the stallion put his hoof in Spike’s claw. “Back at ya, man. Call me Blue, your roomie for the time being.”
That comment got the little filly to perk up after stopping her own giggle fit. “‘Roomie’? Is he staying here?”
Twilight answered with a nod. “Yes, for the foreseeable future, Blue will be staying in the guest room here. I trust both of you to respect his own personal space and privacy while he’s here, understood?” She smiled from the twin salutes she received from her family before looking to Blue. “Well, now that we’ve been humiliated in front of children, how about we have dinner? And since you’re the guest, we’ll try it your way this time. But next time I’m cooking, we do it the traditional way. Deal?”
Blue looked as she offered a hoof to him which he shook with a smile. “Aye aye, landlady.” The joke got a few chuckles out of the surrounding creatures as he moved to grab the pot. “Let’s get to serving then.”
With some orders from the resident alicorn mare, the table had been set only moments later as she and Blue moved the sauce and noodles to the table and dealt out the portions for everyone to have a good serving. Soon enough, the four of them would have been seated and started digging in.
“Mmm, this is really good,” Nyx spoke up after slurping a good helping.
“Yeah, not bad at all. We might have to do it this way more often,” Spike agreed, twirling his noodles. In doing so he ended up missing the smug smirk Blue was giving Twilight who had a look of betrayal that turned into one of annoyance.
His sense of victory accomplished, Blue happily ate up, watching the eclectic group he was dining with. Though eventually his eyes landed on the little black filly, taking notice of a feature that he’d missed. “Hey, I don’t mean to be rude, but are her eyes a little different?”
That single comment caused all three of them to stop eating, glancing to each other, then at Blue, then at Nyx who then shyly looked away. Blue’s eyes tracked between them all, swallowing his latest bite as he clicked his tongue.
“Ah dang, is that sensitive?”
Twilight let out a soft sigh. “It’s… a long story. I don’t think we’re quite ready to share that. I’m sorry, but please understand.”
Blue quickly nods his head, waving his forehooves in front of him defensively. “No no, totally I get it. I was just really curious about it since her eyes were pretty cool.”
The filly’s ear flicked as she looked at him, curiosity shining in her cyan eyes, giving Blue a good look at their slitted appearance. He took note of the much more predatory nature of the Nyx’s eyes, but he just tilted his head slightly at seeing them so clearly.
“‘Cool’?” Twilight parroted slowly, a brow raised at the stallion. “Do you really think that?”
He nodded again. “I mean, yeah. They’re much different from what I’ve seen so far. Hers and Spike’s actually are pretty similar.” Said dragon and filly blinked and looked at each other. “The only difference is the eye color really. Hers seems more like a brilliant cyan while Spike’s got that emerald green to it. But their pupils are more like slits, like predators. It makes sense for him, but for her it’s unique. Makes her special.”
“Special?” Nyx repeats, a soft redness shining through the black fur on face that most certainly wasn’t pasta sauce.
Twilight giggled at her daughter’s blushing before glancing back at the stallion who was rubbing the back of his neck. “Well that’s kind of you to say. Isn’t it, Nyx?”
The filly blinked out of her blush before nodding, remembering her manners. “Y-yes, thank you, sir.”
Blue waved his hoof dismissively with a smile. “No need for any formalities. I’m no one special.” He then glanced at Twilight who had her brow cocked again. “What?”
“Nothing special? Says the stallion who broke his back falling from a portal in my library.”
Unfortunately for Spike, he was mid-bite hearing that tidbit of information, coughing and sputtering. Thankfully he was able to pat his chest to get the food down the right pipe. “What was that about a portal‽ You mentioned strangeness but you couldn’t have thought to tell us he came from a portal‽ Where’s this guy even from‽”
“Earth,” Blue answered nonchalantly, receiving a deadpan from Twilight.
Nyx raised her hoof. “Where’s Earth? Is it where earth ponies get their name?”
Blue put a hoof to his chin. “That is a coincidence that you refer to ground in such a way. But no, it’s the name of my home world. I come from a… would it be dimension or universe? I was never certain what the difference was.”
“Another universe‽” Spike shouted, his jaw dropping. “Are you even a pony‽”
“That’s the crux of the issue,” Twilight interceded. “Blue claims that he was a human prior to arriving in Equestria, but his memories appear to be missing. That or whatever magic brought him has done… something to them. We can’t really say just yet without any further investigation.”
“A human?” Nyx questioned. “You mean like where your other friends are with Sunset Shimmer?”
It was Blue’s turn to blink in surprise, looking at Twilight. “So you’ve met humans before? I guess that would explain why you were familiar with some of the terms I was using. But you didn’t mention anything like that in your stories with your friends.”
Twilight nodded. “They weren’t really there for that adventure so I didn’t bring it up. But yes, I’ve been to a world of humans. I even became one while I was there and made friends with the human versions of my friends.”
To her shock, Blue actually nodded in some form of understanding. “So it’s a parallel universe. Slight deviations with distinct similarities. Was there anything else about it you could tell me? It could be my first clue to my memories.”
“Well,” Twilight put a hoof to her chin, quickly setting aside her surprise as she thought back to her adventure. “We’d arrived at a high school and my friends were teenagers there. Definitely several years younger than they are here, but even I was a few years younger too in that human form. But aside from having those gangly arms and legs, everypony looked like they did here, even the same colors.”
Blue frowned a little as she described it all. “I think we’re gonna have to cross that one off the list.”
“Huh? Why? Wouldn’t that be the human world you know of?” Twilight asked.
He shook his head, letting out a sigh. “While it could be similar, you saying everyone had different colors immediately rules it out. The Earth I knew had people of different colors, but most shared them with only a percentage of differentiation. Nowhere near the vibrancy I’ve seen between you all. None of your colors could ever be a human skin tone, with the closest may be Rarity, but even that was, well… a rarity.”
Twilight snorted at the unintentional pun before she tapped her chin again. “So a human world with less color. It sounds… interesting. Oh I wish I could talk with my friends on the other side. At least then we might learn a few more things that could help.”
“You can’t? Why not?” he asked before taking another helping of food.
“The mirror we used to get there only opens every thirty moons,” she explained. “It hasn’t been very long since I was there so it’ll be some time before I can visit them again.”
Blue tilted his head. “‘Moons’? What kind of measurement is that?”
“You don’t count time in moons?” Nyx asked as Blue shook his head. “We were just learning about them in my class at school last week. One moon is 30 days, a whole cycle of Princess Luna’s moon phases.”
“Oh,” the stallion nodded, putting things together. “An odd thing to go by, but I think I get it.” He then blinked and frowned. “Did she say ‘Princess Luna’s’ moon?”
Spike was the first to speak up. “Well yeah, she controls it like Princess Celestia controls the sun. So they technically belong to them.”
Twilight nodded with a smile, lifting a hoof to go into one of her favorite lectures before she looked at her house guest. He seemed to have been frozen stock still, one of his eyes twitching every few seconds while his hoof was stuck lifting up a portion of noodles.
“Blue? Are you alright?” she finally asked.
Though she would wish she hadn’t. Many ponies would complain the next morning at town hall with noise complaints from the library of all places. Their peaceful evenings all interrupted from the ear-piercing shout that rocked the town.
“THEY CONTROL WHAT‽‽‽‽”
It took nearly an hour to calm Blue down who had jumped into a rabid lecture into the motions of planetary bodies and the effects of gravity and light. While initially Twilight had been eager to learn, the absolute slander she was hearing about her teacher and friend had caused the impromptu lecture to turn into a debate, Spike and Nyx forced to stop the shouting match themselves. While they would laugh in later years over the “Great Space Nerd” debate, the two adults acted far more like foals than the very foals in the room until Spike had calmed them down by grabbing the hose from outside.
To apologize to Twilight’s young charges, Blue and Twilight had to both apologize as well as clean up what had remained of dinner by themselves. As well as the surrendering of a treat for both Spike and Nyx, to which Blue was shown how a dragon chomps down on a gem, nearly losing it again over the price of rare minerals before quickly being shut down over how common they were in Equestria.
A few hours passed as they spoke more, learning what they could about each other, though Blue was disappointed at not being able to hear the story of how Nyx joined the family, but was assured he would at some time. However, their time for sharing would come to a close as the night wore on. Twilight bid a good night to Blue as she took Spike and Nyx to bed, both of whom had fallen asleep while the former didn’t appear all that much better, the activities of the day taking their toll.
Blue would wave them to bed as he moved to the guest room that was in the basement of the treebrary. With a hop, he would land in the lone bed of the room, looking around at the compact quarters, only enough space for said bed, a night stand with a clock and a writing desk. There was a small sliver of moonlight shining inside from a high placed yet small window on the far side of the room. The stallion placed his head on the pillow as he stared up at the ceiling, lost in thought as he looked back over the day.
‘A world completely unknown to me, a body just as foreign, surrounded by creatures that should be myth. And to top it off, I can barely remember anything. All in less than twelve hours.’ He sighed to himself before he smiled to himself. ‘At least I’m not completely alone. I’d go mad if I didn’t at least have someone to talk to. And they’re pretty nice too.’ He felt his eyes grow heavy as sleep started to call on him. ‘Maybe being a pony won’t be so bad. But at the end of the day, I’ll always be a human. It’s the only thing I’m certain of.’ His consciousness quickly began to drift, falling into the realm of dreams before he knew it, even with one lingering thought in his head. ‘I am certain, right?’