//------------------------------// // Tabula rasa // Story: Stacking stones // by Brimstone //------------------------------// (Author notes- Don't worry, this is almost certainly one-time thing.) This is my first attempt at a proper piece of fan fiction. Don't worry, it is indeed human in Equestria, but it's going to take a couple chapters before the "Equestria" half of that becomes blatantly obvious. The setting as of chapter one is a mountain downrange from Smokey Mountain, also known as "That place from Dragonshy", so this is hopefully enough to keep this story from from violating any rules. The first chapter is short because it is a test chapter intended to gauge interest in this particular variety of story. Now that all of that is out of the way, on to the story proper. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You wake up with a splitting headache. Groaning, you roll over and pull yourself into a ball. Leaves crunch beneath you, and a bird trills somewhere overhead. There's a tickling at the back of your mind that tells you something isn't right, but trying to think about it just makes your headache worse. Thinking about that can wait until later, you decide. After a few minutes of laying down, curiosity wins the mental tug-of-war, and you pull yourself up and look around. From what you can see of your surroundings, you're in some kind of dense forest, in a small clearing at the base of a cliff. It's pleasantly warm, and there's not a cloud to be seen. Trying to think of other forests you might have been in to see if you can figure out where you are, only draws a blank and another dull throb of pain from your headache. Shaking your head and rubbing your palms into your eyes in an instinctual effort to clear the pain, it finally sinks in that you have no idea where you are. At all. You are completely, utterly lost. Not that you didn't already realize this, but the ramifications of this fact have settled into your mind. You're in the middle of a forest. You don't know where it is, and therefore you also do not know what weather to expect, what temperatures, wildlife, plant life, hostile cultures, natural dis- you grab a nearby branch hard enough to snap it as you pull yourself out of a panic attack. Once you calm yourself down, you sit down on a mossy rock. Okay, step one. What do you know? First off, you woke up here. You don't remember anything prior to that. You also have a splitting headache, but are otherwise fine. Something clicks during your self-review. You can't remember a damn thing about how you got here or about yourself, but you can remember plenty of other things. Amnesia. Retrograde, not that you remember how in the nine hells you know that. Nine hells, Dante. The inferno. Slumping backwards on the rock, your mind runs through a flood of useless facts and trivia by association. Somewhere around "A man in France once ate an entire Cessna", you sit up and decide to make for higher ground, if only to get a feel for the area you're in. You meander around the base of the cliff, before spotting a steep but climbable rock slope that evens out into a rolling hill before meeting sheer cliff again. Slowly, you make your way up, but it's not the easiest climb. Once you haul yourself onto the grass, you lay back for a quick breather. You prop yourself up against a tree, and lazily look out across the forest. In front of you, the trees roll on in an endless sea of deep green, until the haze claims them off in the distance, fading to blue. You let your head slide to the left, and see a mountain range stretching off into the distance, tapering off many miles away. There's no easy way out in that direction. Sighing, you turn your head to the right. You blink. You blink again. Wow. That's a big goddamn mountain. It in, in fact, so tall that you have to tilt your head back just to see the top of it, where the steep, steel-grey peak soars past the clouds, earning a generous cap of snow. A low whistle slips past your lips in appreciation of the sheer height of the daunting spire. A few minutes crawl by during which you just stare at the mountain, trying to match it up with anything you might know. You don't succeed. Your eyebrows knit as you continuously draw a blank every time you attempt to think of places you have been, mountains you have seen, or mountains people you know have seen. It's fairly easy for you to remember plenty of famous mountains, and even a number of not-so famous mountains, but you're fairly certain the one you are staring at isn't one of them. Admitting defeat, you pull yourself up. As you scan the the grassy piece of land, you notice a cluster of caves further down the cliff, and some bushes lining the side. It appears the only way up or down is the steep slope you used to get up. That's a relief, at least. God, you hope there aren't bears in those caves. Or mountain lions. Or tigers, oh my. No, that was just cheesy. You walk slowly along the edge of the cliff, making sure to stay far enough away that the rock won't crumble under your feet. The bushes are some kind of berry bush, but you know better than to eat mystery berries. Thankfully, from what you can see, the caves appear very shallow, and the one that isn't is lit by a natural skylight. It's empty. That's a relief. By this point, the sun is beginning to set, and you need to find somewhere safe to sleep, just in case. Thankfully, you realize the tree you were leaning against is perfect for sleeping in, the branches forming a bowl shape as they split from the trunk maybe six or seven feet up. Only a few branches are lower than that, and the lowest is just far enough down for you to grab if you jump. You haul yourself up and into the tree, feeling very much in touch with your genetic ancestors. Eek eek, ook ook, and all that. Hopefully, you inherited the disposition for sleeping in trees. As you fall asleep, your mind taunts you with visions of banana splits.