‘Oh God, this was the worst idea I’ve ever had,’ you think to yourself as an unknown pink pony bounces around your bed. ‘Why the hell did I agree to this?’
Before the two ponies’ friends arrived, you were sitting peacefully in your bed, in a completely non-stressful environment. Now, though, you have never felt more stressed in your entire life.
There are three horses in your room, all of which are currently vying for your undivided attention. It’s not like they’re real, so you try to play along. But that proves to be impossible as they all continue to shout at you.
The moment your door opened, a pink ball of pure hyperactivity literally popped up next to your bed, and began bombarding you with questions. It asked you what you are, where you’re from, if you like cake, and that she will be throwing you a huge ‘Welcome to Equestria’ party in one single breath. You eventually get a good look at her and notice she is entirely pink, with even darker pink hair and balloons sketched above her posterior.
You didn’t have time to answer any of her rapid-fire questions. Before you knew it, another horse was in your room. Only this one was flying above you. Some papers that were lying on your bedside table flew away, never to be seen again. The blur suddenly stops and floats directly above you, her face mere inches from yours.
“What the hay are you?” it asks. This flying horse had a light blue coat, a very interesting rainbow mane and tail, which you thought was awesome, and a cloud and lightning bolt tattooed on her rump.
‘What’s up with all these tattoos?’ you ask yourself.
Before you can entertain the rainbow themed horse with an answer, you feel something poke at your thigh. You wince. Your thigh is still rather sensitive, so no one should want to touch it.
You look down to see a purple horse with a horn on her head, poking at you with a hoof. Her horn is suddenly enveloped in purple light as a notepad and pencil are lifted out seemingly from nowhere. She begins scribbling something down, before poking at you again. This particular poking horse had a purple coat, dark purple hair with a pink highlight, and a weird star-looking thing surrounded by other stars on her rump.
You wince again. “What are you doing?” you ask the purple horse, reaching a hand down to place on your thigh. You hope the purple horse takes this a sign to stop touching you.
She looks at your hand and audibly gasps, jumping up into the air. Her purple eyes suddenly get very wide as she takes a moment to simply stare at your hand.
The purple unicorn’s horn suddenly goes purple, as does your favorite digited appendage.
An unseen force suddenly pulls your hand (along with the rest of your injured body, for that matter) towards the purple unicorn.
You wince in pain as your entire body is forced to the left side of your bed. Your left shoulder is suddenly crying out in pain at the sudden and violent movement.
“Ooh,” the purple unicorn says, seemingly fascinated with your hand. The pencil and notepad are levitated from the floor and float next to the captivated horse, as she observes your hand. She looks as though she is inspecting it for… some reason. You don’t know why.
She glances back and forth from your hand to her pad of paper as the pencil begins writing while suspended in mid-air.
The magic forces your hand around. One moment your palm will be facing the floor, then the door, then the roof, then back to the door.
You’ve had enough of this. “Excuse me?” you ask, louder than you originally intended.
You see her gasp at the sound of your voice.
“What are you doing?” You try not to let your annoyance become too apparent in your tone. First impressions and all that. But this purple pony is definitely making a terrible first impression.
“Oh, um, just taking notes.” She smiles sheepishly.
‘Taking notes on what?’ you ask yourself. ‘What’s going on?’
“Why are you taking notes?” you ask.
“What is this?” she asks, ignoring your question and interjecting her own.
“What’s what?” you half-groan. It’s taking all your willpower not to start yelling at these talking horses. You know they don’t exist, so why won’t they just leave?!
“This…” she points at your hand and looks back up at you, as if she expects you to finish her sentence.
“My hand?” you ask, unsure of what she really wants from you.
“Hand…” she slowly repeats. The pencil continues to write feverishly on the notepad. “Where have I read that before?” The question was aimed more at herself than you.
You take the opportunity to quickly withdraw your hand from the purple aura and hide it under the safety of your bed sheets. You shuffle your way back to your original laying position on the bed.
“Why do you want to know so much about me? Why are you taking notes?” you ask the purple one.
‘I’m not that interesting, you little hallucinations,’ you think to yourself. ‘Begone with you so I may wake up on my bedroom floor in peace!’
“Because Twilight always takes notes on everything, silly!” the pink one interjects. She is currently somehow face-to-face with you while upside down.
She hops down from the roof and legitimately bounces around your bed as she continues to ramble.
“She doesn’t know what you are so she’ll write down everything about you, and I mean everything, before going back to the library and studying ALL NIGHT until she finally finds something about whatever you are! Then she’ll come and tell me so I know what to call you! That way I can plan your party!”
“Actually,” the purple one says, “I’m gathering information for a report to Celestia. I’m sure she’ll want to hear about this.”
You decide to tell everyone your name.
“That’s the most awesomest bestest name I’ve ever heard in my entire Pinkie Pie life!”
“What?” you hear the blue one ask. “That’s not even a name! What are you?”
“Why are you here?” the pink one asks now.
“Where did you come from?” the purple one cuts in, too.
You are quickly overwhelmed by these three horses advancing on you with their absurd questions that you don’t have time to answer. Over their questioning, you hear your heart monitor begin to beep faster and faster until-
“Girls! Enough! Y’all are scarin’ him!” you hear a familiar southern accented voice yell. Everyone freezes and looks
back towards the doorway. Next to the door stand an angry looking Applejack and an equally angry looking Rarity, shaking her head.
“Really, have you no manners?” Rarity chides. “And what did we say about overwhelming him? You all agreed to stand back and enter slowly, correct?”
Rarity and Applejack fully enter the room to stand at the foot of your unreasonably small bed.
The rainbow colored one answers. “Well, yeah, but Pinkie-“
“I will have none of that, Rainbow Dash. You should know better than to follow along with Pinkie Pie. Just look at him!” Rarity gestures towards you. “You nearly scared the poor thing to death!” You must have looked pretty scared because all their ears immediately fold down as sad looking expressions overcome their faces.
“Rainbow! Git on the ground this second!” Applejack says sternly, stomping the ground. “Y’all should know better than to fly around in here and go after ‘im like that.”
Rainbow floats dismally to the floor of your temporary bedroom.
“Twilight,” Rarity begins, “it is not socially acceptable for a lady to poke at anypony they just met for any reason at all. It is most unbecoming. Not to mention illegal.”
Twilight tries to justify herself. “But I was just-“
“No excuses!” Rarity interrupts. “Just think of how you may have offended He is very injured! You shouldn’t be touching him at all!”
Twilight looks down, dejected.
“And you, Pinkie Pie,” Rarity continues, putting emphasis on the word ‘you,’ as though the pink horse is her arch-enemy.
“Yes?” Pinkie says with a smile and a flutter of her eyelashes.
“WHAT did we say about bombarding the poor soul with your questions?! You nearly gave him a heart attack!” Pinkie looks sadly at you before looking at the floor. “Now, I want all of you to apologize. This. Instant.”
“We’re sorry,” come the chorus of monotone replies from the three aforementioned horses. They all look down at the floor with their ears folded down. You think that this is the saddest sight in the world. They look absolutely adorable when they’re sad, but you want them to be happy.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” you respond, trying to sit up, and failing. “I know you all have questions, but uh, one at a time would be nice.”
The pink horse is the first one to recover. She immediately looks back up at you with the biggest smile and the biggest blue eyes you have ever seen.
“Ooh! Ooh! I have a question!” she starts bouncing in place.
“Alright, ask away.” You prepare yourself for whatever question the pink horse’s mind will conjure up next. Hopefully nothing too weird.
“Where’s Fluttershy?” she asks you with a big smile.
‘What the hell’s a Fluttershy?’ you ask yourself. Pinkie’s question has left you baffled. You assume that this ‘Fluttershy’ is another one of these horses, but you haven’t seen anything besides the ones in your room.
You see the purple horse roll her eyes and begin to meander out of the room.
You exchange looks with the four remaining equines currently standing in your room.
Rainbow, Rarity, and Applejack all look over towards the door, waiting for the ‘Fluttershy’ to enter. Meanwhile, Pinkie stares at you with a huge smile plastered on her face.
You look over at her. You don’t know what to do.
‘Should I smile? Should I wave?’ you ask yourself. ‘Please stop looking at me!’
“Hello,” you smile nervously.
“Hi!” she shouts excitedly, continuing to look at you.
“Fluttershy!” you hear a voice yell from the hallway outside your door. “Come inside! Don’t you want to meet him?”
“Oh, no, no, absolutely not!” you hear another pony half-yell. She sounds like she was trying to shout, but just couldn’t for whatever reason.
“Why not? He wants to meet you!”
“No! Rainbow said that thing in there is from an alternate universe, and breathes fire and eats pegasi! And I’m a pegasus, Twilight!”
Everyone’s head turns to look at the rainbow maned pegasus and glares at her. They seem angry, but you can only look at her in confusion. You have no idea what is going on right now.
“Then why would Rainbow go in there?” the louder voice asks flatly.
“S-she told me that she’s not afraid of anything, and-”
“Fluttershy!” the soft voice is interrupted. “You’re going in! We have to make a good first impression!”
‘Too late for that.’
“No! Twilight! Put me down! Please!” the soft voice begs. By the way she is desperately pleading not to enter the room, you’d think she was about to be executed or something. You can hardly blame her for not wanting to meet you. Who would ever want to meet you? But this is ridiculous.
“I’ll give you anything you want!” the soft voice pleads. “Money? Pets? Books? Whatever you want, I’ll get you! Please, Twilight!”
The purple horse rounds the corner and enters your room with her horn aglow. Immediately behind her, a yellow pegasus with a pink mane and butterflies on her rump is floating in mid-air, surrounded by a purple light.
The yellow pony is desperately trying to free herself from the magical grip in a useless attempt to escape. From you.
The yellow pegasus is levitated to the foot of your bed, and released from the purple light. She falls a few feet onto the floor.
She looks up at you. Her eyes widen instantly as they connect with yours.
You don’t know what to do. “Um... hello?” you greet, wary of her reaction.
“Meep!” the yellow horse says/ gasps, before tearing out of the room at light speed.
‘It was nice to meet you too.’
==========
You place your quill back into the ink jar before leaning back in your chair. You don’t know how long you’ve been writing today, probably a couple of hours, but what matters the most right now is the fact that you’re done.
You take a moment to close your eyes and allow your mind to go blank. You had to work pretty hard on these final recommendations. You don’t know some of the ponies as well as you do others, so you had to wrack your brain for information regarding some of them.
You take a few moments to think.
‘Man,’ you think. ‘I wish I could’ve seen Luna getting wasted.’ You laugh. ‘Or at least see her throw a cake at Blueblood. That bastard’s probably trying the clean his coat right now.’
You think of Celestia a little. It’s a shame that she has a job where she works nearly 24 hours a day. If she didn’t, you’d be able to spend more free time with her.
Whenever you don’t have to work, Celestia does. Despite this, you still try to spend time with her.
If she’s in a meeting and you’re allowed to enter, you always do, just so you can sit with her, or at least be in the same room as her. The noble ponies that attend most of those meetings don’t really like you. Which is fine. You don’t like them. Finding a Canterlot noble who isn’t a self-obsessed prick is harder than finding Waldo.
Whenever you’re not allowed to enter, though, you will either walk around the castle or find some friends. But, considering your friends have their own jobs to do, due to the fact that most of them are in the military, you’re often left alone.
Which sucks.
Your all-time favorite past time with Celestia is walking through the Castle garden at sunset.
The way the orange glow of the sun reflects off of Celestia’s gleaming white coat is simply captivating. The flowers are nice too, but the most beautiful thing in that garden is undoubtedly Celestia.
You haven’t walked through the garden in a while, though. You’ve both been far too busy for that. You think that you can get home early tonight, so you can both take a stroll through the garden after dinner.
Dinner…
Food…
You want food. You’re becoming hungry. You can feel it.
Your tummy rumbles as you open your eyes to stare at the white ceiling above you. You visualize yourself eating a hamburger… a chicken too… and an entire pig…
Your hallucinating is not doing you any good. You’re just becoming hungrier as time slowly passes. You feel your head throbbing as the clock slowly ticks every second away.
You sit up in your chair and stare down at your now empty desk. On the corner of your desk lie in the ‘out’ bin 80 green folders. 80. That’s a ton.
In all honesty, it should’ve only taken you one day at most to do all the reviews, but you found yourself constantly distracted by the various trinkets in your room.
For example, on the far right side of your desk, sits a Newton’s Cradle. You continued to lift up one ball and release it before observing the balls on either end of the cradle bound back and forth. You probably stared at that thing for an hour. It’s just so cool.
You stand up in from your comfortable swivel chair, you notice your golden door handle glow a dark gray.
‘What the-?’ you begin asking yourself. You quickly realize that the door knob is glowing because, obviously enough, somepony is opening it. You may live in a land fraught with flying and magical creatures, but it still confuses you whenever your door handle starts glowing.
Your office door opens towards you, and in walks a close friend of yours; Sherman.
Sherman is an orange unicorn with a fiery red mane and a light red tail. He’s probably one of the only ponies you’ve seen with two different colors for his mane and tail. His cutie mark is, as one may assume, a torch.
He sees you and immediately snaps to attention. “Letter for you, sir!” he practically shouts, quickly pulling out a letter from his saddlebags and floating it over to you.
You take it out of his magical grip without saying anything, unfold it, and begin reading.
Lieutenant,
I would like to congratulate you and your troops on a job well done. I regret that I couldn’t have been there to personally witness your handling of the riot, but from what I’ve heard, you did an admirable job.
I would like to inform you that I will be reviewing the Centuries in which I am in direct command of later in the week. That includes yours, Lieutenant.
Once I can finally rid myself of all this damn paperwork, I will make it my top priority to come down and inspect my troops.
Appreciate being a Lieutenant while you can. If you think that you have a lot of paperwork, I can guarantee you don’t want to see what I have to do on a daily basis.
Captain Sparrow, 1st Unicorn Legion.
“Thank you, Sherman,” you nod at the stallion still standing at attention. “That will be all. Dismissed.”
“Yes, sir.” He makes an about-face, exits your room, and closes the door behind him. You should probably write back to your Captain, but you really don’t want to. You just finished writing, and you should go work out before you are tempted to sit down again.
You hope your Captain didn’t hear about you allowing your soldiers to come in late today. You’re not sure if that is allowed in the military, but you’re pretty sure it isn’t. If Captain Sparrow finds out everypony showed up four hours late, you could be in a lot of trouble.
Captain Sparrow was Lieutenant of your Century before you joined the Legion. Once you became an officer though, he was promoted to Captain and you got to take his place. Pretty sweet deal.
You glance at your clock before exiting your office.
“Damn,” you mumble. “It’s almost 12:30.” You’ve been writing for quite a while.
Time for some exercise.
You open the door, and as you expected, you are greeted with the all-too-familiar scene of 80 ponies working out, sweating, and smelling terrible.
You take a deep breath. ‘Ah,’ you sigh happily to yourself. ‘Smells like pony sweat.’ You take another deep breath and choke back a gag. ‘Which smells disgusting.’
You look to your right and see Mace currently bench pressing an unknown amount of weight, with Pike nervously spotting him.
As the commanding officer, it is imperative that you continue to ensure the safety of all of your legionnaires. Considering that Pike was assaulted just a few hours ago, you should probably talk to him. Make sure the blow to his head isn’t causing him to hallucinate or anything.
“Hey Pike!” you call out when you’re about twenty-or-so feet away from where he is standing. Pike looks up at you. “How are you feeling, bud? Head hurt?”
Pike shakes his head and turns to fully face you. “No, sir,” he responds. “It hurt a little bit last night when I went home, but I just slept on it and now it’s fine.”
“PikePikePike!” you hear a strangled voice attempt to yell next to you.
You glance down to try to find the source of the strange noise, only to find Mace, who is currently being crushed by the weight he was previously lifting.
“Oh shit!” Pike yells as he quickly dashes over to Mace. You immediately follow him and grab onto the weight. Pike grips one end in his magic as you grip the other end in your hands before you both lift the bar up and set it to rest.
Mace sits up and takes a very deep breath as if this is the first time he’s breathed in years. He then quickly spins around and glares at Pike. “What the hell are you doing, moron? You could’ve killed me!” Mace places a hoof on his chest as he attempts to control his breathing.
“Relax, Mace,” you roll your eyes. You know he likes to have his moments of drama. “The weight you were lifting couldn’t have crushed a peanut, let alone you.”
Mace glares at you. “Whatever, Lieutenant.” Mace stands up and stretches.”Y’know boss, you should be more concerned over what just happened.”
You raise an eyebrow. “And why is that?”
‘This should be good,’ you think.
“Well, you see sir,” Mace begins, “Pike just attempted to murder a fellow soldier under your command.” He emphasizes his point by pointing a hoof at you.
“Is that so?” you ask, smiling at the absurdity of his unreasonable thoughts. “That’s a pretty serious allegation, Mace. Do you have any evidence to support your claim?”
“Absolutely, sir,” Mace stops stretching and stands in front of you and next to Pike. “You see, Pike here has been desperately craving a promotion for months now. And we all know that won’t happen.”
“Hey!” Pike interjects.
Mace ignores him. “I mean, just look at him, Lieutenant!” Mace begins circling Pike. “He is scrawny, jittery, and severely mentally handicapped.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Pike says, but Mace continues as though Pike isn’t even there.
“He saw a clear opportunity to terminate my position as a Sergeant in this Century, and he decided to try his luck and take a chance.
“He didn’t even have to try, sir. In fact, all he had to do was not try. As I was being crushed by the enormous weight pressing down upon my chest, Pike did nothing to save my innocent life.” Mace places a hoof on his own chest.
“That’s not even a crime, idiot,” Pike says. “It’s not a crime if you don’t save somepony.”
“Aha!” Mace exclaims. “See, Lieutenant? Pike had this all planned from the very beginning! He even just said it wasn’t it crime for not saving me! He is a murderer, and I demand he be thrown into the Royal Dungeons at once!”
“Mace,” you rub a hand down your tired face. “Shut. Up. I really don’t want to hear you speak right now.”
“But-“ Mace begins.
“Gulag,” you interject. “One more word, Mace, and I swear I will.”
Mace pouts. “Fine. Whatever. Let the murderer roam the streets freely, then!” He throws his fore hooves up in the air.
“I think it’s time for formation drills,” you say.
“Aw, but Captain-“ Sherman begins from behind you.
“No, Sherman,” you say sternly. You’re suddenly feeling much more tired than you were a few moment ago.
“Listen up, everypony!” you yell across the weight room. Everypony stops exercising and looks up at you. “Get suited up. Formation drills in ten minutes!”
You are met by various whines and groans, but you really don’t care. It’s been almost a week since the last time you led formation drills. Not that there’s much need for constant drilling. The only time you ever march in formation is when you’re in a parade, which only happens a couple times a year.
You don’t like parades. Well, parades aren’t bad. What you really don’t like is when you have to march in a parade. You are two feet taller than the next pony, so all the spectators are only looking at you.
You kind of wish that Equestria would go to war just so you could actually march in formation for a legitimate purpose. Of course, you don’t want anything bad to happen to your soldiers, but this endless drilling is very tiresome.
You go into the locker room and get into your armor along with every other pony. The scene you witness around you is much different from what you saw nine hours ago. Whereas then nopony was talking; now everypony is talking animatedly. You can easily tell they are much more awake then they were at 3 this morning.
You put on your body armor, shin guards, arm guards, and helmet; all of which are bright, shiny silver. Your entire uniform, obviously enough, had to be custom made. Not a single part of a pony’s armor could fit you. Especially the helmet. You tried on one of their helmets once. It resulted in one hour of frantic pulling until you and Mace could eventually pry the damn thing off your head.
But now you have a real helmet to fit your unnaturally large head. You put the helmet on, and tie the strings together underneath your chin to hold the cheek guards in place.
“All right, men!” you shout across the locker room. “Form up!”
Everypony scurries off to get into formation, preparing themselves for another long, boring day.
===========
The youth of Equestria astounds you. The way in which they behave, which is much different from children back on Earth, slightly baffles you. Of course, pony or human, they’re still children, so they’re very naïve. But the way in which they behave themselves is so radically different from each other that it manages to continuously confuse you.
You’re currently walking by a playground, of course. It is not healthy for one to be thinking of little children unless you’re constantly forced to do so. If you’re a parent or a teacher, then that’s fine, but I digress.
The young fillies and colts in Equestria are polar opposite from the youth of Earth in some aspects. For example, these fillies and colts are currently playing on a playground. You totally forgot playgrounds even existed. Children on Earth scarcely even go outside. Who needs to when you have the internet?
You blame the internet for corrupting the new generation of human children. When you were a youngin’, the internet hardly existed, and your generation is… well it’s okay, you guess. No way of knowing how they’re doing now. You don’t live on Earth. Who knows? Your generation may be the greatest generation the Earth has ever seen!
Probably not, but whatever.
Anyway, after leaving work for the day, Mace informed you that he needed to pick up his child from this very playground, which does not surprise you. Mace’s kid, along with most of the lower and middle class youth of Canterlot, always come here after school. It’s one of the only places for children to play in the whole city of Canterlot. You asked Mace why his wife didn’t just pick him up.
“She works late on Fridays,” Mace responded. “Then she’ll go home and cook. So I have to get him. It’s not a big deal. It’s only once a week.”
You don’t mind assisting in escorting Mace’s kid back home. Like most ponies, Mace’s boy loves you. Probably not because of your personality, but most likely because you look so abnormal relative to ponies. Kids seem to like that about you for whatever reason.
You all meander on up to the edge of the playground.
“Mace,” Sherman says, “hurry up. I need to smoke. I love fire.”
‘Probably because you’re named after a notorious pyromaniac,’ you think. You would never actually say that to Sherman. There are two main reasons as to why: First of all, it would be insulting. Secondly, he wouldn’t understand it anyways, so it doesn’t really matter.
Smoking is illegal at playgrounds. And it’s also illegal to smoke in most areas of the clean city. You can usually only smoke at bars or in your own home.
“Clay!?” Mace calls out, scanning the not-so-crowded playground. “Claymore!?”
No, Mace is not calling out for an explosive, command detonated mine, nor is he calling out for a medieval longsword; he is calling out for his son.
Names in Equestria confuse you. You’ve always wanted to do a scientific study on names and how they relate to an individual’s cutie mark. All ponies are named before they earn their cutie marks, so how is that 98% of the population has a name that is somehow related to their cutie mark?
Shit’s crazy.
Unfortunately, you’re not a scientist. So conducting such a study would prove to be extraordinarily difficult and time consuming. Due to the fact that you are abnormally lazy, you would never be able to do such a study, even if you did have the required technology and resources.
Claymore does not have a cutie mark yet. He’s only like… eight years old? You don’t know for sure. Not that it matters. He’s not your kid. But when he does get his cutie mark, it’ll definitely be a sword. Mines don’t exist in Equestria. At least you think they don’t. Otherwise the military would supply you with some and teach you how they work. Which would be pretty cool, but since they don’t exist here, you’ll never get to use one.
This saddens you. But you quickly change your attitude when you realize you’re living a fantastic life. What’s not to love about it?
You are living with the woman... well, mare, of your dreams, who is madly in love with you. You have great, close friends. You have a wonderful job, despite it being abnormally boring on occasion. In the end, you really can’t complain about your life. It’s pretty damn great right now.
“There he is,” Mace says, pointing to a giant swirly slide. “Claymore!” he yells to his son. “Time to go, bud!”
“Aw, but dad!” you hear Clay whine back from the top of the slide. “I don’t wanna go yet!”
“Sorry, Clay, mom told me to come get you!” he yells to the colt before addressing you. “And when she tells me to do something, I do it.”
You smile. You know the feeling. Whenever Celestia tells you to do something, you better go and do it; especially since Celestia, in a military sense at least, is in direct control of all of your actions. Luckily though, Celestia treats you like her boyfriend instead of a subordinate.
“Dad, just give me like, five more minutes!” Clay tries to reason.
“No can do, sport. Your mother wants you back home now!”
You hear Clay groan out of frustration from a few dozen feet away.
You understand what Clay is going through right now. When you were a kid and you were playing with your friends, you never wanted it to end. So when your parents inevitably called you back inside, you were pretty pissed.
Your childhood was traumatic.
Clay slides his way down the massive, red, swirly slide before sprinting towards his father.
“Are we going to The Clover again?” Pike asks, sounding as nervous as ever.
“Can’t,” Mace responds, sounding disappointed. “They’re still cleaning the place up from that riot last night. It’ll be a few days before they open again.” He sighs. “We gotta find somewhere else to go.”
“Where are you going, dad?” Claymore asks as he stops his sprinting directly in front of his father.
Mace laughs. “A place for grown-ups,” he says, giving his son a noogie.
“Dad!” Clay shouts in embarrassment, backing away. He pulls away from his father’s grip before restyling his silver mane.
Clay has a silver mane and tail, like his dad, but a dark blue coat and blue eyes like his mom. Like both of his parents, and most of the population in Canterlot, he is a unicorn.
That’s one of the great things about pony anatomy. You can always tell who a child belongs to by looking at the color of their coat, mane, and eyes. This isn’t always necessarily the case, but it’s true about 90% of the time.
“Ready to go, bud?” Mace asks, smiling at his son’s embarrassment.
“Yeah,” Clay says, sounding extraordinarily disappointed.
You all begin walking along the road towards Mace’s house. A great thing about Equestria is that the roads are for everypony. Back on Earth, roads were for cars, as you already know. Contrary to popular belief, the roads are not for bikers. Get a car or get off the road.
Equestria’s roads are probably most similar to the roads back in the 19th century. They’re paved nicely, like modern roads, and anypony can either walk on them or ride in a carriage.
And thankfully, there are no bikers.
The roads are beginning to get more and more crowded. It’s rush hour, it would seem. Everypony’s day job ends at the same time, which is now, and they are all meandering their way on home.
It surprises you that most ponies in Equestria own homes. Even in the city, there are quite a number of houses. They’re all very close to being physically connected to each other, but they’re still houses. It makes the city look nicer; wealthier, really. Apartments tend to have the ability to make a city look like a run-down pile of shit.
7-11’s also tend to make a city look worse. In a city as high-class as Canterlot, though, you won’t find any store that even slightly resembles a 7-11. Everything in Canterlot is expensive and pretty high quality. It’s a good thing you’re sleeping with Celestia, otherwise you’d be on a mad financial struggle.
“Dad,” Clay says, earning everyone’s attention as you continue your journey along the crowded street. “When I grow up, can I go with you and your friends?”
“What’s wrong with your friends?” Mace asks jokingly.
“Oh, nothing,” Clay responds quickly. “I just want to hang out with the grownups.”
You also know that feeling. There are two ways in which children tend to view adults. One of them is children viewing adults as cool and wanting to be around them whenever possible. Claymore would fall into this category.
The other way children view adults is that adults are lame, boring, and/or stupid, and they never want to be seen in public with them, or do anything that they do.
“When you get older,” Mace says addressing his son with a smile, “you can hang out with us as much as you want.”
Clay smiles at his dad, clearly excited by the idea of one day being able to have adult friends.
The rest of the walk is uneventful, to say the least. Trying to work one’s way through the bustling streets of Canterlot is like trying to drive in D.C.
Which sucks.
Most ponies are walking. It’s easy and affordable to walk. But some of the wealthier ponies elect to ride in a carriage for whatever reason.
Ponies are allowed to walk on either side of the street. Back in the real world, one had to drive on a specific side of the road. Here, however, there are no traffic laws. So, if you can walk in a certain direction, and you want to go in that direction, you can. Nopony will stop you.
But there really should be some sort of traffic directing system in such a busy city. If everypony would just walk on one side of the road, it wouldn’t take you 15 minutes to take a 5 minute walk.
Everypony also feels the need to stare at you as they pass you by. It used to be kind of cool, how everypony would simply stare at you in awe. Your height and the way in which you generally look gathers a lot of attention from ponies.
If everypony would simply stop staring at you, face forward, and just GO then you could be at the bar by now. But no. You’re still journeying to Mace’s house.
The sight of said home suddenly brings you out of your sulking. You never thought you’d be so happy to see his small, rundown, two-hundred year old house.
Canterlot is a very old city. When Equestria was originally colonized, Canterlot was one of the first cities started.
You don’t know why anypony would want to live here. It takes hours to walk down the massive mountain the city is built into. God knows how long it would take to walk up.
And who built this city into a mountain in the first place? Honestly. Who looks at a tall, thin, unstable mountain, and thinks, ‘Hey, we should build a city up there.’ And who the hell are the ponies that agreed with him?
There have been many times in which you wanted to go to Ponyville to visit your first Equestrian pals, until you realize that journeying there is strenuous and not worth the effort. It’s a shame really. You still manage to visit Ponyville every once in a while, but not as often as you would like to.
Mace walks into his ancient, two story house, and you all decide to follow him inside.
All lower-middle class Canterlot homes are generally the same. When walking through the door, you have two options. You can either walk up the stairs to your left, or walk down a thin hallway to your right.
You follow Mace through the thin hallway into his kitchen and living room while Clay makes his way up to his room. After walking into the kitchen, you see Mace’s lovely wife, Morning Star.
Morning Star is a unicorn, like her husband and son. She has a dark blue coat, a black mane, a pair of blue eyes, and a spiked ball as a cutie mark. Her cutie mark is pretty strange, considering she’s an editor for the Canterlot Daily, a very popular newspaper company.
Morning Star is currently meandering about the kitchen. Cooking probably. You don’t know what else one does in the kitchen.
Morning Star looks up and smiles at her husband. “Hey, honey,” she casually greets. “How was your day?”
Mace yawns as loud and as dramatically as possible. “Oh, honey!” he practically shouts, sounding exhausted. “It was terrible! The things my boss does to me are unspeakable!” Mace raises a foreleg to his head, swoons, and falls to the floor of his kitchen.
“Oh, sweetie!” Morning Star gasps dramatically, playing along. “What did that nasty, dirty human do to you?” She jogs over to Mace, lifts him off the floor, cradles him, and looks into his eyes.
‘What?’ you think. ‘I bathe every single day! I smell wonderful!’
Mace releases a shaky breath. “H-he had Pike choke me!” he sobs. “He turned my friends against me! Just because he thought it was funny!” He buries his head in his wife’s chest. “It was terrible! I don’t want to go back! I don’t want to go back!”
Morning Star sniffles. “But sweetie, if you don’t go back, how we will put food on the table?! What will we do?!” she cries. “Claymore won’t be able to go to school! We won’t be able to pay our bills! We’ll have to leave town, and leave everything behind! Please, you must go back! You must!”
You roll your eyes. ‘How long have they been rehearsing this?’ you ask yourself. ‘This is ridiculous… but the acting isn’t bad.’
Mace takes a deep, shaky breath. “OK,” he says, exhaling. “I will go back and face that demon! And I will do it for you, my love.”
“Oh, Mace!” Morning star cries.
“Oh, Star!” Mace cries, embracing his wife.
You, Pike, and Sherman have been watching their acting for quite some time. It wasn’t bad, per se, just uncalled for. What did you do to warrant such a spectacle? Honestly?
“That was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen,” Sherman says, wiping a fake tear from his face. “Bravo! Encore!”
Mace and Morning Star stand and take a deep bow.
“Thank you, thank you,” Mace says, bowing again. “We’ve been rehearsing that for months now.”
“Really?” Pike asks.
“No. Not really. We just made it up right now. Pretty sweet, huh?”
Sherman jumps in. “Well in that case, the acting was phenomenal.”
Mace turns to you. “What’d you think, Lieutenant?” he asks you. “Pretty cool, huh?
You roll your eyes. “Yeah, it was great,” you reply sarcastically. “Am I really that bad of a boss?”
“Yes,” everypony in the room except Morning Star answers simultaneously.
‘Well shit.’
You turn towards Mace’s wife. “Hey, Morning Star,” you greet, politely. “How are you this fine evening?”
She turns to go back into the kitchen. “Not bad at all. How’s life in the Castle?”
You smile. Morning Star loves talking about the Castle. “Not bad. Still not used to the stairs though.”
She rolls her eyes. “You know,” she says, preparing you for a lecture, “there are ponies that would kill just to get inside of the Castle gate. So how can you complain about something as trivial as stairs?”
You shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t like stairs.”
You really do hate stairs.
Morning Star just rolls her eyes.
Pike and Sherman have moved themselves into Mace’s living room to sit down, while Mace goes through his refrigerator, probably looking for a drink.
“Don’t you think it’s kind of weird that you two got married?” you ask Mace and Morning Star.
They both look up at you quizzically, then at each other, and then back at you again. “What?” they both ask at the same time.
“Not that you guys aren’t a great match or anything,” you say quickly, not wishing to offend them. “It’s just your names…”
“What about them?” Morning Star asks.
“It’s just…” you try to think of a way to phrase what you want to say. “They’re… they both-“
“Can we leave now?!” Sherman whines from the other room, interrupting you. “I want to go now!”
Mace sighs. “Yeah, yeah, fine.” He turns to his wife. “Honey?” he asks, giving her his puppy dog eyes. “Can I go out with my friends?” He drags out the word ‘friends,’ trying to sound cute.
“Aw,” his wife says. “Of course you can go sweetie.” She puts a hoof on his cheek.
“Thank you, honey. You are too good to me.”
“And don’t you forget it.” She turns back into the kitchen. “Be back for supper!”
“I will, don’t worry,” he assures her.
Sherman and Pike rise from the sofa and join you and Mace. You all stroll through the abnormally thin hallway, waltz out the front door, and hunt for a new bar.
==========
You decide to order an orange soda and a sandwich. Back on Earth, you would be openly mocked and beaten for ordering what you did in a bar. In Equestria, though, it’s pretty normal.
You ordered an egg salad sandwich. According to the menu, the sandwich contains eggs, mayonnaise, celery, salt and pepper, and lettuce, all on toasted bread with a side of fries.
You’d rather have a hamburger or chicken sandwich, but this’ll do.
You’re at a new bar. The Flying Unicorn, is its’ name. It’s a normal sized bar, but there aren’t very many ponies in here. Which is strange. Bars tend to get very crowded every single night, no matter what day it is.
You don’t want to drink any alcohol. You actually plan on leaving early so you can be with Celestia. It’s been far too long since the both of you spent some quality time together. You would love it if you could get home in time for a walk in the Castle Garden.
You take a bite of your sandwich.
“How is it?” Mace asks, his mouth stuffed with French fries.
Now that he asks, it tastes kind of funny. Not bad, really. Just… different.
“Not bad,” you respond shrugging. It’s not a lie, but it’s not the truth either. “Tastes different from what I’m used to, but it’s fine. How are the fries?”
“Mmph mmd mmeemmr,” he attempts to respond, his mouth stuffed with an unnecessary amount of fried potatoes.
“You’re a pig,” Sherman says looking at Mace, taking a sip of his dark beer.
Mace swallows. “You’re a ‘whorse.’” He doesn’t miss a beat.
‘What?!’ you exclaim internally, desperately trying to keep yourself from laughing. ‘That’s such a terrible pun!’
“You’re mom is my best customer,” Sherman retorts.
“Dude, my mom is like, 70 years old,” Mace responds, disgusted.
“I am aware,” Sherman says, keeping a straight face.
“Do you know what it feels like to be bucked in the mouth?” Mace asks. You continue to eat your sandwich.
“If I say ‘yes,’ will you buck me?” he narrows his eyes and leans forward. “Will you buck me hard?”
“Probably.”
Pike facehoofs. “Guys,” he says, sounding very tired, “shut… up. Please, just be quiet. For the love of Celestia...”
Ponies seem to love taking the name of your marefriend in vain. You don’t like it, but you’re not going to correct them. Freedom of speech and all. You figure it’s just like saying “Oh my God!” or “By the Hammer of Thor!” back on Earth.
“Fine,” Sherman surrenders, turning to Pike. “What do you want to talk about then?”
“Literally anything besides Mace’s mom.”
You finish your sandwich, down your drink, and dry your hands on your napkin.
You look up at the clock.
‘6:00 o’clock,’ you observe. ‘Good. I still have about a half-an-hour.’
“Well gentlemen,” you begin, rising from your uncomfortably small wooden seat. “It’s been a pleasure as always, but alas, I must bid you adieu.”
“You are such a mare sometimes,” Sherman points out, levitating a cigar out of seemingly nowhere.
You roll your eyes. “Whatever. I need to go. I’ll see you all bright and early tomorrow.”
Mace groans, slamming his head hard down on the table. “But Cappy,” he drawls, assumingly addressing you. “Can’t we have a day off?”
You smile and shake your head. “No. And if you’re late tomorrow I’ll give you something to actually go complain to your wife about.”
‘That sounded a lot more heterosexual in my head,’ you think, becoming aware of what you said.
Mace lifts up his head and gives you a semi-seductive smile. It would probably be more seductive if he wasn’t so damn ugly.
“Is that a threat or a promise?” he asks.
You don’t know how to respond. So you decide to be as neutral as you can in this situation.
“Both,” you say. “It depends if you enjoy it.”
Pike facehoofs before saying, “Why do I allow myself to be seen in public with you guys? Honestly.”
Sherman quickly steps in. “‘Cause without us you’d have no friends and be a lonely, worthless, poor, sack of shit.” Sherman brings his cigar up to his mouth with his magic.
“Sounds right to me,” Mace says.
“That’s why I hang out with you guys,” Sherman says, nodding to Mace. Sherman strikes a match, which you weren’t aware he had in his possession until now, and lights his cigar.
“But Cappy,” Mace says, presumably addressing you. “Vinyl and Octavia are supposed to meet us here in like, fifteen minutes. Why don’t you stay?”
You shake your head. “I would if I could. But I can’t, so I won’t.”
“But they really wanted to see you.”
You shrug. “I’ll just have to see them some other time. Sorry. If I don’t go back to the Castle right now, though, I might not be able to see Celestia for the rest of the night.”
It’s true. Celestia works a lot. At night, she prefers to sort through her mail. And she gets a lot of mail. Some of them are simple ‘Thank You’ cards from foals in school. But some are very important bills and various documents that must be read and responded to by the next morning.
“Must you really smoke next to me?” Pike asks, drawing attention to himself and Sherman as he backs away slightly. “It smells disgusting.”
As much as you would love to watch Sherman and Pike argue about the morality and health effects of smoking, you have much more interesting things to do. Like staring at Celestia, for example. Which is a much more efficient way to spend your time.
“I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” you say turning around.
You don’t think they heard you, though, as Sherman and Pike continue to argue. Not that you care. You don’t want to talk to them anyway. You want to go home.
You walk out the door and into the significantly less crowded and cold streets of Canterlot, and see the sun descending towards the horizon.
‘Time to go home.’
==========
Your hatred for stairs increases every time you encounter them. If stairs was a pony, you would punch him right in his ugly, exhausting face.
But the stairs in the Castle are marble. Which is a solid. So if you punched a marble pony, you’d probably break your hand. And all of your fingers. And your wrist for that matter.
You decide that getting a hobby is probably the best way to relieve your stress.
‘What do ponies do to relieve stress?’ you ask yourself.
‘Singing. Most ponies sing.’
You can’t sing. You’re physically able to, but for the sake of those ponies blessed with the gift of hearing, you decide not to as often as possible.
‘Hmm… some ponies… collect stamps! I could collect stamps…’
No you can’t. Stamp collecting sounds extraordinarily boring. Collecting stamps would probably do nothing for your stress levels. If anything, it would increase it.
As you ponder what hobby you should take up, you come to the top of the final staircase; the top of the tower. You look down the hallway and see your large, golden bedroom doors shut, with two guards standing stoically outside.
Maverick and Eagle-Eye haven’t showed up yet. They don’t start working for a few more hours.
During the day, Royal Guards are randomly selected for the job of watching over your quarters. Thus, you do not immediately recognize these two particular stallions who guard your Princess.
Unlike the daytime guards, night-guards are specially selected. For whatever reason, Shining thought that would be best. You guess Shining figured that if anypony was going to attack Celestia in her chambers, they’d probably do it at night.
But Equestria is far too peaceful, and Celestia is much too loved, for anypony to even think about entering the Castle without explicit permission.
You want to stop and talk with these unnamed guards, but you can’t. Time is wasting.
You keep walking forward, on a direct collision course with your doors. At the last second, though, the door handles glow green, and your doors open into the room, away from you.
You walk through, enter your bedroom, and hear the doors close behind you. As opposed to most nights when you return home, you are not blinded by darkness.
The sun is still in the sky, and it bathes your room in a soft, late-evening light. You notice your balcony doors are closed, which is good. The temperature is quickly dropping. The pegasi must be preparing for winter in their usual fashion, which would be a massive snowstorm.
When the seasons change in Equestria, they change immediately and dramatically. For example: the transition from spring to summer, which you got to experience firsthand. In the spring, it was warm and rained a couple of days a week. Then, the next day, the temperature increased to about 120% of what it previously was (or something like that) and the rain stopped.
Pegasi don’t screw around with the weather. When it’s time to change the seasons, they take it pretty seriously.
So you’re assuming that the pegasi are now preparing the city for winter… by giving you a snowstorm. Seems logical.
It doesn’t matter. You love winter. It’s cold, and snowy, and it’ll give you excuses to cuddle with your Princess.
Speaking of Celestia, she is currently where she usually is when you come home; on her purple cushion in front of the fireplace, reading letters.
Her big, purple eyes look up from her letters and gaze into yours.
She smiles. “Good evening, honey,” she greets.
You walk on over to where your Goddess is laying, bend down, and share a quick kiss hello. “You have more mail,” Celestia informs you after pulling away, motioning towards your dresser with her head. “I put it over there for you.”
You smile. “Why thank you, my dear,” you respond. “That was very kind of you.”
You stroll on over to your dresser, and stare at the stack of letters that sit on top of it.
‘I guess I can spare a few moments to read some of these,’ you figure. ‘How long could it take?’
You grab the stack of letters, walk over to your bed, and sit, resting your tired legs. You open the first letter and begin reading.
Hello!
I am a Prince from the Crystal Empire, and I need you to send me money! I-
You stop reading the letter there. Even in Equestria, away from electronic mail, you still manage to get spam. You thought that by coming to the land of magic and happiness that you could escape these pesky letters. Turns out you were wrong.
You open the next letter.
Do you want to extend the size of your horn three whole inches, free of charge, and improve your love life? Now you can! All you have to do is-
You stop reading again.
You’re done with this. You still have a whole stack of letters to read, but you’re pretty sure there’s still a ton of spam still left. And you are not in the mood to be reading spam.
‘Who the hell sends spam letters?!’ you ask angrily to yourself. ‘Honestly! There is no reason for me to get these damn things in the mail anymore!’
You have no idea who it was that decided Equestria needed spam. It isn’t even necessary on e-mail, so why would it be needed in the Pony Express?
Whatever. It’s just one of those things that you can’t control.
You put the letters back on top of your dresser. You know that if you don’t read them now, you’ll have them, and then some more, to read later on. Which is fine. You don’t care. You just want to go for a walk.
You raise yourself off of the abnormally soft mattress, walk over to Celestia, and lie down on your back next to her.
No sooner do you lie down than Celestia drapes her wing over top of you. You love it when she does that. Her wings are always so soft and warm; it’s like a giant blanket.
“Celestia?” you ask, staring up at the ceiling.
“Hmm?” Celestia asks, still looking at the papers she is levitating in front of her.
“Do you think we could go for a walk?” You don’t want to pressure her into doing it. If she’s too busy, then that’s fine. You understand.
She doesn’t respond, so you decide to continue. “I was thinking today, how we haven’t walked through the gardens together in a while. And considering today is the last day before winter, I was wondering if you wanted to. I understand if you’re too busy, though. You are the Princess.”
Celestia’s wing retracts to her side, and you immediately assume you said something wrong.
‘Oh shit,’ you think. ‘Did I upset her? Did I pressure her? Did I ask a bad time? Did-‘
You are suddenly pulled out of your thoughts as you feel Celestia’s lips meet yours. You are stunned for moment, but begin to press back.
You sigh in relief as you continue kissing. You thought you royally screwed up. Guess not.
Celestia pulls away and smiles down at you. “I’d love to,” she says, barely above a whisper. Her horn suddenly becomes very bright as you feel a force under your shoulders, lifting you up to your feet.
You exhale. “That’s a relief. I thought I may have upset you.”
Celestia kisses your cheek. “I don’t think you could ever upset me.” She smiles at you. “Even if you tried.”
You smile. “Is that a challenge?”
“If you somehow do manage to upset me, I’ll throw you into the Castle dungeon. How does that sound?” Her smile grows.
“Honestly, that sounds terrible.” You give her a quick kiss on her snout. “I think I’ll do my best to keep you happy.”
“I’d like that,” Celestia says as she wraps you up in her giant, white wings, bringing you in for a kiss.
She sighs happily as the kiss continues. This is the happiest you’ve ever been in your entire life. Your life up until your ‘accident,’ as you like to call it, wasn’t too great. You always felt that there was something… missing, you guess. You could never quite put your finger on it, but there was a part of you that was empty.
Now that you’re in Equestria, though, you feel full, consoled, no longer an empty shell. You attribute this to your marefriend, of course. Ever since you started dating Celestia, you’ve never felt happier in your life.
Celestia breaks the kiss. “Ready to go?” she asks with a soft smile. “We better be on our way before it’s time to set the sun.”
“Ladies first,” you say, gesturing towards the door.
You walk out of your room and prepare yourself for the long trek down the dozens of flights of stairs.
==========
'Wow,’ you think. ‘I completely forgot how beautiful this place was.’
You love the Castle gardens. The vibrant and colorful flowers are beautiful to look at, pleasing to smell, and the animals…
The exotic animals are very interesting to listen to. The gardens are home a very wide variety of creatures. There are simple animals like squirrels, chipmunks, hummingbirds, and rabbits that you always see upon entering the labyrinth of flowers, trees, shrubberies, and statues.
But there are also animals you would normally find in a zoo back on Earth that live in these gardens. For example, the last time you were in here, you swore you saw a koala bear. You don’t know if your mind was just screwing with you, or you actually saw a small bear-like creature commonly found in Australia chilling in a tree.
You asked Celestia if there are any other abnormal creatures, but Celestia admitted that she has no idea.
“I always tell the Chief Gardener to ‘surprise me’ every year,” she responded, back when you first asked her. “It’s exciting walking through the gardens at the beginning of each spring, not knowing what new and exotic animals or plants I’ll find.”
After entering the garden, you tried to search for more wild, yet harmless, creatures found in the garden, but quickly gave up. Once you left the warmth of Celestia’s wing, you immediately regretted it, and ran back to her after only a few moments. She just laughed and accepted you back into her warm embrace.
It’s a shame really. You wanted to find those creatures before they began hibernating, but it appears you have failed.
Oh well. It doesn’t matter anyway. What truly matters at this specific moment is that you are in Celestia’s embrace, in one of the most beautiful places you have ever visited.
You both walk in silence, simply content with each others’ company, gazing at the scenery surrounding you. You have your arm around Celestia’s shoulder. Celestia has her wing draped over your back, keeping you warm, and has her head resting against yours.
After a few minutes of walking, you finally reach Celestia’s favorite part of the garden. You like to call it ‘the hill,’ because you are very uncreative.
However, it is appropriately named because it is, as one may assume, a hill.
This particular location is hardly a hill, though. It’s more like a slight elevation. The only way to get here is to meticulously search the hundreds of pathways for a couple of minutes, until you finally reach a small set of stairs.
You hate stairs, but in a small quantity, they’re manageable.
You ascend the white steps, still holding Celestia, and come to the top of the bluff.
There is a small area of grass surrounded by a long row of bushes. The green shrub encompasses the perimeter of the hill except for the staircase. From atop of this small, grassy platform, you can see far out into the garden in any direction you please.
Celestia used to come up here all the time. Or so she told you. She apparently used to come this spot, look at the sky, and think. But ever since you’ve arrived in Equestria, Celestia stopped coming out here to think, and instead comes out here with you, just for the sake of being with you.
The most beautiful thing about this small section of the garden, besides Celestia of course, is the flowers in the surrounded hedge. During the day, you wouldn’t be able to tell these flowers are special in any way whatsoever. But at night, these flowers, the ones currently all around you on this small hill, glow.
These flowers literally glow in the dark. When Celestia first told you this, you were rather skeptical. But, like always, she was telling the truth. When night comes, these flowers glow neon green: it’s beautiful.
You don’t know how these flowers are capable of glowing, but stranger things have happened. Look at yourself, for example. You’re pretty weird.
You figure that the flowers are radioactive. Seems logical enough. But considering that you’re living in a world with 0% logic, it doesn’t really matter. And if the flowers were truly radioactive, you’d probably be dying a slow, terrible, agonizing death.
Which you are not.
You break away from Celestia as you approach the center of the small, grassy area. The cold air hits you like a freight train, and all the hairs on your arms, legs, and the back of your neck immediately stand.
You lie down on your back and stare up at the late-evening sky. The sky is a nice shade of pink, red, and orange, which is absolutely breathtaking.
You feel Celestia lie down next to you. She drapes a foreleg over you, followed by her wing, before kissing you on the cheek. Her head eventually comes to rest on your chest as you continue to gaze up at the evening sky.
“Are you cold, honey?” you ask, concerned.
“I’m part pegasus,” she responds as her horn begins to glow gold.
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ you ask yourself.
“Umm… so no?” You don’t know what her having to be a pegasus has to do with anything.
She laughs a little, probably at you. “No, sweetie,” she rubs her head against your chest. “I’m fine.”
As her horn continues to glow, you notice the red sky beginning to get darker.
As the sun sets and the darkness falls, you can barely make out various pegasi flying high above you, moving clouds around, presumably for the storm tomorrow.
You can feel the temperature dropping. You begin to shiver and your teeth begin to chatter. Unless you’re Russian, or a whale, when it’s this cold and you’re only wearing shorts and a t-shirt, you’re going to get pretty cold pretty fast.
The sky is entirely black now. The sun has officially set for the evening; Celestia’s horn stops glowing. On a normal night, you would be able to see the bright, shining stars and the moon, but the clouds block your view.
Which sucks.
You quickly realize the flowers surrounding you are glowing. You look around in awe of such a spectacle. No matter how many times you come here, you are always amazed.
You crane your neck to look down at Celestia, and notice that her fur is no longer white, but instead a faint neon green. It’s not a bad look, but she is much prettier with her white coat.
You exhale, and you can see your warm breath meet the cold air, and turn into steam.
“Are you ready to go back, honey?” you hear Celestia ask you, her head not leaving your chest. “You feel cold.”
She’s right. You’re freezing. No matter how warm her wing may be, it’s just not warm enough for these incoming winter temperatures.
“Yeah,” you exhale, shakily. “I’m ready if you are.”
It’s a shame that you were only out here for a few minutes, but it was nice while it lasted.
Celestia rises off of you, exposing you to the cold, and stands.
You follow immediately after her, wanting to return to the warmth of her wing.
Celestia notices how quick you get up. “Eager, are we?” she teases.
You smile. “I’m just really, really cold right now.” You shiver as she wraps her wing around you once more. “Sitting by the fire sounds pretty nice.”
You feel Celestia’s warm tongue trace up your cheek. You weren’t aroused 20 seconds ago, but you really are now.
You look over at her. Her trademark soft smile that she’s always wearing is no longer there. In its’ place is the most seductive smile you have ever seen in your entire life.
She asks, “Maybe I can find a way to warm you up. Hmm?”
‘Sweet Jesus,’ you think, completely shocked.
You lunge at Celestia, completely forgetting yourself. You went from freezing, to cold, to moderately warm, and now you’re practically on fire.
Celestia yelps as you tackle her back down onto the cold grass. You manage to force her onto her back before straddling her stomach. You close your eyes as you bring her into a deep, lustful kiss.
‘D’ah shit!’ you mentally exclaim, continuing your kiss with your beautiful Princess. ‘We are outside… in the open… while the weather pegasi are probably watching us from the clouds.’
This thought does not hamper your progress in any way whatsoever. You don’t really like the idea of a bunch of ponies watching you, but you thoroughly enjoy the idea of you and Celestia making love outside.
You’ve always wanted to do it outside. And what better place than the garden? Unfortunately, due to the fact that there are some ponies that can fly, you’ve always been a little worried about being spotted by some hovering voyeurs. Or swingers.
And you’re not a swinger.
‘And Luna’s probably trolling around the skies somewhere too,’ you guess. Luna has been known to be in the wrong place at the strangest of times.
Celestia puts a hoof on your chest, and pushes you back slightly, breaking the kiss.
“How about we go back upstairs?” she asks, breathing heavily; her breath turning into steam.
“Why not just stay here?” you ask, hoping your Princess is thinking what you’re thinking.
Celestia gasps at the thought. “Oh, no, we could never!” she whispers loudly. “What if somepony sees us?” She begins looking around, as though somepony is watching you right now. And they probably are.
“That’s fine. We’d probably make their day!” you reason. Ponies probably think about doing things to Celestia all the time. She is very attractive. Why not let them see it for once?
Celestia shakes her head. “If we are going to do anything, it’ll most definitely not happen here. I have no objections to the privacy of our bedroom, though.”
“Then let’s go back there!” you exclaim, trying to hurry your Princess along. At this very moment, you’re aroused, and at this very moment, you want to act on your arousal. Unfortunately though, Celestia is taking her time in getting up.
“Come on!” you get up, pull her to her hooves, and begin pushing her out of the maze of flowers. “It’s going to snow, any second.”
Celestia’s horn quickly flares gold, and you are momentarily blinded. Your entire field of vision is bathed in a blinding light.
As quick as the light came, it left, and you can now re-open your eyes. Only now…
You’re back in your room. You’re at the foot of your bed, to be more exact.
‘Celestia must’ve teleported us again,’ you reason. ‘I hate it when-‘
You don’t get to finish that thought, as you are physically picked up, and dumped onto the bed. Just like the previous night.
‘This is really getting old,’ you think as you bounce on your fluffy mattress.
You become aware of another presence on the opposite end of the bed. You look up and see Celestia, gazing at you with her bedroom eyes.
You are supine on your bed. But Celestia has her head down towards the mattress, her forelegs dropped down, with her hind-legs still standing; she’s in a very playful stance, and she is ready to pounce on you at any moment.
Not wishing for this to be a repeat of last night, you decide to take control.
You hop up to your feet in a second, lunging at Celestia. She tries to fight you for dominance as you wrestle with her, but you, thankfully, end up on top.
You straddle Celestia’s stomach, and look down at her. She is yours, in every way she can be. Celestia looks up at you, not at all pleased with the way things have turned out. She wants to be on top. But the problem is, you also want to be on top, and you don’t plan on giving her that satisfaction.
You bend down and attempt to kiss her, but as you are mere inches away from your target, Celestia’s wings flare out, her forelegs wrap tightly around you, and she rolls you over.
You look up at her, and she is grinning smugly down at you; as though she just conquered a great enemy. But you don’t plan on giving up now.
Celestia tries to pull your shirt off with her magic, but as she is distracted, you push her off of you. Celestia falls back to the far side of the bed, and you rise to your knees from where you were previously lying.
You both square off from opposite side of the fluffy mattress.
‘This is going to be a long night,’ you think.
==========
Your stomach hurts. It hurts a lot. You’ve had stomach aches before, but none quite like this.
‘I’m dying!’ you exclaim, too tired to actually shout it out loud. You roll over onto your other side. ‘Oh God! Take me now!’
You don’t know what time it is. All you know is that your room is still dark and your alarm hasn’t gone off yet.
You look up at the digital clock on your nightstand.
‘2:00 a.m.’ you observe. ‘Why do the most terrible things happen to me at 2 o’clock in the morning?’
You don’t have an answer to that question. Nopony in Equestria can answer that question. The universe, it would appear, just loves to screw with you. First it throws you into a land of magic and happiness. Which is pretty great. And now you feel as though you are dying.
Which sucks.
You cross your arms over your stomach. As though such an action will provide a magical healing effect. Considering that you do live in a land fraught with magic, you figure that holding yourself will make you feel better.
It doesn’t. After a few minutes of gripping your stomach, if anything, you feel much worse.
‘Oh shit,’ you think, urgently making your way to your bathroom.
A colorful medley of curse words steadily flow through your tired mind. You turn your body, place your feet on the floor, get up, and shuffle as fast as humanly possible to the relief of your bathroom.
Upon stumbling into the bathroom, magic candles immediately illuminate themselves once sensing your presence, lighting up the room. Equestria may not have electricity, but with these strange, magical candles, Celestia doesn’t need it.
You quickly shut the door as to not disturb your sleeping Goddess, who truly deserves her rest. She’s been working much too hard in an unnaturally stressful job for more than a thousand years. Alone, no less.
It amazes you that her mane has always looked so vibrant and beautiful. With such a stressful job, you figure that her hair would’ve turned gray hundreds of years ago. Yet, it has always looked magnificent.
Then again, Celestia isn’t one to get stressed out. You’ve never seen her worried about anything. Ever.
Except for last night when you returned from your riot control. She wasn’t acting like herself at all. You didn’t see her cry last night, but she came pretty close.
You throw yourself at your beloved porcelain bowl of happiness, and empty your stomach via your mouth.
“Ohh” you groan. “What did I eat?... I should-”
Your words are interrupted by you vomiting again.
“This is disgusting.”
You spit into the toilet, and flush away your pungent, volatile stomach acid. You try your best to catch your breath after puking twice in a row. Your throat burns, you feel dizzy, and you would do anything for somepony to knock you out cold where you currently kneel, so you can go back to sleep.
Your stomach is still hurting, but it’s feeling a lot better than it was when you first woke up. You’re too afraid to leave the safety of your toilet, so you elect to stay where you are, and spit.
You hear the bathroom door open. You want to look up, but you can’t. You’re too afraid. But it doesn’t matter anyway; you know who it is. Who else could it be?
“Sweetie?” Celestia asks, sounding concerned, and very, very tired, walking over towards you. You can hear her hooves clopping on the marble floor, the sound getting louder and louder as she approaches you. “What’s wrong? Are you alright?”
You spit again, and smile. You are touched that your Princess got out of her bed to check on you. And she sounds sincere. It seems dumb that you would feel so happy at such a small act of love, but nevertheless, it’s an act of love.
“I’m fine, honey,” you groggily respond, your voice muffled by the porcelain bowl of noisome acid. “Go back to bed.” You wave her away with one of your hands. “You need to sleep.” Your voice sounds a little raspy from the acid that just traveled through it, but you’re still understandable.
You hear hooves clop their way on up to you before stopping. Although you’re not looking at her, you’re pretty sure Celestia is standing directly behind you.
Celestia traces a hoof along your back. “I’m not leaving,” she said. “Not until you do.” You hear her sit down directly behind you and scoot herself up to your bare back. She leans herself slightly so that her chest is touching your back, as she wraps a hoof around your body and brings it to your stomach.
Slowly, she begins to rub her soft, furry hoof along your belly in a pleasant circular motion. You sigh at her relaxing touch. She really knows how to make you feel good.
“Thank you sweetie,” you respond to her touch. “But you should really go back to bed. You need to sleep. You get cranky when you don’t.”
Celestia scoffs. “I do not get cranky. I become… slightly irritated, I would say. When you have my job, it’s rather difficult not to.”
“Which is my point,” you reason. “You need to go to bed. A ruler needs her sleep.”
She kisses the back of your neck. “I will not sleep until you do.” You try to respond but she interrupts you. “It’s only fair.”
You decide to give up arguing. You’ve never been able to win an argument with Celestia, and it’s most definitely not going to start happening now. What, with your head in your toilet and all.
“Okay, hon’,” you accept, defeated.
Her hoof continues to circle your belly button in a soft, relaxing manner, calming your inflamed stomach. You don’t how Celestia got so good at calming ponies. You would’ve figured that being alone in a position of absolute power would easily corrupt her, but she is such a naturally kind, intelligent, good-hearted, peaceful, beautiful individual. She’s faced Nightmare Moon, Discord, and countless other tyrants and cruel leaders. But she has always held strong.
If those things couldn’t corrupt her, nothing ever will.
“What’s wrong sweetie?” she asks you, bringing you away from your thoughts. “Are you sick?”
‘Nah,’ you want to respond. ‘Just thought I’d leave my nice, soft, warm bed with my Goddess in it at 2 in the morning to put my head in the toilet. It’s a human thing.’
“I guess so,” you actually respond. “I don’t know how, though. I haven’t been sick ever since I came here.” You spit again.
“That’s odd,” Celestia muses. “How did you get sick?”
“I wish I knew. It was a pretty normal day. I suppose everyone just gets sick every so often. It’s just one of those things.”
“I haven’t been sick in decades,” Celestia brags.
“Well aren’t you just perfect,” you say, attempting to sound sarcastic.
“I know,” she says, sounding proud. “But if you’re sick, and haven’t been sick before, you should see a doctor.” She begins to get slightly more panicked. “What if you have a disease that ponies don’t even know about?”
“It’s all right, hon,’” you say, attempting to calm her before you have a repeat of last night. “It’s all right. I’m fine. Really. These kinds of things just happen every once in a while.”
You hear Celestia take a deep breath. “Okay. But I still want you to see a doctor.”
You hate the idea of seeing a ‘doctor,’ as ponies like to call them. They’re not doctors. They’re veterinarians. What’s weird though, is that Equestria has veterinarians too. Doctors service ponies, and veterinarians help everything else.
Technically, you should go see a vet, but that’s not going to happen. You don’t even want to see a doctor. They’re not going to help you anyway. It’s a good thing your anatomy is similar to ponies, or else you’d be dead.
But that’s essentially the only thing you have in common. At least you think so. You’ve haven’t seen a doctor for a checkup since your ‘arrival,’ as you call it. And you’re in no rush to do so.
“I’m not seeing a doctor,” you say, rolling your eyes at Celestia for even mentioning it.
“I wasn’t asking you,” Celestia tells you sternly, as though you’re a child. “I’m telling you. Tomorrow morning, I will retrieve the Castle doctor, and bring him here.”
“But-“ you begin.
“No ‘buts,’” Celestia interrupts. You’re seeing the doctor, and that’s final.”
“Hmph!” you pout into the toilet.
Celestia rests her tired head on your shoulder as you lean over the bowl. Even though she is still awake, for your sake, she is probably exhausted.
“I’m sorry sweetie,” Celestia says. “I’m just worried. You’ll be thanking me later.”
Her hoof rubs your belly in wide circles. But after a few minutes, the circles begin to get smaller and smaller.
After an unknown amount of time has passed, you feel well enough to go back to bed. Your head is still swimming, and your stomach is still burning, but you should be fine.
You place your hand on Celestia’s hoof, effectively stopping it. “I’m Okay, sweetie,” you say, raising your head out of the toilet at long last. “I should be fine now, I think.” You want to turn around and face Celestia, but you’re too afraid to.
You don’t want to get sick again while turned in her general direction. That would be terrible.
You gaze down into the water of your toilet. “Go back to bed. I’ll be in after I wash up.”
But Celestia doesn’t move. At all. Even her hoof is still on your stomach.
“Celestia,” you say in a tone that you hope conveys finality. “I’ll be in after I wash up. Just give me a minute. Okay?”
She kisses your neck before replying with a simple and quiet “Okay.” She retracts her hoof, stands up, and walks back into the bedroom.
You rise from the toilet, move over to the sink, and begin running the water. You quickly glance up at the mirror in front of you to observe yourself.
Luckily, you appear to be fine. Your face is normal. Or as normal as your face can be. Nothing out of place. Which is good. All limbs are still attached.
You cup your hands under the running water, fill them, raise them to your lips, and begin the process of rinsing the acid out of your burning throat.
The cold water feels fantastic as it mixes with the burning substance. You gargle, spit, and repeat.
This process continues a number of times until you can only barely taste the foul substance. But now, your throat is nice and cool, which is amazing. You took everything in your life for granted until this very moment.
Everything.
You turn the handle on the sink, shutting off the water. You look your naked self over in the mirror before deciding to head back into your bedroom. As you look at yourself in the mirror, you finally realize why Celestia loves you so much.
You have one sexy body. You are so incredibly good looking it’s absurd. That’s why Celestia wants you so bad. Everything about you is perfect.
Kidding.
You shuffle back into your bedroom, too tired to actually pick up your feet to walk. Who has the energy to pick up their feet? Seriously. As you exit the bathroom, the candles magically extinguish themselves.
While walking back into your bedroom, you come to a sudden realization. ‘I’m sick.’
You begin to panic a little. ‘I haven’t been sick since I came here. What if I got some weird animal disease?! That’s why Celestia wants me to see a doctor, right?! Isn’t that what she said? What if they can’t cure me?! Or worse. What if I give it to Celestia?! Oh, she’ll be so pissed!’
Not wishing to get your Goddess sick, if that’s even possible, you decide to sleep on Celestia’s giant, purple, unoccupied cushion.
You give your eyes a few moments to adjust to the darkness of your bedroom. Luckily, however, the sky outside is a dark purple, which lights up your room fairly nicely.
You look at your bed, and see Celestia laying it. Judging by the way her chest is evenly rising and falling, you assume she already fell back asleep.
‘We have to have some spare blankets around here somewhere,’ you reason.
You look over at the closet. ‘Aha!’ you exclaim triumphantly, assuming that you’re correct for once.
You shuffle to the closet, open the massive doors, and see many folded blankets sitting on a shelf.
You grab the fluffiest one you see, take it out of the stack, walk back over to your cushion, unfold it, and lie down.
You don’t enjoy the idea of sleeping alone, as you are right now. It’s been a while since you’ve slept alone, but it shouldn’t take you long to get used to it again.
You rest your tired, sick head upon the yellow pillow, pulling the blanket up to your shoulders.
You shiver. ‘God damn it’s cold, I wish the fire would come back on.’
But it doesn’t. The fireplace is completely empty. No logs. No fire. No warmth. No happiness.
You are desolated.
You turn on your side, facing away from the bed and towards your fireplace, trying to get comfortable and warm.
As you lie alone, you reflect on your day. ‘What did I do today that could’ve made me sick?’ you wonder. ‘It was a pretty normal day… Maybe, it was-‘
Your thoughts are interrupted when you hear movement from behind you. You hear Celestia turn over. You hear Celestia tiredly mumble “Huh?”
It’s more of a grunt, really, but whatever.
You hear more movement, then nothing, then even more movement. You hear her hooves clop down onto the floor, and listen as she walks towards you; her hooves growing in volume.
Celestia stops walking, and you assume that she is directly behind you, but don’t move to check.
You feel Celestia lift up your blanket before feeling her climb atop of the giant cushion, right behind you. After she places herself comfortable on the cushion, she lowers the blanket back down, and re-adjusts it so it sits nicely on top of you.
You feel Celestia wrap a foreleg overtop your side. She holds you in place as she slides up to your back, spooning.
“Celestia?” you ask. “What are you doing? I’m sick.” You really don’t want Celestia to get sick too. If you got Celestia sick, she’d be pissed. All of Equestria would be pissed.
You don’t know how much of a difference sleeping fifteen feet away from each other would make when it comes to not getting her sick. You’re not a doctor. But you figure it should help.
“We always sleep together,” she reasons. “Why should tonight be any different?”
“I don’t want to get you sick. You should go back to bed.”
“You said I would never have to sleep alone again,” she said sadly, pulling you closer to her, and wrapping a giant wing over top of you. “You promised.”
She’s right. You did promise. Oh well.
‘Then why don’t we just go back to the bed?’ you want to ask, but don’t. You’re perfectly content with cuddling on the giant pillow.
You reach a hand back and rest it on her. “I did promise,” you say. “You’re right.” She always is. You retract your hand and kiss her wing that covers you.
She rests her chin on the top of your head. Celestia, when lying stretched out, or when standing on her hind-legs, is much taller than you. Thankfully, however, you have never seen Celestia stand on her hind-legs. You imagine it would take a great deal of anger for her to do that.
But when you lie together, as you are now, Celestia’s form extends well beyond yours. You figure that if she were to ever stand on her back legs, she’d probably be like, nine or ten feet tall. Which is huge.
You begin to turn yourself over.
Celestia takes this as a sign to release you. But you don’t want her to let you go. After you completely turn yourself over, facing her, you wrap an arm overtop of her, and snuggle your head into her chest.
Celestia, in turn, places her foreleg and wing back over you once more. You are so warm right now. You couldn’t be happier.
As nice as it is to wake up at 2 in the morning and vomit uncontrollably, you look forward to going back to sleep; with your beautiful Princess pressed against you.
“I love you,” you hear Celestia whisper.
You smile. You kiss her chest for a few moments before responding. “I love you too, honey. See you in the morning.”
==========
Written by- ScatMan2001
Edited by- DoctorBrony
Special thanks to DoctorBrony for making this chapter readable.
Also, I apologize it took a little longer than intended to publish this chapter. You see, DoctorBrony had malaria or some shit (some weird Wisconsin disease, I guess) for the past couple of days. He's alive though. Yay.
Hoped you enjoyed the chapter!
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