By the time you and the ponies make it back to the town, none of you are really in any shape to do anything besides sleep. Even though you're practically asleep on your feet, you're still coherent enough to find the fact that Twilight lives in a tree weird. As you stand there staring at it, Twilight walks right into the back of your legs. "Ow!" She just poked you in the back of the knee with her damn horn. Goddamn, that smarts.
"Sorry! Sorry. Are you okay?" It feels like you just got stabbed in the leg.
"It feels like I just got stabbed in the leg." Redundancy achieved. Too tired to care. Where is a place to sleep, where? A moment of vague fumbling with the door later, Twilight guides you into the library.
"Wait, I forgot to ask earlier- where do you come from?" Twilight's curiosity has apparently overcome her sleepiness.
"I come from another planet, I think. Now, do you have a guest room or something? I'm about to pass out."
She says something about a blanket, but you're nearly asleep on your feet. The last thing to enter your mind is the feeling of something soft wrapped around you, and then a deep, dreamless sleep takes you.
Something delicious smelling greets you as you wake. After your brain finally pulls its ass into gear, you hear sizzling and put two and two together. Delicious bacon! It must- wait, no. Herbivores. Some kind of stir fry? Would a stir fry even work for breakfast? Do eggs count as carnivore food? Whatever, it smells delicious. Also, something's fluffy and warm, and wrapped around you. Where did this blanket even come from?
Barging into what is apparently the kitchen, you scare Twilight quite thoroughly.
"WHERE DID THIS BLANKET- Is that a dragon?" It's a tiny purple dragon, holy shit that's awesome. The dragon slowly nods, not breaking eye contact. Then, it speaks.
"Twi...light? Is there an alien in the kitchen? Am I dreaming again?" You pinch a dragon. Common sense has no place in your mind today. Twilight rolls her eyes at the unfolding parade of shenanigans, and hovers a plate over to the table. Is that hay arranged to look like bacon? What. Another plate floats onto the table. Oh man those are PANCAKES. You know they taste delicious, but you can't remember when exactly you've eaten them before. Time to deal with it. By eating them. Now.
"Yes, Spike, he is an alien. Well, in a way. Basically, the ambient magic generated by a large number of artifacts in the hoard of the dragon on the mountain reacted to an unusual spike of energy created by an unknown source (possibly one of the previously mentioned artifacts), resonating on just the right frequency with the fabric of space-time to cause a multiversal cascade event, which-" Any coherent train of thought Twilight had was not only brought to a screeching halt, but derailed, tragically killing all the exposition aboard. This was most likely due to the face that you and Spike had engaged in a pancake-eating contest.
You stare down your scaled opponent. The blasted battlefield (messy table) separates you by mere feet. Both of you are splattered with the blood (syrup) of your enemies (pancakes). As one, you draw your swords (forks), and utter battle cries (actual battle cries) as you dive for your final goal. A resounding clonk echoes through the house as you and Spike inadvertently headbutt each other in your overly dramatic attempts to be the first to reach the last pancake. Twilight stares blankly at the shameless display of showmanship and supreme stupidity on the part of both you and Spike.
"Ow."
"Ow, balls."
"What, like rubber ones?"
"... Yeah, let's go with that."
Twilight continues to practice for poker night as she observes the idiot in it's natural habitat. After you and Spike finish the last pancake (and rubbing your heads in pain), you introduce yourself to Spike.
"I'm Max, and going by what Twilight McAskstoomanyquestions over there called you, you're Spike." You extend a fist. "We're cool, right?" Spike adopts a quizzical expression. Okay, handshake, maybe? This time, you get positive results. Awesome.
"Yeah, we're cool. Uh, Twilight's kind of staring at you." Ah, so she is! It's uh, kind of creepy.
"Spike. Quills and paper now. Maxwell, main room. Chair. No more headbutting." Twilight's current expression could make a nun feel like they did something wrong. Man, you're in the shi- She just winked. WE'VE BEEN HAD, CAPTAIN!
There's a chair and a cushion set up in the main room of Twilight's library/house. Speaking of said pony, she's still chuckling about the look on your face after you realized she was pulling a fast one. Oddly enough, the chair seems to be made for a human. You're just going to assume she made it with magic.
Once you've both settled down, and after Spike divides the paper and ink evenly between himself and Twilight, the barrage, nay, blitzkrieg of questions commences.
"Okay, Max. Name and describe your home planet, in as much detail as you feel you should." Easy enough.
"We Humans call our planet "Earth". Original, Huh? One moon, one sun. Somewhere below three-quarters of the planet is covered by ocean, with two big groupings of landmasses, each with a multitude of smaller islands. The first contains two continents, North and South America."
"Can you sketch them for me?" Despite having basically no idea how to use a quill, you manage well enough. You also fill in the rest of the globe to the best of your ability.
"Okay, so the rest of the stuff I drew is like this. Under South America is Antarctica. It's cold enough to make you wish to be on fire. That's really goddamn cold. It's also icy. That's basically it. This over here is Australia. Basically, everything there can and will kill you if you give it the chance. It's still nice from what I hear, as long as you know what to avoid." The conversation goes on like this for a while.
Twilight hands the stack of shoddy geographical description over to Spike, who starts copying it down onto his stack of paper.
"Okay, can you describe Humans? Just a sort of general statement first. We can get into details after that." Wuh-oh. That's going to be a bit harder than a pop quiz on world geography.
"Okay. How to put this." You grab a piece of paper and a quill. "Okay, diagram time." You draw a line along the paper, and divide that in half with anther line. "Line graph, diagram, close enough." You point to the left side. "Let's say this is the capability for bad things. The further from the center, the worse it gets. On the other side, it's the potential for good." You draw a line that starts just a little bit into the bad side, but extends all the way into the good side, ending in an arrow. "This is the conclusion I have drawn about you ponies so far."
"Fair enough," says Twilight.
"Darn right it is. Okay, so this is humanity." You draw a line that extends all the way from one side to the other, ending in an arrow on both ends. "We can be our own greatest monsters, and yet we manage so many good things at the same time." You stare down at the paper, deep in thought. "Our greatest strength, and weakness, is our diversity and potential."
"Woah. That's deep, Max." That was kind of the point, oh scaled slayer of pancakes.
"That's... huh. Okay Max, how about culture? The arts, traditions, religions. That kind of thing." Oh this is going to be even worse.
"Well, we're a fairly fractured race, culturally. But in general, we really like doing our own thing, and trying new things. There's no shortage of art in every form, culinary masterpieces, so on. Most cultural aspects like food and art get spread globally, and everyone puts a twist on them. Traditions tend to stay contained to the area they originated in, unless tied to a religion. There are exceptions, of course."
"Wait, a religion? Humans have more than one? Why?" She seems really perplexed. That's actually surprising.
"Too many different holy books in the same place at the same time, basically. Plus, conquering civilizations liked to mess around with native religions. And yes, we had lots of wars. Still do, but not nearly as much." War is likely to be a touchy subject with them. I mean, they seem peaceful. So far.
"Who exactly controls the Sun and Moon on Earth?" What. What? You what? I what? What?
"What? The laws of physics do. Gravity, and all that. How exactly does it work around here?" This is going to get weird, you can tell.
"Celestia raises and lowers the sun, and Luna the moon." Huh, that's a new one.
"So the sun orbits the planet?" Don't say yes, don't say yes, don't say-
"Yes." Sun goes up, sun comes down. You can't explain that. Honestly, you're starting to have no idea what to expect of reality anymore.
"Well, that's, uh. That's neat, I guess." Interview over?
"That's it for today, okay Max?" Interview over.
Sliding out of your chair, you pop your back. That chair was ten different kinds of uncomfortable. At least you didn't get splinters from it.
"Oh! I forgot. Max, could you provide an example of a musical from your world?" What? Why?
"Uh, why? Is that important?" Musicals are important to the pastel coloured pony people. What a surprise.
"Musicals are a vital part of Equestrian culture. Due to ambient magic, and the magic contained within all creatures in Equestria, it is possible to-"
"Look, if I sing in my horrible singing voice, will you spare me the lecture?"
"But- Oh, okay. It wasn't even that long of an explanation..." Aww, you made her kind of sad.
"You can tell me later, I guess. I need to think of something for an example. I can't remember anything specific from where I come from, so there's that." Hah, she forgot about that. Maybe you can play the amnesiac card?
"But you said you could remember things, just not how you knew them, or the personal details?" Damn.
"Fine," you say, dragging out the I into a half-joking whine. "Let's see. Musicals. Musicals. Hmm. Famous musicals. Ah!" Please oh please remember the lyrics to this right. Even if you can't sing, remember the lyrics. Here goes.
"I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news... lot of news. Got it!
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse."
Wait, something sounds off. You can swear you hear- THERE'S A BUNCH OF PONIES PROVIDING A BAND AND CHORUS OUTSIDE OF THE WINDOW, WHAT THE HELL. Wait, you were singing. You were singing well. Hold up.
"Max, why did you stop?" Musical numbers don't just happen like that.
"Because that's not how Humans singing works. You need actors for that. What the hell's going on?" The crowd around the window has dejectedly dissipated, and rather quickly, you note.
"That's how singing works around here, though. Well, usually. It has to do with magic reacting to a-" Captain cutoff, away!
"But I'm not from around here, oh purple science pony. Can you explain THAT?" Apparently, no. Twilight scrunches her face up, apparently deep in thought. Personally, you think it looks more like she just smelled something absolutely goddamn terrible. But hey, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
"Max, things may not work like they do where you come from, but bear in mind that you are no longer where you come from." This is like some cheesy comedic fantasy novel kind of stuff. The kind full of all sorts of cliches and... tropes... A new wave of facts hits you. Tropes, TV. My god, it's full of stars. Countless dozens of tropes flicker into your consciousness, but one stays firm, two words full of subtle horror. Two words that make you realize you may just be in the shit.
"Max, are you okay? Max?" Twilight snaps you out of it, and you shake your head to clear your thoughts, even though that really doesn't do much. The headache returns, but just barely, a dull ache lingering just at the edge of your sense of pain.
"I'm fine, Twilight, but there's a term for this sort of thing where I come from. A term for a land that alters it's inhabitants to a certain set of rules or attributes. For example, such a place might bolster singing skill because musical numbers are "how things work" in said place." Twilight cocks her head to one side.
"You're not suggesting Equestria is not only sentient but also... evil, are you?"
"No, just that it's a Fisher Kingdom."