//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 // Story: The Traveller // by Phxntxm //------------------------------// When I woke up the next morning at about eight AM I realized that I hadn't eaten at all yesterday, when you eat as little as I do that's not really a big deal. I thought about just grabbing something from her fridge, but I didn't want to overstay my welcome too much. Normally my food comes from trash cans, where ponies have thrown out contents and it doesn't belong to them. Taking from their fridge would be stealing if I didn't have permission, I have never stolen in my life. Never have, never will. So I decided I would ask for permission, I hate going days without eating, it's not very comfortable. I walked upstairs and found the room that I presumed to be hers and knocked on her door. After I received no answer I opened the door and walked in, and trotted up to her bed where she was sleeping. I poked her snout with a hoof and whispered, “Hey? Psssst, Twilight, you awake?” She groaned and shooed away my hoof as if it were an annoying fly. “You want an annoying fly? I'll show you an annoying fly!” I began poking anywhere and everywhere I could reach, “Hey! Twilight wake up!” She sat up with quite a bad bed-mane, bloodshot eyes, and her teeth ground together. She glared at me and shouted, “What?!” I giggled when I saw her, “You look funny.” She looked about ready to murder me, I decided I better quell that storm before it happens. “Okay, before you commit any felonies here, I was hungry and I didn't want to be rude and just raid your fridge. Can I have something?” She facehoofed and plopped back down in the bed, “Of course you can have something! I don't care!” She stopped as she heard my stomach growl, she got up and raised an eyebrow as she asked curiously, “When's the last time you've eaten?” I shrugged my shoulders and responded, “I don't know, maybe a couple days ago?” She freaked out, bad, her hair flung out as if she was just shocked by lightning, and she jumped up screaming, “ A COUPLE DAYS AGO?! Are you freaking crazy?!” I had a feeling the spontaneous outbursts were just part of her personality, because I've known her for like...14 hours or something and it's happened at least two zillion times, maybe 3. One thing I was also going to have to get used to apparently was getting carried off by her magic. Once again I found myself floating along behind her as she rushed downstairs. I sighed at her theatrics, not much else I could have done at the moment. When we reached the kitchen I found her hurriedly rummaging through the cabinets; she pulled out some bread and some flowers. She set me down at the table as she began to focus on what she was doing. After about five minutes of her hopping around, dropping stuff on the ground, and groaning in frustration she shouted, “SPIKE!” I turned around when I heard grumbling coming from the stairs behind me. My eyes widened in surprise as I found a baby dragon walking down with a blanket in his hand, rubbing his eyes. Now how did I not notice THAT before? He barely even payed notice to me, most likely too tired from the way he looked, and walked straight up to Twilight. “What is it Twilight? I was sleeping you know, it is way too early for this.” He crossed his arms as he looked at Twilight with frustration. A second later he noticed the mess around the kitchen, and looked back at Twilight with confusion. “I can't make the sandwich right!” She shouted frantically. “Twilight...you just put the flowers in the bread...are you being serious right now?” He asked crossly. “JUST FIX IT SPIKE!” She screamed. “Okay! Okay!” He grumbled some more as he went to fix Twilight's mess. As soon as the sandwich was made Twilight levitated it off of the plate and shoved it into my mouth. She was about an inch from my face and was watching me intently. She looked legitimately scared, so I knew I had to calm her down a little bit. I removed the sandwich from my mouth slowly before talking, “Okay, first of all: calm down Twilight. This isn't the first time I've gone a couple days without eating. I do it all the time, second of all; since I'm being serious right now, which we both know doesn't happen much, I wanted to thank you for letting me sleep here last night. I don't think I've ever slept on something as comfortable as a couch, it was pretty awesome. And thanks for the sandwich, I also don't think I've ever eaten something that wasn't from a trash can. This is the first sandwich I'll have ever had...even though the purple guy-” “Dragon.” “-Purple guy made it.” She facehoofed at that. “Anywho, I just wanted to say thanks. And I know how to feed myself, you don't need to feed me.” She looked back at me with so many emotions in her eyes that it was hard to read, I saw sadness, pity, curiosity, and thankfulness. “I don't mean to be intrusive, but I have to know about you; you say you live in boxes, you sleep on newspapers, and you eat out of trash cans. I don't understand...why? Why can't you just find family to live with, get a job and live somewhere, just...why?” She looked so sad when she spoke, she legitimately did not understand my life. She must have never lived, or heard about, someplace where not everypony lives in harmony. “So you want to know about my life do you?” She nodded frantically, “Well then I'll start from the beginning.” I cleared my throat, and began by throwing my arms out theatrically, “IN WEST FILLYDELPHIA, BORN AND RAISED-” She grabbed a hold of her hair and started pulling at it in frustration, “For the love of Celestia, just be serious for once!” I smiled at her before responding, “Technically that'll be the second time I've been serious. But fine, if you insist, I just had to throw one joke in there.” She sighed and shook her head before I continued on a more serious note, “Okay the real start. My first memory is of living on the streets, it's where I started, plain and simple. I don't remember any parents, any family, I don't even know my name. I also do not know why I have no memory before about 12 years old. I don't know why I started out on the streets, I don't know what happened to my parents, and I frankly don't care. I've thought of a few possibilities, they might have been terrible parents and just left me to fend for myself. In that case I have no want to know about my parents because they'd have been terrible and meeting them would just make everything worse. They could have died and I somehow survived, in which case I would not want to know them. You may wonder why then, but it would because I do not want to know what I've missed by them dying. I hate the fact that innocent ponies can meet a fate like that, and I don't want to know if it happened to my own family. If this is what happened, I'm sure they're watching me from wherever they are and they understand where I stand on the matter. They'd know that I love them for who they are and everything that I'm sure they've done for me before they were gone.” Twilight's jaw had dropped open as she stared on with a mix of fascination and horror. As I took a pause she looked at me with sad eyes. She knew I wasn't done yet and she waited for me to finish. “At first I hated everyone, I hated everything, no matter what had happened to put me in that situation, it simply wasn't fair. I did nothing to deserve it, so why was I there? I blamed everyone I could, and I never let anyone get close to me. All the time I lived in the place I found myself, I skirted around anything and stuck to myself. I had a little alleyway that had become my home, a dumpster next to it that a whole apartment used. I had food and shelter, that's all I needed. And honestly, that was my life from then on. The only other question I didn't answer is why I didn't get a job and settle down. And well, I just felt like moving around, I don't like staying in one place too long. I think the reason for that is I'm just looking for somewhere that feels right, somewhere I actually can belong and not live a crappy life anymore. “I just want to mention one more thing though, one thing you'll find out about me is how ignorant I am. I literally knew nothing from I first “started out” I guess. It's why I find it curious that I have no memory before 12-ish, how can someone have the mindset of a toddler at most, no knowledge of anything, and be that old? I don't know what happened to me, but I don't want to delve and find out. I hate feeling like this, it's the reason I joke around all the time. Thinking about the past just puts me down, I don't like it. “Anyway, I had to learn things by myself, teach myself things. Everyone has the primal urges to eat, drink, and find shelter of some kind. That was all instinctual. What wasn't instinctual however were things like what IS actually food? What is edible and what wasn't? It might seem silly to you, and it even is to me now. But I simply didn't know what I could eat, I had to try a ton of things to figure out what would cause me to throw-up and what would actually satiate my hunger. Another concept I had to teach myself that was no fun was ownership. I learned that ponies don't like it when you take something from them, so I had to experiment and find out what people actually claim is their own. Again it seems like an obvious thing, but how was I supposed to know? “I learned that stuff inside their house counts as theirs, something they bring out with them and are near at all times it is out of their house is theirs, anything they leave somewhere—like a dumpster—then it's no longer theirs. “I wanted to tell you this because I sometimes find myself asking things that make ponies think I'm stupid, and I hate it. I feel like a little foal when ponies act like something is common knowledge but I simply don't know it, it reminds me too well of my past. So I just want to let you know now, if anything like that comes up and I make things awkward, then you'll understand why.” By the time I had finished all of that, Twilight was actually crying, I didn't understand why she cared so much about a pony she'd never known before, but I wasn't about to complain. No ponies in any town I'd been in had been as kind as she was being, and I was hoping that she wasn't the only one here like that. This place seemed a lot different than anyplace I'd ever been. “This the most depressed you'll ever see me, I don't like talking about my past, so don't expect me to do it very often. I hate feeling like this, so I just simply don't. I joke around all the time, I make myself remain happy even when nothing around me can possibly make me feel that way. When you start your life at the bottom of a hill, the only place you can go is up.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes dry before smiling and responding to my story, “I just have one question, if you say you don't know your name...what do you call yourself?” “I go by Phantom,” I responded. “Most places I've lived don't contain the friendliest of ponies. I've found that out first-hoof. So I make myself unknown, I like to be able to come into a town without anyone asking questions, and being able to leave without anyone noticing a pony has left. So I like to be like a phantom, and that's what I've always called myself. I think this is the first time that I've been somewhere where I find that ponies are actually friendly. I also think this might be the first time that I might be able to call a pony a friend...” At the end I had dropped off a little and looked at her with hopeful eyes. I don't know what it was about this Twilight Sparkle, but I found that I could trust her very easily. Before I knew what had happened, she had jumped at me and gave me a bone-crushing hug. She sniffled into my coat as she spoke, “You can definitely call me a friend Phantom.” I returned the hug and smiled. Although I forced myself to be happy all the time, this was one of the few times I found happiness naturally.