I opened my eyes, and my vision slowly adjusted to the amount of light entering the room. Lifting my head up, I saw that I was still in my new form. I must have transformed into some sort of freaky blue horse with wings. People were going to run screaming at the sight of me. I told myself I was lucky to be alive, although my body was still sore from all the changes that I had to go through. Grunting, I rolled over and got up on what I assumed must have been my hooves. It felt strange to have all four of my appendages on the ground at once. I wobbled a bit getting used to the new perspective and feelings that came with standing as I was. A few wobbly steps forward gave me a new sense of balance that seemed almost natural to me.
Lifting my head up, I looked around to see I was in a library of sorts. There were shelves upon shelves, all filled to the brim with books of all the titles imaginable. Random piles of books were scattered around the room seemingly at random. The piles all towered over me and looked to be in no sort of order. It looked as if someone had been studying all night for some important test. All of the surfaces were clean from dust indicating that they must have been used pretty recently.
I half-stumbled, half-walked over to one of the smaller piles and picked up a book, looking through the contents. It was written in English, so that meant I could talk to the inhabitants of this place. The book was on simple math and was mostly explaining word problems. I ignored the rest of it and shut it in my hooves. Then it occurred to me.
How am I holding this book with hooves?!
The book instantly fell to the floor as soon as I thought about how I just managed to do that. I jumped back a little bit, scared at the pseudo-miracle I had just performed. Logically, that feat would be impossible, because my hooves had no way of wrapping themselves around the binding. Walking back over to the book now lying text-down on the floor, I put my hoof onto it to see if there was some way it had accidentally stuck to the back. My hoof came instantly up with no resistance or any sort of sticky residue covering it. The book didn’t even budge.
With a hunch, I put my hoof back onto the cover of the face-down book. This time when I brought it back up, I thought about actually grabbing it as if I still had hands. The book came up as if glued to my hoof. I stood there awestruck at the impossible feat, not believing what I was looking at. Taking another leap of faith, I thought about letting it go. When I did, gravity took over and the book instantly dropped to the floor with a loud thud. Once again I was amazed as I picked up the book and dropped it over and over on the wooden floor.
Soon, however, I grew bored of defying physics and took another look around. The floor was entirely wooden with rings starting in the middle of the room and expanding out until it hit the walls. If I wasn’t mistaken, it looked as if I was inside of a tree. This was interesting, but not impossible. I’ve heard of buildings in trees before. A library, however, was a new one for me.
“Great!” a voice said from behind me, making me jump a little. “You’re awake!”
Turning my head to see who was addressing me, I saw a small creature jump down from the step on the stairs to land next to me. He looked like some sort of overgrown lizard or maybe a very small dragon. I slowly took a step backward nervously.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. “The name’s Spike by the way.”
“Um…I-I’m f-fine… uh… Spike,” I nervously stuttered, slowly backing away from this terrifying, talking dragon. “M-My name’s Z-Zack… Um… where-where am I?”
“You’re in Ponyville Library!”
“P-Ponyville… L-Library?” I repeated, my mind failing to process what he even said.
“Yeah, my friend Twilight runs the place,” he said picking up the book I was messing with earlier. “I’m just an assistant. She went to get someone to help wake you up, and I was supposed to make sure you were ok. I was just making a little snack from upstairs when I heard you get up. Were you messing with one of the books? I heard a thumping.”
“Wait… H-How—”
The door burst open as a purple horse with a horn ran in, talking to what seemed to be a light yellow horse with wings like mine. “He’s right in here,” she said looking back at the yellow pony whose pink hair was covering most of her face. “Oh… You’re awake. How are you feeling?” she asked, seeing me standing.
I froze up, too scared to talk. Spike covered the silence, though, when he spoke up once again, saying, “He just woke up a few minutes ago, but he seems fine now to me.”
The pink-maned horse spoke quietly with a very shy tone, “I guess I won’t be needed then.” She seemed afraid of me, and I wanted to console her, but I was too dumbfounded at all the talking creatures to do anything except stare at them with my mouth agape.
“Why don’t you stay, Fluttershy, just in case he blacks out again,” The purple horse that resembled the mythical unicorn replied to the winged horse.
She muttered something in response so quietly that I had no idea what she said, but she didn’t make any indication of leaving, so I assume she must have said something along the lines of “ok.”
“Well, hello…” the purple unicorn asked, seeming at a loss for my name.
When he noticed that I wasn’t about to say anything, Spike once again piped up, “Zack.”
“Hello, Zack, My name is Twilight Sparkle. Welcome to Ponyville. So, where are you from?”
Three curious faces gazed upon me waiting for an answer, but my brain was still processing all the information, “Ponyville… did that mean these horses were actually ponies?” I thought. “But these ponies don’t look anywhere near normal. The yellow pony was called Fluttershy. The purple one was called Twilight. They could speak English and were very friendly. I was in a library, so that meant they could read and write. Am I going insane? How did I end up here…”
My throat tightened as my mind lost track of my sanity. I was standing in the form of a pony around two strange, talking ponies and some sort of talking lizard. I wanted to say something, anything, but my brain was fried. All I could manage to force out of my mouth was a faint squeak.
“Can he understand me?” Twilight asked Spike, while still keeping an eye on me.
“He was talking to me a minute ago, although he did seem really nervous,” Spike told Twilight, scratching the side of his head with a claw. “It was as if he had never seen a dragon before!”
“Oh my gosh!” Twilight burst out, as if a sudden realization hit her.
“What?” Spike replied, jumping back a little.
“He probably hasn’t seen a dragon before.”
“But nearly everypony has seen at least a picture of a dragon,” Fluttershy added in with her soft voice, slowly fading away as she spoke on, “but I guess Spike can be scary… sometimes…”
“That’s the thing,” Twilight responded. “I’m not certain he is a pony.”
“What do you mean he isn’t a pony?” Spike questioned. “Look at him; he’s obviously a pony!” Spike said triumphantly. He turned to me looking me down once more, before asking “Aren’t you?”
Still not gaining enough courage to speak, I shook my head slightly in disagreement as Spike stood with a confused look on his face.
“I don’t think he’s even from this universe,” Twilight started to explain. “I was looking through a new book that the Princess gave me on my last visit to Canterlot. It was a spell book called Spells and Incantations for Advanced Students that contained class S spells. Those are the same class as the ones the Princesses use to raise and lower the sun and moon each day.
“Anyway, I was working on one spell in particular that can be used to open up portals to alternate universes. Picking my coordinates at random, I tried to open up a portal but failed the first few times. After a few attempts, however, I succeeded, but only for a few seconds. In those few seconds that I had the portal open, though, he fell out of it, completely blacked out. That’s when I called you down, Spike, to make sure he didn’t get hurt while I was fetching you, Fluttershy. I thought at the time that I had just accidentally opened a portal to somewhere else in Equestria, because the spell sometimes does that…”
“If he’s not a pony… t-then w-what is he?” Fluttershy asked, backing slightly off and half hiding behind her mane, which draped itself in front of her.
“I’m…I’m a human” I finally managed to sputter, getting over all the talking horses.
“A what?” everyone gasped, turning to me.
“A human,” I said again, with a little more confidence now that my brain finally had a grip on the situation at hand. “Haven’t you heard of humans?”
“Well,” Twilight started, “the only time I had ever even heard the word—”
“But you have heard of humans, right?” I interrupted her.
“Well, technically, I have. But this was in a book my mother read to me when I was still a filly in Canterlot. It told of a story of before Princess Celestia or Princess Luna were even born. Back long ago it was said a mysterious traveler from some unknown place came through a magical door to Equestria. He came on the darkest night of the year, which today is known as Nightmare Night.”
“But doesn’t Nightmare Night celebrate Nightmare Moon’s return to Equestria?” Spike asked.
“Yes, but there are actually two reasons we celebrate it. The mysterious traveler story had just fallen into obscurity. Anyway, this traveler was said to stand on two legs with two arms and hands. He had a mane on top of his head, and was unlike anything anypony had ever seen before. He stood as tall as a pony and was fabled to have instruments of death imbedded into his skin. He had no other appendages, and the rest of his body was hairless.
“He was fabled to have wiped an entire town off the face of Equestria. The ponies screams could be heard for miles, and he was told to have spared only one small filly. He left him cowering in his bed as the stranger entered the door to his closet. Saying only the words, ‘The doctor will be back,’ he disappeared. Every night thereafter, he was said to come out of any closet and take anypony who wasn’t in their bed. No one knew when or where he was going to return. That’s why you’re not supposed to be out of bed at night. My mom told me that the story was only intended to keep restless fillies in their beds though…”
When Twilight was finished with her tale, I noticed that Fluttershy’s face had become much paler than when she walked in a few minutes ago. Her eyes were wide open and her teeth were chattering. Shivers must have been running up and down her spine as she was shaking uncontrollably. Her wings were being held tight to her body and she was lying on the floor with her eyes trained on me. She looked as if she had seen a monster.
“Fluttershy, are you—?”
“Don’t hurt me!” Fluttershy shouted, wings bursting out as she leapt into the air. She flapped madly bolting straight towards the nearest window. Crashing into a window, she groaned and slowly slid down. Before she could get back up Spike rushed over to her.
“Whoa, calm down there ‘Shy,” Spike reassured her helping her up from the floor. Her face had turned a dark shade of red, “He’s not going to hurt you. Breathe…breathe.”
Fluttershy shakily got back up onto four hooves and slowly but surely brought her breathing down from a state of hyperventilation. I stepped forward toward her trying to reassure her I meant no harm, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I won’t hurt you, trust me.”
All Fluttershy could manage to reply to me was a squeak before quickly running to hide behind Twilight. “Don’t worry about her,” Twilight reassured me, “she just gets scared very easily. I probably shouldn’t have told that whole story, knowing she was here.”
“I know a way to calm her down,” Spike pitched in, while picking up a few books that were knocked off the shelf in Fluttershy’s panic. “Why don’t we have lunch. I’m starving!”
“Oh, Spike,” Twilight chuckled before turning to me. “Well, I guess it would be better than just standing around. What would you like to eat?”
“Thanks,” I replied nervously, “I guess I’ll have what everybo—” I then realized that they had all been saying the word ‘everypony’ instead of ‘everybody,’ so, assuming that that word must have been the norm, I finished my sentence, “—what everypony else is having.”
“Great,” Twilight replied turning to the stairs which Fluttershy was hurriedly running up. “Spike, make us a few daisy sandwiches. Oh, and by the way, welcome to Equestria.”
“Thanks. I’ll have to admit, I’m a little overwhelmed at all of this. Everything’s completely new to me. This world, Equestria, you call it? This world is nothing like mine. I thought of alternate universes, but this amazes me.”
“Well, We’ll try to make your visit as good as we can. I’ll try and get you back as soon as I can, but that spell drained me. I’m really sorry, but I don’t think I can get you home until tomorrow.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’ve got a few days until someone finds out what happened.”
“Do you mean somepony?”
“Hah, well back in my universe, we have humans. We have ponies too, but they look nothing like you guys, and they can’t talk.”
“Oh… I may have to check out your universe sometime…” Twilight put a hoof to her chin with a curious look in her eye. After a few seconds she removed it and pointed towards the steps, saying, “Anyway, shall we go up and see how Lunch is coming along?”
I said sure and let her lead me upstairs where Spike was already starting to set up a table with a few plates. Fluttershy was setting out the plates and making some freshly squeezed orange juice. She only had one other orange and I was curious as to how she was going to squeeze enough juice out for all of us. Right then, a hummingbird, carrying an orange in its claws, flew in and set down the fruit on the table next to Fluttershy.
“Thank you Hummy,” she said to it in her kind soothing voice. “I’ll need just a few more, do you think you could be a dear…?”
The hummingbird nodded happily and flew back out the window as Fluttershy noticed me coming up with Twilight. She instantly hid her face behind her pink hair, trying to avoid eye contact with me. “So Zack,” Twilight started cheerily, “Do humans normally have daisy sandwiches?”
I didn’t want to tell her about how we ate meat. A pony would probably never dream of eating another creature, and Fluttershy seemed thoroughly scared by me already. Besides, it would probably offend her and gross her out. “Well I’ve never actually had a sandwich with any sort of flowers on it,” I answered her, “but I have had a sandwich with lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese before.”
“Interesting…Well I hope you like daisies. I’m sorry, but it’s all I have to offer. Have you at least tried drinking orange juice where you’re from?”
“It’s actually one of my favorite drinks, right after apple juice.”
“Oh! Well, I’d offer you some, but Spike finished off the apples this morning for breakfast. I’ll need to go get some more from Applejack now that I have some company.”
“Who’s Applejack?”
“Hey, everypony,” Spike said before Twilight could answer me. “Lunch is ready. Dig in.”
“It looks like Spike and Fluttershy have gotten everything ready for us,” Twilight said. “We’ll talk while we’re eating.”
Twilight and walked over to the table and sat down into a chair next to Spike who had already taken a bite out of his sandwich. Fluttershy finished squeezing the juice out of the oranges, and flew over with a pitcher of the stuff. Setting it down on the table she took up the seat across from Spike. I sat down opposite Twilight and before I could even consider taking a bite out of the bland-looking sandwich, I heard a loud thud as something smashed into the side of the library.
“Oh… If that’s Rainbow,” Twilight started, but before she could finish a rainbow maned pony crashed through the window, skidding across the floor. She tumbled a few times before finally hitting the wall next to me, stopping upside-down.
This was going to be an interesting lunch.