//------------------------------// // Chapter 0.5 AKA the prequel // Story: Apple of My Eye // by musicalreader //------------------------------// The wind rushed over his wings in the cool night air. Underneath the stars, Orion sailed along, riding the air currents of a warm spring night underneath the light of Luna’s moon. Looking down, he could make out the twinkling of the lights from the town below, and he could hear the faint noise of those like him. These were his kin, the night owls. Most of Equestria was active during the day, the few exceptions being those who worked at night at the few clubs scattered here and there, or those who were like him and simply felt more at ease under the moonlight, but in any case, they shared the common bonds of being part of the night life. They were under Princess Luna’s watch, and were at ease to be so. He scanned the sky around him and started back pedaling his wings to slow down, settling on a passing cirrus cloud that had eluded the local weather patrol. He gazed out over the darkened landscape, and he could almost swear that he saw the silhouette of the Princess of the Night in the moon’s light. These were the moments that he was at peace with the world. He reclined on the thin cloud, his wings spread out beneath him as he turned his gaze from the mountainous landscape beneath him to the heavens above. When he was a young colt, he would sneak out of his home and just look at the stars for hours, wondering what had inspired Luna to put them there, and then he would try for hours to find and name the constellations. Orion could even remember being caught by his mother one winter’s night, and when he had told her what he was doing, she showed him the constellation that he was named for. It was one of his favorite memories… and one of the few truly good ones from when he was growing up… As he gazed up at the night sky, he noticed that there was a single star that seemed to be growing brighter. When he looked again, this time focusing only on that one jewel in the night, he also realized that it wasn’t actually a star... not one that stayed still at any rate. He saw a trail of light follow the rogue gem it as it sped across the night sky, careening across the normally calm expanse above and racing over head towards the mountains behind the town. As the sky got brighter, and the moving body came closer, Orion remembered something his grandmother had told him once… “If you ever see a shooting star, close your eyes and make a wish…” He repeated softly, closing his eyes as the star passed directly overhead, brightening the sky as if it were midday. “I wish this were real.” As the light from the passing star faded from view on the other side of the mountains, Orion closed his eyes and sighed deeply, relaxing into the cloud, feeling it’s cool texture cradle him and lulling him off to a deep, restful sleep. He woke up to the sound of his phone’s alarm going off. The sunlight poured through his window and he reached over to the desk near his bed and shut off the noise from his phone. As much as he liked the song, he was beginning to think that waking up each morning to Alex S. would drive him crazy. “Well, I guess I could use a change of pace anyway…” the young man said, rolling out of bed and sitting down at the desk to put on some music while he went through his morning routine. As Octavia’s Triptych played through the desk speakers, one of the few luxuries he was able to afford himself these days, the young man jumped into the shower and started cleaning off the grease and sweat from his job the night before. It didn’t pay much, but at least he had work and a place to himself. Not bad all things considered. It could have certainly have been worse. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! …Speak of the devil… “DUDE! TURN THAT SHIT OFF! IT’S TOO EARLY FOR THIS CRAP!” His neighbor yelled, slamming his fist against the wall one more time for good measure. He bit his tongue to keep from blasting expletives at the frat boy next door, instead to take the passive aggressive approach and changing the song to something a bit more upbeat; namely, one of his new brony songs, “Diamond Dogs”. Smiling to himself, he got dressed, grabbed the backpack with his work clothes, and set out for his job at the supermarket. Later: Work had been worse than usual… He had managed to botch a truck order to the point that the floor manager sent him to work register, and as if dealing with every other customer arguing with their kid while trying to make a purchase wasn’t bad enough, he got put on cleanup by himself. The sweeping and mopping alone took him two hours, and that wasn’t counting the time he spent in the deli cleaning dried meat juices off of… well everything really… At least he got home before midnight this time. Barely… “Seriously, would it kill them to hire a newbie to help with cleanup at least?” he wondered out loud, fumbling with the keys to his apartment. Suddenly, a hand on his shoulder spun him around, slamming his head against the door and making his vision swim. “Alright man, I’m gonna make this easy for you. You give me your wallet, I walk away.” a masked man said, holding a knife in front of the young man’s face. “Okay dude, just give me some space to dig it out of my bag…” he said, putting his hands up in surrender and keeping his eye not on the knife, but on the arm it was attached to. The mugger backed up a step and lowered the blade enough for the young man to pull his bag around to dig his wallet out. He pulled the black leather out and held it up, handing it to the mugger without a fuss, but as soon as he went to put the wallet in his coat pocket, the young man saw his opening. He grabbed the inside of the assailant’s wrist loosening the grip, then twisted his arm and planted his other palm on the mugger’s elbow. It should have forced the man to drop the knife, but like so many things that day, it didn’t work out that way… The mugger twisted with the motion and brought other elbow up behind him, slamming into the young man’s head again causing him to lose his grip. Before he could do anything more, the attacker brought the knife down in a deadly arc, pain coursed through the young man as the blade bit into his forearm. He dropped to the floor and swore, blood flowing out onto the wooden floor of the hallway as the mugger ran off into the night. The noise had attracted some attention though, and a moment later, his neighbor was kneeling down next to him and calling an ambulance. Dawn was still a ways away, and the stitches had been simple enough to do at the hospital once he’d been doped up a bit. But now he had a bum arm, and was on his way home… the same home that he had been at when he’d been sliced open. “Whoop de freaking do……” he said, as he walked along the darkened streets. He eventually made it home, but he didn’t think that the slimy feeling at having been mugged literally at his front door would ever go away. When he walked into his flat, the first thing he did was hop in the shower. If scalding hot water didn’t help him lose some of this tension, nothing would… He got out later, grateful that the bandages were waterproof, and sat down at his desk to watch one of his favorite cartoon shows. As the credits for the episode rolled, the young man found himself humming along to the episode’s song. “1,2,3,4… Raise this barn, raise this barn. 1,2,3,4… Look at us we’re family, working together thankfully, something something, stick together the pony way…” he sang slowly, breathing deeply and trying to calm down. The shock at being mugged had worn off awhile ago, but he was still skittish, and every little noise made his eyes fly open and his heart race. “Ughhh! I’m never going to get to sleep am I?” he asked no one in particular, sitting up in bed to look at the moon over the city skyline. “What does it feel like for you Luna? Do you ever feel like you don’t belong? How do you deal with it?” “Well, being akin to a goddess usually helps.” A gentle voice replied, from the darkness beside his bed, the words causing him to jump at least three feet straight up. Rather impressive considering he had been lying down… “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you.” Luna said, a look of concern coming over her face as the young man practically hyperventilated in front of her. “I’m, you, but, this….” He said, grasping at words and trying to make them into a sentence… no such luck… “Allow me to explain child…” Luna said, sitting down next to the bed as he pulled his knees up to his chest and continued staring at her in surprise, taking in minute details about her mane, and the fact that her eyes were HUGE! Like seriously, if you imagine a normal size horse, then make half of its face just the eyes, you have an image of what he saw in front of him. “Are you done muttering to yourself about my ginormous freaking eyes?” she asked calmly, chuckling slightly at your confusion. “You’re, you’re really here?” the young man asked hesitantly, “I’m not just dreaming? I’m not dead? Did I bleed out on my bed? That would suck so much… like seriously, bleeding out could b a cool way to go, but in my bed and in my lounge pants? Not so much…” After allowing him to babble for a bit longer, the princess of the night held up a hoof and motioned for him to be quiet. When he finally complied and reverted back to simply gawking, she spoke. “I assure you child, I am truly here. And as for this being a dream, you could say I’m here because of one you had recently… I trust you know of the place I come from?” “You mean Equestria?” he responds, “Yeah, but I mean, it’s a cartoon… you’re a cartoon…” Luna frowned at that last part, before returning to her regally neutral expression, “And you humans wonder why others don’t try and contact your kind… Yes, in this realm, my home is a cartoon. But where do you think the idea for that cartoon came from?” “Lauren Faust?” he guessed, acclimating to the weirdness of his current position rather well. Luna sighed, trying to repress another chuckle at the young man’s expense. “While you’re not wrong, that’s not entirely true. The idea for the cartoon as you know it comes from an echo left by a real place. Equestria is as real as Earth is. Now, as for the reason I came to you tonight. Do you remember your dream from last night?” “Yeah… I mean, it’s kind of common… I’m in Equestria, I’m a pegasus, and I’m just flying under the stars, feeling the wind, looking out and just feeling at peace….” He replies, his eyes gazing into the distance as his favorite dream is replayed quickly in his mind. “And it is always the same?” Luna asked, leaning in a bit and smiling. “Well, there’s usually little things that are different… how many lights there are, sometimes where I am, what the weather’s like… but it’s usually the same thing. I fly, I rest, I watch, I wake up.” “And what of your dream last night?” “There wasn’t anything that different… I mean, there was a shooting star, that was nice, but nothing else.” “Well that star is part of the reason I’m here. You see child, as I’m sure you know, one of my domains is dreams. I try and avoid the dreams of humans for the most part, but there are a few, like you, who dream of my world and wish to live there.” Luna explained. “But what’s that have to do with anything? It’s not exactly rare for a brony to want to at least visit Equestria.” “But there are a rare few who dream with such detail, such love, such peace, and such simplicity… I enjoy watching your dreams child, because I see another who not only appreciates my work, but is simply content to revel in the simple things of life. Things that my subjects take for granted.” “So you came here to tell me you like watching my dreams?” the young man asks, starting to wonder if Princess Luna had ever fully gotten over her social awkwardness… Luna coughed, a little embarrassed at having come off as a stalker, “Again, not entirely. In your dream last night, you witnessed one of my stars coming loose and made a wish. Partly because you witnessed something like that in my realm, and partly because I’ve seen how you live in this world, I’ve come to offer you life in my world.” The young man’s brain stopped working for a minute as his ears tried to process what the lunar deity had just said. A few minutes went by, and Luna poked his chest to make sure he was still breathing. Finally, he blinked once, twice, three times, before letting out a small laugh and passing out and falling off the bed. Luckily, Luna was prepared for that sort of reaction, and caught him in the gently hold of her magic about an inch away from the floor. She smiled softly at the young man and prepared a teleportation spell before blinking out of existence. As the moon set in the sky, and the dawn broke through the darkness, covering the sky with a prism of warm colors, a young man found himself waking up in a foreign land, and in possibly the worlds softest bed. He cracked his eyes open as the first ray of light fell through the curtains of the dark room. Weird… that was a hell of a dream. Why does my bed feel… bigger? And why doesn’t my arm hurt? As he realized there was a distinct lack of pain from the gash on his forearm from the previous night, the young man sat up in bed and went to pull away the covering… but there was no covering to pull away… Even weirder, he didn’t have blue sheets on his bed… and his sheets definitely weren’t made of silk… He crawled out of bed and went to open the curtains and let in some more light, but as he opened them, he realized another important fact about his room… HIS ROOM DIDN’T HAVE CURTAINS! Realizing this as he was opening them, his eyes were left no choice but to look out over the alien landscape in front of him… The city beneath him was bustling and alive with bright colors in the early morning light. There were no tacky neon signs, or billboards, and there was no smell of trash and sewage… Everything was clean! He looked out beyond the city and saw mountains in the distance, some woods nearby, and a sparkling clean river running beneath the window into a lake that wasn’t clogged with boats or garbage barges… All in all, he handled the change of venue rather well. He closed the blinds, went back to the bed, curled into the fetal position, and started rocking back and forth muttering, “it’srealit’sreal,holyshitit’sallreal…” “See Sister, I told you he was fine. He’s not even screaming or crying like the last one!” Luna’s voice said, cutting through the air as candles around the room magically sprang to life, giving off way more light than candles normally did. “Luna dear… the poor boy looks like he’s hyperventilating…” Celestia observed, following the Lunar Diarch into the royal guest suite. “No no Tia, he did that last night, we saw it. Why would he hyperventilate twice?” Luna retorted, turning up her nose at the idea that she had harmed the young man. “Are you alright child?” Celestia said, leaning in a bit closer to the young man, lighting up her horn ever so much and sending a calming spell into his still very shocked body. As he felt the magic seeping into him and his limbs relaxing enough to allow him to focus on other things, he noticed something rather funny about the regal sisters before him. “You’re shorter than I thought…” he said dumbly, his eyes shooting between the Princesses standing in front of him. “I believe that if you try standing on the floor rather than sitting on the bed, that you’ll see we are about the same height as you.” Luna pointed out, still nursing a bit of a sore spot at being the “little” sister. Sure enough, when he had received the full effect of the relaxation spell and stood up, he was about eye level with Luna… well, more like, his eye was level with her top eyelid… seriously, those things were massive… “Does he realize that he talks out loud sometimes?” Celestia wondered, walking over to stand beside her sister. “I believe it is a coping mechanism for shock Tia, nothing to worry about.” “And you are sure he is the one? He made the wish?” the taller mare asked, doubt edging into her voice slightly, “You know I’m always behind you on your projects Luna, but there are times I swear you just make it up as you go along…” “One faulty trap during a prank war and you never let me hear the end of it Tia…” Luna glowered, muttering to herself, “Besides, we got the pudding off the ceiling, and only half the castle got burned… nopony was even seriously injured… except that cat… and it’s fur grew back…” “Excuse me, your majesties?” the young man said, interrupting Luna’s little private tirade as well as cutting into Celestia’s fit of giggles at Luna’s expense. “Yes child? You’re undoubtedly confused about a few things.” The solar princess guessed, smiling as he nodded slowly. “It is exactly as we tried to explain to you last night in your home. You made a wish on a star in a dream that I enjoyed watching. I decided that we would offer you an opportunity to live out your life here in Equestria if you so chose. We could even help make the transition less awkward by giving you a new form that would be more… native.” “But we should stress that this is purely up to you. We’ll answer any questions that you may have, and we’ll not tamper in your life or your memories of this place if you choose to stay on Earth.” Celestia offered, trying to ease the pressure and absolutely failing at doing so. “Did one of you heal me while I was unconscious?” he asked, deciding to focus on one thing at a time. “That was me… as I said, I watched your life back on Earth to see if you might benefit from this offer. When I brought you back, I remembered that you were wounded, and didn’t wish for something like that to mar your impressions of this world.” Luna said, looking at you with caring eyes. How this mare ever got to be called Nightmare was beyond the young man. “Okay, thanks for that…and… if I decided to live here, you said you’d change my form? I’d be a pony?” he said next, trying to fit the princesses offer into a clear picture. “Your physical appearance would be magically altered to that of the way you appear in your dreams. Luna has been very careful in mapping out the details of how you should look, and the only thing that would not be able to be granted would be a cutie mark. That would of course appear only once you had recognized your special talent.” “And before you ask, yes, you would be a pegasus.” Luna added, smiling broadly at this point. “And my life back on Earth… I don’t exactly have family to miss me… and I don’t have a girlfriend or anyone like that… would I be a missing person there?” he asked, satisfied with their answers so far. “That would be the easy part really. You would be transported in order to pack anything of sentimental value, and then a quick memory spell in the right places and it would be as if you had never been there at all.” “What she means, is that your disappearance wouldn’t cause any trouble or confusion for anyone, and you would be able to continue your life guilt free here in Equestria. If you had any family, the offer of a new life would extend to them, but as you already admitted, you are a rather solitary individual…” Celestia said softly. Even though both Luna and Celestia had meant well when they said it, he didn’t need any reminders that he was almost completely alone back on Earth. But there was still a question nagging at him. “What if I accidentally let slip that I’m not from Equestria?” “We trust that you are intelligent enough to know what should and should not be shared here in Equestria.” The solar princess said, smiling warmly. “And where would I live in this world? I don’t know anywhere but the few places that they put into the show…” the young man finally asked, realizing that he’d not only be gaining a new life, but he’d forsake any feeling of familiarity. “I wouldn’t worry about that so much, child… Our sister knows a few ponies that are notorious for making newcomers feel at home, and the place they live is a bit of a growing, thriving town. You should know it well enough from what you’ve seen of this world on Earth.” Luna said, smiling calmly, reassuringly. “Ponyville…” he says quietly… “I could live in Ponyville… a new life…” “We shall of course, allow you some privacy to think it over.” Celestia said, wrapping a wing around Luna and trying to steer her towards the door of the room, try being the operative word. The young man jumped at the royal sisters, wrapping his arms around their necks and pulling them close, giggling to himself as he hugged them. “I take it that you wish to accept our offer then?” Luna guessed, her own grin growing on her face. “Yes!” he responded, beginning to jump up and down, still holding onto the Princesses, which ended up giving them the appearance of bobble-head dolls. “HUZZAH! Then let us go gather your things and we shall begin preparations for the spell!” Luna said, wrapping the young man in her magic and teleporting them back to his apartment. Celestia sighed, lowering her head and chuckling to herself, “I haven’t seen her this excited about a new friend since she found that abacus…”