//------------------------------// // Chapter: 1 [revised] // Story: A Link to Equestria // by Mcayon //------------------------------// A Link to Equestria Chapter 1 You look up from your tablet and out the window. There is a light drizzle accompanied with some wind outside your residence. The rain is lit up and made extra visible by the streetlights. You sigh and go back to your tablet. You open a new tab in the browser and type in the address “equestriadaily.com”. The site loads quickly and you can soon see the familiar homepage. You hope to see something new, but you don’t. You sigh once again and decide to check your e-mail. A smile creeps up on your face as you see the e-mails flooding in. The e-mails you got, usually consisted of news or similar things from the sites you often visited. This was the case now as well, but there was one that stood out from the others. You open the e-mail and read it; “Do you want your dreams to come true? Well, click the link provided in this e-mail and they will.” You chuckle as you read the text, “Awesome! Let's see if this is for real or not.” you say to yourself and click the link. The screen suddenly becomes completely white and the tablet heats up. The heat forces you to let go of the tablet, “Ow!” you yelp. As if the situation wasn't weird enough, it floats up in the air and stops in front of you. Before you can react, you are without warning sucked into the tablet. You feel yourself collide with something hard and black out. As you wake up with a blistering headache, you feel yourself being slumped against something hard. You hear water pouring behind you. “Maybe the water will ease the headache...” you think and slowly open your eyes. You’re met by a bright light and shield your eyes with your hoof. “A hoof!?” Your eyes shoots open and you look over your body to find that you now indeed have hooves and two new appendages aside from the hooves, wings. “What the... how the hell did this happen!?” you blurt out. In panic you try to stand up on two legs as you normally would. You manage to do so, but you promptly fall to your side. “Ouch...” you mutter and rub your head as you sit up. Looking to your right, you see a fountain. Since you’re not able to walk, you crawl over to it and look into the water. The face that looks back at you in the reflection is without a doubt not human in any way. You flinch and back away. You can’t believe your eyes. “This is so not happening, this is friggin’ impossible! I just can’t all of the sudden be some kind of horse....thing, with technicolor hair and fur..!” You ramble, panicking. You lay yourself down on the grass you’re on, letting the side effect of shock and insanity flow through you. You shake in fear as you try to figure out what is going on. “Am I dead? Or is this a dream that is very real for some reason?” You ask yourself, not knowing the answer. You continue to think over the possible explanations to what has happened for what you think is ten minutes, you’re not sure, you don’t have a clock, nor can you see one nearby. You have managed to slowly calm yourself down, the sense of panic and shock is slowly fading away. You decide to sit up and you look around, taking in your surroundings. You discover that you are in some sort of park. You look yourself over again, and you go back to the fountain, once again looking at the reflection of yourself. You think for a bit before deciding what you must be, you’re a pony, because of a number of reasons. The main one being that you’re too short to be a horse, besides, you thought that calling yourself ‘some sort of horse thing’ would get annoying and probably weird in the end. From guessing that the population in the place you’re in are ponies, you’re at first surprised by the fact that you haven’t noticed any other ponies in the park, but as you look up at the sky towards the sun, you realize that it’s around just past lunch-time, which explains the lack of ponies. As you take your eyes from the sky and continue to look around and you see several buildings not too far from where you are. You also see something that makes your eyes widen and the gears in your head spin rapidly, trying to find their place, a big white castle with spires that reach high up in the sky. It is almost like a faint ‘click’ can be heard as the gears are locked into their correct position as you realize where you are. You’re in Canterlot, the capital of Equestria, the country where the fictional TV-series ‘My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic’ takes place. But it seems like it’s no longer fictional, it is real. At the realization of that you are in the world of your favorite TV-show, you immediately feel the need to explore. But you have a big problem to fix before you can proceed with your new plan. You need to learn how to walk on four legs. You carefully stand up again, but on four legs and successfully keeping your balance this time, thankful that no-one, or rather, nopony is around to see you struggling. You smile at your success. You close your eyes, trying to visualize what it looks like when a pony walks. You start with your left fore and back hoof and raise them into the air, with the intention of using them simultaneously and taking a step forwards. But as you do, you feel that you’re about to lose your balance again, so you quickly put them down again. “Nope, that’s wrong,” you say to yourself before deciding to try a different tactic. You start with your left forehoof and take a step, and then you do the same with your left back hoof. It seems to work and you repeat what you just did with your right hooves. It also seems to work, so you repeat your previous motions. You wobble around a bit before you find a good rhythm to what you’re doing. After what you think is fifteen minutes of training, it seems like you can finally walk properly, but you know that it probably looks a bit unnatural and odd to someone, or rather, somepony native to the land you’re in. “Let’s do this.” you say with a heavy sigh before you start to walk towards what you guess is the center of Canterlot As you get closer to the center, you see more and more ponies. You sigh in relief since you for a moment believed that the whole town was empty. As you walk around on what can be considered as a lone tour of Canterlot, you can clearly see that the show doesn’t do the town justice. You think it’s really beautiful and you’re amazed by everything you see. You try to take everything in, but as you walk, it gets pretty difficult as the amount of ponies increases and you have to avoid bumping into ponies. It doesn’t take long before you eventually bump into a number of ponies who yells at you, despite the fact that you apologize for bumping into them; “Watch where you’re going, ruffian!” some of them says. This continues and you keep getting insulted, which puts you in a sour mood and you decide to walk closer to the buildings, rather than in the middle among the other ponies. This works and no more insults are thrown your way, which puts you in a much happier mood and you begin to happily skip along, not watching where you’re going since there is no risk of bumping into anypony. But, you forget that other things might be in your way and you don’t get far before your head collides with a pole and you’re knocked down to the ground. As you sit up again and rub your head, you see two of the Royal Guards approaching you. Since you’re not comfortable with authority figures, you get very nervous as they stop in front of you. “Are you alright, sir?” one of them asks in a voice mixed with concern and authority, just as you expected. You are in a bit of a daze and you shake it off and stand up before you reply, “Y-Yes, a little dizzy, but otherwise I’m alright.” They nod. “Have a good day, sir.” the other one says and they continue their patrol. You sigh in relief and you continue to walk, now wary of objects in your way. After a while you see a bench and you decide to sit down and rest on it. The bench is a little to the side of everything, which gives you room to do some much needed thinking. Because on your way through Canterlot, you’ve seen ponies buying various things, which made you realize something, you don’t have any money, nor do you have anywhere to stay. You think for a good while on what you should do before you decide to go to the castle and see if you can get any help from Princess Celestia. You get off of the bench and you start to walk towards the castle. Unfortunately for you, this means that you have to get back in the crowd of ponies. You sigh again as what happened a short while ago repeats itself. “I expected the nobles to be rude and such, but not this rude...” This is what you think before you bump into a tall, alabaster pony. But this is no ordinary pony, no, you have just bumped into the flank of her Royal Highness Princess Celestia, the pony you intended to speak with. Or have you? “S-sorry, your highness.” you stutter as you recover from bumping in to the Princess. Her oddly rainbow colored mane suddenly shifts into a monochrome color and a sense of fear flows through your body as the alicorn turns around and looks at you with a mischievous grin. You begin to slowly back away as she begins to speak, “My, my, didn’t your mother tell you it is rude to bump into somepony?” You look up at her in both fear and confusion before answering her, “It’s kinda difficult not to when somepony suddenly stands in your way.” She giggles at your answer before looking at you once again with the same mischievous grin as before. “It was a big mistake, bumping in to me, therefore you’ll have to be punished.” she says and takes a step towards you.   “Shit.”