They walked for little bit, and Lyra pointed out the few plants in the forest that she could recognize while Max scribbled them down in the notebook he had dug out of his backpack. Max would have been happy if things stayed like that the whole way, but Lyra was no botanist, and eventually she began to ask some of her own questions.
“So,” she said, after about a minute of awkward silence. “Of all the places to land, why did you land out here?”
“Well…” Max was wary about explaining too much about his mission to a random pony wandering around in the forest, since there were still things about it that were too classified for most humans to know. He was just going to have to choose his words carefully.
“Remember what I said,” Max began, pausing to step over a large log lying in his path. “My flying machine is really loud, and really fast. Most humans would completely freak out if something like that just appeared over their hometown and an alien walked out. I just want to stay far away until I can present myself in a manner that’s a little less, um, alarming.”
Lyra thought for a second before hopping on top the log that Max had just hoisted himself over, bringing herself to eye level with her taller companion. “Well, I guess that makes sense, but this forest is really weird. It’s not like the rest of Equestria.”
Max turned around and gave Lyra the same curious look she had been giving him since he arrived. “What do you mean by different?” He was suddenly worried about the ten-billion-dollar aircraft he had parked in a clearing in the forest that was apparently not the same as the rest of the planet.
“Well, everything about this place is weird. We can’t really control the weather, things grow here that ponies didn’t plant, and animals here are wild.”
Max’s ears picked up a few things that were seriously wrong with what he heard, but it took him a few seconds to realize exactly what was said, because Lyra had said all right things, but in the wrong way.
“Wait, what?” Those two words were becoming something of a catch phrase for the astronaut.
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately, you know that?”
Max scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “Yeah, I noticed. But what’s wrong with this place again?”
Lyra hopped down from the log and looked up at Max seriously. “I said this place is kind of dangerous compared to the rest of Equestria. We can’t control the weather here and-”
“Hold it!” Max cut her off before she could reiterate the rest of her confusing statement. “Did you say you can’t control the weather here?”
Lyra nodded slowly. “Yeah, that’s the scariest part of this place if you ask me.”
Max had to turn the statement over in his head a few times before logic lead him to a rather illogical conclusion. If not being able to control weather was scary…
“Then that means you control the weather everywhere else,” he said slowly, not really believing what he was saying.
“Well, unicorns can’t, but pegasi can. They’re the ones who control the weather.”
Max responded with a skeptical stare.
Lyra was taken aback. “Can’t you control weather on your planet?”
“Well, no, actually. We can’t.” Max might not have been a meteorologist, but being a pilot meant he had to understand weather better than most, and he highly doubted that weather could be controlled by anything or anyone. Meteorology was a natural science, after all, and its principles should have applied to any planet with an atmosphere. Although, now that she mentioned it, Max had noticed a distinct lack of adverse weather over most of the continent during his flight…
“How can you guys survive without controlling the weather?” Lyra asked as they resumed their walk.
“Well, for one thing, most humans wear clothes pretty much all the time.” Max paused to gesture to his nylon pants and shirt.
“Ponies usually only wear clothes for fancy parties and stuff like that.”
“Well, you have a fur coat.” Max rolled up his sleeve to expose the skin on his arm. “Underneath all this, it’s pretty much just skin.”
“And wearing clothes all the time solves everything?” Lyra asked.
“ No,” Max said seriously. “Weather can get pretty bad when you don’t control it.”
“How bad?”
“Um, do you have hurricanes or blizzards here?” Max asked.
“Yeah, but they take a lot of work to build up, so the pegasi don’t make them all that often,” Lyra explained. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a storm that big.”
Max still didn’t quite believe Lyra, but he didn’t try to argue science with her, and instead just explained things as he knew them. “Well, weather can be a big problem in some places, so we build dwellings tough enough to keep bad weather out. But there are some other places on Earth that have weather so bad no one wanted to live there until we could build something tough enough to stand up to it.”
“How can you build something tough enough to survive blizzards and hurricanes?” asked Lyra.
“Oh, we can get pretty creative. But almost everything we build nowadays is made of steel and cement, so it can hold up to almost anything nature can throw at us.” Max was careful to add in the word ‘almost,’ having seen enough freak storms, earthquakes, and other natural disasters to know Mother Nature would always final say in whether or not anything humans built remained standing or crumbled to the ground.
“I guess that makes sense,” the unicorn said thoughtfully.
“Speaking of which,” Max said, seizing the opportunity to ask a burning question of his own. “How exactly do you manage to control the weather out here?”
“I can’t control weather, I’m a unicorn,” she said quickly. “But pegasi can. They live in the clouds, manufacture all the weather, and move it all over Equestria.”
“Um…right,” Max said slowly, hoping that there was more to what this unicorn knew than that. “And how do these pegasi live in clouds and make weather?”
Lyra shrugged. “It’s just part of the magic pegasi have in them,” she said nonchalantly.
“Wait, did you just say…magic?” Max stopped in his tracks and stared at the unicorn in confusion.
Lyra turned and looked back at him curiously. “Yeah, haven’t you ever heard of – Ooooh.” She suddenly remembered Max’s startled reaction to her levitation spell the night before, and decided a proper demonstration was in order. “I’m gonna show you something, but you have to promise not to freak out, okay?”
“Okay…”
“You see that rock over there?” Lyra pointed to a medium-sized rock laying a few feet away.
“Yeah…” Max said cautiously, not entirely sure what the unicorn was meaning to do. He watched as her horn began to glow and sparkle, and when he looked back at the rock, it was surrounded by an identical aura of light. His eyes widened in disbelief as the rock was slowly lifted from the ground, and, suspended in midair, floated the short distance between its original spot and where Lyra and Max stood. As soon as it was hovering in front of Max, the glowing and shimmering disappeared, and the rock fell to back to the ground, hitting the dirt with a hard thud.
As soon as Lyra released her magical grip on the rock, she looked up at Max to see his reaction. True to his word, the astronaut had refrained from freaking out as he did the previous night, but it was taking visible effort on his part to do so. A strained expression that was a mix of shock, disbelief, and a small amount of fear had painted itself on his face, and his hands had suddenly gotten slightly fidgety. His eyes darted back and forth between Lyra’s horn and the rock that been dropped at his feet.
“So…” he said with notable strain in his voice. “I assume that’s what you call magic.”
“Yeah, that’s magic,” Lyra replied, hoping the astronaut would keep his head on straight.
To Max’s credit, he handled the undoing of physics as he knew it better than most other humans with his level of education would have, but wrapping his mind around what he just saw was still a bit of a stretch. “So that’s also how you hit me in the face last night,” he stated simply.
“That was an accident. You just scared me while I was holding my bags,” Lyra told him, gesturing to the saddle bags that rested on her back. She watched Max carefully, hoping she wouldn’t have to knock him out again.
It took Max a few seconds, but he finally regained control of himself. Alright, Max, he thought. Calm down. You knew anything was possible. You’re on another freaking planet for crying out loud! That planet just happens to be populated by magical, English-speaking, four-foot-tall, telekinetic ponies. Stranger things have happened.
Max contemplated his thought for a second. Okay, I take it back; this one probably tops the weird charts. But still, get a grip!
He let out a slow, calming breath through his nose and stopped wringing his fingers together, before saying, “Well, I’m convinced.”
Lyra also out a breath that she didn’t know she was holding in, and the pair resumed their hike.
“So this magic you guys have lets you move things without touching them,” Max said to clarify, and Lyra nodded. “And it also lets pegasi control the weather.”
“Yeah, now you’re getting it!” Lyra said happily.
Max thought for a moment, before asking, “Is there anything else magic can do that I should know about?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Lyra replied. “Magic can do all sorts of things. There’s a spell for almost everything, and some ponies know a lot of them, but most unicorns can only do a certain few that pertains to their own special talent. But that levitation spell is like the easiest one, and pretty much every unicorn can do it.”
Max contemplated her last statement. Telekinesis and weather control alone meant that these ponies were leaps and bounds ahead of humanity, and if those weren’t the only tricks they had up their sleeves, then Max didn’t even want to try and fathom what they were really capable of.
“Is everything okay?” Lyra asked, snapping Max out of his thoughts.
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” he said quickly.
“You got pretty quiet there for a while,” she told him.
“Sorry,” Max apologized. “But this is all pretty hard for me to believe. You’ve probably guessed this by now, but we don’t have any magic where I come from. Not only that, but these things you just told me about are considered impossible.”
Lyra gasped in surprise. “Impossible?” she repeated.
“It’s so impossible for us that it’s not even something we’re trying to learn about.” Max went on. “We’ve found ways to keep track of and predict weather fairly reliably, but we’ve never seriously tried to control it. And this magic you just showed me is something we don’t even consider realistic. So when you tell me that this is commonplace here, it’s a bit much for me to take in.”
Lyra was a bit taken back by trying to imagine the world without magic, but she nodded understandingly. “I guess that kinda explains why you freaked out the first time you saw me levitate something.” She laughed sheepishly. “Sorry if I scared you before.”
Now it was Max’s turn to laugh. “Of all the crazy things I never thought I’d see, the friendly magical unicorn is the one to make me freak out.”
At this, both the human and the pony laughed again, and Max decided to change the subject while he could do so on a positive note. “So, what do ponies have for a government or established leadership?” he asked.
“Oh, that’s a good question.” Lyra perked up, happy to talk about the kind and beloved leaders that were the Princesses. “Equestria is run by two magical princesses, Princess Celestia and Luna. Celestia is the one who raises and sets the sun every day, and Luna controls the moon and stars at night. They’re kind and benevolent, and they’ve done a great job maintaining peace and order throughout the kingdom for thousands of years.”
If there was one thing Max remembered about how he had been taught to deal with other civilizations, it was that he should avoid conflicts at all costs, and given the kinds of fights that different religious beliefs had sparked on Earth, it was a topic he would have been happy to leave alone. But the idea of a thousand-year-old princess controlling the day and night sounded an awful lot like a fanatic religion to him. His skepticism was partially fueled by the fact that both planets shared the same sun, so everything he knew about it should have still applied.
“Uh-huh,” he said in a disbelieving tone, which Lyra picked up immediately.
“What?” she asked. “You don’t believe me?”
“No, no, I believe you,” Max said quickly. “It’s just like I said. We don’t have magic back home, so the sun and moon kind of…um… raise and lower themselves.” Although, she was able to lift a heavy rock like it was nothing. Could something like that be done with this planet’s moon?
“I can’t imagine a world without magic,” Lyra mused. “We use it for almost everything in some way here.”
“That’s because you’re used to having it handy for everything,” Max countered, actively trying to steer the conversation away from his previous question. “My planet has never had anything like it, so it’s hard for me to imagine a world with magic, and you know, talking ponies. And yet, here I am.”
“Do you have ponies on your planet?” she asked.
“Yes, but they don’t look like you at all. And they don’t talk like you or me. I don’t even think that they can think like you or me. They’re just animals.”
Lyra gasped. “You mean ponies can’t talk or even think where you come from?”
“Exactly,” Max told her. “Come to think of it, only humans can talk where I come from, and there are only a handful of animals intelligent enough to work with.”
“Do humans ever get lonely, being the only thing on the planet that can talk?”
Max chuckled. “As a whole, no we don’t. There are plenty of other humans, and there are thousands upon thousands of separate countries, cultures, races, ethnicities, and any other sort of community you could think of.”
“How many humans are there on your planet?” the unicorn asked, her curiosity driving her to learn everything she could from this human.
“Well, that’s kind of a touchy subject back home,” Max explained. “Some people think there are way too many of us, and that the planet can’t sustain the population for much longer. Others think we should just keep on expanding. But here’s a question, how many ponies are there in Equestria?”
Lyra paused, and put a hoof to her chin in thought. “I don’t really know,” she said after a minute.
“Okay, then how many ponies are there in the town where you live?” the astronaut asked.
“Oh, I know that. Ponyville is kind of a small town, and we only have a few hundred ponies there.”
“Alright, then picture this. Where I come from, a town with a few hundred people would be so small that it wouldn't even be on most maps. The city where I lived had about three million people in it while I was growing up, and that’s considered a pretty average size.”
“That’s like twice the size of Manehattan!” Lyra said incredulously with wide eyes.
Max blinked a couple times. “Sorry, did you just say ‘Manhattan?’”
“No,” Lyra replied. “I said MANE-hattan. What’s this Manhattan?”
“Well, our biggest city right now is called New York City, and there’s a district in it called Manhattan.”
“Huh.” Lyra shrugged. “That’s funny.”
“Yeah, real uncanny, isn’t it?” First they speak English, and now this? Something is going on here...
Max was seriously beginning to doubt that all this was coincidence. But the implications of any similarities not being purely coincidence were sure to crumble the very foundations of everything he knew about humanity, so Max decided not to think about it. Perhaps if he ever got to meet these ‘magical’ princesses that supposedly controlled day and night, he would ask them. But for now, Max decided he would just keep up pleasant conversation with his new friend.
“So if this New York City is your biggest city, how many humans live there?” She asked after a few seconds of silence.
“Well, when I left, the population was about to hit forty million. But that was a year ago. I think it may have passed that number by now.”
Lyra gasped again. “That is a lot of humans! How do you feed them all?”
Max let out a brief chuckle, before answering, “Lots of people back home are asking the exact same question. It’s one of the reasons some think there are too many people in the world. It’s a problem we call overpopulation.” He decided to leave out the detail that the recent war had dramatically reduced the population of a few of the less fortunate nations, giving the world an awkward and morbid respite from the population crisis.
“So if that’s just one city,” Lyra began cautiously, as if the answer to her next question might be frightening. “How many humans are there total?”
“When I left, we were looking at a global population of about nine billion people. It’s still going up, though.”
Lyra was shocked. She had never even heard of anything that needed the word ‘billion’ to be counted.
Max was about to say something else, but he noticed the forest canopy overhead was beginning to get a little less dense, and there was light coming through the trees ahead. “Hey, I think we’re getting close.” he said.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” Lyra said after looking around.
Sure enough, the edge of the forest was in sight. The net of tree branches above their heads had thinned out, and the mid-morning sunshine was beginning to stream through. When Max and Lyra reached the edge of the forest, they paused for a brief moment, looking at the field that lay between the forest and the town. Across the hills, Max could make out some wooden structures and their straw roofs.
“Are you sure you can’t come into town and meet some ponies?” Lyra asked. “I’m sure nopony would have a problem with you. You’re not the evil or mean kind of alien or anything.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Max said. “But I really don’t think that’s a good idea. In fact, it might be best if you held off mentioning me to anyone else for the time being.”
“But…you’re coming back later, right?”
“Yes, I’ll be back. Just don’t come looking for me. If you ponies are anything like us humans, it will be a very big deal when I decide to make an appearance. You’ll probably hear about it in some way or another.”
“Okay. Well thanks for your help,” Lyra said gratefully. “And when you make your appearance, just ask for Lyra Heartstrings.”
“I’ll do that,” Max told her and nodded.
“Good luck with your mission and everything!” Lyra said, waving back at Max with her hoof as she exited the forest and walked towards the town.
Max waved back and watched her go, and for the first time, he noticed that she had some sort of mark on her hind flanks that resembled a lyre.
Yep, this definitely tops the ‘weird’ charts. He turned away from the town and began the long hike back the Birdie.
During said hike, Max mulled over what Lyra had told him about the ponies that inhabited this world. He had been thoroughly convinced that these unicorns had some strange kind of telekinetic ability thanks to their ‘magic,’ as it was hard to argue with the demonstration the green pony had given him, and even her claims about some other kind of pony called a Pegasus being able to control the weather were making a little more sense, but the statement about the princesses bugged him.
There was absolutely no way anything could possibly manipulate the sun, as people on Earth would have detected any such anomalies long ago that physics couldn’t explain. Everything he knew about the sun complied with the laws of physics, and therefore applied everywhere in the solar system. He could fathom some ridiculously powerful unicorn using telekinesis to move the planet’s moon small amounts, but not the sun. It would take a being with power of biblical proportions to do anything to the sun.
That train of thought led Max to the next problem he had with Lyra’s claim about the all-powerful princesses. She claimed that they had ruled Equestria for thousands of years, and nothing he knew of lived to be that old naturally. It was conceivable that this ‘magic’ ponies commanded could extend one’s lifespan beyond its natural length, but very few animals on Earth had ever lived longer than a hundred and twenty years. Even the undersea invertebrates on Earth were only estimated to be few hundred years old.
According to Lyra’s description, these princesses sounded like gods, and whenever rulers on Earth tried to convince their subjects that they were gods, there were nothing but melodramatic and power-hungry tyrants blowing hot air and trying to wring every bit of admiration and loyalty they could from other people.
Max definitely did not like the idea of the established authority on this planet being classified with the likes of some of the most evil and hated leaders in human history, but that was what it sounded like to him. He much would have preferred the kind and benevolent magical goddess story, as it sounded like something straight out of a fairy tale or a little girl’s fantasy, but the tyrannical monarch persona was much more likely based on what Max knew about Earth’s history.
It didn’t take as long to reach the landing site as it had to get to the village, and Max chalked that up to not having to stop every and stare questioningly at a unicorn every time she said something confusing, which was almost every time Lyra spoke. It was just after noon when the explorer neared the clearing where he’d left the Birdie, and his mind was still occupied with the topics he’d discussed with Lyra during their early-morning jaunt.
Consequently, he didn’t notice that the birds that woke him up were all gone. In fact, the faint sound of clanking metal and gruff male voices barking orders could be heard as he trekked through the slightly familiar landscape that surrounded the clearing, but it went in one ear and out the other; he had a few other things on his mind.
So when Max broke through the wall of trees and found a small army of armor-clad ponies populating the area, all he could do was stop and stare. There were maybe a hundred and fifty of them, and not all of them were walking on the ground. Perhaps a third of the ponies Max could see were hovering in the air, flapping wings that were attached to their backs. He suddenly remembered where he’d heard the word ‘Pegasus’ before.
Right, ancient mythology, he thought. A pegasus is a horse with wings. Got it.
What was even more surprising than the sizable fraction of the group that was flying was their equipment. Every pony in the clearing was wearing a shining suit of metal armor; some looked to be made of brass, and others steel. They wore helmets that resembled what knights from fairy tales would wear into battle, and they all carried lances with razor sharp spear points.
For about ten seconds, Max did absolutely nothing. He just stared at what had formerly been his landing site, which had apparently been transformed into a medieval military outpost in his absence. He could just make out the Birdie on the other side of the clearing, surrounded by a ring of armored, armed ponies on the ground and a group of similarly outfitted pegasi hovering in a dome-like fashion over the craft. It was quite the sight to behold, with platoons of armored ponies bustling all about and squadrons of pegasi circling overhead, but Max’s status as an unseen observer was short-lived.
One of the ponies shouted, “There it is!” and all movement ceased in an instant as every set of eyes in the clearing turned and focused on the hapless explorer.
Max’s first thought was to run away, and possibly find a nice place hide. In the brief moments of stillness while the army of quadrupeds stared at the newcomer to their planet, an image of Lyra flashed through his mind, and he suddenly regretted not taking her up on her offer to show him Ponyville.
In the time it took Max to take a tentative step backwards, every single pony with an unobstructed path, ground-bound and otherwise, rushed towards him with a frightening amount of speed, and what felt like a hundred spear points suddenly crammed themselves into the area directly in front of his face. He froze, his brain went into overdrive. Old instincts from military training kicked in, and Max’s hand reflexively reached for the firearm hanging from his thigh.
But before he could so much as wrap his hand around the grip of the pistol, a booming female voice thundered throughout the clearing, and said, “YOU ARE OUTNUMBERED AND OVERWHELMED. IF YOU DECIDE TO FIGHT, YOU WILL BE DEFEATED.”
The source of the nearly-deafening voice was nearby, but Max was having difficulties thinking about anything but the multiple spears mere inches from his face and the gun mere millimeters from his trembling fingers. Some of the pegasi hovering in the air above him parted slowly without lowering their weapons, and when Max looked up into the gap in their formation he saw a very interesting sight indeed.
A glaring, golden light shone down on Max through the break in the net of pegasi, and at first he thought he was looking directly at the sun. The explorer quickly averted his gaze, but upon looking away, he remembered the sun being almost directly overhead when he first returned to the clearing, and slowly looked back at what was shining so brightly.
It was not the sun, but rather a flying, four-legged creature that was significantly larger than all the others. It flew on a pair of majestic white wings that moved through the air powerfully, and it was adorned in golden armor that glowed and sparkled like the sun itself. Instead of hair, the mane and tail looked like they were made of a tangible rainbow that billowed in some non-existent wind. Upon her head was a tall pointed horn, and the tip of it seemed to be the source of the light that had just so blinding a few seconds earlier. The creature’s eyes glowed an intense white, and their haunting gaze fell square on the astronaut.
Max had a sinking sensation that this was the magical and all-powerful goddess/princess Lyra had mentioned, and all of his skepticism of the little unicorn’s description melted away in an instant. That skepticism was replaced with the fear that came with the undivided attention of such an imposing figure. The twitching fingers next to his weapon suddenly froze.
“IF YOU SURRENDER, YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED,” it said just as loudly as before.
For five long seconds, the only movement was the powerful beating of majestic wings. The glowing creature hovered where she was, the spears in front of Max’s face held steady, and his fingers itched to snatch the gun from its holster. The tension in the clearing was so tangible that if one of the spears so much as twitched, Max was sure he would see the atmosphere around it quake. But none of the weapons so much as quivered, and his frantic mind could only come up with one course of action.
Slowly, steadily, Max took his right hand away from his weapon, and raised both hands above his head.