//------------------------------//
// Through Glass 
// Story: Sometime Around Midnight 
// by flecdorbee 
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	It was early afternoon when I awoke. I opened my left eye first, as I often did when I woke on Earth, and was greeted with a blur of green and blue. My body ached, and my mind was screaming. Was this a residual effect of the pills? Some hallucination brought on by trauma and substance abuse? Probably. I closed my eyes to await the end of it all. To my surprise, my pain seemed to fade away. Not the good kind either. I was still aware of my consciousness. It occurred to me that I was not dying at all. In fact, I felt better than I had in ages. This was not good.

I rolled onto my back, ignoring my legs as they shouted in protest at the movement. The roof was unusually blue. Very blue. It was such an uncommon blue that I gave me pause. Never had I seen such a brilliant, vibrant shade of blue. The moving white against it made clear to me that it was indeed a sky. Impossible, I thought. They sky could never look like that. Too much smog. 

"Sniff, sniff" Something was smelling me. I wasn't used to being smelled. Not actively, at least. "You smell funny." I smirked. It was a kid. Probably some schoolboy walking home from class. 

"So do you." I didn't know what he smelled like, but I imagined anyone would appreciate the rapport. I know I would have.

Whoever it was poked my head twice, both times sending more waves of dull pain through me. "What...what are you?" What a strange question, I thought. Did he mean my race? I lived in a predominately white neighborhood. Could it be that this child had never seen a Caucasian before? Improbable, I thought. With great effort, I rolled my eyes up to get a glimpse of the kid, and was greeted by another, even stranger sight than before. A horse. A tiny, blue, horned equine with huge, even bluer eyes than the sky. Stranger still, I saw no other beings in the area. Could this creature, this pony, be the owner of the childish voice?  

"Hey, I asked you a question!" Another knock to the head, coupled with the child's dialogue confirmed my suspicions. I was indeed hallucinating. The pain was not as strong as before, and my legs were quickly losing their revolution against the oppression of my brain. I rolled to my side, exclaiming very loudly how I really felt about my arms, and tried to prop myself up. After gathering myself, I took inventory of my surroundings. Everything was...pastel. Light and vibrant, a contrast of the run-down southern-California neighborhood from which I hailed. The trees, the grass, even the siding on the houses had more emotion than the common pedestrian of my home. The child was still staring at me, its brow furrowed in an irate fashion. Being just an illusion, I threw away the manual for introducing one's self to an unfamiliar sentient species and decided the best course of action would to be extremely frank.

"I'm human." This seemed like a fair response. Not too much information, not too little. Just enough to be mysterious.

The child did not seem pleased with my answer. "No, no. Not 'who' you are. 'What' you are. That's what I asked."

"That's what I told you." This little pony was obviously shocked by my appearance. He growled in frustration, and stared at me angrily. I stared back. This went on for a minute, before the silence was broken by a shrill scream from behind me. I turned my head to see another small pony, of different colors, screaming at the top of it's lungs. How rude, I thought. "Hey, could you not do that?"

The pony went silent, and I was about to thank it, when it opened it's mouth a second time. "I-it...IT TALKS!? " This was followed by another bout of screaming. 

"Applebloom, stop screaming for a second! You're going to scare it away!" The blue pony seemed to have some pull over the other, for it stopped making noise. Instead of screaming, the thing began to walk away slowly, turning in kind as though not to startle me. When it came 'round fully, it took off in a dead sprint, kicking dirt on the face of the blue one as he chased it. 

I stood then, to get a better view of my surroundings. My legs had surrendered by then, and my balance seemed unaffected. In fact, I felt fine. I felt alive. I knelt down to the ground and brushed it with my hand. The grass felt real. Not in a way that my mind could produce on a whim, either. There was dew where i had touched it, and little specks of dirt and plant matter as well. 

How bizarre.

I walked over to one of the comically technicolor trees and wrapped my hands around it. It was a real tree. This was real. Those ponies, this sky, that giant tree-house I could see now that I was upright; it was all real. I was in a place where small, annoying equines ruled a painted world. 

This must be Hell, I thought. My eternal punishment for falling off the rails. 

Funny, I imagined it being less...brilliant.