//------------------------------//
// The Mare in the Maelstrom 
// Story: Destiny Sparkle 
// by Spirit Guide 
//------------------------------//

It all started on the night of the big storm.

At the end of the road, the loneliest street in town, stood the house that I've lived in since I was young. The house has belonged to my family since it was built five generations ago, but now it was nearly empty. My parents died a few years back, leaving me the sole resident of the large 3-storey building with its dull-white paint job. I don't have to pay rent because my great-great-grandfather bought the house a long time ago, even though my work on the town's construction team pays nicely.

I was sitting in the armchair in the living room, a book in my lap. Three months ago, my grandfather had given me the book as he lay on his deathbed in the hospital. I'll never forget the way he spoke to me that day. "There's something I want you to have," he whispered to me during his last moments. He reached inside his bedside table and pulled out a medium sized book. The brown leather cover was adorned with elaborate patterns of a golden substance. My grandfather handed me the book and explained, "Our family has always believed in the supernatural. This book contains some of our world's most ancient secrets." I opened the book slowly, only to find that the few pages inside were crowded with illegible writing. I tried to make sense of them but couldn't understand anything. "What does it say?" I asked him. Grandfather smiled and said, "These were written long ago, by whom we don't know, but know this: one day it will all become clear." This was a start but, still confused, I asked "Why are there so few pages?" His answer was just as mysterious as the previous one, "So more is discovered, so more will appear." He coughed several times, lay back and closed his eyes. "Keep it safe. I feel that you will be the one to unlock its secrets. Be strong and never stop believing."

Those were the last words he ever said.

Now, sitting at home with the book open in front of me, I'm beginning to wonder if my family had been duped into believing there was something special in this world, a magical force we couldn't detect. It all seemed like a load of kid's fairy tales.

Look who's talking about kid's stuff. Who am I kidding.

I am a brony. You don't need me to explain what that is, otherwise you wouldn't be listening to my story. Living my life alone has made the Way-to-Equestria desire all the more powerful for me. What else did this world have to offer me? I had no family left, I was barely known to the townspeople and was not very good at making friends. One would think that a man who watches a show about friendship would have no trouble with that, but it was just something I had no experience in.

The storm was not helping.

The weather forecaster had announced the strangest occurrence ever: a combination downpour, blizzard and hurricane would rage across the country for a week before petering out. It was the third day of said bizarre weather, and the house was holding up surprisingly well, despite its old age. The trees outside bent from the strength of the wind, electrical wires rocking back and forth while their supporting poles creaked against the gale. I had gotten used to the troublesome noises that the storm outside generated after the first two days of El Niño-grade weather. But tonight the atmosphere introduced us to a natural instance it had left behind.

Lightning.

It may not sound so bad at first, but you need to understand exactly what it was. It wasn't just lightning. It was every type of lightning known to mankind. Cloud-to-ground, ball lightning, dark lightning, there were even reports of sightings of a superbolt that lit up the dark skies for tens of miles around. Every time a bolt struck it heated up the air,  generating a sonic shock wave with a sound ranging between sharp cracks and low rumbles.

I laid the old brown book on the coffee table, got up from my armchair and looked out the window. The rain was coming down in buckets, flooding the streets and forcing the sewers to expel its foul fluids. Cars that were parked outside were subjected to the harsh weather while some vehicles actually rolled across the street horizontally under the force of the winds.

As I continued to stare at the rain, freezing snow came down and joined the condensed water, resulting in large ice crystals descending from the heavens. The road was too flooded and dirty to freeze, so the only thing the storm iced over was the sidewalk, coating the pavement in clear ice.

Lightning began to strike again, chasing away the darkness for mere moments before fading. Thunder filled the air and drowned out the hard pattering of the rain and the light, clinking sound of ice on brick. I was beginning to wonder if a storm this big would ever truly dissipate or would it continue to rage on, filling the streets with megaliters of water, coating the sidewalks in layers of ice and filling the skies with the flash of lightning and the roar of thunder.

I was just about to turn away from the window when a bolt of lightning struck again, right outside my house, destroying a tree that it had used as a conductor. The tree went up in flames and the rain put it out before the trunk even hit the ground. But the weirdest part of the strike was the flash. It wasn't white or a pale yellow like flashes of lightning are supposed to be. It was mulberry.

The storm had my attention now. Lightning giving off flashes of mulberry light? Unbelievable. But it happened. I pressed my face against the window to see better. The tree lay in the road, charred branches floating in the swamped street. Another car was blown across the submerged asphalt by the gale. But all this became unimportant when I saw the purple unicorn mare who was thrashing in the road.

My eyes went wide. I blinked several times and slapped myself before returning my gaze to the outside. Nope, she was still there, and in trouble. The rain must have caught her off-guard, she stumbled blindly from one side of the road to the other, shouting and screaming above the booming of the thunder and shrill whistling of the wind. Her mane and tail whipped back and forth in the wind, hindering any movement she attempted.

I could hear her yelling, crying out for help. "Hello? Is anypony there?" Ignoring the rain, she galloped to one side of the street, called out, and then rushed over to the other side. Sleet rained down on her as she called out for her friends. "Spike? Rainbow? Applejack?" She turned to one house, then another, then another. "Rarity? Fluttershy? Pinkie?" She faced my house, eyes contributing to the already-flooded area, her voice rising above the sonority of the storm. "Somepony?! Anypony?! HELP!!!!"

My heart was racing, each beat louder than the one before. My mind attempted to come up with a logical explanation, but my train of thought was destroyed by another bolt of lightning which lit up the dark street, Twilight's miserable face appearing in great, unnecessary detail in the flash. I couldn't take it anymore. I ran over to my door as fast as I could, unlocked the door and wrenched it open. The light from my house flooded the wooden porch and illuminated the road. Twilight's head immediately turned in my direction.

"Come in, quick!" I called out to her. She didn't hesitate. She galloped as fast as she could towards my house. I shifted to the left and she dashed inside. I slammed the door behind us, locking it with the bolt as well as the key. Hurrying into the living room I found Twilight, dripping and shivering in obvious discomfort. Her eyes were wide with fear and surprise, her wet body shaking from the cold. I wouldn't last a sentence against such a sight. I went to the kitchen and opened one of the drawers where the towels are kept, pulling out a large, purple one. Taking it back to the living room, I unfurled the towel and draped it over the shivering mare. She wrapped it closer around herself, trying to dry her soaked body.

"Thank you," she whispered gratefully. Her voice was rather hoarse, probably from all the shouting she did as well as being out in the storm. 

"You're welcome," I said softly, sliding back into my armchair without taking my eyes off of her. It was incredible. Here, right in front of me, was a living, breathing talking purple unicorn, and not just any unicorn: Twilight Sparkle, one of the main characters of My little Pony Friendship is Magic. It didn't seem possible, but the fact that she was shivering in front of me brought me back to reality.

"You feeling any better?" I asked gently.

She nodded. "If you didn't show up and offer me shelter, I probably wouldn't have lasted out there." Even I shuddered at the thought. Still, it didn't answer the question that intrigued me the most.

"How did you get here?"

Standing up, Twilight thought for a moment before answering. "I'm not quite sure. I was working on a spell in the library, while a storm raged outside. All my friends were there, sheltering from the weather that had caught us all by surprise. It's the pegasi's job, you see, to handle the weather, but this storm wasn't their doing. It was a horribly strong thunderstorm, rain pouring, wind blowing and snow falling. I figured that if my friends would be spending the night I may as well entertain them. So I pulled out one of my books and found something interesting: a climate-control spell. I thought that it would be able to detect the origin of the storm and maybe even help wear it out. My friends shuffled backwards to give me maximum space, Spike with a quill and parchment, ready to record every step of the spell. I started to cast the spell, just like the book said, when a bolt of lightning struck the magical lightning rod that protected the library. After that, it was all just flashing lights. The next thing I knew I was outside your house, another full-blown storm raging around me."

I whistled audibly. "That's quite something." Twilight started shivering again. The sight was heart-melting. I got up slowly and bent down beside her, gathering the mare in my arms. She didn't struggle, seeming more curious than concerned, as I carried her over to the fireplace. Settling her down beside the empty hearth, I grabbed several small logs and lobbed them into the pile of ashes. I reached up for a matchbox on the mantle and struck a match against its side, dropping the ignited stick into the fireplace. The flame caught on to the logs and a fire roared into being. I sat down beside the burning fireplace, while Twilight shifted closer to the warmth of the flames.

"Thanks again," Twilight said quietly. She looked deep into the fire and I watched the flames reflected in her violet eyes. I reached up for the book on the coffee table and held it in front of the firelight. The brown tome caught Twilight's attention.

"What's that book?" she asked inquisitively.

"It was given to me by my grandfather three months ago." I told her about my grandfather's last words and my family's tradition concerning the book. Twilight was a great listener. She followed every word I said and didn't interrupt. When I finished, she asked "Could I have a look inside?"

"Sure." I held out the brown tome and it was surrounded by a light magenta glow. The book lifted itself out of my hand and hovered over to Twilight, where it landed I front of her and opened itself. Twilight bent over the pages, scrunching her nose as she tried to decipher the strange script. After several minutes of staring and flipping she looked up at me. "I can't understand anything," she declared.

I nodded. "That makes two of us. I've done tons of research but this doesn't appear to be any script from my world, not even Japanese, which is considered the hardest of all scripts to learn."

Twilight carefully closed the book, gazing at the golden designs on the cover. "Well, maybe one day you'll discover what it says," she said positively.

"It'd be nice to solve it with a friend," I said, almost wistfully. The truth is, I didn't have many friends. The neighbors mainly kept to themselves and on the work force I was just another employee, Working the machinery, dragging buckets of cement and bags of sand to keep my home in working condition. Having a friend around would be great for me.

Twilight yawned and covered her mouth with a hoof, but not before I caught sight of this and glanced at the clock on the mantle. It was nearly eleven at night, but the storm was not weakening. In fact it just seemed to be getting stronger every hour.

Twilight listened to the rain splatter against the window. "We should probably get some sleep. Do you have anywhere I could stay?"

"The couch behind you should do the trick." I got up from the floor and went over to the couch in question. I removed the cushions and, grabbing a handle at the side, flipped the upholstery outwards, revealing a medium sized bed, perfect for a three-foot pony. I ran upstairs and snagged a pillow, blanket and bedsheets before returning to the living room. In no time at all, a nice cozy bed was set up beside the still-burning fireplace.

Twilight looked at the bed and then at me. "You mean I could sleep here?" she asked.

"Of course. I'd have to be heartless to turn you out into the street in this weather, and even if it wasn't storming I'd offer you a place to stay."

Smiling, Twilight ran up and gave me a hug. I didn't expect that to happen, but I embraced her in return. We wrapped up the moment and Twilight asked me how long she could stay.

"Obviously, until the storm blows out, but if you want, you can stay here as long as you wish." I showed her where the bathroom was, as well as the water in the fridge and cups she could use. Needless to say, she was all set for the night. Twilight climbed into the sofa bed and I turned off the light, leaving the dying fire to cast it's soft light over the living room. I picked up my grandfather's book and placed it back on the coffee table. Turning around, I found Twilight watching me, a smile on her face. Looking at her cute expression left me with a smile as well.

I bent down over her and whispered into her ear. "Goodnight, Twilight."

Her eyes filled with astonishment, but anything she wanted to say was pushed aside, and she simply answered, "Goodnight, and thanks for everything."

Still smiling, I made my way to the staircase, stopping only to look back at my guest. She was still watching, her purple eyes fixed on me. The sight of my smile must've put her at ease, because she then closed her eyes, turned over and and began to produce light breathing sounds, hopefully a sign she was sleeping blissfully.

My smile widened with every breath the unicorn took. It was the most peaceful sound I'd heard in a long time: the sound of trust, not being worried of danger befalling you knowing that there's someone there watching over you. I never thought that it would happen with me.

I trekked up the stairs and went into my room. It wasn't very big, but that didn't bother me. It had what I needed: a bed, closet, desk, computer, shelves. I had everything. Except for someone to share it with.

I lay down on my bed and listened to the wind blowing through the trees, thinking about the past day's events. There was now a purple unicorn sleeping in my living room with no idea of how she ended up here. We would have to look into that together tomorrow. These facts wound through my head and eventually lead me to sleep.

I hadn't slept so well in months.