“No! This one gets water three times a day,” Roseluck explained after pausing and pointing to a smaller plant right next to a group of roses, ”and this one gets no water for today.”
Samantha had tried to remember exactly how her boss wanted things done, for probably the tenth time that morning. It didn’t sound difficult in her head, just memorize the watering schedule for three sets of plants and then memorize another one for another set. Then all she had to do was water some of them one day and some of them another day. Easy. Except she kept forgetting which plants were in whatever ‘set’. This is just like learning my times tables all over again… She thought in ire. Math could sure suck.
It was only half way through the day and already Samantha wanted nothing to do with work anymore. It was so boring, and every time she made a mistake, she got a lecture! It’s not like she meant for one of the flower pots to break, or for one of her roses to mysteriously disappear… or for a customer to march out angrily when he was insulted. It wasn’t her fault he looked fat!
Things were getting tense, between getting yelled out by her ‘boss’ from not having a baggy lunch to eat for lunch. She had to escape! But how? She knew the purpose of the job, but some part of her also knew she did not wish to be there. How do you stop working at a job anyway? Never having one, she simply didn’t know. To her it felt like a punishment, it had to be! Escaping though seemed like the right word, so she went with that.
Looking around she saw that Roseluck had finally left her side, trusting her to be alone for a little while. The escape was going to be difficult to pull off, she only had one room to work with after all. Everything was going to have to be perfect.
“How’s everything going in here?”
In no time at all Samantha had darted out of the store, past Roseluck and whipped past several dozen ponies away from town. If she couldn’t be found then she didn’t have to work; but what then? Would Twilight be angry with her? Probably. She didn’t know Twilight that well though. After running for near three minutes straight, she stopped and started panting for breath. Looking around she noticed that she had found herself in the exact same spot that she had woken up in. For now she was safe, no ponies were near. Just trees, fences, houses and dirt.
“I’m bored…” She muttered, walking away from the town a bit. Eventually she realized that walking around doing nothing was pretty boring; it had been a running theme that day. She spotted a nearby tree and took a seat at the base of it, awkwardly laying down as she had seen other ponies done before. “Really, really bored.”
Glancing down she spotted something peculiar. A part of the grass shrouded around the tree wasn’t grass, at least it didn’t look like grass. It was green, sure, but didn’t seem naturally green. At any rate it certainly didn’t look the same as the grass right next to it. There was also the fact that it was glowing dimly, a spherical shape surrounding it. Grass didn’t glow, as far as she knew. Without thinking she raised a hoof and touched the glowing surface. Her hoof felt incredibly warm, but not to the point of feeling uncomfortable. “Is that… my bed?” She extended her head in closed and almost instantly she felt a sucking sensation envelop her entire body. The force was nearly impossible to resist, of course that didn’t stop her from trying… for about two seconds.
She fell face forward directly onto a soft pillow that was laying on a green blanket. Her body no longer felt weird; she gasped and looked up to confirm her suspicions. She was human again, and of course in the body of a child. “Huh?” She was back, that was impossible to deny. Her room with the pony posters on the wall and the stuffed animals that had littered the floor. She looked up to the one poster on the ceiling and gasped, it was no longer glowing. She got on her hands and knees and looked past the poster to her window, it was dark out. Out of everything that had been going on. that’s what felt so off. It from being bright as can be, to being terribly dark. She felt around and found she was now wearing her usual pair of pink footed pajamas.
Was it all a dream?
It was a natural question; but if it was a dream then it was certainly the most realistic and fantastic dream she had ever… dreamt. She sighed. “I guess it was fun while it lasted…” She smiled, thinking it was nice to be back in her room. Hopefully her mommy wasn't too upset for being gone for three days. She curled back into bed and yawned, sleep sounded good about now. The last thing she focused on before fully falling to sleep again was the poster with the colorful ponies lining her walls. They didn’t exactly look like the ponies in her dream, the dream ones were better.
Whatever… sleepy time… She thought, being a grownup in her dreams was exhausting. The last thing she heard faintly before finally passing out was a very subtle echo of laughter.
It had been a full month since Samantha had ‘dreamt’ of Equestria, at least she was pretty sure it was a dream. The odd thing was that she hadn’t dreamt since then, she didn’t have many dreams and certainly didn’t remember any of them. She remembered the ponies plane quite well though.
“Honey, did you finish your homework?” She heard her mother call out from the hallway that connected to her room.
“Uh…. no.”
Her mother walked in and gave her a knowing smirk, she was a tall woman who donned a business suit with black hair. “Start on it now or you won't get dessert tonight.”
With being difficult to argue with that threat, she quickly scrambled to the edge of her bed and dug into her red and blue backpack. Her mother smiled and left her alone, all though Samantha knew she would be back. She was always coming back to check on her. Sometimes with cookies! She thought gleefully; usually not though. She sighed and tried to figure out the rudimentary math problems that had been laid out before her, of course for her they were quite challenging.
After trying to finish off the first page (out of three), at one point she looked up. She had glanced at her pony poster numerous times over the last month, there was just something off about it. She had plenty of things on her walls, and ponies weren’t an odd thing to be into (at least she didn't think so). She glanced down to her paper, then quickly back up to the poster. Something inside her wanted her to look closer at the poster. Maybe she would find a clue about why it seemed so weird? It was in my dream… wasn’t it? She didn’t actually know this, she just knew when waking up from it the poster had been staring down at her.
She looked to her door to make sure that the coast was clear and quickly stood up on her bed. Reaching out she felt something familiar nearly reach out for her hands, then her entire body. She nearly yelped and backed up quickly. Memories came flooding back, ones that were hazy before. Samantha knew exactly what the poster did, and exactly why it gave her such weird feelings when glancing at it.
Ponies…
Dessert and homework could wait. It was time to go back, at least she hoped so. Perhaps the sucking motion had just been her imagination? Only one way to find out. She climbed back onto the bed and started reaching out with her hands, after that everything went white.
She felt the foreign body return to her, she was looking down at her hooves, seated next to a tree, a very familiar tree.
“Wha?” She barely expected that to work, let alone end up in the same spot as before.
“There you are!” She turned around and spotted Twilight who made a beeline directly toward her. Before she could even think of something to say, Twilight beat her to it. “Where have you been? Roseluck said you ran out on her? Why?”
“Um…” Was she still dreaming? Or was this real? If it was real then was it on the same day? How was that possible? She didn’t know much about math, but she knew how time worked and it didn’t go backwards! Or freeze! “I don’t know?”
Twilight squinted her eyes in annoyance and seemed to be holding back some anger. “Well, you’re fired.”
“Oh…” She didn’t know how to respond to that. “I’m sorry…”
“I… it’s alright, but we may have found you another job. Just don’t run out on them! If you get nervous then take deep breathes. If we hurry we can get you there now for an interview. Follow me!” Twilight insisted. “We’re already twelve minutes late on my personal schedule. C’mon!”
“Oh, um, okay…” She was still trying to figure out what was going on, however a part of her was ecstatic to be back in Equestria. Her school was so much more boring than a place ran by ponies. “Let’s go!”
“Uh, right…” Twilight could barely make heads or tails on the new pony in town. Shy some moments, happy and excited in others. She seemed almost bubbly, but not the point of even coming close to being a character clone of Pinkie Pie. The unicorn mentally shrugged, she figured eventually she would figure out the pony that was Samantha. For now she had to get her a job so she could move on with her daily schedule, it was already noon and she was behind! Then again she was (at least she felt so) responsible for residents in Ponyville, so she pressed onward.
Practically dragging Samantha along, the two found themselves in the middle of town. The ‘filly’ spotted a massive tree that was stationed next to several other elaborately designed buildings. The one they seemed to be heading toward almost looked like a carousel. Before she had a chance to examine the fluffy design or the wooden horses outside, she was quickly shoved inside.
“Hi Rarity… Oh.” The two found the mare in question concentrating heavily, using the magic flowing from her horn to levitate three dresses high into the air. In front of her was Sweetie Belle, munching on a cracker watching her sister with mild curiosity. “I’m sorry, should we come back later?”
“No..ah!” Rarity panicked when one of the dressed almost fell, but she quickly caught it. Twilight noted that they looked extremely heavy with far too many gems decorating the whole thing. “No… dear, I was just comparing these three. Did you bring Samantha?” Rarity hadn’t bothered to turn around; however Sweetie Belle was shying away from the two.
The filly in the room muttered something then turned around, her ears flattening against her head.
“I’m sorry, what?” Twilight questioned the filly.
Sweetie Belle sighed and turned around. “I said, I’m sorry for ditching you Samantha.. it wasn’t right.”
Samantha blinked a few times, not really recalling that happening. She vaguely remembered the filly that was Sweetie Belle, but that was a month ago! That’s like forever! “Huh?”
The marshmallow colored filly raised a brow to that. “You know? Yesterday? We kinda just… ditched you.”
Then it hit her, that was a month ago to her but some some reason not for them! “Oh yeah… heh.” She laughed nervously, figuring it was best to play along. “That’s alright…” Though things were certainly not alright, something fishy was going on.
“Okay… I’ll see ya later then,” Sweetie Belle said and quickly left the room.
Rarity nodded to one of the dresses and gently but swiftly lowered them to a wooden table centered in the middle of the room. She walked up to Samantha and smiled devilishly. “Now then, Twilight says you need a job? Hmm?”
Samantha gulped.