Dream 427 - A horrible twistd form, shreiking a wiked laughter. I was spiraling downwads and upwards… I cant remember much else.
Day 2 in Equestria - Examination
My dreams are weird.
I figured I might as well use this as a dream journal, considering it satisfies the checklist for being one, that being ‘a book’ and ‘not destroyed’, and so I’ll record any dream I can remember into this book when I wake up. Anyway, the morning...
I was up first, unsurprisingly, my remark yesterday about Skittles' lack of knowledge about the concept of Personal Space was brought on by the fact that they took turns watching me through the night. So, being the only one that got a decent rest, I was up first. Just to make a note, that night was probably the best night’s rest I have ever had, it wasn’t plagued by nightmares that I’d expect out of this situation, and it wasn’t gifted with memorable dreams either. It was just simply a relaxing sleep, I suppose it also helps that these beds the ponies sleep on feel like they are made of clouds.
I did wake up disheartened though, the main fact that this whole tirade didn’t turn out to be a nightmare solidified when I woke up under the same strange wooden ceiling I fell asleep under. I guess I really am never going home.
Anyway, I was up first in the day, and my first hour of being awake was spent at the window, looking at the town that I was torn to, this, ‘Ponyville’ as it was called. Little of it’s inhabitance were awake at this hour so this enabled me to gaze for quite some time. My first thought was that everything was so colourful, the sunrise accenting perfectly the yellows and browns of the thatched roofs, light reflecting beautifully off the pasty white of the stone enlaced buildings, the swaying greens of the leaves in the forrest in the distance as they danced with the winds, all of the sweeping grass on the rolling meadows in the distance and the glorious hard brown that was the branches jutting out of my vantage point, that I later found out was inside a tree. It was beautiful to say the least.
My attention was then caught by some early-morning pegasi who were flittering about in the clouds, they looked as though they were moving them around the place. This whole picture reminded me of that famous earthly painting, you know the one, the one of the lakeside parkland with a white clad populous sitting about the place enjoying their morning, just without the people. I would have enjoyed the sight and relaxed on it further but a hoof that nudged my side made me jump and severed my reverie.
“Sugar cube,” went the owners accented voice, “Ah think y’all should probably come away from the window, we don’t want ponies ta’ see you right ’bout now, it’ll raise too many unwanted questions.”
“That’s fine,” I drew the curtains, isolating my view from the beautiful sight.
It was silent for but a few moments until Applejack spoke up in her natural farmer dialect, “So, how are you up so early?” It’s a strange question, but I’ll bite.
“I usually am, the place I lived was about an hour’s bus ride away from my school, so I had to be up really early to catch it, or I’d have to get the next one and be an hour late.”
“A bus? Is that like a carriage?” Right, I forgot, these ponies don’t have as advanced methods of transportation, I asked about that yesterday when I talked to Spike about the topic, and the little awesome dude told me about the pegasus drawn carriages and the ‘earthpony’ powered train system. Heh, talk about horse power.
“It sort of is, but it can hold about fifty or so people in it.”
“Golley, what sort of demand would need that kind of transport?” She thinks that’s impressive?
“A big city with lots of people that need to be places, or a spread out city with not as many people but need to go further.” Supply and demand and all that.
“Well, Ah’ll be. Anywho, I was goin’ to slip out of here to trot on up to mah farm an’ git you somethin’ to eat before y’all woke up but you beat me to it… but since ya’ haven’t tried anything bad while we were sleeping, I think I can trust you enough to leave you alone,” she turned away and head for the door of the library, before freezing in front of it and turning to me, “before ah go, Twilight said that y’all were om-niv-rus without explainin’ it to any of us…” Twilight must have told her while they were off plotting my demise, she probably assumed that they all knew what omnivorous meant and you know what happens when you assume, “What does that mean?”
“It means that I’m a lower grade carnivore and herbivore at the same time,” ‘lower grade’ because humans can’t eat only meat alone, and we don’t have a hankering for leaves and grass and the like. After my explanation she just looked at me funny, my first thought was that she had a lower opinion of me because I eat meat, but looking at her face made me realise that I explained one big word using other big words, I hate it when dictionaries do that and it didn’t make it any better when I did, “It means that I can eat both meat and fruit.”
“Ah,” she affirmed, “Meat huh? Shoot, ah don’t know if I could get any of that here, not that ah’d want to for that matter,” she shivered at the thought, “would apples be fine?” I nodded. At my answer she dipped her head and turned away, “Well, ah’ll be off, knowing these lazy ponies, ah’d be up ’n’ back three times before they wake up.” I chuckled at that last remark and wished her well in her epic quest for apples. She left me to my musings. I decided that I should heed my earlier warnings about gazing through the windows and see if I could pique my interests on anything else. It didn’t take long until my eyes fell upon Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, it was adorable.
Twilight set out the sleeping arrangements so that she’d share her bed with Applejack, Spike and I’d have our own beds and Fluttershy and Rainbow would drag a cloud into the library to sleep on. These ponies don’t have the same taboos with sleeping as humans do it seems. I saw them do it yesterday, but thought not to mention it, and by ‘do it’ I mean drag in the cloud you sick bastard. Besides, why are you even reading this? this is my journal, stop it.
Down boy.
Anyway, I saw them drag the cloud in and do some weird pegasus mojo on it to make it not float away, then Fluttershy just plonked herself onto it and promptly fell asleep. She didn’t fall through it either, I wanted to see if I could actually touch it but to my distain, my hand just fazed through it. I questioned about that but Rainbow just explained it as ‘magic’. I will quickly come to hate that term. It was Rainbow’s first shift to watch me, then she’d go and wake up Twilight and go to sleep with Fluttershy. After Twilight’s shift she’d magic Fluttershy out of bed without disturbing Rainbow, and then she’d go to sleep. And finally, when Fluttershy felt that I wouldn’t be a problem, she’d go back to bed. It was then planned that Applejack would wake up before me and see if I was being unruly, but they didn’t plan on me being up first now did they?
Looking at the adorable sight before me made me just want to go over there and squeeze the life out of the two cute little ponies. They were facing each other with the Skittle’s hoovsies wrapped around the little dainty Banana. The little banana-flavoured pony had her head down close to the skittle flavoured pony’s chest and Skittles had her head just above Banana’s in some form of protective display, like an older sister caring for her younger. I couldn’t stop smiling at the sight, it was just too charming to let by. However, since I didn’t want to be caught staring and smiling at ponies while they slept my attentions were drawn elsewhere.
I got out of the bed I was given and went into the main room. I was interested in what kind of books this library held so I picked one up and started reading. It didn’t take me long for me to realise that I couldn’t actually read it well. Sure the symbols looked familiar, but it was as confusing as hell to try and decode it. It honestly looked more like Russian. Still, I managed to get the gist of the contents, it was some book about agricultural methods or something. I was more interested in decoding the words than what the words were actually saying, so a good hour or so passed and I became somewhat more proficient with reading these weird equestrian words.
“Booksmarts will only git you so far, nothin’ beats proper experience,” came a voice unto my silence, “I’m a good example of that.” I looked up to see Applejack trot on in and quickly close the door behind her and her little wagon of food. It took me this long to realise how hungry I was, I hadn’t eaten in about 10 or so hours after all, and the abrupt break in my sleep yesterday served to aggravate that.
I sniffed at the air as a tantilising smell wafted through the building and caressed my nose, I responded, “I smell apple pie,” I put the book down, “I love apple pie.”
“Then you an’ I are gonna get along jus’ fine,” she smiled. With that bout of broship out of the way, Applejack and I sat down to enjoy various filling apple related foodstuffs. It was a good while of apple munching silence before Applejack asked me about my diet and whatnot.
“It’s no mystery that humans can live without meat, in fact, some humans choose to, they call themselves vegetarians,” and I call them crazy, “but it really, really sucks to, especially if you’ve been practically living off of it for the past lifetime,” she looked worried at the confession, “that doesn’t mean I won’t try, mind you, however it’s impossible for me to live without a steady source of iron in my diet.”
“You can eat metals to?” Spike so suddenly said behind me.
That damn near scared me within an inch of my life, it made me choke on the food in my mouth for that matter. After I managed to eject the intruding morsel from the entrance of my oesophagus, the pony and dragon asked if I was fine. I nodded the affirmative yet still took a moment to recover. “What? No, I don’t eat metals-” I interrupted my speech to rearrange my windpipe slightly, “what made you come to that conclusion?”
“Dragons can eat metals! Though, gems mostly, and anything that’s available here, like hay fries for instance!”
“No meat though?” I asked.
Spike was about to answer before Twilight spoke up from behind him, scaring the little awesome dude like he did to me earlier. All we need now is for Rainbow to scare Twilight and Fluttershy to scare Rainbow, and the combo will be complete. “Spike doesn’t eat meat,” she said that with a hint of something in her voice, disgust perhaps. I briefly wondered what kind of dragon doesn’t eat meat before the grape-flavoured pony continued speaking, “It seems that you’ve already had breakfast, was he any trouble Applejack?”
“Nope, he was even up before me and didn’t do nothin’.” Them double negatives aren’t really not bad.
“Excellent, then I suppose I can have the others here as well, Spike, go get Rarity and Pinkie Pie and bring them here to meet Fericious.”
“Right away!” He then bolted out the door, and I swear I could see hearts in his eyes or something.
“I suppose I should get the other girls up so they can eat to,” and so she did, and we all ate in the room until the food was all used up. I think I might just note here that those apples were the second best thing that I have ever tasted, number one being my mother’s cooking and a close third is good ole’ Vegemite and cheese on toast. I think I can sustain forever on those three things alone. It didn’t take long for the little awesome dude to return from his little awesome quest and bring in the two earlier mentioned ponies, like an awesome little dude.
The voice of a very typical high society person sank in through the door, “Honestly Spike, I don’t see what is ever so important that you’d pull me from my morning routine, a figure like this can’t sustain itself you know,” then the door opened, “So can you plea- Oh my word! What is that thing?” she shrieked when her eyes fell on me. She was another unicorn like Twilight, but the only thing being very purple about her was her mane, and it was a very deep purple to, it was styled in a way that reminded me of ribbons, she had very blue eyes and had a very white plushy body, I have a nickname for this pony, and I will now refer to her in passing as Marshmallow-Flavoured, not that I’d ever say it out loud, mind you.
The other pony that entered with Marshmallow was another non-interesse pony that was very and ridiculously pink, she had a very pink body with a very, yet darker, pink and poofy mane accented slightly by her very blue eyes, I have a name for this pony, I will now refer to her in passing as, Strawberry-Flavoured, not that I’ll ever say it out loud, mind you. This one’s reaction was probably on the opposite scale to Marshmallow’s, she let out a sharp, startling squeal and proceeded to rapidly bombard my face with a tirade of incomprehensible words strung together with barely recognisable words like Party, Creature, Friends, and Ponyville, it was quite the unsettling experience, she then near disappeared from my face and appeared around me, jutting about and describing certain things about me… I think. I decided to react to the Marshmallow-flavoured pony, because I don’t think I could provide a possible reaction to the strawberry-flavoured splurge of verbal nonsense.
“Nice to meet you too I guess, that’s not a very nice way to welcome an alien to your world,” I crossed my arms in annoyance as the strawberry-flavoured hurricane of speech rocketed away from me. The Marshmallow at least had the goodwill to be ashamed at her reaction. I then looked towards the strawberry-flavoured pony, who, by the way, was still talking at break neck speeds, though she seemed to be annoying Skittles about something relating to surprises, pranks, parties and cupcakes. I have an ominous feeling about this one.
“I apologise,” Marshmallow stepped closer to me in an attempt to quell any harsh misgivings, “It’s just that I have never seen a… ah…” she paused and motioned with her hoof in some weird way, in hindsight, she was probably trying to get me to fill in the blanks for her, but at the time it just looked like she wanted me to spoon feed her or something.
Ponies are hard to read if you aren’t one.
“Human,” Twilight cut in before I could find a spoon anywhere and most likely embarrass myself.
Rarity nodded a quiet thanks to her friend before continuing, “…A ‘human’ quite like yourself before,” she looked abashed towards my feet, “Your presence was quite startling.” Her apology sounded genuine, and I know the difference between that and a fake one, having used (and abused) both myself, so I lightened up. If she had the goodwill to mean her apology, than I should at least have the will to forgive her.
“Consider yourself forgiven.” She and I shared a quaint little nod to subvert any past and potential future aggressiveness.
After the grape-flavoured pony managed to calm the strawberry-flavoured tornado from talking the library in on itself, Twilight introduced me to the new members of the gang, “Rarity, Pinkie Pie, this is Fericious. He was accidentally summoned here when I launched a research project, and I have no means to send him back, for now however, he is our… guest, I suppose. He is a Human.”
It was then when I knew what it felt like to be steam roller’d by a pony, as I was tackled down with a gas bagging strawberry pony. In fact, I think I might’ve had some splinters in my poor uncovered back. “Wow! I’ve never seen a hu-mane before!” She leaned really close to my face before she gasped and illogically floated off me somehow, “I’ve never thrown a party for a hue-man before!” she squealed before zipping over to to the grape-pony, “What are you gonna do with him Twi? Can we keep him? Can we keep him? Pleeeeeaaaaase?”
It was then when I knew that it was going to be a long day.
Nothing really remarkable happened for the rest of the day, it mostly included me just hanging about amongst the books and reading all sorts of different interesting things. Lunch came and went without a problem and everyone seemed fine with my presence, that was before Twilight shattered the pleasant atmosphere with an almighty gasp, flash of light and a transparent very purple bubble around yours truly. This of course put everyone on edge, me especially, because I was halfway through a really tense story about an assassin, the blade was nearly at her target’s throat when the book suddenly disappeared out of my hands.
“Hey, I was reading that!”
“I can’t believe I could be that absent!” Twilight suddenly proclaimed. Well, the last racehorse finally crossed the finish line.
“What’s the matter?” Came the Skittle-Flavoured reply.
“Fericious, do you remember when you said something about fatal diseases on you?” Twilight went on, regardless of Rainbow’s question.
“I remember it exactly, yes,” It hasn’t been thirty-six hours since then, so it’s still in my memory banks, “why do you ask?”
“Because that could be a very possible conundrum to have to deal with if left unsolved!”
“Oh dear,” says I, “I hadn’t thought of that,” we then promptly vanished in a puff of grape-flavoured magic and reappeared in the laboratory. Twilight kept me in the bubble until all of the necessary machines were set up and then proceeded to hook me into every single recording device possible. She even had the stereotypical evil mad scientist brain washing machine. “What do you want?” I exclaimed in a deep voice, “Do you want me to talk?”
“No, Fericious, I want you to keep still for a moment. As I said, I have to check to see if you carry any fatal diseases.” Well fair enough. She didn’t get far through her examinations until her friends burst through into the laboratory and joined in the interrogation… I mean investigation.
“Are you sure this is necessary?” I asked, tensing my wrist against the really tight chair cuffs she put me in.
“I just have to run some tests,” She replied, her mind preoccupied, “I have to search you for any known diseases, and then for any bacteria, virus, chemical, pheromone, radiation, hazard, spore, seed or aura you might have carried over from your world that has a malicious intent.”
Silence.
“Wat.” I stared at her blankly, matching the gaze of her friends. She suddenly stopped her activities when she felt all of our eyes on her.
“I have to know if you are a health risk to ponies.”
All of us that were staring all looked away at each other as we shared the ‘oh’ of understanding and let her get back to work. It didn’t take long before the Strawberry started messing with the Grape’s equipment. She was being very silent about it to, we didn’t actually notice her presence near the consoles until my spine was ruptured with a searing pain, as if struck by lightning.
“Ohh! That’s what that does!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed. I couldn’t speak, the pain was too intense.
“Oh no!” I heard the frantic shriek of the Banana pony as she fused to my side to see if I was hurt. She was gently caressing my shoulders and back, which didn’t really do well because of the hard hooves and all, but still it was a nice gesture.
The pain didn’t let up, I let out the breath I was holding and it came out with a bit of smoke. My brain tickled and ached with the influx of electricity. I just hoped my heart was still beating. I managed to find my voice, and barely hissed, “Moriarty!”
Being a big fan of Sherlock I decided that if I was ever to be tortured for what ever reason, of if I was being hurt by someone, I would shout out that name, because you know, being tortured is a very possible circumstance to have to plan for… Anyway, I coughed as Rarity came closer to help Fluttershy try and help me recover from my very shocking experience, thankfully it was over in a manner of a few agonising minutes.
Rainbow Dash, Spike and Applejack were sharing a ball of laughter at my expense. They’ll get theirs, I promise.
“What the bloody hell was that for?” There goes the Aussie swagger again. Everyone present seemed a bit taken back by my exclamation, or by Pinkie’s rashness. Or maybe that I could actually still speak after that, who knows?
“Well excuse me for being curious! That button was practically begging to be pushed!” Pinkie said in a futile attempt to defend herself, “But that wasn’t so fun at all!”
“That must have been the Bio-Electric Detection Amplifier,” Grapey examined the console where Pinkie was, “though that’s actually not what it does, it was supposed to measure the intensity of electric signals being sent from the brain to the muscles and back, it must have overloaded and sent a surge of detection magic through you,” Twilight looked at what Pinkie had pressed, “I don’t even know how she did it.”
She moved to show her, I tensed up, “Well it’s easy! You just have to-“
Twilight put a hoof in front of the Strawberry-flavoured menace to stop her, “And I don’t want to find out either. I don’t want him to be put in any more pain or turn violent.” The rest of the process after that unpleasant experience went rather well, in that I didn’t somehow manage to piss off Zeus and get lightning bolt’d to the back again, and as it turns out I didn’t, in fact, have any hazardous factors about me. It was then when she decided to run a biological study on me. I do not want to write any of that down here because the professionalism was quickly chucked out the window and became concussed on the gutter outside covered in glass shards with one sly remark from the Marshmallow’s mouth.
“So you mean he is ripe for the picking?”
See what I mean? Curb concussion. By the comments that I totally didn’t hear and the surrounding quips that I am not going to repeat, I’d put the age of these ponies to be somewhere around young adults. Around the twenty mark. The whole thing wasn’t at all pleasurable for anyone with a Y chromosome. Like I said before, long day.
After a long time of sitting in an increasingly uncomfortable chair Twilight finally told me that I was healthy, “Well, you don’t have any physical hazards on you, and your aura isn’t infected as far as I know, so I can say that you are healthy,” she said, “Aside from yourself, I can confidently state that I know the most about humans, but even that is limited knowledge. You look fine at least, even after the Bio-Electric Detection Amplifier malfunctioned.” After she unlocked my restraints and let me stand we returned to the library proper, and I returned to my book. Not long after she turned to her friends and bid them farewell as they left for their various homes and workplaces.
I didn’t look up from my book as she saw her friends off, “Already trust me enough to send your security away?” I asked.
“Ponies are trusting by nature,” I heard the door shut and looked up. She had turned to face me, “But we generally only trust once, keep our trust healthy and we’ll get along just fine. Besides, you seem okay, you haven’t outright attacked any of my friends and you stopped yourself from hurting me yesterday in that panic attack, so I can tell you have a trained self restraint. Also that…” She paused as a slight blush formed on her cheeks, “biological examination… served to prove that you are hardly in a position to hurt me, not without any sort of weapon or intent.”
“Let’s keep me without one then,” I smiled and nodded, deliberately not determining to which I was referring, before I thought of something really important, “but what if the rest of the populace in Ponyville don’t take well to me? Should I just roll over and take the caning?”
“Well, you shouldn’t have any problem with the local ponies, they’d sooner lock themselves away then outright attack you on sight,” that’s funny, that’s what Spike said yesterday, I think, “Besides, the ‘capital’ punishment ponies employ is more weighted towards banishment than anything worse. Although, if you do get exiled and live to return, if the princesses deem you worthy of a second chance she will give it. If you don’t do anything to warrant exile then you should be fine.”
I didn’t really take to well to that information to be honest, but it’s better than nothing. The phrase ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ comes to mind, I’m figuring out the meaning of that faster than a family of illegal Iraqi immigrants as their boat sinks just before Papua New Guinea.
Christ All-mighty, I’m such an Australian.
there wasn’t much more I could say about this day as it ended. I read more books, which Twilight readily and enthusiastically supplied. I had finished off that story about the assassin and was horrendously discontented at it. The climax built as her blade edged closer to her target, but then the pony turned around and the assassin realised that she loved her target, so she gave up her entire life’s work to live with this stallion she just met, and just like that the story was over. Twilight seemed to really celebrate it as mastery of the written word and pinnacle of romance, my English teacher, on the other hand, would have had a conniption over it. The following fiction books I read weren’t any better. I put the books down in disgust as I vowed to correct this blight on fictional literature, for my teacher’s sake.
Oh well, I suppose I could rant and rave about literature for the next thirty minutes, but I don’t really want to fill this journal with things like that. So as it stands now, this stain on literature shall rest as it’s corrupted nature festers. As of now, sleep calls, and it so seductively whispers.