//------------------------------// // Home // Story: Accidental Pleasantries // by DR1 //------------------------------// You grimace as the morning sun shines brightly through the blinds on your window. Rolling over, you grab another pillow and slap it on your face. You drift in and out of sleep again and again as the slow march of time causes the sun to push and retract its beams of light under the fluffy cover on your face. You slide out of bed eventually, a scowl on your face. You never liked waking up early but you had important things to accomplish today. Shuffling over to your wardrobe, you pick out a set of clothes that you aren’t afraid to get dirty. Sliding them on, you walk slowly down the stairs and proceed out the door. Tiredly, you begin the long trek across the hills towards the edge of the forest you appeared beside a few days earlier. You now know, thanks to Fluttershy, that forest is called the Everfree forest. Your walking is slow; a slight wind is blowing in your face, chilling you to the bone. The morning dew still covers the grass as you walk. The path through the hills, bobbing up and down and weaving back and forth, causes a slight absence of breath within you by the time you reach the outskirts of the forest. You’re not out of shape but you were never the athletic type.   Stretching your arms, you decide not to waste any time thinking about it. There was no need to have a game plan. You walk your way around the forest slowly, looking for any sign that there may be some metal or any of those sorts of things stuck in the dirt or in a tree. Anything would have been a breath of fresh air. You go over the contents of your basement in your head over and over but when it got down to it, you doubted anything was intact. Your search wasn’t for a specific machine, but just random pieces that had been part of it. Wires, scrap metal, glass, bolts, screws, anything would be welcome. But what you really needed were tools. Given enough time, almost anything could be replaced but the tools were irreplaceable. Without them, you had no way of working with whatever you would happen to find. Wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers, side cutters or saws, anything you could find. You’re glad you never had enough money to purchase power tools as they would be useless in this environment. The forest is extremely large, bigger than you first thought it to be. You didn’t know how close any item, which would have gotten sucked into the portal with you, would land. You also decide that it couldn’t hurt to search just a tiny bit into the forest. You change your motion of searching and begin to weave in and out of the forest and back into the fields as you walk. It seems like you’ve been searching the large fields that stretch outside the forest and the outer clusters of trees that make up the dark intimidating forest when you spot something out of the corner of your eye. You focus on it and realize that it’s just the root of a tree. It had looked rather square and jagged, that’s why it caught your attention. You brush it out of your mind and continue. You almost miss it again as you pass by. You look at the ‘root’ a bit closer and realize that it in fact was not a root, but a piece of finished wood. You run over to it and drop to your knees. The wood is infused into the tree itself. You study it for a while and realize what it is. My bookcase! Why is it stuck in this tree though? You notice how strange that is almost right away. The top of your bookcase was stuck inside the tree. Well actually more specifically it was fused with the tree and the dirt. You realize just how lucky you are as you piece together the scene in front of you. The way you were transported to this plane didn’t seem to be able to distinguish matter. You could have easily ended up like that bookcase. You shiver thinking about what it would have been like to have the trunk of that tree running through your abdomen fused with your guts, gasping for breath as your body fails and you die slowly. You begin to brush the dirt away from the wood. You conclude that you’ll have to dig it all up. Luckily the case itself had been transported horizontally and the books where only a few inches under the dirt. Glad to see that most of them had been undamaged by the transportation, you pull them out one by and one and stack them into a large pile. As you pile the books up, you grasp that you hadn’t brought anything to carry recovered objects home with you in. You curse under your breath at your stupidity. You begin to sort through the rather foreboding pile. Sifting them into different piles, you categorize them into ones you want to take back now and ones you can risk to come back for later. You end up with four smaller but still rather bulky piles. Sighing you grab the first pile, the most important books consisting of physics texts and mathematical books. Carrying the heavy pile across the hills, you head back towards your home. Your legs start to get tired and you weren’t even halfway back, but you gratify them and take a short break before proceeding. At about the halfway mark, your arms begin aching. By the time you get back to your house, your arms feel as if they were made out of jelly, your back is hurting and you’re gasping for breath, a layer of sweat covering you. Huffing you turn to look back at the forest. Jesus… You grimace at the thought of going back for more books, but it had to be done. Starting the long journey again you make your way back to where you left the rest of the books. The whole process was quite boring and a strain on your muscles. You went back and forth another three times, carrying pile after pile. Every journey straining your physical and mental prowess, but you were determined. Each procession took a good two hours for the trip to and back. By the time you were done, the sun had crossed the sky. After collapsing at your door and catching your breath for about ten minutes, you calculate the time of day. Being a boy scout actually came in handy… Suddenly you’re glad your dad made you go to the meetings and outings of the Cleghorn Boy Scouts. You come to the understanding that it’s about four in the afternoon. You decide that you’ve had enough manual labor for today, besides all these books did need sorting. After all the books are inside your house, you almost slam your head against the wall. I don’t have a freaking bookcase! Well you didn’t have one anymore. At this point, someone could put your picture under the definition for stupidity and you wouldn't object. You sigh and begin to sort the books by subject and author, stacking them up on your floor like dominoes and taking a vase off of your side table to hold the row up. The Universe in a Nutshell, A Brief History of Time, E=MC2, The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wi Lu Masters are just some of the books that make up the rather small collection. As you sort the books, you consider all the possible scenarios that could have lead you to this situation. Wormholes and means of multiverse travel clouds your mind. I don’t think this is a different planet. What are the chances that another planet in our system, or any system at that, would have a species similar to the ponies that are on Earth? Although it was a possibility, considering probability says that with enough tries anything is possible. Even though the universe is infinite and that gives you an infinite amount of “tries” to land on a planet such as this one, you push that possibility out of your mind and continue to run ideas through your head. Wormholes are now not applicable as they could only, theoretically might you add, be used for inter-universal travel, unless somehow you absentmindedly discovered a new way to use them. Even if I did discover something that amazing, it still doesn’t help me figure out a way home. You curse rather loudly. You’re running out of ideas. Your books are now organized but you have nowhere to store them. It’s relatively late in the evening and you have no money, so buying a bookcase is out of the question. I wonder where Fluttershy is. I’ve been gone all day, I thought she would be wondering where I am. You wince as your stomach twists and growls. You take that as an initiative to go to the kitchen and grab an apple from the bowl sitting on your counter. You backtrack and then sit on the couch with a fwump as you munch on the fruit. At first you were perfectly okay with just eating apples and carrots, but after only a few days, you’ve now officially grown tired of the all-vegetable and fruit diet. If the apples around here weren’t so good, you probably would have gone partially crazy from the food already. You finish your snack sized dinner and stretch your arms behind your back. As you do, you nearly vomit from the odor that’s emanating from your underarms. Oh god! I’m glad Fluttershy didn’t come to see me today, I stink so badly. You hurry up the stairs, stripping your smelly clothes as you move towards the bathroom. As you enter, you begin to run a full bath and then quickly slip in. After lathering up a wash cloth, the long process of scrubbing off the slime and dirt from a day’s work begins. The soap is refreshing on your skin. Ponies apparently make some very nice soap. With your skin freshly scrubbed and your hair lathered to a nice bubbly puff, you lean down and dip your whole body down under the water rinsing it all off. Gently you set your head against the back of the bathtub and think about your family, and what friends you had. Emotions are swarming in your head. You can’t take it anymore; you can’t deny it any further. As wonderfully peaceful this place is, it’s not your home. You slowly break out into a quiet sob, the realization almost too much to bear. God I’m never going to get home… You hate yourself for being so weak but can’t help but sob in the warmth of the basin for a good ten minutes before you calm yourself down. You pull the plug on the tub with your foot and slip out and into the bedroom, quickly grabbing some undergarments and pulling them up to your hips. Slinking down the stairs, you take a seat on the couch once again, placing your face in your hands. You still have no idea how to feel about any of this. All of it happened so suddenly and you denied it at first with your false sense of inner peacefulness, but you just have no idea how to process the situation. As if some greater being wants to deny you any second of peace, you hear a knock on your door. You get up and answer the appeal for entrance. It’s Fluttershy. You can’t say you’re excited to see her but you also can’t say you wish she hadn’t come. Frankly you don’t know how the hell to feel. “Hello Matthew,” she says, grinning just a tiny bit. “Hey Fluttershy, Please come in,” you reply in a lackluster tone. She steps through the frame, allowing you to close the door, the breeze from the cold outside cut off. “Is s-something wrong? Did I come at a bad time? I can leave if you want.” Fluttershy’s tone changes to one of worry and she looks into your eyes, longing for an honest answer. You can’t lie to her. “Yeah, I’m not feeling the greatest.” You slump back down on the couch. “I’ve just been thinking today about the situation I’m in. I miss my home. I miss my family. I feel like I’ll never get back home and I thought I was okay with that at first, but now I’m not so sure.” “O-oh, is it something I did? I didn’t mean to make you angry.” Ironically, her assumption is what makes you angry. “No,” you growl. She can sense the tension in your voice. An ‘I’m sorry’ in a mumble is all she can muster. You motion for her to join you on the couch, feeling slightly bad for the way you spoke to her. She slowly progresses to the couch, avoiding eye contact with you all the while. “Don’t worry Fluttershy; I’m not mad at you. I’m just a little stressed is all?” reaching over you scratch her mane. She leans her head slightly against your hand, relishing the touch. Her eyes begin to close before she remembers something, her eyes opening wide. “Oh I almost forgot to ask. W-where were you today? I knocked on your door this morning but I didn’t get an answer. I was so worried…” Your heart almost skips a beat at the thought that someone cares about you enough to be worried when you don’t answer the door. “I went looking for my things.” “D-did you find anything?” a fearful twang in her voice. “Like my way back home?” laughing darkly at the thought you shake your head no.” all I found was my bookcase.” You motion towards the books lined up on your floor. She takes a deep breath at the sight of the books.” Oh my, where’s the bookcase then?” “Well see that’s the strange part. When I found it, the wood itself was fused into a tree. I came to the conclusion that whatever caused me to end up here had no regard for whether or not I ended up united, rather painfully, with a tree or random object.” Her eyes become wide at the thought.” You mean you could have died?” she says her voice shaky. “Well yes, but I didn’t.” Fluttershy suddenly grabs you and pulls you into a hug. You’re stunned for a few moments before you embrace her back. Before long, you notice she’s sobbing on your shoulder lightly. “Why are you crying Fluttershy? I’m not dead.” She continues to cry for a minute before she answers between sniffles,” I know, and I don’t know why but I can’t help myself.” You both sit there clinching together for what feels like an hour or two. In reality, it was probably only about thirty minutes. It begins to get quite awkward for you but you continue to hug her so she’ll feel better. Fluttershy is the one to break the hug. Immediately you regret your feelings of awkwardness as her warmth is removed from your body. She coughs slightly, a reaction you find amusing. Had she felt awkward too? And if so, was she also hugging you just to make you feel better? You heart pumps harder at the thought of it and you look down at your hands. As you look down, you realize that you’re shirtless. Blushing hard, you pretend like you still haven’t noticed, she also doesn’t seem to have noticed, unless she was also hiding it. God I’m such a mess. You glance back and forth wondering what to do or say. You’re at a loss for words. Women are so complicated, even if this one wasn't human. Eventually you manage to spit out a question. “Well how was your day?” “Pretty average, except I was worried about you all day,” she says teasingly. “I never really caught what you do on a day to day basis.” “Oh, I tend to needy animals most of the day. It’s my passion; I just love animals so much.” “That’s great! I’m pretty neutral on the subject myself. I’ve never had a pet but I wouldn’t mind one.” “Maybe one day I can help you pick one out.” She smiles at you goofily. You giggle at the way she smiled. Not a mean teasing laugh but a light hearted one. Fluttershy then gets off the couch and rubs her hoof against the floor a few times. “Um, I should probably get going its sort of late.” “Yeah I need to get to bed, would you mind helping me with my search tomorrow?” you say leading her towards the door. You open it for her with a friendly smile. As she walks out the door she turns around abruptly and squeezes you tight for a few seconds. That's all the answer you need. “Goodbye!” she says as she trots off immediately after breaking the quick hug. You call out a goodnight after her and then shut the door. You move to your room and collapse in your bed with a grin. Almost immediately, sleep finds you and you drift off into a land even stranger than the one you currently inhabit. The next day, the whole process begins again. The slow descent out of bed, the travel across the hill territory that surrounds Ponyville, and the hunt for lost equipment. This time, luckily, you have Fluttershy there to talk to and help hunt. You describe all of the things that she should be looking for, but you’re skeptical if she knows what you’re talking about or not. After receiving the instructions and the descriptions, she flies high into the air, looking down at the ground for an aerial point of view. It took just less than half an hour for her to find something. She guides you to the spot and you both begin digging. She scrapes her hooves against the ground moving little piles of dirt in the process as you claw at the dirt. Finally, with a lot of caked dirt under your fingernails you get the item up. It was a wrench. Score. You were glad to have at least one tool. Even if it wasn’t all of them, one was better than none. You slide the metal tool into your pocket and allow Fluttershy to fly up again, continuing her search. Soon enough she spots another object and you meet her at the point. You begin digging at the ground again, paying no attention to how dirty your arms were getting. From your excavation, you discover a box. You can’t quite remember what was inside so you open the container. Most of the items that are in it are completely random. Some wire, side cutters to go with it, nuts, bolts, screws, and a flat head screwdriver. You were happy to at least be making some progress. These discoveries and recoveries went on the whole day. By the end of the day you and your friend had created a good sized pile of random objects. Glass, scrap metal, some random tools, gears, bars, and rods littered the ground. All of it would be useful. You’re glad that Fluttershy was smart enough to bring a large piece of fabric to wrap it all in. She flies down and helps encase all of the items in the cloth. After it’s all wrapped up she flies off with the large ball of crap hanging off her back. Carrying nothing but the wrench, you begin the long walk home. In about an hour, you finally make your way back. Fluttershy is already there and has the recovered items sitting in a pile smack dab in the middle of your living room. She had been examining them when you walked through the door. Her head nearly hit the roof as you greeted her; she had not been expecting you back so soon. “O-oh hi. I was just, um, looking at your things. I hope you don’t mind.” She seems a bit embarrassed, her face flushing red. “Not at all Fluttershy, do you want me to show you how some of it works?” “That would be… interesting,” she says shyly. You grin, excited to show her something “interesting.” You quickly scrap up a few gears, cogs and rods, cradling them in your arms as you carry them to your couch. Slowly but surely, you piece the parts together. You have no idea what you’re making but you’ve always been good at ad-libbing. The pieces slip together effortlessly as you fit them all into one as quickly as possible. She stares at you in amazement as you work. It doesn’t take very long to get the object done; you end up with a makeshift water-powered mechanism. You then take the device and proceed to the kitchen. You place the device into the sink and turn the faucet on. The water runs down onto the wheel, collecting into the bins that line it and the circle begins to spin. You show her how when the water hits the wheel and causes it to spin it rotates the gears and rods causing the claw attached to it to move back and forth. Rather stupid and elementary… Fluttershy doesn’t seem to think so and is amazed that you accomplished something like that using just a few spare parts you had laying around. You’re happy she’s pleased with the creation but you decide its best to scrap it. You cut off the water and then take it back out into the living room proceeding to dismantle it. Screw by screw, bolt by bolt, you take the thing apart dropping the spare parts on the floor as you work. When it’s about half way taken apart, you give up finding the task boring and just end up throwing what’s left of it back onto the pile. If I need any of that crap at a later point, I’ll take it apart then. Fluttershy begins asking you how one’s able to make things like that and how they could possibly be useful. You explain to her that if you put enough mechanisms and systems like that together you can make all sorts of things happen. Stories follow suit about the large automated factories that litter your land.  You talk about the mechanisms that do peoples’ jobs for them more efficiently and quickly than they ever could hope to achieve and how humans can fly without wings using engines and rotor blades. All of these things are new to her of course and you have to explain the concept of the engine and many other things to her as you go along. She marvels at your tales saying that “it’s amazing humans could accomplish all this without the use of magic.” I guess our lack of magic is what helps us advance technologically. She starts to ask you an array of questions about the device and all the other things you talked about and how they work. She also asks you if there were any other things you could make. You confess that you were never much of an inventor but you grasp the basics of mechanics and systems. Pulleys, levers, winches and that such, are not beyond your grasp. She asks you what those things are and you have to explain each in turn. You feel like a middle school technology teacher. As you explain all of these things to her, she keeps glancing back to the pile of scraps in the middle of the floor as if they would somehow magically piece together and create some amazing machine that can do all your chores for you. You find it amusing that the things you know the least about amaze Fluttershy. I can only imagine if I tried to explain the Morris-Thorne wormhole metric to her. Fluttershy yawns widely and you suggested that you both retire. She rejects your offer and asks you to continue talking about all the fascinating things in your world. You try to explain as much as you can about, well, everything. You can’t even scrape the tip of the iceberg as you enlighten her about all of the items humans have and how they work. Toasters, ovens, microwaves, washing machines, cars, trains, fans, televisions, phones, computers, speakers, C.D.s , mp3 players, and all sorts of other mundane things you never thought twice about were explained that night. At first when you explained some household objects, she didn’t seem very impressed but as you explain that they work by way of electricity she seems dumbfounded. Ponies also have ovens and that such but apparently they are all magical items. She acts like she understands and you truly think she grasps what you’re telling her, but you don’t think she understands that all the things you’re telling her aren’t even the start of things. Eventually she becomes too tired to continue to listen and takes her leave. She says goodbye and exits your home. As Fluttershy leaves, you feel great that you had someone to talk to about your hobbies and studies and all the things from back home. Ignoring the mess that liters your living room you move upstairs and pull off your clothes, collapsing onto your bed nude. Fuck it. You’re too lazy to put any pajamas on and sleep quickly overtakes you as you lay there. That night, you dream of spaceships and time travel. You dream that you’re an amazing scientist that can harness the power of time and space and bend it to his will, going anywhere at any time. Childish things but you can’t help the warm feeling they create inside you, and lament over the fact that such things are out of grasp. Redundancy, you didn’t know the meaning of the word until that week. Every day the actions repeated. An early morning followed by a long day of searching and physical labor. With the end of the labor and the diurnal cycle coming to an end, the education begins. Each night after you two had finished the scavenging, Fluttershy and yourself would sort through the various items you had found that day. As you’d array the objects, you would teach her about various technologies. Electricity, simple mechanics, systems, some advanced geometry and mathematics, and occasionally science. Ecology and Meteorology were especially hard subjects to teach to a pony. In Equestria, all of the processes of nature were done by the ponies themselves. You had to explain to Fluttershy that on Earth all of those things happened on its own. At first she didn’t believe you. “What? No way,” she scoffed. When she noticed you were serious, her tone quickly changed and her attention was grasped. Food chains and weather patterns were strange to her, so in response you had to explain it time and time again until she understood. Electricity was another hard concept to grasp for the mare. Thankfully, when it came to electricity, you had the ability to show her. Piece by piece, you crafted an object to show her the wonders of electricity. It took you a long while, three days to be exact, but with a snap as the rotor, stator, and turbine all clicked together, you were finished. Done! You now had in your possession a small hydro-electric generator. You never thought yourself capable of building something like that but apparently, as the object was sitting right in front of you, your knowledge of such things was wider than you thought. Soon enough, you were both at the river that runs through Fluttershy’s front lawn. You placed the object down into the water and watched as the water tugged at the small metal fins. They started to spin and it began to power up, all the pieces working together in a flow that was more beautiful than the river itself. You stared at the LED that you attached to the power output earlier to test if the instrument worked. Sadly enough, after a few minutes you realized that it wasn’t going to light up. “It’s probably just a problem with the speed of the water. On the larger generators back on earth we would block off whole rivers, guiding the water to the point we wanted it so that the velocity of the liquid was more than if you just placed all the generators into the water,” You said. “Surreee,” she said almost jokingly. At first you thought she was being a smart-ass but as you faced her, you came to the realization she was screwing with you. She believed you, you were sure of it. Her teasing demeanor was soon replaced with one of interest as you began to attempt to explain everything you knew about electricity. This of course wasn’t that hard, your knowledge was formidable but you didn’t know everything. Although your teachings were a bit mediocre, Fluttershy hung on your every word as if your lessons were the key to something spectacular. Ponies didn’t need technology anyways, they had magic. Anything you could accomplish with technology could just as easily be accomplished with the power of a unicorn. The lessons persisted, each day something new being taught. Your collection of items grew bigger and bigger with each passing moment and before you knew it, your living room was full of random scraps and parts. Each night you’d break something out that Fluttershy hadn’t seen yet and each night you would play with your new items, creating something fresh each time. It was an enjoyable time, relaxing. In fact, you don’t think you’ve had this much fun since you were a kid. As the week came to a close, you redefined the definition of “home” in your head. Home isn’t just where you lay your head; it isn’t defined by any sole group of people or any one action or feeling. It’s the combination of those things that makes a place home. If the place and people you’re with makes you happy, then it can be considered home. This is my home. // Frankly, I feel as if I tried to do more with this chapter than I should have, or at least have taken more time on it with how much i was trying to get out of it. Whatever, enjoy!