//------------------------------//
// The World in a Grain of Sand 
// Story: Just One Man 
// by Cordovan Splotch 
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        Days passed, tests were taken, all of them surprisingly non-invasive. The worst of it was when the meek yellow pegasus apparently needed to take a blood sample, and that wasn’t bad at all.
At least for me it wasn’t, I had grown to become fairly relaxed around needles and syringes, pretty early in my life. The pegasus on the other hand had started off being unsure of where to draw blood from, but I figured if I was going to be here for a while, it’d be better if I actually gave this world’s medical professionals a chance at figuring how I worked, in case I’d need them later.
When I stretched out my left arm to show her where my veins were visible and she had swabbed the spot with alcohol soaked cotton, she looked just about ready to faint.
So to help this go along as smoothly as possible, I carefully took the syringe from her and stuck it into my arm, filling it with my blood before handing it back to the now very light-headed looking pony.

        Another curious event was when the purple unicorn seemed to want to test the effects of her telekinesis and other magic on me. I was a bit more apprehensive about this, but as it turned out I needn’t be nervous about that. Every time the sparkling magical energy came into contact with my body, I just felt it sort of fizzle away around me.
This both frustrated and intrigued the unicorn to no end, and I spent most of that day feeling like I was being dipped in body temperature club soda every time she tried and failed to cast spell on me.

        What did this mean though? Was I immune to magic? Did contact with me cancel it out? Was magic simply incompatible with me? No doubt this was going to be something these beings would be researching exhaustively.

        Through all of this, the blue pegasus came to visit me every night.
She didn’t always need to vent her frustrations, sometime she just came by to have her mane, neck and back scratched, and after a few days she even let me carefully stroke her wings.
It was odd to me how the wings of these pegasi seemed much too small to carry a creature of their size, even if they were greatly lightened by having hollow bones. It was like the whole thing with the bumblebees all over again. I found myself wondering if any ponies without wings or magic could break what little of the laws of physics I had knowledge of too, and was reminded of the pink one that had been peeking into the cell under the top of the doorway, as if she was stuck to the ceiling.

        This night, like the others, the blue pegasus came to visit for more backscratchings, no venting tonight it seemed. That was perfectly alright with me though, even if I had learned a bit more of the language since I first came here, it was mostly just the names of things, I was however getting the hang of the foreign way of pronouncing sounds. I guess my good ear for languages was coming in handy after all.
However nice that was, I still wanted to go home and see my family again but seeing as how I didn’t even know how I got here in the first place, I wasn’t very optimistic about the possibilities.

        Each night I had been visited by the pegasus, I had stayed quiet and just listened to her. Sometimes to see if I could recognize words, the rest of the time I just listened out of politeness.
Tonight I felt like letting out a bit of my own feelings though.

        “I miss my own bed.” I said as I looked down on my mattresses, while scratching the pony’s favorite spot on her neck. I wasn’t surprised to see her being taken aback by my suddenly speaking.
“It’s nothing special, just this fairly nice one I got from Ikea seven or eight years ago... There’s this wooden panel that isn’t supposed to be in it, but if I don’t leave it in, the board holding the mattress in the frame will get moved around and fall out of the frame.”

        Her face showed no comprehension of what I was telling her whatsoever, but I didn’t really need her to understand... I needed what she needed, someone who would listen.

        “So yeah... it’s not a particularly good bed, but it’s familiar, it’s comfortable and even though it’s slightly broken, I made it work well enough for me... just like my life back on earth.”
I was pretty happy with my life back on earth, making simple websites, banner adds and apps for smartphones, nothing big or popular in any way... just enough to make a living, which was impressive enough on it’s own in that business.
It was pretty much the ideal job for me, letting me embrace both my nerdy and my creative and artistic sides.
I especially loved when a client gave me more or less free reigns over the design process of a website, letting me try out new and exciting design styles.
I remember one time when I designed an entire website to look like a coloured pencil sketch and even made a whole new font for that website alone.

        “I wish I had my sketchbook and pencils here, there’s so much stuff I’ve seen here that I wish I could put on paper and take back home... if... if I can ever even get back home.”
I really felt hopeless, and it must have shown through, as the pegasus by my side suddenly started nuzzling my shoulder and neck. I looked at her and saw how unsure she looked about the whole thing, and it was just about the cutest thing I ever saw.
Once again I just couldn’t help myself and pulled the little thing into a hug, feeling her entire body go rigid with shock... she must have though I was trying to kill her or something like.
When that didn’t happen however, she slowly wrapped her front legs around my shoulders and I could almost... almost imagine I was back home in my apartment, hugging my sister goodbye after having her over for dinner.

        “Thank you.” I said as I let go of her “I needed that.”
I sat back, leaning against the wall, more or less resigned to my fate of remaining here for the rest of my life. I was an alien here, this worlds Roswell, hidden away for research and safekeeping. At least I was being treated more humanely than I could imagine any alien being treated on earth, even the little dietary slip-ups were more amusing than anything else.

        The pegasus nuzzled my hand one last time before leaving the cell and I laid down for my night of sleep. As the world slowly faded away and I fell asleep, my last thought was of what delicious muffins I’d be having for breakfast tomorrow, there had been a new kind each morning since they found out I could eat baked goods... maybe blueberry... or apple and cinnamon... or carrot muffins... mmm... carrot muffins...

        And then I was someplace else. In fact, I was now sitting in a desert looking straight ahead at a great big sand dune, topped with two small stone structures to which were fastened two long flowing ribbons, wafting in the warm breeze.
I knew this place... I knew it well. I stood up and walked to the top of the dune, looking toward the horizon and the great mountain breaching the cloud cover, it’s split peak glowing as if aflame in the light of the shining sun.

        I took a deep breath before taking a single step forward to slide down the sand dune, throwing whirling flurries of hot sand into the air behind me. I felt at peace with the warm wind in my face, I knew where I was going.
As I reached the foot of the dune I set of running through the small sea of sand and gravestones that lay between me and an ancient ruined building. Atop the building was a shiny beacon, calling to me, beckoning me.

Feeling light on my feet I quickly traversed the familiar graveyard and found myself standing exhilarated at the foot of the ruins. I scaled the steps formed by the fallen walls of the structure and climbed my way to the flat roof of the building. The glowing symbol was now right in front of me, surrounded by little pieces of cloth that seemed to swim in the air around it.
As I approached the symbol I felt a short, warm gust of wind tickled my ear as if the wind was whispering to me. I reached out to touch the symbol, to earn my scarf, something warm and soft touched my face.

        I woke up and realized what I felt was one of the ponies nuzzling my face to try and wake me up. Had the blue pegasus returned?
I opened my eyes and saw one of the ponies I had least expected to come visiting in the night... and why in the world was she wearing a black spandex sneaking suit?

        Twenty minutes later, I was up, clothed, given a small cloth bag of food and outside the facility... the pony had helped me escape. At first I had been unsure of whether I wanted to escape from the facility into the rest of this alien world. I knew however that if there was a way to return to my own world, then it was unlikely I would find it by staying in my cell.
In part my dream had also awoken a certain amount of wanderlust in me. What was the point of being stranded on an alien world if you couldn’t explore it.

        So I set out into the moonlit night, excitement making my heart beat faster and harder than I could remember it ever beating before. One thing was certain... in my dream I had know exactly where to go... in this world... I had no idea.