"WHAT!?" This loud word woke me from my peaceful slumber. "YOU BROUGHT ONE HERE?!" The voice was yelling so loudly, and I was so groggy, that I couldn't make out who it belonged to.
"…well, he sorta just came with me." I recognized this somber voice as Lyra's. I started to roll around.
"ACK! IT'S WAKING UP!" The other voice yelled.
"His name is Michael…" Lyra interjected.
I sat up angrily and looked at the source of my morning irritation, and shouted back at it "Of course I'm awake with you SHOUTING SO MUCH!" I realized I couldn't see much, so I rubbed my eyes and looked again. "Twilight?"
"How did you know my name?" She asked, completely dumbfounded. "How did he know my name?!"
I just blurted out her name didn't I? Um… "Lyra told me?" Speak of the devil, I spotted her near Twilight, in her much more familiar mint green form. She trotted over to me and gave me a big smile and a hug.
"Mornin' sunshine!" She was not the least bit concerned that I might not recognize her in pony form.
"Mornin' Lyra, how'd you sleep?" I asked her.
"Like a human!" Completely not what I meant, but whatever. How does one sleep like a human anyway?
Twilight walked over to us, she did not look happy. "I am NOT going to have you looking like that!"
I looked down at myself briefly, then back up to Twilight. "What's that supposed to mean?" She answered this by shooting me with magic. I was lifted off the ground and then the magic intensified. "OW! WHY DOES IT HURT?!" I shouted. In a matter of moments, she was done and dropped me on the floor. I felt dizzy, but I had a pretty good idea what had just happened. As soon as I opened my eyes, I couldn't help but notice that the world looked different. Like those huge pony eyes had a different lens angle or something. I looked to the most obvious thing first, my forelegs. Yep. Hooves… why was I not surprised?
I put my two front hooves flat on the floor and pulled myself up. I had trouble getting my hind legs to do what they needed to do. But I got myself up eventually. "Gee, it's nice to meet you too, Twilight."
"Sorry about that, I kinda freaked out a bit." She looked away, realizing the full extent of her first impression upon me.
Once the dizziness wore off, I couldn't help but admire my new form. My coat was piss yellow, and my mane and tail were green. "Might as well call me Lemon Lime…" I joked. I put a hoof to my forehead, then looked at my sides, yep. Dirt pony. I checked my ass, and sure enough there was a cutie mark there. Just what I expected too: an airplane. A passenger jet which looked like a 747. I am a travel agent, after all, it made sense. Of course this would be a bit confusing to them.
"What's that?" Lyra asked, pointing a hoof at my cutie mark.
"Wow you spent a week in my world and you don't know what an airplane is?"
"OOOH! So that's what an airplane looks like!"
"What's an airplane?" Asked Twilight.
Sigh.
So after Twilight dragged Lyra and I to Ponyville, we stopped at some kind of restaurant for breakfast. Lyra ordered grass pancakes, and I just said "what she's having," Twilight said she ate already. Surprisingly, grass pancakes were not bad. They tasted fruity, maple syrup went well with them. Don't judge me. My pony mouth liked them anyway.
Twilight couldn't help but ask, "So what do humans eat?"
Lyra answered, "Oh you know, vegetables, fruits… no grass or hay though."
I looked at Lyra and she looked back at me with a 'keep quiet' look on her face. But I just couldn't pass up that opportunity. "We eat meat. Copious amounts of bloody red meat."
Lyra gawked at me, and lightly punched me in the side with a hoof. I just laughed. Twilight was a little surprised, but not shocked as I imagined she would be. "Surprised, Twilight?"
"I suppose it is a little strange for a primate to be a carnivore."
"Not scared of the vicious meat-eater?"
"Why would I be? Griffons eat meat, and my pet owl eats mice."
I just face-hoofed. I didn't even think about that. "Lyra, did you…?" I trailed off, making a vague gesture with my hoof, assuming she knew what I meant.
"…No, I didn't want to. I just told everypony I don't eat meat, and they all just… seemed to understand… why is that?"
"Vegetarianism… some humans choose not to eat it."
Twilight and Lyra both seemed fascinated by this.
"Well, shall we go to the library?" Twilight asked with a quirky smile.
Twilight asked questions about my world for hours. They were all directed at Lyra, since she's the one who ventured there, and I didn't want to steal the spotlight from her. Occasionally I did have to fill in some blanks for Lyra, but there weren't many, she was very keen to study my world while she was there. Eventually the topic of money came up.
"What did you do for money, Lyra?" I asked.
"Oh, well I didn't know how much I would need, so I took a big bag of bits with me. And as soon as I got there, somepo… human saw my bag and asked me what was inside. So I let him see it and he liked it so much, he traded me a big pile of paper monies for all of it! He said it was ten thousand 'bucks'…" Lyra tried to make air-quotes with her hooves when she said 'bucks,' I don't think Twilight understood the gesture.
Twilight looked at me and said, "Bucks? What a silly name for a currency." (As if their naming system for things in this world was any less ridiculous.) "Is ten thousand bucks a lot?"
"Yeah, you could buy…" I trailed off as I wondered what kind of monetary comparison I could possibly make that would make sense to ponies. A nice used car, a first class plane ticket to another continent, yeah, not gonna happen. "Well… it's a lot."
Twilight fired a few more questions at Lyra, and then wrapped up her notes. I was getting hungry again by then, it was probably way past lunch time anyway. "If you're done with the notes Twilight, can we go get something to eat? I'm starving."
"Yeah, me too!" Lyra added.
"Oh no, I'm sorry Michael, but I have to send you back now." Twilight added.
"WHAT?" Lyra and I said in unison, each of us just as shocked as the other.
"Well we can't just have him stay here!" Twilight defended.
"WHY NOT?" We said together again. I added, "She got to stay in my world for a week! I haven't even been here a whole day!"
"I don't know how to say this Lyra… But what we've been doing isn't exactly… allowed. Nopony can find out. They'll probably banish us… or something…" Twilight said.
"But you made him look like us! Nopony will ever know..." Lyra countered.
"Yeah!" I added.
"What if he blows his cover? I can't take that chance. Besides, he doesn't belong here." Twilight wasn't changing her mind.
Both Lyra and myself were simply at a loss for words, stammering to try and suggest a valid reason why I should stay. Before either of us could come up with a reply, I was shot with magic again, but this time it didn't hurt. I just felt like I was drifting out of consciousness. Feeling half asleep, I finally came up with something to say, "I didn't get to meet the others…" I didn't say it very loud, they probably didn't hear it.
Right before I completely blacked out, I heard Lyra yelling, "NOOO!"
Laughing. I heard laughing. As I gained consciousness, I could tell it wasn't ordinary laughing… It was a laugh track for some shitty sitcom.
I sat up, and sure enough, the first thing I saw was the TV. Bad actors spouting cheesy one-liners, with an even cheesier laugh track added to make the writers feel like their jokes weren't as bad as they actually were.
Seinfeld.
I hate sitcoms. I was confused for a minute. Something happened. Something I couldn't remember. Must've been a dream.
I got my lazy ass off the bed, and went to the bathroom to take a leak. Apparently I fell asleep in my shirt and boxers. I finished my business and washed my hands. I looked at my tired self in the mirror. I put on a big fake smile just to see how bad I looked, being disheveled, tired, and unshaven. I didn't really like what I saw, and I had something stuck in my teeth. Figures. I wondered how long I had walked around with that stuck there. I got closer to the mirror and examined further. I picked it out and looked at the offending piece of food on my fingernail. It looked like spinach… or…
Suddenly I remembered some of the dream I had. It was still hazy, but there were ponies. And I was…
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
Who the hell would knock on my hotel room door at this time of night? I tiptoed out of the bathroom and looked through the peephole in the door. There was a girl standing there… a blonde in a slinky black dress…
That was one hell of a night.