Until about thirty years ago, I lived in a small town called Baileyton. I was not a unicorn. In fact, I knew no magic at all. I was a human, named Innis, and my life was very, very weird.
I worked the counter at a bookstore. And I don’t care to brag, but I could name every volume we had. Though, that was mostly because we got such rotten business I could afford to read in my massive amounts of spare time. You know how frontier villages are. No respect for literature.
Baileyton was essentially a bunch of buildings that had sprung up around a lumber mill. We cut, we shaped, we made wood trinkets and goods for the good of the kingdom at large, and we shipped them out by the caravan-full. Anything besides that was secondary. It was quite dreary.
And then who should show up but the Elves?
What?
Oh, you probably don’t call them “Elves” anymore. What do you call Elves nowadays? Woodsies? The Fair Folk? Yeah, the Fair Folk. I always thought that was too close to “Fairy.” But anyway, whatever you called them, they showed up one fine December evening and beheaded a lumberjack for improperly felling a tree.
Oh, yes, they were Elves, alright.
So the Elven ambassador - no, I’m not going to call them “Fair Folk,” Archer, stop asking. So the ambassador comes along and says they won’t kill anyone else - that is, if we follow the rules. Then he tore out a man’s tongue for having the gall to ask what the rules were, and that’s how we knew it was war.
Yes, Pinkie, his tongue. All the way out. I don’t know if you’ve picked up on this yet, but someone who comes into Equestria for transmogrification is usually not a good representative of the rest of their species. Not like Snowflake, you can pretty much tell he used to be an ogre.
What? Oh, right. Sorry, Archer. I’ll get to transmogrification in a minute.
So, the town council unanimously voted that we were all way in over our heads, what with the Elves setting up shop not five miles away. That was just barely over the horizon in the Baileyton area, and it scared the bejabbers out of us.
...No, Pinkie, I don’t know what bejabbers are.
Anyway, we sent an urgent S.O.S. to good old Castle Town, saying that our collective rear end was in serious need of covering, and could our kind and handsome, not to mention generous King Jove the Fourth send in a battalion or two because that would really make us feel better, please and thank you, sincerely, Baileyton.
Not in those exact words, obviously.
In marched the 21st Vorlanian infantry. It would go on to be nicknamed “The Woodsy-Bait Brigade” after the Baileyton fiasco, though we had no way of knowing that at the time.
Of course, the town didn’t have any spare barracks on hand, so we had to quarter the troops in our own homes. My brother got a very fetching swordswoman, who he was going out with inside of a week. I got Higgs.
Higgs was a pikeman. But he was also sort of nuts.
He’d tell you he was a party animal, but everyone who knew him would tell you he was just a druggie. When he wasn’t at his post on the walls, or even when he was, sometimes, he had a jug of moonshine in one hand and a cup of speedball in the other.
No, Rainbow, speedball doesn’t make you faster. Quite the opposite.
...
No, I will not tell you how to make it. Shut up.
So it was my job to look after this mess of a human being for a year plus change, while pretty much everyone except him in the 21st actually defended Baileyton from falling victim to Elven legislation. It can make a girl feel bitter.
Eventually, the sheer volume of hassle that came from having to cover Higgs’s shenanigans drove me to drink. No, not alcohol. That proved to be a little too tame. I ended up with the expensive addiction - Liquid Nerve potion. For sound mind and steady hands, there’s nothing better. It certainly made babysitting the oaf easier for a month or so.
But you know, the thing about Liquid Nerve is, every so often, you get a bad batch. And if, Celestia forbid, you end up drinking a bad dose of Liquid Nerve, things can get... ugly.
The night I fled Baileyton, I was stoned off my gourd on overfermented Liquid Nerve. I’d become convinced that the entire setup - elves, troops, Higgs and all - was some overly complex conspiracy to drive me to insanity. And while that was certainly not the case, I had been driven insane. Temporarily, that is.
I’m getting out before you end up murdering me as well, I remember saying. As it turned out, I was indeed avoiding an untimely death by leaving when I did. The very next morning, an Elven demolisher track drove a boulder straight through the Baileyton gate, and the defense effort and Baileyton as a whole were pretty much over.
I spent the next few days wandering through the countryside, dazed and confused. From what I understand, I stumbled into and through several Fae realms, surviving either because the Fair Folk have no laws against public intoxication or because I am, in fact, a very mean drunk.
Eventually I emerged on top of Mount Swayback in Equestria, which was weird because everything leading up to that was so much flat prairie. I clambered down, only to find the nearest village to be Hoofington, which is of course populated exclusively by pastel-colored ponies.
I took this better than you’d think, since I figured I was still hallucinating. It was only after the third week at the Equestrian halfway house that I cottoned onto the fact that something wasn’t quite right.
I was gradually reintroduced to my generous hosts, the Equestrians. It was quite a bit of culture shock, as you can imagine. A Fae race that didn’t want to skewer me alive and eat me? What a novel concept!
No, Pinkie, I’m not trying to be gross. That’s just how things work where I’m from.
So, eventually, I warmed up to them. Who wouldn’t? Besides Archer, I mean. Hah. I got the toxins out of my system and was kindly and generously kicked out on my behind in the middle of Hoofington with half the number of legs as everyone else, a very tenuous grasp of the local language, and a measly 10 bits to my name. What was a girl to do?
Well, naturally, I went back to counterwork at a bookstore.
It was easy enough to set up - by the time I got out I’d figured out the words for “book,” “work,” “pay,” and all the various other nouns and verbs needed to negotiate an employment contract.
Why, yes, the stares got old after a while. Why do you ask?
I spent a good year at that job, making friends among the populace. I never gave much thought to heading home, mostly because I’d gotten here on what amounted to a wild bender and had no barking idea how to get back. And just winging it wasn’t an option, seeing as I could easily land myself in Orc lands, or worse. I was far from home, but going back was far, far more trouble than it was worth.
Near Hearth’s Warming, I was approached by a noble from Canterlot. I’d apparently attracted the attention of the Princess herself, and was being summoned for an audience in Canterlot.
Seeing as this was the first time I had ever heard of the Princess, Canterlot, or Equestrian nobility of any kind, it was quite the effort for the poor stallion to try and communicate all this to me.
But communicate it he did, and it was off to Canterlot for me.
Interesting fact: Celestia can speak any language she bloody well likes. Ever. At all. It made the rest of that week a lot easier.
I was informed of a process by which any being could be inducted into the Equestrian race - a process known to them as “transmogrification”. I knew it was a grave crime to abandon the human form, though why Vorlan puts such stock in that particular law, I have no idea.
I figured I was never going back. I was never going to see another human again, and even if I did, my family was so much Fair Folk food at that point. I didn’t even want to go back. I took the leap.
I was turned into a pretty blue unicorn who had a magical affinity for literature. I regret nothing.
Over the next several years, I was on royal assignment in Ponyville, writing a translation dictionary between English and Equestrian. Inkwell’s English-Equestrian Concordance was published about twelve years ago. I’ve been the Ponyville bookkeeper ever since.
And then you showed up, and now there’s an imaginary copy of me tormenting my waking moments, there was apparently a plot to confine me to Ponyville for the brief time I was bent on leaving, and now here I am, relating my life story to a couple of living legends, a figment of my imagination, and an interloper on Equestrian soil, along with a figment of his imagination.
And to be perfectly frank, I just don’t know what I’m going to do with myself.
So, that’s my story. Happy?