Talk to someone on the telephone enough and you get an idea of what they look like.

And then you meet them for the first time, and they're not at all what you expected.

Most work undertaken by princesses is fairly tedious, and a good chunk of it is paperwork and letters.

Celestia is interrupted while dealing with some of this.

-

The Straight To The Point Studio version.
My version.

A horse appears semi-regularly. A magical horse. Mainly she comes to relax and take up space. She's polite and friendly but it did take some getting used to.

Still. Worse things have happened.

-
A reading by Straight To The Point Studio.

And by me.

A particular magical horse has made such a habit of randomly appearing and administering whimsy and cuddles that there are enough victims available to form a semi-regular support group.

Something strange about that new guy though...

Isolated from her friends and taken prisoner in the middle of a war, Twilight must deal with the very real dangers of being percieved as an enemy as well as the nightmares of her arrival on 'Earth'. Can she overcome her own fears and the fears of her captors? Will the wayward unicorn's assistance be a boon or a curse to the 'humans?' Most importantly, will she ever find her way home?

"In short, it's a story of friendship and plasma rifles, with the emphasis on the friendship. The characters are well written, the XCOM setting is fleshed out very well, and the story is compelling. If you love XCOM, you'll love the story, but even if you've never heard of it, it's more than worth giving the first 3 chapters a read.

There's excellent action later on, but the real strength lies in the collision between the friendly and naive world of Twilight Sparkle and the desperate world of humans fighting a losing war for survival and willing to do anything to turn the tide."

--Arzoo

(XCOM/FiM crossover)
(Cover art commissioned by a friend and created by the magnificent FoxInShadow!)
(Original cover art by the amazing Carnelian can be viewed here!)
(Gore tag for blood and some violence)
(Many thanks to the studius OminousTen, Arzoo, xXFluttershyForeverXx and finally Setokaiva for giving my rambles a once-over)
(Now with it's own TV Tropes page! Get to tropin' folks!)

When Apollo 11 lands on the moon, Neil Armstrong utters his famous lines as his boots land in the lunar regolith, but when he turns around he finds something no one was expecting or had ever planned for.
There's an alien on the moon. And it's blue, four-legged, and staring at him.

Sequel here.

This story is a sequel to Mistakes were made

With the local human having ceased wandering and causing ruckus he attempts - with Twilight's ever-patient assistance - to calm down, make it up to those that he needs to make it up to and generally live his best his life.

His greatest obstacle in this, as with most things post-arrival, is his towering neurosis.

And maybe the uncomfortable fact that he can't stop growing larger and more resilient with each passing day. And that not being belligerent to the wildlife gives him sufficient time to fully contemplate the breadth of his situation as a lone and isolated example of his kind in a world entirely not his own, try as he might to just ignore it and stop his brain from eating itself with irritating doubts and fears.

Other than that he's having a whale of a time.

A long, long time ago, there was a knight who set out on a noble quest to save a fair maiden and, if possible, slay the dragon keeping her captive.

Only... things don't always go as planned.

Many thanks to the incredibly talented hattonslayden for letting me use this picture for the cover art. Check out his work some time!

Update: featured? Oh my... I feel all tingly inside...

Rainbow Dash's morning was pretty much ruined.
She tripped getting out of bed and landed flat on her face, giving herself an aching muzzle.
She forgot to buy her favorite brand of hay flakes at the store yesterday and had to eat plain toast for breakfast.
She found out she had to pull double-duty today and tomorrow on the weather patrol.
Oh, and she found a nearly-dead foal, broken and bleeding at the edge of Ponyville.

The rest of her day became a whirlpool of stress and worry but the colt woke up, thank Celestia.
Something's not right, though. Nopony can find his parents, he's not in the registers, and there's an unsettling look in his eye...

-
YouTube reading by Fire Hearth

Chinese Translation by forgivenlove

Russian Translation by Likantrop

TV Tropes page, if you're interested in that sort of thing.

It occurred one peaceful night. Half of Equestria awoke to the sound like a double-shot thunderclap. A percussion heard in the skies and rattling windows from Apploosa, to Canterlot, to Ponyville. Nopony knew what it was or what it heralded for the world as it drew a line across the nation.

For Twilight Sparkle, this isolated incident might have faded from memory after a time, if not for the strange rumors of a creature sitting on the hill on the outskirts of town.

These are her thoughts given written form. These are Sparkle's Notes.

Report EVERYTHING to the Princess.