Painted Mirror

by Lord of Turtles

Nothing Else to Do

The next day was much cooler, unfortunately that was due to rain.

Heavy beads of water pelted down from the sky, pooling in the clearing and turning Raj's entire camp into a mud-pit. The crude sitting area and woven chair he's made in his idle hours have either been swept away or sunk into the mud like stones.

Both Raj and Banjo huddled in the wrecked car. The dog poked his nose under the floor mat that's been re-purposed as a cover for the broken window, licking drops of moisture off his nose with every curious probe.

Raj gazed out the intact back-window, scanning for signs that the weather would let up, but every time he checked, the sloshing puddles look deeper and the misty haze was thicker. Murmuring uselessly, he busied himself with his fishtrap, tightening belts and lashing wood.

He wanted to start a fire, he wanted to cook his ducks, he wanted to eat their tender meat and suck their fat off his fingers. He glared at the dog, already glutted fit to bursting on cast off parts and innards. His belly rumbled sourly and he looked down at the cooler. They were just sitting there, waiting to be roasted and crisped.

Like everything else in Equestria, it was frustrating.

* * *

I hate this place.

That is not correct. I do not hate this place. I don't even dislike it.

But I despise the fact that it makes a fool out of me.

* * *

Raj was squatting in the mud, building a tent out of thick leaves and twigs in the shade of a tree. The looming branches did little to cut the rain, but little is more than nothing. He hoped to make a cover for a fire, to give embers the chance they need to catch.

He rose and looked down at his work. It held for one whole second before the wind and and a spill of water from above collapsed it. Raj looks at it blankly for a moment, grumbled, and set to building it again for the fifth time.

* * *

I have survivalist training. I know how to live in the bush and provide for myself. All that knowledge is made into hash here.

This storm came with no warning at all, none. A weather front this powerful should have had signs, some sort of buildup or warning. There was none, simply sunshine one minute and torrential downpour the next. It was all I could do to get inside before getting soaked. Its been raining for hours and the river hasn't swelled an inch. How does that work?

I come from a place of logic, of sense and rules. Back home, the wind blows according to seasonal changes and predictable phenomena. Here, I can speak with a jive talking Zebra and punch a Chimera in its three faces.

I would have to be half mad to dream these things up. Maybe that's what happened, maybe I've finally snapped and this is some solipsistic realm of my own devising.

At least that would make sense.

* * *

After another hour of failed attempts, Raj felt he had constructed the sturdiest fire hut that he possibly could. He stood over it proudly for a minute before leaving to gather wood for burning.

He returned a few minutes later, just in time to see an ankle high wave of water come flowing down the hill and wash away his little hut. He dropped the wood in a panic and looked up, fearing that a wall of water was bearing down on him.

No wall was present. In fact, there wasn't even a large amount of flow coming down at all. It seemed like the wave existed solely to destroy his hut.

His jaw clenched and his hands tightened into fists. Muttering obscenities, he stomped away.

* * *

The strangest thing has to be the similarities. The echoes of home that seem to have followed me here.

Ponies speak english, I don't know how or why but they do. Zecora speaks that and another language I can't recognize, but I swear I've heard it before. There's a link here, some line I can't perceive. It's amazing for hundreds of reasons.

I've recognized plants and animals from home in these woods. Leeks and wild onions grow on the riverbank, jays and sparrows nest in trees and raccoons and rabbits root around in the undergrowth. Some are different in minute ways. I've seen Ravens hunt in flocks for example and mosquitoes tend to avoid me for some reason.

Some I recognize for different reasons.

There are monsters here. Honest-to-god monsters, pulled straight from myth and legend. I've fought a Chimera and battled a Bugbear. In a swamp miles south I saw a great, multi-headed lizard that could only have been a Hydra. There have been other things, things that I can't readily identify. Like a starry-hide bear deep in a cave or a colossal winged shape that swooped over my camp and set Banjo into a fit of barking. I even saw a massive mustachioed monstrosity cavorting in the broader parts of the river, seemingly singing to itself.

My first thought at seeing that? What does a River Serpent even sing about?

* * *

Raj waded in the fast-moving river carefully, searching for a wide flat stone. He probed carefully with his hands, slowly inching his way deeper and deeper.

His finger flared with pain and he reared back, flopping gracelessly into the water. He felt something gnawing and suckling at his digit. In a panic he clutched it and ripped it off, throwing it at the bank.

The little body smacked into the shore and bounced up, landing in a sprawl in a rock.

It was a frog, a large frog, but still just a frog. Raj saw it and let out a nervous chuckle, wiping at his brow. He felt an odd chill and looked at his hand. A thin band of lighter flesh sits just above his first knuckle.

His eyes darted back to the frog and he saw a thin line of gold poking out of the corner of its mouth. It croaked in what Raj perceived as a mocking fashion and hopped back into the water, closely followed by a diving human.

* * *

Maybe the monsters were normal once, maybe they were creatures as natural as squirrels and birds and deer, but the strangeness of this place changed them. Turned them into something else.

If that's the case, then I am afraid. Afraid I'll become one of them.

I am changing. I can't deny it anymore. Equestria is doing something to me.

I feel... stronger. Faster. Back home I could grab the rim on the hoop above the garage and that was the biggest jump I could manage. Here though? I can hook the back of my knees on a branch three feet over my head. I haven't been able to do a one armed pull-up since I got out of boot, now I can knock out a hundred before breakfast.

I'm being altered, shifted in ways I don't like. If this is what I'm noticing, then what am I not aware of, what could be slipping by? What is happening to me?

* * *

He slapped the flat stone in the center of his car and laid out some logs to dry. A few minutes out of the rain should get the worst of the moisture from the wood, he reasoned. He slipped off his ring and set it in the ashtray, cursing his foolishness for letting something that precious ever be at risk.

With a few minutes to spare, he went to check the Arch again.

It was much the same as he's known it to be since he came here. White and warm, and oddly dry despite the weather. He ran his hands along it, reaching high to grace his fingers along the narrowest part of it and then down the other side. It felt the same as it always had. Nothing had changed.

Standing underneath, he took a purposeful step underneath the white bough. For a moment he thinks he felt something, some tingle, some twinge of energy, some sign that this is what he should be doing.

He's wrong though, and he knew it.

He sighed and leaned against it, slumping down to the base. He enjoyed the tiny amount of warmth he leeched from it. Part of him thinks that's all the blasted tree is good for.

* * *

I realize it is silly to demand that the world follows my rules, because this isn't my world. I've known that since my first terrifying night here when an alien sky full of unknown stars looked down on me.

Am I in another galaxy? The same one but a different arm? Regardless of that, how did I get here in the first place?

How do I get back?

* * *

Raj was sitting in the cab of his car trying to start a fire.

The front seats were soaking out in the rain, discarded. The stone plate sat on a bare section of frame and he was furiously pumping a bow, trying to get even one iota of a spark. Banjo looked on curiously, but not entirely interested.

He stopped and massaged his sore muscles for a moment and then went back at it, winding back and forth with manic speed. He saw a tiny glow, the faintest of embers on the wet wood when he heard a loud snap and the string of his bow slapped painfully into his hand.

Raj didn't scream nor did he curse. He simply slumped and put his hand over his face, his thoughts gone.

* * *

My questions have no answers. They can't. I don't have the tools to understand this place, and even if I did I fear they are beyond my comprehension.

I will continue to ponder though. The alternative is to think of them.

I miss Marielle, I miss Ben. I miss them so much it hurts.

It would be spring by now back home. The flowers by the walk should be in bloom and the neighbors garden is full of tomatoes and zucchini. Ben should be getting ready to finish 7th. He'll be a teenager in a few months. I pray I'll be there to see it.

Marielle, I know you are strong, stronger than me. You are handling this better than I could ever hope to. I promise I'll be home soon.

Please don't let me be a liar.

* * *

The door to the car swung open and let out a rolling cloud of acrid smoke. Banjo sprinted through and makes for the trees, his humor with his master's odd behavior completely evaporated.. Raj stumbled out, coughing and hacking and falling to his knees.

He coughed so hard he's made dizzy by it, black fingers clawing at the edge of his vision. He shook his head and turned around, kneeling at the base of the open door. He started scooping up handfuls of muddy water and threw them into the vehicle. The water hissed and spit off of heated stone and metal.

The fire was quickly out, but the floor of the car is a molten wreck and the padding of the ceiling has charred into black cracklings. He opened the other doors and let the smoke roll out. Even with that, the inside will reek of melted plastic for weeks.

Tentatively, he went back inside to find half a duck sitting in a pile of watery ashes. His stomach roared at him and he pounced on it, pulling off strips of seared flesh with tears in his eyes.

His home was burned, his lungs were soiled, and he was tired, wet, and cold, but he was not hungry.

* * *

I can't keep this up. There's too much. Everything I have is dwindling. I'll make it through today, but that's just today.

Four months. I've been trapped here for four months.

How long until I find something poisonous and it kills me? How long until some fantastic creature gets the drop on me and rips my guts out? How long until I misstep on a rock and break my leg, dying of exposure a week later? Another month? Another two? Or will it be tomorrow?

I have to persevere, I have to keep going. Keep fighting, keep hunting, keep surviving.

There is nothing else to do.

Comments

[ArcaneVisions]

Damn, some bad luck.

[Blackshadow of Abys]

soldier on bro soldier on OORAA

[Truthseeker]

Ponies speak english

What? In the previous chapter when he was watching the two Ponies pick berries, he couldn't understand them.

[Aunoraux]

6591157
If you read that part carefully, it does say that the reason he couldn't understand them was that they were too far away for their words to be clear enough to understand them.
They were speaking English, he was just too far away to make out anything other than the muttering of far off voices.

[Lancerlot]

I'm confused about why Raj has kept himself isolated from the locals. I can understand an author wanting to avoid the worn-out old, "Wander into Ponyville and make friends" plotline, but the best way to find out how to survive in a strange place is still talking with the people who live there.

[Deltorix]

8544425
Maybe this is before zacora becomes friends with the ponies and has warned him to avoid them