Chapter 3- Living Arrangements
Chapter 3
Living Arrangements
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To say my family were shocked when they saw Lyra... would be about the biggest understatement ever.
When I’d woken up the next morning, I wondered why my bed felt so warm, before I felt the thing in my arms move a little and I remembered what had happened the previous day.
To be honest, I’d thought that was a dream. But, when I shifted so I could see what was in the bed with me, sure enough, held within my arms was a mint-green unicorn filly, sleeping peacefully, a contented smile on her muzzle.
I decided to just wait until she woke up before doing anything. Who was I to interrupt a filly’s dreams, right?
However, no sooner had I thought this, then something caught me off-guard. Something I’d never have expected. I heard a scream.
I went ridged as it echoed around me, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. It was a horrified, pain-filled scream of a female.
I didn’t even move. I remained motionless for what felt like forever, my ears peeled for even the slightest explanation as to what that scream had been about.
From the fact I heard nothing going on outside, it seemed like I was the only one who heard it. Lyra had seemed a little anxious, stirring in her sleep, a slight frown appearing on her face, but other than that, nothing seemed wrong.
I decided to put it out of my mind and chock it up to my brain still waking up and just hearing things that weren’t there.
A few minutes later, Lyra stirred. She opened her eyes, those large, golden eyes and looked at me. For a second, she looked frightened, but then she smiled.
“Good morning,” I said, smiling back. “Did you have a good sleep?”
She yawned, stretching and tried to get up. The covers were a little too heavy though, so I helped her push them off.
We went out into the kitchen and I got us some breakfast. Nothing special. A bowl of Milo Dou cereal each and a glass of water for myself and some apple juice for Lyra.
At first, I thought she was going to eat her cereal like a dog, push her face down into it and start eating. Instead, to my utter surprise, her horn glowed with its golden aura. The same aura covered the spoon I’d intended to eat my cereal, but had put so close to her she must have assumed it was hers.
I watched as the spoon levitated off the table, moved to her bowl, scooped up some of the brown and white pieces and popped them in her mouth. She chewed, a smile breaking across her face and she quickly swallowed and scooped up another spoonful.
I couldn’t believe Lyra could already use her magic. In My Little Dashie, Rainbow Dash hadn’t been able to fly for a while and she’d been at least a year or two older than Lyra was now. Maybe unicorns mature sooner than pegasi?
It was at that moment the back door slid open and my first younger brother, Tim walked in. As soon as he saw Lyra he stopped dead. I’d gone ridged the moment I heard the door opening, my brain freezing, not letting me try and figure out how to explain how a mint-green cartoon pony was sitting at our kitchen table, eating breakfast.
Tim looks a lot like me, mousy-blonde hair, blue eyes and a similar facial structure. He’s a little taller than me, but back when we were younger, people kept mistaking us for each other. As we got older though, he started looking a little different from me and thus, people stopped confusing us with each other.
Tim slowly turned and spotted me. His face showing his mind looked like it was about to crack like an egg, he mouthed one word. “What?”
I grinned hesitantly. “Um...” I chuckled, fidgeting with my hands. “I... can’t really explain this without sounding crazy, can I?”
He slowly shook his head. “What is that... unicorn doing at our table?” At once his face deflated and he put his head in his heads. “That sounded like something a mad person would say. Maybe I am mad? You don’t see a mint-green unicorn sitting at our table, eating breakfast, do you?!” He looked back up and at me, his eyes wide, pleading. I wasn’t sure whether he was pleading for me to say “no”, so he could rationalize this as him simply hallucinating from a long night of work, or if he wanted me to say “yes”, so that he knew he wasn’t simply going nuts.
I sighed, got up and took him to the bean bags, easing him down into one. Lyra hopped down from the table and walked over, a puzzled expression on her face, while Tim just looked at her with blank eyes.
“A unicorn,” he said, sounding like he wasn’t really talking, just letting his thoughts become vocal. “There’s a unicorn in our house. Unicorns are real. They’re not make-believe.” He lay back in the bean bag, looking up at the ceiling. “James, I’ve gone nuts, haven’t I?”
I shook my head and tried to explain to him what was going on as best I could. The fact that I had to mention My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic didn’t help.
Lyra just looked from him to me, more confused than afraid of this second human.
When I finished, he looked at me and I could see the gears in his head slowly turning, trying to logicalize everything.
“So, are you trying to tell me that a show for little girls, that somehow spawned a fandom comprised of both girls and guys of every age, is a real place?”
“Well, if you accept the idea of string theory, yeah,” I said, nodding. “I’ve always believed that, for every TV show, every book, every fictional thing that ever has been thought up by mankind, another universe, parallel to our own is created. I think Lyra proves my theory, don’t you?”
He looked at her, puzzlement appearing on his face. “How’d she get here?”
I shrugged. “Got me. I just found her yesterday, trapped in bush on my way home after work. As for how she got here, to our world, not a clue.”
Tim frowned. “What’ll we do with her?”
I frowned too, out of irritation. “What exactly do you mean “What’ll we do with her?”?”
He looked at me, his expression serious. “This is big, James. A cartoon character has appeared in the real world. Don’t you realize what this could mean? The two worlds could be coming together. There’s no telling what kind of damage that could do!”
My face eased and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Phew. I thought you were talking about getting rid of her.”
His eyes bulged. “What? You plan on keeping her?!”
I frowned slightly. “She’s a little kid, Tim. By the show’s standards, she’s a little more than a toddler.”
He stood up, staring at me. “You’re always going on about Doctor Who! Now that something that could cause our universe to collapse, destroying everything, you’re not even thinking about it?!”
“Didn’t happen in My Little Dashie,” I shrugged, getting up and walking into the kitchen, Lyra following after me.
Tim just stared at me, his right eye twitching slightly. “You’re telling me, you’re chancing our universe’s destruction because of something you read in a fan fic of a show for little girls?!”
I gave him a withering look. “If the universe didn’t like the fact that Lyra’s here, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation because we wouldn’t be here.”
He stopped, blinking. “That... that...” He flopped back on the bean bag, his eyes wide. “You... How did you just make that sound so rational?”
I shrugged. “Listen to The Doctor talking long enough and you get into a similar mind-set, I guess.”
Tim sighed and got up. He walked into the kitchen, glancing at Lyra as she watched him walk passed me. “So, you plan on keeping her?”
“Would you knowingly send a child, in a world different from her own, out onto the streets? She wouldn’t even last a day in our world.”
He frowned, thinking. “That’s true. And think about what the government would do if they learned there was an alternate world alongside our own and that one of its inhabitants has come here.”
I shook my head as I closed the fridge. “I’d rather not, really. We’ve seen similar stuff in movies enough to know anyway.”
The rest of the family’s reactions were varied. My youngest brother, Tom (yeah, Tim and Tom, go ahead and laugh), thought Lyra was stupid and acted like he couldn’t see her.
I got very angry at him for that. She’s a unicorn, for crying out loud. And yeah, she’s not exactly the smartest one of us, but then again, she’s only three-years-old at the least. He wasn’t exactly the smartest apple in the bunch when he was that age himself, after all.
My sisters, Chloe, Elsa and Trina had a small part of their inner child reawaken and acted like any little girl does when unicorns are involved.
My parents... well, they were harder to deal with and easier to deal with at the same time. My dad told me we’d have to send Lyra away, since we weren’t (he wasn’t) sure if it was safe to have her around.
My mum had rounded on him (after I explained everything I could) furious at him for even thinking of sending a lost child away, especially one we all knew wouldn’t simply be able to fit in with the rest of society.
After much arguing, and me promising I’d take responsibility for Lyra, he came around and agreed that, as long as I took care of her, I could keep Lyra.
I scowled at him when he said that. Lyra wasn’t just some pet, a dog that I’d taken pity on and brought home. She was a magical unicorn filly, a child that needed caring for and protection in this world unfamiliar to her.
___________________________________________________________
“So, how’re those plans coming along?”
I groaned at my mother’s question, leaning back in my chair and stretching.
It has been about five months since Lyra came into my life. At first, she was nervous. With so many humans living around her, that was understandable. However, she opened up to the rest of my family in time.
She acts just like a child, which hadn’t surprised me, I’d read My Little Dashie after all. She seems to enjoy a lot of the shows for children on the local stations and some of them I find enjoyable myself in a child-nostalgic kind of way.
However, I made sure she watched only the kid shows meant to educate as well as entertain little children that weren’t made too recently. I found the more recent ones just made it seem like the producers think little kids are completely brain dead. The educational kid shows from when I was younger, back in the 90s and earlier 2000s were far better. They taught you, but didn’t insult your intelligence as they did so.
We’d quickly realized we had to get her some presents for Christmas. Since I’d found her on December 5th, that hadn’t left us much time, but we’d decided on a few toys for little kids. A rubber ball, some Lego Duplo blocks and a small green teddy bear.
When she took her presents out of her Christmas bag (in my family’s house we don’t wrap presents, but have them in large sacks instead), her eyes widened with joy.
She looked closely at the red rubber ball I’d gotten her, a puzzled expression playing across her face. I bent down and bounced the ball in front of her. She watched with intrigue as it bounced up and down. She giggled when she leaned in and it bounced off her nose.
We’d all laughed, watching her run after it and chase the ball around the living room. She looked so happy and full of joy, a stark contrast to how she’d been when I found her and her first few days.
I’m not sure why, but I’d caught her at times looking into space, a sad expression on her features, a few tears in her eyes. I still didn’t know what those were about and until she learns to talk, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to find out.
As I watched her playing, none of that sadness visible as she smiled like... well, a child on Christmas morning, I couldn’t help feeling a sense of joy that I never had before. I couldn’t fully explain it, though I’d noticed my mum give dad an odd look. I paid it no mind though, just happy that Lyra was happy.
Caring for Lyra had become what I do each day. Likely, I’d found her days before work was over for the Christmas holidays and I’d been able to be with Lyra every day.
When we’d shown Lyra to the rest of our family, my grandparents and cousins, they’d all been shocked. One, because a cartoon unicorn was with us, and two, we didn’t seem bothered by it. Well, I wasn’t bothered. The rest of my family had still been a little hesitant at the time.
If you can’t tell, yes, I’ve had what happened to Dash’s dad happen to me. Without meaning to, I’ve become a father.
___________________________________________________________
The first time I realized that I’d become a father was when Lyra and I had gone to bed one night (she sleeps in the bed, I now sleep on a mattress on the floor). It had been a month since Lyra had arrived.
I told her goodnight and she’d said it. As I moved to turn off the light, from behind me I heard, “Good night, Daddy. I love you.”
I literally stopped, my mind trying to process the words she’d just said. I smiled, walked back over, leaned down and kissed her forehead, right below her horn.
“Good night, my Little Lyra. I love you, too.”
She smiled, and closed her eyes, snuggling into bed to sleep.
I walked back and turned off the light, then went back to my mattress. I lay there for a long time, thinking about the last few months.
Ever since I’d brought Lyra home, I’d felt something whenever I saw or thought about her. A feeling in my chest that I’d never felt before. A joy that couldn’t be explained in words.
I’d suspected this would happen, having read My Little Dashie. She’d seen me as her father since I took the charge in caring for her. However, knowing it will happen and it actually happening are two very different things.
However, that fact that she’d said it only reinforced my worries about her safety. She hasn’t once gone outside the house aside from going to the family Christmas Bummer (Party), which we drove to by car and the backyard. The risk is just too great to let her go out like a normal child and that’s not the right environment for a child to grow up in.
___________________________________________________________
I rub my eyes and sigh as I look at the computer screen. I’d been searching the net and communicating with someone online for the last three months.
We’d realized after New Year’s that we couldn’t care for Lyra here in Australia. A mint-green unicorn would be way too obvious here and she’d be taken away out of fear that she could be dangerous, even though that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
When she isn’t playing, or watching television, Lyra wrestles with Jack. He got used to her after a while and the two are near inseparable. Sometimes I’ve even caught her taking a nap alongside him.
Those had been the perfect picture moments, which we’d put into the newest family member photo album, Lyra’s. We each had one from when we were little, me and my brothers and sisters, anyway and now she had one too.
Anyway, I’d joined fimfction.net in the hopes that I could meet someone who might be able to help me. I’d first gone to RobCakeran, the writer of My Little Dashie and asked him just how he’d come up with the story. I’d hoped that he’d actually been speaking from a first-hand story, even if some parts of it wouldn’t add up with the dates he’d set.
Turns out, it wasn’t like that. He’d been inspired and it was just a fictional work. He’d never had Rainbow Dash come to his home and wrote the story as a way to tell his story without giving her away.
I’d then decided to just asked in a blog if there was anyone who lived in a place where seeing a character from the show in real life wouldn’t seem weird.
It was an innocent enough sounding question and it didn’t actually risk Lyra’s reveal. All anyone who read it thought was that I was just posing a hypothetical question.
I’ve no idea why I thought that was a good idea or why I thought someone might answer. Surprisingly, they did.
Two weeks after I posted the blog, someone by the screen name KayPony233 had contacted me, telling me that her home in Japan would be a good choice for that idea. With all the weird stuff that goes on in Japan normally, a cartoon pony walking around wouldn’t seem too weird at all. Might turn a few heads, but that’d be it.
I started talking regularly with KayPony233, first on fimfiction, then via regular email, before we moved to Skype calls, during which we shared our real names. She was an interesting girl. Her name was Saiyaka Rio, she lives in a small town in Sapporo in an area called Odori Park , she was nineteen and still in school, studying to be a high school teacher.
Dad had at once been against me living with a girl four years younger than me, before I reminded him I’m not like a lot of the guys of today, only thinking about the girl and getting in her pants.
My reason for going to live with this girl and share an apartment with her was for Lyra, so she could live a happy and non-enclosed life, in a place where she won’t have others staring at her or worse.
Life wasn’t too easy for Saiyaka though. She lived in a reasonably large apartment for a Japanese apartment (her words, not mine) in a building called Tsuki Apartments and had to pay the rent all on her own and it was making it hard for her to do her studies, because she had to work part-time to make enough to pay the rent each five months.
She had no parents, them having died when she was ten and had been living with her grandmother on her mother’s side until a few years ago, when she’d moved out. She and her grandmother were the last of her family, so they didn’t have anyone else to turn to.
When I asked her if I could come to Japan and live with her, help her with the rent, she was interested as to why I’d want to move to a foreign country just for that. I told her it was because I was caring for a mint-green unicorn filly and wanted to raise her there so that she’d be safer.
She’d burst out laughing during that Skype call. She didn’t believe me, I’d known she wouldn’t. She was in for quite a surprise when I moved in with her in a few more months.
I looked at my mum, a slight frown creasing my brow. “It’s not like I’ve just jumped into this, Mum. I’ve been looking for a job I can take that pays well in Japan as well as gotten my working visa and learned enough Japanese to be able to get by.”
Learning Japanese had been a nightmare. I’d always loved the Japanese culture, Anime had been a part of my life since I was a child, but the language was torture to actually learn. I’d had to spend all my work breaks listening to English to Japanese translation CDs and go to sleep with them playing in my ears so that I could learn it.
The most insulting part was Lyra had somehow used her magic to learn Japanese. I honestly don’t know how she figured out how to use her magic like that, I’m not a unicorn, so I couldn’t have taught her to if I’d tried, but she’d done it. She’d started speaking only a few days after I’d brought her home, so her sudden mastery of a language I was seriously struggling to learn hurt my ego pretty hard.
In the end, she’d taught me and she’s still not even four-years-old yet. You feel pretty small when your three-year-old daughter is the one teaching you a new language.
My mum folds her arms. “A child care worker? That’s a high paying job?”
“Where I’ll be working, it will,” I said, showing her the home page of the school I’d soon be working at. “Working for Shiseikan Elementary School I get a sum of six hundred thousand yen a week. Even when you convert that to Aussie dollars, that’s way more than twice what I get a fortnight already. Financially, I’ll be fine. Plus, let’s be real, Mum: I don’t exactly have the highest qualifications, so teaching preschoolers-kindergarteners is a good a place as any,”
Mum sighs, walking up and pulling me into a hug, which I didn’t expect. “I’m just worried about you. Because of your brain injury, I didn’t think you’d be leaving home for at least twenty more years. And now you’re a father and you’re moving to a whole other country and...”
I return her hug, patting her back. “I know, Mum. This is a big change for all of us. But we have to think about what’s best for Lyra. We don’t know when or even if she’ll ever go back to Equestria.”
That was a lie, of course. I know she’ll go back someday. Whether it’s a simple “poof” and she’s gone or Twilight Sparkle will come and take her back there. I don’t know when this will happen, but I know it will happen one day, not that I’d tell my family this. They’ve all become fond of Lyra in the time she’s been here. She’s as much a member of the family as any of us.
Plus, it means, amongst our family only, my parents can say they’re grandparents while they’re still relatively young and my brothers and sisters can say they’re aunts and uncles, and the oldest of them isn’t even twenty for a few more months.
“Until then,” I say, patting her back, “we have to keep her safe while still allowing her to enjoy her childhood and Japan is the best place for that. There she can walk around and no one will really question it. Japan’s so weird she’ll seem normal by comparison.”
She sniffles and smiles at me.
This was the right thing for Lyra. Now that I was her father, I had to think about her future. True, I’d never wanted to be a child care worker, I’d never even considered the idea of teaching kids, which I would have to deal with regularly as one, and I’d now be working four, sometimes five days a week instead of just three like I’m used to, but for Lyra, I’d have taken a six day a week job at a fish gutting factory if I had to.
Lyra and I had gotten special shots to make us immune to the bacteria in Japan’s water. They don’t have the same filters for their water that we do in Australia, so it was necessary if we were going to live there.
How did we manage to get Lyra’s shots when she’s a pony, you might ask? We’d all gone dressed in costumes and told the doctor that we were going to a costume party after and that Lyra had chosen to dress as a unicorn.
Still don’t know how, but he bought it, gave her and me our shots and we were set.
On September 24th, Lyra, my dad and I will be going to Japan. It will take saving up everything I make at work here in Australia to that point, but I’ll have enough to pay Dad back for our flight to Japan.
In a few more months, I’ll be leaving my life in Australia behind and beginning a new one, as Lyra’s father in Japan. I was already her father, but I will be able to be a much better one there.
I can only hope she will be happy there and that I’ll get enough time with her before she returns to Equestria to be happy with my life.
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.... half of me wants to see Lyra become a magical girl, the other half says she's magical enough she doesn't need to. But I can totally see her blasting a criminal or something to save her daddy
I liked this chapter the only thing that has (and might will) is that time gap. I need to fill that becaws the family gest feels kinda feels hollow, and the future chapters that they talk on skype or something. I only say this becaws we have moved to America, England, france, then back to America. And our famaly almost all ways talks to us.
I did not see Japan coming, very inrtresting.
please don't let this end like My Little Dashie did
Dude....I think the same way. A reality for everyone! yay!
4791525 i would not like that too, but if i understand him right, the two of them don´t get separate. I don´t like such storys with an sad ending, i only disliked my little Dashie for the ending.
I don´t care for the meanin behind the story, i know that it could be possible like that but even then i don´t think it would be reason enough to separate them forever. At first i wanted to say, why not let Rainbow stay in the Human world, then again she is a Element bearer, but Lyra not. So i think if she want to stay Celestia could let her, or he went with her to Equestria.
PS: But i don´t remember a story where a pony choose to live in the Human world so this would be new i think (and maybe better because of being new), every pony Human story end normaly the way with the Human going to Equestria
I don´t really get why he wanted to go to Japan and i don´t know what to think of it yet, but then again why not.
good story i like it
And the government would take her away and experiment on her.
Exactly
We cant let the government find her!