Chapter One: Saturday, April 26
It was a long day at the cinema. While the moviegoers are oddly pleasant compared to the stories you hear elsewhere, you still get a few who bitch about the violent content of a film and how its warped their children's fragile little minds. I'm half tempted to snap back that maybe you should be a parent and research this stuff before you take your kids to see it, but it would make the customer more irate, and get me fired. Besides, someone who takes their kid to an R-rated slasher film is not the sharpest knife in the drawer to begin with.
I was looking forward to getting home and relaxing, maybe ordering a pizza from DiMarino's for dinner. My parents went on a little trip to Vegas, a second honeymoon for them. My sister, brother-in-law, and nephew had gone to New Jersey to visit her in-laws. Both groups had left this morning. I had also decided to use my week's worth of paid vacation time during the same week everyone had gone. I had the house to myself until next Saturday evening, and was going to enjoy every minute of it.
I was on my way home, with the sound of Journey's "Only the Young" blaring from the radio of my green '64 Chevy Malibu, inherited from my grandfather. I was singing along, enjoying myself and Steve Perry's vocal abilities. Life was good.
Then I saw something over the nearby woods that intrigued me. I pulled the Malibu over and watched.
The clouds above the woods seemed to be swirling, much like the clouds over the school at the end of My Science Project when a time portal is opened over a high school. As a matter of fact, it looked exactly like that. I saw a lightning bolt, purple in color, strike the ground from the center of the portal. Aferwards, the clouds stopped swirling, and slowly returned to their normal pattern in the sky.
"Weird." I thought. I was tempted to go home, hoping someone had seen it and would report it. I then realized that the area was deserted, and the chances someone else had seen it were slim. There was also a fatal flaw of mine: curiosity. Despite my common sense all but grabbing me by the neck and shaking me, yelling "GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE, YOU IDIOT," I just had to investigate.
I pulled the Malibu up closer to the woods and stopped. I turned off the engine, and retrieved a flashlight from my glove box. It was a MagLight, so if there was anything hostile, at least with something as blunt as that, I'd have a fighting chance. I stepped out of the Malibu, closed and locked the door, put on my dark green trenchcoat, as it was a little chilly, and switched on the MagLight. The high intensity beam lit up the woods. I started walking in the direction of the lightning strike.
It felt like I had been walking for hours. I looked at my watch, one of those Indiglo light-up dealies, and saw that just a half-hour had passed. Judging from what I saw, I knew that- I'm lying, what I meant was I hoped that I was near the site. Fortunately, I was.
I swung the beam of the MagLight around. There was a crater where the lightning had struck. Not unusual for that, I supposed. What was unusual was what was lying in the center of the crater.
I stepped closer and knelt at the crater, shining the light on the strange object inside. It appeared to be a metal pendant of some sort. It reminded me of the AURYN from The Neverending Story in it's craftmanship. It consisted of a circle, with a cinnamon bun-like swirl in the center. Putting a finger out, I touched it. It was a little warm, but safe enough to pick up. This was strange, considering the fact that lightning struck this place a little more than a half hour ago and logic dictated that I should be pulling my hand away in burning agony, but considering what I just saw, it seemed that reality had taken a holiday.
I picked up the pendant and shined the light on it, taking a closer look at it. The swirl wasn't really a swirl at all, but a long string of star-shapes clustered together in a swirl-like formation. I was definitely no expert, but it looked old, Medieval old. It was as rusted as some of the metal weapons from the Medieval era that my freshman high-school class had seen during a field trip to the museum. I slipped it into my pocket.
I heard a twig snap behind me. I shot up, whirling around and shining the MagLight on the figure behind me. My jaw dropped.
The figure was a woman, probably in her early-to-mid twenties. She was utterly gorgeous, a total knockout, almost Far Eastern in appearance. That wasn't remotely what shocked me, though. Nor was it her purple hair and sapphire-blue eyes. What got me was that she was nude. Either she had sleepwalked nude into the forest, there was the quietest freaking frat party around nearby, or there was something unsavory going on, The kind of thing that Benson and Stabler investigate. She looked like she was having trouble standing, almost like my nephew when he first learned to walk. She fell to her knees, and my heart went out to her.
"Excuse me, miss," I said, "are you all right?"
She looked up at me, studying me. I went over to her. "Are you all right?" I repeated. She groaned, then she spoke to me.
"I think so." She had a trans-Atlantic accent, sort of like the Howells from Gilligan's Island.
"Can you stand?" I asked.
"I'll try." I grabbed her by the hand, and helped her up. She managed to stand with some difficulty. As she stood, I noticed a strange tattoo of three light-blue gems on both of her hips. She started shivering from the breeze. I took off my coat and put it on her. She pulled it close to her.
"Thank you, darling." She said. I blushed. Hearing it from Jennifer was one thing, as we knew each other for years before we dated. From a total stranger, from someone I had known for all of 15 seconds, it was... strangely just as heartwarming.
I decided to introduce myself. "I'm James Quinn. Who are you?" She got a worried expression on her face, then she seemed to remember. "Rarity, darling."
"Rarity?" I thought. Maybe she had hippie parents, like another classmate of mine. Poor bastard was named Moonchild. Even the AV Club picked on him. "Well, Rarity, can you tell me what happened to you, or how you got here?"
"I'm not sure. I can't really remember anything but my name, and where I came from." She said.
"Great, we can start there. Where are you from?" I asked.
"Ponyville." She replied.
I froze for a moment, trying to take that in. Ponyville? Maybe she's a mental patient. Maybe I'm having a polite conversation with the female Dahmer. I decided to humor her and see where this went.
"And where is that?" I asked.
"Equestria, of course, silly." She replied.
Oookay. A place called Equestria? Yeahhhh.... mental patient. However, she seemed harmless. There was no blood on her before I put my coat on her, so that was a good sign. I had the feeling she was utterly harmless, otherwise she'd be wearing my skin as a suit by now. However, it was the next thing she said that floored me.
"Does everyone look like you here?"
"Yeah. Everyone's a human, just like you and me." I replied. This caused her distress.
"Human? I'm a unicorn, not a 'human.'" She replied. "See, I have a ta-" was what she got out before she felt around and realized that she did, indeed, have no tail. She felt around on her forehead, looking for something. "Where's my horn?" She asked herself, softly. She soon realized that something else was wrong when she pulled her hands away from her forehead and saw them. "These aren't my hooves!" She yelled. "What are these?"
"They're hands. Everyone has them." I said.
"Not ponies." She said. "I'm supposed to have hooves!"
"Look," I said, trying to change the subject, "Do you have anywhere to go?"
"After that, I don't know. I'm obviously not in Ponyville, if what I've seen is anything to go by." She said.
I felt a mixture of pity and sadness at her plight. Before I fully thought it through, I blurted out "You can stay with me for the night, if you want."
Her eyes lit up. "Really? Thank you!" She hugged me. I awkwardly returned the gesture, caught a bit off guard.
"My car is back this way. I'll take you to my house, and I'll lend you some clothes."
"Why?" She replied. "I normally don't wear clothes."
"Keep your mind out of the gutter, man." I thought. "You have a very vulnerable person here."
"I'm sure that works for you in Ponyville, but you're not there. You're in Carney, Wisconsin. Here, we have to wear clothes. It's the law." I told her.
She processed this. "I don't see why, but OK." She said. "What was your name again?"
"James... Jimmy Quinn." I replied.
"Rarity." She said, as she awkwardly extended her hand. I gave her mine, and she shook it, marking our formal introduction.
"Come on," I started, "Let's get back to my house." We started back in the direction of my car. Rarity had a difficult time walking, so I had her lean on me until she got comfortable walking. I felt like I should call the police, but what do I tell them? I found a naked girl in the woods? We all know how this ends: they think I forced myself on her and I wind up in a cell where some guy named Bubba will make me his bitch. No, thank you. I'll take my chances at home.
I unlocked the Malibu and opened the passenger door for Rarity. She got in and sat down. As I sat down in the driver's side and opened the glove box to put the flashlight away, she screamed, looking at the rear view mirror.
"What happened to me?" She asked. "Why am I so hideous?"
And I thought I had a low self-image. "You're not hideous." I said. "You're absolutely gorgeous." And I meant it.
"Why am I like you?" She wailed. "Why am I... a human?"
"You weren't born a human?" I asked, a bit of snarkiness coming through.
"Of course not. I told you, I'm a unicorn!" She wailed.
"Right." I said, a bit snarky, "A unicorn who looks like a human." She turned to me, anger tinging her eyes. "I AM!" She yelled.
"How can you prove it?" I asked, hoping to talk some sense into her.
"Unicorns, like me, can use magic." She replied. "Some who study it, like one of my friends, can do almost anything..." She paused for a moment. "It's starting to come back."
"Your memory?" I asked.
"Yes." Rarity replied. "Little by little. As I was saying, I'm not as skilled as my friend. I can mainly levitate objects and find hidden gems."
"Fine." I said. Figuring that finding gems would be a longshot for someone without magical powers, much less with, I decided to go with the first option. "Levitate something. If you can, I'll take you to my house and you can stay there until I figure out what's going on. If you can't... I'll still take you home but I'll start calling sanitariums and see if someone escaped. Is it a deal?"
"Deal." She replied, a confident look on her face. Rarity closed her eyes and concentrated. I looked through the windshield to see if anything was moving. Normally, I wouldn't do this, but there was something about her, an absolute honesty to her claims that I could sense. The next thing I knew, there was a rumble from underneath the car. I let out a yelp as the trees started to move away. I looked out the driver's side window to see that I was no longer on solid ground... the Malibu was floating off the ground and continuing to rise. At a loss to rationally explain this, aside from some hidden camera show with a huge effects budget, I gave in.
"OK, OK! For the love of God, please set the car down!" I begged. A smirk crossed Rarity's face as the car was softly lowered to the ground. It took me a while to process this: a gorgeous woman... sorry, unicorn, just managed to lift my car several feet off the ground using only her mind. Now, there's something you don't think very often.
"Believe me now?" Rarity asked. "Oh, yeah." I replied, still a bit shaken. "I believe, all right,"
I pulled the Malibu into the driveway of my house, then shut off the ignition. I unlocked first Rarity's door, then mine, and we stepped out.
"This is your house?" Rarity asked me.
"Not mine, per se." I replied. "My whole family lives here. Mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew. They're not here at the moment, though."
"Really?" She asked. "Where are they?" As we walked to the front door, I explained the situation, how everyone was on seperate trips, yadda yadda yadda. I felt around my pockets and let out a "D'oh."
"What is it?" Rarity asked.
"I can't find my house keys." I replied. "Maybe they're in my coat pocket. Can you check?"
Rarity started rummaging through the pockets of my coat. She felt something and pulled it out. She froze, staring at the pendant fom the crater, as if she had just pulled out a loaded pistol.
"Are you OK?" I asked. "I'm fine." She replied, in a flat tone. I wasn't convinced, but I couldn't just continue standing out here. "My keys, please?"
Rarity's head shot up, aware. "Oh, right. Sorry." She fished my keys out from my coat pocket, and I unlocked the front door. I held the door open for her. "Ladies first." I said. She smiled and went in. I followed, locking the door afterward.
The living room was about as cheerful as middle class could be. Beige walls, with several family photos hanging off of them; a cheap, yet comfortable sofa; a recliner; a coffee table with several of my brother-in-law's issues of Entertainment Weekly scattered about; a TV stand with a 32-inch Proscan TV atop it, Blu-Ray player and Roku box next to it; a china cabinet in the corner. A hall next to the TV stand led to my nephew's room, my room, the upstairs stairs, and the front bathroom. The archway next to the china cabinet led to the kitchen. Rarity took a seat on the couch.
"My sister's gotten a box together of old clothes she's donating to Goodwill. I'll dig it out in the morning. In the meanwhile, I'll lend you a few of my things." I told her.
"Thank you very much, darling." Rarity replied. I blushed again. "Not a problem. I'll be right back."
I headed to my room, opened the door, and turned on the light. My room is, to sum it up, a shrine to nerdiness in all its glory. Movie posters covered the walls, my favorite being one for Exit Wounds, as my grandmother was a huge Steven Seagal fan. We even buried her with her VHS copy of On Deadly Ground, but that's another story. My bed sat in the far corner, next to the dresser. A plush Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man sat upon it, along with a Wal-Mart bag containing deodorant and some three-packs of boxer-briefs. Atop the dresser next to it was a Sharper Image bookcase stereo, with both CD and cassette capability, hooked up to a USB turntable. An orange milk crate, holding some of my albums, sat next to it. An entertainment center sat in front of the wall to the left of the dresser, a 29-inch Samsung TV sat in the middle, my game systems and books taking up the left shelves, and some of my movie collection taking up the right shelves. The next wall had a cabinet with the rest of my movies, positioned next to the closet, the door of which was adorned with a poster for my favorite bad movie of all time, Battlefield Earth. Action figures adorned many of the shelves, and models of the USS Enterprise, an X-Wing, and a F/18 Hornet were strung up on the ceiling, swinging in the breeze generated by the ceiling fan. Above my bed, a replica of a sword from the god-awful Eragon movie, Zar 'Roc to be exact, was hung on a wooden holder. It was beautiful in it's blood red blade, and imitation sapphire stone set into the brass hilt. I headed over to the closet, opened the door, and searched for a suitable outfit. I came away with an AC/DC T-shirt and a pair of plaid pajama pants. I went to the bed and unwrapped one of the boxer-brief three-packs, grabbing a pair.
Rarity was perusing an Entertainment Weekly when I returned with her clothes. "You humans seem so fascinating." She said. "You're so much like the ponies back home. We have stuff like this there, covering what's new in fashion, movies, and the like. In my line of work, you've got to keep up with the trends."
"What do you do?" I asked.
"I design and sew clothes." She replied as I took a seat next to her. "If you name it, I can design it. I'm the best in Ponyville." She paused. “What do you do?”
“I work at a movie theater. I sweep up the theaters, make sure no one makes trouble during the movie, keep the place clean. Perfect job for a movie nerd like me.”
“Have you got your cutie mark for that?”
“What?”
“Your cutie mark. It's a symbol that represents your special talent.”
“Humans don't get those.”
“Then how come several people in these magazines have them? Strange that this Mike Tyson fellow has it on his face, though. It looks absolutely hideous.”
“Those are tattoos, Rarity. They're not representative of special talents, they're ways of expressing oneself.”
“So... you humans can go your whole lives without knowing your special talent?”
“Not quite. Many of us figure out what we're good at early in life. Some of us make a living doing that, and some of us toil away in regular jobs when we can't make a career out of doing what we're good at. We just don't have marks that tell us what our talent is.”
“Weird. Fascinating, but weird.”
I realized I hadn't given her the outfit I picked for her yet. “Oh, here's your clothes.” I named them as I handed them to her, just in case. “Underwear, shirt, pajama pants.”
“What's AC/DC?” Rarity asked, having seen the front of the shirt.
“Only the greatest rock band that ever lived.” I replied. “Bathroom is down the hall, you can change in there.”
Rarity got up and headed for the bathroom. “Thank you again, darling. It's not the most fashionable attire, but it'll do for now.”
She stopped. “I just realized. Lyra was right.”
“What?” I asked, before I heard the sound of the bathroom door closing.
It took fifteen minutes for Rarity to exit the bathroom. “Ta-da.” She said.
I looked up from the EW I was reading. She was unkempt beauty personified. “You're right.” I said. “It's not fashionable, but it'll do.”
She sat down next to me. “You seem to be better at getting around.” I said.”
“It just takes a little getting used to.” She said. “We ponies are an adaptable breed.” After a short pause, she said “I've gone on a lot about me, so tell me about you, darling.”
“Trivialities? Hopes? Dreams? Family? What topic?”
“Hmmm... Family.”
“Well, Dad's a policeman, going on 25 years, and my Mom was a paralegal before she had my big sister Audrey. She married my brother-in-law Gus about seven or eight years ago, and my nephew Cristian was born about six years ago. My uncle Joe 's been unemployed for a while and he's been trying to find work.” I continued for a while about some choice moments from my family's life, like my Dad electrocuting himself with a lamp my grandfather rewired, my grandmother's crush on Steven Seagal, Charles Bronson and Ice-T, and the timed she cursed out a nun for taking her parking space (she didn't know she was a nun at the time). I asked afterward “You have a family, Rarity?”
“Yes. My mom and dad, and my little sister Sweetie Belle.”
“All unicorns, too?”
“Of course. My mom and dad are from midwest Equestria. Dad was a hoofball player, Mom was a baker. They settled down in Ponyville just before I was born because he got traded to the Ponyville Mustangs, and my mom wound up staying at home to raise me and later Sweetie. I'm still wondering where I got my fashion sense from, because judging from the amount of tacky shirts and dresses in their closet, it couldn't have been them.”
“Hoofball player?” I soon realized she meant pony football, and tried to picture ponies dashing down the 40 yard line with the ball in their teeth. I managed to suppress a laugh. “Retired?”
“Yes. He coaches now. Mom's gotten back into baking. Judging by how she's been teaching Sweetie, she's a tad rusty.”
“Rusty how?”
“The batch of cookies she taught her how to bake looked like charcoal briquettes. They tasted about as good.”
“Gahhh..”
We spent the next two hours getting to know each other, and it became clear as time went on that the holes in her swiss-cheesed memory were slowly being filled. We were chatting about friends, school, life in general. She told me more about Equestria, and I told her about Earth. She seemed initially shocked when I told her about the World Wars, but she told me that ponies used to be like that before Equestria was founded, and that humans may one day learn to get along. “Don't hold your breath.” I thought. She told me about her adventures back home with her friends, about having helped save Equestria several times, and something about the Elements of Harmony, apparently artifacts that represented elements of friendship and were quite powerful. I was about to write that off, then remembered the hovering Malibu from earlier and reconsidered.
“You seem to be getting your memories back.” I said.
“Not all of them.” She replied. “I still can't remember anything between yesterday and arriving in this world.”
I got up, and got my coat from the bathroom door where she had hung it. I fished in my pocket and pulled out the medallion. I went back to the couch and showed it to her. “Does this jog anything?” I asked.
Rarity struggled to remember. “I seem to remember something about someone escaping from... Tartarus...”
From what I could remember of my high school history, Tartarus was the part of the underworld in Greek mythology where the most evil and wicked people were condemned to eternal suffering. I remembered asking where in Texas Tartarus was. The class was amused, but the teacher, who was from Texas, wasn't. Two days detention was a tad harsh.
“Go on...”
“I remember hearing from Twilight about someone breaking into the Ponyville Museum and stealing an amulet... and something about the Canterlot library, and Star Swirl the Bearded...” She took another look. "The thing seems familiar"
“Do you remember anything else?”
“No, its back to a blur, I'm afraid, darling.”
“Well, at least we're getting somewhere.” I assured her. “It'll come back to you in time.”
Rarity yawned. “I don't know what to make of this world so far, but if there are a lot of people out there like you, it may not be so bad.” She said.
I blushed at the compliment. “I can only imagine how you feel. Imagine if I were transported to Equestria... if I had to live as a pony... I'd be just as disoriented as you were when I met you.”
I only got snoring in reply. I looked over to see Rarity, head on my shoulder, asleep.
“Good night, Rarity.” I said as I lifted her head up gently so I could get up, and laid her down on the couch softly so she didn't wake up. I got her a blanket from the closet and covered her up. Don't want her to freeze the first night in a new world.
I went to my room, and retrieved the loupe eyeglasses I used for my model-building to get those fine details right while painting. I sat down on the bed, and examined the medallion with them. It hit me then that a medallion with swirling stars belonged to someone named Star Swirl. After the chuckle, I noticed what looked like writing on the border. Unfortunately, it wasn't English, and I couldn't make it out. I set the medallion aside, and decided to wait until morning and see if Rarity remembered anything else. After changing into my sleeping attire of a Ghostbusters T-shirt and green-and-gold Zubaz pants and climbing into bed, my thoughts turned to the stranger I had let crash in the house. It all seemed so strange and unbelievable, but I remembered the lightning, her naked in the woods, the levitation of my car, and the strange medallion.
“It is real.” I thought, as I drifted off to sleep. “It's all real.”
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Wouldnt that be 'hoofball'? As the horrible puns may go...
Not bad.
this story is f***ing fantastic
Thumbs up for someone knowing gilligan's island
I like this. Follow man
I would like this story 100 times if I could. BTW: GO GHOST BUSTERS!!!
See, that's why I like James. He's VERY, and I mean VERY relatable, or however you say that word.
Another great story from one of my favorite great authors. Back to reading.