I'm not Insane, I'm Crazy!

by frayboy15

3 — In which I am Confused [for Something Else]

Chapter 3 — In which I am Confused [for Something Else]

Yes, your reaction was priceless.

I know that you didn't freak out, but the humor comes from the concerted lack of a reaction you displayed. I could practically hear your panic.

For those of you who were not present, it went down like this:

The unicorn blinked: once, twice, thrice. She looked towards Rainbow and blinked for the fourth time before squeaking out a short question and closing her gaping mouth. Rainbow nodded her head, responding with an equally short statement. The unicorn turned back to me and I lifted my free hand and waved. The unicorn, whom I had decided to call "Purple" after its prominent colors, looked at Canary and asked another question.

Canary answered while she walked up to the unicorn and Rainbow jumped back into the conversation after that. The two pegasi must have been filling the unicorn in on how they had come across me, because Rainbow was doing her faux battle routine again.

Purple gasped at that part and broke out what appeared to be a withering barrage of equine articulation that, to my ear, contained an interesting mix of harmonics and dissonance. I'm a little disappointed now that I didn't get a recording of it. *Heh heh*, I could have turned it into music and played it back now to see whether the words held up through editing.

Canary's sudden interjection stopped Purple mid manic-rant and fully startled me. Her volume was only comparable to the yelling that she and Rainbow did back at the butterflies, and even that seemed quiet by comparison. After the initial burst of volume though, she retuned to her regular, nearly-inaudible-at-a-distance voice.

From what I could gather, Purple was horrified by Rainbow's attack on me, Rainbow didn't think it mattered because nothing "bad" happened, and Canary was trying to get the two to reach a happy medium.

While that was going on, I decided to take a rest; all that walking really gave my legs a workout and hauling my bags didn't make it any easier.

I maneuvered myself into the shadow of the tree, shrugged my backpack off, and untied the unicorn from the straps. I arranged my bags with the suitcase laying flat and the backpack standing on one end so I could use the two as an ad-hoc beach chair. It was actually quite comfy, aside from the lower edge of the unicorn digging into the small of my back.

Once I had myself situated, I unzipped the middle pouch of my backpack and pulled out one of my books to pass the time. It's part of a great series about a boy on the cusp of manhood who lives with his uncle and dreams about bigger things beyond the backwater place he's from. One day, he discovers from an old man that he wields a strange power and could very well be the last hope to overthrow the evil empire that vies for control over everything. So he and the old man travel off to find a person who can bring them in contact with a ragtag group of rebels.

It's a real' good read. Pity the translation spell you came up with only works on sounds.

…

I'm sorry, that was kind of a mean prank. Though, if she stuck around and ranted here, I would've offered to read them to her. Though without the rest of the series', these two won't have the proper context…

Should we wait for her to come back?

Well, she was there for the rest of the day, and therefore, won't miss much, but she also seems to be the type who can't stand incomplete notes.

OK then. If you're making your own copy she shouldn't get too upset. Good thinking, Spike.

So, I was reading my book, listening to the chatter from the three ponies, when a new voice called out and briefly silenced the talkative trio. I looked up from the pages and saw that the three young ponies were back from wherever they ran off to with an older pony as their escort. The new arrival was walking up to Canary, Rainbow, and Purple with a mix of confusion and curiosity visible on its face.

It was an orange earth pony with a long blond mane and tail that were a few shades darker than Canary's coat and both the masses of hair were bunched with a red band at the lower end, leading me to believe that it was another female. She was also wearing a Stetson-style hat, making her the most heavily clothed pony I've seen to date.

The new arrival, tentatively labeled "Orange," said something to the two pegasi that caused both of them and Purple to look around. Rainbow stopped searching when her gaze locked onto me and pointed a foreleg in my direction. The other three also turned to look at me. Purple and Canary displayed varying degrees of relief while Orange looked a mix of intrigued and confused.

I waved and went back to my book, but there was a slight problem.

It wasn't in my lap where I left it. I looked on the ground around me, but it wasn't there either. I stood up and checked the area more carefully. No luck, I still couldn't find my book: the very book that I had been holding not a minute earlier. That's when a heard a cry come from the small crowd of ponies; it sounded like Canary was upset again.

I interrupted my search and looked towards the group to see what the problem was. Low and behold, there was my book. It was suspended in front of Purple, and hung just low enough that I could see a rather expressive inner war being waged across the unicorn's face. It was like Purple couldn't decide whether to apologize for taking the book, panic over the fact that it was effectively illegible, or faint from the implications of that fact.

Orange made her own comment, accompanied by a disappointed look, bringing vital reinforcements to the side of embarrassment and conscience. Purple grimaced and the book flew over and landed on my suitcase. I was now somewhat intrigued: not only was the unicorn capable of telekinesis, but she was also sporting a rather cute blush that somehow showed through her fur.

Under more normal circumstances, I would have been less composed in the face of apparent magic, but by this point I had confronted so much impossibility that I was getting rather jaded to further examples. So instead of gaping at my possessions' blatant, though temporary, dismissal of gravity, I shrugged mentally and picked the book back up so I could recline and continue reading.

In the periphery of my vision, I noticed the four continue to watch me for a moment before turning back towards each other and initiating another conversation. It wasn't long before Purple was starting to look anxious. There were a few more verbal exchanges before Orange said something that replaced the anxiety with a look that said, "I just had an epiphany and I'm disappointed that it took this long!"

Purple's eyes closed, her muzzle scrunched up, and suddenly, there was a roll of some kind of paper accompanied by a large white feather and a small black bottle just sitting, affixed in the air adjacent to her left shoulder. As Purple uncorked the bottle, I realized that the it must have contained ink, which meant that the feather was a quill. Purple was penning something using an actual quill! She finished scratching out her writings in short order and the quill, along with the re-corked bottle, silently vanished while a ribbon bearing some manner of seal appeared in a similar fashion.

Purple turned towards the door of the tree and called out while she fanned the paper. After she finished waving it around, she rolled it into a scroll and affixed the ribbon to it, using the seal to tie off the end. From inside the tree, a voice faintly responded and before long, the three young ponies tumbled out the still-open portal and ran up to the group of adults. I was surprised by their appearance; I had seen them when they ran up with Orange, but I didn't notice when they vanished.

They were way too energetic to be stealthy and they had hooves. HOW ON EARTH DID THEY EVEN- ok, enough of that- I'm getting to my point now. The three fillies were followed from the tree by a significantly different manner of creature.

It was a biped, standing plantigrade at a hight just beyond what the three fillies reached, and covered in scales that matched Purple's coat almost perfectly. It had a series of green ridge-spikes leading from the top of its head to the tip of its tail. There were also two green frills placed barely aft of where I would expect the ears to be on a human. Overall, It appeared that I was either looking at a dragon of some sort, or a young dinosaur, which is basically the same thing.

The reptilian creature was following the youngsters, but it stopped next to Purple while the other three wouldn't keep still. Purple checked over her scroll and it flew into the waiting claws of the dragon. It was definitely a dragon. It lifted the scroll and blew fire, reducing it to a wisp of smoke; only an honest-to-goodness dragon can breath fire.

Still, I was confused. Purple wasn't upset that the dragon had torched her writing. Unless she… wanted it to get burned, but if that was the case, why write it in the first place?

The dragon was speaking now. It's voice matched the one I heard from inside the tree and was lower in pitch than the equines, aside from Rainbow and maybe Orange. Purple talked to the dragon, who I'd decided to call "Scales" since Purple was taken and "Green" wasn't a very good name by itself. Then she inclined her head towards me and Scales followed the prompt, turning in my direction. The dragon tensed a bit when it saw me, but relaxed a second later, after some scrutiny of my person.

Scales turned back to Purple and asked a question. The body language was a lot easier to read on the biped and I could follow the short discussion they had better than the others I'd witnessed.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the three fillies running off again. This time, the unicorn was leading the trio and they were heading off past the closing stalls of the market. As they disappeared amongst the crowds, I returned my attention to the book. I was almost to the part where the hero travels to a distant place to find an old master of the power he wields and learn about the order that was wiped out by the emperor.

I had just finished three pages when an impressive belch brought my face out of the book. The ponies had split into two small groups. Orange and Rainbow were talking and Canary was speaking to Purple and Scales, the latter of whom was holding a new scroll in one hand and rubbing his belly with the other. Only a young boy can let off a noise like that in mixed company without being embarrassed, it's almost a law of the universe.

Purple's face lit up and the scroll shot to her and was unrolled. Rainbow and Orange stopped talking and turned to Purple as she started reading the scroll. The other four beings glanced towards me at several during the reading so I figured that it concerned me to some extent. By the end of the reading, Purple was a mix of nerves and excitement and was looking expectantly at Scales as she rolled the scroll up and it disappeared like her writing supplies.

Canary walked up and began to speak softly to me, gesturing down one of the roads and giving me half-pleading-half-earnest looks before shyly ducking behind her mane.

I gestured at myself and the group then pointed in the same direction. I was under the impression that they wanted to take me somewhere and wanted to verify. She smiled brightly and nodded a few times so I got up, put my book away, and reattached my pack to my person. I decided to haul the unicorn separately because there were roads here and it would be more trouble to tie it up than to just pull it.

As we moved to rejoin the group, I discovered where the second scroll had come from. Scales belched again, and issuing from his mouth was another wisp of smoke that condensed into another scroll. It was also bound with a ribbon and I noticed that the seal on the ribbon matched the color of Purple's coat. The seal was marked with a strange image of a six-pointed starburst that matched the color of the lighter stripe in her mane. Since the roll went directly to Purple, I assumed that Purple was a government official of some sort and Scales was some kind of secretary/adjunct who gave her a secure messaging system.

Purple opened the new message and quickly read through it, silently this time, before she rolled it back up and shut her eyes in concentration. Out from the doorway in the tree came a pair of saddlebags, which settled across Purple's back and cinched themselves securely around her barrel before the message disappeared into the pouch on her right side. The saddlebags were also adorned with the starburst symbol so I felt more sure in my theory concerning Purple's job.

Purple lowered herself and Scales clambered onto her back. She then made a short declaration to the group and we all headed off down a street that seemed to head deeper into the town.

After a few minutes of walking, and getting interrupted by passersby, we entered what must have been the main square; it was more circular than I expected. On the far side, there was a tall, circular, tan building which must have been almost fifty feet tall, though half of that height was invested in a conical, red roof.

This building, which must have been the town hall, seemed to be our destination. When we arrived, Purple led us into a lobby of sorts and had us wait while she and Scales slipped through a door marked with that still-strange script and a stylized scroll wrapped in a blue ribbon. Purple and Scales exited the door soon after accompanied by a third person. It was an earth pony with a sand colored coat, a white and grey streaked mane, and wearing a white collar set with a blue gem of some sort. There was also a pair of half-rim glasses perched upon the muzzle of the new arrival.

The tan pony looked up at me and then turned back to Purple. The two spoke quickly, despite a brief interruption from the other three ponies in the room. The tan pony was looking somewhat sheepish and had started stuttering slightly when Orange interjected and said something herself. The tan pony was wide-eyed with shock, but Canary delivered her own piece which prompted a relieved expression and a comment from the tan pony. Rainbow rose into the air with a declarative shout and disappeared up a flight of stairs with Orange and Canary following at a more sedate pace.

With the distractions gone, Purple and the tan earth pony resumed speaking. Once they finished their conversation, Purple gestured for me to follow her up the stairs. The tan pony, who I was still having trouble finding a name for, led the way with Purple following behind. I collapsed the handle of my unicorn, picked it up, and followed the group up the stairs to the second floor.

When I finished the nerve-racking climb up the rather narrow stairs, Purple waved me over to a door that looked marginally more fancy than the rest. It was painted ivory-white and had a plaque mounted in the middle. The plaque depicted a very stylized sun, with exaggerated corona tongues surrounding the center.

Purple and Scales were standing on either side of the door and the dragon was writing on a new blank scroll with a quill held between his right claws. From the other side of the door, I could hear the sounds of furniture being moved as well as hurried conversation.

As I approached the door and its attendants, Scales finished his writing and passed it to Purple's invisible grip. She looked it over and nodded before it moved back into Scales' claws, rolling up along the way. Scales tucked the roll of paper under his arm and jogged back down the stairs, likely running the message to somewhere he couldn't get it via burning.

Purple watched him disappear before she turned and smartly struck the door a few time with an extended foreleg. The noises from beyond the door, which had turned into a lot of coughing, sneezing, and shouting, stopped and the door cracked open, revealing the tan pony's face. The pony in question was looking marginally more grey than before. There was a short discussion that ended with the pony moving away from the doorway, allowing Purple to fully open the door and lead me into the room.

It was a bedroom. A rather impressive, albeit musty, bedroom. Canary, Rainbow, and Orange were also in the room and, aside from Rainbow, everyone was covered in a thin coating of dust. Rainbow was hovering above a pile of the stuff and looking rather sheepish while Orange glared breadsticks at her, so it was my guess that she was the cause of both the state of everyone else and the sounds that were coming through the door prior to Purple's knocking.

Canary and the tan pony, now called "Glasses" for the lack of another pony wearing any, were giving me strained smiles, though Canary didn't hold the expression for long. Her nose was twitching, and her whole face suddenly scrunched up and she let out the most adorable sneeze I had ever heard from any creature that wasn't a cat… or a baby panda, but everything they do is automatically cute so they don't count. The sneeze, though tiny, caused a good portion of the dust covering Canary to fly into the air and spread throughout the room.

All of a sudden, the dust started gathering into a growing ball that floated in the middle of the room, right above the pile underneath Rainbow. Suspicious of the cause, I looked down at Purple and, sure enough, she was leaning her head forward, eyes narrowed in concentration.

Soon, the room, and the ponies in it, were spotless and the dust was packed into a trash pail that had been found, knocked over, in a corner. Orange shook herself and Glasses reseated her spectacles while Canary and Purple were working together to try and tell me something. Canary was making wide, encompassing gestures while Purple was relatively still. She was talking up a storm, and while it sounded impressive, I still couldn't understand a lick of it. I decided to display my lack of comprehension to the best of my ability.

I tipped my head to the side, raised an eyebrow, blinked asynchronously for effect, and said, "huh?"

It wasn't my best confused face, but it got the point across. Purple and Canary both stopped what they doing and blushed. From Rainbow came a snort of horsey laughter and Orange made her own statement by walking up to me and grabbing the side handle of my suitcase in her mouth.

I let her pull it out of my hand, mostly from surprise, and watched her carry it across the room before she flipped it up and onto the foot of the king sized bed. A soft slapping sound came from my side so I looked down to see Purple with a hoof being slowly dragged down her face, accompanied by some low muttering.

Canary was talking to Orange when I looked back up. She seemed impressed by the direct message Orange managed to deliver. Orange gave a brief response, then walked over to one of the windows and opened it up, propping it with a brace that was located on the sill.

By now, Purple was talking to Glasses and Rainbow was gliding out the door and down the stairs. I decided to explore the room, seeing as they were letting me use it if Orange's actions meant what I thought they did.

There wasn't much in the way of furniture in the room. There was a desk placed along wall to the right of the bed. Underneath that there was a strange looking box that I assumed was a safe. It had a handle and a large tumbler dial, so that was the only thing that made sense.

On the other side of the room, adjacent to the interior wall, was an empty cabinet. It had a few shelves on the lower half and a clothing rack holding a few, strange-looking hangers. It struck me that the ponies I had seen didn't seem to wear much. This cabinet must have been the equivalent to a small closet for the equines.

And for me, it would do. It would do just fine. Most of my clothing wouldn't be getting hung up anyway.

A couple feet away from the micro-closet was another door. I peered through the crack I made opening the door and saw a collection of hardware that was passably recognizable as lavatory implements. The surfaces inside the bathroom were just as dusty as I imagined the bedroom had been not five minutes prior. I immediately decided against making any further incursions until I was properly equipped, or rather, properly unencumbered.

Purple must have caught the grimace I was making as I shut the door. She was walking over to the bathroom while I was heading to the desk to offload my backpack and take a stab at the mess in the bathroom. She peaked in herself and recoiled slightly before steadying herself, taking a deep breath, and plunging into the room.

Seconds later, I heard quiet rattling coming from beyond the door, followed by the unmistakable sound of a flushing toilet. Scales reentered the room during that time and he looked around while a second flush, and then a third, came from the bathroom. Purple stumbled back through the door, wheezing gently and gasping every few breaths.

Scales' shot a questioning look towards me, to which I responded by pointing at the dust-filled pail, followed by waving a hand towards the bathroom. His widening eyes told me that he understood the problem better than I did.

He rushed to Purple's side with a shout, reached into one of the saddlebags, and pulled out what looked like a large perfume bottle, complete with one of those little air bladders that aerosolize the contents. As soon as it cleared the opening of the bag, it flew out of his grip and around to Purple's face.

She closed her mouth over the nozzle and the bladder was compressed twice. Purple reopened her mouth and the bottle returned to Scales' claws while she took a few deep, unlabored breaths. She then calmly walked over to the pail and spat out a grey streaked wad of mucus into it. Scales had followed and was speaking quickly with concern spread across his face.

I looked around the room, curious as to why no one else was worried, and I saw that we three were now the only ones in it. The others must have left while I was examining the room and, without a convenient distraction, I felt a little embarrassed that I wasn't able to help Purple with the cleaning.

Purple was releasing Scales from a one-legged hug as my attention returned to them. She turned to face me while a scroll floated out from under Scales' arm and hovered in front of me. I reached a hand out in preparation to take it and looked at Purple for confirmation. She nodded and the scroll moved closer.

I opened the scroll and was faced with a series of line drawings. The first showed the sun on the horizon with an arrow pointing away the ground. The next depicted a unicorn and Scales walking up to the building we were in. I guessed the unicorn was Purple because the starburst on Purple's saddlebags was added to the flank of the unicorn in the drawing. Below that was the two knocking on the door to the room I had been given, complete with the plaque. The fourth and final image showed the two walking into the tree building along with me.

I figured that they were telling me they would be back to see me tomorrow and, at some point, we would be visiting the tree. To show that I understood, I bent down to repeat the message back via gestures.

I pointed at the second image and pointed at them. At Purple's nod, I pointed to the drawn human and pointed at me. Once again, Purple nodded, this time accompanying it with some speech. Finally, I pointed at the sun and though the window and pantomimed it setting and rising as best I could. A grin broke out on Purple's face and she nodded a final time.

I rose to my feet, setting the scroll on the bed as I went, and decided on a proper, nonverbal farewell to dismiss the two with. I stood, back straight, with my feet together and my hand held vertically, palms and fingers touching, just below my sternum. I bent forward at the waist, keeping my hands vertical, until I was about to unbalance, at which point, I reversed the motion and returned to vertical.

"Until tomorrow," I said, while trying to keep from smiling.

Purple made an interesting bow with one foreleg curling beneath her and the other dipping her towards the floor, the grace in the motion telling me that it wasn't the first time she had done the maneuver.

As Purple returned to a standing position, Scales retuned the bottle he was still holding to the saddlebags and hopped onto the unicorn's back. The two left the room chatting, the door closing behind them, and I immediately moved to my suitcase to unpack a change of clothes to slip into for the night that I could also wear the next day. Luckily, my mom had the forethought to do all our laundry before we left the hotel, so all my clothes were clean, aside from the outfit I was currently wearing.

After picking a set and changing into it, I ran into the immaculate bathroom and hurriedly figured out how to use the strange-looking toilet. I hadn't felt the need to void my colon all day because of the stress and the traveling, but now I was relaxed and heading to bed and, come heaven or high water, I was having a bowel movement.

With that finished, I left the bathroom and finished my preparations for sleep, crawled into the bed, and went subconscious.

"And from the next morning when I woke up to today, I have spent my time in a routine of telling Twilight the names of anything she could get me to recognize. I thought she was trying to teach me the language, but nope, inexplicable magic translation spell!" said Jason, as he finished telling the assembled ponies the story of his first day in Equestria.

"Hold on a moment please, I'm a little confused," said Mayor Silver Scroll, the tan earth pony that Jason had been calling 'Glasses' during his monologue.

"You arrived in Equestria on the same day Twilight Sparkle brought you to see me," began the puzzled mare.

"I did."

"And you did not mean to come here."

"Yes, that's right," answered Jason, wondering what the pony was getting at.

"So why did Miss Sparkle tell me that you were a diplomat?"

Jason's head tipped to the side and his eyes lost their focus. After a few seconds, he straitened back up and his mouth opened.

"She said I was a what?"

Author's Note:

He's finally finished! Now I can get on with the actual story.

Comments

[frayboy15]

If anyone's wondering, I need to do some rewriting of chapter 2 and edit chapter 3. I've been rewatching episodes to get the layout of the Ponyville and I realized that Golden Oaks isn't in the town square.
I am about halfway through chapter 4 and I found a good map to use as reference material.
In other news, I have two short(er) stories that I'm working on. Three chapters at most each.
Keep a lookout, folksies.

[frayboy15]

8351908
Ok. Editing of Chapters is done. I'm over 2-of-4 Kilo-words into chapter 4. I've gotten my HAM license and almost have my CDL.
Wait, IT'S BEEN ALMOST A YEAR!?! WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE!!?
*Looks at watch* Oh, there it is.
Almost... *huf* There... Just a... *gasp wheeze* few dozen more... *cough* paragraphs.