Bermuda Beginnings

by ScarFox9700

Chapter 7: Waking up, Making New Friends, and Getting Ready

The next morning, by about 8:00am, the sun was streaming in through the window of Taylor's room. For a moment, he thought that he was back on Earth, but when he looked down at the pony mare next to him, then he remembered.

"Oh yeah, I'm now in 'Equestria'. I crash-landed here yesterday, and have been here ever since."

Redheart began to stir as Taylor moved around a bit, and she kissed him good morning. Taylor looked her over.

"You look really cute with 'bedhead'." He blushed.

"Not as cute as you cuddling me in your sleep!" She giggled in reply.

After Taylor got up, he went over to the mirrored sink against the far side of his room. After bringing the water to the right temperature, he washed his face, put his hair back into place, and making use of the toothbrush and toothpaste that he was provided with, he brushed his teeth.

Then, after putting his shirt back on, Redheart let him lean on her, and they made their way out to the main hallway, to mingle with the rest of the ponies who were in that ward at the time. Of course, by the time word reached all of them that Taylor had been brought to the hospital the previous day, anypony who was able gathered in the hallway, waiting to catch a glimpse of the new creature that walked on two legs.

When Taylor walked down the hallway at Redheart's side, they all stared at him with wide-eyed wonder. Taylor stared back for a moment.

"Um.....hello." He said shyly.

Then many smiled, and after he sat down to breakfast in the cafeteria, he was swamped with questions; everything from his name, to where he came from, what he was, and how he got to Equestria. Taylor smiled. He surmised that ponies were naturally curious, and he was all too happy to answer their questions; it helped him to remember it all better.

As he was eating, Dr. Stables and his nurse assistant came over to him.

"Mr. Taylor?"

"Yes Doctor?"

"You need to pack your bags, clean your clothes, shave, bathe, and make yourself presentable. You too Miss Redheart. But not together!!!!"

"Whatever gave you that thought Doctor?" Taylor was visibly disturbed.

"I was just making sure."

"Well, sure thing Doc, but why do I need to do this?" Taylor was curious.

"Because we have to be on the train to Canterlot by noon, and get to the castle in time to meet Princess Celestia at precisely 4:00."

"P-p-princess?!?!?!" Taylor was shocked.

"I see that you need a crash-course lesson in Equestrian history, protocol, and way of life. As you clean yourself up and pack your bags, Miss Redheart, and my assistant here, Nurse Starlight, will instruct you."

Taylor had finished eating at this point, and stood up. "I'll learn as fast as I can sir, and I'll be the best Earth ambassador that I can be."

"That's good to hear. Now then, the clock is ticking, so you'd better hop to it!"

"You got it Doc!"

The first order of business was for Taylor to get his pilot's uniform cleaned, pressed, ironed, and deodorized. This took some doing, as the laundry at the hospital paled in comparison to the one at the base in Fort Lauderdale. Nevertheless, the staff followed the clothes's cleaning instructions to the letter, and while that was happening, Taylor was in a bathtub, being scrubbed down by the two nurses, all the while trying to take in all that they had to say.

".......And Princess Celestia has been the princess of Equestria for more than 1,000 years now." Redheart was saying.

"Are Alicorn's immortal?" Taylor asked.

"Not quite", Nurse Starlight answered, "They can however live up to 5,000 standard years, and then they pass on their powers to their successor. Celestia's mother, Princess Faust, passed her powers to her, just as her mother, Princess Stardust, passer her powers to her."

Suddenly, Taylor had a major epiphany. The legend said that the first ruler of Equestria was created by what the ponies called "The Master of the Universe". He created her, along with hundreds of other animals and creatures to live in a beautiful garden. This garden was created not long after the dawn of time, and there was no evil in the world back then. The gardeners were a bipedal creature and his mate, who had the special favor of the Master. This made the princess jealous.

The Master said to her, "Be content with your lot, for you will be the mother of a new race. A race that will one day live in peace and harmony with Humanity. History will remember you well, but beware!" He warned, "A misstep will bring a terrible suffering to your children, and only a descendant of the Man who has my favor, as well as the favor of my Son, will be able to stop it."

The young mare was very perplexed, but she didn't complain anymore. She then joined in with the rest of the creatures singing praises to the Master, also called 'The Creator'.

To make a long story short though, paradise didn't last. An evil snake came to the garden. The princess had the chance to warn the Man's mate, the Woman, or the creature's presence, but because she still felt a twinge of jealousy, she did not. This was the beginning of the terrible misstep that the Creator had warned her about.

The snake told the Woman to eat of a special fruit that the Creator had warned her not to touch, lest she would die. She ate it, her mate ate it, and the princess ate what the pair didn't. Now, Sin had entered the world, and everything suffered as a result.

The world was split into two; The Humans ruled part of it, now called "Earth", and the ponies, gryphons, dragons, and other such mythical creatures ruled the rest of it, with the princess, Stardust, as their ruler. Stardust ruled her new nation, called "Equestria", with a steady, but sometimes cruel rule.

Because she had eaten of the fruit as well, The Creator told her that she would now live longer than her subjects, but at the terrible cost of losing those that she loved to Death, and that she would live on without them. She would die eventually, but not before she had a daughter that would inherit her terrible curse next. The curse was then passed to Princess Faust, and from her, down to Celestia, and her sister, Princess Luna. It remained unknown where the curse would go from there.

Taylor sat back in shock once the words of his great epiphany sank in. The two nurses stared wide-eyed at the human, and wondered if he knew what he had just said. They needn't have wondered, for in that moment, Taylor had another epiphany.

"So if my calculations are correct, Equestria has always been ruled by a princess who lives in Canterlot, and if that princess always outlives everyone else, then that means", Taylor mused, "That Celestia's grandmother was the first ruler of Equestria, and since legend says that she lived in a beautiful garden before it got cursed, the aftermath of which brought her to Equestria, then that means that her grandmother was created by God Himself, and she lived in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve when God created Earth!"

Once Taylor had finished having his second epiphany, he looked up at the two nurses. He saw the looks on their faces, and he had more questions about what he had seen in his head, but he didn't dare ask. Instead, he decided to change the subject.

He asked instead about what he should expect when he arrived at the castle. He tried to keep listening to Redheart, but she just kept droning on and on about how beautiful Canterlot City was.

"Oh boy, will she ever stop?" Taylor thought to himself. The sun wasn't even fully up yet, and he knew that already, he was going to have a long day ahead of him.

Author's Note:

If you were wondering, yes, I did just talk about the Garden of Eden from the Bible. Why did I do that? Well, I like to think that, before the Fall of Man, creatures like Unicorns, Pegasai, Gryphons, and even Dragons actually existed. Sadly, the Fall changed all of that. Why did I make Taylor a Christian you ask? Well remember, Taylor is a part of the Greatest Generation. There were far more Bible-believing Christians then than there are today. Taylor fought in WW2, and actually was religious in real life. There will be many more references to God, Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity in general, so if you don't like it, then just stop reading this story. Otherwise, sit back, hold on, and keep reading, as very soon, Taylor will be having his first meeting with Celestia.

ScarFox out for Now!

Comments

[AutumnT]

First person "I found a puppy abandoned on the street."
Second Person "You reach out to pet the puppy."
Third Person "John took the puppy home to become a new member of his family."

This story is Third Person, not Second. Please remove the '2nd person' tag.

Other things of note.
Your chapters should be at minimum 1k words for readers to take you seriously. You could easily squish the intro and first 4 chapters into a single chapter. Simply leave a blank space of several lines and/or a line between 'scenes'.

More detail in your writing would be good, but I will wait for others to roll in on critique for that.

Don't forget you can always ask for help from groups like "looking for editors".
Simply click on "groups" in the fimfiction navigation bar and then search the list.

Good Luck.

[ScarFox9700]

Ok, thank you. I removed the "2nd person" tag. And at some point, I'll look into compressing the first couple of chapters. However, if you're worried about the lack of detail, don't worry. As I started writing the original manuscript a while back, I only finished it fairly recently, and it got better as time went on. So don't fret, I'll be getting into more details on everything, including how the portal to Earth came to be, and more importantly, why.

Anyway, I hope that you keep reading my story, and if you feel inclined, please spread the word about it as well.

[Starscribe]

Okay, two things. Smaller thing first: I think you have your "epiphanies" in reverse order in this chapter. Taylor should learn about the second one first since it contains the information he needs to understand the first one.

There is some bigger storytelling advice, though. Advice that is probably too late for this story, but might help you in the future. It has to do with the explicit inclusion of the God stuff. And no, I'm not going to approach this the way you're thinking. I have nothing against a religious story. So let me start with a question: What makes a story entertaining? What is a story?

Since this isn't a class, we'll skip to the answer: A story is about a person struggling to achieve something. To get something they want. Sometimes that means they have to discover what they want along the way. The drama of a story is what makes it interesting. We believe the person might fail, so we root for them at every step of the way.

When the audience knows how it is going to end, there's no longer any drama. If you tell me at page 1 that your character saves the day on page 200, then I can close the book and check out another one that has some more drama.

So here's the first problem: Creating a character that explicitly promised by God to show up and accomplish something spoils the drama. It ceases to be interesting as a story and becomes a faith-affirming moral lesson, like a bible story. But a pony fanfiction can't be some morally affirming thing, because, in the case of bible stories, we learn from them because we treat them like they actually happened. Obviously, nothing in this story happened, so it can't be faith-building. So what does that leave us with?

Let me explain this another way. The religious elements you've included are so "powerful" in themselves that they're going to dominate the story. You only have some much room in each chapter. You can tell us about ponies being ponies or you can tell us a story about the mythical pony history you've come up with, but it's very hard to do both.

In this chapter for instance, the religious stuff comes out of nowhere, has no connection to what has happened so far, and is unlikely to have much bearing on what does happen. And the parts that do--about someone with God's favor coming to Equestria to right the balance or some such--that was only a few lines in the pages and pages of stuff about Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden that just don't matter to this story.

If, on the other hand, you were telling a story about an archeologist who was searching out mysteries, and he was discovering this over the course of his investigation, that would be one thing. But this--ask yourself, would the chapter be any harder to understand if you took out everything about the garden of Eden and god in this chapter? The answer, obviously, is no.

That's not a knock against God, the bible, or the story of the garden of eden. The problem is that it isn't nessisary, not that there's anything wrong with it. It would be exactly the same if, instead of Eden, the other nurse had instead spent a few hours lecturing Taylor about how cheese is made in Equestria. It's what we call a non-sequitur, something the Editor's pen should remove.

If you want to include religion in a story, the best way to do that is with subtlety. Instead of having the narrator explicitly confirm "this is what happened the bible is true guys," instead you have a character who has faith, and that character's faith carries them through. Maybe they slowly learn facts and those facts support their faith. Then in their darkest hour, that character's faith gives them the strength to endure and win in the end. It can be worked in as a subtle part of a story, rather than making it "dominate the page."

Lastly, the chapter seems to imply that Taylor is "favored of God and his son." which is another kind of red flag--the mary sue. Basically, a mary sue is a character that most people in the setting will like for no reason, often without explanation. And the only characters who don't like them are antagonists. Mary Sues in MLP typically manifest as characters that the Mane Six instantly love without explanation, but you've found a way to trump that by miles. Instead of explicitly saying the main character is loved by some ponies, they're loved by God himself. And not in the vague sense of "yeah god loves everyone," but in the sense of having been sent to Equestria on an explicit mission from him.

Sorry if that comes off as harsh. As I said, I've got nothing against religious elements or religious stories. The problem I have with this chapter is that your religious elements don't serve the story. They seem like they're put there just to be there, taking up tons of page space without advancing the narrative or enriching the story.

The typical defense to this is "Oh, but they will later." If that's the case, then tell us later. And tell us exactly what we need to know when later comes. Don't waste our time now with things we don't need.

[ScarFox9700]

8535256
Hello Starscribe.

Yes, I fixed the epiphanies scene.

In regards to everything else, I knew right off the bat that when I wrote this into my story, I was playing with a box of dynamite. Christianity is a somewhat sensitive topic, and maybe I should have put a warning about it when I started writing. However, this does get better, and more subtle as time goes on, (With the exception of Chapters 13-15, but that's a whole different topic for when you get to those chapters.) Truth be told, 2 years ago, when I began to write this story, I used chapters like this to show my Christian faith. I left it in when I posted it here as an experiment, however, not long after, the downvotes began. These dealt a blow to my story, and my morale. I continued to write, but with more subtly this time. I learned my lesson. Don't push Christianity into a story like this. I now see that it was a nice idea, but one that was met with criticism. For the sake of my original manuscript, which is the foundation for this entire story, as well as my personal preference, I'm going to leave this chapter as it is. I took my beat-down, learned my lesson, and made the rest of this story better, with only mentions of God here and there, with the exceptions of Chapters 13, 14, and 15, but that's a topic for when you get to those chapters.

[SOG AVENGER 225]

Dude I think my brain just had a aneurism

[ScarFox9700]

8714401
Hello SOG AVENGER 225,

And yes, I know that this story has problems! This was my very first story, and I didn't know what I was doing back then. It's gotten a lot of criticism, and I know why. I've fixed this problem in my later stories, and they've done, or have been doing, MUCH better than this one. This story was largely an experiment, which failed. I'm still trying to salvage this story, but I'm afraid that most of the damage has already been done. I'll continue the story soon, as it IS NOT dead yet, but I'm doing other writing work at the moment, as well as college, and a job. It won't be on hiatus, as I still am writing it, but It's just going to take longer than I originally thought. I'll get to it eventually though!

[Wir sind verloren]

Dude so long as no one FORCES me to worship God I'll be fine! Though I am Christian.

[ScarFox9700]

9229424
Hello Trixiecat,

And sadly, it was putting Christianity into this story that doomed it. I had it going well, but then I put too much in, and it went into an out of control tail spin. I did everything in my power short of re-writing it to save it, but alas, my efforts were in vain. The story crashed and burned, and will need a re-write to save it. It was a great idea, and it has a solid foundation, and a good frame, but yet, some of the walls are rotten, and need to just be replaced.

I did learn my lesson here, and when "Battleship Express" came to be, it had SOME Christianity in it, but not enough to hurt the story as a whole.