A Strange Way to Spend the Day
I leaned back in my chair with a sigh, throwing down my pen on my latest failed attempt while I massaged the ache out of my wrist. I recalled when I was younger and still a student, my penmanship was more than passable. While I never really attempted any fancy calligraphy, I would still shape my letters in an aesthetically pleasing, and more importantly, legible, fashion. This indecipherable mess in front of me bore more resemblance to my bumbling preschool scrawling than it did to my more elegant high school era script.
I knew what the problem was, of course. For the last decade or more, I’ve done most of my writing on a keyboard, rather than with pen and paper. My penmanship is atrocious now. My spelling, thanks to years of spell-check dependency, is very nearly as bad. Not for the first time, I considered simply giving in and writing the entire thing on my laptop and printing it off. After all, it’s just words on paper when you get right down to it. Still, though, something in the back of my mind insisted that, in order for this to be “authentic”, I had to write using paper and pen. And not just any pen, but my grandfather's old-fashioned fountain pen, the type that nearly nobody uses anymore.
With a sigh, I pulled a fresh sheet in front of me. Like all the others that came before, this one started with the same familiar introductory line:
“Dear Princess Celestia.”
It was over an hour later when I finally finished. That blasted fountain pen had ruined, with huge blotches of uncontrolled ink, nearly as many copies as my atrocious handwriting and spelling had. However, I eventually learned how to control the flow, and I finally completed one copy that I was extremely pleased with, as well as several that were good, but not quite perfect. It was time to finish up this nonsense, or so I told myself at the time. I was carefully ignoring that spark of hope that I was secretly nurturing. Something in me just wouldn’t let me fully acknowledge that I hoped that this would actually work.
When I walked outside, behind my house, I noticed that the sun was already setting. Appropriate enough, I thought. I had already set up the fire pit, a portable steel one that my wife had insisted we buy in order to make our backyard more hospitable on these chill autumn nights. Yes, I am a Brony with a wife. I'm not sure if that's unusual or not, I don't think there's ever been a Brony census. In any case, my wife is mildly bemused but tentatively accepting of my interest in the show. Still, it was good that she was currently out of town visiting relatives. As accepting as she was of my, for lack of a better word, “hobby” (though “obsession” might be more apt), she would probably not be at all amused by my writing letters to fictional pony princesses.
I lit the fire pit, relaxing in a lawn chair and drinking a soda as I watched the flames catch and grow. Once I decided that the flames were roaring about as vigorously as they ever would, I brought out the one perfect letter, tied with a silk ribbon. I was about to casually toss it into the flames when, instead, I decided that a bit more decorum was called for. This blasted letter had taken hours to write, after all, I might as well make a bit of a production out of this instead of just burning it.
Standing, I carefully dipped one end of the rolled-up letter into the flames. I couldn’t help but imagine the princess while I was doing so, the multicolored mane, the regal presence, the gentle yet wise look in her eye. In my mind, and my likely overactive imagination, I imagined her as an immortal who had long ago become used to the pain of never having a constant companion, but also never lost her joy in the temporary ones she was able to connect with. A lonely immortal who still managed to love all of the brief sparks of life that surrounded her.
To her, they must be gone so fast. And yet, each one was so precious to her. It must break her heart over and over again to lose them, and still she kept on, still loving them, still caring, still allowing them close. I couldn’t even imagine the kind of heart a creature like that would have to have.
I admit that I’m often a melancholy type of guy. I tend to over-think things like this, such as imaginary alicorn princesses with more love than any creature should be able to hold. I admit, these thoughts moved me briefly to tears, as I held my painstakingly written notes in the flames.
Just before the flames reached my fingers, I dropped the rest of the note into the fire. The smoke rose from the fire pit, and I watched the flames dance for a while, as the sun sent out a few final rays of light in what was, admittedly, an incredibly glorious sunset. I don’t know how long I stared into the fire, but it was long enough for the flames to start dying down to mere embers.
It was around this time that I started to feel incredibly silly. It probably comes as a shock to anyone who is reading this that it took this long for me to feel this way. When I get obsessed with the thought of doing something, I tend to focus on the task rather than how I feel about it. But suddenly, it sunk in that I had just spent hours on this. First, finding and then cleaning my grandfather’s fountain pen, then driving around to find a stationary store that actually sold ink that I could use with it (along with a ream of high-grade paper to write on, since I hadn’t wanted to be cheap on this). Then I spent well over an hour scratching out letter after letter. I recalled with embarrassment the other attempts, the absolute failures that went into the trash can, and the few that were almost good enough that I held on to, in case that turned out to be the best that I could do.
I decided that it would be a good idea to consign those to the fire as well, before my wife came home and had a chance to see them.
Having made that determination, I turned to go back into the house and nearly ran smack into Celestia herself, who was standing quite silently behind me. As I stared in complete and utter shock, she solemnly said one thing to me.
It was this:
“I accept your invitation.”
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Very creative I like this story
I cant help but feel reminded of Ah My Goddess with Celestia showing up behind him. Did she come in through the mirror?
SPOILER ALERT!!!
It was time to finish up this nonsense, or so I told myself at the time.
-Going to be some magic applied to the fire, or is he just going to lace it with copper to make it burn green, or what? Also, the summary or whatever you want to call it implied that he was trying for any Fairytale Princess... maybe it means that he will get Luna instead somehow?
I noticed that the sun was already setting.
-This might explain it if Luna shows up, but "Lesson Zero" (if that was out when you wrote this) implies that Celestia uses the night as her "off hours for personal business"... then again first-contact with other dimensions is a fairly "official business" sort of thing.
, she would probably not be at all amused by my writing letters to fictional pony princesses
-Missing a period at the end.
I lighted the fire pit and,
-"lit" I think...
I imagined her as an immortal who had long ago become used to the pain of never having a constant companion,
-You mean "having lost her only, here-to-for constant companion" or something like that?
“I accept your invitation.”
Of course, he might have specificially offered her the chance to talk to her extra-dimensional fans directly.
-To what? "Hey, come over to my dimension! I'm 99% sure you aren't made of anti-matter, and the atmosphere isn't poisonous to you."?
Definitely original, very creative.
I LIKE IT! I have just finished reading this page and I can already tell I am going to like this I simply can't wait for you to continue it 
I have never read a story that involved anything but a pony or other animal interacting with a pony, never a human being. so this is definitely something that will get positive reviews, and I see it already has a few 
Magic realism.
Heh. Celestia just pulled a Batman on the guy.
http://chemistry.about.com/od/funfireprojects/a/greenfire.htm --- This may interest you. There are a bunch of other ways to produce fire that burns green...some sort of copper solution comes to mind for some reason. It just seems like the sort of addition someone doing this might try? Nicely written, in any case.
Oh damn, Celestia's a bad-ass!
WOW!
Oh shit just got real!
LOL
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this was the ad below the story
So he just went to all the trouble of writing to a POny Princess that in his universe may or may not have existed. You know I think he just crazy and the Celestia he is seeing at the end of this chapter is just a hallucination.
59486 How exactly are those "spoilers"?
I don't think there's ever been a Brony census.
There was! Perhaps there might not have been when this story was written, however there has been one since!
I'm trying this.
I will be honest here, this threw me off guard. I had the impression that a reporter (or journalist) accidentally gets sent to equestria and has a chance to interview Princess Celestia. Since you know the description was and I quote:
Now I don’t have a problem with the protagonist being a brony. My problem is the fact he’s writing a letter to a fictional character as if she was real. And it works.
It would be funny if he tried to get an interview with the voice actor of Princess Celestia or a tumbler role player as her, or maybe Lauren Faust. Instead he gets to interview the actual Celestia. That would have been funny and made a bit of sense. But the fact that this happens because of “plot reasons”. That threw me for a loop.