Chapter 1: Two mistakes
“Hmm…”
“What’s wrong, Eric?”
“Well, Spike, since I ‘came’ to Equestria, my beard hasn’t grown back.”
“A beard? You can grow them?”
“Yeah. Or at least I used to.”
Hey, Eric “Buggie” Reed here.
In my bedroom in Princess Twilight Sparkle’s castle, I was staring at a mirror hanging on a wall near the door. Spike had just stopped by my room and saw me staring at my reflection and stood outside the door.
What's going on? Over the months I've been stuck in Equestria, my beard stopped growing for some reason. Weirder things have happened to me, namely being trapped in a magical world full of talking ponies and other beings possessing human-like intelligence, so not growing an annoying beard anymore wasn't something I cared about. If anything, my thoughts were “Good riddance!” because having to shave each time it grew back annoyed me.
However, seeing Pinkie Pie hopping around Ponyville earlier, with a fake beard, made me start to seriously wonder what the deal was with mine. I learned to NEVER question Pinkie when she’s being Pinkie Pie, so I didn’t ask why she was wearing a fake beard.
As for my missing beard, maybe it stopped growing because of Equestrian magic? If so, Ponyville’s resident expert in magic, Twilight Sparkle, could probably figure out what’s wrong.
But as I pondered telling Twilight about it, said purple Alicorn walked to my doorway and stood beside Spike. She wore a cheerful smile. It was about time for a reading session that she and I have every two or three days.
“Oh, hey, Buggie, I picked out some great books for us to read this...wait, what’s wrong?” Twilight walked into my room and to me with a worried frown.
I turned to her and answered, “Not really ‘wrong’, but I’m just trying to figure something out.”
“What’s that?”
“My beard hasn’t been growing since I’ve been in Equestria, and I don’t know why.”
“I didn’t know you could grow them. Hmm.” Twilight set a hoof on her cheek and looked down. Something she often did when deep in thought. After a second, she took her hoof off her cheek and raised her head to me. “Well, I might be able to figure out why your beard isn't growing anymore, if you want.” Twilight smiled again. It was the kind she gave when her curiosity and inner researcher was triggered. “I'd just need to ask you a few questions.”
Heh, both that smile and last sentence brought back memories of the first night we talked and started bonding. Over my time in Equestria, Twilight Sparkle has literally asked me hundreds of questions about my old world, though I stopped counting once she reached a hundred during my third week here.
Not kidding. But over time, she cooled it on the questions and doesn’t ask many now, though she’d still ask some from time to time.
I was about to let Twi ask her questions. But, as I really noticed the look in her eyes and grin, the fact that she’s Twilight Sparkle registered in my noggin. When she gets that look on her face and tries to discover the secrets to something, she won’t quit till she does.
Twilight has some general knowledge about how the human anatomy works, but not about the more complicated things, especially if she can’t apply it to pony anatomy too. If she had trouble figuring out the deal with my beard, I would have been stuck with a purple shadow for who knows how long. I enjoy spending time with her, but not THAT much!
I shook my head hard and said, “Uh, no thanks, Twi. You don’t have to do anything.”
“But I thought you were curious?”
“Oh, uh, I was? N-Not really, and I hated having to always shave that thing off every two or three weeks anyway.”
Twilight frowned. “Well, okay.” She turned toward my open door, but a second later she looked back to me. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She turned towards the door and took some slow steps toward it. After the steps, she spun her head to me again. “Because I can take a little bit of time to find out what’s wrong and we can read together later.”
“It’s okay.”
Twi looked away, took more steps to the door, stopped, and faced me yet again. This time, she said nothing, but both her frown and big, purple eyes screamed, “Please?”
This was just getting sad. Poor Twi loved doing research on anything that piqued her curiosity. If I wouldn’t let this mare try, she would rack that head of hers wondering what was the deal with my beard. When she’s not allowed to even try to satisfy her OCD, things do not end well for her. And for anypony near her. Plus, over my time in Equestria, I’ve gained a brother-sister friendship with Twilight, and my heart couldn’t take my “big sis” looking like that.
I sighed and committed what I hoped wouldn’t be “mistake number two”. Mistake number one was simply telling her about my beard.
“Okay, big sis, you can--”
A big ‘ol grin curled on Twilight’s face, making her do something she’s prone to doing: looking aborable. Or "aborkable" in Twilight's case. Though, instead of laying into me with questions, she teleported out of the room.
“Weird. Spike, where you thi--”
Twilight teleported back in the room, in front of me, levitating a red quill and a scroll of paper in the air. Half of the scroll was laid out on the floor. She gathered those fast!
With an excited smile, Twilight sat down and levitated the quill over the scroll. “Okay, first, tell me more about beards so I know for sure how they grow in humans. When did you start growing them? How fast did it used to grow? Why didn’t you have one when I found you in Equestria?”
There would be plenty more questions than those, making me feel nostalgic. At her most excited, this was similar to how Twilight acted when she bombarded me with questions about my old world. Oddly, I think part of me actually misses that.
At any rate, I sat on my bed on the other side of the room, then explained to the Princess of Curiosity and Spike the history of my beards. I told them that they started growing three years ago, why I was beardless when Twilight and I first met -- it was shaved three days earlier -- and also answered the other questions Twi had.
As I explained, she wrote what I said in her paper. She didn't even ask Spike to do it, meaning Twi was really into learning about my beard!
After she had finally asked enough, Twilight levitated the quill and paper onto my room’s dresser, which was near the mirror on the wall. “I see. First, let me take a close look at your face.”
Despite Twilight saying that like a request, her actions showed otherwise. She used her magic to pull me off my bed toward her and stared at my face as she was talking. After a minute, Twilight released me from her magic and said, “I can’t see any hair. Maybe Equestrian magic destroyed your hair follicles, so I’ll get a magnifying glass for a better look at them.” Twilight teleported out of the room.
Five seconds later, she popped back in, levitating a magnifying glass in her magic. Unicorns and Alicorns don’t know how good they have it to possess the ability to levitate stuff whenever they want. And how good they have it to just be able to use magic.
With the magnifying glass, Twilight leaned her head closer and examined the hair follicles on the right side of my face. Spike got bored and left, but around ten minutes later, he returned to see if Twi was finished.
She wasn’t.
“Wow, you’re still not done, Twilight?” Spike asked.
“No. I've only checked a few of his hair follicles.”
Giving in to her was already looking like “mistake number two”.
I gasped and asked, “Hold on, are you going to check every one?”
“Of course. How can I find out for sure what’s wrong if I don’t?”
“Y-You can’t! Well, you could, but I have thousands! We’ll be here for days, if not weeks, if you look at them one-by-one!”
“Yeaaah, and Eric’s not like you and could go on forever on this stuff,” Spike pointed out.
Twilight sighed and moved both her head and magnifying glass away from me. “Fine. But from the ones you let me see, Buggie, I don’t think your hair follicles are damaged, but just aren’t growing hair. Let me check the ones on the top of your head and maybe they can give some clues.”
Like before, Twilight didn’t act like it was a request. But this time, she turned me around to inspect the hair on my head. We’re the same height when standing, but Twi flapped her wings to get airborne to have the best look at the top of my head.
“You’re not going to look at each hair follicle on my head, are you?”
I’m only going to examine a few.” Twilight studied a “few” for another ten minutes, and Spike decided to stay this time. She adjusted her exact spot to me as she looked at different parts of my head, but stayed in mid-air the whole time. At this point, I could do nothing but just let my big sis have her fun.
And wish that I kept my big mouth shut.
After those ten minutes, Twilight landed on the floor and was now in front of me. She wore a frown screaming she didn’t find anything out. “Well, nothing seems to be different about the hair follicles on your head other than they are growing hair. I don’t think the structure of your hair follicles differs that much more than those of ponies, so I don’t get it.” Twilight set her hoof on her cheek again and laid the magnifying glass onto the dresser with the scroll and paper she laid there earlier.
“Well, thanks for trying, Twi”-- I walked around Twilight and toward the doorway to my room --“and since you’re finished, we can go to the library and--”
“Wait, who says I’m finished?”
I stopped in my tracks and spun around to Twilight, who had the hoof on her face back on the floor. “But didn’t you say that you didn’t ‘get it’?”
“Not yet, but there's still a lot more to do.”
Uh-oh. This was what I was afraid would happen.
“There is?” Spike asked, beating me to the punch.
“Yeah. I can cast some spells to see if they can reveal some hidden anomalies.”
“Spells?” I took a step back. “Uh, you know that I trust you with my life, but how about ‘no’ on the spells, Twilight?”
“Why? You know I would never cast spells on you that could do any harm!”
“Yeah, but if you cast spells like this, I'd feel like your test subject, Princess of Obsessiveness!”
“I wouldn't ever think of you as a 'test subject', little bro! I just--”
“Twilight Sparkle? NO!”
“But…*sigh*...okay, I won’t do it.” Twilight’s ears drooped. She picked up the scroll, quill, and magnifying glass she had laid on my dresser before, walked by me, and then by Spike after she went through the doorway. Guess she didn’t feel like reading together now. I felt a little bad for yelling at her, but not enough to give in.
Spike watched her mope down the hallway and said, “I don’t think you should have done that, Eric. Now Twilight’s going to drive herself crazy wondering what’s up with your beard. You know how that never ends well.”
“Yeah, and it’s not that I don’t trust her with spells and later I’ll apologize to her for shouting. But still, I’m not that pony’s lab rat.”
“Uh, lab rat?”
Heh, despite being so accustomed to Equestria, I often forget that a lot of expressions from my old world can confuse Equestrians. “Oh, yeah, you wouldn’t know what that meant. Let’s just say that I’m not doing what Twilight wanted to do.”
“I understand, but you might regret this, big bro.”
I decided to take the chance and wasn’t planning to change my mind.
An hour later, I headed to the kitchen to have something to eat. I would have been eating some snacks already with Twilight during our reading session, but that...got postponed.
Walking into the castle’s kitchen, by a table, I saw the second pony I gained a brother-sister friendship with: Starlight Glimmer. She was chowing down on a sandwich that she held with her magic. “Starie” must have been hungry, and since most of it was still there, she just started eating. There was also a new, larger cabinet in the kitchen that I never saw before.
“Hey, Starie. Is Twi in here?”
Starlight set the sandwich on a plate in front of her and looked around. “Uh...unless she cast an invisibility spell to hide, I don’t think she’s here.”
“Oh, right, sorry.”
“What’s going on? Why aren’t you two having your reading session?”
“I doubt she’s in the mood to read right now. I made the dumb decision to tell her about how my beard stopped growing. And when did we get that--”
The door to that new cabinet cracked open in pink magic, but the opening pointed away from me. What seemed to be the lens of a telescope peeked out and was aimed at me, surrounded by the same pink magic. When I focused my stare at that thing, it moved back into the cabinet and the magic closed its doors. Heh, wonder who that magic belonged to?
“What?” Starlight looked toward the new cabinet. "Oh, that's right, we have a new cabinet. I guess Twilight wanted to surprise us with it, because she didn't say anything about getting one."
That further confirmed what I was thinking. I crept to the cabinet’s door that closed, opened it, and found a certain Alicorn inside. Even with the larger space in it compared to the other cabinets, she was barely able to fit in there. Despite the limited space, she still held a scroll, a red quill, and a foot-long telescope. The telescope was curved instead of straight, so despite the cabinet being cracked open in the other direction, its lens was still aimed at me when I spotted it.
Knowing she was busted, Twi dropped what she was holding onto the floor and put on one of her nervous grins. She’ll get more adorkable points.
With a smirk, I faced Starlight and pointed at Twilight. “Well, well, looky what I found, Starie. One princess that can’t take ‘no’ for an answer!”
“Twilight? What are you doing in there?” Starlight asked.
“Oh, uh, hi, Buggie, Starlight. I was just, uh--”
I looked at Twi again and interrupted, “Let me guess. First, you knew I’d get hungry soon, so after you left my room, you went out to get that cabinet and carried it here. Then, you squeezed into it and waited for me so you could ‘study’ more of my face’s hair follicles without me knowing. Am I right?”
“Maybe?” Twilight answered in a cute voice tone. It’s tough to get too mad at her when she looks adorkable like this, but she’s pushing it.
I stopped smiling and said, “Okay, Twilight, this is getting ridiculous, and how can you even get a good look at my hair follicles from in there, anyway? Is that telescope that good?” I picked up the telescope on the floor and peeked through them. Its lens pointed at Twilight, who had crawled out of the cabinet while I was telling her how silly these antics were, so her head ended up in its line of sight. I saw not just some of the individual strands of her mane's hair, but the multiple tiny fissures along the strands in great detail. It was like looking through a microscope, not a telescope.
I lowered the telescope from my eyes and faced Twilight. “Wow, this is that good, bent or not. When did you get this, Twi?”
“I’ve always had it, but I cast a spell to boost the telescope’s zooming power to make it strong enough to be used like a microscope.”
“Ha, figures you could do that, and I bet you bent it with a spell so it would face the direction you needed it to. But anyway, can you knock it off before you get carried away?”
“But I just have to find out why your beard isn’t growing! There could be an important reason why!”
“Like you said, maybe it’s because of Equestrian magic. Besides, if something serious was wrong, we’d know by now.”
That failed to calm her down. It just made her place her forelegs’ hooves on my shoulders, making me drop her telescope. “But if it’s not because of Equestrian magic, you could be the first human that this happened to, making this groundbreaking news! Doesn’t that exci--”
“Twilight!”
“Okay, fine! I’ll stop trying to study the hair follicles on your face.” Twilight took her hooves off me, turned around, picked up her scroll, paper, and telescope in magic, and stomped out of the kitchen. As she left, she grumbled, “ponyfeathers,” to herself.
Starlight giggled and suggested, “Maybe you should let her try to figure out what’s wrong with that ‘beard’ you were talking about. Besides, what could go wrong?”
Annnnd any thoughts about changing my mind went bye-bye. When that question is asked, things WILL go wrong. Badly.
“Guess you didn’t learn to never ask that question, Starie. Now a disaster will happen if I back down.”
“If you say so, but I don’t think Twilight’s giving up. I hate to say it, but it’s not like you can stop her from doing something she really wants to.”
“Why? Yeah, she’s a princess, but she wouldn’t use her title to make me let her keep trying.”
“It’s not because Twilight’s a princess, but because she’s an Alicorn. Most Unicorns’ magic can’t do much against hers, and you can’t use any magic.”
Oh, boy. Starlight had a point. Compared to me, Twilight Sparkle’s God-like because of the level of magic she possesses, so there was little I could do if she became a royal pain in the butt! And saying “little I could do” is me highballing. Twilight’s friendliness and modest nature help mask how strong she truly is, so it’s easy to forget.
Understanding the spot I was in, I facepalmed. “Oh, yeah, you’re right. I’m screwed if she won’t lay off me on her own. But then again, Twilight Sparkle’s not a pony that would use her magic to force me to do something, usually. I hope.”
My appetite left me, so I headed back to my room. Starlight stayed in the kitchen and got back to her sandwich. Several hours later, when I went to bed, since Twilight never came to bother me, I thought, Well, that was easy.
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You‘d think after nearly destroying the town because she couldn’t read any books, Eric would know to stop giving Twilight ultimatums
10045539
You'll think that, but pride can do that. Eric knows how Twilight can get carried away, which is why he refused to be her "test subject". But he forgot what might happen IF he doesn't just let her do her thing.
Kinda like a catch-22 in a way.
Poor, poor Eric. He has no idea what he has unleashed.
10045654
But he will soon!
“Good riddance!” because having to shave each time it grew back annoyed me.
Blasphemy! only the manliest of men have beard's. Any man that can grow a full thick manly beard should wear it proudly as a badge of honor. And be a beacon of hope for other men who might not be as fortunate as those of us who can grow the manliest of all hair from our faces.
Although I must admit eating soup is a challenge.
10048612
Maybe, just maybe, Eric is so manly that he doesn't need a beard to know his manliness.
Or he's one of the oddballs.
She's going to shave him bald to study the hair follicles not on his face, isn't she?
Wait, they're the same height?! Is Eric that short? (No offense Twily and Eric, but...)
11195313
A quirk in stories with Eric is that adult ponies are about the height of an adult person instead of around 3 or 4 feet tall as they usually are in HiE stories. Back when I wrote the first story with Eric, I wasn't thinking too much about how tall Equestrian ponies might really be, so I had them Eric's height.