My World, Our Life

by CEverw00d

Ch 3. The Weekend

Ch. 3 The Weekend

I’d woken up to the sound of the usual alarm. Luckily I hit the snooze button before it woke up Stardust. She looked very cozy and, dare I say, safe. It’s a Friday, the last day of the week before I can spend a nice, free weekend with her and get to know more about her. For now, I got ready for work and went about my morning routine with a sort of feeling of being refreshed. I suppose I haven’t been this happy in some time, it felt good. This time, while preparing my breakfast, I prepared some breakfast for Stardust as well. I cut up the apples and added some cinnamon. I left a note for her, telling her about where I went and about the food in the refrigerator. It made me think about what else she might want to eat, I’m sure she’d get bored of apples and carrots all the time. I pondered these things on my ways to and from work.

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Once I’d arrived at my door, I paused to remember yesterday’s events. I turned the handle, locked. Good. I unlocked, went in and, for the first time, said aloud, “I’m home.”

Stardust came trotting in from the bedroom, “Welcome back!”

I set my things down and loosened my clothing in preparation for a weekend that would certainly be fun. I went into my room, my books were scattered around the room and my laptop was partially opened. I looked over to Stardust, “What happened in here?”

She looked up at me, she wasn’t sure if I was mad at her or just curious, but apparently she was practiced in honesty, “I got bored of waiting, so I went through your books. I also tried to use your computer thing, but…” She looked sadly at her hooves; I figured what probably went wrong there.

I didn’t have much in the ways of reading material, just mangas and books I’d purchased in my college days. I’m sure textbooks would be pretty boring. “Did you just get bored of one and look through another or something?”

“No, I read them.”

“Read them? Even the textbooks?”

“Er, not the textbooks, but those funny backwards-reading comics.”

“Still, you read all of them while I was away?”

“Heehee, I like reading a lot. I’m super-fast at it!”

No kidding. Maybe I’m just slow, but it usually takes me an hour or two to go through a manga. I could already tell that I was going to run out of reading material for her real quickly. I began picking up the books and putting them back where they were; she used her magic to help. It’s perfectly normal for a unicorn to use magic like that, but it was still amazing to me, since this was the first time I’d witnessed her using it. Maybe I could get her some books on magic. Then I remembered the only books on magic out there are cheap entertainment tricks and weird voodoo Satanism stuff.

She nudged me in the leg to snap me out of it, “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head, “Oh, no, it’s nothing, I was just thinking. I guess you like to read in your free time? Is there anything else you like doing?”

“Hmmmm. I like reading, and I like cooking, and I like eating, and I like practicing magic, and I like that movie you showed me. Hmmmmmmmmm.” She tried to think up more things that she might like.

The first thing that came to my mine was to get her a cook book and maybe some ingredients to play with. Then I remembered that I should ask her about food, “What do you like to eat usually?”

“I like hay, and cupcakes and cookies; I like candy and apples; I like all kinds of fruit actually. I like lettuce and carrots.”

“Do you like oatmeal?”

“Oatmeal?”

“Yeah, it’s like….oats…but kinda soupy, and you can add stuff to it. Do you like potatos?”

“I’ve never had oatmeal or potatoes.”

“Then it’s something for us to try!”

I had a box of oatmeal on top of my Mini-fridge, I never ate the stuff, too lazy to make it myself. I wondered how I should talk to her about meat. I’m very sure that ponies are vegetarians, and I don’t know if she would be okay with me eating it either. It would be a topic for the future. For now, I’d go vegetarian I guess.

We had oatmeal for supper. I laid the various spices and things that could be added to make it taste better. She seemed to enjoy it on its own, but quickly went overboard with the brown sugar and cinnamon. Still, it was something that she liked, and I’m glad that she did.

That night we talked about our families. My parents and siblings all were hard workers and seemed more mature than I ever was, I’d developed apathy for everyone and everything; I didn’t care for anyone, not even myself. Still, I kept it simple, that my family was nice and caring people, that we had fun together and that we all went our separate ways. I didn’t tell her that I didn’t much like my siblings or that I generally detested my parents. It made me feel bad when she told me about her family.

She didn’t have parents. She was separated from them only days after she was born. Apparently, her parents were kind and fairly wealthy ponies who lived out in the country. One had to go down a path through a beautiful forest to get to their establishment, which was small despite their wealth. They were generous, smart, and kind ponies. But one night a forest fire had started. The path to get out of the forest was already ablaze so almost nobody could come to the house to warn the family of the approaching fire. The family would awake to Stardust’s crying as the house caught fire. Having his room next to hers, Stardust’s brother was the first one to get to her, but before he could get out the doorway, it collapsed. He escaped with his little sister out the window and into the woods that were yet to be on fire. They didn’t know if their parents made it out of the flaming home or not, but they could not afford to wait.

The young siblings would be found later by the nearby villagers in a small cave by the lake in the middle of the forest. The siblings were taken in and cared for by every pony in the village where they’d been living up to this point.

And now, separated from her parents, separated from her brother, she’s here in a strange new world full of these being unknown to her called humans. It only made me want to care for her more.

Having shared her story, she looked me in the eyes and smiled, she didn’t want me to be sad about it. She said she was done being sad about it. She wanted to be happy. I could only smile and agree.

I put on the Disney movie "Aladdin" and we both fell asleep during the movie.

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The following morning I woke up rather early, a natural habit with or without the alarm. I decided I would use this opportunity to go out shopping for the week to come, since I’d run out of apples and carrots already. It would also give me tomorrow to look over my financial schedule and tweak it a little to the expenses of having Stardust live with me. I hated thinking of it like that, it’s true I’m going to have to spend a tad bit more money to support us both, but she is most certainly not a burden to me by any means. I left her a note, just in case she got up before I returned.

It was times like these I wished I had a car, carrying everything back to the apartment was quite a bit, but I was rather satisfied with what I got. Eggs, flour, baking soda, various fruits, things I could add to a salad, since I don’t expect to be eating sandwiches anymore, and various herbs and spices. I didn’t know what kinds of foods they were all used in, but they’ll be nice ingredients to experiment with. I also got a cook book and the first of the Harry Potter series. I hid those; I wanted to give them to her as gifts, surprise her with some things to read to spend her time.

She woke up after an hour or two and I immediately got started on breakfast, a bowl of Cheerios and an apple for each of us. I set her place to sit across from me, but as soon as I sat down, she moved everything to the spot at the corner beside me, then beamed a silly grin at me. That’s just way too cute, I couldn’t help but laugh a bit. We both ate our breakfasts. She didn’t much like the taste of plain cheerios. I didn’t either, but if I add sugar to it, then what’s the point of a healthy cereal? She put sugar in hers and ate it with more enthusiasm.

After that, I showed her all the fresh food I put into the refrigerator this morning. I showed her where everything was so that if she ever got hungry while I was away, she would know where everything was. While she looked through it, I washed the dishes and went to go get the two books.

I brought them in, one in each hand and said, “Ta-daaaaah!” I felt really lame but also really happy that I could be so lame for any reason. She saw the two books, inhaled with excitement and dashed towards me to look at them. A story about wizards that captured the hearts of minds of a generation, and a book full of many possibilities to play with, what could be better? She took the two books with her magic and inspected them, flipping through the pages of both at the same time. I squatted down and asked, “So, what do you think? Think these will keep you occupied for a little while?”

She set both books down and leaped at me, wrapping her hooves around my neck and shouting, “Thank you!”

She was small but she still knocked me over and we both lay on the floor, pleased in each other’s company.

As I got up, she set the cook book on the table for later read while she took the Harry Potter book into my room and dove right in. I took this time to open up my laptop and check my e-mail, since I hadn’t for a couple of days. Nothing note-worthy. I’m not sure what I was expecting. I decided to look through a few news sites, I wouldn’t normally check them, but I figured they might say something about the storm or the unexpected eclipse on Wednesday, or maybe even something about her brother. The eclipse and storm were mentioned, though only mentioned as “mysterious” and “unexplained” and how scientists were looking into them for more details. One detail did pop out though, the solar eclipse is usually caused by the moon blocking out the sun. Reports say that the moon was in a totally different location at the point of the eclipse and that whatever blocked out the sun was not the moon.

After a few minutes of this, Stardust came out of my room and over to me. I was sitting in my lounging chair so she came over to my side and looked over the armrest at what I was doing. I stopped and looked over at her; I asked, “Do you need something?”

“Mmmmmm noooooooo. I’m just checkin’ what you’re doooin’.”

“I was seeing what they had to say about the eclipse and the storm on the day that I found you. That stuff isn’t normal.”

“What’s an eclipse?”

I guess if the sun and moon were controlled by Celestia and Luna, an Eclipse would never happen, “A solar eclipse is when the Sun gets blocked out by the moon.”

“Oh? Maybe Luna is mad at Celestia or something.”

“Uhh. Celestia and Luna don’t move our sun and moon. They sort of…move on their own. Well, our sun doesn’t move….much…”

“Really? But how? Do you guys have some sort of magic you all have or something?”

“No. Ours just….does. Like, we didn’t make it move, we just found out our planet and our moon both move on their own. It’s normal, like plants growing. No magic involved.”

“Reeeaaaaally? That’s weird. Are you sure?”

Thinking back to my philosophy class in college, technically I’d have to say no, I’m not sure, that I’m never sure, and can never be sure, but there’s no reason to complicate this, “Yeah, I’m sure. Some really smart people figured all that out and wrote it down so we’d all know about it.”

“It’s still weird though. And…what’s a ‘people’ “

“Uhhh. People is….are…..a bunch of persons. And a person is like me! It’s what we call ourselves, a person or a human being, or just a human, just like you call yourselves ponies. We also sometimes call ourselves ‘bodies.’ Like ‘somebody’ or ‘everybody’ instead of ‘somepony’ and ‘everypony.’ Get it?”

“I think so. I’ll try to remember!”

“Hehe, don’t worry about forgetting, I’ll know what you mean.” As I said that, I rubbed her head.

“Also….I was wondering….if…maybe…I could come with you?” She moved her hoof in circles and looked towards the ground as she asked.

“Come with me? Where?”

“To school. Maybe I could be one of your students!”

“Oh. To school? That would be…..uhm….” That would be troublesome. I could get in trouble for bringing a normal animal to school with me, bringing a talking cartoon pony would probably get me not only fired but all kinds of publicity. The last thing I want is everyone knowing about this. It’s dangerous.

“It’s okay if you don’t want me to. I’ll just stay here and wait for you.” She looked from the floor to the side. She tried not to look disappointed, but it was clear that she wanted to go, if not for the school experience, then just to be with me.

“No no. I do want you to, but I can’t risk a whole bunch of people seeing you or knowing about you. There are dangerous people in my world, a lot of them can be meaner than monsters. Maybe even scarier.”

“Really? I don’t think so; no pony I’ve ever met was meaner or scarier than a monster!”

“These people aren’t ponies. We’re like ponies, but we aren’t the same. Some are just always mean and angry all the time; you don’t know what they would do to you.” It was then that my mind began to think about the more extreme side of the brony community and shuddered. It’s not my place to judge or criticize anyone’s interests, but I simply cannot let anyone like that know about Stardust.

“Well…if you say so.” She was partially disappointed and partially curious about what I’d said and what I was thinking.

“Maybe…..maybe you could be there if they didn’t see you.”

“Yeah! Maybe I could hide!”

“But hiding you while traveling would be kinda difficult. You wouldn’t happen to know some sort of teleporty spell or invisibility spell, would you?”

“No, I’ve never learned any spells like those.”

But maybe….maybe she could. I don’t know what it takes to make a unicorn’s spell happen, but I guess this might be where the brony community comes in handy. I said to her, “Give me a minute.” She went off back to my room to read more Harry Potty while I searched the internet for something that might give me a clue about how her spells work.

I already had some sort of clue from seeing Twilight Sparkle use her magic in the show. The Magic power needed to do something can cause some physical fatigue but ultimately does not depend on the strength of one’s body. Concentration and will seem to be constants in anything having to do with magic. Twilight’s various “spells” didn’t seem to require anything different than one another, no special materials or memorizing of special symbols or anything. If I had to guess, they were just differences in what to concentrate on and what to ‘will’ to happen. If that’s the case, instead of trying to find out how to do certain spells, we could possibly just create the spells. After looking through various theories, I was ready to give it a try.

I called Stardust back in and looked at her confidently. She didn’t know what was going on. I said to her, “I want you to try an invisibility spell.”

She tilted her head, “But I told you I haven’t learned that spell yet.”

“I know, I know, but I want you to try anyway. Just…try wanting to be invisible. Concentrate on something like not being able to be seen. Set your mind to it and let the magic to the rest.” Of course, this was all very vague and really sounded like nonsense, but hey, I have a magical little unicorn in my apartment, this stopped making sense since Wednesday.

“Oooookaaaaaay…..” She said hesitantly. She closed her eyes and tried to think of it. I guess it was an abstract thought but she found some sort of idea. Her horn glowed brighter and brighter with a color that fluctuated between various shades of purple.

When it stopped glowing I could hardly believe my eyes. She was still visible, but various parts of her were very much invisible. Parts of her were see-through while a few other areas were more hazy. She’d managed to make her left eye and most of her mane entirely invisible. I smiled and said, “You did it!”

She looked at herself frantically, “Really!? You can’t see me?? I can still see me, but you can’t see me!?”

I went over to the bathroom to get a mirror and showed her what she’d done. Then she said, “Aww, I’m not TOTALLY invisible!”

I rubbed her head, “Practice makes perfect. You did really well for your first try at something like this!”

She beamed a grin at me and let off a, “Hee hee!”

“Now you can try another spell.”

“Hm?”

“Making yourself visible again!”

“Oh! Yeah!” She closed her eyes again and her horn began to glow. This one stopped much sooner and seemed to be easier to pull off. A thin ring of light moved from the tip of her horn and over her body to the tip of her tail, revealing her as clearly as she was naturally as it passed over her. She looked into the mirror again and saw her flawless success at reversing the invisibility spell.

“You did a great job, I’m proud of you.”

She grinned. She continued practicing her invisibility spell, each time getting different parts of herself to be invisible, each time getting more of herself at the same time. After a while, though, it was clear that she was becoming exhausted by the non-stop practice. I told her to relax awhile and we took a little snack break and each had a granola bar.

I decided to show her how to use my computer. I had a mouse that I could plug in, one that she could move more easily with her hoof or with magic. I also posed the idea of using her magic to levitate pens to poke the keys in order to type. She learned fast. I showed her Paint, Microsoft Word, and some of the games I had on my computer as well as how to insert a DVD and play it. I also told her not to click any of the icons to open up the internet. That was a big resource with many dangers lurking in it; I would want to spend another day explaining all of it. Most of all, she might find out about MLP:FIM, and I wanted to talk to her about it before she was exposed to that. I wasn’t sure when I would tell her about it though.

The rest of the day passed and she practiced more, read more, and skimmed through the cook book. She saw many recipes that she wanted to try, particularly the recipe for banana nut cupcakes. I didn’t have nuts or those pans needed for making cupcakes; it just never occurred to me that I might need one.

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Sunday, it seemed like my weekend went by far too quickly. I always dread waking up on Sundays. I do like my job, but sometimes I just like to stay home and do nothing.

I’d woken up before Stardust had and I decided, once again, to go out shopping. This time, more specifically, I was getting cooking ware and some nuts. Once I got them, I headed right back and started finding places to put it all. Fortunately, I usually didn’t have all that much excess food or spices lying around, so my cupboards were mostly empty. I got out most of the dried ingredients needed for the cupcakes and set them on the counter by the faucet.

After all that, I set to reworking my weekly-to-monthly financial schedule. Buying all the things I normally wouldn’t get certainly caused a dip, but I don’t expect anything like that to happen again, unless I buy more books. Maybe I should start stopping by the school library. I had a general idea of what the weekly cost was going to be with Stardust and myself living here and reallocated how much I would put into saving and other such things.

Stardust woke up and came trotting in with a perky, “Mornin’!”

I greeted her back with a “Good morning.”

Her eyes immediately passed over all the dried ingredients, nuts, and the cupcake sheet on the counter. Her eyes sparkled with excitement and I knew she wanted to start immediately but I said, “Hold on there, Star, we gotta eat breakfast before we start baking any cupcakes.”

She turned to me, not smiling, her mouth was agape with surprise as she mumbled out inaudibly, “You called me Star…”

Unable to hear her mumble, I asked, “What?”

“You called me Star. You called me Star!” She started hopping in circles, now smiling again.

I guess I hadn’t thought about the implications of saying it but now it’s said, “So I did. So, what do you want for breakfast, Star?”

“Mmmmm, let’s have oatmeal, Charlie!” She was grinning now, I don’t know if she was teasing me or if she was comfortable with calling me Charlie now. Either way, it was nice.

So we had oatmeal and sliced pears this time. She really liked pears too. We talked about possible things we could add to the cupcakes. I was a little bit worried, but I was sure she was mostly kidding.

Immediately after, we went to making the cupcakes. I handled the wet ingredients and cutting the bananas while she handled the dry ingredients. When putting them together, she wanted to taste the batter and add more brown sugar. I told her a little bit. So she added a little bit of brown sugar to my hair. I returned fire by reaching for the flour. Naturally, it turned into a fun-filled exchange of brown sugar and flower, which finally ended with her “winning” and both of us laughing.

We set the batter into the trays and let them bake while we cleaned ourselves up. She took a bath, I helped wash her. She returned the favor by helping “clean” me by splashing me. Another splash fight ensued and before we knew it, the cupcakes were ready.

Still dripping wet, I turned off the oven and took the cupcakes out to let them cool off. She came out dripping wet too, but she didn’t care, the cupcakes smelled delicious. I warned her about how hot they were and told her to go dry herself off. I did the same and changed into my pajamas. I didn’t intend to go anywhere today so I figured if I was going to change, I might as well change into some cozy clothing. She said I looked silly.

We went the whole day snacking on cupcakes, she practiced her magic and I casually browsed the internet for any new information. Nothing.

Night approached. After supper I went to brush my teeth. I’d given her one of my spare toothbrushes for herself. When I finished and came out of the bathroom, she wasn’t there. I checked my room, she wasn’t there either. I was making my way for the door to see if it was still locked when she suddenly shouted, “BOO!”

Shocked, I stumbled back and looked around for her. I didn’t see her at all. I called out for her, “Staaaar?”

“Charlie, I’m right here!”

“Where is ‘here?’ “

“Right in front of you!”

I looked in front of me, there was nothing. It finally occurred to me. She was completely invisible. I reached out to touch the air and felt her fur. I felt around, I was touching what was apparently her cheek. She’d mastered it in only two days. She must be talented or very skilled in magic, it was amazing. I said softly, “You did it. You’re completely invisible.”

“Yeah! I did it!” She pounced on me, I felt her arms on my shoulders and something slam against my chest. I fell down and could feel her on top of me. She used her magic to make herself visible again, her silly grin of excitement and success. I couldn’t help but grin back, even though my lower back still sort of hurt from falling. She then asked excitedly, “So does this mean I can come to school with you!?”

I thought about it. There’s no reason why not. She could be invisible or hide when she’s not invisible. Nobody will get in trouble and she won’t be lonely. I nodded and said with satisfaction, “Yes. You can come to school with me.”

“Yippee!” She jumped around the room, laughing and excited.

“But that means you have to wake up early with me and hold on tight when we bike to school.”

“That’s okay! I’ll be sure to hold REAL tight!”

I knew there’s nothing to deter her now. There’ll just be fun days ahead.

We headed to bed early so that she could have plenty of energy and rest for tomorrow. No movie was needed; she snuggled right up to my side and fell asleep with a big smile of satisfaction on her face.

Sleep tight, Star, we’ve got a big day ahead of us.