The Irish Man

by The Irish Brony

From Now On

I lay in the tent staring up at the calling. I have been up all night thinking through everything that had happened. "I could have stopped this, I could have saved him, if only.." scenario run through my head. The night ticked on, not carrying that what had gone down had broken the very soul that was supposed to be sleeping.

Everything around me started to go black as the cold rushed in. I sit up quickly as the cold wind stops and a blue shimmer starts to form around me. It spreads out in all directions creating the ground. I look up to see the stars of the night sky giving light to this strange place. I slowly stand up as I try and understand what just happened.

"We have finally had the pleaser to meet thy," a comforting feminine voice says from behind me. I turn slowly around to see a dark blue alicorn with a blue mane and tail. Her mane is covered in little white stars like the night sky. On her rump is her cutie mark, which was a recent moon.

"Who are you?" I ask my voice echoing in the fast void.

"I am Princess Luna. Princess of the night, and dreams," She says, gesturing to the area we are in. "This is a type of connection between our mind and thy,"

"You're the voice, but why?" I ask.

"When I first saw you, I was skeptical at first. We've had humans in the past before coming into our world. I watched you, even tried to communicate with you. You were hurt, and I thought I could help."

"You're a little late," I responded coldly.

"We don't mean Finn. You need to let go, if you don't you are going to miss the things that are right in front of you," Luna says, slowly walking over to me as she talks. She stands just a little taller than me.

"I don't understand," I say confused.

"You might not now, but when you wake you will," Luna's horn lights up, blinding.

---

We get out of our tent in awkward silence. Neither of us talked to each other. I'm still reeling from what happened during my sleep as I grab my bag as Dash takes the tent down. I slowly place my stuff into my bag. We make our way to the fire pit and sit down across from each other. I look down at the ground, unable to think of anything coherently. I hadn't been able to sleep at all.

Dash finally cracks the silence by saying, "We should go home," I look up at her to see sadness plastered on her face.

"It had to happen Dash," I say. She looks at me and smiles. For that seconds, my heart stopped. I smiled back as I remembered why I liked her. That then lead to me remembering Fluttershy back home. My eyes widen as my thoughts finally correlate to one point.

"Shit!" I yell, grabbing my bag and standing up quickly. "I need to go, I have to apologize and tell some pony how I feel about her," I say, turning and jogging away before Dash's voice stopped me.

"Brogan!" I turn around to see her smiling at me. "Go get her," She says, giving me a node. I node back and start running back through the forest.

---

My feet hit the ground at a constant but fast rate as I run towards Fluttershy’s cottage.

“What have I done?” I think as I almost miss the turn to head out of the forest. I slide to a stop and turn around to head down the path towards town. I jump over a downed tree on the path.

“I hope she’ll forgive me at the very least.” I go running out of the forest at full speed as I run-up to the door. I stop and take a breather. The wind completely knocked out of me from running. It takes me a few seconds before I knock on the door and start to slowly open the door.

“Come in,” the sweet but broken voice of Fluttershy radiates through the house. I cringe at her hurt voice knowing full well I caused it.

“Fluttershy, I’m back,” I say meekly as I slowly shut the door. I can hear her sadness from where I stood. Fluttershy walks out of the kitchen with her bangs over her eye as she looks at the ground. I kneel down and hug her, which makes her flinch violently before she relaxes.

“I’m sorry,” I start to apologize as tears run down my face. “I’m sorry for closing you out when you opened up to me. I’m sorry for running. I’m sorry for hurting you.” Fluttershy pulls away and places a hoof on my mouth to stop me from talking.
She smiles at me as she moves her bangs out of her face. “It’s ok, I’m just glad you're ok. I thought..” Fluttershy looks down at the ground as she lowers her hoof. I relax as I lean against my legs. “I thought you hated me for asking,”

“Never!” I say, making Fluttershy flinch as she looks up at me. “I could never hate the pony that got me used to this world. The pony who has had no problem with me living here,” I place my hand gently on her cheek. She smiles and leans into my hands as I rub her cheek with my thumb.

“I love you to Fluttershy,” I say. Before Fluttershy can react, I place my mouth against her’s and kiss her. She squirms a little but doesn't break the kiss. She closes her eyes and presses back. Her lips were soft and tasted like fish.

“Must have brought fish to her animal friends,” I think. We separate and look at each other as I lower my hand away from her face. We stare into each other's eyes for what seemed like forever as the light of the setting sun cut through the house. The red and orange light lights up the side of her face as she smiles. Tears form in her eyes as she jumps up and hugs me.

I almost fall over in surprise. I smile and wrap my hands around her body. “I love you Brogan” She pauses before pulling back. “Oh and this..” She says before smacking me in the face. I turn to look back at her in shock as I grab my jaw. “Is for breaking my heart,”

“Didn’t expect that, but totally deserved,” I say as we embrace each other back into a hug. “How about tomorrow we start on the right hoof and have a nice data at your animal sanctuary,”

“That would be nice,” Fluttershy says softly as she rubs her head into my neck. I place my head on top of her’s.

---

I stand in front of the bathroom mirror as I brush my hair as best as I can. The date wasn’t going to be formal, but I thought I might as well look somewhat presentable for Fluttershy on our first date. I had put on a nice red hoodie and blue shorts. I told her to meet me at the sanctuary.

I open the door and walk into the living room. I grab my bag and some wood. I asked Fluttershy if we could have a fire. She agreed but asked why. I didn’t want to tell her at the moment that I was going to burn the last of my belongings that belonged to my dad.

“Nice save Romeo,” The voice in my head says as I step out of the cottage.

“You’re getting better at talking with me in my head,” I think back as I head down the road towards the sanctuary.

“We have gotten better at projecting our thoughts to you,”
“But why talk to me?” I think, looking up at the invisible thing.

“Because thy is a working creator of society like the rest of our little ponies,” I chuckle at the last part. “What is so funny?”
“Nothing,” I replied. My mind starts to wonder as I walk through the park. I smile as my face turns beet red.

“You humans get excited fast don't you?”

“Ok, now you are reading my mind. I could get Twilight to repel you from my head if you keep doing that,” The voice goes silent as my face returns to normal. I walk into the sanctuary and look around. The center of the place was a is a beautiful waterfall that leads into a lake at the bottom. Animals roam around freely, playing, eating, and drinking. I feel something hit my foot. I look down to see angel bunny looking up at me as he taps one of his feet with his hands on his hips.

“Calm down, I just got here,” I say as I rethink who I was talking to. “Where is Fluttershy?” I ask. Angel bunny hops away and I follow. He hops to a building that looks like a small barn. Angil nods his head towards it like he is telling me to open it. I place my bag and wood down by the door before opening the door.

“There you go, be careful next time Gefery,” Fluttershy says sweetly. I look in to see Fluttershy taking care of a gerbil. My eyes stay fixed on Fluttershy. She has her bangs brushed back with a flower clip holding it out of her face. She seems brighter than normal like she just took a bath.

“Hello,” Is all I can crock out with a big smile on my face. The gerbil runs past my feet as Fluttershy turns to look at me. She looks up at me as a small but very cute smile grows on her face. My heart races, almost ready to bust out of my chest.

“Good morning Brogan, how are you this morning?” Fluttershy asks, standing up and slowly walking towards me.

“I’m good,” I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. “You look great,” I say, stepping out of the way to let her out.

“Oh,” Fluttershy blushes as she tries to hide it behind her hoof. “Thanks, I didn’t know how dressed up we need to be,” She says, pushing back her hair. I squat down and hug her.

“You didn’t need to do anything, you are perfect the way you are,” I say as we nuzzle into each other's necks.

“Thanks,” Fluttershy responds as we sit there in an embrace. We let go of each other as I stood up.

“Do you have a fire pit here?” I ask, looking around.

“Ya, it’s over by the lake,” Fluttershy says, pointing to a fire ring near the lake. I grab my bag and the firewood as we walk over to the fire pit and sit down. I place three logs in a tepee shape as Fluttershy adds some kindling. I pull out my flint and steel from my bag and light the fire. This time it catches easily.

I pull out my dad’s journals out as the fire spreads. Fluttershy stands up and walks back towards the shake. I watch her as she walks. She looked great as always, from the flower in her hair to her slightly plush rump. I smile like an idiot as my face turns red. I look back to the fire as Fluttershy slips into the shed.

“Hay, hay, hay, stay out of my shed,” I think to myself as I chuckle. The red from my face goes away as I laugh. “Where have I heard that from?” I think as Fluttershy comes out of the shed with a basket full of sandwiches. I hold one of my dad’s journals and look at it as Fluttershy sits down next to me and sets down the basket.

“This is the last I have of my father,” I say, glossing my thumb over the ruff journal. Fluttershy looks at me sadly. “It’s also the last thing that connects me to the human world,” I say as I throw the book into the fire. Fluttershy looks shocked as the book goes up in flames.

“W-why would you do that?” Fluttershy asks as I grab another book. I watch as the paper slowly melts into ash before responding.

“Because I live here now,” I say, throwing the other book in. “With you and everypony else,” I say, before wrapping my arm around her shoulder. She smiles and shifts closer to me. Nuzzling into my chest as she closes her eyes happily. “You are my new family Flutters,”

We sit there and watch the fire burn the books away. Animals drink from the lake and run around the sanctuary not batting an eye at us.

“I hope I can love you as much as you love me,” Fluttershy says, looking up at me with a small smile.

“Just be yourself,” I say, rubbing my cheek against the top of her head. She nuzzles unto my body more in repons. “I love you Flutters,”

“I love you B..” Fluttershy pulls away and looks up at me in question. “Can I call you B?”

I smile before responding, “Of course you can Flutters.” She smiles and sighs before leaning against my chest again.

Author's Note:

I'm done, this chapter might be rushed and bad, but fuck it I want this story done so here it is.

Comments

[fahpeerawa204]

Oh, man. It ends here? Well, I guess I will for your possible sequel. If you plan to, of course. Anyways, good story.

[Handyman]

Alright, at the behest of my friend I gave this a read through.

You actually have the beginnings of a good sense of pace but it comes across as very rushed and chaotic, which isn't very good as you don't really allow a scene to build up properly. However, at the very least this meant I was never bored reading the story as it didn't linger overly long on miscellaneous points, despite this you could do with taking your time and considering your pacing and what you want the scene to communicate to the audience. This is very hard to do properly with a first person perspective which greatly limits narrative perspective and scene composition as we're purely locked into the perspective character's point of view and can't notice anything else about the scene the character is not directly observing right that second. When done well this can be a great tool for narrative tension building but the vast majority of the time it is a handicap.

Thankfully there wasn't too many action scenes in the story as this limitation would greatly hinder your ability to communicate the chaos of the situation adequately to the audience. For example with the battle against the Timberwolves in the second to last chapter, we're limited to Brogan's perspective, he see Dash get hit but we don't linger on how bad the hit is, she seems fine, but she is described as sounding sleepy and she collapses at one point seemingly randomly before the climatic scene with Brogan and Finn on the Ravine. I understand you mean to imply Dash got pretty roughed up while battling the Timberwolf on her own but we the audience never got to understand just how bad that final hit rattled her, so it comes across as random and out of nowhere that she collapsed like that. Also there was that third Timberwolf (the one Brogan yeeted a fireball straight to the face) that just sorta disappears, I understand you wanted to end the fight quickly for the climatic scene but it a very noticeable oversight. Another place where this limitation screws with the reader was the chapter just after Brogan woke up from the night of the school bonfire party and the events thereof, and we get the revelation that Twilight had ahem sampled Brogan's wares on what was, essentially, Day Two of his time in Equestria.

This revelation came so out of left field that I actually went back to the chapter where she was getting Brogan's measurements, both the final scene where it cuts off and the first scene of the next chapter where they are both embarrassed. It came across, at my absolute worst interpretation, that Twilight had no sense of personal space and FOR SCIENCE'd her way to breaking Brogan's personal space boundaries for her measurements, which is funny and awkward which fits many common depictions of funny awkward purple horse wizard princess, so I assumed that's what happened and nothing more intimate, because being locked into Brogan's perspective it was hard to pick up on subtext from tertiary narrative clues, so the latter revelation came as something of a shock.

Speaking of narrative, it really did feel as if you weren't sure where you wanted to go with this story. An adventure? A slice of life? Mystery? It had elements of all of them but never committed to any of them on the macro level. It bounced between hinting at Brogan's knowledge of ancient Celtic magic, which brings up all sorts of world building questions that never even get asked much less answered. Which happens a lot in the story, because there are interesting world building elements, not least of which is brought up very early on with the tools in Fluttershy's kitchen having hoof shaped indents to allow them to click onto their hooves to allow easier tool use. But this or anything like this is never brought up again, or commented on, even passively by Brogan. So too with Luna's eventual revelation there had been other humans to Equestria before (besides his dad), but that was very late in the story so it cant be held against it.

On the micro level, it never seems to follow through on the consequences of the stories developments. Brogan needs a job, so he gets one working at Applejack's farm. Ok, standard fare, lots of authors have their humans do that. But we never actually see it, even occasionally, outside of one scene during the Bet arc where he's messing with Rainbow Dash. AJ's farm is good slice of life fodder, as is her family and other secondary characters of Ponyville but it never gets seems to get utilized for it despite the story almost never leaving the town. Speaking of the Bet Arc, the bet was hyped up for three chapters where they were pranking eachother to win the prank war with some fairly serious consequences, becoming the servant of the other for like a week. But once it concluded and one of them wins... We don't see it. Its not even mentioned again, not even as a joke, its like the arc never happened.

His father popping out of nowhere was actually a shocking development and a genuine twist in the story I didn't see coming, and the heavy implication of timey wimey shenanigans being involved as Brogan slowly realises he was the other man from stories his dad told him when he was a child had fascinating implications. Especially as time progressed and he realised this strange human Finn met had the same name as his son, but unlike Brogan, was unaware time shenanigans were involved so couldn't possibly infer Brogan actually was his son from the future (from his perspective). It was weird and felt unnatural that the mane six would know he existed and then just never tell Brogan however, making Brogan's otherwise understandable reaction to this revelation felt kinda forced, especially when he gave the ponies the cold shoulder for their 'betrayal.' Especially Fluttershy, who he had stumbled into basically confessing to not too long beforehand, making his rude treatment of her, not even saying goodbye, seem especially heartless when she was the least at fault.

However, as almost comically heartless as the climax seems (letting go of his dad), it ceases to be so when you realise his dad doesn't actually die. He makes it back to earth, in order to tell his then younger son about his adventures in horseland and how the ravine was magic and thats how he survived. This... Ruins the character development after that point where Brogan acts very much like he had just callously killed his father in order to avoid a time paradox, when he should know he didn't, he just sent him back to Earth thanks to his foreknowledge because of time bullshit. So his otherwise understandable mourning the night after the incident is undermined when, trauma aside, he knows he didn't actually kill his dad. Which makes his burning of his dad's journals, his 'last connection to Earth', seems more callous than cathartic, which I believe was what was intended. Especially since I think its implied he burns 'The Irish Man' as well, the book whose cover forms the image of this fiction's cover image.

Speaking of callousness, the characterization of Brogan does not exactly make him likeable, which is alright if that was what is intended, but I don't think it was. Brogan's rather... abrupt put down of each of the girls in turn, the ones he was considering a relationship with, comes across as very, very dickish. Not least because not only does he not do it gently, especially to Twilight who he had been working with closely for the better part of a year at that point. And then he decides to stand outside the door, winning a bet with himself that he made her cry. And then does the something, more or less with Rainbow Dash. This came across as extremely churlish and almost sociopathic on Brogan's part, which if things had of gone differently and he did in fact kill his dad at the ravine would have sealed him as one of the most impressively Bastardous human characters I have read in a fiction under a 100k words. I do not think this was intentional however, but man it came across that way.

While it was very hard to get through the initial sentence structure of the early chapters, you clearly tidied up your spellchecking by the last couple chapters by a great deal but there was still a lot of work to be done here and there, but clearly progress had been made. It did make for some impressively confusing moments at times, like at the Bonfire where I legitimately struggled to understand how much alcohol content was in the spirits being given to the school kids, why it was considered below Adult limits for Ponies, and how low the alcohol content must have been in that whiskey Twilight had them both drink a few scenes before in the library that only got brogan buzzed and not blitzed. Also I had no idea what to make of the fact the ponies used to use Francium to purify their alcohol back in the day, that stuff is like the rarest, most radioactive element on the periodic table. I, too, like my Exclusion Zone vodka without ice, fellow Stalker.

All things considered, not a bad first effort despite its flaws with much you can improve upon and learn from, but there's clearly something there.

[The Orthodox Priesthood]

11192435

[WildFire 24]

I loved it and Keep up the good writing