Across the Universe

by JewishKamikaze

Dorothy

It was intensely sunny to Fluttershy, the world prior to her sudden deposition across the Universe being bathed in artificial light. And so it was that in a manner as confounding as the manner in which her situation coalesced, her situation dispersed by improbably popping her and a steaming-hot cup of coffee firmly atop the crest of a promontory overlooking a strange landscape with small pockets of forest; small, scorched, ashy tracts; and a vast, verdant veldt connecting it all. Long, shimmering lines crisscrossed the land, too, undoubtedly a result of the light reflecting off numerous streams. Off in the distance were snow-capped mountains, some purple due to their distance, some that seemed formed entirely out of snow, and some that appeared completely black. No doubt the two latter kinds of mountain were composed of marble.

Disregarding the blackened bits of ravaged shrubbery, it seemed like an ideal place to be left after a great white running-shoe-shaped spaceship unintentionally hitchhiked upon improbably leaves one to their own devices in a rude and uncalled for manner. In fact, it was not so bad, she told herself. It’s kind of like Equestria in a way. Maybe I’m there and there was just a migration of the— them—and I fell asleep. The vista felt exciting and enterprising and yet altogether too earthy. In that sense, it was alien. The greens lacked yellow, the grass, too, lacked the varying shades she was accustomed to. It was not naturally well-groomed. It was not naturally flowing. It seemed as if nopony had ever made an effort to make the place beautiful. And yet, in its own way, it had a sense of majesty, a sense of purity about it. Many stunted, unsightly trees also occupied the landscape furthest from the tributaries, which differed from the bumbling brooks she had known in the apparent lack of continual clarity and distinct beauty that every Equestrian stream had. The whole panorama was alien in that it was not as breathtakingly picturesque as a similar landform in Equestria would have been. Even so, it was beautiful in its own way—a balanced, untamed way.

Her wings pressed against her sides as she continued shivering at the memory of the migration of the incomprehensibly frightening, fire-breathing—. As a consequence of the alleviation of repressed memories, the next two minutes consisted of Fluttershy kneeling down with her hooves over her eyes, her tail wrapping around in a wide, enveloping crescent, and her wings plastered to her flanks. Moreover, she shivered violently on top of shaking uncontrollably until she began to overheat.

The sun, one not unlike the star Celestia rose every day, was a half-hour above the horizon, evaporating the abundant dew that glistened atop each blade of grass. Although it facilitated evaporative cooling in that respect, the rising sun moved on to higher tasks than piddling dew-evaporation and concentrated its energy into Fluttershy’s absorptive mane, soaking through each layer unpleasantly. What was that, Fluttershy? Why be afraid of memories? Why don’t I stop recoiling whenever I remember something scary? Start by not cowering from right now onwards. She felt silly after wasting so much time on worry and fear on recollecting events that were no longer even marginally consequential to her.

She opened her wings to cool herself off, letting them flex for the first time in what they told her were hours. It was only ten minutes ago she had counted a numerical value of blue berries equal to that of Twilight’s racing number. More effectively than any jab from an ornery creature with a thorn in its paw, a pang of unoriginality knocked her breath away momentarily. Consequentially, she had the notion that the unoriginality was not hers, nor was it subtle enough to be funny to the reader. She gasped once and returned to relative homeostasis, no longer flustered. Her adrenaline still affected her, fueling her continued shaking, which concentrated on her knees and wings, while her teeth had ceased chattering.

Among all of her misfortune, luck came in the form of her ear’s newest resident. Not only would she be able to understand every language that could come her way, but her newest companion had not turned into anything slightly larger than a Babel fish, which would have caused serious pain and problems. The coffee next to her, which seemed inconspicuous, had saved her life by existing; it had soaked up all the deadliest wavelengths of improbability.

The coffee cup was of no help to her. It was identical to a cup of coffee that would eventually be purchased by one of the beings aboard the ineffably cool, shoe-shaped ship, and as such, it proved too hot to drink then and too cold to take with. Out of the sky, however, was a true blessing of improbability. Fluttering down haphazardly and landing gently in an uneven pile was an exact copy of the specimen to be seen by another one of the glittering ship’s crew while he is to be in an office in a tower being forcefully taken to Frogstar B, but there was time before that would befall.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value—you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brillian marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bublatter Beast of Traal (a mindbogglingly stupid anima, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you—daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will thenhappily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Silently and many miles behind the dazed and vulnerable Fluttershy, a dangerous creature glided steadily downwards, accelerating and swooping lazily between two mountains, one black marble and the other white marble. The winged-beast flapped dreamily with two great whooshes and regained lost altitude, sending a noise that reached the Babel fish few seconds later and then her own ear drums another lazy milliseconds after.

The prospect of abandoning the coffee and becoming the new custodian of a powerful talisman like the towel and its floral decorations were far too distracting to notice some wings flapping, no matter how deep and dark their beats resonated. To her, it might as well be Dash practicing some of her moves over her house. Fluttershy, preoccupied, lightly exhaled out her nostrils in amusement and at fond recollection. She added a small, “yay”. Locked in her impregnable aura of adorableness, the next thing she heard, after everything she had ever experienced, was the most frightening thing she would come to perceive up to that point. Only a second after the mighty larynx vibrated with all of its potency like countless overstretched baritone strings being released at once, the sonorousness reached the poor, misplaced pony.

There was no hiding from the notion: a dragon had just roared. She spun around, her previously flexed wings once again shakily sandwiching her torso. Then she saw the most frightening thing she had come to perceive up to that point. It had bumps on its long snout and sinister yellow teeth that jutted out at equally sinister angles. Its eyes, although distant, were an unavoidably cool, piercing blue. Its rough, scaly, corrupt-turquoise face was followed by a rough, scaly, looming, corrupt-turquoise body and finally a rough, scaly, looming, corrupt-turquoise tail complete with spikes and similar accessories that culminated into a perfect combination of fear, fright, and faintheartedness. As a direct result of this trembling trifecta, Fluttershy gasped suddenly, her mouth unhinged to the agape position, and her pupils dilated. The lightness that instantly occupied her chest, the sudden spasm that compelled her legs and hooves to press the ground away, and the spontaneous way her face seemed to physically radiate a beam of awestruck energy contributed to her state of shock.

Unlike most instances of perceived danger, there was nothing to hide behind. Luckily, her general situation forced her to forget the natural instinct to stand still, so she pulled the towel over herself and lay prone on the ground. Her tail stuck out, but she was committed to this move and was committed to playing with the calamitous hand she had been dealt. Her breath against the membrane of the towel accumulated in a tight, uncomfortably warm and humid cloud, but halitosis was the least of her concerns.

A few extended expulsions of flame adding new scorched tracts were heard as very deep fooms in her right ear, but other than dramatic increases in light, nothing was seen by the pony with the odd-smelling towel pressed tightly against her face. It was a fillyish position, the towel trailing down to her hind knees, but the die was cast. For a brief moment, the world grew very dark and then became light again. The towel became soggy as a result of her repeated hyperventilations. As such, there was much water on the brane.

Now the great belches amalgamated into her left ear, bringing a sudden wash of relief after a precipitating wash of confusion. She heard a few deep beats of the mighty wings and then an echoing roar that touched distant lands and brought back their muted replies. At this, the towel was off. Bright yellow light confiscated her retinas, forcing a hoof over her eyes.

When her pupils contracted to a more appropriate diameter, what Fluttershy saw was a hostile world full of danger and tribulation. In the sheer mountains, in the glistening dew, in the choking humidity, in the dark forests, in the slowly receding glare, and especially in the scorched spots that dotted the bowl-shaped valley, she saw adversity. Her heart sank and her tail snaked along the horrid ground, as did the tips of her bangs, while she plodded towards the expanse of pernicious trees in front of her, galloped down the maniacally gentle slope of the hill, and crossed a dreadfully lackadaisical stream with diabolically clean and clear water she intended to drink from. The malevolent grass crunched wetly beneath her hooves, her cream-pink tail and bangs soaking up wicked dew. Weighed down by the burden of water and solemn duty, she left the innocent porcelain vessel and its dark bean-extract but opted to take the stitched engineering-wonder for shelter, warmth, and defense.