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Chapter 1: Aliens1,699 words
Chapter 2: Ponies, wings and tigers2,095 words

Chapter 2: Ponies, wings and tigers

I would have passed out, but suddenly the dark horse began talking. It shocked me back to reality... or whatever this was.

“Who and what are you?” the horse questioned. She looked like she might shoot another beam at me any moment.

I slowly climbed out of the pod and raised my hands non-threateningly. The horse allowed me to approach her a bit, and I stopped about five feet away from her. She came up to about chest level on me. “My name is Ryan, and I’m a human.” I answered while I looked around at the area I had crashed into. There were lots of trees and flowers. It kinda looked like a jungle.

“A human? We have never heard or seen any of your species before.” The horse stated as she slowly began to circle me.

“Well I’ve never seen something like you before.” I countered while looking curiously at the horse. She had black coat and a dark blue, flowy mane that resembled the night sky above us. She also had wings, a horn, and a tattoo on her butt that looked like a moon in the night sky. Well, she had wings, so wasn’t that a pegasus? She had a horn too though, which would make her a unicorn... “Are you a pegacorn or something?’’

The horse almost seemed insulted. “No, We are an alicorn.”

“An alicorn? Sounds weird.”

She only got angrier as I continued talking. “We’ll have thee know that alicorns are the most powerful beings in the world!”

“Are you bragging? ‘Cause that sounded like bragging.”

“No we are not bragging, we just state the facts.” she seemed arguably calmer now.

“So where are we?”

“We are in a jungle that is located in Zebrica.”

“Am I supposed to know what any of that means? Other than jungle?”

“No.”

“Hm... Well, have you learned whatever you said you wanted to know?”

“Yes, We have determined that thou art not a threat.”

“Oh, good! Could you take me out of this jungle then? I dunno how safe it is out here.”

“No.”

“WHAT!? Why?”

“We just came here to check if thou was a danger, now thou art not our problem.”

“But you can’t just leave me here!”

“We can and we will.” she stated nonchalantly right before she disappeared in a flash of light.

“What a BITCH!’’ I shouted before laying on the ground. "I-its s-so c-cold.’’ I finally noticed. The temperature hadn’t been at the front of my mind while I was falling from orbit and being shot at by magic horses. I decided to just sleep, seeing as there wasn’t much else I could do. It took a while, but I managed to fall into an uneasy sleep.

***************************

*Beep beep beep*

“Ooooooooh, I’m so so cold right now!” I groaned as I began to wake up. “Isn’t the jungle supposed to be warm? What’s that beeping noise?” after looking around for a few seconds, I realized the beeping was coming from the escape pod. I ignored it and shoved my hands in my pockets to keep them warm. I suddenly realized I still had my iPhone and my headphones. “Huh... I don’t remember having those here, but I’m not complaining.”

I got to my feet and felt a strange sensation on my back, right where there had been tingling while I was approaching the planet. “Hm... What could that be?” I wondered to myself. I began to take my shirt off and hoped my back wasn’t broken in some way. As soon as my shirt was gone, I felt something move on my back. I panicked for a brief moment as I imagined some sort of alien parasite on my back. I turned my head to try and get a look at whatever nightmarish thing had attached itself to me. What I actually saw was far more surprising.

Two, large, bright orange wings had been pressed against my back by my shirt.

“I GOT WINGS!?” I shouted. There was no denying what I was seeing. I had grown wings. Something was off about them though, they didn’t look exactly normal. Then I realized what was off. The feathers looked like small flames. The wings were made of fire!

I, in all my vast wisdom, decided to touch the wings to see if they were really there... and on fire. Luckily, the wings didn’t actually burn like fire. In fact, my hand didn’t even feel warmer. It just felt like normal feathers to me. I was freaking out. How did I get this? Why did the feathers look like fire? And the biggest question: Could I fly?

My thoughts were interrupted by my stomach complaining. I suddenly realized that I was very hungry. “I should look for some food...” I said to myself as I walked a random direction.

I had walked for a bit when I finally discovered a bush with orange berries.

“Hm I wonder if I can eat these berries? I am from another planet and I likely should not eat something from another planet.”

“Shut up brain, stomach is hungry.”

I did what my stomach wanted and took a berry and ate it. A few seconds later, I understood why it was a bad idea.

“AAAAAAAHHHHH! IT’S SO HOT!” I yelled as I started running around in panic. Luckily I had the sense to hold on to my shirt. While running, I saw a river and dunked my head into it without thinking, accidentally dunking my shirt as well in the process. After a few moments, I came back up for air. “Ahhhh... cold water...” I sighed in relief. My dunk was interrupted by a small growl from somewhere nearby. I looked in the direction I heard the sound come from, and there was a freaking tiger under a tree next to the river. I nearly freaked out and ran away screaming, but something wasn’t quite right with it.

Other than the fact that it was under a tree.

It didn’t move towards me, it only growled. For the second time that day, I applied my infinite wisdom and decided to approach the tiger. “Nice tiger...” I mumbled soothingly as I left the river bank and walked to the tiger.

The tiger growled at me, likely thinking I was going to hurt it... or because it thought I was food, but I decided to assume the former.

“Woah take it easy. I’m not going to hurt you, I want to help you.” I assured it gently. To my surprise, the tiger almost seemed to understand my words. It stopped growling, but still stared at me warily. I decided to have my mental breakdown over the english understanding tiger and talking horse later, right now the tiger needed help.

I kneeled down next to the tiger and saw that it had large gashes and cuts all along its sides. I gasped a little.

“Let me see the wounds so I can help you ok?” I asked as I reached towards the tiger. It held still and allowed me to get a closer look at its wounds. The scratches didn’t stop on its sides, they appeared to go all the way down to its belly. Which meant that somehow, were I to really help her, I’d have to get the tree off of her. I turned my attention to the tree for a moment.

It wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t exactly small either. Obviously the tiger wasn’t strong enough to move it alone... but maybe if we worked together... It had seemed to understand me earlier, so maybe I could get it to work with me to save it.

“Alright, listen up. I need you to try as hard as you can to stand up, ok? We’re going to get this tree off of you.” after a quick nod, the tiger immediately began struggling against the weight of the tree. I braced my shoulder and threw my weight against it as well. Through our combined strength, we managed to just barely roll the tree off of the tiger.

We panted exhaustedly together for a few seconds. I quickly reminded myself that I still had work to do to help the tiger.

“Alright, roll over so I can see how injured your belly is, ok?”

The tiger nodded and rolled over onto its belly. When it did, I quickly checked to see what gender tiger I was dealing with. I was a bit surprised to see that it was a female. I had imagined she was a male for some reason. I focused on her injuries again. She had some scars and a deep wound on the sides of her belly, but nothing in the center of her stomach.

I knew that I didn’t have enough knowledge to actually disinfect or help heal the cuts, so I decided to just stop as much of the bleeding as I could. “Ok I’m going to use my shirt to stop the bleeding. It’s still wet from the river, so it might be a little cold.” I warned.

The tiger nodded as I struggled to rip my shirt into strips. After a few tries, I sighed and realized I couldn’t do it.

“Could you slice this for me? You know, since you have claws?”

Right after I finished my sentence, the tiger took a weak swing at my shirt. She couldn’t slice the whole thing since she was so weak, but the slices she made allowed me to rip it the rest of the way and form a few strips of cloth. I tied the strips around her, covering all the wounds and scratches I could. She hissed a bit as the cool cloth contacted her fur, but other than that she was good.

I began to wonder why she was so scratched up in the first place. The cuts she had kind of reminded me of tiger victims I had seen while watching the Discovery Channel. I could only assume she had been fighting.

“So you were in a fight huh?” I asked tentatively, not quite sure if I was right. She nodded. “Was it against other tigers?” I continued. She nodded again. “Were they... friends of yours?” instead of giving me another nod, she hung her head sadly. “So... you’re all alone then, huh?” she nodded again.

I began to think again. She was alone, hurt, and she didn’t seem to hate me... I figured it was worth it to risk asking her to accompany me.

“What do you say that you become my partner then? I’m all alone out here too you know.” she seemed to be... smiling at me after I asked. “I’ll assume that’s a yes then. Great! Now, what to call you... Oh! I know, what about Snowflake?” the tiger tilted her head and seemed to not understand the name. “Heh, it’s a reference to something back where I’m from. So what do you say? Does Snowflake sound good?” she eventually nodded and licked my face. After a brief moment of panic in which I wondered if she was tasting me, I began to laugh. “Hahahaha! Stop, that tickles!”

I laughed for a little while, until a strange sound caught my attention. I stood up, dusted the earth off of my knees, and started to walk in the direction I heard the sound come from. Snowflake tried to stand and follow me, but she couldn’t seem to manage it just yet.

“It’s alright Snowflake, stay here.” I ordered gently. She nodded and I turned back in the direction of the noise. After a very short walk, I reached the outskirts of a clearing. I hid behind a bush on the very edge of the clearing and peered in to see if the source of the noise was in it.

I was right. In the clearing, there was another horse. This one was much smaller than the other one, and it only had wings, no horn. Its coat was tan and its mane was black. Unlike the other horse, this one had clothing on. An adventurer’s jacket and a little hat that I associated with jungle explorers back on Earth. A pith helmet, I believe. There was one detail about the horse that stood out above all else...

It was out cold.

Author's Note:

Thank you to Sharky White for the help. And if you get the reference you get a cookie.

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