A world with no giants

by TheSexyMenhir

Calliope's Box

A world with no giants
Ch.10 “Calliope's Box”

Angelo stared at the object before him.

His mind was entirely blank, and had any buddhist monks been around they surely would have praised him for his state of enlightenment. Maybe they even would have called him a buddha.

But since there weren’t any monks, buddhist or other, he was just staring pretty dumbly at what appeared to be a picnic basket.

He had awoken this morning and like every other day he had planned to get some new water, shaking Empress out of her sleep, and half awake making his way to the cave entrance, but when he turned south, much to his surprise there stood a small wicker basket, complete with red checker pattern blanket.

Slowly, very slowly after all it was early in the morning and so far Angelo had found nothing that even remotely resembled coffee, his mind began to work again, analyzing the situation that presented itself before him.
He had seen many bizarre things since he had come to this world, for example he would never forget that time when he had tried to eat an apple, only to instead be attacked by a screeching furry ball of rage, for days his dreams had been plagued by nightmares about those creatures which he dubbed “fruitbats”, but some part of him refused to believe that the spontaneous materialization of fully filled picnic baskets was among the oddities of this world.

… he had to chuckle when he realized that he had just used the same trail of logic that some creationist’ used to justify their views. But yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that picnic baskets weren’t on the list of things that just happened naturally (a view that was entirely wrong. Picnic baskets are a universal constant that every sentient race throughout the galaxy created once they reach a sufficient advanced level of civilization. Another few constants are Infomercials, corrupt politicians and strangely enough some guy named Bob.)

It was then that he remembered that he was still standing out in the open staring dumbfoundedly at a wicker basket, chuckling to himself. Embarrassedly he looked around.

“Okay,” he thought to himself, “you’ve just been confronted with a situation that can only mean one of two things.
A. I’ve gone crazy (not entirely unlikely)
B. I’m hallucinating (those mushrooms did look kinda strange)
Either way there’s only one way that a learned and sophisticated men like me can approach this situation.”

Carefully he closed in on the basket constantly scanning his surroundings and eying the small wicker container like it was about to attack any minute. He prodded it with his spear.

The basket let out a yelp of pain and jumped at Angelo baring his vicious teeth...

Okay not really.

It actually just sat there and did what picnic baskets tend to do, quite a lot of nothing.

Gordon felt like a fool. What had he expected? A bomb? Had he really been alone so long that he could only view a sign of civilization as a trap?

This last thought reverberated in his brain.

“CIVILIZATION!” he couldn’t help but scream as he stared at the basket with renewed wonder. Could it be? Hastily he looked arround once again checking his surroundings; were there any tracks, anything that could help him locate the owner of this basket? No, nothing.

He fell to his knees and began to rummage through the contents of the container. Under the blanket lay a small assortment of food, some which he recognized, but other that looked comparatively alien. Finally his eyes fell on a familiar sight. Almost awestruck he lifted the thing of beauty out of it’s confinement.

There it was, the triangular shape was almost unmistakable even through the thin paper wrapper. Hastily he ripped away the frail packaging. As Empress peeked her head out of the burrow she could see the shape of Angelo sitting on the ground weeping tears of joy as he stared at what appeared to be two triangular slices of bread.

A sandwich.

A goddamn Sandwich.

It was like someone had taken a part of his homeworld and brought it here.

He raised the snack towards his lips, moving slowly. He wanted to savor even the last bit of anticipation. His mouth opened wide and with much gusto he took his first bite.

He spat out his first bite into the grass beside him.

“Grass?!? FLOWERS?! Is this some kind of cruel joke?” he whined as the skeptically looking Empress looked at him from the sidelines. The empty gaze from his companion brought back some sense into Angelo.

He looked at the mess that he had made out of the picnic. Bits of food and the blanket were strewn around haphazardly where he had thrown them in his search of the basket. If this basket was really placed here by intelligent beings than this was definitely not the best way to make an first impression.

Hurriedly he collected all of the foodstuff and tried to sort it back into the basket, at the end folding up the blanket and hiding the damage he had done beneath it.

Then he looked at himself. For a moment he weighed whether it would make worst first impression if he was naked, or if he was currently clothed with a picnic blanket that he stole. Modesty, the strange thing it is, won this particular battle and soon Angelo was covered by, a rather colourful, toga.

What to do next?

Whoever had left the basket, had left all his food inside as well, which meant that they would return, wouldn’t they? Should he hide? No. Then they might think that he wanted to harm them. Carefully he sat down besides the basket and tried to look as nonthreatening as possible.

A wet feeling reminded him that he had just spat out a sizeable chunk of sandwhich onto the grass.

He sighed.

---

“Huh, weird.” Lyra mumbled.

“Damn straight it is! Did you see that?” Bonbon raged, loud enough to make Lyra fear that she would give away their hidden observation spot. “He just spat out MY sandwich.”

“Maybe he can’t eat flowers?” Lyra theorized, more to herself than to her enraged marefriend.

“What? That’s crazy, whoever hear of somebody not eating flowers?” Bonbon continued, trying to hold onto her anger in the face of Lyra’s observations.

“Diamond Dogs...” Lary mumbled absentmindedly, while she flipped through her notebook.

“...” Bonbon stared at her the mint colored unicorn.Then she bopped Lyra on the shoulder.

“Ow! What did you do that for?” Lyra complained.

“It would be nice if you payed attention to me while we’re talking.” Bonbon replied.

“Oh... I’m sorry sweetie. It’s just that this might hint at him actually being an omnivore, but we haven’t seen him eat anything but nuts and berries yet.” She explained.

“Wait! You mean that thing eats meat?!” Bonbon mouthed wide eyed.

“That’s just it, he doesn’t. But most herbivores are able to digest almost all plant matter.” Lyra continued her explanation.

Bonbon seemed conflicted by this new information.

“Are you sure that this is safe?” she asked, more out of concern for Lyra than for herself.

“I... I can’t say for sure, no. That’s why we’re doing this. We want to gauge his reaction to see if it’s safe to approach .... Look!” she suddenly interrupted herself.

“What is he doing now?” Bonbon looked puzzled by the bipods new behaviour.

“I think... he’s trying to clean up?” Lyra guessed equally puzzled.

She once again turned to her companion.

“Look, Bonbon: This might just be my only chance to ever make a really big discovery. I can’t promise you that this is entirely safe, but I will do my best to keep you out of harms way,” she pledged.

“But what if he’s aggressive? I don’t want to watch as he eats you!” Bonbon protested.

Lyra couldn’t help but shudder. Just for a moment Bonbon’s words had reawakened some old memory of a story her mother always read to her at bedtime. It was one of those really old folk tales, with tons of blood and battles galore, but while she usually had appreciated that, this particular story had a passage about a dragon eating a little foal. It was safe to say that Lyra had some very imaginative nightmares in the nights to follow.

But that was neither here, nor now. The creature was twice as tall as her, but she was pretty sure that if worse came to worse she and Bonbon could take it head on.

“I promise I’ll be careful, but I have to do this.” she finally said.

Bonbon looked deep into her eyes, but she knew that look of determination. She hated it when Lyra became reckless like this, but then again, wasn’t it exactly this sheer amount of guts and determination that had drawn her to Lyra in the first place?

She sighed defeatedly.

“Okay, just be carefull.”

Lyra smiled and leaned in to kiss her, and they shared a small moment of intimacy.

A shadow fell over them, and a short polite cough could be heard.

The two ponies looked upwards, right into the face of the creature.

They screamed.

Comments

[Mr101]

They screamed.

Always the best reaction.

[TheSexyMenhir]

2841716 It takes a real professional to scream like a little girl. ^^

[Mr101]

2841727
fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/175/e/f/deal_with_lyra_by_bronyman1995-d54pbfv.png

[Fireeaters]

Lol

Do Moar nao.

[Deve167]

Woo. While it was a fantastic chapter, dat cliffhanger.

[Sorrowfulwinds]

"Oh hey, Screaming horses good first contact situation eh? Scream at me like little girls"
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
"....Maybe I should've slept in today..."

[criketsnipa]

I have waiting so long for this story to update. I am so on love with it. A favorite among my favorites. Can't wait for more!

[AnormalUnicornPony]

ARGG!!!! Cliffhanger again!??!?!?!?! You are lucky that this is pretty well written and has Lyra in it!

[Firebirdbtops]

Just think, the foals of the future will have to study this very moment.

[AnormalUnicornPony]

Woah! Awesome! did you know that if your java wigs out and tries to post your message multiple times that the system displays "Stop there now criminal scum!"?!

Also my last post was too wordy.. I will have to be more... efficient in the future.

[Tome Turner]

So many deleted comments...What happened?