Day the First
Before I tell you about the amazing thing that happened to me, I think it’s prudent to tell you a bit about myself. I’m a Scorpio, 17 years old, curly black hair, freckles (not the cute kind, like Applejack’s), creepily big eyes that look even bigger behind my awkward horn-rimmed glasses (my passed grandmother’s; my grandfather cries at my ingratitude if I so much as take them off to give the lenses a rub), and a life that seriously needs more pony.
And I love to read. Did I mention that I love to read? I love to write, too, which, fortunately, is by no means hindered by my addiction to ink on paper. I’ll read pretty much anything. Twilight Sparkle got nothing on me. The nutrition panel on a cereal box, Alzheimer’s awareness billboards, YouTube disclaimers, even those stupid, Photoshop-shmeared magazines in the checkout aisle of every grocery store that say “100 sex moves that’ll—”
*blush*
A-anyhay, I like to read. And that includes fanfiction. As you may have guessed, I’m a brony. Pegasister? Let’s not get into that now. Anyway, I’m a girl who likes My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fanfictions. I guess I could’ve said that at the beginning and you would’ve understood well enough. But I suppose I have to stall. My story is totally unbelievable, and I don’t know how to start…
I guess the beginning is a good place. It usually works that way.
I was sitting at my computer, flying through the latest chapter of my favorite running fanfiction, about a group of people who somehow travel through time and space and end up in Equestria. As the tension in the story grew, I kept a wary eye on the scrolling bar. It was getting suspiciously close to the bottom.
Don’t do it. Don’t do it, don’t do it, I begged. Heart pounding as the young heroine scrambled between the clutching flora of Everfree, I read faster, like it would keep the story from ending with—
DANG! A cliffhanger. I scoffed, in the style of a pony-snort. I stretched back in my spinny desk-chair and groaned… then yelped as the back of the chair suddenly popped off and sent me flying backwards. I landed with my feet in the air, mostly unhurt. Rainbow Dash flew in to save me in the nick of time. Or at least, in my wild flailing, I happened to grab the jumbo-plush that was sitting on my bed beside my computer and somehow got her under my head before I could give myself a concussion.
I knew that the proper thing to do would be to get up and fix my chair, or better yet ask Grampa or Dad to do it for me, but I didn’t feel like it. It was oddly refreshing to sit there with my heels in the air, head pillowed on downy wings, a plush cyan body, and a rainbow, polyester mane. I let myself pretend I really was cuddling with a pony. I wished I could be one of the characters in my favorite kinds of fanfictions, with real, breathing, furry ponies to hang out with. Even when I read My Little Dashie, I bawled through my tears that I wanted to switch places with the narrator. I stroked my close-as-I-could-get-Dash’s mane and sighed.
I think I’d been down there for about 20 minutes when my bedroom door unexpectedly opened, bonking first my little pony, then me on the head. I definitely should have gotten up sooner. I yelped, sitting upright, and clutched Dashie against me as I patted first her head, then my own to check for injury.
Once I was assured that all was well, I looked up. My mother stared at me, aghast. She’s never accepted with grace that her daughter is a pony-lover. I had long tried since my addition to the herd to get her to watch just one episode, but was met with resistance until I threw my hands up and yelled “Haters gonna hate, ponies gonna pwn!” much to her confusion and my exasperation. Sheesh, get a meme, Mom.
She finally just rolled her eyes. “You know better than to lie in doorways like that! Put that thing away and come eat lunch.”
I glared at her until she was out of sight, then stood, smoothed Dash’s mane, and set her (“That thing.” The very idea!) on my bed next to my similarly sized Twilight Sparkle. I have five of the mane six, all but Pinkie Pie. After straightening each of their manes, I stood my dismembered chair upright in its place and went out to the kitchen for lunch.
Trés surprise. Microwave pasta and green bean casserole. My family is not known for its kitchenly wiles. Even so, a six-foot-tall stack of parenting and happy family books that my mom has created over the years has made her quite certain that both the prevention of and cure to all disquiet in the home is eating meals together whenever possible. Unfortunately, neither she nor I are the best talkers, so until my father and grandfather join us at the table, all that we can safely bond over is an awkward silence. My relationship with my mom isn’t so great. It hasn’t precisely gotten better since she discovered that I am enamored with a show about multicolored ponies learning about friendship that was supposedly designed for girls half my own age or younger.
Sitting down and pulling my plate closer, I picked up my fork and poked the nuked casserole. I jumped when my mom cried out without warning. “Not yet! Wait for Dad and Grampa to sit down. You can be so rude.” My fork dropped with a clang of stainless steel on ceramic and I rolled my eyes. I hadn’t been hungry before, but once I had food under my nose my stomach started growling indignantly. What kind of cruel joke was she playing? After a few minutes my father tottered in, bleary eyed, and Grampa followed after him, shuffling over and into his old oak chair. When Grampa shuffles it means rain is coming. Or as he says, a rainbow. He’s pretty positive about the future; it’s the past that sometimes gets him down.
The second everyone’s plot had been planted, I started shoveling food into my mouth, keeping it full enough to make sure it was impossible for me to talk. My mother frowned but was hesitant to lecture me because my father was doing the same thing. After a moment’s thought, she scolded my father instead.
“Michael! Why are you in such a rush?”
He had cleared his plate of casserole in ten seconds flat, as it were. He stuffed a forkful of raviolis in his mouth, chewed thoughtfully for a moment, and swallowed. “Honestly, honey, I just want to go back to sleep.” Mom pouted, insulted by the suggestion that her cure-all family meal was less important than sleep to a man who worked nothing but night-shifts at a veterinary hospital. Poor Dad. He still had dog hair sticking to his own and band aids on his fingers, souvenirs of encounters with overly enthusiastic dogs and less-than-grateful cats.
Mom gave up on Dad for the time being and turned to me instead. “And what is your excuse, Lady Violet?” she snapped sarcastically.
My full name is Violet Rose Summers. My parents had both wanted a floral name but couldn’t choose between “violet” (my mom’s idea) and “rose” (my dad’s idea), so they flipped a coin and Violet became my first name and Rose my second. The Summers was just luck. I used to hate the ooey-gooey flowery sound of it until I became a brony; then I discovered that it sounds like a pony name.
I poked the entrails of a ravioli. “I wanted to finish reading some stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“I dunno. Whatever looks good.”
“Are you still reading those pony stories?”
“Pony fanfictions. Yes.”
“You are too. Old. For that kind of thing. At your age you should be looking at colleges and womp womp womwom womp,” she complained on and on, and I tuned her out. I’d heard it all before. To quote Pinkie Pie: “Boooooorin~g!”
To the rest of my family, me being a brony wasn’t a big deal. To Grampa I was still a little girl anyway, so he was fine with it. When I told my dad, he just said absently “I used to have a little pony when I lived out in the country, when I was a kid. His name was Blazer. Because he had a blaze—you know, on his nose?” Dad even tried to watch a couple episodes with me, though he fell asleep about five minutes into each one. I didn’t nag him about it like I nagged Mom; he really was tired, and I was grateful that he had at least tried. But mom was stubbornly keeping her mind fixated on the older generations of My Little Pony that she had seen in her younger days, which are of course fine in their own way as far as children’s cartoons go, but not as dynamic and appealing, (in my humble opinion, of course) as my dear FiM. No matter what I tried to say to her they were just kid shows, all one and the same. But, listening to her mocking fanfiction was annoying in a slightly different way. I had half a mind to turn off the maturity filter and leave my browser open on some random shipping fic, or better yet, Cupcakes, just to get her to think twice.
So I sat there, inhaling my food and ignoring my mom as best I could (Dad still beat me to the finish and lumbered back to bed) as she nagged and woe-is-me-for-my-daughter-is-a-weirdo’d. After a while I started to get irritated and all of a sudden something inside me triggered the lie to become truth that led to the entire disaster and delectation that was to come in the next few days. I don’t know where it came from. Maybe I had been toying with the idea in my subconscious for a while and that instinctive, rebellious teenage part of me placed it front and center in my mind because it knew I was just itching to cheese my mother off. Maybe I just had a brain fart. In any case, I swallowed my last bite, looked her in the eye, and said:
“I’m doing it for research. I want to write a story, too, and I’m looking for good techniques so I can do it right.” The second the words were out of my mouth, I thought to myself I say, that’s quite the nice idea!
Mom stared at me. “Y-you want to what?”
“Write a story. I like it. Bronies are a talented bunch.” She winced at my addressing of myself as a brony. “I’ve already learned a lot. I got this.” I picked up my plate and scraped the remainder of my meal into my mouth, taking advantage of my mom’s temporary speechlessness as she thought that over.
“B-but, it’s not like you’re going to get any money for it or anything. Why don’t you write some scholarship essays with what you’ve learned?”
“Pssssh, please.” I pushed myself back from the table and loped back toward my room. “There’s more to life than money. Like ponies.”
“You excuse yourself from the table before you leave! MICHAEL! Are you hearing what your daughter is saying?”
“Can’t hear you,” he called back from their bedroom. “I’m asleep.”
I was too busy escaping to drop to the floor to laugh, and when I got to my room I picked up the back of my chair and dropped the post back into its place, twisting the screws back in their proper holes with my fingers. I’d ask Dad to fix it when he woke up.
“That’ll do it for now,” I muttered. Plopping my butt in the chair, I scooted up to my computer desk, cracked my knuckles, and opened a new document. I knew exactly what I wanted. Another human-in-Equestria fic. Full of awkward explanations, crushed clichés, and perfectly safe cupcakes. I put my game face on and went to work.
***
After a while I stopped typing to stretch my fingers. I was developing a twitcha-twitch in my thumb from pressing the spacebar. I wiggled my thumbs and arced my back, stretching over the back of my chair and listening wryly to the pops my too-young-to-be-popping spine made in protest. Then suddenly, IT happened. The back of my chair disconnected again and I started to fall backward. My arms ineffectually waved about in a panic as I went down. Rainbow Dash was too far away to save me this time. I was just thinking Darn it, I want a new desk chair next Christmas when I suppose I hit the floor, and saw a soft flash of lilac light before I could see nothing more.
***
You know the feeling that one has after a dream in which one is falling? You are plummeting, surely about to be gravely injured or worse, and just upon the breath-taking, crushing impact, you wake up, winded but alive and well and perhaps just a wee bit disoriented? THAT was what it felt like to land in Equestria.
I was still cringing and flailing and holding my breath when I fully came to. The feel of the lumpy corpse of my chair’s backing beneath me was gone and I was confused. After another moment I finally let myself inhale and flailed for a second longer before freezing, taking in my surrounding through all my senses but sight.
Okay, I thought. One step at a time.
Touch. I am clearly on something dusty and firm, probably dirt, because I can feel it getting into my shorts and up my T-shirt.
Taste. I opened my mouth and inhaled, concentrating on the qualities of the air that went over my tongue. Fresh air. It isn’t stagnant enough to be the air from home, and it sure isn’t choking enough to be the air from any place outside my house and in my city, or even the whole state.
Smell. It smells… woody. But clean. Like a campground after a little rain and before anypony has set up a campfire and gotten everything smelling like smoke.
Sound. Bird song. Or rather bird alarms. At this point, my best guess is that I have somehow ended up in their forest uninvited and disrupted their daily routine. Whatever that is for birds.
So. Everything is weird, I concluded. I decided to just open my eyes. What harm could it do, right?
Well. Sweet flippin’ Celestia’s mane.
Cracking one eye open, I squinted at the sunlight that was filtering through the boughs and leaves above me. I blinked a couple of times, vision adjusting. So far so good. Still weird, but so far so good. I opened the other eye…
…to find a pair of wide, aqua colored eyes and a twitching, cream colored muzzle pointing back at me. I stared for a moment, turned away to rub my eyes, and turned back again.
The little yellow Pegasus pony’s eyebrows were drawn together with concern.
“Oh, you poor little creature! Though I’ve never seen an animal like you before… That was quite a fall, wasn’t it? Are you all right?”
All right? Once I had been winded, and perhaps in a little bit of shock, but now... huzzah! Or should I say, *yay*! I was healed! A miracle!
I popped into the air as if propelled by rockets in the earth and flung myself forward, squealing: “FLUTTERSHY!!!”
Of course, that was a mistake.
At the first shouted syllable (“Flut”) she jumped into the air herself, wings flared and flapping in a panic. At the second syllable (“ter”) she had turned tail and started to gallop off in the opposite direction. And at the third syllable (“shy”) her poor little legs froze up, her wings clamped to her sides, and she fell to the forest floor with a “clump.” As I watched, transfixed and guilt-stricken, she slowly rotated through no effort of her own to a back on the ground, legs stiff and upright, position. Her eyes were wide open, but unseeing and twitching. I sat and stared at her for what I think must have been about 5 minutes before I overcame my awe, delight, and guilt enough to realize that I may have actually given her a seriously harmful scare. Oh crap.
I crawled over to her, muttering to myself. “Pleeeease, oh please oh please. God, tell me I didn’t break the Fluttershy.” When I reached her I peered down into her face the way she must have been peering into mine before I’d so rudely given her the fright of her life. I waved a hand in front of her face. “Um, Fluttershy?” No response. Gently poking her flank, I pushed her over until she was lying on her side, then removed my finger and watched with alarm as she slowly returned to her stiff-leg-upright position again, like one of those annoying toys that wobble but don’t fall down. I waved a hand in front of her again frantically. “F-Flutters?? Are you okay??”
She didn’t move, but she did make a tiny noise that was something to the effect of “heemee~ee!”
I was flabbergasted. I hopped to my feet and ran about in circles. All delight at finding myself in Equestria for no apparent reason was completely eclipsed by the fact that I seemed to have scared one of my favorite little ponies into a coma. Realizing that I was being useless, I quickly stopped my pacing and looked around, straining for a glimpse of something that would help Fluttershy. I could see, through a tiny break in the trees, a flash of light off of a pane of glass: a window in the wall of Fluttershy’s cottage. I trotted back to the downed Pegasus and gave one more helpless shot at snapping her out of it by waving my hands about, then tucked my arms under her and scooped her up.
She was so light I almost dropped her. She was certainly barely heavier than the jumbo plush in her own likeness that was sitting on my bed at home. I adjusted her position so that the feathers of her wings were not twisting the wrong way. Maybe she’s so close to being weightless because a Pegasus needs hollow bones, like a bird's, I mused. Then of course, there was always magic…
I stared down at her, contemplating that for a second before I realized that Pegasi anatomy trivia was not of the least importance at the time.
Turning around, I ran out of what I had by then figured out were the outskirts of the Everfree Forest and made my way clumsily toward Fluttershy’s home.
After I had made my way over the bridge and past a small stampede of frightened animals, I found that Fluttershy’s door was unlocked and fairly flew up the stairs to put her into her bed. I tucked her in firmly to make sure she was lying in a somewhat natural position and took a step back, unsure what to do next.
Every 30 seconds or so, she would suddenly give a twitch or squeak that would give me hope, but she unfailingly returned to her frozen state each time. Returning to pacing about, I waved my hands in panic. Eventually, I stopped and covered my face with my hands, about to cry.
Of course, the best thing to do would've been to go into Ponyville and find some of Fluttershy’s friends, or maybe a doctor or nurse (looking at cutie marks ought to get me close enough to finding somepony with medical experience) but I had no doubt that going into town out of the blue would probably raise more questions than we had time to find answers for.
So what am I supposed to do now?? I rubbed my eyes and suddenly felt a tap on the toe of my foot (which was still covered by nothing but socks, by the way). Glancing down, I found myself looking into the stern eyes of…
“ANGEL—” I caught myself. “—Bunny!” I needn’t’ve bothered. Made of tougher stuff than his owner, he just crossed his little arms and glared up at me. I dropped to a crouch, looking down at him excitedly. “Angel! You can understand me, right? I need you to help me! Can you go into Ponyville and—”
Before I could enlist the little creature to help me help Fluttershy, Angel suddenly turned about, took hold of something that was behind his back and spun back around to stab me in one of my sock feet with a carrot.
While a ripe-for-the-nibbling carrot doesn’t really count as a deadly weapon, it still hurt like the dickens and I yelped and flinched away, hopping on my uninjured foot as Angel chased after me, waving his carrot about like an orange sword. I slipped…
…and fell down the stairs, clunking my head or butt against every other step on the way. When I finally landed on the first floor, a fluffy brown kitten screeched at me, scratched me on the nose, and dashed to hide behind Angel, who stood protectively in front of the stairway, thumping the carrot against his little paw like a billy club.
I raised a hand to my pounding head, touched my nose gingerly, then inspected my hand. I was bleeding. At the sight of my blood on the outside of my body, my brain instantly told my nose to start hurting, and it throbbed obediently.
I winced painfully. “OH ffffffponyfeathers!” I sat up and started to scoot toward the still-open door on my butt, preferring to take my chances in Ponyville rather than risk another shot at engaging Angel’s assistance, when I heard a shouted battle cry coming from outside. I turned around wearily and found myself face to face with Rainbow Dash, who unreservedly gave me a full body tackle to the stomach, sending both of us flying backward and bonking my head against the far wall.
I stared up at the spinning room as Rainbow pinned me down, a forehoof on each of my shoulders, and an angry cyan snout thrust into my face. Sweet Celestia’s mane, what in the world have I done? I thought absently.
“Who are you!?!” the furious Pegasus demanded. She was much more muscular, and therefore much heavier, than Fluttershy, and was quite capable of keeping me on the ground. “Who are you working for? What have you done to Fluttershy?!”
My head had almost stopped spinning, and I attempted to focus on her face. I partially succeeded, but for some reason there were two Rainbow Dashes.
I squinted. “Grampa was right. And it’s a double Rainbow,” I told her. Then I blacked out.
Annnd, that concludes the events of my first day in Equestria. Are you jealous yet?