Generic Chapter Title, Part the First
I think everyone has a run in with a pony once in their lives, usually at a carnival-Thing™ that your parents dragged you to kicking and screaming because you couldn't stand to be away from your precious pre-fps era video games any longer than it takes to inhale artery clogging fat slapped with a "chips" label. And once you get to the carnival-Thing™ you happen to glance up from your portable handheld gaming long enough to spot actual animals instead of collections of brightly colored pixels with various elemental excretions coming out of their backs with names that looked like somebody mashed a fist into their keyboard and added vowels (yes I am referencing pokemon™). So you abandon your Pikachu and your Salamander and your Bug to check out the actual animals that don't have superpowers, and eventually you come across the Pony™, something that looks like a cow without any udders that got it's face stuck in an industrial size vacuum and a bucket of paint. The Pony™ is just standing there, blinking slower than a snail hitching a ride on the back of a turtle, so you think it's safe to actually reach out and touch the Pony with your own hand, when suddenly the big fat snout of the thing swings around and bites you! And your parents have to drag you away kicking and screaming again because now you think you're going to die from rabies!
Or is that just me
Anyway that was my experience with a Pony™, and I never saw or touched another one as long as I lived, until now. And I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that I was lucky for that.
And I was right! Because I would trade those awful, fly covered carnival-Thing brand Ponies for these pony-Things™ in a heartbeat.
I'm still trying to wrap my own head around how I got here, my rational side (ie: the side of me that isn't dead in the water) is screaming at me and beating me over the head with a rusty shovel of logic labeled "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE," but nevertheless, here I still am.
I suppose I should introduce myself, my name is Anon (why my parents chose that name I'll never understand, they tell me it's Turkish) and I am in a land of Technicolor talking ponies that are definitely not magical in any way shape or form. Oh, should I have put a spoiler alert right there or something? Boo hoo.
I'll tell you all I know about how I got here, which isn't much anyway, but screw you, listen to what I have to say and you tell me if you could explain it any better.
The day was a gloomy one indeed; the sun was somewhere behind a layer of clouds thicker than the skull of a CoD™ fan (HA gaming humor) hiding like the solar system had become a tsundere anime overnight, and good ol' Sol had just bought a new skirt. Everything was gray, the kind of gray that you get when you mix the two sides of your children's yogurt, and consequentially everyone was in a sour mood, like the kind of mood you get when people question why a grown man would be eating children's yogurt with his lunch. But while the threat of rain was in the high 90s of percentages and getting uncomfortably close to you in the elevator, it never had the guts to do anything about it, like a passive aggressive co-worker who is 76% sure you're the one who made the mess in the break room (which is true but there are still better ways to handle it, Toby!)
In short, it was a gloomy, bitter, dreary day, the kind of day everyone just wants to sleep away, but they can't because of these icky things called jjjoOobs, so everyone is constantly ragging on everyone.
Yes, truly a glorious day.
So there I was, waiting for my most preferred method of public transportation while high winds whipped past like a good time at a party, wearing a wide grin on my face because everyone else around me was so miserable. (Schadenfreude, I believe the word is.) when suddenly something hard and metal pinged me in the back of the head. I look down to see a tin can rolling away, back towards it's point of origin, a dark alleyway just out of the line of sight of any police cars that might happen to pass by just in case of any illegal activities.
Now normally I wouldn't do anything that would directly put my body in jeopardy of becoming inside out, but I was in a good mood because everyone else wasn't and I decided any amount of trouble I could get myself into I would be able to get myself back out of with lots of run on sentences and colorful metaphors, like something very clever.
So putting on my best menacing face, which was pretty much just a slightly deeper frown than what I usually wore coupled with a few furrowed brows, I stepped into the alley and proudly declared, "Tin cans are a perfectly recyclable waste product! Littering is bad and you should feel bad!"
"Oh, woe is me," declared another voice, completely ignoring my noble defense of recycling, "Oh, sob, oh, cry,"
"I don't think you actually expect me to believe you're crying," I said, stepping further into the alley. Anyone intelligent enough to appreciate the satirical humor of feigning blatantly fake despair would also most likely be intelligent enough to be too lazy for wanton violence.
"Your skills of observation are unparalleled," the voice said, dripping with sincerity.
"Thank you," I nodded, peering deeper into the darkness. Quite suddenly, I noticed a foreign, unrecognizable shape slinking around a trash can next to the wall. The shape skillfully wrapped itself around the can and slithering into the open, proudly visible and grotesquely ugly. It looked like somebody had cut the head off a goat and smashed it onto the body of something long, tubular, and covered with brown fur. Instead of legs that matched with the body and/or head of the creature, one was that of a lion, one was of an eagle, one looked almost like a ram's foot, and one was covered in scales. (Although, do they not match by not matching? The extremities are uniform in their dis-uniformity.)
I took a startled step backwards, nearly tripping over the long since forgotten tin can, "What are you?" I asked in a voice that I'm sure expressed nothing but scientific curiosity.
The creature crossed two of its many legs and eyed me, a forked tongue flicking about a cancerously long snaggletooth, "And in that moment, I swear all the concern for my false despair evaporated," he said in mock narration. That's my job! "Such is the weary existence of a monster,"
I got up, trying to convince myself this was a creature of intelligence equal to that of my own, and tried again, "Pardon my surprise, it's not every day you get to see a...Thing™,"
The Thing™ clicked its tongue, "If you must know, I'm called a Draconequus™."
"Sure,"
"Anyway," the Draconequus™ continued, "I'm 'sad' because I'm bored."
Now, the rational side of mine was having a lively discussion with me, "Huh, a grotesque creature that shouldn't possibly exist, much less be talking is expressing to you its boredom. It would be wise to bid the Draco-Thing™ goodbye and go back to your real life where these things only happen in bad fanfiction for children's shows." It advised.
Obviously, I made several colorful suggestions as to where my rational side could shove its advice, and continued fearlessly, "How exactly does your boredom affect me?" I requested sincerely, "Is that why you beaned me with a tin can instead of recycling it like a responsible citizen?"
A grin that can only be accurately described by the word "malicious" spread across the Draco-Thing's™ face, as if that were just what it had been waiting to hear. "Oh, you can do more than you know," it said with all the euphemistic undertone it is physically possible to cram into eight words (I know you just paused to count, you expletive. What, don't believe the narrator?).
And this is where things start to get a little iffy for me, because I don't know what exactly happened. the Thing™ lifted it's bird claw leg and snapped it's talons, which already shouldn't be possible, when suddenly I was thrown into what I imagine was a interspatial wormhole. It felt like splashing into a pool of water, and then falling out of the bottom perfectly dry. And it happened so fast you'd miss it if you blinked, which of course I did, so I can't tell you what the fabric of reality looks like. Boo hoo, you try getting thrown into a wormhole sometime.
Anyway I was spit out on the other side into some Technicolor™ grass, which felt and looked like feathers without the hard spines in the middle that poke you and betray your faith in everything good in the world. Then I looked up and I saw a Pony™, except this one was bubblegum pink, and had a mane that looked like it was made out of the same. Its eyes seemed to be the largest organs in its body, and its hooves were indistinguishable with the rest of their respective legs.
The explicitly cartoon-ish Pony™ looked me in the eyes and said, "Wnaethoch chi mewn gwirionedd yn mynd a chyfieithu hyn?"
I, in return, looked it back into its disturbingly large eyes and said, "what"