The Story of Slate

by Marblocks

First published

Slate's life is turned upside down when everybody forgets who he is.

Slate is your average earth pony. He works hard at his town's quarry, then goes home, and goes to sleep. Ever since he started writing in a journal everything has gone wrong for him: he's having weird dreams, no one remembers who he is, and he gets fired from his job. The weirdest thing is everybody remembers someone named "Granite" and as far as they're concerned that's who Slate is supposed to be. Slate's quest for answers will take him down some frustrating roads as he tries to fix his problem.

The Story of Slate

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Saturday, June 6th, 2015

Hi, my name is Slate. I am just your average earth pony, chilling and going on with my life. I run the local quarry. I've decided to keep this journal because hey, someone's gotta have a record of me when I've been dead for 20 years.

Sunday, June 7th, 2015

Last night I had a strange dream in which I was a rock. Slate, to be exact. I did absolutely nothing, just sat around doing nothing, there's not a ton that rocks do. I just thought it was a funny dream.

Monday, June 8th, 2015

Today I had a weird experience. A mare came in today, and as she wanted to see the manager, I came to her. She kept asking for someone named "Granite". I told her I've worked at the quarry for 3 years and have never known anyone named Granite. She kept saying that Granite was the manager as she was a regular customer. I told her I would get Granite for her in order to get her to leave.

Tuesday, June 9th, 2015

Today was one of the worst days of my life. All of the workers decided I wasn't really the manager apparently, and that for as long as they could remember they were managed by Granite. I mean, you work for 3 years, you expect some respect every once in a while. I see that is too much to ask for however. At any rate they managed to kick me out even though I'm their boss. I really need to find this Granite fellow.

Wednesday, June 10th, 2015

I had another strange dream last night. I was just walking around my house when suddenly I fell down. I couldn't move, say anything, or even look around. I was just stuck there.

Thursday, June 11th, 2015

Nothing new today, except that in a bit I'm going to go down to the library and try to find information on Granite. Maybe if I can find out some stuff about him I might be able to meet him.

Thursday, June 18th, 2015

I think I should probably stop this investigation of Granite. For one whole week I've done nothing but look into this guy. I haven't even had time to write in this journal. My wife is concerned about me. "I don't know who you are." she said. I thought it was weird that she didn't end it with "anymore" but that's just the way she phrased it I guess.

Friday, June 19th, 2015

Looks like it wasn't just a weird phrasing after all. When I told her I was going to stop my information she said she didn't care because she had no idea who I was. She also wanted to know what I did with Granite. I think something is going on here. I HAVE to figure this out.

Saturday, June 20th, 2015

Today it has been 2 weeks since I started this journal. I'm going to visit Princess Celestia, maybe she can help me. It's a long walk though so I should be heading out.

Sunday, June 21st, 2015

I was pretty unsuccessful today. I tried to get into the castle, but the guards wouldn't let me. The only way I'm getting in is if I figure out how to get pass them.

Monday, June 22nd, 2015

Okay, I've got a plan for today: I'm just going to barge right in. I know, you'd think that that's a bad plan, and it probably is, but I don't have a ton of options.

Monday, June 29th, 2015

It's been a week since the last one, I know that's probably bad of me. It's just taken me a while to process everything.

Barging in did not work out at all. I was immediately captured and I was sent to a dungeon. The good thing though is that either way I was able to talk to Celestia. I told her all about my situation, and she decided it was a weird one. I discussed with her everything I had dug up on Granite (which was a lot; there was certainly no way for me to argue that there was no one like that that existed). She agreed that this was all very strange and she did some magic on me to try and search my mind for anything that we might be missing. She found information that was very disheartening.

I am a rock. Slate, to be exact. Or at least I was, in my original universe. She believes that somehow I was sent to this universe with no memories of being a rock (because, of course, how could a rock have memories?) and I replaced this Granite guy. However not all is lot; she says as strange as it sounds she deals with people coming in from other universes all the time. She says she would be able to send me back, however I had to get something for her.

She said I needed some herbs from this zebra named Zecora who lives in what's called the "Everfree Forest". She described the Everfree Forest as being dangerous, and that things like clouds moving or other such things that ponies control themselves, happen on their own. As abnormal as that is it didn't scare me that much. Celestia says that that's because in my universe (or what she believes to be my universe; the majority of people from another universe come from this one world that seems to be connected to this one in some way, and she has to constantly erase the memories of people here so they don't get any ideas of trying to go over there) that is how it is naturally done, so I must have some sort of natural connection to that way of doing things. Which doesn't make a ton of sense to me since I was originally an inanimate object but whatever.

All this is scary and it makes me sad that I never really existed here but you gotta roll with the punches.

Tuesday, June 30th, 2015

I had an interesting thought today. If I'm going to be teleported back to my own universe, wouldn't that essentially be killing me? Since rocks have no brain or organs or anything, it would be like I died. But, I have to go on with this if I want to get Granite back into his own world.

Tuesday, July 7th, 2015

I can't do it! There's no way I can go through with this. I got the herbs from Zecora, man is she weird. She always talks in these rhymes. It's annoying. But I got the herbs, and now I have to go back, and then she'll basically kill me.

Tuesday, July 14th, 2015

I brought the herbs back to Celestia but I urged her to try and find another way. She said she would consider it and get back to me tomorrow. Here's hoping for the best.

Wednesday, July 15th, 2015

She said it was possible for me to go back and take control over a pony from over there, and that the transition would be easy since I already know how to move and such here. The difficult part would be getting granite over here. She suggested I go under rigorous examination of the mind to try and figure out where Granite would be, assuming we really did switch places.

Wednesday, August 12th, 2015

I went through a month of this "examination". They were able to figure out where exactly granite was, and it is believed that they can pull him out from over there.

Tonight I go back to my original universe. Wish me luck.

Thursday, August 13th, 2015

Hi, my name's Andy Matthews. My wife thought it would be a good idea to keep a journal as I'm getting older and my memory's starting to fail a bit. So, this is that.

Last night something interesting happened. My horse, who has never given birth even when we tried to make her, suddenly gave birth to a colt without any sign of being pregnant before hand. The colt is a gray-ish color, kind of like slate, and so that's what we named him. It was a really weird experience.