> Live Wire
>  by Celly Da Pancake
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Strung Up
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

So many stories start with waking up. You had been asleep for the past hour. It had been a mere thought, to close your eyes and rest, rest that would assuredly only last for twenty or so minutes—at least, that is what you told yourself. But as you should have expected, thought turned to action, and soon, you were fast asleep on your bed, oblivious to the world around you.

While many of your naps ended with you starting awake to the most insipid of things, such as the honk of a horn from the street next to your apartment, or the knock of the daily salescolt come to sell you horse condoms or some other such things, this time, paradoxically, you had woken yourself with a dream.

Hanging over the side of your window, you gazed upon the white alicorn wound up around your clothes line, arranged like one who chose to prostrate in the vertical position. Not the most comfortable of orientations, you thought to yourself, but to each their own. Who were you to judge the resting states of others?

Her eyes were magenta, and they were also sad. It was raining—pouring more like, but the important fact was that water was falling from the sky, and it was falling hard. It only compounded on the sadness, enough that you yourself were starting to feel sad. While gazing upon such a sight, only those without a soul, or a shred of empathy would feel nothing, and you were not one of those people.

“Do you need any help up there?” You asked neutrally. Altruism wasn’t acceptable—at least, not within the iron fortress of Manehattan. To fit the part, you had to at least act as if you didn’t care.

Sadness quickly morphed into frustration, or at least the closest imitation available to the cutsie alicorn’s cheek muscles. “I would appreciate a ho—hand, it is quite chilly out here, as I’m sure you could imagine.” Gratitude then. Frustrated gratitude? It was confusing, and you stopped pondering on it.

“Hold on a moment.” Taking a moment to ready yourself, you climbed up on the window sill, balancing precariously and bracing yourself on the side of the window. “I’ll get you down!”

The wind pulsed wildly in response, whipping Celestia about. She looked at you with a questioning, slightly worried gaze. Whatever it is she tried to convey was lost to the wind, which seemed to worsen with each passing second. 

Closing your eyes, you took the leap, tackling Celestia and falling downwards, only to crack your head on your nightstand.

“Owww, fuck!” 

Your expletives went unappreciated, seemingly indicative of your pained, alicornless state. You sighed. It was a good dream.

Surveying your room with barely concealed frustration, you massaged your abused temples in an attempt to quell the dull hammering within them. Your eyes went to your window, where your trusty curtains absorbed as much sunlight as they could, shielding the collection of other oddities residing on the window sill. A stalwart row of cases and their accompanying animated caricatures, sat alone atop the sill, standing guard over your room, as they had for months since your arrival in Equestria. 

Shaking the feeling of pins and needles from your arms, you stood up and rubbed your eyes. Truly, removing crust from one’s eyes was an exercise in futility, if there ever was one. After waking up, you normally would have gone about your daily Saturday routine, that being nothing at all, but there was something different. 

If your ears weren’t failing you, it sounded as though something was pounding on your window. With a quirked eyebrow and a cocked and tightened fist, you approached the aperture. Quickly clearing off your belongings, you fumbled with the lock mechanism, and after a moment of struggling, swung it outwards to the outside world.

Sun filtered into your apartment flat, lighting up the dark space and making you hiss slightly, as though it were harming you. Below you, a rich profusion of reds, blues, yellows, twisted into the Equestrian version of an alleyway—a far cry from the bleak greyness of alleyways on Earth. Even in Manehattan, Equestria’s latent colorfulness reigned supreme, infecting anything and everything with every color on the palette. 

But there was something else in front of you. Somepony familiar. 

“Celestia?”

It felt like deja-vu was punching you in the face. Didn’t this just happen? The only difference was that it wasn’t raining, and it was early in the morning, but the similarities were striking.

“Anon?” Celestia giggled embarrassedly with colored cheeks and a hoof to her mouth. “Fancy seeing you here! I didn’t know you frequented these parts…”

You raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I kind of live here. It would sure be a waste of money—your money, considering you’re paying for me to live here and all that—for me not to frequent these parts.” Gesturing to her with an almost accusing point of the finger, you continue. “The better question is why you are here—and why—how you’re all strung up in my clothes line,” you finished, crossing your arms over your chest.

“Oh, you know, just on the way home from work and I got caught up in the string here—it was hard to see,” Celestia replied, trying to cross her hooves, but failing, only accomplishing getting herself more stuck, somehow.

“You know, I find that very hard to believe, considering you work in Canterlot —” You paused, waving your hand about in what you assumed was the general direction of Canterlot from where you were standing “— you know, as the princess of this whole country?”

“About that,” she intoned, her cheeks seeming to redden even more. “I might havecometovisityou? Can we just talk about it after I get me down? I'm a bit stuck, you see?”

“Yes… I can see it all.”

A moment of silence pervaded the colorful alleyway, before you spoke once more.

“Sooo, did you need any help getting down?” You questioned with a chuckle.

“Oh, there’s no need for that, I can get myself down just fine…” 

After watching her thrash about for a bit, you bit your lip and clambered on top of your window sill, just like in your dream. “Here, let me just do you a favor and get you down from there and then, we can talk about whatever it is you want to talk about.”

And just like your dream, you found yourself having an issue. You lived on the second floor, and your clothes line was on the first floor. Now, you could have just walked down the stairs like a normal person, but where was the fun in that?”

“I’m going to jump, Celestia,” you announced to her. Eyes like, and completely unlike yours, looked at you with knowledge and wisdom—the type of knowledge that screamed that what you were about to do was a terrible idea. 

“No, you shouldn’t do that Anon, I wouldn’t want you getting hur—”

She was cut off as you tackled her, your perfect trajectory bringing you crashing directly into her and into a conveniently placed trash can across the alleyway from your window.

The two of you settled into the bottom of the can, using the garbage bag below you as a cushion. Something like a lifetime passed before the silence was broken by the first thing that came to your mind.

“Couldn’t you have just used your magic?” You asked incredulously.

“Mhmm,” she muttered, snuggling deeper into your chest. You took that as a yes.

So there you sat, comfortable as could be in a trash can, cuddling with Celestia.

Your brain slotted this into your box of good memories, as you closed your eyes and smiled, holding the alicorn closer.

It did smell though. Maybe you should move.