I pulled out my phone to check the time once again. The glow of its screen told me it was nearly three in the morning. Lying on my couch, I had been watching my TV for God knows how long. I groaned as my eyelids tried to close yet again. I knew I needed to get to bed, but I was trying to stay up all night just to see if I could make it. I rubbed my eyes once more before turning off the TV and sitting up on the couch. Putting the remote on the coffee table in front of me, I stood up and stretched, cracking my back, and giving myself a few fake slaps.
“Come on, Zack, wake up,” I mumbled to myself, trying to get some blood flowing.
Not feeling any more awake than I was a few seconds ago, I slowly walked over to my bathroom, still in my pajamas. Groggily I opened the door, reaching out and flipping the light switch. I turned on the faucet and cupped my hands underneath the pouring water. The water set my hands shaking from the bitter cold it produced. Giving myself a few seconds to prepare, I splashed the freezing water onto my face, shivering as soon as it made contact. I woke up fairly quickly, and took a breath, reaching out for a towel. Overreaching the spot where the towels should have been, my fingers lightly hit the wall. With water dripping off my chin, I turned my head to look at the towel rack. Every single towel was missing.
I sighed, deciding to just use my shirt to wipe up my dripping head. At least now the cold water would keep me from falling asleep for a while. Once I finished getting most of the water off I looked into the mirror above the sink, seeing my sleep-deprived face. My brown hair was sticking up in hundreds of different directions and my eyes looked bloodshot. Jokingly I squinted my eyes pretending to be some famous celebrity. I chuckled a little, thinking about what to do. It was a Friday night, and I was bored. I spread my gums and opened my mouth to see how my hygiene was holding up. While looking at the amount of debris stuck in between my teeth, I noticed something in the corner of my vision.
Looking at the edge of the mirror, I saw a faint purple glow erupting in the corner. I stepped back, suddenly wide awake and very nervous. The color spread along the frame of the mirror, until the entire outline was glowing with a dark purple hue. Then, the mirror itself started to be engulfed in the color. Staring in awe, I watched as the purple glow filled the entire surface of the mirror. It looked as if the clear reflective surface of a normal mirror was being replaced with a glowing purple liquid. I was dumbfounded as to what was going on, and I had a sudden urge to touch it—just to see what it would feel like.
Not even thinking twice about what would happen if I did so, I reached out with my finger and gave it a poke. It felt like I had stuck my finger in jelly, and the surface rippled a little when I pulled it back out. I watched in wonder as the ripples reflected off the edges as if I had just thrown a stone into a pond. I jumped a little when I looked down to see that my finger had turned a pastel blue color. My stomach flipped over when I saw it, but I calmed down a bit when I saw that the color was slowly receding. I calmed myself down and instantly became curious as to what was on the other end of this portal.
Thinking about what to do next, I considered sticking my head in quickly to see if I find anything. I was a little worried about what happened to my finger, but giving it another glance, I saw that it had returned to its natural color. Nothing indicated that it had been damaged, and it felt fine when I flexed the muscle. If that was the case, then I had no worries about sticking my head in for a few seconds; it was like sticking my head into gelatin. I then took a big breath of air and stuck my face right into the mirror.
That was a big mistake.
As soon as my head went through the purple substance, I could feel my body being sucked through with it. I couldn’t grab anything before the mass took me in entirely. It felt like I was falling into a pit with no indication of the ground or sky. A sense of vertigo overcame me when I noticed that I seemed to be spinning, yet there was no sort of wind and the air seemed thick. Quickly I became disoriented; there was no way of judging up or down.
My heart pounded against my chest as my eyes darted back and forth trying to make sense of my surroundings. The entrance into this mysterious place was now nonexistent, as everything was exactly alike. No solid objects came to view, and every way I looked just produced an endless image of a purple void. My stomach churned a little as my mind processed all the illogical images it was receiving. I felt like I was going to vomit.
The vast expanse of empty space became the least of my worries when I looked down at my hands. They, along with the rest of my skin, had turned a light sky-blue color, almost identical to that of my finger when I stuck it in last time. This time, however, it gave no indication of fading away. I panicked and started clawing at my skin in hopes that it was just some sort of paint or coating. Nothing happened except my skin turned a slight shade of red from the irritation.
As I was trying fruitlessly to scratch whatever had changed my skin blue, my fingers seemed to pull themselves together. Giving up on changing my skin color back, I tried to pull apart my fingers to find that they wouldn’t budge. I gave my wrist a snap to try and separate the appendages, but with no luck. Giving them another look, I noticed that my fingers were slowly shrinking back into my wrist and as the seconds passed, my hand became more blockish and stump-like.
I bit my arm in some mad hope that this was some sort of messed up dream. The pain that came after told me that this was no dream, this was reality. I looked down again to see if my hands had stopped. They had indeed stopped, but now my hand didn’t even exist. It looked like someone had taken a cleaver and sliced completely through my arm. My clothing seemed to melt away from my skin as it disappeared into the void around me. Looking down I saw that my feet were in the same stumpy form that my hands were. The change must have occurred while I was focused on my hands. I didn’t get to give it much thought, because suddenly a strong burning pain started to arise on my hindquarters.
Taking a glance behind me, I saw something starting to protrude out my lower back. I watched as a thick brown tail started to grow feverishly. The thing got longer and longer until it passed up my legs, and, soon, past my newly-formed stumps. It was very bushy and gritty, and was the exact same dark brown that my hair color was. I only got a few seconds to admire its beauty before my head felt like someone was putting it through a sander.
I shook my head, trying to get the pain to stop. It felt worse than if some had lit it on fire. I shut my eyes pushed what used to be my hands into the top of my head trying to get the pain to stop, or at least dull a little. I felt my hair growing intensely out from the top of my head and along my neck and back. My arms were soon covered by a sloppy mess of hair, as a mane began to form along my neck. While the hair was growing, my neck also seemed to push itself out from my torso as it elongated well past human proportions. I had never felt this amount of pain ever before.
As if on cue, my back started to itch. The slight itch grew and grew until it finally formed into an unwavering pain that felt like something was going to explode out my back. Looking back I saw some blue skin look as if it were about to rip itself free from my flesh, pulsing consistently. I closed my eyes until the pain became too much. Grunting, something finally burst out from my back, instantly stopping the pain that accompanied it. Opening my eyes, I glanced back to see what had happened. Where what I thought would be a giant bloody hole in my back, I saw two wings, covered in some sort of clear liquid.
I gazed in awe at the two massive things on my back and tested them out a little by flexing my newly-formed muscles in order to make them twitch. As soon as I did, I knew I had made a mistake as a wave of fire overcame me; the newly-formed muscles burned with the fire that my head was still producing. I let out a slight moan before quickly tucking them into my body to let the pain recede a little. Finally I let out the breath I realized I had been holding the entire time.
I gagged trying to inhale the much needed oxygen. The purple-black mass that surrounded me wouldn’t let me breathe, and I started to panic. I thrashed my hooves in front of my elongated nose, trying to move whatever was blocking the air around me. Nothing seemed to be blocking the air around me and I involuntarily tried to inhale again, only to gag on nothing. My heart rate slowed down and the purple substance started to fade away as my vision became blurry once again. I was passing out, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was going to die in this objectless hellhole.
Before the wave of unconsciousness hit me, I saw a room start to materialize in front of me.
I opened my eyes, and my vision slowly adjusted to the amount of light entering the room. Lifting my head up, I saw that I was still in my new form. I must have transformed into some sort of freaky blue horse with wings. People were going to run screaming at the sight of me. I told myself I was lucky to be alive, although my body was still sore from all the changes that I had to go through. Grunting, I rolled over and got up on what I assumed must have been my hooves. It felt strange to have all four of my appendages on the ground at once. I wobbled a bit getting used to the new perspective and feelings that came with standing as I was. A few wobbly steps forward gave me a new sense of balance that seemed almost natural to me.
Lifting my head up, I looked around to see I was in a library of sorts. There were shelves upon shelves, all filled to the brim with books of all the titles imaginable. Random piles of books were scattered around the room seemingly at random. The piles all towered over me and looked to be in no sort of order. It looked as if someone had been studying all night for some important test. All of the surfaces were clean from dust indicating that they must have been used pretty recently.
I half-stumbled, half-walked over to one of the smaller piles and picked up a book, looking through the contents. It was written in English, so that meant I could talk to the inhabitants of this place. The book was on simple math and was mostly explaining word problems. I ignored the rest of it and shut it in my hooves. Then it occurred to me.
How am I holding this book with hooves?!
The book instantly fell to the floor as soon as I thought about how I just managed to do that. I jumped back a little bit, scared at the pseudo-miracle I had just performed. Logically, that feat would be impossible, because my hooves had no way of wrapping themselves around the binding. Walking back over to the book now lying text-down on the floor, I put my hoof onto it to see if there was some way it had accidentally stuck to the back. My hoof came instantly up with no resistance or any sort of sticky residue covering it. The book didn’t even budge.
With a hunch, I put my hoof back onto the cover of the face-down book. This time when I brought it back up, I thought about actually grabbing it as if I still had hands. The book came up as if glued to my hoof. I stood there awestruck at the impossible feat, not believing what I was looking at. Taking another leap of faith, I thought about letting it go. When I did, gravity took over and the book instantly dropped to the floor with a loud thud. Once again I was amazed as I picked up the book and dropped it over and over on the wooden floor.
Soon, however, I grew bored of defying physics and took another look around. The floor was entirely wooden with rings starting in the middle of the room and expanding out until it hit the walls. If I wasn’t mistaken, it looked as if I was inside of a tree. This was interesting, but not impossible. I’ve heard of buildings in trees before. A library, however, was a new one for me.
“Great!” a voice said from behind me, making me jump a little. “You’re awake!”
Turning my head to see who was addressing me, I saw a small creature jump down from the step on the stairs to land next to me. He looked like some sort of overgrown lizard or maybe a very small dragon. I slowly took a step backward nervously.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. “The name’s Spike by the way.”
“Um…I-I’m f-fine… uh… Spike,” I nervously stuttered, slowly backing away from this terrifying, talking dragon. “M-My name’s Z-Zack… Um… where-where am I?”
“You’re in Ponyville Library!”
“P-Ponyville… L-Library?” I repeated, my mind failing to process what he even said.
“Yeah, my friend Twilight runs the place,” he said picking up the book I was messing with earlier. “I’m just an assistant. She went to get someone to help wake you up, and I was supposed to make sure you were ok. I was just making a little snack from upstairs when I heard you get up. Were you messing with one of the books? I heard a thumping.”
“Wait… H-How—”
The door burst open as a purple horse with a horn ran in, talking to what seemed to be a light yellow horse with wings like mine. “He’s right in here,” she said looking back at the yellow pony whose pink hair was covering most of her face. “Oh… You’re awake. How are you feeling?” she asked, seeing me standing.
I froze up, too scared to talk. Spike covered the silence, though, when he spoke up once again, saying, “He just woke up a few minutes ago, but he seems fine now to me.”
The pink-maned horse spoke quietly with a very shy tone, “I guess I won’t be needed then.” She seemed afraid of me, and I wanted to console her, but I was too dumbfounded at all the talking creatures to do anything except stare at them with my mouth agape.
“Why don’t you stay, Fluttershy, just in case he blacks out again,” The purple horse that resembled the mythical unicorn replied to the winged horse.
She muttered something in response so quietly that I had no idea what she said, but she didn’t make any indication of leaving, so I assume she must have said something along the lines of “ok.”
“Well, hello…” the purple unicorn asked, seeming at a loss for my name.
When he noticed that I wasn’t about to say anything, Spike once again piped up, “Zack.”
“Hello, Zack, My name is Twilight Sparkle. Welcome to Ponyville. So, where are you from?”
Three curious faces gazed upon me waiting for an answer, but my brain was still processing all the information, “Ponyville… did that mean these horses were actually ponies?” I thought. “But these ponies don’t look anywhere near normal. The yellow pony was called Fluttershy. The purple one was called Twilight. They could speak English and were very friendly. I was in a library, so that meant they could read and write. Am I going insane? How did I end up here…”
My throat tightened as my mind lost track of my sanity. I was standing in the form of a pony around two strange, talking ponies and some sort of talking lizard. I wanted to say something, anything, but my brain was fried. All I could manage to force out of my mouth was a faint squeak.
“Can he understand me?” Twilight asked Spike, while still keeping an eye on me.
“He was talking to me a minute ago, although he did seem really nervous,” Spike told Twilight, scratching the side of his head with a claw. “It was as if he had never seen a dragon before!”
“Oh my gosh!” Twilight burst out, as if a sudden realization hit her.
“What?” Spike replied, jumping back a little.
“He probably hasn’t seen a dragon before.”
“But nearly everypony has seen at least a picture of a dragon,” Fluttershy added in with her soft voice, slowly fading away as she spoke on, “but I guess Spike can be scary… sometimes…”
“That’s the thing,” Twilight responded. “I’m not certain he is a pony.”
“What do you mean he isn’t a pony?” Spike questioned. “Look at him; he’s obviously a pony!” Spike said triumphantly. He turned to me looking me down once more, before asking “Aren’t you?”
Still not gaining enough courage to speak, I shook my head slightly in disagreement as Spike stood with a confused look on his face.
“I don’t think he’s even from this universe,” Twilight started to explain. “I was looking through a new book that the Princess gave me on my last visit to Canterlot. It was a spell book called Spells and Incantations for Advanced Students that contained class S spells. Those are the same class as the ones the Princesses use to raise and lower the sun and moon each day.
“Anyway, I was working on one spell in particular that can be used to open up portals to alternate universes. Picking my coordinates at random, I tried to open up a portal but failed the first few times. After a few attempts, however, I succeeded, but only for a few seconds. In those few seconds that I had the portal open, though, he fell out of it, completely blacked out. That’s when I called you down, Spike, to make sure he didn’t get hurt while I was fetching you, Fluttershy. I thought at the time that I had just accidentally opened a portal to somewhere else in Equestria, because the spell sometimes does that…”
“If he’s not a pony… t-then w-what is he?” Fluttershy asked, backing slightly off and half hiding behind her mane, which draped itself in front of her.
“I’m…I’m a human” I finally managed to sputter, getting over all the talking horses.
“A what?” everyone gasped, turning to me.
“A human,” I said again, with a little more confidence now that my brain finally had a grip on the situation at hand. “Haven’t you heard of humans?”
“Well,” Twilight started, “the only time I had ever even heard the word—”
“But you have heard of humans, right?” I interrupted her.
“Well, technically, I have. But this was in a book my mother read to me when I was still a filly in Canterlot. It told of a story of before Princess Celestia or Princess Luna were even born. Back long ago it was said a mysterious traveler from some unknown place came through a magical door to Equestria. He came on the darkest night of the year, which today is known as Nightmare Night.”
“But doesn’t Nightmare Night celebrate Nightmare Moon’s return to Equestria?” Spike asked.
“Yes, but there are actually two reasons we celebrate it. The mysterious traveler story had just fallen into obscurity. Anyway, this traveler was said to stand on two legs with two arms and hands. He had a mane on top of his head, and was unlike anything anypony had ever seen before. He stood as tall as a pony and was fabled to have instruments of death imbedded into his skin. He had no other appendages, and the rest of his body was hairless.
“He was fabled to have wiped an entire town off the face of Equestria. The ponies screams could be heard for miles, and he was told to have spared only one small filly. He left him cowering in his bed as the stranger entered the door to his closet. Saying only the words, ‘The doctor will be back,’ he disappeared. Every night thereafter, he was said to come out of any closet and take anypony who wasn’t in their bed. No one knew when or where he was going to return. That’s why you’re not supposed to be out of bed at night. My mom told me that the story was only intended to keep restless fillies in their beds though…”
When Twilight was finished with her tale, I noticed that Fluttershy’s face had become much paler than when she walked in a few minutes ago. Her eyes were wide open and her teeth were chattering. Shivers must have been running up and down her spine as she was shaking uncontrollably. Her wings were being held tight to her body and she was lying on the floor with her eyes trained on me. She looked as if she had seen a monster.
“Fluttershy, are you—?”
“Don’t hurt me!” Fluttershy shouted, wings bursting out as she leapt into the air. She flapped madly bolting straight towards the nearest window. Crashing into a window, she groaned and slowly slid down. Before she could get back up Spike rushed over to her.
“Whoa, calm down there ‘Shy,” Spike reassured her helping her up from the floor. Her face had turned a dark shade of red, “He’s not going to hurt you. Breathe…breathe.”
Fluttershy shakily got back up onto four hooves and slowly but surely brought her breathing down from a state of hyperventilation. I stepped forward toward her trying to reassure her I meant no harm, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I won’t hurt you, trust me.”
All Fluttershy could manage to reply to me was a squeak before quickly running to hide behind Twilight. “Don’t worry about her,” Twilight reassured me, “she just gets scared very easily. I probably shouldn’t have told that whole story, knowing she was here.”
“I know a way to calm her down,” Spike pitched in, while picking up a few books that were knocked off the shelf in Fluttershy’s panic. “Why don’t we have lunch. I’m starving!”
“Oh, Spike,” Twilight chuckled before turning to me. “Well, I guess it would be better than just standing around. What would you like to eat?”
“Thanks,” I replied nervously, “I guess I’ll have what everybo—” I then realized that they had all been saying the word ‘everypony’ instead of ‘everybody,’ so, assuming that that word must have been the norm, I finished my sentence, “—what everypony else is having.”
“Great,” Twilight replied turning to the stairs which Fluttershy was hurriedly running up. “Spike, make us a few daisy sandwiches. Oh, and by the way, welcome to Equestria.”
“Thanks. I’ll have to admit, I’m a little overwhelmed at all of this. Everything’s completely new to me. This world, Equestria, you call it? This world is nothing like mine. I thought of alternate universes, but this amazes me.”
“Well, We’ll try to make your visit as good as we can. I’ll try and get you back as soon as I can, but that spell drained me. I’m really sorry, but I don’t think I can get you home until tomorrow.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’ve got a few days until someone finds out what happened.”
“Do you mean somepony?”
“Hah, well back in my universe, we have humans. We have ponies too, but they look nothing like you guys, and they can’t talk.”
“Oh… I may have to check out your universe sometime…” Twilight put a hoof to her chin with a curious look in her eye. After a few seconds she removed it and pointed towards the steps, saying, “Anyway, shall we go up and see how Lunch is coming along?”
I said sure and let her lead me upstairs where Spike was already starting to set up a table with a few plates. Fluttershy was setting out the plates and making some freshly squeezed orange juice. She only had one other orange and I was curious as to how she was going to squeeze enough juice out for all of us. Right then, a hummingbird, carrying an orange in its claws, flew in and set down the fruit on the table next to Fluttershy.
“Thank you Hummy,” she said to it in her kind soothing voice. “I’ll need just a few more, do you think you could be a dear…?”
The hummingbird nodded happily and flew back out the window as Fluttershy noticed me coming up with Twilight. She instantly hid her face behind her pink hair, trying to avoid eye contact with me. “So Zack,” Twilight started cheerily, “Do humans normally have daisy sandwiches?”
I didn’t want to tell her about how we ate meat. A pony would probably never dream of eating another creature, and Fluttershy seemed thoroughly scared by me already. Besides, it would probably offend her and gross her out. “Well I’ve never actually had a sandwich with any sort of flowers on it,” I answered her, “but I have had a sandwich with lettuce, tomatoes, and cheese before.”
“Interesting…Well I hope you like daisies. I’m sorry, but it’s all I have to offer. Have you at least tried drinking orange juice where you’re from?”
“It’s actually one of my favorite drinks, right after apple juice.”
“Oh! Well, I’d offer you some, but Spike finished off the apples this morning for breakfast. I’ll need to go get some more from Applejack now that I have some company.”
“Who’s Applejack?”
“Hey, everypony,” Spike said before Twilight could answer me. “Lunch is ready. Dig in.”
“It looks like Spike and Fluttershy have gotten everything ready for us,” Twilight said. “We’ll talk while we’re eating.”
Twilight and walked over to the table and sat down into a chair next to Spike who had already taken a bite out of his sandwich. Fluttershy finished squeezing the juice out of the oranges, and flew over with a pitcher of the stuff. Setting it down on the table she took up the seat across from Spike. I sat down opposite Twilight and before I could even consider taking a bite out of the bland-looking sandwich, I heard a loud thud as something smashed into the side of the library.
“Oh… If that’s Rainbow,” Twilight started, but before she could finish a rainbow maned pony crashed through the window, skidding across the floor. She tumbled a few times before finally hitting the wall next to me, stopping upside-down.
This was going to be an interesting lunch.
