The Chapter In Which Silver Key Gets a Rude and Weird Awakening
I woke up from my nap feeling a sense of peace. The pleasantly warm night air around me was filled with the chirps of crickets. I kept my eyes closed, smiling slightly and not wanting to move. I seemed to be contorted in an odd position, with all my limbs under me, but for whatever reason it wasn’t uncomfortable, and seemed quite ideal. I felt like a cat curled up in a ray of sunlight – except, of course, that it was night.
I would have liked to have stayed there longer, but a voice said intruded into my peaceful rest. I didn’t quite make out what it said, and I tried my best to ignore it, shifting slightly.
The feminine voice persisted. “Come on, Silver, you don’t want to miss the meteor shower!”
I perked up a little. Meteor showers were something I was certainly interested in. I didn’t know the voice, and I didn’t know who she was talking to, but maybe she’d let me tag along. I stretched and opened my eyes.
I was quite unprepared for what awaited me.
Before me was a wooded field or park. But somehow, it looked far different from any I’d seen. Colors were brighter and detail was lost, giving it a simple, cartoonish appearance. As I looked around, everything had the same visage – including something that very much stood out. A lavender… creature stood smiling at me, quadrupedal with giant eyes on a head held high, and a blue… mane of sorts, with a pink stripe running through it and a lavender horn sticking out of it.
“Finally!” It said. “Come on, the others are waiting for us.”
Words failed me.
I decided the best course of action was to stand up. Well, maybe not the best thing, but certainly something to do while I tried to figure out what was going on. I reached my hand out to press against the ground for leverage in getting up, but as I did so I noticed that there wasn’t any feeling in my fingers. I looked down in puzzlement, and found that not only was my skin a steely grey, but my hand was gone, leaving only a flat stump. Despite this, the limb found purchase on the ground. I couldn’t feel the grass beneath my feet – or whatever my extremities now were - but I otherwise seemed fine.
I brought my… limb… up to my face for closer examination, given the lack of detail. This revealed three things. First, the steel blue color in fact belonged to fur. Second, my face was somewhat elongated, and I now had a snout. This directly led to my third discovery, that the end of my arm was rather hard, as it bonked against my nose painfully.
I let out very light yelp at this. In response, I heard the purple creature say, “Are you all right?” I looked up to see that she had started moving off, but was now looking back towards me with an obviously concerned expression.
“Uh… yeah.” I responded, but I didn’t quite recognize the voice that came out. If a look of complete confusion and dawning horror showed on my face, the purple creature didn’t notice, and she resumed walking.
I tried once more to get to my feet, and found it was easier to stand on all fours. Slowly, my mind was putting the pieces together. Four legs. Mane. Snout. Hooves. Even a horn, which I confirmed I as well with a sweep over my head. Was I a… unicorn?
And why did that other unicorn call me “Silver?”
As quickly as I could manage, I gathered my bearings and quickly set off after the only creature that might have an idea what was going on. I watched her legs carefully, trying to get a feel for how to move my own limbs.
As we trotted, I thought about asking her what the meaning of all this was, but she seemed completely oblivious to my plight, or indeed that anything was wrong. Combined with my inner instinct to not make a fuss, this meant that I was going to play along, smiling and nodding if need be. This unicorn offered normalcy (strange as it sounded), and I was ready to grab at it, no matter how bizarre my current circumstances were.
As we walked, I tried to ponder my situation, with little effect. Was this a dream, I wondered? Unlikely – it seemed real enough, and I was rarely lucid enough in my dreams to realize what they were. I didn’t remember taking any hallucinogens or anything to cause a vision or anything like that. That left the possibility that I had somehow been transferred to another world… though my mind rebelled at the absurdity of such a notion.
As a result, even though my body was on autopilot, I accomplished little in the way of analyzing on the way to… wherever we were going. In no time at all we ascended a hill, where I noticed many, many more equines, all in various biology-defying pastels. Some had horns like myself and my companion, some had wings, and some had neither. As I continued moving, gawking as I went, we came to a stop beside a picnic blanket, with various snacks upon it and several ponies around it… as well as a small purple bipedal lizardlike creature. Who appeared to be wearing a large red bejeweled bow tie, which I thought looked both ridiculous and strangely adorable.
“Finally!” A blue pegasus with a rainbow mane, easily the most outlandish-looking of the group, spoke up. “What took you so long?”
The purple unicorn replied “Oh, Silver Key was still napping. Guess he stayed up too long reading again.” She giggled.
I smiled nervously. “Y-yeah. Just needed a nap before tonight, you know?” As far as I recalled, I’d just laid down for a perfectly normal nap, not realizing it would be my last as a human being.
“Of course! Gotta be alert for the meteor shower!” Exclaimed a pink equine with a frizzy mane who appeared to have no problems being alert. “It’s gonna be amazing!”
“Hey everypony, the show is starting!” A smaller white unicorn exclaimed from nearby. Everypony? Was that a word in this world?
The assorted ponies in the group clustered into a group to watch the meteors. A couple of the smaller ones hopped on the backs of their elders to see. I craned my neck to get a view.
I had to admit, it was quite a sight. Even the strange appearance of this world didn’t change the beauty of the heavens. In fact… I was pretty sure the sparkling lights streaking across the purple sky was one of the most beautiful things I’d seen in my life.
Eventually, the show had to end. But the assorted ponies weren’t done for the night – they gathered back around to talk and socialize… and I, as an apparent good friend of theirs, stayed around. Thankfully, I didn’t have to talk to much – I simply listened and ate snacks while the others conversed. It was kind of awkward without opposable thumbs to pick up food with, but I took my cues from the other ponies, as I suspected I’d be doing a lot in the future. I also listened carefully, trying to scout out the names and personalities of my “new” friends – and hopefully, find someone… or somepony… who wouldn’t laugh at me or throw me in an asylum when they heard my plight.
Of course, since these were ponies that had evidently known me – or Silver Key - for some time and interacted with me on a regular basis, it was inevitable that I got asked a few questions.
“So, Silver, how’s that book I lent you?”
“Uh…” I had to pick my words carefully. If I told “Twilight Sparkle” that I hadn’t started it yet, I ran the risk of her saying, for instance, “But you told me you were almost done-“ or something like that.
…Okay, maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal, but I wanted to avoid any and all fuss, no matter how minor. No pony could know that anything was amiss, at least not until I knew how to handle the situation.
In the end, I settled for, “It’s great, so far,” and hoped that it was, in fact, great.
A yellow pegasus named Fluttershy asked, “How’s Moonstone?”
What? Who the heck was Moonstone? My pet, my baby brother? The knowledge that I was now responsible for another living being, while necessary, was not comforting. Unless I was lucky enough that she was talking about actual moonstone, whatever that was. “Uh, same as always, I guess.”
Another voice cut in. “You all right, sugarcube?”
“Yeah,” I responded to the orange mare responsible. Either “Applejack” was awfully perceptive or just lucky. “Just… just got a lot on my mind.” At least I didn’t have to fudge that one.
At last the night ended – after we ran out of punch and found Spike the baby dragon sleeping in the bowl. I laughed with the rest at the “Spiked” punch (apparently I would have to watch out for that in this world, too), and soon the group began to split up.
Twilight’s horn glowed magenta, and Spike was surrounded by an identically-colored aura and levitated onto Twilight’s back. I tried not to stare too hard. Could all unicorns do that? Could I do that? I needed to figure out how to do that.
I needed to figure out a lot of things.
My head swam with theories. I had to get home, see what kind of pony Silver Key was, what life he led.
That’s when I realized something. I didn’t know where I lived.
The Chapter in Which Silver Key Examines His House
Once again, I was paralyzed. After a moment, I looked around at the departing ponies. I had an idea – one of them had to know where I lived. My eyes fell upon Twilight Sparkle. I had determined so far that she was somewhat introverted and into books. It wasn’t much, but it meant I had the most in common with her out of all ponies. It also meant that she was the pony I’d most likely ask out on a date… which was extremely important given what I was about to do.
I trotted after her, and pulled up alongside her. It wasn’t hard given she was carefully carrying a baby dragon on her back. “Um, Twilight…”
“Yes?”
Man, this was hard to say. “Would you mind if I… walked with you? Home, I mean?”
She smiled and said without hesitation, “Of course!”
Either she was oblivious enough to believe that my request was purely platonic, which amusingly enough it was, or else we were already dating. Which would be very awkward, to say the least. I spent the next few moments wondering how to tactfully figure out if one is in a relationship with someone. Maybe if I was unlucky she’d give me a goodnight kiss.
The most obvious flaw with this plan was that, if her house was closer to the hill than mine, I’d be left high and dry with no idea which house in this thankfully-small town was mine. I decided to go out on a limb and asked, “Forgive me for asking, but in this darkness I’m not sure I’ll be able to pick out my house…”
“Oh, no problem! It should be… right over there!” She gestured with her hoof up the street, lined with similar-looking two-story thatched houses.
I did my best to gauge where she was pointing at, and as we came alongside the house in question, I asked, “This one, right?”
“Yep.” She looked at me for a long moment, making me slightly uncomfortable. I hoped she wasn’t expecting a kiss. I was very definitely not going to provide. Could ponies even kiss, anyway?
I broke the silence. “Thanks. I’m… just feeling out of it tonight.” I flashed a small smile at her and she returned it. I then turned and faced my “new” home.
As I pulled the door open (after fumbling a bit with it), I had several objectives in mind. See, I now had a couple of hypotheses in my head, and I needed to figure out which was the more likely.
One is that I had been utterly inserted into this new world, with everything and everypony set as though I had always been here. As an alternate but similar possibility, I, Silver Key, had amnesia coupled with delusions of life as a human.
The other possibility was that both I and Silver Key were separate, real individuals, and this night had had our minds and lives switched.
Either way, until a way to reverse the process was found, I needed to search my house, find out what made Silver Key… Silver Key. I needed to acclimate and assimilate into this new life long enough to figure out a likely explanation… as well as figure out who to trust with my dilemma.
As I thought about this, I proceeded to bump into what I assumed was a table. In my ignorance, I had failed to realize that there weren’t any lights on in the house. I wandered about the darkness until my nose bumped into a wall – I couldn’t figure out a good way to reach out with foreleg in front of my face while walking – and from there tried to find a light switch.
It was 10 minutes before I found a lamp, and another 5 to figure out that it ran on fireflies.
Well, it seemed to work fine for all parties involved, so I turned to survey the room I was in. As it turned out, I was in a kitchen/dining room, with the offending table from before in the center. Lying on the table was a stone-grey cat, eyes narrowed at me as though he were bored and had watched me for the past 15 minutes thinking, “What an idiot.”
I stared back at the cat. I wondered, was this the Moonstone that Fluttershy had mentioned earlier? Awkwardly, I said, “Hello, Moonstone.”
The cat merely flicked his tail, his expression contemptuous.
I decided that perhaps his problem was that he needed feeding. Or watering. I just hoped that this was Moonstone and that I didn’t have a roommate or something to deal with. In any event, I walked over to the kitchen counter, trying to find where I’d keep the cat food. The table was relatively clean and tidy, which meant that I’d have to open the cupboards and drawers. Without hands.
It didn’t make sense, really. Why did everything look like it was designed by creatures with hands?
I glared at a drawer for a moment before deciding that perhaps now was a good time to try out that telekinesis I had seen Twilight use. I hoped it was as easy as it looked, because I was after all from a world where such magic didn’t exist. I wasn’t even sure how to go about it, and the cat’s gaze performing a lobotomy on me wasn’t helping. At last, I simply willed the drawer to open, and low and behold, a silvery glow surrounded it and it slid outward.
I was sure if the cat could clap, with mocking slowness, he’d have done so. Particularly since the cat food was not in this drawer.
A dozen more applications of telekinesis later, and I had found a bag of cat food in a lower cupboard, which I decided would be great for more practice of telekinesis. Carefully, I moved it over to a food bowl on the floor, and rotated it so some dry kibble poured into the bowl… and proceded to overflow it and spill cat food on the floor.
The cat hopped down from the table and brushed past me, smacking my foreleg with his tail. I swear it was on purpose.
In any event, he seemed satisfied with the food, so I decided to investigate the rest of the house. Despite having the trappings of a house from the 50’s, it seemed to lack electrical equipment, at least outside the kitchen. No TV, no computer, no phone. Just books. In fact, my bed was surrounded by bookshelves. Most even had books in them.
There wasn’t actually a whole lot in the house other than books. In contrast with my house back on Earth, it looked like more a place where I slept. And read. And probably fell asleep reading. Most of my time was probably spent outside, probably socializing. I wondered if that was normal for ponies.
Seeing the books reminded me that I’d apparently borrowed a book from Twilight, and it was with some dread that I looked around and tried to figure out which one it could possibly be. Thankfully, my choice was narrowed down to the… four books on the nightstand. Evidently my- err, Silver Key’s – attention flickered wildly between books.
I checked each of the books for a bookmark, and found one in a book with an illustrated cover, Daring Do and the Griffon’s Goblet.. The bookmark was near the beginning, so I figured I could simply start over again and hope I didn’t stop because it was boring.
Wait a moment, I thought. I’m here for one evening and I’m already making long-term plans!?
I decided I was too tired for this. It was my personal philosophy that, when I went to bed, all of my troubles could collectively screw themselves. I’d had a rough day, taken a nap, and then woke up to find my old troubles gone but replaced with something completely different. I lay on the bed, pulled the covers up, and closed my eyes.
I hoped the real Silver Key wasn’t in too much trouble by now. And that he hadn’t ruined my life too much.
Meanwhile, on Earth, a tall, brown-haired man was staring down a horse. If the horse could talk, he probably would have asked, “Why the long face?” As it were, the man acted as though the question had been asked anyway.
“And then there’s Rainbow Dash, she’s cyan blue with a rainbow… Hey, don’t just walk away!”
