One Nap Later...

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.