I'm a pony.
In a small suburban cul-de-sac, in a little blue house, inside of a tiny room, Michael sat at his desk staring down at the history textbook he'd been trying to read for the last two hours, but his focus had long since left and he'd been reading the same paragraph over and over for about half an hour.
"Ugh! I just can't read this anymore!" Micheal said as he slammed the cover shut and stared out his window.
Micheal had been struggling with history for the entire semester. The stories he could remember, but dates and numbers were always hard and every test was more multiple choice about numbers than anything else. He cradled his head in his hands and wondered if he'd manage to keep his scholarship if he failed his final exam.
"Smells like a storm. That's odd, there's no clouds out tonight," he said as he sniffed the air.
Suddenly several flashes of light and the scintillating sound of a hundred tiny electric arcs erupted behind him. He jumped back as he turned to see what was happening. A sphere of lightning and darkness was growing in the middle of his room. He looked towards the door to his room and wondered if he should make a dash for it, but realized that the sphere was already too large to get around. He pressed himself up against his desk and hoped that whatever this thing was it would dissipate quietly rather than explode.
"Is it ball lightning? Isn't ball lightning really bright? Not a black hole in the middle of my room? Maybe it just looks like it's black, but it's really bright and I'm just going blind..." Thoughts like these continued to race though his head as he stared at the ever growing sphere.
After a few more seconds of growth the sphere erupted outward in a flash of white light and Michael closed his eyes and looked away hoping that it wasn't the end. After a second he slowly turned back to the place where the sphere had been and tried to come to terms with what he saw standing there, but first the screaming. His voice went up an entire octave and it took him a moment to realize that the screaming was coming from him.
He screamed. Then it screamed. Then they both grew quiet as it looked at him and around his room and he stared at it, silent and frozen in disbelief.
It was... what was it? It was impossible. It was definitely purple and stood on four legs, but the color was wrong. The color was bright and solid and didn't seem to be affected by the light or shadows in his room. It was like he was staring at a cartoon. A living cartoon seemed to be standing in the middle of his room and looking at him.
"Hi, my name's Twilight Sparkle."
It was speaking. The impossible thing that was impossibly in the middle of his room was speaking to him and smiling.
"Hello? Can you speak?" it asked.
"I... uh... what?" Michael said as he shook his head and tried to figure out what was happening. Maybe he'd been studying too hard and had fallen asleep. This had to be a dream or delusion or something. He pinched himself, but didn't wake up.
"My name's Twilight Sparkle. What's yours?"
"M-Michael. My name's Michael," he said, "What's happening? What are you? Are you an alien?"
"Huh? Alien? I'm a pony. Isn't that obvious? I was practicing a new spell for teleporting longer distances, but I think something must have gone wrong. What are you? Are you some sort of minotaur? Everything here looks a little odd. Where am I?"
"You're in Mequon, Wisconsin."
"Mechawicksin? I've never seen that on a map."
"Did you say you're a pony?"
"Yes. What else would I be?"
"You're not a pony."
"Excuse me? I think I know what I am."
"No."
"Yes." She looked like she was getting irritated, if he could trust his ability to read the facial expressions of a purple cartoon pony...
"Look, first of all, ponies don't talk, they are not purple, and they, well, they are just simply not like you. Here, let me show you." Michael said as he turned to his laptop and started searching for a photo of a pony. "Here, this is a pony!"
Twilight walked over to the desk and peered at the image on the screen. "I don't know what that is, but it's not a pony. It's some sort of fur-beast monster."
"No, that's a pony. You're... you're some sort of... delusion. I'm obviously having a mental breakdown. I've gotta get to the hospital. You can't exist. A talking 'pony' thing in the middle of my bedroom. You can't be real."
"Look, calm down. Don't worry. I've just got to think for a minute. I should be able to cast the spell I used to get here and it should, theoretically, take me back to Equestria."
"Equestria... right," Micheal said with more than a tinge of snarkiness, "because you're from a silly horse land of brightly colored, magical, pony, unicorn things. I bet there are pegasuses and-"
"Hm? Now you're getting it," Twilight said, " but could you be quiet for a couple of minutes. I need to remember the spell."
"Ah. Yeah. I think I'll just, uh, sit here and slowly go insane."
"You're really weird."
"Says the purple unicorn."
She glared at him for a moment and then seemed to drift off into her own thoughts and calculations.
"Okay. I think I've got it. Stand back."
Twilight frowned, bit her lower lip, and concentrated. Her horn began to glow and another black sphere of lightning started building around it. After a few moments, the sphere had completely covered the small unicorn and then erupted into a bright flash of light, leaving Michael alone in his room once again.
"I don't understand what just happened. Cartoon, unicorn, magic, purple thing. Balls of lightning. Magic spells. I'm losing it. Too much stress. I'm totally going to fail that exam. There's just no way..."
After sitting in his room for a couple of hours, talking himself back into some sort of sanity, Michael decided to go for a walk in the cool evening air. Everything would be better after a walk, and a good night's rest, and breakfast, he assured himself. The cool air, the sound of crickets chirruping, and the moths flying into the streetlights all slowly calmed his nerves.
"That must have all been a dream. I mean, I don't remember waking up, but I must have woken up after that dream and just not realized it," he said to himself as he put his key into his front door, unlocked it, and stepped inside.
"There are six of you now."
"Yeah, I thought I'd worked out the bugs with the spell, so I was trying to teleport us to the Crystal Empire, but we ended up here instead. Don't worry though, I'm sure I'll be able to get us back soon," the purple one said.
