Little Lyra and You

Chapter One: There’s a Little Horse in my Shoe

It had been a long days work and you just couldn’t wait to get home. You grumble to yourself as you climb up the stairs to your apartment about pay cuts and the rest of the steaming piles of bullshit that was going on thanks to the industry.

            A loud clap of thunder pulls you out of your thoughts. Then the rain started pouring down and you hasten your climb up the stairs to your apartment. As you approach the door you reach into your small work bag and feel around in the pockets for that familiar key ring. “Where is it?” You ask yourself as you lift the bag up to your face to peer inside. You scan the nearly empty pocket for your keys, but all that’s there is your phone, Nintendo DS(You’re not afraid to admit you still play pokemon) and a thumb drive with some ‘special’ images stored on it. But no keys.

You sigh to yourself and close the flap on your bag. ‘Good thing I keep a spare under the mat.’ You say bending over and lifting the small, worn mat that had once said welcome but the ‘L’ had fallen off some time ago and it now read ‘We Come’ which was kind of creepy. You run your hand under the mat and pull out the small silver key. It had a few spider webs on it, but you just blew those off and inserted it into the keyhole and unlocked the door. You turn the knob and step into your apartment.

It wasn’t much, just a single living space, kitchen and a bedroom with a washroom across the hall. But it was all you needed. It was home, or at least, more so than back in Michigan. You had lived there for the better part of your life, not that you wanted to remember those years. You mentally shake your head to banish those thoughts from your mind and walk into the kitchen for some grub, kicking off your shoes at the door.

You pull open the fridge and rut around a bit before pulling out a can of Dr. Pepper and a half eaten log of sausage. You bring the sausage over to the cutting board that you had used that morning and picked up the knife that had been resting on it and began cutting the log of meat.

As you sliced the meat let your thoughts wander back to your work. You had landed a sweet job at Bungie two years ago as an artist and as a huge Halo fan, you had gladly accepted the position. Even after Bungie sold their rights to Halo you loved your work. But it wasn’t just what you did there anymore, but the people you had met in your time there. Like your friends John and Chris whom you had met through your time there. John was one of the artists like yourself while Chris was one of the story designers.

As you let your mind wander you paid less attention to the knife and eventually sliced your thumb open. “Ouch, shit.” You say to yourself examining the small cut. Blood was already welling up and running down your hand. You rush over to the small drawer where you kept the bandages with your thumb in your mouth in an attempt to keep from getting blood on the white tiled floor. You pull the drawer open and pull out a piece of gauze and quickly start wrapping it tightly around your injured thumb. You trim the piece of cloth and tape it down. Your dad had taught you how to patch up minor wounds like that one before he died.

Satisfied with your work you put the remaining gauze back into the drawer and turn back th the sausage. You didn’t want to risk cutting yourself again so you put the knife in the sink and the sausage into a plastic bag and placed it back into the cooler. You pick back up your Coke and walk over to your desk, which sat in the corner of your living space next to the recliner which sat across from your tv, and plop down into the comfy office chair and turn on your gaming PC. You glance up as the monitor that you had mounted on the wall when you first moved in flickered to life  with the Windows Logo front and center in all its misshapen window glory.

As windows boots up you reach down and extract a small drawing pad and a stylus from your work bag and lay them out on your desk. The Windows logo disappears and is replaced by your home screen swamped with different icons along a backdrop of “Fallout Three”, one of your favorite games of all time.

As you load up your drawing software, the Skype notification ‘blurp’ sounds. The window pops up with a message from Chris. You have to squint to read the small text without your glasses. Hey man, you coming over tonight or what. We’re not gonna’ wait for you forever.

“Oh shit.” You exclaim as you remember what night it is. You grab your raincoat off the back of your chair and start walking to the door. “Can’t believe I forgot game night.” YOu mumble to yourself as you slip your arm through the stiff arm hole of the jacket, grimacing slightly as your thumb brushes against the fabric. You do your best to ignore the pain and go to slip on your shoes.

Right as your toe is about an inch away from the shoe, a small head pops out, no bigger than a golf ball. “Gahh!” You yell in surprise jumping back a few inches before tripping over the rug and falling flat on your ass. with the ruckus you were making, the head popped back into the shoe with a startled squeak. “Whaa?” You say, not entirely sure what you just saw. You pick up the shoe tentatively and turn it upside down. As you begin to shake it softly, a small body falls out of the hole and land on the ground with a soft thud, causing you to jump back a bit more.

It was just a little thing appeared to be a horse of sorts. Like the ones your sister used to play with, except it wasn’t those rainbow ponies, but a little mint green one with just a slightly lighter shaded mane split only by a small horn.

It stood back up and shook itself before looking back at you, not in fear, but curiosity. For such a small thing, it was quite brave. Normally, you would have been creeped out by something alive falling out of your shoe, but this, pony, had an air of calmness about it. While you were fascinated by it, you had the feeling it didn’t belong here. You reach over to it and grab its tail to pick it up. It thrashes about in your grasp but seeing there were no fruits to its labors, it calmed down and let you transport it from the ground to your hand.

You gently place her on your palm while she stares at you intently. Her small hooves pressed into your hand as she sniffed at your fingers, not taking her eyes off you. She nips the tip of your index finger causing you to jump slightly. It didn’t really hurt as much as it surprised you. The little blue horse giggled slightly and sat down on your palm, a wide smile on her face. Or, you guessed it was a female by the way it was colored.

“Ha ha, you’re real funny.” You say and to your surprise she shrugs as if she could understand what you were saying. “Wait, you can understand me?” You ask her. She nods and opens her mouth as if to say something, out all that comes out is a soft squeak. She eyes you expectantly with a goofy looking grin.

“Ummm.” You say with a confused look on your face. She raises an eyebrow and makes the same squeak again. ‘You think to yourself. ‘But what.’ As if to answer your question you hear a soft rumbling and the pony looks down at her belly. “Oh, you’re hungry! Why didn’t you just say so.” She looks up at you with a slightly annoyed look in her eyes as you stand up.

You place her on your shoulder, making sure she doesn’t fall off as you walk to your kitchen. She looks simply fascinated looking around at all your stuff on the way to the kitchen. You step into the small cooking space and set her down on the counter.

“So, what do you want to eat.” You ask. She seems to think it over as she scratches her chin with one small hoof. She seems to figure out what she wants and lets out another squeak. You stare at her for a moment, trying to figure out what it is she asked for before you spot a small notepad on the corner of the counter.

You walk across the kitchen to get it, leaving the small pony on the other side of the counter. You grab the notepad and a pen that was lying in a drawer and bring them over to the small pony who was staring at you with her head cocked sideways.

“I can’t really understand you, so I figured you could write down what you want on this here.” You said indicating the notepad. She shrugged trotted over to the pen, her hooves making small clicking sounds on the countertop. She grabbed the end of the pen and pushed the button on the top, jumping slightly at the loud ‘click’. She grabbed it in her mouth and tilted her head back, trying to pick it up, but to no avail.

She let go and growled slightly at the pen. Her horn glowed a faint green color that moved to surround the pen. It started to lift up, very slowly, as you watched in amazement. She closed her eyes to concentrate as small green sparks flew off the top of her horn. As the pen came in contact with the notepad, the pony opened one of her eyes and smiled. She walked closer to the pad, the pen still suspended in the air, but he seemed to be holding it with less effort that before.

She looked at the pen and flicked her head to the right and the pen started to move along the pad as she controlled it effortlessly. She set the pen down next to the notepad and lifted it up to you. You grabbed it and the green aura around it disappeared. Written on the pad was only one word, cookies?

You chuckle slightly to yourself as you set down the notepad and look at the small pony on the counter, waiting anxiously. You turn around and walk to the pantry and opened the door. The cookies sat just where you had left them. You pop open the plastic box and take out two chocolate chip cookies, each the size of your fist, and bring them over to the small pony. She eyed the cookies in your hand, a small amount of drool running down her chin and her tail beating the counter. You chuckle slightly and set down the cookie next to her and she immediately jumps on top of it.

You chuckle slightly to yourself and take a bite of your own cookie. At the sound of laughter, she looks up from her cookie. Her mouth was smeared with chocolate seeing as she had created a sizable hole in the center of the cookie. “you’re cute.” You say. She gives you a cute smile and then goes back to work on her cookie.