Snow In Equestria

December 13, 2012

I kept the best poker face I could while I fell at a lethal velocity from ten thousand feet above sea level, all while mentally panicking. I had let my friends talk me into skydiving, God knows why, and it was just as terrifying as I had imagined. I had learned all the poses back on the ground, spreading out wide and arching my back to slow down, or putting my arms at my sides and legs together to speed up. Needless to say, I remained frozen in the slow position the entire time. It was a torturing experience really, and after a while I started to feel a little nauseous. I simply screwed my eyes shut and waited for the instructor to tell me when to pull the ripcord, like he promised he would five minutes and eight thousand feet ago. I would get used to the sound of the wind rushing past my ears and it would seem silent for moments at a time. After a while, the periods of quietness grew, and I felt almost like I had been falling for much longer than I should have been.

I opened my eyes, but could see nothing of the ground through the thick layer of clouds, so I looked over my shoulder. There was no one in sight. I was suddenly on my own, and I waited for the blanket of clouds to come closer and closer before I simply fell right through, small droplets of water forming on my goggles for a split second before they were blown back into space by the air resistance.

I opened my eyes again once I was sure I was on the other side, and I am fairly certain I almost passed out when I saw how close to the ground I was. There were still no signs of my friends or the professional, and the ground was getting closer with every terrifying moment. Screw the professional, I pulled the cord. Or so I tried to, anyways. I clumsily hit the handle several times before looking down to see what was wrong, and I definitely found the problem. It wasn’t that I couldn’t get my fingers around the handle. The real problem was locating my fingers at all, seeing as how where my hand should have been was now a flat, hard surface that simply clanked against the metal handle as I tried to pull it. A similar fate had consumed my other hand, and I felt the adrenaline surge through my body as the little undefined blurs on the ground became distinguishable buildings and structures. The buildings weren’t huge; it seemed like a small town actually, but either way, this was NOT where I was supposed to land.

In some sort of fight-or-flight response, I grew a second pair of arms out of my back.

Wait a minute… arms?

I looked up and to the side and saw a stiff, feathered appendage. It was the same color of white that the rest of my body had decided to turn to, but what was this new limb? I looked to the other side and saw the same thing. A feathered appendage… a wing! Surely I had wings! Now I was almost certain that I had passed out and was in some sort of dream, but I felt the need to survive anyways, whether it was real or not. I tried flapping my wings once.

Let me stop right there. If you are ever skydiving and you grow wings that you don’t know how to use, do NOT try to use them. Soon after my failed attempt, I twisted into an uncontrollable barrel roll, my wings only adding to the speed at which I was spinning. The only thing left, I suppose, was to wait for impact.

“Thanks for the book, Twilight,” said Rainbow Dash after having dropped off the last edition of Daring Do and picking up the next one to take back with her.

“No problem, Rainbow. It’s always good to see a friend reading,” Twilight replied before turning back to Spike, who was with pen and paper, waiting to write out Twilight’s friendship report to the princess.

However, as soon as Rainbow Dash reached for the door to leave, a loud crash came from just outside, followed by the ground shaking a little. Both mares turned back to face each other immediately.

“Whoa! What was that!?” Rainbow Dash yelped.

“I don’t know,” Twilight replied uneasily. “Let’s go find out.”

The mares raced out of the door and towards the strange noise. Spike sighed and placed the pen and paper back on the desk as he waited for Twilight to return.

I heard the sound of muffled voices, more of them approaching as time went on. After a few more moments, I tried to open my eyes. I had deduced that I wasn’t unconscious very long – if I was unconscious at all – since my eyes were still properly adjusted to the sunlight. I heard people talking, but all I saw was a small group of technicolored, miniature horses surrounding my apparent point of impact.

After I looked around for a bit, the whisperings turned silent and the colorful horses stared at me for a while. Things suddenly seemed a little familiar and I got the feeling of déjà vu.

No. It can’t be… I thought silently.

I knew well where I was. I was in Equestria, no doubt about it, especially since I recognized one of the ponies as none other than Twilight Sparkle, whose expression was a mix of shock and concern. Rainbow Dash was flying just above her with a similarly shocked look. There were a couple more that I recognized as Fluttershy and Applejack.

Wow, almost the whole mane six…

I decided to look around to see what damage had been done. Sure enough, I was sitting in big ‘ol, smoking crater. My wings were glowing under me with a golden aura as well. As it looks, my glowing wings protected me, breaking my fall by spreading out to take the impact. The people, erm… ponies around me flinched as my wings suddenly retracted and returned to normal.

As I began to realize while I was falling, I had been turned into a pony as well. A snow white pegasus with a blonde, almost golden mane, to be exact. Looking around, I saw that I was about the same size as Rainbow Dash… how masculine. Although, my wings were rather massive compared to hers, and apparently they were magical, too.

“H-hello?” Twilight asked cautiously. “Are you alright?”

I figured I might as well find out. I stood up and stretched for a moment. My clothes were gone, and so was the backpack with the parachute, but that was probably for the best at the moment.

“Yes, I’m fine thanks,” I replied slowly as I walked up towards the purple mare. She looked a little hesitant, but I smiled in a rather poor attempt to diffuse tension. “Umm… where am I?”

“You’re in, uh… Ponyville,” she answered a bit more confidently this time.

Well, duh. I knew that!

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Asked the cyan pegasus, who had now landed on the ground next to the crater. “You just kinda… fell out of the sky, ya know.”

I grinned back and answered, “Yes, I’m sure, thank you. My wings took the fall, and apparently they’re indestructible,” I said as I looked back at one of them, twitching and examining it.

Applejack suddenly spoke up, “Where ya from, stranger?”

“Oh… Well, I’m not from around here, I guess,” I answered a bit sheepishly.

“Well, duh,” Rainbow Dash answered somewhat irritably. “And are you some sort of vampire or what?"

“Vampire?” I repeated confusedly after a moment, “What do you mean?”

“Are you serious?” Rainbow Dash asked, “Your teeth are like, pointy.”

I felt around my mouth with my tongue, poking at the tips of my teeth. They were the same as usual despite the elongation of a pony’s mouth; incisors, canines, molars… the whole package.

“My canines? Well, of course they are,” I reply a bit curiously, assuming she was referring to my canine teeth. “How else am I supposed to eat meat?”

The mares looked a little scared at this point, and I suddenly remembered that ponies were herbivores. I panicked a bit before coughing. I continued until I was practically pretend choking and the ponies began to get worried and tried to help me.

“Do you think I could get some water?” I asked a meekly as I could. Luckily for me, Twilight somehow complied, inviting me back to her tree home with the others.

Fortunately, we were only about a two minute walk from Twilight’s house. Before we entered, she began introducing herself and her friends.

“Well, I’m Twilight, and this is Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Fluttershy,” she said, pointing a hoof at each one respectively.

“Sup.”

“Howdy.”

“H-Hello.”

It was obviously my turn to introduce myself, but then I realized I didn’t have an awesome pony name yet, and there was no way I was going to be stuck with my boring old human name that I shared with hundreds of other people back on earth.

“It’s nice to meet you all.” I looked down at my forelegs while I tried to think of a name. “You can call me… Snow,” I finished, getting the idea from my snow-white fur.

“It’s nice to meet you as well,” Twilight replied as she opened the door to her house. The other girls agreed and followed Twilight in. I was the last to follow suit, joining them inside. I made myself comfortable in the best library-tree-home in existence while Twilight levitated a glass of water from the kitchen with her magic. Magic was so awesome like that (Or at least that’s what I used to think... Oh, how naive I was).

Suddenly, she floated the glass in my direction. At first, I was glad to see a familiar substance in this foreign world, but then I was terrified.

How the hell am I supposed to grab this!? I thought frantically as the glass was shoved into my hooves. I reached out to grab it with one hoof, because the other was supporting me, but without fingers, there was no way to take ahold of it.

The purple aura suddenly vanished, and the cup began to fall. I had no choice but to bring my other hoof up to the cup, but it was no use. The cup fell as I scratched at it with my hooves. The cup hit the floor about the same time as my face and the water spilled everywhere. I lay down and groaned in defeat as the water soaked my white coat, turning it a darker hue.

“Um, are you… are you okay?” Fluttershy asked quietly.

Out of all the things I could have done, I started laughing. I don’t know why, I just started laughing. I’m fairly certain that all of the mares thought that I was certifiably insane by the time I was rolling around on the floor in my own spilled beverage, laughing so hard that my eyes were watering and my sides were hurting.

However, I eventually had to stop laughing and, as I stood up and wiped a tear from my eye (hooves don’t work well for that, by the way), I happily replied to the confused and frightened yellow pegasus.

“Yes, yes. I just haven’t gotten used to the ‘picking up stuff with hooves’ thing yet.” The girls, aside from one, looked worried and confused. Twilight; however, looked intrigued, and was the first to speak.

“Where are you from again, Snow?” I figured there was no point hiding it anymore. I just went out and told them.

“I’m from a place called Earth, I’m new to this planet actually,” I said with a chuckle.

Most of the mares obviously thought I was insane, but that’s okay. With Twilight here, I figured all would be settled in due time.

“Well, Snow, do you know how you got here?” asked the mare in question. I figured as much from her, while her friends still looked weary of the drenched, seemingly deranged pegasus standing in their friend’s living room.

“Well, I was skydiving and-”

“Sky diving?” interrupted Rainbow Dash. “What’s that?”

“It’s when you jump out of an airplane and-”

“What’s an airplane?” She asked again.

I know, she’s a pony, but still. She was starting to piss me off.

“How about I finish this thought and then you can interrupt me more afterwards?” I offered. She stayed silent and backed off a little. I decided to try to explain everything with detail so I could avoid as many questions as possible.

First, I explained sky diving and what an airplane was, to the best of my ability anyways. That was followed by a long and frustrating argument with Twilight as to how a machine much denser than air could fly. I explained that the shape of the wings causes the air underneath each wing to be denser than the air around it and push the whole airplane up, just like a pegasus’s wing, but I don’t think she bought it. After all, a pegasus was propelled by ‘magic’, according to Twilight. She resolved to try an experiment for herself, and thus we moved on.

“So, you jumped out of a giant, flying metal tube from twelve thousand feet above the ground?” Twilight asked, attempting to clarify.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Why would you do that?” Fluttershy asked in her cute little shy voice. I was about to squeal and hug her, but then I remembered that she thought I was insane, and I mustn’t risk scaring Fluttershy. That would be unforgivable. So I settled for grinning stupidly at her for a while before giving my answer.

“Well, they said it would be fun, and I think they thought it was fun, but to me it was terrifying. I wouldn’t do it again. Anyways, I as far as I know, I turned into a pony on the way down and crashed into Ponyville.”

“Oh…” she replied timidly. It was impossible to tell whether she was satisfied with my answer or not.

“Do you know why you’re here?” Twilight continued.

“Well, no. I was hoping you might know. Did anything happen here that could have triggered it?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Dash and I heard a loud noise, and it turned out to be you lying in the bottom of a crater,” she replied, just as dumbfounded as I was.

“Seems legit. So, what now?” I asked, wanting to know what was going to happen. I wanted to stay with them in Ponyville and befriend them. The ‘Equestrian dream’, if you will.

“I should find out what time it is,” she said first, as if that would affect her decision of what to do next. Naturally, I whipped out my phone to help. I looked at the screen of my Droid X2 and relayed the time to Twilight.

“It’s five thirty-seven,” I said simply. The mares whipped their heads from Twilight to me, trying to figure out how I knew that. They saw me holding my phone in front of my face. It was rather dark so I could assume that it was casting light on my face and probably looking a little strange to them.

“What is that?” Twilight asked, quickly approaching me. She took a spot next to me to get a better look, and in a few moments, all four mares were at my sides, gaping at the screen of my phone. Luckily, the tip of my hoof looked almost exactly the same as a fingertip, and it was easy to maneuver it with one hoof while holding it with the other.

Unfortunately, once I held both of my front hooves up, my face hit the floor again. I settled for letting it sit on the floor as I used one hoof to unlock it. It made an audible click and Applejack jumped a little at the unexpected noise.

“It’s my cell phone. It’s an electronic device. Normally, I can talk to people over pretty much any distance. It also gives me access to the internet,” I explained quickly as I went through a few a few of the phone’s features.

“What’s the internet?” Twilight immediately asked.

I tried to think about how to explain this quickly and move on.

“It’s a massive source of information on basically anything. You can look up anything on it and find just about every bit of known information about it. It’s kinda like the universe’s biggest library.”

Grinning, I looked over to Twilight to see her reaction. Her eyes were basically glowing with interest, as I suspected they would.

“But I have no service in this world, so I can’t access it now. I need to be within a certain distance of a signal so I can actually see the information.”

Twilight’s expression deflated and I decided to put my phone away. I turned to put it back in my pocket, but then I noticed I wasn’t wearing any clothes.

“How do I put this away?” I mumbled, trying to figure out where to put it.

“Oh, uh… Where did you get that from, anyways?” Twilight asked, having heard my mumbling.

“Well, normally I just keep it in my pocket. I just kinda pulled it out,” I replied, still looking for a way to put it back from wherever it came.

“Hold on, let me try this again,” I said. The mares gave me a little more room and I stared straight ahead. Trying to do the same thing I did last time, I reached into my non-existent pocket and pulled something out. It worked.

What I held in my hand was a black and green pack of ‘Five’ gum, the spearmint flavor. It made sense, as the two things I had in my pockets at all times were my phone and a pack of gum. Spearmint was definitely my favorite flavor.

“Is that another, um… cell phone?” Twilight asked cautiously. I don’t know why she asked that, because this looked absolutely nothing like my phone, but I guess she didn’t have much information to go on.

“Uh, no. This is gum. Are you sure you don’t have this in your world?” They all stared blankly at me. “Chewing gum?” I repeated. They all shook their heads.

I figured I’d have some. I rested my front half on my elbows (thank God I had joints where my elbows were supposed to be; although, they were twisted and almost backwards) so I could use both my hooves and my teeth to get it open. My ass was currently sticking up in the air, but I didn’t care, I was about to introduce chewing gum to Equestria.

“Ya need some help there, partner?” applejack asked before quickly picking it up and flipping it open for me, almost as if she had fingers.

“How did you…?” My question was left unfinished.

“So, how does this work?” she continued.

“Just uh, take out one of those strips and unwrap it,” I told her. Applejack did as she was instructed and was left with the piece of green chewing gum.

“Now put it in your mouth,” I added. They all gave me uneasy stare, wondering why I would want Applejack to put a foreign substance into her mouth.

“It won’t hurt you, I promise. Just chew it, but don’t swallow it,” I reassured her. Luckily, she was brave enough to comply.

Tentatively, she slid the green stick of gum into her mouth, little by little, until it was gone and she began chewing it. Her eyes widened after a couple seconds and she smiled.

“This thing tastes pretty good. It’s almost like peppermint, but it’s chewy,” exclaimed Applejack.

“I know right? And how did you unwrap it and stuff with your hooves?”

“Er... what do ya mean, sugar?” She asked in that over exaggerated country accent of hers.

“Well, where I’m from, I had fingers, like griffons or draconequus. Your hooves are flat, so how did you do that just then?” I elaborated.

“Oh… Ah guess ah just did it. Sorta like how you pulled that cell-thingy out of yer invisible pocket.”

“I’ll have to learn how to do that,” I decided with a sigh before there was a short, slightly awkward pause.

“I’ll send a letter to the princess. I suppose you can sleep in the guest bedroom here if you don’t have a p

lace to stay,” Twilight offered.

I smiled back at her to show my approval as she turned went deeper into her house (assumingly to find Spike). The others needed to return to their respective homes, so I said my farewells, and they were on their way.

“Good-bye Dashie!” I called after Rainbow Dash, as she was the last to leave. She turned around and stuck her head into the door for a moment.

“Don’t call me that,” she deadpanned before leaving again.

“Okay, Dashie…” I mumbled to myself after she was out of hearing range.