Where the Rainbows Touch Down

I woke up on a small bed, a simple steel frame and small mattress with a thin red cloth blanket over me.  Next to that was a small metal desk with a glass of water in it.  I became aware of a sudden thirst and found myself reaching for the water and had drained it before I even could question what possibly might be inside it, though it tasted like normal, purified drinking water to me.

Afterwards, I took some time to examine my surroundings.  It appeared to me that I was inside a small cell, one with the ceilings only just high enough that I could stand in the room and walk about, though my hair kept touching the ceiling.  The steel door only went up to my neck and I had to almost get on my knees just to see through the window in the top of it.  The room appeared to be lit by a large square light in the top though no switch was available inside the room itself, which was covered in muted beige walls with a wooden baseboard.  The floor itself was some sort of soft white carpet that reminded me of the inside of a padded solitary confinement cell.  And in the top corner was a small black surveillance camera that seemed to follow my every move.  Having nothing else I could do, I went over to the bed I had been lying on and sat down on it, waiting for something to happen.

I didn’t have to wait long.  I had barely sat myself down when I heard the sound of the steel door unlock with a loud clang! and a small horse stepped into the room.  This one was a tall stallion, able to stare me in the eye while I was sitting down on the bed, and covered in the same bronze armor I had seen on the horses at the entrance.  His coat itself was a rather bright off-white color, and large his eyes were a glittering bright blue.  He sat down in front of me, his posture looking very much like a cat, and raised his two front hooves up to his helmet.  In the same smooth gesture, he grabbed his helmet with both hooves and lifted it off his head before setting it down on the ground in front of him and revealing a mane of bright blonde hair that was tied into a ponytail.  It was an odd sight to behold and I must admit that I stood there dumbfounded and not quite believing what I was seeing.

The small horse took a few minutes to survey me, all with a rather calm and level gaze.  His eyes moved more than his head did, glancing at me from my feet to my head.  After a while, he looked straight at me and I could see the edges of his mouth tilt upwards in a small smile.

“I’m sure you have plenty of questions,” he suddenly spoke.  At least, I was sure it was him.  I hadn’t spoken at all as I was too confused to say a word and I was pretty sure I saw his own mouth and lips move.  Not only that, it was a soft, clear voice as opposed to my normal deeper, occasionally growling voice.  “I will attempt to answer them as best as I can,” the stallion continued.

Being trained as a scientist and receiving lessons about proper communication, I responded in the way I could logically and reasonably think of.  “You’re speaking…!”

“Sure,” the stallion said calmly, my obvious hysteria not fazing him a bit.  “I can sing and dance, too.  I would show you, but I’m not exactly skilled in either.”

“But you shouldn’t be.  I must be dreaming.  Yes, that’s it.  I’m dreaming.  There is no way that a horse can speak, a scientific improbability with how the vocal chords are structured, that the only way that sort of thing could possibly happen is to be in a place where logically anything can happen: my own mind.”

The stallion laughed.  “I can assure you that I am speaking to you.  But let’s determine where exactly it is you come from and see if somehow we can’t find a connection between the two.  First of all, let’s go through some basic things.  Where did you come from?”

I told him.

It was the only time during my entire conversation that he even seemed close to breaking the nice façade.  “…where?”

I told him again.

He looked up as though searching his mind for something.  “I shall have to ask her later,” he said, mostly to himself.  “Now, let’s just have a little conversation here.  I promise nothing will happen to you.  What’s your name?”

In the position of something that likely could kick me and cause extreme damage if I didn’t do what he asked, I took a few deep breaths to calm down and responded.  “Trent Phillip.”

The stallion nodded.  “My name is Garnet.  Garnet Heart.  And how old are you?”

“I just passed by my twenty-seventh birthday not long ago.”

“Alright.  And, um, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a chemist working with a small laboratory in my hometown.”

“And where is this lab?”

I told him a third time.

“Well, Mister Trent Phillip, do you mind if I call you Trent?”

“Of course.”

“Well, Trent, I’ll give you a little information that may help you out,” the stallion said calmly.  “Currently you are in a place called Equestria, a land ruled by ponies similar to myself.  We are the dominant species here.  If I am correct in my thinking, you are a human.  They’re a rare sight around here lately and always seem to come in through odd ways.  Matter of fact, I was leading a group out to meet you when you first arrived because someone said there was an odd puff of smoke outside our little town and that you had appeared unconscious on the grass.”

“That doesn’t sound anywhere near to—”

“The place you mentioned isn’t even on our maps,” the stallion said before I could finish.  “Now, might I ask what you were doing when you first arrived?”

I told him, limiting the details.

“Well, then,” the stallion said.

“Look, I don’t know who or what you really are, but I just want to know if I could somehow get home.”

“It’s not quite that simple.”

“What do you mean?”

“Place your hand on my head.”

I wasn’t sure what he was asking, but I reached slightly forward and gently placed a hand on his head.  The white fur and dirty-blonde mane were soft to the touch, yet even as I touched his head I could feel something coursing through me, something completely unfamiliar to me.  It was a sort of energy that I could not determine its source, but it felt warm and comforting.  It enveloped me from head to toe and settled gently down on me.

The stallion was watching me with intrigue and gentle amusement.  “What do you feel?” he asked.

“A… a strange sort of energy.  It feels warm, and the second I touched your head it coursed through me like an electrical current.”

“That is what we call magic,” the stallion said.  “I cannot perform feats of magic, but I have it in me.  Everything does here.  There might possibly be a way to send you back, but it would require this ‘energy’, as you put it, and a rather large quantity of it.”

“There must be a way to send me back, though.”

“Magic has its limits,” the stallion said as I pulled my hand away.  “However, I can contact our leaders, and they will be able to determine whether or not we have the required amount of necessary energy to bring you back.”

“How long will it take you to know?  I will have friends and family that will miss me if I am gone for too long.”  Or, if this was all a dream, I would be able to wake up sooner.

“Only a few days.  I can send out an urgent message this evening.  In the meantime, I have been told to watch over you, to take care of you, and to make sure that you remain calm here.”

I said nothing in response.  There was nothing I could say.  I wasn’t sure what was going on.  I was so confused about what was going on my head hurt.  I simply sat on the bed with my hands on my legs, wondering what in the world was going on.

“I imagine this is hard to process,” the stallion said.  He looked at me with a gentle smile and placed a hoof on my hand.  It was strange, intimate, surprisingly familiar.  “I don’t want to hurt you.  I want to help you in whatever way I can.  You can trust me.”

I looked at him and said my next words with a sense of resignation that surprised even myself.  “What choice do I have?”

The stallion kept his smile, but the look in his eyes changed to a sense of pity.  “Don’t worry,” he said.  “We will make sure you get home, wherever it might be.  For now, come.  We’ll need to get you something to eat and I need to consult an official in town about your arrangements.”

I still had only my lab coat, shirt, jeans, and shoes.  I checked my pockets and found I had carried with me nothing else; everything had been deposited in a safe before I had entered the laboratory proper back at home.  I had arrived with nothing but the clothes on my back.  After I had inspected myself, I ducked under the doorframe and followed the stallion out of the room and into a small hallway filled with four rooms similarly constructed to mine, each with a key in the lock.  The stallion led me down the hallway and into a small lobby with a few desks, brightly lit by the light of the afternoon sun outside.

“How long was I out for?” I asked.

“You arrived this morning,” the stallion said.  “We did some paperwork and the agreement was reached that, if you were calm and controlled, I was to take you home and take care of you.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“I’m a member of a small guard force for the town of Ponyville.  There’s not much crime so there’s not many of us; you’re the first big thing we’ve had happen around here in months.”

I followed the stallion out the door and into the village of pink and beige houses with thatched roofs and dirt roads.  More of the smaller horses like the stallion I was following populated the streets, all in a variety of colors and mane styles that logically couldn’t have existed back home.  Some had nothing, but some had wings and some had horns that would glow slightly as objects were surrounded with a similar glow and moved around without them even touching them.

“Welcome to Ponyville,” the stallion said.

I said nothing but followed the stallion down the street.  Some of the smaller horses would look at me, and some even found themselves bolting into nearby buildings and closing the doors, watching me from behind window curtains and in darkened rooms, while others stared at me in some sort of horror, taking special care to keep a large distance from me.

“Um… what is your name again?” I asked.

“Garnet.  Garnet Heart.”

“Right… what are all those pictures on the flanks?”

“They’re called cutie marks.  Each of us get them as our talent is revealed.  The picture is an indicator of what talent the pony has.  A pony’s name usually matches their cutie marks.”

“What is yours?”

“My cutie mark?  A heart made of a carved red gemstone.”

“How did you get it?”

“The garnet gemstone is often a symbol of faithfulness and friendship.  I obtained this mark because of my loyalty and friendship with others.”

I recall thinking I could not have heard a more sickeningly romantic thing in my entire life.  I’ve since heard and seen worse.  “Is this entire place like that?”

“Oh, yes,” Garnet replied.  “But without it, none of this place would exist.  Without the bonds that tie us together, we’d be separated.  No civilization.  Is it not the same back where you came from?  Without the bonds of cooperation, you would have no society, wouldn’t you?”

I was surprised this pony could argue like that.

“Do not think we are completely free of the troubles you have.  For instance, many thought that you were a monster from the nearby forests when you appeared, and the first response was to call the guard and make sure we were armed in case we had to fight.”

“…do you think me a monster?”

“No.  I see you as lost, scared, perhaps even lonely.  After all, as you can see, there’s not another of your kind here.”

“Are there in other communities?”

“Not even an eighth of Ponyville would be filled if all the humans across Equestria were gathered in one place.  They are out there, but it’s difficult to bring them all together.”

Eventually we reached a small, one-floor house with faded paint and Garnet pulled out a key from somewhere underneath his armor.  Using his mouth, he placed the key in the lock and unlocked the door, pushing it open and motioning for me to go inside.  I walked in and found the roof a little higher and the doors a little taller, and it didn’t require so much ducking for me to enter and exit the place.

It was a rather normal house.  In the main room that I walked into there was a couch and a chair, along with a bookshelf filled with books of all shapes and sizes.  A small television set stood on a table, and a radio was not far away.  There were three rooms off the main living room; a kitchen with a small counter and a table big enough for four ponies to sit at though it had pillows instead of chairs, a small bathroom with a fair-sized tub and shower, and a bedroom with a small clock on the wall and what to me might have been a full-sized bed.

“Welcome to my home,” Garnet said, following me in.  “I realize it’s not much, but we’ll have things sorted out for you to stay in comfortably.”

I walked in a little more, but followed Garnet to the white-tiled kitchen.  I had to duck under more doorways and pulled out a pillow and sat on it while Garnet made his way through his kitchen.  A few minutes later I was treated to two eggs, three slices of toast with butter and jam, and a decent-sized salad with lettuce, tomato, carrots, cabbage, kale, and nuts covered in a sweet oil and vinegar mix, along with a fair sized glass of milk to go with it.  Garnet seemed to have the same thing, though among his food I saw bits of hay and a slightly smaller amount of eggs.  He had served me my plate first along with proper utensils, but I was unsure about it.

“Go on,” he said.  “Eat.  It’s probably been hours since you last ate.”

I tentatively tasted everything.  It was all good, though I missed the fact that there wasn’t any meat in it.  Of course, this was to be expected in a society of hors– um, ponies, who were obviously more along the line of vegetarians.  I ate slowly, watching as Garnet went between picking things up with his hooves and eating with just his own mouth in the dish.  To be honest, I was slightly put off by the behavior and after eating only half my food I pushed the rest away.

“You’re not hungry?”

I shrugged, not wanting to explain.  “Not particularly.”

Garnet looked at me for a while, his bright blue eyes looking me over.  “Tell me what’s bugging you.”

“It’s nothing.  I’m just not hungry.”

“Why aren’t you?  Are you sick?  Are you not feeling well?  Do you need a rest?”

I shook my head.

Garnet looked at me thoughtfully.  “It’s because I’m just eating with my mouth, isn’t it?”

I nodded slowly.

Garnet nodded in return.  “It’s fine.  I didn’t actually do that when I prepared it.  I have utensils, but it’s hard for me to use them without having to grasp something with my mouth.  It’s all clean, though.”

I ate the rest of my meal in silence.

Afterwards, I went and sat down on the couch in the main room and Garnet came over with a book in his mouth and gave it to me.  Surprisingly, the book was dry and looked like it hardly had been even touched by the teeth.  “You’re a chemist, so I suppose you’re a decently smart fellow.  Read this book; it offers a short history of Equestria in case you’re still curious.  In the meantime, I’ll be off speaking with a local mage and librarian.  She might know something about your condition.”

“Where is this librarian?”

“If you look out the window and down the street, there’s a large oak tree in the center of town.  It’s been hollowed out and made into a library.  That’s where I’ll be.  I’ll be back shortly.  There’s some apples and bananas and some more bread and jam in the fridge.  Feel free to grab something if you need it.”  And, with that, Garnet Heart left and I was alone in the house.

There was nothing I could do except for read the book, so I did.

* * *

My name is Trent Phillip.  Yeah, it’s weird, having a last name that sounds like it could be my first.  I had a few people call me Phillip before, too.  Thought it was my actual first name.  Anyway, getting off subject for a bit there, I’m currently 28 years old and have recently recovered from a period of depression that had made the last year or so of my life a major pain.

A little over a year ago, I was an undergraduate scientist going for a doctorate’s in chemistry.  I worked in a small lab in my hometown, helping the researchers there run experiments with various chemicals and substances.  We’d been working on this one new chemical that had recently been approved for testing, a sort of steroid made from chemicals made inside a horse’s blood and digestive system that would supposedly help people become able to digest more fiber from plant foods.  At the time being, it was volatile, and since it was an acid we had to attempt to mix it with a base in order to make it where it didn’t dissolve human flesh on contact.

The last thing I was able to remember for a while was that someone dropped said chemical and the base.  One of the new interns who had been hired about a month before, I think.  Forgot to clean up some water mess or something.  Anyways, the thing somehow exploded like someone dropped sodium into water and I got thrown backwards.  Everything went sort of white and the lab faded into nothingness, then it went pitch black.  For a while, I thought I was dead, but I kept breathing and I never felt my heart stop throughout the whole thing so I can’t really tell.

It was a long time before I managed to open my eyes.  I was lying on my back and seemed to have all my vital signs be okay, but I was outside in a grassy field with sunlight high above me.  I wasn’t in the lab at all.  I still had my white lab coat on, my plain black shirt, my jeans, and my brown hiking shoes that I wore around the lab, all seemingly undamaged, and I found myself thanking god or whoever it was that saved me.

The first thought was to see if I had been blown out of the lab and I got up to see just where I had exploded to.  Problem was, the lab I worked on was on a third story window next to a large concrete parking lot so the nearest grassy field was in a park a few miles away.  I managed to push myself up to my feet and found myself staring at the entrance to a dark forest that was so thick with vegetation I couldn’t see much beyond a few feet inwards before everything seemed to go as dark as night.  I turned around and my eyes swept past long fields of vibrant green grass and sparse trees before finding myself staring down a winding dirt road to a stone bridge over a small river that lead into a village of thatched houses, one that lied in between two small ranges of hills.

This was nowhere that I recognized.

I walked forwards, down the winding path.  I wasn’t sure what I was doing, only that I needed to find out where exactly that I was and from there figure out how to get to my home and lab.  I walked down the path, noting the strange vibrant nature of the place.  The grass was greener, the sky was bluer, the flowers in brighter colors.  I had quite obviously gone from the city to the country.

I was maybe a few hundred feet from the bridge leading into the village when I saw them.  A group of about four small horses, perhaps no bigger than my chest at the tops of their ears, dressed in gold armor standing at the entrance of the village.  Some even managed to have a hoof up and curled around a small but sturdy-looking wooden spear with sharp, metallic tips.  All of them were white, but three of them had golden eyes while one had a bright blue eyes and a pair of wings extended from either side.

It was then that the ringing in my ears came.  I clasped my hands to my ears and dropped to my knees; the ringing was so loud as though the noise of the explosion had waited until I had settled myself in before pounding at my face.  I recall crying out during that time but I had no idea what I was saying; I couldn’t hear anything.  I soon fell over to my sides, not caring where I was but only wondering when the ringing would stop.

Along the path, I could see the horses galloping out towards me and everything once again faded to black.

I woke up in the room I mentioned earlier, where I met Garnet, and now we're back to where we started.

* * *

Apparently according to the book I read, Equestria had been around for thousands of years.  No one quite knew where some of the ancient ruins came from, but from those ruins came the first Equestrians.  I made my way through a surprising amount of wars and inter-tribal conflicts between pegasus ponies, unicorn ponies, and earth ponies and reached a chapter detailing the emergence of the “royal pony sisters”.  It was... hard to believe.  It sounded like something out of an epic fantasy novel with elves and dwarves and humans replaced with unicorns and pegasi and earth ponies.

Garnet returned, this time with a lavender pony with a purple mane and a pink skunk stripe and boasting both a horn and a set of wings.

“This is Twilight Sparkle,” Garnet said.  “One of Equestria’s four rulers and preeminent mage.  It was her skills in magic that allowed her to go through the rites of ascension to become a princess and thus a leader.  She also has some of the largest background information on humans in Equestria.”

The purple pony bowed slightly to me.  “You are Trent Phillip?  How do you remember entering Equestria?”

I told her the whole story, starting from my work at the laboratory, again only giving limited details, and went through the entire schedule of what had happened until she walked in the door.  She stayed quiet and patient the whole time, taking notes on a pad of paper with a pencil she had brought with her.

It was only when my story was finished that she spoke.  “Do you mind touching my horn for a second?  I want to see if there’s any magical energy in you.”

Not sure of why that was necessary, I went ahead and touched Twilight’s horn, which felt a bit like a hardened fingernail covered in very small guard hairs.  The feeling was much like that of touching Garnet’s head, but stronger in force and even felt like a small electrical shock was going through my body though not enough to paralyze or hurt me.  As I touched the horn, Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated and I saw her horn begin to glow, though the tip of the horn where I was touching failed to light up at all.  After a while, Twilight frowned and backed away and the glow on her horn disappeared.

“This is disconcerting…” Twilight mused.

“What’s the problem?” Garnet asked.

“It appears he has no magical energy,” Twilight said.  “Therefore, it’s entirely possible that we might not be able to send him back.”

I was not too happy about that.  “What do you mean, you might not be able to send me back?  This, for me, defies as much logic as it does to see you all talking.  If you are magic and this place is magic, then certainly magic must be able to send me back home, right?”

“Your logic is commendable,” Twilight said.  “However, there are certain limits to magic.  For example, you have no magic energy in you.  It is entirely possible that you won’t be affected by magic at all.  Someone could fire a spell at you designed to burn your flesh and it wouldn’t work and would instead bounce right off or dissolve.  Matter of fact, I couldn’t even use my magic to trace where you came from, it simply wouldn’t connect with you even when you were touching my horn.”

I couldn’t argue with that.  “Is there anything you can do?”

“There’s someone who has more magical power than even I do, my mentor and main princess of Equestria, Princess Celestia.  She knows more about magic than I do and is often quick to contact.  I can send a message to her and see if she knows anything possible that we could do to send you back.”

Garnet looked at me.  “It’s the best course of action at the moment,” he said.  “We should be able to get a message by tomorrow if we’re lucky, I’m presuming, and perhaps then we’ll have an answer.  Until then, if not even Twilight can do anything about it, we can’t do much for the moment.”

I nodded.  “I understand.  Or, at least, I think I do.”

Twilight smiled.  “I’ll return to the library and write that note to Princess Celestia.  It will be sent to her as urgent mail by this evening and she should get it between tonight and tomorrow morning.  In the meantime, I’m sorry this had to happen to you but I shall try to either help speed your return or help acquaint you with Equestria.”  Her smile faltered and she seemed concerned.  “Whichever route it eventually comes down to.”

Something told me she wasn’t very hopeful about the whole thing, but I didn’t respond.  Instead, I merely watched as she left the house and Garnet shut and locked the door behind her.

It wasn’t for a while when Garnet turned around and came over and sat next to me on the couch.  He motioned to the book I was still holding and my finger placed in between the pages.  “You nearly finished it?”

I nodded.  “It was like reading an epic fantasy novel back at home,” I said.  “All these things feel so surreal.  I still have a hard time believing any of it.”

Garnet nodded.  “Do you like classical music?”

I nodded.  “It’s calming and peaceful.”

He got up and went over to the radio, using one of his hooves to fiddle with a knob.  “There’s a classical music station around here.  We can play that for background noise.”  A few seconds more of fiddling and Garnet flipped the switch.  The radio suddenly came alive with sounds of strings playing a light orchestral piece that I recognized from my days in music class back in university.

Garnet went into the bedroom for a little while and closed the door.  When he came out, his mane was straightened and the ponytail was redone so that more of his dirty blonde mane was hanging loose.  He had also dropped the armor, and I got to see what he really looked like for the first time.  He had a slightly bigger build than Twilight, with more muscle in the legs and chest, but was very sleek and fit and further accented by his bright coat, which looked closer to white with the armor off.  His wings, nearly as wide as he was tall, were filled with neatly-preened feathers and currently rested comfortably at his sides.  He also had a rather handsome-looking face, neatly proportioned though with a slightly smaller muzzle than a normal horse’s would have been.

“So, what did you do in your job as a chemist?” Garnet asked.

“Well, I worked under a few researchers.  They typed out certain experiments they wanted us to do, and I would go into the lab and follow the instructions they typed out and write down the results.  Then I would go and send the results to the researchers, watched as they duplicated the experiment for themselves to see if the results were consistent, and would team up and we would write the report.  The researchers got the credit, but I got myself a decent salary.”

“Did you have any family back home?”

“I had my parents, currently going into their older sixties, and a brother who was two years older than me.  He worked as a literature teacher for a high school.”

“Any special someone?”

“No.  I’d had a few girlfriends, but none I ever stayed with for long.”

“What about friends?  Who did you hang out with?”

“Well, there was there were a couple of guys and girls from my job and my old university days.  We would go out to lunch a couple times a week.  Sometimes we would hit up the local bowling alley and play a few games.  Other times there was this bar we would go to that had games of darts and shuffleboard that we would hang around while we had some drinks and food.  And sometimes we’d get together for barbecues and parties at someone’s house for sporting events, watch the game with food and drinks.”

Garnet nodded.  “If you don’t mind me asking, did you have any trouble back there?”

“You mean like with the law?”

Garnet nodded again.

“No.  I had a clean record.  Never drove after drinking, never got myself into fights, never stole a thing.  I had some financial problems a couple times and nearly had to file for bankruptcy, but I got myself back together, paid off my debts, and was back to normal.”

Garnet smiled.  It was beginning to be comforting to see him smile, I had to admit, though never to him.  “Alright.  I’ll tell you a bit about myself.  I’m a year younger than you are, graduated from high school and went to police academy.  I was there for about three years and entered into the guard.  I was sent off for some more training and came back six months later and was hired almost immediately.  I have a few friends around here and we like playing cloud soccer, a variation on your game but in the sky, and occasionally heading out to the local drinking establishment and having a few back like you.”

Garnet was silent for a while, as though expecting me to ask him a question.  I probably both fulfilled it and defied what he expected with my next question.  “Why are you doing this?”

“You’re not a monster,” he said softly.  “Some consider you a monster because you look different.  The truth is, you’re not much different from us.  I don’t know what it was, but I could see that about you, and when we talked back at the offices of the guard, you were simply scared and lost, not angry and hurting.”

“Is looks really all that it takes for them to consider me a monster?”

“Well, there were the cries of pain and fear when you collapsed outside Ponyville.  There were a few of us that were scared you might panic and try to attack.  But when you cried out in panic and fear it wasn’t hard for us in the guard to realize you simply weren’t used to what you were seeing.  Still, it was generally decided we should keep an eye on you.”

“Hence why I’m staying here for the time being.”

“Precisely.”

It made sense, I guessed.

Garnet and I continued talking long into the night.  I learned more things about Equestria and I told Garnet as much as I knew about Earth.  Things seemed relatively the same only that the ponies were less inclined to eat meat and that seasons were controlled through special events that used varying kinds of magic to manipulate the weather.

It wasn’t until late that I finally started to feel the effects of sleep.  Garnet pulled out a spare pillow and a few blankets and we set up a bed for me on the couch, though the back cushions needed to be taken off for me to have enough room, and even then I had to bend my legs slightly so that my feet and half my legs weren’t hanging off the end.

“I will be waking up at about seven in the morning to make breakfast.  When work begins at nine, I’m afraid you may have to come with me to give the Captain some more information about yourself and where you came from.  Don’t worry; I’ll wake you up.”

Garnet went around and turned off the lights.  Despite it being darker, the light of the full moon outside shone softly and created just enough light to see around.  “You can call for me if you need anything,” Garnet said.  “I’ll keep my door open and will likely be awake as soon as you call; I’m a light sleeper.  Is there anything else you think you might need?”

I shook my head.  “I think I’ll be okay.”

Garnet smiled at me and for a moment I felt calm.  “Good night, Trent.”  Then he closed the door so that only a crack remained open.  I could hear him get into his bed and the sound of blankets shuffling as he positioned himself and the house fell into silence.

I forced myself to get into the bed.  It all felt so unusual and strange.  I was in an unknown place and in an unknown house with a race of sentient ponies that could speak and acted like humans, something which I thought would only come out of the pages of books.  I had nothing to my name except the clothes on my back and from the way things were sounding, I would likely be stuck here.

I broke down then.  I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop it.  The explosion was hitting me again, but not with a physical pain.  It was a mental one, one that caused me to become fearful and panicked and scared and lonely and confused, and I didn’t know what to do so all I could do was cry.  I closed my eyes and slowly whimpered into the pillows, and it later became full-on sobs that only the action of my face shoved into the pillow stopped it.

Eventually, I wore myself out and fell slowly and softly into sleep, though the last thing I heard was the creaking of a door being opened and the last thing I felt was that of soft fur on the underside of my hand.