She remembered going to bed last night, snug and warm, in her own bed. Now she was stuck in what she could only surmise was a plastic shell. It was a tight enough fit that she could not move any of her body parts. She took a moment to observe her surroundings.
It wasn't any place that she recognized. For one, everything looked significantly sized-up. To her right was an extremely oversized bottle of water. Not too far off was a gigantic plate. Farther away was an enormous pen with an equally enormous notepad.
That’s when she realized something. If she was trapped inside a plastic shell with no obvious airways, how was she breathing?
Suddenly, a door—or gate from her perspective—on the other side of the room opened and in walked a creature she had never seen before. In a way, it resembled a troll in that it was huge and mostly hairless save for a pile of messy, unkempt hair at the top of its head. It was also much more slender than any troll she had the misfortune of meeting. Another thing that stood out for her was that this creature was completely clothed. Perhaps it was a pet?
A darker thought crossed her mind. What if this thing was what imprisoned her here? Her thoughts and heart began to race. Or it would have when she realized that she could not even feel the beating of her own heart.
Her panic was now great enough to go full circle as she entered a bizarre state of calm. Her mind began to reason that this was nothing more than a bad dream. Luna would surely appear any moment now and put a stop to all this ridiculousness.
If not a dream, then perhaps a sophisticated prank that Rainbow and Pinkie had managed to accomplish with the help of Twilight’s magic or even Zecora’s potions.
She was lying to herself and she knew it.
Her eyes widened—or would have—when the bipedal began to approach her. It grabbed her plastic prison and began to rip it free from a large piece of cardboard. As the creature placed the rest of her packaging on the table, she realized that it actually had her picture on it. She was smiling. How ironic. Around the packaging, she noticed characters that she could not make out. At least, she thought they were characters. For all she knew they could be magical runes that bound her to that prison.
None of that mattered now as the creature held her in its hand. A new horror dawned on her. She could not feel its touch. She could not feel the air around her. She could not feel anything. Her joints remained rigid. Her skin felt hard, like a shell of some sort.
It forced her head to turn. She still didn’t feel anything. It held her up and looked at her from all angles, much like how she used to inspect the gems she would go hunting for. It was smiling as it looked at her.
Shivers made their way down her spine. Or she hoped they would.
Eventually it put her back down onto the table. Beside her it also placed down a large black slate that looked to have a sheet of glass completely covering one side. It was angled just enough for her to see her reflection in it. The first thing she noticed was her mane. The second thing was her tail. They looked absolutely atrocious. Long, laid out and completely unstyled. He lucious locks were simply wasted as they lay limp across her body.
That’s when she noticed that she was stuck in a standing pose. Try as she might, she still could not move any of her body parts. Even her eyes were locked in a certain direction, severely limiting what she could see. At the very least, her body wouldn’t ache from being stuck in this one pose. The thought did not comfort her. Suddenly, the glass on the slate lit up as it began to emit loud rock music.
She jumped back in surprise. Or she wanted to, at least.
It sounded dreadful. She noticed that the glass was displaying a picture of the creature. The longer she looked, she realized that it wasn’t the same one. Its face was much more differnent. That meant that there were indeed more than one of these things. She imagined herself furrowing her brows in worry.
The creature entered once more and took the noisy slate away, leaving her alone in in the large room.
Hours passed as she noted that the light in the room had significantly diminished. She figured that Celestia must have lowered the sun by now. She hoped against hope that her friends were searching for her. She felt so alone.
The door opened as the creature walked back into the room. It drew up a large chair and sat at the table she was on. It smiled at her as it picked her up and placed her to one side. The creature then brought out a large black tome and laid to its side in the middle of the table. When it opened the tome, she noticed another large glass plate covering the entire page of the tome. On the other page were a large number of what she could guess were square buttons.
She wanted to stretch her neck for a better look, but she found that she still could not.
It pressed a button on the corner of the page and the glass plate lit up. After a moment, the creature began swiping one of its fingers on a specific spot of the tome. Whatever magic this was caused images to appear and disappear from the large glass plate. Every once in a while, she noticed that it would smile or laugh at a particular image. Sometimes, it sat up straight and used its fingers to hit several of the buttons.
Finally, the creature sat back and relaxed on its chair as a bunch of moving pictures—film as she recalled—began to display on the glass. To her shock, it was about her and her friends. She could catch glimpses of Twilight and Fluttershy, Applejack and Pinkie Pie, even Rainbow Dash and dear Spikey-wikey.
Her heart ached. Or she hoped it would.
Several days had passed and she still could not move. She could not feel. She could not smell. She could not even sleep. All she could do was see and hear. She bagan to wonder how she managed to stay sane. Unless, of course, she no longer was and she had yet to relize it.
After some observations, she noticed that the creature tended to disappear during the daytime and come back just before nightfall. It would then spend a few hours either at the magic black tome with the glass plate, or reading a traditional book that had symbols she still could not make out.
One thing she could see was that this creature was not wild or uncivilized. It had its own patterns and systems and schedules. If anything, it reminded her of her student days.
She released a sigh. She couldn’t.
One day, the creature came in and laid out a number of gigantic objects on the table. From the corner of her eye, she med out several hair pins, a drinking straw, a small comb and a spray bottle. It grabbed her and gave her a rough—or at least she thought it was—rub down. It got the bottle and began to spray her mane and tail.
When her hair was wet enough, it got the comb and laid her hair out straight. It grabbed the straw and used the pins to attach it to her hair. It repeated the process on her tail. She realized that it was using the large drinking straw as makeshift curlers. It was giving her a makeover.
When it was finished setting the straws, it got a large desk lamp and placed her under it, lowering the bulb such that it practically touched her. Judging from the intensity of the light, she figured she should have been feeling hot. She wasn’t.
When her hair dried, it took her out of the lamp and removed the curlers. Obviously impressed, it held her and admired her from all angles again. For some reason, she couldn’t help but want to blush at the scenario.
It put her back down beside the small black slate. She looked at herself as best as she could from her frozen state. She noticed her hair curled and coiffed in a manner similar to how she normally wore it. Besides a few stray hairs here and there, she thought it was perfect.
She wanted to thank the creature somehow. She couldn’t.
She had lost track of the days. What she knew was that it had been a long time. She could no longer remember movement. She could no longer remember smell. Neither taste. Neither physical feeling. All she knew was to observe.
At one point the creature had entered the room, but it wasn’t alone. It had a companion. The companion had smoother curves and longer hair than the usual creature. From her understanding of biology, those usually meant that this was a female. That meant that the creature she had been observing was male.
She smiled as she learned something new about it. She couldn’t.
The two began to exchange calls to each other. As she listened in, she noticed that there was a definite pattern of phonetics in the sounds they were making. It was a language. She couldn’t understand any of it, but it was a language nonetheless.
As the days passed, the female came over more often. Sometimes the two would sit on the creatures bed, on the far side of the room, and just talk.
She wished she could join in. She couldn’t.
Sometimes, they would spend time looking at images on the black tome with buttons. At one point, he even showed her off to the female. Sometimes he wouldn’t even comeb back at sundown and instead came at what she guessed was midnight. The creature walked—usually sluggishly—to its bed and went straight to sleep.
One night, she noticed the covers on the bed moving and tossing. Her ears picked up a distinct moan echo in the room. It was the voice of the female. It didn’t take her long to figure out what was happening. She felt like she was intruding. This was something private. Try as she might, she could not walk away from the obscenity.
She wanted to look away. She couldn’t.
Time stopped existing for her. In her mind there was only when the creature was there and when it wasn’t. Her world was now nothing more than watching this strange biped come and go.
She thought she should pity herself. She didn’t.
The creature was trying something new now. It had a large sketch pad on the table and a number of pencils beside it. She remembered, vaguely, of a time when she used to deal with her own sketches. She had forgotten what it was she used to draw on paper.
The creature picked he up placed her in front of the pad. It looked to her every once in a while as it drew curves onto the paper. It was drawing her. At least, it was trying. From what she could see, it drew a large blob that had a large curl of hair. As far as she could remember, she did not look like that.
This was all the creature did when it was there for a while. It sketched and sketched and sketched. Sometimes it returned to its black tome, but it spent most of its time trying to perfect the drawing. Finally, after many failed attempts, it managed a spitting image of her. She was happy that it finally managed to do it, and also flattered that it was so dedicated in drawing her.
She wasn’t sure what to feel. She decided not to.
Over time, she noticed something was changing. The creature spent less and less time watching the films that had her and her friends. That made her sad as that was the last thing she had to remind herself of what she and her friends were like. The adventures and capers they would get into. The life she used to have.
The creature chose instead to watch different films. She couldn’t understand them and so never bothered trying to.
She also noticed that it picked her up less and less. This made her worried. Had she offended it somehow? She couldn't imagine how seeing as she could not even move, let alone speak. She longed for the days when it would simply admire her.
The sketchpad was also opened less and less everyday. The creature instead chose to hunch over its black tome with its fingers blazing across the buttons. Walls upon walls of symbols tended to appear on the glass plate. She still couldn’t understand any of it.
She also noticed lines rapidly forming under the creatures eyes as the days passed. It held its head more and more often as it scowled in pain. Sometimes, it would scream at the black tome.
She wanted to cry. She couldn’t.
The final day began like any other. The creature had disappeared for the day. Come nightfall, it returned. The first thing it did when it arrived was sigh. She knew that sigh from instinct. It was one of exhaustion and fatigue.
It approached the table and picked her up. It looked at her fondly and smiled. She missed these moments in time.
That was when it did the unthinkable. It approached a cabinet just beside the creature’s bed. She knew this well. This is where it placed things that were never to see the light of day again. Old figures, old books and other old knick knacks.
For so long she had seen these simple items come and go from the creature’s table. He would bring them home and appreciate them, even as they sat idly on his desk. Eventually he would tire of one and place them in the cabinet. She felt a tingle of pride in knowing that she had been on his table the longest.
Now it was over. It was her turn to leave.
She thought that she should be afraid. She wasn’t.
She thought that she should try screaming. She didn’t.
She thought that she should feel. She couldn’t.
