A Lyre's Tale

Lyra’s daze and disorientation were waning away; she was beginning to remember why she was there and whatever it was that she was doing. A long, pale creature strapped to the table was the last thing on her mind at the moment, though it should have been the first. A small hourglass on her desk was still falling its sand. Barely an hour had passed since she has cast the spell.  She turned it over as the last grains of sand fell through.  Gathering her thoughts together, she was just now understanding the lengths in which she went to do whatever it was that she had done.

Three weeks ago she had been summoned by the Canterlot Orchestra to work on a few songs requiring a harp. The townspony left to the palace and even played in front of Celestia herself. Meanwhile, she had been going to the Canterlot Library and researching transdimentional interaction. Now, just an hour ago, she had just summoned a Human from another universe just for the sake of her curiosity. She didn’t tell the Princess, she didn’t even tell BonBon. Now, in 23 hours, this human creature was going  to wake up. It was 4:00 in the morning. She looked around her.

Lyra was in her dark, damp basement. The last light of two small candles flickered on the table upon which she piled dozens of books and scrolls.  Upon yet another table: jars. At least a dozen. Some nearly full, others completely empty, along with scales, spoons, and a kitchen knife. A cauldron lay on a pile of ash, a faint, soft glow emitting from its core. Streams of mist and little sparks were still lightly flying from the cauldron to the figure lying on the table.

Just as the sparks did, her thoughts flew to the human as well. She stepped over to the table and gazed upon the creature that she had just summoned from across reality. It was nothing like in the books, no prince in a castle-- no sorceror’s apprentice. This was the real thing. A pale, naked, half bald—thing just lying there.

Two hours later. BonBon set off to work. The paycheck from her latest musical works would last her and BonBon a long time, but she didn’t want to lounge around. Lyra was in the garden outside the house. She was not used to cultivation. That was an Earth pony’s job. She was honest with herself, and admitted that she was terrible at it. She couldn’t grow the flowers nearly as fast and beautiful as the slowest Earth Pony around, but she was decent at harvesting. She pulled a sickle from the toolshed and began working on the flowerbed, nervously passing the morning away, picking only the ones ripe enough to stew.

Lyra thought again about the creature locked up in the basement. Come to think of it, this creature must have been an earth human as well. She had no wings, nor a horn. The drawings in the books didn’t provide much detail relating to human anatomy. The human’s muzzle, or lack on one, she should say, had its mouth separated from her nostrils, and her ears were like those of a monkey. She wondered what he would be like once she awakened.  ‘Will she be shy or go on a rampage? Will she be strong or weak? Would Lyra even be able to communicate with her? She was a different species after all.’ She could take care of that later, she supposed.

Lyra crept down into the basement again. It was three in the afternoon. Twelve hours left. In her mind, she tried to make an excuse for going down there again. The basement was really unlike her. BonBon never went down there. She hated the place more than Lyra. Whenever the furnace needed to be heated, BonBon would rather suffer through a blizzard waiting for Lyra to come home before going down there. Lyra was the pony who knew every square inch of the storerooms: she filled them herself. She figured the only excuse for going down there was to escape the heat.

She went into the kitchen and opened the basement door. The darkness and a sense of adventure beckoned her there. She stepped down cautiously, as if she didn’t want to disturb anything from its place. She walked over to the furnace in the dim light from the doorway and lit her horn. The door above closed in her aura. Her horn was the only dim light source in the room. It really was cool in the basement, and she needed it after spending half the day in the garden. She found a candle, and with her own spark, lit it. After a couple of minutes, with 5 candles lit, Lyra decided to look through her notes and books on humans.

‘Obsessive,’ she thought to herself. ‘Just what we’re looking for.’ There weren’t many, if at all, intellectual studies on them. Ponies interested in mythical beings usually only liked to hear stories about them, not studies on a creature they only half think to exist in the first place.

The bookmarks in place in the fiction stories told a lot despite the lack of concrete study or organized information. There was a lot of mention of human nature made by wizard humans. In her book, the wizard called Aritsotle made interesting comments about his own species. The first was that humans are social and sexual creatures. This was no surprise. Ponies are like this too.

‘Perhaps,’ Lyra figured, ‘relating to these creatures wouldn’t be so hard after all. Let’s see,’ she thought. ‘The next point… humans are political.’ She thought about it for a second. ‘I know Mayor Mare was a type of political pony, but having another Mayor was more than this town needed. Perhaps this is all realtive.’

Lyra didn’t think ponies were really political in nature. Pinkie Pie certainly wasn’t. Neither was BonBon.

‘Or is she?’ BonBon and Lyra worked out their differences and chores by negotiation. Was this politics?

Lyra continued thinking in great detail about her interpretations of the words of the pages. The hour glass turned. Searching through the books, she had gone off topic within 5 minutes. A new record. She was already looking through love stories again. She loved romance stories. Just thinking about anonymously watching a couple and relation develop from the writer’s hoof made her heart beat faster. She looked long into the day about stories of human nobles and damselles and romance…

Suddenly, somewhere deep in a story, Lyra heard a door close from outside the dark, cool, damp basement.

“Lyra, I’m here!” came BonBon’s voice. Lyra gasped.  Already! It was five o’clock already!

“I-ah- Coming!”

Lyra blew out the candles and ran up the stairs.

“What were you doing in there?” asked BonBon.

“I- ah- nothing! Just cooling off! I- ah- was just out trimming for dinner, see?” She pointed toward the small basket with freshly trimmed flowers. “It’s nice and cool in there!”

“Heheh… if you say so,” said BonBon with a cringe. Lyra pulled out a pan from under the sink.

“You thinking about roses tonight?” asked Lyra, as her aura sifted through the flower trimmings.

“Am I? It’s my favorite!” They both giggled and set to work.

After dinner, Lyra and BonBon usally lounged around in their living room or visited across town, whatever they fancied. Lyra was in the mood to head off to the Library. After sneaking in and out of the basement, bringing out a small stack of several books in her saddlebag, she started out the door.

“Hey, Lyra?” She froze. Did BonBon suspect anything? Was her cover blown? Did she find anything about a human in their basement?

“Y-yes?”

“You find me a book I haven’t read yet? I just finished the fourth in the Daring Do series. See if you can find the fifth while you’re there?” What a relief. She suspected nothing. ‘I’m panicking too much!’ she thought.

“Yeah, sure!” She galloped off into the setting sun. The library was nearby, on the outskirts of town.