A Lyre's Tale

The human was finally awake. He felt himself wrapped in blankets lying on something soft. Fluttershy and Lyra stood over him. When he opened his eyes, he glanced to see he was wrapped up on a couch. It wasn’t quite so cruelly cold as it was shivering naked in that dark room. He quickly closed them again. He didn’t want to distract Fluttershy and Lyra from whatever they were talking about. He wanted to hear everything and pretend to wake up at just the right moment.

“I’m sorry, Fluttershy- it must have been the cold that made him pass out.”

“Here- you go make some tea for him- if you don’t mind- while I light the fire. He let his eyes open. The room was dim. The shutters were probably closed. He heard the sound of Fluttershy’s shoe striking at a piece of flint. He saw nothing but the ceiling and part of the couch. He tried to move, but he couldn’t. The attempted movement got his blood flowing a little bit faster. The cold struck again. This time, the blankets didn’t help.  Suddenly his senses were dimmed. His vision darkened and hearing went half way. He felt a strangled moan fall out of his throat. He struggled against it with his will, but everything went dark.

He awoke in the same place. There was no more light leaking from where there would be windows. The only lights there were flickering. His hearing came back to him and he could make out a voice.

“He doesn’t look good.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We can’t take him to the hospital or the vet. I think we’ll have to take him to Twilight if he’s going to live.”

“But- I-“

“Listen, Lyra! I want to see him live as much as you do- and if there is only one way to help him and keep our little secret, it’s Twilight.” He heard Fluttershy’s voice turn teary. “We have to do this.”

The human didn’t understand why Fluttershy would even be this severe with anypony. It was as if something was different about her. He slipped again.

He woke up to a familiar looking wooden library. It was just like the cartoon, but it, and everything for that matter, was much more detailed. Suddenly in his vision, he saw a small, big eyed, scaly, purple face peek over his own. The baby dragon’s claw rested over his forehead as the little creature sniffed him.

“I haven’t seen or smelt something like this, before, Lyra; where did you find him?”

“You promised never to tell anypony, so I’ll tell you. I looked up a transdimentional summoning spell and summoned a human from his native world- and- I-“ Lyra burst into tears. The human didn’t at the moment understand Lyra’s emotional outburst, nor did anypony at the time.

Unbeknownst to anypony, a human’s presence in the pony world is akin to a pony’s presence in the human, and, just like the humans fall in love with the ponies in the stories that they read and watch, the ponies fall in love with the humans that they read about.

“A human?” said Spike. “Like one of the humans in the ‘Mankind’ short stories and the little colts’ comic books that-- grown-- mares like to read? Those kinds of humans?”

There was a long silence. Everyone looked at Lyra, who blushed.

“Okay, I confess: I am a fan of the Schoolboy series. Don’t judge me-“ she sniffed. Everypony was now blushing- except Spike, who rolled his eyes.

There was another long silence, which was broken by a knock on the door. Everyone got to their hooves. Fluttershy and Lyra pulled the human up the stairs while Spike looked out the window.

“It’s Derpy with a package!” He opened the door.

“I have sumthing for th’ library,” said the cute, wall-eyed pony.

“She’s out to Canterlot for the week. Can I help you?”

“I was given this package and told to come here,” she said bluntly. She backed from in front of a large wooden crate that was bigger than she was. It looked over 18 hooves tall.*

“And,” she said with her speech slightly more slurred than usual, “It was really heavy~”

After dragging in the box and tipping Derpy (almost 25 bits for that kind of work), Spike gave an all clear and scurried up the stairs. The human, he saw, was breathing heavily, his eyes rolled back and his face pale and sweaty.  He passed out again.

“Prop his back legs up,” said Spike. They did, and the human came back to life. They slowly moved him up onto Twilight’s bed and gave him some water.

“He doesn’t look good,”came Fluttershy’s voice. Tears where in the two ponies’ eyes. Spike turned downcast. He didn’t want to see two grown mares cry. He went down stairs and spat sparks at the joints of the crate until he was able to pry them open. There were two other crates inside the large one. He opened the first. “Medical tools?” The second. “A Chemistry set? Twilight must have sent them here after going shopping or something. I’d better catalogue and store them in the basement.”

Spike, having forgotten the human entirely for the moment, was busily cataloging racks of test tubes, flasks, and beakers when Lyra showed up.

“Spike? Do you have any Mirrorpool Lotus around here?”

“There’s a small box with some in it in the upper left-claw shelf above spine grass. Just look into the spice sections of the stores down here.” Several moments passed. Spike ignored the continuous whispering and mumbling between Fluttershy and Lyra.

“Um- Spike- if you don’t mind, can you tell me where the Cockatrice scales are?”

“Right under the Baby Dragon Scales,” said Spike, painfully showing her the empty patches on his chest. “I don’t know why Twilight is getting into alchemy right now. She’s been buying medical and Alchemical books for the past three  weeks now.”

“So we’ve noticed,” said Lyra, her aura holding up a freshly printed vetrinary volume.

The human slipped in and out of consciousness for the rest of the week until Twilight returned. Lyra, Fluttershy, and Spike confided in her the secret of the human lying sick in Twilight’s bedroom. Twilight healed him for the next day and a half until he was able to walk again. By lunchtime, Twilight trotted over to the sugarcube corner, where Fluttershy and Lyra were talking casually (Lyra doing most of the talking of course); there seemed to be significantly less enmity between the two of them since last time she saw them. Twilight walked in and sat down.

“He’s able to walk now.” They both gasped in excitement.

“Can we go see him?”

“Yes, and we’d better hurry while he’s still awake.”

Twilight, Lyra, and Fluttershy galloped to the library, where inside, the human was sitting in a rocking chair by the fire. His green eyes met theirs. They were spell bound for a half of a second before they walked over to him.

“How are you feeling, Amotus?”

“Amotus? That’s his name?” asked Lyra.

“Lyra” came the weak, but still smooth and lyrical voice. He looked longingly and lovingly at the three ponies, then looked downcast. It seemed he was sad that this wouldn’t last, or as if this dream was going to end soon.

“What’s the matter?” asked Twilight with an encouraging smile. “You’re here and safe with us” The human smiled weakly, like Darth Vader after having his mask taken off for the very last time. With his head leaned back into the rocking chair, his eyes crawled out the window into the fresh blue sky.

“But why were you all so easily corrupted?”

“There are now only two things that nautrally drive a human’s heart—those are fear, and greed. I’m sure that you all are familiar with those.  We were consumed by them and live in disharmony to this day. “

“Wait—I don’t understand. You seem normal and nautral, and you also seem to be a good person by nature—and now you are telling me that goodness is unnautral in humans? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s because I am alone,” said Amotus. “I’m not surrounded by pliable crowds. I’m surrounded by colorful magical ponies.”

“This is all too complicated for me to understand,” said Lyra.

  The window outside was now dark, the only lights were the candle and the moon. They had been talking for nearly nine hours. Fluttershy had already left for the evening feeding.  Lyra looked and saw what the human was using to hold the book, which she hadn’t noticed since he was in the basement tied to the table. He yawned.

Lyra, Twilight, and Amotus had practically shared their worlds and histories with each other, and had already gotten comfortable with each other’s calmness and openness.  Amotus felt much more open to talk about himself after talking about his people, but he yawned again.

There was a minute’s silence while the human leaned back in the chair with his eyes closed. Lyra eyed the seeming majestic creature. Spike came up.

“Well,” Spike said, “Today’s work is finished, and the distillery is done.”

“Thanks, spike,”said Twilight, who walked over and nuzzled the dragon’s scaly face.

“Lyra? Twilight?”

“Yes?” they both responded serenely, probably as tired as Amotus was.

“I just realized. I’m tired and hungry”

“Good,” said Spike, “Dinner is still warm over the fire and I brought in an old matress from outside a mover’s warehouse for you. I’ll bring it in, and a pillow with the dinner.

They ate in silence. Lyra eyed the human’s hands. He collapsed on the mattress and fell asleep almost before Spike could put the pillow under his head. Twilight nuzzled Spike again, and they both went to bed.

The human’s bed was right under and next to Twilight’s.

Every once in a while, Twilight tosses and turns in her sleep, sometimes falling out. This night she did just that, and fell right on top of Amotus. He didn’t wake up, but she did. The next thing that she knew, was that the human had wrapped his arms affectionately around the pony’s neck. She serenely and sedatedly made herself comfortable, leaned back into the human’s chest, and went back to sleep. She didn’t even know why.