I watched as Twilight made her way back up the stairs. It was apparent that she was thoroughly fried from all the things we spoke of. She lifted her mess of papers, quills, and ink pots which had seen quite a bit of use over the discussion. Her possessions bobbed through the air after her. I was worried when an open inkpot bumped the wall and the ink splashed out. Rather than stain the wooden stairs and/or wall, it merely fell to the bottom of a pink bubble that had suddenly popped into existence around it. The inkpot was released from the bubble and was maneuvered underneath where the bubble suddenly morphed into a funnel which deposited all the ink back where it came from.

That’s impressive. That was another moment where it really struck me that I was playing the role of stranger in a strange land, but I was coping fine in spite of that. Yeah my disappearance is probably a minor catastrophe and I am having chats with colorful alien equines, but I’ve already learned that worrying is pointless in all situations except maybe as an expression of stress.

That wasn’t important. The only thing on my mind was what I was going to do until the next interview, meal, or in this case, party came up. I was in the middle of a library and I was also quite the reader so I decided to look around. I walked around the library and scanned the bookshelves or something interesting. There were whole sections of textbook subjects: history, math, writing, science, etc. I was hoping to find something interesting in the science category but most subjects were either basic by my standards or mixed in with magic to a degree where I couldn’t get into it. A cursory examination revealed equations that I couldn’t read and diagrams of gemstones and how they did magic… stuff.

I came across a fiction section which had most of the regular genres that I could’ve expected, although did discover that fantasy was was instead labeled as adventure while science fiction was split between sci fi and fantasy in a manner that couldn’t tell the difference between. I gave up and decided to head back down to the basement with my laptop bag to find some sort of electricity free way to entertain myself.

In spite of the fact that I had gone to visit my friends in Sacramento, I brought some books with me as a holdover from a time when I was much more introverted. With me were the books Atlas Shrugged and Star Fist: First to Fight, each of which I had been meaning to read for a few months. I had also brought my guitar. The only other things that I had brought from my car was clothes and toiletries etc.

Upon weighing my options I decided to give my guitar some attention. I unzipped the bag that housed it along with some sheet music that I printed out from the internet. I sat on my slightly undersized bed with my legs crossed and the music leaning up against the headboard and begin to strum away.

A while later I hear the tapping of hooves on wooden stairs coming my way as I continue to fiddle with my guitar. As I finish I turn to find Twilight standing several feet away, taking in everything she could.

“Decided to come investigate?”

She quietly nods. “What kind of instrument is that?”

“It’s a guitar. I’m assuming you want me to tell you about it?”

She was amused at this. “How did you guess?”

“A hunch.” She approaches and hops onto the bed in front of me. “Let’s see. I guess I’ll talk about how I got it. My aunt gave it to me as a graduation present. It originally belonged to my cousin but she hurt her left hand. She was really into music and could still play and perform but knowing guitars, a damaged left hand would be quite the painful liability.”

“So what did you graduate from?”

“High school last year. I’m going to college now.”

“Interesting, I ask about that next time we do one of our talks. For now I would like to know more about this guitar of yours.”

“Right, well normally a guitar is either acoustic or electric, but this one is actually a hybrid of the two. It works like a normal acoustic guitar but it can be plugged into an amplifier to get all the normal crazy business of electric guitars.”

“Crazy…?”

“Well, they are much more intense. I actually have a few songs on my laptop that are good examples. I can pull it out again.”

“What if it runs out of power?”

“We can probably get that dealt with but I think this is as good of a time as any.”

I retrieve my laptop again and boot it up. After a minute I login and navigate to where I have my music. I decide to start up one of the first metal songs that I enjoyed before I actually learned to like the genre. It started as soft bass sounds which quickly led into low singing before quickly getting to the good stuff.

I had the volume on fairly low, concerned about how sensitive her ears might have been and whether or not she would enjoy it at all. I was surprised when she asked, “Is this as loud as it can go?”

“No, how high would you like it to go?”

“Just act as if you were enjoying this for yourself.”

I raise an eyebrow at this before leaning down and pressing fn + f12 to raise the volume. I had decided to stop if it got painful or if Twilight reacted poorly but that didn’t happen even as the volume reached 100%. At that point it was pretty darn loud and my laptop speakers were not something to be sneezed at. We listened to the rest of the song without either of us having an issue.

“So you listen to stuff like that all the time?”

“No, I have all kinds of stuff and I usually have a headset to keep it to myself.”

“Can I see that?”

“Um, sure.” I pull out the wireless headset and its little transmitter and put everything together. “Would you like to try it?” She nods in suppressed excitement. No doubt thinking about what a great cultural exchange it would be.

I decided to put together a quick playlist of some of my calmer songs. I told her how to adjust the volume on the headset and to press the big empty button on the keyboard to pause or play it. I helped to arrange the headset in a manner that would work, which turned out alright with the part connecting to the earmuffs resting on her neck.

I started the playlist off with Building Worlds which quickly moved onto Owl City, Space Oddity, and Glorious Morning 2. I let her listen to them loop a few times to her obvious enjoyment. I set my guitar aside and lounged on my bed until she decided that she’d had enough and paused it by pressing the spacebar with her magic.

She magically pulled the headset off her head and set it down next to her on the bed. She looked to me and asked, “I heard some rather interesting things in that third song and I was hoping that you would explain them to me.” I leaned down towards the screen and looked passed the tiny blurry smears on my glasses at the screen.

“Oh, I know all about Space Oddity. What do you want to know?”

“Well the singer mentions being in a tin can ‘far above the world’ and I have my ideas about this but I wanted to ask about it first.”

“Ok, well the singer was a Canadian Astronaut named Chris Hadfield. He recorded the song while he was on the International Space Station. The song was a reimagined version of another song with the same name that’s like thirty years old or something.”

“So what’s a space station?”

“Um, it’s like a building in space. As opposed to a spaceship, it’s not meant to actually go anywhere outside its own orbit.”

“Space… ships? As in ships that sail through space? How could something like that possibly work without magic?”

“With exorbitant use of Newton’s third law.”

“Which is…?” She ushered me on.

“Any action is met with an equal and opposite reaction. In that case it means a directed explosion shoots out of the back of a rocket pushes it forwards.”

She was quiet after that. Pondering my favorite concept.

“I suppose I’ll add that to the list. Pinkie’s party starts in a few hours so I think we will have to put it off until tomorrow.” She sighed. “I have some errands that I need to go run. When I get back we can have lunch and later we can go to the party. How’s that?”

“Sounds peachy.”

Several hours later, after a meatless lunch and idle chatting about magic. We left to go to Pinkie’s party.

As we walked through town, I noticed that there was not quite as many ponies out and about as there was the day before. As we maneuvered our way to Sugarcube Corner, I discovered that it was a perfect facsimile of a gingerbread house.

As we approached we could hear Pinkie’s voice, “-he’s really tall and he be with us for a while. Introducing-” She somehow timed it perfectly with our arrival. The instant we walked through the door she screamed, “-Tom!”

We walked in to find a huge crowd of colorful ponies surrounding a table that Pinkie Pie was standing on. They all turned their heads to look at me. Some of them seemed to recognize me while others looked confused or worried, but that certainly didn’t hinder the party at all. Not with Pinkie at the wheel, who zipped right to me and started leading me around.

It was odd to be the tallest individual by far in the room, but things quickly got underway. The very first thing that Pinkie had me do was play pin the tail on the pony. Some of the ponies there were worried about whether I would be able to keep standing but I waved off their worries. I was quickly blindfolded and spun in circles until I was dizzy. I bent my legs to help my balance as I waddled forwards and held the tail at what I hoped was a good height. I felt the tack touch a hard surface so I just push it in where it first touch the wall and removed my blindfold.

Yes, pure skills here, I thought to myself when I saw that the tail was attached to the stomach of the paper pony on the wall. I turned around and handed off the blindfold and looked for something else to do at my welcome party when I saw a trio of ponies scrambling towards me.

I didn’t recognize them but I knew that they were young, considering that they were only a bit taller than my knees.

“Hey, we have a question!” The orange one shouted over the din of the party.

I raised an eyebrow.

“Do you have a cutie mark?”

Ω Twilight’s Perspective Ω

I watched as Tom got into a discussion with the crusaders, probably about cutie marks. I couldn’t exactly hear over all the noise but it’s always a foregone conclusion with those three.

I turned back towards Rarity and Rainbow, fully intending to continue our conversation about our esteemed guest when spike went into a familiar fit. He promptly coughed up a scroll. Gripping the corners of the paper in my magic, I unrolled it and read it to myself.

[insert]

Dear Twilight Sparkle

I have just been informed that progress has been made in unraveling the spell-form that was used to summon Tom. The scientists have expressed a desire to examine Tom and to present their results to you face to face.

Unless you have prior commitments, I would appreciate the presence of both you and Tom here at Canterlot before noon of tomorrow or the next day.

Sincerely,

Princess Celestia[/insert]

“What’s it about dear?” Rarity inquired.

“Tom and I have been summoned to Canterlot. It seems progress has already been made in analyzing the spell used to summon Tom. The princesses probably want to meet him too.”

“That’s wonderful darling! I can say that he is handling his situation far better than I would if I were in his hooves.” She glanced at Tom’s feet. “Or the equivalent.”

“Pfft,” Rainbow interjected, “If I were in his place not only would I find my way home faster, I would be awesome while doing it!”

I rolled my eyes and grinned at the boastful comment. I doubted that it would be the kind of ‘lost’ that could be solved by having wings.

I looked back to Tom to find him giving two of the crusaders a ride on his shoulders. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle each held on by the crooks of their forelegs while they each tried to use their hind legs to grip his waist. They were both giggling madly.

Over the next few hours, Tom managed to experience most of what the party had to offer and had met a few other ponies. Meanwhile, Spike had managed to scoot all the way around to Rarity’s side of the table. I did spot the pony I wanted to talk to about Tom’s electrical needs. He was a unicorn named Spark Eclipse. I arranged for him to pay a visit early tomorrow morning to talk with Tom.

When the end of the party began to near, Tom sat down at my table. All of the others had already left while I elected to stay near Tom.

He sighed when he sat down, “I’m so tired of standing.” He laid his head down on the table and sprawled his arms in front of him.

I smiled. Carrying around one’s full bodyweight on two legs probably wasn’t the easiest thing ever done. “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. Did you learn anything new?”

“In Soviet Russia, pony rides you.”

Huh? “A pony rides me where?” I think that came out poorly.

Tom just snorted in amusement. “It’s a joke people use when they see something that’s backwards in some way.”

That certainly piqued my curiosity. “What do you mean by backwards?”

He lifted his head off the table and sat upright. “Well, remember how I said that humans are the only sapient species back home? Well that is not the same as saying that there are no equine species to be found. I don’t know about here, but back home we have horses, which I guess are much larger versions of ponies, and by being sturdy and easily domesticated animals, they were at one time used as beasts of burden. I don’t know all that much so don’t be offended by anything I say.”

“I’m not offended or anything but it does make things a bit awkward.” Our conversation went silent for a moment until I remembered the letter. “Oh, Tom, I did get a letter from the princess asking us to visit Canterlot. Apparently some progress has been made and the scientists want to report to us directly for whatever reason and Princess Celestia wants to meet you.”

“Oh, I suppose that will be interesting. I’ll admit that I was worried that we wouldn’t see results for a long time. Well, not worried per se but concerned.”

“It may still take weeks or months to figure everything out. So with that in mind, I took an opportunity to ask Spark Eclipse to pay us a visit. He is going to see if it’s possible to meet your electrical needs before we leave tomorrow so he can work on something while we’re gone.”

“I think I did get to talk to him something like an hour ago. He seems like my kind of… well, pony I suppose.”

“Well, we should get to the library and get some sleep. We have a long day tomorrow.”

“Sounds good. I want to move my car to the library though. It’s not a good idea to leave it sitting out in a field unattended.”

I yawned as we walked out into the crisp, cool air of the Equestrian night. “Well, you do that. Make sure that you are ready to go in the morning.”

“I will.”

Author's Note

I am going to set this on a fast track for completion it since I want to get it out of the way so I can focus on Pegasus Mating Dance. Also I am reformatting the story. I no longer want it to be a compilation of anything so I will change things up in the description a bit.