Just One Man

Chapters

A Breath of Fresh Air
An Epic Tale
Under Pressure
A Nightly Visitor
The World in a Grain of Sand
Dear Princess Luna (Interlude 1)

A Breath of Fresh Air

The office was dark all around, except for what little was illuminated by the bank of three monitors on a desk. The low hum of the workstation desktop computer and the occasional clacking of the keyboard and clicking of the mouse could be heard through the quiet music playing in the background.

A man sat by the desk, frustratedly glaring at the middle monitor, and throwing glances at the one to the right after typing for a bit. This was usually followed by a disappointed sigh whenever the changes he had made had not had the desired effect.

He saved what he had of the Cascading Style Sheet document so far, and the preliminary menu button designs he had open in Photoshop. He rose out of his chair, swaying a bit from side to side as the dizzyness from having sat down for too long and rising too fast, slowly wore off.

Stretching his back and his legs as the motion sensors in the office made the fluorescent lamps in the office flicker on, he moved away from his desk after locking his computer. He always locked it, more out of habit than worry anyone would mess with it, knowing he was likely to be the only one in the building besides the night-guard in the lobby.

The music grew distant as he walked through the door to his office and down the empty hallway, slowly getting lit up as the motion sensors - once again - noticed his presence. The flickering lamps now illuminated his destination: The soda vending machine a little further down.

Already knowing what he wanted, he slid a coin into the slot and pressed the button for a grapefruit soda. Some relatively loud clunking noises emanated from the machine as a half liter bottle hit the bottom of the tray.

A frown appeared on his face as he picked up what was apparently a lemon-lime soda, the frown soon replaced with a look of puzzlement as his eyes moved between the button he had pressed, the soda in his hand and the button for orange soda. He then shook his head and returned to his desk with his unexpected bounty.

Sitting back down and taking a gulp of the cold, fizzy drink before putting the cap back on, he returned to his work as the usual spring rains drummed on his window. Living and working in Denmark had a few benefits... the weather was not one of them. As a web-designer, however, it didn't much matter where he worked from as he could theoretically get clients from anywhere in the world, or work from anywhere in the world with a stable Internet connection.

Unlocking his computer, he returned to his work on the highly uncooperative div-box positionings and z-indexes. Hoping to be done with the structuring of these web-site pages by the morning, he decided to power through the night so he could get to work with the more interesting stuff once the morning came.

He greatly preferred the more creative design aspects of his work, working with the colours, shapes, textures, typography and logo design. He always carried around a sketchbook and a set of pencils in the grey courier bag he practically never left his home without.

The sketchbook containing little more than random scribbles and a few sketches of things that at one point caught his attention. Ever since he had gotten himself a Wacom tablet he had mostly been drawing with that, but he still liked the feeling of paper and preferred to have the ability to doodle a few things down, should the opportunity arise.

By the time morning came, he was sitting in front of the computer, his head dipping from exhaustion, his job finished on the monitor in front of him. Locking his computer once again, he got out of his chair, audible pops issuing from his back and neck as he rose, hoisting the strap of his courier bag over his head and onto his shoulder.
The mostly untouched soda got put into the bag before he wandered back out of his office.

It had stopped raining a bit earlier, so he wanted to head up to the roof for a breath of fresh air, something he'd need if he was to spend an hour or two more getting started on the rest of his little work project before going home to sleep the day away.

He plugged his headphones into his phone as he ascended the stairs leading to the roof a few floors further up, put the headphones in his ears and nimbly navigated to the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon play-list, that he felt would fit well with watching the sunrise from the roof of the office building. As soon as he exited the door to the roof, he walked to the closest wall and leaned against it, closing his eyes and just breathing in the cool morning air.

Starting to feel the warmth of the sun on his cheek, he opened his eyes... and noticed something was off.

First off: The door he had gone through to get onto the roof was suddenly too small for him to go through without hunching down. Secondly: There were barely any clouds in the sky and the roof was dry, despite it having just rained.

He turned off the music on his phone and took out the headphones, only to notice even more oddities. It was too quiet... not completely quiet, but much too quiet to be the Copenhagen business district he was supposed to be in. No car-horns or engines that he could hear, and a noticeably louder sound of wings flapping than he was used to.

Putting the phone back in his bag, he started looking around, but failed to figure out where he suddenly found himself.

He wasn't in Denmark anymore, that much was easy to tell from the presence of mountains.
Panic slowly crept into him as he realized that something impossible had happened and he had no understanding of what it was at all... either that or he was dreaming.

After pinching several different spots of his body to no effect whatsoever, he felt no better about his situation, but he realized that staying on this roof - wheresoever it was - would get him nowhere.

Crouching a bit to get back through the door to the stairway down, he went down the stairs all the way to the ground floor, hoping to see the night guard snoring away the last half hour or so of his shift behind his desk... When he opened the door to the lobby, he saw no such thing.

What he did see however, damn near broke his brain.

The building's lobby was full of colourful, furry, four-legged creatures. None of them taller than the average full-grown Great Dane. Every single one of them looking at him with an expression of about as much surprise as was on his own face.

His jaw hung low as he stared at all of them...

Their jaws hung low as they stared at him...

And they all dove for cover, as he bolted out through the front door of the building and ran through the streets, as fast as his two legs could carry him. He dodged more of these creatures out on the sidewalks and in the streets, noticing some of them pulling small carts like they were horses.

He could hear the sounds of screaming and whinnying following behind him like a wave and even saw one of the creatures faint as he stormed towards it.

“Dear sweet Celestia! What the hay is that thing?”
“Waaaah! It’s the end of days! The Horror! THE HORROR!”
“Watch out Tavi! It’s headed right for you!”
“Somepony do something! Get the guard! Get the Elements! Get the Princesses!”
“Alright everypony! Follow my lead. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHGG!”

Of course he understood none of this and heard only little of it through the din of panic.

He could not run forever though and soon had to dive into the nearest back alley to hide, not knowing exactly why he was running in the first place... just knowing that this place was very much not where he was supposed to be.

It was beginning to show that the locals agreed with him on this.

“I saw it go in there, I think it’s hiding.”

“Thank you citizen, stand back now... there’s no telling if this thing is dangerous.”

Peeking out from behind some neatly stacked garbage bags and back towards the street only to lock eyes with a lone one of the creatures. This one in what looked like golden Roman Legionnaire armour, and all of a sudden not moving so confidently down the alley anymore.
It’s presence however was still more than enough to send the man scrambling further down the alley, until he reached what he now saw was a dead end.

Trapped, cornered and tired, he didn’t even notice the odd rainbow trail and three dark smoke trails, crossing the small visible sliver of sky directly above him. They were suddenly much harder to ignore when they were barreling down through the alleyway straight at him at high velocity. A winged creature much like the other ones out on the streets at the front of each trail.

The four creatures stopped about 10 feet in front of him.

“Stop right there xeno scum, nopony breaks the law on my watch!”
“Uhm Soarin’, I don’t think it’s done anything illegal yet.”
“It definitely will if we don’t grab it now Spitfire, I can see it in it’s tiny, beady, shifty eyes!”
“See? Dash agrees with me! It’s probably dangerous!
“Yeah, let’s just knock it out and let the princesses figure out what to do with it.”
“Don’t you guys think we should be a bit calmer about th...”
“GeronimoooOOOOO!”

“Uhm, I don't understand what you're sayooomph!”

“Get it’s head Soarin’! Hit it’s head!”

“Which part is the head!? Where is it!?”

“Idunno! Just hit all of the parts!”

“Ooooof!”

He promptly blacked out as a pair of light blue hooves connected violently with his face as he was held tight against the wall by another creature with rainbow coloured hair. Collapsing onto the ground as it let go of his limp body.

An Epic Tale

I wake up with my face on a rough and irregular surface.

‘Thank god that was just a dream, but why did I have to fall asleep on my keyboard again? Now it’s probably full of drool and I’ll have to go home with “QWERTY” imprinted on the side of my face’

I opened my eyes...

“Crap...”

There was no keyboard under my face, instead there was a small pile of hay. I was in some sort of cell in what looked like a dungeon, complete with the window near the ceiling that I wouldn’t have been able to see out of... at least if I was about 3 feet shorter than I was. Getting up to look through it, I began to notice how sore I was in every part of my body... and that I wasn’t wearing any clothes.

Outside was nothing but green rolling hills as far as I could see, except for the mountain range out in the distance. Slumping back down to the floor with my back against the wall, I notice a big pair of eyes looking at me through the small barred window in the door. They were magenta in colour, and seemed slightly familiar.

Remembering that I was still naked, my eyes darted around the room and found a nice looking blanket, which I quickly covered myself with. A moment later, the eyes disappeared and I heard what sounded like talking in some strange alien language outside. One voice clear and slightly raspy, the other one almost so quiet I wasn’t sure it was even there at all.

After a bit, other voices joined in... then the voices stopped and I heard the lock on the door being unlocked. When the door swung open, I saw six heads around the edge of it, all very colourful, all very much staring at me.

‘Wait... how is that pink one peeking in under the top of the door frame? And... is that one wearing a cowboy hat?’

One of them was pushed into the cell, it didn’t look at all comfortable with the situation, but didn’t run back out either, it was canary yellow with light pink hair and tail, light blue eyes and... wings. Behind it came in a second one, this one lavender with purple hair and tail, except for a pink streak running through both. A horn jutted out between the locks of it’s hair.

The lavender one sat down in a far corner of the cell as the door swung closed. The yellow one jumped a little as if startled and glanced towards the now closed door, but quickly turned it’s eyes back on me.

‘What are these things? The tails, ears and legs remind me of horses, but they’re much smaller’ I thought to myself as the lavender one seemed to try to goad the yellow one on.
‘The legs are thick and stubby and I don’t think I see any hooves at the end...’
The yellow one gulped and slowly moved closer, cooing and crooning quietly in a soothing and relaxing tone.
‘And their heads... they’re round instead of long and... no... this can’t be physically possible... their eyeballs must take up more space than there is in the skull... maybe they’re flat? Would that work?’

As I finished that last bit of thought, the horn of the lavender one started to glow... as did a quill, a bottle of ink and a clipboard that all flew out of a bag strapped to it’s side. The tiny unicorn... yeah, that description seemed appropriate started to scribble down what I assumed were notes with what my brain could only reconcile as magic. My jaw dropped as I witnessed this.

So captivated was I by seeing this one creature blatantly defying the laws of physics in such a way, that I didn’t even notice that the yellow... pegasus? Yeah... pegasus had gotten up right next to me until I felt it softly nuzzling my shoulder, and looking up at me with those huge blue eyes.

After the initial shock of the close proximity had worn off for me, it gently pushed me into a prone position. Lying on my back, it started examining me from head to toe, paying special attention to my hands, feet and head, seemingly reporting it’s findings back to the one taking notes. When it tried to remove the blanket I had covering my more private parts, I grabbed the blanket and made sure nothing too private was revealed. It seemed to accept this and just examined my chest and the bruises on it.

That’s when my stomach grumbled.

It said some things... I don’t know what, but it might have been a question. It was clear enough that it was addressing me though.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying, I’m sorry.”

As I said that, the lavender one gasped, said some things too and then furiously scribbled things on it’s clipboard... must’ve been because of the language. I’m not sure why I replied in English myself... perhaps I just reflexively switched to English because they clearly didn’t speak Danish? Yeah, let’s go with that.

The yellow pegasus softly grabbed my head and opened my mouth, inspecting my teeth. It suddenly looked noticeably more nervous, it’s wings flaring out for a second, before folding back in. It then began pulling away from me as it spoke to the lavender one.
The lavender one sighed and then opened the door, which they both exited... the lavender one much more reluctantly than the yellow one. Then the door was closed and locked... and I was alone again, no wait... the magenta eyes were back in the window of the door, staring at me curiously.

I recognized them now, they belonged to the one that held me while another one knocked me out. It was probably assigned to guarding me. There was no hostility in those eyes anymore, they just looked at me curiously, whenever they didn’t get pushed out of the way by a pink head with blue eyes.

It was starting to occur to me that I probably wasn’t going home anytime soon, a thought that scared the hell out of me. Not that I was particularly scared of losing my previous life, I liked my life, but I could easily have torn up my roots and re-planted myself anywhere on earth and made a life there. I wasn’t on earth anymore though, that much was obvious. Humans have pretty much scoured the entire planet, discovering and examining everything there was to discover. There certainly wasn’t enough undiscovered ground left for a whole species of sapient alien mini-horses with magic powers to build a civilisation without us knowing.

So where was I? And how did I get here? Definitely not in the solar system I knew. If I had had any knowledge of astronomy at all, I might have been able to hazard a guess with time and the right equipment. All I knew about this stuff was from back in grade school, and even my fairly good memory was failing me when it came to pre-college stuff. So unless one of these aliens knew how to send me back, and wanted to... I probably wasn’t going home.

Some thirty minutes or so passed like this until the door was opened yet again and the two from before stepped back in. The lavender one already had it’s clipboard out and ready, the yellow one had a bowl in it’s mouth, which it slowly approached me with and set down in front of me.

In the bowl were an apple, some berries... and a fish... as in, the whole fish. With head, scales, innards and all. This would have been a small problem, had I only had the right tools to work on it, since I assumed I had plenty of time to work on the thing.
At least I had an idea why the yellow one was looking at my teeth now.

I ate the apple and berries first while the aliens observed and one of them likely took notes. When I got to the fish I tried to figure out how to skin it with no knife. It smelled fresh, so I wasn’t afraid of eating it raw, I’d had sushi several times in the past and liked it. After a while though I had to give up and just put it back into the bowl, which the yellow pegasus took back with a puzzled expression.

Both of the two aliens left the cell, and it seemed like all of the aliens outside left the hallway, until I saw the pair of magenta eyes in the door’s window once again. They stayed there, watching me for about five minutes before I heard the door slowly unlocking and saw it swing open as the sky blue pegasus with the rainbow coloured mane entered the cell carefully.

It didn’t close the door behind it, but it didn’t matter, where was I going to escape to anyway? So when it started talking, I just listened.
It’s talking was accompanied by a lot of body language, especially as it seemed to get more and more excited about what it was talking about, swooping and flapping motions done by both it’s wings and it’s four legs. I couldn’t help but feel like I was being told about something epic or heroic as the pegasus danced all over the floor.

It soon became clear to it that I didn’t understand anything of what it was telling me, so with it’s head hanging low in disappointment, it exited the cell again and locked the door. I didn’t see those magenta eyes any more that day.

Under Pressure

“Jeez... I wish I could have brought Spike with me here, his writing is so much more legible than mine.” said Twilight and sighed as she closely examined what looked to her like a strange big saddlebag, something the alien had reportedly been wearing when it was caught in Manehattan.

“Hmmm, it’s made from some kind of tough grey fabric... doesn’t feel like anything I’ve felt before... maybe get Rarity to look at it once she’s done with it’s clothes.”
She rotated the courier bag in the air with her magic, looking at it from every angle.
“There seem to be clasps underneath the flap for securely closing it... made from another unknown material... not closed.”
Using her magic, she opened the bag and laid it down on a table in front of her, squeeing with excitement as she looked into it.

“Okay Twilight, keep it together! Keep. it. together! Whew...” she muttered to herself as her magic held the bag wide open.
“Insides of the bag seems to be divided into smaller compartments, each specialized to hold specific items.”
She pulled out a the bottle of soda, setting it down carefully on the table and puts a label next to it.

“Item number one... a clear blue bottle-like container with an unknown liquid inside... material of the bottle is unknown but seem to share traits with the material the clasps on the bag are made of. Printed paper label seems to be glued to the bottle, likely for identification purposes.”
Looking more closely at the writing on the label, she continued.
“I do not recognize any of the symbols on the label, but the patterns they are put in suggests it is written text. Colours on the label are green, blue, white and yellow.”

“Item number two...” She said quietly while simultaneously pulling out the next thing and noting down everything she said.
“... appears to be a flat, rectangular, tin container... containing... pencils?” her face betrayed a slight disappointment that it had not contained something more interesting and foreign.
“The pencils are masterfully crafted and a lot thinner than any I have seen before, but are apparently made from the same materials as Equestrian pencils and work in the same way.”

Pouting slightly, she pulled out the next artifact.

“Item number three... appears to be a sketchbook, with remarkably fine paper... much smoother than any paper produced here in Equestria. A more thorough investigation of what has been drawn in it must wait until preliminary examination of all the alien artifacts has been completed.”

Next up she pulled out eight almost identical items.

“Item number four is in fact several seemingly identical items... they are made of the same mysterious material as the clasps and the bottle, except for small slivers of metal on what appears to be removable protective caps.”
She cautiously pulled the end cap off of one of the devices, revealing a small metal tip.
“When cap is removed, device resembles a pencil made from the mysterious material and has a tip of metal instead of charcoal. It seems a safe assumption that this is some form of writing implement.”
Twilight put the ball-point pen to a piece of paper and wrote out her name with it... her jaw dropped as she observed the coloured ink mark the page with a fine and even line.
“Uhm... a uhh... a quick experiment proved this theory to be true... the entire collection of these...” Her eyes shifted from side to side as she slipped half of the pens into her own saddle-bags.
“Uhm... these uhh... four writing tools appear to be used to write in different colours. Finding out how these can be replicated may very well revolutionize writing in Equestria.”
She reluctantly put down the remaining four ball-point pens on the table along with their own numbered label.

‘Unbelievable... so many important new discoveries. All in one simple saddlebag. This is amazing! This is... This...’
Twilight thought to herself as she got more and more excited about the implications of the discoveries she was making, needing to take a few deep breaths to calm herself down before she could continue.

“Okay... Item number... uh... five.” she said pulling out a small, dark and flat object with a smooth glass surface on one side.
“Hmmm... this seems to be made from both metal, glass and more of this foreign material that many of the other things contained.”
Starting by examining the glass covered side, she was suddenly stumped as to what this might be.
“The glass surface has markings appearing to be inside the glass as opposed to on it... near one end are three markings put close together, somewhat resembling some of the lettering on the label on the bottle.”
She quickly re-checked the bottle label, nodding as she confirmed her suspicions of the markings being letters.
“Near the opposite end are four markings, evenly spaced out to fill the entire... breadth? Height? Uh... the entirety of what I believe to be the breadth of the artifact.”
If the lettering at one end and the lettering on the bottle was anything to go by, they were an indication of a portrait format instead of a landscape format. With this perspective in mind, she examined the other four markings.
“The leftmost of the four markings is a pentagon with the two bottom angles being right angles, it looks like a symbol made to resemble a house... the next symbol is three simple parallel lines, resembling a bit of text... the next is a bent arrow, pointing left... the final one being a circle with a line protruding down and to the right... slightly resembling a magnifying glass.”
More closely examining the glass surface revealed more oddities, causing more questions to pop up about this alien device.

“The glass is extraordinarily smooth and free of scratches, there are however a few smudges on it’s surface, but I can’t tell if this holds any significance... near the trio of markings is a long, thin indentation with tiny holes in the metal frame and next to that a circular indentation.”
To Twilight it didn’t seem like there was more to see on this side, so she flipped it over.
“Near the middle of the opposite side the trio of letters from the glass surface is repeated, finely stamped into the metal, it would seem... near each end are two areas with a slightly rubbery feel to them... one of these areas has two glass-covered circular indentations and a small version of the long indentation from the opposite side. The function of these elude me as the device seems to be inactive.”

Next, she examined the edges of the device, finding two holes in it and two bits that extruded from the frame by a tiny bit.
“The extrusions are small and unseeming and their functions a mystery... the holes are different from each other, one is round and deep while the other has a strangely flat but irregular shape and visible bottom... perhaps meant for connecting with other devices?”

Not being able to figure out the function of this device, she laid it to rest on the table next to it’s label.
“Item number five seems masterfully crafted and designed... it might even be a unique or rare artifact, extra care must be taken when examining it further.”

She delved back into the bag but only found a few loose bits of paper and cardboard with writing on them as well as what she deemed to be a keyring with a collection of keys... they were different form Equestrian keys, having been made out of flat bits of metal, but it was hard to mistake their function.

Twilight was simply bursting with excitement over all this and had to talk with somepony about it. So she trotted over to where Rarity was examining the clothes they had gotten off of the alien being.
“Hey there Rarity.” she said with barely controlled enthusiasm.
“Hello Twilight, these items are just fascinating, don’t you think?” replied Rarity.
“I do! Just the things in the saddlebag alone could probably have me busy with research for YEARS! This is amazing!”
“Really? That’s marvelous darling! These clothes are fairly straightforward when keeping in mind that they’re made for a bipedal creature. The quality is good, but not as good as I could make them myself.”
“Sooo... not very interesting?
“Oh no! Quite the contrary or as the say in Prance ‘au contraire’ my dear. You see, all over these clothes I’m seeing signs that they were all mass produced.”
“Mass produced? Why would anypony mass produce clothes?”
“Nopony would, because as our dear Applejack would so aptly put it, we don’t normally wear clothes.”
“But a species that does...” mouthed Twilight as her eyes grew wide.
“Exactly... whatever it is, there’s many more of them somewhere, and they all normally wear clothes... oh dear the cultural implications!” Rarity’s eye sparkled with excitement.
“Also darling... the fashion of these clothes is fairly recognizable, I myself wore a sweater not unlike this one, during my trip to Canterlot back before that birthday of yours eight years ago.”
“Oh? What about this hat then? It looks a little bit like Applejack’s.”
“Yes... and for the life of me I can’t figure out why somebody would wear that with a sweater like this.”
Twilight merely raised her eyebrow at this little bit of irrelevant information from the fashionista.
“This hat was a bit of a mystery to me in more ways than one however... you see the material it is made of is tough and pliant, but also fairly smooth and soft to the touch, but most importantly... it’s completely water-resistant.”

“So... what is it made of?” Twilight asked

“It took me awhile to figure out, but I believe it’s made from the skin of a dead animal.”

“Wha...!?” exclaimed Twilight taking a step back... pointedly moving away from the hat.

“Yes... my reaction to the epiphany was not unlike yours... but I must admit that the attributes of the material are impressive. Disregarding the rather macabre origins of this hat, I do believe somepony like our dear Applejack would appreciate something like this.”

“Let’s uh... talk about the other clothes.” Twilight awkwardly said.

“Indeed... see these? The alien wore these underneath the other pants, I don’t quite recognize the fabric type, but they are silky smooth to the touch.”

Twilight grabs them and feels them.

“Oh wow! You’re right Rarity, these feel great!”

“The fact that they were worn underneath the outer layer of clothing as well as information from the report of it’s capture, leads me to believe that the long legged pants are meant for protection against the elements, while these are meant for another sort of protection.”

“Mhmmm...?”

“The creature has no fur coat to speak of which would necessitate clothes in most climates, but what caught my eye in the report was that when it’s clothes were removed, it’s reproductive organs were discovered to always be unsheathed, which would necessitate a more delicate fabric to protect them from chafing.”
Twilight Sparkle very suddenly stopped softly rubbing her cheek against the smooth fabric of the undergarments and instead started blushing furiously.
Rarity on the other hand was working hard to stifle her laughing at the poor unicorn.

Soon after Twilight hurriedly left the Clothing research station, having completely forgotten to ask about the materials used to make the alien’s saddlebag. Returning to her own station to see Pinkie Pie looking over all of the things on the table with wide eyes.

“Hey Pinkie Pie.”

“Hi Twilight! Have you seen all these things? Some of them are really weird and don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before, which is weird because I’ve seen a alooooooooooot of things, but I haven’t seen these things before, have you seen them before?”

“Yes Pinkie, I was the one who unpacked them from the saddlebag.”

“Oooooooh, then now what are you gonna do with them?”

“I’m going to closely examine each thing to find out exactly what they are.”

“Ooooh, oooh, oooh, OOOH! Can I help?”

Twilight thought about this for a moment before agreeing, she was going to start with the bottle of liquid anyways... nothing much dramatic could come from that.

“Alright, just follow me Pinkie.” said Twilight as she grabbed the bottle with her magic and took it to a seperate table.

“Okie dokie lokie!” replied Pinkie Pie, bouncing to the opposite side of said table.

“Well,” said Twilight “I’ve already examined the outside of this bottle, so I think it’s about time I try opening it.”

At that moment Pinkie Pie felt a few unfamiliar twitches and a chill running down her... chin? While Pinkie Pie contemplated how a chill could ever run down her chin, Twilight Sparkle opened the bottle... and something dramatic came from it, spraying all over the two mares.

“Oh sweet Celestia! It’s a bomb! It’s poison! It’s a POISON BOMB! Everypony run for your lives!” Twilight yelled untill she heard the sound of Pinkie Pie’s raucus laughter.
“Pinkie Pie! What are you doing?”

“Oh Twilight, this isn’t poison.”

“It isn’t?”

Pinkie Somehow managed to lick the liquid from the entirety of her face with one swipe of her tongue.

“Nope, it’s lemon soda! And it’s delicious.”

Twilights eyes went a little twitchy as she put the cap back on the bottle of soda and placed it back on the table with the other things.
Then she exited the research lab and headed for the shower... deciding not to go back there for the rest of the day... this day had been more than long enough.

A Nightly Visitor

I found myself in a somehow familiar place, it was a nice Chinese restaurant with red painted walls and oak tables. There were matted glass dividers in between the tables to offer the guests privacy. I was sitting at one of these tables, and across from me sat... Detective Harry Tipper. Recognizing him made me instantly recognize the restaurant as well, as well as the fact that I was dreaming.

“So... alien space ponies, huh dude? That’s pretty trippy my man.” said Tipper as he removed his sunglasses.
I couldn’t really argue with him on that, mostly because he was me talking to myself through my subconscious, under the guise of a character from a video game series I used to play when I was young.
“Anyways... don’t hush out dude, I know things seem pretty uncool right now, but it’ll all work out just fine.”
He got up out of his seat and stood by the table.
“In any case, it’s time for me to boogie on. And it’s time for you...” he put his sunglasses back on “... to split!”
A loud “YYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHH!” was heard in the restaurant as the moustached man thrust his hips forward repeatedly... and then I woke up.

I was back in the cell, lying on on two mattresses, since either one of them would have been too short for me. I got up and stretched my back, groaning as I felt myself slowly waking up more and more.
Pressing my forehead against the cold stone wall and breathing deeply to calm myself down. I was never the type of person to freak out over things easily, and I didn’t want to change that now.

That’s when I heard the door opening with a creaking sound, and when I turned to look I saw the canary yellow pegasus standing in the doorway with a very nervous look on it’s face, the rainbow-haired one hovering just behind it looking mildly exasperated.
The yellow one said something in such a low volume that even if I did understand their language, I still might not have caught much of what it said. After a few seconds of waiting, I believe it repeated whatever it was it said before, this time even quieter... it was even starting to look a bit scared of me.

Since the yellow one repeating it’s words didn’t seem to yeild any results, the rainbow haired one flew into the cell and started pushing me towards the door with it’s oddly soft hooves on my shoulder blades. I let them guide me wherever it was they wanted me to go.
I was very thankful that where they were leading me wasn’t some sort of laboratory, but a bathroom. It seemed I would be able to get a shower this morning... sure, I’d have to get down on my knees and bend a bit to fit under the shower head, but this was still a lot better than nothing.

The two pegasi left me alone in the bathroom and closed the door after them, so it would seem that they understood the concept of privacy. After pulling an all-nighter, running for my life in a foreign world and then spending a day or two in some kind of jail cell, I really needed that shower. I looked over the shampoo bottle and tried to decipher the alien script written on it, there were few words on it however, and I couldn’t seem to find anything resembling a list of ingredients. The lack of a barcode on something like a bottle of shampoo was another oddly noticeable difference, but it would have been illogical to assume that an alien civilization would use the same organizational systems as us. The shower water was nice and warm, and I came out of it smelling like roses... probably thanks to the shampoo and bar of soap that I had used.

When I came back out of the bathroom with my blanket wrapped around me, I noticed that the two pegasi hadn’t been the only ones following me to the bathroom, three of the guards in armour had also been escorting me there and were now gazing at me warily. I was escorted back to the cell where a number of the other aliens were waiting, an alabaster white unicorn with a dark purple mane was sitting by my mattresses with a set of what looked like clothes. In the middle of the room was now the addition of a small table and a chair, on the table was a plate of muffins, waffles and pancakes as well as a bowl of fruit salad. On the other side of the table was a pink alien pony with a poofy mane and tail... and the biggest, widest, creepiest grin I have ever seen outside of creepypasta images.

“Now THIS I can eat!” I may have unthinkingly blurted out, sending the purple one into yet another bout of frantic scribbling down of notes over in her corner of the room. In the meantime the white one levitated what proved to be a new set of clothes over to me. I took them and said a quiet “Thank you.”
Carefully putting the pants on without removing the blanket and then putting on the shirt. The items of clothing fitting just as well as any item he had ever worn before. They were practical clothes of a tough cotton fabric, light blue in colour and with no pockets or noticeable decorations.

I sat down on the chair across from the pink creature that was still beaming alarmingly at me, carefully grabbed a muffin and sniffed at it for a moment... not that I would have any idea how drugs or poisons would smell, but my worried mind demanded I at least do something other than just throw it down the hatch. My slight paranoia was put aside just enough to take a bite, and then the last of my apprehension was washed away by the flavour. Nobody went to the trouble of baking something this delicious just to drug someone who was already held captive... that would be crazy.

As I ate, the purple note-taker came over to the table and sat down next to the pink one, pointed a hoof at a muffin and said a short word, then paused for a second before repeating the word and looking expectantly at me.
I tried my best to mimic the pronunciation. I had always been good at languages, learning both English, French and German very quickly. This language however eluded me, it was as if it had sounds I’d never heard in any language before, intermixed with melodically arranged vowels.
It was pretty evident that I had greatly failed at repeating the purple unicorn’s words, especially from the pink one’s snorting gigglefit as it rolled around on the floor and the varying degrees of blushes on the faces of the other ponies in the room.

The rest of my breakfast passed fairly peacefully as the purple one didn’t give up easily and became determined to teach me the words for as many things as possible.
When I decided to also tell it the human words for those same things, it excitedly noted it all down in what I assumed passed for phonetic writing in this world.
After I finished eating the delicious breakfast, the language lesson seemed to be over. Instead, the purple unicorn walked around the table and came up next to me. Then it sat down and grabbed my right arm in between it’s too forelegs, closely examining it and my hand while talking back and forth with the yellow pegasus.

For the better part of an hour I was prodded in many various places through my new clothes, though mostly on my arms, legs, hands, feet and face. Even the timid yellow one came over to help with the examination. The pink one on the other hand completely misunderstood the entire situation at one point and pounced on me over the table and started to tickle me.
How in the world that thing instinctively knew exactly where my most ticklish spots were, I’ll never know. Despite being short lived on account of the note-taking unicorn chasing the pink tickler away, the episode did elicit some chuckles from the other ponies... especially the rainbow haired one.

After a while it seemed like what I assumed to be an examination of my bone and muscle structure had come to an end without any more awkward situations coming up.
All of the ponies once more left the cell, the rainbow haired one uttering a short, bored-sounding sigh as it flew past me and out the door before closing and locking it.
For the rest of the day, nothing much happened, except the yellow pegasus coming back to the cell with various foodstuffs, some edible to me... others... not so much.

After the sun went down however, the rainbow haired one came back into the cell, eyeing me less warily than it had the last time it came in to the cell alone.
It seemed a little different tonight though, like it wasn’t quite sure what to do now that it was in here. For the first few minutes it just sat in the middle of the cell, looking like it was having an internal debate, so I just decided to lie down and close my eyes for a bit.
Either the pegasus didn’t like the lack of attention or it just decided on what to do right after I closed my eyes since I quickly felt a soft hoof poking me in the ribs and opened my eyes to see it glaring at me.

As it started talking I could tell it felt frustrated about something... and that it’s voice sounded strangely feminine, yet raspy and boyish. Now that I thought about it, all six of the different ponies had various feminine voices, at least by human standards. Maybe it was safe to assume that they were female.
Even though I was slowly starting to figure this world out, it didn’t help me to understand what this pegasus was ranting about, all I could tell was that she wasn’t happy about something.
I assumed it had something to do with me, but couldn’t for the life of me guess why she was telling all this to me. I’m sure she knew I couldn’t understand her, so why...?

Soon the sky blue pegasus was standing right next to me, her face no more than two feet from mine, still ranting and raving.
It didn’t take long until she finished it all off with a heartbreakingly hopeless sigh though and just lowered her head, looking at the floor next to my mattresses.

I couldn’t help myself. I don’t quite know why I did it, but I carefully reached out a hand and stroked her mane in an attempt to comfort her.
Her head jerked upwards and she backed up by half a step as my hand fell back into my lap.

“I’m sorry.” I said quietly as she looked me in the eyes.

For a full minute the pegasus seemed to be conflicted once again, before approaching me with her head slightly tilted. I stroked her mane again and felt her ever so slightly pressing her head against my hand. I could feel the muscles in and around her neck, slowly growing less and less tense, as I scratched her behind the ears.

As I continued to stroke her mane and scratch her behind the ears (which made these adorable little flapping motions by the way), she moved closer and closer until she was finally leaning against me, talking slowly and in a much more relaxed manner than before.
This went on for about five more minutes until a sound came from outside the cell, at which point her now closed eyes shot open and she rushed out of the room and closed the door.

Once again, I was alone in my cell and laid down to get some sleep. In the quiet darkness I couldn’t help but think about my family and whether I’d ever see them again. I was really starting to miss all of them, but I specifically missed my little sister. She had always been the hard worker and diligent student of the two of us, the go-getter and achiever. I was every bit as smart as her and maybe even had a bit more potential, but I never put my heart and soul into anything like she did. I was easily distracted by whatever caught my interest at any given moment, and to be perfectly honest, I was always a bit lazy.
Despite all that however, I couldn’t remember a single moment where I hadn’t enjoyed her company greatly. She was funny, intelligent, hard-working, honest, kind and an all around joy to be near... I was so proud of her... compared to her, I was just some guy.

The World in a Grain of Sand

Days passed, tests were taken, all of them surprisingly non-invasive. The worst of it was when the meek yellow pegasus apparently needed to take a blood sample, and that wasn’t bad at all.
At least for me it wasn’t, I had grown to become fairly relaxed around needles and syringes, pretty early in my life. The pegasus on the other hand had started off being unsure of where to draw blood from, but I figured if I was going to be here for a while, it’d be better if I actually gave this world’s medical professionals a chance at figuring how I worked, in case I’d need them later.
When I stretched out my left arm to show her where my veins were visible and she had swabbed the spot with alcohol soaked cotton, she looked just about ready to faint.
So to help this go along as smoothly as possible, I carefully took the syringe from her and stuck it into my arm, filling it with my blood before handing it back to the now very light-headed looking pony.

Another curious event was when the purple unicorn seemed to want to test the effects of her telekinesis and other magic on me. I was a bit more apprehensive about this, but as it turned out I needn’t be nervous about that. Every time the sparkling magical energy came into contact with my body, I just felt it sort of fizzle away around me.
This both frustrated and intrigued the unicorn to no end, and I spent most of that day feeling like I was being dipped in body temperature club soda every time she tried and failed to cast spell on me.

What did this mean though? Was I immune to magic? Did contact with me cancel it out? Was magic simply incompatible with me? No doubt this was going to be something these beings would be researching exhaustively.

Through all of this, the blue pegasus came to visit me every night.
She didn’t always need to vent her frustrations, sometime she just came by to have her mane, neck and back scratched, and after a few days she even let me carefully stroke her wings.
It was odd to me how the wings of these pegasi seemed much too small to carry a creature of their size, even if they were greatly lightened by having hollow bones. It was like the whole thing with the bumblebees all over again. I found myself wondering if any ponies without wings or magic could break what little of the laws of physics I had knowledge of too, and was reminded of the pink one that had been peeking into the cell under the top of the doorway, as if she was stuck to the ceiling.

This night, like the others, the blue pegasus came to visit for more backscratchings, no venting tonight it seemed. That was perfectly alright with me though, even if I had learned a bit more of the language since I first came here, it was mostly just the names of things, I was however getting the hang of the foreign way of pronouncing sounds. I guess my good ear for languages was coming in handy after all.
However nice that was, I still wanted to go home and see my family again but seeing as how I didn’t even know how I got here in the first place, I wasn’t very optimistic about the possibilities.

Each night I had been visited by the pegasus, I had stayed quiet and just listened to her. Sometimes to see if I could recognize words, the rest of the time I just listened out of politeness.
Tonight I felt like letting out a bit of my own feelings though.

“I miss my own bed.” I said as I looked down on my mattresses, while scratching the pony’s favorite spot on her neck. I wasn’t surprised to see her being taken aback by my suddenly speaking.
“It’s nothing special, just this fairly nice one I got from Ikea seven or eight years ago... There’s this wooden panel that isn’t supposed to be in it, but if I don’t leave it in, the board holding the mattress in the frame will get moved around and fall out of the frame.”

Her face showed no comprehension of what I was telling her whatsoever, but I didn’t really need her to understand... I needed what she needed, someone who would listen.

“So yeah... it’s not a particularly good bed, but it’s familiar, it’s comfortable and even though it’s slightly broken, I made it work well enough for me... just like my life back on earth.”
I was pretty happy with my life back on earth, making simple websites, banner adds and apps for smartphones, nothing big or popular in any way... just enough to make a living, which was impressive enough on it’s own in that business.
It was pretty much the ideal job for me, letting me embrace both my nerdy and my creative and artistic sides.
I especially loved when a client gave me more or less free reigns over the design process of a website, letting me try out new and exciting design styles.
I remember one time when I designed an entire website to look like a coloured pencil sketch and even made a whole new font for that website alone.

“I wish I had my sketchbook and pencils here, there’s so much stuff I’ve seen here that I wish I could put on paper and take back home... if... if I can ever even get back home.”
I really felt hopeless, and it must have shown through, as the pegasus by my side suddenly started nuzzling my shoulder and neck. I looked at her and saw how unsure she looked about the whole thing, and it was just about the cutest thing I ever saw.
Once again I just couldn’t help myself and pulled the little thing into a hug, feeling her entire body go rigid with shock... she must have though I was trying to kill her or something like.
When that didn’t happen however, she slowly wrapped her front legs around my shoulders and I could almost... almost imagine I was back home in my apartment, hugging my sister goodbye after having her over for dinner.

“Thank you.” I said as I let go of her “I needed that.”
I sat back, leaning against the wall, more or less resigned to my fate of remaining here for the rest of my life. I was an alien here, this worlds Roswell, hidden away for research and safekeeping. At least I was being treated more humanely than I could imagine any alien being treated on earth, even the little dietary slip-ups were more amusing than anything else.

The pegasus nuzzled my hand one last time before leaving the cell and I laid down for my night of sleep. As the world slowly faded away and I fell asleep, my last thought was of what delicious muffins I’d be having for breakfast tomorrow, there had been a new kind each morning since they found out I could eat baked goods... maybe blueberry... or apple and cinnamon... or carrot muffins... mmm... carrot muffins...

And then I was someplace else. In fact, I was now sitting in a desert looking straight ahead at a great big sand dune, topped with two small stone structures to which were fastened two long flowing ribbons, wafting in the warm breeze.
I knew this place... I knew it well. I stood up and walked to the top of the dune, looking toward the horizon and the great mountain breaching the cloud cover, it’s split peak glowing as if aflame in the light of the shining sun.

I took a deep breath before taking a single step forward to slide down the sand dune, throwing whirling flurries of hot sand into the air behind me. I felt at peace with the warm wind in my face, I knew where I was going.
As I reached the foot of the dune I set of running through the small sea of sand and gravestones that lay between me and an ancient ruined building. Atop the building was a shiny beacon, calling to me, beckoning me.

Feeling light on my feet I quickly traversed the familiar graveyard and found myself standing exhilarated at the foot of the ruins. I scaled the steps formed by the fallen walls of the structure and climbed my way to the flat roof of the building. The glowing symbol was now right in front of me, surrounded by little pieces of cloth that seemed to swim in the air around it.
As I approached the symbol I felt a short, warm gust of wind tickled my ear as if the wind was whispering to me. I reached out to touch the symbol, to earn my scarf, something warm and soft touched my face.

I woke up and realized what I felt was one of the ponies nuzzling my face to try and wake me up. Had the blue pegasus returned?
I opened my eyes and saw one of the ponies I had least expected to come visiting in the night... and why in the world was she wearing a black spandex sneaking suit?

Twenty minutes later, I was up, clothed, given a small cloth bag of food and outside the facility... the pony had helped me escape. At first I had been unsure of whether I wanted to escape from the facility into the rest of this alien world. I knew however that if there was a way to return to my own world, then it was unlikely I would find it by staying in my cell.
In part my dream had also awoken a certain amount of wanderlust in me. What was the point of being stranded on an alien world if you couldn’t explore it.

So I set out into the moonlit night, excitement making my heart beat faster and harder than I could remember it ever beating before. One thing was certain... in my dream I had know exactly where to go... in this world... I had no idea.

Dear Princess Luna (Interlude 1)

Dear Princess Luna

As I recounted in my previous letter to you, I have for some time now been travelling through the Desert lying in between Equestria and Arcadia in search for old abandoned Gryphon encampments in order to research their culture and history, for the impending signing of the peace treaty.

I am writing this letter to you this evening, to tell you that we have discovered one of these campsites earlier today and have set up camp nearby.
We have not yet begun our actual research work, but a preliminary look at the remains of the camp and the items left behind support the theory of a nomadic lifestyle, despite the surprisingly large size of the abandoned campsite. Perhaps three or more groups had crossed each others paths and camped together before parting ways again.

There’s quite a lot of distinctively Gryphonian artifacts in the abandoned camp, as well as remains of wooden mechanical structures that are too damaged to guess at their function without much closer inspection.

I believe we may have found an encampment that alone should provide us with more than enough knowledge about their culture and history. I go to rest now that I may have a clear mind for the work ahead of me.

Your faithful student
Dusty Dunes