Escaping The Collector

Lyra yawned as she entered her home and shut the door behind her. Today's shift at Colgate's dentist office as her receptionist had been beyond boring, but if nothing else it had given her plenty of time to go over her plans for the coming evening, which was now. Tonight was a very special night, oh yes! Tonight she would finally, in her mind at least, complete her collection on Human paraphernalia!

If she was being honest even Lyra herself wasn't quite sure where or when her fascination had first started for certain, but she did know that three full walls of her house's basement were lined with what others of her interest had declared 'genuine articles' of Human history and proof of existence or pre-existance. Most of them looked to be little more than junk, and her cousin Sweetie Drops (more commonly known to her friends as Bon Bon due to her talent with chocolates) had threatened more than once to throw the whole lot in the garbage, but after tonight all the time, bits, and storage space spent would be worth it, and complete. On this night she would summon, shrink, and put in stasis for display an average-build male Human. Last night she had summoned a dark-skinned female, which had arrived asleep, thankfully, and had already placed her in a labeled glass dome with a base of dark brown oak wood next to what an Anthropologist had declared to be a capped ball-point pen (still functional! "Squee!").

Lyra placed her bit bag on the kitchen table, grabbed a banana from the tree-shaped banana hanger on the counter and headed up to her shower. When she was finished eating and bathing she toweled off and then headed down to her basement to prepare the summoning circle she'd drawn in pink chalk (without Sweetie Drops knowing) on the floor. The full setup took close to an hour but with the final edition of a table to the circle's center it was finally finished. Smiling with satisfaction Lyra yawned a second time and rubbed her eyes.

Maybe I should wait until morning after breakfast for this... Lyra considered as she glanced at the moon shining in through one of the basement's ground level windows. She thought about it for a few minutes, glanced at the empty display case next to the woman, then nodded. IT wouldn't do for her to botch the stasis spell and rapid-age or reverse-age her poor captured human then have to start the process all over again with a new one just because she was too impatient to get a full night's sleep first. Stasis spells in general were challenging for her as they'd never been her area of expertise to begin with, and even using plain 'ol telekinesis got harder when Unicorns were sleepy.

The next morning Lyra awoke to the sound of birds chirping outside her window. Yawning unhappily Lyra sat up and lifted the glass of water she kept next to her bed as she approached aforementioned window with a frown. She pushed the blinds aside and hurled the contents out, splashing the birds and sending them flapping away squawking indignantly.

"Dumb birds! Can't even sleep in properly on a day off..." she grumbled as she headed first for the bathroom. After briefly running a brush through her mane and using a bit of mouthwash to get rid of her morning breath she progressed downstairs to jump-start her brain with caffeine.

One cup.

Two cups.

Two and a half- "Hic- Yee-or'OAP!"

"Lyra! That was disgusting!" a familiar voice scolded.

Lyra turned her head towards Bon Bon's' room to see her frowning room mate and cousin standing by the refrigerator.  "Could you at least cover your mouth when you're going to belch loud enough to wake the dead?" she asked as she moved to the cupboard to get her own coffee cup. Lyra set hers down on the counter next to the coffee pot and apologized.

"Sorry, Bonny. It just kinda slipped out."

"Slipped?" Bon Bon scoffed. "More like bulldozed. Where's the milk?"

"Hasn't shown up yet." Lyra glanced at a clock across the room. "It's not due for another twenty minutes or so."

"So you're drinking that swill straight?" Bon Bon asked, her tone disbelieving as she examined Lyra's cup and sticking out her tongue in disgust. "How can you stand it?"

"Necessity. I've got plans for today and I wanted to be fully awake before I started. Trust me, I would never be drinking it without milk and sugar otherwise." Bon Bon raised an eyebrow.

"You do know that we have sugar, right?" Lyra shuffled her hoofs nervously and gave a pained grin. Seeing this, Bon Bon's face became deadpan. "What?"

"I...used it."

"You used it." Lyra nodded, not losing her small pained grin. "You used three pounds of sugar in less than two weeks." She nodded again. "On what?!" Bon Bon asked, her voice raised.

"'l needed it for a project, but I'll buy more, I promise!" Bon Bon stamped her fore hoofs on the floor, causing a bang.

"That doesn't make it okay, Lyra! You do know that I run a candy shop, right? I need to have extra sugar on hoof at all times in case somepony gives me a special order and what I have in my shop's kitchen isn't enough!" Lyra lost any semblance of a smile on her face and looked at the floor in shame. She had known that Bon Bon might need that sugar, but had hoped that she would have completed the final portion of the ritual and had enough time to buy more in the town market before Bon Bon found out. Oops

Bon Bon rubbed her face with a hoof and sighed. This wasn't the first time that her cousin had done something completely selfish without thinking and she doubted it would be the last. Still, she rarely acted in such a way with malicious intent, and she was one of the few members of her family that she was close to. I may as well forgive her.

"Look," Lyra raised her head. "just...just go get me a replacement bag from Sweet Cane's spice stand before midday, alright? I was planning on opening a little later today anyway." Lyra's face began to grow a grateful smile, but Bon Bon quickly raised a warning hoof. She might be willing to forgive Lyra's occasional madness, but just letting it go completely with her would be a mistake (as she had learned the hard way). "BUT! The next time you do that without at least giving me a heads up first, you're banned from my shop for two months!" Lyra winced and Bon Bon smiled inwardly. If Lyra had a weakness, it was the threat of being denied sweets. She'll not forget that one anytime soon!

After eating her breakfast Lyra went to her room to gather the bits needed to replace Bon Bon's bag of sugar and then left the house, while Bon Bon continued with her own morning meal complimented with the recently-arrived bottles of fresh milk. Setting down one of the bottles on the table to drink form directly she also took a grapefruit from their fruit bowl on the table and settled down to eat it.

__ __ __ __ __

Meanwhile down in the house's basement during the two mares' conversation a mouse cautiously made its way from its hidey-hole in the corner towards the strong smell of sugar coming from the middle of the room. It moved forward a few inches, then stopped and looked around, sniffing for danger, then scurried forward another half meter, then stopped and repeated its actions, and then finally reached the source of the scent. Sniffing one last time for danger, the mouse grabbed for a paw full of the sweet crystals and stuffed them into its mouth, repeating the action several times before having had its fill, and then it moved to return to its home when a loud bang above it startled the poor creature and, panicking, it bolted in a random direction, colliding with a stool left near the summoning circle and causing it to rock a tiny bit before turning away and running back for its hole.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZKSAsk9Gt4&index=80&list=PL8C4A0B6360BB2B3C)

On top of the stool a charged cylindrical arcane gem tipped over and rolled until it fell from the stool and landed on the ring of sugar that lined the summoning circle. The magic stored inside surged from the container and into the circle, lighting up the drawn lines and symbols as it spread and emitting a bright light that filled the room and, had it still been night, been very visible through the small ground-level windows.

When the light faded and the drawn lines and symbols with it only the table Lyra had placed within the circle and a small figure atop it that had not been there previously remained.

Blinking in the confusion at its new location, the figure rose to its feet and looked around. He stood at six inches on the dot, was wearing a pair of blue jeans, a dark green long-sleeved shirt, a pair of casual boots, and was of [REDACTED] skin tone and [REDACTED], messy hair. From his point of view, everything not shrouded in shadows was very large in comparison to himself and after a short trip to the edge of the table he stood on found that what should have been a short distance to the floor back home was a tad uncomfortable drop. Having assessed that he most certainly wasn't 'In Kansas anymore', he had just one thing to say:

"Where the Spartan-Heck am I?"