Through the Looking Glass
Beneath my right palm a creature of finely groomed hair growled in pleasure. As my fingers moved through white fur I felt it's rumbling contentment vibrate through me as it's back arched into my hand, aching for the alien touch that came with opposable digits.
I'd never been a cat person before today, but the feline stretched luxuriously out on my crossed legs was rapidly converting me: In part by the simple pleasure of bringing joy to another being, but mostly the calming influence it had. Because right now I needed calming. Talking ponies and head trauma can have a surprisingly deleterious effect on ones mental well being.
Ah. Yes. The talking ponies.
“Well, my parents were giving me a lift back home from the airport when they stopped to pick up something from...” brand names probably wouldn't mean anything to these creatures, so I hunted for the best description I could come up with, “... a store, and while they picked up their new settee I wondered off out of boredom.”
Still stroking the cat – Opalescence, I think – my mind drifted back as I tried to sift through my memories for anything that could help describe what happened next without making me seem crazy. But then again, being the first human these ponies had apparently seen before was probably doing that to me anyway.
“Next thing I know the lights have all gone out, and in the pitch darkness I fumble for a door and walk through. A couple of steps in and I walked into a wall, so I must have walked into a closet or wardrobe. I feel stupid, turn around and then open the door to walk out, which is when I see...” I gestured at a white coated pony with a purple mane “...and then the next thing I remember is waking up with a pounding headache and the five of you standing around me.”
I was thankful that I'd seen the pony first before the concussion, otherwise I might think that the whole thing was a hallucination induced my severe head trauma. As it stood, it was probably just an hallucination induced by something someone had drugged me with, or I was going insane. Or maybe I had just stumbled into a land of talking animals through a magical wardrobe. I wonder...
“Hey, this isn't Narnia by any chance?” Then I remembered their naming conventions. “Neigh-arnia?” My hilarious discourse didn't appear to survive translation too well though, and this just got blank stares from the purple unicorn staring at me intently.
While I spoke purple light flared and pulsed in a cone around the purple pony's horn, flashing in time to my speech in a way not dissimilar to those wave things you see on a stereo, and once I'd stopped talking she – I think it was a she, but I wasn't certain and it was probably poor etiquette to stare at 'her' undercarriage to check. Assuming of course these creature even had similar plumbing to the ponies back on earth – tilted her head to one thought as if listening to a voice that only she could hear and turned to relay the message to the five other ponies standing around her.
The speech was... well... indescribable. I want to use words like 'neighed' or brayed' but it was far more musical that that, a soft lilting sound with nothing I could pick up as words. They sang to each other in that alien tongue for a few minutes, obviously trying to make more meaning that I could from what had happened. Heck, they were unicorn, pegasus and... erm... normal ponies, and if they could translate from English to 'pony' with that purple glow then they clearly knew more about magic than I did.
Time passed, the cat expertly keeping my attention by flexing its claws whenever my rhythm slowed, and then the purple pony turned back to face me again. Her horned flared up again, and a simulacrum of a mouth formed from nothing. I was about to make a 'witty' comment about a grin without a cat when the mouth moved.
+RARITY APOLOGISES FOR SLAMMING THE DOOR BUT FINDING A STRANGE CREATURE IN THE WARDROBE CAUGHT HER BY SURPRISE+
The voice slid across my brain with all the delicacy and finesse of a cheese grater, and I let go of Opalescence to slam both hands over my ears as it flossed my head with steel wool. Not that it did any good, as the 'sound' seemed to be projecting itself straight through my skull, ignoring such niceties as ears and auditory canals. It stopped for a moment, and I made the mistake of relaxing before that buzz-saw growl ripped through me again.
+NONE OF US HAVE HEARD OF NARNIA AND I AM AFRAID THAT I HAVE NOT A CLUE ABOUT HOW YOU HAVE ENDED UP HERE OR HOW TO RETURN YOU HOME THERE IS NOTHING MAGICAL ABOUT THE WARDROBE BELONGING TO RARITY SO I BELIEVE THAT IT MUST HAVE BEEN SOMETHING AT YOUR END SO I SHALL CONTACT THE PRINCESS AND ASK WHAT SHE HAS ON MAGICAL TRAVEL IN THE ROYAL CANTERLOT LIBRARY IT COULD BE ANY NUMBER OF THINGS AS IT HAPPENS I...+
I could barely make out the words, and instead it felt like a migraine and hangover were having the party of their lives on all the tender parts of my brain – so all of it if I'm being honest – and every syllable was the throb of some monstrous sub-woofer. I smiled weakly and nodded, years of courtesy – rather than an iron will – forcing me to remain silent and polite. This stopped when I felt my nose start to run.
“Oh,” came the silent whisper, “I'm sorry to interrupt, but do any of you ponies have a hanky or somethi-”
...and for the second time in as many hours I fell unconscious, slumping limply to the floor. Clearly I wasn't cut out for life amongst magical talking ponies.
Upon waking I had roughly three coherent thoughts between that pleasantly addled feeling that comes after waking from a deep sleep. The first was that the bed was incredibly comfortable, although a little short for my tastes – which was the burden that everyone over a certain height must bare – and smelling a little too much of rose petals and lilacs. Well, some sort of flower anyway. Horticulture was hardly an area of expertise for me.
The second thought was that the alarm clock was making an odd sing-song noise that was naggingly familiar. I flailed out to one side in a desperate attempt to steal a few minutes more of precious sleep, while tossing up the benefits of toast and coffee, cereal and coffee or fruit and coffee. Or just coffee. It felt like a 'just coffee' kinda morning.
Then I opened my eyes.
Before my train of though derailed, taking with it the station of focus and and the nearby traffic on the road of intelligent thought in a conflagration of epic proportions, the third thought manifested as “that's a very pink thing right above me and oh look it has lots of teeth and why is it smiling what is it oh goodness” but with many more expletives, and with a strangled whimper I was pushing myself upright and rolling out of the bed.
The carpet, and my knees, took the worst of the fall and within a heartbeat I was racing towards the door. Of course the crashing and banging sounds had attracted the attention of something outside the door, and it swung towards me as I reached it at full pelt. An pale alien face bedecked with a horn and rather fetching purple curls stared at me, and it all came flooding back.
Head trauma. Magical ponies. Oh, right.
“Why'd you do that!? If you didn't want breakfast you could have just said something...” From behind the white unicorn stepped a purple and green reptilian creature, and since I'd already bumped into unicorns and pegasus then calling it a dragon probably wasn't a big addition to this weird reality. Unless it was all a hallucination. It could still be that, but I'm hoping my subconsciousness wasn't quite that insane.
“I... I can understand you! I don't... I mean... how!?”
“Dragon blood. Enchantments hold better on a dragon, and it helps that my voice-throat-noise things are close enough to yours that I can make your strange sounds.” The voice was a throaty growl, but with a slight squeak to it as though the speaker were trying to sound older than he really was.
Now my mind had settled slightly, I turned to look at the bed properly and saw the dejected looking pink pony with a bowl perched on her – assumptions based on skin colour, so a lovely opportunity for me to gender stereotype – head with cereal and milk dribbling down through the pony's hair. A tray lay overturned on the ground, with crockery and cutlery scattered beside it.
“Umm... can you apologise to the pink pony for me? Please? I didn't mean to panic like that...”
“Pinkie Pie. Her” – oh good, it was a her – “name is Pinkie Pie. I'm Spike, and this is Rarity.”
“Erm, I'm Mason. Please to meet you.”
We shook, his scaly claw dwarfed by my hand, and he said something in the strange lilting pony language that I had first taken as an alarm clock, and 'Pinkie Pie' went from limp to smiling in an instant before bounding over and standing on her hind legs with forelegs on my shoulder, her bubbly voice spilling over me.
I had no idea what she was saying, but between the mental picture of a giant pink friendly dog and the ponies overflowing exuberance I felt a smile creep onto my face.
...and so, with Spike trying to translate something about muffins, cupcakes and an endless stream of other confections, I had my second run at a day in the town I would later learn to call 'Ponyville'.
There were certainly worse ways to wake up.