I sat down on the top of the hill, and thought. I started by calming myself down once again, by trying to think of nothing. It didn’t work. So instead, my thoughts turned to my family, mostly wondering when or if I would ever see them again. Then, I thought about Mason, and the rest of my friends, just acknowledging and coming to terms with the fact that it would likely be at least a very long time before I saw any of them again. At that point there was no longer any doubt in my mind that I was in Equestria, and it was an overwhelming thought, but I stupidly kept thinking, continuing to overload myself. I tried to think of what I was gonna do, who I was gonna meet, and what I would say.

Talking to myself while subconsciously questioning my sanity, I pondered, “Let’s see… there’s Pinkie, Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Fluttershy. Who do I go to? Who will help me, and not freak out too much at the sight of me? Pinkie and Fluttershy are out of the question, too crazy and too easily surprised. And it probably shouldn’t be Rainbow, don’t wanna get myself knocked out. The other three probably... well, hopefully will be pretty reasonable. I don’t exactly know where any of them live though…”

I snapped out of thought and looked over towards the town once again. I took the pair of binoculars taken from downstairs out from its casing and scanned the town’s buildings, eventually spotting a few things I recognized, the huge treehouse and the boutique the most notable... about as far away from me as possible. I could only see the tops of the two buildings.

“Dang, both of them are right on the edge of town. Well, guess I’m gonna have to go find Applejack.”

There was no sign of Sweet Apple Acres that I could see, lamentably. To go with that, there was every possibility that it was also on the other side of town, because I had no friggin’ clue how the area was laid out. Neither could I see any of the residences of the other three ponies I knew, even though I didn’t want to go to any of those, it would’ve been nice to have known where they were.

Eventually, I realized that I was probably pushing myself into shock from thinking about all of this. Seriously, Ponyville was just sitting a mile away from the hill for me to just… look at. So, I actually had some sense to stay seated for a little while and try to calm myself down once again, this time by just thinking about my house, since I wasn’t gonna be missing that. There was broken glass literally everywhere, which was going to be a pain to clean up. To go along with that, I had no idea if there was any structural damage, having no clue what the trans-universal twisting could’ve done to my poor house.

My pulse was too fast for my liking, so I kept resting for a moment and listened to the quiet noises of the village in the distance. Minutes passed by, and I had laid down by this point, staring up at the clear sky, keeping track of my heart rate. What I assume was the Ponyville School’s bell, went off at one point, though I didn’t know for what. It could’ve been for lunch, or for the end of school, or for something else. I didn’t have the time, and foolishly it never occurred to me to check any of the clocks in my house.

Unfortunately, the sound of an airplane came to my ears once again, although at that point I was pretty sure it wasn’t just any plane.

“Crud.”

I dived down the hill as quick as I could without breaking my neck and hid in the somewhat tall grass to conceal myself. Cringing and hoping that the sound wouldn’t come any closer to me, another noise came to my ears that shocked me.

“Uhh… sir, what are you doing?” the familiar voice questioned from the pathway on the bottom of the hill.

My eyes flashed open, adrenaline flowed, and breathing stopped. Slowly, my head turned to this new sound.

As my surprised face turned to hers, she started to look frightened.

“Are-are you OK?”

Finally remembering to breathe, I gave an infirm huff in response, which in retrospect did not help, though I couldn’t really control it, acting by instinct. I must’ve looked like a savage. My hair was still messed up and stiff from standing on end from the static, there was dried blood all over me, a two inch cut in my leg, and my shirt and pants were torn up and stained from all the little cuts I had from the glass and Jasper’s painful claws. And I had just dove down a hill for no good reason.

“Can-can you talk?” she asked, obviously wanting to help if she could, probably legitimately questioning my ability to communicate.

“I… I… Yes,” I said, squirming to sit up and look somewhat civilized.

“Well, are you OK then?”

“Uh… Yes. Well, I... don’t really know.”

I didn’t know what to say, I felt paralyzed. She was clearly waiting for me to elaborate.

After an awkward moment of silence, she questioned, “S-so are you hurt, are you-“

“No, I just- I’m sorry, what else did you want to say?” I said in nervousness, accidentally interrupting her.

“No, no, you go ahead.” She said, seemingly at a loss for words herself.

“Well, I- I just,” I paused, still not knowing what to say. Nothing was registering in my head. Sure, my mind could take the change in the look of the terrain without freaking out too much, but this? Talking to an alien?

Eventually, I nearly yelled, “Oh-OH my God. Are you real?”

She looked around, and looked back at me, more than likely thinking I was completely insane.

“Yes, I’m pretty sure I’m real. Are you sure you’re alright, sir?”

I gave a nervous laugh. “At this point, to be honest, I have no idea. I’m confused, and I wanna go home.”

“Oh, well, I’m sure that my friends and I could help you find a way home. Uh… where exactly do you live?” she replied, seeming more relieved now that I had given at least given some tidbit of information to her.

“Uh, you see, it’s kinda complicated. My house is just down that road. You can see it from here,” I replied, getting more used to talking now that I just had to answer straightforward questions.

“Huh? You live in the... Everfree?” she said, turning around to look where I had pointed. “Whoa, I definitely do not remember that being there. Did you just... move there?” she asked, her face showing great concern over what I told her.

“Not, uh, willingly.”

“What do you mean?”

“OK, OK, I - I’m just gonna give you a brief rundown, and you’re gonna think I’m more crazy than you already do. I was just there, in my house, that house. It was a perfectly normal day, then poof, there was a big yellow light, a lot of shaking and all of the sudden I’m here.”

She blinked. “... Wow. That had to take a lot of magical energy to teleport you and your entire house there. Actually, that had to take an impossible amount of energy, at least for one pony to conjure."

“I don’t know if it was magic.”

She chuckled a little bit, “What else could it have been?”

I paused for a moment, considering what she had said. I truly had not half a clue as to what brought me to Equestria at that point. The idea of magic being real hadn’t hit me. “I - I don’t know Twilight… maybe you’re right....”

Twilight blinked in alarm. “How do you know my name?” she asked, in an accusing manner.

My mouth was stuck open. I spoke without thinking. I, of course, knew an answer to that question, but it wasn’t one that I wanted to give at that very moment.

Now glaring at me in suspicion, she pestered, “Well?”

“It’s… it’s really a very long story, uh, ma’am.” I didn’t know what to call her. There were too many alternative options, and they all seemed too awkward to use.

“Well, would you mind telling it? The way you’ve been acting and talking, it’s just made me a bit nervous,” she chided, speaking with more confidence and seriousness than before. That made me extraordinarily nervous, and I felt like breaking down right then and there. I don’t know what kept me going.

“Oh… ah. Yes, I’m sorry. I don’t want to spook you, trust me. It’s uh… really an honor to meet you.”

“It... is?” she remarked, raising an eyebrow.

Quickly, I decided the honest route was best way to go. Mind you, I wasn’t planning on saying every detail right there and then, but I did not want to lie to her and lose more trust than I had already lost. “Yes, it is. If you could… excuse me to think for a moment. I don’t know how to te-”

It was at that moment that I realized what I was looking at. Yes, it was indeed Twilight Sparkle. She was wearing a saddle-pack with some bottles sticking out of the top of the bags. At first, I thought they were covering up something of her’s. That moment, however, I noticed she was instead missing the something I thought was there. Her wings. They weren’t there.

Carelessly, I blurted out, “How come... you don’t have wi-” My hands instantly covered my mouth in panic.

“Of course,” I thought. When I looked at her treehouse, I did not realize that I was looking at her treehouse, which should’ve been smashed to smithereens.

“Oh shiiii-,” I quietly breathed into my hands. Had I just nearly accidentally revealed her future?

My plan to tell her the truth went out the window, and I had no idea what to do. I didn’t know if it was alright to even tell her that I might’ve known her future, what with all the science fiction movies I had seen where the main characters ‘break the space-time continuum’ by playing around with time travel. Unfortunately, my facial expressions seemingly told her that I was taken aback.

Her face had an ill-tempered look from my sudden aversion from saying that I would explain my freak-out. It seemed hopeless for me.

Then, my phone went off, jingling its little jingle to let me know I just got a text, while simultaneously scaring the heck outta both of us.

“Wha-what in Equestria was that?”

My eyes widened and jaw dropped. “That… that was my phone!”

Scrambling to tear the little device out of my pocket, I pushed the screen to read the new message.

“What IS that?” Twilight asked from the dirt pathway.

“It’s… it’s my phone. It’s just a thing a lot of humans have,” I quickly explained, walking down the hill towards her.

“A - a lot of what have?”

“Humans, a lot of humans. I’m a human, that’s what we call ourselves, humans,” I clarified, now reading the text.

It was from Mason. The text read: “dude, just heard about your parents house burning down. U ok?”

“What? My house burning down?” I sneered under my breath. “What’s he talking about?”

Twilight was listening intently. “Your house is burning? But isn’t your house right there?” she interjected, motioning her head towards my childhood’s humble abode.

We both looked towards the house.

“Uh, it’s not burning,” she stated.

“Nope,” I replied.

“Why did you say your house was burning then?”

“I didn’t, he did.”

Twilight squinted in bewilderment. “What?” she retorted.

I looked up at her. She was weirded out by this to no end, there was no question about that.

“It’s - it’s my friend, Mason, alright?”

“Huh? Wha- Where... where is he then?” She quietly perplexed in an increasing state of frustration.

“Oh my goodness,” I said in irritation,“It’s right here.” I proceeded to point the phone’s screen at her.

“I don’t get it, mister human, I didn’t even hear this mason friend of yours-” she said, not looking at the screen right away. “Oh,” she paused, reading the small text, “I see, it says it right there… why does he have such poor grammar?”

“Oh for the love of… just forget it.”

“But-but why did he say your house was burning if it’s right there?” She declared, motioning to my house again.

“I don’t know,” I said, exasperated.

At this point it was clear we were getting on each other’s nerves. Thankfully, I suppose, I finally realized yet another anomaly in the situation.

“WAIT!” I yelled.

“What!” She replied, joining in.

“HOW THE HELL DO I HAVE SERVICE?”

Her eye twitched, as she screamed in annoyance, “I. DON’T. KNOW. WHAT. YOU’RE. TALKING. ABOUT.”

I gave a nervous laugh, then stupidly said, “Twilight, I have service!”

“I still don’t know what that is,” she hissed.

“What kinda provider has interdimensional service?” I mumbled, baffled at the fact that I had the ability to still communicate with Earth.

“Ugh.” She stated in acceptance of my vagueness.

“I have to.. I have to… if they think the house burned down... oh no. They might think I’m dead!”

As much as I realized I was ticking off Twilight by not explaining to her what was going on, that text brought what I thought was a more pressing matter. So I sat there for a moment, typing out, “Everyone, I’m fine. The house hasn’t burned down, Jasper’s fine, but what happened will take some explaining.’

As I was doing this, Twilight just stared at me, hopelessly confounded as I - to her - pushed on a little bright light a bunch.

“And… there. Sent a message to my family and friends,” I confirmed, as the message successfully delivered itself to my joy.

She stared at me, expecting me to just keep blurting out things she didn’t understand.

Now, I had time to explain everything to her. I felt pretty bad for not being able to earlier in the conversation, at that point it seemed like she was already fed up with me.

I sighed, then got to fixing my mistakes. “OK Twilight, this is a telephone. A mobile telephone,” I said, figuring that was a good enough spot as any to start at.

She blinked, suddenly looking interested. “Alright, what exactly does that do?”

“It’s a communications device. A lot of humans have one, especially where I live. Each one has a number, and all you have to do is enter another person’s number in the device and it’ll call it. Basically, that means you can talk to the person with the other telephone.”

“Call? How does a telephone call another telephone?” she questioned, having no context to fully understand what I was saying.

“Ah, well you see, when a person ‘calls’, it makes the other person’s telephone ‘ring’, or just make a sound to let that person know they’re being called, which is what we heard earlier from my phone. When the other person picks up the phone, they can answer the call and talk.”

“... So you talk, like what you showed me with your friend, with those written messages?”

“No, no, talking with voices.”

“Whoa, how does that work? And why did you have written if you could actually talk to him?”

“Ah… one question at a time. I couldn’t explain it to you fully, even though I want to. Service! That’s what I mean by that actually. When I say service, I’m saying that I’m getting service from a telephone tower. Which is really weird, because there are no telephone towers anywhere near here.”

“Huh? Service from a tower? What does that even mean?”

“The answer to that is very scientific, and that’s why I said I couldn’t explain it to you fully. I guess I can try. Basically what happens is your voice gets electronically turned into a signal, which is sent to a big metal tower, that receives it, sends it to a satellite, which sends the signal-”

“Whoa, whoa. Satellite? As in a moon?”

“No, no no. An artificial satellite with a bunch of electronics on it. We send up satellites for a lot of-”

Her jaw dropped. She interrupted,“Ar-artificial? You mean you send things into orbit?”

I nodded.

“Oh my goodness,” she paused. “How! How do you do that?” Twilight said, unable to contain her newfound excitement.

“Okay, okay Twilight, please don’t freak out. I’m going to overwhelm you if I give you all the details here. So… can we talk it maybe a little later? I’m sure you’ll love human technology, but right now I’m really scared, and I want to find out what the heck is going on,” I confessed.

“Oh…. right. Well, I don’t know for sure, teleportation is kind of tricky. It gets exponentially more difficult the farther you go, and mass is a factor as well.” I nearly interrupted her, raising a finger, but decided to let her continue. “Personally, I couldn’t dream of teleporting myself more than a dozen or so miles at most, let alone the distance between where ever you came from and Equestria, not to mention that humongous house you brought with you. I don’t think Celestia’s magic could even come close to that kind of power.”

“Okay… so how else could I have gotten here?” I maintained.

She mulled over the thought for a moment. “I… don’t know,” she eventually answered.

My hopes dropped significantly.

Sighing, I muttered, “I’m not gonna be going home for a while, am I?”

Twilight frowned.

Author's Note

Hello reader! Thank you for reading my first foray into this story. Feedback is welcomed below!

Also, I'm looking for a pre-reader! I feel like I spent way too much time scouring over these first few chapters, I need someone more experienced with spotting errors, and maybe giving me general advice about the story and writing techniques and whatnot. Message me or comment below if you're willing.

Updates for this story might be infrequent, I don't have guaranteed free time too often.