The life and times of Lafayette Ryder

I awake to an empty hospital room and laugh. There are no tubes around my legs, the intravenous drip is on an IV pole just as it should be, and no dusk toned angels rest before me.

“Damn doc, those drugs did the trick.” I speak quietly to myself, as I often do, but I find my statement false as I sit up and feel a tremendous jolt of pain in my chest and abdomen. I shout as I crumple back into the thin mattress. The metal hospital bed creaks straining to uphold my weight.

Red blurs my vision so I don’t see the door open or who enters, my ears on the other hand have stopped ringing and I can hear them. Two people, probably a Doc and a nurse, wait, no… four people? I hear four sets of footsteps and two voices, one of which I recognize as Twilight's or whoever she was that spoke to me earlier. I guess her voice had been real and her appearance had been the hallucination, I assumed she was a nurse who had just checked on my while I was out.

I manage to prop my head up on a pillow so that I could see who was with her. On second thought I’ll just go back to sleep. Standing by the doorway was Twilight Sparkle, not the human owner of her voice but her. Next to her is a white mare with a Red Cross tattoo on her hip and a nurse’s hat.

MARE, not woman, mare as in a pony. What the hell?

My jaw drops and I stare at them. Twilight, who was facing me, stops her conversation with the white mare and walks up to my bed. The white mare follows her and hands (hoofs?) me a small cup of water before leaving. My confusion must be evident because Twilight begins to speak calmly and slowly, like one would speak to a small child, and in this situation I feel as though I am a small child innocent and ignorant to whatever the hell is happening to me. Her first words bring a sense of déjà vu but as she continues to explain herself I start to calm down.

“Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle.” Her smile seems genuine and her voice is just as sweet as I remember it being. “I know you’ve been through a lot, that fall must have been rough, but I was hoping to talk with you some. You’re very strange, I’ve never seen anything like you, no one has.” She stops just long enough to bring one of the chairs in the room over to my bedside. I’m sure my jaw has dislocated by now, she didn’t walk over and grab it she used some sort of telekinesis to move it. Her horn lit as she summoned the chair over and acted as if it were nothing out of the usual.

Had my brain been a PC the blue screen of death would have just appeared, had it been a Mac it would probably be running no worse than usual. It took a minute for me to grasp the situation.

I’m in a hospital.

I fell and nearly died.

There is a pony…unicorn actually… talking to me.

She seems to be just as sentient and intelligent as most humans.

Actually she is probably smarter than half the people I know.

Her voice derails my train of thought; I look over to her as she repeats herself.

“What’s your name?”

I mumble and groan, my throat is sore and dry and I can’t speak very well. I reach for the cup of water left by the nurse and gulp it down. I hawk a bit, Twilight flinches as I do, and I begin to speak. I’m stopped before I even start as Twilight questions me.

“Can you… Can you even understand me?”

I nod my head and speak, my voice is raspy and deep but she seems to hear it clearly.

“Yes I can understand you.” her smile returns and she retrieves a scroll and quill to write with. I stare at her use of telekinesis for a moment but wave it off and continue with what I was saying.

“My name is Lafayette Ryder.” Her smile shrank and a look of confusion, much like the one I’ve worn since I woke up here, replaced her previous attitude.

“What a… strange name. What does it mean?” it took a bit for her words to sink in but then they make sense. Names here must be like Indian names; Twilight Sparkle instead of Little Strong Heart. I think of a good analogy to describe my name but I can’t. Oh well I'll just explain it as best I can.

“It doesn’t mean anything, most names where I’m from don’t. Parents just pick a name they like and stick it to their child as a way to identify them. If you prefer you can just call me Lafe.”

Her quill scratches along the scroll as I speak and I can see symbols being drawn. Odd, we have a common spoken language but a different written language. Just one more thing for me to learn about this place.

She looks up at me and back to her paper.

“Oh I’m sorry; I may have paraphrased a few things.”

I wave a hand dismissively. “No problem, just don’t take anything out of context. What language is that anyway?”

Twilight looked puzzled, no doubt to her it sounded like I just asked what writing was. I knew almost nothing of where I was and most of my questions would be just as childish and strange to her as this one.

“It’s Royal Equestrian, most ponies use Standard Equestrian, but this report is going to the princesses so it needs to be formal. The only difference between the two is the level of formality and the extent of the vocabulary; Royal has more characters and words than Standard.”

“Ah, I see.” So two languages, the professor in me is delighted, I get to study not one but two alien languages! I decide that I should explain some human languages to her but first there is one more thing I need to know.

“Twilight?”

“Yes”

“Where, exactly, am I?”

Her expression is blank, I might have asked any sort of fascinating question but instead I ask for common knowledge.

“Equestria, you’re in Equestria. Where are you from, I just assumed you to be foreigner but if you were you would know where you are. Equestria is a superpower, the largest country on the planet, well the only real country anyway. We have the princesses to rule us; everywhere else just has a local form of government.”

So I was on another world and in a country ruled by a Mon… Diarchy? Hmm. I cut her rambling off with a cough and explain my origins.

“I am from the planet Earth, specifically the United States of America, which is a superpower there.”

“Could you tell me more?” twilight asks, eyes aglow with desire to learn of this new world I’ve mentioned to her.

“While I would love to, and I do intend on discussing it later, I would like to leave this place sooner rather than later.” I wave at the bleak and dreary surroundings and shift my weight on this uncomfortable bed.

She frowns; pulling at my heartstrings as I interrupt her but my promise to talk later and the stuffiness of the small room are enough to persuade her. Within twenty minutes I am cleared to leave the hospital. If it were not for my acting, or let’s call it what it is lying, skills and my high tolerance for pain I doubt they ever would have let me go so soon. I have to reassure both a doctor and a nurse that I feel fine while gritting my teeth to ignore the pain throughout my body. I may have survived the fall without any breaks but I’m bruised all to hell, fortunately most of it is under my clothes and out of sight.

I dress myself in the BDU I was wearing when I got here, equip all my gear, shoulder my back pack and sling my rifle over my neck. As we leave I see Twilight eyeing it suspiciously.

“Don’t worry.” I assure her. “All my weapons are either sheathed or on safety, they won’t go off unless I use them and I wouldn’t even consider doing that except in an emergency.”

While my words do calm her down some she still looks uneasy.

“What kind of weapons are they? The royal guards only carry spears. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

I have to duck again as we leave, the doors here obviously aren’t built for humans and at six foot five I could hit my head on doorways even back home. I’ll need to remember that or else I’ll end up with more concussions than a prize fighter. We walk down a dirt road to town and I tell her about my firearms.

“I’m glad you haven’t seen anything like it, they’re meant to be used for protection but more often than not they’re misused.”

“So why do you have one?” twilight eyes my suspiciously.

“I’m a soldier, a Marine specifically.” She stares at me blankly. “You know, military and all that fun stuff.” Again she fails to understand me. “Forget it, we’ll discuss it more later, how about that?” with a nod of agreement from Twilight we both continue on our way to the town.

As we close in on the town a question pops into my head.

“What’s this place called anyway?”

“Ponyville.”

I stop and chuckle. That chuckle soon becomes an outburst of side splitting laughter which actually begins to hurt my stomach so bad I have to stop. Twilight is beyond confused so I try to tell her that it would be like a town called Humansville but she doesn’t get it and I just start giggling again. Remember me saying I’m a Marine? That was true but I’m not some Drill Sergeant type who is super serious. I am the type who would kick your ass, giggle about it, and then help you up. Though that may just be a result of a few too many party nights back in college.

I give up on my explanation as we enter town. What I had assumed were people during my free fall, I now see are actually just more ponies. Lots of multicolored ponies, hair one or two colors and fur another. I also find that every one of the ponies has a tattoo on their hips. I myself have a few so I didn’t think that in itself was strange but the things the tattoos depicted were odd. Flowers and dolphins seem familiar but fruit, time pieces, and random symbols were not. I look back to twilight’s hip and see a large star surrounded by several others. She sees where I’m looking and blushes heavily. Realizing that I must have slipped up I look her in the eye and apologize.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend but I was wondering why everyone has tattoos on their hips.”

All traces of the blush disappear from Twilight’s face as she jumps into a lecture about ‘Cutie Marks’.

“Oh those, we call them Cutie Marks. They are on our flanks by the way not our hips.” Hearing that they were the equivalent of ass tattoos explains the blush. Well that’s one taboo to remember; don’t stare at the ink on the ass, then again that would be taboo back home too.

Twilight resumes her speech. “Everypony gets a Cutie Mark when they find their special talent in life.” She gives a shake of the hips…flank I guess, to show her own and continues. “Mine symbolizes magic, which I am quite proficient at. Most Marks are pretty simple to understand, for instance see that pink mare hopping over here?”

“Yes.”

“Can you see her Cutie mark?”

“Yes.”

“Well…”

“Oh, uh three balloons… is she a clown?” I laugh as Twilight face palms…face hooves? I turn around to see the energetic pink mare eye level with me, a smile as wide as a mile was glued to her face and…wait a second, how the hell is she eye level with me? These ponies are only four foot tall or so. I look down and see her legs suspended in air, for a second I think of the magic Twilight uses or the wings of the Pegasi I’ve seen flying about but a glance at her head and then shoulders proves her lack of either attribute.

This pony is hovering in mid air and looking at me expectantly.

“Hi?” I venture.

“Oh, it’s so good to see you Brendon, I haven’t seen you in ages, well not ages, but years- same thing really, and you’ve grown so much, and oh cool outfit, remember that party freshman year, wow that was awesome, I got so wasted and then you and I went back to your dorm room and then we played video games and then we smoked some reefer, oh I still have your iPod that you let me borrow only now I can’t use it because of the hooves, oh but the best part of the night was when we got in the Jacuzzi and…..”

Fearing both how the sentence would end and that she would run out of air soon I clamp a hand around her muzzle and shush her.

"I’m going to let go now, when I do I want you to stay quiet. Understand?” she nodded furiously and I let go. Free of all restraints she floated back to the ground and took a deep breath before beginning another sentence.

“…Fucked!” She whispers.

“What?!” Twilight and I both shout at once. Twilight turns to me with a very angry look on her face and demands an explanation, before I can start the pink mare barrels into a long story. The just of it was-

“Remember when Discord broke free? Well I got sent to Earth because of it, it was just a second here but I spent the night there. I got invited to a party at a college and I met Brendon there and we drank, and sang, and danced, and smoked, and then we fucked.” Twilight’s jaw fell and my brain rebooted in attempt to understand the jumble of run on sentences that came out of the pink one. Somehow during her story she had also told us about meeting Elvis at a laundry mat, dropping acid, skateboarding, and the insanity of someone’s affection for oatmeal. After a good two minutes of her smiling at Twilight and I, It clicked.

“Diana Pier!”

“You do remember me!” She began to dance and hop around me as Twilight finally makes sense of what is happening.

“So you went to earth, right Pinkie Pie.” Twilight points at the pink mare whose real name was apparently Pinkie pie. “And you did WHAT with her at a party?” she now points an accusing hoof at me.

“In my defense, I was young, drunk and at one point high. Also she was a human when all of that happened.” I hold my hands up and hope for the best. Fortunately Pinkie saves me by confirming my story and adding to it.

“Actually it was somewhat my fault because I kind of, sort of, maybe hit on him, grabbed his butt, oh and I also told him that if he wanted I would suck on his…”

“PINKIE!” Again we both shout in order to silence her blathering. Twilight follows the shout with a very embarrassed apology to me and an affirmation to Pinkie that she doesn’t want to hear anymore about the trip to Earth or what Pinkie and I did here.

After a rather awkward silence Pinkie excused herself, mumbling something about planning either a ‘welcome’ or a ‘let’s bang again’ party. For the love of God I hope she sticks with the first choice.

Dusk looms and Twilight offers that I can stay at her place for the time being. We navigate through town and end up at a tree house. Literally a tree made into a house and apparently a library as well. I thought to myself ‘What kind of person would want to live in a library’ then an answer came to me, I’m the kind of person who would want to live in a library! Evidently Twilight was of a like mind on the subject.

Though we both want to talk my pain and exhaustion overcome me and I ask where I can sleep at. Twilight guides my upstairs and pulls out a small guest bed for me to use. It fits two, she says. The problem is that it fits two ponies, not humans and certainly not ones of my stature and girth. I thank her for the gesture and tell her that my bed roll will do just fine.

I wait until after she points out the bathroom and heads downstairs before I undress. Now in my boxers and a t shirt I head to the bathroom and empty my bladder into an oddly shaped toilet. I go back to the bedroom and manage to give myself a nice goose egg on a lower part of the ceiling.

Between pain, lack of sleep, and now some minor brain damage I fall asleep in just a few minutes.

I toss and turn in my slumber dreams and nightmares visit me.

If only it were more dreams and fewer nightmares