The After

Chapter One: The Arrival

The pony’s eyes flared up as the darkness vanished.

The Arrival blinked repeatedly, her mind blank, her vision filled with white, light now appearing to her as if for the first time.

It took the sleepyhead a moment to comprehend she wasn’t actually paralyzed. Her eyes quickly adjusted; attentive even whereas seconds before they had been blinded.

What she saw was nothing different than before: a white space.
Still, she could tell that the whiteness she was looking at was not a some kind of screen placed over her eyes. It was the ceiling.

The mare glanced down quickly, realizing her body was tucked under a fluffy, blue blanket. It didn’t take her very long to figure out that she was lying in bed, and a comfy bed at that.

She craned her head away from the purple pillow, slowly raising her back up against the wall for a closer look at her surroundings, her view filled with the contours of her rectangular-shaped room, the walls completely painted in white, where her bed sat tucked away into the left corner.

On her right side up ahead of her, there was a window, angled in such a way that she could see sunbeams pouring out of it, but not what was outside. Meanwhile, a small chandelier competed feebly in illumination.

Except for an empty, black chair on the wall furthest away from her, the room was spotless and void of any other furniture besides the bed.

Facing her, she noticed how uncanny it looked, as if somepony was supposed to be sitting in it, waiting for her to awake. Its black color stuck out like a sore hoof in the stinging white room.

Yet it was at that point that the awakening pony noticed the biggest detail of all; something that changed the world around her dramatically.

On the wall opposite to the window, there happened to be a carved, brown, wooden door.

And it was open.

That was all there was to see, and the perplexed mare grew more than a bit frightened by her mysterious setting as she asked herself…

Where am I?

It was the the first thing she’d thought since waking up.

She pulled the sheets over her body and hid beneath them, feeling as if the walls were closing in on her.

“Hello?” she popped her head from underneath, the faint echo bouncing around to nopony but herself.

She waited, her ears folding backwards discouragedly, but there was no response.

Closing her eyes, she tried to retrace her hoofsteps, wishing she could remember how she’d gotten here.

However, the more she tried, the more she realized she couldn't recall anything. Her mind was blank. She wasn’t just missing an answer for how she’d arrived here. She was missing everything.

She had no memory of going to bed, no hazy recollection of dreaming beforehoof, and no recognition of the room. In fact, there was absolutely nothing that she could construct leading up to her awakening.

Certain words and generic actions came to mind when she concentrated on them, but unfortunately, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember anything else, and even more alarming, she couldn’t remember anypony else.

Growing ever more frightened, she called out once more, “Hello? Is anypony there?”

Silence.

Everything remained eerily quiet. The only noise in the room was the sound of own shallow breathing.

Then, without warning a loud whistle pierced the air.

“Ahh!” The pony nearly jumped out of her bed, scrambling to get underneath the sheets again.

The pony closed her eyes and shivered with fright beneath the covers until she realized: Wait a second, she thought, I know that sound.

Cautiously, she poked her head out of her homemade cocoon, the blanket wrapped tightly around her chin and body as if it were a shield. She peered towards the window; the most-likely source of the whistle.

She stood frozen for a moment, until she heard the same whistle, softer and sweeter this time. It prompted her to investigate, giving her courage against her numbering fear.

Reluctantly, the the mare peeled her safety net off of her with a hoof. She looked down to make sure the ground was safe, before slowly and gently putting her hooves down, one at a time, until she was safely and securely standing on all fours.

She expected to feel drowsy, fatigued, or tired, but oddly enough, once she was stably on her hooves, she discovered that she was none of these things.

There came another whistle, slightly different this time, followed by another.

While still conscious of the unknown danger, she slowly drifted toward the glass opening in the wall, the whistles getting louder the closer she got. Bright light flooded her eyes.

Aaaahhh… she winced quietly, the light momentarily stinging as she fluttered her eyelids, until she had adjusted enough to make out the shape of a large maple tree. Now that her vision was clear, she found herself staring at the tree, and it seemed as if the surrounding tree stared back. The base of the large brown maple was surrounded in grass at the edge of a long green field, and sitting directly across from the tree, was a brick wall that obscured everything beyond it. Yet there was nothing extraordinary, and she couldn’t see a source for the noise anywhere.

"Hmm…" she hummed, wondering where the sound had originated from.

Suddenly, three blazes of color rushed past her before landing on the tree’s branches as they simultaneously let out an enormous chorus of chirps with such ferocity that it sent the pony flying backwards in surprise.

"Owwah!" she cried in mid-air, just in time before her head smacked onto the floor and her back came along.

Seeing stars, she waited a moment for the initial shock and pain to subdue.

After a few quick breaths, she stopped. “Owwww,” she muttered to herself, recovering from the fall as she rubbed her head. Once the irritation left her body, she shook her head at how silly she was to react so startledly. Gently, she rolled back onto her hooves, letting the dizziness ease out of her, before she looked out the window once again.

Still chirping, but with less intensity, the birds confirmed her suspicions.

Indeed, the ‘colors’ she had seen before, were actually three jays. One red, one blue, and one green.

Suddenly, something on her back began to itch with sensation, and whatever it was, she could feel it aching with pain from the fall.

She looked backwards to see what it might be.

Then her jaw dropped.

Standing at attention and flapping as if they had a mind of their own, were two fully-feathered, butterscotch colored wings.

“Oh my!” she spurted, suddenly acknowledging the appendages, flapping them uncontrollably in surprise. She spun around two times in an almost involuntary urge to chase them, her shadow twirling into a mess, before she tripped and collapsed down onto her rump.
Now it was her head that was twirling.

Gaining her senses again, she panted a few times, then shook her head rapidly, trying to shake of her dizziness, but only succeeding in making her surprise worse when a portion of her mane fell in front her face as she reacted with a high-pitched, “Eeeek!”

She blew the hair away, almost obnoxiously, discovering that it was a light shade of pink. This was hardly as big a deal compared to the fact that she had wings, and the fact that she hadn’t known about them until now.

It took her awhile to work up the courage to look over her shoulder once more, staring at her newly revealed body parts as they rested at her side.

As looked, something else caught her eye.

Covering her body was a green hospital gown; two holes cut in it for both her wings, and another hole for the pink and flowing tail she didn’t know she had; the same color as her mane.

She scanned the article of clothing, finding a loosely tied string around her waist. Touching her own shoulder, she feel its smooth silkiness, yet her heart was overcome by dread. Somehow, she had overlooked both the clothes on her body, and her body itself, until now

The-pony-now-made-pegasus sat back up, inspecting her hooves. Analysis revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

She was starting to feel silly about everything. So far all she’d managed to do was find a couple of birds, fall of her back, and somehow have forgotten everything.

That was until all of her newfound realizations culminated into one question that hit her with full force.

“Who am I?” she asked herself out loud.

Nopony answered her, as it occurred to her with stinging sincerity that she didn’t even know her own name.

The only response she received came from above her, in the form of another whistle.

The pony’s attention turned back towards the trio outside.

“Well…” she wondered what to say, “Hello birdies!” she greeted, almost automatically. “How are you doing today?”

Of course, none of them replied back.

The mare reconsidered herself.

“Wait,” she put a hoof under her chin and stared down.

Why did I do that?

She looked back up at the birds and noticed that one of the birds, the red jay, was staring back at her with intriguing curiosity, and soon, the other had two joined-in, until all of them were looking at her with their full attention.

Despite understanding she wouldn’t get an intelligent response, the strange pair of eyes made her feel the need to ask them another, although awkwardly, “D-D-do y-you-u know where we are?”

The blue jay cocked its head, stared into her eyes for a few seconds, then flew off beyond sight of the unfortunate pony, the other two following swiftly behind.

She sighed, rubbing a hoof on the window. Her only company had abandoned her.

“Well… goodbye then.”

Still confused, but no longer as fearful, the nameless mare arched back to the open door, with more questions than answers.

Beyond the door there was a short hallway, which lead into a much larger and much more colorful room than her own. She tried to analyze it, but found she couldn’t distinguish anything within. The colors and objects were just a blurry, unfamiliar haze.

Walking towards the exit of her room, the sound of her hoofsteps on the unfamiliar white floor made her evermore unsure of what awaited her. She had hoped somepony would come to her and explain, well—everything.

She stopped in her tracks just as she was about to leave her room, standing in the doorway with one hoof in the door and the other in the hallway.

M-m-ma-maybe…

She stuttered, even in her thoughts.

Maybe I should just stay here? Somepony’s bound to come to check up on me, right?

She looked back at the chair. It had to have been placed in her room for a reason.

While staring back into the interior, she thought about the intense mystery of the place, from the unexplainable bed she had woken up, to the empty grass field outside her room.

Indecision creeped into her, making her feel more and more scared by the second.

Looking back one last time, she gulped, realizing there might be no other choice than to leave.

Unable to bear the anxiety building up inside her, she closed her eyes. A surge of courage rushed through her, and she jumped forward and into the air, opening her eyes to see herself on the other side.

She proceed forward, congratulating herself with confidence and a determined face.

Gazing along the corridor, she noticed that by contrast to before, the walls surrounding her were painted with a bright orange hue, with red, purple, blue, and white paint-curves flowing over the background decoratively, giving the room a feeling of creativity and liveliness.

Already, the hallway was coming to an end. In its wake, the visitor entered into an area too large for her to comprehend all at once, but before she could grasp everything around her, a voice interrupted her as if out of thin-air.

“Hello!”

“Ah!” The newcomer blurted out in surprise, so distracted by the wondrous setting that she didn’t even notice the pony sitting right in front of her.

Not visible from the hallway but scooted just to the right, lying on top of a large, red, sofa-type of chair, was the smiling face of a purple pony, her forehooves crossed over each other as if she had been expecting the mare.

The intruder gathered herself embarrassingly, unlike the purple stranger before her, who appeared as if everything was normal. She wore a white lab coat, with a few pens and pencils in her front pocket. The attire matched her black pants that ended at her hind hooves, the outfit altogether almost completely covering her body except for her neck and head.

Floating to the side of her, was a sparkling, transparent clipboard, made of a substance completely unrecognizable to the confused pony.

“Hello,” The figure repeated, “I’m Doctor Fineshine Star.” she introduced herself in a friendly voice as she stood up, before saying something the mare would never forgot.

“Good evening, and Welcome to The After.”