Echo awoke slowly, shaking her head to attempt to clear the grogginess that had built up from the aftermath of passing through the portal. She had actually arrived here some time ago but the process had, for some reason, left her far weaker than she had expected. It had taken her a good three hours before her body actually responded to her. She had spent around 2 hours sleeping the weakness off and an hour trying to gather up enough strength to get up. Thankfully, that hour gave her plenty of time to observe her surroundings. She seemed to be in some sort of basement, boxes where strewn across the room, some piling high up against walls. All where filled with assorted items, from dusty electronics to books depicting odd creatures.
The room was also incredibly dark, not so much that she couldn't see anything, but to the point that she had to squint to make out things further than two feet from her. Peering through the darkness, she took a closer look at the book with the odd creature on it. It looked a lot like the old books said the Mirror World humans looked like, bipedal, two arms with hands like a Minotaur and no cutiemark to be seen.
How odd for somepony to even have a book like this... it seems there are more in here aswell. Oh god, don't tell me I’ve stumbled into one of those 'Human' fanatics homes.
Echo had heard stories of how those ponies behaved. Almost all of them giving everything they could to attempt to go through the mirror to study the humans on the other side. The princess, seeing how this could very well lead to a major problem, forbade anypony from going within 100 feet of the room that contained the mirror. It didn't stop them trying sadly.
If I am going to get out of here I should probably either try to find somepony of try to find an exit. Some light would be nice aswell.
The pegasus began searching the walls for anything that resembled a door or a light switch. From the fact that some of the electronics in those boxes had some fairly advanced items in them she figured that whoever owned this home had the money to purchase lights. Eventually she came across a small rectangle with an incline in the middle of it. With a cheer of success she pushed the incline in, causing it to click and the entire room to light up.
After squinting from the sudden change of light for a few moments Echo began to look around the room she was in. Now that she could see properly she could see the area she had landed in, the boxes squashed down from her three hour recovery. Another thing she noted was a staircase leading to a white door.
~sigh~ Of course it would have been an easy to find staircase and not a random door. What was I thinking?
Bearing a small smile, she began her small trek through the piles of boxes towards the staircase, trying not to step on anything that looked valuable or fragile. She didn't see any reason to damage things that where not hers. Even if the pony that owned them may be some raging maniac bent on finding humans.
After a few minutes of arduously stepping through boxes, she finally reached her goal and promptly climbed the stairs. Luckily enough the door was unlocked.
Obviously the owner didn't expect anypony coming in from the inside. She thought, her smile growing ever wider at the thought of escaping this place.
Now that she had gotten out of the basement she began to take note of her surroundings. Everything seemed to be built for ponies twice the size of her. There was a tall dining table sitting to her right with four dining chairs that looked far to big to be comfortable. To her left was a fairly large room with a couple of beige couches and a reasonable sized flat-screen TV. Directly in front of her was what she assumed to be the staircase to the second floor and behind her and to the left was a hallway leading to a door outside.
Odd, I don't see a kitchen anywhere. Maybe the pony that lives here doesn't cook in house? She thought to herself as she took a closer look around. She may have wanted to get out of there but curiosity was driving her to explore this unfamiliar place. She was about to start exploring upstairs after finding nothing of high interest on the ground floor (other than the kitchen, the door to which was built under the stairs and lead to a 10ft by 10ft kitchen) when she heard a key turning in the front door.
Quickly thinking, she decided it would be better to sneak out than try to explain to some random stranger about why she was snooping around their house when the doors where quite clearly locked.
The young pegasus looked frantically around for a place to hide temporarily, and finding that the only place of reach was under the oversized couch, she quickly dove under.
And not a moment too soon. No sooner had she got under the couch the owner of the house came into view.
It was a bipedal being with two arms that had hands like a Minotaur. No matter where she looked she could not see a cutiemark although whatever it was had multiple layers of clothing on, making it difficult to determine exactly what it looked like.
It only took Echo a few moments to remember what she had seen in the basement. She was looking at a real life human, and it hadn't noticed her yet.
Oh man, I wonder how many ponies would kill to be in my position right now... She thought as she watched the human take off a couple of layers of clothing. With this loss of coverage she could now see its face. It had olive eyes and a short nose, its ears where pulled against its head and instead of being on the top of its head, they where attached to its side. It had a fairly pale complexion and no fur other than a brown patch on its head to be seen. Its facial description almost matched perfectly with the description of the Mirror World humans only its colours where not and vibrant and its eyes where far smaller.
As the human finished putting its clothing away, Echo started to figure out a strategy to escape. She could try tackling the human and making a break for it but that may make it angry and she didn't want an angry creature chasing her through a world she was not familiar with. She finalized her brilliant plan with simply making a break for it when its back was turned. So with that, she waited for the human to be done with its work that it was doing in the dining room. It was obviously showing intelligence so she knew it wasn't some dumb animal but she couldn't figure out its gender. Normally a ponies gender could be told by their facial shape, mane and tail length and their eyes having styled eyelashes. But this human had little of those features. If she had to work with the facts she knew she would assume that it was male. So until she was proven otherwise, she would just classify it as a “he” and not an “it”.
Many more minutes passed and finally, the human rose from his chair, paperwork in hand, and walked into the kitchen.
Now's my chance
With as much speed as she could muster she ran towards the door and her freedom. Almost laughing at the thought of getting out of this house and into the clean, fresh air that she was used to.
Though that thought came to a crashing halt when she came to discover that the human had locked the door behind him while she was looking at him to study his looks.
A rhythmic thudding came from down the hall behind her as she finally came to terms with the fact that she was stuck. When the thudding stopped she slowly turned to find the human from earlier staring down at her with a expression of shock and fear.
“Um.... hi?” Echo offered with a sheepish smile. Slowly backing from the creature that stood before her.
His reaction was fairly odd to say the least. As soon as he heard the words leave her lips his eyes rolled up in their sockets and he slumped down to the ground.
