Author's Note

I would like some proofreaders for the future chapters if anyone is interested. Just send me a PM.

1 — In which I am Lost

Chapter 1 – In which I am Lost

'Where am I?'

'What am I?'

'WHO am I?'

These were the first thoughts that I was aware of when I woke up that fateful morning. Of course, those were the questions that I usually wake to; that part was completely normal. Not to say that I'm a slow thinker, it's just that my trains of thought have special low-friction tracks and wheels. In other words, it takes me longer to wake up most mornings than other people usually do. Of course, this is just my best guess because all my friends, when I asked them, reported some variant of 'ninja-like alertness' upon awakening. I have my suspicions though.

But that's neither here nor there at the moment. You all, or y'all, or even ye'all depending on your accent preference, didn't come here to learn about me. …Ok, not strictly accurate; you did come to learn about me, but not in the physiological sense(I hope). This tale is about events that just so happen to include me as the central, narratorial character. Events that describe the first day I experienced upon my mysterious arrival upon your world.

…

Miss Twilight, can you please hold your questions until I'm done with the story?

Because it won't make much sense to keep interrupting me whenever you have a new question. We'd be here all day! Just… I don't know, write them down or something.

So anyway, I began my daily… well, it's not really a ritual, but it isn't exactly a habit either. I mean seriously, I'm practically unconscious and immobile for most of it and it isn't an action or activity, it's a cerebral exercise. Let's call it "My Morning Mental Momentum Maker" to keep with the whole train-of-though analogy from earlier; the alliteration is a bonus.

Yes, I do enjoy using alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia in my speechifications. No… why would I want to do that? That doesn't have anything to with what you just said. Can this wait until I'm done? How come?

…Please tell me she isn't serious. You don't know? Why?! Wait… really?

Ok… I'm going to pretend the last two minutes didn't happen until I have time to obsess over it properly.

*Phew* So, I began pulling the relevant information in reverse order from the deep recesses of my vast intellect.

What's that look for?

I'm not being narcissistic, it happens to be… hyperbole.

What? You thought I was going to say it was true? No way, I've seen plenty of situations where those kinds of statements determine the fate of the something or other and I have no desire to be the something. Can I PLEASE get back to my possibly exaggerated exposition now? Thank you.

So, relevant information, reverse order, ect. I believe my exact responses were rather recursive and drawn out so I'll condense it.

In order, they were, "I am Jason Andrew Richards. Unless and until my sisters find proof otherwise, I am human. I am probably in bed; the temperature suggests I kicked my covers off again."

My mind found some new data and flagged my bed response as false. My left arm was asleep and the surface I was on was no mattress. I revised my location with the findings. "Oh right, I'm not in bed; I'm sleeping in the terminal at SeaTac airport because my layover is over seven hours long. My flight home is due to board at 8:40 in the morning."

In case you're wondering, my family, consisting of my two parents, one older sister, myself, three younger sisters, and one younger brother, were on a Christmas vacation in the Hawaiian Islands. My maternal grandparents have a timeshare at one of the hotels so the trip didn't stress our finances too much. The only problem was getting home. We were able to all leave on the same day, but seating constraints meant that we would have to split up across three separate flights.

My parents had the earliest flight, also to Seattle. It had four seats so they took Carol and Sam, the youngest amongst my sib's. June, Dana, and Amber, my remaining sisters(June's the oldest), took the next flight which was headed to San Diego, California. It left about an hour after my parents' flight so both groups would likely arrive home within several hours of each other.

Those three get along pretty well and they have that weird, near psychic, girl connection thing where they anticipate each other so it made sense for them to get the flight with three spare seats.

I was delegated to the third flight because I was old enough and I was the least likely to mind the massive layover. It left in the afternoon and was the earliest one we could find with an open seat. I didn't really mind much: June may have got the family laptop, which has a couple dozen gigs of videos and movies on it, for her flight, but I had my tablet loaded up with music, books, and apps and it was safely stored in my backpack. I also had my laptop in my carry-on. It contains a good portion of my game library, along with some of my favorite films and tv shows. I wasn't going to be bored on the flight by myself. The only part about the flight that I didn't like was, in fact, the layover.

I can't sleep when I'm in a moving vehicle. I don't know why and I don't really care; it's a real bonus when I'm driving. However, when I'm flying it's a disadvantage. I can't sleep on a plane, and when I arrived at the airport it was after midnight so I was too tired to go online or anything like that before the next leg of my journey.

I had put my tablet away in my backpack and ran some zip-ties through the zippers to discourage any would-be thieves. Then I put it on and lay down with my suitcase as the pillow. It actually made for a rather comfortable pillow and if the terminal carpet had been more plush, it would have been a near perfect bed. I ran my arm through the carrying handle on the side to keep myself from rolling around in my sleep, and yes, it happens often enough that I prepare for it when I'm not in my own bed.

Once when I was eight, I spent the night at a friend's house and got to sleep on a bunk bed for the first time. I got the top bunk. Two hours later, I woke up to gravity playing Cupid with my friend's bookshelf and my forehead. Ten minutes after that, I was at the emergency room in a daze and getting sutures for the resulting gash. After that, I've stuck with sleeping bags.

...

Jeez... when I tangent, I really tangent. What was the point I was making? OH, RIGHT! I wasn't in bed because I was in the Seattle airport waiting for my flight home to begin boarding. Yeesh, if my head wasn't attached, I'd be chasing Ichabod through the woods on horseback.

What? Oh, it's an obscure literary reference. I'll explain it later, along with the rest of the questions you said you had for me.

Ok, back on track. I was in the airport and there were daytime levels of light on my face so it was time to get up and get ready to fly home. Of course, as soon as my eyes cracked open they slammed shut again, accompanied by a lance of photonic pain through my optic nerve. The sun was really bright and it was shining into my face; not exactly the kind of thing I enjoy waking up to.

You too? Cool, we have something else in common.

I extricated my numbed arm from my suitcase and sat up, shielding my face from the aggressively bright sun. As I shook the blood back into it, I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and began to look around, trying to find the reason for the lack of airport noise.

Once my sight cleared, it took me a couple seconds to recognize what I was seeing and another couple to realize what it meant. After that, I pretty much stopped doing anything but breath. I was completely flabbergasted at what I saw; I was no longer in the airport, but was instead, sitting in the middle of a field of tall grass.

I'll be honest. The grass was WAY more disconcerting than the fact that I wasn't where I went to sleep. Christmas happens in the deep mid-winter where I'm from. That means that snow is on the ground. The place I was now at seemed to be experiencing a warm summer day, despite the fact that the nearest summer climate should have been over 500 miles away.

I immediately ruled out it being a dream because I was wearing the same outfit that I had put on before leaving the hotel and I still had my backpack and suitcase; that never happens when I'm dreaming. I could also rule out a lucid dream for those same reasons as well as the fact that most of my dreams are lucid enough that I can directly manipulate them. Since I had been aware for more than a minute and I still wasn't holding a lightsaber, I decided that I was definitely awake and there was something fishy going on.

I pulled the zip ties out of my backpack's zippers and unclipped my suitcase so I could check my inventory and see if anything was missing. I had everything that I packed into those two bags: two tee-shirts, one turtleneck, one pair of shorts, two pairs of sweatpants, a pair of jeans, two pairs of socks, four briefs, my winter jacket, headphones, four pounds of assorted snacks, a filled water-bottle, my tablet and its cable, my four favorite books, and my laptop with its various peripherals.

Peripherals? Those are any devices that require another to work and provide an auxiliary function. I can show you what they are when I'm finished Miss.

So, I was in an unfamiliar location that was experiencing the wrong season, but I still had all the stuff that I went to sleep with. All in all, I can easily imagine much worse scenarios to have found myself in. I quickly checked the clock on my tablet, but it only confused me more.

It reported that the time was 7:33 in the morning of the same day. I had somehow moved across almost half the planet in under a quarter of a day IN. MY. SLEEP. I knew that my best move would be to look for the nearest town and then work on getting back home.

I repacked my bags, put my backpack on again, and extended the handle of my unicorn –yes, it's called a unicorn.

Since I had no idea where I was and didn't know the local time, I couldn't use the sun's position to orient myself. It could have been rising or setting for all I knew. I did, however, identify a good landmark to help me navigate; it was a large mountain that was tall enough to stand out in a range, but had no neighbors. It was really skinny for a mountain, and appeared to be much too steep for the casual climber with no equipment.

Despite that, the mountain was likely to serve as a navigation point for the locals. Its base could have even been the location of the main trade center for the region. I decided that the mountain would be my heading until I found anything more promising. So I double checked my bags and began my trek.

It took about fifteen minutes for me to regret my lack of muscle. Pulling that suitcase through the knee-high grass was not easy. My arms were both tired of hauling it and I wasn't able to move very fast. I decided to take a short break to rest my limbs and find a faster way to pull the thing.

I couldn't find anything in the immediate area that I could use, and I wasn't too crazy about continuing the way I had been. Luckily, I had an idea when I sat down for a second rest ten minutes later.

My backpack has a belt that clips around my waist and the cinch straps for the arms are pretty long when I tighten them properly. I tied the straps to the handle of my suitcase and clipped the belt to hold the pack in place. Amazingly enough, it worked! I could walk with my hands free and I didn't feel the same amount of drag from the unicorn. With the less cumbersome set-up, I continued walking towards the distant mountain.

After several hours had passed, I was able to make several assumptions on my location based on how the sun had moved. The ball of light had moved further from the horizon than it was at the time I woke up, so the local time was, more or less, close to what my clock reported. That meant I must have been near the same time zone as the Seattle airport, though not nearly as far north. It also meant that the sun was in the eastern half of the sky, which told me that I was heading south-by-southwest.

I was filling the relative silence with sporadic bouts of whistling and singing to keep myself from getting too bored with my apparent lack of progress. The mountain was getting bigger, but without anything to compare to, I couldn't be sure how close it was. The only real sign that I was moving at all was the trail of flattened grass caused by my trailing suitcase, though the grass did appear to be standing back up about half a mile behind me.

While walking, I came across all manner of bird, rodent and weasel. The birds and mice seemed much less skittish than what I was used to seeing, but a couple of skunks made me rather nervous. If they had sprayed me, I would have had to deal with all of my stuff smelling like skunk stink for the foreseeable future. But, they all seemed content to just follow me, though a few birds were brave enough to land on my suitcase and catch a ride.

I have to admit: at the time, I thought it was the coolest thing to ever happen to me. I felt like a modern St. Francis of Assisi –he had a way with animals, kind of like you.

Roughly four hours later, it about seven hours into my expedition, and it was getting too hot for me to continue. I hadn't found any signs of water and I didn't want to use up my entire supply on the first day.

The animals mostly left my company about a mile back and were likely going to their nests or burrows to rest, like I was planning to do. So I took off my backpack and did a bit of exploring in the immediate area, hoping to find somewhere to pass the afternoon heat out of the sun.

I found a shallow dip in the ground nearby and brought my bags over. I set them up on the west side to make a shadow on the ground that I could take a nap in. I was tired enough to fall asleep quickly and I did.

My dream wasn't particularly interesting. It was mostly me walking towards the mountain and the various things I thought I would find along the way or when I reached it. It was rather strange because my dreams rarely, if ever, take form in a way that lets me plan; I use daydreams for that kind of stuff. Of course, people say reality is stranger than fiction, and I never thought that what actually happened could have ever been a possibility.

I woke with a start. There was noise nearby and my brain was both excited and terrified by the implications. Of course, I was also in the middle of my waking up, and the sudden appearance of consciousness left me rather confused and unfocused. My thoughts were mostly split between recognizing my location and trying to identify the whatever-it-was that woke me.

It sounded like someone had taken a trumpet, thrown it around a couple times to warp the resonance, and then preceded to run through the scales with a few arpeggios added at random for good measure. It was followed by about fifteen seconds- that's a quarter minute- of some more similar sounds, though about a third of the noises were at a much lower volume. It wasn't a bad sound really, just out of place and maybe a little jarring. From what I knew, only angry or injured animals made sounds that were as loud as the ones that woke me up.

Still bleary-eyed, I stood up and looked around. My view was obscured by a massive kaleidoscope of butterflies, but I could tell from the ground around me that I hadn't moved while I was asleep again. I grabbed my bags and worked on extricating myself from their flight path, but I couldn't make much headway. I decided to put my backpack on, freeing my arms up to direct the fliers around me. I didn't want to crush any of them, mostly from squeamishness, so I put the bag on over one arm and waved the butterflies from my path with the other.

It took nearly a minute for me to maneuver my way out of the mass of flying insects. I was awake enough to remember that one of my science books from home said a butterfly's wings could be damaged by a glancing touch, so I was very careful to keep contact to a minimum.

Now, while the butterflies were making a surprising amount to noise with their wings, it wasn't what woke me. That noise had come from beyond the moving mass and I'd been moving towards it as I worked my way out. The sounds had continued at irregular intervals as I wormed past the insects, and they had also moved off to the right, in the direction the butterflies were coming from. The loud set of sounds had again lowered in volume, though they were still louder than the rarer, quiet sounds; I figured that the two different volumes meant two different sources.

Once I emerged from the mass of migrating mariposa, I looked towards the noises to see what kind of animals were making them and I could not. believe. what I saw.

TINY PEGASI! –or is it pegasuses? So they're both correct? Really? Ok, but I prefer pegasi so that's what I'm using.

There were two small, strangely colored pegasi no more than 8 feet away, moving next to the butterflies but in the opposite direction. One of them was even flying, despite its wings looking much too small for flight. The other was prancing along next to the flier, occasionally using its wings for jumping and gliding.

The coloration of the winged equines really had me stumped. I had never heard of any mammals with those colors, though there were several species of bird I knew of that did. The walker had a coat that was nearly identical, color-wise, to a canary, and its mane and tail were comparable to the hue of strawberry ice cream. The flying pegasus was covered in a blue coat that was a few shades darker than the sky. But its mane and tail! Each had the entire visible spectrum contained within; it seemed like the flier was a living embodiment of the sky.

–Really!?! That's your takeaway? I am not infatuated; I'm waxing poetic so I can paint a better description of what I saw. Quit that snickering, I could just as easily make a similar description of each of you. I've seen you all in your 'natural habitats,' as it were, and I can probably get all of you to blush just as hard as she is.

Are you done? Good.

So… they looked like no animal I had ever seen before, and I gasped once I realized the implications of my discovery. I had found evidence of what was almost unanimously accepted as a mythological species! The notoriety, the fame, the possibility of being able to tame one for Amber because she had wanted to have one since she saw Hercules.

Oh please, I didn't know you were people at the time so don't act so indignant. Besides, I'm willing to bet that you had similar thoughts while she was patching me up.

Anyway, when I gasped, I accidentally inhaled a passing butterfly that wasn't holding formation with the rest. About five percent of them, at my best estimate, were also outliers, but I was too busy coughing and gagging on the rogue insect to marvel at the odds. I slipped my backpack off my shoulder during this so I wouldn't fall or jostle the contents too much.

Once I had hacked the bug back into open air and got the tickles out of my throat with some growling and more coughs. I looked up to see the pegasi staring at me with uncomfortably large eyes containing impressively small irises and pupils. My feelings of awkwardness from the stares prompted me to say something to ease the mounting tension.

"Well, that was rather uncomfortable."

I was a bit surprised at how deep and raspy my voice was; I guess it was a result of my energetic expulsion of the butterfly from my esophagus. I was just about to wipe the spittle from my face with the back of my hand when the blue one reacted. It darted towards me at an impressive speed and spun just before impact to deliver a one-legged kick to my head.

I was already jumping back from the shock of its approach so the kick didn't connect fully, which is lucky because it would have probably killed me or at least caused brain damage–still not blaming you. Even so, the side of its hoof impacted my forehead and made a good one-inch cut, right over the spot that has seen the most "action," injury-wise.

Now, I'm not gonna lie: that cut hurt and it hurt bad. That blue pegasus had, through some incredible luck, struck the one spot on my head that had an injury routine. It was the spot that got cut when I fell of my friend's bunk-bed. It was the spot that got split open at another friend's seventh birthday party during the piñata-brake; that time I got hit with a… well, a long metal club is the best analogy I've got. Point is, I've bled more from that spot in total than the rest of my dermal injuries combined. Only my nose has lost more blood than my forehead, and that's only because I have gotten a lot of nosebleeds during winters.

I cried out in pain, bringing a hand up to cover the wound and using my other arm to keep my balance. My throat was still irritated from the coughing, so the cry came out deeper than I'm used to and also caused me some additional discomfort. Blinking the pain-induced tears from my eyes, I saw the blue pegasus looping back towards me for a second strike. I was legitimately scared for my life now and I was beginning to panic.

I did manage, through the adrenaline, to remember something I read from a dog training manual about what to do when attacked. Following the recalled advice, I dropped to the ground, curled up to protect my stomach and chest, and put my free hand over my head to hold it in. I was in full freak out mode now: I was hyperventilating, my nervous twitch was present, and I was full-on crying, with both my mouth and my eyes. I was expecting something to happen, so when I heard the shout, I cringed in anticipation of the coming pain, but it didn't come.