Pinkie Pie ended up making more pancakes than either of us could eat, despite how amazing they were. With the addition of coffee for the both of us (Pinkie requested decaf) we retired to the living room couches to rest our chubby bellies. When both of us found comfortable sitting positions, we began to strike up a conversation.

Truth be told I didn’t know much about who or what was currently sitting with me in my apartment. My decision to take her in was a spur of the moment thing; and I didn’t have the heart to think of the potential consequences that welcoming a strange alien into my house would bring. However, despite my latest concerns, everything was going fine so far, so I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“So,” I began, “aliens exist huh?”

“I guess so.” Pinkie replied.

“I guess the best thing to do now would be to introduce ourselves? You go first.”

“Okie Dokie!” She replied. “Well, as you already know my name is Pinkie Pie, and I was born and raised on a rock farm. I have three sisters- “.

“whoa wait, a rock farm? What’s a rock farm?” I asked, curious why someone would need to farm rocks.

“You’ve never heard of a rock farm? Well, we grew all kinds of minerals and stuff, like Sapphires, emeralds, rubies, gold, platinum, Olivine, gypsum, calcite, biotite and a whole bunch more! My families rock farm in Equestria supplies minerals to a lot of sciency ponies who use those minerals for their sciency stuff to make all kinds of construction materials and medicines so that ponies can have houses and not be sick!” Pinkie explained rapidly.

“So, your family farms diamonds and rubies?! How is that even possible?” I stated, baffled that anyone could simply grow precious gems.

Pinkie replied, saying “Well that’s easy! You just have to grow them in magically saturated fields. With a little earth pony magic you enchant some gem ‘seeds’ with the right key so that it grows into a beautiful gem! But it’s not that easy, growing rocks takes a lot of magic so we have to move the rocks to different fields, so other fields can recharge their magic and the rocks can get fresh magic! But that’s just the basics and everypony knows that.”

“Oooh,” I replied, seeing where this was going, “Haha, good joke, you had me going there, I mean honestly who could actually grow rubies?” It seemed preposterous that anyone could simply wave their hand, err, hoof and make gems grow. She sold it well, but it takes more than an improvised story to fool me!

Her ears bent back, and she looked at me with a slight frown, saying “what? But I’m not making it up. How have you not heard of rock farms? Everypony knows what a rock farm is.”

“Easy” I replied, “They don’t exist.” I spoke smugly, as if I had caught a rat that was stealing cheese.

“Oh, just like magic doesn’t exist, right?” She replied in a voice that dripped with smug sarcasm.

“Exactly!” I replied, with victory clear in my voice; however, she didn’t give me the happily defeated reaction I was expecting. Instead, she looked at me with a confused expression that soon morphed into contemplation. I soon found myself adopting those same features as she closed her eyes and looked focused.

When she finally opened her eyes she said, “Um, just so we’re clear, and I’m probably being silly by asking this, you can use magic right?”

Her sincerity filled me with a cautious dread, the kind of feeling that a scientist gets when his hypothesis is proven wrong. If what I was beginning to guess was true, then my world at the very least was going to get a whole lot more complicated. I said “No, magic has never existed here or anywhere else, and the people who do call themselves magicians don’t have real magic either.” I spoke that line with hope that what I was saying was actually true.

Pinkie began to look at me with a slightly sad, slightly horrified look, as if someone dropped the last piece of cake and I hadn’t received any, except multiplied by eleven. “But how?” She began, “how can you not have magic? Everypony has at least some magic! Magic is what makes life work! How do you get food? How do you build cities like this? How do you survive?”

Pinkie said all those things with the air that her entire world had come to an abrupt halt and was slowly trying to catch up. Little did she know that my world was doing the exact same thing, albeit for different reasons. Magic isn’t supposed to exist, we don’t channel it, we don’t cast it, heck even if it exists we can’t detect it! “What do you mean how do we survive? Magic is the stuff of fairy tales and legends, not reality.” I replied with what was left of my rapidly deteriorating sanity.

Pinkie was beginning to mirror my loss of sanity, as her mane was becoming disheveled and her expression was looking more and more like a fish out of water. For a time, we both sat there, staring at each other, trying to find some question or statement that might disprove the other’s lies. Finally, I found it and threw all my cards on the table, I simply said “prove it.”

Pinkie just stared at me, a hint of a smile appearing on her face as she realized that my statement could be her salvation. That didn’t last long, as she also realized that she wasn’t in her world at the moment, and the rules could be different. Seemingly with nothing left to lose, she nodded, got off the couch, and began to survey my apartment, searching for something.

Pinkie was away for a fair amount of time, as I simply sat on the couch, content to let her search for whatever it was she needed. In fact, I began my own search for a bunch of marbles I misplaced during our conversation.

When Pinkie finally arrived back in the living room, which wasn’t truly a living room, just a carpet surrounded by a couch and a lazy boy, she was carrying a bunch of items on her back. She carefully laid out her haul on the carpet in front of me; a sewing needle, without thread, I noted; a shiny crystal of quartz that I was gifted from a friend of mine who worked in geology; a wet cloth; and one of the leftover pancakes from breakfast.

Stuffing the pancake in her mouth, she started first by picking up the chunk of quartz, which I really didn’t mind her messing with, despite how it looked it didn’t fit with the rest of my décor, washing it down thoroughly with the cloth. After that she placed it down on the carpet and, grabbing the needle in her mouth she began carving a diagram into the quartz. The chunk of quartz was hidden from my view, so I couldn’t see what she was carving exactly, but she spent a good four or five minutes doing it.

When she was finished with her carving she stood up and placed her hoof on top of the quartz carving and closed her eyes. I didn’t notice it at first, as it began slowly, but the room began to get brighter, and the typically yellowish tint was being pushed back by a purer, white light. Soon Pinkie backed away from the chunk of quartz that was now radiating a cool white light that illuminated my entire apartment.

I was dumbstruck at what I was seeing. A small pink pony just made a block of quartz that was sitting on a shelf in my house start glowing brighter than my car’s high beams. She moved towards the quartz and placed her hoof on top of it again, which made the light slowly recede to a comfortable enough level, where it was more akin to a small flashlight. Pinkie flipped the quartz onto another one of its six sides and picked the pin up again, drawing another diagram on her chosen side.

When she finished drawing this latest diagram she repeated her previous motions, placing her hoof over the diagram and closing her eyes. Again, the effects were slow, but as the effects of this latest diagram took place, I was in pure awe at what I saw. Slowly, Pinkies hoof raised in the air, but despite what the law has to say about gravity, her hoof didn’t leave the quartz. Instead the quartz followed her hoof, all the way until she moved it away. The funny thing is, the quartz didn’t follow her hoof this time, instead it stayed in the air, unmoving, unaware of the call of gravity, a free spirit unchained from the petty laws of man.

At this point I didn’t know what to feel. There was a glowing, floating chunk of quartz in front of me. If there were words to say to this, then they were lost on me.

Pinkie shoved the crystal in my direction, and it floated smoothly over to me, like a football, on a slow-motion camera, that was glowing. Except this wasn’t a football, nor was it on a slow-motion camera; this was a block of quartz that was flying right in front of my eyes. So, I did the most logical thing I could think of and poked it.

When my finger neared the floating mineral, it felt like static electricity. When I held it in my hands, it felt as though a soothing current of electricity ran from the stone, through my body, and back out again in a loop. It also had the side effect of making my slightly overgrown hair stand on end.

Pinkie Pie giggled at how I looked with my hair standing up, and finally, I built up the nerve to say something, “How is this even possible? Rocks don’t glow no matter what they’re made of.”

“Well, no, rocks don’t normally get that bright, but I drew a light sigil on it. And they don’t normally float either, so I drew a gravity sigil to disconnect it from gravity. I’m no magician, but, when you live on a rock farm you tend to pick some stuff up.” Pinkie replied, ending in a nonchalant tone.

At this point my curiosity had piqued. Magic was being performed for the first time on earth, that I knew of, and it was happening in my living room. I could think of thousands, nay millions who would pay, well, millions to see something like this; and it was happening right in front of my eyes. “I suppose the million-dollar question is, how?” I questioned.

“Hehe Silly! A magician never reveals her secrets!” At my crushed expression she laughed hysterically and fell on her back. When she calmed down she said, “I’m just kidding Josh, don’t worry. Um, I guess I’d have to start at the basics. Magic is something that every creature in Equestria has, they just go about using it differently.”

At this point she began lecturing in a tone that I might’ve considered mocking, if it were clear that I was the intended target, “All the races in equestria are different in size, shape and features, but they all have one common element, and that is that everyone uses keratin to channel their magic. Keratin is the best magical conductor that ponies know of, which is great because it grows naturally on a lot of living creatures, which means we can all use it to channel magic! Unicorns have their keratin horns which are built to effectively channel magic outwards; Pegasi have their feathers which they use to channel magic around themselves; and Earth Ponies have hard keratin hoovsies that we use to push magic through us and into the ground.

“All three different ponies have different shapes of keratin, which means they channel magic differently, so they’re better at doing different jobs. Unicorns, because they can channel magic outward, are great artists and architects; Pegasi, because they can channel magic around themselves and fly, use their magic to fly super-duper fast and work with the weather; And finally, Earth Ponies, because we’re great at channeling magic in and under us, use our magic for strength and farming yummy food!

“I used my hoovsies to push magic into the sigils that I drew in the quartz to power them. And drawing sigils is as simple as learning how to write and using the right materials! Gems and minerals are naturally great magical conductors so they’re great for enchanting and drawing sigils on! Quartz wouldn’t be my first choice though, cause it’s not the best.” She finished, letting out a breath and letting her hair pop back into its natural bubbly shape, compared to the straight-lined cut it morphed into during her rant.

I decided not to dwell on the fact that a small talking pink pony was giving me magic lessons in my living room, and rather, to go with the flow and open my mind up a bit. Pinkie had given me a wealth of information that I was trying to process as quickly as I could.

What I had gathered so far was that there were three different kinds of ponies, all of which existed in current mythology, and each race used magic differently. Each different race used keratin, a common material found on living creatures, including myself, to perform magical feats of epic proportions; and the ponies used their magic to grow food, control weather, and create works of art. I definitely need to write this down somewhere.

At this point I was resigned to the fact that magic was now a thing that existed, and as such I would have to get used to it. Having regained some sense of control over my reality again, I spoke to Pinkie, saying, “That, is truly astonishing. I mean, before today magic didn’t even exist! And now I’m seeing it first hand in my living room?! On a rock that’s been sitting on my shelf collecting dust for years? I can’t even describe to you how amazed I am. What else can you do with a block of quartz, I wonder?”

“Ah ah ah,” Pinkie began, “I think it’s my turn to ask a couple questions, Josh.”

I blushed slightly, it was kind of hard to remember that the alien in front of me was just as intelligent as I was, and likely had the same emotions. I replied, sheepishly “Oh, yeah, of course, ask away! I’d be happy to tell you anything you want to know!”

“Ooh alrighty! First! What is your favorite color!” she asked.

I was puzzled by her choice of question, but nonetheless I replied, “Um, light blue.”

She stomped a hoof at that, saying “Darn, I thought for sure you’d be a red kinda guy! Oh oh oh! My second question is, are you a guy?”

I felt pretty dumb for not having asked that of her sooner; however, it made enough sense, not counting the fact that she was an alien, to assume that she was female, I said “yes, last time I checked I was a dude. And can I assume that you are, in fact, a female pony?”

She beamed at that and nodded, both of us having guessed correctly in our impromptu game of twenty questions. She continued, saying, “Alright! Third question, where in the hay are we?”

That’s an easy one, “Well, right now we’re in my apartment in New York city, in the United States, which is all situated on a big old chunk of rock that we like to call Earth.”

Pinkies ears splayed back at my mentioning what planet we were on. Both of us assumed that she came from extraterrestrial origins. Unfortunately, that didn’t lessen the pain that me telling her she was impossibly far from her home caused her.

I regretted my lack of tact when informing her of where she was, kicking myself mentally for not realizing that this might’ve been a sensitive moment for her. Not that it would’ve changed much, it still felt bad though.

Pinkie looked lost and alone once more, similar, though not as rain soaked, to the way I originally found her. I went to comfort her, not quite knowing how much, but being able to imagine how alone she must feel right now. Even if I couldn’t know the pain she felt, one thing I did know, was that you couldn’t be alone if you had friends beside you.

I moved over to where Pinkie was sitting, and embraced her in a hug. At my actions, the walls she had put up to prevent herself from openly crying broke. She was lost in a strange place, and up until now was surviving on the adrenaline-fueled barriers that helped her to keep her composure in the face of the unknown. It seemed that my actions gave her just enough comfort to finally give up the fight and let loose the tightly packed emotions that were caused by her losing her family and friends.

I didn’t quite know what I was going to do with a pink alien pony, but for the moment all I saw was a lonely soul, desperate for the companionship that she was torn away from. Pinkie likely had family and friends where she lived, just like I did, and she was pulled away from them. I couldn’t possibly relate to her situation, in fact I doubt anyone on this planet could know what she’d gone through last night. I didn’t know what to do in the long run, but what I did know, right now, was that there was a lost soul sitting on my couch, and she needed a friend to count on.

We sat together on the couch, comforted by the warmth of the others body. Pinkie didn’t cry for very long, as most of her tears had come out the night before. No longer struggling with the basic necessities, food, water, shelter, and companionship, she was able to better contemplate her situation, which went a long way towards stabilizing her emotions.

As we sat, my hand on Pinkies back, she smiled, and spoke softly, saying, “thank you, Josh, for everything.”

Author's Note

Phew! I'm happy with how this one turned out. Writing dialogue and writing a story through dialogue is a new thing (just like everything else about this story) for me, but I think I did alright! I did a bit of world building as well, it wasn't too thought out, but it made sense in my head!

Just like last time, please tell me your thoughts and opinions on this chapter! I can't just turn off my brain and read it, I had an idea writing this and it's hard to look past that when reading it. So the only way I can know if you guys picked up what I put down is if you tell me!

I've got some organization going for this story now. The first chapter I think did alright but I was basically free handing the entire thing, now I've got some outlines and character bios so at the very least it should be consistent! I've also got some basic story arc outlines going so there is planned content!

I hope you're all enjoying this so far, cause I know I'm having a blast writing it!