Master of None

The day started out like most Tuesdays. I got up. I donned my glasses. I poured a bowl of my favorite cereal (Jack tested, Jack approved). I sat at my tiny dining table, started looking through job listings on my phone, and, naturally, promptly decided that watching YouTube was a much better use of my time. I finished breakfast, brushed my teeth, showered, and got dressed. Y’know, the usual stuff.

Most of my clothes are black. I’m not goth or anything like that, in case you were wondering. I just like black. Plus it’s just easier when you’ve got jet black hair, pasty skin, and weird hazel (-ish?) eyes like I do. Seriously. Sometimes they look gray, sometimes they look brown, sometimes green...sometimes they change to even more odd colors. I swear to you they were purple once. I don’t know, and no one I know knows, either. We just call ‘em hazel and leave it at that. And so I just stick with black rather than making a real effort to coordinate colors based on my complexion or whatever. I don’t like spending a lot of time getting ready in the morning. It’s why I like keeping my hair really short. Like, ‘who has time for a comb?’ short. It’s practical. You don’t have to fuss with hair that short. It dries off really quickly, too. Best of all, you don’t have to worry about long, dangly strays getting everywhere.

With that all in mind, I spent all of about three seconds picking out a v-neck t-shirt and some jeans--yes, the jeans are black too--and grabbed my leather trench coat (I bet you’ll never guess what color it is). It wasn’t necessarily cold enough to need it yet, even on an October morning, and especially not on a hike, but I like wearing it.

Make fun if you want. I don’t care what anyone says. It makes me look cool.
So, with my clearly dashing outfit all ready, I tied my hiking boots and got in my cruddy little sedan to drive up to one of the local hiking trails. It was one of the ones I hadn’t been to except for maybe once or twice, and that meant there would be plenty of new stuff for me to explore. I even brought my compass and binoculars with me, just in case.

Okay, yeah, I’ve hardly ever needed them, but having them always made me feel more like some kind of intrepid explorer.

I parked the car and made sure I had all of my exploring gear (including my phone in case I got really lost). I also brought a water bottle, one of those tall, aluminum ones--hydration is important, y’know--and some snack bars, just in case I was out that long.

Oh, I also brought a cheap bluetooth speaker so I could play music from my phone. I mean, c’mon. I may enjoy quiet, but that doesn’t mean I need to be in total silence for the entirety of a several-hour hike. And before you start up about earbuds or headphones or whatever, talk to me after you’ve worn them when the cord got caught on a tree branch.

After I finished my double-checking, I locked the car, shoved my keys in my pocket, and started out on the trail. The first couple of hours or so came and went pretty uneventfully. I hit a couple of forks along the way and took the longer route each time, as indicated by those signs so helpfully placed by the park service or whoever’s in charge of that. Unfortunately for me, when I came to the third fork, the sign was missing. It had clearly been there at one point; the post was still there, but the sign board itself was nowhere to be found. Not even in the brush beneath. Just my luck. It must’ve broken or something and they hadn’t gotten around to putting up the replacement. Or someone had stolen it. Worse, this far out, I couldn’t easily tell which trail led back just by looking at them to see which was more worn, nor did I necessarily want to make my trip another hour and a half longer by heading to the next trail marker. After a few more minutes’ inspection, however, a clearer solution had yet to present itself, and the sheer density of the trees made my binoculars essentially useless. I’d just have to pick a direction and hope for the best.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: ‘Well, Jack, why didn’t you just turn around and go back the way you came?’ And, y’know, that probably would’ve been a great idea if I’d thought of it at the time! Hindsight is fantastic that way.

At least I brought those snack bars.

The battery on my speaker had already run out half an hour before, and I didn’t feel like putting any extra load on my phone battery this far into the middle of nowhere, so I plodded along in silence. I chose the left trail, which my compass said headed in a predominantly northwesterly direction.

It was another hour or so and several winding turns later before I realized I’d lost the trail altogether. They don’t always really address in movies and stuff just how alarming a realization that is. See, the trail doesn’t just suddenly disappear on you. It gets gradually less and less worn until eventually there’s more grass and underbrush than dirt, and then the underbrush that had been pushed out of the way by other people isn’t pushed out of the way anymore, and before you know it, you’re just standing in the middle of the forest with absolutely no idea where you are. And then you’re left wondering if you just didn’t pay attention to where the trail swerved off, or if you’re still standing right on it and simply can’t see it anymore.

I didn’t let panic set in, of course. Being the calm, collected, and rational veteran explorer that I am, I resorted to my cunning and guile to get myself out of this situation.

Which is to say that I dug my phone out of my pocket so that I could call for help.

My phone, however, apparently thought that was cheating and saw fit to respond by helpfully informing me that I had no signal. Not even emergency service. On top of that, when I checked my compass, I discovered that it had decided it wanted to pull a move from the Twilight Zone and spin uncontrollably.

Desperate, I decided to rely on the sun. According to my phone, it was a little after 4pm, which would mean the sun would be West-ish. So I started to head in the direction I thought was mostly southeast...ish.

This proved to be a mistake. By the time the sun had begun to set, I still hadn’t found the hiking trail. I’d gone through my snack bars and so wasn’t quite as hungry as I’d be otherwise, but that wouldn’t last. And I was lost. In the forest. In what was becoming night time at an uncomfortably rapid pace.

Oh, and to top it all off, I was pretty sure I heard howling. I was pretty sure there weren’t wolves in this part of Washington, but at the time, the phrase ‘pretty sure’ was not as comforting as it would have otherwise been.

~*~*~*~*~*~

With darkness came the cold, and I found myself thankful that I’d brought my coat. Fashion statement became necessity as the evening breeze picked up, tempered though it was by the surrounding wood, and I buttoned up and flipped up my collar to better shield myself against the elements.

The sun had long since settled down beyond the horizon, but I found a small mercy in the form of a bright, full moon. The shadows were deep and long, my surroundings even more alien than they were during the day, but at least I could still see. New scents and sounds had come with the transition as well, somehow both more strange and serene all at once. Water vapor from the day condensed into dew as it chilled. Nocturnal animals of all sorts began calling out into the night, and, among them, I heard those howls again.

I was still as lost as I had been since that afternoon, and checking my phone again revealed a little yellow “12%” right next to that ever-persistent circle-slash reminding me that I still had no way of calling anyone. Staring up at the sky, I looked for any familiar constellations. I seemed to recall my dad saying something about the Big Dipper pointing to the Little Dipper and the North Star...or maybe it was the other way around. I lamented the fact that I couldn’t Google it without a cell signal, although it didn’t really matter since I couldn’t seem to recognize anything through the forest canopy, anyway.
My focus broke when I heard something rustling in the brush maybe a few yards away. My head snapped to where I thought the noise came from, but the night had gone back to its usual stillness. I continued on.

A part of me knew I ought to have been looking for shelter by this point, but there was nothing to be found save for trees and more trees. I could’ve tried building a fire, but I didn’t have the skills to start one with what I had on hand. Plus I was already exhausted from hours upon hours of walking, wandering, hoping I’d find my way closer to the path. I had built up pretty good endurance by this point, but I’d been out quite a bit longer than I was used to. For all I knew, I’d gotten myself well and truly lost, where it’d possibly be days before a search party could find me. And it could be days more before they even knew to start looking for me. I have friends, sure, but I don’t always keep up with them on a regular basis. I’m a very private person, you see.

I’d sat down against one of the larger pines, coming to this realization, when I heard a rustling from the brush again. I looked up, ready to dismiss it as the breeze and my imagination messing with me. Instead, my eyes locked onto a pair of glowing, sickly yellow-green orbs floating in the shadows from across a small clearing. Alarm bells went off in my head as that deep, primal part of me shouted danger, and it was all the rational side of my brain could do to keep me from bolting then and there. I knew enough to realize that if a predator had me in its sights, running would only set it off, and my black wardrobe, though it helped me blend in with the darkness, wouldn’t do much to hide me from its other senses.

I heard a quiet rumbling coming from a different direction, and my initial panic settled into dread as I realized I was being surrounded. I managed to fight it off and force myself to assess my situation as more pairs of eyes came into view, cutting off potential escape routes. Looking up, I saw that the branches in the tree I was backed against were too high for me to reach. As I slowly turned in a circle, however, I saw my only chance: a gap just large enough that I might have time to run past whatever was sizing me up for dinner. I tensed, slowly positioning myself on that side of my tree and getting ready to sprint. Once I was in place, I put one foot against the trunk, coiled up, and then launched myself from it. The burst of speed wouldn’t give me much of a head start, but I’d take anything I could get. Snarls and howls followed after me. I wasn’t really motivated to slow down before, despite my fatigue, but the sounds certainly encouraged me to keep up the pace nonetheless.

Now, hiking is one thing. Running, and especially sprinting, is a whole different prospect. See, with hiking, you can more or less keep your own pace. The important thing there is long-term endurance, and the slower you go, the easier it is to go longer, and you can more or less keep going until you stop. Humans are just kind of built for long-distance walking like that. I remember watching this thing on History Channel or whatever, y’know back before it was all those weird reality shows. They mentioned something about humans having evolved to be pursuit predators. We’re really good at going for a long time compared to most other animals. Plus, when you’re hiking, you usually have nice, flat trails to make things even easier. Not so with sprinting. You go fast over a relatively short distance and then that’s it. You’re done.

It’s even worse deep in the forest, and especially at night. There are rocks and stray plants and errant roots to catch your feet on. The ground is uneven. And though the moonlight made it so I could more or less see where I was going, the shadows made it all but impossible to see where I was actually putting my feet, or to make sure I kept going in a straight line. To top things off, the wolves--I was pretty sure they were wolves, by this point--were clearly better at this than I was. I could hear them behind me and then coming up alongside me, working to cut me off. I gained a new, fundamental understanding of why so many fairy tales took place in forests, and especially at night. It’s an utterly terrifying proposition.

I kept stumbling as I went, barely able to see, and my heart raced from panic and the rush of adrenaline. I thanked what few lucky stars I had left that my coat didn’t catch on any stray branches. And then I saw a clearing. I went for it. It wasn’t necessarily the smartest idea, but I knew that if I just kept going as I was, I’d be dead in a matter of moments. Plus, with the wolves on either side, I had precious little else in the way of options. I had to think of something, and fast. The opening in the canopy did exactly as I’d hoped and let the moonlight in so I could actually look where I was running, granting me a greater burst of speed.

That wasn’t all it let me see, though.

As I glanced aside at my pursuers, I could see that they were not, in fact, wolves. At least, not of any sort I’d ever read about. Or seen on TV. Or even heard about, for that matter. Their eyes still glowed that sickly yellow-green, but it was more like a fire in the sockets than actual eyes. Their bodies looked to be made of the same stuff as the trees in the surrounding forest, all branches and bark, covered in leaves and moss, held together (so far as I could tell) by little more than a vague idea that they ought to be shaped that way.

I screeched to a halt little more than halfway across the clearing. Apparently, the “wolves” were able to take as much advantage of the open ground as I was, and they had promptly surrounded me. I was done for.

As one of the pack stalked toward me, I closed my eyes and wished for a miracle. I was never exactly the religious type, you see, but if there were ever a time for a lightning bolt to randomly strike from the heavens, I’d have loved it no more than just then.

That all said, I practically jumped out of my boots when a crack of thunder actually did explode through the clearing. Now, if you’ve ever been in a thunderstorm--I mean really in one, where strikes come within less than a mile of you--then you know what I mean when I say that the boom of thunder rocks you to your core. When it’s right next to you, it’s loud. You feel it more than you hear it, and at that range, it leaves your head pounding and your ears ringing. It rattles your bones, and the rest of you shakes as if you were made of jello. Simply put, you’re left stunned as you process what just happened. Few things impress the sheer power of mother nature like that, and when I opened my eyes, I could see that the wolves were impressed, too. At least one of them was on fire, and all of them were booking it back to the tree line as fast as their legs would carry them, yelping and yipping the whole way.

As I shook it off, it took me a few more moments to realize the night sky was still clear. Oh, sure, there were a few wisps of cloud, but nothing anyone could confuse for a storm. While I was still looking up, though, a flash of crimson sparks exploded above the forest canopy, immediately followed by another earth-shaking kaboom! This one was a little less intense than the first, but I realized as it was followed by another explosion--a brilliant viridian, this time--that what I had mistaken for thunder was actually, in fact, fireworks. They were the big kind, too, like you see at those big, city-wide Fourth of July celebrations. Which made sense, I supposed. They’d have to be big and close to be that loud.

I sat there in the middle of the clearing for several moments. I’m not sure at what point I’d left my feet, just watching more of those huge fireworks go off, roman candles and those mortar shell things that explode into smaller ones all over, and swirls and stars and all sorts of patterns in all sorts of colors. I recall thinking it was rather surreal, especially after the encounter I’d just had. I concluded that I must have been having some sort of bizarre dream. Surely, I’d never gone out at all, and any time now I’d find myself back in my cramped little bed in my cramped little apartment, ready to take on a new day. More or less.

When I finally broke from my reverie, I found that the pyrotechnic display had come to an end. I was left looking at the open sky once more, all stars and moonlight, occasionally occluded by shadowy wisps of smoke drifting on the wind.

“Nice night, huh?” asked a voice from somewhere off to my right.

I hummed and began nodding absently for a moment before suddenly remembering that I’d been lost in the woods all day. Look, if you’d had the day I had, you’d be a bit distracted, too. And it was, evidently, not over yet.

I turned to face who I had to assume was my rescuer. She (at least, so I presumed based on her voice) stood at roughly eye-level to me, which may not have been all that remarkable except that I was still sitting down. Her eyes were huge, in vibrant amber hues. She stood on four legs that ended in hooves, and she was covered in midnight blue fur, with a mane and tail that practically exploded--not unlike the show a moment earlier--in a mess of fiery red and yellow tangles. Topping off her tiny equine visage was a unicorn’s horn protruding from her forehead.

And, if her expression and canted head were any indication, I appeared almost as odd to her as she did to me.

I, meanwhile, was at a loss for words.

She sat upon her haunches as we regarded one another in silence. She was the first to break it as she extended a hoof. Out of habit more than anything, I took it in my hand to shake.

“I’m Pyra. Pyra Technic. Nice to meet’cha!” She greeted me cheerily, as if it were the most ordinary of circumstances.

I nodded again, operating predominantly on autopilot as I attempted to process what I was seeing. “Jack,” I replied. “Jack Swanson.”

She furrowed her brow, staring at me. “You okay, Jack?”

I had to think about that. I mean, I was pretty sure I wasn’t dead. Always a plus. I still had no idea what the hell was going on, or if I was hallucinating.

“I’m alive,” I said finally. “Thanks to you, I assume?”

Pyra beamed with pride. “Yep, that was my show, alright! Did you like it?”

I stared at her for another moment. And then I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. Between my near-death experience and the bizarre nature of my current situation, I was overwhelmed, and laughing felt better than screaming. When I sobered up enough to answer, I replied, “Best fireworks display I’ve seen in my entire life.”

Her smile grew at that. “So what’re you doing out here all by your lonesome?”

“Lost.”

“Where you from?”

“I live in Cheney.”

“Never heard of it! Is that in the Undiscovered West?”

I sighed. Why was I not surprised? Clearly my compass pulled a Twilight Zone earlier because I actually had entered the Twilight Zone. “Uh, no? Maybe? I don’t know. Okay...what have you heard of? What’s nearby? And where are we, exactly?”

I watched Pyra look across the clearing behind her. She raised a hoof in the same direction as she gave her answer. “Well, we’re in the Everfree Forest. Ponyville is a bit of a trot that way. From there you can take a train to Canterlot or pretty much wherever you want to go. Plus we can take you to the hospital to get those scratches looked at!”

When I raised my eyebrow at her, she pointed at my face. I raised my hand to my cheek then and realized quite suddenly that it hurt. My coat had mostly protected me from the worst of my dash through the trees, but I could tell that I had still gotten scratched up a fair bit.

I pushed myself to my feet. “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I haven’t heard of any of these places you’re talking about. Do you know where Washington is? Or the United States, for that matter?”

She took a minute to think about that. I perked up with her a couple of times as she went to answer, only to take another moment to ponder. Then, finally, “Nope!”

I sank. Again I considered the possibility that this was some kind of dream or hallucination, but this felt too real. But then, I wouldn’t really know if I was hallucinating, would I? I guessed, regardless, that my only choice was to go with it until another option presented itself.

“Alright,” I said, taking a few steps in the direction Pyra had indicated a moment ago. “Can you show me to Ponyville?”