What Shouldn't Be...

Twilight Sparkle was having what she felt like to be a normal day. Applejack was working hard on her new apple cider recipe, Rainbow Dash was galloping in a marathon, Fluttershy was nowhere to be found, Rarity was dressing up for no occasion whatsoever, and Pinkie Pie was… Pinkie. And Spike was asleep, and he had become a bore as of late. So what did that leave Twilight to do? Plan her day.

She planned to do planning for the first part of the day, then do a bit of self-talk after planning what to do in the evening, then reading until it was time to go to bed.

The planning was shorter than it should’ve been. In truth, it was much shorter. A whole hour had not been planned, and Twilight had to do something in that time or face that terrible hour with the company of boredom, who is not terribly fun. She talked to herself into doing her self-talk early, since she needed to reflect on the past week as she had missed the opportunity to do so yesterday.

Before trying to leave the house, she grabbed her list of things to talk to herself about. “Let me see what there’s left on the list,” she stated. She flipped past the first fifty one pages. Those were over-talked about and the subjects had been crossed out. When she got to page fifty two, she found all of those subjects crossed out too. That’s fine. She told herself, I have plenty more pages. She turned the page. All those subjects were crossed out. She flipped to page fifty four. Same thing. Page fifty five. Fifty six. Sixty. Seventy three. Ninety eight. One hundred twenty seven. As she flipped the list some more, she realized she was out of pages to flip. She had reached the end of her list. This meant only one thing.

The emergency list was on the top shelf. She used her magic to get it down then blew off the dust from the cover. She had hoped to never use it, but circumstances had forced her hoof. As she lifted the cover of her book, she read the warning she had written to herself. WARNING! This book contains subjects that should only be talked about when no other pony can hear. They also should be avoided at all costs, unless circumstances have allowed.

Twilight almost didn’t dare turn the other page. Almost. She slowly uncovered the next page, and a bold red text revealed the first topic. Classified for boredom: Lint. She bust out in laughter. She had made this book over a year ago, and she obviously hadn’t been thinking. Lint?! Seriously! She decided her next fifty five minutes would be reading this book and seeing what else was in it.

Not the greatest idea Twilight had. As it turned out, the book had many subjects that made her shudder, and gag at intervals. But she pushed through. Disgust was a feeling she could cope with. Boredom was not. Boredom was the worst of feelings, since it was a lack of them.

She turned to the last page with squinted eyes and found a subject that was actually a rather good one. It read: Whatever the first thing I see is when I leave the house. That she could do. She looked at her clock and found it was time to do the self talk anyway, so she trotted up to her door and opened it, proud to have a subject to talk to herself about.

She saw a couple of ponies, both about her brother’s age, sitting at a table eating and talking. They were obviously on an outing together. They were…

DATING!?!

Twilight shook her head, telling herself no four times over. She looked to her right, where she saw a pair of bunnies with a lot of little bunnies following them. She looked left, where she saw a pair of birds circling each other. She looked down, where she saw dirt. She looked up where she saw an object hurtling towards her house.

Meteors. Twilight could talk about meteors. WAIT! NO!

But it was too late. If Rainbow Dash were here, she would have been jealous of the meteor, for not only did it accomplish more speed than her, it made more noise than her Sonic Rainboom. Not as much destruction as was once done to one of Applejack's barns, but reasonably enough to make a cloud of dust fill the house.. As the dust settled down, she saw the object had landed in the exact center of her library, where the dust still had not gone away. She could hear other ponies screaming and galloping towards her (along with Spike still snoring), but she was completely transfixed by the object that had just crashed. And as she moved closer, she found that it wasn’t an object at all. Not even close.

It was a unicorn. He was either dusty brown or caked in dirt, with a black mane. Interestingly, he had no cutie mark, even though he seemed around Twilight’s own age. And that was all that there was to tell about him really. Nothing else distinguished him.

He moaned, and opened his eye ajar. Twilight looked into it and saw a dark green iris. He said nothing for a second, as if it wouldn’t come to him, then he whispered, “Help me.” He raised his hoof to her, then it plopped back down on the ground and the eye closed.

Twilight couldn’t believe what just happened. A non-Pegasus pony had crashed through the roof of her house and had no cutie mark. She almost couldn’t believe it.

Almost.