“Life was like a cup of coffee, that’s what Cal had always thought. It’s full of shitty tasting stuff, and yet everyone has it.” Cal sipped at his coffee, and tried to think of more ways to compare his mug of instant coffee to life. He nodded for no particular reason, pretending he had good ideas in mind. After some time doing this, he took another sip of his now-cold coffee. “Crap.” Already in the kitchen, and already by the kettle, which was already full enough of water, Cal flicked the kettle on and walked over to the sink to pour away his cup of jack. Cal smiled.

“A ‘cup of jack’.” He nodded for real this time, convinced his idea wasn’t as bad as his coffee. He stared out the window at the orange sky as the sun peeked out from the distant hills. Whether it was early in the day or late, Cal had no idea. His clothes were no clue, his dressing gown, boxers and slippers were what he’d wear regardless of the time of day. “Hell, if he could get away with it, he’d even wear them to work,” Cal monologued. His smile slipped somewhat, and a slight frown formed. “The kettle doesn’t usually take this long,” he explained to nobody before turning back to it.

“His kettle was glowing,” he narrated, “purple- no, red- no- huh…” The colour of his kettle continued to shift, and no amount of monologuing his own life would change that. “Rather than the metal itself glowing, it seems to be a strange aura around said kettle. Which is glowing. The aura, I mean.” His descriptive abilities lacked like a thing which lacked. “Well, no time for magic at this time in the morning or night.” Cal approached the glowing kettle, set on getting himself a cup of jack.

As Cal approached, he noticed that the usual whistling sound of the kettle was slowly transitioning into a humming noise vibrating into his head. Like any intellectual, Cal did the appropriate thing, and poked it.

The kettle exploded, and a piece of metal flew towards Cal in a very necessary and dramatic fashion.

Cal awoke on a floor in what looked to him like a cathedral. Of course, his view was limited to the ceiling above him.

“He decided to stand up,” Cal narrated, standing up. He noticed his coffee mug was still in his hand, and then he noticed the large white horse sitting on a throne. “Cal sipped at his coffee, only to realise he hadn’t made any more jack,” he spoke into his mug.

““Hello, human,” spoke Celestia, “I am Princess Celestia,”,” said Cal.

“Wow, okay, you’re already exactly what I-” Celestia stopped suddenly and cleared her throat. “During an experiment of my pupil or I, you were brought to our world.”

“You mean left and right?” Asked Cal.

“Excuse me?”

“You said your pupil and your eye, so I assumed your eyes are magic and you were either being too specific or only had the full magic powers in the one eye and in the other other had only a magic pupil.”

Celestia blinked.

“I don’t know how eyes can experiment,” Cal continued, “but you’re a horse and maybe horses can do that kind of thing. How magic your eyes are I’m not sure of, my friend Chris can control his at the same time. Not ‘at the same time’ at the same time, I mean of course he can control them at the same time, I mean he can do different things with them at the same time, like look at his watch and read the paper. Cal sipped at his empty cup, wishing he could do things like his friend Chris.” Cal waited until he had finished speaking before sipping at his empty cup, but was never in a state of not being jealous of Chris. “My other friend Jane, though, her eyes are super magic, she can do this thing where she closes one but not the other.”

“That’s… That’s… Wow.” Celestia took a deep breath. She reached into her pocket to pull out her phone, only to remember she was naked, and lived in a fantasy land without phones. She instead grabbed a tin can hanging from the ceiling by a piece of string. “Hey, Servant Person? Can you bring me the strong wine? The kind I used for genocide that one time?”

“Cal ignored her and continued his talk of magic eyes,” said Cal. “Why are horse eyes magic? Moreover, which eye did you experiment with?”

“Well, Cal-”

“How do you know my name, Cal exclaimed?!” Cal exclaimed. “I never introduced myself.”

Celestia regretted.

“I’m kidding of course, you have magic eyes, obviously. Also I narrate and probably let it slip once or twice.”

Servant Person entered from a doorway nearby the throne, carrying a deep purple bottle of wine and a fancy glass tankard atop a silver platter. Celestia took the wine, ripped out the cork with her teeth and started chugging. She finished the bottle in record time, placed the bottle back onto the platter (which Servant Person swiftly took away), and stretched her neck out in preparation for the stupidity to follow.

“First of all, Cal,” she slowly began, “my eyes aren’t magical, not in the way you think, anyway. Secondly, you mistook the word ‘pupil’, as in student, for its homophone ‘pupil’, as in…” She paused, trying to think of a way to describe the word ‘pupil’. “...As in an eye part. You also mistook the single letter word ‘I’, as in myself, for its homophone ‘eye’, once again as in my eyes.”

“I see,” said Cal, nodding. “And that’s ‘I’ a a one letter word. In that case, what do you mean ‘your pupil or you’? How couldn’t you be sure?”

“I said ‘my pupil or eye’ because-”

“‘Eye’ or ‘I’?”

“‘I’, I mean. I said ‘my pupil or I’ in jest, I was joking.” Celestia took a breath, glad to be out of the loop of eyes. “Putting the situation bluntly, Cal, my pupil brought you to this world in an experiment which went in a way she did not intend. As it stands, we have no current way of sending you back to your world, and the experiment itself is far too dangerous to mess with for the sake of a single person. I’m sorry, but you’re now stuck in this world.”

For the first time since Cal’s arrival, the throne room was silent.

“I don’t understand the purpose of your joke, Cal finally spoke, breaking the silence,” Cal finally spoke, breaking the silence. “The punchline of your joke is that you yourself brought me here, and I now notice the extra setup earlier, but your joke fails twofold. Firstly…”

Celestia once again took hold of the tin can. “Servant Person?”

“Already bringing more wine, m’lady.”

Author's Note

And so begins the first epic adventure of Cal The Coffee Guy.