A thick chop echoes through the hills and trees. It’s only company is another chop, followed by another and another as you swing at the fallen cedar. A good ten minutes have passed. Two things come to mind. First, being what others would think; There are easier and dryer woods around, this is not worth the effort! Also, sometimes what one needs is a meaningfully tough object to enact sweet, sweet catharsis upon.

You’re not a particularly violent or troubled person per se, but the opportunity presented itself, and you gladly embraced it. You even read about this in a textbook chapter about holistic care once. Violent exhibitions of force are healthy so long as no living thing is harmed or threatened. There’s a good ten feet of cedar post just lying there, soon to be two roughly five-foot posts that will support a makeshift camping shelter, and on the last day you’re here, it’ll burn nice and long. Fifteen minutes have passed, and now one more swing ought to do it, so with a vigorous grunt, you bear down on the wood with all these long month’s frustration.

Satisfied with your effort, you set the axe in the ground and take a deep breath. As you slowly exhale, all tension fades away, and you build in your mind the readiness to put your all into the foreseeable future. You turn and walk a few steps to the right to rinse the sweat off your hands in the stream that is… was there. You look around. What a few moments ago was upstream of a decent river is now a grouping of exceptionally large oak trees. The iron and flint ridden hill country that your car was parked in behind you is now a lush and unbroken field of grass.

What could possibly get you this disoriented? You don’t do drugs, and you only eat wild mushrooms that you have encyclopedic knowledge of, the grand total of which being zero. No bug bite or plant wound seems to be on your body. A good idea to orient yourself with the sun nearly came to mind if only it were for the wide eyed, wide smiling pinkness accosting you with the loudest sing-song “Hello!” you’ve ever heard in person. Nothing could have prepared you for what came next.

“I’m Pinky Pie! Will you be visiting Ponyville nearby? I’d love to throw you a welcome party!”

“Mu… Thaw?”

“What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite dessert? Ooh-ooh-ooh, do you like music?”

The pink four-legged thing is in your face now. You stumble backwards and away, picking up your axe and holding it in front of you, blade pointed up so that a flat surface of the head is defensively pointed to your accoster. You don’t think it will do any good to fight something this big and with this much energy, but you will cling to any chance of blocking whatever it’s about to maul you with.

“I… I… Dloh no, uoy era gniklat yaw oot tsaf.”

“Oh, you’re saying each word backwards! Is this a game? I love games! Os woh od ew yalp siht emag? Ooh s’tahw siht?”

Wait, you’re talking to this thing, and it’s right, every word you say comes out backwards. You really need to wrap your head around things before anything else happ- god-blessed it just jabbed at your pistol holster! Your gun goes off on your hip, missing your foot thankfully. There’s a bruise from that jab, and you’re pretty sure the gun is busted, but there are five more bullets. You do not want to stay anywhere near this thing, whatever it is.

Realization strikes as the two of you find yourselves having jumped back from each other. A good look at your attacker reveals a pink pony that is craning her head up to be at eye level with you. It doesn’t look like some machine trick so there will be no running from this thing. Time to try something else. You hold the axe in front of you sideways, and slowly lower it to the ground, hoping to get across the idea of “Please don’t harm me, pink pony thing.” The pony looks intensely at the axe. Is it comprehension of your intention? The only indication you get is the axe handle catching fire in your hands before you can fully put it down.

Why? Why are you being attacked by a pink pony? Why are you saying words backwards? Why did your axe catch fire? You shout this, not caring how the words come out, or that you somehow managed to get a hold of your backpack and are now cowering behind it. You’re half sure the pink pony handed it to you.

You hate fighting loosing battles. You would rather find peaceful solutions than kick a brick wall, especially when the wall is pink and can probably outrun you. Taking a deep breath and letting it out quickly, you begin to take inventory on the situation. You don’t know where you are. Every word you say comes out backwards. There is a talking pink pony that set off your holstered gun and set your axe on fire. You doubt it will slow down enough for you to talk things down. To your left is an unfamiliar forest. To your right is an unfamiliar field of grass. To either side of you is now another pony, each in black armor and placing a hoof on your shoulder. A larger armored pony jumps in front of you, taking a protective stance, and making the pink one jump back.

A flash of green flame engulfs your vision. The next thing you see is a room with wooden walls. You find yourself in a basement, the two armored ponies now taking their hooves off you. As far as you can tell, they do not intend to cause harm. You take the chance to orient yourself once more. There are no foot or hoof steps above you. The walls of this room are plain with a single small basement window up and to your left. Nothing is stored on the bare earthen floor. You can hear the pink pony yelling “Twilight!” in a panicked fashion and moving away. Is it a code word? Maybe the name of the ponies that just took you away?

You move silently towards the wall where no one can see from through the window and sit down. The armored ponies follow and sit with you, saying nothing. Their faces showing no sign of aggression. Taking a finger to the dirt in front of you, you wright out the question, “ARE WE SAFE?” One nods and traces a hoof across its muzzle. Keep quiet. Good idea. You nod back. A green flame flashes on the other side of the room. The larger armored pony is now there, holding a hoof up to it’s muzzle. The three of you nod, then it marks a line in the dirt parallel to what light is shining through the window. The light will eventually strike the line. “We move at this time,” It seems to say.

You take the chance to check your bag. The tools you carried on you are now useless, so all you have left are your supplies: a light ten by ten tarp, 6 days of jerky, a small solar panel for your phone, a bag of pocket warmers, and a box of ammo. In silence, five bullets are carefully taken out of the gun and placed back in the ammo box, one place with a spent casing. Your gun holster now replaced with a knife clipped to your belt. That pink pony somehow hit the safety and dented the trigger mechanism in one jab. You place the broken gun in your bag with the ammo box.

Still with some time left, you take in the appearance of your new friends. They wait calmly and patiently, sometimes looking at each other. Each pony in front of you wore a transparent set of wings and a horn riddled with holes. Perhaps they perform a function. Rank maybe? One turns their head and notices you examining them. You notice their armor does not seem to have any gaps or hinge points, but you saw the shine of a chitinous armor outside, and their hooves on you definitely felt like armor rather than flesh. You make a gesture by rubbing your arm with a hand, then lifting it and reaching part way to them. One bows their head and closes their eyes, allowing you to touch them. You feel down their back. The hardness of chitin is there, but there is more that can be felt. You know what hard material placed over flesh feels like, and this is nothing like that. What you felt expanded and contracted with each breath, the warmth of blood vessels and pulse of a heart feint but present. The chitinous pony leans toward you slightly, enjoying the petting they are now receiving, and once the attention ceased, that pony turned to the other, leaning their horns against each other and glowing a now familiar shade of green. You watch the ponies curiously. The larger pony watches you curiously.

Just a few minutes before the makeshift sundial reaches the mark, you stand up, checking your arm and leg motions. With a few deep breaths in through the nose and quickly out the mouth, your heart rate is ready for a run. The ponies are standing now with the larger one near the door.

“Stay close behind. Flank him from behind and signal me if he slows down.” Another feminine voice, slightly deeper.

“On three. One. Two. Three.”

The door opens and the four of us run out. We take alleys and shaded corners, keeping to the outskirts of what seems to be a rustic village. Before long, the lead pony makes a sharp turn and sprints out into the open. We are out in a part of the fields that surround the village. The woods are closer to this part, and there are downlands that can be hidden around. This is where she led us. Hiding behind tall mounds and long evening shadows. There is less than an hour of light left. You follow your lead in silence taking wide turns in and around thick groupings of trees and sharp turns after jumping down ditches dug out by creeks. It gets harder to see in the dying light. Your eyes have adjusted for a while, but you now cannot continue without slowing or else risking tripping on a root or rock. One of your flanking ponies lets out a low insect like hiss and the lead pony slows her pace.

Not much farther, the four of you slow to a stop. The lead pony lifting a hidden door at the base of a hill with particularly large and twisting oaks grouped together. The other two ponies pile in, so you do not hesitate to follow. Once everyone is in, the large pony ties the door closed from the inside, and you are engulfed in darkness for a moment until a hanging crystal lights up in the middle of the dugout room in a pail glow. With the pony’s eyes all now on you, their green orbs glinting most prominently in the crystal light, the large one asks with concern.

“Are you alright? Have you suffered any injuries?”

“On.”

You cringe, reminded of whatever madness is affecting your speech. You might as well try talking backwards to make the words come out right.

“No!”

You blink. It worked. There may be a way to communicate properly. You your knife from your belt and scratch some words into the floor. You read them left to right but trace your finger across each word backwards.

“No injuries. My speech is… reversed… from what I… intend. Why?”

It took some effort, but you managed to get the words sounding properly. All you must do is put effort into speaking backwards like a madman in order to sound normal. A true grasp of something sane, the first step forward in the right direction today. The large pony reacts to you.

“It looks like you’ve been cursed. We are safe here. We can seek out someone to cure you in the morning, then sort everything else out after that.”

“Please and thank you!”

This is probably not permanent. You may yet have your sanity back, and you have these ponies to thank for that. The larger one tells you that her name is Chrysalis, and the two smaller ones are Gentle Breeze and Soft Light. Eager to show your gratitude, you try to offer your name without writing it down, but it doesn’t come out.

“My name is… [ ]… [ ]… [ ]!

Not even that the name comes out backwards, you can’t seem to say it at all backwards or forwards. You try to carve it into the ground with your knife, but after two letters, the ground erupts in a bright yellow flame that Gentle Breeze and Soft Light quickly stomp out. There is apparently a species of wolves called timber wolves that would seek out and trample any fires that they sense in this forest. They are apparently big enough to rip this dugout to pieces with short effort.

You keep from offering to start a fire for warmth. Instead, you lay out the tarp and offer that everyone huddles together under it. The crystal light quickly dying out, and the temperature dropping even faster, all ponies involved did not act bashfully. Magic crystals, glowing horns, a vocal curse, wherever you seem to be now, and your own dang name catching fire. At this rate, those wings on the ponies are actually functional as wings. All things to sort out tomorrow when you can speak properly. You take a deep breath, exuding calm as you slowly exhale and settle into being big spoon to Gentle Breeze and Soft Light huddled together, Chrysalis doing the same from the other side. If you could see, you’d swear that each pony wore an innocent smile.

Author's Note

I loved listening to Friendship is Magic fanfics as I worked and exercised, but at some point, I started brainstorming what I might wright as a story. That idea grew in scenes and details uncontrollably until I could no longer listen without my own unborn story ideas drowning out my other thoughts. I currently have several chapters written ahead as rough drafts. Any and all feedback is appreciated.