Taken

“Oh god…” I wake up slowly, and my hand instinctively goes to my head. Fuck, I’ve got a splitting headache… I probably did take too much out of myself yesterday. Then again, I don’t know if it’s even tomorrow or not. I could’ve been out for an hour, a day, or a hundred years… I have no idea.

I sit up slowly, trying not to have a migraine flare. It seems to be working somewhat well, so I figure I’ll stick with this plan. I look around; I’m still in the master bedroom. Good; that means my sleepwalking isn’t flaring up. It’s odd… I guess I’m over it now? Maybe?

I steady myself, arms stretched out on either side of me, and try to stand up. Immediately I’m racked with sharp pains in my skull, and I sit down quickly again. Not a good idea, I guess. I look towards the end table, to see if the first-aid kit has any painkillers in it.

It’s not there. Huh? What happened to it? Oh… I bet I know what happened to it. I’m pretty sure Discord came and took it while I was out. That sneaky son of a bitch… He does want me to suffer. I’m sure he knew exactly what he was doing when he told me to use my flame; I’m sure he knew the side effects, too.

He’s too smart to not know.

It’s only then that I realize that something- or more specifically, somepony- else is missing. Yeah, that’s right. Twilight isn’t next to me anymore. Now the panic starts to set in. What if Discord got her when he came to collect the first-aid kit? My head is throbbing now, and I inhale sharply through my nose-

Eggs. What the hell? Why do I smell eggs? It seems like the smell is coming from the kitchen… Somebody cooked eggs for breakfast? It wasn’t me, so it had to have been-

Twilight. She’s alive! This news makes me happier than I ever thought possible, and I quite literally jump off the bed in joy. This proves to be the worst possible move I could have made, because as soon as I hit the ground, my legs buckle and I fall with alarming speed. I throw out my arms to shield myself in the fall, but all that serves to do is to whiplash my head forward once I hit the ground.

My forehead smacks the floor with alacrity, and agony sears my mind. I can barely fucking think straight. All I can do is curl myself up on the ground; I can’t move, I can barely breathe… Shit.

I hear a voice from behind me, but it seems to be echoing from a million miles away. “Oh no,” it says. “Are you ok?” I try to call out to answer, but no words escape the prison of my lips.

At this point, it feels like the floor throws itself out from under me, and it takes all my effort not to start flailing around erratically in my freefall- But wait. I’m not falling. On the contrary, I’m being levitated… I get set back down onto the bed, and turned to face over towards the doorway.

Sure enough, Twilight is standing just inside, a very concerned expression on her face. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks. I try to answer, but again I can’t speak. The pain is just too much.

She comes up to me and touches her horn to my forehead; it feels cool, and yet somehow warm at the same time. Like an Icy-Hot patch that’s having a malfunction and sending out both waves of pain relief at the same time.

Her voice echoes in my mind: “I’m sorry… I should have known you couldn’t speak. Here, just think what you want to say. I’ll hear it.”

I groan in my mind, then think, “I’ve never been happier than right now… in spite of all the pain and misery that I’m in.”

Twilight looks confused. “That makes absolutely no sense… How can you be happy, when you’re obviously so miserable?”

I give off an impression that I’m smiling at her. “Because you’re okay… I was so worried about you… I tried everything to bring you back to health, before-“ I catch myself; no need, once again, to let her know about Discord’s help… “-before I finally figured out what it was going to take to save you.”

“Save me?” Twilight looks at me bemusedly. “Save me from what? Did something happen to me?”

She doesn’t remember? Maybe that’s a side effect of the magical coma: memories getting kinda skewed. I show her in my mind, what happened to her: the man and what he did to her, all I did to keep her alive, and finally the trick with the flame.

She gasps. “No… how could I not remember any of that? And you really did all of that… for me?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “I was so scared… I didn’t want to lose you. You’re quite literally all I have here, and if I were to lose you… I don’t know what I would do.”

I think this pushes her over the edge, because at this point she just absolutely breaks down into tears. She jumps up onto the bed and lays beside me, trying to snuggle up as close to me as she can. This shocks the hell out of me; she’s never even shown any kind of physical affection before, but here and now…?

With quite a bit of effort, I roll over so that I’m laying on my back, while at the same time picking her up and placing her flush against my chest. She seemed to like it before; there’s no reason why I should think she won’t like it now. I was right, and for a long while we just lay there like that, her on my chest and in my arms.

Eventually, I drift off again. When I wake up, Twilight is still on my chest, sleeping peacefully. She looks like this is completely natural for her, in spite of the fact that before she met me, she had no idea what interaction with a human was like. This is all so foreign for the both of us.

My stomach gurgles, and I laugh softly to myself. Of course I would be hungry; I haven’t eaten in god knows how long. Suddenly, something occurs to me, totally out of the blue: I wonder if Twilight could re-charge my cell phone with her magic. It seems to be able to do pretty much everything else; why not recharge a smart phone?

In spite of the fact that I really do need to get some food, I don’t want to get up, mostly because I don’t want to disturb Twilight. Though, if I’m being honest with myself, it’s also kind of selfish, because I really am enjoying laying here with her like this. It’s very comforting.

I’m laying in bed for another- probably- fifteen minutes or so before I go back to sleep. When I wake up again, Twilight is no longer on my chest. I have to quash a knee-jerk reaction of panic; she’s probably just out in the living room or something.

I get up, very slowly this time. I very quickly notice that nothing hurts now, which is very odd. Even my splitting headache is gone. Did Twilight heal me while she was asleep? I’ll have to be sure to ask her about that, the next time I see her.

I start to walk towards the door, when something else hits me: I need a cigarette. Badly. I fish around in my pants for my pack and lighter; both are right where I left them. This is good. Instead of heading towards the back porch, though, I go to the kitchen area, to see if that’s where Twilight is at. She’s in the dining room, setting two plates of eggs on the table.

Something occurs to me, just then. “Hey, Twilight…? Where did you get those eggs? They weren’t in the ice box when I checked it the first time.”

She sighs. “It took me awhile to get these. When I woke up, you were still out cold, so I went out in search of a grocery store or something. I had to walk for about eight or nine miles before I found one, but when I did, I picked up a whole bunch of food.” She smiles. “My magic can carry a lot, so I ended up taking about half the store. We have enough here to be able to sustain us for at least three or four months.”

I don’t know which I’m happier about: the fact that we have food now, or the fact that Twilight was willing to do all of this for me-

Which kinda makes me angry, too. “You’re saying you went out there? By yourself? I know you don’t remember what happened to you, but I’m sure you know that there are some pretty blood-thirsty creatures out there wanting us for breakfast. If something would have happened to you…”

“I have my magic, you know,” Twilight replies. She seems a bit miffed. “I’m not as defenseless as you are.” The look on her face says that she immediately regrets saying that. “Oh no, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean for that to come out the way it did-“

I know she’s just lying to cover her tracks. “Don’t BS me. You mean every word you say… And for the record, I’m not too mad because you’re right. I am very much defenseless, especially against those creatures…” I silently add, “And against Discord…”

“But, the flame… What about it?”

I shrug. “Hell if I know. Apparently it can be used to heal, but healing is generally a defensive capability. I’m not sure what kind of offensive shit it can do, if anything. It may be pure defense.” I sit down at the table and look down at my plate. “This looks absolutely delicious.”

“Thank you,” I hear from behind me. “I’ve never tried cooking eggs before, so I wasn’t too sure of the proper procedures… Hopefully they don’t taste too terrible.”

I pick up my fork and dig in. Surprisingly, they’re actually really good. They’re very fluffy and flavorful; in fact, they remind me irresistibly of my mom’s eggs, which are by far the best eggs that I’ve ever had. I wait until I’m done chewing to respond: “They’re delicious. Was this your first batch?”

She blushes and turns away a bit. “No…” she replies. “I burned the first three batches, before I finally got this one semi-right…” Oh. That would explain the slight burnt-egg smell in the air.

“No problem,” I reply, digging in some more. “You really should try these- or do you not think you can, with you being a pony and all?”

She sits down at the table. “I’m not sure how eggs are composed in this world, as opposed to the way they are in Equestria. I’m relatively sure they’re ok, though.” She levitates a fork, then uses it to somewhat clumsily scoop some eggs into her mouth. “Hey! These are good!”

I smile at her. “Told you.” In a few minutes, we’ve gotten them all finished. I take the dishes to the kitchen and wash them up, while Twilight clears away the remainder of the mess from cooking. After all this is done, I go outside and fire up a cigarette.

Aah, bliss…

Twilight comes out and shuts the door behind her. “Are those things good for you?” she asks.

I laugh a bit. “Not really, but like I said, it’s how I stay sane. Plus, they take the edge off my appetite most times, which is how I’ve been able to stay as skinny as I have.”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” she replies, sitting down on the ground. “We need to get some more weight on you. You’re entirely too skinny.”

This kinda throws me for a loop. “What about you? You’re how old, and you’re the size of a miniature pony back on my world?”

“I’ll have you know that I’m fully grown,” she says with more than a hint of pride. “Very few of our species actually grow to be taller than what I am right now. The only ones that get taller are the alicorns. Think of a cross between a unicorn- like me- and a regular horse from your world. Over in Equestria, we refer to them as ‘Earth ponies’ though.”

“So you have pegasi, Earth ponies, unicorns, and alicorns? Am I missing anything?”

“Well, there’s the zebras, though I’ve only met one of them: a shaman named Zecora.”

“Zecora?” I ask. “Interesting name… I’ve never heard anything like it before.”

She nods. “Some of the beings in our world have some very… interesting attributes about them. Like there’s this one pony that looks like he’s been pumping steroids since he was still a foal-“

Wait, what? “You all have steroids in your world, too?”

“Not exactly; I was just trying to paint it in terms that you would understand. I recognize that not everything that is in my world is going to have an exact translation into your world.” At this point, I’m noticing that she’s wincing a little bit.

“Are you alright, Twilight?” I ask.

Though she’s obviously in a bit of pain, she nods. “It’s my flank… It’s acting up, which is weird… It never does this.” I tell her that it’s probably because that is the area that her wound was at, which makes her look at me funny again. “I swear I should remember this… I mean, I believe you when you said and showed me what happened, but that still doesn’t make up for the fact that I, myself, don’t remember it…”

I shrug. “It was a pretty traumatic experience; maybe it’s just temporary amnesia. It’ll probably come back after not too long.”

She nods. “I hope so. Knowledge has been my best friend since I was just a foal, and to know that there’s something so important that I’ve forgotten… It’s rather unsettling.”

I’m about to respond, when I hear a faint knocking sound. “Did you hear that?” I ask. Twilight indicates that she has no idea what I’m talking about. “I thought I heard someone knock on the front door. I’ll be right back…”

I cut through the house and make my way out front. The knocking is getting louder and more incessant by the second. “Hold on a damn second!” I yell as I reach the door and open it. No one’s there? What the hell? I step outside and look around, but there’s nobody around. I make my way out onto the front lawn-

And everything goes black. It’s almost like I’m enveloped in a thick shadow, so thick that I can’t break out of it. I feel myself sinking, and I cry out for Twilight’s help, but I don’t think she can hear me. I can only keep screaming as I’m dragged down into the earth, the darkness my unwilling cage and sanctum.