Anonymous in Nu-Questria

You were Anon.

You were out. That was the agreement.

It was, for better or worse, mutual. Consensual. Twilight would get to have her kingdom, her family. All of Equestria. And you would fuck off back to your own life, and never have to deal with the endless parade of bullshit again.

You remember her and the other princesses performing the ritual on you. The crystal that crept up your motionless, numb body. Sleep forever in stone. Wake up in the place before. That was the plan.

And, surprisingly, it happened.

In an instant, that chapter of your life closed. Your alarm went off. You woke up.

You checked the date. No time had passed. Like it was all one incredibly long dream.

You spent the whole day in an oblivious stupor. You turned off your phone and took a shower that lasted three hours. As you sat down in the steam, you half-expected to feel a hoof on your shoulder, or the glow of a horn in the mist.

But nopony ever came.

You had chills and then developed a fever. You slept for sixteen hours straight that night. Deep, dreamless sleep.

The next day, the pain had subsided. You felt alright. You got up, dressed up and looked outside. For once you didn’t have to worry about some pastel blob knocking at your door, or trying to ram their way into your life. For the first time in a long time, you stepped out out of your front door and took a breath of fresh Earth air.

Your life... was back.

Nine years passed. And on a warm September night, you went to bed feeling content. You no longer feared the morning alarm, or the sudden return to a forgotten dream.

Peace.

And yet. Somehow, in the morning you awoke to the gentle noise of thousands of leaves rushing in a dense, forest canopy. The calls of birds and frogs echoed across a verdant landscape. Another dream of the past overtaken you.

Then you feel the pain. A sharp pain, right in your head.

Your vision clears. The sunlight pours through gaps in the patterns of ever-shifting leaves. Your head is pounding as you try to blink away sleep from your eyes. You try to move your hand, but it feels all pins and needles. There are bits of vegetation and dirt and scattered on your clothes.

You’re wearing a suit. Shit.

You manage to strain your neck and look around a bit.

The multi-hued foliage and twisting branches give an otherworldly feel to the trees in the area, as well as the massive size of the trunks. Birds swoop gracefully between glades and insects chirp and hop in the underbrush. No place on Earth could be so resplendent.

God. Dammit.

You want to scream, but all you can do is let out a desperate moan. Your throat is burning, and your mouth feels gritty and coarse to your tongue. You clear your throat.

"God damn you! What the fuck do you want?!" You scream at the sky in rage. Birds take wing and let off warning calls as the sound pierces the still of the forest.

"I said I was out, god dammit! What the fuck is this shit?" You struggle to sit upright, but your legs are completely unresponsive. What happened to your tomb? Your huge emerald casket? Your Equestrian body should be encased in solid crystal right now. How the fuck did it end up in temperate rainforest?

You manage to flail your right arm a little, but you accidentally hit something behind your head instead. The trunk of a tree. Its bark is strangely smooth to the touch. You follow it down slowly and touch an exposed root. It leads to your head. There’s something sticky there. You pull your hand up and see red on your fingertips.

Fuck...

Suddenly, you hear footsteps. No, not footsteps. Short bursts of hooves. You blink and wipe your eyes. You don’t see anything moving, but... maybe you’re saved?

The feeling has returned more to your upper body, and so you grab two tree roots and hoist your torso up as best you can against the trunk. The action takes so much out of you. It's been a long time since you've been in this body.

You blink your eyes hard and breathe heavily. Suddenly, there is a unicorn staring at you about five feet away.

“Hello friend!” She says with a wide smile.

The visage of the pony, her large fuchsia eyes, her lavender coat, her tumbling blue mane, strike at you with such a terrifying lucidity, you feel your heart jump into your throat. The mare occupies the totality of your reality. Your doubts about this being a dream are instantly crushed.

“My name's Izzy, what's your name?" She says, tilting her head a bit.

She's tall for a mare, and her horn is solid white. Your bottom lip is trembling, your mouth open in shock. No, fuck. No, this can’t be real.

Yet you know it’s real. Equestria has a feeling to it. You know it deep down to your soul. Once you feel it, there’s no mistaking it.

You start to feel very dizzy.

The unicorn folds her ears back with concern and raises an eyebrow, surprised at your lack of response. Your grip on the tree roots starts to slip. Darkness creeps into the edges of your vision.

You manage to say "Anohh...” before collapsing. Darkness takes you.

You are woken up by the gentle tap of a hoof on your cheek.

Your eyes shoot open to see a bright lamp above you. You hear the forest again, but it’s a bit muffled now. You’re laying on some sort of cot and you have a pillow under your head.

The silhouette of a yellow stallion with a short, teal mane leans in over you. He tilts his head one way and the other, inspecting you. He gives a short nod and looks away.

“Yep, he’s awake now.” The stallion says. He moves out of your field of view.

You hear the voice of a mare, different than the unicorn from before.

“Hitch, you’re amazing!” the voice says.

“No problem,” the stallion, Hitch, says confidently, “That first-aid training really came in handy today! Ha!”

Another silhouette of a pony slowly moves into your field of view. It’s more slender. A mare. She has an orange coat and a purple-pink mane in a long braid.

“Hey there...” she says in a kind voice, “I’m very sorry about the way in which we, uh... woke you up.”

Her large, turquoise eyes are filled with remorse. You don’t feel any forgiveness.

“You took a bit of a fall, but don’t worry. You’re okay now.” She explains. “We bandaged your head and gave you water and medicine to help with the pain.”

When she notices your lack of response, she widens her eyes quizzically. “Do you understand me?” She asks, “Nod once for yes.”

You grimace. “Of course I understand you.” Her eyes light up with delight in spite of your stern response.

She smiles and says, “Okay, great! My name is Sunny. Sunny Starscout. I’m very, very glad to meet you.”

You squint your eyes at her. “Why did you... unpetrify me?” You ask.

“Well...” she says as she runs a hoof along her braid. “I’m... sorry, but... we really need your help.”

We? What does that mean? Before she can explain more she turns away.

“Izzy, go ahead.” she says.

“With pleasure~!” A female voice says. You can’t see her, but you recognize it as the unicorn from before.

You hear a cranking sound as your torso juts forward a bit. Little by little, one half of the cot is tilted by some hoof-powered mechanism. You are moved to a sitting position. Then you see them. Candy colored coats, silky smooth in the soft light. You see the small furs on their conical ears. Their manes. Their large, round eyes.

Ponies.

You are once again surrounded by ponies.

Fuck.

The unicorn comes out from behind you into your field of vision. There’s five in all. Two earth ponies. Two pegasi, and a unicorn. They watch you with that familiar mix of wonder and hesitation you know so well.

Sunny, the orange earth pony from before, steps forward towards you holding a beaten-up leather journal to her chest. She smiles softly at you like she's looking at an old friend. Someone you met a long time ago, but lost contact with through the years. Yet you've never seen this mare before.

“Your name... it’s Anonymous, isn’t it?” she says.

What is her deal? She has such a youthful determination in her eyes.

“Yeah...?” you reply. At least you’re sure of your own name. Where the fuck you are is a whole different story.

Sunny only gasps in response, her ears perk up and her face lights with joy. She flips open the journal and speedily pages through it. Her hoof stops on a page and smacks it confidently.

“Just as I thought!” she says with a self-assured smirk. The ponies around her all widen their eyes as they see the page.

Sunny steps closer and raises the the journal up to you. You see a page that stirs a memory inside you. More than that, it stirs deep down to the roots of your soul.

The old, yellowed parchment is an illustrated page of notes. There is a sketch of a human figure on the left. No doubt about it, it's you. Legs and arms extended, the Vitruvian Man replaced with your body. Thankfully, with your underwear on.

The horn-writing on the right page is very familiar. You recognize it instantly. You remember her quill writing down the words. Her snarky quips as she drew you. Her laugh. Her smile.

"Twilight-"

"Twilight wrote about you! You're Anonymous the human! Oh my stars, I have so many questions!"

Before you can respond, Sunny puts her notebook on the ground and turns the page. She starts quickly reading off a huge list of questions at you.

"What was it like being the only human in all of Equestria? Did you still eat meat, or did you eat normal pony food? Did you live in a giant-sized house? Do you groom other humans with your hands? How big are your automobiles? Do-”

“Woah, woah, Sunny... slow down.” Hitch says and puts a hoof on the journal. “He just woke up, he needs rest. I don’t think we need to overwhelm him with a bunch questions right now.”

Sunny blinks and tilts her head. “Oh... I was doing it again wasn’t I?”

The ponies all nod in unison. Sunny folds her ears back and frowns. “Sorry.”

“No. I’m sorry.” You say. The absurdity of your present situation is starting to gnaw at you. You fake a shaky smile.

“You woke me up. For what? For what? Because you’re all fangirls?! Would someo-... somepony. Please tell me what THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!”

The ponies all tilt their necks and widen their eyes at your outburst. Your heart is racing and your face feels hot.

Hitch puffs out his chest and narrows his eyes. Sunny starts to open her mouth, but then a new voice rings out.

“Fine~ I’ll fill you in.” says a pink pegasus in a cheery voice.

She flutters up towards you on poofy pink wings. She has a dark violet mane adorned with a golden tiara. God damn, she even has golden glittery hooves.

She lands on the foot of your cot, and her smile turns to into a scornful grimace. She pulls out what appears to be a smartphone? What the fuck?

Before you can do anything, there’s a camera flash and you’re momentarily blinded. You blink and see stars.

The pink pegasus tucks her phone away in her wing. “Alright, so listen mister ‘Anonymoose’” she says with air-quotes.

You rub your eyes. The pegasus continues, gesticulating with a hoof as she talks.

“So like you’re old, right? Like, thousands of thousands of moons old. You lived in Ancient Equestria, met Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Rarity and Fluttershy. The Elements of Harmony. Great, right? Psch.”

She tilts her head forward and gives you a condescending smile.

“Well, welcome to present day. All the unicorns, pegasi and earth ponies live in separate places, and there hasn’t been magic for a really long time. No pony knows what happened, and no pony really cares.”

She shrugs. Then she leans back and gestures behind her. “Except us~!” She says in a sing-songy voice. The ponies behind her all smile.

She turns back to you with a sour expression. “We helped bring friendship back to all ponies, and we helped bring back magic too. So, if you’d really be so kind, could you please, please, please help us out by telling us a bit about Ancient Equestria?”

She bats her eyelashes and pouts at you. You just look at her in shock.

“W-w-what...?” You say, trying to process it all.

You start to remember that time ran differently in Equestria than it did on Earth. Twilight told you that while she was planning for the spell. Nine years in Earth time would be... how many moons? You can’t remember the formula, though your mind strains as hard as it can. Has it been centuries? Millennia?

Your stomach drops in your chest. The realization weighs on you like a humpback whale. You exhale a deep, long breath.

“T-they’re... all dead... aren’t they?” You say. You try to fight the tears, but they come any way.

The pegasus seems genuinely taken aback by your response. Her face softens into a sympathetic expression and she droops her head.

There’s a pregnant pause as you sit there, letting the reality of it all wash through your mind. It could be millions of years for all you know. Further back than you can comprehend. Civilizations rise and fall as the tides do. Nothing lasts forever.

The ponies all catch on to the mood. Sunny takes a step forward, her ears folded back. The pegasus steps back off the cot.

“Anonymous... I’m... I’m sorry. I didn’t think about how you might feel after being woken up after all this time.” She says, looking down.

You look down to hide your eyes. A tear drops onto your lap. You take a few shaky breaths.

“Turn me back.” You say.

“We... um...” Sunny says. She hesitates for a long while. “We... don’t know... how.”

“Someone h-has to know. Take me to them.” You say.

Sunny doesn’t respond. Her silence tells you all you need to know.

You slowly curl up your legs and hold your head in your hands. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

You sit there, your fingers tensing against your temples and forehead. Your chest convulses with sobs, and your nose starts to run.

“C’mon everypony, let’s give him some space...” the stallion says. You hear the sound of quiet hoofsteps, and the door to the tent opens. The light of day creeps in as they leave, and then the tent closes.

“Pipp, you really could have broken that to him a bit better...” You hear Sunny’s muffled voice say. “I know, I’m sorry, but how was I supposed to know...” The pegasus says, her voice trailing off.

You sit for a while. The tears flow, and you let them. The visions from your past swell in the back of your mind. You force them back and try to think.

So... that’s it then? You’re stuck here with a bunch of young ponies in a time where everyone you knew and loved is long since gone. Ponykind lost everything they had. All the magic and power is drained from the land. Then, these five ponies somehow start to bring it back, and you just happened to be the first ancient petrified being they stumbled on.

But what the fuck can you do? You don’t know shit about magic or how to help them.

You glance over at the door to the tent. You see the stocky shadow of a stallion being projected near the door. It’s most likely the one that bandaged you up. He seems to be keeping watch.

You consider just trying to make a run for it. Maybe you’ll have better luck without them. Definitely less headache in the long run.

Suddenly you hear a soft noise coming from the other side of the tent. “Pssst!”

You look over to see the head of the lavender unicorn poking out from under the tent wall. She looks side to side and then slowly slides the rest of her body through.

She stands up and quietly walks up to your cot. She reaches a hoof into her voluminous blue mane.

“Here.” she says very softly. She pulls out a bracelet made from small crystal fragments strung together like beads. She places it on top of the cot and gives you a small, genuine smile. She walks back and turns before you can say anything.

The unicorn disappears back under the tent wall. You wipe your eyes and sniff your nose. You pick up the bracelet and look at it.

Chiseled carefully into each of the crystals is a letter. It spells out A-N-O-N.