Chapter 10 “The Party”.

To those people wandering about high end social parties let me tell you first hand that most people who even got close to a celebrity or even attended an event from the jet set, know nothing about the ungodly amount of wealth being put on display for this some-what meaningless social get-together. The decorations, the pastries and even the clothing etiquette was over the top, like someone decided to paint the whole castle with a golden and crystal paint or something like that, it was a show of splendor and extravagance the like you have never seen before, at least for me. With gigantic crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, an entire ensemble of flowers as center tables, details that showed what a royal event was for the likes of the creatures of this world, all happening in front of your eyes, and to see it through television is one thing but to see it from my point of view was another type of experience.

I mean sure it was part of a formal event to congratulate the bravery of the soldiers of a battle well fought and the first real victory of a reunited kingdom over a millennia. But I was never the kind of guy who liked being put in the center of attention, mind you I wasn’t a stranger to this type of formal events, after all I do come from a family that has connections to people in power or at least people who moved in high circles of the society, but not of this caliber. So after all the medals, handshakes and the ceremony to the knights who fulfilled their duty, now it was the time to shown the gratitude to the new group of humans who helped save the lives of the innocent in their desperate time.

And I could not feel anymore awkward than I was before, I wasn’t about to puke out of embarrassment in front of everybody but when the prince was awarding us for our involvement in the rescue mission, He pulled out what looked like golden eggs, the likes you see in museums with ruby and emeralds and the works, it reminded me the eggs the Zar of Russia gave to his dukes in X-mas and Easter. I guess it was an important detail because every cretaure seeing this reacted with a gasp, I thought it must be a cultural thing or something, I don’t know, didn’t manage to learn about it in our short time in the castle, but everyone was excited so !yay! free golden egg. Still having all eyes on me wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Not only that, being knighted or as close as you can be recognized by the crown is no small feature, I am sure that he did it in order to impose his image or at least let the rest of the foreign envoys known that the Griffon Crown was now making a presence in the world again and their rule would not be questioned or at least not lightly criticized by the low naysayers.

With giant golden egg in one hand, a medal on my chest and being watched by all manners of creatures, I was feeling a little overwhelmed, thankfully the girls helped alleviate some of that pressure and reminded me that I wasn’t completely alone. We gave our eggs to the servants not to lose them and began to introduce ourselves in the crowd of dignitaries, I always believed that the best way to deal with this kind of situations is to tell little white lies or at least half truths, not to over do it but it always a good thing to have some reservation or a advantage against these kind of people, or maybe it was the spur of the moment that made me a little apprehensive during the party.

Let me remind you that our group of humans already had a close relation with Fernidand, and in this world most of the friendship politics it has always been the Equestrians who took the first step when it came down to making allies, whether was a new species or a new country being discovered, the ponies always had first contact.
Thus giving them advantage in commerce, knowledge and everything else, sure it also brought new threats but according to records despite their innocent nature and looks the ponies always came on top of every challenge turning their kingdom stronger every time or as close as a modern day super power on this side of the world.

Why this is important you ask? well because during the whole event the ponies dignitaries both nobles from Canterlot and other places of Equestria looked desperate to steal us from the claws from the griffins, often saying things about giving us proper welcoming if we ever stop to visit their country or to share their “gifts” with us at the same time praising us for our display of courage and generosity during the event of the forest, it was the whole dog and pony show. That was why I never liked this kind of people, always willing to shower you with gifts and smiles in return for something else, hiding their true faces beneath all that glamour.

Some had some tact when taking to us and tried to demonstrate that not all off the Equestrians were greedy and selfish, perhaps 1 out of every 5 of the whole Equestrian entourage, then came the Saddle Arabians (in which apparently are another type of equestrian but with more fined features even though they share similarities with their race yet they are another kingdom entirely) whom were quite fascinated with our appearance or should I say the girls appearance, when describing us some of the rumors said that we looked a little like shaved monkeys, but when they got a first glance at us, they very same rumors couldn’t be further away from the truth.

The girls with their clean hair and long dresses resembled an alien race that not even the imagination of those present could entirely understand, it was like these ambassadors expected a bunch of tribal monkeys from planets of the apes or a bunch of bloodthirsty hairy savages, I think it was because our involvement with all the fighting the rumors and talks made us look like some sort of war like tribesmen, either that or just how common we were took them by surprise.

Elsa on the other hand was enjoying the whole thing, but then again a tall blonde girl with blue eyes can cause a lot of turning of heads specially with the male population, her white pale skin made her look like Galadriel I could see that some of the most young noble ponies were awestruck by her and some of the ponies girls kept a close shoulder on their partners just in case they would go chasing after her.
She talked about almost everything with some group of ponies that came from the Northern parts of Equestria and I swear that I saw a huge pony with a viking beard and beads talking to her, the guy was happy to have met her and hear her side of her story but then when Elsa discovered that his mother tongue was a mix of Finnish with some other Nordic dialect, Elsa couldn't stop herself from going full Swedish and both began to talk in their own languages excitedly, no one from outside those two understood a thing they were saying but some of the ponies accompanying that guy just sweetly smiled at their interaction. I’m good with languages and I could get some words out of their conversation but nothing concrete, it was like hearing two versions of Dobby from the Thornberries talking to each other.

Aliana was another side of the spectrum when it came to socialize her thic accent made her sound a little strong but she was clearly trying out a soft demeanor with it, she was talking with some griffin nobles and some Arabians about her country, nothing too graphic or bad about it, but it surprised her audience that we came from different countries and not just one big country. That’s when we heard a loud !WHAT? and turned my head to Milla who was talking to princess Skylar of the Hippogrifs, apparently she was saying something about travel and the idea of being able to cross continents in a matter of days or even hours made her lose her composure, meanwhile Queen Novo gave her daughter a stern look but she was also surprised of this new discovery, things turned a whole lot different when Milla pulled her phone and showed satellites pictures of our world among those photos was the whole Solar Sytem.

In a single moment in that little device Milla just showed to the entire Hippogriff royal family that we were in fact literal aliens in a way, it was a good thing that Skylar little shout was the only thing everyone heard, maybe it wasn’t a shock to us now but to Skylar and Novo seeing pictures of our galaxy through our phone was like seeing a whole other realm of possibilities and we ourselves were evidence of the existence of other Worlds. A revelation that was being processed through the minds of both mother and daughter, while Milla merely chuckled and reminded them that she had the same reaction, only that she was lost in a forest surrounded by strangers in the same situation.
Then Milla showed how to take selfies on her phone and called Aliana to join up with her, it was nice seeing her slowly get out of her depression, I’m sure the loss of her brother was hard on her but she looked like she was powering through, still the image of both girls making poses and silly faces with the Hippogriff royal family while taking selfies is something to scratch off the bucket list.

I was just fine talking with the knights about their plans for the future, now that I was technically speaking one of them, the moment I went to get something to drink I felt like someone was looking at me from behind, I turned around and was met with a sea of stars floating ethereally above the head of an Alicorn with navy blue fur, I looked down a little and met her eyes.
I just stood there watching her right in her eyes while she did the same to me, I would have been panicking but the height difference made her look way more smaller than she looked, like come on the tallest ponies reached our waist
aside from a few of them who managed to go a little beyond that line but they all had the height of adults dogs.
And there I was looking down on a Princess not saying anything and apparently she didn’t find that exchange as funny as I did. Finally I decided to speak and formally introduced myself to her while apologizing, she thought nothing of it, smiling softly saying that it reminded her the exchanges she had with her older sister back when they were young.
From then on we just spoke about different subjects family, my world, her world and on and on. I’m sure she seemed to recognize me from somewhere but didn’t know where from. The same was happening to me while I looked at her, that sense of familiarity was running in both of our heads, and we stood there both of us talking ignoring for the most part the rest of the party, after a moment of back and forth in our conversation Princess Luna decided to introduce me to her sister to talk about my experience in the forest and how magic reacts to our bodies.

I for one didn’t want to face the Solar Alicorn alone, but I saw Elsa being dragged by a group of ponies the same way that I was to get introduced to their leader. I expected to be awkward and nervous by whole exchange, but I decided to face her anyway, might as well get over with this instead of finding a hole to hide myself.
Celestia tried to looked tall in front of us but our height compared to her was little more different that she expected, we could see that reaction through her eyes, I guess she got used to be the tallest of ponies and wasn’t expecting this much difference.
Still she introduced herself with a slight bow and with refined grace she told us that it was an honor to have met us, we responded back the same way with much less grace and refinement but the action spoke louder than words and to the rest of the equestrians it shown that it was the right way to show respect to their princesses.
We talk almost about everything that happened, from whom we were, our countries and our arrival to this world to our fight in Branwick, I tried to make it sound like what really occurred in the forest with all details but the more We explained our story and the more we described it , more fantastical it sounded, like lets be real everything felt like a crazy session chapter of a D&D campaign and the final confrontation appeared to impress both alicorn sisters, I guess they don’t leave the castle that much or the rumors they heard were nothing but bullshit.

The Sisters had an odd look on their faces when got to the part of using magic, we told them about having no magic in our world, no real knowledge about it and yet we were able to used part of it, they said that they could get some materials for us to get to know a little bit more about it but they will need time to make some research, that their teacher Star-something might be able to scrounge something for us to train or some skill to develop, we agreed to it and when Milla and Aliana joined us in our conversation the whole thing just exploded with questions about the whole idea of being able to use magic, Milla specially asking a whole barrage of theories and what ifs meanwhile both sisters had a bemused expression on their faces as if this reaction was all too familiar to them.
The rest of the party went as expected with the whole inter-species meet and greet going much better than it was anticipated, the whole celebration was something that was going to be the talk of the century or at least for the next months, just when thing calmed down a little Princess Celestia wanted me to talk in private for a little while before leaving.

Dreading the interaction we went to a balcony that was close to the main hall and we talked, on that moment the guilt of what happened in the past came rushing back and I spilled an apology like a 7 years old only without crying, the white bitch just brought a hoof to her mouth and chuckled but she was glad that I remembered her and from then on we just talked with out formality, no titles no decorum, seeing her in a new light like this was a strange change of pace of what I’ve been experiencing so far but it was a wholesome one, that was until she said something about getting revenge for the punch I gave her while giving a little smirk.

And from then on we argued about the legitimacy of attacking royalty in the dream space, the whole thing was absurd and I lost the argument, mind you I did make the mistake of using logic and reason with a magical woman on what was technically an event that never actually happened, but might as well let her have this small victory and not incite her wrath, at the end of it we both ended up having a laugh about the whole ordeal.
In a serious light in the conversation I asked her how was I even able to go through the dreams like that, and her response gave me no real answer or at least not the one I was looking for, It appears that magic is finicky when it comes to certain individuals, some are born with a great skill to manipulate magic while others simply either learn or have a late blooming for it.
Kind off like going through a second puberty in a short time only this time you may be able to throw lightning or fireballs, She said that even with all the knowledge and experience her species gathered through time there are still a lot to learn about magic in this world.
It was all good to learn about this sort of things and I wanted to hear more of it but all of the sudden a Pegasus guard with a golden armor came to us and told Celestia that they were about to depart, so we said our goodbyes but before I could even retreat back inside Celestia asked if we could have conversations like this in the nearby future, she said that even though her nobles were a little invasive with me and my friends, she really wanted to be friends with us and apologized personally for their actions.
I told her that I thought nothing of it and that me and the girls would love to talk more with her and her sister, specially Milla whom the idea of learning magic straight from the source was like a dream come true, to this Celestia said that she may have a teacher or two in mind and with a slight bow she left.

All in all the party was great and the whole group went back to our rooms with some leftovers while we talked about everything that happened, I decided to tell the girls everything that happened with me and Celestia, the idea of meeting the rest of the equestrian royal family as well the possibility of learning magic, also told them that maybe all of us at some point might be able to use it like the literal wizard we all knew about even if those were products of fantasy stories.

I expected the worst to happen in the party like a paranoid freak and instead was left surprised with a good impression of all of it, still can’t shake the feeling that We were missing an important piece of the puzzle, so much everything was left behind not only through what happened to us in the forest but to all of our doings in this short period of time.
I wasn’t going to get the answers on that moment so I decided to go to sleep, maybe shaking the whole stress of the party might be able to find some specific detail that we overlooked.
But like most people know sometime you can't just choose what kind of dream you’re going to have, I expected something calm like a sunny beach instead I found myself in the same corridor with all kinds of doors on both sides, annoyed I sighted and began to walk down the path hoping to find a certain Princess to guide me through this mess.

Author's Note

Sorry for the long wait a lot has happened and writer's block is a bitch to have.
Might be able to get a new chapter in the middle of the month but for now enjoy.