Magyck

"I-i-is it g-gone?" whispered Fluttershy from under a mountain of books.

"It's OK, Fluttershy," said Twilight, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. "I locked the door this time."

Fluttershy daintily made her way out of her not-too-soft landing spot, wings flapping anxiously. "What was it? I've never seen a creature like that before in my whole life!"

"That's what I've been staying up so late to find out. I thought I'd seen a picture of it before in a book, so I was trying to find that book again. I can't for the love of Celestia remember what it was called, though..."

"Is it this one?" Fluttershy walked over to a book that had been flipped open by her tumble from the walkway above. The picture on the page showed a creature exactly like the one that had just scared their manes off.

"...Um...yeah, it is..." said Twilight, half surprised, half annoyed. How did other ponies always find in one minute what she had been looking for for hours? It was beyond her. She lived here, for Celestia's sake!

The book was engulfed in a soft purple glow and levitated so Twilight could better read it. The page opposite the picture read:

Humans

Humans are creatures supposedly from ancient times, that most credible research ponies now regard as extinct. According to legend, they were unique in many ways from the other creatures of Equestria. Most were not extraordinarily strong, but their strength lay in their combination of two grasping appendages called "hands", located where the two front hooves on a pony would be, and their amazing penchant for innovation and invention. Humans were rumored to have learned how to use tools before even Earth Ponies had, marking them as possibly more intelligent than Ponykind, and compensating for their utter lack of magical capabilities, though this opinion is not widely held among the researcher community.

Humans were said to tend toward violence as a species, though there are a few stories that tell of kind humans helping ponies by gifting them with their advanced machinery or helping them build buildings with their legendary knowledge of architecture. Most of these stories are considered to be fiction, as the tools and/or weapons used by the humans in these tales would be far more advanced that any historipony could give any race credit for.

Humans also, according to legend, lived in the Everfree Forest, marking them as dangerous, like most other creatures that make their home there even today. If they could survive in the Everfree Forest, they would have to have been formidable adversaries indeed.

There are many stories of Humans attacking villages and burning much of them to the ground, and carrying off everypony in the village. These villages were usually earth pony, as Pegasi lived in the clouds and Unicorns were magical, and Humans feared magic greatly. Thus, ponies learned to fear the Everfree forest and everything in it. However, today many brave expeditions into the feared forest have revealed that, even if humans had existed at one point in time, they do not reside in the Everfree forest any longer. There is much debate among researchers about the fate of the Humans; some believe that their bipedal structure (they only walked on two legs, allowing for greater use of their "hands") was not fit for survival, and thus they slowly died off in the harsh environment of the Forest. Other wilder theories, one being that Humans discovered a way to travel over great distances, similar to how unicorns travel over short distances using magic, and left Equestria, and another being that the humans eventually became so good at fighting that they began fighting each other and killed themselves off, also exist, but these are dismissed as fantastical without any basis in reality.

Whatever the reason for their disappearance, they are known to have existed because of the odd artifacts that have been found by archeoloponies in the everfree forest, the function of which could not be determined. These artifacts include two long, narrow, hollow tubes of metal that are stuck together with what appears to be a handle at one end, and several large plates of metal with handles on one side, which some researchers speculate took advantage of a human's second hand during battle by allowing them to deflect a blow with the metal plate. Neither of these artifacts offer anything of practical benefit to Ponykind, and as a result most studies still conducted on this ancient race are purely out of curiosity.

There were sub-chapters and references, which Twilight was dying to read, but first things first. She got Fluttershy her book and hurried her out the door, ignoring her questions about the creature; she didn't want anypony to know about this until the situation was under control. Her brain raced, forming theories about how her invention could have brought one into her house. Had she brought it forward in time? Or had she brought it from a distant land? The biggest question on her mind was why she had never heard of humans before if there was so much research done on them; this niggled at the back of her mind constantly. She had to put these questions out of her mind temporarily, however, knowing for now all that mattered was alerting the Princess to the possible danger this human posed.

Brandon woke from his slumber feeling better physically, but his memory was still fuzzy. He was now certain, after sleeping on it, that Unicorns and Pegasi were creatures of myth. Had he merely hallucinated them? He got up and tried the door. Locked. So that gave some validity to the events he recalled last night, but how could a horse talk? It went against everything he knew, and, he guessed, everything he didn't know as well.

And then there was the problem of his voice. Why didn't his vocal cords work? Perhaps the flash of light he remembered was an explosion?? That seemed like a good explanation, as his voice box may have been damaged enough to hinder his speaking. From what he knew, that could heal, but it would take time, and without being able to talk, there was no way for him to...talk...to the horses? He was already thinking of their powers of speech as a fact! It made no sense, and yet...he knew what he'd heard. He even remembered how it talked, as if it was trying to calm a potentially dangerous or upset creature: 'I'm not going to hurt you, so don't be afraid...'. Clearly it had no idea what he was.

But it spoke his language! The chances of that were astronomically low. How would it know English?! ...He forced himself to calm down. He just had to take things as they came and, at least for now, not over-think things too much. That could lead to mental instability; it would be best to just pretend that this was all possible, if not normal, and not question it until he'd learned more.

He lay back down on his bed. He needed his rest; his body still felt like he'd just fallen down 30 flights of stairs. As he drifted off, he couldn't help feeling annoyed at his helplessness. Despite all he knew, he still felt very unsure of everything. This wasn't right, he knew, but he couldn't remember any personal experiences whatsoever that might prove it to him. His irritation faded to apathy as sleep took a hold on him. That night, his dreams were full of talking unicorns and pegasi, and there, they didn't seem unusual at all.