Behind the Shower Curtainby 6-D PegasusChaptersThe Voice in the ShowerExperiments and SurprisesQuestions and DisbeliefHistorical TangentsYet More Historical TangentsRun-In at the CafeThe Voice in the ShowerClick-clack, click-click-click clack The sound of typing filled the spacious room, echoing ever so softly against the near-barren walls. Ryan's hands rapidly danced across the keyboard of his work laptop, systematically pressing the right combination of letters and spaces needed to properly wrap up the summary of the work report for the week. The twenty-three year old web developer had just recently moved into his own place at last. It wasn't much; there was the main room that had his bed propped up against the wall on the far side, a desk in the middle propped up opposite of his bed at which he currently sat doing work, and a small, modest kitchen area that still lacked a proper refrigerator. Beside the kitchen stood the one and only front door. Last but not least, there was a single bathroom whose door sat in front of and obnoxiously close to his bed, immediately opposite of his desk. Ryan let out a groan of exasperation. Today was supposed to be a good day. A wonderful day. One of celebration and relaxation. A few days ago, he had finally saved up enough money to move into a new, decent sized apartment. No more cheap motel room with its cramped space that did not even fit a bed, or its suspicious smelling heater, or most importantly, lack of a personal bathroom. He could finally lean back in his bed, stare up at a ceiling not covered in a crude paint job splattered with mysterious stains, inhale a breath of fresh, clean air, and bask in the warm presence of what he was finally proud to call his new home. Or at least, he would have done all that, if it weren't for the fact that his boss had decided to pile a ton of new work items last minute that needed to be done by the end of the week. You know, the week in which he was moving in. Oh, what's that? Why don't you just reserve some time off? Let them know your attention is needed elsewhere? As much as he would have loved to do so, said aforementioned work items just so happened to be absolutely crucial for a client demo presentation at the start of the next week. Sure, he could take the time off, but there were no other developers on his team that were familiar enough with the part of the site those work items were on to be able to complete it in time. Or at least, Ryan thought. It's not like I don't trust any of them to work on this area. I have complete faith in their skills. Ryan paused his typing to glance at the ceiling in thought. It's just that I... that I... well... ... Oh who am I kidding Ryan sighed shamefully to himself before resuming his work. Last time he needed to take some time for himself, several members of their developer team were assigned to continue his work items while he was gone. When he returned, he would find the pages he worked on in the condition of the website equivalent of nuclear fallout. He didn't really blame them for it though; he doubted he could keep up either if he was thrust into someone else's work environment with a completely foreign method of organizing and implementing items. If anyone was going to finish this part of the site, it would have to be him. Almost... there... His fingers furiously raced across his keyboard as he put the finishing word on his work report. Annnnd done! He smashed the enter key with more force than intended and watched as his code for the last work item of the week was sent up to the cloud. After a few seconds of silence, a soft ping told him the operation was successful: no merge conflicts. "Wooo!" Ryan cried out in glee and shot his hands into the air in tired, yet satisfied finality. He glanced around his apartment with a going before remembering he was alone. Awkwardly putting his hands down, he scanned his room again and realized to his dismay that, due to the urgency of previously pressing matters, he never had the chance to properly set up his new residence. Several boxes filled with essential equipment and his old belongings laid stacked and scattered on the floor of the main entrance. Ryan exhaled through his nose in tired annoyance before getting up to give his moving boxes a once over. One box contained many decorative items, including some posters, a small desktop lamp. Low priority, Ryan thought to himself as he moved to the next box. This one contained much of his clothes. Also Low prio-, he started, then paused upon becoming acutely aware of how long he had been donning his current attire, possibly accumulating plenty of sweat throughout his work day, just the thought of which made him cringe immensely. Alright, alright, might as well "wake myself up" before dealing with this. He briefly shuffled through his packed clothes before selecting and extracting a comfy pair of night clothes. He walked over to the bathroom, opened the door, lazily plopped his clothes on the floor, then cringed when he spotted the shower. Specifically its lack of a shower curtain. Sighing, he turned around, fished his shower curtain out of its respective box, and gave it a quick glance. It wasn't fancy by any means. It draped long and wide enough to fully the shower area from wall to wall and from floor to the metal bar above the shower ledge, with six metal rings attached to the top. The curtain itself was a foggy white; if someone were to press something right up against its surface, you might be able to make it out from the other side. Once there were more than a few inches of space between the object and the curtain, its appearance from the other side would dissolve into a blurry fuzz of color. Perfect for privacy purposes. More than ready to wind down for the evening, Ryan carried the shower curtain to his bathroom and reached up to attach the metal rings to the overhanging bar. One... Two... Three... Four... Five... annnd six! A sudden chill rushed through Ryan's body, sending shivers down his body. "What the-?" He quickly glanced back out of the bathroom to verify his windows and door were closed. He turned back to his now curtain-covered shower in confusion, still shuddering a little. He let out a gentle whistle. Yeaaaahhhhh. It's official, I'm totally losing it. Ugh just let me lay down already. With that last thought, Ryan reached down to turn on the faucet and unleash a hopefully warm rain of stress-relieving droplets. Somewhere else... "Oh, Spike you're back already? I thought you'd be out for another couple of hours!" "..." "Spike?" "..." "Spike, you know that's our one and only shower, you can't just waltz in there and start another one of your hour long showers without at least telling me beforehand! What if I was going to use it?" "..." "Uh... Spike?" "..." "Helllloooooooo- you know what, I'll chew him out when he's done." Ohhh wow, I needed that so badly. Ahhhhhhh Ryan emerged from the shower, snugly wrapped in a soft, white towel, before pulling the curtain back close behind him. He sighed blissfully as he stood there for a moment, his eyes closed. Yes, the day had indeed been stressful, but that shower had practically melted away his worries. Oh sure, they'd be waiting for him again when work resumed at the start of next week, but for now none of it mattered. Ryan pursed his lips together. He could have sworn he heard someone distantly shouting during his shower. He brushed it off as maybe some auditory illusion caused by the sound of falling water, but just in case, he made a mental note to check with his neighbors about it. After all, the apartment, specifically the bathroom, had some considerably thick walls to keep external sound out. It had to have been some damn loud shouting for him to even hear it over the shower. After carefully hanging the towel on a little bar in the wall, Ryan quickly changed into his night clothes and moved in front of the sink. Despite the warm shower, Ryan could tell from his own facial expression that he was just about ready to keel over from exhaustion. His short, black hair shot out in all directions, and his eyes could barely remain half open. Chuckling to himself, he reached for his cup containing his toothbrush and toothpaste... only to accidentally knock the entire thing off the sink ledge. He winced at the sound of his precious toothbrush clattering against the tile floor. Bruh, come on I can't be THIS tired, right? With a defeated sigh, he reached down to pick it up and- "Spike?" Ryan jumped and cried out in alarm, dropping the toothbrush once more as he nearly slipped on the still wet tiling. "What the, who's there?!" His eyes darted around the bathroom, searching for any sign of movement, but everything was still. The voice had clearly came from within the bathroom, but he couldn't pinpoint any possible sources. For what seemed like several minutes, he stood completely still, eyes wide in shock. While the shower utterly failed in waking him up, this scare had certainly succeeded. For a while, he didn't dare to move, but after several more moments of nothing happening, he knew he had to do at least something. Reaching down again, he picked his toothbrush off the ground and held it in a defensive position like some pathetic, makeshift knife. He slowly inched closer to the center of the bathroom, tracking his eyes across anything he could see. "H-hello? Who's there?" The voice called out again, slightly closer now but not enough for Ryan to determine a source. It was definitely female, and whoever it belonged to sounded young, probably mid-twenties. There was a hint of fear in the tone as well. Ryan relaxed slightly, his own fear and panic subsiding, making way for curiosity. The voice sounded like it was coming from where his shower was, but that made no sense; he was literally in there not even a couple of minutes ago and hadn't once left the bathroom. It also sounded a bit more distant that it should've, as if whoever was speaking was an entire additional room length away, but his bathroom wasn't nearly that long. Not to mention there was solid tiled wall not even a couple feet behind the curtain. He began slowly creeping towards it. "A-and why are you in my shower?" Wait, what? Ryan stopped dead in his tracks, his train of thought carrying all his questions and concerns utterly derailed. He glanced down at his feet to confirm that he was, indeed, standing on the brown tiling of his bathroom floor and not on the white porcelain that ordained the bottom of his shower. "Uh, no I'm not, I'm standing right in front of my shower and, um... YOU'RE the one in MY shower!" There was a brief moment of silence. "What? You're being ridiculous, I'm staring right at my shower curtain and your voice is clearly coming from behind it, from inside my shower, so where else can you be?" The voice lost all traces of fear and had taken on an annoyed tone. Ryan then heard what he could only describe as the sound of hooves clopping on wood getting closer and closer before it seemingly stopped right behind his shower curtain. "And the library isn't open to visitors this late in the evening so, whoever you are sir, I'm going to have to ask you to lea-" The voice cut off. Ryan blinked. "Wh- wh- I- wha- this isn't possible, where are you??" The voice had taken to a frantic panic, and Ryan began slowly backing away from his shower. It sounded like some deranged mental institute patient was now residing in his shower, somehow completely out of sight. He surmised they must be curled up on the shower floor or something, just out of view from behind the curtain. "I'm, erm, in my bathroom?" Could he run out, grab his phone, and dial the police before whatever maniac that was in his shower managed to catch him? The bathroom door lock was only on the inside, maybe he could barricade the door? He cursed the thought away upon remembering the door opened into the bathroom. "No, this is MY bathroom! How are you doing this? Why can't I see you? Wait a minute." Ryan heard what sounded like a whooosh accompanied by some sort of "twinkling" from behind the curtain. He was now starting to doubt his previous mental patient theory. "What?! No no no that's impossible, there's no one here but me! What are you?!" With most his brain occupied with formulating a plan of escape, the question caught him completely off guard and he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "I'm, um... Asian?" Again there was silence, and Ryan mentally smacked himself in the head. Really? Asian? Yeah because that's obviously the right response to calm someone down. He opened his mouth to offer a better crafted response, but to his surprise his awkward answer would indeed succeed at calming his target down as when the voice would cut him off again, it carried a tone not of panic or worry, but pure confusion. "An asian? I don't recall reading or hearing about any sort of creature under that name. Or, wait, is that your name?" Ryan felt his eye twitch. Is that my-, excuse me?? In his mind, no longer was this some potentially dangerous figure lurking in his bathroom, for it was now just someone who happened to really tick him off. "What, are you actually for real?? Oh ha ha ha, so funny I forgot to laugh. How about you then, what's your race?!" "Well, I'm a unicorn." "..." Silence. Ryan stood frozen in silence for a half a minute as the response slowly sank into his mind, his jaw hanging open. A... unicorn? What the... what? This woman is absolutely out of it. It wasn't just the words that stunned him, it was the tone. It sounded as if they had been asked what their name was while they were wearing a bright neon name tag with their name in bold, with their name also etched across their shirt and tattooed on their forehead. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and cautiously began to approach the shower once more. "No you aren't, those aren't even real." He heard what sounded like an angry stomp. "Not real?! I think I'd know if I wasn't real!" Reaching out, he carefully grasped the shower curtain in his hand. "Oh really?!" With one swift motion, he threw the curtain to the side to reveal... ... nothing? Ryan practically leaped into his shower as his eyes darted all over, scanning every nook and cranny, every possible hiding spot no matter how small. Eying his shampoo bottle, he quickly knocked it to the floor half expecting to see some tiny woman hiding behind it. Nothing. Nothing at all. "Oh really what? Wait, are you some sort of enchanted shower curtain?" Ryan turned around in confusion. Now the voice seemed to be coming from outside the shower, directly behind the shower curtain once again. "No? Why and how could I even be a shower curtain?" He slowly peeked out from behind his curtain, looking around the room for the speaker. Despite seeing absolutely no one, the voice was now so close he could swear they were right beside him. "Well, your voice is clearly coming from my shower curtain, so I don't know. Are you using some sort of spell to talk to me through it? And, uh... why?" From the... shower... curtain... Ryan slowly turned to stare at his completely uninteresting, bare white shower curtain. Wait a minute. "Could you... repeat what you just said?" There was a pause. "You're using some sort of spell to-" "No no no, right before that!" He put his ear right up against the shower curtain. "Your voice is coming from my shower curtain." Ryan stepped back, his heart racing. The voice wasn't coming from his shower. It was coming from his shower curtain. With his back pressed tight against the nearest wall, he cautiously stepped out of the shower and pulled the shower curtain close. Once he back on his bathroom tile, he slowly slid down to the floor, his head starting to hurt. "Um, ma'am could you repeat that oneeee more time, please?" The voice complied with evident confusion. "Your voice is coming from my shower curtain?" Ryan smiled, the world going for a magnificent spin around him. "Thank you." Then he blacked out. Author's Note Woo! Hey look, I actually managed to finish a chapter the same day I started it rather than like six months after :'D Greatly appreciate any feedback in the comments! Experiments and SurprisesDarkness. "H-hello? S-sir wha-...?" "..." "Are you okay? Please, just say somethi- ..." "..." "Ohhhh what do I do what do I do-..." "... Ow." Ryan groaned softly. As he came to, he felt the cool touch of tile on his face, and he quickly realized he had fallen on his side at some point. He squeezed his eyes tighter and reached up to rub the back of his head, which twinged with a slight throbbing pain, possibly from where he hit the ground. Did I seriously pass out from exhaustion? And what am I doing in the bathroom? Ugh, I really need to take better care of myself. "A-are you okay sir?" Ryan blindly waved off in the direction of the apparently female voice, still massaging his still aching head. "Yeah, I'm fine thanks." He sucked in a bit of air through his teeth. "Yeeesh, I must have fallen over or something." Did one of his neighbors come in to check on him or something? It was a kind, heartwarming thought, but mixed with a bit of concern as he swore he remembered locking his door. "Well, thanks ma'am for checking in on me by the way, but, uh, how did you get in here again? I don't recall giving any of my neighbors a spare key." "Get in where? I'm still here, sitting in my bathroom." Your bathroom? Wha- ... Ryan groggily opened his eyes to take in his surroundings. He was still in his bathroom, though he had indeed fallen on his side directly in front of his shower. He still loosely clutched his toothbrush in his right hand, and, to his dismay, his shirt was a little wet from him having laid in some of the spilled water from his shower. At least the floor was dry now. "Are you sure you're alright? I can't see you or anything, but it sounded like you fell pretty hard over there." Ryan narrowed his eyes in confusion. "What do you mean you can't see me? I'm right next to-..." He turned his head to face his would-be helpful neighbor, only to be met with an empty shower, his shower curtain hanging over and covering its entrance entirely. He turned around and noted his open bathroom door. Maybe she was just outside? Sound can bounce in funny ways in enclosed rooms after all. He slowly started to climb to his feet so he could- "All I can see is the shower curtain in my bathroom, I have no idea where you are." He blinked. He was very familiar with funny bouncing echos, and that was no echo. The voice was indeed coming from right behind him, from his shower. He turned once more to face his shower and, after finally standing up, approached it with toothbrush in hand. He very slowly pulled back the curtain and peeked his head inside, confirming the absence of any helpful neighbors in his shower. "Um, can you say something again? Like, just anything." "Uh... sure?" The voice was practically in his ear. With an embarrassingly girlish scream, Ryan jumped back from his shower and threw his toothbrush at it. It bounced harmlessly on the hanging curtain and clattered to the tile floor. "Hey, what was that?! What's going on over there?" The minor jump scare had properly woke him up from his groggy state. With the fog now lifted from his brain, the full memory of the last half hour or so rushed back into his mind hard enough to make him recoil. Oh. OH. His eyes widened as he remembered where the voice was coming from and once again creeped up to his shower curtain, picking up his fallen toothbrush in the process."W- wait, that was all real? You're... real?" A quiet scoff sounded out from behind the curtain. "Yes, I am real, we went over that already." A wave of pain rippled across the back of Ryan's head. He winced and instinctively rubbed at it with a free hand. Carefully, he reached out with his toothbrush and gave the shower curtain a slow poke. Then a quick one. Nope, this is it, isn't it? I've worked myself to the bone and now the voices have come to break my mind. I can already feel the padded cell. He whined internally. But I don't want to wear a strai- "Helloooooooo? Is something wrong? You keep going quiet." Ryan continued to poke the curtain. "Oh no, everything is fine, voice-in-my-head. Let me guess, you're in my walls too, huh?" He heard what he could only imagine was an angry stomp. "Wha- I'm not a voice in your head, I am a pony! I even told you earlier, I'm a unicorn!" "Oh yeah? Prove you're not in my head." There was a pause. "Well, uh, hmm... Is there some experiment you had in mind that could convince you?" Ryan cocked his head. "An... experiment?" "Precisely! Last year, there was a brief, weird conspiracy spread around town by some wackos about whether we were all living in a giant shared dream created by Princess Luna. Finally they decided to conduct an experiment where they picked a random page of a massive book they all had copies of and had never read before. They each then read the first word at the top of that page and recited it one after another. If they were in a dream, they would've likely all said different words, but since they all said the same thing, they figured that they were all indeed awake and were satisfied, albeit extremely embarassed." Ryan blinked. Doubt began to creep through the back of his mind. He'd never heard of anything remotely like a Princess Luna. And that whole experiment idea was... pretty smart actually. He doubted his mind could've come up with that so quickly and on the spot, not to mention to that level of detail. He thought back to what the voice had said. "That... does give me an idea for an experiment actually. Can you, um, wait right there a second?" "Oh? Well, okay." With that, Ryan scrambled out of the bathroom, but not before sparing a quick glance at his shower curtain, half expecting it to disappear the moment it left his line of sight. When nothing happened, he ran over to his work desk and grabbed his phone from where it sat charging. He then ran over to one of his moving boxes and dug around a bit before pulling out a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. He had purchased them so he could relax to music even in a crowded area, but today it would serve a more... interesting purpose. Now holding both items, Ryan walked back to his bathroom and peeked inside. The shower curtain still hung uninterestingly from its metal bar, silence filling the room. He awkwardly coughed to clear his throat. "Um... you still there?" The response was immediate. "Oh! Yes I'm still here!" Dang it. Ryan sighed and entered his bathroom, walking over to the shower and sitting directly in front of the curtain. "Okay, so this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to play a random piece of music for about a minute or so while wearing headphones so I have no idea what's playing. After that, you'll need to briefly describe the music you heard. Then, I'll double check what was playing and compare it with your description. If you're really in my head, then there should be no way for you to know what's playing if I don't either." The voice was silent for a few seconds. "Hmm, that's actually a really neat idea for an experiment! Sure, let's do that!" Ryan had to stifle a laugh; the voice sounded unusually excited about it. Despite sounding like an adult woman, it carried the sort of bouncy cheer he'd imagine a child would have after being told they were going to Disneyland. "Alright, first I'll do a quick test to make sure this even works." He opened YouTube on his phone and searched for "Rain sounds for sleeping". After selecting a random video from the list, he pressed it and was immediately assaulted by the torturous, unbearable, inhumane sound of a mobile game ad. For the love of- "Sorry give me a moment!" Ryan quickly lowered his volume to zero and impatiently pressed at the Skip button for a painful five seconds before it was finally over. With that, the video changed to a looping scene of a closeup of rain hitting and sliding down a glass window. Satisfied, he turned the volume up to 75% and placed the phone screen down on the floor. "Are you able to hear this?" Again the voice was silent for a few seconds. "Woah, did you just make it rain over there? How are you-, uh, I- I mean yes I can hear that perfectly clear." "Alright then, here goes." With the confirmation he needed, Ryan put on his headphones and gave a moment to confirm he could no longer hear anything from his phone. He then closed the video and navigated to his various playlists. He had accessed his music playlists so often he could practically do it blindfolded. Turning his phone around so to no longer see the screen, he performed a series of memorized swipes and presses that would take him to a random playlist, shuffle it, then play the video that was moved to the top of the list. He placed the phone on the ground, screen down once more, and lightly brushed his finger against its speakers. Once he felt the telltale vibrations indicating audio was playing, he stood up and left the bathroom for his desk. "I'll be back in a minute to check on the results!" With his headphones preventing him from hearing any sort of response, he just shrugged and sat down in his work chair. He opened up his laptop's clock and stared at it in thought as the seconds slowly ticked up. This is so stupid, why am I even doing this? He sighed to himself and spared a glance at his bathroom, door still wide open. I... I have to be crazy right? Voices aren't supposed to come from shower curtains, so it has to be coming from my mind. He leaned back and looked up in contemplation. If I'm hearing the voice in my mind... shouldn't it be able to follow me wherever I go, regardless of headphones? Ryan looked back to his clock to see that roughly 86 seconds had passed since he sat down. Alright then, moment of truth. He got up and confidently walked back into the bathroom. He reached over to his phone and turned it off, effectively cutting off its music. He felt around the speakers to make sure it was indeed no longer playing before finally taking off his headphones. "Hello? Can you hear me?" No response. "Are you still there?" Ryan leaned a little closer to the shower curtain and raised his voice slightly. "Hellooo?" He heard a quiet gasp. "Ah! Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry I must have dozed off! The music was just so soothing and it's already getting late and-" "Hey hey hey, calm down, it's okay!" Ryan cut the voice off before it could continue rambling. "Do you still remember the music?" "Mhm, yes!" Ryan took a deep inhale and steadied himself. "Can you describe it for me?" There was a brief pause. "Well, I never really studied music so I don't think I can describe it in that way, but it sounded like there was a single cello playing. The melody was also really beautiful..." Ryan's eyes widened. A solo cello piece? There's only one like that across all my playlists. He fumbled to open his phone to read title of the currently open video. "Bach - Cello Suite No.1 i-Prelude", he whispered to himself. Out of the hundreds of songs and pieces on his variously purposed playlists, the voice had successfully identified the one and only piece that consisted of nothing but a single cello. "O-okay, well let's do one more then." "Sounds good to me!" Putting his headphones back on, Ryan shakily swiped and pressed around his phone blindly to pick out another random video before placing it face down on the tile. This time instead of leaving, he just remained seated beside the shower, his eyes blankly staring at the opposite wall. Is this... for real? Am I really talking to someone through my shower curtain? A... Ryan strained to remember what the voice called itself earlier. ... A unicorn no less? Or, maybe it's an alien. But if so, how is it speaking English? Agh this is making my head hurt. Once he was fairly confident a minute had passed, Ryan reached forward and shut off his phone once again before taking off his headphones. "Hey, you there?" There was an unusual hint of confusion in the response. "Y-yeah I'm still here." "Alright, can you describe this new song you just heard?" The voice hesitated. "I- I couldn't hear anything. I'm sorry, was the music supposed to be really quiet?" What. Ryan unlocked his phone once again and gazed at the screen. He had successfully navigated to an Imagine Dragons playlist, but it seemed due to how much his hands were shaking, his finger had completely missed the video, and he had forgotten to check the speakers for their vibrations. Nothing had been playing. He hadn't even considered the possibility of accidentally not playing anything. Sure there was a very, very, very small chance the voice could have randomly guessed which of his many videos he picked the first time, because he knew something was going to play. But to correctly guess something that wasn't even supposed to happen? Slowly but surely, the veil of doubt washed away from his mind. When he spoke again, his voice barely came above a whisper. "Y-you really are real? I'm not imagining this at all? You really are talking to me through my shower curtain?" There was a pause. "Well, from my end, you're also talking to me through my shower curtain, so... Yes! I suppose that's true." The last wall of denial came crashing down in Ryan's mind as he accepted the strange reality. He laughed softly. "Well, in that case, um, sorry for the really awkward first impression then. I was so certain I was going crazy." A gentle chuckle mirrored his own. "Oh, no worries, it's completely fine. I was honestly more worried about you. We were talking for a bit when you started asking me to repeat stuff, then it sounded like you collapsed! You weren't responding for nearly a minute, I thought something happened to you!" Ryan awkwardly looked away. "Yeaaah, sorry for that, I was really tired, and I think the shock of learning that someone was somehow talking to me through my shower curtain was a little too much for my brain to handle." He paused in thought, his curiousity now more than happy to fill the gap left by his fears and worries. "By the way, where are you talking to me from? I'm..." He hesitated, wondering how much info he was willing to share to this complete stranger. "... in my apartment in California, in the United States." There was a pause. "Oh? I've never heard of either of those locations. I'm in my bathroom at the Golden Oak Library in Ponyville, which is in Equestria." Ponyville? Equestria? What's up with the horse puns? Oh wait... Ryan racked his brain as he tried to remember what the voice had call itself earlier. "Youuuu said you're a... pony unicorn?" "Almost. I'm a-" The voice paused. "Well my species is pony and my race is unicorn, so I'm a unicorn pony!" Ryan deadpanned. Ah yes, that definitely clears things up. "Well, I should probably clarify what I said before. Asian was my race; my species is human." There was an audible gasp. "Oh wow this is amazing! I've read through the entire Canterlot Archives front and back and there's not a single reference to any species called a 'human' anywhere! It's been centuries since the last documented discovery of another sentient species!" Ryan took an involuntary step back at the voice's sudden upwards shift in pitch and volume. Despite being the only one physically in the room, it somehow felt like his personal space was being harshly violated. "Where on Equus do all of you live?! Is your United States a small island chain overseas? We've mapped out almost the entirety of the planet, but there's probably a few islands here and there that have yet to be discovered." Ha! The United States as a small island chain? Cute. "Actually, it's pretty huge. It takes up a huge chunk of the continent we're on." Confusion laced the voice's tone. "What? A huge part of a continent? That's nearly impossible. Unless you're all extremely sparsely distributed, there's no land on the planet that large that hasn't already been explored and mapped." Ryan laughed as he stared at the wall immediately separating his bathroom from the next door apartment. "Oh no, we're hardly spaced apart here. Or at least, the region I live in." "Well, how many of you humans are there in the United States?" Ryan paused, thinking about the implications behind the question. "Do you want to know how many humans live here in my country? Or across the whole world?" "... there's more of you everywhere?" Ryan chuckled. "Yep, we're pretty much all over the w-" "The whole world then! How many of there are across the whole world?" Ryan blinked and shook his head to regain his train of thought after being cut off. "As a rough estimate, the world population is somewhere between seven to eight billion people right now." A whole minute of silence. Starting to get worried, Ryan grabbed his toothbrush and began repeatedly poking the shower curtain. "Hey, you still with m-" "BILLION?!" Ryan jumped at the outburst, quickly scrambling to a standing position. "No, this isn't scientifically possible. YOU are not scientifically possible! The pony population of Equestria alone doesn't even come up to ten million, even after adding the combined populations of all the other nations! There's no way a population THAT large can remain so undetected, there's not a single reference to it across all of history! Unless..." At the same time, Ryan's head was also going in overdrive. Nearly ten million? Mapped and explored almost the entire world? Without us knowing? There's no way a civilization can hide that well with all of us all over the place. Either Atlantis is real, Antarctica is hiding something big, or... or... They both came to the same realization at the same time. "We're not on the same world." "We're not on the same world." "..." Ryan opened his mouth to ask something, but was cut off by a quiet gasp from the other side. The voice returned, but much quieter this time. "Oh my gosh, I completely forgot about Spike! I don't want him finding out about this yet." Spike? Ryan went to ask who that was, but was cut off before he even started to speak. "I'll make sure he doesn't come in here, but I won't be able to talk with you again until he leaves tomorrow at noon to go help Rarity." What's with these names? There was a brief silence, and when the voice came back it did so with a trace of worry. "Wi- will you still be here?" Ryan nodded, despite knowing the speaker couldn't see him. "Yeah, I'll still be around, don't worry." He paused. "I'll leave my bathroom door open too, so I'll be able to hear whenever you're back." He heard a sigh of relief. "That's great to hear, I have sooooo many questions to ask and-" There was a pause, during which Ryan swore he could very faintly hear the sound of a door closing. "I have to go. Talk to you tomorrow?" "Yeah, talk to you tomorrow." He could hear the sound of hooves on wood begin to fade away, and he was about to leave as well when a thought suddenly occurred to him. "Wait!" The hoofsteps stopped and quickly came back around. "What is it?" Ryan swallowed and inhaled slowly. "My... my name is Ryan, it's nice to meet you." There was a soft giggle, and Ryan could practically hear the warm smile from the other side of the curtain. "My name is Twilight Sparkle. It's nice to meet you too, Ryan." With that, the hoofsteps once more faded into the distance before being silenced by a closing door. Author's Note New chapter! Started and finished on the same day too, which is fairly rare for me if you were to check the dates of updates on my other multi-chapter stories (yikes) Again, please feel free to leave feedback in the comments! It's been a long time since I've felt my writer's block lifted like this, so I'll do my best to keep it that way. Thanks for all the kind comments on the first chapter! I'm glad to see so many ponies interested in my story. Questions and DisbeliefThe rest of the evening went by rather uneventful for Ryan. After the voice, or Twilight Sparkle as it had self identified, supposedly left him alone, he had remained in the bathroom, still staring at the curtain in disbelief. Question after question ran through his head. Did he really just make contact with an alien species? And how could they already speak English? And what in the world were those names? Ryan had called out for the voice again for several minutes, hoping for a response. After a while, he finally decided whoever he had been speaking with had indeed decided to leave, and he gave up and left to finish up with his day. He still had yet to brush his teeth, and he could practically hear the soft mattress of his bed calling out to him. Of course, he made sure to leave the bathroom door wide open. If the voi- if Twilight really did return, he wanted to be sure he'd hear her immediately. Now, as he lay tossing and turning in bed, his thoughts refused to drift to anywhere but the strange interactions of the day. Sure, it had passed his little test, but for all he knew he could've just been dreaming the whole time. Maybe he was still dreaming right now; the mind was a powerful thing after all and could easily have concocted this whole scenario. He had read up on some disturbing stories in which people have experienced years of an imaginary life, all while being unconscious for merely a few minutes. He shuddered at the thought. He began to reach a hand up to pinch his arm in some silly attempt to test if he was dreaming, but the blanket of sleep began to slowly descend upon his mind, and he decided against putting off his much needed rest any further. With what little energy he had left, he tilted his head up to sweep his eyes around his dark, mostly empty apartment. There was no scarcity of sound by any means; muffled through his front door came the distant, ambient sounds of the city. The honks of cars, incoherent voices, and occasionally passing footsteps created a sort of white noise that permeated through the fog of sleep while also strengthening it. He had worked aggressively over the past year to finally afford this place, which had put a strain on the few social relationships he still had. In fact, now that he thought of it, his new mysterious company within his shower curtain had been the last friendly voice he had held some sort of casual conversation with in over a year. As suspicious as he was over whether it had been real, he'd be lying if he said it wasn't a little pleasant. Whoever this Twilight Sparkle was, she sounded... genuinely friendly and sincere. He turned again in his bed and sighed deeply, sparing one final glance at his apartment as the weight upon his eyes gently lowered his eyelids. The wider space, the gentle heating, everything was far better than his last place. The only thing that remained the same was the pang of loneliness he felt every time he drifted off to sleep. "...psssst..." "..." "...psssssssst..." "Wuh-?" Snort. "Fi- five more minutes..." "R- Ryan? Are you there?" Another snort, followed by a long snore. "Ryaaaaaaan?" "..." "Oh for Celestia's sake, it's like I'm waking up Spike..." A pause. "In that case..." "..." "RYAN!!" "Huhwahdahe- ow!" Ryan shouted in pain as the sudden scare sent him tumbling out of bed onto the carpet. He groaned from the impact and slowly climbed to his feet, silently praising his decision to not go with a harder flooring material. He blinked his eyes groggily and shook his head to clear his mind. He gave his apartment a quick once over and groaned internally upon landing his gaze on the several still-packed cardboard moving boxes sitting in front of his front door. He moved to begin unpacking them when, after a few seconds, he registered why he was woken up in the first place. "Hey wait a minute, who's there?!" He ran to the middle of his apartment, searching around for any signs of a potential intruder. "What do you want?" "Ryan, it's me! From yesterday? Or last night I suppose." The feminine sounding voice echoed out from his bathroom, its door still wide open just as he had left it last night, and once again his mind gave him a quick refresher on yesterday's interactions. Oh. Right. Slowly, he approached his open bathroom and peeked in, his eyes falling upon his white shower curtain. "Tw- Twilight Sparkle? Is that you?" "Yep, that's me, but you can just call me Twilight! Good morning, Ryan!" Oh dear God, this really is still happening. "Uhh, good morning to you too, Twilight." He reached for his phone and unlocked it to gaze at the time, which read 10:24 AM. Oh wow, I slept all the way to ten? I must have been more tired than I thought. The voice—no, Twilight—hummed contently in response. "So! I have so many questions for you! As a precaution, I've cast a sound-proofing on my bathroom to make sure any sounds on your end don't make it out here and attract any unwanted attention when guests are visiting the library. Not that any of them should ever be up here anyway, but still just in case! I've also told Spike that this bathroom is completely clogged and to just use the downstairs one, so we shouldn't need to worry about him. I talked with one of my friends about it and she offered to let Spike use the shower at her boutique whenever he needs to." There was a soft giggle. "He seemed more than eager to go for that, no questions asked! Hehe I wonder why..." A brief flicker of recognition crossed Ryan's mind. Spike? I swear she mentioned that name yesterda- agh my legs. Before saying anything, he quickly ran out and dragged his desk chair into the bathroom, plopping it right in front of the shower curtain before taking a seat. While his mind was certainly awake now, his body didn't seem to take kindly to being made to stand for a while right after waking up. "Uh, who's this Spike? I think I heard you bring him up yesterday a couple times." "Oh, Spike's my dragon assistant! He helps me out with managing the library, as well as with... hmmm..." A brief pause. "Actually he helps me out with pretty much everything! He lives with me here at the library, so when I heard the shower turn on here, I thought it was just Spike taking another one of his unusually long showers. I'm guessing that was you instead?" "Yeah, I had just finished with my shower before I heard you the first time and-" Ryan blinked. Wait a minute. "Woah woah woah, wait, you said Spike is a dragon?!" Twilight hummed in confirmation. "Mhm! Yeah, I know it's a little strange. As far as I know, Spike is the first dragon to really grow up among ponies. Sure, there's a few settlements with dragons throughout Fillydelphia, but they usually only stick to themselves." "... you have dragons?!" There was a quiet scoff. "Well, yeah? Most of them live in the Dragon Lands some distance southeast of Equestria." A brief moment of silence. "I... don't suppose you have those over there?" Have dragons here?! "Twilight, dragons don't exist here on Earth! Neither do unicorns for that matter, they're both considered mythological creatures. And even in legends and stories, they're usually more... wild... and not living in cities or taking showers or, well, talking." "Ooooo this is fascinating!" Ryan could hear her practically bouncing around in excitement on the other end. "Some of the creatures here don't exist on your world, and yet are present in your legends and myths? This is so exciting! Oh wait wait wait! I want to know just how many of our species exist as myths for you!" Ryan blanched. "There's more?! And they're all sentient creatures that can talk and everything?" "Uhuh! So first off are my species, ponies, which is split into three main races of unicorns—like me!—, pegasi, and earth ponies! There's also a fourth race known as an alicorn, but there's only three known alicorns so they're a bit of an exception." "Pegasi? That sounds like..." Ryan's mind raced through its memory of mythological creatures. "Is that plural for a Pegasus? And what's up with alicorns? Only three in the world?! Are they, like, endangered or something? " Twilight chuckled. "Yep, 'pegasus ponies' works too, but it's just a lot faster to say 'pegasi'. And no, the three alicorns are actually all rulers of Equestria. Or sort of. The Royal Sisters, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna rule over Equestria together. Princess Cadance rules over the Crystal Empire just up in the frozen North of Equestria. It's too large to be considered as just a city, and it's too far and isolated from the rest of Equestria to be properly maintained and managed from Canterlot, so Cadance was given the responsibility of presiding over it alongside her husband, Shining Armor." Ryan nodded calmly, while on the inside having a near mental breakdown trying to process the influx of information. "Well aren't you quite familiar with your leaders?" He snickered a little. "Anyway, yeah we do have, well, normal ponies, but they definitely aren't capable of like, being a working citizen of a country or something. The pegasus is also a creature of mythology here: a winged horse. And I'm guessing an alicorn is a pony with both wings and a horn?" "Well, I am the personal..." There was a brief pause. "I like to stay up to date with Equestrian history! And mmm, alicorns are a little more than that. Oh! That reminds me, there's technically another race of ponies exclusively from the Empire called the Crystal ponies! They're a bit like earth ponies in that they lack wings or a horn, but..." Twilight paused. "They're sort of more... crystally? They also hold a special kind of magic attuned to the Empire itself, sorry there aren't too many books about them circulating the public libraries yet, so I can't really tell you too much about them." Ryan took a deep breath in before slowly releasing it. "...magic?" "Uhm, what about it?" "You're saying magic is real over there too?" A quiet gasp, then silence. "... Uh, Twili-" "You don't have magic?!" Ryan winced at the short-range, verbal onslaught on his poor eardrums not even a half hour after waking up. He reached up to massage his now ringing ears. "Ow? Chill with the yelling please, Twilight. And to answer your question, no. No, we do not. I feel like it should be more a surprise your world has magic instead of ours lacking it.." Twilight stammered "Bu- but magic is everywhere! Within every creature! Within, well, everything! If I plucked a random pebble from outside, I'd probably be able to detect even the tiniest of magic signatures inside. I- I can't begin to imagine a world completely devoid of it... Are you sure there's no magic anywhere where you are?" Ryan laughed. "Yeah I think I'd know if magic was re-" Then he paused, glancing at the ceiling in thought. How... would I know if magic was real here? There's gotta be a million things we didn't know existed yet not even a hundred years ago. He laughed again, a little drier this time."You know what, I'm actually not sure anymore. Anything is possible at this point. I'm talking to you after all from like, halfway across the universe or something with hilariously low latency. If it's real here, I suppose we just haven't discovered it. Speaking of which, how is magic used over there?" "Every species on Equus has magic in them and can also access the magic field in different ways, but its our pony species that by far can use magic the most. Unicorns can actively channel magic through their horn for basic things like levitating objects or casting light around them. Pegasi passively channel magic through their whole body to fly and manipulate weather, mainly clouds. Lastly, earth ponies passively channel magic to have higher strength, endurance, and stamina, but also have a strong connection to the earth that lets them tend to crops way better than anypony else!" Ryan hummed back in acknowledgement, encouraging her to continue as he desperately scribbled notes down on a notebook he grabbed off his desk halfway through Twilight's little lecture. "Alicorns are a special case. In addition to being able to use magic the same way all three pony races can, each of them have a special kind of alicorn magic within them that's attuned to their special talent. Cadance is the princess of love, and so she can feel the love between all ponies all throughout her Empire and, with the help of an artifact called the Crystal Heart, amplifies that love throughout Equestria." That sounds pretty sappy. Ryan jotted down more notes in his notebook and hummed for Twilight to continue. "Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are the princesses of day and night respectfully, and so they both draw power from their respective celestial bodies of the sun and the moon. Naturally, Princess Celestia uses this magic to control the rising and setting of the sun in the sky, and until Princess Luna's return, she also did so for the moon. Princess Luna is now once again in charge of the movement of the moon across the sky, but she also is tasked with monitoring the dreamscape to ensure all ponies in Equestria sleep without nightmares." Ryan stared forward at the curtain, his mouth wide open. His pencil fell away and clattered noisily to the tile floor. "...Ryan? You still with me?" "..." "I know that was probably a lot to take in, but if you have any questions, just te-" "THEY CAN MOVE THE SUN?!" Now it was Ryan's turn to shout in disbelief. A quiet whimper sounded out from behind the curtain, and Ryan surmised Twilight was probably massaging her ears just like he had previously. "I mean, the moon too, but the sun?!" "Well, how else are they supposed to rise and set?" Ryan blanched. "How else?! Doesn't your planet rotate on an axis? You know, to give the appearance of rising and setting?" Silence, broken by a sheepish, nervous laugh. "... noooo?" Ryan deadpanned. Unicorns, pegasi, dragons, alicorns that can move entire stars, magic?! When I said anything is possible, I didn't mean THIS level of anything! Ohhhh what could possibly top this? A curious thought passed through his mind. "Say Twilight, about how old is this Princess Celestia?" "Oh, I think a little over 1,500 years old! Princess Luna is just a little younger by about ten years according to the records." "..." "...Ryan?" "I, uh..." Yep, there goes my brain. Out the window it goes, taking all my common sense with it. "Wow... that's a lot..." A soft rumble echoed throughout the bathroom. Ryan's eyes widened as he realized just how long it had been since he last ate. "Uh, Twilight?" "Hmmm? What is it, Ryan?" Ryan stood up and shuffled awkwardly on his feet. "I, mmm, haven't eaten yet today... and noon is fast approaching, so I'm gonna have to head out for a bit to-" "Wha- you're leaving already? But it hasn't even been a half hour..." A hint of sadness and disappointment snuck its way through Twilight's tone, and Ryan couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt. "I barely even got to any of my questions... When will you be back?" "Well, I was thinking in about forty minutes. How long were you wanting to talk?" "... three hours?" Three hours?! She... was looking forward to this that much? Hmm... Ryan bit his lip. "Well, I mean, I could probably grab something really quick from a place close by and head back right away. That'd take me only about twenty minutes or so. Would that be better?" "Oh?" There was significantly less sadness in Twilight's voice now. "Yes! That would be perfect!" Ryan heard what sounded like hooves clapping together. "Alright then, well, I'll be back in a bit!" Ryan grabbed his phone and began to head for the front door. "R- Ryan, wait!" Ryan wheeled back around in confusion and rushed back to the open bathroom door. "Yeah, what is it Twilight?" There was a few seconds of awkward silence, during which Ryan heard what he imagined was Twilight fidgeting on her hooves. "Can... can you play that music from yesterday again? If I remember right, you had some object that let you play music wherever you were and, well, I really liked it." Ryan blinked as he recalled his little "experiment" from the previous evening. "Oh! You mean the Bach cello suite?" A pause. "Is that what it's called? It was really beautiful, and I nearly fell asleep to it." Ryan laughed quietly. "Yeah, it's a really beautiful piece. Okay, how about this." He picked up his laptop and carried it over to the chair still sitting in front of the bathroom curtain before dragging his laptop charger over to plug it in to one of the bathroom's sockets. After a few seconds of searching, he found the piece he was looking for on YouTube. He made sure to set the video on loop, then hit play and turned up the volume to fifty percent. "Are you able to hear this?" He heard of gentle hum of content from his shower curtain. "Mmmm, yes I can hear it, that's the one. Thanks so much, Ryan..." Her voice began to trail off. "The recording of this first cello suite is about nineteen minutes, so hopefully I'll get back right when it ends. Just in case though, I set it up to repeat when it ends so it doesn't leave you hanging." "Thanks Ryan, I'll be here waiting for you. I still have to..." A long, soft yawn sneaked its way into Twilight's sentence. "... ask you about the rest of our 'mythological' species..." Finally, Twilight's voice dropped quiet enough to the point where, if she was still talking, it could not longer be heard over the sound of classical cello resonating and amplified by the miracle of bathroom acoustics. Yeeesh, if only I could fall asleep that fast! Ryan suppressed a giggle as he turned around and made his way out the front door. No doubt there were probably a dozen or so more nonexistent, mythological creatures roaming around Twilight's world, but he'd rather deal with those impossibilities on a full stomach. Author's Note Next chapter should be up by next week! Currently expecting it to be far longer than the current three chapters! My indecisive butt is probably gonna end up changing this chapter title like several times this hour so heads up lmao (alright I think I'm good after like the 4th change haha!) Historical TangentsRyan returned to his apartment with a cheerful smile and a half-eaten breakfast sandwich in his hand. He checked his phone for the time and, as expected, it had taken about nineteen minutes to depart, order a quick meal, wait for its completion, and return home with his prize in hand. The walk back had caused the sandwich to lose much of its heat, but food was food, and this morsel was just enough to restore his energy for the morning. Besides, at least it wasn't cold or anything. As soon as he laid his eyes on the interior of his humble abode, he spotted the still-open bathroom door and remembered that he had someone waiting for him. Quietly, he closed his front door as to make as little sound as possible. With the ambient sounds of the city no longer pouring into his room, he could hear the faint sounds of his favorite cello piece echoing out from his bathroom. He recognized the notes as belonging to the last part of the cello suite, meaning he had returned just in time before the piece could loop. After silently kicking off his shoes, Ryan held his breath and began tip-toeing carefully to his bathroom. Thankfully, the few days he had spent living there had taught him what specific parts of the floor are most likely to creak, and he made an effort to steer clear of those. Upon reaching the bathroom, he peaked inside. Everything was exactly where he had left it; his laptop sat on his work chair which remained in front of the shower, its curtain still safely draped across the splash area. Ryan leaned forward towards his laptop and brushed a finger across the touchpad to turn on its screen. Sure enough, the video was still playing with about twenty seconds remaining on the music. He stood there quietly for the remaining duration, enjoying the final notes in the piece until it got to a final, drawn-out chord. Once the final note concluded, he reached over and gently pushed on the space key, pausing the video before it could loop. With the music no longer filling the bathroom air, he focused on his hearing and was able to make out some faint breathing noises coming from the shower curtain, confirming the presence of his mysterious companion. Not wanting to leave his precious laptop in such a precarious spot, he carefully picked it up off the chair and carried it back over to his work desk before closing it. He thought about bringing his chair back out, but realized it might make too much noise if he hit a wall or so much as scraped the tiled floor with it. Making his way back to the bathroom, he placed both his hands on chair's back and leaned forward as much as he could, turning his head so right ear pressed against the shower curtain. Sure enough, he could hear soft, slow rhythmic breathing on the other side. Despite the absurdity of the situation, he couldn't help but snicker a little. So... she fell asleep to it again, huh? Ryan recalled that Twilight had supposedly dozed off during his experiment yesterday involving that same cello piece. And after only a couple minutes of it no less. It seemed she was no match for a full nineteen minutes of it. A small grin made its on his face as he took a step back to fully face the curtain. This is for knocking my sense of reality on its feet yesterday. "TWILIGHT!" "Gaahh!!" Ryan heard a loud crash on the other side of the curtain, accompanied by a pained yelp and followed up with a soft groan. "Ughh... Ryan, wa- was that you?" Ryan covered his mouth with his hands and tried his best to remain quiet, but to his dismay a small snicker sneaked through his fingers. "Wha- it was!" Twilight's voice took on a tone of expected indignation. A couple of angry stomps resounded through the curtain."That wasn't funny, you made me knock over my trash bin!" Oh I can't anymore. Losing all composure, Ryan keeled over in laughter and almost lost his footing on the tile floor. He heard an annoyed huff, which made it even harder to stop laughing. "... Are you done yet?" After a few more seconds of mirth, Ryan finally closed his eyes and breathed deep, holding it in for a little before letting it all out. "Wooooooo. Yep, yep I'm done. Sorry, I just couldn't resist haha. Wow, you fall asleep really easily to this piece! You really love it that much?" Twilight let out an embarrassed laugh. "Well, yes actually! There's a pony who lives near the outskirts of Ponyville named Octavia who plays the cello. She's part of the orchestra in Canterlot, which hosts concerts of solo performances every so often. I used to attend those a lot when I used to live there, and occasionally I still do if it happens to be land on a day and time that my schedule is free." There's another name... Ryan leaned against the wall. "Octavia, huh? Is she one of your unicorn friends? I'm guessing my music sounds a lot like hers, right?" "Nope, she's an Earth pony." Ryan went over his memory of Twilight's explanation of the different pony races. Earth pony... that's the one with... no wings and no horn! Wait, no horn? His eyes furrowed in confusion. That means no magic. How the hell does she play a cello then?! Twilight hummed in thought. "And yes, that cello piece sounds exactly like the kind of music she usually composes! Her concerts are the only time I can listen to it though. They only make a limited number of vinyl records for each performance, and every time I've never been able buy one before they run out of supplies." There was a pause, followed by a quiet, annoyed grumble. "Though sometimes it feels like those richer, Canterlot nobles are somehow reserving records before the actual performances..." Geez, the rich elite having advantages over others? Guess her society isn't that much different from ours... Well, minus the flying, magic, and who knows how many other fantastical species exist there. Ryan laughed. "So I take it you can't really listen to music like that whenever you want then? Or wherever you want for that matter?" Twilight hummed in thought. "Well, that sounds a bit like a music box. Those are these wooden, mechanical instruments using a metal cylinder and comb that-" "-plays music when a crank is turned?" A second passed. "... yes! Precisely!" Ryan blinked in surprise. "Yeah, we... have those, too. Same name and everything. Though we have these things called phones that can hold a lot more music than the one piece a music box can play, among other things." "Wow, really?! This is incredible, I didn't realize just how many terms are shared between our worlds! I've got to write this all down." Yeah, this is getting weird... Ryan listened to what sounded like mess of hooves clopping and paper scattering. A thought crossed his mind. "Wait, that reminds me... Do you still have that list of those other species you wanted to ask me about?" There was a brief moment of silence. "Yes, I still have them on hoof. Did you want to check those out now?" Ryan chuckled inwardly at the horse puns of 'on hand' and cracked his knuckles. "If that's alright, yeah. Something just occurred to me." "...what was that?" Ryan blinked. "What was what?" "That sound you just made. It sounds awfully familiar somehow." He pondered for a moment what she could possibly be talking about when it hit him. "Oh! Yeah, I was just cracking my knuckles. Sorry, it's a bit of a habit of mine, I probably shouldn't be doing that when talking to someone anyway." There was a pause. "Knuckles? Wait a minute, that sounds like... oh my gosh, I can't believe I forgot about that!" What is she on about? Ryan furrowed his eyes in utter confusion. "Forgot about what?" "Your anatomy!" Ryan's eyes widened in realization. "Oh, I-, uh-, I mean yes, I guess I never-" "Do you have claws? Paws? Hooves? Talons? How many limbs do you have?" "Hold on, wait a-" "How many eyes? How tall is your species on average? What about average weight?" "Wai-" "Where do humans usually live? Or what do you eat? Oh! What about your-" "Twilight!" "...oh. Sorry!" Ryan couldn't help but laugh a little. "No, you're fine, that was just... a little too fast for me to process. I did catch your first few questions though. First off, we typically have four limbs: two legs and two arms." "Two legs? Oh, so human are bipedal!" Ryan blinked. "Yyyyyyyyyes. Yep! I'd imagine this is different for your world, where you said is filled with quadrupeds?" "Mhm, most sentient races in our world are quadruped, but there are definitely exceptions like with Minotaurs and juvenile dragons. Juvenile dra- you know what, nevermind. "Gotcha. Also no, we don't really have claws on our arms. We call those hands." Twilight hummed in thought. "Hands, hands... Hmm, that's very interesting." Ryan tilted his head curiously. "What is it?" "Well, it's something I've never really thought of before. But as far as I'm aware, of the few documented sentient species here that use the term arm for their upper limbs, none of them use the term 'hand' for the extension of the limb. However, it's used universally as a verb for giving or passing something. There is also the expression of giving or lending a hand, which is interchangeable with 'lending a hoof', but I've never really questioned it until now." "Really? We use 'hand' for all the same expressions here." There was a loud gasp, followed by the rustling papers and the sound of scribbling. "Wha- Twilight, are you really taking a note of that?" Twilight stammered. "I-, of course I am! Proper research requires thorough documentation!" "Wowwww, glad to know I'm just your research topic." "That's not what I meant!" Ryan let loose a snicker. "Pfft, I know, I'm just messing with you." He swore he could hear a muffled exasperated growl. "Ha. Ha. Very funny. You and Rainbow Dash would get along veryyyyyy well." Rainbow Dash, huh? "Let me guess, Rainbow is a pegasus pony?" "Hmm? Oh, yes, that's correct. How'd you figure?" "Rainbow... Dash? The name just feels a bit... self-intuitive." "What do you-... oh, hmmm... I suppose so!" Twilight chuckled. "Anyways, sometime later I'm probably going to do some research on the origin of that 'hand' word. It does perplex me how that word exists for us when, well, none of us have any hands." Ryan laughed. "Alright then, let me know how that goes!" He took a bite out of what remained of his breakfast sandwich, noting most of its heat had long since dissipated during their talk. "Soooo, before I left, you mentioned something about asking me more about those... 'mythological creatures' of your world?" "Okay, sure! Just lemme..." There was some more rustling of paper. "Here we go! Yes, there are many sentient species spread throughout Equus, most of which are somewhat documented, but there are many of them that likely remain elusive to us." Dang, not all sentient species are accounted for over there? That's a lot of interesting first encounters just waiting to happen. "How much of your world has been explored already? Here on Earth, almost every strip of land is mapped out and then some! We still know pretty little about our oceans, though." Twilight gasped in shock. "The whole world mostly mapped out?! That's amazing! I mean, most of Equestria itself is roughly mapped out, but I can't say the same for much of the surrounding nations' land." Ooooo yes, politics. Must be worse than ours then. "How come?" "Well, long before the First Long Night, during Equestria's expansionsist era, no official borders formally existed. Scribes and cartographers would travel outwards from Canterlot to map out the surrounding land, both for documentation and to scout out potential locations of settlement. Because there were little to no larger pockets of sentient species on the mainland, Equestria expanded to cover most of the continent, stopping just short of the Frozen North. When we tried expanding overseas however, we came across much larger regions occupied by other sentient species like dragons, griffons, zebras, or yaks, with established systems of rule." Ryan hummed in thought. "Yaks? Griffons are also part of mythology and legend here, but we've got yaks." "Oh! Sentient?" "Nah." There was a soft sigh. "Right. If I ever saw your world, I already know that sight would be pretty... upsetting, as much as I'd still want to witness that for research purposes." Haha, we got Planet of the Apes for that. "Yeah, I get what you mean." Twilight cleared her throat. "Anyways, after several months of back and forth negotiating, the first of many treaties was signed between the two Princesses of Equestria and the known leaders of the other species that established a formal committee for international affairs. Well... calling it a formal committee might be pushing it. The main accomplishment was recognizing each other as separate nations and establishing official borders for the Dragon Lands, the Griffon Kingdom, and Yakyakistan, and to make sure no one tried expanding into another's land. The dragons stubbornly remained hostile to anyone who crossed into their territory, agreeing to maintain nonaggression when on foreign land. Of course, there's been a few... isolated incidents, but for the most part nothing major." Ryan scoffed. "So basically, 'we won't go out of our way to screw with you, but all bets are off if you make it easy for us'?" "I- ," Twilight chuckled. "Yes, I suppose that's a way to put it. In any case, they weren't very open to ponies trekking across the border to survey their geography. Griffons were more tolerant of visiting creatures, but made it clear mapping attempts were not welcome. The yaks stated they wouldn't stop anyone who wanted to try, but back then the storms in the north were far harsher, so it was not worth the risk to most cartographers when most ponies didn't care much for exploring beyond our borders." Ryan pondered the implications. "So... do maps of the world just leave the areas like the dragon kingdom as like, some mysterious region? 'Here there be monsters'?" "Griffon Kingdom," Twilight corrected. "But no, there's a rough approximation of foreign geography used in modern maps. Around a century ago, international trade became more common, and the hostility from griffons and dragons had settled down enough to where scout pegasi could fly the outskirts of the borders to map the regions leading into their lands. For the griffons, this included the west-most city, Griffonstone, in its entirety. Ponies rarely venture further east of Griffonstone, so maps just cut off there. The dragons, as far as we know, don't have individual cities, but we know so little about them and their history and culture to begin with. The few stories of ponies being... eaten by dragons in old history scare most ponies from even thinking of getting close!" Dang... well, at least dragons being generally scary is consistent between our worlds. Ryan thought about this information for a bit, poking the shower curtain absentmindedly. "Dragons in our legends and myths vary a lot. In some, they're sentient and can talk, but in others, they're just mindless beasts. They're used in a lot of stories and movies nowadays. There's even a whole book and movie franchise around a character learning to tame and ride a dragon!" "What?!" Twilight exclaimed, before giggling. "We definitely don't have something like that around here, but it sounds like something Spike would find funny." Spike... Spike... Oh, her dragon assistant, right. "What, the whole 'riding a dragon' part? Is that concept no-" "Oh no, that's a thing here too in some stories or comics. It's the 'taming a dragon' part since, you know... they can talk?" Oh. "Ah! My bad." Ryan scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "Yeah... that'd be pretty weird. Anyways, didn't you also mention zebras?" "Oh, oops. Like I said, zebras were among the many sentient species Equestria encountered during its expansion and are also among the committee, but unlike with the others, first contact was very peaceful, mainly in that the scouting party wasn't attacked on sight. They were very welcoming and open to exchanging information, though at the time none of it could be understood as every species had their own native language. A prominent sorcerer, Starswirl the Bearded, helped alongside the zebras to create the first universal translator spell, which would be why Princess Celestia would even be able to negotiate with the griffons, dragons, and yaks." Holdddd up. Ryan's jaw dropped. "No way, a universal translation spell? That would be a breakthrough if something like that was developed here, and you're saying this has been a thing over there for centuries?!" "Yep! Anyways, back to what I was saying, once stable communication was established, a lot of information was exchanged, including a good chunk of the geography for the zebra homeland. Once the rest of the land's geography was recorded, a consistent trade route was established, though this shrank following the First Long Night and only Canterlot directly trades with them currently. For the rest of Equestria, zebras gradually became enshrowded in mystery, and their cultural tie with nature spawned many unpleasant rumors about them. It doesn't help that zebras never venture into Equestria, save for one who actually lives near Ponyville in the Everfree Forest, named Zecora." Twilight stifled a snort. "All those rumors must have really gotten to the ponies here when Zecora began making regular surprise visits looking for certain herbs or flowers that she hoped might grow here. They even started to get to me, despite me knowing they weren't true. That was a... very interesting experience for me and my friends that I'll have to tell you another time." Ryan chuckled. "I mean... I don't have anywhere else to be right now." A soft hum of contemplation bounced around the bathroom. "Hmmmm, I suppose so... wait. Oh my gosh. Oh no." "Huh?" Ryan asked worriedly, backing up slightly. "Is somethingggg wrong?" "I can't believe I forgot, I promised to help one of my friends with revising their speech for presenting her new fashion line, and her speech is in thirty minutes!" There was a groan of exasperation. "I didn't even get to most of the questions on my list, I got myself in a tangent answering yours!" Ryan shrank a little. "Oh. Sorry." "Nonono, you're fine, Ryan, I know you probably have as many questions as I do, I just realllyyy enjoy explaining things. I'll be back in maybe an hour or two, will you still be around by then?" Ryan did a brief mental check of his completely empty schedule for the day. "I... should be, yeah." "Perfect! I'm so sorry, I didn't want to just cut off our talk like this but I lost track for time and-" "Twilight!" Ryan interjected. "It's alright, I've done this sort of thing tonssss of times before, you're fine." Twilight let out a relieved laugh. "Haha, well alright then, thanks. I'll be back soon!" "See ya!" Ryan listened as Twilight's galloping began to fade away, only to quickly return. "Oh! Also! If for whatever reason, you hear Spike enter the bathroom, pleaaaase try not to make any noise. I don't want him becoming suspicious." Ryan nodded to the curtain. "Okay, I'll try. Um... what does Spike sound like?" "Young and male. You know what, scratch that. Just apply that to anyone you hear who isn't me!" Ryan laughed. "Alright, got it!" He paused. "And good luck with that speech!" "Thanks! Bye again!" Before Ryan could respond, he heard the bathroom door somewhere on the other side of the curtain slam shut, further muffling the waning sounds of Twilight's hooves. After a few more seconds, the bathroom fell utterly silent once more. Ryan reached up and gently brushed the otherwise normal-looking shower curtain aside, revealing a completely ordinary shower. Of all things... how did this?... He stared blankly at his porcelain tiles before letting the curtain fall back into place. Anyways, what was I doing before I came back here? I swear I'm forgetting somethi- His stomach rumbled, and he glanced to his left hand which still held his cold, half-eaten breakfast sandwich. "Oh. Right." Author's Note sorry for the massive delay! 1.3k words of this chapter were written within a week of the previous chapter publish, then a lot of things happened and it got pushed back constantly. this is not cancelled though! i still know how this story will play out more or less, just a matter of getting to it. I have no estimation on when the next chapter will be though, but it'll most likely be in a month or two In other news, I'm thinking I'm back into writing! I fully intend to make this a more routine update, and I got some new stories coming soon too! Yet More Historical Tangents"Okay wait wait wait, let me get this straight. Your nation was formed after the leaders of the unicorns, pegasi, and Earth ponies, beefed over and over, summoning mystical Windigo creatures that covered the entire land in ice and snow. And, after that, they brought their closest advisor with them to try to find better living conditions, ran into each other, beefed again until they got stuck in a cave and frozen. Then, their advisors became friends instead of fighting, and that created this giant 'fire of friendship' that burned away the Windigos and made the leaders friendlier, after which they established Equestria together as one race?" There was a moment of silence. "I-, hmmm, I mean, that's a bit of a fast overview, but yes. That's essentially what happened." Yep, got it all down. Ryan finished checking over his notes and chuckled, twirling a pencil between his fingers. "Wow, you really weren't kidding about Equestria being founded on friendship and harmony. I thought the whole friendship part was just a metaphor for 'mutual compromise', like I usually see it when it pops up with anything in today's world." "Friendship is much more than just mutual compromise! And I meant it quite literally that the three leaders and each of their advisors became friends following the unification of the tribes, not that they just entered friendlier relations with each other. According to some of our oldest remaining documents of that time period, the six of them began arranging more and more frequent meetups with each other that, while starting out as formal dinners to discuss laws, policies, resource distribution, or other essential areas, soon turned into a gathering of friends. It must've helped that, with the three tribes working together, problems were taken care of much faster. Some of the few remaining accounts by castle servants reported hearing occasional uproars of laughter and giggles from through the closed doors of the "Hehe, you know", Ryan said with a chuckle," you're very awfully familiar with your country's ancient history. You said all of what you've just told me in the last..." Ryan snuck a glance at his phone screen. "...thirty minutes, is all from off the top of your head? I mean, most of what I told you about our history was stuff I had to learn in school as well, but once I started studying for my career, there was only so much of it I could keep in my head. I've been reading this off of multiple articles I have up, but you've been reading off of, well, yourself. That's..." Ryan whistled. "...pretty impressive." "Oh! I- um, thanks!" Ryan could practically hear the blush. "I dunno, I guess history always fascinated me as a filly. I've always loved learning about the actions and thoughts and experiences of the ponies that lived centuries ago, even a millenia ago, when the world was so different than what we have now. Being able to read about all the many tiny moving parts and pieces that would eventually craft the world I live and breathe in now... it's just really special to me." Ryan cracked a small grin. "Heh, I'm glad there's always someone like you who can appreciate all that. Growing up, all of that seemed real interesting to me, but I couldn't devote much time to any of that due to... a number of things that were going at the time." Ryan looked away. "Eventually, I guess I lost that interest and pivoted more towards things I believed mattered more to my future in the long run." "...what about now?" Ryan looked back up to the voice. "What do you mean?" "You didn't have the time when you were younger because you were so worried about finding what your role in the world would be, right?" He blinked. "That's... an interesting way to put it. And it was among other things, but yeah, I guess you can say that." "So what about now? You said you've got your own apartment earlier, so you must have a stable job already. Why don't you explore your history again in your free time?" Ryan laughed, trailing off near the end. "I... could. But it's been so long since I really bothered with caring, it just feels weird to suddenly care again." "Hey, there's nothing that says you can't get back into old hobbies! I used to make book forts with Spike when I was a filly, and recently we've started doing it again as a way of livening up when we reorganize the library." "Haha, that's cute." Ryan chuckled, then sighed. "But you have someone you can do that with, like, so it's more enjoyable and all. I don't really know anyone I can just randomly talk about history with." Besides, I'd probably really weird them out. Twilight hummed in thought. "You know, I'd be more than happy to exchange more of Equestria's history with yours." What? Ryan blinked. "I-, Twilight, I appreciate the thought and all, but I don't thi-" "Come on, it'll be fun! And exciting too!" Twilight's tone carried such an insane level of passion, it pretty much sent Ryan reeling. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for me to better understand the culture and history of another distant civilization completely unknown to us! I mean, your voice just happens to pop into my shower curtain, of all ponies?! It's like history is begging to be written!" "I mean, are you really sure?" Ryan scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "When I was talking earlier about our history, you seemed a bit, mmmm... squeamish?" "Oh... yeah, that. Sorry about some of my, um, earlier freak outs. I just wasn't expecting your nation's history to be so... so..." "Violent?" Ryan offered, raising an eyebrow. "Conflicted. I was gonna say 'conflicted'." "Uh huh, sure." Ryan chuckled. "I mean, I don't really blame you either. If I was in your place, I'd probably go a bit green in the face too, just hearing how many wars we've fought in." "Oh no, it's not really that. Equestria has seen its fair share of wars and conflicts throughout its long history. Granted, not anywhere as much as your 'United States' has experienced in such a... small time span since its conception, but we're no stranger to fighting. It's those... fatality numbers that are a big shock to me." Ryan hung his head low and laughed dryly. "Ah, yep, that'll do it. I hadn't asked about it earlier cause I wasn't sure if it was possibly a sensitive topic, but does Equestria not lose that many peo-, I mean, ponies, in combat?" "No! Not even close!" It sounded like Twilight was aghast at just the mere suggestion. "In fact, I don't think there's a single war that Equestria was majorly involved in where we lost more in total than how many of you were killed in your, um, bloodiest battle. Let me check..." Some papers rustled distantly. "The... Battle of Anty-tam?" "Antietam." Ryan corrected, followed by more rustling paper. "Well, overall, there's a lot worse, I'll talk about those another day... but Antietam I think was the worst single-day one in our history, since it was during a civil war and both sides were Americans in the end. Almost twenty-three thousand casualties from a single day battle, including three and a half thousand dead." There was a nervous gulp. "Yeah... that one. Three and a half thousand...". Twilight's voice shuddered upon the restatement. "A- anyways, our worst conflict doesn't even come near those numbers. During the few recorded times when Equestria fought a hostile nation, it was rare for any soldiers to actually die in battle. Celestia made sure all unicorns were taught critical healing and defensive spells, while earth ponies and pegasi carried old healing potions that had been en masse imports from trading in the zebra lands. Many ponies did suffer losing some of their limbs or even a bit worse that magic at the time couldn't restore." Is she actually for real? "Wait, Equestria had all this magic and potions, but focused it on mostly just protection? What did ponies use for, well, attacking?" "Mainly spears and swords. Pegasi had crossbows too." "What the he-" "Shush you, I know what you're about to say." Twilight cut in. "I asked the same thing when I learned about this in Ancient Equestrian History. A thousand years ago, our knowledge of magic and its complexities weren't all there yet, so advancements in magic were made in the most important direction, which Celestia focused towards protection of her ponies. It was only after Equestria had stabilized that a branch of study for magic properly sprouted." Twilight paused. "You said that battle of yours was during a... civil war? What is that?" Ryan blinked, caught off guard by the sudden query. "Wha- oh, sorry. 'Civil war'? You've never heard of that term?" "Not that I can remember, no." "Oh, that's... interesting." For a nation that apparently speaks our language, shares a ton of words, and has an even longer history that mine, that's a big surprise. "Well, it's pretty much a war between people of the same country." "Oh! Hmm, we've never really had that happen before since the founding of Equestria, maybe that's why no specific term was made for it aside from 'period of internal strife'. We did almost experience one a long time ago, though. You remember my mention of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, right?" "Mhm." Ryan affirmed, not needing to check his notes for tidbits he'd probably never forget again. "They're the two sisters who rule Equestria together, can move the sun and moon somehow, and are both over a thousand years old. Oh, and they're both alicorns." "Yep, that's them! A little over a millennia ago, tensions started to rise between the two of them. Princess Luna, the younger of the sisters, slowly grew envious of the praise and attention Princess Celestia received. While they ruled together as equals, Luna always handled the duties of the night, such as guarding the dreams of ponies from nightmares, and watching over the world at night with her moon, ensuring no dark forces attempt to slip in during the cover of night. Like Celestia, who held court during the day, Luna held a court at night that saw a lot less ponies for obvious reasons, and performed her most important duties at night, so during the day she was rarely seen. She initially never thought anything of it, but soon, it's said she began noticing how ambassadors, delegates, and nobles often slipped up and referred to Celestia as the primary monarch, sometimes forgetting she was even in the room with them." Twilight paused, which Ryan surmised was her letting him catch up on his notes. His mind drifted a little. Guarding ponies' dreams, huh? I'll make a note to ask about that after this. He jotted the last bit of short-hand down before clearing his throat. "Alright, I got it down." "This went on for years upon years." Twilight continued, prompting Ryan to return to note-taking. "What I listed was just speculation from others who were around during that time. The nation was still growing and strife with countless domestic and international instabilities. Celestia was at her wit's end trying to find peace and compromise for early Equestria and ended up... neglecting Luna's rising concerns. I don't fully know what really went on a thousand years ago, but it gradually created a divide between the two sisters that somehow managed to leak onto the citizens of Equestria. Some ponies unhappy with Celestia's policies and rule latched onto this conflict to spark their own movements." "Movements?" Ryan questioned, still wrapping up a few notes. "Like, did they want to secede or-" "According to our history books, it was complete chaos." Twilight interrupted quickly, as if anticipating that exact question. "Some wanted to splinter their town off from Equestria, others wanted some proposal or reform passed. Whatever it was, every group pointed to the growing distance between the two princesses as proof that the current system wasn't working. Over time, this rise in riots and protests twisted Luna's envy into harsh disdain, pushing her past her breaking point as the nation was on the verge of collapse. During one summer's day, she raised the moon over the sun and cast the land into the darkness of an eclipse, marking the beginning of the First Long Night. When Celestia confronted her, she refused to lower it and turned to her own dark magics, transforming herself into a wicked creature known as Nightmare Moon." Nightmare Moon? Again with these names... Ryan added a quick side note abbreviating the unusual name as 'NMM' for future shorthand. "Born from all of Luna's inner bitterness, rage, and envy, Nightmare Moon sought only to kill Celestia and attacked her straight away. Within minutes, their castle was almost completely destroyed, and Celestia led her sister to the skies away from the civilian populace. They battled for hours at a standstill until Celestia finally defeated her and reluctantly banished her to the moon for a thousand years. With their primary source of motivation gone, most the rebellions faded out on their own." Wow... "That's... awful." Ryan scratched the back of his head. "If I got this down right, you said all of this happened around a thousand years ago? And Luna was banished for a thousand years? So... does that mean..." "If it's what I think it is, then yes." Twilight affirmed. "She returned a little over a year ago in what is now called the Second Long Night, but... eventually, she was not only defeated, but freed from her own corruption. After a bit of recovery and restoration, she's since rejoined Celestia as Princess of the Night and has resumed her old duties once again!" Ryan blinked. Hmm.. that was quick, I'll have to ask some more details on that later. I don't know if how she was defeated is some sort of secret, but Twilight's been pretty obsessed with her details lately so her skimming over this bit seems off. Ryan looked down his notes to reference something and gawked. "Wait, hold up, you said one of her old duties was to guard ponies' dreams from nightmares? Like, um, how is that supposed to work? Is there some sort of shield she puts over ponies' minds? Or some spell that can give pleasant dreams? Or-" Twilight cut him off with a giggle. "No, it's not really that straightfoward. She has the unique ability to Dreamwalk, allowing her to view, enter, and even interact with ponies' dreams through the Dreamscape. She can dispel nightmares on a surface level, but she often has to speak with the dreamer themselves to help them resolve whatever inner fears or conflicts are behind the nightmares. The whole thing is really delicate, and she has to stay pretty mindful of each pony's privacy when doing this." Ryan tapped his pencil to his chin. "That is... actually really sweet. Hmm, you say it like she's the only one who's able to do this. How come you seem so... well-read on all this? Are there any books about Dreamwalking around in your library or something?" "Pffft, though I'd love that! Maybe I could write one..." Twilight began to trail off. "Anyways, no, there aren't really any books dedicated to what Luna can do with dreams around anywhere actually. A few months ago, I was having a terrible nightmare and she came to dispel it, which I hadn't seen personally before. Once I realized it was really her in my dream, I... mayyyyy or may not have flooded her with all the questions I could think of about how it works. Honestly, I'm surprised she entertained me with that much, I learned more from her that one night than months of me digging around various libraries." "Hmmm..." Ryan glanced around his room nervously as a thought passed his mind. "So... Luna can enter dreams. Since... we're able to talk to each other now... does that mean she could enter mine?" There was a long pause. "I... have no idea. You think she could help you with some nightmares you're having?" "Wha- no!" Ryan sputtered out. "Nonono. I mean, who wouldn't say no to having no nightmares. But I just mean, I can't really control what my mind dreams up, and it could be pretty private and-" "Ryan, Luna guards the dreams of millions of ponies and has personally entered each of their dreams at least once." Twilight chuckled. "She knows how to keep secrets. With that said, I actually don't know if she could reach dreams from another world, even with an open connection like this. I could wri-, try asking next time I happen to see her, but I don't want her or Princess Celestia catching on to this just yet. Do you... remember seeing her last night?" Ryan thought long and hard, yet fruitlessly, about the contents of his last dream. "Not that I know of? Though, you know how dreams sort of just slip off your mind once you wake up. For all I know, maybe she did pass by and I just forgot." Ryan slipped a glance back at his front window, where the glow of the streetlights flooded faintly through with the darkness of the coming night. "The sun set about an hour ago here, and I'll have to go to sleep in an hour or two. I'm just... a bit worried about any surprise visitors haha." He paused. "Sunset was an hour ago? Wow, Saturday went by fast." "Time can move quickly when you're learning!" Ryan blanched. No it does no- "And, well, if it's any reassurance, Luna puts her focus towards ponies who are having nightmares. Even if by some miracle she could detect your dreams, they're among millions of other dreams out there. I don't think she'd notice a single new dream pop up in the whole ocean of them she works with every night, let alone when she's focusing on those with nightmares." "I, hrmmm... alright." Ryan eventually conceded. "If you say so. I'm still going to keep a look out for her just in case!" "You sure you can do that? With how dreams tend to work and all?" "I, um..." Ryan paused and mulled it over. "Probably not. But that doesn't mean I can't try!" Twilight chuckled. "I guess I can't really stop you." She paused for a moment before speaking again, this time her voice lowered to a whisper. "Sorry, Spike just came back, I have to go again." "Oh, really?" A brief pang of sadness passed through him. "That's okay, it's getting late anyways. Thanks for today though." "What for?" "I..." Ryan hesitated briefly. "I haven't really gotten to talk to someone this much in a really long time. I've missed it more than I realized. So... thanks for talking to me, I guess is what I'm trying to say." "Awww, Ryan!" Twilight giggled lightheartedly. "You're very welcome! And we'll have even more time to talk tomorrow, right?" "Hmmm." Ryan thought about it for a moment. "I'll definitely be around, but it might not be as much as today. I have to prepare a bit of a speech I have to give at some meeting on Monday." "Oh..." Ryan caught a trace of disappointment in her tone. "That's okay! Actually, I'd be happy to help a bit with your speech tomorrow if you want. Not to brag, but I've written quite a lot of speeches for presentations back in school! I am prettyyyy good at them." Ryan laughed and raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't mind a little advice, I guess. You sure?" "Come on, pleaaaaaseeeeee?" Ryan did a double-take at the shift in energy. Wow's she's suddenly all excited about this. "Alright, alright. Only if there's something I actually need some help with, which there probably will be, not gonna lie." "Yay!" Ryan chuckled at Twilight's enthusiasm. "This is gonna be-" "Twilight? What are you doing up there?" "Eep! I have to go now, I'll be around same time tomorrow!" Ryan reeled in surprise. "I-" Hoof steps followed by a slamming door echoed throughout Ryan's bathroom, cutting him off. He blinked and stood frozen for a few seconds before letting out a quiet laugh. That must have been that Spike dragon she's mentioned. Closing the bathroom door slowly, Ryan peered around his apartment. His eyes fell upon his messy bed and a yawn escaped his mouth. If Twilight says I shouldn't need to worry about her world's nightly princess invading my dreams, then I'll try not to. It's not like I could do anything to stop her anyway. He began reaching for his clothes drawer to get ready for the night, then paused as a thought hit him. Wow... I really did spend almost the whole day just talking to one person. Or, pony, I guess. Ryan mulled over it for a while, before gently smiling. This was a good day. Author's Note I swear I'm going to stop taking so long on updates haha! We are nearing the end of the 'introductory' section of the story, soon there will be a more forward direction to the narrative in future chapters! Just hang in there! Run-In at the CafeBeep beep beep! Ryan groaned and squirmed around in bed, finding himself completely entangled in his bed sheets. He reached an arm out from under the covers, blindly seeking out the source of the most evil sound of all existence at the point in time. Eventually, his hand brushed against the cool surface of his phone, which he promptly snatched and yanked under the blanket with him. Ugh, alright let's see what time it i- ack! Momentarily blinded by his screen's brightness, he shook his head to clear daze before squinting his eyes at his phone. 10:51 AM?! Eesh, that's even later than yesterday! Tumbling head over heels, Ryan scrambled out of bed and practically threw himself onto the floor. He winced a bit from the impact and groaned sleepily, gazing around his apartment. The sight of many still packed cardboard boxes graced his eyes, eliciting a tired sigh. How have I not gotten to unpacking yet? Come on, what is wrong with you, Ryan? I'll have to get to this after breakfast. Or brunch, I guess. Climbing to his feet, Ryan's eyes flicked to his bedside table, where he had left a small note for himself last night with the words "Princess Luna" messily scribbled on it. Recognition flashed in his mind and he remembered why he had left it. Let's see, um... I think tonight there were a few childhood faces, some large school campus, an even larger, uh, water bottle or something? Really weird dream tonight, as usual, but I don't think I can remember there being any Princess Luna. Ryan scratched his head awkwardly. "I... guess there really was nothing to worry about, like Twilight said." He glanced over to the hallway leading to the bathroom, where he had apparently left the door open from last night. Quietly, he crept towards the door and leaned an ear into the open space. After receiving a few seconds of nothing but his own breathing, he cautiously peeked his head into the bathroom. "Hey, Twilight? You there?" Once more, no response could be heard. He waited maybe ten seconds, straining to pick up any sort of faint noises from the other side of his mystical shower curtain, before backing up and closing the door. Hmmm... she's probably out getting breakfast. He double checked his phone to reaffirm the time. Or... lunch? Or, maybe brunch. Is brunch even a thing over there in, uh, Equestria? He scratched his head in thought. Oh, whatever. From what she's told me so far, she has her own sort of life, so whatever she's up to right now shouldn't be anything I need to worry about. He paused, the realization of what he had just thought hitting him in the face, and chuckled. I somehow managed to discretely make first contact with some unknown, alien world made up of sentient ponies and a whole ton of random creatures from our myths and legends... and two days later, I'm wondering whether she's busy eating lunch or brunch. Wow, okay. He glanced backwards towards the notebook sitting on his work desk, still opened to his latest page of notes taken from the previous day's talks with this 'Twilight Sparkle'. And apparently, minus the impossible existence of mythological creatures, the ability to control the weather, moon, and freaking sun, and just the existence of magic in general... they're barely any different from us as a society. They've got businesses and jobs and unemployment, there's restaurants and libraries and farms, a functioning government, hell, they even have to pay taxes! He turned around to face his now-closed bathroom door. Not to mention, I can understand Twilight completely fine, like she's a native English speaker, though she says their language is something called 'ponish', with its own, completely different origin! What's going on, is there some sort of 'magic spell' on my shower curtain that's translating our words to each other or what? Ryan's stomach rumbled, and he rolled his eyes in annoyance. Yeah yeah, I heard you. Ugh, I really need to grab food now. I'll have to remember to ask her more about this whenever I see, I mean, talk with her again. Based on everything else she's told me, magic and all that is much more her specialty. I'll probably be best if I... He paused, then chuckled to himself. Who am I kidding? I have no idea what the hell is going on. Ryan walked over to his desk, picking up his wallet and key, before heading for his front door. He spared a glance backwards once more towards his bathroom door, then turned back around and quietly opened his front door and slipped out. "One breakfast burrito, please." The cashier nodded and pressed a set of keys on the register, its front-facing display lighting up to list his one and only item. Ryan fidgeted around with his credit card already out and ready in his hand. She turned tiredly back to him. "Do you want any extra sauce with that?" Ryan shuffled around on his feet, trying not to think about the many potential sets of eyes that could be gazing upon him from the short line of customers behind him. "Uh, no, no sauce, thanks." He eyed the packets of ketchup sauce sitting at the edge of the counter. I don't want to risk another incident of spilling the sauce while walking. Gah, never again. "Any plates or utensils?" Ryan looked back towards the cashier. "Oh, uhm, no thanks either." "What about-" "Just the burrito, please. Oh, and make it to-go." The cashier rolled her eyes. "Alright, that'll be $5.99." Agh, why are you the one rolling your eyes, I just wanna get out of your hair quicker. Ryan swiped his card and waited a few seconds for her to hand him his receipt. "Your food will be ready in about five minutes." "Cool, thanks." Ryan grabbed his receipt and walked over to an unoccupied corner of the joint and leaned on the wall. He pulled out his phone and began mindlessly scrolling through his downloaded music. Alright, so if I remember right, Twilight mentioned there were some orchestra concerts she's likes listening to, and she definitely really liked that cello prelude I have saved. Hmm... He scrolled down his phone more, making note of a few relevant orchestral pieces he had saved. I should probably make a playlist or something for Twilight with all the different orchestra pieces I have. If she liked that cello music, she'd totally love some of these other ones. He paused. Actually, I gotta make playlists for all my music so I'm not just sifting through them in alphabetical order... He swiped over the menu to create a new playlist, subsequently naming it 'Twilight Music'. He then started going through his music and checking off anything remotely recognized as being orchestra. "Hey." "WHA-?!" Panicked, Ryan stumbled a little to the side, away from the voice that was just in his ear, very nearly dropping his phone. After regaining his bearings, he turned around and faced the annoyingly familiar Vietnamese man with his obnoxiously familiar black and white business suit. "Ugh, Peter, really?" Peter, Ryan's former work colleague, leaned against a nearby wall and flashed a cocky smirk. "What, surprised to see me?" "Uhm, yeah? I only ever see you eating out during the week." Ryan slipped his phone into his pocket and mirrored Peter's posture, though a little unsteadily as the wall near him had some unfortunately-placed shelves, but he did his best. He looked Peter up and down. "And what's with the whole get-up? You look like you just came from your office, isn't it the weekend?" Peter's smile faltered and he rolled his eyes, groaning in exasperation. "If by 'weekend', you mean either Saturday or Sunday, then yes. But if you mean 'day of relaxation away from all your work and stress', then I'm afraid my company's got another thing to say." He leaned his head back and bumped it hard against the wall. "Our product manager called the entire team in for some last minute stress testing of the application and database or whatever. We don't have an internal demo of it for it yet, so I dunno what the fuss is about." "Aw, damn." Ryan looked to the ground awkwardly and scratched the back of his head. "Uhm, sorry to hear, man." "Nah, it's all good." Peter waved a hand dismissively. "I can handle it as long as we're getting paid for the extra time. We'd handle it better if you were still with us." "Uhuh. Ha. Ha." Ryan rolled his eyes though failing to hide a small grin. "You know, you don't need to mention that so much, I like my new work place a lot better." "Well, duh. It's your literally place. Not like you have anyone telling you what you can't have hanging on your walls." Peter playfully punched Ryan on his shoulder. "But come on, you need to get out more than just our little lunch talks during the weeks. You've been lot more, uh..." He scratched his chin. "A lot more reserved lately, since you left us. I swear, you gotta talk to more people other than just me, now that you're not like, forced to when you were on the dev team." Ryan scoffed and looked away slightly, sighing a little. "I'm... fine with how I am now, with how things are now. I just... I dunno, I think I'm pretty content with just keeping things how they are." He glanced over to the counter, eyeing the small slips of paper hanging on the wall behind. Come on, where's my burrito already? "Really? You sure don't sound like it." Peter pulled out his phone and scrolled through some lists, text too small for Ryan to read out from where he stood. "Huh?" Ryan let out a yawn. "Well, maybe I'm just sleepy still, I just woke up not too long ago after all. And besides, we still have our lunch chats and our occasional weekend hangouts, right? That seems like enough for me for now." Peter put his phone back away and glanced over to Ryan. "Speaking of that, what was up with you yesterday? You weren't answering any of my calls or messages all day." Uh oh. Ryan's eyes widened. "You were texting me yesterday?" "Yeah? Of course I was, I was just seeing if you were free to hang at your place again." Peter raised an eyebrow. "I know you can be a bit slow on replying, but you've full on ghosted me for a full day, that's not really like you. At least, I hope it isn't now. Were you busy or something yesterday?" Shoot, I had my phone on silent for most of yesterday! Some notification popped up during my talk with Twilight, so I disabled the push notifications so I could focus more on all those topics she was asking me about. Ryan pulled out his phone and peeked at his settings, confirming his memory. I got so sucked into chatting with her that I totally forgot Peter usually messages me on Saturdays. Ryan rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, offering a sheepish smile. "Yeah, uhm, sorry about that. I was just really busy with researching some new, uhm..." His eyes flickered across the cafe for some inspiration, between people, tables, wall decor, before finally landing on one of the workers in the back pouring a smoothie. "...fluid dynamics simulations. You know about those, right?" Peter blinked. "Huh? You've never been interested in those before." Have I not? "Well, I just found saw some YouTube video about it yesterday morning and really wanted to play around with it." Ryan mentally wiped off an imaginary bead of sweat from his forehead. Peter stared at him for a while before looking down and shaking his head with a smile. "Heh. That sounds about right. By the way, you seem pretty relaxed now, with all things considered. I haven't really seen your new place yet, so you think we could drop by your place and-" Twilight. "No!" "Huh?" Peter blinked, then chuckled. "Come on, you just moved in, you can't possibly have made that bad of a mess already." Twilight might be around by the time I get back. I mean, I could run ahead and warn her to stay quiet, but that might look weird to Peter. I don't know if she might get too curious and try greeting another one of 'humans' anyways. The last thing I need is word of this weird, interdimensional... thingie getting loose. I literally just moved in and everything is actually... okay for once. He paused. And if he so much as hears a girl's voice in my apartment, he's totally gonna get the wrong idea and start telling that crap to everyone. His mind raced, searching for a valid excuse. Wait a minute, what am I doing? I don't even need to lie. "Yeahhhh sorry about that. I, uh, haven't really unpacked pretty much anything since moving in last week. Everything' still all over the floor, and I'd rather you see the place once I have it all nice and organized." Peter rolls his eyes with a laugh. "Uhuh, suuuure, don't know why I expected anything different. You even found some whole new thing to obsess over before even getting to that." A quiet sigh of relief. Whew, he bought it. Perfect. Now I can just- "Just don't get too distracted with that for that demo thing of yours tomorrow." What. "What?" Peter cocked his head in confusion. "Yeah? Y'know, that client demo you've been telling me about all week." Ryan sharply inhaled as the recollection of the previous week's stresses flooded back to him. This time, a genuine bead of sweat slid down the side of his face. "Oh. Right, that." "Yeh, you were all stressed about it, always talking about how you weren't sure whether a certain feature would be done in time." I spent the entire week focusing on getting the functionality up and running. I had told myself I could just use the upcoming weekend to plan out the presentation and my speaking points. "And even with the parts that you were done with, you didn't even know how you were going to properly demo them!" And then the weekend happened, and Twilight happened, and I got completely caught up with chatting with her all day yesterday and completely wasted half of the weekend. "Especially with your anxiety with running presentations in the first place, like wow. I mean, do you remember what happened the last time you tried managing the demonstration when you still working with us? Like, wowie, I-" "Oh my god, thank you for the reminder, but you are not helping at all." Ryan snapped loudly. Silence fell over the cafe, and he shrank slightly. "Sorry, uh, I-" "Ryan! Breakfast burrito!" A voice called out from the pick-up section of the counter. Oh, universe, you could not have timed that better. Ryan quickly stumbled over to the pick-up counter and grabbed his wrapped-up food, then made his way for the door. "Sorry, I really gotta go now, Peter!" "Wait! What is going on with yo-" Whatever Peter's parting words were, they were lost to Ryan's ears as the door slammed shut behind him. Author's Note Yep! Another update! Bit short, but not splitting it here would've made this chapter unnecessarily long. Hoping to stop these hiatuses from getting too long.
The Voice in the ShowerClick-clack, click-click-click clack The sound of typing filled the spacious room, echoing ever so softly against the near-barren walls. Ryan's hands rapidly danced across the keyboard of his work laptop, systematically pressing the right combination of letters and spaces needed to properly wrap up the summary of the work report for the week. The twenty-three year old web developer had just recently moved into his own place at last. It wasn't much; there was the main room that had his bed propped up against the wall on the far side, a desk in the middle propped up opposite of his bed at which he currently sat doing work, and a small, modest kitchen area that still lacked a proper refrigerator. Beside the kitchen stood the one and only front door. Last but not least, there was a single bathroom whose door sat in front of and obnoxiously close to his bed, immediately opposite of his desk. Ryan let out a groan of exasperation. Today was supposed to be a good day. A wonderful day. One of celebration and relaxation. A few days ago, he had finally saved up enough money to move into a new, decent sized apartment. No more cheap motel room with its cramped space that did not even fit a bed, or its suspicious smelling heater, or most importantly, lack of a personal bathroom. He could finally lean back in his bed, stare up at a ceiling not covered in a crude paint job splattered with mysterious stains, inhale a breath of fresh, clean air, and bask in the warm presence of what he was finally proud to call his new home. Or at least, he would have done all that, if it weren't for the fact that his boss had decided to pile a ton of new work items last minute that needed to be done by the end of the week. You know, the week in which he was moving in. Oh, what's that? Why don't you just reserve some time off? Let them know your attention is needed elsewhere? As much as he would have loved to do so, said aforementioned work items just so happened to be absolutely crucial for a client demo presentation at the start of the next week. Sure, he could take the time off, but there were no other developers on his team that were familiar enough with the part of the site those work items were on to be able to complete it in time. Or at least, Ryan thought. It's not like I don't trust any of them to work on this area. I have complete faith in their skills. Ryan paused his typing to glance at the ceiling in thought. It's just that I... that I... well... ... Oh who am I kidding Ryan sighed shamefully to himself before resuming his work. Last time he needed to take some time for himself, several members of their developer team were assigned to continue his work items while he was gone. When he returned, he would find the pages he worked on in the condition of the website equivalent of nuclear fallout. He didn't really blame them for it though; he doubted he could keep up either if he was thrust into someone else's work environment with a completely foreign method of organizing and implementing items. If anyone was going to finish this part of the site, it would have to be him. Almost... there... His fingers furiously raced across his keyboard as he put the finishing word on his work report. Annnnd done! He smashed the enter key with more force than intended and watched as his code for the last work item of the week was sent up to the cloud. After a few seconds of silence, a soft ping told him the operation was successful: no merge conflicts. "Wooo!" Ryan cried out in glee and shot his hands into the air in tired, yet satisfied finality. He glanced around his apartment with a going before remembering he was alone. Awkwardly putting his hands down, he scanned his room again and realized to his dismay that, due to the urgency of previously pressing matters, he never had the chance to properly set up his new residence. Several boxes filled with essential equipment and his old belongings laid stacked and scattered on the floor of the main entrance. Ryan exhaled through his nose in tired annoyance before getting up to give his moving boxes a once over. One box contained many decorative items, including some posters, a small desktop lamp. Low priority, Ryan thought to himself as he moved to the next box. This one contained much of his clothes. Also Low prio-, he started, then paused upon becoming acutely aware of how long he had been donning his current attire, possibly accumulating plenty of sweat throughout his work day, just the thought of which made him cringe immensely. Alright, alright, might as well "wake myself up" before dealing with this. He briefly shuffled through his packed clothes before selecting and extracting a comfy pair of night clothes. He walked over to the bathroom, opened the door, lazily plopped his clothes on the floor, then cringed when he spotted the shower. Specifically its lack of a shower curtain. Sighing, he turned around, fished his shower curtain out of its respective box, and gave it a quick glance. It wasn't fancy by any means. It draped long and wide enough to fully the shower area from wall to wall and from floor to the metal bar above the shower ledge, with six metal rings attached to the top. The curtain itself was a foggy white; if someone were to press something right up against its surface, you might be able to make it out from the other side. Once there were more than a few inches of space between the object and the curtain, its appearance from the other side would dissolve into a blurry fuzz of color. Perfect for privacy purposes. More than ready to wind down for the evening, Ryan carried the shower curtain to his bathroom and reached up to attach the metal rings to the overhanging bar. One... Two... Three... Four... Five... annnd six! A sudden chill rushed through Ryan's body, sending shivers down his body. "What the-?" He quickly glanced back out of the bathroom to verify his windows and door were closed. He turned back to his now curtain-covered shower in confusion, still shuddering a little. He let out a gentle whistle. Yeaaaahhhhh. It's official, I'm totally losing it. Ugh just let me lay down already. With that last thought, Ryan reached down to turn on the faucet and unleash a hopefully warm rain of stress-relieving droplets. Somewhere else... "Oh, Spike you're back already? I thought you'd be out for another couple of hours!" "..." "Spike?" "..." "Spike, you know that's our one and only shower, you can't just waltz in there and start another one of your hour long showers without at least telling me beforehand! What if I was going to use it?" "..." "Uh... Spike?" "..." "Helllloooooooo- you know what, I'll chew him out when he's done." Ohhh wow, I needed that so badly. Ahhhhhhh Ryan emerged from the shower, snugly wrapped in a soft, white towel, before pulling the curtain back close behind him. He sighed blissfully as he stood there for a moment, his eyes closed. Yes, the day had indeed been stressful, but that shower had practically melted away his worries. Oh sure, they'd be waiting for him again when work resumed at the start of next week, but for now none of it mattered. Ryan pursed his lips together. He could have sworn he heard someone distantly shouting during his shower. He brushed it off as maybe some auditory illusion caused by the sound of falling water, but just in case, he made a mental note to check with his neighbors about it. After all, the apartment, specifically the bathroom, had some considerably thick walls to keep external sound out. It had to have been some damn loud shouting for him to even hear it over the shower. After carefully hanging the towel on a little bar in the wall, Ryan quickly changed into his night clothes and moved in front of the sink. Despite the warm shower, Ryan could tell from his own facial expression that he was just about ready to keel over from exhaustion. His short, black hair shot out in all directions, and his eyes could barely remain half open. Chuckling to himself, he reached for his cup containing his toothbrush and toothpaste... only to accidentally knock the entire thing off the sink ledge. He winced at the sound of his precious toothbrush clattering against the tile floor. Bruh, come on I can't be THIS tired, right? With a defeated sigh, he reached down to pick it up and- "Spike?" Ryan jumped and cried out in alarm, dropping the toothbrush once more as he nearly slipped on the still wet tiling. "What the, who's there?!" His eyes darted around the bathroom, searching for any sign of movement, but everything was still. The voice had clearly came from within the bathroom, but he couldn't pinpoint any possible sources. For what seemed like several minutes, he stood completely still, eyes wide in shock. While the shower utterly failed in waking him up, this scare had certainly succeeded. For a while, he didn't dare to move, but after several more moments of nothing happening, he knew he had to do at least something. Reaching down again, he picked his toothbrush off the ground and held it in a defensive position like some pathetic, makeshift knife. He slowly inched closer to the center of the bathroom, tracking his eyes across anything he could see. "H-hello? Who's there?" The voice called out again, slightly closer now but not enough for Ryan to determine a source. It was definitely female, and whoever it belonged to sounded young, probably mid-twenties. There was a hint of fear in the tone as well. Ryan relaxed slightly, his own fear and panic subsiding, making way for curiosity. The voice sounded like it was coming from where his shower was, but that made no sense; he was literally in there not even a couple of minutes ago and hadn't once left the bathroom. It also sounded a bit more distant that it should've, as if whoever was speaking was an entire additional room length away, but his bathroom wasn't nearly that long. Not to mention there was solid tiled wall not even a couple feet behind the curtain. He began slowly creeping towards it. "A-and why are you in my shower?" Wait, what? Ryan stopped dead in his tracks, his train of thought carrying all his questions and concerns utterly derailed. He glanced down at his feet to confirm that he was, indeed, standing on the brown tiling of his bathroom floor and not on the white porcelain that ordained the bottom of his shower. "Uh, no I'm not, I'm standing right in front of my shower and, um... YOU'RE the one in MY shower!" There was a brief moment of silence. "What? You're being ridiculous, I'm staring right at my shower curtain and your voice is clearly coming from behind it, from inside my shower, so where else can you be?" The voice lost all traces of fear and had taken on an annoyed tone. Ryan then heard what he could only describe as the sound of hooves clopping on wood getting closer and closer before it seemingly stopped right behind his shower curtain. "And the library isn't open to visitors this late in the evening so, whoever you are sir, I'm going to have to ask you to lea-" The voice cut off. Ryan blinked. "Wh- wh- I- wha- this isn't possible, where are you??" The voice had taken to a frantic panic, and Ryan began slowly backing away from his shower. It sounded like some deranged mental institute patient was now residing in his shower, somehow completely out of sight. He surmised they must be curled up on the shower floor or something, just out of view from behind the curtain. "I'm, erm, in my bathroom?" Could he run out, grab his phone, and dial the police before whatever maniac that was in his shower managed to catch him? The bathroom door lock was only on the inside, maybe he could barricade the door? He cursed the thought away upon remembering the door opened into the bathroom. "No, this is MY bathroom! How are you doing this? Why can't I see you? Wait a minute." Ryan heard what sounded like a whooosh accompanied by some sort of "twinkling" from behind the curtain. He was now starting to doubt his previous mental patient theory. "What?! No no no that's impossible, there's no one here but me! What are you?!" With most his brain occupied with formulating a plan of escape, the question caught him completely off guard and he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "I'm, um... Asian?" Again there was silence, and Ryan mentally smacked himself in the head. Really? Asian? Yeah because that's obviously the right response to calm someone down. He opened his mouth to offer a better crafted response, but to his surprise his awkward answer would indeed succeed at calming his target down as when the voice would cut him off again, it carried a tone not of panic or worry, but pure confusion. "An asian? I don't recall reading or hearing about any sort of creature under that name. Or, wait, is that your name?" Ryan felt his eye twitch. Is that my-, excuse me?? In his mind, no longer was this some potentially dangerous figure lurking in his bathroom, for it was now just someone who happened to really tick him off. "What, are you actually for real?? Oh ha ha ha, so funny I forgot to laugh. How about you then, what's your race?!" "Well, I'm a unicorn." "..." Silence. Ryan stood frozen in silence for a half a minute as the response slowly sank into his mind, his jaw hanging open. A... unicorn? What the... what? This woman is absolutely out of it. It wasn't just the words that stunned him, it was the tone. It sounded as if they had been asked what their name was while they were wearing a bright neon name tag with their name in bold, with their name also etched across their shirt and tattooed on their forehead. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and cautiously began to approach the shower once more. "No you aren't, those aren't even real." He heard what sounded like an angry stomp. "Not real?! I think I'd know if I wasn't real!" Reaching out, he carefully grasped the shower curtain in his hand. "Oh really?!" With one swift motion, he threw the curtain to the side to reveal... ... nothing? Ryan practically leaped into his shower as his eyes darted all over, scanning every nook and cranny, every possible hiding spot no matter how small. Eying his shampoo bottle, he quickly knocked it to the floor half expecting to see some tiny woman hiding behind it. Nothing. Nothing at all. "Oh really what? Wait, are you some sort of enchanted shower curtain?" Ryan turned around in confusion. Now the voice seemed to be coming from outside the shower, directly behind the shower curtain once again. "No? Why and how could I even be a shower curtain?" He slowly peeked out from behind his curtain, looking around the room for the speaker. Despite seeing absolutely no one, the voice was now so close he could swear they were right beside him. "Well, your voice is clearly coming from my shower curtain, so I don't know. Are you using some sort of spell to talk to me through it? And, uh... why?" From the... shower... curtain... Ryan slowly turned to stare at his completely uninteresting, bare white shower curtain. Wait a minute. "Could you... repeat what you just said?" There was a pause. "You're using some sort of spell to-" "No no no, right before that!" He put his ear right up against the shower curtain. "Your voice is coming from my shower curtain." Ryan stepped back, his heart racing. The voice wasn't coming from his shower. It was coming from his shower curtain. With his back pressed tight against the nearest wall, he cautiously stepped out of the shower and pulled the shower curtain close. Once he back on his bathroom tile, he slowly slid down to the floor, his head starting to hurt. "Um, ma'am could you repeat that oneeee more time, please?" The voice complied with evident confusion. "Your voice is coming from my shower curtain?" Ryan smiled, the world going for a magnificent spin around him. "Thank you." Then he blacked out. Author's Note Woo! Hey look, I actually managed to finish a chapter the same day I started it rather than like six months after :'D Greatly appreciate any feedback in the comments!
Experiments and SurprisesDarkness. "H-hello? S-sir wha-...?" "..." "Are you okay? Please, just say somethi- ..." "..." "Ohhhh what do I do what do I do-..." "... Ow." Ryan groaned softly. As he came to, he felt the cool touch of tile on his face, and he quickly realized he had fallen on his side at some point. He squeezed his eyes tighter and reached up to rub the back of his head, which twinged with a slight throbbing pain, possibly from where he hit the ground. Did I seriously pass out from exhaustion? And what am I doing in the bathroom? Ugh, I really need to take better care of myself. "A-are you okay sir?" Ryan blindly waved off in the direction of the apparently female voice, still massaging his still aching head. "Yeah, I'm fine thanks." He sucked in a bit of air through his teeth. "Yeeesh, I must have fallen over or something." Did one of his neighbors come in to check on him or something? It was a kind, heartwarming thought, but mixed with a bit of concern as he swore he remembered locking his door. "Well, thanks ma'am for checking in on me by the way, but, uh, how did you get in here again? I don't recall giving any of my neighbors a spare key." "Get in where? I'm still here, sitting in my bathroom." Your bathroom? Wha- ... Ryan groggily opened his eyes to take in his surroundings. He was still in his bathroom, though he had indeed fallen on his side directly in front of his shower. He still loosely clutched his toothbrush in his right hand, and, to his dismay, his shirt was a little wet from him having laid in some of the spilled water from his shower. At least the floor was dry now. "Are you sure you're alright? I can't see you or anything, but it sounded like you fell pretty hard over there." Ryan narrowed his eyes in confusion. "What do you mean you can't see me? I'm right next to-..." He turned his head to face his would-be helpful neighbor, only to be met with an empty shower, his shower curtain hanging over and covering its entrance entirely. He turned around and noted his open bathroom door. Maybe she was just outside? Sound can bounce in funny ways in enclosed rooms after all. He slowly started to climb to his feet so he could- "All I can see is the shower curtain in my bathroom, I have no idea where you are." He blinked. He was very familiar with funny bouncing echos, and that was no echo. The voice was indeed coming from right behind him, from his shower. He turned once more to face his shower and, after finally standing up, approached it with toothbrush in hand. He very slowly pulled back the curtain and peeked his head inside, confirming the absence of any helpful neighbors in his shower. "Um, can you say something again? Like, just anything." "Uh... sure?" The voice was practically in his ear. With an embarrassingly girlish scream, Ryan jumped back from his shower and threw his toothbrush at it. It bounced harmlessly on the hanging curtain and clattered to the tile floor. "Hey, what was that?! What's going on over there?" The minor jump scare had properly woke him up from his groggy state. With the fog now lifted from his brain, the full memory of the last half hour or so rushed back into his mind hard enough to make him recoil. Oh. OH. His eyes widened as he remembered where the voice was coming from and once again creeped up to his shower curtain, picking up his fallen toothbrush in the process."W- wait, that was all real? You're... real?" A quiet scoff sounded out from behind the curtain. "Yes, I am real, we went over that already." A wave of pain rippled across the back of Ryan's head. He winced and instinctively rubbed at it with a free hand. Carefully, he reached out with his toothbrush and gave the shower curtain a slow poke. Then a quick one. Nope, this is it, isn't it? I've worked myself to the bone and now the voices have come to break my mind. I can already feel the padded cell. He whined internally. But I don't want to wear a strai- "Helloooooooo? Is something wrong? You keep going quiet." Ryan continued to poke the curtain. "Oh no, everything is fine, voice-in-my-head. Let me guess, you're in my walls too, huh?" He heard what he could only imagine was an angry stomp. "Wha- I'm not a voice in your head, I am a pony! I even told you earlier, I'm a unicorn!" "Oh yeah? Prove you're not in my head." There was a pause. "Well, uh, hmm... Is there some experiment you had in mind that could convince you?" Ryan cocked his head. "An... experiment?" "Precisely! Last year, there was a brief, weird conspiracy spread around town by some wackos about whether we were all living in a giant shared dream created by Princess Luna. Finally they decided to conduct an experiment where they picked a random page of a massive book they all had copies of and had never read before. They each then read the first word at the top of that page and recited it one after another. If they were in a dream, they would've likely all said different words, but since they all said the same thing, they figured that they were all indeed awake and were satisfied, albeit extremely embarassed." Ryan blinked. Doubt began to creep through the back of his mind. He'd never heard of anything remotely like a Princess Luna. And that whole experiment idea was... pretty smart actually. He doubted his mind could've come up with that so quickly and on the spot, not to mention to that level of detail. He thought back to what the voice had said. "That... does give me an idea for an experiment actually. Can you, um, wait right there a second?" "Oh? Well, okay." With that, Ryan scrambled out of the bathroom, but not before sparing a quick glance at his shower curtain, half expecting it to disappear the moment it left his line of sight. When nothing happened, he ran over to his work desk and grabbed his phone from where it sat charging. He then ran over to one of his moving boxes and dug around a bit before pulling out a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. He had purchased them so he could relax to music even in a crowded area, but today it would serve a more... interesting purpose. Now holding both items, Ryan walked back to his bathroom and peeked inside. The shower curtain still hung uninterestingly from its metal bar, silence filling the room. He awkwardly coughed to clear his throat. "Um... you still there?" The response was immediate. "Oh! Yes I'm still here!" Dang it. Ryan sighed and entered his bathroom, walking over to the shower and sitting directly in front of the curtain. "Okay, so this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to play a random piece of music for about a minute or so while wearing headphones so I have no idea what's playing. After that, you'll need to briefly describe the music you heard. Then, I'll double check what was playing and compare it with your description. If you're really in my head, then there should be no way for you to know what's playing if I don't either." The voice was silent for a few seconds. "Hmm, that's actually a really neat idea for an experiment! Sure, let's do that!" Ryan had to stifle a laugh; the voice sounded unusually excited about it. Despite sounding like an adult woman, it carried the sort of bouncy cheer he'd imagine a child would have after being told they were going to Disneyland. "Alright, first I'll do a quick test to make sure this even works." He opened YouTube on his phone and searched for "Rain sounds for sleeping". After selecting a random video from the list, he pressed it and was immediately assaulted by the torturous, unbearable, inhumane sound of a mobile game ad. For the love of- "Sorry give me a moment!" Ryan quickly lowered his volume to zero and impatiently pressed at the Skip button for a painful five seconds before it was finally over. With that, the video changed to a looping scene of a closeup of rain hitting and sliding down a glass window. Satisfied, he turned the volume up to 75% and placed the phone screen down on the floor. "Are you able to hear this?" Again the voice was silent for a few seconds. "Woah, did you just make it rain over there? How are you-, uh, I- I mean yes I can hear that perfectly clear." "Alright then, here goes." With the confirmation he needed, Ryan put on his headphones and gave a moment to confirm he could no longer hear anything from his phone. He then closed the video and navigated to his various playlists. He had accessed his music playlists so often he could practically do it blindfolded. Turning his phone around so to no longer see the screen, he performed a series of memorized swipes and presses that would take him to a random playlist, shuffle it, then play the video that was moved to the top of the list. He placed the phone on the ground, screen down once more, and lightly brushed his finger against its speakers. Once he felt the telltale vibrations indicating audio was playing, he stood up and left the bathroom for his desk. "I'll be back in a minute to check on the results!" With his headphones preventing him from hearing any sort of response, he just shrugged and sat down in his work chair. He opened up his laptop's clock and stared at it in thought as the seconds slowly ticked up. This is so stupid, why am I even doing this? He sighed to himself and spared a glance at his bathroom, door still wide open. I... I have to be crazy right? Voices aren't supposed to come from shower curtains, so it has to be coming from my mind. He leaned back and looked up in contemplation. If I'm hearing the voice in my mind... shouldn't it be able to follow me wherever I go, regardless of headphones? Ryan looked back to his clock to see that roughly 86 seconds had passed since he sat down. Alright then, moment of truth. He got up and confidently walked back into the bathroom. He reached over to his phone and turned it off, effectively cutting off its music. He felt around the speakers to make sure it was indeed no longer playing before finally taking off his headphones. "Hello? Can you hear me?" No response. "Are you still there?" Ryan leaned a little closer to the shower curtain and raised his voice slightly. "Hellooo?" He heard a quiet gasp. "Ah! Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry I must have dozed off! The music was just so soothing and it's already getting late and-" "Hey hey hey, calm down, it's okay!" Ryan cut the voice off before it could continue rambling. "Do you still remember the music?" "Mhm, yes!" Ryan took a deep inhale and steadied himself. "Can you describe it for me?" There was a brief pause. "Well, I never really studied music so I don't think I can describe it in that way, but it sounded like there was a single cello playing. The melody was also really beautiful..." Ryan's eyes widened. A solo cello piece? There's only one like that across all my playlists. He fumbled to open his phone to read title of the currently open video. "Bach - Cello Suite No.1 i-Prelude", he whispered to himself. Out of the hundreds of songs and pieces on his variously purposed playlists, the voice had successfully identified the one and only piece that consisted of nothing but a single cello. "O-okay, well let's do one more then." "Sounds good to me!" Putting his headphones back on, Ryan shakily swiped and pressed around his phone blindly to pick out another random video before placing it face down on the tile. This time instead of leaving, he just remained seated beside the shower, his eyes blankly staring at the opposite wall. Is this... for real? Am I really talking to someone through my shower curtain? A... Ryan strained to remember what the voice called itself earlier. ... A unicorn no less? Or, maybe it's an alien. But if so, how is it speaking English? Agh this is making my head hurt. Once he was fairly confident a minute had passed, Ryan reached forward and shut off his phone once again before taking off his headphones. "Hey, you there?" There was an unusual hint of confusion in the response. "Y-yeah I'm still here." "Alright, can you describe this new song you just heard?" The voice hesitated. "I- I couldn't hear anything. I'm sorry, was the music supposed to be really quiet?" What. Ryan unlocked his phone once again and gazed at the screen. He had successfully navigated to an Imagine Dragons playlist, but it seemed due to how much his hands were shaking, his finger had completely missed the video, and he had forgotten to check the speakers for their vibrations. Nothing had been playing. He hadn't even considered the possibility of accidentally not playing anything. Sure there was a very, very, very small chance the voice could have randomly guessed which of his many videos he picked the first time, because he knew something was going to play. But to correctly guess something that wasn't even supposed to happen? Slowly but surely, the veil of doubt washed away from his mind. When he spoke again, his voice barely came above a whisper. "Y-you really are real? I'm not imagining this at all? You really are talking to me through my shower curtain?" There was a pause. "Well, from my end, you're also talking to me through my shower curtain, so... Yes! I suppose that's true." The last wall of denial came crashing down in Ryan's mind as he accepted the strange reality. He laughed softly. "Well, in that case, um, sorry for the really awkward first impression then. I was so certain I was going crazy." A gentle chuckle mirrored his own. "Oh, no worries, it's completely fine. I was honestly more worried about you. We were talking for a bit when you started asking me to repeat stuff, then it sounded like you collapsed! You weren't responding for nearly a minute, I thought something happened to you!" Ryan awkwardly looked away. "Yeaaah, sorry for that, I was really tired, and I think the shock of learning that someone was somehow talking to me through my shower curtain was a little too much for my brain to handle." He paused in thought, his curiousity now more than happy to fill the gap left by his fears and worries. "By the way, where are you talking to me from? I'm..." He hesitated, wondering how much info he was willing to share to this complete stranger. "... in my apartment in California, in the United States." There was a pause. "Oh? I've never heard of either of those locations. I'm in my bathroom at the Golden Oak Library in Ponyville, which is in Equestria." Ponyville? Equestria? What's up with the horse puns? Oh wait... Ryan racked his brain as he tried to remember what the voice had call itself earlier. "Youuuu said you're a... pony unicorn?" "Almost. I'm a-" The voice paused. "Well my species is pony and my race is unicorn, so I'm a unicorn pony!" Ryan deadpanned. Ah yes, that definitely clears things up. "Well, I should probably clarify what I said before. Asian was my race; my species is human." There was an audible gasp. "Oh wow this is amazing! I've read through the entire Canterlot Archives front and back and there's not a single reference to any species called a 'human' anywhere! It's been centuries since the last documented discovery of another sentient species!" Ryan took an involuntary step back at the voice's sudden upwards shift in pitch and volume. Despite being the only one physically in the room, it somehow felt like his personal space was being harshly violated. "Where on Equus do all of you live?! Is your United States a small island chain overseas? We've mapped out almost the entirety of the planet, but there's probably a few islands here and there that have yet to be discovered." Ha! The United States as a small island chain? Cute. "Actually, it's pretty huge. It takes up a huge chunk of the continent we're on." Confusion laced the voice's tone. "What? A huge part of a continent? That's nearly impossible. Unless you're all extremely sparsely distributed, there's no land on the planet that large that hasn't already been explored and mapped." Ryan laughed as he stared at the wall immediately separating his bathroom from the next door apartment. "Oh no, we're hardly spaced apart here. Or at least, the region I live in." "Well, how many of you humans are there in the United States?" Ryan paused, thinking about the implications behind the question. "Do you want to know how many humans live here in my country? Or across the whole world?" "... there's more of you everywhere?" Ryan chuckled. "Yep, we're pretty much all over the w-" "The whole world then! How many of there are across the whole world?" Ryan blinked and shook his head to regain his train of thought after being cut off. "As a rough estimate, the world population is somewhere between seven to eight billion people right now." A whole minute of silence. Starting to get worried, Ryan grabbed his toothbrush and began repeatedly poking the shower curtain. "Hey, you still with m-" "BILLION?!" Ryan jumped at the outburst, quickly scrambling to a standing position. "No, this isn't scientifically possible. YOU are not scientifically possible! The pony population of Equestria alone doesn't even come up to ten million, even after adding the combined populations of all the other nations! There's no way a population THAT large can remain so undetected, there's not a single reference to it across all of history! Unless..." At the same time, Ryan's head was also going in overdrive. Nearly ten million? Mapped and explored almost the entire world? Without us knowing? There's no way a civilization can hide that well with all of us all over the place. Either Atlantis is real, Antarctica is hiding something big, or... or... They both came to the same realization at the same time. "We're not on the same world." "We're not on the same world." "..." Ryan opened his mouth to ask something, but was cut off by a quiet gasp from the other side. The voice returned, but much quieter this time. "Oh my gosh, I completely forgot about Spike! I don't want him finding out about this yet." Spike? Ryan went to ask who that was, but was cut off before he even started to speak. "I'll make sure he doesn't come in here, but I won't be able to talk with you again until he leaves tomorrow at noon to go help Rarity." What's with these names? There was a brief silence, and when the voice came back it did so with a trace of worry. "Wi- will you still be here?" Ryan nodded, despite knowing the speaker couldn't see him. "Yeah, I'll still be around, don't worry." He paused. "I'll leave my bathroom door open too, so I'll be able to hear whenever you're back." He heard a sigh of relief. "That's great to hear, I have sooooo many questions to ask and-" There was a pause, during which Ryan swore he could very faintly hear the sound of a door closing. "I have to go. Talk to you tomorrow?" "Yeah, talk to you tomorrow." He could hear the sound of hooves on wood begin to fade away, and he was about to leave as well when a thought suddenly occurred to him. "Wait!" The hoofsteps stopped and quickly came back around. "What is it?" Ryan swallowed and inhaled slowly. "My... my name is Ryan, it's nice to meet you." There was a soft giggle, and Ryan could practically hear the warm smile from the other side of the curtain. "My name is Twilight Sparkle. It's nice to meet you too, Ryan." With that, the hoofsteps once more faded into the distance before being silenced by a closing door. Author's Note New chapter! Started and finished on the same day too, which is fairly rare for me if you were to check the dates of updates on my other multi-chapter stories (yikes) Again, please feel free to leave feedback in the comments! It's been a long time since I've felt my writer's block lifted like this, so I'll do my best to keep it that way. Thanks for all the kind comments on the first chapter! I'm glad to see so many ponies interested in my story.
Questions and DisbeliefThe rest of the evening went by rather uneventful for Ryan. After the voice, or Twilight Sparkle as it had self identified, supposedly left him alone, he had remained in the bathroom, still staring at the curtain in disbelief. Question after question ran through his head. Did he really just make contact with an alien species? And how could they already speak English? And what in the world were those names? Ryan had called out for the voice again for several minutes, hoping for a response. After a while, he finally decided whoever he had been speaking with had indeed decided to leave, and he gave up and left to finish up with his day. He still had yet to brush his teeth, and he could practically hear the soft mattress of his bed calling out to him. Of course, he made sure to leave the bathroom door wide open. If the voi- if Twilight really did return, he wanted to be sure he'd hear her immediately. Now, as he lay tossing and turning in bed, his thoughts refused to drift to anywhere but the strange interactions of the day. Sure, it had passed his little test, but for all he knew he could've just been dreaming the whole time. Maybe he was still dreaming right now; the mind was a powerful thing after all and could easily have concocted this whole scenario. He had read up on some disturbing stories in which people have experienced years of an imaginary life, all while being unconscious for merely a few minutes. He shuddered at the thought. He began to reach a hand up to pinch his arm in some silly attempt to test if he was dreaming, but the blanket of sleep began to slowly descend upon his mind, and he decided against putting off his much needed rest any further. With what little energy he had left, he tilted his head up to sweep his eyes around his dark, mostly empty apartment. There was no scarcity of sound by any means; muffled through his front door came the distant, ambient sounds of the city. The honks of cars, incoherent voices, and occasionally passing footsteps created a sort of white noise that permeated through the fog of sleep while also strengthening it. He had worked aggressively over the past year to finally afford this place, which had put a strain on the few social relationships he still had. In fact, now that he thought of it, his new mysterious company within his shower curtain had been the last friendly voice he had held some sort of casual conversation with in over a year. As suspicious as he was over whether it had been real, he'd be lying if he said it wasn't a little pleasant. Whoever this Twilight Sparkle was, she sounded... genuinely friendly and sincere. He turned again in his bed and sighed deeply, sparing one final glance at his apartment as the weight upon his eyes gently lowered his eyelids. The wider space, the gentle heating, everything was far better than his last place. The only thing that remained the same was the pang of loneliness he felt every time he drifted off to sleep. "...psssst..." "..." "...psssssssst..." "Wuh-?" Snort. "Fi- five more minutes..." "R- Ryan? Are you there?" Another snort, followed by a long snore. "Ryaaaaaaan?" "..." "Oh for Celestia's sake, it's like I'm waking up Spike..." A pause. "In that case..." "..." "RYAN!!" "Huhwahdahe- ow!" Ryan shouted in pain as the sudden scare sent him tumbling out of bed onto the carpet. He groaned from the impact and slowly climbed to his feet, silently praising his decision to not go with a harder flooring material. He blinked his eyes groggily and shook his head to clear his mind. He gave his apartment a quick once over and groaned internally upon landing his gaze on the several still-packed cardboard moving boxes sitting in front of his front door. He moved to begin unpacking them when, after a few seconds, he registered why he was woken up in the first place. "Hey wait a minute, who's there?!" He ran to the middle of his apartment, searching around for any signs of a potential intruder. "What do you want?" "Ryan, it's me! From yesterday? Or last night I suppose." The feminine sounding voice echoed out from his bathroom, its door still wide open just as he had left it last night, and once again his mind gave him a quick refresher on yesterday's interactions. Oh. Right. Slowly, he approached his open bathroom and peeked in, his eyes falling upon his white shower curtain. "Tw- Twilight Sparkle? Is that you?" "Yep, that's me, but you can just call me Twilight! Good morning, Ryan!" Oh dear God, this really is still happening. "Uhh, good morning to you too, Twilight." He reached for his phone and unlocked it to gaze at the time, which read 10:24 AM. Oh wow, I slept all the way to ten? I must have been more tired than I thought. The voice—no, Twilight—hummed contently in response. "So! I have so many questions for you! As a precaution, I've cast a sound-proofing on my bathroom to make sure any sounds on your end don't make it out here and attract any unwanted attention when guests are visiting the library. Not that any of them should ever be up here anyway, but still just in case! I've also told Spike that this bathroom is completely clogged and to just use the downstairs one, so we shouldn't need to worry about him. I talked with one of my friends about it and she offered to let Spike use the shower at her boutique whenever he needs to." There was a soft giggle. "He seemed more than eager to go for that, no questions asked! Hehe I wonder why..." A brief flicker of recognition crossed Ryan's mind. Spike? I swear she mentioned that name yesterda- agh my legs. Before saying anything, he quickly ran out and dragged his desk chair into the bathroom, plopping it right in front of the shower curtain before taking a seat. While his mind was certainly awake now, his body didn't seem to take kindly to being made to stand for a while right after waking up. "Uh, who's this Spike? I think I heard you bring him up yesterday a couple times." "Oh, Spike's my dragon assistant! He helps me out with managing the library, as well as with... hmmm..." A brief pause. "Actually he helps me out with pretty much everything! He lives with me here at the library, so when I heard the shower turn on here, I thought it was just Spike taking another one of his unusually long showers. I'm guessing that was you instead?" "Yeah, I had just finished with my shower before I heard you the first time and-" Ryan blinked. Wait a minute. "Woah woah woah, wait, you said Spike is a dragon?!" Twilight hummed in confirmation. "Mhm! Yeah, I know it's a little strange. As far as I know, Spike is the first dragon to really grow up among ponies. Sure, there's a few settlements with dragons throughout Fillydelphia, but they usually only stick to themselves." "... you have dragons?!" There was a quiet scoff. "Well, yeah? Most of them live in the Dragon Lands some distance southeast of Equestria." A brief moment of silence. "I... don't suppose you have those over there?" Have dragons here?! "Twilight, dragons don't exist here on Earth! Neither do unicorns for that matter, they're both considered mythological creatures. And even in legends and stories, they're usually more... wild... and not living in cities or taking showers or, well, talking." "Ooooo this is fascinating!" Ryan could hear her practically bouncing around in excitement on the other end. "Some of the creatures here don't exist on your world, and yet are present in your legends and myths? This is so exciting! Oh wait wait wait! I want to know just how many of our species exist as myths for you!" Ryan blanched. "There's more?! And they're all sentient creatures that can talk and everything?" "Uhuh! So first off are my species, ponies, which is split into three main races of unicorns—like me!—, pegasi, and earth ponies! There's also a fourth race known as an alicorn, but there's only three known alicorns so they're a bit of an exception." "Pegasi? That sounds like..." Ryan's mind raced through its memory of mythological creatures. "Is that plural for a Pegasus? And what's up with alicorns? Only three in the world?! Are they, like, endangered or something? " Twilight chuckled. "Yep, 'pegasus ponies' works too, but it's just a lot faster to say 'pegasi'. And no, the three alicorns are actually all rulers of Equestria. Or sort of. The Royal Sisters, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna rule over Equestria together. Princess Cadance rules over the Crystal Empire just up in the frozen North of Equestria. It's too large to be considered as just a city, and it's too far and isolated from the rest of Equestria to be properly maintained and managed from Canterlot, so Cadance was given the responsibility of presiding over it alongside her husband, Shining Armor." Ryan nodded calmly, while on the inside having a near mental breakdown trying to process the influx of information. "Well aren't you quite familiar with your leaders?" He snickered a little. "Anyway, yeah we do have, well, normal ponies, but they definitely aren't capable of like, being a working citizen of a country or something. The pegasus is also a creature of mythology here: a winged horse. And I'm guessing an alicorn is a pony with both wings and a horn?" "Well, I am the personal..." There was a brief pause. "I like to stay up to date with Equestrian history! And mmm, alicorns are a little more than that. Oh! That reminds me, there's technically another race of ponies exclusively from the Empire called the Crystal ponies! They're a bit like earth ponies in that they lack wings or a horn, but..." Twilight paused. "They're sort of more... crystally? They also hold a special kind of magic attuned to the Empire itself, sorry there aren't too many books about them circulating the public libraries yet, so I can't really tell you too much about them." Ryan took a deep breath in before slowly releasing it. "...magic?" "Uhm, what about it?" "You're saying magic is real over there too?" A quiet gasp, then silence. "... Uh, Twili-" "You don't have magic?!" Ryan winced at the short-range, verbal onslaught on his poor eardrums not even a half hour after waking up. He reached up to massage his now ringing ears. "Ow? Chill with the yelling please, Twilight. And to answer your question, no. No, we do not. I feel like it should be more a surprise your world has magic instead of ours lacking it.." Twilight stammered "Bu- but magic is everywhere! Within every creature! Within, well, everything! If I plucked a random pebble from outside, I'd probably be able to detect even the tiniest of magic signatures inside. I- I can't begin to imagine a world completely devoid of it... Are you sure there's no magic anywhere where you are?" Ryan laughed. "Yeah I think I'd know if magic was re-" Then he paused, glancing at the ceiling in thought. How... would I know if magic was real here? There's gotta be a million things we didn't know existed yet not even a hundred years ago. He laughed again, a little drier this time."You know what, I'm actually not sure anymore. Anything is possible at this point. I'm talking to you after all from like, halfway across the universe or something with hilariously low latency. If it's real here, I suppose we just haven't discovered it. Speaking of which, how is magic used over there?" "Every species on Equus has magic in them and can also access the magic field in different ways, but its our pony species that by far can use magic the most. Unicorns can actively channel magic through their horn for basic things like levitating objects or casting light around them. Pegasi passively channel magic through their whole body to fly and manipulate weather, mainly clouds. Lastly, earth ponies passively channel magic to have higher strength, endurance, and stamina, but also have a strong connection to the earth that lets them tend to crops way better than anypony else!" Ryan hummed back in acknowledgement, encouraging her to continue as he desperately scribbled notes down on a notebook he grabbed off his desk halfway through Twilight's little lecture. "Alicorns are a special case. In addition to being able to use magic the same way all three pony races can, each of them have a special kind of alicorn magic within them that's attuned to their special talent. Cadance is the princess of love, and so she can feel the love between all ponies all throughout her Empire and, with the help of an artifact called the Crystal Heart, amplifies that love throughout Equestria." That sounds pretty sappy. Ryan jotted down more notes in his notebook and hummed for Twilight to continue. "Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are the princesses of day and night respectfully, and so they both draw power from their respective celestial bodies of the sun and the moon. Naturally, Princess Celestia uses this magic to control the rising and setting of the sun in the sky, and until Princess Luna's return, she also did so for the moon. Princess Luna is now once again in charge of the movement of the moon across the sky, but she also is tasked with monitoring the dreamscape to ensure all ponies in Equestria sleep without nightmares." Ryan stared forward at the curtain, his mouth wide open. His pencil fell away and clattered noisily to the tile floor. "...Ryan? You still with me?" "..." "I know that was probably a lot to take in, but if you have any questions, just te-" "THEY CAN MOVE THE SUN?!" Now it was Ryan's turn to shout in disbelief. A quiet whimper sounded out from behind the curtain, and Ryan surmised Twilight was probably massaging her ears just like he had previously. "I mean, the moon too, but the sun?!" "Well, how else are they supposed to rise and set?" Ryan blanched. "How else?! Doesn't your planet rotate on an axis? You know, to give the appearance of rising and setting?" Silence, broken by a sheepish, nervous laugh. "... noooo?" Ryan deadpanned. Unicorns, pegasi, dragons, alicorns that can move entire stars, magic?! When I said anything is possible, I didn't mean THIS level of anything! Ohhhh what could possibly top this? A curious thought passed through his mind. "Say Twilight, about how old is this Princess Celestia?" "Oh, I think a little over 1,500 years old! Princess Luna is just a little younger by about ten years according to the records." "..." "...Ryan?" "I, uh..." Yep, there goes my brain. Out the window it goes, taking all my common sense with it. "Wow... that's a lot..." A soft rumble echoed throughout the bathroom. Ryan's eyes widened as he realized just how long it had been since he last ate. "Uh, Twilight?" "Hmmm? What is it, Ryan?" Ryan stood up and shuffled awkwardly on his feet. "I, mmm, haven't eaten yet today... and noon is fast approaching, so I'm gonna have to head out for a bit to-" "Wha- you're leaving already? But it hasn't even been a half hour..." A hint of sadness and disappointment snuck its way through Twilight's tone, and Ryan couldn't help but feel a pang of guilt. "I barely even got to any of my questions... When will you be back?" "Well, I was thinking in about forty minutes. How long were you wanting to talk?" "... three hours?" Three hours?! She... was looking forward to this that much? Hmm... Ryan bit his lip. "Well, I mean, I could probably grab something really quick from a place close by and head back right away. That'd take me only about twenty minutes or so. Would that be better?" "Oh?" There was significantly less sadness in Twilight's voice now. "Yes! That would be perfect!" Ryan heard what sounded like hooves clapping together. "Alright then, well, I'll be back in a bit!" Ryan grabbed his phone and began to head for the front door. "R- Ryan, wait!" Ryan wheeled back around in confusion and rushed back to the open bathroom door. "Yeah, what is it Twilight?" There was a few seconds of awkward silence, during which Ryan heard what he imagined was Twilight fidgeting on her hooves. "Can... can you play that music from yesterday again? If I remember right, you had some object that let you play music wherever you were and, well, I really liked it." Ryan blinked as he recalled his little "experiment" from the previous evening. "Oh! You mean the Bach cello suite?" A pause. "Is that what it's called? It was really beautiful, and I nearly fell asleep to it." Ryan laughed quietly. "Yeah, it's a really beautiful piece. Okay, how about this." He picked up his laptop and carried it over to the chair still sitting in front of the bathroom curtain before dragging his laptop charger over to plug it in to one of the bathroom's sockets. After a few seconds of searching, he found the piece he was looking for on YouTube. He made sure to set the video on loop, then hit play and turned up the volume to fifty percent. "Are you able to hear this?" He heard of gentle hum of content from his shower curtain. "Mmmm, yes I can hear it, that's the one. Thanks so much, Ryan..." Her voice began to trail off. "The recording of this first cello suite is about nineteen minutes, so hopefully I'll get back right when it ends. Just in case though, I set it up to repeat when it ends so it doesn't leave you hanging." "Thanks Ryan, I'll be here waiting for you. I still have to..." A long, soft yawn sneaked its way into Twilight's sentence. "... ask you about the rest of our 'mythological' species..." Finally, Twilight's voice dropped quiet enough to the point where, if she was still talking, it could not longer be heard over the sound of classical cello resonating and amplified by the miracle of bathroom acoustics. Yeeesh, if only I could fall asleep that fast! Ryan suppressed a giggle as he turned around and made his way out the front door. No doubt there were probably a dozen or so more nonexistent, mythological creatures roaming around Twilight's world, but he'd rather deal with those impossibilities on a full stomach. Author's Note Next chapter should be up by next week! Currently expecting it to be far longer than the current three chapters! My indecisive butt is probably gonna end up changing this chapter title like several times this hour so heads up lmao (alright I think I'm good after like the 4th change haha!)
Historical TangentsRyan returned to his apartment with a cheerful smile and a half-eaten breakfast sandwich in his hand. He checked his phone for the time and, as expected, it had taken about nineteen minutes to depart, order a quick meal, wait for its completion, and return home with his prize in hand. The walk back had caused the sandwich to lose much of its heat, but food was food, and this morsel was just enough to restore his energy for the morning. Besides, at least it wasn't cold or anything. As soon as he laid his eyes on the interior of his humble abode, he spotted the still-open bathroom door and remembered that he had someone waiting for him. Quietly, he closed his front door as to make as little sound as possible. With the ambient sounds of the city no longer pouring into his room, he could hear the faint sounds of his favorite cello piece echoing out from his bathroom. He recognized the notes as belonging to the last part of the cello suite, meaning he had returned just in time before the piece could loop. After silently kicking off his shoes, Ryan held his breath and began tip-toeing carefully to his bathroom. Thankfully, the few days he had spent living there had taught him what specific parts of the floor are most likely to creak, and he made an effort to steer clear of those. Upon reaching the bathroom, he peaked inside. Everything was exactly where he had left it; his laptop sat on his work chair which remained in front of the shower, its curtain still safely draped across the splash area. Ryan leaned forward towards his laptop and brushed a finger across the touchpad to turn on its screen. Sure enough, the video was still playing with about twenty seconds remaining on the music. He stood there quietly for the remaining duration, enjoying the final notes in the piece until it got to a final, drawn-out chord. Once the final note concluded, he reached over and gently pushed on the space key, pausing the video before it could loop. With the music no longer filling the bathroom air, he focused on his hearing and was able to make out some faint breathing noises coming from the shower curtain, confirming the presence of his mysterious companion. Not wanting to leave his precious laptop in such a precarious spot, he carefully picked it up off the chair and carried it back over to his work desk before closing it. He thought about bringing his chair back out, but realized it might make too much noise if he hit a wall or so much as scraped the tiled floor with it. Making his way back to the bathroom, he placed both his hands on chair's back and leaned forward as much as he could, turning his head so right ear pressed against the shower curtain. Sure enough, he could hear soft, slow rhythmic breathing on the other side. Despite the absurdity of the situation, he couldn't help but snicker a little. So... she fell asleep to it again, huh? Ryan recalled that Twilight had supposedly dozed off during his experiment yesterday involving that same cello piece. And after only a couple minutes of it no less. It seemed she was no match for a full nineteen minutes of it. A small grin made its on his face as he took a step back to fully face the curtain. This is for knocking my sense of reality on its feet yesterday. "TWILIGHT!" "Gaahh!!" Ryan heard a loud crash on the other side of the curtain, accompanied by a pained yelp and followed up with a soft groan. "Ughh... Ryan, wa- was that you?" Ryan covered his mouth with his hands and tried his best to remain quiet, but to his dismay a small snicker sneaked through his fingers. "Wha- it was!" Twilight's voice took on a tone of expected indignation. A couple of angry stomps resounded through the curtain."That wasn't funny, you made me knock over my trash bin!" Oh I can't anymore. Losing all composure, Ryan keeled over in laughter and almost lost his footing on the tile floor. He heard an annoyed huff, which made it even harder to stop laughing. "... Are you done yet?" After a few more seconds of mirth, Ryan finally closed his eyes and breathed deep, holding it in for a little before letting it all out. "Wooooooo. Yep, yep I'm done. Sorry, I just couldn't resist haha. Wow, you fall asleep really easily to this piece! You really love it that much?" Twilight let out an embarrassed laugh. "Well, yes actually! There's a pony who lives near the outskirts of Ponyville named Octavia who plays the cello. She's part of the orchestra in Canterlot, which hosts concerts of solo performances every so often. I used to attend those a lot when I used to live there, and occasionally I still do if it happens to be land on a day and time that my schedule is free." There's another name... Ryan leaned against the wall. "Octavia, huh? Is she one of your unicorn friends? I'm guessing my music sounds a lot like hers, right?" "Nope, she's an Earth pony." Ryan went over his memory of Twilight's explanation of the different pony races. Earth pony... that's the one with... no wings and no horn! Wait, no horn? His eyes furrowed in confusion. That means no magic. How the hell does she play a cello then?! Twilight hummed in thought. "And yes, that cello piece sounds exactly like the kind of music she usually composes! Her concerts are the only time I can listen to it though. They only make a limited number of vinyl records for each performance, and every time I've never been able buy one before they run out of supplies." There was a pause, followed by a quiet, annoyed grumble. "Though sometimes it feels like those richer, Canterlot nobles are somehow reserving records before the actual performances..." Geez, the rich elite having advantages over others? Guess her society isn't that much different from ours... Well, minus the flying, magic, and who knows how many other fantastical species exist there. Ryan laughed. "So I take it you can't really listen to music like that whenever you want then? Or wherever you want for that matter?" Twilight hummed in thought. "Well, that sounds a bit like a music box. Those are these wooden, mechanical instruments using a metal cylinder and comb that-" "-plays music when a crank is turned?" A second passed. "... yes! Precisely!" Ryan blinked in surprise. "Yeah, we... have those, too. Same name and everything. Though we have these things called phones that can hold a lot more music than the one piece a music box can play, among other things." "Wow, really?! This is incredible, I didn't realize just how many terms are shared between our worlds! I've got to write this all down." Yeah, this is getting weird... Ryan listened to what sounded like mess of hooves clopping and paper scattering. A thought crossed his mind. "Wait, that reminds me... Do you still have that list of those other species you wanted to ask me about?" There was a brief moment of silence. "Yes, I still have them on hoof. Did you want to check those out now?" Ryan chuckled inwardly at the horse puns of 'on hand' and cracked his knuckles. "If that's alright, yeah. Something just occurred to me." "...what was that?" Ryan blinked. "What was what?" "That sound you just made. It sounds awfully familiar somehow." He pondered for a moment what she could possibly be talking about when it hit him. "Oh! Yeah, I was just cracking my knuckles. Sorry, it's a bit of a habit of mine, I probably shouldn't be doing that when talking to someone anyway." There was a pause. "Knuckles? Wait a minute, that sounds like... oh my gosh, I can't believe I forgot about that!" What is she on about? Ryan furrowed his eyes in utter confusion. "Forgot about what?" "Your anatomy!" Ryan's eyes widened in realization. "Oh, I-, uh-, I mean yes, I guess I never-" "Do you have claws? Paws? Hooves? Talons? How many limbs do you have?" "Hold on, wait a-" "How many eyes? How tall is your species on average? What about average weight?" "Wai-" "Where do humans usually live? Or what do you eat? Oh! What about your-" "Twilight!" "...oh. Sorry!" Ryan couldn't help but laugh a little. "No, you're fine, that was just... a little too fast for me to process. I did catch your first few questions though. First off, we typically have four limbs: two legs and two arms." "Two legs? Oh, so human are bipedal!" Ryan blinked. "Yyyyyyyyyes. Yep! I'd imagine this is different for your world, where you said is filled with quadrupeds?" "Mhm, most sentient races in our world are quadruped, but there are definitely exceptions like with Minotaurs and juvenile dragons. Juvenile dra- you know what, nevermind. "Gotcha. Also no, we don't really have claws on our arms. We call those hands." Twilight hummed in thought. "Hands, hands... Hmm, that's very interesting." Ryan tilted his head curiously. "What is it?" "Well, it's something I've never really thought of before. But as far as I'm aware, of the few documented sentient species here that use the term arm for their upper limbs, none of them use the term 'hand' for the extension of the limb. However, it's used universally as a verb for giving or passing something. There is also the expression of giving or lending a hand, which is interchangeable with 'lending a hoof', but I've never really questioned it until now." "Really? We use 'hand' for all the same expressions here." There was a loud gasp, followed by the rustling papers and the sound of scribbling. "Wha- Twilight, are you really taking a note of that?" Twilight stammered. "I-, of course I am! Proper research requires thorough documentation!" "Wowwww, glad to know I'm just your research topic." "That's not what I meant!" Ryan let loose a snicker. "Pfft, I know, I'm just messing with you." He swore he could hear a muffled exasperated growl. "Ha. Ha. Very funny. You and Rainbow Dash would get along veryyyyyy well." Rainbow Dash, huh? "Let me guess, Rainbow is a pegasus pony?" "Hmm? Oh, yes, that's correct. How'd you figure?" "Rainbow... Dash? The name just feels a bit... self-intuitive." "What do you-... oh, hmmm... I suppose so!" Twilight chuckled. "Anyways, sometime later I'm probably going to do some research on the origin of that 'hand' word. It does perplex me how that word exists for us when, well, none of us have any hands." Ryan laughed. "Alright then, let me know how that goes!" He took a bite out of what remained of his breakfast sandwich, noting most of its heat had long since dissipated during their talk. "Soooo, before I left, you mentioned something about asking me more about those... 'mythological creatures' of your world?" "Okay, sure! Just lemme..." There was some more rustling of paper. "Here we go! Yes, there are many sentient species spread throughout Equus, most of which are somewhat documented, but there are many of them that likely remain elusive to us." Dang, not all sentient species are accounted for over there? That's a lot of interesting first encounters just waiting to happen. "How much of your world has been explored already? Here on Earth, almost every strip of land is mapped out and then some! We still know pretty little about our oceans, though." Twilight gasped in shock. "The whole world mostly mapped out?! That's amazing! I mean, most of Equestria itself is roughly mapped out, but I can't say the same for much of the surrounding nations' land." Ooooo yes, politics. Must be worse than ours then. "How come?" "Well, long before the First Long Night, during Equestria's expansionsist era, no official borders formally existed. Scribes and cartographers would travel outwards from Canterlot to map out the surrounding land, both for documentation and to scout out potential locations of settlement. Because there were little to no larger pockets of sentient species on the mainland, Equestria expanded to cover most of the continent, stopping just short of the Frozen North. When we tried expanding overseas however, we came across much larger regions occupied by other sentient species like dragons, griffons, zebras, or yaks, with established systems of rule." Ryan hummed in thought. "Yaks? Griffons are also part of mythology and legend here, but we've got yaks." "Oh! Sentient?" "Nah." There was a soft sigh. "Right. If I ever saw your world, I already know that sight would be pretty... upsetting, as much as I'd still want to witness that for research purposes." Haha, we got Planet of the Apes for that. "Yeah, I get what you mean." Twilight cleared her throat. "Anyways, after several months of back and forth negotiating, the first of many treaties was signed between the two Princesses of Equestria and the known leaders of the other species that established a formal committee for international affairs. Well... calling it a formal committee might be pushing it. The main accomplishment was recognizing each other as separate nations and establishing official borders for the Dragon Lands, the Griffon Kingdom, and Yakyakistan, and to make sure no one tried expanding into another's land. The dragons stubbornly remained hostile to anyone who crossed into their territory, agreeing to maintain nonaggression when on foreign land. Of course, there's been a few... isolated incidents, but for the most part nothing major." Ryan scoffed. "So basically, 'we won't go out of our way to screw with you, but all bets are off if you make it easy for us'?" "I- ," Twilight chuckled. "Yes, I suppose that's a way to put it. In any case, they weren't very open to ponies trekking across the border to survey their geography. Griffons were more tolerant of visiting creatures, but made it clear mapping attempts were not welcome. The yaks stated they wouldn't stop anyone who wanted to try, but back then the storms in the north were far harsher, so it was not worth the risk to most cartographers when most ponies didn't care much for exploring beyond our borders." Ryan pondered the implications. "So... do maps of the world just leave the areas like the dragon kingdom as like, some mysterious region? 'Here there be monsters'?" "Griffon Kingdom," Twilight corrected. "But no, there's a rough approximation of foreign geography used in modern maps. Around a century ago, international trade became more common, and the hostility from griffons and dragons had settled down enough to where scout pegasi could fly the outskirts of the borders to map the regions leading into their lands. For the griffons, this included the west-most city, Griffonstone, in its entirety. Ponies rarely venture further east of Griffonstone, so maps just cut off there. The dragons, as far as we know, don't have individual cities, but we know so little about them and their history and culture to begin with. The few stories of ponies being... eaten by dragons in old history scare most ponies from even thinking of getting close!" Dang... well, at least dragons being generally scary is consistent between our worlds. Ryan thought about this information for a bit, poking the shower curtain absentmindedly. "Dragons in our legends and myths vary a lot. In some, they're sentient and can talk, but in others, they're just mindless beasts. They're used in a lot of stories and movies nowadays. There's even a whole book and movie franchise around a character learning to tame and ride a dragon!" "What?!" Twilight exclaimed, before giggling. "We definitely don't have something like that around here, but it sounds like something Spike would find funny." Spike... Spike... Oh, her dragon assistant, right. "What, the whole 'riding a dragon' part? Is that concept no-" "Oh no, that's a thing here too in some stories or comics. It's the 'taming a dragon' part since, you know... they can talk?" Oh. "Ah! My bad." Ryan scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "Yeah... that'd be pretty weird. Anyways, didn't you also mention zebras?" "Oh, oops. Like I said, zebras were among the many sentient species Equestria encountered during its expansion and are also among the committee, but unlike with the others, first contact was very peaceful, mainly in that the scouting party wasn't attacked on sight. They were very welcoming and open to exchanging information, though at the time none of it could be understood as every species had their own native language. A prominent sorcerer, Starswirl the Bearded, helped alongside the zebras to create the first universal translator spell, which would be why Princess Celestia would even be able to negotiate with the griffons, dragons, and yaks." Holdddd up. Ryan's jaw dropped. "No way, a universal translation spell? That would be a breakthrough if something like that was developed here, and you're saying this has been a thing over there for centuries?!" "Yep! Anyways, back to what I was saying, once stable communication was established, a lot of information was exchanged, including a good chunk of the geography for the zebra homeland. Once the rest of the land's geography was recorded, a consistent trade route was established, though this shrank following the First Long Night and only Canterlot directly trades with them currently. For the rest of Equestria, zebras gradually became enshrowded in mystery, and their cultural tie with nature spawned many unpleasant rumors about them. It doesn't help that zebras never venture into Equestria, save for one who actually lives near Ponyville in the Everfree Forest, named Zecora." Twilight stifled a snort. "All those rumors must have really gotten to the ponies here when Zecora began making regular surprise visits looking for certain herbs or flowers that she hoped might grow here. They even started to get to me, despite me knowing they weren't true. That was a... very interesting experience for me and my friends that I'll have to tell you another time." Ryan chuckled. "I mean... I don't have anywhere else to be right now." A soft hum of contemplation bounced around the bathroom. "Hmmmm, I suppose so... wait. Oh my gosh. Oh no." "Huh?" Ryan asked worriedly, backing up slightly. "Is somethingggg wrong?" "I can't believe I forgot, I promised to help one of my friends with revising their speech for presenting her new fashion line, and her speech is in thirty minutes!" There was a groan of exasperation. "I didn't even get to most of the questions on my list, I got myself in a tangent answering yours!" Ryan shrank a little. "Oh. Sorry." "Nonono, you're fine, Ryan, I know you probably have as many questions as I do, I just realllyyy enjoy explaining things. I'll be back in maybe an hour or two, will you still be around by then?" Ryan did a brief mental check of his completely empty schedule for the day. "I... should be, yeah." "Perfect! I'm so sorry, I didn't want to just cut off our talk like this but I lost track for time and-" "Twilight!" Ryan interjected. "It's alright, I've done this sort of thing tonssss of times before, you're fine." Twilight let out a relieved laugh. "Haha, well alright then, thanks. I'll be back soon!" "See ya!" Ryan listened as Twilight's galloping began to fade away, only to quickly return. "Oh! Also! If for whatever reason, you hear Spike enter the bathroom, pleaaaase try not to make any noise. I don't want him becoming suspicious." Ryan nodded to the curtain. "Okay, I'll try. Um... what does Spike sound like?" "Young and male. You know what, scratch that. Just apply that to anyone you hear who isn't me!" Ryan laughed. "Alright, got it!" He paused. "And good luck with that speech!" "Thanks! Bye again!" Before Ryan could respond, he heard the bathroom door somewhere on the other side of the curtain slam shut, further muffling the waning sounds of Twilight's hooves. After a few more seconds, the bathroom fell utterly silent once more. Ryan reached up and gently brushed the otherwise normal-looking shower curtain aside, revealing a completely ordinary shower. Of all things... how did this?... He stared blankly at his porcelain tiles before letting the curtain fall back into place. Anyways, what was I doing before I came back here? I swear I'm forgetting somethi- His stomach rumbled, and he glanced to his left hand which still held his cold, half-eaten breakfast sandwich. "Oh. Right." Author's Note sorry for the massive delay! 1.3k words of this chapter were written within a week of the previous chapter publish, then a lot of things happened and it got pushed back constantly. this is not cancelled though! i still know how this story will play out more or less, just a matter of getting to it. I have no estimation on when the next chapter will be though, but it'll most likely be in a month or two In other news, I'm thinking I'm back into writing! I fully intend to make this a more routine update, and I got some new stories coming soon too!
Yet More Historical Tangents"Okay wait wait wait, let me get this straight. Your nation was formed after the leaders of the unicorns, pegasi, and Earth ponies, beefed over and over, summoning mystical Windigo creatures that covered the entire land in ice and snow. And, after that, they brought their closest advisor with them to try to find better living conditions, ran into each other, beefed again until they got stuck in a cave and frozen. Then, their advisors became friends instead of fighting, and that created this giant 'fire of friendship' that burned away the Windigos and made the leaders friendlier, after which they established Equestria together as one race?" There was a moment of silence. "I-, hmmm, I mean, that's a bit of a fast overview, but yes. That's essentially what happened." Yep, got it all down. Ryan finished checking over his notes and chuckled, twirling a pencil between his fingers. "Wow, you really weren't kidding about Equestria being founded on friendship and harmony. I thought the whole friendship part was just a metaphor for 'mutual compromise', like I usually see it when it pops up with anything in today's world." "Friendship is much more than just mutual compromise! And I meant it quite literally that the three leaders and each of their advisors became friends following the unification of the tribes, not that they just entered friendlier relations with each other. According to some of our oldest remaining documents of that time period, the six of them began arranging more and more frequent meetups with each other that, while starting out as formal dinners to discuss laws, policies, resource distribution, or other essential areas, soon turned into a gathering of friends. It must've helped that, with the three tribes working together, problems were taken care of much faster. Some of the few remaining accounts by castle servants reported hearing occasional uproars of laughter and giggles from through the closed doors of the "Hehe, you know", Ryan said with a chuckle," you're very awfully familiar with your country's ancient history. You said all of what you've just told me in the last..." Ryan snuck a glance at his phone screen. "...thirty minutes, is all from off the top of your head? I mean, most of what I told you about our history was stuff I had to learn in school as well, but once I started studying for my career, there was only so much of it I could keep in my head. I've been reading this off of multiple articles I have up, but you've been reading off of, well, yourself. That's..." Ryan whistled. "...pretty impressive." "Oh! I- um, thanks!" Ryan could practically hear the blush. "I dunno, I guess history always fascinated me as a filly. I've always loved learning about the actions and thoughts and experiences of the ponies that lived centuries ago, even a millenia ago, when the world was so different than what we have now. Being able to read about all the many tiny moving parts and pieces that would eventually craft the world I live and breathe in now... it's just really special to me." Ryan cracked a small grin. "Heh, I'm glad there's always someone like you who can appreciate all that. Growing up, all of that seemed real interesting to me, but I couldn't devote much time to any of that due to... a number of things that were going at the time." Ryan looked away. "Eventually, I guess I lost that interest and pivoted more towards things I believed mattered more to my future in the long run." "...what about now?" Ryan looked back up to the voice. "What do you mean?" "You didn't have the time when you were younger because you were so worried about finding what your role in the world would be, right?" He blinked. "That's... an interesting way to put it. And it was among other things, but yeah, I guess you can say that." "So what about now? You said you've got your own apartment earlier, so you must have a stable job already. Why don't you explore your history again in your free time?" Ryan laughed, trailing off near the end. "I... could. But it's been so long since I really bothered with caring, it just feels weird to suddenly care again." "Hey, there's nothing that says you can't get back into old hobbies! I used to make book forts with Spike when I was a filly, and recently we've started doing it again as a way of livening up when we reorganize the library." "Haha, that's cute." Ryan chuckled, then sighed. "But you have someone you can do that with, like, so it's more enjoyable and all. I don't really know anyone I can just randomly talk about history with." Besides, I'd probably really weird them out. Twilight hummed in thought. "You know, I'd be more than happy to exchange more of Equestria's history with yours." What? Ryan blinked. "I-, Twilight, I appreciate the thought and all, but I don't thi-" "Come on, it'll be fun! And exciting too!" Twilight's tone carried such an insane level of passion, it pretty much sent Ryan reeling. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for me to better understand the culture and history of another distant civilization completely unknown to us! I mean, your voice just happens to pop into my shower curtain, of all ponies?! It's like history is begging to be written!" "I mean, are you really sure?" Ryan scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "When I was talking earlier about our history, you seemed a bit, mmmm... squeamish?" "Oh... yeah, that. Sorry about some of my, um, earlier freak outs. I just wasn't expecting your nation's history to be so... so..." "Violent?" Ryan offered, raising an eyebrow. "Conflicted. I was gonna say 'conflicted'." "Uh huh, sure." Ryan chuckled. "I mean, I don't really blame you either. If I was in your place, I'd probably go a bit green in the face too, just hearing how many wars we've fought in." "Oh no, it's not really that. Equestria has seen its fair share of wars and conflicts throughout its long history. Granted, not anywhere as much as your 'United States' has experienced in such a... small time span since its conception, but we're no stranger to fighting. It's those... fatality numbers that are a big shock to me." Ryan hung his head low and laughed dryly. "Ah, yep, that'll do it. I hadn't asked about it earlier cause I wasn't sure if it was possibly a sensitive topic, but does Equestria not lose that many peo-, I mean, ponies, in combat?" "No! Not even close!" It sounded like Twilight was aghast at just the mere suggestion. "In fact, I don't think there's a single war that Equestria was majorly involved in where we lost more in total than how many of you were killed in your, um, bloodiest battle. Let me check..." Some papers rustled distantly. "The... Battle of Anty-tam?" "Antietam." Ryan corrected, followed by more rustling paper. "Well, overall, there's a lot worse, I'll talk about those another day... but Antietam I think was the worst single-day one in our history, since it was during a civil war and both sides were Americans in the end. Almost twenty-three thousand casualties from a single day battle, including three and a half thousand dead." There was a nervous gulp. "Yeah... that one. Three and a half thousand...". Twilight's voice shuddered upon the restatement. "A- anyways, our worst conflict doesn't even come near those numbers. During the few recorded times when Equestria fought a hostile nation, it was rare for any soldiers to actually die in battle. Celestia made sure all unicorns were taught critical healing and defensive spells, while earth ponies and pegasi carried old healing potions that had been en masse imports from trading in the zebra lands. Many ponies did suffer losing some of their limbs or even a bit worse that magic at the time couldn't restore." Is she actually for real? "Wait, Equestria had all this magic and potions, but focused it on mostly just protection? What did ponies use for, well, attacking?" "Mainly spears and swords. Pegasi had crossbows too." "What the he-" "Shush you, I know what you're about to say." Twilight cut in. "I asked the same thing when I learned about this in Ancient Equestrian History. A thousand years ago, our knowledge of magic and its complexities weren't all there yet, so advancements in magic were made in the most important direction, which Celestia focused towards protection of her ponies. It was only after Equestria had stabilized that a branch of study for magic properly sprouted." Twilight paused. "You said that battle of yours was during a... civil war? What is that?" Ryan blinked, caught off guard by the sudden query. "Wha- oh, sorry. 'Civil war'? You've never heard of that term?" "Not that I can remember, no." "Oh, that's... interesting." For a nation that apparently speaks our language, shares a ton of words, and has an even longer history that mine, that's a big surprise. "Well, it's pretty much a war between people of the same country." "Oh! Hmm, we've never really had that happen before since the founding of Equestria, maybe that's why no specific term was made for it aside from 'period of internal strife'. We did almost experience one a long time ago, though. You remember my mention of Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, right?" "Mhm." Ryan affirmed, not needing to check his notes for tidbits he'd probably never forget again. "They're the two sisters who rule Equestria together, can move the sun and moon somehow, and are both over a thousand years old. Oh, and they're both alicorns." "Yep, that's them! A little over a millennia ago, tensions started to rise between the two of them. Princess Luna, the younger of the sisters, slowly grew envious of the praise and attention Princess Celestia received. While they ruled together as equals, Luna always handled the duties of the night, such as guarding the dreams of ponies from nightmares, and watching over the world at night with her moon, ensuring no dark forces attempt to slip in during the cover of night. Like Celestia, who held court during the day, Luna held a court at night that saw a lot less ponies for obvious reasons, and performed her most important duties at night, so during the day she was rarely seen. She initially never thought anything of it, but soon, it's said she began noticing how ambassadors, delegates, and nobles often slipped up and referred to Celestia as the primary monarch, sometimes forgetting she was even in the room with them." Twilight paused, which Ryan surmised was her letting him catch up on his notes. His mind drifted a little. Guarding ponies' dreams, huh? I'll make a note to ask about that after this. He jotted the last bit of short-hand down before clearing his throat. "Alright, I got it down." "This went on for years upon years." Twilight continued, prompting Ryan to return to note-taking. "What I listed was just speculation from others who were around during that time. The nation was still growing and strife with countless domestic and international instabilities. Celestia was at her wit's end trying to find peace and compromise for early Equestria and ended up... neglecting Luna's rising concerns. I don't fully know what really went on a thousand years ago, but it gradually created a divide between the two sisters that somehow managed to leak onto the citizens of Equestria. Some ponies unhappy with Celestia's policies and rule latched onto this conflict to spark their own movements." "Movements?" Ryan questioned, still wrapping up a few notes. "Like, did they want to secede or-" "According to our history books, it was complete chaos." Twilight interrupted quickly, as if anticipating that exact question. "Some wanted to splinter their town off from Equestria, others wanted some proposal or reform passed. Whatever it was, every group pointed to the growing distance between the two princesses as proof that the current system wasn't working. Over time, this rise in riots and protests twisted Luna's envy into harsh disdain, pushing her past her breaking point as the nation was on the verge of collapse. During one summer's day, she raised the moon over the sun and cast the land into the darkness of an eclipse, marking the beginning of the First Long Night. When Celestia confronted her, she refused to lower it and turned to her own dark magics, transforming herself into a wicked creature known as Nightmare Moon." Nightmare Moon? Again with these names... Ryan added a quick side note abbreviating the unusual name as 'NMM' for future shorthand. "Born from all of Luna's inner bitterness, rage, and envy, Nightmare Moon sought only to kill Celestia and attacked her straight away. Within minutes, their castle was almost completely destroyed, and Celestia led her sister to the skies away from the civilian populace. They battled for hours at a standstill until Celestia finally defeated her and reluctantly banished her to the moon for a thousand years. With their primary source of motivation gone, most the rebellions faded out on their own." Wow... "That's... awful." Ryan scratched the back of his head. "If I got this down right, you said all of this happened around a thousand years ago? And Luna was banished for a thousand years? So... does that mean..." "If it's what I think it is, then yes." Twilight affirmed. "She returned a little over a year ago in what is now called the Second Long Night, but... eventually, she was not only defeated, but freed from her own corruption. After a bit of recovery and restoration, she's since rejoined Celestia as Princess of the Night and has resumed her old duties once again!" Ryan blinked. Hmm.. that was quick, I'll have to ask some more details on that later. I don't know if how she was defeated is some sort of secret, but Twilight's been pretty obsessed with her details lately so her skimming over this bit seems off. Ryan looked down his notes to reference something and gawked. "Wait, hold up, you said one of her old duties was to guard ponies' dreams from nightmares? Like, um, how is that supposed to work? Is there some sort of shield she puts over ponies' minds? Or some spell that can give pleasant dreams? Or-" Twilight cut him off with a giggle. "No, it's not really that straightfoward. She has the unique ability to Dreamwalk, allowing her to view, enter, and even interact with ponies' dreams through the Dreamscape. She can dispel nightmares on a surface level, but she often has to speak with the dreamer themselves to help them resolve whatever inner fears or conflicts are behind the nightmares. The whole thing is really delicate, and she has to stay pretty mindful of each pony's privacy when doing this." Ryan tapped his pencil to his chin. "That is... actually really sweet. Hmm, you say it like she's the only one who's able to do this. How come you seem so... well-read on all this? Are there any books about Dreamwalking around in your library or something?" "Pffft, though I'd love that! Maybe I could write one..." Twilight began to trail off. "Anyways, no, there aren't really any books dedicated to what Luna can do with dreams around anywhere actually. A few months ago, I was having a terrible nightmare and she came to dispel it, which I hadn't seen personally before. Once I realized it was really her in my dream, I... mayyyyy or may not have flooded her with all the questions I could think of about how it works. Honestly, I'm surprised she entertained me with that much, I learned more from her that one night than months of me digging around various libraries." "Hmmm..." Ryan glanced around his room nervously as a thought passed his mind. "So... Luna can enter dreams. Since... we're able to talk to each other now... does that mean she could enter mine?" There was a long pause. "I... have no idea. You think she could help you with some nightmares you're having?" "Wha- no!" Ryan sputtered out. "Nonono. I mean, who wouldn't say no to having no nightmares. But I just mean, I can't really control what my mind dreams up, and it could be pretty private and-" "Ryan, Luna guards the dreams of millions of ponies and has personally entered each of their dreams at least once." Twilight chuckled. "She knows how to keep secrets. With that said, I actually don't know if she could reach dreams from another world, even with an open connection like this. I could wri-, try asking next time I happen to see her, but I don't want her or Princess Celestia catching on to this just yet. Do you... remember seeing her last night?" Ryan thought long and hard, yet fruitlessly, about the contents of his last dream. "Not that I know of? Though, you know how dreams sort of just slip off your mind once you wake up. For all I know, maybe she did pass by and I just forgot." Ryan slipped a glance back at his front window, where the glow of the streetlights flooded faintly through with the darkness of the coming night. "The sun set about an hour ago here, and I'll have to go to sleep in an hour or two. I'm just... a bit worried about any surprise visitors haha." He paused. "Sunset was an hour ago? Wow, Saturday went by fast." "Time can move quickly when you're learning!" Ryan blanched. No it does no- "And, well, if it's any reassurance, Luna puts her focus towards ponies who are having nightmares. Even if by some miracle she could detect your dreams, they're among millions of other dreams out there. I don't think she'd notice a single new dream pop up in the whole ocean of them she works with every night, let alone when she's focusing on those with nightmares." "I, hrmmm... alright." Ryan eventually conceded. "If you say so. I'm still going to keep a look out for her just in case!" "You sure you can do that? With how dreams tend to work and all?" "I, um..." Ryan paused and mulled it over. "Probably not. But that doesn't mean I can't try!" Twilight chuckled. "I guess I can't really stop you." She paused for a moment before speaking again, this time her voice lowered to a whisper. "Sorry, Spike just came back, I have to go again." "Oh, really?" A brief pang of sadness passed through him. "That's okay, it's getting late anyways. Thanks for today though." "What for?" "I..." Ryan hesitated briefly. "I haven't really gotten to talk to someone this much in a really long time. I've missed it more than I realized. So... thanks for talking to me, I guess is what I'm trying to say." "Awww, Ryan!" Twilight giggled lightheartedly. "You're very welcome! And we'll have even more time to talk tomorrow, right?" "Hmmm." Ryan thought about it for a moment. "I'll definitely be around, but it might not be as much as today. I have to prepare a bit of a speech I have to give at some meeting on Monday." "Oh..." Ryan caught a trace of disappointment in her tone. "That's okay! Actually, I'd be happy to help a bit with your speech tomorrow if you want. Not to brag, but I've written quite a lot of speeches for presentations back in school! I am prettyyyy good at them." Ryan laughed and raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't mind a little advice, I guess. You sure?" "Come on, pleaaaaaseeeeee?" Ryan did a double-take at the shift in energy. Wow's she's suddenly all excited about this. "Alright, alright. Only if there's something I actually need some help with, which there probably will be, not gonna lie." "Yay!" Ryan chuckled at Twilight's enthusiasm. "This is gonna be-" "Twilight? What are you doing up there?" "Eep! I have to go now, I'll be around same time tomorrow!" Ryan reeled in surprise. "I-" Hoof steps followed by a slamming door echoed throughout Ryan's bathroom, cutting him off. He blinked and stood frozen for a few seconds before letting out a quiet laugh. That must have been that Spike dragon she's mentioned. Closing the bathroom door slowly, Ryan peered around his apartment. His eyes fell upon his messy bed and a yawn escaped his mouth. If Twilight says I shouldn't need to worry about her world's nightly princess invading my dreams, then I'll try not to. It's not like I could do anything to stop her anyway. He began reaching for his clothes drawer to get ready for the night, then paused as a thought hit him. Wow... I really did spend almost the whole day just talking to one person. Or, pony, I guess. Ryan mulled over it for a while, before gently smiling. This was a good day. Author's Note I swear I'm going to stop taking so long on updates haha! We are nearing the end of the 'introductory' section of the story, soon there will be a more forward direction to the narrative in future chapters! Just hang in there!
Run-In at the CafeBeep beep beep! Ryan groaned and squirmed around in bed, finding himself completely entangled in his bed sheets. He reached an arm out from under the covers, blindly seeking out the source of the most evil sound of all existence at the point in time. Eventually, his hand brushed against the cool surface of his phone, which he promptly snatched and yanked under the blanket with him. Ugh, alright let's see what time it i- ack! Momentarily blinded by his screen's brightness, he shook his head to clear daze before squinting his eyes at his phone. 10:51 AM?! Eesh, that's even later than yesterday! Tumbling head over heels, Ryan scrambled out of bed and practically threw himself onto the floor. He winced a bit from the impact and groaned sleepily, gazing around his apartment. The sight of many still packed cardboard boxes graced his eyes, eliciting a tired sigh. How have I not gotten to unpacking yet? Come on, what is wrong with you, Ryan? I'll have to get to this after breakfast. Or brunch, I guess. Climbing to his feet, Ryan's eyes flicked to his bedside table, where he had left a small note for himself last night with the words "Princess Luna" messily scribbled on it. Recognition flashed in his mind and he remembered why he had left it. Let's see, um... I think tonight there were a few childhood faces, some large school campus, an even larger, uh, water bottle or something? Really weird dream tonight, as usual, but I don't think I can remember there being any Princess Luna. Ryan scratched his head awkwardly. "I... guess there really was nothing to worry about, like Twilight said." He glanced over to the hallway leading to the bathroom, where he had apparently left the door open from last night. Quietly, he crept towards the door and leaned an ear into the open space. After receiving a few seconds of nothing but his own breathing, he cautiously peeked his head into the bathroom. "Hey, Twilight? You there?" Once more, no response could be heard. He waited maybe ten seconds, straining to pick up any sort of faint noises from the other side of his mystical shower curtain, before backing up and closing the door. Hmmm... she's probably out getting breakfast. He double checked his phone to reaffirm the time. Or... lunch? Or, maybe brunch. Is brunch even a thing over there in, uh, Equestria? He scratched his head in thought. Oh, whatever. From what she's told me so far, she has her own sort of life, so whatever she's up to right now shouldn't be anything I need to worry about. He paused, the realization of what he had just thought hitting him in the face, and chuckled. I somehow managed to discretely make first contact with some unknown, alien world made up of sentient ponies and a whole ton of random creatures from our myths and legends... and two days later, I'm wondering whether she's busy eating lunch or brunch. Wow, okay. He glanced backwards towards the notebook sitting on his work desk, still opened to his latest page of notes taken from the previous day's talks with this 'Twilight Sparkle'. And apparently, minus the impossible existence of mythological creatures, the ability to control the weather, moon, and freaking sun, and just the existence of magic in general... they're barely any different from us as a society. They've got businesses and jobs and unemployment, there's restaurants and libraries and farms, a functioning government, hell, they even have to pay taxes! He turned around to face his now-closed bathroom door. Not to mention, I can understand Twilight completely fine, like she's a native English speaker, though she says their language is something called 'ponish', with its own, completely different origin! What's going on, is there some sort of 'magic spell' on my shower curtain that's translating our words to each other or what? Ryan's stomach rumbled, and he rolled his eyes in annoyance. Yeah yeah, I heard you. Ugh, I really need to grab food now. I'll have to remember to ask her more about this whenever I see, I mean, talk with her again. Based on everything else she's told me, magic and all that is much more her specialty. I'll probably be best if I... He paused, then chuckled to himself. Who am I kidding? I have no idea what the hell is going on. Ryan walked over to his desk, picking up his wallet and key, before heading for his front door. He spared a glance backwards once more towards his bathroom door, then turned back around and quietly opened his front door and slipped out. "One breakfast burrito, please." The cashier nodded and pressed a set of keys on the register, its front-facing display lighting up to list his one and only item. Ryan fidgeted around with his credit card already out and ready in his hand. She turned tiredly back to him. "Do you want any extra sauce with that?" Ryan shuffled around on his feet, trying not to think about the many potential sets of eyes that could be gazing upon him from the short line of customers behind him. "Uh, no, no sauce, thanks." He eyed the packets of ketchup sauce sitting at the edge of the counter. I don't want to risk another incident of spilling the sauce while walking. Gah, never again. "Any plates or utensils?" Ryan looked back towards the cashier. "Oh, uhm, no thanks either." "What about-" "Just the burrito, please. Oh, and make it to-go." The cashier rolled her eyes. "Alright, that'll be $5.99." Agh, why are you the one rolling your eyes, I just wanna get out of your hair quicker. Ryan swiped his card and waited a few seconds for her to hand him his receipt. "Your food will be ready in about five minutes." "Cool, thanks." Ryan grabbed his receipt and walked over to an unoccupied corner of the joint and leaned on the wall. He pulled out his phone and began mindlessly scrolling through his downloaded music. Alright, so if I remember right, Twilight mentioned there were some orchestra concerts she's likes listening to, and she definitely really liked that cello prelude I have saved. Hmm... He scrolled down his phone more, making note of a few relevant orchestral pieces he had saved. I should probably make a playlist or something for Twilight with all the different orchestra pieces I have. If she liked that cello music, she'd totally love some of these other ones. He paused. Actually, I gotta make playlists for all my music so I'm not just sifting through them in alphabetical order... He swiped over the menu to create a new playlist, subsequently naming it 'Twilight Music'. He then started going through his music and checking off anything remotely recognized as being orchestra. "Hey." "WHA-?!" Panicked, Ryan stumbled a little to the side, away from the voice that was just in his ear, very nearly dropping his phone. After regaining his bearings, he turned around and faced the annoyingly familiar Vietnamese man with his obnoxiously familiar black and white business suit. "Ugh, Peter, really?" Peter, Ryan's former work colleague, leaned against a nearby wall and flashed a cocky smirk. "What, surprised to see me?" "Uhm, yeah? I only ever see you eating out during the week." Ryan slipped his phone into his pocket and mirrored Peter's posture, though a little unsteadily as the wall near him had some unfortunately-placed shelves, but he did his best. He looked Peter up and down. "And what's with the whole get-up? You look like you just came from your office, isn't it the weekend?" Peter's smile faltered and he rolled his eyes, groaning in exasperation. "If by 'weekend', you mean either Saturday or Sunday, then yes. But if you mean 'day of relaxation away from all your work and stress', then I'm afraid my company's got another thing to say." He leaned his head back and bumped it hard against the wall. "Our product manager called the entire team in for some last minute stress testing of the application and database or whatever. We don't have an internal demo of it for it yet, so I dunno what the fuss is about." "Aw, damn." Ryan looked to the ground awkwardly and scratched the back of his head. "Uhm, sorry to hear, man." "Nah, it's all good." Peter waved a hand dismissively. "I can handle it as long as we're getting paid for the extra time. We'd handle it better if you were still with us." "Uhuh. Ha. Ha." Ryan rolled his eyes though failing to hide a small grin. "You know, you don't need to mention that so much, I like my new work place a lot better." "Well, duh. It's your literally place. Not like you have anyone telling you what you can't have hanging on your walls." Peter playfully punched Ryan on his shoulder. "But come on, you need to get out more than just our little lunch talks during the weeks. You've been lot more, uh..." He scratched his chin. "A lot more reserved lately, since you left us. I swear, you gotta talk to more people other than just me, now that you're not like, forced to when you were on the dev team." Ryan scoffed and looked away slightly, sighing a little. "I'm... fine with how I am now, with how things are now. I just... I dunno, I think I'm pretty content with just keeping things how they are." He glanced over to the counter, eyeing the small slips of paper hanging on the wall behind. Come on, where's my burrito already? "Really? You sure don't sound like it." Peter pulled out his phone and scrolled through some lists, text too small for Ryan to read out from where he stood. "Huh?" Ryan let out a yawn. "Well, maybe I'm just sleepy still, I just woke up not too long ago after all. And besides, we still have our lunch chats and our occasional weekend hangouts, right? That seems like enough for me for now." Peter put his phone back away and glanced over to Ryan. "Speaking of that, what was up with you yesterday? You weren't answering any of my calls or messages all day." Uh oh. Ryan's eyes widened. "You were texting me yesterday?" "Yeah? Of course I was, I was just seeing if you were free to hang at your place again." Peter raised an eyebrow. "I know you can be a bit slow on replying, but you've full on ghosted me for a full day, that's not really like you. At least, I hope it isn't now. Were you busy or something yesterday?" Shoot, I had my phone on silent for most of yesterday! Some notification popped up during my talk with Twilight, so I disabled the push notifications so I could focus more on all those topics she was asking me about. Ryan pulled out his phone and peeked at his settings, confirming his memory. I got so sucked into chatting with her that I totally forgot Peter usually messages me on Saturdays. Ryan rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, offering a sheepish smile. "Yeah, uhm, sorry about that. I was just really busy with researching some new, uhm..." His eyes flickered across the cafe for some inspiration, between people, tables, wall decor, before finally landing on one of the workers in the back pouring a smoothie. "...fluid dynamics simulations. You know about those, right?" Peter blinked. "Huh? You've never been interested in those before." Have I not? "Well, I just found saw some YouTube video about it yesterday morning and really wanted to play around with it." Ryan mentally wiped off an imaginary bead of sweat from his forehead. Peter stared at him for a while before looking down and shaking his head with a smile. "Heh. That sounds about right. By the way, you seem pretty relaxed now, with all things considered. I haven't really seen your new place yet, so you think we could drop by your place and-" Twilight. "No!" "Huh?" Peter blinked, then chuckled. "Come on, you just moved in, you can't possibly have made that bad of a mess already." Twilight might be around by the time I get back. I mean, I could run ahead and warn her to stay quiet, but that might look weird to Peter. I don't know if she might get too curious and try greeting another one of 'humans' anyways. The last thing I need is word of this weird, interdimensional... thingie getting loose. I literally just moved in and everything is actually... okay for once. He paused. And if he so much as hears a girl's voice in my apartment, he's totally gonna get the wrong idea and start telling that crap to everyone. His mind raced, searching for a valid excuse. Wait a minute, what am I doing? I don't even need to lie. "Yeahhhh sorry about that. I, uh, haven't really unpacked pretty much anything since moving in last week. Everything' still all over the floor, and I'd rather you see the place once I have it all nice and organized." Peter rolls his eyes with a laugh. "Uhuh, suuuure, don't know why I expected anything different. You even found some whole new thing to obsess over before even getting to that." A quiet sigh of relief. Whew, he bought it. Perfect. Now I can just- "Just don't get too distracted with that for that demo thing of yours tomorrow." What. "What?" Peter cocked his head in confusion. "Yeah? Y'know, that client demo you've been telling me about all week." Ryan sharply inhaled as the recollection of the previous week's stresses flooded back to him. This time, a genuine bead of sweat slid down the side of his face. "Oh. Right, that." "Yeh, you were all stressed about it, always talking about how you weren't sure whether a certain feature would be done in time." I spent the entire week focusing on getting the functionality up and running. I had told myself I could just use the upcoming weekend to plan out the presentation and my speaking points. "And even with the parts that you were done with, you didn't even know how you were going to properly demo them!" And then the weekend happened, and Twilight happened, and I got completely caught up with chatting with her all day yesterday and completely wasted half of the weekend. "Especially with your anxiety with running presentations in the first place, like wow. I mean, do you remember what happened the last time you tried managing the demonstration when you still working with us? Like, wowie, I-" "Oh my god, thank you for the reminder, but you are not helping at all." Ryan snapped loudly. Silence fell over the cafe, and he shrank slightly. "Sorry, uh, I-" "Ryan! Breakfast burrito!" A voice called out from the pick-up section of the counter. Oh, universe, you could not have timed that better. Ryan quickly stumbled over to the pick-up counter and grabbed his wrapped-up food, then made his way for the door. "Sorry, I really gotta go now, Peter!" "Wait! What is going on with yo-" Whatever Peter's parting words were, they were lost to Ryan's ears as the door slammed shut behind him. Author's Note Yep! Another update! Bit short, but not splitting it here would've made this chapter unnecessarily long. Hoping to stop these hiatuses from getting too long.
