In the immortal words of Limp Bizkit, it was just one of those days. You know the ones. The kind where everything is fucked, and everybody sucks.

Was it me? Something I'd done? Lack of good sleep? Maybe it was just middle-of-the-work-week blues. Could it have been yesterday's solar flare? I didn't know, but my money was on the world just being a sadistic bitch, and I could somehow sense it deep in my soul. Whatever it actually was, something was just wrong from the get-go.

It started with being dragged kicking and screaming from comfortable unconsciousness by the insistent warning of my alarm clock. What time was it? Didn't fucking matter! Any time before ten was far too goddamn early. Having to get up any earlier had to be a crime against nature or something. Plus, my bed was cozy, and beyond it… wasn't.

Then I blearily got an actual look at my clock. Too early was somehow also far too fucking late. How many times had I hit snooze?! Even the immediate double shot of adrenaline was barely enough as I struggled out from under the covers. The rush faded as fast as it came, lasting only through application of contacts and partway through a sloppy shower. By the time I slapped on some clothes I was dragging again, stumbling through feeding Dimble, my cat, yawning around cramming breakfast into my face, and having to bite back half-thought curses against the dawn as I tried not to wake my roommate, Craig.

And hey, I ended up only a few minutes late. So, an otherwise pretty normal Wednesday.

Being late to work was, surprisingly enough, not much of a problem; I was my boss' most consistent employee. Consistently tardy, yes, but more importantly, consistently there, consistently working my hours and more, consistently not calling out, and consistently adjusting my life to fit the store's needs. My boss was willing to forgive my little morning foible as long as I kept up the good work. So, even as I raced out of the apartment parking lot, I had little real concern. That didn't mean I was happy that I was being me again.

The morning might have been salvageable if I'd been able to crank the radio to my favorite station and just cruise through the commute, but no, my favorite station was still more concerned with the solar flare. I mean, the past few days had been just chock full of speculation and concern, but it had happened yesterday, and that was that. Right? No previous one had proved worth the attention. A few cell phones might suffer lost calls! Oh no! There could be glitches in a couple satellites! Shucks! Some electronics could suffer a case of the hiccups! Yeah!

I needed my tunes, damnit! They were my coffee! But no, it was all 'solar flare this,' and 'solar flare that.' Since Craig was a DJ on the station, maybe I could file a complaint with him.

Though my phone, a brand new pre-owned one had been scarily fritzy over the past day. Maybe there was something to this. The number of broken down cars along my drive seemed to confirm it. Seriously, just about every mile brought another tow truck struggling over another vehicle, frequently strategically-placed to make everyone dodge and weave like they had caught a serious case of The Stupids. Had every car on the road in the ungodly super-early hours bitten it? It seemed so. Even then, the intense relief that my aging Mazda Millenia continued to chug along wasn't enough. Not with a creeping exhaustion slipping in between bursts of frenetic, weaving traffic, or the spits of static cutting into what little radio time I got. Somebody was going to pay for my fucking ruined morning.

This flare did seem different though: stronger, or, at least more effective. Had all the others just missed my neck of the woods or something? Was this what people elsewhere had gone through each time one had made the news? Pondering it all became a tertiary concern, because arriving at work dropped me right in the shit. Much like everywhere else, electrical outages do very bad things to a paint store - they too have fancy electronics at their heart - and it seemed that starting off on the wrong foot had carried through to the whole morning.

It didn't really strike me until I got up behind the counter that I actually wasn't the only one affected; my coworkers must have faced the same hurdles I had, and our customers… Our customers were here for a triple treatment: one on their way in, a second while they were here, and a third on their way out. And they seemed to know this ahead of time.

Perhaps that's why nobody needed just a simple couple gallons to be on their way. No, every project was an exercise in fitting round paint cans into problems with fractal-shaped solutions. Even then, everything we suggested was nitpicked to death - as though we didn't know what we were talking about - and somehow never turned out to be the right solution anyway. And it was still entirely our fault that they cut corners in spite of our advice. Then, to top it all off, all of us behind the counter had no idea what we were doing, because we never, ever charged anyone their correct, extra-special price for anything. All of this was set against a backdrop of everyone waiting in line behind every other equally-grumpy customer. Like an overfull cup on a dashboard, everything ended up the next person's problem - ours - and since we didn't want it, we naturally paid it forward. It was like, just for fun, everyone agreed to needle each other as a twisted form of commiseration.

Or perhaps the eleventh Commandment had been "Thou shalt not late thyself to work," and this was all some convoluted way to punish me. Seemed reasonable.

I spent all morning looking forward to a break, a grace period away from everything, some 'me time' to relax. Lunch was the obvious opportunity, because that was the one guarantee that I could actually shut out everyone else. Its arrival was a breath of relief. I squirreled myself away, sat down, opened my food-

"Alex. Some lady here for you."

Fuck you, pick someone else! But I'd been requested by name... Fucking hell. Sure enough, it was a lady I'd helped before, if only because I was the only one patient enough to put up with her. Oh, she was plenty nice, and under most any other circumstance she wasn't a bad customer. Just not here. Not now. She… refused to make up her own mind, which was the absolute last thing I needed.

On and on she stretched, waffling over every decision, over every suggestion, and backtracking constantly to reconsider. 'Oh, I don't know. What do you think?' was somehow her go-to response to any possibility of a decision. Every time it came up, I had to fight down imaginative new ways that I might vent the slowly seething frustration, even as my stomach considered just how nourishing the rest of my gut might be. When she did eventually assent to some amount of resolution - picking a couple minor things, which at least in her mind was progress toward maybe deciding to make a decision - the sale computer burped, its screen fuzzing out for a second.

Fuck you, no! Fuck i- Agh, fuck! I don't know whether I might have cried, screamed, or thrown the computer had I lost-

It came back! Everything right where I needed it to be! My fingers had never moved so fast, flying through the remainder of her sale while I silently went through a list of every deity I could think of - God, Allah, Buddha, Elune, The Unconquered Sun, Fizban, and a host of others - praising each in turn for holding together the stressed computers just this once. Whether any actually existed I couldn't say, but if even one were actually out there, I hoped they still appreciated my efforts.

So I finally got to sit down, cracked open my lunch again-

Dave, my boss, popped up just outside the employee office. "I thought you were going to marry her." The portly middle-aged man waved his sausage fingers while leaning against the doorframe. He was spastic, apparently incapable of relaxing, and kept fidgeting. Though a good portion of that was a habit we all had: repeatedly looking toward the store's glass front, always on the lookout for the next customer.

"Fifty-something, overweight, and indecisive is my kind of woman." I rolled my eyes, biting back some of the vitriol.

"Just how much time did you spend with her?"

Too goddamned much. I shrugged, reclining a bit in my chair, and considered how quickly I could get him to fuck off. I was going to have to yell at my own boss, wasn't I?

"Did she at least buy a lot?" He rubbed at the scruff ringing his mouth.

"Oh yeah, four whole samples. Oh, and a brush!"

His blank look told me just how contagious my lack of excitement was. Shrugging, he straightened. "Well, if this Sun thing would just stop screwing with the computers, we might be able to sell something. Franky-" our sales rep, "-has been up my ass all day about making sales. Like it's not his job to go out and bring in customers. We haven't heard from Pat's yet-" easily our biggest customer, "-so they'll probably want something. Wonder if their phones are working."

I shrugged.

"I should give him a call."

"You do that. I'm eating."

He glared. "Asshole. Sitting there not doing anything. Get the hell back to work."

He didn't actually mean it; it was his standard ritual of bonding through faux griping. True to form, he soon disappeared in the direction of the bathroom. This left me alone with a glorious peanut butter and jelly sandwich - blueberry to be exact - some cookies, and a soda. And my phone.

Having any kind of smartphone was still kind of new to me - I was always behind the gadget curve - and it had added a whole new dynamic to my breaks. I used to sit around just idling or daydreaming, but now I was beginning to enjoy the wonders of browsing while on break. I queued it on and lit it up.

Huh. A new text message. Oh, right, my pocket had buzzed in the middle of Indecisive Lady's anti-lunch crusade.

Sender: unknown.

Message: a bunch of unintelligible squiggles.

It wasn't in any alphabet that I recognized, and I considered myself pretty capable at identifying the base appearance of most languages. The Latin family was plenty familiar, and I was certain I could at least peg the region of any I saw. Arabic ones were quite distinctive, and I had seen enough Asian pictography - was it even pictography? - to at least get myself in the right geographic region. But as I worked my way through my sandwich, I realized that I had no idea what was on my phone.

Perhaps something from Africa, though I had my doubts; I had this impression that African languages had fairly angular letters, but this stuff flowed. Even then, I was sure I was wrong about there being unifying themes across every single African alphabet. Whatever this was was also too abstract to be any kind of hieroglyph, and too connected for things like cuneiform or ancient Greek, so the old languages I could identify were right out. Perhaps it was from one of the "Stans" in central Asia. I had no idea what their writings looked like.

It was short, and there were no links embedded anywhere, so if it was some form of phishing, I didn't think it would be easily dangerous. It was probably safe to dig a little deeper. Google Translate itself was a bust - very weird - but copying it directly to my browser gave me several dozen hits. I love Google. Then I really looked at what had been spat back. An Equestrian Primer. An Introduction to the Equestrian Language PDF. An Equestrian Translator. Forum help for the Equestrian language translator.

Let me back up a bit. I'm a Brony; a fan of the cartoon My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I'd taken a pretty deep dive down that rabbit hole, rigorously supporting favorite characters and episodes, debating them and other points of contention with other fans, seriously looked into buying fan paraphernalia, and even dabbled in a bit of fan art. When I'm on my phone during lunch, I'm not just piddling around on social media; I'm normally on pony fan websites. I know about the show. I know about the world, Equestria. But this? Had someone actually gone and written a fake Equestrian language? Tolkien had done it for his books, sure, but he'd also been an established linguist, turning his passion into an art in support of his stories. It was weird to think about putting that much effort into a fantasy, and even more bizarre that someone had done it for a mere cartoon meant to promote kids’ toys. Much like most other made up languages - Klingon, for example - this was just too deep for me.

Still, I had so many questions, and now my curiosity was piqued. Would the translator actually work? The description mentioned that it was a work in progress, but that it should be helpful to true fans. A tap and a quick scan of the page revealed a very basic setup; two boxes - one each for input and output - a note that the translator only worked for English and Equestrian, and there was a larger description of the fan's work on the translator at the bottom. It was put together by someone called BackgroundPony1337, but credited an AzureMare with the original layout of the language.

Interesting, I guess. Nothing left for it though; I plugged in the copy from my mysterious text.

'Hey, are you coming to my party this weekend?'

Huh. I copied and pasted back and forth between Equestrian and English a couple of times, and at least for this message, it was pretty consistent. A couple of random other test sentences seemed to also work just fine. A working translator? Damn, these people were hardcore.

That meant the mystery text... Whoever it was wasn't just using this stuff, they were socializing with it! I frowned, leaning back to consider. What kind of nut was this?

'Are you coming to my party this weekend?' Sure. I'll get right on that. I'll go to a party filled with pony fans so devoted that they invented a whole language for a corporate cartoon. Even if it was a really good show. I bet they even spent their time talking in 'pony.' That gave me an idea though. The message was clearly not for me, and I had had a bad morning.

'Sure. Where's it at?'

Plugging my message back in to the translator gave me a bunch of squiggly gibberish - hopefully it still worked out - and that went right back into the conversation. But hitting send just gave me an error message; my phone had no idea who the recipient was.

I frowned, glaring at my useless slab of technology. The stupid thing had spat out a message, and now it couldn't send one back? What the hell? I hit send again. Just another error message. Fuck you, do your job! There was a familiar, surprisingly loud popping sound on my third try, and my phone's screen flickered. But the message acquired a green 'sent' check mark.

"Goddamnit!" Oh right, that popping sound was the computers shutting off. Carl, my assistant boss, was cursing and spitting out front. "Fucking computers! My order's probably gone to hell. Hey Alex! I need you to fix these computers!"

I poked my head out of the office to look at the tall, skinny, middle-aged man with spiky gray hair. At least he wasn't yelling with customers in the store. Again.

"What am I supposed to do?"

"I dunno.' Just fix them or something." He glared at me over the frames of his glasses.

"Yeah, let me get right on that. I'm sure punching a few buttons will get the power back on."

"Fuck it, I'm going for a smoke!" came his faint, very angry call from the back.

I sighed and sat back down. The computers had already come back on, though it would take a few minutes for them to run through their reboot. There was nothing anyone could do there. And would you look at that, while 'talking' with Carl my phone had found another mystery text.

'It's at the castle, silly! You know, my birthday? The one you should already have presents for?'

Yeah, okay, I should have expected role play. For people who lived with a made up language, that would be just part and parcel with staying in character. And since the weekend was only three days away, I wouldn't be surprised if this person's house was already decorated into a mock-up of the Royal Palace in the pony capital of Canterlot. Seriously, this was too much. But I couldn't not see where this went. After my morning, I just kind of wanted to watch the world burn, and a nutter on the safe end of some texting could be a good outlet.

'The one on the corner, or the one down the street?'

This time my phone sent it on the first try, and without crashing the computers. Go figure. I hadn't even managed to down one cookie before the next message arrived. What was happening on this person's end? Were they not having the same trouble with this as I was? Fuck them!

'You're not Sea Breeze! Who is this? My pad just says unknown.'

Busted! Oh well. I hadn't expected the ruse to last long anyways.

Though the casual pony-ness was only getting worse; they were even naming each other like ponies. A bit of role-play was one thing, but if they were so committed as to talk to outsiders as ponies, there was nothing left for it but to mess with them. But how? A moment of consideration returned what had to be my favorite alias.

'Englebert Humperdink. Who are you?'

Every time I recalled the man's name, I felt a pang of sympathy for him. Did he know that he had one of the silliest-sounding names ever concocted? How had he survived childhood with that clunky monster? I mean, I'd had enough trouble with derivations of 'stepping out-ski,' so I couldn't even imagine how 'Humperdink' had fared.

Waiting a long minute got me no reply, and unfortunately also ran me out of break time. The grindstone waits for no man...

The afternoon was at least more agreeable than the morning had been. Customers were fewer, so there weren't as many inane questions. I initially even felt less grumpy - more myself really - which was probably in part the comfort of a full belly. It even seemed like the solar flare was less disruptive as well, only kicking the computers in the teeth a couple times. The radio still had consistent problems though, to which the DJs sympathized with us listeners, and that helped. A little.

Throughout it all, I found myself taking frequent short breaks to check my phone for updates. As weirded out as I was by the mysterious messenger, the conversation was at least entertaining. I probably should have simply been posting in English rather than using the translator, and I wasn't really sure why I didn't. Perhaps they would have broken character if I hadn't engaged them in their own little world.

After my next customer:

'What? That's just some random syllables. Who are you really?'

Which was followed almost immediately by:

'Amaranth?'

The second message puzzled me for a few, but ultimately I had nothing, and little interest to figure it out in the face of the first. Then it took six goddamned tries slipped between two customers and a phone call to send another reply. My connection was showing strength, so where the hell was this person that they had such shitty reception?

'What's wrong with my name? Dinglebert Umperhink is a perfectly good name!'

After a young couple, the male half of which I would have traded places with in a heartbeat, if only to spend time next to his absolutely delicious partner in her gauzy sundress:

'That's not even the name you just gave! Just tell me who you really are!'

Hah. Sure. That sounds like a great idea! Tell some nut across the world my actual information. Maybe I should have stopped there and let things fizzle; the whole conversation was just a harmless electronic fuck up courtesy of an errant solar burp. But like a speeding freight train, I found that I couldn't. Talking in a made up language? Renaming themselves and their friends? Steadfastly remaining in-character? Just generally living in a fantasy? During a crappy day? How could I not poke at them?

'What? Yes it is! Like I've said three times now, it's Lingledirt Dumperfink.'

After wheeling out some paint to a customer's truck:

'No you did not! That was only twice, and not even the same thing again! Who are you really?'

How about no? Honestly, despite a twinge of self recrimination, this was kind of fun.

'I've already said! Jingleyurt. Rumperquink. Why can't you get that through your thick skull?'

"No personal calls!" I rolled my eyes as my boss rounded the corner, slipping my phone back in my pocket.

"Hey Dave, who was that you were talking to for about an hour this morning?"

"Uh... My wife? Hey, that was only five minutes."

Five minutes, my ass!

He waved a piece of paper under my nose. "She's been dealing with her sick aunt, and won't leave me alone. She just can't take it alone, and wants me home. You're lucky I didn't leave early."

Carl snorted from the other end of the counter, but said nothing else.

I could see it coming from a mile away: another long, one-sided 'conversation' about how terrible and stressful Dave's life was. The sick aunt would probably transition into how his wife was insufferable, then to how his kids were out to give him an aneurism, maybe an aside about another relative, and finally back to how much crap he had to put up with here at work. I wasn't unsympathetic, but I'd been through this too many times to count, and I really wasn't in the mood today for another. There was only one way out. I took it with relish.

"...and so she wants to go visit next weekend when my brothers can also..." He noticed the paper I'd snatched from his hand. "Oh yeah. I almost forgot. I need you to make that for tomorrow morning."

Thank God for an interruption. As I squeezed past my boss, intent on this Very Important Task, my phone went off again. More messages from Unknown probably, but I had actual work to do.

Naturally, things couldn't just be that simple. On an already bad day, every little thing becomes a tragedy. A stubbed toe, some fumbled papers, missed keystrokes, a small leak in a paint can that was hidden until it was in the industrial shaker... You want grumpy employees and customers? Nothing better for it than having to stop everything to do some emergency cleanup all over the heart of the store. Only in the aftermath did I have a moment to check my phone, and by then I was fed up again.

'This is the castle's private network, so you must realize that I am one of your princesses. Just tell me who you are!'

So, not just a pony, but a princess. Or, I guess, a Princess. A pony of status. A pony of power. A pony of unusual form and stature, and most likely an alicorn: a pony with horn and wings. There were only four in the show, with two being effectively immortal rulers over everything, another was every little girl's pretty, pretty princess dream, and the last was the titular protagonist. This person... She - it was easier to think of them as female - could have picked a more reasonable pony to imitate, but no, she had to be extra-special. And there were only so many reasons that someone would go all-in on role-playing one of these exceptional characters, with few of them worthy.

Or worse, they had concocted their own princess, crafted in the image of one of the show's great notables. Actually, that seemed likely, since this person was doing a terrible job at representing any established character. Maybe - maybe - the aforementioned pretty, pretty princess dream, Cadance, but that was only because we had seen so little of her.

I don't know what came over me then. I swear I'm not normally a jackass - I've even been accused of being too nice! - but I was just done with this day, and this person was apparently unwilling to engage with reality.

'just 'cause your daddy calls you "his little princess" does not make you one. have to get back to work. ttyl!'

If there is one good thing about working in a paint store, it's that running the place keeps you busy. And not just the regular customer traffic either. Even with them, you were always moving, lifting pounds and pounds at a time to be used somewhere else. Surprisingly little of my day actually involved being in one place for any period of time. In other words, despite my boss' attempts to prove otherwise, it was a good workout. Such consistent motion was particularly useful if you - like me - wanted to just fuck off and lose yourself in the simple, mind-calming monotony of stocking, shelving, and organizing.

Though that only works while you have coworkers to cover customers for you. At the end of the day, abandoned by homeward-bound coworkers, I was unwillingly pulled into an unending conversation with a stooped elderly man, trying to precisely detail microscopic differences between paint colors. If there was any day that I would have wanted to start closing at the appointed time, it would have been this one, but reality - and old men - make fools of us all. Delaying my long commute to food and rest even further? Well, that was just the spoiled cherry on top.

And hey, I'd gotten a half dozen more messages from Princess Unknown. Neat… Mostly they were continued insistence that I tell her who I actually was, and denial that I could refuse to do so - I rolled my eyes - though one vented that it was apparently fucking hard to send me messages. So, she was also having trouble with the flare after all. Good.

Y'know what? Fuck you, princess. Someone deserved to suffer along with me.

And yet… There was always that remote chance that this person was actually someone important from some country I barely knew. I… Fuck.

Backtracking my hasty message as I walked to my car, cursing my own persistent conscience, I instead carefully crafted my rejection, injecting just the right amount of snippiness, told her I had to go, and wished her a nice life. Punch, punch, punch. Four goddamned tries to send the thing. Why not? Fuck it! I was out and free!

A warm-ish June evening, and mostly clear, the drive was a pleasant one. The radio stations seemed to have recovered, and I happily cranked it up to cover the wind rushing through opened windows. As I cruised along, my mind naturally backtracked, picking apart the events of the day, analyzing for problems and solutions. And really, as bothered as I had been - as aggressive as I'd felt - there was a creeping upset with how I'd reacted. Guilt. I had let myself fall to darker impulses, and taken it out on another person.

It wasn't me. It wasn't right. Should I fix things? How would I even…?

Tail lights ahead on the road. Lots of them. Probably an accident, and given the lack of movement, a big one. Fucking highway! Not here! Not fucking now! No way forward, and with more cars piling in by the minute, no way back. No turn offs. A U-turn, maybe? Also no. The median was too deep and angled to risk my little comfort sedan, especially in the dark. I did not need to get actually stuck. Which meant I had all the time in the world to think… to stew… to comfort myself with every injustice wrought by the day… to find a target to justify my suffering...

Two hours into an hour-long commute, I finally stomped through the front door of my ground floor two bedroom apartment, ready to flay someone. Shucking my shoes, I stepped into the kitchen area to whip up something quick, because first I needed to cram something in my stomach. On the other end of the room, where it became living instead of kitchen, Craig was thoroughly lounged on the couch, his legs stretched toward the TV. His glance was questioning, but he went right back to watching his game. Dimble got fed first, naturally - he was The Cat - then, after some indecision, I set a couple hotdogs and some mac 'n cheese on the stove. Simple and fast was the better option tonight.

Plopping down on the opposite end of the couch from Craig, I found another two messages from The Princess. Well, I'll be… Apparently the castle guard now knew of me, so I should out myself and apologize for being… 'disharmonious?' First off, what the hell kind of threat is that? Second, whoever you are, you're definitely convincing me to want to share any actual information with you! Fuck off! That kind of stupid is a quick way to end up on the receiving end of 'Very Bad Things.'

What did I even want to do about it? Something for sure, but what?

"You alright, dude?"

Huh? I blinked at Craig.

"You been staring at your phone for like five minutes."

"Oh." I'd leaned forward over my phone, but physical and mental exhaustion had left myself and my intentions blank. So yeah, I probably had, since I wasn't in a state to do more than just vegetate. "Eh. Work sucked. Day sucked. And I got these weird messages from some girl."

Craig's eyebrows achieved liftoff.

"Sent me a message by mistake, I played around a bit, and now she won't leave me alone. Total nut, so I've just been messing with her."

"A girl, huh?" He was just starting to smile.

"Remember when I said she was a total nut?"

It didn't seem like he cared, so I leaned over and showed off my phone. Pulling up the messages, I-

"What the hell is this crap? Some kind of Yiddish?"

"Yiddish? Really? You don't even know what that is." I quickly showed him the translator. "No, it's 'Equestrian.' Some fan invented a whole fucking language for the show." Craig had discovered me being a fan long ago. Low-key ribbing had become a facet of my life.

"Woah. Yeah, okay. So she's a nut." His grin jerked from 'I know something juicy' into 'this shit is hilarious.' "Is she at least a hot nut?"

Oh, no. I wasn't falling for that one! "Probably not. She's probably a dude, or old, or an old dude. Take your pick. But she's completely committed to the act."

"Whatcha' mean?"

Tilting my phone his way, I showed him the text stream, then the translator and a bit of back and forth with it using one of her older messages. "See, she's a 'Princess,'" I made sure to include the required amount of sarcasm.

"You've been doing this too? The, um, pony thing back?" The look he gave made me want to slap it back off his face. Yes, Craig, I'm a fucking dork too.

"She didn't respond back if I didn't."

He put up his hands. Maybe I was too snide. "Okay, okay, dude. But what've you been doing here?"

In hindsight, I really should have been copying everything into a separate folder, because it took a long damn time to pull everything again and back-translate it again. A process with which he was almost immediately bored, flopping back to gaze into the TV. Even the stove timer finished before I could.

"There's it all." I dropped my phone off on the coffee table, and went to tend to my dinner.

"Ooo, she's angry."

"Yup."

"Eh, it's okay."

I blinked, brows furrowing, and looked over my shoulder. "What?"

"This." He leaned back, holding out my phone and extending his other hand toward it. "Messing with this girl. You did okay."

It all suddenly clicked. Craig...

My roommate was tall and overly skinny, with a penchant for wearing whatever seemed cleanest. We had some differences there, but ultimately they were unimportant. As a rock station DJ, it wasn't like tidiness was ever a huge worry for him anyways, which was a perfect fit. From his jeans, open flannel shirt, scruffy beard, ratty hat, and unruly hair, everything about him was casual. His posture was always casual, his demeanor was perpetually casual, and his outlook was ever casual. But as my polar opposite, he made it work in ways I was supremely envious of. He could throw on whatever, amble to wherever, strike up a careless conversation about nothing, and still project himself better than I. Everywhere he went, and in everything he did, he knew what to say and do to get what he wanted; I had never actually seen anyone melt from a smile and a few simple nothings until I watched Craig work a bar. What he might lack in the cookie in the jar, he more than made up for in personal charm.

If I really wanted to take out my frustrations on Princess Unknown, Craig would know how.

"But you could do better." It wasn't a question.

Because the truth was obvious to all. "Duh."

"Then have at her." Yeah, I know; it was mean to vent by roping Craig into this, but I didn't particularly care. If he was game, then so was I. Plus then I could eat in peace.

The hotdogs got sliced, dropped into the mac 'n cheese, and then the whole pot came with me. Finally taking a good look at the TV… College football. Meh. "Well, have fun with her. I'll be in my room. Try to keep it PG 13. You can do that, right?" I fixed my roommate with a look.

"Hey, I work on the radio. You can't say shit there or you get fired."

"Right…" I paused before turning down the short hallway leading past Craig's room toward mine. "Oh, it's fucking hard to send her messages. Shitty connection or solar flare fuckery or something."

Craig, who'd sat up to fiddle with my phone, grunted. "Space is stupid."

I snorted, then waved myself off, retreating into my little rabbit hole; my sanctum. Dresser on the left, bed across from the doorway and against the wall with two windows, and my computer desk to the right, facing the door and overseeing all. The 'God Seat' style of arranging, as another friend had labeled it. Dimble followed languidly, and as I set up shop at my desk, he claimed my bed like always, occupying nearly half. The gray-and-black tabby was not actually that big, but he still acted like it, and could sprawl with the best of them.

Ponies or World of Warcraft? World of Warcraft or ponies? Despite the 'Princess,' my love of ponies was still very tempting… No, tonight felt like a World of Warcraft night. Some small group player versus player would be the harder activity, but all the more rewarding if I got to thoroughly trounce someone.

And it went okay-ish. No great losses, and enough victories to make it all well worth the effort. Craig's occasional laugh from elsewhere in the apartment followed me as I hopped from fight to fight, and at one point I swear he was hooting. Might've been at the TV. I hoped it was at the TV. I did not need him sexting on my phone, no matter how much he said I'd appreciate the help. And especially not with crazy Princess Lady.

It must have been an hour before I truly paused, taking note of the lukewarm, half-cleared pot of noodles. I really needed to fridge them before they got all crusty. So, after one last round, I scooped up the dishes, petted the cat a couple times, then tromped back to the kitchen. Craig was back to being stretched out toward the TV, my phone dark and forgotten on the coffee table.

"So, what do you think?" I asked.

"Eh. Murtold was a bad pick. They should have left him for someone else to draft. He averaged like three fumbles a game last season." Craig shrugged.

"No, I meant the crazy girl on my phone."

"Oh, her. She shut up a while ago." He tossed my phone at me, but thankfully my reflexes were good. I glared death and dismemberment at him.

"What?" He stared back blankly.

"Don't throw my new phone around."

"Right. Sorry."

What had he been up to? I had to know if his distant theatrics had been phone related, or… There was the message stream with Unknown. Craig had apparently tried texting her in English - a couple times, in fact - but she never took the bait. A bit of expressed confusion, but no leaving her chosen fantasy language, which had forced Craig to play her game. I snorted and rolled my eyes; I wasn't sure whether to be impressed or appalled. More of the latter, really.

Something, something, angry texting over who we really were. Yadda, yadda, the Royal Guard were aware we had broken into the network. Ooo! Were fellow role-players getting involved now? Wow. Blah, blah, give ourselves up for being disharmonious.

Well, I'll give her this: she was really selling the act. Maybe I was too quick to dismiss one of the Middle Eastern states - or even central south Asian! - as her home. They probably had more than their fair share of uptight, overly-pampered princesses. Right? Hmmmm… Which made me wonder whether I might have pissed off one of the ruling royals of an ally of the United States. It seemed unlikely, but I couldn't help some growing trepidation. And I did feel a little bad for Unknown. Craig might have had to play in her language, but the battle of words was his playground.

Then I remembered how stupid the whole conversation was. Maybe I really was too considerate at times.

And yeah, Princess Unknown was angry. Craig had slowly but surely teased her into a frenzy with witty comebacks and bold jabs. As funny as reading his messages was, it was a bit painful to read back through the conversation. Perhaps we had pushed her too far; her final message was just a weird, nonsensical tirade.

'You inconsiderate, colicky, friendless, patchy, blank-flanked, disharmonious mule! This conversation is over!'

Craig's response was simply... inspired.

'your mom's a blankflanked disharmonius mule'

I burst out laughing. You don't often get a legitimate chance to come back like that, and of course Craig had. I couldn't help myself. It was the funniest thing I'd seen in a long time.

"Like that?" Craig was looking at me with an amused smile.

"Fucking brilliant, dude."

"Yeah. Then she got all quiet. Was boring, and I'm not gonna' keep sending texts like some whipped boyfriend."

"Uh huh. I feel kinda' bad though. She just doesn't get it." I looked at my phone, debating whether or not to do anything about the conversation.

"Just leave it." Craig said, stretching his arms up and looking back at the game. "You're too soft. If she doesn't get it, then she doesn't get it. It's not your fault."

Except that it kind of was. And now that I'd had time to calm down, had space to be away from a crappy day, I did feel bad. It was just who I was. In my anger, I'd had us insult this person into a raving tizzy, and that made up my mind. Sliding open the keyboard - I did say I was behind the tech curve, right? - I began typing another message. Hopefully my phone would let this one through just fine.

'Hey. I want to apologize. My friend and I have been having some fun at-'

My phone was... glowing? It was! Not like the screen or the little lights under the keyboard, which were all already on: a pale yellow sun-shafted aura was around the outside, as though the thing was being backlit by something. And the glow was growing wider and brighter!

"Oh shit!"

I let go and jumped away, the phone thumping into the carpet . I hadn't felt a thing from the glow, but phones didn't glow, and there was no way I was putting my hand anywhere near it now. I stood stock still for a moment, staring down and a little glad that it hadn't broken, trying to compute and utterly failing. Phones didn't glow! But mine was! But there was no way it could do that! But-! But-? But-!

"Dude...?" Hearing Craig's high-pitched call from the couch snapped my head around.

Seeing him upright but scrunched back, also clearly reacting to the impossibility on the floor, was like a switch, and I leapt halfway across the room, closer to him. Craig shot up as I came to a stop, raising a hand and jabbing a finger toward my phone.

"What?" His way with words was amazing.

"I don't know!" I nearly shouted.

The glow on my phone had steadied, though the light shafts still gently shifted around. The air just above it seemed to… wiggle? Motion. Like a heat mirage lifting off from the phone until the area several feet above the floor shimmered and warped, causing the wall and hall entryway across from us to take a slightly refracted look. I had always liked the effect, but this was different. This wasn't some distant heat mirage. It was too confined, too organized, and too close. Then it moved.

The warping did what I could only describe as a small loop-de-loop before settling in the hall entryway about three feet off the ground. Even though it had moved, my phone still glowed, giving us two sources of weird to shy away from. Once the mirage had settled in one spot, the shimmer intensified and the air seemed to roll back from the area. It was not simply the air leaving the area - I shouldn't have been able to see that - it was more like sci fi renderings of how the very fabric of reality bends outward around a black hole. Was I staring in unabashed horror at imminent destruction? I couldn't deny the probability!

Then the whole distortion collapsed back in on itself with a loud thump, replaced in an instant by a creature. Facing us and a couple heads shorter than I, golden yellow and blue were its primary colors. Four long legs ended in hooves that were slightly darker than the yellow of its slim body, while a graceful neck held up a face with a distinct muzzle, and a vibrant light-blue-on-dark-blue mane spilled off one side in a series of neat waves. Vaguely dog-like, it was still clearly equine. I was staring at a pony. An honest-to-God, real life, My Little Pony pony. I blinked, my mouth dropping open.

As my eyes flicked back and forth, I began picking through specific details, trying to digest what I was seeing. I could vaguely see a tail behind it, colored similarly to the mane, truly massive feathers were laid neatly along both of its sides, a small silvery torc rested around the base of its neck, a long, neatly spiraled horn - which was also glowing! - rose from its forehead, and a silver-colored circlet rested atop its head. Its face and frame were fine-boned and defined by gentle curves; if Friendship is Magic was at all accurate, then this had to be a female pony. With the feathered wings, horn, and the regalia- A fucking alicorn?! Unknown had actually been a-?!

It took barely a moment to register everything and figure out that I was pretty well fucked!

A different flash - a pink one - distracted me from reviewing my short, very unfortunate life. As the glow around her horn and my phone winked out together, a shiny rectangular pink object fell right out of the air fucking in front of her to thwack against the carpet. Was that an iPad? What the fuck? With nothing else to go on, I looked back at the face of my would-be executioner.

Her eyes were closed. Forcefully scrunched, actually. Before my poor, overloaded brain could wonder at that as well, she opened her mouth and gave a piteous whine, her face contorting into a rictus of pain. Then she wobbled. This proved disastrous as her hind hooves slipped on the faux stone tiles of the hallway. Frozen, I could only watch across the insurmountable distance of my living room as she tilted slightly backwards and toppled, her head rebounding off the casing. Her hooves clattered against the hallway walls as she thudded bonelessly against the floor, legs folding up every which way in the confined space. Finally, like a dismal, grotesque climax, her wings slowly slid to half-splayed about her.

My body wouldn't move. I could only stare and cringe. There was a pony in my apartment. A pony. How could I ever comprehend this? This was straight up fucking impossible! A pony! In my apartment! Oh, God… She looked completely knocked out. Was that...? Yes, there was a little crimson on the side of her head. Please, please, please don't let her be dead! Getting out of this peacefully seemed impossible, because if this alicorn was dead, then so was I! I doubt even Princess Celestia, in her infinite mercy, would show any leniency after I mauled one of her subjects.

This might even be one of Celestia's relatives. Fuck! Not helping, brain!

Then, with flawless eloquence and a masterful grasp of the gravity of the situation, Craig turned to me and summed up both our thoughts in a single, sage sentence.

"Dude, your phone just shit out a pony!"

Author's Note

Welcome to the new(*) and improved version of chapter one! Now with better presentation, greater clarity, and smoother progression! Less cringe too, I hope.

This wouldn't be such a thing without my wonderful editors/spitballers:
Seven Fates
m1ntf4n

I'm always amazed that they both put up with me so well. (Don't ask...)

And fret not, the original version is preserved, just in case anyone still wants to hearken back to ye olden days. Okay... I like to. Here:
To Love a Pony 1 - Close Encounters (original)

Though, for the truly brave, the very first draft also continues to exist...

Oh God, don't read below this line!

I'm warning you!

Seriously, you don't want to do this!

Chapter 1 original draft -

“Will there be anything else?”

I had my eyes fixed on the computer screen in front of me, the blues, tans and reds of the second-to-last menu blurring together in to a solid mass. I studiously feigned an interest in it that was well beyond my mind’s actual capability. In reality I wanted nothing more than to smash my forehead in to the computer, hopefully knocking myself completely oblivious in the process. It wasn’t that I hated my job per say, I just found myself occasionally wishing that I could pull a katana out of my pants pocket with which to behead certain odious customers, and through that act steal their unholy power. I reminded myself – again – that such a thing would not garner me ultimate power. If the average intelligence of my customers was anything to go by it would just give me something messy and incurable.

Oh, and the police probably don’t take kindly to random, though totally justified, beheadings. That could be a problem. I would have to think about…

“No, that should be all for today. Thanks!”

This woman was entirely too chipper for my taste. But that was simply another very familiar trait of the ungodly horror standing across the counter from me.

“You’ve been a big help! I really appreciate it!”

I nodded, still studying the computer screen as though it held some piece of information that would be vital within the next few minutes for my continued existence. Perhaps it did. I could only maintain the friendly smile plastered below my nose for so long. That screen was artificial heart and lungs to said smile because it distracted my brain from finally getting around to pulling the plug. I didn’t want to seem unfriendly to the customer after all.

The screen flickered as I hit a button and I read the nice lady her total. I looked up and saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Finally! She would hand me her payment, I would produce a receipt, and then we would part ways, hopefully to never see each other again. Instead, the harridan produced a check book and scrounged around my counter for a pen.

I did what I could to wait patiently, desperately shoring up the smile that was the bulwark keeping my hatred from showing. I thought of daisies and warm sunny days without a care. I thought about logging in to World of Warcraft and taking down undergeared newbies with wanton abandon. I thought about last year’s trip to the Great Lakes and the frigid water that… Never mind. At least I was distracting myself long enough for her to…

“Who do I make this out to?”

My brain faceplanted against the inside of my skull so hard I’m sure that seismometers in China were wondering what had just happened to the American East coast.

With my brain fully out of commission my body went in to autopilot. The smile remained, but my eyes likely held a dejected lifelessness. Perhaps this was how the zombie apocalypse began; one man behind a counter, his psyche obliterated by the endless inanity of modern society. Chasing her down while moaning ‘brains’ made for a pretty picture, and I felt the slightest twinge of pleasure in an otherwise depressing emotional void. I pointed over my shoulder to the giant sign we had hanging on the wall over the counter. For the love of God, it was right in front of her in bold, shiny letters. I fully expected her to ask me how to spell it...

She began to scribble instead. I breathed a sigh of relief and began searching among the remains of my brain for some semblance of personality. I looked down as the screen flickered again. The colors fuzzed, blended, and then the entire thing shifted sideways. The defibrillation I was trying on my brain failed as everything I had accomplished over the last fifteen minutes disappeared in to an electronic black hole.

I was going to scream. I could feel it in the back of my throat clawing its way out from my gut. I had just spent the better part of my morning discussing the intricate details of this lady's purchase while she waited for me to make up her mind for her. Now I would have to spend even more time talking to her; putting on a happy face and a pleasant tone just so she would not know how much I wished to be doing anything else. With my fingers carving grooves in to my palms I took several slow breaths

The Horror! THE HORROR! THE HORROR!!!!